Meanwhile, in the distant town of Sandbourne, Christopher Julian had
recovered from the weariness produced by his labours at the Wyndway
evening-party where Ethelberta had been a star. Instead of engaging his
energies to clear encumbrances from the tangled way of his life, he now
set about reading the popular 'Metres by E.' with more interest and
assiduity than ever; for though Julian was a thinker by instinct, he was
a worker by effort only; and the higher of these kinds being dependent
upon the lower for its exhibition, there was often a lamentable lack of
evidence of his power in either. It is a provoking correlation, and has
conduced to the obscurity of many a genius.
'Kit,' said his sister, on reviving at the end of the bad headache which
had followed the dance, 'those poems seem to have increased in value with
you. The lady, lofty as she appears to be, would be flattered if she
only could know how much you study them. Have you decided to thank her
for them? Now let us talk it over--I like having a chat about such a
pretty new subject.'
'I would thank her in a moment if I were absolutely certain that she had
anything to do with sending them, or even writing them. I am not quite
sure of that yet.'
'How strange that a woman could bring herself to write those verses!'
'Not at all strange--they are natural outpourings.'
Faith looked critically at the remoter caverns of the fire.
'Why strange?' continued Christopher. 'There is no harm in them.'
'O no--no harm. But I cannot explain to you--unless you see it partly of
your own accord--that to write them she must be rather a fast lady--not a
bad fast lady; a nice fast lady, I mean, of course. There, I have said
it now, and I daresay you are vexed with me, for your interest in her has
deepened to what it originally was, I think. I don't mean any absolute
harm by "fast," Kit.'
'Bold, forward, you mean, I suppose?'
Faith tried to hit upon a better definition which should meet all views;
and, on failing to do so, looked concerned at her brother's somewhat
grieved appearance, and said, helplessly, 'Yes, I suppose I do.'
'My idea of her is quite the reverse. A poetess must intrinsically be
sensitive, or she could never feel: but then, frankness is a rhetorical
necessity even with the most modest, if their inspirations are to do any
good in the world. You will, for certain, not be interested in something
I was going to tell you, which I thought would have pleased you
immensely; but it is not worth mentioning now.'
'If you will not tell me, never mind. But don't be crabbed, Kit! You
know how interested I am in all your affairs.'
'It is only that I have composed an air to one of the prettiest of her
songs, "When tapers tall"--but I am not sure about the power of it. This
is how it begins--I threw it off in a few minutes, after you had gone to
bed.'
He went to the piano and lightly touched over an air, the manuscript copy
of which he placed in front of him, and listened to hear her opinion,
having proved its value frequently; for it was not that of a woman
merely, but impersonally human. Though she was unknown to fame, this was
a great gift in Faith, since to have an unsexed judgment is as precious
as to be an unsexed being is deplorable.
'It is very fair indeed,' said the sister, scarcely moving her lips in
her great attention. 'Now again, and again, and again. How could you do
it in the time!'
Kit knew that she admired his performance: passive assent was her usual
praise, and she seldom insisted vigorously upon any view of his
compositions unless for purposes of emendation.
'I was thinking that, as I cannot very well write to her, I may as well
send her this,' said Christopher, with lightened spirits, voice to
correspond, and eyes likewise; 'there can be no objection to it, for such
things are done continually. Consider while I am gone, Faith. I shall
be out this evening for an hour or two.'
When Christopher left the house shortly after, instead of going into the
town on some errand, as was customary whenever he went from home after
dark, he ascended a back street, passed over the hills behind, and walked
at a brisk pace inland along the road to Rookington Park, where, as he
had learnt, Ethelberta and Lady Petherwin were staying for a time, the
day or two which they spent at Wyndway having formed a short break in the
middle of this visit. The moon was shining to-night, and Christopher
sped onwards over the pallid high-road as readily as he could have done
at noonday. In three-quarters of an hour he reached the park gates; and
entering now upon a tract which he had never before explored, he went
along more cautiously and with some uncertainty as to the precise
direction that the road would take. A frosted expanse of even grass, on
which the shadow of his head appeared with an opal halo round it, soon
allowed the house to be discovered beyond, the other portions of the park
abounding with timber older and finer than that of any other spot in the
neighbourhood. Christopher withdrew into the shade, and wheeled round to
the front of the building that contained his old love. Here he gazed and
idled, as many a man has done before him--wondering which room the fair
poetess occupied, waiting till lights began to appear in the upper
windows--which they did as uncertainly as glow-worms blinking up at
eventide--and warming with currents of revived feeling in perhaps the
sweetest of all conditions. New love is brightest, and long love is
greatest; but revived love is the tenderest thing known upon earth.
Occupied thus, Christopher was greatly surprised to see, on casually
glancing to one side, another man standing close to the shadowy trunk of
another tree, in a similar attitude to his own, gazing, with arms folded,
as blankly at the windows of the house as Christopher himself had been
gazing. Not willing to be discovered, Christopher stuck closer to his
tree. While he waited thus, the stranger began murmuring words, in a
slow soft voice. Christopher listened till he heard the following:--
'Pale was the day and rayless, love,
That had an eve so dim.'
Two well-known lines from one of Ethelberta's poems.
Jealousy is a familiar kind of heat which disfigures, licks playfully,
clouds, blackens, and boils a man as a fire does a pot; and on
recognizing these pilferings from what he had grown to regard as his own
treasury, Christopher's fingers began to nestle with great vigour in the
palms of his hands. Three or four minutes passed, when the unknown rival
gave a last glance at the windows, and walked away. Christopher did not
like the look of that walk at all--there was grace enough in it to
suggest that his antagonist had no mean chance of finding favour in a
woman's eyes. A sigh, too, seemed to proceed from the stranger's breast;
but as their distance apart was too great for any such sound to be heard
by any possibility, Christopher set down that to imagination, or to the
brushing of the wind over the trees.
The lighted windows went out one by one, and all the house was in
darkness. Julian then walked off himself, with a vigour that was
spasmodic only, and with much less brightness of mind than he had
experienced on his journey hither. The stranger had gone another way,
and Christopher saw no more of him. When he reached Sandbourne, Faith
was still sitting up.
'But I told you I was going to take a long walk,' he said.
'No, Christopher: really you did not. How tired and sad you do
look--though I always know beforehand when you are in that state: one of
your feet has a drag about it as you pass along the pavement outside the
window.'
'Yes, I forgot that I did not tell you.'
He could not begin to describe his pilgrimage: it was too silly a thing
even for her to hear of.
'It does not matter at all about my staying up,' said Faith assuringly;
'that is, if exercise benefits you. Walking up and down the lane, I
suppose?'
'No; not walking up and down the lane.'
'The turnpike-road to Rookington is pleasant.'
'Faith, that is really where I have been. How came you to know?'
'I only guessed. Verses and an accidental meeting produce a special
journey.'
'Ethelberta is a fine woman, physically and mentally, both. I wonder
people do not talk about her twice as much as they do.'
'Then surely you are getting attached to her again. You think you
discover in her more than anybody else does; and love begins with a sense
of superior discernment.'
'No, no. That is only nonsense,' he said hurriedly. 'However, love her
or love her not, I can keep a corner of my heart for you, Faith. There
is another brute after her too, it seems.'
'Of course there is: I expect there are many. Her position in society is
above ours, so that it is an unwise course to go troubling yourself more
about her.'
'No. If a needy man must be so foolish as to fall in love, it is best to
do so where he cannot double his foolishness by marrying the woman.'
'I don't like to hear you talk so slightingly of what poor father did.'
Christopher fixed his attention on the supper. That night, late as it
was, when Faith was in bed and sleeping, he sat before a sheet of music-
paper, neatly copying his composition upon it. The manuscript was
intended as an offering to Ethelberta at the first convenient
opportunity.
* * * * *
'Well, after all my trouble to find out about Ethelberta, here comes the
clue unasked for,' said the musician to his sister a few days later.
She turned and saw that he was reading the Wessex Reflector.
'What is it?' asked Faith.
'The secret of the true authorship of the book is out at last, and it is
Ethelberta of course. I am so glad to have it proved hers.'
'But can we believe--?'
'O yes. Just hear what "Our London Correspondent" says. It is one of
the nicest bits of gossip that he has furnished us with for a long time.'
'Yes: now read it, do.'
'"The author of 'Metres by E.'"' Christopher began, '"a book of which so
much has been said and conjectured, and one, in fact, that has been the
chief talk for several weeks past of the literary circles to which I
belong, is a young lady who was a widow before she reached the age of
eighteen, and is now not far beyond her fourth lustrum. I was
additionally informed by a friend whom I met yesterday on his way to the
House of Lords, that her name is Mrs. Petherwin--Christian name
Ethelberta; and that she resides with her mother-in-law at their house in
Exonbury Crescent. She is, moreover, the daughter of the late Bishop of
Silchester (if report may be believed), whose active benevolence, as your
readers know, left his family in comparatively straitened circumstances
at his death. The marriage was a secret one, and much against the wish
of her husband's friends, who are wealthy people on all sides. The death
of the bridegroom two or three weeks after the wedding led to a
reconciliation; and the young poetess was taken to the home which she
still occupies, devoted to the composition of such brilliant effusions as
those the world has lately been favoured with from her pen."'
'If you want to send her your music, you can do so now,' said Faith.
'I might have sent it before, but I wanted to deliver it personally.
However, it is all the same now, I suppose, whether I send it or not. I
always knew that our destinies would lie apart, though she was once
temporarily under a cloud. Her momentary inspiration to write that
"Cancelled Words" was the worst possible omen for me. It showed that,
thinking me no longer useful as a practical chance, she would make me
ornamental as a poetical regret. But I'll send the manuscript of the
song.'
'In the way of business, as a composer only; and you must say to
yourself, "Ethelberta, as thou art but woman, I dare; but as widow I fear
thee."'
Notwithstanding Christopher's affected carelessness, that evening saw a
great deal of nicety bestowed upon the operation of wrapping up and
sending off the song. He dropped it into the box and heard it fall, and
with the curious power which he possessed of setting his wisdom to watch
any particular folly in himself that it could not hinder, speculated as
he walked on the result of this first tangible step of return to his old
position as Ethelberta's lover.