'This is indeed a surprise; I--am glad to see you!' Christopher
stammered, with a wire-drawn, radically different smile from the one he
had intended--a smile not without a tinge of ghastliness.
'Yes--I am home for the holidays,' said the blushing maiden; and, after a
critical pause, she added, 'If you wish to speak to my sister, she is in
the plantation with the children.'
'O no--no, thank you--not necessary at all,' said Christopher, in haste.
'I only wish for an interview with a lady called Mrs. Petherwin.'
'Yes; Mrs Petherwin--my sister,' said Picotee. 'She is in the
plantation. That little path will take you to her in five minutes.'
The amazed Christopher persuaded himself that this discovery was very
delightful, and went on persuading so long that at last he felt it to be
so. Unable, like many other people, to enjoy being satirized in words
because of the irritation it caused him as aimed-at victim, he sometimes
had philosophy enough to appreciate a satire of circumstance, because
nobody intended it. Pursuing the path indicated, he found himself in a
thicket of scrubby undergrowth, which covered an area enclosed from the
park proper by a decaying fence. The boughs were so tangled that he was
obliged to screen his face with his hands, to escape the risk of having
his eyes filliped out by the twigs that impeded his progress. Thus
slowly advancing, his ear caught, between the rustles, the tones of a
voice in earnest declamation; and, pushing round in that direction, he
beheld through some beech boughs an open space about ten yards in
diameter, floored at the bottom with deep beds of curled old leaves, and
cushions of furry moss. In the middle of this natural theatre was the
stump of a tree that had been felled by a saw, and upon the flat stool
thus formed stood Ethelberta, whom Christopher had not beheld since the
ball at Wyndway House.
Round her, leaning against branches or prostrate on the ground, were five
or six individuals. Two were young mechanics--one of them evidently a
carpenter. Then there was a boy about thirteen, and two or three younger
children. Ethelberta's appearance answered as fully as ever to that of
an English lady skilfully perfected in manner, carriage, look, and
accent; and the incongruity of her present position among lives which had
had many of Nature's beauties stamped out of them, and few of the
beauties of Art stamped in, brought him, as a second feeling, a pride in
her that almost equalled his first sentiment of surprise. Christopher's
attention was meanwhile attracted from the constitution of the group to
the words of the speaker in the centre of it--words to which her auditors
were listening with still attention.
It appeared to Christopher that Ethelberta had lately been undergoing
some very extraordinary experiences. What the beginning of them had been
he could not in the least understand, but the portion she was describing
came distinctly to his ears, and he wondered more and more.
'He came forward till he, like myself, was about twenty yards from the
edge. I instinctively grasped my useless stiletto. How I longed for the
assistance which a little earlier I had so much despised! Reaching the
block or boulder upon which I had been sitting, he clasped his arms
around from behind; his hands closed upon the empty seat, and he jumped
up with an oath. This method of attack told me a new thing with wretched
distinctness; he had, as I suppose, discovered my sex, male attire was to
serve my turn no longer. The next instant, indeed, made it clear, for he
exclaimed, "You don't escape me, masquerading madam," or some such words,
and came on. My only hope was that in his excitement he might forget to
notice where the grass terminated near the edge of the cliff, though this
could be easily felt by a careful walker: to make my own feeling more
distinct on this point I hastily bared my feet.'
The listeners moistened their lips, Ethelberta took breath, and then went
on to describe the scene that ensued, 'A dreadful variation on the game
of Blindman's buff,' being the words by which she characterized it.
Ethelberta's manner had become so impassioned at this point that the lips
of her audience parted, the children clung to their elders, and
Christopher could control himself no longer. He thrust aside the boughs,
and broke in upon the group.
'For Heaven's sake, Ethelberta,' he exclaimed with great excitement,
'where did you meet with such a terrible experience as that?'
The children shrieked, as if they thought that the interruption was in
some way the catastrophe of the events in course of narration. Every one
started up; the two young mechanics stared, and one of them inquired, in
return, 'What's the matter, friend?'
Christopher had not yet made reply when Ethelberta stepped from her
pedestal down upon the crackling carpet of deep leaves.
'Mr. Julian!' said she, in a serene voice, turning upon him eyes of such
a disputable stage of colour, between brown and grey, as would have
commended itself to a gallant duellist of the last century as a point on
which it was absolutely necessary to take some friend's life or other.
But the calmness was artificially done, and the astonishment that did not
appear in Ethelberta's tones was expressed by her gaze. Christopher was
not in a mood to draw fine distinctions between recognized and
unrecognized organs of speech. He replied to the eyes.
'I own that your surprise is natural,' he said, with an anxious look into
her face, as if he wished to get beyond this interpolated scene to
something more congenial and understood. 'But my concern at such a
history of yourself since I last saw you is even more natural than your
surprise at my manner of breaking in.'
'That history would justify any conduct in one who hears it--'
'Yes, indeed.'
'If it were true,' added Ethelberta, smiling. 'But it is as false as--'
She could name nothing notoriously false without raising an image of what
was disagreeable, and she continued in a better manner: 'The story I was
telling is entirely a fiction, which I am getting up for a particular
purpose--very different from what appears at present.'
'I am sorry there was such a misunderstanding,' Christopher stammered,
looking upon the ground uncertain and ashamed. 'Yet I am not, either,
for I am very glad you have not undergone such trials, of course. But
the fact is, I--being in the neighbourhood--I ventured to call on a
matter of business, relating to a poem which I had the pleasure of
setting to music at the beginning of the year.'
Ethelberta was only a little less ill at ease than Christopher showed
himself to be by this way of talking.
'Will you walk slowly on?' she said gently to the two young men, 'and
take the children with you; this gentleman wishes to speak to me on
business.'
The biggest young man caught up a little one under his arm, and plunged
amid the boughs; another little one lingered behind for a few moments to
look shyly at Christopher, with an oblique manner of hiding her mouth
against her shoulder and her eyes behind her pinafore. Then she
vanished, the boy and the second young man followed, and Ethelberta and
Christopher stood within the wood-bound circle alone.
'I hope I have caused no inconvenience by interrupting the proceedings,'
said Christopher softly; 'but I so very much wished to see you!'
'Did you, indeed--really wish to see me?' she said gladly. 'Never mind
inconvenience then; it is a word which seems shallow in meaning under the
circumstances. I surely must say that a visit is to my advantage, must I
not? I am not as I was, you see, and may receive as advantages what I
used to consider as troubles.'
'Has your life really changed so much?'
'It has changed. But what I first meant was that an interesting visitor
at a wrong time is better than a stupid one at a right time.'
'I had been behind the trees for some minutes, looking at you, and
thinking of you; but what you were doing rather interrupted my first
meditation. I had thought of a meeting in which we should continue our
intercourse at the point at which it was broken off years ago, as if the
omitted part had not existed at all; but something, I cannot tell what,
has upset all that feeling, and--'
'I can soon tell you the meaning of my extraordinary performance,'
Ethelberta broke in quickly, and with a little trepidation. 'My mother-
in-law, Lady Petherwin, is dead; and she has left me nothing but her
house and furniture in London--more than I deserve, but less than she had
distinctly led me to expect; and so I am somewhat in a corner.'
'It is always so.'
'Not always, I think. But this is how it happened. Lady Petherwin was
very capricious; when she was not foolishly kind she was unjustly harsh.
A great many are like it, never thinking what a good thing it would be,
instead of going on tacking from side to side between favour and cruelty,
to keep to a mean line of common justice. And so we quarrelled, and she,
being absolute mistress of all her wealth, destroyed her will that was in
my favour, and made another, leaving me nothing but the fag-end of the
lease of the town-house and the furniture in it. Then, when we were
abroad, she turned to me again, forgave everything, and, becoming ill
afterwards, wrote a letter to the brother, to whom she had left the bulk
of her property, stating that I was to have twenty-thousand of the one-
hundred-thousand pounds she had bequeathed to him--as in the original
will--doing this by letter in case anything should happen to her before a
new will could be considered, drawn, and signed, and trusting to his
honour quite that he would obey her expressed wish should she die abroad.
Well, she did die, in the full persuasion that I was provided for; but
her brother (as I secretly expected all the time) refused to be morally
bound by a document which had no legal value, and the result is that he
has everything, except, of course, the furniture and the lease. It would
have been enough to break the heart of a person who had calculated upon
getting a fortune, which I never did; for I felt always like an intruder
and a bondswoman, and had wished myself out of the Petherwin family a
hundred times, with my crust of bread and liberty. For one thing, I was
always forbidden to see my relatives, and it pained me much. Now I am
going to move for myself, and consider that I have a good chance of
success in what I may undertake, because of an indifference I feel about
succeeding which gives the necessary coolness that any great task
requires.'
'I presume you mean to write more poems?'
'I cannot--that is, I can write no more that satisfy me. To blossom into
rhyme on the sparkling pleasures of life, you must be under the influence
of those pleasures, and I am at present quite removed from
them--surrounded by gaunt realities of a very different description.'
'Then try the mournful. Trade upon your sufferings: many do, and
thrive.'
'It is no use to say that--no use at all. I cannot write a line of
verse. And yet the others flowed from my heart like a stream. But
nothing is so easy as to seem clever when you have money.'
'Except to seem stupid when you have none,' said Christopher, looking at
the dead leaves.
Ethelberta allowed herself to linger on that thought for a few seconds;
and continued, 'Then the question arose, what was I to do? I felt that
to write prose would be an uncongenial occupation, and altogether a poor
prospect for a woman like me. Finally I have decided to appear in
public.'
'Not on the stage?'
'Certainly not on the stage. There is no novelty in a poor lady turning
actress, and novelty is what I want. Ordinary powers exhibited in a new
way effect as much as extraordinary powers exhibited in an old way.'
'Yes--so they do. And extraordinary powers, and a new way too, would be
irresistible.'
'I don't calculate upon both. I had written a prose story by request,
when it was found that I had grown utterly inane over verse. It was
written in the first person, and the style was modelled after De Foe's.
The night before sending it off, when I had already packed it up, I was
reading about the professional story-tellers of Eastern countries, who
devoted their lives to the telling of tales. I unfastened the manuscript
and retained it, convinced that I should do better by telling the story.'
'Well thought of!' exclaimed Christopher, looking into her face. 'There
is a way for everybody to live, if they can only find it out.'
'It occurred to me,' she continued, blushing slightly, 'that tales of the
weird kind were made to be told, not written. The action of a teller is
wanted to give due effect to all stories of incident; and I hope that a
time will come when, as of old, instead of an unsocial reading of fiction
at home alone, people will meet together cordially, and sit at the feet
of a professed romancer. I am going to tell my tales before a London
public. As a child, I had a considerable power in arresting the
attention of other children by recounting adventures which had never
happened; and men and women are but children enlarged a little. Look at
this.'
She drew from her pocket a folded paper, shook it abroad, and disclosed a
rough draft of an announcement to the effect that Mrs. Petherwin,
Professed Story-teller, would devote an evening to that ancient form of
the romancer's art, at a well-known fashionable hall in London. 'Now you
see,' she continued, 'the meaning of what you observed going on here.
That you heard was one of three tales I am preparing, with a view of
selecting the best. As a reserved one, I have the tale of my own life--to
be played as a last card. It was a private rehearsal before my brothers
and sisters--not with any view of obtaining their criticism, but that I
might become accustomed to my own voice in the presence of listeners.'
'If I only had had half your enterprise, what I might have done in the
world!'
'Now did you ever consider what a power De Foe's manner would have if
practised by word of mouth? Indeed, it is a style which suits itself
infinitely better to telling than to writing, abounding as it does in
colloquialisms that are somewhat out of place on paper in these days, but
have a wonderful power in making a narrative seem real. And so, in
short, I am going to talk De Foe on a subject of my own. Well?'
The last word had been given tenderly, with a long-drawn sweetness, and
was caused by a look that Christopher was bending upon her at the moment,
in which he revealed that he was thinking less of the subject she was so
eagerly and hopefully descanting upon than upon her aspect in explaining
it. It is a fault of manner particularly common among men newly imported
into the society of bright and beautiful women; and we will hope that,
springing as it does from no unworthy source, it is as soon forgiven in
the general world as it was here.
'I was only following a thought,' said Christopher:--'a thought of how I
used to know you, and then lost sight of you, and then discovered you
famous, and how we are here under these sad autumn trees, and nobody in
sight.'
'I think it must be tea-time,' she said suddenly. 'Tea is a great meal
with us here--you will join us, will you not?' And Ethelberta began to
make for herself a passage through the boughs. Another rustle was heard
a little way off, and one of the children appeared.
'Emmeline wants to know, please, if the gentleman that come to see 'ee
will stay to tea; because, if so, she's agoing to put in another spoonful
for him and a bit of best green.'
'O Georgina--how candid! Yes, put in some best green.'
Before Christopher could say any more to her, they were emerging by the
corner of the cottage, and one of the brothers drew near them. 'Mr.
Julian, you'll bide and have a cup of tea wi' us?' he inquired of
Christopher. 'An old friend of yours, is he not, Mrs. Petherwin? Dan
and I be going back to Sandbourne to-night, and we can walk with 'ee as
far as the station.'
'I shall be delighted,' said Christopher; and they all entered the
cottage. The evening had grown clearer by this time; the sun was peeping
out just previous to departure, and sent gold wires of light across the
glades and into the windows, throwing a pattern of the diamond quarries,
and outlines of the geraniums in pots, against the opposite wall. One
end of the room was polygonal, such a shape being dictated by the
exterior design; in this part the windows were placed, as at the east end
of continental churches. Thus, from the combined effects of the
ecclesiastical lancet lights and the apsidal shape of the room, it
occurred to Christopher that the sisters were all a delightful set of
pretty saints, exhibiting themselves in a lady chapel, and backed up by
unkempt major prophets, as represented by the forms of their big
brothers.
Christopher sat down to tea as invited, squeezing himself in between two
children whose names were almost as long as their persons, and whose tin
cups discoursed primitive music by means of spoons rattled inside them
until they were filled. The tea proceeded pleasantly, notwithstanding
that the cake, being a little burnt, tasted on the outside like the
latter plums in snapdragon. Christopher never could meet the eye of
Picotee, who continued in a wild state of flushing all the time, fixing
her looks upon the sugar-basin, except when she glanced out of the window
to see how the evening was going on, and speaking no word at all unless
it was to correct a small sister of somewhat crude manners as regards
filling the mouth, which Picotee did in a whisper, and a gentle
inclination of her mouth to the little one's ear, and a still deeper
blush than before.
Their visitor next noticed that an additional cup-and-saucer and plate
made their appearance occasionally at the table, were silently
replenished, and then carried off by one of the children to an inner
apartment.
'Our mother is bedridden,' said Ethelberta, noticing Christopher's look
at the proceeding. 'Emmeline attends to the household, except when
Picotee is at home, and Joey attends to the gate; but our mother's
affliction is a very unfortunate thing for the poor children. We are
thinking of a plan of living which will, I hope, be more convenient than
this is; but we have not yet decided what to do.' At this minute a
carriage and pair of horses became visible through one of the angular
windows of the apse, in the act of turning in from the highway towards
the park gate. The boy who answered to the name of Joey sprang up from
the table with the promptness of a Jack-in-the-box, and ran out at the
door. Everybody turned as the carriage passed through the gate, which
Joey held open, putting his other hand where the brim of his hat would
have been if he had worn one, and lapsing into a careless boy again the
instant that the vehicle had gone by.
'There's a tremendous large dinner-party at the House to-night,' said
Emmeline methodically, looking at the equipage over the edge of her
teacup, without leaving off sipping. 'That was Lord Mountclere. He's a
wicked old man, they say.'
'Lord Mountclere?' said Ethelberta musingly. 'I used to know some
friends of his. In what way is he wicked?'
'I don't know,' said Emmeline, with simplicity. 'I suppose it is because
he breaks the commandments. But I wonder how a big rich lord can want to
steal anything.' Emmeline's thoughts of breaking commandments
instinctively fell upon the eighth, as being in her ideas the only case
wherein the gain could be considered as at all worth the hazard.
Ethelberta said nothing; but Christopher thought that a shade of
depression passed over her.
'Hook back the gate, Joey,' shouted Emmeline, when the carriage had
proceeded up the drive. 'There's more to come.'
Joey did as ordered, and by the time he got indoors another carriage
turned in from the public road--a one-horse brougham this time.
'I know who that is: that's Mr. Ladywell,' said Emmeline, in the same
matter-of-fact tone. 'He's been here afore: he's a distant relation of
the squire's, and he once gave me sixpence for picking up his gloves.'
'What shall I live to see?' murmured the poetess, under her breath,
nearly dropping her teacup in an involuntary trepidation, from which she
made it a point of dignity to recover in a moment. Christopher's eyes,
at that exhibition from Ethelberta, entered her own like a pair of
lances. Picotee, seeing Christopher's quick look of jealousy, became
involved in her turn, and grew pale as a lily in her endeavours to
conceal the complications to which it gave birth in her poor little
breast likewise.
'You judge me very wrongly,' said Ethelberta, in answer to Christopher's
hasty look of resentment.
'In supposing Mr. Ladywell to be a great friend of yours?' said
Christopher, who had in some indescribable way suddenly assumed a right
to Ethelberta as his old property.
'Yes: for I hardly know him, and certainly do not value him.'
After this there was something in the mutual look of the two, though
their words had been private, which did not tend to remove the anguish of
fragile Picotee. Christopher, assured that Ethelberta's embarrassment
had been caused by nothing more than the sense of her odd social
subsidence, recovered more bliss than he had lost, and regarded calmly
the profile of young Ladywell between the two windows of his brougham as
it passed the open cottage door, bearing him along unconscious as the
dead of the nearness of his beloved one, and of the sad buffoonery that
fate, fortune, and the guardian angels had been playing with Ethelberta
of late. He recognized the face as that of the young man whom he had
encountered when watching Ethelberta's window from Rookington Park.
'Perhaps you remember seeing him at the Christmas dance at Wyndway?' she
inquired. 'He is a good-natured fellow. Afterwards he sent me that
portfolio of sketches you see in the corner. He might possibly do
something in the world as a painter if he were obliged to work at the art
for his bread, which he is not.' She added with bitter pleasantry: 'In
bare mercy to his self-respect I must remain unseen here.'
It impressed Christopher to perceive how, under the estrangement which
arose from differences of education, surroundings, experience, and
talent, the sympathies of close relationship were perceptible in
Ethelberta's bearing towards her brothers and sisters. At a remark upon
some simple pleasure wherein she had not participated because absent and
occupied by far more comprehensive interests, a gloom as of banishment
would cross her face and dim it for awhile, showing that the free habits
and enthusiasms of country life had still their charm with her, in the
face of the subtler gratifications of abridged bodices, candlelight, and
no feelings in particular, which prevailed in town. Perhaps the one
condition which could work up into a permanent feeling the passing
revival of his fancy for a woman whose chief attribute he had supposed to
be sprightliness was added now by the romantic ubiquity of station that
attached to her. A discovery which might have grated on the senses of a
man wedded to conventionality was a positive pleasure to one whose faith
in society had departed with his own social ruin.
The room began to darken, whereupon Christopher arose to leave; and the
brothers Sol and Dan offered to accompany him.