After such successes as these, Christopher could not forego the seductive
intention of calling upon the poetess and romancer, at her now
established town residence in Exonbury Crescent. One wintry afternoon he
reached the door--now for the third time--and gave a knock which had in
it every tender refinement that could be thrown into the somewhat
antagonistic vehicle of noise. Turning his face down the street he
waited restlessly on the step. There was a strange light in the
atmosphere: the glass of the street-lamps, the varnished back of a
passing cab, a milk-woman's cans, and a row of church-windows glared in
his eyes like new-rubbed copper; and on looking the other way he beheld a
bloody sun hanging among the chimneys at the upper end, as a danger-lamp
to warn him off.
By this time the door was opened, and before him stood Ethelberta's young
brother Joey, thickly populated with little buttons, the remainder of him
consisting of invisible green.
'Ah, Joseph,' said Christopher, instantly recognizing the boy. 'What,
are you here in office? Is your--'
Joey lifted his forefinger and spread his mouth in a genial manner, as if
to signify particular friendliness mingled with general caution.
'Yes, sir, Mrs. Petherwin is my mistress. I'll see if she is at home,
sir,' he replied, raising his shoulders and winking a wink of strategic
meanings by way of finish--all which signs showed, if evidence were
wanted, how effectually this pleasant young page understood, though quite
fresh from Wessex, the duties of his peculiar position. Mr. Julian was
shown to the drawing-room, and there he found Ethelberta alone.
She gave him a hand so cool and still that Christopher, much as he
desired the contact, was literally ashamed to let her see and feel his
own, trembling with unmanageable excess of feeling. It was always so,
always had been so, always would be so, at these meetings of theirs: she
was immeasurably the strongest; and the deep-eyed young man fancied, in
the chagrin which the perception of this difference always bred in him,
that she triumphed in her superior control. Yet it was only in little
things that their sexes were thus reversed: Christopher would receive
quite a shock if a little dog barked at his heels, and be totally unmoved
when in danger of his life.
Certainly the most self-possessed woman in the world, under pressure of
the incongruity between their last meeting and the present one, might
have shown more embarrassment than Ethelberta showed on greeting him to-
day. Christopher was only a man in believing that the shyness which she
did evince was chiefly the result of personal interest. She might or
might not have been said to blush--perhaps the stealthy change upon her
face was too slow an operation to deserve that name: but, though pale
when he called, the end of ten minutes saw her colour high and wide. She
soon set him at his ease, and seemed to relax a long-sustained tension as
she talked to him of her arrangements, hopes, and fears.
'And how do you like London society?' said Ethelberta.
'Pretty well, as far as I have seen it: to the surface of its front
door.'
'You will find nothing to be alarmed at if you get inside.'
'O no--of course not--except my own shortcomings,' said the modest
musician. 'London society is made up of much more refined people than
society anywhere else.'
'That's a very prevalent opinion; and it is nowhere half so prevalent as
in London society itself. However, come and see my house--unless you
think it a trouble to look over a house?'
'No; I should like it very much.'
The decorations tended towards the artistic gymnastics prevalent in some
quarters at the present day. Upon a general flat tint of duck's-egg
green appeared quaint patterns of conventional foliage, and birds, done
in bright auburn, several shades nearer to redbreast-red than was
Ethelberta's hair, which was thus thrust further towards brown by such
juxtaposition--a possible reason for the choice of tint. Upon the glazed
tiles within the chimney-piece were the forms of owls, bats, snakes,
frogs, mice, spiders in their webs, moles, and other objects of aversion
and darkness, shaped in black and burnt in after the approved fashion.
'My brothers Sol and Dan did most of the actual work,' said Ethelberta,
'though I drew the outlines, and designed the tiles round the fire. The
flowers, mice, and spiders are done very simply, you know: you only press
a real flower, mouse, or spider out flat under a piece of glass, and then
copy it, adding a little more emaciation and angularity at pleasure.'
'In that "at pleasure" is where all the art lies,' said he.
'Well, yes--that is the case,' said Ethelberta thoughtfully; and
preceding him upstairs, she threw open a door on one of the floors,
disclosing Dan in person, engaged upon a similar treatment of this floor
also. Sol appeared bulging from the door of a closet, a little further
on, where he was fixing some shelves; and both wore workmen's blouses. At
once coming down from the short ladder he was standing upon, Dan shook
Christopher's hand with some velocity.
'We do a little at a time, you see,' he said, 'because Colonel down
below, and Mrs. Petherwin's visitors, shan't smell the turpentine.'
'We be pushing on to-day to get it out of the way,' said Sol, also coming
forward and greeting their visitor, but more reluctantly than his brother
had done. 'Now I'll tell ye what--you two,' he added, after an uneasy
pause, turning from Christopher to Ethelberta and back again in great
earnestness; 'you'd better not bide here, talking to we rough ones, you
know, for folks might find out that there's something closer between us
than workmen and employer and employer's friend. So Berta and Mr.
Julian, if you'll go on and take no more notice o' us, in case of
visitors, it would be wiser--else, perhaps, if we should be found out
intimate with ye, and bring down your gentility, you'll blame us for it.
I get as nervous as a cat when I think I may be the cause of any disgrace
to ye.'
'Don't be so silly, Sol,' said Ethelberta, laughing.
'Ah, that's all very well,' said Sol, with an unbelieving smile; 'but if
we bain't company for you out of doors, you bain't company for we
within--not that I find fault with ye or mind it, and shan't take
anything for painting your house, nor will Dan neither, any more for
that--no, not a penny; in fact, we are glad to do it for 'ee. At the
same time, you keep to your class, and we'll keep to ours. And so, good
afternoon, Berta, when you like to go, and the same to you, Mr. Julian.
Dan, is that your mind?'
'I can but own it,' said Dan.
The two brothers then turned their backs upon their visitors, and went on
working, and Ethelberta and her lover left the room. 'My brothers, you
perceive,' said she, 'represent the respectable British workman in his
entirety, and a touchy individual he is, I assure you, on points of
dignity, after imbibing a few town ideas from his leaders. They are
painfully off-hand with me, absolutely refusing to be intimate, from a
mistaken notion that I am ashamed of their dress and manners; which, of
course, is absurd.'
'Which, of course, is absurd,' said Christopher.
'Of course it is absurd!' she repeated with warmth, and looking keenly at
him. But, finding no harm in his face, she continued as before: 'Yet,
all the time, they will do anything under the sun that they think will
advance my interests. In our hearts we are one. All they ask me to do
is to leave them to themselves, and therefore I do so. Now, would you
like to see some more of your acquaintance?'
She introduced him to a large attic; where he found himself in the
society of two or three persons considerably below the middle height,
whose manners were of that gushing kind sometimes called Continental,
their ages ranging from five years to eight. These were the youngest
children, presided over by Emmeline, as professor of letters, capital and
small.
'I am giving them the rudiments of education here,' said Ethelberta; 'but
I foresee several difficulties in the way of keeping them here, which I
must get over as best I can. One trouble is, that they don't get enough
air and exercise.'
'Is Mrs. Chickerel living here as well?' Christopher ventured to inquire,
when they were downstairs again.
'Yes; but confined to her room as usual, I regret to say. Two more
sisters of mine, whom you have never seen at all, are also here. They
are older than any of the rest of us, and had, broadly speaking, no
education at all, poor girls. The eldest, Gwendoline, is my cook, and
Cornelia is my housemaid. I suffer much sadness, and almost misery
sometimes, in reflecting that here are we, ten brothers and sisters, born
of one father and mother, who might have mixed together and shared all in
the same scenes, and been properly happy, if it were not for the strange
accidents that have split us up into sections as you see, cutting me off
from them without the compensation of joining me to any others. They are
all true as steel in keeping the secret of our kin, certainly; but that
brings little joy, though some satisfaction perhaps.'
'You might be less despondent, I think. The tale-telling has been one of
the successes of the season.'
'Yes, I might; but I may observe that you scarcely set the example of
blitheness.'
'Ah--that's not because I don't recognize the pleasure of being here. It
is from a more general cause: simply an underfeeling I have that at the
most propitious moment the distance to the possibility of sorrow is so
short that a man's spirits must not rise higher than mere cheerfulness
out of bare respect to his insight.
"As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow."'
Ethelberta bowed uncertainly; the remark might refer to her past conduct
or it might not. 'My great cause of uneasiness is the children,' she
presently said, as a new page of matter. 'It is my duty, at all risk and
all sacrifice of sentiment, to educate and provide for them. The grown-
up ones, older than myself, I cannot help much, but the little ones I
can. I keep my two French lodgers for the sake of them.'
'The lodgers, of course, don't know the relationship between yourself and
the rest of the people in the house?'
'O no!--nor will they ever. My mother is supposed to let the ground and
first floors to me--a strange lady--as she does the second and third
floors to them. Still, I may be discovered.'
'Well--if you are?'
'Let me be. Life is a battle, they say; but it is only so in the sense
that a game of chess is a battle--there is no seriousness in it; it may
be put an end to at any inconvenient moment by owning yourself beaten,
with a careless "Ha-ha!" and sweeping your pieces into the box.
Experimentally, I care to succeed in society; but at the bottom of my
heart, I don't care.'
'For that very reason you are likely to do it. My idea is, make ambition
your business and indifference your relaxation, and you will fail; but
make indifference your business and ambition your relaxation, and you
will succeed. So impish are the ways of the gods.'
'I hope that you at any rate will succeed,' she said, at the end of a
silence.
'I never can--if success means getting what one wants.'
'Why should you not get that?'
'It has been forbidden to me.'
Her complexion changed just enough to show that she knew what he meant.
'If you were as bold as you are subtle, you would take a more cheerful
view of the matter,' she said, with a look signifying innermost things.
'I will instantly! Shall I test the truth of my cheerful view by a word
of question?'
'I deny that you are capable of taking that view, and until you prove
that you are, no question is allowed,' she said, laughing, and still
warmer in the face and neck. 'Nothing but melancholy, gentle melancholy,
now as in old times when there was nothing to cause it.'
'Ah--you only tease.'
'You will not throw aside that bitter medicine of distrust, for the
world. You have grown so used to it, that you take it as food, as some
invalids do their mixtures.'
'Ethelberta, you have my heart--my whole heart. You have had it ever
since I first saw you. Now you understand me, and no pretending that you
don't, mind, this second time.'
'I understood you long ago; you have not understood me.'
'You are mysterious,' he said lightly; 'and perhaps if I disentangle your
mystery I shall find it to cover--indifference. I hope it does--for your
sake.'
'How can you say so!' she exclaimed reproachfully. 'Yet I wish it did
too--I wish it did cover indifference--for yours. But you have all of me
that you care to have, and may keep it for life if you wish to. Listen,
surely there was a knock at the door? Let us go inside the room: I am
always uneasy when anybody comes, lest any awkward discovery should be
made by a visitor of my miserable contrivances for keeping up the
establishment.'
Joey met them before they had left the landing.
'Please, Berta,' he whispered, 'Mr. Ladywell has called, and I've showed
him into the liberry. You know, Berta, this is how it was, you know: I
thought you and Mr. Julian were in the drawing-room, and wouldn't want
him to see ye together, and so I asked him to step into the liberry a
minute.'
'You must improve your way of speaking,' she said, with quick
embarrassment, whether at the mention of Ladywell's name before Julian,
or at the way Joey coupled herself with Christopher, was quite uncertain.
'Will you excuse me for a few moments?' she said, turning to Christopher.
'Pray sit down; I shall not be long.' And she glided downstairs.
They had been standing just by the drawing-room door, and Christopher
turned back into the room with no very satisfactory countenance. It was
very odd, he thought, that she should go down to Ladywell in that
mysterious manner, when he might have been admitted to where they were
talking without any trouble at all. What could Ladywell have to say, as
an acquaintance calling upon her for a few minutes, that he was not to
hear? Indeed, if it came to that, what right had Ladywell to call upon
her at all, even though she were a widow, and to some extent chartered to
live in a way which might be considered a trifle free if indulged in by
other young women. This was the first time that he himself had ventured
into her house on that very account--a doubt whether it was quite proper
to call, considering her youth, and the fertility of her position as
ground for scandal. But no sooner did he arrive than here was Ladywell
blundering in, and, since this conjunction had occurred on his first
visit, the chances were that Ladywell came very often.
Julian walked up and down the room, every moment expanding itself to a
minute in his impatience at the delay and vexation at the cause. After
scrutinizing for the fifth time every object on the walls as if afflicted
with microscopic closeness of sight, his hands under his coat-tails, and
his person jigging up and down upon his toes, he heard her coming up the
stairs. When she entered the apartment her appearance was decidedly that
of a person subsiding after some little excitement.
'I did not calculate upon being so long,' she said sweetly, at the same
time throwing back her face and smiling. 'But I--was longer than I
expected.'
'It seemed rather long,' said Christopher gloomily, 'but I don't mind
it.'
'I am glad of that,' said Ethelberta.
'As you asked me to stay, I was very pleased to do so, and always should
be; but I think that now I will wish you good-bye.'
'You are not vexed with me?' she said, looking quite into his face. 'Mr.
Ladywell is nobody, you know.'
'Nobody?'
'Well, he is not much, I mean. The case is, that I am sitting to him for
a subject in which my face is to be used--otherwise than as a
portrait--and he called about it.'
'May I say,' said Christopher, 'that if you want yourself painted, you
are ill-advised not to let it be done by a man who knows how to use the
brush a little?'
'O, he can paint!' said Ethelberta, rather warmly. 'His last picture was
excellent, I think. It was greatly talked about.'
'I imagined you to say that he was a mere nobody!'
'Yes, but--how provoking you are!--nobody, I mean, to talk to. He is a
true artist, nevertheless.'
Christopher made no reply. The warm understanding between them had quite
ended now, and there was no fanning it up again. Sudden tiffs had been
the constant misfortune of their courtship in days gone by, had been the
remote cause of her marriage to another; and the familiar shadows seemed
to be rising again to cloud them with the same persistency as ever.
Christopher went downstairs with well-behaved moodiness, and left the
house forthwith. The postman came to the door at the same time.
Ethelberta opened a letter from Picotee--now at Sandbourne again; and,
stooping to the fire-light, she began to read:--
'MY DEAR ETHELBERTA,--I have tried to like staying at Sandbourne
because you wished it, but I can't endure the town at all, dear Berta;
everything is so wretched and dull! O, I only wish you knew how
dismal it is here, and how much I would give to come to London! I
cannot help thinking that I could do better in town. You see, I
should be close to you, and should have the benefit of your
experience. I would not mind what I did for a living could I be there
where you all are. It is so like banishment to be here. If I could
not get a pupil-teachership in some London school (and I believe I
could by advertising) I could stay with you, and be governess to
Georgina and Myrtle, for I am sure you cannot spare time enough to
teach them as they ought to be taught, and Emmeline is not old enough
to have any command over them. I could also assist at your
dressmaking, and you must require a great deal of that to be done if
you continue to appear in public. Mr. Long read in the papers the
account of your first evening, and afterwards I heard two ladies of
our committee talking about it; but of course not one of them knew my
personal interest in the discussion. Now will you, Ethelberta, think
if I may not come: Do, there's a dear sister! I will do anything you
set me about if I may only come.--Your ever affectionate,
PICOTEE.'
'Great powers above--what worries do beset me!' cried Ethelberta, jumping
up. 'What can possess the child so suddenly?--she used to like
Sandbourne well enough!' She sat down, and hastily scribbled the
following reply:--
'MY DEAR PICOTEE--There is only a little time to spare before the post
goes, but I will try to answer your letter at once. Whatever is the
reason of this extraordinary dislike to Sandbourne? It is a nice
healthy place, and you are likely to do much better than either of our
elder sisters, if you follow straight on in the path you have chosen.
Of course, if such good fortune should attend me that I get rich by my
contrivances of public story-telling and so on, I shall share
everything with you and the rest of us, in which case you shall not
work at all. But (although I have been unexpectedly successful so
far) this is problematical; and it would be rash to calculate upon all
of us being able to live, or even us seven girls only, upon the
fortune I am going to make that way. So, though I don't mean to be
harsh, I must impress upon you the necessity of going on as you are
going just at present. I know the place must be dull, but we must all
put up with dulness sometimes. You, being next to me in age, must aid
me as well as you can in doing something for the younger ones; and if
anybody at all comes and lives here otherwise than as a servant, it
must be our father--who will not, however, at present hear of such a
thing when I mention it to him. Do think of all this, Picotee, and
bear up! Perhaps we shall all be happy and united some day. Joey is
waiting to run to the post-office with this at once. All are well.
Sol and Dan have nearly finished the repairs and decorations of my
house--but I will tell you of that another time.--Your affectionate
sister, BERTA.'