When this letter reached its destination the next morning, Picotee, in
her over-anxiety, could not bring herself to read it in anybody's
presence, and put it in her pocket till she was on her walk across the
moor. She still lived at the cottage out of the town, though at some
inconvenience to herself, in order to teach at a small village
night-school whilst still carrying on her larger occupation of
pupil-teacher in Sandbourne.
So she walked and read, and was soon in tears. Moreover, when she
thought of what Ethelberta would have replied had that keen sister known
the wildness of her true reason in wishing to go, she shuddered with
misery. To wish to get near a man only because he had been kind to her,
and had admired her pretty face, and had given her flowers, to nourish a
passion all the more because of its hopeless impracticability, were
things to dream of, not to tell. Picotee was quite an unreasoning
animal. Her sister arranged situations for her, told her how to conduct
herself in them, how to make up anew, in unobtrusive shapes, the valuable
wearing apparel she sent from time to time--so as to provoke neither
exasperation in the little gentry, nor superciliousness in the great.
Ethelberta did everything for her, in short; and Picotee obeyed orders
with the abstracted ease of mind which people show who have their
thinking done for them, and put out their troubles as they do their
washing. She was quite willing not to be clever herself, since it was
unnecessary while she had a much-admired sister, who was clever enough
for two people and to spare.
This arrangement, by which she gained an untroubled existence in exchange
for freedom of will, had worked very pleasantly for Picotee until the
anomaly of falling in love on her own account created a jar in the
machinery. Then she began to know how wearing were miserable days, and
how much more wearing were miserable nights. She pictured Christopher in
London calling upon her dignified sister (for Ethelberta innocently
mentioned his name sometimes in writing) and imagined over and over again
the mutual signs of warm feeling between them. And now Picotee resolved
upon a noble course. Like Juliet, she had been troubled with a
consciousness that perhaps her love for Christopher was a trifle forward
and unmaidenly, even though she had determined never to let him or
anybody in the whole world know of it. To set herself to pray that she
might have strength to see him without a pang the lover of her sister,
who deserved him so much more than herself, would be a grand penance and
corrective.
After uttering petitions to this effect for several days, she still felt
very bad; indeed, in the psychological difficulty of striving for what in
her soul she did not desire, rather worse, if anything. At last, weary
of walking the old road and never meeting him, and blank in a general
powerlessness, she wrote the letter to Ethelberta, which was only the
last one of a series that had previously been written and torn up.
Now this hope had been whirled away like thistledown, and the case was
grievous enough to distract a greater stoic than Picotee. The end of it
was that she left the school on insufficient notice, gave up her cottage
home on the plea--true in the letter--that she was going to join a
relative in London, and went off thither by a morning train, leaving her
things packed ready to be sent on when she should write for them.
Picotee arrived in town late on a cold February afternoon, bearing a
small bag in her hand. She crossed Westminster Bridge on foot, just
after dusk, and saw a luminous haze hanging over each well-lighted street
as it withdrew into distance behind the nearer houses, showing its
direction as a train of morning mist shows the course of a distant stream
when the stream itself is hidden. The lights along the riverside towards
Charing Cross sent an inverted palisade of gleaming swords down into the
shaking water, and the pavement ticked to the touch of pedestrians' feet,
most of whom tripped along as if walking only to practise a favourite
quick step, and held handkerchiefs to their mouths to strain off the
river mist from their lungs. She inquired her way to Exonbury Crescent,
and between five and six o'clock reached her sister's door.
Two or three minutes were passed in accumulating resolution sufficient to
ring the bell, which when at last she did, was not performed in a way at
all calculated to make the young man Joey hasten to the door. After the
lapse of a certain time he did, however, find leisure to stroll and see
what the caller might want, out of curiosity to know who there could be
in London afraid to ring a bell twice.
Joey's delight exceeded even his surprise, the ruling maxim of his life
being the more the merrier, under all circumstances. The beaming young
man was about to run off and announce her upstairs and downstairs, left
and right, when Picotee called him hastily to her. In the hall her quick
young eye had caught sight of an umbrella with a peculiar horn handle--an
umbrella she had been accustomed to meet on Sandbourne Moor on many happy
afternoons. Christopher was evidently in the house.
'Joey,' she said, as if she were ready to faint, 'don't tell Berta I am
come. She has company, has she not?'
'O no--only Mr. Julian!' said the brother. 'He's quite one of the
family!'
'Never mind--can't I go down into the kitchen with you?' she inquired.
There had been bliss and misery mingled in those tidings, and she
scarcely knew for a moment which way they affected her. What she did
know was that she had run her dear fox to earth, and a sense of
satisfaction at that feat prevented her just now from counting the cost
of the performance.
'Does Mr. Julian come to see her very often?' said she.
'O yes--he's always a-coming--a regular bore to me.'
'A regular what?'
'Bore!--Ah, I forgot, you don't know our town words. However, come
along.'
They passed by the doors on tiptoe, and their mother upstairs being,
according to Joey's account, in the midst of a nap, Picotee was unwilling
to disturb her; so they went down at once to the kitchen, when forward
rushed Gwendoline the cook, flourishing her floury hands, and Cornelia
the housemaid, dancing over her brush; and these having welcomed and made
Picotee comfortable, who should ring the area-bell, and be admitted down
the steps, but Sol and Dan. The workman-brothers, their day's duties
being over, had called to see their relations, first, as usual, going
home to their lodgings in Marylebone and making themselves as spruce as
bridegrooms, according to the rules of their newly-acquired town
experience. For the London mechanic is only nine hours a mechanic,
though the country mechanic works, eats, drinks, and sleeps a mechanic
throughout the whole twenty-four.
'God bless my soul--Picotee!' said Dan, standing fixed. 'Well--I say,
this is splendid! ha-ha!'
'Picotee--what brought you here?' said Sol, expanding the circumference
of his face in satisfaction. 'Well, come along--never mind so long as
you be here.'
Picotee explained circumstances as well as she could without stating
them, and, after a general conversation of a few minutes, Sol interrupted
with--'Anybody upstairs with Mrs. Petherwin?'
'Mr. Julian was there just now,' said Joey; 'but he may be gone. Berta
always lets him slip out how he can, the form of ringing me up not being
necessary with him. Wait a minute--I'll see.'
Joseph vanished up the stairs; and, the question whether Christopher were
gone or not being an uninteresting one to the majority, the talking went
on upon other matters. When Joey crept down again a minute later,
Picotee was sitting aloof and silent, and he accordingly singled her out
to speak to.
'Such a lark, Picotee!' he whispered. 'Berta's a-courting of her young
man. Would you like to see how they carries on a bit?'
'Dearly I should!' said Picotee, the pupils of her eyes dilating.
Joey conducted her to the top of the basement stairs, and told her to
listen. Within a few yards of them was the morning-room door, now
standing ajar; and an intermittent flirtation in soft male and female
tones could be heard going on inside. Picotee's lips parted at thus
learning the condition of things, and she leant against the stair-newel.
'My? What's the matter?' said Joey.
'If this is London, I don't like it at all!' moaned Picotee.
'Well--I never see such a girl--fainting all over the stairs for nothing
in the world.'
'O--it will soon be gone--it is--it is only indigestion.'
'Indigestion? Much you simple country people can know about that! You
should see what devils of indigestions we get in high life--eating
'normous great dinners and suppers that require clever physicians to
carry 'em off, or else they'd carry us off with gout next day; and waking
in the morning with such a splitting headache, and dry throat, and inward
cusses about human nature, that you feel all the world like some great
lord. However, now let's go down again.'
'No, no, no!' said the unhappy maiden imploringly. 'Hark!'
They listened again. The voices of the musician and poetess had changed:
there was a decided frigidity in their tone--then came a louder
expression--then a silence.
'You needn't be afeard,' said Joey. 'They won't fight; bless you, they
busts out quarrelling like this times and times when they've been over-
friendly, but it soon gets straight with 'em again.'
There was now a quick walk across the room, and Joey and his sister drew
down their heads out of sight. Then the room door was slammed, quick
footsteps went along the hall, the front door closed just as loudly, and
Christopher's tread passed into nothing along the pavement.
'That's rather a wuss one than they mostly have; but Lord, 'tis nothing
at all.'
'I don't much like biding here listening!' said Picotee.
'O, 'tis how we do all over the West End,' said Joey. ''Tis yer
ignorance of town life that makes it seem a good deal to 'ee.'
'You can't make much boast about town life; for you haven't left off
talking just as they do down in Wessex.'
'Well, I own to that--what's fair is fair, and 'tis a true charge; but if
I talk the Wessex way 'tisn't for want of knowing better; 'tis because my
staunch nater makes me bide faithful to our old ancient institutions.
You'd soon own 'twasn't ignorance in me, if you knowed what large
quantities of noblemen I gets mixed up with every day. In fact 'tis
thoughted here and there that I shall do very well in the world.'
'Well, let us go down,' said Picotee. 'Everything seems so overpowering
here.'
'O, you'll get broke in soon enough. I felt just the same when I first
entered into society.'
'Do you think Berta will be angry with me? How does she treat you?'
'Well, I can't complain. You see she's my own flesh and blood, and what
can I say? But, in secret truth, the wages is terrible low, and barely
pays for the tobacco I consooms.'
'O Joey, you wicked boy! If mother only knew that you smoked!'
'I don't mind the wickedness so much as the smell. And Mrs. Petherwin
has got such a nose for a fellow's clothes. 'Tis one of the greatest
knots in service--the smoke question. 'Tis thoughted that we shall make
a great stir about it in the mansions of the nobility soon.'
'How much more you know of life than I do--you only fourteen and me
seventeen!'
'Yes, that's true. You see, age is nothing--'tis opportunity. And even
I can't boast, for many a younger man knows more.'
'But don't smoke, Joey--there's a dear!'
'What can I do? Society hev its rules, and if a person wishes to keep
himself up, he must do as the world do. We be all Fashion's slave--as
much a slave as the meanest in the land!'
They got downstairs again; and when the dinner of the French lady and
gentleman had been sent up and cleared away, and also Ethelberta's
evening tea (which she formed into a genuine meal, making a dinner of
luncheon, when nobody was there, to give less trouble to her
servant-sisters), they all sat round the fire. Then the rustle of a
dress was heard on the staircase, and squirrel-haired Ethelberta appeared
in person. It was her custom thus to come down every spare evening, to
teach Joey and her sisters something or other--mostly French, which she
spoke fluently; but the cook and housemaid showed more ambition than
intelligence in acquiring that tongue, though Joey learnt it readily
enough.
There was consternation in the camp for a moment or two, on account of
poor Picotee, Ethelberta being not without firmness in matters of
discipline. Her eye instantly lighted upon her disobedient sister, now
looking twice as disobedient as she really was.
'O, you are here, Picotee? I am glad to see you,' said the mistress of
the house quietly.
This was altogether to Picotee's surprise, for she had expected a round
rating at least, in her freshness hardly being aware that this reserve of
feeling was an acquired habit of Ethelberta's, and that civility stood in
town for as much vexation as a tantrum represented in Wessex.
Picotee lamely explained her outward reasons for coming, and soon began
to find that Ethelberta's opinions on the matter would not be known by
the tones of her voice. But innocent Picotee was as wily as a
religionist in sly elusions of the letter whilst infringing the spirit of
a dictum; and by talking very softly and earnestly about the wondrous
good she could do by remaining in the house as governess to the children,
and playing the part of lady's-maid to her sister at show times, she so
far coaxed Ethelberta out of her intentions that she almost accepted the
plan as a good one. It was agreed that for the present, at any rate,
Picotee should remain. Then a visit was made to Mrs. Chickerel's room,
where the remainder of the evening was passed; and harmony reigned in the
household.