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.