THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA -- A COMEDY IN CHAPTERS
by Thomas Hardy.
PREFACE
This somewhat frivolous narrative was produced as an interlude
between stories of a more sober design, and it was given the sub-
title of a comedy to indicate--though not quite accurately--the aim
of the performance. A high degree of probability was not attempted
in the arrangement of the incidents, and there was expected of the
reader a certain lightness of mood, which should inform him with a
good-natured willingness to accept the production in the spirit in
which it was offered. The characters themselves, however, were
meant to be consistent and human.
On its first appearance the novel suffered, perhaps deservedly, for
what was involved in these intentions--for its quality of
unexpectedness in particular--that unforgivable sin in the critic's
sight--the immediate precursor of 'Ethelberta' having been a purely
rural tale. Moreover, in its choice of medium, and line of
perspective, it undertook a delicate task: to excite interest in a
drama--if such a dignified word may be used in the connection--
wherein servants were as important as, or more important than, their
masters; wherein the drawing-room was sketched in many cases from
the point of view of the servants' hall. Such a reversal of the
social foreground has, perhaps, since grown more welcome, and
readers even of the finer crusted kind may now be disposed to pardon
a writer for presenting the sons and daughters of Mr. and Mrs.
Chickerel as beings who come within the scope of a congenial regard.
T. H.
December 1895.
The Hand of Ethelberta
1. A STREET IN ANGLEBURY - A HEATH NEAR IT - INSIDE THE 'RED LION' INN
Young Mrs. Petherwin stepped from the door of an old and well-
appointed inn in a Wessex town to take a country walk. By her look
and carriage she appeared to belong to that gentle order of society
which has no worldly sorrow except when its jewellery gets stolen;
but, as a fact not generally known, her claim to distinction was
rather one of brains than of blood. She was the daughter of a
gentleman who lived in a large house not his own, and began life as
a baby christened Ethelberta after an infant of title who does not
come into the story at all, having merely furnished Ethelberta's
mother with a subject of contemplation. She became teacher in a
school, was praised by examiners, admired by gentlemen, not admired
by gentlewomen, was touched up with accomplishments by masters who
were coaxed into painstaking by her many graces, and, entering a
mansion as governess to the daughter thereof, was stealthily married
by the son. He, a minor like herself, died from a chill caught
during the wedding tour, and a few weeks later was followed into the
grave by Sir Ralph Petherwin, his unforgiving father, who had
bequeathed his wealth to his wife absolutely.
These calamities were a sufficient reason to Lady Petherwin for
pardoning all concerned. She took by the hand the forlorn
Ethelberta--who seemed rather a detached bride than a widow--and
finished her education by placing her for two or three years in a
boarding-school at Bonn. Latterly she had brought the girl to
England to live under her roof as daughter and companion, the
condition attached being that Ethelberta was never openly to
recognize her relations, for reasons which will hereafter appear.
The elegant young lady, as she had a full right to be called if she
cared for the definition, arrested all the local attention when she
emerged into the summer-evening light with that diadem-and-sceptre
bearing--many people for reasons of heredity discovering such graces
only in those whose vestibules are lined with ancestral mail,
forgetting that a bear may be taught to dance. While this air of
hers lasted, even the inanimate objects in the street appeared to
know that she was there; but from a way she had of carelessly
overthrowing her dignity by versatile moods, one could not calculate
upon its presence to a certainty when she was round corners or in
little lanes which demanded no repression of animal spirits.
'Well to be sure!' exclaimed a milkman, regarding her. 'We should
freeze in our beds if 'twere not for the sun, and, dang me! if she
isn't a pretty piece. A man could make a meal between them eyes and
chin--eh, hostler? Odd nation dang my old sides if he couldn't!'
The speaker, who had been carrying a pair of pails on a yoke,
deposited them upon the edge of the pavement in front of the inn,
and straightened his back to an excruciating perpendicular. His
remarks had been addressed to a rickety person, wearing a waistcoat
of that preternatural length from the top to the bottom button which
prevails among men who have to do with horses. He was sweeping
straws from the carriage-way beneath the stone arch that formed a
passage to the stables behind.
'Never mind the cursing and swearing, or somebody who's never out of
hearing may clap yer name down in his black book,' said the hostler,
also pausing, and lifting his eyes to the mullioned and transomed
windows and moulded parapet above him--not to study them as features
of ancient architecture, but just to give as healthful a stretch to
the eyes as his acquaintance had done to his back. 'Michael, a old
man like you ought to think about other things, and not be looking
two ways at your time of life. Pouncing upon young flesh like a
carrion crow--'tis a vile thing in a old man.'
''Tis; and yet 'tis not, for 'tis a naterel taste,' said the
milkman, again surveying Ethelberta, who had now paused upon a
bridge in full view, to look down the river. 'Now, if a poor needy
feller like myself could only catch her alone when she's dressed up
to the nines for some grand party, and carry her off to some lonely
place--sakes, what a pot of jewels and goold things I warrant he'd
find about her! 'Twould pay en for his trouble.'
'I don't dispute the picter; but 'tis sly and untimely to think such
roguery. Though I've had thoughts like it, 'tis true, about high
women--Lord forgive me for't.'
'And that figure of fashion standing there is a widow woman, so I
hear?'
'Lady--not a penny less than lady. Ay, a thing of twenty-one or
thereabouts.'
'A widow lady and twenty-one. 'Tis a backward age for a body who's
so forward in her state of life.'
'Well, be that as 'twill, here's my showings for her age. She was
about the figure of two or three-and-twenty when a' got off the
carriage last night, tired out wi' boaming about the country; and
nineteen this morning when she came downstairs after a sleep round
the clock and a clane-washed face: so I thought to myself, twenty-
one, I thought.'
'And what's the young woman's name, make so bold, hostler?'
'Ay, and the house were all in a stoor with her and the old woman,
and their boxes and camp-kettles, that they carry to wash in because
hand-basons bain't big enough, and I don't know what all; and
t'other folk stopping here were no more than dirt thencefor'ard.'
'I suppose they've come out of some noble city a long way herefrom?'
'And there was her hair up in buckle as if she'd never seen a clay-
cold man at all. However, to cut a long story short, all I know
besides about 'em is that the name upon their luggage is Lady
Petherwin, and she's the widow of a city gentleman, who was a man of
valour in the Lord Mayor's Show.'
'Who's that chap in the gaiters and pack at his back, come out of
the door but now?' said the milkman, nodding towards a figure of
that description who had just emerged from the inn and trudged off
in the direction taken by the lady--now out of sight.
'Chap in the gaiters? Chok' it all--why, the father of that
nobleman that you call chap in the gaiters used to be hand in glove
with half the Queen's court.'
'What d'ye tell o'?'
'That man's father was one of the mayor and corporation of
Sandbourne, and was that familiar with men of money, that he'd slap
'em upon the shoulder as you or I or any other poor fool would the
clerk of the parish.'
'O, what's my lordlin's name, make so bold, then?'
'Ay, the toppermost class nowadays have left off the use of wheels
for the good of their constitutions, so they traipse and walk for
many years up foreign hills, where you can see nothing but snow and
fog, till there's no more left to walk up; and if they reach home
alive, and ha'n't got too old and weared out, they walk and see a
little of their own parishes. So they tower about with a pack and a
stick and a clane white pocket-handkerchief over their hats just as
you see he's got on his. He's been staying here a night, and is off
now again. "Young man, young man," I think to myself, "if your
shoulders were bent like a bandy and your knees bowed out as mine
be, till there is not an inch of straight bone or gristle in 'ee,
th' wouldstn't go doing hard work for play 'a b'lieve."'
'True, true, upon my song. Such a pain as I have had in my lynes
all this day to be sure; words don't know what shipwreck I suffer in
these lynes o' mine--that they do not! And what was this young
widow lady's maiden name, then, hostler? Folk have been peeping
after her, that's true; but they don't seem to know much about her
family.'
'And while I've tended horses fifty year that other folk might
straddle 'em, here I be now not a penny the better! Often-times,
when I see so many good things about, I feel inclined to help myself
in common justice to my pocket.
"Work hard and be poor,
Do nothing and get more."
But I draw in the horns of my mind and think to myself, "Forbear,
John Hostler, forbear!"--Her maiden name? Faith, I don't know the
woman's maiden name, though she said to me, "Good evening, John;"
but I had no memory of ever seeing her afore--no, no more than the
dead inside church-hatch--where I shall soon be likewise--I had not.
"Ay, my nabs," I think to myself, "more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool
knows."'
'More know Tom Fool--what rambling old canticle is it you say,
hostler?' inquired the milkman, lifting his ear. 'Let's have it
again--a good saying well spit out is a Christmas fire to my
withered heart. More know Tom Fool--'
'Than Tom Fool knows,' said the hostler.
'Ah! That's the very feeling I've feeled over and over again,
hostler, but not in such gifted language. 'Tis a thought I've had
in me for years, and never could lick into shape!--O-ho-ho-ho!
Splendid! Say it again, hostler, say it again! To hear my own poor
notion that had no name brought into form like that--I wouldn't ha'
lost it for the world! More know Tom Fool than--than--h-ho-ho-ho-
ho!'
'Don't let your sense o' vitness break out in such uproar, for
heaven's sake, or folk will surely think you've been laughing at the
lady and gentleman. Well, here's at it again--Night t'ee, Michael.'
And the hostler went on with his sweeping.
'Night t'ee, hostler, I must move too,' said the milkman,
shouldering his yoke, and walking off; and there reached the inn in
a gradual diminuendo, as he receded up the street, shaking his head
convulsively, 'More know--Tom Fool--than Tom Fool--ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!'
The 'Red Lion,' as the inn or hotel was called which of late years
had become the fashion among tourists, because of the absence from
its precincts of all that was fashionable and new, stood near the
middle of the town, and formed a corner where in winter the winds
whistled and assembled their forces previous to plunging helter-
skelter along the streets. In summer it was a fresh and pleasant
spot, convenient for such quiet characters as sojourned there to
study the geology and beautiful natural features of the country
round.
The lady whose appearance had asserted a difference between herself
and the Anglebury people, without too clearly showing what that
difference was, passed out of the town in a few moments and,
following the highway across meadows fed by the Froom, she crossed
the railway and soon got into a lonely heath. She had been watching
the base of a cloud as it closed down upon the line of a distant
ridge, like an upper upon a lower eyelid, shutting in the gaze of
the evening sun. She was about to return before dusk came on, when
she heard a commotion in the air immediately behind and above her
head. The saunterer looked up and saw a wild-duck flying along with
the greatest violence, just in its rear being another large bird,
which a countryman would have pronounced to be one of the biggest
duck-hawks that he had ever beheld. The hawk neared its intended
victim, and the duck screamed and redoubled its efforts.
Ethelberta impulsively started off in a rapid run that would have
made a little dog bark with delight and run after, her object being,
if possible, to see the end of this desperate struggle for a life so
small and unheard-of. Her stateliness went away, and it could be
forgiven for not remaining; for her feet suddenly became as quick as
fingers, and she raced along over the uneven ground with such force
of tread that, being a woman slightly heavier than gossamer, her
patent heels punched little D's in the soil with unerring accuracy
wherever it was bare, crippled the heather-twigs where it was not,
and sucked the swampy places with a sound of quick kisses.
Her rate of advance was not to be compared with that of the two
birds, though she went swiftly enough to keep them well in sight in
such an open place as that around her, having at one point in the
journey been so near that she could hear the whisk of the duck's
feathers against the wind as it lifted and lowered its wings. When
the bird seemed to be but a few yards from its enemy she saw it
strike downwards, and after a level flight of a quarter of a minute,
vanish. The hawk swooped after, and Ethelberta now perceived a
whitely shining oval of still water, looking amid the swarthy level
of the heath like a hole through to a nether sky.
Into this large pond, which the duck had been making towards from
the beginning of its precipitate flight, it had dived out of sight.
The excited and breathless runner was in a few moments close enough
to see the disappointed hawk hovering and floating in the air as if
waiting for the reappearance of its prey, upon which grim pastime it
was so intent that by creeping along softly she was enabled to get
very near the edge of the pool and witness the conclusion of the
episode. Whenever the duck was under the necessity of showing its
head to breathe, the other bird would dart towards it, invariably
too late, however; for the diver was far too experienced in the
rough humour of the buzzard family at this game to come up twice
near the same spot, unaccountably emerging from opposite sides of
the pool in succession, and bobbing again by the time its adversary
reached each place, so that at length the hawk gave up the contest
and flew away, a satanic moodiness being almost perceptible in the
motion of its wings.
The young lady now looked around her for the first time, and began
to perceive that she had run a long distance--very much further than
she had originally intended to come. Her eyes had been so long
fixed upon the hawk, as it soared against the bright and mottled
field of sky, that on regarding the heather and plain again it was
as if she had returned to a half-forgotten region after an absence,
and the whole prospect was darkened to one uniform shade of
approaching night. She began at once to retrace her steps, but
having been indiscriminately wheeling round the pond to get a good
view of the performance, and having followed no path thither, she
found the proper direction of her journey to be a matter of some
uncertainty.
'Surely,' she said to herself, 'I faced the north at starting:' and
yet on walking now with her back where her face had been set, she
did not approach any marks on the horizon which might seem to
signify the town. Thus dubiously, but with little real concern, she
walked on till the evening light began to turn to dusk, and the
shadows to darkness.
Presently in front of her Ethelberta saw a white spot in the shade,
and it proved to be in some way attached to the head of a man who
was coming towards her out of a slight depression in the ground. It
was as yet too early in the evening to be afraid, but it was too
late to be altogether courageous; and with balanced sensations
Ethelberta kept her eye sharply upon him as he rose by degrees into
view. The peculiar arrangement of his hat and pugree soon struck
her as being that she had casually noticed on a peg in one of the
rooms of the 'Red Lion,' and when he came close she saw that his
arms diminished to a peculiar smallness at their junction with his
shoulders, like those of a doll, which was explained by their being
girt round at that point with the straps of a knapsack that he
carried behind him. Encouraged by the probability that he, like
herself, was staying or had been staying at the 'Red Lion,' she
said, 'Can you tell me if this is the way back to Anglebury?'
'It is one way; but the nearest is in this direction,' said the
tourist--the same who had been criticized by the two old men.
At hearing him speak all the delicate activities in the young lady's
person stood still: she stopped like a clock. When she could again
fence with the perception which had caused all this, she breathed.
'Mr. Julian!' she exclaimed. The words were uttered in a way which
would have told anybody in a moment that here lay something
connected with the light of other days.
'Ah, Mrs. Petherwin!--Yes, I am Mr. Julian--though that can matter
very little, I should think, after all these years, and what has
passed.'
No remark was returned to this rugged reply, and he continued
unconcernedly, 'Shall I put you in the path--it is just here?'
'If you please.'
'Come with me, then.'
She walked in silence at his heels, not a word passing between them
all the way: the only noises which came from the two were the
brushing of her dress and his gaiters against the heather, or the
smart rap of a stray flint against his boot.
They had now reached a little knoll, and he turned abruptly: 'That
is Anglebury--just where you see those lights. The path down there
is the one you must follow; it leads round the hill yonder and
directly into the town.'
'Thank you,' she murmured, and found that he had never removed his
eyes from her since speaking, keeping them fixed with mathematical
exactness upon one point in her face. She moved a little to go on
her way; he moved a little less--to go on his.
'Good-night,' said Mr. Julian.
The moment, upon the very face of it, was critical; and yet it was
one of those which have to wait for a future before they acquire a
definite character as good or bad.
Thus much would have been obvious to any outsider; it may have been
doubly so to Ethelberta, for she gave back more than she had got,
replying, 'Good-bye--if you are going to say no more.'
Then in struck Mr. Julian: 'What can I say? You are nothing to me.
. . . I could forgive a woman doing anything for spite, except
marrying for spite.'
'The connection of that with our present meeting does not appear,
unless it refers to what you have done. It does not refer to me.'
'I am not married: you are.'
She did not contradict him, as she might have done. 'Christopher,'
she said at last, 'this is how it is: you knew too much of me to
respect me, and too little to pity me. A half knowledge of
another's life mostly does injustice to the life half known.'
'Then since circumstances forbid my knowing you more, I must do my
best to know you less, and elevate my opinion of your nature by
forgetting what it consists in,' he said in a voice from which all
feeling was polished away.
'If I did not know that bitterness had more to do with those words
than judgment, I--should be--bitter too! You never knew half about
me; you only knew me as a governess; you little think what my
beginnings were.'
'I have guessed. I have many times told myself that your early life
was superior to your position when I first met you. I think I may
say without presumption that I recognize a lady by birth when I see
her, even under reverses of an extreme kind. And certainly there is
this to be said, that the fact of having been bred in a wealthy home
does slightly redeem an attempt to attain to such a one again.'
Ethelberta smiled a smile of many meanings.
'However, we are wasting words,' he resumed cheerfully. 'It is
better for us to part as we met, and continue to be the strangers
that we have become to each other. I owe you an apology for having
been betrayed into more feeling than I had a right to show, and let
us part friends. Good night, Mrs. Petherwin, and success to you.
We may meet again, some day, I hope.'
'Good night,' she said, extending her hand. He touched it, turned
about, and in a short time nothing remained of him but quick regular
brushings against the heather in the deep broad shadow of the moor.
Ethelberta slowly moved on in the direction that he had pointed out.
This meeting had surprised her in several ways. First, there was
the conjuncture itself; but more than that was the fact that he had
not parted from her with any of the tragic resentment that she had
from time to time imagined for that scene if it ever occurred. Yet
there was really nothing wonderful in this: it is part of the
generous nature of a bachelor to be not indisposed to forgive a
portionless sweetheart who, by marrying elsewhere, has deprived him
of the bliss of being obliged to marry her himself. Ethelberta
would have been disappointed quite had there not been a comforting
development of exasperation in the middle part of his talk; but
after all it formed a poor substitute for the loving hatred she had
expected.
When she reached the hotel the lamp over the door showed a face a
little flushed, but the agitation which at first had possessed her
was gone to a mere nothing. In the hall she met a slender woman
wearing a silk dress of that peculiar black which in sunlight
proclaims itself to have once seen better days as a brown, and days
even better than those as a lavender, green, or blue.
'Menlove,' said the lady, 'did you notice if any gentleman observed
and followed me when I left the hotel to go for a walk this
evening?'
The lady's-maid, thus suddenly pulled up in a night forage after
lovers, put a hand to her forehead to show that there was no mistake
about her having begun to meditate on receiving orders to that
effect, and said at last, 'You once told me, ma'am, if you
recollect, that when you were dressed, I was not to go staring out
of the window after you as if you were a doll I had just
manufactured and sent round for sale.'
'Yes, so I did.'
'So I didn't see if anybody followed you this evening.'
'Then did you hear any gentleman arrive here by the late train last
night?'
'O no, ma'am--how could I?' said Mrs. Menlove--an exclamation which
was more apposite than her mistress suspected, considering that the
speaker, after retiring from duty, had slipped down her dark skirt
to reveal a light, puffed, and festooned one, put on a hat and
feather, together with several pennyweights of metal in the form of
rings, brooches, and earrings--all in a time whilst one could count
a hundred--and enjoyed half-an-hour of prime courtship by an
honourable young waiter of the town, who had proved constant as the
magnet to the pole for the space of the day and a half that she had
known him.
Going at once upstairs, Ethelberta ran down the passage, and after
some hesitation softly opened the door of the sitting-room in the
best suite of apartments that the inn could boast of.
In this room sat an elderly lady writing by the light of two candles
with green shades. Well knowing, as it seemed, who the intruder
was, she continued her occupation, and her visitor advanced and
stood beside the table. The old lady wore her spectacles low down
her cheek, her glance being depressed to about the slope of her
straight white nose in order to look through them. Her mouth was
pursed up to almost a youthful shape as she formed the letters with
her pen, and a slight move of the lip accompanied every downstroke.
There were two large antique rings on her forefinger, against which
the quill rubbed in moving backwards and forwards, thereby causing a
secondary noise rivalling the primary one of the nib upon the paper.
'Mamma,' said the younger lady, 'here I am at last.'
A writer's mind in the midst of a sentence being like a ship at sea,
knowing no rest or comfort till safely piloted into the harbour of a
full stop, Lady Petherwin just replied with 'What,' in an occupied
tone, not rising to interrogation. After signing her name to the
letter, she raised her eyes.
'Why, how late you are, Ethelberta, and how heated you look!' she
said. 'I have been quite alarmed about you. What do you say has
happened?'
The great, chief, and altogether eclipsing thing that had happened
was the accidental meeting with an old lover whom she had once
quarrelled with; and Ethelberta's honesty would have delivered the
tidings at once, had not, unfortunately, all the rest of her
attributes been dead against that act, for the old lady's sake even
more than for her own.
'I saw a great cruel bird chasing a harmless duck!' she exclaimed
innocently. 'And I ran after to see what the end of it would be--
much further than I had any idea of going. However, the duck came
to a pond, and in running round it to see the end of the fight, I
could not remember which way I had come.'
'Mercy!' said her mother-in-law, lifting her large eyelids, heavy as
window-shutters, and spreading out her fingers like the horns of a
snail. 'You might have sunk up to your knees and got lost in that
swampy place--such a time of night, too. What a tomboy you are!
And how did you find your way home after all!'
'O, some man showed me the way, and then I had no difficulty, and
after that I came along leisurely.'
'I thought you had been running all the way; you look so warm.'
'It is a warm evening. . . . Yes, and I have been thinking of old
times as I walked along,' she said, 'and how people's positions in
life alter. Have I not heard you say that while I was at Bonn, at
school, some family that we had known had their household broken up
when the father died, and that the children went away you didn't
know where?'
'Do you mean the Julians?'
'Yes, that was the name.'
'Why, of course you know it was the Julians. Young Julian had a day
or two's fancy for you one summer, had he not?--just after you came
to us, at the same time, or just before it, that my poor boy and you
were so desperately attached to each other.'
'O yes, I recollect,' said Ethelberta. 'And he had a sister, I
think. I wonder where they went to live after the family collapse.'
'I do not know,' said Lady Petherwin, taking up another sheet of
paper. 'I have a dim notion that the son, who had been brought up
to no profession, became a teacher of music in some country town--
music having always been his hobby. But the facts are not very
distinct in my memory.' And she dipped her pen for another letter.
Ethelberta, with a rather fallen countenance, then left her mother-
in-law, and went where all ladies are supposed to go when they want
to torment their minds in comfort--to her own room. Here she
thoughtfully sat down awhile, and some time later she rang for her
maid.
'Menlove,' she said, without looking towards a rustle and half a
footstep that had just come in at the door, but leaning back in her
chair and speaking towards the corner of the looking-glass, 'will
you go down and find out if any gentleman named Julian has been
staying in this house? Get to know it, I mean, Menlove, not by
directly inquiring; you have ways of getting to know things, have
you not? If the devoted George were here now, he would help--'
'George was nothing to me, ma'am.'
'James, then.'
'And I only had James for a week or ten days: when I found he was a
married man, I encouraged his addresses very little indeed.'
'If you had encouraged him heart and soul, you couldn't have fumed
more at the loss of him. But please to go and make that inquiry,
will you, Menlove?'
In a few minutes Ethelberta's woman was back again. 'A gentleman of
that name stayed here last night, and left this afternoon.'
'Will you find out his address?'
Now the lady's-maid had already been quick-witted enough to find out
that, and indeed all about him; but it chanced that a fashionable
illustrated weekly paper had just been sent from the bookseller's,
and being in want of a little time to look it over before it reached
her mistress's hands, Mrs. Menlove retired, as if to go and ask the
question--to stand meanwhile under the gas-lamp in the passage,
inspecting the fascinating engravings. But as time will not wait
for tire-women, a natural length of absence soon elapsed, and she
returned again and said,
'His address is, Upper Street, Sandbourne.'
'Thank you, that will do,' replied her mistress.
The hour grew later, and that dreamy period came round when ladies'
fancies, that have lain shut up close as their fans during the day,
begin to assert themselves anew. At this time a good guess at
Ethelberta's thoughts might have been made from her manner of
passing the minutes away. Instead of reading, entering notes in her
diary, or doing any ordinary thing, she walked to and fro, curled
her pretty nether lip within her pretty upper one a great many
times, made a cradle of her locked fingers, and paused with fixed
eyes where the walls of the room set limits upon her walk to look at
nothing but a picture within her mind.
