4. SANDBOURNE PIER - ROAD TO WYNDWAY - BALL-ROOM IN WYNDWAY HOUSE
The last light of a winter day had gone down behind the houses of
Sandbourne, and night was shut close over all. Christopher, about
eight o'clock, was standing at the end of the pier with his back
towards the open sea, whence the waves were pushing to the shore in
frills and coils that were just rendered visible in all their bleak
instability by the row of lights along the sides of the jetty, the
rapid motion landward of the wavetips producing upon his eye an
apparent progress of the pier out to sea. This pier-head was a spot
which Christopher enjoyed visiting on such moaning and sighing
nights as the present, when the sportive and variegated throng that
haunted the pier on autumn days was no longer there, and he seemed
alone with weather and the invincible sea.
Somebody came towards him along the deserted footway, and rays from
the nearest lamp streaked the face of his sister Faith.
'O Christopher, I knew you were here,' she said eagerly. 'You are
wanted; there's a servant come from Wyndway House for you. He is
sent to ask if you can come immediately to play at a little dance
they have resolved upon this evening--quite suddenly it seems. If
you can come, you must bring with you any assistant you can lay your
hands upon at a moment's notice, he says.'
'Wyndway House; why should the people send for me above all other
musicians in the town?'
Faith did not know. 'If you really decide to go,' she said, as they
walked homeward, 'you might take me as your assistant. I should
answer the purpose, should I not, Kit? since it is only a dance or
two they seem to want.'
'And your harp I suppose you mean. Yes; you might be competent to
take a part. It cannot be a regular ball; they would have had the
quadrille band for anything of that sort. Faith--we'll go.
However, let us see the man first, and inquire particulars.'
Reaching home, Christopher found at his door a horse and wagonette
in charge of a man-servant in livery, who repeated what Faith had
told her brother. Wyndway House was a well-known country-seat three
or four miles out of the town, and the coachman mentioned that if
they were going it would be well that they should get ready to start
as soon as they conveniently could, since he had been told to return
by ten if possible. Christopher quickly prepared himself, and put a
new string or two into Faith's harp, by which time she also was
dressed; and, wrapping up herself and her instrument safe from the
night air, away they drove at half-past nine.
'Is it a large party?' said Christopher, as they whizzed along.
'No, sir; it is what we call a dance--that is, 'tis like a ball, you
know, on a small scale--a ball on a spurt, that you never thought of
till you had it. In short, it grew out of a talk at dinner, I
believe; and some of the young people present wanted a jig, and
didn't care to play themselves, you know, young ladies being an idle
class of society at the best of times. We've a house full of
sleeping company, you understand--been there a week some of 'em--
most of 'em being mistress's relations.'
'They probably found it a little dull.'
'Well, yes--it is rather dull for 'em--Christmas-time and all. As
soon as it was proposed they were wild for sending post-haste for
somebody or other to play to them.'
'Did they name me particularly?' said Christopher.
'Yes; "Mr. Christopher Julian," she says. "The gent who's turned
music-man?" I said. "Yes, that's him," says she.'
'There were music-men living nearer to your end of the town than I.'
'Yes, but I know it was you particular: though I don't think
mistress thought anything about you at first. Mr. Joyce--that's the
butler--said that your name was mentioned to our old party, when he
was in the room, by a young lady staying with us, and mistress says
then, "The Julians have had a downfall, and the son has taken to
music." Then when dancing was talked of, they said, "O, let's have
him by all means."'
'Was the young lady who first inquired for my family the same one
who said, "Let's have him by all means?"'
'O no; but it was on account of her asking that the rest said they
would like you to play--at least that's as I had it from Joyce.'
'Do you know that lady's name?'
'Mrs. Petherwin.'
'Ah!'
'Cold, sir?'
'O no.'
Christopher did not like to question the man any further, though
what he had heard added new life to his previous curiosity; and they
drove along the way in silence, Faith's figure, wrapped up to the
top of her head, cutting into the sky behind them like a sugar-loaf.
Such gates as crossed the roads had been left open by the
forethought of the coachman, and, passing the lodge, they proceeded
about half-a-mile along a private drive, then ascended a rise, and
came in view of the front of the mansion, punctured with windows
that were now mostly lighted up.
'What is that?' said Faith, catching a glimpse of something that the
carriage-lamp showed on the face of one wall as they passed, a
marble bas-relief of some battle-piece, built into the stonework.
'That's the scene of the death of one of the squire's forefathers--
Colonel Sir Martin Jones, who was killed at the moment of victory in
the battle of Salamanca--but I haven't been here long enough to know
the rights of it. When I am in one of my meditations, as I wait
here with the carriage sometimes, I think how many more get killed
at the moment of victory than at the moment of defeat. This is the
entrance for you, sir.' And he turned the corner and pulled up
before a side door.
They alighted and went in, Christopher shouldering Faith's harp, and
she marching modestly behind, with curly-eared music-books under her
arm. They were shown into the house-steward's room, and ushered
thence along a badly-lit passage and past a door within which a hum
and laughter were audible. The door next to this was then opened
for them, and they entered.
Scarcely had Faith, or Christopher either, ever beheld a more
shining scene than was presented by the saloon in which they now
found themselves. Coming direct from the gloomy park, and led to
the room by that back passage from the servants' quarter, the light
from the chandelier and branches against the walls, striking on
gilding at all points, quite dazzled their sight for a minute or
two; it caused Faith to move forward with her eyes on the floor, and
filled Christopher with an impulse to turn back again into some
dusky corner where every thread of his not over-new dress suit--
rather moth-eaten through lack of feasts for airing it--could be
counted less easily.
He was soon seated before a grand piano, and Faith sat down under
the shadow of her harp, both being arranged on a dais within an
alcove at one end of the room. A screen of ivy and holly had been
constructed across the front of this recess for the games of the
children on Christmas Eve, and it still remained there, a small
creep-hole being left for entrance and exit.
Then the merry guests tumbled through doors at the further end, and
dancing began. The mingling of black-coated men and bright ladies
gave a charming appearance to the groups as seen by Faith and her
brother, the whole spectacle deriving an unexpected novelty from the
accident of reaching their eyes through interstices in the tracery
of green leaves, which added to the picture a softness that it would
not otherwise have possessed. On the other hand, the musicians,
having a much weaker light, could hardly be discerned by the
performers in the dance.
The music was now rattling on, and the ladies in their foam-like
dresses were busily threading and spinning about the floor, when
Faith, casually looking up into her brother's face, was surprised to
see that a change had come over it. At the end of the quadrille he
leant across to her before she had time to speak, and said quietly,
'She's here!'
'Who?' said Faith, for she had not heard the words of the coachman.
'Ethelberta.'
'Which is she?' asked Faith, peeping through with the keenest
interest.
'The one who has the skirts of her dress looped up with convolvulus
flowers--the one with her hair fastened in a sort of Venus knot
behind; she has just been dancing with that perfumed piece of a man
they call Mr. Ladywell--it is he with the high eyebrows arched like
a girl's.' He added, with a wrinkled smile, 'I cannot for my life
see anybody answering to the character of husband to her, for every
man takes notice of her.'
They were interrupted by another dance being called for, and then,
his fingers tapping about upon the keys as mechanically as fowls
pecking at barleycorns, Christopher gave himself up with a curious
and far from unalloyed pleasure to the occupation of watching
Ethelberta, now again crossing the field of his vision like a
returned comet whose characteristics were becoming purely
historical. She was a plump-armed creature, with a white round neck
as firm as a fort--altogether a vigorous shape, as refreshing to the
eye as the green leaves through which he beheld her. She danced
freely, and with a zest that was apparently irrespective of
partners. He had been waiting long to hear her speak, and when at
length her voice did reach his ears, it was the revelation of a
strange matter to find how great a thing that small event had become
to him. He knew the old utterance--rapid but not frequent, an
obstructive thought causing sometimes a sudden halt in the midst of
a stream of words. But the features by which a cool observer would
have singled her out from others in his memory when asking himself
what she was like, was a peculiar gaze into imaginary far-away
distance when making a quiet remark to a partner--not with
contracted eyes like a seafaring man, but with an open full look--a
remark in which little words in a low tone were made to express a
great deal, as several single gentlemen afterwards found.
The production of dance-music when the criticizing stage among the
dancers has passed, and they have grown full of excitement and
animal spirits, does not require much concentration of thought in
the producers thereof; and desultory conversation accordingly went
on between Faith and her brother from time to time.
'Kit,' she said on one occasion, 'are you looking at the way in
which the flowers are fastened to the leaves?--taking a mean
advantage of being at the back of the tapestry? You cannot think
how you stare at them.'
'I was looking through them--certainly not at them. I have a
feeling of being moved about like a puppet in the hands of a person
who legally can be nothing to me.'
'That charming woman with the shining bunch of hair and
convolvuluses?'
'Yes: it is through her that we are brought here, and through her
writing that poem, "Cancelled Words," that the book was sent me, and
through the accidental renewal of acquaintance between us on
Anglebury Heath, that she wrote the poem. I was, however, at the
moment you spoke, thinking more particularly of the little teacher
whom Ethelberta must have commissioned to send the book to me; and
why that girl was chosen to do it.'
'There may be a hundred reasons. Kit, I have never yet seen her
look once this way.'
Christopher had certainly not yet received look or gesture from her;
but his time came. It was while he was for a moment outside the
recess, and he caught her in the act. She became slightly confused,
turned aside, and entered into conversation with a neighbour.
It was only a look, and yet what a look it was! One may say of a
look that it is capable of division into as many species, genera,
orders, and classes, as the animal world itself. Christopher saw
Ethelberta Petherwin's performance in this kind--the well-known
spark of light upon the well-known depths of mystery--and felt
something going out of him which had gone out of him once before.
Thus continually beholding her and her companions in the giddy
whirl, the night wore on with the musicians, last dances and more
last dances being added, till the intentions of the old on the
matter were thrice exceeded in the interests of the young. Watching
the couples whirl and turn, advance and recede as gently as spirits,
knot themselves like house-flies and part again, and lullabied by
the faint regular beat of their footsteps to the tune, the players
sank into the peculiar mesmeric quiet which comes over
impressionable people who play for a great length of time in the
midst of such scenes; and at last the only noises that Christopher
took cognizance of were those of the exceptional kind, breaking
above the general sea of sound--a casual smart rustle of silk, a
laugh, a stumble, the monosyllabic talk of those who happened to
linger for a moment close to the leafy screen--all coming to his
ears like voices from those old times when he had mingled in similar
scenes, not as servant but as guest.
