17. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE
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.'
