18. NEAR SANDBOURNE - LONDON STREETS - ETHELBERTA'S
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.
