22. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE
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.
