31. KNOLLSEA - A LOFTY DOWN - A RUINED CASTLE
Knollsea was a seaside village lying snug within two headlands as
between a finger and thumb. Everybody in the parish who was not a
boatman was a quarrier, unless he were the gentleman who owned half
the property and had been a quarryman, or the other gentleman who
owned the other half, and had been to sea.
The knowledge of the inhabitants was of the same special sort as
their pursuits. The quarrymen in white fustian understood practical
geology, the laws and accidents of dips, faults, and cleavage, far
better than the ways of the world and mammon; the seafaring men in
Guernsey frocks had a clearer notion of Alexandria, Constantinople,
the Cape, and the Indies than of any inland town in their own
country. This, for them, consisted of a busy portion, the Channel,
where they lived and laboured, and a dull portion, the vague
unexplored miles of interior at the back of the ports, which they
seldom thought of.
Some wives of the village, it is true, had learned to let lodgings,
and others to keep shops. The doors of these latter places were
formed of an upper hatch, usually kept open, and a lower hatch, with
a bell attached, usually kept shut. Whenever a stranger went in, he
would hear a whispering of astonishment from a back room, after
which a woman came forward, looking suspiciously at him as an
intruder, and advancing slowly enough to allow her mouth to get
clear of the meal she was partaking of. Meanwhile the people in the
back room would stop their knives and forks in absorbed curiosity as
to the reason of the stranger's entry, who by this time feels
ashamed of his unwarrantable intrusion into this hermit's cell, and
thinks he must take his hat off. The woman is quite alarmed at
seeing that he is not one of the fifteen native women and children
who patronize her, and nervously puts her hand to the side of her
face, which she carries slanting. The visitor finds himself saying
what he wants in an apologetic tone, when the woman tells him that
they did keep that article once, but do not now; that nobody does,
and probably never will again; and as he turns away she looks
relieved that the dilemma of having to provide for a stranger has
passed off with no worse mishap than disappointing him.
A cottage which stood on a high slope above this townlet and its bay
resounded one morning with the notes of a merry company. Ethelberta
had managed to find room for herself and her young relations in the
house of one of the boatmen, whose wife attended upon them all.
Captain Flower, the husband, assisted her in the dinner
preparations, when he slipped about the house as lightly as a girl
and spoke of himself as cook's mate. The house was so small that
the sailor's rich voice, developed by shouting in high winds during
a twenty years' experience in the coasting trade, could be heard
coming from the kitchen between the chirpings of the children in the
parlour. The furniture of this apartment consisted mostly of the
painting of a full-rigged ship, done by a man whom the captain had
specially selected for the purpose because he had been seven-and-
twenty years at sea before touching a brush, and thereby offered a
sufficient guarantee that he understood how to paint a vessel
properly.
Before this picture sat Ethelberta in a light linen dress, and with
tightly-knotted hair--now again Berta Chickerel as of old--serving
out breakfast to the rest of the party, and sometimes lifting her
eyes to the outlook from the window, which presented a happy
combination of grange scenery with marine. Upon the irregular slope
between the house and the quay was an orchard of aged trees wherein
every apple ripening on the boughs presented its rubicund side
towards the cottage, because that building chanced to lie upwards in
the same direction as the sun. Under the trees were a few Cape
sheep, and over them the stone chimneys of the village below:
outside these lay the tanned sails of a ketch or smack, and the
violet waters of the bay, seamed and creased by breezes insufficient
to raise waves; beyond all a curved wall of cliff, terminating in a
promontory, which was flanked by tall and shining obelisks of chalk
rising sheer from the trembling blue race beneath.
By one sitting in the room that commanded this prospect, a white
butterfly among the apple-trees might be mistaken for the sails of a
yacht far away on the sea; and in the evening when the light was
dim, what seemed like a fly crawling upon the window-pane would turn
out to be a boat in the bay.
When breakfast was over, Ethelberta sat leaning on the window-sill
considering her movements for the day. It was the time fixed for
the meeting of the Imperial Association at Corvsgate Castle, the
celebrated ruin five miles off, and the meeting had some
fascinations for her. For one thing, she had never been present at
a gathering of the kind, although what was left in any shape from
the past was her constant interest, because it recalled her to
herself and fortified her mind. Persons waging a harassing social
fight are apt in the interest of the combat to forget the smallness
of the end in view; and the hints that perishing historical remnants
afforded her of the attenuating effects of time even upon great
struggles corrected the apparent scale of her own. She was reminded
that in a strife for such a ludicrously small object as the entry of
drawing-rooms, winning, equally with losing, is below the zero of
the true philosopher's concern.
There could never be a more excellent reason than this for going to
view the meagre stumps remaining from flourishing bygone centuries,
and it had weight with Ethelberta this very day; but it would be
difficult to state the whole composition of her motive. The
approaching meeting had been one of the great themes at Mr.
Doncastle's dinner-party, and Lord Mountclere, on learning that she
was to be at Knollsea, had recommended her attendance at some, if
not all of the meetings, as a desirable and exhilarating change
after her laborious season's work in town. It was pleasant to have
won her way so far in high places that her health of body and mind
should be thus considered--pleasant, less as personal gratification,
than that it casually reflected a proof of her good judgment in a
course which everybody among her kindred had condemned by calling a
foolhardy undertaking.
And she might go without the restraint of ceremony.
Unconventionality--almost eccentricity-was de rigueur for one who
had been first heard of as a poetess; from whose red lips magic
romance had since trilled for weeks to crowds of listeners, as from
a perennial spring.
So Ethelberta went, after a considerable pondering how to get there
without the needless sacrifice either of dignity or cash. It would
be inconsiderate to the children to spend a pound on a brougham when
as much as she could spare was wanted for their holiday. It was
almost too far too walk. She had, however, decided to walk, when
she met a boy with a donkey, who offered to lend it to her for three
shillings. The animal was rather sad-looking, but Ethelberta found
she could sit upon the pad without discomfort. Considering that she
might pull up some distance short of the castle, and leave the ass
at a cottage before joining her four-wheeled friends, she struck the
bargain and rode on her way.
This was, first by a path on the shore where the tide dragged
huskily up and down the shingle without disturbing it, and thence up
the steep crest of land opposite, whereon she lingered awhile to let
the ass breathe. On one of the spires of chalk into which the hill
here had been split was perched a cormorant, silent and motionless,
with wings spread out to dry in the sun after his morning's fishing,
their white surface shining like mail. Retiring without disturbing
him and turning to the left along the lofty ridge which ran inland,
the country on each side lay beneath her like a map, domains behind
domains, parishes by the score, harbours, fir-woods, and little
inland seas mixing curiously together. Thence she ambled along
through a huge cemetery of barrows, containing human dust from
prehistoric times.
Standing on the top of a giant's grave in this antique land,
Ethelberta lifted her eyes to behold two sorts of weather pervading
Nature at the same time. Far below on the right hand it was a fine
day, and the silver sunbeams lighted up a many-armed inland sea
which stretched round an island with fir-trees and gorse, and amid
brilliant crimson heaths wherein white paths and roads occasionally
met the eye in dashes and zigzags like flashes of lightning.
Outside, where the broad Channel appeared, a berylline and opalized
variegation of ripples, currents, deeps, and shallows, lay as fair
under the sun as a New Jerusalem, the shores being of gleaming sand.
Upon the radiant heather bees and butterflies were busy, she knew,
and the birds on that side were just beginning their autumn songs.
On the left, quite up to her position, was dark and cloudy weather,
shading a valley of heavy greens and browns, which at its further
side rose to meet the sea in tall cliffs, suggesting even here at
their back how terrible were their aspects seaward in a growling
southwest gale. Here grassed hills rose like knuckles gloved in
dark olive, and little plantations between them formed a still
deeper and sadder monochrome. A zinc sky met a leaden sea on this
hand, the low wind groaned and whined, and not a bird sang.
The ridge along which Ethelberta rode divided these two climates
like a wall; it soon became apparent that they were wrestling for
mastery immediately in her pathway. The issue long remained
doubtful, and this being an imaginative hour with her, she watched
as typical of her own fortunes how the front of battle swayed--now
to the west, flooding her with sun, now to the east, covering her
with shade: then the wind moved round to the north, a blue hole
appeared in the overhanging cloud, at about the place of the north
star; and the sunlight spread on both sides of her.
The towers of the notable ruin to be visited rose out of the
furthermost shoulder of the upland as she advanced, its site being
the slope and crest of a smoothly nibbled mount at the toe of the
ridge she had followed. When observing the previous uncertainty of
the weather on this side Ethelberta had been led to doubt if the
meeting would be held here to-day, and she was now strengthened in
her opinion that it would not by the total absence of human figures
amid the ruins, though the time of appointment was past. This
disposed of another question which had perplexed her: where to find
a stable for the ass during the meeting, for she had scarcely liked
the idea of facing the whole body of lords and gentlemen upon the
animal's back. She now decided to retain her seat, ride round the
ruin, and go home again, without troubling further about the
movements of the Association or acquaintance with the members
composing it.
Accordingly Ethelberta crossed the bridge over the moat, and rode
under the first archway into the outer ward. As she had expected,
not a soul was here. The arrow-slits, portcullis-grooves, and
staircases met her eye as familiar friends, for in her childhood she
had once paid a visit to the spot. Ascending the green incline and
through another arch into the second ward, she still pressed on,
till at last the ass was unable to clamber an inch further. Here
she dismounted, and tying him to a stone which projected like a fang
from a raw edge of wall, performed the remainder of the ascent on
foot. Once among the towers above, she became so interested in the
windy corridors, mildewed dungeons, and the tribe of daws peering
invidiously upon her from overhead, that she forgot the flight of
time.
Nearly three-quarters of an hour passed before she came out from the
immense walls, and looked from an opening to the front over the wide
expanse of the outer ward, by which she had ascended.
Ethelberta was taken aback to see there a file of shining carriages,
which had arrived during her seclusion in the keep. From these
began to burst a miscellany of many-coloured draperies, blue, buff,
pied, and black; they united into one, and crept up the incline like
a cloud, which then parted into fragments, dived into old doorways,
and lost substance behind projecting piles. Recognizing in this the
ladies and gentlemen of the meeting, her first thought was how to
escape, for she was suddenly overcome with dread to meet them all
single-handed as she stood. She drew back and hurried round to the
side, as the laughter and voices of the assembly began to be
audible, and, more than ever vexed that she could not have fallen in
with them in some unobtrusive way, Ethelberta found that they were
immediately beneath her.
Venturing to peep forward again, what was her mortification at
finding them gathered in a ring, round no object of interest
belonging to the ruin, but round her faithful beast, who had
loosened himself in some way from the stone, and stood in the middle
of a plat of grass, placidly regarding them.
Being now in the teeth of the Association, there was nothing to do
but to go on, since, if she did not, the next few steps of their
advance would disclose her. She made the best of it, and began to
descend in the broad view of the assembly, from the midst of which
proceeded a laugh--'Hee-hee-hee!' Ethelberta knew that Lord
Mountclere was there.
'The poor thing has strayed from its owner,' said one lady, as they
all stood eyeing the apparition of the ass.
'It may belong to some of the villagers,' said the President in a
historical voice: 'and it may be appropriate to mention that many
were kept here in olden times: they were largely used as beasts of
burden in victualling the castle previous to the last siege, in the
year sixteen hundred and forty-five.'
'It is very weary, and has come a long way, I think,' said a lady;
adding, in an imaginative tone, 'the humble creature looks so aged
and is so quaintly saddled that we may suppose it to be only an
animated relic, of the same date as the other remains.'
By this time Lord Mountclere had noticed Ethelberta's presence, and
straightening himself to ten years younger, he lifted his hat in
answer to her smile, and came up jauntily. It was a good time now
to see what the viscount was really like. He appeared to be about
sixty-five, and the dignified aspect which he wore to a gazer at a
distance became depreciated to jocund slyness upon nearer view, when
the small type could be read between the leading lines. Then it
could be seen that his upper lip dropped to a point in the middle,
as if impressing silence upon his too demonstrative lower one. His
right and left profiles were different, one corner of his mouth
being more compressed than the other, producing a deep line thence
downwards to the side of his chin. Each eyebrow rose obliquely
outwards and upwards, and was thus far above the little eye, shining
with the clearness of a pond that has just been able to weather the
heats of summer. Below this was a preternaturally fat jowl, which,
by thrusting against cheeks and chin, caused the arch old mouth to
be almost buried at the corners.
A few words of greeting passed, and Ethelberta told him how she was
fearing to meet them all, united and primed with their morning's
knowledge as they appeared to be.
'Well, we have not done much yet,' said Lord Mountclere. 'As for
myself, I have given no thought at all to our day's work. I had not
forgotten your promise to attend, if you could possibly drive
across, and--hee-hee-hee!--I have frequently looked towards the hill
where the road descends. . . . Will you now permit me to introduce
some of my party--as many of them as you care to know by name? I
think they would all like to speak to you.'
Ethelberta then found herself nominally made known to ten or a dozen
ladies and gentlemen who had wished for special acquaintance with
her. She stood there, as all women stand who have made themselves
remarkable by their originality, or devotion to any singular cause,
as a person freed of her hampering and inconvenient sex, and, by
virtue of her popularity, unfettered from the conventionalities of
manner prescribed by custom for household womankind. The charter to
move abroad unchaperoned, which society for good reasons grants only
to women of three sorts--the famous, the ministering, and the
improper--Ethelberta was in a fair way to make splendid use of:
instead of walking in protected lanes she experienced that luxury of
isolation which normally is enjoyed by men alone, in conjunction
with the attention naturally bestowed on a woman young and fair.
Among the presentations were Mr. and Mrs. Tynn, member and member's
mainspring for North Wessex; Sir Cyril and Lady Blandsbury; Lady
Jane Joy; and the Honourable Edgar Mountclere, the viscount's
brother. There also hovered near her the learned Doctor Yore; Mr.
Small, a profound writer, who never printed his works; the Reverend
Mr. Brook, rector; the Very Reverend Dr. Taylor, dean; and the
undoubtedly Reverend Mr. Tinkleton, Nonconformist, who had slipped
into the fold by chance.
These and others looked with interest at Ethelberta: the old county
fathers hard, as at a questionable town phenomenon, the county sons
tenderly, as at a pretty creature, and the county daughters with
great admiration, as at a lady reported by their mammas to be no
better than she should be. It will be seen that Ethelberta was the
sort of woman that well-rooted local people might like to look at on
such a free and friendly occasion as an archaeological meeting,
where, to gratify a pleasant whim, the picturesque form of
acquaintance is for the nonce preferred to the useful, the spirits
being so brisk as to swerve from strict attention to the select and
sequent gifts of heaven, blood and acres, to consider for an idle
moment the subversive Mephistophelian endowment, brains.
'Our progress in the survey of the castle has not been far as yet,'
Lord Mountclere resumed; 'indeed, we have only just arrived, the
weather this morning being so unsettled. When you came up we were
engaged in a preliminary study of the poor animal you see there:
how it could have got up here we cannot understand.'
He pointed as he spoke to the donkey which had brought Ethelberta
thither, whereupon she was silent, and gazed at her untoward beast
as if she had never before beheld him.
The ass looked at Ethelberta as though he would say, 'Why don't you
own me, after safely bringing you over those weary hills?' But the
pride and emulation which had made her what she was would not permit
her, as the most lovely woman there, to take upon her own shoulders
the ridicule that had already been cast upon the ass. Had he been
young and gaily caparisoned, she might have done it; but his age,
the clumsy trappings of rustic make, and his needy woful look of
hard servitude, were too much to endure.
'Many come and picnic here,' she said serenely, 'and the animal may
have been left till they return from some walk.'
'True,' said Lord Mountclere, without the slightest suspicion of the
truth. The humble ass hung his head in his usual manner, and it
demanded little fancy from Ethelberta to imagine that he despised
her. And then her mind flew back to her history and extraction, to
her father--perhaps at that moment inventing a private plate-powder
in an underground pantry--and with a groan at her inconsistency in
being ashamed of the ass, she said in her heart, 'My God, what a
thing am I!'
They then all moved on to another part of the castle, the viscount
busying himself round and round her person like the head scraper at
a pig-killing; and as they went indiscriminately mingled, jesting
lightly or talking in earnest, she beheld ahead of her the form of
Neigh among the rest.
Now, there could only be one reason on earth for Neigh's presence--
her remark that she might attend--for Neigh took no more interest in
antiquities than in the back of the moon. Ethelberta was a little
flurried; perhaps he had come to scold her, or to treat her badly in
that indefinable way of his by which he could make a woman feel as
nothing without any direct act at all. She was afraid of him, and,
determining to shun him, was thankful that Lord Mountclere was near,
to take off the edge of Neigh's manner towards her if he approached.
'Do you know in what part of the ruins the lecture is to be given?'
she said to the viscount.
'Wherever you like,' he replied gallantly. 'Do you propose a place,
and I will get Dr. Yore to adopt it. Say, shall it be here, or
where they are standing?'
How could Ethelberta refrain from exercising a little power when it
was put into her hands in this way?
'Let it be here,' she said, 'if it makes no difference to the
meeting.'
'It shall be,' said Lord Mountclere.
And then the lively old nobleman skipped like a roe to the President
and to Dr. Yore, who was to read the paper on the castle, and they
soon appeared coming back to where the viscount's party and
Ethelberta were beginning to seat themselves. The bulk of the
company followed, and Dr. Yore began.
He must have had a countenance of leather--as, indeed, from his
colour he appeared to have--to stand unmoved in his position, and
read, and look up to give explanations, without a change of muscle,
under the dozens of bright eyes that were there converged upon him,
like the sticks of a fan, from the ladies who sat round him in a
semicircle upon the grass. However, he went on calmly, and the
women sheltered themselves from the heat with their umbrellas and
sunshades, their ears lulled by the hum of insects, and by the drone
of the doctor's voice. The reader buzzed on with the history of the
castle, tracing its development from a mound with a few earthworks
to its condition in Norman times; he related monkish marvels
connected with the spot; its resistance under Matilda to Stephen,
its probable shape while a residence of King John, and the sad story
of the Damsel of Brittany, sister of his victim Arthur, who was
confined here in company with the two daughters of Alexander, king
of Scotland. He went on to recount the confinement of Edward II.
herein, previous to his murder at Berkeley, the gay doings in the
reign of Elizabeth, and so downward through time to the final
overthrow of the stern old pile. As he proceeded, the lecturer
pointed with his finger at the various features appertaining to the
date of his story, which he told with splendid vigour when he had
warmed to his work, till his narrative, particularly in the
conjectural and romantic parts, where it became coloured rather by
the speaker's imagination than by the pigments of history, gathered
together the wandering thoughts of all. It was easy for him then to
meet those fair concentred eyes, when the sunshades were thrown
back, and complexions forgotten, in the interest of the history.
The doctor's face was then no longer criticized as a rugged boulder,
a dried fig, an oak carving, or a walnut shell, but became blotted
out like a mountain top in a shining haze by the nebulous pictures
conjured by his tale.
Then the lecture ended, and questions were asked, and individuals of
the company wandered at will, the light dresses of the ladies
sweeping over the hot grass and brushing up thistledown which had
hitherto lain quiescent, so that it rose in a flight from the skirts
of each like a comet's tail.
Some of Lord Mountclere's party, including himself and Ethelberta,
wandered now into a cool dungeon, partly open to the air overhead,
where long arms of ivy hung between their eyes and the white sky.
While they were here, Lady Jane Joy and some other friends of the
viscount told Ethelberta that they were probably coming on to
Knollsea.
She instantly perceived that getting into close quarters in that way
might be very inconvenient, considering the youngsters she had under
her charge, and straightway decided upon a point that she had
debated for several days--a visit to her aunt in Normandy. In
London it had been a mere thought, but the Channel had looked so
tempting from its brink that the journey was virtually fixed as soon
as she reached Knollsea, and found that a little pleasure steamer
crossed to Cherbourg once a week during the summer, so that she
would not have to enter the crowded routes at all.
'I am afraid I shall not see you in Knollsea,' she said. 'I am
about to go to Cherbourg and then to Rouen.'
'How sorry I am. When do you leave?'
'At the beginning of next week,' said Ethelberta, settling the time
there and then.
'Did I hear you say that you were going to Cherbourg and Rouen?'
Lord Mountclere inquired.
'I think to do so,' said Ethelberta.
'I am going to Normandy myself,' said a voice behind her, and
without turning she knew that Neigh was standing there.
They next went outside, and Lord Mountclere offered Ethelberta his
arm on the ground of assisting her down the burnished grass slope.
Ethelberta, taking pity upon him, took it; but the assistance was
all on her side; she stood like a statue amid his slips and
totterings, some of which taxed her strength heavily, and her
ingenuity more, to appear as the supported and not the supporter.
The incident brought Neigh still further from his retirement, and
she learnt that he was one of a yachting party which had put in at
Knollsea that morning; she was greatly relieved to find that he was
just now on his way to London, whence he would probably proceed on
his journey abroad.
Ethelberta adhered as well as she could to her resolve that Neigh
should not speak with her alone, but by dint of perseverance he did
manage to address her without being overheard.
'Will you give me an answer?' said Neigh. 'I have come on purpose.'
'I cannot just now. I have been led to doubt you.'
'Doubt me? What new wrong have I done?'
'Spoken jestingly of my visit to Farnfield.'
'Good ---! I did not speak or think of you. When I told that
incident I had no idea who the lady was--I did not know it was you
till two days later, and I at once held my tongue. I vow to you
upon my soul and life that what I say is true. How shall I prove my
truth better than by my errand here?'
'Don't speak of this now. I am so occupied with other things. I am
going to Rouen, and will think of it on my way.'
'I am going there too. When do you go?'
'I shall be in Rouen next Wednesday, I hope.'
'May I ask where?'
'Hotel Beau Sejour.'
'Will you give me an answer there? I can easily call upon you. It
is now a month and more since you first led me to hope--'
'I did not lead you to hope--at any rate clearly.'
'Indirectly you did. And although I am willing to be as considerate
as any man ought to be in giving you time to think over the
question, there is a limit to my patience. Any necessary delay I
will put up with, but I won't be trifled with. I hate all nonsense,
and can't stand it.'
'Indeed. Good morning.'
'But Mrs. Petherwin--just one word.'
'I have nothing to say.'
'I will meet you at Rouen for an answer. I would meet you in Hades
for the matter of that. Remember this: next Wednesday, if I live,
I shall call upon you at Rouen.'
She did not say nay.
'May I?' he added.
'If you will.'
'But say it shall be an appointment?'
'Very well.'
Lord Mountclere was by this time toddling towards them to ask if
they would come on to his house, Enckworth Court, not very far
distant, to lunch with the rest of the party. Neigh, having already
arranged to go on to town that afternoon, was obliged to decline,
and Ethelberta thought fit to do the same, idly asking Lord
Mountclere if Enckworth Court lay in the direction of a gorge that
was visible where they stood.
'No; considerably to the left,' he said. 'The opening you are
looking at would reveal the sea if it were not for the trees that
block the way. Ah, those trees have a history; they are half-a-
dozen elms which I planted myself when I was a boy. How time
flies!'
'It is unfortunate they stand just so as to cover the blue bit of
sea. That addition would double the value of the view from here.'
'You would prefer the blue sea to the trees?'
'In that particular spot I should; they might have looked just as
well, and yet have hidden nothing worth seeing. The narrow slit
would have been invaluable there.'
'They shall fall before the sun sets, in deference to your opinion,'
said Lord Mountclere.
'That would be rash indeed,' said Ethelberta, laughing, 'when my
opinion on such a point may be worth nothing whatever.'
'Where no other is acted upon, it is practically the universal one,'
he replied gaily.
And then Ethelberta's elderly admirer bade her adieu, and away the
whole party drove in a long train over the hills towards the valley
wherein stood Enckworth Court. Ethelberta's carriage was supposed
by her friends to have been left at the village inn, as were many
others, and her retiring from view on foot attracted no notice.
She watched them out of sight, and she also saw the rest depart--
those who, their interest in archaeology having begun and ended with
this spot, had, like herself, declined the hospitable viscount's
invitation, and started to drive or walk at once home again.
Thereupon the castle was quite deserted except by Ethelberta, the
ass, and the jackdaws, now floundering at ease again in and about
the ivy of the keep.
Not wishing to enter Knollsea till the evening shades were falling,
she still walked amid the ruins, examining more leisurely some
points which the stress of keeping herself companionable would not
allow her to attend to while the assemblage was present. At the end
of the survey, being somewhat weary with her clambering, she sat
down on the slope commanding the gorge where the trees grew, to make
a pencil sketch of the landscape as it was revealed between the
ragged walls. Thus engaged she weighed the circumstances of Lord
Mountclere's invitation, and could not be certain if it were
prudishness or simple propriety in herself which had instigated her
to refuse. She would have liked the visit for many reasons, and if
Lord Mountclere had been anybody but a remarkably attentive old
widower, she would have gone. As it was, it had occurred to her
that there was something in his tone which should lead her to
hesitate. Were any among the elderly or married ladies who had
appeared upon the ground in a detached form as she had done--and
many had appeared thus--invited to Enckworth; and if not, why were
they not? That Lord Mountclere admired her there was no doubt, and
for this reason it behoved her to be careful. His disappointment at
parting from her was, in one aspect, simply laughable, from its odd
resemblance to the unfeigned sorrow of a boy of fifteen at a first
parting from his first love; in another aspect it caused reflection;
and she thought again of his curiosity about her doings for the
remainder of the summer.
While she sketched and thought thus, the shadows grew longer, and
the sun low. And then she perceived a movement in the gorge. One
of the trees forming the curtain across it began to wave strangely:
it went further to one side, and fell. Where the tree had stood was
now a rent in the foliage, and through the narrow rent could be seen
the distant sea.
Ethelberta uttered a soft exclamation. It was not caused by the
surprise she had felt, nor by the intrinsic interest of the sight,
nor by want of comprehension. It was a sudden realization of vague
things hitherto dreamed of from a distance only--a sense of novel
power put into her hands without request or expectation. A
landscape was to be altered to suit her whim. She had in her
lifetime moved essentially larger mountains, but they had seemed of
far less splendid material than this; for it was the nature of the
gratification rather than its magnitude which enchanted the fancy of
a woman whose poetry, in spite of her necessities, was hardly yet
extinguished. But there was something more, with which poetry had
little to do. Whether the opinion of any pretty woman in England
was of more weight with Lord Mountclere than memories of his
boyhood, or whether that distinction was reserved for her alone;
this was a point that she would have liked to know.
The enjoyment of power in a new element, an enjoyment somewhat
resembling in kind that which is given by a first ride or swim, held
Ethelberta to the spot, and she waited, but sketched no more.
Another tree-top swayed and vanished as before, and the slit of sea
was larger still. Her mind and eye were so occupied with this
matter that, sitting in her nook, she did not observe a thin young
man, his boots white with the dust of a long journey on foot, who
arrived at the castle by the valley-road from Knollsea. He looked
awhile at the ruin, and, skirting its flank instead of entering by
the great gateway, climbed up the scarp and walked in through a
breach. After standing for a moment among the walls, now silent and
apparently empty, with a disappointed look he descended the slope,
and proceeded along on his way.
Ethelberta, who was in quite another part of the castle, saw the
black spot diminishing to the size of a fly as he receded along the
dusty road, and soon after she descended on the other side, where
she remounted the ass, and ambled homeward as she had come, in no
bright mood. What, seeing the precariousness of her state, was the
day's triumph worth after all, unless, before her beauty abated, she
could ensure her position against the attacks of chance?
'To be thus is nothing;
But to be safely thus.'
--she said it more than once on her journey that day.
On entering the sitting-room of their cot up the hill she found it
empty, and from a change perceptible in the position of small
articles of furniture, something unusual seemed to have taken place
in her absence. The dwelling being of that sort in which whatever
goes on in one room is audible through all the rest, Picotee, who
was upstairs, heard the arrival and came down. Picotee's face was
rosed over with the brilliance of some excitement. 'What do you
think I have to tell you, Berta?' she said.
'I have no idea,' said her sister. 'Surely,' she added, her face
intensifying to a wan sadness, 'Mr. Julian has not been here?'
'Yes,' said Picotee. 'And we went down to the sands--he, and
Myrtle, and Georgina, and Emmeline, and I--and Cornelia came down
when she had put away the dinner. And then we dug wriggles out of
the sand with Myrtle's spade: we got such a lot, and had such fun;
they are in a dish in the kitchen. Mr. Julian came to see you; but
at last he could wait no longer, and when I told him you were at the
meeting in the castle ruins he said he would try to find you there
on his way home, if he could get there before the meeting broke up.'
'Then it was he I saw far away on the road--yes, it must have been.'
She remained in gloomy reverie a few moments, and then said, 'Very
well--let it be. Picotee, get me some tea: I do not want dinner.'
But the news of Christopher's visit seemed to have taken away her
appetite for tea also, and after sitting a little while she flung
herself down upon the couch, and told Picotee that she had settled
to go and see their aunt Charlotte.
'I am going to write to Sol and Dan to ask them to meet me there,'
she added. 'I want them, if possible, to see Paris. It will
improve them greatly in their trades, I am thinking, if they can see
the kinds of joinery and decoration practised in France. They
agreed to go, if I should wish it, before we left London. You, of
course, will go as my maid.'
Picotee gazed upon the sea with a crestfallen look, as if she would
rather not cross it in any capacity just then.
'It would scarcely be worth going to the expense of taking me, would
it?' she said.
The cause of Picotee's sudden sense of economy was so plain that her
sister smiled; but young love, however foolish, is to a thinking
person far too tragic a power for ridicule; and Ethelberta forbore,
going on as if Picotee had not spoken: 'I must have you with me. I
may be seen there: so many are passing through Rouen at this time
of the year. Cornelia can take excellent care of the children while
we are gone. I want to get out of England, and I will get out of
England. There is nothing but vanity and vexation here.'
'I am sorry you were away when he called,' said Picotee gently.
'O, I don't mean that. I wish there were no different ranks in the
world, and that contrivance were not a necessary faculty to have at
all. Well, we are going to cross by the little steamer that puts in
here, and we are going on Monday.' She added in another minute,
'What had Mr. Julian to tell us that he came here? How did he find
us out?'
'I mentioned that we were coming here in my letter to Faith. Mr.
Julian says that perhaps he and his sister may also come for a few
days before the season is over. I should like to see Miss Julian
again. She is such a nice girl.'
'Yes.' Ethelberta played with her hair, and looked at the ceiling
as she reclined. 'I have decided after all,' she said, 'that it
will be better to take Cornelia as my maid, and leave you here with
the children. Cornelia is stronger as a companion than you, and she
will be delighted to go. Do you think you are competent to keep
Myrtle and Georgina out of harm's way?'
'O yes--I will be exceedingly careful,' said Picotee, with great
vivacity. 'And if there is time I can go on teaching them a
little.' Then Picotee caught Ethelberta's eye, and colouring red,
sank down beside her sister, whispering, 'I know why it is! But if
you would rather have me with you I will go, and not once wish to
stay.'
Ethelberta looked as if she knew all about that, and said, 'Of
course there will be no necessity to tell the Julians about my
departure until they have fixed the time for coming, and cannot
alter their minds.'
The sound of the children with Cornelia, and their appearance
outside the window, pushing between the fuchsia bushes which
overhung the path, put an end to this dialogue; they entered armed
with buckets and spades, a very moist and sandy aspect pervading
them as far up as the high-water mark of their clothing, and began
to tell Ethelberta of the wonders of the deep.
