romp with the others, when she was startled by the announcement of a male
visitor - none other than Mr. Neigh.
Ethelberta's attitude on receipt of this information sufficiently
expressed a revived sense that the incidence of Mr. Neigh on her path
might have a meaning after all. Neigh had certainly said he was going to
marry her, and now here he was come to her house - just as if he meant to
do it forthwith. She had mentally discarded him; yet she felt a shock
which was scarcely painful, and a dread which was almost exhilarating.
Her flying visit to Farnfield she thought little of at this moment. From
the fact that the mind prefers imaginings to recapitulation, conjecture
to history, Ethelberta had dwelt more upon Neigh's possible plans and
anticipations than upon the incidents of her evening journey; and the
former assumed a more distinct shape in her mind's eye than anything on
the visible side of the curtain.
Neigh was perhaps not quite so placidly nonchalant as in ordinary; still,
he was by far the most trying visitor that Ethelberta had lately faced,
and she could not get above the stage - not a very high one for the
mistress of a house - of feeling her personality to be inconveniently in
the way of his eyes. He had somewhat the bearing of a man who was going
to do without any fuss what gushing people would call a philanthropic
action.
'I have been intending to write a line to you,' said Neigh; 'but I felt
that I could not be sure of writing my meaning in a way which might
please you. I am not bright at a letter - never was. The question I mean
is one that I hope you will be disposed to answer favourably, even though
I may show the awkwardness of a fellow-person who has never put such a
question before. Will you give me a word of encouragement - just a hope
that I may not be unacceptable as a husband to you? Your talents are
very great; and of course I know that I have nothing at all in that way.
Still people are happy together sometimes in spite of such things. Will
you say "Yes," and settle it now?'
'I was not expecting you had come upon such an errand as this,' said she,
looking up a little, but mostly looking down. 'I cannot say what you
wish, Mr. Neigh.
'Perhaps I have been too sudden and presumptuous. Yes, I know I have
been that. However, directly I saw you I felt that nobody ever came so
near my idea of what is desirable in a lady, and it occurred to me that
only one obstacle should stand in the way of the natural results, which
obstacle would be your refusal. In common kindness consider. I daresay
I am judged to be a man of inattentive habits - I know that's what you
think of me; but under your influence I should be very different; so pray
do not let your dislike to little matters influence you.'
'I would not indeed. But believe me there can be no discussion of
marriage between us,' said Ethelberta decisively.
'If that's the case I may as well say no more. To burden you with my
regrets would be out of place, I suppose,' said Neigh, looking calmly out
of the window.
'Apart from personal feeling, there are considerations which would
prevent what you contemplated,' she murmured. 'My affairs are too
lengthy, intricate, and unpleasant for me to explain to anybody at
present. And that would be a necessary first step.'
'Not at all. I cannot think that preliminary to be necessary at all. I
would put my lawyer in communication with yours, and we would leave the
rest to them: I believe that is the proper way. You could say anything
in confidence to your family-man; and you could inquire through him
anything you might wish to know about my - about me. All you would need
to say to myself are just the two little words - "I will," in the church
here at the end of the Crescent.'
'I am sorry to pain you, Mr. Neigh - so sorry,' said Ethelberta. 'But I
cannot say them.' She was rather distressed that, despite her
discouraging words, he still went on with his purpose, as if he imagined
what she so distinctly said to be no bar, but rather a stimulant, usual
under the circumstances.
'It does not matter about paining me,' said Neigh. 'Don't take that into
consideration at all. But I did not expect you to leave me so entirely
without help - to refuse me absolutely as far as words go - after what you
did. If it had not been for that I should never have ventured to call. I
might otherwise have supposed your interest to be fixed in another
quarter; but your acting in that manner encouraged me to think you could
listen to a word.'
'What do you allude to?' said Ethelberta. 'How have I acted?'
Neigh appeared reluctant to go any further; but the allusion soon became
sufficiently clear. 'I wish my little place at Farnfield had been
worthier of you,' he said brusquely. 'However, that's a matter of time
only. It is useless to build a house there yet. I wish I had known that
you would be looking over it at that time of the evening. A single word,
when we were talking about it the other day, that you were going to be in
the neighbourhood, would have been sufficient. Nothing could have given
me so much delight as to have driven you round.'
He knew that she had been to Farnfield: that knowledge was what had
inspired him to call upon her to-day! Ethelberta breathed a sort of
exclamation, not right out, but stealthily, like a parson's damn. Her
face did not change, since a face must be said not to change while it
preserves the same pleasant lines in the mobile parts as before; but
anybody who has preserved his pleasant lines under the half-minute's peer
of the invidious camera, and found what a wizened, starched kind of thing
they stiffen to towards the end of the time, will understand the tendency
of Ethelberta's lovely features now.
'Yes; I walked round,' said Ethelberta faintly.
Neigh was decidedly master of the position at last; but he spoke as if he
did not value that. His knowledge had furnished him with grounds for
calling upon her, and he hastened to undeceive her from supposing that he
could think ill of any motive of hers which gave him those desirable
grounds.
'I supposed you, by that, to give some little thought to me
occasionally,' he resumed, in the same slow and orderly tone. 'How could
I help thinking so? It was your doing that which encouraged me. Now,
was it not natural - I put it to you?'
Ethelberta was almost exasperated at perceiving the awful extent to which
she had compromised herself with this man by her impulsive visit. Lightly
and philosophically as he seemed to take it - as a thing, in short, which
every woman would do by nature unless hindered by difficulties - it was no
trifle to her as long as he was ignorant of her justification; and this
she determined that he should know at once, at all hazards.
'It was through you in the first place that I did look into your
grounds!' she said excitedly. 'It was your presumption that caused me to
go there. I should not have thought of such a thing else. If you had
not said what you did say I never should have thought of you or Farnfield
either - Farnfield might have been in Kamtschatka for all I cared.'
'I hope sincerely that I never said anything to disturb you?'
'Yes, you did - not to me, but to somebody,' said Ethelberta, with her
eyes over-full of retained tears.
'What have I said to somebody that can be in the least objectionable to
you?' inquired Neigh, with much concern.
'You said - you said, you meant to marry me - just as if I had no voice in
the matter! And that annoyed me, and made me go there out of curiosity.'
Neigh changed colour a little. 'Well, I did say it: I own that I said
it,' he replied at last. Probably he knew enough of her nature not to
feel long disconcerted by her disclosure, however she might have become
possessed of the information. The explanation was certainly a great
excuse to her curiosity; but if Ethelberta had tried she could not have
given him a better ground for making light of her objections to his suit.
'I felt that I must marry you, that we were predestined to marry ages
ago, and I feel it still!' he continued, with listless ardour. 'You seem
to regret your interest in Farnfield; but to me it is a charm, and has
been ever since I heard of it.'
'If you only knew all!' she said helplessly, showing, without perceiving
it, an unnecessary humility in the remark, since there was no more reason
just then that she should go into details about her life than that he
should about his. But melancholy and mistaken thoughts of herself as a
counterfeit had brought her to this.
'I do not wish to know more,' said Neigh.
'And would you marry any woman off-hand, without being thoroughly
acquainted with her circumstances?' she said, looking at him curiously,
and with a little admiration, for his unconscionably phlegmatic treatment
of her motives in going to Farnfield had a not unbecoming daring about it
in Ethelberta's eye.
'I would marry a woman off-hand when that woman is you. I would make you
mine this moment did I dare; or, to speak with absolute accuracy, within
twenty-four hours. Do assent to it, dear Mrs. Petherwin, and let me be
sure of you for ever. I'll drive to Doctors' Commons this minute, and
meet you to-morrow morning at nine in the church just below. It is a
simple impulse, but I would adhere to it in the coolest moment. Shall it
be arranged in that way, instead of our waiting through the ordinary
routine of preparation? I am not a youth now, but I can see the bliss of
such an act as that, and the contemptible nature of methodical
proceedings beside it!'
He had taken her hand. Ethelberta gave it a subtle movement backwards to
imply that he was not to retain the prize, and said, 'One whose inner
life is almost unknown to you, and whom you have scarcely seen except at
other people's houses!'
'We know each other far better than we may think at first,' said Neigh.
'We are not people to love in a hurry, and I have not done so in this
case. As for worldly circumstances, the most important items in a
marriage contract are the persons themselves, and, as far as I am
concerned, if I get a lady fair and wise I care for nothing further. I
know you are beautiful, for all London owns it; I know you are talented,
for I have read your poetry and heard your romances; and I know you are
politic and discreet - '
'For I have examined your property,' said she, with a weak smile.
Neigh bowed. 'And what more can I wish to know? Come, shall it be?'
'Certainly not to-morrow.'
'I would be entirely in your hands in that matter. I will not urge you
to be precipitate - I could not expect you to be ready yet. My suddenness
perhaps offended you; but, having thought deeply of this bright
possibility, I was apt to forget the forbearance that one ought to show
at first in mentioning it. If I have done wrong forgive me.'
'I will think of that,' said Ethelberta, with a cooler manner. 'But
seriously, all these words are nothing to the purpose. I must remark
that I prize your friendship, but it is not for me to marry now. You
have convinced me of your goodness of heart and freedom from unworthy
suspicions; let that be enough. The best way in which I in my turn can
convince you of my goodness of heart is by asking you to see me in
private no more.'
'And do you refuse to think of me as - -. Why do you treat me like that,
after all?' said Neigh, surprised at this want of harmony with his
principle that one convert to matrimony could always find a second ready-
made.
'I cannot explain, I cannot explain,' said she, impatiently. 'I would
and I would not - explain I mean, not marry. I don't love anybody, and I
have no heart left for beginning. It is only honest in me to tell you
that I am interested in watching another man's career, though that is not
to the point either, for no close relationship with him is contemplated.
But I do not wish to speak of this any more. Do not press me to it.'
'Certainly I will not,' said Neigh, seeing that she was distressed and
sorrowful. 'But do consider me and my wishes; I have a right to ask it
for it is only asking a continuance of what you have already begun to do.
To-morrow I believe I shall have the happiness of seeing you again.'
She did not say no, and long after the door had closed upon him she
remained fixed in thought. 'How can he be blamed for his manner,' she
said, 'after knowing what I did!'
Ethelberta as she sat felt herself much less a Petherwin than a
Chickerel, much less a poetess richly freighted with fancy than an
adventuress with a nebulous prospect. Neigh was one of the few men whose
presence seemed to attenuate her dignity in some mysterious way to its
very least proportions; and that act of espial, which had so quickly and
inexplicably come to his knowledge, helped his influence still more. She
knew little of the nature of the town bachelor; there were opaque depths
in him which her thoughts had never definitely plumbed. Notwithstanding
her exaltation to the atmosphere of the Petherwin family, Ethelberta was
very far from having the thoroughbred London woman's knowledge of sets,
grades, coteries, cliques, forms, glosses, and niceties, particularly on
the masculine side. Setting the years from her infancy to her first look
into town against those linking that epoch with the present, the former
period covered not only the greater time, but contained the mass of her
most vivid impressions of life and its ways. But in recognizing her
ignorance of the ratio between words to women and deeds to women in the
ethical code of the bachelor of the club, she forgot that human nature in
the gross differs little with situation, and that a gift which, if the
germs were lacking, no amount of training in clubs and coteries could
supply, was mother-wit like her own.
27. MRS. BELMAINE'S - CRIPPLEGATE CHURCH
Neigh's remark that he believed he should see Ethelberta again the next
day referred to a contemplated pilgrimage of an unusual sort which had
been arranged for that day by Mrs. Belmaine upon the ground of an
incidental suggestion of Ethelberta's. One afternoon in the week
previous they had been chatting over tea at the house of the former lady,
Neigh being present as a casual caller, when the conversation was
directed upon Milton by somebody opening a volume of the poet's works
that lay on a table near.
'Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee - '
said Mrs. Belmaine with the degree of flippancy which is considered
correct for immortal verse, the Bible, God, etc., in these days. And
Ethelberta replied, lit up by a quick remembrance, 'It is a good time to
talk of Milton; for I have been much impressed by reading the "Life;" and
I have decided to go and see his tomb. Could we not all go? We ought to
quicken our memories of the great, and of where they lie, by such a visit
occasionally.'
'We ought,' said Mrs. Belmaine.
'And why shouldn't we?' continued Ethelberta, with interest.
'To Westminster Abbey?' said Mr. Belmaine, a common man of thirty,
younger than his wife, who had lately come into the room.
'No; to where he lies comparatively alone - Cripplegate Church.'
'I always thought that Milton was buried in Poet's Corner,' said Mr.
Belmaine.
'So did I,' said Neigh; 'but I have such an indifferent head for places
that my thinking goes for nothing.'
'Well, it would be a pretty thing to do,' said Mrs. Belmaine, 'and
instructive to all of us. If Mrs. Petherwin would like to go, I should.
We can take you in the carriage and call round for Mrs. Doncastle on our
way, and set you both down again coming back.'
'That would be excellent,' said Ethelberta. 'There is nowhere I like
going to so much as the depths of the city. The absurd narrowness of
world-renowned streets is so surprising - so crooked and shady as they are
too, and full of the quaint smells of old cupboards and cellars. Walking
through one of them reminds me of being at the bottom of some crevasse or
gorge, the proper surface of the globe being the tops of the houses.'
'You will come to take care of us, John? And you, Mr. Neigh, would like
to come? We will tell Mr. Ladywell that he may join us if he cares to,'
said Mrs. Belmaine.
'O yes,' said her husband quietly; and Neigh said he should like nothing
better, after a faint aspect of apprehension at the remoteness of the
idea from the daily track of his thoughts. Mr. Belmaine observing this,
and mistaking it for an indication that Neigh had been dragged into the
party against his will by his over-hasty wife, arranged that Neigh should
go independently and meet them there at the hour named if he chose to do
so, to give him an opportunity of staying away. Ethelberta also was by
this time doubting if she had not been too eager with her proposal. To
go on such a sentimental errand might be thought by her friends to be
simply troublesome, their adherence having been given only in the regular
course of complaisance. She was still comparatively an outsider here,
her life with Lady Petherwin having been passed chiefly in alternations
between English watering-places and continental towns. However, it was
too late now to muse on this, and it may be added that from first to last
Ethelberta never discovered from the Belmaines whether her proposal had
been an infliction or a charm, so perfectly were they practised in
sustaining that complete divorce between thinking and saying which is the
hall-mark of high civilization.
But, however she might doubt the Belmaines, she had no doubt as to
Neigh's true sentiments: the time had come when he, notwithstanding his
air of being oppressed by almost every lively invention of town and
country for charming griefs to rest, would not be at all oppressed by a
quiet visit to the purlieus of St Giles's, Cripplegate, since she was the
originator, and was going herself.
It was a bright hope-inspiring afternoon in this mid-May time when the
carriage containing Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine, Mrs. Doncastle, and
Ethelberta, crept along the encumbered streets towards Barbican; till
turning out of that thoroughfare into Redcross Street they beheld the
bold shape of the old tower they sought, clothed in every neutral shade,
standing clear against the sky, dusky and grim in its upper stage, and
hoary grey below, where every corner of every stone was completely
rounded off by the waves of wind and storm.
All people were busy here: our visitors seemed to be the only idle
persons the city contained; and there was no dissonance - there never
is - between antiquity and such beehive industry; for pure industry, in
failing to observe its own existence and aspect, partakes of the
unobtrusive nature of material things. This intra-mural stir was a
flywheel transparent by excessive motion, through which Milton and his
day could be seen as if nothing intervened. Had there been ostensibly
harmonious accessories, a crowd of observing people in search of the
poetical, conscious of the place and the scene, what a discord would have
arisen there! But everybody passed by Milton's grave except Ethelberta
and her friends, and for the moment the city's less invidious conduct
appeared to her more respectful as a practice than her own.
But she was brought out of this rumination by the halt at the church
door, and completely reminded of the present by finding the church open,
and Neigh - the, till yesterday, unimpassioned Neigh - waiting in the
vestibule to receive them, just as if he lived there. Ladywell had not
arrived. It was a long time before Ethelberta could get back to Milton
again, for Neigh was continuing to impend over her future more and more
visibly. The objects along the journey had distracted her mind from him;
but the moment now was as a direct renewal and prolongation of the
declaration-time yesterday, and as if in furtherance of the conclusion of
the episode.
They all alighted and went in, the coachman being told to take the
carriage to a quiet nook further on, and return in half-an-hour. Mrs.
Belmaine and her carriage some years before had accidentally got jammed
crosswise in Cheapside through the clumsiness of the man in turning up a
side street, blocking that great artery of the civilized world for the
space of a minute and a half, when they were pounced upon by half-a-dozen
policemen and forced to back ignominiously up a little slit between the
houses where they did not mean to go, amid the shouts of the hindered
drivers; and it was her nervous recollection of that event which caused
Mrs. Belmaine to be so precise in her directions now.
By the time that they were grouped around the tomb the visit had assumed
a much more solemn complexion than any one among them had anticipated.
Ashamed of the influence that she discovered Neigh to be exercising over
her, and opposing it steadily, Ethelberta drew from her pocket a small
edition of Milton, and proposed that she should read a few lines from
'Paradise Lost.' The responsibility of producing a successful afternoon
was upon her shoulders; she was, moreover, the only one present who could
properly manage blank verse, and this was sufficient to justify the
proposal.
She stood with her head against the marble slab just below the bust, and
began a selected piece, Neigh standing a few yards off on her right
looking into his hat in order to listen accurately, Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine
and Mrs. Doncastle seating themselves in a pew directly facing the
monument. The ripe warm colours of afternoon came in upon them from the
west, upon the sallow piers and arches, and the infinitely deep brown
pews beneath, the aisle over Ethelberta's head being in misty shade
through which glowed a lurid light from a dark-stained window behind. The
sentences fell from her lips in a rhythmical cadence one by one, and she
could be fancied a priestess of him before whose image she stood, when
with a vivid suggestiveness she delivered here, not many yards from the
central money-mill of the world, yet out from the very tomb of their
author, the passage containing the words:
'Mammon led them on;
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From heaven.'
When she finished reading Ethelberta left the monument, and then each one
present strayed independently about the building, Ethelberta turning to
the left along the passage to the south door. Neigh - from whose usually
apathetic face and eyes there had proceeded a secret smouldering light as
he listened and regarded her - followed in the same direction and vanished
at her heels into the churchyard, whither she had now gone. Mr. and Mrs.
Belmaine exchanged glances, and instead of following the pair they went
with Mrs. Doncastle into the vestry to inquire of the person in charge
for the register of the marriage of Oliver Cromwell, which was solemnized
here. The church was now quite empty, and its stillness was as a vacuum
into which an occasional noise from the street overflowed and became
rarefied away to nothing.
Something like five minutes had passed when a hansom stopped outside the
door, and Ladywell entered the porch. He stood still, and, looking
inquiringly round for a minute or two, sat down in one of the high pews,
as if under the impression that the others had not yet arrived.
While he sat here Neigh reappeared at the south door opposite, and came
slowly in. Ladywell, in rising to go to him, saw that Neigh's attention
was engrossed by something he held in his hand. It was his pocket-book,
and Neigh was looking at a few loose flower-petals which had been placed
between the pages. When Ladywell came forward Neigh looked up, started,
and closed the book quickly, so that some of the petals fluttered to the
ground between the two men. They were striped, red and white, and
appeared to be leaves of the Harlequin rose.
'Ah! here you are, Ladywell,' he said, recovering himself. 'We had given
you up: my aunt said that you would not care to come. They are all in
the vestry.' How it came to pass that Neigh designated those in the
vestry as 'all,' when there was one in the churchyard, was a thing that
he himself could hardly have explained, so much more had it to do with
instinct than with calculation.
'Never mind them - don't interrupt them,' said Ladywell. 'The plain truth
is that I have been very greatly disturbed in mind; and I could not
appear earlier by reason of it. I had some doubt about coming at all.'
'I am sorry to hear that.'
'Neigh - I may as well tell you and have done with it. I have found that
a lady of my acquaintance has two strings to her bow, or I am very much
in error.'
'What - Mrs. Petherwin?' said Neigh uneasily. 'But I thought that - that
fancy was over with you long ago. Even your acquaintance with her was at
an end, I thought.'
'In a measure it is at an end. But let me tell you that what you call a
fancy has been anything but a fancy with me, to be over like a spring
shower. To speak plainly, Neigh, I consider myself badly used by that
woman; damn badly used.'
'Badly used?' said Neigh mechanically, and wondering all the time if
Ladywell had been informed that Ethelberta was to be one of the party to-
day.
'Well, I ought not to talk like that,' said Ladywell, adopting a lighter
tone. 'All is fair in courtship, I suppose, now as ever. Indeed, I mean
to put a good face upon it: if I am beaten, I am. But it is very
provoking, after supposing matters to be going on smoothly, to find out
that you are quite mistaken.'
'I told you you were quite mistaken in supposing she cared for you.'
'That is just the point I was not mistaken in,' said Ladywell warmly.
'She did care for me, and I stood as well with her as any man could stand
until this fellow came, whoever he is. I sometimes feel so disturbed
about it that I have a good mind to call upon her and ask his name.
Wouldn't you, Neigh? Will you accompany me?'
'I would in a moment, but, but - I strongly advise you not to go,' said
Neigh earnestly. 'It would be rash, you know, and rather unmannerly; and
would only hurt your feelings.'
'Well, I am always ready to yield to a friend's arguments. . . . A
sneaking scamp, that's what he is. Why does he not show himself?'
'Don't you really know who he is?' said Neigh, in a pronounced and
exceptional tone, on purpose to give Ladywell a chance of suspecting, for
the position was getting awkward. But Ladywell was blind as Bartimeus in
that direction, so well had indifference to Ethelberta's charms been
feigned by Neigh until he thought seriously of marrying her. Yet,
unfortunately for the interests of calmness, Ladywell was less blind with
his outward eye. In his reflections his glance had lingered again upon
the pocket-book which Neigh still held in his hand, and upon the two or
three rose-leaves on the floor, until he said idly, superimposing
humorousness upon misery, as men in love can:
'Rose-leaves, Neigh? I thought you did not care for flowers. What makes
you amuse yourself with such sentimental objects as those, only fit for
women, or painters like me? If I had not observed you with my own eyes I
should have said that you were about the last man in the world to care
for things of that sort. Whatever makes you keep rose-leaves in your
pocket-book?'
'The best reason on earth,' said Neigh. 'A woman gave them to me.'
'That proves nothing unless she is a great deal to you,' said Ladywell,
with the experienced air of a man who, whatever his inferiority in years
to Neigh, was far beyond him in knowledge of that sort, by virtue of his
recent trials.
'She is a great deal to me.'
'If I did not know you to be such a confirmed misogynist I should say
that this is a serious matter.'
'It is serious,' said Neigh quietly. 'The probability is that I shall
marry the woman who gave me these. Anyhow I have asked her the question,
and she has not altogether said no.'
'I am glad to hear it, Neigh,' said Ladywell heartily. 'I am glad to
hear that your star is higher than mine.'
Before Neigh could make further reply Ladywell was attracted by the glow
of green sunlight reflected through the south door by the grass of the
churchyard, now in all its spring freshness and luxuriance. He bent his
steps thither, followed anxiously by Neigh.
'I had no idea there was such a lovely green spot in the city,' Ladywell
continued, passing out. 'Trees too, planted in the manner of an orchard.
What a charming place!'
The place was truly charming just at that date. The untainted leaves of
the lime and plane trees and the newly-sprung grass had in the sun a
brilliancy of beauty that was brought into extraordinary prominence by
the sable soil showing here and there, and the charcoaled stems and
trunks out of which the leaves budded: they seemed an importation, not a
produce, and their delicacy such as would perish in a day.
'What is this round tower?' Ladywell said again, walking towards the iron-
grey bastion, partly covered with ivy and Virginia creeper, which stood
obtruding into the enclosure.
'O, didn't you know that was here? That's a piece of the old city wall,'
said Neigh, looking furtively around at the same time. Behind the
bastion the churchyard ran into a long narrow strip, grassed like the
other part, but completely hidden from it by the cylinder of ragged
masonry. On rounding this projection, Ladywell beheld within a few feet
of him a lady whom he knew too well.
'Mrs. Petherwin here!' exclaimed he, proving how ignorant he had been of
the composition of the party he was to meet, and accounting at the same
time for his laxity in attending it.
'I forgot to tell you,' said Neigh awkwardly, behind him, 'that Mrs.
Petherwin was to come with us.'
Ethelberta's look was somewhat blushful and agitated, as if from some
late transaction: she appeared to have been secluding herself there till
she should have recovered her equanimity. However, she came up to him
and said, 'I did not see you before this moment: we had been thinking you
would not come.'
While these words were being prettily spoken, Ladywell's face became pale
as death. On Ethelberta's bosom were the stem and green calyx of a rose,
almost all its flower having disappeared. It had been a Harlequin rose,
for two or three of its striped leaves remained to tell the tale.
She could not help noticing his fixed gaze, and she said quickly, 'Yes, I
have lost my pretty rose: this may as well go now,' and she plucked the
stem from its fastening in her dress and flung it away.
Poor Ladywell turned round to meet Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine, whose voices
were beginning to be heard just within the church door, leaving Neigh and
Ethelberta together. It was a graceful act of young Ladywell's that, in
the midst of his own pain at the strange tale the rose-leaves
suggested - Neigh's rivalry, Ethelberta's mutability, his own defeat - he
was not regardless of the intense embarrassment which might have been
caused had he remained.
The two were silent at first, and it was evident that Ethelberta's mood
was one of anger at something that had gone before. She turned aside
from him to follow the others, when Neigh spoke in a tone somewhat bitter
and somewhat stern.
'What - going like that! After being compromised together, why don't you
close with me? Ladywell knows all: I had already told him that the rose-
leaves were given me by my intended wife. We seem to him to be
practising deceptions all of a piece, and what folly it is to play off
so! As to what I did, that I ask your forgiveness for.'
Ethelberta looked upon the ground and maintained a compressed lip. Neigh
resumed: 'If I showed more feeling than you care for, I insist that it
was not more than was natural under the circumstances, if not quite
proper. Opinions may differ, but my experience goes to prove that
conventional squeamishness at such times as these is more talked and
written about than practised. Plain behaviour must be expected when
marriage is the question. Nevertheless, I do say - and I cannot say
more - that I am sincerely sorry to have offended you by exceeding my
privileges. I will never do so again.'
'Don't say privileges. You have none.'
'I am sorry that I thought otherwise, and that others will think so too.
Ladywell is, at any rate, bent on thinking so. . . . It might have been
made known to him in a gentle way - but God disposes.'
'There is nothing to make known - I don't understand,' said Ethelberta,
going from him.
By this time Ladywell had walked round the gravel walks with the two
other ladies and Mr. Belmaine, and they were all turning to come back
again. The young painter had deputed his voice to reply to their
remarks, but his understanding continued poring upon other things. When
he came up to Ethelberta, his agitation had left him: she too was free
from constraint; while Neigh was some distance off, carefully examining
nothing in particular in an old fragment of wall.
The little party was now united again as to its persons; though in spirit
far otherwise. They went through the church in general talk, Ladywell
sad but serene, and Ethelberta keeping far-removed both from him and from
Neigh. She had at this juncture entered upon that Sphinx-like stage of
existence in which, contrary to her earlier manner, she signified to no
one of her ways, plans, or sensations, and spoke little on any subject at
all. There were occasional smiles now which came only from the face, and
speeches from the lips merely.
The journey home was performed as they had come, Ladywell not accepting
the seat in Neigh's cab which was phlegmatically offered him. Mrs.
Doncastle's acquaintance with Ethelberta had been slight until this day;
but the afternoon's proceeding had much impressed the matron with her
younger friend. Before they parted she said, with the sort of affability
which is meant to signify the beginning of permanent friendship: 'A
friend of my husband's, Lord Mountclere, has been anxious for some time
to meet you. He is a great admirer of the poems, and more still of the
story-telling invention, and your power in it. He has been present many
times at the Mayfair Hall to hear you. When will you dine with us to
meet him? I know you will like him. Will Thursday be convenient?'
Ethelberta stood for a moment reflecting, and reflecting hoped that Mrs.
Doncastle had not noticed her momentary perplexity. Crises were becoming
as common with her as blackberries; and she had foreseen this one a long
time. It was not that she was to meet Lord Mountclere, for he was only a
name and a distant profile to her: it was that her father would
necessarily be present at the meeting, in the most anomalous position
that human nature could endure.
However, having often proved in her disjointed experience that the
shortest way out of a difficulty lies straight through it, Ethelberta
decided to dine at the Doncastles', and, as she murmured that she should
have great pleasure in meeting any friend of theirs, set about contriving
how the encounter with her dearest relative might be made safe and
unsuspected. She bade them adieu blithely; but the thoughts engendered
by the invitation stood before her as sorrowful and rayless ghosts which
could not be laid. Often at such conjunctures as these, when the
futility of her great undertaking was more than usually manifest, did
Ethelberta long like a tired child for the conclusion of the whole
matter; when her work should be over, and the evening come; when she
might draw her boat upon the shore, and in some thymy nook await eternal
night with a placid mind.
28. ETHELBERTA'S - MR. CHICKEREL'S ROOM
The question of Neigh or no Neigh had reached a pitch of insistence which
no longer permitted of dallying, even by a popular beauty. His character
was becoming defined to Ethelberta as something very differently composed
from that of her first imagining. She had set him down to be a man whose
external in excitability owed nothing to self-repression, but stood as
the natural surface of the mass within. Neigh's urban torpor, she said,
might have been in the first instance produced by art, but, were it thus,
it had gone so far as to permeate him. This had been disproved, first
surprisingly, by his reported statement; wondrously, in the second place,
by his call upon her and sudden proposal; thirdly, to a degree simply
astounding, by what had occurred in the city that day. For Neigh, before
the fervour had subsided which was produced in him by her look and
general power while reading 'Paradise Lost,' found himself alone with her
in a nook outside the church, and there had almost demanded her promise
to be his wife. She had replied by asking for time, and idly offering
him the petals of her rose, that had shed themselves in her hand. Neigh,
in taking them, pressed her fingers more warmly than she thought she had
given him warrant for, which offended her. It was certainly a very
momentary affair, and when it was over seemed to surprise himself almost
as much as it had vexed her; but it had reminded her of one truth which
she was in danger of forgetting. The town gentleman was not half so far
removed from Sol and Dan, and the hard-handed order in general, in his
passions as in his philosophy. He still continued to be the male of his
species, and when the heart was hot with a dream Pall Mall had much the
same aspect as Wessex.
Well, she had not accepted him yet; indeed, for the moment they were in a
pet with one another. Yet that might soon be cleared off, and then
recurred the perpetual question, would the advantage that might accrue to
her people by her marriage be worth the sacrifice? One palliative
feature must be remembered when we survey the matrimonial ponderings of
the poetess and romancer. What she contemplated was not meanly to
ensnare a husband just to provide incomes for her and her family, but to
find some man she might respect, who would maintain her in such a stage
of comfort as should, by setting her mind free from temporal anxiety,
enable her to further organize her talent, and provide incomes for them
herself. Plenty of saleable originality was left in her as yet, but it
was getting crushed under the rubbish of her necessities.
She was not sure that Neigh would stand the test of her revelations. It
would be possible to lead him to marry her without revealing anything - the
events of the last few days had shown her that - yet Ethelberta's honesty
shrank from the safe course of holding her tongue. It might be pleasant
to many a modern gentleman to find himself allied with a lady, none of
whose ancestors had ever pandered to a court, lost an army, taken a
bribe, oppressed a community, or broken a bank; but the added disclosure
that, in avoiding these stains, her kindred had worked and continued to
work with their hands for bread, might lead such an one to consider that
the novelty was dearly purchased.
Ethelberta was, upon the whole, dissatisfied with her progress thus far.
She had planned many things and fulfilled few. Had her father been by
this time provided for and made independent of the world, as she had
thought he might be, not only would her course with regard to Neigh be
quite clear, but the impending awkwardness of dining with her father