'And on the way to many more,' said Christopher. The tone was just of
the kind which may be imagined of a sombre man who had been up all night
piping that others might dance.
Faith parted her lips as if in consternation at possibilities.
Ethelberta, having already become an influence in Christopher's system,
might soon become more - an indestructible fascination - to drag him about,
turn his soul inside out, harrow him, twist him, and otherwise torment
him, according to the stereotyped form of such processes.
They were interrupted by the opening of a door. A servant entered and
came up to them.
'This is for you, I believe, sir,' he said. 'Two guineas;' and he placed
the money in Christopher's hand. 'Some breakfast will be ready for you
in a moment if you like to have it. Would you wish it brought in here;
or will you come to the steward's room?'
'Yes, we will come.' And the man then began to extinguish the lights one
by one. Christopher dropped the two pounds and two shillings singly into
his pocket, and looking listlessly at the footman said, 'Can you tell me
the address of that lady on the lawn? Ah, she has disappeared!'
'She wore a dress with blue flowers,' said Faith.
'And remarkable bright in her manner? O, that's the young widow,
Mrs - what's that name - I forget for the moment.'
'Widow?' said Christopher, the eyes of his understanding getting
wonderfully clear, and Faith uttering a private ejaculation of thanks
that after all no commandments were likely to be broken in this matter.
'The lady I mean is quite a girlish sort of woman.'
'Yes, yes, so she is - that's the one. Coachman says she must have been
born a widow, for there is not time for her ever to have been made one.
However, she's not quite such a chicken as all that. Mrs. Petherwin,
that's the party's name.'
'Does she live here?'
'No, she is staying in the house visiting for a few days with her mother-
in-law. They are a London family, I don't know her address.'
'Is she a poetess?'
'That I cannot say. She is very clever at verses; but she don't lean
over gates to see the sun, and goes to church as regular as you or I, so
I should hardly be inclined to say that she's the complete thing. When
she's up in one of her vagaries she'll sit with the ladies and make up
pretty things out of her head as fast as sticks a-breaking. They will
run off her tongue like cotton from a reel, and if she can ever be got in
the mind of telling a story she will bring it out that serious and awful
that it makes your flesh creep upon your bones; if she's only got to say
that she walked out of one door into another, she'll tell it so that
there seems something wonderful in it. 'Tis a bother to start her, so
our people say behind her back, but, once set going, the house is all
alive with her. However, it will soon be dull enough; she and Lady
Petherwin are off to-morrow for Rookington, where I believe they are
going to stay over New Year's Day.'
'Where do you say they are going?' inquired Christopher, as they followed
the footman.
'Rookington Park - about three miles out of Sandbourne, in the opposite
direction to this.'
'A widow,' Christopher murmured.
Faith overheard him. 'That makes no difference to us, does it?' she said
wistfully.
Forty minutes later they were driving along an open road over a ridge
which commanded a view of a small inlet below them, the sands of this
nook being sheltered by crumbling cliffs. Here at once they saw, in the
full light of the sun, two women standing side by side, their faces
directed over the sea.
'There she is again!' said Faith. 'She has walked along the shore from
the lawn where we saw her before.'
'Yes,' said the coachman, 'she's a curious woman seemingly. She'll talk
to any poor body she meets. You see she had been out for a morning walk
instead of going to bed, and that is some queer mortal or other she has
picked up with on her way.'
'I wonder she does not prefer some rest,' Faith observed.
The road then dropped into a hollow, and the women by the sea were no
longer within view from the carriage, which rapidly neared Sandbourne
with the two musicians.
6. THE SHORE BY WYNDWAY
The east gleamed upon Ethelberta's squirrel-coloured hair as she said to
her companion, 'I have come, Picotee; but not, as you imagine, from a
night's sleep. We have actually been dancing till daylight at Wyndway.'
'Then you should not have troubled to come! I could have borne the
disappointment under such circumstances,' said the pupil-teacher, who,
wearing a dress not so familiar to Christopher's eyes as had been the
little white jacket, had not been recognized by him from the hill. 'You
look so tired, Berta. I could not stay up all night for the world!'
'One gets used to these things,' said Ethelberta quietly. 'I should have
been in bed certainly, had I not particularly wished to use this
opportunity of meeting you before you go home to-morrow. I could not
have come to Sandbourne to-day, because we are leaving to return again to
Rookington. This is all that I wish you to take to mother - only a few
little things which may be useful to her; but you will see what it
contains when you open it.' She handed to Picotee a small parcel. 'This
is for yourself,' she went on, giving a small packet besides. 'It will
pay your fare home and back, and leave you something to spare.'
'Thank you,' said Picotee docilely.
'Now, Picotee,' continued the elder, 'let us talk for a few minutes
before I go back: we may not meet again for some time.' She put her arm
round the waist of Picotee, who did the same by Ethelberta; and thus
interlaced they walked backwards and forwards upon the firm flat sand
with the motion of one body animated by one will.
'Well, what did you think of my poems?'
'I liked them; but naturally, I did not understand all the experience you
describe. It is so different from mine. Yet that made them more
interesting to me. I thought I should so much like to mix in the same
scenes; but that of course is impossible.'
'I am afraid it is. And you posted the book as I said?'
'Yes.' She added hurriedly, as if to change the subject, 'I have told
nobody that we are sisters, or that you are known in any way to me or to
mother or to any of us. I thought that would be best, from what you
said.'
'Yes, perhaps it is best for the present.'
'The box of clothes came safely, and I find very little alteration will
be necessary to make the dress do beautifully for me on Sundays. It is
quite new-fashioned to me, though I suppose it was old-fashioned to you.
O, and Berta, will the title of Lady Petherwin descend to you when your
mother-in-law dies?'
'No, of course not. She is only a knight's widow, and that's nothing.'
'The lady of a knight looks as good on paper as the lady of a lord.'
'Yes. And in other places too sometimes. However, about your journey
home. Be very careful; and don't make any inquiries at the stations of
anybody but officials. If any man wants to be friendly with you, try to
find out if it is from a genuine wish to assist you, or from admiration
of your fresh face.'
'How shall I know which?' said Picotee.
Ethelberta laughed. 'If Heaven does not tell you at the moment I
cannot,' she said. 'But humanity looks with a different eye from love,
and upon the whole it is most to be prized by all of us. I believe it
ends oftener in marriage than do a lover's flying smiles. So that for
this and other reasons love from a stranger is mostly worthless as a
speculation; and it is certainly dangerous as a game. Well, Picotee, has
any one paid you real attentions yet?'
'No - that is - '
'There is something going on.'
'Only a wee bit.'
'I thought so. There was a dishonesty about your dear eyes which has
never been there before, and love-making and dishonesty are inseparable
as coupled hounds. Up comes man, and away goes innocence. Are you going
to tell me anything about him?'
'I would rather not, Ethelberta; because it is hardly anything.'
'Well, be careful. And mind this, never tell him what you feel.'
'But then he will never know it.'
'Nor must he. He must think it only. The difference between his
thinking and knowing is often the difference between your winning and
losing. But general advice is not of much use, and I cannot give more
unless you tell more. What is his name?'
Picotee did not reply.
'Never mind: keep your secret. However, listen to this: not a kiss - not
so much as the shadow, hint, or merest seedling of a kiss!'
'There is no fear of it,' murmured Picotee; 'though not because of me!'
'You see, my dear Picotee, a lover is not a relative; and he isn't quite
a stranger; but he may end in being either, and the way to reduce him to
whichever of the two you wish him to be is to treat him like the other.
Men who come courting are just like bad cooks: if you are kind to them,
instead of ascribing it to an exceptional courtesy on your part, they
instantly set it down to their own marvellous worth.'
'But I ought to favour him just a little, poor thing? Just the smallest
glimmer of a gleam!'
'Only a very little indeed - so that it comes as a relief to his misery,
not as adding to his happiness.'
'It is being too clever, all this; and we ought to be harmless as doves.'
'Ah, Picotee! to continue harmless as a dove you must be wise as a
serpent, you'll find - ay, ten serpents, for that matter.'
'But if I cannot get at him, how can I manage him in these ways you speak
of?'
'Get at him? I suppose he gets at you in some way, does he not? - tries
to see you, or to be near you?'
'No - that's just the point - he doesn't do any such thing, and there's the
worry of it!'
'Well, what a silly girl! Then he is not your lover at all?'
'Perhaps he's not. But I am his, at any rate - twice over.'
'That's no use. Supply the love for both sides? Why, it's worse than
furnishing money for both. You don't suppose a man will give his heart
in exchange for a woman's when he has already got hers for nothing?
That's not the way old Adam does business at all.'
Picotee sighed. 'Have you got a young man, too, Berta?'
'A young man?'
'A lover I mean - that's what we call 'em down here.'
'It is difficult to explain,' said Ethelberta evasively. 'I knew one
many years ago, and I have seen him again, and - that is all.'
'According to my idea you have one, but according to your own you have
not; he does not love you, but you love him - is that how it is?'
'I have not quite considered how it is.'
'Do you love him?'
'I have never seen a man I hate less.'
'A great deal lies covered up there, I expect!'
'He was in that carriage which drove over the hill at the moment we met
here.'
'Ah-ah - some great lord or another who has his day by candlelight, and so
on. I guess the style. Somebody who no more knows how much bread is a
loaf than I do the price of diamonds and pearls.'
'I am afraid he's only a commoner as yet, and not a very great one
either. But surely you guess, Picotee? But I'll set you an example of
frankness by telling his name. My friend, Mr. Julian, to whom you posted
the book. Such changes as he has seen! - from affluence to poverty. He
and his sister have been playing dances all night at Wyndway - What is the
matter?'
'Only a pain!'
'My dear Picotee - '
'I think I'll sit down for a moment, Berta.'
'What - have you over-walked yourself, dear?'
'Yes - and I got up very early, you see.'
'I hope you are not going to be ill, child. You look as if you ought not
to be here.'
'O, it is quite trifling. Does not getting up in a hurry cause a sense
of faintness sometimes?'
'Yes, in people who are not strong.'
'If we don't talk about being faint it will go off. Faintness is such a
queer thing that to think of it is to have it. Let us talk as we were
talking before - about your young man and other indifferent matters, so as
to divert my thoughts from fainting, dear Berta. I have always thought
the book was to be forwarded to that gentleman because he was a
connection of yours by marriage, and he had asked for it. And so you
have met this - this Mr. Julian, and gone for walks with him in evenings,
I suppose, just as young men and women do who are courting?'
'No, indeed - what an absurd child you are!' said Ethelberta. 'I knew him
once, and he is interesting; a few little things like that make it all
up.'
'The love is all on one side, as with me.'
'O no, no: there is nothing like that. I am not attached to any one,
strictly speaking - though, more strictly speaking, I am not unattached.'
''Tis a delightful middle mind to be in. I know it, for I was like it
once; but I had scarcely been so long enough to know where I was before I
was gone past.'
'You should have commanded yourself, or drawn back entirely; for let me
tell you that at the beginning of caring for a man - just when you are
suspended between thinking and feeling - there is a hair's-breadth of time
at which the question of getting into love or not getting in is a matter
of will - quite a thing of choice. At the same time, drawing back is a
tame dance, and the best of all is to stay balanced awhile.'
'You do that well, I'll warrant.'
'Well, no; for what between continually wanting to love, to escape the
blank lives of those who do not, and wanting not to love, to keep out of
the miseries of those who do, I get foolishly warm and foolishly cold by
turns.'
'Yes - and I am like you as far as the "foolishly" goes. I wish we poor
girls could contrive to bring a little wisdom into our love by way of a
change!'
'That's the very thing that leading minds in town have begun to do, but
there are difficulties. It is easy to love wisely, but the rich man may
not marry you; and it is not very hard to reject wisely, but the poor man
doesn't care. Altogether it is a precious problem. But shall we clamber
out upon those shining blocks of rock, and find some of the little yellow
shells that are in the crevices? I have ten minutes longer, and then I
must go.'
7. THE DINING-ROOM OF A TOWN HOUSE - THE BUTLER'S PANTRY
A few weeks later there was a friendly dinner-party at the house of a
gentleman called Doncastle, who lived in a moderately fashionable square
of west London. All the friends and relatives present were nice people,
who exhibited becoming signs of pleasure and gaiety at being there; but
as regards the vigour with which these emotions were expressed, it may be
stated that a slight laugh from far down the throat and a slight
narrowing of the eye were equivalent as indices of the degree of mirth
felt to a Ha-ha-ha! and a shaking of the shoulders among the minor
traders of the kingdom; and to a Ho-ho-ho! contorted features, purple
face, and stamping foot among the gentlemen in corduroy and fustian who
adorn the remoter provinces.
The conversation was chiefly about a volume of musical, tender, and
humorous rhapsodies lately issued to the world in the guise of verse,
which had been reviewed and talked about everywhere. This topic,
beginning as a private dialogue between a young painter named Ladywell
and the lady on his right hand, had enlarged its ground by degrees, as a
subject will extend on those rare occasions when it happens to be one
about which each person has thought something beforehand, instead of, as
in the natural order of things, one to which the oblivious listener
replies mechanically, with earnest features, but with thoughts far away.
And so the whole table made the matter a thing to inquire or reply upon
at once, and isolated rills of other chat died out like a river in the
sands.
'Witty things, and occasionally Anacreontic: and they have the
originality which such a style must naturally possess when carried out by
a feminine hand,' said Ladywell.
'If it is a feminine hand,' said a man near.
Ladywell looked as if he sometimes knew secrets, though he did not wish
to boast.
'Written, I presume you mean, in the Anacreontic measure of three feet
and a half - spondees and iambics?' said a gentleman in spectacles,
glancing round, and giving emphasis to his inquiry by causing bland
glares of a circular shape to proceed from his glasses towards the person
interrogated.
The company appeared willing to give consideration to the words of a man
who knew such things as that, and hung forward to listen. But Ladywell
stopped the whole current of affairs in that direction by saying -
'O no; I was speaking rather of the matter and tone. In fact, the Seven
Days' Review said they were Anacreontic, you know; and so they are - any
one may feel they are.'
The general look then implied a false encouragement, and the man in
spectacles looked down again, being a nervous person, who never had time
to show his merits because he was so much occupied in hiding his faults.
'Do you know the authoress, Mr. Neigh?' continued Ladywell.
'Can't say that I do,' he replied.
Neigh was a man who never disturbed the flesh upon his face except when
he was obliged to do so, and paused ten seconds where other people only
paused one; as he moved his chin in speaking, motes of light from under
the candle-shade caught, lost, and caught again the outlying threads of
his burnished beard.
'She will be famous some day; and you ought at any rate to read her
book.'
'Yes, I ought, I know. In fact, some years ago I should have done it
immediately, because I had a reason for pushing on that way just then.'
'Ah, what was that?'
'Well, I thought of going in for Westminster Abbey myself at that time;
but a fellow has so much to do, and - '
'What a pity that you didn't follow it up. A man of your powers, Mr.
Neigh - '
'Afterwards I found I was too steady for it, and had too much of the
respectable householder in me. Besides, so many other men are on the
same tack; and then I didn't care about it, somehow.'
'I don't understand high art, and am utterly in the dark on what are the
true laws of criticism,' a plain married lady, who wore archaeological
jewellery, was saying at this time. 'But I know that I have derived an
unusual amount of amusement from those verses, and I am heartily thankful
to "E." for them.'
'I am afraid,' said a gentleman who was suffering from a bad shirt-front,
'that an estimate which depends upon feeling in that way is not to be
trusted as permanent opinion.'
The subject now flitted to the other end.
'Somebody has it that when the heart flies out before the understanding,
it saves the judgment a world of pains,' came from a voice in that
quarter.
'I, for my part, like something merry,' said an elderly woman, whose face
was bisected by the edge of a shadow, which toned her forehead and
eyelids to a livid neutral tint, and left her cheeks and mouth like metal
at a white heat in the uninterrupted light. 'I think the liveliness of
those ballads as great a recommendation as any. After all, enough misery
is known to us by our experiences and those of our friends, and what we
see in the newspapers, for all purposes of chastening, without having
gratuitous grief inflicted upon us.'
'But you would not have wished that "Romeo and Juliet" should have ended
happily, or that Othello should have discovered the perfidy of his
Ancient in time to prevent all fatal consequences?'
'I am not afraid to go so far as that,' said the old lady. 'Shakespeare
is not everybody, and I am sure that thousands of people who have seen
those plays would have driven home more cheerfully afterwards if by some
contrivance the characters could all have been joined together
respectively. I uphold our anonymous author on the general ground of her
levity.'
'Well, it is an old and worn argument - that about the inexpedience of
tragedy - and much may be said on both sides. It is not to be denied that
the anonymous Sappho's verses - for it seems that she is really a
woman - are clever.'
'Clever!' said Ladywell - the young man who had been one of the shooting-
party at Sandbourne - 'they are marvellously brilliant.'
'She is rather warm in her assumed character.'
'That's a sign of her actual coldness; she lets off her feeling in
theoretic grooves, and there is sure to be none left for practical ones.
Whatever seems to be the most prominent vice, or the most prominent
virtue in anybody's writing is the one thing you are safest from in
personal dealings with the writer.'
'O, I don't mean to call her warmth of feeling a vice or virtue exactly - '
'I agree with you,' said Neigh to the last speaker but one, in tones as
emphatic as they possibly could be without losing their proper character
of indifference to the whole matter. 'Warm sentiment of any sort,
whenever we have it, disturbs us too much to leave us repose enough for
writing it down.'
'I am sure, when I was at the ardent age,' said the mistress of the
house, in a tone of pleasantly agreeing with every one, particularly
those who were diametrically opposed to each other, 'I could no more have
printed such emotions and made them public than I - could have helped
privately feeling them.'
'I wonder if she has gone through half she says? If so, what an
experience!'
'O no - not at all likely,' said Mr. Neigh. 'It is as risky to calculate
people's ways of living from their writings as their incomes from their
way of living.'
'She is as true to nature as fashion is false,' said the painter, in his
warmth becoming scarcely complimentary, as sometimes happens with young
persons. 'I don't think that she has written a word more than what every
woman would deny feeling in a society where no woman says what she means
or does what she says. And can any praise be greater than that?'
'Ha-ha! Capital!'
'All her verses seem to me,' said a rather stupid person, 'to be simply -
"Tral'-la-la-lal'-la-la-la',
Tral'-la-la-lal'-la-la-lu',
Tral'-la-la-lal'-la-la-lalla',
Tral'-la-la-lu'."
When you take away the music there is nothing left. Yet she is plainly a
woman of great culture.'
'Have you seen what the London Light says about them - one of the finest
things I have ever read in the way of admiration?' continued Ladywell,
paying no attention to the previous speaker. He lingered for a reply,
and then impulsively quoted several lines from the periodical he had
named, without aid or hesitation. 'Good, is it not?' added Ladywell.
They assented, but in such an unqualified manner that half as much
readiness would have meant more. But Ladywell, though not experienced
enough to be quite free from enthusiasm, was too experienced to mind
indifference for more than a minute or two. When the ladies had
withdrawn, the young man went on -
'Colonel Staff said a funny thing to me yesterday about these very poems.
He asked me if I knew her, and - '
'Her? Why, he knows that it is a lady all the time, and we were only
just now doubting whether the sex of the writer could be really what it
seems. Shame, Ladywell!' said his friend Neigh.
'Ah, Mr. Ladywell,' said another, 'now we have found you out. You know
her!'
'Now - I say - ha-ha!' continued the painter, with a face expressing that
he had not at all tried to be found out as the man possessing
incomparably superior knowledge of the poetess. 'I beg pardon really,
but don't press me on the matter. Upon my word the secret is not my own.
As I was saying, the Colonel said, "Do you know her?" - but you don't care
to hear?'
'We shall be delighted!'
'So the Colonel said, "Do you know her?" adding, in a most comic way,
"Between U. and E., Ladywell, I believe there is a close
affinity" - meaning me, you know, by U. Just like the Colonel - ha-ha-ha!'
The older men did not oblige Ladywell a second time with any attempt at
appreciation; but a weird silence ensued, during which the smile upon
Ladywell's face became frozen to painful permanence.
'Meaning by E., you know, the "E" of the poems - heh-heh!' he added.
'It was a very humorous incident certainly,' said his friend Neigh, at
which there was a laugh - not from anything connected with what he said,
but simply because it was the right thing to laugh when Neigh meant you
to do so.
'Now don't, Neigh - you are too hard upon me. But, seriously, two or
three fellows were there when I said it, and they all began laughing - but,
then, the Colonel said it in such a queer way, you know. But you were
asking me about her? Well, the fact is, between ourselves, I do know
that she is a lady; and I don't mind telling a word - '
'But we would not for the world be the means of making you betray her
confidence - would we, Jones?'
'No, indeed; we would not.'
'No, no; it is not that at all - this is really too bad! - you must listen
just for a moment - '
'Ladywell, don't betray anybody on our account.'
'Whoever the illustrious young lady may be she has seen a great deal of
the world,' said Mr. Doncastle blandly, 'and puts her experience of the
comedy of its emotions, and of its method of showing them, in a very
vivid light.'
'I heard a man say that the novelty with which the ideas are presented is
more noticeable than the originality of the ideas themselves,' observed
Neigh. 'The woman has made a great talk about herself; and I am quite
weary of people asking of her condition, place of abode, has she a
father, has she a mother, or dearer one yet than all other.'
'I would have burlesque quotation put down by Act of Parliament, and all
who dabble in it placed with him who can cite Scripture for his
purposes,' said Ladywell, in retaliation.
After a pause Neigh remarked half-privately to their host, who was his
uncle: 'Your butler Chickerel is a very intelligent man, as I have
heard.'
'Yes, he does very well,' said Mr. Doncastle.
'But is he not a - very extraordinary man?'
'Not to my knowledge,' said Doncastle, looking up surprised. 'Why do you
think that, Alfred?'
'Well, perhaps it was not a matter to mention. He reads a great deal, I
dare say?'
'I don't think so.'
'I noticed how wonderfully his face kindled when we began talking about
the poems during dinner. Perhaps he is a poet himself in disguise. Did
you observe it?'
'No. To the best of my belief he is a very trustworthy and honourable
man. He has been with us - let me see, how long? - five months, I think,
and he was fifteen years in his last place. It certainly is a new side
to his character if he publicly showed any interest in the conversation,
whatever he might have felt.'
'Since the matter has been mentioned,' said Mr. Jones, 'I may say that I
too noticed the singularity of it.'
'If you had not said otherwise,' replied Doncastle somewhat warmly, 'I
should have asserted him to be the last man-servant in London to infringe
such an elementary rule. If he did so this evening, it is certainly for
the first time, and I sincerely hope that no annoyance was caused - '
'O no, no - not at all - it might have been a mistake of mine,' said Jones.
'I should quite have forgotten the circumstance if Mr. Neigh's words had
not brought it to my mind. It was really nothing to notice, and I beg
that you will not say a word to him about it on my account.'
'He has a taste that way, my dear uncle, nothing more, depend upon it,'
said Neigh. 'If I had such a man belonging to me I should only be too
proud. Certainly do not mention it.'
'Of course Chickerel is Chickerel,' Mr. Doncastle rejoined. 'We all know
what that means. And really, on reflecting, I do remember that he is of
a literary turn of mind - not further by an inch than is commendable, you
know. I am quite aware as I glance down the papers and prints any
morning that Chickerel's eyes have been over the ground before mine, and
that he generally forestalls the rest of us by a chapter or so in the
last new book sent home; but in these vicious days that particular
weakness is really virtue, just because it is not quite a vice.'
'Yes,' said Mr. Jones, the reflective man in spectacles, 'positive
virtues are getting moved off the stage: negative ones are moved on to
the place of positives; we thank bare justice as we used only to thank
generosity; call a man honest who steals only by law, and consider him a
benefactor if he does not steal at all.'
'Hear, hear!' said Neigh. 'We will decide that Chickerel is even a
better trained fellow than if he had shown no interest at all in his
face.'
'The action being like those trifling irregularities in art at its
vigorous periods, which seemed designed to hide the unpleasant monotony
of absolute symmetry,' said Ladywell.
'On the other hand, an affected want of training of that sort would be
even a better disguise for an artful man than a perfectly impassible
demeanour. He is two removes from discovery in a hidden scheme, whilst a
neutral face is only one.'
'You quite alarm me by these subtle theories,' said Mr. Doncastle,
laughing; and the subject then became compounded with other matters, till
the speakers rose to rejoin the charming flock upstairs.
* * * * *
In the basement story at this hour Mr. Chickerel the butler, who had
formed the subject of discussion on the floor above, was busily engaged
in looking after his two subordinates as they bustled about in the
operations of clearing away. He was a man of whom, if the shape of
certain bones and muscles of the face is ever to be taken as a guide to
the character, one might safely have predicated conscientiousness in the
performance of duties, a thorough knowledge of all that appertained to
them, a general desire to live on without troubling his mind about
anything which did not concern him. Any person interested in the matter
would have assumed without hesitation that the estimate his employer had
given of Chickerel was a true one - more, that not only would the butler
under all ordinary circumstances resolutely prevent his face from showing
curiosity in an unbecoming way, but that, with the soul of a true
gentleman, he would, if necessary, equivocate as readily as the noblest
of his betters to remove any stain upon his honour in such trifles. Hence
it is apparent that if Chickerel's countenance really appeared, as Neigh
had asserted, full of curiosity with regard to the gossip that was going
on, the feelings which led to the exhibition must have been of a very
unusual and irrepressible kind.
His hair was of that peculiar bluish-white which is to be observed when
the oncoming years, instead of singling out special locks of a man's head
for operating against, advance uniformly over the whole field, and
enfeeble the colour at all points before absolutely extinguishing it
anywhere; his nose was of the knotty shape in the gristle and earthward
tendency in the flesh which is commonly said to carry sound judgment
above it, his eyes were thoughtful, and his face was thin - a contour
which, if it at once abstracted from his features that cheerful assurance
of single-minded honesty which adorns the exteriors of so many of his
brethren, might have raised a presumption in the minds of some beholders
that perhaps in this case the quality might not be altogether wanting
within.
The coffee having been served to the people upstairs, one of the footmen
rushed into his bedroom on the lower floor, and in a few minutes emerged
again in the dress of a respectable clerk who had been born for better
things, with the trifling exceptions that he wore a low-crowned hat, and
instead of knocking his heels on the pavement walked with a gait as
delicate as a lady's. Going out of the area-door with a cigar in his
mouth, he mounted the steps hastily to keep an appointment round the
corner - the keeping of which as a private gentleman necessitated the
change of the greater part of his clothes twice within a quarter of an
hour - the limit of his time of absence. The other footman was upstairs,
and the butler, finding that he had a few minutes to himself, sat down at
the table and wrote: -
'MY DEAR ETHELBERTA, - I did not intend to write to you for some few
days to come, but the way in which you have been talked about here
this evening makes me anxious to send a line or two at once, though I
have very little time to spare, as usual. We have just had a dinner-
party - indeed the carriages have not yet been brought round - and the
talk at dinner was about your verses, of course. The thing was
brought up by a young fellow named Ladywell - do you know him? He is a
painter by profession, but he has a pretty good private income beyond
what he gets by practising his line of business among the nobility,
and that I expect is not little, for he is well known, and encouraged
because he is young, and good-looking, and so forth. His family own a
good bit of land somewhere out Aldbrickham way. However, I am before
my story. From what they all said it is pretty clear that you are
thought a great deal of in fashionable society as a poetess - but
perhaps you know this as well as I - moving in it as you do yourself,
my dear.
'The ladies afterwards got very curious about your age, so curious, in
fact, and so full of certainty that you were thirty-five and a
blighted existence, if an hour, that I felt inclined to rap out there
and then, and hang what came of it: "My daughter, ladies, was to my
own and her mother's certain knowledge only twenty-one last birthday,
and has as bright a heart as anybody in London." One of them actually
said that you must be fifty to have got such an experience. Her guess
was a very shrewd one in the bottom of it, however, for it was
grounded upon the way you use those strange experiences of mine in the
society that I tell you of, and dress them up as if they were yours;
and, as you see, she hit off my own age to a year. I thought it was
very sharp of her to be so right, although so wrong.
'I do not want to influence your plans in any way about things which
your school learning fits you to understand much better than I, who
never had such opportunities, but I think that if I were in your
place, Berta, I would not let my name be known just yet, for people
always want what's kept from them, and don't value what's given. I am
not sure, but I think that after the women had gone upstairs the
others turned their thoughts upon you again; what they said about you
I don't know, for if there's one thing I hate 'tis hanging about the
doors when the men begin to get moved by their wine, which they did to
a large extent to-night, and spoke very loud. They always do here,
for old Don is a hearty giver in his way. However, as you see these
people from their own level now, it is not much that I can tell you in
seeing them only from the under side, though I see strange things
sometimes, and of course -
"What great ones do the less will prattle of,"
as it says in that book of select pieces that you gave me.
'Well, my dear girl, I hope you will prosper. One thing above all
others you'll have to mind, and it is that folk must continually
strain to advance in order to remain where they are: and you
particularly. But as for trying too hard, I wouldn't do it. Much
lies in minding this, that your best plan for lightness of heart is to
raise yourself a little higher than your old mates, but not so high as
to be quite out of their reach. All human beings enjoy themselves
from the outside, and so getting on a little has this good in it, you
still keep in your old class where your feelings are, and are
thoughtfully treated by this class: while by getting on too much you
are sneered at by your new acquaintance, who don't know the skill of
your rise, and you are parted from and forgot by the old ones who do.
Whatever happens, don't be too quick to feel. You will surely get
some hard blows when you are found out, for if the great can find no
excuse for hitting with a mind, they'll do it and say 'twas in fun.
But you are young and healthy, and youth and health are power. I wish
I could have a decent footman here with me, but I suppose it is no use
trying. It is such men as these that provoke the contempt we get.
Well, thank God a few years will see the end of me, for I am growing
ashamed of my company - so different as they are to the servants of old
times. - Your affectionate father, R. CHICKEREL.
'P.S. - Do not press Lady Petherwin any further to remove the rules on
which you live with her. She is quite right: she cannot keep us, and
to recognize us would do you no good, nor us either. We are content
to see you secretly, since it is best for you.'
8. CHRISTOPHER'S LODGINGS - THE GROUNDS ABOUT ROOKINGTON
Meanwhile, in the distant town of Sandbourne, Christopher Julian had
recovered from the weariness produced by his labours at the Wyndway
evening-party where Ethelberta had been a star. Instead of engaging his
energies to clear encumbrances from the tangled way of his life, he now
set about reading the popular 'Metres by E.' with more interest and
assiduity than ever; for though Julian was a thinker by instinct, he was
a worker by effort only; and the higher of these kinds being dependent
upon the lower for its exhibition, there was often a lamentable lack of
evidence of his power in either. It is a provoking correlation, and has
conduced to the obscurity of many a genius.
'Kit,' said his sister, on reviving at the end of the bad headache which
had followed the dance, 'those poems seem to have increased in value with
you. The lady, lofty as she appears to be, would be flattered if she
only could know how much you study them. Have you decided to thank her
for them? Now let us talk it over - I like having a chat about such a
pretty new subject.'
'I would thank her in a moment if I were absolutely certain that she had
anything to do with sending them, or even writing them. I am not quite
sure of that yet.'
'How strange that a woman could bring herself to write those verses!'
'Not at all strange - they are natural outpourings.'
Faith looked critically at the remoter caverns of the fire.
'Why strange?' continued Christopher. 'There is no harm in them.'
'O no - no harm. But I cannot explain to you - unless you see it partly of
your own accord - that to write them she must be rather a fast lady - not a
bad fast lady; a nice fast lady, I mean, of course. There, I have said
it now, and I daresay you are vexed with me, for your interest in her has
deepened to what it originally was, I think. I don't mean any absolute
harm by "fast," Kit.'
'Bold, forward, you mean, I suppose?'
Faith tried to hit upon a better definition which should meet all views;
and, on failing to do so, looked concerned at her brother's somewhat
grieved appearance, and said, helplessly, 'Yes, I suppose I do.'
'My idea of her is quite the reverse. A poetess must intrinsically be
sensitive, or she could never feel: but then, frankness is a rhetorical
necessity even with the most modest, if their inspirations are to do any
good in the world. You will, for certain, not be interested in something
I was going to tell you, which I thought would have pleased you
immensely; but it is not worth mentioning now.'
'If you will not tell me, never mind. But don't be crabbed, Kit! You