know how interested I am in all your affairs.'
'It is only that I have composed an air to one of the prettiest of her
songs, "When tapers tall" - but I am not sure about the power of it. This
is how it begins - I threw it off in a few minutes, after you had gone to
bed.'
He went to the piano and lightly touched over an air, the manuscript copy
of which he placed in front of him, and listened to hear her opinion,
having proved its value frequently; for it was not that of a woman
merely, but impersonally human. Though she was unknown to fame, this was
a great gift in Faith, since to have an unsexed judgment is as precious
as to be an unsexed being is deplorable.
'It is very fair indeed,' said the sister, scarcely moving her lips in
her great attention. 'Now again, and again, and again. How could you do
it in the time!'
Kit knew that she admired his performance: passive assent was her usual
praise, and she seldom insisted vigorously upon any view of his
compositions unless for purposes of emendation.
'I was thinking that, as I cannot very well write to her, I may as well
send her this,' said Christopher, with lightened spirits, voice to
correspond, and eyes likewise; 'there can be no objection to it, for such
things are done continually. Consider while I am gone, Faith. I shall
be out this evening for an hour or two.'
When Christopher left the house shortly after, instead of going into the
town on some errand, as was customary whenever he went from home after
dark, he ascended a back street, passed over the hills behind, and walked
at a brisk pace inland along the road to Rookington Park, where, as he
had learnt, Ethelberta and Lady Petherwin were staying for a time, the
day or two which they spent at Wyndway having formed a short break in the
middle of this visit. The moon was shining to-night, and Christopher
sped onwards over the pallid high-road as readily as he could have done
at noonday. In three-quarters of an hour he reached the park gates; and
entering now upon a tract which he had never before explored, he went
along more cautiously and with some uncertainty as to the precise
direction that the road would take. A frosted expanse of even grass, on
which the shadow of his head appeared with an opal halo round it, soon
allowed the house to be discovered beyond, the other portions of the park
abounding with timber older and finer than that of any other spot in the
neighbourhood. Christopher withdrew into the shade, and wheeled round to
the front of the building that contained his old love. Here he gazed and
idled, as many a man has done before him - wondering which room the fair
poetess occupied, waiting till lights began to appear in the upper
windows - which they did as uncertainly as glow-worms blinking up at
eventide - and warming with currents of revived feeling in perhaps the
sweetest of all conditions. New love is brightest, and long love is
greatest; but revived love is the tenderest thing known upon earth.
Occupied thus, Christopher was greatly surprised to see, on casually
glancing to one side, another man standing close to the shadowy trunk of
another tree, in a similar attitude to his own, gazing, with arms folded,
as blankly at the windows of the house as Christopher himself had been
gazing. Not willing to be discovered, Christopher stuck closer to his
tree. While he waited thus, the stranger began murmuring words, in a
slow soft voice. Christopher listened till he heard the following: -
'Pale was the day and rayless, love,
That had an eve so dim.'
Two well-known lines from one of Ethelberta's poems.
Jealousy is a familiar kind of heat which disfigures, licks playfully,
clouds, blackens, and boils a man as a fire does a pot; and on
recognizing these pilferings from what he had grown to regard as his own
treasury, Christopher's fingers began to nestle with great vigour in the
palms of his hands. Three or four minutes passed, when the unknown rival
gave a last glance at the windows, and walked away. Christopher did not
like the look of that walk at all - there was grace enough in it to
suggest that his antagonist had no mean chance of finding favour in a
woman's eyes. A sigh, too, seemed to proceed from the stranger's breast;
but as their distance apart was too great for any such sound to be heard
by any possibility, Christopher set down that to imagination, or to the
brushing of the wind over the trees.
The lighted windows went out one by one, and all the house was in
darkness. Julian then walked off himself, with a vigour that was
spasmodic only, and with much less brightness of mind than he had
experienced on his journey hither. The stranger had gone another way,
and Christopher saw no more of him. When he reached Sandbourne, Faith
was still sitting up.
'But I told you I was going to take a long walk,' he said.
'No, Christopher: really you did not. How tired and sad you do
look - though I always know beforehand when you are in that state: one of
your feet has a drag about it as you pass along the pavement outside the
window.'
'Yes, I forgot that I did not tell you.'
He could not begin to describe his pilgrimage: it was too silly a thing
even for her to hear of.
'It does not matter at all about my staying up,' said Faith assuringly;
'that is, if exercise benefits you. Walking up and down the lane, I
suppose?'
'No; not walking up and down the lane.'
'The turnpike-road to Rookington is pleasant.'
'Faith, that is really where I have been. How came you to know?'
'I only guessed. Verses and an accidental meeting produce a special
journey.'
'Ethelberta is a fine woman, physically and mentally, both. I wonder
people do not talk about her twice as much as they do.'
'Then surely you are getting attached to her again. You think you
discover in her more than anybody else does; and love begins with a sense
of superior discernment.'
'No, no. That is only nonsense,' he said hurriedly. 'However, love her
or love her not, I can keep a corner of my heart for you, Faith. There
is another brute after her too, it seems.'
'Of course there is: I expect there are many. Her position in society is
above ours, so that it is an unwise course to go troubling yourself more
about her.'
'No. If a needy man must be so foolish as to fall in love, it is best to
do so where he cannot double his foolishness by marrying the woman.'
'I don't like to hear you talk so slightingly of what poor father did.'
Christopher fixed his attention on the supper. That night, late as it
was, when Faith was in bed and sleeping, he sat before a sheet of music-
paper, neatly copying his composition upon it. The manuscript was
intended as an offering to Ethelberta at the first convenient
opportunity.
* * * * *
'Well, after all my trouble to find out about Ethelberta, here comes the
clue unasked for,' said the musician to his sister a few days later.
She turned and saw that he was reading the Wessex Reflector.
'What is it?' asked Faith.
'The secret of the true authorship of the book is out at last, and it is
Ethelberta of course. I am so glad to have it proved hers.'
'But can we believe - ?'
'O yes. Just hear what "Our London Correspondent" says. It is one of
the nicest bits of gossip that he has furnished us with for a long time.'
'Yes: now read it, do.'
'"The author of 'Metres by E.'"' Christopher began, '"a book of which so
much has been said and conjectured, and one, in fact, that has been the
chief talk for several weeks past of the literary circles to which I
belong, is a young lady who was a widow before she reached the age of
eighteen, and is now not far beyond her fourth lustrum. I was
additionally informed by a friend whom I met yesterday on his way to the
House of Lords, that her name is Mrs. Petherwin - Christian name
Ethelberta; and that she resides with her mother-in-law at their house in
Exonbury Crescent. She is, moreover, the daughter of the late Bishop of
Silchester (if report may be believed), whose active benevolence, as your
readers know, left his family in comparatively straitened circumstances
at his death. The marriage was a secret one, and much against the wish
of her husband's friends, who are wealthy people on all sides. The death
of the bridegroom two or three weeks after the wedding led to a
reconciliation; and the young poetess was taken to the home which she
still occupies, devoted to the composition of such brilliant effusions as
those the world has lately been favoured with from her pen."'
'If you want to send her your music, you can do so now,' said Faith.
'I might have sent it before, but I wanted to deliver it personally.
However, it is all the same now, I suppose, whether I send it or not. I
always knew that our destinies would lie apart, though she was once
temporarily under a cloud. Her momentary inspiration to write that
"Cancelled Words" was the worst possible omen for me. It showed that,
thinking me no longer useful as a practical chance, she would make me
ornamental as a poetical regret. But I'll send the manuscript of the
song.'
'In the way of business, as a composer only; and you must say to
yourself, "Ethelberta, as thou art but woman, I dare; but as widow I fear
thee."'
Notwithstanding Christopher's affected carelessness, that evening saw a
great deal of nicety bestowed upon the operation of wrapping up and
sending off the song. He dropped it into the box and heard it fall, and
with the curious power which he possessed of setting his wisdom to watch
any particular folly in himself that it could not hinder, speculated as
he walked on the result of this first tangible step of return to his old
position as Ethelberta's lover.
9. A LADY'S DRAWING-ROOMS - ETHELBERTA'S DRESSING-ROOM
It was a house on the north side of Hyde Park, between ten and eleven in
the evening, and several intelligent and courteous people had assembled
there to enjoy themselves as far as it was possible to do so in a neutral
way - all carefully keeping every variety of feeling in a state of
solution, in spite of any attempt such feelings made from time to time to
crystallize on interesting subjects in hand.
'Neigh, who is that charming woman with her head built up in a novel way
even for hair architecture - the one with her back towards us?' said a man
whose coat fitted doubtfully to a friend whose coat fitted well.
'Just going to ask for the same information,' said Mr. Neigh, determining
the very longest hair in his beard to an infinitesimal nicety by drawing
its lower portion through his fingers. 'I have quite forgotten - cannot
keep people's names in my head at all; nor could my father either - nor
any of my family - a very odd thing. But my old friend Mrs. Napper knows
for certain.' And he turned to one of a small group of middle-aged
persons near, who, instead of skimming the surface of things in general,
like the rest of the company, were going into the very depths of them.
'O - that is the celebrated Mrs. Petherwin, the woman who makes rhymes and
prints 'em,' said Mrs. Napper, in a detached sentence, and then continued
talking again to those on the other side of her.
The two loungers went on with their observations of Ethelberta's
headdress, which, though not extraordinary or eccentric, did certainly
convey an idea of indefinable novelty. Observers were sometimes half
inclined to think that her cuts and modes were acquired by some secret
communication with the mysterious clique which orders the livery of the
fashionable world, for - and it affords a parallel to cases in which
clever thinkers in other spheres arrive independently at one and the same
conclusion - Ethelberta's fashion often turned out to be the coming one.
'O, is that the woman at last?' said Neigh, diminishing his broad general
gaze at the room to a close criticism of Ethelberta.
'"The rhymes," as Mrs. Napper calls them, are not to be despised,' said
his companion. 'They are not quite virginibus puerisque, and the
writer's opinions of life and society differ very materially from mine,
but I cannot help admiring her in the more reflective pieces; the songs I
don't care for. The method in which she handles curious subjects, and at
the same time impresses us with a full conviction of her modesty, is very
adroit, and somewhat blinds us to the fact that no such poems were
demanded of her at all.'
'I have not read them,' said Neigh, secretly wrestling with his jaw, to
prevent a yawn; 'but I suppose I must. The truth is, that I never care
much for reading what one ought to read; I wish I did, but I cannot help
it. And, no doubt, you admire the lady immensely for writing them: I
don't. Everybody is so talented now-a-days that the only people I care
to honour as deserving real distinction are those who remain in
obscurity. I am myself hoping for a corner in some biographical
dictionary when the time comes for those works only to contain lists of
the exceptional individuals of whom nothing is known but that they lived
and died.'
'Ah - listen. They are going to sing one of her songs,' said his friend,
looking towards a bustling movement in the neighbourhood of the piano. 'I
believe that song, "When tapers tall," has been set to music by three or
four composers already.'
'Men of any note?' said Neigh, at last beaten by his yawn, which courtesy
nevertheless confined within his person to such an extent that only a few
unimportant symptoms, such as reduced eyes and a certain rectangular
manner of mouth in speaking, were visible.
'Scarcely,' replied the other man. 'Established writers of music do not
expend their energies upon new verse until they find that such verse is
likely to endure; for should the poet be soon forgotten, their labour is
in some degree lost.'
'Artful dogs - who would have thought it?' said Neigh, just as an exercise
in words; and they drew nearer to the piano, less to become listeners to
the singing than to be spectators of the scene in that quarter. But
among some others the interest in the songs seemed to be very great; and
it was unanimously wished that the young lady who had practised the
different pieces of music privately would sing some of them now in the
order of their composers' reputations. The musical persons in the room
unconsciously resolved themselves into a committee of taste.
One and another had been tried, when, at the end of the third, a lady
spoke to Ethelberta.
'Now, Mrs. Petherwin,' she said, gracefully throwing back her face, 'your
opinion is by far the most valuable. In which of the cases do you
consider the marriage of verse and tune to have been most successful?'
Ethelberta, finding these and other unexpected calls made upon herself,
came to the front without flinching.
'The sweetest and the best that I like by far,' she said, 'is none of
these. It is one which reached me by post only this morning from a place
in Wessex, and is written by an unheard-of man who lives somewhere down
there - a man who will be, nevertheless, heard a great deal of some day, I
hope - think. I have only practised it this afternoon; but, if one's own
judgment is worth anything, it is the best.'
'Let us have your favourite, by all means,' said another friend of
Ethelberta's who was present - Mrs. Doncastle.
'I am so sorry that I cannot oblige you, since you wish to hear it,'
replied the poetess regretfully; 'but the music is at home. I had not
received it when I lent the others to Miss Belmaine, and it is only in
manuscript like the rest.'
'Could it not be sent for?' suggested an enthusiast who knew that
Ethelberta lived only in the next street, appealing by a look to her, and
then to the mistress of the house.
'Certainly, let us send for it,' said that lady. A footman was at once
quietly despatched with precise directions as to where Christopher's
sweet production might be found.
'What - is there going to be something interesting?' asked a young married
friend of Mrs. Napper, who had returned to her original spot.
'Yes - the best song she has written is to be sung in the best manner to
the best air that has been composed for it. I should not wonder if she
were going to sing it herself.'
'Did you know anything of Mrs. Petherwin until her name leaked out in
connection with these ballads?'
'No; but I think I recollect seeing her once before. She is one of those
people who are known, as one may say, by subscription: everybody knows a
little, till she is astonishingly well known altogether; but nobody knows
her entirely. She was the orphan child of some clergyman, I believe.
Lady Petherwin, her mother-in-law, has been taking her about a great deal
latterly.'
'She has apparently a very good prospect.'
'Yes; and it is through her being of that curious undefined character
which interprets itself to each admirer as whatever he would like to have
it. Old men like her because she is so girlish; youths because she is
womanly; wicked men because she is good in their eyes; good men because
she is wicked in theirs.'
'She must be a very anomalous sort of woman, at that rate.'
'Yes. Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to
her inconsistencies in principle.'
'These poems must have set her up. She appears to be quite the correct
spectacle. Happy Mrs. Petherwin!'
The subject of their dialogue was engaged in a conversation with Mrs.
Belmaine upon the management of households - a theme provoked by a
discussion that was in progress in the pages of some periodical of the
time. Mrs. Belmaine was very full of the argument, and went on from
point to point till she came to servants.
The face of Ethelberta showed caution at once.
'I consider that Lady Plamby pets her servants by far too much,' said
Mrs. Belmaine. 'O, you do not know her? Well, she is a woman with
theories; and she lends her maids and men books of the wrong kind for
their station, and sends them to picture exhibitions which they don't in
the least understand - all for the improvement of their taste, and morals,
and nobody knows what besides. It only makes them dissatisfied.'
The face of Ethelberta showed venturesomeness. 'Yes, and dreadfully
ambitious!' she said.
'Yes, indeed. What a turn the times have taken! People of that sort
push on, and get into business, and get great warehouses, until at last,
without ancestors, or family, or name, or estate - '
'Or the merest scrap of heirloom or family jewel.'
'Or heirlooms, or family jewels, they are thought as much of as if their
forefathers had glided unobtrusively through the peerage - '
'Ever since the first edition.'
'Yes.' Mrs. Belmaine, who really sprang from a good old family, had been
going to say, 'for the last seven hundred years,' but fancying from
Ethelberta's addendum that she might not date back more than a trifling
century or so, adopted the suggestion with her usual well-known courtesy,
and blushed down to her locket at the thought of the mistake that she
might have made. This sensitiveness was a trait in her character which
gave great gratification to her husband, and, indeed, to all who knew
her.
'And have you any theory on the vexed question of servant-government?'
continued Mrs. Belmaine, smiling. 'But no - the subject is of far too
practical a nature for one of your bent, of course.'
'O no - it is not at all too practical. I have thought of the matter
often,' said Ethelberta. 'I think the best plan would be for somebody to
write a pamphlet, "The Shortest Way with the Servants," just as there was
once written a terribly stinging one, "The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters," which had a great effect.'
'I have always understood that that was written by a dissenter as a
satire upon the Church?'
'Ah - so it was: but the example will do to illustrate my meaning.'
'Quite so - I understand - so it will,' said Mrs. Belmaine, with clouded
faculties.
Meanwhile Christopher's music had arrived. An accomplished gentleman who
had every musical talent except that of creation, scanned the notes
carefully from top to bottom, and sat down to accompany the singer. There
was no lady present of sufficient confidence or skill to venture into a
song she had never seen before, and the only one who had seen it was
Ethelberta herself; she did not deny having practised it the greater part
of the afternoon, and was very willing to sing it now if anybody would
derive pleasure from the performance. Then she began, and the sweetness
of her singing was such that even the most unsympathetic honoured her by
looking as if they would be willing to listen to every note the song
contained if it were not quite so much trouble to do so. Some were so
interested that, instead of continuing their conversation, they remained
in silent consideration of how they would continue it when she had
finished; while the particularly civil people arranged their countenances
into every attentive form that the mind could devise. One emotional
gentleman looked at the corner of a chair as if, till that moment, such
an object had never crossed his vision before; the movement of his finger
to the imagined tune was, for a deaf old clergyman, a perfect mine of
interest; whilst a young man from the country was powerless to put an end
to an enchanted gaze at nothing at all in the exact middle of the room
before him. Neigh, and the general phalanx of cool men and celebrated
club yawners, were so much affected that they raised their chronic look
of great objection to things, to an expression of scarcely any objection
at all.
'What makes it so interesting,' said Mrs. Doncastle to Ethelberta, when
the song was over and she had retired from the focus of the company, 'is,
that it is played from the composer's own copy, which has never met the
public eye, or any other than his own before to-day. And I see that he
has actually sketched in the lines by hand, instead of having ruled
paper - just as the great old composers used to do. You must have been as
pleased to get it fresh from the stocks like that as he probably was
pleased to get your thanks.'
Ethelberta became reflective. She had not thanked Christopher; moreover,
she had decided, after some consideration, that she ought not to thank
him. What new thoughts were suggested by that remark of Mrs.
Doncastle's, and what new inclination resulted from the public
presentation of his tune and her words as parts of one organic whole, are
best explained by describing her doings at a later hour, when, having
left her friends somewhat early, she had reached home and retired from
public view for that evening.
Ethelberta went to her room, sent away the maid who did double duty for
herself and Lady Petherwin, walked in circles about the carpet till the
fire had grown haggard and cavernous, sighed, took a sheet of paper and
wrote: -
'DEAR MR. JULIAN, - I have said I would not write: I have said it
twice; but discretion, under some circumstances, is only another name
for unkindness. Before thanking you for your sweet gift, let me tell
you in a few words of something which may materially change an aspect
of affairs under which I appear to you to deserve it.
'With regard to my history and origin you are altogether mistaken; and
how can I tell whether your bitterness at my previous silence on those
points may not cause you to withdraw your act of courtesy now? But
the gratification of having at last been honest with you may
compensate even for the loss of your respect.
'The matter is a small one to tell, after all. What will you say on
learning that I am not the trodden-down "lady by birth" that you have
supposed me? That my father is not dead, as you probably imagine;
that he is working for his living as one among a peculiarly
stigmatized and ridiculed multitude?
'Had he been a brawny cottager, carpenter, mason, blacksmith, well-
digger, navvy, tree-feller - any effective and manly trade, in short, a
worker in which can stand up in the face of the noblest and daintiest,
and bare his gnarled arms and say, with a consciousness of superior
power, "Look at a real man!" I should have been able to show you
antecedents which, if not intensely romantic, are not altogether
antagonistic to romance. But the present fashion of associating with
one particular class everything that is ludicrous and bombastic
overpowers me when I think of it in relation to myself and your known
sensitiveness. When the well-born poetess of good report melts into.
. .'
Having got thus far, a faint-hearted look, which had begun to show itself
several sentences earlier, became pronounced. She threw the writing into
the dull fire, poked and stirred it till a red inflammation crept over
the sheet, and then started anew: -
'DEAR MR. JULIAN, - Not knowing your present rank as composer - whether
on the very brink of fame, or as yet a long way off - I cannot decide
what form of expression my earnest acknowledgments should take. Let
me simply say in one short phrase, I thank you infinitely!
'I am no musician, and my opinion on music may not be worth much: yet
I know what I like (as everybody says, but I do not use the words as a
form to cover a hopeless blank on all connected with the subject), and
this sweet air I love. You must have glided like a breeze about
me - seen into a heart not worthy of scrutiny, jotted down words that
cannot justify attention - before you could have apotheosized the song
in so exquisite a manner. My gratitude took the form of wretchedness
when, on hearing the effect of the ballad in public this evening, I
thought that I had not power to withhold a reply which might do us
both more harm than good. Then I said, "Away with all emotion - I wish
the world was drained dry of it - I will take no notice," when a lady
whispered at my elbow to the effect that of course I had expressed my
gratification to you. I ought first to have mentioned that your
creation has been played to-night to full drawing-rooms, and the
original tones cooled the artificial air like a fountain almost.
'I prophesy great things of you. Perhaps, at the time when we are
each but a row of bones in our individual graves, your genius will be
remembered, while my mere cleverness will have been long forgotten.
'But - you must allow a woman of experience to say this - the undoubted
power that you possess will do you socially no good unless you mix
with it the ingredient of ambition - a quality in which I fear you are
very deficient. It is in the hope of stimulating you to a better
opinion of yourself that I write this letter.
'Probably I shall never meet you again. Not that I think
circumstances to be particularly powerful to prevent such a meeting,
rather it is that I shall energetically avoid it. There can be no
such thing as strong friendship between a man and a woman not of one
family.
'More than that there must not be, and this is why we will not meet.
You see that I do not mince matters at all; but it is hypocrisy to
avoid touching upon a subject which all men and women in our position
inevitably think of, no matter what they say. Some women might have
written distantly, and wept at the repression of their real feeling;
but it is better to be more frank, and keep a dry eye. - Yours,
ETHELBERTA.'
Her feet felt cold and her heart weak as she directed the letter, and she
was overpowered with weariness. But murmuring, 'If I let it stay till
the morning I shall not send it, and a man may be lost to fame because of
a woman's squeamishness - it shall go,' she partially dressed herself,
wrapped a large cloak around her, descended the stairs, and went out to
the pillar-box at the corner, leaving the door not quite close. No gust
of wind had realized her misgivings that it might be blown shut on her
return, and she re-entered as softly as she had emerged.
It will be seen that Ethelberta had said nothing about her family after
all.
10. LADY PETHERWIN'S HOUSE
The next day old Lady Petherwin, who had not accompanied Ethelberta the
night before, came into the morning-room, with a newspaper in her hand.
'What does this mean, Ethelberta?' she inquired in tones from which every
shade of human expressiveness was extracted by some awful and imminent
mood that lay behind. She was pointing to a paragraph under the heading
of 'Literary Notes,' which contained in a few words the announcement of
Ethelberta's authorship that had more circumstantially appeared in the
Wessex Reflector.
'It means what it says,' said Ethelberta quietly.
'Then it is true?'
'Yes. I must apologize for having kept it such a secret from you. It
was not done in the spirit that you may imagine: it was merely to avoid
disturbing your mind that I did it so privately.'
'But surely you have not written every one of those ribald verses?'
Ethelberta looked inclined to exclaim most vehemently against this; but
what she actually did say was, '"Ribald" - what do you mean by that? I
don't think that you are aware what "ribald" means.'
'I am not sure that I am. As regards some words as well as some persons,
the less you are acquainted with them the more it is to your credit.'
'I don't quite deserve this, Lady Petherwin.'
'Really, one would imagine that women wrote their books during those
dreams in which people have no moral sense, to see how improper some,
even virtuous, ladies become when they get into print.'
'I might have done a much more unnatural thing than write those poems.
And perhaps I might have done a much better thing, and got less praise.
But that's the world's fault, not mine.'
'You might have left them unwritten, and shown more fidelity.'
'Fidelity! it is more a matter of humour than principle. What has
fidelity to do with it?'
'Fidelity to my dear boy's memory.'
'It would be difficult to show that because I have written so-called
tender and gay verse, I feel tender and gay. It is too often assumed
that a person's fancy is a person's real mind. I believe that in the
majority of cases one is fond of imagining the direct opposite of one's
principles in sheer effort after something fresh and free; at any rate,
some of the lightest of those rhymes were composed between the deepest
fits of dismals I have ever known. However, I did expect that you might
judge in the way you have judged, and that was my chief reason for not
telling you what I had done.'
'You don't deny that you tried to escape from recollections you ought to
have cherished? There is only one thing that women of your sort are as
ready to do as to take a man's name, and that is, drop his memory.'
'Dear Lady Petherwin - don't be so unreasonable as to blame a live person
for living! No woman's head is so small as to be filled for life by a
memory of a few months. Four years have passed since I last saw my boy-
husband. We were mere children; see how I have altered since in mind,
substance, and outline - I have even grown half an inch taller since his
death. Two years will exhaust the regrets of widows who have long been
faithful wives; and ought I not to show a little new life when my husband
died in the honeymoon?'
'No. Accepting the protection of your husband's mother was, in effect,
an avowal that you rejected the idea of being a widow to prolong the idea
of being a wife; and the sin against your conventional state thus assumed
is almost as bad as would have been a sin against the married state
itself. If you had gone off when he died, saying, "Thank heaven, I am
free!" you would, at any rate, have shown some real honesty.'
'I should have been more virtuous by being more unfeeling. That often
happens.'
'I have taken to you, and made a great deal of you - given you the
inestimable advantages of foreign travel and good society to enlarge your
mind. In short, I have been like a Naomi to you in everything, and I
maintain that writing these poems saps the foundation of it all.'
'I do own that you have been a very good Naomi to me thus far; but Ruth
was quite a fast widow in comparison with me, and yet Naomi never blamed
her. You are unfortunate in your illustration. But it is dreadfully
flippant of me to answer you like this, for you have been kind. But why
will you provoke me!'
'Yes, you are flippant, Ethelberta. You are too much given to that sort
of thing.'
'Well, I don't know how the secret of my name has leaked out; and I am
not ribald, or anything you say,' said Ethelberta, with a sigh.
'Then you own you do not feel so ardent as you seem in your book?'
'I do own it.'
'And that you are sorry your name has been published in connection with
it?'
'I am.'
'And you think the verses may tend to misrepresent your character as a
gay and rapturous one, when it is not?'
'I do fear it.'
'Then, of course, you will suppress the poems instantly. That is the
only way in which you can regain the position you have hitherto held with
me.'
Ethelberta said nothing; and the dull winter atmosphere had far from
light enough in it to show by her face what she might be thinking.
'Well?' said Lady Petherwin.
'I did not expect such a command as that,' said Ethelberta. 'I have been
obedient for four years, and would continue so - but I cannot suppress the
poems. They are not mine now to suppress.'
'You must get them into your hands. Money will do it, I suppose?'
'Yes, I suppose it would - a thousand pounds.'
'Very well; the money shall be forthcoming,' said Lady Petherwin, after a
pause. 'You had better sit down and write about it at once.'
'I cannot do it,' said Ethelberta; 'and I will not. I don't wish them to
be suppressed. I am not ashamed of them; there is nothing to be ashamed
of in them; and I shall not take any steps in the matter.'
'Then you are an ungrateful woman, and wanting in natural affection for
the dead! Considering your birth - '
'That's an intolerable - '
Lady Petherwin crashed out of the room in a wind of indignation, and went
upstairs and heard no more. Adjoining her chamber was a smaller one
called her study, and, on reaching this, she unlocked a cabinet, took out
a small deed-box, removed from it a folded packet, unfolded it, crumpled
it up, and turning round suddenly flung it into the fire. Then she stood
and beheld it eaten away word after word by the flames, 'Testament' - 'all
that freehold' - 'heirs and assigns' appearing occasionally for a moment
only to disappear for ever. Nearly half the document had turned into a
glossy black when the lady clasped her hands.
'What have I done!' she exclaimed. Springing to the tongs she seized
with them the portion of the writing yet unconsumed, and dragged it out
of the fire. Ethelberta appeared at the door.
'Quick, Ethelberta!' said Lady Petherwin. 'Help me to put this out!' And
the two women went trampling wildly upon the document and smothering it
with a corner of the hearth-rug.
'What is it?' said Ethelberta.
'My will!' said Lady Petherwin. 'I have kept it by me lately, for I have
wished to look over it at leisure - '
'Good heavens!' said Ethelberta. 'And I was just coming in to tell you
that I would always cling to you, and never desert you, ill-use me how
you might!'
'Such an affectionate remark sounds curious at such a time,' said Lady
Petherwin, sinking down in a chair at the end of the struggle.
'But,' cried Ethelberta, 'you don't suppose - '
'Selfishness, my dear, has given me such crooked looks that I can see it
round a corner.'
'If you mean that what is yours to give may not be mine to take, it would
be as well to name it in an impersonal way, if you must name it at all,'
said the daughter-in-law, with wet eyelids. 'God knows I had no selfish
thought in saying that. I came upstairs to ask you to forgive me, and
knew nothing about the will. But every explanation distorts it all the
more!'
'We two have got all awry, dear - it cannot be concealed - awry - awry. Ah,
who shall set us right again? However, now I must send for Mr.
Chancerly - no, I am going out on other business, and I will call upon
him. There, don't spoil your eyes: you may have to sell them.'
She rang the bell and ordered the carriage; and half-an-hour later Lady
Petherwin's coachman drove his mistress up to the door of her lawyer's
office in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
11. SANDBOURNE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD - SOME LONDON STREETS
While this was going on in town, Christopher, at his lodgings in
Sandbourne, had been thrown into rare old visions and dreams by the
appearance of Ethelberta's letter. Flattered and encouraged to ambition
as well as to love by her inspiriting sermon, he put off now the last
remnant of cynical doubt upon the genuineness of his old mistress, and
once and for all set down as disloyal a belief he had latterly acquired
that 'Come, woo me, woo me; for I am like enough to consent,' was all a
young woman had to tell.
All the reasoning of political and social economists would not have
convinced Christopher that he had a better chance in London than in
Sandbourne of making a decent income by reasonable and likely labour; but
a belief in a far more improbable proposition, impetuously expressed,
warmed him with the idea that he might become famous there. The greater
is frequently more readily credited than the less, and an argument which
will not convince on a matter of halfpence appears unanswerable when
applied to questions of glory and honour.
The regulation wet towel and strong coffee of the ambitious and
intellectual student floated before him in visions; but it was with a
sense of relief that he remembered that music, in spite of its drawbacks
as a means of sustenance, was a profession happily unencumbered with
those excruciating preliminaries to greatness.
Christopher talked about the new move to his sister, and he was vexed
that her hopefulness was not roused to quite the pitch of his own. As
with others of his sort, his too general habit of accepting the most
clouded possibility that chances offered was only transcended by his
readiness to kindle with a fitful excitement now and then. Faith was
much more equable. 'If you were not the most melancholy man God ever
created,' she said, kindly looking at his vague deep eyes and thin face,
which was but a few degrees too refined and poetical to escape the
epithet of lantern-jawed from any one who had quarrelled with him, 'you
would not mind my coolness about this. It is a good thing of course to
go; I have always fancied that we were mistaken in coming here.
Mediocrity stamped "London" fetches more than talent marked "provincial."
But I cannot feel so enthusiastic.'
'Still, if we are to go, we may as well go by enthusiasm as by
calculation; it is a sensation pleasanter to the nerves, and leads to
just as good a result when there is only one result possible.'
'Very well,' said Faith. 'I will not depress you. If I had to describe
you I should say you were a child in your impulses, and an old man in
your reflections. Have you considered when we shall start?'
'Yes.'
'What have you thought?'
'That we may very well leave the place in six weeks if we wish.'
'We really may?'
'Yes. And what is more, we will.'
* * * * *