13. THE LODGE (continued)--THE COPSE BEHIND
'This is indeed a surprise; I--am glad to see you!' Christopherstammered, with a wire-drawn, radically different smile from the one hehad intended--a smile not without a tinge of ghastliness.
'Yes--I am home for the holidays,' said the blushing maiden; and, after acritical pause, she added, 'If you wish to speak to my sister, she is inthe plantation with the children.'
'O no--no, thank you--not necessary at all,' said Christopher, in haste.'I only wish for an interview with a lady called Mrs. Petherwin.'
'Yes; Mrs Petherwin--my sister,' said Picotee. 'She is in theplantation. That little path will take you to her in five minutes.'
The amazed Christopher persuaded himself that this discovery was verydelightful, and went on persuading so long that at last he felt it to beso. Unable, like many other people, to enjoy being satirized in wordsbecause of the irritation it caused him as aimed-at victim, he sometimeshad philosophy enough to appreciate a satire of circumstance, becausenobody intended it. Pursuing the path indicated, he found himself in athicket of scrubby undergrowth, which covered an area enclosed from thepark proper by a decaying fence. The boughs were so tangled that he wasobliged to screen his face with his hands, to escape the risk of havinghis eyes filliped out by the twigs that impeded his progress. Thusslowly advancing, his ear caught, between the rustles, the tones of avoice in earnest declamation; and, pushing round in that direction, hebeheld through some beech boughs an open space about ten yards indiameter, floored at the bottom with deep beds of curled old leaves, andcushions of furry moss. In the middle of this natural theatre was thestump of a tree that had been felled by a saw, and upon the flat stoolthus formed stood Ethelberta, whom Christopher had not beheld since theball at Wyndway House.
Round her, leaning against branches or prostrate on the ground, were fiveor six individuals. Two were young mechanics--one of them evidently acarpenter. Then there was a boy about thirteen, and two or three youngerchildren. Ethelberta's appearance answered as fully as ever to that ofan English lady skilfully perfected in manner, carriage, look, andaccent; and the incongruity of her present position among lives which hadhad many of Nature's beauties stamped out of them, and few of thebeauties of Art stamped in, brought him, as a second feeling, a pride inher that almost equalled his first sentiment of surprise. Christopher'sattention was meanwhile attracted from the constitution of the group tothe words of the speaker in the centre of it--words to which her auditorswere listening with still attention.
It appeared to Christopher that Ethelberta had lately been undergoingsome very extraordinary experiences. What the beginning of them had beenhe could not in the least understand, but the portion she was describingcame distinctly to his ears, and he wondered more and more.
'He came forward till he, like myself, was about twenty yards from theedge. I instinctively grasped my useless stiletto. How I longed for theassistance which a little earlier I had so much despised! Reaching theblock or boulder upon which I had been sitting, he clasped his armsaround from behind; his hands closed upon the empty seat, and he jumpedup with an oath. This method of attack told me a new thing with wretcheddistinctness; he had, as I suppose, discovered my sex, male attire was toserve my turn no longer. The next instant, indeed, made it clear, for heexclaimed, "You don't escape me, masquerading madam," or some such words,and came on. My only hope was that in his excitement he might forget tonotice where the grass terminated near the edge of the cliff, though thiscould be easily felt by a careful walker: to make my own feeling moredistinct on this point I hastily bared my feet.'
The listeners moistened their lips, Ethelberta took breath, and then wenton to describe the scene that ensued, 'A dreadful variation on the gameof Blindman's buff,' being the words by which she characterized it.
Ethelberta's manner had become so impassioned at this point that the lipsof her audience parted, the children clung to their elders, andChristopher could control himself no longer. He thrust aside the boughs,and broke in upon the group.
'For Heaven's sake, Ethelberta,' he exclaimed with great excitement,'where did you meet with such a terrible experience as that?'
The children shrieked, as if they thought that the interruption was insome way the catastrophe of the events in course of narration. Every onestarted up; the two young mechanics stared, and one of them inquired, inreturn, 'What's the matter, friend?'
Christopher had not yet made reply when Ethelberta stepped from herpedestal down upon the crackling carpet of deep leaves.
'Mr. Julian!' said she, in a serene voice, turning upon him eyes of sucha disputable stage of colour, between brown and grey, as would havecommended itself to a gallant duellist of the last century as a point onwhich it was absolutely necessary to take some friend's life or other.But the calmness was artificially done, and the astonishment that did notappear in Ethelberta's tones was expressed by her gaze. Christopher wasnot in a mood to draw fine distinctions between recognized andunrecognized organs of speech. He replied to the eyes.
'I own that your surprise is natural,' he said, with an anxious look intoher face, as if he wished to get beyond this interpolated scene tosomething more congenial and understood. 'But my concern at such ahistory of yourself since I last saw you is even more natural than yoursurprise at my manner of breaking in.'
'That history would justify any conduct in one who hears it--'
'Yes, indeed.'
'If it were true,' added Ethelberta, smiling. 'But it is as false as--'She could name nothing notoriously false without raising an image of whatwas disagreeable, and she continued in a better manner: 'The story I wastelling is entirely a fiction, which I am getting up for a particularpurpose--very different from what appears at present.'
'I am sorry there was such a misunderstanding,' Christopher stammered,looking upon the ground uncertain and ashamed. 'Yet I am not, either,for I am very glad you have not undergone such trials, of course. Butthe fact is, I--being in the neighbourhood--I ventured to call on amatter of business, relating to a poem which I had the pleasure ofsetting to music at the beginning of the year.'
Ethelberta was only a little less ill at ease than Christopher showedhimself to be by this way of talking.
'Will you walk slowly on?' she said gently to the two young men, 'andtake the children with you; this gentleman wishes to speak to me onbusiness.'
The biggest young man caught up a little one under his arm, and plungedamid the boughs; another little one lingered behind for a few moments tolook shyly at Christopher, with an oblique manner of hiding her mouthagainst her shoulder and her eyes behind her pinafore. Then shevanished, the boy and the second young man followed, and Ethelberta andChristopher stood within the wood-bound circle alone.
'I hope I have caused no inconvenience by interrupting the proceedings,'said Christopher softly; 'but I so very much wished to see you!'
'Did you, indeed--really wish to see me?' she said gladly. 'Never mindinconvenience then; it is a word which seems shallow in meaning under thecircumstances. I surely must say that a visit is to my advantage, must Inot? I am not as I was, you see, and may receive as advantages what Iused to consider as troubles.'
'Has your life really changed so much?'
'It has changed. But what I first meant was that an interesting visitorat a wrong time is better than a stupid one at a right time.'
'I had been behind the trees for some minutes, looking at you, andthinking of you; but what you were doing rather interrupted my firstmeditation. I had thought of a meeting in which we should continue ourintercourse at the point at which it was broken off years ago, as if theomitted part had not existed at all; but something, I cannot tell what,has upset all that feeling, and--'
'I can soon tell you the meaning of my extraordinary performance,'Ethelberta broke in quickly, and with a little trepidation. 'My mother-in-law, Lady Petherwin, is dead; and she has left me nothing but herhouse and furniture in London--more than I deserve, bu
t less than she haddistinctly led me to expect; and so I am somewhat in a corner.'
'It is always so.'
'Not always, I think. But this is how it happened. Lady Petherwin wasvery capricious; when she was not foolishly kind she was unjustly harsh.A great many are like it, never thinking what a good thing it would be,instead of going on tacking from side to side between favour and cruelty,to keep to a mean line of common justice. And so we quarrelled, and she,being absolute mistress of all her wealth, destroyed her will that was inmy favour, and made another, leaving me nothing but the fag-end of thelease of the town-house and the furniture in it. Then, when we wereabroad, she turned to me again, forgave everything, and, becoming illafterwards, wrote a letter to the brother, to whom she had left the bulkof her property, stating that I was to have twenty-thousand of the one-hundred-thousand pounds she had bequeathed to him--as in the originalwill--doing this by letter in case anything should happen to her before anew will could be considered, drawn, and signed, and trusting to hishonour quite that he would obey her expressed wish should she die abroad.Well, she did die, in the full persuasion that I was provided for; buther brother (as I secretly expected all the time) refused to be morallybound by a document which had no legal value, and the result is that hehas everything, except, of course, the furniture and the lease. It wouldhave been enough to break the heart of a person who had calculated upongetting a fortune, which I never did; for I felt always like an intruderand a bondswoman, and had wished myself out of the Petherwin family ahundred times, with my crust of bread and liberty. For one thing, I wasalways forbidden to see my relatives, and it pained me much. Now I amgoing to move for myself, and consider that I have a good chance ofsuccess in what I may undertake, because of an indifference I feel aboutsucceeding which gives the necessary coolness that any great taskrequires.'
'I presume you mean to write more poems?'
'I cannot--that is, I can write no more that satisfy me. To blossom intorhyme on the sparkling pleasures of life, you must be under the influenceof those pleasures, and I am at present quite removed fromthem--surrounded by gaunt realities of a very different description.'
'Then try the mournful. Trade upon your sufferings: many do, andthrive.'
'It is no use to say that--no use at all. I cannot write a line ofverse. And yet the others flowed from my heart like a stream. Butnothing is so easy as to seem clever when you have money.'
'Except to seem stupid when you have none,' said Christopher, looking atthe dead leaves.
Ethelberta allowed herself to linger on that thought for a few seconds;and continued, 'Then the question arose, what was I to do? I felt thatto write prose would be an uncongenial occupation, and altogether a poorprospect for a woman like me. Finally I have decided to appear inpublic.'
'Not on the stage?'
'Certainly not on the stage. There is no novelty in a poor lady turningactress, and novelty is what I want. Ordinary powers exhibited in a newway effect as much as extraordinary powers exhibited in an old way.'
'Yes--so they do. And extraordinary powers, and a new way too, would beirresistible.'
'I don't calculate upon both. I had written a prose story by request,when it was found that I had grown utterly inane over verse. It waswritten in the first person, and the style was modelled after De Foe's.The night before sending it off, when I had already packed it up, I wasreading about the professional story-tellers of Eastern countries, whodevoted their lives to the telling of tales. I unfastened the manuscriptand retained it, convinced that I should do better by telling the story.'
'Well thought of!' exclaimed Christopher, looking into her face. 'Thereis a way for everybody to live, if they can only find it out.'
'It occurred to me,' she continued, blushing slightly, 'that tales of theweird kind were made to be told, not written. The action of a teller iswanted to give due effect to all stories of incident; and I hope that atime will come when, as of old, instead of an unsocial reading of fictionat home alone, people will meet together cordially, and sit at the feetof a professed romancer. I am going to tell my tales before a Londonpublic. As a child, I had a considerable power in arresting theattention of other children by recounting adventures which had neverhappened; and men and women are but children enlarged a little. Look atthis.'
She drew from her pocket a folded paper, shook it abroad, and disclosed arough draft of an announcement to the effect that Mrs. Petherwin,Professed Story-teller, would devote an evening to that ancient form ofthe romancer's art, at a well-known fashionable hall in London. 'Now yousee,' she continued, 'the meaning of what you observed going on here.That you heard was one of three tales I am preparing, with a view ofselecting the best. As a reserved one, I have the tale of my own life--tobe played as a last card. It was a private rehearsal before my brothersand sisters--not with any view of obtaining their criticism, but that Imight become accustomed to my own voice in the presence of listeners.'
'If I only had had half your enterprise, what I might have done in theworld!'
'Now did you ever consider what a power De Foe's manner would have ifpractised by word of mouth? Indeed, it is a style which suits itselfinfinitely better to telling than to writing, abounding as it does incolloquialisms that are somewhat out of place on paper in these days, buthave a wonderful power in making a narrative seem real. And so, inshort, I am going to talk De Foe on a subject of my own. Well?'
The last word had been given tenderly, with a long-drawn sweetness, andwas caused by a look that Christopher was bending upon her at the moment,in which he revealed that he was thinking less of the subject she was soeagerly and hopefully descanting upon than upon her aspect in explainingit. It is a fault of manner particularly common among men newly importedinto the society of bright and beautiful women; and we will hope that,springing as it does from no unworthy source, it is as soon forgiven inthe general world as it was here.
'I was only following a thought,' said Christopher:--'a thought of how Iused to know you, and then lost sight of you, and then discovered youfamous, and how we are here under these sad autumn trees, and nobody insight.'
'I think it must be tea-time,' she said suddenly. 'Tea is a great mealwith us here--you will join us, will you not?' And Ethelberta began tomake for herself a passage through the boughs. Another rustle was hearda little way off, and one of the children appeared.
'Emmeline wants to know, please, if the gentleman that come to see 'eewill stay to tea; because, if so, she's agoing to put in another spoonfulfor him and a bit of best green.'
'O Georgina--how candid! Yes, put in some best green.'
Before Christopher could say any more to her, they were emerging by thecorner of the cottage, and one of the brothers drew near them. 'Mr.Julian, you'll bide and have a cup of tea wi' us?' he inquired ofChristopher. 'An old friend of yours, is he not, Mrs. Petherwin? Danand I be going back to Sandbourne to-night, and we can walk with 'ee asfar as the station.'
'I shall be delighted,' said Christopher; and they all entered thecottage. The evening had grown clearer by this time; the sun was peepingout just previous to departure, and sent gold wires of light across theglades and into the windows, throwing a pattern of the diamond quarries,and outlines of the geraniums in pots, against the opposite wall. Oneend of the room was polygonal, such a shape being dictated by theexterior design; in this part the windows were placed, as at the east endof continental churches. Thus, from the combined effects of theecclesiastical lancet lights and the apsidal shape of the room, itoccurred to Christopher that the sisters were all a delightful set ofpretty saints, exhibiting themselves in a lady chapel, and backed up byunkempt major prophets, as represented by the forms of their bigbrothers.
Christopher sat down to tea as invited, squeezing himself in between twochildren whose names were almost as long as their persons, and whose tincups discoursed primitive music by means of spoons rattled inside themuntil they were filled. The tea proceeded pleasantly, notwithstandingthat the cake,
being a little burnt, tasted on the outside like thelatter plums in snapdragon. Christopher never could meet the eye ofPicotee, who continued in a wild state of flushing all the time, fixingher looks upon the sugar-basin, except when she glanced out of the windowto see how the evening was going on, and speaking no word at all unlessit was to correct a small sister of somewhat crude manners as regardsfilling the mouth, which Picotee did in a whisper, and a gentleinclination of her mouth to the little one's ear, and a still deeperblush than before.
Their visitor next noticed that an additional cup-and-saucer and platemade their appearance occasionally at the table, were silentlyreplenished, and then carried off by one of the children to an innerapartment.
'Our mother is bedridden,' said Ethelberta, noticing Christopher's lookat the proceeding. 'Emmeline attends to the household, except whenPicotee is at home, and Joey attends to the gate; but our mother'saffliction is a very unfortunate thing for the poor children. We arethinking of a plan of living which will, I hope, be more convenient thanthis is; but we have not yet decided what to do.' At this minute acarriage and pair of horses became visible through one of the angularwindows of the apse, in the act of turning in from the highway towardsthe park gate. The boy who answered to the name of Joey sprang up fromthe table with the promptness of a Jack-in-the-box, and ran out at thedoor. Everybody turned as the carriage passed through the gate, whichJoey held open, putting his other hand where the brim of his hat wouldhave been if he had worn one, and lapsing into a careless boy again theinstant that the vehicle had gone by.
'There's a tremendous large dinner-party at the House to-night,' saidEmmeline methodically, looking at the equipage over the edge of herteacup, without leaving off sipping. 'That was Lord Mountclere. He's awicked old man, they say.'
'Lord Mountclere?' said Ethelberta musingly. 'I used to know somefriends of his. In what way is he wicked?'
'I don't know,' said Emmeline, with simplicity. 'I suppose it is becausehe breaks the commandments. But I wonder how a big rich lord can want tosteal anything.' Emmeline's thoughts of breaking commandmentsinstinctively fell upon the eighth, as being in her ideas the only casewherein the gain could be considered as at all worth the hazard.
Ethelberta said nothing; but Christopher thought that a shade ofdepression passed over her.
'Hook back the gate, Joey,' shouted Emmeline, when the carriage hadproceeded up the drive. 'There's more to come.'
Joey did as ordered, and by the time he got indoors another carriageturned in from the public road--a one-horse brougham this time.
'I know who that is: that's Mr. Ladywell,' said Emmeline, in the samematter-of-fact tone. 'He's been here afore: he's a distant relation ofthe squire's, and he once gave me sixpence for picking up his gloves.'
'What shall I live to see?' murmured the poetess, under her breath,nearly dropping her teacup in an involuntary trepidation, from which shemade it a point of dignity to recover in a moment. Christopher's eyes,at that exhibition from Ethelberta, entered her own like a pair oflances. Picotee, seeing Christopher's quick look of jealousy, becameinvolved in her turn, and grew pale as a lily in her endeavours toconceal the complications to which it gave birth in her poor littlebreast likewise.
'You judge me very wrongly,' said Ethelberta, in answer to Christopher'shasty look of resentment.
'In supposing Mr. Ladywell to be a great friend of yours?' saidChristopher, who had in some indescribable way suddenly assumed a rightto Ethelberta as his old property.
'Yes: for I hardly know him, and certainly do not value him.'
After this there was something in the mutual look of the two, thoughtheir words had been private, which did not tend to remove the anguish offragile Picotee. Christopher, assured that Ethelberta's embarrassmenthad been caused by nothing more than the sense of her odd socialsubsidence, recovered more bliss than he had lost, and regarded calmlythe profile of young Ladywell between the two windows of his brougham asit passed the open cottage door, bearing him along unconscious as thedead of the nearness of his beloved one, and of the sad buffoonery thatfate, fortune, and the guardian angels had been playing with Ethelbertaof late. He recognized the face as that of the young man whom he hadencountered when watching Ethelberta's window from Rookington Park.
'Perhaps you remember seeing him at the Christmas dance at Wyndway?' sheinquired. 'He is a good-natured fellow. Afterwards he sent me thatportfolio of sketches you see in the corner. He might possibly dosomething in the world as a painter if he were obliged to work at the artfor his bread, which he is not.' She added with bitter pleasantry: 'Inbare mercy to his self-respect I must remain unseen here.'
It impressed Christopher to perceive how, under the estrangement whicharose from differences of education, surroundings, experience, andtalent, the sympathies of close relationship were perceptible inEthelberta's bearing towards her brothers and sisters. At a remark uponsome simple pleasure wherein she had not participated because absent andoccupied by far more comprehensive interests, a gloom as of banishmentwould cross her face and dim it for awhile, showing that the free habitsand enthusiasms of country life had still their charm with her, in theface of the subtler gratifications of abridged bodices, candlelight, andno feelings in particular, which prevailed in town. Perhaps the onecondition which could work up into a permanent feeling the passingrevival of his fancy for a woman whose chief attribute he had supposed tobe sprightliness was added now by the romantic ubiquity of station thatattached to her. A discovery which might have grated on the senses of aman wedded to conventionality was a positive pleasure to one whose faithin society had departed with his own social ruin.
The room began to darken, whereupon Christopher arose to leave; and thebrothers Sol and Dan offered to accompany him.