22. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE
Ethelberta came indoors one day from the University boat-race, and satdown, without speaking, beside Picotee, as if lost in thought.
'Did you enjoy the sight?' said Picotee.
'I scarcely know. We couldn't see at all from Mrs. Belmaine's carriage,so two of us--very rashly--agreed to get out and be rowed across to theother side where the people were quite few. But when the boatman had usin the middle of the river he declared he couldn't land us on the otherside because of the barges, so there we were in a dreadful state--tossedup and down like corks upon great waves made by steamers till I made upmy mind for a drowning. Well, at last we got back again, but couldn'treach the carriage for the crowd; and I don't know what we should havedone if a gentleman hadn't come--sent by Mrs. Belmaine, who was in agreat fright about us; then he was introduced to me, and--I wonder how itwill end!'
'Was there anything so wonderful in the beginning, then?'
'Yes. One of the coolest and most practised men in London wasill-mannered towards me from sheer absence of mind--and could there behigher flattery? When a man of that sort does not give you thepoliteness you deserve, it means that in his heart he is rebellingagainst another feeling which his pride suggests that you do not deserve.O, I forgot to say that he is a Mr. Neigh, a nephew of Mr. Doncastle's,who lives at ease about Piccadilly and Pall Mall, and has a few acressomewhere--but I don't know much of him. The worst of my position now isthat I excite this superficial interest in many people and a deepfriendship in nobody. If what all my supporters feel could be collectedinto the hearts of two or three they would love me better than they lovethemselves; but now it pervades all and operates in none.'
'But it must operate in this gentleman?'
'Well, yes--just for the present. But men in town have so manycontrivances for getting out of love that you can't calculate uponkeeping them in for two days together. However, it is all the same tome. There's only--but let that be.'
'What is there only?' said Picotee coaxingly.
'Only one man,' murmured Ethelberta, in much lower tones. 'I mean, whosewife I should care to be; and the very qualities I like in him will, Ifear, prevent his ever being in a position to ask me.'
'Is he the man you punished the week before last by forbidding him tocome?'
'Perhaps he is: but he does not want civility from me. Where there'smuch feeling there's little ceremony.'
'It certainly seems that he does not want civility from you to make himattentive to you,' said Picotee, stifling a sigh; 'for here is a letterin his handwriting, I believe.'
'You might have given it to me at once,' said Ethelberta, opening theenvelope hastily. It contained very few sentences: they were to theeffect that Christopher had received her letter forbidding him to call;that he had therefore at first resolved not to call or even see her more,since he had become such a shadow in her path. Still, as it was alwaysbest to do nothing hastily, he had on second thoughts decided to ask herto grant him a last special favour, and see him again just once, for afew minutes only that afternoon, in which he might at least say Farewell.To avoid all possibility of compromising her in anybody's eyes, he wouldcall at half-past six, when other callers were likely to be gone, knowingthat from the peculiar constitution of the household the hour would notinterfere with her arrangements. There being no time for an answer, hewould assume that she would see him, and keep the engagement; the requestbeing one which could not rationally be objected to.
'There--read it!' said Ethelberta, with glad displeasure. 'Did you everhear such audacity? Fixing a time so soon that I cannot reply, and thusmaking capital out of a pretended necessity, when it is really anarbitrary arrangement of his own. That's real rebellion--forcing himselfinto my house when I said strictly he was not to come; and then, that itcannot rationally be objected to--I don't like his "rationally."'
'Where there's much love there's little ceremony, didn't you say justnow?' observed innocent Picotee.
'And where there's little love, no ceremony at all. These manners of hisare dreadful, and I believe he will never improve.'
'It makes you care not a bit about him, does it not, Berta?' said Picoteehopefully.
'I don't answer for that,' said Ethelberta. 'I feel, as many others do,that a want of ceremony which is produced by abstraction of mind is nodefect in a poet or musician, fatal as it may be to an ordinary man.'
'Mighty me! You soon forgive him.'
'Picotee, don't you be so quick to speak. Before I have finished, how doyou know what I am going to say? I'll never tell you anything again, ifyou take me up so. Of course I am going to punish him at once, and makehim remember that I am a lady, even if I do like him a little.'
'How do you mean to punish him?' said Picotee, with interest.
'By writing and telling him that on no account is he to come.'
'But there is not time for a letter--'
'That doesn't matter. It will show him that I did not mean him to come.'
At hearing the very merciful nature of the punishment, Picotee sighedwithout replying; and Ethelberta despatched her note. The hour ofappointment drew near, and Ethelberta showed symptoms of unrest. Sixo'clock struck and passed. She walked here and there for nothing, and itwas plain that a dread was filling her: her letter might accidentallyhave had, in addition to the moral effect which she had intended, thepractical effect which she did not intend, by arriving before, instead ofafter, his purposed visit to her, thereby stopping him in spite of allher care.
'How long are letters going to Bloomsbury?' she said suddenly.
'Two hours, Joey tells me,' replied Picotee, who had already inquired onher own private account.
'There!' exclaimed Ethelberta petulantly. 'How I dislike a man tomisrepresent things! He said there was not time for a reply!'
'Perhaps he didn't know,' said Picotee, in angel tones; 'and so ithappens all right, and he has got it, and he will not come after all.'
They waited and waited, but Christopher did not appear that night; thetrue case being that his declaration about insufficient time for a replywas merely an ingenious suggestion to her not to be so cruel as to forbidhim. He was far from suspecting when the letter of denial did reachhim--about an hour before the time of appointment--that it was sent by arefinement of art, of which the real intention was futility, and that butfor his own misstatement it would have been carefully delayed.
The next day another letter came from the musician, decidedly short andto the point. The irate lover stated that he would not be made a fool ofany longer: under any circumstances he meant to come that self-sameafternoon, and should decidedly expect her to see him.
'I will not see him!' said Ethelberta. 'Why did he not call last night?'
'Because you told him not to,' said Picotee.
'Good gracious, as if a woman's words are to be translated as literallyas Homer! Surely he is aware that more often than not "No" is said to aman's importunities because it is traditionally the correct modest reply,and for nothing else in the world. If all men took words assuperficially as he does, we should die of decorum in shoals.'
'Ah, Berta! how could you write a letter that you did not mean should beobeyed?'
'I did in a measure mean it, although I could have shown Christianforgiveness if it had not been. Never mind; I will not see him. I'llplague my heart for the credit of my sex.'
To ensure the fulfilment of this resolve, Ethelberta determined to giveway to a headache that she was beginning to be aware of, go to her room,disorganize her dress, and ruin her hair by lying down; so putting it outof her power to descend and meet Christopher on any momentary impulse.
Picotee sat in the room with her, reading, or pretending to read, andEthelberta pretended to sleep. Christopher's knock came up the stairs,and with it the end of the farce.
'I'll tell you what,' said Ethelberta in the prompt and broadly-awaketone of one who had been concentrated on the expectation of that soundfor a length of time, '
it was a mistake in me to do this! Joey will besure to make a muddle of it.'
Joey was heard coming up the stairs. Picotee opened the door, and said,with an anxiety transcending Ethelberta's, 'Well?'
'O, will you tell Mrs. Petherwin that Mr. Julian says he'll wait.'
'You were not to ask him to wait,' said Ethelberta, within.
'I know that,' said Joey, 'and I didn't. He's doing that out of his ownhead.'
'Then let Mr. Julian wait, by all means,' said Ethelberta. 'Allow him towait if he likes, but tell him it is uncertain if I shall be able to comedown.'
Joey then retired, and the two sisters remained in silence.
'I wonder if he's gone,' Ethelberta said, at the end of a long time.
'I thought you were asleep,' said Picotee. 'Shall we ask Joey? I havenot heard the door close.'
Joey was summoned, and after a leisurely ascent, interspersed by variousgymnastic performances over the handrail here and there, appeared again.
'He's there jest the same: he don't seem to be in no hurry at all,' saidJoey.
'What is he doing?' inquired Picotee solicitously.
'O, only looking at his watch sometimes, and humming tunes, and playingrat-a-tat-tat upon the table. He says he don't mind waiting a bit.'
'You must have made a mistake in the message,' said Ethelberta, within.
'Well, no. I am correct as a jineral thing. I jest said perhaps youwould be engaged all the evening, and perhaps you wouldn't.'
When Joey had again retired, and they had waited another ten minutes,Ethelberta said, 'Picotee, do you go down and speak a few words to him. Iam determined he shall not see me. You know him a little; you rememberwhen he came to the Lodge?'
'What must I say to him?'
Ethelberta paused before replying. 'Try to find out if--if he is muchgrieved at not seeing me, and say--give him to understand that I willforgive him, Picotee.'
'Very well.'
'And Picotee--'
'Yes.'
'If he says he must see me--I think I will get up. But only if he saysmust: you remember that.'
Picotee departed on her errand. She paused on the staircase trembling,and thinking between the thrills how very far would have been the conductof her poor slighted self from proud recalcitration had Mr. Julian'sgentle request been addressed to her instead of to Ethelberta; and shewent some way in the painful discovery of how much more tantalizing itwas to watch an envied situation that was held by another than to be outof sight of it altogether. Here was Christopher waiting to bestow love,and Ethelberta not going down to receive it: a commodity unequalled invalue by any other in the whole wide world was being wantonly wastedwithin that very house. If she could only have stood to-night as thebeloved Ethelberta, and not as the despised Picotee, how different wouldbe this going down! Thus she went along, red and pale moving in hercheeks as in the Northern Lights at their strongest time.
Meanwhile Christopher had sat waiting minute by minute till the eveningshades grew browner, and the fire sank low. Joey, finding himself notparticularly wanted upon the premises after the second inquiry, hadslipped out to witness a nigger performance round the corner, and Julianbegan to think himself forgotten by all the household. The perceptiongradually cooled his emotions and enabled him to hold his hat quitesteadily.
When Picotee gently thrust open the door she was surprised to find theroom in darkness, the fire gone completely out, and the form ofChristopher only visible by a faint patch of light, which, coming from alamp on the opposite side of the way and falling upon the mirror, wasthrown as a pale nebulosity upon his shoulder. Picotee was too flurriedat sight of the familiar outline to know what to do, and, instead ofgoing or calling for a light, she mechanically advanced into the room.Christopher did not turn or move in any way, and then she perceived thathe had begun to doze in his chair.
Instantly, with the precipitancy of the timorous, she said, 'Mr. Julian!'and touched him on the shoulder--murmuring then, 'O, I beg pardon, I--Iwill get a light.'
Christopher's consciousness returned, and his first act, before rising,was to exclaim, in a confused manner, 'Ah--you have come--thank you,Berta!' then impulsively to seize her hand, as it hung beside his head,and kiss it passionately. He stood up, still holding her fingers.
Picotee gasped out something, but was completely deprived of articulateutterance, and in another moment being unable to control herself at thissort of first meeting with the man she had gone through fire and water tobe near, and more particularly by the overpowering kiss upon her hand,burst into hysterical sobbing. Julian, in his inability to imagine somuch emotion--or at least the exhibition of it--in Ethelberta, gentlydrew Picotee further forward by the hand he held, and utilized thesolitary spot of light from the mirror by making it fall upon her face.Recognizing the childish features, he at once, with an exclamation,dropped her hand and started back. Being in point of fact a completebundle of nerves and nothing else, his thin figure shook like aharp-string in painful excitement at a contretemps which would scarcelyhave quickened the pulse of an ordinary man.
Poor Picotee, feeling herself in the wind of a civil d---, started backalso, sobbing more than ever. It was a little too much that the firstresult of his discovery of the mistake should be absolute repulse. Sheleant against the mantelpiece, when Julian, much bewildered at hersuperfluity of emotion, assisted her to a seat in sheer humanity. ButChristopher was by no means pleased when he again thought round thecircle of circumstances.
'How could you allow such an absurd thing to happen?' he said, in astern, though trembling voice. 'You knew I might mistake. I had no ideayou were in the house: I thought you were miles away, at Sandbourne orsomewhere! But I see: it is just done for a joke, ha-ha!'
This made Picotee rather worse still. 'O-O-O-O!' she replied, in thetone of pouring from a bottle. 'What shall I do-o-o-o! It is--not donefor a--joke at all-l-l-l!'
'Not done for a joke? Then never mind--don't cry, Picotee. What was itdone for, I wonder?'
Picotee, mistaking the purport of his inquiry, imagined him to refer toher arrival in the house, quite forgetting, in her guilty sense of havingcome on his account, that he would have no right or thought of askingquestions about a natural visit to a sister, and she said: 'When you--wentaway from--Sandbourne, I--I--I didn't know what to do, and then I ranaway, and came here, and then Ethelberta--was angry with me; but she saysI may stay; but she doesn't know that I know you, and how we used to meetalong the road every morning--and I am afraid to tell her--O, what shallI do!'
'Never mind it,' said Christopher, a sense of the true state of her casedawning upon him with unpleasant distinctness, and bringing someirritation at his awkward position; though it was impossible to be longangry with a girl who had not reasoning foresight enough to perceive thatdoubtful pleasure and certain pain must be the result of any meetingwhilst hearts were at cross purposes in this way.
'Where is your sister?' he asked.
'She wouldn't come down, unless she MUST,' said Picotee. 'You have vexedher, and she has a headache besides that, and I came instead.'
'So that I mightn't be wasted altogether. Well, it's a strange businessbetween the three of us. I have heard of one-sided love, and reciprocallove, and all sorts, but this is my first experience of a concatenatedaffection. You follow me, I follow Ethelberta, and she follows--Heavenknows who!'
'Mr. Ladywell!' said the mortified Picotee.
'Good God, if I didn't think so!' said Christopher, feeling to the solesof his feet like a man in a legitimate drama.
'No, no, no!' said the frightened girl hastily. 'I am not sure it is Mr.Ladywell. That's altogether a mistake of mine!'
'Ah, yes, you want to screen her,' said Christopher, with a witheringsmile at the spot of light. 'Very sisterly, doubtless; but none of thatwill do for me. I am too old a bird by far--by very far! Now are yousure she does not love Ladywell?'
'Yes!'
'Well, perhaps I blame her wrongly. She may hav
e some little goodfaith--a woman has, here and there. How do you know she does not loveLadywell?'
'Because she would prefer Mr. Neigh to him, any day.'
'Ha!'
'No, no--you mistake, sir--she doesn't love either at all--Ethelbertadoesn't. I meant that she cannot love Mr. Ladywell because he standslower in her opinion than Mr. Neigh, and him she certainly does not carefor. She only loves you. If you only knew how true she is you wouldn'tbe so suspicious about her, and I wish I had not come here--yes, I do!'
'I cannot tell what to think of it. Perhaps I don't know much of thisworld after all, or what girls will do. But you don't excuse her to me,Picotee.'
Before this time Picotee had been simulating haste in getting a light;but in her dread of appearing visibly to Christopher's eyes, and showinghim the precise condition of her tear-stained face, she put it off momentafter moment, and stirred the fire, in hope that the faint illuminationthus produced would be sufficient to save her from the charge of stupidconduct as entertainer.
Fluttering about on the horns of this dilemma, she was greatly relievedwhen Christopher, who read her difficulty, and the general painfulness ofthe situation, said that since Ethelberta was really suffering from aheadache he would not wish to disturb her till to-morrow, and went offdownstairs and into the street without further ceremony.
Meanwhile other things had happened upstairs. No sooner had Picotee lefther sister's room, than Ethelberta thought it would after all have beenmuch better if she had gone down herself to speak to this admirablypersistent lover. Was she not drifting somewhat into the character ofcoquette, even if her ground of offence--a word of Christopher's aboutsomebody else's mean parentage, which was spoken in utter forgetfulnessof her own position, but had wounded her to the quick nevertheless--wasto some extent a tenable one? She knew what facilities in sufferingChristopher always showed; how a touch to other people was a blow to him,a blow to them his deep wound, although he took such pains to look stolidand unconcerned under those inflictions, and tried to smile as if he hadno feelings whatever. It would be more generous to go down to him, andbe kind. She jumped up with that alertness which comes so spontaneouslyat those sweet bright times when desire and duty run hand in hand.
She hastily set her hair and dress in order--not such matchless order asshe could have wished them to be in, but time was precious--and descendedthe stairs. When on the point of pushing open the drawing-room door,which wanted about an inch of being closed, she was astounded to discoverthat the room was in total darkness, and still more to hear Picoteesobbing inside. To retreat again was the only action she was capable ofat that moment: the clash between this picture and the anticipated sceneof Picotee and Christopher sitting in frigid propriety at opposite sidesof a well-lighted room was too great. She flitted upstairs again withthe least possible rustle, and flung herself down on the couch as before,panting with excitement at the new knowledge that had come to her.
There was only one possible construction to be put upon this inEthelberta's rapid mind, and that approximated to the true one. She hadknown for some time that Picotee once had a lover, or something akin toit, and that he had disappointed her in a way which had never been told.No stranger, save in the capacity of the one beloved, could wound a womansufficiently to make her weep, and it followed that Christopher was theman of Picotee's choice. As Ethelberta recalled the conversations,conclusion after conclusion came like pulsations in an aching head. 'O,how did it happen, and who is to blame?' she exclaimed. 'I cannot doubthis faith, and I cannot doubt hers; and yet how can I keep doubting themboth?'
It was characteristic of Ethelberta's jealous motherly guard over heryoung sisters that, amid these contending inquiries, her foremost feelingwas less one of hope for her own love than of championship for Picotee's.