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The Hand of Ethelberta
THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA--A COMEDY IN CHAPTERS by Thomas Hardy.
"Vitae post-scenia celant."--Lucretius.
PREFACE
This somewhat frivolous narrative was produced as an interlude between
stories of a more sober design, and it was given the sub-title of a
comedy to indicate--though not quite accurately--the aim of the
performance. A high degree of probability was not attempted in the
arrangement of the incidents, and there was expected of the reader a
certain lightness of mood, which should inform him with a good-natured
willingness to accept the production in the spirit in which it was
offered. The characters themselves, however, were meant to be
consistent and human.
On its first appearance the novel suffered, perhaps deservedly, for
what was involved in these intentions--for its quality of
unexpectedness in particular--that unforgivable sin in the critic's
sight--the immediate precursor of 'Ethelberta' having been a purely
rural tale. Moreover, in its choice of medium, and line of
perspective, it undertook a delicate task: to excite interest in a
drama--if such a dignified word may be used in the connection--wherein
servants were as important as, or more important than, their masters;
wherein the drawing-room was sketched in many cases from the point of
view of the servants' hall. Such a reversal of the social foreground
has, perhaps, since grown more welcome, and readers even of the finer
crusted kind may now be disposed to pardon a writer for presenting the
sons and daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Chickerel as beings who come within
the scope of a congenial regard.
T. H.
December 1895.
CONTENTS
1. A STREET IN ANGLEBURY--A HEATH NEAR IT--INSIDE THE 'RED LION' INN
2. CHRISTOPHER'S HOUSE--SANDBOURNE TOWN--SANDBOURNE MOOR 3.
SANDBOURNE MOOR (continued) 4. SANDBOURNE PIER--ROAD TO
WYNDWAY--BALLROOM IN WYNDWAY HOUSE 5. AT THE WINDOW--THE ROAD HOME 6.
THE SHORE BY WYNDWAY 7. THE DINING-ROOM OF A TOWN HOUSE--THE BUTLER'S
PANTRY 8. CHRISTOPHER'S LODGINGS--THE GROUNDS ABOUT ROOKINGTON 9. A
LADY'S DRAWING-ROOMS--ETHELBERTA'S DRESSING-ROOM 10. LADY PETHERWIN'S
HOUSE 11. SANDBOURNE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD--SOME LONDON STREETS 12.
ARROWTHORNE PARK AND LODGE 13. THE LODGE (continued)--THE COPSE
BEHIND 14. A TURNPIKE ROAD 15. AN INNER ROOM AT THE LODGE 16. A
LARGE PUBLIC HALL 17. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE 18. NEAR SANDBOURNE--LONDON
STREETS--ETHELBERTA'S 19. ETHELBERTA'S DRAWING-ROOM 20. THE
NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE HALL--THE ROAD HOME 21. A STREET--NEIGH'S
ROOMS--CHRISTOPHER'S ROOMS 22. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE 23. ETHELBERTA'S
HOUSE (continued) 24. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE (continued)--THE BRITISH
MUSEUM 25. THE ROYAL ACADEMY--THE FARNFIELD ESTATE 26. ETHELBERTA'S
DRAWING-ROOM 27. MRS. BELMAINE'S--CRIPPLEGATE CHURCH 28.
ETHELBERTA'S--MR. CHICKEREL'S ROOM 29. ETHELBERTA'S
DRESSING-ROOM--MR. DONCASTLE'S HOUSE 30. ON THE HOUSETOP 31.
KNOLLSEA--A LOFTY DOWN--A RUINED CASTLE 32. A ROOM IN ENCKWORTH COURT
33. THE ENGLISH CHANNEL--NORMANDY 34. THE HOTEL BEAU SEJOUR, AND
SPOTS NEAR IT 35. THE HOTEL (continued), AND THE QUAY IN FRONT 36.
THE HOUSE IN TOWN 37. KNOLLSEA--AN ORNAMENTAL VILLA 38. ENCKWORTH
COURT 39. KNOLLSEA--MELCHESTER 40. MELCHESTER (continued) 41.
WORKSHOPS--AN INN--THE STREET 42. THE DONCASTLES' RESIDENCE, AND
OUTSIDE THE SAME 43. THE RAILWAY--THE SEA--THE SHORE BEYOND 44.
SANDBOURNE--A LONELY HEATH--THE 'RED LION'--THE HIGHWAY 45.
KNOLLSEA--THE ROAD THENCE--ENCKWORTH 46. ENCKWORTH (continued)--THE
ANGLEBURY HIGHWAY 47. ENCKWORTH AND ITS PRECINCTS--MELCHESTER SEQUEL.
ANGLEBURY--ENCKWORTH--SANDBOURNE
1. A STREET IN ANGLEBURY--A HEATH NEAR IT--INSIDE THE 'RED LION' INN
Young Mrs. Petherwin stepped from the door of an old and
well-appointed inn in a Wessex town to take a country walk. By her
look and carriage she appeared to belong to that gentle order of
society which has no worldly sorrow except when its jewellery gets
stolen; but, as a fact not generally known, her claim to distinction
was rather one of brains than of blood. She was the daughter of a
gentleman who lived in a large house not his own, and began life as a
baby christened Ethelberta after an infant of title who does not come
into the story at all, having merely furnished Ethelberta's mother
with a subject of contemplation. She became teacher in a school, was
praised by examiners, admired by gentlemen, not admired by
gentlewomen, was touched up with accomplishments by masters who were
coaxed into painstaking by her many graces, and, entering a mansion as
governess to the daughter thereof, was stealthily married by the son.
He, a minor like herself, died from a chill caught during the wedding
tour, and a few weeks later was followed into the grave by Sir Ralph
Petherwin, his unforgiving father, who had bequeathed his wealth to
his wife absolutely.
These calamities were a sufficient reason to Lady Petherwin for
pardoning all concerned. She took by the hand the forlorn
Ethelberta--who seemed rather a detached bride than a widow--and
finished her education by placing her for two or three years in a
boarding-school at Bonn. Latterly she had brought the girl to England
to live under her roof as daughter and companion, the condition
attached being that Ethelberta was never openly to recognize her
relations, for reasons which will hereafter appear.
The elegant young lady, as she had a full right to be called if she
cared for the definition, arrested all the local attention when she
emerged into the summer-evening light with that diadem-and-sceptre
bearing--many people for reasons of heredity discovering such graces
only in those whose vestibules are lined with ancestral mail,
forgetting that a bear may be taught to dance. While this air of hers
lasted, even the inanimate objects in the street appeared to know that
she was there; but from a way she had of carelessly overthrowing her
dignity by versatile moods, one could not calculate upon its presence
to a certainty when she was round corners or in little lanes which
demanded no repression of animal spirits.
'Well to be sure!' exclaimed a milkman, regarding her. 'We should
freeze in our beds if 'twere not for the sun, and, dang me! if she
isn't a pretty piece. A man could make a meal between them eyes and
chin--eh, hostler? Odd nation dang my old sides if he couldn't!'
The speaker, who had been carrying a pair of pails on a yoke,
deposited them upon the edge of the pavement in front of the inn, and
straightened his back to an excruciating perpendicular. His remarks
had been addressed to a rickety person, wearing a waistcoat of that
preternatural length from the top to the bottom button which prevails
among men who have to do with horses. He was sweeping straws from the
carriage-way beneath the stone arch that formed a passage to the
stables behind.
'Never mind the cursing and swearing, or somebody who's never out of
hearing may clap yer name down in his black book,' said the hostler,
also pausing, and lifting his eyes to the mullioned and transomed
windows and moulded parapet above him--not to study them as features
of ancient architecture, but just to give as healthful a stretch to
the eyes as his acquaintance had done to his back. 'Michael, a old
man like you ought to think about other things, and not be looking two
ways at your time of life. Pouncing upon young flesh like a carrion
crow--'tis a vile thing in a old man.'
''Tis; and yet 'tis not, for 'tis a naterel taste,' said the milkman,
again surveying Ethelberta, who had now paused upon a bridge in full
view, to look down the river. 'Now, if a poor needy feller like
myself could only catch her alone when she's dressed up to the nines
for some grand party, and carry her off to some lonely place--sakes,
what a pot of jewels and goold things I warrant he'd find about her!
'Twould pay en for his trouble.'
'I don't dispute the picter; but 'tis sly and untimely to think such
roguery. Though I've had thoughts like it, 'tis true, about high
women--Lord forgive me for't.'
'And that figure of fashion standing there is a widow woman, so I
hear?'
'Lady--not a penny less than lady. Ay, a thing of twenty-one or
thereabouts.'
'A widow lady and twenty-one. 'Tis a backward age for a body who's so
forward in her state of life.'
'Well, be that as 'twill, here's my showings for her age. She was
about the figure of two or three-and-twenty when a' got off the
carriage last night, tired out wi' boaming about the country; and
nineteen this morning when she came downstairs after a sleep round the
clock and a clane-washed face: so I thought to myself, twenty-one, I
thought.'
'And what's the young woman's name, make so bold, hostler?'
'Ay, and the house were all in a stoor with her and the old woman, and
their boxes and camp-kettles, that they carry to wash in because hand-
basons bain't big enough, and I don't know what all; and t'other folk
stopping here were no more than dirt thencefor'ard.'
'I suppose they've come out of some noble city a long way herefrom?'
'And there was her hair up in buckle as if she'd never seen a
clay-cold man at all. However, to cut a long story short, all I know
besides about 'em is that the name upon their luggage is Lady
Petherwin, and she's the widow of a city gentleman, who was a man of
valour in the Lord Mayor's Show.'
'Who's that chap in the gaiters and pack at his back, come out of the
door but now?' said the milkman, nodding towards a figure of that
description who had just emerged from the inn and trudged off in the
direction taken by the lady--now out of sight.
'Chap in the gaiters? Chok' it all--why, the father of that nobleman
that you call chap in the gaiters used to be hand in glove with half
the Queen's court.'
'What d'ye tell o'?'
'That man's father was one of the mayor and corporation of Sandbourne,
and was that familiar with men of money, that he'd slap 'em upon the
shoulder as you or I or any other poor fool would the clerk of the
parish.'
'O, what's my lordlin's name, make so bold, then?'
'Ay, the toppermost class nowadays have left off the use of wheels for
the good of their constitutions, so they traipse and walk for many
years up foreign hills, where you can see nothing but snow and fog,
till there's no more left to walk up; and if they reach home alive,
and ha'n't got too old and weared out, they walk and see a little of
their own parishes. So they tower about with a pack and a stick and a
clane white pocket-handkerchief over their hats just as you see he's
got on his. He's been staying here a night, and is off now again.
"Young man, young man," I think to myself, "if your shoulders were
bent like a bandy and your knees bowed out as mine be, till there is
not an inch of straight bone or gristle in 'ee, th' wouldstn't go
doing hard work for play 'a b'lieve."'
'True, true, upon my song. Such a pain as I have had in my lynes all
this day to be sure; words don't know what shipwreck I suffer in these
lynes o' mine--that they do not! And what was this young widow lady's
maiden name, then, hostler? Folk have been peeping after her, that's
true; but they don't seem to know much about her family.'
'And while I've tended horses fifty year that other folk might
straddle 'em, here I be now not a penny the better! Often-times, when
I see so many good things about, I feel inclined to help myself in
common justice to my pocket.
"Work hard and be poor, Do nothing and get more."
But I draw in the horns of my mind and think to myself, "Forbear, John
Hostler, forbear!"--Her maiden name? Faith, I don't know the woman's
maiden name, though she said to me, "Good evening, John;" but I had no
memory of ever seeing her afore--no, no more than the dead inside
church- hatch--where I shall soon be likewise--I had not. "Ay, my
nabs," I think to myself, "more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows."'
'More know Tom Fool--what rambling old canticle is it you say,
hostler?' inquired the milkman, lifting his ear. 'Let's have it
again--a good saying well spit out is a Christmas fire to my withered
heart. More know Tom Fool--'
'Than Tom Fool knows,' said the hostler.
'Ah! That's the very feeling I've feeled over and over again,
hostler, but not in such gifted language. 'Tis a thought I've had in
me for years, and never could lick into shape!--O-ho-ho-ho! Splendid!
Say it again, hostler, say it again! To hear my own poor notion that
had no name brought into form like that--I wouldn't ha' lost it for
the world! More know Tom Fool than--than--h-ho-ho-ho-ho!'
'Don't let your sense o' vitness break out in such uproar, for
heaven's sake, or folk will surely think you've been laughing at the
lady and gentleman. Well, here's at it again--Night t'ee, Michael.'
And the hostler went on with his sweeping.
'Night t'ee, hostler, I must move too,' said the milkman, shouldering
his yoke, and walking off; and there reached the inn in a gradual
diminuendo, as he receded up the street, shaking his head
convulsively, 'More know--Tom Fool--than Tom Fool--ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!'
The 'Red Lion,' as the inn or hotel was called which of late years had
become the fashion among tourists, because of the absence from its
precincts of all that was fashionable and new, stood near the middle
of the town, and formed a corner where in winter the winds whistled
and assembled their forces previous to plunging helter-skelter along
the streets. In summer it was a fresh and pleasant spot, convenient
for such quiet characters as sojourned there to study the geology and
beautiful natural features of the country round.
The lady whose appearance had asserted a difference between herself
and the Anglebury people, without too clearly showing what that
difference was, passed out of the town in a few moments and, following
the highway across meadows fed by the Froom, she crossed the railway
and soon got into a lonely heath. She had been watching the base of a
cloud as it closed down upon the line of a distant ridge, like an
upper upon a lower eyelid, shutting in the gaze of the evening sun.
She was about to return before dusk came on, when she heard a
commotion in the air immediately behind and above her head. The
saunterer looked up and saw a wild-duck flying along with the greatest
violence, just in its rear being another large bird, which a
countryman would have pronounced to be one of the biggest duck-hawks
that he had ever beheld. The hawk neared its intended victim, and the
duck screamed and redoubled its efforts.
Ethelberta impulsively started off in a rapid run that would have made
a little dog bark with delight and run after, her object being, if
possible, to see the end of this desperate struggle for a life so
small and unheard-of. Her stateliness went away, and it could be
forgiven for not remaining; for her feet suddenly became as quick as
fingers, and she raced along over the uneven ground with such force of
tread that, being a woman slightly heavier than gossamer, her patent
heels punched little D's in the soil with unerring accuracy wherever
it was bare, crippled the heather-twigs where it was not, and sucked
the swampy places with a sound of quick kisses.
Her rate of advance was not to be compared with that of the two birds,
though she went swiftly enough to keep them well in sight in such an
open place as that around her, having at one point in the journey been
so near that she could hear the whisk of the duck's feathers against
the wind as it lifted and lowered its wings. When the bird seemed to
be but a few yards from its enemy she saw it strike downwards, and
after a level flight of a quarter of a minute, vanish. The hawk
swooped after, and Ethelberta now perceived a whitely shining oval of
still water, looking amid the swarthy level of the heath like a hole
through to a nether sky.
Into this large pond, which the duck had been making towards from the
beginning of its precipitate flight, it had dived out of sight. The
excited and breathless runner was in a few moments close enough to see
the disappointed hawk hovering and floating in the air as if waiting
for the reappearance of its prey, upon which grim pastime it was so
intent that by creeping along softly she was enabled to get very near
the edge of the pool and witness the conclusion of the episode.
Whenever the duck was under the necessity of showing its head to
breathe, the other bird would dart towards it, invariably too late,
however; for the diver was far too experienced in the rough humour of
the buzzard family at this game to come up twice near the same spot,
unaccountably emerging from opposite sides of the pool in succession,
and bobbing again by the time its adversary reached each place, so
that at length the hawk gave up the contest and flew away, a satanic
moodiness being almost perceptible in the motion of its wings.
The young lady now looked around her for the first time, and began to
perceive that she had run a long distance--very much further than she
had originally intended to come. Her eyes had been so long fixed upon
the hawk, as it soared against the bright and mottled field of sky,
that on regarding the heather and plain again it was as if she had
returned to a half-forgotten region after an absence, and the whole
prospect was darkened to one uniform shade of approaching night. She
began at once to retrace her steps, but having been indiscriminately
wheeling round the pond to get a good view of the performance, and
having followed no path thither, she found the proper direction of her
journey to be a matter of some uncertainty.
'Surely,' she said to herself, 'I faced the north at starting:' and
yet on walking now with her back where her face had been set, she did
not approach any marks on the horizon which might seem to signify the
town. Thus dubiously, but with little real concern, she walked on till
the evening light began to turn to dusk, and the shadows to darkness.
Presently in front of her Ethelberta saw a white spot in the shade,
and it proved to be in some way attached to the head of a man who was
coming towards her out of a slight depression in the ground. It was
as yet too early in the evening to be afraid, but it was too late to
be altogether courageous; and with balanced sensations Ethelberta kept
her eye sharply upon him as he rose by degrees into view. The
peculiar arrangement of his hat and pugree soon struck her as being
that she had casually noticed on a peg in one of the rooms of the 'Red
Lion,' and when he came close she saw that his arms diminished to a
peculiar smallness at their junction with his shoulders, like those of
a doll, which was explained by their being girt round at that point
with the straps of a knapsack that he carried behind him. Encouraged
by the probability that he, like herself, was staying or had been
staying at the 'Red Lion,' she said, 'Can you tell me if this is the
way back to Anglebury?'
'It is one way; but the nearest is in this direction,' said the
tourist--the same who had been criticized by the two old men.
At hearing him speak all the delicate activities in the young lady's
person stood still: she stopped like a clock. When she could again
fence with the perception which had caused all this, she breathed.
'Mr. Julian!' she exclaimed. The words were uttered in a way which
would have told anybody in a moment that here lay something connected
with the light of other days.
'Ah, Mrs. Petherwin!--Yes, I am Mr. Julian--though that can matter
very little, I should think, after all these years, and what has
passed.'
No remark was returned to this rugged reply, and he continued
unconcernedly, 'Shall I put you in the path--it is just here?'
'If you please.'
'Come with me, then.'
She walked in silence at his heels, not a word passing between them
all the way: the only noises which came from the two were the brushing
of her dress and his gaiters against the heather, or the smart rap of
a stray flint against his boot.
They had now reached a little knoll, and he turned abruptly: 'That is
Anglebury--just where you see those lights. The path down there is
the one you must follow; it leads round the hill yonder and directly
into the town.'
'Thank you,' she murmured, and found that he had never removed his
eyes from her since speaking, keeping them fixed with mathematical
exactness upon one point in her face. She moved a little to go on her
way; he moved a little less--to go on his.
'Good-night,' said Mr. Julian.
The moment, upon the very face of it, was critical; and yet it was one
of those which have to wait for a future before they acquire a
definite character as good or bad.
Thus much would have been obvious to any outsider; it may have been
doubly so to Ethelberta, for she gave back more than she had got,
replying, 'Good-bye--if you are going to say no more.'
Then in struck Mr. Julian: 'What can I say? You are nothing to me. .
. . I could forgive a woman doing anything for spite, except marrying
for spite.'
'The connection of that with our present meeting does not appear,
unless it refers to what you have done. It does not refer to me.'
'I am not married: you are.'
She did not contradict him, as she might have done. 'Christopher,'
she said at last, 'this is how it is: you knew too much of me to
respect me, and too little to pity me. A half knowledge of another's
life mostly does injustice to the life half known.'
'Then since circumstances forbid my knowing you more, I must do my
best to know you less, and elevate my opinion of your nature by
forgetting what it consists in,' he said in a voice from which all
feeling was polished away.
'If I did not know that bitterness had more to do with those words
than judgment, I--should be--bitter too! You never knew half about
me; you only knew me as a governess; you little think what my
beginnings were.'
'I have guessed. I have many times told myself that your early life
was superior to your position when I first met you. I think I may say
without presumption that I recognize a lady by birth when I see her,
even under reverses of an extreme kind. And certainly there is this
to be said, that the fact of having been bred in a wealthy home does
slightly redeem an attempt to attain to such a one again.'
Ethelberta smiled a smile of many meanings.
'However, we are wasting words,' he resumed cheerfully. 'It is better
for us to part as we met, and continue to be the strangers that we
have become to each other. I owe you an apology for having been
betrayed into more feeling than I had a right to show, and let us part
friends. Good night, Mrs. Petherwin, and success to you. We may meet
again, some day, I hope.'
'Good night,' she said, extending her hand. He touched it, turned
about, and in a short time nothing remained of him but quick regular
brushings against the heather in the deep broad shadow of the moor.
Ethelberta slowly moved on in the direction that he had pointed out.
This meeting had surprised her in several ways. First, there was the
conjuncture itself; but more than that was the fact that he had not
parted from her with any of the tragic resentment that she had from
time to time imagined for that scene if it ever occurred. Yet there
was really nothing wonderful in this: it is part of the generous
nature of a bachelor to be not indisposed to forgive a portionless
sweetheart who, by marrying elsewhere, has deprived him of the bliss
of being obliged to marry her himself. Ethelberta would have been
disappointed quite had there not been a comforting development of
exasperation in the middle part of his talk; but after all it formed a
poor substitute for the loving hatred she had expected.
When she reached the hotel the lamp over the door showed a face a
little flushed, but the agitation which at first had possessed her was
gone to a mere nothing. In the hall she met a slender woman wearing a
silk dress of that peculiar black which in sunlight proclaims itself
to have once seen better days as a brown, and days even better than
those as a lavender, green, or blue.
'Menlove,' said the lady, 'did you notice if any gentleman observed
and followed me when I left the hotel to go for a walk this evening?'
The lady's-maid, thus suddenly pulled up in a night forage after
lovers, put a hand to her forehead to show that there was no mistake
about her having begun to meditate on receiving orders to that effect,
and said at last, 'You once told me, ma'am, if you recollect, that
when you were dressed, I was not to go staring out of the window after
you as if you were a doll I had just manufactured and sent round for
sale.'
'Yes, so I did.'
'So I didn't see if anybody followed you this evening.'
'Then did you hear any gentleman arrive here by the late train last
night?'
'O no, ma'am--how could I?' said Mrs. Menlove--an exclamation which
was more apposite than her mistress suspected, considering that the
speaker, after retiring from duty, had slipped down her dark skirt to
reveal a light, puffed, and festooned one, put on a hat and feather,
together with several pennyweights of metal in the form of rings,
brooches, and earrings--all in a time whilst one could count a
hundred--and enjoyed half-an-hour of prime courtship by an honourable
young waiter of the town, who had proved constant as the magnet to the
pole for the space of the day and a half that she had known him.
Going at once upstairs, Ethelberta ran down the passage, and after
some hesitation softly opened the door of the sitting-room in the best
suite of apartments that the inn could boast of.
In this room sat an elderly lady writing by the light of two candles
with green shades. Well knowing, as it seemed, who the intruder was,
she continued her occupation, and her visitor advanced and stood
beside the table. The old lady wore her spectacles low down her
cheek, her glance being depressed to about the slope of her straight
white nose in order to look through them. Her mouth was pursed up to
almost a youthful shape as she formed the letters with her pen, and a
slight move of the lip accompanied every downstroke. There were two
large antique rings on her forefinger, against which the quill rubbed
in moving backwards and forwards, thereby causing a secondary noise
rivalling the primary one of the nib upon the paper.
'Mamma,' said the younger lady, 'here I am at last.'
A writer's mind in the midst of a sentence being like a ship at sea,
knowing no rest or comfort till safely piloted into the harbour of a
full stop, Lady Petherwin just replied with 'What,' in an occupied
tone, not rising to interrogation. After signing her name to the
letter, she raised her eyes.
'Why, how late you are, Ethelberta, and how heated you look!' she
said. 'I have been quite alarmed about you. What do you say has
happened?'
The great, chief, and altogether eclipsing thing that had happened was
the accidental meeting with an old lover whom she had once quarrelled
with; and Ethelberta's honesty would have delivered the tidings at
once, had not, unfortunately, all the rest of her attributes been dead
against that act, for the old lady's sake even more than for her own.
'I saw a great cruel bird chasing a harmless duck!' she exclaimed
innocently. 'And I ran after to see what the end of it would be--much
further than I had any idea of going. However, the duck came to a
pond, and in running round it to see the end of the fight, I could not
remember which way I had come.'
'Mercy!' said her mother-in-law, lifting her large eyelids, heavy as
window-shutters, and spreading out her fingers like the horns of a
snail. 'You might have sunk up to your knees and got lost in that
swampy place--such a time of night, too. What a tomboy you are! And
how did you find your way home after all!'
'O, some man showed me the way, and then I had no difficulty, and
after that I came along leisurely.'
'I thought you had been running all the way; you look so warm.'
'It is a warm evening. . . . Yes, and I have been thinking of old
times as I walked along,' she said, 'and how people's positions in
life alter. Have I not heard you say that while I was at Bonn, at
school, some family that we had known had their household broken up
when the father died, and that the children went away you didn't know
where?'
'Do you mean the Julians?'
'Yes, that was the name.'
'Why, of course you know it was the Julians. Young Julian had a day
or two's fancy for you one summer, had he not?--just after you came to
us, at the same time, or just before it, that my poor boy and you were
so desperately attached to each other.'
'O yes, I recollect,' said Ethelberta. 'And he had a sister, I think.
I wonder where they went to live after the family collapse.'
'I do not know,' said Lady Petherwin, taking up another sheet of
paper. 'I have a dim notion that the son, who had been brought up to
no profession, became a teacher of music in some country town--music
having always been his hobby. But the facts are not very distinct in
my memory.' And she dipped her pen for another letter.
Ethelberta, with a rather fallen countenance, then left her mother-in-
law, and went where all ladies are supposed to go when they want to
torment their minds in comfort--to her own room. Here she
thoughtfully sat down awhile, and some time later she rang for her
maid.
'Menlove,' she said, without looking towards a rustle and half a
footstep that had just come in at the door, but leaning back in her
chair and speaking towards the corner of the looking-glass, 'will you
go down and find out if any gentleman named Julian has been staying in
this house? Get to know it, I mean, Menlove, not by directly
inquiring; you have ways of getting to know things, have you not? If
the devoted George were here now, he would help--'
'George was nothing to me, ma'am.'
'James, then.'
'And I only had James for a week or ten days: when I found he was a
married man, I encouraged his addresses very little indeed.'
'If you had encouraged him heart and soul, you couldn't have fumed
more at the loss of him. But please to go and make that inquiry, will
you, Menlove?'
In a few minutes Ethelberta's woman was back again. 'A gentleman of
that name stayed here last night, and left this afternoon.'
'Will you find out his address?'
Now the lady's-maid had already been quick-witted enough to find out
that, and indeed all about him; but it chanced that a fashionable
illustrated weekly paper had just been sent from the bookseller's, and
being in want of a little time to look it over before it reached her
mistress's hands, Mrs. Menlove retired, as if to go and ask the
question--to stand meanwhile under the gas-lamp in the passage,
inspecting the fascinating engravings. But as time will not wait for
tire-women, a natural length of absence soon elapsed, and she returned
again and said,
'His address is, Upper Street, Sandbourne.'
'Thank you, that will do,' replied her mistress.
The hour grew later, and that dreamy period came round when ladies'
fancies, that have lain shut up close as their fans during the day,
begin to assert themselves anew. At this time a good guess at
Ethelberta's thoughts might have been made from her manner of passing
the minutes away. Instead of reading, entering notes in her diary, or
doing any ordinary thing, she walked to and fro, curled her pretty
nether lip within her pretty upper one a great many times, made a
cradle of her locked fingers, and paused with fixed eyes where the
walls of the room set limits upon her walk to look at nothing but a
picture within her mind.