The Hand of Ethelberta Part 19

'Why should you not get that?'

'It has been forbidden to me.'

Her complexion changed just enough to show that she knew what he meant.

'If you were as bold as you are subtle, you would take a more cheerful view of the matter,' she said, with a look signifying innermost things.

'I will instantly! Shall I test the truth of my cheerful view by a word of question?'

'I deny that you are capable of taking that view, and until you prove that you are, no question is allowed,' she said, laughing, and still warmer in the face and neck. 'Nothing but melancholy, gentle melancholy, now as in old times when there was nothing to cause it.'

'Ah--you only tease.'

'You will not throw aside that bitter medicine of distrust, for the world. You have grown so used to it, that you take it as food, as some invalids do their mixtures.'

'Ethelberta, you have my heart--my whole heart. You have had it ever since I first saw you. Now you understand me, and no pretending that you don't, mind, this second time.'

'I understood you long ago; you have not understood me.'

'You are mysterious,' he said lightly; 'and perhaps if I disentangle your mystery I shall find it to cover--indifference. I hope it does--for your sake.'

'How can you say so!' she exclaimed reproachfully. 'Yet I wish it did too--I wish it did cover indifference--for yours. But you have all of me that you care to have, and may keep it for life if you wish to. Listen, surely there was a knock at the door? Let us go inside the room: I am always uneasy when anybody comes, lest any awkward discovery should be made by a visitor of my miserable contrivances for keeping up the establishment.'

Joey met them before they had left the landing.

'Please, Berta,' he whispered, 'Mr. Ladywell has called, and I've showed him into the liberry. You know, Berta, this is how it was, you know: I thought you and Mr. Julian were in the drawing-room, and wouldn't want him to see ye together, and so I asked him to step into the liberry a minute.'

'You must improve your way of speaking,' she said, with quick embarra.s.sment, whether at the mention of Ladywell's name before Julian, or at the way Joey coupled herself with Christopher, was quite uncertain.

'Will you excuse me for a few moments?' she said, turning to Christopher.

'Pray sit down; I shall not be long.' And she glided downstairs.

They had been standing just by the drawing-room door, and Christopher turned back into the room with no very satisfactory countenance. It was very odd, he thought, that she should go down to Ladywell in that mysterious manner, when he might have been admitted to where they were talking without any trouble at all. What could Ladywell have to say, as an acquaintance calling upon her for a few minutes, that he was not to hear? Indeed, if it came to that, what right had Ladywell to call upon her at all, even though she were a widow, and to some extent chartered to live in a way which might be considered a trifle free if indulged in by other young women. This was the first time that he himself had ventured into her house on that very account--a doubt whether it was quite proper to call, considering her youth, and the fertility of her position as ground for scandal. But no sooner did he arrive than here was Ladywell blundering in, and, since this conjunction had occurred on his first visit, the chances were that Ladywell came very often.

Julian walked up and down the room, every moment expanding itself to a minute in his impatience at the delay and vexation at the cause. After scrutinizing for the fifth time every object on the walls as if afflicted with microscopic closeness of sight, his hands under his coat-tails, and his person jigging up and down upon his toes, he heard her coming up the stairs. When she entered the apartment her appearance was decidedly that of a person subsiding after some little excitement.

'I did not calculate upon being so long,' she said sweetly, at the same time throwing back her face and smiling. 'But I--was longer than I expected.'

'It seemed rather long,' said Christopher gloomily, 'but I don't mind it.'

'I am glad of that,' said Ethelberta.

'As you asked me to stay, I was very pleased to do so, and always should be; but I think that now I will wish you good-bye.'

'You are not vexed with me?' she said, looking quite into his face. 'Mr.

Ladywell is n.o.body, you know.'

'n.o.body?'

'Well, he is not much, I mean. The case is, that I am sitting to him for a subject in which my face is to be used--otherwise than as a portrait--and he called about it.'

'May I say,' said Christopher, 'that if you want yourself painted, you are ill-advised not to let it be done by a man who knows how to use the brush a little?'

'O, he can paint!' said Ethelberta, rather warmly. 'His last picture was excellent, I think. It was greatly talked about.'

'I imagined you to say that he was a mere n.o.body!'

'Yes, but--how provoking you are!--n.o.body, I mean, to talk to. He is a true artist, nevertheless.'

Christopher made no reply. The warm understanding between them had quite ended now, and there was no fanning it up again. Sudden tiffs had been the constant misfortune of their courts.h.i.+p in days gone by, had been the remote cause of her marriage to another; and the familiar shadows seemed to be rising again to cloud them with the same persistency as ever.

Christopher went downstairs with well-behaved moodiness, and left the house forthwith. The postman came to the door at the same time.

Ethelberta opened a letter from Picotee--now at Sandbourne again; and, stooping to the fire-light, she began to read:--

'MY DEAR ETHELBERTA,--I have tried to like staying at Sandbourne because you wished it, but I can't endure the town at all, dear Berta; everything is so wretched and dull! O, I only wish you knew how dismal it is here, and how much I would give to come to London! I cannot help thinking that I could do better in town. You see, I should be close to you, and should have the benefit of your experience. I would not mind what I did for a living could I be there where you all are. It is so like banishment to be here. If I could not get a pupil-teachers.h.i.+p in some London school (and I believe I could by advertising) I could stay with you, and be governess to Georgina and Myrtle, for I am sure you cannot spare time enough to teach them as they ought to be taught, and Emmeline is not old enough to have any command over them. I could also a.s.sist at your dressmaking, and you must require a great deal of that to be done if you continue to appear in public. Mr. Long read in the papers the account of your first evening, and afterwards I heard two ladies of our committee talking about it; but of course not one of them knew my personal interest in the discussion. Now will you, Ethelberta, think if I may not come: Do, there's a dear sister! I will do anything you set me about if I may only come.--Your ever affectionate, PICOTEE.'

'Great powers above--what worries do beset me!' cried Ethelberta, jumping up. 'What can possess the child so suddenly?--she used to like Sandbourne well enough!' She sat down, and hastily scribbled the following reply:--

'MY DEAR PICOTEE--There is only a little time to spare before the post goes, but I will try to answer your letter at once. Whatever is the reason of this extraordinary dislike to Sandbourne? It is a nice healthy place, and you are likely to do much better than either of our elder sisters, if you follow straight on in the path you have chosen.

Of course, if such good fortune should attend me that I get rich by my contrivances of public story-telling and so on, I shall share everything with you and the rest of us, in which case you shall not work at all. But (although I have been unexpectedly successful so far) this is problematical; and it would be rash to calculate upon all of us being able to live, or even us seven girls only, upon the fortune I am going to make that way. So, though I don't mean to be harsh, I must impress upon you the necessity of going on as you are going just at present. I know the place must be dull, but we must all put up with dulness sometimes. You, being next to me in age, must aid me as well as you can in doing something for the younger ones; and if anybody at all comes and lives here otherwise than as a servant, it must be our father--who will not, however, at present hear of such a thing when I mention it to him. Do think of all this, Picotee, and bear up! Perhaps we shall all be happy and united some day. Joey is waiting to run to the post-office with this at once. All are well.

Sol and Dan have nearly finished the repairs and decorations of my house--but I will tell you of that another time.--Your affectionate sister, BERTA.'

18. NEAR SANDBOURNE--LONDON STREETS--ETHELBERTA'S

When this letter reached its destination the next morning, Picotee, in her over-anxiety, could not bring herself to read it in anybody's presence, and put it in her pocket till she was on her walk across the moor. She still lived at the cottage out of the town, though at some inconvenience to herself, in order to teach at a small village night-school whilst still carrying on her larger occupation of pupil-teacher in Sandbourne.

So she walked and read, and was soon in tears. Moreover, when she thought of what Ethelberta would have replied had that keen sister known the wildness of her true reason in wis.h.i.+ng to go, she shuddered with misery. To wish to get near a man only because he had been kind to her, and had admired her pretty face, and had given her flowers, to nourish a pa.s.sion all the more because of its hopeless impracticability, were things to dream of, not to tell. Picotee was quite an unreasoning animal. Her sister arranged situations for her, told her how to conduct herself in them, how to make up anew, in un.o.btrusive shapes, the valuable wearing apparel she sent from time to time--so as to provoke neither exasperation in the little gentry, nor superciliousness in the great.

Ethelberta did everything for her, in short; and Picotee obeyed orders with the abstracted ease of mind which people show who have their thinking done for them, and put out their troubles as they do their was.h.i.+ng. She was quite willing not to be clever herself, since it was unnecessary while she had a much-admired sister, who was clever enough for two people and to spare.

This arrangement, by which she gained an untroubled existence in exchange for freedom of will, had worked very pleasantly for Picotee until the anomaly of falling in love on her own account created a jar in the machinery. Then she began to know how wearing were miserable days, and how much more wearing were miserable nights. She pictured Christopher in London calling upon her dignified sister (for Ethelberta innocently mentioned his name sometimes in writing) and imagined over and over again the mutual signs of warm feeling between them. And now Picotee resolved upon a n.o.ble course. Like Juliet, she had been troubled with a consciousness that perhaps her love for Christopher was a trifle forward and unmaidenly, even though she had determined never to let him or anybody in the whole world know of it. To set herself to pray that she might have strength to see him without a pang the lover of her sister, who deserved him so much more than herself, would be a grand penance and corrective.

After uttering pet.i.tions to this effect for several days, she still felt very bad; indeed, in the psychological difficulty of striving for what in her soul she did not desire, rather worse, if anything. At last, weary of walking the old road and never meeting him, and blank in a general powerlessness, she wrote the letter to Ethelberta, which was only the last one of a series that had previously been written and torn up.

Now this hope had been whirled away like thistledown, and the case was grievous enough to distract a greater stoic than Picotee. The end of it was that she left the school on insufficient notice, gave up her cottage home on the plea--true in the letter--that she was going to join a relative in London, and went off thither by a morning train, leaving her things packed ready to be sent on when she should write for them.

Picotee arrived in town late on a cold February afternoon, bearing a small bag in her hand. She crossed Westminster Bridge on foot, just after dusk, and saw a luminous haze hanging over each well-lighted street as it withdrew into distance behind the nearer houses, showing its direction as a train of morning mist shows the course of a distant stream when the stream itself is hidden. The lights along the riverside towards Charing Cross sent an inverted palisade of gleaming swords down into the shaking water, and the pavement ticked to the touch of pedestrians' feet, most of whom tripped along as if walking only to practise a favourite quick step, and held handkerchiefs to their mouths to strain off the river mist from their lungs. She inquired her way to Exonbury Crescent, and between five and six o'clock reached her sister's door.

Two or three minutes were pa.s.sed in acc.u.mulating resolution sufficient to ring the bell, which when at last she did, was not performed in a way at all calculated to make the young man Joey hasten to the door. After the lapse of a certain time he did, however, find leisure to stroll and see what the caller might want, out of curiosity to know who there could be in London afraid to ring a bell twice.

Joey's delight exceeded even his surprise, the ruling maxim of his life being the more the merrier, under all circ.u.mstances. The beaming young man was about to run off and announce her upstairs and downstairs, left and right, when Picotee called him hastily to her. In the hall her quick young eye had caught sight of an umbrella with a peculiar horn handle--an umbrella she had been accustomed to meet on Sandbourne Moor on many happy afternoons. Christopher was evidently in the house.

'Joey,' she said, as if she were ready to faint, 'don't tell Berta I am come. She has company, has she not?'

'O no--only Mr. Julian!' said the brother. 'He's quite one of the family!'

'Never mind--can't I go down into the kitchen with you?' she inquired.

There had been bliss and misery mingled in those tidings, and she scarcely knew for a moment which way they affected her. What she did know was that she had run her dear fox to earth, and a sense of satisfaction at that feat prevented her just now from counting the cost of the performance.