The Hand of Ethelberta Part 23

'There's less Christianity in that sentiment than in your confessing to it, old fellow. I know the truth of it nevertheless, and that's why married men advise others to marry. Were all the world tied up, the pleasantly tied ones would be equivalent to those at present free. But what if your fellow-sufferer is not only in another such a hole, but in the same one?'

'No, Neigh--never! Don't trifle with a friend who--'

'That is, refused like yourself, as well as in love.'

'Ah, thanks, thanks! It suddenly occurred to me that we might be dead against one another as rivals, and a friends.h.i.+p of many long--days be snapped like a--like a reed.'

'No--no--only a jest,' said Neigh, with a strangely accelerated speech.

'Love-making is an ornamental pursuit that matter-of-fact fellows like me are quite unfit for. A man must have courted at least half-a-dozen women before he's a match for one; and since triumph lies so far ahead, I shall keep out of the contest altogether.'

'Your life would be pleasanter if you were engaged. It is a nice thing, after all.'

'It is. The worst of it would be that, when the time came for breaking it off, a fellow might get into an action for breach--women are so fond of that sort of thing now; and I hate love-affairs that don't end peaceably!'

'But end it by peaceably marrying, my dear fellow!'

'It would seem so singular. Besides, I have a horror of antiquity: and you see, as long as a man keeps single, he belongs in a measure to the rising generation, however old he may be; but as soon as he marries and has children, he belongs to the last generation, however young he may be.

Old Jones's son is a deal younger than young Brown's father, though they are both the same age.'

'At any rate, honest courts.h.i.+p cures a man of many evils he had no power to stem before.'

'By subst.i.tuting an incurable matrimony!'

'Ah--two persons must have a mind for that before it can happen!' said Ladywell, sorrowfully shaking his head.

'I think you'll find that if one has a mind for it, it will be quite sufficient. But here we are at my rooms. Come in for half-an-hour?'

'Not to-night, thanks!'

They parted, and Neigh went in. When he got upstairs he murmured in his deepest chest note, 'O, lords, that I should come to this! But I shall never be such a fool as to marry her! What a flat that poor young devil was not to discover that we were tarred with the same brush. O, the deuce, the deuce!' he continued, walking about the room as if pa.s.sionately stamping, but not quite doing it because another man had rooms below.

Neigh drew from his pocket-book an envelope embossed with the name of a fas.h.i.+onable photographer, and out of this pulled a portrait of the lady who had, in fact, enslaved his secret self equally with his frank young friend the painter. After contemplating it awhile with a face of cynical adoration, he murmured, shaking his head, 'Ah, my lady; if you only knew this, I should be snapped up like a snail! Not a minute's peace for me till I had married you. I wonder if I shall!--I wonder.'

Neigh was a man of five-and-thirty--Ladywell's senior by ten years; and, being of a phlegmatic temperament, he had glided thus far through the period of eligibility with impunity. He knew as well as any man how far he could go with a woman and yet keep clear of having to meet her in church without her bonnet; but it is doubtful if his mind that night were less disturbed with the question how to guide himself out of the natural course which his pa.s.sion for Ethelberta might tempt him into, than was Ladywell's by his ardent wish to secure her.

About the time at which Neigh and Ladywell parted company, Christopher Julian was entering his little place in Bloomsbury. The quaint figure of Faith, in her bonnet and cloak, was kneeling on the hearth-rug endeavouring to stir a dull fire into a bright one.

'What--Faith! you have never been out alone?' he said.

Faith's soft, quick-shutting eyes looked unutterable things, and she replied, 'I have been to hear Mrs. Petherwin's story-telling again.'

'And walked all the way home through the streets at this time of night, I suppose!'

'Well, n.o.body molested me, either going or coming back.'

'Faith, I gave you strict orders not to go into the streets after two o'clock in the day, and now here you are taking no notice of what I say at all!'

'The truth is, Kit, I wanted to see with my spectacles what this woman was really like, and I went without them last time. I slipped in behind, and n.o.body saw me.'

'I don't think much of her after what I have seen tonight,' said Christopher, moodily recurring to a previous thought.

'Why? What is the matter?'

'I thought I would call on her this afternoon, but when I got there I found she had left early for the performance. So in the evening, when I thought it would be all over, I went to the private door of the Hall to speak to her as she came out, and ask her flatly a question or two which I was fool enough to think I must ask her before I went to bed. Just as I was drawing near she came out, and, instead of getting into the brougham that was waiting for her, she went round the corner. When she came back a man met her and gave her something, and they stayed talking together two or three minutes. The meeting may certainly not have been intentional on her part; but she has no business to be going on so coolly when--when--in fact, I have come to the conclusion that a woman's affection is not worth having. The only feeling which has any dignity or permanence or worth is family affection between close blood-relations.'

'And yet you snub me sometimes, Mr. Kit.'

'And, for the matter of that, you snub me. Still, you know what I mean--there's none of that off-and-on humbug between us. If we grumble with one another we are united just the same: if we don't write when we are parted, we are just the same when we meet--there has been some rational reason for silence; but as for lovers and sweethearts, there is nothing worth a rush in what they feel!'

Faith said nothing in reply to this. The opinions she had formed upon the wisdom of her brother's pursuit of Ethelberta would have come just then with an ill grace. It must, however, have been evident to Christopher, had he not been too preoccupied for observation, that Faith's impressions of Ethelberta were not quite favourable as regarded her womanhood, notwithstanding that she greatly admired her talents.

22. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE

Ethelberta came indoors one day from the University boat-race, and sat down, 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 the other side where the people were quite few. But when the boatman had us in the middle of the river he declared he couldn't land us on the other side because of the barges, so there we were in a dreadful state--tossed up and down like corks upon great waves made by steamers till I made up my mind for a drowning. Well, at last we got back again, but couldn't reach the carriage for the crowd; and I don't know what we should have done if a gentleman hadn't come--sent by Mrs. Belmaine, who was in a great fright about us; then he was introduced to me, and--I wonder how it will end!'

'Was there anything so wonderful in the beginning, then?'

'Yes. One of the coolest and most practised men in London was ill-mannered towards me from sheer absence of mind--and could there be higher flattery? When a man of that sort does not give you the politeness you deserve, it means that in his heart he is rebelling against 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 acres somewhere--but I don't know much of him. The worst of my position now is that I excite this superficial interest in many people and a deep friends.h.i.+p in n.o.body. If what all my supporters feel could be collected into the hearts of two or three they would love me better than they love themselves; 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 many contrivances for getting out of love that you can't calculate upon keeping them in for two days together. However, it is all the same to me. 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, whose wife I should care to be; and the very qualities I like in him will, I fear, prevent his ever being in a position to ask me.'

'Is he the man you punished the week before last by forbidding him to come?'

'Perhaps he is: but he does not want civility from me. Where there's much feeling there's little ceremony.'

'It certainly seems that he does not want civility from you to make him attentive to you,' said Picotee, stifling a sigh; 'for here is a letter in his handwriting, I believe.'

'You might have given it to me at once,' said Ethelberta, opening the envelope hastily. It contained very few sentences: they were to the effect 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 always best to do nothing hastily, he had on second thoughts decided to ask her to grant him a last special favour, and see him again just once, for a few minutes only that afternoon, in which he might at least say Farewell.

To avoid all possibility of compromising her in anybody's eyes, he would call at half-past six, when other callers were likely to be gone, knowing that from the peculiar const.i.tution of the household the hour would not interfere with her arrangements. There being no time for an answer, he would a.s.sume that she would see him, and keep the engagement; the request being one which could not rationally be objected to.

'There--read it!' said Ethelberta, with glad displeasure. 'Did you ever hear such audacity? Fixing a time so soon that I cannot reply, and thus making capital out of a pretended necessity, when it is really an arbitrary arrangement of his own. That's real rebellion--forcing himself into my house when I said strictly he was not to come; and then, that it cannot rationally be objected to--I don't like his "rationally."'