The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters

  2. CHRISTOPHER'S HOUSE--SANDBOURNE TOWN--SANDBOURNE MOOR

  During the wet autumn of the same year, the postman passed one morning asusual into a plain street that ran through the less fashionable portionof Sandbourne, a modern coast town and watering-place not many miles fromthe ancient Anglebury. He knocked at the door of a flat-faced brickhouse, and it was opened by a slight, thoughtful young man, with his haton, just then coming out. The postman put into his hands a book packet,addressed, 'Christopher Julian, Esq.'

  Christopher took the package upstairs, opened it with curiosity, anddiscovered within a green volume of poems, by an anonymous writer, thetitle-page bearing the inscription, 'Metres by E.' The book was new,though it was cut, and it appeared to have been looked into. The youngman, after turning it over and wondering where it came from, laid it onthe table and went his way, being in haste to fulfil his engagements forthe day.

  In the evening, on returning home from his occupations, he sat himselfdown cosily to read the newly-arrived volume. The winds of thisuncertain season were snarling in the chimneys, and drops of rain spatthemselves into the fire, revealing plainly that the young man's room wasnot far enough from the top of the house to admit of a twist in the flue,and revealing darkly a little more, if that social rule-of-three inverse,the higher in lodgings the lower in pocket, were applicable here.However, the aspect of the room, though homely, was cheerful, a somewhatcontradictory group of furniture suggesting that the collection consistedof waifs and strays from a former home, the grimy faces of the oldarticles exercising a curious and subduing effect on the bright faces ofthe new. An oval mirror of rococo workmanship, and a heavy cabinet-pianowith a cornice like that of an Egyptian temple, adjoined a harmonium ofyesterday, and a harp that was almost as new. Printed music of the lastcentury, and manuscript music of the previous evening, lay there in suchquantity as to endanger the tidiness of a retreat which was indeed onlysaved from a chronic state of litter by a pair of hands that sometimesplayed, with the lightness of breezes, about the sewing-machine standingin a remote corner--if any corner could be called remote in a room sosmall.

  Fire lights and shades from the shaking flames struck in a butterflyflutter on the underparts of the mantelshelf, and upon the reader's cheekas he sat. Presently, and all at once, a much greater intentnesspervaded his face: he turned back again, and read anew the subject thathad arrested his eyes. He was a man whose countenance varied with hismood, though it kept somewhat in the rear of that mood. He looked sadwhen he felt almost serene, and only serene when he felt quite cheerful.It is a habit people acquire who have had repressing experiences.

  A faint smile and flush now lightened his face, and jumping up he openedthe door and exclaimed, 'Faith! will you come here for a moment?'

  A prompt step was heard on the stairs, and the young person addressed asFaith entered the room. She was small in figure, and bore less in theform of her features than in their shades when changing from expressionto expression the evidence that she was his sister.

  'Faith--I want your opinion. But, stop, read this first.' He laid hisfinger upon a page in the book, and placed it in her hand.

  The girl drew from her pocket a little green-leather sheath, worn at theedges to whity-brown, and out of that a pair of spectacles, unconsciouslylooking round the room for a moment as she did so, as if to ensure thatno stranger saw her in the act of using them. Here a weakness wasuncovered at once; it was a small, pretty, and natural one; indeed, asweaknesses go in the great world, it might almost have been called acommendable trait. She then began to read, without sitting down.

  These 'Metres by E.' composed a collection of soft and marvellouslymusical rhymes, of a nature known as the vers de societe. The linespresented a series of playful defences of the supposed strategy ofwomankind in fascination, courtship, and marriage--the whole teeming withideas bright as mirrors and just as unsubstantial, yet forming abrilliant argument to justify the ways of girls to men. The pervadingcharacteristic of the mass was the means of forcing into notice, bystrangeness of contrast, the single mournful poem that the bookcontained. It was placed at the very end, and under the title of'Cancelled Words,' formed a whimsical and rather affecting love-lament,somewhat in the tone of many of Sir Thomas Wyatt's poems. This was thepiece which had arrested Christopher's attention, and had been pointedout by him to his sister Faith.

  'It is very touching,' she said, looking up.

  'What do you think I suspect about it--that the poem is addressed to me!Do you remember, when father was alive and we were at Solentsea thatseason, about a governess who came there with a Sir Ralph Petherwin andhis wife, people with a sickly little daughter and a grown-up son?'

  'I never saw any of them. I think I remember your knowing somethingabout a young man of that name.'

  'Yes, that was the family. Well, the governess there was a veryattractive woman, and somehow or other I got more interested in her thanI ought to have done (this is necessary to the history), and we used tomeet in romantic places--and--and that kind of thing, you know. The endof it was, she jilted me and married the son.'

  'You were anxious to get away from Solentsea.'

  'Was I? Then that was chiefly the reason. Well, I decided to think nomore of her, and I was helped to do it by the troubles that came upon usshortly afterwards; it is a blessed arrangement that one does not feel asentimental grief at all when additional grief comes in the shape ofpractical misfortune. However, on the first afternoon of the littleholiday I took for my walking tour last summer, I came to Anglebury, andstayed about the neighbourhood for a day or two to see what it was like,thinking we might settle there if this place failed us. The next eveningI left, and walked across the heath to Flychett--that's a village aboutfive miles further on--so as to be that distance on my way for nextmorning; and while I was crossing the heath there I met this very woman.We talked a little, because we couldn't help it--you may imagine the kindof talk it was--and parted as coolly as we had met. Now this strangebook comes to me; and I have a strong conviction that she is the writerof it, for that poem sketches a similar scene--or rather suggests it; andthe tone generally seems the kind of thing she would write--not that shewas a sad woman, either.'

  'She seems to be a warm-hearted, impulsive woman, to judge from thesetender verses.'

  'People who print very warm words have sometimes very cold manners. Iwonder if it is really her writing, and if she has sent it to me!'

  'Would it not be a singular thing for a married woman to do? Though ofcourse'--(she removed her spectacles as if they hindered her fromthinking, and hid them under the timepiece till she should go onreading)--'of course poets have morals and manners of their own, andcustom is no argument with them. I am sure I would not have sent it to aman for the world!'

  'I do not see any absolute harm in her sending it. Perhaps she thinksthat, since it is all over, we may as well die friends.'

  'If I were her husband I should have doubts about the dying. And "allover" may not be so plain to other people as it is to you.'

  'Perhaps not. And when a man checks all a woman's finer sentimentstowards him by marrying her, it is only natural that it should find avent somewhere. However, she probably does not know of my downfall sincefather's death. I hardly think she would have cared to do it had sheknown that. (I am assuming that it is Ethelberta--Mrs. Petherwin--whosends it: of course I am not sure.) We must remember that when I knewher I was a gentleman at ease, who had not the least notion that I shouldhave to work for a living, and not only so, but should have first toinvent a profession to work at out of my old tastes.'

  'Kit, you have made two mistakes in your thoughts of that lady. Eventhough I don't know her, I can show you that. Now I'll tell you! thefirst is in thinking that a married lady would send the book with thatpoem in it without at any rate a slight doubt as to its propriety: thesecond is in supposing that, had she wished to do it, she would havegiven the thing up because of our misfortunes. With a true woman thesecond reas
on would have had no effect had she once got over the first.I'm a woman, and that's why I know.'

  Christopher said nothing, and turned over the poems.

  * * * * *

  He lived by teaching music, and, in comparison with starving, thrived;though the wealthy might possibly have said that in comparison withthriving he starved. During this night he hummed airs in bed, thought hewould do for the ballad of the fair poetess what other musicians had donefor the ballads of other fair poetesses, and dreamed that she smiled onhim as her prototype Sappho smiled on Phaon.

  The next morning before starting on his rounds a new circumstance inducedhim to direct his steps to the bookseller's, and ask a question. He hadfound on examining the wrapper of the volume that it was posted in hisown town.

  'No copy of the book has been sold by me,' the bookseller's voice repliedfrom far up the Alpine height of the shop-ladder, where he stood dustingstale volumes, as was his habit of a morning before customers came. 'Ihave never heard of it--probably never shall;' and he shook out theduster, so as to hit the delicate mean between stifling Christopher andnot stifling him.

  'Surely you don't live by your shop?' said Christopher, drawing back.

  The bookseller's eyes rested on the speaker's; his face changed; he camedown and placed his hand on the lapel of Christopher's coat. 'Sir,' hesaid, 'country bookselling is a miserable, impoverishing, exasperatingthing in these days. Can you understand the rest?'

  'I can; I forgive a starving man anything,' said Christopher.

  'You go a long way very suddenly,' said the book seller. 'Half as muchpity would have seemed better. However, wait a moment.' He looked intoa list of new books, and added: 'The work you allude to was onlypublished last week; though, mind you, if it had been published lastcentury I might not have sold a copy.'

  Although his time was precious, Christopher had now become so interestedin the circumstance that the unseen sender was somebody breathing his ownatmosphere, possibly the very writer herself--the book being too new tobe known--that he again passed through the blue shadow of the spire whichstretched across the street to-day, and went towards the post-office,animated by a bright intention--to ask the postmaster if he knew thehandwriting in which the packet was addressed.

  Now the postmaster was an acquaintance of Christopher's, but, as regardedputting that question to him, there was a difficulty. Everything turnedupon whether the postmaster at the moment of asking would be in his under-government manner, or in the manner with which mere nature had endowedhim. In the latter case his reply would be all that could be wished; inthe former, a man who had sunk in society might as well put his tongueinto a mousetrap as make an inquiry so obviously outside the pale oflegality as was this.

  So he postponed his business for the present, and refrained from enteringtill he passed by after dinner, when pleasant malt liquor, of thatcapacity for cheering which is expressed by four large letter X'smarching in a row, had refilled the globular trunk of the postmaster andneutralized some of the effects of officiality. The time was wellchosen, but the inquiry threatened to prove fruitless: the postmaster hadnever, to his knowledge, seen the writing before. Christopher wasturning away when a clerk in the background looked up and stated thatsome young lady had brought a packet with such an address upon it intothe office two days earlier to get it stamped.

  'Do you know her?' said Christopher.

  'I have seen her about the neighbourhood. She goes by every morning; Ithink she comes into the town from beyond the common, and returns againbetween four and five in the afternoon.'

  'What does she wear?'

  'A white wool jacket with zigzags of black braid.'

  Christopher left the post-office and went his way. Among his otherpupils there were two who lived at some distance from Sandbourne--one ofthem in the direction indicated as that habitually taken by the youngperson; and in the afternoon, as he returned homeward, Christopherloitered and looked around. At first he could see nobody; but when abouta mile from the outskirts of the town he discerned a light spot ahead ofhim, which actually turned out to be the jacket alluded to. In due timehe met the wearer face to face; she was not Ethelberta Petherwin--quite adifferent sort of individual. He had long made up his mind that thiswould be the case, yet he was in some indescribable way disappointed.

  Of the two classes into which gentle young women naturally divide, thosewho grow red at their weddings, and those who grow pale, the present onebelonged to the former class. She was an April-natured, pink-cheekedgirl, with eyes that would have made any jeweller in England think of histrade--one who evidently took her day in the daytime, frequently caughtthe early worm, and had little to do with yawns or candlelight. She cameand passed him; he fancied that her countenance changed. But one mayfancy anything, and the pair receded each from each without turning theirheads. He could not speak to her, plain and simple as she seemed.

  It is rarely that a man who can be entered and made to throb by thechannel of his ears is not open to a similar attack through the channelof his eyes--for many doors will admit to one mansion--allowance beingmade for the readier capacity of chosen and practised organs. Hence thebeauties, concords, and eloquences of the female form were never withouttheir effect upon Christopher, a born musician, artist, poet, seer,mouthpiece--whichever a translator of Nature's oracles into simple speechmay be called. The young girl who had gone by was fresh and pleasant;moreover, she was a sort of mysterious link between himself and the past,which these things were vividly reviving in him.

  The following week Christopher met her again. She had not much dignity,he had not much reserve, and the sudden resolution to have a holidaywhich sometimes impels a plump heart to rise up against a brain thatoverweights it was not to be resisted. He just lifted his hat, and putthe only question he could think of as a beginning: 'Have I the pleasureof addressing the author of a book of very melodious poems that was sentme the other day?'

  The girl's forefinger twirled rapidly the loop of braid that it hadpreviously been twirling slowly, and drawing in her breath, she said,'No, sir.'

  'The sender, then?'

  'Yes.'

  She somehow presented herself as so insignificant by the combined effectof the manner and the words that Christopher lowered his method ofaddress to her level at once. 'Ah,' he said, 'such an atmosphere as thewriter of "Metres by E." seems to breathe would soon spoil cheeks thatare fresh and round as lady-apples--eh, little girl? But are youdisposed to tell me that writer's name?'

  By applying a general idea to a particular case a person with the best ofintentions may find himself immediately landed in a quandary. In sayingto the country girl before him what would have suited the mass of countrylasses well enough, Christopher had offended her beyond the cure ofcompliment.

  'I am not disposed to tell the writer's name,' she replied, with adudgeon that was very great for one whose whole stock of it was a trifle.And she passed on and left him standing alone.

  Thus further conversation was checked; but, through having rearranged thehours of his country lessons, Christopher met her the next Wednesday, andthe next Friday, and throughout the following week--no further wordspassing between them. For a while she went by very demurely, apparentlymindful of his offence. But effrontery is not proved to be part of aman's nature till he has been guilty of a second act: the best of men maycommit a first through accident or ignorance--may even be betrayed intoit by over-zeal for experiment. Some such conclusion may or may not havebeen arrived at by the girl with the lady-apple cheeks; at any rate,after the lapse of another week a new spectacle presented itself; herredness deepened whenever Christopher passed her by, and embarrassmentpervaded her from the lowest stitch to the tip of her feather. She hadlittle chance of escaping him by diverging from the road, for a figurecould be seen across the open ground to the distance of half a mile oneither side. One day as he drew near as usual, she met him as women meeta cloud of dust--she turned and looked backwards till he had passed.

  This
would have been disconcerting but for one reason: Christopher wasceasing to notice her. He was a man who often, when walking abroad, andlooking as it were at the scene before his eyes, discerned successes andfailures, friends and relations, episodes of childhood, wedding feastsand funerals, the landscape suffering greatly by these visions, until itbecame no more than the patterned wall-tints about the paintings in agallery; something necessary to the tone, yet not regarded. Nothing buta special concentration of himself on externals could interrupt thishabit, and now that her appearance along the way had changed from achance to a custom he began to lapse again into the old trick. He gazedonce or twice at her form without seeing it: he did not notice that shetrembled.

  He sometimes read as he walked, and book in hand he frequently approachedher now. This went on till six weeks had passed from the time of theirfirst encounter. Latterly might have been once or twice heard, when hehad moved out of earshot, a sound like a small gasping sigh; but noarrangements were disturbed, and Christopher continued to keep down hiseyes as persistently as a saint in a church window.

  The last day of his engagement had arrived, and with it the last of hiswalks that way. On his final return he carried in his hand a bunch offlowers which had been presented to him at the country-house where hislessons were given. He was taking them home to his sister Faith, whoprized the lingering blossoms of the seeding season. Soon appeared asusual his fellow-traveller; whereupon Christopher looked down upon hisnosegay. 'Sweet simple girl,' he thought, 'I'll endeavour to make peacewith her by means of these flowers before we part for good.'

  When she came up he held them out to her and said, 'Will you allow me topresent you with these?'

  The bright colours of the nosegay instantly attracted the girl'shand--perhaps before there had been time for thought to thoroughlyconstrue the position; for it happened that when her arm was stretchedinto the air she steadied it quickly, and stood with the pose of astatue--rigid with uncertainty. But it was too late to refuse:Christopher had put the nosegay within her fingers. Whatever pleasantexpression of thanks may have appeared in her eyes fell only on the bunchof flowers, for during the whole transaction they reached to no higherlevel than that. To say that he was coming no more seemed scarcelynecessary under the circumstances, and wishing her 'Good afternoon' veryheartily, he passed on.

  He had learnt by this time her occupation, which was that ofpupil-teacher at one of the schools in the town, whither she walked dailyfrom a village near. If he had not been poor and the little teacherhumble, Christopher might possibly have been tempted to inquire morebriskly about her, and who knows how such a pursuit might have ended? Buthard externals rule volatile sentiment, and under these untowardinfluences the girl and the book and the truth about its author werematters upon which he could not afford to expend much time. AllChristopher did was to think now and then of the pretty innocent face andround deep eyes, not once wondering if the mind which enlivened them everthought of him.