The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters

  31. KNOLLSEA--A LOFTY DOWN--A RUINED CASTLE

  Knollsea was a seaside village lying snug within two headlands as betweena finger and thumb. Everybody in the parish who was not a boatman was aquarrier, unless he were the gentleman who owned half the property andhad been a quarryman, or the other gentleman who owned the other half,and had been to sea.

  The knowledge of the inhabitants was of the same special sort as theirpursuits. The quarrymen in white fustian understood practical geology,the laws and accidents of dips, faults, and cleavage, far better than theways of the world and mammon; the seafaring men in Guernsey frocks had aclearer notion of Alexandria, Constantinople, the Cape, and the Indiesthan of any inland town in their own country. This, for them, consistedof a busy portion, the Channel, where they lived and laboured, and a dullportion, the vague unexplored miles of interior at the back of the ports,which they seldom thought of.

  Some wives of the village, it is true, had learned to let lodgings, andothers to keep shops. The doors of these latter places were formed of anupper hatch, usually kept open, and a lower hatch, with a bell attached,usually kept shut. Whenever a stranger went in, he would hear awhispering of astonishment from a back room, after which a woman cameforward, looking suspiciously at him as an intruder, and advancing slowlyenough to allow her mouth to get clear of the meal she was partaking of.Meanwhile the people in the back room would stop their knives and forksin absorbed curiosity as to the reason of the stranger's entry, who bythis time feels ashamed of his unwarrantable intrusion into this hermit'scell, and thinks he must take his hat off. The woman is quite alarmed atseeing that he is not one of the fifteen native women and children whopatronize her, and nervously puts her hand to the side of her face, whichshe carries slanting. The visitor finds himself saying what he wants inan apologetic tone, when the woman tells him that they did keep thatarticle once, but do not now; that nobody does, and probably never willagain; and as he turns away she looks relieved that the dilemma of havingto provide for a stranger has passed off with no worse mishap thandisappointing him.

  A cottage which stood on a high slope above this townlet and its bayresounded one morning with the notes of a merry company. Ethelberta hadmanaged to find room for herself and her young relations in the house ofone of the boatmen, whose wife attended upon them all. Captain Flower,the husband, assisted her in the dinner preparations, when he slippedabout the house as lightly as a girl and spoke of himself as cook's mate.The house was so small that the sailor's rich voice, developed byshouting in high winds during a twenty years' experience in the coastingtrade, could be heard coming from the kitchen between the chirpings ofthe children in the parlour. The furniture of this apartment consistedmostly of the painting of a full-rigged ship, done by a man whom thecaptain had specially selected for the purpose because he had been seven-and-twenty years at sea before touching a brush, and thereby offered asufficient guarantee that he understood how to paint a vessel properly.

  Before this picture sat Ethelberta in a light linen dress, and withtightly-knotted hair--now again Berta Chickerel as of old--serving outbreakfast to the rest of the party, and sometimes lifting her eyes to theoutlook from the window, which presented a happy combination of grangescenery with marine. Upon the irregular slope between the house and thequay was an orchard of aged trees wherein every apple ripening on theboughs presented its rubicund side towards the cottage, because thatbuilding chanced to lie upwards in the same direction as the sun. Underthe trees were a few Cape sheep, and over them the stone chimneys of thevillage below: outside these lay the tanned sails of a ketch or smack,and the violet waters of the bay, seamed and creased by breezesinsufficient to raise waves; beyond all a curved wall of cliff,terminating in a promontory, which was flanked by tall and shiningobelisks of chalk rising sheer from the trembling blue race beneath.

  By one sitting in the room that commanded this prospect, a whitebutterfly among the apple-trees might be mistaken for the sails of ayacht far away on the sea; and in the evening when the light was dim,what seemed like a fly crawling upon the window-pane would turn out to bea boat in the bay.

  When breakfast was over, Ethelberta sat leaning on the window-sillconsidering her movements for the day. It was the time fixed for themeeting of the Imperial Association at Corvsgate Castle, the celebratedruin five miles off, and the meeting had some fascinations for her. Forone thing, she had never been present at a gathering of the kind,although what was left in any shape from the past was her constantinterest, because it recalled her to herself and fortified her mind.Persons waging a harassing social fight are apt in the interest of thecombat to forget the smallness of the end in view; and the hints thatperishing historical remnants afforded her of the attenuating effects oftime even upon great struggles corrected the apparent scale of her own.She was reminded that in a strife for such a ludicrously small object asthe entry of drawing-rooms, winning, equally with losing, is below thezero of the true philosopher's concern.

  There could never be a more excellent reason than this for going to viewthe meagre stumps remaining from flourishing bygone centuries, and it hadweight with Ethelberta this very day; but it would be difficult to statethe whole composition of her motive. The approaching meeting had beenone of the great themes at Mr. Doncastle's dinner-party, and LordMountclere, on learning that she was to be at Knollsea, had recommendedher attendance at some, if not all of the meetings, as a desirable andexhilarating change after her laborious season's work in town. It waspleasant to have won her way so far in high places that her health ofbody and mind should be thus considered--pleasant, less as personalgratification, than that it casually reflected a proof of her goodjudgment in a course which everybody among her kindred had condemned bycalling a foolhardy undertaking.

  And she might go without the restraint of ceremony.Unconventionality--almost eccentricity--was de rigueur for one who hadbeen first heard of as a poetess; from whose red lips magic romance hadsince trilled for weeks to crowds of listeners, as from a perennialspring.

  So Ethelberta went, after a considerable pondering how to get therewithout the needless sacrifice either of dignity or cash. It would beinconsiderate to the children to spend a pound on a brougham when as muchas she could spare was wanted for their holiday. It was almost too fartoo walk. She had, however, decided to walk, when she met a boy with adonkey, who offered to lend it to her for three shillings. The animalwas rather sad-looking, but Ethelberta found she could sit upon the padwithout discomfort. Considering that she might pull up some distanceshort of the castle, and leave the ass at a cottage before joining herfour-wheeled friends, she struck the bargain and rode on her way.

  This was, first by a path on the shore where the tide dragged huskily upand down the shingle without disturbing it, and thence up the steep crestof land opposite, whereon she lingered awhile to let the ass breathe. Onone of the spires of chalk into which the hill here had been split wasperched a cormorant, silent and motionless, with wings spread out to dryin the sun after his morning's fishing, their white surface shining likemail. Retiring without disturbing him and turning to the left along thelofty ridge which ran inland, the country on each side lay beneath herlike a map, domains behind domains, parishes by the score, harbours, fir-woods, and little inland seas mixing curiously together. Thence sheambled along through a huge cemetery of barrows, containing human dustfrom prehistoric times.

  Standing on the top of a giant's grave in this antique land, Ethelbertalifted her eyes to behold two sorts of weather pervading Nature at thesame time. Far below on the right hand it was a fine day, and the silversunbeams lighted up a many-armed inland sea which stretched round anisland with fir-trees and gorse, and amid brilliant crimson heathswherein white paths and roads occasionally met the eye in dashes andzigzags like flashes of lightning. Outside, where the broad Channelappeared, a berylline and opalized variegation of ripples, currents,deeps, and shallows, lay as fair under the sun as a New Jerusalem, theshores being of gleaming sand. Upon the radiant heather
bees andbutterflies were busy, she knew, and the birds on that side were justbeginning their autumn songs.

  On the left, quite up to her position, was dark and cloudy weather,shading a valley of heavy greens and browns, which at its further siderose to meet the sea in tall cliffs, suggesting even here at their backhow terrible were their aspects seaward in a growling southwest gale.Here grassed hills rose like knuckles gloved in dark olive, and littleplantations between them formed a still deeper and sadder monochrome. Azinc sky met a leaden sea on this hand, the low wind groaned and whined,and not a bird sang.

  The ridge along which Ethelberta rode divided these two climates like awall; it soon became apparent that they were wrestling for masteryimmediately in her pathway. The issue long remained doubtful, and thisbeing an imaginative hour with her, she watched as typical of her ownfortunes how the front of battle swayed--now to the west, flooding herwith sun, now to the east, covering her with shade: then the wind movedround to the north, a blue hole appeared in the overhanging cloud, atabout the place of the north star; and the sunlight spread on both sidesof her.

  The towers of the notable ruin to be visited rose out of the furthermostshoulder of the upland as she advanced, its site being the slope andcrest of a smoothly nibbled mount at the toe of the ridge she hadfollowed. When observing the previous uncertainty of the weather on thisside Ethelberta had been led to doubt if the meeting would be held hereto-day, and she was now strengthened in her opinion that it would not bythe total absence of human figures amid the ruins, though the time ofappointment was past. This disposed of another question which hadperplexed her: where to find a stable for the ass during the meeting, forshe had scarcely liked the idea of facing the whole body of lords andgentlemen upon the animal's back. She now decided to retain her seat,ride round the ruin, and go home again, without troubling further aboutthe movements of the Association or acquaintance with the memberscomposing it.

  Accordingly Ethelberta crossed the bridge over the moat, and rode underthe first archway into the outer ward. As she had expected, not a soulwas here. The arrow-slits, portcullis-grooves, and staircases met hereye as familiar friends, for in her childhood she had once paid a visitto the spot. Ascending the green incline and through another arch intothe second ward, she still pressed on, till at last the ass was unable toclamber an inch further. Here she dismounted, and tying him to a stonewhich projected like a fang from a raw edge of wall, performed theremainder of the ascent on foot. Once among the towers above, she becameso interested in the windy corridors, mildewed dungeons, and the tribe ofdaws peering invidiously upon her from overhead, that she forgot theflight of time.

  Nearly three-quarters of an hour passed before she came out from theimmense walls, and looked from an opening to the front over the wideexpanse of the outer ward, by which she had ascended.

  Ethelberta was taken aback to see there a file of shining carriages,which had arrived during her seclusion in the keep. From these began toburst a miscellany of many-coloured draperies, blue, buff, pied, andblack; they united into one, and crept up the incline like a cloud, whichthen parted into fragments, dived into old doorways, and lost substancebehind projecting piles. Recognizing in this the ladies and gentlemen ofthe meeting, her first thought was how to escape, for she was suddenlyovercome with dread to meet them all single-handed as she stood. Shedrew back and hurried round to the side, as the laughter and voices ofthe assembly began to be audible, and, more than ever vexed that shecould not have fallen in with them in some unobtrusive way, Ethelbertafound that they were immediately beneath her.

  Venturing to peep forward again, what was her mortification at findingthem gathered in a ring, round no object of interest belonging to theruin, but round her faithful beast, who had loosened himself in some wayfrom the stone, and stood in the middle of a plat of grass, placidlyregarding them.

  Being now in the teeth of the Association, there was nothing to do but togo on, since, if she did not, the next few steps of their advance woulddisclose her. She made the best of it, and began to descend in the broadview of the assembly, from the midst of which proceeded a laugh--'Hee-hee-hee!' Ethelberta knew that Lord Mountclere was there.

  'The poor thing has strayed from its owner,' said one lady, as they allstood eyeing the apparition of the ass.

  'It may belong to some of the villagers,' said the President in ahistorical voice: 'and it may be appropriate to mention that many werekept here in olden times: they were largely used as beasts of burden invictualling the castle previous to the last siege, in the year sixteenhundred and forty-five.'

  'It is very weary, and has come a long way, I think,' said a lady;adding, in an imaginative tone, 'the humble creature looks so aged and isso quaintly saddled that we may suppose it to be only an animated relic,of the same date as the other remains.'

  By this time Lord Mountclere had noticed Ethelberta's presence, andstraightening himself to ten years younger, he lifted his hat in answerto her smile, and came up jauntily. It was a good time now to see whatthe viscount was really like. He appeared to be about sixty-five, andthe dignified aspect which he wore to a gazer at a distance becamedepreciated to jocund slyness upon nearer view, when the small type couldbe read between the leading lines. Then it could be seen that his upperlip dropped to a point in the middle, as if impressing silence upon histoo demonstrative lower one. His right and left profiles were different,one corner of his mouth being more compressed than the other, producing adeep line thence downwards to the side of his chin. Each eyebrow roseobliquely outwards and upwards, and was thus far above the little eye,shining with the clearness of a pond that has just been able to weatherthe heats of summer. Below this was a preternaturally fat jowl, which,by thrusting against cheeks and chin, caused the arch old mouth to bealmost buried at the corners.

  A few words of greeting passed, and Ethelberta told him how she wasfearing to meet them all, united and primed with their morning'sknowledge as they appeared to be.

  'Well, we have not done much yet,' said Lord Mountclere. 'As for myself,I have given no thought at all to our day's work. I had not forgottenyour promise to attend, if you could possibly drive across, and--hee-hee-hee!--I have frequently looked towards the hill where the road descends.. . . Will you now permit me to introduce some of my party--as many ofthem as you care to know by name? I think they would all like to speakto you.'

  Ethelberta then found herself nominally made known to ten or a dozenladies and gentlemen who had wished for special acquaintance with her.She stood there, as all women stand who have made themselves remarkableby their originality, or devotion to any singular cause, as a personfreed of her hampering and inconvenient sex, and, by virtue of herpopularity, unfettered from the conventionalities of manner prescribed bycustom for household womankind. The charter to move abroad unchaperoned,which society for good reasons grants only to women of three sorts--thefamous, the ministering, and the improper--Ethelberta was in a fair wayto make splendid use of: instead of walking in protected lanes sheexperienced that luxury of isolation which normally is enjoyed by menalone, in conjunction with the attention naturally bestowed on a womanyoung and fair. Among the presentations were Mr. and Mrs. Tynn, memberand member's mainspring for North Wessex; Sir Cyril and Lady Blandsbury;Lady Jane Joy; and the Honourable Edgar Mountclere, the viscount'sbrother. There also hovered near her the learned Doctor Yore; Mr. Small,a profound writer, who never printed his works; the Reverend Mr. Brook,rector; the Very Reverend Dr. Taylor, dean; and the undoubtedly ReverendMr. Tinkleton, Nonconformist, who had slipped into the fold by chance.

  These and others looked with interest at Ethelberta: the old countyfathers hard, as at a questionable town phenomenon, the county sonstenderly, as at a pretty creature, and the county daughters with greatadmiration, as at a lady reported by their mammas to be no better thanshe should be. It will be seen that Ethelberta was the sort of womanthat well-rooted local people might like to look at on such a free andfriendly occasion as an archaeological meeting,
where, to gratify apleasant whim, the picturesque form of acquaintance is for the noncepreferred to the useful, the spirits being so brisk as to swerve fromstrict attention to the select and sequent gifts of heaven, blood andacres, to consider for an idle moment the subversive Mephistophelianendowment, brains.

  'Our progress in the survey of the castle has not been far as yet,' LordMountclere resumed; 'indeed, we have only just arrived, the weather thismorning being so unsettled. When you came up we were engaged in apreliminary study of the poor animal you see there: how it could have gotup here we cannot understand.'

  He pointed as he spoke to the donkey which had brought Ethelbertathither, whereupon she was silent, and gazed at her untoward beast as ifshe had never before beheld him.

  The ass looked at Ethelberta as though he would say, 'Why don't you ownme, after safely bringing you over those weary hills?' But the pride andemulation which had made her what she was would not permit her, as themost lovely woman there, to take upon her own shoulders the ridicule thathad already been cast upon the ass. Had he been young and gailycaparisoned, she might have done it; but his age, the clumsy trappings ofrustic make, and his needy woful look of hard servitude, were too much toendure.

  'Many come and picnic here,' she said serenely, 'and the animal may havebeen left till they return from some walk.'

  'True,' said Lord Mountclere, without the slightest suspicion of thetruth. The humble ass hung his head in his usual manner, and it demandedlittle fancy from Ethelberta to imagine that he despised her. And thenher mind flew back to her history and extraction, to her father--perhapsat that moment inventing a private plate-powder in an undergroundpantry--and with a groan at her inconsistency in being ashamed of theass, she said in her heart, 'My God, what a thing am I!'

  They then all moved on to another part of the castle, the viscountbusying himself round and round her person like the head scraper at a pig-killing; and as they went indiscriminately mingled, jesting lightly ortalking in earnest, she beheld ahead of her the form of Neigh among therest.

  Now, there could only be one reason on earth for Neigh's presence--herremark that she might attend--for Neigh took no more interest inantiquities than in the back of the moon. Ethelberta was a littleflurried; perhaps he had come to scold her, or to treat her badly in thatindefinable way of his by which he could make a woman feel as nothingwithout any direct act at all. She was afraid of him, and, determiningto shun him, was thankful that Lord Mountclere was near, to take off theedge of Neigh's manner towards her if he approached.

  'Do you know in what part of the ruins the lecture is to be given?' shesaid to the viscount.

  'Wherever you like,' he replied gallantly. 'Do you propose a place, andI will get Dr. Yore to adopt it. Say, shall it be here, or where theyare standing?'

  How could Ethelberta refrain from exercising a little power when it wasput into her hands in this way?

  'Let it be here,' she said, 'if it makes no difference to the meeting.'

  'It shall be,' said Lord Mountclere.

  And then the lively old nobleman skipped like a roe to the President andto Dr. Yore, who was to read the paper on the castle, and they soonappeared coming back to where the viscount's party and Ethelberta werebeginning to seat themselves. The bulk of the company followed, and Dr.Yore began.

  He must have had a countenance of leather--as, indeed, from his colour heappeared to have--to stand unmoved in his position, and read, and look upto give explanations, without a change of muscle, under the dozens ofbright eyes that were there converged upon him, like the sticks of a fan,from the ladies who sat round him in a semicircle upon the grass.However, he went on calmly, and the women sheltered themselves from theheat with their umbrellas and sunshades, their ears lulled by the hum ofinsects, and by the drone of the doctor's voice. The reader buzzed onwith the history of the castle, tracing its development from a mound witha few earthworks to its condition in Norman times; he related monkishmarvels connected with the spot; its resistance under Matilda to Stephen,its probable shape while a residence of King John, and the sad story ofthe Damsel of Brittany, sister of his victim Arthur, who was confinedhere in company with the two daughters of Alexander, king of Scotland. Hewent on to recount the confinement of Edward II. herein, previous to hismurder at Berkeley, the gay doings in the reign of Elizabeth, and sodownward through time to the final overthrow of the stern old pile. Ashe proceeded, the lecturer pointed with his finger at the variousfeatures appertaining to the date of his story, which he told withsplendid vigour when he had warmed to his work, till his narrative,particularly in the conjectural and romantic parts, where it becamecoloured rather by the speaker's imagination than by the pigments ofhistory, gathered together the wandering thoughts of all. It was easyfor him then to meet those fair concentred eyes, when the sunshades werethrown back, and complexions forgotten, in the interest of the history.The doctor's face was then no longer criticized as a rugged boulder, adried fig, an oak carving, or a walnut shell, but became blotted out likea mountain top in a shining haze by the nebulous pictures conjured by histale.

  Then the lecture ended, and questions were asked, and individuals of thecompany wandered at will, the light dresses of the ladies sweeping overthe hot grass and brushing up thistledown which had hitherto lainquiescent, so that it rose in a flight from the skirts of each like acomet's tail.

  Some of Lord Mountclere's party, including himself and Ethelberta,wandered now into a cool dungeon, partly open to the air overhead, wherelong arms of ivy hung between their eyes and the white sky. While theywere here, Lady Jane Joy and some other friends of the viscount toldEthelberta that they were probably coming on to Knollsea.

  She instantly perceived that getting into close quarters in that waymight be very inconvenient, considering the youngsters she had under hercharge, and straightway decided upon a point that she had debated forseveral days--a visit to her aunt in Normandy. In London it had been amere thought, but the Channel had looked so tempting from its brink thatthe journey was virtually fixed as soon as she reached Knollsea, andfound that a little pleasure steamer crossed to Cherbourg once a weekduring the summer, so that she would not have to enter the crowded routesat all.

  'I am afraid I shall not see you in Knollsea,' she said. 'I am about togo to Cherbourg and then to Rouen.'

  'How sorry I am. When do you leave?'

  'At the beginning of next week,' said Ethelberta, settling the time thereand then.

  'Did I hear you say that you were going to Cherbourg and Rouen?' LordMountclere inquired.

  'I think to do so,' said Ethelberta.

  'I am going to Normandy myself,' said a voice behind her, and withoutturning she knew that Neigh was standing there.

  They next went outside, and Lord Mountclere offered Ethelberta his arm onthe ground of assisting her down the burnished grass slope. Ethelberta,taking pity upon him, took it; but the assistance was all on her side;she stood like a statue amid his slips and totterings, some of whichtaxed her strength heavily, and her ingenuity more, to appear as thesupported and not the supporter. The incident brought Neigh stillfurther from his retirement, and she learnt that he was one of a yachtingparty which had put in at Knollsea that morning; she was greatly relievedto find that he was just now on his way to London, whence he wouldprobably proceed on his journey abroad.

  Ethelberta adhered as well as she could to her resolve that Neigh shouldnot speak with her alone, but by dint of perseverance he did manage toaddress her without being overheard.

  'Will you give me an answer?' said Neigh. 'I have come on purpose.'

  'I cannot just now. I have been led to doubt you.'

  'Doubt me? What new wrong have I done?'

  'Spoken jestingly of my visit to Farnfield.'

  'Good ---! I did not speak or think of you. When I told that incident Ihad no idea who the lady was--I did not know it was you till two dayslater, and I at once held my tongue. I vow to you upon my soul and lifethat what I say is true. How shall I prove my
truth better than by myerrand here?'

  'Don't speak of this now. I am so occupied with other things. I amgoing to Rouen, and will think of it on my way.'

  'I am going there too. When do you go?'

  'I shall be in Rouen next Wednesday, I hope.'

  'May I ask where?'

  'Hotel Beau Sejour.'

  'Will you give me an answer there? I can easily call upon you. It isnow a month and more since you first led me to hope--'

  'I did not lead you to hope--at any rate clearly.'

  'Indirectly you did. And although I am willing to be as considerate asany man ought to be in giving you time to think over the question, thereis a limit to my patience. Any necessary delay I will put up with, but Iwon't be trifled with. I hate all nonsense, and can't stand it.'

  'Indeed. Good morning.'

  'But Mrs. Petherwin--just one word.'

  'I have nothing to say.'

  'I will meet you at Rouen for an answer. I would meet you in Hades forthe matter of that. Remember this: next Wednesday, if I live, I shallcall upon you at Rouen.'

  She did not say nay.

  'May I?' he added.

  'If you will.'

  'But say it shall be an appointment?'

  'Very well.'

  Lord Mountclere was by this time toddling towards them to ask if theywould come on to his house, Enckworth Court, not very far distant, tolunch with the rest of the party. Neigh, having already arranged to goon to town that afternoon, was obliged to decline, and Ethelberta thoughtfit to do the same, idly asking Lord Mountclere if Enckworth Court lay inthe direction of a gorge that was visible where they stood.

  'No; considerably to the left,' he said. 'The opening you are looking atwould reveal the sea if it were not for the trees that block the way. Ah,those trees have a history; they are half-a-dozen elms which I plantedmyself when I was a boy. How time flies!'

  'It is unfortunate they stand just so as to cover the blue bit of sea.That addition would double the value of the view from here.'

  'You would prefer the blue sea to the trees?'

  'In that particular spot I should; they might have looked just as well,and yet have hidden nothing worth seeing. The narrow slit would havebeen invaluable there.'

  'They shall fall before the sun sets, in deference to your opinion,' saidLord Mountclere.

  'That would be rash indeed,' said Ethelberta, laughing, 'when my opinionon such a point may be worth nothing whatever.'

  'Where no other is acted upon, it is practically the universal one,' hereplied gaily.

  And then Ethelberta's elderly admirer bade her adieu, and away the wholeparty drove in a long train over the hills towards the valley whereinstood Enckworth Court. Ethelberta's carriage was supposed by her friendsto have been left at the village inn, as were many others, and herretiring from view on foot attracted no notice.

  She watched them out of sight, and she also saw the rest depart--thosewho, their interest in archaeology having begun and ended with this spot,had, like herself, declined the hospitable viscount's invitation, andstarted to drive or walk at once home again. Thereupon the castle wasquite deserted except by Ethelberta, the ass, and the jackdaws, nowfloundering at ease again in and about the ivy of the keep.

  Not wishing to enter Knollsea till the evening shades were falling, shestill walked amid the ruins, examining more leisurely some points whichthe stress of keeping herself companionable would not allow her to attendto while the assemblage was present. At the end of the survey, beingsomewhat weary with her clambering, she sat down on the slope commandingthe gorge where the trees grew, to make a pencil sketch of the landscapeas it was revealed between the ragged walls. Thus engaged she weighedthe circumstances of Lord Mountclere's invitation, and could not becertain if it were prudishness or simple propriety in herself which hadinstigated her to refuse. She would have liked the visit for manyreasons, and if Lord Mountclere had been anybody but a remarkablyattentive old widower, she would have gone. As it was, it had occurredto her that there was something in his tone which should lead her tohesitate. Were any among the elderly or married ladies who had appearedupon the ground in a detached form as she had done--and many had appearedthus--invited to Enckworth; and if not, why were they not? That LordMountclere admired her there was no doubt, and for this reason it behovedher to be careful. His disappointment at parting from her was, in oneaspect, simply laughable, from its odd resemblance to the unfeignedsorrow of a boy of fifteen at a first parting from his first love; inanother aspect it caused reflection; and she thought again of hiscuriosity about her doings for the remainder of the summer.

  * * * * *

  While she sketched and thought thus, the shadows grew longer, and the sunlow. And then she perceived a movement in the gorge. One of the treesforming the curtain across it began to wave strangely: it went further toone side, and fell. Where the tree had stood was now a rent in thefoliage, and through the narrow rent could be seen the distant sea.

  Ethelberta uttered a soft exclamation. It was not caused by the surpriseshe had felt, nor by the intrinsic interest of the sight, nor by want ofcomprehension. It was a sudden realization of vague things hithertodreamed of from a distance only--a sense of novel power put into herhands without request or expectation. A landscape was to be altered tosuit her whim. She had in her lifetime moved essentially largermountains, but they had seemed of far less splendid material than this;for it was the nature of the gratification rather than its magnitudewhich enchanted the fancy of a woman whose poetry, in spite of hernecessities, was hardly yet extinguished. But there was something more,with which poetry had little to do. Whether the opinion of any prettywoman in England was of more weight with Lord Mountclere than memories ofhis boyhood, or whether that distinction was reserved for her alone; thiswas a point that she would have liked to know.

  The enjoyment of power in a new element, an enjoyment somewhat resemblingin kind that which is given by a first ride or swim, held Ethelberta tothe spot, and she waited, but sketched no more. Another tree-top swayedand vanished as before, and the slit of sea was larger still. Her mindand eye were so occupied with this matter that, sitting in her nook, shedid not observe a thin young man, his boots white with the dust of a longjourney on foot, who arrived at the castle by the valley-road fromKnollsea. He looked awhile at the ruin, and, skirting its flank insteadof entering by the great gateway, climbed up the scarp and walked inthrough a breach. After standing for a moment among the walls, nowsilent and apparently empty, with a disappointed look he descended theslope, and proceeded along on his way.

  Ethelberta, who was in quite another part of the castle, saw the blackspot diminishing to the size of a fly as he receded along the dusty road,and soon after she descended on the other side, where she remounted theass, and ambled homeward as she had come, in no bright mood. What,seeing the precariousness of her state, was the day's triumph worth afterall, unless, before her beauty abated, she could ensure her positionagainst the attacks of chance?

  'To be thus is nothing; But to be safely thus.'

  --she said it more than once on her journey that day.

  On entering the sitting-room of their cot up the hill she found it empty,and from a change perceptible in the position of small articles offurniture, something unusual seemed to have taken place in her absence.The dwelling being of that sort in which whatever goes on in one room isaudible through all the rest, Picotee, who was upstairs, heard thearrival and came down. Picotee's face was rosed over with the brillianceof some excitement. 'What do you think I have to tell you, Berta?' shesaid.

  'I have no idea,' said her sister. 'Surely,' she added, her faceintensifying to a wan sadness, 'Mr. Julian has not been here?'

  'Yes,' said Picotee. 'And we went down to the sands--he, and Myrtle, andGeorgina, and Emmeline, and I--and Cornelia came down when she had putaway the dinner. And then we dug wriggles out of the sand with Myrtle'sspade: we got such a lot, and had such fun; they are in a dish in theki
tchen. Mr. Julian came to see you; but at last he could wait nolonger, and when I told him you were at the meeting in the castle ruinshe said he would try to find you there on his way home, if he could getthere before the meeting broke up.'

  'Then it was he I saw far away on the road--yes, it must have been.' Sheremained in gloomy reverie a few moments, and then said, 'Very well--letit be. Picotee, get me some tea: I do not want dinner.'

  But the news of Christopher's visit seemed to have taken away herappetite for tea also, and after sitting a little while she flung herselfdown upon the couch, and told Picotee that she had settled to go and seetheir aunt Charlotte.

  'I am going to write to Sol and Dan to ask them to meet me there,' sheadded. 'I want them, if possible, to see Paris. It will improve themgreatly in their trades, I am thinking, if they can see the kinds ofjoinery and decoration practised in France. They agreed to go, if Ishould wish it, before we left London. You, of course, will go as mymaid.'

  Picotee gazed upon the sea with a crestfallen look, as if she wouldrather not cross it in any capacity just then.

  'It would scarcely be worth going to the expense of taking me, would it?'she said.

  The cause of Picotee's sudden sense of economy was so plain that hersister smiled; but young love, however foolish, is to a thinking personfar too tragic a power for ridicule; and Ethelberta forbore, going on asif Picotee had not spoken: 'I must have you with me. I may be seenthere: so many are passing through Rouen at this time of the year.Cornelia can take excellent care of the children while we are gone. Iwant to get out of England, and I will get out of England. There isnothing but vanity and vexation here.'

  'I am sorry you were away when he called,' said Picotee gently.

  'O, I don't mean that. I wish there were no different ranks in theworld, and that contrivance were not a necessary faculty to have at all.Well, we are going to cross by the little steamer that puts in here, andwe are going on Monday.' She added in another minute, 'What had Mr.Julian to tell us that he came here? How did he find us out?'

  'I mentioned that we were coming here in my letter to Faith. Mr. Juliansays that perhaps he and his sister may also come for a few days beforethe season is over. I should like to see Miss Julian again. She is sucha nice girl.'

  'Yes.' Ethelberta played with her hair, and looked at the ceiling as shereclined. 'I have decided after all,' she said, 'that it will be betterto take Cornelia as my maid, and leave you here with the children.Cornelia is stronger as a companion than you, and she will be delightedto go. Do you think you are competent to keep Myrtle and Georgina out ofharm's way?'

  'O yes--I will be exceedingly careful,' said Picotee, with greatvivacity. 'And if there is time I can go on teaching them a little.'Then Picotee caught Ethelberta's eye, and colouring red, sank down besideher sister, whispering, 'I know why it is! But if you would rather haveme with you I will go, and not once wish to stay.'

  Ethelberta looked as if she knew all about that, and said, 'Of coursethere will be no necessity to tell the Julians about my departure untilthey have fixed the time for coming, and cannot alter their minds.'

  The sound of the children with Cornelia, and their appearance outside thewindow, pushing between the fuchsia bushes which overhung the path, putan end to this dialogue; they entered armed with buckets and spades, avery moist and sandy aspect pervading them as far up as the high-watermark of their clothing, and began to tell Ethelberta of the wonders ofthe deep.