The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters

  35. THE HOTEL (continued), AND THE QUAY IN FRONT

  Ethelberta, having arrived there some time earlier, had gone straight toher aunt, whom she found sitting behind a large ledger in the office,making up the accounts with her husband, a well-framed reflective manwith a grey beard. M. Moulin bustled, waited for her remarks andreplies, and made much of her in a general way, when Ethelberta said,what she had wanted to say instantly, 'Has a gentleman called Mr. Neighbeen here?'

  'O yes--I think it is Neigh--there's a card upstairs,' replied her aunt.'I told him you were alone at the cathedral, and I believe he walked thatway. Besides that one, another has come for you--a Mr. Ladywell, and heis waiting.'

  'Not for me?'

  'Yes, indeed. I thought he seemed so anxious, under a sort of assumedcalmness, that I recommended him to remain till you came in.'

  'Goodness, aunt; why did you?' Ethelberta said, and thought how much hermother's sister resembled her mother in doings of that sort.

  'I thought he had some good reason for seeing you. Are these menintruders, then?'

  'O no--a woman who attempts a public career must expect to be treated aspublic property: what would be an intrusion on a domiciled gentlewoman isa tribute to me. You cannot have celebrity and sex-privilege both.' ThusEthelberta laughed off the awkward conjuncture, inwardly deploring theunconscionable maternal meddling which had led to this, though notresentfully, for she had too much staunchness of heart to decry aparent's misdirected zeal. Had the clanship feeling been universally asstrong as in the Chickerel family, the fable of the well-bonded fagotmight have remained unwritten.

  Ladywell had sent her a letter about getting his picture of herselfengraved for an illustrated paper, and she had not replied, consideringthat she had nothing to do with the matter, her form and feature havingbeen given in the painting as no portrait at all, but as those of anideal. To see him now would be vexatious; and yet it was chilly andformal to an ungenerous degree to keep aloof from him, sitting lonely inthe same house. 'A few weeks hence,' she thought, 'when Menlove'sdisclosures make me ridiculous, he may slight me as a lackey's girl, anupstart, an adventuress, and hardly return my bow in the street. Then Imay wish I had given him no personal cause for additional bitterness.'So, putting off the fine lady, Ethelberta thought she would see Ladywellat once.

  Ladywell was unaffectedly glad to meet her; so glad, that Ethelbertawished heartily, for his sake, there could be warm friendship betweenherself and him, as well as all her lovers, without that insistentcourtship-and-marriage question, which sent them all scattering likeleaves in a pestilent blast, at enmity with one another. She was lesspleased when she found that Ladywell, after saying all there was to sayabout his painting, gently signified that he had been misinformed, as hebelieved, concerning her future intentions, which had led to hisabsenting himself entirely from her; the remark being of course, anatural product of her mother's injudicious message to him.

  She cut him short with terse candour. 'Yes,' she said, 'a false reportis in circulation. I am not yet engaged to be married to any one, ifthat is your meaning.'

  Ladywell looked cheerful at this frank answer, and said tentatively, 'AmI forgotten?'

  'No; you are exactly as you always were in my mind.'

  'Then I have been cruelly deceived. I was guided too much byappearances, and they were very delusive. I am beyond measure glad Icame here to-day. I called at your house and learnt that you were here;and as I was going out of town, in any indefinite direction, I settledthen to come this way. What a happy idea it was! To think of younow--and I may be permitted to--'

  'Assuredly you may not. How many times I have told you that!'

  'But I do not wish for any formal engagement,' said Ladywell quickly,fearing she might commit herself to some expression of positive denial,which he could never surmount. 'I'll wait--I'll wait any length of time.Remember, you have never absolutely forbidden my--friendship. Will youdelay your answer till some time hence, when you have thoroughlyconsidered; since I fear it may be a hasty one now?'

  'Yes, indeed; it may be hasty.'

  'You will delay it?'

  'Yes.'

  'When shall it be?'

  'Say a month hence. I suggest that, because by that time you will havefound an answer in your own mind: strange things may happen before then."She shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; andshe shall seek them, but shall not find them; then shall she say, I willgo and return to my first"--however, that's no matter.'

  'What--did you--?' Ladywell began, altogether bewildered by this.

  'It is a passage in Hosea which came to my mind, as possibly applicableto myself some day,' she answered. 'It was mere impulse.'

  'Ha-ha!--a jest--one of your romances broken loose. There is no law forimpulse: that is why I am here.'

  Thus fancifully they conversed till the interview concluded. Getting herto promise that she would see him again, Ladywell retired to a sitting-room on the same landing, in which he had been writing letters before shecame up. Immediately upon this her aunt, who began to suspect thatsomething peculiar was in the wind, came to tell her that Mr. Neigh hadbeen inquiring for her again.

  'Send him in,' said Ethelberta.

  Neigh's footsteps approached, and the well-known figure entered.Ethelberta received him smilingly, for she was getting so used to awkwardjuxtapositions that she treated them quite as a natural situation. Shemerely hoped that Ladywell would not hear them talking through thepartition.

  Neigh scarcely said anything as a beginning: she knew his errandperfectly; and unaccountable as it was to her, the strange andunceremonious relationship between them, that had originated in thepeculiar conditions of their first close meeting, was continued now asusual.

  'Have you been able to bestow a thought on the question between us? Ihope so,' said Neigh.

  'It is no use,' said Ethelberta. 'Wait a month, and you will not requirean answer. You will not mind speaking low, because of a person in thenext room?'

  'Not at all.--Why will that be?'

  'I might say; but let us speak of something else.'

  'I don't see how we can,' said Neigh brusquely. 'I had no other reasonon earth for calling here. I wished to get the matter settled, and Icould not be satisfied without seeing you. I hate writing on matters ofthis sort. In fact I can't do it, and that's why I am here.'

  He was still speaking when an attendant entered with a note.

  'Will you excuse me one moment?' said Ethelberta, stepping to the windowand opening the missive. It contained these words only, in a scrawl sofull of deformities that she could hardly piece its meaning together:--

  'I must see you again to-day unless you absolutely deny yourself to me, which I shall take as a refusal to meet me any more. I will arrive, punctually, five minutes after you receive this note. Do pray be alone if you can, and eternally gratify,--Yours,

  'MOUNTCLERE.'

  'If anything has happened I shall be pleased to wait,' said Neigh, seeingher concern when she had closed the note.

  'O no, it is nothing,' said Ethelberta precipitately. 'Yet I think Iwill ask you to wait,' she added, not liking to dismiss Neigh in a hurry;for she was not insensible to his perseverance in seeking her over allthese miles of sea and land; and secondly, she feared that if he were toleave on the instant he might run into the arms of Lord Mountclere andLadywell.

  'I shall be only too happy to stay till you are at leisure,' said Neigh,in the unimpassioned delivery he used whether his meaning were a tritecompliment or the expression of his most earnest feeling.

  'I may be rather a long time,' said Ethelberta dubiously.

  'My time is yours.'

  Ethelberta left the room and hurried to her aunt, exclaiming, 'O, AuntCharlotte, I hope you have rooms enough to spare for my visitors, forthey are like the fox, the goose, and the corn, in the riddle; I cannotleave them together, and I can only be with one at a time. I want thenicest drawing-room you have for an i
nterview of a bare two minutes withan old gentleman. I am so sorry this has happened, but it is notaltogether my fault! I only arranged to see one of them; but the otherwas sent to me by mother, in a mistake, and the third met with me on myjourney: that's the explanation. There's the oldest of them just come.'

  She looked through the glass partition, and under the arch of the court-gate, as the wheels of the viscount's carriage were heard outside.Ethelberta ascended to a room on the first floor, Lord Mountclere wasshown up, and the door closed upon them.

  At this time Neigh was very comfortably lounging in an arm-chair inEthelberta's room on the second floor. This was a pleasant enough way ofpassing the minutes with such a tender interview in prospect; and as heleant he looked with languid and luxurious interest through the opencasement at the spars and rigging of some luggers on the Seine, thepillars of the suspension bridge, and the scenery of the Faubourg St.Sever on the other side of the river. How languid his interest mightultimately have become there is no knowing; but there soon arose upon hisear the accents of Ethelberta in low distinctness from somewhere outsidethe room.

  'Yes; the scene is pleasant to-day,' she said. 'I like a view over ariver.'

  'I should think the steamboats are objectionable when they stop here,'said another person.

  Neigh's face closed in to an aspect of perplexity. 'Surely that cannotbe Lord Mountclere?' he muttered.

  Had he been certain that Ethelberta was only talking to a stranger, Neighwould probably have felt their conversation to be no business of his,much as he might have been surprised to find her giving audience toanother man at such a place. But his impression that the voice was thatof his acquaintance, Lord Mountclere, coupled with doubts as to itspossibility, was enough to lead him to rise from the chair and put hishead out of the window.

  Upon a balcony beneath him were the speakers, as he hadsuspected--Ethelberta and the viscount.

  Looking right and left, he saw projecting from the next window the headof his friend Ladywell, gazing right and left likewise, apparently justdrawn out by the same voice which had attracted himself.

  'What--you, Neigh!--how strange,' came from Ladywell's lips before he hadtime to recollect that great coolness existed between himself and Neighon Ethelberta's account, which had led to the reduction of their intimacyto the most attenuated of nods and good-mornings ever since the Harlequin-rose incident at Cripplegate.

  'Yes; it is rather strange,' said Neigh, with saturnine evenness. 'Stilla fellow must be somewhere.'

  Each then looked over his window-sill downwards, upon the speakers whohad attracted them thither.

  Lord Mountclere uttered something in a low tone which did not reach theyoung men; to which Ethelberta replied, 'As I have said, Lord Mountclere,I cannot give you an answer now. I must consider what to do with Mr.Neigh and Mr. Ladywell. It is too sudden for me to decide at once. Icould not do so until I have got home to England, when I will write you aletter, stating frankly my affairs and those of my relatives. I shallnot consider that you have addressed me on the subject of marriage until,having received my letter, you--'

  'Repeat my proposal,' said Lord Mountclere.

  'Yes.'

  'My dear Mrs. Petherwin, it is as good as repeated! But I have no rightto assume anything you don't wish me to assume, and I will wait. Howlong is it that I am to suffer in this uncertainty?'

  'A month. By that time I shall have grown weary of my other twosuitors.'

  'A month! Really inflexible?'

  Ethelberta had returned inside the window, and her answer was inaudible.Ladywell and Neigh looked up, and their eyes met. Both had beenreluctant to remain where they stood, but they were too fascinated toinstantly retire. Neigh moved now, and Ladywell did the same. Each sawthat the face of his companion was flushed.

  'Come in and see me,' said Ladywell quickly, before quite withdrawing hishead. 'I am staying in this room.'

  'I will,' said Neigh; and taking his hat he left Ethelberta's apartmentforthwith.

  On entering the quarters of his friend he found him seated at a tablewhereon writing materials were strewn. They shook hands in silence, butthe meaning in their looks was enough.

  'Just let me write a note, Ladywell, and I'm your man,' said Neigh then,with the freedom of an old acquaintance.

  'I was going to do the same thing,' said Ladywell.

  Neigh then sat down, and for a minute or two nothing was to be heard butthe scratching of a pair of pens, ending on the one side with a moreboisterous scratch, as the writer shaped 'Eustace Ladywell,' and on theother with slow firmness in the characters 'Alfred Neigh.'

  'There's for you, my fair one,' said Neigh, closing and directing hisletter.

  'Yours is for Mrs. Petherwin? So is mine,' said Ladywell, grasping thebell-pull. 'Shall I direct it to be put on her table with this one?'

  'Thanks.' And the two letters went off to Ethelberta's sitting-room,which she had vacated to receive Lord Mountclere in an empty one beneath.Neigh's letter was simply a pleading of a sudden call away whichprevented his waiting till she should return; Ladywell's, though statingthe same reason for leaving, was more of an upbraiding nature, and mightalmost have told its reader, were she to take the trouble to guess, thathe knew of the business of Lord Mountclere with her to-day.

  'Now, let us get out of this place,' said Neigh. He proceeded at oncedown the stairs, followed by Ladywell, who--settling his account at thebureau without calling for a bill, and directing his portmanteau to besent to the Right-bank railway station--went with Neigh into the street.

  They had not walked fifty yards up the quay when two British workmen, inholiday costume, who had just turned the corner of the Rue Jeanne d'Arc,approached them. Seeing him to be an Englishman, one of the twoaddressed Neigh, saying, 'Can you tell us the way, sir, to the Hotel BoldSoldier?'

  Neigh pointed out the place he had just come from to the tall young men,and continued his walk with Ladywell.

  Ladywell was the first to break silence. 'I have been considerablymisled, Neigh,' he said; 'and I imagine from what has just happened thatyou have been misled too.'

  'Just a little,' said Neigh, bringing abstracted lines of meditation intohis face. 'But it was my own fault: for I ought to have known that thesestage and platform women have what they are pleased to call Bohemianismso thoroughly engrained with their natures that they are no more constantto usage in their sentiments than they are in their way of living. GoodLord, to think she has caught old Mountclere! She is sure to have him ifshe does not dally with him so long that he gets cool again.'

  'A beautiful creature like her to think of marrying such an infatuatedidiot as he!'

  'He can give her a title as well as younger men. It will not be thefirst time that such matches have been made.'

  'I can't believe it,' said Ladywell vehemently. 'She has too much poetryin her--too much good sense; her nature is the essence of all that'sromantic. I can't help saying it, though she has treated me cruelly.'

  'She has good looks, certainly. I'll own to that. As for her romanceand good-feeling, that I leave to you. I think she has treated you nomore cruelly, as you call it, than she has me, come to that.'

  'She told me she would give me an answer in a month,' said Ladywellemotionally.

  'So she told me,' said Neigh.

  'And so she told him,' said Ladywell.

  'And I have no doubt she will keep her word to him in her usual precisemanner.'

  'But see what she implied to me! I distinctly understood from her thatthe answer would be favourable.'

  'So did I.'

  'So does he.'

  'And he is sure to be the one who gets it, since only one of us can.Well, I wouldn't marry her for love, money, nor--'

  'Offspring.'

  'Exactly: I would not. "I'll give you an answer in a month"--to allthree of us! For God's sake let's sit down here and have something todrink.'

  They drew up a couple of chairs to one of the tables of a wine-shop cl
oseby, and shouted to the waiter with the vigour of persons going to thedogs. Here, behind the horizontal-headed trees that dotted this part ofthe quay, they sat over their bottles denouncing womankind till the sungot low down upon the river, and the houses on the further side began tobe toned by a blue mist. At last they rose from their seats anddeparted, Neigh to dine and consider his route, and Ladywell to take thetrain for Dieppe.

  While these incidents had been in progress the two workmen had foundtheir way into the hotel where Ethelberta was staying. Passing throughthe entrance, they stood at gaze in the court, much perplexed as to thedoor to be made for; the difficulty was solved by the appearance ofCornelia, who in expectation of them had been for the last half-hourleaning over the sill of her bed-room window, which looked into theinterior, amusing herself by watching the movements to and fro in thecourt beneath.

  After conversing awhile in undertones as if they had no real right thereat all, Cornelia told them she would call their sister, if an oldgentleman who had been to see her were gone again. Cornelia then ranaway, and Sol and Dan stood aloof, till they had seen the old gentlemanalluded to go to the door and drive off, shortly after which Ethelbertaran down to meet them.

  'Whatever have you got as your luggage?' she said, after hearing a fewwords about their journey, and looking at a curious object like a hugeextended accordion with bellows of gorgeous-patterned carpeting.

  'Well, I thought to myself,' said Sol, ''tis a terrible bother aboutcarrying our things. So what did I do but turn to and make a carpet-bagthat would hold all mine and Dan's too. This, you see, Berta, is a dealtop and bottom out of three-quarter stuff, stained and varnished. Well,then you see I've got carpet sides tacked on with these brass nails,which make it look very handsome; and so when my bag is empty 'twill shutup and be only a couple of boards under yer arm, and when 'tis open itwill hold a'most anything you like to put in it. That portmantle didn'tcost more than three half-crowns altogether, and ten pound wouldn't ha'got anything so strong from a portmantle maker, would it, Dan?'

  'Well, no.'

  'And then you see, Berta,' Sol continued in the same earnest tone, andfurther exhibiting the article, 'I've made this trap-door in the top withhinges and padlock complete, so that--'

  'I am afraid it is tiring you after your journey to explain all this tome,' said Ethelberta gently, noticing that a few Gallic smilers weregathering round. 'Aunt has found a nice room for you at the top of thestaircase in that corner--"Escalier D" you'll see painted at thebottom--and when you have been up come across to me at number thirty-fouron this side, and we'll talk about everything.'

  'Look here, Sol,' said Dan, who had left his brother and gone on to thestairs. 'What a rum staircase--the treads all in little blocks, andpainted chocolate, as I am alive!'

  'I am afraid I shall not be able to go on to Paris with you, after all,'Ethelberta continued to Sol. 'Something has just happened which makes itdesirable for me to return at once to England. But I will write a listof all you are to see, and where you are to go, so that it will makelittle difference, I hope.'

  Ten minutes before this time Ethelberta had been frankly and earnestlyasked by Lord Mountclere to become his bride; not only so, but he pressedher to consent to have the ceremony performed before they returned toEngland. Ethelberta had unquestionably been much surprised; and, barringthe fact that the viscount was somewhat ancient in comparison withherself, the temptation to close with his offer was strong, and wouldhave been felt as such by any woman in the position of Ethelberta, now alittle reckless by stress of circumstances, and tinged with a bitternessof spirit against herself and the world generally. But she wasexperienced enough to know what heaviness might result from a hastymarriage, entered into with a mind full of concealments and suppressionswhich, if told, were likely to stop the marriage altogether; and aftertrying to bring herself to speak of her family and situation to LordMountclere as he stood, a certain caution triumphed, and she concludedthat it would be better to postpone her reply till she could considerwhich of two courses it would be advisable to adopt; to write and explainto him, or to explain nothing and refuse him. The third course, toexplain nothing and hasten the wedding, she rejected without hesitation.With a pervading sense of her own obligations in forming this compact itdid not occur to her to ask if Lord Mountclere might not have duties ofexplanation equally with herself, though bearing rather on the moral thanthe social aspects of the case.

  Her resolution not to go on to Paris was formed simply because LordMountclere himself was proceeding in that direction, which might lead toother unseemly rencounters with him had she, too, persevered in herjourney. She accordingly gave Sol and Dan directions for their guidanceto Paris and back, starting herself with Cornelia the next day to returnagain to Knollsea, and to decide finally and for ever what to do in thevexed question at present agitating her.

  Never before in her life had she treated marriage in such a terribly cooland cynical spirit as she had done that day; she was almost frightened atherself in thinking of it. How far any known system of ethics mightexcuse her on the score of those curious pressures which had been broughtto bear upon her life, or whether it could excuse her at all, she had nospirit to inquire. English society appeared a gloomy concretion enoughto abide in as she contemplated it on this journey home; yet, since itsgloominess was less an essential quality than an accident of her point ofview, that point of view she had determined to change.

  There lay open to her two directions in which to move. She might annexherself to the easy-going high by wedding an old nobleman, or she mightjoin for good and all the easy-going low, by plunging back to the levelof her family, giving up all her ambitions for them, settling as the wifeof a provincial music-master named Julian, with a little shop of fiddlesand flutes, a couple of old pianos, a few sheets of stale music pinned toa string, and a narrow back parlour, wherein she would wait for thephenomenon of a customer. And each of these divergent grooves had itsfascinations, till she reflected with regard to the first that, eventhough she were a legal and indisputable Lady Mountclere, she might bedespised by my lord's circle, and left lone and lorn. The intermediatepath of accepting Neigh or Ladywell had no more attractions for her tastethan the fact of disappointing them had qualms for her conscience; andhow few these were may be inferred from her opinion, true or false, thattwo words about the spigot on her escutcheon would sweep her lovers'affections to the antipodes. She had now and then imagined that herprevious intermarriage with the Petherwin family might efface muchbesides her surname, but experience proved that the having been wife fora few weeks to a minor who died in his father's lifetime, did not weavesuch a tissue of glory about her course as would resist a speedy undoingby startling confessions on her station before her marriage, and herenvironments now.