The Hand of Ethelberta Part 14

He repeated the name.

'Don't know the person.'

'The lady may be a visitor--I call on business.'

'She is not visiting in this house, sir.'

'Is not this Arrowthorne Lodge?'

'Certainly not.'

'Then where is Arrowthorne Lodge, please?'

'Well, it is nearly a mile from here. Under the trees by the high-road.

If you go across by that footpath it will bring you out quicker than by following the bend of the drive.'

Christopher wondered how he could have managed to get into the wrong park; but, setting it down to his ignorance of the difference between oak and elm, he immediately retraced his steps, pa.s.sing across the park again, through the gate at the end of the drive, and into the turnpike road. No other gate, park, or country seat of any description was within view.

'Can you tell me the way to Arrowthorne Lodge?' he inquired of the first person he met, who was a little girl.

'You are just coming away from it, sir,' said she. 'I'll show you; I am going that way.'

They walked along together. Getting abreast the entrance of the park he had just emerged from, the child said, 'There it is, sir; I live there too.'

Christopher, with a dazed countenance, looked towards a cottage which stood nestling in the shrubbery and ivy like a mushroom among gra.s.s. 'Is that Arrowthorne Lodge?' he repeated.

'Yes, and if you go up the drive, you come to Arrowthorne House.'

'Arrowthorne Lodge--where Mrs. Petherwin lives, I mean.'

'Yes. She lives there along wi' mother and we. But she don't want anybody to know it, sir, cause she's celebrate, and 'twouldn't do at all.'

Christopher said no more, and the little girl became interested in the products of the bank and ditch by the wayside. He left her, pushed open the heavy gate, and tapped at the Lodge door.

The latch was lifted. 'Does Mrs. Petherwin,' he began, and, determined that there should be no mistake, repeated, 'Does Mrs. Ethelberta Petherwin, the poetess, live here?' turning full upon the person who opened the door.

'She does, sir,' said a faltering voice; and he found himself face to face with the pupil-teacher of Sandbourne.

13. THE LODGE (continued)--THE COPSE BEHIND

'This is indeed a surprise; I--am glad to see you!' Christopher stammered, with a wire-drawn, radically different smile from the one he had intended--a smile not without a tinge of ghastliness.

'Yes--I am home for the holidays,' said the blushing maiden; and, after a critical pause, she added, 'If you wish to speak to my sister, she is in the plantation with the children.'

'O no--no, thank you--not necessary at all,' said Christopher, in haste.

'I only wish for an interview with a lady called Mrs. Petherwin.'

'Yes; Mrs Petherwin--my sister,' said Picotee. 'She is in the plantation. That little path will take you to her in five minutes.'

The amazed Christopher persuaded himself that this discovery was very delightful, and went on persuading so long that at last he felt it to be so. Unable, like many other people, to enjoy being satirized in words because of the irritation it caused him as aimed-at victim, he sometimes had philosophy enough to appreciate a satire of circ.u.mstance, because n.o.body intended it. Pursuing the path indicated, he found himself in a thicket of scrubby undergrowth, which covered an area enclosed from the park proper by a decaying fence. The boughs were so tangled that he was obliged to screen his face with his hands, to escape the risk of having his eyes filliped out by the twigs that impeded his progress. Thus slowly advancing, his ear caught, between the rustles, the tones of a voice in earnest declamation; and, pushing round in that direction, he beheld through some beech boughs an open s.p.a.ce about ten yards in diameter, floored at the bottom with deep beds of curled old leaves, and cushions of furry moss. In the middle of this natural theatre was the stump of a tree that had been felled by a saw, and upon the flat stool thus formed stood Ethelberta, whom Christopher had not beheld since the ball at Wyndway House.

Round her, leaning against branches or prostrate on the ground, were five or six individuals. Two were young mechanics--one of them evidently a carpenter. Then there was a boy about thirteen, and two or three younger children. Ethelberta's appearance answered as fully as ever to that of an English lady skilfully perfected in manner, carriage, look, and accent; and the incongruity of her present position among lives which had had many of Nature's beauties stamped out of them, and few of the beauties of Art stamped in, brought him, as a second feeling, a pride in her that almost equalled his first sentiment of surprise. Christopher's attention was meanwhile attracted from the const.i.tution of the group to the words of the speaker in the centre of it--words to which her auditors were listening with still attention.

It appeared to Christopher that Ethelberta had lately been undergoing some very extraordinary experiences. What the beginning of them had been he could not in the least understand, but the portion she was describing came distinctly to his ears, and he wondered more and more.

'He came forward till he, like myself, was about twenty yards from the edge. I instinctively grasped my useless stiletto. How I longed for the a.s.sistance which a little earlier I had so much despised! Reaching the block or boulder upon which I had been sitting, he clasped his arms around from behind; his hands closed upon the empty seat, and he jumped up with an oath. This method of attack told me a new thing with wretched distinctness; he had, as I suppose, discovered my s.e.x, male attire was to serve my turn no longer. The next instant, indeed, made it clear, for he exclaimed, "You don't escape me, masquerading madam," or some such words, and came on. My only hope was that in his excitement he might forget to notice where the gra.s.s terminated near the edge of the cliff, though this could be easily felt by a careful walker: to make my own feeling more distinct on this point I hastily bared my feet.'

The listeners moistened their lips, Ethelberta took breath, and then went on to describe the scene that ensued, 'A dreadful variation on the game of Blindman's buff,' being the words by which she characterized it.

Ethelberta's manner had become so impa.s.sioned at this point that the lips of her audience parted, the children clung to their elders, and Christopher could control himself no longer. He thrust aside the boughs, and broke in upon the group.

'For Heaven's sake, Ethelberta,' he exclaimed with great excitement, 'where did you meet with such a terrible experience as that?'

The children shrieked, as if they thought that the interruption was in some way the catastrophe of the events in course of narration. Every one started up; the two young mechanics stared, and one of them inquired, in return, 'What's the matter, friend?'

Christopher had not yet made reply when Ethelberta stepped from her pedestal down upon the crackling carpet of deep leaves.

'Mr. Julian!' said she, in a serene voice, turning upon him eyes of such a disputable stage of colour, between brown and grey, as would have commended itself to a gallant duellist of the last century as a point on which it was absolutely necessary to take some friend's life or other.

But the calmness was artificially done, and the astonishment that did not appear in Ethelberta's tones was expressed by her gaze. Christopher was not in a mood to draw fine distinctions between recognized and unrecognized organs of speech. He replied to the eyes.

'I own that your surprise is natural,' he said, with an anxious look into her face, as if he wished to get beyond this interpolated scene to something more congenial and understood. 'But my concern at such a history of yourself since I last saw you is even more natural than your surprise at my manner of breaking in.'

'That history would justify any conduct in one who hears it--'

'Yes, indeed.'

'If it were true,' added Ethelberta, smiling. 'But it is as false as--'

She could name nothing notoriously false without raising an image of what was disagreeable, and she continued in a better manner: 'The story I was telling is entirely a fiction, which I am getting up for a particular purpose--very different from what appears at present.'

'I am sorry there was such a misunderstanding,' Christopher stammered, looking upon the ground uncertain and ashamed. 'Yet I am not, either, for I am very glad you have not undergone such trials, of course. But the fact is, I--being in the neighbourhood--I ventured to call on a matter of business, relating to a poem which I had the pleasure of setting to music at the beginning of the year.'

Ethelberta was only a little less ill at ease than Christopher showed himself to be by this way of talking.

'Will you walk slowly on?' she said gently to the two young men, 'and take the children with you; this gentleman wishes to speak to me on business.'

The biggest young man caught up a little one under his arm, and plunged amid the boughs; another little one lingered behind for a few moments to look shyly at Christopher, with an oblique manner of hiding her mouth against her shoulder and her eyes behind her pinafore. Then she vanished, the boy and the second young man followed, and Ethelberta and Christopher stood within the wood-bound circle alone.

'I hope I have caused no inconvenience by interrupting the proceedings,'

said Christopher softly; 'but I so very much wished to see you!'

'Did you, indeed--really wish to see me?' she said gladly. 'Never mind inconvenience then; it is a word which seems shallow in meaning under the circ.u.mstances. I surely must say that a visit is to my advantage, must I not? I am not as I was, you see, and may receive as advantages what I used to consider as troubles.'

'Has your life really changed so much?'

'It has changed. But what I first meant was that an interesting visitor at a wrong time is better than a stupid one at a right time.'