The Hand of Ethelberta Part 18

Ethelberta being regarded, in common with the latest conjurer, spirit- medium, aeronaut, giant, dwarf or monarch, as a new sensation, she was duly criticized in the morning papers, and even obtained a notice in some of the weekly reviews.

'A handsome woman,' said one of these, 'may have her own reasons for causing the flesh of the London public to creep upon its bones by her undoubtedly remarkable narrative powers; but we question if much good can result from such a form of entertainment. Nevertheless, some praise is due. We have had the novel-writer among us for some time, and the novel- reader has occasionally appeared on our platforms; but we believe that this is the first instance on record of a Novel-teller--one, that is to say, who relates professedly as fiction a romantic tale which has never been printed--the whole owing its chief interest to the method whereby the teller identifies herself with the leading character in the story.'

Another observed: 'When once we get away from the magic influence of the story-teller's eye and tongue, we perceive how improbable, even impossible, is the tissue of events to which we have been listening with so great a sense of reality, and we feel almost angry with ourselves at having been the victims of such utter illusion.'

'Mrs. Petherwin's personal appearance is decidedly in her favour,' said another. 'She affects no unconsciousness of the fact that form and feature are no mean vehicles of persuasion, and she uses the powers of each to the utmost. There spreads upon her face when in repose an air of innocence which is charmingly belied by the subtlety we discover beneath it when she begins her tale; and this amusing discrepancy between her physical presentment and the inner woman is further ill.u.s.trated by the misgiving, which seizes us on her entrance, that so impressionable a lady will never bear up in the face of so trying an audience. . . . The combinations of incident which Mrs. Petherwin persuades her hearers that she has pa.s.sed through are not a little marvellous; and if what is rumoured be true, that the tales are to a great extent based upon her own experiences, she has proved herself to be no less daring in adventure than facile in her power of describing it.'

17. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE

After such successes as these, Christopher could not forego the seductive intention of calling upon the poetess and romancer, at her now established town residence in Exonbury Crescent. One wintry afternoon he reached the door--now for the third time--and gave a knock which had in it every tender refinement that could be thrown into the somewhat antagonistic vehicle of noise. Turning his face down the street he waited restlessly on the step. There was a strange light in the atmosphere: the gla.s.s of the street-lamps, the varnished back of a pa.s.sing cab, a milk-woman's cans, and a row of church-windows glared in his eyes like new-rubbed copper; and on looking the other way he beheld a b.l.o.o.d.y sun hanging among the chimneys at the upper end, as a danger-lamp to warn him off.

By this time the door was opened, and before him stood Ethelberta's young brother Joey, thickly populated with little b.u.t.tons, the remainder of him consisting of invisible green.

'Ah, Joseph,' said Christopher, instantly recognizing the boy. 'What, are you here in office? Is your--'

Joey lifted his forefinger and spread his mouth in a genial manner, as if to signify particular friendliness mingled with general caution.

'Yes, sir, Mrs. Petherwin is my mistress. I'll see if she is at home, sir,' he replied, raising his shoulders and winking a wink of strategic meanings by way of finish--all which signs showed, if evidence were wanted, how effectually this pleasant young page understood, though quite fresh from Wess.e.x, the duties of his peculiar position. Mr. Julian was shown to the drawing-room, and there he found Ethelberta alone.

She gave him a hand so cool and still that Christopher, much as he desired the contact, was literally ashamed to let her see and feel his own, trembling with unmanageable excess of feeling. It was always so, always had been so, always would be so, at these meetings of theirs: she was immeasurably the strongest; and the deep-eyed young man fancied, in the chagrin which the perception of this difference always bred in him, that she triumphed in her superior control. Yet it was only in little things that their s.e.xes were thus reversed: Christopher would receive quite a shock if a little dog barked at his heels, and be totally unmoved when in danger of his life.

Certainly the most self-possessed woman in the world, under pressure of the incongruity between their last meeting and the present one, might have shown more embarra.s.sment than Ethelberta showed on greeting him to- day. Christopher was only a man in believing that the shyness which she did evince was chiefly the result of personal interest. She might or might not have been said to blush--perhaps the stealthy change upon her face was too slow an operation to deserve that name: but, though pale when he called, the end of ten minutes saw her colour high and wide. She soon set him at his ease, and seemed to relax a long-sustained tension as she talked to him of her arrangements, hopes, and fears.

'And how do you like London society?' said Ethelberta.

'Pretty well, as far as I have seen it: to the surface of its front door.'

'You will find nothing to be alarmed at if you get inside.'

'O no--of course not--except my own shortcomings,' said the modest musician. 'London society is made up of much more refined people than society anywhere else.'

'That's a very prevalent opinion; and it is nowhere half so prevalent as in London society itself. However, come and see my house--unless you think it a trouble to look over a house?'

'No; I should like it very much.'

The decorations tended towards the artistic gymnastics prevalent in some quarters at the present day. Upon a general flat tint of duck's-egg green appeared quaint patterns of conventional foliage, and birds, done in bright auburn, several shades nearer to redbreast-red than was Ethelberta's hair, which was thus thrust further towards brown by such juxtaposition--a possible reason for the choice of tint. Upon the glazed tiles within the chimney-piece were the forms of owls, bats, snakes, frogs, mice, spiders in their webs, moles, and other objects of aversion and darkness, shaped in black and burnt in after the approved fashion.

'My brothers Sol and Dan did most of the actual work,' said Ethelberta, 'though I drew the outlines, and designed the tiles round the fire. The flowers, mice, and spiders are done very simply, you know: you only press a real flower, mouse, or spider out flat under a piece of gla.s.s, and then copy it, adding a little more emaciation and angularity at pleasure.'

'In that "at pleasure" is where all the art lies,' said he.

'Well, yes--that is the case,' said Ethelberta thoughtfully; and preceding him upstairs, she threw open a door on one of the floors, disclosing Dan in person, engaged upon a similar treatment of this floor also. Sol appeared bulging from the door of a closet, a little further on, where he was fixing some shelves; and both wore workmen's blouses. At once coming down from the short ladder he was standing upon, Dan shook Christopher's hand with some velocity.

'We do a little at a time, you see,' he said, 'because Colonel down below, and Mrs. Petherwin's visitors, shan't smell the turpentine.'

'We be pushing on to-day to get it out of the way,' said Sol, also coming forward and greeting their visitor, but more reluctantly than his brother had done. 'Now I'll tell ye what--you two,' he added, after an uneasy pause, turning from Christopher to Ethelberta and back again in great earnestness; 'you'd better not bide here, talking to we rough ones, you know, for folks might find out that there's something closer between us than workmen and employer and employer's friend. So Berta and Mr.

Julian, if you'll go on and take no more notice o' us, in case of visitors, it would be wiser--else, perhaps, if we should be found out intimate with ye, and bring down your gentility, you'll blame us for it.

I get as nervous as a cat when I think I may be the cause of any disgrace to ye.'

'Don't be so silly, Sol,' said Ethelberta, laughing.

'Ah, that's all very well,' said Sol, with an unbelieving smile; 'but if we bain't company for you out of doors, you bain't company for we within--not that I find fault with ye or mind it, and shan't take anything for painting your house, nor will Dan neither, any more for that--no, not a penny; in fact, we are glad to do it for 'ee. At the same time, you keep to your cla.s.s, and we'll keep to ours. And so, good afternoon, Berta, when you like to go, and the same to you, Mr. Julian.

Dan, is that your mind?'

'I can but own it,' said Dan.

The two brothers then turned their backs upon their visitors, and went on working, and Ethelberta and her lover left the room. 'My brothers, you perceive,' said she, 'represent the respectable British workman in his entirety, and a touchy individual he is, I a.s.sure you, on points of dignity, after imbibing a few town ideas from his leaders. They are painfully off-hand with me, absolutely refusing to be intimate, from a mistaken notion that I am ashamed of their dress and manners; which, of course, is absurd.'

'Which, of course, is absurd,' said Christopher.

'Of course it is absurd!' she repeated with warmth, and looking keenly at him. But, finding no harm in his face, she continued as before: 'Yet, all the time, they will do anything under the sun that they think will advance my interests. In our hearts we are one. All they ask me to do is to leave them to themselves, and therefore I do so. Now, would you like to see some more of your acquaintance?'

She introduced him to a large attic; where he found himself in the society of two or three persons considerably below the middle height, whose manners were of that gushing kind sometimes called Continental, their ages ranging from five years to eight. These were the youngest children, presided over by Emmeline, as professor of letters, capital and small.

'I am giving them the rudiments of education here,' said Ethelberta; 'but I foresee several difficulties in the way of keeping them here, which I must get over as best I can. One trouble is, that they don't get enough air and exercise.'

'Is Mrs. Chickerel living here as well?' Christopher ventured to inquire, when they were downstairs again.

'Yes; but confined to her room as usual, I regret to say. Two more sisters of mine, whom you have never seen at all, are also here. They are older than any of the rest of us, and had, broadly speaking, no education at all, poor girls. The eldest, Gwendoline, is my cook, and Cornelia is my housemaid. I suffer much sadness, and almost misery sometimes, in reflecting that here are we, ten brothers and sisters, born of one father and mother, who might have mixed together and shared all in the same scenes, and been properly happy, if it were not for the strange accidents that have split us up into sections as you see, cutting me off from them without the compensation of joining me to any others. They are all true as steel in keeping the secret of our kin, certainly; but that brings little joy, though some satisfaction perhaps.'

'You might be less despondent, I think. The tale-telling has been one of the successes of the season.'

'Yes, I might; but I may observe that you scarcely set the example of blitheness.'

'Ah--that's not because I don't recognize the pleasure of being here. It is from a more general cause: simply an underfeeling I have that at the most propitious moment the distance to the possibility of sorrow is so short that a man's spirits must not rise higher than mere cheerfulness out of bare respect to his insight.

"As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow."'

Ethelberta bowed uncertainly; the remark might refer to her past conduct or it might not. 'My great cause of uneasiness is the children,' she presently said, as a new page of matter. 'It is my duty, at all risk and all sacrifice of sentiment, to educate and provide for them. The grown- up ones, older than myself, I cannot help much, but the little ones I can. I keep my two French lodgers for the sake of them.'

'The lodgers, of course, don't know the relationship between yourself and the rest of the people in the house?'

'O no!--nor will they ever. My mother is supposed to let the ground and first floors to me--a strange lady--as she does the second and third floors to them. Still, I may be discovered.'

'Well--if you are?'

'Let me be. Life is a battle, they say; but it is only so in the sense that a game of chess is a battle--there is no seriousness in it; it may be put an end to at any inconvenient moment by owning yourself beaten, with a careless "Ha-ha!" and sweeping your pieces into the box.

Experimentally, I care to succeed in society; but at the bottom of my heart, I don't care.'

'For that very reason you are likely to do it. My idea is, make ambition your business and indifference your relaxation, and you will fail; but make indifference your business and ambition your relaxation, and you will succeed. So impish are the ways of the G.o.ds.'

'I hope that you at any rate will succeed,' she said, at the end of a silence.

'I never can--if success means getting what one wants.'