The Hand of Ethelberta Part 30

Neigh appeared reluctant to go any further; but the allusion soon became sufficiently clear. 'I wish my little place at Farnfield had been worthier of you,' he said brusquely. 'However, that's a matter of time only. It is useless to build a house there yet. I wish I had known that you would be looking over it at that time of the evening. A single word, when we were talking about it the other day, that you were going to be in the neighbourhood, would have been sufficient. Nothing could have given me so much delight as to have driven you round.'

He knew that she had been to Farnfield: that knowledge was what had inspired him to call upon her to-day! Ethelberta breathed a sort of exclamation, not right out, but stealthily, like a parson's d.a.m.n. Her face did not change, since a face must be said not to change while it preserves the same pleasant lines in the mobile parts as before; but anybody who has preserved his pleasant lines under the half-minute's peer of the invidious camera, and found what a wizened, starched kind of thing they stiffen to towards the end of the time, will understand the tendency of Ethelberta's lovely features now.

'Yes; I walked round,' said Ethelberta faintly.

Neigh was decidedly master of the position at last; but he spoke as if he did not value that. His knowledge had furnished him with grounds for calling upon her, and he hastened to undeceive her from supposing that he could think ill of any motive of hers which gave him those desirable grounds.

'I supposed you, by that, to give some little thought to me occasionally,' he resumed, in the same slow and orderly tone. 'How could I help thinking so? It was your doing that which encouraged me. Now, was it not natural--I put it to you?'

Ethelberta was almost exasperated at perceiving the awful extent to which she had compromised herself with this man by her impulsive visit. Lightly and philosophically as he seemed to take it--as a thing, in short, which every woman would do by nature unless hindered by difficulties--it was no trifle to her as long as he was ignorant of her justification; and this she determined that he should know at once, at all hazards.

'It was through you in the first place that I did look into your grounds!' she said excitedly. 'It was your presumption that caused me to go there. I should not have thought of such a thing else. If you had not said what you did say I never should have thought of you or Farnfield either--Farnfield might have been in Kamtschatka for all I cared.'

'I hope sincerely that I never said anything to disturb you?'

'Yes, you did--not to me, but to somebody,' said Ethelberta, with her eyes over-full of retained tears.

'What have I said to somebody that can be in the least objectionable to you?' inquired Neigh, with much concern.

'You said--you said, you meant to marry me--just as if I had no voice in the matter! And that annoyed me, and made me go there out of curiosity.'

Neigh changed colour a little. 'Well, I did say it: I own that I said it,' he replied at last. Probably he knew enough of her nature not to feel long disconcerted by her disclosure, however she might have become possessed of the information. The explanation was certainly a great excuse to her curiosity; but if Ethelberta had tried she could not have given him a better ground for making light of her objections to his suit.

'I felt that I must marry you, that we were predestined to marry ages ago, and I feel it still!' he continued, with listless ardour. 'You seem to regret your interest in Farnfield; but to me it is a charm, and has been ever since I heard of it.'

'If you only knew all!' she said helplessly, showing, without perceiving it, an unnecessary humility in the remark, since there was no more reason just then that she should go into details about her life than that he should about his. But melancholy and mistaken thoughts of herself as a counterfeit had brought her to this.

'I do not wish to know more,' said Neigh.

'And would you marry any woman off-hand, without being thoroughly acquainted with her circ.u.mstances?' she said, looking at him curiously, and with a little admiration, for his unconscionably phlegmatic treatment of her motives in going to Farnfield had a not unbecoming daring about it in Ethelberta's eye.

'I would marry a woman off-hand when that woman is you. I would make you mine this moment did I dare; or, to speak with absolute accuracy, within twenty-four hours. Do a.s.sent to it, dear Mrs. Petherwin, and let me be sure of you for ever. I'll drive to Doctors' Commons this minute, and meet you to-morrow morning at nine in the church just below. It is a simple impulse, but I would adhere to it in the coolest moment. Shall it be arranged in that way, instead of our waiting through the ordinary routine of preparation? I am not a youth now, but I can see the bliss of such an act as that, and the contemptible nature of methodical proceedings beside it!'

He had taken her hand. Ethelberta gave it a subtle movement backwards to imply that he was not to retain the prize, and said, 'One whose inner life is almost unknown to you, and whom you have scarcely seen except at other people's houses!'

'We know each other far better than we may think at first,' said Neigh.

'We are not people to love in a hurry, and I have not done so in this case. As for worldly circ.u.mstances, the most important items in a marriage contract are the persons themselves, and, as far as I am concerned, if I get a lady fair and wise I care for nothing further. I know you are beautiful, for all London owns it; I know you are talented, for I have read your poetry and heard your romances; and I know you are politic and discreet--'

'For I have examined your property,' said she, with a weak smile.

Neigh bowed. 'And what more can I wish to know? Come, shall it be?'

'Certainly not to-morrow.'

'I would be entirely in your hands in that matter. I will not urge you to be precipitate--I could not expect you to be ready yet. My suddenness perhaps offended you; but, having thought deeply of this bright possibility, I was apt to forget the forbearance that one ought to show at first in mentioning it. If I have done wrong forgive me.'

'I will think of that,' said Ethelberta, with a cooler manner. 'But seriously, all these words are nothing to the purpose. I must remark that I prize your friendship, but it is not for me to marry now. You have convinced me of your goodness of heart and freedom from unworthy suspicions; let that be enough. The best way in which I in my turn can convince you of my goodness of heart is by asking you to see me in private no more.'

'And do you refuse to think of me as ---. Why do you treat me like that, after all?' said Neigh, surprised at this want of harmony with his principle that one convert to matrimony could always find a second ready- made.

'I cannot explain, I cannot explain,' said she, impatiently. 'I would and I would not--explain I mean, not marry. I don't love anybody, and I have no heart left for beginning. It is only honest in me to tell you that I am interested in watching another man's career, though that is not to the point either, for no close relationship with him is contemplated.

But I do not wish to speak of this any more. Do not press me to it.'

'Certainly I will not,' said Neigh, seeing that she was distressed and sorrowful. 'But do consider me and my wishes; I have a right to ask it for it is only asking a continuance of what you have already begun to do.

To-morrow I believe I shall have the happiness of seeing you again.'

She did not say no, and long after the door had closed upon him she remained fixed in thought. 'How can he be blamed for his manner,' she said, 'after knowing what I did!'

Ethelberta as she sat felt herself much less a Petherwin than a Chickerel, much less a poetess richly freighted with fancy than an adventuress with a nebulous prospect. Neigh was one of the few men whose presence seemed to attenuate her dignity in some mysterious way to its very least proportions; and that act of espial, which had so quickly and inexplicably come to his knowledge, helped his influence still more. She knew little of the nature of the town bachelor; there were opaque depths in him which her thoughts had never definitely plumbed. Notwithstanding her exaltation to the atmosphere of the Petherwin family, Ethelberta was very far from having the thoroughbred London woman's knowledge of sets, grades, coteries, cliques, forms, glosses, and niceties, particularly on the masculine side. Setting the years from her infancy to her first look into town against those linking that epoch with the present, the former period covered not only the greater time, but contained the ma.s.s of her most vivid impressions of life and its ways. But in recognizing her ignorance of the ratio between words to women and deeds to women in the ethical code of the bachelor of the club, she forgot that human nature in the gross differs little with situation, and that a gift which, if the germs were lacking, no amount of training in clubs and coteries could supply, was mother-wit like her own.

27. MRS. BELMAINE'S--CRIPPLEGATE CHURCH

Neigh's remark that he believed he should see Ethelberta again the next day referred to a contemplated pilgrimage of an unusual sort which had been arranged for that day by Mrs. Belmaine upon the ground of an incidental suggestion of Ethelberta's. One afternoon in the week previous they had been chatting over tea at the house of the former lady, Neigh being present as a casual caller, when the conversation was directed upon Milton by somebody opening a volume of the poet's works that lay on a table near.

'Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee--'

said Mrs. Belmaine with the degree of flippancy which is considered correct for immortal verse, the Bible, G.o.d, etc., in these days. And Ethelberta replied, lit up by a quick remembrance, 'It is a good time to talk of Milton; for I have been much impressed by reading the "Life;" and I have decided to go and see his tomb. Could we not all go? We ought to quicken our memories of the great, and of where they lie, by such a visit occasionally.'

'We ought,' said Mrs. Belmaine.

'And why shouldn't we?' continued Ethelberta, with interest.

'To Westminster Abbey?' said Mr. Belmaine, a common man of thirty, younger than his wife, who had lately come into the room.

'No; to where he lies comparatively alone--Cripplegate Church.'

'I always thought that Milton was buried in Poet's Corner,' said Mr.

Belmaine.

'So did I,' said Neigh; 'but I have such an indifferent head for places that my thinking goes for nothing.'

'Well, it would be a pretty thing to do,' said Mrs. Belmaine, 'and instructive to all of us. If Mrs. Petherwin would like to go, I should.

We can take you in the carriage and call round for Mrs. Doncastle on our way, and set you both down again coming back.'

'That would be excellent,' said Ethelberta. 'There is nowhere I like going to so much as the depths of the city. The absurd narrowness of world-renowned streets is so surprising--so crooked and shady as they are too, and full of the quaint smells of old cupboards and cellars. Walking through one of them reminds me of being at the bottom of some creva.s.se or gorge, the proper surface of the globe being the tops of the houses.'

'You will come to take care of us, John? And you, Mr. Neigh, would like to come? We will tell Mr. Ladywell that he may join us if he cares to,'

said Mrs. Belmaine.

'O yes,' said her husband quietly; and Neigh said he should like nothing better, after a faint aspect of apprehension at the remoteness of the idea from the daily track of his thoughts. Mr. Belmaine observing this, and mistaking it for an indication that Neigh had been dragged into the party against his will by his over-hasty wife, arranged that Neigh should go independently and meet them there at the hour named if he chose to do so, to give him an opportunity of staying away. Ethelberta also was by this time doubting if she had not been too eager with her proposal. To go on such a sentimental errand might be thought by her friends to be simply troublesome, their adherence having been given only in the regular course of complaisance. She was still comparatively an outsider here, her life with Lady Petherwin having been pa.s.sed chiefly in alternations between English watering-places and continental towns. However, it was too late now to muse on this, and it may be added that from first to last Ethelberta never discovered from the Belmaines whether her proposal had been an infliction or a charm, so perfectly were they practised in sustaining that complete divorce between thinking and saying which is the hall-mark of high civilization.

But, however she might doubt the Belmaines, she had no doubt as to Neigh's true sentiments: the time had come when he, notwithstanding his air of being oppressed by almost every lively invention of town and country for charming griefs to rest, would not be at all oppressed by a quiet visit to the purlieus of St Giles's, Cripplegate, since she was the originator, and was going herself.

It was a bright hope-inspiring afternoon in this mid-May time when the carriage containing Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine, Mrs. Doncastle, and Ethelberta, crept along the enc.u.mbered streets towards Barbican; till turning out of that thoroughfare into Redcross Street they beheld the bold shape of the old tower they sought, clothed in every neutral shade, standing clear against the sky, dusky and grim in its upper stage, and h.o.a.ry grey below, where every corner of every stone was completely rounded off by the waves of wind and storm.