The Hand of Ethelberta Part 47

Without attempting to trace an a.n.a.logy between a man and his mansion, it may be stated that everything here, though so dignified and magnificent, was not conceived in quite the true and eternal spirit of art. It was a house in which Pugin would have torn his hair. Those ma.s.sive blocks of red-veined marble lining the hall--emulating in their surface-glitter the Escalier de Marbre at Versailles--were cunning imitations in paint and plaster by workmen brought from afar for the purpose, at a prodigious expense, by the present viscount's father, and recently repaired and re- varnished. The dark green columns and pilasters corresponding were brick at the core. Nay, the external walls, apparently of ma.s.sive and solid freestone, were only veneered with that material, being, like the pillars, of brick within.

To a stone mask worn by a brick face a story naturally appertained--one which has since done service in other quarters. When the vast addition had just been completed King George visited Enckworth. Its owner pointed out the features of its grand architectural attempt, and waited for commendation.

'Brick, brick, brick,' said the king.

The Georgian Lord Mountclere blushed faintly, albeit to his very poll, and said nothing more about his house that day. When the king was gone he sent frantically for the craftsmen recently dismissed, and soon the green lawns became again the colour of a Nine-Elms cement wharf. Thin freestone slabs were affixed to the whole series of fronts by copper cramps and dowels, each one of substance sufficient to have furnished a poor boy's pocket with pennies for a month, till not a speck of the original surface remained, and the edifice shone in all the grandeur of ma.s.sive masonry that was not ma.s.sive at all. But who remembered this save the builder and his crew? and as long as n.o.body knew the truth, pretence looked just as well.

What was honest in Enckworth Court was that portion of the original edifice which still remained, now degraded to subservient uses. Where the unt.i.tled Mountclere of the White Rose faction had spread his knees over the brands, when the place was a castle and not a court, the still- room maid now simmered her preserves; and where Elizabethan mothers and daughters of that st.u.r.dy line had tapestried the love-scenes of Isaac and Jacob, boots and shoes were now cleaned and coals stowed away.

Lord Mountclere had so far recovered from the sprain as to be nominally quite well, under pressure of a wish to receive guests. The sprain had in one sense served him excellently. He had now a reason, apart from that of years, for walking with his stick, and took care to let the reason be frequently known. To-day he entertained a larger number of persons than had been a.s.sembled within his walls for a great length of time.

Until after dinner Ethelberta felt as if she were staying at an hotel.

Few of the people whom she had met at the meeting of the Imperial a.s.sociation greeted her here. The viscount's brother was not present, but Sir Cyril Blandsbury and his wife were there, a lively pair of persons, entertaining as actors, and friendly as dogs. Beyond these all the faces and figures were new to her, though they were handsome and dashing enough to satisfy a court chronicler. Ethelberta, in a dress sloped about as high over the shoulder as would have drawn approval from Reynolds, and expostulation from Lely, thawed and thawed each friend who came near her, and sent him or her away smiling; yet she felt a little surprise. She had seldom visited at a country-house, and knew little of the ordinary composition of a group of visitors within its walls; but the present a.s.semblage seemed to want much of that old-fashioned stability and quaint monumental dignity she had expected to find under this historical roof. n.o.body of her entertainer's own rank appeared. Not a single clergyman was there. A tendency to talk Walpolean scandal about foreign courts was particularly manifest. And although tropical travellers, Indian officers and their wives, courteous exiles, and descendants of Irish kings, were infinitely more pleasant than Lord Mountclere's landed neighbours would probably have been, to such a cosmopolite as Ethelberta a calm Tory or old Whig company would have given a greater treat. They would have struck as gratefully upon her senses as sylvan scenery after crags and cliffs, or silence after the roar of a cataract.

It was evening, and all these personages at Enckworth Court were merry, snug, and warm within its walls. Dinner-time had pa.s.sed, and everything had gone on well, when Mrs. Tara O'Fanagan, who had a gold-clamped tooth, which shone every now and then, asked Ethelberta if she would amuse them by telling a story, since n.o.body present, except Lord Mountclere, had ever heard one from her lips.

Seeing that Ethelberta had been working at that art as a profession, it can hardly be said that the question was conceived with tact, though it was put with grace. Lord Mountclere evidently thought it objectionable, for he looked unhappy. To only one person in the brilliant room did the request appear as a timely accident, and that was to Ethelberta herself.

Her honesty was always making war upon her manoeuvres, and shattering their delicate meshes, to her great inconvenience and delay. Thus there arose those devious impulses and tangential flights which spoil the works of every would-be schemer who instead of being wholly machine is half heart. One of these now was to show herself as she really was, not only to Lord Mountclere, but to his friends a.s.sembled, whom, in her ignorance, she respected more than they deserved, and so get rid of that self-reproach which had by this time reached a morbid pitch, through her over-sensitiveness to a situation in which a large majority of women and men would have seen no falseness.

Full of this curious intention, she quietly a.s.sented to the request, and laughingly bade them put themselves in listening order.

'An old story will suit us,' said the lady who had importuned her. 'We have never heard one.'

'No; it shall be quite new,' she replied. 'One not yet made public; though it soon will be.'

The narrative began by introducing to their notice a girl of the poorest and meanest parentage, the daughter of a serving-man, and the fifth of ten children. She graphically recounted, as if they were her own, the strange dreams and ambitious longings of this child when young, her attempts to acquire education, partial failures, partial successes, and constant struggles; instancing how, on one of these occasions, the girl concealed herself under a bookcase of the library belonging to the mansion in which her father served as footman, and having taken with her there, like a young Fawkes, matches and a halfpenny candle, was going to sit up all night reading when the family had retired, until her father discovered and prevented her scheme. Then followed her experiences as nursery-governess, her evening lessons under self-selected masters, and her ultimate rise to a higher grade among the teaching sisterhood. Next came another epoch. To the mansion in which she was engaged returned a truant son, between whom and the heroine an attachment sprang up. The master of the house was an ambitious gentleman just knighted, who, perceiving the state of their hearts, harshly dismissed the homeless governess, and rated the son, the consequence being that the youthful pair resolved to marry secretly, and carried their resolution into effect. The runaway journey came next, and then a moving description of the death of the young husband, and the terror of the bride.

The guests began to look perplexed, and one or two exchanged whispers.

This was not at all the kind of story that they had expected; it was quite different from her usual utterances, the nature of which they knew by report. Ethelberta kept her eye upon Lord Mountclere. Soon, to her amazement, there was that in his face which told her that he knew the story and its heroine quite well. When she delivered the sentence ending with the professedly fict.i.tious words: 'I thus was reduced to great distress, and vainly cast about me for directions what to do,' Lord Mountclere's manner became so excited and anxious that it acted reciprocally upon Ethelberta; her voice trembled, she moved her lips but uttered nothing. To bring the story up to the date of that very evening had been her intent, but it was beyond her power. The spell was broken; she blushed with distress and turned away, for the folly of a disclosure here was but too apparent.

Though every one saw that she had broken down, none of them appeared to know the reason why, or to have the clue to her performance. Fortunately Lord Mountclere came to her aid.

'Let the first part end here,' he said, rising and approaching her. 'We have been well entertained so far. I could scarcely believe that the story I was listening to was utterly an invention, so vividly does Mrs.

Petherwin bring the scenes before our eyes. She must now be exhausted; we will have the remainder to-morrow.'

They all agreed that this was well, and soon after fell into groups, and dispersed about the rooms. When everybody's attention was thus occupied Lord Mountclere whispered to Ethelberta tremulously, 'Don't tell more: you think too much of them: they are no better than you! Will you meet me in the little winter garden two minutes hence? Pa.s.s through that door, and along the gla.s.s pa.s.sage.' He himself left the room by an opposite door.

She had not set three steps in the warm snug octagon of gla.s.s and plants when he appeared on the other side.

'You knew it all before!' she said, looking keenly at him. 'Who told you, and how long have you known it?'

'Before yesterday or last week,' said Lord Mountclere. 'Even before we met in France. Why are you so surprised?'

Ethelberta had been surprised, and very greatly, to find him, as it were, secreted in the very rear of her position. That nothing she could tell was new to him was a good deal to think of, but it was little beside the recollection that he had actually made his first declaration in the face of that knowledge of her which she had supposed so fatal to all her matrimonial ambitions.

'And now only one point remains to be settled,' he said, taking her hand.

'You promised at Rouen that at our next interview you would honour me with a decisive reply--one to make me happy for ever.'

'But my father and friends?' said she.

'Are nothing to be concerned about. Modern developments have shaken up the cla.s.ses like peas in a hopper. An annuity, and a comfortable cottage--'

'My brothers are workmen.'

'Manufacture is the single vocation in which a man's prospects may be said to be illimitable. Hee-hee!--they may buy me up before they die!

And now what stands in the way? It would take fifty alliances with fifty families so little disreputable as yours, darling, to drag mine down.'

Ethelberta had antic.i.p.ated the scene, and settled her course; what had to be said and done here was mere formality; yet she had been unable to go straight to the a.s.sent required. However, after these words of self-depreciation, which were let fall as much for her own future ease of conscience as for his present warning, she made no more ado.

'I shall think it a great honour to be your wife,' she said simply.

39. KNOLLSEA--MELCHESTER

The year was now moving on apace, but Ethelberta and Picotee chose to remain at Knollsea, in the brilliant variegated brick and stone villa to which they had removed in order to be in keeping with their ascending fortunes. Autumn had begun to make itself felt and seen in bolder and less subtle ways than at first. In the morning now, on coming downstairs, in place of a yellowish-green leaf or two lying in a corner of the lowest step, which had been the only previous symptoms around the house, she saw dozens of them playing at corkscrews in the wind, directly the door was opened. Beyond, towards the sea, the slopes and scarps that had been m.u.f.fled with a thick robe of cliff herbage, were showing their chill grey substance through the withered verdure, like the background of velvet whence the pile has been fretted away. Unexpected breezes broomed and rasped the smooth bay in evanescent patches of stippled shade, and, besides the small boats, the ponderous lighters used in shipping stone were hauled up the beach in antic.i.p.ation of the equinoctial attack.

A few days after Ethelberta's reception at Enckworth, an improved stanhope, driven by Lord Mountclere himself, climbed up the hill until it was opposite her door. A few notes from a piano softly played reached his ear as he descended from his place: on being shown in to his betrothed, he could perceive that she had just left the instrument.

Moreover, a tear was visible in her eye when she came near him.

They discoursed for several minutes in the manner natural between a defenceless young widow and an old widower in Lord Mountclere's position to whom she was plighted--a great deal of formal considerateness making itself visible on her part, and of extreme tenderness on his. While thus occupied, he turned to the piano, and casually glanced at a piece of music lying open upon it. Some words of writing at the top expressed that it was the composer's original copy, presented by him, Christopher Julian, to the author of the song. Seeing that he noticed the sheet somewhat lengthily, Ethelberta remarked that it had been an offering made to her a long time ago--a melody written to one of her own poems.

'In the writing of the composer,' observed Lord Mountclere, with interest. 'An offering from the musician himself--very gratifying and touching. Mr. Christopher Julian is the name I see upon it, I believe? I knew his father, Dr. Julian, a Sandbourne man, if I recollect.'

'Yes,' said Ethelberta placidly. But it was really with an effort. The song was the identical one which Christopher sent up to her from Sandbourne when the fire of her hope burnt high for less material ends; and the discovery of the sheet among her music that day had started eddies of emotion for some time checked.

'I am sorry you have been grieved,' said Lord Mountclere, with gloomy restlessness.

'Grieved?' said Ethelberta.

'Did I not see a tear there? or did my eyes deceive me?'

'You might have seen one.'

'Ah! a tear, and a song. I think--'

'You naturally think that a woman who cries over a man's gift must be in love with the giver?' Ethelberta looked him serenely in the face.

Lord Mountclere's jealous suspicions were considerably shaken.

'Not at all,' he said hastily, as if ashamed. 'One who cries over a song is much affected by its sentiment.'

'Do you expect authors to cry over their own words?' she inquired, merging defence in attack. 'I am afraid they don't often do that.'

'You would make me uneasy.'