The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters Read online

  1. A STREET IN ANGLEBURY--A HEATH NEAR IT--INSIDE THE 'RED LION' INN

  Young Mrs. Petherwin stepped from the door of an old and well-appointedinn in a Wessex town to take a country walk. By her look and carriageshe appeared to belong to that gentle order of society which has noworldly sorrow except when its jewellery gets stolen; but, as a fact notgenerally known, her claim to distinction was rather one of brains thanof blood. She was the daughter of a gentleman who lived in a large housenot his own, and began life as a baby christened Ethelberta after aninfant of title who does not come into the story at all, having merelyfurnished Ethelberta's mother with a subject of contemplation. Shebecame teacher in a school, was praised by examiners, admired bygentlemen, not admired by gentlewomen, was touched up withaccomplishments by masters who were coaxed into painstaking by her manygraces, and, entering a mansion as governess to the daughter thereof, wasstealthily married by the son. He, a minor like herself, died from achill caught during the wedding tour, and a few weeks later was followedinto the grave by Sir Ralph Petherwin, his unforgiving father, who hadbequeathed his wealth to his wife absolutely.

  These calamities were a sufficient reason to Lady Petherwin for pardoningall concerned. She took by the hand the forlorn Ethelberta--who seemedrather a detached bride than a widow--and finished her education byplacing her for two or three years in a boarding-school at Bonn. Latterlyshe had brought the girl to England to live under her roof as daughterand companion, the condition attached being that Ethelberta was neveropenly to recognize her relations, for reasons which will hereafterappear.

  The elegant young lady, as she had a full right to be called if she caredfor the definition, arrested all the local attention when she emergedinto the summer-evening light with that diadem-and-sceptre bearing--manypeople for reasons of heredity discovering such graces only in thosewhose vestibules are lined with ancestral mail, forgetting that a bearmay be taught to dance. While this air of hers lasted, even theinanimate objects in the street appeared to know that she was there; butfrom a way she had of carelessly overthrowing her dignity by versatilemoods, one could not calculate upon its presence to a certainty when shewas round corners or in little lanes which demanded no repression ofanimal spirits.

  'Well to be sure!' exclaimed a milkman, regarding her. 'We should freezein our beds if 'twere not for the sun, and, dang me! if she isn't apretty piece. A man could make a meal between them eyes and chin--eh,hostler? Odd nation dang my old sides if he couldn't!'

  The speaker, who had been carrying a pair of pails on a yoke, depositedthem upon the edge of the pavement in front of the inn, and straightenedhis back to an excruciating perpendicular. His remarks had beenaddressed to a rickety person, wearing a waistcoat of that preternaturallength from the top to the bottom button which prevails among men whohave to do with horses. He was sweeping straws from the carriage-waybeneath the stone arch that formed a passage to the stables behind.

  'Never mind the cursing and swearing, or somebody who's never out ofhearing may clap yer name down in his black book,' said the hostler, alsopausing, and lifting his eyes to the mullioned and transomed windows andmoulded parapet above him--not to study them as features of ancientarchitecture, but just to give as healthful a stretch to the eyes as hisacquaintance had done to his back. 'Michael, a old man like you ought tothink about other things, and not be looking two ways at your time oflife. Pouncing upon young flesh like a carrion crow--'tis a vile thingin a old man.'

  ''Tis; and yet 'tis not, for 'tis a naterel taste,' said the milkman,again surveying Ethelberta, who had now paused upon a bridge in fullview, to look down the river. 'Now, if a poor needy feller like myselfcould only catch her alone when she's dressed up to the nines for somegrand party, and carry her off to some lonely place--sakes, what a pot ofjewels and goold things I warrant he'd find about her! 'Twould pay enfor his trouble.'

  'I don't dispute the picter; but 'tis sly and untimely to think suchroguery. Though I've had thoughts like it, 'tis true, about highwomen--Lord forgive me for't.'

  'And that figure of fashion standing there is a widow woman, so I hear?'

  'Lady--not a penny less than lady. Ay, a thing of twenty-one orthereabouts.'

  'A widow lady and twenty-one. 'Tis a backward age for a body who's soforward in her state of life.'

  'Well, be that as 'twill, here's my showings for her age. She was aboutthe figure of two or three-and-twenty when a' got off the carriage lastnight, tired out wi' boaming about the country; and nineteen this morningwhen she came downstairs after a sleep round the clock and a clane-washedface: so I thought to myself, twenty-one, I thought.'

  'And what's the young woman's name, make so bold, hostler?'

  'Ay, and the house were all in a stoor with her and the old woman, andtheir boxes and camp-kettles, that they carry to wash in because hand-basons bain't big enough, and I don't know what all; and t'other folkstopping here were no more than dirt thencefor'ard.'

  'I suppose they've come out of some noble city a long way herefrom?'

  'And there was her hair up in buckle as if she'd never seen a clay-coldman at all. However, to cut a long story short, all I know besides about'em is that the name upon their luggage is Lady Petherwin, and she's thewidow of a city gentleman, who was a man of valour in the Lord Mayor'sShow.'

  'Who's that chap in the gaiters and pack at his back, come out of thedoor but now?' said the milkman, nodding towards a figure of thatdescription who had just emerged from the inn and trudged off in thedirection taken by the lady--now out of sight.

  'Chap in the gaiters? Chok' it all--why, the father of that noblemanthat you call chap in the gaiters used to be hand in glove with half theQueen's court.'

  'What d'ye tell o'?'

  'That man's father was one of the mayor and corporation of Sandbourne,and was that familiar with men of money, that he'd slap 'em upon theshoulder as you or I or any other poor fool would the clerk of theparish.'

  'O, what's my lordlin's name, make so bold, then?'

  'Ay, the toppermost class nowadays have left off the use of wheels forthe good of their constitutions, so they traipse and walk for many yearsup foreign hills, where you can see nothing but snow and fog, tillthere's no more left to walk up; and if they reach home alive, and ha'n'tgot too old and weared out, they walk and see a little of their ownparishes. So they tower about with a pack and a stick and a clane whitepocket-handkerchief over their hats just as you see he's got on his. He'sbeen staying here a night, and is off now again. "Young man, young man,"I think to myself, "if your shoulders were bent like a bandy and yourknees bowed out as mine be, till there is not an inch of straight bone orgristle in 'ee, th' wouldstn't go doing hard work for play 'a b'lieve."'

  'True, true, upon my song. Such a pain as I have had in my lynes allthis day to be sure; words don't know what shipwreck I suffer in theselynes o' mine--that they do not! And what was this young widow lady'smaiden name, then, hostler? Folk have been peeping after her, that'strue; but they don't seem to know much about her family.'

  'And while I've tended horses fifty year that other folk might straddle'em, here I be now not a penny the better! Often-times, when I see somany good things about, I feel inclined to help myself in common justiceto my pocket.

  "Work hard and be poor, Do nothing and get more."

  But I draw in the horns of my mind and think to myself, "Forbear, JohnHostler, forbear!"--Her maiden name? Faith, I don't know the woman'smaiden name, though she said to me, "Good evening, John;" but I had nomemory of ever seeing her afore--no, no more than the dead inside church-hatch--where I shall soon be likewise--I had not. "Ay, my nabs," I thinkto myself, "more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows."'

  'More know Tom Fool--what rambling old canticle is it you say, hostler?'inquired the milkman, lifting his ear. 'Let's have it again--a goodsaying well spit out is a Christmas fire to my withered heart. More knowTom Fool--'

  'Than Tom Fool knows,' said the hostler.

  'Ah! That's the
very feeling I've feeled over and over again, hostler,but not in such gifted language. 'Tis a thought I've had in me foryears, and never could lick into shape!--O-ho-ho-ho! Splendid! Say itagain, hostler, say it again! To hear my own poor notion that had noname brought into form like that--I wouldn't ha' lost it for the world!More know Tom Fool than--than--h-ho-ho-ho-ho!'

  'Don't let your sense o' vitness break out in such uproar, for heaven'ssake, or folk will surely think you've been laughing at the lady andgentleman. Well, here's at it again--Night t'ee, Michael.' And thehostler went on with his sweeping.

  'Night t'ee, hostler, I must move too,' said the milkman, shouldering hisyoke, and walking off; and there reached the inn in a gradual diminuendo,as he receded up the street, shaking his head convulsively, 'Moreknow--Tom Fool--than Tom Fool--ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!'

  The 'Red Lion,' as the inn or hotel was called which of late years hadbecome the fashion among tourists, because of the absence from itsprecincts of all that was fashionable and new, stood near the middle ofthe town, and formed a corner where in winter the winds whistled andassembled their forces previous to plunging helter-skelter along thestreets. In summer it was a fresh and pleasant spot, convenient for suchquiet characters as sojourned there to study the geology and beautifulnatural features of the country round.

  The lady whose appearance had asserted a difference between herself andthe Anglebury people, without too clearly showing what that differencewas, passed out of the town in a few moments and, following the highwayacross meadows fed by the Froom, she crossed the railway and soon gotinto a lonely heath. She had been watching the base of a cloud as itclosed down upon the line of a distant ridge, like an upper upon a lowereyelid, shutting in the gaze of the evening sun. She was about to returnbefore dusk came on, when she heard a commotion in the air immediatelybehind and above her head. The saunterer looked up and saw a wild-duckflying along with the greatest violence, just in its rear being anotherlarge bird, which a countryman would have pronounced to be one of thebiggest duck-hawks that he had ever beheld. The hawk neared its intendedvictim, and the duck screamed and redoubled its efforts.

  Ethelberta impulsively started off in a rapid run that would have made alittle dog bark with delight and run after, her object being, ifpossible, to see the end of this desperate struggle for a life so smalland unheard-of. Her stateliness went away, and it could be forgiven fornot remaining; for her feet suddenly became as quick as fingers, and sheraced along over the uneven ground with such force of tread that, being awoman slightly heavier than gossamer, her patent heels punched little D'sin the soil with unerring accuracy wherever it was bare, crippled theheather-twigs where it was not, and sucked the swampy places with a soundof quick kisses.

  Her rate of advance was not to be compared with that of the two birds,though she went swiftly enough to keep them well in sight in such an openplace as that around her, having at one point in the journey been so nearthat she could hear the whisk of the duck's feathers against the wind asit lifted and lowered its wings. When the bird seemed to be but a fewyards from its enemy she saw it strike downwards, and after a levelflight of a quarter of a minute, vanish. The hawk swooped after, andEthelberta now perceived a whitely shining oval of still water, lookingamid the swarthy level of the heath like a hole through to a nether sky.

  Into this large pond, which the duck had been making towards from thebeginning of its precipitate flight, it had dived out of sight. Theexcited and breathless runner was in a few moments close enough to seethe disappointed hawk hovering and floating in the air as if waiting forthe reappearance of its prey, upon which grim pastime it was so intentthat by creeping along softly she was enabled to get very near the edgeof the pool and witness the conclusion of the episode. Whenever the duckwas under the necessity of showing its head to breathe, the other birdwould dart towards it, invariably too late, however; for the diver wasfar too experienced in the rough humour of the buzzard family at thisgame to come up twice near the same spot, unaccountably emerging fromopposite sides of the pool in succession, and bobbing again by the timeits adversary reached each place, so that at length the hawk gave up thecontest and flew away, a satanic moodiness being almost perceptible inthe motion of its wings.

  The young lady now looked around her for the first time, and began toperceive that she had run a long distance--very much further than she hadoriginally intended to come. Her eyes had been so long fixed upon thehawk, as it soared against the bright and mottled field of sky, that onregarding the heather and plain again it was as if she had returned to ahalf-forgotten region after an absence, and the whole prospect wasdarkened to one uniform shade of approaching night. She began at once toretrace her steps, but having been indiscriminately wheeling round thepond to get a good view of the performance, and having followed no paththither, she found the proper direction of her journey to be a matter ofsome uncertainty.

  'Surely,' she said to herself, 'I faced the north at starting:' and yeton walking now with her back where her face had been set, she did notapproach any marks on the horizon which might seem to signify the town.Thus dubiously, but with little real concern, she walked on till theevening light began to turn to dusk, and the shadows to darkness.

  Presently in front of her Ethelberta saw a white spot in the shade, andit proved to be in some way attached to the head of a man who was comingtowards her out of a slight depression in the ground. It was as yet tooearly in the evening to be afraid, but it was too late to be altogethercourageous; and with balanced sensations Ethelberta kept her eye sharplyupon him as he rose by degrees into view. The peculiar arrangement ofhis hat and pugree soon struck her as being that she had casually noticedon a peg in one of the rooms of the 'Red Lion,' and when he came closeshe saw that his arms diminished to a peculiar smallness at theirjunction with his shoulders, like those of a doll, which was explained bytheir being girt round at that point with the straps of a knapsack thathe carried behind him. Encouraged by the probability that he, likeherself, was staying or had been staying at the 'Red Lion,' she said,'Can you tell me if this is the way back to Anglebury?'

  'It is one way; but the nearest is in this direction,' said thetourist--the same who had been criticized by the two old men.

  At hearing him speak all the delicate activities in the young lady'sperson stood still: she stopped like a clock. When she could again fencewith the perception which had caused all this, she breathed.

  'Mr. Julian!' she exclaimed. The words were uttered in a way which wouldhave told anybody in a moment that here lay something connected with thelight of other days.

  'Ah, Mrs. Petherwin!--Yes, I am Mr. Julian--though that can matter verylittle, I should think, after all these years, and what has passed.'

  No remark was returned to this rugged reply, and he continuedunconcernedly, 'Shall I put you in the path--it is just here?'

  'If you please.'

  'Come with me, then.'

  She walked in silence at his heels, not a word passing between them allthe way: the only noises which came from the two were the brushing of herdress and his gaiters against the heather, or the smart rap of a strayflint against his boot.

  They had now reached a little knoll, and he turned abruptly: 'That isAnglebury--just where you see those lights. The path down there is theone you must follow; it leads round the hill yonder and directly into thetown.'

  'Thank you,' she murmured, and found that he had never removed his eyesfrom her since speaking, keeping them fixed with mathematical exactnessupon one point in her face. She moved a little to go on her way; hemoved a little less--to go on his.

  'Good-night,' said Mr. Julian.

  The moment, upon the very face of it, was critical; and yet it was one ofthose which have to wait for a future before they acquire a definitecharacter as good or bad.

  Thus much would have been obvious to any outsider; it may have beendoubly so to Ethelberta, for she gave back more than she had got,replying, 'Good-bye--if you are going to say no more.'

  The
n in struck Mr. Julian: 'What can I say? You are nothing to me. . . .I could forgive a woman doing anything for spite, except marrying forspite.'

  'The connection of that with our present meeting does not appear, unlessit refers to what you have done. It does not refer to me.'

  'I am not married: you are.'

  She did not contradict him, as she might have done. 'Christopher,' shesaid at last, 'this is how it is: you knew too much of me to respect me,and too little to pity me. A half knowledge of another's life mostlydoes injustice to the life half known.'

  'Then since circumstances forbid my knowing you more, I must do my bestto know you less, and elevate my opinion of your nature by forgettingwhat it consists in,' he said in a voice from which all feeling waspolished away.

  'If I did not know that bitterness had more to do with those words thanjudgment, I--should be--bitter too! You never knew half about me; youonly knew me as a governess; you little think what my beginnings were.'

  'I have guessed. I have many times told myself that your early life wassuperior to your position when I first met you. I think I may saywithout presumption that I recognize a lady by birth when I see her, evenunder reverses of an extreme kind. And certainly there is this to besaid, that the fact of having been bred in a wealthy home does slightlyredeem an attempt to attain to such a one again.'

  Ethelberta smiled a smile of many meanings.

  'However, we are wasting words,' he resumed cheerfully. 'It is betterfor us to part as we met, and continue to be the strangers that we havebecome to each other. I owe you an apology for having been betrayed intomore feeling than I had a right to show, and let us part friends. Goodnight, Mrs. Petherwin, and success to you. We may meet again, some day,I hope.'

  'Good night,' she said, extending her hand. He touched it, turned about,and in a short time nothing remained of him but quick regular brushingsagainst the heather in the deep broad shadow of the moor.

  Ethelberta slowly moved on in the direction that he had pointed out. Thismeeting had surprised her in several ways. First, there was theconjuncture itself; but more than that was the fact that he had notparted from her with any of the tragic resentment that she had from timeto time imagined for that scene if it ever occurred. Yet there wasreally nothing wonderful in this: it is part of the generous nature of abachelor to be not indisposed to forgive a portionless sweetheart who, bymarrying elsewhere, has deprived him of the bliss of being obliged tomarry her himself. Ethelberta would have been disappointed quite hadthere not been a comforting development of exasperation in the middlepart of his talk; but after all it formed a poor substitute for theloving hatred she had expected.

  When she reached the hotel the lamp over the door showed a face a littleflushed, but the agitation which at first had possessed her was gone to amere nothing. In the hall she met a slender woman wearing a silk dressof that peculiar black which in sunlight proclaims itself to have onceseen better days as a brown, and days even better than those as alavender, green, or blue.

  'Menlove,' said the lady, 'did you notice if any gentleman observed andfollowed me when I left the hotel to go for a walk this evening?'

  The lady's-maid, thus suddenly pulled up in a night forage after lovers,put a hand to her forehead to show that there was no mistake about herhaving begun to meditate on receiving orders to that effect, and said atlast, 'You once told me, ma'am, if you recollect, that when you weredressed, I was not to go staring out of the window after you as if youwere a doll I had just manufactured and sent round for sale.'

  'Yes, so I did.'

  'So I didn't see if anybody followed you this evening.'

  'Then did you hear any gentleman arrive here by the late train lastnight?'

  'O no, ma'am--how could I?' said Mrs. Menlove--an exclamation which wasmore apposite than her mistress suspected, considering that the speaker,after retiring from duty, had slipped down her dark skirt to reveal alight, puffed, and festooned one, put on a hat and feather, together withseveral pennyweights of metal in the form of rings, brooches, andearrings--all in a time whilst one could count a hundred--and enjoyedhalf-an-hour of prime courtship by an honourable young waiter of thetown, who had proved constant as the magnet to the pole for the space ofthe day and a half that she had known him.

  Going at once upstairs, Ethelberta ran down the passage, and after somehesitation softly opened the door of the sitting-room in the best suiteof apartments that the inn could boast of.

  In this room sat an elderly lady writing by the light of two candles withgreen shades. Well knowing, as it seemed, who the intruder was, shecontinued her occupation, and her visitor advanced and stood beside thetable. The old lady wore her spectacles low down her cheek, her glancebeing depressed to about the slope of her straight white nose in order tolook through them. Her mouth was pursed up to almost a youthful shape asshe formed the letters with her pen, and a slight move of the lipaccompanied every downstroke. There were two large antique rings on herforefinger, against which the quill rubbed in moving backwards andforwards, thereby causing a secondary noise rivalling the primary one ofthe nib upon the paper.

  'Mamma,' said the younger lady, 'here I am at last.'

  A writer's mind in the midst of a sentence being like a ship at sea,knowing no rest or comfort till safely piloted into the harbour of a fullstop, Lady Petherwin just replied with 'What,' in an occupied tone, notrising to interrogation. After signing her name to the letter, sheraised her eyes.

  'Why, how late you are, Ethelberta, and how heated you look!' she said.'I have been quite alarmed about you. What do you say has happened?'

  The great, chief, and altogether eclipsing thing that had happened wasthe accidental meeting with an old lover whom she had once quarrelledwith; and Ethelberta's honesty would have delivered the tidings at once,had not, unfortunately, all the rest of her attributes been dead againstthat act, for the old lady's sake even more than for her own.

  'I saw a great cruel bird chasing a harmless duck!' she exclaimedinnocently. 'And I ran after to see what the end of it would be--muchfurther than I had any idea of going. However, the duck came to a pond,and in running round it to see the end of the fight, I could not rememberwhich way I had come.'

  'Mercy!' said her mother-in-law, lifting her large eyelids, heavy aswindow-shutters, and spreading out her fingers like the horns of a snail.'You might have sunk up to your knees and got lost in that swampyplace--such a time of night, too. What a tomboy you are! And how didyou find your way home after all!'

  'O, some man showed me the way, and then I had no difficulty, and afterthat I came along leisurely.'

  'I thought you had been running all the way; you look so warm.'

  'It is a warm evening. . . . Yes, and I have been thinking of old timesas I walked along,' she said, 'and how people's positions in life alter.Have I not heard you say that while I was at Bonn, at school, some familythat we had known had their household broken up when the father died, andthat the children went away you didn't know where?'

  'Do you mean the Julians?'

  'Yes, that was the name.'

  'Why, of course you know it was the Julians. Young Julian had a day ortwo's fancy for you one summer, had he not?--just after you came to us,at the same time, or just before it, that my poor boy and you were sodesperately attached to each other.'

  'O yes, I recollect,' said Ethelberta. 'And he had a sister, I think. Iwonder where they went to live after the family collapse.'

  'I do not know,' said Lady Petherwin, taking up another sheet of paper.'I have a dim notion that the son, who had been brought up to noprofession, became a teacher of music in some country town--music havingalways been his hobby. But the facts are not very distinct in mymemory.' And she dipped her pen for another letter.

  Ethelberta, with a rather fallen countenance, then left her mother-in-law, and went where all ladies are supposed to go when they want totorment their minds in comfort--to her own room. Here she thoughtfullysat down awhile, and some time later s
he rang for her maid.

  'Menlove,' she said, without looking towards a rustle and half a footstepthat had just come in at the door, but leaning back in her chair andspeaking towards the corner of the looking-glass, 'will you go down andfind out if any gentleman named Julian has been staying in this house?Get to know it, I mean, Menlove, not by directly inquiring; you have waysof getting to know things, have you not? If the devoted George were herenow, he would help--'

  'George was nothing to me, ma'am.'

  'James, then.'

  'And I only had James for a week or ten days: when I found he was amarried man, I encouraged his addresses very little indeed.'

  'If you had encouraged him heart and soul, you couldn't have fumed moreat the loss of him. But please to go and make that inquiry, will you,Menlove?'

  In a few minutes Ethelberta's woman was back again. 'A gentleman of thatname stayed here last night, and left this afternoon.'

  'Will you find out his address?'

  Now the lady's-maid had already been quick-witted enough to find outthat, and indeed all about him; but it chanced that a fashionableillustrated weekly paper had just been sent from the bookseller's, andbeing in want of a little time to look it over before it reached hermistress's hands, Mrs. Menlove retired, as if to go and ask thequestion--to stand meanwhile under the gas-lamp in the passage,inspecting the fascinating engravings. But as time will not wait fortire-women, a natural length of absence soon elapsed, and she returnedagain and said,

  'His address is, Upper Street, Sandbourne.'

  'Thank you, that will do,' replied her mistress.

  The hour grew later, and that dreamy period came round when ladies'fancies, that have lain shut up close as their fans during the day, beginto assert themselves anew. At this time a good guess at Ethelberta'sthoughts might have been made from her manner of passing the minutesaway. Instead of reading, entering notes in her diary, or doing anyordinary thing, she walked to and fro, curled her pretty nether lipwithin her pretty upper one a great many times, made a cradle of herlocked fingers, and paused with fixed eyes where the walls of the roomset limits upon her walk to look at nothing but a picture within hermind.