The Hand of Ethelberta

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Hand of Ethelberta


When she came up he held them out to her and said, 'Will you allow me to
present you with these?'

The bright colours of the nosegay instantly attracted the girl's
hand--perhaps before there had been time for thought to thoroughly
construe the position; for it happened that when her arm was stretched
into the air she steadied it quickly, and stood with the pose of a
statue--rigid with uncertainty. But it was too late to refuse:
Christopher had put the nosegay within her fingers. Whatever pleasant
expression of thanks may have appeared in her eyes fell only on the bunch
of flowers, for during the whole transaction they reached to no higher
level than that. To say that he was coming no more seemed scarcely
necessary under the circumstances, and wishing her 'Good afternoon' very
heartily, he passed on.

He had learnt by this time her occupation, which was that of
pupil-teacher at one of the schools in the town, whither she walked daily
from a village near. If he had not been poor and the little teacher
humble, Christopher might possibly have been tempted to inquire more
briskly about her, and who knows how such a pursuit might have ended? But
hard externals rule volatile sentiment, and under these untoward
influences the girl and the book and the truth about its author were
matters upon which he could not afford to expend much time. All
Christopher did was to think now and then of the pretty innocent face and
round deep eyes, not once wondering if the mind which enlivened them ever
thought of him.




3. SANDBOURNE MOOR (continued)


It was one of those hostile days of the year when chatterbox ladies
remain miserably in their homes to save the carriage and harness, when
clerks' wives hate living in lodgings, when vehicles and people appear in
the street with duplicates of themselves underfoot, when bricklayers,
slaters, and other out-door journeymen sit in a shed and drink beer, when
ducks and drakes play with hilarious delight at their own family game, or
spread out one wing after another in the slower enjoyment of letting the
delicious moisture penetrate to their innermost down. The smoke from the
flues of Sandbourne had barely strength enough to emerge into the
drizzling rain, and hung down the sides of each chimney-pot like the
streamer of a becalmed ship; and a troop of rats might have rattled down
the pipes from roof to basement with less noise than did the water that
day.

On the broad moor beyond the town, where Christopher's meetings with the
teacher had so regularly occurred, were a stream and some large pools;
and beside one of these, near some hatches and a weir, stood a little
square building, not much larger inside than the Lord Mayor's coach. It
was known simply as 'The Weir House.' On this wet afternoon, which was
the one following the day of Christopher's last lesson over the plain, a
nearly invisible smoke came from the puny chimney of the hut. Though the
door was closed, sounds of chatting and mirth fizzed from the interior,
and would have told anybody who had come near--which nobody did--that the
usually empty shell was tenanted to-day.

The scene within was a large fire in a fireplace to which the whole floor
of the house was no more than a hearthstone. The occupants were two
gentlemanly persons, in shooting costume, who had been traversing the
moor for miles in search of wild duck and teal, a waterman, and a small
spaniel. In the corner stood their guns, and two or three wild mallards,
which represented the scanty product of their morning's labour, the
iridescent necks of the dead birds replying to every flicker of the fire.
The two sportsmen were smoking, and their man was mostly occupying
himself in poking and stirring the fire with a stick: all three appeared
to be pretty well wetted.

One of the gentlemen, by way of varying the not very exhilarating study
of four brick walls within microscopic distance of his eye, turned to a
small square hole which admitted light and air to the hut, and looked out
upon the dreary prospect before him. The wide concave of cloud, of the
monotonous hue of dull pewter, formed an unbroken hood over the level
from horizon to horizon; beneath it, reflecting its wan lustre, was the
glazed high-road which stretched, hedgeless and ditchless, past a
directing-post where another road joined it, and on to the less regular
ground beyond, lying like a riband unrolled across the scene, till it
vanished over the furthermost undulation. Beside the pools were
occasional tall sheaves of flags and sedge, and about the plain a few
bushes, these forming the only obstructions to a view otherwise unbroken.

The sportsman's attention was attracted by a figure in a state of gradual
enlargement as it approached along the road.

'I should think that if pleasure can't tempt a native out of doors to-
day, business will never force him out,' he observed. 'There is, for the
first time, somebody coming along the road.'

'If business don't drag him out pleasure'll never tempt en, is more like
our nater in these parts, sir,' said the man, who was looking into the
fire.

The conversation showed no vitality, and down it dropped dead as before,
the man who was standing up continuing to gaze into the moisture. What
had at first appeared as an epicene shape the decreasing space resolved
into a cloaked female under an umbrella: she now relaxed her pace, till,
reaching the directing-post where the road branched into two, she paused
and looked about her. Instead of coming further she slowly retraced her
steps for about a hundred yards.

'That's an appointment,' said the first speaker, as he removed the cigar
from his lips; 'and by the lords, what a day and place for an appointment
with a woman!'

'What's an appointment?' inquired his friend, a town young man, with a
Tussaud complexion and well-pencilled brows half way up his forehead, so
that his upper eyelids appeared to possess the uncommon quality of
tallness.

'Look out here, and you'll see. By that directing-post, where the two
roads meet. As a man devoted to art, Ladywell, who has had the honour of
being hung higher up on the Academy walls than any other living painter,
you should take out your sketch-book and dash off the scene.'

Where nothing particular is going on, one incident makes a drama; and,
interested in that proportion, the art-sportsman puts up his eyeglass (a
form he adhered to before firing at game that had risen, by which
merciful arrangement the bird got safe off), placed his face beside his
companion's, and also peered through the opening. The young
pupil-teacher--for she was the object of their scrutiny--re-approached
the spot whereon she had been accustomed for the last many weeks of her
journey home to meet Christopher, now for the first time missing, and
again she seemed reluctant to pass the hand-post, for that marked the
point where the chance of seeing him ended. She glided backwards as
before, this time keeping her face still to the front, as if trying to
persuade the world at large, and her own shamefacedness, that she had not
yet approached the place at all.

'Query, how long will she wait for him (for it is a man to a certainty)?'
resumed the elder of the smokers, at the end of several minutes of
silence, when, full of vacillation and doubt, she became lost to view
behind some bushes. 'Will she reappear?' The smoking went on, and up
she came into open ground as before, and walked by.

'I wonder who the girl is, to come to such a place in this weather? There
she is again,' said the young man called Ladywell.

'Some cottage lass, not yet old enough to make the most of the value set
on her by her follower, small as that appears to be. Now we may get an
idea of the hour named by the fellow for the appointment, for, depend
upon it, the time when she first came--about five minutes ago--was the
time he should have been there. It is now getting on towards five--half-
past four was doubtless the time mentioned.'

'She's not come o' purpose: 'tis her way home from school every day,'
said the waterman.

'An experiment on woman's endurance and patience under neglect. Two to
one against her staying a quarter of an hour.'

'The same odds against her not staying till five would be nearer
probability. What's half-an-hour to a girl in love?'

'On a moorland in wet weather it is thirty perceptible minutes to any
fireside man, woman, or beast in Christendom--minutes that can be felt,
like the Egyptian plague of darkness. Now, little girl, go home: he is
not worth it.'

Twenty minutes passed, and the girl returned miserably to the hand-post,
still to wander back to her retreat behind the sedge, and lead any chance
comer from the opposite quarter to believe that she had not yet reached
this ultimate point beyond which a meeting with Christopher was
impossible.

'Now you'll find that she means to wait the complete half-hour, and then
off she goes with a broken heart.'

All three now looked through the hole to test the truth of the
prognostication. The hour of five completed itself on their watches; the
girl again came forward. And then the three in ambuscade could see her
pull out her handkerchief and place it to her eyes.

'She's grieving now because he has not come. Poor little woman, what a
brute he must be; for a broken heart in a woman means a broken vow in a
man, as I infer from a thousand instances in experience, romance, and
history. Don't open the door till she is gone, Ladywell; it will only
disturb her.'

As they had guessed, the pupil-teacher, hearing the distant town-clock
strike the hour, gave way to her fancy no longer, and launched into the
diverging path. This lingering for Christopher's arrival had, as is
known, been founded on nothing more of the nature of an assignation than
lay in his regular walk along the plain at that time every Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday of the six previous weeks. It must be said that he
was very far indeed from divining that his injudicious peace-offering of
the flowers had stirred into life such a wearing, anxious, hopeful,
despairing solicitude as this, which had been latent for some time during
his constant meetings with the little stranger.

She vanished in the mist towards the left, and the loiterers in the hut
began to move and open the door, remarking, 'Now then for Wyndway House,
a change of clothes, and a dinner.'




4. SANDBOURNE PIER--ROAD TO WYNDWAY--BALL-ROOM IN WYNDWAY HOUSE


The last light of a winter day had gone down behind the houses of
Sandbourne, and night was shut close over all. Christopher, about eight
o'clock, was standing at the end of the pier with his back towards the
open sea, whence the waves were pushing to the shore in frills and coils
that were just rendered visible in all their bleak instability by the row
of lights along the sides of the jetty, the rapid motion landward of the
wavetips producing upon his eye an apparent progress of the pier out to
sea. This pier-head was a spot which Christopher enjoyed visiting on
such moaning and sighing nights as the present, when the sportive and
variegated throng that haunted the pier on autumn days was no longer
there, and he seemed alone with weather and the invincible sea.

Somebody came towards him along the deserted footway, and rays from the
nearest lamp streaked the face of his sister Faith.

'O Christopher, I knew you were here,' she said eagerly. 'You are
wanted; there's a servant come from Wyndway House for you. He is sent to
ask if you can come immediately to play at a little dance they have
resolved upon this evening--quite suddenly it seems. If you can come,
you must bring with you any assistant you can lay your hands upon at a
moment's notice, he says.'

'Wyndway House; why should the people send for me above all other
musicians in the town?'

Faith did not know. 'If you really decide to go,' she said, as they
walked homeward, 'you might take me as your assistant. I should answer
the purpose, should I not, Kit? since it is only a dance or two they seem
to want.'

'And your harp I suppose you mean. Yes; you might be competent to take a
part. It cannot be a regular ball; they would have had the quadrille
band for anything of that sort. Faith--we'll go. However, let us see
the man first, and inquire particulars.'

Reaching home, Christopher found at his door a horse and wagonette in
charge of a man-servant in livery, who repeated what Faith had told her
brother. Wyndway House was a well-known country-seat three or four miles
out of the town, and the coachman mentioned that if they were going it
would be well that they should get ready to start as soon as they
conveniently could, since he had been told to return by ten if possible.
Christopher quickly prepared himself, and put a new string or two into
Faith's harp, by which time she also was dressed; and, wrapping up
herself and her instrument safe from the night air, away they drove at
half-past nine.

'Is it a large party?' said Christopher, as they whizzed along.

'No, sir; it is what we call a dance--that is, 'tis like a ball, you
know, on a small scale--a ball on a spurt, that you never thought of till
you had it. In short, it grew out of a talk at dinner, I believe; and
some of the young people present wanted a jig, and didn't care to play
themselves, you know, young ladies being an idle class of society at the
best of times. We've a house full of sleeping company, you
understand--been there a week some of 'em--most of 'em being mistress's
relations.'

'They probably found it a little dull.'

'Well, yes--it is rather dull for 'em--Christmas-time and all. As soon
as it was proposed they were wild for sending post-haste for somebody or
other to play to them.'

'Did they name me particularly?' said Christopher.

'Yes; "Mr. Christopher Julian," she says. "The gent who's turned music-
man?" I said. "Yes, that's him," says she.'

'There were music-men living nearer to your end of the town than I.'

'Yes, but I know it was you particular: though I don't think mistress
thought anything about you at first. Mr. Joyce--that's the butler--said
that your name was mentioned to our old party, when he was in the room,
by a young lady staying with us, and mistress says then, "The Julians
have had a downfall, and the son has taken to music." Then when dancing
was talked of, they said, "O, let's have him by all means."'

'Was the young lady who first inquired for my family the same one who
said, "Let's have him by all means?"'

'O no; but it was on account of her asking that the rest said they would
like you to play--at least that's as I had it from Joyce.'

'Do you know that lady's name?'

'Mrs. Petherwin.'

'Ah!'

'Cold, sir?'

'O no.'

Christopher did not like to question the man any further, though what he
had heard added new life to his previous curiosity; and they drove along
the way in silence, Faith's figure, wrapped up to the top of her head,
cutting into the sky behind them like a sugar-loaf. Such gates as
crossed the roads had been left open by the forethought of the coachman,
and, passing the lodge, they proceeded about half-a-mile along a private
drive, then ascended a rise, and came in view of the front of the
mansion, punctured with windows that were now mostly lighted up.

'What is that?' said Faith, catching a glimpse of something that the
carriage-lamp showed on the face of one wall as they passed, a marble bas-
relief of some battle-piece, built into the stonework.

'That's the scene of the death of one of the squire's forefathers--Colonel
Sir Martin Jones, who was killed at the moment of victory in the battle
of Salamanca--but I haven't been here long enough to know the rights of
it. When I am in one of my meditations, as I wait here with the carriage
sometimes, I think how many more get killed at the moment of victory than
at the moment of defeat. This is the entrance for you, sir.' And he
turned the corner and pulled up before a side door.

They alighted and went in, Christopher shouldering Faith's harp, and she
marching modestly behind, with curly-eared music-books under her arm.
They were shown into the house-steward's room, and ushered thence along a
badly-lit passage and past a door within which a hum and laughter were
audible. The door next to this was then opened for them, and they
entered.

* * * * *

Scarcely had Faith, or Christopher either, ever beheld a more shining
scene than was presented by the saloon in which they now found
themselves. Coming direct from the gloomy park, and led to the room by
that back passage from the servants' quarter, the light from the
chandelier and branches against the walls, striking on gilding at all
points, quite dazzled their sight for a minute or two; it caused Faith to
move forward with her eyes on the floor, and filled Christopher with an
impulse to turn back again into some dusky corner where every thread of
his not over-new dress suit--rather moth-eaten through lack of feasts for
airing it--could be counted less easily.

He was soon seated before a grand piano, and Faith sat down under the
shadow of her harp, both being arranged on a dais within an alcove at one
end of the room. A screen of ivy and holly had been constructed across
the front of this recess for the games of the children on Christmas Eve,
and it still remained there, a small creep-hole being left for entrance
and exit.

Then the merry guests tumbled through doors at the further end, and
dancing began. The mingling of black-coated men and bright ladies gave a
charming appearance to the groups as seen by Faith and her brother, the
whole spectacle deriving an unexpected novelty from the accident of
reaching their eyes through interstices in the tracery of green leaves,
which added to the picture a softness that it would not otherwise have
possessed. On the other hand, the musicians, having a much weaker light,
could hardly be discerned by the performers in the dance.

The music was now rattling on, and the ladies in their foam-like dresses
were busily threading and spinning about the floor, when Faith, casually
looking up into her brother's face, was surprised to see that a change
had come over it. At the end of the quadrille he leant across to her
before she had time to speak, and said quietly, 'She's here!'

'Who?' said Faith, for she had not heard the words of the coachman.

'Ethelberta.'

'Which is she?' asked Faith, peeping through with the keenest interest.

'The one who has the skirts of her dress looped up with convolvulus
flowers--the one with her hair fastened in a sort of Venus knot behind;
she has just been dancing with that perfumed piece of a man they call Mr.
Ladywell--it is he with the high eyebrows arched like a girl's.' He
added, with a wrinkled smile, 'I cannot for my life see anybody answering
to the character of husband to her, for every man takes notice of her.'

They were interrupted by another dance being called for, and then, his
fingers tapping about upon the keys as mechanically as fowls pecking at
barleycorns, Christopher gave himself up with a curious and far from
unalloyed pleasure to the occupation of watching Ethelberta, now again
crossing the field of his vision like a returned comet whose
characteristics were becoming purely historical. She was a plump-armed
creature, with a white round neck as firm as a fort--altogether a
vigorous shape, as refreshing to the eye as the green leaves through
which he beheld her. She danced freely, and with a zest that was
apparently irrespective of partners. He had been waiting long to hear
her speak, and when at length her voice did reach his ears, it was the
revelation of a strange matter to find how great a thing that small event
had become to him. He knew the old utterance--rapid but not frequent, an
obstructive thought causing sometimes a sudden halt in the midst of a
stream of words. But the features by which a cool observer would have
singled her out from others in his memory when asking himself what she
was like, was a peculiar gaze into imaginary far-away distance when
making a quiet remark to a partner--not with contracted eyes like a
seafaring man, but with an open full look--a remark in which little words
in a low tone were made to express a great deal, as several single
gentlemen afterwards found.

The production of dance-music when the criticizing stage among the
dancers has passed, and they have grown full of excitement and animal
spirits, does not require much concentration of thought in the producers
thereof; and desultory conversation accordingly went on between Faith and
her brother from time to time.

'Kit,' she said on one occasion, 'are you looking at the way in which the
flowers are fastened to the leaves?--taking a mean advantage of being at
the back of the tapestry? You cannot think how you stare at them.'

'I was looking through them--certainly not at them. I have a feeling of
being moved about like a puppet in the hands of a person who legally can
be nothing to me.'

'That charming woman with the shining bunch of hair and convolvuluses?'

'Yes: it is through her that we are brought here, and through her writing
that poem, "Cancelled Words," that the book was sent me, and through the
accidental renewal of acquaintance between us on Anglebury Heath, that
she wrote the poem. I was, however, at the moment you spoke, thinking
more particularly of the little teacher whom Ethelberta must have
commissioned to send the book to me; and why that girl was chosen to do
it.'

'There may be a hundred reasons. Kit, I have never yet seen her look
once this way.'

Christopher had certainly not yet received look or gesture from her; but
his time came. It was while he was for a moment outside the recess, and
he caught her in the act. She became slightly confused, turned aside,
and entered into conversation with a neighbour.

It was only a look, and yet what a look it was! One may say of a look
that it is capable of division into as many species, genera, orders, and
classes, as the animal world itself. Christopher saw Ethelberta
Petherwin's performance in this kind--the well-known spark of light upon
the well-known depths of mystery--and felt something going out of him
which had gone out of him once before.

Thus continually beholding her and her companions in the giddy whirl, the
night wore on with the musicians, last dances and more last dances being
added, till the intentions of the old on the matter were thrice exceeded
in the interests of the young. Watching the couples whirl and turn,
advance and recede as gently as spirits, knot themselves like house-flies
and part again, and lullabied by the faint regular beat of their
footsteps to the tune, the players sank into the peculiar mesmeric quiet
which comes over impressionable people who play for a great length of
time in the midst of such scenes; and at last the only noises that
Christopher took cognizance of were those of the exceptional kind,
breaking above the general sea of sound--a casual smart rustle of silk, a
laugh, a stumble, the monosyllabic talk of those who happened to linger
for a moment close to the leafy screen--all coming to his ears like
voices from those old times when he had mingled in similar scenes, not as
servant but as guest.




5. AT THE WINDOW--THE ROAD HOME


The dancing was over at last, and the radiant company had left the room.
A long and weary night it had been for the two players, though a
stimulated interest had hindered physical exhaustion in one of them for a
while. With tingling fingers and aching arms they came out of the alcove
into the long and deserted apartment, now pervaded by a dry haze. The
lights had burnt low, and Faith and her brother were waiting by request
till the wagonette was ready to take them home, a breakfast being in
course of preparation for them meanwhile.

Christopher had crossed the room to relieve his cramped limbs, and now,
peeping through a crevice in the window curtains, he said suddenly,
'Who's for a transformation scene? Faith, look here!'

He touched the blind, up it flew, and a gorgeous scene presented itself
to her eyes. A huge inflamed sun was breasting the horizon of a wide
sheet of sea which, to her surprise and delight, the mansion overlooked.
The brilliant disc fired all the waves that lay between it and the shore
at the bottom of the grounds, where the water tossed the ruddy light from
one undulation to another in glares as large and clear as mirrors,
incessantly altering them, destroying them, and creating them again;
while further off they multiplied, thickened, and ran into one another
like struggling armies, till they met the fiery source of them all.

'O, how wonderful it is!' said Faith, putting her hand on Christopher's
arm. 'Who knew that whilst we were all shut in here with our puny
illumination such an exhibition as this was going on outside! How sorry
and mean the grand and stately room looks now!'

Christopher turned his back upon the window, and there were the hitherto
beaming candle-flames shining no more radiantly than tarnished javelin-
heads, while the snow-white lengths of wax showed themselves clammy and
cadaverous as the fingers of a corpse. The leaves and flowers which had
appeared so very green and blooming by the artificial light were now seen
to be faded and dusty. Only the gilding of the room in some degree
brought itself into keeping with the splendours outside, stray darts of
light seizing upon it and lengthening themselves out along fillet, quirk,
arris, and moulding, till wasted away.