The Hand of Ethelberta

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Hand of Ethelberta


'Then if Gwendoline is to be your cook, she must soon give notice at her
present place?'

'Yes. Everything depends upon Gwendoline and Cornelia. But there is
time enough for them to give notice--Christmas will be soon enough. If
they cannot or will not come as cook and housemaid, I am afraid the plan
will break down. A vital condition is that I do not have a soul in the
house (beyond the lodgers) who is not one of my own relations. When we
have put Joey into buttons, he will do very well to attend to the door.'

'But s'pose,' said Joey, after a glassy look at his future appearance in
the position alluded to, 'that any of your gentle-people come to see ye,
and when I opens the door and lets 'em in a swinging big lodger stalks
downstairs. What will 'em think? Up will go their eye-glasses at one
another till they glares each other into holes. My gracious!'

'The one who calls will only think that another visitor is leaving, Joey.
But I shall have no visitors, or very few. I shall let it be well known
among my late friends that my mother is an invalid, and that on this
account we receive none but the most intimate friends. These intimate
friends not existing, we receive nobody at all.'

'Except Sol and Dan, if they get a job in London? They'll have to call
upon us at the back door, won't they, Berta?' said Joey.

'They must go down the area steps. But they will not mind that; they
like the idea.'

'And father, too, must he go down the steps?'

'He may come whichever way he likes. He will be glad enough to have us
near at any price. I know that he is not at all happy at leaving you
down here, and he away in London. You remember that he has only taken
the situation at Mr. Doncastle's on the supposition that you all come to
town as soon as he can see an opening for getting you there; and as
nothing of the sort has offered itself to him, this will be the very
thing. Of course, if I succeed wonderfully well in my schemes for story-
tellings, readings of my ballads and poems, lectures on the art of
versification, and what not, we need have no lodgers; and then we shall
all be living a happy family--all taking our share in keeping the
establishment going.'

'Except poor me!' sighed the mother.

'My dear mother, you will be necessary as a steadying power--a flywheel,
in short, to the concern. I wish that father could live there, too.'

'He'll never give up his present way of life--it has grown to be a part
of his nature. Poor man, he never feels at home except in somebody
else's house, and is nervous and quite a stranger in his own. Sich is
the fatal effects of service!'

'O mother, don't!' said Ethelberta tenderly, but with her teeth on edge;
and Picotee curled up her toes, fearing that her mother was going to
moralize.

'Well, what I mean is, that your father would not like to live upon your
earnings, and so forth. But in town we shall be near him--that's one
comfort, certainly.'

'And I shall not be wanted at all,' said Picotee, in a melancholy tone.

'It is much better to stay where you are,' her mother said. 'You will
come and spend the holidays with us, of course, as you do now.'

'I should like to live in London best,' murmured Picotee, her head
sinking mournfully to one side. 'I HATE being in Sandbourne now!'

'Nonsense!' said Ethelberta severely. 'We are all contriving how to live
most comfortably, and it is by far the best thing for you to stay at the
school. You used to be happy enough there.'

Picotee sighed, and said no more.




16. A LARGE PUBLIC HALL


It was the second week in February, Parliament had just met, and
Ethelberta appeared for the first time before an audience in London.

There was some novelty in the species of entertainment that the active
young woman had proposed to herself, and this doubtless had due effect in
collecting the body of strangers that greeted her entry, over and above
those friends who came to listen to her as a matter of course. Men and
women who had become totally indifferent to new actresses, new readers,
and new singers, once more felt the freshness of curiosity as they
considered the promise of the announcement. But the chief inducement to
attend lay in the fact that here was to be seen in the flesh a woman with
whom the tongue of rumour had been busy in many romantic ways--a woman
who, whatever else might be doubted, had certainly produced a volume of
verses which had been the talk of the many who had read them, and of the
many more who had not, for several consecutive weeks.

What was her story to be? Persons interested in the inquiry--a small
proportion, it may be owned, of the whole London public, and chiefly
young men--answered this question for themselves by assuming that it
would take the form of some pungent and gratifying revelation of the
innermost events of her own life, from which her gushing lines had sprung
as an inevitable consequence, and which being once known, would cause
such musical poesy to appear no longer wonderful.

The front part of the room was well filled, rows of listeners showing
themselves like a drilled-in crop of which not a seed has failed. They
were listeners of the right sort, a majority having noses of the
prominent and dignified type, which when viewed in oblique perspective
ranged as regularly as bow-windows at a watering place. Ethelberta's
plan was to tell her pretended history and adventures while sitting in a
chair--as if she were at her own fireside, surrounded by a circle of
friends. By this touch of domesticity a great appearance of truth and
naturalness was given, though really the attitude was at first more
difficult to maintain satisfactorily than any one wherein stricter
formality should be observed. She gently began her subject, as if
scarcely knowing whether a throng were near her or not, and, in her fear
of seeming artificial, spoke too low. This defect, however, she soon
corrected, and ultimately went on in a charmingly colloquial manner. What
Ethelberta relied upon soon became evident. It was not upon the
intrinsic merits of her story as a piece of construction, but upon her
method of telling it. Whatever defects the tale possessed--and they were
not a few--it had, as delivered by her, the one pre-eminent merit of
seeming like truth. A modern critic has well observed of De Foe that he
had the most amazing talent on record for telling lies; and Ethelberta,
in wishing her fiction to appear like a real narrative of personal
adventure, did wisely to make De Foe her model. His is a style even
better adapted for speaking than for writing, and the peculiarities of
diction which he adopts to give verisimilitude to his narratives acquired
enormous additional force when exhibited as viva-voce mannerisms. And
although these artifices were not, perhaps, slavishly copied from that
master of feigning, they would undoubtedly have reminded her hearers of
him, had they not mostly been drawn from an easeful section in society
which is especially characterized by the mental condition of knowing
nothing about any author a week after they have read him. The few there
who did remember De Foe were impressed by a fancy that his words greeted
them anew in a winged auricular form, instead of by the weaker channels
of print and eyesight. The reader may imagine what an effect this well-
studied method must have produced when intensified by a clear, living
voice, animated action, and the brilliant and expressive eye of a
handsome woman--attributes which of themselves almost compelled belief.
When she reached the most telling passages, instead of adding exaggerated
action and sound, Ethelberta would lapse to a whisper and a sustained
stillness, which were more striking than gesticulation. All that could
be done by art was there, and if inspiration was wanting nobody missed
it.

It was in performing this feat that Ethelberta seemed first to discover
in herself the full power of that self-command which further onward in
her career more and more impressed her as a singular possession, until at
last she was tempted to make of it many fantastic uses, leading to
results that affected more households than her own. A talent for
demureness under difficulties without the cold-bloodedness which renders
such a bearing natural and easy, a face and hand reigning unmoved outside
a heart by nature turbulent as a wave, is a constitutional arrangement
much to be desired by people in general; yet, had Ethelberta been framed
with less of that gift in her, her life might have been more comfortable
as an experience, and brighter as an example, though perhaps duller as a
story.

'Ladywell, how came this Mrs. Petherwin to think of such a queer trick as
telling romances, after doing so well as a poet?' said a man in the
stalls to his friend, who had been gazing at the Story-teller with a rapt
face.

'What--don't you know?--everybody did, I thought,' said the painter.

'A mistake. Indeed, I should not have come here at all had I not heard
the subject mentioned by accident yesterday at Grey's; and then I
remembered her to be the same woman I had met at some place--Belmaine's I
think it was--last year, when I thought her just getting on for handsome
and clever, not to put it too strongly.'

'Ah! naturally you would not know much,' replied Ladywell, in an eager
whisper. 'Perhaps I am judging others by myself a little more than--but,
as you have heard, she is an acquaintance of mine. I know her very well,
and, in fact, I originally suggested the scheme to her as a pleasant way
of adding to her fame. "Depend upon it, dear Mrs. Petherwin," I said,
during a pause in one of our dances together some time ago, "any public
appearance of yours would be successful beyond description."'

'O, I had no idea that you knew her so well! Then it is quite through
you that she has adopted this course?'

'Well, not entirely--I could not say entirely. She said that some day,
perhaps, she might do such a thing; and, in short, I reduced her vague
ideas to form.'

'I should not mind knowing her better--I must get you to throw us
together in some way,' said Neigh, with some interest. 'I had no idea
that you were such an old friend. You could do it, I suppose?'

'Really, I am afraid--hah-hah--may not have the opportunity of obliging
you. I met her at Wyndway, you know, where she was visiting with Lady
Petherwin. It was some time ago, and I cannot say that I have ever met
her since.'

'Or before?' said Neigh.

'Well--no; I never did.'

'Ladywell, if I had half your power of going to your imagination for
facts, I would be the greatest painter in England.'

'Now Neigh--that's too bad--but with regard to this matter, I do speak
with some interest,' said Ladywell, with a pleased sense of himself.

'In love with her?--Smitten down?--Done for?'

'Now, now! However, several other fellows chaff me about her. It was
only yesterday that Jones said--'

'Do you know why she cares to do this sort of thing?'

'Merely a desire for fame, I suppose.'

'I should think she has fame enough already.'

'That I can express no opinion upon. I am thinking of getting her
permission to use her face in a subject I am preparing. It is a fine
face for canvas. Glorious contour--glorious. Ah, here she is again, for
the second part.'

'Dream on, young fellow. You'll make a rare couple!' said Neigh, with a
flavour of superciliousness unheeded by his occupied companion.

Further back in the room were a pair of faces whose keen interest in the
performance contrasted much with the languidly permissive air of those in
front. When the ten minutes' break occurred, Christopher was the first
of the two to speak. 'Well, what do you think of her, Faith?' he said,
shifting restlessly on his seat.

'I like the quiet parts of the tale best, I think,' replied the sister;
'but, of course, I am not a good judge of these things. How still the
people are at times! I continually take my eyes from her to look at the
listeners. Did you notice the fat old lady in the second row, with her
cloak a little thrown back? She was absolutely unconscious, and stayed
with her face up and lips parted like a little child of six.'

'She well may! the thing is a triumph. That fellow Ladywell is here, I
believe--yes, it is he, busily talking to the man on his right. If I
were a woman I would rather go donkey-driving than stick myself up there,
for gaping fops to quiz and say what they like about! But she had no
choice, poor thing; for it was that or nothing with her.'

Faith, who had secret doubts about the absolute necessity of Ethelberta's
appearance in public, said, with remote meanings, 'Perhaps it is not
altogether a severe punishment to her to be looked at by well-dressed
men. Suppose she feels it as a blessing, instead of an affliction?'

'She is a different sort of woman, Faith, and so you would say if you
knew her. Of course, it is natural for you to criticize her severely
just now, and I don't wish to defend her.'

'I think you do a little, Kit.'

'No; I am indifferent about it all. Perhaps it would have been better
for me if I had never seen her; and possibly it might have been better
for her if she had never seen me. She has a heart, and the heart is a
troublesome encumbrance when great things have to be done. I wish you
knew her: I am sure you would like each other.'

'O yes,' said Faith, in a voice of rather weak conviction. 'But, as we
live in such a plain way, it would be hardly desirable at present.'

* * * * *

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 illustrated 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 passed 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 glass of the street-lamps, the varnished back of a
passing 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
bloody 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 buttons, 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 Wessex, 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 sexes 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 embarrassment 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 glass, 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 class, 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 assure 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.'