Ethelberta came indoors one day from the University boat-race, and sat down, without speaking, beside Picotee, as if lost in thought.
'Did you enjoy the sight?' said Picotee.
'I scarcely know. We couldn't see at all from Mrs. Belmaine's carriage, so two of us--very rashly--agreed to get out and be rowed across to the other side where the people were quite few. But when the boatman had us in the middle of the river he declared he couldn't land us on the other side because of the barges, so there we were in a dreadful state--tossed up and down like corks upon great waves made by steamers till I made up my mind for a drowning.
Well, at last we got back again, but couldn't reach the carriage for the crowd; and I don't know what we should have done if a gentleman hadn't come--sent by Mrs. Belmaine, who was in a great fright about us; then he was introduced to me, and--I wonder how it will end!'
'Was there anything so wonderful in the beginning, then?'
'Yes. One of the coolest and most practised men in London was ill-mannered towards me from sheer absence of mind--and could there be higher flattery? When a man of that sort does not give you the politeness you deserve, it means that in his heart he is rebelling against another feeling which his pride suggests that you do not deserve. O, I forgot to say that he is a Mr. Neigh, a nephew of Mr.
Doncastle's, who lives at ease about Piccadilly and Pall Mall, and has a few acres somewhere--but I don't know much of him. The worst of my position now is that I excite this superficial interest in many people and a deep friendship in nobody. If what all my supporters feel could be collected into the hearts of two or three they would love me better than they love themselves; but now it pervades all and operates in none.'
'But it must operate in this gentleman?'
'Well, yes--just for the present. But men in town have so many contrivances for getting out of love that you can't calculate upon keeping them in for two days together. However, it is all the same to me. There's only--but let that be.'
'What is there only?' said Picotee coaxingly.
'Only one man,' murmured Ethelberta, in much lower tones. 'I mean, whose wife I should care to be; and the very qualities I like in him will, I fear, prevent his ever being in a position to ask me.'
'Is he the man you punished the week before last by forbidding him to come?'
'Perhaps he is: but he does not want civility from me. Where there's much feeling there's little ceremony.'
'It certainly seems that he does not want civility from you to make him attentive to you,' said Picotee, stifling a sigh; 'for here is a letter in his handwriting, I believe.'
'You might have given it to me at once,' said Ethelberta, opening the envelope hastily. It contained very few sentences: they were to the effect that Christopher had received her letter forbidding him to call; that he had therefore at first resolved not to call or even see her more, since he had become such a shadow in her path.
Still, as it was always best to do nothing hastily, he had on second thoughts decided to ask her to grant him a last special favour, and see him again just once, for a few minutes only that afternoon, in which he might at least say Farewell. To avoid all possibility of compromising her in anybody's eyes, he would call at half-past six, when other callers were likely to be gone, knowing that from the peculiar constitution of the household the hour would not interfere with her arrangements. There being no time for an answer, he would assume that she would see him, and keep the engagement; the request being one which could not rationally be objected to.
'There--read it!' said Ethelberta, with glad displeasure. 'Did you ever hear such audacity? Fixing a time so soon that I cannot reply, and thus making capital out of a pretended necessity, when it is really an arbitrary arrangement of his own. That's real rebellion--forcing himself into my house when I said strictly he was not to come; and then, that it cannot rationally be objected to--I don't like his "rationally."'
'Where there's much love there's little ceremony, didn't you say just now?' observed innocent Picotee.
'And where there's little love, no ceremony at all. These manners of his are dreadful, and I believe he will never improve.'
'It makes you care not a bit about him, does it not, Berta?' said Picotee hopefully.
'I don't answer for that,' said Ethelberta. 'I feel, as many others do, that a want of ceremony which is produced by abstraction of mind is no defect in a poet or musician, fatal as it may be to an ordinary man.'
'Mighty me! You soon forgive him.'
'Picotee, don't you be so quick to speak. Before I have finished, how do you know what I am going to say? I'll never tell you anything again, if you take me up so. Of course I am going to punish him at once, and make him remember that I am a lady, even if I do like him a little.'
'How do you mean to punish him?' said Picotee, with interest.
'By writing and telling him that on no account is he to come.'
'But there is not time for a letter--'
'That doesn't matter. It will show him that I did not MEAN him to come.'
At hearing the very merciful nature of the punishment, Picotee sighed without replying; and Ethelberta despatched her note. The hour of appointment drew near, and Ethelberta showed symptoms of unrest. Six o'clock struck and passed. She walked here and there for nothing, and it was plain that a dread was filling her: her letter might accidentally have had, in addition to the moral effect which she had intended, the practical effect which she did not intend, by arriving before, instead of after, his purposed visit to her, thereby stopping him in spite of all her care.
'How long are letters going to Bloomsbury?' she said suddenly.
'Two hours, Joey tells me,' replied Picotee, who had already inquired on her own private account.
'There!' exclaimed Ethelberta petulantly. 'How I dislike a man to misrepresent things! He said there was not time for a reply!'
