'Was I? Then that was chiefly the reason. Well, I decided to think no more of her, and I was helped to do it by the troubles that came upon us shortly afterwards; it is a blessed arrangement that one does not feel a sentimental grief at all when additional grief comes in the shape of practical misfortune. However, on the first afternoon of the little holiday I took for my walking tour last summer, I came to Anglebury, and stayed about the neighbourhood for a day or two to see what it was like, thinking we might settle there if this place failed us. The next evening I left, and walked across the heath to Flychett--that's a village about five miles further on--so as to be that distance on my way for next morning; and while Iwas crossing the heath there I met this very woman. We talked a little, because we couldn't help it--you may imagine the kind of talk it was--and parted as coolly as we had met. Now this strange book comes to me; and I have a strong conviction that she is the writer of it, for that poem sketches a similar scene--or rather suggests it; and the tone generally seems the kind of thing she would write--not that she was a sad woman, either.'
'She seems to be a warm-hearted, impulsive woman, to judge from these tender verses.'
'People who print very warm words have sometimes very cold manners.
I wonder if it is really her writing, and if she has sent it to me!'
'Would it not be a singular thing for a married woman to do? Though of course'--(she removed her spectacles as if they hindered her from thinking, and hid them under the timepiece till she should go on reading)--'of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them. I am sure I would not have sent it to a man for the world!'
'I do not see any absolute harm in her sending it. Perhaps she thinks that, since it is all over, we may as well die friends.'
'If I were her husband I should have doubts about the dying. And "all over" may not be so plain to other people as it is to you.'
'Perhaps not. And when a man checks all a woman's finer sentiments towards him by marrying her, it is only natural that it should find a vent somewhere. However, she probably does not know of my downfall since father's death. I hardly think she would have cared to do it had she known that. (I am assuming that it is Ethelberta--Mrs. Petherwin--who sends it: of course I am not sure.) We must remember that when I knew her I was a gentleman at ease, who had not the least notion that I should have to work for a living, and not only so, but should have first to invent a profession to work at out of my old tastes.'
'Kit, you have made two mistakes in your thoughts of that lady.
Even though I don't know her, I can show you that. Now I'll tell you! the first is in thinking that a married lady would send the book with that poem in it without at any rate a slight doubt as to its propriety: the second is in supposing that, had she wished to do it, she would have given the thing up because of our misfortunes.
With a true woman the second reason would have had no effect had she once got over the first. I'm a woman, and that's why I know.'
Christopher said nothing, and turned over the poems.
He lived by teaching music, and, in comparison with starving, thrived; though the wealthy might possibly have said that in comparison with thriving he starved. During this night he hummed airs in bed, thought he would do for the ballad of the fair poetess what other musicians had done for the ballads of other fair poetesses, and dreamed that she smiled on him as her prototype Sappho smiled on Phaon.
The next morning before starting on his rounds a new circumstance induced him to direct his steps to the bookseller's, and ask a question. He had found on examining the wrapper of the volume that it was posted in his own town.
'No copy of the book has been sold by me,' the bookseller's voice replied from far up the Alpine height of the shop-ladder, where he stood dusting stale volumes, as was his habit of a morning before customers came. 'I have never heard of it--probably never shall;' and he shook out the duster, so as to hit the delicate mean between stifling Christopher and not stifling him.
'Surely you don't live by your shop?' said Christopher, drawing back.
The bookseller's eyes rested on the speaker's; his face changed; he came down and placed his hand on the lapel of Christopher's coat.
'Sir,' he said, 'country bookselling is a miserable, impoverishing, exasperating thing in these days. Can you understand the rest?'
'I can; I forgive a starving man anything,' said Christopher.
'You go a long way very suddenly,' said the book seller. 'Half as much pity would have seemed better. However, wait a moment.' He looked into a list of new books, and added: 'The work you allude to was only published last week; though, mind you, if it had been published last century I might not have sold a copy.'
Although his time was precious, Christopher had now become so interested in the circumstance that the unseen sender was somebody breathing his own atmosphere, possibly the very writer herself--the book being too new to be known--that he again passed through the blue shadow of the spire which stretched across the street to-day, and went towards the post-office, animated by a bright intention--to ask the postmaster if he knew the handwriting in which the packet was addressed.
Now the postmaster was an acquaintance of Christopher's, but, as regarded putting that question to him, there was a difficulty.
Everything turned upon whether the postmaster at the moment of asking would be in his under-government manner, or in the manner with which mere nature had endowed him. In the latter case his reply would be all that could be wished; in the former, a man who had sunk in society might as well put his tongue into a mousetrap as make an inquiry so obviously outside the pale of legality as was this.
