Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (232 page)

‘I think it is,’ said Picotee outside, stretching her neck forward as far as she could.  ‘No, it is the men on the beach dragging up their boats; they expect wind to-night.’

‘How wearisome!  Picotee, you may as well come inside; if he means to call he will; but he ought to be here by this time.’

It was only once more, and that some time later that she again said ‘Listen!’

‘That’s not the noise of a carriage; it is the fizz of a rocket.  The coastguardsmen are practising the life-apparatus to-day, to be ready for the autumn wrecks.’

‘Ah!’ said Ethelberta, her face clearing up.  Hers had not been a sweetheart’s impatience, but her mood had intensified during these minutes of suspense to a harassing mistrust of her man-compelling power, which was, if that were possible, more gloomy than disappointed love.  ‘I know now where he is.  That operation with the cradle-apparatus is very interesting, and he is stopping to see it. . . .  But I shall not wait indoors much longer, whatever he may be stopping to see.  It is very unaccountable, and vexing, after moving into this new house too.  We were much more comfortable in the old one.  In keeping any previous appointment in which I have been concerned he has been ridiculously early.’

‘Shall I run round?’ said Picotee, ‘and if he is not watching them we will go out.’

‘Very well,’ said her sister.

The time of Picotee’s absence seemed an age.  Ethelberta heard the roar of another rocket, and still Picotee did not return.  ‘What can the girl be thinking of?’ she mused. . . .  ‘What a half-and-half policy mine has been!  Thinking of marrying for position, and yet not making it my rigid plan to secure the man the first moment that he made his offer.  So I lose the comfort of having a soul above worldliness, and my compensation for not having it likewise!’  A minute or two more and in came Picotee.

‘What has kept you so long — and how excited you look,’ said Ethelberta.

‘I thought I would stay a little while, as I had never seen a rocket-apparatus,’ said Picotee, faintly and strangely.

‘But is he there?’ asked her sister impatiently.

‘Yes — he was.  He’s gone now!’

‘Lord Mountclere?’

‘No.  There is no old man there at all.  Mr Julian was there.’

A little ‘Ah!’ came from Ethelberta, like a note from a storm-bird at night.  She turned round and went into the back room.  ‘Is Mr. Julian going to call here?’ she inquired, coming forward again.

‘No — he’s gone by the steamboat.  He was only passing through on his way to Sandbourne, where he is gone to settle a small business relating to his father’s affairs.  He was not in Knollsea ten minutes, owing to something which detained him on the way.’

‘Did he inquire for me?’

‘No.  And only think, Ethelberta — such a remarkable thing has happened, though I nearly forgot to tell you.  He says that coming along the road he was overtaken by a carriage, and when it had just passed him one of the horses shied, pushed the other down a slope, and overturned the carriage.  One wheel came off and trundled to the bottom of the hill by itself.  Christopher of course ran up, and helped out of the carriage an old gentleman — now do you know what’s likely?’

‘It was Lord Mountclere.  I am glad that’s the cause,’ said Ethelberta involuntarily.

‘I imagined you would suppose it to be Lord Mountclere.  But Mr. Julian did not know the gentleman, and said nothing about who he might be.’

‘Did he describe him?’

‘Not much — just a little.’

‘Well?’

‘He said he was a sly old dog apparently, to hear how he swore in whispers.  This affair is what made Mr. Julian so late that he had no time to call here.  Lord Mountclere’s ankle — if it was Lord Mountclere — was badly sprained.  But the servants were not injured beyond a scratch on the coachman’s face.  Then they got another carriage and drove at once back again.  It must be he, or else why is he not come?  It is a pity, too, that Mr. Julian was hindered by this, so that there was no opportunity for him to bide a bit in Knollsea.’

Ethelberta was not disposed to believe that Christopher would have called, had time favoured him to the utmost.  Between himself and her there was that kind of division which is more insurmountable than enmity; for estrangements produced by good judgment will last when those of feeling break down in smiles.  Not the lovers who part in passion, but the lovers who part in friendship, are those who most frequently part for ever.

‘Did you tell Mr. Julian that the injured gentleman was possibly Lord Mountclere, and that he was coming here?’ said Ethelberta.

‘I made no remark at all — I did not think of him till afterwards.’

The inquiry was hardly necessary, for Picotee’s words would dry away like a brook in the sands when she held conversation with Christopher.

As they had anticipated, the sufferer was no other than their intending visitor.  Next morning there was a note explaining the accident, and expressing its writer’s suffering from the cruel delay as greater than that from the swollen ankle, which was progressing favourably.

Nothing further was heard of Lord Mountclere for more than a week, when she received another letter, which put an end to her season of relaxation, and once more braced her to the contest.  This epistle was very courteously written, and in point of correctness, propriety, and gravity, might have come from the quill of a bishop.  Herein the old nobleman gave a further description of the accident, but the main business of the communication was to ask her if, since he was not as yet very active, she would come to Enckworth Court and delight himself and a small group of friends who were visiting there.

She pondered over the letter as she walked by the shore that day, and after some hesitation decided to go.

CHAPTER 38.

ENCKWORTH COURT

It was on a dull, stagnant, noiseless afternoon of autumn that Ethelberta first crossed the threshold of Enckworth Court.  The daylight was so lowered by the impervious roof of cloud overhead that it scarcely reached further into Lord Mountclere’s entrance-hall than to the splays of the windows, even but an hour or two after midday; and indoors the glitter of the fire reflected itself from the very panes, so inconsiderable were the opposing rays.

Enckworth Court, in its main part, had not been standing more than a hundred years.  At that date the weakened portions of the original mediaeval structure were pulled down and cleared away, old jambs being carried off for rick-staddles, and the foliated timbers of the hall roof making themselves useful as fancy chairs in the summer-houses of rising inns.  A new block of masonry was built up from the ground of such height and lordliness that the remnant of the old pile left standing became as a mere cup-bearer and culinary menial beside it.  The rooms in this old fragment, which had in times past been considered sufficiently dignified for dining-hall, withdrawing-room, and so on, were now reckoned barely high enough for sculleries, servants’ hall, and laundries, the whole of which were arranged therein.

The modern portion had been planned with such a total disregard of association, that the very rudeness of the contrast gave an interest to the mass which it might have wanted had perfect harmony been attempted between the old nucleus and its adjuncts, a probable result if the enlargement had taken place later on in time.  The issue was that the hooded windows, simple string-courses, and random masonry of the Gothic workman, stood elbow to elbow with the equal-spaced ashlar, architraves, and fasciae of the Classic addition, each telling its distinct tale as to stage of thought and domestic habit without any of those artifices of blending or restoration by which the seeker for history in stones will be utterly hoodwinked in time to come.

To the left of the door and vestibule which Ethelberta passed through rose the principal staircase, constructed of a freestone so milk-white and delicately moulded as to be easily conceived in the lamplight as of biscuit-ware.  Who, unacquainted with the secrets of geometrical construction, could imagine that, hanging so airily there, to all appearance supported on nothing, were twenty or more tons dead weight of stone, that would have made a prison for an elephant if so arranged?  The art which produced this illusion was questionable, but its success was undoubted.  ‘How lovely!’ said Ethelberta, as she looked at the fairy ascent.  ‘His staircase alone is worth my hand!’

Passing along by the colonnade, which partly fenced the staircase from the visitor, the saloon was reached, an apartment forming a double cube.  About the left-hand end of this were grouped the drawing-rooms and library; while on the right was the dining-hall, with billiard, smoking, and gun rooms in mysterious remoteness beyond.

Without attempting to trace an analogy between a man and his mansion, it may be stated that everything here, though so dignified and magnificent, was not conceived in quite the true and eternal spirit of art.  It was a house in which Pugin would have torn his hair.  Those massive blocks of red-veined marble lining the hall — emulating in their surface-glitter the Escalier de Marbre at Versailles — were cunning imitations in paint and plaster by workmen brought from afar for the purpose, at a prodigious expense, by the present viscount’s father, and recently repaired and re-varnished.  The dark green columns and pilasters corresponding were brick at the core.  Nay, the external walls, apparently of massive and solid freestone, were only veneered with that material, being, like the pillars, of brick within.

To a stone mask worn by a brick face a story naturally appertained — one which has since done service in other quarters.  When the vast addition had just been completed King George visited Enckworth.  Its owner pointed out the features of its grand architectural attempt, and waited for commendation.

‘Brick, brick, brick,’ said the king.

The Georgian Lord Mountclere blushed faintly, albeit to his very poll, and said nothing more about his house that day.  When the king was gone he sent frantically for the craftsmen recently dismissed, and soon the green lawns became again the colour of a Nine-Elms cement wharf.  Thin freestone slabs were affixed to the whole series of fronts by copper cramps and dowels, each one of substance sufficient to have furnished a poor boy’s pocket with pennies for a month, till not a speck of the original surface remained, and the edifice shone in all the grandeur of massive masonry that was not massive at all.  But who remembered this save the builder and his crew? and as long as nobody knew the truth, pretence looked just as well.

What was honest in Enckworth Court was that portion of the original edifice which still remained, now degraded to subservient uses.  Where the untitled Mountclere of the White Rose faction had spread his knees over the brands, when the place was a castle and not a court, the still-room maid now simmered her preserves; and where Elizabethan mothers and daughters of that sturdy line had tapestried the love-scenes of Isaac and Jacob, boots and shoes were now cleaned and coals stowed away.

Lord Mountclere had so far recovered from the sprain as to be nominally quite well, under pressure of a wish to receive guests.  The sprain had in one sense served him excellently.  He had now a reason, apart from that of years, for walking with his stick, and took care to let the reason be frequently known.  To-day he entertained a larger number of persons than had been assembled within his walls for a great length of time.

Until after dinner Ethelberta felt as if she were staying at an hotel.  Few of the people whom she had met at the meeting of the Imperial Association greeted her here.  The viscount’s brother was not present, but Sir Cyril Blandsbury and his wife were there, a lively pair of persons, entertaining as actors, and friendly as dogs.  Beyond these all the faces and figures were new to her, though they were handsome and dashing enough to satisfy a court chronicler.  Ethelberta, in a dress sloped about as high over the shoulder as would have drawn approval from Reynolds, and expostulation from Lely, thawed and thawed each friend who came near her, and sent him or her away smiling; yet she felt a little surprise.  She had seldom visited at a country-house, and knew little of the ordinary composition of a group of visitors within its walls; but the present assemblage seemed to want much of that old-fashioned stability and quaint monumental dignity she had expected to find under this historical roof.  Nobody of her entertainer’s own rank appeared.  Not a single clergyman was there.  A tendency to talk Walpolean scandal about foreign courts was particularly manifest.  And although tropical travellers, Indian officers and their wives, courteous exiles, and descendants of Irish kings, were infinitely more pleasant than Lord Mountclere’s landed neighbours would probably have been, to such a cosmopolite as Ethelberta a calm Tory or old Whig company would have given a greater treat.  They would have struck as gratefully upon her senses as sylvan scenery after crags and cliffs, or silence after the roar of a cataract.

It was evening, and all these personages at Enckworth Court were merry, snug, and warm within its walls.  Dinner-time had passed, and everything had gone on well, when Mrs. Tara O’Fanagan, who had a gold-clamped tooth, which shone every now and then, asked Ethelberta if she would amuse them by telling a story, since nobody present, except Lord Mountclere, had ever heard one from her lips.

Seeing that Ethelberta had been working at that art as a profession, it can hardly be said that the question was conceived with tact, though it was put with grace.  Lord Mountclere evidently thought it objectionable, for he looked unhappy.  To only one person in the brilliant room did the request appear as a timely accident, and that was to Ethelberta herself.  Her honesty was always making war upon her manoeuvres, and shattering their delicate meshes, to her great inconvenience and delay.  Thus there arose those devious impulses and tangential flights which spoil the works of every would-be schemer who instead of being wholly machine is half heart.  One of these now was to show herself as she really was, not only to Lord Mountclere, but to his friends assembled, whom, in her ignorance, she respected more than they deserved, and so get rid of that self-reproach which had by this time reached a morbid pitch, through her over-sensitiveness to a situation in which a large majority of women and men would have seen no falseness.