The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters

‘Has anybody been beating you?’

‘Beating! Do I look like a person who gets beatings? No, it is a madness,’ said Joey, putting his hand upon his chest. ‘The case is, I am in love.’

‘O Joey, a boy no bigger than you are!’ said Picotee reprovingly. Her personal interest in the passion, however, provoked her to inquire, in the next breath, ‘Who is it? Do tell, Joey.’

‘No bigger than I! What hev bigness to do with it? That’s just like your old-fashioned notions. Bigness is no more wanted in courting nowadays than in soldiering or smoking or any other duty of man. Husbands is rare; and a promising courter who means business will fetch his price in these times, big or small, I assure ye. I might have been engaged a dozen times over as far as the bigness goes. You should see what a miserable little fellow my rival is afore you talk like that. Now you know I’ve got a rival, perhaps you’ll own there must be something in it.’

‘Yes, that seems like the real thing. But who is the young woman?’

‘Well, I don’t mind telling you, Picotee. It is Mrs. Doncastle’s new maid. I called to see father last night, and had supper there; and you should have seen how lovely she were – eating sparrowgrass sideways, as if she were born to it. But, of course, there’s a rival – there always is – I might have known that, and I will crush him!’

‘But Mrs. Doncastle’s new maid – if that was she I caught a glimpse of the other day – is ever so much older than you – a dozen years.’

‘What’s that to a man in love? Pooh – I wish you would leave me, Picotee; I wants to be alone.’

A short time after this Picotee was in the company of Ethelberta, and she took occasion to mention Joey’s attachment. Ethelberta grew exceedingly angry directly she heard of it.

‘What a fearful nuisance that boy is becoming,’ she said. ‘Does father know anything of this?’

‘I think not,’ said Picotee. ‘O no, he cannot; he would not allow any such thing to go on; she is so much older than Joey.’

‘I should think he wouldn’t allow it! The fact is I must be more strict about this growing friendliness between you all and the Doncastle servants. There shall be absolutely no intimacy or visiting of any sort. When father wants to see any of you he must come here, unless there is a most serious reason for your calling upon him. Some disclosure or reference to me otherwise than as your mistress, will certainly be made else, and then I am ruined. I will speak to father myself about Joey’s absurd nonsense this evening. I am going to see him on another matter.’ And Ethelberta sighed. ‘I am to dine there on Thursday,’ she added.

‘To dine there, Berta? Well, that is a strange thing! Why, father will be close to you!’

‘Yes,’ said Ethelberta quietly.

‘How I should like to see you sitting at a grand dinner-table, among lordly dishes and shining people, and father about the room unnoticed! Berta, I have never seen a dinner-party in my life, and father said that I should some day; he promised me long ago.’

‘How will he be able to carry out that, my dear child?’ said Ethelberta, drawing her sister gently to her side.

‘Father says that for an hour and a half the guests are quite fixed in the dining-room, and as unlikely to move as if they were trees planted round the table. Do let me go and see you, Berta,’ Picotee added coaxingly. ‘I would give anything to see how you look in the midst of elegant people talking and laughing, and you my own sister all the time, and me looking on like puss-in-the-corner.’

Ethelberta could hardly resist the entreaty, in spite of her recent resolution.

‘We will leave that to be considered when I come home to-night,’ she said. ‘I must hear what father says.’

After dark the same evening a woman, dressed in plain black and wearing a hood, went to the servants’ entrance of Mr. Doncastle’s house, and inquired for Mr. Chickerel. Ethelberta found him in a room by himself, and on entering she closed the door behind her, and unwrapped her face.

‘Can you sit with me a few minutes, father?’ she said.

‘Yes, for a quarter of an hour or so,’ said the butler. ‘Has anything happened? I thought it might be Picotee.’

‘No. All’s well yet. But I thought it best to see you upon one or two matters which are harassing me a little just now. The first is, that stupid boy Joey has got entangled in some way with the lady’s-maid at this house; a ridiculous affair it must be by all account, but it is too serious for me to treat lightly. She will worm everything out of him, and a pretty business it will be then.’

‘God bless my soul! why, the woman is old enough to be his mother! I have never heard a sound of it till now. What do you propose to do?’

‘I have hardly thought: I cannot tell at all. But we will consider that after I have done. The next thing is, I am to dine here Thursday – that is, to-morrow.’

‘You going to dine here, are you?’ said her father in surprise. ‘Dear me, that’s news. We have a dinner-party to-morrow, but I was not aware that you knew our people.’

‘I have accepted the invitation,’ said Ethelberta. ‘But if you think I had better stay away, I will get out of it by some means. Heavens! what does that mean – will anybody come in?’ she added, rapidly pulling up her hood and jumping from the seat as the loud tones of a bell clanged forth in startling proximity.

‘O no – it is all safe,’ said her father. ‘It is the area door – nothing to do with me. About the dinner: I don’t see why you may not come. Of course you will take no notice of me, nor shall I of you. It is to be rather a large party. Lord What’s-his-name is coming, and several good people.’

‘Yes; he is coming to meet me, it appears. But, father,’ she said more softly and slowly, ‘how wrong it will be for me to come so close to you, and never recognize you! I don’t like it. I wish you could have given up service by this time; it would have been so much less painful for us all round. I thought we might have been able to manage it somehow.’

‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said Mr. Chickerel crossly. ‘There is not the least reason why I should give up. I want to save a little money first. If you don’t like me as I am, you must keep away from me. Don’t be uneasy about my comfort; I am right enough, thank God. I can mind myself for many a year yet.’

Ethelberta looked at him with tears in her eyes, but she did not speak. She never could help crying when she met her father here.

‘I have been in service now for more than seven-and-thirty years,’ her father went on. ‘It is an honourable calling; and why should you maintain me because you can earn a few pounds by your gifts, and an old woman left you her house and a few sticks of furniture? If she had left you any money it would have been a different thing, but as you have to work for every penny you get, I cannot think of it. Suppose I should agree to come and live with you, and then you should be ill, or such like, and I no longer able to help myself? O no, I’ll stick where I am, for here I am safe as to food and shelter at any rate. Surely, Ethelberta, it is only right that I, who ought to keep you all, should at least keep your mother and myself? As to our position, that we cannot help; and I don’t mind that you are unable to own me.’

‘I wish I could own you – all of you.’

‘Well, you chose your course, my dear; and you must abide by it. Having put your hand to the plough, it will be foolish to turn back.’

‘It would, I suppose. Yet I wish I could get a living by some simple humble occupation, and drop the name of Petherwin, and be Berta Chickerel again, and live in a green cottage as we used to do when I was small. I am miserable to a pitiable degree sometimes, and sink into regrets that I ever fell into such a groove as this. I don’t like covert deeds, such as coming here to-night, and many are necessary with me from time to time. There is something without which splendid energies are a drug; and that is a cold heart. There is another thing necessary to energy, too – the power of distinguishing your visions from your reasonable forecasts when looking into the future, so as to allow your energy to lay hold of the forecasts only. I begin to have a fear that mother is right when she implies that I undertook to carry out visions and all. But ten of us are so many to cope with. If God Almighty had only killed off three-quarters of us when we were little, a body might have done something for the rest; but as we are it is hopeless!’

‘There is no use in your going into high doctrine like that,’ said Chickerel. ‘As I said before, you chose your course. You have begun to fly high, and you had better keep there.’

‘And to do that there is only one way – that is, to do it surely, so that I have some groundwork to enable me to keep up to the mark in my profession. That way is marriage.’

‘Marriage? Who are you going to marry?’

‘God knows. Perhaps Lord Mountclere. Stranger things have happened.’

‘Yes, so they have; though not many wretcheder things. I would sooner see you in your grave, Ethelberta, than Lord Mountclere’s wife, or the wife of anybody like him, great as the honour would be.’

‘Of course that was only something to say; I don’t know the man even.’

‘I know his valet. However, marry who you may, I hope you’ll be happy, my dear girl. You would be still more divided from us in that event; but when your mother and I are dead, it will make little difference.’

Ethelberta placed her hand upon his shoulder, and smiled cheerfully. ‘Now, father, don’t despond. All will be well, and we shall see no such misfortune as that for many a year. Leave all to me. I am a rare hand at contrivances.’

‘You are indeed, Berta. It seems to me quite wonderful that we should be living so near together and nobody suspect the relationship, because of the precautions you have taken.’

‘Yet the precautions were rather Lady Petherwin’s than mine, as you know. Consider how she kept me abroad. My marriage being so secret made it easy to cut off all traces, unless anybody had made it a special business to search for them. That people should suspect as yet would be by far the more wonderful thing of the two. But we must, for one thing, have no visiting between our girls and the servants here, or they soon will suspect.’

Ethelberta then laid down a few laws on the subject, and, explaining the other details of her visit, told her father soon that she must leave him.

He took her along the passage and into the area. They were standing at the bottom of the steps, saying a few parting words about Picotee’s visit to see the dinner, when a female figure appeared by the railing above, slipped in at the gate, and flew down the steps past the father and daughter. At the moment of passing she whispered breathlessly to him, ‘Is that you, Mr. Chickerel?’

‘Yes,’ said the butler.

She tossed into his arms a quantity of wearing apparel, and adding, ‘Please take them upstairs for me – I am late,’ rushed into the house.

‘Good heavens, what does that mean?’ said Ethelberta, holding her father’s arm in her uneasiness.