The Hand of Ethelberta Part 43

'But I do not wish for any formal engagement,' said Ladywell quickly, fearing she might commit herself to some expression of positive denial, which he could never surmount. 'I'll wait--I'll wait any length of time.

Remember, you have never absolutely forbidden my--friends.h.i.+p. Will you delay your answer till some time hence, when you have thoroughly considered; since I fear it may be a hasty one now?'

'Yes, indeed; it may be hasty.'

'You will delay it?'

'Yes.'

'When shall it be?'

'Say a month hence. I suggest that, because by that time you will have found an answer in your own mind: strange things may happen before then.

"She shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them; then shall she say, I will go and return to my first"--however, that's no matter.'

'What--did you--?' Ladywell began, altogether bewildered by this.

'It is a pa.s.sage in Hosea which came to my mind, as possibly applicable to myself some day,' she answered. 'It was mere impulse.'

'Ha-ha!--a jest--one of your romances broken loose. There is no law for impulse: that is why I am here.'

Thus fancifully they conversed till the interview concluded. Getting her to promise that she would see him again, Ladywell retired to a sitting- room on the same landing, in which he had been writing letters before she came up. Immediately upon this her aunt, who began to suspect that something peculiar was in the wind, came to tell her that Mr. Neigh had been inquiring for her again.

'Send him in,' said Ethelberta.

Neigh's footsteps approached, and the well-known figure entered.

Ethelberta received him smilingly, for she was getting so used to awkward juxtapositions that she treated them quite as a natural situation. She merely hoped that Ladywell would not hear them talking through the part.i.tion.

Neigh scarcely said anything as a beginning: she knew his errand perfectly; and unaccountable as it was to her, the strange and unceremonious relations.h.i.+p between them, that had originated in the peculiar conditions of their first close meeting, was continued now as usual.

'Have you been able to bestow a thought on the question between us? I hope so,' said Neigh.

'It is no use,' said Ethelberta. 'Wait a month, and you will not require an answer. You will not mind speaking low, because of a person in the next room?'

'Not at all.--Why will that be?'

'I might say; but let us speak of something else.'

'I don't see how we can,' said Neigh brusquely. 'I had no other reason on earth for calling here. I wished to get the matter settled, and I could not be satisfied without seeing you. I hate writing on matters of this sort. In fact I can't do it, and that's why I am here.'

He was still speaking when an attendant entered with a note.

'Will you excuse me one moment?' said Ethelberta, stepping to the window and opening the missive. It contained these words only, in a scrawl so full of deformities that she could hardly piece its meaning together:--

'I must see you again to-day unless you absolutely deny yourself to me, which I shall take as a refusal to meet me any more. I will arrive, punctually, five minutes after you receive this note. Do pray be alone if you can, and eternally gratify,--Yours,

'MOUNTCLERE.'

'If anything has happened I shall be pleased to wait,' said Neigh, seeing her concern when she had closed the note.

'O no, it is nothing,' said Ethelberta precipitately. 'Yet I think I will ask you to wait,' she added, not liking to dismiss Neigh in a hurry; for she was not insensible to his perseverance in seeking her over all these miles of sea and land; and secondly, she feared that if he were to leave on the instant he might run into the arms of Lord Mountclere and Ladywell.

'I shall be only too happy to stay till you are at leisure,' said Neigh, in the unimpa.s.sioned delivery he used whether his meaning were a trite compliment or the expression of his most earnest feeling.

'I may be rather a long time,' said Ethelberta dubiously.

'My time is yours.'

Ethelberta left the room and hurried to her aunt, exclaiming, 'O, Aunt Charlotte, I hope you have rooms enough to spare for my visitors, for they are like the fox, the goose, and the corn, in the riddle; I cannot leave them together, and I can only be with one at a time. I want the nicest drawing-room you have for an interview of a bare two minutes with an old gentleman. I am so sorry this has happened, but it is not altogether my fault! I only arranged to see one of them; but the other was sent to me by mother, in a mistake, and the third met with me on my journey: that's the explanation. There's the oldest of them just come.'

She looked through the gla.s.s part.i.tion, and under the arch of the court- gate, as the wheels of the viscount's carriage were heard outside.

Ethelberta ascended to a room on the first floor, Lord Mountclere was shown up, and the door closed upon them.

At this time Neigh was very comfortably lounging in an arm-chair in Ethelberta's room on the second floor. This was a pleasant enough way of pa.s.sing the minutes with such a tender interview in prospect; and as he leant he looked with languid and luxurious interest through the open cas.e.m.e.nt at the spars and rigging of some luggers on the Seine, the pillars of the suspension bridge, and the scenery of the Faubourg St.

Sever on the other side of the river. How languid his interest might ultimately have become there is no knowing; but there soon arose upon his ear the accents of Ethelberta in low distinctness from somewhere outside the room.

'Yes; the scene is pleasant to-day,' she said. 'I like a view over a river.'

'I should think the steamboats are objectionable when they stop here,'

said another person.

Neigh's face closed in to an aspect of perplexity. 'Surely that cannot be Lord Mountclere?' he muttered.

Had he been certain that Ethelberta was only talking to a stranger, Neigh would probably have felt their conversation to be no business of his, much as he might have been surprised to find her giving audience to another man at such a place. But his impression that the voice was that of his acquaintance, Lord Mountclere, coupled with doubts as to its possibility, was enough to lead him to rise from the chair and put his head out of the window.

Upon a balcony beneath him were the speakers, as he had suspected--Ethelberta and the viscount.

Looking right and left, he saw projecting from the next window the head of his friend Ladywell, gazing right and left likewise, apparently just drawn out by the same voice which had attracted himself.

'What--you, Neigh!--how strange,' came from Ladywell's lips before he had time to recollect that great coolness existed between himself and Neigh on Ethelberta's account, which had led to the reduction of their intimacy to the most attenuated of nods and good-mornings ever since the Harlequin- rose incident at Cripplegate.

'Yes; it is rather strange,' said Neigh, with saturnine evenness. 'Still a fellow must be somewhere.'

Each then looked over his window-sill downwards, upon the speakers who had attracted them thither.

Lord Mountclere uttered something in a low tone which did not reach the young men; to which Ethelberta replied, 'As I have said, Lord Mountclere, I cannot give you an answer now. I must consider what to do with Mr.

Neigh and Mr. Ladywell. It is too sudden for me to decide at once. I could not do so until I have got home to England, when I will write you a letter, stating frankly my affairs and those of my relatives. I shall not consider that you have addressed me on the subject of marriage until, having received my letter, you--'

'Repeat my proposal,' said Lord Mountclere.

'Yes.'

'My dear Mrs. Petherwin, it is as good as repeated! But I have no right to a.s.sume anything you don't wish me to a.s.sume, and I will wait. How long is it that I am to suffer in this uncertainty?'

'A month. By that time I shall have grown weary of my other two suitors.'

'A month! Really inflexible?'

Ethelberta had returned inside the window, and her answer was inaudible.

Ladywell and Neigh looked up, and their eyes met. Both had been reluctant to remain where they stood, but they were too fascinated to instantly retire. Neigh moved now, and Ladywell did the same. Each saw that the face of his companion was flushed.