The Hand of Ethelberta | Page 2

by Sir Ralph Petherwin, his
unforgiving father, who had bequeathed his wealth to his wife
absolutely.
These calamities were a sufficient reason to Lady Petherwin for
pardoning all concerned. She took by the hand the forlorn
Ethelberta--who seemed rather a detached bride than a widow--and
finished her education by placing her for two or three years in a
boarding-school at Bonn. Latterly she had brought the girl to England
to live under her roof as daughter and companion, the condition
attached being that Ethelberta was never openly to recognize her
relations, for reasons which will hereafter appear.
The elegant young lady, as she had a full right to be called if she cared
for the definition, arrested all the local attention when she emerged into
the summer-evening light with that diadem-and-sceptre bearing--many
people for reasons of heredity discovering such graces only in those
whose vestibules are lined with ancestral mail, forgetting that a bear
may be taught to dance. While this air of hers lasted, even the
inanimate objects in the street appeared to know that she was there; but
from a way she had of carelessly overthrowing her dignity by versatile
moods, one could not calculate upon its presence to a certainty when
she was round corners or in little lanes which demanded no repression
of animal spirits.

'Well to be sure!' exclaimed a milkman, regarding her. 'We should
freeze in our beds if 'twere not for the sun, and, dang me! if she isn't a
pretty piece. A man could make a meal between them eyes and chin--eh,
hostler? Odd nation dang my old sides if he couldn't!'
The speaker, who had been carrying a pair of pails on a yoke, deposited
them upon the edge of the pavement in front of the inn, and
straightened his back to an excruciating perpendicular. His remarks had
been addressed to a rickety person, wearing a waistcoat of that
preternatural length from the top to the bottom button which prevails
among men who have to do with horses. He was sweeping straws from
the carriage-way beneath the stone arch that formed a passage to the
stables behind.
'Never mind the cursing and swearing, or somebody who's never out of
hearing may clap yer name down in his black book,' said the hostler,
also pausing, and lifting his eyes to the mullioned and transomed
windows and moulded parapet above him--not to study them as
features of ancient architecture, but just to give as healthful a stretch to
the eyes as his acquaintance had done to his back. 'Michael, a old man
like you ought to think about other things, and not be looking two ways
at your time of life. Pouncing upon young flesh like a carrion crow--'tis
a vile thing in a old man.'
''Tis; and yet 'tis not, for 'tis a naterel taste,' said the milkman, again
surveying Ethelberta, who had now paused upon a bridge in full view,
to look down the river. 'Now, if a poor needy feller like myself could
only catch her alone when she's dressed up to the nines for some grand
party, and carry her off to some lonely place--sakes, what a pot of
jewels and goold things I warrant he'd find about her! 'Twould pay en
for his trouble.'
'I don't dispute the picter; but 'tis sly and untimely to think such roguery.
Though I've had thoughts like it, 'tis true, about high women--Lord
forgive me for't.'
'And that figure of fashion standing there is a widow woman, so I hear?'

'Lady--not a penny less than lady. Ay, a thing of twenty-one or
thereabouts.'
'A widow lady and twenty-one. 'Tis a backward age for a body who's so
forward in her state of life.'
'Well, be that as 'twill, here's my showings for her age. She was about
the figure of two or three-and-twenty when a' got off the carriage last
night, tired out wi' boaming about the country; and nineteen this
morning when she came downstairs after a sleep round the clock and a
clane-washed face: so I thought to myself, twenty- one, I thought.'
'And what's the young woman's name, make so bold, hostler?'
'Ay, and the house were all in a stoor with her and the old woman, and
their boxes and camp-kettles, that they carry to wash in because
hand-basons bain't big enough, and I don't know what all; and t'other
folk stopping here were no more than dirt thencefor'ard.'
'I suppose they've come out of some noble city a long way herefrom?'
'And there was her hair up in buckle as if she'd never seen a clay- cold
man at all. However, to cut a long story short, all I know besides about
'em is that the name upon their luggage is Lady Petherwin, and she's
the widow of a