The Hand of Ethelberta | Page 8

in her diary, or doing
any ordinary thing, she walked to and fro, curled her pretty nether lip
within her pretty upper one a great many times, made a cradle of her
locked fingers, and paused with fixed eyes where the walls of the room
set limits upon her walk to look at nothing but a picture within her
mind.

2. CHRISTOPHER'S HOUSE - SANDBOURNE TOWN -
SANDBOURNE MOOR
During the wet autumn of the same year, the postman passed one
morning as usual into a plain street that ran through the less fashionable
portion of Sandbourne, a modern coast town and watering- place not
many miles from the ancient Anglebury. He knocked at the door of a
flat-faced brick house, and it was opened by a slight, thoughtful young
man, with his hat on, just then coming out. The postman put into his
hands a book packet, addressed, 'Christopher Julian, Esq.'
Christopher took the package upstairs, opened it with curiosity, and
discovered within a green volume of poems, by an anonymous writer,
the title-page bearing the inscription, 'Metres by E.' The book was new,
though it was cut, and it appeared to have been looked into. The young
man, after turning it over and wondering where it came from, laid it on
the table and went his way, being in haste to fulfil his engagements for
the day.
In the evening, on returning home from his occupations, he sat himself
down cosily to read the newly-arrived volume. The winds of this
uncertain season were snarling in the chimneys, and drops of rain spat
themselves into the fire, revealing plainly that the young man's room
was not far enough from the top of the house to admit of a twist in the
flue, and revealing darkly a little more, if that social rule-of-three

inverse, the higher in lodgings the lower in pocket, were applicable
here. However, the aspect of the room, though homely, was cheerful, a
somewhat contradictory group of furniture suggesting that the
collection consisted of waifs and strays from a former home, the grimy
faces of the old articles exercising a curious and subduing effect on the
bright faces of the new. An oval mirror of rococo workmanship, and a
heavy cabinet- piano with a cornice like that of an Egyptian temple,
adjoined a harmonium of yesterday, and a harp that was almost as new.
Printed music of the last century, and manuscript music of the previous
evening, lay there in such quantity as to endanger the tidiness of a
retreat which was indeed only saved from a chronic state of litter by a
pair of hands that sometimes played, with the lightness of breezes,
about the sewing-machine standing in a remote corner--if any corner
could be called remote in a room so small.
Fire lights and shades from the shaking flames struck in a butterfly
flutter on the underparts of the mantelshelf, and upon the reader's cheek
as he sat. Presently, and all at once, a much greater intentness pervaded
his face: he turned back again, and read anew the subject that had
arrested his eyes. He was a man whose countenance varied with his
mood, though it kept somewhat in the rear of that mood. He looked sad
when he felt almost serene, and only serene when he felt quite cheerful.
It is a habit people acquire who have had repressing experiences.
A faint smile and flush now lightened his face, and jumping up he
opened the door and exclaimed, 'Faith! will you come here for a
moment?'
A prompt step was heard on the stairs, and the young person addressed
as Faith entered the room. She was small in figure, and bore less in the
form of her features than in their shades when changing from
expression to expression the evidence that she was his sister.
'Faith--I want your opinion. But, stop, read this first.' He laid his finger
upon a page in the book, and placed it in her hand.
The girl drew from her pocket a little green-leather sheath, worn at the
edges to whity-brown, and out of that a pair of spectacles,

unconsciously looking round the room for a moment as she did so, as if
to ensure that no stranger saw her in the act of using them. Here a
weakness was uncovered at once; it was a small, pretty, and natural one;
indeed, as weaknesses go in the great world, it might almost have been
called a commendable trait. She then began to read, without sitting
down.
These 'Metres by E.' composed a collection of soft and marvellously
musical rhymes, of a nature known as the vers de societe. The lines
presented a series of playful defences of the supposed strategy of
womankind in fascination, courtship, and marriage--the whole teeming
with