Wessex Tales | Page 9

them half as much as usual.
* * *
'Mrs. Hooper, have you a photograph of--the gentleman who lived
here?' She was getting to be curiously shy in mentioning his name.
'Why, yes. It's in the ornamental frame on the mantelpiece in your own
bedroom, ma'am.'
'No; the Royal Duke and Duchess are in that.'
'Yes, so they are; but he's behind them. He belongs rightly to that frame,
which I bought on purpose; but as he went away he said: "Cover me up
from those strangers that are coming, for God's sake. I don't want them
staring at me, and I am sure they won't want me staring at them." So I
slipped in the Duke and Duchess temporarily in front of him, as they
had no frame, and Royalties are more suitable for letting furnished than
a private young man. If you take 'em out you'll see him under. Lord,
ma'am, he wouldn't mind if he knew it! He didn't think the next tenant
would be such an attractive lady as you, or he wouldn't have thought of
hiding himself; perhaps.'
'Is he handsome?' she asked timidly.

'I call him so. Some, perhaps, wouldn't.'
'Should I?' she asked, with eagerness.
'I think you would, though some would say he's more striking than
handsome; a large-eyed thoughtful fellow, you know, with a very
electric flash in his eye when he looks round quickly, such as you'd
expect a poet to be who doesn't get his living by it.'
'How old is he?'
'Several years older than yourself, ma'am; about thirty-one or two, I
think.'
Ella was, as a matter of fact, a few months over thirty herself; but she
did not look nearly so much. Though so immature in nature, she was
entering on that tract of life in which emotional women begin to
suspect that last love may be stronger than first love; and she would
soon, alas, enter on the still more melancholy tract when at least the
vainer ones of her sex shrink from receiving a male visitor otherwise
than with their backs to the window or the blinds half down. She
reflected on Mrs. Hooper's remark, and said no more about age.
Just then a telegram was brought up. It came from her husband, who
had gone down the Channel as far as Budmouth with his friends in the
yacht, and would not be able to get back till next day.
After her light dinner Ella idled about the shore with the children till
dusk, thinking of the yet uncovered photograph in her room, with a
serene sense of something ecstatic to come. For, with the subtle
luxuriousness of fancy in which this young woman was an adept, on
learning that her husband was to be absent that night she had refrained
from incontinently rushing upstairs and opening the picture-frame,
preferring to reserve the inspection till she could be alone, and a more
romantic tinge be imparted to the occasion by silence, candles, solemn
sea and stars outside, than was afforded by the garish afternoon
sunlight.
The children had been sent to bed, and Ella soon followed, though it
was not yet ten o'clock. To gratify her passionate curiosity she now
made her preparations, first getting rid of superfluous garments and
putting on her dressing-gown, then arranging a chair in front of the
table and reading several pages of Trewe's tenderest utterances. Then
she fetched the portrait-frame to the light, opened the back, took out the
likeness, and set it up before her.

It was a striking countenance to look upon. The poet wore a luxuriant
black moustache and imperial, and a slouched hat which shaded the
forehead. The large dark eyes, described by the landlady, showed an
unlimited capacity for misery; they looked out from beneath
well-shaped brows as if they were reading the universe in the
microcosm of the confronter's face, and were not altogether overjoyed
at what the spectacle portended.
Ella murmured in her lowest, richest, tenderest tone: 'And it's YOU
who've so cruelly eclipsed me these many times!'
As she gazed long at the portrait she fell into thought, till her eyes filled
with tears, and she touched the cardboard with her lips. Then she
laughed with a nervous lightness, and wiped her eyes.
She thought how wicked she was, a woman having a husband and three
children, to let her mind stray to a stranger in this unconscionable
manner. No, he was not a stranger! She knew his thoughts and feelings
as well as she knew her own; they were, in fact, the self- same thoughts
and feelings as hers, which her husband distinctly lacked; perhaps
luckily for himself; considering that he had to provide for family
expenses.
'He's nearer my real self, he's more intimate with the real me than Will