virtues of the song as a composition, was a great recommendation to it as a property. Christopher was delighted to perceive that out of this position he could frame an admissible, if not an unimpeachable, reason for calling upon Ethelberta. He determined to do so at once, and obtain the required permission by word of mouth.
He was greatly surprised, when the front of the house appeared in view on this spring afternoon, to see what a white and sightless aspect pervaded all the windows. He came close: the eyeball blankness was caused by all the shutters and blinds being shut tight from top to bottom. Possibly this had been the case for some time – he could not tell. In one of the windows was a card bearing the announcement, ‘This House to be let Furnished.’ Here was a merciless clash between fancy and fact. Regretting now his faint-heartedness in not letting her know beforehand by some means that he was about to make a new start in the world, and coming to dwell near her, Christopher rang the bell to make inquiries. A gloomy caretaker appeared after a while, and the young man asked whither the ladies had gone to live. He was beyond measure depressed to learn that they were in the South of France – Arles, the man thought the place was called – the time of their return to town being very uncertain; though one thing was clear, they meant to miss the forthcoming London season altogether.
As Christopher’s hope to see her again had brought a resolve to do so, so now resolve led to dogged patience. Instead of attempting anything by letter, he decided to wait; and he waited well, occupying himself in publishing a ‘March’ and a ‘Morning and Evening Service in E flat.’ Some four-part songs, too, engaged his attention when the heavier duties of the day were over – these duties being the giving of lessons in harmony and counterpoint, in which he was aided by the introductions of a man well known in the musical world, who had been acquainted with young Julian as a promising amateur long before he adopted music as the staff of his pilgrimage.
It was the end of summer when he again tried his fortune at the house in Exonbury Crescent. Scarcely calculating upon finding her at this stagnant time of the town year, and only hoping for information, Julian was surprised and excited to see the shutters open, and the house wearing altogether a living look, its neighbours having decidedly died off meanwhile.
‘The family here,’ said a footman in answer to his inquiry, ‘are only temporary tenants of the house. It is not Lady Petherwin’s people.’
‘Do you know the Petherwins’ present address?’
‘Underground, sir, for the old lady. She died some time ago in Switzerland, and was buried there, I believe.’
‘And Mrs. Petherwin – the young lady,’ said Christopher, starting.
‘We are not acquainted personally with the family,’ the man replied. ‘My master has only taken the house for a few months, whilst extensive alterations are being made in his own on the other side of the park, which he goes to look after every day. If you want any further information about Lady Petherwin, Mrs. Petherwin will probably give it. I can let you have her address.’
‘Ah, yes; thank you,’ said Christopher.
The footman handed him one of some cards which appeared to have been left for the purpose. Julian, though tremblingly anxious to know where Ethelberta was, did not look at it till he could take a cool survey in private. The address was ‘Arrowthorne Lodge, Upper Wessex.’
‘Dear me!’ said Christopher to himself, ‘not far from Melchester; and not dreadfully far from Sandbourne.’
12. ARROWTHORNE PARK AND LODGE
Summer was just over when Christopher Julian found himself rattling along in the train to Sandbourne on some trifling business appertaining to his late father’s affairs, which would afford him an excuse for calling at Arrowthorne about the song of hers that he wished to produce. He alighted in the afternoon at a little station some twenty miles short of Sandbourne, and leaving his portmanteau behind him there, decided to walk across the fields, obtain if possible the interview with the lady, and return then to the station to finish the journey to Sandbourne, which he could thus reach at a convenient hour in the evening, and, if he chose, take leave of again the next day.
It was an afternoon which had a fungous smell out of doors, all being sunless and stagnant overhead and around. The various species of trees had begun to assume the more distinctive colours of their decline, and where there had been one pervasive green were now twenty greenish yellows, the air in the vistas between them being half opaque with blue exhalation. Christopher in his walk overtook a countryman, and inquired if the path they were following would lead him to Arrowthorne Lodge.
‘’Twill take ’ee into Arr’thorne Park,’ the man replied. ‘But you won’t come anigh the Lodge, unless you bear round to the left as might be.’
‘Mrs. Petherwin lives there, I believe?’
‘No, sir. Leastwise unless she’s but lately come. I have never heard of such a woman.’
‘She may possibly be only visiting there.’
‘Ah, perhaps that’s the shape o’t. Well, now you tell o’t, I have seen a strange face thereabouts once or twice lately. A young good-looking maid enough, seemingly.’
‘Yes, she’s considered a very handsome lady.’
‘I’ve heard the woodmen say, now that you tell o’t, that they meet her every now and then, just at the closing in of the day, as they come home along with their nitches of sticks; ay, stalking about under the trees by herself – a tall black martel, so long-legged and awful-like that you’d think ’twas the old feller himself a-coming, they say. Now a woman must be a queer body to my thinking, to roam about by night so lonesome and that? Ay, now that you tell o’t, there is such a woman, but ’a never have showed in the parish; sure I never thought who the body was – no, not once about her, nor where ’a was living and that – not I, till you spoke. Well, there, sir, that’s Arr’thorne Lodge; do you see they three elms?’ He pointed across the glade towards some confused foliage a long way off.
‘I am not sure about the sort of tree you mean,’ said Christopher, ‘I see a number of trees with edges shaped like edges of clouds.’
‘Ay, ay, they be oaks; I mean the elms to the left hand.’
‘But a man can hardly tell oaks from elms at that distance, my good fellow!’
‘That ’a can very well – leastwise, if he’s got the sense.’
‘Well, I think I see what you mean,’ said Christopher. ‘What next?’
‘When you get there, you bear away smart to nor’-west, and you’ll come straight as a line to the Lodge.’
‘How the deuce am I to know which is north-west in a strange place, with no sun to tell me?’
‘What, not know nor-west? Well, I should think a boy could never live and grow up to be a man without knowing the four quarters. I knowed ’em when I was a mossel of a chiel. We be no great scholars here, that’s true, but there isn’t a Tom-rig or Jack-straw in these parts that don’t know where they lie as well as I. Now I’ve lived, man and boy, these eight-and-sixty years, and never met a man in my life afore who hadn’t learnt such a common thing as the four quarters.’
Christopher parted from his companion and soon reached a stile, clambering over which he entered a park. Here he threaded his way, and rounding a clump of aged trees the young man came in view of a light and elegant country-house in the half-timbered Gothic style of the late revival, apparently only a few years old. Surprised at finding himself so near, Christopher’s
