'What--is there going to be something interesting?' asked a young married friend of Mrs. Napper, who had returned to her original spot.
'Yes--the best song she has written is to be sung in the best manner to the best air that has been composed for it. I should not wonder if she were going to sing it herself.'
'Did you know anything of Mrs. Petherwin until her name leaked out in connection with these ballads?'
'No; but I think I recollect seeing her once before. She is one of those people who are known, as one may say, by subion: everybody knows a little, till she is astonishingly well known altogether; but nobody knows her entirely. She was the orphan child of some clergyman, I believe. Lady Petherwin, her mother-in-law, has been taking her about a great deal latterly.'
'She has apparently a very good prospect.'
'Yes; and it is through her being of that curious undefined character which interprets itself to each admirer as whatever he would like to have it. Old men like her because she is so girlish;youths because she is womanly; wicked men because she is good in their eyes; good men because she is wicked in theirs.'
'She must be a very anomalous sort of woman, at that rate.'
'Yes. Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.'
'These poems must have set her up. She appears to be quite the correct spectacle. Happy Mrs. Petherwin!'
The subject of their dialogue was engaged in a conversation with Mrs. Belmaine upon the management of households--a theme provoked by a discussion that was in progress in the pages of some periodical of the time. Mrs. Belmaine was very full of the argument, and went on from point to point till she came to servants.
The face of Ethelberta showed caution at once.
'I consider that Lady Plamby pets her servants by far too much,' said Mrs. Belmaine. 'O, you do not know her? Well, she is a woman with theories; and she lends her maids and men books of the wrong kind for their station, and sends them to picture exhibitions which they don't in the least understand--all for the improvement of their taste, and morals, and nobody knows what besides. It only makes them dissatisfied.'
The face of Ethelberta showed venturesomeness. 'Yes, and dreadfully ambitious!' she said.
'Yes, indeed. What a turn the times have taken! People of that sort push on, and get into business, and get great warehouses, until at last, without ancestors, or family, or name, or estate--'
'Or the merest scrap of heirloom or family jewel.'
'Or heirlooms, or family jewels, they are thought as much of as if their forefathers had glided unobtrusively through the peerage--'
'Ever since the first edition.'
'Yes.' Mrs. Belmaine, who really sprang from a good old family, had been going to say, 'for the last seven hundred years,' but fancying from Ethelberta's addendum that she might not date back more than a trifling century or so, adopted the suggestion with her usual well-known courtesy, and blushed down to her locket at the thought of the mistake that she might have made. This sensitiveness was a trait in her character which gave great gratification to her husband, and, indeed, to all who knew her.
'And have you any theory on the vexed question of servant-government?' continued Mrs. Belmaine, smiling. 'But no--the subject is of far too practical a nature for one of your bent, of course.'
'O no--it is not at all too practical. I have thought of the matter often,' said Ethelberta. 'I think the best plan would be for somebody to write a pamphlet, "The Shortest Way with the Servants,"just as there was once written a terribly stinging one, "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters," which had a great effect.'
'I have always understood that that was written by a dissenter as a satire upon the Church?'
'Ah--so it was: but the example will do to illustrate my meaning.'
'Quite so--I understand--so it will,' said Mrs. Belmaine, with clouded faculties.
Meanwhile Christopher's music had arrived. An accomplished gentleman who had every musical talent except that of creation, scanned the notes carefully from top to bottom, and sat down to accompany the singer. There was no lady present of sufficient confidence or skill to venture into a song she had never seen before, and the only one who had seen it was Ethelberta herself; she did not deny having practised it the greater part of the afternoon, and was very willing to sing it now if anybody would derive pleasure from the performance. Then she began, and the sweetness of her singing was such that even the most unsympathetic honoured her by looking as if they would be willing to listen to every note the song contained if it were not quite so much trouble to do so. Some were so interested that, instead of continuing their conversation, they remained in silent consideration of how they would continue it when she had finished; while the particularly civil people arranged their countenances into every attentive form that the mind could devise.
One emotional gentleman looked at the corner of a chair as if, till that moment, such an object had never crossed his vision before; the movement of his finger to the imagined tune was, for a deaf old clergyman, a perfect mine of interest; whilst a young man from the country was powerless to put an end to an enchanted gaze at nothing at all in the exact middle of the room before him. Neigh, and the general phalanx of cool men and celebrated club yawners, were so much affected that they raised their chronic look of great objection to things, to an expression of scarcely any objection at all.
