So he postponed his business for the present, and refrained from entering till he passed by after dinner, when pleasant malt liquor, of that capacity for cheering which is expressed by four large letter X's marching in a row, had refilled the globular trunk of the postmaster and neutralized some of the effects of officiality. The time was well chosen, but the inquiry threatened to prove fruitless: the postmaster had never, to his knowledge, seen the writing before.
Christopher was turning away when a clerk in the background looked up and stated that some young lady had brought a packet with such an address upon it into the office two days earlier to get it stamped.
'Do you know her?' said Christopher.
'I have seen her about the neighbourhood. She goes by every morning; I think she comes into the town from beyond the common, and returns again between four and five in the afternoon.'
'What does she wear?'
'A white wool jacket with zigzags of black braid.'
Christopher left the post-office and went his way. Among his other pupils there were two who lived at some distance from Sandbourne--one of them in the direction indicated as that habitually taken by the young person; and in the afternoon, as he returned homeward, Christopher loitered and looked around. At first he could see nobody; but when about a mile from the outskirts of the town he discerned a light spot ahead of him, which actually turned out to be the jacket alluded to. In due time he met the wearer face to face;she was not Ethelberta Petherwin--quite a different sort of individual. He had long made up his mind that this would be the case, yet he was in some indescribable way disappointed.
Of the two classes into which gentle young women naturally divide, those who grow red at their weddings, and those who grow pale, the present one belonged to the former class. She was an April-natured, pink-cheeked girl, with eyes that would have made any jeweller in England think of his trade--one who evidently took her day in the daytime, frequently caught the early worm, and had little to do with yawns or candlelight. She came and passed him; he fancied that her countenance changed. But one may fancy anything, and the pair receded each from each without turning their heads. He could not speak to her, plain and simple as she seemed.
It is rarely that a man who can be entered and made to throb by the channel of his ears is not open to a similar attack through the channel of his eyes--for many doors will admit to one mansion--allowance being made for the readier capacity of chosen and practised organs. Hence the beauties, concords, and eloquences of the female form were never without their effect upon Christopher, a born musician, artist, poet, seer, mouthpiece--whichever a translator of Nature's oracles into simple speech may be called.
The young girl who had gone by was fresh and pleasant; moreover, she was a sort of mysterious link between himself and the past, which these things were vividly reviving in him.
The following week Christopher met her again. She had not much dignity, he had not much reserve, and the sudden resolution to have a holiday which sometimes impels a plump heart to rise up against a brain that overweights it was not to be resisted. He just lifted his hat, and put the only question he could think of as a beginning:
'Have I the pleasure of addressing the author of a book of very melodious poems that was sent me the other day?'
The girl's forefinger twirled rapidly the loop of braid that it had previously been twirling slowly, and drawing in her breath, she said, 'No, sir.'
'The sender, then?'
'Yes.'
She somehow presented herself as so insignificant by the combined effect of the manner and the words that Christopher lowered his method of address to her level at once. 'Ah,' he said, 'such an atmosphere as the writer of "Metres by E." seems to breathe would soon spoil cheeks that are fresh and round as lady-apples--eh, little girl? But are you disposed to tell me that writer's name?'
By applying a general idea to a particular case a person with the best of intentions may find himself immediately landed in a quandary. In saying to the country girl before him what would have suited the mass of country lasses well enough, Christopher had offended her beyond the cure of compliment.
