Thomas Hardy

The Hand of Ethelberta Thomas Hardy

During the wet autumn of the same year, the postman passed one morning as usual into a plainstreet that ran through the less fashionable portion of Sandbourne, a modern coast town andwatering-place not many miles from the ancient Anglebury. He knocked at the door of a flat-facedbrick house, and it was opened by a slight, thoughtful young man, with his hat on, just then comingout. 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 greenvolume of poems, by an anonymous writer, the title-page bearing the inscription, 'Metres by E.' Thebook was new, though it was cut, and it appeared to have been looked into. The young man, afterturning it over and wondering where it came from, laid it on the table and went his way, being inhaste to fulfil his engagements for the day. In the evening, on returning home from his occupations, he sat himself down cosily to read thenewly-arrived volume. The winds of this uncertain season were snarling in the chimneys, and dropsof rain spat themselves into the fire, revealing plainly that the young man's room was not far enoughfrom the top of the house to admit of a twist in the flue, and revealing darkly a little more, if thatsocial 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 offurniture suggesting that the collection consisted of waifs and strays from a former home, the grimyfaces of the old articles exercising a curious and subduing effect on the bright faces of the new. Anoval mirror of rococo workmanship, and a heavy cabinet-piano with a cornice like that of anEgyptian temple, adjoined a harmonium of yesterday, and a harp that was almost as new. Printedmusic of the last century, and manuscript music of the previous evening, lay there in such quantity asto endanger the tidiness of a retreat which was indeed only saved from a chronic state of litter by apair of hands that sometimes played, with the lightness of breezes, about the sewing-machinestanding in a remote corner-if any corner could be called remote in a room so small.