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DESPERATE REMEDIES

By Thomas Hardy

CONTENTS

PREFATORY NOTE

I. THE EVENTS OF THIRTY YEARS

II. THE EVENTS OF A FORTNIGHT

III. THE EVENTS OF EIGHT DAYS

IV. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

V. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

VI. THE EVENTS OF TWELVE HOURS

VII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS

VIII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS

IX. THE EVENTS OF TEN WEEKS

X. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT

XI. THE EVENTS OF FIVE DAYS

XII. THE EVENTS OF TEN MONTHS

XIII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

XIV. THE EVENTS OF FIVE WEEKS

XV. THE EVENTS OF THREE WEEKS

XVI. THE EVENTS OF ONE WEEK

XVII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

XVIII. THE EVENTS OF THREE DAYS

XIX. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT

XX. THE EVENTS OF THREE HOURS

XXI. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN HOURS

SEQUEL

PREFATORY NOTE

The following story, the first published by the author, was written

nineteen years ago, at a time when he was feeling his way to a

method. The principles observed in its composition are, no doubt, too

exclusively those in which mystery, entanglement, surprise, and moral

obliquity are depended on for exciting interest; but some of the scenes,

and at least one of the characters, have been deemed not unworthy of a

little longer preservation; and as they could hardly be reproduced in a

fragmentary form the novel is reissued complete--the more readily that

it has for some considerable time been reprinted and widely circulated

in America. January 1889.

To the foregoing note I have only to add that, in the present edition of

‘Desperate Remedies,’ some Wessex towns and other places that are common

to the scenes of several of these stories have been called for the

first time by the names under which they appear elsewhere, for the

satisfaction of any reader who may care for consistency in such matters.

This is the only material change; for, as it happened that certain

characteristics which provoked most discussion in my latest story were

present in this my first--published in 1871, when there was no French

name for them it has seemed best to let them stand unaltered.

T.H. February 1896.

I. THE EVENTS OF THIRTY YEARS

1. DECEMBER AND JANUARY, 1835-36

In the long and intricately inwrought chain of circumstance which

renders worthy of record some experiences of Cytherea Graye, Edward

Springrove, and others, the first event directly influencing the issue

was a Christmas visit.

In the above-mentioned year, 1835, Ambrose Graye, a young architect who

had just begun the practice of his profession in the midland town of

Hocbridge, to the north of Christminster, went to London to spend the

Christmas holidays with a friend who lived in Bloomsbury. They had

gone up to Cambridge in the same year, and, after graduating together,

Huntway, the friend, had taken orders.

Graye was handsome, frank, and gentle. He had a quality of thought

which, exercised on homeliness, was humour; on nature, picturesqueness;

on abstractions, poetry. Being, as a rule, broadcast, it was all three.

Of the wickedness of the world he was too forgetful. To discover evil in

a new friend is to most people only an additional experience: to him it

was ever a surprise.

While in London he became acquainted with a retired officer in the

Navy named Bradleigh, who, with his wife and their daughter, lived in

a street not far from Russell Square. Though they were in no more than

comfortable circumstances, the captain’s wife came of an ancient family

whose genealogical tree was interlaced with some of the most illustrious

and well-known in the kingdom.

The young lady, their daughter, seemed to Graye by far the most

beautiful and queenly being he had ever beheld. She was about nineteen

or twenty, and her name was Cytherea. In truth she was not so very

unlike country girls of that type of beauty, except in one respect.

She was perfect in her manner and bearing, and they were not. A mere

distinguishing peculiarity, by catching the eye, is often read as

the pervading characteristic, and she appeared to him no less than

perfection throughout--transcending her rural rivals in very nature.

Graye did a thing the blissfulness of which was only eclipsed by its

hazardousness. He loved her at first sight.

His introductions had led him into contact with Cytherea and her parents

two or three times on the first week of his arrival in London, and

accident and a lover’s contrivance brought them together as frequently

the week following. The parents liked young Graye, and having few

friends (for their equals in blood were their superiors in position), he

was received on very generous terms. His passion for Cytherea grew not

only strong, but ineffably exalted: she, without positively encouraging

him, tacitly assented to his schemes for being near her. Her father and

mother seemed to have lost all confidence in nobility of birth, without

money to give effect to its presence, and looked upon the budding

consequence of the young people’s reciprocal glances with placidity, if

not actual favour.

Graye’s whole impassioned dream terminated in a sad and unaccountable

episode. After passing through three weeks of sweet experience, he had

arrived at the last stage--a kind of moral Gaza--before plunging into an

emotional desert. The second week in January had come round, and it was

necessary for the young architect to leave town.

Throughout his acquaintanceship with the lady of his heart there had

been this marked peculiarity in her love: she had delighted in his

presence as a sweetheart should do, yet from first to last she had

repressed all recognition of the true nature of the thread which

drew them together, blinding herself to its meaning and only natural

tendency, and appearing to dread his announcement of them. The present

seemed enough for her without cumulative hope: usually, even if love is

in itself an end, it must be regarded as a beginning to be enjoyed.

In spite of evasions as an obstacle, and in consequence of them as a

spur, he would put the matter off no longer. It was evening. He took

her into a little conservatory on the landing, and there among the

evergreens, by the light of a few tiny lamps, infinitely enhancing the

freshness and beauty of the leaves, he made the declaration of a love as

fresh and beautiful as they.

‘My love--my darling, be my wife!’

She seemed like one just awakened. ‘Ah--we must part now!’ she faltered,

in a voice of anguish. ‘I will write to you.’ She loosened her hand and

rushed away.

In a wild fever Graye went home and watched for the next morning. Who

shall express his misery and wonder when a note containing these words

was put into his hand?

‘Good-bye; good-bye for ever. As recognized lovers something divides us

eternally. Forgive me--I should have told you before; but your love was

sweet! Never mention me.’

That very day, and as it seemed, to put an end to a painful condition of

things, daughter and parents left London to pay off a promised visit to

a relative in a western county. No message or letter of entreaty could

wring from her any explanation. She begged him not to follow her, and

the most bewildering point was that her father and mother appeared, from

the tone of a letter Graye received from them, as vexed and sad as he

at this sudden renunciation. One thing was plain: without admitting her

reason as valid, they knew what that reason was, and did not intend to

reveal it.

A week from that day Ambrose Graye left his friend Huntway’s house

and saw no more of the Love he mourned. From time to time his friend

answered any inquiry Graye made by letter respecting her. But very poor

food to a lover is intelligence of a mistress filtered through a friend.

Huntway could tell nothing definitely. He said he believed there had

been some prior flirtation between Cytherea and her cousin, an officer

of the line, two or three years before Graye met her, which had suddenly

been terminated by the cousin’s departure for India, and the young

lady’s travelling on the Continent with her parents the whole of the

ensuing summer, on account of delicate health. Eventually Huntway said

that circumstances had rendered Graye’s attachment more hopeless still.

Cytherea’s mother had unexpectedly inherited a large fortune and estates

in the west of England by the rapid fall of some intervening lives. This

had caused their removal from the small house in Bloomsbury, and, as it

appeared, a renunciation of their old friends in that quarter.

Young Graye concluded that his Cytherea had forgotten him and his love.

But he could not forget her.

2. FROM 1843 TO 1861

Eight years later, feeling lonely and depressed--a man without

relatives, with many acquaintances but no friends--Ambrose Graye met

a young lady of a different kind, fairly endowed with money and good

gifts. As to caring very deeply for another woman after the loss of

Cytherea, it was an absolute impossibility with him. With all, the

beautiful things of the earth become more dear as they elude pursuit;

but with some natures utter elusion is the one special event which will

make a passing love permanent for ever.

This second young lady and Graye were married. That he did not, first

or last, love his wife as he should have done, was known to all; but

few knew that his unmanageable heart could never be weaned from useless

repining at the loss of its first idol.

His character to some extent deteriorated, as emotional constitutions

will under the long sense of disappointment at having missed their

imagined destiny. And thus, though naturally of a gentle and pleasant

disposition, he grew to be not so tenderly regarded by his acquaintances

as it is the lot of some of those persons to be. The winning and

sanguine receptivity of his early life developed by degrees a moody

nervousness, and when not picturing prospects drawn from baseless hope

he was the victim of indescribable depression. The practical issue of

such a condition was improvidence, originally almost an unconscious

improvidence, for every debt incurred had been mentally paid off with a

religious exactness from the treasures of expectation before mentioned.

But as years revolved, the same course was continued from the lack of

spirit sufficient for shifting out of an old groove when it has been

found to lead to disaster.

In the year 1861 his wife died, leaving him a widower with two children.

The elder, a son named Owen, now just turned seventeen, was taken from

school, and initiated as pupil to the profession of architect in his

father’s office. The remaining child was a daughter, and Owen’s junior

by a year.

Her christian name was Cytherea, and it is easy to guess why.

3. OCTOBER THE TWELFTH, 1863

We pass over two years in order to reach the next cardinal event of

these persons’ lives. The scene is still the Grayes’ native town of

Hocbridge, but as it appeared on a Monday afternoon in the month of

October.

The weather was sunny and dry, but the ancient borough was to be seen

wearing one of its least attractive aspects. First on account of the

time. It was that stagnant hour of the twenty-four when the practical

garishness of Day, having escaped from the fresh long shadows and

enlivening newness of the morning, has not yet made any perceptible

advance towards acquiring those mellow and soothing tones which grace

its decline. Next, it was that stage in the progress of the week when

business--which, carried on under the gables of an old country place,

is not devoid of a romantic sparkle--was well-nigh extinguished. Lastly,

the town was intentionally bent upon being attractive by exhibiting

to an influx of visitors the local talent for dramatic recitation, and

provincial towns trying to be lively are the dullest of dull things.

Little towns are like little children in this respect, that they

interest most when they are enacting native peculiarities unconscious

of beholders. Discovering themselves to be watched they attempt to

be entertaining by putting on an antic, and produce disagreeable

caricatures which spoil them.

The weather-stained clock-face in the low church tower standing at the

intersection of the three chief streets was expressing half-past two

to the Town Hall opposite, where the much talked-of reading from

Shakespeare was about to begin. The doors were open, and those persons

who had already assembled within the building were noticing the entrance

of the new-comers--silently criticizing their dress--questioning the

genuineness of their teeth and hair--estimating their private means.

Among these later ones came an exceptional young maiden who glowed amid

the dulness like a single bright-red poppy in a field of brown stubble.

She wore an elegant dark jacket, lavender dress, hat with grey strings

and trimmings, and gloves of a colour to harmonize. She lightly walked

up the side passage of the room, cast a slight glance around, and

entered the seat pointed out to her.

The young girl was Cytherea Graye; her age was now about eighteen.

During her entry, and at various times whilst sitting in her seat and

listening to the reader on the platform, her personal appearance formed

an interesting subject of study for several neighbouring eyes.

Her face was exceedingly attractive, though artistically less perfect

than her figure, which approached unusually near to the standard of

faultlessness. But even this feature of hers yielded the palm to the

gracefulness of her movement, which was fascinating and delightful to an

extreme degree.

Indeed, motion was her speciality, whether shown on its most extended

scale of bodily progression, or minutely, as in the uplifting of

her eyelids, the bending of her fingers, the pouting of her lip. The

carriage of her head--motion within motion--a glide upon a glide--was

as delicate as that of a magnetic needle. And this flexibility and

elasticity had never been taught her by rule, nor even been acquired by

observation, but, nullo cultu, had naturally developed itself with her

years. In childhood, a stone or stalk in the way, which had been the

inevitable occasion of a fall to her playmates, had usually left her

safe and upright on her feet after the narrowest escape by oscillations

and whirls for the preservation of her balance. At mixed Christmas

parties, when she numbered but twelve or thirteen years, and was

heartily despised on that account by lads who deemed themselves men, her

apt lightness in the dance covered this incompleteness in her womanhood,

and compelled the self-same youths in spite of resolutions to seize upon

her childish figure as a partner whom they could not afford to contemn.

And in later years, when the instincts of her sex had shown her this

point as the best and rarest feature in her external self, she was not

found wanting in attention to the cultivation of finish in its details.

Her hair rested gaily upon her shoulders in curls and was of a shining

corn yellow in the high lights, deepening to a definite nut-brown as

each curl wound round into the shade. She had eyes of a sapphire hue,

though rather darker than the gem ordinarily appears; they possessed

the affectionate and liquid sparkle of loyalty and good faith as

distinguishable from that harder brightness which seems to express

faithfulness only to the object confronting them.

But to attempt to gain a view of her--or indeed of any fascinating

woman--from a measured category, is as difficult as to appreciate the

effect of a landscape by exploring it at night with a lantern--or of a

full chord of music by piping the notes in succession. Nevertheless it

may readily be believed from the description here ventured, that

among the many winning phases of her aspect, these were particularly

striking:--

During pleasant doubt, when her eyes brightened stealthily and

smiled (as eyes will smile) as distinctly as her lips, and in the

space of a single instant expressed clearly the whole round of

degrees of expectancy which lie over the wide expanse between Yea

and Nay.

During the telling of a secret, which was involuntarily

accompanied by a sudden minute start, and ecstatic pressure of

the listener’s arm, side, or neck, as the position and degree

of intimacy dictated.

When anxiously regarding one who possessed her affections.

She suddenly assumed the last-mentioned bearing in the progress of the

present entertainment. Her glance was directed out of the window.

Why the particulars of a young lady’s presence at a very mediocre

performance were prevented from dropping into the oblivion which their

intrinsic insignificance would naturally have involved--why they were

remembered and individualized by herself and others through after

years--was simply that she unknowingly stood, as it were, upon the

extreme posterior edge of a tract in her life, in which the real

meaning of Taking Thought had never been known. It was the last hour of

experience she ever enjoyed with a mind entirely free from a knowledge

of that labyrinth into which she stepped immediately afterwards--to

continue a perplexed course along its mazes for the greater portion of

twenty-nine subsequent months.

The Town Hall, in which Cytherea sat, was a building of brown stone, and

through one of the windows could be seen from the interior of the room

the housetops and chimneys of the adjacent street, and also the upper

part of a neighbouring church spire, now in course of completion under

the superintendence of Miss Graye’s father, the architect to the work.

That the top of this spire should be visible from her position in the

room was a fact which Cytherea’s idling eyes had discovered with some

interest, and she was now engaged in watching the scene that was being

enacted about its airy summit. Round the conical stonework rose a cage

of scaffolding against the blue sky, and upon this stood five men--four

in clothes as white as the new erection close beneath their hands, the

fifth in the ordinary dark suit of a gentleman.

The four working-men in white were three masons and a mason’s labourer.

The fifth man was the architect, Mr. Graye. He had been giving

directions as it seemed, and retiring as far as the narrow footway

allowed, stood perfectly still.

The picture thus presented to a spectator in the Town Hall was curious

and striking. It was an illuminated miniature, framed in by the dark

margin of the window, the keen-edged shadiness of which emphasized by

contrast the softness of the objects enclosed.

The height of the spire was about one hundred and twenty feet, and the

five men engaged thereon seemed entirely removed from the sphere and

experiences of ordinary human beings. They appeared little larger

than pigeons, and made their tiny movements with a soft, spirit-like

silentness. One idea above all others was conveyed to the mind of a

person on the ground by their aspect, namely, concentration of purpose:

that they were indifferent to--even unconscious of--the distracted world

beneath them, and all that moved upon it. They never looked off the

scaffolding.

Then one of them turned; it was Mr. Graye. Again he stood motionless,

with attention to the operations of the others. He appeared to be lost

in reflection, and had directed his face towards a new stone they were

lifting.

‘Why does he stand like that?’ the young lady thought at length--up to

that moment as listless and careless as one of the ancient Tarentines,

who, on such an afternoon as this, watched from the Theatre the entry

into their Harbour of a power that overturned the State.

She moved herself uneasily. ‘I wish he would come down,’ she whispered,

still gazing at the skybacked picture. ‘It is so dangerous to be

absent-minded up there.’

When she had done murmuring the words her father indecisively laid hold

of one of the scaffold-poles, as if to test its strength, then let it go

and stepped back. In stepping, his foot slipped. An instant of doubling

forward and sideways, and he reeled off into the air, immediately

disappearing downwards.

His agonized daughter rose to her feet by a convulsive movement. Her

lips parted, and she gasped for breath. She could utter no sound. One by

one the people about her, unconscious of what had happened, turned their

heads, and inquiry and alarm became visible upon their faces at the

sight of the poor child. A moment longer, and she fell to the floor.

The next impression of which Cytherea had any consciousness was of being

carried from a strange vehicle across the pavement to the steps of her

own house by her brother and an older man. Recollection of what had

passed evolved itself an instant later, and just as they entered the

door--through which another and sadder burden had been carried but a few

instants before--her eyes caught sight of the south-western sky, and,

without heeding, saw white sunlight shining in shaft-like lines from a

rift in a slaty cloud. Emotions will attach themselves to scenes that

are simultaneous--however foreign in essence these scenes may be--as

chemical waters will crystallize on twigs and wires. Even after that

time any mental agony brought less vividly to Cytherea’s mind the scene

from the Town Hall windows than sunlight streaming in shaft-like lines.

4. OCTOBER THE NINETEENTH

When death enters a house, an element of sadness and an element of

horror accompany it. Sadness, from the death itself: horror, from the

clouds of blackness we designedly labour to introduce.

The funeral had taken place. Depressed, yet resolved in his demeanour,

Owen Graye sat before his father’s private escritoire, engaged

in turning out and unfolding a heterogeneous collection of

papers--forbidding and inharmonious to the eye at all times--most of all

to one under the influence of a great grief. Laminae of white paper

tied with twine were indiscriminately intermixed with other white papers

bounded by black edges--these with blue foolscap wrapped round with

crude red tape.

The bulk of these letters, bills, and other documents were submitted

to a careful examination, by which the appended particulars were

ascertained:--

First, that their father’s income from professional sources had

been very small, amounting to not more than half their expenditure;

and that his own and his wife’s property, upon which he had relied

for the balance, had been sunk and lost in unwise loans to

unscrupulous men, who had traded upon their father’s too

open-hearted trustfulness.

Second, that finding his mistake, he had endeavoured to regain

his standing by the illusory path of speculation. The most notable

instance of this was the following. He had been induced, when at

Plymouth in the autumn of the previous year, to venture all his

spare capital on the bottomry security of an Italian brig which

had put into the harbour in distress. The profit was to be

considerable, so was the risk. There turned out to be no security

whatever. The circumstances of the case tendered it the most

unfortunate speculation that a man like himself--ignorant of all

such matters--could possibly engage in. The vessel went down, and

all Mr. Graye’s money with it.

Third, that these failures had left him burdened with debts he

knew not how to meet; so that at the time of his death even the few

pounds lying to his account at the bank were his only in name.

Fourth, that the loss of his wife two years earlier had

awakened him to a keen sense of his blindness, and of his duty by

his children. He had then resolved to reinstate by unflagging zeal

in the pursuit of his profession, and by no speculation, at least a

portion of the little fortune he had let go.

Cytherea was frequently at her brother’s elbow during these

examinations. She often remarked sadly--

‘Poor papa failed to fulfil his good intention for want of time, didn’t

he, Owen? And there was an excuse for his past, though he never would

claim it. I never forget that original disheartening blow, and how that

from it sprang all the ills of his life--everything connected with his

gloom, and the lassitude in business we used so often to see about him.’

‘I remember what he said once,’ returned the brother, ‘when I sat up

late with him. He said, “Owen, don’t love too blindly: blindly you

will love if you love at all, but a little care is still possible to

a well-disciplined heart. May that heart be yours as it was not mine,”

father said. “Cultivate the art of renunciation.” And I am going to,

Cytherea.’

‘And once mamma said that an excellent woman was papa’s ruin, because he

did not know the way to give her up when he had lost her. I wonder where

she is now, Owen? We were told not to try to find out anything about

her. Papa never told us her name, did he?’

‘That was by her own request, I believe. But never mind her; she was not

our mother.’

The love affair which had been Ambrose Graye’s disheartening blow was

precisely of that nature which lads take little account of, but girls

ponder in their hearts.

5. FROM OCTOBER THE NINETEENTH TO JULY THE NINTH

Thus Ambrose Graye’s good intentions with regard to the reintegration of

his property had scarcely taken tangible form when his sudden death put

them for ever out of his power.

Heavy bills, showing the extent of his obligations, tumbled in

immediately upon the heels of the funeral from quarters previously

unheard and unthought of. Thus pressed, a bill was filed in Chancery to

have the assets, such as they were, administered by the Court.

‘What will become of us now?’ thought Owen continually.

There is in us an unquenchable expectation, which at the gloomiest time

persists in inferring that because we are _ourselves_, there must be a

special future in store for us, though our nature and antecedents to the

remotest particular have been common to thousands. Thus to Cytherea and

Owen Graye the question how their lives would end seemed the deepest of

possible enigmas. To others who knew their position equally well with

themselves the question was the easiest that could be asked--‘Like those

of other people similarly circumstanced.’

Then Owen held a consultation with his sister to come to some decision

on their future course, and a month was passed in waiting for answers to

letters, and in the examination of schemes more or less futile. Sudden

hopes that were rainbows to the sight proved but mists to the touch.

In the meantime, unpleasant remarks, disguise them as some well-meaning

people might, were floating around them every day. The undoubted

truth, that they were the children of a dreamer who let slip away every

farthing of his money and ran into debt with his neighbours--that the

daughter had been brought up to no profession--that the son who had, had

made no progress in it, and might come to the dogs--could not from the

nature of things be wrapped up in silence in order that it might not

hurt their feelings; and as a matter of fact, it greeted their ears in

some form or other wherever they went. Their few acquaintances passed

them hurriedly. Ancient pot-wallopers, and thriving shopkeepers, in

their intervals of leisure, stood at their shop-doors--their toes

hanging over the edge of the step, and their obese waists hanging over

their toes--and in discourses with friends on the pavement, formulated

the course of the improvident, and reduced the children’s prospects to a

shadow-like attenuation. The sons of these men (who wore breastpins of

a sarcastic kind, and smoked humorous pipes) stared at Cytherea with a

stare unmitigated by any of the respect that had formerly softened it.

Now it is a noticeable fact that we do not much mind what men think of

us, or what humiliating secret they discover of our means, parentage, or

object, provided that each thinks and acts thereupon in isolation. It is

the exchange of ideas about us that we dread most; and the possession

by a hundred acquaintances, severally insulated, of the knowledge of our

skeleton-closet’s whereabouts, is not so distressing to the nerves as a

chat over it by a party of half-a-dozen--exclusive depositaries though

these may be.

Perhaps, though Hocbridge watched and whispered, its animus would have

been little more than a trifle to persons in thriving circumstances. But

unfortunately, poverty, whilst it is new, and before the skin has

had time to thicken, makes people susceptible inversely to their

opportunities for shielding themselves. In Owen was found, in place of

his father’s impressibility, a larger share of his father’s pride, and a

squareness of idea which, if coupled with a little more blindness, would

have amounted to positive prejudice. To him humanity, so far as he had

thought of it at all, was rather divided into distinct classes than

blended from extreme to extreme. Hence by a sequence of ideas which

might be traced if it were worth while, he either detested or respected

opinion, and instinctively sought to escape a cold shade that mere

sensitiveness would have endured. He could have submitted to separation,

sickness, exile, drudgery, hunger and thirst, with stoical indifference,

but superciliousness was too incisive.

After living on for nine months in attempts to make an income as his

father’s successor in the profession--attempts which were utterly

fruitless by reason of his inexperience--Graye came to a simple and

sweeping resolution. They would privately leave that part of England,

drop from the sight of acquaintances, gossips, harsh critics, and bitter

creditors of whose misfortune he was not the cause, and escape the

position which galled him by the only road their great poverty left open

to them--that of his obtaining some employment in a distant place by

following his profession as a humble under-draughtsman.

He thought over his capabilities with the sensations of a soldier

grinding his sword at the opening of a campaign. What with lack of

employment, owing to the decrease of his late father’s practice, and the

absence of direct and uncompromising pressure towards monetary results

from a pupil’s labour (which seems to be always the case when a

professional man’s pupil is also his son), Owen’s progress in the art

and science of architecture had been very insignificant indeed. Though

anything but an idle young man, he had hardly reached the age at which

industrious men who lack an external whip to send them on in the world,

are induced by their own common sense to whip on themselves. Hence his

knowledge of plans, elevations, sections, and specifications, was not

greater at the end of two years of probation than might easily have

been acquired in six months by a youth of average ability--himself, for

instance--amid a bustling London practice.

But at any rate he could make himself handy to one of the

profession--some man in a remote town--and there fulfil his indentures.

A tangible inducement lay in this direction of survey. He had a slight

conception of such a man--a Mr. Gradfield--who was in practice in

Budmouth Regis, a seaport town and watering-place in the south of

England.

After some doubts, Graye ventured to write to this gentleman, asking the

necessary question, shortly alluding to his father’s death, and stating

that his term of apprenticeship had only half expired. He would be glad

to complete his articles at a very low salary for the whole remaining

two years, provided payment could begin at once.

The answer from Mr. Gradfield stated that he was not in want of a

pupil who would serve the remainder of his time on the terms Mr. Graye

mentioned. But he would just add one remark. He chanced to be in want of

some young man in his office--for a short time only, probably about two

months--to trace drawings, and attend to other subsidiary work of the

kind. If Mr. Graye did not object to occupy such an inferior position as

these duties would entail, and to accept weekly wages which to one with

his expectations would be considered merely nominal, the post would give

him an opportunity for learning a few more details of the profession.

‘It is a beginning, and, above all, an abiding-place, away from the

shadow of the cloud which hangs over us here--I will go,’ said Owen.

Cytherea’s plan for her future, an intensely simple one, owing to the

even greater narrowness of her resources, was already marked out. One

advantage had accrued to her through her mother’s possession of a fair

share of personal property, and perhaps only one. She had been carefully

educated. Upon this consideration her plan was based. She was to take

up her abode in her brother’s lodging at Budmouth, when she would

immediately advertise for a situation as governess, having obtained

the consent of a lawyer at Aldbrickham who was winding up her father’s

affairs, and who knew the history of her position, to allow himself to

be referred to in the matter of her past life and respectability.

Early one morning they departed from their native town, leaving behind

them scarcely a trace of their footsteps.

Then the town pitied their want of wisdom in taking such a step.

‘Rashness; they would have made a better income in Hocbridge, where they

are known! There is no doubt that they would.’

But what is Wisdom really? A steady handling of any means to bring about

any end necessary to happiness.

Yet whether one’s end be the usual end--a wealthy position in life--or

no, the name of wisdom is seldom applied but to the means to that usual

end.

II. THE EVENTS OF A FORTNIGHT

1. THE NINTH OF JULY

The day of their departure was one of the most glowing that the climax

of a long series of summer heats could evolve. The wide expanse of

landscape quivered up and down like the flame of a taper, as they

steamed along through the midst of it. Placid flocks of sheep reclining

under trees a little way off appeared of a pale blue colour. Clover

fields were livid with the brightness of the sun upon their deep red

flowers. All waggons and carts were moved to the shade by their careful

owners, rain-water butts fell to pieces; well-buckets were lowered

inside the covers of the well-hole, to preserve them from the fate of

the butts, and generally, water seemed scarcer in the country than the

beer and cider of the peasantry who toiled or idled there.

To see persons looking with children’s eyes at any ordinary scenery, is

a proof that they possess the charming faculty of drawing new sensations

from an old experience--a healthy sign, rare in these feverish days--the

mark of an imperishable brightness of nature.

Both brother and sister could do this; Cytherea more noticeably. They

watched the undulating corn-lands, monotonous to all their companions;

the stony and clayey prospect succeeding those, with its angular and

abrupt hills. Boggy moors came next, now withered and dry--the spots

upon which pools usually spread their waters showing themselves as

circles of smooth bare soil, over-run by a net-work of innumerable

little fissures. Then arose plantations of firs, abruptly terminating

beside meadows cleanly mown, in which high-hipped, rich-coloured cows,

with backs horizontal and straight as the ridge of a house, stood

motionless or lazily fed. Glimpses of the sea now interested them, which

became more and more frequent till the train finally drew up beside the

platform at Budmouth.

‘The whole town is looking out for us,’ had been Graye’s impression

throughout the day. He called upon Mr. Gradfield--the only man who had

been directly informed of his coming--and found that Mr. Gradfield had

forgotten it.

However, arrangements were made with this gentleman--a stout, active,

grey-bearded burgher of sixty--by which Owen was to commence work in his

office the following week.

The same day Cytherea drew up and sent off the advertisement appended:--

‘A YOUNG LADY is desirous of meeting with an _engagement_ as

_governess_ or _companion_. She is competent to teach English,

French, and Music. Satisfactory references--Address, C. G.,

Post-Office, Budmouth.’

It seemed a more material existence than her own that she saw thus

delineated on the paper. ‘That can’t be myself; how odd I look!’ she

said, and smiled.

2. JULY THE ELEVENTH

On the Monday subsequent to their arrival in Budmouth, Owen Graye

attended at Mr. Gradfield’s office to enter upon his duties, and his

sister was left in their lodgings alone for the first time.

Despite the sad occurrences of the preceding autumn, an unwonted

cheerfulness pervaded her spirit throughout the day. Change of

scene--and that to untravelled eyes--conjoined with the sensation of

freedom from supervision, revived the sparkle of a warm young nature

ready enough to take advantage of any adventitious restoratives.

Point-blank grief tends rather to seal up happiness for a time than to

produce that attrition which results from griefs of anticipation that

move onward with the days: these may be said to furrow away the capacity

for pleasure.

Her expectations from the advertisement began to be extravagant. A

thriving family, who had always sadly needed her, was already definitely

pictured in her fancy, which, in its exuberance, led her on to picturing

its individual members, their possible peculiarities, virtues, and

vices, and obliterated for a time the recollection that she would be

separated from her brother.

Thus musing, as she waited for his return in the evening, her eyes fell

on her left hand. The contemplation of her own left fourth finger by

symbol-loving girlhood of this age is, it seems, very frequently, if

not always, followed by a peculiar train of romantic ideas. Cytherea’s

thoughts, still playing about her future, became directed into this

romantic groove. She leant back in her chair, and taking hold of the

fourth finger, which had attracted her attention, she lifted it with the

tips of the others, and looked at the smooth and tapering member for a

long time.

She whispered idly, ‘I wonder who and what he will be?

‘If he’s a gentleman of fashion, he will take my finger so, just with

the tips of his own, and with some fluttering of the heart, and the

least trembling of his lip, slip the ring so lightly on that I shall

hardly know it is there--looking delightfully into my eyes all the time.

‘If he’s a bold, dashing soldier, I expect he will proudly turn round,

take the ring as if it equalled her Majesty’s crown in value, and

desperately set it on my finger thus. He will fix his eyes unflinchingly

upon what he is doing--just as if he stood in battle before the enemy

(though, in reality, very fond of me, of course), and blush as much as I

shall.

‘If he’s a sailor, he will take my finger and the ring in this way,

and deck it out with a housewifely touch and a tenderness of expression

about his mouth, as sailors do: kiss it, perhaps, with a simple air, as

if we were children playing an idle game, and not at the very height of

observation and envy by a great crowd saying, “Ah! they are happy now!”

‘If he should be rather a poor man--noble-minded and affectionate, but

still poor--’

Owen’s footsteps rapidly ascending the stairs, interrupted this

fancy-free meditation. Reproaching herself, even angry with herself

for allowing her mind to stray upon such subjects in the face of their

present desperate condition, she rose to meet him, and make tea.

Cytherea’s interest to know how her brother had been received at Mr.

Gradfield’s broke forth into words at once. Almost before they had sat

down to table, she began cross-examining him in the regular sisterly

way.

‘Well, Owen, how has it been with you to-day? What is the place like--do

you think you will like Mr. Gradfield?’

‘O yes. But he has not been there to-day; I have only had the head

draughtsman with me.’

Young women have a habit, not noticeable in men, of putting on at a

moment’s notice the drama of whosoever’s life they choose. Cytherea’s

interest was transferred from Mr. Gradfield to his representative.

‘What sort of a man is he?’

‘He seems a very nice fellow indeed; though of course I can hardly tell

to a certainty as yet. But I think he’s a very worthy fellow; there’s

no nonsense in him, and though he is not a public school man he has read

widely, and has a sharp appreciation of what’s good in books and art.

In fact, his knowledge isn’t nearly so exclusive as most professional

men’s.’

‘That’s a great deal to say of an architect, for of all professional men

they are, as a rule, the most professional.’

‘Yes; perhaps they are. This man is rather of a melancholy turn of mind,

I think.’

‘Has the managing clerk any family?’ she mildly asked, after a while,

pouring out some more tea.

‘Family; no!’

‘Well, dear Owen, how should I know?’

‘Why, of course he isn’t married. But there happened to be a

conversation about women going on in the office, and I heard him say

what he should wish his wife to be like.’

‘What would he wish his wife to be like?’ she said, with great apparent

lack of interest.

‘O, he says she must be girlish and artless: yet he would be loth to do

without a dash of womanly subtlety, ‘tis so piquant. Yes, he said, that

must be in her; she must have womanly cleverness. “And yet I should like

her to blush if only a cock-sparrow were to look at her hard,” he said,

“which brings me back to the girl again: and so I flit backwards and

forwards. I must have what comes, I suppose,” he said, “and whatever she

may be, thank God she’s no worse. However, if he might give a final hint

to Providence,” he said, “a child among pleasures, and a woman among

pains was the rough outline of his requirement.”’

‘Did he say that? What a musing creature he must be.’

‘He did, indeed.’

3. FROM THE TWELFTH TO THE FIFTEENTH OF JULY

As is well known, ideas are so elastic in a human brain, that they have

no constant measure which may be called their actual bulk. Any important

idea may be compressed to a molecule by an unwonted crowding of others;

and any small idea will expand to whatever length and breadth of vacuum

the mind may be able to make over to it. Cytherea’s world was tolerably

vacant at this time, and the young architectural designer’s image became

very pervasive. The next evening this subject was again renewed.

‘His name is Springrove,’ said Owen, in reply to her. ‘He is a thorough

artist, but a man of rather humble origin, it seems, who has made

himself so far. I think he is the son of a farmer, or something of the

kind.’

‘Well, he’s none the worse for that, I suppose.’

‘None the worse. As we come down the hill, we shall be continually

meeting people going up.’ But Owen had felt that Springrove was a little

the worse nevertheless.

‘Of course he’s rather old by this time.’

‘O no. He’s about six-and-twenty--not more.’

‘Ah, I see.... What is he like, Owen?’

‘I can’t exactly tell you his appearance: ‘tis always such a difficult

thing to do.’

‘A man you would describe as short? Most men are those we should

describe as short, I fancy.’

‘I should call him, I think, of the middle height; but as I only see

him sitting in the office, of course I am not certain about his form and

figure.’

‘I wish you were, then.’

‘Perhaps you do. But I am not, you see.’

‘Of course not, you are always so provoking. Owen, I saw a man in the

street to-day whom I fancied was he--and yet, I don’t see how it could

be, either. He had light brown hair, a snub nose, very round face, and

a peculiar habit of reducing his eyes to straight lines when he looked

narrowly at anything.’

‘O no. That was not he, Cytherea.’

‘Not a bit like him in all probability.’

‘Not a bit. He has dark hair--almost a Grecian nose, regular teeth, and

an intellectual face, as nearly as I can recall to mind.’

‘Ah, there now, Owen, you _have_ described him! But I suppose he’s not

generally called pleasing, or--’

‘Handsome?’

‘I scarcely meant that. But since you have said it, is he handsome?’

‘Rather.’

‘His tout ensemble is striking?’

‘Yes--O no, no--I forgot: it is not. He is rather untidy in his

waistcoat, and neck-ties, and hair.’

‘How vexing!... it must be to himself, poor thing.’

‘He’s a thorough bookworm--despises the pap-and-daisy school of

verse--knows Shakespeare to the very dregs of the foot-notes. Indeed,

he’s a poet himself in a small way.’

‘How delicious!’ she said. ‘I have never known a poet.’

‘And you don’t know him,’ said Owen dryly.

She reddened. ‘Of course I don’t. I know that.’

‘Have you received any answer to your advertisement?’ he inquired.

‘Ah--no!’ she said, and the forgotten disappointment which had showed

itself in her face at different times during the day, became visible

again.

Another day passed away. On Thursday, without inquiry, she learnt more

of the head draughtsman. He and Graye had become very friendly, and he

had been tempted to show her brother a copy of some poems of his--some

serious and sad--some humorous--which had appeared in the poets’ corner

of a magazine from time to time. Owen showed them now to Cytherea, who

instantly began to read them carefully and to think them very beautiful.

‘Yes--Springrove’s no fool,’ said Owen sententiously.

‘No fool!--I should think he isn’t, indeed,’ said Cytherea, looking up

from the paper in quite an excitement: ‘to write such verses as these!’

‘What logic are you chopping, Cytherea? Well, I don’t mean on account of

the verses, because I haven’t read them; but for what he said when the

fellows were talking about falling in love.’

‘Which you will tell me?’

‘He says that your true lover breathlessly finds himself engaged to a

sweetheart, like a man who has caught something in the dark. He doesn’t

know whether it is a bat or a bird, and takes it to the light when he is

cool to learn what it is. He looks to see if she is the right age, but

right age or wrong age, he must consider her a prize. Sometime later he

ponders whether she is the right kind of prize for him. Right kind or

wrong kind--he has called her his, and must abide by it. After a time he

asks himself, “Has she the temper, hair, and eyes I meant to have, and

was firmly resolved not to do without?” He finds it is all wrong, and

then comes the tussle--’

‘Do they marry and live happily?’

‘Who? O, the supposed pair. I think he said--well, I really forget what

he said.’

‘That _is_ stupid of you!’ said the young lady with dismay.

‘Yes.’

‘But he’s a satirist--I don’t think I care about him now.’

‘There you are just wrong. He is not. He is, as I believe, an impulsive

fellow who has been made to pay the penalty of his rashness in some love

affair.’

Thus ended the dialogue of Thursday, but Cytherea read the verses again

in private. On Friday her brother remarked that Springrove had informed

him he was going to leave Mr. Gradfield’s in a fortnight to push his

fortunes in London.

An indescribable feeling of sadness shot through Cytherea’s heart.

Why should she be sad at such an announcement as that, she thought,

concerning a man she had never seen, when her spirits were elastic

enough to rebound after hard blows from deep and real troubles as if she

had scarcely known them? Though she could not answer this question, she

knew one thing, she was saddened by Owen’s news.

4. JULY THE TWENTY-FIRST

A very popular local excursion by steamboat to Lulstead Cove was

announced through the streets of Budmouth one Thursday morning by

the weak-voiced town-crier, to start at six o’clock the same day. The

weather was lovely, and the opportunity being the first of the kind

offered to them, Owen and Cytherea went with the rest.

They had reached the Cove, and had walked landward for nearly an hour

over the hill which rose beside the strand, when Graye recollected that

two or three miles yet further inland from this spot was an interesting

mediaeval ruin. He was already familiar with its characteristics through

the medium of an archaeological work, and now finding himself so close

to the reality, felt inclined to verify some theory he had formed

respecting it. Concluding that there would be just sufficient time for

him to go there and return before the boat had left the shore, he parted

from Cytherea on the hill, struck downwards, and then up a heathery

valley.

She remained on the summit where he had left her till the time of his

expected return, scanning the details of the prospect around. Placidly

spread out before her on the south was the open Channel, reflecting a

blue intenser by many shades than that of the sky overhead, and dotted

in the foreground by half-a-dozen small craft of contrasting rig, their

sails graduating in hue from extreme whiteness to reddish brown, the

varying actual colours varied again in a double degree by the rays of

the declining sun.

Presently the distant bell from the boat was heard, warning the

passengers to embark. This was followed by a lively air from the harps

and violins on board, their tones, as they arose, becoming intermingled

with, though not marred by, the brush of the waves when their crests

rolled over--at the point where the check of the shallows was first

felt--and then thinned away up the slope of pebbles and sand.

She turned her face landward and strained her eyes to discern, if

possible, some sign of Owen’s return. Nothing was visible save the

strikingly brilliant, still landscape. The wide concave which lay at the

back of the hill in this direction was blazing with the western light,

adding an orange tint to the vivid purple of the heather, now at the

very climax of bloom, and free from the slightest touch of the invidious

brown that so soon creeps into its shades. The light so intensified the

colours that they seemed to stand above the surface of the earth and

float in mid-air like an exhalation of red. In the minor valleys,

between the hillocks and ridges which diversified the contour of the

basin, but did not disturb its general sweep, she marked brakes of tall,

heavy-stemmed ferns, five or six feet high, in a brilliant light-green

dress--a broad riband of them with the path in their midst winding like

a stream along the little ravine that reached to the foot of the hill,

and delivered up the path to its grassy area. Among the ferns grew

holly bushes deeper in tint than any shadow about them, whilst the whole

surface of the scene was dimpled with small conical pits, and here and

there were round ponds, now dry, and half overgrown with rushes.

The last bell of the steamer rang. Cytherea had forgotten herself, and

what she was looking for. In a fever of distress lest Owen should

be left behind, she gathered up in her hand the corners of her

handkerchief, containing specimens of the shells, plants, and fossils

which the locality produced, started off to the sands, and mingled with

the knots of visitors there congregated from other interesting points

around; from the inn, the cottages, and hired conveyances that had

returned from short drives inland. They all went aboard by the primitive

plan of a narrow plank on two wheels--the women being assisted by a

rope. Cytherea lingered till the very last, reluctant to follow,

and looking alternately at the boat and the valley behind. Her delay

provoked a remark from Captain Jacobs, a thickset man of hybrid stains,

resulting from the mixed effects of fire and water, peculiar to sailors

where engines are the propelling power.

‘Now then, missy, if you please. I am sorry to tell ‘ee our time’s up.

Who are you looking for, miss?’

‘My brother--he has walked a short distance inland; he must be here

directly. Could you wait for him--just a minute?’

‘Really, I am afraid not, m’m.’ Cytherea looked at the stout,

round-faced man, and at the vessel, with a light in her eyes so

expressive of her own opinion being the same, on reflection, as his, and

with such resignation, too, that, from an instinctive feeling of pride

at being able to prove himself more humane than he was thought to

be--works of supererogation are the only sacrifices that entice in this

way--and that at a very small cost, he delayed the boat till some among

the passengers began to murmur.

‘There, never mind,’ said Cytherea decisively. ‘Go on without me--I

shall wait for him.’

‘Well, ‘tis a very awkward thing to leave you here all alone,’ said the

captain. ‘I certainly advise you not to wait.’

‘He’s gone across to the railway station, for certain,’ said another

passenger.

‘No--here he is!’ Cytherea said, regarding, as she spoke, the half

hidden figure of a man who was seen advancing at a headlong pace down

the ravine which lay between the heath and the shore.

‘He can’t get here in less than five minutes,’ a passenger said. ‘People

should know what they are about, and keep time. Really, if--’

‘You see, sir,’ said the captain, in an apologetic undertone, ‘since

‘tis her brother, and she’s all alone, ‘tis only nater to wait a minute,

now he’s in sight. Suppose, now, you were a young woman, as might be,

and had a brother, like this one, and you stood of an evening upon

this here wild lonely shore, like her, why you’d want us to wait, too,

wouldn’t you, sir? I think you would.’

The person so hastily approaching had been lost to view during this

remark by reason of a hollow in the ground, and the projecting cliff

immediately at hand covered the path in its rise. His footsteps were

now heard striking sharply upon the flinty road at a distance of about

twenty or thirty yards, but still behind the escarpment. To save time,

Cytherea prepared to ascend the plank.

‘Let me give you my hand, miss,’ said Captain Jacobs.

‘No--please don’t touch me,’ said she, ascending cautiously by sliding

one foot forward two or three inches, bringing up the other behind it,

and so on alternately--her lips compressed by concentration on the feat,

her eyes glued to the plank, her hand to the rope, and her immediate

thought to the fact of the distressing narrowness of her footing. Steps

now shook the lower end of the board, and in an instant were up to her

heels with a bound.

‘O, Owen, I am so glad you are come!’ she said without turning. ‘Don’t,

don’t shake the plank or touch me, whatever you do.... There, I am up.

Where have you been so long?’ she continued, in a lower tone, turning

round to him as she reached the top.

Raising her eyes from her feet, which, standing on the firm deck,

demanded her attention no longer, she acquired perceptions of the

new-comer in the following order: unknown trousers; unknown waistcoat;

unknown face. The man was not her brother, but a total stranger.

Off went the plank; the paddles started, stopped, backed, pattered in

confusion, then revolved decisively, and the boat passed out into deep

water.

One or two persons had said, ‘How d’ye do, Mr. Springrove?’ and looked

at Cytherea, to see how she bore her disappointment. Her ears had but

just caught the name of the head draughtsman, when she saw him advancing

directly to address her.

‘Miss Graye, I believe?’ he said, lifting his hat.

‘Yes,’ said Cytherea, colouring, and trying not to look guilty of a

surreptitious knowledge of him.

‘I am Mr. Springrove. I passed Corvsgate Castle about an hour ago, and

soon afterwards met your brother going that way. He had been deceived in

the distance, and was about to turn without seeing the ruin, on account

of a lameness that had come on in his leg or foot. I proposed that

he should go on, since he had got so near; and afterwards, instead of

walking back to the boat, get across to Anglebury Station--a shorter

walk for him--where he could catch the late train, and go directly home.

I could let you know what he had done, and allay any uneasiness.’

‘Is the lameness serious, do you know?’

‘O no; simply from over-walking himself. Still, it was just as well to

ride home.’

Relieved from her apprehensions on Owen’s score, she was able slightly

to examine the appearance of her informant--Edward Springrove--who now

removed his hat for a while, to cool himself. He was rather above her

brother’s height. Although the upper part of his face and head was

handsomely formed, and bounded by lines of sufficiently masculine

regularity, his brows were somewhat too softly arched, and finely

pencilled for one of his sex; without prejudice, however, to the belief

which the sum total of his features inspired--that though they did not

prove that the man who thought inside them would do much in the

world, men who had done most of all had had no better ones. Across his

forehead, otherwise perfectly smooth, ran one thin line, the healthy

freshness of his remaining features expressing that it had come there

prematurely.

Though some years short of the age at which the clear spirit bids

good-bye to the last infirmity of noble mind, and takes to house-hunting

and investments, he had reached the period in a young man’s life when

episodic periods, with a hopeful birth and a disappointing death, have

begun to accumulate, and to bear a fruit of generalities; his glance

sometimes seeming to state, ‘I have already thought out the issue of

such conditions as these we are experiencing.’ At other times he wore an

abstracted look: ‘I seem to have lived through this moment before.’

He was carelessly dressed in dark grey, wearing a rolled-up black

kerchief as a neck-cloth; the knot of which was disarranged, and stood

obliquely--a deposit of white dust having lodged in the creases.

‘I am sorry for your disappointment,’ he continued, glancing into

her face. Their eyes having met, became, as it were, mutually locked

together, and the single instant only which good breeding allows as

the length of such a look, became trebled: a clear penetrating ray of

intelligence had shot from each into each, giving birth to one of those

unaccountable sensations which carry home to the heart before the hand

has been touched or the merest compliment passed, by something stronger

than mathematical proof, the conviction, ‘A tie has begun to unite us.’

Both faces also unconsciously stated that their owners had been much in

each other’s thoughts of late. Owen had talked to the young architect of

his sister as freely as to Cytherea of the young architect.

A conversation began, which was none the less interesting to the parties

engaged because it consisted only of the most trivial and commonplace

remarks. Then the band of harps and violins struck up a lively melody,

and the deck was cleared for dancing; the sun dipping beneath the

horizon during the proceeding, and the moon showing herself at their

stern. The sea was so calm, that the soft hiss produced by the

bursting of the innumerable bubbles of foam behind the paddles could be

distinctly heard. The passengers who did not dance, including Cytherea

and Springrove, lapsed into silence, leaning against the paddle-boxes,

or standing aloof--noticing the trembling of the deck to the steps of

the dance--watching the waves from the paddles as they slid thinly and

easily under each other’s edges.

Night had quite closed in by the time they reached Budmouth harbour,

sparkling with its white, red, and green lights in opposition to the

shimmering path of the moon’s reflection on the other side, which

reached away to the horizon till the flecked ripples reduced themselves

to sparkles as fine as gold dust.

‘I will walk to the station and find out the exact time the train

arrives,’ said Springrove, rather eagerly, when they had landed.

She thanked him much.

‘Perhaps we might walk together,’ he suggested hesitatingly. She looked

as if she did not quite know, and he settled the question by showing the

way.

They found, on arriving there, that on the first day of that month

the particular train selected for Graye’s return had ceased to stop at

Anglebury station.

‘I am very sorry I misled him,’ said Springrove.

‘O, I am not alarmed at all,’ replied Cytherea.

‘Well, it’s sure to be all right--he will sleep there, and come by the

first in the morning. But what will you do, alone?’

‘I am quite easy on that point; the landlady is very friendly. I must go

indoors now. Good-night, Mr. Springrove.’

‘Let me go round to your door with you?’ he pleaded.

‘No, thank you; we live close by.’

He looked at her as a waiter looks at the change he brings back. But she

was inexorable.

‘Don’t--forget me,’ he murmured. She did not answer.

‘Let me see you sometimes,’ he said.

‘Perhaps you never will again--I am going away,’ she replied in

lingering tones; and turning into Cross Street, ran indoors and

upstairs.

The sudden withdrawal of what was superfluous at first, is often felt as

an essential loss. It was felt now with regard to the maiden. More, too,

after a meeting so pleasant and so enkindling, she had seemed to imply

that they would never come together again.

The young man softly followed her, stood opposite the house and watched

her come into the upper room with the light. Presently his gaze was cut

short by her approaching the window and pulling down the blind--Edward

dwelling upon her vanishing figure with a hopeless sense of loss akin to

that which Adam is said by logicians to have felt when he first saw the

sun set, and thought, in his inexperience, that it would return no more.

He waited till her shadow had twice crossed the window, when, finding

the charming outline was not to be expected again, he left the street,

crossed the harbour-bridge, and entered his own solitary chamber on the

other side, vaguely thinking as he went (for undefined reasons),

‘One hope is too like despair

For prudence to smother.’

III. THE EVENTS OF EIGHT DAYS

1. FROM THE TWENTY-SECOND TO THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF JULY

But things are not what they seem. A responsive love for Edward

Springrove had made its appearance in Cytherea’s bosom with all the

fascinating attributes of a first experience, not succeeding to or

displacing other emotions, as in older hearts, but taking up entirely

new ground; as when gazing just after sunset at the pale blue sky we see

a star come into existence where nothing was before.

His parting words, ‘Don’t forget me,’ she repeated to herself a hundred

times, and though she thought their import was probably commonplace, she

could not help toying with them,--looking at them from all points,

and investing them with meanings of love and faithfulness,--ostensibly

entertaining such meanings only as fables wherewith to pass the time,

yet in her heart admitting, for detached instants, a possibility of

their deeper truth. And thus, for hours after he had left her, her

reason flirted with her fancy as a kitten will sport with a dove,

pleasantly and smoothly through easy attitudes, but disclosing its cruel

and unyielding nature at crises.

To turn now to the more material media through which this story moves,

it so happened that the very next morning brought round a circumstance

which, slight in itself, took up a relevant and important position

between the past and the future of the persons herein concerned.

At breakfast time, just as Cytherea had again seen the postman pass

without bringing her an answer to the advertisement, as she had fully

expected he would do, Owen entered the room.

‘Well,’ he said, kissing her, ‘you have not been alarmed, of course.

Springrove told you what I had done, and you found there was no train?’

‘Yes, it was all clear. But what is the lameness owing to?’

‘I don’t know--nothing. It has quite gone off now... Cytherea, I hope

you like Springrove. Springrove’s a nice fellow, you know.’

‘Yes. I think he is, except that--’

‘It happened just to the purpose that I should meet him there, didn’t

it? And when I reached the station and learnt that I could not get on by

train my foot seemed better. I started off to walk home, and went about

five miles along a path beside the railway. It then struck me that I

might not be fit for anything to-day if I walked and aggravated the

bothering foot, so I looked for a place to sleep at. There was

no available village or inn, and I eventually got the keeper of a

gate-house, where a lane crossed the line, to take me in.’

They proceeded with their breakfast. Owen yawned.

‘You didn’t get much sleep at the gate-house last night, I’m afraid,

Owen,’ said his sister.

‘To tell the truth, I didn’t. I was in such very close and narrow

quarters. Those gate-houses are such small places, and the man had

only his own bed to offer me. Ah, by-the-bye, Cythie, I have such an

extraordinary thing to tell you in connection with this man!--by Jove,

I had nearly forgotten it! But I’ll go straight on. As I was saying,

he had only his own bed to offer me, but I could not afford to be

fastidious, and as he had a hearty manner, though a very queer one, I

agreed to accept it, and he made a rough pallet for himself on the floor

close beside me. Well, I could not sleep for my life, and I wished I had

not stayed there, though I was so tired. For one thing, there were the

luggage trains rattling by at my elbow the early part of the night. But

worse than this, he talked continually in his sleep, and occasionally

struck out with his limbs at something or another, knocking against the

post of the bedstead and making it tremble. My condition was altogether

so unsatisfactory that at last I awoke him, and asked him what he had

been dreaming about for the previous hour, for I could get no sleep at

all. He begged my pardon for disturbing me, but a name I had casually

let fall that evening had led him to think of another stranger he had

once had visit him, who had also accidentally mentioned the same name,

and some very strange incidents connected with that meeting. The affair

had occurred years and years ago; but what I had said had made him think

and dream about it as if it were but yesterday. What was the word? I

said. “Cytherea,” he said. What was the story? I asked then. He then

told me that when he was a young man in London he borrowed a few pounds

to add to a few he had saved up, and opened a little inn at Hammersmith.

One evening, after the inn had been open about a couple of months,

every idler in the neighbourhood ran off to Westminster. The Houses of

Parliament were on fire.

‘Not a soul remained in his parlour besides himself, and he began

picking up the pipes and glasses his customers had hastily relinquished.

At length a young lady about seventeen or eighteen came in. She asked

if a woman was there waiting for herself--Miss Jane Taylor. He said no;

asked the young lady if she would wait, and showed her into the small

inner room. There was a glass-pane in the partition dividing this room

from the bar to enable the landlord to see if his visitors, who sat

there, wanted anything. A curious awkwardness and melancholy about the

behaviour of the girl who called, caused my informant to look frequently

at her through the partition. She seemed weary of her life, and sat with

her face buried in her hands, evidently quite out of her element in

such a house. Then a woman much older came in and greeted Miss Taylor by

name. The man distinctly heard the following words pass between them:--

‘“Why have you not brought him?”

‘“He is ill; he is not likely to live through the night.”

‘At this announcement from the elderly woman, the young lady fell to the

floor in a swoon, apparently overcome by the news. The landlord ran in

and lifted her up. Well, do what they would they could not for a long

time bring her back to consciousness, and began to be much alarmed. “Who

is she?” the innkeeper said to the other woman. “I know her,” the other

said, with deep meaning in her tone. The elderly and young woman seemed

allied, and yet strangers.

‘She now showed signs of life, and it struck him (he was plainly of an

inquisitive turn), that in her half-bewildered state he might get some

information from her. He stooped over her, put his mouth to her ear,

and said sharply, “What’s your name?” “To catch a woman napping

is difficult, even when she’s half dead; but I did it,” says the

gatekeeper. When he asked her her name, she said immediately--

‘“Cytherea”--and stopped suddenly.’

‘My own name!’ said Cytherea.

‘Yes--your name. Well, the gateman thought at the time it might be

equally with Jane a name she had invented for the occasion, that they

might not trace her; but I think it was truth unconsciously uttered,

for she added directly afterwards: “O, what have I said!” and was quite

overcome again--this time with fright. Her vexation that the woman now

doubted the genuineness of her other name was very much greater than

that the innkeeper did, and it is evident that to blind the woman was

her main object. He also learnt from words the elderly woman casually

dropped, that meetings of the same kind had been held before, and that

the falseness of the soi-disant Miss Jane Taylor’s name had never been

suspected by this dependent or confederate till then.

‘She recovered, rested there for an hour, and first sending off her

companion peremptorily (which was another odd thing), she left the

house, offering the landlord all the money she had to say nothing about

the circumstance. He has never seen her since, according to his

own account. I said to him again and again, “Did you find any more

particulars afterwards?” “Not a syllable,” he said. O, he should never

hear any more of that! too many years had passed since it happened. “At

any rate, you found out her surname?” I said. “Well, well, that’s my

secret,” he went on. “Perhaps I should never have been in this part of

the world if it hadn’t been for that. I failed as a publican, you know.”

I imagine the situation of gateman was given him and his debts paid off

as a bribe to silence; but I can’t say. “Ah, yes!” he said, with a long

breath. “I have never heard that name mentioned since that time till

to-night, and then there instantly rose to my eyes the vision of that

young lady lying in a fainting fit.” He then stopped talking and fell

asleep. Telling the story must have relieved him as it did the Ancient

Mariner, for he did not move a muscle or make another sound for the

remainder of the night. Now isn’t that an odd story?’

‘It is indeed,’ Cytherea murmured. ‘Very, very strange.’

‘Why should she have said your most uncommon name?’ continued Owen. ‘The

man was evidently truthful, for there was not motive sufficient for his

invention of such a tale, and he could not have done it either.’

Cytherea looked long at her brother. ‘Don’t you recognize anything else

in connection with the story?’ she said.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Do you remember what poor papa once let drop--that Cytherea was

the name of his first sweetheart in Bloomsbury, who so mysteriously

renounced him? A sort of intuition tells me that this was the same

woman.’

‘O no--not likely,’ said her brother sceptically.

‘How not likely, Owen? There’s not another woman of the name in England.

In what year used papa to say the event took place?’

‘Eighteen hundred and thirty-five.’

‘And when were the Houses of Parliament burnt?--stop, I can tell you.’

She searched their little stock of books for a list of dates, and found

one in an old school history.

‘The Houses of Parliament were burnt down in the evening of the

sixteenth of October, eighteen hundred and thirty-four.’

‘Nearly a year and a quarter before she met father,’ remarked Owen.

They were silent. ‘If papa had been alive, what a wonderful absorbing

interest this story would have had for him,’ said Cytherea by-and-by.

‘And how strangely knowledge comes to us. We might have searched for a

clue to her secret half the world over, and never found one. If we had

really had any motive for trying to discover more of the sad history

than papa told us, we should have gone to Bloomsbury; but not caring to

do so, we go two hundred miles in the opposite direction, and there

find information waiting to be told us. What could have been the secret,

Owen?’

‘Heaven knows. But our having heard a little more of her in this way (if

she is the same woman) is a mere coincidence after all--a family story

to tell our friends if we ever have any. But we shall never know any

more of the episode now--trust our fates for that.’

Cytherea sat silently thinking.

‘There was no answer this morning to your advertisement, Cytherea?’ he

continued.

‘None.’

‘I could see that by your looks when I came in.’

‘Fancy not getting a single one,’ she said sadly. ‘Surely there must be

people somewhere who want governesses?’

‘Yes; but those who want them, and can afford to have them, get them

mostly by friends’ recommendations; whilst those who want them, and

can’t afford to have them, make use of their poor relations.’

‘What shall I do?’

‘Never mind it. Go on living with me. Don’t let the difficulty trouble

your mind so; you think about it all day. I can keep you, Cythie, in a

plain way of living. Twenty-five shillings a week do not amount to

much truly; but then many mechanics have no more, and we live quite as

sparingly as journeymen mechanics... It is a meagre narrow life we are

drifting into,’ he added gloomily, ‘but it is a degree more tolerable

than the worrying sensation of all the world being ashamed of you, which

we experienced at Hocbridge.’

‘I couldn’t go back there again,’ she said.

‘Nor I. O, I don’t regret our course for a moment. We did quite right in

dropping out of the world.’ The sneering tones of the remark were almost

too laboured to be real. ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘something better for

me is sure to turn up soon. I wish my engagement here was a permanent

one instead of for only two months. It may, certainly, be for a longer

time, but all is uncertain.’

‘I wish I could get something to do; and I must too,’ she said firmly.

‘Suppose, as is very probable, you are not wanted after the beginning of

October--the time Mr. Gradfield mentioned--what should we do if I were

dependent on you only throughout the winter?’

They pondered on numerous schemes by which a young lady might be

supposed to earn a decent livelihood--more or less convenient and

feasible in imagination, but relinquished them all until advertising had

been once more tried, this time taking lower ground. Cytherea was vexed

at her temerity in having represented to the world that so inexperienced

a being as herself was a qualified governess; and had a fancy that this

presumption of hers might be one reason why no ladies applied. The new

and humbler attempt appeared in the following form:--

‘NURSERY GOVERNESS OR USEFUL COMPANION. A young person wishes to

hear of a situation in either of the above capacities. Salary very

moderate. She is a good needle-woman--Address G., 3 Cross Street,

Budmouth.’

In the evening they went to post the letter, and then walked up and down

the Parade for a while. Soon they met Springrove, said a few words

to him, and passed on. Owen noticed that his sister’s face had become

crimson. Rather oddly they met Springrove again in a few minutes. This

time the three walked a little way together, Edward ostensibly talking

to Owen, though with a single thought to the reception of his words by

the maiden at the farther side, upon whom his gaze was mostly resting,

and who was attentively listening--looking fixedly upon the pavement the

while. It has been said that men love with their eyes; women with their

ears.

As Owen and himself were little more than acquaintances as yet, and as

Springrove was wanting in the assurance of many men of his age, it now

became necessary to wish his friends good-evening, or to find a reason

for continuing near Cytherea by saying some nice new thing. He thought

of a new thing; he proposed a pull across the bay. This was assented

to. They went to the pier; stepped into one of the gaily painted boats

moored alongside and sheered off. Cytherea sat in the stern steering.

They rowed that evening; the next came, and with it the necessity of

rowing again. Then the next, and the next, Cytherea always sitting in

the stern with the tiller ropes in her hand. The curves of her figure

welded with those of the fragile boat in perfect continuation, as she

girlishly yielded herself to its heaving and sinking, seeming to form

with it an organic whole.

Then Owen was inclined to test his skill in paddling a canoe. Edward

did not like canoes, and the issue was, that, having seen Owen on board,

Springrove proposed to pull off after him with a pair of sculls; but

not considering himself sufficiently accomplished to do finished rowing

before a parade full of promenaders when there was a little swell on,

and with the rudder unshipped in addition, he begged that Cytherea might

come with him and steer as before. She stepped in, and they floated

along in the wake of her brother. Thus passed the fifth evening on the

water.

But the sympathetic pair were thrown into still closer companionship,

and much more exclusive connection.

2. JULY THE TWENTY-NINTH

It was a sad time for Cytherea--the last day of Springrove’s management

at Gradfield’s, and the last evening before his return from Budmouth to

his father’s house, previous to his departure for London.

Graye had been requested by the architect to survey a plot of land

nearly twenty miles off, which, with the journey to and fro, would

occupy him the whole day, and prevent his returning till late in the

evening. Cytherea made a companion of her landlady to the extent of

sharing meals and sitting with her during the morning of her

brother’s absence. Mid-day found her restless and miserable under this

arrangement. All the afternoon she sat alone, looking out of the window

for she scarcely knew whom, and hoping she scarcely knew what. Half-past

five o’clock came--the end of Springrove’s official day. Two minutes

later Springrove walked by.

She endured her solitude for another half-hour, and then could endure no

longer. She had hoped--while affecting to fear--that Edward would have

found some reason or other for calling, but it seemed that he had not.

Hastily dressing herself she went out, when the farce of an accidental

meeting was repeated. Edward came upon her in the street at the first

turning, and, like the Great Duke Ferdinand in ‘The Statue and the

Bust’--

‘He looked at her as a lover can;

She looked at him as one who awakes--

The past was a sleep, and her life began.’

‘Shall we have a boat?’ he said impulsively.

How blissful it all is at first. Perhaps, indeed, the only bliss in

the course of love which can truly be called Eden-like is that which

prevails immediately after doubt has ended and before reflection has set

in--at the dawn of the emotion, when it is not recognized by name, and

before the consideration of what this love is, has given birth to the

consideration of what difficulties it tends to create; when on the man’s

part, the mistress appears to the mind’s eye in picturesque, hazy, and

fresh morning lights, and soft morning shadows; when, as yet, she is

known only as the wearer of one dress, which shares her own personality;

as the stander in one special position, the giver of one bright

particular glance, and the speaker of one tender sentence; when, on

her part, she is timidly careful over what she says and does, lest she

should be misconstrued or under-rated to the breadth of a shadow of a

hair.

‘Shall we have a boat?’ he said again, more softly, seeing that to

his first question she had not answered, but looked uncertainly at the

ground, then almost, but not quite, in his face, blushed a series of

minute blushes, left off in the midst of them, and showed the usual

signs of perplexity in a matter of the emotions.

Owen had always been with her before, but there was now a force of habit

in the proceeding, and with Arcadian innocence she assumed that a row on

the water was, under any circumstances, a natural thing. Without another

word being spoken on either side, they went down the steps. He carefully

handed her in, took his seat, slid noiselessly off the sand, and away

from the shore.

They thus sat facing each other in the graceful yellow cockle-shell,

and his eyes frequently found a resting-place in the depths of hers. The

boat was so small that at each return of the sculls, when his hands came

forward to begin the pull, they approached so near to her that her vivid

imagination began to thrill her with a fancy that he was going to clasp

his arms round her. The sensation grew so strong that she could not run

the risk of again meeting his eyes at those critical moments, and turned

aside to inspect the distant horizon; then she grew weary of looking

sideways, and was driven to return to her natural position again. At

this instant he again leant forward to begin, and met her glance by

an ardent fixed gaze. An involuntary impulse of girlish embarrassment

caused her to give a vehement pull at the tiller-rope, which brought the

boat’s head round till they stood directly for shore.

His eyes, which had dwelt upon her form during the whole time of her

look askance, now left her; he perceived the direction in which they

were going.

‘Why, you have completely turned the boat, Miss Graye?’ he said, looking

over his shoulder. ‘Look at our track on the water--a great semicircle,

preceded by a series of zigzags as far as we can see.’

She looked attentively. ‘Is it my fault or yours?’ she inquired. ‘Mine,

I suppose?’

‘I can’t help saying that it is yours.’

She dropped the ropes decisively, feeling the slightest twinge of

vexation at the answer.

‘Why do you let go?’

‘I do it so badly.’

‘O no; you turned about for shore in a masterly way. Do you wish to

return?’

‘Yes, if you please.’

‘Of course, then, I will at once.’

‘I fear what the people will think of us--going in such absurd

directions, and all through my wretched steering.’

‘Never mind what the people think.’ A pause. ‘You surely are not so weak

as to mind what the people think on such a matter as that?’

Those words might almost be called too firm and hard to be given by him

to her; but never mind. For almost the first time in her life she felt

the charming sensation, although on such an insignificant subject, of

being compelled into an opinion by a man she loved. Owen, though

less yielding physically, and more practical, would not have had the

intellectual independence to answer a woman thus. She replied quietly

and honestly--as honestly as when she had stated the contrary fact a

minute earlier--

‘I don’t mind.’

‘I’ll unship the tiller that you may have nothing to do going back but

to hold your parasol,’ he continued, and arose to perform the operation,

necessarily leaning closely against her, to guard against the risk

of capsizing the boat as he reached his hands astern. His warm breath

touched and crept round her face like a caress; but he was apparently

only concerned with his task. She looked guilty of something when he

seated himself. He read in her face what that something was--she had

experienced a pleasure from his touch. But he flung a practical glance

over his shoulder, seized the oars, and they sped in a straight line

towards the shore.

Cytherea saw that he noted in her face what had passed in her heart,

and that noting it, he continued as decided as before. She was inwardly

distressed. She had not meant him to translate her words about returning

home so literally at the first; she had not intended him to learn her

secret; but more than all she was not able to endure the perception of

his learning it and continuing unmoved.

There was nothing but misery to come now. They would step ashore; he

would say good-night, go to London to-morrow, and the miserable She

would lose him for ever. She did not quite suppose what was the fact,

that a parallel thought was simultaneously passing through his mind.

They were now within ten yards, now within five; he was only now waiting

for a ‘smooth’ to bring the boat in. Sweet, sweet Love must not be

slain thus, was the fair maid’s reasoning. She was equal to the

occasion--ladies are--and delivered the god--

‘Do you want very much to land, Mr. Springrove?’ she said, letting her

young violet eyes pine at him a very, very little.

‘I? Not at all,’ said he, looking an astonishment at her inquiry which a

slight twinkle of his eye half belied. ‘But you do?’

‘I think that now we have come out, and it is such a pleasant evening,’

she said gently and sweetly, ‘I should like a little longer row if you

don’t mind? I’ll try to steer better than before if it makes it easier

for you. I’ll try very hard.’

It was the turn of his face to tell a tale now. He looked, ‘We

understand each other--ah, we do, darling!’ turned the boat, and pulled

back into the Bay once more.

‘Now steer wherever you will,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Never mind the

directness of the course--wherever you will.’

‘Shall it be Creston Shore?’ she said, pointing to a stretch of beach

northward from Budmouth Esplanade.

‘Creston Shore certainly,’ he responded, grasping the sculls. She took

the strings daintily, and they wound away to the left.

For a long time nothing was audible in the boat but the regular dip

of the oars, and their movement in the rowlocks. Springrove at length

spoke.

‘I must go away to-morrow,’ he said tentatively.

‘Yes,’ she replied faintly.

‘To endeavour to advance a little in my profession in London.’

‘Yes,’ she said again, with the same preoccupied softness.

‘But I shan’t advance.’

‘Why not? Architecture is a bewitching profession. They say that an

architect’s work is another man’s play.’

‘Yes. But worldly advantage from an art doesn’t depend upon mastering

it. I used to think it did; but it doesn’t. Those who get rich need have

no skill at all as artists.’

‘What need they have?’

‘A certain kind of energy which men with any fondness for art possess

very seldom indeed--an earnestness in making acquaintances, and a love

for using them. They give their whole attention to the art of

dining out, after mastering a few rudimentary facts to serve up in

conversation. Now after saying that, do I seem a man likely to make a

name?’

‘You seem a man likely to make a mistake.’

‘What’s that?’

‘To give too much room to the latent feeling which is rather common

in these days among the unappreciated, that because some remarkably

successful men are fools, all remarkably unsuccessful men are geniuses.’

‘Pretty subtle for a young lady,’ he said slowly. ‘From that remark I

should fancy you had bought experience.’

She passed over the idea. ‘Do try to succeed,’ she said, with wistful

thoughtfulness, leaving her eyes on him.

Springrove flushed a little at the earnestness of her words, and mused.

‘Then, like Cato the Censor, I shall do what I despise, to be in the

fashion,’ he said at last... ‘Well, when I found all this out that I

was speaking of, what ever do you think I did? From having already

loved verse passionately, I went on to read it continually; then I went

rhyming myself. If anything on earth ruins a man for useful occupation,

and for content with reasonable success in a profession or trade, it is

the habit of writing verses on emotional subjects, which had much better

be left to die from want of nourishment.’

‘Do you write poems now?’ she said.

‘None. Poetical days are getting past with me, according to the usual

rule. Writing rhymes is a stage people of my sort pass through, as they

pass through the stage of shaving for a beard, or thinking they are

ill-used, or saying there’s nothing in the world worth living for.’

‘Then the difference between a common man and a recognized poet is, that

one has been deluded, and cured of his delusion, and the other continues

deluded all his days.’

‘Well, there’s just enough truth in what you say, to make the remark

unbearable. However, it doesn’t matter to me now that I “meditate the

thankless Muse” no longer, but....’ He paused, as if endeavouring to

think what better thing he did.

Cytherea’s mind ran on to the succeeding lines of the poem, and their

startling harmony with the present situation suggested the fancy that he

was ‘sporting’ with her, and brought an awkward contemplativeness to her

face.

Springrove guessed her thoughts, and in answer to them simply said

‘Yes.’ Then they were silent again.

‘If I had known an Amaryllis was coming here, I should not have made

arrangements for leaving,’ he resumed.

Such levity, superimposed on the notion of ‘sport’, was intolerable to

Cytherea; for a woman seems never to see any but the serious side of her

attachment, though the most devoted lover has all the time a vague and

dim perception that he is losing his old dignity and frittering away his

time.

‘But will you not try again to get on in your profession? Try once

more; do try once more,’ she murmured. ‘I am going to try again. I have

advertised for something to do.’

‘Of course I will,’ he said, with an eager gesture and smile. ‘But we

must remember that the fame of Christopher Wren himself depended upon

the accident of a fire in Pudding Lane. My successes seem to come very

slowly. I often think, that before I am ready to live, it will be time

for me to die. However, I am trying--not for fame now, but for an easy

life of reasonable comfort.’

It is a melancholy truth for the middle classes, that in proportion

as they develop, by the study of poetry and art, their capacity for

conjugal love of the highest and purest kind, they limit the possibility

of their being able to exercise it--the very act putting out of their

power the attainment of means sufficient for marriage. The man who works

up a good income has had no time to learn love to its solemn extreme;

the man who has learnt that has had no time to get rich.

‘And if you should fail--utterly fail to get that reasonable wealth,’

she said earnestly, ‘don’t be perturbed. The truly great stand upon no

middle ledge; they are either famous or unknown.’

‘Unknown,’ he said, ‘if their ideas have been allowed to flow with

a sympathetic breadth. Famous only if they have been convergent and

exclusive.’

‘Yes; and I am afraid from that, that my remark was but discouragement,

wearing the dress of comfort. Perhaps I was not quite right in--’

‘It depends entirely upon what is meant by being truly great. But the

long and the short of the matter is, that men must stick to a thing if

they want to succeed in it--not giving way to over-much admiration

for the flowers they see growing in other people’s borders; which I am

afraid has been my case.’ He looked into the far distance and paused.

Adherence to a course with persistence sufficient to ensure success is

possible to widely appreciative minds only when there is also found

in them a power--commonplace in its nature, but rare in such

combination--the power of assuming to conviction that in the outlying

paths which appear so much more brilliant than their own, there are

bitternesses equally great--unperceived simply on account of their

remoteness.

They were opposite Ringsworth Shore. The cliffs here were formed of

strata completely contrasting with those of the further side of the Bay,

whilst in and beneath the water hard boulders had taken the place of

sand and shingle, between which, however, the sea glided noiselessly,

without breaking the crest of a single wave, so strikingly calm was the

air. The breeze had entirely died away, leaving the water of that rare

glassy smoothness which is unmarked even by the small dimples of the

least aerial movement. Purples and blues of divers shades were reflected

from this mirror accordingly as each undulation sloped east or west.

They could see the rocky bottom some twenty feet beneath them,

luxuriant with weeds of various growths, and dotted with pulpy creatures

reflecting a silvery and spangled radiance upwards to their eyes.

At length she looked at him to learn the effect of her words of

encouragement. He had let the oars drift alongside, and the boat had

come to a standstill. Everything on earth seemed taking a contemplative

rest, as if waiting to hear the avowal of something from his lips. At

that instant he appeared to break a resolution hitherto zealously kept.

Leaving his seat amidships he came and gently edged himself down beside

her upon the narrow seat at the stern.

She breathed more quickly and warmly: he took her right hand in his own

right: it was not withdrawn. He put his left hand behind her neck till

it came round upon her left cheek: it was not thrust away. Lightly

pressing her, he brought her face and mouth towards his own; when, at

this the very brink, some unaccountable thought or spell within him

suddenly made him halt--even now, and as it seemed as much to himself as

to her, he timidly whispered ‘May I?’

Her endeavour was to say No, so denuded of its flesh and sinews that its

nature would hardly be recognized, or in other words a No from so near

the affirmative frontier as to be affected with the Yes accent. It was

thus a whispered No, drawn out to nearly a quarter of a minute’s length,

the O making itself audible as a sound like the spring coo of a pigeon

on unusually friendly terms with its mate. Though conscious of her

success in producing the kind of word she had wished to produce, she at

the same time trembled in suspense as to how it would be taken. But the

time available for doubt was so short as to admit of scarcely more than

half a pulsation: pressing closer he kissed her. Then he kissed her

again with a longer kiss.

It was the supremely happy moment of their experience. The ‘bloom’ and

the ‘purple light’ were strong on the lineaments of both. Their hearts

could hardly believe the evidence of their lips.

‘I love you, and you love me, Cytherea!’ he whispered.

She did not deny it; and all seemed well. The gentle sounds around them

from the hills, the plains, the distant town, the adjacent shore, the

water heaving at their side, the kiss, and the long kiss, were all ‘many

a voice of one delight,’ and in unison with each other.

But his mind flew back to the same unpleasant thought which had been

connected with the resolution he had broken a minute or two earlier. ‘I

could be a slave at my profession to win you, Cytherea; I would work at

the meanest, honest trade to be near you--much less claim you as mine; I

would--anything. But I have not told you all; it is not this; you don’t

know what there is yet to tell. Could you forgive as you can love?’ She

was alarmed to see that he had become pale with the question.

‘No--do not speak,’ he said. ‘I have kept something from you, which has

now become the cause of a great uneasiness. I had no right--to love you;

but I did it. Something forbade--’

‘What?’ she exclaimed.

‘Something forbade me--till the kiss--yes, till the kiss came; and now

nothing shall forbid it! We’ll hope in spite of all... I must, however,

speak of this love of ours to your brother. Dearest, you had better go

indoors whilst I meet him at the station, and explain everything.’

Cytherea’s short-lived bliss was dead and gone. O, if she had known of

this sequel would she have allowed him to break down the barrier of mere

acquaintanceship--never, never!

‘Will you not explain to me?’ she faintly urged. Doubt--indefinite,

carking doubt had taken possession of her.

‘Not now. You alarm yourself unnecessarily,’ he said tenderly. ‘My only

reason for keeping silence is that with my present knowledge I may tell

an untrue story. It may be that there is nothing to tell. I am to blame

for haste in alluding to any such thing. Forgive me, sweet--forgive me.’

Her heart was ready to burst, and she could not answer him. He returned

to his place and took to the oars.

They again made for the distant Esplanade, now, with its line of houses,

lying like a dark grey band against the light western sky. The sun

had set, and a star or two began to peep out. They drew nearer their

destination, Edward as he pulled tracing listlessly with his eyes the

red stripes upon her scarf, which grew to appear as black ones in the

increasing dusk of evening. She surveyed the long line of lamps on the

sea-wall of the town, now looking small and yellow, and seeming to send

long tap-roots of fire quivering down deep into the sea. By-and-by they

reached the landing-steps. He took her hand as before, and found it as

cold as the water about them. It was not relinquished till he reached

her door. His assurance had not removed the constraint of her manner:

he saw that she blamed him mutely and with her eyes, like a captured

sparrow. Left alone, he went and seated himself in a chair on the

Esplanade.

Neither could she go indoors to her solitary room, feeling as she did

in such a state of desperate heaviness. When Springrove was out of sight

she turned back, and arrived at the corner just in time to see him

sit down. Then she glided pensively along the pavement behind him,

forgetting herself to marble like Melancholy herself as she mused in his

neighbourhood unseen. She heard, without heeding, the notes of pianos

and singing voices from the fashionable houses at her back, from the

open windows of which the lamp-light streamed to join that of the

orange-hued full moon, newly risen over the Bay in front. Then Edward

began to pace up and down, and Cytherea, fearing that he would notice

her, hastened homeward, flinging him a last look as she passed out of

sight. No promise from him to write: no request that she herself would

do so--nothing but an indefinite expression of hope in the face of some

fear unknown to her. Alas, alas!

When Owen returned he found she was not in the small sitting-room, and

creeping upstairs into her bedroom with a light, he discovered her there

lying asleep upon the coverlet of the bed, still with her hat and

jacket on. She had flung herself down on entering, and succumbed to

the unwonted oppressiveness that ever attends full-blown love. The wet

traces of tears were yet visible upon her long drooping lashes.

‘Love is a sowre delight, and sugred griefe,

A living death, and ever-dying life.’

‘Cytherea,’ he whispered, kissing her. She awoke with a start, and

vented an exclamation before recovering her judgment. ‘He’s gone!’ she

said.

‘He has told me all,’ said Graye soothingly. ‘He is going off early

to-morrow morning. ‘Twas a shame of him to win you away from me, and

cruel of you to keep the growth of this attachment a secret.’

‘We couldn’t help it,’ she said, and then jumping up--‘Owen, has he told

you _all_?’

‘All of your love from beginning to end,’ he said simply.

Edward then had not told more--as he ought to have done: yet she could

not convict him. But she would struggle against his fetters. She tingled

to the very soles of her feet at the very possibility that he might be

deluding her.

‘Owen,’ she continued, with dignity, ‘what is he to me? Nothing. I must

dismiss such weakness as this--believe me, I will. Something far more

pressing must drive it away. I have been looking my position steadily

in the face, and I must get a living somehow. I mean to advertise once

more.’

‘Advertising is no use.’

‘This one will be.’ He looked surprised at the sanguine tone of her

answer, till she took a piece of paper from the table and showed it him.

‘See what I am going to do,’ she said sadly, almost bitterly. This was

her third effort:--

‘LADY’S-MAID. Inexperienced. Age eighteen.--G., 3 Cross Street,

Budmouth.’

Owen--Owen the respectable--looked blank astonishment. He repeated in a

nameless, varying tone, the two words--

‘Lady’s-maid!’

‘Yes; lady’s-maid. ‘Tis an honest profession,’ said Cytherea bravely.

‘But _you_, Cytherea?’

‘Yes, I--who am I?’

‘You will never be a lady’s-maid--never, I am quite sure.’

‘I shall try to be, at any rate.’

‘Such a disgrace--’

‘Nonsense! I maintain that it is no disgrace!’ she said, rather warmly.

‘You know very well--’

‘Well, since you will, you must,’ he interrupted. ‘Why do you put

“inexperienced?”’

‘Because I am.’

‘Never mind that--scratch out “inexperienced.” We are poor, Cytherea,

aren’t we?’ he murmured, after a silence, ‘and it seems that the two

months will close my engagement here.’

‘We can put up with being poor,’ she said, ‘if they only give us work

to do.... Yes, we desire as a blessing what was given us as a curse, and

even that is denied. However, be cheerful, Owen, and never mind!’

In justice to desponding men, it is as well to remember that the

brighter endurance of women at these epochs--invaluable, sweet, angelic,

as it is--owes more of its origin to a narrower vision that shuts out

many of the leaden-eyed despairs in the van, than to a hopefulness

intense enough to quell them.

IV. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

1. AUGUST THE FOURTH. TILL FOUR O’CLOCK

The early part of the next week brought an answer to Cytherea’s last

note of hope in the way of advertisement--not from a distance of

hundreds of miles, London, Scotland, Ireland, the Continent--as Cytherea

seemed to think it must, to be in keeping with the means adopted for

obtaining it, but from a place in the neighbourhood of that in which

she was living--a country mansion not twenty miles off. The reply ran

thus:--

KNAPWATER HOUSE,

August 3, 1864.

‘Miss Aldclyffe is in want of a young person as lady’s-maid. The duties

of the place are light. Miss Aldclyffe will be in Budmouth on Thursday,

when (should G. still not have heard of a place) she would like to see

her at the Belvedere Hotel, Esplanade, at four o’clock. No answer need

be returned to this note.’

A little earlier than the time named, Cytherea, clothed in a modest

bonnet, and a black silk jacket, turned down to the hotel. Expectation,

the fresh air from the water, the bright, far-extending outlook, raised

the most delicate of pink colours to her cheeks, and restored to her

tread a portion of that elasticity which her past troubles, and thoughts

of Edward, had well-nigh taken away.

She entered the vestibule, and went to the window of the bar.

‘Is Miss Aldclyffe here?’ she said to a nicely-dressed barmaid in the

foreground, who was talking to a landlady covered with chains, knobs,

and clamps of gold, in the background.

‘No, she isn’t,’ said the barmaid, not very civilly. Cytherea looked a

shade too pretty for a plain dresser.

‘Miss Aldclyffe is expected here,’ the landlady said to a third person,

out of sight, in the tone of one who had known for several days the fact

newly discovered from Cytherea. ‘Get ready her room--be quick.’ From the

alacrity with which the order was given and taken, it seemed to Cytherea

that Miss Aldclyffe must be a woman of considerable importance.

‘You are to have an interview with Miss Aldclyffe here?’ the landlady

inquired.

‘Yes.’

‘The young person had better wait,’ continued the landlady. With a

money-taker’s intuition she had rightly divined that Cytherea would

bring no profit to the house.

Cytherea was shown into a nondescript chamber, on the shady side of the

building, which appeared to be either bedroom or dayroom, as occasion

necessitated, and was one of a suite at the end of the first-floor

corridor. The prevailing colour of the walls, curtains, carpet, and

coverings of furniture, was more or less blue, to which the cold light

coming from the north easterly sky, and falling on a wide roof of new

slates--the only object the small window commanded--imparted a more

striking paleness. But underneath the door, communicating with the next

room of the suite, gleamed an infinitesimally small, yet very powerful,

fraction of contrast--a very thin line of ruddy light, showing that the

sun beamed strongly into this room adjoining. The line of radiance was

the only cheering thing visible in the place.

People give way to very infantine thoughts and actions when they wait;

the battle-field of life is temporarily fenced off by a hard and fast

line--the interview. Cytherea fixed her eyes idly upon the streak, and

began picturing a wonderful paradise on the other side as the source

of such a beam--reminding her of the well-known good deed in a naughty

world.

Whilst she watched the particles of dust floating before the brilliant

chink she heard a carriage and horses stop opposite the front of the

house. Afterwards came the rustle of a lady’s skirts down the corridor,

and into the room communicating with the one Cytherea occupied.

The golden line vanished in parts like the phosphorescent streak caused

by the striking of a match; there was the fall of a light footstep

on the floor just behind it: then a pause. Then the foot tapped

impatiently, and ‘There’s no one here!’ was spoken imperiously by a

lady’s tongue.

‘No, madam; in the next room. I am going to fetch her,’ said the

attendant.

‘That will do--or you needn’t go in; I will call her.’

Cytherea had risen, and she advanced to the middle door with the chink

under it as the servant retired. She had just laid her hand on the knob,

when it slipped round within her fingers, and the door was pulled open

from the other side.

2. FOUR O’CLOCK

The direct blaze of the afternoon sun, partly refracted through the

crimson curtains of the window, and heightened by reflections from the

crimson-flock paper which covered the walls, and a carpet on the floor

of the same tint, shone with a burning glow round the form of a lady

standing close to Cytherea’s front with the door in her hand. The

stranger appeared to the maiden’s eyes--fresh from the blue gloom, and

assisted by an imagination fresh from nature--like a tall black figure

standing in the midst of fire. It was the figure of a finely-built

woman, of spare though not angular proportions.

Cytherea involuntarily shaded her eyes with her hand, retreated a step

or two, and then she could for the first time see Miss Aldclyffe’s face

in addition to her outline, lit up by the secondary and softer light

that was reflected from the varnished panels of the door. She was not

a very young woman, but could boast of much beauty of the majestic

autumnal phase.

‘O,’ said the lady, ‘come this way.’ Cytherea followed her to the

embrasure of the window.

Both the women showed off themselves to advantage as they walked forward

in the orange light; and each showed too in her face that she had

been struck with her companion’s appearance. The warm tint added to

Cytherea’s face a voluptuousness which youth and a simple life had not

yet allowed to express itself there ordinarily; whilst in the elder

lady’s face it reduced the customary expression, which might have been

called sternness, if not harshness, to grandeur, and warmed her decaying

complexion with much of the youthful richness it plainly had once

possessed.

She appeared now no more than five-and-thirty, though she might easily

have been ten or a dozen years older. She had clear steady eyes, a Roman

nose in its purest form, and also the round prominent chin with which

the Caesars are represented in ancient marbles; a mouth expressing a

capability for and tendency to strong emotion, habitually controlled by

pride. There was a severity about the lower outlines of the face which

gave a masculine cast to this portion of her countenance. Womanly

weakness was nowhere visible save in one part--the curve of her forehead

and brows--there it was clear and emphatic. She wore a lace shawl over a

brown silk dress, and a net bonnet set with a few blue cornflowers.

‘You inserted the advertisement for a situation as lady’s-maid giving

the address, G., Cross Street?’

‘Yes, madam. Graye.’

‘Yes. I have heard your name--Mrs. Morris, my housekeeper, mentioned

you, and pointed out your advertisement.’

This was puzzling intelligence, but there was not time enough to

consider it.

‘Where did you live last?’ continued Miss Aldclyffe.

‘I have never been a servant before. I lived at home.’

‘Never been out? I thought too at sight of you that you were too

girlish-looking to have done much. But why did you advertise with such

assurance? It misleads people.’

‘I am very sorry: I put “inexperienced” at first, but my brother said it

is absurd to trumpet your own weakness to the world, and would not let

it remain.’

‘But your mother knew what was right, I suppose?’

‘I have no mother, madam.’

‘Your father, then?’

‘I have no father.’

‘Well,’ she said, more softly, ‘your sisters, aunts, or cousins.’

‘They didn’t think anything about it.’

‘You didn’t ask them, I suppose.’

‘No.’

‘You should have done so, then. Why didn’t you?’

‘Because I haven’t any of them, either.’

Miss Aldclyffe showed her surprise. ‘You deserve forgiveness then at

any rate, child,’ she said, in a sort of drily-kind tone. ‘However, I

am afraid you do not suit me, as I am looking for an elderly person. You

see, I want an experienced maid who knows all the usual duties of the

office.’ She was going to add, ‘Though I like your appearance,’ but the

words seemed offensive to apply to the ladylike girl before her, and she

modified them to, ‘though I like you much.’

‘I am sorry I misled you, madam,’ said Cytherea.

Miss Aldclyffe stood in a reverie, without replying.

‘Good afternoon,’ continued Cytherea.

‘Good-bye, Miss Graye--I hope you will succeed.’

Cytherea turned away towards the door. The movement chanced to be one

of her masterpieces. It was precise: it had as much beauty as was

compatible with precision, and as little coquettishness as was

compatible with beauty.

And she had in turning looked over her shoulder at the other lady with a

faint accent of reproach in her face. Those who remember Greuze’s ‘Head

of a Girl,’ have an idea of Cytherea’s look askance at the turning.

It is not for a man to tell fishers of men how to set out their

fascinations so as to bring about the highest possible average of takes

within the year: but the action that tugs the hardest of all at an

emotional beholder is this sweet method of turning which steals the

bosom away and leaves the eyes behind.

Now Miss Aldclyffe herself was no tyro at wheeling. When Cytherea had

closed the door upon her, she remained for some time in her motionless

attitude, listening to the gradually dying sound of the maiden’s

retreating footsteps. She murmured to herself, ‘It is almost worth while

to be bored with instructing her in order to have a creature who could

glide round my luxurious indolent body in that manner, and look at me

in that way--I warrant how light her fingers are upon one’s head and

neck.... What a silly modest young thing she is, to go away so suddenly

as that!’ She rang the bell.

‘Ask the young lady who has just left me to step back again,’ she said

to the attendant. ‘Quick! or she will be gone.’

Cytherea was now in the vestibule, thinking that if she had told her

history, Miss Aldclyffe might perhaps have taken her into the household;

yet her history she particularly wished to conceal from a stranger.

When she was recalled she turned back without feeling much surprise.

Something, she knew not what, told her she had not seen the last of Miss

Aldclyffe.

‘You have somebody to refer me to, of course,’ the lady said, when

Cytherea had re-entered the room.

‘Yes: Mr. Thorn, a solicitor at Aldbrickham.’

‘And are you a clever needlewoman?’

‘I am considered to be.’

‘Then I think that at any rate I will write to Mr. Thorn,’ said Miss

Aldclyffe, with a little smile. ‘It is true, the whole proceeding is

very irregular; but my present maid leaves next Monday, and neither of

the five I have already seen seem to do for me.... Well, I will write to

Mr. Thorn, and if his reply is satisfactory, you shall hear from me. It

will be as well to set yourself in readiness to come on Monday.’

When Cytherea had again been watched out of the room, Miss Aldclyffe

asked for writing materials, that she might at once communicate with Mr.

Thorn. She indecisively played with the pen. ‘Suppose Mr. Thorn’s reply

to be in any way disheartening--and even if so from his own imperfect

acquaintance with the young creature more than from circumstantial

knowledge--I shall feel obliged to give her up. Then I shall regret that

I did not give her one trial in spite of other people’s prejudices. All

her account of herself is reliable enough--yes, I can see that by her

face. I like that face of hers.’

Miss Aldclyffe put down the pen and left the hotel without writing to

Mr. Thorn.

V. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

1. AUGUST THE EIGHTH. MORNING AND AFTERNOON

At post-time on that following Monday morning, Cytherea watched so

anxiously for the postman, that as the time which must bring him

narrowed less and less her vivid expectation had only a degree less

tangibility than his presence itself. In another second his form came

into view. He brought two letters for Cytherea.

One from Miss Aldclyffe, simply stating that she wished Cytherea to come

on trial: that she would require her to be at Knapwater House by Monday

evening.

The other was from Edward Springrove. He told her that she was the

bright spot of his life: that her existence was far dearer to him than

his own: that he had never known what it was to love till he had met

her. True, he had felt passing attachments to other faces from time to

time; but they all had been weak inclinations towards those faces

as they then appeared. He loved her past and future, as well as her

present. He pictured her as a child: he loved her. He pictured her of

sage years: he loved her. He pictured her in trouble; he loved her.

Homely friendship entered into his love for her, without which all love

was evanescent.

He would make one depressing statement. Uncontrollable circumstances (a

long history, with which it was impossible to acquaint her at present)

operated to a certain extent as a drag upon his wishes. He had felt this

more strongly at the time of their parting than he did now--and it was

the cause of his abrupt behaviour, for which he begged her to forgive

him. He saw now an honourable way of freeing himself, and the perception

had prompted him to write. In the meantime might he indulge in the

hope of possessing her on some bright future day, when by hard labour

generated from her own encouraging words, he had placed himself in a

position she would think worthy to be shared with him?

Dear little letter; she huddled it up. So much more important a

love-letter seems to a girl than to a man. Springrove was unconsciously

clever in his letters, and a man with a talent of that kind may write

himself up to a hero in the mind of a young woman who loves him without

knowing much about him. Springrove already stood a cubit higher in her

imagination than he did in his shoes.

During the day she flitted about the room in an ecstasy of pleasure,

packing the things and thinking of an answer which should be worthy

of the tender tone of the question, her love bubbling from her

involuntarily, like prophesyings from a prophet.

In the afternoon Owen went with her to the railway-station, and put her

in the train for Carriford Road, the station nearest to Knapwater House.

Half-an-hour later she stepped out upon the platform, and found nobody

there to receive her--though a pony-carriage was waiting outside. In two

minutes she saw a melancholy man in cheerful livery running towards her

from a public-house close adjoining, who proved to be the servant sent

to fetch her. There are two ways of getting rid of sorrows: one by

living them down, the other by drowning them. The coachman drowned his.

He informed her that her luggage would be fetched by a spring-waggon in

about half-an-hour; then helped her into the chaise and drove off.

Her lover’s letter, lying close against her neck, fortified her against

the restless timidity she had previously felt concerning this new

undertaking, and completely furnished her with the confident ease of

mind which is required for the critical observation of surrounding

objects. It was just that stage in the slow decline of the summer days,

when the deep, dark, and vacuous hot-weather shadows are beginning to be

replaced by blue ones that have a surface and substance to the eye. They

trotted along the turnpike road for a distance of about a mile, which

brought them just outside the village of Carriford, and then turned

through large lodge-gates, on the heavy stone piers of which stood a

pair of bitterns cast in bronze. They then entered the park and wound

along a drive shaded by old and drooping lime-trees, not arranged in the

form of an avenue, but standing irregularly, sometimes leaving the track

completely exposed to the sky, at other times casting a shade over it,

which almost approached gloom--the under surface of the lowest boughs

hanging at a uniform level of six feet above the grass--the extreme

height to which the nibbling mouths of the cattle could reach.

‘Is that the house?’ said Cytherea expectantly, catching sight of a grey

gable between the trees, and losing it again.

‘No; that’s the old manor-house--or rather all that’s left of it. The

Aldycliffes used to let it sometimes, but it was oftener empty. ‘Tis

now divided into three cottages. Respectable people didn’t care to live

there.’

‘Why didn’t they?’

‘Well, ‘tis so awkward and unhandy. You see so much of it has been

pulled down, and the rooms that are left won’t do very well for a small

residence. ‘Tis so dismal, too, and like most old houses stands too low

down in the hollow to be healthy.’

‘Do they tell any horrid stories about it?’

‘No, not a single one.’

‘Ah, that’s a pity.’

‘Yes, that’s what I say. ‘Tis jest the house for a nice ghastly

hair-on-end story, that would make the parish religious. Perhaps it will

have one some day to make it complete; but there’s not a word of

the kind now. There, I wouldn’t live there for all that. In fact, I

couldn’t. O no, I couldn’t.’

‘Why couldn’t you?’

‘The sounds.’

‘What are they?’

‘One is the waterfall, which stands so close by that you can hear that

there waterfall in every room of the house, night or day, ill or well.

‘Tis enough to drive anybody mad: now hark.’

He stopped the horse. Above the slight common sounds in the air came the

unvarying steady rush of falling water from some spot unseen on account

of the thick foliage of the grove.

‘There’s something awful in the timing o’ that sound, ain’t there,

miss?’

‘When you say there is, there really seems to be. You said there were

two--what is the other horrid sound?’

‘The pumping-engine. That’s close by the Old House, and sends water up

the hill and all over the Great House. We shall hear that directly....

There, now hark again.’

From the same direction down the dell they could now hear the whistling

creak of cranks, repeated at intervals of half-a-minute, with a sousing

noise between each: a creak, a souse, then another creak, and so on

continually.

‘Now if anybody could make shift to live through the other sounds, these

would finish him off, don’t you think so, miss? That machine goes on

night and day, summer and winter, and is hardly ever greased or visited.

Ah, it tries the nerves at night, especially if you are not very well;

though we don’t often hear it at the Great House.’

‘That sound is certainly very dismal. They might have the wheel greased.

Does Miss Aldclyffe take any interest in these things?’

‘Well, scarcely; you see her father doesn’t attend to that sort of thing

as he used to. The engine was once quite his hobby. But now he’s getten

old and very seldom goes there.’

‘How many are there in family?’

‘Only her father and herself. He’s a’ old man of seventy.’

‘I had thought that Miss Aldclyffe was sole mistress of the property,

and lived here alone.’

‘No, m--’ The coachman was continually checking himself thus, being

about to style her miss involuntarily, and then recollecting that he was

only speaking to the new lady’s-maid.

‘She will soon be mistress, however, I am afraid,’ he continued, as if

speaking by a spirit of prophecy denied to ordinary humanity. ‘The poor

old gentleman has decayed very fast lately.’ The man then drew a long

breath.

‘Why did you breathe sadly like that?’ said Cytherea.

‘Ah!... When he’s dead peace will be all over with us old servants. I

expect to see the old house turned inside out.’

‘She will marry, do you mean?’

‘Marry--not she! I wish she would. No, in her soul she’s as solitary

as Robinson Crusoe, though she has acquaintances in plenty, if

not relations. There’s the rector, Mr. Raunham--he’s a relation by

marriage--yet she’s quite distant towards him. And people say that if

she keeps single there will be hardly a life between Mr. Raunham and the

heirship of the estate. Dang it, she don’t care. She’s an extraordinary

picture of womankind--very extraordinary.’

‘In what way besides?’

‘You’ll know soon enough, miss. She has had seven lady’s-maids this last

twelvemonth. I assure you ‘tis one body’s work to fetch ‘em from the

station and take ‘em back again. The Lord must be a neglectful party at

heart, or he’d never permit such overbearen goings on!’

‘Does she dismiss them directly they come!’

‘Not at all--she never dismisses them--they go theirselves. Ye see ‘tis

like this. She’s got a very quick temper; she flees in a passion with

them for nothing at all; next mornen they come up and say they are

going; she’s sorry for it and wishes they’d stay, but she’s as proud as

a lucifer, and her pride won’t let her say, “Stay,” and away they go.

‘Tis like this in fact. If you say to her about anybody, “Ah, poor

thing!” she says, “Pooh! indeed!” If you say, “Pooh, indeed!” “Ah, poor

thing!” she says directly. She hangs the chief baker, as mid be, and

restores the chief butler, as mid be, though the devil but Pharaoh

herself can see the difference between ‘em.’

Cytherea was silent. She feared she might be again a burden to her

brother.

‘However, you stand a very good chance,’ the man went on, ‘for I

think she likes you more than common. I have never known her send the

pony-carriage to meet one before; ‘tis always the trap, but this time

she said, in a very particular ladylike tone, “Roobert, gaow with the

pony-kerriage.”... There, ‘tis true, pony and carriage too are getten

rather shabby now,’ he added, looking round upon the vehicle as if to

keep Cytherea’s pride within reasonable limits.

‘’Tis to be hoped you’ll please in dressen her to-night.’

‘Why to-night?’

‘There’s a dinner-party of seventeen; ‘tis her father’s birthday, and

she’s very particular about her looks at such times. Now see; this is

the house. Livelier up here, isn’t it, miss?’

They were now on rising ground, and had just emerged from a clump of

trees. Still a little higher than where they stood was situated the

mansion, called Knapwater House, the offices gradually losing themselves

among the trees behind.

2. EVENING

The house was regularly and substantially built of clean grey freestone

throughout, in that plainer fashion of Greek classicism which prevailed

at the latter end of the last century, when the copyists called

designers had grown weary of fantastic variations in the Roman orders.

The main block approximated to a square on the ground plan, having a

projection in the centre of each side, surmounted by a pediment. From

each angle of the inferior side ran a line of buildings lower than the

rest, turning inwards again at their further end, and forming

within them a spacious open court, within which resounded an echo of

astonishing clearness. These erections were in their turn backed by

ivy-covered ice-houses, laundries, and stables, the whole mass of

subsidiary buildings being half buried beneath close-set shrubs and

trees.

There was opening sufficient through the foliage on the right hand to

enable her on nearer approach to form an idea of the arrangement of the

remoter or lawn front also. The natural features and contour of this

quarter of the site had evidently dictated the position of the

house primarily, and were of the ordinary, and upon the whole, most

satisfactory kind, namely, a broad, graceful slope running from the

terrace beneath the walls to the margin of a placid lake lying below,

upon the surface of which a dozen swans and a green punt floated at

leisure. An irregular wooded island stood in the midst of the lake;

beyond this and the further margin of the water were plantations and

greensward of varied outlines, the trees heightening, by half veiling,

the softness of the exquisite landscape stretching behind.

The glimpses she had obtained of this portion were now checked by the

angle of the building. In a minute or two they reached the side door, at

which Cytherea alighted. She was welcomed by an elderly woman of lengthy

smiles and general pleasantness, who announced herself to be Mrs.

Morris, the housekeeper.

‘Mrs. Graye, I believe?’ she said.

‘I am not--O yes, yes, we are all mistresses,’ said Cytherea, smiling,

but forcedly. The title accorded her seemed disagreeably like the first

slight scar of a brand, and she thought of Owen’s prophecy.

Mrs. Morris led her into a comfortable parlour called The Room. Here

tea was made ready, and Cytherea sat down, looking, whenever occasion

allowed, at Mrs. Morris with great interest and curiosity, to discover,

if possible, something in her which should give a clue to the secret

of her knowledge of herself, and the recommendation based upon it.

But nothing was to be learnt, at any rate just then. Mrs. Morris was

perpetually getting up, feeling in her pockets, going to cupboards,

leaving the room two or three minutes, and trotting back again.

‘You’ll excuse me, Mrs. Graye,’ she said, ‘but ‘tis the old gentleman’s

birthday, and they always have a lot of people to dinner on that

day, though he’s getting up in years now. However, none of them are

sleepers--she generally keeps the house pretty clear of lodgers (being a

lady with no intimate friends, though many acquaintances), which, though

it gives us less to do, makes it all the duller for the younger maids in

the house.’ Mrs. Morris then proceeded to give in fragmentary speeches

an outline of the constitution and government of the estate.

‘Now, are you sure you have quite done tea? Not a bit or drop more? Why,

you’ve eaten nothing, I’m sure.... Well, now, it is rather inconvenient

that the other maid is not here to show you the ways of the house a

little, but she left last Saturday, and Miss Aldclyffe has been making

shift with poor old clumsy me for a maid all yesterday and this morning.

She is not come in yet. I expect she will ask for you, Mrs. Graye, the

first thing.... I was going to say that if you have really done tea,

I will take you upstairs, and show you through the wardrobes--Miss

Aldclyffe’s things are not laid out for to-night yet.’

She preceded Cytherea upstairs, pointed out her own room, and then took

her into Miss Aldclyffe’s dressing-room, on the first-floor; where,

after explaining the whereabouts of various articles of apparel, the

housekeeper left her, telling her that she had an hour yet upon her

hands before dressing-time. Cytherea laid out upon the bed in the next

room all that she had been told would be required that evening, and then

went again to the little room which had been appropriated to herself.

Here she sat down by the open window, leant out upon the sill like

another Blessed Damozel, and listlessly looked down upon the brilliant

pattern of colours formed by the flower-beds on the lawn--now richly

crowded with late summer blossom. But the vivacity of spirit which had

hitherto enlivened her, was fast ebbing under the pressure of prosaic

realities, and the warm scarlet of the geraniums, glowing most

conspicuously, and mingling with the vivid cold red and green of the

verbenas, the rich depth of the dahlia, and the ripe mellowness of the

calceolaria, backed by the pale hue of a flock of meek sheep feeding in

the open park, close to the other side of the fence, were, to a great

extent, lost upon her eyes. She was thinking that nothing seemed worth

while; that it was possible she might die in a workhouse; and what did

it matter? The petty, vulgar details of servitude that she had just

passed through, her dependence upon the whims of a strange woman, the

necessity of quenching all individuality of character in herself, and

relinquishing her own peculiar tastes to help on the wheel of this alien

establishment, made her sick and sad, and she almost longed to pursue

some free, out-of-doors employment, sleep under trees or a hut, and know

no enemy but winter and cold weather, like shepherds and cowkeepers, and

birds and animals--ay, like the sheep she saw there under her window.

She looked sympathizingly at them for several minutes, imagining their

enjoyment of the rich grass.

‘Yes--like those sheep,’ she said aloud; and her face reddened with

surprise at a discovery she made that very instant.

The flock consisted of some ninety or a hundred young stock ewes: the

surface of their fleece was as rounded and even as a cushion, and white

as milk. Now she had just observed that on the left buttock of every one

of them were marked in distinct red letters the initials ‘E. S.’

‘E. S.’ could bring to Cytherea’s mind only one thought; but that

immediately and for ever--the name of her lover, Edward Springrove.

‘O, if it should be--!’ She interrupted her words by a resolve. Miss

Aldclyffe’s carriage at the same moment made its appearance in the

drive; but Miss Aldclyffe was not her object now. It was to ascertain to

whom the sheep belonged, and to set her surmise at rest one way or the

other. She flew downstairs to Mrs. Morris.

‘Whose sheep are those in the park, Mrs. Morris?’

‘Farmer Springrove’s.’

‘What Farmer Springrove is that?’ she said quickly.

‘Why, surely you know? Your friend, Farmer Springrove, the cider-maker,

and who keeps the Three Tranters Inn; who recommended you to me when he

came in to see me the other day?’

Cytherea’s mother-wit suddenly warned her in the midst of her excitement

that it was necessary not to betray the secret of her love. ‘O yes,’

she said, ‘of course.’ Her thoughts had run as follows in that short

interval:--

‘Farmer Springrove is Edward’s father, and his name is Edward too.

‘Edward knew I was going to advertise for a situation of some kind.

‘He watched the Times, and saw it, my address being attached.

‘He thought it would be excellent for me to be here that we might meet

whenever he came home.

‘He told his father that I might be recommended as a lady’s-maid; and he

knew my brother and myself.

‘His father told Mrs. Morris; Mrs. Morris told Miss Aldclyffe.’

The whole chain of incidents that drew her there was plain, and there

was no such thing as chance in the matter. It was all Edward’s doing.

The sound of a bell was heard. Cytherea did not heed it, and still

continued in her reverie.

‘That’s Miss Aldclyffe’s bell,’ said Mrs. Morris.

‘I suppose it is,’ said the young woman placidly.

‘Well, it means that you must go up to her,’ the matron continued, in a

tone of surprise.

Cytherea felt a burning heat come over her, mingled with a sudden

irritation at Mrs. Morris’s hint. But the good sense which had

recognized stern necessity prevailed over rebellious independence; the

flush passed, and she said hastily--

‘Yes, yes; of course, I must go to her when she pulls the bell--whether

I want to or no.’

However, in spite of this painful reminder of her new position in life,

Cytherea left the apartment in a mood far different from the gloomy

sadness of ten minutes previous. The place felt like home to her

now; she did not mind the pettiness of her occupation, because Edward

evidently did not mind it; and this was Edward’s own spot. She found

time on her way to Miss Aldclyffe’s dressing-room to hurriedly glide out

by a side door, and look for a moment at the unconscious sheep bearing

the friendly initials. She went up to them to try to touch one of the

flock, and felt vexed that they all stared sceptically at her kind

advances, and then ran pell-mell down the hill. Then, fearing any one

should discover her childish movements, she slipped indoors again,

and ascended the staircase, catching glimpses, as she passed, of

silver-buttoned footmen, who flashed about the passages like lightning.

Miss Aldclyffe’s dressing-room was an apartment which, on a casual

survey, conveyed an impression that it was available for almost any

purpose save the adornment of the feminine person. In its hours of

perfect order nothing pertaining to the toilet was visible; even the

inevitable mirrors with their accessories were arranged in a roomy

recess not noticeable from the door, lighted by a window of its own,

called the dressing-window.

The washing-stand figured as a vast oak chest, carved with grotesque

Renaissance ornament. The dressing table was in appearance something

between a high altar and a cabinet piano, the surface being richly

worked in the same style of semi-classic decoration, but the

extraordinary outline having been arrived at by an ingenious joiner and

decorator from the neighbouring town, after months of painful toil in

cutting and fitting, under Miss Aldclyffe’s immediate eye; the materials

being the remains of two or three old cabinets the lady had found in the

lumber-room. About two-thirds of the floor was carpeted, the remaining

portion being laid with parquetry of light and dark woods.

Miss Aldclyffe was standing at the larger window, away from the

dressing-niche. She bowed, and said pleasantly, ‘I am glad you have

come. We shall get on capitally, I dare say.’

Her bonnet was off. Cytherea did not think her so handsome as on the

earlier day; the queenliness of her beauty was harder and less warm.

But a worse discovery than this was that Miss Aldclyffe, with the usual

obliviousness of rich people to their dependents’ specialities, seemed

to have quite forgotten Cytherea’s inexperience, and mechanically

delivered up her body to her handmaid without a thought of details, and

with a mild yawn.

Everything went well at first. The dress was removed, stockings and

black boots were taken off, and silk stockings and white shoes were

put on. Miss Aldclyffe then retired to bathe her hands and face, and

Cytherea drew breath. If she could get through this first evening, all

would be right. She felt that it was unfortunate that such a crucial

test for her powers as a birthday dinner should have been applied on the

threshold of her arrival; but set to again.

Miss Aldclyffe was now arrayed in a white dressing-gown, and dropped

languidly into an easy-chair, pushed up before the glass. The instincts

of her sex and her own practice told Cytherea the next movement. She let

Miss Aldclyffe’s hair fall about her shoulders, and began to arrange it.

It proved to be all real; a satisfaction.

Miss Aldclyffe was musingly looking on the floor, and the operation went

on for some minutes in silence. At length her thoughts seemed to turn to

the present, and she lifted her eyes to the glass.

‘Why, what on earth are you doing with my head?’ she exclaimed, with

widely opened eyes. At the words she felt the back of Cytherea’s little

hand tremble against her neck.

‘Perhaps you prefer it done the other fashion, madam?’ said the maiden.

‘No, no; that’s the fashion right enough, but you must make more show of

my hair than that, or I shall have to buy some, which God forbid!’

‘It is how I do my own,’ said Cytherea naively, and with a sweetness

of tone that would have pleased the most acrimonious under favourable

circumstances; but tyranny was in the ascendant with Miss Aldclyffe

at this moment, and she was assured of palatable food for her vice by

having felt the trembling of Cytherea’s hand.

‘Yours, indeed! _Your_ hair! Come, go on.’ Considering that Cytherea

possessed at least five times as much of that valuable auxiliary to

woman’s beauty as the lady before her, there was at the same time some

excuse for Miss Aldclyffe’s outburst. She remembered herself, however,

and said more quietly, ‘Now then, Graye--By-the-bye, what do they call

you downstairs?’

‘Mrs. Graye,’ said the handmaid.

‘Then tell them not to do any such absurd thing--not but that it is

quite according to usage; but you are too young yet.’

This dialogue tided Cytherea safely onward through the hairdressing

till the flowers and diamonds were to be placed upon the lady’s brow.

Cytherea began arranging them tastefully, and to the very best of her

judgment.

‘That won’t do,’ said Miss Aldclyffe harshly.

‘Why?’

‘I look too young--an old dressed doll.’

‘Will that, madam?’

‘No, I look a fright--a perfect fright!’

‘This way, perhaps?’

‘Heavens! Don’t worry me so.’ She shut her lips like a trap.

Having once worked herself up to the belief that her head-dress was to

be a failure that evening, no cleverness of Cytherea’s in arranging

it could please her. She continued in a smouldering passion during the

remainder of the performance, keeping her lips firmly closed, and the

muscles of her body rigid. Finally, snatching up her gloves, and taking

her handkerchief and fan in her hand, she silently sailed out of the

room, without betraying the least consciousness of another woman’s

presence behind her.

Cytherea’s fears that at the undressing this suppressed anger would find

a vent, kept her on thorns throughout the evening. She tried to read;

she could not. She tried to sew; she could not. She tried to muse; she

could not do that connectedly. ‘If this is the beginning, what will

the end be!’ she said in a whisper, and felt many misgivings as to the

policy of being overhasty in establishing an independence at the expense

of congruity with a cherished past.

3. MIDNIGHT

The clock struck twelve. The Aldclyffe state dinner was over. The

company had all gone, and Miss Aldclyffe’s bell rang loudly and

jerkingly.

Cytherea started to her feet at the sound, which broke in upon a fitful

sleep that had overtaken her. She had been sitting drearily in her chair

waiting minute after minute for the signal, her brain in that state

of intentness which takes cognizance of the passage of Time as a real

motion--motion without matter--the instants throbbing past in the

company of a feverish pulse. She hastened to the room, to find the

lady sitting before the dressing shrine, illuminated on both sides, and

looking so queenly in her attitude of absolute repose, that the younger

woman felt the awfullest sense of responsibility at her Vandalism in

having undertaken to demolish so imposing a pile.

The lady’s jewelled ornaments were taken off in silence--some by her own

listless hands, some by Cytherea’s. Then followed the outer stratum of

clothing. The dress being removed, Cytherea took it in her hand and

went with it into the bedroom adjoining, intending to hang it in the

wardrobe. But on second thoughts, in order that she might not keep Miss

Aldclyffe waiting a moment longer than necessary, she flung it down on

the first resting-place that came to hand, which happened to be the

bed, and re-entered the dressing-room with the noiseless footfall of a

kitten. She paused in the middle of the room.

She was unnoticed, and her sudden return had plainly not been expected.

During the short time of Cytherea’s absence, Miss Aldclyffe had pulled

off a kind of chemisette of Brussels net, drawn high above the throat,

which she had worn with her evening dress as a semi-opaque covering to

her shoulders, and in its place had put her night-gown round her.

Her right hand was lifted to her neck, as if engaged in fastening her

night-gown.

But on a second glance Miss Aldclyffe’s proceeding was clearer to

Cytherea. She was not fastening her night-gown; it had been carelessly

thrown round her, and Miss Aldclyffe was really occupied in holding up

to her eyes some small object that she was keenly scrutinizing. And

now on suddenly discovering the presence of Cytherea at the back of the

apartment, instead of naturally continuing or concluding her inspection,

she desisted hurriedly; the tiny snap of a spring was heard, her hand

was removed, and she began adjusting her robes.

Modesty might have directed her hasty action of enwrapping her

shoulders, but it was scarcely likely, considering Miss Aldclyffe’s

temperament, that she had all her life been used to a maid, Cytherea’s

youth, and the elder lady’s marked treatment of her as if she were a

mere child or plaything. The matter was too slight to reason about, and

yet upon the whole it seemed that Miss Aldclyffe must have a practical

reason for concealing her neck.

With a timid sense of being an intruder Cytherea was about to step back

and out of the room; but at the same moment Miss Aldclyffe turned, saw

the impulse, and told her companion to stay, looking into her eyes as if

she had half an intention to explain something. Cytherea felt certain

it was the little mystery of her late movements. The other withdrew her

eyes; Cytherea went to fetch the dressing-gown, and wheeled round

again to bring it up to Miss Aldclyffe, who had now partly removed her

night-dress to put it on the proper way, and still sat with her back

towards Cytherea.

Her neck was again quite open and uncovered, and though hidden from the

direct line of Cytherea’s vision, she saw it reflected in the glass--the

fair white surface, and the inimitable combination of curves between

throat and bosom which artists adore, being brightly lit up by the light

burning on either side.

And the lady’s prior proceedings were now explained in the simplest

manner. In the midst of her breast, like an island in a sea of pearl,

reclined an exquisite little gold locket, embellished with arabesque

work of blue, red, and white enamel. That was undoubtedly what Miss

Aldclyffe had been contemplating; and, moreover, not having been put

off with her other ornaments, it was to be retained during the night--a

slight departure from the custom of ladies which Miss Aldclyffe had at

first not cared to exhibit to her new assistant, though now, on further

thought, she seemed to have become indifferent on the matter.

‘My dressing-gown,’ she said, quietly fastening her night-dress as she

spoke.

Cytherea came forward with it. Miss Aldclyffe did not turn her head, but

looked inquiringly at her maid in the glass.

‘You saw what I wear on my neck, I suppose?’ she said to Cytherea’s

reflected face.

‘Yes, madam, I did,’ said Cytherea to Miss Aldclyffe’s reflected face.

Miss Aldclyffe again looked at Cytherea’s reflection as if she were

on the point of explaining. Again she checked her resolve, and said

lightly--

‘Few of my maids discover that I wear it always. I generally keep it

a secret--not that it matters much. But I was careless with you, and

seemed to want to tell you. You win me to make confidences that....’

She ceased, took Cytherea’s hand in her own, lifted the locket with the

other, touched the spring and disclosed a miniature.

‘It is a handsome face, is it not?’ she whispered mournfully, and even

timidly.

‘It is.’

But the sight had gone through Cytherea like an electric shock, and

there was an instantaneous awakening of perception in her, so thrilling

in its presence as to be well-nigh insupportable. The face in the

miniature was the face of her own father--younger and fresher than she

had ever known him--but her father!

Was this the woman of his wild and unquenchable early love? And was this

the woman who had figured in the gate-man’s story as answering the name

of Cytherea before her judgment was awake? Surely it was. And if so,

here was the tangible outcrop of a romantic and hidden stratum of the

past hitherto seen only in her imagination; but as far as her scope

allowed, clearly defined therein by reason of its strangeness.

Miss Aldclyffe’s eyes and thoughts were so intent upon the miniature

that she had not been conscious of Cytherea’s start of surprise. She

went on speaking in a low and abstracted tone.

‘Yes, I lost him.’ She interrupted her words by a short meditation, and

went on again. ‘I lost him by excess of honesty as regarded my past. But

it was best that it should be so.... I was led to think rather more

than usual of the circumstances to-night because of your name. It is

pronounced the same way, though differently spelt.’

The only means by which Cytherea’s surname could have been spelt to

Miss Aldclyffe must have been by Mrs. Morris or Farmer Springrove. She

fancied Farmer Springrove would have spelt it properly if Edward was his

informant, which made Miss Aldclyffe’s remark obscure.

Women make confidences and then regret them. The impulsive rush of

feeling which had led Miss Aldclyffe to indulge in this revelation,

trifling as it was, died out immediately her words were beyond recall;

and the turmoil, occasioned in her by dwelling upon that chapter of her

life, found vent in another kind of emotion--the result of a trivial

accident.

Cytherea, after letting down Miss Aldclyffe’s hair, adopted some plan

with it to which the lady had not been accustomed. A rapid revulsion

to irritation ensued. The maiden’s mere touch seemed to discharge the

pent-up regret of the lady as if she had been a jar of electricity.

‘How strangely you treat my hair!’ she exclaimed.

A silence.

‘I have told you what I never tell my maids as a rule; of course

_nothing_ that I say in this room is to be mentioned outside it.’ She

spoke crossly no less than emphatically.

‘It shall not be, madam,’ said Cytherea, agitated and vexed that the

woman of her romantic wonderings should be so disagreeable to her.

‘Why on earth did I tell you of my past?’ she went on.

Cytherea made no answer.

The lady’s vexation with herself, and the accident which had led to the

disclosure swelled little by little till it knew no bounds. But what was

done could not be undone, and though Cytherea had shown a most winning

responsiveness, quarrel Miss Aldclyffe must. She recurred to the subject

of Cytherea’s want of expertness, like a bitter reviewer, who finding

the sentiments of a poet unimpeachable, quarrels with his rhymes.

‘Never, never before did I serve myself such a trick as this in engaging

a maid!’ She waited for an expostulation: none came. Miss Aldclyffe

tried again.

‘The idea of my taking a girl without asking her more than three

questions, or having a single reference, all because of her good l--,

the shape of her face and body! It _was_ a fool’s trick. There, I am

served right, quite right--by being deceived in such a way.’

‘I didn’t deceive you,’ said Cytherea. The speech was an unfortunate

one, and was the very ‘fuel to maintain its fires’ that the other’s

petulance desired.

‘You did,’ she said hotly.

‘I told you I couldn’t promise to be acquainted with every detail of

routine just at first.’

‘Will you contradict me in this way! You are telling untruths, I say.’

Cytherea’s lip quivered. ‘I would answer the remark if--if--’

‘If what?’

‘If it were a lady’s!’

‘You girl of impudence--what do you say? Leave the room this instant, I

tell you.’

‘And I tell you that a person who speaks to a lady as you do to me, is

no lady herself!’

‘To a lady? A lady’s-maid speaks in this way. The idea!’

‘Don’t “lady’s-maid” me: nobody is my mistress I won’t have it!’

‘Good Heavens!’

‘I wouldn’t have come--no--I wouldn’t! if I had known!’

‘What?’

‘That you were such an ill-tempered, unjust woman!’

‘Possest beyond the Muse’s painting,’ Miss Aldclyffe exclaimed--

‘A Woman, am I! I’ll teach you if I am a Woman!’ and lifted her hand as

if she would have liked to strike her companion. This stung the maiden

into absolute defiance.

‘I dare you to touch me!’ she cried. ‘Strike me if you dare, madam! I am

not afraid of you--what do you mean by such an action as that?’

Miss Aldclyffe was disconcerted at this unexpected show of spirit, and

ashamed of her unladylike impulse now it was put into words. She sank

back in the chair. ‘I was not going to strike you--go to your room--I

beg you to go to your room!’ she repeated in a husky whisper.

Cytherea, red and panting, took up her candlestick and advanced to

the table to get a light. As she stood close to them the rays from the

candles struck sharply on her face. She usually bore a much stronger

likeness to her mother than to her father, but now, looking with a

grave, reckless, and angered expression of countenance at the kindling

wick as she held it slanting into the other flame, her father’s features

were distinct in her. It was the first time Miss Aldclyffe had seen her

in a passionate mood, and wearing that expression which was invariably

its concomitant. It was Miss Aldclyffe’s turn to start now; and the

remark she made was an instance of that sudden change of tone from

high-flown invective to the pettiness of curiosity which so often makes

women’s quarrels ridiculous. Even Miss Aldclyffe’s dignity had not

sufficient power to postpone the absorbing desire she now felt to settle

the strange suspicion that had entered her head.

‘You spell your name the common way, G, R, E, Y, don’t you?’ she said,

with assumed indifference.

‘No,’ said Cytherea, poised on the side of her foot, and still looking

into the flame.

‘Yes, surely? The name was spelt that way on your boxes: I looked and

saw it myself.’

The enigma of Miss Aldclyffe’s mistake was solved. ‘O, was it?’ said

Cytherea. ‘Ah, I remember Mrs. Jackson, the lodging-house keeper at

Budmouth, labelled them. We spell our name G, R, A, Y, E.’

‘What was your father’s trade?’

Cytherea thought it would be useless to attempt to conceal facts any

longer. ‘His was not a trade,’ she said. ‘He was an architect.’

‘The idea of your being an architect’s daughter!’

‘There’s nothing to offend you in that, I hope?’

‘O no.’

‘Why did you say “the idea”?’

‘Leave that alone. Did he ever visit in Gower Street, Bloomsbury, one

Christmas, many years ago?--but you would not know that.’

‘I have heard him say that Mr. Huntway, a curate somewhere in that part

of London, and who died there, was an old college friend of his.’

‘What is your Christian name?’

‘Cytherea.’

‘No! And is it really? And you knew that face I showed you? Yes, I see

you did.’ Miss Aldclyffe stopped, and closed her lips impassibly. She

was a little agitated.

‘Do you want me any longer?’ said Cytherea, standing candle in hand and

looking quietly in Miss Aldclyffe’s face.

‘Well--no: no longer,’ said the other lingeringly.

‘With your permission, I will leave the house to morrow morning, madam.’

‘Ah.’ Miss Aldclyffe had no notion of what she was saying.

‘And I know you will be so good as not to intrude upon me during the

short remainder of my stay?’

Saying this Cytherea left the room before her companion had answered.

Miss Aldclyffe, then, had recognized her at last, and had been curious

about her name from the beginning.

The other members of the household had retired to rest. As Cytherea went

along the passage leading to her room her skirts rustled against the

partition. A door on her left opened, and Mrs. Morris looked out.

‘I waited out of bed till you came up,’ she said, ‘it being your first

night, in case you should be at a loss for anything. How have you got on

with Miss Aldclyffe?’

‘Pretty well--though not so well as I could have wished.’

‘Has she been scolding?’

‘A little.’

‘She’s a very odd lady--‘tis all one way or the other with her. She’s

not bad at heart, but unbearable in close quarters. Those of us who

don’t have much to do with her personally, stay on for years and years.’

‘Has Miss Aldclyffe’s family always been rich?’ said Cytherea.

‘O no. The property, with the name, came from her mother’s uncle. Her

family is a branch of the old Aldclyffe family on the maternal side. Her

mother married a Bradleigh--a mere nobody at that time--and was on that

account cut by her relations. But very singularly the other branch of

the family died out one by one--three of them, and Miss Aldclyffe’s

great-uncle then left all his property, including this estate, to

Captain Bradleigh and his wife--Miss Aldclyffe’s father and mother--on

condition that they took the old family name as well. There’s all about

it in the “Landed Gentry.” ‘Tis a thing very often done.’

‘O, I see. Thank you. Well, now I am going. Good-night.’

VI. THE EVENTS OF TWELVE HOURS

1. AUGUST THE NINTH. ONE TO TWO O’CLOCK A.M.

Cytherea entered her bedroom, and flung herself on the bed, bewildered

by a whirl of thought. Only one subject was clear in her mind, and it

was that, in spite of family discoveries, that day was to be the first

and last of her experience as a lady’s-maid. Starvation itself should

not compel her to hold such a humiliating post for another instant.

‘Ah,’ she thought, with a sigh, at the martyrdom of her last little

fragment of self-conceit, ‘Owen knows everything better than I.’

She jumped up and began making ready for her departure in the morning,

the tears streaming down when she grieved and wondered what practical

matter on earth she could turn her hand to next. All these preparations

completed, she began to undress, her mind unconsciously drifting away

to the contemplation of her late surprises. To look in the glass for an

instant at the reflection of her own magnificent resources in face and

bosom, and to mark their attractiveness unadorned, was perhaps but the

natural action of a young woman who had so lately been chidden whilst

passing through the harassing experience of decorating an older beauty

of Miss Aldclyffe’s temper.

But she directly checked her weakness by sympathizing reflections on the

hidden troubles which must have thronged the past years of the solitary

lady, to keep her, though so rich and courted, in a mood so repellent

and gloomy as that in which Cytherea found her; and then the young girl

marvelled again and again, as she had marvelled before, at the strange

confluence of circumstances which had brought herself into contact with

the one woman in the world whose history was so romantically intertwined

with her own. She almost began to wish she were not obliged to go away

and leave the lonely being to loneliness still.

In bed and in the dark, Miss Aldclyffe haunted her mind more

persistently than ever. Instead of sleeping, she called up staring

visions of the possible past of this queenly lady, her mother’s rival.

Up the long vista of bygone years she saw, behind all, the young girl’s

flirtation, little or much, with the cousin, that seemed to have been

nipped in the bud, or to have terminated hastily in some way. Then the

secret meetings between Miss Aldclyffe and the other woman at the little

inn at Hammersmith and other places: the commonplace name she adopted:

her swoon at some painful news, and the very slight knowledge the elder

female had of her partner in mystery. Then, more than a year afterwards,

the acquaintanceship of her own father with this his first love; the

awakening of the passion, his acts of devotion, the unreasoning heat of

his rapture, her tacit acceptance of it, and yet her uneasiness under

the delight. Then his declaration amid the evergreens: the utter

change produced in her manner thereby, seemingly the result of a rigid

determination: and the total concealment of her reason by herself

and her parents, whatever it was. Then the lady’s course dropped into

darkness, and nothing more was visible till she was discovered here at

Knapwater, nearly fifty years old, still unmarried and still beautiful,

but lonely, embittered, and haughty. Cytherea imagined that her father’s

image was still warmly cherished in Miss Aldclyffe’s heart, and was

thankful that she herself had not been betrayed into announcing that

she knew many particulars of this page of her father’s history, and the

chief one, the lady’s unaccountable renunciation of him. It would have

made her bearing towards the mistress of the mansion more awkward, and

would have been no benefit to either.

Thus conjuring up the past, and theorizing on the present, she lay

restless, changing her posture from one side to the other and back

again. Finally, when courting sleep with all her art, she heard a clock

strike two. A minute later, and she fancied she could distinguish a soft

rustle in the passage outside her room.

To bury her head in the sheets was her first impulse; then to uncover

it, raise herself on her elbow, and stretch her eyes wide open in the

darkness; her lips being parted with the intentness of her listening.

Whatever the noise was, it had ceased for the time.

It began again and came close to her door, lightly touching the panels.

Then there was another stillness; Cytherea made a movement which caused

a faint rustling of the bed-clothes.

Before she had time to think another thought a light tap was given.

Cytherea breathed: the person outside was evidently bent upon finding

her awake, and the rustle she had made had encouraged the hope. The

maiden’s physical condition shifted from one pole to its opposite. The

cold sweat of terror forsook her, and modesty took the alarm. She became

hot and red; her door was not locked.

A distinct woman’s whisper came to her through the keyhole: ‘Cytherea!’

Only one being in the house knew her Christian name, and that was Miss

Aldclyffe. Cytherea stepped out of bed, went to the door, and whispered

back, ‘Yes?’

‘Let me come in, darling.’

The young woman paused in a conflict between judgment and emotion. It

was now mistress and maid no longer; woman and woman only. Yes; she must

let her come in, poor thing.

She got a light in an instant, opened the door, and raising her eyes and

the candle, saw Miss Aldclyffe standing outside in her dressing-gown.

‘Now you see that it is really myself; put out the light,’ said the

visitor. ‘I want to stay here with you, Cythie. I came to ask you to

come down into my bed, but it is snugger here. But remember that you are

mistress in this room, and that I have no business here, and that you

may send me away if you choose. Shall I go?’

‘O no; you shan’t indeed if you don’t want to,’ said Cythie generously.

The instant they were in bed Miss Aldclyffe freed herself from the

last remnant of restraint. She flung her arms round the young girl, and

pressed her gently to her heart.

‘Now kiss me,’ she said.

Cytherea, upon the whole, was rather discomposed at this change of

treatment; and, discomposed or no, her passions were not so impetuous as

Miss Aldclyffe’s. She could not bring her soul to her lips for a moment,

try how she would.

‘Come, kiss me,’ repeated Miss Aldclyffe.

Cytherea gave her a very small one, as soft in touch and in sound as the

bursting of a bubble.

‘More earnestly than that--come.’

She gave another, a little but not much more expressively.

‘I don’t deserve a more feeling one, I suppose,’ said Miss Aldclyffe,

with an emphasis of sad bitterness in her tone. ‘I am an ill-tempered

woman, you think; half out of my mind. Well, perhaps I am; but I have

had grief more than you can think or dream of. But I can’t help loving

you--your name is the same as mine--isn’t it strange?’

Cytherea was inclined to say no, but remained silent.

‘Now, don’t you think I must love you?’ continued the other.

‘Yes,’ said Cytherea absently. She was still thinking whether duty to

Owen and her father, which asked for silence on her knowledge of her

father’s unfortunate love, or duty to the woman embracing her, which

seemed to ask for confidence, ought to predominate. Here was a solution.

She would wait till Miss Aldclyffe referred to her acquaintanceship and

attachment to Cytherea’s father in past times: then she would tell her

all she knew: that would be honour.

‘Why can’t you kiss me as I can kiss you? Why can’t you!’ She impressed

upon Cytherea’s lips a warm motherly salute, given as if in the outburst

of strong feeling, long checked, and yearning for something to love and

be loved by in return.

‘Do you think badly of me for my behaviour this evening, child? I don’t

know why I am so foolish as to speak to you in this way. I am a very

fool, I believe. Yes. How old are you?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘Eighteen!... Well, why don’t you ask me how old I am?’

‘Because I don’t want to know.’

‘Never mind if you don’t. I am forty-six; and it gives me greater

pleasure to tell you this than it does to you to listen. I have not told

my age truly for the last twenty years till now.’

‘Why haven’t you?’

‘I have met deceit by deceit, till I am weary of it--weary, weary--and I

long to be what I shall never be again--artless and innocent, like you.

But I suppose that you, too, will, prove to be not worth a thought, as

every new friend does on more intimate knowledge. Come, why don’t you

talk to me, child? Have you said your prayers?’

‘Yes--no! I forgot them to-night.’

‘I suppose you say them every night as a rule?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you do that?’

‘Because I have always done so, and it would seem strange if I were not

to. Do you?’

‘I? A wicked old sinner like me! No, I never do. I have thought all such

matters humbug for years--thought so so long that I should be glad to

think otherwise from very weariness; and yet, such is the code of the

polite world, that I subscribe regularly to Missionary Societies and

others of the sort.... Well, say your prayers, dear--you won’t omit them

now you recollect it. I should like to hear you very much. Will you?’

‘It seems hardly--’

‘It would seem so like old times to me--when I was young, and

nearer--far nearer Heaven than I am now. Do, sweet one,’

Cytherea was embarrassed, and her embarrassment arose from the following

conjuncture of affairs. Since she had loved Edward Springrove, she had

linked his name with her brother Owen’s in her nightly supplications to

the Almighty. She wished to keep her love for him a secret, and, above

all, a secret from a woman like Miss Aldclyffe; yet her conscience and

the honesty of her love would not for an instant allow her to think of

omitting his dear name, and so endanger the efficacy of all her previous

prayers for his success by an unworthy shame now: it would be wicked

of her, she thought, and a grievous wrong to him. Under any worldly

circumstances she might have thought the position justified a little

finesse, and have skipped him for once; but prayer was too solemn a

thing for such trifling.

‘I would rather not say them,’ she murmured first. It struck her then

that this declining altogether was the same cowardice in another dress,

and was delivering her poor Edward over to Satan just as unceremoniously

as before. ‘Yes; I will say my prayers, and you shall hear me,’ she

added firmly.

She turned her face to the pillow and repeated in low soft tones the

simple words she had used from childhood on such occasions. Owen’s name

was mentioned without faltering, but in the other case, maidenly shyness

was too strong even for religion, and that when supported by excellent

intentions. At the name of Edward she stammered, and her voice sank to

the faintest whisper in spite of her.

‘Thank you, dearest,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘I have prayed too, I verily

believe. You are a good girl, I think.’ Then the expected question came.

‘“Bless Owen,” and whom, did you say?’

There was no help for it now, and out it came. ‘Owen and Edward,’ said

Cytherea.

‘Who are Owen and Edward?’

‘Owen is my brother, madam,’ faltered the maid.

‘Ah, I remember. Who is Edward?’

A silence.

‘Your brother, too?’ continued Miss Aldclyffe.

‘No.’

Miss Aldclyffe reflected a moment. ‘Don’t you want to tell me who Edward

is?’ she said at last, in a tone of meaning.

‘I don’t mind telling; only....’

‘You would rather not, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

Miss Aldclyffe shifted her ground. ‘Were you ever in love?’ she inquired

suddenly.

Cytherea was surprised to hear how quickly the voice had altered from

tenderness to harshness, vexation, and disappointment.

‘Yes--I think I was--once,’ she murmured.

‘Aha! And were you ever kissed by a man?’

A pause.

‘Well, were you?’ said Miss Aldclyffe, rather sharply.

‘Don’t press me to tell--I can’t--indeed, I won’t, madam!’

Miss Aldclyffe removed her arms from Cytherea’s neck. ‘’Tis now with

you as it is always with all girls,’ she said, in jealous and gloomy

accents. ‘You are not, after all, the innocent I took you for. No, no.’

She then changed her tone with fitful rapidity. ‘Cytherea, try to love

me more than you love him--do. I love you more sincerely than any man

can. Do, Cythie: don’t let any man stand between us. O, I can’t bear

that!’ She clasped Cytherea’s neck again.

‘I must love him now I have begun,’ replied the other.

‘Must--yes--must,’ said the elder lady reproachfully. ‘Yes, women are

all alike. I thought I had at last found an artless woman who had

not been sullied by a man’s lips, and who had not practised or been

practised upon by the arts which ruin all the truth and sweetness and

goodness in us. Find a girl, if you can, whose mouth and ears have

not been made a regular highway of by some man or another! Leave the

admittedly notorious spots--the drawing-rooms of society--and look in

the villages--leave the villages and search in the schools--and you can

hardly find a girl whose heart has not been _had_--is not an old thing

half worn out by some He or another! If men only knew the staleness of

the freshest of us! that nine times out of ten the “first love” they

think they are winning from a woman is but the hulk of an old wrecked

affection, fitted with new sails and re-used. O Cytherea, can it be that

you, too, are like the rest?’

‘No, no, no,’ urged Cytherea, awed by the storm she had raised in the

impetuous woman’s mind. ‘He only kissed me once--twice I mean.’

‘He might have done it a thousand times if he had cared to, there’s no

doubt about that, whoever his lordship is. You are as bad as I--we are

all alike; and I--an old fool--have been sipping at your mouth as if

it were honey, because I fancied no wasting lover knew the spot. But

a minute ago, and you seemed to me like a fresh spring meadow--now you

seem a dusty highway.’

‘O no, no!’ Cytherea was not weak enough to shed tears except on

extraordinary occasions, but she was fain to begin sobbing now. She

wished Miss Aldclyffe would go to her own room, and leave her and her

treasured dreams alone. This vehement imperious affection was in one

sense soothing, but yet it was not of the kind that Cytherea’s instincts

desired. Though it was generous, it seemed somewhat too rank and

capricious for endurance.

‘Well,’ said the lady in continuation, ‘who is he?’

Her companion was desperately determined not to tell his name: she too

much feared a taunt when Miss Aldclyffe’s fiery mood again ruled her

tongue.

‘Won’t you tell me? not tell me after all the affection I have shown?’

‘I will, perhaps, another day.’

‘Did you wear a hat and white feather in Budmouth for the week or two

previous to your coming here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I have seen you and your lover at a distance! He rowed you round

the bay with your brother.’

‘Yes.’

‘And without your brother--fie! There, there, don’t let that little

heart beat itself to death: throb, throb: it shakes the bed, you silly

thing. I didn’t mean that there was any harm in going alone with him. I

only saw you from the Esplanade, in common with the rest of the people.

I often run down to Budmouth. He was a very good figure: now who was

he?’

‘I--I won’t tell, madam--I cannot indeed!’

‘Won’t tell--very well, don’t. You are very foolish to treasure up his

name and image as you do. Why, he has had loves before you, trust him

for that, whoever he is, and you are but a temporary link in a long

chain of others like you: who only have your little day as they have had

theirs.’

‘’Tisn’t true! ‘tisn’t true! ‘tisn’t true!’ cried Cytherea in an agony

of torture. ‘He has never loved anybody else, I know--I am sure he

hasn’t.’

Miss Aldclyffe was as jealous as any man could have been. She

continued--

‘He sees a beautiful face and thinks he will never forget it, but in a

few weeks the feeling passes off, and he wonders how he could have cared

for anybody so absurdly much.’

‘No, no, he doesn’t--What does he do when he has thought that--Come,

tell me--tell me!’

‘You are as hot as fire, and the throbbing of your heart makes me

nervous. I can’t tell you if you get in that flustered state.’

‘Do, do tell--O, it makes me so miserable! but tell--come tell me!’

‘Ah--the tables are turned now, dear!’ she continued, in a tone which

mingled pity with derision--

‘“Love’s passions shall rock thee

As the storm rocks the ravens on high,

Bright reason will mock thee

Like the sun from a wintry sky.”

‘What does he do next?--Why, this is what he does next: ruminate on what

he has heard of women’s romantic impulses, and how easily men torture

them when they have given way to those feelings, and have resigned

everything for their hero. It may be that though he loves you heartily

now--that is, as heartily as a man can--and you love him in return, your

loves may be impracticable and hopeless, and you may be separated for

ever. You, as the weary, weary years pass by will fade and fade--bright

eyes _will_ fade--and you will perhaps then die early--true to him to

your latest breath, and believing him to be true to the latest breath

also; whilst he, in some gay and busy spot far away from your last quiet

nook, will have married some dashing lady, and not purely oblivious of

you, will long have ceased to regret you--will chat about you, as you

were in long past years--will say, “Ah, little Cytherea used to tie her

hair like that--poor innocent trusting thing; it was a pleasant useless

idle dream--that dream of mine for the maid with the bright eyes and

simple, silly heart; but I was a foolish lad at that time.” Then he will

tell the tale of all your little Wills and Wont’s and particular ways,

and as he speaks, turn to his wife with a placid smile.’

‘It is not true! He can’t, he c-can’t be s-so cruel--and you are cruel

to me--you are, you are!’ She was at last driven to desperation: her

natural common sense and shrewdness had seen all through the piece how

imaginary her emotions were--she felt herself to be weak and foolish in

permitting them to rise; but even then she could not control them: be

agonized she must. She was only eighteen, and the long day’s labour,

her weariness, her excitement, had completely unnerved her, and worn her

out: she was bent hither and thither by this tyrannical working upon her

imagination, as a young rush in the wind. She wept bitterly. ‘And now

think how much I like you,’ resumed Miss Aldclyffe, when Cytherea grew

calmer. ‘I shall never forget you for anybody else, as men do--never. I

will be exactly as a mother to you. Now will you promise to live with me

always, and always be taken care of, and never deserted?’

‘I cannot. I will not be anybody’s maid for another day on any

consideration.’

‘No, no, no. You shan’t be a lady’s-maid. You shall be my companion. I

will get another maid.’

Companion--that was a new idea. Cytherea could not resist the evidently

heartfelt desire of the strange-tempered woman for her presence. But she

could not trust to the moment’s impulse.

‘I will stay, I think. But do not ask for a final answer to-night.’

‘Never mind now, then. Put your hair round your mamma’s neck, and give

me one good long kiss, and I won’t talk any more in that way about your

lover. After all, some young men are not so fickle as others; but even

if he’s the ficklest, there is consolation. The love of an inconstant

man is ten times more ardent than that of a faithful man--that is, while

it lasts.’

Cytherea did as she was told, to escape the punishment of further talk;

flung the twining tresses of her long, rich hair over Miss Aldclyffe’s

shoulders as directed, and the two ceased conversing, making themselves

up for sleep. Miss Aldclyffe seemed to give herself over to a luxurious

sense of content and quiet, as if the maiden at her side afforded her a

protection against dangers which had menaced her for years; she was soon

sleeping calmly.

2. TWO TO FIVE A.M.

With Cytherea it was otherwise. Unused to the place and circumstances,

she continued wakeful, ill at ease, and mentally distressed. She

withdrew herself from her companion’s embrace, turned to the other

side, and endeavoured to relieve her busy brain by looking at the

window-blind, and noticing the light of the rising moon--now in her last

quarter--creep round upon it: it was the light of an old waning moon

which had but a few days longer to live.

The sight led her to think again of what had happened under the rays of

the same month’s moon, a little before its full, the ecstatic

evening scene with Edward: the kiss, and the shortness of those happy

moments--maiden imagination bringing about the apotheosis of a status

quo which had had several unpleasantnesses in its earthly reality.

But sounds were in the ascendant that night. Her ears became aware of a

strange and gloomy murmur.

She recognized it: it was the gushing of the waterfall, faint and low,

brought from its source to the unwonted distance of the House by a faint

breeze which made it distinct and recognizable by reason of the utter

absence of all disturbing sounds. The groom’s melancholy representation

lent to the sound a more dismal effect than it would have had of its own

nature. She began to fancy what the waterfall must be like at that hour,

under the trees in the ghostly moonlight. Black at the head, and over

the surface of the deep cold hole into which it fell; white and

frothy at the fall; black and white, like a pall and its border; sad

everywhere.

She was in the mood for sounds of every kind now, and strained her ears

to catch the faintest, in wayward enmity to her quiet of mind. Another

soon came.

The second was quite different from the first--a kind of intermittent

whistle it seemed primarily: no, a creak, a metallic creak, ever and

anon, like a plough, or a rusty wheelbarrow, or at least a wheel of some

kind. Yes, it was, a wheel--the water-wheel in the shrubbery by the old

manor-house, which the coachman had said would drive him mad.

She determined not to think any more of these gloomy things; but now

that she had once noticed the sound there was no sealing her ears to it.

She could not help timing its creaks, and putting on a dread expectancy

just before the end of each half-minute that brought them. To imagine

the inside of the engine-house, whence these noises proceeded, was now a

necessity. No window, but crevices in the door, through which, probably,

the moonbeams streamed in the most attenuated and skeleton-like rays,

striking sharply upon portions of wet rusty cranks and chains; a

glistening wheel, turning incessantly, labouring in the dark like a

captive starving in a dungeon; and instead of a floor below, gurgling

water, which on account of the darkness could only be heard; water which

laboured up dark pipes almost to where she lay.

She shivered. Now she was determined to go to sleep; there could be

nothing else left to be heard or to imagine--it was horrid that her

imagination should be so restless. Yet just for an instant before going

to sleep she would think this--suppose another sound _should_ come--just

suppose it should! Before the thought had well passed through her brain,

a third sound came.

The third was a very soft gurgle or rattle--of a strange and abnormal

kind--yet a sound she had heard before at some past period of her

life--when, she could not recollect. To make it the more disturbing, it

seemed to be almost close to her--either close outside the window, close

under the floor, or close above the ceiling. The accidental fact of

its coming so immediately upon the heels of her supposition, told so

powerfully upon her excited nerves that she jumped up in the bed. The

same instant, a little dog in some room near, having probably heard the

same noise, set up a low whine. The watch-dog in the yard, hearing

the moan of his associate, began to howl loudly and distinctly. His

melancholy notes were taken up directly afterwards by the dogs in the

kennel a long way off, in every variety of wail.

One logical thought alone was able to enter her flurried brain. The

little dog that began the whining must have heard the other two sounds

even better than herself. He had taken no notice of them, but he had

taken notice of the third. The third, then, was an unusual sound.

It was not like water, it was not like wind; it was not the night-jar,

it was not a clock, nor a rat, nor a person snoring.

She crept under the clothes, and flung her arms tightly round Miss

Aldclyffe, as if for protection. Cytherea perceived that the lady’s late

peaceful warmth had given place to a sweat. At the maiden’s touch, Miss

Aldclyffe awoke with a low scream.

She remembered her position instantly. ‘O such a terrible dream!’ she

cried, in a hurried whisper, holding to Cytherea in her turn; ‘and

your touch was the end of it. It was dreadful. Time, with his wings,

hour-glass, and scythe, coming nearer and nearer to me--grinning and

mocking: then he seized me, took a piece of me only... But I can’t tell

you. I can’t bear to think of it. How those dogs howl! People say it

means death.’

The return of Miss Aldclyffe to consciousness was sufficient to

dispel the wild fancies which the loneliness of the night had woven in

Cytherea’s mind. She dismissed the third noise as something which in all

likelihood could easily be explained, if trouble were taken to inquire

into it: large houses had all kinds of strange sounds floating about

them. She was ashamed to tell Miss Aldclyffe her terrors.

A silence of five minutes.

‘Are you asleep?’ said Miss Aldclyffe.

‘No,’ said Cytherea, in a long-drawn whisper.

‘How those dogs howl, don’t they?’

‘Yes. A little dog in the house began it.’

‘Ah, yes: that was Totsy. He sleeps on the mat outside my father’s

bedroom door. A nervous creature.’

There was a silent interval of nearly half-an-hour. A clock on the

landing struck three.

‘Are you asleep, Miss Aldclyffe?’ whispered Cytherea.

‘No,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘How wretched it is not to be able to sleep,

isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ replied Cytherea, like a docile child.

Another hour passed, and the clock struck four. Miss Aldclyffe was still

awake.

‘Cytherea,’ she said, very softly.

Cytherea made no answer. She was sleeping soundly.

The first glimmer of dawn was now visible. Miss Aldclyffe arose, put on

her dressing-gown, and went softly downstairs to her own room.

‘I have not told her who I am after all, or found out the particulars

of Ambrose’s history,’ she murmured. ‘But her being in love alters

everything.’

3. HALF-PAST SEVEN TO TEN O’CLOCK A.M.

Cytherea awoke, quiet in mind and refreshed. A conclusion to remain at

Knapwater was already in possession of her.

Finding Miss Aldclyffe gone, she dressed herself and sat down at the

window to write an answer to Edward’s letter, and an account of her

arrival at Knapwater to Owen. The dismal and heart-breaking pictures

that Miss Aldclyffe had placed before her the preceding evening, the

later terrors of the night, were now but as shadows of shadows, and she

smiled in derision at her own excitability.

But writing Edward’s letter was the great consoler, the effect of each

word upon him being enacted in her own face as she wrote it. She felt

how much she would like to share his trouble--how well she could endure

poverty with him--and wondered what his trouble was. But all would be

explained at last, she knew.

At the appointed time she went to Miss Aldclyffe’s room, intending, with

the contradictoriness common in people, to perform with pleasure, as a

work of supererogation, what as a duty was simply intolerable.

Miss Aldclyffe was already out of bed. The bright penetrating light

of morning made a vast difference in the elder lady’s behaviour to her

dependent; the day, which had restored Cytherea’s judgment, had effected

the same for Miss Aldclyffe. Though practical reasons forbade her

regretting that she had secured such a companionable creature to read,

talk, or play to her whenever her whim required, she was inwardly vexed

at the extent to which she had indulged in the womanly luxury of making

confidences and giving way to emotions. Few would have supposed that the

calm lady sitting aristocratically at the toilet table, seeming scarcely

conscious of Cytherea’s presence in the room, even when greeting her,

was the passionate creature who had asked for kisses a few hours before.

It is both painful and satisfactory to think how often these

antitheses are to be observed in the individual most open to our

observation--ourselves. We pass the evening with faces lit up by some

flaring illumination or other: we get up the next morning--the fiery

jets have all gone out, and nothing confronts us but a few crinkled

pipes and sooty wirework, hardly even recalling the outline of the

blazing picture that arrested our eyes before bedtime.

Emotions would be half starved if there were no candle-light. Probably

nine-tenths of the gushing letters of indiscreet confession are written

after nine or ten o’clock in the evening, and sent off before day

returns to leer invidiously upon them. Few that remain open to catch

our glance as we rise in the morning, survive the frigid criticism of

dressing-time.

The subjects uppermost in the minds of the two women who had thus cooled

from their fires, were not the visionary ones of the later hours,

but the hard facts of their earlier conversation. After a remark that

Cytherea need not assist her in dressing unless she wished to, Miss

Aldclyffe said abruptly--

‘I can tell that young man’s name.’ She looked keenly at Cytherea. ‘It

is Edward Springrove, my tenant’s son.’

The inundation of colour upon the younger lady at hearing a name which

to her was a world, handled as if it were only an atom, told Miss

Aldclyffe that she had divined the truth at last.

‘Ah--it is he, is it?’ she continued. ‘Well, I wanted to know for

practical reasons. His example shows that I was not so far wrong in my

estimate of men after all, though I only generalized, and had no thought

of him.’ This was perfectly true.

‘What do you mean?’ said Cytherea, visibly alarmed.

‘Mean? Why that all the world knows him to be engaged to be married, and

that the wedding is soon to take place.’ She made the remark bluntly and

superciliously, as if to obtain absolution at the hands of her family

pride for the weak confidences of the night.

But even the frigidity of Miss Aldclyffe’s morning mood was overcome by

the look of sick and blank despair which the carelessly uttered words

had produced upon Cytherea’s face. She sank back into a chair, and

buried her face in her hands.

‘Don’t be so foolish,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘Come, make the best of it.

I cannot upset the fact I have told you of, unfortunately. But I believe

the match can be broken off.’

‘O no, no.’

‘Nonsense. I liked him much as a youth, and I like him now. I’ll help

you to captivate and chain him down. I have got over my absurd feeling

of last night in not wanting you ever to go away from me--of course, I

could not expect such a thing as that. There, now I have said I’ll help

you, and that’s enough. He’s tired of his first choice now that he’s

been away from home for a while. The love that no outer attack can

frighten away quails before its idol’s own homely ways; it is always

so.... Come, finish what you are doing if you are going to, and don’t be

a little goose about such a trumpery affair as that.’

‘Who--is he engaged to?’ Cytherea inquired by a movement of her lips but

no sound of her voice. But Miss Aldclyffe did not answer. It mattered

not, Cytherea thought. Another woman--that was enough for her: curiosity

was stunned.

She applied herself to the work of dressing, scarcely knowing how. Miss

Aldclyffe went on:--

‘You were too easily won. I’d have made him or anybody else speak out

before he should have kissed my face for his pleasure. But you are one

of those precipitantly fond things who are yearning to throw away their

hearts upon the first worthless fellow who says good-morning. In the

first place, you shouldn’t have loved him so quickly: in the next,

if you must have loved him off-hand, you should have concealed it. It

tickled his vanity: “By Jove, that girl’s in love with me already!” he

thought.’

To hasten away at the end of the toilet, to tell Mrs. Morris--who

stood waiting in a little room prepared for her, with tea poured out,

bread-and-butter cut into diaphanous slices, and eggs arranged--that she

wanted no breakfast: then to shut herself alone in her bedroom, was her

only thought. She was followed thither by the well-intentioned

matron with a cup of tea and one piece of bread-and-butter on a tray,

cheerfully insisting that she should eat it.

To those who grieve, innocent cheerfulness seems heartless levity. ‘No,

thank you, Mrs. Morris,’ she said, keeping the door closed. Despite

the incivility of the action, Cytherea could not bear to let a pleasant

person see her face then.

Immediate revocation--even if revocation would be more effective by

postponement--is the impulse of young wounded natures. Cytherea went

to her blotting-book, took out the long letter so carefully written, so

full of gushing remarks and tender hints, and sealed up so neatly with

a little seal bearing ‘Good Faith’ as its motto, tore the missive into

fifty pieces, and threw them into the grate. It was then the bitterest

of anguishes to look upon some of the words she had so lovingly written,

and see them existing only in mutilated forms without meaning--to feel

that his eye would never read them, nobody ever know how ardently she

had penned them.

Pity for one’s self for being wasted is mostly present in these moods of

abnegation.

The meaning of all his allusions, his abruptness in telling her of his

love, his constraint at first, then his desperate manner of speaking,

was clear. They must have been the last flickerings of a conscience not

quite dead to all sense of perfidiousness and fickleness. Now he had

gone to London: she would be dismissed from his memory, in the same way

as Miss Aldclyffe had said. And here she was in Edward’s own parish,

reminded continually of him by what she saw and heard. The landscape,

yesterday so much and so bright to her, was now but as the banquet-hall

deserted--all gone but herself.

Miss Aldclyffe had wormed her secret out of her, and would now be

continually mocking her for her trusting simplicity in believing him. It

was altogether unbearable: she would not stay there.

She went downstairs and found Miss Aldclyffe had gone into the

breakfast-room, but that Captain Aldclyffe, who rose later with

increasing infirmities, had not yet made his appearance. Cytherea

entered. Miss Aldclyffe was looking out of the window, watching a trail

of white smoke along the distant landscape--signifying a passing train.

At Cytherea’s entry she turned and looked inquiry.

‘I must tell you now,’ began Cytherea, in a tremulous voice.

‘Well, what?’ Miss Aldclyffe said.

‘I am not going to stay with you. I must go away--a very long way. I am

very sorry, but indeed I can’t remain!’

‘Pooh--what shall we hear next?’ Miss Aldclyffe surveyed Cytherea’s face

with leisurely criticism. ‘You are breaking your heart again about that

worthless young Springrove. I knew how it would be. It is as Hallam says

of Juliet--what little reason you may have possessed originally has all

been whirled away by this love. I shan’t take this notice, mind.’

‘Do let me go!’

Miss Aldclyffe took her new pet’s hand, and said with severity, ‘As to

hindering you, if you are determined to go, of course that’s absurd.

But you are not now in a state of mind fit for deciding upon any such

proceeding, and I shall not listen to what you have to say. Now, Cythie,

come with me; we’ll let this volcano burst and spend itself, and after

that we’ll see what had better be done.’ She took Cytherea into her

workroom, opened a drawer, and drew forth a roll of linen.

‘This is some embroidery I began one day, and now I should like it

finished.’

She then preceded the maiden upstairs to Cytherea’s own room. ‘There,’

she said, ‘now sit down here, go on with this work, and remember one

thing--that you are not to leave the room on any pretext whatever for

two hours unless I send for you--I insist kindly, dear. Whilst you

stitch--you are to stitch, recollect, and not go mooning out of the

window--think over the whole matter, and get cooled; don’t let the

foolish love-affair prevent your thinking as a woman of the world. If

at the end of that time you still say you must leave me, you may. I will

have no more to say in the matter. Come, sit down, and promise to sit

here the time I name.’

To hearts in a despairing mood, compulsion seems a relief; and docility

was at all times natural to Cytherea. She promised, and sat down. Miss

Aldclyffe shut the door upon her and retreated.

She sewed, stopped to think, shed a tear or two, recollected the

articles of the treaty, and sewed again; and at length fell into a

reverie which took no account whatever of the lapse of time.

4. TEN TO TWELVE O’CLOCK A.M.

A quarter of an hour might have passed when her thoughts became

attracted from the past to the present by unwonted movements downstairs.

She opened the door and listened.

There were hurryings along passages, opening and shutting of doors,

trampling in the stable-yard. She went across into another bedroom, from

which a view of the stable-yard could be obtained, and arrived there

just in time to see the figure of the man who had driven her from the

station vanishing down the coach-road on a black horse--galloping at the

top of the animal’s speed.

Another man went off in the direction of the village.

Whatever had occurred, it did not seem to be her duty to inquire or

meddle with it, stranger and dependent as she was, unless she were

requested to, especially after Miss Aldclyffe’s strict charge to her.

She sat down again, determined to let no idle curiosity influence her

movements.

Her window commanded the front of the house; and the next thing she saw

was a clergyman walk up and enter the door.

All was silent again till, a long time after the first man had left,

he returned again on the same horse, now matted with sweat and trotting

behind a carriage in which sat an elderly gentleman driven by a lad in

livery. These came to the house, entered, and all was again the same as

before.

The whole household--master, mistress, and servants--appeared to have

forgotten the very existence of such a being as Cytherea. She almost

wished she had not vowed to have no idle curiosity.

Half-an-hour later, the carriage drove off with the elderly gentleman,

and two or three messengers left the house, speeding in various

directions. Rustics in smock-frocks began to hang about the road

opposite the house, or lean against trees, looking idly at the windows

and chimneys.

A tap came to Cytherea’s door. She opened it to a young maid-servant.

‘Miss Aldclyffe wishes to see you, ma’am.’ Cytherea hastened down.

Miss Aldclyffe was standing on the hearthrug, her elbow on the mantel,

her hand to her temples, her eyes on the ground; perfectly calm, but

very pale.

‘Cytherea,’ she said in a whisper, ‘come here.’

Cytherea went close.

‘Something very serious has taken place,’ she said again, and then

paused, with a tremulous movement of her mouth.

‘Yes,’ said Cytherea.

‘My father. He was found dead in his bed this morning.’

‘Dead!’ echoed the younger woman. It seemed impossible that the

announcement could be true; that knowledge of so great a fact could be

contained in a statement so small.

‘Yes, dead,’ murmured Miss Aldclyffe solemnly. ‘He died alone, though

within a few feet of me. The room we slept in is exactly over his own.’

Cytherea said hurriedly, ‘Do they know at what hour?’

‘The doctor says it must have been between two and three o’clock this

morning.’

‘Then I heard him!’

‘Heard him?’

‘Heard him die!’

‘You heard him die? What did you hear?’

‘A sound I heard once before in my life--at the deathbed of my mother. I

could not identify it--though I recognized it. Then the dog howled: you

remarked it. I did not think it worth while to tell you what I had heard

a little earlier.’ She looked agonized.

‘It would have been useless,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘All was over by that

time.’ She addressed herself as much as Cytherea when she continued, ‘Is

it a Providence who sent you here at this juncture that I might not be

left entirely alone?’

Till this instant Miss Aldclyffe had forgotten the reason of Cytherea’s

seclusion in her own room. So had Cytherea herself. The fact now

recurred to both in one moment.

‘Do you still wish to go?’ said Miss Aldclyffe anxiously.

‘I don’t want to go now,’ Cytherea had remarked simultaneously with the

other’s question. She was pondering on the strange likeness which Miss

Aldclyffe’s bereavement bore to her own; it had the appearance of being

still another call to her not to forsake this woman so linked to her

life, for the sake of any trivial vexation.

Miss Aldclyffe held her almost as a lover would have held her, and said

musingly--

‘We get more and more into one groove. I now am left fatherless and

motherless as you were.’ Other ties lay behind in her thoughts, but she

did not mention them.

‘You loved your father, Cytherea, and wept for him?’

‘Yes, I did. Poor papa!’

‘I was always at variance with mine, and can’t weep for him now! But you

must stay here always, and make a better woman of me.’

The compact was thus sealed, and Cytherea, in spite of the failure of

her advertisements, was installed as a veritable Companion. And,

once more in the history of human endeavour, a position which it was

impossible to reach by any direct attempt, was come to by the seeker’s

swerving from the path, and regarding the original object as one of

secondary importance.

VII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS

1. AUGUST THE SEVENTEENTH

The time of day was four o’clock in the afternoon. The place was the

lady’s study or boudoir, Knapwater House. The person was Miss Aldclyffe

sitting there alone, clothed in deep mourning.

The funeral of the old Captain had taken place, and his will had been

read. It was very concise, and had been executed about five years

previous to his death. It was attested by his solicitors, Messrs.

Nyttleton and Tayling, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The whole of his estate,

real and personal, was bequeathed to his daughter Cytherea, for her sole

and absolute use, subject only to the payment of a legacy to the rector,

their relative, and a few small amounts to the servants.

Miss Aldclyffe had not chosen the easiest chair of her boudoir to sit

in, or even a chair of ordinary comfort, but an uncomfortable, high,

narrow-backed, oak framed and seated chair, which was allowed to

remain in the room only on the ground of being a companion in artistic

quaintness to an old coffer beside it, and was never used except to

stand in to reach for a book from the highest row of shelves. But she

had sat erect in this chair for more than an hour, for the reason that

she was utterly unconscious of what her actions and bodily feelings

were. The chair had stood nearest her path on entering the room, and she

had gone to it in a dream.

She sat in the attitude which denotes unflagging, intense, concentrated

thought--as if she were cast in bronze. Her feet were together, her body

bent a little forward, and quite unsupported by the back of the chair;

her hands on her knees, her eyes fixed intently on the corner of a

footstool.

At last she moved and tapped her fingers upon the table at her side.

Her pent-up ideas had finally found some channel to advance in. Motions

became more and more frequent as she laboured to carry further and

further the problem which occupied her brain. She sat back and drew

a long breath: she sat sideways and leant her forehead upon her

hand. Later still she arose, walked up and down the room--at first

abstractedly, with her features as firmly set as ever; but by degrees

her brow relaxed, her footsteps became lighter and more leisurely; her

head rode gracefully and was no longer bowed. She plumed herself like a

swan after exertion.

‘Yes,’ she said aloud. ‘To get _him_ here without letting him know that

I have any other object than that of getting a useful man--that’s the

difficulty--and that I think I can master.’

She rang for the new maid, a placid woman of forty with a few grey

hairs.

‘Ask Miss Graye if she can come to me.’

Cytherea was not far off, and came in.

‘Do you know anything about architects and surveyors?’ said Miss

Aldclyffe abruptly.

‘Know anything?’ replied Cytherea, poising herself on her toe to

consider the compass of the question.

‘Yes--know anything,’ said Miss Aldclyffe.

‘Owen is an architect and surveyor’s draughtsman,’ the maiden said, and

thought of somebody else who was likewise.

‘Yes! that’s why I asked you. What are the different kinds of work

comprised in an architect’s practice? They lay out estates, and

superintend the various works done upon them, I should think, among

other things?’

‘Those are, more properly, a land or building steward’s duties--at least

I have always imagined so. Country architects include those things in

their practice; city architects don’t.’

‘I know that, child. But a steward’s is an indefinite fast and loose

profession, it seems to me. Shouldn’t you think that a man who had been

brought up as an architect would do for a steward?’

Cytherea had doubts whether an architect pure would do.

The chief pleasure connected with asking an opinion lies in not adopting

it. Miss Aldclyffe replied decisively--

‘Nonsense; of course he would. Your brother Owen makes plans for country

buildings--such as cottages, stables, homesteads, and so on?’

‘Yes; he does.’

‘And superintends the building of them?’

‘Yes; he will soon.’

‘And he surveys land?’

‘O yes.’

‘And he knows about hedges and ditches--how wide they ought to be,

boundaries, levelling, planting trees to keep away the winds, measuring

timber, houses for ninety-nine years, and such things?’

‘I have never heard him say that; but I think Mr. Gradfield does those

things. Owen, I am afraid, is inexperienced as yet.’

‘Yes; your brother is not old enough for such a post yet, of course.

And then there are rent-days, the audit and winding up of tradesmen’s

accounts. I am afraid, Cytherea, you don’t know much more about the

matter than I do myself.... I am going out just now,’ she continued. ‘I

shall not want you to walk with me to-day. Run away till dinner-time.’

Miss Aldclyffe went out of doors, and down the steps to the lawn: then

turning to the left, through a shrubbery, she opened a wicket and passed

into a neglected and leafy carriage-drive, leading down the hill. This

she followed till she reached the point of its greatest depression,

which was also the lowest ground in the whole grove.

The trees here were so interlaced, and hung their branches so near the

ground, that a whole summer’s day was scarcely long enough to change

the air pervading the spot from its normal state of coolness to even a

temporary warmth. The unvarying freshness was helped by the nearness of

the ground to the level of the springs, and by the presence of a deep,

sluggish stream close by, equally well shaded by bushes and a high wall.

Following the road, which now ran along at the margin of the stream,

she came to an opening in the wall, on the other side of the water,

revealing a large rectangular nook from which the stream proceeded,

covered with froth, and accompanied by a dull roar. Two more steps,

and she was opposite the nook, in full view of the cascade forming its

further boundary. Over the top could be seen the bright outer sky in the

form of a crescent, caused by the curve of a bridge across the rapids,

and the trees above.

Beautiful as was the scene she did not look in that direction. The same

standing-ground afforded another prospect, straight in the front, less

sombre than the water on the right or the trees all around. The avenue

and grove which flanked it abruptly terminated a few yards ahead, where

the ground began to rise, and on the remote edge of the greensward thus

laid open, stood all that remained of the original manor-house, to which

the dark margin-line of the trees in the avenue formed an adequate

and well-fitting frame. It was the picture thus presented that was

now interesting Miss Aldclyffe--not artistically or historically,

but practically--as regarded its fitness for adaptation to modern

requirements.

In front, detached from everything else, rose the most ancient portion

of the structure--an old arched gateway, flanked by the bases of two

small towers, and nearly covered with creepers, which had clambered

over the eaves of the sinking roof, and up the gable to the crest of the

Aldclyffe family perched on the apex. Behind this, at a distance of ten

or twenty yards, came the only portion of the main building that still

existed--an Elizabethan fragment, consisting of as much as could be

contained under three gables and a cross roof behind. Against the wall

could be seen ragged lines indicating the form of other destroyed gables

which had once joined it there. The mullioned and transomed windows,

containing five or six lights, were mostly bricked up to the extent

of two or three, and the remaining portion fitted with cottage

window-frames carelessly inserted, to suit the purpose to which the

old place was now applied, it being partitioned out into small rooms

downstairs to form cottages for two labourers and their families; the

upper portion was arranged as a storehouse for divers kinds of roots and

fruit.

The owner of the picturesque spot, after her survey from this

point, went up to the walls and walked into the old court, where the

paving-stones were pushed sideways and upwards by the thrust of the

grasses between them. Two or three little children, with their fingers

in their mouths, came out to look at her, and then ran in to tell their

mothers in loud tones of secrecy that Miss Aldclyffe was coming. Miss

Aldclyffe, however, did not come in. She concluded her survey of the

exterior by making a complete circuit of the building; then turned into

a nook a short distance off where round and square timber, a saw-pit,

planks, grindstones, heaps of building stone and brick, explained that

the spot was the centre of operations for the building work done on the

estate.

She paused, and looked around. A man who had seen her from the window of

the workshops behind, came out and respectfully lifted his hat to her.

It was the first time she had been seen walking outside the house since

her father’s death.

‘Strooden, could the Old House be made a decent residence of, without

much trouble?’ she inquired.

The mechanic considered, and spoke as each consideration completed

itself.

‘You don’t forget, ma’am, that two-thirds of the place is already pulled

down, or gone to ruin?’

‘Yes; I know.’

‘And that what’s left may almost as well be, ma’am.’

‘Why may it?’

‘’Twas so cut up inside when they made it into cottages, that the whole

carcase is full of cracks.’

‘Still by pulling down the inserted partitions, and adding a little

outside, it could be made to answer the purpose of an ordinary six or

eight-roomed house?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘About what would it cost?’ was the question which had invariably come

next in every communication of this kind to which the superintending

workman had been a party during his whole experience. To his surprise,

Miss Aldclyffe did not put it. The man thought her object in altering an

old house must have been an unusually absorbing one not to prompt what

was so instinctive in owners as hardly to require any prompting at all.

‘Thank you: that’s sufficient, Strooden,’ she said. ‘You will understand

that it is not unlikely some alteration may be made here in a short

time, with reference to the management of the affairs.’

Strooden said ‘Yes,’ in a complex voice, and looked uneasy.

‘During the life of Captain Aldclyffe, with you as the foreman of works,

and he himself as his own steward, everything worked well. But now

it may be necessary to have a steward, whose management will encroach

further upon things which have hitherto been left in your hands than did

your late master’s. What I mean is, that he will directly and in detail

superintend all.’

‘Then--I shall not be wanted, ma’am?’ he faltered.

‘O yes; if you like to stay on as foreman in the yard and workshops

only. I should be sorry to lose you. However, you had better consider. I

will send for you in a few days.’

Leaving him to suspense, and all the ills that came in its

train--distracted application to his duties, and an undefined number

of sleepless nights and untasted dinners, Miss Aldclyffe looked at her

watch and returned to the House. She was about to keep an appointment

with her solicitor, Mr. Nyttleton, who had been to Budmouth, and was

coming to Knapwater on his way back to London.

2. AUGUST THE TWENTIETH

On the Saturday subsequent to Mr. Nyttleton’s visit to Knapwater House,

the subjoined advertisement appeared in the Field and the Builder

newspapers:--

‘LAND STEWARD.

‘A gentleman of integrity and professional skill is required immediately

for the MANAGEMENT of an ESTATE, containing about 1000 acres, upon

which agricultural improvements and the erection of buildings are

contemplated. He must be a man of superior education, unmarried, and not

more than thirty years of age. Considerable preference will be shown

for one who possesses an artistic as well as a practical knowledge of

planning and laying out. The remuneration will consist of a salary of

220 pounds, with the old manor-house as a residence--Address Messrs.

Nyttleton and Tayling, solicitors, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’

A copy of each paper was sent to Miss Aldclyffe on the day of

publication. The same evening she told Cytherea that she was advertising

for a steward, who would live at the old manor-house, showing her the

papers containing the announcement.

What was the drift of that remark? thought the maiden; or was it merely

made to her in confidential intercourse, as other arrangements were

told her daily. Yet it seemed to have more meaning than common. She

remembered the conversation about architects and surveyors, and her

brother Owen. Miss Aldclyffe knew that his situation was precarious,

that he was well educated and practical, and was applying himself heart

and soul to the details of the profession and all connected with

it. Miss Aldclyffe might be ready to take him if he could compete

successfully with others who would reply. She hazarded a question:

‘Would it be desirable for Owen to answer it?’

‘Not at all,’ said Miss Aldclyffe peremptorily.

A flat answer of this kind had ceased to alarm Cytherea. Miss

Aldclyffe’s blunt mood was not her worst. Cytherea thought of another

man, whose name, in spite of resolves, tears, renunciations and injured

pride, lingered in her ears like an old familiar strain. That man was

qualified for a stewardship under a king.

‘Would it be of any use if Edward Springrove were to answer it?’ she

said, resolutely enunciating the name.

‘None whatever,’ replied Miss Aldclyffe, again in the same decided tone.

‘You are very unkind to speak in that way.’

‘Now don’t pout like a goosie, as you are. I don’t want men like either

of them, for, of course, I must look to the good of the estate rather

than to that of any individual. The man I want must have been more

specially educated. I have told you that we are going to London next

week; it is mostly on this account.’

Cytherea found that she had mistaken the drift of Miss Aldclyffe’s

peculiar explicitness on the subject of advertising, and wrote to tell

her brother that if he saw the notice it would be useless to reply.

3. AUGUST THE TWENTY-FIFTH

Five days after the above-mentioned dialogue took place they went to

London, and, with scarcely a minute’s pause, to the solicitors’ offices

in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

They alighted opposite one of the characteristic entrances about the

place--a gate which was never, and could never be, closed, flanked by

lamp-standards carrying no lamp. Rust was the only active agent to be

seen there at this time of the day and year. The palings along the

front were rusted away at their base to the thinness of wires, and the

successive coats of paint, with which they were overlaid in bygone

days, had been completely undermined by the same insidious canker, which

lifted off the paint in flakes, leaving the raw surface of the iron on

palings, standards, and gate hinges, of a staring blood-red.

But once inside the railings the picture changed. The court and offices

were a complete contrast to the grand ruin of the outwork which enclosed

them. Well-painted respectability extended over, within, and around the

doorstep; and in the carefully swept yard not a particle of dust was

visible.

Mr. Nyttleton, who had just come up from Margate, where he was staying

with his family, was standing at the top of his own staircase as the

pair ascended. He politely took them inside.

‘Is there a comfortable room in which this young lady can sit during our

interview?’ said Miss Aldclyffe.

It was rather a favourite habit of hers to make much of Cytherea when

they were out, and snub her for it afterwards when they got home.

‘Certainly--Mr. Tayling’s.’ Cytherea was shown into an inner room.

Social definitions are all made relatively: an absolute datum is only

imagined. The small gentry about Knapwater seemed unpractised to Miss

Aldclyffe, Miss Aldclyffe herself seemed unpractised to Mr. Nyttleton’s

experienced old eyes.

‘Now then,’ the lady said, when she was alone with the lawyer; ‘what is

the result of our advertisement?’

It was late summer; the estate-agency, building, engineering, and

surveying worlds were dull. There were forty-five replies to the

advertisement.

Mr. Nyttleton spread them one by one before Miss Aldclyffe. ‘You will

probably like to read some of them yourself, madam?’ he said.

‘Yes, certainly,’ said she.

‘I will not trouble you with those which are from persons manifestly

unfit at first sight,’ he continued; and began selecting from the heap

twos and threes which he had marked, collecting others into his hand.

‘The man we want lies among these, if my judgment doesn’t deceive me,

and from them it would be advisable to select a certain number to be

communicated with.’

‘I should like to see every one--only just to glance them over--exactly

as they came,’ she said suasively.

He looked as if he thought this a waste of his time, but dismissing his

sentiment unfolded each singly and laid it before her. As he laid them

out, it struck him that she studied them quite as rapidly as he could

spread them. He slyly glanced up from the outer corner of his eye to

hers, and noticed that all she did was look at the name at the bottom of

the letter, and then put the enclosure aside without further ceremony.

He thought this an odd way of inquiring into the merits of forty-five

men who at considerable trouble gave in detail reasons why they believed

themselves well qualified for a certain post. She came to the final one,

and put it down with the rest.

Then the lady said that in her opinion it would be best to get as many

replies as they possibly could before selecting--‘to give us a wider

choice. What do you think, Mr. Nyttleton?’

It seemed to him, he said, that a greater number than those they already

had would scarcely be necessary, and if they waited for more, there

would be this disadvantage attending it, that some of those they now

could command would possibly not be available.

‘Never mind, we will run that risk,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘Let the

advertisement be inserted once more, and then we will certainly settle

the matter.’

Mr. Nyttleton bowed, and seemed to think Miss Aldclyffe, for a single

woman, and one who till so very recently had never concerned herself

with business of any kind, a very meddlesome client. But she was rich,

and handsome still. ‘She’s a new broom in estate-management as yet,’

he thought. ‘She will soon get tired of this,’ and he parted from her

without a sentiment which could mar his habitual blandness.

The two ladies then proceeded westward. Dismissing the cab in Waterloo

Place, they went along Pall Mall on foot, where in place of the usual

well-dressed clubbists--rubicund with alcohol--were to be seen, in linen

pinafores, flocks of house-painters pallid from white lead. When they

had reached the Green Park, Cytherea proposed that they should sit down

awhile under the young elms at the brow of the hill. This they did--the

growl of Piccadilly on their left hand--the monastic seclusion of the

Palace on their right: before them, the clock tower of the Houses

of Parliament, standing forth with a metallic lustre against a livid

Lambeth sky.

Miss Aldclyffe still carried in her hand a copy of the newspaper, and

while Cytherea had been interesting herself in the picture around,

glanced again at the advertisement.

She heaved a slight sigh, and began to fold it up again. In the action

her eye caught sight of two consecutive advertisements on the cover,

one relating to some lecture on Art, and addressed to members of the

Institute of Architects. The other emanated from the same source, but

was addressed to the public, and stated that the exhibition of drawings

at the Institute’s rooms would close at the end of that week.

Her eye lighted up. She sent Cytherea back to the hotel in a cab, then

turned round by Piccadilly into Bond Street, and proceeded to the rooms

of the Institute. The secretary was sitting in the lobby. After making

her payment, and looking at a few of the drawings on the walls, in the

company of three gentlemen, the only other visitors to the exhibition,

she turned back and asked if she might be allowed to see a list of the

members. She was a little connected with the architectural world, she

said, with a smile, and was interested in some of the names.

‘Here it is, madam,’ he replied, politely handing her a pamphlet

containing the names.

Miss Aldclyffe turned the leaves till she came to the letter M. The name

she hoped to find there was there, with the address appended, as was the

case with all the rest.

The address was at some chambers in a street not far from Charing Cross.

‘Chambers,’ as a residence, had always been assumed by the lady to imply

the condition of a bachelor. She murmured two words, ‘There still.’

Another request had yet to be made, but it was of a more noticeable kind

than the first, and might compromise the secrecy with which she wished

to act throughout this episode. Her object was to get one of the

envelopes lying on the secretary’s table, stamped with the die of the

Institute; and in order to get it she was about to ask if she might

write a note.

But the secretary’s back chanced to be turned, and he now went towards

one of the men at the other end of the room, who had called him to ask

some question relating to an etching on the wall. Quick as thought, Miss

Aldclyffe stood before the table, slipped her hand behind her, took one

of the envelopes and put it in her pocket.

She sauntered round the rooms for two or three minutes longer, then

withdrew and returned to her hotel.

Here she cut the Knapwater advertisement from the paper, put it into the

envelope she had stolen, embossed with the society’s stamp, and directed

it in a round clerkly hand to the address she had seen in the list of

members’ names submitted to her:--

AENEAS MANSTON, ESQ.,

WYKEHAM CHAMBERS,

SPRING GARDENS.

This ended her first day’s work in London.

4. FROM AUGUST THE TWENTY-SIXTH TO SEPTEMBER THE FIRST

The two Cythereas continued at the Westminster Hotel, Miss Aldclyffe

informing her companion that business would detain them in London

another week. The days passed as slowly and quietly as days can pass in

a city at that time of the year, the shuttered windows about the squares

and terraces confronting their eyes like the white and sightless orbs of

blind men. On Thursday Mr. Nyttleton called, bringing the whole number

of replies to the advertisement. Cytherea was present at the interview,

by Miss Aldclyffe’s request--either from whim or design.

Ten additional letters were the result of the second week’s insertion,

making fifty-five in all. Miss Aldclyffe looked them over as before. One

was signed--

AENEAS MANSTON, 133, TURNGATE STREET,

LIVERPOOL.

‘Now, then, Mr. Nyttleton, will you make a selection, and I will add one

or two,’ Miss Aldclyffe said.

Mr. Nyttleton scanned the whole heap of letters, testimonials, and

references, sorting them into two heaps. Manston’s missive, after a mere

glance, was thrown amongst the summarily rejected ones.

Miss Aldclyffe read, or pretended to read after the lawyer. When he had

finished, five lay in the group he had selected. ‘Would you like to add

to the number?’ he said, turning to the lady.

‘No,’ she said carelessly. ‘Well, two or three additional ones rather

took my fancy,’ she added, searching for some in the larger collection.

She drew out three. One was Manston’s.

‘These eight, then, shall be communicated with,’ said the lawyer, taking

up the eight letters and placing them by themselves.

They stood up. ‘If I myself, Miss Aldclyffe, were only concerned

personally,’ he said, in an off-hand way, and holding up a letter

singly, ‘I should choose this man unhesitatingly. He writes honestly,

is not afraid to name what he does not consider himself well acquainted

with--a rare thing to find in answers to advertisements; he is well

recommended, and possesses some qualities rarely found in combination.

Oddly enough, he is not really a steward. He was bred a farmer, studied

building affairs, served on an estate for some time, then went with an

architect, and is now well qualified as architect, estate agent, and

surveyor. That man is sure to have a fine head for a manor like yours.’

He tapped the letter as he spoke. ‘Yes, I should choose him without

hesitation--speaking personally.’

‘And I think,’ she said artificially, ‘I should choose this one as a

matter of mere personal whim, which, of course, can’t be given way to

when practical questions have to be considered.’

Cytherea, after looking out of the window, and then at the newspapers,

had become interested in the proceedings between the clever Miss

Aldclyffe and the keen old lawyer, which reminded her of a game

at cards. She looked inquiringly at the two letters--one in Miss

Aldclyffe’s hand, the other in Mr. Nyttleton’s.

‘What is the name of your man?’ said Miss Aldclyffe.

‘His name--’ said the lawyer, looking down the page; ‘what is his

name?--it is Edward Springrove.’

Miss Aldclyffe glanced towards Cytherea, who was getting red and pale by

turns. She looked imploringly at Miss Aldclyffe.

‘The name of my man,’ said Miss Aldclyffe, looking at her letter in

turn; ‘is, I think--yes--AEneas Manston.’

5. SEPTEMBER THE THIRD

The next morning but one was appointed for the interviews, which were to

be at the lawyer’s offices. Mr. Nyttleton and Mr. Tayling were both in

town for the day, and the candidates were admitted one by one into a

private room. In the window recess was seated Miss Aldclyffe, wearing

her veil down.

The lawyer had, in his letters to the selected number, timed each

candidate at an interval of ten or fifteen minutes from those preceding

and following. They were shown in as they arrived, and had short

conversations with Mr. Nyttleton--terse, and to the point. Miss

Aldclyffe neither moved nor spoke during this proceeding; it might have

been supposed that she was quite unmindful of it, had it not been

for what was revealed by a keen penetration of the veil covering her

countenance--the rays from two bright black eyes, directed towards the

lawyer and his interlocutor.

Springrove came fifth; Manston seventh. When the examination of all was

ended, and the last man had retired, Nyttleton, again as at the former

time, blandly asked his client which of the eight she personally

preferred. ‘I still think the fifth we spoke to, Springrove, the man

whose letter I pounced upon at first, to be by far the best qualified,

in short, most suitable generally.’

‘I am sorry to say that I differ from you; I lean to my first notion

still--that Mr.--Mr. Manston is most desirable in tone and bearing, and

even specifically; I think he would suit me best in the long-run.’

Mr. Nyttleton looked out of the window at the whitened wall of the

court.

‘Of course, madam, your opinion may be perfectly sound and reliable;

a sort of instinct, I know, often leads ladies by a short cut to

conclusions truer than those come to by men after laborious round-about

calculations, based on long experience. I must say I shouldn’t recommend

him.’

‘Why, pray?’

‘Well, let us look first at his letter of answer to the advertisement.

He didn’t reply till the last insertion; that’s one thing. His letter is

bold and frank in tone, so bold and frank that the second thought after

reading it is that not honesty, but unscrupulousness of conscience

dictated it. It is written in an indifferent mood, as if he felt that he

was humbugging us in his statement that he was the right man for such

an office, that he tried hard to get it only as a matter of form which

required that he should neglect no opportunity that came in his way.’

‘You may be right, Mr. Nyttleton, but I don’t quite see the grounds of

your reasoning.’

‘He has been, as you perceive, almost entirely used to the office duties

of a city architect, the experience we don’t want. You want a man

whose acquaintance with rural landed properties is more practical

and closer--somebody who, if he has not filled exactly such an office

before, has lived a country life, knows the ins and outs of country

tenancies, building, farming, and so on.’

‘He’s by far the most intellectual looking of them all.’

‘Yes; he may be--your opinion, Miss Aldclyffe, is worth more than mine

in that matter. And more than you say, he is a man of parts--his brain

power would soon enable him to master details and fit him for the post,

I don’t much doubt that. But to speak clearly’ (here his words started

off at a jog-trot) ‘I wouldn’t run the risk of placing the management

of an estate of mine in his hands on any account whatever. There, that’s

flat and plain, madam.’

‘But, definitely,’ she said, with a show of impatience, ‘what is your

reason?’

‘He is a voluptuary with activity; which is a very bad form of man--as

bad as it is rare.’

‘Oh. Thank you for your explicit statement, Mr. Nyttleton,’ said Miss

Aldclyffe, starting a little and flushing with displeasure.

Mr. Nyttleton nodded slightly, as a sort of neutral motion, simply

signifying a receipt of the information, good or bad.

‘And I really think it is hardly worth while to trouble you further

in this,’ continued the lady. ‘He’s quite good enough for a little

insignificant place like mine at Knapwater; and I know that I could not

get on with one of the others for a single month. We’ll try him.’

‘Certainly, Miss Aldclyffe,’ said the lawyer. And Mr. Manston was

written to, to the effect that he was the successful competitor.

‘Did you see how unmistakably her temper was getting the better of her,

that minute you were in the room?’ said Nyttleton to Tayling, when their

client had left the house. Nyttleton was a man who surveyed everybody’s

character in a sunless and shadowless northern light. A culpable

slyness, which marked him as a boy, had been moulded by Time, the

Improver, into honourable circumspection.

We frequently find that the quality which, conjoined with the simplicity

of the child, is vice, is virtue when it pervades the knowledge of the

man.

‘She was as near as damn-it to boiling over when I added up her man,’

continued Nyttleton. ‘His handsome face is his qualification in her

eyes. They have met before; I saw that.’

‘He didn’t seem conscious of it,’ said the junior.

‘He didn’t. That was rather puzzling to me. But still, if ever a woman’s

face spoke out plainly that she was in love with a man, hers did that

she was with him. Poor old maid, she’s almost old enough to be his

mother. If that Manston’s a schemer he’ll marry her, as sure as I am

Nyttleton. Let’s hope he’s honest, however.’

‘I don’t think she’s in love with him,’ said Tayling. He had seen but

little of the pair, and yet he could not reconcile what he had noticed

in Miss Aldclyffe’s behaviour with the idea that it was the bearing of a

woman towards her lover.

‘Well, your experience of the fiery phenomenon is more recent than

mine,’ rejoined Nyttleton carelessly. ‘And you may remember the nature

of it best.’

VIII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS

1. FROM THE THIRD TO THE NINETEENTH OF SEPTEMBER

Miss Aldclyffe’s tenderness towards Cytherea, between the hours of her

irascibility, increased till it became no less than doting fondness.

Like Nature in the tropics, with her hurricanes and the subsequent

luxuriant vegetation effacing their ravages, Miss Aldclyffe compensated

for her outbursts by excess of generosity afterwards. She seemed to be

completely won out of herself by close contact with a young woman whose

modesty was absolutely unimpaired, and whose artlessness was as perfect

as was compatible with the complexity necessary to produce the due charm

of womanhood. Cytherea, on her part, perceived with honest satisfaction

that her influence for good over Miss Aldclyffe was considerable. Ideas

and habits peculiar to the younger, which the elder lady had originally

imitated as a mere whim, she grew in course of time to take a positive

delight in. Among others were evening and morning prayers, dreaming over

out-door scenes, learning a verse from some poem whilst dressing.

Yet try to force her sympathies as much as she would, Cytherea could

feel no more than thankful for this, even if she always felt as much

as thankful. The mysterious cloud hanging over the past life of her

companion, of which the uncertain light already thrown upon it only

seemed to render still darker the unpenetrated remainder, nourished

in her a feeling which was scarcely too slight to be called dread. She

would have infinitely preferred to be treated distantly, as the mere

dependent, by such a changeable nature--like a fountain, always

herself, yet always another. That a crime of any deep dye had ever been

perpetrated or participated in by her namesake, she would not believe;

but the reckless adventuring of the lady’s youth seemed connected with

deeds of darkness rather than of light.

Sometimes Miss Aldclyffe appeared to be on the point of making some

absorbing confidence, but reflection invariably restrained her. Cytherea

hoped that such a confidence would come with time, and that she might

thus be a means of soothing a mind which had obviously known extreme

suffering.

But Miss Aldclyffe’s reticence concerning her past was not imitated by

Cytherea. Though she never disclosed the one fact of her knowledge

that the love-suit between Miss Aldclyffe and her father terminated

abnormally, the maiden’s natural ingenuousness on subjects not set down

for special guard had enabled Miss Aldclyffe to worm from her, fragment

by fragment, every detail of her father’s history. Cytherea saw how

deeply Miss Aldclyffe sympathized--and it compensated her, to some

extent, for the hasty resentments of other times.

Thus uncertainly she lived on. It was perceived by the servants of the

House that some secret bond of connection existed between Miss Aldclyffe

and her companion. But they were woman and woman, not woman and man, the

facts were ethereal and refined, and so they could not be worked up

into a taking story. Whether, as old critics disputed, a supernatural

machinery be necessary to an epic or no, an ungodly machinery is

decidedly necessary to a scandal.

Another letter had come to her from Edward--very short, but full of

entreaty, asking why she would not write just one line--just one line of

cold friendship at least? She then allowed herself to think, little by

little, whether she had not perhaps been too harsh with him; and at last

wondered if he were really much to blame for being engaged to another

woman. ‘Ah, Brain, there is one in me stronger than you!’ she said. The

young maid now continually pulled out his letter, read it and re-read

it, almost crying with pity the while, to think what wretched suspense

he must be enduring at her silence, till her heart chid her for her

cruelty. She felt that she must send him a line--one little line--just a

wee line to keep him alive, poor thing; sighing like Donna Clara--

‘Ah, were he now before me,

In spite of injured pride,

I fear my eyes would pardon

Before my tongue could chide.’

2. SEPTEMBER THE TWENTIETH. THREE TO FOUR P.M.

It was the third week in September, about five weeks after Cytherea’s

arrival, when Miss Aldclyffe requested her one day to go through the

village of Carriford and assist herself in collecting the subscriptions

made by some of the inhabitants of the parish to a religious society

she patronized. Miss Aldclyffe formed one of what was called a Ladies’

Association, each member of which collected tributary streams of

shillings from her inferiors, to add to her own pound at the end.

Miss Aldclyffe took particular interest in Cytherea’s appearance that

afternoon, and the object of her attention was, indeed, gratifying

to look at. The sight of the lithe girl, set off by an airy dress,

coquettish jacket, flexible hat, a ray of starlight in each eye and a

war of lilies and roses in each cheek, was a palpable pleasure to the

mistress of the mansion, yet a pleasure which appeared to partake less

of the nature of affectionate satisfaction than of mental gratification.

Eight names were printed in the report as belonging to Miss Aldclyffe’s

list, with the amount of subscription-money attached to each.

‘I will collect the first four, whilst you do the same with the last

four,’ said Miss Aldclyffe.

The names of two tradespeople stood first in Cytherea’s share: then came

a Miss Hinton: last of all in the printed list was Mr. Springrove

the elder. Underneath his name was pencilled, in Miss Aldclyffe’s

handwriting, ‘Mr. Manston.’

Manston had arrived on the estate, in the capacity of steward, three or

four days previously, and occupied the old manor-house, which had been

altered and repaired for his reception.

‘Call on Mr. Manston,’ said the lady impressively, looking at the name

written under Cytherea’s portion of the list.

‘But he does not subscribe yet?’

‘I know it; but call and leave him a report. Don’t forget it.’

‘Say you would be pleased if he would subscribe?’

‘Yes--say I should be pleased if he would,’ repeated Miss Aldclyffe,

smiling. ‘Good-bye. Don’t hurry in your walk. If you can’t get easily

through your task to-day put off some of it till to-morrow.’

Each then started on her rounds: Cytherea going in the first place to

the old manor-house. Mr. Manston was not indoors, which was a relief

to her. She called then on the two gentleman-farmers’ wives, who

soon transacted their business with her, frigidly indifferent to her

personality. A person who socially is nothing is thought less of by

people who are not much than by those who are a great deal.

She then turned towards Peakhill Cottage, the residence of Miss Hinton,

who lived there happily enough, with an elderly servant and a house-dog

as companions. Her father, and last remaining parent, had retired

thither four years before this time, after having filled the post of

editor to the Casterbridge Chronicle for eighteen or twenty years. There

he died soon after, and though comparatively a poor man, he left his

daughter sufficiently well provided for as a modest fundholder and

claimant of sundry small sums in dividends to maintain herself as

mistress at Peakhill.

At Cytherea’s knock an inner door was heard to open and close, and

footsteps crossed the passage hesitatingly. The next minute Cytherea

stood face to face with the lady herself.

Adelaide Hinton was about nine-and-twenty years of age. Her hair

was plentiful, like Cytherea’s own; her teeth equalled Cytherea’s in

regularity and whiteness. But she was much paler, and had features

too transparent to be in place among household surroundings. Her mouth

expressed love less forcibly than Cytherea’s, and, as a natural result

of her greater maturity, her tread was less elastic, and she was more

self-possessed.

She had been a girl of that kind which mothers praise as not forward, by

way of contrast, when disparaging those warmer ones with whom loving is

an end and not a means. Men of forty, too, said of her, ‘a good sensible

wife for any man, if she cares to marry,’ the caring to marry being

thrown in as the vaguest hypothesis, because she was so practical.

Yet it would be singular if, in such cases, the important subject of

marriage should be excluded from manipulation by hands that are ready

for practical performance in every domestic concern besides.

Cytherea was an acquisition, and the greeting was hearty.

‘Good afternoon! O yes--Miss Graye, from Miss Aldclyffe’s. I have seen

you at church, and I am so glad you have called! Come in. I wonder if I

have change enough to pay my subscription.’ She spoke girlishly.

Adelaide, when in the company of a younger woman, always levelled

herself down to that younger woman’s age from a sense of justice to

herself--as if, though not her own age at common law, it was in equity.

‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll come again.’

‘Yes, do at any time; not only on this errand. But you must step in for

a minute. Do.’

‘I have been wanting to come for several weeks.’

‘That’s right. Now you must see my house--lonely, isn’t it, for a single

person? People said it was odd for a young woman like me to keep on a

house; but what did I care? If you knew the pleasure of locking up your

own door, with the sensation that you reigned supreme inside it, you

would say it was worth the risk of being called odd. Mr. Springrove

attends to my gardening, the dog attends to robbers, and whenever there

is a snake or toad to kill, Jane does it.’

‘How nice! It is better than living in a town.’

‘Far better. A town makes a cynic of me.’

The remark recalled, somewhat startlingly, to Cytherea’s mind, that

Edward had used those very words to herself one evening at Budmouth.

Miss Hinton opened an interior door and led her visitor into a small

drawing-room commanding a view of the country for miles.

The missionary business was soon settled; but the chat continued.

‘How lonely it must be here at night!’ said Cytherea. ‘Aren’t you

afraid?’

‘At first I was, slightly. But I got used to the solitude. And you know

a sort of commonsense will creep even into timidity. I say to myself

sometimes at night, “If I were anybody but a harmless woman, not worth

the trouble of a worm’s ghost to appear to me, I should think that every

sound I hear was a spirit.” But you must see all over my house.’

Cytherea was highly interested in seeing.

‘I say you _must_ do this, and you _must_ do that, as if you were a

child,’ remarked Adelaide. ‘A privileged friend of mine tells me this

use of the imperative comes of being so constantly in nobody’s society

but my own.’

‘Ah, yes. I suppose she is right.’

Cytherea called the friend ‘she’ by a rule of ladylike practice; for a

woman’s ‘friend’ is delicately assumed by another friend to be of their

own sex in the absence of knowledge to the contrary; just as cats are

called she’s until they prove themselves he’s.

Miss Hinton laughed mysteriously.

‘I get a humorous reproof for it now and then, I assure you,’ she

continued.

‘“Humorous reproof:” that’s not from a woman: who can reprove humorously

but a man?’ was the groove of Cytherea’s thought at the remark. ‘Your

brother reproves you, I expect,’ said that innocent young lady.

‘No,’ said Miss Hinton, with a candid air. ‘’Tis only a professional man

I am acquainted with.’ She looked out of the window.

Women are persistently imitative. No sooner did a thought flash

through Cytherea’s mind that the man was a lover than she became a Miss

Aldclyffe in a mild form.

‘I imagine he’s a lover,’ she said.

Miss Hinton smiled a smile of experience in that line.

Few women, if taxed with having an admirer, are so free from vanity

as to deny the impeachment, even if it is utterly untrue. When it does

happen to be true, they look pityingly away from the person who is so

benighted as to have got no further than suspecting it.

‘There now--Miss Hinton; you are engaged to be married!’ said Cytherea

accusingly.

Adelaide nodded her head practically. ‘Well, yes, I am,’ she said.

The word ‘engaged’ had no sooner passed Cytherea’s lips than the sound

of it--the mere sound of her own lips--carried her mind to the time and

circumstances under which Miss Aldclyffe had used it towards herself.

A sickening thought followed--based but on a mere surmise; yet its

presence took every other idea away from Cytherea’s mind. Miss Hinton

had used Edward’s words about towns; she mentioned Mr. Springrove as

attending to her garden. It could not be that Edward was the man! that

Miss Aldclyffe had planned to reveal her rival thus!

‘Are you going to be married soon?’ she inquired, with a steadiness the

result of a sort of fascination, but apparently of indifference.

‘Not very soon--still, soon.’

‘Ah-ha! In less than three months?’ said Cytherea.

‘Two.’

Now that the subject was well in hand, Adelaide wanted no more

prompting. ‘You won’t tell anybody if I show you something?’ she said,

with eager mystery.

‘O no, nobody. But does he live in this parish?’

‘No.’

Nothing proved yet.

‘What’s his name?’ said Cytherea flatly. Her breath and heart had begun

their old tricks, and came and went hotly. Miss Hinton could not see her

face.

‘What do you think?’ said Miss Hinton.

‘George?’ said Cytherea, with deceitful agony.

‘No,’ said Adelaide. ‘But now, you shall see him first; come here;’

and she led the way upstairs into her bedroom. There, standing on the

dressing table in a little frame, was the unconscious portrait of Edward

Springrove.

‘There he is,’ Miss Hinton said, and a silence ensued.

‘Are you very fond of him?’ continued the miserable Cytherea at length.

‘Yes, of course I am,’ her companion replied, but in the tone of one who

‘lived in Abraham’s bosom all the year,’ and was therefore untouched by

solemn thought at the fact. ‘He’s my cousin--a native of this village.

We were engaged before my father’s death left me so lonely. I was only

twenty, and a much greater belle than I am now. We know each other

thoroughly, as you may imagine. I give him a little sermonizing now and

then.’

‘Why?’

‘O, it’s only in fun. He’s very naughty sometimes--not really, you

know--but he will look at any pretty face when he sees it.’

Storing up this statement of his susceptibility as another item to

be miserable upon when she had time, ‘How do you know that?’ Cytherea

asked, with a swelling heart.

‘Well, you know how things do come to women’s ears. He used to live at

Budmouth as an assistant-architect, and I found out that a young giddy

thing of a girl who lives there somewhere took his fancy for a day

or two. But I don’t feel jealous at all--our engagement is so

matter-of-fact that neither of us can be jealous. And it was a mere

flirtation--she was too silly for him. He’s fond of rowing, and kindly

gave her an airing for an evening or two. I’ll warrant they talked the

most unmitigated rubbish under the sun--all shallowness and pastime,

just as everything is at watering places--neither of them caring a bit

for the other--she giggling like a goose all the time--’

Concentrated essence of woman pervaded the room rather than air.

‘She _didn’t_! and it _wasn’t_ shallowness!’ Cytherea burst out, with

brimming eyes. ‘’Twas deep deceit on one side, and entire confidence

on the other--yes, it was!’ The pent-up emotion had swollen and swollen

inside the young thing till the dam could no longer embay it. The

instant the words were out she would have given worlds to have been able

to recall them.

‘Do you know her--or him?’ said Miss Hinton, starting with suspicion at

the warmth shown.

The two rivals had now lost their personality quite. There was the same

keen brightness of eye, the same movement of the mouth, the same mind

in both, as they looked doubtingly and excitedly at each other. As is

invariably the case with women when a man they care for is the subject

of an excitement among them, the situation abstracted the differences

which distinguished them as individuals, and left only the properties

common to them as atoms of a sex.

Cytherea caught at the chance afforded her of not betraying herself.

‘Yes, I know her,’ she said.

‘Well,’ said Miss Hinton, ‘I am really vexed if my speaking so lightly

of any friend of yours has hurt your feelings, but--’

‘O, never mind,’ Cytherea returned; ‘it doesn’t matter, Miss Hinton. I

think I must leave you now. I have to call at other places. Yes--I must

go.’

Miss Hinton, in a perplexed state of mind, showed her visitor politely

downstairs to the door. Here Cytherea bade her a hurried adieu, and

flitted down the garden into the lane.

She persevered in her duties with a wayward pleasure in giving herself

misery, as was her wont. Mr. Springrove’s name was next on the list, and

she turned towards his dwelling, the Three Tranters Inn.

3. FOUR TO FIVE P.M.

The cottages along Carriford village street were not so close but that

on one side or other of the road was always a hedge of hawthorn or

privet, over or through which could be seen gardens or orchards rich

with produce. It was about the middle of the early apple-harvest, and

the laden trees were shaken at intervals by the gatherers; the soft

pattering of the falling crop upon the grassy ground being diversified

by the loud rattle of vagrant ones upon a rail, hencoop, basket,

or lean-to roof, or upon the rounded and stooping backs of the

collectors--mostly children, who would have cried bitterly at receiving

such a smart blow from any other quarter, but smilingly assumed it to be

but fun in apples.

The Three Tranters Inn, a many-gabled, mediaeval building, constructed

almost entirely of timber, plaster, and thatch, stood close to the line

of the roadside, almost opposite the churchyard, and was connected

with a row of cottages on the left by thatched outbuildings. It was an

uncommonly characteristic and handsome specimen of the genuine roadside

inn of bygone times; and standing on one of the great highways in this

part of England, had in its time been the scene of as much of what is

now looked upon as the romantic and genial experience of stage-coach

travelling as any halting-place in the country. The railway had absorbed

the whole stream of traffic which formerly flowed through the village

and along by the ancient door of the inn, reducing the empty-handed

landlord, who used only to farm a few fields at the back of the house,

to the necessity of eking out his attenuated income by increasing the

extent of his agricultural business if he would still maintain his

social standing. Next to the general stillness pervading the spot, the

long line of outbuildings adjoining the house was the most striking and

saddening witness to the passed-away fortunes of the Three Tranters Inn.

It was the bulk of the original stabling, and where once the hoofs of

two-score horses had daily rattled over the stony yard, to and from the

stalls within, thick grass now grew, whilst the line of roofs--once so

straight--over the decayed stalls, had sunk into vast hollows till they

seemed like the cheeks of toothless age.

On a green plot at the other end of the building grew two or

three large, wide-spreading elm-trees, from which the sign was

suspended--representing the three men called tranters (irregular

carriers), standing side by side, and exactly alike to a hair’s-breadth,

the grain of the wood and joints of the boards being visible through the

thin paint depicting their forms, which were still further disfigured by

red stains running downwards from the rusty nails above.

Under the trees now stood a cider-mill and press, and upon the spot

sheltered by the boughs were gathered Mr. Springrove himself, his men,

the parish clerk, two or three other men, grinders and supernumeraries,

a woman with an infant in her arms, a flock of pigeons, and some little

boys with straws in their mouths, endeavouring, whenever the men’s backs

were turned, to get a sip of the sweet juice issuing from the vat.

Edward Springrove the elder, the landlord, now more particularly a

farmer, and for two months in the year a cider-maker, was an employer of

labour of the old school, who worked himself among his men. He was now

engaged in packing the pomace into horsehair bags with a rammer, and

Gad Weedy, his man, was occupied in shovelling up more from a tub at

his side. The shovel shone like silver from the action of the juice,

and ever and anon, in its motion to and fro, caught the rays of the

declining sun and reflected them in bristling stars of light.

Mr. Springrove had been too young a man when the pristine days of the

Three Tranters had departed for ever to have much of the host left in

him now. He was a poet with a rough skin: one whose sturdiness was

more the result of external circumstances than of intrinsic nature. Too

kindly constituted to be very provident, he was yet not imprudent.

He had a quiet humorousness of disposition, not out of keeping with a

frequent melancholy, the general expression of his countenance being one

of abstraction. Like Walt Whitman he felt as his years increased--

‘I foresee too much; it means more than I thought.’

On the present occasion he wore gaiters and a leathern apron, and worked

with his shirt-sleeves rolled up beyond his elbows, disclosing solid and

fleshy rather than muscular arms. They were stained by the cider, and

two or three brown apple-pips from the pomace he was handling were to be

seen sticking on them here and there.

The other prominent figure was that of Richard Crickett, the parish

clerk, a kind of Bowdlerized rake, who ate only as much as a woman,

and had the rheumatism in his left hand. The remainder of the group,

brown-faced peasants, wore smock-frocks embroidered on the shoulders

with hearts and diamonds, and were girt round their middle with a strap,

another being worn round the right wrist.

‘And have you seen the steward, Mr. Springrove?’ said the clerk.

‘Just a glimpse of him; but ‘twas just enough to show me that he’s not

here for long.’

‘Why mid that be?’

‘He’ll never stand the vagaries of the female figure holden the

reins--not he.’

‘She d’ pay en well,’ said a grinder; ‘and money’s money.’

‘Ah--‘tis: very much so,’ the clerk replied.

‘Yes, yes, naibour Crickett,’ said Springrove, ‘but she’ll vlee in a

passion--all the fat will be in the fire--and there’s an end o’t....

Yes, she is a one,’ continued the farmer, resting, raising his eyes, and

reading the features of a distant apple.

‘She is,’ said Gad, resting too (it is wonderful how prompt a journeyman

is in following his master’s initiative to rest) and reflectively

regarding the ground in front of him.

‘True: a one is she,’ the clerk chimed in, shaking his head ominously.

‘She has such a temper,’ said the farmer, ‘and is so wilful too. You may

as well try to stop a footpath as stop her when she has taken anything

into her head. I’d as soon grind little green crabs all day as live wi’

her.’

‘’Tis a temper she hev, ‘tis,’ the clerk replied, ‘though I be a servant

of the Church that say it. But she isn’t goen to flee in a passion this

time.’

The audience waited for the continuation of the speech, as if they knew

from experience the exact distance off it lay in the future.

The clerk swallowed nothing as if it were a great deal, and then went

on, ‘There’s some’at between ‘em: mark my words, naibours--there’s

some’at between ‘em.’

‘D’ye mean it?’

‘I d’ know it. He came last Saturday, didn’t he?’

‘’A did, truly,’ said Gad Weedy, at the same time taking an apple from

the hopper of the mill, eating a piece, and flinging back the remainder

to be ground up for cider.

‘He went to church a-Sunday,’ said the clerk again.

‘’A did.’

‘And she kept her eye upon en all the service, her face flickeren

between red and white, but never stoppen at either.’

Mr. Springrove nodded, and went to the press.

‘Well,’ said the clerk, ‘you don’t call her the kind o’ woman to make

mistakes in just trotten through the weekly service o’ God? Why, as a

rule she’s as right as I be myself.’

Mr. Springrove nodded again, and gave a twist to the screw of the press,

followed in the movement by Gad at the other side; the two grinders

expressing by looks of the greatest concern that, if Miss Aldclyffe were

as right at church as the clerk, she must be right indeed.

‘Yes, as right in the service o’ God as I be myself,’ repeated the

clerk. ‘But last Sunday, when we were in the tenth commandment, says

she, “Incline our hearts to keep this law,” says she, when ‘twas “Laws

in our hearts, we beseech Thee,” all the church through. Her eye was

upon _him_--she was quite lost--“Hearts to keep this law,” says she; she

was no more than a mere shadder at that tenth time--a mere shadder. You

mi’t ha’ mouthed across to her “Laws in our hearts we beseech Thee,”

fifty times over--she’d never ha’ noticed ye. She’s in love wi’ the man,

that’s what she is.’

‘Then she’s a bigger stunpoll than I took her for,’ said Mr. Springrove.

‘Why, she’s old enough to be his mother.’

‘The row’ll be between her and that young Curlywig, you’ll see. She

won’t run the risk of that pretty face be-en near.’

‘Clerk Crickett, I d’ fancy you d’ know everything about everybody,’

said Gad.

‘Well so’s,’ said the clerk modestly. ‘I do know a little. It comes to

me.’

‘And I d’ know where from.’

‘Ah.’

‘That wife o’ thine. She’s an entertainen woman, not to speak

disrespectful.’

‘She is: and a winnen one. Look at the husbands she’ve had--God bless

her!’

‘I wonder you could stand third in that list, Clerk Crickett,’ said Mr.

Springrove.

‘Well, ‘t has been a power o’ marvel to myself oftentimes. Yes,

matrimony do begin wi’ “Dearly beloved,” and ends wi’ “Amazement,” as

the prayer-book says. But what could I do, naibour Springrove? ‘Twas

ordained to be. Well do I call to mind what your poor lady said to me

when I had just married. “Ah, Mr. Crickett,” says she, “your wife will

soon settle you as she did her other two: here’s a glass o’ rum, for

I shan’t see your poor face this time next year.” I swallered the rum,

called again next year, and said, “Mrs. Springrove, you gave me a glass

o’ rum last year because I was going to die--here I be alive still, you

see.” “Well said, clerk! Here’s two glasses for you now, then,” says

she. “Thank you, mem,” I said, and swallered the rum. Well, dang my old

sides, next year I thought I’d call again and get three. And call I did.

But she wouldn’t give me a drop o’ the commonest. “No, clerk,” says

she, “you be too tough for a woman’s pity.”... Ah, poor soul, ‘twas true

enough! Here be I, that was expected to die, alive and hard as a nail,

you see, and there’s she moulderen in her grave.’

‘I used to think ‘twas your wife’s fate not to have a liven husband when

I zid ‘em die off so,’ said Gad.

‘Fate? Bless thy simplicity, so ‘twas her fate; but she struggled to

have one, and would, and did. Fate’s nothen beside a woman’s schemen!’

‘I suppose, then, that Fate is a He, like us, and the Lord, and the rest

o’ ‘em up above there,’ said Gad, lifting his eyes to the sky.

‘Hullo! Here’s the young woman comen that we were a-talken about

by-now,’ said a grinder, suddenly interrupting. ‘She’s comen up here, as

I be alive!’

The two grinders stood and regarded Cytherea as if she had been a ship

tacking into a harbour, nearly stopping the mill in their new interest.

‘Stylish accoutrements about the head and shoulders, to my thinken,’

said the clerk. ‘Sheenen curls, and plenty o’ em.’

‘If there’s one kind of pride more excusable than another in a young

woman, ‘tis being proud of her hair,’ said Mr. Springrove.

‘Dear man!--the pride there is only a small piece o’ the whole. I

warrant now, though she can show such a figure, she ha’n’t a stick o’

furniture to call her own.’

‘Come, Clerk Crickett, let the maid be a maid while she is a maid,’ said

Farmer Springrove chivalrously.

‘O,’ replied the servant of the Church; ‘I’ve nothen to say against

it--O no:

‘“The chimney-sweeper’s daughter Sue

As I have heard declare, O,

Although she’s neither sock nor shoe

Will curl and deck her hair, O.”’

Cytherea was rather disconcerted at finding that the gradual cessation

of the chopping of the mill was on her account, and still more when she

saw all the cider-makers’ eyes fixed upon her except Mr. Springrove’s,

whose natural delicacy restrained him. She neared the plot of grass, but

instead of advancing further, hesitated on its border.

Mr. Springrove perceived her embarrassment, which was relieved when she

saw his old-established figure coming across to her, wiping his hands in

his apron.

‘I know your errand, missie,’ he said, ‘and am glad to see you, and

attend to it. I’ll step indoors.’

‘If you are busy I am in no hurry for a minute or two,’ said Cytherea.

‘Then if so be you really wouldn’t mind, we’ll wring down this last

filling to let it drain all night?’

‘Not at all. I like to see you.’

‘We are only just grinding down the early pickthongs and griffins,’

continued the farmer, in a half-apologetic tone for detaining by

his cider-making any well-dressed woman. ‘They rot as black as a

chimney-crook if we keep ‘em till the regulars turn in.’ As he spoke he

went back to the press, Cytherea keeping at his elbow. ‘I’m later than

I should have been by rights,’ he continued, taking up a lever for

propelling the screw, and beckoning to the men to come forward.

‘The truth is, my son Edward had promised to come to-day, and I made

preparations; but instead of him comes a letter: “London, September the

eighteenth, Dear Father,” says he, and went on to tell me he couldn’t.

It threw me out a bit.’

‘Of course,’ said Cytherea.

‘He’s got a place ‘a b’lieve?’ said the clerk, drawing near.

‘No, poor mortal fellow, no. He tried for this one here, you know, but

couldn’t manage to get it. I don’t know the rights o’ the matter, but

willy-nilly they wouldn’t have him for steward. Now mates, form in

line.’

Springrove, the clerk, the grinders, and Gad, all ranged themselves

behind the lever of the screw, and walked round like soldiers wheeling.

‘The man that the old quean hev got is a man you can hardly get upon

your tongue to gainsay, by the look o’ en,’ rejoined Clerk Crickett.

‘One o’ them people that can contrive to be thought no worse o’ for

stealen a horse than another man for looken over hedge at en,’ said a

grinder.

‘Well, he’s all there as steward, and is quite the gentleman--no doubt

about that.’

‘So would my Ted ha’ been, for the matter o’ that,’ the farmer said.

‘That’s true: ‘a would, sir.’

‘I said, I’ll give Ted a good education if it do cost me my eyes, and I

would have done it.’

‘Ay, that you would so,’ said the chorus of assistants solemnly.

‘But he took to books and drawing naturally, and cost very little;

and as a wind-up the womenfolk hatched up a match between him and his

cousin.’

‘When’s the wedden to be, Mr. Springrove?’

‘Uncertain--but soon, I suppose. Edward, you see, can do anything pretty

nearly, and yet can’t get a straightforward living. I wish sometimes I

had kept him here, and let professions go. But he was such a one for the

pencil.’

He dropped the lever in the hedge, and turned to his visitor.

‘Now then, missie, if you’ll come indoors, please.’

Gad Weedy looked with a placid criticism at Cytherea as she withdrew

with the farmer.

‘I could tell by the tongue o’ her that she didn’t take her degrees in

our county,’ he said in an undertone.

‘The railways have left you lonely here,’ she observed, when they were

indoors.

Save the withered old flies, which were quite tame from the solitude,

not a being was in the house. Nobody seemed to have entered it since the

last passenger had been called out to mount the last stage-coach that

had run by.

‘Yes, the Inn and I seem almost a pair of fossils,’ the farmer replied,

looking at the room and then at himself.

‘O, Mr. Springrove,’ said Cytherea, suddenly recollecting herself; ‘I am

much obliged to you for recommending me to Miss Aldclyffe.’ She began to

warm towards the old man; there was in him a gentleness of disposition

which reminded her of her own father.

‘Recommending? Not at all, miss. Ted--that’s my son--Ted said a

fellow-draughtsman of his had a sister who wanted to be doing something

in the world, and I mentioned it to the housekeeper, that’s all. Ay, I

miss my son very much.’

She kept her back to the window that he might not see her rising colour.

‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘sometimes I can’t help feeling uneasy about him.

You know, he seems not made for a town life exactly: he gets very queer

over it sometimes, I think. Perhaps he’ll be better when he’s married to

Adelaide.’

A half-impatient feeling arose in her, like that which possesses a

sick person when he hears a recently-struck hour struck again by a slow

clock. She had lived further on.

‘Everything depends upon whether he loves her,’ she said tremulously.

‘He used to--he doesn’t show it so much now; but that’s because he’s

older. You see, it was several years ago they first walked together as

young man and young woman. She’s altered too from what she was when he

first courted her.’

‘How, sir?’

‘O, she’s more sensible by half. When he used to write to her she’d

creep up the lane and look back over her shoulder, and slide out the

letter, and read a word and stand in thought looking at the hills and

seeing none. Then the cuckoo would cry--away the letter would slip, and

she’d start wi’ fright at the mere bird, and have a red skin before the

quickest man among ye could say, “Blood rush up.”’

He came forward with the money and dropped it into her hand. His

thoughts were still with Edward, and he absently took her little fingers

in his as he said, earnestly and ingenuously--

‘’Tis so seldom I get a gentlewoman to speak to that I can’t help

speaking to you, Miss Graye, on my fears for Edward; I sometimes am

afraid that he’ll never get on--that he’ll die poor and despised under

the worst mental conditions, a keen sense of having been passed in the

race by men whose brains are nothing to his own, all through his seeing

too far into things--being discontented with make-shifts--thinking o’

perfection in things, and then sickened that there’s no such thing as

perfection. I shan’t be sorry to see him marry, since it may settle him

down and do him good.... Ay, we’ll hope for the best.’

He let go her hand and accompanied her to the door saying, ‘If you

should care to walk this way and talk to an old man once now and then,

it will be a great delight to him, Miss Graye. Good-evening to ye.... Ah

look! a thunderstorm is brewing--be quick home. Or shall I step up with

you?’

‘No, thank you, Mr. Springrove. Good evening,’ she said in a low voice,

and hurried away. One thought still possessed her; Edward had trifled

with her love.

4. FIVE TO SIX P.M.

She followed the road into a bower of trees, overhanging it so densely

that the pass appeared like a rabbit’s burrow, and presently reached a

side entrance to the park. The clouds rose more rapidly than the

farmer had anticipated: the sheep moved in a trail, and complained

incoherently. Livid grey shades, like those of the modern French

painters, made a mystery of the remote and dark parts of the vista, and

seemed to insist upon a suspension of breath. Before she was half-way

across the park the thunder rumbled distinctly.

The direction in which she had to go would take her close by the old

manor-house. The air was perfectly still, and between each low rumble of

the thunder behind she could hear the roar of the waterfall before her,

and the creak of the engine among the bushes hard by it. Hurrying on,

with a growing dread of the gloom and of the approaching storm, she drew

near the Old House, now rising before her against the dark foliage and

sky in tones of strange whiteness.

On the flight of steps, which descended from a terrace in front to the

level of the park, stood a man. He appeared, partly from the relief the

position gave to his figure, and partly from fact, to be of towering

height. He was dark in outline, and was looking at the sky, with his

hands behind him.

It was necessary for Cytherea to pass directly across the line of his

front. She felt so reluctant to do this, that she was about to turn

under the trees out of the path and enter it again at a point beyond

the Old House; but he had seen her, and she came on mechanically,

unconsciously averting her face a little, and dropping her glance to the

ground.

Her eyes unswervingly lingered along the path until they fell upon

another path branching in a right line from the path she was pursuing.

It came from the steps of the Old House. ‘I am exactly opposite him

now,’ she thought, ‘and his eyes are going through me.’

A clear masculine voice said, at the same instant--

‘Are you afraid?’

She, interpreting his question by her feelings at the moment, assumed

himself to be the object of fear, if any. ‘I don’t think I am,’ she

stammered.

He seemed to know that she thought in that sense.

‘Of the thunder, I mean,’ he said; ‘not of myself.’

She must turn to him now. ‘I think it is going to rain,’ she remarked

for the sake of saying something.

He could not conceal his surprise and admiration of her face and

bearing. He said courteously, ‘It may possibly not rain before you reach

the House, if you are going there?’

‘Yes, I am,’

‘May I walk up with you? It is lonely under the trees.’

‘No.’ Fearing his courtesy arose from a belief that he was addressing a

woman of higher station than was hers, she added, ‘I am Miss Aldclyffe’s

companion. I don’t mind the loneliness.’

‘O, Miss Aldclyffe’s companion. Then will you be kind enough to take a

subscription to her? She sent to me this afternoon to ask me to become

a subscriber to her Society, and I was out. Of course I’ll subscribe if

she wishes it. I take a great interest in the Society.’

‘Miss Aldclyffe will be glad to hear that, I know.’

‘Yes; let me see--what Society did she say it was? I am afraid I haven’t

enough money in my pocket, and yet it would be a satisfaction to her to

have practical proof of my willingness. I’ll get it, and be out in one

minute.’

He entered the house and was at her side again within the time he had

named. ‘This is it,’ he said pleasantly.

She held up her hand. The soft tips of his fingers brushed the palm of

her glove as he placed the money within it. She wondered why his fingers

should have touched her.

‘I think after all,’ he continued, ‘that the rain is upon us, and will

drench you before you reach the House. Yes: see there.’

He pointed to a round wet spot as large as a nasturtium leaf, which had

suddenly appeared upon the white surface of the step.

‘You had better come into the porch. It is not nearly night yet. The

clouds make it seem later than it really is.’

Heavy drops of rain, followed immediately by a forked flash of lightning

and sharp rattling thunder compelled her, willingly or no, to accept

his invitation. She ascended the steps, stood beside him just within the

porch, and for the first time obtained a series of short views of his

person, as they waited there in silence.

He was an extremely handsome man, well-formed, and well-dressed, of an

age which seemed to be two or three years less than thirty. The

most striking point in his appearance was the wonderful, almost

preternatural, clearness of his complexion. There was not a blemish or

speck of any kind to mar the smoothness of its surface or the beauty of

its hue. Next, his forehead was square and broad, his brows straight

and firm, his eyes penetrating and clear. By collecting the round of

expressions they gave forth, a person who theorized on such matters

would have imbibed the notion that their owner was of a nature to kick

against the pricks; the last man in the world to put up with a position

because it seemed to be his destiny to do so; one who took upon himself

to resist fate with the vindictive determination of a Theomachist.

Eyes and forehead both would have expressed keenness of intellect too

severely to be pleasing, had their force not been counteracted by the

lines and tone of the lips. These were full and luscious to a surprising

degree, possessing a woman-like softness of curve, and a ruby redness

so intense, as to testify strongly to much susceptibility of heart where

feminine beauty was concerned--a susceptibility that might require

all the ballast of brain with which he had previously been credited to

confine within reasonable channels.

His manner was rather elegant than good: his speech well-finished and

unconstrained.

The pause in their discourse, which had been caused by the peal of

thunder was unbroken by either for a minute or two, during which

the ears of both seemed to be absently following the low roar of the

waterfall as it became gradually rivalled by the increasing rush of rain

upon the trees and herbage of the grove. After her short looks at him,

Cytherea had turned her head towards the avenue for a while, and now,

glancing back again for an instant, she discovered that his eyes were

engaged in a steady, though delicate, regard of her face and form.

At this moment, by reason of the narrowness of the porch, their dresses

touched, and remained in contact.

His clothes are something exterior to every man; but to a woman

her dress is part of her body. Its motions are all present to her

intelligence if not to her eyes; no man knows how his coat-tails swing.

By the slightest hyperbole it may be said that her dress has sensation.

Crease but the very Ultima Thule of fringe or flounce, and it hurts her

as much as pinching her. Delicate antennae, or feelers, bristle on every

outlying frill. Go to the uppermost: she is there; tread on the lowest:

the fair creature is there almost before you.

Thus the touch of clothes, which was nothing to Manston, sent a thrill

through Cytherea, seeing, moreover, that he was of the nature of a

mysterious stranger. She looked out again at the storm, but still felt

him. At last to escape the sensation she moved away, though by so doing

it was necessary to advance a little into the rain.

‘Look, the rain is coming into the porch upon you,’ he said. ‘Step

inside the door.’

Cytherea hesitated.

‘Perfectly safe, I assure you,’ he added, laughing, and holding the door

open. ‘You shall see what a state of disorganization I am in--boxes on

boxes, furniture, straw, crockery, in every form of transposition. An

old woman is in the back quarters somewhere, beginning to put things to

rights.... You know the inside of the house, I dare say?’

‘I have never been in.’

‘O well, come along. Here, you see, they have made a door through, here,

they have put a partition dividing the old hall into two, one part is

now my parlour; there they have put a plaster ceiling, hiding the old

chestnut-carved roof because it was too high and would have been chilly

for me; you see, being the original hall, it was open right up to the

top, and here the lord of the manor and his retainers used to meet and

be merry by the light from the monstrous fire which shone out from

that monstrous fire-place, now narrowed to a mere nothing for my grate,

though you can see the old outline still. I almost wish I could have had

it in its original state.’

‘With more romance and less comfort.’

‘Yes, exactly. Well, perhaps the wish is not deep-seated. You will see

how the things are tumbled in anyhow, packing-cases and all. The only

piece of ornamental furniture yet unpacked is this one.’

‘An organ?’

‘Yes, an organ. I made it myself, except the pipes. I opened the case

this afternoon to commence soothing myself at once. It is not a very

large one, but quite big enough for a private house. You play, I dare

say?’

‘The piano. I am not at all used to an organ.’

‘You would soon acquire the touch for an organ, though it would spoil

your touch for the piano. Not that that matters a great deal. A piano

isn’t much as an instrument.’

‘It is the fashion to say so now. I think it is quite good enough.’

‘That isn’t altogether a right sentiment about things being good

enough.’

‘No--no. What I mean is, that the men who despise pianos do it as a rule

from their teeth, merely for fashion’s sake, because cleverer men have

said it before them--not from the experience of their ears.’

Now Cytherea all at once broke into a blush at the consciousness of a

great snub she had been guilty of in her eagerness to explain herself.

He charitably expressed by a look that he did not in the least mind her

blunder, if it were one; and this attitude forced him into a position of

mental superiority which vexed her.

‘I play for my private amusement only,’ he said. ‘I have never learned

scientifically. All I know is what I taught myself.’

The thunder, lightning, and rain had now increased to a terrific

force. The clouds, from which darts, forks, zigzags, and balls of fire

continually sprang, did not appear to be more than a hundred yards above

their heads, and every now and then a flash and a peal made gaps in the

steward’s descriptions. He went towards the organ, in the midst of a

volley which seemed to shake the aged house from foundations to chimney.

‘You are not going to play now, are you?’ said Cytherea uneasily.

‘O yes. Why not now?’ he said. ‘You can’t go home, and therefore we may

as well be amused, if you don’t mind sitting on this box. The few chairs

I have unpacked are in the other room.’

Without waiting to see whether she sat down or not, he turned to the

organ and began extemporizing a harmony which meandered through every

variety of expression of which the instrument was capable. Presently he

ceased and began searching for some music-book.

‘What a splendid flash!’ he said, as the lightning again shone in

through the mullioned window, which, of a proportion to suit the whole

extent of the original hall, was much too large for the present room.

The thunder pealed again. Cytherea, in spite of herself, was frightened,

not only at the weather, but at the general unearthly weirdness which

seemed to surround her there.

‘I wish I--the lightning wasn’t so bright. Do you think it will last

long?’ she said timidly.

‘It can’t last much longer,’ he murmured, without turning, running

his fingers again over the keys. ‘But this is nothing,’ he continued,

suddenly stopping and regarding her. ‘It seems brighter because of

the deep shadow under those trees yonder. Don’t mind it; now look at

me--look in my face--now.’

He had faced the window, looking fixedly at the sky with his dark strong

eyes. She seemed compelled to do as she was bidden, and looked in the

too-delicately beautiful face.

The flash came; but he did not turn or blink, keeping his eyes fixed as

firmly as before. ‘There,’ he said, turning to her, ‘that’s the way to

look at lightning.’

‘O, it might have blinded you!’ she exclaimed.

‘Nonsense--not lightning of this sort--I shouldn’t have stared at it

if there had been danger. It is only sheet-lightning now. Now, will you

have another piece? Something from an oratorio this time?’

‘No, thank you--I don’t want to hear it whilst it thunders so.’ But he

had begun without heeding her answer, and she stood motionless again,

marvelling at the wonderful indifference to all external circumstance

which was now evinced by his complete absorption in the music before

him.

‘Why do you play such saddening chords?’ she said, when he next paused.

‘H’m--because I like them, I suppose,’ said he lightly. ‘Don’t you like

sad impressions sometimes?’

‘Yes, sometimes, perhaps.’

‘When you are full of trouble.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, why shouldn’t I when I am full of trouble?’

‘Are you troubled?’

‘I am troubled.’ He said this thoughtfully and abruptly--so abruptly

that she did not push the dialogue further.

He now played more powerfully. Cytherea had never heard music in the

completeness of full orchestral power, and the tones of the organ, which

reverberated with considerable effect in the comparatively small space

of the room, heightened by the elemental strife of light and sound

outside, moved her to a degree out of proportion to the actual power

of the mere notes, practised as was the hand that produced them.

The varying strains--now loud, now soft; simple, complicated, weird,

touching, grand, boisterous, subdued; each phase distinct, yet

modulating into the next with a graceful and easy flow--shook and bent

her to themselves, as a gushing brook shakes and bends a shadow cast

across its surface. The power of the music did not show itself so much

by attracting her attention to the subject of the piece, as by taking

up and developing as its libretto the poem of her own life and soul,

shifting her deeds and intentions from the hands of her judgment and

holding them in its own.

She was swayed into emotional opinions concerning the strange man before

her; new impulses of thought came with new harmonies, and entered into

her with a gnawing thrill. A dreadful flash of lightning then, and the

thunder close upon it. She found herself involuntarily shrinking up

beside him, and looking with parted lips at his face.

He turned his eyes and saw her emotion, which greatly increased the

ideal element in her expressive face. She was in the state in which

woman’s instinct to conceal has lost its power over her impulse to tell;

and he saw it. Bending his handsome face over her till his lips almost

touched her ear, he murmured, without breaking the harmonies--

‘Do you very much like this piece?’

‘Very much indeed,’ she said.

‘I could see you were affected by it. I will copy it for you.’

‘Thank you much.’

‘I will bring it to the House to you to-morrow. Who shall I ask for?’

‘O, not for me. Don’t bring it,’ she said hastily. ‘I shouldn’t like you

to.’

‘Let me see--to-morrow evening at seven or a few minutes past I shall be

passing the waterfall on my way home. I could conveniently give it you

there, and I should like you to have it.’

He modulated into the Pastoral Symphony, still looking in her eyes.

‘Very well,’ she said, to get rid of the look.

The storm had by this time considerably decreased in violence, and in

seven or ten minutes the sky partially cleared, the clouds around the

western horizon becoming lighted up with the rays of the sinking sun.

Cytherea drew a long breath of relief, and prepared to go away. She was

full of a distressing sense that her detention in the old manor-house,

and the acquaintanceship it had set on foot, was not a thing she wished.

It was such a foolish thing to have been excited and dragged into

frankness by the wiles of a stranger.

‘Allow me to come with you,’ he said, accompanying her to the door, and

again showing by his behaviour how much he was impressed with her. His

influence over her had vanished with the musical chords, and she turned

her back upon him. ‘May I come?’ he repeated.

‘No, no. The distance is not a quarter of a mile--it is really not

necessary, thank you,’ she said quietly. And wishing him good-evening,

without meeting his eyes, she went down the steps, leaving him standing

at the door.

‘O, how is it that man has so fascinated me?’ was all she could think.

Her own self, as she had sat spell-bound before him, was all she could

see. Her gait was constrained, from the knowledge that his eyes were

upon her until she had passed the hollow by the waterfall, and by

ascending the rise had become hidden from his view by the boughs of the

overhanging trees.

5. SIX TO SEVEN P.M.

The wet shining road threw the western glare into her eyes with an

invidious lustre which rendered the restlessness of her mood more

wearying. Her thoughts flew from idea to idea without asking for the

slightest link of connection between one and another. One moment she

was full of the wild music and stirring scene with Manston---the next,

Edward’s image rose before her like a shadowy ghost. Then Manston’s

black eyes seemed piercing her again, and the reckless voluptuous mouth

appeared bending to the curves of his special words. What could be those

troubles to which he had alluded? Perhaps Miss Aldclyffe was at the

bottom of them. Sad at heart she paced on: her life was bewildering her.

On coming into Miss Aldclyffe’s presence Cytherea told her of the

incident, not without a fear that she would burst into one of her

ungovernable fits of temper at learning Cytherea’s slight departure

from the programme. But, strangely to Cytherea, Miss Aldclyffe looked

delighted. The usual cross-examination followed.

‘And so you were with him all that time?’ said the lady, with assumed

severity.

‘Yes, I was.’

‘I did not tell you to call at the Old House twice.’

‘I didn’t call, as I have said. He made me come into the porch.’

‘What remarks did he make, do you say?’

‘That the lightning was not so bad as I thought.’

‘A very important remark, that. Did he--’ she turned her glance full

upon the girl, and eyeing her searchingly, said--

‘Did he say anything about _me_?’

‘Nothing,’ said Cytherea, returning her gaze calmly, ‘except that I was

to give you the subscription.’

‘You are quite sure?’

‘Quite.’

‘I believe you. Did he say anything striking or strange about himself?’

‘Only one thing--that he was troubled,’

‘Troubled!’

After saying the word, Miss Aldclyffe relapsed into silence. Such

behaviour as this had ended, on most previous occasions, by her making

a confession, and Cytherea expected one now. But for once she was

mistaken, nothing more was said.

When she had returned to her room she sat down and penned a farewell

letter to Edward Springrove, as little able as any other excitable

and brimming young woman of nineteen to feel that the wisest and only

dignified course at that juncture was to do nothing at all. She told

him that, to her painful surprise, she had learnt that his engagement

to another woman was a matter of notoriety. She insisted that all honour

bade him marry his early love--a woman far better than her unworthy

self, who only deserved to be forgotten, and begged him to remember

that he was not to see her face again. She upbraided him for levity

and cruelty in meeting her so frequently at Budmouth, and above all

in stealing the kiss from her lips on the last evening of the water

excursions. ‘I never, never can forget it!’ she said, and then felt a

sensation of having done her duty, ostensibly persuading herself that

her reproaches and commands were of such a force that no man to whom

they were uttered could ever approach her more.

Yet it was all unconsciously said in words which betrayed a lingering

tenderness of love at every unguarded turn. Like Beatrice accusing

Dante from the chariot, try as she might to play the superior being

who contemned such mere eye-sensuousness, she betrayed at every point

a pretty woman’s jealousy of a rival, and covertly gave her old lover

hints for excusing himself at each fresh indictment.

This done, Cytherea, still in a practical mood, upbraided herself with

weakness in allowing a stranger like Mr. Manston to influence her as he

had done that evening. What right on earth had he to suggest so suddenly

that she might meet him at the waterfall to receive his music? She would

have given much to be able to annihilate the ascendency he had obtained

over her during that extraordinary interval of melodious sound. Not

being able to endure the notion of his living a minute longer in the

belief he was then holding, she took her pen and wrote to him also:--

‘KNAPWATER HOUSE

September 20th.

‘I find I cannot meet you at seven o’clock by the waterfall as I

promised. The emotion I felt made me forgetful of realities.

‘C. GRAYE.’

A great statesman thinks several times, and acts; a young lady acts,

and thinks several times. When, a few minutes later, she saw the postman

carry off the bag containing one of the letters, and a messenger with

the other, she, for the first time, asked herself the question whether

she had acted very wisely in writing to either of the two men who had so

influenced her.

IX. THE EVENTS OF TEN WEEKS

1. FROM SEPTEMBER THE TWENTY-FIRST TO THE MIDDLE OF NOVEMBER

The foremost figure within Cytherea’s horizon, exclusive of the inmates

of Knapwater House, was now the steward, Mr. Manston. It was impossible

that they should live within a quarter of a mile of each other, be

engaged in the same service, and attend the same church, without meeting

at some spot or another, twice or thrice a week. On Sundays, in her

pew, when by chance she turned her head, Cytherea found his eyes waiting

desirously for a glimpse of hers, and, at first more strangely, the eyes

of Miss Aldclyffe furtively resting on him. On coming out of church he

frequently walked beside Cytherea till she reached the gate at

which residents in the House turned into the shrubbery. By degrees a

conjecture grew to a certainty. She knew that he loved her.

But a strange fact was connected with the development of his love. He

was palpably making the strongest efforts to subdue, or at least to

hide, the weakness, and as it sometimes seemed, rather from his own

conscience than from surrounding eyes. Hence she found that not one

of his encounters with her was anything more than the result of pure

accident. He made no advances whatever: without avoiding her, he never

sought her: the words he had whispered at their first interview now

proved themselves to be quite as much the result of unguarded impulse as

was her answer. Something held him back, bound his impulse down, but

she saw that it was neither pride of his person, nor fear that she would

refuse him--a course she unhesitatingly resolved to take should he think

fit to declare himself. She was interested in him and his marvellous

beauty, as she might have been in some fascinating panther or

leopard--for some undefinable reason she shrank from him, even whilst

she admired. The keynote of her nature, a warm ‘precipitance of soul,’

as Coleridge happily writes it, which Manston had so directly pounced

upon at their very first interview, gave her now a tremulous sense of

being in some way in his power.

The state of mind was, on the whole, a dangerous one for a young and

inexperienced woman; and perhaps the circumstance which, more than any

other, led her to cherish Edward’s image now, was that he had taken no

notice of the receipt of her letter, stating that she discarded him. It

was plain then, she said, that he did not care deeply for her, and she

thereupon could not quite leave off caring deeply for him:--

‘Ingenium mulierum,

Nolunt ubi velis, ubi nolis cupiunt ultro.’

The month of October passed, and November began its course. The

inhabitants of the village of Carriford grew weary of supposing that

Miss Aldclyffe was going to marry her steward. New whispers arose and

became very distinct (though they did not reach Miss Aldclyffe’s ears)

to the effect that the steward was deeply in love with Cytherea Graye.

Indeed, the fact became so obvious that there was nothing left to

say about it except that their marriage would be an excellent one for

both;--for her in point of comfort--and for him in point of love.

As circles in a pond grow wider and wider, the next fact, which at first

had been patent only to Cytherea herself, in due time spread to her

neighbours, and they, too, wondered that he made no overt advances. By

the middle of November, a theory made up of a combination of the other

two was received with general favour: its substance being that a guilty

intrigue had been commenced between Manston and Miss Aldclyffe, some

years before, when he was a very young man, and she still in the

enjoyment of some womanly beauty, but now that her seniority began

to grow emphatic she was becoming distasteful to him. His fear of the

effect of the lady’s jealousy would, they said, thus lead him to conceal

from her his new attachment to Cytherea. Almost the only woman who did

not believe this was Cytherea herself, on unmistakable grounds, which

were hidden from all besides. It was not only in public, but even more

markedly in secluded places, on occasions when gallantry would have been

safe from all discovery, that this guarded course of action was pursued,

all the strength of a consuming passion burning in his eyes the while.

2. NOVEMBER THE EIGHTEENTH

It was on a Friday in this month of November that Owen Graye paid a

visit to his sister.

His zealous integrity still retained for him the situation at Budmouth,

and in order that there should be as little interruption as possible to

his duties there, he had decided not to come to Knapwater till late in

the afternoon, and to return to Budmouth by the first train the next

morning, Miss Aldclyffe having made a point of frequently offering him

lodging for an unlimited period, to the great pleasure of Cytherea.

He reached the house about four o’clock, and ringing the bell, asked of

the page who answered it for Miss Graye.

When Graye spoke the name of his sister, Manston, who was just coming

out from an interview with Miss Aldclyffe, passed him in the vestibule

and heard the question. The steward’s face grew hot, and he secretly

clenched his hands. He half crossed the court, then turned his head and

saw that the lad still stood at the door, though Owen had been shown

into the house. Manston went back to him.

‘Who was that man?’ he said.

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Has he ever been here before?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘How many times?’

‘Three.’

‘You are sure you don’t know him?’

‘I think he is Miss Graye’s brother, sir.’

‘Then, why the devil didn’t you say so before!’ Manston exclaimed, and

again went on his way.

‘Of course, that was not the man of my dreams--of course, it couldn’t

be!’ he said to himself. ‘That I should be such a fool--such an utter

fool. Good God! to allow a girl to influence me like this, day after

day, till I am jealous of her very brother. A lady’s dependent, a waif,

a helpless thing entirely at the mercy of the world; yes, curse it; that

is just why it is; that fact of her being so helpless against the blows

of circumstances which renders her so deliciously sweet!’

He paused opposite his house. Should he get his horse saddled? No.

He went down the drive and out of the park, having started to proceed to

an outlying spot on the estate concerning some draining, and to call at

the potter’s yard to make an arrangement for the supply of pipes. But a

remark which Miss Aldclyffe had dropped in relation to Cytherea was

what still occupied his mind, and had been the immediate cause of his

excitement at the sight of her brother. Miss Aldclyffe had meaningly

remarked during their intercourse, that Cytherea was wildly in love with

Edward Springrove, in spite of his engagement to his cousin Adelaide.

‘How I am harassed!’ he said aloud, after deep thought for half-an-hour,

while still continuing his walk with the greatest vehemence. ‘How I am

harassed by these emotions of mine!’ He calmed himself by an effort.

‘Well, duty after all it shall be, as nearly as I can effect it.

“Honesty is the best policy;”’ with which vigorously uttered resolve

he once more attempted to turn his attention to the prosy object of his

journey.

The evening had closed in to a dark and dreary night when the steward

came from the potter’s door to proceed homewards again. The gloom did

not tend to raise his spirits, and in the total lack of objects to

attract his eye, he soon fell to introspection as before. It was along

the margin of turnip fields that his path lay, and the large leaves of

the crop struck flatly against his feet at every step, pouring upon them

the rolling drops of moisture gathered upon their broad surfaces; but

the annoyance was unheeded. Next reaching a fir plantation, he mounted

the stile and followed the path into the midst of the darkness produced

by the overhanging trees.

After walking under the dense shade of the inky boughs for a few

minutes, he fancied he had mistaken the path, which as yet was scarcely

familiar to him. This was proved directly afterwards by his coming

at right angles upon some obstruction, which careful feeling with

outstretched hands soon told him to be a rail fence. However, as the

wood was not large, he experienced no alarm about finding the path

again, and with some sense of pleasure halted awhile against the rails,

to listen to the intensely melancholy yet musical wail of the fir-tops,

and as the wind passed on, the prompt moan of an adjacent plantation in

reply. He could just dimly discern the airy summits of the two or

three trees nearest him waving restlessly backwards and forwards, and

stretching out their boughs like hairy arms into the dull sky. The

scene, from its striking and emphatic loneliness, began to grow

congenial to his mood; all of human kind seemed at the antipodes.

A sudden rattle on his right hand caused him to start from his reverie,

and turn in that direction. There, before him, he saw rise up from among

the trees a fountain of sparks and smoke, then a red glare of light

coming forward towards him; then a flashing panorama of illuminated

oblong pictures; then the old darkness, more impressive than ever.

The surprise, which had owed its origin to his imperfect acquaintance

with the topographical features of that end of the estate, had been but

momentary; the disturbance, a well-known one to dwellers by a railway,

being caused by the 6.50 down-train passing along a shallow cutting

in the midst of the wood immediately below where he stood, the driver

having the fire-door of the engine open at the minute of going by. The

train had, when passing him, already considerably slackened speed, and

now a whistle was heard, announcing that Carriford Road Station was not

far in its van.

But contrary to the natural order of things, the discovery that it

was only a commonplace train had not caused Manston to stir from his

position of facing the railway.

If the 6.50 down-train had been a flash of forked lightning transfixing

him to the earth, he could scarcely have remained in a more trance-like

state. He still leant against the railings, his right hand still

continued pressing on his walking-stick, his weight on one foot, his

other heel raised, his eyes wide open towards the blackness of the

cutting. The only movement in him was a slight dropping of the lower

jaw, separating his previously closed lips a little way, as when a

strange conviction rushes home suddenly upon a man. A new surprise, not

nearly so trivial as the first, had taken possession of him.

It was on this account. At one of the illuminated windows of a

second-class carriage in the series gone by, he had seen a pale face,

reclining upon one hand, the light from the lamp falling full upon it.

The face was a woman’s.

At last Manston moved; gave a whispering kind of whistle, adjusted his

hat, and walked on again, cross-questioning himself in every direction

as to how a piece of knowledge he had carefully concealed had found its

way to another person’s intelligence. ‘How can my address have become

known?’ he said at length, audibly. ‘Well, it is a blessing I have been

circumspect and honourable, in relation to that--yes, I will say it, for

once, even if the words choke me, that darling of mine, Cytherea, never

to be my own, never. I suppose all will come out now. All!’ The great

sadness of his utterance proved that no mean force had been exercised

upon himself to sustain the circumspection he had just claimed.

He wheeled to the left, pursued the ditch beside the railway fence, and

presently emerged from the wood, stepping into a road which crossed the

railway by a bridge.

As he neared home, the anxiety lately written in his face, merged by

degrees into a grimly humorous smile, which hung long upon his lips, and

he quoted aloud a line from the book of Jeremiah--

‘A woman shall compass a man.’

3. NOVEMBER THE NINETEENTH. DAYBREAK

Before it was light the next morning, two little naked feet pattered

along the passage in Knapwater House, from which Owen Graye’s bedroom

opened, and a tap was given upon his door.

‘Owen, Owen, are you awake?’ said Cytherea in a whisper through the

keyhole. ‘You must get up directly, or you’ll miss the train.’

When he descended to his sister’s little room, he found her there

already waiting with a cup of cocoa and a grilled rasher on the table

for him. A hasty meal was despatched in the intervals of putting on his

overcoat and finding his hat, and they then went softly through the long

deserted passages, the kitchen-maid who had prepared their breakfast

walking before them with a lamp held high above her head, which cast

long wheeling shadows down corridors intersecting the one they followed,

their remoter ends being lost in darkness. The door was unbolted and

they stepped out.

Owen had preferred walking to the station to accepting the pony-carriage

which Miss Aldclyffe had placed at his disposal, having a morbid horror

of giving trouble to people richer than himself, and especially to their

men-servants, who looked down upon him as a hybrid monster in social

position. Cytherea proposed to walk a little way with him.

‘I want to talk to you as long as I can,’ she said tenderly.

Brother and sister then emerged by the heavy door into the drive. The

feeling and aspect of the hour were precisely similar to those under

which the steward had left the house the evening previous, excepting

that apparently unearthly reversal of natural sequence, which is caused

by the world getting lighter instead of darker. ‘The tearful glimmer of

the languid dawn’ was just sufficient to reveal to them the melancholy

red leaves, lying thickly in the channels by the roadside, ever and anon

loudly tapped on by heavy drops of water, which the boughs above had

collected from the foggy air.

They passed the Old House, engaged in a deep conversation, and had

proceeded about twenty yards by a cross route, in the direction of the

turnpike road, when the form of a woman emerged from the porch of the

building.

She was wrapped in a grey waterproof cloak, the hood of which was drawn

over her head and closely round her face--so closely that her eyes were

the sole features uncovered.

With this one exception of her appearance there, the most perfect

stillness and silence pervaded the steward’s residence from basement to

chimney. Not a shutter was open; not a twine of smoke came forth.

Underneath the ivy-covered gateway she stood still and listened for two,

or possibly three minutes, till she became conscious of others in the

park. Seeing the pair she stepped back, with the apparent intention

of letting them pass out of sight, and evidently wishing to avoid

observation. But looking at her watch, and returning it rapidly to her

pocket, as if surprised at the lateness of the hour, she hurried out

again, and across the park by a still more oblique line than that traced

by Owen and his sister.

These in the meantime had got into the road, and were walking along it

as the woman came up on the other side of the boundary hedge, looking

for a gate or stile, by which she, too, might get off the grass upon the

hard ground.

Their conversation, of which every word was clear and distinct, in the

still air of the dawn, to the distance of a quarter of a mile, reached

her ears, and withdrew her attention from all other matters and sights

whatsoever. Thus arrested she stood for an instant as precisely in the

attitude of Imogen by the cave of Belarius, as if she had studied the

position from the play. When they had advanced a few steps, she followed

them in some doubt, still screened by the hedge.

‘Do you believe in such odd coincidences?’ said Cytherea.

‘How do you mean, believe in them? They occur sometimes.’

‘Yes, one will occur often enough--that is, two disconnected events will

fall strangely together by chance, and people scarcely notice the fact

beyond saying, “Oddly enough it happened that so and so were the same,”

and so on. But when three such events coincide without any apparent

reason for the coincidence, it seems as if there must be invisible means

at work. You see, three things falling together in that manner are ten

times as singular as two cases of coincidence which are distinct.’

‘Well, of course: what a mathematical head you have, Cytherea! But I

don’t see so much to marvel at in our case. That the man who kept the

public-house in which Miss Aldclyffe fainted, and who found out her name

and position, lives in this neighbourhood, is accounted for by the fact

that she got him the berth to stop his tongue. That you came here was

simply owing to Springrove.’

‘Ah, but look at this. Miss Aldclyffe is the woman our father first

loved, and I have come to Miss Aldclyffe’s; you can’t get over that.’

From these premises, she proceeded to argue like an elderly divine on

the designs of Providence which were apparent in such conjunctures, and

went into a variety of details connected with Miss Aldclyffe’s history.

‘Had I better tell Miss Aldclyffe that I know all this?’ she inquired at

last.

‘What’s the use?’ he said. ‘Your possessing the knowledge does no harm;

you are at any rate comfortable here, and a confession to Miss Aldclyffe

might only irritate her. No, hold your tongue, Cytherea.’

‘I fancy I should have been tempted to tell her too,’ Cytherea went on,

‘had I not found out that there exists a very odd, almost imperceptible,

and yet real connection of some kind between her and Mr. Manston, which

is more than that of a mutual interest in the estate.’

‘She is in love with him!’ exclaimed Owen; ‘fancy that!’

‘Ah--that’s what everybody says who has been keen enough to notice

anything. I said so at first. And yet now I cannot persuade myself that

she is in love with him at all.’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘She doesn’t act as if she were. She isn’t--you will know I don’t say it

from any vanity, Owen--she isn’t the least jealous of me.’

‘Perhaps she is in some way in his power.’

‘No--she is not. He was openly advertised for, and chosen from forty or

fifty who answered the advertisement, without knowing whose it was. And

since he has been here, she has certainly done nothing to compromise

herself in any way. Besides, why should she have brought an enemy here

at all?’

‘Then she must have fallen in love with him. You know as well as I do,

Cyth, that with women there’s nothing between the two poles of emotion

towards an interesting male acquaintance. ‘Tis either love or aversion.’

They walked for a few minutes in silence, when Cytherea’s eyes

accidentally fell upon her brother’s feet.

‘Owen,’ she said, ‘do you know that there is something unusual in your

manner of walking?’

‘What is it like?’ he asked.

‘I can’t quite say, except that you don’t walk so regularly as you used

to.’

The woman behind the hedge, who had still continued to dog their

footsteps, made an impatient movement at this change in their

conversation, and looked at her watch again. Yet she seemed reluctant to

give over listening to them.

‘Yes,’ Owen returned with assumed carelessness, ‘I do know it. I think

the cause of it is that mysterious pain which comes just above my ankle

sometimes. You remember the first time I had it? That day we went by

steam-packet to Lulstead Cove, when it hindered me from coming back to

you, and compelled me to sleep with the gateman we have been talking

about.’

‘But is it anything serious, dear Owen?’ Cytherea exclaimed, with some

alarm.

‘O, nothing at all. It is sure to go off again. I never find a sign of

it when I sit in the office.’

Again their unperceived companion made a gesture of vexation, and looked

at her watch as if time were precious. But the dialogue still flowed

on upon this new subject, and showed no sign of returning to its old

channel.

Gathering up her skirt decisively she renounced all further hope, and

hurried along the ditch till she had dropped into a valley, and came to

a gate which was beyond the view of those coming behind. This she softly

opened, and came out upon the road, following it in the direction of the

railway station.

Presently she heard Owen Graye’s footsteps in her rear, his quickened

pace implying that he had parted from his sister. The woman thereupon

increased her rapid walk to a run, and in a few minutes safely distanced

her fellow-traveller.

The railway at Carriford Road consisted only of a single line of rails;

and the short local down-train by which Owen was going to Budmouth was

shunted on to a siding whilst the first up-train passed. Graye entered

the waiting-room, and the door being open he listlessly observed the

movements of a woman wearing a long grey cloak, and closely hooded, who

had asked for a ticket for London.

He followed her with his eyes on to the platform, saw her waiting there

and afterwards stepping into the train: his recollection of her ceasing

with the perception.

4. EIGHT TO TEN O’CLOCK A.M.

Mrs. Crickett, twice a widow, and now the parish clerk’s wife, a

fine-framed, scandal-loving woman, with a peculiar corner to her eye by

which, without turning her head, she could see what people were doing

almost behind her, lived in a cottage standing nearer to the old

manor-house than any other in the village of Carriford, and she had on

that account been temporarily engaged by the steward, as a respectable

kind of charwoman and general servant, until a settled arrangement could

be made with some person as permanent domestic.

Every morning, therefore, Mrs. Crickett, immediately she had lighted

the fire in her own cottage, and prepared the breakfast for herself and

husband, paced her way to the Old House to do the same for Mr. Manston.

Then she went home to breakfast; and when the steward had eaten his, and

had gone out on his rounds, she returned again to clear away, make his

bed, and put the house in order for the day.

On the morning of Owen Graye’s departure, she went through the

operations of her first visit as usual--proceeded home to breakfast, and

went back again, to perform those of the second.

Entering Manston’s empty bedroom, with her hands on her hips, she

indifferently cast her eyes upon the bed, previously to dismantling it.

Whilst she looked, she thought in an inattentive manner, ‘What a

remarkably quiet sleeper Mr. Manston must be!’ The upper bed-clothes

were flung back, certainly, but the bed was scarcely disarranged.

‘Anybody would almost fancy,’ she thought, ‘that he had made it himself

after rising.’

But these evanescent thoughts vanished as they had come, and Mrs.

Crickett set to work; she dragged off the counterpane, blankets and

sheets, and stooped to lift the pillows. Thus stooping, something

arrested her attention; she looked closely--more closely--very closely.

‘Well, to be sure!’ was all she could say. The clerk’s wife stood as if

the air had suddenly set to amber, and held her fixed like a fly in it.

The object of her wonder was a trailing brown hair, very little less

than a yard long, which proved it clearly to be a hair from some woman’s

head. She drew it off the pillow, and took it to the window; there

holding it out she looked fixedly at it, and became utterly lost in

meditation: her gaze, which had at first actively settled on the hair,

involuntarily dropped past its object by degrees and was lost on the

floor, as the inner vision obscured the outer one.

She at length moistened her lips, returned her eyes to the hair, wound

it round her fingers, put it in some paper, and secreted the whole in

her pocket. Mrs. Crickett’s thoughts were with her work no more that

morning.

She searched the house from roof-tree to cellar, for some other trace of

feminine existence or appurtenance; but none was to be found.

She went out into the yard, coal-hole, stable, hay-loft, green-house,

fowl-house, and piggery, and still there was no sign. Coming in again,

she saw a bonnet, eagerly pounced upon it; and found it to be her own.

Hastily completing her arrangements in the other rooms, she entered the

village again, and called at once on the postmistress, Elizabeth Leat,

an intimate friend of hers, and a female who sported several unique

diseases and afflictions.

Mrs. Crickett unfolded the paper, took out the hair, and waved it on

high before the perplexed eyes of Elizabeth, which immediately mooned

and wandered after it like a cat’s.

‘What is it?’ said Mrs. Leat, contracting her eyelids, and stretching

out towards the invisible object a narrow bony hand that would have been

an unmitigated delight to the pencil of Carlo Crivelli.

‘You shall hear,’ said Mrs. Crickett, complacently gathering up the

treasure into her own fat hand; and the secret was then solemnly

imparted, together with the accident of its discovery.

A shaving-glass was taken down from a nail, laid on its back in the

middle of a table by the window, and the hair spread carefully out upon

it. The pair then bent over the table from opposite sides, their elbows

on the edge, their hands supporting their heads, their foreheads nearly

touching, and their eyes upon the hair.

‘He ha’ been mad a’ter my lady Cytherea,’ said Mrs. Crickett, ‘and ‘tis

my very belief the hair is--’

‘No ‘tidn’. Hers idn’ so dark as that,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Elizabeth, you know that as the faithful wife of a servant of the

Church, I should be glad to think as you do about the girl. Mind I

don’t wish to say anything against Miss Graye, but this I do say, that I

believe her to be a nameless thing, and she’s no right to stick a moral

clock in her face, and deceive the country in such a way. If she wasn’t

of a bad stock at the outset she was bad in the planten, and if she

wasn’t bad in the planten, she was bad in the growen, and if not in the

growen, she’s made bad by what she’s gone through since.’

‘But I have another reason for knowing it idn’ hers,’ said Mrs. Leat.

‘Ah! I know whose it is then--Miss Aldclyffe’s, upon my song!’

‘’Tis the colour of hers, but I don’t believe it to be hers either.’

‘Don’t you believe what they d’ say about her and him?’

‘I say nothen about that; but you don’t know what I know about his

letters.’

‘What about ‘em?’

‘He d’ post all his letters here except those for one person, and they

he d’ take to Budmouth. My son is in Budmouth Post Office, as you know,

and as he d’ sit at desk he can see over the blind of the window all

the people who d’ post letters. Mr. Manston d’ unvariably go there wi’

letters for that person; my boy d’ know ‘em by sight well enough now.’

‘Is it a she?’

‘’Tis a she.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘The little stunpoll of a fellow couldn’t call to mind more than that

‘tis Miss Somebody, of London. However, that’s the woman who ha’ been

here, depend upon’t--a wicked one--some poor street-wench escaped from

Sodom, I warrant ye.’

‘Only to find herself in Gomorrah, seemingly.’

‘That may be.’

‘No, no, Mrs. Leat, this is clear to me. ‘Tis no miss who came here to

see our steward last night--whenever she came or wherever she vanished.

Do you think he would ha’ let a miss get here how she could, go away how

she would, without breakfast or help of any kind?’

Elizabeth shook her head--Mrs. Crickett looked at her solemnly.

‘I say I know she had no help of any kind; I know it was so, for the

grate was quite cold when I touched it this morning with these fingers,

and he was still in bed. No, he wouldn’t take the trouble to write

letters to a girl and then treat her so off-hand as that. There’s a tie

between ‘em stronger than feelen. She’s his wife.’

‘He married! The Lord so ‘s, what shall we hear next? Do he look married

now? His are not the abashed eyes and lips of a married man.’

‘Perhaps she’s a tame one--but she’s his wife still.’

‘No, no: he’s not a married man.’

‘Yes, yes, he is. I’ve had three, and I ought to know.’

‘Well, well,’ said Mrs. Leat, giving way. ‘Whatever may be the truth

on’t I trust Providence will settle it all for the best, as He always

do.’

‘Ay, ay, Elizabeth,’ rejoined Mrs. Crickett with a satirical sigh, as

she turned on her foot to go home, ‘good people like you may say so, but

I have always found Providence a different sort of feller.’

5. NOVEMBER THE TWENTIETH

It was Miss Aldclyffe’s custom, a custom originated by her father, and

nourished by her own exclusiveness, to unlock the post-bag herself every

morning, instead of allowing the duty to devolve on the butler, as

was the case in most of the neighbouring county families. The bag was

brought upstairs each morning to her dressing-room, where she took out

the contents, mostly in the presence of her maid and Cytherea, who

had the entree of the chamber at all hours, and attended there in the

morning at a kind of reception on a small scale, which was held by Miss

Aldclyffe of her namesake only.

Here she read her letters before the glass, whilst undergoing the

operation of being brushed and dressed.

‘What woman can this be, I wonder?’ she said on the morning succeeding

that of the last section. ‘“London, N.!” It is the first time in my

life I ever had a letter from that outlandish place, the North side of

London.’

Cytherea had just come into her presence to learn if there was anything

for herself; and on being thus addressed, walked up to Miss Aldclyffe’s

corner of the room to look at the curiosity which had raised such an

exclamation. But the lady, having opened the envelope and read a few

lines, put it quickly in her pocket, before Cytherea could reach her

side.

‘O, ‘tis nothing,’ she said. She proceeded to make general remarks in

a noticeably forced tone of sang-froid, from which she soon lapsed into

silence. Not another word was said about the letter: she seemed very

anxious to get her dressing done, and the room cleared. Thereupon

Cytherea went away to the other window, and a few minutes later left the

room to follow her own pursuits.

It was late when Miss Aldclyffe descended to the breakfast-table and

then she seemed there to no purpose; tea, coffee, eggs, cutlets, and all

their accessories, were left absolutely untasted. The next that was seen

of her was when walking up and down the south terrace, and round the

flower-beds; her face was pale, and her tread was fitful, and she

crumpled a letter in her hand.

Dinner-time came round as usual; she did not speak ten words, or indeed

seem conscious of the meal; for all that Miss Aldclyffe did in the way

of eating, dinner might have been taken out as intact as it was taken

in.

In her own private apartment Miss Aldclyffe again pulled out the letter

of the morning. One passage in it ran thus:--

‘Of course, being his wife, I could publish the fact, and compel him

to acknowledge me at any moment, notwithstanding his threats, and

reasonings that it will be better to wait. I have waited, and waited

again, and the time for such acknowledgment seems no nearer than at

first. To show you how patiently I have waited I can tell you that not

till a fortnight ago, when by stress of circumstances I had been driven

to new lodgings, have I ever assumed my married name, solely on account

of its having been his request all along that I should not do it. This

writing to you, madam, is my first disobedience, and I am justified in

it. A woman who is driven to visit her husband like a thief in the night

and then sent away like a street dog--left to get up, unbolt, unbar,

and find her way out of the house as she best may--is justified in doing

anything.

‘But should I demand of him a restitution of rights, there would be

involved a publicity which I could not endure, and a noisy scandal

flinging my name the length and breadth of the country.

‘What I still prefer to any such violent means is that you reason with

him privately, and compel him to bring me home to your parish in a

decent and careful manner, in the way that would be adopted by any

respectable man, whose wife had been living away from him for some

time, by reason, say, of peculiar family circumstances which had caused

disunion, but not enmity, and who at length was enabled to reinstate her

in his house.

‘You will, I know, oblige me in this, especially as knowledge of a

peculiar transaction of your own, which took place some years ago, has

lately come to me in a singular way. I will not at present trouble you

by describing how. It is enough, that I alone, of all people living,

know _all the sides of the story_, those from whom I collected it having

each only a partial knowledge which confuses them and points to nothing.

One person knows of your early engagement and its sudden termination;

another, of the reason of those strange meetings at inns and

coffee-houses; another, of what was sufficient to cause all this, and so

on. I know what fits one and all the circumstances like a key, and shows

them to be the natural outcrop of a rational (though rather rash) line

of conduct for a young lady. You will at once perceive how it was that

some at least of these things were revealed to me.

‘This knowledge then, common to, and secretly treasured by us both, is

the ground upon which I beg for your friendship and help, with a feeling

that you will be too generous to refuse it to me.

‘I may add that, as yet, my husband knows nothing of this, neither need

he if you remember my request.’

‘A threat--a flat stinging threat! as delicately wrapped up in words as

the woman could do it; a threat from a miserable unknown creature to an

Aldclyffe, and not the least proud member of the family either! A threat

on his account--O, O! shall it be?’

Presently this humour of defiance vanished, and the members of her body

became supple again, her proceedings proving that it was absolutely

necessary to give way, Aldclyffe as she was. She wrote a short answer

to Mrs. Manston, saying civilly that Mr. Manston’s possession of such

a near relation was a fact quite new to herself, and that she would see

what could be done in such an unfortunate affair.

6. NOVEMBER THE TWENTY-FIRST

Manston received a message the next day requesting his attendance at the

House punctually at eight o’clock the ensuing evening. Miss Aldclyffe

was brave and imperious, but with the purpose she had in view she could

not look him in the face whilst daylight shone upon her.

The steward was shown into the library. On entering it, he was

immediately struck with the unusual gloom which pervaded the apartment.

The fire was dead and dull, one lamp, and that a comparatively small

one, was burning at the extreme end, leaving the main proportion of

the lofty and sombre room in an artificial twilight, scarcely powerful

enough to render visible the titles of the folio and quarto volumes

which were jammed into the lower tiers of the bookshelves.

After keeping him waiting for more than twenty minutes (Miss Aldclyffe

knew that excellent recipe for taking the stiffness out of human flesh,

and for extracting all pre-arrangement from human speech) she entered

the room.

Manston sought her eye directly. The hue of her features was not

discernible, but the calm glance she flung at him, from which all

attempt at returning his scrutiny was absent, awoke him to the

perception that probably his secret was by some means or other known to

her; how it had become known he could not tell.

She drew forth the letter, unfolded it, and held it up to him, letting

it hang by one corner from between her finger and thumb, so that the

light from the lamp, though remote, fell directly upon its surface.

‘You know whose writing this is?’ she said.

He saw the strokes plainly, instantly resolving to burn his ships and

hazard all on an advance.

‘My wife’s,’ he said calmly.

His quiet answer threw her off her balance. She had no more expected an

answer than does a preacher when he exclaims from the pulpit, ‘Do you

feel your sin?’ She had clearly expected a sudden alarm.

‘And why all this concealment?’ she said again, her voice rising, as she

vainly endeavoured to control her feelings, whatever they were.

‘It doesn’t follow that, because a man is married, he must tell every

stranger of it, madam,’ he answered, just as calmly as before.

‘Stranger! well, perhaps not; but, Mr. Manston, why did you choose to

conceal it, I ask again? I have a perfect right to ask this question, as

you will perceive, if you consider the terms of my advertisement.’

‘I will tell you. There were two simple reasons. The first was this

practical one; you advertised for an unmarried man, if you remember?’

‘Of course I remember.’

‘Well, an incident suggested to me that I should try for the situation.

I was married; but, knowing that in getting an office where there is a

restriction of this kind, leaving one’s wife behind is always accepted

as a fulfilment of the condition, I left her behind for awhile. The

other reason is, that these terms of yours afforded me a plausible

excuse for escaping (for a short time) the company of a woman I had been

mistaken in marrying.’

‘Mistaken! what was she?’ the lady inquired.

‘A third-rate actress, whom I met with during my stay in Liverpool

last summer, where I had gone to fulfil a short engagement with an

architect.’

‘Where did she come from?’

‘She is an American by birth, and I grew to dislike her when we had been

married a week.’

‘She was ugly, I imagine?’

‘She is not an ugly woman by any means.’

‘Up to the ordinary standard?’

‘Quite up to the ordinary standard--indeed, handsome. After a while we

quarrelled and separated.’

‘You did not ill-use her, of course?’ said Miss Aldclyffe, with a little

sarcasm.

‘I did not.’

‘But at any rate, you got thoroughly tired of her.’

Manston looked as if he began to think her questions out of place;

however, he said quietly, ‘I did get tired of her. I never told her so,

but we separated; I to come here, bringing her with me as far as London

and leaving her there in perfectly comfortable quarters; and though your

advertisement expressed a single man, I have always intended to tell

you the whole truth; and this was when I was going to tell it, when

your satisfaction with my careful management of your affairs should have

proved the risk to be a safe one to run.’

She bowed.

‘Then I saw that you were good enough to be interested in my welfare to

a greater extent than I could have anticipated or hoped, judging you by

the frigidity of other employers, and this caused me to hesitate. I was

vexed at the complication of affairs. So matters stood till three

nights ago; I was then walking home from the pottery, and came up to the

railway. The down-train came along close to me, and there, sitting at

a carriage window, I saw my wife: she had found out my address, and had

thereupon determined to follow me here. I had not been home many minutes

before she came in, next morning early she left again--’

‘Because you treated her so cavalierly?’

‘And as I suppose, wrote to you directly. That’s the whole story of her,

madam.’ Whatever were Manston’s real feelings towards the lady who had

received his explanation in these supercilious tones, they remained

locked within him as within a casket of steel.

‘Did your friends know of your marriage, Mr. Manston?’ she continued.

‘Nobody at all; we kept it a secret for various reasons.’

‘It is true then that, as your wife tells me in this letter, she has not

passed as Mrs. Manston till within these last few days?’

‘It is quite true; I was in receipt of a very small and uncertain income

when we married; and so she continued playing at the theatre as before

our marriage, and in her maiden name.’

‘Has she any friends?’

‘I have never heard that she has any in England. She came over here on

some theatrical speculation, as one of a company who were going to do

much, but who never did anything; and here she has remained.’

A pause ensued, which was terminated by Miss Aldclyffe.

‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Now, though I have no direct right to concern

myself with your private affairs (beyond those which arise from your

misleading me and getting the office you hold)--’

‘As to that, madam,’ he interrupted, rather hotly, ‘as to coming here,

I am vexed as much as you. Somebody, a member of the Institute of

Architects--who, I could never tell--sent to my old address in London

your advertisement cut from the paper; it was forwarded to me; I wanted

to get away from Liverpool, and it seemed as if this was put in my way

on purpose, by some old friend or other. I answered the advertisement

certainly, but I was not particularly anxious to come here, nor am I

anxious to stay.’

Miss Aldclyffe descended from haughty superiority to womanly persuasion

with a haste which was almost ludicrous. Indeed, the Quos ego of the

whole lecture had been less the genuine menace of the imperious ruler of

Knapwater than an artificial utterance to hide a failing heart.

‘Now, now, Mr. Manston, you wrong me; don’t suppose I wish to be

overbearing, or anything of the kind; and you will allow me to say this

much, at any rate, that I have become interested in your wife, as well

as in yourself.’

‘Certainly, madam,’ he said, slowly, like a man feeling his way in the

dark. Manston was utterly at fault now. His previous experience of the

effect of his form and features upon womankind en masse, had taught

him to flatter himself that he could account by the same law of natural

selection for the extraordinary interest Miss Aldclyffe had hitherto

taken in him, as an unmarried man; an interest he did not at all object

to, seeing that it kept him near Cytherea, and enabled him, a man of

no wealth, to rule on the estate as if he were its lawful owner. Like

Curius at his Sabine farm, he had counted it his glory not to possess

gold himself, but to have power over her who did. But at this hint of

the lady’s wish to take his wife under her wing also, he was perplexed:

could she have any sinister motive in doing so? But he did not allow

himself to be troubled with these doubts, which only concerned his

wife’s happiness.

‘She tells me,’ continued Miss Aldclyffe, ‘how utterly alone in

the world she stands, and that is an additional reason why I should

sympathize with her. Instead, then, of requesting the favour of your

retirement from the post, and dismissing your interests altogether, I

will retain you as my steward still, on condition that you bring home

your wife, and live with her respectably, in short, as if you loved her;

you understand. I _wish_ you to stay here if you grant that everything

shall flow smoothly between yourself and her.’

The breast and shoulders of the steward rose, as if an expression

of defiance was about to be poured forth; before it took form, he

controlled himself and said, in his natural voice--

‘My part of the performance shall be carried out, madam.’

‘And her anxiety to obtain a standing in the world ensures that hers

will,’ replied Miss Aldclyffe. ‘That will be satisfactory, then.’

After a few additional remarks, she gently signified that she wished to

put an end to the interview. The steward took the hint and retired.

He felt vexed and mortified; yet in walking homeward he was convinced

that telling the whole truth as he had done, with the single exception

of his love for Cytherea (which he tried to hide even from himself), had

never served him in better stead than it had done that night.

Manston went to his desk and thought of Cytherea’s beauty with the

bitterest, wildest regret. After the lapse of a few minutes he calmed

himself by a stoical effort, and wrote the subjoined letter to his

wife:--

‘KNAPWATER,

November 21, 1864.

‘DEAR EUNICE,--I hope you reached London safely after your flighty visit

to me.

‘As I promised, I have thought over our conversation that night, and

your wish that your coming here should be no longer delayed. After all,

it was perfectly natural that you should have spoken unkindly as you

did, ignorant as you were of the circumstances which bound me.

‘So I have made arrangements to fetch you home at once. It is hardly

worth while for you to attempt to bring with you any luggage you may

have gathered about you (beyond mere clothing). Dispose of superfluous

things at a broker’s; your bringing them would only make a talk in

this parish, and lead people to believe we had long been keeping house

separately.

‘Will next Monday suit you for coming? You have nothing to do that can

occupy you for more than a day or two, as far as I can see, and the

remainder of this week will afford ample time. I can be in London the

night before, and we will come down together by the mid-day train--Your

very affectionate husband,

‘AENEAS MANSTON.

‘Now, of course, I shall no longer write to you as Mrs. Rondley.’

The address on the envelope was--

MRS. MANSTON, 41 CHARLES SQUARE,

HOXTON,

LONDON, N.

He took the letter to the house, and it being too late for the country

post, sent one of the stablemen with it to Casterbridge, instead of

troubling to go to Budmouth with it himself as heretofore. He had no

longer any necessity to keep his condition a secret.

7. FROM THE TWENTY-SECOND TO THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF NOVEMBER

But the next morning Manston found that he had been forgetful of another

matter, in naming the following Monday to his wife for the journey.

The fact was this. A letter had just come, reminding him that he had

left the whole of the succeeding week open for an important business

engagement with a neighbouring land-agent, at that gentleman’s residence

thirteen miles off. The particular day he had suggested to his wife,

had, in the interim, been appropriated by his correspondent. The meeting

could not now be put off.

So he wrote again to his wife, stating that business, which could not

be postponed, called him away from home on Monday, and would entirely

prevent him coming all the way to fetch her on Sunday night as he had

intended, but that he would meet her at the Carriford Road Station with

a conveyance when she arrived there in the evening.

The next day came his wife’s answer to his first letter, in which she

said that she would be ready to be fetched at the time named. Having

already written his second letter, which was by that time in her hands,

he made no further reply.

The week passed away. The steward had, in the meantime, let it become

generally known in the village that he was a married man, and by a

little judicious management, sound family reasons for his past secrecy

upon the subject, which were floated as adjuncts to the story, were

placidly received; they seemed so natural and justifiable to the

unsophisticated minds of nine-tenths of his neighbours, that curiosity

in the matter, beyond a strong curiosity to see the lady’s face, was

well-nigh extinguished.

X. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT

1. NOVEMBER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH. UNTIL TEN P.M.

Monday came, the day named for Mrs. Manston’s journey from London to

her husband’s house; a day of singular and great events, influencing

the present and future of nearly all the personages whose actions in a

complex drama form the subject of this record.

The proceedings of the steward demand the first notice. Whilst taking

his breakfast on this particular morning, the clock pointing to eight,

the horse-and-gig that was to take him to Chettlewood waiting ready at

the door, Manston hurriedly cast his eyes down the column of Bradshaw

which showed the details and duration of the selected train’s journey.

The inspection was carelessly made, the leaf being kept open by the aid

of one hand, whilst the other still held his cup of coffee; much more

carelessly than would have been the case had the expected new-comer been

Cytherea Graye, instead of his lawful wife.

He did not perceive, branching from the column down which his finger

ran, a small twist, called a shunting-line, inserted at a particular

place, to imply that at that point the train was divided into two. By

this oversight he understood that the arrival of his wife at Carriford

Road Station would not be till late in the evening: by the second half

of the train, containing the third-class passengers, and passing two

hours and three-quarters later than the previous one, by which the lady,

as a second-class passenger, would really be brought.

He then considered that there would be plenty of time for him to return

from his day’s engagement to meet this train. He finished his breakfast,

gave proper and precise directions to his servant on the preparations

that were to be made for the lady’s reception, jumped into his gig, and

drove off to Lord Claydonfield’s, at Chettlewood.

He went along by the front of Knapwater House. He could not help turning

to look at what he knew to be the window of Cytherea’s room. Whilst he

looked, a hopeless expression of passionate love and sensuous anguish

came upon his face and lingered there for a few seconds; then, as on

previous occasions, it was resolutely repressed, and he trotted along

the smooth white road, again endeavouring to banish all thought of the

young girl whose beauty and grace had so enslaved him.

Thus it was that when, in the evening of the same day, Mrs. Manston

reached Carriford Road Station, her husband was still at Chettlewood,

ignorant of her arrival, and on looking up and down the platform, dreary

with autumn gloom and wind, she could see no sign that any preparation

whatever had been made for her reception and conduct home.

The train went on. She waited, fidgeted with the handle of her umbrella,

walked about, strained her eyes into the gloom of the chilly night,

listened for wheels, tapped with her foot, and showed all the usual

signs of annoyance and irritation: she was the more irritated in

that this seemed a second and culminating instance of her husband’s

neglect--the first having been shown in his not fetching her.

Reflecting awhile upon the course it would be best to take, in order

to secure a passage to Knapwater, she decided to leave all her luggage,

except a dressing-bag, in the cloak-room, and walk to her husband’s

house, as she had done on her first visit. She asked one of the porters

if he could find a lad to go with her and carry her bag: he offered to

do it himself.

The porter was a good-tempered, shallow-minded, ignorant man. Mrs.

Manston, being apparently in very gloomy spirits, would probably have

preferred walking beside him without saying a word: but her companion

would not allow silence to continue between them for a longer period

than two or three minutes together.

He had volunteered several remarks upon her arrival, chiefly to the

effect that it was very unfortunate Mr. Manston had not come to the

station for her, when she suddenly asked him concerning the inhabitants

of the parish.

He told her categorically the names of the chief--first the chief

possessors of property; then of brains; then of good looks. As first

among the latter he mentioned Miss Cytherea Graye.

After getting him to describe her appearance as completely as lay in

his power, she wormed out of him the statement that everybody had been

saying--before Mrs. Manston’s existence was heard of--how well the

handsome Mr. Manston and the beautiful Miss Graye were suited for each

other as man and wife, and that Miss Aldclyffe was the only one in the

parish who took no interest in bringing about the match.

‘He rather liked her you think?’

The porter began to think he had been too explicit, and hastened to

correct the error.

‘O no, he don’t care a bit about her, ma’am,’ he said solemnly.

‘Not more than he does about me?’

‘Not a bit.’

‘Then that must be little indeed,’ Mrs. Manston murmured. She stood

still, as if reflecting upon the painful neglect her words had recalled

to her mind; then, with a sudden impulse, turned round, and walked

petulantly a few steps back again in the direction of the station.

The porter stood still and looked surprised.

‘I’ll go back again; yes, indeed, I’ll go back again!’ she said

plaintively. Then she paused and looked anxiously up and down the

deserted road.

‘No, I mustn’t go back now,’ she continued, in a tone of resignation.

Seeing that the porter was watching her, she turned about and came on as

before, giving vent to a slight laugh.

It was a laugh full of character; the low forced laugh which seeks to

hide the painful perception of a humiliating position under the mask of

indifference.

Altogether her conduct had shown her to be what in fact she was, a weak,

though a calculating woman, one clever to conceive, weak to execute:

one whose best-laid schemes were for ever liable to be frustrated by the

ineradicable blight of vacillation at the critical hour of action.

‘O, if I had only known that all this was going to happen!’ she murmured

again, as they paced along upon the rustling leaves.

‘What did you say, ma’am?’ said the porter.

‘O, nothing particular; we are getting near the old manor-house by this

time, I imagine?’

‘Very near now, ma’am.’

They soon reached Manston’s residence, round which the wind blew

mournfully and chill.

Passing under the detached gateway, they entered the porch. The porter

stepped forward, knocked heavily and waited.

Nobody came.

Mrs. Manston then advanced to the door and gave a different series of

rappings--less forcible, but more sustained.

There was not a movement of any kind inside, not a ray of light visible;

nothing but the echo of her own knocks through the passages, and the dry

scratching of the withered leaves blown about her feet upon the floor of

the porch.

The steward, of course, was not at home. Mrs. Crickett, not expecting

that anybody would arrive till the time of the later train, had set the

place in order, laid the supper-table, and then locked the door, to go

into the village and converse with her friends.

‘Is there an inn in the village?’ said Mrs. Manston, after the fourth

and loudest rapping upon the iron-studded old door had resulted only in

the fourth and loudest echo from the passages inside.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Who keeps it?’

‘Farmer Springrove.’

‘I will go there to-night,’ she said decisively. ‘It is too cold, and

altogether too bad, for a woman to wait in the open road on anybody’s

account, gentle or simple.’

They went down the park and through the gate, into the village of

Carriford. By the time they reached the Three Tranters, it was verging

upon ten o’clock. There, on the spot where two months earlier in the

season the sunny and lively group of villagers making cider under the

trees had greeted Cytherea’s eyes, was nothing now intelligible but a

vast cloak of darkness, from which came the low sough of the elms, and

the occasional creak of the swinging sign.

They went to the door, Mrs. Manston shivering; but less from the cold,

than from the dreariness of her emotions. Neglect is the coldest of

winter winds.

It so happened that Edward Springrove was expected to arrive from London

either on that evening or the next, and at the sound of voices his

father came to the door fully expecting to see him. A picture of

disappointment seldom witnessed in a man’s face was visible in old Mr.

Springrove’s, when he saw that the comer was a stranger.

Mrs. Manston asked for a room, and one that had been prepared for Edward

was immediately named as being ready for her, another being adaptable

for Edward, should he come in.

Without taking any refreshment, or entering any room downstairs, or even

lifting her veil, she walked straight along the passage and up to her

apartment, the chambermaid preceding her.

‘If Mr. Manston comes to-night,’ she said, sitting on the bed as she had

come in, and addressing the woman, ‘tell him I cannot see him.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

The woman left the room, and Mrs. Manston locked the door. Before

the servant had gone down more than two or three stairs, Mrs. Manston

unfastened the door again, and held it ajar.

‘Bring me some brandy,’ she said.

The chambermaid went down to the bar and brought up the spirit in a

tumbler. When she came into the room, Mrs. Manston had not removed a

single article of apparel, and was walking up and down, as if still

quite undecided upon the course it was best to adopt.

Outside the door, when it was closed upon her, the maid paused to listen

for an instant. She heard Mrs. Manston talking to herself.

‘This is welcome home!’ she said.

2. FROM TEN TO HALF-PAST ELEVEN P.M.

A strange concurrence of phenomena now confronts us.

During the autumn in which the past scenes were enacted, Mr. Springrove

had ploughed, harrowed, and cleaned a narrow and shaded piece of ground,

lying at the back of his house, which for many years had been looked

upon as irreclaimable waste.

The couch-grass extracted from the soil had been left to wither in the

sun; afterwards it was raked together, lighted in the customary way, and

now lay smouldering in a large heap in the middle of the plot.

It had been kindled three days previous to Mrs. Manston’s arrival, and

one or two villagers, of a more cautious and less sanguine temperament

than Springrove, had suggested that the fire was almost too near the

back of the house for its continuance to be unattended with risk; for

though no danger could be apprehended whilst the air remained moderately

still, a brisk breeze blowing towards the house might possibly carry a

spark across.

‘Ay, that’s true enough,’ said Springrove. ‘I must look round before

going to bed and see that everything’s safe; but to tell the truth I

am anxious to get the rubbish burnt up before the rain comes to wash it

into ground again. As to carrying the couch into the back field to

burn, and bringing it back again, why, ‘tis more than the ashes would be

worth.’

‘Well, that’s very true,’ said the neighbours, and passed on.

Two or three times during the first evening after the heap was lit, he

went to the back door to take a survey. Before bolting and barring

up for the night, he made a final and more careful examination.

The slowly-smoking pile showed not the slightest signs of activity.

Springrove’s perfectly sound conclusion was, that as long as the heap

was not stirred, and the wind continued in the quarter it blew from

then, the couch would not flame, and that there could be no shadow of

danger to anything, even a combustible substance, though it were no more

than a yard off.

The next morning the burning couch was discovered in precisely the same

state as when he had gone to bed the preceding night. The heap smoked

in the same manner the whole of that day: at bed-time the farmer looked

towards it, but less carefully than on the first night.

The morning and the whole of the third day still saw the heap in its old

smouldering condition; indeed, the smoke was less, and there seemed a

probability that it might have to be re-kindled on the morrow.

After admitting Mrs. Manston to his house in the evening, and hearing

her retire, Mr. Springrove returned to the front door to listen for a

sound of his son, and inquired concerning him of the railway-porter,

who sat for a while in the kitchen. The porter had not noticed young

Mr. Springrove get out of the train, at which intelligence the old man

concluded that he would probably not see his son till the next day,

as Edward had hitherto made a point of coming by the train which had

brought Mrs. Manston.

Half-an-hour later the porter left the inn, Springrove at the same time

going to the door to listen again an instant, then he walked round and

in at the back of the house.

The farmer glanced at the heap casually and indifferently in passing;

two nights of safety seemed to ensure the third; and he was about to

bolt and bar as usual, when the idea struck him that there was just a

possibility of his son’s return by the latest train, unlikely as it

was that he would be so delayed. The old man thereupon left the door

unfastened, looked to his usual matters indoors, and went to bed, it

being then half-past ten o’clock.

Farmers and horticulturists well know that it is in the nature of a heap

of couch-grass, when kindled in calm weather, to smoulder for many days,

and even weeks, until the whole mass is reduced to a powdery charcoal

ash, displaying the while scarcely a sign of combustion beyond the

volcano-like smoke from its summit; but the continuance of this quiet

process is throughout its length at the mercy of one particular whim

of Nature: that is, a sudden breeze, by which the heap is liable to be

fanned into a flame so brisk as to consume the whole in an hour or two.

Had the farmer narrowly watched the pile when he went to close the door,

he would have seen, besides the familiar twine of smoke from its summit,

a quivering of the air around the mass, showing that a considerable heat

had arisen inside.

As the railway-porter turned the corner of the row of houses adjoining

the Three Tranters, a brisk new wind greeted his face, and spread past

him into the village. He walked along the high-road till he came to a

gate, about three hundred yards from the inn. Over the gate could

be discerned the situation of the building he had just quitted. He

carelessly turned his head in passing, and saw behind him a clear red

glow indicating the position of the couch-heap: a glow without a flame,

increasing and diminishing in brightness as the breeze quickened or

fell, like the coal of a newly lighted cigar. If those cottages had

been his, he thought, he should not care to have a fire so near them as

that--and the wind rising. But the cottages not being his, he went on

his way to the station, where he was about to resume duty for the night.

The road was now quite deserted: till four o’clock the next morning,

when the carters would go by to the stables there was little probability

of any human being passing the Three Tranters Inn.

By eleven, everybody in the house was asleep. It truly seemed as if

the treacherous element knew there had arisen a grand opportunity for

devastation.

At a quarter past eleven a slight stealthy crackle made itself heard

amid the increasing moans of the night wind; the heap glowed brighter

still, and burst into a flame; the flame sank, another breeze entered

it, sustained it, and it grew to be first continuous and weak, then

continuous and strong.

At twenty minutes past eleven a blast of wind carried an airy bit of

ignited fern several yards forward, in a direction parallel to the

houses and inn, and there deposited it on the ground.

Five minutes later another puff of wind carried a similar piece to a

distance of five-and-twenty yards, where it also was dropped softly on

the ground.

Still the wind did not blow in the direction of the houses, and even now

to a casual observer they would have appeared safe. But Nature does few

things directly. A minute later yet, an ignited fragment fell upon the

straw covering of a long thatched heap or ‘grave’ of mangel-wurzel,

lying in a direction at right angles to the house, and down toward the

hedge. There the fragment faded to darkness.

A short time subsequent to this, after many intermediate deposits and

seemingly baffled attempts, another fragment fell on the mangel-wurzel

grave, and continued to glow; the glow was increased by the wind; the

straw caught fire and burst into flame. It was inevitable that the flame

should run along the ridge of the thatch towards a piggery at the end.

Yet had the piggery been tiled, the time-honoured hostel would even now

at this last moment have been safe; but it was constructed as piggeries

are mostly constructed, of wood and thatch. The hurdles and straw roof

of the frail erection became ignited in their turn, and abutting as the

shed did on the back of the inn, flamed up to the eaves of the main roof

in less than thirty seconds.

3. HALF-PAST ELEVEN TO TWELVE P.M.

A hazardous length of time elapsed before the inmates of the Three

Tranters knew of their danger. When at length the discovery was made,

the rush was a rush for bare life.

A man’s voice calling, then screams, then loud stamping and shouts were

heard.

Mr. Springrove ran out first. Two minutes later appeared the ostler and

chambermaid, who were man and wife. The inn, as has been stated, was a

quaint old building, and as inflammable as a bee-hive; it overhung the

base at the level of the first floor, and again overhung at the eaves,

which were finished with heavy oak barge-boards; every atom in its

substance, every feature in its construction, favoured the fire.

The forked flames, lurid and smoky, became nearly lost to view, bursting

forth again with a bound and loud crackle, increased tenfold in power

and brightness. The crackling grew sharper. Long quivering shadows began

to be flung from the stately trees at the end of the house; the square

outline of the church tower, on the other side of the way, which had

hitherto been a dark mass against a sky comparatively light, now began

to appear as a light object against a sky of darkness; and even the

narrow surface of the flag-staff at the top could be seen in its dark

surrounding, brought out from its obscurity by the rays from the dancing

light.

Shouts and other noises increased in loudness and frequency. The lapse

of ten minutes brought most of the inhabitants of that end of the

village into the street, followed in a short time by the rector, Mr.

Raunham.

Casting a hasty glance up and down, he beckoned to one or two of the

men, and vanished again. In a short time wheels were heard, and Mr.

Raunham and the men reappeared, with the garden engine, the only one in

the village, except that at Knapwater House. After some little trouble

the hose was connected with a tank in the old stable-yard, and the puny

instrument began to play.

Several seemed paralyzed at first, and stood transfixed, their rigid

faces looking like red-hot iron in the glaring light. In the confusion

a woman cried, ‘Ring the bells backwards!’ and three or four of the old

and superstitious entered the belfry and jangled them indescribably.

Some were only half dressed, and, to add to the horror, among them was

Clerk Crickett, running up and down with a face streaming with blood,

ghastly and pitiful to see, his excitement being so great that he had

not the slightest conception of how, when, or where he came by the

wound.

The crowd was now busy at work, and tried to save a little of the

furniture of the inn. The only room they could enter was the parlour,

from which they managed to bring out the bureau, a few chairs, some old

silver candlesticks, and half-a-dozen light articles; but these were

all.

Fiery mats of thatch slid off the roof and fell into the road with a

deadened thud, whilst white flakes of straw and wood-ash were flying in

the wind like feathers. At the same time two of the cottages adjoining,

upon which a little water had been brought to play from the rector’s

engine, were seen to be on fire. The attenuated spirt of water was as

nothing upon the heated and dry surface of the thatched roof; the

fire prevailed without a minute’s hindrance, and dived through to the

rafters.

Suddenly arose a cry, ‘Where’s Mr. Springrove?’

He had vanished from the spot by the churchyard wall, where he had been

standing a few minutes earlier.

‘I fancy he’s gone inside,’ said a voice.

‘Madness and folly! what can he save?’ said another. ‘Good God, find

him! Help here!’

A wild rush was made at the door, which had fallen to, and in defiance

of the scorching flame that burst forth, three men forced themselves

through it. Immediately inside the threshold they found the object of

their search lying senseless on the floor of the passage.

To bring him out and lay him on a bank was the work of an instant; a

basin of cold water was dashed in his face, and he began to recover

consciousness, but very slowly. He had been saved by a miracle. No

sooner were his preservers out of the building than the window-frames

lit up as if by magic with deep and waving fringes of flames.

Simultaneously, the joints of the boards forming the front door started

into view as glowing bars of fire: a star of red light penetrated the

centre, gradually increasing in size till the flames rushed forth.

Then the staircase fell.

‘Everybody is out safe,’ said a voice.

‘Yes, thank God!’ said three or four others.

‘O, we forgot that a stranger came! I think she is safe.’

‘I hope she is,’ said the weak voice of some one coming up from behind.

It was the chambermaid’s.

Springrove at that moment aroused himself; he staggered to his feet, and

threw his hands up wildly.

‘Everybody, no! no! The lady who came by train, Mrs. Manston! I tried to

fetch her out, but I fell.’

An exclamation of horror burst from the crowd; it was caused partly

by this disclosure of Springrove, more by the added perception which

followed his words.

An average interval of about three minutes had elapsed between one

intensely fierce gust of wind and the next, and now another poured over

them; the roof swayed, and a moment afterwards fell in with a crash,

pulling the gable after it, and thrusting outwards the front wall of

wood-work, which fell into the road with a rumbling echo; a cloud of

black dust, myriads of sparks, and a great outburst of flame followed

the uproar of the fall.

‘Who is she? what is she?’ burst from every lip again and again,

incoherently, and without leaving a sufficient pause for a reply, had a

reply been volunteered.

The autumn wind, tameless, and swift, and proud, still blew upon the

dying old house, which was constructed so entirely of combustible

materials that it burnt almost as fiercely as a corn-rick. The heat

in the road increased, and now for an instant at the height of the

conflagration all stood still, and gazed silently, awestruck and

helpless, in the presence of so irresistible an enemy. Then, with minds

full of the tragedy unfolded to them, they rushed forward again with

the obtuse directness of waves, to their labour of saving goods from the

houses adjoining, which it was evident were all doomed to destruction.

The minutes passed by. The Three Tranters Inn sank into a mere heap of

red-hot charcoal: the fire pushed its way down the row as the church

clock opposite slowly struck the hour of midnight, and the bewildered

chimes, scarcely heard amid the crackling of the flames, wandered

through the wayward air of the Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth Psalm.

4. NINE TO ELEVEN P.M.

Manston mounted his gig and set out from Chettlewood that evening in no

very enviable frame of mind. The thought of domestic life in Knapwater

Old House, with the now eclipsed wife of the past, was more than

disagreeable, was positively distasteful to him.

Yet he knew that the influential position, which, from whatever

fortunate cause, he held on Miss Aldclyffe’s manor, would never again

fall to his lot on any other, and he tacitly assented to this dilemma,

hoping that some consolation or other would soon suggest itself to him;

married as he was, he was near Cytherea.

He occasionally looked at his watch as he drove along the lanes, timing

the pace of his horse by the hour, that he might reach Carriford Road

Station just soon enough to meet the last London train.

He soon began to notice in the sky a slight yellow halo, near the

horizon. It rapidly increased; it changed colour, and grew redder; then

the glare visibly brightened and dimmed at intervals, showing that its

origin was affected by the strong wind prevailing.

Manston reined in his horse on the summit of a hill, and considered.

‘It is a rick-yard on fire,’ he thought; ‘no house could produce such a

raging flame so suddenly.’

He trotted on again, attempting to particularize the local features in

the neighbourhood of the fire; but this it was too dark to do, and the

excessive winding of the roads misled him as to its direction, not being

an old inhabitant of the district, or a countryman used to forming

such judgments; whilst the brilliancy of the light shortened its real

remoteness to an apparent distance of not more than half: it seemed so

near that he again stopped his horse, this time to listen; but he could

hear no sound.

Entering now a narrow valley, the sides of which obscured the sky to an

angle of perhaps thirty or forty degrees above the mathematical horizon,

he was obliged to suspend his judgment till he was in possession of

further knowledge, having however assumed in the interim, that the fire

was somewhere between Carriford Road Station and the village.

The self-same glare had just arrested the eyes of another man. He was

at that minute gliding along several miles to the east of the steward’s

position, but nearing the same point as that to which Manston tended.

The younger Edward Springrove was returning from London to his father’s

house by the identical train which the steward was expecting to bring

his wife, the truth being that Edward’s lateness was owing to the

simplest of all causes, his temporary want of money, which led him to

make a slow journey for the sake of travelling at third-class fare.

Springrove had received Cytherea’s bitter and admonitory letter, and he

was clearly awakened to a perception of the false position in which

he had placed himself, by keeping silence at Budmouth on his long

engagement. An increasing reluctance to put an end to those few days of

ecstasy with Cytherea had overruled his conscience, and tied his tongue

till speaking was too late.

‘Why did I do it? how could I dream of loving her?’ he asked himself as

he walked by day, as he tossed on his bed by night: ‘miserable folly!’

An impressionable heart had for years--perhaps as many as six or seven

years--been distracting him, by unconsciously setting itself to yearn

for somebody wanting, he scarcely knew whom. Echoes of himself, though

rarely, he now and then found. Sometimes they were men, sometimes women,

his cousin Adelaide being one of these; for in spite of a fashion which

pervades the whole community at the present day--the habit of exclaiming

that woman is not undeveloped man, but diverse, the fact remains that,

after all, women are Mankind, and that in many of the sentiments of life

the difference of sex is but a difference of degree.

But the indefinable helpmate to the remoter sides of himself still

continued invisible. He grew older, and concluded that the ideas, or

rather emotions, which possessed him on the subject, were probably too

unreal ever to be found embodied in the flesh of a woman. Thereupon,

he developed a plan of satisfying his dreams by wandering away to the

heroines of poetical imagination, and took no further thought on the

earthly realization of his formless desire, in more homely matters

satisfying himself with his cousin.

Cytherea appeared in the sky: his heart started up and spoke:

‘Tis She, and here

Lo! I unclothe and clear

My wishes’ cloudy character.’

Some women kindle emotion so rapidly in a man’s heart that the judgment

cannot keep pace with its rise, and finds, on comprehending the

situation, that faithfulness to the old love is already treachery to the

new. Such women are not necessarily the greatest of their sex, but there

are very few of them. Cytherea was one.

On receiving the letter from her he had taken to thinking over these

things, and had not answered it at all. But ‘hungry generations’ soon

tread down the muser in a city. At length he thought of the strong

necessity of living. After a dreary search, the negligence of which was

ultimately overcome by mere conscientiousness, he obtained a situation

as assistant to an architect in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross: the

duties would not begin till after the lapse of a month.

He could not at first decide whither he should go to spend the

intervening time; but in the midst of his reasonings he found himself

on the road homeward, impelled by a secret and unowned hope of getting a

last glimpse of Cytherea there.

5. MIDNIGHT

It was a quarter to twelve when Manston drove into the station-yard.

The train was punctual, and the bell, announcing its arrival, rang as he

crossed the booking-office to go out upon the platform.

The porter who had accompanied Mrs. Manston to Carriford, and had

returned to the station on his night duty, recognized the steward as he

entered, and immediately came towards him.

‘Mrs. Manston came by the nine o’clock train, sir,’ he said.

The steward gave vent to an expression of vexation.

‘Her luggage is here, sir,’ the porter said.

‘Put it up behind me in the gig if it is not too much,’ said Manston.

‘Directly this train is in and gone, sir.’

The man vanished and crossed the line to meet the entering train.

‘Where is that fire?’ Manston said to the booking-clerk.

Before the clerk could speak, another man ran in and answered the

question without having heard it.

‘Half Carriford is burnt down, or will be!’ he exclaimed. ‘You can’t see

the flames from this station on account of the trees, but step on the

bridge--‘tis tremendous!’

He also crossed the line to assist at the entry of the train, which came

in the next minute.

The steward stood in the office. One passenger alighted, gave up his

ticket, and crossed the room in front of Manston: a young man with a

black bag and umbrella in his hand. He passed out of the door, down the

steps, and struck out into the darkness.

‘Who was that young man?’ said Manston, when the porter had returned.

The young man, by a kind of magnetism, had drawn the steward’s thoughts

after him.

‘He’s an architect.’

‘My own old profession. I could have sworn it by the cut of him,’

Manston murmured. ‘What’s his name?’ he said again.

‘Springrove--Farmer Springrove’s son, Edward.’

‘Farmer Springrove’s son, Edward,’ the steward repeated to himself, and

considered a matter to which the words had painfully recalled his mind.

The matter was Miss Aldclyffe’s mention of the young man as Cytherea’s

lover, which, indeed, had scarcely ever been absent from his thoughts.

‘But for the existence of my wife that man might have been my rival,’ he

pondered, following the porter, who had now come back to him, into the

luggage-room. And whilst the man was carrying out and putting in one

box, which was sufficiently portable for the gig, Manston still thought,

as his eyes watched the process--

‘But for my wife, Springrove might have been my rival.’

He examined the lamps of his gig, carefully laid out the reins, mounted

the seat and drove along the turnpike-road towards Knapwater Park.

The exact locality of the fire was plain to him as he neared home.

He soon could hear the shout of men, the flapping of the flames,

the crackling of burning wood, and could smell the smoke from the

conflagration.

Of a sudden, a few yards ahead, within the compass of the rays from the

right-hand lamp, burst forward the figure of a man. Having been walking

in darkness the newcomer raised his hands to his eyes, on approaching

nearer, to screen them from the glare of the reflector.

Manston saw that he was one of the villagers: a small farmer originally,

who had drunk himself down to a day-labourer and reputed poacher.

‘Hoy!’ cried Manston, aloud, that the man might step aside out of the

way.

‘Is that Mr. Manston?’ said the man.

‘Yes.’

‘Somebody ha’ come to Carriford: and the rest of it may concern you,

sir.’

‘Well, well.’

‘Did you expect Mrs. Manston to-night, sir?’

‘Yes, unfortunately she’s come, I know, and asleep long before this

time, I suppose.’

The labourer leant his elbow upon the shaft of the gig and turned his

face, pale and sweating from his late work at the fire, up to Manston’s.

‘Yes, she did come,’ he said.... ‘I beg pardon, sir, but I should be

glad of--of--’

‘What?’

‘Glad of a trifle for bringen ye the news.’

‘Not a farthing! I didn’t want your news, I knew she was come.’

‘Won’t you give me a shillen, sir?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Then will you lend me a shillen, sir? I be tired out, and don’t know

what to do. If I don’t pay you back some day I’ll be d--d.’

‘The devil is so cheated that perdition isn’t worth a penny as a

security.’

‘Oh!’

‘Let me go on,’ said Manston.

‘Thy wife is _dead_; that’s the rest o’ the news,’ said the labourer

slowly. He waited for a reply; none came.

‘She went to the Three Tranters, because she couldn’t get into thy

house, the burnen roof fell in upon her before she could be called up,

and she’s a cinder, as thou’lt be some day.’

‘That will do, let me drive on,’ said the steward calmly.

Expectation of a concussion may be so intense that its failure strikes

the brain with more force than its fulfilment. The labourer sank back

into the ditch. Such a Cushi could not realize the possibility of such

an unmoved David as this.

Manston drove hastily to the turning of the road, tied his horse, and

ran on foot to the site of the fire.

The stagnation caused by the awful accident had been passed through,

and all hands were helping to remove from the remaining cottage what

furniture they could lay hold of; the thatch of the roofs being already

on fire. The Knapwater fire-engine had arrived on the spot, but it was

small, and ineffectual. A group was collected round the rector, who in a

coat which had become bespattered, scorched, and torn in his exertions,

was directing on one hand the proceedings relative to the removal of

goods into the church, and with the other was pointing out the spot

on which it was most desirable that the puny engines at their disposal

should be made to play. Every tongue was instantly silent at the sight

of Manston’s pale and clear countenance, which contrasted strangely with

the grimy and streaming faces of the toiling villagers.

‘Was she burnt?’ he said in a firm though husky voice, and stepping into

the illuminated area. The rector came to him, and took him aside. ‘Is

she burnt?’ repeated Manston.

‘She is dead: but thank God, she was spared the horrid agony of

burning,’ the rector said solemnly; ‘the roof and gable fell in upon

her, and crushed her. Instant death must have followed.’

‘Why was she here?’ said Manston.

‘From what we can hurriedly collect, it seems that she found the door

of your house locked, and concluded that you had retired, the fact being

that your servant, Mrs. Crickett, had gone out to supper. She then came

back to the inn and went to bed.’

‘Where’s the landlord?’ said Manston.

Mr. Springrove came up, walking feebly, and wrapped in a cloak, and

corroborated the evidence given by the rector.

‘Did she look ill, or annoyed, when she came?’ said the steward.

‘I can’t say. I didn’t see; but I think--’

‘What do you think?’

‘She was much put out about something.’

‘My not meeting her, naturally,’ murmured the other, lost in reverie.

He turned his back on Springrove and the rector, and retired from the

shining light.

Everything had been done that could be done with the limited means

at their disposal. The whole row of houses was destroyed, and each

presented itself as one stage of a series, progressing from smoking

ruins at the end where the inn had stood, to a partly flaming

mass--glowing as none but wood embers will glow--at the other.

A feature in the decline of town fires was noticeably absent

here--steam. There was present what is not observable in

towns--incandescence.

The heat, and the smarting effect upon their eyes of the strong smoke

from the burning oak and deal, had at last driven the villagers back

from the road in front of the houses, and they now stood in groups

in the churchyard, the surface of which, raised by the interments of

generations, stood four or five feet above the level of the road, and

almost even with the top of the low wall dividing one from the other.

The headstones stood forth whitely against the dark grass and yews,

their brightness being repeated on the white smock-frocks of some of the

labourers, and in a mellower, ruddier form on their faces and hands, on

those of the grinning gargoyles, and on other salient stonework of the

weather-beaten church in the background.

The rector had decided that, under the distressing circumstances of

the case, there would be no sacrilege in placing in the church, for the

night, the pieces of furniture and utensils which had been saved from

the several houses. There was no other place of safety for them, and

they accordingly were gathered there.

6. HALF-PAST TWELVE TO ONE A.M.

Manston, when he retired to meditate, had walked round the churchyard,

and now entered the opened door of the building.

He mechanically pursued his way round the piers into his own seat in

the north aisle. The lower atmosphere of this spot was shaded by its own

wall from the shine which streamed in over the window-sills on the

same side. The only light burning inside the church was a small tallow

candle, standing in the font, in the opposite aisle of the building to

that in which Manston had sat down, and near where the furniture was

piled. The candle’s mild rays were overpowered by the ruddier light from

the ruins, making the weak flame to appear like the moon by day.

Sitting there he saw Farmer Springrove enter the door, followed by his

son Edward, still carrying his travelling-bag in his hand. They

were speaking of the sad death of Mrs. Manston, but the subject was

relinquished for that of the houses burnt.

This row of houses, running from the inn eastward, had been built under

the following circumstances:--

Fifty years before this date, the spot upon which the cottages

afterwards stood was a blank strip, along the side of the village

street, difficult to cultivate, on account of the outcrop thereon of a

large bed of flints called locally a ‘lanch’ or ‘lanchet.’

The Aldclyffe then in possession of the estate conceived the idea that

a row of cottages would be an improvement to the spot, and accordingly

granted leases of portions to several respectable inhabitants. Each

lessee was to be subject to the payment of a merely nominal rent for

the whole term of lives, on condition that he built his own cottage, and

delivered it up intact at the end of the term.

Those who had built had, one by one, relinquished their indentures,

either by sale or barter, to Farmer Springrove’s father. New lives were

added in some cases, by payment of a sum to the lord of the manor, etc.,

and all the leases were now held by the farmer himself, as one of the

chief provisions for his old age.

The steward had become interested in the following conversation:--

‘Try not to be so depressed, father; they are all insured.’

The words came from Edward in an anxious tone.

‘You mistake, Edward; they are not insured,’ returned the old man

gloomily.

‘Not?’ the son asked.

‘Not one!’ said the farmer.

‘In the Helmet Fire Office, surely?’

‘They were insured there every one. Six months ago the office, which had

been raising the premiums on thatched premises higher for some years,

gave up insuring them altogether, as two or three other fire-offices had

done previously, on account, they said, of the uncertainty and

greatness of the risk of thatch undetached. Ever since then I have been

continually intending to go to another office, but have never gone. Who

expects a fire?’

‘Do you remember the terms of the leases?’ said Edward, still more

uneasily.

‘No, not particularly,’ said his father absently.

‘Where are they?’

‘In the bureau there; that’s why I tried to save it first, among other

things.’

‘Well, we must see to that at once.’

‘What do you want?’

‘The key.’

They went into the south aisle, took the candle from the font, and then

proceeded to open the bureau, which had been placed in a corner under

the gallery. Both leant over upon the flap; Edward holding the candle,

whilst his father took the pieces of parchment from one of the drawers,

and spread the first out before him.

‘You read it, Ted. I can’t see without my glasses. This one will be

sufficient. The terms of all are the same.’

Edward took the parchment, and read quickly and indistinctly for some

time; then aloud and slowly as follows:--

‘And the said John Springrove for himself his heirs executors and

administrators doth covenant and agree with the said Gerald Fellcourt

Aldclyffe his heirs and assigns that he the said John Springrove his

heirs and assigns during the said term shall pay unto the said Gerald

Fellcourt Aldclyffe his heirs and assigns the clear yearly rent of ten

shillings and sixpence.... at the several times hereinbefore appointed

for the payment thereof respectively. And also shall and at all times

during the said term well and sufficiently repair and keep the said

Cottage or Dwelling-house and all other the premises and all houses or

buildings erected or to be erected thereupon in good and proper repair

in every respect without exception and the said premises in such good

repair upon the determination of this demise shall yield up unto the

said Gerald Fellcourt Aldclyffe his heirs and assigns.’

They closed the bureau and turned towards the door of the church without

speaking.

Manston also had come forward out of the gloom. Notwithstanding the

farmer’s own troubles, an instinctive respect and generous sense of

sympathy with the steward for his awful loss caused the old man to step

aside, that Manston might pass out without speaking to them if he chose

to do so.

‘Who is he?’ whispered Edward to his father, as Manston approached.

‘Mr. Manston, the steward.’

Manston came near, and passed down the aisle on the side of the younger

man. Their faces came almost close together: one large flame, which

still lingered upon the ruins outside, threw long dancing shadows of

each across the nave till they bent upwards against the aisle wall, and

also illuminated their eyes, as each met those of the other. Edward had

learnt, by a letter from home, of the steward’s passion for Cytherea,

and his mysterious repression of it, afterwards explained by his

marriage. That marriage was now nought. Edward realized the man’s newly

acquired freedom, and felt an instinctive enmity towards him--he would

hardly own to himself why. The steward, too, knew Cytherea’s attachment

to Edward, and looked keenly and inscrutably at him.

7. ONE TO TWO A.M.

Manston went homeward alone, his heart full of strange emotions.

Entering the house, and dismissing the woman to her own home, he at once

proceeded upstairs to his bedroom.

Reasoning worldliness, especially when allied with sensuousness, cannot

repress on some extreme occasions the human instinct to pour out the

soul to some Being or Personality, who in frigid moments is dismissed

with the title of Chance, or at most Law. Manston was selfishly and

inhumanly, but honestly and unutterably, thankful for the recent

catastrophe. Beside his bed, for that first time during a period

of nearly twenty years, he fell down upon his knees in a passionate

outburst of feeling.

Many minutes passed before he arose. He walked to the window, and then

seemed to remember for the first time that some action on his part was

necessary in connection with the sad circumstance of the night.

Leaving the house at once, he went to the scene of the fire, arriving

there in time to hear the rector making an arrangement with a certain

number of men to watch the spot till morning. The ashes were still

red-hot and flaming. Manston found that nothing could be done towards

searching them at that hour of the night. He turned homeward again, in

the company of the rector, who had considerately persuaded him to retire

from the scene for a while, and promised that as soon as a man could

live amid the embers of the Three Tranters Inn, they should be carefully

searched for the remains of his unfortunate wife.

Manston then went indoors, to wait for morning.

XI. THE EVENTS OF FIVE DAYS

1. NOVEMBER THE TWENTY-NINTH

The search began at dawn, but a quarter past nine o’clock came without

bringing any result. Manston ate a little breakfast, and crossed

the hollow of the park which intervened between the old and modern

manor-houses, to ask for an interview with Miss Aldclyffe.

He met her midway. She was about to pay him a visit of condolence, and

to place every man on the estate at his disposal, that the search

for any relic of his dead and destroyed wife might not be delayed an

instant.

He accompanied her back to the house. At first they conversed as if the

death of the poor woman was an event which the husband must of necessity

deeply lament; and when all under this head that social form seemed to

require had been uttered, they spoke of the material damage done, and of

the steps which had better be taken to remedy it.

It was not till both were shut inside her private room that she spoke

to him in her blunt and cynical manner. A certain newness of bearing in

him, peculiar to the present morning, had hitherto forbidden her this

tone: the demeanour of the subject of her favouritism had altered, she

could not tell in what way. He was entirely a changed man.

‘Are you really sorry for your poor wife, Mr. Manston?’ she said.

‘Well, I am,’ he answered shortly.

‘But only as for any human being who has met with a violent death?’

He confessed it--‘For she was not a good woman,’ he added.

‘I should be sorry to say such a thing now the poor creature is dead,’

Miss Aldclyffe returned reproachfully.

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why should I praise her if she doesn’t deserve it? I

say exactly what I have often admired Sterne for saying in one of his

letters--that neither reason nor Scripture asks us to speak nothing but

good of the dead. And now, madam,’ he continued, after a short interval

of thought, ‘I may, perhaps, hope that you will assist me, or rather not

thwart me, in endeavouring to win the love of a young lady living about

you, one in whom I am much interested already.’

‘Cytherea!’

‘Yes, Cytherea.’

‘You have been loving Cytherea all the while?’

‘Yes.’

Surprise was a preface to much agitation in her, which caused her

to rise from her seat, and pace to the side of the room. The steward

quietly looked on and added, ‘I have been loving and still love her.’

She came close up to him, wistfully contemplating his face, one hand

moving indecisively at her side.

‘And your secret marriage was, then, the true and only reason for that

backwardness regarding the courtship of Cytherea, which, they tell

me, has been the talk of the village; not your indifference to her

attractions.’ Her voice had a tone of conviction in it, as well as of

inquiry; but none of jealousy.

‘Yes,’ he said; ‘and not a dishonourable one. What held me back was just

that one thing--a sense of morality that perhaps, madam, you did not

give me credit for.’ The latter words were spoken with a mien and tone

of pride.

Miss Aldclyffe preserved silence.

‘And now,’ he went on, ‘I may as well say a word in vindication of my

conduct lately, at the risk, too, of offending you. My actual motive in

submitting to your order that I should send for my late wife, and live

with her, was not the mercenary policy of wishing to retain an office

which brings me greater comforts than any I have enjoyed before, but

this unquenchable passion for Cytherea. Though I saw the weakness,

folly, and even wickedness of it continually, it still forced me to try

to continue near her, even as the husband of another woman.’

He waited for her to speak: she did not.

‘There’s a great obstacle to my making any way in winning Miss Graye’s

love,’ he went on.

‘Yes, Edward Springrove,’ she said quietly. ‘I know it, I did once want

to see them married; they have had a slight quarrel, and it will soon be

made up again, unless--’ she spoke as if she had only half attended to

Manston’s last statement.

‘He is already engaged to be married to somebody else,’ said the

steward.

‘Pooh!’ said she, ‘you mean to his cousin at Peakhill; that’s nothing to

help us; he’s now come home to break it off.’

‘He must not break it off,’ said Manston, firmly and calmly.

His tone attracted her, startled her. Recovering herself, she said

haughtily, ‘Well, that’s your affair, not mine. Though my wish has been

to see her _your_ wife, I can’t do anything dishonourable to bring about

such a result.’

‘But it must be _made_ your affair,’ he said in a hard, steady voice,

looking into her eyes, as if he saw there the whole panorama of her

past.

One of the most difficult things to portray by written words is that

peculiar mixture of moods expressed in a woman’s countenance when, after

having been sedulously engaged in establishing another’s position, she

suddenly suspects him of undermining her own. It was thus that Miss

Aldclyffe looked at the steward.

‘You--know--something--of me?’ she faltered.

‘I know all,’ he said.

‘Then curse that wife of yours! She wrote and said she wouldn’t tell

you!’ she burst out. ‘Couldn’t she keep her word for a day?’ She

reflected and then said, but no more as to a stranger, ‘I will not

yield. I have committed no crime. I yielded to her threats in a moment

of weakness, though I felt inclined to defy her at the time: it was

chiefly because I was mystified as to how she got to know of it. Pooh!

I will put up with threats no more. O, can _you_ threaten me?’ she added

softly, as if she had for the moment forgotten to whom she had been

speaking.

‘My love must be made your affair,’ he repeated, without taking his eyes

from her.

An agony, which was not the agony of being discovered in a secret,

obstructed her utterance for a time. ‘How can you turn upon me so when I

schemed to get you here--schemed that you might win her till I found

you were married. O, how can you! O!... O!’ She wept; and the weeping of

such a nature was as harrowing as the weeping of a man.

‘Your getting me here was bad policy as to your secret--the most absurd

thing in the world,’ he said, not heeding her distress. ‘I knew all,

except the identity of the individual, long ago. Directly I found that

my coming here was a contrived thing, and not a matter of chance, it

fixed my attention upon you at once. All that was required was the mere

spark of life, to make of a bundle of perceptions an organic whole.’

‘Policy, how can you talk of policy? Think, do think! And how can you

threaten me when you know--you know--that I would befriend you readily

without a threat!’

‘Yes, yes, I think you would,’ he said more kindly; ‘but your

indifference for so many, many years has made me doubt it.’

‘No, not indifference--‘twas enforced silence. My father lived.’

He took her hand, and held it gently.

* * * * *

‘Now listen,’ he said, more quietly and humanly, when she had become

calmer: ‘Springrove must marry the woman he’s engaged to. You may make

him, but only in one way.’

‘Well: but don’t speak sternly, AEneas!’

‘Do you know that his father has not been particularly thriving for the

last two or three years?’

‘I have heard something of it, once or twice, though his rents have been

promptly paid, haven’t they?’

‘O yes; and do you know the terms of the leases of the houses which are

burnt?’ he said, explaining to her that by those terms she might compel

him even to rebuild every house. ‘The case is the clearest case of

fire by negligence that I have ever known, in addition to that,’ he

continued.

‘I don’t want them rebuilt; you know it was intended by my father,

directly they fell in, to clear the site for a new entrance to the

park?’

‘Yes, but that doesn’t affect the position, which is that Farmer

Springrove is in your power to an extent which is very serious for him.’

‘I won’t do it--‘tis a conspiracy.’

‘Won’t you for me?’ he said eagerly.

Miss Aldclyffe changed colour.

‘I don’t threaten now, I implore,’ he said.

‘Because you might threaten if you chose,’ she mournfully answered. ‘But

why be so--when your marriage with her was my own pet idea long before

it was yours? What must I do?’

‘Scarcely anything: simply this. When I have seen old Mr. Springrove,

which I shall do in a day or two, and told him that he will be expected

to rebuild the houses, do you see the young man. See him yourself, in

order that the proposals made may not appear to be anything more than an

impulse of your own. You or he will bring up the subject of the houses.

To rebuild them would be a matter of at least six hundred pounds, and

he will almost surely say that we are hard in insisting upon the extreme

letter of the leases. Then tell him that scarcely can you yourself

think of compelling an old tenant like his father to any such painful

extreme--there shall be no compulsion to build, simply a surrender of

the leases. Then speak feelingly of his cousin, as a woman whom you

respect and love, and whose secret you have learnt to be that she is

heart-sick with hope deferred. Beg him to marry her, his betrothed and

your friend, as some return for your consideration towards his father.

Don’t suggest too early a day for their marriage, or he will suspect you

of some motive beyond womanly sympathy. Coax him to make a promise to

her that she shall be his wife at the end of a twelvemonth, and get him,

on assenting to this, to write to Cytherea, entirely renouncing her.’

‘She has already asked him to do that.’

‘So much the better--and telling her, too, that he is about to fulfil

his long-standing promise to marry his cousin. If you think it worth

while, you may say Cytherea was not indisposed to think of me before she

knew I was married. I have at home a note she wrote me the first evening

I saw her, which looks rather warm, and which I could show you. Trust

me, he will give her up. When he is married to Adelaide Hinton, Cytherea

will be induced to marry me--perhaps before; a woman’s pride is soon

wounded.’

‘And hadn’t I better write to Mr. Nyttleton, and inquire more

particularly what’s the law upon the houses?’

‘O no, there’s no hurry for that. We know well enough how the case

stands--quite well enough to talk in general terms about it. And I want

the pressure to be put upon young Springrove before he goes away from

home again.’

She looked at him furtively, long, and sadly, as after speaking he

became lost in thought, his eyes listlessly tracing the pattern of the

carpet. ‘Yes, yes, she will be mine,’ he whispered, careless of Cytherea

Aldclyffe’s presence. At last he raised his eyes inquiringly.

‘I will do my best, AEneas,’ she answered.

Talibus incusat. Manston then left the house, and again went towards the

blackened ruins, where men were still raking and probing.

2. FROM NOVEMBER THE TWENTY-NINTH TO DECEMBER THE SECOND

The smouldering remnants of the Three Tranters Inn seemed to promise

that, even when the searchers should light upon the remains of the

unfortunate Mrs. Manston, very little would be discoverable.

Consisting so largely of the charcoal and ashes of hard dry oak and

chestnut, intermingled with thatch, the interior of the heap was one

glowing mass of embers, which, on being stirred about, emitted sparks

and flame long after it was dead and black on the outside. It was

persistently hoped, however, that some traces of the body would survive

the effect of the hot coals, and after a search pursued uninterruptedly

for thirty hours, under the direction of Manston himself, enough was

found to set at rest any doubts of her fate.

The melancholy gleanings consisted of her watch, bunch of keys, a few

coins, and two charred and blackened bones.

Two days later the official inquiry into the cause of her death was held

at the Rising Sun Inn, before Mr. Floy, the coroner, and a jury of the

chief inhabitants of the district. The little tavern--the only remaining

one in the village--was crowded to excess by the neighbouring peasantry

as well as their richer employers: all who could by any possibility

obtain an hour’s release from their duties being present as listeners.

The jury viewed the sad and infinitesimal remains, which were folded in

a white cambric cloth, and laid in the middle of a well-finished coffin

lined with white silk (by Manston’s order), which stood in an adjoining

room, the bulk of the coffin being completely filled in with carefully

arranged flowers and evergreens--also the steward’s own doing.

Abraham Brown, of Hoxton, London--an old white-headed man, without the

ruddiness which makes white hairs so pleasing--was sworn, and deposed

that he kept a lodging-house at an address he named. On a Saturday

evening less than a month before the fire, a lady came to him, with very

little luggage, and took the front room on the second floor. He did not

inquire where she came from, as she paid a week in advance, but she gave

her name as Mrs. Manston, referring him, if he wished for any guarantee

of her respectability, to Mr. Manston, Knapwater Park. Here she lived

for three weeks, rarely going out. She slept away from her lodgings one

night during the time. At the end of that time, on the twenty-eighth of

November, she left his house in a four-wheeled cab, about twelve o’clock

in the day, telling the driver to take her to the Waterloo Station. She

paid all her lodging expenses, and not having given notice the full week

previous to her going away, offered to pay for the next, but he only

took half. She wore a thick black veil, and grey waterproof cloak, when

she left him, and her luggage was two boxes, one of plain deal, with

black japanned clamps, the other sewn up in canvas.

Joseph Chinney, porter at the Carriford Road Station, deposed that he

saw Mrs. Manston, dressed as the last witness had described, get out

of a second-class carriage on the night of the twenty-eighth. She stood

beside him whilst her luggage was taken from the van. The luggage,

consisting of the clamped deal box and another covered with canvas, was

placed in the cloak-room. She seemed at a loss at finding nobody there

to meet her. She asked him for some person to accompany her, and carry

her bag to Mr. Manston’s house, Knapwater Park. He was just off duty

at that time, and offered to go himself. The witness here repeated

the conversation he had had with Mrs. Manston during their walk, and

testified to having left her at the door of the Three Tranters Inn, Mr.

Manston’s house being closed.

Next, Farmer Springrove was called. A murmur of surprise and

commiseration passed round the crowded room when he stepped forward.

The events of the few preceding days had so worked upon his nervously

thoughtful nature that the blue orbits of his eyes, and the mere spot of

scarlet to which the ruddiness of his cheeks had contracted, seemed the

result of a heavy sickness. A perfect silence pervaded the assembly when

he spoke.

His statement was that he received Mrs. Manston at the threshold, and

asked her to enter the parlour. She would not do so, and stood in the

passage whilst the maid went upstairs to see that the room was in order.

The maid came down to the middle landing of the staircase, when Mrs.

Manston followed her up to the room. He did not speak ten words with her

altogether.

Afterwards, whilst he was standing at the door listening for his son

Edward’s return, he saw her light extinguished, having first caught

sight of her shadow moving about the room.

THE CORONER: ‘Did her shadow appear to be that of a woman undressing?’

SPRINGROVE: ‘I cannot say, as I didn’t take particular notice. It moved

backwards and forwards; she might have been undressing or merely pacing

up and down the room.’

Mrs. Fitler, the ostler’s wife and chambermaid, said that she preceded

Mrs. Manston into the room, put down the candle, and went out. Mrs.

Manston scarcely spoke to her, except to ask her to bring a little

brandy. Witness went and fetched it from the bar, brought it up, and put

it on the dressing-table.

THE CORONER: ‘Had Mrs. Manston begun to undress, when you came back?’

‘No, sir; she was sitting on the bed, with everything on, as when she

came in.’

‘Did she begin to undress before you left?’

‘Not exactly before I had left; but when I had closed the door, and was

on the landing I heard her boot drop on the floor, as it does sometimes

when pulled off?’

‘Had her face appeared worn and sleepy?’

‘I cannot say as her bonnet and veil were still on when I left, for she

seemed rather shy and ashamed to be seen at the Three Tranters at all.’

‘And did you hear or see any more of her?’

‘No more, sir.’

Mrs. Crickett, temporary servant to Mr. Manston, said that in accordance

with Mr. Manston’s orders, everything had been made comfortable in the

house for Mrs. Manston’s expected return on Monday night. Mr. Manston

told her that himself and Mrs. Manston would be home late, not till

between eleven and twelve o’clock, and that supper was to be ready. Not

expecting Mrs. Manston so early, she had gone out on a very important

errand to Mrs. Leat the postmistress.

Mr. Manston deposed that in looking down the columns of Bradshaw he

had mistaken the time of the train’s arrival, and hence was not at the

station when she came. The broken watch produced was his wife’s--he knew

it by a scratch on the inner plate, and by other signs. The bunch of

keys belonged to her: two of them fitted the locks of her two boxes.

Mr. Flooks, agent to Lord Claydonfield at Chettlewood, said that Mr.

Manston had pleaded as his excuse for leaving him rather early in the

evening after their day’s business had been settled, that he was going

to meet his wife at Carriford Road Station, where she was coming by the

last train that night.

The surgeon said that the remains were those of a human being. The small

fragment seemed a portion of one of the lumbar vertebrae--the other

the head of the os femoris--but they were both so far gone that it was

impossible to say definitely whether they belonged to the body of a male

or female. There was no moral doubt that they were a woman’s. He did

not believe that death resulted from burning by fire. He thought she was

crushed by the fall of the west gable, which being of wood, as well as

the floor, burnt after it had fallen, and consumed the body with it.

Two or three additional witnesses gave unimportant testimony.

The coroner summed up, and the jury without hesitation found that the

deceased Mrs. Manston came by her death accidentally through the burning

of the Three Tranters Inn.

3. DECEMBER THE SECOND. AFTERNOON

When Mr. Springrove came from the door of the Rising Sun at the end of

the inquiry, Manston walked by his side as far as the stile to the park,

a distance of about a stone’s-throw.

‘Ah, Mr. Springrove, this is a sad affair for everybody concerned.’

‘Everybody,’ said the old farmer, with deep sadness, ‘’tis quite a

misery to me. I hardly know how I shall live through each day as it

breaks. I think of the words, “In the morning thou shalt say, Would God

it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for

the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of

thine eyes which thou shalt see.”’ His voice became broken.

‘Ah--true. I read Deuteronomy myself,’ said Manston.

‘But my loss is as nothing to yours,’ the farmer continued.

‘Nothing; but I can commiserate you. I should be worse than unfeeling

if I didn’t, although my own affliction is of so sad and solemn a kind.

Indeed my own loss makes me more keenly alive to yours, different in

nature as it is.’

‘What sum do you think would be required of me to put the houses in

place again?’

‘I have roughly thought six or seven hundred pounds.’

‘If the letter of the law is to be acted up to,’ said the old man, with

more agitation in his voice.

‘Yes, exactly.’

‘Do you know enough of Miss Aldclyffe’s mind to give me an idea of how

she means to treat me?’

‘Well, I am afraid I must tell you that though I know very little of her

mind as a rule, in this matter I believe she will be rather peremptory;

she might share to the extent of a sixth or an eighth perhaps, in

consideration of her getting new lamps for old, but I should hardly

think more.’

The steward stepped upon the stile, and Mr. Springrove went along the

road with a bowed head and heavy footsteps towards his niece’s cottage,

in which, rather against the wish of Edward, they had temporarily taken

refuge.

The additional weight of this knowledge soon made itself perceptible.

Though indoors with Edward or Adelaide nearly the whole of the

afternoon, nothing more than monosyllabic replies could be drawn from

him. Edward continually discovered him looking fixedly at the wall or

floor, quite unconscious of another’s presence. At supper he ate just as

usual, but quite mechanically, and with the same abstraction.

4. DECEMBER THE THIRD

The next morning he was in no better spirits. Afternoon came: his son

was alarmed, and managed to draw from him an account of the conversation

with the steward.

‘Nonsense; he knows nothing about it,’ said Edward vehemently. ‘I’ll see

Miss Aldclyffe myself. Now promise me, father, that you’ll not believe

till I come back, and tell you to believe it, that Miss Aldclyffe will

do any such unjust thing.’

Edward started at once for Knapwater House. He strode rapidly along the

high-road, till he reached a wicket where a footpath allowed of a short

cut to the mansion. Here he leant down upon the bars for a few minutes,

meditating as to the best manner of opening his speech, and surveying

the scene before him in that absent mood which takes cognizance of

little things without being conscious of them at the time, though they

appear in the eye afterwards as vivid impressions. It was a yellow,

lustrous, late autumn day, one of those days of the quarter when morning

and evening seem to meet together without the intervention of a noon.

The clear yellow sunlight had tempted forth Miss Aldclyffe herself, who

was at this same time taking a walk in the direction of the village.

As Springrove lingered he heard behind the plantation a woman’s dress

brushing along amid the prickly husks and leaves which had fallen into

the path from the boughs of the chestnut trees. In another minute she

stood in front of him.

He answered her casual greeting respectfully, and was about to request

a few minutes’ conversation with her, when she directly addressed him

on the subject of the fire. ‘It is a sad misfortune for your father’ she

said, ‘and I hear that he has lately let his insurances expire?’

‘He has, madam, and you are probably aware that either by the general

terms of his holding, or the same coupled with the origin of the fire,

the disaster may involve the necessity of his rebuilding the whole row

of houses, or else of becoming a debtor to the estate, to the extent of

some hundreds of pounds?’

She assented. ‘I have been thinking of it,’ she went on, and then

repeated in substance the words put into her mouth by the steward.

Some disturbance of thought might have been fancied as taking place in

Springrove’s mind during her statement, but before she had reached the

end, his eyes were clear, and directed upon her.

‘I don’t accept your conditions of release,’ he said.

‘They are not conditions exactly.’

‘Well, whatever they are not, they are very uncalled-for remarks.’

‘Not at all--the houses have been burnt by your family’s negligence.’

‘I don’t refer to the houses--you have of course the best of all rights

to speak of that matter; but you, a stranger to me comparatively, have

no right at all to volunteer opinions and wishes upon a very delicate

subject, which concerns no living beings but Miss Graye, Miss Hinton,

and myself.’

Miss Aldclyffe, like a good many others in her position, had plainly

not realized that a son of her tenant and inferior could have become an

educated man, who had learnt to feel his individuality, to view society

from a Bohemian standpoint, far outside the farming grade in Carriford

parish, and that hence he had all a developed man’s unorthodox opinion

about the subordination of classes. And fully conscious of the labyrinth

into which he had wandered between his wish to behave honourably in the

dilemma of his engagement to his cousin Adelaide and the intensity of

his love for Cytherea, Springrove was additionally sensitive to any

allusion to the case. He had spoken to Miss Aldclyffe with considerable

warmth.

And Miss Aldclyffe was not a woman likely to be far behind any second

person in warming to a mood of defiance. It seemed as if she were

prepared to put up with a cold refusal, but that her haughtiness

resented a criticism of her conduct ending in a rebuke. By this,

Manston’s discreditable object, which had been made hers by compulsion

only, was now adopted by choice. She flung herself into the work.

A fiery man in such a case would have relinquished persuasion and tried

palpable force. A fiery woman added unscrupulousness and evolved daring

strategy; and in her obstinacy, and to sustain herself as mistress, she

descended to an action the meanness of which haunted her conscience to

her dying hour.

‘I don’t quite see, Mr. Springrove,’ she said, ‘that I am altogether

what you are pleased to call a stranger. I have known your family, at

any rate, for a good many years, and I know Miss Graye particularly

well, and her state of mind with regard to this matter.’

Perplexed love makes us credulous and curious as old women. Edward was

willing, he owned it to himself, to get at Cytherea’s state of mind,

even through so dangerous a medium.

‘A letter I received from her’ he said, with assumed coldness, ‘tells me

clearly enough what Miss Graye’s mind is.’

‘You think she still loves you? O yes, of course you do--all men are

like that.’

‘I have reason to.’ He could feign no further than the first speech.

‘I should be interested in knowing what reason?’ she said, with

sarcastic archness.

Edward felt he was allowing her to do, in fractional parts, what he

rebelled against when regarding it as a whole; but the fact that his

antagonist had the presence of a queen, and features only in the early

evening of their beauty, was not without its influence upon a keenly

conscious man. Her bearing had charmed him into toleration, as Mary

Stuart’s charmed the indignant Puritan visitors. He again answered her

honestly.

‘The best of reasons--the tone of her letter.’

‘Pooh, Mr. Springrove!’

‘Not at all, Miss Aldclyffe! Miss Graye desired that we should be

strangers to each other for the simple practical reason that intimacy

could only make wretched complications worse, not from lack of

love--love is only suppressed.’

‘Don’t you know yet, that in thus putting aside a man, a woman’s pity

for the pain she inflicts gives her a kindness of tone which is

often mistaken for suppressed love?’ said Miss Aldclyffe, with soft

insidiousness.

This was a translation of the ambiguity of Cytherea’s tone which he had

certainly never thought of; and he was too ingenuous not to own it.

‘I had never thought of it,’ he said.

‘And don’t believe it?’

‘Not unless there was some other evidence to support the view.’

She paused a minute and then began hesitatingly--

‘My intention was--what I did not dream of owning to you--my intention

was to try to induce you to fulfil your promise to Miss Hinton not

solely on her account and yours (though partly). I love Cytherea Graye

with all my soul, and I want to see her happy even more than I do you. I

did not mean to drag her name into the affair at all, but I am driven

to say that she wrote that letter of dismissal to you--for it was a

most pronounced dismissal--not on account of your engagement. She is old

enough to know that engagements can be broken as easily as they can be

made. She wrote it because she loved another man; very suddenly, and not

with any idea or hope of marrying him, but none the less deeply.’

‘Who?’

‘Mr. Manston.’

‘Good--! I can’t listen to you for an instant, madam; why, she hadn’t

seen him!’

‘She had; he came here the day before she wrote to you; and I could

prove to you, if it were worth while, that on that day she went

voluntarily to his house, though not artfully or blamably; stayed for

two hours playing and singing; that no sooner did she leave him than she

went straight home, and wrote the letter saying she should not see you

again, entirely because she had seen him and fallen desperately in love

with him--a perfectly natural thing for a young girl to do, considering

that he’s the handsomest man in the county. Why else should she not have

written to you before?’

‘Because I was such a--because she did not know of the connection

between me and my cousin until then.’

‘I must think she did.’

‘On what ground?’

‘On the strong ground of my having told her so, distinctly, the very

first day she came to live with me.’

‘Well, what do you seek to impress upon me after all? This--that the

day Miss Graye wrote to me, saying it was better that we should part,

coincided with the day she had seen a certain man--’

‘A remarkably handsome and talented man.’

‘Yes, I admit that.’

‘And that it coincided with the hour just subsequent to her seeing him.’

‘Yes, just when she had seen him.’

‘And been to his house alone with him.’

‘It is nothing.’

‘And stayed there playing and singing with him.’

‘Admit that, too,’ he said; ‘an accident might have caused it.’

‘And at the same instant that she wrote your dismissal she wrote a

letter referring to a secret appointment with him.’

‘Never, by God, madam! never!’

‘What do you say, sir?’

‘Never.’

She sneered.

‘There’s no accounting for beliefs, and the whole history is a very

trivial matter; but I am resolved to prove that a lady’s word is

truthful, though upon a matter which concerns neither you nor herself.

You shall learn that she _did_ write him a letter concerning an

assignation--that is, if Mr. Manston still has it, and will be

considerate enough to lend it me.’

‘But besides,’ continued Edward, ‘a married man to do what would cause a

young girl to write a note of the kind you mention!’

She flushed a little.

‘That I don’t know anything about,’ she stammered. ‘But Cytherea didn’t,

of course, dream any more than I did, or others in the parish, that he

was married.’

‘Of course she didn’t.’

‘And I have reason to believe that he told her of the fact directly

afterwards, that she might not compromise herself, or allow him to.

It is notorious that he struggled honestly and hard against her

attractions, and succeeded in hiding his feelings, if not in quenching

them.’

‘We’ll hope that he did.’

‘But circumstances are changed now.’

‘Very greatly changed,’ he murmured abstractedly.

‘You must remember,’ she added more suasively, ‘that Miss Graye has a

perfect right to do what she likes with her own--her heart, that is to

say.’

Her descent from irritation was caused by perceiving that Edward’s faith

was really disturbed by her strong assertions, and it gratified her.

Edward’s thoughts flew to his father, and the object of his interview

with her. Tongue-fencing was utterly distasteful to him.

‘I will not trouble you by remaining longer, madam,’ he remarked,

gloomily; ‘our conversation has ended sadly for me.’

‘Don’t think so,’ she said, ‘and don’t be mistaken. I am older than you

are, many years older, and I know many things.’

Full of miserable doubt, and bitterly regretting that he had raised his

father’s expectations by anticipations impossible of fulfilment, Edward

slowly went his way into the village, and approached his cousin’s house.

The farmer was at the door looking eagerly for him. He had been waiting

there for more than half-an-hour. His eye kindled quickly.

‘Well, Ted, what does she say?’ he asked, in the intensely sanguine

tones which fall sadly upon a listener’s ear, because, antecedently,

they raise pictures of inevitable disappointment for the speaker, in

some direction or another.

‘Nothing for us to be alarmed at,’ said Edward, with a forced

cheerfulness.

‘But must we rebuild?’

‘It seems we must, father.’

The old man’s eyes swept the horizon, then he turned to go in, without

making another observation. All light seemed extinguished in him again.

When Edward went in he found his father with the bureau open, unfolding

the leases with a shaking hand, folding them up again without reading

them, then putting them in their niche only to remove them again.

Adelaide was in the room. She said thoughtfully to Edward, as she

watched the farmer--

‘I hope it won’t kill poor uncle, Edward. What should we do if anything

were to happen to him? He is the only near relative you and I have in

the world.’ It was perfectly true, and somehow Edward felt more bound up

with her after that remark.

She continued: ‘And he was only saying so hopefully the day before the

fire, that he wouldn’t for the world let any one else give me away to

you when we are married.’

For the first time a conscientious doubt arose in Edward’s mind as to

the justice of the course he was pursuing in resolving to refuse the

alternative offered by Miss Aldclyffe. Could it be selfishness as well

as independence? How much he had thought of his own heart, how little he

had thought of his father’s peace of mind!

The old man did not speak again till supper-time, when he began asking

his son an endless number of hypothetical questions on what might induce

Miss Aldclyffe to listen to kinder terms; speaking of her now not as an

unfair woman, but as a Lachesis or Fate whose course it behoved nobody

to condemn. In his earnestness he once turned his eyes on Edward’s

face: their expression was woful: the pupils were dilated and strange in

aspect.

‘If she will only agree to that!’ he reiterated for the hundredth time,

increasing the sadness of his listeners.

An aristocratic knocking came to the door, and Jane entered with a

letter, addressed--

‘MR. EDWARD SPRINGROVE, Junior.’

‘Charles from Knapwater House brought it,’ she said.

‘Miss Aldclyffe’s writing,’ said Mr. Springrove, before Edward had

recognized it himself. ‘Now ‘tis all right; she’s going to make an

offer; she doesn’t want the houses there, not she; they are going to

make that the way into the park.’

Edward opened the seal and glanced at the inside. He said, with a

supreme effort of self-command--

‘It is only directed by Miss Aldclyffe, and refers to nothing connected

with the fire. I wonder at her taking the trouble to send it to-night.’

His father looked absently at him and turned away again. Shortly

afterwards they retired for the night. Alone in his bedroom Edward

opened and read what he had not dared to refer to in their presence.

The envelope contained another envelope in Cytherea’s handwriting,

addressed to ‘---- Manston, Esq., Old Manor House.’ Inside this was the

note she had written to the steward after her detention in his house by

the thunderstorm--

‘KNAPWATER HOUSE,

September 20th.

‘I find I cannot meet you at seven o’clock by the waterfall as I

promised. The emotion I felt made me forgetful of realities. ‘C. GRAYE.’

Miss Aldclyffe had not written a line, and, by the unvarying rule

observable when words are not an absolute necessity, her silence seemed

ten times as convincing as any expression of opinion could have been.

He then, step by step, recalled all the conversation on the subject of

Cytherea’s feelings that had passed between himself and Miss Aldclyffe

in the afternoon, and by a confusion of thought, natural enough under

the trying experience, concluded that because the lady was truthful

in her portraiture of effects, she must necessarily be right in her

assumption of causes. That is, he was convinced that Cytherea--the

hitherto-believed faithful Cytherea--had, at any rate, looked with

something more than indifference upon the extremely handsome face and

form of Manston.

Did he blame her, as guilty of the impropriety of allowing herself to

love the newcomer in the face of his not being free to return her love?

No; never for a moment did he doubt that all had occurred in her

old, innocent, impulsive way; that her heart was gone before she knew

it--before she knew anything, beyond his existence, of the man to whom

it had flown. Perhaps the very note enclosed to him was the result

of first reflection. Manston he would unhesitatingly have called a

scoundrel, but for one strikingly redeeming fact. It had been patent

to the whole parish, and had come to Edward’s own knowledge by that

indirect channel, that Manston, as a married man, conscientiously

avoided Cytherea after those first few days of his arrival during which

her irresistibly beautiful and fatal glances had rested upon him--his

upon her.

Taking from his coat a creased and pocket-worn envelope containing

Cytherea’s letter to himself, Springrove opened it and read it through.

He was upbraided therein, and he was dismissed. It bore the date of the

letter sent to Manston, and by containing within it the phrase, ‘All the

day long I have been thinking,’ afforded justifiable ground for assuming

that it was written subsequently to the other (and in Edward’s sight far

sweeter one) to the steward.

But though he accused her of fickleness, he would not doubt the

genuineness, in its kind, of her partiality for him at Budmouth. It was

a short and shallow feeling--not perfect love:

‘Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds.’

But it was not flirtation; a feeling had been born in her and had died.

It would be well for his peace of mind if his love for her could flit

away so softly, and leave so few traces behind.

Miss Aldclyffe had shown herself desperately concerned in the whole

matter by the alacrity with which she had obtained the letter from

Manston, and her labours to induce himself to marry his cousin. Taken in

connection with her apparent interest in, if not love for, Cytherea, her

eagerness, too, could only be accounted for on the ground that Cytherea

indeed loved the steward.

5. DECEMBER THE FOURTH

Edward passed the night he scarcely knew how, tossing feverishly from

side to side, the blood throbbing in his temples, and singing in his

ears.

Before the day began to break he dressed himself. On going out upon

the landing he found his father’s bedroom door already open. Edward

concluded that the old man had risen softly, as was his wont, and gone

out into the fields to start the labourers. But neither of the outer

doors was unfastened. He entered the front room, and found it empty.

Then animated by a new idea, he went round to the little back parlour,

in which the few wrecks saved from the fire were deposited, and looked

in at the door. Here, near the window, the shutters of which had been

opened half way, he saw his father leaning on the bureau, his elbows

resting on the flap, his body nearly doubled, his hands clasping his

forehead. Beside him were ghostly-looking square folds of parchment--the

leases of the houses destroyed.

His father looked up when Edward entered, and wearily spoke to the young

man as his face came into the faint light.

‘Edward, why did you get up so early?’

‘I was uneasy, and could not sleep.’

The farmer turned again to the leases on the bureau, and seemed to

become lost in reflection. In a minute or two, without lifting his eyes,

he said--

‘This is more than we can bear, Ted--more than we can bear! Ted, this

will kill me. Not the loss only--the sense of my neglect about the

insurance and everything. Borrow I never will. ‘Tis all misery now. God

help us--all misery now!’

Edward did not answer, continuing to look fixedly at the dreary daylight

outside.

‘Ted,’ the farmer went on, ‘this upset of be-en burnt out o’ home makes

me very nervous and doubtful about everything. There’s this troubles me

besides--our liven here with your cousin, and fillen up her house. It

must be very awkward for her. But she says she doesn’t mind. Have you

said anything to her lately about when you are going to marry her?’

‘Nothing at all lately.’

‘Well, perhaps you may as well, now we are so mixed in together. You

know, no time has ever been mentioned to her at all, first or last,

and I think it right that now, since she has waited so patiently and so

long--you are almost called upon to say you are ready. It would simplify

matters very much, if you were to walk up to church wi’ her one of these

mornings, get the thing done, and go on liven here as we are. If you

don’t I must get a house all the sooner. It would lighten my mind, too,

about the two little freeholds over the hill--not a morsel a-piece,

divided as they were between her mother and me, but a tidy bit tied

together again. Just think about it, will ye, Ted?’

He stopped from exhaustion produced by the intense concentration of his

mind upon the weary subject, and looked anxiously at his son.

‘Yes, I will,’ said Edward.

‘But I am going to see her of the Great House this morning,’ the farmer

went on, his thoughts reverting to the old subject. ‘I must know the

rights of the matter, the when and the where. I don’t like seeing her,

but I’d rather talk to her than the steward. I wonder what she’ll say to

me.’

The younger man knew exactly what she would say. If his father asked her

what he was to do, and when, she would simply refer him to Manston: her

character was not that of a woman who shrank from a proposition she had

once laid down. If his father were to say to her that his son had at

last resolved to marry his cousin within the year, and had given her a

promise to that effect, she would say, ‘Mr. Springrove, the houses are

burnt: we’ll let them go: trouble no more about them.’

His mind was already made up. He said calmly, ‘Father, when you are

talking to Miss Aldclyffe, mention to her that I have asked Adelaide if

she is willing to marry me next Christmas. She is interested in my union

with Adelaide, and the news will be welcome to her.’

‘And yet she can be iron with reference to me and her property,’ the

farmer murmured. ‘Very well, Ted, I’ll tell her.’

6. DECEMBER THE FIFTH

Of the many contradictory particulars constituting a woman’s heart, two

had shown their vigorous contrast in Cytherea’s bosom just at this time.

It was a dark morning, the morning after old Mr. Springrove’s visit

to Miss Aldclyffe, which had terminated as Edward had intended. Having

risen an hour earlier than was usual with her, Cytherea sat at the

window of an elegant little sitting-room on the ground floor, which had

been appropriated to her by the kindness or whim of Miss Aldclyffe, that

she might not be driven into that lady’s presence against her will. She

leant with her face on her hand, looking out into the gloomy grey air.

A yellow glimmer from the flapping flame of the newly-lit fire fluttered

on one side of her face and neck like a butterfly about to settle there,

contrasting warmly with the other side of the same fair face, which

received from the window the faint cold morning light, so weak that her

shadow from the fire had a distinct outline on the window-shutter in

spite of it. There the shadow danced like a demon, blue and grim.

The contradiction alluded to was that in spite of the decisive

mood which two months earlier in the year had caused her to write a

peremptory and final letter to Edward, she was now hoping for some

answer other than the only possible one a man who, as she held, did not

love her wildly, could send to such a communication. For a lover who

did love wildly, she had left one little loophole in her otherwise

straightforward epistle. Why she expected the letter on some morning of

this particular week was, that hearing of his return to Carriford, she

fondly assumed that he meant to ask for an interview before he left.

Hence it was, too, that for the last few days, she had not been able to

keep in bed later than the time of the postman’s arrival.

The clock pointed to half-past seven. She saw the postman emerge from

beneath the bare boughs of the park trees, come through the wicket, dive

through the shrubbery, reappear on the lawn, stalk across it without

reference to paths--as country postmen do--and come to the porch. She

heard him fling the bag down on the seat, and turn away towards the

village, without hindering himself for a single pace.

Then the butler opened the door, took up the bag, brought it in, and

carried it up the staircase to place it on the slab by Miss Aldclyffe’s

dressing-room door. The whole proceeding had been depicted by sounds.

She had a presentiment that her letter was in the bag at last. She

thought then in diminishing pulsations of confidence, ‘He asks to see

me! Perhaps he asks to see me: I hope he asks to see me.’

A quarter to eight: Miss Aldclyffe’s bell--rather earlier than usual.

‘She must have heard the post-bag brought,’ said the maiden, as,

tired of the chilly prospect outside, she turned to the fire, and drew

imaginative pictures of her future therein.

A tap came to the door, and the lady’s-maid entered.

‘Miss Aldclyffe is awake,’ she said; ‘and she asked if you were moving

yet, miss.’

‘I’ll run up to her,’ said Cytherea, and flitted off with the utterance

of the words. ‘Very fortunate this,’ she thought; ‘I shall see what is

in the bag this morning all the sooner.’

She took it up from the side table, went into Miss Aldclyffe’s bedroom,

pulled up the blinds, and looked round upon the lady in bed, calculating

the minutes that must elapse before she looked at her letters.

‘Well, darling, how are you? I am glad you have come in to see me,’

said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘You can unlock the bag this morning, child, if you

like,’ she continued, yawning factitiously.

‘Strange!’ Cytherea thought; ‘it seems as if she knew there was likely

to be a letter for me.’

From her bed Miss Aldclyffe watched the girl’s face as she tremblingly

opened the post-bag and found there an envelope addressed to her in

Edward’s handwriting; one he had written the day before, after the

decision he had come to on an impartial, and on that account torturing,

survey of his own, his father’s, his cousin Adelaide’s, and what he

believed to be Cytherea’s, position.

The haughty mistress’s soul sickened remorsefully within her when she

saw suddenly appear upon the speaking countenance of the young lady

before her a wan desolate look of agony.

The master-sentences of Edward’s letter were these: ‘You speak truly.

That we never meet again is the wisest and only proper course. That I

regret the past as much as you do yourself, it is hardly necessary for

me to say.’

XII. THE EVENTS OF TEN MONTHS

1. DECEMBER TO APRIL

Week after week, month after month, the time had flown by. Christmas had

passed; dreary winter with dark evenings had given place to more dreary

winter with light evenings. Thaws had ended in rain, rain in wind,

wind in dust. Showery days had come--the period of pink dawns and white

sunsets; with the third week in April the cuckoo had appeared, with the

fourth, the nightingale.

Edward Springrove was in London, attending to the duties of his

new office, and it had become known throughout the neighbourhood of

Carriford that the engagement between himself and Miss Adelaide Hinton

would terminate in marriage at the end of the year.

The only occasion on which her lover of the idle delicious days at

Budmouth watering-place had been seen by Cytherea after the time of the

decisive correspondence, was once in church, when he sat in front of

her, and beside Miss Hinton.

The rencounter was quite an accident. Springrove had come there in the

full belief that Cytherea was away from home with Miss Aldclyffe; and he

continued ignorant of her presence throughout the service.

It is at such moments as these, when a sensitive nature writhes under

the conception that its most cherished emotions have been treated with

contumely, that the sphere-descended Maid, Music, friend of Pleasure

at other times, becomes a positive enemy--racking, bewildering,

unrelenting. The congregation sang the first Psalm and came to the

verse--

‘Like some fair tree which, fed by streams,

With timely fruit doth bend,

He still shall flourish, and success

All his designs attend.’

Cytherea’s lips did not move, nor did any sound escape her; but could

she help singing the words in the depths of her being, although the man

to whom she applied them sat at her rival’s side?

Perhaps the moral compensation for all a woman’s petty cleverness

under thriving conditions is the real nobility that lies in her extreme

foolishness at these other times; her sheer inability to be simply

just, her exercise of an illogical power entirely denied to men in

general--the power not only of kissing, but of delighting to kiss the

rod by a punctilious observance of the self-immolating doctrines in the

Sermon on the Mount.

As for Edward--a little like other men of his temperament, to whom, it

is somewhat humiliating to think, the aberrancy of a given love is in

itself a recommendation--his sentiment, as he looked over his cousin’s

book, was of a lower rank, Horatian rather than Psalmodic--

‘O, what hast thou of her, of her

Whose every look did love inspire;

Whose every breathing fanned my fire,

And stole me from myself away!’

Then, without letting him see her, Cytherea slipt out of church early,

and went home, the tones of the organ still lingering in her ears as she

tried bravely to kill a jealous thought that would nevertheless live:

‘My nature is one capable of more, far more, intense feeling than hers!

She can’t appreciate all the sides of him--she never will! He is more

tangible to me even now, as a thought, than his presence itself is to

her!’ She was less noble then.

But she continually repressed her misery and bitterness of heart till

the effort to do so showed signs of lessening. At length she even tried

to hope that her lost lover and her rival would love one another very

dearly.

The scene and the sentiment dropped into the past. Meanwhile, Manston

continued visibly before her. He, though quiet and subdued in his

bearing for a long time after the calamity of November, had not

simulated a grief that he did not feel. At first his loss seemed so

to absorb him--though as a startling change rather than as a heavy

sorrow--that he paid Cytherea no attention whatever. His conduct was

uniformly kind and respectful, but little more. Then, as the date of the

catastrophe grew remoter, he began to wear a different aspect towards

her. He always contrived to obliterate by his manner all recollection on

her side that she was comparatively more dependent than himself--making

much of her womanhood, nothing of her situation. Prompt to aid her

whenever occasion offered, and full of delightful petits soins at all

times, he was not officious. In this way he irresistibly won for himself

a position as her friend, and the more easily in that he allowed not the

faintest symptom of the old love to be apparent.

Matters stood thus in the middle of the spring when the next move on his

behalf was made by Miss Aldclyffe.

2. THE THIRD OF MAY

She led Cytherea to a summer-house called the Fane, built in the private

grounds about the mansion in the form of a Grecian temple; it overlooked

the lake, the island on it, the trees, and their undisturbed reflection

in the smooth still water. Here the old and young maid halted; here they

stood, side by side, mentally imbibing the scene.

The month was May--the time, morning. Cuckoos, thrushes, blackbirds, and

sparrows gave forth a perfect confusion of song and twitter. The road

was spotted white with the fallen leaves of apple-blossoms, and the

sparkling grey dew still lingered on the grass and flowers. Two swans

floated into view in front of the women, and then crossed the water

towards them.

‘They seem to come to us without any will of their own--quite

involuntarily--don’t they?’ said Cytherea, looking at the birds’

graceful advance.

‘Yes, but if you look narrowly you can see their hips just beneath the

water, working with the greatest energy.’

‘I’d rather not see that, it spoils the idea of proud indifference to

direction which we associate with a swan.’

‘It does; we’ll have “involuntarily.” Ah, now this reminds me of

something.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of a human being who involuntarily comes towards yourself.’

Cytherea looked into Miss Aldclyffe’s face; her eyes grew round as

circles, and lines of wonderment came visibly upon her countenance.

She had not once regarded Manston as a lover since his wife’s sudden

appearance and subsequent death. The death of a wife, and such a death,

was an overwhelming matter in her ideas of things.

‘Is it a man or woman?’ she said, quite innocently.

‘Mr. Manston,’ said Miss Aldclyffe quietly.

‘Mr. Manston attracted by me _now_?’ said Cytherea, standing at gaze.

‘Didn’t you know it?’

‘Certainly I did not. Why, his poor wife has only been dead six months.’

‘Of course he knows that. But loving is not done by months, or method,

or rule, or nobody would ever have invented such a phrase as “falling

in love.” He does not want his love to be observed just yet, on the very

account you mention; but conceal it as he may from himself and us, it

exists definitely--and very intensely, I assure you.’

‘I suppose then, that if he can’t help it, it is no harm of him,’ said

Cytherea naively, and beginning to ponder.

‘Of course it isn’t--you know that well enough. She was a great burden

and trouble to him. This may become a great good to you both.’

A rush of feeling at remembering that the same woman, before Manston’s

arrival, had just as frankly advocated Edward’s claims, checked

Cytherea’s utterance for awhile.

‘There, don’t look at me like that, for Heaven’s sake!’ said Miss

Aldclyffe. ‘You could almost kill a person by the force of reproach you

can put into those eyes of yours, I verily believe.’

Edward once in the young lady’s thoughts, there was no getting rid of

him. She wanted to be alone.

‘Do you want me here?’ she said.

‘Now there, there; you want to be off, and have a good cry,’ said Miss

Aldclyffe, taking her hand. ‘But you mustn’t, my dear. There’s nothing

in the past for you to regret. Compare Mr. Manston’s honourable conduct

towards his wife and yourself, with Springrove towards his betrothed and

yourself, and then see which appears the more worthy of your thoughts.’

3. FROM THE FOURTH OF MAY TO THE TWENTY-FIRST OF JUNE

The next stage in Manston’s advances towards her hand was a clearly

defined courtship. She was sadly perplexed, and some contrivance was

necessary on his part in order to meet with her. But it is next to

impossible for an appreciative woman to have a positive repugnance

towards an unusually handsome and gifted man, even though she may not be

inclined to love him. Hence Cytherea was not so alarmed at the sight of

him as to render a meeting and conversation with her more than a matter

of difficulty.

Coming and going from church was his grand opportunity. Manston was very

religious now. It is commonly said that no man was ever converted by

argument, but there is a single one which will make any Laodicean in

England, let him be once love-sick, wear prayer-books and become a

zealous Episcopalian--the argument that his sweetheart can be seen from

his pew.

Manston introduced into his method a system of bewitching flattery,

everywhere pervasive, yet, too, so transitory and intangible, that, as

in the case of the poet Wordsworth and the Wandering Voice, though she

felt it present, she could never find it. As a foil to heighten its

effect, he occasionally spoke philosophically of the evanescence of

female beauty--the worthlessness of mere appearance. ‘Handsome is that

handsome does’ he considered a proverb which should be written on the

looking-glass of every woman in the land. ‘Your form, your motions, your

heart have won me,’ he said, in a tone of playful sadness. ‘They are

beautiful. But I see these things, and it comes into my mind that they

are doomed, they are gliding to nothing as I look. Poor eyes, poor

mouth, poor face, poor maiden! “Where will her glories be in twenty

years?” I say. “Where will all of her be in a hundred?” Then I think

it is cruel that you should bloom a day, and fade for ever and ever. It

seems hard and sad that you will die as ordinarily as I, and be buried;

be food for roots and worms, be forgotten and come to earth, and grow up

a mere blade of churchyard-grass and an ivy leaf. Then, Miss Graye, when

I see you are a Lovely Nothing, I pity you, and the love I feel then

is better and sounder, larger and more lasting than that I felt at the

beginning.’ Again an ardent flash of his handsome eyes.

It was by this route that he ventured on an indirect declaration and

offer of his hand.

She implied in the same indirect manner that she did not love him enough

to accept it.

An actual refusal was more than he had expected. Cursing himself for

what he called his egregious folly in making himself the slave of a mere

lady’s attendant, and for having given the parish, should they know

of her refusal, a chance of sneering at him--certainly a ground for

thinking less of his standing than before--he went home to the Old

House, and walked indecisively up and down his back-yard. Turning aside,

he leant his arms upon the edge of the rain-water-butt standing in the

corner, and looked into it. The reflection from the smooth stagnant

surface tinged his face with the greenish shades of Correggio’s nudes.

Staves of sunlight slanted down through the still pool, lighting it

up with wonderful distinctness. Hundreds of thousands of minute living

creatures sported and tumbled in its depth with every contortion that

gaiety could suggest; perfectly happy, though consisting only of a head,

or a tail, or at most a head and a tail, and all doomed to die within

the twenty-four hours.

‘Damn my position! Why shouldn’t I be happy through my little day too?

Let the parish sneer at my repulses, let it. I’ll get her, if I move

heaven and earth to do it!’

Indeed, the inexperienced Cytherea had, towards Edward in the first

place, and Manston afterwards, unconsciously adopted bearings that would

have been the very tactics of a professional fisher of men who wished

to have them each successively dangling at her heels. For if any rule

at all can be laid down in a matter which, for men collectively, is

notoriously beyond regulation, it is that to snub a petted man, and to

pet a snubbed man, is the way to win in suits of both kinds. Manston

with Springrove’s encouragement would have become indifferent. Edward

with Manston’s repulses would have sheered off at the outset, as he did

afterwards. Her supreme indifference added fuel to Manston’s ardour--it

completely disarmed his pride. The invulnerable Nobody seemed greater to

him than a susceptible Princess.

4. FROM THE TWENTY-FIRST OF JUNE TO THE END OF JULY

Cytherea had in the meantime received the following letter from her

brother. It was the first definite notification of the enlargement

of that cloud no bigger than a man’s hand which had for nearly a

twelvemonth hung before them in the distance, and which was soon to give

a colour to their whole sky from horizon to horizon.

‘BUDMOUTH REGIS,

Saturday.

‘DARLING SIS,--I have delayed telling you for a long time of a

little matter which, though not one to be seriously alarmed about, is

sufficiently vexing, and it would be unfair in me to keep it from you

any longer. It is that for some time past I have again been distressed

by that lameness which I first distinctly felt when we went to Lulstead

Cove, and again when I left Knapwater that morning early. It is an

unusual pain in my left leg, between the knee and the ankle. I had just

found fresh symptoms of it when you were here for that half-hour about a

month ago--when you said in fun that I began to move like an old man. I

had a good mind to tell you then, but fancying it would go off in a

few days, I thought it was not worth while. Since that time it has

increased, but I am still able to work in the office, sitting on the

stool. My great fear is that Mr. G. will have some out-door measuring

work for me to do soon, and that I shall be obliged to decline it.

However, we will hope for the best. How it came, what was its origin, or

what it tends to, I cannot think. You shall hear again in a day or two,

if it is no better...--Your loving brother, OWEN.’

This she answered, begging to know the worst, which she could bear, but

suspense and anxiety never. In two days came another letter from him, of

which the subjoined paragraph is a portion:--

‘I had quite decided to let you know the worst, and to assure you that

it was the worst, before you wrote to ask it. And again I give you

my word that I will conceal nothing--so that there will be no excuse

whatever for your wearing yourself out with fears that I am worse than I

say. This morning then, for the first time, I have been obliged to stay

away from the office. Don’t be frightened at this, dear Cytherea. Rest

is all that is wanted, and by nursing myself now for a week, I may avoid

an illness of six months.’

After a visit from her he wrote again:--

‘Dr. Chestman has seen me. He said that the ailment was some sort of

rheumatism, and I am now undergoing proper treatment for its cure. My

leg and foot have been placed in hot bran, liniments have been applied,

and also severe friction with a pad. He says I shall be as right as ever

in a very short time. Directly I am I shall run up by the train to see

you. Don’t trouble to come to me if Miss Aldclyffe grumbles again about

your being away, for I am going on capitally.... You shall hear again at

the end of the week.’

At the time mentioned came the following:--

‘I am sorry to tell you, because I know it will be so disheartening

after my last letter, that I am not so well as I was then, and that

there has been a sort of hitch in the proceedings. After I had been

treated for rheumatism a few days longer (in which treatment they

pricked the place with a long needle several times,) I saw that Dr.

Chestman was in doubt about something, and I requested that he would

call in a brother professional man to see me as well. They consulted

together and then told me that rheumatism was not the disease after all,

but erysipelas. They then began treating it differently, as became a

different matter. Blisters, flour, and starch, seem to be the order of

the day now--medicine, of course, besides.

‘Mr. Gradfield has been in to inquire about me. He says he has been

obliged to get a designer in my place, which grieves me very much,

though, of course, it could not be avoided.’

A month passed away; throughout this period, Cytherea visited him

as often as the limited time at her command would allow, and wore as

cheerful a countenance as the womanly determination to do nothing which

might depress him could enable her to wear. Another letter from him then

told her these additional facts:--

‘The doctors find they are again on the wrong tack. They cannot make out

what the disease is. O Cytherea! how I wish they knew! This suspense is

wearing me out. Could not Miss Aldclyffe spare you for a day? Do come to

me. We will talk about the best course then. I am sorry to complain, but

I am worn out.’

Cytherea went to Miss Aldclyffe, and told her of the melancholy turn her

brother’s illness had taken. Miss Aldclyffe at once said that Cytherea

might go, and offered to do anything to assist her which lay in her

power. Cytherea’s eyes beamed gratitude as she turned to leave the room,

and hasten to the station.

‘O, Cytherea,’ said Miss Aldclyffe, calling her back; ‘just one word.

Has Mr. Manston spoken to you lately?’

‘Yes,’ said Cytherea, blushing timorously.

‘He proposed?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you refused him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tut, tut! Now listen to my advice,’ said Miss Aldclyffe emphatically,

‘and accept him before he changes his mind. The chance which he offers

you of settling in life is one that may possibly, probably, not occur

again. His position is good and secure, and the life of his wife would

be a happy one. You may not be sure that you love him madly; but suppose

you are not sure? My father used to say to me as a child when he was

teaching me whist, “When in doubt win the trick!” That advice is ten

times as valuable to a woman on the subject of matrimony. In refusing a

man there is always the risk that you may never get another offer.’

‘Why didn’t you win the trick when you were a girl?’ said Cytherea.

‘Come, my lady Pert; I’m not the text,’ said Miss Aldclyffe, her face

glowing like fire.

Cytherea laughed stealthily.

‘I was about to say,’ resumed Miss Aldclyffe severely, ‘that here is

Mr. Manston waiting with the tenderest solicitude for you, and you

overlooking it, as if it were altogether beneath you. Think how you

might benefit your sick brother if you were Mrs. Manston. You will

please me _very much_ by giving him some encouragement. You understand

me, Cythie dear?’

Cytherea was silent.

‘And,’ said Miss Aldclyffe, still more emphatically, ‘on your promising

that you will accept him some time this year, I will take especial care

of your brother. You are listening, Cytherea?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, leaving the room.

She went to Budmouth, passed the day with her brother, and returned to

Knapwater wretched and full of foreboding. Owen had looked startlingly

thin and pale--thinner and paler than ever she had seen him before. The

brother and sister had that day decided that notwithstanding the drain

upon their slender resources, another surgeon should see him. Time was

everything.

Owen told her the result in his next letter:--

‘The three practitioners between them have at last hit the nail on the

head, I hope. They probed the place, and discovered that the secret lay

in the bone. I underwent an operation for its removal three days ago

(after taking chloroform)... Thank God it is over. Though I am so weak,

my spirits are rather better. I wonder when I shall be at work again?

I asked the surgeons how long it would be first. I said a month? They

shook their heads. A year? I said. Not so long, they said. Six months? I

inquired. They would not, or could not, tell me. But never mind.

‘Run down, when you have half a day to spare, for the hours drag on so

drearily. O Cytherea, you can’t think how drearily!’

She went. Immediately on her departure Miss Aldclyffe sent a note to the

Old House, to Manston. On the maiden’s return, tired and sick at heart

as usual, she found Manston at the station awaiting her. He asked

politely if he might accompany her to Knapwater. She tacitly acquiesced.

During their walk he inquired the particulars of her brother’s illness,

and with an irresistible desire to pour out her trouble to some one,

she told him of the length of time which must elapse before he could be

strong again, and of the lack of comfort in lodgings.

Manston was silent awhile. Then he said impetuously: ‘Miss Graye, I will

not mince matters--I love you--you know it. Stratagem they say is fair

in love, and I am compelled to adopt it now. Forgive me, for I cannot

help it. Consent to be my wife at any time that may suit you--any remote

day you may name will satisfy me--and you shall find him well provided

for.’

For the first time in her life she truly dreaded the handsome man at

her side who pleaded thus selfishly, and shrank from the hot voluptuous

nature of his passion for her, which, disguise it as he might under a

quiet and polished exterior, at times radiated forth with a scorching

white heat. She perceived how animal was the love which bargained.

‘I do not love you, Mr. Manston,’ she replied coldly.

5. FROM THE FIRST TO THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF AUGUST

The long sunny days of the later summer-time brought only the same

dreary accounts from Budmouth, and saw Cytherea paying the same sad

visits.

She grew perceptibly weaker, in body and mind. Manston still persisted

in his suit, but with more of his former indirectness, now that he saw

how unexpectedly well she stood an open attack. His was the system of

Dares at the Sicilian games--

‘He, like a captain who beleaguers round

Some strong-built castle on a rising ground,

Views all the approaches with observing eyes,

This and that other part again he tries,

And more on industry than force relies.’

Miss Aldclyffe made it appear more clearly than ever that aid to

Owen from herself depended entirely upon Cytherea’s acceptance of

her steward. Hemmed in and distressed, Cytherea’s answers to his

importunities grew less uniform; they were firm, or wavering, as Owen’s

malady fluctuated. Had a register of her pitiful oscillations been kept,

it would have rivalled in pathos the diary wherein De Quincey tabulates

his combat with Opium--perhaps as noticeable an instance as any in which

a thrilling dramatic power has been given to mere numerals. Thus she

wearily and monotonously lived through the month, listening on Sundays

to the well-known round of chapters narrating the history of Elijah and

Elisha in famine and drought; on week-days to buzzing flies in hot sunny

rooms. ‘So like, so very like, was day to day.’ Extreme lassitude seemed

all that the world could show her.

Her state was in this wise, when one afternoon, having been with her

brother, she met the surgeon, and begged him to tell the actual truth

concerning Owen’s condition.

The reply was that he feared that the first operation had not been

thorough; that although the wound had healed, another attempt might

still be necessary, unless nature were left to effect her own cure. But

the time such a self-healing proceeding would occupy might be ruinous.

‘How long would it be?’ she said.

‘It is impossible to say. A year or two, more or less.’

‘And suppose he submitted to another artificial extraction?’

‘Then he might be well in four or six months.’

Now the remainder of his and her possessions, together with a sum he had

borrowed, would not provide him with necessary comforts for half

that time. To combat the misfortune, there were two courses open--her

becoming betrothed to Manston, or the sending Owen to the County

Hospital.

Thus terrified, driven into a corner, panting and fluttering about for

some loophole of escape, yet still shrinking from the idea of being

Manston’s wife, the poor little bird endeavoured to find out from

Miss Aldclyffe whether it was likely Owen would be well treated in the

hospital.

‘County Hospital!’ said Miss Aldclyffe; ‘why, it is only another

name for slaughter-house--in surgical cases at any rate. Certainly if

anything about your body is snapt in two they do join you together in

a fashion, but ‘tis so askew and ugly, that you may as well be apart

again.’ Then she terrified the inquiring and anxious maiden by relating

horrid stories of how the legs and arms of poor people were cut off at a

moment’s notice, especially in cases where the restorative treatment was

likely to be long and tedious.

‘You know how willing I am to help you, Cytherea,’ she added

reproachfully. ‘You know it. Why are you so obstinate then? Why do you

selfishly bar the clear, honourable, and only sisterly path which leads

out of this difficulty? I cannot, on my conscience, countenance you; no,

I cannot.’

Manston once more repeated his offer; and once more she refused, but

this time weakly, and with signs of an internal struggle. Manston’s eye

sparkled; he saw for the hundredth time in his life, that perseverance,

if only systematic, was irresistible by womankind.

6. THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF AUGUST

On going to Budmouth three days later, she found to her surprise that

the steward had been there, had introduced himself, and had seen her

brother. A few delicacies had been brought him also by the same hand.

Owen spoke in warm terms of Manston and his free and unceremonious call,

as he could not have refrained from doing of any person, of any kind,

whose presence had served to help away the tedious hours of a long day,

and who had, moreover, shown that sort of consideration for him which

the accompanying basket implied--antecedent consideration, so telling

upon all invalids--and which he so seldom experienced except from the

hands of his sister.

How should he perceive, amid this tithe-paying of mint, and anise, and

cummin, the weightier matters which were left undone?

Again the steward met her at Carriford Road Station on her return

journey. Instead of being frigid as at the former meeting at the same

place, she was embarrassed by a strife of thought, and murmured brokenly

her thanks for what he had done. The same request that he might see her

home was made.

He had perceived his error in making his kindness to Owen a conditional

kindness, and had hastened to efface all recollection of it. ‘Though I

let my offer on her brother’s--my friend’s--behalf, seem dependent on my

lady’s graciousness to me,’ he whispered wooingly in the course of their

walk, ‘I could not conscientiously adhere to my statement; it was said

with all the impulsive selfishness of love. Whether you choose to have

me, or whether you don’t, I love you too devotedly to be anything but

kind to your brother.... Miss Graye, Cytherea, I will do anything,’ he

continued earnestly, ‘to give you pleasure--indeed I will.’

She saw on the one hand her poor and much-loved Owen recovering from

his illness and troubles by the disinterested kindness of the man

beside her, on the other she drew him dying, wholly by reason of her

self-enforced poverty. To marry this man was obviously the course of

common sense, to refuse him was impolitic temerity. There was reason

in this. But there was more behind than a hundred reasons--a woman’s

gratitude and her impulse to be kind.

The wavering of her mind was visible in her tell-tale face. He noticed

it, and caught at the opportunity.

They were standing by the ruinous foundations of an old mill in the

midst of a meadow. Between grey and half-overgrown stonework--the only

signs of masonry remaining--the water gurgled down from the old millpond

to a lower level, under the cloak of rank broad leaves--the sensuous

natures of the vegetable world. On the right hand the sun, resting on

the horizon-line, streamed across the ground from below copper-coloured

and lilac clouds, stretched out in flats beneath a sky of pale soft

green. All dark objects on the earth that lay towards the sun were

overspread by a purple haze, against which a swarm of wailing gnats

shone forth luminously, rising upward and floating away like sparks of

fire.

The stillness oppressed and reduced her to mere passivity. The only

wish the humidity of the place left in her was to stand motionless.

The helpless flatness of the landscape gave her, as it gives all such

temperaments, a sense of bare equality with, and no superiority to, a

single entity under the sky.

He came so close that their clothes touched. ‘Will you try to love me?

Do try to love me!’ he said, in a whisper, taking her hand. He had never

taken it before. She could feel his hand trembling exceedingly as it

held hers in its clasp.

Considering his kindness to her brother, his love for herself, and

Edward’s fickleness, ought she to forbid him to do this? How truly

pitiful it was to feel his hand tremble so--all for her! Should she

withdraw her hand? She would think whether she would. Thinking, and

hesitating, she looked as far as the autumnal haze on the marshy

ground would allow her to see distinctly. There was the fragment of a

hedge--all that remained of a ‘wet old garden’--standing in the middle

of the mead, without a definite beginning or ending, purposeless and

valueless. It was overgrown, and choked with mandrakes, and she could

almost fancy she heard their shrieks.... Should she withdraw her hand?

No, she could not withdraw it now; it was too late, the act would not

imply refusal. She felt as one in a boat without oars, drifting with

closed eyes down a river--she knew not whither.

He gave her hand a gentle pressure, and relinquished it.

Then it seemed as if he were coming to the point again. No, he was not

going to urge his suit that evening. Another respite.

7. THE EARLY PART OF SEPTEMBER

Saturday came, and she went on some trivial errand to the village

post-office. It was a little grey cottage with a luxuriant jasmine

encircling the doorway, and before going in Cytherea paused to admire

this pleasing feature of the exterior. Hearing a step on the gravel

behind the corner of the house, she resigned the jasmine and entered.

Nobody was in the room. She could hear Mrs. Leat, the widow who acted

as postmistress, walking about over her head. Cytherea was going to the

foot of the stairs to call Mrs. Leat, but before she had accomplished

her object, another form stood at the half-open door. Manston came in.

‘Both on the same errand,’ he said gracefully.

‘I will call her,’ said Cytherea, moving in haste to the foot of the

stairs.

‘One moment.’ He glided to her side. ‘Don’t call her for a moment,’ he

repeated.

But she had said, ‘Mrs. Leat!’

He seized Cytherea’s hand, kissed it tenderly, and carefully replaced it

by her side.

She had that morning determined to check his further advances, until she

had thoroughly considered her position. The remonstrance was now on her

tongue, but as accident would have it, before the word could be

spoken Mrs. Leat was stepping from the last stair to the floor, and no

remonstrance came.

With the subtlety which characterized him in all his dealings with her,

he quickly concluded his own errand, bade her a good-bye, in the tones

of which love was so garnished with pure politeness that it only showed

its presence to herself, and left the house--putting it out of her

power to refuse him her companionship homeward, or to object to his late

action of kissing her hand.

The Friday of the next week brought another letter from her brother. In

this he informed her that, in absolute grief lest he should distress her

unnecessarily, he had some time earlier borrowed a few pounds. A week

ago, he said, his creditor became importunate, but that on the day

on which he wrote, the creditor had told him there was no hurry for a

settlement, that ‘his _sister’s suitor_ had guaranteed the sum.’ ‘Is he

Mr. Manston? tell me, Cytherea,’ said Owen.

He also mentioned that a wheeled chair had been anonymously hired

for his especial use, though as yet he was hardly far enough advanced

towards convalescence to avail himself of the luxury. ‘Is this Mr.

Manston’s doing?’ he inquired.

She could dally with her perplexity, evade it, trust to time for

guidance, no longer. The matter had come to a crisis: she must once and

for all choose between the dictates of her understanding and those of

her heart. She longed, till her soul seemed nigh to bursting, for her

lost mother’s return to earth, but for one minute, that she might have

tender counsel to guide her through this, her great difficulty.

As for her heart, she half fancied that it was not Edward’s to quite

the extent that it once had been; she thought him cruel in conducting

himself towards her as he did at Budmouth, cruel afterwards in making so

light of her. She knew he had stifled his love for her--was utterly

lost to her. But for all that she could not help indulging in a woman’s

pleasure of recreating defunct agonies, and lacerating herself with them

now and then.

‘If I were rich,’ she thought, ‘I would give way to the luxury of being

morbidly faithful to him for ever without his knowledge.’

But she considered; in the first place she was a homeless dependent;

and what did practical wisdom tell her to do under such desperate

circumstances? To provide herself with some place of refuge from

poverty, and with means to aid her brother Owen. This was to be Mr.

Manston’s wife.

She did not love him.

But what was love without a home? Misery. What was a home without love?

Alas, not much; but still a kind of home.

‘Yes,’ she thought, ‘I am urged by my common sense to marry Mr.

Manston.’

Did anything nobler in her say so too?

With the death (to her) of Edward her heart’s occupation was gone. Was

it necessary or even right for her to tend it and take care of it as she

used to in the old time, when it was still a capable minister?

By a slight sacrifice here she could give happiness to at least two

hearts whose emotional activities were still unwounded. She would do

good to two men whose lives were far more important than hers.

‘Yes,’ she said again, ‘even Christianity urges me to marry Mr.

Manston.’

Directly Cytherea had persuaded herself that a kind of heroic

self-abnegation had to do with the matter, she became much more content

in the consideration of it. A wilful indifference to the future was what

really prevailed in her, ill and worn out, as she was, by the perpetual

harassments of her sad fortune, and she regarded this indifference, as

gushing natures will do under such circumstances, as genuine resignation

and devotedness.

Manston met her again the following day: indeed, there was no escaping

him now. At the end of a short conversation between them, which took

place in the hollow of the park by the waterfall, obscured on the outer

side by the low hanging branches of the limes, she tacitly assented to

his assumption of a privilege greater than any that had preceded it. He

stooped and kissed her brow.

Before going to bed she wrote to Owen explaining the whole matter. It

was too late in the evening for the postman’s visit, and she placed the

letter on the mantelpiece to send it the next day.

The morning (Sunday) brought a hurried postscript to Owen’s letter of

the day before:--

‘September 9, 1865.

‘DEAR CYTHEREA--I have received a frank and friendly letter from Mr.

Manston explaining the position in which he stands now, and also that in

which he hopes to stand towards you. Can’t you love him? Why not? Try,

for he is a good, and not only that, but a cultured man. Think of the

weary and laborious future that awaits you if you continue for life in

your present position, and do you see any way of escape from it except

by marriage? I don’t. Don’t go against your heart, Cytherea, but be

wise.--Ever affectionately yours, OWEN.’

She thought that probably he had replied to Mr. Manston in the same

favouring mood. She had a conviction that that day would settle her

doom. Yet

‘So true a fool is love,’

that even now she nourished a half-hope that something would happen at

the last moment to thwart her deliberately-formed intentions, and favour

the old emotion she was using all her strength to thrust down.

8. THE TENTH OF SEPTEMBER

The Sunday was the thirteenth after Trinity, and the afternoon service

at Carriford was nearly over. The people were singing the Evening Hymn.

Manston was at church as usual in his accustomed place two seats forward

from the large square pew occupied by Miss Aldclyffe and Cytherea.

The ordinary sadness of an autumnal evening-service seemed, in

Cytherea’s eyes, to be doubled on this particular occasion. She looked

at all the people as they stood and sang, waving backwards and forwards

like a forest of pines swayed by a gentle breeze; then at the village

children singing too, their heads inclined to one side, their eyes

listlessly tracing some crack in the old walls, or following the

movement of a distant bough or bird with features petrified almost to

painfulness. Then she looked at Manston; he was already regarding her

with some purpose in his glance.

‘It is coming this evening,’ she said in her mind. A minute later, at

the end of the hymn, when the congregation began to move out, Manston

came down the aisle. He was opposite the end of her seat as she stepped

from it, the remainder of their progress to the door being in contact

with each other. Miss Aldclyffe had lingered behind.

‘Don’t let’s hurry,’ he said, when Cytherea was about to enter the

private path to the House as usual. ‘Would you mind turning down this

way for a minute till Miss Aldclyffe has passed?’

She could not very well refuse now. They turned into a secluded path on

their left, leading round through a thicket of laurels to the other gate

of the church-yard, walking very slowly. By the time the further gate

was reached, the church was closed. They met the sexton with the keys in

his hand.

‘We are going inside for a minute,’ said Manston to him, taking the keys

unceremoniously. ‘I will bring them to you when we return.’

The sexton nodded his assent, and Cytherea and Manston walked into the

porch, and up the nave.

They did not speak a word during their progress, or in any way interfere

with the stillness and silence that prevailed everywhere around them.

Everything in the place was the embodiment of decay: the fading

red glare from the setting sun, which came in at the west window,

emphasizing the end of the day and all its cheerful doings, the mildewed

walls, the uneven paving-stones, the wormy pews, the sense of recent

occupation, and the dank air of death which had gathered with the

evening, would have made grave a lighter mood than Cytherea’s was then.

‘What sensations does the place impress you with?’ she said at last,

very sadly.

‘I feel imperatively called upon to be honest, from very despair of

achieving anything by stratagem in a world where the materials are such

as these.’ He, too, spoke in a depressed voice, purposely or otherwise.

‘I feel as if I were almost ashamed to be seen walking such a world,’

she murmured; ‘that’s the effect it has upon me; but it does not induce

me to be honest particularly.’

He took her hand in both his, and looked down upon the lids of her eyes.

‘I pity you sometimes,’ he said more emphatically.

‘I am pitiable, perhaps; so are many people. Why do you pity me?’

‘I think that you make yourself needlessly sad.’

‘Not needlessly.’

‘Yes, needlessly. Why should you be separated from your brother so much,

when you might have him to stay with you till he is well?’

‘That can’t be,’ she said, turning away.

He went on, ‘I think the real and only good thing that can be done for

him is to get him away from Budmouth awhile; and I have been wondering

whether it could not be managed for him to come to my house to live for

a few weeks. Only a quarter of a mile from you. How pleasant it would

be!’

‘It would.’

He moved himself round immediately to the front of her, and held her

hand more firmly, as he continued, ‘Cytherea, why do you say “It would,”

so entirely in the tone of abstract supposition? I want him there: I

want him to be my brother, too. Then make him so, and be my wife! I

cannot live without you. O Cytherea, my darling, my love, come and be my

wife!’

His face bent closer and closer to hers, and the last words sank to a

whisper as weak as the emotion inspiring it was strong.

She said firmly and distinctly, ‘Yes, I will.’

‘Next month?’ he said on the instant, before taking breath.

‘No; not next month.’

‘The next?’

‘No.’

‘December? Christmas Day, say?’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘O, you darling!’ He was about to imprint a kiss upon her pale, cold

mouth, but she hastily covered it with her hand.

‘Don’t kiss me--at least where we are now!’ she whispered imploringly.

‘Why?’

‘We are too near God.’

He gave a sudden start, and his face flushed. She had spoken so

emphatically that the words ‘Near God’ echoed back again through the

hollow building from the far end of the chancel.

‘What a thing to say!’ he exclaimed; ‘surely a pure kiss is not

inappropriate to the place!’

‘No,’ she replied, with a swelling heart; ‘I don’t know why I burst out

so--I can’t tell what has come over me! Will you forgive me?’

‘How shall I say “Yes” without judging you? How shall I say “No” without

losing the pleasure of saying “Yes?”’ He was himself again.

‘I don’t know,’ she absently murmured.

‘I’ll say “Yes,”’ he answered daintily. ‘It is sweeter to fancy we

are forgiven, than to think we have not sinned; and you shall have the

sweetness without the need.’

She did not reply, and they moved away. The church was nearly dark now,

and melancholy in the extreme. She stood beside him while he locked

the door, then took the arm he gave her, and wound her way out of the

churchyard with him. Then they walked to the house together, but the

great matter having been set at rest, she persisted in talking only on

indifferent subjects.

‘Christmas Day, then,’ he said, as they were parting at the end of the

shrubbery.

‘I meant Old Christmas Day,’ she said evasively.

‘H’m, people do not usually attach that meaning to the words.’

‘No; but I should like it best if it could not be till then?’ It seemed

to be still her instinct to delay the marriage to the utmost.

‘Very well, love,’ he said gently. ‘’Tis a fortnight longer still; but

never mind. Old Christmas Day.’

9. THE ELEVENTH OF SEPTEMBER

‘There. It will be on a Friday!’

She sat upon a little footstool gazing intently into the fire. It was

the afternoon of the day following that of the steward’s successful

solicitation of her hand.

‘I wonder if it would be proper in me to run across the park and tell

him it is a Friday?’ she said to herself, rising to her feet, looking

at her hat lying near, and then out of the window towards the Old

House. Proper or not, she felt that she must at all hazards remove the

disagreeable, though, as she herself owned, unfounded impression the

coincidence had occasioned. She left the house directly, and went to

search for him.

Manston was in the timber-yard, looking at the sawyers as they worked.

Cytherea came up to him hesitatingly. Till within a distance of a few

yards she had hurried forward with alacrity--now that the practical

expression of his face became visible she wished almost she had never

sought him on such an errand; in his business-mood he was perhaps very

stern.

‘It will be on a Friday,’ she said confusedly, and without any preface.

‘Come this way!’ said Manston, in the tone he used for workmen, not

being able to alter at an instant’s notice. He gave her his arm and

led her back into the avenue, by which time he was lover again. ‘On

a Friday, will it, dearest? You do not mind Fridays, surely? That’s

nonsense.’

‘Not seriously mind them, exactly--but if it could be any other day?’

‘Well, let us say Old Christmas Eve, then. Shall it be Old Christmas

Eve?’

‘Yes, Old Christmas Eve.’

‘Your word is solemn, and irrevocable now?’

‘Certainly, I have solemnly pledged my word; I should not have promised

to marry you if I had not meant it. Don’t think I should.’ She spoke the

words with a dignified impressiveness.

‘You must not be vexed at my remark, dearest. Can you think the worse of

an ardent man, Cytherea, for showing some anxiety in love?’

‘No, no.’ She could not say more. She was always ill at ease when he

spoke of himself as a piece of human nature in that analytical way, and

wanted to be out of his presence. The time of day, and the proximity

of the house, afforded her a means of escape. ‘I must be with Miss

Aldclyffe now--will you excuse my hasty coming and going?’ she said

prettily. Before he had replied she had parted from him.

‘Cytherea, was it Mr. Manston I saw you scudding away from in the avenue

just now?’ said Miss Aldclyffe, when Cytherea joined her.

‘Yes.’

‘“Yes.” Come, why don’t you say more than that? I hate those taciturn

“Yesses” of yours. I tell you everything, and yet you are as close as

wax with me.’

‘I parted from him because I wanted to come in.’

‘What a novel and important announcement! Well, is the day fixed?’

‘Yes.’

Miss Aldclyffe’s face kindled into intense interest at once. ‘Is it

indeed? When is it to be?’

‘On Old Christmas Eve.’

‘Old Christmas Eve.’ Miss Aldclyffe drew Cytherea round to her front,

and took a hand in each of her own. ‘And then you will be a bride!’

she said slowly, looking with critical thoughtfulness upon the maiden’s

delicately rounded cheeks.

The normal area of the colour upon each of them decreased perceptibly

after that slow and emphatic utterance by the elder lady.

Miss Aldclyffe continued impressively, ‘You did not say “Old Christmas

Eve” as a fiancee should have said the words: and you don’t receive my

remark with the warm excitement that foreshadows a bright future.... How

many weeks are there to the time?’

‘I have not reckoned them.’

‘Not? Fancy a girl not counting the weeks! I find I must take the

lead in this matter--you are so childish, or frightened, or stupid, or

something, about it. Bring me my diary, and we will count them at once.’

Cytherea silently fetched the book.

Miss Aldclyffe opened the diary at the page containing the almanac,

and counted sixteen weeks, which brought her to the thirty-first of

December--a Sunday. Cytherea stood by, looking on as if she had no

appetite for the scene.

‘Sixteen to the thirty-first. Then let me see, Monday will be the first

of January, Tuesday the second, Wednesday third, Thursday fourth, Friday

fifth--you have chosen a Friday, as I declare!’

‘A Thursday, surely?’ said Cytherea.

‘No: Old Christmas Day comes on a Saturday.’

The perturbed little brain had reckoned wrong. ‘Well, it must be a

Friday,’ she murmured in a reverie.

‘No: have it altered, of course,’ said Miss Aldclyffe cheerfully.

‘There’s nothing bad in Friday, but such a creature as you will be

thinking about its being unlucky--in fact, I wouldn’t choose a

Friday myself to be married on, since all the other days are equally

available.’

‘I shall not have it altered,’ said Cytherea firmly; ‘it has been

altered once already: I shall let it be.’

XIII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

1. THE FIFTH OF JANUARY. BEFORE DAWN

We pass over the intervening weeks. The time of the story is thus

advanced more than a quarter of a year.

On the midnight preceding the morning which would make her the wife of

a man whose presence fascinated her into involuntariness of bearing,

and whom in absence she almost dreaded, Cytherea lay in her little bed,

vainly endeavouring to sleep.

She had been looking back amid the years of her short though varied

past, and thinking of the threshold upon which she stood. Days and

months had dimmed the form of Edward Springrove like the gauzes of a

vanishing stage-scene, but his dying voice could still be heard faintly

behind. That a soft small chord in her still vibrated true to his

memory, she would not admit: that she did not approach Manston with

feelings which could by any stretch of words be called hymeneal, she

calmly owned.

‘Why do I marry him?’ she said to herself. ‘Because Owen, dear Owen my

brother, wishes me to marry him. Because Mr. Manston is, and has been,

uniformly kind to Owen, and to me. “Act in obedience to the dictates

of common-sense,” Owen said, “and dread the sharp sting of poverty. How

many thousands of women like you marry every year for the same reason,

to secure a home, and mere ordinary, material comforts, which after all

go far to make life endurable, even if not supremely happy.”

‘’Tis right, I suppose, for him to say that. O, if people only knew what

a timidity and melancholy upon the subject of her future grows up in the

heart of a friendless woman who is blown about like a reed shaken with

the wind, as I am, they would not call this resignation of one’s self

by the name of scheming to get a husband. Scheme to marry? I’d rather

scheme to die! I know I am not pleasing my heart; I know that if I only

were concerned, I should like risking a single future. But why should I

please my useless self overmuch, when by doing otherwise I please those

who are more valuable than I?’

In the midst of desultory reflections like these, which alternated

with surmises as to the inexplicable connection that appeared to exist

between her intended husband and Miss Aldclyffe, she heard dull noises

outside the walls of the house, which she could not quite fancy to be

caused by the wind. She seemed doomed to such disturbances at critical

periods of her existence. ‘It is strange,’ she pondered, ‘that this my

last night in Knapwater House should be disturbed precisely as my first

was, no occurrence of the kind having intervened.’

As the minutes glided by the noise increased, sounding as if some one

were beating the wall below her window with a bunch of switches. She

would gladly have left her room and gone to stay with one of the maids,

but they were without doubt all asleep.

The only person in the house likely to be awake, or who would have

brains enough to comprehend her nervousness, was Miss Aldclyffe, but

Cytherea never cared to go to Miss Aldclyffe’s room, though she was

always welcome there, and was often almost compelled to go against her

will.

The oft-repeated noise of switches grew heavier upon the wall, and was

now intermingled with creaks, and a rattling like the rattling of dice.

The wind blew stronger; there came first a snapping, then a crash, and

some portion of the mystery was revealed. It was the breaking off and

fall of a branch from one of the large trees outside. The smacking

against the wall, and the intermediate rattling, ceased from that time.

Well, it was the tree which had caused the noises. The unexplained

matter was that neither of the trees ever touched the walls of the house

during the highest wind, and that trees could not rattle like a man

playing castanets or shaking dice.

She thought, ‘Is it the intention of Fate that something connected with

these noises shall influence my future as in the last case of the kind?’

During the dilemma she fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamt that she

was being whipped with dry bones suspended on strings, which rattled at

every blow like those of a malefactor on a gibbet; that she shifted and

shrank and avoided every blow, and they fell then upon the wall to which

she was tied. She could not see the face of the executioner for his

mask, but his form was like Manston’s.

‘Thank Heaven!’ she said, when she awoke and saw a faint light

struggling through her blind. ‘Now what were those noises?’ To settle

that question seemed more to her than the event of the day.

She pulled the blind aside and looked out. All was plain. The evening

previous had closed in with a grey drizzle, borne upon a piercing air

from the north, and now its effects were visible. The hoary drizzle

still continued; but the trees and shrubs were laden with icicles to an

extent such as she had never before witnessed. A shoot of the diameter

of a pin’s head was iced as thick as her finger; all the boughs in

the park were bent almost to the earth with the immense weight of the

glistening incumbrance; the walks were like a looking-glass. Many boughs

had snapped beneath their burden, and lay in heaps upon the icy grass.

Opposite her eye, on the nearest tree, was a fresh yellow scar, showing

where the branch that had terrified her had been splintered from the

trunk.

‘I never could have believed it possible,’ she thought, surveying the

bowed-down branches, ‘that trees would bend so far out of their true

positions without breaking.’ By watching a twig she could see a drop

collect upon it from the hoary fog, sink to the lowest point, and there

become coagulated as the others had done.

‘Or that I could so exactly have imitated them,’ she continued. ‘On this

morning I am to be married--unless this is a scheme of the great Mother

to hinder a union of which she does not approve. Is it possible for my

wedding to take place in the face of such weather as this?’

2. MORNING

Her brother Owen was staying with Manston at the Old House. Contrary

to the opinion of the doctors, the wound had healed after the first

surgical operation, and his leg was gradually acquiring strength, though

he could only as yet get about on crutches, or ride, or be dragged in a

chair.

Miss Aldclyffe had arranged that Cytherea should be married from

Knapwater House, and not from her brother’s lodgings at Budmouth, which

was Cytherea’s first idea. Owen, too, seemed to prefer the plan. The

capricious old maid had latterly taken to the contemplation of the

wedding with even greater warmth than had at first inspired her, and

appeared determined to do everything in her power, consistent with her

dignity, to render the adjuncts of the ceremony pleasing and complete.

But the weather seemed in flat contradiction of the whole proceeding. At

eight o’clock the coachman crept up to the House almost upon his hands

and knees, entered the kitchen, and stood with his back to the fire,

panting from his exertions in pedestrianism.

The kitchen was by far the pleasantest apartment in Knapwater House

on such a morning as this. The vast fire was the centre of the whole

system, like a sun, and threw its warm rays upon the figures of the

domestics, wheeling about it in true planetary style. A nervously-feeble

imitation of its flicker was continually attempted by a family of

polished metallic utensils standing in rows and groups against the walls

opposite, the whole collection of shines nearly annihilating the weak

daylight from outside. A step further in, and the nostrils were greeted

by the scent of green herbs just gathered, and the eye by the plump form

of the cook, wholesome, white-aproned, and floury--looking as edible as

the food she manipulated--her movements being supported and assisted by

her satellites, the kitchen and scullery maids. Minute recurrent sounds

prevailed--the click of the smoke-jack, the flap of the flames, and the

light touches of the women’s slippers upon the stone floor.

The coachman hemmed, spread his feet more firmly upon the hearthstone,

and looked hard at a small plate in the extreme corner of the dresser.

‘No wedden this mornen--that’s my opinion. In fact, there can’t be,’ he

said abruptly, as if the words were the mere torso of a many-membered

thought that had existed complete in his head.

The kitchen-maid was toasting a slice of bread at the end of a very long

toasting-fork, which she held at arm’s length towards the unapproachable

fire, travestying the Flanconnade in fencing.

‘Bad out of doors, isn’t it?’ she said, with a look of commiseration for

things in general.

‘Bad? Not even a liven soul, gentle or simple, can stand on level

ground. As to getten up hill to the church, ‘tis perfect lunacy. And

I speak of foot-passengers. As to horses and carriage, ‘tis murder

to think of ‘em. I am going to send straight as a line into the

breakfast-room, and say ‘tis a closer.... Hullo--here’s Clerk Crickett

and John Day a-comen! Now just look at ‘em and picture a wedden if you

can.’

All eyes were turned to the window, from which the clerk and gardener

were seen crossing the court, bowed and stooping like Bel and Nebo.

‘You’ll have to go if it breaks all the horses’ legs in the county,’

said the cook, turning from the spectacle, knocking open the oven-door

with the tongs, glancing critically in, and slamming it together with a

clang.

‘O, O; why shall I?’ asked the coachman, including in his auditory by a

glance the clerk and gardener who had just entered.

‘Because Mr. Manston is in the business. Did you ever know him to give

up for weather of any kind, or for any other mortal thing in heaven or

earth?’

‘----Mornen so’s--such as it is!’ interrupted Mr. Crickett cheerily,

coming forward to the blaze and warming one hand without looking at the

fire. ‘Mr. Manston gie up for anything in heaven or earth, did you say?

You might ha’ cut it short by sayen “to Miss Aldclyffe,” and leaven out

heaven and earth as trifles. But it might be put off; putten off a thing

isn’t getten rid of a thing, if that thing is a woman. O no, no!’

The coachman and gardener now naturally subsided into secondaries. The

cook went on rather sharply, as she dribbled milk into the exact centre

of a little crater of flour in a platter--

‘It might be in this case; she’s so indifferent.’

‘Dang my old sides! and so it might be. I have a bit of news--I thought

there was something upon my tongue; but ‘tis a secret; not a word, mind,

not a word. Why, Miss Hinton took a holiday yesterday.’

‘Yes?’ inquired the cook, looking up with perplexed curiosity.

‘D’ye think that’s all?’

‘Don’t be so three-cunning--if it is all, deliver you from the evil of

raising a woman’s expectations wrongfully; I’ll skimmer your pate as

sure as you cry Amen!’

‘Well, it isn’t all. When I got home last night my wife said, “Miss

Adelaide took a holiday this mornen,” says she (my wife, that is);

“walked over to Nether Mynton, met the comen man, and got married!” says

she.’

‘Got married! what, Lord-a-mercy, did Springrove come?’

‘Springrove, no--no--Springrove’s nothen to do wi’ it--‘twas Farmer

Bollens. They’ve been playing bo-peep for these two or three months

seemingly. Whilst Master Teddy Springrove has been daddlen, and hawken,

and spetten about having her, she’s quietly left him all forsook. Serve

him right. I don’t blame the little woman a bit.’

‘Farmer Bollens is old enough to be her father!’

‘Ay, quite; and rich enough to be ten fathers. They say he’s so rich

that he has business in every bank, and measures his money in half-pint

cups.’

‘Lord, I wish it was me, don’t I wish ‘twas me!’ said the scullery-maid.

‘Yes, ‘twas as neat a bit of stitching as ever I heard of,’ continued

the clerk, with a fixed eye, as if he were watching the process from a

distance. ‘Not a soul knew anything about it, and my wife is the only

one in our parish who knows it yet. Miss Hinton came back from the

wedden, went to Mr. Manston, puffed herself out large, and said she was

Mrs. Bollens, but that if he wished, she had no objection to keep on

the house till the regular time of giving notice had expired, or till he

could get another tenant.’

‘Just like her independence,’ said the cook.

‘Well, independent or no, she’s Mrs. Bollens now. Ah, I shall

never forget once when I went by Farmer Bollens’s garden--years ago

now--years, when he was taking up ashleaf taties. A merry feller I was

at that time, a very merry feller--for ‘twas before I took holy orders,

and it didn’t prick my conscience as ‘twould now. “Farmer,” says I,

“little taties seem to turn out small this year, don’t em?” “O no,

Crickett,” says he, “some be fair-sized.” He’s a dull man--Farmer

Bollens is--he always was. However, that’s neither here nor there; he’s

a-married to a sharp woman, and if I don’t make a mistake she’ll bring

him a pretty good family, gie her time.’

‘Well, it don’t matter; there’s a Providence in it,’ said the

scullery-maid. ‘God A’mighty always sends bread as well as children.’

‘But ‘tis the bread to one house and the children to another very often.

However, I think I can see my lady Hinton’s reason for chosen yesterday

to sickness-or-health-it. Your young miss, and that one, had crossed one

another’s path in regard to young Master Springrove; and I expect that

when Addy Hinton found Miss Graye wasn’t caren to have en, she thought

she’d be beforehand with her old enemy in marrying somebody else too.

That’s maids’ logic all over, and maids’ malice likewise.’

Women who are bad enough to divide against themselves under a man’s

partiality are good enough to instantly unite in a common cause against

his attack. ‘I’ll just tell you one thing then,’ said the cook,

shaking out her words to the time of a whisk she was beating eggs with.

‘Whatever maids’ logic is and maids’ malice too, if Cytherea Graye even

now knows that young Springrove is free again, she’ll fling over the

steward as soon as look at him.’

‘No, no: not now,’ the coachman broke in like a moderator. ‘There’s

honour in that maid, if ever there was in one. No Miss Hinton’s tricks

in her. She’ll stick to Manston.’

‘Pifh!’

‘Don’t let a word be said till the wedden is over, for Heaven’s sake,’

the clerk continued. ‘Miss Aldclyffe would fairly hang and quarter me,

if my news broke off that there wedden at a last minute like this.’

‘Then you had better get your wife to bolt you in the closet for an hour

or two, for you’ll chatter it yourself to the whole boiling parish if

she don’t! ‘Tis a poor womanly feller!’

‘You shouldn’t ha’ begun it, clerk. I knew how ‘twould be,’ said the

gardener soothingly, in a whisper to the clerk’s mangled remains.

The clerk turned and smiled at the fire, and warmed his other hand.

3. NOON

The weather gave way. In half-an-hour there began a rapid thaw. By

ten o’clock the roads, though still dangerous, were practicable to the

extent of the half-mile required by the people of Knapwater Park. One

mass of heavy leaden cloud spread over the whole sky; the air began to

feel damp and mild out of doors, though still cold and frosty within.

They reached the church and passed up the nave, the deep-coloured glass

of the narrow windows rendering the gloom of the morning almost night

itself inside the building. Then the ceremony began. The only warmth

or spirit imported into it came from the bridegroom, who retained a

vigorous--even Spenserian--bridal-mood throughout the morning.

Cytherea was as firm as he at this critical moment, but as cold as the

air surrounding her. The few persons forming the wedding-party were

constrained in movement and tone, and from the nave of the church came

occasional coughs, emitted by those who, in spite of the weather, had

assembled to see the termination of Cytherea’s existence as a single

woman. Many poor people loved her. They pitied her success, why, they

could not tell, except that it was because she seemed to stand more like

a statue than Cytherea Graye.

Yet she was prettily and carefully dressed; a strange contradiction in

a man’s idea of things--a saddening, perplexing contradiction. Are

there any points in which a difference of sex amounts to a difference of

nature? Then this is surely one. Not so much, as it is commonly put, in

regard to the amount of consideration given, but in the conception of

the thing considered. A man emasculated by coxcombry may spend more time

upon the arrangement of his clothes than any woman, but even then there

is no fetichism in his idea of them--they are still only a covering

he uses for a time. But here was Cytherea, in the bottom of her heart

almost indifferent to life, yet possessing an instinct with which her

heart had nothing to do, the instinct to be particularly regardful of

those sorry trifles, her robe, her flowers, her veil, and her gloves.

The irrevocable words were soon spoken--the indelible writing soon

written--and they came out of the vestry. Candles had been necessary

here to enable them to sign their names, and on their return to the

church the light from the candles streamed from the small open door,

and across the chancel to a black chestnut screen on the south side,

dividing it from a small chapel or chantry, erected for the soul’s peace

of some Aldclyffe of the past. Through the open-work of this screen

could now be seen illuminated, inside the chantry, the reclining figures

of cross-legged knights, damp and green with age, and above them a

huge classic monument, also inscribed to the Aldclyffe family, heavily

sculptured in cadaverous marble.

Leaning here--almost hanging to the monument--was Edward Springrove, or

his spirit.

The weak daylight would never have revealed him, shaded as he was by the

screen; but the unexpected rays of candle-light in the front showed him

forth in startling relief to any and all of those whose eyes wandered in

that direction. The sight was a sad one--sad beyond all description. His

eyes were wild, their orbits leaden. His face was of a sickly paleness,

his hair dry and disordered, his lips parted as if he could get no

breath. His figure was spectre-thin. His actions seemed beyond his own

control.

Manston did not see him; Cytherea did. The healing effect upon her heart

of a year’s silence--a year and a half’s separation--was undone in

an instant. One of those strange revivals of passion by mere

sight--commoner in women than in men, and in oppressed women commonest

of all--had taken place in her--so transcendently, that even to herself

it seemed more like a new creation than a revival.

Marrying for a home--what a mockery it was!

It may be said that the means most potent for rekindling old love in a

maiden’s heart are, to see her lover in laughter and good spirits in her

despite when the breach has been owing to a slight from herself; when

owing to a slight from him, to see him suffering for his own fault. If

he is happy in a clear conscience, she blames him; if he is miserable

because deeply to blame, she blames herself. The latter was Cytherea’s

case now.

First, an agony of face told of the suppressed misery within her, which

presently could be suppressed no longer. When they were coming out of

the porch, there broke from her in a low plaintive scream the words,

‘He’s dying--dying! O God, save us!’ She began to sink down, and would

have fallen had not Manston caught her. The chief bridesmaid applied her

vinaigrette.

‘What did she say?’ inquired Manston.

Owen was the only one to whom the words were intelligible, and he was

far too deeply impressed, or rather alarmed, to reply. She did not

faint, and soon began to recover her self-command. Owen took advantage

of the hindrance to step back to where the apparition had been seen.

He was enraged with Springrove for what he considered an unwarrantable

intrusion.

But Edward was not in the chantry. As he had come, so he had gone,

nobody could tell how or whither.

4. AFTERNOON

It might almost have been believed that a transmutation had taken place

in Cytherea’s idiosyncrasy, that her moral nature had fled.

The wedding-party returned to the house. As soon as he could find an

opportunity, Owen took his sister aside to speak privately with her

on what had happened. The expression of her face was hard, wild, and

unreal--an expression he had never seen there before, and it disturbed

him. He spoke to her severely and sadly.

‘Cytherea,’ he said, ‘I know the cause of this emotion of yours. But

remember this, there was no excuse for it. You should have been woman

enough to control yourself. Remember whose wife you are, and don’t

think anything more of a mean-spirited fellow like Springrove; he had

no business to come there as he did. You are altogether wrong, Cytherea,

and I am vexed with you more than I can say--very vexed.’

‘Say ashamed of me at once,’ she bitterly answered.

‘I am ashamed of you,’ he retorted angrily; ‘the mood has not left you

yet, then?’

‘Owen,’ she said, and paused. Her lip trembled; her eye told of

sensations too deep for tears. ‘No, Owen, it has not left me; and I will

be honest. I own now to you, without any disguise of words, what last

night I did not own to myself, because I hardly knew of it. I love

Edward Springrove with all my strength, and heart, and soul. You call me

a wanton for it, don’t you? I don’t care; I have gone beyond caring for

anything!’ She looked stonily into his face and made the speech calmly.

‘Well, poor Cytherea, don’t talk like that!’ he said, alarmed at her

manner.

‘I thought that I did not love him at all,’ she went on hysterically. ‘A

year and a half had passed since we met. I could go by the gate of his

garden without thinking of him--look at his seat in church and not care.

But I saw him this morning--dying because he loves me so--I know it is

that! Can I help loving him too? No, I cannot, and I will love him, and

I don’t care! We have been separated somehow by some contrivance--I know

we have. O, if I could only die!’

He held her in his arms. ‘Many a woman has gone to ruin herself,’ he

said, ‘and brought those who love her into disgrace, by acting upon such

impulses as possess you now. I have a reputation to lose as well as you.

It seems that do what I will by way of remedying the stains which fell

upon us, it is all doomed to be undone again.’ His voice grew husky as

he made the reply.

The right and only effective chord had been touched. Since she had

seen Edward, she had thought only of herself and him. Owen--her

name--position--future--had been as if they did not exist.

‘I won’t give way and become a disgrace to _you_, at any rate,’ she

said.

‘Besides, your duty to society, and those about you, requires that you

should live with (at any rate) all the appearance of a good wife, and

try to love your husband.’

‘Yes--my duty to society,’ she murmured. ‘But ah, Owen, it is difficult

to adjust our outer and inner life with perfect honesty to all! Though