Desperate Remedies
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