Desperate Remedies
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