Desperate Remedies
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