Desperate Remedies
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