Desperate Remedies
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.