Desperate Remedies
air surrounding her. The few persons forming the wedding-party were
constrained in movement and tone, and from the nave of the church came
occasional coughs, emitted by those who, in spite of the weather, had
assembled to see the termination of Cytherea’s existence as a single
woman. Many poor people loved her. They pitied her success, why, they
could not tell, except that it was because she seemed to stand more like
a statue than Cytherea Graye.
Yet she was prettily and carefully dressed; a strange contradiction in
a man’s idea of things--a saddening, perplexing contradiction. Are
there any points in which a difference of sex amounts to a difference of
nature? Then this is surely one. Not so much, as it is commonly put, in
regard to the amount of consideration given, but in the conception of
the thing considered. A man emasculated by coxcombry may spend more time
upon the arrangement of his clothes than any woman, but even then there
is no fetichism in his idea of them--they are still only a covering
he uses for a time. But here was Cytherea, in the bottom of her heart
almost indifferent to life, yet possessing an instinct with which her
heart had nothing to do, the instinct to be particularly regardful of
those sorry trifles, her robe, her flowers, her veil, and her gloves.
The irrevocable words were soon spoken--the indelible writing soon
written--and they came out of the vestry. Candles had been necessary
here to enable them to sign their names, and on their return to the
church the light from the candles streamed from the small open door,
and across the chancel to a black chestnut screen on the south side,
dividing it from a small chapel or chantry, erected for the soul’s peace
of some Aldclyffe of the past. Through the open-work of this screen
could now be seen illuminated, inside the chantry, the reclining figures
of cross-legged knights, damp and green with age, and above them a
huge classic monument, also inscribed to the Aldclyffe family, heavily
sculptured in cadaverous marble.
Leaning here--almost hanging to the monument--was Edward Springrove, or
his spirit.
The weak daylight would never have revealed him, shaded as he was by the
screen; but the unexpected rays of candle-light in the front showed him
forth in startling relief to any and all of those whose eyes wandered in
that direction. The sight was a sad one--sad beyond all description. His
eyes were wild, their orbits leaden. His face was of a sickly paleness,
his hair dry and disordered, his lips parted as if he could get no
breath. His figure was spectre-thin. His actions seemed beyond his own
control.
Manston did not see him; Cytherea did. The healing effect upon her heart
of a year’s silence--a year and a half’s separation--was undone in
an instant. One of those strange revivals of passion by mere
sight--commoner in women than in men, and in oppressed women commonest
of all--had taken place in her--so transcendently, that even to herself
it seemed more like a new creation than a revival.
Marrying for a home--what a mockery it was!
It may be said that the means most potent for rekindling old love in a
maiden’s heart are, to see her lover in laughter and good spirits in her
despite when the breach has been owing to a slight from herself; when
owing to a slight from him, to see him suffering for his own fault. If
he is happy in a clear conscience, she blames him; if he is miserable
because deeply to blame, she blames herself. The latter was Cytherea’s
case now.
First, an agony of face told of the suppressed misery within her, which
presently could be suppressed no longer. When they were coming out of
the porch, there broke from her in a low plaintive scream the words,
‘He’s dying--dying! O God, save us!’ She began to sink down, and would
have fallen had not Manston caught her. The chief bridesmaid applied her
vinaigrette.
‘What did she say?’ inquired Manston.
Owen was the only one to whom the words were intelligible, and he was
far too deeply impressed, or rather alarmed, to reply. She did not
faint, and soon began to recover her self-command. Owen took advantage
of the hindrance to step back to where the apparition had been seen.
He was enraged with Springrove for what he considered an unwarrantable
intrusion.
But Edward was not in the chantry. As he had come, so he had gone,
nobody could tell how or whither.
4. AFTERNOON
It might almost have been believed that a transmutation had taken place
in Cytherea’s idiosyncrasy, that her moral nature had fled.
The wedding-party returned to the house. As soon as he could find an
opportunity, Owen took his sister aside to speak privately with her
on what had happened. The expression of her face was hard, wild, and
unreal--an expression he had never seen there before, and it disturbed
him. He spoke to her severely and sadly.
‘Cytherea,’ he said, ‘I know the cause of this emotion of yours. But
remember this, there was no excuse for it. You should have been woman
enough to control yourself. Remember whose wife you are, and don’t
think anything more of a mean-spirited fellow like Springrove; he had
no business to come there as he did. You are altogether wrong, Cytherea,
and I am vexed with you more than I can say--very vexed.’
‘Say ashamed of me at once,’ she bitterly answered.
‘I am ashamed of you,’ he retorted angrily; ‘the mood has not left you
yet, then?’
‘Owen,’ she said, and paused. Her lip trembled; her eye told of
sensations too deep for tears. ‘No, Owen, it has not left me; and I will
be honest. I own now to you, without any disguise of words, what last
night I did not own to myself, because I hardly knew of it. I love
Edward Springrove with all my strength, and heart, and soul. You call me
a wanton for it, don’t you? I don’t care; I have gone beyond caring for
anything!’ She looked stonily into his face and made the speech calmly.
‘Well, poor Cytherea, don’t talk like that!’ he said, alarmed at her
manner.
‘I thought that I did not love him at all,’ she went on hysterically. ‘A
year and a half had passed since we met. I could go by the gate of his
garden without thinking of him--look at his seat in church and not care.
But I saw him this morning--dying because he loves me so--I know it is
that! Can I help loving him too? No, I cannot, and I will love him, and
I don’t care! We have been separated somehow by some contrivance--I know
we have. O, if I could only die!’
He held her in his arms. ‘Many a woman has gone to ruin herself,’ he
said, ‘and brought those who love her into disgrace, by acting upon such
impulses as possess you now. I have a reputation to lose as well as you.
It seems that do what I will by way of remedying the stains which fell
upon us, it is all doomed to be undone again.’ His voice grew husky as
he made the reply.
The right and only effective chord had been touched. Since she had
seen Edward, she had thought only of herself and him. Owen--her
name--position--future--had been as if they did not exist.
‘I won’t give way and become a disgrace to _you_, at any rate,’ she
said.
‘Besides, your duty to society, and those about you, requires that you
should live with (at any rate) all the appearance of a good wife, and
try to love your husband.’
‘Yes--my duty to society,’ she murmured. ‘But ah, Owen, it is difficult
to adjust our outer and inner life with perfect honesty to all! Though
it may be right to care more for the benefit of the many than for the
indulgence of your own single self, when you consider that the many, and
duty to them, only exist to you through your own existence, what can be
said? What do our own acquaintances care about us? Not much. I think of
mine. Mine will now (do they learn all the wicked frailty of my heart in
this affair) look at me, smile sickly, and condemn me. And perhaps, far
in time to come, when I am dead and gone, some other’s accent, or some
other’s song, or thought, like an old one of mine, will carry them back
to what I used to say, and hurt their hearts a little that they blamed
me so soon. And they will pause just for an instant, and give a sigh to
me, and think, “Poor girl!” believing they do great justice to my
memory by this. But they will never, never realize that it was my single
opportunity of existence, as well as of doing my duty, which they are
regarding; they will not feel that what to them is but a thought, easily
held in those two words of pity, “Poor girl!” was a whole life to me;
as full of hours, minutes, and peculiar minutes, of hopes and dreads,
smiles, whisperings, tears, as theirs: that it was my world, what is to
them their world, and they in that life of mine, however much I cared
for them, only as the thought I seem to them to be. Nobody can enter
into another’s nature truly, that’s what is so grievous.’
‘Well, it cannot be helped,’ said Owen.
‘But we must not stay here,’ she continued, starting up and going. ‘We
shall be missed. I’ll do my best, Owen--I will, indeed.’
It had been decided that on account of the wretched state of the roads,
the newly-married pair should not drive to the station till the latest
hour in the afternoon at which they could get a train to take them to
Southampton (their destination that night) by a reasonable time in the
evening. They intended the next morning to cross to Havre, and thence to
Paris--a place Cytherea had never visited--for their wedding tour.
The afternoon drew on. The packing was done. Cytherea was so restless
that she could stay still nowhere. Miss Aldclyffe, who, though she took
little part in the day’s proceedings, was, as it were, instinctively
conscious of all their movements, put down her charge’s agitation for
once as the natural result of the novel event, and Manston himself was
as indulgent as could be wished.
At length Cytherea wandered alone into the conservatory. When in it,
she thought she would run across to the hot-house in the outer garden,
having in her heart a whimsical desire that she should also like to
take a last look at the familiar flowers and luxuriant leaves collected
there. She pulled on a pair of overshoes, and thither she went. Not
a soul was in or around the place. The gardener was making merry on
Manston’s and her account.
The happiness that a generous spirit derives from the belief that it
exists in others is often greater than the primary happiness itself. The
gardener thought ‘How happy they are!’ and the thought made him happier
than they.
Coming out of the forcing-house again, she was on the point of returning
indoors, when a feeling that these moments of solitude would be her last
of freedom induced her to prolong them a little, and she stood
still, unheeding the wintry aspect of the curly-leaved plants, the
straw-covered beds, and the bare fruit-trees around her. The garden, no
part of which was visible from the house, sloped down to a narrow river
at the foot, dividing it from the meadows without.
A man was lingering along the public path on the other side of the
river; she fancied she knew the form. Her resolutions, taken in the
presence of Owen, did not fail her now. She hoped and prayed that it
might not be one who had stolen her heart away, and still kept it. Why
should he have reappeared at all, when he had declared that he went out
of her sight for ever?
She hastily hid herself, in the lowest corner of the garden close to the
river. A large dead tree, thickly robed in ivy, had been considerably
depressed by its icy load of the morning, and hung low over the stream,
which here ran slow and deep. The tree screened her from the eyes of any
passer on the other side.
She waited timidly, and her timidity increased. She would not allow
herself to see him--she would hear him pass, and then look to see if it
had been Edward.