Desperate Remedies
What old days and sunny eves at Budmouth Bay was she picturing? Her
reverie had caused her not to notice his knock.
‘Cytherea!’ he said softly.
She let drop her hand, and turned her head, evidently thinking that her
visitor could be no other than Manston, yet puzzled at the voice.
There was no preface on Springrove’s tongue; he forgot his
position--hers--that he had come to ask quietly if Manston had other
proofs of being a widower--everything--and jumped to a conclusion.
‘You are not his wife, Cytherea--come away, he has a wife living!’ he
cried in an agitated whisper. ‘Owen will be here directly.’
She started up, recognized the tidings first, the bearer of them
afterwards. ‘Not his wife? O, what is it--what--who is living?’ She
awoke by degrees. ‘What must I do? Edward, it is you! Why did you come?
Where is Owen?’
‘What has Manston shown you in proof of the death of his other wife?
Tell me quick.’
‘Nothing--we have never spoken of the subject. Where is my brother Owen?
I want him, I want him!’
‘He is coming by-and-by. Come to the station to meet him--do,’ implored
Springrove. ‘If Mr. Manston comes, he will keep you from me: I am
nobody,’ he added bitterly, feeling the reproach her words had faintly
shadowed forth.
‘Mr. Manston is only gone out to post a letter he has just written,’ she
said, and without being distinctly cognizant of the action, she wildly
looked for her bonnet and cloak, and began putting them on, but in the
act of fastening them uttered a spasmodic cry.
‘No, I’ll not go out with you,’ she said, flinging the articles
down again. Running to the door she flitted along the passage, and
downstairs.
‘Give me a private room--quite private,’ she said breathlessly to some
one below.
‘Number twelve is a single room, madam, and unoccupied,’ said some
tongue in astonishment.
Without waiting for any person to show her into it, Cytherea hurried
upstairs again, brushed through the corridor, entered the room
specified, and closed the door. Edward heard her sob out--
‘Nobody but Owen shall speak to me--nobody!’
‘He will be here directly,’ said Springrove, close against the panel,
and then went towards the stairs. He had seen her; it was enough.
He descended, stepped into the street, and hastened to meet Owen at the
railway-station.
As for the poor maiden who had received the news, she knew not what to
think. She listened till the echo of Edward’s footsteps had died away,
then bowed her face upon the bed. Her sudden impulse had been to escape
from sight. Her weariness after the unwonted strain, mental and bodily,
which had been put upon her by the scenes she had passed through during
the long day, rendered her much more timid and shaken by her position
than she would naturally have been. She thought and thought of that
single fact which had been told her--that the first Mrs. Manston was
still living--till her brain seemed ready to burst its confinement with
excess of throbbing. It was only natural that she should, by degrees,
be unable to separate the discovery, which was matter of fact, from the
suspicion of treachery on her husband’s part, which was only matter of
inference. And thus there arose in her a personal fear of him.
‘Suppose he should come in now and seize me!’ This at first mere
frenzied supposition grew by degrees to a definite horror of his
presence, and especially of his intense gaze. Thus she raised herself to
a heat of excitement, which was none the less real for being vented
in no cry of any kind. No; she could not meet Manston’s eye alone, she
would only see him in her brother’s company.
Almost delirious with this idea, she ran and locked the door to prevent
all possibility of her intentions being nullified, or a look or word
being flung at her by anybody whilst she knew not what she was.
8. HALF-PAST EIGHT O’CLOCK P.M.
Then Cytherea felt her way amid the darkness of the room till she came
to the head of the bed, where she searched for the bell-rope and gave it
a pull. Her summons was speedily answered by the landlady herself,
whose curiosity to know the meaning of these strange proceedings knew no
bounds. The landlady attempted to turn the handle of the door. Cytherea
kept the door locked. ‘Please tell Mr. Manston when he comes that I am
ill,’ she said from the inside, ‘and that I cannot see him.’
‘Certainly I will, madam,’ said the landlady. ‘Won’t you have a fire?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Nor a light?’
‘I don’t want one, thank you.’
‘Nor anything?’
‘Nothing.’
The landlady withdrew, thinking her visitor half insane.
Manston came in about five minutes later, and went at once up to the
sitting-room, fully expecting to find his wife there. He looked round,
rang, and was told the words Cytherea had said, that she was too ill to
be seen.
‘She is in number twelve room,’ added the maid.
Manston was alarmed, and knocked at the door. ‘Cytherea!’
‘I am unwell, I cannot see you,’ she said.
‘Are you seriously ill, dearest? Surely not.’
‘No, not seriously.’
‘Let me come in; I will get a doctor.’
‘No, he can’t see me either.’
‘She won’t open the door, sir, not to nobody at all!’ said the
chambermaid, with wonder-waiting eyes.
‘Hold your tongue, and be off!’ said Manston with a snap.
The maid vanished.
‘Come, Cytherea, this is foolish--indeed it is--not opening the door....
I cannot comprehend what can be the matter with you. Nor can a doctor
either, unless he sees you.’
Her voice had trembled more and more at each answer she gave, but
nothing could induce her to come out and confront him. Hating scenes,
Manston went back to the sitting-room, greatly irritated and perplexed.
And there Cytherea from the adjoining room could hear him pacing up
and down. She thought, ‘Suppose he insists upon seeing me--he probably
may--and will burst open the door!’ This notion increased, and she sank
into a corner in a half-somnolent state, but with ears alive to the
slightest sound. Reason could not overthrow the delirious fancy that
outside her door stood Manston and all the people in the hotel, waiting
to laugh her to scorn.
9. HALF-PAST EIGHT TO ELEVEN P.M.
In the meantime, Springrove was pacing up and down the arrival platform
of the railway-station. Half-past eight o’clock--the time at which
Owen’s train was due--had come, and passed, but no train appeared.
‘When will the eight-thirty train be in?’ he asked of a man who was
sweeping the mud from the steps.
‘She is not expected yet this hour.’
‘How is that?’
‘Christmas-time, you see, ‘tis always so. People are running about to
see their friends. The trains have been like it ever since Christmas
Eve, and will be for another week yet.’
Edward again went on walking and waiting under the draughty roof. He
found it utterly impossible to leave the spot. His mind was so
intent upon the importance of meeting with Owen, and informing him of
Cytherea’s whereabouts, that he could not but fancy Owen might leave the
station unobserved if he turned his back, and become lost to him in the
streets of the town.
The hour expired. Ten o’clock struck. ‘When will the train be in?’ said
Edward to the telegraph clerk.
‘In five-and-thirty minutes. She’s now at L----. They have extra
passengers, and the rails are bad to-day.’
At last, at a quarter to eleven, the train came in.
The first to alight from it was Owen, looking pale and cold. He casually
glanced round upon the nearly deserted platform, and was hurrying to the
outlet, when his eyes fell upon Edward. At sight of his friend he was
quite bewildered, and could not speak.
‘Here I am, Mr. Graye,’ said Edward cheerfully. ‘I have seen Cytherea,
and she has been waiting for you these two or three hours.’
Owen took Edward’s hand, pressed it, and looked at him in silence. Such
was the concentration of his mind, that not till many minutes after did
he think of inquiring how Springrove had contrived to be there before
him.
10. ELEVEN O’CLOCK P.M.
On their arrival at the door of the hotel, it was arranged between
Springrove and Graye that the latter only should enter, Edward waiting
outside. Owen had remembered continually what his friend had frequently
overlooked, that there was yet a possibility of his sister being
Manston’s wife, and the recollection taught him to avoid any rashness in
his proceedings which might lead to bitterness hereafter.
Entering the room, he found Manston sitting in the chair which had been
occupied by Cytherea on Edward’s visit, three hours earlier. Before Owen
had spoken, Manston arose, and stepping past him closed the door. His
face appeared harassed--much more troubled than the slight circumstance
which had as yet come to his knowledge seemed to account for.
Manston could form no reason for Owen’s presence, but intuitively linked
it with Cytherea’s seclusion. ‘Altogether this is most unseemly,’ he
said, ‘whatever it may mean.’
‘Don’t think there is meant anything unfriendly by my coming here,’ said
Owen earnestly; ‘but listen to this, and think if I could do otherwise
than come.’
He took from his pocket the confession of Chinney the porter, as hastily
written out by the vicar, and read it aloud. The aspects of Manston’s
face whilst he listened to the opening words were strange, dark, and
mysterious enough to have justified suspicions that no deceit could
be too complicated for the possessor of such impulses, had there not
overridden them all, as the reading went on, a new and irrepressible
expression--one unmistakably honest. It was that of unqualified
amazement in the steward’s mind at the news he heard. Owen looked up
and saw it. The sight only confirmed him in the belief he had held
throughout, in antagonism to Edward’s suspicions.
There could no longer be a shadow of doubt that if the first Mrs.
Manston lived, her husband was ignorant of the fact. What he could have
feared by his ghastly look at first, and now have ceased to fear, it was
quite futile to conjecture.
‘Now I do not for a moment doubt your complete ignorance of the whole
matter; you cannot suppose for an instant that I do,’ said Owen when he
had finished reading. ‘But is it not best for both that Cytherea should
come back with me till the matter is cleared up? In fact, under the
circumstances, no other course is left open to me than to request it.’
Whatever Manston’s original feelings had been, all in him now gave way
to irritation, and irritation to rage. He paced up and down the room
till he had mastered it; then said in ordinary tones--
‘Certainly, I know no more than you and others know--it was a gratuitous
unpleasantness in you to say you did not doubt me. Why should you, or
anybody, have doubted me?’
‘Well, where is my sister?’ said Owen.
‘Locked in the next room.’
His own answer reminded Manston that Cytherea must, by some inscrutable
means, have had an inkling of the event.
Owen had gone to the door of Cytherea’s room.
‘Cytherea, darling--‘tis Owen,’ he said, outside the door. A rustling
of clothes, soft footsteps, and a voice saying from the inside, ‘Is it
really you, Owen,--is it really?’
‘It is.’
‘O, will you take care of me?’
‘Always.’
She unlocked the door, and retreated again. Manston came forward from
the other room with a candle in his hand, as Owen pushed open the door.
Her frightened eyes were unnaturally large, and shone like stars in the
darkness of the background, as the light fell upon them. She leapt up to
Owen in one bound, her small taper fingers extended like the leaves of a
lupine. Then she clasped her cold and trembling hands round his neck and
shivered.
The sight of her again kindled all Manston’s passions into activity.
‘She shall not go with you,’ he said firmly, and stepping a pace or two