Desperate Remedies
confidential tone of men who are slightly intoxicated, its subject being
an unaccountable experience that one of them had had on the night of the
fire.
What the steward heard was enough, and more than enough, to lead him to
forget or to renounce his motive in entering. The effect upon him was
strange and strong. His first object seemed to be to escape from the
house again without being seen or heard.
Having accomplished this, he went in at the park gate, and strode off
under the trees to the Old House. There sitting down by the fire,
and burying himself in reflection, he allowed the minutes to pass by
unheeded. First the candle burnt down in its socket and stunk: he did
not notice it. Then the fire went out: he did not see it. His feet grew
cold; still he thought on.
It may be remarked that a lady, a year and a quarter before this time,
had, under the same conditions--an unrestricted mental absorption--shown
nearly the same peculiarities as this man evinced now. The lady was Miss
Aldclyffe.
It was half-past twelve when Manston moved, as if he had come to a
determination.
The first thing he did the next morning was to call at Knapwater House;
where he found that Miss Aldclyffe was not well enough to see him.
She had been ailing from slight internal haemorrhage ever since the
confession of the porter Chinney. Apparently not much aggrieved at the
denial, he shortly afterwards went to the railway-station and took his
departure for London, leaving a letter for Miss Aldclyffe, stating the
reason of his journey thither--to recover traces of his missing wife.
During the remainder of the week paragraphs appeared in the local and
other newspapers, drawing attention to the facts of this singular case.
The writers, with scarcely an exception, dwelt forcibly upon a feature
which had at first escaped the observation of the villagers, including
Mr. Raunham--that if the announcement of the man Chinney were true,
it seemed extremely probable that Mrs. Manston left her watch and keys
behind on purpose to blind people as to her escape; and that therefore
she would not now let herself be discovered, unless a strong pressure
were put upon her. The writers added that the police were on the track
of the porter, who very possibly had absconded in the fear that his
reticence was criminal, and that Mr. Manston, the husband, was, with
praiseworthy energy, making every effort to clear the whole matter up.
2. FROM THE EIGHTEENTH TO THE END OF JANUARY
Five days from the time of his departure, Manston returned from London
and Liverpool, looking very fatigued and thoughtful. He explained to the
rector and other of his acquaintance that all the inquiries he had
made at his wife’s old lodgings and his own had been totally barren of
results.
But he seemed inclined to push the affair to a clear conclusion now that
he had commenced. After the lapse of another day or two he proceeded to
fulfil his promise to the rector, and advertised for the missing
woman in three of the London papers. The advertisement was a carefully
considered and even attractive effusion, calculated to win the heart,
or at least the understanding, of any woman who had a spark of her own
nature left in her.
There was no answer.
Three days later he repeated the experiment; with the same result as
before.
‘I cannot try any further,’ said Manston speciously to the rector, his
sole auditor throughout the proceedings. ‘Mr. Raunham, I’ll tell you the
truth plainly: I don’t love her; I do love Cytherea, and the whole of
this business of searching for the other woman goes altogether against
me. I hope to God I shall never see her again.’
‘But you will do your duty at least?’ said Mr. Raunham.
‘I have done it,’ said Manston. ‘If ever a man on the face of this earth
has done his duty towards an absent wife, I have towards her--living or
dead--at least,’ he added, correcting himself, ‘since I have lived at
Knapwater. I neglected her before that time--I own that, as I have owned
it before.’
‘I should, if I were you, adopt other means to get tidings of her
if advertising fails, in spite of my feelings,’ said the rector
emphatically. ‘But at any rate, try advertising once more. There’s a
satisfaction in having made any attempt three several times.’
When Manston had left the study, the rector stood looking at the fire
for a considerable length of time, lost in profound reflection. He went
to his private diary, and after many pauses, which he varied only by
dipping his pen, letting it dry, wiping it on his sleeve, and then
dipping it again, he took the following note of events:--
‘January 25.--Mr. Manston has just seen me for the third time on the
subject of his lost wife. There have been these peculiarities attending
the three interviews:--
‘The first. My visitor, whilst expressing by words his great anxiety to
do everything for her recovery, showed plainly by his bearing that he
was convinced he should never see her again.
‘The second. He had left off feigning anxiety to do rightly by his first
wife, and honestly asked after Cytherea’s welfare.
‘The third (and most remarkable). He seemed to have lost all
consistency. Whilst expressing his love for Cytherea (which certainly is
strong) and evincing the usual indifference to the first Mrs. Manston’s
fate, he was unable to conceal the intensity of his eagerness for me to
advise him to _advertise again_ for her.’
A week after the second, the third advertisement was inserted. A
paragraph was attached, which stated that this would be the last time
the announcement would appear.
3. THE FIRST OF FEBRUARY
At this, the eleventh hour, the postman brought a letter for Manston,
directed in a woman’s hand.
A bachelor friend of the steward’s, Mr. Dickson by name, who was
somewhat of a chatterer--plenus rimarum--and who boasted of an endless
string of acquaintances, had come over from Casterbridge the preceding
day by invitation--an invitation which had been a pleasant surprise
to Dickson himself, insomuch that Manston, as a rule, voted him a bore
almost to his face. He had stayed over the night, and was sitting at
breakfast with his host when the important missive arrived.
Manston did not attempt to conceal the subject of the letter, or the
name of the writer. First glancing the pages through, he read aloud as
follows:--
‘“MY HUSBAND,--I implore your forgiveness.
‘“During the last thirteen months I have repeated to myself a hundred
times that you should never discover what I voluntarily tell you now,
namely, that I am alive and in perfect health.
‘“I have seen all your advertisements. Nothing but your persistence
has won me round. Surely, I thought, he _must_ love me still. Why else
should he try to win back a woman who, faithful unto death as she will
be, can, in a social sense, aid him towards acquiring nothing?--rather
the reverse, indeed.
‘“You yourself state my own mind--that the only grounds upon which we
can meet and live together, with a reasonable hope of happiness, must
be a mutual consent to bury in oblivion all past differences. I heartily
and willingly forget everything--and forgive everything. You will do the
same, as your actions show.
‘“There will be plenty of opportunity for me to explain the few facts
relating to my escape on the night of the fire. I will only give the
heads in this hurried note. I was grieved at your not coming to fetch
me, more grieved at your absence from the station, most of all by your
absence from home. On my journey to the inn I writhed under a passionate
sense of wrong done me. When I had been shown to my room I waited and
hoped for you till the landlord had gone upstairs to bed. I still found
that you did not come, and then I finally made up my mind to leave. I
had half undressed, but I put on my things again, forgetting my watch
(and I suppose dropping my keys, though I am not sure where) in my
hurry, and slipped out of the house. The--“’
‘Well, that’s a rum story,’ said Mr. Dickson, interrupting.
‘What’s a rum story?’ said Manston hastily, and flushing in the face.
‘Forgetting her watch and dropping her keys in her hurry.’
‘I don’t see anything particularly wonderful in it. Any woman might do
such a thing.’
‘Any woman might if escaping from fire or shipwreck, or any such
immediate danger. But it seems incomprehensible to me that any woman
in her senses, who quietly decides to leave a house, should be so
forgetful.’
‘All that is required to reconcile your seeming with her facts is to
assume that she was not in her senses, for that’s what she did plainly,
or how could the things have been found there? Besides, she’s truthful
enough.’ He spoke eagerly and peremptorily.
‘Yes, yes, I know that. I merely meant that it seemed rather odd.’
‘O yes.’ Manston read on:--
’”--and slipped out of the house. The rubbish-heap was burning up
brightly, but the thought that the house was in danger did not strike
me; I did not consider that it might be thatched.
‘“I idled in the lane behind the wood till the last down-train had come
in, not being in a mood to face strangers. Whilst I was there the
fire broke out, and this perplexed me still more. However, I was still
determined not to stay in the place. I went to the railway-station,
which was now quiet, and inquired of the solitary man on duty there
concerning the trains. It was not till I had left the man that I saw the
effect the fire might have on my history. I considered also, though not
in any detailed manner, that the event, by attracting the attention of
the village to my former abode, might set people on my track should
they doubt my death, and a sudden dread of having to go back again
to Knapwater--a place which had seemed inimical to me from first to
last--prompted me to run back and bribe the porter to secrecy. I then
walked on to Anglebury, lingering about the outskirts of the town till
the morning train came in, when I proceeded by it to London, and then
took these lodgings, where I have been supporting myself ever since by
needlework, endeavouring to save enough money to pay my passage home to
America, but making melancholy progress in my attempt. However, all that
is changed--can I be otherwise than happy at it? Of course not. I am
happy. Tell me what I am to do, and believe me still to be your faithful
wife, EUNICE.
‘“My name here is (as before)
‘“MRS. RONDLEY, and my address,
79 ADDINGTON STREET,
LAMBETH.’”
The name and address were written on a separate slip of paper.
‘So it’s to be all right at last then,’ said Manston’s friend. ‘But
after all there’s another woman in the case. You don’t seem very
sorry for the little thing who is put to such distress by this turn of
affairs? I wonder you can let her go so coolly.’ The speaker was looking
out between the mullions of the window--noticing that some of the
lights were glazed in lozenges, some in squares--as he said the words,
otherwise he would have seen the passionate expression of agonized
hopelessness that flitted across the steward’s countenance when the
remark was made. He did not see it, and Manston answered after a short
interval. The way in which he spoke of the young girl who had believed
herself his wife, whom, a few short days ago, he had openly idolized,
and whom, in his secret heart, he idolized still, as far as such a
form of love was compatible with his nature, showed that from policy or
otherwise, he meant to act up to the requirements of the position into
which fate appeared determined to drive him.
‘That’s neither here nor there,’ he said; ‘it is a point of honour to do
as I am doing, and there’s an end of it.’
‘Yes. Only I thought you used not to care overmuch about your first
bargain.’