Desperate Remedies
The quiet villagers of Carriford required no pew-opener in their place
of worship: natives and in-dwellers had their own seats, and strangers
sat where they could. Graye took a seat in the nave, on the north
side, close behind a pillar dividing it from the north aisle, which was
completely allotted to Miss Aldclyffe, her farmers, and her retainers,
Manston’s pew being in the midst of them. Owen’s position on the other
side of the passage was a little in advance of Manston’s seat, and so
situated that by leaning forward he could look directly into the face
of any person sitting there, though, if he sat upright, he was wholly
hidden from such a one by the intervening pillar.
Aiming to keep his presence unknown to Manston if possible, Owen sat,
without once turning his head, during the entrance of the congregation.
A rustling of silk round by the north passage and into Manston’s seat,
told him that some woman had entered there, and as it seemed from the
accompaniment of heavier footsteps, Manston was with her.
Immediately upon rising up, he looked intently in that direction, and
saw a lady standing at the end of the seat nearest himself. Portions of
Manston’s figure appeared on the other side of her. In two glances Graye
read thus many of her characteristics, and in the following order:--
She was a tall woman.
She was broad at the shoulders.
She was full-bosomed.
She was easily recognizable from the photograph but nothing could be
discerned of the colour of her eyes.
With a preoccupied mind he withdrew into his nook, and heard the
service continued--only conscious of the fact that in opposition to the
suspicion which one odd circumstance had bred in his sister concerning
this woman, all ostensible and ordinary proofs and probabilities tended
to the opposite conclusion. There sat the genuine original of the
portrait--could he wish for more? Cytherea wished for more. Eunice
Manston’s eyes were blue, and it was necessary that this woman’s eyes
should be blue also.
Unskilled labour wastes in beating against the bars ten times the energy
exerted by the practised hand in the effective direction. Owen felt this
to be the case in his own and Edward’s attempts to follow up the clue
afforded them. Think as he might, he could not think of a crucial test
in the matter absorbing him, which should possess the indispensable
attribute--a capability of being applied privately; that in the event of
its proving the lady to be the rightful owner of the name she used, he
might recede without obloquy from an untenable position.
But to see Mrs. Manston’s eyes from where he sat was impossible, and he
could do nothing in the shape of a direct examination at present. Miss
Aldclyffe had possibly recognized him, but Manston had not, and feeling
that it was indispensable to keep the purport of his visit a secret from
the steward, he thought it would be as well, too, to keep his presence
in the village a secret from him; at any rate, till the day was over.
At the first opening of the doors, Graye left the church and wandered
away into the fields to ponder on another scheme. He could not call
on Farmer Springrove, as he had intended, until this matter was set at
rest. Two hours intervened between the morning and afternoon services.
This time had nearly expired before Owen had struck out any method of
proceeding, or could decide to run the risk of calling at the Old House
and asking to see Mrs. Manston point-blank. But he had drawn near the
place, and was standing still in the public path, from which a partial
view of the front of the building could be obtained, when the bells
began chiming for afternoon service. Whilst Graye paused, two persons
came from the front door of the half-hidden dwelling whom he presently
saw to be Manston and his wife. Manston was wearing his old garden-hat,
and carried one of the monthly magazines under his arm. Immediately
they had passed the gateway he branched off and went over the hill in a
direction away from the church, evidently intending to ramble along,
and read as the humour moved him. The lady meanwhile turned in the other
direction, and went into the church path.
Owen resolved to make something of this opportunity. He hurried along
towards the church, doubled round a sharp angle, and came back upon the
other path, by which Mrs. Manston must arrive.
In about three minutes she appeared in sight without a veil. He
discovered, as she drew nearer, a difficulty which had not struck him
at first--that it is not an easy matter to particularize the colour of
a stranger’s eyes in a merely casual encounter on a path out of doors.
That Mrs. Manston must be brought close to him, and not only so, but to
look closely at him, if his purpose were to be accomplished.
He shaped a plan. It might by chance be effectual; if otherwise, it
would not reveal his intention to her. When Mrs. Manston was within
speaking distance, he went up to her and said--
‘Will you kindly tell me which turning will take me to Casterbridge?’
‘The second on the right,’ said Mrs. Manston.
Owen put on a blank look: he held his hand to his ear--conveying to the
lady the idea that he was deaf.
She came closer and said more distinctly--
‘The second turning on the right.’
Owen flushed a little. He fancied he had beheld the revelation he was in
search of. But had his eyes deceived him?
Once more he used the ruse, still drawing nearer and intimating by a
glance that the trouble he gave her was very distressing to him.
‘How very deaf!’ she murmured. She exclaimed loudly--
‘_The second turning to the right_.’
She had advanced her face to within a foot of his own, and in speaking
mouthed very emphatically, fixing her eyes intently upon his. And now
his first suspicion was indubitably confirmed. Her eyes were as black as
midnight.
All this feigning was most distasteful to Graye. The riddle having
been solved, he unconsciously assumed his natural look before she had
withdrawn her face. She found him to be peering at her as if he would
read her very soul--expressing with his eyes the notification of which,
apart from emotion, the eyes are more capable than any other--inquiry.
Her face changed its expression--then its colour. The natural tint of
the lighter portions sank to an ashy gray; the pink of her cheeks grew
purpler. It was the precise result which would remain after blood had
left the face of one whose skin was dark, and artificially coated with
pearl-powder and carmine.
She turned her head and moved away, murmuring a hasty reply to Owen’s
farewell remark of ‘Good-day,’ and with a kind of nervous twitch lifting
her hand and smoothing her hair, which was of a light-brown colour.
‘She wears false hair,’ he thought, ‘or has changed its colour
artificially. Her true hair matched her eyes.’
And now, in spite of what Mr. Brown’s neighbours had said about nearly
recognizing Mrs. Manston on her recent visit--which might have meant
anything or nothing; in spite of the photograph, and in spite of his
previous incredulity; in consequence of the verse, of her silence and
backwardness at the visit to Hoxton with Manston, and of her appearance
and distress at the present moment, Graye had a conviction that the
woman was an impostor.
What could be Manston’s reason for such an astounding trick he could by
no stretch of imagination divine.
He changed his direction as soon as the woman was out of sight, and
plodded along the lanes homeward to Tolchurch.
One new idea was suggested to him by his desire to allay Cytherea’s
dread of being claimed, and by the difficulty of believing that the
first Mrs. Manston lost her life as supposed, notwithstanding the
inquest and verdict. Was it possible that the real Mrs. Manston, who
was known to be a Philadelphian by birth, had returned by the train
to London, as the porter had said, and then left the country under an
assumed name, to escape that worst kind of widowhood--the misery of
being wedded to a fickle, faithless, and truant husband?
In her complicated distress at the news brought by her brother,
Cytherea’s thoughts at length reverted to her friend, the Rector of
Carriford. She told Owen of Mr. Raunham’s warm-hearted behaviour towards
herself, and of his strongly expressed wish to aid her.
‘He is not only a good, but a sensible man. We seem to want an old head
on our side.’
‘And he is a magistrate,’ said Owen in a tone of concurrence. He
thought, too, that no harm could come of confiding in the rector, but
there was a difficulty in bringing about the confidence. He wished that
his sister and himself might both be present at an interview with Mr.
Raunham, yet it would be unwise for them to call on him together, in the
sight of all the servants and parish of Carriford.
There could be no objection to their writing him a letter.
No sooner was the thought born than it was carried out. They wrote to
him at once, asking him to have the goodness to give them some advice
they sadly needed, and begging that he would accept their assurance
that there was a real justification for the additional request they
made--that instead of their calling upon him, he would any evening of
the week come to their cottage at Tolchurch.
2. MARCH THE TWENTIETH. SIX TO NINE O’CLOCK P.M.
Two evenings later, to the total disarrangement of his dinner-hour, Mr.
Raunham appeared at Owen’s door. His arrival was hailed with genuine
gratitude. The horse was tied to the palings, and the rector ushered
indoors and put into the easy-chair.
Then Graye told him the whole story, reminding him that their first
suspicions had been of a totally different nature, and that in
endeavouring to obtain proof of their truth they had stumbled upon
marks which had surprised them into these new uncertainties, thrice as
marvellous as the first, yet more prominent.
Cytherea’s heart was so full of anxiety that it superinduced a manner of
confidence which was a death-blow to all formality. Mr. Raunham took her
hand pityingly.
‘It is a serious charge,’ he said, as a sort of original twig on which
his thoughts might precipitate themselves.
‘Assuming for a moment that such a substitution was rendered an easy
matter by fortuitous events,’ he continued, ‘there is this consideration
to be placed beside it--what earthly motive can Mr. Manston have had
which would be sufficiently powerful to lead him to run such a very
great risk? The most abandoned roue could not, at that particular
crisis, have taken such a reckless step for the mere pleasure of a new
companion.’
Owen had seen that difficulty about the motive; Cytherea had not.
‘Unfortunately for us,’ the rector resumed, ‘no more evidence is to be
obtained from the porter, Chinney. I suppose you know what became of
him? He got to Liverpool and embarked, intending to work his way to
America, but on the passage he fell overboard and was drowned. But there
is no doubt of the truth of his confession--in fact, his conduct tends
to prove it true--and no moral doubt of the fact that the real Mrs.
Manston left here to go back by that morning’s train. This being the
case, then, why, if this woman is not she, did she take no notice of the
advertisement--I mean not necessarily a friendly notice, but from the
information it afforded her have rendered it impossible that she should
be personified without her own connivance?’
‘I think that argument is overthrown,’ Graye said, ‘by my earliest
assumption of her hatred of him, weariness of the chain which bound her
to him, and a resolve to begin the world anew. Let’s suppose she has
married another man--somewhere abroad, say; she would be silent for her
own sake.’
‘You’ve hit the only genuine possibility,’ said Mr. Raunham, tapping