Desperate Remedies
easily under each other’s edges.
Night had quite closed in by the time they reached Budmouth harbour,
sparkling with its white, red, and green lights in opposition to the
shimmering path of the moon’s reflection on the other side, which
reached away to the horizon till the flecked ripples reduced themselves
to sparkles as fine as gold dust.
‘I will walk to the station and find out the exact time the train
arrives,’ said Springrove, rather eagerly, when they had landed.
She thanked him much.
‘Perhaps we might walk together,’ he suggested hesitatingly. She looked
as if she did not quite know, and he settled the question by showing the
way.
They found, on arriving there, that on the first day of that month
the particular train selected for Graye’s return had ceased to stop at
Anglebury station.
‘I am very sorry I misled him,’ said Springrove.
‘O, I am not alarmed at all,’ replied Cytherea.
‘Well, it’s sure to be all right--he will sleep there, and come by the
first in the morning. But what will you do, alone?’
‘I am quite easy on that point; the landlady is very friendly. I must go
indoors now. Good-night, Mr. Springrove.’
‘Let me go round to your door with you?’ he pleaded.
‘No, thank you; we live close by.’
He looked at her as a waiter looks at the change he brings back. But she
was inexorable.
‘Don’t--forget me,’ he murmured. She did not answer.
‘Let me see you sometimes,’ he said.
‘Perhaps you never will again--I am going away,’ she replied in
lingering tones; and turning into Cross Street, ran indoors and
upstairs.
The sudden withdrawal of what was superfluous at first, is often felt as
an essential loss. It was felt now with regard to the maiden. More, too,
after a meeting so pleasant and so enkindling, she had seemed to imply
that they would never come together again.
The young man softly followed her, stood opposite the house and watched
her come into the upper room with the light. Presently his gaze was cut
short by her approaching the window and pulling down the blind--Edward
dwelling upon her vanishing figure with a hopeless sense of loss akin to
that which Adam is said by logicians to have felt when he first saw the
sun set, and thought, in his inexperience, that it would return no more.
He waited till her shadow had twice crossed the window, when, finding
the charming outline was not to be expected again, he left the street,
crossed the harbour-bridge, and entered his own solitary chamber on the
other side, vaguely thinking as he went (for undefined reasons),
‘One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother.’
III. THE EVENTS OF EIGHT DAYS
1. FROM THE TWENTY-SECOND TO THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF JULY
But things are not what they seem. A responsive love for Edward
Springrove had made its appearance in Cytherea’s bosom with all the
fascinating attributes of a first experience, not succeeding to or
displacing other emotions, as in older hearts, but taking up entirely
new ground; as when gazing just after sunset at the pale blue sky we see
a star come into existence where nothing was before.
His parting words, ‘Don’t forget me,’ she repeated to herself a hundred
times, and though she thought their import was probably commonplace, she
could not help toying with them,--looking at them from all points,
and investing them with meanings of love and faithfulness,--ostensibly
entertaining such meanings only as fables wherewith to pass the time,
yet in her heart admitting, for detached instants, a possibility of
their deeper truth. And thus, for hours after he had left her, her
reason flirted with her fancy as a kitten will sport with a dove,
pleasantly and smoothly through easy attitudes, but disclosing its cruel
and unyielding nature at crises.
To turn now to the more material media through which this story moves,
it so happened that the very next morning brought round a circumstance
which, slight in itself, took up a relevant and important position
between the past and the future of the persons herein concerned.
At breakfast time, just as Cytherea had again seen the postman pass
without bringing her an answer to the advertisement, as she had fully
expected he would do, Owen entered the room.
‘Well,’ he said, kissing her, ‘you have not been alarmed, of course.
Springrove told you what I had done, and you found there was no train?’
‘Yes, it was all clear. But what is the lameness owing to?’
‘I don’t know--nothing. It has quite gone off now... Cytherea, I hope
you like Springrove. Springrove’s a nice fellow, you know.’
‘Yes. I think he is, except that--’
‘It happened just to the purpose that I should meet him there, didn’t
it? And when I reached the station and learnt that I could not get on by
train my foot seemed better. I started off to walk home, and went about
five miles along a path beside the railway. It then struck me that I
might not be fit for anything to-day if I walked and aggravated the
bothering foot, so I looked for a place to sleep at. There was
no available village or inn, and I eventually got the keeper of a
gate-house, where a lane crossed the line, to take me in.’
They proceeded with their breakfast. Owen yawned.
‘You didn’t get much sleep at the gate-house last night, I’m afraid,
Owen,’ said his sister.
‘To tell the truth, I didn’t. I was in such very close and narrow
quarters. Those gate-houses are such small places, and the man had
only his own bed to offer me. Ah, by-the-bye, Cythie, I have such an
extraordinary thing to tell you in connection with this man!--by Jove,
I had nearly forgotten it! But I’ll go straight on. As I was saying,
he had only his own bed to offer me, but I could not afford to be
fastidious, and as he had a hearty manner, though a very queer one, I
agreed to accept it, and he made a rough pallet for himself on the floor
close beside me. Well, I could not sleep for my life, and I wished I had
not stayed there, though I was so tired. For one thing, there were the
luggage trains rattling by at my elbow the early part of the night. But
worse than this, he talked continually in his sleep, and occasionally
struck out with his limbs at something or another, knocking against the
post of the bedstead and making it tremble. My condition was altogether
so unsatisfactory that at last I awoke him, and asked him what he had
been dreaming about for the previous hour, for I could get no sleep at
all. He begged my pardon for disturbing me, but a name I had casually
let fall that evening had led him to think of another stranger he had
once had visit him, who had also accidentally mentioned the same name,
and some very strange incidents connected with that meeting. The affair
had occurred years and years ago; but what I had said had made him think
and dream about it as if it were but yesterday. What was the word? I
said. “Cytherea,” he said. What was the story? I asked then. He then
told me that when he was a young man in London he borrowed a few pounds
to add to a few he had saved up, and opened a little inn at Hammersmith.
One evening, after the inn had been open about a couple of months,
every idler in the neighbourhood ran off to Westminster. The Houses of
Parliament were on fire.
‘Not a soul remained in his parlour besides himself, and he began
picking up the pipes and glasses his customers had hastily relinquished.
At length a young lady about seventeen or eighteen came in. She asked
if a woman was there waiting for herself--Miss Jane Taylor. He said no;
asked the young lady if she would wait, and showed her into the small
inner room. There was a glass-pane in the partition dividing this room
from the bar to enable the landlord to see if his visitors, who sat
there, wanted anything. A curious awkwardness and melancholy about the
behaviour of the girl who called, caused my informant to look frequently
at her through the partition. She seemed weary of her life, and sat with
her face buried in her hands, evidently quite out of her element in
such a house. Then a woman much older came in and greeted Miss Taylor by
name. The man distinctly heard the following words pass between them:--
‘“Why have you not brought him?”
‘“He is ill; he is not likely to live through the night.”
‘At this announcement from the elderly woman, the young lady fell to the
floor in a swoon, apparently overcome by the news. The landlord ran in
and lifted her up. Well, do what they would they could not for a long
time bring her back to consciousness, and began to be much alarmed. “Who
is she?” the innkeeper said to the other woman. “I know her,” the other
said, with deep meaning in her tone. The elderly and young woman seemed
allied, and yet strangers.
‘She now showed signs of life, and it struck him (he was plainly of an
inquisitive turn), that in her half-bewildered state he might get some
information from her. He stooped over her, put his mouth to her ear,
and said sharply, “What’s your name?” “To catch a woman napping
is difficult, even when she’s half dead; but I did it,” says the
gatekeeper. When he asked her her name, she said immediately--
‘“Cytherea”--and stopped suddenly.’
‘My own name!’ said Cytherea.
‘Yes--your name. Well, the gateman thought at the time it might be
equally with Jane a name she had invented for the occasion, that they
might not trace her; but I think it was truth unconsciously uttered,
for she added directly afterwards: “O, what have I said!” and was quite
overcome again--this time with fright. Her vexation that the woman now
doubted the genuineness of her other name was very much greater than
that the innkeeper did, and it is evident that to blind the woman was
her main object. He also learnt from words the elderly woman casually
dropped, that meetings of the same kind had been held before, and that
the falseness of the soi-disant Miss Jane Taylor’s name had never been
suspected by this dependent or confederate till then.
‘She recovered, rested there for an hour, and first sending off her
companion peremptorily (which was another odd thing), she left the
house, offering the landlord all the money she had to say nothing about
the circumstance. He has never seen her since, according to his
own account. I said to him again and again, “Did you find any more
particulars afterwards?” “Not a syllable,” he said. O, he should never
hear any more of that! too many years had passed since it happened. “At
any rate, you found out her surname?” I said. “Well, well, that’s my
secret,” he went on. “Perhaps I should never have been in this part of
the world if it hadn’t been for that. I failed as a publican, you know.”
I imagine the situation of gateman was given him and his debts paid off
as a bribe to silence; but I can’t say. “Ah, yes!” he said, with a long
breath. “I have never heard that name mentioned since that time till
to-night, and then there instantly rose to my eyes the vision of that
young lady lying in a fainting fit.” He then stopped talking and fell
asleep. Telling the story must have relieved him as it did the Ancient
Mariner, for he did not move a muscle or make another sound for the
remainder of the night. Now isn’t that an odd story?’
‘It is indeed,’ Cytherea murmured. ‘Very, very strange.’
‘Why should she have said your most uncommon name?’ continued Owen. ‘The
man was evidently truthful, for there was not motive sufficient for his
invention of such a tale, and he could not have done it either.’
Cytherea looked long at her brother. ‘Don’t you recognize anything else
in connection with the story?’ she said.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Do you remember what poor papa once let drop--that Cytherea was
the name of his first sweetheart in Bloomsbury, who so mysteriously
renounced him? A sort of intuition tells me that this was the same
woman.’