Desperate Remedies
‘O no--not likely,’ said her brother sceptically.
‘How not likely, Owen? There’s not another woman of the name in England.
In what year used papa to say the event took place?’
‘Eighteen hundred and thirty-five.’
‘And when were the Houses of Parliament burnt?--stop, I can tell you.’
She searched their little stock of books for a list of dates, and found
one in an old school history.
‘The Houses of Parliament were burnt down in the evening of the
sixteenth of October, eighteen hundred and thirty-four.’
‘Nearly a year and a quarter before she met father,’ remarked Owen.
They were silent. ‘If papa had been alive, what a wonderful absorbing
interest this story would have had for him,’ said Cytherea by-and-by.
‘And how strangely knowledge comes to us. We might have searched for a
clue to her secret half the world over, and never found one. If we had
really had any motive for trying to discover more of the sad history
than papa told us, we should have gone to Bloomsbury; but not caring to
do so, we go two hundred miles in the opposite direction, and there
find information waiting to be told us. What could have been the secret,
Owen?’
‘Heaven knows. But our having heard a little more of her in this way (if
she is the same woman) is a mere coincidence after all--a family story
to tell our friends if we ever have any. But we shall never know any
more of the episode now--trust our fates for that.’
Cytherea sat silently thinking.
‘There was no answer this morning to your advertisement, Cytherea?’ he
continued.
‘None.’
‘I could see that by your looks when I came in.’
‘Fancy not getting a single one,’ she said sadly. ‘Surely there must be
people somewhere who want governesses?’
‘Yes; but those who want them, and can afford to have them, get them
mostly by friends’ recommendations; whilst those who want them, and
can’t afford to have them, make use of their poor relations.’
‘What shall I do?’
‘Never mind it. Go on living with me. Don’t let the difficulty trouble
your mind so; you think about it all day. I can keep you, Cythie, in a
plain way of living. Twenty-five shillings a week do not amount to
much truly; but then many mechanics have no more, and we live quite as
sparingly as journeymen mechanics... It is a meagre narrow life we are
drifting into,’ he added gloomily, ‘but it is a degree more tolerable
than the worrying sensation of all the world being ashamed of you, which
we experienced at Hocbridge.’
‘I couldn’t go back there again,’ she said.
‘Nor I. O, I don’t regret our course for a moment. We did quite right in
dropping out of the world.’ The sneering tones of the remark were almost
too laboured to be real. ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘something better for
me is sure to turn up soon. I wish my engagement here was a permanent
one instead of for only two months. It may, certainly, be for a longer
time, but all is uncertain.’
‘I wish I could get something to do; and I must too,’ she said firmly.
‘Suppose, as is very probable, you are not wanted after the beginning of
October--the time Mr. Gradfield mentioned--what should we do if I were
dependent on you only throughout the winter?’
They pondered on numerous schemes by which a young lady might be
supposed to earn a decent livelihood--more or less convenient and
feasible in imagination, but relinquished them all until advertising had
been once more tried, this time taking lower ground. Cytherea was vexed
at her temerity in having represented to the world that so inexperienced
a being as herself was a qualified governess; and had a fancy that this
presumption of hers might be one reason why no ladies applied. The new
and humbler attempt appeared in the following form:--
‘NURSERY GOVERNESS OR USEFUL COMPANION. A young person wishes to
hear of a situation in either of the above capacities. Salary very
moderate. She is a good needle-woman--Address G., 3 Cross Street,
Budmouth.’
In the evening they went to post the letter, and then walked up and down
the Parade for a while. Soon they met Springrove, said a few words
to him, and passed on. Owen noticed that his sister’s face had become
crimson. Rather oddly they met Springrove again in a few minutes. This
time the three walked a little way together, Edward ostensibly talking
to Owen, though with a single thought to the reception of his words by
the maiden at the farther side, upon whom his gaze was mostly resting,
and who was attentively listening--looking fixedly upon the pavement the
while. It has been said that men love with their eyes; women with their
ears.
As Owen and himself were little more than acquaintances as yet, and as
Springrove was wanting in the assurance of many men of his age, it now
became necessary to wish his friends good-evening, or to find a reason
for continuing near Cytherea by saying some nice new thing. He thought
of a new thing; he proposed a pull across the bay. This was assented
to. They went to the pier; stepped into one of the gaily painted boats
moored alongside and sheered off. Cytherea sat in the stern steering.
They rowed that evening; the next came, and with it the necessity of
rowing again. Then the next, and the next, Cytherea always sitting in
the stern with the tiller ropes in her hand. The curves of her figure
welded with those of the fragile boat in perfect continuation, as she
girlishly yielded herself to its heaving and sinking, seeming to form
with it an organic whole.
Then Owen was inclined to test his skill in paddling a canoe. Edward
did not like canoes, and the issue was, that, having seen Owen on board,
Springrove proposed to pull off after him with a pair of sculls; but
not considering himself sufficiently accomplished to do finished rowing
before a parade full of promenaders when there was a little swell on,
and with the rudder unshipped in addition, he begged that Cytherea might
come with him and steer as before. She stepped in, and they floated
along in the wake of her brother. Thus passed the fifth evening on the
water.
But the sympathetic pair were thrown into still closer companionship,
and much more exclusive connection.
2. JULY THE TWENTY-NINTH
It was a sad time for Cytherea--the last day of Springrove’s management
at Gradfield’s, and the last evening before his return from Budmouth to
his father’s house, previous to his departure for London.
Graye had been requested by the architect to survey a plot of land
nearly twenty miles off, which, with the journey to and fro, would
occupy him the whole day, and prevent his returning till late in the
evening. Cytherea made a companion of her landlady to the extent of
sharing meals and sitting with her during the morning of her
brother’s absence. Mid-day found her restless and miserable under this
arrangement. All the afternoon she sat alone, looking out of the window
for she scarcely knew whom, and hoping she scarcely knew what. Half-past
five o’clock came--the end of Springrove’s official day. Two minutes
later Springrove walked by.
She endured her solitude for another half-hour, and then could endure no
longer. She had hoped--while affecting to fear--that Edward would have
found some reason or other for calling, but it seemed that he had not.
Hastily dressing herself she went out, when the farce of an accidental
meeting was repeated. Edward came upon her in the street at the first
turning, and, like the Great Duke Ferdinand in ‘The Statue and the
Bust’--
‘He looked at her as a lover can;
She looked at him as one who awakes--
The past was a sleep, and her life began.’
‘Shall we have a boat?’ he said impulsively.
How blissful it all is at first. Perhaps, indeed, the only bliss in
the course of love which can truly be called Eden-like is that which
prevails immediately after doubt has ended and before reflection has set
in--at the dawn of the emotion, when it is not recognized by name, and
before the consideration of what this love is, has given birth to the
consideration of what difficulties it tends to create; when on the man’s
part, the mistress appears to the mind’s eye in picturesque, hazy, and
fresh morning lights, and soft morning shadows; when, as yet, she is
known only as the wearer of one dress, which shares her own personality;
as the stander in one special position, the giver of one bright
particular glance, and the speaker of one tender sentence; when, on
her part, she is timidly careful over what she says and does, lest she
should be misconstrued or under-rated to the breadth of a shadow of a
hair.
‘Shall we have a boat?’ he said again, more softly, seeing that to
his first question she had not answered, but looked uncertainly at the
ground, then almost, but not quite, in his face, blushed a series of
minute blushes, left off in the midst of them, and showed the usual
signs of perplexity in a matter of the emotions.
Owen had always been with her before, but there was now a force of habit
in the proceeding, and with Arcadian innocence she assumed that a row on
the water was, under any circumstances, a natural thing. Without another
word being spoken on either side, they went down the steps. He carefully
handed her in, took his seat, slid noiselessly off the sand, and away
from the shore.
They thus sat facing each other in the graceful yellow cockle-shell,
and his eyes frequently found a resting-place in the depths of hers. The
boat was so small that at each return of the sculls, when his hands came
forward to begin the pull, they approached so near to her that her vivid
imagination began to thrill her with a fancy that he was going to clasp
his arms round her. The sensation grew so strong that she could not run
the risk of again meeting his eyes at those critical moments, and turned
aside to inspect the distant horizon; then she grew weary of looking
sideways, and was driven to return to her natural position again. At
this instant he again leant forward to begin, and met her glance by
an ardent fixed gaze. An involuntary impulse of girlish embarrassment
caused her to give a vehement pull at the tiller-rope, which brought the
boat’s head round till they stood directly for shore.
His eyes, which had dwelt upon her form during the whole time of her
look askance, now left her; he perceived the direction in which they
were going.
‘Why, you have completely turned the boat, Miss Graye?’ he said, looking
over his shoulder. ‘Look at our track on the water--a great semicircle,
preceded by a series of zigzags as far as we can see.’
She looked attentively. ‘Is it my fault or yours?’ she inquired. ‘Mine,
I suppose?’
‘I can’t help saying that it is yours.’
She dropped the ropes decisively, feeling the slightest twinge of
vexation at the answer.
‘Why do you let go?’
‘I do it so badly.’
‘O no; you turned about for shore in a masterly way. Do you wish to
return?’
‘Yes, if you please.’
‘Of course, then, I will at once.’
‘I fear what the people will think of us--going in such absurd
directions, and all through my wretched steering.’
‘Never mind what the people think.’ A pause. ‘You surely are not so weak
as to mind what the people think on such a matter as that?’
Those words might almost be called too firm and hard to be given by him
to her; but never mind. For almost the first time in her life she felt
the charming sensation, although on such an insignificant subject, of
being compelled into an opinion by a man she loved. Owen, though
less yielding physically, and more practical, would not have had the
intellectual independence to answer a woman thus. She replied quietly
and honestly--as honestly as when she had stated the contrary fact a
minute earlier--
‘I don’t mind.’
‘I’ll unship the tiller that you may have nothing to do going back but