Desperate Remedies

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Desperate Remedies


Another letter had come to her from Edward--very short, but full of
entreaty, asking why she would not write just one line--just one
line of cold friendship at least? She then allowed herself to
think, little by little, whether she had not perhaps been too harsh
with him; and at last wondered if he were really much to blame for
being engaged to another woman. 'Ah, Brain, there is one in me
stronger than you!' she said. The young maid now continually pulled
out his letter, read it and re-read it, almost crying with pity the
while, to think what wretched suspense he must be enduring at her
silence, till her heart chid her for her cruelty. She felt that she
must send him a line--one little line--just a wee line to keep him
alive, poor thing; sighing like Donna Clara--


'Ah, were he now before me,
In spite of injured pride,
I fear my eyes would pardon
Before my tongue could chide.'


2. SEPTEMBER THE TWENTIETH. THREE TO FOUR P.M.

It was the third week in September, about five weeks after
Cytherea's arrival, when Miss Aldclyffe requested her one day to go
through the village of Carriford and assist herself in collecting
the subscriptions made by some of the inhabitants of the parish to a
religious society she patronized. Miss Aldclyffe formed one of what
was called a Ladies' Association, each member of which collected
tributary streams of shillings from her inferiors, to add to her own
pound at the end.

Miss Aldclyffe took particular interest in Cytherea's appearance
that afternoon, and the object of her attention was, indeed,
gratifying to look at. The sight of the lithe girl, set off by an
airy dress, coquettish jacket, flexible hat, a ray of starlight in
each eye and a war of lilies and roses in each cheek, was a palpable
pleasure to the mistress of the mansion, yet a pleasure which
appeared to partake less of the nature of affectionate satisfaction
than of mental gratification.

Eight names were printed in the report as belonging to Miss
Aldclyffe's list, with the amount of subscription-money attached to
each.

'I will collect the first four, whilst you do the same with the last
four,' said Miss Aldclyffe.

The names of two tradespeople stood first in Cytherea's share: then
came a Miss Hinton: last of all in the printed list was Mr.
Springrove the elder. Underneath his name was pencilled, in Miss
Aldclyffe's handwriting, 'Mr. Manston.'

Manston had arrived on the estate, in the capacity of steward, three
or four days previously, and occupied the old manor-house, which had
been altered and repaired for his reception.

'Call on Mr. Manston,' said the lady impressively, looking at the
name written under Cytherea's portion of the list.

'But he does not subscribe yet?'

'I know it; but call and leave him a report. Don't forget it.'

'Say you would be pleased if he would subscribe?'

'Yes--say I should be pleased if he would,' repeated Miss Aldclyffe,
smiling. 'Good-bye. Don't hurry in your walk. If you can't get
easily through your task to-day put off some of it till to-morrow.'

Each then started on her rounds: Cytherea going in the first place
to the old manor-house. Mr. Manston was not indoors, which was a
relief to her. She called then on the two gentleman-farmers' wives,
who soon transacted their business with her, frigidly indifferent to
her personality. A person who socially is nothing is thought less
of by people who are not much than by those who are a great deal.

She then turned towards Peakhill Cottage, the residence of Miss
Hinton, who lived there happily enough, with an elderly servant and
a house-dog as companions. Her father, and last remaining parent,
had retired thither four years before this time, after having filled
the post of editor to the Casterbridge Chronicle for eighteen or
twenty years. There he died soon after, and though comparatively a
poor man, he left his daughter sufficiently well provided for as a
modest fundholder and claimant of sundry small sums in dividends to
maintain herself as mistress at Peakhill.

At Cytherea's knock an inner door was heard to open and close, and
footsteps crossed the passage hesitatingly. The next minute
Cytherea stood face to face with the lady herself.

Adelaide Hinton was about nine-and-twenty years of age. Her hair
was plentiful, like Cytherea's own; her teeth equalled Cytherea's in
regularity and whiteness. But she was much paler, and had features
too transparent to be in place among household surroundings. Her
mouth expressed love less forcibly than Cytherea's, and, as a
natural result of her greater maturity, her tread was less elastic,
and she was more self-possessed.

She had been a girl of that kind which mothers praise as not
forward, by way of contrast, when disparaging those warmer ones with
whom loving is an end and not a means. Men of forty, too, said of
her, 'a good sensible wife for any man, if she cares to marry,' the
caring to marry being thrown in as the vaguest hypothesis, because
she was so practical. Yet it would be singular if, in such cases,
the important subject of marriage should be excluded from
manipulation by hands that are ready for practical performance in
every domestic concern besides.

Cytherea was an acquisition, and the greeting was hearty.

'Good afternoon! O yes--Miss Graye, from Miss Aldclyffe's. I have
seen you at church, and I am so glad you have called! Come in. I
wonder if I have change enough to pay my subscription.' She spoke
girlishly.

Adelaide, when in the company of a younger woman, always levelled
herself down to that younger woman's age from a sense of justice to
herself--as if, though not her own age at common law, it was in
equity.

'It doesn't matter. I'll come again.'

'Yes, do at any time; not only on this errand. But you must step in
for a minute. Do.'

'I have been wanting to come for several weeks.'

'That's right. Now you must see my house--lonely, isn't it, for a
single person? People said it was odd for a young woman like me to
keep on a house; but what did I care? If you knew the pleasure of
locking up your own door, with the sensation that you reigned
supreme inside it, you would say it was worth the risk of being
called odd. Mr. Springrove attends to my gardening, the dog attends
to robbers, and whenever there is a snake or toad to kill, Jane does
it.'

'How nice! It is better than living in a town.'

'Far better. A town makes a cynic of me.'

The remark recalled, somewhat startlingly, to Cytherea's mind, that
Edward had used those very words to herself one evening at Budmouth.

Miss Hinton opened an interior door and led her visitor into a small
drawing-room commanding a view of the country for miles.

The missionary business was soon settled; but the chat continued.

'How lonely it must be here at night!' said Cytherea. 'Aren't you
afraid?'

'At first I was, slightly. But I got used to the solitude. And you
know a sort of commonsense will creep even into timidity. I say to
myself sometimes at night, "If I were anybody but a harmless woman,
not worth the trouble of a worm's ghost to appear to me, I should
think that every sound I hear was a spirit." But you must see all
over my house.'

Cytherea was highly interested in seeing.

'I say you _must_ do this, and you _must_ do that, as if you were
a child,' remarked Adelaide. 'A privileged friend of mine tells me
this use of the imperative comes of being so constantly in nobody's
society but my own.'

'Ah, yes. I suppose she is right.'

Cytherea called the friend 'she' by a rule of ladylike practice; for
a woman's 'friend' is delicately assumed by another friend to be of
their own sex in the absence of knowledge to the contrary; just as
cats are called she's until they prove themselves he's.

Miss Hinton laughed mysteriously.

'I get a humorous reproof for it now and then, I assure you,' she
continued.

'"Humorous reproof:" that's not from a woman: who can reprove
humorously but a man?' was the groove of Cytherea's thought at the
remark. 'Your brother reproves you, I expect,' said that innocent
young lady.

'No,' said Miss Hinton, with a candid air. ''Tis only a
professional man I am acquainted with.' She looked out of the
window.

Women are persistently imitative. No sooner did a thought flash
through Cytherea's mind that the man was a lover than she became a
Miss Aldclyffe in a mild form.

'I imagine he's a lover,' she said.

Miss Hinton smiled a smile of experience in that line.

Few women, if taxed with having an admirer, are so free from vanity
as to deny the impeachment, even if it is utterly untrue. When it
does happen to be true, they look pityingly away from the person who
is so benighted as to have got no further than suspecting it.

'There now--Miss Hinton; you are engaged to be married!' said
Cytherea accusingly.

Adelaide nodded her head practically. 'Well, yes, I am,' she said.

The word 'engaged' had no sooner passed Cytherea's lips than the
sound of it--the mere sound of her own lips--carried her mind to the
time and circumstances under which Miss Aldclyffe had used it
towards herself. A sickening thought followed--based but on a mere
surmise; yet its presence took every other idea away from Cytherea's
mind. Miss Hinton had used Edward's words about towns; she
mentioned Mr. Springrove as attending to her garden. It could not
be that Edward was the man! that Miss Aldclyffe had planned to
reveal her rival thus!

'Are you going to be married soon?' she inquired, with a steadiness
the result of a sort of fascination, but apparently of indifference.

'Not very soon--still, soon.'

'Ah-ha! In less than three months?' said Cytherea.

'Two.'

Now that the subject was well in hand, Adelaide wanted no more
prompting. 'You won't tell anybody if I show you something?' she
said, with eager mystery.

'O no, nobody. But does he live in this parish?'

'No.'

Nothing proved yet.

'What's his name?' said Cytherea flatly. Her breath and heart had
begun their old tricks, and came and went hotly. Miss Hinton could
not see her face.

'What do you think?' said Miss Hinton.

'George?' said Cytherea, with deceitful agony.

'No,' said Adelaide. 'But now, you shall see him first; come here;'
and she led the way upstairs into her bedroom. There, standing on
the dressing table in a little frame, was the unconscious portrait
of Edward Springrove.

'There he is,' Miss Hinton said, and a silence ensued.

'Are you very fond of him?' continued the miserable Cytherea at
length.

'Yes, of course I am,' her companion replied, but in the tone of one
who 'lived in Abraham's bosom all the year,' and was therefore
untouched by solemn thought at the fact. 'He's my cousin--a native
of this village. We were engaged before my father's death left me
so lonely. I was only twenty, and a much greater belle than I am
now. We know each other thoroughly, as you may imagine. I give him
a little sermonizing now and then.'

'Why?'

'O, it's only in fun. He's very naughty sometimes--not really, you
know--but he will look at any pretty face when he sees it.'

Storing up this statement of his susceptibility as another item to
be miserable upon when she had time, 'How do you know that?'
Cytherea asked, with a swelling heart.

'Well, you know how things do come to women's ears. He used to live
at Budmouth as an assistant-architect, and I found out that a young
giddy thing of a girl who lives there somewhere took his fancy for a
day or two. But I don't feel jealous at all--our engagement is so
matter-of-fact that neither of us can be jealous. And it was a mere
flirtation--she was too silly for him. He's fond of rowing, and
kindly gave her an airing for an evening or two. I'll warrant they
talked the most unmitigated rubbish under the sun--all shallowness
and pastime, just as everything is at watering places--neither of
them caring a bit for the other--she giggling like a goose all the
time--'

Concentrated essence of woman pervaded the room rather than air.
'She _didn't_! and it _wasn't_ shallowness!' Cytherea burst out,
with brimming eyes. ''Twas deep deceit on one side, and entire
confidence on the other--yes, it was!' The pent-up emotion had
swollen and swollen inside the young thing till the dam could no
longer embay it. The instant the words were out she would have
given worlds to have been able to recall them.

'Do you know her--or him?' said Miss Hinton, starting with suspicion
at the warmth shown.

The two rivals had now lost their personality quite. There was the
same keen brightness of eye, the same movement of the mouth, the
same mind in both, as they looked doubtingly and excitedly at each
other. As is invariably the case with women when a man they care
for is the subject of an excitement among them, the situation
abstracted the differences which distinguished them as individuals,
and left only the properties common to them as atoms of a sex.

Cytherea caught at the chance afforded her of not betraying herself.
'Yes, I know her,' she said.

'Well,' said Miss Hinton, 'I am really vexed if my speaking so
lightly of any friend of yours has hurt your feelings, but--'

'O, never mind,' Cytherea returned; 'it doesn't matter, Miss Hinton.
I think I must leave you now. I have to call at other places. Yes
--I must go.'

Miss Hinton, in a perplexed state of mind, showed her visitor
politely downstairs to the door. Here Cytherea bade her a hurried
adieu, and flitted down the garden into the lane.

She persevered in her duties with a wayward pleasure in giving
herself misery, as was her wont. Mr. Springrove's name was next on
the list, and she turned towards his dwelling, the Three Tranters
Inn.

3. FOUR TO FIVE P.M.

The cottages along Carriford village street were not so close but
that on one side or other of the road was always a hedge of hawthorn
or privet, over or through which could be seen gardens or orchards
rich with produce. It was about the middle of the early
apple-harvest, and the laden trees were shaken at intervals by the
gatherers; the soft pattering of the falling crop upon the grassy
ground being diversified by the loud rattle of vagrant ones upon a
rail, hencoop, basket, or lean-to roof, or upon the rounded and
stooping backs of the collectors--mostly children, who would have
cried bitterly at receiving such a smart blow from any other
quarter, but smilingly assumed it to be but fun in apples.

The Three Tranters Inn, a many-gabled, mediaeval building,
constructed almost entirely of timber, plaster, and thatch, stood
close to the line of the roadside, almost opposite the churchyard,
and was connected with a row of cottages on the left by thatched
outbuildings. It was an uncommonly characteristic and handsome
specimen of the genuine roadside inn of bygone times; and standing
on one of the great highways in this part of England, had in its
time been the scene of as much of what is now looked upon as the
romantic and genial experience of stage-coach travelling as any
halting-place in the country. The railway had absorbed the whole
stream of traffic which formerly flowed through the village and
along by the ancient door of the inn, reducing the empty-handed
landlord, who used only to farm a few fields at the back of the
house, to the necessity of eking out his attenuated income by
increasing the extent of his agricultural business if he would still
maintain his social standing. Next to the general stillness
pervading the spot, the long line of outbuildings adjoining the
house was the most striking and saddening witness to the passed-away
fortunes of the Three Tranters Inn. It was the bulk of the original
stabling, and where once the hoofs of two-score horses had daily
rattled over the stony yard, to and from the stalls within, thick
grass now grew, whilst the line of roofs--once so straight--over the
decayed stalls, had sunk into vast hollows till they seemed like the
cheeks of toothless age.

On a green plot at the other end of the building grew two or three
large, wide-spreading elm-trees, from which the sign was suspended
--representing the three men called tranters (irregular carriers),
standing side by side, and exactly alike to a hair's-breadth, the
grain of the wood and joints of the boards being visible through the
thin paint depicting their forms, which were still further
disfigured by red stains running downwards from the rusty nails
above.

Under the trees now stood a cider-mill and press, and upon the spot
sheltered by the boughs were gathered Mr. Springrove himself, his
men, the parish clerk, two or three other men, grinders and
supernumeraries, a woman with an infant in her arms, a flock of
pigeons, and some little boys with straws in their mouths,
endeavouring, whenever the men's backs were turned, to get a sip of
the sweet juice issuing from the vat.

Edward Springrove the elder, the landlord, now more particularly a
farmer, and for two months in the year a cider-maker, was an
employer of labour of the old school, who worked himself among his
men. He was now engaged in packing the pomace into horsehair bags
with a rammer, and Gad Weedy, his man, was occupied in shovelling up
more from a tub at his side. The shovel shone like silver from the
action of the juice, and ever and anon, in its motion to and fro,
caught the rays of the declining sun and reflected them in bristling
stars of light.

Mr. Springrove had been too young a man when the pristine days of
the Three Tranters had departed for ever to have much of the host
left in him now. He was a poet with a rough skin: one whose
sturdiness was more the result of external circumstances than of
intrinsic nature. Too kindly constituted to be very provident, he
was yet not imprudent. He had a quiet humorousness of disposition,
not out of keeping with a frequent melancholy, the general
expression of his countenance being one of abstraction. Like Walt
Whitman he felt as his years increased--

'I foresee too much; it means more than I thought.'

On the present occasion he wore gaiters and a leathern apron, and
worked with his shirt-sleeves rolled up beyond his elbows,
disclosing solid and fleshy rather than muscular arms. They were
stained by the cider, and two or three brown apple-pips from the
pomace he was handling were to be seen sticking on them here and
there.

The other prominent figure was that of Richard Crickett, the parish
clerk, a kind of Bowdlerized rake, who ate only as much as a woman,
and had the rheumatism in his left hand. The remainder of the
group, brown-faced peasants, wore smock-frocks embroidered on the
shoulders with hearts and diamonds, and were girt round their middle
with a strap, another being worn round the right wrist.

'And have you seen the steward, Mr. Springrove?' said the clerk.

'Just a glimpse of him; but 'twas just enough to show me that he's
not here for long.'

'Why mid that be?'

'He'll never stand the vagaries of the female figure holden the
reins--not he.'

'She d' pay en well,' said a grinder; 'and money's money.'

'Ah--'tis: very much so,' the clerk replied.

'Yes, yes, naibour Crickett,' said Springrove, 'but she'll vlee
in a passion--all the fat will be in the fire--and there's an end
o't. . . . Yes, she is a one,' continued the farmer, resting,
raising his eyes, and reading the features of a distant apple.

'She is,' said Gad, resting too (it is wonderful how prompt a
journeyman is in following his master's initiative to rest) and
reflectively regarding the ground in front of him.

'True: a one is she,' the clerk chimed in, shaking his head
ominously.

'She has such a temper,' said the farmer, 'and is so wilful too.
You may as well try to stop a footpath as stop her when she has
taken anything into her head. I'd as soon grind little green crabs
all day as live wi' her.'

''Tis a temper she hev, 'tis,' the clerk replied, 'though I be a
servant of the Church that say it. But she isn't goen to flee in a
passion this time.'

The audience waited for the continuation of the speech, as if they
knew from experience the exact distance off it lay in the future.

The clerk swallowed nothing as if it were a great deal, and then
went on, 'There's some'at between 'em: mark my words, naibours
--there's some'at between 'em.'

'D'ye mean it?'

'I d' know it. He came last Saturday, didn't he?'

''A did, truly,' said Gad Weedy, at the same time taking an apple
from the hopper of the mill, eating a piece, and flinging back the
remainder to be ground up for cider.

'He went to church a-Sunday,' said the clerk again.

''A did.'

'And she kept her eye upon en all the service, her face flickeren
between red and white, but never stoppen at either.'

Mr. Springrove nodded, and went to the press.

'Well,' said the clerk, 'you don't call her the kind o' woman to
make mistakes in just trotten through the weekly service o' God?
Why, as a rule she's as right as I be myself.'

Mr. Springrove nodded again, and gave a twist to the screw of the
press, followed in the movement by Gad at the other side; the two
grinders expressing by looks of the greatest concern that, if Miss
Aldclyffe were as right at church as the clerk, she must be right
indeed.

'Yes, as right in the service o' God as I be myself,' repeated the
clerk. 'But last Sunday, when we were in the tenth commandment,
says she, "Incline our hearts to keep this law," says she, when
'twas "Laws in our hearts, we beseech Thee," all the church through.
Her eye was upon _him_--she was quite lost--"Hearts to keep this
law," says she; she was no more than a mere shadder at that tenth
time--a mere shadder. You mi't ha' mouthed across to her "Laws in
our hearts we beseech Thee," fifty times over--she'd never ha'
noticed ye. She's in love wi' the man, that's what she is.'

'Then she's a bigger stunpoll than I took her for,' said Mr.
Springrove. 'Why, she's old enough to be his mother.'

'The row'll be between her and that young Curlywig, you'll see. She
won't run the risk of that pretty face be-en near.'

'Clerk Crickett, I d' fancy you d' know everything about everybody,'
said Gad.

'Well so's,' said the clerk modestly. 'I do know a little. It
comes to me.'

'And I d' know where from.'

'Ah.'

'That wife o' thine. She's an entertainen woman, not to speak
disrespectful.'

'She is: and a winnen one. Look at the husbands she've had--God
bless her!'

'I wonder you could stand third in that list, Clerk Crickett,' said
Mr. Springrove.

'Well, 't has been a power o' marvel to myself oftentimes. Yes,
matrimony do begin wi' "Dearly beloved," and ends wi' "Amazement,"
as the prayer-book says. But what could I do, naibour Springrove?
'Twas ordained to be. Well do I call to mind what your poor lady
said to me when I had just married. "Ah, Mr. Crickett," says she,
"your wife will soon settle you as she did her other two: here's a
glass o' rum, for I shan't see your poor face this time next year."
I swallered the rum, called again next year, and said, "Mrs.
Springrove, you gave me a glass o' rum last year because I was going
to die--here I be alive still, you see." "Well said, clerk! Here's
two glasses for you now, then," says she. "Thank you, mem," I
said, and swallered the rum. Well, dang my old sides, next year I
thought I'd call again and get three. And call I did. But she
wouldn't give me a drop o' the commonest. "No, clerk," says she,
"you be too tough for a woman's pity." . . . Ah, poor soul, 'twas
true enough! Here be I, that was expected to die, alive and hard as
a nail, you see, and there's she moulderen in her grave.'

'I used to think 'twas your wife's fate not to have a liven husband
when I zid 'em die off so,' said Gad.

'Fate? Bless thy simplicity, so 'twas her fate; but she struggled
to have one, and would, and did. Fate's nothen beside a woman's
schemen!'

'I suppose, then, that Fate is a He, like us, and the Lord, and the
rest o' 'em up above there,' said Gad, lifting his eyes to the sky.

'Hullo! Here's the young woman comen that we were a-talken about
by-now,' said a grinder, suddenly interrupting. 'She's comen up
here, as I be alive!'

The two grinders stood and regarded Cytherea as if she had been a
ship tacking into a harbour, nearly stopping the mill in their new
interest.

'Stylish accoutrements about the head and shoulders, to my thinken,'
said the clerk. 'Sheenen curls, and plenty o' em.'

'If there's one kind of pride more excusable than another in a young
woman, 'tis being proud of her hair,' said Mr. Springrove.

'Dear man!--the pride there is only a small piece o' the whole. I
warrant now, though she can show such a figure, she ha'n't a stick
o' furniture to call her own.'

'Come, Clerk Crickett, let the maid be a maid while she is a maid,'
said Farmer Springrove chivalrously.

'O,' replied the servant of the Church; 'I've nothen to say against
it--O no:

'"The chimney-sweeper's daughter Sue
As I have heard declare, O,
Although she's neither sock nor shoe
Will curl and deck her hair, O."'

Cytherea was rather disconcerted at finding that the gradual
cessation of the chopping of the mill was on her account, and still
more when she saw all the cider-makers' eyes fixed upon her except
Mr. Springrove's, whose natural delicacy restrained him. She neared
the plot of grass, but instead of advancing further, hesitated on
its border.