Desperate Remedies

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Desperate Remedies


Cytherea appeared in the sky: his heart started up and spoke:

'Tis She, and here
Lo! I unclothe and clear
My wishes' cloudy character.'

Some women kindle emotion so rapidly in a man's heart that the
judgment cannot keep pace with its rise, and finds, on comprehending
the situation, that faithfulness to the old love is already
treachery to the new. Such women are not necessarily the greatest
of their sex, but there are very few of them. Cytherea was one.

On receiving the letter from her he had taken to thinking over these
things, and had not answered it at all. But 'hungry generations'
soon tread down the muser in a city. At length he thought of the
strong necessity of living. After a dreary search, the negligence
of which was ultimately overcome by mere conscientiousness, he
obtained a situation as assistant to an architect in the
neighbourhood of Charing Cross: the duties would not begin till
after the lapse of a month.

He could not at first decide whither he should go to spend the
intervening time; but in the midst of his reasonings he found
himself on the road homeward, impelled by a secret and unowned hope
of getting a last glimpse of Cytherea there.

5. MIDNIGHT

It was a quarter to twelve when Manston drove into the station-yard.
The train was punctual, and the bell, announcing its arrival, rang
as he crossed the booking-office to go out upon the platform.

The porter who had accompanied Mrs. Manston to Carriford, and had
returned to the station on his night duty, recognized the steward as
he entered, and immediately came towards him.

'Mrs. Manston came by the nine o'clock train, sir,' he said.

The steward gave vent to an expression of vexation.

'Her luggage is here, sir,' the porter said.

'Put it up behind me in the gig if it is not too much,' said
Manston.

'Directly this train is in and gone, sir.'

The man vanished and crossed the line to meet the entering train.

'Where is that fire?' Manston said to the booking-clerk.

Before the clerk could speak, another man ran in and answered the
question without having heard it.

'Half Carriford is burnt down, or will be!' he exclaimed. 'You
can't see the flames from this station on account of the trees, but
step on the bridge--'tis tremendous!'

He also crossed the line to assist at the entry of the train, which
came in the next minute.

The steward stood in the office. One passenger alighted, gave up
his ticket, and crossed the room in front of Manston: a young man
with a black bag and umbrella in his hand. He passed out of the
door, down the steps, and struck out into the darkness.

'Who was that young man?' said Manston, when the porter had
returned. The young man, by a kind of magnetism, had drawn the
steward's thoughts after him.

'He's an architect.'

'My own old profession. I could have sworn it by the cut of him,'
Manston murmured. 'What's his name?' he said again.

'Springrove--Farmer Springrove's son, Edward.'

'Farmer Springrove's son, Edward,' the steward repeated to himself,
and considered a matter to which the words had painfully recalled
his mind.

The matter was Miss Aldclyffe's mention of the young man as
Cytherea's lover, which, indeed, had scarcely ever been absent from
his thoughts.

'But for the existence of my wife that man might have been my
rival,' he pondered, following the porter, who had now come back to
him, into the luggage-room. And whilst the man was carrying out and
putting in one box, which was sufficiently portable for the gig,
Manston still thought, as his eyes watched the process--

'But for my wife, Springrove might have been my rival.'

He examined the lamps of his gig, carefully laid out the reins,
mounted the seat and drove along the turnpike-road towards Knapwater
Park.

The exact locality of the fire was plain to him as he neared home.
He soon could hear the shout of men, the flapping of the flames, the
crackling of burning wood, and could smell the smoke from the
conflagration.

Of a sudden, a few yards ahead, within the compass of the rays from
the right-hand lamp, burst forward the figure of a man. Having been
walking in darkness the newcomer raised his hands to his eyes, on
approaching nearer, to screen them from the glare of the reflector.

Manston saw that he was one of the villagers: a small farmer
originally, who had drunk himself down to a day-labourer and reputed
poacher.

'Hoy!' cried Manston, aloud, that the man might step aside out of
the way.

'Is that Mr. Manston?' said the man.

'Yes.'

'Somebody ha' come to Carriford: and the rest of it may concern
you, sir.'

'Well, well.'

'Did you expect Mrs. Manston to-night, sir?'

'Yes, unfortunately she's come, I know, and asleep long before this
time, I suppose.'

The labourer leant his elbow upon the shaft of the gig and turned
his face, pale and sweating from his late work at the fire, up to
Manston's.

'Yes, she did come,' he said. . . . 'I beg pardon, sir, but I
should be glad of--of--'

'What?'

'Glad of a trifle for bringen ye the news.'

'Not a farthing! I didn't want your news, I knew she was come.'

'Won't you give me a shillen, sir?'

'Certainly not.'

'Then will you lend me a shillen, sir? I be tired out, and don't
know what to do. If I don't pay you back some day I'll be d--d.'

'The devil is so cheated that perdition isn't worth a penny as a
security.'

'Oh!'

'Let me go on,' said Manston.

'Thy wife is _dead_; that's the rest o' the news,' said the
labourer slowly. He waited for a reply; none came.

'She went to the Three Tranters, because she couldn't get into thy
house, the burnen roof fell in upon her before she could be called
up, and she's a cinder, as thou'lt be some day.'

'That will do, let me drive on,' said the steward calmly.

Expectation of a concussion may be so intense that its failure
strikes the brain with more force than its fulfilment. The labourer
sank back into the ditch. Such a Cushi could not realize the
possibility of such an unmoved David as this.

Manston drove hastily to the turning of the road, tied his horse,
and ran on foot to the site of the fire.

The stagnation caused by the awful accident had been passed through,
and all hands were helping to remove from the remaining cottage what
furniture they could lay hold of; the thatch of the roofs being
already on fire. The Knapwater fire-engine had arrived on the spot,
but it was small, and ineffectual. A group was collected round the
rector, who in a coat which had become bespattered, scorched, and
torn in his exertions, was directing on one hand the proceedings
relative to the removal of goods into the church, and with the other
was pointing out the spot on which it was most desirable that the
puny engines at their disposal should be made to play. Every tongue
was instantly silent at the sight of Manston's pale and clear
countenance, which contrasted strangely with the grimy and streaming
faces of the toiling villagers.

'Was she burnt?' he said in a firm though husky voice, and stepping
into the illuminated area. The rector came to him, and took him
aside. 'Is she burnt?' repeated Manston.

'She is dead: but thank God, she was spared the horrid agony of
burning,' the rector said solemnly; 'the roof and gable fell in upon
her, and crushed her. Instant death must have followed.'

'Why was she here?' said Manston.

'From what we can hurriedly collect, it seems that she found the
door of your house locked, and concluded that you had retired, the
fact being that your servant, Mrs. Crickett, had gone out to supper.
She then came back to the inn and went to bed.'

'Where's the landlord?' said Manston.

Mr. Springrove came up, walking feebly, and wrapped in a cloak, and
corroborated the evidence given by the rector.

'Did she look ill, or annoyed, when she came?' said the steward.

'I can't say. I didn't see; but I think--'

'What do you think?'

'She was much put out about something.'

'My not meeting her, naturally,' murmured the other, lost in
reverie. He turned his back on Springrove and the rector, and
retired from the shining light.

Everything had been done that could be done with the limited means
at their disposal. The whole row of houses was destroyed, and each
presented itself as one stage of a series, progressing from smoking
ruins at the end where the inn had stood, to a partly flaming mass
--glowing as none but wood embers will glow--at the other.

A feature in the decline of town fires was noticeably absent here
--steam. There was present what is not observable in towns
--incandescence.

The heat, and the smarting effect upon their eyes of the strong
smoke from the burning oak and deal, had at last driven the
villagers back from the road in front of the houses, and they now
stood in groups in the churchyard, the surface of which, raised by
the interments of generations, stood four or five feet above the
level of the road, and almost even with the top of the low wall
dividing one from the other. The headstones stood forth whitely
against the dark grass and yews, their brightness being repeated on
the white smock-frocks of some of the labourers, and in a mellower,
ruddier form on their faces and hands, on those of the grinning
gargoyles, and on other salient stonework of the weather-beaten
church in the background.

The rector had decided that, under the distressing circumstances of
the case, there would be no sacrilege in placing in the church, for
the night, the pieces of furniture and utensils which had been saved
from the several houses. There was no other place of safety for
them, and they accordingly were gathered there.

6. HALF-PAST TWELVE TO ONE A.M.

Manston, when he retired to meditate, had walked round the
churchyard, and now entered the opened door of the building.

He mechanically pursued his way round the piers into his own seat in
the north aisle. The lower atmosphere of this spot was shaded by
its own wall from the shine which streamed in over the window-sills
on the same side. The only light burning inside the church was a
small tallow candle, standing in the font, in the opposite aisle of
the building to that in which Manston had sat down, and near where
the furniture was piled. The candle's mild rays were overpowered by
the ruddier light from the ruins, making the weak flame to appear
like the moon by day.

Sitting there he saw Farmer Springrove enter the door, followed by
his son Edward, still carrying his travelling-bag in his hand. They
were speaking of the sad death of Mrs. Manston, but the subject was
relinquished for that of the houses burnt.

This row of houses, running from the inn eastward, had been built
under the following circumstances:--

Fifty years before this date, the spot upon which the cottages
afterwards stood was a blank strip, along the side of the village
street, difficult to cultivate, on account of the outcrop thereon of
a large bed of flints called locally a 'lanch' or 'lanchet.'

The Aldclyffe then in possession of the estate conceived the idea
that a row of cottages would be an improvement to the spot, and
accordingly granted leases of portions to several respectable
inhabitants. Each lessee was to be subject to the payment of a
merely nominal rent for the whole term of lives, on condition that
he built his own cottage, and delivered it up intact at the end of
the term.

Those who had built had, one by one, relinquished their indentures,
either by sale or barter, to Farmer Springrove's father. New lives
were added in some cases, by payment of a sum to the lord of the
manor, etc., and all the leases were now held by the farmer himself,
as one of the chief provisions for his old age.

The steward had become interested in the following conversation:--

'Try not to be so depressed, father; they are all insured.'

The words came from Edward in an anxious tone.

'You mistake, Edward; they are not insured,' returned the old man
gloomily.

'Not?' the son asked.

'Not one!' said the farmer.

'In the Helmet Fire Office, surely?'

'They were insured there every one. Six months ago the office,
which had been raising the premiums on thatched premises higher for
some years, gave up insuring them altogether, as two or three other
fire-offices had done previously, on account, they said, of the
uncertainty and greatness of the risk of thatch undetached. Ever
since then I have been continually intending to go to another
office, but have never gone. Who expects a fire?'

'Do you remember the terms of the leases?' said Edward, still more
uneasily.

'No, not particularly,' said his father absently.

'Where are they?'

'In the bureau there; that's why I tried to save it first, among
other things.'

'Well, we must see to that at once.'

'What do you want?'

'The key.'

They went into the south aisle, took the candle from the font, and
then proceeded to open the bureau, which had been placed in a corner
under the gallery. Both leant over upon the flap; Edward holding
the candle, whilst his father took the pieces of parchment from one
of the drawers, and spread the first out before him.

'You read it, Ted. I can't see without my glasses. This one will
be sufficient. The terms of all are the same.'

Edward took the parchment, and read quickly and indistinctly for
some time; then aloud and slowly as follows:--


'And the said John Springrove for himself his heirs executors and
administrators doth covenant and agree with the said Gerald
Fellcourt Aldclyffe his heirs and assigns that he the said John
Springrove his heirs and assigns during the said term shall pay unto
the said Gerald Fellcourt Aldclyffe his heirs and assigns the clear
yearly rent of ten shillings and sixpence . . . . at the several
times hereinbefore appointed for the payment thereof respectively.
And also shall and at all times during the said term well and
sufficiently repair and keep the said Cottage or Dwelling-house and
all other the premises and all houses or buildings erected or to be
erected thereupon in good and proper repair in every respect without
exception and the said premises in such good repair upon the
determination of this demise shall yield up unto the said Gerald
Fellcourt Aldclyffe his heirs and assigns.'


They closed the bureau and turned towards the door of the church
without speaking.

Manston also had come forward out of the gloom. Notwithstanding the
farmer's own troubles, an instinctive respect and generous sense of
sympathy with the steward for his awful loss caused the old man to
step aside, that Manston might pass out without speaking to them if
he chose to do so.

'Who is he?' whispered Edward to his father, as Manston approached.

'Mr. Manston, the steward.'

Manston came near, and passed down the aisle on the side of the
younger man. Their faces came almost close together: one large
flame, which still lingered upon the ruins outside, threw long
dancing shadows of each across the nave till they bent upwards
against the aisle wall, and also illuminated their eyes, as each met
those of the other. Edward had learnt, by a letter from home, of
the steward's passion for Cytherea, and his mysterious repression of
it, afterwards explained by his marriage. That marriage was now
nought. Edward realized the man's newly acquired freedom, and felt
an instinctive enmity towards him--he would hardly own to himself
why. The steward, too, knew Cytherea's attachment to Edward, and
looked keenly and inscrutably at him.

7. ONE TO TWO A.M.

Manston went homeward alone, his heart full of strange emotions.
Entering the house, and dismissing the woman to her own home, he at
once proceeded upstairs to his bedroom.

Reasoning worldliness, especially when allied with sensuousness,
cannot repress on some extreme occasions the human instinct to pour
out the soul to some Being or Personality, who in frigid moments is
dismissed with the title of Chance, or at most Law. Manston was
selfishly and inhumanly, but honestly and unutterably, thankful for
the recent catastrophe. Beside his bed, for that first time during
a period of nearly twenty years, he fell down upon his knees in a
passionate outburst of feeling.

Many minutes passed before he arose. He walked to the window, and
then seemed to remember for the first time that some action on his
part was necessary in connection with the sad circumstance of the
night.

Leaving the house at once, he went to the scene of the fire,
arriving there in time to hear the rector making an arrangement with
a certain number of men to watch the spot till morning. The ashes
were still red-hot and flaming. Manston found that nothing could be
done towards searching them at that hour of the night. He turned
homeward again, in the company of the rector, who had considerately
persuaded him to retire from the scene for a while, and promised
that as soon as a man could live amid the embers of the Three
Tranters Inn, they should be carefully searched for the remains of
his unfortunate wife.

Manston then went indoors, to wait for morning.



XI. THE EVENTS OF FIVE DAYS

1. NOVEMBER THE TWENTY-NINTH

The search began at dawn, but a quarter past nine o'clock came
without bringing any result. Manston ate a little breakfast, and
crossed the hollow of the park which intervened between the old and
modern manor-houses, to ask for an interview with Miss Aldclyffe.

He met her midway. She was about to pay him a visit of condolence,
and to place every man on the estate at his disposal, that the
search for any relic of his dead and destroyed wife might not be
delayed an instant.

He accompanied her back to the house. At first they conversed as if
the death of the poor woman was an event which the husband must of
necessity deeply lament; and when all under this head that social
form seemed to require had been uttered, they spoke of the material
damage done, and of the steps which had better be taken to remedy
it.

It was not till both were shut inside her private room that she
spoke to him in her blunt and cynical manner. A certain newness of
bearing in him, peculiar to the present morning, had hitherto
forbidden her this tone: the demeanour of the subject of her
favouritism had altered, she could not tell in what way. He was
entirely a changed man.

'Are you really sorry for your poor wife, Mr. Manston?' she said.

'Well, I am,' he answered shortly.

'But only as for any human being who has met with a violent death?'

He confessed it--'For she was not a good woman,' he added.

'I should be sorry to say such a thing now the poor creature is
dead,' Miss Aldclyffe returned reproachfully.

'Why?' he asked. 'Why should I praise her if she doesn't deserve
it? I say exactly what I have often admired Sterne for saying in
one of his letters--that neither reason nor Scripture asks us to
speak nothing but good of the dead. And now, madam,' he continued,
after a short interval of thought, 'I may, perhaps, hope that you
will assist me, or rather not thwart me, in endeavouring to win the
love of a young lady living about you, one in whom I am much
interested already.'

'Cytherea!'

'Yes, Cytherea.'

'You have been loving Cytherea all the while?'

'Yes.'

Surprise was a preface to much agitation in her, which caused her to
rise from her seat, and pace to the side of the room. The steward
quietly looked on and added, 'I have been loving and still love
her.'

She came close up to him, wistfully contemplating his face, one hand
moving indecisively at her side.

'And your secret marriage was, then, the true and only reason for
that backwardness regarding the courtship of Cytherea, which, they
tell me, has been the talk of the village; not your indifference to
her attractions.' Her voice had a tone of conviction in it, as well
as of inquiry; but none of jealousy.

'Yes,' he said; 'and not a dishonourable one. What held me back was
just that one thing--a sense of morality that perhaps, madam, you
did not give me credit for.' The latter words were spoken with a
mien and tone of pride.

Miss Aldclyffe preserved silence.

'And now,' he went on, 'I may as well say a word in vindication of
my conduct lately, at the risk, too, of offending you. My actual
motive in submitting to your order that I should send for my late
wife, and live with her, was not the mercenary policy of wishing to
retain an office which brings me greater comforts than any I have
enjoyed before, but this unquenchable passion for Cytherea. Though
I saw the weakness, folly, and even wickedness of it continually, it
still forced me to try to continue near her, even as the husband of
another woman.'

He waited for her to speak: she did not.

'There's a great obstacle to my making any way in winning Miss
Graye's love,' he went on.

'Yes, Edward Springrove,' she said quietly. 'I know it, I did once
want to see them married; they have had a slight quarrel, and it
will soon be made up again, unless--' she spoke as if she had only
half attended to Manston's last statement.

'He is already engaged to be married to somebody else,' said the
steward.

'Pooh!' said she, 'you mean to his cousin at Peakhill; that's
nothing to help us; he's now come home to break it off.'

'He must not break it off,' said Manston, firmly and calmly.

His tone attracted her, startled her. Recovering herself, she said
haughtily, 'Well, that's your affair, not mine. Though my wish has
been to see her _your_ wife, I can't do anything dishonourable to
bring about such a result.'

'But it must be _made_ your affair,' he said in a hard, steady voice,
looking into her eyes, as if he saw there the whole panorama of her
past.

One of the most difficult things to portray by written words is that
peculiar mixture of moods expressed in a woman's countenance when,
after having been sedulously engaged in establishing another's
position, she suddenly suspects him of undermining her own. It was
thus that Miss Aldclyffe looked at the steward.

'You--know--something--of me?' she faltered.

'I know all,' he said.

'Then curse that wife of yours! She wrote and said she wouldn't
tell you!' she burst out. 'Couldn't she keep her word for a day?'
She reflected and then said, but no more as to a stranger, 'I will
not yield. I have committed no crime. I yielded to her threats in
a moment of weakness, though I felt inclined to defy her at the
time: it was chiefly because I was mystified as to how she got to
know of it. Pooh! I will put up with threats no more. O, can _you_
threaten me?' she added softly, as if she had for the moment
forgotten to whom she had been speaking.

'My love must be made your affair,' he repeated, without taking his
eyes from her.

An agony, which was not the agony of being discovered in a secret,
obstructed her utterance for a time. 'How can you turn upon me so
when I schemed to get you here--schemed that you might win her till
I found you were married. O, how can you! O! . . . O!' She wept;
and the weeping of such a nature was as harrowing as the weeping of
a man.

'Your getting me here was bad policy as to your secret--the most
absurd thing in the world,' he said, not heeding her distress. 'I
knew all, except the identity of the individual, long ago. Directly
I found that my coming here was a contrived thing, and not a matter
of chance, it fixed my attention upon you at once. All that was
required was the mere spark of life, to make of a bundle of
perceptions an organic whole.'

'Policy, how can you talk of policy? Think, do think! And how can
you threaten me when you know--you know--that I would befriend you
readily without a threat!'

'Yes, yes, I think you would,' he said more kindly; 'but your
indifference for so many, many years has made me doubt it.'

'No, not indifference--'twas enforced silence. My father lived.'

He took her hand, and held it gently.

* * * * *

'Now listen,' he said, more quietly and humanly, when she had become
calmer: 'Springrove must marry the woman he's engaged to. You may
make him, but only in one way.'

'Well: but don't speak sternly, AEneas!'

'Do you know that his father has not been particularly thriving for
the last two or three years?'

'I have heard something of it, once or twice, though his rents have
been promptly paid, haven't they?'

'O yes; and do you know the terms of the leases of the houses which
are burnt?' he said, explaining to her that by those terms she might
compel him even to rebuild every house. 'The case is the clearest
case of fire by negligence that I have ever known, in addition to
that,' he continued.

'I don't want them rebuilt; you know it was intended by my father,
directly they fell in, to clear the site for a new entrance to the
park?'

'Yes, but that doesn't affect the position, which is that Farmer
Springrove is in your power to an extent which is very serious for
him.'

'I won't do it--'tis a conspiracy.'

'Won't you for me?' he said eagerly.

Miss Aldclyffe changed colour.

'I don't threaten now, I implore,' he said.

'Because you might threaten if you chose,' she mournfully answered.
'But why be so--when your marriage with her was my own pet idea long
before it was yours? What must I do?'