Desperate Remedies

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Desperate Remedies


'Don't let's hurry,' he said, when Cytherea was about to enter the
private path to the House as usual. 'Would you mind turning down
this way for a minute till Miss Aldclyffe has passed?'

She could not very well refuse now. They turned into a secluded
path on their left, leading round through a thicket of laurels to
the other gate of the church-yard, walking very slowly. By the time
the further gate was reached, the church was closed. They met the
sexton with the keys in his hand.

'We are going inside for a minute,' said Manston to him, taking the
keys unceremoniously. 'I will bring them to you when we return.'

The sexton nodded his assent, and Cytherea and Manston walked into
the porch, and up the nave.

They did not speak a word during their progress, or in any way
interfere with the stillness and silence that prevailed everywhere
around them. Everything in the place was the embodiment of decay:
the fading red glare from the setting sun, which came in at the west
window, emphasizing the end of the day and all its cheerful doings,
the mildewed walls, the uneven paving-stones, the wormy pews, the
sense of recent occupation, and the dank air of death which had
gathered with the evening, would have made grave a lighter mood than
Cytherea's was then.

'What sensations does the place impress you with?' she said at last,
very sadly.

'I feel imperatively called upon to be honest, from very despair of
achieving anything by stratagem in a world where the materials are
such as these.' He, too, spoke in a depressed voice, purposely or
otherwise.

'I feel as if I were almost ashamed to be seen walking such a
world,' she murmured; 'that's the effect it has upon me; but it does
not induce me to be honest particularly.'

He took her hand in both his, and looked down upon the lids of her
eyes.

'I pity you sometimes,' he said more emphatically.

'I am pitiable, perhaps; so are many people. Why do you pity me?'

'I think that you make yourself needlessly sad.'

'Not needlessly.'

'Yes, needlessly. Why should you be separated from your brother so
much, when you might have him to stay with you till he is well?'

'That can't be,' she said, turning away.

He went on, 'I think the real and only good thing that can be done
for him is to get him away from Budmouth awhile; and I have been
wondering whether it could not be managed for him to come to my
house to live for a few weeks. Only a quarter of a mile from you.
How pleasant it would be!'

'It would.'

He moved himself round immediately to the front of her, and held her
hand more firmly, as he continued, 'Cytherea, why do you say "It
would," so entirely in the tone of abstract supposition? I want him
there: I want him to be my brother, too. Then make him so, and be
my wife! I cannot live without you. O Cytherea, my darling, my
love, come and be my wife!'

His face bent closer and closer to hers, and the last words sank to
a whisper as weak as the emotion inspiring it was strong.

She said firmly and distinctly, 'Yes, I will.'

'Next month?' he said on the instant, before taking breath.

'No; not next month.'

'The next?'

'No.'

'December? Christmas Day, say?'

'I don't mind.'

'O, you darling!' He was about to imprint a kiss upon her pale,
cold mouth, but she hastily covered it with her hand.

'Don't kiss me--at least where we are now!' she whispered
imploringly.

'Why?'

'We are too near God.'

He gave a sudden start, and his face flushed. She had spoken so
emphatically that the words 'Near God' echoed back again through the
hollow building from the far end of the chancel.

'What a thing to say!' he exclaimed; 'surely a pure kiss is not
inappropriate to the place!'

'No,' she replied, with a swelling heart; 'I don't know why I burst
out so--I can't tell what has come over me! Will you forgive me?'

'How shall I say "Yes" without judging you? How shall I say "No"
without losing the pleasure of saying "Yes?"' He was himself again.

'I don't know,' she absently murmured.

'I'll say "Yes,"' he answered daintily. 'It is sweeter to fancy we
are forgiven, than to think we have not sinned; and you shall have
the sweetness without the need.'

She did not reply, and they moved away. The church was nearly dark
now, and melancholy in the extreme. She stood beside him while he
locked the door, then took the arm he gave her, and wound her way
out of the churchyard with him. Then they walked to the house
together, but the great matter having been set at rest, she
persisted in talking only on indifferent subjects.

'Christmas Day, then,' he said, as they were parting at the end of
the shrubbery.

'I meant Old Christmas Day,' she said evasively.

'H'm, people do not usually attach that meaning to the words.'

'No; but I should like it best if it could not be till then?' It
seemed to be still her instinct to delay the marriage to the utmost.

'Very well, love,' he said gently. ''Tis a fortnight longer still;
but never mind. Old Christmas Day.'

9. THE ELEVENTH OF SEPTEMBER

'There. It will be on a Friday!'

She sat upon a little footstool gazing intently into the fire. It
was the afternoon of the day following that of the steward's
successful solicitation of her hand.

'I wonder if it would be proper in me to run across the park and
tell him it is a Friday?' she said to herself, rising to her feet,
looking at her hat lying near, and then out of the window towards
the Old House. Proper or not, she felt that she must at all hazards
remove the disagreeable, though, as she herself owned, unfounded
impression the coincidence had occasioned. She left the house
directly, and went to search for him.

Manston was in the timber-yard, looking at the sawyers as they
worked. Cytherea came up to him hesitatingly. Till within a
distance of a few yards she had hurried forward with alacrity--now
that the practical expression of his face became visible she wished
almost she had never sought him on such an errand; in his
business-mood he was perhaps very stern.

'It will be on a Friday,' she said confusedly, and without any
preface.

'Come this way!' said Manston, in the tone he used for workmen, not
being able to alter at an instant's notice. He gave her his arm and
led her back into the avenue, by which time he was lover again. 'On
a Friday, will it, dearest? You do not mind Fridays, surely?
That's nonsense.'

'Not seriously mind them, exactly--but if it could be any other
day?'

'Well, let us say Old Christmas Eve, then. Shall it be Old
Christmas Eve?'

'Yes, Old Christmas Eve.'

'Your word is solemn, and irrevocable now?'

'Certainly, I have solemnly pledged my word; I should not have
promised to marry you if I had not meant it. Don't think I should.'
She spoke the words with a dignified impressiveness.

'You must not be vexed at my remark, dearest. Can you think the
worse of an ardent man, Cytherea, for showing some anxiety in love?'

'No, no.' She could not say more. She was always ill at ease when
he spoke of himself as a piece of human nature in that analytical
way, and wanted to be out of his presence. The time of day, and the
proximity of the house, afforded her a means of escape. 'I must be
with Miss Aldclyffe now--will you excuse my hasty coming and going?'
she said prettily. Before he had replied she had parted from him.

'Cytherea, was it Mr. Manston I saw you scudding away from in the
avenue just now?' said Miss Aldclyffe, when Cytherea joined her.

'Yes.'

'"Yes." Come, why don't you say more than that? I hate those
taciturn "Yesses" of yours. I tell you everything, and yet you are
as close as wax with me.'

'I parted from him because I wanted to come in.'

'What a novel and important announcement! Well, is the day fixed?'

'Yes.'

Miss Aldclyffe's face kindled into intense interest at once. 'Is it
indeed? When is it to be?'

'On Old Christmas Eve.'

'Old Christmas Eve.' Miss Aldclyffe drew Cytherea round to her
front, and took a hand in each of her own. 'And then you will be a
bride!' she said slowly, looking with critical thoughtfulness upon
the maiden's delicately rounded cheeks.

The normal area of the colour upon each of them decreased
perceptibly after that slow and emphatic utterance by the elder
lady.

Miss Aldclyffe continued impressively, 'You did not say "Old
Christmas Eve" as a fiancee should have said the words: and you
don't receive my remark with the warm excitement that foreshadows a
bright future. . . . How many weeks are there to the time?'

'I have not reckoned them.'

'Not? Fancy a girl not counting the weeks! I find I must take the
lead in this matter--you are so childish, or frightened, or stupid,
or something, about it. Bring me my diary, and we will count them at
once.'

Cytherea silently fetched the book.

Miss Aldclyffe opened the diary at the page containing the almanac,
and counted sixteen weeks, which brought her to the thirty-first of
December--a Sunday. Cytherea stood by, looking on as if she had no
appetite for the scene.

'Sixteen to the thirty-first. Then let me see, Monday will be the
first of January, Tuesday the second, Wednesday third, Thursday
fourth, Friday fifth--you have chosen a Friday, as I declare!'

'A Thursday, surely?' said Cytherea.

'No: Old Christmas Day comes on a Saturday.'

The perturbed little brain had reckoned wrong. 'Well, it must be a
Friday,' she murmured in a reverie.

'No: have it altered, of course,' said Miss Aldclyffe cheerfully.
'There's nothing bad in Friday, but such a creature as you will be
thinking about its being unlucky--in fact, I wouldn't choose a
Friday myself to be married on, since all the other days are equally
available.'

'I shall not have it altered,' said Cytherea firmly; 'it has been
altered once already: I shall let it be.'



XIII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

1. THE FIFTH OF JANUARY. BEFORE DAWN

We pass over the intervening weeks. The time of the story is thus
advanced more than a quarter of a year.

On the midnight preceding the morning which would make her the wife
of a man whose presence fascinated her into involuntariness of
bearing, and whom in absence she almost dreaded, Cytherea lay in her
little bed, vainly endeavouring to sleep.

She had been looking back amid the years of her short though varied
past, and thinking of the threshold upon which she stood. Days and
months had dimmed the form of Edward Springrove like the gauzes of a
vanishing stage-scene, but his dying voice could still be heard
faintly behind. That a soft small chord in her still vibrated true
to his memory, she would not admit: that she did not approach
Manston with feelings which could by any stretch of words be called
hymeneal, she calmly owned.

'Why do I marry him?' she said to herself. 'Because Owen, dear Owen
my brother, wishes me to marry him. Because Mr. Manston is, and has
been, uniformly kind to Owen, and to me. "Act in obedience to the
dictates of common-sense," Owen said, "and dread the sharp sting of
poverty. How many thousands of women like you marry every year for
the same reason, to secure a home, and mere ordinary, material
comforts, which after all go far to make life endurable, even if not
supremely happy."

''Tis right, I suppose, for him to say that. O, if people only knew
what a timidity and melancholy upon the subject of her future grows
up in the heart of a friendless woman who is blown about like a reed
shaken with the wind, as I am, they would not call this resignation
of one's self by the name of scheming to get a husband. Scheme to
marry? I'd rather scheme to die! I know I am not pleasing my
heart; I know that if I only were concerned, I should like risking a
single future. But why should I please my useless self overmuch,
when by doing otherwise I please those who are more valuable than
I?'

In the midst of desultory reflections like these, which alternated
with surmises as to the inexplicable connection that appeared to
exist between her intended husband and Miss Aldclyffe, she heard
dull noises outside the walls of the house, which she could not
quite fancy to be caused by the wind. She seemed doomed to such
disturbances at critical periods of her existence. 'It is strange,'
she pondered, 'that this my last night in Knapwater House should be
disturbed precisely as my first was, no occurrence of the kind
having intervened.'

As the minutes glided by the noise increased, sounding as if some
one were beating the wall below her window with a bunch of switches.
She would gladly have left her room and gone to stay with one of the
maids, but they were without doubt all asleep.

The only person in the house likely to be awake, or who would have
brains enough to comprehend her nervousness, was Miss Aldclyffe, but
Cytherea never cared to go to Miss Aldclyffe's room, though she was
always welcome there, and was often almost compelled to go against
her will.

The oft-repeated noise of switches grew heavier upon the wall, and
was now intermingled with creaks, and a rattling like the rattling
of dice. The wind blew stronger; there came first a snapping, then
a crash, and some portion of the mystery was revealed. It was the
breaking off and fall of a branch from one of the large trees
outside. The smacking against the wall, and the intermediate
rattling, ceased from that time.

Well, it was the tree which had caused the noises. The unexplained
matter was that neither of the trees ever touched the walls of the
house during the highest wind, and that trees could not rattle like
a man playing castanets or shaking dice.

She thought, 'Is it the intention of Fate that something connected
with these noises shall influence my future as in the last case of
the kind?'

During the dilemma she fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamt that
she was being whipped with dry bones suspended on strings, which
rattled at every blow like those of a malefactor on a gibbet; that
she shifted and shrank and avoided every blow, and they fell then
upon the wall to which she was tied. She could not see the face of
the executioner for his mask, but his form was like Manston's.

'Thank Heaven!' she said, when she awoke and saw a faint light
struggling through her blind. 'Now what were those noises?' To
settle that question seemed more to her than the event of the day.

She pulled the blind aside and looked out. All was plain. The
evening previous had closed in with a grey drizzle, borne upon a
piercing air from the north, and now its effects were visible. The
hoary drizzle still continued; but the trees and shrubs were laden
with icicles to an extent such as she had never before witnessed. A
shoot of the diameter of a pin's head was iced as thick as her
finger; all the boughs in the park were bent almost to the earth
with the immense weight of the glistening incumbrance; the walks
were like a looking-glass. Many boughs had snapped beneath their
burden, and lay in heaps upon the icy grass. Opposite her eye, on
the nearest tree, was a fresh yellow scar, showing where the branch
that had terrified her had been splintered from the trunk.

'I never could have believed it possible,' she thought, surveying
the bowed-down branches, 'that trees would bend so far out of their
true positions without breaking.' By watching a twig she could see
a drop collect upon it from the hoary fog, sink to the lowest point,
and there become coagulated as the others had done.

'Or that I could so exactly have imitated them,' she continued. 'On
this morning I am to be married--unless this is a scheme of the
great Mother to hinder a union of which she does not approve. Is it
possible for my wedding to take place in the face of such weather as
this?'

2. MORNING

Her brother Owen was staying with Manston at the Old House.
Contrary to the opinion of the doctors, the wound had healed after
the first surgical operation, and his leg was gradually acquiring
strength, though he could only as yet get about on crutches, or
ride, or be dragged in a chair.

Miss Aldclyffe had arranged that Cytherea should be married from
Knapwater House, and not from her brother's lodgings at Budmouth,
which was Cytherea's first idea. Owen, too, seemed to prefer the
plan. The capricious old maid had latterly taken to the
contemplation of the wedding with even greater warmth than had at
first inspired her, and appeared determined to do everything in her
power, consistent with her dignity, to render the adjuncts of the
ceremony pleasing and complete.

But the weather seemed in flat contradiction of the whole
proceeding. At eight o'clock the coachman crept up to the House
almost upon his hands and knees, entered the kitchen, and stood with
his back to the fire, panting from his exertions in pedestrianism.

The kitchen was by far the pleasantest apartment in Knapwater House
on such a morning as this. The vast fire was the centre of the
whole system, like a sun, and threw its warm rays upon the figures
of the domestics, wheeling about it in true planetary style. A
nervously-feeble imitation of its flicker was continually attempted
by a family of polished metallic utensils standing in rows and
groups against the walls opposite, the whole collection of shines
nearly annihilating the weak daylight from outside. A step further
in, and the nostrils were greeted by the scent of green herbs just
gathered, and the eye by the plump form of the cook, wholesome,
white-aproned, and floury--looking as edible as the food she
manipulated--her movements being supported and assisted by her
satellites, the kitchen and scullery maids. Minute recurrent sounds
prevailed--the click of the smoke-jack, the flap of the flames, and
the light touches of the women's slippers upon the stone floor.

The coachman hemmed, spread his feet more firmly upon the
hearthstone, and looked hard at a small plate in the extreme corner
of the dresser.

'No wedden this mornen--that's my opinion. In fact, there can't
be,' he said abruptly, as if the words were the mere torso of a
many-membered thought that had existed complete in his head.

The kitchen-maid was toasting a slice of bread at the end of a very
long toasting-fork, which she held at arm's length towards the
unapproachable fire, travestying the Flanconnade in fencing.

'Bad out of doors, isn't it?' she said, with a look of commiseration
for things in general.

'Bad? Not even a liven soul, gentle or simple, can stand on level
ground. As to getten up hill to the church, 'tis perfect lunacy.
And I speak of foot-passengers. As to horses and carriage, 'tis
murder to think of 'em. I am going to send straight as a line into
the breakfast-room, and say 'tis a closer. . . . Hullo--here's
Clerk Crickett and John Day a-comen! Now just look at 'em and
picture a wedden if you can.'

All eyes were turned to the window, from which the clerk and
gardener were seen crossing the court, bowed and stooping like Bel
and Nebo.

'You'll have to go if it breaks all the horses' legs in the county,'
said the cook, turning from the spectacle, knocking open the
oven-door with the tongs, glancing critically in, and slamming it
together with a clang.

'O, O; why shall I?' asked the coachman, including in his auditory
by a glance the clerk and gardener who had just entered.

'Because Mr. Manston is in the business. Did you ever know him to
give up for weather of any kind, or for any other mortal thing in
heaven or earth?'

'----Mornen so's--such as it is!' interrupted Mr. Crickett
cheerily, coming forward to the blaze and warming one hand without
looking at the fire. 'Mr. Manston gie up for anything in heaven or
earth, did you say? You might ha' cut it short by sayen "to Miss
Aldclyffe," and leaven out heaven and earth as trifles. But it
might be put off; putten off a thing isn't getten rid of a thing, if
that thing is a woman. O no, no!'

The coachman and gardener now naturally subsided into secondaries.
The cook went on rather sharply, as she dribbled milk into the exact
centre of a little crater of flour in a platter--

'It might be in this case; she's so indifferent.'

'Dang my old sides! and so it might be. I have a bit of news--I
thought there was something upon my tongue; but 'tis a secret; not a
word, mind, not a word. Why, Miss Hinton took a holiday yesterday.'

'Yes?' inquired the cook, looking up with perplexed curiosity.

'D'ye think that's all?'

'Don't be so three-cunning--if it is all, deliver you from the evil
of raising a woman's expectations wrongfully; I'll skimmer your pate
as sure as you cry Amen!'

'Well, it isn't all. When I got home last night my wife said, "Miss
Adelaide took a holiday this mornen," says she (my wife, that is);
"walked over to Nether Mynton, met the comen man, and got married!"
says she.'

'Got married! what, Lord-a-mercy, did Springrove come?'

'Springrove, no--no--Springrove's nothen to do wi' it--'twas Farmer
Bollens. They've been playing bo-peep for these two or three months
seemingly. Whilst Master Teddy Springrove has been daddlen, and
hawken, and spetten about having her, she's quietly left him all
forsook. Serve him right. I don't blame the little woman a bit.'

'Farmer Bollens is old enough to be her father!'

'Ay, quite; and rich enough to be ten fathers. They say he's so
rich that he has business in every bank, and measures his money in
half-pint cups.'

'Lord, I wish it was me, don't I wish 'twas me!' said the
scullery-maid.

'Yes, 'twas as neat a bit of stitching as ever I heard of,'
continued the clerk, with a fixed eye, as if he were watching the
process from a distance. 'Not a soul knew anything about it, and my
wife is the only one in our parish who knows it yet. Miss Hinton
came back from the wedden, went to Mr. Manston, puffed herself out
large, and said she was Mrs. Bollens, but that if he wished, she had
no objection to keep on the house till the regular time of giving
notice had expired, or till he could get another tenant.'

'Just like her independence,' said the cook.

'Well, independent or no, she's Mrs. Bollens now. Ah, I shall never
forget once when I went by Farmer Bollens's garden--years ago now
--years, when he was taking up ashleaf taties. A merry feller I was
at that time, a very merry feller--for 'twas before I took holy
orders, and it didn't prick my conscience as 'twould now. "Farmer,"
says I, "little taties seem to turn out small this year, don't em?"
"O no, Crickett," says he, "some be fair-sized." He's a dull man
--Farmer Bollens is--he always was. However, that's neither here nor
there; he's a-married to a sharp woman, and if I don't make a
mistake she'll bring him a pretty good family, gie her time.'

'Well, it don't matter; there's a Providence in it,' said the
scullery-maid. 'God A'mighty always sends bread as well as
children.'

'But 'tis the bread to one house and the children to another very
often. However, I think I can see my lady Hinton's reason for
chosen yesterday to sickness-or-health-it. Your young miss, and
that one, had crossed one another's path in regard to young Master
Springrove; and I expect that when Addy Hinton found Miss Graye
wasn't caren to have en, she thought she'd be beforehand with her
old enemy in marrying somebody else too. That's maids' logic all
over, and maids' malice likewise.'

Women who are bad enough to divide against themselves under a man's
partiality are good enough to instantly unite in a common cause
against his attack. 'I'll just tell you one thing then,' said the
cook, shaking out her words to the time of a whisk she was beating
eggs with. 'Whatever maids' logic is and maids' malice too, if
Cytherea Graye even now knows that young Springrove is free again,
she'll fling over the steward as soon as look at him.'

'No, no: not now,' the coachman broke in like a moderator.
'There's honour in that maid, if ever there was in one. No Miss
Hinton's tricks in her. She'll stick to Manston.'

'Pifh!'

'Don't let a word be said till the wedden is over, for Heaven's
sake,' the clerk continued. 'Miss Aldclyffe would fairly hang and
quarter me, if my news broke off that there wedden at a last minute
like this.'

'Then you had better get your wife to bolt you in the closet for an
hour or two, for you'll chatter it yourself to the whole boiling
parish if she don't! 'Tis a poor womanly feller!'

'You shouldn't ha' begun it, clerk. I knew how 'twould be,' said
the gardener soothingly, in a whisper to the clerk's mangled
remains.

The clerk turned and smiled at the fire, and warmed his other hand.

3. NOON

The weather gave way. In half-an-hour there began a rapid thaw. By
ten o'clock the roads, though still dangerous, were practicable to
the extent of the half-mile required by the people of Knapwater
Park. One mass of heavy leaden cloud spread over the whole sky; the
air began to feel damp and mild out of doors, though still cold and
frosty within.

They reached the church and passed up the nave, the deep-coloured
glass of the narrow windows rendering the gloom of the morning
almost night itself inside the building. Then the ceremony began.
The only warmth or spirit imported into it came from the bridegroom,
who retained a vigorous--even Spenserian--bridal-mood throughout the
morning.