Desperate Remedies

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Desperate Remedies


'I wish you would believe Manston a villain, as I do,' said
Springrove.

'It would be absurd of me to say that I like him now--family feeling
prevents it, but I cannot in honesty say deliberately that he is a
bad man.'

Edward could keep the secret of Manston's coercion of Miss Aldclyffe
in the matter of the houses a secret no longer. He told Owen the
whole story.

'That's one thing,' he continued, 'but not all. What do you think
of this--I have discovered that he went to Budmouth post-office for
a letter the day before the first advertisement for his wife
appeared in the papers. One was there for him, and it was directed
in his wife's handwriting, as I can prove. This was not till after
the marriage with Cytherea, it is true, but if (as it seems to show)
the advertising was a farce, there is a strong presumption that the
rest of the piece was.'

Owen was too astounded to speak. He dropped his cigar, and fixed
his eyes upon his companion.

'Collusion!'

'Yes.'

'With his first wife?'

'Yes--with his wife. I am firmly persuaded of it.'

'What did you discover?'

'That he fetched from the post-office at Budmouth a letter from her
the day _before_ the first advertisement appeared.'

Graye was lost in a long consideration. 'Ah!' he said, 'it would be
difficult to prove anything of that sort now. The writing could not
be sworn to, and if he is guilty the letter is destroyed.'

'I have other suspicions--'

'Yes--as you said' interrupted Owen, who had not till now been able
to form the complicated set of ideas necessary for picturing the
position. 'Yes, there is this to be remembered--Cytherea had been
taken from him before that letter came--and his knowledge of his
wife's existence could not have originated till after the wedding.
I could have sworn he believed her dead then. His manner was
unmistakable.'

'Well, I have other suspicions,' repeated Edward; 'and if I only had
the right--if I were her husband or brother, he should be convicted
of bigamy yet.'

'The reproof was not needed,' said Owen, with a little bitterness.
'What can I do--a man with neither money nor friends--whilst Manston
has Miss Aldclyffe and all her fortune to back him up? God only
knows what lies between the mistress and her steward, but since this
has transpired--if it is true--I can believe the connection to be
even an unworthy one--a thing I certainly never so much as owned to
myself before.'

3. THE FIFTH OF MARCH

Edward's disclosure had the effect of directing Owen Graye's
thoughts into an entirely new and uncommon channel.

On the Monday after Springrove's visit, Owen had walked to the top
of a hill in the neighbourhood of Tolchurch--a wild hill that had no
name, beside a barren down where it never looked like summer. In
the intensity of his meditations on the ever-present subject, he sat
down on a weather-beaten boundary-stone gazing towards the distant
valleys--seeing only Manston's imagined form.

Had his defenceless sister been trifled with? that was the question
which affected him. Her refusal of Edward as a husband was, he
knew, dictated solely by a humiliated sense of inadequacy to him in
repute, and had not been formed till since the slanderous tale
accounting for her seclusion had been circulated. Was it not true,
as Edward had hinted, that he, her brother, was neglecting his duty
towards her in allowing Manston to thrive unquestioned, whilst she
was hiding her head for no fault at all?

Was it possible that Manston was sensuous villain enough to have
contemplated, at any moment before the marriage with Cytherea, the
return of his first wife, when he should have grown weary of his new
toy? Had he believed that, by a skilful manipulation of such
circumstances as chance would throw in his way, he could escape all
suspicion of having known that she lived? Only one fact within his
own direct knowledge afforded the least ground for such a
supposition. It was that, possessed by a woman only in the humble
and unprotected station of a lady's hired companion, his sister's
beauty might scarcely have been sufficient to induce a selfish man
like Manston to make her his wife, unless he had foreseen the
possibility of getting rid of her again.

'But for that stratagem of Manston's in relation to the
Springroves,' Owen thought, 'Cythie might now have been the happy
wife of Edward. True, that he influenced Miss Aldclyffe only rests
on Edward's suspicions, but the grounds are good--the probability is
strong.'

He went indoors and questioned Cytherea.

'On the night of the fire, who first said that Mrs. Manston was
burnt?' he asked.

'I don't know who started the report.'

'Was it Manston?'

'It was certainly not he. All doubt on the subject was removed
before he came to the spot--that I am certain of. Everybody knew
that she did not escape _after_ the house was on fire, and thus all
overlooked the fact that she might have left before--of course that
would have seemed such an improbable thing for anybody to do.'

'Yes, until the porter's story of her irritation and doubt as to her
course made it natural.'

'What settled the matter at the inquest,' said Cytherea, 'was Mr.
Manston's evidence that the watch was his wife's.'

'He was sure of that, wasn't he?'

'I believe he said he was certain of it.'

'It might have been hers--left behind in her perturbation, as they
say it was--impossible as that seems at first sight. Yes--on the
whole, he might have believed in her death.'

'I know by several proofs that then, and at least for some time
after, he had no other thought than that she was dead. I now think
that before the porter's confession he knew something about her
--though not that she lived.'

'Why do you?'

'From what he said to me on the evening of the wedding-day, when I
had fastened myself in the room at the hotel, after Edward's visit.
He must have suspected that I knew something, for he was irritated,
and in a passion of uneasy doubt. He said, "You don't suppose my
first wife is come to light again, madam, surely?" Directly he had
let the remark slip out, he seemed anxious to withdraw it.'

'That's odd,' said Owen.

'I thought it very odd.'

'Still we must remember he might only have hit upon the thought by
accident, in doubt as to your motive. Yes, the great point to
discover remains the same as ever--did he doubt his first impression
of her death _before_ he married you. I can't help thinking he did,
although he was so astounded at our news that night. Edward swears
he did.'

'It was perhaps only a short time before,' said Cytherea; 'when he
could hardly recede from having me.

'Seasoning justice with mercy as usual, Cytherea. 'Tis unfair to
yourself to talk like that. If I could only bring him to ruin as a
bigamist--supposing him to be one--I should die happy. That's what
we must find out by fair means or foul--was he a wilful bigamist?'

'It is no use trying, Owen. You would have to employ a solicitor,
and how can you do that?'

'I can't at all--I know that very well. But neither do I altogether
wish to at present--a lawyer must have a case--facts to go upon,
that means. Now they are scarce at present--as scarce as money is
with us, and till we have found more money there is no hurry for a
lawyer. Perhaps by the time we have the facts we shall have the
money. The only thing we lose in working alone in this way, is
time--not the issue: for the fruit that one mind matures in a
twelvemonth forms a more perfectly organized whole than that of
twelve minds in one month, especially if the interests of the single
one are vitally concerned, and those of the twelve are only hired.
But there is not only my mind available--you are a shrewd woman,
Cythie, and Edward is an earnest ally. Then, if we really get a
sure footing for a criminal prosecution, the Crown will take up the
case.'

'I don't much care to press on in the matter,' she murmured. 'What
good can it do us, Owen, after all?'

'Selfishly speaking, it will do this good--that all the facts of
your journey to Southampton will become known, and the scandal will
die. Besides, Manston will have to suffer--it's an act of justice
to you and to other women, and to Edward Springrove.'

He now thought it necessary to tell her of the real nature of the
Springroves' obligation to Miss Aldclyffe--and their nearly certain
knowledge that Manston was the prime mover in effecting their
embarrassment. Her face flushed as she listened.

'And now,' he said, 'our first undertaking is to find out where Mrs.
Manston lived during the separation; next, when the first
communications passed between them after the fire.'

'If we only had Miss Aldclyffe's countenance and assistance as I
used to have them,' Cytherea returned, 'how strong we should be! O,
what power is it that he exercises over her, swaying her just as he
wishes! She loves me now. Mrs. Morris in her letter said that Miss
Aldclyffe prayed for me--yes, she heard her praying for me, and
crying. Miss Aldclyffe did not mind an old friend like Mrs. Morris
knowing it, either. Yet in opposition to this, notice her dead
silence and inaction throughout this proceeding.'

'It is a mystery; but never mind that now,' said Owen impressively.
'About where Mrs. Manston has been living. We must get this part of
it first--learn the place of her stay in the early stage of their
separation, during the period of Manston's arrival here, and so on,
for that was where she was first communicated with on the subject of
coming to Knapwater, before the fire; and that address, too, was her
point of departure when she came to her husband by stealth in the
night--you know--the time I visited you in the evening and went home
early in the morning, and it was found that he had been visited too.
Ah! couldn't we inquire of Mrs. Leat, who keeps the post-office at
Carriford, if she remembers where the letters to Mrs. Manston were
directed?'

'He never posted his letters to her in the parish--it was remarked
at the time. I was thinking if something relating to her address
might not be found in the report of the inquest in the Casterbridge
Chronicle of the date. Some facts about the inquest were given in
the papers to a certainty.'

Her brother caught eagerly at the suggestion. 'Who has a file of
the Chronicles?' he said.

'Mr. Raunham used to file them,' said Cytherea. 'He was rather
friendly-disposed towards me, too.'

Owen could not, on any consideration, escape from his attendance at
the church-building till Saturday evening; and thus it became
necessary, unless they actually wasted time, that Cytherea herself
should assist. 'I act under your orders, Owen,' she said.



XVI. THE EVENTS OF ONE WEEK

1. MARCH THE SIXTH

The next morning the opening move of the game was made. Cytherea,
under cover of a thick veil, hired a conveyance and drove to within
a mile or so of Carriford. It was with a renewed sense of
depression that she saw again the objects which had become familiar
to her eye during her sojourn under Miss Aldclyffe's roof--the
outline of the hills, the meadow streams, the old park trees. She
hastened by a lonely path to the rectory-house, and asked if Mr.
Raunham was at home.

Now the rector, though a solitary bachelor, was as gallant and
courteous to womankind as an ancient Iberian; and, moreover, he was
Cytherea's friend in particular, to an extent far greater than she
had ever surmised. Rarely visiting his relative, Miss Aldclyffe,
except on parish matters, more rarely still being called upon by
Miss Aldclyffe, Cytherea had learnt very little of him whilst she
lived at Knapwater. The relationship was on the impecunious
paternal side, and for this branch of her family the lady of the
estate had never evinced much sympathy. In looking back upon our
line of descent it is an instinct with us to feel that all our
vitality was drawn from the richer party to any unequal marriage in
the chain.

Since the death of the old captain, the rector's bearing in
Knapwater House had been almost that of a stranger, a circumstance
which he himself was the last man in the world to regret. This
polite indifference was so frigid on both sides that the rector did
not concern himself to preach at her, which was a great deal in a
rector; and she did not take the trouble to think his sermons poor
stuff, which in a cynical woman was a great deal more.

Though barely fifty years of age, his hair was as white as snow,
contrasting strangely with the redness of his skin, which was as
fresh and healthy as a lad's. Cytherea's bright eyes, mutely and
demurely glancing up at him Sunday after Sunday, had been the means
of driving away many of the saturnine humours that creep into an
empty heart during the hours of a solitary life; in this case,
however, to supplant them, when she left his parish, by those others
of a more aching nature which accompany an over-full one. In short,
he had been on the verge of feeling towards her that passion to
which his dignified self-respect would not give its true name, even
in the privacy of his own thought.

He received her kindly; but she was not disposed to be frank with
him. He saw her wish to be reserved, and with genuine good taste
and good nature made no comment whatever upon her request to be
allowed to see the Chronicle for the year before the last. He
placed the papers before her on his study table, with a timidity as
great as her own, and then left her entirely to herself.

She turned them over till she came to the first heading connected
with the subject of her search--'Disastrous Fire and Loss of Life at
Carriford.'

The sight, and its calamitous bearing upon her own life, made her so
dizzy that she could, for a while, hardly decipher the letters.
Stifling recollection by an effort she nerved herself to her work,
and carefully read the column. The account reminded her of no other
fact than was remembered already.

She turned on to the following week's report of the inquest. After
a miserable perusal she could find no more pertaining to Mrs.
Manston's address than this:--

'ABRAHAM BROWN, of Hoxton, London, at whose house the deceased woman
had been living, deposed,' etc.

Nobody else from London had attended the inquest. She arose to
depart, first sending a message of thanks to Mr. Raunham, who was
out of doors gardening.

He stuck his spade into the ground, and accompanied her to the gate.

'Can I help you in anything, Cytherea?' he said, using her Christian
name by an intuition that unpleasant memories might be revived if he
called her Miss Graye after wishing her good-bye as Mrs. Manston at
the wedding. Cytherea saw the motive and appreciated it,
nevertheless replying evasively--

'I only guess and fear.'

He earnestly looked at her again.

'Promise me that if you want assistance, and you think I can give
it, you will come to me.'

'I will,' she said.

The gate closed between them.

'You don't want me to help you in anything now, Cytherea?' he
repeated.

If he had spoken what he felt, 'I want very much to help you,
Cytherea, and have been watching Manston on your account,' she would
gladly have accepted his offer. As it was, she was perplexed, and
raised her eyes to his, not so fearlessly as before her trouble, but
as modestly, and with still enough brightness in them to do fearful
execution as she said over the gate--

'No, thank you.'

She returned to Tolchurch weary with her day's work. Owen's
greeting was anxious--

'Well, Cytherea?'

She gave him the words from the report of the inquest, pencilled on
a slip of paper.

'Now to find out the name of the street and number,' Owen remarked.

'Owen,' she said, 'will you forgive me for what I am going to say?
I don't think I can--indeed I don't think I can--take any further
steps towards disentangling the mystery. I still think it a useless
task, and it does not seem any duty of mine to be revenged upon Mr.
Manston in any way.' She added more gravely, 'It is beneath my
dignity as a woman to labour for this; I have felt it so all day.'

'Very well,' he said, somewhat shortly; 'I shall work without you
then. There's dignity in justice.' He caught sight of her pale
tired face, and the dilated eye which always appeared in her with
weariness. 'Darling,' he continued warmly, and kissing her, 'you
shall not work so hard again--you are worn out quite. But you must
let me do as I like.'

2. MARCH THE TENTH

On Saturday evening Graye hurried off to Casterbridge, and called at
the house of the reporter to the Chronicle. The reporter was at
home, and came out to Graye in the passage. Owen explained who and
what he was, and asked the man if he would oblige him by turning to
his notes of the inquest at Carriford in the December of the year
preceding the last--just adding that a family entanglement, of which
the reporter probably knew something, made him anxious to ascertain
some additional details of the event, if any existed.

'Certainly,' said the other, without hesitation; 'though I am afraid
I haven't much beyond what we printed at the time. Let me see--my
old note-books are in my drawer at the office of the paper: if you
will come with me I can refer to them there.' His wife and family
were at tea inside the room, and with the timidity of decent poverty
everywhere he seemed glad to get a stranger out of his domestic
groove.

They crossed the street, entered the office, and went thence to an
inner room. Here, after a short search, was found the book
required. The precise address, not given in the condensed report
that was printed, but written down by the reporter, was as follows:--


'ABRAHAM BROWN,
LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER,
41 CHARLES SQUARE,
HOXTON.'


Owen copied it, and gave the reporter a small fee. 'I want to keep
this inquiry private for the present,' he said hesitatingly. 'You
will perhaps understand why, and oblige me.'

The reporter promised. 'News is shop with me,' he said, 'and to
escape from handling it is my greatest social enjoyment.'

It was evening, and the outer room of the publishing-office was
lighted up with flaring jets of gas. After making the above remark,
the reporter came out from the inner apartment in Graye's company,
answering an expression of obligation from Owen with the words that
it was no trouble. At the moment of his speech, he closed behind
him the door between the two rooms, still holding his note-book in
his hand.

Before the counter of the front room stood a tall man, who was also
speaking, when they emerged. He said to the youth in attendance, 'I
will take my paper for this week now I am here, so that you needn't
post it to me.'

The stranger then slightly turned his head, saw Owen, and recognized
him. Owen passed out without recognizing the other as Manston.

Manston then looked at the reporter, who, after walking to the door
with Owen, had come back again to lock up his books. Manston did
not need to be told that the shabby marble-covered book which he
held in his hand, opening endways and interleaved with
blotting-paper, was an old reporting-book. He raised his eyes to the
reporter's face, whose experience had not so schooled his features
but that they betrayed a consciousness, to one half initiated as the
other was, that his late proceeding had been connected with events
in the life of the steward. Manston said no more, but, taking his
newspaper, followed Owen from the office, and disappeared in the
gloom of the street.

Edward Springrove was now in London again, and on this same evening,
before leaving Casterbridge, Owen wrote a careful letter to him,
stating therein all the facts that had come to his knowledge, and
begging him, as he valued Cytherea, to make cautious inquiries. A
tall man was standing under the lamp-post, about half-a-dozen yards
above the post-office, when he dropped the letter into the box.

That same night, too, for a reason connected with the rencounter
with Owen Graye, the steward entertained the idea of rushing off
suddenly to London by the mail-train, which left Casterbridge at ten
o'clock. But remembering that letters posted after the hour at
which Owen had obtained his information--whatever that was--could
not be delivered in London till Monday morning, he changed his mind
and went home to Knapwater. Making a confidential explanation to
his wife, arrangements were set on foot for his departure by the
mail on Sunday night.

3. MARCH THE ELEVENTH

Starting for church the next morning several minutes earlier than
was usual with him, the steward intentionally loitered along the
road from the village till old Mr. Springrove overtook him. Manston
spoke very civilly of the morning, and of the weather, asking how
the farmer's barometer stood, and when it was probable that the wind
might change. It was not in Mr. Springrove's nature--going to
church as he was, too--to return anything but a civil answer to such
civil questions, however his feelings might have been biassed by
late events. The conversation was continued on terms of greater
friendliness.

'You must be feeling settled again by this time, Mr. Springrove,
after the rough turn-out you had on that terrible night in
November.'

'Ay, but I don't know about feeling settled, either, Mr. Manston.
The old window in the chimney-corner of the old house I shall never
forget. No window in the chimney-corner where I am now, and I had
been used to it for more than fifty years. Ted says 'tis a great
loss to me, and he knows exactly what I feel.'

'Your son is again in a good situation, I believe?' said Manston,
imitating that inquisitiveness into the private affairs of the
natives which passes for high breeding in country villages.

'Yes, sir. I hope he'll keep it, or do something else and stick to
it.'

''Tis to be hoped he'll be steady now.'

'He's always been that, I assure 'ee,' said the old man tartly.

'Yes--yes--I mean intellectually steady. Intellectual wild oats
will thrive in a soil of the strictest morality.'

'Intellectual gingerbread! Ted's steady enough--that's all I know
about it.'

'Of course--of course. Has he respectable lodgings? My own
experience has shown me that that's a great thing to a young man
living alone in London.'

'Warwick Street, Charing Cross--that's where he is.'

'Well, to be sure--strange! A very dear friend of mine used to live
at number fifty-two in that very same street.'

'Edward lives at number forty-nine--how very near being the same
house!' said the old farmer, pleased in spite of himself.

'Very,' said Manston. 'Well, I suppose we had better step along a
little quicker, Mr. Springrove; the parson's bell has just begun.'

'Number forty-nine,' he murmured.

4. MARCH THE TWELFTH

Edward received Owen's letter in due time, but on account of his
daily engagements he could not attend to any request till the clock
had struck five in the afternoon. Rushing then from his office in
Westminster, he called a hansom and proceeded to Hoxton. A few
minutes later he knocked at the door of number forty-one, Charles
Square, the old lodging of Mrs. Manston.

A tall man who would have looked extremely handsome had he not been
clumsily and closely wrapped up in garments that were much too
elderly in style for his years, stood at the corner of the quiet
square at the same instant, having, too, alighted from a cab, that
had been driven along Old Street in Edward's rear. He smiled
confidently when Springrove knocked.

Nobody came to the door. Springrove knocked again.

This brought out two people--one at the door he had been knocking
upon, the other from the next on the right.

'Is Mr. Brown at home?' said Springrove.

'No, sir.'

'When will he be in?'

'Quite uncertain.'

'Can you tell me where I may find him?'

'No. O, here he is coming, sir. That's Mr. Brown.'

Edward looked down the pavement in the direction pointed out by the
woman, and saw a man approaching. He proceeded a few steps to meet
him.

Edward was impatient, and to a certain extent still a countryman,
who had not, after the manner of city men, subdued the natural
impulse to speak out the ruling thought without preface. He said in
a quiet tone to the stranger, 'One word with you--do you remember a
lady lodger of yours of the name of Mrs. Manston?'

Mr. Brown half closed his eyes at Springrove, somewhat as if he were
looking into a telescope at the wrong end.

'I have never let lodgings in my life,' he said, after his survey.

'Didn't you attend an inquest a year and a half ago, at Carriford?'

'Never knew there was such a place in the world, sir; and as to
lodgings, I have taken acres first and last during the last thirty
years, but I have never let an inch.'

'I suppose there is some mistake,' Edward murmured, and turned away.
He and Mr. Brown were now opposite the door next to the one he had
knocked at. The woman who was still standing there had heard the
inquiry and the result of it.

'I expect it is the other Mr. Brown, who used to live there, that
you want, sir,' she said. 'The Mr. Brown that was inquired for the
other day?'

'Very likely that is the man,' said Edward, his interest
reawakening.