Desperate Remedies

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Desperate Remedies


'You must do something,' he murmured. 'You must. Yes, you must.'

'I never will,' she said. 'It is a criminal act.'

He looked at her earnestly. 'Will you not support me through this
deception if my very life depends upon it? Will you not?'

'Nonsense! Life! It will be a scandal to you, but she must leave
this place. It will out sooner or later, and the exposure had
better come now.'

Manston repeated gloomily the same words. 'My life depends upon
your supporting me--my very life.'

He then came close to her, and spoke into her ear. Whilst he spoke
he held her head to his mouth with both his hands. Strange
expressions came over her face; the workings of her mouth were
painful to observe. Still he held her and whispered on.

The only words that could be caught by Anne Seaway, confused as her
hearing frequently was by the moan of the wind and the waterfall in
her outer ear, were these of Miss Aldclyffe, in tones which
absolutely quivered: 'They have no money. What can they prove?'

The listener tasked herself to the utmost to catch his answer, but
it was in vain. Of the remainder of the colloquy one fact alone was
plain to Anne, and that only inductively--that Miss Aldclyffe, from
what he had revealed to her, was going to scheme body and soul on
Manston's behalf.

Miss Aldclyffe seemed now to have no further reason for remaining,
yet she lingered awhile as if loth to leave him. When, finally, the
crestfallen and agitated lady made preparations for departure, Anne
quickly inserted the bolt, ran round to the entrance archway, and
down the steps into the park. Here she stood close to the trunk of
a huge lime-tree, which absorbed her dark outline into its own.

In a few minutes she saw Manston, with Miss Aldclyffe leaning on his
arm, cross the glade before her and proceed in the direction of the
house. She watched them ascend the rise and advance, as two black
spots, towards the mansion. The appearance of an oblong space of
light in the dark mass of walls denoted that the door was opened.
Miss Aldclyffe's outline became visible upon it; the door shut her
in, and all was darkness again. The form of Manston returning alone
arose from the gloom, and passed by Anne in her hiding-place.

Waiting outside a quarter of an hour longer, that no suspicion of
any kind might be excited, Anne returned to the old manor-house.

4. FROM EIGHT TO ELEVEN O'CLOCK P.M.

Manston was very friendly that evening. It was evident to her, now
that she was behind the scenes, that he was making desperate efforts
to disguise the real state of his mind.

Her terror of him did not decrease. They sat down to supper,
Manston still talking cheerfully. But what is keener than the eye
of a mistrustful woman? A man's cunning is to it as was the armour
of Sisera to the thin tent-nail. She found, in spite of his
adroitness, that he was attempting something more than a disguise of
his feeling. He was trying to distract her attention, that he might
be unobserved in some special movement of his hands.

What a moment it was for her then! The whole surface of her body
became attentive. She allowed him no chance whatever. We know the
duplicated condition at such times--when the existence divides
itself into two, and the ostensibly innocent chatterer stands in
front, like another person, to hide the timorous spy.

Manston played the same game, but more palpably. The meal was
nearly over when he seemed possessed of a new idea of how his object
might be accomplished. He tilted back his chair with a reflective
air, and looked steadily at the clock standing against the wall
opposite to him. He said sententiously, 'Few faces are capable of
expressing more by dumb show than the face of a clock. You may see
in it every variety of incentive--from the softest seductions to
negligence to the strongest hints for action.'

'Well, in what way?' she inquired. His drift was, as yet, quite
unintelligible to her.

'Why, for instance: look at the cold, methodical, unromantic,
business-like air of all the right-angled positions of the hands.
They make a man set about work in spite of himself. Then look at
the piquant shyness of its face when the two hands are over each
other. Several attitudes imply "Make ready." The "make ready" of
ten minutes to one differs from the "make ready" of ten minutes to
twelve, as youth differs from age. "Upward and onward" says
twenty-five minutes to eleven. Mid-day or midnight expresses
distinctly "It is done." You surely have noticed that?'

'Yes, I have.'

He continued with affected quaintness:--

'The easy dash of ten minutes past seven, the rakish recklessness of
a quarter past, the drooping weariness of twenty-five minutes past,
must have been observed by everybody.'

'Whatever amount of truth there may be, there is a good deal of
imagination in your fancy,' she said.

He still contemplated the clock.

'Then, again, the general finish of the face has a great effect upon
the eye. This old-fashioned brass-faced one we have here, with its
arched top, half-moon slit for the day of the month, and ship
rocking at the upper part, impresses me with the notion of its being
an old cynic, elevating his brows, whose thoughts can be seen
wavering between good and evil.'

A thought now enlightened her: the clock was behind her, and he
wanted to get her back turned. She dreaded turning, yet, not to
excite his suspicion, she was on her guard; she quickly looked
behind her at the clock as he spoke, recovering her old position
again instantly. The time had not been long enough for any action
whatever on his part.

'Ah,' he casually remarked, and at the same minute began to pour her
out a glass of wine. 'Speaking of the clock has reminded me that it
must nearly want winding up. Remember that it is wound to-night.
Suppose you do it at once, my dear.'

There was no possible way of evading the act. She resolutely turned
to perform the operation: anything was better than that he should
suspect her. It was an old-fashioned eight-day clock, of
workmanship suited to the rest of the antique furniture that Manston
had collected there, and ground heavily during winding.

Anne had given up all idea of being able to watch him during the
interval, and the noise of the wheels prevented her learning
anything by her ears. But, as she wound, she caught sight of his
shadow on the wall at her right hand.

What was he doing? He was in the very act of pouring something into
her glass of wine.

He had completed the manoeuvre before she had done winding. She
methodically closed the clock-case and turned round again. When she
faced him he was sitting in his chair as before she had risen.

In a familiar scene which has hitherto been pleasant it is difficult
to realize that an added condition, which does not alter its aspect,
can have made it terrible. The woman thought that his action must
have been prompted by no other intent than that of poisoning her,
and yet she could not instantly put on a fear of her position.

And before she had grasped these consequences, another supposition
served to make her regard the first as unlikely, if not absurd. It
was the act of a madman to take her life in a manner so easy of
discovery, unless there were far more reason for the crime than any
that Manston could possibly have.

Was it not merely his intention, in tampering with her wine, to make
her sleep soundly that night? This was in harmony with her original
suspicion, that he intended secretly to abscond. At any rate, he
was going to set about some stealthy proceeding, as to which she was
to be kept in utter darkness. The difficulty now was to avoid
drinking the wine.

By means of one pretext and another she put off taking her glass for
nearly five minutes, but he eyed her too frequently to allow her to
throw the potion under the grate. It became necessary to take one
sip. This she did, and found an opportunity of absorbing it in her
handkerchief.

Plainly he had no idea of her countermoves. The scheme seemed to
him in proper train, and he turned to poke out the fire. She
instantly seized the glass, and poured its contents down her bosom.
When he faced round again she was holding the glass to her lips,
empty.

In due course he locked the doors and saw that the shutters were
fastened. She attended to a few closing details of housewifery, and
a few minutes later they retired for the night.

5. FROM ELEVEN O'CLOCK TO MIDNIGHT

When Manston was persuaded, by the feigned heaviness of her
breathing, that Anne Seaway was asleep, he softly arose, and dressed
himself in the gloom. With ears strained to their utmost she heard
him complete this operation; then he took something from his pocket,
put it in the drawer of the dressing-table, went to the door, and
down the stairs. She glided out of bed and looked in the drawer.
He had only restored to its place a small phial she had seen there
before. It was labelled 'Battley's Solution of Opium.' She felt
relieved that her life had not been attempted. That was to have
been her sleeping-draught. No time was to be lost if she meant to
be a match for him. She followed him in her nightdress. When she
reached the foot of the staircase he was in the office and had
closed the door, under which a faint gleam showed that he had
obtained a light. She crept to the door, but could not venture to
open it, however slightly. Placing her ear to the panel, she could
hear him tearing up papers of some sort, and a brighter and
quivering ray of light coming from the threshold an instant later,
implied that he was burning them. By the slight noise of his
footsteps on the uncarpeted floor, she at length imagined that he
was approaching the door. She flitted upstairs again and crept into
bed.

Manston returned to the bedroom close upon her heels, and entered
it--again without a light. Standing motionless for an instant to
assure himself that she still slept, he went to the drawer in which
their ready-money was kept, and removed the casket that contained
it. Anne's ear distinctly caught the rustle of notes, and the chink
of the gold as he handled it. Some he placed in his pocket, some he
returned to its place. He stood thinking, as it were weighing a
possibility. While lingering thus, he noticed the reflected image
of his own face in the glass--pale and spectre-like in its
indistinctness. The sight seemed to be the feather which turned the
balance of indecision: he drew a heavy breath, retired from the
room, and passed downstairs. She heard him unbar the back-door, and
go out into the yard.

Feeling safe in a conclusion that he did not intend to return to the
bedroom again, she arose, and hastily dressed herself. On going to
the door of the apartment she found that he had locked it behind
him. 'A precaution--it can be no more,' she muttered. Yet she was
all the more perplexed and excited on this account. Had he been
going to leave home immediately, he would scarcely have taken the
trouble to lock her in, holding the belief that she was in a drugged
sleep. The lock shot into a mortice, so that there was no
possibility of her pushing back the bolt. How should she follow
him? Easily. An inner closet opened from the bedroom: it was
large, and had some time heretofore been used as a dressing or bath
room, but had been found inconvenient from having no other outlet to
the landing. The window of this little room looked out upon the
roof of the porch, which was flat and covered with lead. Anne took
a pillow from the bed, gently opened the casement of the inner room
and stepped forth on the flat. There, leaning over the edge of the
small parapet that ornamented the porch, she dropped the pillow upon
the gravel path, and let herself down over the parapet by her hands
till her toes swung about two feet from the ground. From this
position she adroitly alighted upon the pillow, and stood in the
path.

Since she had come indoors from her walk in the early part of the
evening the moon had risen. But the thick clouds overspreading the
whole landscape rendered the dim light pervasive and grey: it
appeared as an attribute of the air. Anne crept round to the back
of the house, listening intently. The steward had had at least ten
minutes' start of her. She had waited here whilst one might count
fifty, when she heard a movement in the outhouse--a fragment once
attached to the main building. This outhouse was partitioned into
an outer and an inner room, which had been a kitchen and a scullery
before the connecting erections were pulled down, but they were now
used respectively as a brewhouse and workshop, the only means of
access to the latter being through the brewhouse. The outer door of
this first apartment was usually fastened by a padlock on the
exterior. It was now closed, but not fastened. Manston was
evidently in the outhouse.

She slightly moved the door. The interior of the brewhouse was
wrapped in gloom, but a streak of light fell towards her in a line
across the floor from the inner or workshop door, which was not
quite closed. This light was unexpected, none having been visible
through hole or crevice. Glancing in, the woman found that he had
placed cloths and mats at the various apertures, and hung a sack at
the window to prevent the egress of a single ray. She could also
perceive from where she stood that the bar of light fell across the
brewing-copper just outside the inner door, and that upon it lay the
key of her bedroom. The illuminated interior of the workshop was
also partly visible from her position through the two half-open
doors. Manston was engaged in emptying a large cupboard of the
tools, gallipots, and old iron it contained. When it was quite
cleared he took a chisel, and with it began to withdraw the hooks
and shoulder-nails holding the cupboard to the wall. All these
being loosened, he extended his arms, lifted the cupboard bodily
from the brackets under it, and deposited it on the floor beside
him.

That portion of the wall which had been screened by the cupboard was
now laid bare. This, it appeared, had been plastered more recently
than the bulk of the outhouse. Manston loosened the plaster with
some kind of tool, flinging the pieces into a basket as they fell.
Having now stripped clear about two feet area of wall, he inserted a
crowbar between the joints of the bricks beneath, softly wriggling
it until several were loosened. There was now disclosed the mouth
of an old oven, which was apparently contrived in the thickness of
the wall, and having fallen into disuse, had been closed up with
bricks in this manner. It was formed after the simple old-fashioned
plan of oven-building--a mere oblate cavity without a flue.

Manston now stretched his arm into the oven, dragged forth a heavy
weight of great bulk, and let it slide to the ground. The woman
who watched him could see the object plainly. It was a common
corn-sack, nearly full, and was tied at the mouth in the usual way.

The steward had once or twice started up, as if he had heard sounds,
and his motions now became more cat-like still. On a sudden he put
out the light. Anne had made no noise, yet a foreign noise of some
kind had certainly been made in the intervening portion of the
house. She heard it. 'One of the rats,' she thought.

He seemed soon to recover from his alarm, but changed his tactics
completely. He did not light his candle--going on with his work in
the dark. She had only sounds to go by now, and, judging as well as
she could from these, he was piling up the bricks which closed the
oven's mouth as they had been before he disturbed them. The query
that had not left her brain all the interval of her inspection--how
should she get back into her bedroom again?--now received a
solution. Whilst he was replacing the cupboard, she would glide
across the brewhouse, take the key from the top of the copper, run
upstairs, unlock the door, and bring back the key again: if he
returned to bed, which was unlikely, he would think the lock had
failed to catch in the staple. This thought and intention,
occupying such length of words, flashed upon her in an instant, and
hardly disturbed her strong curiosity to stay and learn the meaning
of his actions in the workshop.

Slipping sideways through the first door and closing it behind her,
she advanced into the darkness towards the second, making every
individual footfall with the greatest care, lest the fragments of
rubbish on the floor should crackle beneath her tread. She soon
stood close by the copper, and not more than a foot from the door of
the room occupied by Manston himself, from which position she could
distinctly hear him breathe between each exertion, although it was
far too dark to discern anything of him.

To secure the key of her chamber was her first anxiety, and
accordingly she cautiously reached out with her hand to where it
lay. Instead of touching it, her fingers came in contact with the
boot of a human being.

She drooped faint in a cold sweat. It was the foot either of a man
or woman, standing on the brewing-copper where the key had lain. A
warm foot, covered with a polished boot.

The startling discovery so terrified her that she could hardly
repress a sound. She withdrew her hand with a motion like the
flight of an arrow. Her touch was so light that the leather seemed
to have been thick enough to keep the owner of the foot in entire
ignorance of it, and the noise of Manston's scraping might have been
quite sufficient to drown the slight rustle of her dress.

The person was obviously not the steward: he was still busy. It
was somebody who, since the light had been extinguished, had taken
advantage of the gloom, to come from some dark recess in the
brewhouse and stand upon the brickwork of the copper. The fear
which had at first paralyzed her lessened with the birth of a sense
that fear now was utter failure: she was in a desperate position
and must abide by the consequences. The motionless person on the
copper was, equally with Manston, quite unconscious of her
proximity, and she ventured to advance her hand again, feeling
behind the feet, till she found the key. On its return to her side,
her finger-tip skimmed the lower verge of a trousers-leg.

It was a man, then, who stood there. To go to the door just at this
time was impolitic, and she shrank back into an inner corner to
wait. The comparative security from discovery that her new position
ensured resuscitated reason a little, and empowered her to form some
logical inferences:--

1. The man who stood on the copper had taken advantage of the
darkness to get there, as she had to enter.

2. The man must have been hidden in the outhouse before she had
reached the door.

3. He must be watching Manston with much calculation and system,
and for purposes of his own.

She could now tell by the noises that Manston had completed his
re-erection of the cupboard. She heard him replacing the articles it
had contained--bottle by bottle, tool by tool--after which he came
into the brewhouse, went to the window, and pulled down the cloths
covering it; but the window being rather small, this unveiling
scarcely relieved the darkness of the interior. He returned to the
workshop, hoisted something to his back by a jerk, and felt about
the room for some other article. Having found it, he emerged from
the inner door, crossed the brewhouse, and went into the yard.
Directly he stepped out she could see his outline by the light of
the clouded and weakly moon. The sack was slung at his back, and in
his hand he carried a spade.

Anne now waited in her corner in breathless suspense for the
proceedings of the other man. In about half-a-minute she heard him
descend from the copper, and then the square opening of the doorway
showed the outline of this other watcher passing through it
likewise. The form was that of a broad-shouldered man enveloped in
a long coat. He vanished after the steward.

The woman vented a sigh of relief, and moved forward to follow.
Simultaneously, she discovered that the watcher whose foot she had
touched was, in his turn, watched and followed also.

It was by one of her own sex. Anne Seaway shrank backward again.
The unknown woman came forward from the further side of the yard,
and pondered awhile in hesitation. Tall, dark, and closely wrapped,
she stood up from the earth like a cypress. She moved, crossed the
yard without producing the slightest disturbance by her footsteps,
and went in the direction the others had taken.

Anne waited yet another minute--then in her turn noiselessly
followed the last woman.

But so impressed was she with the sensation of people in hiding,
that in coming out of the yard she turned her head to see if any
person were following her, in the same way. Nobody was visible, but
she discerned, standing behind the angle of the stable, Manston's
horse and gig, ready harnessed.

He did intend to fly after all, then, she thought. He must have
placed the horse in readiness, in the interval between his leaving
the house and her exit by the window. However, there was not time
to weigh this branch of the night's events. She turned about again,
and continued on the trail of the other three.

6. FROM MIDNIGHT TO HALF-PAST ONE A.M.

Intentness pervaded everything; Night herself seemed to have become
a watcher.

The four persons proceeded across the glade, and into the park
plantation, at equi-distances of about seventy yards. Here the
ground, completely overhung by the foliage, was coated with a thick
moss which was as soft as velvet beneath their feet. The first
watcher, that is, the man walking immediately behind Manston, now
fell back, when Manston's housekeeper, knowing the ground pretty
well, dived circuitously among the trees and got directly behind the
steward, who, encumbered with his load, had proceeded but slowly.
The other woman seemed now to be about opposite to Anne, or a little
in advance, but on Manston's other hand.

He reached a pit, midway between the waterfall and the engine-house.
There he stopped, wiped his face, and listened.

Into this pit had drifted uncounted generations of withered leaves,
half filling it. Oak, beech, and chestnut, rotten and brown alike,
mingled themselves in one fibrous mass. Manston descended into the
midst of them, placed his sack on the ground, and raking the leaves
aside into a large heap, began digging. Anne softly drew nearer,
crept into a bush, and turning her head to survey the rest, missed
the man who had dropped behind, and whom we have called the first
watcher. Concluding that he, too, had hidden himself, she turned
her attention to the second watcher, the other woman, who had
meanwhile advanced near to where Anne lay in hiding, and now seated
herself behind a tree, still closer to the steward than was Anne
Seaway.

Here and thus Anne remained concealed. The crunch of the steward's
spade, as it cut into the soft vegetable mould, was plainly
perceptible to her ears when the periodic cessations between the
creaks of the engine concurred with a lull in the breeze, which
otherwise brought the subdued roar of the cascade from the further
side of the bank that screened it. A large hole--some four or five
feet deep--had been excavated by Manston in about twenty minutes.
Into this he immediately placed the sack, and then began filling in
the earth, and treading it down. Lastly he carefully raked the
whole mass of dead and dry leaves into the middle of the pit,
burying the ground with them as they had buried it before.

For a hiding-place the spot was unequalled. The thick accumulation
of leaves, which had not been disturbed for centuries, might not be
disturbed again for centuries to come, whilst their lower layers
still decayed and added to the mould beneath.

By the time this work was ended the sky had grown clearer, and Anne
could now see distinctly the face of the other woman, stretching
from behind the tree, seemingly forgetful of her position in her
intense contemplation of the actions of the steward. Her
countenance was white and motionless.

It was impossible that Manston should not soon notice her. At the
completion of his labour he turned, and did so.

'Ho--you here!' he exclaimed.

'Don't think I am a spy upon you,' she said, in an imploring
whisper. Anne recognized the voice as Miss Aldclyffe's.

The trembling lady added hastily another remark, which was drowned
in the recurring creak of the engine close at hand The first
watcher, if he had come no nearer than his original position, was
too far off to hear any part of this dialogue, on account of the
roar of the falling water, which could reach him unimpeded by the
bank.

The remark of Miss Aldclyffe to Manston had plainly been concerning
the first watcher, for Manston, with his spade in his hand,
instantly rushed to where the man was concealed, and, before the
latter could disengage himself from the boughs, the steward struck
him on the head with the blade of the instrument. The man fell to
the ground.

'Fly!' said Miss Aldclyffe to Manston. Manston vanished amidst the
trees. Miss Aldclyffe went off in a contrary direction.