Desperate Remedies

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Desperate Remedies


'Strooden, could the Old House be made a decent residence of,
without much trouble?' she inquired.

The mechanic considered, and spoke as each consideration completed
itself.

'You don't forget, ma'am, that two-thirds of the place is already
pulled down, or gone to ruin?'

'Yes; I know.'

'And that what's left may almost as well be, ma'am.'

'Why may it?'

''Twas so cut up inside when they made it into cottages, that the
whole carcase is full of cracks.'

'Still by pulling down the inserted partitions, and adding a little
outside, it could be made to answer the purpose of an ordinary six
or eight-roomed house?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'About what would it cost?' was the question which had invariably
come next in every communication of this kind to which the
superintending workman had been a party during his whole experience.
To his surprise, Miss Aldclyffe did not put it. The man thought her
object in altering an old house must have been an unusually
absorbing one not to prompt what was so instinctive in owners as
hardly to require any prompting at all.

'Thank you: that's sufficient, Strooden,' she said. 'You will
understand that it is not unlikely some alteration may be made here
in a short time, with reference to the management of the affairs.'

Strooden said 'Yes,' in a complex voice, and looked uneasy.

'During the life of Captain Aldclyffe, with you as the foreman of
works, and he himself as his own steward, everything worked well.
But now it may be necessary to have a steward, whose management will
encroach further upon things which have hitherto been left in your
hands than did your late master's. What I mean is, that he will
directly and in detail superintend all.'

'Then--I shall not be wanted, ma'am?' he faltered.

'O yes; if you like to stay on as foreman in the yard and workshops
only. I should be sorry to lose you. However, you had better
consider. I will send for you in a few days.'

Leaving him to suspense, and all the ills that came in its train
--distracted application to his duties, and an undefined number of
sleepless nights and untasted dinners, Miss Aldclyffe looked at her
watch and returned to the House. She was about to keep an
appointment with her solicitor, Mr. Nyttleton, who had been to
Budmouth, and was coming to Knapwater on his way back to London.

2. AUGUST THE TWENTIETH

On the Saturday subsequent to Mr. Nyttleton's visit to Knapwater
House, the subjoined advertisement appeared in the Field and the
Builder newspapers:--


'LAND STEWARD.

'A gentleman of integrity and professional skill is required
immediately for the MANAGEMENT of an ESTATE, containing about 1000
acres, upon which agricultural improvements and the erection of
buildings are contemplated. He must be a man of superior education,
unmarried, and not more than thirty years of age. Considerable
preference will be shown for one who possesses an artistic as well
as a practical knowledge of planning and laying out. The
remuneration will consist of a salary of 220 pounds, with the old
manor-house as a residence--Address Messrs. Nyttleton and Tayling,
solicitors, Lincoln's Inn Fields.'


A copy of each paper was sent to Miss Aldclyffe on the day of
publication. The same evening she told Cytherea that she was
advertising for a steward, who would live at the old manor-house,
showing her the papers containing the announcement.

What was the drift of that remark? thought the maiden; or was it
merely made to her in confidential intercourse, as other
arrangements were told her daily. Yet it seemed to have more
meaning than common. She remembered the conversation about
architects and surveyors, and her brother Owen. Miss Aldclyffe knew
that his situation was precarious, that he was well educated and
practical, and was applying himself heart and soul to the details of
the profession and all connected with it. Miss Aldclyffe might be
ready to take him if he could compete successfully with others who
would reply. She hazarded a question:

'Would it be desirable for Owen to answer it?'

'Not at all,' said Miss Aldclyffe peremptorily.

A flat answer of this kind had ceased to alarm Cytherea. Miss
Aldclyffe's blunt mood was not her worst. Cytherea thought of
another man, whose name, in spite of resolves, tears, renunciations
and injured pride, lingered in her ears like an old familiar strain.
That man was qualified for a stewardship under a king.

'Would it be of any use if Edward Springrove were to answer it?' she
said, resolutely enunciating the name.

'None whatever,' replied Miss Aldclyffe, again in the same decided
tone.

'You are very unkind to speak in that way.'

'Now don't pout like a goosie, as you are. I don't want men like
either of them, for, of course, I must look to the good of the
estate rather than to that of any individual. The man I want must
have been more specially educated. I have told you that we are
going to London next week; it is mostly on this account.'

Cytherea found that she had mistaken the drift of Miss Aldclyffe's
peculiar explicitness on the subject of advertising, and wrote to
tell her brother that if he saw the notice it would be useless to
reply.

3. AUGUST THE TWENTY-FIFTH

Five days after the above-mentioned dialogue took place they went to
London, and, with scarcely a minute's pause, to the solicitors'
offices in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

They alighted opposite one of the characteristic entrances about the
place--a gate which was never, and could never be, closed, flanked
by lamp-standards carrying no lamp. Rust was the only active agent
to be seen there at this time of the day and year. The palings
along the front were rusted away at their base to the thinness of
wires, and the successive coats of paint, with which they were
overlaid in bygone days, had been completely undermined by the same
insidious canker, which lifted off the paint in flakes, leaving the
raw surface of the iron on palings, standards, and gate hinges, of a
staring blood-red.

But once inside the railings the picture changed. The court and
offices were a complete contrast to the grand ruin of the outwork
which enclosed them. Well-painted respectability extended over,
within, and around the doorstep; and in the carefully swept yard not
a particle of dust was visible.

Mr. Nyttleton, who had just come up from Margate, where he was
staying with his family, was standing at the top of his own
staircase as the pair ascended. He politely took them inside.

'Is there a comfortable room in which this young lady can sit during
our interview?' said Miss Aldclyffe.

It was rather a favourite habit of hers to make much of Cytherea
when they were out, and snub her for it afterwards when they got
home.

'Certainly--Mr. Tayling's.' Cytherea was shown into an inner room.

Social definitions are all made relatively: an absolute datum is
only imagined. The small gentry about Knapwater seemed unpractised
to Miss Aldclyffe, Miss Aldclyffe herself seemed unpractised to Mr.
Nyttleton's experienced old eyes.

'Now then,' the lady said, when she was alone with the lawyer; 'what
is the result of our advertisement?'

It was late summer; the estate-agency, building, engineering, and
surveying worlds were dull. There were forty-five replies to the
advertisement.

Mr. Nyttleton spread them one by one before Miss Aldclyffe. 'You
will probably like to read some of them yourself, madam?' he said.

'Yes, certainly,' said she.

'I will not trouble you with those which are from persons manifestly
unfit at first sight,' he continued; and began selecting from the
heap twos and threes which he had marked, collecting others into his
hand.

'The man we want lies among these, if my judgment doesn't deceive
me, and from them it would be advisable to select a certain number
to be communicated with.'

'I should like to see every one--only just to glance them over
--exactly as they came,' she said suasively.

He looked as if he thought this a waste of his time, but dismissing
his sentiment unfolded each singly and laid it before her. As he
laid them out, it struck him that she studied them quite as rapidly
as he could spread them. He slyly glanced up from the outer corner
of his eye to hers, and noticed that all she did was look at the
name at the bottom of the letter, and then put the enclosure aside
without further ceremony. He thought this an odd way of inquiring
into the merits of forty-five men who at considerable trouble gave
in detail reasons why they believed themselves well qualified for a
certain post. She came to the final one, and put it down with the
rest.

Then the lady said that in her opinion it would be best to get as
many replies as they possibly could before selecting--'to give us a
wider choice. What do you think, Mr. Nyttleton?'

It seemed to him, he said, that a greater number than those they
already had would scarcely be necessary, and if they waited for
more, there would be this disadvantage attending it, that some of
those they now could command would possibly not be available.

'Never mind, we will run that risk,' said Miss Aldclyffe. 'Let the
advertisement be inserted once more, and then we will certainly
settle the matter.'

Mr. Nyttleton bowed, and seemed to think Miss Aldclyffe, for a
single woman, and one who till so very recently had never concerned
herself with business of any kind, a very meddlesome client. But
she was rich, and handsome still. 'She's a new broom in
estate-management as yet,' he thought. 'She will soon get tired of
this,' and he parted from her without a sentiment which could mar
his habitual blandness.

The two ladies then proceeded westward. Dismissing the cab in
Waterloo Place, they went along Pall Mall on foot, where in place of
the usual well-dressed clubbists--rubicund with alcohol--were to be
seen, in linen pinafores, flocks of house-painters pallid from white
lead. When they had reached the Green Park, Cytherea proposed that
they should sit down awhile under the young elms at the brow of the
hill. This they did--the growl of Piccadilly on their left hand
--the monastic seclusion of the Palace on their right: before them,
the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament, standing forth with a
metallic lustre against a livid Lambeth sky.

Miss Aldclyffe still carried in her hand a copy of the newspaper,
and while Cytherea had been interesting herself in the picture
around, glanced again at the advertisement.

She heaved a slight sigh, and began to fold it up again. In the
action her eye caught sight of two consecutive advertisements on the
cover, one relating to some lecture on Art, and addressed to members
of the Institute of Architects. The other emanated from the same
source, but was addressed to the public, and stated that the
exhibition of drawings at the Institute's rooms would close at the
end of that week.

Her eye lighted up. She sent Cytherea back to the hotel in a cab,
then turned round by Piccadilly into Bond Street, and proceeded to
the rooms of the Institute. The secretary was sitting in the lobby.
After making her payment, and looking at a few of the drawings on
the walls, in the company of three gentlemen, the only other
visitors to the exhibition, she turned back and asked if she might
be allowed to see a list of the members. She was a little connected
with the architectural world, she said, with a smile, and was
interested in some of the names.

'Here it is, madam,' he replied, politely handing her a pamphlet
containing the names.

Miss Aldclyffe turned the leaves till she came to the letter M. The
name she hoped to find there was there, with the address appended,
as was the case with all the rest.

The address was at some chambers in a street not far from Charing
Cross. 'Chambers,' as a residence, had always been assumed by the
lady to imply the condition of a bachelor. She murmured two words,
'There still.'

Another request had yet to be made, but it was of a more noticeable
kind than the first, and might compromise the secrecy with which she
wished to act throughout this episode. Her object was to get one of
the envelopes lying on the secretary's table, stamped with the die
of the Institute; and in order to get it she was about to ask if she
might write a note.

But the secretary's back chanced to be turned, and he now went
towards one of the men at the other end of the room, who had called
him to ask some question relating to an etching on the wall. Quick
as thought, Miss Aldclyffe stood before the table, slipped her hand
behind her, took one of the envelopes and put it in her pocket.

She sauntered round the rooms for two or three minutes longer, then
withdrew and returned to her hotel.

Here she cut the Knapwater advertisement from the paper, put it into
the envelope she had stolen, embossed with the society's stamp, and
directed it in a round clerkly hand to the address she had seen in
the list of members' names submitted to her:--

AENEAS MANSTON, ESQ.,
WYKEHAM CHAMBERS,
SPRING GARDENS.

This ended her first day's work in London.

4. FROM AUGUST THE TWENTY-SIXTH TO SEPTEMBER THE FIRST

The two Cythereas continued at the Westminster Hotel, Miss Aldclyffe
informing her companion that business would detain them in London
another week. The days passed as slowly and quietly as days can
pass in a city at that time of the year, the shuttered windows about
the squares and terraces confronting their eyes like the white and
sightless orbs of blind men. On Thursday Mr. Nyttleton called,
bringing the whole number of replies to the advertisement. Cytherea
was present at the interview, by Miss Aldclyffe's request--either
from whim or design.

Ten additional letters were the result of the second week's
insertion, making fifty-five in all. Miss Aldclyffe looked them
over as before. One was signed--

AENEAS MANSTON,
133, TURNGATE STREET,
LIVERPOOL.

'Now, then, Mr. Nyttleton, will you make a selection, and I will add
one or two,' Miss Aldclyffe said.

Mr. Nyttleton scanned the whole heap of letters, testimonials, and
references, sorting them into two heaps. Manston's missive, after a
mere glance, was thrown amongst the summarily rejected ones.

Miss Aldclyffe read, or pretended to read after the lawyer. When he
had finished, five lay in the group he had selected. 'Would you
like to add to the number?' he said, turning to the lady.

'No,' she said carelessly. 'Well, two or three additional ones
rather took my fancy,' she added, searching for some in the larger
collection.

She drew out three. One was Manston's.

'These eight, then, shall be communicated with,' said the lawyer,
taking up the eight letters and placing them by themselves.

They stood up. 'If I myself, Miss Aldclyffe, were only concerned
personally,' he said, in an off-hand way, and holding up a letter
singly, 'I should choose this man unhesitatingly. He writes
honestly, is not afraid to name what he does not consider himself
well acquainted with--a rare thing to find in answers to
advertisements; he is well recommended, and possesses some qualities
rarely found in combination. Oddly enough, he is not really a
steward. He was bred a farmer, studied building affairs, served on
an estate for some time, then went with an architect, and is now
well qualified as architect, estate agent, and surveyor. That man
is sure to have a fine head for a manor like yours.' He tapped the
letter as he spoke. 'Yes, I should choose him without hesitation
--speaking personally.'

'And I think,' she said artificially, 'I should choose this one as a
matter of mere personal whim, which, of course, can't be given way
to when practical questions have to be considered.'

Cytherea, after looking out of the window, and then at the
newspapers, had become interested in the proceedings between the
clever Miss Aldclyffe and the keen old lawyer, which reminded her of
a game at cards. She looked inquiringly at the two letters--one in
Miss Aldclyffe's hand, the other in Mr. Nyttleton's.

'What is the name of your man?' said Miss Aldclyffe.

'His name--' said the lawyer, looking down the page; 'what is his
name?--it is Edward Springrove.'

Miss Aldclyffe glanced towards Cytherea, who was getting red and
pale by turns. She looked imploringly at Miss Aldclyffe.

'The name of my man,' said Miss Aldclyffe, looking at her letter in
turn; 'is, I think--yes--AEneas Manston.'

5. SEPTEMBER THE THIRD

The next morning but one was appointed for the interviews, which
were to be at the lawyer's offices. Mr. Nyttleton and Mr. Tayling
were both in town for the day, and the candidates were admitted one
by one into a private room. In the window recess was seated Miss
Aldclyffe, wearing her veil down.

The lawyer had, in his letters to the selected number, timed each
candidate at an interval of ten or fifteen minutes from those
preceding and following. They were shown in as they arrived, and
had short conversations with Mr. Nyttleton--terse, and to the point.
Miss Aldclyffe neither moved nor spoke during this proceeding; it
might have been supposed that she was quite unmindful of it, had it
not been for what was revealed by a keen penetration of the veil
covering her countenance--the rays from two bright black eyes,
directed towards the lawyer and his interlocutor.

Springrove came fifth; Manston seventh. When the examination of all
was ended, and the last man had retired, Nyttleton, again as at the
former time, blandly asked his client which of the eight she
personally preferred. 'I still think the fifth we spoke to,
Springrove, the man whose letter I pounced upon at first, to be by
far the best qualified, in short, most suitable generally.'

'I am sorry to say that I differ from you; I lean to my first notion
still--that Mr.--Mr. Manston is most desirable in tone and bearing,
and even specifically; I think he would suit me best in the
long-run.'

Mr. Nyttleton looked out of the window at the whitened wall of the
court.

'Of course, madam, your opinion may be perfectly sound and reliable;
a sort of instinct, I know, often leads ladies by a short cut to
conclusions truer than those come to by men after laborious
round-about calculations, based on long experience. I must say I
shouldn't recommend him.'

'Why, pray?'

'Well, let us look first at his letter of answer to the
advertisement. He didn't reply till the last insertion; that's one
thing. His letter is bold and frank in tone, so bold and frank that
the second thought after reading it is that not honesty, but
unscrupulousness of conscience dictated it. It is written in an
indifferent mood, as if he felt that he was humbugging us in his
statement that he was the right man for such an office, that he
tried hard to get it only as a matter of form which required that he
should neglect no opportunity that came in his way.'

'You may be right, Mr. Nyttleton, but I don't quite see the grounds
of your reasoning.'

'He has been, as you perceive, almost entirely used to the office
duties of a city architect, the experience we don't want. You want
a man whose acquaintance with rural landed properties is more
practical and closer--somebody who, if he has not filled exactly
such an office before, has lived a country life, knows the ins and
outs of country tenancies, building, farming, and so on.'

'He's by far the most intellectual looking of them all.'

'Yes; he may be--your opinion, Miss Aldclyffe, is worth more than
mine in that matter. And more than you say, he is a man of parts
--his brain power would soon enable him to master details and fit
him for the post, I don't much doubt that. But to speak clearly'
(here his words started off at a jog-trot) 'I wouldn't run the risk
of placing the management of an estate of mine in his hands on any
account whatever. There, that's flat and plain, madam.'

'But, definitely,' she said, with a show of impatience, 'what is
your reason?'

'He is a voluptuary with activity; which is a very bad form of man
--as bad as it is rare.'

'Oh. Thank you for your explicit statement, Mr. Nyttleton,' said
Miss Aldclyffe, starting a little and flushing with displeasure.

Mr. Nyttleton nodded slightly, as a sort of neutral motion, simply
signifying a receipt of the information, good or bad.

'And I really think it is hardly worth while to trouble you further
in this,' continued the lady. 'He's quite good enough for a little
insignificant place like mine at Knapwater; and I know that I could
not get on with one of the others for a single month. We'll try
him.'

'Certainly, Miss Aldclyffe,' said the lawyer. And Mr. Manston was
written to, to the effect that he was the successful competitor.

'Did you see how unmistakably her temper was getting the better of
her, that minute you were in the room?' said Nyttleton to Tayling,
when their client had left the house. Nyttleton was a man who
surveyed everybody's character in a sunless and shadowless northern
light. A culpable slyness, which marked him as a boy, had been
moulded by Time, the Improver, into honourable circumspection.

We frequently find that the quality which, conjoined with the
simplicity of the child, is vice, is virtue when it pervades the
knowledge of the man.

'She was as near as damn-it to boiling over when I added up her
man,' continued Nyttleton. 'His handsome face is his qualification
in her eyes. They have met before; I saw that.'

'He didn't seem conscious of it,' said the junior.

'He didn't. That was rather puzzling to me. But still, if ever a
woman's face spoke out plainly that she was in love with a man, hers
did that she was with him. Poor old maid, she's almost old enough
to be his mother. If that Manston's a schemer he'll marry her, as
sure as I am Nyttleton. Let's hope he's honest, however.'

'I don't think she's in love with him,' said Tayling. He had seen
but little of the pair, and yet he could not reconcile what he had
noticed in Miss Aldclyffe's behaviour with the idea that it was the
bearing of a woman towards her lover.

'Well, your experience of the fiery phenomenon is more recent than
mine,' rejoined Nyttleton carelessly. 'And you may remember the
nature of it best.'



VIII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS

1. FROM THE THIRD TO THE NINETEENTH OF SEPTEMBER

Miss Aldclyffe's tenderness towards Cytherea, between the hours of
her irascibility, increased till it became no less than doting
fondness. Like Nature in the tropics, with her hurricanes and the
subsequent luxuriant vegetation effacing their ravages, Miss
Aldclyffe compensated for her outbursts by excess of generosity
afterwards. She seemed to be completely won out of herself by close
contact with a young woman whose modesty was absolutely unimpaired,
and whose artlessness was as perfect as was compatible with the
complexity necessary to produce the due charm of womanhood.
Cytherea, on her part, perceived with honest satisfaction that her
influence for good over Miss Aldclyffe was considerable. Ideas and
habits peculiar to the younger, which the elder lady had originally
imitated as a mere whim, she grew in course of time to take a
positive delight in. Among others were evening and morning prayers,
dreaming over out-door scenes, learning a verse from some poem
whilst dressing.

Yet try to force her sympathies as much as she would, Cytherea could
feel no more than thankful for this, even if she always felt as much
as thankful. The mysterious cloud hanging over the past life of her
companion, of which the uncertain light already thrown upon it only
seemed to render still darker the unpenetrated remainder, nourished
in her a feeling which was scarcely too slight to be called dread.
She would have infinitely preferred to be treated distantly, as the
mere dependent, by such a changeable nature--like a fountain, always
herself, yet always another. That a crime of any deep dye had ever
been perpetrated or participated in by her namesake, she would not
believe; but the reckless adventuring of the lady's youth seemed
connected with deeds of darkness rather than of light.

Sometimes Miss Aldclyffe appeared to be on the point of making some
absorbing confidence, but reflection invariably restrained her.
Cytherea hoped that such a confidence would come with time, and that
she might thus be a means of soothing a mind which had obviously
known extreme suffering.

But Miss Aldclyffe's reticence concerning her past was not imitated
by Cytherea. Though she never disclosed the one fact of her
knowledge that the love-suit between Miss Aldclyffe and her father
terminated abnormally, the maiden's natural ingenuousness on
subjects not set down for special guard had enabled Miss Aldclyffe
to worm from her, fragment by fragment, every detail of her father's
history. Cytherea saw how deeply Miss Aldclyffe sympathized--and it
compensated her, to some extent, for the hasty resentments of other
times.

Thus uncertainly she lived on. It was perceived by the servants of
the House that some secret bond of connection existed between Miss
Aldclyffe and her companion. But they were woman and woman, not
woman and man, the facts were ethereal and refined, and so they
could not be worked up into a taking story. Whether, as old critics
disputed, a supernatural machinery be necessary to an epic or no, an
ungodly machinery is decidedly necessary to a scandal.