by Thomas Hardy
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 furt
her 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.
Another letter had come to her from Edward — very short, but full of entreaty, asking why she would not write just one line — just one line of cold friendship at least? She then allowed herself to think, little by little, whether she had not perhaps been too harsh with him; and at last wondered if he were really much to blame for being engaged to another woman. ‘Ah, Brain, there is one in me stronger than you!’ she said. The young maid now continually pulled out his letter, read it and re-read it, almost crying with pity the while, to think what wretched suspense he must be enduring at her silence, till her heart chid her for her cruelty. She felt that she must send him a line — one little line — just a wee line to keep him alive, poor thing; sighing like Donna Clara —
‘Ah, were he now before me,
In spite of injured pride,
I fear my eyes would pardon
Before my tongue could chide.’
2. SEPTEMBER THE TWENTIETH. THREE TO FOUR P.M.
It was the third week in September, about five weeks after Cytherea’s arrival, when Miss Aldclyffe requested her one day to go through the village of Carriford and assist herself in collecting the subscriptions made by some of the inhabitants of the parish to a religious society she patronized. Miss Aldclyffe formed one of what was called a Ladies’ Association, each member of which collected tributary streams of shillings from her inferiors, to add to her own pound at the end.
Miss Aldclyffe took particular interest in Cytherea’s appearance that afternoon, and the object of her attention was, indeed, gratifying to look at. The sight of the lithe girl, set off by an airy dress, coquettish jacket, flexible hat, a ray of starlight in each eye and a war of lilies and roses in each cheek, was a palpable pleasure to the mistress of the mansion, yet a pleasure which appeared to partake less of the nature of affectionate satisfaction than of mental gratification.
Eight names were printed in the report as belonging to Miss Aldclyffe’s list, with the amount of subscription-money attached to each.
‘I will collect the first four, whilst you do the same with the last four,’ said Miss Aldclyffe.
The names of two tradespeople stood first in Cytherea’s share: then came a Miss Hinton: last of all in the printed list was Mr. Springrove the elder. Underneath his name was pencilled, in Miss Aldclyffe’s handwriting, ‘Mr. Manston.’
Manston had arrived on the estate, in the capacity of steward, three or four days previously, and occupied the old manor-house, which had been altered and repaired for his reception.
‘Call on Mr. Manston,’ said the lady impressively, looking at the name written under Cytherea’s portion of the list.
‘But he does not subscribe yet?’
‘I know it; but call and leave him a report. Don’t forget it.’
‘Say you would be pleased if he would subscribe?’
‘Yes — say I should be pleased if he would,’ repeated Miss Aldclyffe, smiling. ‘Good-bye. Don’t hurry in your walk. If you can’t get easily through your task to-day put off some of it till to-morrow.’
Each then started on her rounds: Cytherea going in the first place to the old manor-house. Mr. Manston was not indoors, which was a relief to her. She called then on the two gentleman-farmers’ wives, who soon tra
nsacted their business with her, frigidly indifferent to her personality. A person who socially is nothing is thought less of by people who are not much than by those who are a great deal.
She then turned towards Peakhill Cottage, the residence of Miss Hinton, who lived there happily enough, with an elderly servant and a house-dog as companions. Her father, and last remaining parent, had retired thither four years before this time, after having filled the post of editor to the Casterbridge Chronicle for eighteen or twenty years. There he died soon after, and though comparatively a poor man, he left his daughter sufficiently well provided for as a modest fundholder and claimant of sundry small sums in dividends to maintain herself as mistress at Peakhill.
At Cytherea’s knock an inner door was heard to open and close, and footsteps crossed the passage hesitatingly. The next minute Cytherea stood face to face with the lady herself.
Adelaide Hinton was about nine-and-twenty years of age. Her hair was plentiful, like Cytherea’s own; her teeth equalled Cytherea’s in regularity and whiteness. But she was much paler, and had features too transparent to be in place among household surroundings. Her mouth expressed love less forcibly than Cytherea’s, and, as a natural result of her greater maturity, her tread was less elastic, and she was more self-possessed.
She had been a girl of that kind which mothers praise as not forward, by way of contrast, when disparaging those warmer ones with whom loving is an end and not a means. Men of forty, too, said of her, ‘a good sensible wife for any man, if she cares to marry,’ the caring to marry being thrown in as the vaguest hypothesis, because she was so practical. Yet it would be singular if, in such cases, the important subject of marriage should be excluded from manipulation by hands that are ready for practical performance in every domestic concern besides.
Cytherea was an acquisition, and the greeting was hearty.