This done, Cytherea, still in a practical mood, upbraided herself with weakness in allowing a stranger like Mr. Manston to influence her as he had done that evening. What right on earth had he to suggest so suddenly that she might meet him at the waterfall to receive his music? She would have given much to be able to annihilate the ascendency he had obtained over her during that extraordinary interval of melodious sound. Not being able to endure the notion of his living a minute longer in the belief he was then holding, she took her pen and wrote to him also:--
"KNAPWATER HOUSE September 20th.
"I find I cannot meet you at seven o"clock by the waterfall as I promised. The emotion I felt made me forgetful of realities.
"C. GRAYE."
A great statesman thinks several times, and acts; a young lady acts, and thinks several times. When, a few minutes later, she saw the postman carry off the bag containing one of the letters, and a messenger with the other, she, for the first time, asked herself the question whether she had acted very wisely in writing to either of the two men who had so influenced her.
IX. THE EVENTS OF TEN WEEKS
1. FROM SEPTEMBER THE TWENTY-FIRST TO THE MIDDLE OF NOVEMBER
The foremost figure within Cytherea"s horizon, exclusive of the inmates of Knapwater House, was now the steward, Mr. Manston. It was impossible that they should live within a quarter of a mile of each other, be engaged in the same service, and attend the same church, without meeting at some spot or another, twice or thrice a week. On Sundays, in her pew, when by chance she turned her head, Cytherea found his eyes waiting desirously for a glimpse of hers, and, at first more strangely, the eyes of Miss Aldclyffe furtively resting on him. On coming out of church he frequently walked beside Cytherea till she reached the gate at which residents in the House turned into the shrubbery. By degrees a conjecture grew to a certainty. She knew that he loved her.
But a strange fact was connected with the development of his love. He was palpably making the strongest efforts to subdue, or at least to hide, the weakness, and as it sometimes seemed, rather from his own conscience than from surrounding eyes. Hence she found that not one of his encounters with her was anything more than the result of pure accident. He made no advances whatever: without avoiding her, he never sought her: the words he had whispered at their first interview now proved themselves to be quite as much the result of unguarded impulse as was her answer. Something held him back, bound his impulse down, but she saw that it was neither pride of his person, nor fear that she would refuse him--a course she unhesitatingly resolved to take should he think fit to declare himself. She was interested in him and his marvellous beauty, as she might have been in some fascinating panther or leopard--for some undefinable reason she shrank from him, even whilst she admired. The keynote of her nature, a warm "precipitance of soul,"
as Coleridge happily writes it, which Manston had so directly pounced upon at their very first interview, gave her now a tremulous sense of being in some way in his power.
The state of mind was, on the whole, a dangerous one for a young and inexperienced woman; and perhaps the circ.u.mstance which, more than any other, led her to cherish Edward"s image now, was that he had taken no notice of the receipt of her letter, stating that she discarded him. It was plain then, she said, that he did not care deeply for her, and she thereupon could not quite leave off caring deeply for him:--
"Ingenium mulierum, Nolunt ubi velis, ubi nolis cupiunt ultro."
The month of October pa.s.sed, and November began its course. The inhabitants of the village of Carriford grew weary of supposing that Miss Aldclyffe was going to marry her steward. New whispers arose and became very distinct (though they did not reach Miss Aldclyffe"s ears) to the effect that the steward was deeply in love with Cytherea Graye.
Indeed, the fact became so obvious that there was nothing left to say about it except that their marriage would be an excellent one for both;--for her in point of comfort--and for him in point of love.
As circles in a pond grow wider and wider, the next fact, which at first had been patent only to Cytherea herself, in due time spread to her neighbours, and they, too, wondered that he made no overt advances. By the middle of November, a theory made up of a combination of the other two was received with general favour: its substance being that a guilty intrigue had been commenced between Manston and Miss Aldclyffe, some years before, when he was a very young man, and she still in the enjoyment of some womanly beauty, but now that her seniority began to grow emphatic she was becoming distasteful to him. His fear of the effect of the lady"s jealousy would, they said, thus lead him to conceal from her his new attachment to Cytherea. Almost the only woman who did not believe this was Cytherea herself, on unmistakable grounds, which were hidden from all besides. It was not only in public, but even more markedly in secluded places, on occasions when gallantry would have been safe from all discovery, that this guarded course of action was pursued, all the strength of a consuming pa.s.sion burning in his eyes the while.
2. NOVEMBER THE EIGHTEENTH
It was on a Friday in this month of November that Owen Graye paid a visit to his sister.
His zealous integrity still retained for him the situation at Budmouth, and in order that there should be as little interruption as possible to his duties there, he had decided not to come to Knapwater till late in the afternoon, and to return to Budmouth by the first train the next morning, Miss Aldclyffe having made a point of frequently offering him lodging for an unlimited period, to the great pleasure of Cytherea.
He reached the house about four o"clock, and ringing the bell, asked of the page who answered it for Miss Graye.
When Graye spoke the name of his sister, Manston, who was just coming out from an interview with Miss Aldclyffe, pa.s.sed him in the vestibule and heard the question. The steward"s face grew hot, and he secretly clenched his hands. He half crossed the court, then turned his head and saw that the lad still stood at the door, though Owen had been shown into the house. Manston went back to him.
"Who was that man?" he said.
"I don"t know, sir."
"Has he ever been here before?"
"Yes, sir."
"How many times?"
"Three."
"You are sure you don"t know him?"
"I think he is Miss Graye"s brother, sir."
"Then, why the devil didn"t you say so before!" Manston exclaimed, and again went on his way.
"Of course, that was not the man of my dreams--of course, it couldn"t be!" he said to himself. "That I should be such a fool--such an utter fool. Good G.o.d! to allow a girl to influence me like this, day after day, till I am jealous of her very brother. A lady"s dependent, a waif, a helpless thing entirely at the mercy of the world; yes, curse it; that is just why it is; that fact of her being so helpless against the blows of circ.u.mstances which renders her so deliciously sweet!"
He paused opposite his house. Should he get his horse saddled? No.
He went down the drive and out of the park, having started to proceed to an outlying spot on the estate concerning some draining, and to call at the potter"s yard to make an arrangement for the supply of pipes. But a remark which Miss Aldclyffe had dropped in relation to Cytherea was what still occupied his mind, and had been the immediate cause of his excitement at the sight of her brother. Miss Aldclyffe had meaningly remarked during their intercourse, that Cytherea was wildly in love with Edward Springrove, in spite of his engagement to his cousin Adelaide.
"How I am hara.s.sed!" he said aloud, after deep thought for half-an-hour, while still continuing his walk with the greatest vehemence. "How I am hara.s.sed by these emotions of mine!" He calmed himself by an effort.
"Well, duty after all it shall be, as nearly as I can effect it.
"Honesty is the best policy;"" with which vigorously uttered resolve he once more attempted to turn his attention to the prosy object of his journey.
The evening had closed in to a dark and dreary night when the steward came from the potter"s door to proceed homewards again. The gloom did not tend to raise his spirits, and in the total lack of objects to attract his eye, he soon fell to introspection as before. It was along the margin of turnip fields that his path lay, and the large leaves of the crop struck flatly against his feet at every step, pouring upon them the rolling drops of moisture gathered upon their broad surfaces; but the annoyance was unheeded. Next reaching a fir plantation, he mounted the stile and followed the path into the midst of the darkness produced by the overhanging trees.
After walking under the dense shade of the inky boughs for a few minutes, he fancied he had mistaken the path, which as yet was scarcely familiar to him. This was proved directly afterwards by his coming at right angles upon some obstruction, which careful feeling with outstretched hands soon told him to be a rail fence. However, as the wood was not large, he experienced no alarm about finding the path again, and with some sense of pleasure halted awhile against the rails, to listen to the intensely melancholy yet musical wail of the fir-tops, and as the wind pa.s.sed on, the prompt moan of an adjacent plantation in reply. He could just dimly discern the airy summits of the two or three trees nearest him waving restlessly backwards and forwards, and stretching out their boughs like hairy arms into the dull sky. The scene, from its striking and emphatic loneliness, began to grow congenial to his mood; all of human kind seemed at the antipodes.
A sudden rattle on his right hand caused him to start from his reverie, and turn in that direction. There, before him, he saw rise up from among the trees a fountain of sparks and smoke, then a red glare of light coming forward towards him; then a flashing panorama of illuminated oblong pictures; then the old darkness, more impressive than ever.
The surprise, which had owed its origin to his imperfect acquaintance with the topographical features of that end of the estate, had been but momentary; the disturbance, a well-known one to dwellers by a railway, being caused by the 6.50 down-train pa.s.sing along a shallow cutting in the midst of the wood immediately below where he stood, the driver having the fire-door of the engine open at the minute of going by. The train had, when pa.s.sing him, already considerably slackened speed, and now a whistle was heard, announcing that Carriford Road Station was not far in its van.
But contrary to the natural order of things, the discovery that it was only a commonplace train had not caused Manston to stir from his position of facing the railway.
If the 6.50 down-train had been a flash of forked lightning transfixing him to the earth, he could scarcely have remained in a more trance-like state. He still leant against the railings, his right hand still continued pressing on his walking-stick, his weight on one foot, his other heel raised, his eyes wide open towards the blackness of the cutting. The only movement in him was a slight dropping of the lower jaw, separating his previously closed lips a little way, as when a strange conviction rushes home suddenly upon a man. A new surprise, not nearly so trivial as the first, had taken possession of him.
It was on this account. At one of the illuminated windows of a second-cla.s.s carriage in the series gone by, he had seen a pale face, reclining upon one hand, the light from the lamp falling full upon it.
The face was a woman"s.
At last Manston moved; gave a whispering kind of whistle, adjusted his hat, and walked on again, cross-questioning himself in every direction as to how a piece of knowledge he had carefully concealed had found its way to another person"s intelligence. "How can my address have become known?" he said at length, audibly. "Well, it is a blessing I have been circ.u.mspect and honourable, in relation to that--yes, I will say it, for once, even if the words choke me, that darling of mine, Cytherea, never to be my own, never. I suppose all will come out now. All!" The great sadness of his utterance proved that no mean force had been exercised upon himself to sustain the circ.u.mspection he had just claimed.
He wheeled to the left, pursued the ditch beside the railway fence, and presently emerged from the wood, stepping into a road which crossed the railway by a bridge.
As he neared home, the anxiety lately written in his face, merged by degrees into a grimly humorous smile, which hung long upon his lips, and he quoted aloud a line from the book of Jeremiah--
"A woman shall compa.s.s a man."
3. NOVEMBER THE NINETEENTH. DAYBREAK
Before it was light the next morning, two little naked feet pattered along the pa.s.sage in Knapwater House, from which Owen Graye"s bedroom opened, and a tap was given upon his door.
"Owen, Owen, are you awake?" said Cytherea in a whisper through the keyhole. "You must get up directly, or you"ll miss the train."