Miss Aldclyffe shifted her ground. "Were you ever in love?" she inquired suddenly.
Cytherea was surprised to hear how quickly the voice had altered from tenderness to harshness, vexation, and disappointment.
"Yes--I think I was--once," she murmured.
"Aha! And were you ever kissed by a man?"
A pause.
"Well, were you?" said Miss Aldclyffe, rather sharply.
"Don"t press me to tell--I can"t--indeed, I won"t, madam!"
Miss Aldclyffe removed her arms from Cytherea"s neck. ""Tis now with you as it is always with all girls," she said, in jealous and gloomy accents. "You are not, after all, the innocent I took you for. No, no."
She then changed her tone with fitful rapidity. "Cytherea, try to love me more than you love him--do. I love you more sincerely than any man can. Do, Cythie: don"t let any man stand between us. O, I can"t bear that!" She clasped Cytherea"s neck again.
"I must love him now I have begun," replied the other.
"Must--yes--must," said the elder lady reproachfully. "Yes, women are all alike. I thought I had at last found an artless woman who had not been sullied by a man"s lips, and who had not practised or been practised upon by the arts which ruin all the truth and sweetness and goodness in us. Find a girl, if you can, whose mouth and ears have not been made a regular highway of by some man or another! Leave the admittedly notorious spots--the drawing-rooms of society--and look in the villages--leave the villages and search in the schools--and you can hardly find a girl whose heart has not been _had_--is not an old thing half worn out by some He or another! If men only knew the staleness of the freshest of us! that nine times out of ten the "first love" they think they are winning from a woman is but the hulk of an old wrecked affection, fitted with new sails and re-used. O Cytherea, can it be that you, too, are like the rest?"
"No, no, no," urged Cytherea, awed by the storm she had raised in the impetuous woman"s mind. "He only kissed me once--twice I mean."
"He might have done it a thousand times if he had cared to, there"s no doubt about that, whoever his lordship is. You are as bad as I--we are all alike; and I--an old fool--have been sipping at your mouth as if it were honey, because I fancied no wasting lover knew the spot. But a minute ago, and you seemed to me like a fresh spring meadow--now you seem a dusty highway."
"O no, no!" Cytherea was not weak enough to shed tears except on extraordinary occasions, but she was fain to begin sobbing now. She wished Miss Aldclyffe would go to her own room, and leave her and her treasured dreams alone. This vehement imperious affection was in one sense soothing, but yet it was not of the kind that Cytherea"s instincts desired. Though it was generous, it seemed somewhat too rank and capricious for endurance.
"Well," said the lady in continuation, "who is he?"
Her companion was desperately determined not to tell his name: she too much feared a taunt when Miss Aldclyffe"s fiery mood again ruled her tongue.
"Won"t you tell me? not tell me after all the affection I have shown?"
"I will, perhaps, another day."
"Did you wear a hat and white feather in Budmouth for the week or two previous to your coming here?"
"Yes."
"Then I have seen you and your lover at a distance! He rowed you round the bay with your brother."
"Yes."
"And without your brother--fie! There, there, don"t let that little heart beat itself to death: throb, throb: it shakes the bed, you silly thing. I didn"t mean that there was any harm in going alone with him. I only saw you from the Esplanade, in common with the rest of the people.
I often run down to Budmouth. He was a very good figure: now who was he?"
"I--I won"t tell, madam--I cannot indeed!"
"Won"t tell--very well, don"t. You are very foolish to treasure up his name and image as you do. Why, he has had loves before you, trust him for that, whoever he is, and you are but a temporary link in a long chain of others like you: who only have your little day as they have had theirs."
""Tisn"t true! "tisn"t true! "tisn"t true!" cried Cytherea in an agony of torture. "He has never loved anybody else, I know--I am sure he hasn"t."
Miss Aldclyffe was as jealous as any man could have been. She continued--
"He sees a beautiful face and thinks he will never forget it, but in a few weeks the feeling pa.s.ses off, and he wonders how he could have cared for anybody so absurdly much."
"No, no, he doesn"t--What does he do when he has thought that--Come, tell me--tell me!"
"You are as hot as fire, and the throbbing of your heart makes me nervous. I can"t tell you if you get in that fl.u.s.tered state."
"Do, do tell--O, it makes me so miserable! but tell--come tell me!"
"Ah--the tables are turned now, dear!" she continued, in a tone which mingled pity with derision--
""Love"s pa.s.sions shall rock thee As the storm rocks the ravens on high, Bright reason will mock thee Like the sun from a wintry sky."
"What does he do next?--Why, this is what he does next: ruminate on what he has heard of women"s romantic impulses, and how easily men torture them when they have given way to those feelings, and have resigned everything for their hero. It may be that though he loves you heartily now--that is, as heartily as a man can--and you love him in return, your loves may be impracticable and hopeless, and you may be separated for ever. You, as the weary, weary years pa.s.s by will fade and fade--bright eyes _will_ fade--and you will perhaps then die early--true to him to your latest breath, and believing him to be true to the latest breath also; whilst he, in some gay and busy spot far away from your last quiet nook, will have married some dashing lady, and not purely oblivious of you, will long have ceased to regret you--will chat about you, as you were in long past years--will say, "Ah, little Cytherea used to tie her hair like that--poor innocent trusting thing; it was a pleasant useless idle dream--that dream of mine for the maid with the bright eyes and simple, silly heart; but I was a foolish lad at that time." Then he will tell the tale of all your little Wills and Wont"s and particular ways, and as he speaks, turn to his wife with a placid smile."
"It is not true! He can"t, he c-can"t be s-so cruel--and you are cruel to me--you are, you are!" She was at last driven to desperation: her natural common sense and shrewdness had seen all through the piece how imaginary her emotions were--she felt herself to be weak and foolish in permitting them to rise; but even then she could not control them: be agonized she must. She was only eighteen, and the long day"s labour, her weariness, her excitement, had completely unnerved her, and worn her out: she was bent hither and thither by this tyrannical working upon her imagination, as a young rush in the wind. She wept bitterly. "And now think how much I like you," resumed Miss Aldclyffe, when Cytherea grew calmer. "I shall never forget you for anybody else, as men do--never. I will be exactly as a mother to you. Now will you promise to live with me always, and always be taken care of, and never deserted?"
"I cannot. I will not be anybody"s maid for another day on any consideration."
"No, no, no. You shan"t be a lady"s-maid. You shall be my companion. I will get another maid."
Companion--that was a new idea. Cytherea could not resist the evidently heartfelt desire of the strange-tempered woman for her presence. But she could not trust to the moment"s impulse.
"I will stay, I think. But do not ask for a final answer to-night."
"Never mind now, then. Put your hair round your mamma"s neck, and give me one good long kiss, and I won"t talk any more in that way about your lover. After all, some young men are not so fickle as others; but even if he"s the ficklest, there is consolation. The love of an inconstant man is ten times more ardent than that of a faithful man--that is, while it lasts."
Cytherea did as she was told, to escape the punishment of further talk; flung the twining tresses of her long, rich hair over Miss Aldclyffe"s shoulders as directed, and the two ceased conversing, making themselves up for sleep. Miss Aldclyffe seemed to give herself over to a luxurious sense of content and quiet, as if the maiden at her side afforded her a protection against dangers which had menaced her for years; she was soon sleeping calmly.
2. TWO TO FIVE A.M.
With Cytherea it was otherwise. Unused to the place and circ.u.mstances, she continued wakeful, ill at ease, and mentally distressed. She withdrew herself from her companion"s embrace, turned to the other side, and endeavoured to relieve her busy brain by looking at the window-blind, and noticing the light of the rising moon--now in her last quarter--creep round upon it: it was the light of an old waning moon which had but a few days longer to live.
The sight led her to think again of what had happened under the rays of the same month"s moon, a little before its full, the ecstatic evening scene with Edward: the kiss, and the shortness of those happy moments--maiden imagination bringing about the apotheosis of a status quo which had had several unpleasantnesses in its earthly reality.
But sounds were in the ascendant that night. Her ears became aware of a strange and gloomy murmur.
She recognized it: it was the gushing of the waterfall, faint and low, brought from its source to the unwonted distance of the House by a faint breeze which made it distinct and recognizable by reason of the utter absence of all disturbing sounds. The groom"s melancholy representation lent to the sound a more dismal effect than it would have had of its own nature. She began to fancy what the waterfall must be like at that hour, under the trees in the ghostly moonlight. Black at the head, and over the surface of the deep cold hole into which it fell; white and frothy at the fall; black and white, like a pall and its border; sad everywhere.
She was in the mood for sounds of every kind now, and strained her ears to catch the faintest, in wayward enmity to her quiet of mind. Another soon came.
The second was quite different from the first--a kind of intermittent whistle it seemed primarily: no, a creak, a metallic creak, ever and anon, like a plough, or a rusty wheelbarrow, or at least a wheel of some kind. Yes, it was, a wheel--the water-wheel in the shrubbery by the old manor-house, which the coachman had said would drive him mad.
She determined not to think any more of these gloomy things; but now that she had once noticed the sound there was no sealing her ears to it.
She could not help timing its creaks, and putting on a dread expectancy just before the end of each half-minute that brought them. To imagine the inside of the engine-house, whence these noises proceeded, was now a necessity. No window, but crevices in the door, through which, probably, the moonbeams streamed in the most attenuated and skeleton-like rays, striking sharply upon portions of wet rusty cranks and chains; a glistening wheel, turning incessantly, labouring in the dark like a captive starving in a dungeon; and instead of a floor below, gurgling water, which on account of the darkness could only be heard; water which laboured up dark pipes almost to where she lay.