Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (28 page)

‘What’s the use?’ he said. ‘Your possessing the knowledge does no harm; you are at any rate comfortable here, and a confession to Miss Aldclyffe might only irritate her. No, hold your tongue, Cytherea.’

‘I fancy I should have been tempted to tell her too,’ Cytherea went on, ‘had I not found out that there exists a very odd, almost imperceptible, and yet real connection of some kind between her and Mr. Manston, which is more than that of a mutual interest in the estate.’

‘She is in love with him!’ exclaimed Owen; ‘fancy that!’

‘Ah — that’s what everybody says who has been keen enough to notice anything. I said so at first. And yet now I cannot persuade myself that she is in love with him at all.’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘She doesn’t act as if she were. She isn’t — you will know I don’t say it from any vanity, Owen — she isn’t the least jealous of me.’

‘Perhaps she is in some way in his power.’

‘No — she is not. He was openly advertised for, and chosen from forty or fifty who answered the advertisement, without knowing whose it was. And since he has been here, she has certainly done nothing to compromise herself in any way. Besides, why should she have brought an enemy here at all?’

‘Then she must have fallen in love with him. You know as well as I do, Cyth, that with women there’s nothing between the two poles of emotion towards an interesting male acquaintance. ‘Tis either love or aversion.’

They walked for a few minutes in silence, when Cytherea’s eyes accidentally fell upon her brother’s feet.

‘Owen,’ she said, ‘do you know that there is something unusual in your manner of walking?’

‘What is it like?’ he asked.

‘I can’t quite say, except that you don’t walk so regularly as you used to.’

The woman behind the hedge, who had still continued to dog their footsteps, made an impatient movement at this change in their conversation, and looked at her watch again. Yet she seemed reluctant to give over listening to them.

‘Yes,’ Owen returned with assumed carelessness, ‘I do know it. I think the cause of it is that mysterious pain which comes just above my ankle sometimes. You remember the first time I had it? That day we went by steam-packet to Lulstead Cove, when it hindered me from coming back to you, and compelled me to sleep with the gateman we have been talking about.’

‘But is it anything serious, dear Owen?’ Cytherea exclaimed, with some alarm.

‘O, nothing at all. It is sure to go off again. I never find a sign of it when I sit in the office.’

Again their unperceived companion made a gesture of vexation, and looked at her watch as if time were precious. But the dialogue still flowed on upon this new subject, and showed no sign of returning to its old channel.

Gathering up her skirt decisively she renounced all further hope, and hurried along the ditch till she had dropped into a valley, and came to a gate which was beyond the view of those coming behind. This she softly opened, and came out upon the road, following it in the direction of the railway station.

Presently she heard Owen Graye’s footsteps in her rear, his quickened pace implying that he had parted from his sister. The woman thereupon increased her rapid walk to a run, and in a few minutes safely distanced her fellow-traveller.

The railway at Carriford Road consisted only of a single line of rails; and the short local down-train by which Owen was going to Budmouth was shunted on to a siding whilst the first up-train passed. Graye entered the waiting-room, and the door being open he listlessly observed the movements of a woman wearing a long grey cloak, and closely hooded, who had asked for a ticket for London.

He followed her with his eyes on to the platform, saw her waiting there and afterwards stepping into the train: his recollection of her ceasing with the perception.

4. EIGHT TO TEN O’CLOCK A.M.

Mrs. Crickett, twice a widow, and now the parish clerk’s wife, a fine-framed, scandal-loving woman, with a peculiar corner to her eye by which, without turning her head, she could see what people were doing almost behind her, lived in a cottage standing nearer to the old manor-house than any other in the village of Carriford, and she had on that account been temporarily engaged by the steward, as a respectable kind of charwoman and general servant, until a settled arrangement could be made with some person as permanent domestic.

Every morning, therefore, Mrs. Crickett, immediately she had lighted the fire in her own cottage, and prepared the breakfast for herself and husband, paced her way to the Old House to do the same for Mr. Manston. Then she went home to breakfast; and when the steward had eaten his, and had gone out on his rounds, she returned again to clear away, make his bed, and put the house in order for the day.

On the morning of Owen Graye’s departure, she went through the operations of her first visit as usual — proceeded home to breakfast, and went back again, to perform those of the second.

Entering Manston’s empty bedroom, with her hands on her hips, she indifferently cast her eyes upon the bed, previously to dismantling it.

Whilst she looked, she thought in an inattentive manner, ‘What a remarkably quiet sleeper Mr. Manston must be!’ The upper bed-clothes were flung back, certainly, but the bed was scarcely disarranged. ‘Anybody would almost fancy,’ she thought, ‘that he had made it himself after rising.’

But these evanescent thoughts vanished as they had come, and Mrs. Crickett set to work; she dragged off the counterpane, blankets and sheets, and stooped to lift the pillows. Thus stooping, something arrested her attention; she looked closely — more closely — very closely. ‘Well, to be sure!’ was all she could say. The clerk’s wife stood as if the air had suddenly set to amber, and held her fixed like a fly in it.

The object of her wonder was a trailing brown hair, very little less than a yard long, which proved it clearly to be a hair from some woman’s head. She drew it off the pillow, and took it to the window; there holding it out she looked fixedly at it, and became utterly lost in meditation: her gaze, which had at first actively settled on the hair, involuntarily dropped past its object by degrees and was lost on the floor, as the inner vision obscured the outer one.

She at length moistened her lips, returned her eyes to the hair, wound it round her fingers, put it in some paper, and secreted the whole in her pocket. Mrs. Crickett’s thoughts were with her work no more that morning.

She searched the house from roof-tree to cellar, for some other trace of feminine existence or appurtenance; but none was to be found.

She went out into the yard, coal-hole, stable, hay-loft, green-house, fowl-house, and piggery, and still there was no sign. Coming in again, she saw a bonnet, eagerly pounced upon it; and found it to be her own.

Hastily completing her arrangements in the other rooms, she entered the village again, and called at once on the postmistress, Elizabeth Leat, an intimate friend of hers, and a female who sported several unique diseases and afflictions.

Mrs. Crickett unfolded the paper, took out the hair, and waved it on high before the perplexed eyes of Elizabeth, which immediately mooned and wandered after it like a cat’s.

‘What is it?’ said Mrs. Leat, contracting her eyelids, and stretching out towards the invisible object a narrow bony hand that would have been an unmitigated delight to the pencil of Carlo Crivelli.

‘You shall hear,’ said Mrs. Crickett, complacently gathering up the treasure into her own fat hand; and the secret was then solemnly imparted, together with the accident of its discovery.

A shaving-glass was taken down from a nail, laid on its back in the middle of a table by the window, and the hair spread carefully out upon it. The pair then bent over the table from opposite sides, their elbows on the edge, their hands supporting their heads, their foreheads nearly touching, and their eyes upon the hair.

‘He ha’ been mad a’ter my lady Cytherea,’ said Mrs. Crickett, ‘and ‘tis my very belief the hair is — ’

‘No ‘tidn’. Hers idn’ so dark as that,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Elizabeth, you know that as the faithful wife of a servant of the Church, I should be glad to think as you do about the girl. Mind I don’t wish to say anything against Miss Graye, but this I do say, that I believe her to be a nameless thing, and she’s no right to stick a moral clock in her face, and deceive the country in such a way. If she wasn’t of a bad stock at the outset she was bad in the planten, and if she wasn’t bad in the planten, she was bad in the growen, and if not in the growen, she’s made bad by what she’s gone through since.’

‘But I have another reason for knowing it idn’ hers,’ said Mrs. Leat.

‘Ah! I know whose it is then — Miss Aldclyffe’s, upon my song!’

‘‘Tis the colour of hers, but I don’t believe it to be hers either.’

‘Don’t you believe what they d’ say about her and him?’

‘I say nothen about that; but you don’t know what I know about his letters.’

‘What about ‘em?’

‘He d’ post all his letters here except those for one person, and they he d’ take to Budmouth. My son is in Budmouth Post Office, as you know, and as he d’ sit at desk he can see over the blind of the window all the people who d’ post letters. Mr. Manston d’ unvariably go there wi’ letters for that person; my boy d’ know ‘em by sight well enough now.’

‘Is it a she?’

‘‘Tis a she.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘The little stunpoll of a fellow couldn’t call to mind more than that ‘tis Miss Somebody, of London. However, that’s the woman who ha’ been here, depend upon’t — a wicked one — some poor street-wench escaped from Sodom, I warrant ye.’

‘Only to find herself in Gomorrah, seemingly.’

‘That may be.’

‘No, no, Mrs. Leat, this is clear to me. ‘Tis no miss who came here to see our steward last night — whenever she came or wherever she vanished. Do you think he would ha’ let a miss get here how she could, go away how she would, without breakfast or help of any kind?’

Elizabeth shook her head — Mrs. Crickett looked at her solemnly.

‘I say I know she had no help of any kind; I know it was so, for the grate was quite cold when I touched it this morning with these fingers, and he was still in bed. No, he wouldn’t take the trouble to write letters to a girl and then treat her so off-hand as that. There’s a tie between ‘em stronger than feelen. She’s his wife.’

‘He married! The Lord so ‘s, what shall we hear next? Do he look married now? His are not the abashed eyes and lips of a married man.’

‘Perhaps she’s a tame one — but she’s his wife still.’

‘No, no: he’s not a married man.’

‘Yes, yes, he is. I’ve had three, and I ought to know.’

‘Well, well,’ said Mrs. Leat, giving way. ‘Whatever may be the truth on’t I trust Providence will settle it all for the best, as He always do.’

‘Ay, ay, Elizabeth,’ rejoined Mrs. Crickett with a satirical sigh, as she turned on her foot to go home, ‘good people like you may say so, but I have always found Providence a different sort of feller.’

5. NOVEMBER THE TWENTIETH

It was Miss Aldclyffe’s custom, a custom originated by her father, and nourished by her own exclusiveness, to unlock the post-bag herself every morning, instead of allowing the duty to devolve on the butler, as was the case in most of the neighbouring county families. The bag was brought upstairs each morning to her dressing-room, where she took out the contents, mostly in the presence of her maid and Cytherea, who had the entree of the chamber at all hours, and attended there in the morning at a kind of reception on a small scale, which was held by Miss Aldclyffe of her namesake only.

Here she read her letters before the glass, whilst undergoing the operation of being brushed and dressed.

‘What woman can this be, I wonder?’ she said on the morning succeeding that of the last section. ‘“London, N.!” It is the first time in my life I ever had a letter from that outlandish place, the North side of London.’

Cytherea had just come into her presence to learn if there was anything for herself; and on being thus addressed, walked up to Miss Aldclyffe’s corner of the room to look at the curiosity which had raised such an exclamation. But the lady, having opened the envelope and read a few lines, put it quickly in her pocket, before Cytherea could reach her side.

‘O, ‘tis nothing,’ she said. She proceeded to make general remarks in a noticeably forced tone of sang-froid, from which she soon lapsed into silence. Not another word was said about the letter: she seemed very anxious to get her dressing done, and the room cleared. Thereupon Cytherea went away to the other window, and a few minutes later left the room to follow her own pursuits.

It was late when Miss Aldclyffe descended to the breakfast-table and then she seemed there to no purpose; tea, coffee, eggs, cutlets, and all their accessories, were left absolutely untasted. The next that was seen of her was when walking up and down the south terrace, and round the flower-beds; her face was pale, and her tread was fitful, and she crumpled a letter in her hand.

Dinner-time came round as usual; she did not speak ten words, or indeed seem conscious of the meal; for all that Miss Aldclyffe did in the way of eating, dinner might have been taken out as intact as it was taken in.

In her own private apartment Miss Aldclyffe again pulled out the letter of the morning. One passage in it ran thus: —

‘Of course, being his wife, I could publish the fact, and compel him to acknowledge me at any moment, notwithstanding his threats, and reasonings that it will be better to wait. I have waited, and waited again, and the time for such acknowledgment seems no nearer than at first. To show you how patiently I have waited I can tell you that not till a fortnight ago, when by stress of circumstances I had been driven to new lodgings, have I ever assumed my married name, solely on account of its having been his request all along that I should not do it. This writing to you, madam, is my first disobedience, and I am justified in it. A woman who is driven to visit her husband like a thief in the night and then sent away like a street dog — left to get up, unbolt, unbar, and find her way out of the house as she best may — is justified in doing anything.