Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (53 page)

‘O no, sir, no,’ pleaded Cytherea, beginning to blanch, and breathing quickly. ‘Please don’t say anything. Let me live here with Owen. I am so afraid it will turn out that I shall have to go to Knapwater and be his wife, and I don’t want to go. Do conceal what we have told you. Let him continue his deception — it is much the best for me.’

Mr. Raunham at length divined that her love for Manston, if it had ever existed, had transmuted itself into a very different feeling now.

‘At any rate,’ he said, as he took his leave and mounted his mare, ‘I will see about it. Rest content, Miss Graye, and depend upon it that I will not lead you into difficulty.’

‘Conceal it,’ she still pleaded.

‘We’ll see — but of course I must do my duty.’

‘No — don’t do your duty!’ She looked up at him through the gloom, illuminating her own face and eyes with the candle she held.

‘I will consider, then,’ said Mr. Raunham, sensibly moved. He turned his horse’s head, bade them a warm adieu, and left the door.

The rector of Carriford trotted homewards under the cold and clear March sky, its countless stars fluttering like bright birds. He was unconscious of the scene. Recovering from the effect of Cytherea’s voice and glance of entreaty, he laid the subject of the interview clearly before himself.

The suspicions of Cytherea and Owen were honest, and had foundation — that he must own. Was he — a clergyman, magistrate, and conscientious man — justified in yielding to Cytherea’s importunities to keep silence, because she dreaded the possibility of a return to Manston? Was she wise in her request? Holding her present belief, and with no definite evidence either way, she could, for one thing, never conscientiously marry any one else. Suppose that Cytherea were Manston’s wife — i.e., that the first wife was really burnt? The adultery of Manston would be proved, and, Mr. Raunham thought, cruelty sufficient to bring the case within the meaning of the statute. Suppose the new woman was, as stated, Mr. Manston’s restored wife? Cytherea was perfectly safe as a single woman whose marriage had been void. And if it turned out that, though this woman was not Manston’s wife, his wife was still living, as Owen had suggested, in America or elsewhere, Cytherea was safe.

The first supposition opened up the worst contingency. Was she really safe as Manston’s wife? Doubtful. But, however that might be, the gentle, defenceless girl, whom it seemed nobody’s business to help or defend, should be put in a track to proceed against this man. She had but one life, and the superciliousness with which all the world now regarded her should be compensated in some measure by the man whose carelessness — to set him in the best light — had caused it.

Mr. Raunham felt more and more positively that his duty must be done. An inquiry must be made into the matter. Immediately on reaching home, he sat down and wrote a plain and friendly letter to Mr. Manston, and despatched it at once to him by hand. Then he flung himself back in his chair, and went on with his meditation. Was there anything in the suspicion? There could be nothing, surely. Nothing is done by a clever man without a motive, and what conceivable motive could Manston have for such abnormal conduct? Corinthian that he might be, who had preyed on virginity like St. George’s dragon, he would never have been absurd enough to venture on such a course for the possession alone of the woman — there was no reason for it — she was inferior to Cytherea in every respect, physical and mental.

On the other hand, it seemed rather odd, when he analyzed the action, that a woman who deliberately hid herself from her husband for more than a twelvemonth should be brought back by a mere advertisement. In fact, the whole business had worked almost too smoothly and effectually for unpremeditated sequence. It was too much like the indiscriminate righting of everything at the end of an old play. And there was that curious business of the keys and watch. Her way of accounting for their being left behind by forgetfulness had always seemed to him rather forced. The only unforced explanation was that suggested by the newspaper writers — that she left them behind on purpose to blind people as to her escape, a motive which would have clashed with the possibility of her being fished back by an advertisement, as the present woman had been. Again, there were the two charred bones. He shuffled the books and papers in his study, and walked about the room, restlessly musing on the same subject. The parlour-maid entered.

‘Can young Mr. Springrove from London see you to-night, sir?’

‘Young Mr. Springrove?’ said the rector, surprised.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Yes, of course he can see me. Tell him to come in.’

Edward came so impatiently into the room, as to show that the few short moments his announcement had occupied had been irksome to him. He stood in the doorway with the same black bag in his hand, and the same old gray cloak on his shoulders, that he had worn fifteen months earlier when returning on the night of the fire. This appearance of his conveyed a true impression; he had become a stagnant man. But he was excited now.

‘I have this moment come from London,’ he said, as the door was closed behind him.

The prophetic insight, which so strangely accompanies critical experiences, prompted Mr. Raunham’s reply.

‘About the Grayes and Manston?’

‘Yes. That woman is not Mrs. Manston.’

‘Prove it.’

‘I can prove that she is somebody else — that her name is Anne Seaway.’

‘And are their suspicions true indeed!’

‘And I can do what’s more to the purpose at present.’

‘Suggest Manston’s motive?’

‘Only suggest it, remember. But my assumption fits so perfectly with the facts that have been secretly unearthed and conveyed to me, that I can hardly conceive of another.’

There was in Edward’s bearing that entire unconsciousness of himself which, natural to wild animals, only prevails in a sensitive man at moments of extreme intentness. The rector saw that he had no trivial story to communicate, whatever the story was.

‘Sit down,’ said Mr. Raunham. ‘My mind has been on the stretch all the evening to form the slightest guess at such an object, and all to no purpose — entirely to no purpose. Have you said anything to Owen Graye?’

‘Nothing — nor to anybody. I could not trust to the effect a letter might have upon yourself, either; the intricacy of the case brings me to this interview.’

Whilst Springrove had been speaking the two had sat down together. The conversation, hitherto distinct to every corner of the room, was carried on now in tones so low as to be scarcely audible to the interlocutors, and in phrases which hesitated to complete themselves. Three-quarters of an hour passed. Then Edward arose, came out of the rector’s study and again flung his cloak around him. Instead of going thence homeward, he went first to the Carriford Road Station with a telegram, having despatched which he proceeded to his father’s house for the first time since his arrival in the village.

3. FROM NINE TO TEN O’CLOCK P.M.

The next presentation is the interior of the Old House on the evening of the preceding section. The steward was sitting by his parlour fire, and had been reading the letter arrived from the rectory. Opposite to him sat the woman known to the village and neighbourhood as Mrs. Manston.

‘Things are looking desperate with us,’ he said gloomily. His gloom was not that of the hypochondriac, but the legitimate gloom which has its origin in a syllogism. As he uttered the words he handed the letter to her.

‘I almost expected some such news as this,’ she replied, in a tone of much greater indifference. ‘I knew suspicion lurked in the eyes of that young man who stared at me so in the church path: I could have sworn it.’

Manston did not answer for some time. His face was worn and haggard; latterly his head had not been carried so uprightly as of old. ‘If they prove you to be — who you are.... Yes, if they do,’ he murmured.

‘They must not find that out,’ she said, in a positive voice, and looking at him. ‘But supposing they do, the trick does not seem to me to be so serious as to justify that wretched, miserable, horrible look of yours. It makes my flesh creep; it is perfectly deathlike.’

He did not reply, and she continued, ‘If they say and prove that Eunice is indeed living — and dear, you know she is — she is sure to come back.’

This remark seemed to awaken and irritate him to speech. Again, as he had done a hundred times during their residence together, he categorized the events connected with the fire at the Three Tranters. He dwelt on every incident of that night’s history, and endeavoured, with an anxiety which was extraordinary in the apparent circumstances, to prove that his wife must, by the very nature of things, have perished in the flames. She arose from her seat, crossed the hearthrug, and set herself to soothe him; then she whispered that she was still as unbelieving as ever. ‘Come, supposing she escaped — just supposing she escaped — where is she?’ coaxed the lady.

‘Why are you so curious continually?’ said Manston.

‘Because I am a woman and want to know. Now where is she?’

‘In the Flying Isle of San Borandan.’

‘Witty cruelty is the cruellest of any. Ah, well — if she is in England, she will come back.’

‘She is not in England.’

‘But she will come back?’

‘No, she won’t.... Come, madam,’ he said, arousing himself, ‘I shall not answer any more questions.’

‘Ah — ah — ah — she is not dead,’ the woman murmured again poutingly.

‘She is, I tell you.’

‘I don’t think so, love.’

‘She was burnt, I tell you!’ he exclaimed.

‘Now to please me, admit the bare possibility of her being alive — just the possibility.’

‘O yes — to please you I will admit that,’ he said quickly. ‘Yes, I admit the possibility of her being alive, to please you.’

She looked at him in utter perplexity. The words could only have been said in jest, and yet they seemed to savour of a tone the furthest remove from jesting. There was his face plain to her eyes, but no information of any kind was to be read there.

‘It is only natural that I should be curious,’ she murmured pettishly, ‘if I resemble her as much as you say I do.’

‘You are handsomer,’ he said, ‘though you are about her own height and size. But don’t worry yourself. You must know that you are body and soul united with me, though you are but my housekeeper.’

She bridled a little at the remark. ‘Wife,’ she said, ‘most certainly wife, since you cannot dismiss me without losing your character and position, and incurring heavy penalties.’

‘I own it — it was well said, though mistakenly — very mistakenly.’

‘Don’t riddle to me about mistakenly and such dark things. Now what was your motive, dearest, in running the risk of having me here?’

‘Your beauty,’ he said.

‘She thanks you much for the compliment, but will not take it. Come, what was your motive?’

‘Your wit.’

‘No, no; not my wit. Wit would have made a wife of me by this time instead of what I am.’

‘Your virtue.’

‘Or virtue either.’

‘I tell you it was your beauty — really.’

‘But I cannot help seeing and hearing, and if what people say is true, I am not nearly so good-looking as Cytherea, and several years older.’

The aspect of Manston’s face at these words from her was so confirmatory of her hint, that his forced reply of ‘O no,’ tended to develop her chagrin.

‘Mere liking or love for me,’ she resumed, ‘would not have sprung up all of a sudden, as your pretended passion did. You had been to London several times between the time of the fire and your marriage with Cytherea — you had never visited me or thought of my existence or cared that I was out of a situation and poor. But the week after you married her and were separated from her, off you rush to make love to me — not first to me either, for you went to several places — ’

‘No, not several places.’

‘Yes, you told me so yourself — that you went first to the only lodging in which your wife had been known as Mrs. Manston, and when you found that the lodging-house-keeper had gone away and died, and that nobody else in the street had any definite ideas as to your wife’s personal appearance, and came and proposed the arrangement we carried out — that I should personate her. Your taking all this trouble shows that something more serious than love had to do with the matter.’

‘Humbug — what trouble after all did I take? When I found Cytherea would not stay with me after the wedding I was much put out at being left alone again. Was that unnatural?’

‘No.’

‘And those favouring accidents you mention — that nobody knew my first wife — seemed an arrangement of Providence for our mutual benefit, and merely perfected a half-formed impulse — that I should call you my first wife to escape the scandal that would have arisen if you had come here as anything else.’

‘My love, that story won’t do. If Mrs. Manston was burnt, Cytherea, whom you love better than me, could have been compelled to live with you as your lawful wife. If she was not burnt, why should you run the risk of her turning up again at any moment and exposing your substitution of me, and ruining your name and prospects?’

‘Why — because I might have loved you well enough to run the risk (assuming her not to be burnt, which I deny).’

‘No — you would have run the risk the other way. You would rather have risked her finding you with Cytherea as a second wife, than with me as a personator of herself — the first one.’

‘You came easiest to hand — remember that.’

‘Not so very easy either, considering the labour you took to teach me your first wife’s history. All about how she was a native of Philadelphia. Then making me read up the guide-book to Philadelphia, and details of American life and manners, in case the birthplace and history of your wife, Eunice, should ever become known in this neighbourhood — unlikely as it was. Ah! and then about the handwriting of hers that I had to imitate, and the dying my hair, and rouging, to make the transformation complete? You mean to say that that was taking less trouble than there would have been in arranging events to make Cytherea believe herself your wife, and live with you?’