Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (55 page)

‘I hope so much that you are not angry with me for writing to Miss Aldclyffe. You are not, dear, are you? Forgive me. — Your loving wife, EUNICE.’

This was the last of the letters from the wife to the husband. One other, in Mrs. Manston’s handwriting, and in the same packet, was differently addressed.

                                    ‘THREE TRANTERS INN, CARRIFORD,

                                                  November 28, 1864.

‘DEAR COUSIN JAMES, — Thank you indeed for answering my letter so promptly. When I called at the post-office yesterday I did not in the least think there would be one. But I must leave this subject. I write again at once under the strangest and saddest conditions it is possible to conceive.

‘I did not tell you in my last that I was a married woman. Don’t blame me — it was my husband’s influence. I hardly know where to begin my story. I had been living apart from him for a time — then he sent for me (this was last week) and I was glad to go to him. Then this is what he did. He promised to fetch me, and did not — leaving me to do the journey alone. He promised to meet me at the station here — he did not. I went on through the darkness to his house, and found his door locked and himself away from home. I have been obliged to come here, and I write to you in a strange room in a strange village inn! I choose the present moment to write to drive away my misery. Sorrow seems a sort of pleasure when you detail it on paper — poor pleasure though.

‘But this is what I want to know — and I am ashamed to tell it. I would gladly do as you say, and come to you as a housekeeper, but I have not the money even for a steerage passage. James, do you want me badly enough — do you pity me enough to send it? I could manage to subsist in London upon the proceeds of my sale for another month or six weeks. Will you send it to the same address at the post-office? But how do I know that you...’

Thus the letter ended. From creases in the paper it was plain that the writer, having got so far, had become dissatisfied with her production, and had crumpled it in her hand. Was it to write another, or not to write at all?

The next thing Anne Seaway perceived was that the fragmentary story she had coaxed out of Manston, to the effect that his wife had left England for America, might be truthful, according to two of these letters, corroborated by the evidence of the railway-porter. And yet, at first, he had sworn in a passion that his wife was most certainly consumed in the fire.

If she had been burnt, this letter, written in her bedroom, and probably thrust into her pocket when she relinquished it, would have been burnt with her. Nothing was surer than that. Why, then, did he say she was burnt, and never show Anne herself this letter?

The question suddenly raised a new and much stranger one — kindling a burst of amazement in her. How did Manston become possessed of this letter?

That fact of possession was certainly the most remarkable revelation of all in connection with this epistle, and perhaps had something to do with his reason for never showing it to her.

She knew by several proofs, that before his marriage with Cytherea, and up to the time of the porter’s confession, Manston believed — honestly believed — that Cytherea would be his lawful wife, and hence, of course, that his wife Eunice was dead. So that no communication could possibly have passed between his wife and himself from the first moment that he believed her dead on the night of the fire, to the day of his wedding. And yet he had that letter. How soon afterwards could they have communicated with each other?

The existence of the letter — as much as, or more than its contents — implying that Mrs. Manston was not burnt, his belief in that calamity must have terminated at the moment he obtained possession of the letter, if no earlier. Was, then, the only solution to the riddle that Anne could discern, the true one? — that he had communicated with his wife somewhere about the commencement of Anne’s residence with him, or at any time since?

It was the most unlikely thing on earth that a woman who had forsaken her husband should countenance his scheme to personify her — whether she were in America, in London, or in the neighbourhood of Knapwater.

Then came the old and harassing question, what was Manston’s real motive in risking his name on the deception he was practising as regarded Anne. It could not be, as he had always pretended, mere passion. Her thoughts had reverted to Mr. Raunham’s letter, asking for proofs of her identity with the original Mrs. Manston. She could see no loophole of escape for the man who supported her. True, in her own estimation, his worst alternative was not so very bad after all — the getting the name of libertine, a possible appearance in the divorce or some other court of law, and a question of damages. Such an exposure might hinder his worldly progress for some time. Yet to him this alternative was, apparently, terrible as death itself.

She restored the letters to their hiding-place, scanned anew the other letters and memoranda, from which she could gain no fresh information, fastened up the cabinet, and left everything in its former condition.

Her mind was ill at ease. More than ever she wished that she had never seen Manston. Where the person suspected of mysterious moral obliquity is the possessor of great physical and intellectual attractions, the mere sense of incongruity adds an extra shudder to dread. The man’s strange bearing terrified Anne as it had terrified Cytherea; for with all the woman Anne’s faults, she had not descended to such depths of depravity as to willingly participate in crime. She had not even known that a living wife was being displaced till her arrival at Knapwater put retreat out of the question, and had looked upon personation simply as a mode of subsistence a degree better than toiling in poverty and alone, after a bustling and somewhat pampered life as housekeeper in a gay mansion.

              ‘Non illa colo calathisve Minervae

      Foemineas assueta manus.’

2. AFTERNOON

Mr. Raunham and Edward Springrove had by this time set in motion a machinery which they hoped to find working out important results.

The rector was restless and full of meditation all the following morning. It was plain, even to the servants about him, that Springrove’s communication wore a deeper complexion than any that had been made to the old magistrate for many months or years past. The fact was that, having arrived at the stage of existence in which the difficult intellectual feat of suspending one’s judgment becomes possible, he was now putting it in practice, though not without the penalty of watchful effort.

It was not till the afternoon that he determined to call on his relative, Miss Aldclyffe, and cautiously probe her knowledge of the subject occupying him so thoroughly. Cytherea, he knew, was still beloved by this solitary woman. Miss Aldclyffe had made several private inquiries concerning her former companion, and there was ever a sadness in her tone when the young lady’s name was mentioned, which showed that from whatever cause the elder Cytherea’s renunciation of her favourite and namesake proceeded, it was not from indifference to her fate.

‘Have you ever had any reason for supposing your steward anything but an upright man?’ he said to the lady.

‘Never the slightest. Have you?’ said she reservedly.

‘Well — I have.’

‘What is it?’

‘I can say nothing plainly, because nothing is proved. But my suspicions are very strong.’

‘Do you mean that he was rather cool towards his wife when they were first married, and that it was unfair in him to leave her? I know he was; but I think his recent conduct towards her has amply atoned for the neglect.’

He looked Miss Aldclyffe full in the face. It was plain that she spoke honestly. She had not the slightest notion that the woman who lived with the steward might be other than Mrs. Manston — much less that a greater matter might be behind.

‘That’s not it — I wish it was no more. My suspicion is, first, that the woman living at the Old House is not Mr. Manston’s wife.’

‘Not — Mr. Manston’s wife?’

‘That is it.’

Miss Aldclyffe looked blankly at the rector. ‘Not Mr. Manston’s wife — who else can she be?’ she said simply.

‘An improper woman of the name of Anne Seaway.’

Mr. Raunham had, in common with other people, noticed the extraordinary interest of Miss Aldclyffe in the well-being of her steward, and had endeavoured to account for it in various ways. The extent to which she was shaken by his information, whilst it proved that the understanding between herself and Manston did not make her a sharer of his secrets, also showed that the tie which bound her to him was still unbroken. Mr. Raunham had lately begun to doubt the latter fact, and now, on finding himself mistaken, regretted that he had not kept his own counsel in the matter. This it was too late to do, and he pushed on with his proofs. He gave Miss Aldclyffe in detail the grounds of his belief.

Before he had done, she recovered the cloak of reserve that she had adopted on his opening the subject.

‘I might possibly be convinced that you were in the right, after such an elabourate argument,’ she replied, ‘were it not for one fact, which bears in the contrary direction so pointedly, that nothing but absolute proof can turn it. It is that there is no conceivable motive which could induce any sane man — leaving alone a man of Mr. Manston’s clear-headedness and integrity — to venture upon such an extraordinary course of conduct — no motive on earth.’

‘That was my own opinion till after the visit of a friend last night — a friend of mine and poor little Cytherea’s.’

‘Ah — and Cytherea,’ said Miss Aldclyffe, catching at the idea raised by the name. ‘That he loved Cytherea — yes and loves her now, wildly and devotedly, I am as positive as that I breathe. Cytherea is years younger than Mrs. Manston — as I shall call her — twice as sweet in disposition, three times as beautiful. Would he have given her up quietly and suddenly for a common — Mr. Raunham, your story is monstrous, and I don’t believe it!’ She glowed in her earnestness.

The rector might now have advanced his second proposition — the possible motive — but for reasons of his own he did not.

‘Very well, madam. I only hope that facts will sustain you in your belief. Ask him the question to his face, whether the woman is his wife or no, and see how he receives it.’

‘I will to-morrow, most certainly,’ she said. ‘I always let these things die of wholesome ventilation, as every fungus does.’

But no sooner had the rector left her presence, than the grain of mustard-seed he had sown grew to a tree. Her impatience to set her mind at rest could not brook a night’s delay. It was with the utmost difficulty that she could wait till evening arrived to screen her movements. Immediately the sun had dropped behind the horizon, and before it was quite dark, she wrapped her cloak around her, softly left the house, and walked erect through the gloomy park in the direction of the old manor-house.

The same minute saw two persons sit down in the rectory-house to share the rector’s usually solitary dinner. One was a man of official appearance, commonplace in all except his eyes. The other was Edward Springrove.

The discovery of the carefully-concealed letters rankled in the mind of Anne Seaway. Her woman’s nature insisted that Manston had no right to keep all matters connected with his lost wife a secret from herself. Perplexity had bred vexation; vexation, resentment; curiosity had been continuous. The whole morning this resentment and curiosity increased.

The steward said very little to his companion during their luncheon at mid-day. He seemed reckless of appearances — almost indifferent to whatever fate awaited him. All his actions betrayed that something portentous was impending, and still he explained nothing. By carefully observing every trifling action, as only a woman can observe them, the thought at length dawned upon her that he was going to run away secretly. She feared for herself; her knowledge of law and justice was vague, and she fancied she might in some way be made responsible for him.

In the afternoon he went out of the house again, and she watched him drive away in the direction of the county-town. She felt a desire to go there herself, and, after an interval of half-an-hour, followed him on foot notwithstanding the distance — ostensibly to do some shopping.

One among her several trivial errands was to make a small purchase at the druggist’s. Near the druggist’s stood the County Bank. Looking out of the shop window, between the coloured bottles, she saw Manston come down the steps of the bank, in the act of withdrawing his hand from his pocket, and pulling his coat close over its mouth.

It is an almost universal habit with people, when leaving a bank, to be carefully adjusting their pockets if they have been receiving money; if they have been paying it in, their hands swing laxly. The steward had in all likelihood been taking money — possibly on Miss Aldclyffe’s account — that was continual with him. And he might have been removing his own, as a man would do who was intending to leave the country.

3. FROM FIVE TO EIGHT O’CLOCK P.M.

Anne reached home again in time to preside over preparations for dinner. Manston came in half-an-hour later. The lamp was lighted, the shutters were closed, and they sat down together. He was pale and worn — almost haggard.

The meal passed off in almost unbroken silence. When preoccupation withstands the influence of a social meal with one pleasant companion, the mental scene must be surpassingly vivid. Just as she was rising a tap came to the door.

Before a maid could attend to the knock, Manston crossed the room and answered it himself. The visitor was Miss Aldclyffe.

Manston instantly came back and spoke to Anne in an undertone. ‘I should be glad if you could retire to your room for a short time.’

‘It is a dry, starlight evening,’ she replied. ‘I will go for a little walk if your object is merely a private conversation with Miss Aldclyffe.’

‘Very well, do; there’s no accounting for tastes,’ he said. A few commonplaces then passed between her and Miss Aldclyffe, and Anne went upstairs to bonnet and cloak herself. She came down, opened the front door, and went out.