A quarter of an hour might have passed when her thoughts became
attracted from the past to the present by unwonted movements downstairs.
She opened the door and listened.
There were hurryings along passages, opening and shutting of doors,
trampling in the stable-yard. She went across into another bedroom, from
which a view of the stable-yard could be obtained, and arrived there
just in time to see the figure of the man who had driven her from the
station vanishing down the coach-road on a black horse--galloping at the
top of the animal’s speed.
Another man went off in the direction of the village.
Whatever had occurred, it did not seem to be her duty to inquire or
meddle with it, stranger and dependent as she was, unless she were
requested to, especially after Miss Aldclyffe’s strict charge to her.
She sat down again, determined to let no idle curiosity influence her
movements.
Her window commanded the front of the house; and the next thing she saw
was a clergyman walk up and enter the door.
All was silent again till, a long time after the first man had left,
he returned again on the same horse, now matted with sweat and trotting
behind a carriage in which sat an elderly gentleman driven by a lad in
livery. These came to the house, entered, and all was again the same as
before.
The whole household--master, mistress, and servants--appeared to have
forgotten the very existence of such a being as Cytherea. She almost
wished she had not vowed to have no idle curiosity.
Half-an-hour later, the carriage drove off with the elderly gentleman,
and two or three messengers left the house, speeding in various
directions. Rustics in smock-frocks began to hang about the road
opposite the house, or lean against trees, looking idly at the windows
and chimneys.
A tap came to Cytherea’s door. She opened it to a young maid-servant.
‘Miss Aldclyffe wishes to see you, ma’am.’ Cytherea hastened down.
Miss Aldclyffe was standing on the hearthrug, her elbow on the mantel,
her hand to her temples, her eyes on the ground; perfectly calm, but
very pale.
‘Cytherea,’ she said in a whisper, ‘come here.’
Cytherea went close.
‘Something very serious has taken place,’ she said again, and then
paused, with a tremulous movement of her mouth.
‘Yes,’ said Cytherea.
‘My father. He was found dead in his bed this morning.’
‘Dead!’ echoed the younger woman. It seemed impossible that the
announcement could be true; that knowledge of so great a fact could be
contained in a statement so small.
‘Yes, dead,’ murmured Miss Aldclyffe solemnly. ‘He died alone, though
within a few feet of me. The room we slept in is exactly over his own.’
Cytherea said hurriedly, ‘Do they know at what hour?’
‘The doctor says it must have been between two and three o’clock this
morning.’
‘Then I heard him!’
‘Heard him?’
‘Heard him die!’
‘You heard him die? What did you hear?’
‘A sound I heard once before in my life--at the deathbed of my mother. I
could not identify it--though I recognized it. Then the dog howled: you
remarked it. I did not think it worth while to tell you what I had heard
a little earlier.’ She looked agonized.
‘It would have been useless,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘All was over by that
time.’ She addressed herself as much as Cytherea when she continued, ‘Is
it a Providence who sent you here at this juncture that I might not be
left entirely alone?’
Till this instant Miss Aldclyffe had forgotten the reason of Cytherea’s
seclusion in her own room. So had Cytherea herself. The fact now
recurred to both in one moment.
‘Do you still wish to go?’ said Miss Aldclyffe anxiously.
‘I don’t want to go now,’ Cytherea had remarked simultaneously with the
other’s question. She was pondering on the strange likeness which Miss
Aldclyffe’s bereavement bore to her own; it had the appearance of being
still another call to her not to forsake this woman so linked to her
life, for the sake of any trivial vexation.
Miss Aldclyffe held her almost as a lover would have held her, and said
musingly--
‘We get more and more into one groove. I now am left fatherless and
motherless as you were.’ Other ties lay behind in her thoughts, but she
did not mention them.
‘You loved your father, Cytherea, and wept for him?’
‘Yes, I did. Poor papa!’
‘I was always at variance with mine, and can’t weep for him now! But you
must stay here always, and make a better woman of me.’
The compact was thus sealed, and Cytherea, in spite of the failure of
her advertisements, was installed as a veritable Companion. And,
once more in the history of human endeavour, a position which it was
impossible to reach by any direct attempt, was come to by the seeker’s
swerving from the path, and regarding the original object as one of
secondary importance.