The wet shining road threw the western glare into her eyes with an
invidious lustre which rendered the restlessness of her mood more
wearying. Her thoughts flew from idea to idea without asking for the
slightest link of connection between one and another. One moment she
was full of the wild music and stirring scene with Manston---the next,
Edward’s image rose before her like a shadowy ghost. Then Manston’s
black eyes seemed piercing her again, and the reckless voluptuous mouth
appeared bending to the curves of his special words. What could be those
troubles to which he had alluded? Perhaps Miss Aldclyffe was at the
bottom of them. Sad at heart she paced on: her life was bewildering her.
On coming into Miss Aldclyffe’s presence Cytherea told her of the
incident, not without a fear that she would burst into one of her
ungovernable fits of temper at learning Cytherea’s slight departure
from the programme. But, strangely to Cytherea, Miss Aldclyffe looked
delighted. The usual cross-examination followed.
‘And so you were with him all that time?’ said the lady, with assumed
severity.
‘Yes, I was.’
‘I did not tell you to call at the Old House twice.’
‘I didn’t call, as I have said. He made me come into the porch.’
‘What remarks did he make, do you say?’
‘That the lightning was not so bad as I thought.’
‘A very important remark, that. Did he--’ she turned her glance full
upon the girl, and eyeing her searchingly, said--
‘Did he say anything about _me_?’
‘Nothing,’ said Cytherea, returning her gaze calmly, ‘except that I was
to give you the subscription.’
‘You are quite sure?’
‘Quite.’
‘I believe you. Did he say anything striking or strange about himself?’
‘Only one thing--that he was troubled,’
‘Troubled!’
After saying the word, Miss Aldclyffe relapsed into silence. Such
behaviour as this had ended, on most previous occasions, by her making
a confession, and Cytherea expected one now. But for once she was
mistaken, nothing more was said.
When she had returned to her room she sat down and penned a farewell
letter to Edward Springrove, as little able as any other excitable
and brimming young woman of nineteen to feel that the wisest and only
dignified course at that juncture was to do nothing at all. She told
him that, to her painful surprise, she had learnt that his engagement
to another woman was a matter of notoriety. She insisted that all honour
bade him marry his early love--a woman far better than her unworthy
self, who only deserved to be forgotten, and begged him to remember
that he was not to see her face again. She upbraided him for levity
and cruelty in meeting her so frequently at Budmouth, and above all
in stealing the kiss from her lips on the last evening of the water
excursions. ‘I never, never can forget it!’ she said, and then felt a
sensation of having done her duty, ostensibly persuading herself that
her reproaches and commands were of such a force that no man to whom
they were uttered could ever approach her more.
Yet it was all unconsciously said in words which betrayed a lingering
tenderness of love at every unguarded turn. Like Beatrice accusing
Dante from the chariot, try as she might to play the superior being
who contemned such mere eye-sensuousness, she betrayed at every point
a pretty woman’s jealousy of a rival, and covertly gave her old lover
hints for excusing himself at each fresh indictment.
This done, Cytherea, still in a practical mood, upbraided herself with
weakness in allowing a stranger like Mr. Manston to influence her as he
had done that evening. What right on earth had he to suggest so suddenly
that she might meet him at the waterfall to receive his music? She would
have given much to be able to annihilate the ascendency he had obtained
over her during that extraordinary interval of melodious sound. Not
being able to endure the notion of his living a minute longer in the
belief he was then holding, she took her pen and wrote to him also:--
‘KNAPWATER HOUSE
September 20th.
‘I find I cannot meet you at seven o’clock by the waterfall as I
promised. The emotion I felt made me forgetful of realities.
‘C. GRAYE.’
A great statesman thinks several times, and acts; a young lady acts,
and thinks several times. When, a few minutes later, she saw the postman
carry off the bag containing one of the letters, and a messenger with
the other, she, for the first time, asked herself the question whether
she had acted very wisely in writing to either of the two men who had so
influenced her.