Manston received a message the next day requesting his attendance at the
House punctually at eight o’clock the ensuing evening. Miss Aldclyffe
was brave and imperious, but with the purpose she had in view she could
not look him in the face whilst daylight shone upon her.
The steward was shown into the library. On entering it, he was
immediately struck with the unusual gloom which pervaded the apartment.
The fire was dead and dull, one lamp, and that a comparatively small
one, was burning at the extreme end, leaving the main proportion of
the lofty and sombre room in an artificial twilight, scarcely powerful
enough to render visible the titles of the folio and quarto volumes
which were jammed into the lower tiers of the bookshelves.
After keeping him waiting for more than twenty minutes (Miss Aldclyffe
knew that excellent recipe for taking the stiffness out of human flesh,
and for extracting all pre-arrangement from human speech) she entered
the room.
Manston sought her eye directly. The hue of her features was not
discernible, but the calm glance she flung at him, from which all
attempt at returning his scrutiny was absent, awoke him to the
perception that probably his secret was by some means or other known to
her; how it had become known he could not tell.
She drew forth the letter, unfolded it, and held it up to him, letting
it hang by one corner from between her finger and thumb, so that the
light from the lamp, though remote, fell directly upon its surface.
‘You know whose writing this is?’ she said.
He saw the strokes plainly, instantly resolving to burn his ships and
hazard all on an advance.
‘My wife’s,’ he said calmly.
His quiet answer threw her off her balance. She had no more expected an
answer than does a preacher when he exclaims from the pulpit, ‘Do you
feel your sin?’ She had clearly expected a sudden alarm.
‘And why all this concealment?’ she said again, her voice rising, as she
vainly endeavoured to control her feelings, whatever they were.
‘It doesn’t follow that, because a man is married, he must tell every
stranger of it, madam,’ he answered, just as calmly as before.
‘Stranger! well, perhaps not; but, Mr. Manston, why did you choose to
conceal it, I ask again? I have a perfect right to ask this question, as
you will perceive, if you consider the terms of my advertisement.’
‘I will tell you. There were two simple reasons. The first was this
practical one; you advertised for an unmarried man, if you remember?’
‘Of course I remember.’
‘Well, an incident suggested to me that I should try for the situation.
I was married; but, knowing that in getting an office where there is a
restriction of this kind, leaving one’s wife behind is always accepted
as a fulfilment of the condition, I left her behind for awhile. The
other reason is, that these terms of yours afforded me a plausible
excuse for escaping (for a short time) the company of a woman I had been
mistaken in marrying.’
‘Mistaken! what was she?’ the lady inquired.
‘A third-rate actress, whom I met with during my stay in Liverpool
last summer, where I had gone to fulfil a short engagement with an
architect.’
‘Where did she come from?’
‘She is an American by birth, and I grew to dislike her when we had been
married a week.’
‘She was ugly, I imagine?’
‘She is not an ugly woman by any means.’
‘Up to the ordinary standard?’
‘Quite up to the ordinary standard--indeed, handsome. After a while we
quarrelled and separated.’
‘You did not ill-use her, of course?’ said Miss Aldclyffe, with a little
sarcasm.
‘I did not.’
‘But at any rate, you got thoroughly tired of her.’
Manston looked as if he began to think her questions out of place;
however, he said quietly, ‘I did get tired of her. I never told her so,
but we separated; I to come here, bringing her with me as far as London
and leaving her there in perfectly comfortable quarters; and though your
advertisement expressed a single man, I have always intended to tell
you the whole truth; and this was when I was going to tell it, when
your satisfaction with my careful management of your affairs should have
proved the risk to be a safe one to run.’
She bowed.
‘Then I saw that you were good enough to be interested in my welfare to
a greater extent than I could have anticipated or hoped, judging you by
the frigidity of other employers, and this caused me to hesitate. I was
vexed at the complication of affairs. So matters stood till three
nights ago; I was then walking home from the pottery, and came up to the
railway. The down-train came along close to me, and there, sitting at
a carriage window, I saw my wife: she had found out my address, and had
thereupon determined to follow me here. I had not been home many minutes
before she came in, next morning early she left again--’
‘Because you treated her so cavalierly?’
‘And as I suppose, wrote to you directly. That’s the whole story of her,
madam.’ Whatever were Manston’s real feelings towards the lady who had
received his explanation in these supercilious tones, they remained
locked within him as within a casket of steel.
‘Did your friends know of your marriage, Mr. Manston?’ she continued.
‘Nobody at all; we kept it a secret for various reasons.’
‘It is true then that, as your wife tells me in this letter, she has not
passed as Mrs. Manston till within these last few days?’
‘It is quite true; I was in receipt of a very small and uncertain income
when we married; and so she continued playing at the theatre as before
our marriage, and in her maiden name.’
‘Has she any friends?’
‘I have never heard that she has any in England. She came over here on
some theatrical speculation, as one of a company who were going to do
much, but who never did anything; and here she has remained.’
A pause ensued, which was terminated by Miss Aldclyffe.
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Now, though I have no direct right to concern
myself with your private affairs (beyond those which arise from your
misleading me and getting the office you hold)--’
‘As to that, madam,’ he interrupted, rather hotly, ‘as to coming here,
I am vexed as much as you. Somebody, a member of the Institute of
Architects--who, I could never tell--sent to my old address in London
your advertisement cut from the paper; it was forwarded to me; I wanted
to get away from Liverpool, and it seemed as if this was put in my way
on purpose, by some old friend or other. I answered the advertisement
certainly, but I was not particularly anxious to come here, nor am I
anxious to stay.’
Miss Aldclyffe descended from haughty superiority to womanly persuasion
with a haste which was almost ludicrous. Indeed, the Quos ego of the
whole lecture had been less the genuine menace of the imperious ruler of
Knapwater than an artificial utterance to hide a failing heart.
‘Now, now, Mr. Manston, you wrong me; don’t suppose I wish to be
overbearing, or anything of the kind; and you will allow me to say this
much, at any rate, that I have become interested in your wife, as well
as in yourself.’
‘Certainly, madam,’ he said, slowly, like a man feeling his way in the
dark. Manston was utterly at fault now. His previous experience of the
effect of his form and features upon womankind en masse, had taught
him to flatter himself that he could account by the same law of natural
selection for the extraordinary interest Miss Aldclyffe had hitherto
taken in him, as an unmarried man; an interest he did not at all object
to, seeing that it kept him near Cytherea, and enabled him, a man of
no wealth, to rule on the estate as if he were its lawful owner. Like
Curius at his Sabine farm, he had counted it his glory not to possess
gold himself, but to have power over her who did. But at this hint of
the lady’s wish to take his wife under her wing also, he was perplexed:
could she have any sinister motive in doing so? But he did not allow
himself to be troubled with these doubts, which only concerned his
wife’s happiness.
‘She tells me,’ continued Miss Aldclyffe, ‘how utterly alone in
the world she stands, and that is an additional reason why I should
sympathize with her. Instead, then, of requesting the favour of your
retirement from the post, and dismissing your interests altogether, I
will retain you as my steward still, on condition that you bring home
your wife, and live with her respectably, in short, as if you loved her;
you understand. I _wish_ you to stay here if you grant that everything
shall flow smoothly between yourself and her.’
The breast and shoulders of the steward rose, as if an expression
of defiance was about to be poured forth; before it took form, he
controlled himself and said, in his natural voice--
‘My part of the performance shall be carried out, madam.’
‘And her anxiety to obtain a standing in the world ensures that hers
will,’ replied Miss Aldclyffe. ‘That will be satisfactory, then.’
After a few additional remarks, she gently signified that she wished to
put an end to the interview. The steward took the hint and retired.
He felt vexed and mortified; yet in walking homeward he was convinced
that telling the whole truth as he had done, with the single exception
of his love for Cytherea (which he tried to hide even from himself), had
never served him in better stead than it had done that night.
Manston went to his desk and thought of Cytherea’s beauty with the
bitterest, wildest regret. After the lapse of a few minutes he calmed
himself by a stoical effort, and wrote the subjoined letter to his
wife:--
‘KNAPWATER,
November 21, 1864.
‘DEAR EUNICE,--I hope you reached London safely after your flighty visit
to me.
‘As I promised, I have thought over our conversation that night, and
your wish that your coming here should be no longer delayed. After all,
it was perfectly natural that you should have spoken unkindly as you
did, ignorant as you were of the circumstances which bound me.
‘So I have made arrangements to fetch you home at once. It is hardly
worth while for you to attempt to bring with you any luggage you may
have gathered about you (beyond mere clothing). Dispose of superfluous
things at a broker’s; your bringing them would only make a talk in
this parish, and lead people to believe we had long been keeping house
separately.
‘Will next Monday suit you for coming? You have nothing to do that can
occupy you for more than a day or two, as far as I can see, and the
remainder of this week will afford ample time. I can be in London the
night before, and we will come down together by the mid-day train--Your
very affectionate husband,
‘AENEAS MANSTON.
‘Now, of course, I shall no longer write to you as Mrs. Rondley.’