Saturday came, and she went on some trivial errand to the village
post-office. It was a little grey cottage with a luxuriant jasmine
encircling the doorway, and before going in Cytherea paused to admire
this pleasing feature of the exterior. Hearing a step on the gravel
behind the corner of the house, she resigned the jasmine and entered.
Nobody was in the room. She could hear Mrs. Leat, the widow who acted
as postmistress, walking about over her head. Cytherea was going to the
foot of the stairs to call Mrs. Leat, but before she had accomplished
her object, another form stood at the half-open door. Manston came in.
‘Both on the same errand,’ he said gracefully.
‘I will call her,’ said Cytherea, moving in haste to the foot of the
stairs.
‘One moment.’ He glided to her side. ‘Don’t call her for a moment,’ he
repeated.
But she had said, ‘Mrs. Leat!’
He seized Cytherea’s hand, kissed it tenderly, and carefully replaced it
by her side.
She had that morning determined to check his further advances, until she
had thoroughly considered her position. The remonstrance was now on her
tongue, but as accident would have it, before the word could be
spoken Mrs. Leat was stepping from the last stair to the floor, and no
remonstrance came.
With the subtlety which characterized him in all his dealings with her,
he quickly concluded his own errand, bade her a good-bye, in the tones
of which love was so garnished with pure politeness that it only showed
its presence to herself, and left the house--putting it out of her
power to refuse him her companionship homeward, or to object to his late
action of kissing her hand.
The Friday of the next week brought another letter from her brother. In
this he informed her that, in absolute grief lest he should distress her
unnecessarily, he had some time earlier borrowed a few pounds. A week
ago, he said, his creditor became importunate, but that on the day
on which he wrote, the creditor had told him there was no hurry for a
settlement, that ‘his _sister’s suitor_ had guaranteed the sum.’ ‘Is he
Mr. Manston? tell me, Cytherea,’ said Owen.
He also mentioned that a wheeled chair had been anonymously hired
for his especial use, though as yet he was hardly far enough advanced
towards convalescence to avail himself of the luxury. ‘Is this Mr.
Manston’s doing?’ he inquired.
She could dally with her perplexity, evade it, trust to time for
guidance, no longer. The matter had come to a crisis: she must once and
for all choose between the dictates of her understanding and those of
her heart. She longed, till her soul seemed nigh to bursting, for her
lost mother’s return to earth, but for one minute, that she might have
tender counsel to guide her through this, her great difficulty.
As for her heart, she half fancied that it was not Edward’s to quite
the extent that it once had been; she thought him cruel in conducting
himself towards her as he did at Budmouth, cruel afterwards in making so
light of her. She knew he had stifled his love for her--was utterly
lost to her. But for all that she could not help indulging in a woman’s
pleasure of recreating defunct agonies, and lacerating herself with them
now and then.
‘If I were rich,’ she thought, ‘I would give way to the luxury of being
morbidly faithful to him for ever without his knowledge.’
But she considered; in the first place she was a homeless dependent;
and what did practical wisdom tell her to do under such desperate
circumstances? To provide herself with some place of refuge from
poverty, and with means to aid her brother Owen. This was to be Mr.
Manston’s wife.
She did not love him.
But what was love without a home? Misery. What was a home without love?
Alas, not much; but still a kind of home.
‘Yes,’ she thought, ‘I am urged by my common sense to marry Mr.
Manston.’
Did anything nobler in her say so too?
With the death (to her) of Edward her heart’s occupation was gone. Was
it necessary or even right for her to tend it and take care of it as she
used to in the old time, when it was still a capable minister?
By a slight sacrifice here she could give happiness to at least two
hearts whose emotional activities were still unwounded. She would do
good to two men whose lives were far more important than hers.
‘Yes,’ she said again, ‘even Christianity urges me to marry Mr.
Manston.’
Directly Cytherea had persuaded herself that a kind of heroic
self-abnegation had to do with the matter, she became much more content
in the consideration of it. A wilful indifference to the future was what
really prevailed in her, ill and worn out, as she was, by the perpetual
harassments of her sad fortune, and she regarded this indifference, as
gushing natures will do under such circumstances, as genuine resignation
and devotedness.
Manston met her again the following day: indeed, there was no escaping
him now. At the end of a short conversation between them, which took
place in the hollow of the park by the waterfall, obscured on the outer
side by the low hanging branches of the limes, she tacitly assented to
his assumption of a privilege greater than any that had preceded it. He
stooped and kissed her brow.
Before going to bed she wrote to Owen explaining the whole matter. It
was too late in the evening for the postman’s visit, and she placed the
letter on the mantelpiece to send it the next day.
The morning (Sunday) brought a hurried postscript to Owen’s letter of
the day before:--
‘September 9, 1865.
‘DEAR CYTHEREA--I have received a frank and friendly letter from Mr.
Manston explaining the position in which he stands now, and also that in
which he hopes to stand towards you. Can’t you love him? Why not? Try,
for he is a good, and not only that, but a cultured man. Think of the
weary and laborious future that awaits you if you continue for life in
your present position, and do you see any way of escape from it except
by marriage? I don’t. Don’t go against your heart, Cytherea, but be
wise.--Ever affectionately yours, OWEN.’
She thought that probably he had replied to Mr. Manston in the same
favouring mood. She had a conviction that that day would settle her
doom. Yet
‘So true a fool is love,’
that even now she nourished a half-hope that something would happen at
the last moment to thwart her deliberately-formed intentions, and favour
the old emotion she was using all her strength to thrust down.