The next presentation is the interior of the Old House on the evening of
the preceding section. The steward was sitting by his parlour fire, and
had been reading the letter arrived from the rectory. Opposite to him
sat the woman known to the village and neighbourhood as Mrs. Manston.
‘Things are looking desperate with us,’ he said gloomily. His gloom was
not that of the hypochondriac, but the legitimate gloom which has its
origin in a syllogism. As he uttered the words he handed the letter to
her.
‘I almost expected some such news as this,’ she replied, in a tone of
much greater indifference. ‘I knew suspicion lurked in the eyes of that
young man who stared at me so in the church path: I could have sworn
it.’
Manston did not answer for some time. His face was worn and haggard;
latterly his head had not been carried so uprightly as of old. ‘If they
prove you to be--who you are.... Yes, if they do,’ he murmured.
‘They must not find that out,’ she said, in a positive voice, and
looking at him. ‘But supposing they do, the trick does not seem to me to
be so serious as to justify that wretched, miserable, horrible look of
yours. It makes my flesh creep; it is perfectly deathlike.’
He did not reply, and she continued, ‘If they say and prove that Eunice
is indeed living--and dear, you know she is--she is sure to come back.’
This remark seemed to awaken and irritate him to speech. Again, as he
had done a hundred times during their residence together, he categorized
the events connected with the fire at the Three Tranters. He dwelt on
every incident of that night’s history, and endeavoured, with an anxiety
which was extraordinary in the apparent circumstances, to prove that his
wife must, by the very nature of things, have perished in the flames.
She arose from her seat, crossed the hearthrug, and set herself to
soothe him; then she whispered that she was still as unbelieving as
ever. ‘Come, supposing she escaped--just supposing she escaped--where is
she?’ coaxed the lady.
‘Why are you so curious continually?’ said Manston.
‘Because I am a woman and want to know. Now where is she?’
‘In the Flying Isle of San Borandan.’
‘Witty cruelty is the cruellest of any. Ah, well--if she is in England,
she will come back.’
‘She is not in England.’
‘But she will come back?’
‘No, she won’t.... Come, madam,’ he said, arousing himself, ‘I shall not
answer any more questions.’
‘Ah--ah--ah--she is not dead,’ the woman murmured again poutingly.
‘She is, I tell you.’
‘I don’t think so, love.’
‘She was burnt, I tell you!’ he exclaimed.
‘Now to please me, admit the bare possibility of her being alive--just
the possibility.’
‘O yes--to please you I will admit that,’ he said quickly. ‘Yes, I admit
the possibility of her being alive, to please you.’
She looked at him in utter perplexity. The words could only have been
said in jest, and yet they seemed to savour of a tone the furthest
remove from jesting. There was his face plain to her eyes, but no
information of any kind was to be read there.
‘It is only natural that I should be curious,’ she murmured pettishly,
‘if I resemble her as much as you say I do.’
‘You are handsomer,’ he said, ‘though you are about her own height and
size. But don’t worry yourself. You must know that you are body and soul
united with me, though you are but my housekeeper.’
She bridled a little at the remark. ‘Wife,’ she said, ‘most certainly
wife, since you cannot dismiss me without losing your character and
position, and incurring heavy penalties.’
‘I own it--it was well said, though mistakenly--very mistakenly.’
‘Don’t riddle to me about mistakenly and such dark things. Now what was
your motive, dearest, in running the risk of having me here?’
‘Your beauty,’ he said.
‘She thanks you much for the compliment, but will not take it. Come,
what was your motive?’
‘Your wit.’
‘No, no; not my wit. Wit would have made a wife of me by this time
instead of what I am.’
‘Your virtue.’
‘Or virtue either.’
‘I tell you it was your beauty--really.’
‘But I cannot help seeing and hearing, and if what people say is true, I
am not nearly so good-looking as Cytherea, and several years older.’
The aspect of Manston’s face at these words from her was so confirmatory
of her hint, that his forced reply of ‘O no,’ tended to develop her
chagrin.
‘Mere liking or love for me,’ she resumed, ‘would not have sprung up
all of a sudden, as your pretended passion did. You had been to London
several times between the time of the fire and your marriage with
Cytherea--you had never visited me or thought of my existence or cared
that I was out of a situation and poor. But the week after you married
her and were separated from her, off you rush to make love to me--not
first to me either, for you went to several places--’
‘No, not several places.’
‘Yes, you told me so yourself--that you went first to the only lodging
in which your wife had been known as Mrs. Manston, and when you found
that the lodging-house-keeper had gone away and died, and that nobody
else in the street had any definite ideas as to your wife’s personal
appearance, and came and proposed the arrangement we carried out--that I
should personate her. Your taking all this trouble shows that something
more serious than love had to do with the matter.’
‘Humbug--what trouble after all did I take? When I found Cytherea would
not stay with me after the wedding I was much put out at being left
alone again. Was that unnatural?’
‘No.’
‘And those favouring accidents you mention--that nobody knew my first
wife--seemed an arrangement of Providence for our mutual benefit, and
merely perfected a half-formed impulse--that I should call you my first
wife to escape the scandal that would have arisen if you had come here
as anything else.’
‘My love, that story won’t do. If Mrs. Manston was burnt, Cytherea, whom
you love better than me, could have been compelled to live with you as
your lawful wife. If she was not burnt, why should you run the risk of
her turning up again at any moment and exposing your substitution of me,
and ruining your name and prospects?’
‘Why--because I might have loved you well enough to run the risk
(assuming her not to be burnt, which I deny).’
‘No--you would have run the risk the other way. You would rather have
risked her finding you with Cytherea as a second wife, than with me as a
personator of herself--the first one.’
‘You came easiest to hand--remember that.’
‘Not so very easy either, considering the labour you took to teach
me your first wife’s history. All about how she was a native of
Philadelphia. Then making me read up the guide-book to Philadelphia, and
details of American life and manners, in case the birthplace and
history of your wife, Eunice, should ever become known in this
neighbourhood--unlikely as it was. Ah! and then about the handwriting of
hers that I had to imitate, and the dying my hair, and rouging, to make
the transformation complete? You mean to say that that was taking less
trouble than there would have been in arranging events to make Cytherea
believe herself your wife, and live with you?’
‘You were a needy adventuress, who would dare anything for a new
pleasure and an easy life--and I was fool enough to give in to you--’
‘Good heavens above!--did I ask you to insert those advertisements for
your old wife, and to make me answer it as if I was she? Did I ask you
to send me the letter for me to copy and send back to you when the third
advertisement appeared--purporting to come from the long-lost wife, and
giving a detailed history of her escape and subsequent life--all which
you had invented yourself? You deluded me into loving you, and then
enticed me here! Ah, and this is another thing. How did you know the
real wife wouldn’t answer it, and upset all your plans?’
‘Because I knew she was burnt.’
‘Why didn’t you force Cytherea to come back, then? Now, my love, I have
caught you, and you may just as well tell first as last, _what was your
motive in having me here as your first wife_?’
‘Silence!’ he exclaimed.
She was silent for the space of two minutes, and then persisted in going
on to mutter, ‘And why was it that Miss Aldclyffe allowed her favourite
young lady, Cythie, to be overthrown and supplanted without an
expostulation or any show of sympathy? Do you know I often think you
exercise a secret power over Miss Aldclyffe. And she always shuns me as
if I shared the power. A poor, ill-used creature like me sharing power,
indeed!’
‘She thinks you are Mrs. Manston.’
‘That wouldn’t make her avoid me.’
‘Yes it would,’ he exclaimed impatiently. ‘I wish I was dead--dead!’
He had jumped up from his seat in uttering the words, and now walked
wearily to the end of the room. Coming back more decisively, he looked
in her face.
‘We must leave this place if Raunham suspects what I think he does,’
he said. ‘The request of Cytherea and her brother may simply be for
a satisfactory proof, to make her feel legally free--but it may mean
more.’
‘What may it mean?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Well, well, never mind, old boy,’ she said, approaching him to make up
the quarrel. ‘Don’t be so alarmed--anybody would think that you were the
woman and I the man. Suppose they do find out what I am--we can go away
from here and keep house as usual. People will say of you, “His first
wife was burnt to death” (or “ran away to the Colonies,” as the case
may be); “He married a second, and deserted her for Anne Seaway.” A very
everyday case--nothing so horrible, after all.’
He made an impatient movement. ‘Whichever way we do it, _nobody must
know that you are not my wife Eunice_. And now I must think about
arranging matters.’
Manston then retired to his office, and shut himself up for the
remainder of the evening.