by Thomas Hardy
‘Do you write poems now?’ she said.
‘None. Poetical days are getting past with me, according to the usual rule. Writing rhymes is a stage people of my sort pass through, as they pass through the stage of shaving for a beard, or thinking they are ill-used, or saying there’s nothing in the world worth living for.’
‘Then the difference between a common man and a recognized poet is, that one has been deluded, and cured of his delusion, and the other continues deluded all his days.’
‘Well, there’s just enough truth in what you say, to make the remark unbearable. However, it doesn’t matter to me now that I “meditate the thankless Muse” no longer, but....’ He paused, as if endeavouring to think what better thing he did.
Cytherea’s mind ran on to the succeeding lines of the poem, and their startling harmony with the present situation suggested the fancy that he was ‘sporting’ with her, and brought an awkward contemplativeness to her face.
Springrove guessed her thoughts, and in answer to them simply said ‘Yes.’ Then they were silent again.
‘If I had known an Amaryllis was coming here, I should not have made arrangements for leaving,’ he resumed.
Such levity, superimposed on the notion of ‘sport’, was intolerable to Cytherea; for a woman seems never to see any but the serious side of her attachment, though the most devoted lover has all the time a vague and dim perception that he is losing his old dignity and frittering away his time.
‘But will you not try again to get on in your profession? Try once more; do try once more,’ she murmured. ‘I am going to try again. I have advertised for something to do.’
‘Of course I will,’ he said, with an eager gesture and smile. ‘But we must remember that the fame of Christopher Wren himself depended upon the accident of a fire in Pudding Lane. My successes seem to come very slowly. I often think, that before I am ready to live, it will be time for me to die. However, I am trying — not for fame now, but for an easy life of reasonable comfort.’
It is a melancholy truth for the middle classes, that in proportion as they develop, by the study of poetry and art, their capacity for conjugal love of the highest and purest kind, they limit the possibility of their being able to exercise it — the very act putting out of their power the attainment of means sufficient for marriage. The man who works up a good income has had no time to learn love to its solemn extreme; the man who has learnt that has had no time to get rich.
‘And if you should fail — utterly fail to get that reasonable wealth,’ she said earnestly, ‘don’t be perturbed. The truly great stand upon no middle ledge; they are either famous or unknown.’
‘Unknown,’ he said, ‘if their ideas have been allowed to flow with a sympathetic breadth. Famous only if they have been convergent and exclusive.’
‘Yes; and I am afraid from that, that my remark was but discouragement, wearing the dress of comfort. Perhaps I was not quite right in — ’
‘It depends entirely upon what is meant by being truly great. But the long and the short of the matter is, that men must stick to a thing if they want to succeed in it — not giving way to over-much admiration for the flowers they see growing in other people’s borders; which I am afraid has been my case.’ He looked into the far distance and paused.
Adherence to a course with persistence sufficient to ensure success is possible to widely appreciative minds only when there is also found in them a power — commonplace in its nature, but rare in such combination — the power of assuming to conviction that in the outlying paths which appear so much more brilliant than their own, there are bitternesses equally great — unperceived simply on account of their remoteness.
They were opposite Ringsworth Shore. The cliffs here were formed of strata completely contrasting with those of the further side of the Bay, whilst in and beneath the water hard boulders had taken the place of sand and shingle, between which, however, the sea glided noiselessly, without breaking the crest of a single wave, so strikingly calm was the air. The breeze had entirely died away, leaving the water of that rare glassy smoothness which is unmarked even by the small dimples of the least aerial movement. Purples and blues of divers shades were reflected from this mirror accordingly as each undulation sloped east or west. They could see the rocky bottom some twenty feet beneath them, luxuriant with weeds of various growths, and dotted with pulpy creatures reflecting a silvery and spangled radiance upwards to their eyes.
At length she looked at him to learn the effect of her words of encouragement. He had let the oars drift alongside, and the boat had come to a standstill. Everything on earth seemed taking a contemplative rest, as if waiting to hear the avowal of something from his lips. At that instant he appeared to break a resolution hitherto zealously kept. Leaving his seat amidships he came and gently edged himself down beside her upon the narrow seat at the stern.
She breathed more quickly and warmly: he took her right hand in his own right: it was not withdrawn. He put his left hand behind her neck till it came round upon her left cheek: it was not thrust away. Lightly pressing her, he brought her face and mouth towards his own; when, at this the very brink, some unaccountable thought or spell within him suddenly made him halt — even now, and as it seemed as much to himself as to her, he timidly whispered ‘May I?’
Her endeavour was to say No, so denuded of its flesh and sinews that its nature would hardly be recognized, or in other words a No from so near the affirmative frontier as to be affected with the Yes accent. It was thus a whispered No, drawn out to nearly a quarter of a minute’s length, the O making itself audible as a sound like the spring coo of a pigeon on unusually friendly terms with its mate. Though conscious of her success in producing the kind of word she had wished to produce, she at the same time trembled in suspense as to how it would be taken. But the time available for doubt was so short as to admit of scarcely more than half a pulsation: pressing closer he kissed her. Then he kissed her again with a longer kiss.
It was the supremely happy moment of their experience. The ‘bloom’ and the ‘purple light’ were strong on the lineaments of both. Their hearts could hardly believe the evidence of their lips.
‘I love you, and you love me, Cytherea!’ he whispered.
She did not deny it; and all seemed well. The gentle sounds around them from the hills, the plains, the distant town, the adjacent shore, the water heaving at their side, the kiss, and the long kiss, were all ‘many a voice of one delight,’ and in unison with each other.
But his mind flew back to the same unpleasant thought which had been connected with the resolution he had broken a minute or two earlier. ‘I could be a slave at my profession to win you, Cytherea; I would work at the meanest, honest trade to be near you — much less claim you as mine; I would — anything. But I have not told you all; it is not this; you don’t know what there is yet to tell. Could you forgive as you can love?’ She was alarmed to see that he had become pale with the question.
‘No — do not speak,’ he said. ‘I have kept something from you, which has now become the cause of a great uneasiness. I had no right — to love you; but I did it. Something forbade — ’
‘What?’ she exclaimed.
‘Something forbade me — till the kiss — yes, till the kiss came; and now nothing shall forbid it! We’ll hope in spite of all... I must, however, speak of this love of ours to your brother. Dearest, you had better go indoors whilst I meet him at the station, and explain everything.’
Cytherea’s short-lived bliss was dead and gone. O, if she had known of this sequel would she have allowed him to break down the barrier of mere acquaintanceship — never, never!
‘Will you not explain to me?’ she faintly urged. Doubt — indefinite, carking doubt had taken possession of her.
‘Not now. You alarm yourself unnecessarily,’ he said tenderly. ‘My only reason for keeping silence is that with my present knowledge I may tell an untrue story. It may be that there is nothing to tell. I am to blame for haste in alludi
ng to any such thing. Forgive me, sweet — forgive me.’ Her heart was ready to burst, and she could not answer him. He returned to his place and took to the oars.
They again made for the distant Esplanade, now, with its line of houses, lying like a dark grey band against the light western sky. The sun had set, and a star or two began to peep out. They drew nearer their destination, Edward as he pulled tracing listlessly with his eyes the red stripes upon her scarf, which grew to appear as black ones in the increasing dusk of evening. She surveyed the long line of lamps on the sea-wall of the town, now looking small and yellow, and seeming to send long tap-roots of fire quivering down deep into the sea. By-and-by they reached the landing-steps. He took her hand as before, and found it as cold as the water about them. It was not relinquished till he reached her door. His assurance had not removed the constraint of her manner: he saw that she blamed him mutely and with her eyes, like a captured sparrow. Left alone, he went and seated himself in a chair on the Esplanade.
Neither could she go indoors to her solitary room, feeling as she did in such a state of desperate heaviness. When Springrove was out of sight she turned back, and arrived at the corner just in time to see him sit down. Then she glided pensively along the pavement behind him, forgetting herself to marble like Melancholy herself as she mused in his neighbourhood unseen. She heard, without heeding, the notes of pianos and singing voices from the fashionable houses at her back, from the open windows of which the lamp-light streamed to join that of the orange-hued full moon, newly risen over the Bay in front. Then Edward began to pace up and down, and Cytherea, fearing that he would notice her, hastened homeward, flinging him a last look as she passed out of sight. No promise from him to write: no request that she herself would do so — nothing but an indefinite expression of hope in the face of some fear unknown to her. Alas, alas!
When Owen returned he found she was not in the small sitting-room, and creeping upstairs into her bedroom with a light, he discovered her there lying asleep upon the coverlet of the bed, still with her hat and jacket on. She had flung herself down on entering, and succumbed to the unwonted oppressiveness that ever attends full-blown love. The wet traces of tears were yet visible upon her long drooping lashes.
‘Love is a sowre delight, and sugred griefe,
A living death, and ever-dying life.’
‘Cytherea,’ he whispered, kissing her. She awoke with a start, and vented an exclamation before recovering her judgment. ‘He’s gone!’ she said.
‘He has told me all,’ said Graye soothingly. ‘He is going off early to-morrow morning. ‘Twas a shame of him to win you away from me, and cruel of you to keep the growth of this attachment a secret.’
‘We couldn’t help it,’ she said, and then jumping up — ’Owen, has he told you all?’
‘All of your love from beginning to end,’ he said simply.
Edward then had not told more — as he ought to have done: yet she could not convict him. But she would struggle against his fetters. She tingled to the very soles of her feet at the very possibility that he might be deluding her.
‘Owen,’ she continued, with dignity, ‘what is he to me? Nothing. I must dismiss such weakness as this — believe me, I will. Something far more pressing must drive it away. I have been looking my position steadily in the face, and I must get a living somehow. I mean to advertise once more.’
‘Advertising is no use.’
‘This one will be.’ He looked surprised at the sanguine tone of her answer, till she took a piece of paper from the table and showed it him. ‘See what I am going to do,’ she said sadly, almost bitterly. This was her third effort: —
‘LADY’S-MAID. Inexperienced. Age eighteen. — G., 3 Cross Street,
Budmouth.’
Owen — Owen the respectable — looked blank astonishment. He repeated in a nameless, varying tone, the two words —
‘Lady’s-maid!’
‘Yes; lady’s-maid. ‘Tis an honest profession,’ said Cytherea bravely.
‘But you, Cytherea?’
‘Yes, I — who am I?’
‘You will never be a lady’s-maid — never, I am quite sure.’
‘I shall try to be, at any rate.’
‘Such a disgrace — ’
‘Nonsense! I maintain that it is no disgrace!’ she said, rather warmly. ‘You know very well — ’
‘Well, since you will, you must,’ he interrupted. ‘Why do you put “inexperienced?”‘
‘Because I am.’
‘Never mind that — scratch out “inexperienced.” We are poor, Cytherea, aren’t we?’ he murmured, after a silence, ‘and it seems that the two months will close my engagement here.’
‘We can put up with being poor,’ she said, ‘if they only give us work to do.... Yes, we desire as a blessing what was given us as a curse, and even that is denied. However, be cheerful, Owen, and never mind!’
In justice to desponding men, it is as well to remember that the brighter endurance of women at these epochs — invaluable, sweet, angelic, as it is — owes more of its origin to a narrower vision that shuts out many of the leaden-eyed despairs in the van, than to a hopefulness intense enough to quell them.
IV. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
1. AUGUST THE FOURTH. TILL FOUR O’CLOCK
The early part of the next week brought an answer to Cytherea’s last note of hope in the way of advertisement — not from a distance of hundreds of miles, London, Scotland, Ireland, the Continent — as Cytherea seemed to think it must, to be in keeping with the means adopted for obtaining it, but from a place in the neighbourhood of that in which she was living — a country mansion not twenty miles off. The reply ran thus: —
KNAPWATER HOUSE,
August 3, 1864.
‘Miss Aldclyffe is in want of a young person as lady’s-maid. The duties of the place are light. Miss Aldclyffe will be in Budmouth on Thursday, when (should G. still not have heard of a place) she would like to see her at the Belvedere Hotel, Esplanade, at four o’clock. No answer need be returned to this note.’
A little earlier than the time named, Cytherea, clothed in a modest bonnet, and a black silk jacket, turned down to the hotel. Expectation, the fresh air from the water, the bright, far-extending outlook, raised the most delicate of pink colours to her cheeks, and restored to her tread a portion of that elasticity which her past troubles, and thoughts of Edward, had well-nigh taken away.
She entered the vestibule, and went to the window of the bar.
‘Is Miss Aldclyffe here?’ she said to a nicely-dressed barmaid in the foreground, who was talking to a landlady covered with chains, knobs, and clamps of gold, in the background.
‘No, she isn’t,’ said the barmaid, not very civilly. Cytherea looked a shade too pretty for a plain dresser.
‘Miss Aldclyffe is expected here,’ the landlady said to a third person, out of sight, in the tone of one who had known for several days the fact newly discovered from Cytherea. ‘Get ready her room — be quick.’ From the alacrity with which the order was given and taken, it seemed to Cytherea that Miss Aldclyffe must be a woman of considerable importance.
‘You are to have an interview with Miss Aldclyffe here?’ the landlady inquired.
‘Yes.’
‘The young person had better wait,’ continued the landlady. With a money-taker’s intuition she had rightly divined that Cytherea would bring no profit to the house.
Cytherea was shown into a nondescript chamber, on the shady side of the building, which appeared to be either bedroom or dayroom, as occasion necessitated, and was one of a suite at the end of the first-floor corridor. The prevailing colour of the walls, curtains, carpet, and coverings of furniture, was more or less blue, to which the cold light coming from the north easterly sky, and falling on a wide roof of new slates — the only object the small window commanded — imparted a more striking paleness. But underneath the door, communicating with the next room of the suite, gleamed an infinitesimally small, yet very powerful
, fraction of contrast — a very thin line of ruddy light, showing that the sun beamed strongly into this room adjoining. The line of radiance was the only cheering thing visible in the place.
People give way to very infantine thoughts and actions when they wait; the battle-field of life is temporarily fenced off by a hard and fast line — the interview. Cytherea fixed her eyes idly upon the streak, and began picturing a wonderful paradise on the other side as the source of such a beam — reminding her of the well-known good deed in a naughty world.
Whilst she watched the particles of dust floating before the brilliant chink she heard a carriage and horses stop opposite the front of the house. Afterwards came the rustle of a lady’s skirts down the corridor, and into the room communicating with the one Cytherea occupied.
The golden line vanished in parts like the phosphorescent streak caused by the striking of a match; there was the fall of a light footstep on the floor just behind it: then a pause. Then the foot tapped impatiently, and ‘There’s no one here!’ was spoken imperiously by a lady’s tongue.
‘No, madam; in the next room. I am going to fetch her,’ said the attendant.
‘That will do — or you needn’t go in; I will call her.’
Cytherea had risen, and she advanced to the middle door with the chink under it as the servant retired. She had just laid her hand on the knob, when it slipped round within her fingers, and the door was pulled open from the other side.
2. FOUR O’CLOCK
The direct blaze of the afternoon sun, partly refracted through the crimson curtains of the window, and heightened by reflections from the crimson-flock paper which covered the walls, and a carpet on the floor of the same tint, shone with a burning glow round the form of a lady standing close to Cytherea’s front with the door in her hand. The stranger appeared to the maiden’s eyes — fresh from the blue gloom, and assisted by an imagination fresh from nature — like a tall black figure standing in the midst of fire. It was the figure of a finely-built woman, of spare though not angular proportions.
