Desperate Remedies Part 68

'MY DEAR HUSBAND,--The order for ten pounds has just come, and I am truly glad to get it. But why will you write so bitterly? Ah--well, if I had only had the money I should have been on my way to America by this time, so don't think I want to bore you of my own free-will. Who can you have met with at that new place? Remember I say this in no malignant tone, but certainly the facts go to prove that you have deserted me!

You are inconstant--I know it. O, why are you so? Now I have lost you, I love you in spite of your neglect. I am weakly fond--that's my nature.

I fear that upon the whole my life has been wasted. I know there is another woman supplanting me in your heart--yes, I know it. Come to me--do come. EUNICE.'

'41 CHARLES SQUARE, HOXTON, November 19.

'DEAR AENEAS,--Here I am back again after my visit. Why should you have been so enraged at my finding your exact address? Any woman would have tried to do it--you know she would have. And no woman would have lived under a.s.sumed names so long as I did. I repeat that I did not call myself Mrs. Manston until I came to this lodging at the beginning of this month--what could you expect?

'A helpless creature I, had not fortune favoured me unexpectedly.

Banished as I was from your house at dawn, I did not suppose the indignity was about to lead to important results. But in crossing the park I overheard the conversation of a young man and woman who had also risen early. I believe her to be the girl who has won you away from me. Well, their conversation concerned you and Miss Aldclyffe, _very peculiarly_. The remarkable thing is that you yourself, without knowing it, told me of what, added to their conversation, completely reveals a secret to me that neither of you understand. Two negatives never made such a telling positive before. One clue more, and you would see it.

A single consideration prevents my revealing it--just one doubt as to whether your ignorance was real, and was not feigned to deceive me.

Civility now, please. EUNICE.'

'41 CHARLES SQUARE, Tuesday, November 22.

'MY DARLING HUSBAND,--Monday will suit me excellently for coming. I have acted exactly up to your instructions, and have sold my rubbish at the broker's in the next street. All this movement and bustle is delightful to me after the weeks of monotony I have endured. It is a relief to wish the place good-bye--London always has seemed so much more foreign to me than Liverpool The mid-day train on Monday will do nicely for me. I shall be anxiously looking out for you on Sunday night.

'I hope so much that you are not angry with me for writing to Miss Aldclyffe. You are not, dear, are you? Forgive me.--Your loving wife, EUNICE.'

This was the last of the letters from the wife to the husband. One other, in Mrs. Manston's handwriting, and in the same packet, was differently addressed.

'THREE TRANTERS INN, CARRIFORD, November 28, 1864.

'DEAR COUSIN JAMES,--Thank you indeed for answering my letter so promptly. When I called at the post-office yesterday I did not in the least think there would be one. But I must leave this subject. I write again at once under the strangest and saddest conditions it is possible to conceive.

'I did not tell you in my last that I was a married woman. Don't blame me--it was my husband's influence. I hardly know where to begin my story. I had been living apart from him for a time--then he sent for me (this was last week) and I was glad to go to him. Then this is what he did. He promised to fetch me, and did not--leaving me to do the journey alone. He promised to meet me at the station here--he did not. I went on through the darkness to his house, and found his door locked and himself away from home. I have been obliged to come here, and I write to you in a strange room in a strange village inn! I choose the present moment to write to drive away my misery. Sorrow seems a sort of pleasure when you detail it on paper--poor pleasure though.

'But this is what I want to know--and I am ashamed to tell it. I would gladly do as you say, and come to you as a housekeeper, but I have not the money even for a steerage pa.s.sage. James, do you want me badly enough--do you pity me enough to send it? I could manage to subsist in London upon the proceeds of my sale for another month or six weeks. Will you send it to the same address at the post-office? But how do I know that you...'

Thus the letter ended. From creases in the paper it was plain that the writer, having got so far, had become dissatisfied with her production, and had crumpled it in her hand. Was it to write another, or not to write at all?

The next thing Anne Seaway perceived was that the fragmentary story she had coaxed out of Manston, to the effect that his wife had left England for America, might be truthful, according to two of these letters, corroborated by the evidence of the railway-porter. And yet, at first, he had sworn in a pa.s.sion that his wife was most certainly consumed in the fire.

If she had been burnt, this letter, written in her bedroom, and probably thrust into her pocket when she relinquished it, would have been burnt with her. Nothing was surer than that. Why, then, did he say she was burnt, and never show Anne herself this letter?

The question suddenly raised a new and much stranger one--kindling a burst of amazement in her. How did Manston become possessed of this letter?

That fact of possession was certainly the most remarkable revelation of all in connection with this epistle, and perhaps had something to do with his reason for never showing it to her.

She knew by several proofs, that before his marriage with Cytherea, and up to the time of the porter's confession, Manston believed--honestly believed--that Cytherea would be his lawful wife, and hence, of course, that his wife Eunice was dead. So that no communication could possibly have pa.s.sed between his wife and himself from the first moment that he believed her dead on the night of the fire, to the day of his wedding.

And yet he had that letter. How soon afterwards could they have communicated with each other?

The existence of the letter--as much as, or more than its contents--implying that Mrs. Manston was not burnt, his belief in that calamity must have terminated at the moment he obtained possession of the letter, if no earlier. Was, then, the only solution to the riddle that Anne could discern, the true one?--that he had communicated with his wife somewhere about the commencement of Anne's residence with him, or at any time since?

It was the most unlikely thing on earth that a woman who had forsaken her husband should countenance his scheme to personify her--whether she were in America, in London, or in the neighbourhood of Knapwater.

Then came the old and hara.s.sing question, what was Manston's real motive in risking his name on the deception he was practising as regarded Anne.

It could not be, as he had always pretended, mere pa.s.sion. Her thoughts had reverted to Mr. Raunham's letter, asking for proofs of her ident.i.ty with the original Mrs. Manston. She could see no loophole of escape for the man who supported her. True, in her own estimation, his worst alternative was not so very bad after all--the getting the name of libertine, a possible appearance in the divorce or some other court of law, and a question of damages. Such an exposure might hinder his worldly progress for some time. Yet to him this alternative was, apparently, terrible as death itself.

She restored the letters to their hiding-place, scanned anew the other letters and memoranda, from which she could gain no fresh information, fastened up the cabinet, and left everything in its former condition.

Her mind was ill at ease. More than ever she wished that she had never seen Manston. Where the person suspected of mysterious moral obliquity is the possessor of great physical and intellectual attractions, the mere sense of incongruity adds an extra shudder to dread. The man's strange bearing terrified Anne as it had terrified Cytherea; for with all the woman Anne's faults, she had not descended to such depths of depravity as to willingly partic.i.p.ate in crime. She had not even known that a living wife was being displaced till her arrival at Knapwater put retreat out of the question, and had looked upon personation simply as a mode of subsistence a degree better than toiling in poverty and alone, after a bustling and somewhat pampered life as housekeeper in a gay mansion.

'Non illa colo calathisve Minervae Foemineas a.s.sueta ma.n.u.s.'

2. AFTERNOON

Mr. Raunham and Edward Springrove had by this time set in motion a machinery which they hoped to find working out important results.

The rector was restless and full of meditation all the following morning. It was plain, even to the servants about him, that Springrove's communication wore a deeper complexion than any that had been made to the old magistrate for many months or years past. The fact was that, having arrived at the stage of existence in which the difficult intellectual feat of suspending one's judgment becomes possible, he was now putting it in practice, though not without the penalty of watchful effort.

It was not till the afternoon that he determined to call on his relative, Miss Aldclyffe, and cautiously probe her knowledge of the subject occupying him so thoroughly. Cytherea, he knew, was still beloved by this solitary woman. Miss Aldclyffe had made several private inquiries concerning her former companion, and there was ever a sadness in her tone when the young lady's name was mentioned, which showed that from whatever cause the elder Cytherea's renunciation of her favourite and namesake proceeded, it was not from indifference to her fate.

'Have you ever had any reason for supposing your steward anything but an upright man?' he said to the lady.

'Never the slightest. Have you?' said she reservedly.

'Well--I have.'

'What is it?'

'I can say nothing plainly, because nothing is proved. But my suspicions are very strong.'

'Do you mean that he was rather cool towards his wife when they were first married, and that it was unfair in him to leave her? I know he was; but I think his recent conduct towards her has amply atoned for the neglect.'

He looked Miss Aldclyffe full in the face. It was plain that she spoke honestly. She had not the slightest notion that the woman who lived with the steward might be other than Mrs. Manston--much less that a greater matter might be behind.

'That's not it--I wish it was no more. My suspicion is, first, that the woman living at the Old House is not Mr. Manston's wife.'

'Not--Mr. Manston's wife?'

'That is it.'

Miss Aldclyffe looked blankly at the rector. 'Not Mr. Manston's wife--who else can she be?' she said simply.

'An improper woman of the name of Anne Seaway.'

Mr. Raunham had, in common with other people, noticed the extraordinary interest of Miss Aldclyffe in the well-being of her steward, and had endeavoured to account for it in various ways. The extent to which she was shaken by his information, whilst it proved that the understanding between herself and Manston did not make her a sharer of his secrets, also showed that the tie which bound her to him was still unbroken. Mr.

Raunham had lately begun to doubt the latter fact, and now, on finding himself mistaken, regretted that he had not kept his own counsel in the matter. This it was too late to do, and he pushed on with his proofs. He gave Miss Aldclyffe in detail the grounds of his belief.

Before he had done, she recovered the cloak of reserve that she had adopted on his opening the subject.

'I might possibly be convinced that you were in the right, after such an elaborate argument,' she replied, 'were it not for one fact, which bears in the contrary direction so pointedly, that nothing but absolute proof can turn it. It is that there is no conceivable motive which could induce any sane man--leaving alone a man of Mr. Manston's clear-headedness and integrity--to venture upon such an extraordinary course of conduct--no motive on earth.'

'That was my own opinion till after the visit of a friend last night--a friend of mine and poor little Cytherea's.'