VICTORIAN TRILOGY: Desperate Remedies, The Hand of Ethelberta & A Laodicean (Illustrated Edition). Ð¢Ð¾Ð¼Ð°Ñ Ð¥Ð°Ñ€Ð´Ð¸
gentleman, and two or three messengers left the house, speeding in various directions. Rustics in smock-frocks began to hang about the road opposite the house, or lean against trees, looking idly at the windows and chimneys.
A tap came to Cytherea’s door. She opened it to a young maid-servant.
‘Miss Aldclyffe wishes to see you, ma’am.’ Cytherea hastened down.
Miss Aldclyffe was standing on the hearthrug, her elbow on the mantel, her hand to her temples, her eyes on the ground; perfectly calm, but very pale.
‘Cytherea,’ she said in a whisper, ‘come here.’
Cytherea went close.
‘Something very serious has taken place,’ she said again, and then paused, with a tremulous movement of her mouth.
‘Yes,’ said Cytherea.
‘My father. He was found dead in his bed this morning.’
‘Dead!’ echoed the younger woman. It seemed impossible that the announcement could be true; that knowledge of so great a fact could be contained in a statement so small.
‘Yes, dead,’ murmured Miss Aldclyffe solemnly. ‘He died alone, though within a few feet of me. The room we slept in is exactly over his own.’
Cytherea said hurriedly, ‘Do they know at what hour?’
‘The doctor says it must have been between two and three o’clock this morning.’
‘Then I heard him!’
‘Heard him?’
‘Heard him die!’
‘You heard him die? What did you hear?’
‘A sound I heard once before in my life – at the deathbed of my mother. I could not identify it – though I recognized it. Then the dog howled: you remarked it. I did not think it worth while to tell you what I had heard a little earlier.’ She looked agonized.
‘It would have been useless,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘All was over by that time.’ She addressed herself as much as Cytherea when she continued, ‘Is it a Providence who sent you here at this juncture that I might not be left entirely alone?’
Till this instant Miss Aldclyffe had forgotten the reason of Cytherea’s seclusion in her own room. So had Cytherea herself. The fact now recurred to both in one moment.
‘Do you still wish to go?’ said Miss Aldclyffe anxiously.
‘I don’t want to go now,’ Cytherea had remarked simultaneously with the other’s question. She was pondering on the strange likeness which Miss Aldclyffe’s bereavement bore to her own; it had the appearance of being still another call to her not to forsake this woman so linked to her life, for the sake of any trivial vexation.
Miss Aldclyffe held her almost as a lover would have held her, and said musingly —
‘We get more and more into one groove. I now am left fatherless and motherless as you were.’ Other ties lay behind in her thoughts, but she did not mention them.
‘You loved your father, Cytherea, and wept for him?’
‘Yes, I did. Poor papa!’
‘I was always at variance with mine, and can’t weep for him now! But you must stay here always, and make a better woman of me.’
The compact was thus sealed, and Cytherea, in spite of the failure of her advertisements, was installed as a veritable Companion. And, once more in the history of human endeavour, a position which it was impossible to reach by any direct attempt, was come to by the seeker’s swerving from the path, and regarding the original object as one of secondary importance.
7. The Events of Eighteen Days
1. August the Seventeenth
The time of day was four o’clock in the afternoon. The place was the lady’s study or boudoir, Knapwater House. The person was Miss Aldclyffe sitting there alone, clothed in deep mourning.
The funeral of the old Captain had taken place, and his will had been read. It was very concise, and had been executed about five years previous to his death. It was attested by his solicitors, Messrs. Nyttleton and Tayling, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The whole of his estate, real and personal, was bequeathed to his daughter Cytherea, for her sole and absolute use, subject only to the payment of a legacy to the rector, their relative, and a few small amounts to the servants.
Miss Aldclyffe had not chosen the easiest chair of her boudoir to sit in, or even a chair of ordinary comfort, but an uncomfortable, high, narrow-backed, oak framed and seated chair, which was allowed to remain in the room only on the ground of being a companion in artistic quaintness to an old coffer beside it, and was never used except to stand in to reach for a book from the highest row of shelves. But she had sat erect in this chair for more than an hour, for the reason that she was utterly unconscious of what her actions and bodily feelings were. The chair had stood nearest her path on entering the room, and she had gone to it in a dream.
She sat in the attitude which denotes unflagging, intense, concentrated thought – as if she were cast in bronze. Her feet were together, her body bent a little forward, and quite unsupported by the back of the chair; her hands on her knees, her eyes fixed intently on the corner of a footstool.
At last she moved and tapped her fingers upon the table at her side. Her pent-up ideas had finally found some channel to advance in. Motions became more and more frequent as she laboured to carry further and further the problem which occupied her brain. She sat back and drew a long breath: she sat sideways and leant her forehead upon her hand. Later still she arose, walked up and down the room – at first abstractedly, with her features as firmly set as ever; but by degrees her brow relaxed, her footsteps became lighter and more leisurely; her head rode gracefully and was no longer bowed. She plumed herself like a swan after exertion.
‘Yes,’ she said aloud. ‘To get him here without letting him know that I have any other object than that of getting a useful man – that’s the difficulty – and that I think I can master.’
She rang for the new maid, a placid woman of forty with a few grey hairs.
‘Ask Miss Graye if she can come to me.’
Cytherea was not far off, and came in.
‘Do you know anything about architects and surveyors?’ said Miss Aldclyffe abruptly.
‘Know anything?’ replied Cytherea, poising herself on her toe to consider the compass of the question.
‘Yes – know anything,’ said Miss Aldclyffe.
‘Owen is an architect and surveyor’s draughtsman,’ the maiden said, and thought of somebody else who was likewise.
‘Yes! that’s why I asked you. What are the different kinds of work comprised in an architect’s practice? They lay out estates, and superintend the various works done upon them, I should think, among other things?’
‘Those are, more properly, a land or building steward’s duties – at least I have always imagined so. Country architects include those things in their practice; city architects don’t.’
‘I know that, child. But a steward’s is an indefinite fast and loose profession, it seems to me. Shouldn’t you think that a man who had been brought up as an architect would do for a steward?’
Cytherea had doubts whether an architect pure would do.
The chief pleasure connected with asking an opinion lies in not adopting it. Miss Aldclyffe replied decisively —
‘Nonsense; of course he would. Your brother Owen makes plans for country buildings – such as cottages, stables, homesteads, and so on?’
‘Yes; he does.’
‘And superintends the building of them?’
‘Yes; he will soon.’
‘And he surveys land?’
‘O yes.’
‘And