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3. HALF-PAST SEVEN TO TEN O'CLOCK A.M.

3. HALF-PAST SEVEN TO TEN O'CLOCK

A.M.Cytherea awoke, quiet in mind and refreshed. A conclusion to

remain at Knapwater was already in possession of her.

Finding Miss Aldclyffe gone, she dressed herself and sat down at

the window to write an answer to Edward's letter, and an account of

her arrival at Knapwater to Owen. The dismal and heart-breaking

pictures that Miss Aldclyffe had placed before her the preceding

evening, the later terrors of the night, were now but as shadows of

shadows, and she smiled in derision at her own excitability.

But writing Edward's letter was the great consoler, the effect

of each word upon him being enacted in her own face as she wrote

it. She felt how much she would like to share his trouble—how well

she could endure poverty with him—and wondered what his trouble

was. But all would be explained at last, she knew.

At the appointed time she went to Miss Aldclyffe's room,

intending, with the contradictoriness common in people, to perform

with pleasure, as a work of supererogation, what as a duty was

simply intolerable.

Miss Aldclyffe was already out of bed. The bright penetrating

light of morning made a vast difference in the elder lady's

behaviour to her dependent; the day, which had restored Cytherea's

judgment, had effected the same for Miss Aldclyffe. Though

practical reasons forbade her regretting that she had secured such

a companionable creature to read, talk, or play to her whenever her

whim required, she was inwardly vexed at the extent to which she

had indulged in the womanly luxury of making confidences and giving

way to emotions. Few would have supposed that the calm lady sitting

aristocratically at the toilet table, seeming scarcely conscious of

Cytherea's presence in the room, even when greeting her, was the

passionate creature who had asked for kisses a few hours

before.

It is both painful and satisfactory to think how often these

antitheses are to be observed in the individual most open to our

observation—ourselves. We pass the evening with faces lit up by

some flaring illumination or other: we get up the next morning—the

fiery jets have all gone out, and nothing confronts us but a few

crinkled pipes and sooty wirework, hardly even recalling the

outline of the blazing picture that arrested our eyes before

bedtime.

Emotions would be half starved if there were no candle-light.

Probably nine-tenths of the gushing letters of indiscreet

confession are written after nine or ten o'clock in the evening,

and sent off before day returns to leer invidiously upon them. Few

that remain open to catch our glance as we rise in the morning,

survive the frigid criticism of dressing-time.

The subjects uppermost in the minds of the two women who had

thus cooled from their fires, were not the visionary ones of the

later hours, but the hard facts of their earlier conversation.

After a remark that Cytherea need not assist her in dressing unless

she wished to, Miss Aldclyffe said abruptly—

'I can tell that young man's name.' She looked keenly at

Cytherea. 'It is Edward Springrove, my tenant's son.'

The inundation of colour upon the younger lady at hearing a name

which to her was a world, handled as if it were only an atom, told

Miss Aldclyffe that she had divined the truth at last.

'Ah—it is he, is it?' she continued. 'Well, I wanted to know for

practical reasons. His example shows that I was not so far wrong in

my estimate of men after all, though I only generalized, and had no

thought of him.' This was perfectly true.

'What do you mean?' said Cytherea, visibly alarmed.

'Mean? Why that all the world knows him to be engaged to be

married, and that the wedding is soon to take place.' She made the

remark bluntly and superciliously, as if to obtain absolution at

the hands of her family pride for the weak confidences of the

night.

But even the frigidity of Miss Aldclyffe's morning mood was

overcome by the look of sick and blank despair which the carelessly

uttered words had produced upon Cytherea's face. She sank back into

a chair, and buried her face in her hands.

'Don't be so foolish,' said Miss Aldclyffe. 'Come, make the best

of it. I cannot upset the fact I have told you of, unfortunately.

But I believe the match can be broken off.'

'O no, no.'

'Nonsense. I liked him much as a youth, and I like him now. I'll

help you to captivate and chain him down. I have got over my absurd

feeling of last night in not wanting you ever to go away from me—of

course, I could not expect such a thing as that. There, now I have

said I'll help you, and that's enough. He's tired of his first

choice now that he's been away from home for a while. The love that

no outer attack can frighten away quails before its idol's own

homely ways; it is always so… . Come, finish what you are doing if

you are going to, and don't be a little goose about such a trumpery

affair as that.'

'Who—is he engaged to?' Cytherea inquired by a movement of her

lips but no sound of her voice. But Miss Aldclyffe did not answer.

It mattered not, Cytherea thought. Another woman—that was enough

for her: curiosity was stunned.

She applied herself to the work of dressing, scarcely knowing

how. Miss Aldclyffe went on:—

'You were too easily won. I'd have made him or anybody else

speak out before he should have kissed my face for his pleasure.

But you are one of those precipitantly fond things who are yearning

to throw away their hearts upon the first worthless fellow who says

good-morning. In the first place, you shouldn't have loved him so

quickly: in the next, if you must have loved him off-hand, you

should have concealed it. It tickled his vanity: "By Jove, that

girl's in love with me already!" he thought.'

To hasten away at the end of the toilet, to tell Mrs. Morris—who

stood waiting in a little room prepared for her, with tea poured

out, bread-and-butter cut into diaphanous slices, and eggs

arranged—that she wanted no breakfast: then to shut herself alone

in her bedroom, was her only thought. She was followed thither by

the well-intentioned matron with a cup of tea and one piece of

bread-and-butter on a tray, cheerfully insisting that she should

eat it.

To those who grieve, innocent cheerfulness seems heartless

levity. 'No, thank you, Mrs. Morris,' she said, keeping the door

closed. Despite the incivility of the action, Cytherea could not

bear to let a pleasant person see her face then.

Immediate revocation—even if revocation would be more effective

by postponement—is the impulse of young wounded natures. Cytherea

went to her blotting-book, took out the long letter so carefully

written, so full of gushing remarks and tender hints, and sealed up

so neatly with a little seal bearing 'Good Faith' as its motto,

tore the missive into fifty pieces, and threw them into the grate.

It was then the bitterest of anguishes to look upon some of the

words she had so lovingly written, and see them existing only in

mutilated forms without meaning—to feel that his eye would never

read them, nobody ever know how ardently she had penned them.

Pity for one's self for being wasted is mostly present in these

moods of abnegation.

The meaning of all his allusions, his abruptness in telling her

of his love, his constraint at first, then his desperate manner of

speaking, was clear. They must have been the last flickerings of a

conscience not quite dead to all sense of perfidiousness and

fickleness. Now he had gone to London: she would be dismissed from

his memory, in the same way as Miss Aldclyffe had said. And here

she was in Edward's own parish, reminded continually of him by what

she saw and heard. The landscape, yesterday so much and so bright

to her, was now but as the banquet-hall deserted—all gone but

herself.

Miss Aldclyffe had wormed her secret out of her, and would now

be continually mocking her for her trusting simplicity in believing

him. It was altogether unbearable: she would not stay there.

She went downstairs and found Miss Aldclyffe had gone into the

breakfast-room, but that Captain Aldclyffe, who rose later with

increasing infirmities, had not yet made his appearance. Cytherea

entered. Miss Aldclyffe was looking out of the window, watching a

trail of white smoke along the distant landscape—signifying a

passing train. At Cytherea's entry she turned and looked

inquiry.

'I must tell you now,' began Cytherea, in a tremulous voice.

'Well, what?' Miss Aldclyffe said.

'I am not going to stay with you. I must go away—a very long

way. I am very sorry, but indeed I can't remain!'

'Pooh—what shall we hear next?' Miss Aldclyffe surveyed

Cytherea's face with leisurely criticism. 'You are breaking your

heart again about that worthless young Springrove. I knew how it

would be. It is as Hallam says of Juliet—what little reason you may

have possessed originally has all been whirled away by this love. I

shan't take this notice, mind.'

'Do let me go!'

Miss Aldclyffe took her new pet's hand, and said with severity,

'As to hindering you, if you are determined to go, of course that's

absurd. But you are not now in a state of mind fit for deciding

upon any such proceeding, and I shall not listen to what you have

to say. Now, Cythie, come with me; we'll let this volcano burst and

spend itself, and after that we'll see what had better be done.'

She took Cytherea into her workroom, opened a drawer, and drew

forth a roll of linen.

'This is some embroidery I began one day, and now I should like

it finished.'

She then preceded the maiden upstairs to Cytherea's own room.

'There,' she said, 'now sit down here, go on with this work, and

remember one thing—that you are not to leave the room on any

pretext whatever for two hours unless I send for you—I insist

kindly, dear. Whilst you stitch—you are to stitch, recollect, and

not go mooning out of the window—think over the whole matter, and

get cooled; don't let the foolish love-affair prevent your thinking

as a woman of the world. If at the end of that time you still say

you must leave me, you may. I will have no more to say in the

matter. Come, sit down, and promise to sit here the time I

name.'

To hearts in a despairing mood, compulsion seems a relief; and

docility was at all times natural to Cytherea. She promised, and

sat down. Miss Aldclyffe shut the door upon her and retreated.

She sewed, stopped to think, shed a tear or two, recollected the

articles of the treaty, and sewed again; and at length fell into a

reverie which took no account whatever of the lapse of time.