Desperate Remedies, The Hand of Ethelberta & A Laodicean: Complete Illustrated Trilogy. Томас Харди

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СКАЧАТЬ servant and a house-dog as companions. Her father, and last remaining parent, had retired thither four years before this time, after having filled the post of editor to the Casterbridge Chronicle for eighteen or twenty years. There he died soon after, and though comparatively a poor man, he left his daughter sufficiently well provided for as a modest fundholder and claimant of sundry small sums in dividends to maintain herself as mistress at Peakhill.

      At Cytherea’s knock an inner door was heard to open and close, and footsteps crossed the passage hesitatingly. The next minute Cytherea stood face to face with the lady herself.

      Adelaide Hinton was about nine-and-twenty years of age. Her hair was plentiful, like Cytherea’s own; her teeth equalled Cytherea’s in regularity and whiteness. But she was much paler, and had features too transparent to be in place among household surroundings. Her mouth expressed love less forcibly than Cytherea’s, and, as a natural result of her greater maturity, her tread was less elastic, and she was more self-possessed.

      She had been a girl of that kind which mothers praise as not forward, by way of contrast, when disparaging those warmer ones with whom loving is an end and not a means. Men of forty, too, said of her, ‘a good sensible wife for any man, if she cares to marry,’ the caring to marry being thrown in as the vaguest hypothesis, because she was so practical. Yet it would be singular if, in such cases, the important subject of marriage should be excluded from manipulation by hands that are ready for practical performance in every domestic concern besides.

      Cytherea was an acquisition, and the greeting was hearty.

      ‘Good afternoon! O yes — Miss Graye, from Miss Aldclyffe’s. I have seen you at church, and I am so glad you have called! Come in. I wonder if I have change enough to pay my subscription.’ She spoke girlishly.

      Adelaide, when in the company of a younger woman, always levelled herself down to that younger woman’s age from a sense of justice to herself — as if, though not her own age at common law, it was in equity.

      ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll come again.’

      ‘Yes, do at any time; not only on this errand. But you must step in for a minute. Do.’

      ‘I have been wanting to come for several weeks.’

      ‘That’s right. Now you must see my house — lonely, isn’t it, for a single person? People said it was odd for a young woman like me to keep on a house; but what did I care? If you knew the pleasure of locking up your own door, with the sensation that you reigned supreme inside it, you would say it was worth the risk of being called odd. Mr. Springrove attends to my gardening, the dog attends to robbers, and whenever there is a snake or toad to kill, Jane does it.’

      ‘How nice! It is better than living in a town.’

      ‘Far better. A town makes a cynic of me.’

      The remark recalled, somewhat startlingly, to Cytherea’s mind, that Edward had used those very words to herself one evening at Budmouth.

      Miss Hinton opened an interior door and led her visitor into a small drawing-room commanding a view of the country for miles.

      The missionary business was soon settled; but the chat continued.

      ‘How lonely it must be here at night!’ said Cytherea. ‘Aren’t you afraid?’

      ‘At first I was, slightly. But I got used to the solitude. And you know a sort of commonsense will creep even into timidity. I say to myself sometimes at night, “If I were anybody but a harmless woman, not worth the trouble of a worm’s ghost to appear to me, I should think that every sound I hear was a spirit.” But you must see all over my house.’

      Cytherea was highly interested in seeing.

      ‘I say you must do this, and you must do that, as if you were a child,’ remarked Adelaide. ‘A privileged friend of mine tells me this use of the imperative comes of being so constantly in nobody’s society but my own.’

      ‘Ah, yes. I suppose she is right.’

      Cytherea called the friend ‘she’ by a rule of ladylike practice; for a woman’s ‘friend’ is delicately assumed by another friend to be of their own sex in the absence of knowledge to the contrary; just as cats are called she’s until they prove themselves he’s.

      Miss Hinton laughed mysteriously.

      ‘I get a humorous reproof for it now and then, I assure you,’ she continued.

      ‘“Humorous reproof:” that’s not from a woman: who can reprove humorously but a man?’ was the groove of Cytherea’s thought at the remark. ‘Your brother reproves you, I expect,’ said that innocent young lady.

      ‘No,’ said Miss Hinton, with a candid air. ”Tis only a professional man I am acquainted with.’ She looked out of the window.

      Women are persistently imitative. No sooner did a thought flash through Cytherea’s mind that the man was a lover than she became a Miss Aldclyffe in a mild form.

      ‘I imagine he’s a lover,’ she said.

      Miss Hinton smiled a smile of experience in that line.

      Few women, if taxed with having an admirer, are so free from vanity as to deny the impeachment, even if it is utterly untrue. When it does happen to be true, they look pityingly away from the person who is so benighted as to have got no further than suspecting it.

      ‘There now — Miss Hinton; you are engaged to be married!’ said Cytherea accusingly.

      Adelaide nodded her head practically. ‘Well, yes, I am,’ she said.

      The word ‘engaged’ had no sooner passed Cytherea’s lips than the sound of it — the mere sound of her own lips — carried her mind to the time and circumstances under which Miss Aldclyffe had used it towards herself. A sickening thought followed — based but on a mere surmise; yet its presence took every other idea away from Cytherea’s mind. Miss Hinton had used Edward’s words about towns; she mentioned Mr. Springrove as attending to her garden. It could not be that Edward was the man! that Miss Aldclyffe had planned to reveal her rival thus!

      ‘Are you going to be married soon?’ she inquired, with a steadiness the result of a sort of fascination, but apparently of indifference.

      ‘Not very soon — still, soon.’

      ‘Ah-ha! In less than three months?’ said Cytherea.

      ‘Two.’

      Now that the subject was well in hand, Adelaide wanted no more prompting. ‘You won’t tell anybody if I show you something?’ she said, with eager mystery.

      ‘O no, nobody. But does he live in this parish?’

      ‘No.’

      Nothing proved yet.

      ‘What’s his name?’ said Cytherea flatly. Her breath and heart had begun their old tricks, and came and went hotly. Miss Hinton could not see her face.

      ‘What do you think?’ said Miss Hinton.

      ‘George?’ СКАЧАТЬ