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

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СКАЧАТЬ we must see to that at once.’

      ‘What do you want?’

      ‘The key.’

      They went into the south aisle, took the candle from the font, and then proceeded to open the bureau, which had been placed in a corner under the gallery. Both leant over upon the flap; Edward holding the candle, whilst his father took the pieces of parchment from one of the drawers, and spread the first out before him.

      ‘You read it, Ted. I can’t see without my glasses. This one will be sufficient. The terms of all are the same.’

      Edward took the parchment, and read quickly and indistinctly for some time; then aloud and slowly as follows:—

      ‘And the said John Springrove for himself his heirs executors and administrators doth covenant and agree with the said Gerald Fellcourt Aldclyffe his heirs and assigns that he the said John Springrove his heirs and assigns during the said term shall pay unto the said Gerald Fellcourt Aldclyffe his heirs and assigns the clear yearly rent of ten shillings and sixpence. . . . at the several times hereinbefore appointed for the payment thereof respectively. And also shall and at all times during the said term well and sufficiently repair and keep the said Cottage or Dwelling-house and all other the premises and all houses or buildings erected or to be erected thereupon in good and proper repair in every respect without exception and the said premises in such good repair upon the determination of this demise shall yield up unto the said Gerald Fellcourt Aldclyffe his heirs and assigns.’

      They closed the bureau and turned towards the door of the church without speaking.

      Manston also had come forward out of the gloom. Notwithstanding the farmer’s own troubles, an instinctive respect and generous sense of sympathy with the steward for his awful loss caused the old man to step aside, that Manston might pass out without speaking to them if he chose to do so.

      ‘Who is he?’ whispered Edward to his father, as Manston approached.

      ‘Mr. Manston, the steward.’

      Manston came near, and passed down the aisle on the side of the younger man. Their faces came almost close together: one large flame, which still lingered upon the ruins outside, threw long dancing shadows of each across the nave till they bent upwards against the aisle wall, and also illuminated their eyes, as each met those of the other. Edward had learnt, by a letter from home, of the steward’s passion for Cytherea, and his mysterious repression of it, afterwards explained by his marriage. That marriage was now nought. Edward realized the man’s newly acquired freedom, and felt an instinctive enmity towards him — he would hardly own to himself why. The steward, too, knew Cytherea’s attachment to Edward, and looked keenly and inscrutably at him.

      7. One To Two A.m.

      Manston went homeward alone, his heart full of strange emotions. Entering the house, and dismissing the woman to her own home, he at once proceeded upstairs to his bedroom.

      Reasoning worldliness, especially when allied with sensuousness, cannot repress on some extreme occasions the human instinct to pour out the soul to some Being or Personality, who in frigid moments is dismissed with the title of Chance, or at most Law. Manston was selfishly and inhumanly, but honestly and unutterably, thankful for the recent catastrophe. Beside his bed, for that first time during a period of nearly twenty years, he fell down upon his knees in a passionate outburst of feeling.

      Many minutes passed before he arose. He walked to the window, and then seemed to remember for the first time that some action on his part was necessary in connection with the sad circumstance of the night.

      Leaving the house at once, he went to the scene of the fire, arriving there in time to hear the rector making an arrangement with a certain number of men to watch the spot till morning. The ashes were still red-hot and flaming. Manston found that nothing could be done towards searching them at that hour of the night. He turned homeward again, in the company of the rector, who had considerately persuaded him to retire from the scene for a while, and promised that as soon as a man could live amid the embers of the Three Tranters Inn, they should be carefully searched for the remains of his unfortunate wife.

      Manston then went indoors, to wait for morning.

      11. The Events of five Days

       Table of Contents

      1. November the Twenty-ninth

      The search began at dawn, but a quarter past nine o’clock came without bringing any result. Manston ate a little breakfast, and crossed the hollow of the park which intervened between the old and modern manor-houses, to ask for an interview with Miss Aldclyffe.

      He met her midway. She was about to pay him a visit of condolence, and to place every man on the estate at his disposal, that the search for any relic of his dead and destroyed wife might not be delayed an instant.

      He accompanied her back to the house. At first they conversed as if the death of the poor woman was an event which the husband must of necessity deeply lament; and when all under this head that social form seemed to require had been uttered, they spoke of the material damage done, and of the steps which had better be taken to remedy it.

      It was not till both were shut inside her private room that she spoke to him in her blunt and cynical manner. A certain newness of bearing in him, peculiar to the present morning, had hitherto forbidden her this tone: the demeanour of the subject of her favouritism had altered, she could not tell in what way. He was entirely a changed man.

      ‘Are you really sorry for your poor wife, Mr. Manston?’ she said.

      ‘Well, I am,’ he answered shortly.

      ‘But only as for any human being who has met with a violent death?’

      He confessed it —‘For she was not a good woman,’ he added.

      ‘I should be sorry to say such a thing now the poor creature is dead,’ Miss Aldclyffe returned reproachfully.

      ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why should I praise her if she doesn’t deserve it? I say exactly what I have often admired Sterne for saying in one of his letters — that neither reason nor Scripture asks us to speak nothing but good of the dead. And now, madam,’ he continued, after a short interval of thought, ‘I may, perhaps, hope that you will assist me, or rather not thwart me, in endeavouring to win the love of a young lady living about you, one in whom I am much interested already.’

      ‘Cytherea!’

      ‘Yes, Cytherea.’

      ‘You have been loving Cytherea all the while?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Surprise was a preface to much agitation in her, which caused her to rise from her seat, and pace to the side of the room. The steward quietly looked on and added, ‘I have been loving and still love her.’

      She came close up to him, wistfully contemplating his face, one hand moving indecisively at her side.

      ‘And your СКАЧАТЬ