Desperate Remedies. Thomas Hardy

pace down the ravine which lay between the heath and the shore.

      ‘He can’t get here in less than five minutes,’ a passenger said. ‘People should know what they are about, and keep time. Really, if – ’

      ‘You see, sir,’ said the captain, in an apologetic undertone, ‘since ‘tis her brother, and she’s all alone, ‘tis only nater to wait a minute, now he’s in sight. Suppose, now, you were a young woman, as might be, and had a brother, like this one, and you stood of an evening upon this here wild lonely shore, like her, why you’d want us to wait, too, wouldn’t you, sir? I think you would.’

      The person so hastily approaching had been lost to view during this remark by reason of a hollow in the ground, and the projecting cliff immediately at hand covered the path in its rise. His footsteps were now heard striking sharply upon the flinty road at a distance of about twenty or thirty yards, but still behind the escarpment. To save time, Cytherea prepared to ascend the plank.

      ‘Let me give you my hand, miss,’ said Captain Jacobs.

      ‘No – please don’t touch me,’ said she, ascending cautiously by sliding one foot forward two or three inches, bringing up the other behind it, and so on alternately – her lips compressed by concentration on the feat, her eyes glued to the plank, her hand to the rope, and her immediate thought to the fact of the distressing narrowness of her footing. Steps now shook the lower end of the board, and in an instant were up to her heels with a bound.

      ‘O, Owen, I am so glad you are come!’ she said without turning. ‘Don’t, don’t shake the plank or touch me, whatever you do… There, I am up. Where have you been so long?’ she continued, in a lower tone, turning round to him as she reached the top.

      Raising her eyes from her feet, which, standing on the firm deck, demanded her attention no longer, she acquired perceptions of the new-comer in the following order: unknown trousers; unknown waistcoat; unknown face. The man was not her brother, but a total stranger.

      Off went the plank; the paddles started, stopped, backed, pattered in confusion, then revolved decisively, and the boat passed out into deep water.

      One or two persons had said, ‘How d’ye do, Mr. Springrove?’ and looked at Cytherea, to see how she bore her disappointment. Her ears had but just caught the name of the head draughtsman, when she saw him advancing directly to address her.

      ‘Miss Graye, I believe?’ he said, lifting his hat.

      ‘Yes,’ said Cytherea, colouring, and trying not to look guilty of a surreptitious knowledge of him.

      ‘I am Mr. Springrove. I passed Corvsgate Castle about an hour ago, and soon afterwards met your brother going that way. He had been deceived in the distance, and was about to turn without seeing the ruin, on account of a lameness that had come on in his leg or foot. I proposed that he should go on, since he had got so near; and afterwards, instead of walking back to the boat, get across to Anglebury Station – a shorter walk for him – where he could catch the late train, and go directly home. I could let you know what he had done, and allay any uneasiness.’

      ‘Is the lameness serious, do you know?’

      ‘O no; simply from over-walking himself. Still, it was just as well to ride home.’

      Relieved from her apprehensions on Owen’s score, she was able slightly to examine the appearance of her informant – Edward Springrove – who now removed his hat for a while, to cool himself. He was rather above her brother’s height. Although the upper part of his face and head was handsomely formed, and bounded by lines of sufficiently masculine regularity, his brows were somewhat too softly arched, and finely pencilled for one of his sex; without prejudice, however, to the belief which the sum total of his features inspired – that though they did not prove that the man who thought inside them would do much in the world, men who had done most of all had had no better ones. Across his forehead, otherwise perfectly smooth, ran one thin line, the healthy freshness of his remaining features expressing that it had come there prematurely.

      Though some years short of the age at which the clear spirit bids good-bye to the last infirmity of noble mind, and takes to house-hunting and investments, he had reached the period in a young man’s life when episodic periods, with a hopeful birth and a disappointing death, have begun to accumulate, and to bear a fruit of generalities; his glance sometimes seeming to state, ‘I have already thought out the issue of such conditions as these we are experiencing.’ At other times he wore an abstracted look: ‘I seem to have lived through this moment before.’

      He was carelessly dressed in dark grey, wearing a rolled-up black kerchief as a neck-cloth; the knot of which was disarranged, and stood obliquely – a deposit of white dust having lodged in the creases.

      ‘I am sorry for your disappointment,’ he continued, glancing into her face. Their eyes having met, became, as it were, mutually locked together, and the single instant only which good breeding allows as the length of such a look, became trebled: a clear penetrating ray of intelligence had shot from each into each, giving birth to one of those unaccountable sensations which carry home to the heart before the hand has been touched or the merest compliment passed, by something stronger than mathematical proof, the conviction, ‘A tie has begun to unite us.’

      Both faces also unconsciously stated that their owners had been much in each other’s thoughts of late. Owen had talked to the young architect of his sister as freely as to Cytherea of the young architect.

      A conversation began, which was none the less interesting to the parties engaged because it consisted only of the most trivial and commonplace remarks. Then the band of harps and violins struck up a lively melody, and the deck was cleared for dancing; the sun dipping beneath the horizon during the proceeding, and the moon showing herself at their stern. The sea was so calm, that the soft hiss produced by the bursting of the innumerable bubbles of foam behind the paddles could be distinctly heard. The passengers who did not dance, including Cytherea and Springrove, lapsed into silence, leaning against the paddle-boxes, or standing aloof – noticing the trembling of the deck to the steps of the dance – watching the waves from the paddles as they slid thinly and easily under each other’s edges.

      Night had quite closed in by the time they reached Budmouth harbour, sparkling with its white, red, and green lights in opposition to the shimmering path of the moon’s reflection on the other side, which reached away to the horizon till the flecked ripples reduced themselves to sparkles as fine as gold dust.

      ‘I will walk to the station and find out the exact time the train arrives,’ said Springrove, rather eagerly, when they had landed.

      She thanked him much.

      ‘Perhaps we might walk together,’ he suggested hesitatingly. She looked as if she did not quite know, and he settled the question by showing the way.

      They found, on arriving there, that on the first day of that month the particular train selected for Graye’s return had ceased to stop at Anglebury station.

      ‘I am very sorry I misled him,’ said Springrove.

      ‘O, I am not alarmed at all,’ replied Cytherea.

      ‘Well, it’s sure to be all right – he will sleep there, and come by the first in the morning. But what will you do, alone?’

      ‘I am quite easy on that point; the landlady is very friendly. I must go indoors now. Good-night, Mr. Springrove.’

      ‘Let me go round to your door with you?’ he pleaded.

      ‘No, thank you; we live close by.’

      He looked at her as a waiter looks at the change he brings back. But she was inexorable.

      ‘Don’t – forget me,’ he murmured. She did not answer.

      ‘Let me see you sometimes,’ he said.

      ‘Perhaps you never will again – I am going away,’ she replied in lingering tones; and turning into Cross Street, ran indoors and upstairs.

      The sudden withdrawal of what was superfluous at first, is often felt as an essential loss. It was felt now with regard to the maiden. More, too, after a meeting so pleasant