Desperate Remedies Read online

  Produced by Les Bowler

  DESPERATE REMEDIES

  By Thomas Hardy

  CONTENTS

  PREFATORY NOTE

  I. THE EVENTS OF THIRTY YEARS II. THE EVENTS OF A FORTNIGHT III. THE EVENTS OF EIGHT DAYS IV. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY V. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY VI. THE EVENTS OF TWELVE HOURS VII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS VIII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS IX. THE EVENTS OF TEN WEEKS X. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT XI. THE EVENTS OF FIVE DAYS XII. THE EVENTS OF TEN MONTHS XIII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY XIV. THE EVENTS OF FIVE WEEKS XV. THE EVENTS OF THREE WEEKS XVI. THE EVENTS OF ONE WEEK XVII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY XVIII. THE EVENTS OF THREE DAYS XIX. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT XX. THE EVENTS OF THREE HOURS XXI. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN HOURS SEQUEL

  PREFATORY NOTE

  The following story, the first published by the author, was writtennineteen years ago, at a time when he was feeling his way to amethod. The principles observed in its composition are, no doubt, tooexclusively those in which mystery, entanglement, surprise, and moralobliquity are depended on for exciting interest; but some of the scenes,and at least one of the characters, have been deemed not unworthy of alittle longer preservation and as they could hardly be reproduced in afragmentary form the novel is reissued complete--the more readily thatit has for some considerable time been reprinted and widely circulatedin America. January 1889.

  To the foregoing note I have only to add that, in the present edition of'Desperate Remedies,' some Wessex towns and other places that are commonto the scenes of several of these stories have been called for thefirst time by the names under which they appear elsewhere, for thesatisfaction of any reader who may care for consistency in such matters.

  This is the only material change; for, as it happened that certaincharacteristics which provoked most discussion in my latest story werepresent in this my first--published in 1871, when there was no Frenchname for them it has seemed best to let them stand unaltered.

  T.H. February 1896.

  I. THE EVENTS OF THIRTY YEARS

  1. DECEMBER AND JANUARY, 1835-36

  In the long and intricately inwrought chain of circumstance whichrenders worthy of record some experiences of Cytherea Graye, EdwardSpringrove, and others, the first event directly influencing the issuewas a Christmas visit.

  In the above-mentioned year, 1835, Ambrose Graye, a young architect whohad just begun the practice of his profession in the midland town ofHocbridge, to the north of Christminster, went to London to spend theChristmas holidays with a friend who lived in Bloomsbury. They hadgone up to Cambridge in the same year, and, after graduating together,Huntway, the friend, had taken orders.

  Graye was handsome, frank, and gentle. He had a quality of thoughtwhich, exercised on homeliness, was humour; on nature, picturesqueness;on abstractions, poetry. Being, as a rule, broadcast, it was all three.

  Of the wickedness of the world he was too forgetful. To discover evil ina new friend is to most people only an additional experience: to him itwas ever a surprise.

  While in London he became acquainted with a retired officer in theNavy named Bradleigh, who, with his wife and their daughter, lived ina street not far from Russell Square. Though they were in no more thancomfortable circumstances, the captain's wife came of an ancient familywhose genealogical tree was interlaced with some of the most illustriousand well-known in the kingdom.

  The young lady, their daughter, seemed to Graye by far the mostbeautiful and queenly being he had ever beheld. She was about nineteenor twenty, and her name was Cytherea. In truth she was not so veryunlike country girls of that type of beauty, except in one respect.She was perfect in her manner and bearing, and they were not. A meredistinguishing peculiarity, by catching the eye, is often read asthe pervading characteristic, and she appeared to him no less thanperfection throughout--transcending her rural rivals in very nature.Graye did a thing the blissfulness of which was only eclipsed by itshazardousness. He loved her at first sight.

  His introductions had led him into contact with Cytherea and her parentstwo or three times on the first week of his arrival in London, andaccident and a lover's contrivance brought them together as frequentlythe week following. The parents liked young Graye, and having fewfriends (for their equals in blood were their superiors in position), hewas received on very generous terms. His passion for Cytherea grew notonly strong, but ineffably exalted: she, without positively encouraginghim, tacitly assented to his schemes for being near her. Her father andmother seemed to have lost all confidence in nobility of birth, withoutmoney to give effect to its presence, and looked upon the buddingconsequence of the young people's reciprocal glances with placidity, ifnot actual favour.

  Graye's whole impassioned dream terminated in a sad and unaccountableepisode. After passing through three weeks of sweet experience, he hadarrived at the last stage--a kind of moral Gaza--before plunging into anemotional desert. The second week in January had come round, and it wasnecessary for the young architect to leave town.

  Throughout his acquaintanceship with the lady of his heart there hadbeen this marked peculiarity in her love: she had delighted in hispresence as a sweetheart should do, yet from first to last she hadrepressed all recognition of the true nature of the thread whichdrew them together, blinding herself to its meaning and only naturaltendency, and appearing to dread his announcement of them. The presentseemed enough for her without cumulative hope: usually, even if love isin itself an end, it must be regarded as a beginning to be enjoyed.

  In spite of evasions as an obstacle, and in consequence of them as aspur, he would put the matter off no longer. It was evening. He tookher into a little conservatory on the landing, and there among theevergreens, by the light of a few tiny lamps, infinitely enhancing thefreshness and beauty of the leaves, he made the declaration of a love asfresh and beautiful as they.

  'My love--my darling, be my wife!'

  She seemed like one just awakened. 'Ah--we must part now!' she faltered,in a voice of anguish. 'I will write to you.' She loosened her hand andrushed away.

  In a wild fever Graye went home and watched for the next morning. Whoshall express his misery and wonder when a note containing these wordswas put into his hand?

  'Good-bye; good-bye for ever. As recognized lovers something divides useternally. Forgive me--I should have told you before; but your love wassweet! Never mention me.'

  That very day, and as it seemed, to put an end to a painful condition ofthings, daughter and parents left London to pay off a promised visit toa relative in a western county. No message or letter of entreaty couldwring from her any explanation. She begged him not to follow her, andthe most bewildering point was that her father and mother appeared, fromthe tone of a letter Graye received from them, as vexed and sad as heat this sudden renunciation. One thing was plain: without admitting herreason as valid, they knew what that reason was, and did not intend toreveal it.

  A week from that day Ambrose Graye left his friend Huntway's houseand saw no more of the Love he mourned. From time to time his friendanswered any inquiry Graye made by letter respecting her. But very poorfood to a lover is intelligence of a mistress filtered through a friend.Huntway could tell nothing definitely. He said he believed there hadbeen some prior flirtation between Cytherea and her cousin, an officerof the line, two or three years before Graye met her, which had suddenlybeen terminated by the cousin's departure for India, and the younglady's travelling on the Continent with her parents the whole of theensuing summer, on account of delicate health. Eventually Huntway saidthat circumstances had rendered Graye's attachment more hopeless still.Cytherea's mother had unexpectedly inherited a large fortu
ne and estatesin the west of England by the rapid fall of some intervening lives. Thishad caused their removal from the small house in Bloomsbury, and, as itappeared, a renunciation of their old friends in that quarter.

  Young Graye concluded that his Cytherea had forgotten him and his love.But he could not forget her.

  2. FROM 1843 TO 1861

  Eight years later, feeling lonely and depressed--a man withoutrelatives, with many acquaintances but no friends--Ambrose Graye meta young lady of a different kind, fairly endowed with money and goodgifts. As to caring very deeply for another woman after the loss ofCytherea, it was an absolute impossibility with him. With all, thebeautiful things of the earth become more dear as they elude pursuit;but with some natures utter elusion is the one special event which willmake a passing love permanent for ever.

  This second young lady and Graye were married. That he did not, firstor last, love his wife as he should have done, was known to all; butfew knew that his unmanageable heart could never be weaned from uselessrepining at the loss of its first idol.

  His character to some extent deteriorated, as emotional constitutionswill under the long sense of disappointment at having missed theirimagined destiny. And thus, though naturally of a gentle and pleasantdisposition, he grew to be not so tenderly regarded by his acquaintancesas it is the lot of some of those persons to be. The winning andsanguine receptivity of his early life developed by degrees a moodynervousness, and when not picturing prospects drawn from baseless hopehe was the victim of indescribable depression. The practical issue ofsuch a condition was improvidence, originally almost an unconsciousimprovidence, for every debt incurred had been mentally paid off with areligious exactness from the treasures of expectation before mentioned.But as years revolved, the same course was continued from the lack ofspirit sufficient for shifting out of an old groove when it has beenfound to lead to disaster.

  In the year 1861 his wife died, leaving him a widower with two children.The elder, a son named Owen, now just turned seventeen, was taken fromschool, and initiated as pupil to the profession of architect in hisfather's office. The remaining child was a daughter, and Owen's juniorby a year.

  Her christian name was Cytherea, and it is easy to guess why.

  3. OCTOBER THE TWELFTH, 1863

  We pass over two years in order to reach the next cardinal event ofthese persons' lives. The scene is still the Grayes' native town ofHocbridge, but as it appeared on a Monday afternoon in the month ofOctober.

  The weather was sunny and dry, but the ancient borough was to be seenwearing one of its least attractive aspects. First on account of thetime. It was that stagnant hour of the twenty-four when the practicalgarishness of Day, having escaped from the fresh long shadows andenlivening newness of the morning, has not yet made any perceptibleadvance towards acquiring those mellow and soothing tones which graceits decline. Next, it was that stage in the progress of the week whenbusiness--which, carried on under the gables of an old country place,is not devoid of a romantic sparkle--was well-nigh extinguished. Lastly,the town was intentionally bent upon being attractive by exhibitingto an influx of visitors the local talent for dramatic recitation, andprovincial towns trying to be lively are the dullest of dull things.

  Little towns are like little children in this respect, that theyinterest most when they are enacting native peculiarities unconsciousof beholders. Discovering themselves to be watched they attempt tobe entertaining by putting on an antic, and produce disagreeablecaricatures which spoil them.

  The weather-stained clock-face in the low church tower standing at theintersection of the three chief streets was expressing half-past twoto the Town Hall opposite, where the much talked-of reading fromShakespeare was about to begin. The doors were open, and those personswho had already assembled within the building were noticing the entranceof the new-comers--silently criticizing their dress--questioning thegenuineness of their teeth and hair--estimating their private means.

  Among these later ones came an exceptional young maiden who glowed amidthe dulness like a single bright-red poppy in a field of brown stubble.She wore an elegant dark jacket, lavender dress, hat with grey stringsand trimmings, and gloves of a colour to harmonize. She lightly walkedup the side passage of the room, cast a slight glance around, andentered the seat pointed out to her.

  The young girl was Cytherea Graye; her age was now about eighteen.During her entry, and at various times whilst sitting in her seat andlistening to the reader on the platform, her personal appearance formedan interesting subject of study for several neighbouring eyes.

  Her face was exceedingly attractive, though artistically less perfectthan her figure, which approached unusually near to the standard offaultlessness. But even this feature of hers yielded the palm to thegracefulness of her movement, which was fascinating and delightful to anextreme degree.

  Indeed, motion was her speciality, whether shown on its most extendedscale of bodily progression, or minutely, as in the uplifting ofher eyelids, the bending of her fingers, the pouting of her lip. Thecarriage of her head--motion within motion--a glide upon a glide--wasas delicate as that of a magnetic needle. And this flexibility andelasticity had never been taught her by rule, nor even been acquired byobservation, but, nullo cultu, had naturally developed itself with heryears. In childhood, a stone or stalk in the way, which had been theinevitable occasion of a fall to her playmates, had usually left hersafe and upright on her feet after the narrowest escape by oscillationsand whirls for the preservation of her balance. At mixed Christmasparties, when she numbered but twelve or thirteen years, and washeartily despised on that account by lads who deemed themselves men, herapt lightness in the dance covered this incompleteness in her womanhood,and compelled the self-same youths in spite of resolutions to seize uponher childish figure as a partner whom they could not afford to contemn.And in later years, when the instincts of her sex had shown her thispoint as the best and rarest feature in her external self, she was notfound wanting in attention to the cultivation of finish in its details.

  Her hair rested gaily upon her shoulders in curls and was of a shiningcorn yellow in the high lights, deepening to a definite nut-brown aseach curl wound round into the shade. She had eyes of a sapphire hue,though rather darker than the gem ordinarily appears; they possessedthe affectionate and liquid sparkle of loyalty and good faith asdistinguishable from that harder brightness which seems to expressfaithfulness only to the object confronting them.

  But to attempt to gain a view of her--or indeed of any fascinatingwoman--from a measured category, is as difficult as to appreciate theeffect of a landscape by exploring it at night with a lantern--or of afull chord of music by piping the notes in succession. Nevertheless itmay readily be believed from the description here ventured, thatamong the many winning phases of her aspect, these were particularlystriking:--

  During pleasant doubt, when her eyes brightened stealthily and smiled (as eyes will smile) as distinctly as her lips, and in the space of a single instant expressed clearly the whole round of degrees of expectancy which lie over the wide expanse between Yea and Nay.

  During the telling of a secret, which was involuntarily accompanied by a sudden minute start, and ecstatic pressure of the listener's arm, side, or neck, as the position and degree of intimacy dictated.

  When anxiously regarding one who possessed her affections.

  She suddenly assumed the last-mentioned bearing in the progress of thepresent entertainment. Her glance was directed out of the window.

  Why the particulars of a young lady's presence at a very mediocreperformance were prevented from dropping into the oblivion which theirintrinsic insignificance would naturally have involved--why they wereremembered and individualized by herself and others through afteryears--was simply that she unknowingly stood, as it were, upon theextreme posterior edge of a tract in her life, in which the realmeaning of Taking Thought had never been known. It was the last hour ofexperience she ever enjoyed with a mind entirely free from a knowledgeof that
labyrinth into which she stepped immediately afterwards--tocontinue a perplexed course along its mazes for the greater portion oftwenty-nine subsequent months.

  The Town Hall, in which Cytherea sat, was a building of brown stone, andthrough one of the windows could be seen from the interior of the roomthe housetops and chimneys of the adjacent street, and also the upperpart of a neighbouring church spire, now in course of completion underthe superintendence of Miss Graye's father, the architect to the work.

  That the top of this spire should be visible from her position in theroom was a fact which Cytherea's idling eyes had discovered with someinterest, and she was now engaged in watching the scene that was beingenacted about its airy summit. Round the conical stonework rose a cageof scaffolding against the blue sky, and upon this stood five men--fourin clothes as white as the new erection close beneath their hands, thefifth in the ordinary dark suit of a gentleman.

  The four working-men in white were three masons and a mason's labourer.The fifth man was the architect, Mr. Graye. He had been givingdirections as it seemed, and retiring as far as the narrow footwayallowed, stood perfectly still.

  The picture thus presented to a spectator in the Town Hall was curiousand striking. It was an illuminated miniature, framed in by the darkmargin of the window, the keen-edged shadiness of which emphasized bycontrast the softness of the objects enclosed.

  The height of the spire was about one hundred and twenty feet, and thefive men engaged thereon seemed entirely removed from the sphere andexperiences of ordinary human beings. They appeared little largerthan pigeons, and made their tiny movements with a soft, spirit-likesilentness. One idea above all others was conveyed to the mind of aperson on the ground by their aspect, namely, concentration of purpose:that they were indifferent to--even unconscious of--the distracted worldbeneath them, and all that moved upon it. They never looked off thescaffolding.

  Then one of them turned; it was Mr. Graye. Again he stood motionless,with attention to the operations of the others. He appeared to be lostin reflection, and had directed his face towards a new stone they werelifting.

  'Why does he stand like that?' the young lady thought at length--up tothat moment as listless and careless as one of the ancient Tarentines,who, on such an afternoon as this, watched from the Theatre the entryinto their Harbour of a power that overturned the State.

  She moved herself uneasily. 'I wish he would come down,' she whispered,still gazing at the skybacked picture. 'It is so dangerous to beabsent-minded up there.'

  When she had done murmuring the words her father indecisively laid holdof one of the scaffold-poles, as if to test its strength, then let it goand stepped back. In stepping, his foot slipped. An instant of doublingforward and sideways, and he reeled off into the air, immediatelydisappearing downwards.

  His agonized daughter rose to her feet by a convulsive movement. Herlips parted, and she gasped for breath. She could utter no sound. One byone the people about her, unconscious of what had happened, turned theirheads, and inquiry and alarm became visible upon their faces at thesight of the poor child. A moment longer, and she fell to the floor.

  The next impression of which Cytherea had any consciousness was of beingcarried from a strange vehicle across the pavement to the steps of herown house by her brother and an older man. Recollection of what hadpassed evolved itself an instant later, and just as they entered thedoor--through which another and sadder burden had been carried but a fewinstants before--her eyes caught sight of the south-western sky, and,without heeding, saw white sunlight shining in shaft-like lines from arift in a slaty cloud. Emotions will attach themselves to scenes thatare simultaneous--however foreign in essence these scenes may be--aschemical waters will crystallize on twigs and wires. Even after thattime any mental agony brought less vividly to Cytherea's mind the scenefrom the Town Hall windows than sunlight streaming in shaft-like lines.

  4. OCTOBER THE NINETEENTH

  When death enters a house, an element of sadness and an element ofhorror accompany it. Sadness, from the death itself: horror, from theclouds of blackness we designedly labour to introduce.

  The funeral had taken place. Depressed, yet resolved in his demeanour,Owen Graye sat before his father's private escritoire, engagedin turning out and unfolding a heterogeneous collection ofpapers--forbidding and inharmonious to the eye at all times--most of allto one under the influence of a great grief. Laminae of white papertied with twine were indiscriminately intermixed with other white papersbounded by black edges--these with blue foolscap wrapped round withcrude red tape.

  The bulk of these letters, bills, and other documents were submittedto a careful examination, by which the appended particulars wereascertained:--

  First, that their father's income from professional sources had been very small, amounting to not more than half their expenditure; and that his own and his wife's property, upon which he had relied for the balance, had been sunk and lost in unwise loans to unscrupulous men, who had traded upon their father's too open-hearted trustfulness.

  Second, that finding his mistake, he had endeavoured to regain his standing by the illusory path of speculation. The most notable instance of this was the following. He had been induced, when at Plymouth in the autumn of the previous year, to venture all his spare capital on the bottomry security of an Italian brig which had put into the harbour in distress. The profit was to be considerable, so was the risk. There turned out to be no security whatever. The circumstances of the case tendered it the most unfortunate speculation that a man like himself--ignorant of all such matters--could possibly engage in. The vessel went down, and all Mr. Graye's money with it.

  Third, that these failures had left him burdened with debts he knew not how to meet; so that at the time of his death even the few pounds lying to his account at the bank were his only in name.

  Fourth, that the loss of his wife two years earlier had awakened him to a keen sense of his blindness, and of his duty by his children. He had then resolved to reinstate by unflagging zeal in the pursuit of his profession, and by no speculation, at least a portion of the little fortune he had let go.

  Cytherea was frequently at her brother's elbow during theseexaminations. She often remarked sadly--

  'Poor papa failed to fulfil his good intention for want of time, didn'the, Owen? And there was an excuse for his past, though he never wouldclaim it. I never forget that original disheartening blow, and how thatfrom it sprang all the ills of his life--everything connected with hisgloom, and the lassitude in business we used so often to see about him.'

  'I remember what he said once,' returned the brother, 'when I sat uplate with him. He said, "Owen, don't love too blindly: blindly youwill love if you love at all, but a little care is still possible toa well-disciplined heart. May that heart be yours as it was not mine,"father said. "Cultivate the art of renunciation." And I am going to,Cytherea.'

  'And once mamma said that an excellent woman was papa's ruin, because hedid not know the way to give her up when he had lost her. I wonder whereshe is now, Owen? We were told not to try to find out anything abouther. Papa never told us her name, did he?'

  'That was by her own request, I believe. But never mind her; she was notour mother.'

  The love affair which had been Ambrose Graye's disheartening blow wasprecisely of that nature which lads take little account of, but girlsponder in their hearts.

  5. FROM OCTOBER THE NINETEENTH TO JULY THE NINTH

  Thus Ambrose Graye's good intentions with regard to the reintegration ofhis property had scarcely taken tangible form when his sudden death putthem for ever out of his power.

  Heavy bills, showing the extent of his obligations, tumbled inimmediately upon the heels of the funeral from quarters previouslyunheard and unthought of. Thus pressed, a bill was filed in Chancery tohave the assets, such as they were, administered by the Court.

  'What will become of us now?' thought Owen continually.

  There is in us an unquenchable expectat
ion, which at the gloomiest timepersists in inferring that because we are _ourselves_, there must be aspecial future in store for us, though our nature and antecedents to theremotest particular have been common to thousands. Thus to Cytherea andOwen Graye the question how their lives would end seemed the deepest ofpossible enigmas. To others who knew their position equally well withthemselves the question was the easiest that could be asked--'Like thoseof other people similarly circumstanced.'

  Then Owen held a consultation with his sister to come to some decisionon their future course, and a month was passed in waiting for answers toletters, and in the examination of schemes more or less futile. Suddenhopes that were rainbows to the sight proved but mists to the touch.In the meantime, unpleasant remarks, disguise them as some well-meaningpeople might, were floating around them every day. The undoubtedtruth, that they were the children of a dreamer who let slip away everyfarthing of his money and ran into debt with his neighbours--that thedaughter had been brought up to no profession--that the son who had, hadmade no progress in it, and might come to the dogs--could not from thenature of things be wrapped up in silence in order that it might nothurt their feelings; and as a matter of fact, it greeted their ears insome form or other wherever they went. Their few acquaintances passedthem hurriedly. Ancient pot-wallopers, and thriving shopkeepers, intheir intervals of leisure, stood at their shop-doors--their toeshanging over the edge of the step, and their obese waists hanging overtheir toes--and in discourses with friends on the pavement, formulatedthe course of the improvident, and reduced the children's prospects to ashadow-like attenuation. The sons of these men (who wore breastpins ofa sarcastic kind, and smoked humorous pipes) stared at Cytherea with astare unmitigated by any of the respect that had formerly softened it.

  Now it is a noticeable fact that we do not much mind what men think ofus, or what humiliating secret they discover of our means, parentage, orobject, provided that each thinks and acts thereupon in isolation. It isthe exchange of ideas about us that we dread most; and the possessionby a hundred acquaintances, severally insulated, of the knowledge of ourskeleton-closet's whereabouts, is not so distressing to the nerves as achat over it by a party of half-a-dozen--exclusive depositaries thoughthese may be.

  Perhaps, though Hocbridge watched and whispered, its animus would havebeen little more than a trifle to persons in thriving circumstances. Butunfortunately, poverty, whilst it is new, and before the skin hashad time to thicken, makes people susceptible inversely to theiropportunities for shielding themselves. In Owen was found, in place ofhis father's impressibility, a larger share of his father's pride, and asquareness of idea which, if coupled with a little more blindness, wouldhave amounted to positive prejudice. To him humanity, so far as he hadthought of it at all, was rather divided into distinct classes thanblended from extreme to extreme. Hence by a sequence of ideas whichmight be traced if it were worth while, he either detested or respectedopinion, and instinctively sought to escape a cold shade that meresensitiveness would have endured. He could have submitted to separation,sickness, exile, drudgery, hunger and thirst, with stoical indifference,but superciliousness was too incisive.

  After living on for nine months in attempts to make an income as hisfather's successor in the profession--attempts which were utterlyfruitless by reason of his inexperience--Graye came to a simple andsweeping resolution. They would privately leave that part of England,drop from the sight of acquaintances, gossips, harsh critics, and bittercreditors of whose misfortune he was not the cause, and escape theposition which galled him by the only road their great poverty left opento them--that of his obtaining some employment in a distant place byfollowing his profession as a humble under-draughtsman.

  He thought over his capabilities with the sensations of a soldiergrinding his sword at the opening of a campaign. What with lack ofemployment, owing to the decrease of his late father's practice, and theabsence of direct and uncompromising pressure towards monetary resultsfrom a pupil's labour (which seems to be always the case when aprofessional man's pupil is also his son), Owen's progress in the artand science of architecture had been very insignificant indeed. Thoughanything but an idle young man, he had hardly reached the age at whichindustrious men who lack an external whip to send them on in the world,are induced by their own common sense to whip on themselves. Hence hisknowledge of plans, elevations, sections, and specifications, was notgreater at the end of two years of probation than might easily havebeen acquired in six months by a youth of average ability--himself, forinstance--amid a bustling London practice.

  But at any rate he could make himself handy to one of theprofession--some man in a remote town--and there fulfil his indentures.A tangible inducement lay in this direction of survey. He had a slightconception of such a man--a Mr. Gradfield--who was in practice inBudmouth Regis, a seaport town and watering-place in the south ofEngland.

  After some doubts, Graye ventured to write to this gentleman, asking thenecessary question, shortly alluding to his father's death, and statingthat his term of apprenticeship had only half expired. He would be gladto complete his articles at a very low salary for the whole remainingtwo years, provided payment could begin at once.

  The answer from Mr. Gradfield stated that he was not in want of apupil who would serve the remainder of his time on the terms Mr. Grayementioned. But he would just add one remark. He chanced to be in want ofsome young man in his office--for a short time only, probably about twomonths--to trace drawings, and attend to other subsidiary work of thekind. If Mr. Graye did not object to occupy such an inferior position asthese duties would entail, and to accept weekly wages which to one withhis expectations would be considered merely nominal, the post would givehim an opportunity for learning a few more details of the profession.

  'It is a beginning, and, above all, an abiding-place, away from theshadow of the cloud which hangs over us here--I will go,' said Owen.

  Cytherea's plan for her future, an intensely simple one, owing to theeven greater narrowness of her resources, was already marked out. Oneadvantage had accrued to her through her mother's possession of a fairshare of personal property, and perhaps only one. She had been carefullyeducated. Upon this consideration her plan was based. She was to takeup her abode in her brother's lodging at Budmouth, when she wouldimmediately advertise for a situation as governess, having obtainedthe consent of a lawyer at Aldbrickham who was winding up her father'saffairs, and who knew the history of her position, to allow himself tobe referred to in the matter of her past life and respectability.

  Early one morning they departed from their native town, leaving behindthem scarcely a trace of their footsteps.

  Then the town pitied their want of wisdom in taking such a step.'Rashness; they would have made a better income in Hocbridge, where theyare known! There is no doubt that they would.'

  But what is Wisdom really? A steady handling of any means to bring aboutany end necessary to happiness.

  Yet whether one's end be the usual end--a wealthy position in life--orno, the name of wisdom is seldom applied but to the means to that usualend.