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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/482-0.txt b/482-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c66f5cc --- /dev/null +++ b/482-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15484 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Woodlanders, by Thomas Hardy + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: The Woodlanders + +Author: Thomas Hardy + +Release Date: April, 1996 [eBook #482] +[Most recently updated: February 4, 2021] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOODLANDERS *** + + + + +The Woodlanders + +by Thomas Hardy + + +Contents + + CHAPTER I. + CHAPTER II. + CHAPTER III. + CHAPTER IV. + CHAPTER V. + CHAPTER VI. + CHAPTER VII. + CHAPTER VIII. + CHAPTER IX. + CHAPTER X. + CHAPTER XI. + CHAPTER XII. + CHAPTER XIII. + CHAPTER XIV. + CHAPTER XV. + CHAPTER XVI. + CHAPTER XVII. + CHAPTER XVIII. + CHAPTER XIX. + CHAPTER XX. + CHAPTER XXI. + CHAPTER XXII. + CHAPTER XXIII. + CHAPTER XXIV. + CHAPTER XXV. + CHAPTER XXVI. + CHAPTER XXVII. + CHAPTER XXVIII. + CHAPTER XXIX. + CHAPTER XXX. + CHAPTER XXXI. + CHAPTER XXXII. + CHAPTER XXXIII. + CHAPTER XXXIV. + CHAPTER XXXV. + CHAPTER XXXVI. + CHAPTER XXXVII. + CHAPTER XXXVIII. + CHAPTER XXXIX. + CHAPTER XL. + CHAPTER XLI. + CHAPTER XLII. + CHAPTER XLIII. + CHAPTER XLIV. + CHAPTER XLV. + CHAPTER XLVI. + CHAPTER XLVII. + CHAPTER XLVIII. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should trace the +forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to +the south shore of England, would find himself during the latter half +of his journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands, +interspersed with apple-orchards. Here the trees, timber or +fruit-bearing, as the case may be, make the wayside hedges ragged by +their drip and shade, stretching over the road with easeful +horizontality, as if they found the unsubstantial air an adequate +support for their limbs. At one place, where a hill is crossed, the +largest of the woods shows itself bisected by the high-way, as the head +of thick hair is bisected by the white line of its parting. The spot is +lonely. + +The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree +that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like +stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of +what is with what might be probably accounts for this. To step, for +instance, at the place under notice, from the hedge of the plantation +into the adjoining pale thoroughfare, and pause amid its emptiness for +a moment, was to exchange by the act of a single stride the simple +absence of human companionship for an incubus of the forlorn. + +At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone winter’s day, there +stood a man who had entered upon the scene much in the aforesaid +manner. Alighting into the road from a stile hard by, he, though by no +means a “chosen vessel” for impressions, was temporarily influenced by +some such feeling of being suddenly more alone than before he had +emerged upon the highway. + +It could be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress that +he did not belong to the country proper; and from his air, after a +while, that though there might be a sombre beauty in the scenery, music +in the breeze, and a wan procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment +of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly puzzled about the way. The +dead men’s work that had been expended in climbing that hill, the +blistered soles that had trodden it, and the tears that had wetted it, +were not his concern; for fate had given him no time for any but +practical things. + +He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground with his +walking-stick. A closer glance at his face corroborated the testimony +of his clothes. It was self-complacent, yet there was small apparent +ground for such complacence. Nothing irradiated it; to the eye of the +magician in character, if not to the ordinary observer, the expression +enthroned there was absolute submission to and belief in a little +assortment of forms and habitudes. + +At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as he desired, or +seemed likely to appear that night. But presently a slight noise of +laboring wheels and the steady dig of a horse’s shoe-tips became +audible; and there loomed in the notch of the hill and plantation that +the road formed here at the summit a carrier’s van drawn by a single +horse. When it got nearer, he said, with some relief to himself, “’Tis +Mrs. Dollery’s—this will help me.” + +The vehicle was half full of passengers, mostly women. He held up his +stick at its approach, and the woman who was driving drew rein. + +“I’ve been trying to find a short way to Little Hintock this last +half-hour, Mrs. Dollery,” he said. “But though I’ve been to Great +Hintock and Hintock House half a dozen times I am at fault about the +small village. You can help me, I dare say?” + +She assured him that she could—that as she went to Great Hintock her +van passed near it—that it was only up the lane that branched out of +the lane into which she was about to turn—just ahead. “Though,” +continued Mrs. Dollery, “’tis such a little small place that, as a town +gentleman, you’d need have a candle and lantern to find it if ye don’t +know where ’tis. Bedad! I wouldn’t live there if they’d pay me to. Now +at Great Hintock you do see the world a bit.” + +He mounted and sat beside her, with his feet outside, where they were +ever and anon brushed over by the horse’s tail. + +This van, driven and owned by Mrs. Dollery, was rather a movable +attachment of the roadway than an extraneous object, to those who knew +it well. The old horse, whose hair was of the roughness and color of +heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and hoofs were distorted by +harness and drudgery from colthood—though if all had their rights, he +ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been picking the herbage of some +Eastern plain instead of tugging here—had trodden this road almost +daily for twenty years. Even his subjection was not made congruous +throughout, for the harness being too short, his tail was not drawn +through the crupper, so that the breeching slipped awkwardly to one +side. He knew every subtle incline of the seven or eight miles of +ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas—the market-town to which he +journeyed—as accurately as any surveyor could have learned it by a +Dumpy level. + +The vehicle had a square black tilt which nodded with the motion of the +wheels, and at a point in it over the driver’s head was a hook to which +the reins were hitched at times, when they formed a catenary curve from +the horse’s shoulders. Somewhere about the axles was a loose chain, +whose only known purpose was to clink as it went. Mrs. Dollery, having +to hop up and down many times in the service of her passengers, wore, +especially in windy weather, short leggings under her gown for +modesty’s sake, and instead of a bonnet a felt hat tied down with a +handkerchief, to guard against an earache to which she was frequently +subject. In the rear of the van was a glass window, which she cleaned +with her pocket-handkerchief every market-day before starting. Looking +at the van from the back, the spectator could thus see through its +interior a square piece of the same sky and landscape that he saw +without, but intruded on by the profiles of the seated passengers, who, +as they rumbled onward, their lips moving and heads nodding in animated +private converse, remained in happy unconsciousness that their +mannerisms and facial peculiarities were sharply defined to the public +eye. + +This hour of coming home from market was the happy one, if not the +happiest, of the week for them. Snugly ensconced under the tilt, they +could forget the sorrows of the world without, and survey life and +recapitulate the incidents of the day with placid smiles. + +The passengers in the back part formed a group to themselves, and while +the new-comer spoke to the proprietress, they indulged in a +confidential chat about him as about other people, which the noise of +the van rendered inaudible to himself and Mrs. Dollery, sitting +forward. + +“’Tis Barber Percombe—he that’s got the waxen woman in his window at +the top of Abbey Street,” said one. “What business can bring him from +his shop out here at this time and not a journeyman hair-cutter, but a +master-barber that’s left off his pole because ’tis not genteel!” + +They listened to his conversation, but Mr. Percombe, though he had +nodded and spoken genially, seemed indisposed to gratify the curiosity +which he had aroused; and the unrestrained flow of ideas which had +animated the inside of the van before his arrival was checked +thenceforward. + +Thus they rode on till they turned into a half-invisible little lane, +whence, as it reached the verge of an eminence, could be discerned in +the dusk, about half a mile to the right, gardens and orchards sunk in +a concave, and, as it were, snipped out of the woodland. From this +self-contained place rose in stealthy silence tall stems of smoke, +which the eye of imagination could trace downward to their root on +quiet hearth-stones festooned overhead with hams and flitches. It was +one of those sequestered spots outside the gates of the world where may +usually be found more meditation than action, and more passivity than +meditation; where reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results in +inferences wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less +than in other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean +are enacted in the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and +closely knit interdependence of the lives therein. + +This place was the Little Hintock of the master-barber’s search. The +coming night gradually obscured the smoke of the chimneys, but the +position of the sequestered little world could still be distinguished +by a few faint lights, winking more or less ineffectually through the +leafless boughs, and the undiscerned songsters they bore, in the form +of balls of feathers, at roost among them. + +Out of the lane followed by the van branched a yet smaller lane, at the +corner of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dollery’s van going on to the +larger village, whose superiority to the despised smaller one as an +exemplar of the world’s movements was not particularly apparent in its +means of approach. + +“A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, is in league +with the devil, lives in the place you be going to—not because there’s +anybody for’n to cure there, but because ’tis the middle of his +district.” + +The observation was flung at the barber by one of the women at parting, +as a last attempt to get at his errand that way. + +But he made no reply, and without further pause the pedestrian plunged +towards the umbrageous nook, and paced cautiously over the dead leaves +which nearly buried the road or street of the hamlet. As very few +people except themselves passed this way after dark, a majority of the +denizens of Little Hintock deemed window-curtains unnecessary; and on +this account Mr. Percombe made it his business to stop opposite the +casements of each cottage that he came to, with a demeanor which showed +that he was endeavoring to conjecture, from the persons and things he +observed within, the whereabouts of somebody or other who resided here. + +Only the smaller dwellings interested him; one or two houses, whose +size, antiquity, and rambling appurtenances signified that +notwithstanding their remoteness they must formerly have been, if they +were not still, inhabited by people of a certain social standing, being +neglected by him entirely. Smells of pomace, and the hiss of fermenting +cider, which reached him from the back quarters of other tenements, +revealed the recent occupation of some of the inhabitants, and joined +with the scent of decay from the perishing leaves underfoot. + +Half a dozen dwellings were passed without result. The next, which +stood opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance, +the flickering brightness from the inside shining up the chimney and +making a luminous mist of the emerging smoke. The interior, as seen +through the window, caused him to draw up with a terminative air and +watch. The house was rather large for a cottage, and the door, which +opened immediately into the living-room, stood ajar, so that a ribbon +of light fell through the opening into the dark atmosphere without. +Every now and then a moth, decrepit from the late season, would flit +for a moment across the out-coming rays and disappear again into the +night. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a girl +seated on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of the fire, +which was ample and of wood. With a bill-hook in one hand and a leather +glove, much too large for her, on the other, she was making spars, such +as are used by thatchers, with great rapidity. She wore a leather apron +for this purpose, which was also much too large for her figure. On her +left hand lay a bundle of the straight, smooth sticks called +spar-gads—the raw material of her manufacture; on her right, a heap of +chips and ends—the refuse—with which the fire was maintained; in front, +a pile of the finished articles. To produce them she took up each gad, +looked critically at it from end to end, cut it to length, split it +into four, and sharpened each of the quarters with dexterous blows, +which brought it to a triangular point precisely resembling that of a +bayonet. + +Beside her, in case she might require more light, a brass candlestick +stood on a little round table, curiously formed of an old coffin-stool, +with a deal top nailed on, the white surface of the latter contrasting +oddly with the black carved oak of the substructure. The social +position of the household in the past was almost as definitively shown +by the presence of this article as that of an esquire or nobleman by +his old helmets or shields. It had been customary for every well-to-do +villager, whose tenure was by copy of court-roll, or in any way more +permanent than that of the mere cotter, to keep a pair of these stools +for the use of his own dead; but for the last generation or two a +feeling of cui bono had led to the discontinuance of the custom, and +the stools were frequently made use of in the manner described. + +The young woman laid down the bill-hook for a moment and examined the +palm of her right hand, which, unlike the other, was ungloved, and +showed little hardness or roughness about it. The palm was red and +blistering, as if this present occupation were not frequent enough with +her to subdue it to what it worked in. As with so many right hands born +to manual labor, there was nothing in its fundamental shape to bear out +the physiological conventionalism that gradations of birth, gentle or +mean, show themselves primarily in the form of this member. Nothing but +a cast of the die of destiny had decided that the girl should handle +the tool; and the fingers which clasped the heavy ash haft might have +skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string, had they only been set +to do it in good time. + +Her face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by a +life of solitude. Where the eyes of a multitude beat like waves upon a +countenance they seem to wear away its individuality; but in the still +water of privacy every tentacle of feeling and sentiment shoots out in +visible luxuriance, to be interpreted as readily as a child’s look by +an intruder. In years she was no more than nineteen or twenty, but the +necessity of taking thought at a too early period of life had forced +the provisional curves of her childhood’s face to a premature finality. +Thus she had but little pretension to beauty, save in one prominent +particular—her hair. Its abundance made it almost unmanageable; its +color was, roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, brown, but +careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that its +true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation to chestnut. + +On this one bright gift of Time to the particular victim of his now +before us the new-comer’s eyes were fixed; meanwhile the fingers of his +right hand mechanically played over something sticking up from his +waistcoat-pocket—the bows of a pair of scissors, whose polish made them +feebly responsive to the light within. In her present beholder’s mind +the scene formed by the girlish spar-maker composed itself into a +post-Raffaelite picture of extremest quality, wherein the girl’s hair +alone, as the focus of observation, was depicted with intensity and +distinctness, and her face, shoulders, hands, and figure in general, +being a blurred mass of unimportant detail lost in haze and obscurity. + +He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and entered. The young +woman turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor, and +exclaiming, “Oh, Mr. Percombe, how you frightened me!” quite lost her +color for a moment. + +He replied, “You should shut your door—then you’d hear folk open it.” + +“I can’t,” she said; “the chimney smokes so. Mr. Percombe, you look as +unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge. Surely you +have not come out here on my account—for—” + +“Yes—to have your answer about this.” He touched her head with his +cane, and she winced. “Do you agree?” he continued. “It is necessary +that I should know at once, as the lady is soon going away, and it +takes time to make up.” + +“Don’t press me—it worries me. I was in hopes you had thought no more +of it. I can _not_ part with it—so there!” + +“Now, look here, Marty,” said the barber, sitting down on the +coffin-stool table. “How much do you get for making these spars?” + +“Hush—father’s up-stairs awake, and he don’t know that I am doing his +work.” + +“Well, now tell me,” said the man, more softly. “How much do you get?” + +“Eighteenpence a thousand,” she said, reluctantly. + +“Who are you making them for?” + +“Mr. Melbury, the timber-dealer, just below here.” + +“And how many can you make in a day?” + +“In a day and half the night, three bundles—that’s a thousand and a +half.” + +“Two and threepence.” The barber paused. “Well, look here,” he +continued, with the remains of a calculation in his tone, which +calculation had been the reduction to figures of the probable monetary +magnetism necessary to overpower the resistant force of her present +purse and the woman’s love of comeliness, “here’s a sovereign—a gold +sovereign, almost new.” He held it out between his finger and thumb. +“That’s as much as you’d earn in a week and a half at that rough man’s +work, and it’s yours for just letting me snip off what you’ve got too +much of.” + +The girl’s bosom moved a very little. “Why can’t the lady send to some +other girl who don’t value her hair—not to me?” she exclaimed. + +“Why, simpleton, because yours is the exact shade of her own, and ’tis +a shade you can’t match by dyeing. But you are not going to refuse me +now I’ve come all the way from Sherton o’ purpose?” + +“I say I won’t sell it—to you or anybody.” + +“Now listen,” and he drew up a little closer beside her. “The lady is +very rich, and won’t be particular to a few shillings; so I will +advance to this on my own responsibility—I’ll make the one sovereign +two, rather than go back empty-handed.” + +“No, no, no!” she cried, beginning to be much agitated. “You are +a-tempting me, Mr. Percombe. You go on like the Devil to Dr. Faustus in +the penny book. But I don’t want your money, and won’t agree. Why did +you come? I said when you got me into your shop and urged me so much, +that I didn’t mean to sell my hair!” The speaker was hot and stern. + +“Marty, now hearken. The lady that wants it wants it badly. And, +between you and me, you’d better let her have it. ’Twill be bad for you +if you don’t.” + +“Bad for me? Who is she, then?” + +The barber held his tongue, and the girl repeated the question. + +“I am not at liberty to tell you. And as she is going abroad soon it +makes no difference who she is at all.” + +“She wants it to go abroad wi’?” + +Percombe assented by a nod. The girl regarded him reflectively. “Barber +Percombe,” she said, “I know who ’tis. ’Tis she at the House—Mrs. +Charmond!” + +“That’s my secret. However, if you agree to let me have it, I’ll tell +you in confidence.” + +“I’ll certainly not let you have it unless you tell me the truth. It is +Mrs. Charmond.” + +The barber dropped his voice. “Well—it is. You sat in front of her in +church the other day, and she noticed how exactly your hair matched her +own. Ever since then she’s been hankering for it, and at last decided +to get it. As she won’t wear it till she goes off abroad, she knows +nobody will recognize the change. I’m commissioned to get it for her, +and then it is to be made up. I shouldn’t have vamped all these miles +for any less important employer. Now, mind—’tis as much as my business +with her is worth if it should be known that I’ve let out her name; but +honor between us two, Marty, and you’ll say nothing that would injure +me?” + +“I don’t wish to tell upon her,” said Marty, coolly. “But my hair is my +own, and I’m going to keep it.” + +“Now, that’s not fair, after what I’ve told you,” said the nettled +barber. “You see, Marty, as you are in the same parish, and in one of +her cottages, and your father is ill, and wouldn’t like to turn out, it +would be as well to oblige her. I say that as a friend. But I won’t +press you to make up your mind to-night. You’ll be coming to market +to-morrow, I dare say, and you can call then. If you think it over +you’ll be inclined to bring what I want, I know.” + +“I’ve nothing more to say,” she answered. + +Her companion saw from her manner that it was useless to urge her +further by speech. “As you are a trusty young woman,” he said, “I’ll +put these sovereigns up here for ornament, that you may see how +handsome they are. Bring the hair to-morrow, or return the sovereigns.” +He stuck them edgewise into the frame of a small mantle looking-glass. +“I hope you’ll bring it, for your sake and mine. I should have thought +she could have suited herself elsewhere; but as it’s her fancy it must +be indulged if possible. If you cut it off yourself, mind how you do it +so as to keep all the locks one way.” He showed her how this was to be +done. + +“But I sha’nt,” she replied, with laconic indifference. “I value my +looks too much to spoil ’em. She wants my hair to get another lover +with; though if stories are true she’s broke the heart of many a noble +gentleman already.” + +“Lord, it’s wonderful how you guess things, Marty,” said the barber. +“I’ve had it from them that know that there certainly is some foreign +gentleman in her eye. However, mind what I ask.” + +“She’s not going to get him through me.” + +Percombe had retired as far as the door; he came back, planted his cane +on the coffin-stool, and looked her in the face. “Marty South,” he +said, with deliberate emphasis, “_you’ve got a lover yourself_, and +that’s why you won’t let it go!” + +She reddened so intensely as to pass the mild blush that suffices to +heighten beauty; she put the yellow leather glove on one hand, took up +the hook with the other, and sat down doggedly to her work without +turning her face to him again. He regarded her head for a moment, went +to the door, and with one look back at her, departed on his way +homeward. + +Marty pursued her occupation for a few minutes, then suddenly laying +down the bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the back of the room, +where she opened a door which disclosed a staircase so whitely scrubbed +that the grain of the wood was wellnigh sodden away by such cleansing. +At the top she gently approached a bedroom, and without entering, said, +“Father, do you want anything?” + +A weak voice inside answered in the negative; adding, “I should be all +right by to-morrow if it were not for the tree!” + +“The tree again—always the tree! Oh, father, don’t worry so about that. +You know it can do you no harm.” + +“Who have ye had talking to ye down-stairs?” + +“A Sherton man called—nothing to trouble about,” she said, soothingly. +“Father,” she went on, “can Mrs. Charmond turn us out of our house if +she’s minded to?” + +“Turn us out? No. Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is turned +out of my body. ’Tis life-hold, like Ambrose Winterborne’s. But when my +life drops ’twill be hers—not till then.” His words on this subject so +far had been rational and firm enough. But now he lapsed into his +moaning strain: “And the tree will do it—that tree will soon be the +death of me.” + +“Nonsense, you know better. How can it be?” She refrained from further +speech, and descended to the ground-floor again. + +“Thank Heaven, then,” she said to herself, “what belongs to me I keep.” + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +The lights in the village went out, house after house, till there only +remained two in the darkness. One of these came from a residence on the +hill-side, of which there is nothing to say at present; the other shone +from the window of Marty South. Precisely the same outward effect was +produced here, however, by her rising when the clock struck ten and +hanging up a thick cloth curtain. The door it was necessary to keep +ajar in hers, as in most cottages, because of the smoke; but she +obviated the effect of the ribbon of light through the chink by hanging +a cloth over that also. She was one of those people who, if they have +to work harder than their neighbors, prefer to keep the necessity a +secret as far as possible; and but for the slight sounds of +wood-splintering which came from within, no wayfarer would have +perceived that here the cottager did not sleep as elsewhere. + +Eleven, twelve, one o’clock struck; the heap of spars grew higher, and +the pile of chips and ends more bulky. Even the light on the hill had +now been extinguished; but still she worked on. When the temperature of +the night without had fallen so low as to make her chilly, she opened a +large blue umbrella to ward off the draught from the door. The two +sovereigns confronted her from the looking-glass in such a manner as to +suggest a pair of jaundiced eyes on the watch for an opportunity. +Whenever she sighed for weariness she lifted her gaze towards them, but +withdrew it quickly, stroking her tresses with her fingers for a +moment, as if to assure herself that they were still secure. When the +clock struck three she arose and tied up the spars she had last made in +a bundle resembling those that lay against the wall. + +She wrapped round her a long red woollen cravat and opened the door. +The night in all its fulness met her flatly on the threshold, like the +very brink of an absolute void, or the antemundane Ginnung-Gap believed +in by her Teuton forefathers. For her eyes were fresh from the blaze, +and here there was no street-lamp or lantern to form a kindly +transition between the inner glare and the outer dark. A lingering wind +brought to her ear the creaking sound of two over-crowded branches in +the neighboring wood which were rubbing each other into wounds, and +other vocalized sorrows of the trees, together with the screech of +owls, and the fluttering tumble of some awkward wood-pigeon +ill-balanced on its roosting-bough. + +But the pupils of her young eyes soon expanded, and she could see well +enough for her purpose. Taking a bundle of spars under each arm, and +guided by the serrated line of tree-tops against the sky, she went some +hundred yards or more down the lane till she reached a long open shed, +carpeted around with the dead leaves that lay about everywhere. Night, +that strange personality, which within walls brings ominous +introspectiveness and self-distrust, but under the open sky banishes +such subjective anxieties as too trivial for thought, inspired Marty +South with a less perturbed and brisker manner now. She laid the spars +on the ground within the shed and returned for more, going to and fro +till her whole manufactured stock were deposited here. + +This erection was the wagon-house of the chief man of business +hereabout, Mr. George Melbury, the timber, bark, and copse-ware +merchant for whom Marty’s father did work of this sort by the piece. It +formed one of the many rambling out-houses which surrounded his +dwelling, an equally irregular block of building, whose immense +chimneys could just be discerned even now. The four huge wagons under +the shed were built on those ancient lines whose proportions have been +ousted by modern patterns, their shapes bulging and curving at the base +and ends like Trafalgar line-of-battle ships, with which venerable +hulks, indeed, these vehicles evidenced a constructed spirit curiously +in harmony. One was laden with sheep-cribs, another with hurdles, +another with ash poles, and the fourth, at the foot of which she had +placed her thatching-spars was half full of similar bundles. + +She was pausing a moment with that easeful sense of accomplishment +which follows work done that has been a hard struggle in the doing, +when she heard a woman’s voice on the other side of the hedge say, +anxiously, “George!” In a moment the name was repeated, with “Do come +indoors! What are you doing there?” + +The cart-house adjoined the garden, and before Marty had moved she saw +enter the latter from the timber-merchant’s back door an elderly woman +sheltering a candle with her hand, the light from which cast a moving +thorn-pattern of shade on Marty’s face. Its rays soon fell upon a man +whose clothes were roughly thrown on, standing in advance of the +speaker. He was a thin, slightly stooping figure, with a small nervous +mouth and a face cleanly shaven; and he walked along the path with his +eyes bent on the ground. In the pair Marty South recognized her +employer Melbury and his wife. She was the second Mrs. Melbury, the +first having died shortly after the birth of the timber-merchant’s only +child. + +“’Tis no use to stay in bed,” he said, as soon as she came up to where +he was pacing restlessly about. “I can’t sleep—I keep thinking of +things, and worrying about the girl, till I’m quite in a fever of +anxiety.” He went on to say that he could not think why “she (Marty +knew he was speaking of his daughter) did not answer his letter. She +must be ill—she must, certainly,” he said. + +“No, no. ’Tis all right, George,” said his wife; and she assured him +that such things always did appear so gloomy in the night-time, if +people allowed their minds to run on them; that when morning came it +was seen that such fears were nothing but shadows. “Grace is as well as +you or I,” she declared. + +But he persisted that she did not see all—that she did not see as much +as he. His daughter’s not writing was only one part of his worry. On +account of her he was anxious concerning money affairs, which he would +never alarm his mind about otherwise. The reason he gave was that, as +she had nobody to depend upon for a provision but himself, he wished +her, when he was gone, to be securely out of risk of poverty. + +To this Mrs. Melbury replied that Grace would be sure to marry well, +and that hence a hundred pounds more or less from him would not make +much difference. + +Her husband said that that was what she, Mrs. Melbury, naturally +thought; but there she was wrong, and in that lay the source of his +trouble. “I have a plan in my head about her,” he said; “and according +to my plan she won’t marry a rich man.” + +“A plan for her not to marry well?” said his wife, surprised. + +“Well, in one sense it is that,” replied Melbury. “It is a plan for her +to marry a particular person, and as he has not so much money as she +might expect, it might be called as you call it. I may not be able to +carry it out; and even if I do, it may not be a good thing for her. I +want her to marry Giles Winterborne.” + +His companion repeated the name. “Well, it is all right,” she said, +presently. “He adores the very ground she walks on; only he’s close, +and won’t show it much.” + +Marty South appeared startled, and could not tear herself away. + +Yes, the timber-merchant asserted, he knew that well enough. +Winterborne had been interested in his daughter for years; that was +what had led him into the notion of their union. And he knew that she +used to have no objection to him. But it was not any difficulty about +that which embarrassed him. It was that, since he had educated her so +well, and so long, and so far above the level of daughters thereabout, +it was _wasting her_ to give her to a man of no higher standing than +the young man in question. + +“That’s what I have been thinking,” said Mrs. Melbury. + +“Well, then, Lucy, now you’ve hit it,” answered the timber-merchant, +with feeling. “There lies my trouble. I vowed to let her marry him, and +to make her as valuable as I could to him by schooling her as many +years and as thoroughly as possible. I mean to keep my vow. I made it +because I did his father a terrible wrong; and it was a weight on my +conscience ever since that time till this scheme of making amends +occurred to me through seeing that Giles liked her.” + +“Wronged his father?” asked Mrs. Melbury. + +“Yes, grievously wronged him,” said her husband. + +“Well, don’t think of it to-night,” she urged. “Come indoors.” + +“No, no, the air cools my head. I shall not stay long.” He was silent a +while; then he told her, as nearly as Marty could gather, that his +first wife, his daughter Grace’s mother, was first the sweetheart of +Winterborne’s father, who loved her tenderly, till he, the speaker, won +her away from him by a trick, because he wanted to marry her himself. +He sadly went on to say that the other man’s happiness was ruined by +it; that though he married Winterborne’s mother, it was but a +half-hearted business with him. Melbury added that he was afterwards +very miserable at what he had done; but that as time went on, and the +children grew up, and seemed to be attached to each other, he +determined to do all he could to right the wrong by letting his +daughter marry the lad; not only that, but to give her the best +education he could afford, so as to make the gift as valuable a one as +it lay in his power to bestow. “I still mean to do it,” said Melbury. + +“Then do,” said she. + +“But all these things trouble me,” said he; “for I feel I am +sacrificing her for my own sin; and I think of her, and often come down +here and look at this.” + +“Look at what?” asked his wife. + +He took the candle from her hand, held it to the ground, and removed a +tile which lay in the garden-path. “’Tis the track of her shoe that she +made when she ran down here the day before she went away all those +months ago. I covered it up when she was gone; and when I come here and +look at it, I ask myself again, why should she be sacrificed to a poor +man?” + +“It is not altogether a sacrifice,” said the woman. “He is in love with +her, and he’s honest and upright. If she encourages him, what can you +wish for more?” + +“I wish for nothing definite. But there’s a lot of things possible for +her. Why, Mrs. Charmond is wanting some refined young lady, I hear, to +go abroad with her—as companion or something of the kind. She’d jump at +Grace.” + +“That’s all uncertain. Better stick to what’s sure.” + +“True, true,” said Melbury; “and I hope it will be for the best. Yes, +let me get ’em married up as soon as I can, so as to have it over and +done with.” He continued looking at the imprint, while he added, +“Suppose she should be dying, and never make a track on this path any +more?” + +“She’ll write soon, depend upon’t. Come, ’tis wrong to stay here and +brood so.” + +He admitted it, but said he could not help it. “Whether she write or +no, I shall fetch her in a few days.” And thus speaking, he covered the +track, and preceded his wife indoors. + +Melbury, perhaps, was an unlucky man in having within him the sentiment +which could indulge in this foolish fondness about the imprint of a +daughter’s footstep. Nature does not carry on her government with a +view to such feelings, and when advancing years render the open hearts +of those who possess them less dexterous than formerly in shutting +against the blast, they must suffer “buffeting at will by rain and +storm” no less than Little Celandines. + +But her own existence, and not Mr. Melbury’s, was the centre of Marty’s +consciousness, and it was in relation to this that the matter struck +her as she slowly withdrew. + +“That, then, is the secret of it all,” she said. “And Giles Winterborne +is not for me, and the less I think of him the better.” + +She returned to her cottage. The sovereigns were staring at her from +the looking-glass as she had left them. With a preoccupied countenance, +and with tears in her eyes, she got a pair of scissors, and began +mercilessly cutting off the long locks of her hair, arranging and tying +them with their points all one way, as the barber had directed. Upon +the pale scrubbed deal of the coffin-stool table they stretched like +waving and ropy weeds over the washed gravel-bed of a clear stream. + +She would not turn again to the little looking-glass, out of humanity +to herself, knowing what a deflowered visage would look back at her, +and almost break her heart; she dreaded it as much as did her own +ancestral goddess Sif the reflection in the pool after the rape of her +locks by Loke the malicious. She steadily stuck to business, wrapped +the hair in a parcel, and sealed it up, after which she raked out the +fire and went to bed, having first set up an alarum made of a candle +and piece of thread, with a stone attached. + +But such a reminder was unnecessary to-night. Having tossed till about +five o’clock, Marty heard the sparrows walking down their long holes in +the thatch above her sloping ceiling to their orifice at the eaves; +whereupon she also arose, and descended to the ground-floor again. + +It was still dark, but she began moving about the house in those +automatic initiatory acts and touches which represent among housewives +the installation of another day. While thus engaged she heard the +rumbling of Mr. Melbury’s wagons, and knew that there, too, the day’s +toil had begun. + +An armful of gads thrown on the still hot embers caused them to blaze +up cheerfully and bring her diminished head-gear into sudden prominence +as a shadow. At this a step approached the door. + +“Are folk astir here yet?” inquired a voice she knew well. + +“Yes, Mr. Winterborne,” said Marty, throwing on a tilt bonnet, which +completely hid the recent ravages of the scissors. “Come in!” + +The door was flung back, and there stepped in upon the mat a man not +particularly young for a lover, nor particularly mature for a person of +affairs. There was reserve in his glance, and restraint upon his mouth. +He carried a horn lantern which hung upon a swivel, and wheeling as it +dangled marked grotesque shapes upon the shadier part of the walls. + +He said that he had looked in on his way down, to tell her that they +did not expect her father to make up his contract if he was not well. +Mr. Melbury would give him another week, and they would go their +journey with a short load that day. + +“They are done,” said Marty, “and lying in the cart-house.” + +“Done!” he repeated. “Your father has not been too ill to work after +all, then?” + +She made some evasive reply. “I’ll show you where they be, if you are +going down,” she added. + +They went out and walked together, the pattern of the air-holes in the +top of the lantern being thrown upon the mist overhead, where they +appeared of giant size, as if reaching the tent-shaped sky. They had no +remarks to make to each other, and they uttered none. Hardly anything +could be more isolated or more self-contained than the lives of these +two walking here in the lonely antelucan hour, when gray shades, +material and mental, are so very gray. And yet, looked at in a certain +way, their lonely courses formed no detached design at all, but were +part of the pattern in the great web of human doings then weaving in +both hemispheres, from the White Sea to Cape Horn. + +The shed was reached, and she pointed out the spars. Winterborne +regarded them silently, then looked at her. + +“Now, Marty, I believe—” he said, and shook his head. + +“What?” + +“That you’ve done the work yourself.” + +“Don’t you tell anybody, will you, Mr. Winterborne?” she pleaded, by +way of answer. “Because I am afraid Mr. Melbury may refuse my work if +he knows it is mine.” + +“But how could you learn to do it? ’Tis a trade.” + +“Trade!” said she. “I’d be bound to learn it in two hours.” + +“Oh no, you wouldn’t, Mrs. Marty.” Winterborne held down his lantern, +and examined the cleanly split hazels as they lay. “Marty,” he said, +with dry admiration, “your father with his forty years of practice +never made a spar better than that. They are too good for the thatching +of houses—they are good enough for the furniture. But I won’t tell. Let +me look at your hands—your poor hands!” + +He had a kindly manner of a quietly severe tone; and when she seemed +reluctant to show her hands, he took hold of one and examined it as if +it were his own. Her fingers were blistered. + +“They’ll get harder in time,” she said. “For if father continues ill, I +shall have to go on wi’ it. Now I’ll help put ’em up in wagon.” + +Winterborne without speaking set down his lantern, lifted her as she +was about to stoop over the bundles, placed her behind him, and began +throwing up the bundles himself. “Rather than you should do it I will,” +he said. “But the men will be here directly. Why, Marty!—whatever has +happened to your head? Lord, it has shrunk to nothing—it looks an apple +upon a gate-post!” + +Her heart swelled, and she could not speak. At length she managed to +groan, looking on the ground, “I’ve made myself ugly—and hateful—that’s +what I’ve done!” + +“No, no,” he answered. “You’ve only cut your hair—I see now.” + +“Then why must you needs say that about apples and gate-posts?” + +“Let me see.” + +“No, no!” She ran off into the gloom of the sluggish dawn. He did not +attempt to follow her. When she reached her father’s door she stood on +the step and looked back. Mr. Melbury’s men had arrived, and were +loading up the spars, and their lanterns appeared from the distance at +which she stood to have wan circles round them, like eyes weary with +watching. She observed them for a few seconds as they set about +harnessing the horses, and then went indoors. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and +presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged like +a dead-born child. The villagers everywhere had already bestirred +themselves, rising at this time of the year at the far less dreary hour +of absolute darkness. It had been above an hour earlier, before a +single bird had untucked his head, that twenty lights were struck in as +many bedrooms, twenty pairs of shutters opened, and twenty pairs of +eyes stretched to the sky to forecast the weather for the day. + +Owls that had been catching mice in the out-houses, rabbits that had +been eating the wintergreens in the gardens, and stoats that had been +sucking the blood of the rabbits, discerning that their human neighbors +were on the move, discreetly withdrew from publicity, and were seen and +heard no more that day. + +The daylight revealed the whole of Mr. Melbury’s homestead, of which +the wagon-sheds had been an outlying erection. It formed three sides of +an open quadrangle, and consisted of all sorts of buildings, the +largest and central one being the dwelling itself. The fourth side of +the quadrangle was the public road. + +It was a dwelling-house of respectable, roomy, almost dignified aspect; +which, taken with the fact that there were the remains of other such +buildings thereabout, indicated that Little Hintock had at some time or +other been of greater importance than now, as its old name of Hintock +St. Osmond also testified. The house was of no marked antiquity, yet of +well-advanced age; older than a stale novelty, but no canonized +antique; faded, not hoary; looking at you from the still distinct +middle-distance of the early Georgian time, and awakening on that +account the instincts of reminiscence more decidedly than the remoter +and far grander memorials which have to speak from the misty reaches of +mediaevalism. The faces, dress, passions, gratitudes, and revenues of +the great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers who had been the first to +gaze from those rectangular windows, and had stood under that +key-stoned doorway, could be divined and measured by homely standards +of to-day. It was a house in whose reverberations queer old personal +tales were yet audible if properly listened for; and not, as with those +of the castle and cloister, silent beyond the possibility of echo. + +The garden-front remained much as it had always been, and there was a +porch and entrance that way. But the principal house-door opened on the +square yard or quadrangle towards the road, formerly a regular carriage +entrance, though the middle of the area was now made use of for +stacking timber, fagots, bundles, and other products of the wood. It +was divided from the lane by a lichen-coated wall, in which hung a pair +of gates, flanked by piers out of the perpendicular, with a round white +ball on the top of each. + +The building on the left of the enclosure was a long-backed erection, +now used for spar-making, sawing, crib-framing, and copse-ware +manufacture in general. Opposite were the wagon-sheds where Marty had +deposited her spars. + +Here Winterborne had remained after the girl’s abrupt departure, to see +that the wagon-loads were properly made up. Winterborne was connected +with the Melbury family in various ways. In addition to the sentimental +relationship which arose from his father having been the first Mrs. +Melbury’s lover, Winterborne’s aunt had married and emigrated with the +brother of the timber-merchant many years before—an alliance that was +sufficient to place Winterborne, though the poorer, on a footing of +social intimacy with the Melburys. As in most villages so secluded as +this, intermarriages were of Hapsburgian frequency among the +inhabitants, and there were hardly two houses in Little Hintock +unrelated by some matrimonial tie or other. + +For this reason a curious kind of partnership existed between Melbury +and the younger man—a partnership based upon an unwritten code, by +which each acted in the way he thought fair towards the other, on a +give-and-take principle. Melbury, with his timber and copse-ware +business, found that the weight of his labor came in winter and spring. +Winterborne was in the apple and cider trade, and his requirements in +cartage and other work came in the autumn of each year. Hence horses, +wagons, and in some degree men, were handed over to him when the apples +began to fall; he, in return, lending his assistance to Melbury in the +busiest wood-cutting season, as now. + +Before he had left the shed a boy came from the house to ask him to +remain till Mr. Melbury had seen him. Winterborne thereupon crossed +over to the spar-house where two or three men were already at work, two +of them being travelling spar-makers from White-hart Lane, who, when +this kind of work began, made their appearance regularly, and when it +was over disappeared in silence till the season came again. + +Firewood was the one thing abundant in Little Hintock; and a blaze of +gad-cuds made the outhouse gay with its light, which vied with that of +the day as yet. In the hollow shades of the roof could be seen dangling +etiolated arms of ivy which had crept through the joints of the tiles +and were groping in vain for some support, their leaves being dwarfed +and sickly for want of sunlight; others were pushing in with such force +at the eaves as to lift from their supports the shelves that were fixed +there. + +Besides the itinerant journey-workers there were also present John +Upjohn, engaged in the hollow-turnery trade, who lived hard by; old +Timothy Tangs and young Timothy Tangs, top and bottom sawyers, at work +in Mr. Melbury’s pit outside; Farmer Bawtree, who kept the cider-house, +and Robert Creedle, an old man who worked for Winterborne, and stood +warming his hands; these latter being enticed in by the ruddy blaze, +though they had no particular business there. None of them call for any +remark except, perhaps, Creedle. To have completely described him it +would have been necessary to write a military memoir, for he wore under +his smock-frock a cast-off soldier’s jacket that had seen hot service, +its collar showing just above the flap of the frock; also a hunting +memoir, to include the top-boots that he had picked up by chance; also +chronicles of voyaging and shipwreck, for his pocket-knife had been +given him by a weather-beaten sailor. But Creedle carried about with +him on his uneventful rounds these silent testimonies of war, sport, +and adventure, and thought nothing of their associations or their +stories. + +Copse-work, as it was called, being an occupation which the secondary +intelligence of the hands and arms could carry on without requiring the +sovereign attention of the head, the minds of its professors wandered +considerably from the objects before them; hence the tales, chronicles, +and ramifications of family history which were recounted here were of a +very exhaustive kind, and sometimes so interminable as to defy +description. + +Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not arrived, stepped back again +outside the door; and the conversation interrupted by his momentary +presence flowed anew, reaching his ears as an accompaniment to the +regular dripping of the fog from the plantation boughs around. + +The topic at present handled was a highly popular and frequent one—the +personal character of Mrs. Charmond, the owner of the surrounding woods +and groves. + +“My brother-in-law told me, and I have no reason to doubt it,” said +Creedle, “that she’d sit down to her dinner with a frock hardly higher +than her elbows. ‘Oh, you wicked woman!’ he said to himself when he +first see her, ‘you go to your church, and sit, and kneel, as if your +knee-jints were greased with very saint’s anointment, and tell off your +Hear-us-good-Lords like a business man counting money; and yet you can +eat your victuals such a figure as that!’ Whether she’s a reformed +character by this time I can’t say; but I don’t care who the man is, +that’s how she went on when my brother-in-law lived there.” + +“Did she do it in her husband’s time?” + +“That I don’t know—hardly, I should think, considering his temper. Ah!” +Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance into physical form by slowly +resigning his head to obliquity and letting his eyes water. “That man! +‘Not if the angels of heaven come down, Creedle,’ he said, ‘shall you +do another day’s work for me!’ Yes—he’d say anything—anything; and +would as soon take a winged creature’s name in vain as yours or mine! +Well, now I must get these spars home-along, and to-morrow, thank God, +I must see about using ’em.” + +An old woman now entered upon the scene. She was Mr. Melbury’s servant, +and passed a great part of her time in crossing the yard between the +house-door and the spar-shed, whither she had come now for fuel. She +had two facial aspects—one, of a soft and flexible kind, she used +indoors when assisting about the parlor or upstairs; the other, with +stiff lines and corners, when she was bustling among the men in the +spar-house or out-of-doors. + +“Ah, Grammer Oliver,” said John Upjohn, “it do do my heart good to see +a old woman like you so dapper and stirring, when I bear in mind that +after fifty one year counts as two did afore! But your smoke didn’t +rise this morning till twenty minutes past seven by my beater; and +that’s late, Grammer Oliver.” + +“If you was a full-sized man, John, people might take notice of your +scornful meanings. But your growing up was such a scrimped and scanty +business that really a woman couldn’t feel hurt if you were to spit +fire and brimstone itself at her. Here,” she added, holding out a +spar-gad to one of the workmen, from which dangled a long +black-pudding—“here’s something for thy breakfast, and if you want tea +you must fetch it from in-doors.” + +“Mr. Melbury is late this morning,” said the bottom-sawyer. + +“Yes. ’Twas a dark dawn,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Even when I opened the +door, so late as I was, you couldn’t have told poor men from gentlemen, +or John from a reasonable-sized object. And I don’t think maister’s +slept at all well to-night. He’s anxious about his daughter; and I know +what that is, for I’ve cried bucketfuls for my own.” + +When the old woman had gone Creedle said, + +“He’ll fret his gizzard green if he don’t soon hear from that maid of +his. Well, learning is better than houses and lands. But to keep a maid +at school till she is taller out of pattens than her mother was in +’em—’tis tempting Providence.” + +“It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl,” said young +Timothy Tangs. + +“I can mind her mother,” said the hollow-turner. “Always a teuny, +delicate piece; her touch upon your hand was as soft and cool as wind. +She was inoculated for the small-pox and had it beautifully fine, just +about the time that I was out of my apprenticeship—ay, and a long +apprenticeship ’twas. I served that master of mine six years and three +hundred and fourteen days.” + +The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, as if, considering +their number, they were a rather more remarkable fact than the years. + +“Mr. Winterborne’s father walked with her at one time,” said old +Timothy Tangs. “But Mr. Melbury won her. She was a child of a woman, +and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever she and her +husband came to a puddle in their walks together he’d take her up like +a half-penny doll and put her over without dirting her a speck. And if +he keeps the daughter so long at boarding-school, he’ll make her as +nesh as her mother was. But here he comes.” + +Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury crossing the court +from his door. He was carrying an open letter in his hand, and came +straight to Winterborne. His gloom of the preceding night had quite +gone. + +“I’d no sooner made up my mind, Giles, to go and see why Grace didn’t +come or write than I get a letter from her—‘Clifton: Wednesday. My dear +father,’ says she, ‘I’m coming home to-morrow’ (that’s to-day), ‘but I +didn’t think it worth while to write long beforehand.’ The little +rascal, and didn’t she! Now, Giles, as you are going to Sherton market +to-day with your apple-trees, why not join me and Grace there, and +we’ll drive home all together?” + +He made the proposal with cheerful energy; he was hardly the same man +as the man of the small dark hours. Ever it happens that even among the +moodiest the tendency to be cheered is stronger than the tendency to be +cast down; and a soul’s specific gravity stands permanently less than +that of the sea of troubles into which it is thrown. + +Winterborne, though not demonstrative, replied to this suggestion with +something like alacrity. There was not much doubt that Marty’s grounds +for cutting off her hair were substantial enough, if Ambrose’s eyes had +been a reason for keeping it on. As for the timber-merchant, it was +plain that his invitation had been given solely in pursuance of his +scheme for uniting the pair. He had made up his mind to the course as a +duty, and was strenuously bent upon following it out. + +Accompanied by Winterborne, he now turned towards the door of the +spar-house, when his footsteps were heard by the men as aforesaid. + +“Well, John, and Lot,” he said, nodding as he entered. “A rimy +morning.” + +“’Tis, sir!” said Creedle, energetically; for, not having as yet been +able to summon force sufficient to go away and begin work, he felt the +necessity of throwing some into his speech. “I don’t care who the man +is, ’tis the rimiest morning we’ve had this fall.” + +“I heard you wondering why I’ve kept my daughter so long at +boarding-school,” resumed Mr. Melbury, looking up from the letter which +he was reading anew by the fire, and turning to them with the +suddenness that was a trait in him. “Hey?” he asked, with affected +shrewdness. “But you did, you know. Well, now, though it is my own +business more than anybody else’s, I’ll tell ye. When I was a boy, +another boy—the pa’son’s son—along with a lot of others, asked me ‘Who +dragged Whom round the walls of What?’ and I said, ‘Sam Barrett, who +dragged his wife in a chair round the tower corner when she went to be +churched.’ They laughed at me with such torrents of scorn that I went +home ashamed, and couldn’t sleep for shame; and I cried that night till +my pillow was wet: till at last I thought to myself there and +then—‘They may laugh at me for my ignorance, but that was father’s +fault, and none o’ my making, and I must bear it. But they shall never +laugh at my children, if I have any: I’ll starve first!’ Thank God, +I’ve been able to keep her at school without sacrifice; and her +scholarship is such that she stayed on as governess for a time. Let ’em +laugh now if they can: Mrs. Charmond herself is not better informed +than my girl Grace.” + +There was something between high indifference and humble emotion in his +delivery, which made it difficult for them to reply. Winterborne’s +interest was of a kind which did not show itself in words; listening, +he stood by the fire, mechanically stirring the embers with a spar-gad. + +“You’ll be, then, ready, Giles?” Melbury continued, awaking from a +reverie. “Well, what was the latest news at Shottsford yesterday, Mr. +Bawtree?” + +“Well, Shottsford is Shottsford still—you can’t victual your carcass +there unless you’ve got money; and you can’t buy a cup of genuine +there, whether or no....But as the saying is, ‘Go abroad and you’ll +hear news of home.’ It seems that our new neighbor, this young Dr. +What’s-his-name, is a strange, deep, perusing gentleman; and there’s +good reason for supposing he has sold his soul to the wicked one.” + +“’Od name it all,” murmured the timber-merchant, unimpressed by the +news, but reminded of other things by the subject of it; “I’ve got to +meet a gentleman this very morning? and yet I’ve planned to go to +Sherton Abbas for the maid.” + +“I won’t praise the doctor’s wisdom till I hear what sort of bargain +he’s made,” said the top-sawyer. + +“’Tis only an old woman’s tale,” said Bawtree. “But it seems that he +wanted certain books on some mysterious science or black-art, and in +order that the people hereabout should not know anything about his dark +readings, he ordered ’em direct from London, and not from the Sherton +book-seller. The parcel was delivered by mistake at the pa’son’s, and +he wasn’t at home; so his wife opened it, and went into hysterics when +she read ’em, thinking her husband had turned heathen, and ’twould be +the ruin of the children. But when he came he said he knew no more +about ’em than she; and found they were this Mr. Fitzpier’s property. +So he wrote ‘Beware!’ outside, and sent ’em on by the sexton.” + +“He must be a curious young man,” mused the hollow-turner. + +“He must,” said Timothy Tangs. + +“Nonsense,” said Mr. Melbury, authoritatively, “he’s only a gentleman +fond of science and philosophy and poetry, and, in fact, every kind of +knowledge; and being lonely here, he passes his time in making such +matters his hobby.” + +“Well,” said old Timothy, “’tis a strange thing about doctors that the +worse they be the better they be. I mean that if you hear anything of +this sort about ’em, ten to one they can cure ye as nobody else can.” + +“True,” said Bawtree, emphatically. “And for my part I shall take my +custom from old Jones and go to this one directly I’ve anything the +matter with me. That last medicine old Jones gave me had no taste in it +at all.” + +Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed man, did not listen to these +recitals, being moreover preoccupied with the business appointment +which had come into his head. He walked up and down, looking on the +floor—his usual custom when undecided. That stiffness about the arm, +hip, and knee-joint which was apparent when he walked was the net +product of the divers sprains and over-exertions that had been required +of him in handling trees and timber when a young man, for he was of the +sort called self-made, and had worked hard. He knew the origin of every +one of these cramps: that in his left shoulder had come of carrying a +pollard, unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home; that in one leg was +caused by the crash of an elm against it when they were felling; that +in the other was from lifting a bole. On many a morrow after wearying +himself by these prodigious muscular efforts, he had risen from his bed +fresh as usual; his lassitude had departed, apparently forever; and +confident in the recuperative power of his youth, he had repeated the +strains anew. But treacherous Time had been only hiding ill results +when they could be guarded against, for greater accumulation when they +could not. In his declining years the store had been unfolded in the +form of rheumatisms, pricks, and spasms, in every one of which Melbury +recognized some act which, had its consequence been contemporaneously +made known, he would wisely have abstained from repeating. + +On a summons by Grammer Oliver to breakfast, he left the shed. Reaching +the kitchen, where the family breakfasted in winter to save +house-labor, he sat down by the fire, and looked a long time at the +pair of dancing shadows cast by each fire-iron and dog-knob on the +whitewashed chimney-corner—a yellow one from the window, and a blue one +from the fire. + +“I don’t quite know what to do to-day,” he said to his wife at last. +“I’ve recollected that I promised to meet Mrs. Charmond’s steward in +Round Wood at twelve o’clock, and yet I want to go for Grace.” + +“Why not let Giles fetch her by himself? ’Twill bring ’em together all +the quicker.” + +“I could do that—but I should like to go myself. I always have gone, +without fail, every time hitherto. It has been a great pleasure to +drive into Sherton, and wait and see her arrive; and perhaps she’ll be +disappointed if I stay away.” + +“You may be disappointed, but I don’t think she will, if you send +Giles,” said Mrs. Melbury, dryly. + +“Very well—I’ll send him.” + +Melbury was often persuaded by the quietude of his wife’s words when +strenuous argument would have had no effect. This second Mrs. Melbury +was a placid woman, who had been nurse to his child Grace before her +mother’s death. After that melancholy event little Grace had clung to +the nurse with much affection; and ultimately Melbury, in dread lest +the only woman who cared for the girl should be induced to leave her, +persuaded the mild Lucy to marry him. The arrangement—for it was little +more—had worked satisfactorily enough; Grace had thriven, and Melbury +had not repented. + +He returned to the spar-house and found Giles near at hand, to whom he +explained the change of plan. “As she won’t arrive till five o’clock, +you can get your business very well over in time to receive her,” said +Melbury. “The green gig will do for her; you’ll spin along quicker with +that, and won’t be late upon the road. Her boxes can be called for by +one of the wagons.” + +Winterborne, knowing nothing of the timber-merchant’s restitutory aims, +quietly thought all this to be a kindly chance. Wishing even more than +her father to despatch his apple-tree business in the market before +Grace’s arrival, he prepared to start at once. + +Melbury was careful that the turnout should be seemly. The gig-wheels, +for instance, were not always washed during winter-time before a +journey, the muddy roads rendering that labor useless; but they were +washed to-day. The harness was blacked, and when the rather elderly +white horse had been put in, and Winterborne was in his seat ready to +start, Mr. Melbury stepped out with a blacking-brush, and with his own +hands touched over the yellow hoofs of the animal. + +“You see, Giles,” he said, as he blacked, “coming from a fashionable +school, she might feel shocked at the homeliness of home; and ’tis +these little things that catch a dainty woman’s eye if they are +neglected. We, living here alone, don’t notice how the whitey-brown +creeps out of the earth over us; but she, fresh from a city—why, she’ll +notice everything!” + +“That she will,” said Giles. + +“And scorn us if we don’t mind.” + +“Not scorn us.” + +“No, no, no—that’s only words. She’s too good a girl to do that. But +when we consider what she knows, and what she has seen since she last +saw us, ’tis as well to meet her views as nearly as possible. Why, ’tis +a year since she was in this old place, owing to her going abroad in +the summer, which I agreed to, thinking it best for her; and naturally +we shall look small, just at first—I only say just at first.” + +Mr. Melbury’s tone evinced a certain exultation in the very sense of +that inferiority he affected to deplore; for this advanced and refined +being, was she not his own all the time? Not so Giles; he felt +doubtful—perhaps a trifle cynical—for that strand was wound into him +with the rest. He looked at his clothes with misgiving, then with +indifference. + +It was his custom during the planting season to carry a specimen +apple-tree to market with him as an advertisement of what he dealt in. +This had been tied across the gig; and as it would be left behind in +the town, it would cause no inconvenience to Miss Grace Melbury coming +home. + +He drove away, the twigs nodding with each step of the horse; and +Melbury went in-doors. Before the gig had passed out of sight, Mr. +Melbury reappeared and shouted after— + +“Here, Giles,” he said, breathlessly following with some wraps, “it may +be very chilly to-night, and she may want something extra about her. +And, Giles,” he added, when the young man, having taken the articles, +put the horse in motion once more, “tell her that I should have come +myself, but I had particular business with Mrs. Charmond’s agent, which +prevented me. Don’t forget.” + +He watched Winterborne out of sight, saying, with a jerk—a shape into +which emotion with him often resolved itself—“There, now, I hope the +two will bring it to a point and have done with it! ’Tis a pity to let +such a girl throw herself away upon him—a thousand pities!...And yet +’tis my duty for his father’s sake.” + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and +without discomposure. Had he regarded his inner self spectacularly, as +lovers are now daily more wont to do, he might have felt pride in the +discernment of a somewhat rare power in him—that of keeping not only +judgment but emotion suspended in difficult cases. But he noted it not. +Neither did he observe what was also the fact, that though he cherished +a true and warm feeling towards Grace Melbury, he was not altogether +her fool just now. It must be remembered that he had not seen her for a +year. + +Arrived at the entrance to a long flat lane, which had taken the spirit +out of many a pedestrian in times when, with the majority, to travel +meant to walk, he saw before him the trim figure of a young woman in +pattens, journeying with that steadfast concentration which means +purpose and not pleasure. He was soon near enough to see that she was +Marty South. Click, click, click went the pattens; and she did not turn +her head. + +She had, however, become aware before this that the driver of the +approaching gig was Giles. She had shrunk from being overtaken by him +thus; but as it was inevitable, she had braced herself up for his +inspection by closing her lips so as to make her mouth quite +unemotional, and by throwing an additional firmness into her tread. + +“Why do you wear pattens, Marty? The turnpike is clean enough, although +the lanes are muddy.” + +“They save my boots.” + +“But twelve miles in pattens—’twill twist your feet off. Come, get up +and ride with me.” + +She hesitated, removed her pattens, knocked the gravel out of them +against the wheel, and mounted in front of the nodding specimen +apple-tree. She had so arranged her bonnet with a full border and +trimmings that her lack of long hair did not much injure her +appearance; though Giles, of course, saw that it was gone, and may have +guessed her motive in parting with it, such sales, though infrequent, +being not unheard of in that locality. + +But nature’s adornment was still hard by—in fact, within two feet of +him, though he did not know it. In Marty’s basket was a brown paper +packet, and in the packet the chestnut locks, which, by reason of the +barber’s request for secrecy, she had not ventured to intrust to other +hands. + +Giles asked, with some hesitation, how her father was getting on. + +He was better, she said; he would be able to work in a day or two; he +would be quite well but for his craze about the tree falling on him. + +“You know why I don’t ask for him so often as I might, I suppose?” said +Winterborne. “Or don’t you know?” + +“I think I do.” + +“Because of the houses?” + +She nodded. + +“Yes. I am afraid it may seem that my anxiety is about those houses, +which I should lose by his death, more than about him. Marty, I do feel +anxious about the houses, since half my income depends upon them; but I +do likewise care for him; and it almost seems wrong that houses should +be leased for lives, so as to lead to such mixed feelings.” + +“After father’s death they will be Mrs. Charmond’s?” + +“They’ll be hers.” + +“They are going to keep company with my hair,” she thought. + +Thus talking, they reached the town. By no pressure would she ride up +the street with him. “That’s the right of another woman,” she said, +with playful malice, as she put on her pattens. “I wonder what you are +thinking of! Thank you for the lift in that handsome gig. Good-by.” + +He blushed a little, shook his head at her, and drove on ahead into the +streets—the churches, the abbey, and other buildings on this clear +bright morning having the liny distinctness of architectural drawings, +as if the original dream and vision of the conceiving master-mason, +some mediaeval Vilars or other unknown to fame, were for a few minutes +flashed down through the centuries to an unappreciative age. Giles saw +their eloquent look on this day of transparency, but could not construe +it. He turned into the inn-yard. + +Marty, following the same track, marched promptly to the +hair-dresser’s, Mr. Percombe’s. Percombe was the chief of his trade in +Sherton Abbas. He had the patronage of such county offshoots as had +been obliged to seek the shelter of small houses in that ancient town, +of the local clergy, and so on, for some of whom he had made wigs, +while others among them had compensated for neglecting him in their +lifetime by patronizing him when they were dead, and letting him shave +their corpses. On the strength of all this he had taken down his pole, +and called himself “Perruquier to the aristocracy.” + +Nevertheless, this sort of support did not quite fill his children’s +mouths, and they had to be filled. So, behind his house there was a +little yard, reached by a passage from the back street, and in that +yard was a pole, and under the pole a shop of quite another description +than the ornamental one in the front street. Here on Saturday nights +from seven till ten he took an almost innumerable succession of +twopences from the farm laborers who flocked thither in crowds from the +country. And thus he lived. + +Marty, of course, went to the front shop, and handed her packet to him +silently. “Thank you,” said the barber, quite joyfully. “I hardly +expected it after what you said last night.” + +She turned aside, while a tear welled up and stood in each eye at this +reminder. + +“Nothing of what I told you,” he whispered, there being others in the +shop. “But I can trust you, I see.” + +She had now reached the end of this distressing business, and went +listlessly along the street to attend to other errands. These occupied +her till four o’clock, at which time she recrossed the market-place. It +was impossible to avoid rediscovering Winterborne every time she passed +that way, for standing, as he always did at this season of the year, +with his specimen apple-tree in the midst, the boughs rose above the +heads of the crowd, and brought a delightful suggestion of orchards +among the crowded buildings there. When her eye fell upon him for the +last time he was standing somewhat apart, holding the tree like an +ensign, and looking on the ground instead of pushing his produce as he +ought to have been doing. He was, in fact, not a very successful seller +either of his trees or of his cider, his habit of speaking his mind, +when he spoke at all, militating against this branch of his business. + +While she regarded him he suddenly lifted his eyes in a direction away +from Marty, his face simultaneously kindling with recognition and +surprise. She followed his gaze, and saw walking across to him a +flexible young creature in whom she perceived the features of her she +had known as Miss Grace Melbury, but now looking glorified and refined +above her former level. Winterborne, being fixed to the spot by his +apple-tree, could not advance to meet her; he held out his spare hand +with his hat in it, and with some embarrassment beheld her coming on +tiptoe through the mud to the middle of the square where he stood. + +Miss Melbury’s arrival so early was, as Marty could see, unexpected by +Giles, which accounted for his not being ready to receive her. Indeed, +her father had named five o’clock as her probable time, for which +reason that hour had been looming out all the day in his forward +perspective, like an important edifice on a plain. Now here she was +come, he knew not how, and his arranged welcome stultified. + +His face became gloomy at her necessity for stepping into the road, and +more still at the little look of embarrassment which appeared on hers +at having to perform the meeting with him under an apple-tree ten feet +high in the middle of the market-place. Having had occasion to take off +the new gloves she had bought to come home in, she held out to him a +hand graduating from pink at the tips of the fingers to white at the +palm; and the reception formed a scene, with the tree over their heads, +which was not by any means an ordinary one in Sherton Abbas streets. + +Nevertheless, the greeting on her looks and lips was of a restrained +type, which perhaps was not unnatural. For true it was that Giles +Winterborne, well-attired and well-mannered as he was for a yeoman, +looked rough beside her. It had sometimes dimly occurred to him, in his +ruminating silence at Little Hintock, that external phenomena—such as +the lowness or height or color of a hat, the fold of a coat, the make +of a boot, or the chance attitude or occupation of a limb at the +instant of view—may have a great influence upon feminine opinion of a +man’s worth—so frequently founded on non-essentials; but a certain +causticity of mental tone towards himself and the world in general had +prevented to-day, as always, any enthusiastic action on the strength of +that reflection; and her momentary instinct of reserve at first sight +of him was the penalty he paid for his laxness. + +He gave away the tree to a by-stander, as soon as he could find one who +would accept the cumbersome gift, and the twain moved on towards the +inn at which he had put up. Marty made as if to step forward for the +pleasure of being recognized by Miss Melbury; but abruptly checking +herself, she glided behind a carrier’s van, saying, dryly, “No; I baint +wanted there,” and critically regarded Winterborne’s companion. + +It would have been very difficult to describe Grace Melbury with +precision, either now or at any time. Nay, from the highest point of +view, to precisely describe a human being, the focus of a universe—how +impossible! But, apart from transcendentalism, there never probably +lived a person who was in herself more completely a _reductio ad +absurdum_ of attempts to appraise a woman, even externally, by items of +face and figure. Speaking generally, it may be said that she was +sometimes beautiful, at other times not beautiful, according to the +state of her health and spirits. + +In simple corporeal presentment she was of a fair and clear complexion, +rather pale than pink, slim in build and elastic in movement. Her look +expressed a tendency to wait for others’ thoughts before uttering her +own; possibly also to wait for others’ deeds before her own doing. In +her small, delicate mouth, which had perhaps hardly settled down to its +matured curves, there was a gentleness that might hinder sufficient +self-assertion for her own good. She had well-formed eyebrows which, +had her portrait been painted, would probably have been done in Prout’s +or Vandyke brown. + +There was nothing remarkable in her dress just now, beyond a natural +fitness and a style that was recent for the streets of Sherton. But, +indeed, had it been the reverse, and quite striking, it would have +meant just as little. For there can be hardly anything less connected +with a woman’s personality than drapery which she has neither designed, +manufactured, cut, sewed, or even seen, except by a glance of approval +when told that such and such a shape and color must be had because it +has been decided by others as imperative at that particular time. + +What people, therefore, saw of her in a cursory view was very little; +in truth, mainly something that was not she. The woman herself was a +shadowy, conjectural creature who had little to do with the outlines +presented to Sherton eyes; a shape in the gloom, whose true description +could only be approximated by putting together a movement now and a +glance then, in that patient and long-continued attentiveness which +nothing but watchful loving-kindness ever troubles to give. + +There was a little delay in their setting out from the town, and Marty +South took advantage of it to hasten forward, with the view of escaping +them on the way, lest they should feel compelled to spoil their +_tête-à-tête_ by asking her to ride. She walked fast, and one-third of +the journey was done, and the evening rapidly darkening, before she +perceived any sign of them behind her. Then, while ascending a hill, +she dimly saw their vehicle drawing near the lowest part of the +incline, their heads slightly bent towards each other; drawn together, +no doubt, by their souls, as the heads of a pair of horses well in hand +are drawn in by the rein. She walked still faster. + +But between these and herself there was a carriage, apparently a +brougham, coming in the same direction, with lighted lamps. When it +overtook her—which was not soon, on account of her pace—the scene was +much darker, and the lights glared in her eyes sufficiently to hide the +details of the equipage. + +It occurred to Marty that she might take hold behind this carriage and +so keep along with it, to save herself the mortification of being +overtaken and picked up for pity’s sake by the coming pair. +Accordingly, as the carriage drew abreast of her in climbing the long +ascent, she walked close to the wheels, the rays of the nearest lamp +penetrating her very pores. She had only just dropped behind when the +carriage stopped, and to her surprise the coachman asked her, over his +shoulder, if she would ride. What made the question more surprising was +that it came in obedience to an order from the interior of the vehicle. + +Marty gladly assented, for she was weary, very weary, after working all +night and keeping afoot all day. She mounted beside the coachman, +wondering why this good-fortune had happened to her. He was rather a +great man in aspect, and she did not like to inquire of him for some +time. + +At last she said, “Who has been so kind as to ask me to ride?” + +“Mrs. Charmond,” replied her statuesque companion. + +Marty was stirred at the name, so closely connected with her last +night’s experiences. “Is this her carriage?” she whispered. + +“Yes; she’s inside.” + +Marty reflected, and perceived that Mrs. Charmond must have recognized +her plodding up the hill under the blaze of the lamp; recognized, +probably, her stubbly poll (since she had kept away her face), and +thought that those stubbles were the result of her own desire. + +Marty South was not so very far wrong. Inside the carriage a pair of +bright eyes looked from a ripely handsome face, and though behind those +bright eyes was a mind of unfathomed mysteries, beneath them there beat +a heart capable of quick extempore warmth—a heart which could, indeed, +be passionately and imprudently warm on certain occasions. At present, +after recognizing the girl, she had acted on a mere impulse, possibly +feeling gratified at the denuded appearance which signified the success +of her agent in obtaining what she had required. + +“’Tis wonderful that she should ask ye,” observed the magisterial +coachman, presently. “I have never known her do it before, for as a +rule she takes no interest in the village folk at all.” + +Marty said no more, but occasionally turned her head to see if she +could get a glimpse of the Olympian creature who as the coachman had +truly observed, hardly ever descended from her clouds into the Tempe of +the parishioners. But she could discern nothing of the lady. She also +looked for Miss Melbury and Winterborne. The nose of their horse +sometimes came quite near the back of Mrs. Charmond’s carriage. But +they never attempted to pass it till the latter conveyance turned +towards the park gate, when they sped by. Here the carriage drew up +that the gate might be opened, and in the momentary silence Marty heard +a gentle oral sound, soft as a breeze. + +“What’s that?” she whispered. + +“Mis’ess yawning.” + +“Why should she yawn?” + +“Oh, because she’s been used to such wonderfully good life, and finds +it dull here. She’ll soon be off again on account of it.” + +“So rich and so powerful, and yet to yawn!” the girl murmured. “Then +things don’t fay with she any more than with we!” + +Marty now alighted; the lamp again shone upon her, and as the carriage +rolled on, a soft voice said to her from the interior, “Good-night.” + +“Good-night, ma’am,” said Marty. But she had not been able to see the +woman who began so greatly to interest her—the second person of her own +sex who had operated strongly on her mind that day. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +Meanwhile, Winterborne and Grace Melbury had also undergone their +little experiences of the same homeward journey. + +As he drove off with her out of the town the glances of people fell +upon them, the younger thinking that Mr. Winterborne was in a pleasant +place, and wondering in what relation he stood towards her. Winterborne +himself was unconscious of this. Occupied solely with the idea of +having her in charge, he did not notice much with outward eye, neither +observing how she was dressed, nor the effect of the picture they +together composed in the landscape. + +Their conversation was in briefest phrase for some time, Grace being +somewhat disconcerted, through not having understood till they were +about to start that Giles was to be her sole conductor in place of her +father. When they were in the open country he spoke. + +“Don’t Brownley’s farm-buildings look strange to you, now they have +been moved bodily from the hollow where the old ones stood to the top +of the hill?” + +She admitted that they did, though she should not have seen any +difference in them if he had not pointed it out. + +“They had a good crop of bitter-sweets; they couldn’t grind them all” +(nodding towards an orchard where some heaps of apples had been left +lying ever since the ingathering). + +She said “Yes,” but looking at another orchard. + +“Why, you are looking at John-apple-trees! You know bitter-sweets—you +used to well enough!” + +“I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is getting too dark to +distinguish.” + +Winterborne did not continue. It seemed as if the knowledge and +interest which had formerly moved Grace’s mind had quite died away from +her. He wondered whether the special attributes of his image in the +past had evaporated like these other things. + +However that might be, the fact at present was merely this, that where +he was seeing John-apples and farm-buildings she was beholding a far +remoter scene—a scene no less innocent and simple, indeed, but much +contrasting—a broad lawn in the fashionable suburb of a fast city, the +evergreen leaves shining in the evening sun, amid which bounding girls, +gracefully clad in artistic arrangements of blue, brown, red, black, +and white, were playing at games, with laughter and chat, in all the +pride of life, the notes of piano and harp trembling in the air from +the open windows adjoining. Moreover, they were girls—and this was a +fact which Grace Melbury’s delicate femininity could not lose sight +of—whose parents Giles would have addressed with a deferential Sir or +Madam. Beside this visioned scene the homely farmsteads did not quite +hold their own from her present twenty-year point of survey. For all +his woodland sequestration, Giles knew the primitive simplicity of the +subject he had started, and now sounded a deeper note. + +“’Twas very odd what we said to each other years ago; I often think of +it. I mean our saying that if we still liked each other when you were +twenty and I twenty-five, we’d—” + +“It was child’s tattle.” + +“H’m!” said Giles, suddenly. + +“I mean we were young,” said she, more considerately. That gruff manner +of his in making inquiries reminded her that he was unaltered in much. + +“Yes....I beg your pardon, Miss Melbury; your father _sent_ me to meet +you to-day.” + +“I know it, and I am glad of it.” + +He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: “At that time you were +sitting beside me at the back of your father’s covered car, when we +were coming home from gypsying, all the party being squeezed in +together as tight as sheep in an auction-pen. It got darker and darker, +and I said—I forget the exact words—but I put my arm round your waist +and there you let it stay till your father, sitting in front suddenly +stopped telling his story to Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe. The +flash shone into the car, and showed us all up distinctly; my arm flew +from your waist like lightning; yet not so quickly but that some of ’em +had seen, and laughed at us. Yet your father, to our amazement, instead +of being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed quite pleased. Have you +forgot all that, or haven’t you?” + +She owned that she remembered it very well, now that he mentioned the +circumstances. “But, goodness! I must have been in short frocks,” she +said. + +“Come now, Miss Melbury, that won’t do! Short frocks, indeed! You know +better, as well as I.” + +Grace thereupon declared that she would not argue with an old friend +she valued so highly as she valued him, saying the words with the easy +elusiveness that will be polite at all costs. It might possibly be +true, she added, that she was getting on in girlhood when that event +took place; but if it were so, then she was virtually no less than an +old woman now, so far did the time seem removed from her present. “Do +you ever look at things philosophically instead of personally?” she +asked. + +“I can’t say that I do,” answered Giles, his eyes lingering far ahead +upon a dark spot, which proved to be a brougham. + +“I think you may, sometimes, with advantage,” said she. “Look at +yourself as a pitcher drifting on the stream with other pitchers, and +consider what contrivances are most desirable for avoiding cracks in +general, and not only for saving your poor one. Shall I tell you all +about Bath or Cheltenham, or places on the Continent that I visited +last summer?” + +“With all my heart.” + +She then described places and persons in such terms as might have been +used for that purpose by any woman to any man within the four seas, so +entirely absent from that description was everything specially +appertaining to her own existence. When she had done she said, gayly, +“Now do you tell me in return what has happened in Hintock since I have +been away.” + +“Anything to keep the conversation away from her and me,” said Giles +within him. + +It was true cultivation had so far advanced in the soil of Miss +Melbury’s mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of that +she knew well, and had the greatest interest in developing—that is to +say, herself. + +He had not proceeded far with his somewhat bald narration when they +drew near the carriage that had been preceding them for some time. Miss +Melbury inquired if he knew whose carriage it was. + +Winterborne, although he had seen it, had not taken it into account. On +examination, he said it was Mrs. Charmond’s. + +Grace watched the vehicle and its easy roll, and seemed to feel more +nearly akin to it than to the one she was in. + +“Pooh! We can polish off the mileage as well as they, come to that,” +said Winterborne, reading her mind; and rising to emulation at what it +bespoke, he whipped on the horse. This it was which had brought the +nose of Mr. Melbury’s old gray close to the back of Mrs. Charmond’s +much-eclipsing vehicle. + +“There’s Marty South sitting up with the coachman,” said he, discerning +her by her dress. + +“Ah, poor Marty! I must ask her to come to see me this very evening. +How does she happen to be riding there?” + +“I don’t know. It is very singular.” + +Thus these people with converging destinies went along the road +together, till Winterborne, leaving the track of the carriage, turned +into Little Hintock, where almost the first house was the +timber-merchant’s. Pencils of dancing light streamed out of the windows +sufficiently to show the white laurestinus flowers, and glance over the +polished leaves of laurel. The interior of the rooms could be seen +distinctly, warmed up by the fire-flames, which in the parlor were +reflected from the glass of the pictures and bookcase, and in the +kitchen from the utensils and ware. + +“Let us look at the dear place for a moment before we call them,” she +said. + +In the kitchen dinner was preparing; for though Melbury dined at one +o’clock at other times, to-day the meal had been kept back for Grace. A +rickety old spit was in motion, its end being fixed in the fire-dog, +and the whole kept going by means of a cord conveyed over pulleys along +the ceiling to a large stone suspended in a corner of the room. Old +Grammer Oliver came and wound it up with a rattle like that of a mill. + +In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury’s head fell on the wall and +ceiling; but before the girl had regarded this room many moments their +presence was discovered, and her father and stepmother came out to +welcome her. + +The character of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces some +shyness in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait frequent in +rural households, and one which stands in curiously inverse relation to +most of the peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people of +towns. Thus hiding their warmer feelings under commonplace talk all +round, Grace’s reception produced no extraordinary demonstrations. But +that more was felt than was enacted appeared from the fact that her +father, in taking her in-doors, quite forgot the presence of Giles +without, as did also Grace herself. He said nothing, but took the gig +round to the yard and called out from the spar-house the man who +particularly attended to these matters when there was no conversation +to draw him off among the copse-workers inside. Winterborne then +returned to the door with the intention of entering the house. + +The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in +themselves. The fire was, as before, the only light, and it irradiated +Grace’s face and hands so as to make them look wondrously smooth and +fair beside those of the two elders; shining also through the loose +hair about her temples as sunlight through a brake. Her father was +surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so much had she developed and +progressed in manner and stature since he last had set eyes on her. + +Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door, +mechanically tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters carved +in the jambs—initials of by-gone generations of householders who had +lived and died there. + +No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the family; +they had forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that he had +brought her home. Still, he was a little surprised that her father’s +eagerness to send him for Grace should have resulted in such an +anticlimax as this. + +He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking back +when he reached the turning, from which he could get a last glimpse of +the timber-merchant’s roof. He hazarded guesses as to what Grace was +saying just at that moment, and murmured, with some self-derision, +“nothing about me!” He looked also in the other direction, and saw +against the sky the thatched hip and solitary chimney of Marty’s +cottage, and thought of her too, struggling bravely along under that +humble shelter, among her spar-gads and pots and skimmers. + +At the timber-merchant’s, in the mean time, the conversation flowed; +and, as Giles Winterborne had rightly enough deemed, on subjects in +which he had no share. Among the excluding matters there was, for one, +the effect upon Mr. Melbury of the womanly mien and manners of his +daughter, which took him so much unawares that, though it did not make +him absolutely forget the existence of her conductor homeward, thrust +Giles’s image back into quite the obscurest cellarage of his brain. +Another was his interview with Mrs. Charmond’s agent that morning, at +which the lady herself had been present for a few minutes. Melbury had +purchased some standing timber from her a long time before, and now +that the date had come for felling it he was left to pursue almost his +own course. This was what the household were actually talking of during +Giles’s cogitation without; and Melbury’s satisfaction with the clear +atmosphere that had arisen between himself and the deity of the groves +which enclosed his residence was the cause of a counterbalancing +mistiness on the side towards Winterborne. + +“So thoroughly does she trust me,” said Melbury, “that I might fell, +top, or lop, on my own judgment, any stick o’ timber whatever in her +wood, and fix the price o’t, and settle the matter. But, name it all! I +wouldn’t do such a thing. However, it may be useful to have this good +understanding with her....I wish she took more interest in the place, +and stayed here all the year round.” + +“I am afraid ’tis not her regard for you, but her dislike of Hintock, +that makes her so easy about the trees,” said Mrs. Melbury. + +When dinner was over, Grace took a candle and began to ramble +pleasurably through the rooms of her old home, from which she had +latterly become wellnigh an alien. Each nook and each object revived a +memory, and simultaneously modified it. The chambers seemed lower than +they had appeared on any previous occasion of her return, the surfaces +of both walls and ceilings standing in such relations to the eye that +it could not avoid taking microscopic note of their irregularities and +old fashion. Her own bedroom wore at once a look more familiar than +when she had left it, and yet a face estranged. The world of little +things therein gazed at her in helpless stationariness, as though they +had tried and been unable to make any progress without her presence. +Over the place where her candle had been accustomed to stand, when she +had used to read in bed till the midnight hour, there was still the +brown spot of smoke. She did not know that her father had taken +especial care to keep it from being cleaned off. + +Having concluded her perambulation of this now uselessly commodious +edifice, Grace began to feel that she had come a long journey since the +morning; and when her father had been up himself, as well as his wife, +to see that her room was comfortable and the fire burning, she prepared +to retire for the night. No sooner, however, was she in bed than her +momentary sleepiness took itself off, and she wished she had stayed up +longer. She amused herself by listening to the old familiar noises that +she could hear to be still going on down-stairs, and by looking towards +the window as she lay. The blind had been drawn up, as she used to have +it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim tree-tops against +the sky on the neighboring hill. Beneath this meeting-line of light and +shade nothing was visible save one solitary point of light, which +blinked as the tree-twigs waved to and fro before its beams. From its +position it seemed to radiate from the window of a house on the +hill-side. The house had been empty when she was last at home, and she +wondered who inhabited the place now. + +Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, and she was +watching the light quite idly, when it gradually changed color, and at +length shone blue as sapphire. Thus it remained several minutes, and +then it passed through violet to red. + +Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she sat up +in bed, and stared steadily at the shine. An appearance of this sort, +sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less than a marvel in +Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet. Almost every diurnal and +nocturnal effect in that woodland place had hitherto been the direct +result of the regular terrestrial roll which produced the season’s +changes; but here was something dissociated from these normal +sequences, and foreign to local habit and knowledge. + +It was about this moment that Grace heard the household below preparing +to retire, the most emphatic noise in the proceeding being that of her +father bolting the doors. Then the stairs creaked, and her father and +mother passed her chamber. The last to come was Grammer Oliver. + +Grace slid out of bed, ran across the room, and lifting the latch, +said, “I am not asleep, Grammer. Come in and talk to me.” + +Before the old woman had entered, Grace was again under the bedclothes. +Grammer set down her candlestick, and seated herself on the edge of +Miss Melbury’s coverlet. + +“I want you to tell me what light that is I see on the hill-side,” said +Grace. + +Mrs. Oliver looked across. “Oh, that,” she said, “is from the doctor’s. +He’s often doing things of that sort. Perhaps you don’t know that we’ve +a doctor living here now—Mr. Fitzpiers by name?” + +Grace admitted that she had not heard of him. + +“Well, then, miss, he’s come here to get up a practice. I know him very +well, through going there to help ’em scrub sometimes, which your +father said I might do, if I wanted to, in my spare time. Being a +bachelor-man, he’ve only a lad in the house. Oh yes, I know him very +well. Sometimes he’ll talk to me as if I were his own mother.” + +“Indeed.” + +“Yes. ‘Grammer,’ he said one day, when I asked him why he came here +where there’s hardly anybody living, ‘I’ll tell you why I came here. I +took a map, and I marked on it where Dr. Jones’s practice ends to the +north of this district, and where Mr. Taylor’s ends on the south, and +little Jimmy Green’s on the east, and somebody else’s to the west. Then +I took a pair of compasses, and found the exact middle of the country +that was left between these bounds, and that middle was Little Hintock; +so here I am....’ But, Lord, there: poor young man!” + +“Why?” + +“He said, ‘Grammer Oliver, I’ve been here three months, and although +there are a good many people in the Hintocks and the villages round, +and a scattered practice is often a very good one, I don’t seem to get +many patients. And there’s no society at all; and I’m pretty near +melancholy mad,’ he said, with a great yawn. ‘I should be quite if it +were not for my books, and my lab—laboratory, and what not. Grammer, I +was made for higher things.’ And then he’d yawn and yawn again.” + +“Was he really made for higher things, do you think? I mean, is he +clever?” + +“Well, no. How can he be clever? He may be able to jine up a broken man +or woman after a fashion, and put his finger upon an ache if you tell +him nearly where ’tis; but these young men—they should live to my time +of life, and then they’d see how clever they were at five-and-twenty! +And yet he’s a projick, a real projick, and says the oddest of rozums. +‘Ah, Grammer,’ he said, at another time, ‘let me tell you that +Everything is Nothing. There’s only Me and not Me in the whole world.’ +And he told me that no man’s hands could help what they did, any more +than the hands of a clock....Yes, he’s a man of strange meditations, +and his eyes seem to see as far as the north star.” + +“He will soon go away, no doubt.” + +“I don’t think so.” Grace did not say “Why?” and Grammer hesitated. At +last she went on: “Don’t tell your father or mother, miss, if I let you +know a secret.” + +Grace gave the required promise. + +“Well, he talks of buying me; so he won’t go away just yet.” + +“Buying you!—how?” + +“Not my soul—my body, when I’m dead. One day when I was there cleaning, +he said, ‘Grammer, you’ve a large brain—a very large organ of brain,’ +he said. ‘A woman’s is usually four ounces less than a man’s; but yours +is man’s size.’ Well, then—hee, hee!—after he’d flattered me a bit like +that, he said he’d give me ten pounds to have me as a natomy after my +death. Well, knowing I’d no chick nor chiel left, and nobody with any +interest in me, I thought, faith, if I can be of any use to my +fellow-creatures after I’m gone they are welcome to my services; so I +said I’d think it over, and would most likely agree and take the ten +pounds. Now this is a secret, miss, between us two. The money would be +very useful to me; and I see no harm in it.” + +“Of course there’s no harm. But oh, Grammer, how can you think to do +it? I wish you hadn’t told me.” + +“I wish I hadn’t—if you don’t like to know it, miss. But you needn’t +mind. Lord—hee, hee!—I shall keep him waiting many a year yet, bless +ye!” + +“I hope you will, I am sure.” + +The girl thereupon fell into such deep reflection that conversation +languished, and Grammer Oliver, taking her candle, wished Miss Melbury +good-night. The latter’s eyes rested on the distant glimmer, around +which she allowed her reasoning fancy to play in vague eddies that +shaped the doings of the philosopher behind that light on the lines of +intelligence just received. It was strange to her to come back from the +world to Little Hintock and find in one of its nooks, like a tropical +plant in a hedgerow, a nucleus of advanced ideas and practices which +had nothing in common with the life around. Chemical experiments, +anatomical projects, and metaphysical conceptions had found a strange +home here. + +Thus she remained thinking, the imagined pursuits of the man behind the +light intermingling with conjectural sketches of his personality, till +her eyes fell together with their own heaviness, and she slept. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +Kaleidoscopic dreams of a weird alchemist-surgeon, Grammer Oliver’s +skeleton, and the face of Giles Winterborne, brought Grace Melbury to +the morning of the next day. It was fine. A north wind was blowing—that +not unacceptable compromise between the atmospheric cutlery of the +eastern blast and the spongy gales of the west quarter. She looked from +her window in the direction of the light of the previous evening, and +could just discern through the trees the shape of the surgeon’s house. +Somehow, in the broad, practical daylight, that unknown and lonely +gentleman seemed to be shorn of much of the interest which had invested +his personality and pursuits in the hours of darkness, and as Grace’s +dressing proceeded he faded from her mind. + +Meanwhile, Winterborne, though half assured of her father’s favor, was +rendered a little restless by Miss Melbury’s behavior. Despite his dry +self-control, he could not help looking continually from his own door +towards the timber-merchant’s, in the probability of somebody’s +emergence therefrom. His attention was at length justified by the +appearance of two figures, that of Mr. Melbury himself, and Grace +beside him. They stepped out in a direction towards the densest quarter +of the wood, and Winterborne walked contemplatively behind them, till +all three were soon under the trees. + +Although the time of bare boughs had now set in, there were sheltered +hollows amid the Hintock plantations and copses in which a more tardy +leave-taking than on windy summits was the rule with the foliage. This +caused here and there an apparent mixture of the seasons; so that in +some of the dells that they passed by holly-berries in full red were +found growing beside oak and hazel whose leaves were as yet not far +removed from green, and brambles whose verdure was rich and deep as in +the month of August. To Grace these well-known peculiarities were as an +old painting restored. + +Now could be beheld that change from the handsome to the curious which +the features of a wood undergo at the ingress of the winter months. +Angles were taking the place of curves, and reticulations of surfaces—a +change constituting a sudden lapse from the ornate to the primitive on +Nature’s canvas, and comparable to a retrogressive step from the art of +an advanced school of painting to that of the Pacific Islander. + +Winterborne followed, and kept his eye upon the two figures as they +threaded their way through these sylvan phenomena. Mr. Melbury’s long +legs, and gaiters drawn in to the bone at the ankles, his slight stoop, +his habit of getting lost in thought and arousing himself with an +exclamation of “Hah!” accompanied with an upward jerk of the head, +composed a personage recognizable by his neighbors as far as he could +be seen. It seemed as if the squirrels and birds knew him. One of the +former would occasionally run from the path to hide behind the arm of +some tree, which the little animal carefully edged round _pari passu_ +with Melbury and his daughters movement onward, assuming a mock manner, +as though he were saying, “Ho, ho; you are only a timber-merchant, and +carry no gun!” + +They went noiselessly over mats of starry moss, rustled through +interspersed tracts of leaves, skirted trunks with spreading roots, +whose mossed rinds made them like hands wearing green gloves; elbowed +old elms and ashes with great forks, in which stood pools of water that +overflowed on rainy days, and ran down their stems in green cascades. +On older trees still than these, huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs. +Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what +it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a +city slum. The leaf was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was +interrupted; the lichen eat the vigor of the stalk, and the ivy slowly +strangled to death the promising sapling. + +They dived amid beeches under which nothing grew, the younger boughs +still retaining their hectic leaves, that rustled in the breeze with a +sound almost metallic, like the sheet-iron foliage of the fabled +Jarnvid wood. Some flecks of white in Grace’s drapery had enabled Giles +to keep her and her father in view till this time; but now he lost +sight of them, and was obliged to follow by ear—no difficult matter, +for on the line of their course every wood-pigeon rose from its perch +with a continued clash, dashing its wings against the branches with +wellnigh force enough to break every quill. By taking the track of this +noise he soon came to a stile. + +Was it worth while to go farther? He examined the doughy soil at the +foot of the stile, and saw among the large sole-and-heel tracks an +impression of a slighter kind from a boot that was obviously not local, +for Winterborne knew all the cobblers’ patterns in that district, +because they were very few to know. The mud-picture was enough to make +him swing himself over and proceed. + +The character of the woodland now changed. The bases of the smaller +trees were nibbled bare by rabbits, and at divers points heaps of +fresh-made chips, and the newly-cut stool of a tree, stared white +through the undergrowth. There had been a large fall of timber this +year, which explained the meaning of some sounds that soon reached him. + +A voice was shouting intermittently in a sort of human bark, which +reminded Giles that there was a sale of trees and fagots that very day. +Melbury would naturally be present. Thereupon Winterborne remembered +that he himself wanted a few fagots, and entered upon the scene. + +A large group of buyers stood round the auctioneer, or followed him +when, between his pauses, he wandered on from one lot of plantation +produce to another, like some philosopher of the Peripatetic school +delivering his lectures in the shady groves of the Lyceum. His +companions were timber-dealers, yeomen, farmers, villagers, and others; +mostly woodland men, who on that account could afford to be curious in +their walking-sticks, which consequently exhibited various +monstrosities of vegetation, the chief being cork-screw shapes in black +and white thorn, brought to that pattern by the slow torture of an +encircling woodbine during their growth, as the Chinese have been said +to mould human beings into grotesque toys by continued compression in +infancy. Two women, wearing men’s jackets on their gowns, conducted in +the rear of the halting procession a pony-cart containing a tapped +barrel of beer, from which they drew and replenished horns that were +handed round, with bread-and-cheese from a basket. + +The auctioneer adjusted himself to circumstances by using his +walking-stick as a hammer, and knocked down the lot on any convenient +object that took his fancy, such as the crown of a little boy’s head, +or the shoulders of a by-stander who had no business there except to +taste the brew; a proceeding which would have been deemed humorous but +for the air of stern rigidity which that auctioneer’s face preserved, +tending to show that the eccentricity was a result of that absence of +mind which is engendered by the press of affairs, and no freak of fancy +at all. + +Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the rest of the Peripatetics, and +Grace beside him, clinging closely to his arm, her modern attire +looking almost odd where everything else was old-fashioned, and +throwing over the familiar garniture of the trees a homeliness that +seemed to demand improvement by the addition of a few contemporary +novelties also. Grace seemed to regard the selling with the interest +which attaches to memories revived after an interval of obliviousness. + +Winterborne went and stood close to them; the timber-merchant spoke, +and continued his buying; Grace merely smiled. To justify his presence +there Winterborne began bidding for timber and fagots that he did not +want, pursuing the occupation in an abstracted mood, in which the +auctioneer’s voice seemed to become one of the natural sounds of the +woodland. A few flakes of snow descended, at the sight of which a +robin, alarmed at these signs of imminent winter, and seeing that no +offence was meant by the human invasion, came and perched on the tip of +the fagots that were being sold, and looked into the auctioneer’s face, +while waiting for some chance crumb from the bread-basket. Standing a +little behind Grace, Winterborne observed how one flake would sail +downward and settle on a curl of her hair, and how another would choose +her shoulder, and another the edge of her bonnet, which took up so much +of his attention that his biddings proceeded incoherently; and when the +auctioneer said, every now and then, with a nod towards him, “Yours, +Mr. Winterborne,” he had no idea whether he had bought fagots, poles, +or logwood. + +He regretted, with some causticity of humor, that her father should +show such inequalities of temperament as to keep Grace tightly on his +arm to-day, when he had quite lately seemed anxious to recognize their +betrothal as a fact. And thus musing, and joining in no conversation +with other buyers except when directly addressed, he followed the +assemblage hither and thither till the end of the auction, when Giles +for the first time realized what his purchases had been. Hundreds of +fagots, and divers lots of timber, had been set down to him, when all +he had required had been a few bundles of spray for his odd man Robert +Creedle’s use in baking and lighting fires. + +Business being over, he turned to speak to the timber merchant. But +Melbury’s manner was short and distant; and Grace, too, looked vexed +and reproachful. Winterborne then discovered that he had been +unwittingly bidding against her father, and picking up his favorite +lots in spite of him. With a very few words they left the spot and +pursued their way homeward. + +Giles was extremely sorry at what he had done, and remained standing +under the trees, all the other men having strayed silently away. He saw +Melbury and his daughter pass down a glade without looking back. While +they moved slowly through it a lady appeared on horseback in the middle +distance, the line of her progress converging upon that of Melbury’s. +They met, Melbury took off his hat, and she reined in her horse. A +conversation was evidently in progress between Grace and her father and +this equestrian, in whom he was almost sure that he recognized Mrs. +Charmond, less by her outline than by the livery of the groom who had +halted some yards off. + +The interlocutors did not part till after a prolonged pause, during +which much seemed to be said. When Melbury and Grace resumed their walk +it was with something of a lighter tread than before. + +Winterborne then pursued his own course homeward. He was unwilling to +let coldness grow up between himself and the Melburys for any trivial +reason, and in the evening he went to their house. On drawing near the +gate his attention was attracted by the sight of one of the bedrooms +blinking into a state of illumination. In it stood Grace lighting +several candles, her right hand elevating the taper, her left hand on +her bosom, her face thoughtfully fixed on each wick as it kindled, as +if she saw in every flame’s growth the rise of a life to maturity. He +wondered what such unusual brilliancy could mean to-night. On getting +in-doors he found her father and step-mother in a state of suppressed +excitement, which at first he could not comprehend. + +“I am sorry about my biddings to-day,” said Giles. “I don’t know what I +was doing. I have come to say that any of the lots you may require are +yours.” + +“Oh, never mind—never mind,” replied the timber-merchant, with a slight +wave of his hand, “I have so much else to think of that I nearly had +forgot it. Just now, too, there are matters of a different kind from +trade to attend to, so don’t let it concern ye.” + +As the timber-merchant spoke, as it were, down to him from a higher +moral plane than his own, Giles turned to Mrs. Melbury. + +“Grace is going to the House to-morrow,” she said, quietly. “She is +looking out her things now. I dare say she is wanting me this minute to +assist her.” Thereupon Mrs. Melbury left the room. + +Nothing is more remarkable than the independent personality of the +tongue now and then. Mr. Melbury knew that his words had been a sort of +boast. He decried boasting, particularly to Giles; yet whenever the +subject was Grace, his judgment resigned the ministry of speech in +spite of him. + +Winterborne felt surprise, pleasure, and also a little apprehension at +the news. He repeated Mrs. Melbury’s words. + +“Yes,” said paternal pride, not sorry to have dragged out of him what +he could not in any circumstances have kept in. “Coming home from the +woods this afternoon we met Mrs. Charmond out for a ride. She spoke to +me on a little matter of business, and then got acquainted with Grace. +’Twas wonderful how she took to Grace in a few minutes; that +freemasonry of education made ’em close at once. Naturally enough she +was amazed that such an article—ha, ha!—could come out of my house. At +last it led on to Mis’ess Grace being asked to the House. So she’s busy +hunting up her frills and furbelows to go in.” As Giles remained in +thought without responding, Melbury continued: “But I’ll call her +down-stairs.” + +“No, no; don’t do that, since she’s busy,” said Winterborne. + +Melbury, feeling from the young man’s manner that his own talk had been +too much at Giles and too little to him, repented at once. His face +changed, and he said, in lower tones, with an effort, “She’s yours, +Giles, as far as I am concerned.” + +“Thanks—my best thanks....But I think, since it is all right between us +about the biddings, that I’ll not interrupt her now. I’ll step +homeward, and call another time.” + +On leaving the house he looked up at the bedroom again. Grace, +surrounded by a sufficient number of candles to answer all purposes of +self-criticism, was standing before a cheval-glass that her father had +lately bought expressly for her use; she was bonneted, cloaked, and +gloved, and glanced over her shoulder into the mirror, estimating her +aspect. Her face was lit with the natural elation of a young girl +hoping to inaugurate on the morrow an intimate acquaintance with a new, +interesting, and powerful friend. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +The inspiriting appointment which had led Grace Melbury to indulge in a +six-candle illumination for the arrangement of her attire, carried her +over the ground the next morning with a springy tread. Her sense of +being properly appreciated on her own native soil seemed to brighten +the atmosphere and herbage around her, as the glowworm’s lamp +irradiates the grass. Thus she moved along, a vessel of emotion going +to empty itself on she knew not what. + +Twenty minutes’ walking through copses, over a stile, and along an +upland lawn brought her to the verge of a deep glen, at the bottom of +which Hintock House appeared immediately beneath her eye. To describe +it as standing in a hollow would not express the situation of the +manor-house; it stood in a hole, notwithstanding that the hole was full +of beauty. From the spot which Grace had reached a stone could easily +have been thrown over or into, the birds’-nested chimneys of the +mansion. Its walls were surmounted by a battlemented parapet; but the +gray lead roofs were quite visible behind it, with their gutters, laps, +rolls, and skylights, together with incised letterings and +shoe-patterns cut by idlers thereon. + +The front of the house exhibited an ordinary manorial presentation of +Elizabethan windows, mullioned and hooded, worked in rich snuff-colored +freestone from local quarries. The ashlar of the walls, where not +overgrown with ivy and other creepers, was coated with lichen of every +shade, intensifying its luxuriance with its nearness to the ground, +till, below the plinth, it merged in moss. + +Above the house to the back was a dense plantation, the roots of whose +trees were above the level of the chimneys. The corresponding high +ground on which Grace stood was richly grassed, with only an old tree +here and there. A few sheep lay about, which, as they ruminated, looked +quietly into the bedroom windows. The situation of the house, +prejudicial to humanity, was a stimulus to vegetation, on which account +an endless shearing of the heavy-armed ivy was necessary, and a +continual lopping of trees and shrubs. It was an edifice built in times +when human constitutions were damp-proof, when shelter from the +boisterous was all that men thought of in choosing a dwelling-place, +the insidious being beneath their notice; and its hollow site was an +ocular reminder, by its unfitness for modern lives, of the fragility to +which these have declined. The highest architectural cunning could have +done nothing to make Hintock House dry and salubrious; and ruthless +ignorance could have done little to make it unpicturesque. It was +vegetable nature’s own home; a spot to inspire the painter and poet of +still life—if they did not suffer too much from the relaxing +atmosphere—and to draw groans from the gregariously disposed. Grace +descended the green escarpment by a zigzag path into the drive, which +swept round beneath the slope. The exterior of the house had been +familiar to her from her childhood, but she had never been inside, and +the approach to knowing an old thing in a new way was a lively +experience. It was with a little flutter that she was shown in; but she +recollected that Mrs. Charmond would probably be alone. Up to a few +days before this time that lady had been accompanied in her comings, +stayings, and goings by a relative believed to be her aunt; latterly, +however, these two ladies had separated, owing, it was supposed, to a +quarrel, and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate. Being presumably a +woman who did not care for solitude, this deprivation might possibly +account for her sudden interest in Grace. + +Mrs. Charmond was at the end of a gallery opening from the hall when +Miss Melbury was announced, and saw her through the glass doors between +them. She came forward with a smile on her face, and told the young +girl it was good of her to come. + +“Ah! you have noticed those,” she said, seeing that Grace’s eyes were +attracted by some curious objects against the walls. “They are +man-traps. My husband was a connoisseur in man-traps and spring-guns +and such articles, collecting them from all his neighbors. He knew the +histories of all these—which gin had broken a man’s leg, which gun had +killed a man. That one, I remember his saying, had been set by a +game-keeper in the track of a notorious poacher; but the keeper, +forgetting what he had done, went that way himself, received the charge +in the lower part of his body, and died of the wound. I don’t like them +here, but I’ve never yet given directions for them to be taken away.” +She added, playfully, “Man-traps are of rather ominous significance +where a person of our sex lives, are they not?” + +Grace was bound to smile; but that side of womanliness was one which +her inexperience had no great zest in contemplating. + +“They are interesting, no doubt, as relics of a barbarous time happily +past,” she said, looking thoughtfully at the varied designs of these +instruments of torture—some with semi-circular jaws, some with +rectangular; most of them with long, sharp teeth, but a few with none, +so that their jaws looked like the blank gums of old age. + +“Well, we must not take them too seriously,” said Mrs. Charmond, with +an indolent turn of her head, and they moved on inward. When she had +shown her visitor different articles in cabinets that she deemed likely +to interest her, some tapestries, wood-carvings, ivories, miniatures, +and so on—always with a mien of listlessness which might either have +been constitutional, or partly owing to the situation of the place—they +sat down to an early cup of tea. + +“Will you pour it out, please? Do,” she said, leaning back in her +chair, and placing her hand above her forehead, while her almond +eyes—those long eyes so common to the angelic legions of early Italian +art—became longer, and her voice more languishing. She showed that +oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps most frequent in women of +darker complexion and more lymphatic temperament than Mrs. Charmond’s +was; who lingeringly smile their meanings to men rather than speak +them, who inveigle rather than prompt, and take advantage of currents +rather than steer. + +“I am the most inactive woman when I am here,” she said. “I think +sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but float +about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams. But that cannot be really +my destiny, and I must struggle against such fancies.” + +“I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion—it is quite sad! I wish I +could tend you and make you very happy.” + +There was something so sympathetic, so appreciative, in the sound of +Grace’s voice, that it impelled people to play havoc with their +customary reservations in talking to her. “It is tender and kind of you +to feel that,” said Mrs. Charmond. “Perhaps I have given you the notion +that my languor is more than it really is. But this place oppresses me, +and I have a plan of going abroad a good deal. I used to go with a +relative, but that arrangement has dropped through.” Regarding Grace +with a final glance of criticism, she seemed to make up her mind to +consider the young girl satisfactory, and continued: “Now I am often +impelled to record my impressions of times and places. I have often +thought of writing a ‘New _Sentimental Journey_.’ But I cannot find +energy enough to do it alone. When I am at different places in the +south of Europe I feel a crowd of ideas and fancies thronging upon me +continually, but to unfold writing-materials, take up a cold steel pen, +and put these impressions down systematically on cold, smooth +paper—that I cannot do. So I have thought that if I always could have +somebody at my elbow with whom I am in sympathy, I might dictate any +ideas that come into my head. And directly I had made your acquaintance +the other day it struck me that you would suit me so well. Would you +like to undertake it? You might read to me, too, if desirable. Will you +think it over, and ask your parents if they are willing?” + +“Oh yes,” said Grace. “I am almost sure they would be very glad.” + +“You are so accomplished, I hear; I should be quite honored by such +intellectual company.” + +Grace, modestly blushing, deprecated any such idea. + +“Do you keep up your lucubrations at Little Hintock?” + +“Oh no. Lucubrations are not unknown at Little Hintock; but they are +not carried on by me.” + +“What—another student in that retreat?” + +“There is a surgeon lately come, and I have heard that he reads a great +deal—I see his light sometimes through the trees late at night.” + +“Oh yes—a doctor—I believe I was told of him. It is a strange place for +him to settle in.” + +“It is a convenient centre for a practice, they say. But he does not +confine his studies to medicine, it seems. He investigates theology and +metaphysics and all sorts of subjects.” + +“What is his name?” + +“Fitzpiers. He represents a very old family, I believe, the Fitzpierses +of Buckbury-Fitzpiers—not a great many miles from here.” + +“I am not sufficiently local to know the history of the family. I was +never in the county till my husband brought me here.” Mrs. Charmond did +not care to pursue this line of investigation. Whatever mysterious +merit might attach to family antiquity, it was one which, though she +herself could claim it, her adaptable, wandering _weltbürgerliche_ +nature had grown tired of caring about—a peculiarity that made her a +contrast to her neighbors. “It is of rather more importance to know +what the man is himself than what his family is,” she said, “if he is +going to practise upon us as a surgeon. Have you seen him?” + +Grace had not. “I think he is not a very old man,” she added. + +“Has he a wife?” + +“I am not aware that he has.” + +“Well, I hope he will be useful here. I must get to know him when I +come back. It will be very convenient to have a medical man—if he is +clever—in one’s own parish. I get dreadfully nervous sometimes, living +in such an outlandish place; and Sherton is so far to send to. No doubt +you feel Hintock to be a great change after watering-place life.” + +“I do. But it is home. It has its advantages and its disadvantages.” +Grace was thinking less of the solitude than of the attendant +circumstances. + +They chatted on for some time, Grace being set quite at her ease by her +entertainer. Mrs. Charmond was far too well-practised a woman not to +know that to show a marked patronage to a sensitive young girl who +would probably be very quick to discern it, was to demolish her dignity +rather than to establish it in that young girl’s eyes. So, being +violently possessed with her idea of making use of this gentle +acquaintance, ready and waiting at her own door, she took great pains +to win her confidence at starting. + +Just before Grace’s departure the two chanced to pause before a mirror +which reflected their faces in immediate juxtaposition, so as to bring +into prominence their resemblances and their contrasts. Both looked +attractive as glassed back by the faithful reflector; but Grace’s +countenance had the effect of making Mrs. Charmond appear more than her +full age. There are complexions which set off each other to great +advantage, and there are those which antagonize, the one killing or +damaging its neighbor unmercifully. This was unhappily the case here. +Mrs. Charmond fell into a meditation, and replied abstractedly to a +cursory remark of her companion’s. However, she parted from her young +friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her know as +soon as her mind was made up on the arrangement she had suggested. + +When Grace had ascended nearly to the top of the adjoining slope she +looked back, and saw that Mrs. Charmond still stood at the door, +meditatively regarding her. + +Often during the previous night, after his call on the Melburys, +Winterborne’s thoughts ran upon Grace’s announced visit to Hintock +House. Why could he not have proposed to walk with her part of the way? +Something told him that she might not, on such an occasion, care for +his company. + +He was still more of that opinion when, standing in his garden next +day, he saw her go past on the journey with such a pretty pride in the +event. He wondered if her father’s ambition, which had purchased for +her the means of intellectual light and culture far beyond those of any +other native of the village, would conduce to the flight of her future +interests above and away from the local life which was once to her the +movement of the world. + +Nevertheless, he had her father’s permission to win her if he could; +and to this end it became desirable to bring matters soon to a crisis, +if he ever hoped to do so. If she should think herself too good for +him, he could let her go and make the best of his loss; but until he +had really tested her he could not say that she despised his suit. The +question was how to quicken events towards an issue. + +He thought and thought, and at last decided that as good a way as any +would be to give a Christmas party, and ask Grace and her parents to +come as chief guests. + +These ruminations were occupying him when there became audible a slight +knocking at his front door. He descended the path and looked out, and +beheld Marty South, dressed for out-door work. + +“Why didn’t you come, Mr. Winterborne?” she said. “I’ve been waiting +there hours and hours, and at last I thought I must try to find you.” + +“Bless my soul, I’d quite forgot,” said Giles. + +What he had forgotten was that there was a thousand young fir-trees to +be planted in a neighboring spot which had been cleared by the +wood-cutters, and that he had arranged to plant them with his own +hands. He had a marvellous power of making trees grow. Although he +would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly, there was a sort of +sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or beech that he was +operating on, so that the roots took hold of the soil in a few days. +When, on the other hand, any of the journeymen planted, although they +seemed to go through an identically similar process, one quarter of the +trees would die away during the ensuing August. + +Hence Winterborne found delight in the work even when, as at present, +he contracted to do it on portions of the woodland in which he had no +personal interest. Marty, who turned her hand to anything, was usually +the one who performed the part of keeping the trees in a perpendicular +position while he threw in the mould. + +He accompanied her towards the spot, being stimulated yet further to +proceed with the work by the knowledge that the ground was close to the +way-side along which Grace must pass on her return from Hintock House. + +“You’ve a cold in the head, Marty,” he said, as they walked. “That +comes of cutting off your hair.” + +“I suppose it do. Yes; I’ve three headaches going on in my head at the +same time.” + +“Three headaches!” + +“Yes, a rheumatic headache in my poll, a sick headache over my eyes, +and a misery headache in the middle of my brain. However, I came out, +for I thought you might be waiting and grumbling like anything if I was +not there.” + +The holes were already dug, and they set to work. Winterborne’s fingers +were endowed with a gentle conjuror’s touch in spreading the roots of +each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress, under which the +delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their proper directions for +growth. He put most of these roots towards the south-west; for, he +said, in forty years’ time, when some great gale is blowing from that +quarter, the trees will require the strongest holdfast on that side to +stand against it and not fall. + +“How they sigh directly we put ’em upright, though while they are lying +down they don’t sigh at all,” said Marty. + +“Do they?” said Giles. “I’ve never noticed it.” + +She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her +finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not to +cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled—probably long +after the two planters should be felled themselves. + +“It seems to me,” the girl continued, “as if they sigh because they are +very sorry to begin life in earnest—just as we be.” + +“Just as we be?” He looked critically at her. “You ought not to feel +like that, Marty.” + +Her only reply was turning to take up the next tree; and they planted +on through a great part of the day, almost without another word. +Winterborne’s mind ran on his contemplated evening-party, his +abstraction being such that he hardly was conscious of Marty’s presence +beside him. From the nature of their employment, in which he handled +the spade and she merely held the tree, it followed that he got good +exercise and she got none. But she was an heroic girl, and though her +out-stretched hand was chill as a stone, and her cheeks blue, and her +cold worse than ever, she would not complain while he was disposed to +continue work. But when he paused she said, “Mr. Winterborne, can I run +down the lane and back to warm my feet?” + +“Why, yes, of course,” he said, awakening anew to her existence. +“Though I was just thinking what a mild day it is for the season. Now I +warrant that cold of yours is twice as bad as it was. You had no +business to chop that hair off, Marty; it serves you almost right. Look +here, cut off home at once.” + +“A run down the lane will be quite enough.” + +“No, it won’t. You ought not to have come out to-day at all.” + +“But I should like to finish the—” + +“Marty, I tell you to go home,” said he, peremptorily. “I can manage to +keep the rest of them upright with a stick or something.” + +She went away without saying any more. When she had gone down the +orchard a little distance she looked back. Giles suddenly went after +her. + +“Marty, it was for your good that I was rough, you know. But warm +yourself in your own way, I don’t care.” + +When she had run off he fancied he discerned a woman’s dress through +the holly-bushes which divided the coppice from the road. It was Grace +at last, on her way back from the interview with Mrs. Charmond. He +threw down the tree he was planting, and was about to break through the +belt of holly when he suddenly became aware of the presence of another +man, who was looking over the hedge on the opposite side of the way +upon the figure of the unconscious Grace. He appeared as a handsome and +gentlemanly personage of six or eight and twenty, and was quizzing her +through an eye-glass. Seeing that Winterborne was noticing him, he let +his glass drop with a click upon the rail which protected the hedge, +and walked away in the opposite direction. Giles knew in a moment that +this must be Mr. Fitzpiers. When he was gone, Winterborne pushed +through the hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting object of +their contemplation. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +“I heard the bushes move long before I saw you,” she began. “I said +first, ‘it is some terrible beast;’ next, ‘it is a poacher;’ next, ‘it +is a friend!’” + +He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing, not her speech, but the +question whether he should tell her that she had been watched. He +decided in the negative. + +“You have been to the house?” he said. “But I need not ask.” The fact +was that there shone upon Miss Melbury’s face a species of exaltation, +which saw no environing details nor his own occupation; nothing more +than his bare presence. + +“Why need you not ask?” + +“Your face is like the face of Moses when he came down from the Mount.” + +She reddened a little and said, “How can you be so profane, Giles +Winterborne?” + +“How can you think so much of that class of people? Well, I beg pardon; +I didn’t mean to speak so freely. How do you like her house and her?” + +“Exceedingly. I had not been inside the walls since I was a child, when +it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond’s late husband +bought the property. She is SO nice!” And Grace fell into such an +abstracted gaze at the imaginary image of Mrs. Charmond and her +niceness that it almost conjured up a vision of that lady in mid-air +before them. + +“She has only been here a month or two, it seems, and cannot stay much +longer, because she finds it so lonely and damp in winter. She is going +abroad. Only think, she would like me to go with her.” + +Giles’s features stiffened a little at the news. “Indeed; what for? But +I won’t keep you standing here. Hoi, Robert!” he cried to a swaying +collection of clothes in the distance, which was the figure of Creedle +his man. “Go on filling in there till I come back.” + +“I’m a-coming, sir; I’m a-coming.” + +“Well, the reason is this,” continued she, as they went on +together—“Mrs. Charmond has a delightful side to her character—a desire +to record her impressions of travel, like Alexandre Dumas, and Méry, +and Sterne, and others. But she cannot find energy enough to do it +herself.” And Grace proceeded to explain Mrs. Charmond’s proposal at +large. “My notion is that Méry’s style will suit her best, because he +writes in that soft, emotional, luxurious way she has,” Grace said, +musingly. + +“Indeed!” said Winterborne, with mock awe. “Suppose you talk over my +head a little longer, Miss Grace Melbury?” + +“Oh, I didn’t mean it!” she said, repentantly, looking into his eyes. +“And as for myself, I hate French books. And I love dear old Hintock, +_and the people in it_, fifty times better than all the Continent. But +the scheme; I think it an enchanting notion, don’t you, Giles?” + +“It is well enough in one sense, but it will take you away,” said he, +mollified. + +“Only for a short time. We should return in May.” + +“Well, Miss Melbury, it is a question for your father.” + +Winterborne walked with her nearly to her house. He had awaited her +coming, mainly with the view of mentioning to her his proposal to have +a Christmas party; but homely Christmas gatherings in the venerable and +jovial Hintock style seemed so primitive and uncouth beside the lofty +matters of her converse and thought that he refrained. + +As soon as she was gone he turned back towards the scene of his +planting, and could not help saying to himself as he walked, that this +engagement of his was a very unpromising business. Her outing to-day +had not improved it. A woman who could go to Hintock House and be +friendly with its mistress, enter into the views of its mistress, talk +like her, and dress not much unlike her, why, she would hardly be +contented with him, a yeoman, now immersed in tree-planting, even +though he planted them well. “And yet she’s a true-hearted girl,” he +said, thinking of her words about Hintock. “I must bring matters to a +point, and there’s an end of it.” + +When he reached the plantation he found that Marty had come back, and +dismissing Creedle, he went on planting silently with the girl as +before. + +“Suppose, Marty,” he said, after a while, looking at her extended arm, +upon which old scratches from briers showed themselves purple in the +cold wind—“suppose you know a person, and want to bring that person to +a good understanding with you, do you think a Christmas party of some +sort is a warming-up thing, and likely to be useful in hastening on the +matter?” + +“Is there to be dancing?” + +“There might be, certainly.” + +“Will He dance with She?” + +“Well, yes.” + +“Then it might bring things to a head, one way or the other; I won’t be +the one to say which.” + +“It shall be done,” said Winterborne, not to her, though he spoke the +words quite loudly. And as the day was nearly ended, he added, “Here, +Marty, I’ll send up a man to plant the rest to-morrow. I’ve other +things to think of just now.” + +She did not inquire what other things, for she had seen him walking +with Grace Melbury. She looked towards the western sky, which was now +aglow like some vast foundery wherein new worlds were being cast. +Across it the bare bough of a tree stretched horizontally, revealing +every twig against the red, and showing in dark profile every beck and +movement of three pheasants that were settling themselves down on it in +a row to roost. + +“It will be fine to-morrow,” said Marty, observing them with the +vermilion light of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, “for they are +a-croupied down nearly at the end of the bough. If it were going to be +stormy they’d squeeze close to the trunk. The weather is almost all +they have to think of, isn’t it, Mr. Winterborne? and so they must be +lighter-hearted than we.” + +“I dare say they are,” said Winterborne. + +Before taking a single step in the preparations, Winterborne, with no +great hopes, went across that evening to the timber-merchant’s to +ascertain if Grace and her parents would honor him with their presence. +Having first to set his nightly gins in the garden, to catch the +rabbits that ate his winter-greens, his call was delayed till just +after the rising of the moon, whose rays reached the Hintock houses but +fitfully as yet, on account of the trees. Melbury was crossing his yard +on his way to call on some one at the larger village, but he readily +turned and walked up and down the path with the young man. + +Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of living on a much smaller scale +than the Melburys did, would not for the world imply that his +invitation was to a gathering of any importance. So he put it in the +mild form of “Can you come in for an hour, when you have done business, +the day after to-morrow; and Mrs. and Miss Melbury, if they have +nothing more pressing to do?” + +Melbury would give no answer at once. “No, I can’t tell you to-day,” he +said. “I must talk it over with the women. As far as I am concerned, my +dear Giles, you know I’ll come with pleasure. But how do I know what +Grace’s notions may be? You see, she has been away among cultivated +folks a good while; and now this acquaintance with Mrs. Charmond—Well, +I’ll ask her. I can say no more.” + +When Winterborne was gone the timber-merchant went on his way. He knew +very well that Grace, whatever her own feelings, would either go or not +go, according as he suggested; and his instinct was, for the moment, to +suggest the negative. His errand took him past the church, and the way +to his destination was either across the church-yard or along-side it, +the distances being the same. For some reason or other he chose the +former way. + +The moon was faintly lighting up the gravestones, and the path, and the +front of the building. Suddenly Mr. Melbury paused, turned ill upon the +grass, and approached a particular headstone, where he read, “In memory +of John Winterborne,” with the subjoined date and age. It was the grave +of Giles’s father. + +The timber-merchant laid his hand upon the stone, and was humanized. +“Jack, my wronged friend!” he said. “I’ll be faithful to my plan of +making amends to ’ee.” + +When he reached home that evening, he said to Grace and Mrs. Melbury, +who were working at a little table by the fire, + +“Giles wants us to go down and spend an hour with him the day after +to-morrow; and I’m thinking, that as ’tis Giles who asks us, we’ll go.” + +They assented without demur, and accordingly the timber-merchant sent +Giles the next morning an answer in the affirmative. + +Winterborne, in his modesty, or indifference, had mentioned no +particular hour in his invitation; and accordingly Mr. Melbury and his +family, expecting no other guests, chose their own time, which chanced +to be rather early in the afternoon, by reason of the somewhat quicker +despatch than usual of the timber-merchant’s business that day. To show +their sense of the unimportance of the occasion, they walked quite +slowly to the house, as if they were merely out for a ramble, and going +to nothing special at all; or at most intending to pay a casual call +and take a cup of tea. + +At this hour stir and bustle pervaded the interior of Winterborne’s +domicile from cellar to apple-loft. He had planned an elaborate high +tea for six o’clock or thereabouts, and a good roaring supper to come +on about eleven. Being a bachelor of rather retiring habits, the whole +of the preparations devolved upon himself and his trusty man and +familiar, Robert Creedle, who did everything that required doing, from +making Giles’s bed to catching moles in his field. He was a survival +from the days when Giles’s father held the homestead, and Giles was a +playing boy. + +These two, with a certain dilatoriousness which appertained to both, +were now in the heat of preparation in the bake-house, expecting nobody +before six o’clock. Winterborne was standing before the brick oven in +his shirt-sleeves, tossing in thorn sprays, and stirring about the +blazing mass with a long-handled, three-pronged Beelzebub kind of fork, +the heat shining out upon his streaming face and making his eyes like +furnaces, the thorns crackling and sputtering; while Creedle, having +ranged the pastry dishes in a row on the table till the oven should be +ready, was pressing out the crust of a final apple-pie with a +rolling-pin. A great pot boiled on the fire, and through the open door +of the back kitchen a boy was seen seated on the fender, emptying the +snuffers and scouring the candlesticks, a row of the latter standing +upside down on the hob to melt out the grease. + +Looking up from the rolling-pin, Creedle saw passing the window first +the timber-merchant, in his second-best suit, Mrs. Melbury in her best +silk, and Grace in the fashionable attire which, in part brought home +with her from the Continent, she had worn on her visit to Mrs. +Charmond’s. The eyes of the three had been attracted to the proceedings +within by the fierce illumination which the oven threw out upon the +operators and their utensils. + +“Lord, Lord! if they baint come a’ready!” said Creedle. + +“No—hey?” said Giles, looking round aghast; while the boy in the +background waved a reeking candlestick in his delight. As there was no +help for it, Winterborne went to meet them in the door-way. + +“My dear Giles, I see we have made a mistake in the time,” said the +timber-merchant’s wife, her face lengthening with concern. + +“Oh, it is not much difference. I hope you’ll come in.” + +“But this means a regular randyvoo!” said Mr. Melbury, accusingly, +glancing round and pointing towards the bake-house with his stick. + +“Well, yes,” said Giles. + +“And—not Great Hintock band, and dancing, surely?” + +“I told three of ’em they might drop in if they’d nothing else to do,” +Giles mildly admitted. + +“Now, why the name didn’t ye tell us ’twas going to be a serious kind +of thing before? How should I know what folk mean if they don’t say? +Now, shall we come in, or shall we go home and come back along in a +couple of hours?” + +“I hope you’ll stay, if you’ll be so good as not to mind, now you are +here. I shall have it all right and tidy in a very little time. I ought +not to have been so backward.” Giles spoke quite anxiously for one of +his undemonstrative temperament; for he feared that if the Melburys +once were back in their own house they would not be disposed to turn +out again. + +“’Tis we ought not to have been so forward; that’s what ’tis,” said Mr. +Melbury, testily. “Don’t keep us here in the sitting-room; lead on to +the bakehouse, man. Now we are here we’ll help ye get ready for the +rest. Here, mis’ess, take off your things, and help him out in his +baking, or he won’t get done to-night. I’ll finish heating the oven, +and set you free to go and skiver up them ducks.” His eye had passed +with pitiless directness of criticism into yet remote recesses of +Winterborne’s awkwardly built premises, where the aforesaid birds were +hanging. + +“And I’ll help finish the tarts,” said Grace, cheerfully. + +“I don’t know about that,” said her father. “’Tisn’t quite so much in +your line as it is in your mother-law’s and mine.” + +“Of course I couldn’t let you, Grace!” said Giles, with some distress. + +“I’ll do it, of course,” said Mrs. Melbury, taking off her silk train, +hanging it up to a nail, carefully rolling back her sleeves, pinning +them to her shoulders, and stripping Giles of his apron for her own +use. + +So Grace pottered idly about, while her father and his wife helped on +the preparations. A kindly pity of his household management, which +Winterborne saw in her eyes whenever he caught them, depressed him much +more than her contempt would have done. + +Creedle met Giles at the pump after a while, when each of the others +was absorbed in the difficulties of a _cuisine_ based on utensils, +cupboards, and provisions that were strange to them. He groaned to the +young man in a whisper, “This is a bruckle het, maister, I’m much +afeared! Who’d ha’ thought they’d ha’ come so soon?” + +The bitter placidity of Winterborne’s look adumbrated the misgivings he +did not care to express. “Have you got the celery ready?” he asked, +quickly. + +“Now that’s a thing I never could mind; no, not if you’d paid me in +silver and gold. And I don’t care who the man is, I says that a stick +of celery that isn’t scrubbed with the scrubbing-brush is not clean.” + +“_Very_ well, very well! I’ll attend to it. You go and get ’em +comfortable in-doors.” + +He hastened to the garden, and soon returned, tossing the stalks to +Creedle, who was still in a tragic mood. “If ye’d ha’ married, d’ye +see, maister,” he said, “this caddle couldn’t have happened to us.” + +Everything being at last under way, the oven set, and all done that +could insure the supper turning up ready at some time or other, Giles +and his friends entered the parlor, where the Melburys again dropped +into position as guests, though the room was not nearly so warm and +cheerful as the blazing bakehouse. Others now arrived, among them +Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner, and tea went off very well. + +Grace’s disposition to make the best of everything, and to wink at +deficiencies in Winterborne’s menage, was so uniform and persistent +that he suspected her of seeing even more deficiencies than he was +aware of. That suppressed sympathy which had showed in her face ever +since her arrival told him as much too plainly. + +“This muddling style of house-keeping is what you’ve not lately been +used to, I suppose?” he said, when they were a little apart. + +“No; but I like it; it reminds me so pleasantly that everything here in +dear old Hintock is just as it used to be. The oil is—not quite nice; +but everything else is.” + +“The oil?” + +“On the chairs, I mean; because it gets on one’s dress. Still, mine is +not a new one.” + +Giles found that Creedle, in his zeal to make things look bright, had +smeared the chairs with some greasy kind of furniture-polish, and +refrained from rubbing it dry in order not to diminish the mirror-like +effect that the mixture produced as laid on. Giles apologized and +called Creedle; but he felt that the Fates were against him. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +Supper-time came, and with it the hot-baked meats from the oven, laid +on a snowy cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated with folds, as +in Flemish “Last Suppers.” Creedle and the boy fetched and carried with +amazing alacrity, the latter, to mollify his superior and make things +pleasant, expressing his admiration of Creedle’s cleverness when they +were alone. + +“I s’pose the time when you learned all these knowing things, Mr. +Creedle, was when you was in the militia?” + +“Well, yes. I seed the world at that time somewhat, certainly, and many +ways of strange dashing life. Not but that Giles has worked hard in +helping me to bring things to such perfection to-day. ‘Giles,’ says I, +though he’s maister. Not that I should call’n maister by rights, for +his father growed up side by side with me, as if one mother had twinned +us and been our nourishing.” + +“I s’pose your memory can reach a long way back into history, Mr. +Creedle?” + +“Oh yes. Ancient days, when there was battles and famines and +hang-fairs and other pomps, seem to me as yesterday. Ah, many’s the +patriarch I’ve seed come and go in this parish! There, he’s calling for +more plates. Lord, why can’t ’em turn their plates bottom upward for +pudding, as they used to do in former days?” + +Meanwhile, in the adjoining room Giles was presiding in a +half-unconscious state. He could not get over the initial failures in +his scheme for advancing his suit, and hence he did not know that he +was eating mouthfuls of bread and nothing else, and continually +snuffing the two candles next him till he had reduced them to mere +glimmers drowned in their own grease. Creedle now appeared with a +specially prepared dish, which he served by elevating the little +three-legged pot that contained it, and tilting the contents into a +dish, exclaiming, simultaneously, “Draw back, gentlemen and ladies, +please!” + +A splash followed. Grace gave a quick, involuntary nod and blink, and +put her handkerchief to her face. + +“Good heavens! what did you do that for, Creedle?” said Giles, sternly, +and jumping up. + +“’Tis how I do it when they baint here, maister,” mildly expostulated +Creedle, in an aside audible to all the company. + +“Well, yes—but—” replied Giles. He went over to Grace, and hoped none +of it had gone into her eye. + +“Oh no,” she said. “Only a sprinkle on my face. It was nothing.” + +“Kiss it and make it well,” gallantly observed Mr. Bawtree. + +Miss Melbury blushed. + +The timber-merchant said, quickly, “Oh, it is nothing! She must bear +these little mishaps.” But there could be discerned in his face +something which said “I ought to have foreseen this.” + +Giles himself, since the untoward beginning of the feast, had not quite +liked to see Grace present. He wished he had not asked such people as +Bawtree and the hollow-turner. He had done it, in dearth of other +friends, that the room might not appear empty. In his mind’s eye, +before the event, they had been the mere background or padding of the +scene, but somehow in reality they were the most prominent personages +there. + +After supper they played cards, Bawtree and the hollow-turner +monopolizing the new packs for an interminable game, in which a lump of +chalk was incessantly used—a game those two always played wherever they +were, taking a solitary candle and going to a private table in a corner +with the mien of persons bent on weighty matters. The rest of the +company on this account were obliged to put up with old packs for their +round game, that had been lying by in a drawer ever since the time that +Giles’s grandmother was alive. Each card had a great stain in the +middle of its back, produced by the touch of generations of damp and +excited thumbs now fleshless in the grave; and the kings and queens +wore a decayed expression of feature, as if they were rather an +impecunious dethroned race of monarchs hiding in obscure slums than +real regal characters. Every now and then the comparatively few remarks +of the players at the round game were harshly intruded on by the +measured jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner from the back +of the room: + +“And I′ will hold′ a wa′-ger with you′ +That all′ these marks′ are thirt′-y two!” + + +accompanied by rapping strokes with the chalk on the table; then an +exclamation, an argument, a dealing of the cards; then the commencement +of the rhymes anew. + +The timber-merchant showed his feelings by talking with a satisfied +sense of weight in his words, and by praising the party in a +patronizing tone, when Winterborne expressed his fear that he and his +were not enjoying themselves. + +“Oh yes, yes; pretty much. What handsome glasses those are! I didn’t +know you had such glasses in the house. Now, Lucy” (to his wife), “you +ought to get some like them for ourselves.” And when they had abandoned +cards, and Winterborne was talking to Melbury by the fire, it was the +timber-merchant who stood with his back to the mantle in a proprietary +attitude, from which post of vantage he critically regarded Giles’s +person, rather as a superficies than as a solid with ideas and feelings +inside it, saying, “What a splendid coat that one is you have on, +Giles! I can’t get such coats. You dress better than I.” + +After supper there was a dance, the bandsmen from Great Hintock having +arrived some time before. Grace had been away from home so long that +she had forgotten the old figures, and hence did not join in the +movement. Then Giles felt that all was over. As for her, she was +thinking, as she watched the gyrations, of a very different measure +that she had been accustomed to tread with a bevy of sylph-like +creatures in muslin, in the music-room of a large house, most of whom +were now moving in scenes widely removed from this, both as regarded +place and character. + +A woman she did not know came and offered to tell her fortune with the +abandoned cards. Grace assented to the proposal, and the woman told her +tale unskilfully, for want of practice, as she declared. + +Mr. Melbury was standing by, and exclaimed, contemptuously, “Tell her +fortune, indeed! Her fortune has been told by men of science—what do +you call ’em? Phrenologists. You can’t teach her anything new. She’s +been too far among the wise ones to be astonished at anything she can +hear among us folks in Hintock.” + +At last the time came for breaking up, Melbury and his family being the +earliest to leave, the two card-players still pursuing their game +doggedly in the corner, where they had completely covered Giles’s +mahogany table with chalk scratches. The three walked home, the +distance being short and the night clear. + +“Well, Giles is a very good fellow,” said Mr. Melbury, as they struck +down the lane under boughs which formed a black filigree in which the +stars seemed set. + +“Certainly he is,” said Grace, quickly, and in such a tone as to show +that he stood no lower, if no higher, in her regard than he had stood +before. + +When they were opposite an opening through which, by day, the doctor’s +house could be seen, they observed a light in one of his rooms, +although it was now about two o’clock. + +“The doctor is not abed yet,” said Mrs. Melbury. + +“Hard study, no doubt,” said her husband. + +“One would think that, as he seems to have nothing to do about here by +day, he could at least afford to go to bed early at night. ’Tis +astonishing how little we see of him.” + +Melbury’s mind seemed to turn with much relief to the contemplation of +Mr. Fitzpiers after the scenes of the evening. “It is natural enough,” +he replied. “What can a man of that sort find to interest him in +Hintock? I don’t expect he’ll stay here long.” + +His mind reverted to Giles’s party, and when they were nearly home he +spoke again, his daughter being a few steps in advance: “It is hardly +the line of life for a girl like Grace, after what she’s been +accustomed to. I didn’t foresee that in sending her to boarding-school +and letting her travel, and what not, to make her a good bargain for +Giles, I should be really spoiling her for him. Ah, ’tis a thousand +pities! But he ought to have her—he ought!” + +At this moment the two exclusive, chalk-mark men, having at last really +finished their play, could be heard coming along in the rear, +vociferously singing a song to march-time, and keeping vigorous step to +the same in far-reaching strides— + +“She may go, oh! +She may go, oh! +She may go to the d—— for me!” + + +The timber-merchant turned indignantly to Mrs. Melbury. “That’s the +sort of society we’ve been asked to meet,” he said. “For us old folk it +didn’t matter; but for Grace—Giles should have known better!” + +Meanwhile, in the empty house from which the guests had just cleared +out, the subject of their discourse was walking from room to room +surveying the general displacement of furniture with no ecstatic +feeling; rather the reverse, indeed. At last he entered the bakehouse, +and found there Robert Creedle sitting over the embers, also lost in +contemplation. Winterborne sat down beside him. + +“Well, Robert, you must be tired. You’d better get on to bed.” + +“Ay, ay, Giles—what do I call ye? Maister, I would say. But ’tis well +to think the day _is_ done, when ’tis done.” + +Winterborne had abstractedly taken the poker, and with a wrinkled +forehead was ploughing abroad the wood-embers on the broad hearth, till +it was like a vast scorching Sahara, with red-hot bowlders lying about +everywhere. “Do you think it went off well, Creedle?” he asked. + +“The victuals did; that I know. And the drink did; that I steadfastly +believe, from the holler sound of the barrels. Good, honest drink +’twere, the headiest mead I ever brewed; and the best wine that berries +could rise to; and the briskest Horner-and-Cleeves cider ever wrung +down, leaving out the spice and sperrits I put into it, while that +egg-flip would ha’ passed through muslin, so little curdled ’twere. +’Twas good enough to make any king’s heart merry—ay, to make his whole +carcass smile. Still, I don’t deny I’m afeared some things didn’t go +well with He and his.” Creedle nodded in a direction which signified +where the Melburys lived. + +“I’m afraid, too, that it was a failure there!” + +“If so, ’twere doomed to be so. Not but what that snail might as well +have come upon anybody else’s plate as hers.” + +“What snail?” + +“Well, maister, there was a little one upon the edge of her plate when +I brought it out; and so it must have been in her few leaves of +wintergreen.” + +“How the deuce did a snail get there?” + +“That I don’t know no more than the dead; but there my gentleman was.” + +“But, Robert, of all places, that was where he shouldn’t have been!” + +“Well, ’twas his native home, come to that; and where else could we +expect him to be? I don’t care who the man is, snails and caterpillars +always will lurk in close to the stump of cabbages in that tantalizing +way.” + +“He wasn’t alive, I suppose?” said Giles, with a shudder on Grace’s +account. + +“Oh no. He was well boiled. I warrant him well boiled. God forbid that +a _live_ snail should be seed on any plate of victuals that’s served by +Robert Creedle....But Lord, there; I don’t mind ’em myself—them small +ones, for they were born on cabbage, and they’ve lived on cabbage, so +they must be made of cabbage. But she, the close-mouthed little lady, +she didn’t say a word about it; though ’twould have made good small +conversation as to the nater of such creatures; especially as wit ran +short among us sometimes.” + +“Oh yes—’tis all over!” murmured Giles to himself, shaking his head +over the glooming plain of embers, and lining his forehead more than +ever. “Do you know, Robert,” he said, “that she’s been accustomed to +servants and everything superfine these many years? How, then, could +she stand our ways?” + +“Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and-nob elsewhere. +They shouldn’t have schooled her so monstrous high, or else bachelor +men shouldn’t give randys, or if they do give ’em, only to their own +race.” + +“Perhaps that’s true,” said Winterborne, rising and yawning a sigh. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +“’Tis a pity—a thousand pities!” her father kept saying next morning at +breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom. + +But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne’s suit at +this stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored to promote—was, indeed, +mechanically promoting at this moment? A crisis was approaching, mainly +as a result of his contrivances, and it would have to be met. + +But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: since seeing what +an immense change her last twelve months of absence had produced in his +daughter, after the heavy sum per annum that he had been spending for +several years upon her education, he was reluctant to let her marry +Giles Winterborne, indefinitely occupied as woodsman, cider-merchant, +apple-farmer, and what not, even were she willing to marry him herself. + +“She will be his wife if you don’t upset her notion that she’s bound to +accept him as an understood thing,” said Mrs. Melbury. “Bless ye, +she’ll soon shake down here in Hintock, and be content with Giles’s way +of living, which he’ll improve with what money she’ll have from you. +’Tis the strangeness after her genteel life that makes her feel +uncomfortable at first. Why, when _I_ saw Hintock the first time I +thought I never could like it. But things gradually get familiar, and +stone floors seem not so very cold and hard, and the hooting of the +owls not so very dreadful, and loneliness not so very lonely, after a +while.” + +“Yes, I believe ye. That’s just it. I _know_ Grace will gradually sink +down to our level again, and catch our manners and way of speaking, and +feel a drowsy content in being Giles’s wife. But I can’t bear the +thought of dragging down to that old level as promising a piece of +maidenhood as ever lived—fit to ornament a palace wi’—that I’ve taken +so much trouble to lift up. Fancy her white hands getting redder every +day, and her tongue losing its pretty up-country curl in talking, and +her bounding walk becoming the regular Hintock shail and wamble!” + +“She may shail, but she’ll never wamble,” replied his wife, decisively. + +When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her lying in bed so late; +not so much moved by a particular objection to that form of indulgence +as discomposed by these other reflections. + +The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down. “You used to +complain with justice when I was a girl,” she said. “But I am a woman +now, and can judge for myself....But it is not that; it is something +else!” Instead of sitting down she went outside the door. + +He was sorry. The petulance that relatives show towards each other is +in truth directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped +the situation no less for the offenders than the offended, but is too +elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor humanity in irritated +mood. Melbury followed her. She had rambled on to the paddock, where +the white frost lay, and where starlings in flocks of twenties and +thirties were walking about, watched by a comfortable family of +sparrows perched in a line along the string-course of the chimney, +preening themselves in the rays of the sun. + +“Come in to breakfast, my girl,” he said. “And as to Giles, use your +own mind. Whatever pleases you will please me.” + +“I am promised to him, father; and I cannot help thinking that in honor +I ought to marry him, whenever I do marry.” + +He had a strong suspicion that somewhere in the bottom of her heart +there pulsed an old simple indigenous feeling favorable to Giles, +though it had become overlaid with implanted tastes. But he would not +distinctly express his views on the promise. “Very well,” he said. “But +I hope I sha’n’t lose you yet. Come in to breakfast. What did you think +of the inside of Hintock House the other day?” + +“I liked it much.” + +“Different from friend Winterborne’s?” + +She said nothing; but he who knew her was aware that she meant by her +silence to reproach him with drawing cruel comparisons. + +“Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come again—when, did you say?” + +“She thought Tuesday, but would send the day before to let me know if +it suited her.” And with this subject upon their lips they entered to +breakfast. + +Tuesday came, but no message from Mrs. Charmond. Nor was there any on +Wednesday. In brief, a fortnight slipped by without a sign, and it +looked suspiciously as if Mrs. Charmond were not going further in the +direction of “taking up” Grace at present. + +Her father reasoned thereon. Immediately after his daughter’s two +indubitable successes with Mrs. Charmond—the interview in the wood and +a visit to the House—she had attended Winterborne’s party. No doubt the +out-and-out joviality of that gathering had made it a topic in the +neighborhood, and that every one present as guests had been widely +spoken of—Grace, with her exceptional qualities, above all. What, then, +so natural as that Mrs. Charmond should have heard the village news, +and become quite disappointed in her expectations of Grace at finding +she kept such company? + +Full of this _post hoc_ argument, Mr. Melbury overlooked the infinite +throng of other possible reasons and unreasons for a woman changing her +mind. For instance, while knowing that his Grace was attractive, he +quite forgot that Mrs. Charmond had also great pretensions to beauty. +In his simple estimate, an attractive woman attracted all around. + +So it was settled in his mind that her sudden mingling with the +villagers at the unlucky Winterborne’s was the cause of her most +grievous loss, as he deemed it, in the direction of Hintock House. + +“’Tis a thousand pities!” he would repeat to himself. “I am ruining her +for conscience’ sake!” + +It was one morning later on, while these things were agitating his +mind, that, curiously enough, something darkened the window just as +they finished breakfast. Looking up, they saw Giles in person mounted +on horseback, and straining his neck forward, as he had been doing for +some time, to catch their attention through the window. Grace had been +the first to see him, and involuntarily exclaimed, “There he is—and a +new horse!” + +On their faces as they regarded Giles were written their suspended +thoughts and compound feelings concerning him, could he have read them +through those old panes. But he saw nothing: his features just now +were, for a wonder, lit up with a red smile at some other idea. So they +rose from breakfast and went to the door, Grace with an anxious, +wistful manner, her father in a reverie, Mrs. Melbury placid and +inquiring. “We have come out to look at your horse,” she said. + +It could be seen that he was pleased at their attention, and explained +that he had ridden a mile or two to try the animal’s paces. “I bought +her,” he added, with warmth so severely repressed as to seem +indifference, “because she has been used to carry a lady.” + +Still Mr. Melbury did not brighten. Mrs. Melbury said, “And is she +quiet?” + +Winterborne assured her that there was no doubt of it. “I took care of +that. She’s five-and-twenty, and very clever for her age.” + +“Well, get off and come in,” said Melbury, brusquely; and Giles +dismounted accordingly. + +This event was the concrete result of Winterborne’s thoughts during the +past week or two. The want of success with his evening party he had +accepted in as philosophic a mood as he was capable of; but there had +been enthusiasm enough left in him one day at Sherton Abbas market to +purchase this old mare, which had belonged to a neighboring parson with +several daughters, and was offered him to carry either a gentleman or a +lady, and to do odd jobs of carting and agriculture at a pinch. This +obliging quadruped seemed to furnish Giles with a means of reinstating +himself in Melbury’s good opinion as a man of considerateness by +throwing out future possibilities to Grace. + +The latter looked at him with intensified interest this morning, in the +mood which is altogether peculiar to woman’s nature, and which, when +reduced into plain words, seems as impossible as the penetrability of +matter—that of entertaining a tender pity for the object of her own +unnecessary coldness. The imperturbable poise which marked Winterborne +in general was enlivened now by a freshness and animation that set a +brightness in his eye and on his cheek. Mrs. Melbury asked him to have +some breakfast, and he pleasurably replied that he would join them, +with his usual lack of tactical observation, not perceiving that they +had all finished the meal, that the hour was inconveniently late, and +that the note piped by the kettle denoted it to be nearly empty; so +that fresh water had to be brought in, trouble taken to make it boil, +and a general renovation of the table carried out. Neither did he know, +so full was he of his tender ulterior object in buying that horse, how +many cups of tea he was gulping down one after another, nor how the +morning was slipping, nor how he was keeping the family from dispersing +about their duties. + +Then he told throughout the humorous story of the horse’s purchase, +looking particularly grim at some fixed object in the room, a way he +always looked when he narrated anything that amused him. While he was +still thinking of the scene he had described, Grace rose and said, “I +have to go and help my mother now, Mr. Winterborne.” + +“H’m!” he ejaculated, turning his eyes suddenly upon her. + +She repeated her words with a slight blush of awkwardness; whereupon +Giles, becoming suddenly conscious, too conscious, jumped up, saying, +“To be sure, to be sure!” wished them quickly good-morning, and bolted +out of the house. + +Nevertheless he had, upon the whole, strengthened his position, with +her at least. Time, too, was on his side, for (as her father saw with +some regret) already the homeliness of Hintock life was fast becoming +effaced from her observation as a singularity; just as the first +strangeness of a face from which we have for years been separated +insensibly passes off with renewed intercourse, and tones itself down +into simple identity with the lineaments of the past. + +Thus Mr. Melbury went out of the house still unreconciled to the +sacrifice of the gem he had been at such pains in mounting. He fain +could hope, in the secret nether chamber of his mind, that something +would happen, before the balance of her feeling had quite turned in +Winterborne’s favor, to relieve his conscience and preserve her on her +elevated plane. + +He could not forget that Mrs. Charmond had apparently abandoned all +interest in his daughter as suddenly as she had conceived it, and was +as firmly convinced as ever that the comradeship which Grace had shown +with Giles and his crew by attending his party had been the cause. + +Matters lingered on thus. And then, as a hoop by gentle knocks on this +side and on that is made to travel in specific directions, the little +touches of circumstance in the life of this young girl shaped the +curves of her career. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + +It was a day of rather bright weather for the season. Miss Melbury went +out for a morning walk, and her ever-regardful father, having an hour’s +leisure, offered to walk with her. The breeze was fresh and quite +steady, filtering itself through the denuded mass of twigs without +swaying them, but making the point of each ivy-leaf on the trunks +scratch its underlying neighbor restlessly. Grace’s lips sucked in this +native air of hers like milk. They soon reached a place where the wood +ran down into a corner, and went outside it towards comparatively open +ground. Having looked round about, they were intending to re-enter the +copse when a fox quietly emerged with a dragging brush, trotted past +them tamely as a domestic cat, and disappeared amid some dead fern. +They walked on, her father merely observing, after watching the animal, +“They are hunting somewhere near.” + +Farther up they saw in the mid-distance the hounds running hither and +thither, as if there were little or no scent that day. Soon divers +members of the hunt appeared on the scene, and it was evident from +their movements that the chase had been stultified by general +puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of the intended victim. In a +minute a farmer rode up to the two pedestrians, panting with acteonic +excitement, and Grace being a few steps in advance, he addressed her, +asking if she had seen the fox. + +“Yes,” said she. “We saw him some time ago—just out there.” + +“Did you cry Halloo?” + +“We said nothing.” + +“Then why the d—— didn’t you, or get the old buffer to do it for you?” +said the man, as he cantered away. + +She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observing her +father’s face, saw that it was quite red. + +“He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!” said the old man, in the +tone of one whose heart was bruised, though it was not by the epithet +applied to himself. “And he wouldn’t if he had been a gentleman. ’Twas +not the language to use to a woman of any niceness. You, so well read +and cultivated—how could he expect ye to know what tom-boy field-folk +are in the habit of doing? If so be you had just come from trimming +swedes or mangolds—joking with the rough work-folk and all that—I could +have stood it. But hasn’t it cost me near a hundred a year to lift you +out of all that, so as to show an example to the neighborhood of what a +woman can be? Grace, shall I tell you the secret of it? ’Twas because I +was in your company. If a black-coated squire or pa’son had been +walking with you instead of me he wouldn’t have spoken so.” + +“No, no, father; there’s nothing in you rough or ill-mannered!” + +“I tell you it is that! I’ve noticed, and I’ve noticed it many times, +that a woman takes her color from the man she’s walking with. The woman +who looks an unquestionable lady when she’s with a polished-up fellow, +looks a mere tawdry imitation article when she’s hobbing and nobbing +with a homely blade. You sha’n’t be treated like that for long, or at +least your children sha’n’t. You shall have somebody to walk with you +who looks more of a dandy than I—please God you shall!” + +“But, my dear father,” she said, much distressed, “I don’t mind at all. +I don’t wish for more honor than I already have!” + +“A perplexing and ticklish possession is a daughter,” according to +Menander or some old Greek poet, and to nobody was one ever more so +than to Melbury, by reason of her very dearness to him. As for Grace, +she began to feel troubled; she did not perhaps wish there and then to +unambitiously devote her life to Giles Winterborne, but she was +conscious of more and more uneasiness at the possibility of being the +social hope of the family. + +“You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?” asked her +father, in continuation of the subject. + +Despite her feeling she assented to this. His reasoning had not been +without its weight upon her. + +“Grace,” he said, just before they had reached the house, “if it costs +me my life you shall marry well! To-day has shown me that whatever a +young woman’s niceness, she stands for nothing alone. You shall marry +well.” + +He breathed heavily, and his breathing was caught up by the breeze, +which seemed to sigh a soft remonstrance. + +She looked calmly at him. “And how about Mr. Winterborne?” she asked. +“I mention it, father, not as a matter of sentiment, but as a question +of keeping faith.” + +The timber-merchant’s eyes fell for a moment. “I don’t know—I don’t +know,” he said. “’Tis a trying strait. Well, well; there’s no hurry. +We’ll wait and see how he gets on.” + +That evening he called her into his room, a snug little apartment +behind the large parlor. It had at one time been part of the bakehouse, +with the ordinary oval brick oven in the wall; but Mr. Melbury, in +turning it into an office, had built into the cavity an iron safe, +which he used for holding his private papers. The door of the safe was +now open, and his keys were hanging from it. + +“Sit down, Grace, and keep me company,” he said. “You may amuse +yourself by looking over these.” He threw out a heap of papers before +her. + +“What are they?” she asked. + +“Securities of various sorts.” He unfolded them one by one. “Papers +worth so much money each. Now here’s a lot of turnpike bonds for one +thing. Would you think that each of these pieces of paper is worth two +hundred pounds?” + +“No, indeed, if you didn’t say so.” + +“’Tis so, then. Now here are papers of another sort. They are for +different sums in the three-per-cents. Now these are Port Breedy Harbor +bonds. We have a great stake in that harbor, you know, because I send +off timber there. Open the rest at your pleasure. They’ll interest ye.” + +“Yes, I will, some day,” said she, rising. + +“Nonsense, open them now. You ought to learn a little of such matters. +A young lady of education should not be ignorant of money affairs +altogether. Suppose you should be left a widow some day, with your +husband’s title-deeds and investments thrown upon your hands—” + +“Don’t say that, father—title-deeds; it sounds so vain!” + +“It does not. Come to that, I have title-deeds myself. There, that +piece of parchment represents houses in Sherton Abbas.” + +“Yes, but—” She hesitated, looked at the fire, and went on in a low +voice: “If what has been arranged about me should come to anything, my +sphere will be quite a middling one.” + +“Your sphere ought not to be middling,” he exclaimed, not in passion, +but in earnest conviction. “You said you never felt more at home, more +in your element, anywhere than you did that afternoon with Mrs. +Charmond, when she showed you her house and all her knick-knacks, and +made you stay to tea so nicely in her drawing-room—surely you did!” + +“Yes, I did say so,” admitted Grace. + +“Was it true?” + +“Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeling is less strong now, perhaps.” + +“Ah! Now, though you don’t see it, your feeling at the time was the +right one, because your mind and body were just in full and fresh +cultivation, so that going there with her was like meeting like. Since +then you’ve been biding with us, and have fallen back a little, and so +you don’t feel your place so strongly. Now, do as I tell ye, and look +over these papers and see what you’ll be worth some day. For they’ll +all be yours, you know; who have I got to leave ’em to but you? Perhaps +when your education is backed up by what these papers represent, and +that backed up by another such a set and their owner, men such as that +fellow was this morning may think you a little more than a buffer’s +girl.” + +So she did as commanded, and opened each of the folded representatives +of hard cash that her father put before her. To sow in her heart +cravings for social position was obviously his strong desire, though in +direct antagonism to a better feeling which had hitherto prevailed with +him, and had, indeed, only succumbed that morning during the ramble. + +She wished that she was not his worldly hope; the responsibility of +such a position was too great. She had made it for herself mainly by +her appearance and attractive behavior to him since her return. “If I +had only come home in a shabby dress, and tried to speak roughly, this +might not have happened,” she thought. She deplored less the fact than +the sad possibilities that might lie hidden therein. + +Her father then insisted upon her looking over his checkbook and +reading the counterfoils. This, also, she obediently did, and at last +came to two or three which had been drawn to defray some of the late +expenses of her clothes, board, and education. + +“I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses and wagons and corn,” she +said, looking up sorrily. + +“I didn’t want you to look at those; I merely meant to give you an idea +of my investment transactions. But if you do cost as much as they, +never mind. You’ll yield a better return.” + +“Don’t think of me like that!” she begged. “A mere chattel.” + +“A what? Oh, a dictionary word. Well, as that’s in your line I don’t +forbid it, even if it tells against me,” he said, good-humoredly. And +he looked her proudly up and down. + +A few minutes later Grammer Oliver came to tell them that supper was +ready, and in giving the information she added, incidentally, “So we +shall soon lose the mistress of Hintock House for some time, I hear, +Maister Melbury. Yes, she’s going off to foreign parts to-morrow, for +the rest of the winter months; and be-chok’d if I don’t wish I could do +the same, for my wynd-pipe is furred like a flue.” + +When the old woman had left the room, Melbury turned to his daughter +and said, “So, Grace, you’ve lost your new friend, and your chance of +keeping her company and writing her travels is quite gone from ye!” + +Grace said nothing. + +“Now,” he went on, emphatically, “’tis Winterborne’s affair has done +this. Oh yes, ’tis. So let me say one word. Promise me that you will +not meet him again without my knowledge.” + +“I never do meet him, father, either without your knowledge or with +it.” + +“So much the better. I don’t like the look of this at all. And I say it +not out of harshness to him, poor fellow, but out of tenderness to you. +For how could a woman, brought up delicately as you have been, bear the +roughness of a life with him?” + +She sighed; it was a sigh of sympathy with Giles, complicated by a +sense of the intractability of circumstances. + +At that same hour, and almost at that same minute, there was a +conversation about Winterborne in progress in the village street, +opposite Mr. Melbury’s gates, where Timothy Tangs the elder and Robert +Creedle had accidentally met. + +The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had heard what was all over the +parish, the skin of his face being drawn two ways on the matter—towards +brightness in respect of it as news, and towards concern in respect of +it as circumstance. + +“Why, that poor little lonesome thing, Marty South, is likely to lose +her father. He was almost well, but is much worse again. A man all skin +and grief he ever were, and if he leave Little Hintock for a better +land, won’t it make some difference to your Maister Winterborne, +neighbor Creedle?” + +“Can I be a prophet in Israel?” said Creedle. “Won’t it! I was only +shaping of such a thing yesterday in my poor, long-seeing way, and all +the work of the house upon my one shoulders! You know what it means? It +is upon John South’s life that all Mr. Winterborne’s houses hang. If so +be South die, and so make his decease, thereupon the law is that the +houses fall without the least chance of absolution into HER hands at +the House. I told him so; but the words of the faithful be only as +wind!” + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + +The news was true. The life—the one fragile life—that had been used as +a measuring-tape of time by law, was in danger of being frayed away. It +was the last of a group of lives which had served this purpose, at the +end of whose breathings the small homestead occupied by South himself, +the larger one of Giles Winterborne, and half a dozen others that had +been in the possession of various Hintock village families for the +previous hundred years, and were now Winterborne’s, would fall in and +become part of the encompassing estate. + +Yet a short two months earlier Marty’s father, aged fifty-five years, +though something of a fidgety, anxious being, would have been looked on +as a man whose existence was so far removed from hazardous as any in +the parish, and as bidding fair to be prolonged for another quarter of +a century. + +Winterborne walked up and down his garden next day thinking of the +contingency. The sense that the paths he was pacing, the cabbage-plots, +the apple-trees, his dwelling, cider-cellar, wring-house, stables, and +weathercock, were all slipping away over his head and beneath his feet, +as if they were painted on a magic-lantern slide, was curious. In spite +of John South’s late indisposition he had not anticipated danger. To +inquire concerning his health had been to show less sympathy than to +remain silent, considering the material interest he possessed in the +woodman’s life, and he had, accordingly, made a point of avoiding +Marty’s house. + +While he was here in the garden somebody came to fetch him. It was +Marty herself, and she showed her distress by her unconsciousness of a +cropped poll. + +“Father is still so much troubled in his mind about that tree,” she +said. “You know the tree I mean, Mr. Winterborne? the tall one in front +of the house, that he thinks will blow down and kill us. Can you come +and see if you can persuade him out of his notion? I can do nothing.” + +He accompanied her to the cottage, and she conducted him upstairs. John +South was pillowed up in a chair between the bed and the window exactly +opposite the latter, towards which his face was turned. + +“Ah, neighbor Winterborne,” he said. “I wouldn’t have minded if my life +had only been my own to lose; I don’t vallie it in much of itself, and +can let it go if ’tis required of me. But to think what ’tis worth to +you, a young man rising in life, that do trouble me! It seems a trick +of dishonesty towards ye to go off at fifty-five! I could bear up, I +know I could, if it were not for the tree—yes, the tree, ’tis that’s +killing me. There he stands, threatening my life every minute that the +wind do blow. He’ll come down upon us and squat us dead; and what will +ye do when the life on your property is taken away?” + +“Never you mind me—that’s of no consequence,” said Giles. “Think of +yourself alone.” + +He looked out of the window in the direction of the woodman’s gaze. The +tree was a tall elm, familiar to him from childhood, which stood at a +distance of two-thirds its own height from the front of South’s +dwelling. Whenever the wind blew, as it did now, the tree rocked, +naturally enough; and the sight of its motion and sound of its sighs +had gradually bred the terrifying illusion in the woodman’s mind that +it would descend and kill him. Thus he would sit all day, in spite of +persuasion, watching its every sway, and listening to the melancholy +Gregorian melodies which the air wrung out of it. This fear it +apparently was, rather than any organic disease which was eating away +the health of John South. + +As the tree waved, South waved his head, making it his flugel-man with +abject obedience. “Ah, when it was quite a small tree,” he said, “and I +was a little boy, I thought one day of chopping it off with my hook to +make a clothes-line prop with. But I put off doing it, and then I again +thought that I would; but I forgot it, and didn’t. And at last it got +too big, and now ’tis my enemy, and will be the death o’ me. Little did +I think, when I let that sapling stay, that a time would come when it +would torment me, and dash me into my grave.” + +“No, no,” said Winterborne and Marty, soothingly. But they thought it +possible that it might hasten him into his grave, though in another way +than by falling. + +“I tell you what,” added Winterborne, “I’ll climb up this afternoon and +shroud off the lower boughs, and then it won’t be so heavy, and the +wind won’t affect it so.” + +“She won’t allow it—a strange woman come from nobody knows where—she +won’t have it done.” + +“You mean Mrs. Charmond? Oh, she doesn’t know there’s such a tree on +her estate. Besides, shrouding is not felling, and I’ll risk that +much.” + +He went out, and when afternoon came he returned, took a billhook from +the woodman’s shed, and with a ladder climbed into the lower part of +the tree, where he began lopping off—“shrouding,” as they called it at +Hintock—the lowest boughs. Each of these quivered under his attack, +bent, cracked, and fell into the hedge. Having cut away the lowest +tier, he stepped off the ladder, climbed a few steps higher, and +attacked those at the next level. Thus he ascended with the progress of +his work far above the top of the ladder, cutting away his perches as +he went, and leaving nothing but a bare stem below him. + +The work was troublesome, for the tree was large. The afternoon wore +on, turning dark and misty about four o’clock. From time to time Giles +cast his eyes across towards the bedroom window of South, where, by the +flickering fire in the chamber, he could see the old man watching him, +sitting motionless with a hand upon each arm of the chair. Beside him +sat Marty, also straining her eyes towards the skyey field of his +operations. + +A curious question suddenly occurred to Winterborne, and he stopped his +chopping. He was operating on another person’s property to prolong the +years of a lease by whose termination that person would considerably +benefit. In that aspect of the case he doubted if he ought to go on. On +the other hand he was working to save a man’s life, and this seemed to +empower him to adopt arbitrary measures. + +The wind had died down to a calm, and while he was weighing the +circumstances he saw coming along the road through the increasing mist +a figure which, indistinct as it was, he knew well. It was Grace +Melbury, on her way out from the house, probably for a short evening +walk before dark. He arranged himself for a greeting from her, since +she could hardly avoid passing immediately beneath the tree. + +But Grace, though she looked up and saw him, was just at that time too +full of the words of her father to give him any encouragement. The +years-long regard that she had had for him was not kindled by her +return into a flame of sufficient brilliancy to make her rebellious. +Thinking that she might not see him, he cried, “Miss Melbury, here I +am.” + +She looked up again. She was near enough to see the expression of his +face, and the nails in his soles, silver-bright with constant walking. +But she did not reply; and dropping her glance again, went on. + +Winterborne’s face grew strange; he mused, and proceeded automatically +with his work. Grace meanwhile had not gone far. She had reached a +gate, whereon she had leaned sadly, and whispered to herself, “What +shall I do?” + +A sudden fog came on, and she curtailed her walk, passing under the +tree again on her return. Again he addressed her. “Grace,” he said, +when she was close to the trunk, “speak to me.” She shook her head +without stopping, and went on to a little distance, where she stood +observing him from behind the hedge. + +Her coldness had been kindly meant. If it was to be done, she had said +to herself, it should be begun at once. While she stood out of +observation Giles seemed to recognize her meaning; with a sudden start +he worked on, climbing higher, and cutting himself off more and more +from all intercourse with the sublunary world. At last he had worked +himself so high up the elm, and the mist had so thickened, that he +could only just be discerned as a dark-gray spot on the light-gray sky: +he would have been altogether out of notice but for the stroke of his +billhook and the flight of a bough downward, and its crash upon the +hedge at intervals. + +It was not to be done thus, after all: plainness and candor were best. +She went back a third time; he did not see her now, and she lingeringly +gazed up at his unconscious figure, loath to put an end to any kind of +hope that might live on in him still. “Giles— Mr. Winterborne,” she +said. + +He was so high amid the fog that he did not hear. “Mr. Winterborne!” +she cried again, and this time he stopped, looked down, and replied. + +“My silence just now was not accident,” she said, in an unequal voice. +“My father says it is best not to think too much of that—engagement, or +understanding between us, that you know of. I, too, think that upon the +whole he is right. But we are friends, you know, Giles, and almost +relations.” + +“Very well,” he answered, as if without surprise, in a voice which +barely reached down the tree. “I have nothing to say in objection—I +cannot say anything till I’ve thought a while.” + +She added, with emotion in her tone, “For myself, I would have married +you—some day—I think. But I give way, for I see it would be unwise.” + +He made no reply, but sat back upon a bough, placed his elbow in a +fork, and rested his head upon his hand. Thus he remained till the fog +and the night had completely enclosed him from her view. + +Grace heaved a divided sigh, with a tense pause between, and moved +onward, her heart feeling uncomfortably big and heavy, and her eyes +wet. Had Giles, instead of remaining still, immediately come down from +the tree to her, would she have continued in that filial acquiescent +frame of mind which she had announced to him as final? If it be true, +as women themselves have declared, that one of their sex is never so +much inclined to throw in her lot with a man for good and all as five +minutes after she has told him such a thing cannot be, the +probabilities are that something might have been done by the appearance +of Winterborne on the ground beside Grace. But he continued motionless +and silent in that gloomy Niflheim or fog-land which involved him, and +she proceeded on her way. + +The spot seemed now to be quite deserted. The light from South’s window +made rays on the fog, but did not reach the tree. A quarter of an hour +passed, and all was blackness overhead. Giles had not yet come down. + +Then the tree seemed to shiver, then to heave a sigh; a movement was +audible, and Winterborne dropped almost noiselessly to the ground. He +had thought the matter out, and having returned the ladder and billhook +to their places, pursued his way homeward. He would not allow this +incident to affect his outer conduct any more than the danger to his +leaseholds had done, and went to bed as usual. Two simultaneous +troubles do not always make a double trouble; and thus it came to pass +that Giles’s practical anxiety about his houses, which would have been +enough to keep him awake half the night at any other time, was +displaced and not reinforced by his sentimental trouble about Grace +Melbury. This severance was in truth more like a burial of her than a +rupture with her; but he did not realize so much at present; even when +he arose in the morning he felt quite moody and stern: as yet the +second note in the gamut of such emotions, a tender regret for his +loss, had not made itself heard. + +A load of oak timber was to be sent away that morning to a builder +whose works were in a town many miles off. The proud trunks were taken +up from the silent spot which had known them through the buddings and +sheddings of their growth for the foregoing hundred years; chained down +like slaves to a heavy timber carriage with enormous red wheels, and +four of the most powerful of Melbury’s horses were harnessed in front +to draw them. + +The horses wore their bells that day. There were sixteen to the team, +carried on a frame above each animal’s shoulders, and tuned to scale, +so as to form two octaves, running from the highest note on the right +or off-side of the leader to the lowest on the left or near-side of the +shaft-horse. Melbury was among the last to retain horse-bells in that +neighborhood; for, living at Little Hintock, where the lanes yet +remained as narrow as before the days of turnpike roads, these +sound-signals were still as useful to him and his neighbors as they had +ever been in former times. Much backing was saved in the course of a +year by the warning notes they cast ahead; moreover, the tones of all +the teams in the district being known to the carters of each, they +could tell a long way off on a dark night whether they were about to +encounter friends or strangers. + +The fog of the previous evening still lingered so heavily over the +woods that the morning could not penetrate the trees till long after +its time. The load being a ponderous one, the lane crooked, and the air +so thick, Winterborne set out, as he often did, to accompany the team +as far as the corner, where it would turn into a wider road. + +So they rumbled on, shaking the foundations of the roadside cottages by +the weight of their progress, the sixteen bells chiming harmoniously +over all, till they had risen out of the valley and were descending +towards the more open route, the sparks rising from their creaking skid +and nearly setting fire to the dead leaves alongside. + +Then occurred one of the very incidents against which the bells were an +endeavor to guard. Suddenly there beamed into their eyes, quite close +to them, the two lamps of a carriage, shorn of rays by the fog. Its +approach had been quite unheard, by reason of their own noise. The +carriage was a covered one, while behind it could be discerned another +vehicle laden with luggage. + +Winterborne went to the head of the team, and heard the coachman +telling the carter that he must turn back. The carter declared that +this was impossible. + +“You can turn if you unhitch your string-horses,” said the coachman. + +“It is much easier for you to turn than for us,” said Winterborne. +“We’ve five tons of timber on these wheels if we’ve an ounce.” + +“But I’ve another carriage with luggage at my back.” + +Winterborne admitted the strength of the argument. “But even with +that,” he said, “you can back better than we. And you ought to, for you +could hear our bells half a mile off.” + +“And you could see our lights.” + +“We couldn’t, because of the fog.” + +“Well, our time’s precious,” said the coachman, haughtily. “You are +only going to some trumpery little village or other in the +neighborhood, while we are going straight to Italy.” + +“Driving all the way, I suppose,” said Winterborne, sarcastically. + +The argument continued in these terms till a voice from the interior of +the carriage inquired what was the matter. It was a lady’s. + +She was briefly informed of the timber people’s obstinacy; and then +Giles could hear her telling the footman to direct the timber people to +turn their horses’ heads. + +The message was brought, and Winterborne sent the bearer back to say +that he begged the lady’s pardon, but that he could not do as she +requested; that though he would not assert it to be impossible, it was +impossible by comparison with the slight difficulty to her party to +back their light carriages. As fate would have it, the incident with +Grace Melbury on the previous day made Giles less gentle than he might +otherwise have shown himself, his confidence in the sex being rudely +shaken. + +In fine, nothing could move him, and the carriages were compelled to +back till they reached one of the sidings or turnouts constructed in +the bank for the purpose. Then the team came on ponderously, and the +clanging of its sixteen bells as it passed the discomfited carriages, +tilted up against the bank, lent a particularly triumphant tone to the +team’s progress—a tone which, in point of fact, did not at all attach +to its conductor’s feelings. + +Giles walked behind the timber, and just as he had got past the yet +stationary carriages he heard a soft voice say, “Who is that rude man? +Not Melbury?” The sex of the speaker was so prominent in the voice that +Winterborne felt a pang of regret. + +“No, ma’am. A younger man, in a smaller way of business in Little +Hintock. Winterborne is his name.” + +Thus they parted company. “Why, Mr. Winterborne,” said the wagoner, +when they were out of hearing, “that was She—Mrs. Charmond! Who’d ha’ +thought it? What in the world can a woman that does nothing be +cock-watching out here at this time o’ day for? Oh, going to Italy—yes +to be sure, I heard she was going abroad, she can’t endure the winter +here.” + +Winterborne was vexed at the incident; the more so that he knew Mr. +Melbury, in his adoration of Hintock House, would be the first to blame +him if it became known. But saying no more, he accompanied the load to +the end of the lane, and then turned back with an intention to call at +South’s to learn the result of the experiment of the preceding evening. + +It chanced that a few minutes before this time Grace Melbury, who now +rose soon enough to breakfast with her father, in spite of the +unwontedness of the hour, had been commissioned by him to make the same +inquiry at South’s. Marty had been standing at the door when Miss +Melbury arrived. Almost before the latter had spoken, Mrs. Charmond’s +carriages, released from the obstruction up the lane, came bowling +along, and the two girls turned to regard the spectacle. + +Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but there was sufficient light for them +to discern her outline between the carriage windows. A noticeable +feature in her _tournure_ was a magnificent mass of braided locks. + +“How well she looks this morning!” said Grace, forgetting Mrs. +Charmond’s slight in her generous admiration. “Her hair so becomes her +worn that way. I have never seen any more beautiful!” + +“Nor have I, miss,” said Marty, dryly, unconsciously stroking her +crown. + +Grace watched the carriages with lingering regret till they were out of +sight. She then learned of Marty that South was no better. Before she +had come away Winterborne approached the house, but seeing that one of +the two girls standing on the door-step was Grace, he suddenly turned +back again and sought the shelter of his own home till she should have +gone away. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + +The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne’s mind +the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from +her to the fact that several cottages and other houses in the two +Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession in the event of +South’s death. He marvelled what people could have been thinking about +in the past to invent such precarious tenures as these; still more, +what could have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and other village +people, to exchange their old copyholds for life-leases. But having +naturally succeeded to these properties through his father, he had done +his best to keep them in order, though he was much struck with his +father’s negligence in not insuring South’s life. + +After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went upstairs, +turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay between +the mattress and the sacking. In this he kept his leases, which had +remained there unopened ever since his father’s death. It was the usual +hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents. Winterborne +sat down on the bed and looked them over. They were ordinary leases for +three lives, which a member of the South family, some fifty years +before this time, had accepted of the lord of the manor in lieu of +certain copyholds and other rights, in consideration of having the +dilapidated houses rebuilt by said lord. They had come into his +father’s possession chiefly through his mother, who was a South. + +Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter, which +Winterborne had never seen before. It bore a remote date, the +handwriting being that of some solicitor or agent, and the signature +the landholder’s. It was to the effect that at any time before the last +of the stated lives should drop, Mr. Giles Winterborne, senior, or his +representative, should have the privilege of adding his own and his +son’s life to the life remaining on payment of a merely nominal sum; +the concession being in consequence of the elder Winterborne’s consent +to demolish one of the houses and relinquish its site, which stood at +an awkward corner of the lane and impeded the way. + +The house had been pulled down years before. Why Giles’s father had not +taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his son’s lives +it was impossible to say. The likelihood was that death alone had +hindered him in the execution of his project, as it surely was, the +elder Winterborne having been a man who took much pleasure in dealing +with house property in his small way. + +Since one of the Souths still survived, there was not much doubt that +Giles could do what his father had left undone, as far as his own life +was concerned. This possibility cheered him much, for by those houses +hung many things. Melbury’s doubt of the young man’s fitness to be the +husband of Grace had been based not a little on the precariousness of +his holdings in Little and Great Hintock. He resolved to attend to the +business at once, the fine for renewal being a sum that he could easily +muster. His scheme, however, could not be carried out in a day; and +meanwhile he would run up to South’s, as he had intended to do, to +learn the result of the experiment with the tree. + +Marty met him at the door. “Well, Marty,” he said; and was surprised to +read in her face that the case was not so hopeful as he had imagined. + +“I am sorry for your labor,” she said. “It is all lost. He says the +tree seems taller than ever.” + +Winterborne looked round at it. Taller the tree certainly did seem, the +gauntness of its now naked stem being more marked than before. + +“It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had done to it this +morning,” she added. “He declares it will come down upon us and cleave +us, like ‘the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.’” + +“Well; can I do anything else?” asked he. + +“The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down.” + +“Oh—you’ve had the doctor?” + +“I didn’t send for him. Mrs. Charmond, before she left, heard that +father was ill, and told him to attend him at her expense.” + +“That was very good of her. And he says it ought to be cut down. We +mustn’t cut it down without her knowledge, I suppose.” + +He went up-stairs. There the old man sat, staring at the now gaunt tree +as if his gaze were frozen on to its trunk. Unluckily the tree waved +afresh by this time, a wind having sprung up and blown the fog away, +and his eyes turned with its wavings. + +They heard footsteps—a man’s, but of a lighter type than usual. “There +is Doctor Fitzpiers again,” she said, and descended. Presently his +tread was heard on the naked stairs. + +Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick-chamber just as a doctor is more or less +wont to do on such occasions, and pre-eminently when the room is that +of a humble cottager, looking round towards the patient with that +preoccupied gaze which so plainly reveals that he has wellnigh +forgotten all about the case and the whole circumstances since he +dismissed them from his mind at his last exit from the same apartment. +He nodded to Winterborne, with whom he was already a little acquainted, +recalled the case to his thoughts, and went leisurely on to where South +sat. + +Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed, handsome man. His eyes +were dark and impressive, and beamed with the light either of energy or +of susceptivity—it was difficult to say which; it might have been a +little of both. That quick, glittering, practical eye, sharp for the +surface of things and for nothing beneath it, he had not. But whether +his apparent depth of vision was real, or only an artistic accident of +his corporeal moulding, nothing but his deeds could reveal. + +His face was rather soft than stern, charming than grand, pale than +flushed; his nose—if a sketch of his features be _de rigueur_ for a +person of his pretensions—was artistically beautiful enough to have +been worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy, and was hence +devoid of those knotty irregularities which often mean power; while the +double-cyma or classical curve of his mouth was not without a looseness +in its close. Nevertheless, either from his readily appreciative mien, +or his reflective manner, or the instinct towards profound things which +was said to possess him, his presence bespoke the philosopher rather +than the dandy or macaroni—an effect which was helped by the absence of +trinkets or other trivialities from his attire, though this was more +finished and up to date than is usually the case among rural +practitioners. + +Strict people of the highly respectable class, knowing a little about +him by report, might have said that he seemed likely to err rather in +the possession of too many ideas than too few; to be a dreamy ’ist of +some sort, or too deeply steeped in some false kind of ’ism. However +this may be, it will be seen that he was undoubtedly a somewhat rare +kind of gentleman and doctor to have descended, as from the clouds, +upon Little Hintock. + +“This is an extraordinary case,” he said at last to Winterborne, after +examining South by conversation, look, and touch, and learning that the +craze about the elm was stronger than ever. “Come down-stairs, and I’ll +tell you what I think.” + +They accordingly descended, and the doctor continued, “The tree must be +cut down, or I won’t answer for his life.” + +“’Tis Mrs. Charmond’s tree, and I suppose we must get permission?” said +Giles. “If so, as she is gone away, I must speak to her agent.” + +“Oh—never mind whose tree it is—what’s a tree beside a life! Cut it +down. I have not the honor of knowing Mrs. Charmond as yet, but I am +disposed to risk that much with her.” + +“’Tis timber,” rejoined Giles, more scrupulous than he would have been +had not his own interests stood so closely involved. “They’ll never +fell a stick about here without it being marked first, either by her or +the agent.” + +“Then we’ll inaugurate a new era forthwith. How long has he complained +of the tree?” asked the doctor of Marty. + +“Weeks and weeks, sir. The shape of it seems to haunt him like an evil +spirit. He says that it is exactly his own age, that it has got human +sense, and sprouted up when he was born on purpose to rule him, and +keep him as its slave. Others have been like it afore in Hintock.” + +They could hear South’s voice up-stairs “Oh, he’s rocking this way; he +must come! And then my poor life, that’s worth houses upon houses, will +be squashed out o’ me. Oh! oh!” + +“That’s how he goes on,” she added. “And he’ll never look anywhere else +but out of the window, and scarcely have the curtains drawn.” + +“Down with it, then, and hang Mrs. Charmond,” said Mr. Fitzpiers. “The +best plan will be to wait till the evening, when it is dark, or early +in the morning before he is awake, so that he doesn’t see it fall, for +that would terrify him worse than ever. Keep the blind down till I +come, and then I’ll assure him, and show him that his trouble is over.” + +The doctor then departed, and they waited till the evening. When it was +dusk, and the curtains drawn, Winterborne directed a couple of woodmen +to bring a crosscut-saw, and the tall, threatening tree was soon nearly +off at its base. He would not fell it completely then, on account of +the possible crash, but next morning, before South was awake, they went +and lowered it cautiously, in a direction away from the cottage. It was +a business difficult to do quite silently; but it was done at last, and +the elm of the same birth-year as the woodman’s lay stretched upon the +ground. The weakest idler that passed could now set foot on marks +formerly made in the upper forks by the shoes of adventurous climbers +only; once inaccessible nests could be examined microscopically; and on +swaying extremities where birds alone had perched, the by-standers sat +down. + +As soon as it was broad daylight the doctor came, and Winterborne +entered the house with him. Marty said that her father was wrapped up +and ready, as usual, to be put into his chair. They ascended the +stairs, and soon seated him. He began at once to complain of the tree, +and the danger to his life and Winterborne’s house-property in +consequence. + +The doctor signalled to Giles, who went and drew back the printed +cotton curtains. “’Tis gone, see,” said Mr. Fitzpiers. + +As soon as the old man saw the vacant patch of sky in place of the +branched column so familiar to his gaze, he sprang up, speechless, his +eyes rose from their hollows till the whites showed all round; he fell +back, and a bluish whiteness overspread him. + +Greatly alarmed, they put him on the bed. As soon as he came a little +out of his fit, he gasped, “Oh, it is gone!—where?—where?” + +His whole system seemed paralyzed by amazement. They were +thunder-struck at the result of the experiment, and did all they could. +Nothing seemed to avail. Giles and Fitzpiers went and came, but +uselessly. He lingered through the day, and died that evening as the +sun went down. + +“D—d if my remedy hasn’t killed him!” murmured the doctor. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + + +When Melbury heard what had happened he seemed much moved, and walked +thoughtfully about the premises. On South’s own account he was +genuinely sorry; and on Winterborne’s he was the more grieved in that +this catastrophe had so closely followed the somewhat harsh dismissal +of Giles as the betrothed of his daughter. + +He was quite angry with circumstances for so heedlessly inflicting on +Giles a second trouble when the needful one inflicted by himself was +all that the proper order of events demanded. “I told Giles’s father +when he came into those houses not to spend too much money on lifehold +property held neither for his own life nor his son’s,” he exclaimed. +“But he wouldn’t listen to me. And now Giles has to suffer for it.” + +“Poor Giles!” murmured Grace. + +“Now, Grace, between us two, it is very, very remarkable. It is almost +as if I had foreseen this; and I am thankful for your escape, though I +am sincerely sorry for Giles. Had we not dismissed him already, we +could hardly have found it in our hearts to dismiss him now. So I say, +be thankful. I’ll do all I can for him as a friend; but as a pretender +to the position of my son-in law, that can never be thought of more.” + +And yet at that very moment the impracticability to which poor +Winterborne’s suit had been reduced was touching Grace’s heart to a +warmer sentiment on his behalf than she had felt for years concerning +him. + +He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone in the old familiar house which +had ceased to be his, taking a calm if somewhat dismal survey of +affairs. The pendulum of the clock bumped every now and then against +one side of the case in which it swung, as the muffled drum to his +worldly march. Looking out of the window he could perceive that a +paralysis had come over Creedle’s occupation of manuring the garden, +owing, obviously, to a conviction that they might not be living there +long enough to profit by next season’s crop. + +He looked at the leases again and the letter attached. There was no +doubt that he had lost his houses by an accident which might easily +have been circumvented if he had known the true conditions of his +holding. The time for performance had now lapsed in strict law; but +might not the intention be considered by the landholder when she became +aware of the circumstances, and his moral right to retain the holdings +for the term of his life be conceded? + +His heart sank within him when he perceived that despite all the legal +reciprocities and safeguards prepared and written, the upshot of the +matter amounted to this, that it depended upon the mere caprice—good or +ill—of the woman he had met the day before in such an unfortunate way, +whether he was to possess his houses for life or no. + +While he was sitting and thinking a step came to the door, and Melbury +appeared, looking very sorry for his position. Winterborne welcomed him +by a word and a look, and went on with his examination of the +parchments. His visitor sat down. + +“Giles,” he said, “this is very awkward, and I am sorry for it. What +are you going to do?” + +Giles informed him of the real state of affairs, and how barely he had +missed availing himself of his chance of renewal. + +“What a misfortune! Why was this neglected? Well, the best thing you +can do is to write and tell her all about it, and throw yourself upon +her generosity.” + +“I would rather not,” murmured Giles. + +“But you must,” said Melbury. + +In short, he argued so cogently that Giles allowed himself to be +persuaded, and the letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and sent to +Hintock House, whence, as he knew, it would at once be forwarded to +her. + +Melbury feeling that he had done so good an action in coming as almost +to extenuate his previous arbitrary conduct to nothing, went home; and +Giles was left alone to the suspense of waiting for a reply from the +divinity who shaped the ends of the Hintock population. By this time +all the villagers knew of the circumstances, and being wellnigh like +one family, a keen interest was the result all round. + +Everybody thought of Giles; nobody thought of Marty. Had any of them +looked in upon her during those moonlight nights which preceded the +burial of her father, they would have seen the girl absolutely alone in +the house with the dead man. Her own chamber being nearest the stairs, +the coffin had been placed there for convenience; and at a certain hour +of the night, when the moon arrived opposite the window, its beams +streamed across the still profile of South, sublimed by the august +presence of death, and onward a few feet farther upon the face of his +daughter, lying in her little bed in the stillness of a repose almost +as dignified as that of her companion—the repose of a guileless soul +that had nothing more left on earth to lose, except a life which she +did not overvalue. + +South was buried, and a week passed, and Winterborne watched for a +reply from Mrs. Charmond. Melbury was very sanguine as to its tenor; +but Winterborne had not told him of the encounter with her carriage, +when, if ever he had heard an affronted tone on a woman’s lips, he had +heard it on hers. + +The postman’s time for passing was just after Melbury’s men had +assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, who when not busy on his +own account would lend assistance there, used to go out into the lane +every morning and meet the post-man at the end of one of the green +rides through the hazel copse, in the straight stretch of which his +laden figure could be seen a long way off. Grace also was very anxious; +more anxious than her father; more, perhaps, than Winterborne himself. +This anxiety led her into the spar-house on some pretext or other +almost every morning while they were awaiting the reply. + +Fitzpiers too, though he did not personally appear, was much +interested, and not altogether easy in his mind; for he had been +informed by an authority of what he had himself conjectured, that if +the tree had been allowed to stand, the old man would have gone on +complaining, but might have lived for twenty years. + +Eleven times had Winterborne gone to that corner of the ride, and +looked up its long straight slope through the wet grays of winter dawn. +But though the postman’s bowed figure loomed in view pretty regularly, +he brought nothing for Giles. On the twelfth day the man of missives, +while yet in the extreme distance, held up his hand, and Winterborne +saw a letter in it. He took it into the spar-house before he broke the +seal, and those who were there gathered round him while he read, Grace +looking in at the door. + +The letter was not from Mrs. Charmond herself, but her agent at +Sherton. Winterborne glanced it over and looked up. + +“It’s all over,” he said. + +“Ah!” said they altogether. + +“Her lawyer is instructed to say that Mrs. Charmond sees no reason for +disturbing the natural course of things, particularly as she +contemplates pulling the houses down,” he said, quietly. + +“Only think of that!” said several. + +Winterborne had turned away, and said vehemently to himself, “Then let +her pull ’em down, and be d—d to her!” + +Creedle looked at him with a face of seven sorrows, saying, “Ah, ’twas +that sperrit that lost ’em for ye, maister!” + +Winterborne subdued his feelings, and from that hour, whatever they +were, kept them entirely to himself. There could be no doubt that, up +to this last moment, he had nourished a feeble hope of regaining Grace +in the event of this negotiation turning out a success. Not being aware +of the fact that her father could have settled upon her a fortune +sufficient to enable both to live in comfort, he deemed it now an +absurdity to dream any longer of such a vanity as making her his wife, +and sank into silence forthwith. + +Yet whatever the value of taciturnity to a man among strangers, it is +apt to express more than talkativeness when he dwells among friends. +The countryman who is obliged to judge the time of day from changes in +external nature sees a thousand successive tints and traits in the +landscape which are never discerned by him who hears the regular chime +of a clock, because they are never in request. In like manner do we use +our eyes on our taciturn comrade. The infinitesimal movement of muscle, +curve, hair, and wrinkle, which when accompanied by a voice goes +unregarded, is watched and translated in the lack of it, till virtually +the whole surrounding circle of familiars is charged with the reserved +one’s moods and meanings. + +This was the condition of affairs between Winterborne and his neighbors +after his stroke of ill-luck. He held his tongue; and they observed +him, and knew that he was discomposed. + +Mr. Melbury, in his compunction, thought more of the matter than any +one else, except his daughter. Had Winterborne been going on in the old +fashion, Grace’s father could have alluded to his disapproval of the +alliance every day with the greatest frankness; but to speak any +further on the subject he could not find it in his heart to do now. He +hoped that Giles would of his own accord make some final announcement +that he entirely withdrew his pretensions to Grace, and so get the +thing past and done with. For though Giles had in a measure acquiesced +in the wish of her family, he could make matters unpleasant if he chose +to work upon Grace; and hence, when Melbury saw the young man +approaching along the road one day, he kept friendliness and frigidity +exactly balanced in his eye till he could see whether Giles’s manner +was presumptive or not. + +His manner was that of a man who abandoned all claims. “I am glad to +meet ye, Mr. Melbury,” he said, in a low voice, whose quality he +endeavored to make as practical as possible. “I am afraid I shall not +be able to keep that mare I bought, and as I don’t care to sell her, I +should like—if you don’t object—to give her to Miss Melbury. The horse +is very quiet, and would be quite safe for her.” + +Mr. Melbury was rather affected at this. “You sha’n’t hurt your pocket +like that on our account, Giles. Grace shall have the horse, but I’ll +pay you what you gave for her, and any expense you may have been put to +for her keep.” + +He would not hear of any other terms, and thus it was arranged. They +were now opposite Melbury’s house, and the timber-merchant pressed +Winterborne to enter, Grace being out of the way. + +“Pull round the settle, Giles,” said the timber-merchant, as soon as +they were within. “I should like to have a serious talk with you.” + +Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne frankly, and in quite a +friendly way. He declared that he did not like to be hard on a man when +he was in difficulty; but he really did not see how Winterborne could +marry his daughter now, without even a house to take her to. + +Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness of his situation. But from a +momentary feeling that he would like to know Grace’s mind from her own +lips, he did not speak out positively there and then. He accordingly +departed somewhat abruptly, and went home to consider whether he would +seek to bring about a meeting with her. + +In the evening, while he sat quietly pondering, he fancied that he +heard a scraping on the wall outside his house. The boughs of a monthly +rose which grew there made such a noise sometimes, but as no wind was +stirring he knew that it could not be the rose-tree. He took up the +candle and went out. Nobody was near. As he turned, the light flickered +on the whitewashed rough case of the front, and he saw words written +thereon in charcoal, which he read as follows: + +“O Giles, you’ve lost your dwelling-place, +And therefore, Giles, you’ll lose your Grace.” + + +Giles went in-doors. He had his suspicions as to the scrawler of those +lines, but he could not be sure. What suddenly filled his heart far +more than curiosity about their authorship was a terrible belief that +they were turning out to be true, try to see Grace as he might. They +decided the question for him. He sat down and wrote a formal note to +Melbury, in which he briefly stated that he was placed in such a +position as to make him share to the full Melbury’s view of his own and +his daughter’s promise, made some years before; to wish that it should +be considered as cancelled, and they themselves quite released from any +obligation on account of it. + +Having fastened up this their plenary absolution, he determined to get +it out of his hands and have done with it; to which end he went off to +Melbury’s at once. It was now so late that the family had all retired; +he crept up to the house, thrust the note under the door, and stole +away as silently as he had come. + +Melbury himself was the first to rise the next morning, and when he had +read the letter his relief was great. “Very honorable of Giles, very +honorable,” he kept saying to himself. “I shall not forget him. Now to +keep her up to her own true level.” + +It happened that Grace went out for an early ramble that morning, +passing through the door and gate while her father was in the +spar-house. To go in her customary direction she could not avoid +passing Winterborne’s house. The morning sun was shining flat upon its +white surface, and the words, which still remained, were immediately +visible to her. She read them. Her face flushed to crimson. She could +see Giles and Creedle talking together at the back; the charred +spar-gad with which the lines had been written lay on the ground +beneath the wall. Feeling pretty sure that Winterborne would observe +her action, she quickly went up to the wall, rubbed out “lose” and +inserted “keep” in its stead. Then she made the best of her way home +without looking behind her. Giles could draw an inference now if he +chose. + +There could not be the least doubt that gentle Grace was warming to +more sympathy with, and interest in, Giles Winterborne than ever she +had done while he was her promised lover; that since his misfortune +those social shortcomings of his, which contrasted so awkwardly with +her later experiences of life, had become obscured by the generous +revival of an old romantic attachment to him. Though mentally trained +and tilled into foreignness of view, as compared with her youthful +time, Grace was not an ambitious girl, and might, if left to herself, +have declined Winterborne without much discontent or unhappiness. Her +feelings just now were so far from latent that the writing on the wall +had thus quickened her to an unusual rashness. + +Having returned from her walk she sat at breakfast silently. When her +step-mother had left the room she said to her father, “I have made up +my mind that I should like my engagement to Giles to continue, for the +present at any rate, till I can see further what I ought to do.” + +Melbury looked much surprised. + +“Nonsense,” he said, sharply. “You don’t know what you are talking +about. Look here.” + +He handed across to her the letter received from Giles. + +She read it, and said no more. Could he have seen her write on the +wall? She did not know. Fate, it seemed, would have it this way, and +there was nothing to do but to acquiesce. + +It was a few hours after this that Winterborne, who, curiously enough, +had _not_ perceived Grace writing, was clearing away the tree from the +front of South’s late dwelling. He saw Marty standing in her door-way, +a slim figure in meagre black, almost without womanly contours as yet. +He went up to her and said, “Marty, why did you write that on my wall +last night? It _was_ you, you know.” + +“Because it was the truth. I didn’t mean to let it stay, Mr. +Winterborne; but when I was going to rub it out you came, and I was +obliged to run off.” + +“Having prophesied one thing, why did you alter it to another? Your +predictions can’t be worth much.” + +“I have not altered it.” + +“But you have.” + +“No.” + +“It is altered. Go and see.” + +She went, and read that, in spite of losing his dwelling-place, he +would _keep_ his Grace. Marty came back surprised. + +“Well, I never,” she said. “Who can have made such nonsense of it?” + +“Who, indeed?” said he. + +“I have rubbed it all out, as the point of it is quite gone.” + +“You’d no business to rub it out. I didn’t tell you to. I meant to let +it stay a little longer.” + +“Some idle boy did it, no doubt,” she murmured. + +As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetrator was +unsuspected, Winterborne said no more, and dismissed the matter from +his mind. + +From this day of his life onward for a considerable time, Winterborne, +though not absolutely out of his house as yet, retired into the +background of human life and action thereabout—a feat not particularly +difficult of performance anywhere when the doer has the assistance of a +lost prestige. Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her write, made no +further sign, and the frail bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly +launched was stranded and lost. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + + +Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the hill, in a house of much less +pretension, both as to architecture and as to magnitude, than the +timber-merchant’s. The latter had, without doubt, been once the +manorial residence appertaining to the snug and modest domain of Little +Hintock, of which the boundaries were now lost by its absorption with +others of its kind into the adjoining estate of Mrs. Charmond. Though +the Melburys themselves were unaware of the fact, there was every +reason to believe—at least so the parson said—that the owners of that +little manor had been Melbury’s own ancestors, the family name +occurring in numerous documents relating to transfers of land about the +time of the civil wars. + +Mr. Fitzpiers’s dwelling, on the contrary, was small, cottage-like, and +comparatively modern. It had been occupied, and was in part occupied +still, by a retired farmer and his wife, who, on the surgeon’s arrival +in quest of a home, had accommodated him by receding from their front +rooms into the kitchen quarter, whence they administered to his wants, +and emerged at regular intervals to receive from him a not unwelcome +addition to their income. + +The cottage and its garden were so regular in their arrangement that +they might have been laid out by a Dutch designer of the time of +William and Mary. In a low, dense hedge, cut to wedge-shape, was a door +over which the hedge formed an arch, and from the inside of the door a +straight path, bordered with clipped box, ran up the slope of the +garden to the porch, which was exactly in the middle of the house +front, with two windows on each side. Right and left of the path were +first a bed of gooseberry bushes; next of currant; next of raspberry; +next of strawberry; next of old-fashioned flowers; at the corners +opposite the porch being spheres of box resembling a pair of school +globes. Over the roof of the house could be seen the orchard, on yet +higher ground, and behind the orchard the forest-trees, reaching up to +the crest of the hill. + +Opposite the garden door and visible from the parlor window was a +swing-gate leading into a field, across which there ran a footpath. The +swing-gate had just been repainted, and on one fine afternoon, before +the paint was dry, and while gnats were still dying thereon, the +surgeon was standing in his sitting-room abstractedly looking out at +the different pedestrians who passed and repassed along that route. +Being of a philosophical stamp, he perceived that the character of each +of these travellers exhibited itself in a somewhat amusing manner by +his or her method of handling the gate. + +As regarded the men, there was not much variety: they gave the gate a +kick and passed through. The women were more contrasting. To them the +sticky wood-work was a barricade, a disgust, a menace, a treachery, as +the case might be. + +The first that he noticed was a bouncing woman with her skirts tucked +up and her hair uncombed. She grasped the gate without looking, giving +it a supplementary push with her shoulder, when the white imprint drew +from her an exclamation in language not too refined. She went to the +green bank, sat down and rubbed herself in the grass, cursing the +while. + +“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the doctor. + +The next was a girl, with her hair cropped short, in whom the surgeon +recognized the daughter of his late patient, the woodman South. +Moreover, a black bonnet that she wore by way of mourning unpleasantly +reminded him that he had ordered the felling of a tree which had caused +her parent’s death and Winterborne’s losses. She walked and thought, +and not recklessly; but her preoccupation led her to grasp +unsuspectingly the bar of the gate, and touch it with her arm. +Fitzpiers felt sorry that she should have soiled that new black frock, +poor as it was, for it was probably her only one. She looked at her +hand and arm, seemed but little surprised, wiped off the disfigurement +with an almost unmoved face, and as if without abandoning her original +thoughts. Thus she went on her way. + +Then there came over the green quite a different sort of personage. She +walked as delicately as if she had been bred in town, and as firmly as +if she had been bred in the country; she seemed one who dimly knew her +appearance to be attractive, but who retained some of the charm of +being ignorant of that fact by forgetting it in a general pensiveness. +She approached the gate. To let such a creature touch it even with a +tip of her glove was to Fitzpiers almost like letting her proceed to +tragical self-destruction. He jumped up and looked for his hat, but was +unable to find the right one; glancing again out of the window he saw +that he was too late. Having come up, she stopped, looked at the gate, +picked up a little stick, and using it as a bayonet, pushed open the +obstacle without touching it at all. + +He steadily watched her till she had passed out of sight, recognizing +her as the very young lady whom he had seen once before and been unable +to identify. Whose could that emotional face be? All the others he had +seen in Hintock as yet oppressed him with their crude rusticity; the +contrast offered by this suggested that she hailed from elsewhere. + +Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first time of +seeing her; but he now went a little further with them, and considered +that as there had been no carriage seen or heard lately in that spot +she could not have come a very long distance. She must be somebody +staying at Hintock House? Possibly Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard +so much—at any rate an inmate, and this probability was sufficient to +set a mild radiance in the surgeon’s somewhat dull sky. + +Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had been perusing. It happened to be +that of a German metaphysician, for the doctor was not a practical man, +except by fits, and much preferred the ideal world to the real, and the +discovery of principles to their application. The young lady remained +in his thoughts. He might have followed her; but he was not +constitutionally active, and preferred a conjectural pursuit. However, +when he went out for a ramble just before dusk he insensibly took the +direction of Hintock House, which was the way that Grace had been +walking, it having happened that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond that +day, and she had walked to the brow of a hill whence the house could be +seen, returning by another route. + +Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, overlooking the +manor-house. The shutters were shut, and only one chimney smoked. The +mere aspect of the place was enough to inform him that Mrs. Charmond +had gone away and that nobody else was staying there. Fitzpiers felt a +vague disappointment that the young lady was not Mrs. Charmond, of whom +he had heard so much; and without pausing longer to gaze at a carcass +from which the spirit had flown, he bent his steps homeward. + +Later in the evening Fitzpiers was summoned to visit a cottage patient +about two miles distant. Like the majority of young practitioners in +his position he was far from having assumed the dignity of being driven +his rounds by a servant in a brougham that flashed the sunlight like a +mirror; his way of getting about was by means of a gig which he drove +himself, hitching the rein of the horse to the gate post, shutter hook, +or garden paling of the domicile under visitation, or giving pennies to +little boys to hold the animal during his stay—pennies which were well +earned when the cases to be attended were of a certain cheerful kind +that wore out the patience of the little boys. + +On this account of travelling alone, the night journeys which Fitzpiers +had frequently to take were dismal enough, a serious apparent +perversity in nature ruling that whenever there was to be a birth in a +particularly inaccessible and lonely place, that event should occur in +the night. The surgeon, having been of late years a town man, hated the +solitary midnight woodland. He was not altogether skilful with the +reins, and it often occurred to his mind that if in some remote depths +of the trees an accident were to happen, the fact of his being alone +might be the death of him. Hence he made a practice of picking up any +countryman or lad whom he chanced to pass by, and under the disguise of +treating him to a nice drive, obtained his companionship on the +journey, and his convenient assistance in opening gates. + +The doctor had started on his way out of the village on the night in +question when the light of his lamps fell upon the musing form of +Winterborne, walking leisurely along, as if he had no object in life. +Winterborne was a better class of companion than the doctor usually +could get, and he at once pulled up and asked him if he would like a +drive through the wood that fine night. + +Giles seemed rather surprised at the doctor’s friendliness, but said +that he had no objection, and accordingly mounted beside Mr. Fitzpiers. + +They drove along under the black boughs which formed a network upon the +stars, all the trees of a species alike in one respect, and no two of +them alike in another. Looking up as they passed under a horizontal +bough they sometimes saw objects like large tadpoles lodged +diametrically across it, which Giles explained to be pheasants there at +roost; and they sometimes heard the report of a gun, which reminded him +that others knew what those tadpole shapes represented as well as he. + +Presently the doctor said what he had been going to say for some time: + +“Is there a young lady staying in this neighborhood—a very attractive +girl—with a little white boa round her neck, and white fur round her +gloves?” + +Winterborne of course knew in a moment that Grace, whom he had caught +the doctor peering at, was represented by these accessories. With a +wary grimness, partly in his character, partly induced by the +circumstances, he evaded an answer by saying, “I saw a young lady +talking to Mrs. Charmond the other day; perhaps it was she.” + +Fitzpiers concluded from this that Winterborne had not seen him looking +over the hedge. “It might have been,” he said. “She is quite a +gentlewoman—the one I mean. She cannot be a permanent resident in +Hintock or I should have seen her before. Nor does she look like one.” + +“She is not staying at Hintock House?” + +“No; it is closed.” + +“Then perhaps she is staying at one of the cottages, or farmhouses?” + +“Oh no—you mistake. She was a different sort of girl altogether.” As +Giles was nobody, Fitzpiers treated him accordingly, and apostrophized +the night in continuation: + +“She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, +A power, that from its objects scarcely drew +One impulse of her being—in her lightness +Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew, +Which wanders through the waste air’s pathless blue, +To nourish some far desert: she did seem +Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew, +Like the bright shade of some immortal dream +Which walks, when tempests sleep, the wave of life’s dark stream.” + + +The consummate charm of the lines seemed to Winterborne, though he +divined that they were a quotation, to be somehow the result of his +lost love’s charms upon Fitzpiers. + +“You seem to be mightily in love with her, sir,” he said, with a +sensation of heart-sickness, and more than ever resolved not to mention +Grace by name. + +“Oh no—I am not that, Winterborne; people living insulated, as I do by +the solitude of this place, get charged with emotive fluid like a +Leyden-jar with electric, for want of some conductor at hand to +disperse it. Human love is a subjective thing—the essence itself of +man, as that great thinker Spinoza the philosopher says—_ipsa hominis +essentia_—it is joy accompanied by an idea which we project against any +suitable object in the line of our vision, just as the rainbow iris is +projected against an oak, ash, or elm tree indifferently. So that if +any other young lady had appeared instead of the one who did appear, I +should have felt just the same interest in her, and have quoted +precisely the same lines from Shelley about her, as about this one I +saw. Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!” + +“Well, it is what we call being in love down in these parts, whether or +no,” said Winterborne. + +“You are right enough if you admit that I am in love with something in +my own head, and no thing in itself outside it at all.” + +“Is it part of a country doctor’s duties to learn that view of things, +may I ask, sir?” said Winterborne, adopting the Socratic εἰρωνεία with +such well-assumed simplicity that Fitzpiers answered, readily, + +“Oh no. The real truth is, Winterborne, that medical practice in places +like this is a very rule-of-thumb matter; a bottle of bitter stuff for +this and that old woman—the bitterer the better—compounded from a few +simple stereotyped prescriptions; occasional attendance at births, +where mere presence is almost sufficient, so healthy and strong are the +people; and a lance for an abscess now and then. Investigation and +experiment cannot be carried on without more appliances than one has +here—though I have attempted it a little.” + +Giles did not enter into this view of the case; what he had been struck +with was the curious parallelism between Mr. Fitzpiers’s manner and +Grace’s, as shown by the fact of both of them straying into a subject +of discourse so engrossing to themselves that it made them forget it +was foreign to him. + +Nothing further passed between himself and the doctor in relation to +Grace till they were on their way back. They had stopped at a way-side +inn for a glass of brandy and cider hot, and when they were again in +motion, Fitzpiers, possibly a little warmed by the liquor, resumed the +subject by saying, “I should like very much to know who that young lady +was.” + +“What difference can it make, if she’s only the tree your rainbow falls +on?” + +“Ha! ha! True.” + +“You have no wife, sir?” + +“I have no wife, and no idea of one. I hope to do better things than +marry and settle in Hintock. Not but that it is well for a medical man +to be married, and sometimes, begad, ’twould be pleasant enough in this +place, with the wind roaring round the house, and the rain and the +boughs beating against it. I hear that you lost your life-holds by the +death of South?” + +“I did. I lost in more ways than one.” + +They had reached the top of Hintock Lane or Street, if it could be +called such where three-quarters of the road-side consisted of copse +and orchard. One of the first houses to be passed was Melbury’s. A +light was shining from a bedroom window facing lengthwise of the lane. +Winterborne glanced at it, and saw what was coming. He had withheld an +answer to the doctor’s inquiry to hinder his knowledge of Grace; but, +as he thought to himself, “who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who +hath bound the waters in a garment?” he could not hinder what was +doomed to arrive, and might just as well have been outspoken. As they +came up to the house, Grace’s figure was distinctly visible, drawing +the two white curtains together which were used here instead of blinds. + +“Why, there she is!” said Fitzpiers. “How does she come there?” + +“In the most natural way in the world. It is her home. Mr. Melbury is +her father.” + +“Oh, indeed—indeed—indeed! How comes he to have a daughter of that +stamp?” + +Winterborne laughed coldly. “Won’t money do anything,” he said, “if +you’ve promising material to work upon? Why shouldn’t a Hintock girl, +taken early from home, and put under proper instruction, become as +finished as any other young lady, if she’s got brains and good looks to +begin with?” + +“No reason at all why she shouldn’t,” murmured the surgeon, with +reflective disappointment. “Only I didn’t anticipate quite that kind of +origin for her.” + +“And you think an inch or two less of her now.” There was a little +tremor in Winterborne’s voice as he spoke. + +“Well,” said the doctor, with recovered warmth, “I am not so sure that +I think less of her. At first it was a sort of blow; but, dammy! I’ll +stick up for her. She’s charming, every inch of her!” + +“So she is,” said Winterborne, “but not to me.” + +From this ambiguous expression of the reticent woodlander’s, Dr. +Fitzpiers inferred that Giles disliked Miss Melbury because of some +haughtiness in her bearing towards him, and had, on that account, +withheld her name. The supposition did not tend to diminish his +admiration for her. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + + +Grace’s exhibition of herself, in the act of pulling-to the +window-curtains, had been the result of an unfortunate incident in the +house that day—nothing less than the illness of Grammer Oliver, a woman +who had never till now lain down for such a reason in her life. Like +others to whom unbroken years of health has made the idea of keeping +their bed almost as repugnant as death itself, she had continued on +foot till she literally fell on the floor; and though she had, as yet, +been scarcely a day off duty, she had sickened into quite a different +personage from the independent Grammer of the yard and spar-house. Ill +as she was, on one point she was firm. On no account would she see a +doctor; in other words, Fitzpiers. + +The room in which Grace had been discerned was not her own, but the old +woman’s. On the girl’s way to bed she had received a message from +Grammer, to the effect that she would much like to speak to her that +night. + +Grace entered, and set the candle on a low chair beside the bed, so +that the profile of Grammer as she lay cast itself in a keen shadow +upon the whitened wall, her large head being still further magnified by +an enormous turban, which was, really, her petticoat wound in a wreath +round her temples. Grace put the room a little in order, and +approaching the sick woman, said, “I am come, Grammer, as you wish. Do +let us send for the doctor before it gets later.” + +“I will not have him,” said Grammer Oliver, decisively. + +“Then somebody to sit up with you.” + +“Can’t abear it! No; I wanted to see you, Miss Grace, because ’ch have +something on my mind. Dear Miss Grace, _I took that money of the +doctor, after all!_” + +“What money?” + +“The ten pounds.” + +Grace did not quite understand. + +“The ten pounds he offered me for my head, because I’ve a large brain. +I signed a paper when I took the money, not feeling concerned about it +at all. I have not liked to tell ye that it was really settled with +him, because you showed such horror at the notion. Well, having thought +it over more at length, I wish I hadn’t done it; and it weighs upon my +mind. John South’s death of fear about the tree makes me think that I +shall die of this....’Ch have been going to ask him again to let me +off, but I hadn’t the face.” + +“Why?” + +“I’ve spent some of the money—more’n two pounds o’t. It do wherrit me +terribly; and I shall die o’ the thought of that paper I signed with my +holy cross, as South died of his trouble.” + +“If you ask him to burn the paper he will, I’m sure, and think no more +of it.” + +“‘Ch have done it once already, miss. But he laughed cruel like. ‘Yours +is such a fine brain, Grammer,’ ’er said, ‘that science couldn’t afford +to lose you. Besides, you’ve taken my money.’...Don’t let your father +know of this, please, on no account whatever!” + +“No, no. I will let you have the money to return to him.” + +Grammer rolled her head negatively upon the pillow. “Even if I should +be well enough to take it to him, he won’t like it. Though why he +should so particular want to look into the works of a poor old woman’s +head-piece like mine when there’s so many other folks about, I don’t +know. I know how he’ll answer me: ‘A lonely person like you, Grammer,’ +er woll say. ‘What difference is it to you what becomes of ye when the +breath’s out of your body?’ Oh, it do trouble me! If you only knew how +he do chevy me round the chimmer in my dreams, you’d pity me. How I +could do it I can’t think! But ’ch was always so rackless!...If I only +had anybody to plead for me!” + +“Mrs. Melbury would, I am sure.” + +“Ay; but he wouldn’t hearken to she! It wants a younger face than hers +to work upon such as he.” + +Grace started with comprehension. “You don’t think he would do it for +me?” she said. + +“Oh, wouldn’t he!” + +“I couldn’t go to him, Grammer, on any account. I don’t know him at +all.” + +“Ah, if I were a young lady,” said the artful Grammer, “and could save +a poor old woman’s skellington from a heathen doctor instead of a +Christian grave, I would do it, and be glad to. But nobody will do +anything for a poor old familiar friend but push her out of the way.” + +“You are very ungrateful, Grammer, to say that. But you are ill, I +know, and that’s why you speak so. Now believe me, you are not going to +die yet. Remember you told me yourself that you meant to keep him +waiting many a year.” + +“Ay, one can joke when one is well, even in old age; but in sickness +one’s gayety falters to grief; and that which seemed small looks large; +and the grim far-off seems near.” + +Grace’s eyes had tears in them. “I don’t like to go to him on such an +errand, Grammer,” she said, brokenly. “But I will, to ease your mind.” + +It was with extreme reluctance that Grace cloaked herself next morning +for the undertaking. She was all the more indisposed to the journey by +reason of Grammer’s allusion to the effect of a pretty face upon Dr. +Fitzpiers; and hence she most illogically did that which, had the +doctor never seen her, would have operated to stultify the sole motive +of her journey; that is to say, she put on a woollen veil, which hid +all her face except an occasional spark of her eyes. + +Her own wish that nothing should be known of this strange and grewsome +proceeding, no less than Grammer Oliver’s own desire, led Grace to take +every precaution against being discovered. She went out by the garden +door as the safest way, all the household having occupations at the +other side. The morning looked forbidding enough when she stealthily +opened it. The battle between frost and thaw was continuing in mid-air: +the trees dripped on the garden-plots, where no vegetables would grow +for the dripping, though they were planted year after year with that +curious mechanical regularity of country people in the face of +hopelessness; the moss which covered the once broad gravel terrace was +swamped; and Grace stood irresolute. Then she thought of poor Grammer, +and her dreams of the doctor running after her, scalpel in hand, and +the possibility of a case so curiously similar to South’s ending in the +same way; thereupon she stepped out into the drizzle. + +The nature of her errand, and Grammer Oliver’s account of the compact +she had made, lent a fascinating horror to Grace’s conception of +Fitzpiers. She knew that he was a young man; but her single object in +seeking an interview with him put all considerations of his age and +social aspect from her mind. Standing as she stood, in Grammer Oliver’s +shoes, he was simply a remorseless Jove of the sciences, who would not +have mercy, and would have sacrifice; a man whom, save for this, she +would have preferred to avoid knowing. But since, in such a small +village, it was improbable that any long time could pass without their +meeting, there was not much to deplore in her having to meet him now. + +But, as need hardly be said, Miss Melbury’s view of the doctor as a +merciless, unwavering, irresistible scientist was not quite in +accordance with fact. The real Dr. Fitzpiers was a man of too many +hobbies to show likelihood of rising to any great eminence in the +profession he had chosen, or even to acquire any wide practice in the +rural district he had marked out as his field of survey for the +present. In the course of a year his mind was accustomed to pass in a +grand solar sweep through all the zodiacal signs of the intellectual +heaven. Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes in the Bull; one month +he would be immersed in alchemy, another in poesy; one month in the +Twins of astrology and astronomy; then in the Crab of German literature +and metaphysics. In justice to him it must be stated that he took such +studies as were immediately related to his own profession in turn with +the rest, and it had been in a month of anatomical ardor without the +possibility of a subject that he had proposed to Grammer Oliver the +terms she had mentioned to her mistress. + +As may be inferred from the tone of his conversation with Winterborne, +he had lately plunged into abstract philosophy with much zest; perhaps +his keenly appreciative, modern, unpractical mind found this a realm +more to his taste than any other. Though his aims were desultory, +Fitzpiers’s mental constitution was not without its admirable side; a +keen inquirer he honestly was, even if the midnight rays of his lamp, +visible so far through the trees of Hintock, lighted rank literatures +of emotion and passion as often as, or oftener than, the books and +_matériel_ of science. + +But whether he meditated the Muses or the philosophers, the loneliness +of Hintock life was beginning to tell upon his impressionable nature. +Winter in a solitary house in the country, without society, is +tolerable, nay, even enjoyable and delightful, given certain +conditions, but these are not the conditions which attach to the life +of a professional man who drops down into such a place by mere +accident. They were present to the lives of Winterborne, Melbury, and +Grace; but not to the doctor’s. They are old association—an almost +exhaustive biographical or historical acquaintance with every object, +animate and inanimate, within the observer’s horizon. He must know all +about those invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet have +traversed the fields which look so gray from his windows; recall whose +creaking plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands +planted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose horses +and hounds have torn through that underwood; what birds affect that +particular brake; what domestic dramas of love, jealousy, revenge, or +disappointment have been enacted in the cottages, the mansion, the +street, or on the green. The spot may have beauty, grandeur, salubrity, +convenience; but if it lack memories it will ultimately pall upon him +who settles there without opportunity of intercourse with his kind. + +In such circumstances, maybe, an old man dreams of an ideal friend, +till he throws himself into the arms of any impostor who chooses to +wear that title on his face. A young man may dream of an ideal friend +likewise, but some humor of the blood will probably lead him to think +rather of an ideal mistress, and at length the rustle of a woman’s +dress, the sound of her voice, or the transit of her form across the +field of his vision, will enkindle his soul with a flame that blinds +his eyes. + +The discovery of the attractive Grace’s name and family would have been +enough in other circumstances to lead the doctor, if not to put her +personality out of his head, to change the character of his interest in +her. Instead of treasuring her image as a rarity, he would at most have +played with it as a toy. He was that kind of a man. But situated here +he could not go so far as amative cruelty. He dismissed all reverential +thought about her, but he could not help taking her seriously. + +He went on to imagine the impossible. So far, indeed, did he go in this +futile direction that, as others are wont to do, he constructed +dialogues and scenes in which Grace had turned out to be the mistress +of Hintock Manor-house, the mysterious Mrs. Charmond, particularly +ready and willing to be wooed by himself and nobody else. “Well, she +isn’t that,” he said, finally. “But she’s a very sweet, nice, +exceptional girl.” + +The next morning he breakfasted alone, as usual. It was snowing with a +fine-flaked desultoriness just sufficient to make the woodland gray, +without ever achieving whiteness. There was not a single letter for +Fitzpiers, only a medical circular and a weekly newspaper. + +To sit before a large fire on such mornings, and read, and gradually +acquire energy till the evening came, and then, with lamp alight, and +feeling full of vigor, to pursue some engrossing subject or other till +the small hours, had hitherto been his practice. But to-day he could +not settle into his chair. That self-contained position he had lately +occupied, in which the only attention demanded was the concentration of +the inner eye, all outer regard being quite gratuitous, seemed to have +been taken by insidious stratagem, and for the first time he had an +interest outside the house. He walked from one window to another, and +became aware that the most irksome of solitudes is not the solitude of +remoteness, but that which is just outside desirable company. + +The breakfast hour went by heavily enough, and the next followed, in +the same half-snowy, half-rainy style, the weather now being the +inevitable relapse which sooner or later succeeds a time too radiant +for the season, such as they had enjoyed in the late midwinter at +Hintock. To people at home there these changeful tricks had their +interests; the strange mistakes that some of the more sanguine trees +had made in budding before their month, to be incontinently glued up by +frozen thawings now; the similar sanguine errors of impulsive birds in +framing nests that were now swamped by snow-water, and other such +incidents, prevented any sense of wearisomeness in the minds of the +natives. But these were features of a world not familiar to Fitzpiers, +and the inner visions to which he had almost exclusively attended +having suddenly failed in their power to absorb him, he felt +unutterably dreary. + +He wondered how long Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. The +season was unpropitious for accidental encounters with her +out-of-doors, and except by accident he saw not how they were to become +acquainted. One thing was clear—any acquaintance with her could only, +with a due regard to his future, be casual, at most of the nature of a +flirtation; for he had high aims, and they would some day lead him into +other spheres than this. + +Thus desultorily thinking he flung himself down upon the couch, which, +as in many draughty old country houses, was constructed with a hood, +being in fact a legitimate development from the settle. He tried to +read as he reclined, but having sat up till three o’clock that morning, +the book slipped from his hand and he fell asleep. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + + +It was at this time that Grace approached the house. Her knock, always +soft in virtue of her nature, was softer to-day by reason of her +strange errand. However, it was heard by the farmer’s wife who kept the +house, and Grace was admitted. Opening the door of the doctor’s room +the housewife glanced in, and imagining Fitzpiers absent, asked Miss +Melbury to enter and wait a few minutes while she should go and find +him, believing him to be somewhere on the premises. Grace acquiesced, +went in, and sat down close to the door. + +As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round the room, and +started at perceiving a handsome man snugly ensconced in the couch, +like the recumbent figure within some canopied mural tomb of the +fifteenth century, except that his hands were by no means clasped in +prayer. She had no doubt that this was the doctor. Awaken him herself +she could not, and her immediate impulse was to go and pull the broad +ribbon with a brass rosette which hung at one side of the fireplace. +But expecting the landlady to re-enter in a moment she abandoned this +intention, and stood gazing in great embarrassment at the reclining +philosopher. + +The windows of Fitzpiers’s soul being at present shuttered, he probably +appeared less impressive than in his hours of animation; but the light +abstracted from his material presence by sleep was more than +counterbalanced by the mysterious influence of that state, in a +stranger, upon the consciousness of a beholder so sensitive. So far as +she could criticise at all, she became aware that she had encountered a +specimen of creation altogether unusual in that locality. The occasions +on which Grace had observed men of this stamp were when she had been +far removed away from Hintock, and even then such examples as had met +her eye were at a distance, and mainly of coarser fibre than the one +who now confronted her. + +She nervously wondered why the woman had not discovered her mistake and +returned, and went again towards the bell-pull. Approaching the chimney +her back was to Fitzpiers, but she could see him in the glass. An +indescribable thrill passed through her as she perceived that the eyes +of the reflected image were open, gazing wonderingly at her, and under +the curious unexpectedness of the sight she became as if spellbound, +almost powerless to turn her head and regard the original. However, by +an effort she did turn, when there he lay asleep the same as before. + +Her startled perplexity as to what he could be meaning was sufficient +to lead her to precipitately abandon her errand. She crossed quickly to +the door, opened and closed it noiselessly, and went out of the house +unobserved. By the time that she had gone down the path and through the +garden door into the lane she had recovered her equanimity. Here, +screened by the hedge, she stood and considered a while. + +Drip, drip, drip, fell the rain upon her umbrella and around; she had +come out on such a morning because of the seriousness of the matter in +hand; yet now she had allowed her mission to be stultified by a +momentary tremulousness concerning an incident which perhaps had meant +nothing after all. + +In the mean time her departure from the room, stealthy as it had been, +had roused Fitzpiers, and he sat up. In the reflection from the mirror +which Grace had beheld there was no mystery; he had opened his eyes for +a few moments, but had immediately relapsed into unconsciousness, if, +indeed, he had ever been positively awake. That somebody had just left +the room he was certain, and that the lovely form which seemed to have +visited him in a dream was no less than the real presentation of the +person departed he could hardly doubt. + +Looking out of the window a few minutes later, down the box-edged +gravel-path which led to the bottom, he saw the garden door gently +open, and through it enter the young girl of his thoughts, Grace having +just at this juncture determined to return and attempt the interview a +second time. That he saw her coming instead of going made him ask +himself if his first impression of her were not a dream indeed. She +came hesitatingly along, carrying her umbrella so low over her head +that he could hardly see her face. When she reached the point where the +raspberry bushes ended and the strawberry bed began, she made a little +pause. + +Fitzpiers feared that she might not be coming to him even now, and +hastily quitting the room, he ran down the path to meet her. The nature +of her errand he could not divine, but he was prepared to give her any +amount of encouragement. + +“I beg pardon, Miss Melbury,” he said. “I saw you from the window, and +fancied you might imagine that I was not at home—if it is I you were +coming for.” + +“I was coming to speak one word to you, nothing more,” she replied. +“And I can say it here.” + +“No, no. Please do come in. Well, then, if you will not come into the +house, come as far as the porch.” + +Thus pressed she went on to the porch, and they stood together inside +it, Fitzpiers closing her umbrella for her. + +“I have merely a request or petition to make,” she said. “My father’s +servant is ill—a woman you know—and her illness is serious.” + +“I am sorry to hear it. You wish me to come and see her at once?” + +“No; I particularly wish you not to come.” + +“Oh, indeed.” + +“Yes; and she wishes the same. It would make her seriously worse if you +were to come. It would almost kill her....My errand is of a peculiar +and awkward nature. It is concerning a subject which weighs on her +mind—that unfortunate arrangement she made with you, that you might +have her body—after death.” + +“Oh! Grammer Oliver, the old woman with the fine head. Seriously ill, +is she!” + +“And _so_ disturbed by her rash compact! I have brought the money +back—will you please return to her the agreement she signed?” Grace +held out to him a couple of five-pound notes which she had kept ready +tucked in her glove. + +Without replying or considering the notes, Fitzpiers allowed his +thoughts to follow his eyes, and dwell upon Grace’s personality, and +the sudden close relation in which he stood to her. The porch was +narrow; the rain increased. It ran off the porch and dripped on the +creepers, and from the creepers upon the edge of Grace’s cloak and +skirts. + +“The rain is wetting your dress; please do come in,” he said. “It +really makes my heart ache to let you stay here.” + +Immediately inside the front door was the door of his sitting-room; he +flung it open, and stood in a coaxing attitude. Try how she would, +Grace could not resist the supplicatory mandate written in the face and +manner of this man, and distressful resignation sat on her as she +glided past him into the room—brushing his coat with her elbow by +reason of the narrowness. + +He followed her, shut the door—which she somehow had hoped he would +leave open—and placing a chair for her, sat down. The concern which +Grace felt at the development of these commonplace incidents was, of +course, mainly owing to the strange effect upon her nerves of that view +of him in the mirror gazing at her with open eyes when she had thought +him sleeping, which made her fancy that his slumber might have been a +feint based on inexplicable reasons. + +She again proffered the notes; he awoke from looking at her as at a +piece of live statuary, and listened deferentially as she said, “Will +you then reconsider, and cancel the bond which poor Grammer Oliver so +foolishly gave?” + +“I’ll cancel it without reconsideration. Though you will allow me to +have my own opinion about her foolishness. Grammer is a very wise +woman, and she was as wise in that as in other things. You think there +was something very fiendish in the compact, do you not, Miss Melbury? +But remember that the most eminent of our surgeons in past times have +entered into such agreements.” + +“Not fiendish—strange.” + +“Yes, that may be, since strangeness is not in the nature of a thing, +but in its relation to something extrinsic—in this case an unessential +observer.” + +He went to his desk, and searching a while found a paper, which be +unfolded and brought to her. A thick cross appeared in ink at the +bottom—evidently from the hand of Grammer. Grace put the paper in her +pocket with a look of much relief. + +As Fitzpiers did not take up the money (half of which had come from +Grace’s own purse), she pushed it a little nearer to him. “No, no. I +shall not take it from the old woman,” he said. “It is more strange +than the fact of a surgeon arranging to obtain a subject for dissection +that our acquaintance should be formed out of it.” + +“I am afraid you think me uncivil in showing my dislike to the notion. +But I did not mean to be.” + +“Oh no, no.” He looked at her, as he had done before, with puzzled +interest. “I cannot think, I cannot think,” he murmured. “Something +bewilders me greatly.” He still reflected and hesitated. “Last night I +sat up very late,” he at last went on, “and on that account I fell into +a little nap on that couch about half an hour ago. And during my few +minutes of unconsciousness I dreamed—what do you think?—that you stood +in the room.” + +Should she tell? She merely blushed. + +“You may imagine,” Fitzpiers continued, now persuaded that it had, +indeed, been a dream, “that I should not have dreamed of you without +considerable thinking about you first.” + +He could not be acting; of that she felt assured. + +“I fancied in my vision that you stood there,” he said, pointing to +where she had paused. “I did not see you directly, but reflected in the +glass. I thought, what a lovely creature! The design is for once +carried out. Nature has at last recovered her lost union with the Idea! +My thoughts ran in that direction because I had been reading the work +of a transcendental philosopher last night; and I dare say it was the +dose of Idealism that I received from it that made me scarcely able to +distinguish between reality and fancy. I almost wept when I awoke, and +found that you had appeared to me in Time, but not in Space, alas!” + +At moments there was something theatrical in the delivery of +Fitzpiers’s effusion; yet it would have been inexact to say that it was +intrinsically theatrical. It often happens that in situations of +unrestraint, where there is no thought of the eye of criticism, real +feeling glides into a mode of manifestation not easily distinguishable +from rodomontade. A veneer of affectation overlies a bulk of truth, +with the evil consequence, if perceived, that the substance is +estimated by the superficies, and the whole rejected. + +Grace, however, was no specialist in men’s manners, and she admired the +sentiment without thinking of the form. And she was embarrassed: +“lovely creature” made explanation awkward to her gentle modesty. + +“But can it be,” said he, suddenly, “that you really were here?” + +“I have to confess that I have been in the room once before,” faltered +she. “The woman showed me in, and went away to fetch you; but as she +did not return, I left.” + +“And you saw me asleep,” he murmured, with the faintest show of +humiliation. + +“Yes—_if_ you were asleep, and did not deceive me.” + +“Why do you say if?” + +“I saw your eyes open in the glass, but as they were closed when I +looked round upon you, I thought you were perhaps deceiving me. + +“Never,” said Fitzpiers, fervently—“never could I deceive you.” + +Foreknowledge to the distance of a year or so in either of them might +have spoiled the effect of that pretty speech. Never deceive her! But +they knew nothing, and the phrase had its day. + +Grace began now to be anxious to terminate the interview, but the +compelling power of Fitzpiers’s atmosphere still held her there. She +was like an inexperienced actress who, having at last taken up her +position on the boards, and spoken her speeches, does not know how to +move off. The thought of Grammer occurred to her. “I’ll go at once and +tell poor Grammer of your generosity,” she said. “It will relieve her +at once.” + +“Grammer’s a nervous disease, too—how singular!” he answered, +accompanying her to the door. “One moment; look at this—it is something +which may interest you.” + +He had thrown open the door on the other side of the passage, and she +saw a microscope on the table of the confronting room. “Look into it, +please; you’ll be interested,” he repeated. + +She applied her eye, and saw the usual circle of light patterned all +over with a cellular tissue of some indescribable sort. “What do you +think that is?” said Fitzpiers. + +She did not know. + +“That’s a fragment of old John South’s brain, which I am +investigating.” + +She started back, not with aversion, but with wonder as to how it +should have got there. Fitzpiers laughed. + +“Here am I,” he said, “endeavoring to carry on simultaneously the study +of physiology and transcendental philosophy, the material world and the +ideal, so as to discover if possible a point of contrast between them; +and your finer sense is quite offended!” + +“Oh no, Mr. Fitzpiers,” said Grace, earnestly. “It is not so at all. I +know from seeing your light at night how deeply you meditate and work. +Instead of condemning you for your studies, I admire you very much!” + +Her face, upturned from the microscope, was so sweet, sincere, and +self-forgetful in its aspect that the susceptible Fitzpiers more than +wished to annihilate the lineal yard which separated it from his own. +Whether anything of the kind showed in his eyes or not, Grace remained +no longer at the microscope, but quickly went her way into the rain. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + + +Instead of resuming his investigation of South’s brain, which perhaps +was not so interesting under the microscope as might have been expected +from the importance of that organ in life, Fitzpiers reclined and +ruminated on the interview. Grace’s curious susceptibility to his +presence, though it was as if the currents of her life were disturbed +rather than attracted by him, added a special interest to her general +charm. Fitzpiers was in a distinct degree scientific, being ready and +zealous to interrogate all physical manifestations, but primarily he +was an idealist. He believed that behind the imperfect lay the perfect; +that rare things were to be discovered amid a bulk of commonplace; that +results in a new and untried case might be different from those in +other cases where the conditions had been precisely similar. Regarding +his own personality as one of unbounded possibilities, because it was +his own—notwithstanding that the factors of his life had worked out a +sorry product for thousands—he saw nothing but what was regular in his +discovery at Hintock of an altogether exceptional being of the other +sex, who for nobody else would have had any existence. + +One habit of Fitzpiers’s—commoner in dreamers of more advanced age than +in men of his years—was that of talking to himself. He paced round his +room with a selective tread upon the more prominent blooms of the +carpet, and murmured, “This phenomenal girl will be the light of my +life while I am at Hintock; and the special beauty of the situation is +that our attitude and relations to each other will be purely spiritual. +Socially we can never be intimate. Anything like matrimonial intentions +towards her, charming as she is, would be absurd. They would spoil the +ethereal character of my regard. And, indeed, I have other aims on the +practical side of my life.” + +Fitzpiers bestowed a regulation thought on the advantageous marriage he +was bound to make with a woman of family as good as his own, and of +purse much longer. But as an object of contemplation for the present, +as objective spirit rather than corporeal presence, Grace Melbury would +serve to keep his soul alive, and to relieve the monotony of his days. + +His first notion—acquired from the mere sight of her without +converse—that of an idle and vulgar flirtation with a timber-merchant’s +pretty daughter, grated painfully upon him now that he had found what +Grace intrinsically was. Personal intercourse with such as she could +take no lower form than intellectual communion, and mutual explorations +of the world of thought. Since he could not call at her father’s, +having no practical views, cursory encounters in the lane, in the wood, +coming and going to and from church, or in passing her dwelling, were +what the acquaintance would have to feed on. + +Such anticipated glimpses of her now and then realized themselves in +the event. Rencounters of not more than a minute’s duration, frequently +repeated, will build up mutual interest, even an intimacy, in a lonely +place. Theirs grew as imperceptibly as the tree-twigs budded. There +never was a particular moment at which it could be said they became +friends; yet a delicate understanding now existed between two who in +the winter had been strangers. + +Spring weather came on rather suddenly, the unsealing of buds that had +long been swollen accomplishing itself in the space of one warm night. +The rush of sap in the veins of the trees could almost be heard. The +flowers of late April took up a position unseen, and looked as if they +had been blooming a long while, though there had been no trace of them +the day before yesterday; birds began not to mind getting wet. In-door +people said they had heard the nightingale, to which out-door people +replied contemptuously that they had heard him a fortnight before. + +The young doctor’s practice being scarcely so large as a London +surgeon’s, he frequently walked in the wood. Indeed such practice as he +had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have been +necessary for developing it to exceptional proportions. One day, book +in hand, he walked in a part of the wood where the trees were mainly +oaks. It was a calm afternoon, and there was everywhere around that +sign of great undertakings on the part of vegetable nature which is apt +to fill reflective human beings who are not undertaking much themselves +with a sudden uneasiness at the contrast. He heard in the distance a +curious sound, something like the quack of a duck, which, though it was +common enough here about this time, was not common to him. + +Looking through the trees Fitzpiers soon perceived the origin of the +noise. The barking season had just commenced, and what he had heard was +the tear of the ripping tool as it ploughed its way along the sticky +parting between the trunk and the rind. Melbury did a large business in +bark, and as he was Grace’s father, and possibly might be found on the +spot, Fitzpiers was attracted to the scene even more than he might have +been by its intrinsic interest. When he got nearer he recognized among +the workmen the two Timothys, and Robert Creedle, who probably had been +“lent” by Winterborne; Marty South also assisted. + +Each tree doomed to this flaying process was first attacked by Creedle. +With a small billhook he carefully freed the collar of the tree from +twigs and patches of moss which incrusted it to a height of a foot or +two above the ground, an operation comparable to the “little toilet” of +the executioner’s victim. After this it was barked in its erect +position to a point as high as a man could reach. If a fine product of +vegetable nature could ever be said to look ridiculous it was the case +now, when the oak stood naked-legged, and as if ashamed, till the +axe-man came and cut a ring round it, and the two Timothys finished the +work with the crosscut-saw. + +As soon as it had fallen the barkers attacked it like locusts, and in a +short time not a particle of rind was left on the trunk and larger +limbs. Marty South was an adept at peeling the upper parts, and there +she stood encaged amid the mass of twigs and buds like a great bird, +running her tool into the smallest branches, beyond the farthest points +to which the skill and patience of the men enabled them to +proceed—branches which, in their lifetime, had swayed high above the +bulk of the wood, and caught the latest and earliest rays of the sun +and moon while the lower part of the forest was still in darkness. + +“You seem to have a better instrument than they, Marty,” said +Fitzpiers. + +“No, sir,” she said, holding up the tool—a horse’s leg-bone fitted into +a handle and filed to an edge—“’tis only that they’ve less patience +with the twigs, because their time is worth more than mine.” + +A little shed had been constructed on the spot, of thatched hurdles and +boughs, and in front of it was a fire, over which a kettle sung. +Fitzpiers sat down inside the shelter, and went on with his reading, +except when he looked up to observe the scene and the actors. The +thought that he might settle here and become welded in with this sylvan +life by marrying Grace Melbury crossed his mind for a moment. Why +should he go farther into the world than where he was? The secret of +quiet happiness lay in limiting the ideas and aspirations; these men’s +thoughts were conterminous with the margin of the Hintock woodlands, +and why should not his be likewise limited—a small practice among the +people around him being the bound of his desires? + +Presently Marty South discontinued her operations upon the quivering +boughs, came out from the reclining oak, and prepared tea. When it was +ready the men were called; and Fitzpiers being in a mood to join, sat +down with them. + +The latent reason of his lingering here so long revealed itself when +the faint creaking of the joints of a vehicle became audible, and one +of the men said, “Here’s he.” Turning their heads they saw Melbury’s +gig approaching, the wheels muffled by the yielding moss. + +The timber-merchant was on foot leading the horse, looking back at +every few steps to caution his daughter, who kept her seat, where and +how to duck her head so as to avoid the overhanging branches. They +stopped at the spot where the bark-ripping had been temporarily +suspended; Melbury cursorily examined the heaps of bark, and drawing +near to where the workmen were sitting down, accepted their shouted +invitation to have a dish of tea, for which purpose he hitched the +horse to a bough. Grace declined to take any of their beverage, and +remained in her place in the vehicle, looking dreamily at the sunlight +that came in thin threads through the hollies with which the oaks were +interspersed. + +When Melbury stepped up close to the shelter, he for the first time +perceived that the doctor was present, and warmly appreciated +Fitzpiers’s invitation to sit down on the log beside him. + +“Bless my heart, who would have thought of finding you here,” he said, +obviously much pleased at the circumstance. “I wonder now if my +daughter knows you are so nigh at hand. I don’t expect she do.” + +He looked out towards the gig wherein Grace sat, her face still turned +in the opposite direction. “She doesn’t see us. Well, never mind: let +her be.” + +Grace was indeed quite unconscious of Fitzpiers’s propinquity. She was +thinking of something which had little connection with the scene before +her—thinking of her friend, lost as soon as found, Mrs. Charmond; of +her capricious conduct, and of the contrasting scenes she was possibly +enjoying at that very moment in other climes, to which Grace herself +had hoped to be introduced by her friend’s means. She wondered if this +patronizing lady would return to Hintock during the summer, and whether +the acquaintance which had been nipped on the last occasion of her +residence there would develop on the next. + +Melbury told ancient timber-stories as he sat, relating them directly +to Fitzpiers, and obliquely to the men, who had heard them often +before. Marty, who poured out tea, was just saying, “I think I’ll take +out a cup to Miss Grace,” when they heard a clashing of the +gig-harness, and turning round Melbury saw that the horse had become +restless, and was jerking about the vehicle in a way which alarmed its +occupant, though she refrained from screaming. Melbury jumped up +immediately, but not more quickly than Fitzpiers; and while her father +ran to the horse’s head and speedily began to control him, Fitzpiers +was alongside the gig assisting Grace to descend. Her surprise at his +appearance was so great that, far from making a calm and independent +descent, she was very nearly lifted down in his arms. He relinquished +her when she touched ground, and hoped she was not frightened. + +“Oh no, not much,” she managed to say. “There was no danger—unless he +had run under the trees where the boughs are low enough to hit my +head.” + +“Which was by no means an impossibility, and justifies any amount of +alarm.” + +He referred to what he thought he saw written in her face, and she +could not tell him that this had little to do with the horse, but much +with himself. His contiguity had, in fact, the same effect upon her as +on those former occasions when he had come closer to her than +usual—that of producing in her an unaccountable tendency to +tearfulness. Melbury soon put the horse to rights, and seeing that +Grace was safe, turned again to the work-people. His daughter’s nervous +distress had passed off in a few moments, and she said quite gayly to +Fitzpiers as she walked with him towards the group, “There’s destiny in +it, you see. I was doomed to join in your picnic, although I did not +intend to do so.” + +Marty prepared her a comfortable place, and she sat down in the circle, +and listened to Fitzpiers while he drew from her father and the +bark-rippers sundry narratives of their fathers’, their grandfathers’, +and their own adventures in these woods; of the mysterious sights they +had seen—only to be accounted for by supernatural agency; of white +witches and black witches; and the standard story of the spirits of the +two brothers who had fought and fallen, and had haunted Hintock House +till they were exorcised by the priest, and compelled to retreat to a +swamp in this very wood, whence they were returning to their old +quarters at the rate of a cock’s stride every New-year’s Day, old +style; hence the local saying, “On New-year’s tide, a cock’s stride.” + +It was a pleasant time. The smoke from the little fire of peeled sticks +rose between the sitters and the sunlight, and behind its blue veil +stretched the naked arms of the prostrate trees. The smell of the +uncovered sap mingled with the smell of the burning wood, and the +sticky inner surface of the scattered bark glistened as it revealed its +pale madder hues to the eye. Melbury was so highly satisfied at having +Fitzpiers as a sort of guest that he would have sat on for any length +of time, but Grace, on whom Fitzpiers’s eyes only too frequently +alighted, seemed to think it incumbent upon her to make a show of +going; and her father thereupon accompanied her to the vehicle. + +As the doctor had helped her out of it he appeared to think that he had +excellent reasons for helping her in, and performed the attention +lingeringly enough. + +“What were you almost in tears about just now?” he asked, softly. + +“I don’t know,” she said: and the words were strictly true. + +Melbury mounted on the other side, and they drove on out of the grove, +their wheels silently crushing delicate-patterned mosses, hyacinths, +primroses, lords-and-ladies, and other strange and ordinary plants, and +cracking up little sticks that lay across the track. Their way homeward +ran along the crest of a lofty hill, whence on the right they beheld a +wide valley, differing both in feature and atmosphere from that of the +Hintock precincts. It was the cider country, which met the woodland +district on the axis of this hill. Over the vale the air was blue as +sapphire—such a blue as outside that apple-valley was never seen. Under +the blue the orchards were in a blaze of bloom, some of the richly +flowered trees running almost up to where they drove along. Over a gate +which opened down the incline a man leaned on his arms, regarding this +fair promise so intently that he did not observe their passing. + +“That was Giles,” said Melbury, when they had gone by. + +“Was it? Poor Giles,” said she. + +“All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and his hands. If no +blight happens before the setting the apple yield will be such as we +have not had for years.” + +Meanwhile, in the wood they had come from, the men had sat on so long +that they were indisposed to begin work again that evening; they were +paid by the ton, and their time for labor was as they chose. They +placed the last gatherings of bark in rows for the curers, which led +them farther and farther away from the shed; and thus they gradually +withdrew as the sun went down. + +Fitzpiers lingered yet. He had opened his book again, though he could +hardly see a word in it, and sat before the dying fire, scarcely +knowing of the men’s departure. He dreamed and mused till his +consciousness seemed to occupy the whole space of the woodland around, +so little was there of jarring sight or sound to hinder perfect unity +with the sentiment of the place. The idea returned upon him of +sacrificing all practical aims to live in calm contentment here, and +instead of going on elaborating new conceptions with infinite pains, to +accept quiet domesticity according to oldest and homeliest notions. +These reflections detained him till the wood was embrowned with the +coming night, and the shy little bird of this dusky time had begun to +pour out all the intensity of his eloquence from a bush not very far +off. + +Fitzpiers’s eyes commanded as much of the ground in front as was open. +Entering upon this he saw a figure, whose direction of movement was +towards the spot where he sat. The surgeon was quite shrouded from +observation by the recessed shadow of the hut, and there was no reason +why he should move till the stranger had passed by. The shape resolved +itself into a woman’s; she was looking on the ground, and walking +slowly as if searching for something that had been lost, her course +being precisely that of Mr. Melbury’s gig. Fitzpiers by a sort of +divination jumped to the idea that the figure was Grace’s; her nearer +approach made the guess a certainty. + +Yes, she was looking for something; and she came round by the prostrate +trees that would have been invisible but for the white nakedness which +enabled her to avoid them easily. Thus she approached the heap of +ashes, and acting upon what was suggested by a still shining ember or +two, she took a stick and stirred the heap, which thereupon burst into +a flame. On looking around by the light thus obtained she for the first +time saw the illumined face of Fitzpiers, precisely in the spot where +she had left him. + +Grace gave a start and a scream: the place had been associated with him +in her thoughts, but she had not expected to find him there still. +Fitzpiers lost not a moment in rising and going to her side. + +“I frightened you dreadfully, I know,” he said. “I ought to have +spoken; but I did not at first expect it to be you. I have been sitting +here ever since.” + +He was actually supporting her with his arm, as though under the +impression that she was quite overcome, and in danger of falling. As +soon as she could collect her ideas she gently withdrew from his grasp, +and explained what she had returned for: in getting up or down from the +gig, or when sitting by the hut fire, she had dropped her purse. + +“Now we will find it,” said Fitzpiers. + +He threw an armful of last year’s leaves on to the fire, which made the +flame leap higher, and the encompassing shades to weave themselves into +a denser contrast, turning eve into night in a moment. By this radiance +they groped about on their hands and knees, till Fitzpiers rested on +his elbow, and looked at Grace. “We must always meet in odd +circumstances,” he said; “and this is one of the oddest. I wonder if it +means anything?” + +“Oh no, I am sure it doesn’t,” said Grace in haste, quickly assuming an +erect posture. “Pray don’t say it any more.” + +“I hope there was not much money in the purse,” said Fitzpiers, rising +to his feet more slowly, and brushing the leaves from his trousers. + +“Scarcely any. I cared most about the purse itself, because it was +given me. Indeed, money is of little more use at Hintock than on +Crusoe’s island; there’s hardly any way of spending it.” + +They had given up the search when Fitzpiers discerned something by his +foot. “Here it is,” he said, “so that your father, mother, friend, or +_admirer_ will not have his or her feelings hurt by a sense of your +negligence after all.” + +“Oh, he knows nothing of what I do now.” + +“The admirer?” said Fitzpiers, slyly. + +“I don’t know if you would call him that,” said Grace, with simplicity. +“The admirer is a superficial, conditional creature, and this person is +quite different.” + +“He has all the cardinal virtues.” + +“Perhaps—though I don’t know them precisely.” + +“You unconsciously practise them, Miss Melbury, which is better. +According to Schleiermacher they are Self-control, Perseverance, +Wisdom, and Love; and his is the best list that I know.” + +“I am afraid poor—” She was going to say that she feared +Winterborne—the giver of the purse years before—had not much +perseverance, though he had all the other three; but she determined to +go no further in this direction, and was silent. + +These half-revelations made a perceptible difference in Fitzpiers. His +sense of personal superiority wasted away, and Grace assumed in his +eyes the true aspect of a mistress in her lover’s regard. + +“Miss Melbury,” he said, suddenly, “I divine that this virtuous man you +mention has been refused by you?” + +She could do no otherwise than admit it. + +“I do not inquire without good reason. God forbid that I should kneel +in another’s place at any shrine unfairly. But, my dear Miss Melbury, +now that he is gone, may I draw near?” + +“I—I can’t say anything about that!” she cried, quickly. “Because when +a man has been refused you feel pity for him, and like him more than +you did before.” + +This increasing complication added still more value to Grace in the +surgeon’s eyes: it rendered her adorable. “But cannot you say?” he +pleaded, distractedly. + +“I’d rather not—I think I must go home at once.” + +“Oh yes,” said Fitzpiers. But as he did not move she felt it awkward to +walk straight away from him; and so they stood silently together. A +diversion was created by the accident of two birds, that had either +been roosting above their heads or nesting there, tumbling one over the +other into the hot ashes at their feet, apparently engrossed in a +desperate quarrel that prevented the use of their wings. They speedily +parted, however, and flew up, and were seen no more. + +“That’s the end of what is called love!” said some one. + +The speaker was neither Grace nor Fitzpiers, but Marty South, who +approached with her face turned up to the sky in her endeavor to trace +the birds. Suddenly perceiving Grace, she exclaimed, “Oh, Miss Melbury! +I have been following they pigeons, and didn’t see you. And here’s Mr. +Winterborne!” she continued, shyly, as she looked towards Fitzpiers, +who stood in the background. + +“Marty,” Grace interrupted. “I want you to walk home with me—will you? +Come along.” And without lingering longer she took hold of Marty’s arm +and led her away. + +They went between the spectral arms of the peeled trees as they lay, +and onward among the growing trees, by a path where there were no oaks, +and no barking, and no Fitzpiers—nothing but copse-wood, between which +the primroses could be discerned in pale bunches. “I didn’t know Mr. +Winterborne was there,” said Marty, breaking the silence when they had +nearly reached Grace’s door. + +“Nor was he,” said Grace. + +“But, Miss Melbury, I saw him.” + +“No,” said Grace. “It was somebody else. Giles Winterborne is nothing +to me.” + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + + +The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the +woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque body +of infinitely larger shape and importance. The boughs cast green +shades, which hurt the complexion of the girls who walked there; and a +fringe of them which overhung Mr. Melbury’s garden dripped on his +seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface all over as with +pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in such a place were no +good at all. The two trees that had creaked all the winter left off +creaking, the whir of the night-jar, however, forming a very +satisfactory continuation of uncanny music from that quarter. Except at +mid-day the sun was not seen complete by the Hintock people, but rather +in the form of numerous little stars staring through the leaves. + +Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as the +hour grew later, and nine o’clock drew on, the irradiation of the +daytime became broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of +indistinctness. Imagination could trace upon the trunks and boughs +strange faces and figures shaped by the dying lights; the surfaces of +the holly-leaves would here and there shine like peeping eyes, while +such fragments of the sky as were visible between the trunks assumed +the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven tongues. This was before the +moonrise. Later on, when that planet was getting command of the upper +heaven, and consequently shining with an unbroken face into such open +glades as there were in the neighborhood of the hamlet, it became +apparent that the margin of the wood which approached the +timber-merchant’s premises was not to be left to the customary +stillness of that reposeful time. + +Fitzpiers having heard a voice or voices, was looking over his garden +gate—where he now looked more frequently than into his books—fancying +that Grace might be abroad with some friends. He was now irretrievably +committed in heart to Grace Melbury, though he was by no means sure +that she was so far committed to him. That the Idea had for once +completely fulfilled itself in the objective substance—which he had +hitherto deemed an impossibility—he was enchanted enough to fancy must +be the case at last. It was not Grace who had passed, however, but +several of the ordinary village girls in a group—some steadily walking, +some in a mood of wild gayety. He quietly asked his landlady, who was +also in the garden, what these girls were intending, and she informed +him that it being Old Midsummer Eve, they were about to attempt some +spell or enchantment which would afford them a glimpse of their future +partners for life. She declared it to be an ungodly performance, and +one which she for her part would never countenance; saying which, she +entered her house and retired to bed. + +The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of maidens slowly up +the road. They had turned into the wood at an opening between Melbury’s +and Marty South’s; but Fitzpiers could easily track them by their +voices, low as they endeavored to keep their tones. + +In the mean time other inhabitants of Little Hintock had become aware +of the nocturnal experiment about to be tried, and were also sauntering +stealthily after the frisky maidens. Miss Melbury had been informed by +Marty South during the day of the proposed peep into futurity, and, +being only a girl like the rest, she was sufficiently interested to +wish to see the issue. The moon was so bright and the night so calm +that she had no difficulty in persuading Mrs. Melbury to accompany her; +and thus, joined by Marty, these went onward in the same direction. + +Passing Winterborne’s house, they heard a noise of hammering. Marty +explained it. This was the last night on which his paternal roof would +shelter him, the days of grace since it fell into hand having expired; +and Giles was taking down his cupboards and bedsteads with a view to an +early exit next morning. His encounter with Mrs. Charmond had cost him +dearly. + +When they had proceeded a little farther Marty was joined by Grammer +Oliver (who was as young as the youngest in such matters), and Grace +and Mrs. Melbury went on by themselves till they had arrived at the +spot chosen by the village daughters, whose primary intention of +keeping their expedition a secret had been quite defeated. Grace and +her step-mother paused by a holly-tree; and at a little distance stood +Fitzpiers under the shade of a young oak, intently observing Grace, who +was in the full rays of the moon. + +He watched her without speaking, and unperceived by any but Marty and +Grammer, who had drawn up on the dark side of the same holly which +sheltered Mrs. and Miss Melbury on its bright side. The two former +conversed in low tones. + +“If they two come up in Wood next Midsummer Night they’ll come as one,” +said Grammer, signifying Fitzpiers and Grace. “Instead of my +skellington he’ll carry home her living carcass before long. But though +she’s a lady in herself, and worthy of any such as he, it do seem to me +that he ought to marry somebody more of the sort of Mrs. Charmond, and +that Miss Grace should make the best of Winterborne.” + +Marty returned no comment; and at that minute the girls, some of whom +were from Great Hintock, were seen advancing to work the incantation, +it being now about midnight. + +“Directly we see anything we’ll run home as fast as we can,” said one, +whose courage had begun to fail her. To this the rest assented, not +knowing that a dozen neighbors lurked in the bushes around. + +“I wish we had not thought of trying this,” said another, “but had +contented ourselves with the hole-digging to-morrow at twelve, and +hearing our husbands’ trades. It is too much like having dealings with +the Evil One to try to raise their forms.” + +However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly began to march +forward in a skirmishing line through the trees towards the deeper +recesses of the wood. As far as the listeners could gather, the +particular form of black-art to be practised on this occasion was one +connected with the sowing of hemp-seed, a handful of which was carried +by each girl. At the moment of their advance they looked back, and +discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who, alone of all the observers, +stood in the full face of the moonlight, deeply engrossed in the +proceedings. By contrast with her life of late years they made her feel +as if she had receded a couple of centuries in the world’s history. She +was rendered doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and after a few +whispered words, one of the girls—a bouncing maiden, plighted to young +Timothy Tangs—asked her if she would join in. Grace, with some +excitement, said that she would, and moved on a little in the rear of +the rest. + +Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceedings beyond the +faintest occasional rustle of leaves. Grammer whispered again to Marty: +“Why didn’t ye go and try your luck with the rest of the maids?” + +“I don’t believe in it,” said Marty, shortly. + +“Why, half the parish is here—the silly hussies should have kept it +quiet. I see Mr. Winterborne through the leaves, just come up with +Robert Creedle. Marty, we ought to act the part o’ Providence +sometimes. Do go and tell him that if he stands just behind the bush at +the bottom of the slope, Miss Grace must pass down it when she comes +back, and she will most likely rush into his arms; for as soon as the +clock strikes, they’ll bundle back home—along like hares. I’ve seen +such larries before.” + +“Do you think I’d better?” said Marty, reluctantly. + +“Oh yes, he’ll bless ye for it.” + +“I don’t want that kind of blessing.” But after a moment’s thought she +went and delivered the information; and Grammer had the satisfaction of +seeing Giles walk slowly to the bend in the leafy defile along which +Grace would have to return. + +Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had perceived Fitzpiers and +Winterborne, and also the move of the latter. An improvement on +Grammer’s idea entered the mind of Mrs. Melbury, for she had lately +discerned what her husband had not—that Grace was rapidly fascinating +the surgeon. She therefore drew near to Fitzpiers. + +“You should be where Mr. Winterborne is standing,” she said to him, +significantly. “She will run down through that opening much faster than +she went up it, if she is like the rest of the girls.” + +Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice. He went across to +Winterborne and stood beside him. Each knew the probable purpose of the +other in standing there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers scorning to look +upon Winterborne as a rival, and Winterborne adhering to the off-hand +manner of indifference which had grown upon him since his dismissal. + +Neither Grammer nor Marty South had seen the surgeon’s manoeuvre, and, +still to help Winterborne, as she supposed, the old woman suggested to +the wood-girl that she should walk forward at the heels of Grace, and +“tole” her down the required way if she showed a tendency to run in +another direction. Poor Marty, always doomed to sacrifice desire to +obligation, walked forward accordingly, and waited as a beacon, still +and silent, for the retreat of Grace and her giddy companions, now +quite out of hearing. + +The first sound to break the silence was the distant note of Great +Hintock clock striking the significant hour. About a minute later that +quarter of the wood to which the girls had wandered resounded with the +flapping of disturbed birds; then two or three hares and rabbits +bounded down the glade from the same direction, and after these the +rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs denoted the hurried +approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gowns soon became +visible. Miss Melbury, having gone forward quite in the rear of the +rest, was one of the first to return, and the excitement being +contagious, she ran laughing towards Marty, who still stood as a +hand-post to guide her; then, passing on, she flew round the fatal bush +where the undergrowth narrowed to a gorge. Marty arrived at her heels +just in time to see the result. Fitzpiers had quickly stepped forward +in front of Winterborne, who, disdaining to shift his position, had +turned on his heel, and then the surgeon did what he would not have +thought of doing but for Mrs. Melbury’s encouragement and the sentiment +of an eve which effaced conventionality. Stretching out his arms as the +white figure burst upon him, he captured her in a moment, as if she had +been a bird. + +“Oh!” cried Grace, in her fright. + +“You are in my arms, dearest,” said Fitzpiers, “and I am going to claim +you, and keep you there all our two lives!” + +She rested on him like one utterly mastered, and it was several seconds +before she recovered from this helplessness. Subdued screams and +struggles, audible from neighboring brakes, revealed that there had +been other lurkers thereabout for a similar purpose. Grace, unlike most +of these companions of hers, instead of gasping and writhing, said in a +trembling voice, “Mr. Fitzpiers, will you let me go?” + +“Certainly,” he said, laughing; “as soon as you have recovered.” + +She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly pushed him +aside, and glided on her path, the moon whitening her hot blush away. +But it had been enough—new relations between them had begun. + +The case of the other girls was different, as has been said. They +wrestled and tittered, only escaping after a desperate struggle. +Fitzpiers could hear these enactments still going on after Grace had +left him, and he remained on the spot where he had caught her, +Winterborne having gone away. On a sudden another girl came bounding +down the same descent that had been followed by Grace—a fine-framed +young woman with naked arms. Seeing Fitzpiers standing there, she said, +with playful effrontery, “May’st kiss me if ‘canst catch me, Tim!” + +Fitzpiers recognized her as Suke Damson, a hoydenish damsel of the +hamlet, who was plainly mistaking him for her lover. He was impulsively +disposed to profit by her error, and as soon as she began racing away +he started in pursuit. + +On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking over +her shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand; but so +cunningly dodging about among the trees and moon-shades that she never +allowed him to get dangerously near her. Thus they ran and doubled, +Fitzpiers warming with the chase, till the sound of their companions +had quite died away. He began to lose hope of ever overtaking her, when +all at once, by way of encouragement, she turned to a fence in which +there was a stile and leaped over it. Outside the scene was a changed +one—a meadow, where the half-made hay lay about in heaps, in the +uninterrupted shine of the now high moon. + +Fitzpiers saw in a moment that, having taken to open ground, she had +placed herself at his mercy, and he promptly vaulted over after her. +She flitted a little way down the mead, when all at once her light form +disappeared as if it had sunk into the earth. She had buried herself in +one of the hay-cocks. + +Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let her escape him +thus. He approached, and set about turning over the heaps one by one. +As soon as he paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was directed anew by +an imitative kiss which came from her hiding-place, and by snatches of +a local ballad in the smallest voice she could assume: + +“O come in from the foggy, foggy dew.” + + +In a minute or two he uncovered her. + +“Oh, ’tis not Tim!” said she, burying her face. + +Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason of its +mildness, stooped and imprinted the purposed kiss, then sunk down on +the next hay-cock, panting with his race. + +“Whom do you mean by Tim?” he asked, presently. + +“My young man, Tim Tangs,” said she. + +“Now, honor bright, did you really think it was he?” + +“I did at first.” + +“But you didn’t at last?” + +“I didn’t at last.” + +“Do you much mind that it was not?” + +“No,” she answered, slyly. + +Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning. In the moonlight Suke looked +very beautiful, the scratches and blemishes incidental to her out-door +occupation being invisible under these pale rays. While they remain +silent the coarse whir of the eternal night-jar burst sarcastically +from the top of a tree at the nearest corner of the wood. Besides this +not a sound of any kind reached their ears, the time of nightingales +being now past, and Hintock lying at a distance of two miles at least. +In the opposite direction the hay-field stretched away into remoteness +till it was lost to the eye in a soft mist. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + + +When the general stampede occurred Winterborne had also been looking +on, and encountering one of the girls, had asked her what caused them +all to fly. + +She said with solemn breathlessness that they had seen something very +different from what they had hoped to see, and that she for one would +never attempt such unholy ceremonies again. “We saw Satan pursuing us +with his hour-glass. It was terrible!” + +This account being a little incoherent, Giles went forward towards the +spot from which the girls had retreated. After listening there a few +minutes he heard slow footsteps rustling over the leaves, and looking +through a tangled screen of honeysuckle which hung from a bough, he saw +in the open space beyond a short stout man in evening-dress, carrying +on one arm a light overcoat and also his hat, so awkwardly arranged as +possibly to have suggested the “hour-glass” to his timid observers—if +this were the person whom the girls had seen. With the other hand he +silently gesticulated and the moonlight falling upon his bare brow +showed him to have dark hair and a high forehead of the shape seen +oftener in old prints and paintings than in real life. His curious and +altogether alien aspect, his strange gestures, like those of one who is +rehearsing a scene to himself, and the unusual place and hour, were +sufficient to account for any trepidation among the Hintock daughters +at encountering him. + +He paused, and looked round, as if he had forgotten where he was; not +observing Giles, who was of the color of his environment. The latter +advanced into the light. The gentleman held up his hand and came +towards Giles, the two meeting half-way. + +“I have lost my way,” said the stranger. “Perhaps you can put me in the +path again.” He wiped his forehead with the air of one suffering under +an agitation more than that of simple fatigue. + +“The turnpike-road is over there,” said Giles + +“I don’t want the turnpike-road,” said the gentleman, impatiently. “I +came from that. I want Hintock House. Is there not a path to it across +here?” + +“Well, yes, a sort of path. But it is hard to find from this point. +I’ll show you the way, sir, with great pleasure.” + +“Thanks, my good friend. The truth is that I decided to walk across the +country after dinner from the hotel at Sherton, where I am staying for +a day or two. But I did not know it was so far.” + +“It is about a mile to the house from here.” + +They walked on together. As there was no path, Giles occasionally +stepped in front and bent aside the underboughs of the trees to give +his companion a passage, saying every now and then when the twigs, on +being released, flew back like whips, “Mind your eyes, sir.” To which +the stranger replied, “Yes, yes,” in a preoccupied tone. + +So they went on, the leaf-shadows running in their usual quick +succession over the forms of the pedestrians, till the stranger said, + +“Is it far?” + +“Not much farther,” said Winterborne. “The plantation runs up into a +corner here, close behind the house.” He added with hesitation, “You +know, I suppose, sir, that Mrs. Charmond is not at home?” + +“You mistake,” said the other, quickly. “Mrs. Charmond has been away +for some time, but she’s at home now.” + +Giles did not contradict him, though he felt sure that the gentleman +was wrong. + +“You are a native of this place?” the stranger said. + +“Yes.” + +“Well, you are happy in having a home. It is what I don’t possess.” + +“You come from far, seemingly?” + +“I come now from the south of Europe.” + +“Oh, indeed, sir. You are an Italian, or Spanish, or French gentleman, +perhaps?” + +“I am not either.” + +Giles did not fill the pause which ensued, and the gentleman, who +seemed of an emotional nature, unable to resist friendship, at length +answered the question. + +“I am an Italianized American, a South Carolinian by birth,” he said. +“I left my native country on the failure of the Southern cause, and +have never returned to it since.” + +He spoke no more about himself, and they came to the verge of the wood. +Here, striding over the fence out upon the upland sward, they could at +once see the chimneys of the house in the gorge immediately beneath +their position, silent, still, and pale. + +“Can you tell me the time?” the gentleman asked. “My watch has +stopped.” + +“It is between twelve and one,” said Giles. + +His companion expressed his astonishment. “I thought it between nine +and ten at latest! Dear me—dear me!” + +He now begged Giles to return, and offered him a gold coin, which +looked like a sovereign, for the assistance rendered. Giles declined to +accept anything, to the surprise of the stranger, who, on putting the +money back into his pocket, said, awkwardly, “I offered it because I +want you to utter no word about this meeting with me. Will you +promise?” + +Winterborne promised readily. He thereupon stood still while the other +ascended the slope. At the bottom he looked back dubiously. Giles would +no longer remain when he was so evidently desired to leave, and +returned through the boughs to Hintock. + +He suspected that this man, who seemed so distressed and melancholy, +might be that lover and persistent wooer of Mrs. Charmond whom he had +heard so frequently spoken of, and whom it was said she had treated +cavalierly. But he received no confirmation of his suspicion beyond a +report which reached him a few days later that a gentleman had called +up the servants who were taking care of Hintock House at an hour past +midnight; and on learning that Mrs. Charmond, though returned from +abroad, was as yet in London, he had sworn bitterly, and gone away +without leaving a card or any trace of himself. + +The girls who related the story added that he sighed three times before +he swore, but this part of the narrative was not corroborated. Anyhow, +such a gentleman had driven away from the hotel at Sherton next day in +a carriage hired at that inn. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + + +The sunny, leafy week which followed the tender doings of Midsummer Eve +brought a visitor to Fitzpiers’s door; a voice that he knew sounded in +the passage. Mr. Melbury had called. At first he had a particular +objection to enter the parlor, because his boots were dusty, but as the +surgeon insisted he waived the point and came in. + +Looking neither to the right nor to the left, hardly at Fitzpiers +himself, he put his hat under his chair, and with a preoccupied gaze at +the floor, he said, “I’ve called to ask you, doctor, quite privately, a +question that troubles me. I’ve a daughter, Grace, an only daughter, as +you may have heard. Well, she’s been out in the dew—on Midsummer Eve in +particular she went out in thin slippers to watch some vagary of the +Hintock maids—and she’s got a cough, a distinct hemming and hacking, +that makes me uneasy. Now, I have decided to send her away to some +seaside place for a change—” + +“Send her away!” Fitzpiers’s countenance had fallen. + +“Yes. And the question is, where would you advise me to send her?” + +The timber-merchant had happened to call at a moment when Fitzpiers was +at the spring-tide of a sentiment that Grace was a necessity of his +existence. The sudden pressure of her form upon his breast as she came +headlong round the bush had never ceased to linger with him, ever since +he adopted the manoeuvre for which the hour and the moonlight and the +occasion had been the only excuse. Now she was to be sent away. +Ambition? it could be postponed. Family? culture and reciprocity of +tastes had taken the place of family nowadays. He allowed himself to be +carried forward on the wave of his desire. + +“How strange, how very strange it is,” he said, “that you should have +come to me about her just now. I have been thinking every day of coming +to you on the very same errand.” + +“Ah!—you have noticed, too, that her health——” + +“I have noticed nothing the matter with her health, because there is +nothing. But, Mr. Melbury, I have seen your daughter several times by +accident. I have admired her infinitely, and I was coming to ask you if +I may become better acquainted with her—pay my addresses to her?” + +Melbury was looking down as he listened, and did not see the air of +half-misgiving at his own rashness that spread over Fitzpiers’s face as +he made this declaration. + +“You have—got to know her?” said Melbury, a spell of dead silence +having preceded his utterance, during which his emotion rose with +almost visible effect. + +“Yes,” said Fitzpiers. + +“And you wish to become better acquainted with her? You mean with a +view to marriage—of course that is what you mean?” + +“Yes,” said the young man. “I mean, get acquainted with her, with a +view to being her accepted lover; and if we suited each other, what +would naturally follow.” + +The timber-merchant was much surprised, and fairly agitated; his hand +trembled as he laid by his walking-stick. “This takes me unawares,” +said he, his voice wellnigh breaking down. “I don’t mean that there is +anything unexpected in a gentleman being attracted by her; but it did +not occur to me that it would be you. I always said,” continued he, +with a lump in his throat, “that my Grace would make a mark at her own +level some day. That was why I educated her. I said to myself, ‘I’ll do +it, cost what it may;’ though her mother-law was pretty frightened at +my paying out so much money year after year. I knew it would tell in +the end. ‘Where you’ve not good material to work on, such doings would +be waste and vanity,’ I said. ‘But where you have that material it is +sure to be worth while.’” + +“I am glad you don’t object,” said Fitzpiers, almost wishing that Grace +had not been quite so cheap for him. + +“If she is willing I don’t object, certainly. Indeed,” added the honest +man, “it would be deceit if I were to pretend to feel anything else +than highly honored personally; and it is a great credit to her to have +drawn to her a man of such good professional station and venerable old +family. That huntsman-fellow little thought how wrong he was about her! +Take her and welcome, sir.” + +“I’ll endeavor to ascertain her mind.” + +“Yes, yes. But she will be agreeable, I should think. She ought to be.” + +“I hope she may. Well, now you’ll expect to see me frequently.” + +“Oh yes. But, name it all—about her cough, and her going away. I had +quite forgot that that was what I came about.” + +“I assure you,” said the surgeon, “that her cough can only be the +result of a slight cold, and it is not necessary to banish her to any +seaside place at all.” + +Melbury looked unconvinced, doubting whether he ought to take +Fitzpiers’s professional opinion in circumstances which naturally led +him to wish to keep her there. The doctor saw this, and honestly +dreading to lose sight of her, he said, eagerly, “Between ourselves, if +I am successful with her I will take her away myself for a month or +two, as soon as we are married, which I hope will be before the chilly +weather comes on. This will be so very much better than letting her go +now.” + +The proposal pleased Melbury much. There could be hardly any danger in +postponing any desirable change of air as long as the warm weather +lasted, and for such a reason. Suddenly recollecting himself, he said, +“Your time must be precious, doctor. I’ll get home-along. I am much +obliged to ye. As you will see her often, you’ll discover for yourself +if anything serious is the matter.” + +“I can assure you it is nothing,” said Fitzpiers, who had seen Grace +much oftener already than her father knew of. + +When he was gone Fitzpiers paused, silent, registering his sensations, +like a man who has made a plunge for a pearl into a medium of which he +knows not the density or temperature. But he had done it, and Grace was +the sweetest girl alive. + +As for the departed visitor, his own last words lingered in Melbury’s +ears as he walked homeward; he felt that what he had said in the +emotion of the moment was very stupid, ungenteel, and unsuited to a +dialogue with an educated gentleman, the smallness of whose practice +was more than compensated by the former greatness of his family. He had +uttered thoughts before they were weighed, and almost before they were +shaped. They had expressed in a certain sense his feeling at +Fitzpiers’s news, but yet they were not right. Looking on the ground, +and planting his stick at each tread as if it were a flag-staff, he +reached his own precincts, where, as he passed through the court, he +automatically stopped to look at the men working in the shed and +around. One of them asked him a question about wagon-spokes. + +“Hey?” said Melbury, looking hard at him. The man repeated the words. + +Melbury stood; then turning suddenly away without answering, he went up +the court and entered the house. As time was no object with the +journeymen, except as a thing to get past, they leisurely surveyed the +door through which he had disappeared. + +“What maggot has the gaffer got in his head now?” said Tangs the elder. +“Sommit to do with that chiel of his! When you’ve got a maid of yer +own, John Upjohn, that costs ye what she costs him, that will take the +squeak out of your Sunday shoes, John! But you’ll never be tall enough +to accomplish such as she; and ’tis a lucky thing for ye, John, as +things be. Well, he ought to have a dozen—that would bring him to +reason. I see ’em walking together last Sunday, and when they came to a +puddle he lifted her over like a halfpenny doll. He ought to have a +dozen; he’d let ’em walk through puddles for themselves then.” + +Meanwhile Melbury had entered the house with the look of a man who sees +a vision before him. His wife was in the room. Without taking off his +hat he sat down at random. + +“Luce—we’ve done it!” he said. “Yes—the thing is as I expected. The +spell, that I foresaw might be worked, has worked. She’s done it, and +done it well. Where is she—Grace, I mean?” + +“Up in her room—what has happened!” + +Mr. Melbury explained the circumstances as coherently as he could. “I +told you so,” he said. “A maid like her couldn’t stay hid long, even in +a place like this. But where is Grace? Let’s have her down. +Here—Gra-a-ace!” + +She appeared after a reasonable interval, for she was sufficiently +spoiled by this father of hers not to put herself in a hurry, however +impatient his tones. “What is it, father?” said she, with a smile. + +“Why, you scamp, what’s this you’ve been doing? Not home here more than +six months, yet, instead of confining yourself to your father’s rank, +making havoc in the educated classes.” + +Though accustomed to show herself instantly appreciative of her +father’s meanings, Grace was fairly unable to look anyhow but at a loss +now. + +“No, no—of course you don’t know what I mean, or you pretend you don’t; +though, for my part, I believe women can see these things through a +double hedge. But I suppose I must tell ye. Why, you’ve flung your +grapnel over the doctor, and he’s coming courting forthwith.” + +“Only think of that, my dear! Don’t you feel it a triumph?” said Mrs. +Melbury. + +“Coming courting! I’ve done nothing to make him,” Grace exclaimed. + +“’Twasn’t necessary that you should, ’Tis voluntary that rules in these +things....Well, he has behaved very honorably, and asked my consent. +You’ll know what to do when he gets here, I dare say. I needn’t tell +you to make it all smooth for him.” + +“You mean, to lead him on to marry me?” + +“I do. Haven’t I educated you for it?” + +Grace looked out of the window and at the fireplace with no animation +in her face. “Why is it settled off-hand in this way?” said she, +coquettishly. “You’ll wait till you hear what I think of him, I +suppose?” + +“Oh yes, of course. But you see what a good thing it will be.” + +She weighed the statement without speaking. + +“You will be restored to the society you’ve been taken away from,” +continued her father; “for I don’t suppose he’ll stay here long.” + +She admitted the advantage; but it was plain that though Fitzpiers +exercised a certain fascination over her when he was present, or even +more, an almost psychic influence, and though his impulsive act in the +wood had stirred her feelings indescribably, she had never regarded him +in the light of a destined husband. “I don’t know what to answer,” she +said. “I have learned that he is very clever.” + +“He’s all right, and he’s coming here to see you.” + +A premonition that she could not resist him if he came strangely moved +her. “Of course, father, you remember that it is only lately that +Giles—” + +“You know that you can’t think of him. He has given up all claim to +you.” + +She could not explain the subtleties of her feeling as he could state +his opinion, even though she had skill in speech, and her father had +none. That Fitzpiers acted upon her like a dram, exciting her, throwing +her into a novel atmosphere which biassed her doings until the +influence was over, when she felt something of the nature of regret for +the mood she had experienced—still more if she reflected on the silent, +almost sarcastic, criticism apparent in Winterborne’s air towards +her—could not be told to this worthy couple in words. + +It so happened that on this very day Fitzpiers was called away from +Hintock by an engagement to attend some medical meetings, and his +visits, therefore, did not begin at once. A note, however, arrived from +him addressed to Grace, deploring his enforced absence. As a material +object this note was pretty and superfine, a note of a sort that she +had been unaccustomed to see since her return to Hintock, except when a +school friend wrote to her—a rare instance, for the girls were +respecters of persons, and many cooled down towards the timber-dealer’s +daughter when she was out of sight. Thus the receipt of it pleased her, +and she afterwards walked about with a reflective air. + +In the evening her father, who knew that the note had come, said, “Why +be ye not sitting down to answer your letter? That’s what young folks +did in my time.” + +She replied that it did not require an answer. + +“Oh, you know best,” he said. Nevertheless, he went about his business +doubting if she were right in not replying; possibly she might be so +mismanaging matters as to risk the loss of an alliance which would +bring her much happiness. + +Melbury’s respect for Fitzpiers was based less on his professional +position, which was not much, than on the standing of his family in the +county in by-gone days. That implicit faith in members of +long-established families, as such, irrespective of their personal +condition or character, which is still found among old-fashioned people +in the rural districts reached its full intensity in Melbury. His +daughter’s suitor was descended from a family he had heard of in his +grandfather’s time as being once great, a family which had conferred +its name upon a neighboring village; how, then, could anything be amiss +in this betrothal? + +“I must keep her up to this,” he said to his wife. “She sees it is for +her happiness; but still she’s young, and may want a little prompting +from an older tongue.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + + +With this in view he took her out for a walk, a custom of his when he +wished to say anything specially impressive. Their way was over the top +of that lofty ridge dividing their woodland from the cider district, +whence they had in the spring beheld the miles of apple-trees in bloom. +All was now deep green. The spot recalled to Grace’s mind the last +occasion of her presence there, and she said, “The promise of an +enormous apple-crop is fulfilling itself, is it not? I suppose Giles is +getting his mills and presses ready.” + +This was just what her father had not come there to talk about. Without +replying he raised his arm, and moved his finger till he fixed it at a +point. “There,” he said, “you see that plantation reaching over the +hill like a great slug, and just behind the hill a particularly green +sheltered bottom? That’s where Mr. Fitzpiers’s family were lords of the +manor for I don’t know how many hundred years, and there stands the +village of Buckbury Fitzpiers. A wonderful property ’twas—wonderful!” + +“But they are not lords of the manor there now.” + +“Why, no. But good and great things die as well as little and foolish. +The only ones representing the family now, I believe, are our doctor +and a maiden lady living I don’t know where. You can’t help being +happy, Grace, in allying yourself with such a romantical family. You’ll +feel as if you’ve stepped into history.” + +“We’ve been at Hintock as long as they’ve been at Buckbury; is it not +so? You say our name occurs in old deeds continually.” + +“Oh yes—as yeomen, copyholders, and such like. But think how much +better this will be for ’ee. You’ll be living a high intellectual life, +such as has now become natural to you; and though the doctor’s practice +is small here, he’ll no doubt go to a dashing town when he’s got his +hand in, and keep a stylish carriage, and you’ll be brought to know a +good many ladies of excellent society. If you should ever meet me then, +Grace, you can drive past me, looking the other way. I shouldn’t expect +you to speak to me, or wish such a thing, unless it happened to be in +some lonely, private place where ’twouldn’t lower ye at all. Don’t +think such men as neighbor Giles your equal. He and I shall be good +friends enough, but he’s not for the like of you. He’s lived our rough +and homely life here, and his wife’s life must be rough and homely +likewise.” + +So much pressure could not but produce some displacement. As Grace was +left very much to herself, she took advantage of one fine day before +Fitzpiers’s return to drive into the aforesaid vale where stood the +village of Buckbury Fitzpiers. Leaving her father’s man at the inn with +the horse and gig, she rambled onward to the ruins of a castle, which +stood in a field hard by. She had no doubt that it represented the +ancient stronghold of the Fitzpiers family. + +The remains were few, and consisted mostly of remnants of the lower +vaulting, supported on low stout columns surmounted by the _crochet_ +capital of the period. The two or three arches of these vaults that +were still in position were utilized by the adjoining farmer as shelter +for his calves, the floor being spread with straw, amid which the young +creatures rustled, cooling their thirsty tongues by licking the quaint +Norman carving, which glistened with the moisture. It was a degradation +of even such a rude form of art as this to be treatad so grossly, she +thought, and for the first time the family of Fitzpiers assumed in her +imagination the hues of a melancholy romanticism. + +It was soon time to drive home, and she traversed the distance with a +preoccupied mind. The idea of so modern a man in science and aesthetics +as the young surgeon springing out of relics so ancient was a kind of +novelty she had never before experienced. The combination lent him a +social and intellectual interest which she dreaded, so much weight did +it add to the strange influence he exercised upon her whenever he came +near her. + +In an excitement which was not love, not ambition, rather a fearful +consciousness of hazard in the air, she awaited his return. + +Meanwhile her father was awaiting him also. In his house there was an +old work on medicine, published towards the end of the last century, +and to put himself in harmony with events Melbury spread this work on +his knees when he had done his day’s business, and read about Galen, +Hippocrates, and Herophilus—of the dogmatic, the empiric, the +hermetical, and other sects of practitioners that have arisen in +history; and thence proceeded to the classification of maladies and the +rules for their treatment, as laid down in this valuable book with +absolute precision. Melbury regretted that the treatise was so old, +fearing that he might in consequence be unable to hold as complete a +conversation as he could wish with Mr. Fitzpiers, primed, no doubt, +with more recent discoveries. + +The day of Fitzpiers’s return arrived, and he sent to say that he would +call immediately. In the little time that was afforded for putting the +house in order the sweeping of Melbury’s parlor was as the sweeping of +the parlor at the Interpreter’s which wellnigh choked the Pilgrim. At +the end of it Mrs. Melbury sat down, folded her hands and lips, and +waited. Her husband restlessly walked in and out from the timber-yard, +stared at the interior of the room, jerked out “ay, ay,” and retreated +again. Between four and five Fitzpiers arrived, hitching his horse to +the hook outside the door. + +As soon as he had walked in and perceived that Grace was not in the +room, he seemed to have a misgiving. Nothing less than her actual +presence could long keep him to the level of this impassioned +enterprise, and that lacking he appeared as one who wished to retrace +his steps. + +He mechanically talked at what he considered a woodland matron’s level +of thought till a rustling was heard on the stairs, and Grace came in. +Fitzpiers was for once as agitated as she. Over and above the genuine +emotion which she raised in his heart there hung the sense that he was +casting a die by impulse which he might not have thrown by judgment. + +Mr. Melbury was not in the room. Having to attend to matters in the +yard, he had delayed putting on his afternoon coat and waistcoat till +the doctor’s appearance, when, not wishing to be backward in receiving +him, he entered the parlor hastily buttoning up those garments. Grace’s +fastidiousness was a little distressed that Fitzpiers should see by +this action the strain his visit was putting upon her father; and to +make matters worse for her just then, old Grammer seemed to have a +passion for incessantly pumping in the back kitchen, leaving the doors +open so that the banging and splashing were distinct above the parlor +conversation. + +Whenever the chat over the tea sank into pleasant desultoriness Mr. +Melbury broke in with speeches of labored precision on very remote +topics, as if he feared to let Fitzpiers’s mind dwell critically on the +subject nearest the hearts of all. In truth a constrained manner was +natural enough in Melbury just now, for the greatest interest of his +life was reaching its crisis. Could the real have been beheld instead +of the corporeal merely, the corner of the room in which he sat would +have been filled with a form typical of anxious suspense, large-eyed, +tight-lipped, awaiting the issue. That paternal hopes and fears so +intense should be bound up in the person of one child so peculiarly +circumstanced, and not have dispersed themselves over the larger field +of a whole family, involved dangerous risks to future happiness. + +Fitzpiers did not stay more than an hour, but that time had apparently +advanced his sentiments towards Grace, once and for all, from a vaguely +liquescent to an organic shape. She would not have accompanied him to +the door in response to his whispered “Come!” if her mother had not +said in a matter-of-fact way, “Of course, Grace; go to the door with +Mr. Fitzpiers.” Accordingly Grace went, both her parents remaining in +the room. When the young pair were in the great brick-floored hall the +lover took the girl’s hand in his, drew it under his arm, and thus led +her on to the door, where he stealthily kissed her. + +She broke from him trembling, blushed and turned aside, hardly knowing +how things had advanced to this. Fitzpiers drove off, kissing his hand +to her, and waving it to Melbury who was visible through the window. +Her father returned the surgeon’s action with a great flourish of his +own hand and a satisfied smile. + +The intoxication that Fitzpiers had, as usual, produced in Grace’s +brain during the visit passed off somewhat with his withdrawal. She +felt like a woman who did not know what she had been doing for the +previous hour, but supposed with trepidation that the afternoon’s +proceedings, though vague, had amounted to an engagement between +herself and the handsome, coercive, irresistible Fitzpiers. + +This visit was a type of many which followed it during the long summer +days of that year. Grace was borne along upon a stream of reasonings, +arguments, and persuasions, supplemented, it must be added, by +inclinations of her own at times. No woman is without aspirations, +which may be innocent enough within certain limits; and Grace had been +so trained socially, and educated intellectually, as to see clearly +enough a pleasure in the position of wife to such a man as Fitzpiers. +His material standing of itself, either present or future, had little +in it to give her ambition, but the possibilities of a refined and +cultivated inner life, of subtle psychological intercourse, had their +charm. It was this rather than any vulgar idea of marrying well which +caused her to float with the current, and to yield to the immense +influence which Fitzpiers exercised over her whenever she shared his +society. + +Any observer would shrewdly have prophesied that whether or not she +loved him as yet in the ordinary sense, she was pretty sure to do so in +time. + +One evening just before dusk they had taken a rather long walk +together, and for a short cut homeward passed through the shrubberies +of Hintock House—still deserted, and still blankly confronting with its +sightless shuttered windows the surrounding foliage and slopes. Grace +was tired, and they approached the wall, and sat together on one of the +stone sills—still warm with the sun that had been pouring its rays upon +them all the afternoon. + +“This place would just do for us, would it not, dearest,” said her +betrothed, as they sat, turning and looking idly at the old facade. + +“Oh yes,” said Grace, plainly showing that no such fancy had ever +crossed her mind. “She is away from home still,” Grace added in a +minute, rather sadly, for she could not forget that she had somehow +lost the valuable friendship of the lady of this bower. + +“Who is?—oh, you mean Mrs. Charmond. Do you know, dear, that at one +time I thought you lived here.” + +“Indeed!” said Grace. “How was that?” + +He explained, as far as he could do so without mentioning his +disappointment at finding it was otherwise; and then went on: “Well, +never mind that. Now I want to ask you something. There is one detail +of our wedding which I am sure you will leave to me. My inclination is +not to be married at the horrid little church here, with all the yokels +staring round at us, and a droning parson reading.” + +“Where, then, can it be? At a church in town?” + +“No. Not at a church at all. At a registry office. It is a quieter, +snugger, and more convenient place in every way.” + +“Oh,” said she, with real distress. “How can I be married except at +church, and with all my dear friends round me?” + +“Yeoman Winterborne among them.” + +“Yes—why not? You know there was nothing serious between him and me.” + +“You see, dear, a noisy bell-ringing marriage at church has this +objection in our case: it would be a thing of report a long way round. +Now I would gently, as gently as possible, indicate to you how +inadvisable such publicity would be if we leave Hintock, and I purchase +the practice that I contemplate purchasing at Budmouth—hardly more than +twenty miles off. Forgive my saying that it will be far better if +nobody there knows where you come from, nor anything about your +parents. Your beauty and knowledge and manners will carry you anywhere +if you are not hampered by such retrospective criticism.” + +“But could it not be a quiet ceremony, even at church?” she pleaded. + +“I don’t see the necessity of going there!” he said, a trifle +impatiently. “Marriage is a civil contract, and the shorter and simpler +it is made the better. People don’t go to church when they take a +house, or even when they make a will.” + +“Oh, Edgar—I don’t like to hear you speak like that.” + +“Well, well—I didn’t mean to. But I have mentioned as much to your +father, who has made no objection; and why should you?” + +She gave way, deeming the point one on which she ought to allow +sentiment to give way to policy—if there were indeed policy in his +plan. But she was indefinably depressed as they walked homeward. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + + +He left her at the door of her father’s house. As he receded, and was +clasped out of sight by the filmy shades, he impressed Grace as a man +who hardly appertained to her existence at all. Cleverer, greater than +herself, one outside her mental orbit, as she considered him, he seemed +to be her ruler rather than her equal, protector, and dear familiar +friend. + +The disappointment she had experienced at his wish, the shock given to +her girlish sensibilities by his irreverent views of marriage, together +with the sure and near approach of the day fixed for committing her +future to his keeping, made her so restless that she could scarcely +sleep at all that night. She rose when the sparrows began to walk out +of the roof-holes, sat on the floor of her room in the dim light, and +by-and-by peeped out behind the window-curtains. It was even now day +out-of-doors, though the tones of morning were feeble and wan, and it +was long before the sun would be perceptible in this overshadowed vale. +Not a sound came from any of the out-houses as yet. The tree-trunks, +the road, the out-buildings, the garden, every object wore that aspect +of mesmeric fixity which the suspensive quietude of daybreak lends to +such scenes. Outside her window helpless immobility seemed to be +combined with intense consciousness; a meditative inertness possessed +all things, oppressively contrasting with her own active emotions. +Beyond the road were some cottage roofs and orchards; over these roofs +and over the apple-trees behind, high up the slope, and backed by the +plantation on the crest, was the house yet occupied by her future +husband, the rough-cast front showing whitely through its creepers. The +window-shutters were closed, the bedroom curtains closely drawn, and +not the thinnest coil of smoke rose from the rugged chimneys. + +Something broke the stillness. The front door of the house she was +gazing at opened softly, and there came out into the porch a female +figure, wrapped in a large shawl, beneath which was visible the white +skirt of a long loose garment. A gray arm, stretching from within the +porch, adjusted the shawl over the woman’s shoulders; it was withdrawn +and disappeared, the door closing behind her. + +The woman went quickly down the box-edged path between the raspberries +and currants, and as she walked her well-developed form and gait +betrayed her individuality. It was Suke Damson, the affianced one of +simple young Tim Tangs. At the bottom of the garden she entered the +shelter of the tall hedge, and only the top of her head could be seen +hastening in the direction of her own dwelling. + +Grace had recognized, or thought she recognized, in the gray arm +stretching from the porch, the sleeve of a dressing-gown which Mr. +Fitzpiers had been wearing on her own memorable visit to him. Her face +fired red. She had just before thought of dressing herself and taking a +lonely walk under the trees, so coolly green this early morning; but +she now sat down on her bed and fell into reverie. It seemed as if +hardly any time had passed when she heard the household moving briskly +about, and breakfast preparing down-stairs; though, on rousing herself +to robe and descend, she found that the sun was throwing his rays +completely over the tree-tops, a progress of natural phenomena denoting +that at least three hours had elapsed since she last looked out of the +window. + +When attired she searched about the house for her father; she found him +at last in the garden, stooping to examine the potatoes for signs of +disease. Hearing her rustle, he stood up and stretched his back and +arms, saying, “Morning t’ye, Gracie. I congratulate ye. It is only a +month to-day to the time!” + +She did not answer, but, without lifting her dress, waded between the +dewy rows of tall potato-green into the middle of the plot where he +was. + +“I have been thinking very much about my position this morning—ever +since it was light,” she began, excitedly, and trembling so that she +could hardly stand. “And I feel it is a false one. I wish not to marry +Mr. Fitzpiers. I wish not to marry anybody; but I’ll marry Giles +Winterborne if you say I must as an alternative.” + +Her father’s face settled into rigidity, he turned pale, and came +deliberately out of the plot before he answered her. She had never seen +him look so incensed before. + +“Now, hearken to me,” he said. “There’s a time for a woman to alter her +mind; and there’s a time when she can no longer alter it, if she has +any right eye to her parents’ honor and the seemliness of things. That +time has come. I won’t say to ye, you _shall_ marry him. But I will say +that if you refuse, I shall forever be ashamed and a-weary of ye as a +daughter, and shall look upon you as the hope of my life no more. What +do you know about life and what it can bring forth, and how you ought +to act to lead up to best ends? Oh, you are an ungrateful maid, Grace; +you’ve seen that fellow Giles, and he has got over ye; that’s where the +secret lies, I’ll warrant me!” + +“No, father, no! It is not Giles—it is something I cannot tell you of—” + +“Well, make fools of us all; make us laughing-stocks; break it off; +have your own way.” + +“But who knows of the engagement as yet? how can breaking it disgrace +you?” + +Melbury then by degrees admitted that he had mentioned the engagement +to this acquaintance and to that, till she perceived that in his +restlessness and pride he had published it everywhere. She went +dismally away to a bower of laurel at the top of the garden. Her father +followed her. + +“It is that Giles Winterborne!” he said, with an upbraiding gaze at +her. + +“No, it is not; though for that matter you encouraged him once,” she +said, troubled to the verge of despair. “It is not Giles, it is Mr. +Fitzpiers.” + +“You’ve had a tiff—a lovers’ tiff—that’s all, I suppose!” + +“It is some woman—” + +“Ay, ay; you are jealous. The old story. Don’t tell me. Now do you bide +here. I’ll send Fitzpiers to you. I saw him smoking in front of his +house but a minute by-gone.” + +He went off hastily out of the garden-gate and down the lane. But she +would not stay where she was; and edging through a slit in the +garden-fence, walked away into the wood. Just about here the trees were +large and wide apart, and there was no undergrowth, so that she could +be seen to some distance; a sylph-like, greenish-white creature, as +toned by the sunlight and leafage. She heard a foot-fall crushing dead +leaves behind her, and found herself reconnoitered by Fitzpiers +himself, approaching gay and fresh as the morning around them. + +His remote gaze at her had been one of mild interest rather than of +rapture. But she looked so lovely in the green world about her, her +pink cheeks, her simple light dress, and the delicate flexibility of +her movement acquired such rarity from their wild-wood setting, that +his eyes kindled as he drew near. + +“My darling, what is it? Your father says you are in the pouts, and +jealous, and I don’t know what. Ha! ha! ha! as if there were any rival +to you, except vegetable nature, in this home of recluses! We know +better.” + +“Jealous; oh no, it is not so,” said she, gravely. “That’s a mistake of +his and yours, sir. I spoke to him so closely about the question of +marriage with you that he did not apprehend my state of mind.” + +“But there’s something wrong—eh?” he asked, eying her narrowly, and +bending to kiss her. She shrank away, and his purposed kiss miscarried. + +“What is it?” he said, more seriously for this little defeat. + +She made no answer beyond, “Mr. Fitzpiers, I have had no breakfast, I +must go in.” + +“Come,” he insisted, fixing his eyes upon her. “Tell me at once, I +say.” + +It was the greater strength against the smaller; but she was mastered +less by his manner than by her own sense of the unfairness of silence. +“I looked out of the window,” she said, with hesitation. “I’ll tell you +by-and-by. I must go in-doors. I have had no breakfast.” + +By a sort of divination his conjecture went straight to the fact. “Nor +I,” said he, lightly. “Indeed, I rose late to-day. I have had a broken +night, or rather morning. A girl of the village—I don’t know her +name—came and rang at my bell as soon as it was light—between four and +five, I should think it was—perfectly maddened with an aching tooth. As +no-body heard her ring, she threw some gravel at my window, till at +last I heard her and slipped on my dressing-gown and went down. The +poor thing begged me with tears in her eyes to take out her tormentor, +if I dragged her head off. Down she sat and out it came—a lovely molar, +not a speck upon it; and off she went with it in her handkerchief, much +contented, though it would have done good work for her for fifty years +to come.” + +It was all so plausible—so completely explained. Knowing nothing of the +incident in the wood on old Midsummer-eve, Grace felt that her +suspicions were unworthy and absurd, and with the readiness of an +honest heart she jumped at the opportunity of honoring his word. At the +moment of her mental liberation the bushes about the garden had moved, +and her father emerged into the shady glade. “Well, I hope it is made +up?” he said, cheerily. + +“Oh yes,” said Fitzpiers, with his eyes fixed on Grace, whose eyes were +shyly bent downward. + +“Now,” said her father, “tell me, the pair of ye, that you still mean +to take one another for good and all; and on the strength o’t you shall +have another couple of hundred paid down. I swear it by the name.” + +Fitzpiers took her hand. “We declare it, do we not, my dear Grace?” +said he. + +Relieved of her doubt, somewhat overawed, and ever anxious to please, +she was disposed to settle the matter; yet, womanlike, she would not +relinquish her opportunity of asking a concession of some sort. “If our +wedding can be at church, I say yes,” she answered, in a measured +voice. “If not, I say no.” + +Fitzpiers was generous in his turn. “It shall be so,” he rejoined, +gracefully. “To holy church we’ll go, and much good may it do us.” + +They returned through the bushes indoors, Grace walking, full of +thought between the other two, somewhat comforted, both by Fitzpiers’s +ingenious explanation and by the sense that she was not to be deprived +of a religious ceremony. “So let it be,” she said to herself. “Pray God +it is for the best.” + +From this hour there was no serious attempt at recalcitration on her +part. Fitzpiers kept himself continually near her, dominating any +rebellious impulse, and shaping her will into passive concurrence with +all his desires. Apart from his lover-like anxiety to possess her, the +few golden hundreds of the timber-dealer, ready to hand, formed a warm +background to Grace’s lovely face, and went some way to remove his +uneasiness at the prospect of endangering his professional and social +chances by an alliance with the family of a simple countryman. + +The interim closed up its perspective surely and silently. Whenever +Grace had any doubts of her position, the sense of contracting time was +like a shortening chamber: at other moments she was comparatively +blithe. Day after day waxed and waned; the one or two woodmen who +sawed, shaped, spokeshaved on her father’s premises at this inactive +season of the year, regularly came and unlocked the doors in the +morning, locked them in the evening, supped, leaned over their +garden-gates for a whiff of evening air, and to catch any last and +farthest throb of news from the outer world, which entered and expired +at Little Hintock like the exhausted swell of a wave in some innermost +cavern of some innermost creek of an embayed sea; yet no news +interfered with the nuptial purpose at their neighbor’s house. The +sappy green twig-tips of the season’s growth would not, she thought, be +appreciably woodier on the day she became a wife, so near was the time; +the tints of the foliage would hardly have changed. Everything was so +much as usual that no itinerant stranger would have supposed a woman’s +fate to be hanging in the balance at that summer’s decline. + +But there were preparations, imaginable readily enough by those who had +special knowledge. In the remote and fashionable town of Sandbourne +something was growing up under the hands of several persons who had +never seen Grace Melbury, never would see her, or care anything about +her at all, though their creation had such interesting relation to her +life that it would enclose her very heart at a moment when that heart +would beat, if not with more emotional ardor, at least with more +emotional turbulence than at any previous time. + +Why did Mrs. Dollery’s van, instead of passing along at the end of the +smaller village to Great Hintock direct, turn one Saturday night into +Little Hintock Lane, and never pull up till it reached Mr. Melbury’s +gates? The gilding shine of evening fell upon a large, flat box not +less than a yard square, and safely tied with cord, as it was handed +out from under the tilt with a great deal of care. But it was not heavy +for its size; Mrs. Dollery herself carried it into the house. Tim +Tangs, the hollow-turner, Bawtree, Suke Damson, and others, looked +knowing, and made remarks to each other as they watched its entrance. +Melbury stood at the door of the timber-shed in the attitude of a man +to whom such an arrival was a trifling domestic detail with which he +did not condescend to be concerned. Yet he well divined the contents of +that box, and was in truth all the while in a pleasant exaltation at +the proof that thus far, at any rate, no disappointment had supervened. +While Mrs. Dollery remained—which was rather long, from her sense of +the importance of her errand—he went into the out-house; but as soon as +she had had her say, been paid, and had rumbled away, he entered the +dwelling, to find there what he knew he should find—his wife and +daughter in a flutter of excitement over the wedding-gown, just arrived +from the leading dress-maker of Sandbourne watering-place aforesaid. + +During these weeks Giles Winterborne was nowhere to be seen or heard +of. At the close of his tenure in Hintock he had sold some of his +furniture, packed up the rest—a few pieces endeared by associations, or +necessary to his occupation—in the house of a friendly neighbor, and +gone away. People said that a certain laxity had crept into his life; +that he had never gone near a church latterly, and had been sometimes +seen on Sundays with unblacked boots, lying on his elbow under a tree, +with a cynical gaze at surrounding objects. He was likely to return to +Hintock when the cider-making season came round, his apparatus being +stored there, and travel with his mill and press from village to +village. + +The narrow interval that stood before the day diminished yet. There was +in Grace’s mind sometimes a certain anticipative satisfaction, the +satisfaction of feeling that she would be the heroine of an hour; +moreover, she was proud, as a cultivated woman, to be the wife of a +cultivated man. It was an opportunity denied very frequently to young +women in her position, nowadays not a few; those in whom parental +discovery of the value of education has implanted tastes which parental +circles fail to gratify. But what an attenuation was this cold pride of +the dream of her youth, in which she had pictured herself walking in +state towards the altar, flushed by the purple light and bloom of her +own passion, without a single misgiving as to the sealing of the bond, +and fervently receiving as her due + +“The homage of a thousand hearts; the fond, deep love of one.” + + +Everything had been clear then, in imagination; now something was +undefined. She had little carking anxieties; a curious fatefulness +seemed to rule her, and she experienced a mournful want of some one to +confide in. + +The day loomed so big and nigh that her prophetic ear could, in fancy, +catch the noise of it, hear the murmur of the villagers as she came out +of church, imagine the jangle of the three thin-toned Hintock bells. +The dialogues seemed to grow louder, and the ding-ding-dong of those +three crazed bells more persistent. She awoke: the morning had come. + +Five hours later she was the wife of Fitzpiers. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + + +The chief hotel at Sherton-Abbas was an old stone-fronted inn with a +yawning arch, under which vehicles were driven by stooping coachmen to +back premises of wonderful commodiousness. The windows to the street +were mullioned into narrow lights, and only commanded a view of the +opposite houses; hence, perhaps, it arose that the best and most +luxurious private sitting-room that the inn could afford over-looked +the nether parts of the establishment, where beyond the yard were to be +seen gardens and orchards, now bossed, nay incrusted, with scarlet and +gold fruit, stretching to infinite distance under a luminous lavender +mist. The time was early autumn, + +“When the fair apples, red as evening sky, +Do bend the tree unto the fruitful ground, +When juicy pears, and berries of black dye, +Do dance in air, and call the eyes around.” + + +The landscape confronting the window might, indeed, have been part of +the identical stretch of country which the youthful Chatterton had in +his mind. + +In this room sat she who had been the maiden Grace Melbury till the +finger of fate touched her and turned her to a wife. It was two months +after the wedding, and she was alone. Fitzpiers had walked out to see +the abbey by the light of sunset, but she had been too fatigued to +accompany him. They had reached the last stage of a long eight-weeks’ +tour, and were going on to Hintock that night. + +In the yard, between Grace and the orchards, there progressed a scene +natural to the locality at this time of the year. An apple-mill and +press had been erected on the spot, to which some men were bringing +fruit from divers points in mawn-baskets, while others were grinding +them, and others wringing down the pomace, whose sweet juice gushed +forth into tubs and pails. The superintendent of these proceedings, to +whom the others spoke as master, was a young yeoman of prepossessing +manner and aspect, whose form she recognized in a moment. He had hung +his coat to a nail of the out-house wall, and wore his shirt-sleeves +rolled up beyond his elbows, to keep them unstained while he rammed the +pomace into the bags of horse-hair. Fragments of apple-rind had +alighted upon the brim of his hat—probably from the bursting of a +bag—while brown pips of the same fruit were sticking among the down +upon his fine, round arms. + +She realized in a moment how he had come there. Down in the heart of +the apple country nearly every farmer kept up a cider-making apparatus +and wring-house for his own use, building up the pomace in great straw +“cheeses,” as they were called; but here, on the margin of Pomona’s +plain, was a debatable land neither orchard nor sylvan exclusively, +where the apple produce was hardly sufficient to warrant each +proprietor in keeping a mill of his own. This was the field of the +travelling cider-maker. His press and mill were fixed to wheels instead +of being set up in a cider-house; and with a couple of horses, buckets, +tubs, strainers, and an assistant or two, he wandered from place to +place, deriving very satisfactory returns for his trouble in such a +prolific season as the present. + +The back parts of the town were just now abounding with +apple-gatherings. They stood in the yards in carts, baskets, and loose +heaps; and the blue, stagnant air of autumn which hung over everything +was heavy with a sweet cidery smell. Cakes of pomace lay against the +walls in the yellow sun, where they were drying to be used as fuel. Yet +it was not the great make of the year as yet; before the standard crop +came in there accumulated, in abundant times like this, a large +superfluity of early apples, and windfalls from the trees of later +harvest, which would not keep long. Thus, in the baskets, and quivering +in the hopper of the mill, she saw specimens of mixed dates, including +the mellow countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards, +stubbards, ratheripes, and other well-known friends of her ravenous +youth. + +Grace watched the head-man with interest. The slightest sigh escaped +her. Perhaps she thought of the day—not so far distant—when that friend +of her childhood had met her by her father’s arrangement in this same +town, warm with hope, though diffident, and trusting in a promise +rather implied than given. Or she might have thought of days earlier +yet—days of childhood—when her mouth was somewhat more ready to receive +a kiss from his than was his to bestow one. However, all that was over. +She had felt superior to him then, and she felt superior to him now. + +She wondered why he never looked towards her open window. She did not +know that in the slight commotion caused by their arrival at the inn +that afternoon Winterborne had caught sight of her through the archway, +had turned red, and was continuing his work with more concentrated +attention on the very account of his discovery. Robert Creedle, too, +who travelled with Giles, had been incidentally informed by the hostler +that Dr. Fitzpiers and his young wife were in the hotel, after which +news Creedle kept shaking his head and saying to himself, “Ah!” very +audibly, between his thrusts at the screw of the cider-press. + +“Why the deuce do you sigh like that, Robert?” asked Winterborne, at +last. + +“Ah, maister—’tis my thoughts—’tis my thoughts!...Yes, ye’ve lost a +hundred load o’ timber well seasoned; ye’ve lost five hundred pound in +good money; ye’ve lost the stone-windered house that’s big enough to +hold a dozen families; ye’ve lost your share of half a dozen good +wagons and their horses—all lost!—through your letting slip she that +was once yer own!” + +“Good God, Creedle, you’ll drive me mad!” said Giles, sternly. “Don’t +speak of that any more!” + +Thus the subject had ended in the yard. Meanwhile, the passive cause of +all this loss still regarded the scene. She was beautifully dressed; +she was seated in the most comfortable room that the inn afforded; her +long journey had been full of variety, and almost luxuriously +performed—for Fitzpiers did not study economy where pleasure was in +question. Hence it perhaps arose that Giles and all his belongings +seemed sorry and common to her for the moment—moving in a plane so far +removed from her own of late that she could scarcely believe she had +ever found congruity therein. “No—I could never have married him!” she +said, gently shaking her head. “Dear father was right. It would have +been too coarse a life for me.” And she looked at the rings of sapphire +and opal upon her white and slender fingers that had been gifts from +Fitzpiers. + +Seeing that Giles still kept his back turned, and with a little of the +above-described pride of life—easily to be understood, and possibly +excused, in a young, inexperienced woman who thought she had married +well—she said at last, with a smile on her lips, “Mr. Winterborne!” + +He appeared to take no heed, and she said a second time, “Mr. +Winterborne!” + +Even now he seemed not to hear, though a person close enough to him to +see the expression of his face might have doubted it; and she said a +third time, with a timid loudness, “Mr. Winterborne! What, have you +forgotten my voice?” She remained with her lips parted in a welcoming +smile. + +He turned without surprise, and came deliberately towards the window. +“Why do you call me?” he said, with a sternness that took her +completely unawares, his face being now pale. “Is it not enough that +you see me here moiling and muddling for my daily bread while you are +sitting there in your success, that you can’t refrain from opening old +wounds by calling out my name?” + +She flushed, and was struck dumb for some moments; but she forgave his +unreasoning anger, knowing so well in what it had its root. “I am sorry +I offended you by speaking,” she replied, meekly. “Believe me, I did +not intend to do that. I could hardly sit here so near you without a +word of recognition.” + +Winterborne’s heart had swollen big, and his eyes grown moist by this +time, so much had the gentle answer of that familiar voice moved him. +He assured her hurriedly, and without looking at her, that he was not +angry. He then managed to ask her, in a clumsy, constrained way, if she +had had a pleasant journey, and seen many interesting sights. She spoke +of a few places that she had visited, and so the time passed till he +withdrew to take his place at one of the levers which pulled round the +screw. + +Forgotten her voice! Indeed, he had not forgotten her voice, as his +bitterness showed. But though in the heat of the moment he had +reproached her keenly, his second mood was a far more tender one—that +which could regard her renunciation of such as he as her glory and her +privilege, his own fidelity notwithstanding. He could have declared +with a contemporary poet— + + “If I forget, +The salt creek may forget the ocean; + If I forget +The heart whence flows my heart’s bright motion, +May I sink meanlier than the worst +Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst, + If I forget. + + + “Though you forget, +No word of mine shall mar your pleasure; + Though you forget, +You filled my barren life with treasure, +You may withdraw the gift you gave; +You still are queen, I still am slave, + Though you forget.” + + +She had tears in her eyes at the thought that she could not remind him +of what he ought to have remembered; that not herself but the pressure +of events had dissipated the dreams of their early youth. Grace was +thus unexpectedly worsted in her encounter with her old friend. She had +opened the window with a faint sense of triumph, but he had turned it +into sadness; she did not quite comprehend the reason why. In truth it +was because she was not cruel enough in her cruelty. If you have to use +the knife, use it, say the great surgeons; and for her own peace Grace +should have contemned Winterborne thoroughly or not at all. As it was, +on closing the window an indescribable, some might have said dangerous, +pity quavered in her bosom for him. + +Presently her husband entered the room, and told her what a wonderful +sunset there was to be seen. + +“I have not noticed it. But I have seen somebody out there that we +know,” she replied, looking into the court. + +Fitzpiers followed the direction of her eyes, and said he did not +recognize anybody. + +“Why, Mr. Winterborne—there he is, cider-making. He combines that with +his other business, you know.” + +“Oh—that fellow,” said Fitzpiers, his curiosity becoming extinct. + +She, reproachfully: “What, call Mr. Winterborne a fellow, Edgar? It is +true I was just saying to myself that I never could have married him; +but I have much regard for him, and always shall.” + +“Well, do by all means, my dear one. I dare say I am inhuman, and +supercilious, and contemptibly proud of my poor old ramshackle family; +but I do honestly confess to you that I feel as if I belonged to a +different species from the people who are working in that yard.” + +“And from me too, then. For my blood is no better than theirs.” + +He looked at her with a droll sort of awakening. It was, indeed, a +startling anomaly that this woman of the tribe without should be +standing there beside him as his wife, if his sentiments were as he had +said. In their travels together she had ranged so unerringly at his +level in ideas, tastes, and habits that he had almost forgotten how his +heart had played havoc with his principles in taking her to him. + +“Ah YOU—you are refined and educated into something quite different,” +he said, self-assuringly. + +“I don’t quite like to think that,” she murmured with soft regret. “And +I think you underestimate Giles Winterborne. Remember, I was brought up +with him till I was sent away to school, so I cannot be radically +different. At any rate, I don’t feel so. That is, no doubt, my fault, +and a great blemish in me. But I hope you will put up with it, Edgar.” + +Fitzpiers said that he would endeavor to do so; and as it was now +getting on for dusk, they prepared to perform the last stage of their +journey, so as to arrive at Hintock before it grew very late. + +In less than half an hour they started, the cider-makers in the yard +having ceased their labors and gone away, so that the only sounds +audible there now were the trickling of the juice from the tightly +screwed press, and the buzz of a single wasp, which had drunk itself so +tipsy that it was unconscious of nightfall. Grace was very cheerful at +the thought of being soon in her sylvan home, but Fitzpiers sat beside +her almost silent. An indescribable oppressiveness had overtaken him +with the near approach of the journey’s end and the realities of life +that lay there. + +“You don’t say a word, Edgar,” she observed. “Aren’t you glad to get +back? I am.” + +“You have friends here. I have none.” + +“But my friends are yours.” + +“Oh yes—in that sense.” + +The conversation languished, and they drew near the end of Hintock +Lane. It had been decided that they should, at least for a time, take +up their abode in her father’s roomy house, one wing of which was quite +at their service, being almost disused by the Melburys. Workmen had +been painting, papering, and whitewashing this set of rooms in the +wedded pair’s absence; and so scrupulous had been the timber-dealer +that there should occur no hitch or disappointment on their arrival, +that not the smallest detail remained undone. To make it all complete a +ground-floor room had been fitted up as a surgery, with an independent +outer door, to which Fitzpiers’s brass plate was screwed—for mere +ornament, such a sign being quite superfluous where everybody knew the +latitude and longitude of his neighbors for miles round. + +Melbury and his wife welcomed the twain with affection, and all the +house with deference. They went up to explore their rooms, that opened +from a passage on the left hand of the staircase, the entrance to which +could be shut off on the landing by a door that Melbury had hung for +the purpose. A friendly fire was burning in the grate, although it was +not cold. Fitzpiers said it was too soon for any sort of meal, they +only having dined shortly before leaving Sherton-Abbas. He would walk +across to his old lodging, to learn how his locum tenens had got on in +his absence. + +In leaving Melbury’s door he looked back at the house. There was +economy in living under that roof, and economy was desirable, but in +some way he was dissatisfied with the arrangement; it immersed him so +deeply in son-in-lawship to Melbury. He went on to his former +residence. His deputy was out, and Fitzpiers fell into conversation +with his former landlady. + +“Well, Mrs. Cox, what’s the best news?” he asked of her, with cheery +weariness. + +She was a little soured at losing by his marriage so profitable a +tenant as the surgeon had proved to be during his residence under her +roof; and the more so in there being hardly the remotest chance of her +getting such another settler in the Hintock solitudes. “’Tis what I +don’t wish to repeat, sir; least of all to you,” she mumbled. + +“Never mind me, Mrs. Cox; go ahead.” + +“It is what people say about your hasty marrying, Dr. Fitzpiers. +Whereas they won’t believe you know such clever doctrines in physic as +they once supposed of ye, seeing as you could marry into Mr. Melbury’s +family, which is only Hintock-born, such as me.” + +“They are kindly welcome to their opinion,” said Fitzpiers, not +allowing himself to recognize that he winced. “Anything else?” + +“Yes; _she’s_ come home at last.” + +“Who’s she?” + +“Mrs. Charmond.” + +“Oh, indeed!” said Fitzpiers, with but slight interest. “I’ve never +seen her.” + +“She has seen you, sir, whether or no.” + +“Never.” + +“Yes; she saw you in some hotel or street for a minute or two while you +were away travelling, and accidentally heard your name; and when she +made some remark about you, Miss Ellis—that’s her maid—told her you was +on your wedding-tower with Mr. Melbury’s daughter; and she said, ‘He +ought to have done better than that. I fear he has spoiled his +chances,’ she says.” + +Fitzpiers did not talk much longer to this cheering housewife, and +walked home with no very brisk step. He entered the door quietly, and +went straight up-stairs to the drawing-room extemporized for their use +by Melbury in his and his bride’s absence, expecting to find her there +as he had left her. The fire was burning still, but there were no +lights. He looked into the next apartment, fitted up as a little +dining-room, but no supper was laid. He went to the top of the stairs, +and heard a chorus of voices in the timber-merchant’s parlor below, +Grace’s being occasionally intermingled. + +Descending, and looking into the room from the door-way, he found quite +a large gathering of neighbors and other acquaintances, praising and +congratulating Mrs. Fitzpiers on her return, among them being the +dairyman, Farmer Bawtree, and the master-blacksmith from Great Hintock; +also the cooper, the hollow-turner, the exciseman, and some others, +with their wives, who lived hard by. Grace, girl that she was, had +quite forgotten her new dignity and her husband’s; she was in the midst +of them, blushing, and receiving their compliments with all the +pleasure of old-comradeship. + +Fitzpiers experienced a profound distaste for the situation. Melbury +was nowhere in the room, but Melbury’s wife, perceiving the doctor, +came to him. “We thought, Grace and I,” she said, “that as they have +called, hearing you were come, we could do no less than ask them to +supper; and then Grace proposed that we should all sup together, as it +is the first night of your return.” + +By this time Grace had come round to him. “Is it not good of them to +welcome me so warmly?” she exclaimed, with tears of friendship in her +eyes. “After so much good feeling I could not think of our shutting +ourselves up away from them in our own dining-room.” + +“Certainly not—certainly not,” said Fitzpiers; and he entered the room +with the heroic smile of a martyr. + +As soon as they sat down to table Melbury came in, and seemed to see at +once that Fitzpiers would much rather have received no such +demonstrative reception. He thereupon privately chid his wife for her +forwardness in the matter. Mrs. Melbury declared that it was as much +Grace’s doing as hers, after which there was no more to be said by that +young woman’s tender father. By this time Fitzpiers was making the best +of his position among the wide-elbowed and genial company who sat +eating and drinking and laughing and joking around him; and getting +warmed himself by the good cheer, was obliged to admit that, after all, +the supper was not the least enjoyable he had ever known. + +At times, however, the words about his having spoiled his +opportunities, repeated to him as those of Mrs. Charmond, haunted him +like a handwriting on the wall. Then his manner would become suddenly +abstracted. At one moment he would mentally put an indignant query why +Mrs. Charmond or any other woman should make it her business to have +opinions about his opportunities; at another he thought that he could +hardly be angry with her for taking an interest in the doctor of her +own parish. Then he would drink a glass of grog and so get rid of the +misgiving. These hitches and quaffings were soon perceived by Grace as +well as by her father; and hence both of them were much relieved when +the first of the guests to discover that the hour was growing late rose +and declared that he must think of moving homeward. At the words +Melbury rose as alertly as if lifted by a spring, and in ten minutes +they were gone. + +“Now, Grace,” said her husband as soon as he found himself alone with +her in their private apartments, “we’ve had a very pleasant evening, +and everybody has been very kind. But we must come to an understanding +about our way of living here. If we continue in these rooms there must +be no mixing in with your people below. I can’t stand it, and that’s +the truth.” + +She had been sadly surprised at the suddenness of his distaste for +those old-fashioned woodland forms of life which in his courtship he +had professed to regard with so much interest. But she assented in a +moment. + +“We must be simply your father’s tenants,” he continued, “and our +goings and comings must be as independent as if we lived elsewhere.” + +“Certainly, Edgar—I quite see that it must be so.” + +“But you joined in with all those people in my absence, without knowing +whether I should approve or disapprove. When I came I couldn’t help +myself at all.” + +She, sighing: “Yes—I see I ought to have waited; though they came +unexpectedly, and I thought I had acted for the best.” + +Thus the discussion ended, and the next day Fitzpiers went on his old +rounds as usual. But it was easy for so super-subtle an eye as his to +discern, or to think he discerned, that he was no longer regarded as an +extrinsic, unfathomed gentleman of limitless potentiality, scientific +and social; but as Mr. Melbury’s compeer, and therefore in a degree +only one of themselves. The Hintock woodlandlers held with all the +strength of inherited conviction to the aristocratic principle, and as +soon as they had discovered that Fitzpiers was one of the old Buckbury +Fitzpierses they had accorded to him for nothing a touching of +hat-brims, promptness of service, and deference of approach, which +Melbury had to do without, though he paid for it over and over. But +now, having proved a traitor to his own cause by this marriage, +Fitzpiers was believed in no more as a superior hedged by his own +divinity; while as doctor he began to be rated no higher than old +Jones, whom they had so long despised. + +His few patients seemed in his two months’ absence to have dwindled +considerably in number, and no sooner had he returned than there came +to him from the Board of Guardians a complaint that a pauper had been +neglected by his substitute. In a fit of pride Fitzpiers resigned his +appointment as one of the surgeons to the union, which had been the +nucleus of his practice here. + +At the end of a fortnight he came in-doors one evening to Grace more +briskly than usual. “They have written to me again about that practice +in Budmouth that I once negotiated for,” he said to her. “The premium +asked is eight hundred pounds, and I think that between your father and +myself it ought to be raised. Then we can get away from this place +forever.” + +The question had been mooted between them before, and she was not +unprepared to consider it. They had not proceeded far with the +discussion when a knock came to the door, and in a minute Grammer ran +up to say that a message had arrived from Hintock House requesting Dr. +Fitzpiers to attend there at once. Mrs. Charmond had met with a slight +accident through the overturning of her carriage. + +“This is something, anyhow,” said Fitzpiers, rising with an interest +which he could not have defined. “I have had a presentiment that this +mysterious woman and I were to be better acquainted.” + +The latter words were murmured to himself alone. + +“Good-night,” said Grace, as soon as he was ready. “I shall be asleep, +probably, when you return.” + +“Good-night,” he replied, inattentively, and went down-stairs. It was +the first time since their marriage that he had left her without a +kiss. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + + +Winterborne’s house had been pulled down. On this account his face had +been seen but fitfully in Hintock; and he would probably have +disappeared from the place altogether but for his slight business +connection with Melbury, on whose premises Giles kept his cider-making +apparatus, now that he had no place of his own to stow it in. Coming +here one evening on his way to a hut beyond the wood where he now +slept, he noticed that the familiar brown-thatched pinion of his +paternal roof had vanished from its site, and that the walls were +levelled. In present circumstances he had a feeling for the spot that +might have been called morbid, and when he had supped in the hut +aforesaid he made use of the spare hour before bedtime to return to +Little Hintock in the twilight and ramble over the patch of ground on +which he had first seen the day. + +He repeated this evening visit on several like occasions. Even in the +gloom he could trace where the different rooms had stood; could mark +the shape of the kitchen chimney-corner, in which he had roasted apples +and potatoes in his boyhood, cast his bullets, and burned his initials +on articles that did and did not belong to him. The apple-trees still +remained to show where the garden had been, the oldest of them even now +retaining the crippled slant to north-east given them by the great +November gale of 1824, which carried a brig bodily over the Chesil +Bank. They were at present bent to still greater obliquity by the +heaviness of their produce. Apples bobbed against his head, and in the +grass beneath he crunched scores of them as he walked. There was nobody +to gather them now. + +It was on the evening under notice that, half sitting, half leaning +against one of these inclined trunks, Winterborne had become lost in +his thoughts, as usual, till one little star after another had taken up +a position in the piece of sky which now confronted him where his walls +and chimneys had formerly raised their outlines. The house had jutted +awkwardly into the road, and the opening caused by its absence was very +distinct. + +In the silence the trot of horses and the spin of carriage-wheels +became audible; and the vehicle soon shaped itself against the blank +sky, bearing down upon him with the bend in the lane which here +occurred, and of which the house had been the cause. He could discern +the figure of a woman high up on the driving-seat of a phaeton, a groom +being just visible behind. Presently there was a slight scrape, then a +scream. Winterborne went across to the spot, and found the phaeton half +overturned, its driver sitting on the heap of rubbish which had once +been his dwelling, and the man seizing the horses’ heads. The equipage +was Mrs. Charmond’s, and the unseated charioteer that lady herself. + +To his inquiry if she were hurt she made some incoherent reply to the +effect that she did not know. The damage in other respects was little +or none: the phaeton was righted, Mrs. Charmond placed in it, and the +reins given to the servant. It appeared that she had been deceived by +the removal of the house, imagining the gap caused by the demolition to +be the opening of the road, so that she turned in upon the ruins +instead of at the bend a few yards farther on. + +“Drive home—drive home!” cried the lady, impatiently; and they started +on their way. They had not, however, gone many paces when, the air +being still, Winterborne heard her say “Stop; tell that man to call the +doctor—Mr. Fitzpiers—and send him on to the House. I find I am hurt +more seriously than I thought.” + +Winterborne took the message from the groom and proceeded to the +doctor’s at once. Having delivered it, he stepped back into the +darkness, and waited till he had seen Fitzpiers leave the door. He +stood for a few minutes looking at the window which by its light +revealed the room where Grace was sitting, and went away under the +gloomy trees. + +Fitzpiers duly arrived at Hintock House, whose doors he now saw open +for the first time. Contrary to his expectation there was visible no +sign of that confusion or alarm which a serious accident to the +mistress of the abode would have occasioned. He was shown into a room +at the top of the staircase, cosily and femininely draped, where, by +the light of the shaded lamp, he saw a woman of full round figure +reclining upon a couch in such a position as not to disturb a pile of +magnificent hair on the crown of her head. A deep purple dressing-gown +formed an admirable foil to the peculiarly rich brown of her +hair-plaits; her left arm, which was naked nearly up to the shoulder, +was thrown upward, and between the fingers of her right hand she held a +cigarette, while she idly breathed from her plump lips a thin stream of +smoke towards the ceiling. + +The doctor’s first feeling was a sense of his exaggerated prevision in +having brought appliances for a serious case; the next, something more +curious. While the scene and the moment were new to him and +unanticipated, the sentiment and essence of the moment were +indescribably familiar. What could be the cause of it? Probably a +dream. + +Mrs. Charmond did not move more than to raise her eyes to him, and he +came and stood by her. She glanced up at his face across her brows and +forehead, and then he observed a blush creep slowly over her decidedly +handsome cheeks. Her eyes, which had lingered upon him with an +inquiring, conscious expression, were hastily withdrawn, and she +mechanically applied the cigarette again to her lips. + +For a moment he forgot his errand, till suddenly arousing himself he +addressed her, formally condoled with her, and made the usual +professional inquiries about what had happened to her, and where she +was hurt. + +“That’s what I want you to tell me,” she murmured, in tones of +indefinable reserve. “I quite believe in you, for I know you are very +accomplished, because you study so hard.” + +“I’ll do my best to justify your good opinion,” said the young man, +bowing. “And none the less that I am happy to find the accident has not +been serious.” + +“I am very much shaken,” she said. + +“Oh yes,” he replied; and completed his examination, which convinced +him that there was really nothing the matter with her, and more than +ever puzzled him as to why he had been fetched, since she did not +appear to be a timid woman. “You must rest a while, and I’ll send +something,” he said. + +“Oh, I forgot,” she returned. “Look here.” And she showed him a little +scrape on her arm—the full round arm that was exposed. “Put some +court-plaster on that, please.” + +He obeyed. “And now,” she said, “before you go I want to put a question +to you. Sit round there in front of me, on that low chair, and bring +the candles, or one, to the little table. Do you smoke? Yes? That’s +right—I am learning. Take one of these; and here’s a light.” She threw +a matchbox across. + +Fitzpiers caught it, and having lit up, regarded her from his new +position, which, with the shifting of the candles, for the first time +afforded him a full view of her face. “How many years have passed since +first we met!” she resumed, in a voice which she mainly endeavored to +maintain at its former pitch of composure, and eying him with daring +bashfulness. + +“_We_ met, do you say?” + +She nodded. “I saw you recently at an hotel in London, when you were +passing through, I suppose, with your bride, and I recognized you as +one I had met in my girlhood. Do you remember, when you were studying +at Heidelberg, an English family that was staying there, who used to +walk—” + +“And the young lady who wore a long tail of rare-colored hair—ah, I see +it before my eyes!—who lost her gloves on the Great Terrace—who was +going back in the dusk to find them—to whom I said, ‘I’ll go for them,’ +and you said, ‘Oh, they are not worth coming all the way up again for.’ +I _do_ remember, and how very long we stayed talking there! I went next +morning while the dew was on the grass: there they lay—the little +fingers sticking out damp and thin. I see them now! I picked them up, +and then—” + +“Well?” + +“I kissed them,” he rejoined, rather shamefacedly. + +“But you had hardly ever seen me except in the dusk?” + +“Never mind. I was young then, and I kissed them. I wondered how I +could make the most of my _trouvaille_, and decided that I would call +at your hotel with them that afternoon. It rained, and I waited till +next day. I called, and you were gone.” + +“Yes,” answered she, with dry melancholy. “My mother, knowing my +disposition, said she had no wish for such a chit as me to go falling +in love with an impecunious student, and spirited me away to Baden. As +it is all over and past I’ll tell you one thing: I should have sent you +a line passing warm had I known your name. That name I never knew till +my maid said, as you passed up the hotel stairs a month ago, ‘There’s +Dr. Fitzpiers.’” + +“Good Heaven!” said Fitzpiers, musingly. “How the time comes back to +me! The evening, the morning, the dew, the spot. When I found that you +really were gone it was as if a cold iron had been passed down my back. +I went up to where you had stood when I last saw you—I flung myself on +the grass, and—being not much more than a boy—my eyes were literally +blinded with tears. Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I couldn’t +forget your voice.” + +“For how long?” + +“Oh—ever so long. Days and days.” + +“Days and days! _Only_ days and days? Oh, the heart of a man! Days and +days!” + +“But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was +not a full-blown love—it was the merest bud—red, fresh, vivid, but +small. It was a colossal passion in posse, a giant in embryo. It never +matured.” + +“So much the better, perhaps.” + +“Perhaps. But see how powerless is the human will against +predestination. We were prevented meeting; we have met. One feature of +the case remains the same amid many changes. You are still rich, and I +am still poor. Better than that, you have (judging by your last remark) +outgrown the foolish, impulsive passions of your early girl-hood. I +have not outgrown mine.” + +“I beg your pardon,” said she, with vibrations of strong feeling in her +words. “I have been placed in a position which hinders such +outgrowings. Besides, I don’t believe that the genuine subjects of +emotion do outgrow them; I believe that the older such people get the +worse they are. Possibly at ninety or a hundred they may feel they are +cured; but a mere threescore and ten won’t do it—at least for me.” + +He gazed at her in undisguised admiration. Here was a soul of souls! + +“Mrs. Charmond, you speak truly,” he exclaimed. “But you speak sadly as +well. Why is that?” + +“I always am sad when I come here,” she said, dropping to a low tone +with a sense of having been too demonstrative. + +“Then may I inquire why you came?” + +“A man brought me. Women are always carried about like corks upon the +waves of masculine desires....I hope I have not alarmed you; but +Hintock has the curious effect of bottling up the emotions till one can +no longer hold them; I am often obliged to fly away and discharge my +sentiments somewhere, or I should die outright.” + +“There is very good society in the county for those who have the +privilege of entering it.” + +“Perhaps so. But the misery of remote country life is that your +neighbors have no toleration for difference of opinion and habit. My +neighbors think I am an atheist, except those who think I am a Roman +Catholic; and when I speak disrespectfully of the weather or the crops +they think I am a blasphemer.” + +She broke into a low musical laugh at the idea. + +“You don’t wish me to stay any longer?” he inquired, when he found that +she remained musing. + +“No—I think not.” + +“Then tell me that I am to be gone.” + +“Why? Cannot you go without?” + +“I may consult my own feelings only, if left to myself.” + +“Well, if you do, what then? Do you suppose you’ll be in my way?” + +“I feared it might be so.” + +“Then fear no more. But good-night. Come to-morrow and see if I am +going on right. This renewal of acquaintance touches me. I have already +a friendship for you.” + +“If it depends upon myself it shall last forever.” + +“My best hopes that it may. Good-by.” + +Fitzpiers went down the stairs absolutely unable to decide whether she +had sent for him in the natural alarm which might have followed her +mishap, or with the single view of making herself known to him as she +had done, for which the capsize had afforded excellent opportunity. +Outside the house he mused over the spot under the light of the stars. +It seemed very strange that he should have come there more than once +when its inhabitant was absent, and observed the house with a nameless +interest; that he should have assumed off-hand before he knew Grace +that it was here she lived; that, in short, at sundry times and seasons +the individuality of Hintock House should have forced itself upon him +as appertaining to some existence with which he was concerned. + +The intersection of his temporal orbit with Mrs. Charmond’s for a day +or two in the past had created a sentimental interest in her at the +time, but it had been so evanescent that in the ordinary onward roll of +affairs he would scarce ever have recalled it again. To find her here, +however, in these somewhat romantic circumstances, magnified that +by-gone and transitory tenderness to indescribable proportions. + +On entering Little Hintock he found himself regarding it in a new +way—from the Hintock House point of view rather than from his own and +the Melburys’. The household had all gone to bed, and as he went +up-stairs he heard the snore of the timber-merchant from his quarter of +the building, and turned into the passage communicating with his own +rooms in a strange access of sadness. A light was burning for him in +the chamber; but Grace, though in bed, was not asleep. In a moment her +sympathetic voice came from behind the curtains. + +“Edgar, is she very seriously hurt?” + +Fitzpiers had so entirely lost sight of Mrs. Charmond as a patient that +he was not on the instant ready with a reply. + +“Oh no,” he said. “There are no bones broken, but she is shaken. I am +going again to-morrow.” + +Another inquiry or two, and Grace said, + +“Did she ask for me?” + +“Well—I think she did—I don’t quite remember; but I am under the +impression that she spoke of you.” + +“Cannot you recollect at all what she said?” + +“I cannot, just this minute.” + +“At any rate she did not talk much about me?” said Grace with +disappointment. + +“Oh no.” + +“But you did, perhaps,” she added, innocently fishing for a compliment. + +“Oh yes—you may depend upon that!” replied he, warmly, though scarcely +thinking of what he was saying, so vividly was there present to his +mind the personality of Mrs. Charmond. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + + +The doctor’s professional visit to Hintock House was promptly repeated +the next day and the next. He always found Mrs. Charmond reclining on a +sofa, and behaving generally as became a patient who was in no great +hurry to lose that title. On each occasion he looked gravely at the +little scratch on her arm, as if it had been a serious wound. + +He had also, to his further satisfaction, found a slight scar on her +temple, and it was very convenient to put a piece of black plaster on +this conspicuous part of her person in preference to gold-beater’s +skin, so that it might catch the eyes of the servants, and make his +presence appear decidedly necessary, in case there should be any doubt +of the fact. + +“Oh—you hurt me!” she exclaimed one day. + +He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under which the +scrape had turned the color of an unripe blackberry previous to +vanishing altogether. “Wait a moment, then—I’ll damp it,” said +Fitzpiers. He put his lips to the place and kept them there till the +plaster came off easily. “It was at your request I put it on,” said he. + +“I know it,” she replied. “Is that blue vein still in my temple that +used to show there? The scar must be just upon it. If the cut had been +a little deeper it would have spilt my hot blood indeed!” Fitzpiers +examined so closely that his breath touched her tenderly, at which +their eyes rose to an encounter—hers showing themselves as deep and +mysterious as interstellar space. She turned her face away suddenly. +“Ah! none of that! none of that—I cannot coquet with you!” she cried. +“Don’t suppose I consent to for one moment. Our poor, brief, youthful +hour of love-making was too long ago to bear continuing now. It is as +well that we should understand each other on that point before we go +further.” + +“Coquet! Nor I with you. As it was when I found the historic gloves, so +it is now. I might have been and may be foolish; but I am no trifler. I +naturally cannot forget that little space in which I flitted across the +field of your vision in those days of the past, and the recollection +opens up all sorts of imaginings.” + +“Suppose my mother had not taken me away?” she murmured, her dreamy +eyes resting on the swaying tip of a distant tree. + +“I should have seen you again.” + +“And then?” + +“Then the fire would have burned higher and higher. What would have +immediately followed I know not; but sorrow and sickness of heart at +last.” + +“Why?” + +“Well—that’s the end of all love, according to Nature’s law. I can give +no other reason.” + +“Oh, don’t speak like that,” she exclaimed. “Since we are only +picturing the possibilities of that time, don’t, for pity’s sake, spoil +the picture.” Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she added, with an +incipient pout upon her full lips, “Let me think at least that if you +had really loved me at all seriously, you would have loved me for ever +and ever!” + +“You are right—think it with all your heart,” said he. “It is a +pleasant thought, and costs nothing.” + +She weighed that remark in silence a while. “Did you ever hear anything +of me from then till now?” she inquired. + +“Not a word.” + +“So much the better. I had to fight the battle of life as well as you. +I may tell you about it some day. But don’t ever ask me to do it, and +particularly do not press me to tell you now.” + +Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender acquaintance +on the romantic slopes above the Neckar were stretched out in +retrospect to the length and importance of years; made to form a canvas +for infinite fancies, idle dreams, luxurious melancholies, and sweet, +alluring assertions which could neither be proved nor disproved. Grace +was never mentioned between them, but a rumor of his proposed domestic +changes somehow reached her ears. + +“Doctor, you are going away,” she exclaimed, confronting him with +accusatory reproach in her large dark eyes no less than in her rich +cooing voice. “Oh yes, you are,” she went on, springing to her feet +with an air which might almost have been called passionate. “It is no +use denying it. You have bought a practice at Budmouth. I don’t blame +you. Nobody can live at Hintock—least of all a professional man who +wants to keep abreast of recent discovery. And there is nobody here to +induce such a one to stay for other reasons. That’s right, that’s +right—go away!” + +“But no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, though I am +indeed in treaty for it. And, my dear friend, if I continue to feel +about the business as I feel at this moment—perhaps I may conclude +never to go at all.” + +“But you hate Hintock, and everybody and everything in it that you +don’t mean to take away with you?” + +Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory tones, and she +lapsed into the frivolous archness under which she hid passions of no +mean strength—strange, smouldering, erratic passions, kept down like a +stifled conflagration, but bursting out now here, now there—the only +certain element in their direction being its unexpectedness. If one +word could have expressed her it would have been Inconsequence. She was +a woman of perversities, delighting in frequent contrasts. She liked +mystery, in her life, in her love, in her history. To be fair to her, +there was nothing in the latter which she had any great reason to be +ashamed of, and many things of which she might have been proud; but it +had never been fathomed by the honest minds of Hintock, and she rarely +volunteered her experiences. As for her capricious nature, the people +on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that marvellous subtlety +of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found in sons of +the soil and dependants generally, they managed to get along under her +government rather better than they would have done beneath a more +equable rule. + +Now, with regard to the doctor’s notion of leaving Hintock, he had +advanced further towards completing the purchase of the Budmouth +surgeon’s good-will than he had admitted to Mrs. Charmond. The whole +matter hung upon what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four hours. The +evening after leaving her he went out into the lane, and walked and +pondered between the high hedges, now greenish-white with wild +clematis—here called “old-man’s beard,” from its aspect later in the +year. + +The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, after which his +departure from Hintock would be irrevocable. But could he go away, +remembering what had just passed? The trees, the hills, the leaves, the +grass—each had been endowed and quickened with a subtle charm since he +had discovered the person and history, and, above all, mood of their +owner. There was every temporal reason for leaving; it would be +entering again into a world which he had only quitted in a passion for +isolation, induced by a fit of Achillean moodiness after an imagined +slight. His wife herself saw the awkwardness of their position here, +and cheerfully welcomed the purposed change, towards which every step +had been taken but the last. But could he find it in his heart—as he +found it clearly enough in his conscience—to go away? + +He drew a troubled breath, and went in-doors. Here he rapidly penned a +letter, wherein he withdrew once for all from the treaty for the +Budmouth practice. As the postman had already left Little Hintock for +that night, he sent one of Melbury’s men to intercept a mail-cart on +another turnpike-road, and so got the letter off. + +The man returned, met Fitzpiers in the lane, and told him the thing was +done. Fitzpiers went back to his house musing. Why had he carried out +this impulse—taken such wild trouble to effect a probable injury to his +own and his young wife’s prospects? His motive was fantastic, glowing, +shapeless as the fiery scenery about the western sky. Mrs. Charmond +could overtly be nothing more to him than a patient now, and to his +wife, at the outside, a patron. In the unattached bachelor days of his +first sojourning here how highly proper an emotional reason for +lingering on would have appeared to troublesome dubiousness. +Matrimonial ambition is such an honorable thing. + +“My father has told me that you have sent off one of the men with a +late letter to Budmouth,” cried Grace, coming out vivaciously to meet +him under the declining light of the sky, wherein hung, solitary, the +folding star. “I said at once that you had finally agreed to pay the +premium they ask, and that the tedious question had been settled. When +do we go, Edgar?” + +“I have altered my mind,” said he. “They want too much—seven hundred +and fifty is too large a sum—and in short, I have declined to go +further. We must wait for another opportunity. I fear I am not a good +business-man.” He spoke the last words with a momentary faltering at +the great foolishness of his act; for, as he looked in her fair and +honorable face, his heart reproached him for what he had done. + +Her manner that evening showed her disappointment. Personally she liked +the home of her childhood much, and she was not ambitious. But her +husband had seemed so dissatisfied with the circumstances hereabout +since their marriage that she had sincerely hoped to go for his sake. + +It was two or three days before he visited Mrs. Charmond again. The +morning had been windy, and little showers had sowed themselves like +grain against the walls and window-panes of the Hintock cottages. He +went on foot across the wilder recesses of the park, where slimy +streams of green moisture, exuding from decayed holes caused by old +amputations, ran down the bark of the oaks and elms, the rind below +being coated with a lichenous wash as green as emerald. They were +stout-trunked trees, that never rocked their stems in the fiercest +gale, responding to it entirely by crooking their limbs. Wrinkled like +an old crone’s face, and antlered with dead branches that rose above +the foliage of their summits, they were nevertheless still green—though +yellow had invaded the leaves of other trees. + +She was in a little boudoir or writing-room on the first floor, and +Fitzpiers was much surprised to find that the window-curtains were +closed and a red-shaded lamp and candles burning, though out-of-doors +it was broad daylight. Moreover, a large fire was burning in the grate, +though it was not cold. + +“What does it all mean?” he asked. + +She sat in an easy-chair, her face being turned away. “Oh,” she +murmured, “it is because the world is so dreary outside. Sorrow and +bitterness in the sky, and floods of agonized tears beating against the +panes. I lay awake last night, and I could hear the scrape of snails +creeping up the window-glass; it was so sad! My eyes were so heavy this +morning that I could have wept my life away. I cannot bear you to see +my face; I keep it away from you purposely. Oh! why were we given +hungry hearts and wild desires if we have to live in a world like this? +Why should Death only lend what Life is compelled to borrow—rest? +Answer that, Dr. Fitzpiers.” + +“You must eat of a second tree of knowledge before _you_ can do it, +Felice Charmond.” + +“Then, when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I become full of +fears, till I think I shall die for very fear. The terrible +insistencies of society—how severe they are, and cold and +inexorable—ghastly towards those who are made of wax and not of stone. +Oh, I am afraid of them; a stab for this error, and a stab for +that—correctives and regulations framed that society may tend to +perfection—an end which I don’t care for in the least. Yet for this, +all I do care for has to be stunted and starved.” + +Fitzpiers had seated himself near her. “What sets you in this mournful +mood?” he asked, gently. (In reality he knew that it was the result of +a loss of tone from staying in-doors so much, but he did not say so.) + +“My reflections. Doctor, you must not come here any more. They begin to +think it a farce already. I say you must come no more. There—don’t be +angry with me;” and she jumped up, pressed his hand, and looked +anxiously at him. “It is necessary. It is best for both you and me.” + +“But,” said Fitzpiers, gloomily, “what have we done?” + +“Done—we have done nothing. Perhaps we have thought the more. However, +it is all vexation. I am going away to Middleton Abbey, near +Shottsford, where a relative of my late husband lives, who is confined +to her bed. The engagement was made in London, and I can’t get out of +it. Perhaps it is for the best that I go there till all this is past. +When are you going to enter on your new practice, and leave Hintock +behind forever, with your pretty wife on your arm?” + +“I have refused the opportunity. I love this place too well to depart.” + +“You _have?_” she said, regarding him with wild uncertainty. “Why do +you ruin yourself in that way? Great Heaven, what have I done!” + +“Nothing. Besides, you are going away.” + +“Oh yes; but only to Middleton Abbey for a month or two. Yet perhaps I +shall gain strength there—particularly strength of mind—I require it. +And when I come back I shall be a new woman; and you can come and see +me safely then, and bring your wife with you, and we’ll be friends—she +and I. Oh, how this shutting up of one’s self does lead to indulgence +in idle sentiments. I shall not wish you to give your attendance to me +after to-day. But I am glad that you are not going away—if your +remaining does not injure your prospects at all.” + +As soon as he had left the room the mild friendliness she had preserved +in her tone at parting, the playful sadness with which she had +conversed with him, equally departed from her. She became as heavy as +lead—just as she had been before he arrived. Her whole being seemed to +dissolve in a sad powerlessness to do anything, and the sense of it +made her lips tremulous and her closed eyes wet. His footsteps again +startled her, and she turned round. + +“I returned for a moment to tell you that the evening is going to be +fine. The sun is shining; so do open your curtains and put out those +lights. Shall I do it for you?” + +“Please—if you don’t mind.” + +He drew back the window-curtains, whereupon the red glow of the lamp +and the two candle-flames became almost invisible with the flood of +late autumn sunlight that poured in. “Shall I come round to you?” he +asked, her back being towards him. + +“No,” she replied. + +“Why not?” + +“Because I am crying, and I don’t want to see you.” + +He stood a moment irresolute, and regretted that he had killed the +rosy, passionate lamplight by opening the curtains and letting in +garish day. + +“Then I am going,” he said. + +“Very well,” she answered, stretching one hand round to him, and +patting her eyes with a handkerchief held in the other. + +“Shall I write a line to you at—” + +“No, no.” A gentle reasonableness came into her tone as she added, “It +must not be, you know. It won’t do.” + +“Very well. Good-by.” The next moment he was gone. + +In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged the maid who +dressed her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitzpiers’s marriage. + +“Mrs. Fitzpiers was once supposed to favor Mr. Winterborne,” said the +young woman. + +“And why didn’t she marry him?” said Mrs. Charmond. + +“Because, you see, ma’am, he lost his houses.” + +“Lost his houses? How came he to do that?” + +“The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your agent +wouldn’t renew them, though it is said that Mr. Winterborne had a very +good claim. That’s as I’ve heard it, ma’am, and it was through it that +the match was broke off.” + +Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. Charmond sunk into +a mood of dismal self-reproach. “In refusing that poor man his +reasonable request,” she said to herself, “I foredoomed my rejuvenated +girlhood’s romance. Who would have thought such a business matter could +have nettled my own heart like this? Now for a winter of regrets and +agonies and useless wishes, till I forget him in the spring. Oh! I am +glad I am going away.” + +She left her chamber and went down to dine with a sigh. On the stairs +she stood opposite the large window for a moment, and looked out upon +the lawn. It was not yet quite dark. Half-way up the steep green slope +confronting her stood old Timothy Tangs, who was shortening his way +homeward by clambering here where there was no road, and in opposition +to express orders that no path was to be made there. Tangs had +momentarily stopped to take a pinch of snuff; but observing Mrs. +Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to get over the top out of hail. +His precipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a barrel +to the bottom, his snuffbox rolling in front of him. + +Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers; her +constitutional cloud of misery; the sorrowful drops that still hung +upon her eyelashes, all made way for the incursive mood started by the +spectacle. She burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, her very gloom +of the previous hour seeming to render it the more uncontrollable. It +had not died out of her when she reached the dining-room; and even +here, before the servants, her shoulders suddenly shook as the scene +returned upon her; and the tears of her hilarity mingled with the +remnants of those engendered by her grief. + +She resolved to be sad no more. She drank two glasses of champagne, and +a little more still after those, and amused herself in the evening with +singing little amatory songs. + +“I must do something for that poor man Winterborne, however,” she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + + +A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmond had left Hintock House. Middleton +Abbey, the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles distant by +road, eighteen by bridle-paths and footways. + +Grace observed, for the first time, that her husband was restless, that +at moments he even was disposed to avoid her. The scrupulous civility +of mere acquaintanceship crept into his manner; yet, when sitting at +meals, he seemed hardly to hear her remarks. Her little doings +interested him no longer, while towards her father his bearing was not +far from supercilious. It was plain that his mind was entirely outside +her life, whereabouts outside it she could not tell; in some region of +science, possibly, or of psychological literature. But her hope that he +was again immersing himself in those lucubrations which before her +marriage had made his light a landmark in Hintock, was founded simply +on the slender fact that he often sat up late. + +One evening she discovered him leaning over a gate on Rub-Down Hill, +the gate at which Winterborne had once been standing, and which opened +on the brink of a steep, slanting down directly into Blackmoor Vale, or +the Vale of the White Hart, extending beneath the eye at this point to +a distance of many miles. His attention was fixed on the landscape far +away, and Grace’s approach was so noiseless that he did not hear her. +When she came close she could see his lips moving unconsciously, as to +some impassioned visionary theme. + +She spoke, and Fitzpiers started. “What are you looking at?” she asked. + +“Oh! I was contemplating our old place of Buckbury, in my idle way,” he +said. + +It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that +cradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity; but she made no further +observation, and taking his arm walked home beside him almost in +silence. She did not know that Middleton Abbey lay in the direction of +his gaze. “Are you going to have out Darling this afternoon?” she +asked, presently. Darling being the light-gray mare which Winterborne +had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers now constantly used, the +animal having turned out a wonderful bargain, in combining a perfect +docility with an almost human intelligence; moreover, she was not too +young. Fitzpiers was unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these +qualities. + +“Yes,” he replied, “but not to drive. I am riding her. I practise +crossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I can take much +shorter cuts on horseback.” + +He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week, only +since Mrs. Charmond’s absence, his universal practice hitherto having +been to drive. + +Some few days later, Fitzpiers started on the back of this horse to see +a patient in the aforesaid Vale. It was about five o’clock in the +evening when he went away, and at bedtime he had not reached home. +There was nothing very singular in this, though she was not aware that +he had any patient more than five or six miles distant in that +direction. The clock had struck one before Fitzpiers entered the house, +and he came to his room softly, as if anxious not to disturb her. + +The next morning she was stirring considerably earlier than he. + +In the yard there was a conversation going on about the mare; the man +who attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that the latter +was “hag-rid;” for when he had arrived at the stable that morning she +was in such a state as no horse could be in by honest riding. It was +true that the doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so that +she was not looked after as she would have been if he had groomed and +fed her; but that did not account for the appearance she presented, if +Mr. Fitzpiers’s journey had been only where he had stated. The +phenomenal exhaustion of Darling, as thus related, was sufficient to +develop a whole series of tales about riding witches and demons, the +narration of which occupied a considerable time. + +Grace returned in-doors. In passing through the outer room she picked +up her husband’s overcoat which he had carelessly flung down across a +chair. A turnpike ticket fell out of the breast-pocket, and she saw +that it had been issued at Middleton Gate. He had therefore visited +Middleton the previous night, a distance of at least five-and-thirty +miles on horseback, there and back. + +During the day she made some inquiries, and learned for the first time +that Mrs. Charmond was staying at Middleton Abbey. She could not resist +an inference—strange as that inference was. + +A few days later he prepared to start again, at the same time and in +the same direction. She knew that the state of the cottager who lived +that way was a mere pretext; she was quite sure he was going to Mrs. +Charmond. Grace was amazed at the mildness of the passion which the +suspicion engendered in her. She was but little excited, and her +jealousy was languid even to death. It told tales of the nature of her +affection for him. In truth, her antenuptial regard for Fitzpiers had +been rather of the quality of awe towards a superior being than of +tender solicitude for a lover. It had been based upon mystery and +strangeness—the mystery of his past, of his knowledge, of his +professional skill, of his beliefs. When this structure of ideals was +demolished by the intimacy of common life, and she found him as merely +human as the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demand +for an enduring and stanch affection—a sympathetic interdependence, +wherein mutual weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive +alliance. Fitzpiers had furnished none of that single-minded confidence +and truth out of which alone such a second union could spring; hence it +was with a controllable emotion that she now watched the mare brought +round. + +“I’ll walk with you to the hill if you are not in a great hurry,” she +said, rather loath, after all, to let him go. + +“Do; there’s plenty of time,” replied her husband. Accordingly he led +along the horse, and walked beside her, impatient enough nevertheless. +Thus they proceeded to the turnpike road, and ascended Rub-Down Hill to +the gate he had been leaning over when she surprised him ten days +before. This was the end of her excursion. Fitzpiers bade her adieu +with affection, even with tenderness, and she observed that he looked +weary-eyed. + +“Why do you go to-night?” she said. “You have been called up two nights +in succession already.” + +“I must go,” he answered, almost gloomily. “Don’t wait up for me.” With +these words he mounted his horse, passed through the gate which Grace +held open for him, and ambled down the steep bridle-track to the +valley. + +She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then his journey +onward. His way was east, the evening sun which stood behind her back +beaming full upon him as soon as he got out from the shade of the hill. +Notwithstanding this untoward proceeding she was determined to be loyal +if he proved true; and the determination to love one’s best will carry +a heart a long way towards making that best an ever-growing thing. The +conspicuous coat of the active though blanching mare made horse and +rider easy objects for the vision. Though Darling had been chosen with +such pains by Winterborne for Grace, she had never ridden the sleek +creature; but her husband had found the animal exceedingly convenient, +particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of staying +power being left in Darling yet. Fitzpiers, like others of his +character, while despising Melbury and his station, did not at all +disdain to spend Melbury’s money, or appropriate to his own use the +horse which belonged to Melbury’s daughter. + +And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through the gorgeous +autumn landscape of White Hart Vale, surrounded by orchards lustrous +with the reds of apple-crops, berries, and foliage, the whole +intensified by the gilding of the declining sun. The earth this year +had been prodigally bountiful, and now was the supreme moment of her +bounty. In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed with haws and +blackberries; acorns cracked underfoot, and the burst husks of +chestnuts lay exposing their auburn contents as if arranged by anxious +sellers in a fruit-market. In all this proud show some kernels were +unsound as her own situation, and she wondered if there were one world +in the universe where the fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow. + +Herr Tannhäuser still moved on, his plodding steed rendering him +distinctly visible yet. Could she have heard Fitzpiers’s voice at that +moment she would have found him murmuring— + +“...Towards the loadstar of my one desire +I flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the owlet light.” + + +But he was a silent spectacle to her now. Soon he rose out of the +valley, and skirted a high plateau of the chalk formation on his right, +which rested abruptly upon the fruity district of loamy clay, the +character and herbage of the two formations being so distinct that the +calcareous upland appeared but as a deposit of a few years’ antiquity +upon the level vale. He kept along the edge of this high, unenclosed +country, and the sky behind him being deep violet, she could still see +white Darling in relief upon it—a mere speck now—a Wouvermans +eccentricity reduced to microscopic dimensions. Upon this high ground +he gradually disappeared. + +Thus she had beheld the pet animal purchased for her own use, in pure +love of her, by one who had always been true, impressed to convey her +husband away from her to the side of a new-found idol. While she was +musing on the vicissitudes of horses and wives, she discerned shapes +moving up the valley towards her, quite near at hand, though till now +hidden by the hedges. Surely they were Giles Winterborne, with his two +horses and cider-apparatus, conducted by Robert Creedle. Up, upward +they crept, a stray beam of the sun alighting every now and then like a +star on the blades of the pomace-shovels, which had been converted to +steel mirrors by the action of the malic acid. She opened the gate when +he came close, and the panting horses rested as they achieved the +ascent. + +“How do you do, Giles?” said she, under a sudden impulse to be familiar +with him. + +He replied with much more reserve. “You are going for a walk, Mrs. +Fitzpiers?” he added. “It is pleasant just now.” + +“No, I am returning,” said she. + +The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and Winterborne walked +by her side in the rear of the apple-mill. + +He looked and smelt like Autumn’s very brother, his face being sunburnt +to wheat-color, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots and leggings +dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of +apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that +atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an +indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among +the orchards. Her heart rose from its late sadness like a released +spring; her senses revelled in the sudden lapse back to nature +unadorned. The consciousness of having to be genteel because of her +husband’s profession, the veneer of artificiality which she had +acquired at the fashionable schools, were thrown off, and she became +the crude, country girl of her latent, earliest instincts. + +Nature was bountiful, she thought. No sooner had she been starved off +by Edgar Fitzpiers than another being, impersonating bare and undiluted +manliness, had arisen out of the earth, ready to hand. This was an +excursion of the imagination which she did not encourage, and she said +suddenly, to disguise the confused regard which had followed her +thoughts, “Did you meet my husband?” + +Winterborne, with some hesitation, “Yes.” + +“Where did you meet him?” + +“At Calfhay Cross. I come from Middleton Abbey; I have been making +there for the last week.” + +“Haven’t they a mill of their own?” + +“Yes, but it’s out of repair.” + +“I think—I heard that Mrs. Charmond had gone there to stay?” + +“Yes. I have seen her at the windows once or twice.” + +Grace waited an interval before she went on: “Did Mr. Fitzpiers take +the way to Middleton?” + +“Yes...I met him on Darling.” As she did not reply, he added, with a +gentler inflection, “You know why the mare was called that?” + +“Oh yes—of course,” she answered, quickly. + +They had risen so far over the crest of the hill that the whole west +sky was revealed. Between the broken clouds they could see far into the +recesses of heaven, the eye journeying on under a species of golden +arcades, and past fiery obstructions, fancied cairns, logan-stones, +stalactites and stalagmite of topaz. Deeper than this their gaze passed +thin flakes of incandescence, till it plunged into a bottomless medium +of soft green fire. + +Her abandonment to the luscious time after her sense of ill-usage, her +revolt for the nonce against social law, her passionate desire for +primitive life, may have showed in her face. Winterborne was looking at +her, his eyes lingering on a flower that she wore in her bosom. Almost +with the abstraction of a somnambulist he stretched out his hand and +gently caressed the flower. + +She drew back. “What are you doing, Giles Winterborne!” she exclaimed, +with a look of severe surprise. The evident absence of all +premeditation from the act, however, speedily led her to think that it +was not necessary to stand upon her dignity here and now. “You must +bear in mind, Giles,” she said, kindly, “that we are not as we were; +and some people might have said that what you did was taking a +liberty.” + +It was more than she need have told him; his action of forgetfulness +had made him so angry with himself that he flushed through his tan. “I +don’t know what I am coming to!” he exclaimed, savagely. “Ah—I was not +once like this!” Tears of vexation were in his eyes. + +“No, now—it was nothing. I was too reproachful.” + +“It would not have occurred to me if I had not seen something like it +done elsewhere—at Middleton lately,” he said, thoughtfully, after a +while. + +“By whom?” + +“Don’t ask it.” + +She scanned him narrowly. “I know quite well enough,” she returned, +indifferently. “It was by my husband, and the woman was Mrs. Charmond. +Association of ideas reminded you when you saw me....Giles—tell me all +you know about that—please do, Giles! But no—I won’t hear it. Let the +subject cease. And as you are my friend, say nothing to my father.” + +They reached a place where their ways divided. Winterborne continued +along the highway which kept outside the copse, and Grace opened a gate +that entered it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + + +She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand by +nut-bushes, just now heavy with clusters of twos and threes and fours. +A little way on, the track she pursued was crossed by a similar one at +right angles. Here Grace stopped; some few yards up the transverse ride +the buxom Suke Damson was visible—her gown tucked up high through her +pocket-hole, and no bonnet on her head—in the act of pulling down +boughs from which she was gathering and eating nuts with great +rapidity, her lover Tim Tangs standing near her engaged in the same +pleasant meal. + +Crack, crack went Suke’s jaws every second or two. By an automatic +chain of thought Grace’s mind reverted to the tooth-drawing scene +described by her husband; and for the first time she wondered if that +narrative were really true, Susan’s jaws being so obviously sound and +strong. Grace turned up towards the nut-gatherers, and conquered her +reluctance to speak to the girl who was a little in advance of Tim. +“Good-evening, Susan,” she said. + +“Good-evening, Miss Melbury” (crack). + +“Mrs. Fitzpiers.” + +“Oh yes, ma’am—Mrs. Fitzpiers,” said Suke, with a peculiar smile. + +Grace, not to be daunted, continued: “Take care of your teeth, Suke. +That accounts for the toothache.” + +“I don’t know what an ache is, either in tooth, ear, or head, thank the +Lord” (crack). + +“Nor the loss of one, either?” + +“See for yourself, ma’am.” She parted her red lips, and exhibited the +whole double row, full up and unimpaired. + +“You have never had one drawn?” + +“Never.” + +“So much the better for your stomach,” said Mrs. Fitzpiers, in an +altered voice. And turning away quickly, she went on. + +As her husband’s character thus shaped itself under the touch of time, +Grace was almost startled to find how little she suffered from that +jealous excitement which is conventionally attributed to all wives in +such circumstances. But though possessed by none of that feline +wildness which it was her moral duty to experience, she did not fail to +know that she had made a frightful mistake in her marriage. +Acquiescence in her father’s wishes had been degradation to herself. +People are not given premonitions for nothing; she should have obeyed +her impulse on that early morning, and steadfastly refused her hand. + +Oh, that plausible tale which her then betrothed had told her about +Suke—the dramatic account of her entreaties to him to draw the aching +enemy, and the fine artistic touch he had given to the story by +explaining that it was a lovely molar without a flaw! + +She traced the remainder of the woodland track dazed by the +complications of her position. If his protestations to her before their +marriage could be believed, her husband had felt affection of some sort +for herself and this woman simultaneously; and was now again spreading +the same emotion over Mrs. Charmond and herself conjointly, his manner +being still kind and fond at times. But surely, rather than that, he +must have played the hypocrite towards her in each case with elaborate +completeness; and the thought of this sickened her, for it involved the +conjecture that if he had not loved her, his only motive for making her +his wife must have been her little fortune. Yet here Grace made a +mistake, for the love of men like Fitzpiers is unquestionably of such +quality as to bear division and transference. He had indeed, once +declared, though not to her, that on one occasion he had noticed +himself to be possessed by five distinct infatuations at the same time. +Therein it differed from the highest affection as the lower orders of +the animal world differ from advanced organisms, partition causing, not +death, but a multiplied existence. He had loved her sincerely, and had +by no means ceased to love her now. But such double and treble +barrelled hearts were naturally beyond her conception. + +Of poor Suke Damson, Grace thought no more. She had had her day. + +“If he does not love me I will not love him!” said Grace, proudly. And +though these were mere words, it was a somewhat formidable thing for +Fitzpiers that her heart was approximating to a state in which it might +be possible to carry them out. That very absence of hot jealousy which +made his courses so easy, and on which, indeed, he congratulated +himself, meant, unknown to either wife or husband, more mischief than +the inconvenient watchfulness of a jaundiced eye. + +Her sleep that night was nervous. The wing allotted to her and her +husband had never seemed so lonely. At last she got up, put on her +dressing-gown, and went down-stairs. Her father, who slept lightly, +heard her descend, and came to the stair-head. + +“Is that you, Grace? What’s the matter?” he said. + +“Nothing more than that I am restless. Edgar is detained by a case at +Owlscombe in White Hart Vale.” + +“But how’s that? I saw the woman’s husband at Great Hintock just afore +bedtime; and she was going on well, and the doctor gone then.” + +“Then he’s detained somewhere else,” said Grace. “Never mind me; he +will soon be home. I expect him about one.” + +She went back to her room, and dozed and woke several times. One +o’clock had been the hour of his return on the last occasion; but it +passed now by a long way, and Fitzpiers did not come. Just before dawn +she heard the men stirring in the yard; and the flashes of their +lanterns spread every now and then through her window-blind. She +remembered that her father had told her not to be disturbed if she +noticed them, as they would be rising early to send off four loads of +hurdles to a distant sheep-fair. Peeping out, she saw them bustling +about, the hollow-turner among the rest; he was loading his +wares—wooden-bowls, dishes, spigots, spoons, cheese-vats, funnels, and +so on—upon one of her father’s wagons, who carried them to the fair for +him every year out of neighborly kindness. + +The scene and the occasion would have enlivened her but that her +husband was still absent; though it was now five o’clock. She could +hardly suppose him, whatever his infatuation, to have prolonged to a +later hour than ten an ostensibly professional call on Mrs. Charmond at +Middleton; and he could have ridden home in two hours and a half. What, +then, had become of him? That he had been out the greater part of the +two preceding nights added to her uneasiness. + +She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird twilight of +advancing day chilling the rays from the lanterns, and making the men’s +faces wan. As soon as Melbury saw her he came round, showing his alarm. + +“Edgar is not come,” she said. “And I have reason to know that he’s not +attending anybody. He has had no rest for two nights before this. I was +going to the top of the hill to look for him.” + +“I’ll come with you,” said Melbury. + +She begged him not to hinder himself; but he insisted, for he saw a +peculiar and rigid gloom in her face over and above her uneasiness, and +did not like the look of it. Telling the men he would be with them +again soon, he walked beside her into the turnpike-road, and partly up +the hill whence she had watched Fitzpiers the night before across the +Great White Hart or Blackmoor Valley. They halted beneath a half-dead +oak, hollow, and disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading out +like accipitrine claws grasping the ground. A chilly wind circled round +them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime-tree, +supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the boughs +downward like fledglings from their nest. The vale was wrapped in a dim +atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtain +edged with pink. There was no sign nor sound of Fitzpiers. + +“It is no use standing here,” said her father. “He may come home fifty +ways...why, look here!—here be Darling’s tracks—turned homeward and +nearly blown dry and hard! He must have come in hours ago without your +seeing him.” + +“He has not done that,” said she. + +They went back hastily. On entering their own gates they perceived that +the men had left the wagons, and were standing round the door of the +stable which had been appropriated to the doctor’s use. “Is there +anything the matter?” cried Grace. + +“Oh no, ma’am. All’s well that ends well,” said old Timothy Tangs. +“I’ve heard of such things before—among workfolk, though not among your +gentle people—that’s true.” + +They entered the stable, and saw the pale shape of Darling standing in +the middle of her stall, with Fitzpiers on her back, sound asleep. +Darling was munching hay as well as she could with the bit in her +month, and the reins, which had fallen from Fitzpiers’s hand, hung upon +her neck. + +Grace went and touched his hand; shook it before she could arouse him. +He moved, started, opened his eyes, and exclaimed, “Ah, Felice!...Oh, +it’s Grace. I could not see in the gloom. What—am I in the saddle?” + +“Yes,” said she. “How do you come here?” + +He collected his thoughts, and in a few minutes stammered, “I was +riding along homeward through the vale, very, very sleepy, having been +up so much of late. When I came opposite Holywell spring the mare +turned her head that way, as if she wanted to drink. I let her go in, +and she drank; I thought she would never finish. While she was +drinking, the clock of Owlscombe Church struck twelve. I distinctly +remember counting the strokes. From that moment I positively recollect +nothing till I saw you here by my side.” + +“The name! If it had been any other horse he’d have had a broken neck!” +murmured Melbury. + +“’Tis wonderful, sure, how a quiet hoss will bring a man home at such +times!” said John Upjohn. “And what’s more wonderful than keeping your +seat in a deep, slumbering sleep? I’ve knowed men drowze off walking +home from randies where the mead and other liquors have gone round +well, and keep walking for more than a mile on end without waking. +Well, doctor, I don’t care who the man is, ’tis a mercy you wasn’t a +drownded, or a splintered, or a hanged up to a tree like Absalom—also a +handsome gentleman like yerself, as the prophets say.” + +“True,” murmured old Timothy. “From the soul of his foot to the crown +of his head there was no blemish in him.” + +“Or leastwise you might ha’ been a-wownded into tatters a’most, and no +doctor to jine your few limbs together within seven mile!” + +While this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpiers had dismounted, and +taking Grace’s arm walked stiffly in-doors with her. Melbury stood +staring at the horse, which, in addition to being very weary, was +spattered with mud. There was no mud to speak of about the Hintocks +just now—only in the clammy hollows of the vale beyond Owlscombe, the +stiff soil of which retained moisture for weeks after the uplands were +dry. While they were rubbing down the mare, Melbury’s mind coupled with +the foreign quality of the mud the name he had heard unconsciously +muttered by the surgeon when Grace took his hand—“Felice.” Who was +Felice? Why, Mrs. Charmond; and she, as he knew, was staying at +Middleton. + +Melbury had indeed pounced upon the image that filled Fitzpiers’s +half-awakened soul—wherein there had been a picture of a recent +interview on a lawn with a capriciously passionate woman who had begged +him not to come again in tones whose vibration incited him to disobey. +“What are you doing here? Why do you pursue me? Another belongs to you. +If they were to see you they would seize you as a thief!” And she had +turbulently admitted to his wringing questions that her visit to +Middleton had been undertaken less because of the invalid relative than +in shamefaced fear of her own weakness if she remained near his home. A +triumph then it was to Fitzpiers, poor and hampered as he had become, +to recognize his real conquest of this beauty, delayed so many years. +His was the selfish passion of Congreve’s Millamont, to whom love’s +supreme delight lay in “that heart which others bleed for, bleed for +me.” + +When the horse had been attended to Melbury stood uneasily here and +there about his premises; he was rudely disturbed in the comfortable +views which had lately possessed him on his domestic concerns. It is +true that he had for some days discerned that Grace more and more +sought his company, preferred supervising his kitchen and bakehouse +with her step-mother to occupying herself with the lighter details of +her own apartments. She seemed no longer able to find in her own hearth +an adequate focus for her life, and hence, like a weak queen-bee after +leading off to an independent home, had hovered again into the parent +hive. But he had not construed these and other incidents of the kind +till now. + +Something was wrong in the dove-cot. A ghastly sense that he alone +would be responsible for whatever unhappiness should be brought upon +her for whom he almost solely lived, whom to retain under his roof he +had faced the numerous inconveniences involved in giving up the best +part of his house to Fitzpiers. There was no room for doubt that, had +he allowed events to take their natural course, she would have accepted +Winterborne, and realized his old dream of restitution to that young +man’s family. + +That Fitzpiers could allow himself to look on any other creature for a +moment than Grace filled Melbury with grief and astonishment. In the +pure and simple life he had led it had scarcely occurred to him that +after marriage a man might be faithless. That he could sweep to the +heights of Mrs. Charmond’s position, lift the veil of Isis, so to +speak, would have amazed Melbury by its audacity if he had not +suspected encouragement from that quarter. What could he and his simple +Grace do to countervail the passions of such as those two sophisticated +beings—versed in the world’s ways, armed with every apparatus for +victory? In such an encounter the homely timber-dealer felt as inferior +as a bow-and-arrow savage before the precise weapons of modern warfare. + +Grace came out of the house as the morning drew on. The village was +silent, most of the folk having gone to the fair. Fitzpiers had retired +to bed, and was sleeping off his fatigue. She went to the stable and +looked at poor Darling: in all probability Giles Winterborne, by +obtaining for her a horse of such intelligence and docility, had been +the means of saving her husband’s life. She paused over the strange +thought; and then there appeared her father behind her. She saw that he +knew things were not as they ought to be, from the troubled dulness of +his eye, and from his face, different points of which had independent +motions, twitchings, and tremblings, unknown to himself, and +involuntary. + +“He was detained, I suppose, last night?” said Melbury. + +“Oh yes; a bad case in the vale,” she replied, calmly. + +“Nevertheless, he should have stayed at home.” + +“But he couldn’t, father.” + +Her father turned away. He could hardly bear to see his whilom truthful +girl brought to the humiliation of having to talk like that. + +That night carking care sat beside Melbury’s pillow, and his stiff +limbs tossed at its presence. “I can’t lie here any longer,” he +muttered. Striking a light, he wandered about the room. “What have I +done—what have I done for her?” he said to his wife, who had anxiously +awakened. “I had long planned that she should marry the son of the man +I wanted to make amends to; do ye mind how I told you all about it, +Lucy, the night before she came home? Ah! but I was not content with +doing right, I wanted to do more!” + +“Don’t raft yourself without good need, George,” she replied. “I won’t +quite believe that things are so much amiss. I won’t believe that Mrs. +Charmond has encouraged him. Even supposing she has encouraged a great +many, she can have no motive to do it now. What so likely as that she +is not yet quite well, and doesn’t care to let another doctor come near +her?” + +He did not heed. “Grace used to be so busy every day, with fixing a +curtain here and driving a tin-tack there; but she cares for no +employment now!” + +“Do you know anything of Mrs. Charmond’s past history? Perhaps that +would throw some light upon things. Before she came here as the wife of +old Charmond four or five years ago, not a soul seems to have heard +aught of her. Why not make inquiries? And then do ye wait and see more; +there’ll be plenty of opportunity. Time enough to cry when you know +’tis a crying matter; and ’tis bad to meet troubles half-way.” + +There was some good-sense in the notion of seeing further. Melbury +resolved to inquire and wait, hoping still, but oppressed +between-whiles with much fear. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + + +Examine Grace as her father might, she would admit nothing. For the +present, therefore, he simply watched. + +The suspicion that his darling child was being slighted wrought almost +a miraculous change in Melbury’s nature. No man so furtive for the time +as the ingenuous countryman who finds that his ingenuousness has been +abused. Melbury’s heretofore confidential candor towards his +gentlemanly son-in-law was displaced by a feline stealth that did +injury to his every action, thought, and mood. He knew that a woman +once given to a man for life took, as a rule, her lot as it came and +made the best of it, without external interference; but for the first +time he asked himself why this so generally should be so. Moreover, +this case was not, he argued, like ordinary cases. Leaving out the +question of Grace being anything but an ordinary woman, her peculiar +situation, as it were in mid-air between two planes of society, +together with the loneliness of Hintock, made a husband’s neglect a far +more tragical matter to her than it would be to one who had a large +circle of friends to fall back upon. Wisely or unwisely, and whatever +other fathers did, he resolved to fight his daughter’s battle still. + +Mrs. Charmond had returned. But Hintock House scarcely gave forth signs +of life, so quietly had she reentered it. He went to church at Great +Hintock one afternoon as usual, there being no service at the smaller +village. A few minutes before his departure, he had casually heard +Fitzpiers, who was no church-goer, tell his wife that he was going to +walk in the wood. Melbury entered the building and sat down in his pew; +the parson came in, then Mrs. Charmond, then Mr. Fitzpiers. + +The service proceeded, and the jealous father was quite sure that a +mutual consciousness was uninterruptedly maintained between those two; +he fancied that more than once their eyes met. At the end, Fitzpiers so +timed his movement into the aisle that it exactly coincided with Felice +Charmond’s from the opposite side, and they walked out with their +garments in contact, the surgeon being just that two or three inches in +her rear which made it convenient for his eyes to rest upon her cheek. +The cheek warmed up to a richer tone. + +This was a worse feature in the flirtation than he had expected. If she +had been playing with him in an idle freak the game might soon have +wearied her; but the smallest germ of passion—and women of the world do +not change color for nothing—was a threatening development. The mere +presence of Fitzpiers in the building, after his statement, was +wellnigh conclusive as far as he was concerned; but Melbury resolved +yet to watch. + +He had to wait long. Autumn drew shiveringly to its end. One day +something seemed to be gone from the gardens; the tenderer leaves of +vegetables had shrunk under the first smart frost, and hung like faded +linen rags; then the forest leaves, which had been descending at +leisure, descended in haste and in multitudes, and all the golden +colors that had hung overhead were now crowded together in a degraded +mass underfoot, where the fallen myriads got redder and hornier, and +curled themselves up to rot. The only suspicious features in Mrs. +Charmond’s existence at this season were two: the first, that she lived +with no companion or relative about her, which, considering her age and +attractions, was somewhat unusual conduct for a young widow in a lonely +country-house; the other, that she did not, as in previous years, start +from Hintock to winter abroad. In Fitzpiers, the only change from his +last autumn’s habits lay in his abandonment of night study—his lamp +never shone from his new dwelling as from his old. + +If the suspected ones met, it was by such adroit contrivances that even +Melbury’s vigilance could not encounter them together. A simple call at +her house by the doctor had nothing irregular about it, and that he had +paid two or three such calls was certain. What had passed at those +interviews was known only to the parties themselves; but that Felice +Charmond was under some one’s influence Melbury soon had opportunity of +perceiving. + +Winter had come on. Owls began to be noisy in the mornings and +evenings, and flocks of wood-pigeons made themselves prominent again. +One day in February, about six months after the marriage of Fitzpiers, +Melbury was returning from Great Hintock on foot through the lane, when +he saw before him the surgeon also walking. Melbury would have +overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiers turned in through a gate to +one of the rambling drives among the trees at this side of the wood, +which led to nowhere in particular, and the beauty of whose serpentine +curves was the only justification of their existence. Felice almost +simultaneously trotted down the lane towards the timber-dealer, in a +little basket-carriage which she sometimes drove about the estate, +unaccompanied by a servant. She turned in at the same place without +having seen either Melbury or apparently Fitzpiers. Melbury was soon at +the spot, despite his aches and his sixty years. Mrs. Charmond had come +up with the doctor, who was standing immediately behind the carriage. +She had turned to him, her arm being thrown carelessly over the back of +the seat. They looked in each other’s faces without uttering a word, an +arch yet gloomy smile wreathing her lips. Fitzpiers clasped her hanging +hand, and, while she still remained in the same listless attitude, +looking volumes into his eyes, he stealthily unbuttoned her glove, and +stripped her hand of it by rolling back the gauntlet over the fingers, +so that it came off inside out. He then raised her hand to his month, +she still reclining passively, watching him as she might have watched a +fly upon her dress. At last she said, “Well, sir, what excuse for this +disobedience?” + +“I make none.” + +“Then go your way, and let me go mine.” She snatched away her hand, +touched the pony with the whip, and left him standing there, holding +the reversed glove. + +Melbury’s first impulse was to reveal his presence to Fitzpiers, and +upbraid him bitterly. But a moment’s thought was sufficient to show him +the futility of any such simple proceeding. There was not, after all, +so much in what he had witnessed as in what that scene might be the +surface and froth of—probably a state of mind on which censure operates +as an aggravation rather than as a cure. Moreover, he said to himself +that the point of attack should be the woman, if either. He therefore +kept out of sight, and musing sadly, even tearfully—for he was meek as +a child in matters concerning his daughter—continued his way towards +Hintock. + +The insight which is bred of deep sympathy was never more finely +exemplified than in this instance. Through her guarded manner, her +dignified speech, her placid countenance, he discerned the interior of +Grace’s life only too truly, hidden as were its incidents from every +outer eye. + +These incidents had become painful enough. Fitzpiers had latterly +developed an irritable discontent which vented itself in monologues +when Grace was present to hear them. The early morning of this day had +been dull, after a night of wind, and on looking out of the window +Fitzpiers had observed some of Melbury’s men dragging away a large limb +which had been snapped off a beech-tree. Everything was cold and +colorless. + +“My good Heaven!” he said, as he stood in his dressing-gown. “This is +life!” He did not know whether Grace was awake or not, and he would not +turn his head to ascertain. “Ah, fool,” he went on to himself, “to clip +your own wings when you were free to soar!...But I could not rest till +I had done it. Why do I never recognize an opportunity till I have +missed it, nor the good or ill of a step till it is irrevocable!...I +fell in love....Love, indeed!— + +“‘Love’s but the frailty of the mind +When ’tis not with ambition joined; +A sickly flame which if not fed, expires, +And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires!’ + + +Ah, old author of ‘The Way of the World,’ you knew—you knew!” Grace +moved. He thought she had heard some part of his soliloquy. He was +sorry—though he had not taken any precaution to prevent her. + +He expected a scene at breakfast, but she only exhibited an extreme +reserve. It was enough, however, to make him repent that he should have +done anything to produce discomfort; for he attributed her manner +entirely to what he had said. But Grace’s manner had not its cause +either in his sayings or in his doings. She had not heard a single word +of his regrets. Something even nearer home than her husband’s blighted +prospects—if blighted they were—was the origin of her mood, a mood that +was the mere continuation of what her father had noticed when he would +have preferred a passionate jealousy in her, as the more natural. + +She had made a discovery—one which to a girl of honest nature was +almost appalling. She had looked into her heart, and found that her +early interest in Giles Winterborne had become revitalized into +luxuriant growth by her widening perceptions of what was great and +little in life. His homeliness no longer offended her acquired tastes; +his comparative want of so-called culture did not now jar on her +intellect; his country dress even pleased her eye; his exterior +roughness fascinated her. Having discovered by marriage how much that +was humanly not great could co-exist with attainments of an exceptional +order, there was a revulsion in her sentiments from all that she had +formerly clung to in this kind: honesty, goodness, manliness, +tenderness, devotion, for her only existed in their purity now in the +breasts of unvarnished men; and here was one who had manifested them +towards her from his youth up. + +There was, further, that never-ceasing pity in her soul for Giles as a +man whom she had wronged—a man who had been unfortunate in his worldly +transactions; while, not without a touch of sublimity, he had, like +Horatio, borne himself throughout his scathing + +“As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing.” + + +It was these perceptions, and no subtle catching of her husband’s +murmurs, that had bred the abstraction visible in her. + +When her father approached the house after witnessing the interview +between Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond, Grace was looking out of her +sitting-room window, as if she had nothing to do, or think of, or care +for. He stood still. + +“Ah, Grace,” he said, regarding her fixedly. + +“Yes, father,” she murmured. + +“Waiting for your dear husband?” he inquired, speaking with the sarcasm +of pitiful affection. + +“Oh no—not especially. He has a great many patients to see this +afternoon.” + +Melbury came quite close. “Grace, what’s the use of talking like that, +when you know—Here, come down and walk with me out in the garden, +child.” + +He unfastened the door in the ivy-laced wall, and waited. This apparent +indifference alarmed him. He would far rather that she had rushed in +all the fire of jealousy to Hintock House, regardless of +conventionality, confronted and attacked Felice Charmond _unguibus et +rostro_, and accused her even in exaggerated shape of stealing away her +husband. Such a storm might have cleared the air. + +She emerged in a minute or two, and they went inside together. “You +know as well as I do,” he resumed, “that there is something threatening +mischief to your life; and yet you pretend you do not. Do you suppose I +don’t see the trouble in your face every day? I am very sure that this +quietude is wrong conduct in you. You should look more into matters.” + +“I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to +action.” + +Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions—did she not feel jealous? +was she not indignant? but a natural delicacy restrained him. “You are +very tame and let-alone, I am bound to say,” he remarked, pointedly. + +“I am what I feel, father,” she repeated. + +He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the scene of her +offering to wed Winterborne instead of Fitzpiers in the last days +before her marriage; and he asked himself if it could be the fact that +she loved Winterborne, now that she had lost him, more than she had +ever done when she was comparatively free to choose him. + +“What would you have me do?” she asked, in a low voice. + +He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical +matter before them. “I would have you go to Mrs. Charmond,” he said. + +“Go to Mrs. Charmond—what for?” said she. + +“Well—if I must speak plain, dear Grace—to ask her, appeal to her in +the name of your common womanhood, and your many like sentiments on +things, not to make unhappiness between you and your husband. It lies +with her entirely to do one or the other—that I can see.” + +Grace’s face had heated at her father’s words, and the very rustle of +her skirts upon the box-edging bespoke hauteur. “I shall not think of +going to her, father—of course I could not!” she answered. + +“Why—don’t ’ee want to be happier than you be at present?” said +Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself. + +“I don’t wish to be more humiliated. If I have anything to bear I can +bear it in silence.” + +“But, my dear maid, you are too young—you don’t know what the present +state of things may lead to. Just see the harm done a’ready! Your +husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a bigger practice if it had +not been for this. Although it has gone such a little way, it is +poisoning your future even now. Mrs. Charmond is thoughtlessly bad, not +bad by calculation; and just a word to her now might save ’ee a peck of +woes.” + +“Ah, I loved her once,” said Grace, with a broken articulation, “and +she would not care for me then! Now I no longer love her. Let her do +her worst: I don’t care.” + +“You ought to care. You have got into a very good position to start +with. You have been well educated, well tended, and you have become the +wife of a professional man of unusually good family. Surely you ought +to make the best of your position.” + +“I don’t see that I ought. I wish I had never got into it. I wish you +had never, never thought of educating me. I wish I worked in the woods +like Marty South. I hate genteel life, and I want to be no better than +she.” + +“Why?” said her amazed father. + +“Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and troubles. I +say again, I wish you had never sent me to those fashionable schools +you set your mind on. It all arose out of that, father. If I had stayed +at home I should have married—” She closed up her mouth suddenly and +was silent; and he saw that she was not far from crying. + +Melbury was much grieved. “What, and would you like to have grown up as +we be here in Hintock—knowing no more, and with no more chance of +seeing good life than we have here?” + +“Yes. I have never got any happiness outside Hintock that I know of, +and I have suffered many a heartache at being sent away. Oh, the misery +of those January days when I had got back to school, and left you all +here in the wood so happy. I used to wonder why I had to bear it. And I +was always a little despised by the other girls at school, because they +knew where I came from, and that my parents were not in so good a +station as theirs.” + +Her poor father was much hurt at what he thought her ingratitude and +intractability. He had admitted to himself bitterly enough that he +should have let young hearts have their way, or rather should have +helped on her affection for Winterborne, and given her to him according +to his original plan; but he was not prepared for her deprecation of +those attainments whose completion had been a labor of years, and a +severe tax upon his purse. + +“Very well,” he said, with much heaviness of spirit. “If you don’t like +to go to her I don’t wish to force you.” + +And so the question remained for him still: how should he remedy this +perilous state of things? For days he sat in a moody attitude over the +fire, a pitcher of cider standing on the hearth beside him, and his +drinking-horn inverted upon the top of it. He spent a week and more +thus composing a letter to the chief offender, which he would every now +and then attempt to complete, and suddenly crumple up in his hand. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + + +As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom of +the woodmen’s homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little began to +have ears for a rumor of the events out of which had grown the +timber-dealer’s troubles. It took the form of a wide sprinkling of +conjecture, wherein no man knew the exact truth. Tantalizing phenomena, +at once showing and concealing the real relationship of the persons +concerned, caused a diffusion of excited surprise. Honest people as the +woodlanders were, it was hardly to be expected that they could remain +immersed in the study of their trees and gardens amid such +circumstances, or sit with their backs turned like the good burghers of +Coventry at the passage of the beautiful lady. + +Rumor, for a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in this +case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the hills, which, +with individual variations, made a mourner of Ariadne, a by-word of +Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy. There were rencounters +accidental and contrived, stealthy correspondence, sudden misgivings on +one side, sudden self-reproaches on the other. The inner state of the +twain was one as of confused noise that would not allow the accents of +calmer reason to be heard. Determinations to go in this direction, and +headlong plunges in that; dignified safeguards, undignified collapses; +not a single rash step by deliberate intention, and all against +judgment. + +It was all that Melbury had expected and feared. It was more, for he +had overlooked the publicity that would be likely to result, as it now +had done. What should he do—appeal to Mrs. Charmond himself, since +Grace would not? He bethought himself of Winterborne, and resolved to +consult him, feeling the strong need of some friend of his own sex to +whom he might unburden his mind. + +He had entirely lost faith in his own judgment. That judgment on which +he had relied for so many years seemed recently, like a false companion +unmasked, to have disclosed unexpected depths of hypocrisy and +speciousness where all had seemed solidity. He felt almost afraid to +form a conjecture on the weather, or the time, or the fruit-promise, so +great was his self-abasement. + +It was a rimy evening when he set out to look for Giles. The woods +seemed to be in a cold sweat; beads of perspiration hung from every +bare twig; the sky had no color, and the trees rose before him as +haggard, gray phantoms, whose days of substantiality were passed. +Melbury seldom saw Winterborne now, but he believed him to be occupying +a lonely hut just beyond the boundary of Mrs. Charmond’s estate, though +still within the circuit of the woodland. The timber-merchant’s thin +legs stalked on through the pale, damp scenery, his eyes on the dead +leaves of last year; while every now and then a hasty “Ay?” escaped his +lips in reply to some bitter proposition. + +His notice was attracted by a thin blue haze of smoke, behind which +arose sounds of voices and chopping: bending his steps that way, he saw +Winterborne just in front of him. It just now happened that Giles, +after being for a long time apathetic and unemployed, had become one of +the busiest men in the neighborhood. It is often thus; fallen friends, +lost sight of, we expect to find starving; we discover them going on +fairly well. Without any solicitation, or desire for profit on his +part, he had been asked to execute during that winter a very large +order for hurdles and other copse-ware, for which purpose he had been +obliged to buy several acres of brushwood standing. He was now engaged +in the cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work +daily like an automaton. + +The hazel-tree did not belie its name to-day. The whole of the +copse-wood where the mist had cleared returned purest tints of that +hue, amid which Winterborne himself was in the act of making a hurdle, +the stakes being driven firmly into the ground in a row, over which he +bent and wove the twigs. Beside him was a square, compact pile like the +altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already finished, which bristled on +all sides with the sharp points of their stakes. At a little distance +the men in his employ were assisting him to carry out his contract. +Rows of copse-wood lay on the ground as it had fallen under the axe; +and a shelter had been constructed near at hand, in front of which +burned the fire whose smoke had attracted him. The air was so dank that +the smoke hung heavy, and crept away amid the bushes without rising +from the ground. + +After wistfully regarding Winterborne a while, Melbury drew nearer, and +briefly inquired of Giles how he came to be so busily engaged, with an +undertone of slight surprise that Winterborne could seem so thriving +after being deprived of Grace. Melbury was not without emotion at the +meeting; for Grace’s affairs had divided them, and ended their intimacy +of old times. + +Winterborne explained just as briefly, without raising his eyes from +his occupation of chopping a bough that he held in front of him. + +“’Twill be up in April before you get it all cleared,” said Melbury. + +“Yes, there or thereabouts,” said Winterborne, a chop of the billhook +jerking the last word into two pieces. + +There was another interval; Melbury still looked on, a chip from +Winterborne’s hook occasionally flying against the waistcoat and legs +of his visitor, who took no heed. + +“Ah, Giles—you should have been my partner. You should have been my +son-in-law,” the old man said at last. “It would have been far better +for her and for me.” + +Winterborne saw that something had gone wrong with his former friend, +and throwing down the switch he was about to interweave, he responded +only too readily to the mood of the timber-dealer. “Is she ill?” he +said, hurriedly. + +“No, no.” Melbury stood without speaking for some minutes, and then, as +though he could not bring himself to proceed, turned to go away. + +Winterborne told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night and +walked after Melbury. + +“Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir,” he said, +“especially since we don’t stand as we used to stand to one another; +but I hope it is well with them all over your way?” + +“No,” said Melbury—“no.” He stopped, and struck the smooth trunk of a +young ash-tree with the flat of his hand. “I would that his ear had +been where that rind is!” he exclaimed; “I should have treated him to +little compared wi what he deserves.” + +“Now,” said Winterborne, “don’t be in a hurry to go home. I’ve put some +cider down to warm in my shelter here, and we’ll sit and drink it and +talk this over.” + +Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and they went back +to where the fire was, and sat down under the screen, the other woodmen +having gone. He drew out the cider-mug from the ashes and they drank +together. + +“Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now,” repeated +Melbury. “I’ll tell you why for the first time.” + +He thereupon told Winterborne, as with great relief, the story of how +he won away Giles’s father’s chosen one—by nothing worse than a lover’s +cajoleries, it is true, but by means which, except in love, would +certainly have been pronounced cruel and unfair. He explained how he +had always intended to make reparation to Winterborne the father by +giving Grace to Winterborne the son, till the devil tempted him in the +person of Fitzpiers, and he broke his virtuous vow. + +“How highly I thought of that man, to be sure! Who’d have supposed he’d +have been so weak and wrong-headed as this! You ought to have had her, +Giles, and there’s an end on’t.” + +Winterborne knew how to preserve his calm under this unconsciously +cruel tearing of a healing wound to which Melbury’s concentration on +the more vital subject had blinded him. The young man endeavored to +make the best of the case for Grace’s sake. + +“She would hardly have been happy with me,” he said, in the dry, +unimpassioned voice under which he hid his feelings. “I was not well +enough educated: too rough, in short. I couldn’t have surrounded her +with the refinements she looked for, anyhow, at all.” + +“Nonsense—you are quite wrong there,” said the unwise old man, +doggedly. “She told me only this day that she hates refinements and +such like. All that my trouble and money bought for her in that way is +thrown away upon her quite. She’d fain be like Marty South—think o’ +that! That’s the top of her ambition! Perhaps she’s right. Giles, she +loved you—under the rind; and, what’s more, she loves ye still—worse +luck for the poor maid!” + +If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up he +might have held his peace. Winterborne was silent a long time. The +darkness had closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of the fog +from the branches quickened as it turned to fine rain. + +“Oh, she never cared much for me,” Giles managed to say, as he stirred +the embers with a brand. + +“She did, and does, I tell ye,” said the other, obstinately. “However, +all that’s vain talking now. What I come to ask you about is a more +practical matter—how to make the best of things as they are. I am +thinking of a desperate step—of calling on the woman Charmond. I am +going to appeal to her, since Grace will not. ’Tis she who holds the +balance in her hands—not he. While she’s got the will to lead him +astray he will follow—poor, unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer—and how +long she’ll do it depends upon her whim. Did ye ever hear anything +about her character before she came to Hintock?” + +“She’s been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe,” replied Giles, +with the same level quietude, as he regarded the red coals. “One who +has smiled where she has not loved and loved where she has not married. +Before Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a play-actress.” + +“Hey? But how close you have kept all this, Giles! What besides?” + +“Mr. Charmond was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the north, +twenty or thirty years older than she. He married her and retired, and +came down here and bought this property, as they do nowadays.” + +“Yes, yes—I know all about that; but the other I did not know. I fear +it bodes no good. For how can I go and appeal to the forbearance of a +woman in this matter who has made cross-loves and crooked entanglements +her trade for years? I thank ye, Giles, for finding it out; but it +makes my plan the harder that she should have belonged to that unstable +tribe.” + +Another pause ensued, and they looked gloomily at the smoke that beat +about the hurdles which sheltered them, through whose weavings a large +drop of rain fell at intervals and spat smartly into the fire. Mrs. +Charmond had been no friend to Winterborne, but he was manly, and it +was not in his heart to let her be condemned without a trial. + +“She is said to be generous,” he answered. “You might not appeal to her +in vain.” + +“It shall be done,” said Melbury, rising. “For good or for evil, to +Mrs. Charmond I’ll go.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + + +At nine o’clock the next morning Melbury dressed himself up in shining +broadcloth, creased with folding and smelling of camphor, and started +for Hintock House. He was the more impelled to go at once by the +absence of his son-in-law in London for a few days, to attend, really +or ostensibly, some professional meetings. He said nothing of his +destination either to his wife or to Grace, fearing that they might +entreat him to abandon so risky a project, and went out unobserved. He +had chosen his time with a view, as he supposed, of conveniently +catching Mrs. Charmond when she had just finished her breakfast, before +any other business people should be about, if any came. Plodding +thoughtfully onward, he crossed a glade lying between Little Hintock +Woods and the plantation which abutted on the park; and the spot being +open, he was discerned there by Winterborne from the copse on the next +hill, where he and his men were working. Knowing his mission, the +younger man hastened down from the copse and managed to intercept the +timber-merchant. + +“I have been thinking of this, sir,” he said, “and I am of opinion that +it would be best to put off your visit for the present.” + +But Melbury would not even stop to hear him. His mind was made up, the +appeal was to be made; and Winterborne stood and watched him sadly till +he entered the second plantation and disappeared. + +Melbury rang at the tradesmen’s door of the manor-house, and was at +once informed that the lady was not yet visible, as indeed he might +have guessed had he been anybody but the man he was. Melbury said he +would wait, whereupon the young man informed him in a neighborly way +that, between themselves, she was in bed and asleep. + +“Never mind,” said Melbury, retreating into the court, “I’ll stand +about here.” Charged so fully with his mission, he shrank from contact +with anybody. + +But he walked about the paved court till he was tired, and still nobody +came to him. At last he entered the house and sat down in a small +waiting-room, from which he got glimpses of the kitchen corridor, and +of the white-capped maids flitting jauntily hither and thither. They +had heard of his arrival, but had not seen him enter, and, imagining +him still in the court, discussed freely the possible reason of his +calling. They marvelled at his temerity; for though most of the tongues +which had been let loose attributed the chief blame-worthiness to +Fitzpiers, these of her household preferred to regard their mistress as +the deeper sinner. + +Melbury sat with his hands resting on the familiar knobbed thorn +walking-stick, whose growing he had seen before he enjoyed its use. The +scene to him was not the material environment of his person, but a +tragic vision that travelled with him like an envelope. Through this +vision the incidents of the moment but gleamed confusedly here and +there, as an outer landscape through the high-colored scenes of a +stained window. He waited thus an hour, an hour and a half, two hours. +He began to look pale and ill, whereupon the butler, who came in, asked +him to have a glass of wine. Melbury roused himself and said, “No, no. +Is she almost ready?” + +“She is just finishing breakfast,” said the butler. “She will soon see +you now. I am just going up to tell her you are here.” + +“What! haven’t you told her before?” said Melbury. + +“Oh no,” said the other. “You see you came so very early.” + +At last the bell rang: Mrs. Charmond could see him. She was not in her +private sitting-room when he reached it, but in a minute he heard her +coming from the front staircase, and she entered where he stood. + +At this time of the morning Mrs. Charmond looked her full age and more. +She might almost have been taken for the typical _femme de trente ans_, +though she was really not more than seven or eight and twenty. There +being no fire in the room, she came in with a shawl thrown loosely +round her shoulders, and obviously without the least suspicion that +Melbury had called upon any other errand than timber. Felice was, +indeed, the only woman in the parish who had not heard the rumor of her +own weaknesses; she was at this moment living in a fool’s paradise in +respect of that rumor, though not in respect of the weaknesses +themselves, which, if the truth be told, caused her grave misgivings. + +“Do sit down, Mr. Melbury. You have felled all the trees that were to +be purchased by you this season, except the oaks, I believe.” + +“Yes,” said Melbury. + +“How very nice! It must be so charming to work in the woods just now!” + +She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous person’s +affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of the perfect +social machine. Hence her words “very nice,” “so charming,” were +uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them sound absurdly unreal. + +“Yes, yes,” said Melbury, in a reverie. He did not take a chair, and +she also remained standing. Resting upon his stick, he began: “Mrs. +Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter—at least to me—than +tree-throwing. And whatever mistakes I make in my manner of speaking +upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set ’em down to my want of +practice, and not to my want of care.” + +Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease. She might have begun to guess his +meaning; but apart from that, she had such dread of contact with +anything painful, harsh, or even earnest, that his preliminaries alone +were enough to distress her. “Yes, what is it?” she said. + +“I am an old man,” said Melbury, “whom, somewhat late in life, God +thought fit to bless with one child, and she a daughter. Her mother was +a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us when the child +was young, and the child became precious as the apple of my eye to me, +for she was all I had left to love. For her sake entirely I married as +second wife a homespun woman who had been kind as a mother to her. In +due time the question of her education came on, and I said, ‘I will +educate the maid well, if I live upon bread to do it.’ Of her possible +marriage I could not bear to think, for it seemed like a death that she +should cleave to another man, and grow to think his house her home +rather than mine. But I saw it was the law of nature that this should +be, and that it was for the maid’s happiness that she should have a +home when I was gone; and I made up my mind without a murmur to help it +on for her sake. In my youth I had wronged my dead friend, and to make +amends I determined to give her, my most precious possession, to my +friend’s son, seeing that they liked each other well. Things came about +which made me doubt if it would be for my daughter’s happiness to do +this, inasmuch as the young man was poor, and she was delicately +reared. Another man came and paid court to her—one her equal in +breeding and accomplishments; in every way it seemed to me that he only +could give her the home which her training had made a necessity almost. +I urged her on, and she married him. But, ma’am, a fatal mistake was at +the root of my reckoning. I found that this well-born gentleman I had +calculated on so surely was not stanch of heart, and that therein lay a +danger of great sorrow for my daughter. Madam, he saw you, and you know +the rest....I have come to make no demands—to utter no threats; I have +come simply as a father in great grief about this only child, and I +beseech you to deal kindly with my daughter, and to do nothing which +can turn her husband’s heart away from her forever. Forbid him your +presence, ma’am, and speak to him on his duty as one with your power +over him well can do, and I am hopeful that the rent between them may +be patched up. For it is not as if you would lose by so doing; your +course is far higher than the courses of a simple professional man, and +the gratitude you would win from me and mine by your kindness is more +than I can say.” + +Mrs. Charmond had first rushed into a mood of indignation on +comprehending Melbury’s story; hot and cold by turns, she had murmured, +“Leave me, leave me!” But as he seemed to take no notice of this, his +words began to influence her, and when he ceased speaking she said, +with hurried, hot breath, “What has led you to think this of me? Who +says I have won your daughter’s husband away from her? Some monstrous +calumnies are afloat—of which I have known nothing until now!” + +Melbury started, and looked at her simply. “But surely, ma’am, you know +the truth better than I?” + +Her features became a little pinched, and the touches of powder on her +handsome face for the first time showed themselves as an extrinsic +film. “Will you leave me to myself?” she said, with a faintness which +suggested a guilty conscience. “This is so utterly unexpected—you +obtain admission to my presence by misrepresentation—” + +“As God’s in heaven, ma’am, that’s not true. I made no pretence; and I +thought in reason you would know why I had come. This gossip—” + +“I have heard nothing of it. Tell me of it, I say.” + +“Tell you, ma’am—not I. What the gossip is, no matter. What really is, +you know. Set facts right, and the scandal will right of itself. But +pardon me—I speak roughly; and I came to speak gently, to coax you, beg +you to be my daughter’s friend. She loved you once, ma’am; you began by +liking her. Then you dropped her without a reason, and it hurt her warm +heart more than I can tell ye. But you were within your right as the +superior, no doubt. But if you would consider her position now—surely, +surely, you would do her no harm!” + +“Certainly I would do her no harm—I—” Melbury’s eye met hers. It was +curious, but the allusion to Grace’s former love for her seemed to +touch her more than all Melbury’s other arguments. “Oh, Melbury,” she +burst out, “you have made me so unhappy! How could you come to me like +this! It is too dreadful! Now go away—go, go!” + +“I will,” he said, in a husky tone. + +As soon as he was out of the room she went to a corner and there sat +and writhed under an emotion in which hurt pride and vexation mingled +with better sentiments. + +Mrs. Charmond’s mobile spirit was subject to these fierce periods of +stress and storm. She had never so clearly perceived till now that her +soul was being slowly invaded by a delirium which had brought about all +this; that she was losing judgment and dignity under it, becoming an +animated impulse only, a passion incarnate. A fascination had led her +on; it was as if she had been seized by a hand of velvet; and this was +where she found herself—overshadowed with sudden night, as if a tornado +had passed by. + +While she sat, or rather crouched, unhinged by the interview, +lunch-time came, and then the early afternoon, almost without her +consciousness. Then “a strange gentleman who says it is not necessary +to give his name,” was suddenly announced. + +“I cannot see him, whoever he may be. I am not at home to anybody.” + +She heard no more of her visitor; and shortly after, in an attempt to +recover some mental serenity by violent physical exercise, she put on +her hat and cloak and went out-of-doors, taking a path which led her up +the slopes to the nearest spur of the wood. She disliked the woods, but +they had the advantage of being a place in which she could walk +comparatively unobserved. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + + +There was agitation to-day in the lives of all whom these matters +concerned. It was not till the Hintock dinner-time—one o’clock—that +Grace discovered her father’s absence from the house after a departure +in the morning under somewhat unusual conditions. By a little reasoning +and inquiry she was able to come to a conclusion on his destination, +and to divine his errand. + +Her husband was absent, and her father did not return. He had, in +truth, gone on to Sherton after the interview, but this Grace did not +know. In an indefinite dread that something serious would arise out of +Melbury’s visit by reason of the inequalities of temper and nervous +irritation to which he was subject, something possibly that would bring +her much more misery than accompanied her present negative state of +mind, she left the house about three o’clock, and took a loitering walk +in the woodland track by which she imagined he would come home. This +track under the bare trees and over the cracking sticks, screened and +roofed in from the outer world of wind and cloud by a net-work of +boughs, led her slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees +behind her and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his +men were clearing the undergrowth. + +Had Giles’s attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would not +have seen her; but ever since Melbury’s passage across the opposite +glade in the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled as Grace +herself; and her advent now was the one appearance which, since her +father’s avowal, could arrest him more than Melbury’s return with his +tidings. Fearing that something might be the matter, he hastened up to +her. + +She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious of +the late pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly. “I am +only looking for my father,” she said, in an unnecessarily apologetic +intonation. + +“I was looking for him too,” said Giles. “I think he may perhaps have +gone on farther.” + +“Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?” she said, turning her +large tender eyes anxiously upon him. “Did he tell you what for?” + +Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that her +father had visited him the evening before, and that their old +friendship was quite restored, on which she guessed the rest. + +“Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!” she cried. And +then they stood facing each other, fearing each other, troubling each +other’s souls. Grace experienced acute misery at the sight of these +wood-cutting scenes, because she had estranged herself from them, +craving, even to its defects and inconveniences, that homely sylvan +life of her father which in the best probable succession of events +would shortly be denied her. + +At a little distance, on the edge of the clearing, Marty South was +shaping spar-gads to take home for manufacture during the evenings. +While Winterborne and Mrs. Fitzpiers stood looking at her in their +mutual embarrassment at each other’s presence, they beheld approaching +the girl a lady in a dark fur mantle and a black hat, having a white +veil tied picturesquely round it. She spoke to Marty, who turned and +courtesied, and the lady fell into conversation with her. It was Mrs. +Charmond. + +On leaving her house, Mrs. Charmond had walked on and onward under the +fret and fever of her mind with more vigor than she was accustomed to +show in her normal moods—a fever which the solace of a cigarette did +not entirely allay. Reaching the coppice, she listlessly observed Marty +at work, threw away her cigarette, and came near. Chop, chop, chop, +went Marty’s little billhook with never more assiduity, till Mrs. +Charmond spoke. + +“Who is that young lady I see talking to the woodman yonder?” she +asked. + +“Mrs. Fitzpiers, ma’am,” said Marty. + +“Oh,” said Mrs. Charmond, with something like a start; for she had not +recognized Grace at that distance. “And the man she is talking to?” + +“That’s Mr. Winterborne.” + +A redness stole into Marty’s face as she mentioned Giles’s name, which +Mrs. Charmond did not fail to notice informed her of the state of the +girl’s heart. “Are you engaged to him?” she asked, softly. + +“No, ma’am,” said Marty. “_She_ was once; and I think—” + +But Marty could not possibly explain the complications of her thoughts +on this matter—which were nothing less than one of extraordinary +acuteness for a girl so young and inexperienced—namely, that she saw +danger to two hearts naturally honest in Grace being thrown back into +Winterborne’s society by the neglect of her husband. Mrs. Charmond, +however, with the almost supersensory means to knowledge which women +have on such occasions, quite understood what Marty had intended to +convey, and the picture thus exhibited to her of lives drifting away, +involving the wreck of poor Marty’s hopes, prompted her to more +generous resolves than all Melbury’s remonstrances had been able to +stimulate. + +Full of the new feeling, she bade the girl good-afternoon, and went on +over the stumps of hazel to where Grace and Winterborne were standing. +They saw her approach, and Winterborne said, “She is coming to you; it +is a good omen. She dislikes me, so I’ll go away.” He accordingly +retreated to where he had been working before Grace came, and Grace’s +formidable rival approached her, each woman taking the other’s measure +as she came near. + +“Dear—Mrs. Fitzpiers,” said Felice Charmond, with some inward turmoil +which stopped her speech. “I have not seen you for a long time.” + +She held out her hand tentatively, while Grace stood like a wild animal +on first confronting a mirror or other puzzling product of +civilization. Was it really Mrs. Charmond speaking to her thus? If it +was, she could no longer form any guess as to what it signified. + +“I want to talk with you,” said Mrs. Charmond, imploringly, for the +gaze of the young woman had chilled her through. “Can you walk on with +me till we are quite alone?” + +Sick with distaste, Grace nevertheless complied, as by clockwork and +they moved evenly side by side into the deeper recesses of the woods. +They went farther, much farther than Mrs. Charmond had meant to go; but +she could not begin her conversation, and in default of it kept +walking. + +“I have seen your father,” she at length resumed. “And—I am much +troubled by what he told me.” + +“What did he tell you? I have not been admitted to his confidence on +anything he may have said to you.” + +“Nevertheless, why should I repeat to you what you can easily divine?” + +“True—true,” returned Grace, mournfully. “Why should you repeat what we +both know to be in our minds already?” + +“Mrs. Fitzpiers, your husband—” The moment that the speaker’s tongue +touched the dangerous subject a vivid look of self-consciousness +flashed over her, in which her heart revealed, as by a lightning gleam, +what filled it to overflowing. So transitory was the expression that +none but a sensitive woman, and she in Grace’s position, would have had +the power to catch its meaning. Upon her the phase was not lost. + +“Then you _do_ love him!” she exclaimed, in a tone of much surprise. + +“What do you mean, my young friend?” + +“Why,” cried Grace, “I thought till now that you had only been cruelly +flirting with my husband, to amuse your idle moments—a rich lady with a +poor professional gentleman whom in her heart she despised not much +less than her who belongs to him. But I guess from your manner that you +love him desperately, and I don’t hate you as I did before.” + +“Yes, indeed,” continued Mrs. Fitzpiers, with a trembling tongue, +“since it is not playing in your case at all, but _real_. Oh, I do pity +you, more than I despise you, for _you_ will s-s-suffer most!” + +Mrs. Charmond was now as much agitated as Grace. “I ought not to allow +myself to argue with you,” she exclaimed. “I demean myself by doing it. +But I liked you once, and for the sake of that time I try to tell you +how mistaken you are!” Much of her confusion resulted from her wonder +and alarm at finding herself in a sense dominated mentally and +emotionally by this simple school-girl. “I do not love him,” she went +on, with desperate untruth. “It was a kindness—my making somewhat more +of him than one usually does of one’s doctor. I was lonely; I +talked—well, I trifled with him. I am very sorry if such child’s +playing out of pure friendship has been a serious matter to you. Who +could have expected it? But the world is so simple here.” + +“Oh, that’s affectation,” said Grace, shaking her head. “It is no +use—you _love_ him. I can see in your face that in this matter of my +husband you have not let your acts belie your feelings. During these +last four or six months you have been terribly indiscreet; but you have +not been insincere, and that almost disarms me.” + +“I _have_ been insincere—if you will have the word—I mean I _have_ +coquetted, and do _not_ love him!” + +But Grace clung to her position like a limpet. “You may have trifled +with others, but him you love as you never loved another man.” + +“Oh, well—I won’t argue,” said Mrs. Charmond, laughing faintly. “And +you come to reproach me for it, child.” + +“No,” said Grace, magnanimously. “You may go on loving him if you +like—I don’t mind at all. You’ll find it, let me tell you, a bitterer +business for yourself than for me in the end. He’ll get tired of you +soon, as tired as can be—you don’t know him so well as I—and then you +may wish you had never seen him!” + +Mrs. Charmond had grown quite pale and weak under this prophecy. It was +extraordinary that Grace, whom almost every one would have +characterized as a gentle girl, should be of stronger fibre than her +interlocutor. “You exaggerate—cruel, silly young woman,” she +reiterated, writhing with little agonies. “It is nothing but playful +friendship—nothing! It will be proved by my future conduct. I shall at +once refuse to see him more—since it will make no difference to my +heart, and much to my name.” + +“I question if you will refuse to see him again,” said Grace, dryly, as +with eyes askance she bent a sapling down. “But I am not incensed +against you as you are against me,” she added, abandoning the tree to +its natural perpendicular. “Before I came I had been despising you for +wanton cruelty; now I only pity you for misplaced affection. When Edgar +has gone out of the house in hope of seeing you, at seasonable hours +and unseasonable; when I have found him riding miles and miles across +the country at midnight, and risking his life, and getting covered with +mud, to get a glimpse of you, I have called him a foolish man—the +plaything of a finished coquette. I thought that what was getting to be +a tragedy to me was a comedy to you. But now I see that tragedy lies on +YOUR side of the situation no less than on mine, and more; that if I +have felt trouble at my position, you have felt anguish at yours; that +if I have had disappointments, you have had despairs. Heaven may +fortify _me_—God help _you!_” + +“I cannot attempt to reply to your raving eloquence,” returned the +other, struggling to restore a dignity which had completely collapsed. +“My acts will be my proofs. In the world which you have seen nothing +of, friendships between men and women are not unknown, and it would +have been better both for you and your father if you had each judged me +more respectfully, and left me alone. As it is I wish never to see or +speak to you, madam, any more.” + +Grace bowed, and Mrs. Charmond turned away. The two went apart in +directly opposite courses, and were soon hidden from each other by +their umbrageous surroundings and by the shadows of eve. + +In the excitement of their long argument they had walked onward and +zigzagged about without regarding direction or distance. All sound of +the woodcutters had long since faded into remoteness, and even had not +the interval been too great for hearing them they would have been +silent and homeward bound at this twilight hour. But Grace went on her +course without any misgiving, though there was much underwood here, +with only the narrowest passages for walking, across which brambles +hung. She had not, however, traversed this the wildest part of the wood +since her childhood, and the transformation of outlines had been great; +old trees which once were landmarks had been felled or blown down, and +the bushes which then had been small and scrubby were now large and +overhanging. She soon found that her ideas as to direction were +vague—that she had indeed no ideas as to direction at all. If the +evening had not been growing so dark, and the wind had not put on its +night moan so distinctly, Grace would not have minded; but she was +rather frightened now, and began to strike across hither and thither in +random courses. + +Denser grew the darkness, more developed the wind-voices, and still no +recognizable spot or outlet of any kind appeared, nor any sound of the +Hintocks floated near, though she had wandered probably between one and +two hours, and began to be weary. She was vexed at her foolishness, +since the ground she had covered, if in a straight line, must +inevitably have taken her out of the wood to some remote village or +other; but she had wasted her forces in countermarches; and now, in +much alarm, wondered if she would have to pass the night here. She +stood still to meditate, and fancied that between the soughing of the +wind she heard shuffling footsteps on the leaves heavier than those of +rabbits or hares. Though fearing at first to meet anybody on the chance +of his being a friend, she decided that the fellow night-rambler, even +if a poacher, would not injure her, and that he might possibly be some +one sent to search for her. She accordingly shouted a rather timid +“Hoi!” + +The cry was immediately returned by the other person; and Grace running +at once in the direction whence it came beheld an indistinct figure +hastening up to her as rapidly. They were almost in each other’s arms +when she recognized in her vis-a-vis the outline and white veil of her +whom she had parted from an hour and a half before—Mrs. Charmond. + +“I have lost my way, I have lost my way,” cried that lady. “Oh—is it +indeed you? I am so glad to meet you or anybody. I have been wandering +up and down ever since we parted, and am nearly dead with terror and +misery and fatigue!” + +“So am I,” said Grace. “What _shall_ we, _shall_ we do?” + +“You won’t go away from me?” asked her companion, anxiously. + +“No, indeed. Are you very tired?” + +“I can scarcely move, and I am scratched dreadfully about the ankles.” + +Grace reflected. “Perhaps, as it is dry under foot, the best thing for +us to do would be to sit down for half an hour, and then start again +when we have thoroughly rested. By walking straight we must come to a +track leading somewhere before the morning.” + +They found a clump of bushy hollies which afforded a shelter from the +wind, and sat down under it, some tufts of dead fern, crisp and dry, +that remained from the previous season forming a sort of nest for them. +But it was cold, nevertheless, on this March night, particularly for +Grace, who with the sanguine prematureness of youth in matters of +dress, had considered it spring-time, and hence was not so warmly clad +as Mrs. Charmond, who still wore her winter fur. But after sitting a +while the latter lady shivered no less than Grace as the warmth +imparted by her hasty walking began to go off, and they felt the cold +air drawing through the holly leaves which scratched their backs and +shoulders. Moreover, they could hear some drops of rain falling on the +trees, though none reached the nook in which they had ensconced +themselves. + +“If we were to cling close together,” said Mrs. Charmond, “we should +keep each other warm. But,” she added, in an uneven voice, “I suppose +you won’t come near me for the world!” + +“Why not?” + +“Because—well, you know.” + +“Yes. I will—I don’t hate you at all.” + +They consequently crept up to one another, and being in the dark, +lonely and weary, did what neither had dreamed of doing beforehand, +clasped each other closely, Mrs. Charmond’s furs consoling Grace’s cold +face, and each one’s body as she breathed alternately heaving against +that of her companion. + +When a few minutes had been spent thus, Mrs. Charmond said, “I am so +wretched!” in a heavy, emotional whisper. + +“You are frightened,” said Grace, kindly. “But there is nothing to +fear; I know these woods well.” + +“I am not at all frightened at the wood, but I am at other things.” + +Mrs. Charmond embraced Grace more and more tightly, and the younger +woman could feel her neighbor’s breathings grow deeper and more +spasmodic, as though uncontrollable feelings were germinating. + +“After I had left you,” she went on, “I regretted something I had said. +I have to make a confession—I must make it!” she whispered, brokenly, +the instinct to indulge in warmth of sentiment which had led this woman +of passions to respond to Fitzpiers in the first place leading her now +to find luxurious comfort in opening her heart to his wife. “I said to +you I could give him up without pain or deprivation—that he had only +been my pastime. That was untrue—it was said to deceive you. I could +not do it without much pain; and, what is more dreadful, I _cannot_ +give him up—even if I would—of myself alone.” + +“Why? Because you love him, you mean.” + +Felice Charmond denoted assent by a movement. + +“I knew I was right!” said Grace, exaltedly. “But that should not deter +you,” she presently added, in a moral tone. “Oh, do struggle against +it, and you will conquer!” + +“You are so simple, so simple!” cried Felice. “You think, because you +guessed my assumed indifference to him to be a sham, that you know the +extremes that people are capable of going to! But a good deal more may +have been going on than you have fathomed with all your insight. I +_cannot_ give him up until he chooses to give up me.” + +“But surely you are the superior in station and in every way, and the +cut must come from you.” + +“Tchut! Must I tell verbatim, you simple child? Oh, I suppose I must! I +shall eat away my heart if I do not let out all, after meeting you like +this and finding how guileless you are.” She thereupon whispered a few +words in the girl’s ear, and burst into a violent fit of sobbing. + +Grace started roughly away from the shelter of the fur, and sprang to +her feet. + +“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, thunderstruck at a revelation transcending +her utmost suspicion. “Can it be—can it be!” + +She turned as if to hasten away. But Felice Charmond’s sobs came to her +ear: deep darkness circled her about, the funereal trees rocked and +chanted their diriges and placebos around her, and she did not know +which way to go. After a moment of energy she felt mild again, and +turned to the motionless woman at her feet. + +“Are you rested?” she asked, in what seemed something like her own +voice grown ten years older. + +Without an answer Mrs. Charmond slowly rose. + +“You mean to betray me!” she said from the bitterest depths of her +soul. “Oh fool, fool I!” + +“No,” said Grace, shortly. “I mean no such thing. But let us be quick +now. We have a serious undertaking before us. Think of nothing but +going straight on.” + +They walked on in profound silence, pulling back boughs now growing +wet, and treading down woodbine, but still keeping a pretty straight +course. Grace began to be thoroughly worn out, and her companion too, +when, on a sudden, they broke into the deserted highway at the hill-top +on which the Sherton man had waited for Mrs. Dollery’s van. Grace +recognized the spot as soon as she looked around her. + +“How we have got here I cannot tell,” she said, with cold civility. “We +have made a complete circuit of Little Hintock. The hazel copse is +quite on the other side. Now we have only to follow the road.” + +They dragged themselves onward, turned into the lane, passed the track +to Little Hintock, and so reached the park. + +“Here I turn back,” said Grace, in the same passionless voice. “You are +quite near home.” + +Mrs. Charmond stood inert, seeming appalled by her late admission. + +“I have told you something in a moment of irresistible desire to +unburden my soul which all but a fool would have kept silent as the +grave,” she said. “I cannot help it now. Is it to be a secret—or do you +mean war?” + +“A secret, certainly,” said Grace, mournfully. “How can you expect war +from such a helpless, wretched being as I!” + +“And I’ll do my best not to see him. I am his slave; but I’ll try.” + +Grace was naturally kind; but she could not help using a small dagger +now. + +“Pray don’t distress yourself,” she said, with exquisitely fine scorn. +“You may keep him—for me.” Had she been wounded instead of mortified +she could not have used the words; but Fitzpiers’s hold upon her heart +was slight. + +They parted thus and there, and Grace went moodily homeward. Passing +Marty’s cottage she observed through the window that the girl was +writing instead of chopping as usual, and wondered what her +correspondence could be. Directly afterwards she met people in search +of her, and reached the house to find all in serious alarm. She soon +explained that she had lost her way, and her general depression was +attributed to exhaustion on that account. + +Could she have known what Marty was writing she would have been +surprised. + +The rumor which agitated the other folk of Hintock had reached the +young girl, and she was penning a letter to Fitzpiers, to tell him that +Mrs. Charmond wore her hair. It was poor Marty’s only card, and she +played it, knowing nothing of fashion, and thinking her revelation a +fatal one for a lover. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + + +It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting between +Grace and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, that Fitzpiers, just returned from +London, was travelling from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock in a hired +carriage. In his eye there was a doubtful light, and the lines of his +refined face showed a vague disquietude. He appeared now like one of +those who impress the beholder as having suffered wrong in being born. + +His position was in truth gloomy, and to his appreciative mind it +seemed even gloomier than it was. His practice had been slowly +dwindling of late, and now threatened to die out altogether, the +irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing patients up to Fitzpiers’s very +door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest cause of his +unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man, the second branch of his +sadness grew out of a remedial measure proposed for the first—a letter +from Felice Charmond imploring him not to see her again. To bring about +their severance still more effectually, she added, she had decided +during his absence upon almost immediate departure for the Continent. + +The time was that dull interval in a woodlander’s life which coincides +with great activity in the life of the woodland itself—a period +following the close of the winter tree-cutting, and preceding the +barking season, when the saps are just beginning to heave with the +force of hydraulic lifts inside all the trunks of the forest. + +Winterborne’s contract was completed, and the plantations were +deserted. It was dusk; there were no leaves as yet; the nightingales +would not begin to sing for a fortnight; and “the Mother of the Months” +was in her most attenuated phase—starved and bent to a mere bowed +skeleton, which glided along behind the bare twigs in Fitzpiers’s +company. + +When he reached home he went straight up to his wife’s sitting-room. He +found it deserted, and without a fire. He had mentioned no day for his +return; nevertheless, he wondered why she was not there waiting to +receive him. On descending to the other wing of the house and inquiring +of Mrs. Melbury, he learned with much surprise that Grace had gone on a +visit to an acquaintance at Shottsford-Forum three days earlier; that +tidings had on this morning reached her father of her being very unwell +there, in consequence of which he had ridden over to see her. + +Fitzpiers went up-stairs again, and the little drawing-room, now +lighted by a solitary candle, was not rendered more cheerful by the +entrance of Grammer Oliver with an apronful of wood, which she threw on +the hearth while she raked out the grate and rattled about the +fire-irons, with a view to making things comfortable. Fitzpiers +considered that Grace ought to have let him know her plans more +accurately before leaving home in a freak like this. He went +desultorily to the window, the blind of which had not been pulled down, +and looked out at the thin, fast-sinking moon, and at the tall stalk of +smoke rising from the top of Suke Damson’s chimney, signifying that the +young woman had just lit her fire to prepare supper. + +He became conscious of a discussion in progress on the opposite side of +the court. Somebody had looked over the wall to talk to the sawyers, +and was telling them in a loud voice news in which the name of Mrs. +Charmond soon arrested his ears. + +“Grammer, don’t make so much noise with that grate,” said the surgeon; +at which Grammer reared herself upon her knees and held the fuel +suspended in her hand, while Fitzpiers half opened the casement. + +“She is off to foreign lands again at last—hev made up her mind quite +sudden-like—and it is thoughted she’ll leave in a day or two. She’s +been all as if her mind were low for some days past—with a sort of +sorrow in her face, as if she reproached her own soul. She’s the wrong +sort of woman for Hintock—hardly knowing a beech from a woak—that I +own. But I don’t care who the man is, she’s been a very kind friend to +me. + +“Well, the day after to-morrow is the Sabbath day, and without charity +we are but tinkling simples; but this I do say, that her going will be +a blessed thing for a certain married couple who remain.” + +The fire was lighted, and Fitzpiers sat down in front of it, restless +as the last leaf upon a tree. “A sort of sorrow in her face, as if she +reproached her own soul.” Poor Felice. How Felice’s frame must be +pulsing under the conditions of which he had just heard the caricature; +how her fair temples must ache; what a mood of wretchedness she must be +in! But for the mixing up of his name with hers, and her determination +to sunder their too close acquaintance on that account, she would +probably have sent for him professionally. She was now sitting alone, +suffering, perhaps wishing that she had not forbidden him to come +again. + +Unable to remain in this lonely room any longer, or to wait for the +meal which was in course of preparation, he made himself ready for +riding, descended to the yard, stood by the stable-door while Darling +was being saddled, and rode off down the lane. He would have preferred +walking, but was weary with his day’s travel. + +As he approached the door of Marty South’s cottage, which it was +necessary to pass on his way, she came from the porch as if she had +been awaiting him, and met him in the middle of the road, holding up a +letter. Fitzpiers took it without stopping, and asked over his shoulder +from whom it came. + +Marty hesitated. “From me,” she said, shyly, though with noticeable +firmness. + +This letter contained, in fact, Marty’s declaration that she was the +original owner of Mrs. Charmond’s supplementary locks, and enclosed a +sample from the native stock, which had grown considerably by this +time. It was her long contemplated apple of discord, and much her hand +trembled as she handed the document up to him. + +But it was impossible on account of the gloom for Fitzpiers to read it +then, while he had the curiosity to do so, and he put it in his pocket. +His imagination having already centred itself on Hintock House, in his +pocket the letter remained unopened and forgotten, all the while that +Marty was hopefully picturing its excellent weaning effect upon him. + +He was not long in reaching the precincts of the Manor House. He drew +rein under a group of dark oaks commanding a view of the front, and +reflected a while. His entry would not be altogether unnatural in the +circumstances of her possible indisposition; but upon the whole he +thought it best to avoid riding up to the door. By silently approaching +he could retreat unobserved in the event of her not being alone. +Thereupon he dismounted, hitched Darling to a stray bough hanging a +little below the general browsing line of the trees, and proceeded to +the door on foot. + +In the mean time Melbury had returned from Shottsford-Forum. The great +court or quadrangle of the timber-merchant’s house, divided from the +shady lane by an ivy-covered wall, was entered by two white gates, one +standing near each extremity of the wall. It so happened that at the +moment when Fitzpiers was riding out at the lower gate on his way to +the Manor House, Melbury was approaching the upper gate to enter it. +Fitzpiers being in front of Melbury was seen by the latter, but the +surgeon, never turning his head, did not observe his father-in-law, +ambling slowly and silently along under the trees, though his horse too +was a gray one. + +“How is Grace?” said his wife, as soon as he entered. + +Melbury looked gloomy. “She is not at all well,” he said. “I don’t like +the looks of her at all. I couldn’t bear the notion of her biding away +in a strange place any longer, and I begged her to let me get her home. +At last she agreed to it, but not till after much persuading. I was +then sorry that I rode over instead of driving; but I have hired a nice +comfortable carriage—the easiest-going I could get—and she’ll be here +in a couple of hours or less. I rode on ahead to tell you to get her +room ready; but I see her husband has come back.” + +“Yes,” said Mrs. Melbury. She expressed her concern that her husband +had hired a carriage all the way from Shottsford. “What it will cost!” +she said. + +“I don’t care what it costs!” he exclaimed, testily. “I was determined +to get her home. Why she went away I can’t think! She acts in a way +that is not at all likely to mend matters as far as I can see.” (Grace +had not told her father of her interview with Mrs. Charmond, and the +disclosure that had been whispered in her startled ear.) “Since Edgar +is come,” he continued, “he might have waited in till I got home, to +ask me how she was, if only for a compliment. I saw him go out; where +is he gone?” + +Mrs. Melbury did not know positively; but she told her husband that +there was not much doubt about the place of his first visit after an +absence. She had, in fact, seen Fitzpiers take the direction of the +Manor House. + +Melbury said no more. It was exasperating to him that just at this +moment, when there was every reason for Fitzpiers to stay indoors, or +at any rate to ride along the Shottsford road to meet his ailing wife, +he should be doing despite to her by going elsewhere. The old man went +out-of-doors again; and his horse being hardly unsaddled as yet, he +told Upjohn to retighten the girths, when he again mounted, and rode +off at the heels of the surgeon. + +By the time that Melbury reached the park, he was prepared to go any +lengths in combating this rank and reckless errantry of his daughter’s +husband. He would fetch home Edgar Fitzpiers to-night by some means, +rough or fair: in his view there could come of his interference nothing +worse than what existed at present. And yet to every bad there is a +worse. + +He had entered by the bridle-gate which admitted to the park on this +side, and cantered over the soft turf almost in the tracks of +Fitzpiers’s horse, till he reached the clump of trees under which his +precursor had halted. The whitish object that was indistinctly visible +here in the gloom of the boughs he found to be Darling, as left by +Fitzpiers. + +“D—n him! why did he not ride up to the house in an honest way?” said +Melbury. + +He profited by Fitzpiers’s example; dismounting, he tied his horse +under an adjoining tree, and went on to the house on foot, as the other +had done. He was no longer disposed to stick at trifles in his +investigation, and did not hesitate to gently open the front door +without ringing. + +The large square hall, with its oak floor, staircase, and wainscot, was +lighted by a dim lamp hanging from a beam. Not a soul was visible. He +went into the corridor and listened at a door which he knew to be that +of the drawing-room; there was no sound, and on turning the handle he +found the room empty. A fire burning low in the grate was the sole +light of the apartment; its beams flashed mockingly on the somewhat +showy Versaillese furniture and gilding here, in style as unlike that +of the structural parts of the building as it was possible to be, and +probably introduced by Felice to counteract the fine old-English gloom +of the place. Disappointed in his hope of confronting his son-in-law +here, he went on to the dining-room; this was without light or fire, +and pervaded by a cold atmosphere, which signified that she had not +dined there that day. + +By this time Melbury’s mood had a little mollified. Everything here was +so pacific, so unaggressive in its repose, that he was no longer +incited to provoke a collision with Fitzpiers or with anybody. The +comparative stateliness of the apartments influenced him to an emotion, +rather than to a belief, that where all was outwardly so good and +proper there could not be quite that delinquency within which he had +suspected. It occurred to him, too, that even if his suspicion were +justified, his abrupt, if not unwarrantable, entry into the house might +end in confounding its inhabitant at the expense of his daughter’s +dignity and his own. Any ill result would be pretty sure to hit Grace +hardest in the long-run. He would, after all, adopt the more rational +course, and plead with Fitzpiers privately, as he had pleaded with Mrs. +Charmond. + +He accordingly retreated as silently as he had come. Passing the door +of the drawing-room anew, he fancied that he heard a noise within which +was not the crackling of the fire. Melbury gently reopened the door to +a distance of a few inches, and saw at the opposite window two figures +in the act of stepping out—a man and a woman—in whom he recognized the +lady of the house and his son-in-law. In a moment they had disappeared +amid the gloom of the lawn. + +He returned into the hall, and let himself out by the carriage-entrance +door, coming round to the lawn front in time to see the two figures +parting at the railing which divided the precincts of the house from +the open park. Mrs. Charmond turned to hasten back immediately that +Fitzpiers had left her side, and he was speedily absorbed into the +duskiness of the trees. + +Melbury waited till Mrs. Charmond had re-entered the drawing-room, and +then followed after Fitzpiers, thinking that he would allow the latter +to mount and ride ahead a little way before overtaking him and giving +him a piece of his mind. His son-in-law might possibly see the second +horse near his own; but that would do him no harm, and might prepare +him for what he was to expect. + +The event, however, was different from the plan. On plunging into the +thick shade of the clump of oaks, he could not perceive his horse +Blossom anywhere; but feeling his way carefully along, he by-and-by +discerned Fitzpiers’s mare Darling still standing as before under the +adjoining tree. For a moment Melbury thought that his own horse, being +young and strong, had broken away from her fastening; but on listening +intently he could hear her ambling comfortably along a little way +ahead, and a creaking of the saddle which showed that she had a rider. +Walking on as far as the small gate in the corner of the park, he met a +laborer, who, in reply to Melbury’s inquiry if he had seen any person +on a gray horse, said that he had only met Dr. Fitzpiers. + +It was just what Melbury had begun to suspect: Fitzpiers had mounted +the mare which did not belong to him in mistake for his own—an +oversight easily explicable, in a man ever unwitting in horse-flesh, by +the darkness of the spot and the near similarity of the animals in +appearance, though Melbury’s was readily enough seen to be the grayer +horse by day. He hastened back, and did what seemed best in the +circumstances—got upon old Darling, and rode rapidly after Fitzpiers. + +Melbury had just entered the wood, and was winding along the cart-way +which led through it, channelled deep in the leaf-mould with large ruts +that were formed by the timber-wagons in fetching the spoil of the +plantations, when all at once he descried in front, at a point where +the road took a turning round a large chestnut-tree, the form of his +own horse Blossom, at which Melbury quickened Darling’s pace, thinking +to come up with Fitzpiers. + +Nearer view revealed that the horse had no rider. At Melbury’s approach +it galloped friskily away under the trees in a homeward direction. +Thinking something was wrong, the timber-merchant dismounted as soon as +he reached the chestnut, and after feeling about for a minute or two +discovered Fitzpiers lying on the ground. + +“Here—help!” cried the latter as soon as he felt Melbury’s touch; “I +have been thrown off, but there’s not much harm done, I think.” + +Since Melbury could not now very well read the younger man the lecture +he had intended, and as friendliness would be hypocrisy, his instinct +was to speak not a single word to his son-in-law. He raised Fitzpiers +into a sitting posture, and found that he was a little stunned and +stupefied, but, as he had said, not otherwise hurt. How this fall had +come about was readily conjecturable: Fitzpiers, imagining there was +only old Darling under him, had been taken unawares by the younger +horse’s sprightliness. + +Melbury was a traveller of the old-fashioned sort; having just come +from Shottsford-Forum, he still had in his pocket the pilgrim’s flask +of rum which he always carried on journeys exceeding a dozen miles, +though he seldom drank much of it. He poured it down the surgeon’s +throat, with such effect that he quickly revived. Melbury got him on +his legs; but the question was what to do with him. He could not walk +more than a few steps, and the other horse had gone away. + +With great exertion Melbury contrived to get him astride Darling, +mounting himself behind, and holding Fitzpiers round his waist with one +arm. Darling being broad, straight-backed, and high in the withers, was +well able to carry double, at any rate as far as Hintock, and at a +gentle pace. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + + +The mare paced along with firm and cautious tread through the copse +where Winterborne had worked, and into the heavier soil where the oaks +grew; past Great Willy, the largest oak in the wood, and thence towards +Nellcombe Bottom, intensely dark now with overgrowth, and popularly +supposed to be haunted by the spirits of the fratricides exorcised from +Hintock House. + +By this time Fitzpiers was quite recovered as to physical strength. But +he had eaten nothing since making a hasty breakfast in London that +morning, his anxiety about Felice having hurried him away from home +before dining; as a consequence, the old rum administered by his +father-in-law flew to the young man’s head and loosened his tongue, +without his ever having recognized who it was that had lent him a +kindly hand. He began to speak in desultory sentences, Melbury still +supporting him. + +“I’ve come all the way from London to-day,” said Fitzpiers. “Ah, that’s +the place to meet your equals. I live at Hintock—worse, at Little +Hintock—and I am quite lost there. There’s not a man within ten miles +of Hintock who can comprehend me. I tell you, Farmer What’s-your-name, +that I’m a man of education. I know several languages; the poets and I +are familiar friends; I used to read more in metaphysics than anybody +within fifty miles; and since I gave that up there’s nobody can match +me in the whole county of Wessex as a scientist. Yet I an doomed to +live with tradespeople in a miserable little hole like Hintock!” + +“Indeed!” muttered Melbury. + +Fitzpiers, increasingly energized by the alcohol, here reared himself +up suddenly from the bowed posture he had hitherto held, thrusting his +shoulders so violently against Melbury’s breast as to make it difficult +for the old man to keep a hold on the reins. “People don’t appreciate +me here!” the surgeon exclaimed; lowering his voice, he added, softly +and slowly, “except one—except one!...A passionate soul, as warm as she +is clever, as beautiful as she is warm, and as rich as she is +beautiful. I say, old fellow, those claws of yours clutch me rather +tight—rather like the eagle’s, you know, that ate out the liver of +Pro—Pre—the man on Mount Caucasus. People don’t appreciate me, I say, +except _her!_ Ah, gods, I am an unlucky man! She would have been mine, +she would have taken my name; but unfortunately it cannot be so. I +stooped to mate beneath me, and now I rue it.” + +The position was becoming a very trying one for Melbury, corporeally +and mentally. He was obliged to steady Fitzpiers with his left arm, and +he began to hate the contact. He hardly knew what to do. It was useless +to remonstrate with Fitzpiers, in his intellectual confusion from the +rum and from the fall. He remained silent, his hold upon his companion, +however, being stern rather than compassionate. + +“You hurt me a little, farmer—though I am much obliged to you for your +kindness. People don’t appreciate me, I say. Between ourselves, I am +losing my practice here; and why? Because I see matchless attraction +where matchless attraction is, both in person and position. I mention +no names, so nobody will be the wiser. But I have lost her, in a +legitimate sense, that is. If I were a free man now, things have come +to such a pass that she could not refuse me; while with her fortune +(which I don’t covet for itself) I should have a chance of satisfying +an honorable ambition—a chance I have never had yet, and now never, +never shall have, probably!” + +Melbury, his heart throbbing against the other’s backbone, and his +brain on fire with indignation, ventured to mutter huskily, “Why?” + +The horse ambled on some steps before Fitzpiers replied, “Because I am +tied and bound to another by law, as tightly as I am to you by your +arm—not that I complain of your arm—I thank you for helping me. Well, +where are we? Not nearly home yet?...Home, say I. It _is_ a home! When +I might have been at the other house over there.” In a stupefied way he +flung his hand in the direction of the park. “I was just two months too +early in committing myself. Had I only seen the other first—” + +Here the old man’s arm gave Fitzpiers a convulsive shake. “What are you +doing?” continued the latter. “Keep still, please, or put me down. I +was saying that I lost her by a mere little two months! There is no +chance for me now in this world, and it makes me reckless—reckless! +Unless, indeed, anything should happen to the other one. She is amiable +enough; but if anything should happen to her—and I hear she is +ill—well, if it _should_, I should be free—and my fame, my happiness, +would be insured.” + +These were the last words that Fitzpiers uttered in his seat in front +of the timber-merchant. Unable longer to master himself, Melbury, the +skin of his face compressed, whipped away his spare arm from +Fitzpiers’s waist, and seized him by the collar. + +“You heartless villain—after all that we have done for ye!” he cried, +with a quivering lip. “And the money of hers that you’ve had, and the +roof we’ve provided to shelter ye! It is to me, George Melbury, that +you dare to talk like that!” The exclamation was accompanied by a +powerful swing from the shoulder, which flung the young man head-long +into the road, Fitzpiers fell with a heavy thud upon the stumps of some +undergrowth which had been cut during the winter preceding. Darling +continued her walk for a few paces farther and stopped. + +“God forgive me!” Melbury murmured, repenting of what he had done. “He +tried me too sorely; and now perhaps I’ve murdered him!” + +He turned round in the saddle and looked towards the spot on which +Fitzpiers had fallen. To his great surprise he beheld the surgeon rise +to his feet with a bound, as if unhurt, and walk away rapidly under the +trees. + +Melbury listened till the rustle of Fitzpiers’s footsteps died away. +“It might have been a crime, but for the mercy of Providence in +providing leaves for his fall,” he said to himself. And then his mind +reverted to the words of Fitzpiers, and his indignation so mounted +within him that he almost wished the fall had put an end to the young +man there and then. + +He had not ridden far when he discerned his own gray mare standing +under some bushes. Leaving Darling for a moment, Melbury went forward +and easily caught the younger animal, now disheartened at its freak. He +then made the pair of them fast to a tree, and turning back, endeavored +to find some trace of Fitzpiers, feeling pitifully that, after all, he +had gone further than he intended with the offender. + +But though he threaded the wood hither and thither, his toes ploughing +layer after layer of the little horny scrolls that had once been +leaves, he could not find him. He stood still listening and looking +round. The breeze was oozing through the network of boughs as through a +strainer; the trunks and larger branches stood against the light of the +sky in the forms of writhing men, gigantic candelabra, pikes, halberds, +lances, and whatever besides the fancy chose to make of them. Giving up +the search, Melbury came back to the horses, and walked slowly +homeward, leading one in each hand. + +It happened that on this self-same evening a boy had been returning +from Great to Little Hintock about the time of Fitzpiers’s and +Melbury’s passage home along that route. A horse-collar that had been +left at the harness-mender’s to be repaired was required for use at +five o’clock next morning, and in consequence the boy had to fetch it +overnight. He put his head through the collar, and accompanied his walk +by whistling the one tune he knew, as an antidote to fear. + +The boy suddenly became aware of a horse trotting rather friskily along +the track behind him, and not knowing whether to expect friend or foe, +prudence suggested that he should cease his whistling and retreat among +the trees till the horse and his rider had gone by; a course to which +he was still more inclined when he found how noiselessly they +approached, and saw that the horse looked pale, and remembered what he +had read about Death in the Revelation. He therefore deposited the +collar by a tree, and hid himself behind it. The horseman came on, and +the youth, whose eyes were as keen as telescopes, to his great relief +recognized the doctor. + +As Melbury surmised, Fitzpiers had in the darkness taken Blossom for +Darling, and he had not discovered his mistake when he came up opposite +the boy, though he was somewhat surprised at the liveliness of his +usually placid mare. The only other pair of eyes on the spot whose +vision was keen as the young carter’s were those of the horse; and, +with that strongly conservative objection to the unusual which animals +show, Blossom, on eying the collar under the tree—quite invisible to +Fitzpiers—exercised none of the patience of the older horse, but shied +sufficiently to unseat so second-rate an equestrian as the surgeon. + +He fell, and did not move, lying as Melbury afterwards found him. The +boy ran away, salving his conscience for the desertion by thinking how +vigorously he would spread the alarm of the accident when he got to +Hintock—which he uncompromisingly did, incrusting the skeleton event +with a load of dramatic horrors. + +Grace had returned, and the fly hired on her account, though not by her +husband, at the Crown Hotel, Shottsford-Forum, had been paid for and +dismissed. The long drive had somewhat revived her, her illness being a +feverish intermittent nervousness which had more to do with mind than +body, and she walked about her sitting-room in something of a hopeful +mood. Mrs. Melbury had told her as soon as she arrived that her husband +had returned from London. He had gone out, she said, to see a patient, +as she supposed, and he must soon be back, since he had had no dinner +or tea. Grace would not allow her mind to harbor any suspicion of his +whereabouts, and her step-mother said nothing of Mrs. Charmond’s +rumored sorrows and plans of departure. + +So the young wife sat by the fire, waiting silently. She had left +Hintock in a turmoil of feeling after the revelation of Mrs. Charmond, +and had intended not to be at home when her husband returned. But she +had thought the matter over, and had allowed her father’s influence to +prevail and bring her back; and now somewhat regretted that Edgar’s +arrival had preceded hers. + +By-and-by Mrs. Melbury came up-stairs with a slight air of flurry and +abruptness. + +“I have something to tell—some bad news,” she said. “But you must not +be alarmed, as it is not so bad as it might have been. Edgar has been +thrown off his horse. We don’t think he is hurt much. It happened in +the wood the other side of Nellcombe Bottom, where ’tis said the ghosts +of the brothers walk.” + +She went on to give a few of the particulars, but none of the invented +horrors that had been communicated by the boy. “I thought it better to +tell you at once,” she added, “in case he should not be very well able +to walk home, and somebody should bring him.” + +Mrs. Melbury really thought matters much worse than she represented, +and Grace knew that she thought so. She sat down dazed for a few +minutes, returning a negative to her step-mother’s inquiry if she could +do anything for her. “But please go into the bedroom,” Grace said, on +second thoughts, “and see if all is ready there—in case it is serious.” +Mrs. Melbury thereupon called Grammer, and they did as directed, +supplying the room with everything they could think of for the +accommodation of an injured man. + +Nobody was left in the lower part of the house. Not many minutes passed +when Grace heard a knock at the door—a single knock, not loud enough to +reach the ears of those in the bedroom. She went to the top of the +stairs and said, faintly, “Come up,” knowing that the door stood, as +usual in such houses, wide open. + +Retreating into the gloom of the broad landing she saw rise up the +stairs a woman whom at first she did not recognize, till her voice +revealed her to be Suke Damson, in great fright and sorrow. A streak of +light from the partially closed door of Grace’s room fell upon her face +as she came forward, and it was drawn and pale. + +“Oh, Miss Melbury—I would say Mrs. Fitzpiers,” she said, wringing her +hands. “This terrible news. Is he dead? Is he hurted very bad? Tell me; +I couldn’t help coming; please forgive me, Miss Melbury—Mrs. Fitzpiers +I would say!” + +Grace sank down on the oak chest which stood on the landing, and put +her hands to her now flushed face and head. Could she order Suke Damson +down-stairs and out of the house? Her husband might be brought in at +any moment, and what would happen? But could she order this genuinely +grieved woman away? + +There was a dead silence of half a minute or so, till Suke said, “Why +don’t ye speak? Is he here? Is he dead? If so, why can’t I see +him—would it be so very wrong?” + +Before Grace had answered somebody else came to the door below—a +foot-fall light as a roe’s. There was a hurried tapping upon the panel, +as if with the impatient tips of fingers whose owner thought not +whether a knocker were there or no. Without a pause, and possibly +guided by the stray beam of light on the landing, the newcomer ascended +the staircase as the first had done. Grace was sufficiently visible, +and the lady, for a lady it was, came to her side. + +“I could make nobody hear down-stairs,” said Felice Charmond, with lips +whose dryness could almost be heard, and panting, as she stood like one +ready to sink on the floor with distress. “What is—the matter—tell me +the worst! Can he live?” She looked at Grace imploringly, without +perceiving poor Suke, who, dismayed at such a presence, had shrunk away +into the shade. + +Mrs. Charmond’s little feet were covered with mud; she was quite +unconscious of her appearance now. “I have heard such a dreadful +report,” she went on; “I came to ascertain the truth of it. Is +he—killed?” + +“She won’t tell us—he’s dying—he’s in that room!” burst out Suke, +regardless of consequences, as she heard the distant movements of Mrs. +Melbury and Grammer in the bedroom at the end of the passage. + +“Where?” said Mrs. Charmond; and on Suke pointing out the direction, +she made as if to go thither. + +Grace barred the way. “He is not there,” she said. “I have not seen him +any more than you. I have heard a report only—not so bad as you think. +It must have been exaggerated to you.” + +“Please do not conceal anything—let me know all!” said Felice, +doubtingly. + +“You shall know all I know—you have a perfect right to know—who can +have a better than either of you?” said Grace, with a delicate sting +which was lost upon Felice Charmond now. “I repeat, I have only heard a +less alarming account than you have heard; how much it means, and how +little, I cannot say. I pray God that it means not much—in common +humanity. You probably pray the same—_for other reasons_.” + +She regarded them both there in the dim light a while. + +They stood dumb in their trouble, not stinging back at her; not heeding +her mood. A tenderness spread over Grace like a dew. It was well, very +well, conventionally, to address either one of them in the wife’s +regulation terms of virtuous sarcasm, as woman, creature, or thing, for +losing their hearts to her husband. But life, what was it, and who was +she? She had, like the singer of the psalm of Asaph, been plagued and +chastened all the day long; but could she, by retributive words, in +order to please herself—the individual—“offend against the generation,” +as he would not? + +“He is dying, perhaps,” blubbered Suke Damson, putting her apron to her +eyes. + +In their gestures and faces there were anxieties, affection, agony of +heart, all for a man who had wronged them—had never really behaved +towards either of them anyhow but selfishly. Neither one but would have +wellnigh sacrificed half her life to him, even now. The tears which his +possibly critical situation could not bring to her eyes surged over at +the contemplation of these fellow-women. She turned to the balustrade, +bent herself upon it, and wept. + +Thereupon Felice began to cry also, without using her handkerchief, and +letting the tears run down silently. While these three poor women stood +together thus, pitying another though most to be pitied themselves, the +pacing of a horse or horses became audible in the court, and in a +moment Melbury’s voice was heard calling to his stableman. Grace at +once started up, ran down the stairs and out into the quadrangle as her +father crossed it towards the door. “Father, what is the matter with +him?” she cried. + +“Who—Edgar?” said Melbury, abruptly. “Matter? Nothing. What, my dear, +and have you got home safe? Why, you are better already! But you ought +not to be out in the air like this.” + +“But he has been thrown off his horse!” + +“I know; I know. I saw it. He got up again, and walked off as well as +ever. A fall on the leaves didn’t hurt a spry fellow like him. He did +not come this way,” he added, significantly. “I suppose he went to look +for his horse. I tried to find him, but could not. But after seeing him +go away under the trees I found the horse, and have led it home for +safety. So he must walk. Now, don’t you stay out here in this night +air.” + +She returned to the house with her father. When she had again ascended +to the landing and to her own rooms beyond it was a great relief to her +to find that both Petticoat the First and Petticoat the Second of her +_Bien-aimé_ had silently disappeared. They had, in all probability, +heard the words of her father, and departed with their anxieties +relieved. + +Presently her parents came up to Grace, and busied themselves to see +that she was comfortable. Perceiving soon that she would prefer to be +left alone they went away. + +Grace waited on. The clock raised its voice now and then, but her +husband did not return. At her father’s usual hour for retiring he +again came in to see her. “Do not stay up,” she said, as soon as he +entered. “I am not at all tired. I will sit up for him.” + +“I think it will be useless, Grace,” said Melbury, slowly. + +“Why?” + +“I have had a bitter quarrel with him; and on that account I hardly +think he will return to-night.” + +“A quarrel? Was that after the fall seen by the boy?” + +Melbury nodded an affirmative, without taking his eyes off the candle. + +“Yes; it was as we were coming home together,” he said. + +Something had been swelling up in Grace while her father was speaking. +“How could you want to quarrel with him?” she cried, suddenly. “Why +could you not let him come home quietly if he were inclined to? He is +my husband; and now you have married me to him surely you need not +provoke him unnecessarily. First you induce me to accept him, and then +you do things that divide us more than we should naturally be divided!” + +“How can you speak so unjustly to me, Grace?” said Melbury, with +indignant sorrow. “_I_ divide you from your husband, indeed! You little +think—” + +He was inclined to say more—to tell her the whole story of the +encounter, and that the provocation he had received had lain entirely +in hearing her despised. But it would have greatly distressed her, and +he forbore. “You had better lie down. You are tired,” he said, +soothingly. “Good-night.” + +The household went to bed, and a silence fell upon the dwelling, broken +only by the occasional skirr of a halter in Melbury’s stables. Despite +her father’s advice Grace still waited up. But nobody came. + +It was a critical time in Grace’s emotional life that night. She +thought of her husband a good deal, and for the nonce forgot +Winterborne. + +“How these unhappy women must have admired Edgar!” she said to herself. +“How attractive he must be to everybody; and, indeed, he is +attractive.” The possibility is that, piqued by rivalry, these ideas +might have been transformed into their corresponding emotions by a show +of the least reciprocity in Fitzpiers. There was, in truth, a love-bird +yearning to fly from her heart; and it wanted a lodging badly. + +But no husband came. The fact was that Melbury had been much mistaken +about the condition of Fitzpiers. People do not fall headlong on stumps +of underwood with impunity. Had the old man been able to watch +Fitzpiers narrowly enough, he would have observed that on rising and +walking into the thicket he dropped blood as he went; that he had not +proceeded fifty yards before he showed signs of being dizzy, and, +raising his hands to his head, reeled and fell down. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + + +Grace was not the only one who watched and meditated in Hintock that +night. Felice Charmond was in no mood to retire to rest at a customary +hour; and over her drawing-room fire at the Manor House she sat as +motionless and in as deep a reverie as Grace in her little apartment at +the homestead. + +Having caught ear of Melbury’s intelligence while she stood on the +landing at his house, and been eased of much of her mental distress, +her sense of personal decorum returned upon her with a rush. She +descended the stairs and left the door like a ghost, keeping close to +the walls of the building till she got round to the gate of the +quadrangle, through which she noiselessly passed almost before Grace +and her father had finished their discourse. Suke Damson had thought it +well to imitate her superior in this respect, and, descending the back +stairs as Felice descended the front, went out at the side door and +home to her cottage. + +Once outside Melbury’s gates Mrs. Charmond ran with all her speed to +the Manor House, without stopping or turning her head, and splitting +her thin boots in her haste. She entered her own dwelling, as she had +emerged from it, by the drawing-room window. In other circumstances she +would have felt some timidity at undertaking such an unpremeditated +excursion alone; but her anxiety for another had cast out her fear for +herself. + +Everything in her drawing-room was just as she had left it—the candles +still burning, the casement closed, and the shutters gently pulled to, +so as to hide the state of the window from the cursory glance of a +servant entering the apartment. She had been gone about three-quarters +of an hour by the clock, and nobody seemed to have discovered her +absence. Tired in body but tense in mind, she sat down, palpitating, +round-eyed, bewildered at what she had done. + +She had been betrayed by affrighted love into a visit which, now that +the emotion instigating it had calmed down under her belief that +Fitzpiers was in no danger, was the saddest surprise to her. This was +how she had set about doing her best to escape her passionate bondage +to him! Somehow, in declaring to Grace and to herself the unseemliness +of her infatuation, she had grown a convert to its irresistibility. If +Heaven would only give her strength; but Heaven never did! One thing +was indispensable; she must go away from Hintock if she meant to +withstand further temptation. The struggle was too wearying, too +hopeless, while she remained. It was but a continual capitulation of +conscience to what she dared not name. + +By degrees, as she sat, Felice’s mind—helped perhaps by the anticlimax +of learning that her lover was unharmed after all her fright about +him—grew wondrously strong in wise resolve. For the moment she was in a +mood, in the words of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, “to run mad with +discretion;” and was so persuaded that discretion lay in departure that +she wished to set about going that very minute. Jumping up from her +seat, she began to gather together some small personal knick-knacks +scattered about the room, to feel that preparations were really in +train. + +While moving here and there she fancied that she heard a slight noise +out-of-doors, and stood still. Surely it was a tapping at the window. A +thought entered her mind, and burned her cheek. He had come to that +window before; yet was it possible that he should dare to do so now! +All the servants were in bed, and in the ordinary course of affairs she +would have retired also. Then she remembered that on stepping in by the +casement and closing it, she had not fastened the window-shutter, so +that a streak of light from the interior of the room might have +revealed her vigil to an observer on the lawn. How all things conspired +against her keeping faith with Grace! + +The tapping recommenced, light as from the bill of a little bird; her +illegitimate hope overcame her vow; she went and pulled back the +shutter, determining, however, to shake her head at him and keep the +casement securely closed. + +What she saw outside might have struck terror into a heart stouter than +a helpless woman’s at midnight. In the centre of the lowest pane of the +window, close to the glass, was a human face, which she barely +recognized as the face of Fitzpiers. It was surrounded with the +darkness of the night without, corpse-like in its pallor, and covered +with blood. As disclosed in the square area of the pane it met her +frightened eyes like a replica of the Sudarium of St. Veronica. + +He moved his lips, and looked at her imploringly. Her rapid mind pieced +together in an instant a possible concatenation of events which might +have led to this tragical issue. She unlatched the casement with a +terrified hand, and bending down to where he was crouching, pressed her +face to his with passionate solicitude. She assisted him into the room +without a word, to do which it was almost necessary to lift him bodily. +Quickly closing the window and fastening the shutters, she bent over +him breathlessly. + +“Are you hurt much—much?” she cried, faintly. “Oh, oh, how is this!” + +“Rather much—but don’t be frightened,” he answered in a difficult +whisper, and turning himself to obtain an easier position if possible. +“A little water, please.” + +She ran across into the dining-room, and brought a bottle and glass, +from which he eagerly drank. He could then speak much better, and with +her help got upon the nearest couch. + +“Are you dying, Edgar?” she said. “Do speak to me!” + +“I am half dead,” said Fitzpiers. “But perhaps I shall get over +it....It is chiefly loss of blood.” + +“But I thought your fall did not hurt you,” said she. “Who did this?” + +“Felice—my father-in-law!...I have crawled to you more than a mile on +my hands and knees—God, I thought I should never have got here!...I +have come to you—be-cause you are the only friend—I have in the world +now....I can never go back to Hintock—never—to the roof of the +Melburys! Not poppy nor mandragora will ever medicine this bitter +feud!...If I were only well again—” + +“Let me bind your head, now that you have rested.” + +“Yes—but wait a moment—it has stopped bleeding, fortunately, or I +should be a dead man before now. While in the wood I managed to make a +tourniquet of some half-pence and my handkerchief, as well as I could +in the dark....But listen, dear Felice! Can you hide me till I am well? +Whatever comes, I can be seen in Hintock no more. My practice is nearly +gone, you know—and after this I would not care to recover it if I +could.” + +By this time Felice’s tears began to blind her. Where were now her +discreet plans for sundering their lives forever? To administer to him +in his pain, and trouble, and poverty, was her single thought. The +first step was to hide him, and she asked herself where. A place +occurred to her mind. + +She got him some wine from the dining-room, which strengthened him +much. Then she managed to remove his boots, and, as he could now keep +himself upright by leaning upon her on one side and a walking-stick on +the other, they went thus in slow march out of the room and up the +stairs. At the top she took him along a gallery, pausing whenever he +required rest, and thence up a smaller staircase to the least used part +of the house, where she unlocked a door. Within was a lumber-room, +containing abandoned furniture of all descriptions, built up in piles +which obscured the light of the windows, and formed between them nooks +and lairs in which a person would not be discerned even should an eye +gaze in at the door. The articles were mainly those that had belonged +to the previous owner of the house, and had been bought in by the late +Mr. Charmond at the auction; but changing fashion, and the tastes of a +young wife, had caused them to be relegated to this dungeon. + +Here Fitzpiers sat on the floor against the wall till she had hauled +out materials for a bed, which she spread on the floor in one of the +aforesaid nooks. She obtained water and a basin, and washed the dried +blood from his face and hands; and when he was comfortably reclining, +fetched food from the larder. While he ate her eyes lingered anxiously +on his face, following its every movement with such loving-kindness as +only a fond woman can show. + +He was now in better condition, and discussed his position with her. + +“What I fancy I said to Melbury must have been enough to enrage any +man, if uttered in cold blood, and with knowledge of his presence. But +I did not know him, and I was stupefied by what he had given me, so +that I hardly was aware of what I said. Well—the veil of that temple is +rent in twain!...As I am not going to be seen again in Hintock, my +first efforts must be directed to allay any alarm that may be felt at +my absence, before I am able to get clear away. Nobody must suspect +that I have been hurt, or there will be a country talk about me. +Felice, I must at once concoct a letter to check all search for me. I +think if you can bring me a pen and paper I may be able to do it now. I +could rest better if it were done. Poor thing! how I tire her with +running up and down!” + +She fetched writing materials, and held up the blotting-book as a +support to his hand, while he penned a brief note to his nominal wife. + +“The animosity shown towards me by your father,” he wrote, in this +coldest of marital epistles, “is such that I cannot return again to a +roof which is his, even though it shelters you. A parting is +unavoidable, as you are sure to be on his side in this division. I am +starting on a journey which will take me a long way from Hintock, and +you must not expect to see me there again for some time.” + +He then gave her a few directions bearing upon his professional +engagements and other practical matters, concluding without a hint of +his destination, or a notion of when she would see him again. He +offered to read the note to Felice before he closed it up, but she +would not hear or see it; that side of his obligations distressed her +beyond endurance. She turned away from Fitzpiers, and sobbed bitterly. + +“If you can get this posted at a place some miles away,” he whispered, +exhausted by the effort of writing—“at Shottsford or Port-Bredy, or +still better, Budmouth—it will divert all suspicion from this house as +the place of my refuge.” + +“I will drive to one or other of the places myself—anything to keep it +unknown,” she murmured, her voice weighted with vague foreboding, now +that the excitement of helping him had passed away. + +Fitzpiers told her that there was yet one thing more to be done. “In +creeping over the fence on to the lawn,” he said, “I made the rail +bloody, and it shows rather much on the white paint—I could see it in +the dark. At all hazards it should be washed off. Could you do that +also, Felice?” + +What will not women do on such devoted occasions? weary as she was she +went all the way down the rambling staircases to the ground-floor, then +to search for a lantern, which she lighted and hid under her cloak; +then for a wet sponge, and next went forth into the night. The white +railing stared out in the darkness at her approach, and a ray from the +enshrouded lantern fell upon the blood—just where he had told her it +would be found. She shuddered. It was almost too much to bear in one +day—but with a shaking hand she sponged the rail clean, and returned to +the house. + +The time occupied by these several proceedings was not much less than +two hours. When all was done, and she had smoothed his extemporized +bed, and placed everything within his reach that she could think of, +she took her leave of him, and locked him in. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + + +When her husband’s letter reached Grace’s hands, bearing upon it the +postmark of a distant town, it never once crossed her mind that +Fitzpiers was within a mile of her still. She felt relieved that he did +not write more bitterly of the quarrel with her father, whatever its +nature might have been; but the general frigidity of his communication +quenched in her the incipient spark that events had kindled so shortly +before. + +From this centre of information it was made known in Hintock that the +doctor had gone away, and as none but the Melbury household was aware +that he did not return on the night of his accident, no excitement +manifested itself in the village. + +Thus the early days of May passed by. None but the nocturnal birds and +animals observed that late one evening, towards the middle of the +month, a closely wrapped figure, with a crutch under one arm and a +stick in his hand, crept out from Hintock House across the lawn to the +shelter of the trees, taking thence a slow and laborious walk to the +nearest point of the turnpike-road. The mysterious personage was so +disguised that his own wife would hardly have known him. Felice +Charmond was a practised hand at make-ups, as well she might be; and +she had done her utmost in padding and painting Fitzpiers with the old +materials of her art in the recesses of the lumber-room. + +In the highway he was met by a covered carriage, which conveyed him to +Sherton-Abbas, whence he proceeded to the nearest port on the south +coast, and immediately crossed the Channel. + +But it was known to everybody that three days after this time Mrs. +Charmond executed her long-deferred plan of setting out for a long term +of travel and residence on the Continent. She went off one morning as +unostentatiously as could be, and took no maid with her, having, she +said, engaged one to meet her at a point farther on in her route. After +that, Hintock House, so frequently deserted, was again to be let. +Spring had not merged in summer when a clinching rumor, founded on the +best of evidence, reached the parish and neighborhood. Mrs. Charmond +and Fitzpiers had been seen together in Baden, in relations which set +at rest the question that had agitated the little community ever since +the winter. + +Melbury had entered the Valley of Humiliation even farther than Grace. +His spirit seemed broken. + +But once a week he mechanically went to market as usual, and here, as +he was passing by the conduit one day, his mental condition expressed +largely by his gait, he heard his name spoken by a voice formerly +familiar. He turned and saw a certain Fred Beaucock—once a promising +lawyer’s clerk and local dandy, who had been called the cleverest +fellow in Sherton, without whose brains the firm of solicitors +employing him would be nowhere. But later on Beaucock had fallen into +the mire. He was invited out a good deal, sang songs at agricultural +meetings and burgesses’ dinners; in sum, victualled himself with +spirits more frequently than was good for the clever brains or body +either. He lost his situation, and after an absence spent in trying his +powers elsewhere, came back to his native town, where, at the time of +the foregoing events in Hintock, he gave legal advice for astonishingly +small fees—mostly carrying on his profession on public-house settles, +in whose recesses he might often have been overheard making +country-people’s wills for half a crown; calling with a learned voice +for pen-and-ink and a halfpenny sheet of paper, on which he drew up the +testament while resting it in a little space wiped with his hand on the +table amid the liquid circles formed by the cups and glasses. An idea +implanted early in life is difficult to uproot, and many elderly +tradespeople still clung to the notion that Fred Beaucock knew a great +deal of law. + +It was he who had called Melbury by name. “You look very down, Mr. +Melbury—very, if I may say as much,” he observed, when the +timber-merchant turned. “But I know—I know. A very sad case—very. I was +bred to the law, as you know, and am professionally no stranger to such +matters. Well, Mrs. Fitzpiers has her remedy.” + +“How—what—a remedy?” said Melbury. + +“Under the new law, sir. A new court was established last year, and +under the new statute, twenty and twenty-one Vic., cap. eighty-five, +unmarrying is as easy as marrying. No more Acts of Parliament +necessary; no longer one law for the rich and another for the poor. But +come inside—I was just going to have a nibleykin of rum hot—I’ll +explain it all to you.” + +The intelligence amazed Melbury, who saw little of newspapers. And +though he was a severely correct man in his habits, and had no taste +for entering a tavern with Fred Beaucock—nay, would have been quite +uninfluenced by such a character on any other matter in the world—such +fascination lay in the idea of delivering his poor girl from bondage, +that it deprived him of the critical faculty. He could not resist the +ex-lawyer’s clerk, and entered the inn. + +Here they sat down to the rum, which Melbury paid for as a matter of +course, Beaucock leaning back in the settle with a legal gravity which +would hardly allow him to be conscious of the spirits before him, +though they nevertheless disappeared with mysterious quickness. + +How much of the exaggerated information on the then new divorce laws +which Beaucock imparted to his listener was the result of ignorance, +and how much of dupery, was never ascertained. But he related such a +plausible story of the ease with which Grace could become a free woman +that her father was irradiated with the project; and though he scarcely +wetted his lips, Melbury never knew how he came out of the inn, or when +or where he mounted his gig to pursue his way homeward. But home he +found himself, his brain having all the way seemed to ring sonorously +as a gong in the intensity of its stir. Before he had seen Grace, he +was accidentally met by Winterborne, who found his face shining as if +he had, like the Law-giver, conversed with an angel. + +He relinquished his horse, and took Winterborne by the arm to a heap of +rendlewood—as barked oak was here called—which lay under a +privet-hedge. + +“Giles,” he said, when they had sat down upon the logs, “there’s a new +law in the land! Grace can be free quite easily. I only knew it by the +merest accident. I might not have found it out for the next ten years. +She can get rid of him—d’ye hear?—get rid of him. Think of that, my +friend Giles!” + +He related what he had learned of the new legal remedy. A subdued +tremulousness about the mouth was all the response that Winterborne +made; and Melbury added, “My boy, you shall have her yet—if you want +her.” His feelings had gathered volume as he said this, and the +articulate sound of the old idea drowned his sight in mist. + +“Are you sure—about this new law?” asked Winterborne, so disquieted by +a gigantic exultation which loomed alternately with fearful doubt that +he evaded the full acceptance of Melbury’s last statement. + +Melbury said that he had no manner of doubt, for since his talk with +Beaucock it had come into his mind that he had seen some time ago in +the weekly paper an allusion to such a legal change; but, having no +interest in those desperate remedies at the moment, he had passed it +over. “But I’m not going to let the matter rest doubtful for a single +day,” he continued. “I am going to London. Beaucock will go with me, +and we shall get the best advice as soon as we possibly can. Beaucock +is a thorough lawyer—nothing the matter with him but a fiery palate. I +knew him as the stay and refuge of Sherton in knots of law at one +time.” + +Winterborne’s replies were of the vaguest. The new possibility was +almost unthinkable by him at the moment. He was what was called at +Hintock “a solid-going fellow;” he maintained his abeyant mood, not +from want of reciprocity, but from a taciturn hesitancy, taught by life +as he knew it. + +“But,” continued the timber-merchant, a temporary crease or two of +anxiety supplementing those already established in his forehead by time +and care, “Grace is not at all well. Nothing constitutional, you know; +but she has been in a low, nervous state ever since that night of +fright. I don’t doubt but that she will be all right soon....I wonder +how she is this evening?” He rose with the words, as if he had too long +forgotten her personality in the excitement of her previsioned career. + +They had sat till the evening was beginning to dye the garden brown, +and now went towards Melbury’s house, Giles a few steps in the rear of +his old friend, who was stimulated by the enthusiasm of the moment to +outstep the ordinary walking of Winterborne. He felt shy of entering +Grace’s presence as her reconstituted lover—which was how her father’s +manner would be sure to present him—before definite information as to +her future state was forthcoming; it seemed too nearly like the act of +those who rush in where angels fear to tread. + +A chill to counterbalance all the glowing promise of the day was prompt +enough in coming. No sooner had he followed the timber-merchant in at +the door than he heard Grammer inform him that Mrs. Fitzpiers was still +more unwell than she had been in the morning. Old Dr. Jones being in +the neighborhood they had called him in, and he had instantly directed +them to get her to bed. They were not, however, to consider her illness +serious—a feverish, nervous attack the result of recent events, was +what she was suffering from, and she would doubtless be well in a few +days. + +Winterborne, therefore, did not remain, and his hope of seeing her that +evening was disappointed. Even this aggravation of her morning +condition did not greatly depress Melbury. He knew, he said, that his +daughter’s constitution was sound enough. It was only these domestic +troubles that were pulling her down. Once free she would be blooming +again. Melbury diagnosed rightly, as parents usually do. + +He set out for London the next morning, Jones having paid another visit +and assured him that he might leave home without uneasiness, especially +on an errand of that sort, which would the sooner put an end to her +suspense. + +The timber-merchant had been away only a day or two when it was told in +Hintock that Mr. Fitzpiers’s hat had been found in the wood. Later on +in the afternoon the hat was brought to Melbury, and, by a piece of +ill-fortune, into Grace’s presence. It had doubtless lain in the wood +ever since his fall from the horse, but it looked so clean and +uninjured—the summer weather and leafy shelter having much favored its +preservation—that Grace could not believe it had remained so long +concealed. A very little of fact was enough to set her fevered fancy at +work at this juncture; she thought him still in the neighborhood; she +feared his sudden appearance; and her nervous malady developed +consequences so grave that Dr. Jones began to look serious, and the +household was alarmed. + +It was the beginning of June, and the cuckoo at this time of the summer +scarcely ceased his cry for more than two or three hours during the +night. The bird’s note, so familiar to her ears from infancy, was now +absolute torture to the poor girl. On the Friday following the +Wednesday of Melbury’s departure, and the day after the discovery of +Fitzpiers’s hat, the cuckoo began at two o’clock in the morning with a +sudden cry from one of Melbury’s apple-trees, not three yards from the +window of Grace’s room. + +“Oh, he is coming!” she cried, and in her terror sprang clean from the +bed out upon the floor. + +These starts and frights continued till noon; and when the doctor had +arrived and had seen her, and had talked with Mrs. Melbury, he sat down +and meditated. That ever-present terror it was indispensable to remove +from her mind at all hazards; and he thought how this might be done. + +Without saying a word to anybody in the house, or to the disquieted +Winterborne waiting in the lane below, Dr. Jones went home and wrote to +Mr. Melbury at the London address he had obtained from his wife. The +gist of his communication was that Mrs. Fitzpiers should be assured as +soon as possible that steps were being taken to sever the bond which +was becoming a torture to her; that she would soon be free, and was +even then virtually so. “If you can say it _at once_ it may be the +means of averting much harm,” he said. “Write to herself; not to me.” + +On Saturday he drove over to Hintock, and assured her with mysterious +pacifications that in a day or two she might expect to receive some +assuring news. So it turned out. When Sunday morning came there was a +letter for Grace from her father. It arrived at seven o’clock, the +usual time at which the toddling postman passed by Hintock; at eight +Grace awoke, having slept an hour or two for a wonder, and Mrs. Melbury +brought up the letter. + +“Can you open it yourself?” said she. + +“Oh yes, yes!” said Grace, with feeble impatience. She tore the +envelope, unfolded the sheet, and read; when a creeping blush tinctured +her white neck and cheek. + +Her father had exercised a bold discretion. He informed her that she +need have no further concern about Fitzpiers’s return; that she would +shortly be a free woman; and therefore, if she should desire to wed her +old lover—which he trusted was the case, since it was his own deep +wish—she would be in a position to do so. In this Melbury had not +written beyond his belief. But he very much stretched the facts in +adding that the legal formalities for dissolving her union were +practically settled. The truth was that on the arrival of the doctor’s +letter poor Melbury had been much agitated, and could with difficulty +be prevented by Beaucock from returning to her bedside. What was the +use of his rushing back to Hintock? Beaucock had asked him. The only +thing that could do her any good was a breaking of the bond. Though he +had not as yet had an interview with the eminent solicitor they were +about to consult, he was on the point of seeing him; and the case was +clear enough. Thus the simple Melbury, urged by his parental alarm at +her danger by the representations of his companion, and by the doctor’s +letter, had yielded, and sat down to tell her roundly that she was +virtually free. + +“And you’d better write also to the gentleman,” suggested Beaucock, +who, scenting notoriety and the germ of a large practice in the case, +wished to commit Melbury to it irretrievably; to effect which he knew +that nothing would be so potent as awakening the passion of Grace for +Winterborne, so that her father might not have the heart to withdraw +from his attempt to make her love legitimate when he discovered that +there were difficulties in the way. + +The nervous, impatient Melbury was much pleased with the idea of +“starting them at once,” as he called it. To put his long-delayed +reparative scheme in train had become a passion with him now. He added +to the letter addressed to his daughter a passage hinting that she +ought to begin to encourage Winterborne, lest she should lose him +altogether; and he wrote to Giles that the path was virtually open for +him at last. Life was short, he declared; there were slips betwixt the +cup and the lip; her interest in him should be reawakened at once, that +all might be ready when the good time came for uniting them. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + + +At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed than he was moved in +heart. The novelty of the avowal rendered what it carried with it +inapprehensible by him in its entirety. + +Only a few short months ago completely estranged from this +family—beholding Grace going to and fro in the distance, clothed with +the alienating radiance of obvious superiority, the wife of the then +popular and fashionable Fitzpiers, hopelessly outside his social +boundary down to so recent a time that flowers then folded were hardly +faded yet—he was now asked by that jealously guarding father of hers to +take courage—to get himself ready for the day when he should be able to +claim her. + +The old times came back to him in dim procession. How he had been +snubbed; how Melbury had despised his Christmas party; how that sweet, +coy Grace herself had looked down upon him and his household +arrangements, and poor Creedle’s contrivances! + +Well, he could not believe it. Surely the adamantine barrier of +marriage with another could not be pierced like this! It did violence +to custom. Yet a new law might do anything. But was it at all within +the bounds of probability that a woman who, over and above her own +attainments, had been accustomed to those of a cultivated professional +man, could ever be the wife of such as he? + +Since the date of his rejection he had almost grown to see the +reasonableness of that treatment. He had said to himself again and +again that her father was right; that the poor ceorl, Giles +Winterborne, would never have been able to make such a dainty girl +happy. Yet, now that she had stood in a position farther removed from +his own than at first, he was asked to prepare to woo her. He was full +of doubt. + +Nevertheless, it was not in him to show backwardness. To act so +promptly as Melbury desired him to act seemed, indeed, scarcely wise, +because of the uncertainty of events. Giles knew nothing of legal +procedure, but he did know that for him to step up to Grace as a lover +before the bond which bound her was actually dissolved was simply an +extravagant dream of her father’s overstrained mind. He pitied Melbury +for his almost childish enthusiasm, and saw that the aging man must +have suffered acutely to be weakened to this unreasoning desire. + +Winterborne was far too magnanimous to harbor any cynical conjecture +that the timber-merchant, in his intense affection for Grace, was +courting him now because that young lady, when disunited, would be left +in an anomalous position, to escape which a bad husband was better than +none. He felt quite sure that his old friend was simply on tenterhooks +of anxiety to repair the almost irreparable error of dividing two whom +Nature had striven to join together in earlier days, and that in his +ardor to do this he was oblivious of formalities. The cautious +supervision of his past years had overleaped itself at last. Hence, +Winterborne perceived that, in this new beginning, the necessary care +not to compromise Grace by too early advances must be exercised by +himself. + +Perhaps Winterborne was not quite so ardent as heretofore. There is no +such thing as a stationary love: men are either loving more or loving +less. But Giles himself recognized no decline in his sense of her +dearness. If the flame did indeed burn lower now than when he had +fetched her from Sherton at her last return from school, the marvel was +small. He had been laboring ever since his rejection and her marriage +to reduce his former passion to a docile friendship, out of pure regard +to its expediency; and their separation may have helped him to a +partial success. + +A week and more passed, and there was no further news of Melbury. But +the effect of the intelligence he had already transmitted upon the +elastic-nerved daughter of the woods had been much what the old surgeon +Jones had surmised. It had soothed her perturbed spirit better than all +the opiates in the pharmacopoeia. She had slept unbrokenly a whole +night and a day. The “new law” was to her a mysterious, beneficent, +godlike entity, lately descended upon earth, that would make her as she +once had been without trouble or annoyance. Her position fretted her, +its abstract features rousing an aversion which was even greater than +her aversion to the personality of him who had caused it. It was +mortifying, productive of slights, undignified. Him she could forget; +her circumstances she had always with her. + +She saw nothing of Winterborne during the days of her recovery; and +perhaps on that account her fancy wove about him a more romantic tissue +than it could have done if he had stood before her with all the specks +and flaws inseparable from corporeity. He rose upon her memory as the +fruit-god and the wood-god in alternation; sometimes leafy, and smeared +with green lichen, as she had seen him among the sappy boughs of the +plantations; sometimes cider-stained, and with apple-pips in the hair +of his arms, as she had met him on his return from cider-making in +White Hart Vale, with his vats and presses beside him. In her secret +heart she almost approximated to her father’s enthusiasm in wishing to +show Giles once for all how she still regarded him. The question +whether the future would indeed bring them together for life was a +standing wonder with her. She knew that it could not with any propriety +do so just yet. But reverently believing in her father’s sound judgment +and knowledge, as good girls are wont to do, she remembered what he had +written about her giving a hint to Winterborne lest there should be +risk in delay, and her feelings were not averse to such a step, so far +as it could be done without danger at this early stage of the +proceedings. + +From being a frail phantom of her former equable self she returned in +bounds to a condition of passable philosophy. She bloomed again in the +face in the course of a few days, and was well enough to go about as +usual. One day Mrs. Melbury proposed that for a change she should be +driven in the gig to Sherton market, whither Melbury’s man was going on +other errands. Grace had no business whatever in Sherton; but it +crossed her mind that Winterborne would probably be there, and this +made the thought of such a drive interesting. + +On the way she saw nothing of him; but when the horse was walking +slowly through the obstructions of Sheep Street, she discerned the +young man on the pavement. She thought of that time when he had been +standing under his apple-tree on her return from school, and of the +tender opportunity then missed through her fastidiousness. Her heart +rose in her throat. She abjured all such fastidiousness now. Nor did +she forget the last occasion on which she had beheld him in that town, +making cider in the court-yard of the Earl of Wessex Hotel, while she +was figuring as a fine lady in the balcony above. + +Grace directed the man to set her down there in the midst, and +immediately went up to her lover. Giles had not before observed her, +and his eyes now suppressedly looked his pleasure, without the +embarrassment that had formerly marked him at such meetings. + +When a few words had been spoken, she said, archly, “I have nothing to +do. Perhaps you are deeply engaged?” + +“I? Not a bit. My business now at the best of times is small, I am +sorry to say.” + +“Well, then, I am going into the Abbey. Come along with me.” + +The proposition had suggested itself as a quick escape from publicity, +for many eyes were regarding her. She had hoped that sufficient time +had elapsed for the extinction of curiosity; but it was quite +otherwise. The people looked at her with tender interest as the +deserted girl-wife—without obtrusiveness, and without vulgarity; but +she was ill prepared for scrutiny in any shape. + +They walked about the Abbey aisles, and presently sat down. Not a soul +was in the building save themselves. She regarded a stained window, +with her head sideways, and tentatively asked him if he remembered the +last time they were in that town alone. + +He remembered it perfectly, and remarked, “You were a proud miss then, +and as dainty as you were high. Perhaps you are now?” + +Grace slowly shook her head. “Affliction has taken all that out of me,” +she answered, impressively. “Perhaps I am too far the other way now.” +As there was something lurking in this that she could not explain, she +added, so quickly as not to allow him time to think of it, “Has my +father written to you at all?” + +“Yes,” said Winterborne. + +She glanced ponderingly up at him. “Not about me?” + +“Yes.” + +His mouth was lined with charactery which told her that he had been +bidden to take the hint as to the future which she had been bidden to +give. The unexpected discovery sent a scarlet pulsation through Grace +for the moment. However, it was only Giles who stood there, of whom she +had no fear; and her self-possession returned. + +“He said I was to sound you with a view to—what you will understand, if +you care to,” continued Winterborne, in a low voice. Having been put on +this track by herself, he was not disposed to abandon it in a hurry. + +They had been children together, and there was between them that +familiarity as to personal affairs which only such acquaintanceship can +give. “You know, Giles,” she answered, speaking in a very practical +tone, “that that is all very well; but I am in a very anomalous +position at present, and I cannot say anything to the point about such +things as those.” + +“No?” he said, with a stray air as regarded the subject. He was looking +at her with a curious consciousness of discovery. He had not been +imagining that their renewed intercourse would show her to him thus. +For the first time he realized an unexpectedness in her, which, after +all, should not have been unexpected. She before him was not the girl +Grace Melbury whom he used to know. Of course, he might easily have +prefigured as much; but it had never occurred to him. She was a woman +who had been married; she had moved on; and without having lost her +girlish modesty, she had lost her girlish shyness. The inevitable +change, though known to him, had not been heeded; and it struck him +into a momentary fixity. The truth was that he had never come into +close comradeship with her since her engagement to Fitzpiers, with the +brief exception of the evening encounter on Rubdown Hill, when she met +him with his cider apparatus; and that interview had been of too +cursory a kind for insight. + +Winterborne had advanced, too. He could criticise her. Times had been +when to criticise a single trait in Grace Melbury would have lain as +far beyond his powers as to criticise a deity. This thing was sure: it +was a new woman in many ways whom he had come out to see; a creature of +more ideas, more dignity, and, above all, more assurance, than the +original Grace had been capable of. He could not at first decide +whether he were pleased or displeased at this. But upon the whole the +novelty attracted him. + +She was so sweet and sensitive that she feared his silence betokened +something in his brain of the nature of an enemy to her. “What are you +thinking of that makes those lines come in your forehead?” she asked. +“I did not mean to offend you by speaking of the time being premature +as yet.” + +Touched by the genuine loving-kindness which had lain at the foundation +of these words, and much moved, Winterborne turned his face aside, as +he took her by the hand. He was grieved that he had criticised her. + +“You are very good, dear Grace,” he said, in a low voice. “You are +better, much better, than you used to be.” + +“How?” + +He could not very well tell her how, and said, with an evasive smile, +“You are prettier;” which was not what he really had meant. He then +remained still holding her right hand in his own right, so that they +faced in opposite ways; and as he did not let go, she ventured upon a +tender remonstrance. + +“I think we have gone as far as we ought to go at present—and far +enough to satisfy my poor father that we are the same as ever. You see, +Giles, my case is not settled yet, and if—Oh, suppose I _never_ get +free!—there should be any hitch or informality!” + +She drew a catching breath, and turned pale. The dialogue had been +affectionate comedy up to this point. The gloomy atmosphere of the +past, and the still gloomy horizon of the present, had been for the +interval forgotten. Now the whole environment came back, the due +balance of shade among the light was restored. + +“It is sure to be all right, I trust?” she resumed, in uneasy accents. +“What did my father say the solicitor had told him?” + +“Oh—that all is sure enough. The case is so clear—nothing could be +clearer. But the legal part is not yet quite done and finished, as is +natural.” + +“Oh no—of course not,” she said, sunk in meek thought. “But father said +it was _almost_—did he not? Do you know anything about the new law that +makes these things so easy?” + +“Nothing—except the general fact that it enables ill-assorted husbands +and wives to part in a way they could not formerly do without an Act of +Parliament.” + +“Have you to sign a paper, or swear anything? Is it something like +that?” + +“Yes, I believe so.” + +“How long has it been introduced?” + +“About six months or a year, the lawyer said, I think.” + +To hear these two poor Arcadian innocents talk of imperial law would +have made a humane person weep who should have known what a dangerous +structure they were building up on their supposed knowledge. They +remained in thought, like children in the presence of the +incomprehensible. + +“Giles,” she said, at last, “it makes me quite weary when I think how +serious my situation is, or has been. Shall we not go out from here +now, as it may seem rather fast of me—our being so long together, I +mean—if anybody were to see us? I am almost sure,” she added, +uncertainly, “that I ought not to let you hold my hand yet, knowing +that the documents—or whatever it may be—have not been signed; so that +I—am still as married as ever—or almost. My dear father has forgotten +himself. Not that I feel morally bound to any one else, after what has +taken place—no woman of spirit could—now, too, that several months have +passed. But I wish to keep the proprieties as well as I can.” + +“Yes, yes. Still, your father reminds us that life is short. I myself +feel that it is; that is why I wished to understand you in this that we +have begun. At times, dear Grace, since receiving your father’s letter, +I am as uneasy and fearful as a child at what he said. If one of us +were to die before the formal signing and sealing that is to release +you have been done—if we should drop out of the world and never have +made the most of this little, short, but real opportunity, I should +think to myself as I sunk down dying, ‘Would to my God that I had +spoken out my whole heart—given her one poor little kiss when I had the +chance to give it! But I never did, although she had promised to be +mine some day; and now I never can.’ That’s what I should think.” + +She had begun by watching the words from his lips with a mournful +regard, as though their passage were visible; but as he went on she +dropped her glance. “Yes,” she said, “I have thought that, too. And, +because I have thought it, I by no means meant, in speaking of the +proprieties, to be reserved and cold to you who loved me so long ago, +or to hurt your heart as I used to do at that thoughtless time. Oh, not +at all, indeed! But—ought I to allow you?—oh, it is too quick—surely!” +Her eyes filled with tears of bewildered, alarmed emotion. + +Winterborne was too straightforward to influence her further against +her better judgment. “Yes—I suppose it is,” he said, repentantly. “I’ll +wait till all is settled. What did your father say in that last +letter?” + +He meant about his progress with the petition; but she, mistaking him, +frankly spoke of the personal part. “He said—what I have implied. +Should I tell more plainly?” + +“Oh no—don’t, if it is a secret.” + +“Not at all. I will tell every word, straight out, Giles, if you wish. +He said I was to encourage you. There. But I cannot obey him further +to-day. Come, let us go now.” She gently slid her hand from his, and +went in front of him out of the Abbey. + +“I was thinking of getting some dinner,” said Winterborne, changing to +the prosaic, as they walked. “And you, too, must require something. Do +let me take you to a place I know.” + +Grace was almost without a friend in the world outside her father’s +house; her life with Fitzpiers had brought her no society; had +sometimes, indeed, brought her deeper solitude and inconsideration than +any she had ever known before. Hence it was a treat to her to find +herself again the object of thoughtful care. But she questioned if to +go publicly to dine with Giles Winterborne were not a proposal, due +rather to his unsophistication than to his discretion. She said gently +that she would much prefer his ordering her lunch at some place and +then coming to tell her it was ready, while she remained in the Abbey +porch. Giles saw her secret reasoning, thought how hopelessly blind to +propriety he was beside her, and went to do as she wished. + +He was not absent more than ten minutes, and found Grace where he had +left her. “It will be quite ready by the time you get there,” he said, +and told her the name of the inn at which the meal had been ordered, +which was one that she had never heard of. + +“I’ll find it by inquiry,” said Grace, setting out. + +“And shall I see you again?” + +“Oh yes—come to me there. It will not be like going together. I shall +want you to find my father’s man and the gig for me.” + +He waited on some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, till he thought +her lunch ended, and that he might fairly take advantage of her +invitation to start her on her way home. He went straight to The Three +Tuns—a little tavern in a side street, scrupulously clean, but humble +and inexpensive. On his way he had an occasional misgiving as to +whether the place had been elegant enough for her; and as soon as he +entered it, and saw her ensconced there, he perceived that he had +blundered. + +Grace was seated in the only dining-room that the simple old hostelry +could boast of, which was also a general parlor on market-days; a long, +low apartment, with a sanded floor herring-boned with a broom; a wide, +red-curtained window to the street, and another to the garden. Grace +had retreated to the end of the room looking out upon the latter, the +front part being full of a mixed company which had dropped in since he +was there. + +She was in a mood of the greatest depression. On arriving, and seeing +what the tavern was like, she had been taken by surprise; but having +gone too far to retreat, she had heroically entered and sat down on the +well-scrubbed settle, opposite the narrow table with its knives and +steel forks, tin pepper-boxes, blue salt-cellars, and posters +advertising the sale of bullocks against the wall. The last time that +she had taken any meal in a public place it had been with Fitzpiers at +the grand new Earl of Wessex Hotel in that town, after a two months’ +roaming and sojourning at the gigantic hotels of the Continent. How +could she have expected any other kind of accommodation in present +circumstances than such as Giles had provided? And yet how unprepared +she was for this change! The tastes that she had acquired from +Fitzpiers had been imbibed so subtly that she hardly knew she possessed +them till confronted by this contrast. The elegant Fitzpiers, in fact, +at that very moment owed a long bill at the above-mentioned hotel for +the luxurious style in which he used to put her up there whenever they +drove to Sherton. But such is social sentiment, that she had been quite +comfortable under those debt-impending conditions, while she felt +humiliated by her present situation, which Winterborne had paid for +honestly on the nail. + +He had noticed in a moment that she shrunk from her position, and all +his pleasure was gone. It was the same susceptibility over again which +had spoiled his Christmas party long ago. + +But he did not know that this recrudescence was only the casual result +of Grace’s apprenticeship to what she was determined to learn in spite +of it—a consequence of one of those sudden surprises which confront +everybody bent upon turning over a new leaf. She had finished her +lunch, which he saw had been a very mincing performance; and he brought +her out of the house as soon as he could. + +“Now,” he said, with great sad eyes, “you have not finished at all +well, I know. Come round to the Earl of Wessex. I’ll order a tea there. +I did not remember that what was good enough for me was not good enough +for you.” + +Her face faded into an aspect of deep distress when she saw what had +happened. “Oh no, Giles,” she said, with extreme pathos; “certainly +not. Why do you—say that when you know better? You _ever_ will +misunderstand me.” + +“Indeed, that’s not so, Mrs. Fitzpiers. Can you deny that you felt out +of place at The Three Tuns?” + +“I don’t know. Well, since you make me speak, I do not deny it.” + +“And yet I have felt at home there these twenty years. Your husband +used always to take you to the Earl of Wessex, did he not?” + +“Yes,” she reluctantly admitted. How could she explain in the street of +a market-town that it was her superficial and transitory taste which +had been offended, and not her nature or her affection? Fortunately, or +unfortunately, at that moment they saw Melbury’s man driving vacantly +along the street in search of her, the hour having passed at which he +had been told to take her up. Winterborne hailed him, and she was +powerless then to prolong the discourse. She entered the vehicle sadly, +and the horse trotted away. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + + +All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of a +pleasant time, forgetting the pleasant time itself. He feared anew that +they could never be happy together, even should she be free to choose +him. She was accomplished; he was unrefined. It was the original +difficulty, which he was too sensitive to recklessly ignore, as some +men would have done in his place. + +He was one of those silent, unobtrusive beings who want little from +others in the way of favor or condescension, and perhaps on that very +account scrutinize those others’ behavior too closely. He was not +versatile, but one in whom a hope or belief which had once had its +rise, meridian, and decline seldom again exactly recurred, as in the +breasts of more sanguine mortals. He had once worshipped her, laid out +his life to suit her, wooed her, and lost her. Though it was with +almost the same zest, it was with not quite the same hope, that he had +begun to tread the old tracks again, and allowed himself to be so +charmed with her that day. + +Move another step towards her he would not. He would even repulse +her—as a tribute to conscience. It would be sheer sin to let her +prepare a pitfall for her happiness not much smaller than the first by +inveigling her into a union with such as he. Her poor father was now +blind to these subtleties, which he had formerly beheld as in noontide +light. It was his own duty to declare them—for her dear sake. + +Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her solicitous +embarrassment was not lessened the next morning when another letter +from her father was put into her hands. Its tenor was an intenser +strain of the one that had preceded it. After stating how extremely +glad he was to hear that she was better, and able to get out-of-doors, +he went on: + +“This is a wearisome business, the solicitor we have come to see being +out of town. I do not know when I shall get home. My great anxiety in +this delay is still lest you should lose Giles Winterborne. I cannot +rest at night for thinking that while our business is hanging fire he +may become estranged, or go away from the neighborhood. I have set my +heart upon seeing him your husband, if you ever have another. Do, then, +Grace, give him some temporary encouragement, even though it is +over-early. For when I consider the past I do think God will forgive me +and you for being a little forward. I have another reason for this, my +dear. I feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late affairs have still +further helped me that way. And until this thing is done I cannot rest +in peace.” + + +He added a postscript: + +“I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-morrow. +Possibly, therefore, I shall return in the evening after you get this.” + + +The paternal longing ran on all fours with her own desire; and yet in +forwarding it yesterday she had been on the brink of giving offence. +While craving to be a country girl again just as her father requested; +to put off the old Eve, the fastidious miss—or rather madam—completely, +her first attempt had been beaten by the unexpected vitality of that +fastidiousness. Her father on returning and seeing the trifling +coolness of Giles would be sure to say that the same perversity which +had led her to make difficulties about marrying Fitzpiers was now +prompting her to blow hot and cold with poor Winterborne. + +If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching the stops of +her delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to let her +drift away from him again (if she would) on the wind of her estranging +education, he could not have acted more seductively than he did that +day. He chanced to be superintending some temporary work in a field +opposite her windows. She could not discover what he was doing, but she +read his mood keenly and truly: she could see in his coming and going +an air of determined abandonment of the whole landscape that lay in her +direction. + +Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father coming in the +evening—which meant, she supposed, that all formalities would be in +train, her marriage virtually annulled, and she be free to be won +again—how could she look him in the face if he should see them +estranged thus? + +It was a fair green evening in June. She was seated in the garden, in +the rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes—made of peeled +oak-branches that came to Melbury’s premises as refuse after +barking-time. The mass of full-juiced leafage on the heights around her +was just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly spent wind which, even +in its enfeebled state, did not reach her shelter. All day she had +expected Giles to call—to inquire how she had got home, or something or +other; but he had not come. And he still tantalized her by going +athwart and across that orchard opposite. She could see him as she sat. + +A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him a +letter. She knew from this that Creedle had just come from Sherton, and +had called as usual at the post-office for anything that had arrived by +the afternoon post, of which there was no delivery at Hintock. She +pondered on what the letter might contain—particularly whether it were +a second refresher for Winterborne from her father, like her own of the +morning. + +But it appeared to have no bearing upon herself whatever. Giles read +its contents; and almost immediately turned away to a gap in the hedge +of the orchard—if that could be called a hedge which, owing to the +drippings of the trees, was little more than a bank with a bush upon it +here and there. He entered the plantation, and was no doubt going that +way homeward to the mysterious hut he occupied on the other side of the +woodland. + +The sad sands were running swiftly through Time’s glass; she had often +felt it in these latter days; and, like Giles, she felt it doubly now +after the solemn and pathetic reminder in her father’s communication. +Her freshness would pass, the long-suffering devotion of Giles might +suddenly end—might end that very hour. Men were so strange. The thought +took away from her all her former reticence, and made her action bold. +She started from her seat. If the little breach, quarrel, or whatever +it might be called, of yesterday, was to be healed up it must be done +by her on the instant. She crossed into the orchard, and clambered +through the gap after Giles, just as he was diminishing to a faun-like +figure under the green canopy and over the brown floor. + +Grace had been wrong—very far wrong—in assuming that the letter had no +reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the wood after +its perusal. It was, sad to say, because the missive had so much +reference to herself that he had thus turned away. He feared that his +grieved discomfiture might be observed. The letter was from Beaucock, +written a few hours later than Melbury’s to his daughter. It announced +failure. + +Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was the +moment when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. During +his absence in town with Melbury, the lawyer’s clerk had naturally +heard a great deal of the timber-merchant’s family scheme of justice to +Giles, and his communication was to inform Winterborne at the earliest +possible moment that their attempt had failed, in order that the young +man should not place himself in a false position towards Grace in the +belief of its coming success. The news was, in sum, that Fitzpiers’s +conduct had not been sufficiently cruel to Grace to enable her to snap +the bond. She was apparently doomed to be his wife till the end of the +chapter. + +Winterborne quite forgot his superficial differences with the poor girl +under the warm rush of deep and distracting love for her which the +almost tragical information engendered. + +To renounce her forever—that was then the end of it for him, after all. +There was no longer any question about suitability, or room for tiffs +on petty tastes. The curtain had fallen again between them. She could +not be his. The cruelty of their late revived hope was now terrible. +How could they all have been so simple as to suppose this thing could +be done? + +It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming behind him, he +turned and saw her hastening on between the thickets. He perceived in +an instant that she did not know the blighting news. + +“Giles, why didn’t you come across to me?” she asked, with arch +reproach. “Didn’t you see me sitting there ever so long?” + +“Oh yes,” he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for her +unexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of behavior +in the conjuncture. His manner made her think that she had been too +chiding in her speech; and a mild scarlet wave passed over her as she +resolved to soften it. + +“I have had another letter from my father,” she hastened to continue. +“He thinks he may come home this evening. And—in view of his hopes—it +will grieve him if there is any little difference between us, Giles.” + +“There is none,” he said, sadly regarding her from the face downward as +he pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare. + +“Still—I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my being +uncomfortable at the inn.” + +“I have, Grace, I’m sure.” + +“But you speak in quite an unhappy way,” she returned, coming up close +to him with the most winning of the many pretty airs that appertained +to her. “Don’t you think you will ever be happy, Giles?” + +He did not reply for some instants. “When the sun shines on the north +front of Sherton Abbey—that’s when my happiness will come to me!” said +he, staring as it were into the earth. + +“But—then that means that there is something more than my offending you +in not liking The Three Tuns. If it is because I—did not like to let +you kiss me in the Abbey—well, you know, Giles, that it was not on +account of my cold feelings, but because I did certainly, just then, +think it was rather premature, in spite of my poor father. That was the +true reason—the sole one. But I do not want to be hard—God knows I do +not,” she said, her voice fluctuating. “And perhaps—as I am on the +verge of freedom—I am not right, after all, in thinking there is any +harm in your kissing me.” + +“Oh God!” said Winterborne within himself. His head was turned askance +as he still resolutely regarded the ground. For the last several +minutes he had seen this great temptation approaching him in regular +siege; and now it had come. The wrong, the social sin, of now taking +advantage of the offer of her lips had a magnitude, in the eyes of one +whose life had been so primitive, so ruled by purest household laws, as +Giles’s, which can hardly be explained. + +“Did you say anything?” she asked, timidly. + +“Oh no—only that—” + +“You mean that it must _be already_ settled, since my father is coming +home?” she said, gladly. + +Winterborne, though fighting valiantly against himself all this +while—though he would have protected Grace’s good repute as the apple +of his eye—was a man; and, as Desdemona said, men are not gods. In face +of the agonizing seductiveness shown by her, in her unenlightened +school-girl simplicity about the laws and ordinances, he betrayed a +man’s weakness. Since it was so—since it had come to this, that Grace, +deeming herself free to do it, was virtually asking him to demonstrate +that he loved her—since he could demonstrate it only too truly—since +life was short and love was strong—he gave way to the temptation, +notwithstanding that he perfectly well knew her to be wedded +irrevocably to Fitzpiers. Indeed, he cared for nothing past or future, +simply accepting the present and what it brought, desiring once in his +life to clasp in his arms her he had watched over and loved so long. + +She started back suddenly from his embrace, influenced by a sort of +inspiration. “Oh, I suppose,” she stammered, “that I am really +free?—that this is right? Is there _really_ a new law? Father cannot +have been too sanguine in saying—” + +He did not answer, and a moment afterwards Grace burst into tears in +spite of herself. “Oh, why does not my father come home and explain,” +she sobbed, “and let me know clearly what I am? It is too trying, this, +to ask me to—and then to leave me so long in so vague a state that I do +not know what to do, and perhaps do wrong!” + +Winterborne felt like a very Cain, over and above his previous sorrow. +How he had sinned against her in not telling her what he knew. He +turned aside; the feeling of his cruelty mounted higher and higher. How +could he have dreamed of kissing her? He could hardly refrain from +tears. Surely nothing more pitiable had ever been known than the +condition of this poor young thing, now as heretofore the victim of her +father’s well-meant but blundering policy. + +Even in the hour of Melbury’s greatest assurance Winterborne had +harbored a suspicion that no law, new or old, could undo Grace’s +marriage without her appearance in public; though he was not +sufficiently sure of what might have been enacted to destroy by his own +words her pleasing idea that a mere dash of the pen, on her father’s +testimony, was going to be sufficient. But he had never suspected the +sad fact that the position was irremediable. + +Poor Grace, perhaps feeling that she had indulged in too much fluster +for a mere kiss, calmed herself at finding how grave he was. + +“I am glad we are friends again anyhow,” she said, smiling through her +tears. “Giles, if you had only shown half the boldness before I married +that you show now, you would have carried me off for your own first +instead of second. If we do marry, I hope you will never think badly of +me for encouraging you a little, but my father is _so_ impatient, you +know, as his years and infirmities increase, that he will wish to see +us a little advanced when he comes. That is my only excuse.” + +To Winterborne all this was sadder than it was sweet. How could she so +trust her father’s conjectures? He did not know how to tell her the +truth and shame himself. And yet he felt that it must be done. “We may +have been wrong,” he began, almost fearfully, “in supposing that it can +all be carried out while we stay here at Hintock. I am not sure but +that people may have to appear in a public court even under the new +Act; and if there should be any difficulty, and we cannot marry after +all—” + +Her cheeks became slowly bloodless. “Oh, Giles,” she said, grasping his +arm, “you have heard something! What—cannot my father conclude it there +and now? Surely he has done it? Oh, Giles, Giles, don’t deceive me. +What terrible position am I in?” + +He could not tell her, try as he would. The sense of her implicit trust +in his honor absolutely disabled him. “I cannot inform you,” he +murmured, his voice as husky as that of the leaves underfoot. “Your +father will soon be here. Then we shall know. I will take you home.” + +Inexpressibly dear as she was to him, he offered her his arm with the +most reserved air, as he added, correctingly, “I will take you, at any +rate, into the drive.” + +Thus they walked on together. Grace vibrating between happiness and +misgiving. It was only a few minutes’ walk to where the drive ran, and +they had hardly descended into it when they heard a voice behind them +cry, “Take out that arm!” + +For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, more loudly and +hoarsely, + +“Take out that arm!” + +It was Melbury’s. He had returned sooner than they expected, and now +came up to them. Grace’s hand had been withdrawn like lightning on her +hearing the second command. “I don’t blame you—I don’t blame you,” he +said, in the weary cadence of one broken down with scourgings. “But you +two must walk together no more—I have been surprised—I have been +cruelly deceived—Giles, don’t say anything to me; but go away!” + +He was evidently not aware that Winterborne had known the truth before +he brought it; and Giles would not stay to discuss it with him then. +When the young man had gone Melbury took his daughter in-doors to the +room he used as his office. There he sat down, and bent over the slope +of the bureau, her bewildered gaze fixed upon him. + +When Melbury had recovered a little he said, “You are now, as ever, +Fitzpiers’s wife. I was deluded. He has not done you _enough_ harm. You +are still subject to his beck and call.” + +“Then let it be, and never mind, father,” she said, with dignified +sorrow. “I can bear it. It is your trouble that grieves me most.” She +stooped over him, and put her arm round his neck, which distressed +Melbury still more. “I don’t mind at all what comes to me,” Grace +continued; “whose wife I am, or whose I am not. I do love Giles; I +cannot help that; and I have gone further with him than I should have +done if I had known exactly how things were. But I do not reproach +you.” + +“Then Giles did not tell you?” said Melbury. + +“No,” said she. “He could not have known it. His behavior to me proved +that he did not know.” + +Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to the solitude of +her chamber. + +Her heavy disquietude had many shapes; and for a time she put aside the +dominant fact to think of her too free conduct towards Giles. His +love-making had been brief as it was sweet; but would he on reflection +contemn her for forwardness? How could she have been so simple as to +suppose she was in a position to behave as she had done! Thus she +mentally blamed her ignorance; and yet in the centre of her heart she +blessed it a little for what it had momentarily brought her. + + + + +CHAPTER XL. + + +Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be suppressed +and hide-bound for a while. Grace seldom showed herself outside the +house, never outside the garden; for she feared she might encounter +Giles Winterborne; and that she could not bear. + +This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun appeared +likely to continue for an indefinite time. She had learned that there +was one possibility in which her formerly imagined position might +become real, and only one; that her husband’s absence should continue +long enough to amount to positive desertion. But she never allowed her +mind to dwell much upon the thought; still less did she deliberately +hope for such a result. Her regard for Winterborne had been rarefied by +the shock which followed its avowal into an ethereal emotion that had +little to do with living and doing. + +As for Giles, he was lying—or rather sitting—ill at his hut. A feverish +indisposition which had been hanging about him for some time, the +result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to acquire +virulence with the prostration of his hopes. But not a soul knew of his +languor, and he did not think the case serious enough to send for a +medical man. After a few days he was better again, and crept about his +home in a great coat, attending to his simple wants as usual with his +own hands. So matters stood when the limpid inertion of Grace’s +pool-like existence was disturbed as by a geyser. She received a letter +from Fitzpiers. + +Such a terrible letter it was in its import, though couched in the +gentlest language. In his absence Grace had grown to regard him with +toleration, and her relation to him with equanimity, till she had +almost forgotten how trying his presence would be. He wrote briefly and +unaffectedly; he made no excuses, but informed her that he was living +quite alone, and had been led to think that they ought to be together, +if she would make up her mind to forgive him. He therefore purported to +cross the Channel to Budmouth by the steamer on a day he named, which +she found to be three days after the time of her present reading. + +He said that he could not come to Hintock for obvious reasons, which +her father would understand even better than herself. As the only +alternative she was to be on the quay to meet the steamer when it +arrived from the opposite coast, probably about half an hour before +midnight, bringing with her any luggage she might require; join him +there, and pass with him into the twin vessel, which left immediately +the other entered the harbor; returning thus with him to his +continental dwelling-place, which he did not name. He had no intention +of showing himself on land at all. + +The troubled Grace took the letter to her father, who now continued for +long hours by the fireless summer chimney-corner, as if he thought it +were winter, the pitcher of cider standing beside him, mostly untasted, +and coated with a film of dust. After reading it he looked up. + +“You sha’n’t go,” said he. + +“I had felt I would not,” she answered. “But I did not know what you +would say.” + +“If he comes and lives in England, not too near here and in a +respectable way, and wants you to come to him, I am not sure that I’ll +oppose him in wishing it,” muttered Melbury. “I’d stint myself to keep +you both in a genteel and seemly style. But go abroad you never shall +with my consent.” + +There the question rested that day. Grace was unable to reply to her +husband in the absence of an address, and the morrow came, and the next +day, and the evening on which he had requested her to meet him. +Throughout the whole of it she remained within the four walls of her +room. + +The sense of her harassment, carking doubt of what might be impending, +hung like a cowl of blackness over the Melbury household. They spoke +almost in whispers, and wondered what Fitzpiers would do next. It was +the hope of every one that, finding she did not arrive, he would return +again to France; and as for Grace, she was willing to write to him on +the most kindly terms if he would only keep away. + +The night passed, Grace lying tense and wide awake, and her relatives, +in great part, likewise. When they met the next morning they were pale +and anxious, though neither speaking of the subject which occupied all +their thoughts. The day passed as quietly as the previous ones, and she +began to think that in the rank caprice of his moods he had abandoned +the idea of getting her to join him as quickly as it was formed. All on +a sudden, some person who had just come from Sherton entered the house +with the news that Mr. Fitzpiers was on his way home to Hintock. He had +been seen hiring a carriage at the Earl of Wessex Hotel. + +Her father and Grace were both present when the intelligence was +announced. + +“Now,” said Melbury, “we must make the best of what has been a very bad +matter. The man is repenting; the partner of his shame, I hear, is gone +away from him to Switzerland, so that chapter of his life is probably +over. If he chooses to make a home for ye I think you should not say +him nay, Grace. Certainly he cannot very well live at Hintock without a +blow to his pride; but if he can bear that, and likes Hintock best, +why, there’s the empty wing of the house as it was before.” + +“Oh, father!” said Grace, turning white with dismay. + +“Why not?” said he, a little of his former doggedness returning. He +was, in truth, disposed to somewhat more leniency towards her husband +just now than he had shown formerly, from a conviction that he had +treated him over-roughly in his anger. “Surely it is the most +respectable thing to do?” he continued. “I don’t like this state that +you are in—neither married nor single. It hurts me, and it hurts you, +and it will always be remembered against us in Hintock. There has never +been any scandal like it in the family before.” + +“He will be here in less than an hour,” murmured Grace. The twilight of +the room prevented her father seeing the despondent misery of her face. +The one intolerable condition, the condition she had deprecated above +all others, was that of Fitzpiers’s reinstatement there. “Oh, I won’t, +I won’t see him,” she said, sinking down. She was almost hysterical. + +“Try if you cannot,” he returned, moodily. + +“Oh yes, I will, I will,” she went on, inconsequently. “I’ll try;” and +jumping up suddenly, she left the room. + +In the darkness of the apartment to which she flew nothing could have +been seen during the next half-hour; but from a corner a quick +breathing was audible from this impressible creature, who combined +modern nerves with primitive emotions, and was doomed by such +coexistence to be numbered among the distressed, and to take her +scourgings to their exquisite extremity. + +The window was open. On this quiet, late summer evening, whatever sound +arose in so secluded a district—the chirp of a bird, a call from a +voice, the turning of a wheel—extended over bush and tree to unwonted +distances. Very few sounds did arise. But as Grace invisibly breathed +in the brown glooms of the chamber, the small remote noise of light +wheels came in to her, accompanied by the trot of a horse on the +turnpike-road. There seemed to be a sudden hitch or pause in the +progress of the vehicle, which was what first drew her attention to it. +She knew the point whence the sound proceeded—the hill-top over which +travellers passed on their way hitherward from Sherton Abbas—the place +at which she had emerged from the wood with Mrs. Charmond. Grace slid +along the floor, and bent her head over the window-sill, listening with +open lips. The carriage had stopped, and she heard a man use +exclamatory words. Then another said, “What the devil is the matter +with the horse?” She recognized the voice as her husband’s. + +The accident, such as it had been, was soon remedied, and the carriage +could be heard descending the hill on the Hintock side, soon to turn +into the lane leading out of the highway, and then into the “drong” +which led out of the lane to the house where she was. + +A spasm passed through Grace. The Daphnean instinct, exceptionally +strong in her as a girl, had been revived by her widowed seclusion; and +it was not lessened by her affronted sentiments towards the comer, and +her regard for another man. She opened some little ivory tablets that +lay on the dressing-table, scribbled in pencil on one of them, “I am +gone to visit one of my school-friends,” gathered a few toilet +necessaries into a hand-bag, and not three minutes after that voice had +been heard, her slim form, hastily wrapped up from observation, might +have been seen passing out of the back door of Melbury’s house. Thence +she skimmed up the garden-path, through the gap in the hedge, and into +the mossy cart-track under the trees which led into the depth of the +woods. + +The leaves overhead were now in their latter green—so opaque, that it +was darker at some of the densest spots than in winter-time, scarce a +crevice existing by which a ray could get down to the ground. But in +open places she could see well enough. Summer was ending: in the +daytime singing insects hung in every sunbeam; vegetation was heavy +nightly with globes of dew; and after showers creeping damps and +twilight chills came up from the hollows. The plantations were always +weird at this hour of eve—more spectral far than in the leafless +season, when there were fewer masses and more minute lineality. The +smooth surfaces of glossy plants came out like weak, lidless eyes; +there were strange faces and figures from expiring lights that had +somehow wandered into the canopied obscurity; while now and then low +peeps of the sky between the trunks were like sheeted shapes, and on +the tips of boughs sat faint cloven tongues. + +But Grace’s fear just now was not imaginative or spiritual, and she +heeded these impressions but little. She went on as silently as she +could, avoiding the hollows wherein leaves had accumulated, and +stepping upon soundless moss and grass-tufts. She paused breathlessly +once or twice, and fancied that she could hear, above the beat of her +strumming pulse, the vehicle containing Fitzpiers turning in at the +gate of her father’s premises. She hastened on again. + +The Hintock woods owned by Mrs. Charmond were presently left behind, +and those into which she next plunged were divided from the latter by a +bank, from whose top the hedge had long ago perished—starved for want +of sun. It was with some caution that Grace now walked, though she was +quite free from any of the commonplace timidities of her ordinary +pilgrimages to such spots. She feared no lurking harms, but that her +effort would be all in vain, and her return to the house rendered +imperative. + +She had walked between three and four miles when that prescriptive +comfort and relief to wanderers in woods—a distant light—broke at last +upon her searching eyes. It was so very small as to be almost sinister +to a stranger, but to her it was what she sought. She pushed forward, +and the dim outline of a dwelling was disclosed. + +The house was a square cot of one story only, sloping up on all sides +to a chimney in the midst. It had formerly been the home of a +charcoal-burner, in times when that fuel was still used in the county +houses. Its only appurtenance was a paled enclosure, there being no +garden, the shade of the trees preventing the growth of vegetables. She +advanced to the window whence the rays of light proceeded, and the +shutters being as yet unclosed, she could survey the whole interior +through the panes. + +The room within was kitchen, parlor, and scullery all in one; the +natural sandstone floor was worn into hills and dales by long treading, +so that none of the furniture stood level, and the table slanted like a +desk. A fire burned on the hearth, in front of which revolved the +skinned carcass of a rabbit, suspended by a string from a nail. Leaning +with one arm on the mantle-shelf stood Winterborne, his eyes on the +roasting animal, his face so rapt that speculation could build nothing +on it concerning his thoughts, more than that they were not with the +scene before him. She thought his features had changed a little since +she saw them last. The fire-light did not enable her to perceive that +they were positively haggard. + +Grace’s throat emitted a gasp of relief at finding the result so nearly +as she had hoped. She went to the door and tapped lightly. + +He seemed to be accustomed to the noises of woodpeckers, squirrels, and +such small creatures, for he took no notice of her tiny signal, and she +knocked again. This time he came and opened the door. When the light of +the room fell upon her face he started, and, hardly knowing what he +did, crossed the threshold to her, placing his hands upon her two arms, +while surprise, joy, alarm, sadness, chased through him by turns. With +Grace it was the same: even in this stress there was the fond fact that +they had met again. Thus they stood, + +“Long tears upon their faces, waxen white +With extreme sad delight.” + + +He broke the silence by saying in a whisper, “Come in.” + +“No, no, Giles!” she answered, hurriedly, stepping yet farther back +from the door. “I am passing by—and I have called on you—I won’t enter. +Will you help me? I am afraid. I want to get by a roundabout way to +Sherton, and so to Exbury. I have a school-fellow there—but I cannot +get to Sherton alone. Oh, if you will only accompany me a little way! +Don’t condemn me, Giles, and be offended! I was obliged to come to you +because—I have no other help here. Three months ago you were my lover; +now you are only my friend. The law has stepped in, and forbidden what +we thought of. It must not be. But we can act honestly, and yet you can +be my friend for one little hour? I have no other—” + +She could get no further. Covering her eyes with one hand, by an effort +of repression she wept a silent trickle, without a sigh or sob. +Winterborne took her other hand. “What has happened?” he said. + +“He has come.” + +There was a stillness as of death, till Winterborne asked, “You mean +this, Grace—that I am to help you to get away?” + +“Yes,” said she. “Appearance is no matter, when the reality is right. I +have said to myself I can trust you.” + +Giles knew from this that she did not suspect his treachery—if it could +be called such—earlier in the summer, when they met for the last time +as lovers; and in the intensity of his contrition for that tender +wrong, he determined to deserve her faith now at least, and so wipe out +that reproach from his conscience. “I’ll come at once,” he said. “I’ll +light a lantern.” + +He unhooked a dark-lantern from a nail under the eaves and she did not +notice how his hand shook with the slight strain, or dream that in +making this offer he was taxing a convalescence which could ill afford +such self-sacrifice. The lantern was lit, and they started. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + + +The first hundred yards of their course lay under motionless trees, +whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling drops of rain. By the +time that they emerged upon a glade it rained heavily. + +“This is awkward,” said Grace, with an effort to hide her concern. + +Winterborne stopped. “Grace,” he said, preserving a strictly business +manner which belied him, “you cannot go to Sherton to-night.” + +“But I must!” + +“Why? It is nine miles from here. It is almost an impossibility in this +rain.” + +“True—_why?_” she replied, mournfully, at the end of a silence. “What +is reputation to me?” + +“Now hearken,” said Giles. “You won’t—go back to your—” + +“No, no, no! Don’t make me!” she cried, piteously. + +“Then let us turn.” They slowly retraced their steps, and again stood +before his door. “Now, this house from this moment is yours, and not +mine,” he said, deliberately. “I have a place near by where I can stay +very well.” + +Her face had drooped. “Oh!” she murmured, as she saw the dilemma. “What +have I done!” + +There was a smell of something burning within, and he looked through +the window. The rabbit that he had been cooking to coax a weak appetite +was beginning to char. “Please go in and attend to it,” he said. “Do +what you like. Now I leave. You will find everything about the hut that +is necessary.” + +“But, Giles—your supper,” she exclaimed. “An out-house would do for +me—anything—till to-morrow at day-break!” + +He signified a negative. “I tell you to go in—you may catch agues out +here in your delicate state. You can give me my supper through the +window, if you feel well enough. I’ll wait a while.” + +He gently urged her to pass the door-way, and was relieved when he saw +her within the room sitting down. Without so much as crossing the +threshold himself, he closed the door upon her, and turned the key in +the lock. Tapping at the window, he signified that she should open the +casement, and when she had done this he handed in the key to her. + +“You are locked in,” he said; “and your own mistress.” + +Even in her trouble she could not refrain from a faint smile at his +scrupulousness, as she took the door-key. + +“Do you feel better?” he went on. “If so, and you wish to give me some +of your supper, please do. If not, it is of no importance. I can get +some elsewhere.” + +The grateful sense of his kindness stirred her to action, though she +only knew half what that kindness really was. At the end of some ten +minutes she again came to the window, pushed it open, and said in a +whisper, “Giles!” He at once emerged from the shade, and saw that she +was preparing to hand him his share of the meal upon a plate. + +“I don’t like to treat you so hardly,” she murmured, with deep regret +in her words as she heard the rain pattering on the leaves. “But—I +suppose it is best to arrange like this?” + +“Oh yes,” he said, quickly. + +“I feel that I could never have reached Sherton.” + +“It was impossible.” + +“Are you sure you have a snug place out there?” (With renewed +misgiving.) + +“Quite. Have you found everything you want? I am afraid it is rather +rough accommodation.” + +“Can I notice defects? I have long passed that stage, and you know it, +Giles, or you ought to.” + +His eyes sadly contemplated her face as its pale responsiveness +modulated through a crowd of expressions that showed only too clearly +to what a pitch she was strung. If ever Winterborne’s heart fretted his +bosom it was at this sight of a perfectly defenceless creature +conditioned by such circumstances. He forgot his own agony in the +satisfaction of having at least found her a shelter. He took his plate +and cup from her hands, saying, “Now I’ll push the shutter to, and you +will find an iron pin on the inside, which you must fix into the bolt. +Do not stir in the morning till I come and call you.” + +She expressed an alarmed hope that he would not go very far away. + +“Oh no—I shall be quite within hail,” said Winterborne. + +She bolted the window as directed, and he retreated. His snug place +proved to be a wretched little shelter of the roughest kind, formed of +four hurdles thatched with brake-fern. Underneath were dry sticks, hay, +and other litter of the sort, upon which he sat down; and there in the +dark tried to eat his meal. But his appetite was quite gone. He pushed +the plate aside, and shook up the hay and sacks, so as to form a rude +couch, on which he flung himself down to sleep, for it was getting +late. + +But sleep he could not, for many reasons, of which not the least was +thought of his charge. He sat up, and looked towards the cot through +the damp obscurity. With all its external features the same as usual, +he could scarcely believe that it contained the dear friend—he would +not use a warmer name—who had come to him so unexpectedly, and, he +could not help admitting, so rashly. + +He had not ventured to ask her any particulars; but the position was +pretty clear without them. Though social law had negatived forever +their opening paradise of the previous June, it was not without stoical +pride that he accepted the present trying conjuncture. There was one +man on earth in whom she believed absolutely, and he was that man. That +this crisis could end in nothing but sorrow was a view for a moment +effaced by this triumphant thought of her trust in him; and the purity +of the affection with which he responded to that trust rendered him +more than proof against any frailty that besieged him in relation to +her. + +The rain, which had never ceased, now drew his attention by beginning +to drop through the meagre screen that covered him. He rose to attempt +some remedy for this discomfort, but the trembling of his knees and the +throbbing of his pulse told him that in his weakness he was unable to +fence against the storm, and he lay down to bear it as best he might. +He was angry with himself for his feebleness—he who had been so strong. +It was imperative that she should know nothing of his present state, +and to do that she must not see his face by daylight, for its color +would inevitably betray him. + +The next morning, accordingly, when it was hardly light, he rose and +dragged his stiff limbs about the precincts, preparing for her +everything she could require for getting breakfast within. On the bench +outside the window-sill he placed water, wood, and other necessaries, +writing with a piece of chalk beside them, “It is best that I should +not see you. Put my breakfast on the bench.” + +At seven o’clock he tapped at her window, as he had promised, +retreating at once, that she might not catch sight of him. But from his +shelter under the boughs he could see her very well, when, in response +to his signal, she opened the window and the light fell upon her face. +The languid largeness of her eyes showed that her sleep had been little +more than his own, and the pinkness of their lids, that her waking +hours had not been free from tears. + +She read the writing, seemed, he thought, disappointed, but took up the +materials he had provided, evidently thinking him some way off. Giles +waited on, assured that a girl who, in spite of her culture, knew what +country life was, would find no difficulty in the simple preparation of +their food. + +Within the cot it was all very much as he conjectured, though Grace had +slept much longer than he. After the loneliness of the night, she would +have been glad to see him; but appreciating his feeling when she read +the writing, she made no attempt to recall him. She found abundance of +provisions laid in, his plan being to replenish his buttery weekly, and +this being the day after the victualling van had called from Sherton. +When the meal was ready, she put what he required outside, as she had +done with the supper; and, notwithstanding her longing to see him, +withdrew from the window promptly, and left him to himself. + +It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its fall. +As she heard no more of Winterborne, she concluded that he had gone +away to his daily work, and forgotten that he had promised to accompany +her to Sherton; an erroneous conclusion, for he remained all day, by +force of his condition, within fifty yards of where she was. The +morning wore on; and in her doubt when to start, and how to travel, she +lingered yet, keeping the door carefully bolted, lest an intruder +should discover her. Locked in this place, she was comparatively safe, +at any rate, and doubted if she would be safe elsewhere. + +The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade and +drip of the leafage. Autumn, this year, was coming in with rains. +Gazing, in her enforced idleness, from the one window of the +living-room, she could see various small members of the animal +community that lived unmolested there—creatures of hair, fluff, and +scale, the toothed kind and the billed kind; underground creatures, +jointed and ringed—circumambulating the hut, under the impression that, +Giles having gone away, nobody was there; and eying it inquisitively +with a view to winter-quarters. Watching these neighbors, who knew +neither law nor sin, distracted her a little from her trouble; and she +managed to while away some portion of the afternoon by putting Giles’s +home in order and making little improvements which she deemed that he +would value when she was gone. + +Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise amid the trees, +resembling a cough; but as it never came any nearer she concluded that +it was a squirrel or a bird. + +At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger fire for the +evenings were chilly. As soon as it was too dark—which was +comparatively early—to discern the human countenance in this place of +shadows, there came to the window to her great delight, a tapping which +she knew from its method to be Giles’s. + +She opened the casement instantly, and put out her hand to him, though +she could only just perceive his outline. He clasped her fingers, and +she noticed the heat of his palm and its shakiness. + +“He has been walking fast, in order to get here quickly,” she thought. +How could she know that he had just crawled out from the straw of the +shelter hard by; and that the heat of his hand was feverishness? + +“My dear, good Giles!” she burst out, impulsively. + +“Anybody would have done it for you,” replied Winterborne, with as much +matter-of-fact as he could summon. + +“About my getting to Exbury?” she said. + +“I have been thinking,” responded Giles, with tender deference, “that +you had better stay where you are for the present, if you wish not to +be caught. I need not tell you that the place is yours as long as you +like; and perhaps in a day or two, finding you absent, he will go away. +At any rate, in two or three days I could do anything to assist—such as +make inquiries, or go a great way towards Sherton-Abbas with you; for +the cider season will soon be coming on, and I want to run down to the +Vale to see how the crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton road. But +for a day or two I am busy here.” He was hoping that by the time +mentioned he would be strong enough to engage himself actively on her +behalf. “I hope you do not feel over-much melancholy in being a +prisoner?” + +She declared that she did not mind it; but she sighed. + +From long acquaintance they could read each other’s heart-symptoms like +books of large type. “I fear you are sorry you came,” said Giles, “and +that you think I should have advised you more firmly than I did not to +stay.” + +“Oh no, dear, dear friend,” answered Grace, with a heaving bosom. +“Don’t think that that is what I regret. What I regret is my enforced +treatment of you—dislodging you, excluding you from your own house. Why +should I not speak out? You know what I feel for you—what I have felt +for no other living man, what I shall never feel for a man again! But +as I have vowed myself to somebody else than you, and cannot be +released, I must behave as I do behave, and keep that vow. I am not +bound to him by any divine law, after what he has done; but I have +promised, and I will pay.” + +The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things as +she would require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon, an +occupation which diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic views +of her attitude towards him, and of her life in general. The only +infringement—if infringement it could be called—of his predetermined +bearing towards her was an involuntary pressing of her hand to his lips +when she put it through the casement to bid him good-night. He knew she +was weeping, though he could not see her tears. + +She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly appropriating the +cottage. But it would only be for a day or two more, she thought, since +go she must. + +He replied, yearningly, “I—I don’t like you to go away.” + +“Oh, Giles,” said she, “I know—I know! But—I am a woman, and you are a +man. I cannot speak more plainly. ‘Whatsoever things are pure, +whatsoever things are of good report’—you know what is in my mind, +because you know me so well.” + +“Yes, Grace, yes. I do not at all mean that the question between us has +not been settled by the fact of your marriage turning out hopelessly +unalterable. I merely meant—well, a feeling no more.” + +“In a week, at the outside, I should be discovered if I stayed here: +and I think that by law he could compel me to return to him.” + +“Yes; perhaps you are right. Go when you wish, dear Grace.” + +His last words that evening were a hopeful remark that all might be +well with her yet; that Mr. Fitzpiers would not intrude upon her life, +if he found that his presence cost her so much pain. Then the window +was closed, the shutters folded, and the rustle of his footsteps died +away. + +No sooner had she retired to rest that night than the wind began to +rise, and, after a few prefatory blasts, to be accompanied by rain. The +wind grew more violent, and as the storm went on, it was difficult to +believe that no opaque body, but only an invisible colorless thing, was +trampling and climbing over the roof, making branches creak, springing +out of the trees upon the chimney, popping its head into the flue, and +shrieking and blaspheming at every corner of the walls. As in the old +story, the assailant was a spectre which could be felt but not seen. +She had never before been so struck with the devilry of a gusty night +in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in spirit as +she was now. She seemed almost to be apart from herself—a vacuous +duplicate only. The recent self of physical animation and clear +intentions was not there. + +Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so low as to smite +the roof in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth of an +adversary, to be followed by a trickle of rain, as blood from the +wound. To all this weather Giles must be more or less exposed; how +much, she did not know. + +At last Grace could hardly endure the idea of such a hardship in +relation to him. Whatever he was suffering, it was she who had caused +it; he vacated his house on account of her. She was not worth such +self-sacrifice; she should not have accepted it of him. And then, as +her anxiety increased with increasing thought, there returned upon her +mind some incidents of her late intercourse with him, which she had +heeded but little at the time. The look of his face—what had there been +about his face which seemed different from its appearance as of yore? +Was it not thinner, less rich in hue, less like that of ripe autumn’s +brother to whom she had formerly compared him? And his voice; she had +distinctly noticed a change in tone. And his gait; surely it had been +feebler, stiffer, more like the gait of a weary man. That slight +occasional noise she had heard in the day, and attributed to squirrels, +it might have been his cough after all. + +Thus conviction took root in her perturbed mind that Winterborne was +ill, or had been so, and that he had carefully concealed his condition +from her that she might have no scruples about accepting a hospitality +which by the nature of the case expelled her entertainer. + +“My own, own, true l——, my dear kind friend!” she cried to herself. +“Oh, it shall not be—it shall not be!” + +She hastily wrapped herself up, and obtained a light, with which she +entered the adjoining room, the cot possessing only one floor. Setting +down the candle on the table here, she went to the door with the key in +her hand, and placed it in the lock. Before turning it she paused, her +fingers still clutching it; and pressing her other hand to her +forehead, she fell into agitating thought. + +A tattoo on the window, caused by the tree-droppings blowing against +it, brought her indecision to a close. She turned the key and opened +the door. + +The darkness was intense, seeming to touch her pupils like a substance. +She only now became aware how heavy the rainfall had been and was; the +dripping of the eaves splashed like a fountain. She stood listening +with parted lips, and holding the door in one hand, till her eyes, +growing accustomed to the obscurity, discerned the wild brandishing of +their boughs by the adjoining trees. At last she cried loudly with an +effort, “Giles! you may come in!” + +There was no immediate answer to her cry, and overpowered by her own +temerity, Grace retreated quickly, shut the door, and stood looking on +the floor. But it was not for long. She again lifted the latch, and +with far more determination than at first. + +“Giles, Giles!” she cried, with the full strength of her voice, and +without any of the shamefacedness that had characterized her first cry. +“Oh, come in—come in! Where are you? I have been wicked. I have thought +too much of myself! Do you hear? I don’t want to keep you out any +longer. I cannot bear that you should suffer so. Gi-i-iles!” + +A reply! It was a reply! Through the darkness and wind a voice reached +her, floating upon the weather as though a part of it. + +“Here I am—all right. Don’t trouble about me.” + +“Don’t you want to come in? Are you not wet? _Come to me! I don’t mind +what they say, or what they think any more._” + +“I am all right,” he repeated. “It is not necessary for me to come. +Good-night! good-night!” + +Grace sighed, turned and shut the door slowly. Could she have been +mistaken about his health? Perhaps, after all, she had perceived a +change in him because she had not seen him for so long. Time sometimes +did his ageing work in jerks, as she knew. Well, she had done all she +could. He would not come in. She retired to rest again. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII. + + +The next morning Grace was at the window early. She felt determined to +see him somehow that day, and prepared his breakfast eagerly. Eight +o’clock struck, and she had remembered that he had not come to arouse +her by a knocking, as usual, her own anxiety having caused her to stir. + +The breakfast was set in its place without. But he did not arrive to +take it; and she waited on. Nine o’clock arrived, and the breakfast was +cold; and still there was no Giles. A thrush, that had been repeating +itself a good deal on an opposite bush for some time, came and took a +morsel from the plate and bolted it, waited, looked around, and took +another. At ten o’clock she drew in the tray, and sat down to her own +solitary meal. He must have been called away on business early, the +rain having cleared off. + +Yet she would have liked to assure herself, by thoroughly exploring the +precincts of the hut, that he was nowhere in its vicinity; but as the +day was comparatively fine, the dread lest some stray passenger or +woodman should encounter her in such a reconnoitre paralyzed her wish. +The solitude was further accentuated to-day by the stopping of the +clock for want of winding, and the fall into the chimney-corner of +flakes of soot loosened by the rains. At noon she heard a slight +rustling outside the window, and found that it was caused by an eft +which had crept out of the leaves to bask in the last sun-rays that +would be worth having till the following May. + +She continually peeped out through the lattice, but could see little. +In front lay the brown leaves of last year, and upon them some +yellowish-green ones of this season that had been prematurely blown +down by the gale. Above stretched an old beech, with vast armpits, and +great pocket-holes in its sides where branches had been amputated in +past times; a black slug was trying to climb it. Dead boughs were +scattered about like ichthyosauri in a museum, and beyond them were +perishing woodbine stems resembling old ropes. + +From the other window all she could see were more trees, jacketed with +lichen and stockinged with moss. At their roots were stemless yellow +fungi like lemons and apricots, and tall fungi with more stem than +stool. Next were more trees close together, wrestling for existence, +their branches disfigured with wounds resulting from their mutual +rubbings and blows. It was the struggle between these neighbors that +she had heard in the night. Beneath them were the rotting stumps of +those of the group that had been vanquished long ago, rising from their +mossy setting like decayed teeth from green gums. Farther on were other +tufts of moss in islands divided by the shed leaves—variety upon +variety, dark green and pale green; moss-like little fir-trees, like +plush, like malachite stars, like nothing on earth except moss. + +The strain upon Grace’s mind in various ways was so great on this the +most desolate day she had passed there that she felt it would be +well-nigh impossible to spend another in such circumstances. The +evening came at last; the sun, when its chin was on the earth, found an +opening through which to pierce the shade, and stretched irradiated +gauzes across the damp atmosphere, making the wet trunks shine, and +throwing splotches of such ruddiness on the leaves beneath the beech +that they were turned to gory hues. When night at last arrived, and +with it the time for his return, she was nearly broken down with +suspense. + +The simple evening meal, partly tea, partly supper, which Grace had +prepared, stood waiting upon the hearth; and yet Giles did not come. It +was now nearly twenty-four hours since she had seen him. As the room +grew darker, and only the firelight broke against the gloom of the +walls, she was convinced that it would be beyond her staying power to +pass the night without hearing from him or from somebody. Yet eight +o’clock drew on, and his form at the window did not appear. + +The meal remained untasted. Suddenly rising from before the hearth of +smouldering embers, where she had been crouching with her hands clasped +over her knees, she crossed the room, unlocked the door, and listened. +Every breath of wind had ceased with the decline of day, but the rain +had resumed the steady dripping of the night before. Grace might have +stood there five minutes when she fancied she heard that old sound, a +cough, at no great distance; and it was presently repeated. If it were +Winterborne’s, he must be near her; why, then, had he not visited her? + +A horrid misgiving that he could not visit her took possession of +Grace, and she looked up anxiously for the lantern, which was hanging +above her head. To light it and go in the direction of the sound would +be the obvious way to solve the dread problem; but the conditions made +her hesitate, and in a moment a cold sweat pervaded her at further +sounds from the same quarter. + +They were low mutterings; at first like persons in conversation, but +gradually resolving themselves into varieties of one voice. It was an +endless monologue, like that we sometimes hear from inanimate nature in +deep secret places where water flows, or where ivy leaves flap against +stones; but by degrees she was convinced that the voice was +Winterborne’s. Yet who could be his listener, so mute and patient; for +though he argued so rapidly and persistently, nobody replied. + +A dreadful enlightenment spread through the mind of Grace. “Oh,” she +cried, in her anguish, as she hastily prepared herself to go out, “how +selfishly correct I am always—too, too correct! Cruel propriety is +killing the dearest heart that ever woman clasped to her own.” + +While speaking thus to herself she had lit the lantern, and hastening +out without further thought, took the direction whence the mutterings +had proceeded. The course was marked by a little path, which ended at a +distance of about forty yards in a small erection of hurdles, not much +larger than a shock of corn, such as were frequent in the woods and +copses when the cutting season was going on. It was too slight even to +be called a hovel, and was not high enough to stand upright in; +appearing, in short, to be erected for the temporary shelter of fuel. +The side towards Grace was open, and turning the light upon the +interior, she beheld what her prescient fear had pictured in snatches +all the way thither. + +Upon the straw within, Winterborne lay in his clothes, just as she had +seen him during the whole of her stay here, except that his hat was +off, and his hair matted and wild. + +Both his clothes and the straw were saturated with rain. His arms were +flung over his head; his face was flushed to an unnatural crimson. His +eyes had a burning brightness, and though they met her own, she +perceived that he did not recognize her. + +“Oh, my Giles,” she cried, “what have I done to you!” + +But she stopped no longer even to reproach herself. She saw that the +first thing to be thought of was to get him indoors. + +How Grace performed that labor she never could have exactly explained. +But by dint of clasping her arms round him, rearing him into a sitting +posture, and straining her strength to the uttermost, she put him on +one of the hurdles that was loose alongside, and taking the end of it +in both her hands, dragged him along the path to the entrance of the +hut, and, after a pause for breath, in at the door-way. + +It was somewhat singular that Giles in his semi-conscious state +acquiesced unresistingly in all that she did. But he never for a moment +recognized her—continuing his rapid conversation to himself, and +seeming to look upon her as some angel, or other supernatural creature +of the visionary world in which he was mentally living. The undertaking +occupied her more than ten minutes; but by that time, to her great +thankfulness, he was in the inner room, lying on the bed, his damp +outer clothing removed. + +Then the unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. There +was something in his look which agonized her, in the rush of his +thoughts, accelerating their speed from minute to minute. He seemed to +be passing through the universe of ideas like a comet—erratic, +inapprehensible, untraceable. + +Grace’s distraction was almost as great as his. In a few moments she +firmly believed he was dying. Unable to withstand her impulse, she +knelt down beside him, kissed his hands and his face and his hair, +exclaiming, in a low voice, “How could I? How could I?” + +Her timid morality had, indeed, underrated his chivalry till now, +though she knew him so well. The purity of his nature, his freedom from +the grosser passions, his scrupulous delicacy, had never been fully +understood by Grace till this strange self-sacrifice in lonely +juxtaposition to her own person was revealed. The perception of it +added something that was little short of reverence to the deep +affection for him of a woman who, herself, had more of Artemis than of +Aphrodite in her constitution. + +All that a tender nurse could do, Grace did; and the power to express +her solicitude in action, unconscious though the sufferer was, brought +her mournful satisfaction. She bathed his hot head, wiped his +perspiring hands, moistened his lips, cooled his fiery eyelids, sponged +his heated skin, and administered whatever she could find in the house +that the imagination could conceive as likely to be in any way +alleviating. That she might have been the cause, or partially the +cause, of all this, interfused misery with her sorrow. + +Six months before this date a scene, almost similar in its mechanical +parts, had been enacted at Hintock House. It was between a pair of +persons most intimately connected in their lives with these. Outwardly +like as it had been, it was yet infinite in spiritual difference, +though a woman’s devotion had been common to both. + +Grace rose from her attitude of affection, and, bracing her energies, +saw that something practical must immediately be done. Much as she +would have liked, in the emotion of the moment, to keep him entirely to +herself, medical assistance was necessary while there remained a +possibility of preserving him alive. Such assistance was fatal to her +own concealment; but even had the chance of benefiting him been less +than it was, she would have run the hazard for his sake. The question +was, where should she get a medical man, competent and near? + +There was one such man, and only one, within accessible distance; a man +who, if it were possible to save Winterborne’s life, had the brain most +likely to do it. If human pressure could bring him, that man ought to +be brought to the sick Giles’s side. The attempt should be made. + +Yet she dreaded to leave her patient, and the minutes raced past, and +yet she postponed her departure. At last, when it was after eleven +o’clock, Winterborne fell into a fitful sleep, and it seemed to afford +her an opportunity. + +She hastily made him as comfortable as she could, put on her things, +cut a new candle from the bunch hanging in the cupboard, and having set +it up, and placed it so that the light did not fall upon his eyes, she +closed the door and started. + +The spirit of Winterborne seemed to keep her company and banish all +sense of darkness from her mind. The rains had imparted a +phosphorescence to the pieces of touchwood and rotting leaves that lay +about her path, which, as scattered by her feet, spread abroad like +spilt milk. She would not run the hazard of losing her way by plunging +into any short, unfrequented track through the denser parts of the +woodland, but followed a more open course, which eventually brought her +to the highway. Once here, she ran along with great speed, animated by +a devoted purpose which had much about it that was stoical; and it was +with scarcely any faltering of spirit that, after an hour’s progress, +she passed over Rubdown Hill, and onward towards that same Hintock, and +that same house, out of which she had fled a few days before in +irresistible alarm. But that had happened which, above all other things +of chance and change, could make her deliberately frustrate her plan of +flight and sink all regard of personal consequences. + +One speciality of Fitzpiers’s was respected by Grace as much as +ever—his professional skill. In this she was right. Had his persistence +equalled his insight, instead of being the spasmodic and fitful thing +it was, fame and fortune need never have remained a wish with him. His +freedom from conventional errors and crusted prejudices had, indeed, +been such as to retard rather than accelerate his advance in Hintock +and its neighborhood, where people could not believe that nature +herself effected cures, and that the doctor’s business was only to +smooth the way. + +It was past midnight when Grace arrived opposite her father’s house, +now again temporarily occupied by her husband, unless he had already +gone away. Ever since her emergence from the denser plantations about +Winterborne’s residence a pervasive lightness had hung in the damp +autumn sky, in spite of the vault of cloud, signifying that a moon of +some age was shining above its arch. The two white gates were distinct, +and the white balls on the pillars, and the puddles and damp ruts left +by the recent rain, had a cold, corpse-eyed luminousness. She entered +by the lower gate, and crossed the quadrangle to the wing wherein the +apartments that had been hers since her marriage were situate, till she +stood under a window which, if her husband were in the house, gave +light to his bedchamber. + +She faltered, and paused with her hand on her heart, in spite of +herself. Could she call to her presence the very cause of all her +foregoing troubles? Alas!—old Jones was seven miles off; Giles was +possibly dying—what else could she do? + +It was in a perspiration, wrought even more by consciousness than by +exercise, that she picked up some gravel, threw it at the panes, and +waited to see the result. The night-bell which had been fixed when +Fitzpiers first took up his residence there still remained; but as it +had fallen into disuse with the collapse of his practice, and his +elopement, she did not venture to pull it now. + +Whoever slept in the room had heard her signal, slight as it was. In +half a minute the window was opened, and a voice said “Yes?” +inquiringly. Grace recognized her husband in the speaker at once. Her +effort was now to disguise her own accents. + +“Doctor,” she said, in as unusual a tone as she could command, “a man +is dangerously ill in One-chimney Hut, out towards Delborough, and you +must go to him at once—in all mercy!” + +“I will, readily.” + +The alacrity, surprise, and pleasure expressed in his reply amazed her +for a moment. But, in truth, they denoted the sudden relief of a man +who, having got back in a mood of contrition, from erratic abandonment +to fearful joys, found the soothing routine of professional practice +unexpectedly opening anew to him. The highest desire of his soul just +now was for a respectable life of painstaking. If this, his first +summons since his return, had been to attend upon a cat or dog, he +would scarcely have refused it in the circumstances. + +“Do you know the way?” she asked. + +“Yes,” said he. + +“One-chimney Hut,” she repeated. “And—immediately!” + +“Yes, yes,” said Fitzpiers. + +Grace remained no longer. She passed out of the white gate without +slamming it, and hastened on her way back. Her husband, then, had +re-entered her father’s house. How he had been able to effect a +reconciliation with the old man, what were the terms of the treaty +between them, she could not so much as conjecture. Some sort of truce +must have been entered into, that was all she could say. But close as +the question lay to her own life, there was a more urgent one which +banished it; and she traced her steps quickly along the meandering +track-ways. + +Meanwhile, Fitzpiers was preparing to leave the house. The state of his +mind, over and above his professional zeal, was peculiar. At Grace’s +first remark he had not recognized or suspected her presence; but as +she went on, he was awakened to the great resemblance of the speaker’s +voice to his wife’s. He had taken in such good faith the statement of +the household on his arrival, that she had gone on a visit for a time +because she could not at once bring her mind to be reconciled to him, +that he could not quite actually believe this comer to be she. It was +one of the features of Fitzpiers’s repentant humor at this date that, +on receiving the explanation of her absence, he had made no attempt to +outrage her feelings by following her; though nobody had informed him +how very shortly her departure had preceded his entry, and of all that +might have been inferred from her precipitancy. + +Melbury, after much alarm and consideration, had decided not to follow +her either. He sympathized with her flight, much as he deplored it; +moreover, the tragic color of the antecedent events that he had been a +great means of creating checked his instinct to interfere. He prayed +and trusted that she had got into no danger on her way (as he supposed) +to Sherton, and thence to Exbury, if that were the place she had gone +to, forbearing all inquiry which the strangeness of her departure would +have made natural. A few months before this time a performance by Grace +of one-tenth the magnitude of this would have aroused him to unwonted +investigation. + +It was in the same spirit that he had tacitly assented to Fitzpiers’s +domicilation there. The two men had not met face to face, but Mrs. +Melbury had proposed herself as an intermediary, who made the surgeon’s +re-entrance comparatively easy to him. Everything was provisional, and +nobody asked questions. Fitzpiers had come in the performance of a plan +of penitence, which had originated in circumstances hereafter to be +explained; his self-humiliation to the very bass-string was deliberate; +and as soon as a call reached him from the bedside of a dying man his +desire was to set to work and do as much good as he could with the +least possible fuss or show. He therefore refrained from calling up a +stableman to get ready any horse or gig, and set out for One-chimney +Hut on foot, as Grace had done. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII. + + +She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and approached +the sufferer. He had begun anew those terrible mutterings, and his +hands were cold. As soon as she saw him there returned to her that +agony of mind which the stimulus of her journey had thrown off for a +time. + +Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, forgot all things +but the fact that lying there before her was he who had loved her more +than the mere lover would have loved; had martyred himself for her +comfort, cared more for her self-respect than she had thought of +caring. This mood continued till she heard quick, smart footsteps +without; she knew whose footsteps they were. + +Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, holding Giles’s +hand, so that when her husband entered the patient lay between herself +and him. He stood transfixed at first, noticing Grace only. Slowly he +dropped his glance and discerned who the prostrate man was. Strangely +enough, though Grace’s distaste for her husband’s company had amounted +almost to dread, and culminated in actual flight, at this moment her +last and least feeling was personal. Sensitive femininity was eclipsed +by self-effacing purpose, and that it was a husband who stood there was +forgotten. The first look that possessed her face was relief; +satisfaction at the presence of the physician obliterated thought of +the man, which only returned in the form of a sub-consciousness that +did not interfere with her words. + +“Is he dying—is there any hope?” she cried. + +“Grace!” said Fitzpiers, in an indescribable whisper—more than +invocating, if not quite deprecatory. + +He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic +character—though that was striking enough to a man who called himself +the husband of the sufferer’s friend and nurse—but in its character as +the counterpart of one that had its hour many months before, in which +he had figured as the patient, and the woman had been Felice Charmond. + +“Is he in great danger—can you save him?” she cried again. + +Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined +Winterborne as he stood. His inspection was concluded in a mere glance. +Before he spoke he looked at her contemplatively as to the effect of +his coming words. + +“He is dying,” he said, with dry precision. + +“What?” said she. + +“Nothing can be done, by me or any other man. It will soon be all over. +The extremities are dead already.” His eyes still remained fixed on +her; the conclusion to which he had come seeming to end his interest, +professional and otherwise, in Winterborne forever. + +“But it cannot be! He was well three days ago.” + +“Not well, I suspect. This seems like a secondary attack, which has +followed some previous illness—possibly typhoid—it may have been months +ago, or recently.” + +“Ah—he was not well—you are right. He was ill—he was ill when I came.” + +There was nothing more to do or say. She crouched down at the side of +the bed, and Fitzpiers took a seat. Thus they remained in silence, and +long as it lasted she never turned her eyes, or apparently her +thoughts, at all to her husband. He occasionally murmured, with +automatic authority, some slight directions for alleviating the pain of +the dying man, which she mechanically obeyed, bending over him during +the intervals in silent tears. + +Winterborne never recovered consciousness of what was passing; and that +he was going became soon perceptible also to her. In less than an hour +the delirium ceased; then there was an interval of somnolent +painlessness and soft breathing, at the end of which Winterborne passed +quietly away. + +Then Fitzpiers broke the silence. “Have you lived here long?” said he. + +Grace was wild with sorrow—with all that had befallen her—with the +cruelties that had attacked her—with life—with Heaven. She answered at +random. “Yes. By what right do you ask?” + +“Don’t think I claim any right,” said Fitzpiers, sadly. “It is for you +to do and say what you choose. I admit, quite as much as you feel, that +I am a vagabond—a brute—not worthy to possess the smallest fragment of +you. But here I am, and I have happened to take sufficient interest in +you to make that inquiry.” + +“He is everything to me!” said Grace, hardly heeding her husband, and +laying her hand reverently on the dead man’s eyelids, where she kept it +a long time, pressing down their lashes with gentle touches, as if she +were stroking a little bird. + +He watched her a while, and then glanced round the chamber where his +eyes fell upon a few dressing necessaries that she had brought. + +“Grace—if I may call you so,” he said, “I have been already humiliated +almost to the depths. I have come back since you refused to join me +elsewhere—I have entered your father’s house, and borne all that that +cost me without flinching, because I have felt that I deserved +humiliation. But is there a yet greater humiliation in store for me? +You say you have been living here—that he is everything to you. Am I to +draw from that the obvious, the extremest inference?” + +Triumph at any price is sweet to men and women—especially the latter. +It was her first and last opportunity of repaying him for the cruel +contumely which she had borne at his hands so docilely. + +“Yes,” she answered; and there was that in her subtly compounded nature +which made her feel a thrill of pride as she did so. + +Yet the moment after she had so mightily belied her character she half +repented. Her husband had turned as white as the wall behind him. It +seemed as if all that remained to him of life and spirit had been +abstracted at a stroke. Yet he did not move, and in his efforts at +self-control closed his mouth together as a vice. His determination was +fairly successful, though she saw how very much greater than she had +expected her triumph had been. Presently he looked across at +Winterborne. + +“Would it startle you to hear,” he said, as if he hardly had breath to +utter the words, “that she who was to me what he was to you is dead +also?” + +“Dead—_she_ dead?” exclaimed Grace. + +“Yes. Felice Charmond is where this young man is.” + +“Never!” said Grace, vehemently. + +He went on without heeding the insinuation: “And I came back to try to +make it up with you—but—” + +Fitzpiers rose, and moved across the room to go away, looking downward +with the droop of a man whose hope was turned to apathy, if not +despair. In going round the door his eye fell upon her once more. She +was still bending over the body of Winterborne, her face close to the +young man’s. + +“Have you been kissing him during his illness?” asked her husband. + +“Yes.” + +“Since his fevered state set in?” + +“Yes.” + +“On his lips?” + +“Yes.” + +“Then you will do well to take a few drops of this in water as soon as +possible.” He drew a small phial from his pocket and returned to offer +it to her. + +Grace shook her head. + +“If you don’t do as I tell you you may soon be like him.” + +“I don’t care. I wish to die.” + +“I’ll put it here,” said Fitzpiers, placing the bottle on a ledge +beside him. “The sin of not having warned you will not be upon my head +at any rate, among my other sins. I am now going, and I will send +somebody to you. Your father does not know that you are here, so I +suppose I shall be bound to tell him?” + +“Certainly.” + +Fitzpiers left the cot, and the stroke of his feet was soon immersed in +the silence that pervaded the spot. Grace remained kneeling and +weeping, she hardly knew how long, and then she sat up, covered poor +Giles’s features, and went towards the door where her husband had +stood. No sign of any other comer greeted her ear, the only perceptible +sounds being the tiny cracklings of the dead leaves, which, like a +feather-bed, had not yet done rising to their normal level where +indented by the pressure of her husband’s receding footsteps. It +reminded her that she had been struck with the change in his aspect; +the extremely intellectual look that had always been in his face was +wrought to a finer phase by thinness, and a care-worn dignity had been +superadded. She returned to Winterborne’s side, and during her +meditations another tread drew near the door, entered the outer room, +and halted at the entrance of the chamber where Grace was. + +“What—Marty!” said Grace. + +“Yes. I have heard,” said Marty, whose demeanor had lost all its +girlishness under the stroke that seemed almost literally to have +bruised her. + +“He died for me!” murmured Grace, heavily. + +Marty did not fully comprehend; and she answered, “He belongs to +neither of us now, and your beauty is no more powerful with him than my +plainness. I have come to help you, ma’am. He never cared for me, and +he cared much for you; but he cares for us both alike now.” + +“Oh don’t, don’t, Marty!” + +Marty said no more, but knelt over Winterborne from the other side. + +“Did you meet my hus—Mr. Fitzpiers?” + +“No!” + +“Then what brought you here?” + +“I come this way sometimes. I have got to go to the farther side of the +wood this time of the year, and am obliged to get there before four +o’clock in the morning, to begin heating the oven for the early baking. +I have passed by here often at this time.” + +Grace looked at her quickly. “Then did you know I was here?” + +“Yes, ma’am.” + +“Did you tell anybody?” + +“No. I knew you lived in the hut, that he had gied it up to ye, and +lodged out himself.” + +“Did you know where he lodged?” + +“No. That I couldn’t find out. Was it at Delborough?” + +“No. It was not there, Marty. Would it had been! It would have +saved—saved—” To check her tears she turned, and seeing a book on the +window-bench, took it up. “Look, Marty, this is a Psalter. He was not +an outwardly religious man, but he was pure and perfect in his heart. +Shall we read a psalm over him?” + +“Oh yes—we will—with all my heart!” + +Grace opened the thin brown book, which poor Giles had kept at hand +mainly for the convenience of whetting his pen-knife upon its leather +covers. She began to read in that rich, devotional voice peculiar to +women only on such occasions. When it was over, Marty said, “I should +like to pray for his soul.” + +“So should I,” said her companion. “But we must not.” + +“Why? Nobody would know.” + +Grace could not resist the argument, influenced as she was by the sense +of making amends for having neglected him in the body; and their tender +voices united and filled the narrow room with supplicatory murmurs that +a Calvinist might have envied. They had hardly ended when now and more +numerous foot-falls were audible, also persons in conversation, one of +whom Grace recognized as her father. + +She rose, and went to the outer apartment, in which there was only such +light as beamed from the inner one. Melbury and Mrs. Melbury were +standing there. + +“I don’t reproach you, Grace,” said her father, with an estranged +manner, and in a voice not at all like his old voice. “What has come +upon you and us is beyond reproach, beyond weeping, and beyond wailing. +Perhaps I drove you to it. But I am hurt; I am scourged; I am +astonished. In the face of this there is nothing to be said.” + +Without replying, Grace turned and glided back to the inner chamber. +“Marty,” she said, quickly, “I cannot look my father in the face until +he knows the true circumstances of my life here. Go and tell him—what +you have told me—what you saw—that he gave up his house to me.” + +She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty went, and after a +short absence returned. Then Grace rose, and going out asked her father +if he had met her husband. + +“Yes,” said Melbury. + +“And you know all that has happened?” + +“I do. Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting ye of worse than rashness—I +ought to know ye better. Are you coming with me to what was once your +home?” + +“No. I stay here with HIM. Take no account of me any more.” + +The unwonted, perplexing, agitating relations in which she had stood to +Winterborne quite lately—brought about by Melbury’s own +contrivance—could not fail to soften the natural anger of a parent at +her more recent doings. “My daughter, things are bad,” he rejoined. +“But why do you persevere to make ’em worse? What good can you do to +Giles by staying here with him? Mind, I ask no questions. I don’t +inquire why you decided to come here, or anything as to what your +course would have been if he had not died, though I know there’s no +deliberate harm in ye. As for me, I have lost all claim upon you, and I +make no complaint. But I do say that by coming back with me now you +will show no less kindness to him, and escape any sound of shame. + +“But I don’t wish to escape it.” + +“If you don’t on your own account, cannot you wish to on mine and hers? +Nobody except our household knows that you have left home. Then why +should you, by a piece of perverseness, bring down my gray hairs with +sorrow to the grave?” + +“If it were not for my husband—” she began, moved by his words. “But +how can I meet him there? How can any woman who is not a mere man’s +creature join him after what has taken place?” + +“He would go away again rather than keep you out of my house.” + +“How do you know that, father?” + +“We met him on our way here, and he told us so,” said Mrs. Melbury. “He +had said something like it before. He seems very much upset +altogether.” + +“He declared to her when he came to our house that he would wait for +time and devotion to bring about his forgiveness,” said her husband. +“That was it, wasn’t it, Lucy?” + +“Yes. That he would not intrude upon you, Grace, till you gave him +absolute permission,” Mrs. Melbury added. + +This antecedent considerateness in Fitzpiers was as welcome to Grace as +it was unexpected; and though she did not desire his presence, she was +sorry that by her retaliatory fiction she had given him a different +reason for avoiding her. She made no further objections to accompanying +her parents, taking them into the inner room to give Winterborne a last +look, and gathering up the two or three things that belonged to her. +While she was doing this the two women came who had been called by +Melbury, and at their heels poor Creedle. + +“Forgive me, but I can’t rule my mourning nohow as a man should, Mr. +Melbury,” he said. “I ha’n’t seen him since Thursday se’night, and have +wondered for days and days where he’s been keeping. There was I +expecting him to come and tell me to wash out the cider-barrels against +the making, and here was he— Well, I’ve knowed him from table-high; I +knowed his father—used to bide about upon two sticks in the sun afore +he died!—and now I’ve seen the end of the family, which we can ill +afford to lose, wi’ such a scanty lot of good folk in Hintock as we’ve +got. And now Robert Creedle will be nailed up in parish boards ’a +b’lieve; and noboby will glutch down a sigh for he!” + +They started for home, Marty and Creedle remaining behind. For a time +Grace and her father walked side by side without speaking. It was just +in the blue of the dawn, and the chilling tone of the sky was reflected +in her cold, wet face. The whole wood seemed to be a house of death, +pervaded by loss to its uttermost length and breadth. Winterborne was +gone, and the copses seemed to show the want of him; those young trees, +so many of which he had planted, and of which he had spoken so truly +when he said that he should fall before they fell, were at that very +moment sending out their roots in the direction that he had given them +with his subtle hand. + +“One thing made it tolerable to us that your husband should come back +to the house,” said Melbury at last—“the death of Mrs. Charmond.” + +“Ah, yes,” said Grace, arousing slightly to the recollection, “he told +me so.” + +“Did he tell you how she died? It was no such death as Giles’s. She was +shot—by a disappointed lover. It occurred in Germany. The unfortunate +man shot himself afterwards. He was that South Carolina gentleman of +very passionate nature who used to haunt this place to force her to an +interview, and followed her about everywhere. So ends the brilliant +Felice Charmond—once a good friend to me—but no friend to you.” + +“I can forgive her,” said Grace, absently. “Did Edgar tell you of +this?” + +“No; but he put a London newspaper, giving an account of it, on the +hall table, folded in such a way that we should see it. It will be in +the Sherton paper this week, no doubt. To make the event more solemn +still to him, he had just before had sharp words with her, and left +her. He told Lucy this, as nothing about him appears in the newspaper. +And the cause of the quarrel was, of all people, she we’ve left behind +us.” + +“Do you mean Marty?” Grace spoke the words but perfunctorily. For, +pertinent and pointed as Melbury’s story was, she had no heart for it +now. + +“Yes. Marty South.” Melbury persisted in his narrative, to divert her +from her present grief, if possible. “Before he went away she wrote him +a letter, which he kept in his, pocket a long while before reading. He +chanced to pull it out in Mrs. Charmond’s, presence, and read it out +loud. It contained something which teased her very much, and that led +to the rupture. She was following him to make it up when she met with +her terrible death.” + +Melbury did not know enough to give the gist of the incident, which was +that Marty South’s letter had been concerning a certain personal +adornment common to herself and Mrs. Charmond. Her bullet reached its +billet at last. The scene between Fitzpiers and Felice had been sharp, +as only a scene can be which arises out of the mortification of one +woman by another in the presence of a lover. True, Marty had not +effected it by word of mouth; the charge about the locks of hair was +made simply by Fitzpiers reading her letter to him aloud to Felice in +the playfully ironical tones of one who had become a little weary of +his situation, and was finding his friend, in the phrase of George +Herbert, a “flat delight.” He had stroked those false tresses with his +hand many a time without knowing them to be transplanted, and it was +impossible when the discovery was so abruptly made to avoid being +finely satirical, despite her generous disposition. + +That was how it had begun, and tragedy had been its end. On his abrupt +departure she had followed him to the station but the train was gone; +and in travelling to Baden in search of him she had met his rival, +whose reproaches led to an altercation, and the death of both. Of that +precipitate scene of passion and crime Fitzpiers had known nothing till +he saw an account of it in the papers, where, fortunately for himself, +no mention was made of his prior acquaintance with the unhappy lady; +nor was there any allusion to him in the subsequent inquiry, the double +death being attributed to some gambling losses, though, in point of +fact, neither one of them had visited the tables. + +Melbury and his daughter drew near their house, having seen but one +living thing on their way, a squirrel, which did not run up its tree, +but, dropping the sweet chestnut which it carried, cried +chut-chut-chut, and stamped with its hind legs on the ground. When the +roofs and chimneys of the homestead began to emerge from the screen of +boughs, Grace started, and checked herself in her abstracted advance. + +“You clearly understand,” she said to her step-mother some of her old +misgiving returning, “that I am coming back only on condition of his +leaving as he promised? Will you let him know this, that there may be +no mistake?” + +Mrs. Melbury, who had some long private talks with Fitzpiers, assured +Grace that she need have no doubts on that point, and that he would +probably be gone by the evening. Grace then entered with them into +Melbury’s wing of the house, and sat down listlessly in the parlor, +while her step-mother went to Fitzpiers. + +The prompt obedience to her wishes which the surgeon showed did honor +to him, if anything could. Before Mrs. Melbury had returned to the room +Grace, who was sitting on the parlor window-bench, saw her husband go +from the door under the increasing light of morning, with a bag in his +hand. While passing through the gate he turned his head. The firelight +of the room she sat in threw her figure into dark relief against the +window as she looked through the panes, and he must have seen her +distinctly. In a moment he went on, the gate fell to, and he +disappeared. At the hut she had declared that another had displaced +him; and now she had banished him. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV. + + +Fitzpiers had hardly been gone an hour when Grace began to sicken. The +next day she kept her room. Old Jones was called in; he murmured some +statements in which the words “feverish symptoms” occurred. Grace heard +them, and guessed the means by which she had brought this visitation +upon herself. + +One day, while she still lay there with her head throbbing, wondering +if she were really going to join him who had gone before, Grammer +Oliver came to her bedside. “I don’t know whe’r this is meant for you +to take, ma’am,” she said, “but I have found it on the table. It was +left by Marty, I think, when she came this morning.” + +Grace turned her hot eyes upon what Grammer held up. It was the phial +left at the hut by her husband when he had begged her to take some +drops of its contents if she wished to preserve herself from falling a +victim to the malady which had pulled down Winterborne. She examined it +as well as she could. The liquid was of an opaline hue, and bore a +label with an inscription in Italian. He had probably got it in his +wanderings abroad. She knew but little Italian, but could understand +that the cordial was a febrifuge of some sort. Her father, her mother, +and all the household were anxious for her recovery, and she resolved +to obey her husband’s directions. Whatever the risk, if any, she was +prepared to run it. A glass of water was brought, and the drops dropped +in. + +The effect, though not miraculous, was remarkable. In less than an hour +she felt calmer, cooler, better able to reflect—less inclined to fret +and chafe and wear herself away. She took a few drops more. From that +time the fever retreated, and went out like a damped conflagration. + +“How clever he is!” she said, regretfully. “Why could he not have had +more principle, so as to turn his great talents to good account? +Perhaps he has saved my useless life. But he doesn’t know it, and +doesn’t care whether he has saved it or not; and on that account will +never be told by me! Probably he only gave it to me in the arrogance of +his skill, to show the greatness of his resources beside mine, as +Elijah drew down fire from heaven.” + +As soon as she had quite recovered from this foiled attack upon her +life, Grace went to Marty South’s cottage. The current of her being had +again set towards the lost Giles Winterborne. + +“Marty,” she said, “we both loved him. We will go to his grave +together.” + +Great Hintock church stood at the upper part of the village, and could +be reached without passing through the street. In the dusk of the late +September day they went thither by secret ways, walking mostly in +silence side by side, each busied with her own thoughts. Grace had a +trouble exceeding Marty’s—that haunting sense of having put out the +light of his life by her own hasty doings. She had tried to persuade +herself that he might have died of his illness, even if she had not +taken possession of his house. Sometimes she succeeded in her attempt; +sometimes she did not. + +They stood by the grave together, and though the sun had gone down, +they could see over the woodland for miles, and down to the vale in +which he had been accustomed to descend every year, with his portable +mill and press, to make cider about this time. + +Perhaps Grace’s first grief, the discovery that if he had lived he +could never have claimed her, had some power in softening this, the +second. On Marty’s part there was the same consideration; never would +she have been his. As no anticipation of gratified affection had been +in existence while he was with them, there was none to be disappointed +now that he had gone. + +Grace was abased when, by degrees, she found that she had never +understood Giles as Marty had done. Marty South alone, of all the women +in Hintock and the world, had approximated to Winterborne’s level of +intelligent intercourse with nature. In that respect she had formed the +complement to him in the other sex, had lived as his counterpart, had +subjoined her thought to his as a corollary. + +The casual glimpses which the ordinary population bestowed upon that +wondrous world of sap and leaves called the Hintock woods had been with +these two, Giles and Marty, a clear gaze. They had been possessed of +its finer mysteries as of commonplace knowledge; had been able to read +its hieroglyphs as ordinary writing; to them the sights and sounds of +night, winter, wind, storm, amid those dense boughs, which had to Grace +a touch of the uncanny, and even the supernatural, were simple +occurrences whose origin, continuance, and laws they foreknew. They had +planted together, and together they had felled; together they had, with +the run of the years, mentally collected those remoter signs and +symbols which, seen in few, were of runic obscurity, but all together +made an alphabet. From the light lashing of the twigs upon their faces, +when brushing through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the +species of the tree whence they stretched; from the quality of the +wind’s murmur through a bough they could in like manner name its sort +afar off. They knew by a glance at a trunk if its heart were sound, or +tainted with incipient decay, and by the state of its upper twigs, the +stratum that had been reached by its roots. The artifices of the +seasons were seen by them from the conjuror’s own point of view, and +not from that of the spectator’s. + +“He ought to have married _you_, Marty, and nobody else in the world!” +said Grace, with conviction, after thinking somewhat in the above +strain. + +Marty shook her head. “In all our out-door days and years together, +ma’am,” she replied, “the one thing he never spoke of to me was love; +nor I to him.” + +“Yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody else knew—not even +my father, though he came nearest knowing—the tongue of the trees and +fruits and flowers themselves.” + +She could indulge in mournful fancies like this to Marty; but the hard +core to her grief—which Marty’s had not—remained. Had she been sure +that Giles’s death resulted entirely from his exposure, it would have +driven her well-nigh to insanity; but there was always that bare +possibility that his exposure had only precipitated what was +inevitable. She longed to believe that it had not done even this. + +There was only one man whose opinion on the circumstances she would be +at all disposed to trust. Her husband was that man. Yet to ask him it +would be necessary to detail the true conditions in which she and +Winterborne had lived during these three or four critical days that +followed her flight; and in withdrawing her original defiant +announcement on that point, there seemed a weakness she did not care to +show. She never doubted that Fitzpiers would believe her if she made a +clean confession of the actual situation; but to volunteer the +correction would seem like signalling for a truce, and that, in her +present frame of mind, was what she did not feel the need of. + +It will probably not appear a surprising statement, after what has been +already declared of Fitzpiers, that the man whom Grace’s fidelity could +not keep faithful was stung into passionate throbs of interest +concerning her by her avowal of the contrary. + +He declared to himself that he had never known her dangerously full +compass if she were capable of such a reprisal; and, melancholy as it +may be to admit the fact, his own humiliation and regret engendered a +smouldering admiration of her. + +He passed a month or two of great misery at Exbury, the place to which +he had retired—quite as much misery indeed as Grace, could she have +known of it, would have been inclined to inflict upon any living +creature, how much soever he might have wronged her. Then a sudden hope +dawned upon him; he wondered if her affirmation were true. He asked +himself whether it were not the act of a woman whose natural purity and +innocence had blinded her to the contingencies of such an announcement. +His wide experience of the sex had taught him that, in many cases, +women who ventured on hazardous matters did so because they lacked an +imagination sensuous enough to feel their full force. In this light +Grace’s bold avowal might merely have denoted the desperation of one +who was a child to the realities of obliquity. + +Fitzpiers’s mental sufferings and suspense led him at last to take a +melancholy journey to the neighborhood of Little Hintock; and here he +hovered for hours around the scene of the purest emotional experiences +that he had ever known in his life. He walked about the woods that +surrounded Melbury’s house, keeping out of sight like a criminal. It +was a fine evening, and on his way homeward he passed near Marty +South’s cottage. As usual she had lighted her candle without closing +her shutters; he saw her within as he had seen her many times before. + +She was polishing tools, and though he had not wished to show himself, +he could not resist speaking in to her through the half-open door. +“What are you doing that for, Marty?” + +“Because I want to clean them. They are not mine.” He could see, +indeed, that they were not hers, for one was a spade, large and heavy, +and another was a bill-hook which she could only have used with both +hands. The spade, though not a new one, had been so completely +burnished that it was bright as silver. + +Fitzpiers somehow divined that they were Giles Winterborne’s, and he +put the question to her. + +She replied in the affirmative. “I am going to keep ’em,” she said, +“but I can’t get his apple-mill and press. I wish could; it is going to +be sold, they say.” + +“Then I will buy it for you,” said Fitzpiers. “That will be making you +a return for a kindness you did me.” His glance fell upon the girl’s +rare-colored hair, which had grown again. “Oh, Marty, those locks of +yours—and that letter! But it was a kindness to send it, nevertheless,” +he added, musingly. + +After this there was confidence between them—such confidence as there +had never been before. Marty was shy, indeed, of speaking about the +letter, and her motives in writing it; but she thanked him warmly for +his promise of the cider-press. She would travel with it in the autumn +season, as he had done, she said. She would be quite strong enough, +with old Creedle as an assistant. + +“Ah! there was one nearer to him than you,” said Fitzpiers, referring +to Winterborne. “One who lived where he lived, and was with him when he +died.” + +Then Marty, suspecting that he did not know the true circumstances, +from the fact that Mrs. Fitzpiers and himself were living apart, told +him of Giles’s generosity to Grace in giving up his house to her at the +risk, and possibly the sacrifice, of his own life. When the surgeon +heard it he almost envied Giles his chivalrous character. He expressed +a wish to Marty that his visit to her should be kept secret, and went +home thoughtful, feeling that in more that one sense his journey to +Hintock had not been in vain. + +He would have given much to win Grace’s forgiveness then. But whatever +he dared hope for in that kind from the future, there was nothing to be +done yet, while Giles Winterborne’s memory was green. To wait was +imperative. A little time might melt her frozen thoughts, and lead her +to look on him with toleration, if not with love. + + + + +CHAPTER XLV. + + +Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had been passed by Grace +in the soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she and Marty had +devoted themselves. Twice a week the pair went in the dusk to Great +Hintock, and, like the two mourners in _Cymbeline_, sweetened his sad +grave with their flowers and their tears. Sometimes Grace thought that +it was a pity neither one of them had been his wife for a little while, +and given the world a copy of him who was so valuable in their eyes. +Nothing ever had brought home to her with such force as this death how +little acquirements and culture weigh beside sterling personal +character. While her simple sorrow for his loss took a softer edge with +the lapse of the autumn and winter seasons, her self-reproach at having +had a possible hand in causing it knew little abatement. + +Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the fall and decay of +the leaf. Discussion of the almost contemporaneous death of Mrs. +Charmond abroad had waxed and waned. Fitzpiers had had a marvellous +escape from being dragged into the inquiry which followed it, through +the accident of their having parted just before under the influence of +Marty South’s letter—the tiny instrument of a cause deep in nature. + +Her body was not brought home. It seemed to accord well with the fitful +fever of that impassioned woman’s life that she should not have found a +native grave. She had enjoyed but a life-interest in the estate, which, +after her death, passed to a relative of her husband’s—one who knew not +Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be to blot out every vestige of +her. + +On a certain day in February—the cheerful day of St. Valentine, in +fact—a letter reached Mrs. Fitzpiers, which had been mentally promised +her for that particular day a long time before. + +It announced that Fitzpiers was living at some midland town, where he +had obtained a temporary practice as assistant to some local medical +man, whose curative principles were all wrong, though he dared not set +them right. He had thought fit to communicate with her on that day of +tender traditions to inquire if, in the event of his obtaining a +substantial practice that he had in view elsewhere, she could forget +the past and bring herself to join him. + +There the practical part ended; he then went on— + +“My last year of experience has added ten years to my age, dear Grace +and dearest wife that ever erring man undervalued. You may be +absolutely indifferent to what I say, but let me say it: I have never +loved any woman alive or dead as I love, respect, and honor you at this +present moment. What you told me in the pride and haughtiness of your +heart I never believed [this, by the way, was not strictly true]; but +even if I had believed it, it could never have estranged me from you. +Is there any use in telling you—no, there is not—that I dream of your +ripe lips more frequently than I say my prayers; that the old familiar +rustle of your dress often returns upon my mind till it distracts me? +If you could condescend even only to see me again you would be +breathing life into a corpse. My pure, pure Grace, modest as a +turtledove, how came I ever to possess you? For the sake of being +present in your mind on this lovers’ day, I think I would almost rather +have you hate me a little than not think of me at all. You may call my +fancies whimsical; but remember, sweet, lost one, that ‘nature is one +in love, and where ’tis fine it sends some instance of itself.’ I will +not intrude upon you further now. Make me a little bit happy by sending +back one line to say that you will consent, at any rate, to a short +interview. I will meet you and leave you as a mere acquaintance, if you +will only afford me this slight means of making a few explanations, and +of putting my position before you. Believe me, in spite of all you may +do or feel, + + +Your lover always (once your husband), + +“E.F.” + + +It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first on which +Grace had ever received a love-letter from him, his courtship having +taken place under conditions which rendered letter-writing unnecessary. +Its perusal, therefore, had a certain novelty for her. She thought +that, upon the whole, he wrote love-letters very well. But the chief +rational interest of the letter to the reflective Grace lay in the +chance that such a meeting as he proposed would afford her of setting +her doubts at rest, one way or the other, on her actual share in +Winterborne’s death. The relief of consulting a skilled mind, the one +professional man who had seen Giles at that time, would be immense. As +for that statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which +at the time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared to +admit to him that his belief was the true one; for in wronging herself +as she did when she made it, she had done what to her was a far more +serious thing, wronged Winterborne’s memory. + +Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or out of it, +Grace replied to the letter. She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on two +conditions, of which the first was that the place of meeting should be +the top of Rubdown Hill, the second that he would not object to Marty +South accompanying her. + +Whatever part, much or little, there may have been in Fitzpiers’s +so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the bursting +of spring when her brief reply came. It was one of the few pleasures +that he had experienced of late years at all resembling those of his +early youth. He promptly replied that he accepted the conditions, and +named the day and hour at which he would be on the spot she mentioned. + +A few minutes before three on the appointed day found him climbing the +well-known hill, which had been the axis of so many critical movements +in their lives during his residence at Hintock. + +The sight of each homely and well-remembered object swelled the regret +that seldom left him now. Whatever paths might lie open to his future, +the soothing shades of Hintock were forbidden him forever as a +permanent dwelling-place. + +He longed for the society of Grace. But to lay offerings on her +slighted altar was his first aim, and until her propitiation was +complete he would constrain her in no way to return to him. The least +reparation that he could make, in a case where he would gladly have +made much, would be to let her feel herself absolutely free to choose +between living with him and without him. + +Moreover, a subtlist in emotions, he cultivated as under glasses +strange and mournful pleasures that he would not willingly let die just +at present. To show any forwardness in suggesting a _modus vivendi_ to +Grace would be to put an end to these exotics. To be the vassal of her +sweet will for a time, he demanded no more, and found solace in the +contemplation of the soft miseries she caused him. + +Approaching the hill-top with a mind strung to these notions, Fitzpiers +discerned a gay procession of people coming over the crest, and was not +long in perceiving it to be a wedding-party. + +Though the wind was keen the women were in light attire, and the +flowered waistcoats of the men had a pleasing vividness of pattern. +Each of the gentler ones clung to the arm of her partner so tightly as +to have with him one step, rise, swing, gait, almost one centre of +gravity. In the buxom bride Fitzpiers recognized no other than Suke +Damson, who in her light gown looked a giantess; the small husband +beside her he saw to be Tim Tangs. + +Fitzpiers could not escape, for they had seen him; though of all the +beauties of the world whom he did not wish to meet Suke was the chief. +But he put the best face on the matter that he could and came on, the +approaching company evidently discussing him and his separation from +Mrs. Fitzpiers. As the couples closed upon him he expressed his +congratulations. + +“We be just walking round the parishes to show ourselves a bit,” said +Tim. “First we het across to Delborough, then athwart to here, and from +here we go to Rubdown and Millshot, and then round by the cross-roads +home. Home says I, but it won’t be that long! We be off next month.” + +“Indeed. Where to?” + +Tim informed him that they were going to New Zealand. Not but that he +would have been contented with Hintock, but his wife was ambitious and +wanted to leave, so he had given way. + +“Then good-by,” said Fitzpiers; “I may not see you again.” He shook +hands with Tim and turned to the bride. “Good-by, Suke,” he said, +taking her hand also. “I wish you and your husband prosperity in the +country you have chosen.” With this he left them, and hastened on to +his appointment. + +The wedding-party re-formed and resumed march likewise. But in +restoring his arm to Suke, Tim noticed that her full and blooming +countenance had undergone a change. “Holloa! me dear—what’s the +matter?” said Tim. + +“Nothing to speak o’,” said she. But to give the lie to her assertion +she was seized with lachrymose twitches, that soon produced a dribbling +face. + +“How—what the devil’s this about!” exclaimed the bridegroom. + +“She’s a little wee bit overcome, poor dear!” said the first +bridesmaid, unfolding her handkerchief and wiping Suke’s eyes. + +“I never did like parting from people!” said Suke, as soon as she could +speak. + +“Why him in particular?” + +“Well—he’s such a clever doctor, that ’tis a thousand pities we sha’n’t +see him any more! There’ll be no such clever doctor as he in New +Zealand, if I should require one; and the thought o’t got the better of +my feelings!” + +They walked on, but Tim’s face had grown rigid and pale, for he +recalled slight circumstances, disregarded at the time of their +occurrence. The former boisterous laughter of the wedding-party at the +groomsman’s jokes was heard ringing through the woods no more. + +By this time Fitzpiers had advanced on his way to the top of the hill, +where he saw two figures emerging from the bank on the right hand. +These were the expected ones, Grace and Marty South, who had evidently +come there by a short and secret path through the wood. Grace was +muffled up in her winter dress, and he thought that she had never +looked so seductive as at this moment, in the noontide bright but +heatless sun, and the keen wind, and the purplish-gray masses of +brushwood around. + +Fitzpiers continued to regard the nearing picture, till at length their +glances met for a moment, when she demurely sent off hers at a tangent +and gave him the benefit of her three-quarter face, while with +courteous completeness of conduct he lifted his hat in a large arc. +Marty dropped behind; and when Fitzpiers held out his hand, Grace +touched it with her fingers. + +“I have agreed to be here mostly because I wanted to ask you something +important,” said Mrs. Fitzpiers, her intonation modulating in a +direction that she had not quite wished it to take. + +“I am most attentive,” said her husband. “Shall we take to the wood for +privacy?” + +Grace demurred, and Fitzpiers gave in, and they kept the public road. + +At any rate she would take his arm? This also was gravely negatived, +the refusal being audible to Marty. + +“Why not?” he inquired. + +“Oh, Mr. Fitzpiers—how can you ask?” + +“Right, right,” said he, his effusiveness shrivelled up. + +As they walked on she returned to her inquiry. “It is about a matter +that may perhaps be unpleasant to you. But I think I need not consider +that too carefully.” + +“Not at all,” said Fitzpiers, heroically. + +She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne’s death, and +related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness had come +upon him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to which he had +betaken himself, his concealment from her of the hardships that he was +undergoing, all that he had put up with, all that he had done for her +in his scrupulous considerateness. The retrospect brought her to tears +as she asked him if he thought that the sin of having driven him to his +death was upon her. + +Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her +narrative indirectly revealed, the actual harmlessness of an escapade +with her lover, which had at first, by her own showing, looked so +grave, and he did not care to inquire whether that harmlessness had +been the result of aim or of accident. With regard to her question, he +declared that in his judgment no human being could answer it. He +thought that upon the whole the balance of probabilities turned in her +favor. Winterborne’s apparent strength, during the last months of his +life, must have been delusive. It had often occurred that after a first +attack of that insidious disease a person’s apparent recovery was a +physiological mendacity. + +The relief which came to Grace lay almost as much in sharing her +knowledge of the particulars with an intelligent mind as in the +assurances Fitzpiers gave her. “Well, then, to put this case before +you, and obtain your professional opinion, was chiefly why I consented +to come here to-day,” said she, when he had reached the aforesaid +conclusion. + +“For no other reason at all?” he asked, ruefully. + +“It was nearly the whole.” + +They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty starlings feeding +in the grass, and he started the talk again by saying, in a low voice, +“And yet I love you more than ever I loved you in my life.” + +Grace did not move her eyes from the birds, and folded her delicate +lips as if to keep them in subjection. + +“It is a different kind of love altogether,” said he. “Less passionate; +more profound. It has nothing to do with the material conditions of the +object at all; much to do with her character and goodness, as revealed +by closer observation. ‘Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge +with dearer love.’” + +“That’s out of _Measure for Measure_,” said she, slyly. + +“Oh yes—I meant it as a citation,” blandly replied Fitzpiers. “Well, +then, why not give me a very little bit of your heart again?” + +The crash of a felled tree in the remote depths of the wood recalled +the past at that moment, and all the homely faithfulness of +Winterborne. “Don’t ask it! My heart is in the grave with Giles,” she +replied, stanchly. + +“Mine is with you—in no less deep a grave, I fear, according to that.” + +“I am very sorry; but it cannot be helped.” + +“How can you be sorry for me, when you wilfully keep open the grave?” + +“Oh no—that’s not so,” returned Grace, quickly, and moved to go away +from him. + +“But, dearest Grace,” said he, “you have condescended to come; and I +thought from it that perhaps when I had passed through a long state of +probation you would be generous. But if there can be no hope of our +getting completely reconciled, treat me gently—wretch though I am.” + +“I did not say you were a wretch, nor have I ever said so.” + +“But you have such a contemptuous way of looking at me that I fear you +think so.” + +Grace’s heart struggled between the wish not to be harsh and the fear +that she might mislead him. “I cannot look contemptuous unless I feel +contempt,” she said, evasively. “And all I feel is lovelessness.” + +“I have been very bad, I know,” he returned. “But unless you can really +love me again, Grace, I would rather go away from you forever. I don’t +want you to receive me again for duty’s sake, or anything of that sort. +If I had not cared more for your affection and forgiveness than my own +personal comfort, I should never have come back here. I could have +obtained a practice at a distance, and have lived my own life without +coldness or reproach. But I have chosen to return to the one spot on +earth where my name is tarnished—to enter the house of a man from whom +I have had worse treatment than from any other man alive—all for you!” + +This was undeniably true, and it had its weight with Grace, who began +to look as if she thought she had been shockingly severe. + +“Before you go,” he continued, “I want to know your pleasure about +me—what you wish me to do, or not to do.” + +“You are independent of me, and it seems a mockery to ask that. Far be +it from me to advise. But I will think it over. I rather need advice +myself than stand in a position to give it.” + +“_You_ don’t need advice, wisest, dearest woman that ever lived. If you +did—” + +“Would you give it to me?” + +“Would you act upon what I gave?” + +“That’s not a fair inquiry,” said she, smiling despite her gravity. “I +don’t mind hearing it—what you do really think the most correct and +proper course for me.” + +“It is so easy for me to say, and yet I dare not, for it would be +provoking you to remonstrances.” + +Knowing, of course, what the advice would be, she did not press him +further, and was about to beckon Marty forward and leave him, when he +interrupted her with, “Oh, one moment, dear Grace—you will meet me +again?” + +She eventually agreed to see him that day fortnight. Fitzpiers +expostulated at the interval, but the half-alarmed earnestness with +which she entreated him not to come sooner made him say hastily that he +submitted to her will—that he would regard her as a friend only, +anxious for his reform and well-being, till such time as she might +allow him to exceed that privilege. + +All this was to assure her; it was only too clear that he had not won +her confidence yet. It amazed Fitzpiers, and overthrew all his +deductions from previous experience, to find that this girl, though she +had been married to him, could yet be so coy. Notwithstanding a certain +fascination that it carried with it, his reflections were sombre as he +went homeward; he saw how deep had been his offence to produce so great +a wariness in a gentle and once unsuspicious soul. + +He was himself too fastidious to care to coerce her. To be an object of +misgiving or dislike to a woman who shared his home was what he could +not endure the thought of. Life as it stood was more tolerable. + +When he was gone, Marty joined Mrs. Fitzpiers. She would fain have +consulted Marty on the question of Platonic relations with her former +husband, as she preferred to regard him. But Marty showed no great +interest in their affairs, so Grace said nothing. They came onward, and +saw Melbury standing at the scene of the felling which had been audible +to them, when, telling Marty that she wished her meeting with Mr. +Fitzpiers to be kept private, she left the girl to join her father. At +any rate, she would consult him on the expediency of occasionally +seeing her husband. + +Her father was cheerful, and walked by her side as he had done in +earlier days. “I was thinking of you when you came up,” he said. “I +have considered that what has happened is for the best. Since your +husband is gone away, and seems not to wish to trouble you, why, let +him go, and drop out of your life. Many women are worse off. You can +live here comfortably enough, and he can emigrate, or do what he likes +for his good. I wouldn’t mind sending him the further sum of money he +might naturally expect to come to him, so that you may not be bothered +with him any more. He could hardly have gone on living here without +speaking to me, or meeting me; and that would have been very unpleasant +on both sides.” + +These remarks checked her intention. There was a sense of weakness in +following them by saying that she had just met her husband by +appointment. “Then you would advise me not to communicate with him?” +she observed. + +“I shall never advise ye again. You are your own mistress—do as you +like. But my opinion is that if you don’t live with him, you had better +live without him, and not go shilly-shallying and playing bopeep. You +sent him away; and now he’s gone. Very well; trouble him no more.” + +Grace felt a guiltiness—she hardly knew why—and made no confession. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI. + + +The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed in-doors a great deal. +She became quite a student, reading more than she had done since her +marriage But her seclusion was always broken for the periodical visit +to Winterborne’s grave with Marty, which was kept up with pious +strictness, for the purpose of putting snow-drops, primroses, and other +vernal flowers thereon as they came. + +One afternoon at sunset she was standing just outside her father’s +garden, which, like the rest of the Hintock enclosures, abutted into +the wood. A slight foot-path led along here, forming a secret way to +either of the houses by getting through its boundary hedge. Grace was +just about to adopt this mode of entry when a figure approached along +the path, and held up his hand to detain her. It was her husband. + +“I am delighted,” he said, coming up out of breath; and there seemed no +reason to doubt his words. “I saw you some way off—I was afraid you +would go in before I could reach you.” + +“It is a week before the time,” said she, reproachfully. “I said a +fortnight from the last meeting.” + +“My dear, you don’t suppose I could wait a fortnight without trying to +get a glimpse of you, even though you had declined to meet me! Would it +make you angry to know that I have been along this path at dusk three +or four times since our last meeting? Well, how are you?” + +She did not refuse her hand, but when he showed a wish to retain it a +moment longer than mere formality required, she made it smaller, so +that it slipped away from him, with again that same alarmed look which +always followed his attempts in this direction. He saw that she was not +yet out of the elusive mood; not yet to be treated presumingly; and he +was correspondingly careful to tranquillize her. + +His assertion had seemed to impress her somewhat. “I had no idea you +came so often,” she said. “How far do you come from?” + +“From Exbury. I always walk from Sherton-Abbas, for if I hire, people +will know that I come; and my success with you so far has not been +great enough to justify such overtness. Now, my dear one—as I _must_ +call you—I put it to you: will you see me a little oftener as the +spring advances?” + +Grace lapsed into unwonted sedateness, and avoiding the question, said, +“I wish you would concentrate on your profession, and give up those +strange studies that used to distract you so much. I am sure you would +get on.” + +“It is the very thing I am doing. I was going to ask you to burn—or, at +least, get rid of—all my philosophical literature. It is in the +bookcases in your rooms. The fact is, I never cared much for abstruse +studies.” + +“I am so glad to hear you say that. And those other books—those piles +of old plays—what good are they to a medical man?” + +“None whatever!” he replied, cheerfully. “Sell them at Sherton for what +they will fetch.” + +“And those dreadful old French romances, with their horrid spellings of +‘filz’ and ‘ung’ and ‘ilz’ and ‘mary’ and ‘ma foy?’” + +“You haven’t been reading them, Grace?” + +“Oh no—I just looked into them, that was all.” + +“Make a bonfire of ’em directly you get home. I meant to do it myself. +I can’t think what possessed me ever to collect them. I have only a few +professional hand-books now, and am quite a practical man. I am in +hopes of having some good news to tell you soon, and then do you think +you could—come to me again?” + +“I would rather you did not press me on that just now,” she replied, +with some feeling. “You have said you mean to lead a new, useful, +effectual life; but I should like to see you put it in practice for a +little while before you address that query to me. Besides—I could not +live with you.” + +“Why not?” + +Grace was silent a few instants. “I go with Marty to Giles’s grave. We +swore we would show him that devotion. And I mean to keep it up.” + +“Well, I wouldn’t mind that at all. I have no right to expect anything +else, and I will not wish you to keep away. I liked the man as well as +any I ever knew. In short, I would accompany you a part of the way to +the place, and smoke a cigar on the stile while I waited till you came +back.” + +“Then you haven’t given up smoking?” + +“Well—ahem—no. I have thought of doing so, but—” + +His extreme complacence had rather disconcerted Grace, and the question +about smoking had been to effect a diversion. Presently she said, +firmly, and with a moisture in her eye that he could not see, as her +mind returned to poor Giles’s “frustrate ghost,” “I don’t like you—to +speak lightly on that subject, if you did speak lightly. To be frank +with you—quite frank—I think of him as my betrothed lover still. I +cannot help it. So that it would be wrong for me to join you.” + +Fitzpiers was now uneasy. “You say your betrothed lover still,” he +rejoined. “When, then, were you betrothed to him, or engaged, as we +common people say?” + +“When you were away.” + +“How could that be?” + +Grace would have avoided this; but her natural candor led her on. “It +was when I was under the impression that my marriage with you was about +to be annulled, and that he could then marry me. So I encouraged him to +love me.” + +Fitzpiers winced visibly; and yet, upon the whole, she was right in +telling it. Indeed, his perception that she was right in her absolute +sincerity kept up his affectionate admiration for her under the pain of +the rebuff. Time had been when the avowal that Grace had deliberately +taken steps to replace him would have brought him no sorrow. But she so +far dominated him now that he could not bear to hear her words, +although the object of her high regard was no more. + +“It is rough upon me—that!” he said, bitterly. “Oh, Grace—I did not +know you—tried to get rid of me! I suppose it is of no use, but I ask, +cannot you hope to—find a little love in your heart for me again?” + +“If I could I would oblige you; but I fear I cannot!” she replied, with +illogical ruefulness. “And I don’t see why you should mind my having +had one lover besides yourself in my life, when you have had so many.” + +“But I can tell you honestly that I love you better than all of them +put together, and that’s what you will not tell me!” + +“I am sorry; but I fear I cannot,” she said, sighing again. + +“I wonder if you ever will?” He looked musingly into her indistinct +face, as if he would read the future there. “Now have pity, and tell +me: will you try?” + +“To love you again?” + +“Yes; if you can.” + +“I don’t know how to reply,” she answered, her embarrassment proving +her truth. “Will you promise to leave me quite free as to seeing you or +not seeing you?” + +“Certainly. Have I given any ground for you to doubt my first promise +in that respect?” + +She was obliged to admit that he had not. + +“Then I think that you might get your heart out of that grave,” said +he, with playful sadness. “It has been there a long time.” + +She faintly shook her head, but said, “I’ll try to think of you more—if +I can.” + +With this Fitzpiers was compelled to be satisfied, and he asked her +when she would meet him again. + +“As we arranged—in a fortnight.” + +“If it must be a fortnight it must!” + +“This time at least. I’ll consider by the day I see you again if I can +shorten the interval.” + +“Well, be that as it may, I shall come at least twice a week to look at +your window.” + +“You must do as you like about that. Good-night.” + +“Say ‘husband.’” + +She seemed almost inclined to give him the word; but exclaiming, “No, +no; I cannot,” slipped through the garden-hedge and disappeared. + +Fitzpiers did not exaggerate when he told her that he should haunt the +precincts of the dwelling. But his persistence in this course did not +result in his seeing her much oftener than at the fortnightly interval +which she had herself marked out as proper. At these times, however, +she punctually appeared, and as the spring wore on the meetings were +kept up, though their character changed but little with the increase in +their number. + +The small garden of the cottage occupied by the Tangs family—father, +son, and now son’s wife—aligned with the larger one of the +timber-dealer at its upper end; and when young Tim, after leaving work +at Melbury’s, stood at dusk in the little bower at the corner of his +enclosure to smoke a pipe, he frequently observed the surgeon pass +along the outside track before-mentioned. Fitzpiers always walked +loiteringly, pensively, looking with a sharp eye into the gardens one +after another as he proceeded; for Fitzpiers did not wish to leave the +now absorbing spot too quickly, after travelling so far to reach it; +hoping always for a glimpse of her whom he passionately desired to take +to his arms anew. + +Now Tim began to be struck with these loitering progresses along the +garden boundaries in the gloaming, and wondered what they boded. It +was, naturally, quite out of his power to divine the singular, +sentimental revival in Fitzpiers’s heart; the fineness of tissue which +could take a deep, emotional—almost also an artistic—pleasure in being +the yearning _innamorato_ of a woman he once had deserted, would have +seemed an absurdity to the young sawyer. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers were +separated; therefore the question of affection as between them was +settled. But his Suke had, since that meeting on their marriage-day, +repentantly admitted, to the urgency of his questioning, a good deal +concerning her past levities. Putting all things together, he could +hardly avoid connecting Fitzpiers’s mysterious visits to this spot with +Suke’s residence under his roof. But he made himself fairly easy: the +vessel in which they were about to emigrate sailed that month; and then +Suke would be out of Fitzpiers’s way forever. + +The interval at last expired, and the eve of their departure arrived. +They were pausing in the room of the cottage allotted to them by Tim’s +father, after a busy day of preparation, which left them weary. In a +corner stood their boxes, crammed and corded, their large case for the +hold having already been sent away. The firelight shone upon Suke’s +fine face and form as she stood looking into it, and upon the face of +Tim seated in a corner, and upon the walls of his father’s house, which +he was beholding that night almost for the last time. + +Tim Tangs was not happy. This scheme of emigration was dividing him +from his father—for old Tangs would on no account leave Hintock—and had +it not been for Suke’s reputation and his own dignity, Tim would at the +last moment have abandoned the project. As he sat in the back part of +the room he regarded her moodily, and the fire and the boxes. One thing +he had particularly noticed this evening—she was very restless; fitful +in her actions, unable to remain seated, and in a marked degree +depressed. + +“Sorry that you be going, after all, Suke?” he said. + +She sighed involuntarily. “I don’t know but that I be,” she answered. +“’Tis natural, isn’t it, when one is going away?” + +“But you wasn’t born here as I was.” + +“No.” + +“There’s folk left behind that you’d fain have with ’ee, I reckon?” + +“Why do you think that?” + +“I’ve seen things and I’ve heard things; and, Suke, I say ’twill be a +good move for me to get ’ee away. I don’t mind his leavings abroad, but +I do mind ’em at home.” + +Suke’s face was not changed from its aspect of listless indifference by +the words. She answered nothing; and shortly after he went out for his +customary pipe of tobacco at the top of the garden. + +The restlessness of Suke had indeed owed its presence to the gentleman +of Tim’s suspicions, but in a different—and it must be added in justice +to her—more innocent sense than he supposed, judging from former +doings. She had accidentally discovered that Fitzpiers was in the habit +of coming secretly once or twice a week to Hintock, and knew that this +evening was a favorite one of the seven for his journey. As she was +going next day to leave the country, Suke thought there could be no +great harm in giving way to a little sentimentality by obtaining a +glimpse of him quite unknown to himself or to anybody, and thus taking +a silent last farewell. Aware that Fitzpiers’s time for passing was at +hand she thus betrayed her feeling. No sooner, therefore, had Tim left +the room than she let herself noiselessly out of the house, and +hastened to the corner of the garden, whence she could witness the +surgeon’s transit across the scene—if he had not already gone by. + +Her light cotton dress was visible to Tim lounging in the arbor of the +opposite corner, though he was hidden from her. He saw her stealthily +climb into the hedge, and so ensconce herself there that nobody could +have the least doubt her purpose was to watch unseen for a passer-by. + +He went across to the spot and stood behind her. Suke started, having +in her blundering way forgotten that he might be near. She at once +descended from the hedge. + +“So he’s coming to-night,” said Tim, laconically. “And we be always +anxious to see our dears.” + +“He _is_ coming to-night,” she replied, with defiance. “And we _be_ +anxious for our dears.” + +“Then will you step in-doors, where your dear will soon jine ’ee? We’ve +to mouster by half-past three to-morrow, and if we don’t get to bed by +eight at latest our faces will be as long as clock-cases all day.” + +She hesitated for a minute, but ultimately obeyed, going slowly down +the garden to the house, where he heard the door-latch click behind +her. + +Tim was incensed beyond measure. His marriage had so far been a total +failure, a source of bitter regret; and the only course for improving +his case, that of leaving the country, was a sorry, and possibly might +not be a very effectual one. Do what he would, his domestic sky was +likely to be overcast to the end of the day. Thus he brooded, and his +resentment gathered force. He craved a means of striking one blow back +at the cause of his cheerless plight, while he was still on the scene +of his discomfiture. For some minutes no method suggested itself, and +then he had an idea. + +Coming to a sudden resolution, he hastened along the garden, and +entered the one attached to the next cottage, which had formerly been +the dwelling of a game-keeper. Tim descended the path to the back of +the house, where only an old woman lived at present, and reaching the +wall he stopped. Owing to the slope of the ground the roof-eaves of the +linhay were here within touch, and he thrust his arm up under them, +feeling about in the space on the top of the wall-plate. + +“Ah, I thought my memory didn’t deceive me!” he lipped silently. + +With some exertion he drew down a cobwebbed object curiously framed in +iron, which clanked as he moved it. It was about three feet in length +and half as wide. Tim contemplated it as well as he could in the dying +light of day, and raked off the cobwebs with his hand. + +“That will spoil his pretty shins for’n, I reckon!” he said. + +It was a man-trap. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII. + + +Were the inventors of automatic machines to be ranged according to the +excellence of their devices for producing sound artistic torture, the +creator of the man-trap would occupy a very respectable if not a very +high place. + +It should rather, however, be said, the inventor of the particular form +of man-trap of which this found in the keeper’s out-house was a +specimen. For there were other shapes and other sizes, instruments +which, if placed in a row beside one of the type disinterred by Tim, +would have worn the subordinate aspect of the bears, wild boars, or +wolves in a travelling menagerie, as compared with the leading lion or +tiger. In short, though many varieties had been in use during those +centuries which we are accustomed to look back upon as the true and +only period of merry England—in the rural districts more especially—and +onward down to the third decade of the nineteenth century, this model +had borne the palm, and had been most usually followed when the +orchards and estates required new ones. + +There had been the toothless variety used by the softer-hearted +landlords—quite contemptible in their clemency. The jaws of these +resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left nothing but +gums. There were also the intermediate or half-toothed sorts, probably +devised by the middle-natured squires, or those under the influence of +their wives: two inches of mercy, two inches of cruelty, two inches of +mere nip, two inches of probe, and so on, through the whole extent of +the jaws. There were also, as a class apart, the bruisers, which did +not lacerate the flesh, but only crushed the bone. + +The sight of one of these gins when set produced a vivid impression +that it was endowed with life. It exhibited the combined aspects of a +shark, a crocodile, and a scorpion. Each tooth was in the form of a +tapering spine, two and a quarter inches long, which, when the jaws +were closed, stood in alternation from this side and from that. When +they were open, the two halves formed a complete circle between two and +three feet in diameter, the plate or treading-place in the midst being +about a foot square, while from beneath extended in opposite directions +the soul of the apparatus, the pair of springs, each one being of a +stiffness to render necessary a lever or the whole weight of the body +when forcing it down. + +There were men at this time still living at Hintock who remembered when +the gin and others like it were in use. Tim Tangs’s great-uncle had +endured a night of six hours in this very trap, which lamed him for +life. Once a keeper of Hintock woods set it on the track of a poacher, +and afterwards, coming back that way, forgetful of what he had done, +walked into it himself. The wound brought on lockjaw, of which he died. +This event occurred during the thirties, and by the year 1840 the use +of such implements was well-nigh discontinued in the neighborhood. But +being made entirely of iron, they by no means disappeared, and in +almost every village one could be found in some nook or corner as +readily as this was found by Tim. It had, indeed, been a fearful +amusement of Tim and other Hintock lads—especially those who had a dim +sense of becoming renowned poachers when they reached their prime—to +drag out this trap from its hiding, set it, and throw it with billets +of wood, which were penetrated by the teeth to the depth of near an +inch. + +As soon as he had examined the trap, and found that the hinges and +springs were still perfect, he shouldered it without more ado, and +returned with his burden to his own garden, passing on through the +hedge to the path immediately outside the boundary. Here, by the help +of a stout stake, he set the trap, and laid it carefully behind a bush +while he went forward to reconnoitre. As has been stated, nobody passed +this way for days together sometimes; but there was just a possibility +that some other pedestrian than the one in request might arrive, and it +behooved Tim to be careful as to the identity of his victim. + +Going about a hundred yards along the rising ground to the right, he +reached a ridge whereon a large and thick holly grew. Beyond this for +some distance the wood was more open, and the course which Fitzpiers +must pursue to reach the point, if he came to-night, was visible a long +way forward. + +For some time there was no sign of him or of anybody. Then there shaped +itself a spot out of the dim mid-distance, between the masses of +brushwood on either hand. And it enlarged, and Tim could hear the +brushing of feet over the tufts of sour-grass. The airy gait revealed +Fitzpiers even before his exact outline could be seen. + +Tim Tangs turned about, and ran down the opposite side of the hill, +till he was again at the head of his own garden. It was the work of a +few moments to drag out the man-trap, very gently—that the plate might +not be disturbed sufficiently to throw it—to a space between a pair of +young oaks which, rooted in contiguity, grew apart upward, forming a +V-shaped opening between; and, being backed up by bushes, left this as +the only course for a foot-passenger. In it he laid the trap with the +same gentleness of handling, locked the chain round one of the trees, +and finally slid back the guard which was placed to keep the gin from +accidentally catching the arms of him who set it, or, to use the local +and better word, “toiled” it. + +Having completed these arrangements, Tim sprang through the adjoining +hedge of his father’s garden, ran down the path, and softly entered the +house. + +Obedient to his order, Suke had gone to bed; and as soon as he had +bolted the door, Tim unlaced and kicked off his boots at the foot of +the stairs, and retired likewise, without lighting a candle. His object +seemed to be to undress as soon as possible. Before, however, he had +completed the operation, a long cry resounded without—penetrating, but +indescribable. + +“What’s that?” said Suke, starting up in bed. + +“Sounds as if somebody had caught a hare in his gin.” + +“Oh no,” said she. “It was not a hare, ’twas louder. Hark!” + +“Do ’ee get to sleep,” said Tim. “How be you going to wake at half-past +three else?” + +She lay down and was silent. Tim stealthily opened the window and +listened. Above the low harmonies produced by the instrumentation of +the various species of trees around the premises he could hear the +twitching of a chain from the spot whereon he had set the man-trap. But +further human sound there was none. + +Tim was puzzled. In the haste of his project he had not calculated upon +a cry; but if one, why not more? He soon ceased to essay an answer, for +Hintock was dead to him already. In half a dozen hours he would be out +of its precincts for life, on his way to the antipodes. He closed the +window and lay down. + +The hour which had brought these movements of Tim to birth had been +operating actively elsewhere. Awaiting in her father’s house the minute +of her appointment with her husband, Grace Fitzpiers deliberated on +many things. Should she inform her father before going out that the +estrangement of herself and Edgar was not so complete as he had +imagined, and deemed desirable for her happiness? If she did so she +must in some measure become the apologist of her husband, and she was +not prepared to go so far. + +As for him, he kept her in a mood of considerate gravity. He certainly +had changed. He had at his worst times always been gentle in his manner +towards her. Could it be that she might make of him a true and worthy +husband yet? She had married him; there was no getting over that; and +ought she any longer to keep him at a distance? His suave deference to +her lightest whim on the question of his comings and goings, when as +her lawful husband he might show a little independence, was a trait in +his character as unexpected as it was engaging. If she had been his +empress, and he her thrall, he could not have exhibited a more +sensitive care to avoid intruding upon her against her will. + +Impelled by a remembrance she took down a prayer-book and turned to the +marriage-service. Reading it slowly through, she became quite appalled +at her recent off-handedness, when she rediscovered what awfully solemn +promises she had made him at those chancel steps not so very long ago. + +She became lost in long ponderings on how far a person’s conscience +might be bound by vows made without at the time a full recognition of +their force. That particular sentence, beginning “Whom God hath joined +together,” was a staggerer for a gentlewoman of strong devotional +sentiment. She wondered whether God really did join them together. +Before she had done deliberating the time of her engagement drew near, +and she went out of the house almost at the moment that Tim Tangs +retired to his own. + +The position of things at that critical juncture was briefly as +follows. + +Two hundred yards to the right of the upper end of Tangs’s garden +Fitzpiers was still advancing, having now nearly reached the summit of +the wood-clothed ridge, the path being the actual one which further on +passed between the two young oaks. Thus far it was according to Tim’s +conjecture. But about two hundred yards to the left, or rather less, +was arising a condition which he had not divined, the emergence of +Grace as aforesaid from the upper corner of her father’s garden, with +the view of meeting Tim’s intended victim. Midway between husband and +wife was the diabolical trap, silent, open, ready. + +Fitzpiers’s walk that night had been cheerful, for he was convinced +that the slow and gentle method he had adopted was promising success. +The very restraint that he was obliged to exercise upon himself, so as +not to kill the delicate bud of returning confidence, fed his flame. He +walked so much more rapidly than Grace that, if they continued +advancing as they had begun, he would reach the trap a good half-minute +before she could reach the same spot. + +But here a new circumstance came in; to escape the unpleasantness of +being watched or listened to by lurkers—naturally curious by reason of +their strained relations—they had arranged that their meeting for +to-night should be at the holm-tree on the ridge above named. So soon, +accordingly, as Fitzpiers reached the tree he stood still to await her. + +He had not paused under the prickly foliage more than two minutes when +he thought he heard a scream from the other side of the ridge. +Fitzpiers wondered what it could mean; but such wind as there was just +now blew in an adverse direction, and his mood was light. He set down +the origin of the sound to one of the superstitious freaks or +frolicsome scrimmages between sweethearts that still survived in +Hintock from old-English times; and waited on where he stood till ten +minutes had passed. Feeling then a little uneasy, his mind reverted to +the scream; and he went forward over the summit and down the embowered +incline, till he reached the pair of sister oaks with the narrow +opening between them. + +Fitzpiers stumbled and all but fell. Stretching down his hand to +ascertain the obstruction, it came in contact with a confused mass of +silken drapery and iron-work that conveyed absolutely no explanatory +idea to his mind at all. It was but the work of a moment to strike a +match; and then he saw a sight which congealed his blood. + +The man-trap was thrown; and between its jaws was part of a woman’s +clothing—a patterned silk skirt—gripped with such violence that the +iron teeth had passed through it, skewering its tissue in a score of +places. He immediately recognized the skirt as that of one of his +wife’s gowns—the gown that she had worn when she met him on the very +last occasion. + +Fitzpiers had often studied the effect of these instruments when +examining the collection at Hintock House, and the conception instantly +flashed through him that Grace had been caught, taken out mangled by +some chance passer, and carried home, some of her clothes being left +behind in the difficulty of getting her free. The shock of this +conviction, striking into the very current of high hope, was so great +that he cried out like one in corporal agony, and in his misery bowed +himself down to the ground. + +Of all the degrees and qualities of punishment that Fitzpiers had +undergone since his sins against Grace first began, not any even +approximated in intensity to this. + +“Oh, my own—my darling! Oh, cruel Heaven—it is too much, this!” he +cried, writhing and rocking himself over the sorry accessories of her +he deplored. + +The voice of his distress was sufficiently loud to be audible to any +one who might have been there to hear it; and one there was. Right and +left of the narrow pass between the oaks were dense bushes; and now +from behind these a female figure glided, whose appearance even in the +gloom was, though graceful in outline, noticeably strange. + +She was in white up to the waist, and figured above. She was, in short, +Grace, his wife, lacking the portion of her dress which the gin +retained. + +“Don’t be grieved about me—don’t, dear Edgar!” she exclaimed, rushing +up and bending over him. “I am not hurt a bit! I was coming on to find +you after I had released myself, but I heard footsteps; and I hid away, +because I was without some of my clothing, and I did not know who the +person might be.” + +Fitzpiers had sprung to his feet, and his next act was no less +unpremeditated by him than it was irresistible by her, and would have +been so by any woman not of Amazonian strength. He clasped his arms +completely round, pressed her to his breast, and kissed her +passionately. + +“You are not dead!—you are not hurt! Thank God—thank God!” he said, +almost sobbing in his delight and relief from the horror of his +apprehension. “Grace, my wife, my love, how is this—what has happened?” + +“I was coming on to you,” she said as distinctly as she could in the +half-smothered state of her face against his. “I was trying to be as +punctual as possible, and as I had started a minute late I ran along +the path very swiftly—fortunately for myself. Just when I had passed +between these trees I felt something clutch at my dress from behind +with a noise, and the next moment I was pulled backward by it, and fell +to the ground. I screamed with terror, thinking it was a man lying down +there to murder me, but the next moment I discovered it was iron, and +that my clothes were caught in a trap. I pulled this way and that, but +the thing would not let go, drag it as I would, and I did not know what +to do. I did not want to alarm my father or anybody, as I wished nobody +to know of these meetings with you; so I could think of no other plan +than slipping off my skirt, meaning to run on and tell you what a +strange accident had happened to me. But when I had just freed myself +by leaving the dress behind, I heard steps, and not being sure it was +you, I did not like to be seen in such a pickle, so I hid away.” + +“It was only your speed that saved you! One or both of your legs would +have been broken if you had come at ordinary walking pace.” + +“Or yours, if you had got here first,” said she, beginning to realize +the whole ghastliness of the possibility. “Oh, Edgar, there has been an +Eye watching over us to-night, and we should be thankful indeed!” + +He continued to press his face to hers. “You are mine—mine again now.” + +She gently owned that she supposed she was. “I heard what you said when +you thought I was injured,” she went on, shyly, “and I know that a man +who could suffer as you were suffering must have a tender regard for +me. But how does this awful thing come here?” + +“I suppose it has something to do with poachers.” Fitzpiers was still +so shaken by the sense of her danger that he was obliged to sit awhile, +and it was not until Grace said, “If I could only get my skirt out +nobody would know anything about it,” that he bestirred himself. + +By their united efforts, each standing on one of the springs of the +trap, they pressed them down sufficiently to insert across the jaws a +billet which they dragged from a faggot near at hand; and it was then +possible to extract the silk mouthful from the monster’s bite, creased +and pierced with many holes, but not torn. Fitzpiers assisted her to +put it on again; and when her customary contours were thus restored +they walked on together, Grace taking his arm, till he effected an +improvement by clasping it round her waist. + +The ice having been broken in this unexpected manner, she made no +further attempt at reserve. “I would ask you to come into the house,” +she said, “but my meetings with you have been kept secret from my +father, and I should like to prepare him.” + +“Never mind, dearest. I could not very well have accepted the +invitation. I shall never live here again—as much for your sake as for +mine. I have news to tell you on this very point, but my alarm had put +it out of my head. I have bought a practice, or rather a partnership, +in the Midlands, and I must go there in a week to take up permanent +residence. My poor old great-aunt died about eight months ago, and left +me enough to do this. I have taken a little furnished house for a time, +till we can get one of our own.” + +He described the place, and the surroundings, and the view from the +windows, and Grace became much interested. “But why are you not there +now?” she said. + +“Because I cannot tear myself away from here till I have your promise. +Now, darling, you will accompany me there—will you not? To-night has +settled that.” + +Grace’s tremblings had gone off, and she did not say nay. They went on +together. + +The adventure, and the emotions consequent upon the reunion which that +event had forced on, combined to render Grace oblivious of the +direction of their desultory ramble, till she noticed they were in an +encircled glade in the densest part of the wood, whereon the moon, that +had imperceptibly added its rays to the scene, shone almost vertically. +It was an exceptionally soft, balmy evening for the time of year, which +was just that transient period in the May month when beech-trees have +suddenly unfolded large limp young leaves of the softness of +butterflies’ wings. Boughs bearing such leaves hung low around, and +completely enclosed them, so that it was as if they were in a great +green vase, which had moss for its bottom and leaf sides. + +The clouds having been packed in the west that evening so as to retain +the departing glare a long while, the hour had seemed much earlier than +it was. But suddenly the question of time occurred to her. + +“I must go back,” she said; and without further delay they set their +faces towards Hintock. As they walked he examined his watch by the aid +of the now strong moonlight. + +“By the gods, I think I have lost my train!” said Fitzpiers. + +“Dear me—whereabouts are we?” said she. + +“Two miles in the direction of Sherton.” + +“Then do you hasten on, Edgar. I am not in the least afraid. I +recognize now the part of the wood we are in and I can find my way back +quite easily. I’ll tell my father that we have made it up. I wish I had +not kept our meetings so private, for it may vex him a little to know I +have been seeing you. He is getting old and irritable, that was why I +did not. Good-by.” + +“But, as I must stay at the Earl of Wessex to-night, for I cannot +possibly catch the train, I think it would be safer for you to let me +take care of you.” + +“But what will my father think has become of me? He does not know in +the least where I am—he thinks I only went into the garden for a few +minutes.” + +“He will surely guess—somebody has seen me for certain. I’ll go all the +way back with you to-morrow.” + +“But that newly done-up place—the Earl of Wessex!” + +“If you are so very particular about the publicity I will stay at the +Three Tuns.” + +“Oh no—it is not that I am particular—but I haven’t a brush or comb or +anything!” + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII. + + +All the evening Melbury had been coming to his door, saying, “I wonder +where in the world that girl is! Never in all my born days did I know +her bide out like this! She surely said she was going into the garden +to get some parsley.” + +Melbury searched the garden, the parsley-bed, and the orchard, but +could find no trace of her, and then he made inquiries at the cottages +of such of his workmen as had not gone to bed, avoiding Tangs’s because +he knew the young people were to rise early to leave. In these +inquiries one of the men’s wives somewhat incautiously let out the fact +that she had heard a scream in the wood, though from which direction +she could not say. + +This set Melbury’s fears on end. He told the men to light lanterns, and +headed by himself they started, Creedle following at the last moment +with quite a burden of grapnels and ropes, which he could not be +persuaded to leave behind, and the company being joined by the +hollow-turner and the man who kept the cider-house as they went along. + +They explored the precincts of the village, and in a short time lighted +upon the man-trap. Its discovery simply added an item of fact without +helping their conjectures; but Melbury’s indefinite alarm was greatly +increased when, holding a candle to the ground, he saw in the teeth of +the instrument some frayings from Grace’s clothing. No intelligence of +any kind was gained till they met a woodman of Delborough, who said +that he had seen a lady answering to the description her father gave of +Grace, walking through the wood on a gentleman’s arm in the direction +of Sherton. + +“Was he clutching her tight?” said Melbury. + +“Well—rather,” said the man. + +“Did she walk lame?” + +“Well, ’tis true her head hung over towards him a bit.” + +Creedle groaned tragically. + +Melbury, not suspecting the presence of Fitzpiers, coupled this account +with the man-trap and the scream; he could not understand what it all +meant; but the sinister event of the trap made him follow on. +Accordingly, they bore away towards the town, shouting as they went, +and in due course emerged upon the highway. + +Nearing Sherton-Abbas, the previous information was confirmed by other +strollers, though the gentleman’s supporting arm had disappeared from +these later accounts. At last they were so near Sherton that Melbury +informed his faithful followers that he did not wish to drag them +farther at so late an hour, since he could go on alone and inquire if +the woman who had been seen were really Grace. But they would not leave +him alone in his anxiety, and trudged onward till the lamplight from +the town began to illuminate their fronts. At the entrance to the High +Street they got fresh scent of the pursued, but coupled with the new +condition that the lady in the costume described had been going up the +street alone. + +“Faith!—I believe she’s mesmerized, or walking in her sleep,” said +Melbury. + +However, the identity of this woman with Grace was by no means certain; +but they plodded along the street. Percombe, the hair-dresser, who had +despoiled Marty of her tresses, was standing at his door, and they duly +put inquiries to him. + +“Ah—how’s Little Hintock folk by now?” he said, before replying. “Never +have I been over there since one winter night some three year ago—and +then I lost myself finding it. How can ye live in such a one-eyed +place? Great Hintock is bad enough—hut Little Hintock—the bats and owls +would drive me melancholy-mad! It took two days to raise my sperrits to +their true pitch again after that night I went there. Mr. Melbury, sir, +as a man’s that put by money, why not retire and live here, and see +something of the world?” + +The responses at last given by him to their queries guided them to the +building that offered the best accommodation in Sherton—having been +enlarged contemporaneously with the construction of the railway—namely, +the Earl of Wessex Hotel. + +Leaving the others without, Melbury made prompt inquiry here. His alarm +was lessened, though his perplexity was increased, when he received a +brief reply that such a lady was in the house. + +“Do you know if it is my daughter?” asked Melbury. + +The waiter did not. + +“Do you know the lady’s name?” + +Of this, too, the household was ignorant, the hotel having been taken +by brand-new people from a distance. They knew the gentleman very well +by sight, and had not thought it necessary to ask him to enter his +name. + +“Oh, the gentleman appears again now,” said Melbury to himself. “Well, +I want to see the lady,” he declared. + +A message was taken up, and after some delay the shape of Grace +appeared descending round the bend of the stair-case, looking as if she +lived there, but in other respects rather guilty and frightened. + +“Why—what the name—” began her father. “I thought you went out to get +parsley!” + +“Oh, yes—I did—but it is all right,” said Grace, in a flurried whisper. +“I am not alone here. I am here with Edgar. It is entirely owing to an +accident, father.” + +“Edgar! An accident! How does he come here? I thought he was two +hundred mile off.” + +“Yes, so he is—I mean he has got a beautiful practice two hundred miles +off; he has bought it with his own money, some that came to him. But he +travelled here, and I was nearly caught in a man-trap, and that’s how +it is I am here. We were just thinking of sending a messenger to let +you know.” + +Melbury did not seem to be particularly enlightened by this +explanation. + +“You were caught in a man-trap?” + +“Yes; my dress was. That’s how it arose. Edgar is up-stairs in his own +sitting-room,” she went on. “He would not mind seeing you, I am sure.” + +“Oh, faith, I don’t want to see him! I have seen him too often a’ready. +I’ll see him another time, perhaps, if ’tis to oblige ’ee.” + +“He came to see me; he wanted to consult me about this large +partnership I speak of, as it is very promising.” + +“Oh, I am glad to hear it,” said Melbury, dryly. + +A pause ensued, during which the inquiring faces and whity-brown +clothes of Melbury’s companions appeared in the door-way. + +“Then bain’t you coming home with us?” he asked. + +“I—I think not,” said Grace, blushing. + +“H’m—very well—you are your own mistress,” he returned, in tones which +seemed to assert otherwise. “Good-night;” and Melbury retreated towards +the door. + +“Don’t be angry, father,” she said, following him a few steps. “I have +done it for the best.” + +“I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little misled in this. +However, good-night. I must get home along.” + +He left the hotel, not without relief, for to be under the eyes of +strangers while he conversed with his lost child had embarrassed him +much. His search-party, too, had looked awkward there, having rushed to +the task of investigation—some in their shirt sleeves, others in their +leather aprons, and all much stained—just as they had come from their +work of barking, and not in their Sherton marketing attire; while +Creedle, with his ropes and grapnels and air of impending tragedy, had +added melancholy to gawkiness. + +“Now, neighbors,” said Melbury, on joining them, “as it is getting +late, we’ll leg it home again as fast as we can. I ought to tell you +that there has been some mistake—some arrangement entered into between +Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn’t quite understand—an important +practice in the Midland counties has come to him, which made it +necessary for her to join him to-night—so she says. That’s all it +was—and I’m sorry I dragged you out.” + +“Well,” said the hollow-turner, “here be we six mile from home, and +night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to our name. I +say, we’ll have a mossel and a drop o’ summat to strengthen our nerves +afore we vamp all the way back again? My throat’s as dry as a kex. What +d’ye say so’s?” + +They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to the +antique and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of the Three +Tuns was the only radiant object. As soon as they had stumbled down +into the room Melbury ordered them to be served, when they made +themselves comfortable by the long table, and stretched out their legs +upon the herring-boned sand of the floor. Melbury himself, restless as +usual, walked to the door while he waited for them, and looked up and +down the street. + +“I’d gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go out +in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that have got to +get up at five o’clock to morrow,” said a bark-ripper; who, not working +regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in strong opinions. + +“I don’t speak so warm as that,” said the hollow-turner, “but if ’tis +right for couples to make a country talk about their separating, and +excite the neighbors, and then make fools of ’em like this, why, I +haven’t stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty year.” + +All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in these +enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and Creedle chimed +in with, “Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn’t she +ha’ bode with her father, and been faithful?” Poor Creedle was thinking +of his old employer. + +“But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony,” said +Farmer Bawtree. “I knowed a man and wife—faith, I don’t mind owning, as +there’s no strangers here, that the pair were my own relations—they’d +be at it that hot one hour that you’d hear the poker and the tongs and +the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the house with the +movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you’d hear ’em singing +‘The Spotted Cow’ together as peaceable as two holy twins; yes—and very +good voices they had, and would strike in like professional +ballet-singers to one another’s support in the high notes.” + +“And I knowed a woman, and the husband o’ her went away for +four-and-twenty year,” said the bark-ripper. “And one night he came +home when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down +himself on the other side of the chimney-corner. ‘Well,’ says she, +‘have ye got any news?’ ‘Don’t know as I have,’ says he; ‘have you?’ +‘No,’ says she, ‘except that my daughter by my second husband was +married last month, which was a year after I was made a widow by him.’ +‘Oh! Anything else?’ he says. ‘No,’ says she. And there they sat, one +on each side of that chimney-corner, and were found by their neighbors +sound asleep in their chairs, not having known what to talk about at +all.” + +“Well, I don’t care who the man is,” said Creedle, “they required a +good deal to talk about, and that’s true. It won’t be the same with +these.” + +“No. He is such a projick, you see. And she is a wonderful scholar +too!” + +“What women do know nowadays!” observed the hollow-turner. “You can’t +deceive ’em as you could in my time.” + +“What they knowed then was not small,” said John Upjohn. “Always a good +deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife that is now, +the skilfulness that she would show in keeping me on her pretty side as +she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you’ve noticed that she’s got +a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?” + +“I can’t say I’ve noticed it particular much,” said the hollow-turner, +blandly. + +“Well,” continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, “she has. All women under +the sun be prettier one side than t’other. And, as I was saying, the +pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were unending! +I warrant that whether we were going with the sun or against the sun, +uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart of hers was always +towards the hedge, and that dimple towards me. There was I, too simple +to see her wheelings and turnings; and she so artful, though two years +younger, that she could lead me with a cotton thread, like a blind ram; +for that was in the third climate of our courtship. No; I don’t think +the women have got cleverer, for they was never otherwise.” + +“How many climates may there be in courtship, Mr. Upjohn?” inquired a +youth—the same who had assisted at Winterborne’s Christmas party. + +“Five—from the coolest to the hottest—leastwise there was five in +mine.” + +“Can ye give us the chronicle of ’em, Mr. Upjohn?” + +“Yes—I could. I could certainly. But ’tis quite unnecessary. They’ll +come to ye by nater, young man, too soon for your good.” + +“At present Mrs. Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your mis’ess could +lead you,” the hollow-turner remarked. “She’s got him quite tame. But +how long ’twill last I can’t say. I happened to be setting a wire on +the top of my garden one night when he met her on the other side of the +hedge; and the way she queened it, and fenced, and kept that poor +feller at a distance, was enough to freeze yer blood. I should never +have supposed it of such a girl.” + +Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having declared +themselves refreshed, they all started on the homeward journey, which +was by no means cheerless under the rays of the high moon. Having to +walk the whole distance they came by a foot-path rather shorter than +the highway, though difficult except to those who knew the country +well. This brought them by way of Great Hintock; and passing the +church-yard they observed, as they talked, a motionless figure standing +by the gate. + +“I think it was Marty South,” said the hollow-turner, parenthetically. + +“I think ’twas; ’a was always a lonely maid,” said Upjohn. And they +passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more. + +It was Marty, as they had supposed. That evening had been the +particular one of the week upon which Grace and herself had been +accustomed to privately deposit flowers on Giles’s grave, and this was +the first occasion since his death, eight months earlier, on which +Grace had failed to keep her appointment. Marty had waited in the road +just outside Little Hintock, where her fellow-pilgrim had been wont to +join her, till she was weary; and at last, thinking that Grace had +missed her and gone on alone, she followed the way to Great Hintock, +but saw no Grace in front of her. It got later, and Marty continued her +walk till she reached the church-yard gate; but still no Grace. Yet her +sense of comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave alone, +and still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, she stood there with +her little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and her feet chilled +by the damp ground, till more than two hours had passed. + +She then heard the footsteps of Melbury’s men, who presently passed on +their return from the search. In the silence of the night Marty could +not help hearing fragments of their conversation, from which she +acquired a general idea of what had occurred, and where Mrs. Fitzpiers +then was. + +Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the church-yard, +going to a secluded corner behind the bushes, where rose the unadorned +stone that marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne. As this solitary +and silent girl stood there in the moonlight, a straight slim figure, +clothed in a plaitless gown, the contours of womanhood so undeveloped +as to be scarcely perceptible, the marks of poverty and toil effaced by +the misty hour, she touched sublimity at points, and looked almost like +a being who had rejected with indifference the attribute of sex for the +loftier quality of abstract humanism. She stooped down and cleared away +the withered flowers that Grace and herself had laid there the previous +week, and put her fresh ones in their place. + +“Now, my own, own love,” she whispered, “you are mine, and on’y mine; +for she has forgot ’ee at last, although for her you died. But +I—whenever I get up I’ll think of ’ee, and whenever I lie down I’ll +think of ’ee. Whenever I plant the young larches I’ll think that none +can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a gad, and whenever I +turn the cider-wring, I’ll say none could do it like you. If ever I +forget your name, let me forget home and Heaven!—But no, no, my love, I +never can forget ’ee; for you was a _good_ man, and did good things!” + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOODLANDERS *** + +***** This file should be named 482-0.txt or 482-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/8/482/ + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Woodlanders</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Thomas Hardy</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April, 1996 [eBook #482]<br /> +[Most recently updated: February 4, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOODLANDERS ***</div> + +<h1>The Woodlanders</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by Thomas Hardy</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap28">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap29">CHAPTER XXIX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap30">CHAPTER XXX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap31">CHAPTER XXXI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap32">CHAPTER XXXII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap33">CHAPTER XXXIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap34">CHAPTER XXXIV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap35">CHAPTER XXXV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap36">CHAPTER XXXVI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap37">CHAPTER XXXVII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap38">CHAPTER XXXVIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap39">CHAPTER XXXIX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap40">CHAPTER XL.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap41">CHAPTER XLI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap42">CHAPTER XLII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap43">CHAPTER XLIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap44">CHAPTER XLIV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap45">CHAPTER XLV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap46">CHAPTER XLVI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap47">CHAPTER XLVII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap48">CHAPTER XLVIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2> + +<p> +The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should trace the +forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to the +south shore of England, would find himself during the latter half of his +journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands, interspersed with +apple-orchards. Here the trees, timber or fruit-bearing, as the case may be, +make the wayside hedges ragged by their drip and shade, stretching over the +road with easeful horizontality, as if they found the unsubstantial air an +adequate support for their limbs. At one place, where a hill is crossed, the +largest of the woods shows itself bisected by the high-way, as the head of +thick hair is bisected by the white line of its parting. The spot is lonely. +</p> + +<p> +The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree that is +not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness more +emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of what is with what might +be probably accounts for this. To step, for instance, at the place under +notice, from the hedge of the plantation into the adjoining pale thoroughfare, +and pause amid its emptiness for a moment, was to exchange by the act of a +single stride the simple absence of human companionship for an incubus of the +forlorn. +</p> + +<p> +At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone winter’s day, there +stood a man who had entered upon the scene much in the aforesaid manner. +Alighting into the road from a stile hard by, he, though by no means a +“chosen vessel” for impressions, was temporarily influenced by some +such feeling of being suddenly more alone than before he had emerged upon the +highway. +</p> + +<p> +It could be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress that he did +not belong to the country proper; and from his air, after a while, that though +there might be a sombre beauty in the scenery, music in the breeze, and a wan +procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment of this old turnpike-road, he +was mainly puzzled about the way. The dead men’s work that had been +expended in climbing that hill, the blistered soles that had trodden it, and +the tears that had wetted it, were not his concern; for fate had given him no +time for any but practical things. +</p> + +<p> +He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground with his +walking-stick. A closer glance at his face corroborated the testimony of his +clothes. It was self-complacent, yet there was small apparent ground for such +complacence. Nothing irradiated it; to the eye of the magician in character, if +not to the ordinary observer, the expression enthroned there was absolute +submission to and belief in a little assortment of forms and habitudes. +</p> + +<p> +At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as he desired, or seemed +likely to appear that night. But presently a slight noise of laboring wheels +and the steady dig of a horse’s shoe-tips became audible; and there +loomed in the notch of the hill and plantation that the road formed here at the +summit a carrier’s van drawn by a single horse. When it got nearer, he +said, with some relief to himself, “’Tis Mrs. +Dollery’s—this will help me.” +</p> + +<p> +The vehicle was half full of passengers, mostly women. He held up his stick at +its approach, and the woman who was driving drew rein. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been trying to find a short way to Little Hintock this last +half-hour, Mrs. Dollery,” he said. “But though I’ve been to +Great Hintock and Hintock House half a dozen times I am at fault about the +small village. You can help me, I dare say?” +</p> + +<p> +She assured him that she could—that as she went to Great Hintock her van +passed near it—that it was only up the lane that branched out of the lane +into which she was about to turn—just ahead. “Though,” +continued Mrs. Dollery, “’tis such a little small place that, as a +town gentleman, you’d need have a candle and lantern to find it if ye +don’t know where ’tis. Bedad! I wouldn’t live there if +they’d pay me to. Now at Great Hintock you do see the world a bit.” +</p> + +<p> +He mounted and sat beside her, with his feet outside, where they were ever and +anon brushed over by the horse’s tail. +</p> + +<p> +This van, driven and owned by Mrs. Dollery, was rather a movable attachment of +the roadway than an extraneous object, to those who knew it well. The old +horse, whose hair was of the roughness and color of heather, whose leg-joints, +shoulders, and hoofs were distorted by harness and drudgery from +colthood—though if all had their rights, he ought, symmetrical in +outline, to have been picking the herbage of some Eastern plain instead of +tugging here—had trodden this road almost daily for twenty years. Even +his subjection was not made congruous throughout, for the harness being too +short, his tail was not drawn through the crupper, so that the breeching +slipped awkwardly to one side. He knew every subtle incline of the seven or +eight miles of ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas—the market-town +to which he journeyed—as accurately as any surveyor could have learned it +by a Dumpy level. +</p> + +<p> +The vehicle had a square black tilt which nodded with the motion of the wheels, +and at a point in it over the driver’s head was a hook to which the reins +were hitched at times, when they formed a catenary curve from the horse’s +shoulders. Somewhere about the axles was a loose chain, whose only known +purpose was to clink as it went. Mrs. Dollery, having to hop up and down many +times in the service of her passengers, wore, especially in windy weather, +short leggings under her gown for modesty’s sake, and instead of a bonnet +a felt hat tied down with a handkerchief, to guard against an earache to which +she was frequently subject. In the rear of the van was a glass window, which +she cleaned with her pocket-handkerchief every market-day before starting. +Looking at the van from the back, the spectator could thus see through its +interior a square piece of the same sky and landscape that he saw without, but +intruded on by the profiles of the seated passengers, who, as they rumbled +onward, their lips moving and heads nodding in animated private converse, +remained in happy unconsciousness that their mannerisms and facial +peculiarities were sharply defined to the public eye. +</p> + +<p> +This hour of coming home from market was the happy one, if not the happiest, of +the week for them. Snugly ensconced under the tilt, they could forget the +sorrows of the world without, and survey life and recapitulate the incidents of +the day with placid smiles. +</p> + +<p> +The passengers in the back part formed a group to themselves, and while the +new-comer spoke to the proprietress, they indulged in a confidential chat about +him as about other people, which the noise of the van rendered inaudible to +himself and Mrs. Dollery, sitting forward. +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis Barber Percombe—he that’s got the waxen woman in +his window at the top of Abbey Street,” said one. “What business +can bring him from his shop out here at this time and not a journeyman +hair-cutter, but a master-barber that’s left off his pole because +’tis not genteel!” +</p> + +<p> +They listened to his conversation, but Mr. Percombe, though he had nodded and +spoken genially, seemed indisposed to gratify the curiosity which he had +aroused; and the unrestrained flow of ideas which had animated the inside of +the van before his arrival was checked thenceforward. +</p> + +<p> +Thus they rode on till they turned into a half-invisible little lane, whence, +as it reached the verge of an eminence, could be discerned in the dusk, about +half a mile to the right, gardens and orchards sunk in a concave, and, as it +were, snipped out of the woodland. From this self-contained place rose in +stealthy silence tall stems of smoke, which the eye of imagination could trace +downward to their root on quiet hearth-stones festooned overhead with hams and +flitches. It was one of those sequestered spots outside the gates of the world +where may usually be found more meditation than action, and more passivity than +meditation; where reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results in +inferences wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less than in +other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean are enacted in +the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and closely knit +interdependence of the lives therein. +</p> + +<p> +This place was the Little Hintock of the master-barber’s search. The +coming night gradually obscured the smoke of the chimneys, but the position of +the sequestered little world could still be distinguished by a few faint +lights, winking more or less ineffectually through the leafless boughs, and the +undiscerned songsters they bore, in the form of balls of feathers, at roost +among them. +</p> + +<p> +Out of the lane followed by the van branched a yet smaller lane, at the corner +of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dollery’s van going on to the larger +village, whose superiority to the despised smaller one as an exemplar of the +world’s movements was not particularly apparent in its means of approach. +</p> + +<p> +“A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, is in league with +the devil, lives in the place you be going to—not because there’s +anybody for’n to cure there, but because ’tis the middle of his +district.” +</p> + +<p> +The observation was flung at the barber by one of the women at parting, as a +last attempt to get at his errand that way. +</p> + +<p> +But he made no reply, and without further pause the pedestrian plunged towards +the umbrageous nook, and paced cautiously over the dead leaves which nearly +buried the road or street of the hamlet. As very few people except themselves +passed this way after dark, a majority of the denizens of Little Hintock deemed +window-curtains unnecessary; and on this account Mr. Percombe made it his +business to stop opposite the casements of each cottage that he came to, with a +demeanor which showed that he was endeavoring to conjecture, from the persons +and things he observed within, the whereabouts of somebody or other who resided +here. +</p> + +<p> +Only the smaller dwellings interested him; one or two houses, whose size, +antiquity, and rambling appurtenances signified that notwithstanding their +remoteness they must formerly have been, if they were not still, inhabited by +people of a certain social standing, being neglected by him entirely. Smells of +pomace, and the hiss of fermenting cider, which reached him from the back +quarters of other tenements, revealed the recent occupation of some of the +inhabitants, and joined with the scent of decay from the perishing leaves +underfoot. +</p> + +<p> +Half a dozen dwellings were passed without result. The next, which stood +opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance, the flickering +brightness from the inside shining up the chimney and making a luminous mist of +the emerging smoke. The interior, as seen through the window, caused him to +draw up with a terminative air and watch. The house was rather large for a +cottage, and the door, which opened immediately into the living-room, stood +ajar, so that a ribbon of light fell through the opening into the dark +atmosphere without. Every now and then a moth, decrepit from the late season, +would flit for a moment across the out-coming rays and disappear again into the +night. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2> + +<p> +In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a girl seated +on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of the fire, which was +ample and of wood. With a bill-hook in one hand and a leather glove, much too +large for her, on the other, she was making spars, such as are used by +thatchers, with great rapidity. She wore a leather apron for this purpose, +which was also much too large for her figure. On her left hand lay a bundle of +the straight, smooth sticks called spar-gads—the raw material of her +manufacture; on her right, a heap of chips and ends—the refuse—with +which the fire was maintained; in front, a pile of the finished articles. To +produce them she took up each gad, looked critically at it from end to end, cut +it to length, split it into four, and sharpened each of the quarters with +dexterous blows, which brought it to a triangular point precisely resembling +that of a bayonet. +</p> + +<p> +Beside her, in case she might require more light, a brass candlestick stood on +a little round table, curiously formed of an old coffin-stool, with a deal top +nailed on, the white surface of the latter contrasting oddly with the black +carved oak of the substructure. The social position of the household in the +past was almost as definitively shown by the presence of this article as that +of an esquire or nobleman by his old helmets or shields. It had been customary +for every well-to-do villager, whose tenure was by copy of court-roll, or in +any way more permanent than that of the mere cotter, to keep a pair of these +stools for the use of his own dead; but for the last generation or two a +feeling of cui bono had led to the discontinuance of the custom, and the stools +were frequently made use of in the manner described. +</p> + +<p> +The young woman laid down the bill-hook for a moment and examined the palm of +her right hand, which, unlike the other, was ungloved, and showed little +hardness or roughness about it. The palm was red and blistering, as if this +present occupation were not frequent enough with her to subdue it to what it +worked in. As with so many right hands born to manual labor, there was nothing +in its fundamental shape to bear out the physiological conventionalism that +gradations of birth, gentle or mean, show themselves primarily in the form of +this member. Nothing but a cast of the die of destiny had decided that the girl +should handle the tool; and the fingers which clasped the heavy ash haft might +have skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string, had they only been set to +do it in good time. +</p> + +<p> +Her face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by a life of +solitude. Where the eyes of a multitude beat like waves upon a countenance they +seem to wear away its individuality; but in the still water of privacy every +tentacle of feeling and sentiment shoots out in visible luxuriance, to be +interpreted as readily as a child’s look by an intruder. In years she was +no more than nineteen or twenty, but the necessity of taking thought at a too +early period of life had forced the provisional curves of her childhood’s +face to a premature finality. Thus she had but little pretension to beauty, +save in one prominent particular—her hair. Its abundance made it almost +unmanageable; its color was, roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, +brown, but careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that +its true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation to chestnut. +</p> + +<p> +On this one bright gift of Time to the particular victim of his now before us +the new-comer’s eyes were fixed; meanwhile the fingers of his right hand +mechanically played over something sticking up from his +waistcoat-pocket—the bows of a pair of scissors, whose polish made them +feebly responsive to the light within. In her present beholder’s mind the +scene formed by the girlish spar-maker composed itself into a post-Raffaelite +picture of extremest quality, wherein the girl’s hair alone, as the focus +of observation, was depicted with intensity and distinctness, and her face, +shoulders, hands, and figure in general, being a blurred mass of unimportant +detail lost in haze and obscurity. +</p> + +<p> +He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and entered. The young woman +turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor, and exclaiming, +“Oh, Mr. Percombe, how you frightened me!” quite lost her color for +a moment. +</p> + +<p> +He replied, “You should shut your door—then you’d hear folk +open it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t,” she said; “the chimney smokes so. Mr. +Percombe, you look as unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge. +Surely you have not come out here on my account—for—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—to have your answer about this.” He touched her head +with his cane, and she winced. “Do you agree?” he continued. +“It is necessary that I should know at once, as the lady is soon going +away, and it takes time to make up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t press me—it worries me. I was in hopes you had thought +no more of it. I can <i>not</i> part with it—so there!” +</p> + +<p> +“Now, look here, Marty,” said the barber, sitting down on the +coffin-stool table. “How much do you get for making these spars?” +</p> + +<p> +“Hush—father’s up-stairs awake, and he don’t know that +I am doing his work.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, now tell me,” said the man, more softly. “How much do +you get?” +</p> + +<p> +“Eighteenpence a thousand,” she said, reluctantly. +</p> + +<p> +“Who are you making them for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Melbury, the timber-dealer, just below here.” +</p> + +<p> +“And how many can you make in a day?” +</p> + +<p> +“In a day and half the night, three bundles—that’s a thousand +and a half.” +</p> + +<p> +“Two and threepence.” The barber paused. “Well, look +here,” he continued, with the remains of a calculation in his tone, which +calculation had been the reduction to figures of the probable monetary +magnetism necessary to overpower the resistant force of her present purse and +the woman’s love of comeliness, “here’s a sovereign—a +gold sovereign, almost new.” He held it out between his finger and thumb. +“That’s as much as you’d earn in a week and a half at that +rough man’s work, and it’s yours for just letting me snip off what +you’ve got too much of.” +</p> + +<p> +The girl’s bosom moved a very little. “Why can’t the lady +send to some other girl who don’t value her hair—not to me?” +she exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, simpleton, because yours is the exact shade of her own, and +’tis a shade you can’t match by dyeing. But you are not going to +refuse me now I’ve come all the way from Sherton o’ purpose?” +</p> + +<p> +“I say I won’t sell it—to you or anybody.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now listen,” and he drew up a little closer beside her. “The +lady is very rich, and won’t be particular to a few shillings; so I will +advance to this on my own responsibility—I’ll make the one +sovereign two, rather than go back empty-handed.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, no!” she cried, beginning to be much agitated. “You +are a-tempting me, Mr. Percombe. You go on like the Devil to Dr. Faustus in the +penny book. But I don’t want your money, and won’t agree. Why did +you come? I said when you got me into your shop and urged me so much, that I +didn’t mean to sell my hair!” The speaker was hot and stern. +</p> + +<p> +“Marty, now hearken. The lady that wants it wants it badly. And, between +you and me, you’d better let her have it. ’Twill be bad for you if +you don’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bad for me? Who is she, then?” +</p> + +<p> +The barber held his tongue, and the girl repeated the question. +</p> + +<p> +“I am not at liberty to tell you. And as she is going abroad soon it +makes no difference who she is at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“She wants it to go abroad wi’?” +</p> + +<p> +Percombe assented by a nod. The girl regarded him reflectively. “Barber +Percombe,” she said, “I know who ’tis. ’Tis she at the +House—Mrs. Charmond!” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s my secret. However, if you agree to let me have it, +I’ll tell you in confidence.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll certainly not let you have it unless you tell me the truth. +It is Mrs. Charmond.” +</p> + +<p> +The barber dropped his voice. “Well—it is. You sat in front of her +in church the other day, and she noticed how exactly your hair matched her own. +Ever since then she’s been hankering for it, and at last decided to get +it. As she won’t wear it till she goes off abroad, she knows nobody will +recognize the change. I’m commissioned to get it for her, and then it is +to be made up. I shouldn’t have vamped all these miles for any less +important employer. Now, mind—’tis as much as my business with her +is worth if it should be known that I’ve let out her name; but honor +between us two, Marty, and you’ll say nothing that would injure +me?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t wish to tell upon her,” said Marty, coolly. +“But my hair is my own, and I’m going to keep it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now, that’s not fair, after what I’ve told you,” said +the nettled barber. “You see, Marty, as you are in the same parish, and +in one of her cottages, and your father is ill, and wouldn’t like to turn +out, it would be as well to oblige her. I say that as a friend. But I +won’t press you to make up your mind to-night. You’ll be coming to +market to-morrow, I dare say, and you can call then. If you think it over +you’ll be inclined to bring what I want, I know.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve nothing more to say,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +Her companion saw from her manner that it was useless to urge her further by +speech. “As you are a trusty young woman,” he said, +“I’ll put these sovereigns up here for ornament, that you may see +how handsome they are. Bring the hair to-morrow, or return the +sovereigns.” He stuck them edgewise into the frame of a small mantle +looking-glass. “I hope you’ll bring it, for your sake and mine. I +should have thought she could have suited herself elsewhere; but as it’s +her fancy it must be indulged if possible. If you cut it off yourself, mind how +you do it so as to keep all the locks one way.” He showed her how this +was to be done. +</p> + +<p> +“But I sha’nt,” she replied, with laconic indifference. +“I value my looks too much to spoil ’em. She wants my hair to get +another lover with; though if stories are true she’s broke the heart of +many a noble gentleman already.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lord, it’s wonderful how you guess things, Marty,” said the +barber. “I’ve had it from them that know that there certainly is +some foreign gentleman in her eye. However, mind what I ask.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s not going to get him through me.” +</p> + +<p> +Percombe had retired as far as the door; he came back, planted his cane on the +coffin-stool, and looked her in the face. “Marty South,” he said, +with deliberate emphasis, “<i>you’ve got a lover yourself</i>, and +that’s why you won’t let it go!” +</p> + +<p> +She reddened so intensely as to pass the mild blush that suffices to heighten +beauty; she put the yellow leather glove on one hand, took up the hook with the +other, and sat down doggedly to her work without turning her face to him again. +He regarded her head for a moment, went to the door, and with one look back at +her, departed on his way homeward. +</p> + +<p> +Marty pursued her occupation for a few minutes, then suddenly laying down the +bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the back of the room, where she opened a +door which disclosed a staircase so whitely scrubbed that the grain of the wood +was wellnigh sodden away by such cleansing. At the top she gently approached a +bedroom, and without entering, said, “Father, do you want +anything?” +</p> + +<p> +A weak voice inside answered in the negative; adding, “I should be all +right by to-morrow if it were not for the tree!” +</p> + +<p> +“The tree again—always the tree! Oh, father, don’t worry so +about that. You know it can do you no harm.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who have ye had talking to ye down-stairs?” +</p> + +<p> +“A Sherton man called—nothing to trouble about,” she said, +soothingly. “Father,” she went on, “can Mrs. Charmond turn us +out of our house if she’s minded to?” +</p> + +<p> +“Turn us out? No. Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is turned out +of my body. ’Tis life-hold, like Ambrose Winterborne’s. But when my +life drops ’twill be hers—not till then.” His words on this +subject so far had been rational and firm enough. But now he lapsed into his +moaning strain: “And the tree will do it—that tree will soon be the +death of me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense, you know better. How can it be?” She refrained from +further speech, and descended to the ground-floor again. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank Heaven, then,” she said to herself, “what belongs to +me I keep.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2> + +<p> +The lights in the village went out, house after house, till there only remained +two in the darkness. One of these came from a residence on the hill-side, of +which there is nothing to say at present; the other shone from the window of +Marty South. Precisely the same outward effect was produced here, however, by +her rising when the clock struck ten and hanging up a thick cloth curtain. The +door it was necessary to keep ajar in hers, as in most cottages, because of the +smoke; but she obviated the effect of the ribbon of light through the chink by +hanging a cloth over that also. She was one of those people who, if they have +to work harder than their neighbors, prefer to keep the necessity a secret as +far as possible; and but for the slight sounds of wood-splintering which came +from within, no wayfarer would have perceived that here the cottager did not +sleep as elsewhere. +</p> + +<p> +Eleven, twelve, one o’clock struck; the heap of spars grew higher, and +the pile of chips and ends more bulky. Even the light on the hill had now been +extinguished; but still she worked on. When the temperature of the night +without had fallen so low as to make her chilly, she opened a large blue +umbrella to ward off the draught from the door. The two sovereigns confronted +her from the looking-glass in such a manner as to suggest a pair of jaundiced +eyes on the watch for an opportunity. Whenever she sighed for weariness she +lifted her gaze towards them, but withdrew it quickly, stroking her tresses +with her fingers for a moment, as if to assure herself that they were still +secure. When the clock struck three she arose and tied up the spars she had +last made in a bundle resembling those that lay against the wall. +</p> + +<p> +She wrapped round her a long red woollen cravat and opened the door. The night +in all its fulness met her flatly on the threshold, like the very brink of an +absolute void, or the antemundane Ginnung-Gap believed in by her Teuton +forefathers. For her eyes were fresh from the blaze, and here there was no +street-lamp or lantern to form a kindly transition between the inner glare and +the outer dark. A lingering wind brought to her ear the creaking sound of two +over-crowded branches in the neighboring wood which were rubbing each other +into wounds, and other vocalized sorrows of the trees, together with the +screech of owls, and the fluttering tumble of some awkward wood-pigeon +ill-balanced on its roosting-bough. +</p> + +<p> +But the pupils of her young eyes soon expanded, and she could see well enough +for her purpose. Taking a bundle of spars under each arm, and guided by the +serrated line of tree-tops against the sky, she went some hundred yards or more +down the lane till she reached a long open shed, carpeted around with the dead +leaves that lay about everywhere. Night, that strange personality, which within +walls brings ominous introspectiveness and self-distrust, but under the open +sky banishes such subjective anxieties as too trivial for thought, inspired +Marty South with a less perturbed and brisker manner now. She laid the spars on +the ground within the shed and returned for more, going to and fro till her +whole manufactured stock were deposited here. +</p> + +<p> +This erection was the wagon-house of the chief man of business hereabout, Mr. +George Melbury, the timber, bark, and copse-ware merchant for whom +Marty’s father did work of this sort by the piece. It formed one of the +many rambling out-houses which surrounded his dwelling, an equally irregular +block of building, whose immense chimneys could just be discerned even now. The +four huge wagons under the shed were built on those ancient lines whose +proportions have been ousted by modern patterns, their shapes bulging and +curving at the base and ends like Trafalgar line-of-battle ships, with which +venerable hulks, indeed, these vehicles evidenced a constructed spirit +curiously in harmony. One was laden with sheep-cribs, another with hurdles, +another with ash poles, and the fourth, at the foot of which she had placed her +thatching-spars was half full of similar bundles. +</p> + +<p> +She was pausing a moment with that easeful sense of accomplishment which +follows work done that has been a hard struggle in the doing, when she heard a +woman’s voice on the other side of the hedge say, anxiously, +“George!” In a moment the name was repeated, with “Do come +indoors! What are you doing there?” +</p> + +<p> +The cart-house adjoined the garden, and before Marty had moved she saw enter +the latter from the timber-merchant’s back door an elderly woman +sheltering a candle with her hand, the light from which cast a moving +thorn-pattern of shade on Marty’s face. Its rays soon fell upon a man +whose clothes were roughly thrown on, standing in advance of the speaker. He +was a thin, slightly stooping figure, with a small nervous mouth and a face +cleanly shaven; and he walked along the path with his eyes bent on the ground. +In the pair Marty South recognized her employer Melbury and his wife. She was +the second Mrs. Melbury, the first having died shortly after the birth of the +timber-merchant’s only child. +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis no use to stay in bed,” he said, as soon as she came up +to where he was pacing restlessly about. “I can’t sleep—I +keep thinking of things, and worrying about the girl, till I’m quite in a +fever of anxiety.” He went on to say that he could not think why +“she (Marty knew he was speaking of his daughter) did not answer his +letter. She must be ill—she must, certainly,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“No, no. ’Tis all right, George,” said his wife; and she +assured him that such things always did appear so gloomy in the night-time, if +people allowed their minds to run on them; that when morning came it was seen +that such fears were nothing but shadows. “Grace is as well as you or +I,” she declared. +</p> + +<p> +But he persisted that she did not see all—that she did not see as much as +he. His daughter’s not writing was only one part of his worry. On account +of her he was anxious concerning money affairs, which he would never alarm his +mind about otherwise. The reason he gave was that, as she had nobody to depend +upon for a provision but himself, he wished her, when he was gone, to be +securely out of risk of poverty. +</p> + +<p> +To this Mrs. Melbury replied that Grace would be sure to marry well, and that +hence a hundred pounds more or less from him would not make much difference. +</p> + +<p> +Her husband said that that was what she, Mrs. Melbury, naturally thought; but +there she was wrong, and in that lay the source of his trouble. “I have a +plan in my head about her,” he said; “and according to my plan she +won’t marry a rich man.” +</p> + +<p> +“A plan for her not to marry well?” said his wife, surprised. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, in one sense it is that,” replied Melbury. “It is a +plan for her to marry a particular person, and as he has not so much money as +she might expect, it might be called as you call it. I may not be able to carry +it out; and even if I do, it may not be a good thing for her. I want her to +marry Giles Winterborne.” +</p> + +<p> +His companion repeated the name. “Well, it is all right,” she said, +presently. “He adores the very ground she walks on; only he’s +close, and won’t show it much.” +</p> + +<p> +Marty South appeared startled, and could not tear herself away. +</p> + +<p> +Yes, the timber-merchant asserted, he knew that well enough. Winterborne had +been interested in his daughter for years; that was what had led him into the +notion of their union. And he knew that she used to have no objection to him. +But it was not any difficulty about that which embarrassed him. It was that, +since he had educated her so well, and so long, and so far above the level of +daughters thereabout, it was <i>wasting her</i> to give her to a man of no +higher standing than the young man in question. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what I have been thinking,” said Mrs. Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then, Lucy, now you’ve hit it,” answered the +timber-merchant, with feeling. “There lies my trouble. I vowed to let her +marry him, and to make her as valuable as I could to him by schooling her as +many years and as thoroughly as possible. I mean to keep my vow. I made it +because I did his father a terrible wrong; and it was a weight on my conscience +ever since that time till this scheme of making amends occurred to me through +seeing that Giles liked her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wronged his father?” asked Mrs. Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, grievously wronged him,” said her husband. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, don’t think of it to-night,” she urged. “Come +indoors.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, the air cools my head. I shall not stay long.” He was +silent a while; then he told her, as nearly as Marty could gather, that his +first wife, his daughter Grace’s mother, was first the sweetheart of +Winterborne’s father, who loved her tenderly, till he, the speaker, won +her away from him by a trick, because he wanted to marry her himself. He sadly +went on to say that the other man’s happiness was ruined by it; that +though he married Winterborne’s mother, it was but a half-hearted +business with him. Melbury added that he was afterwards very miserable at what +he had done; but that as time went on, and the children grew up, and seemed to +be attached to each other, he determined to do all he could to right the wrong +by letting his daughter marry the lad; not only that, but to give her the best +education he could afford, so as to make the gift as valuable a one as it lay +in his power to bestow. “I still mean to do it,” said Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“Then do,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“But all these things trouble me,” said he; “for I feel I am +sacrificing her for my own sin; and I think of her, and often come down here +and look at this.” +</p> + +<p> +“Look at what?” asked his wife. +</p> + +<p> +He took the candle from her hand, held it to the ground, and removed a tile +which lay in the garden-path. “’Tis the track of her shoe that she +made when she ran down here the day before she went away all those months ago. +I covered it up when she was gone; and when I come here and look at it, I ask +myself again, why should she be sacrificed to a poor man?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is not altogether a sacrifice,” said the woman. “He is in +love with her, and he’s honest and upright. If she encourages him, what +can you wish for more?” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish for nothing definite. But there’s a lot of things possible +for her. Why, Mrs. Charmond is wanting some refined young lady, I hear, to go +abroad with her—as companion or something of the kind. She’d jump +at Grace.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all uncertain. Better stick to what’s sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“True, true,” said Melbury; “and I hope it will be for the +best. Yes, let me get ’em married up as soon as I can, so as to have it +over and done with.” He continued looking at the imprint, while he added, +“Suppose she should be dying, and never make a track on this path any +more?” +</p> + +<p> +“She’ll write soon, depend upon’t. Come, ’tis wrong to +stay here and brood so.” +</p> + +<p> +He admitted it, but said he could not help it. “Whether she write or no, +I shall fetch her in a few days.” And thus speaking, he covered the +track, and preceded his wife indoors. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury, perhaps, was an unlucky man in having within him the sentiment which +could indulge in this foolish fondness about the imprint of a daughter’s +footstep. Nature does not carry on her government with a view to such feelings, +and when advancing years render the open hearts of those who possess them less +dexterous than formerly in shutting against the blast, they must suffer +“buffeting at will by rain and storm” no less than Little +Celandines. +</p> + +<p> +But her own existence, and not Mr. Melbury’s, was the centre of +Marty’s consciousness, and it was in relation to this that the matter +struck her as she slowly withdrew. +</p> + +<p> +“That, then, is the secret of it all,” she said. “And Giles +Winterborne is not for me, and the less I think of him the better.” +</p> + +<p> +She returned to her cottage. The sovereigns were staring at her from the +looking-glass as she had left them. With a preoccupied countenance, and with +tears in her eyes, she got a pair of scissors, and began mercilessly cutting +off the long locks of her hair, arranging and tying them with their points all +one way, as the barber had directed. Upon the pale scrubbed deal of the +coffin-stool table they stretched like waving and ropy weeds over the washed +gravel-bed of a clear stream. +</p> + +<p> +She would not turn again to the little looking-glass, out of humanity to +herself, knowing what a deflowered visage would look back at her, and almost +break her heart; she dreaded it as much as did her own ancestral goddess Sif +the reflection in the pool after the rape of her locks by Loke the malicious. +She steadily stuck to business, wrapped the hair in a parcel, and sealed it up, +after which she raked out the fire and went to bed, having first set up an +alarum made of a candle and piece of thread, with a stone attached. +</p> + +<p> +But such a reminder was unnecessary to-night. Having tossed till about five +o’clock, Marty heard the sparrows walking down their long holes in the +thatch above her sloping ceiling to their orifice at the eaves; whereupon she +also arose, and descended to the ground-floor again. +</p> + +<p> +It was still dark, but she began moving about the house in those automatic +initiatory acts and touches which represent among housewives the installation +of another day. While thus engaged she heard the rumbling of Mr. +Melbury’s wagons, and knew that there, too, the day’s toil had +begun. +</p> + +<p> +An armful of gads thrown on the still hot embers caused them to blaze up +cheerfully and bring her diminished head-gear into sudden prominence as a +shadow. At this a step approached the door. +</p> + +<p> +“Are folk astir here yet?” inquired a voice she knew well. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Mr. Winterborne,” said Marty, throwing on a tilt bonnet, +which completely hid the recent ravages of the scissors. “Come in!” +</p> + +<p> +The door was flung back, and there stepped in upon the mat a man not +particularly young for a lover, nor particularly mature for a person of +affairs. There was reserve in his glance, and restraint upon his mouth. He +carried a horn lantern which hung upon a swivel, and wheeling as it dangled +marked grotesque shapes upon the shadier part of the walls. +</p> + +<p> +He said that he had looked in on his way down, to tell her that they did not +expect her father to make up his contract if he was not well. Mr. Melbury would +give him another week, and they would go their journey with a short load that +day. +</p> + +<p> +“They are done,” said Marty, “and lying in the +cart-house.” +</p> + +<p> +“Done!” he repeated. “Your father has not been too ill to +work after all, then?” +</p> + +<p> +She made some evasive reply. “I’ll show you where they be, if you +are going down,” she added. +</p> + +<p> +They went out and walked together, the pattern of the air-holes in the top of +the lantern being thrown upon the mist overhead, where they appeared of giant +size, as if reaching the tent-shaped sky. They had no remarks to make to each +other, and they uttered none. Hardly anything could be more isolated or more +self-contained than the lives of these two walking here in the lonely antelucan +hour, when gray shades, material and mental, are so very gray. And yet, looked +at in a certain way, their lonely courses formed no detached design at all, but +were part of the pattern in the great web of human doings then weaving in both +hemispheres, from the White Sea to Cape Horn. +</p> + +<p> +The shed was reached, and she pointed out the spars. Winterborne regarded them +silently, then looked at her. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, Marty, I believe—” he said, and shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“That you’ve done the work yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you tell anybody, will you, Mr. Winterborne?” she +pleaded, by way of answer. “Because I am afraid Mr. Melbury may refuse my +work if he knows it is mine.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how could you learn to do it? ’Tis a trade.” +</p> + +<p> +“Trade!” said she. “I’d be bound to learn it in two +hours.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, you wouldn’t, Mrs. Marty.” Winterborne held down his +lantern, and examined the cleanly split hazels as they lay. +“Marty,” he said, with dry admiration, “your father with his +forty years of practice never made a spar better than that. They are too good +for the thatching of houses—they are good enough for the furniture. But I +won’t tell. Let me look at your hands—your poor hands!” +</p> + +<p> +He had a kindly manner of a quietly severe tone; and when she seemed reluctant +to show her hands, he took hold of one and examined it as if it were his own. +Her fingers were blistered. +</p> + +<p> +“They’ll get harder in time,” she said. “For if father +continues ill, I shall have to go on wi’ it. Now I’ll help put +’em up in wagon.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne without speaking set down his lantern, lifted her as she was about +to stoop over the bundles, placed her behind him, and began throwing up the +bundles himself. “Rather than you should do it I will,” he said. +“But the men will be here directly. Why, Marty!—whatever has +happened to your head? Lord, it has shrunk to nothing—it looks an apple +upon a gate-post!” +</p> + +<p> +Her heart swelled, and she could not speak. At length she managed to groan, +looking on the ground, “I’ve made myself ugly—and +hateful—that’s what I’ve done!” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no,” he answered. “You’ve only cut your +hair—I see now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why must you needs say that about apples and gate-posts?” +</p> + +<p> +“Let me see.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no!” She ran off into the gloom of the sluggish dawn. He did +not attempt to follow her. When she reached her father’s door she stood +on the step and looked back. Mr. Melbury’s men had arrived, and were +loading up the spars, and their lanterns appeared from the distance at which +she stood to have wan circles round them, like eyes weary with watching. She +observed them for a few seconds as they set about harnessing the horses, and +then went indoors. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2> + +<p> +There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and presently the +bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged like a dead-born child. +The villagers everywhere had already bestirred themselves, rising at this time +of the year at the far less dreary hour of absolute darkness. It had been above +an hour earlier, before a single bird had untucked his head, that twenty lights +were struck in as many bedrooms, twenty pairs of shutters opened, and twenty +pairs of eyes stretched to the sky to forecast the weather for the day. +</p> + +<p> +Owls that had been catching mice in the out-houses, rabbits that had been +eating the wintergreens in the gardens, and stoats that had been sucking the +blood of the rabbits, discerning that their human neighbors were on the move, +discreetly withdrew from publicity, and were seen and heard no more that day. +</p> + +<p> +The daylight revealed the whole of Mr. Melbury’s homestead, of which the +wagon-sheds had been an outlying erection. It formed three sides of an open +quadrangle, and consisted of all sorts of buildings, the largest and central +one being the dwelling itself. The fourth side of the quadrangle was the public +road. +</p> + +<p> +It was a dwelling-house of respectable, roomy, almost dignified aspect; which, +taken with the fact that there were the remains of other such buildings +thereabout, indicated that Little Hintock had at some time or other been of +greater importance than now, as its old name of Hintock St. Osmond also +testified. The house was of no marked antiquity, yet of well-advanced age; +older than a stale novelty, but no canonized antique; faded, not hoary; looking +at you from the still distinct middle-distance of the early Georgian time, and +awakening on that account the instincts of reminiscence more decidedly than the +remoter and far grander memorials which have to speak from the misty reaches of +mediaevalism. The faces, dress, passions, gratitudes, and revenues of the +great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers who had been the first to gaze from +those rectangular windows, and had stood under that key-stoned doorway, could +be divined and measured by homely standards of to-day. It was a house in whose +reverberations queer old personal tales were yet audible if properly listened +for; and not, as with those of the castle and cloister, silent beyond the +possibility of echo. +</p> + +<p> +The garden-front remained much as it had always been, and there was a porch and +entrance that way. But the principal house-door opened on the square yard or +quadrangle towards the road, formerly a regular carriage entrance, though the +middle of the area was now made use of for stacking timber, fagots, bundles, +and other products of the wood. It was divided from the lane by a lichen-coated +wall, in which hung a pair of gates, flanked by piers out of the perpendicular, +with a round white ball on the top of each. +</p> + +<p> +The building on the left of the enclosure was a long-backed erection, now used +for spar-making, sawing, crib-framing, and copse-ware manufacture in general. +Opposite were the wagon-sheds where Marty had deposited her spars. +</p> + +<p> +Here Winterborne had remained after the girl’s abrupt departure, to see +that the wagon-loads were properly made up. Winterborne was connected with the +Melbury family in various ways. In addition to the sentimental relationship +which arose from his father having been the first Mrs. Melbury’s lover, +Winterborne’s aunt had married and emigrated with the brother of the +timber-merchant many years before—an alliance that was sufficient to +place Winterborne, though the poorer, on a footing of social intimacy with the +Melburys. As in most villages so secluded as this, intermarriages were of +Hapsburgian frequency among the inhabitants, and there were hardly two houses +in Little Hintock unrelated by some matrimonial tie or other. +</p> + +<p> +For this reason a curious kind of partnership existed between Melbury and the +younger man—a partnership based upon an unwritten code, by which each +acted in the way he thought fair towards the other, on a give-and-take +principle. Melbury, with his timber and copse-ware business, found that the +weight of his labor came in winter and spring. Winterborne was in the apple and +cider trade, and his requirements in cartage and other work came in the autumn +of each year. Hence horses, wagons, and in some degree men, were handed over to +him when the apples began to fall; he, in return, lending his assistance to +Melbury in the busiest wood-cutting season, as now. +</p> + +<p> +Before he had left the shed a boy came from the house to ask him to remain till +Mr. Melbury had seen him. Winterborne thereupon crossed over to the spar-house +where two or three men were already at work, two of them being travelling +spar-makers from White-hart Lane, who, when this kind of work began, made their +appearance regularly, and when it was over disappeared in silence till the +season came again. +</p> + +<p> +Firewood was the one thing abundant in Little Hintock; and a blaze of gad-cuds +made the outhouse gay with its light, which vied with that of the day as yet. +In the hollow shades of the roof could be seen dangling etiolated arms of ivy +which had crept through the joints of the tiles and were groping in vain for +some support, their leaves being dwarfed and sickly for want of sunlight; +others were pushing in with such force at the eaves as to lift from their +supports the shelves that were fixed there. +</p> + +<p> +Besides the itinerant journey-workers there were also present John Upjohn, +engaged in the hollow-turnery trade, who lived hard by; old Timothy Tangs and +young Timothy Tangs, top and bottom sawyers, at work in Mr. Melbury’s pit +outside; Farmer Bawtree, who kept the cider-house, and Robert Creedle, an old +man who worked for Winterborne, and stood warming his hands; these latter being +enticed in by the ruddy blaze, though they had no particular business there. +None of them call for any remark except, perhaps, Creedle. To have completely +described him it would have been necessary to write a military memoir, for he +wore under his smock-frock a cast-off soldier’s jacket that had seen hot +service, its collar showing just above the flap of the frock; also a hunting +memoir, to include the top-boots that he had picked up by chance; also +chronicles of voyaging and shipwreck, for his pocket-knife had been given him +by a weather-beaten sailor. But Creedle carried about with him on his +uneventful rounds these silent testimonies of war, sport, and adventure, and +thought nothing of their associations or their stories. +</p> + +<p> +Copse-work, as it was called, being an occupation which the secondary +intelligence of the hands and arms could carry on without requiring the +sovereign attention of the head, the minds of its professors wandered +considerably from the objects before them; hence the tales, chronicles, and +ramifications of family history which were recounted here were of a very +exhaustive kind, and sometimes so interminable as to defy description. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not arrived, stepped back again outside +the door; and the conversation interrupted by his momentary presence flowed +anew, reaching his ears as an accompaniment to the regular dripping of the fog +from the plantation boughs around. +</p> + +<p> +The topic at present handled was a highly popular and frequent one—the +personal character of Mrs. Charmond, the owner of the surrounding woods and +groves. +</p> + +<p> +“My brother-in-law told me, and I have no reason to doubt it,” said +Creedle, “that she’d sit down to her dinner with a frock hardly +higher than her elbows. ‘Oh, you wicked woman!’ he said to himself +when he first see her, ‘you go to your church, and sit, and kneel, as if +your knee-jints were greased with very saint’s anointment, and tell off +your Hear-us-good-Lords like a business man counting money; and yet you can eat +your victuals such a figure as that!’ Whether she’s a reformed +character by this time I can’t say; but I don’t care who the man +is, that’s how she went on when my brother-in-law lived there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did she do it in her husband’s time?” +</p> + +<p> +“That I don’t know—hardly, I should think, considering his +temper. Ah!” Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance into physical form by +slowly resigning his head to obliquity and letting his eyes water. “That +man! ‘Not if the angels of heaven come down, Creedle,’ he said, +‘shall you do another day’s work for me!’ +Yes—he’d say anything—anything; and would as soon take a +winged creature’s name in vain as yours or mine! Well, now I must get +these spars home-along, and to-morrow, thank God, I must see about using +’em.” +</p> + +<p> +An old woman now entered upon the scene. She was Mr. Melbury’s servant, +and passed a great part of her time in crossing the yard between the house-door +and the spar-shed, whither she had come now for fuel. She had two facial +aspects—one, of a soft and flexible kind, she used indoors when assisting +about the parlor or upstairs; the other, with stiff lines and corners, when she +was bustling among the men in the spar-house or out-of-doors. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, Grammer Oliver,” said John Upjohn, “it do do my heart +good to see a old woman like you so dapper and stirring, when I bear in mind +that after fifty one year counts as two did afore! But your smoke didn’t +rise this morning till twenty minutes past seven by my beater; and that’s +late, Grammer Oliver.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you was a full-sized man, John, people might take notice of your +scornful meanings. But your growing up was such a scrimped and scanty business +that really a woman couldn’t feel hurt if you were to spit fire and +brimstone itself at her. Here,” she added, holding out a spar-gad to one +of the workmen, from which dangled a long +black-pudding—“here’s something for thy breakfast, and if you +want tea you must fetch it from in-doors.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Melbury is late this morning,” said the bottom-sawyer. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. ’Twas a dark dawn,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Even when +I opened the door, so late as I was, you couldn’t have told poor men from +gentlemen, or John from a reasonable-sized object. And I don’t think +maister’s slept at all well to-night. He’s anxious about his +daughter; and I know what that is, for I’ve cried bucketfuls for my +own.” +</p> + +<p> +When the old woman had gone Creedle said, +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll fret his gizzard green if he don’t soon hear from that +maid of his. Well, learning is better than houses and lands. But to keep a maid +at school till she is taller out of pattens than her mother was in +’em—’tis tempting Providence.” +</p> + +<p> +“It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl,” said +young Timothy Tangs. +</p> + +<p> +“I can mind her mother,” said the hollow-turner. “Always a +teuny, delicate piece; her touch upon your hand was as soft and cool as wind. +She was inoculated for the small-pox and had it beautifully fine, just about +the time that I was out of my apprenticeship—ay, and a long +apprenticeship ’twas. I served that master of mine six years and three +hundred and fourteen days.” +</p> + +<p> +The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, as if, considering their +number, they were a rather more remarkable fact than the years. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Winterborne’s father walked with her at one time,” said +old Timothy Tangs. “But Mr. Melbury won her. She was a child of a woman, +and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever she and her husband +came to a puddle in their walks together he’d take her up like a +half-penny doll and put her over without dirting her a speck. And if he keeps +the daughter so long at boarding-school, he’ll make her as nesh as her +mother was. But here he comes.” +</p> + +<p> +Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury crossing the court from +his door. He was carrying an open letter in his hand, and came straight to +Winterborne. His gloom of the preceding night had quite gone. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d no sooner made up my mind, Giles, to go and see why Grace +didn’t come or write than I get a letter from her—‘Clifton: +Wednesday. My dear father,’ says she, ‘I’m coming home +to-morrow’ (that’s to-day), ‘but I didn’t think it +worth while to write long beforehand.’ The little rascal, and +didn’t she! Now, Giles, as you are going to Sherton market to-day with +your apple-trees, why not join me and Grace there, and we’ll drive home +all together?” +</p> + +<p> +He made the proposal with cheerful energy; he was hardly the same man as the +man of the small dark hours. Ever it happens that even among the moodiest the +tendency to be cheered is stronger than the tendency to be cast down; and a +soul’s specific gravity stands permanently less than that of the sea of +troubles into which it is thrown. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne, though not demonstrative, replied to this suggestion with +something like alacrity. There was not much doubt that Marty’s grounds +for cutting off her hair were substantial enough, if Ambrose’s eyes had +been a reason for keeping it on. As for the timber-merchant, it was plain that +his invitation had been given solely in pursuance of his scheme for uniting the +pair. He had made up his mind to the course as a duty, and was strenuously bent +upon following it out. +</p> + +<p> +Accompanied by Winterborne, he now turned towards the door of the spar-house, +when his footsteps were heard by the men as aforesaid. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, John, and Lot,” he said, nodding as he entered. “A +rimy morning.” +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis, sir!” said Creedle, energetically; for, not having as +yet been able to summon force sufficient to go away and begin work, he felt the +necessity of throwing some into his speech. “I don’t care who the +man is, ’tis the rimiest morning we’ve had this fall.” +</p> + +<p> +“I heard you wondering why I’ve kept my daughter so long at +boarding-school,” resumed Mr. Melbury, looking up from the letter which +he was reading anew by the fire, and turning to them with the suddenness that +was a trait in him. “Hey?” he asked, with affected shrewdness. +“But you did, you know. Well, now, though it is my own business more than +anybody else’s, I’ll tell ye. When I was a boy, another +boy—the pa’son’s son—along with a lot of others, asked +me ‘Who dragged Whom round the walls of What?’ and I said, +‘Sam Barrett, who dragged his wife in a chair round the tower corner when +she went to be churched.’ They laughed at me with such torrents of scorn +that I went home ashamed, and couldn’t sleep for shame; and I cried that +night till my pillow was wet: till at last I thought to myself there and +then—‘They may laugh at me for my ignorance, but that was +father’s fault, and none o’ my making, and I must bear it. But they +shall never laugh at my children, if I have any: I’ll starve +first!’ Thank God, I’ve been able to keep her at school without +sacrifice; and her scholarship is such that she stayed on as governess for a +time. Let ’em laugh now if they can: Mrs. Charmond herself is not better +informed than my girl Grace.” +</p> + +<p> +There was something between high indifference and humble emotion in his +delivery, which made it difficult for them to reply. Winterborne’s +interest was of a kind which did not show itself in words; listening, he stood +by the fire, mechanically stirring the embers with a spar-gad. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll be, then, ready, Giles?” Melbury continued, awaking +from a reverie. “Well, what was the latest news at Shottsford yesterday, +Mr. Bawtree?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Shottsford is Shottsford still—you can’t victual your +carcass there unless you’ve got money; and you can’t buy a cup of +genuine there, whether or no....But as the saying is, ‘Go abroad and +you’ll hear news of home.’ It seems that our new neighbor, this +young Dr. What’s-his-name, is a strange, deep, perusing gentleman; and +there’s good reason for supposing he has sold his soul to the wicked +one.” +</p> + +<p> +“’Od name it all,” murmured the timber-merchant, unimpressed +by the news, but reminded of other things by the subject of it; +“I’ve got to meet a gentleman this very morning? and yet I’ve +planned to go to Sherton Abbas for the maid.” +</p> + +<p> +“I won’t praise the doctor’s wisdom till I hear what sort of +bargain he’s made,” said the top-sawyer. +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis only an old woman’s tale,” said Bawtree. +“But it seems that he wanted certain books on some mysterious science or +black-art, and in order that the people hereabout should not know anything +about his dark readings, he ordered ’em direct from London, and not from +the Sherton book-seller. The parcel was delivered by mistake at the +pa’son’s, and he wasn’t at home; so his wife opened it, and +went into hysterics when she read ’em, thinking her husband had turned +heathen, and ’twould be the ruin of the children. But when he came he +said he knew no more about ’em than she; and found they were this Mr. +Fitzpier’s property. So he wrote ‘Beware!’ outside, and sent +’em on by the sexton.” +</p> + +<p> +“He must be a curious young man,” mused the hollow-turner. +</p> + +<p> +“He must,” said Timothy Tangs. +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense,” said Mr. Melbury, authoritatively, “he’s +only a gentleman fond of science and philosophy and poetry, and, in fact, every +kind of knowledge; and being lonely here, he passes his time in making such +matters his hobby.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said old Timothy, “’tis a strange thing about +doctors that the worse they be the better they be. I mean that if you hear +anything of this sort about ’em, ten to one they can cure ye as nobody +else can.” +</p> + +<p> +“True,” said Bawtree, emphatically. “And for my part I shall +take my custom from old Jones and go to this one directly I’ve anything +the matter with me. That last medicine old Jones gave me had no taste in it at +all.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed man, did not listen to these recitals, +being moreover preoccupied with the business appointment which had come into +his head. He walked up and down, looking on the floor—his usual custom +when undecided. That stiffness about the arm, hip, and knee-joint which was +apparent when he walked was the net product of the divers sprains and +over-exertions that had been required of him in handling trees and timber when +a young man, for he was of the sort called self-made, and had worked hard. He +knew the origin of every one of these cramps: that in his left shoulder had +come of carrying a pollard, unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home; that in one +leg was caused by the crash of an elm against it when they were felling; that +in the other was from lifting a bole. On many a morrow after wearying himself +by these prodigious muscular efforts, he had risen from his bed fresh as usual; +his lassitude had departed, apparently forever; and confident in the +recuperative power of his youth, he had repeated the strains anew. But +treacherous Time had been only hiding ill results when they could be guarded +against, for greater accumulation when they could not. In his declining years +the store had been unfolded in the form of rheumatisms, pricks, and spasms, in +every one of which Melbury recognized some act which, had its consequence been +contemporaneously made known, he would wisely have abstained from repeating. +</p> + +<p> +On a summons by Grammer Oliver to breakfast, he left the shed. Reaching the +kitchen, where the family breakfasted in winter to save house-labor, he sat +down by the fire, and looked a long time at the pair of dancing shadows cast by +each fire-iron and dog-knob on the whitewashed chimney-corner—a yellow +one from the window, and a blue one from the fire. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t quite know what to do to-day,” he said to his wife +at last. “I’ve recollected that I promised to meet Mrs. +Charmond’s steward in Round Wood at twelve o’clock, and yet I want +to go for Grace.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not let Giles fetch her by himself? ’Twill bring ’em +together all the quicker.” +</p> + +<p> +“I could do that—but I should like to go myself. I always have +gone, without fail, every time hitherto. It has been a great pleasure to drive +into Sherton, and wait and see her arrive; and perhaps she’ll be +disappointed if I stay away.” +</p> + +<p> +“You may be disappointed, but I don’t think she will, if you send +Giles,” said Mrs. Melbury, dryly. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well—I’ll send him.” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury was often persuaded by the quietude of his wife’s words when +strenuous argument would have had no effect. This second Mrs. Melbury was a +placid woman, who had been nurse to his child Grace before her mother’s +death. After that melancholy event little Grace had clung to the nurse with +much affection; and ultimately Melbury, in dread lest the only woman who cared +for the girl should be induced to leave her, persuaded the mild Lucy to marry +him. The arrangement—for it was little more—had worked +satisfactorily enough; Grace had thriven, and Melbury had not repented. +</p> + +<p> +He returned to the spar-house and found Giles near at hand, to whom he +explained the change of plan. “As she won’t arrive till five +o’clock, you can get your business very well over in time to receive +her,” said Melbury. “The green gig will do for her; you’ll +spin along quicker with that, and won’t be late upon the road. Her boxes +can be called for by one of the wagons.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne, knowing nothing of the timber-merchant’s restitutory aims, +quietly thought all this to be a kindly chance. Wishing even more than her +father to despatch his apple-tree business in the market before Grace’s +arrival, he prepared to start at once. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury was careful that the turnout should be seemly. The gig-wheels, for +instance, were not always washed during winter-time before a journey, the muddy +roads rendering that labor useless; but they were washed to-day. The harness +was blacked, and when the rather elderly white horse had been put in, and +Winterborne was in his seat ready to start, Mr. Melbury stepped out with a +blacking-brush, and with his own hands touched over the yellow hoofs of the +animal. +</p> + +<p> +“You see, Giles,” he said, as he blacked, “coming from a +fashionable school, she might feel shocked at the homeliness of home; and +’tis these little things that catch a dainty woman’s eye if they +are neglected. We, living here alone, don’t notice how the whitey-brown +creeps out of the earth over us; but she, fresh from a city—why, +she’ll notice everything!” +</p> + +<p> +“That she will,” said Giles. +</p> + +<p> +“And scorn us if we don’t mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not scorn us.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, no—that’s only words. She’s too good a girl to +do that. But when we consider what she knows, and what she has seen since she +last saw us, ’tis as well to meet her views as nearly as possible. Why, +’tis a year since she was in this old place, owing to her going abroad in +the summer, which I agreed to, thinking it best for her; and naturally we shall +look small, just at first—I only say just at first.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Melbury’s tone evinced a certain exultation in the very sense of that +inferiority he affected to deplore; for this advanced and refined being, was +she not his own all the time? Not so Giles; he felt doubtful—perhaps a +trifle cynical—for that strand was wound into him with the rest. He +looked at his clothes with misgiving, then with indifference. +</p> + +<p> +It was his custom during the planting season to carry a specimen apple-tree to +market with him as an advertisement of what he dealt in. This had been tied +across the gig; and as it would be left behind in the town, it would cause no +inconvenience to Miss Grace Melbury coming home. +</p> + +<p> +He drove away, the twigs nodding with each step of the horse; and Melbury went +in-doors. Before the gig had passed out of sight, Mr. Melbury reappeared and +shouted after— +</p> + +<p> +“Here, Giles,” he said, breathlessly following with some wraps, +“it may be very chilly to-night, and she may want something extra about +her. And, Giles,” he added, when the young man, having taken the +articles, put the horse in motion once more, “tell her that I should have +come myself, but I had particular business with Mrs. Charmond’s agent, +which prevented me. Don’t forget.” +</p> + +<p> +He watched Winterborne out of sight, saying, with a jerk—a shape into +which emotion with him often resolved itself—“There, now, I hope +the two will bring it to a point and have done with it! ’Tis a pity to +let such a girl throw herself away upon him—a thousand pities!...And yet +’tis my duty for his father’s sake.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2> + +<p> +Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and without +discomposure. Had he regarded his inner self spectacularly, as lovers are now +daily more wont to do, he might have felt pride in the discernment of a +somewhat rare power in him—that of keeping not only judgment but emotion +suspended in difficult cases. But he noted it not. Neither did he observe what +was also the fact, that though he cherished a true and warm feeling towards +Grace Melbury, he was not altogether her fool just now. It must be remembered +that he had not seen her for a year. +</p> + +<p> +Arrived at the entrance to a long flat lane, which had taken the spirit out of +many a pedestrian in times when, with the majority, to travel meant to walk, he +saw before him the trim figure of a young woman in pattens, journeying with +that steadfast concentration which means purpose and not pleasure. He was soon +near enough to see that she was Marty South. Click, click, click went the +pattens; and she did not turn her head. +</p> + +<p> +She had, however, become aware before this that the driver of the approaching +gig was Giles. She had shrunk from being overtaken by him thus; but as it was +inevitable, she had braced herself up for his inspection by closing her lips so +as to make her mouth quite unemotional, and by throwing an additional firmness +into her tread. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you wear pattens, Marty? The turnpike is clean enough, although +the lanes are muddy.” +</p> + +<p> +“They save my boots.” +</p> + +<p> +“But twelve miles in pattens—’twill twist your feet off. +Come, get up and ride with me.” +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated, removed her pattens, knocked the gravel out of them against the +wheel, and mounted in front of the nodding specimen apple-tree. She had so +arranged her bonnet with a full border and trimmings that her lack of long hair +did not much injure her appearance; though Giles, of course, saw that it was +gone, and may have guessed her motive in parting with it, such sales, though +infrequent, being not unheard of in that locality. +</p> + +<p> +But nature’s adornment was still hard by—in fact, within two feet +of him, though he did not know it. In Marty’s basket was a brown paper +packet, and in the packet the chestnut locks, which, by reason of the +barber’s request for secrecy, she had not ventured to intrust to other +hands. +</p> + +<p> +Giles asked, with some hesitation, how her father was getting on. +</p> + +<p> +He was better, she said; he would be able to work in a day or two; he would be +quite well but for his craze about the tree falling on him. +</p> + +<p> +“You know why I don’t ask for him so often as I might, I +suppose?” said Winterborne. “Or don’t you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Because of the houses?” +</p> + +<p> +She nodded. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. I am afraid it may seem that my anxiety is about those houses, +which I should lose by his death, more than about him. Marty, I do feel anxious +about the houses, since half my income depends upon them; but I do likewise +care for him; and it almost seems wrong that houses should be leased for lives, +so as to lead to such mixed feelings.” +</p> + +<p> +“After father’s death they will be Mrs. Charmond’s?” +</p> + +<p> +“They’ll be hers.” +</p> + +<p> +“They are going to keep company with my hair,” she thought. +</p> + +<p> +Thus talking, they reached the town. By no pressure would she ride up the +street with him. “That’s the right of another woman,” she +said, with playful malice, as she put on her pattens. “I wonder what you +are thinking of! Thank you for the lift in that handsome gig. Good-by.” +</p> + +<p> +He blushed a little, shook his head at her, and drove on ahead into the +streets—the churches, the abbey, and other buildings on this clear bright +morning having the liny distinctness of architectural drawings, as if the +original dream and vision of the conceiving master-mason, some mediaeval Vilars +or other unknown to fame, were for a few minutes flashed down through the +centuries to an unappreciative age. Giles saw their eloquent look on this day +of transparency, but could not construe it. He turned into the inn-yard. +</p> + +<p> +Marty, following the same track, marched promptly to the hair-dresser’s, +Mr. Percombe’s. Percombe was the chief of his trade in Sherton Abbas. He +had the patronage of such county offshoots as had been obliged to seek the +shelter of small houses in that ancient town, of the local clergy, and so on, +for some of whom he had made wigs, while others among them had compensated for +neglecting him in their lifetime by patronizing him when they were dead, and +letting him shave their corpses. On the strength of all this he had taken down +his pole, and called himself “Perruquier to the aristocracy.” +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless, this sort of support did not quite fill his children’s +mouths, and they had to be filled. So, behind his house there was a little +yard, reached by a passage from the back street, and in that yard was a pole, +and under the pole a shop of quite another description than the ornamental one +in the front street. Here on Saturday nights from seven till ten he took an +almost innumerable succession of twopences from the farm laborers who flocked +thither in crowds from the country. And thus he lived. +</p> + +<p> +Marty, of course, went to the front shop, and handed her packet to him +silently. “Thank you,” said the barber, quite joyfully. “I +hardly expected it after what you said last night.” +</p> + +<p> +She turned aside, while a tear welled up and stood in each eye at this +reminder. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing of what I told you,” he whispered, there being others in +the shop. “But I can trust you, I see.” +</p> + +<p> +She had now reached the end of this distressing business, and went listlessly +along the street to attend to other errands. These occupied her till four +o’clock, at which time she recrossed the market-place. It was impossible +to avoid rediscovering Winterborne every time she passed that way, for +standing, as he always did at this season of the year, with his specimen +apple-tree in the midst, the boughs rose above the heads of the crowd, and +brought a delightful suggestion of orchards among the crowded buildings there. +When her eye fell upon him for the last time he was standing somewhat apart, +holding the tree like an ensign, and looking on the ground instead of pushing +his produce as he ought to have been doing. He was, in fact, not a very +successful seller either of his trees or of his cider, his habit of speaking +his mind, when he spoke at all, militating against this branch of his business. +</p> + +<p> +While she regarded him he suddenly lifted his eyes in a direction away from +Marty, his face simultaneously kindling with recognition and surprise. She +followed his gaze, and saw walking across to him a flexible young creature in +whom she perceived the features of her she had known as Miss Grace Melbury, but +now looking glorified and refined above her former level. Winterborne, being +fixed to the spot by his apple-tree, could not advance to meet her; he held out +his spare hand with his hat in it, and with some embarrassment beheld her +coming on tiptoe through the mud to the middle of the square where he stood. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Melbury’s arrival so early was, as Marty could see, unexpected by +Giles, which accounted for his not being ready to receive her. Indeed, her +father had named five o’clock as her probable time, for which reason that +hour had been looming out all the day in his forward perspective, like an +important edifice on a plain. Now here she was come, he knew not how, and his +arranged welcome stultified. +</p> + +<p> +His face became gloomy at her necessity for stepping into the road, and more +still at the little look of embarrassment which appeared on hers at having to +perform the meeting with him under an apple-tree ten feet high in the middle of +the market-place. Having had occasion to take off the new gloves she had bought +to come home in, she held out to him a hand graduating from pink at the tips of +the fingers to white at the palm; and the reception formed a scene, with the +tree over their heads, which was not by any means an ordinary one in Sherton +Abbas streets. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless, the greeting on her looks and lips was of a restrained type, +which perhaps was not unnatural. For true it was that Giles Winterborne, +well-attired and well-mannered as he was for a yeoman, looked rough beside her. +It had sometimes dimly occurred to him, in his ruminating silence at Little +Hintock, that external phenomena—such as the lowness or height or color +of a hat, the fold of a coat, the make of a boot, or the chance attitude or +occupation of a limb at the instant of view—may have a great influence +upon feminine opinion of a man’s worth—so frequently founded on +non-essentials; but a certain causticity of mental tone towards himself and the +world in general had prevented to-day, as always, any enthusiastic action on +the strength of that reflection; and her momentary instinct of reserve at first +sight of him was the penalty he paid for his laxness. +</p> + +<p> +He gave away the tree to a by-stander, as soon as he could find one who would +accept the cumbersome gift, and the twain moved on towards the inn at which he +had put up. Marty made as if to step forward for the pleasure of being +recognized by Miss Melbury; but abruptly checking herself, she glided behind a +carrier’s van, saying, dryly, “No; I baint wanted there,” and +critically regarded Winterborne’s companion. +</p> + +<p> +It would have been very difficult to describe Grace Melbury with precision, +either now or at any time. Nay, from the highest point of view, to precisely +describe a human being, the focus of a universe—how impossible! But, +apart from transcendentalism, there never probably lived a person who was in +herself more completely a <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of attempts to appraise a +woman, even externally, by items of face and figure. Speaking generally, it may +be said that she was sometimes beautiful, at other times not beautiful, +according to the state of her health and spirits. +</p> + +<p> +In simple corporeal presentment she was of a fair and clear complexion, rather +pale than pink, slim in build and elastic in movement. Her look expressed a +tendency to wait for others’ thoughts before uttering her own; possibly +also to wait for others’ deeds before her own doing. In her small, +delicate mouth, which had perhaps hardly settled down to its matured curves, +there was a gentleness that might hinder sufficient self-assertion for her own +good. She had well-formed eyebrows which, had her portrait been painted, would +probably have been done in Prout’s or Vandyke brown. +</p> + +<p> +There was nothing remarkable in her dress just now, beyond a natural fitness +and a style that was recent for the streets of Sherton. But, indeed, had it +been the reverse, and quite striking, it would have meant just as little. For +there can be hardly anything less connected with a woman’s personality +than drapery which she has neither designed, manufactured, cut, sewed, or even +seen, except by a glance of approval when told that such and such a shape and +color must be had because it has been decided by others as imperative at that +particular time. +</p> + +<p> +What people, therefore, saw of her in a cursory view was very little; in truth, +mainly something that was not she. The woman herself was a shadowy, conjectural +creature who had little to do with the outlines presented to Sherton eyes; a +shape in the gloom, whose true description could only be approximated by +putting together a movement now and a glance then, in that patient and +long-continued attentiveness which nothing but watchful loving-kindness ever +troubles to give. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +There was a little delay in their setting out from the town, and Marty South +took advantage of it to hasten forward, with the view of escaping them on the +way, lest they should feel compelled to spoil their <i>tête-à-tête</i> by +asking her to ride. She walked fast, and one-third of the journey was done, and +the evening rapidly darkening, before she perceived any sign of them behind +her. Then, while ascending a hill, she dimly saw their vehicle drawing near the +lowest part of the incline, their heads slightly bent towards each other; drawn +together, no doubt, by their souls, as the heads of a pair of horses well in +hand are drawn in by the rein. She walked still faster. +</p> + +<p> +But between these and herself there was a carriage, apparently a brougham, +coming in the same direction, with lighted lamps. When it overtook +her—which was not soon, on account of her pace—the scene was much +darker, and the lights glared in her eyes sufficiently to hide the details of +the equipage. +</p> + +<p> +It occurred to Marty that she might take hold behind this carriage and so keep +along with it, to save herself the mortification of being overtaken and picked +up for pity’s sake by the coming pair. Accordingly, as the carriage drew +abreast of her in climbing the long ascent, she walked close to the wheels, the +rays of the nearest lamp penetrating her very pores. She had only just dropped +behind when the carriage stopped, and to her surprise the coachman asked her, +over his shoulder, if she would ride. What made the question more surprising +was that it came in obedience to an order from the interior of the vehicle. +</p> + +<p> +Marty gladly assented, for she was weary, very weary, after working all night +and keeping afoot all day. She mounted beside the coachman, wondering why this +good-fortune had happened to her. He was rather a great man in aspect, and she +did not like to inquire of him for some time. +</p> + +<p> +At last she said, “Who has been so kind as to ask me to ride?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Charmond,” replied her statuesque companion. +</p> + +<p> +Marty was stirred at the name, so closely connected with her last night’s +experiences. “Is this her carriage?” she whispered. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; she’s inside.” +</p> + +<p> +Marty reflected, and perceived that Mrs. Charmond must have recognized her +plodding up the hill under the blaze of the lamp; recognized, probably, her +stubbly poll (since she had kept away her face), and thought that those +stubbles were the result of her own desire. +</p> + +<p> +Marty South was not so very far wrong. Inside the carriage a pair of bright +eyes looked from a ripely handsome face, and though behind those bright eyes +was a mind of unfathomed mysteries, beneath them there beat a heart capable of +quick extempore warmth—a heart which could, indeed, be passionately and +imprudently warm on certain occasions. At present, after recognizing the girl, +she had acted on a mere impulse, possibly feeling gratified at the denuded +appearance which signified the success of her agent in obtaining what she had +required. +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis wonderful that she should ask ye,” observed the +magisterial coachman, presently. “I have never known her do it before, +for as a rule she takes no interest in the village folk at all.” +</p> + +<p> +Marty said no more, but occasionally turned her head to see if she could get a +glimpse of the Olympian creature who as the coachman had truly observed, hardly +ever descended from her clouds into the Tempe of the parishioners. But she +could discern nothing of the lady. She also looked for Miss Melbury and +Winterborne. The nose of their horse sometimes came quite near the back of Mrs. +Charmond’s carriage. But they never attempted to pass it till the latter +conveyance turned towards the park gate, when they sped by. Here the carriage +drew up that the gate might be opened, and in the momentary silence Marty heard +a gentle oral sound, soft as a breeze. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that?” she whispered. +</p> + +<p> +“Mis’ess yawning.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should she yawn?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, because she’s been used to such wonderfully good life, and +finds it dull here. She’ll soon be off again on account of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“So rich and so powerful, and yet to yawn!” the girl murmured. +“Then things don’t fay with she any more than with we!” +</p> + +<p> +Marty now alighted; the lamp again shone upon her, and as the carriage rolled +on, a soft voice said to her from the interior, “Good-night.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night, ma’am,” said Marty. But she had not been able to +see the woman who began so greatly to interest her—the second person of +her own sex who had operated strongly on her mind that day. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2> + +<p> +Meanwhile, Winterborne and Grace Melbury had also undergone their little +experiences of the same homeward journey. +</p> + +<p> +As he drove off with her out of the town the glances of people fell upon them, +the younger thinking that Mr. Winterborne was in a pleasant place, and +wondering in what relation he stood towards her. Winterborne himself was +unconscious of this. Occupied solely with the idea of having her in charge, he +did not notice much with outward eye, neither observing how she was dressed, +nor the effect of the picture they together composed in the landscape. +</p> + +<p> +Their conversation was in briefest phrase for some time, Grace being somewhat +disconcerted, through not having understood till they were about to start that +Giles was to be her sole conductor in place of her father. When they were in +the open country he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t Brownley’s farm-buildings look strange to you, now +they have been moved bodily from the hollow where the old ones stood to the top +of the hill?” +</p> + +<p> +She admitted that they did, though she should not have seen any difference in +them if he had not pointed it out. +</p> + +<p> +“They had a good crop of bitter-sweets; they couldn’t grind them +all” (nodding towards an orchard where some heaps of apples had been left +lying ever since the ingathering). +</p> + +<p> +She said “Yes,” but looking at another orchard. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you are looking at John-apple-trees! You know +bitter-sweets—you used to well enough!” +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is getting too dark to +distinguish.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne did not continue. It seemed as if the knowledge and interest which +had formerly moved Grace’s mind had quite died away from her. He wondered +whether the special attributes of his image in the past had evaporated like +these other things. +</p> + +<p> +However that might be, the fact at present was merely this, that where he was +seeing John-apples and farm-buildings she was beholding a far remoter +scene—a scene no less innocent and simple, indeed, but much +contrasting—a broad lawn in the fashionable suburb of a fast city, the +evergreen leaves shining in the evening sun, amid which bounding girls, +gracefully clad in artistic arrangements of blue, brown, red, black, and white, +were playing at games, with laughter and chat, in all the pride of life, the +notes of piano and harp trembling in the air from the open windows adjoining. +Moreover, they were girls—and this was a fact which Grace Melbury’s +delicate femininity could not lose sight of—whose parents Giles would +have addressed with a deferential Sir or Madam. Beside this visioned scene the +homely farmsteads did not quite hold their own from her present twenty-year +point of survey. For all his woodland sequestration, Giles knew the primitive +simplicity of the subject he had started, and now sounded a deeper note. +</p> + +<p> +“’Twas very odd what we said to each other years ago; I often think +of it. I mean our saying that if we still liked each other when you were twenty +and I twenty-five, we’d—” +</p> + +<p> +“It was child’s tattle.” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” said Giles, suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean we were young,” said she, more considerately. That gruff +manner of his in making inquiries reminded her that he was unaltered in much. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes....I beg your pardon, Miss Melbury; your father <i>sent</i> me to +meet you to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know it, and I am glad of it.” +</p> + +<p> +He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: “At that time you were +sitting beside me at the back of your father’s covered car, when we were +coming home from gypsying, all the party being squeezed in together as tight as +sheep in an auction-pen. It got darker and darker, and I said—I forget +the exact words—but I put my arm round your waist and there you let it +stay till your father, sitting in front suddenly stopped telling his story to +Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe. The flash shone into the car, and showed us +all up distinctly; my arm flew from your waist like lightning; yet not so +quickly but that some of ’em had seen, and laughed at us. Yet your +father, to our amazement, instead of being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed +quite pleased. Have you forgot all that, or haven’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +She owned that she remembered it very well, now that he mentioned the +circumstances. “But, goodness! I must have been in short frocks,” +she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Come now, Miss Melbury, that won’t do! Short frocks, indeed! You +know better, as well as I.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace thereupon declared that she would not argue with an old friend she valued +so highly as she valued him, saying the words with the easy elusiveness that +will be polite at all costs. It might possibly be true, she added, that she was +getting on in girlhood when that event took place; but if it were so, then she +was virtually no less than an old woman now, so far did the time seem removed +from her present. “Do you ever look at things philosophically instead of +personally?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t say that I do,” answered Giles, his eyes lingering +far ahead upon a dark spot, which proved to be a brougham. +</p> + +<p> +“I think you may, sometimes, with advantage,” said she. “Look +at yourself as a pitcher drifting on the stream with other pitchers, and +consider what contrivances are most desirable for avoiding cracks in general, +and not only for saving your poor one. Shall I tell you all about Bath or +Cheltenham, or places on the Continent that I visited last summer?” +</p> + +<p> +“With all my heart.” +</p> + +<p> +She then described places and persons in such terms as might have been used for +that purpose by any woman to any man within the four seas, so entirely absent +from that description was everything specially appertaining to her own +existence. When she had done she said, gayly, “Now do you tell me in +return what has happened in Hintock since I have been away.” +</p> + +<p> +“Anything to keep the conversation away from her and me,” said +Giles within him. +</p> + +<p> +It was true cultivation had so far advanced in the soil of Miss Melbury’s +mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of that she knew well, and +had the greatest interest in developing—that is to say, herself. +</p> + +<p> +He had not proceeded far with his somewhat bald narration when they drew near +the carriage that had been preceding them for some time. Miss Melbury inquired +if he knew whose carriage it was. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne, although he had seen it, had not taken it into account. On +examination, he said it was Mrs. Charmond’s. +</p> + +<p> +Grace watched the vehicle and its easy roll, and seemed to feel more nearly +akin to it than to the one she was in. +</p> + +<p> +“Pooh! We can polish off the mileage as well as they, come to +that,” said Winterborne, reading her mind; and rising to emulation at +what it bespoke, he whipped on the horse. This it was which had brought the +nose of Mr. Melbury’s old gray close to the back of Mrs. Charmond’s +much-eclipsing vehicle. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s Marty South sitting up with the coachman,” said he, +discerning her by her dress. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, poor Marty! I must ask her to come to see me this very evening. How +does she happen to be riding there?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. It is very singular.” +</p> + +<p> +Thus these people with converging destinies went along the road together, till +Winterborne, leaving the track of the carriage, turned into Little Hintock, +where almost the first house was the timber-merchant’s. Pencils of +dancing light streamed out of the windows sufficiently to show the white +laurestinus flowers, and glance over the polished leaves of laurel. The +interior of the rooms could be seen distinctly, warmed up by the fire-flames, +which in the parlor were reflected from the glass of the pictures and bookcase, +and in the kitchen from the utensils and ware. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us look at the dear place for a moment before we call them,” +she said. +</p> + +<p> +In the kitchen dinner was preparing; for though Melbury dined at one +o’clock at other times, to-day the meal had been kept back for Grace. A +rickety old spit was in motion, its end being fixed in the fire-dog, and the +whole kept going by means of a cord conveyed over pulleys along the ceiling to +a large stone suspended in a corner of the room. Old Grammer Oliver came and +wound it up with a rattle like that of a mill. +</p> + +<p> +In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury’s head fell on the wall and +ceiling; but before the girl had regarded this room many moments their presence +was discovered, and her father and stepmother came out to welcome her. +</p> + +<p> +The character of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces some shyness +in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait frequent in rural +households, and one which stands in curiously inverse relation to most of the +peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people of towns. Thus hiding +their warmer feelings under commonplace talk all round, Grace’s reception +produced no extraordinary demonstrations. But that more was felt than was +enacted appeared from the fact that her father, in taking her in-doors, quite +forgot the presence of Giles without, as did also Grace herself. He said +nothing, but took the gig round to the yard and called out from the spar-house +the man who particularly attended to these matters when there was no +conversation to draw him off among the copse-workers inside. Winterborne then +returned to the door with the intention of entering the house. +</p> + +<p> +The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in themselves. The +fire was, as before, the only light, and it irradiated Grace’s face and +hands so as to make them look wondrously smooth and fair beside those of the +two elders; shining also through the loose hair about her temples as sunlight +through a brake. Her father was surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so much +had she developed and progressed in manner and stature since he last had set +eyes on her. +</p> + +<p> +Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door, mechanically +tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters carved in the +jambs—initials of by-gone generations of householders who had lived and +died there. +</p> + +<p> +No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the family; they had +forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that he had brought her home. +Still, he was a little surprised that her father’s eagerness to send him +for Grace should have resulted in such an anticlimax as this. +</p> + +<p> +He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking back when he +reached the turning, from which he could get a last glimpse of the +timber-merchant’s roof. He hazarded guesses as to what Grace was saying +just at that moment, and murmured, with some self-derision, “nothing +about me!” He looked also in the other direction, and saw against the sky +the thatched hip and solitary chimney of Marty’s cottage, and thought of +her too, struggling bravely along under that humble shelter, among her +spar-gads and pots and skimmers. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +At the timber-merchant’s, in the mean time, the conversation flowed; and, +as Giles Winterborne had rightly enough deemed, on subjects in which he had no +share. Among the excluding matters there was, for one, the effect upon Mr. +Melbury of the womanly mien and manners of his daughter, which took him so much +unawares that, though it did not make him absolutely forget the existence of +her conductor homeward, thrust Giles’s image back into quite the +obscurest cellarage of his brain. Another was his interview with Mrs. +Charmond’s agent that morning, at which the lady herself had been present +for a few minutes. Melbury had purchased some standing timber from her a long +time before, and now that the date had come for felling it he was left to +pursue almost his own course. This was what the household were actually talking +of during Giles’s cogitation without; and Melbury’s satisfaction +with the clear atmosphere that had arisen between himself and the deity of the +groves which enclosed his residence was the cause of a counterbalancing +mistiness on the side towards Winterborne. +</p> + +<p> +“So thoroughly does she trust me,” said Melbury, “that I +might fell, top, or lop, on my own judgment, any stick o’ timber whatever +in her wood, and fix the price o’t, and settle the matter. But, name it +all! I wouldn’t do such a thing. However, it may be useful to have this +good understanding with her....I wish she took more interest in the place, and +stayed here all the year round.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid ’tis not her regard for you, but her dislike of +Hintock, that makes her so easy about the trees,” said Mrs. Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +When dinner was over, Grace took a candle and began to ramble pleasurably +through the rooms of her old home, from which she had latterly become wellnigh +an alien. Each nook and each object revived a memory, and simultaneously +modified it. The chambers seemed lower than they had appeared on any previous +occasion of her return, the surfaces of both walls and ceilings standing in +such relations to the eye that it could not avoid taking microscopic note of +their irregularities and old fashion. Her own bedroom wore at once a look more +familiar than when she had left it, and yet a face estranged. The world of +little things therein gazed at her in helpless stationariness, as though they +had tried and been unable to make any progress without her presence. Over the +place where her candle had been accustomed to stand, when she had used to read +in bed till the midnight hour, there was still the brown spot of smoke. She did +not know that her father had taken especial care to keep it from being cleaned +off. +</p> + +<p> +Having concluded her perambulation of this now uselessly commodious edifice, +Grace began to feel that she had come a long journey since the morning; and +when her father had been up himself, as well as his wife, to see that her room +was comfortable and the fire burning, she prepared to retire for the night. No +sooner, however, was she in bed than her momentary sleepiness took itself off, +and she wished she had stayed up longer. She amused herself by listening to the +old familiar noises that she could hear to be still going on down-stairs, and +by looking towards the window as she lay. The blind had been drawn up, as she +used to have it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim tree-tops +against the sky on the neighboring hill. Beneath this meeting-line of light and +shade nothing was visible save one solitary point of light, which blinked as +the tree-twigs waved to and fro before its beams. From its position it seemed +to radiate from the window of a house on the hill-side. The house had been +empty when she was last at home, and she wondered who inhabited the place now. +</p> + +<p> +Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, and she was watching +the light quite idly, when it gradually changed color, and at length shone blue +as sapphire. Thus it remained several minutes, and then it passed through +violet to red. +</p> + +<p> +Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she sat up in bed, +and stared steadily at the shine. An appearance of this sort, sufficient to +excite attention anywhere, was no less than a marvel in Hintock, as Grace had +known the hamlet. Almost every diurnal and nocturnal effect in that woodland +place had hitherto been the direct result of the regular terrestrial roll which +produced the season’s changes; but here was something dissociated from +these normal sequences, and foreign to local habit and knowledge. +</p> + +<p> +It was about this moment that Grace heard the household below preparing to +retire, the most emphatic noise in the proceeding being that of her father +bolting the doors. Then the stairs creaked, and her father and mother passed +her chamber. The last to come was Grammer Oliver. +</p> + +<p> +Grace slid out of bed, ran across the room, and lifting the latch, said, +“I am not asleep, Grammer. Come in and talk to me.” +</p> + +<p> +Before the old woman had entered, Grace was again under the bedclothes. Grammer +set down her candlestick, and seated herself on the edge of Miss +Melbury’s coverlet. +</p> + +<p> +“I want you to tell me what light that is I see on the hill-side,” +said Grace. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Oliver looked across. “Oh, that,” she said, “is from the +doctor’s. He’s often doing things of that sort. Perhaps you +don’t know that we’ve a doctor living here now—Mr. Fitzpiers +by name?” +</p> + +<p> +Grace admitted that she had not heard of him. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then, miss, he’s come here to get up a practice. I know him +very well, through going there to help ’em scrub sometimes, which your +father said I might do, if I wanted to, in my spare time. Being a bachelor-man, +he’ve only a lad in the house. Oh yes, I know him very well. Sometimes +he’ll talk to me as if I were his own mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. ‘Grammer,’ he said one day, when I asked him why he +came here where there’s hardly anybody living, ‘I’ll tell you +why I came here. I took a map, and I marked on it where Dr. Jones’s +practice ends to the north of this district, and where Mr. Taylor’s ends +on the south, and little Jimmy Green’s on the east, and somebody +else’s to the west. Then I took a pair of compasses, and found the exact +middle of the country that was left between these bounds, and that middle was +Little Hintock; so here I am....’ But, Lord, there: poor young +man!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“He said, ‘Grammer Oliver, I’ve been here three months, and +although there are a good many people in the Hintocks and the villages round, +and a scattered practice is often a very good one, I don’t seem to get +many patients. And there’s no society at all; and I’m pretty near +melancholy mad,’ he said, with a great yawn. ‘I should be quite if +it were not for my books, and my lab—laboratory, and what not. Grammer, I +was made for higher things.’ And then he’d yawn and yawn +again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Was he really made for higher things, do you think? I mean, is he +clever?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, no. How can he be clever? He may be able to jine up a broken man +or woman after a fashion, and put his finger upon an ache if you tell him +nearly where ’tis; but these young men—they should live to my time +of life, and then they’d see how clever they were at five-and-twenty! And +yet he’s a projick, a real projick, and says the oddest of rozums. +‘Ah, Grammer,’ he said, at another time, ‘let me tell you +that Everything is Nothing. There’s only Me and not Me in the whole +world.’ And he told me that no man’s hands could help what they +did, any more than the hands of a clock....Yes, he’s a man of strange +meditations, and his eyes seem to see as far as the north star.” +</p> + +<p> +“He will soon go away, no doubt.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think so.” Grace did not say “Why?” and +Grammer hesitated. At last she went on: “Don’t tell your father or +mother, miss, if I let you know a secret.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace gave the required promise. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, he talks of buying me; so he won’t go away just yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Buying you!—how?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not my soul—my body, when I’m dead. One day when I was there +cleaning, he said, ‘Grammer, you’ve a large brain—a very +large organ of brain,’ he said. ‘A woman’s is usually four +ounces less than a man’s; but yours is man’s size.’ Well, +then—hee, hee!—after he’d flattered me a bit like that, he +said he’d give me ten pounds to have me as a natomy after my death. Well, +knowing I’d no chick nor chiel left, and nobody with any interest in me, +I thought, faith, if I can be of any use to my fellow-creatures after I’m +gone they are welcome to my services; so I said I’d think it over, and +would most likely agree and take the ten pounds. Now this is a secret, miss, +between us two. The money would be very useful to me; and I see no harm in +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course there’s no harm. But oh, Grammer, how can you think to +do it? I wish you hadn’t told me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I hadn’t—if you don’t like to know it, miss. +But you needn’t mind. Lord—hee, hee!—I shall keep him waiting +many a year yet, bless ye!” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you will, I am sure.” +</p> + +<p> +The girl thereupon fell into such deep reflection that conversation languished, +and Grammer Oliver, taking her candle, wished Miss Melbury good-night. The +latter’s eyes rested on the distant glimmer, around which she allowed her +reasoning fancy to play in vague eddies that shaped the doings of the +philosopher behind that light on the lines of intelligence just received. It +was strange to her to come back from the world to Little Hintock and find in +one of its nooks, like a tropical plant in a hedgerow, a nucleus of advanced +ideas and practices which had nothing in common with the life around. Chemical +experiments, anatomical projects, and metaphysical conceptions had found a +strange home here. +</p> + +<p> +Thus she remained thinking, the imagined pursuits of the man behind the light +intermingling with conjectural sketches of his personality, till her eyes fell +together with their own heaviness, and she slept. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2> + +<p> +Kaleidoscopic dreams of a weird alchemist-surgeon, Grammer Oliver’s +skeleton, and the face of Giles Winterborne, brought Grace Melbury to the +morning of the next day. It was fine. A north wind was blowing—that not +unacceptable compromise between the atmospheric cutlery of the eastern blast +and the spongy gales of the west quarter. She looked from her window in the +direction of the light of the previous evening, and could just discern through +the trees the shape of the surgeon’s house. Somehow, in the broad, +practical daylight, that unknown and lonely gentleman seemed to be shorn of +much of the interest which had invested his personality and pursuits in the +hours of darkness, and as Grace’s dressing proceeded he faded from her +mind. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, Winterborne, though half assured of her father’s favor, was +rendered a little restless by Miss Melbury’s behavior. Despite his dry +self-control, he could not help looking continually from his own door towards +the timber-merchant’s, in the probability of somebody’s emergence +therefrom. His attention was at length justified by the appearance of two +figures, that of Mr. Melbury himself, and Grace beside him. They stepped out in +a direction towards the densest quarter of the wood, and Winterborne walked +contemplatively behind them, till all three were soon under the trees. +</p> + +<p> +Although the time of bare boughs had now set in, there were sheltered hollows +amid the Hintock plantations and copses in which a more tardy leave-taking than +on windy summits was the rule with the foliage. This caused here and there an +apparent mixture of the seasons; so that in some of the dells that they passed +by holly-berries in full red were found growing beside oak and hazel whose +leaves were as yet not far removed from green, and brambles whose verdure was +rich and deep as in the month of August. To Grace these well-known +peculiarities were as an old painting restored. +</p> + +<p> +Now could be beheld that change from the handsome to the curious which the +features of a wood undergo at the ingress of the winter months. Angles were +taking the place of curves, and reticulations of surfaces—a change +constituting a sudden lapse from the ornate to the primitive on Nature’s +canvas, and comparable to a retrogressive step from the art of an advanced +school of painting to that of the Pacific Islander. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne followed, and kept his eye upon the two figures as they threaded +their way through these sylvan phenomena. Mr. Melbury’s long legs, and +gaiters drawn in to the bone at the ankles, his slight stoop, his habit of +getting lost in thought and arousing himself with an exclamation of +“Hah!” accompanied with an upward jerk of the head, composed a +personage recognizable by his neighbors as far as he could be seen. It seemed +as if the squirrels and birds knew him. One of the former would occasionally +run from the path to hide behind the arm of some tree, which the little animal +carefully edged round <i>pari passu</i> with Melbury and his daughters movement +onward, assuming a mock manner, as though he were saying, “Ho, ho; you +are only a timber-merchant, and carry no gun!” +</p> + +<p> +They went noiselessly over mats of starry moss, rustled through interspersed +tracts of leaves, skirted trunks with spreading roots, whose mossed rinds made +them like hands wearing green gloves; elbowed old elms and ashes with great +forks, in which stood pools of water that overflowed on rainy days, and ran +down their stems in green cascades. On older trees still than these, huge lobes +of fungi grew like lungs. Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which +makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds +of a city slum. The leaf was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was +interrupted; the lichen eat the vigor of the stalk, and the ivy slowly +strangled to death the promising sapling. +</p> + +<p> +They dived amid beeches under which nothing grew, the younger boughs still +retaining their hectic leaves, that rustled in the breeze with a sound almost +metallic, like the sheet-iron foliage of the fabled Jarnvid wood. Some flecks +of white in Grace’s drapery had enabled Giles to keep her and her father +in view till this time; but now he lost sight of them, and was obliged to +follow by ear—no difficult matter, for on the line of their course every +wood-pigeon rose from its perch with a continued clash, dashing its wings +against the branches with wellnigh force enough to break every quill. By taking +the track of this noise he soon came to a stile. +</p> + +<p> +Was it worth while to go farther? He examined the doughy soil at the foot of +the stile, and saw among the large sole-and-heel tracks an impression of a +slighter kind from a boot that was obviously not local, for Winterborne knew +all the cobblers’ patterns in that district, because they were very few +to know. The mud-picture was enough to make him swing himself over and proceed. +</p> + +<p> +The character of the woodland now changed. The bases of the smaller trees were +nibbled bare by rabbits, and at divers points heaps of fresh-made chips, and +the newly-cut stool of a tree, stared white through the undergrowth. There had +been a large fall of timber this year, which explained the meaning of some +sounds that soon reached him. +</p> + +<p> +A voice was shouting intermittently in a sort of human bark, which reminded +Giles that there was a sale of trees and fagots that very day. Melbury would +naturally be present. Thereupon Winterborne remembered that he himself wanted a +few fagots, and entered upon the scene. +</p> + +<p> +A large group of buyers stood round the auctioneer, or followed him when, +between his pauses, he wandered on from one lot of plantation produce to +another, like some philosopher of the Peripatetic school delivering his +lectures in the shady groves of the Lyceum. His companions were timber-dealers, +yeomen, farmers, villagers, and others; mostly woodland men, who on that +account could afford to be curious in their walking-sticks, which consequently +exhibited various monstrosities of vegetation, the chief being cork-screw +shapes in black and white thorn, brought to that pattern by the slow torture of +an encircling woodbine during their growth, as the Chinese have been said to +mould human beings into grotesque toys by continued compression in infancy. Two +women, wearing men’s jackets on their gowns, conducted in the rear of the +halting procession a pony-cart containing a tapped barrel of beer, from which +they drew and replenished horns that were handed round, with bread-and-cheese +from a basket. +</p> + +<p> +The auctioneer adjusted himself to circumstances by using his walking-stick as +a hammer, and knocked down the lot on any convenient object that took his +fancy, such as the crown of a little boy’s head, or the shoulders of a +by-stander who had no business there except to taste the brew; a proceeding +which would have been deemed humorous but for the air of stern rigidity which +that auctioneer’s face preserved, tending to show that the eccentricity +was a result of that absence of mind which is engendered by the press of +affairs, and no freak of fancy at all. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the rest of the Peripatetics, and Grace +beside him, clinging closely to his arm, her modern attire looking almost odd +where everything else was old-fashioned, and throwing over the familiar +garniture of the trees a homeliness that seemed to demand improvement by the +addition of a few contemporary novelties also. Grace seemed to regard the +selling with the interest which attaches to memories revived after an interval +of obliviousness. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne went and stood close to them; the timber-merchant spoke, and +continued his buying; Grace merely smiled. To justify his presence there +Winterborne began bidding for timber and fagots that he did not want, pursuing +the occupation in an abstracted mood, in which the auctioneer’s voice +seemed to become one of the natural sounds of the woodland. A few flakes of +snow descended, at the sight of which a robin, alarmed at these signs of +imminent winter, and seeing that no offence was meant by the human invasion, +came and perched on the tip of the fagots that were being sold, and looked into +the auctioneer’s face, while waiting for some chance crumb from the +bread-basket. Standing a little behind Grace, Winterborne observed how one +flake would sail downward and settle on a curl of her hair, and how another +would choose her shoulder, and another the edge of her bonnet, which took up so +much of his attention that his biddings proceeded incoherently; and when the +auctioneer said, every now and then, with a nod towards him, “Yours, Mr. +Winterborne,” he had no idea whether he had bought fagots, poles, or +logwood. +</p> + +<p> +He regretted, with some causticity of humor, that her father should show such +inequalities of temperament as to keep Grace tightly on his arm to-day, when he +had quite lately seemed anxious to recognize their betrothal as a fact. And +thus musing, and joining in no conversation with other buyers except when +directly addressed, he followed the assemblage hither and thither till the end +of the auction, when Giles for the first time realized what his purchases had +been. Hundreds of fagots, and divers lots of timber, had been set down to him, +when all he had required had been a few bundles of spray for his odd man Robert +Creedle’s use in baking and lighting fires. +</p> + +<p> +Business being over, he turned to speak to the timber merchant. But +Melbury’s manner was short and distant; and Grace, too, looked vexed and +reproachful. Winterborne then discovered that he had been unwittingly bidding +against her father, and picking up his favorite lots in spite of him. With a +very few words they left the spot and pursued their way homeward. +</p> + +<p> +Giles was extremely sorry at what he had done, and remained standing under the +trees, all the other men having strayed silently away. He saw Melbury and his +daughter pass down a glade without looking back. While they moved slowly +through it a lady appeared on horseback in the middle distance, the line of her +progress converging upon that of Melbury’s. They met, Melbury took off +his hat, and she reined in her horse. A conversation was evidently in progress +between Grace and her father and this equestrian, in whom he was almost sure +that he recognized Mrs. Charmond, less by her outline than by the livery of the +groom who had halted some yards off. +</p> + +<p> +The interlocutors did not part till after a prolonged pause, during which much +seemed to be said. When Melbury and Grace resumed their walk it was with +something of a lighter tread than before. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne then pursued his own course homeward. He was unwilling to let +coldness grow up between himself and the Melburys for any trivial reason, and +in the evening he went to their house. On drawing near the gate his attention +was attracted by the sight of one of the bedrooms blinking into a state of +illumination. In it stood Grace lighting several candles, her right hand +elevating the taper, her left hand on her bosom, her face thoughtfully fixed on +each wick as it kindled, as if she saw in every flame’s growth the rise +of a life to maturity. He wondered what such unusual brilliancy could mean +to-night. On getting in-doors he found her father and step-mother in a state of +suppressed excitement, which at first he could not comprehend. +</p> + +<p> +“I am sorry about my biddings to-day,” said Giles. “I +don’t know what I was doing. I have come to say that any of the lots you +may require are yours.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, never mind—never mind,” replied the timber-merchant, +with a slight wave of his hand, “I have so much else to think of that I +nearly had forgot it. Just now, too, there are matters of a different kind from +trade to attend to, so don’t let it concern ye.” +</p> + +<p> +As the timber-merchant spoke, as it were, down to him from a higher moral plane +than his own, Giles turned to Mrs. Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“Grace is going to the House to-morrow,” she said, quietly. +“She is looking out her things now. I dare say she is wanting me this +minute to assist her.” Thereupon Mrs. Melbury left the room. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing is more remarkable than the independent personality of the tongue now +and then. Mr. Melbury knew that his words had been a sort of boast. He decried +boasting, particularly to Giles; yet whenever the subject was Grace, his +judgment resigned the ministry of speech in spite of him. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne felt surprise, pleasure, and also a little apprehension at the +news. He repeated Mrs. Melbury’s words. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said paternal pride, not sorry to have dragged out of him +what he could not in any circumstances have kept in. “Coming home from +the woods this afternoon we met Mrs. Charmond out for a ride. She spoke to me +on a little matter of business, and then got acquainted with Grace. ’Twas +wonderful how she took to Grace in a few minutes; that freemasonry of education +made ’em close at once. Naturally enough she was amazed that such an +article—ha, ha!—could come out of my house. At last it led on to +Mis’ess Grace being asked to the House. So she’s busy hunting up +her frills and furbelows to go in.” As Giles remained in thought without +responding, Melbury continued: “But I’ll call her +down-stairs.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no; don’t do that, since she’s busy,” said +Winterborne. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury, feeling from the young man’s manner that his own talk had been +too much at Giles and too little to him, repented at once. His face changed, +and he said, in lower tones, with an effort, “She’s yours, Giles, +as far as I am concerned.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks—my best thanks....But I think, since it is all right +between us about the biddings, that I’ll not interrupt her now. +I’ll step homeward, and call another time.” +</p> + +<p> +On leaving the house he looked up at the bedroom again. Grace, surrounded by a +sufficient number of candles to answer all purposes of self-criticism, was +standing before a cheval-glass that her father had lately bought expressly for +her use; she was bonneted, cloaked, and gloved, and glanced over her shoulder +into the mirror, estimating her aspect. Her face was lit with the natural +elation of a young girl hoping to inaugurate on the morrow an intimate +acquaintance with a new, interesting, and powerful friend. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> + +<p> +The inspiriting appointment which had led Grace Melbury to indulge in a +six-candle illumination for the arrangement of her attire, carried her over the +ground the next morning with a springy tread. Her sense of being properly +appreciated on her own native soil seemed to brighten the atmosphere and +herbage around her, as the glowworm’s lamp irradiates the grass. Thus she +moved along, a vessel of emotion going to empty itself on she knew not what. +</p> + +<p> +Twenty minutes’ walking through copses, over a stile, and along an upland +lawn brought her to the verge of a deep glen, at the bottom of which Hintock +House appeared immediately beneath her eye. To describe it as standing in a +hollow would not express the situation of the manor-house; it stood in a hole, +notwithstanding that the hole was full of beauty. From the spot which Grace had +reached a stone could easily have been thrown over or into, the +birds’-nested chimneys of the mansion. Its walls were surmounted by a +battlemented parapet; but the gray lead roofs were quite visible behind it, +with their gutters, laps, rolls, and skylights, together with incised +letterings and shoe-patterns cut by idlers thereon. +</p> + +<p> +The front of the house exhibited an ordinary manorial presentation of +Elizabethan windows, mullioned and hooded, worked in rich snuff-colored +freestone from local quarries. The ashlar of the walls, where not overgrown +with ivy and other creepers, was coated with lichen of every shade, +intensifying its luxuriance with its nearness to the ground, till, below the +plinth, it merged in moss. +</p> + +<p> +Above the house to the back was a dense plantation, the roots of whose trees +were above the level of the chimneys. The corresponding high ground on which +Grace stood was richly grassed, with only an old tree here and there. A few +sheep lay about, which, as they ruminated, looked quietly into the bedroom +windows. The situation of the house, prejudicial to humanity, was a stimulus to +vegetation, on which account an endless shearing of the heavy-armed ivy was +necessary, and a continual lopping of trees and shrubs. It was an edifice built +in times when human constitutions were damp-proof, when shelter from the +boisterous was all that men thought of in choosing a dwelling-place, the +insidious being beneath their notice; and its hollow site was an ocular +reminder, by its unfitness for modern lives, of the fragility to which these +have declined. The highest architectural cunning could have done nothing to +make Hintock House dry and salubrious; and ruthless ignorance could have done +little to make it unpicturesque. It was vegetable nature’s own home; a +spot to inspire the painter and poet of still life—if they did not suffer +too much from the relaxing atmosphere—and to draw groans from the +gregariously disposed. Grace descended the green escarpment by a zigzag path +into the drive, which swept round beneath the slope. The exterior of the house +had been familiar to her from her childhood, but she had never been inside, and +the approach to knowing an old thing in a new way was a lively experience. It +was with a little flutter that she was shown in; but she recollected that Mrs. +Charmond would probably be alone. Up to a few days before this time that lady +had been accompanied in her comings, stayings, and goings by a relative +believed to be her aunt; latterly, however, these two ladies had separated, +owing, it was supposed, to a quarrel, and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate. +Being presumably a woman who did not care for solitude, this deprivation might +possibly account for her sudden interest in Grace. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Charmond was at the end of a gallery opening from the hall when Miss +Melbury was announced, and saw her through the glass doors between them. She +came forward with a smile on her face, and told the young girl it was good of +her to come. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! you have noticed those,” she said, seeing that Grace’s +eyes were attracted by some curious objects against the walls. “They are +man-traps. My husband was a connoisseur in man-traps and spring-guns and such +articles, collecting them from all his neighbors. He knew the histories of all +these—which gin had broken a man’s leg, which gun had killed a man. +That one, I remember his saying, had been set by a game-keeper in the track of +a notorious poacher; but the keeper, forgetting what he had done, went that way +himself, received the charge in the lower part of his body, and died of the +wound. I don’t like them here, but I’ve never yet given directions +for them to be taken away.” She added, playfully, “Man-traps are of +rather ominous significance where a person of our sex lives, are they +not?” +</p> + +<p> +Grace was bound to smile; but that side of womanliness was one which her +inexperience had no great zest in contemplating. +</p> + +<p> +“They are interesting, no doubt, as relics of a barbarous time happily +past,” she said, looking thoughtfully at the varied designs of these +instruments of torture—some with semi-circular jaws, some with +rectangular; most of them with long, sharp teeth, but a few with none, so that +their jaws looked like the blank gums of old age. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, we must not take them too seriously,” said Mrs. Charmond, +with an indolent turn of her head, and they moved on inward. When she had shown +her visitor different articles in cabinets that she deemed likely to interest +her, some tapestries, wood-carvings, ivories, miniatures, and so +on—always with a mien of listlessness which might either have been +constitutional, or partly owing to the situation of the place—they sat +down to an early cup of tea. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you pour it out, please? Do,” she said, leaning back in her +chair, and placing her hand above her forehead, while her almond +eyes—those long eyes so common to the angelic legions of early Italian +art—became longer, and her voice more languishing. She showed that +oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps most frequent in women of darker +complexion and more lymphatic temperament than Mrs. Charmond’s was; who +lingeringly smile their meanings to men rather than speak them, who inveigle +rather than prompt, and take advantage of currents rather than steer. +</p> + +<p> +“I am the most inactive woman when I am here,” she said. “I +think sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but float +about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams. But that cannot be really my +destiny, and I must struggle against such fancies.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion—it is quite sad! I wish I +could tend you and make you very happy.” +</p> + +<p> +There was something so sympathetic, so appreciative, in the sound of +Grace’s voice, that it impelled people to play havoc with their customary +reservations in talking to her. “It is tender and kind of you to feel +that,” said Mrs. Charmond. “Perhaps I have given you the notion +that my languor is more than it really is. But this place oppresses me, and I +have a plan of going abroad a good deal. I used to go with a relative, but that +arrangement has dropped through.” Regarding Grace with a final glance of +criticism, she seemed to make up her mind to consider the young girl +satisfactory, and continued: “Now I am often impelled to record my +impressions of times and places. I have often thought of writing a ‘New +<i>Sentimental Journey</i>.’ But I cannot find energy enough to do it +alone. When I am at different places in the south of Europe I feel a crowd of +ideas and fancies thronging upon me continually, but to unfold +writing-materials, take up a cold steel pen, and put these impressions down +systematically on cold, smooth paper—that I cannot do. So I have thought +that if I always could have somebody at my elbow with whom I am in sympathy, I +might dictate any ideas that come into my head. And directly I had made your +acquaintance the other day it struck me that you would suit me so well. Would +you like to undertake it? You might read to me, too, if desirable. Will you +think it over, and ask your parents if they are willing?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” said Grace. “I am almost sure they would be very +glad.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are so accomplished, I hear; I should be quite honored by such +intellectual company.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace, modestly blushing, deprecated any such idea. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you keep up your lucubrations at Little Hintock?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no. Lucubrations are not unknown at Little Hintock; but they are not +carried on by me.” +</p> + +<p> +“What—another student in that retreat?” +</p> + +<p> +“There is a surgeon lately come, and I have heard that he reads a great +deal—I see his light sometimes through the trees late at night.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—a doctor—I believe I was told of him. It is a strange +place for him to settle in.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is a convenient centre for a practice, they say. But he does not +confine his studies to medicine, it seems. He investigates theology and +metaphysics and all sorts of subjects.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is his name?” +</p> + +<p> +“Fitzpiers. He represents a very old family, I believe, the Fitzpierses +of Buckbury-Fitzpiers—not a great many miles from here.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not sufficiently local to know the history of the family. I was +never in the county till my husband brought me here.” Mrs. Charmond did +not care to pursue this line of investigation. Whatever mysterious merit might +attach to family antiquity, it was one which, though she herself could claim +it, her adaptable, wandering <i>weltbürgerliche</i> nature had grown tired of +caring about—a peculiarity that made her a contrast to her neighbors. +“It is of rather more importance to know what the man is himself than +what his family is,” she said, “if he is going to practise upon us +as a surgeon. Have you seen him?” +</p> + +<p> +Grace had not. “I think he is not a very old man,” she added. +</p> + +<p> +“Has he a wife?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not aware that he has.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I hope he will be useful here. I must get to know him when I come +back. It will be very convenient to have a medical man—if he is +clever—in one’s own parish. I get dreadfully nervous sometimes, +living in such an outlandish place; and Sherton is so far to send to. No doubt +you feel Hintock to be a great change after watering-place life.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do. But it is home. It has its advantages and its +disadvantages.” Grace was thinking less of the solitude than of the +attendant circumstances. +</p> + +<p> +They chatted on for some time, Grace being set quite at her ease by her +entertainer. Mrs. Charmond was far too well-practised a woman not to know that +to show a marked patronage to a sensitive young girl who would probably be very +quick to discern it, was to demolish her dignity rather than to establish it in +that young girl’s eyes. So, being violently possessed with her idea of +making use of this gentle acquaintance, ready and waiting at her own door, she +took great pains to win her confidence at starting. +</p> + +<p> +Just before Grace’s departure the two chanced to pause before a mirror +which reflected their faces in immediate juxtaposition, so as to bring into +prominence their resemblances and their contrasts. Both looked attractive as +glassed back by the faithful reflector; but Grace’s countenance had the +effect of making Mrs. Charmond appear more than her full age. There are +complexions which set off each other to great advantage, and there are those +which antagonize, the one killing or damaging its neighbor unmercifully. This +was unhappily the case here. Mrs. Charmond fell into a meditation, and replied +abstractedly to a cursory remark of her companion’s. However, she parted +from her young friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her +know as soon as her mind was made up on the arrangement she had suggested. +</p> + +<p> +When Grace had ascended nearly to the top of the adjoining slope she looked +back, and saw that Mrs. Charmond still stood at the door, meditatively +regarding her. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Often during the previous night, after his call on the Melburys, +Winterborne’s thoughts ran upon Grace’s announced visit to Hintock +House. Why could he not have proposed to walk with her part of the way? +Something told him that she might not, on such an occasion, care for his +company. +</p> + +<p> +He was still more of that opinion when, standing in his garden next day, he saw +her go past on the journey with such a pretty pride in the event. He wondered +if her father’s ambition, which had purchased for her the means of +intellectual light and culture far beyond those of any other native of the +village, would conduce to the flight of her future interests above and away +from the local life which was once to her the movement of the world. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless, he had her father’s permission to win her if he could; and +to this end it became desirable to bring matters soon to a crisis, if he ever +hoped to do so. If she should think herself too good for him, he could let her +go and make the best of his loss; but until he had really tested her he could +not say that she despised his suit. The question was how to quicken events +towards an issue. +</p> + +<p> +He thought and thought, and at last decided that as good a way as any would be +to give a Christmas party, and ask Grace and her parents to come as chief +guests. +</p> + +<p> +These ruminations were occupying him when there became audible a slight +knocking at his front door. He descended the path and looked out, and beheld +Marty South, dressed for out-door work. +</p> + +<p> +“Why didn’t you come, Mr. Winterborne?” she said. +“I’ve been waiting there hours and hours, and at last I thought I +must try to find you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bless my soul, I’d quite forgot,” said Giles. +</p> + +<p> +What he had forgotten was that there was a thousand young fir-trees to be +planted in a neighboring spot which had been cleared by the wood-cutters, and +that he had arranged to plant them with his own hands. He had a marvellous +power of making trees grow. Although he would seem to shovel in the earth quite +carelessly, there was a sort of sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or +beech that he was operating on, so that the roots took hold of the soil in a +few days. When, on the other hand, any of the journeymen planted, although they +seemed to go through an identically similar process, one quarter of the trees +would die away during the ensuing August. +</p> + +<p> +Hence Winterborne found delight in the work even when, as at present, he +contracted to do it on portions of the woodland in which he had no personal +interest. Marty, who turned her hand to anything, was usually the one who +performed the part of keeping the trees in a perpendicular position while he +threw in the mould. +</p> + +<p> +He accompanied her towards the spot, being stimulated yet further to proceed +with the work by the knowledge that the ground was close to the way-side along +which Grace must pass on her return from Hintock House. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve a cold in the head, Marty,” he said, as they walked. +“That comes of cutting off your hair.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose it do. Yes; I’ve three headaches going on in my head at +the same time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Three headaches!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, a rheumatic headache in my poll, a sick headache over my eyes, and +a misery headache in the middle of my brain. However, I came out, for I thought +you might be waiting and grumbling like anything if I was not there.” +</p> + +<p> +The holes were already dug, and they set to work. Winterborne’s fingers +were endowed with a gentle conjuror’s touch in spreading the roots of +each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress, under which the delicate +fibres all laid themselves out in their proper directions for growth. He put +most of these roots towards the south-west; for, he said, in forty years’ +time, when some great gale is blowing from that quarter, the trees will require +the strongest holdfast on that side to stand against it and not fall. +</p> + +<p> +“How they sigh directly we put ’em upright, though while they are +lying down they don’t sigh at all,” said Marty. +</p> + +<p> +“Do they?” said Giles. “I’ve never noticed it.” +</p> + +<p> +She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her finger; the +soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not to cease night or day +till the grown tree should be felled—probably long after the two planters +should be felled themselves. +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to me,” the girl continued, “as if they sigh +because they are very sorry to begin life in earnest—just as we +be.” +</p> + +<p> +“Just as we be?” He looked critically at her. “You ought not +to feel like that, Marty.” +</p> + +<p> +Her only reply was turning to take up the next tree; and they planted on +through a great part of the day, almost without another word. +Winterborne’s mind ran on his contemplated evening-party, his abstraction +being such that he hardly was conscious of Marty’s presence beside him. +From the nature of their employment, in which he handled the spade and she +merely held the tree, it followed that he got good exercise and she got none. +But she was an heroic girl, and though her out-stretched hand was chill as a +stone, and her cheeks blue, and her cold worse than ever, she would not +complain while he was disposed to continue work. But when he paused she said, +“Mr. Winterborne, can I run down the lane and back to warm my +feet?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, yes, of course,” he said, awakening anew to her existence. +“Though I was just thinking what a mild day it is for the season. Now I +warrant that cold of yours is twice as bad as it was. You had no business to +chop that hair off, Marty; it serves you almost right. Look here, cut off home +at once.” +</p> + +<p> +“A run down the lane will be quite enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, it won’t. You ought not to have come out to-day at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I should like to finish the—” +</p> + +<p> +“Marty, I tell you to go home,” said he, peremptorily. “I can +manage to keep the rest of them upright with a stick or something.” +</p> + +<p> +She went away without saying any more. When she had gone down the orchard a +little distance she looked back. Giles suddenly went after her. +</p> + +<p> +“Marty, it was for your good that I was rough, you know. But warm +yourself in your own way, I don’t care.” +</p> + +<p> +When she had run off he fancied he discerned a woman’s dress through the +holly-bushes which divided the coppice from the road. It was Grace at last, on +her way back from the interview with Mrs. Charmond. He threw down the tree he +was planting, and was about to break through the belt of holly when he suddenly +became aware of the presence of another man, who was looking over the hedge on +the opposite side of the way upon the figure of the unconscious Grace. He +appeared as a handsome and gentlemanly personage of six or eight and twenty, +and was quizzing her through an eye-glass. Seeing that Winterborne was noticing +him, he let his glass drop with a click upon the rail which protected the +hedge, and walked away in the opposite direction. Giles knew in a moment that +this must be Mr. Fitzpiers. When he was gone, Winterborne pushed through the +hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting object of their +contemplation. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2> + +<p> +“I heard the bushes move long before I saw you,” she began. +“I said first, ‘it is some terrible beast;’ next, ‘it +is a poacher;’ next, ‘it is a friend!’” +</p> + +<p> +He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing, not her speech, but the question +whether he should tell her that she had been watched. He decided in the +negative. +</p> + +<p> +“You have been to the house?” he said. “But I need not +ask.” The fact was that there shone upon Miss Melbury’s face a +species of exaltation, which saw no environing details nor his own occupation; +nothing more than his bare presence. +</p> + +<p> +“Why need you not ask?” +</p> + +<p> +“Your face is like the face of Moses when he came down from the +Mount.” +</p> + +<p> +She reddened a little and said, “How can you be so profane, Giles +Winterborne?” +</p> + +<p> +“How can you think so much of that class of people? Well, I beg pardon; I +didn’t mean to speak so freely. How do you like her house and her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Exceedingly. I had not been inside the walls since I was a child, when +it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond’s late husband +bought the property. She is SO nice!” And Grace fell into such an +abstracted gaze at the imaginary image of Mrs. Charmond and her niceness that +it almost conjured up a vision of that lady in mid-air before them. +</p> + +<p> +“She has only been here a month or two, it seems, and cannot stay much +longer, because she finds it so lonely and damp in winter. She is going abroad. +Only think, she would like me to go with her.” +</p> + +<p> +Giles’s features stiffened a little at the news. “Indeed; what for? +But I won’t keep you standing here. Hoi, Robert!” he cried to a +swaying collection of clothes in the distance, which was the figure of Creedle +his man. “Go on filling in there till I come back.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m a-coming, sir; I’m a-coming.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, the reason is this,” continued she, as they went on +together—“Mrs. Charmond has a delightful side to her +character—a desire to record her impressions of travel, like Alexandre +Dumas, and Méry, and Sterne, and others. But she cannot find energy enough to +do it herself.” And Grace proceeded to explain Mrs. Charmond’s +proposal at large. “My notion is that Méry’s style will suit her +best, because he writes in that soft, emotional, luxurious way she has,” +Grace said, musingly. +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed!” said Winterborne, with mock awe. “Suppose you talk +over my head a little longer, Miss Grace Melbury?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I didn’t mean it!” she said, repentantly, looking into +his eyes. “And as for myself, I hate French books. And I love dear old +Hintock, <i>and the people in it</i>, fifty times better than all the +Continent. But the scheme; I think it an enchanting notion, don’t you, +Giles?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is well enough in one sense, but it will take you away,” said +he, mollified. +</p> + +<p> +“Only for a short time. We should return in May.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Miss Melbury, it is a question for your father.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne walked with her nearly to her house. He had awaited her coming, +mainly with the view of mentioning to her his proposal to have a Christmas +party; but homely Christmas gatherings in the venerable and jovial Hintock +style seemed so primitive and uncouth beside the lofty matters of her converse +and thought that he refrained. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as she was gone he turned back towards the scene of his planting, and +could not help saying to himself as he walked, that this engagement of his was +a very unpromising business. Her outing to-day had not improved it. A woman who +could go to Hintock House and be friendly with its mistress, enter into the +views of its mistress, talk like her, and dress not much unlike her, why, she +would hardly be contented with him, a yeoman, now immersed in tree-planting, +even though he planted them well. “And yet she’s a true-hearted +girl,” he said, thinking of her words about Hintock. “I must bring +matters to a point, and there’s an end of it.” +</p> + +<p> +When he reached the plantation he found that Marty had come back, and +dismissing Creedle, he went on planting silently with the girl as before. +</p> + +<p> +“Suppose, Marty,” he said, after a while, looking at her extended +arm, upon which old scratches from briers showed themselves purple in the cold +wind—“suppose you know a person, and want to bring that person to a +good understanding with you, do you think a Christmas party of some sort is a +warming-up thing, and likely to be useful in hastening on the matter?” +</p> + +<p> +“Is there to be dancing?” +</p> + +<p> +“There might be, certainly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will He dance with She?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then it might bring things to a head, one way or the other; I +won’t be the one to say which.” +</p> + +<p> +“It shall be done,” said Winterborne, not to her, though he spoke +the words quite loudly. And as the day was nearly ended, he added, “Here, +Marty, I’ll send up a man to plant the rest to-morrow. I’ve other +things to think of just now.” +</p> + +<p> +She did not inquire what other things, for she had seen him walking with Grace +Melbury. She looked towards the western sky, which was now aglow like some vast +foundery wherein new worlds were being cast. Across it the bare bough of a tree +stretched horizontally, revealing every twig against the red, and showing in +dark profile every beck and movement of three pheasants that were settling +themselves down on it in a row to roost. +</p> + +<p> +“It will be fine to-morrow,” said Marty, observing them with the +vermilion light of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, “for they are +a-croupied down nearly at the end of the bough. If it were going to be stormy +they’d squeeze close to the trunk. The weather is almost all they have to +think of, isn’t it, Mr. Winterborne? and so they must be lighter-hearted +than we.” +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say they are,” said Winterborne. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Before taking a single step in the preparations, Winterborne, with no great +hopes, went across that evening to the timber-merchant’s to ascertain if +Grace and her parents would honor him with their presence. Having first to set +his nightly gins in the garden, to catch the rabbits that ate his +winter-greens, his call was delayed till just after the rising of the moon, +whose rays reached the Hintock houses but fitfully as yet, on account of the +trees. Melbury was crossing his yard on his way to call on some one at the +larger village, but he readily turned and walked up and down the path with the +young man. +</p> + +<p> +Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of living on a much smaller scale than the +Melburys did, would not for the world imply that his invitation was to a +gathering of any importance. So he put it in the mild form of “Can you +come in for an hour, when you have done business, the day after to-morrow; and +Mrs. and Miss Melbury, if they have nothing more pressing to do?” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury would give no answer at once. “No, I can’t tell you +to-day,” he said. “I must talk it over with the women. As far as I +am concerned, my dear Giles, you know I’ll come with pleasure. But how do +I know what Grace’s notions may be? You see, she has been away among +cultivated folks a good while; and now this acquaintance with Mrs. +Charmond—Well, I’ll ask her. I can say no more.” +</p> + +<p> +When Winterborne was gone the timber-merchant went on his way. He knew very +well that Grace, whatever her own feelings, would either go or not go, +according as he suggested; and his instinct was, for the moment, to suggest the +negative. His errand took him past the church, and the way to his destination +was either across the church-yard or along-side it, the distances being the +same. For some reason or other he chose the former way. +</p> + +<p> +The moon was faintly lighting up the gravestones, and the path, and the front +of the building. Suddenly Mr. Melbury paused, turned ill upon the grass, and +approached a particular headstone, where he read, “In memory of John +Winterborne,” with the subjoined date and age. It was the grave of +Giles’s father. +</p> + +<p> +The timber-merchant laid his hand upon the stone, and was humanized. +“Jack, my wronged friend!” he said. “I’ll be faithful +to my plan of making amends to ’ee.” +</p> + +<p> +When he reached home that evening, he said to Grace and Mrs. Melbury, who were +working at a little table by the fire, +</p> + +<p> +“Giles wants us to go down and spend an hour with him the day after +to-morrow; and I’m thinking, that as ’tis Giles who asks us, +we’ll go.” +</p> + +<p> +They assented without demur, and accordingly the timber-merchant sent Giles the +next morning an answer in the affirmative. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Winterborne, in his modesty, or indifference, had mentioned no particular hour +in his invitation; and accordingly Mr. Melbury and his family, expecting no +other guests, chose their own time, which chanced to be rather early in the +afternoon, by reason of the somewhat quicker despatch than usual of the +timber-merchant’s business that day. To show their sense of the +unimportance of the occasion, they walked quite slowly to the house, as if they +were merely out for a ramble, and going to nothing special at all; or at most +intending to pay a casual call and take a cup of tea. +</p> + +<p> +At this hour stir and bustle pervaded the interior of Winterborne’s +domicile from cellar to apple-loft. He had planned an elaborate high tea for +six o’clock or thereabouts, and a good roaring supper to come on about +eleven. Being a bachelor of rather retiring habits, the whole of the +preparations devolved upon himself and his trusty man and familiar, Robert +Creedle, who did everything that required doing, from making Giles’s bed +to catching moles in his field. He was a survival from the days when +Giles’s father held the homestead, and Giles was a playing boy. +</p> + +<p> +These two, with a certain dilatoriousness which appertained to both, were now +in the heat of preparation in the bake-house, expecting nobody before six +o’clock. Winterborne was standing before the brick oven in his +shirt-sleeves, tossing in thorn sprays, and stirring about the blazing mass +with a long-handled, three-pronged Beelzebub kind of fork, the heat shining out +upon his streaming face and making his eyes like furnaces, the thorns crackling +and sputtering; while Creedle, having ranged the pastry dishes in a row on the +table till the oven should be ready, was pressing out the crust of a final +apple-pie with a rolling-pin. A great pot boiled on the fire, and through the +open door of the back kitchen a boy was seen seated on the fender, emptying the +snuffers and scouring the candlesticks, a row of the latter standing upside +down on the hob to melt out the grease. +</p> + +<p> +Looking up from the rolling-pin, Creedle saw passing the window first the +timber-merchant, in his second-best suit, Mrs. Melbury in her best silk, and +Grace in the fashionable attire which, in part brought home with her from the +Continent, she had worn on her visit to Mrs. Charmond’s. The eyes of the +three had been attracted to the proceedings within by the fierce illumination +which the oven threw out upon the operators and their utensils. +</p> + +<p> +“Lord, Lord! if they baint come a’ready!” said Creedle. +</p> + +<p> +“No—hey?” said Giles, looking round aghast; while the boy in +the background waved a reeking candlestick in his delight. As there was no help +for it, Winterborne went to meet them in the door-way. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Giles, I see we have made a mistake in the time,” said the +timber-merchant’s wife, her face lengthening with concern. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it is not much difference. I hope you’ll come in.” +</p> + +<p> +“But this means a regular randyvoo!” said Mr. Melbury, accusingly, +glancing round and pointing towards the bake-house with his stick. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, yes,” said Giles. +</p> + +<p> +“And—not Great Hintock band, and dancing, surely?” +</p> + +<p> +“I told three of ’em they might drop in if they’d nothing +else to do,” Giles mildly admitted. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, why the name didn’t ye tell us ’twas going to be a +serious kind of thing before? How should I know what folk mean if they +don’t say? Now, shall we come in, or shall we go home and come back along +in a couple of hours?” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you’ll stay, if you’ll be so good as not to mind, now +you are here. I shall have it all right and tidy in a very little time. I ought +not to have been so backward.” Giles spoke quite anxiously for one of his +undemonstrative temperament; for he feared that if the Melburys once were back +in their own house they would not be disposed to turn out again. +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis we ought not to have been so forward; that’s what +’tis,” said Mr. Melbury, testily. “Don’t keep us here +in the sitting-room; lead on to the bakehouse, man. Now we are here we’ll +help ye get ready for the rest. Here, mis’ess, take off your things, and +help him out in his baking, or he won’t get done to-night. I’ll +finish heating the oven, and set you free to go and skiver up them +ducks.” His eye had passed with pitiless directness of criticism into yet +remote recesses of Winterborne’s awkwardly built premises, where the +aforesaid birds were hanging. +</p> + +<p> +“And I’ll help finish the tarts,” said Grace, cheerfully. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know about that,” said her father. +“’Tisn’t quite so much in your line as it is in your +mother-law’s and mine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course I couldn’t let you, Grace!” said Giles, with some +distress. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll do it, of course,” said Mrs. Melbury, taking off her +silk train, hanging it up to a nail, carefully rolling back her sleeves, +pinning them to her shoulders, and stripping Giles of his apron for her own +use. +</p> + +<p> +So Grace pottered idly about, while her father and his wife helped on the +preparations. A kindly pity of his household management, which Winterborne saw +in her eyes whenever he caught them, depressed him much more than her contempt +would have done. +</p> + +<p> +Creedle met Giles at the pump after a while, when each of the others was +absorbed in the difficulties of a <i>cuisine</i> based on utensils, cupboards, +and provisions that were strange to them. He groaned to the young man in a +whisper, “This is a bruckle het, maister, I’m much afeared! +Who’d ha’ thought they’d ha’ come so soon?” +</p> + +<p> +The bitter placidity of Winterborne’s look adumbrated the misgivings he +did not care to express. “Have you got the celery ready?” he asked, +quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“Now that’s a thing I never could mind; no, not if you’d paid +me in silver and gold. And I don’t care who the man is, I says that a +stick of celery that isn’t scrubbed with the scrubbing-brush is not +clean.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Very</i> well, very well! I’ll attend to it. You go and get +’em comfortable in-doors.” +</p> + +<p> +He hastened to the garden, and soon returned, tossing the stalks to Creedle, +who was still in a tragic mood. “If ye’d ha’ married, +d’ye see, maister,” he said, “this caddle couldn’t have +happened to us.” +</p> + +<p> +Everything being at last under way, the oven set, and all done that could +insure the supper turning up ready at some time or other, Giles and his friends +entered the parlor, where the Melburys again dropped into position as guests, +though the room was not nearly so warm and cheerful as the blazing bakehouse. +Others now arrived, among them Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner, and tea +went off very well. +</p> + +<p> +Grace’s disposition to make the best of everything, and to wink at +deficiencies in Winterborne’s menage, was so uniform and persistent that +he suspected her of seeing even more deficiencies than he was aware of. That +suppressed sympathy which had showed in her face ever since her arrival told +him as much too plainly. +</p> + +<p> +“This muddling style of house-keeping is what you’ve not lately +been used to, I suppose?” he said, when they were a little apart. +</p> + +<p> +“No; but I like it; it reminds me so pleasantly that everything here in +dear old Hintock is just as it used to be. The oil is—not quite nice; but +everything else is.” +</p> + +<p> +“The oil?” +</p> + +<p> +“On the chairs, I mean; because it gets on one’s dress. Still, mine +is not a new one.” +</p> + +<p> +Giles found that Creedle, in his zeal to make things look bright, had smeared +the chairs with some greasy kind of furniture-polish, and refrained from +rubbing it dry in order not to diminish the mirror-like effect that the mixture +produced as laid on. Giles apologized and called Creedle; but he felt that the +Fates were against him. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2> + +<p> +Supper-time came, and with it the hot-baked meats from the oven, laid on a +snowy cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated with folds, as in Flemish +“Last Suppers.” Creedle and the boy fetched and carried with +amazing alacrity, the latter, to mollify his superior and make things pleasant, +expressing his admiration of Creedle’s cleverness when they were alone. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’pose the time when you learned all these knowing things, Mr. +Creedle, was when you was in the militia?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, yes. I seed the world at that time somewhat, certainly, and many +ways of strange dashing life. Not but that Giles has worked hard in helping me +to bring things to such perfection to-day. ‘Giles,’ says I, though +he’s maister. Not that I should call’n maister by rights, for his +father growed up side by side with me, as if one mother had twinned us and been +our nourishing.” +</p> + +<p> +“I s’pose your memory can reach a long way back into history, Mr. +Creedle?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes. Ancient days, when there was battles and famines and hang-fairs +and other pomps, seem to me as yesterday. Ah, many’s the patriarch +I’ve seed come and go in this parish! There, he’s calling for more +plates. Lord, why can’t ’em turn their plates bottom upward for +pudding, as they used to do in former days?” +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, in the adjoining room Giles was presiding in a half-unconscious +state. He could not get over the initial failures in his scheme for advancing +his suit, and hence he did not know that he was eating mouthfuls of bread and +nothing else, and continually snuffing the two candles next him till he had +reduced them to mere glimmers drowned in their own grease. Creedle now appeared +with a specially prepared dish, which he served by elevating the little +three-legged pot that contained it, and tilting the contents into a dish, +exclaiming, simultaneously, “Draw back, gentlemen and ladies, +please!” +</p> + +<p> +A splash followed. Grace gave a quick, involuntary nod and blink, and put her +handkerchief to her face. +</p> + +<p> +“Good heavens! what did you do that for, Creedle?” said Giles, +sternly, and jumping up. +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis how I do it when they baint here, maister,” mildly +expostulated Creedle, in an aside audible to all the company. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, yes—but—” replied Giles. He went over to Grace, +and hoped none of it had gone into her eye. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” she said. “Only a sprinkle on my face. It was +nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Kiss it and make it well,” gallantly observed Mr. Bawtree. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Melbury blushed. +</p> + +<p> +The timber-merchant said, quickly, “Oh, it is nothing! She must bear +these little mishaps.” But there could be discerned in his face something +which said “I ought to have foreseen this.” +</p> + +<p> +Giles himself, since the untoward beginning of the feast, had not quite liked +to see Grace present. He wished he had not asked such people as Bawtree and the +hollow-turner. He had done it, in dearth of other friends, that the room might +not appear empty. In his mind’s eye, before the event, they had been the +mere background or padding of the scene, but somehow in reality they were the +most prominent personages there. +</p> + +<p> +After supper they played cards, Bawtree and the hollow-turner monopolizing the +new packs for an interminable game, in which a lump of chalk was incessantly +used—a game those two always played wherever they were, taking a solitary +candle and going to a private table in a corner with the mien of persons bent +on weighty matters. The rest of the company on this account were obliged to put +up with old packs for their round game, that had been lying by in a drawer ever +since the time that Giles’s grandmother was alive. Each card had a great +stain in the middle of its back, produced by the touch of generations of damp +and excited thumbs now fleshless in the grave; and the kings and queens wore a +decayed expression of feature, as if they were rather an impecunious dethroned +race of monarchs hiding in obscure slums than real regal characters. Every now +and then the comparatively few remarks of the players at the round game were +harshly intruded on by the measured jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the +hollow-turner from the back of the room: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“And I′ will hold′ a wa′-ger with you′<br /> +That all′ these marks′ are thirt′-y two!” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +accompanied by rapping strokes with the chalk on the table; then an +exclamation, an argument, a dealing of the cards; then the commencement of the +rhymes anew. +</p> + +<p> +The timber-merchant showed his feelings by talking with a satisfied sense of +weight in his words, and by praising the party in a patronizing tone, when +Winterborne expressed his fear that he and his were not enjoying themselves. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, yes; pretty much. What handsome glasses those are! I +didn’t know you had such glasses in the house. Now, Lucy” (to his +wife), “you ought to get some like them for ourselves.” And when +they had abandoned cards, and Winterborne was talking to Melbury by the fire, +it was the timber-merchant who stood with his back to the mantle in a +proprietary attitude, from which post of vantage he critically regarded +Giles’s person, rather as a superficies than as a solid with ideas and +feelings inside it, saying, “What a splendid coat that one is you have +on, Giles! I can’t get such coats. You dress better than I.” +</p> + +<p> +After supper there was a dance, the bandsmen from Great Hintock having arrived +some time before. Grace had been away from home so long that she had forgotten +the old figures, and hence did not join in the movement. Then Giles felt that +all was over. As for her, she was thinking, as she watched the gyrations, of a +very different measure that she had been accustomed to tread with a bevy of +sylph-like creatures in muslin, in the music-room of a large house, most of +whom were now moving in scenes widely removed from this, both as regarded place +and character. +</p> + +<p> +A woman she did not know came and offered to tell her fortune with the +abandoned cards. Grace assented to the proposal, and the woman told her tale +unskilfully, for want of practice, as she declared. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Melbury was standing by, and exclaimed, contemptuously, “Tell her +fortune, indeed! Her fortune has been told by men of science—what do you +call ’em? Phrenologists. You can’t teach her anything new. +She’s been too far among the wise ones to be astonished at anything she +can hear among us folks in Hintock.” +</p> + +<p> +At last the time came for breaking up, Melbury and his family being the +earliest to leave, the two card-players still pursuing their game doggedly in +the corner, where they had completely covered Giles’s mahogany table with +chalk scratches. The three walked home, the distance being short and the night +clear. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Giles is a very good fellow,” said Mr. Melbury, as they +struck down the lane under boughs which formed a black filigree in which the +stars seemed set. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly he is,” said Grace, quickly, and in such a tone as to +show that he stood no lower, if no higher, in her regard than he had stood +before. +</p> + +<p> +When they were opposite an opening through which, by day, the doctor’s +house could be seen, they observed a light in one of his rooms, although it was +now about two o’clock. +</p> + +<p> +“The doctor is not abed yet,” said Mrs. Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“Hard study, no doubt,” said her husband. +</p> + +<p> +“One would think that, as he seems to have nothing to do about here by +day, he could at least afford to go to bed early at night. ’Tis +astonishing how little we see of him.” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury’s mind seemed to turn with much relief to the contemplation of +Mr. Fitzpiers after the scenes of the evening. “It is natural +enough,” he replied. “What can a man of that sort find to interest +him in Hintock? I don’t expect he’ll stay here long.” +</p> + +<p> +His mind reverted to Giles’s party, and when they were nearly home he +spoke again, his daughter being a few steps in advance: “It is hardly the +line of life for a girl like Grace, after what she’s been accustomed to. +I didn’t foresee that in sending her to boarding-school and letting her +travel, and what not, to make her a good bargain for Giles, I should be really +spoiling her for him. Ah, ’tis a thousand pities! But he ought to have +her—he ought!” +</p> + +<p> +At this moment the two exclusive, chalk-mark men, having at last really +finished their play, could be heard coming along in the rear, vociferously +singing a song to march-time, and keeping vigorous step to the same in +far-reaching strides— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“She may go, oh!<br /> +She may go, oh!<br /> +She may go to the d—— for me!” +</p> + +<p> +The timber-merchant turned indignantly to Mrs. Melbury. “That’s the +sort of society we’ve been asked to meet,” he said. “For us +old folk it didn’t matter; but for Grace—Giles should have known +better!” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Meanwhile, in the empty house from which the guests had just cleared out, the +subject of their discourse was walking from room to room surveying the general +displacement of furniture with no ecstatic feeling; rather the reverse, indeed. +At last he entered the bakehouse, and found there Robert Creedle sitting over +the embers, also lost in contemplation. Winterborne sat down beside him. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Robert, you must be tired. You’d better get on to +bed.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, ay, Giles—what do I call ye? Maister, I would say. But +’tis well to think the day <i>is</i> done, when ’tis done.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne had abstractedly taken the poker, and with a wrinkled forehead was +ploughing abroad the wood-embers on the broad hearth, till it was like a vast +scorching Sahara, with red-hot bowlders lying about everywhere. “Do you +think it went off well, Creedle?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“The victuals did; that I know. And the drink did; that I steadfastly +believe, from the holler sound of the barrels. Good, honest drink ’twere, +the headiest mead I ever brewed; and the best wine that berries could rise to; +and the briskest Horner-and-Cleeves cider ever wrung down, leaving out the +spice and sperrits I put into it, while that egg-flip would ha’ passed +through muslin, so little curdled ’twere. ’Twas good enough to make +any king’s heart merry—ay, to make his whole carcass smile. Still, +I don’t deny I’m afeared some things didn’t go well with He +and his.” Creedle nodded in a direction which signified where the +Melburys lived. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid, too, that it was a failure there!” +</p> + +<p> +“If so, ’twere doomed to be so. Not but what that snail might as +well have come upon anybody else’s plate as hers.” +</p> + +<p> +“What snail?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, maister, there was a little one upon the edge of her plate when I +brought it out; and so it must have been in her few leaves of +wintergreen.” +</p> + +<p> +“How the deuce did a snail get there?” +</p> + +<p> +“That I don’t know no more than the dead; but there my gentleman +was.” +</p> + +<p> +“But, Robert, of all places, that was where he shouldn’t have +been!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, ’twas his native home, come to that; and where else could we +expect him to be? I don’t care who the man is, snails and caterpillars +always will lurk in close to the stump of cabbages in that tantalizing +way.” +</p> + +<p> +“He wasn’t alive, I suppose?” said Giles, with a shudder on +Grace’s account. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no. He was well boiled. I warrant him well boiled. God forbid that a +<i>live</i> snail should be seed on any plate of victuals that’s served +by Robert Creedle....But Lord, there; I don’t mind ’em +myself—them small ones, for they were born on cabbage, and they’ve +lived on cabbage, so they must be made of cabbage. But she, the close-mouthed +little lady, she didn’t say a word about it; though ’twould have +made good small conversation as to the nater of such creatures; especially as +wit ran short among us sometimes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—’tis all over!” murmured Giles to himself, +shaking his head over the glooming plain of embers, and lining his forehead +more than ever. “Do you know, Robert,” he said, “that +she’s been accustomed to servants and everything superfine these many +years? How, then, could she stand our ways?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and-nob elsewhere. +They shouldn’t have schooled her so monstrous high, or else bachelor men +shouldn’t give randys, or if they do give ’em, only to their own +race.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps that’s true,” said Winterborne, rising and yawning a +sigh. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2> + +<p> +“’Tis a pity—a thousand pities!” her father kept saying +next morning at breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom. +</p> + +<p> +But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne’s suit at +this stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored to promote—was, indeed, +mechanically promoting at this moment? A crisis was approaching, mainly as a +result of his contrivances, and it would have to be met. +</p> + +<p> +But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: since seeing what an +immense change her last twelve months of absence had produced in his daughter, +after the heavy sum per annum that he had been spending for several years upon +her education, he was reluctant to let her marry Giles Winterborne, +indefinitely occupied as woodsman, cider-merchant, apple-farmer, and what not, +even were she willing to marry him herself. +</p> + +<p> +“She will be his wife if you don’t upset her notion that +she’s bound to accept him as an understood thing,” said Mrs. +Melbury. “Bless ye, she’ll soon shake down here in Hintock, and be +content with Giles’s way of living, which he’ll improve with what +money she’ll have from you. ’Tis the strangeness after her genteel +life that makes her feel uncomfortable at first. Why, when <i>I</i> saw Hintock +the first time I thought I never could like it. But things gradually get +familiar, and stone floors seem not so very cold and hard, and the hooting of +the owls not so very dreadful, and loneliness not so very lonely, after a +while.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I believe ye. That’s just it. I <i>know</i> Grace will +gradually sink down to our level again, and catch our manners and way of +speaking, and feel a drowsy content in being Giles’s wife. But I +can’t bear the thought of dragging down to that old level as promising a +piece of maidenhood as ever lived—fit to ornament a palace +wi’—that I’ve taken so much trouble to lift up. Fancy her +white hands getting redder every day, and her tongue losing its pretty +up-country curl in talking, and her bounding walk becoming the regular Hintock +shail and wamble!” +</p> + +<p> +“She may shail, but she’ll never wamble,” replied his wife, +decisively. +</p> + +<p> +When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her lying in bed so late; not so +much moved by a particular objection to that form of indulgence as discomposed +by these other reflections. +</p> + +<p> +The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down. “You used to +complain with justice when I was a girl,” she said. “But I am a +woman now, and can judge for myself....But it is not that; it is something +else!” Instead of sitting down she went outside the door. +</p> + +<p> +He was sorry. The petulance that relatives show towards each other is in truth +directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped the situation no +less for the offenders than the offended, but is too elusive to be discerned +and cornered by poor humanity in irritated mood. Melbury followed her. She had +rambled on to the paddock, where the white frost lay, and where starlings in +flocks of twenties and thirties were walking about, watched by a comfortable +family of sparrows perched in a line along the string-course of the chimney, +preening themselves in the rays of the sun. +</p> + +<p> +“Come in to breakfast, my girl,” he said. “And as to Giles, +use your own mind. Whatever pleases you will please me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am promised to him, father; and I cannot help thinking that in honor I +ought to marry him, whenever I do marry.” +</p> + +<p> +He had a strong suspicion that somewhere in the bottom of her heart there +pulsed an old simple indigenous feeling favorable to Giles, though it had +become overlaid with implanted tastes. But he would not distinctly express his +views on the promise. “Very well,” he said. “But I hope I +sha’n’t lose you yet. Come in to breakfast. What did you think of +the inside of Hintock House the other day?” +</p> + +<p> +“I liked it much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Different from friend Winterborne’s?” +</p> + +<p> +She said nothing; but he who knew her was aware that she meant by her silence +to reproach him with drawing cruel comparisons. +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come again—when, did you +say?” +</p> + +<p> +“She thought Tuesday, but would send the day before to let me know if it +suited her.” And with this subject upon their lips they entered to +breakfast. +</p> + +<p> +Tuesday came, but no message from Mrs. Charmond. Nor was there any on +Wednesday. In brief, a fortnight slipped by without a sign, and it looked +suspiciously as if Mrs. Charmond were not going further in the direction of +“taking up” Grace at present. +</p> + +<p> +Her father reasoned thereon. Immediately after his daughter’s two +indubitable successes with Mrs. Charmond—the interview in the wood and a +visit to the House—she had attended Winterborne’s party. No doubt +the out-and-out joviality of that gathering had made it a topic in the +neighborhood, and that every one present as guests had been widely spoken +of—Grace, with her exceptional qualities, above all. What, then, so +natural as that Mrs. Charmond should have heard the village news, and become +quite disappointed in her expectations of Grace at finding she kept such +company? +</p> + +<p> +Full of this <i>post hoc</i> argument, Mr. Melbury overlooked the infinite +throng of other possible reasons and unreasons for a woman changing her mind. +For instance, while knowing that his Grace was attractive, he quite forgot that +Mrs. Charmond had also great pretensions to beauty. In his simple estimate, an +attractive woman attracted all around. +</p> + +<p> +So it was settled in his mind that her sudden mingling with the villagers at +the unlucky Winterborne’s was the cause of her most grievous loss, as he +deemed it, in the direction of Hintock House. +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis a thousand pities!” he would repeat to himself. +“I am ruining her for conscience’ sake!” +</p> + +<p> +It was one morning later on, while these things were agitating his mind, that, +curiously enough, something darkened the window just as they finished +breakfast. Looking up, they saw Giles in person mounted on horseback, and +straining his neck forward, as he had been doing for some time, to catch their +attention through the window. Grace had been the first to see him, and +involuntarily exclaimed, “There he is—and a new horse!” +</p> + +<p> +On their faces as they regarded Giles were written their suspended thoughts and +compound feelings concerning him, could he have read them through those old +panes. But he saw nothing: his features just now were, for a wonder, lit up +with a red smile at some other idea. So they rose from breakfast and went to +the door, Grace with an anxious, wistful manner, her father in a reverie, Mrs. +Melbury placid and inquiring. “We have come out to look at your +horse,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +It could be seen that he was pleased at their attention, and explained that he +had ridden a mile or two to try the animal’s paces. “I bought +her,” he added, with warmth so severely repressed as to seem +indifference, “because she has been used to carry a lady.” +</p> + +<p> +Still Mr. Melbury did not brighten. Mrs. Melbury said, “And is she +quiet?” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne assured her that there was no doubt of it. “I took care of +that. She’s five-and-twenty, and very clever for her age.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, get off and come in,” said Melbury, brusquely; and Giles +dismounted accordingly. +</p> + +<p> +This event was the concrete result of Winterborne’s thoughts during the +past week or two. The want of success with his evening party he had accepted in +as philosophic a mood as he was capable of; but there had been enthusiasm +enough left in him one day at Sherton Abbas market to purchase this old mare, +which had belonged to a neighboring parson with several daughters, and was +offered him to carry either a gentleman or a lady, and to do odd jobs of +carting and agriculture at a pinch. This obliging quadruped seemed to furnish +Giles with a means of reinstating himself in Melbury’s good opinion as a +man of considerateness by throwing out future possibilities to Grace. +</p> + +<p> +The latter looked at him with intensified interest this morning, in the mood +which is altogether peculiar to woman’s nature, and which, when reduced +into plain words, seems as impossible as the penetrability of matter—that +of entertaining a tender pity for the object of her own unnecessary coldness. +The imperturbable poise which marked Winterborne in general was enlivened now +by a freshness and animation that set a brightness in his eye and on his cheek. +Mrs. Melbury asked him to have some breakfast, and he pleasurably replied that +he would join them, with his usual lack of tactical observation, not perceiving +that they had all finished the meal, that the hour was inconveniently late, and +that the note piped by the kettle denoted it to be nearly empty; so that fresh +water had to be brought in, trouble taken to make it boil, and a general +renovation of the table carried out. Neither did he know, so full was he of his +tender ulterior object in buying that horse, how many cups of tea he was +gulping down one after another, nor how the morning was slipping, nor how he +was keeping the family from dispersing about their duties. +</p> + +<p> +Then he told throughout the humorous story of the horse’s purchase, +looking particularly grim at some fixed object in the room, a way he always +looked when he narrated anything that amused him. While he was still thinking +of the scene he had described, Grace rose and said, “I have to go and +help my mother now, Mr. Winterborne.” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” he ejaculated, turning his eyes suddenly upon her. +</p> + +<p> +She repeated her words with a slight blush of awkwardness; whereupon Giles, +becoming suddenly conscious, too conscious, jumped up, saying, “To be +sure, to be sure!” wished them quickly good-morning, and bolted out of +the house. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless he had, upon the whole, strengthened his position, with her at +least. Time, too, was on his side, for (as her father saw with some regret) +already the homeliness of Hintock life was fast becoming effaced from her +observation as a singularity; just as the first strangeness of a face from +which we have for years been separated insensibly passes off with renewed +intercourse, and tones itself down into simple identity with the lineaments of +the past. +</p> + +<p> +Thus Mr. Melbury went out of the house still unreconciled to the sacrifice of +the gem he had been at such pains in mounting. He fain could hope, in the +secret nether chamber of his mind, that something would happen, before the +balance of her feeling had quite turned in Winterborne’s favor, to +relieve his conscience and preserve her on her elevated plane. +</p> + +<p> +He could not forget that Mrs. Charmond had apparently abandoned all interest in +his daughter as suddenly as she had conceived it, and was as firmly convinced +as ever that the comradeship which Grace had shown with Giles and his crew by +attending his party had been the cause. +</p> + +<p> +Matters lingered on thus. And then, as a hoop by gentle knocks on this side and +on that is made to travel in specific directions, the little touches of +circumstance in the life of this young girl shaped the curves of her career. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2> + +<p> +It was a day of rather bright weather for the season. Miss Melbury went out for +a morning walk, and her ever-regardful father, having an hour’s leisure, +offered to walk with her. The breeze was fresh and quite steady, filtering +itself through the denuded mass of twigs without swaying them, but making the +point of each ivy-leaf on the trunks scratch its underlying neighbor +restlessly. Grace’s lips sucked in this native air of hers like milk. +They soon reached a place where the wood ran down into a corner, and went +outside it towards comparatively open ground. Having looked round about, they +were intending to re-enter the copse when a fox quietly emerged with a dragging +brush, trotted past them tamely as a domestic cat, and disappeared amid some +dead fern. They walked on, her father merely observing, after watching the +animal, “They are hunting somewhere near.” +</p> + +<p> +Farther up they saw in the mid-distance the hounds running hither and thither, +as if there were little or no scent that day. Soon divers members of the hunt +appeared on the scene, and it was evident from their movements that the chase +had been stultified by general puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of the +intended victim. In a minute a farmer rode up to the two pedestrians, panting +with acteonic excitement, and Grace being a few steps in advance, he addressed +her, asking if she had seen the fox. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said she. “We saw him some time ago—just out +there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you cry Halloo?” +</p> + +<p> +“We said nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why the d—— didn’t you, or get the old buffer to +do it for you?” said the man, as he cantered away. +</p> + +<p> +She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observing her father’s +face, saw that it was quite red. +</p> + +<p> +“He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!” said the old man, in +the tone of one whose heart was bruised, though it was not by the epithet +applied to himself. “And he wouldn’t if he had been a gentleman. +’Twas not the language to use to a woman of any niceness. You, so well +read and cultivated—how could he expect ye to know what tom-boy +field-folk are in the habit of doing? If so be you had just come from trimming +swedes or mangolds—joking with the rough work-folk and all that—I +could have stood it. But hasn’t it cost me near a hundred a year to lift +you out of all that, so as to show an example to the neighborhood of what a +woman can be? Grace, shall I tell you the secret of it? ’Twas because I +was in your company. If a black-coated squire or pa’son had been walking +with you instead of me he wouldn’t have spoken so.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, father; there’s nothing in you rough or +ill-mannered!” +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you it is that! I’ve noticed, and I’ve noticed it +many times, that a woman takes her color from the man she’s walking with. +The woman who looks an unquestionable lady when she’s with a polished-up +fellow, looks a mere tawdry imitation article when she’s hobbing and +nobbing with a homely blade. You sha’n’t be treated like that for +long, or at least your children sha’n’t. You shall have somebody to +walk with you who looks more of a dandy than I—please God you +shall!” +</p> + +<p> +“But, my dear father,” she said, much distressed, “I +don’t mind at all. I don’t wish for more honor than I already +have!” +</p> + +<p> +“A perplexing and ticklish possession is a daughter,” according to +Menander or some old Greek poet, and to nobody was one ever more so than to +Melbury, by reason of her very dearness to him. As for Grace, she began to feel +troubled; she did not perhaps wish there and then to unambitiously devote her +life to Giles Winterborne, but she was conscious of more and more uneasiness at +the possibility of being the social hope of the family. +</p> + +<p> +“You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?” asked her +father, in continuation of the subject. +</p> + +<p> +Despite her feeling she assented to this. His reasoning had not been without +its weight upon her. +</p> + +<p> +“Grace,” he said, just before they had reached the house, “if +it costs me my life you shall marry well! To-day has shown me that whatever a +young woman’s niceness, she stands for nothing alone. You shall marry +well.” +</p> + +<p> +He breathed heavily, and his breathing was caught up by the breeze, which +seemed to sigh a soft remonstrance. +</p> + +<p> +She looked calmly at him. “And how about Mr. Winterborne?” she +asked. “I mention it, father, not as a matter of sentiment, but as a +question of keeping faith.” +</p> + +<p> +The timber-merchant’s eyes fell for a moment. “I don’t +know—I don’t know,” he said. “’Tis a trying +strait. Well, well; there’s no hurry. We’ll wait and see how he +gets on.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +That evening he called her into his room, a snug little apartment behind the +large parlor. It had at one time been part of the bakehouse, with the ordinary +oval brick oven in the wall; but Mr. Melbury, in turning it into an office, had +built into the cavity an iron safe, which he used for holding his private +papers. The door of the safe was now open, and his keys were hanging from it. +</p> + +<p> +“Sit down, Grace, and keep me company,” he said. “You may +amuse yourself by looking over these.” He threw out a heap of papers +before her. +</p> + +<p> +“What are they?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Securities of various sorts.” He unfolded them one by one. +“Papers worth so much money each. Now here’s a lot of turnpike +bonds for one thing. Would you think that each of these pieces of paper is +worth two hundred pounds?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, indeed, if you didn’t say so.” +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis so, then. Now here are papers of another sort. They are for +different sums in the three-per-cents. Now these are Port Breedy Harbor bonds. +We have a great stake in that harbor, you know, because I send off timber +there. Open the rest at your pleasure. They’ll interest ye.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I will, some day,” said she, rising. +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense, open them now. You ought to learn a little of such matters. A +young lady of education should not be ignorant of money affairs altogether. +Suppose you should be left a widow some day, with your husband’s +title-deeds and investments thrown upon your hands—” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t say that, father—title-deeds; it sounds so +vain!” +</p> + +<p> +“It does not. Come to that, I have title-deeds myself. There, that piece +of parchment represents houses in Sherton Abbas.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but—” She hesitated, looked at the fire, and went on in +a low voice: “If what has been arranged about me should come to anything, +my sphere will be quite a middling one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your sphere ought not to be middling,” he exclaimed, not in +passion, but in earnest conviction. “You said you never felt more at +home, more in your element, anywhere than you did that afternoon with Mrs. +Charmond, when she showed you her house and all her knick-knacks, and made you +stay to tea so nicely in her drawing-room—surely you did!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I did say so,” admitted Grace. +</p> + +<p> +“Was it true?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeling is less strong now, +perhaps.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! Now, though you don’t see it, your feeling at the time was the +right one, because your mind and body were just in full and fresh cultivation, +so that going there with her was like meeting like. Since then you’ve +been biding with us, and have fallen back a little, and so you don’t feel +your place so strongly. Now, do as I tell ye, and look over these papers and +see what you’ll be worth some day. For they’ll all be yours, you +know; who have I got to leave ’em to but you? Perhaps when your education +is backed up by what these papers represent, and that backed up by another such +a set and their owner, men such as that fellow was this morning may think you a +little more than a buffer’s girl.” +</p> + +<p> +So she did as commanded, and opened each of the folded representatives of hard +cash that her father put before her. To sow in her heart cravings for social +position was obviously his strong desire, though in direct antagonism to a +better feeling which had hitherto prevailed with him, and had, indeed, only +succumbed that morning during the ramble. +</p> + +<p> +She wished that she was not his worldly hope; the responsibility of such a +position was too great. She had made it for herself mainly by her appearance +and attractive behavior to him since her return. “If I had only come home +in a shabby dress, and tried to speak roughly, this might not have +happened,” she thought. She deplored less the fact than the sad +possibilities that might lie hidden therein. +</p> + +<p> +Her father then insisted upon her looking over his checkbook and reading the +counterfoils. This, also, she obediently did, and at last came to two or three +which had been drawn to defray some of the late expenses of her clothes, board, +and education. +</p> + +<p> +“I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses and wagons and corn,” +she said, looking up sorrily. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t want you to look at those; I merely meant to give you an +idea of my investment transactions. But if you do cost as much as they, never +mind. You’ll yield a better return.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t think of me like that!” she begged. “A mere +chattel.” +</p> + +<p> +“A what? Oh, a dictionary word. Well, as that’s in your line I +don’t forbid it, even if it tells against me,” he said, +good-humoredly. And he looked her proudly up and down. +</p> + +<p> +A few minutes later Grammer Oliver came to tell them that supper was ready, and +in giving the information she added, incidentally, “So we shall soon lose +the mistress of Hintock House for some time, I hear, Maister Melbury. Yes, +she’s going off to foreign parts to-morrow, for the rest of the winter +months; and be-chok’d if I don’t wish I could do the same, for my +wynd-pipe is furred like a flue.” +</p> + +<p> +When the old woman had left the room, Melbury turned to his daughter and said, +“So, Grace, you’ve lost your new friend, and your chance of keeping +her company and writing her travels is quite gone from ye!” +</p> + +<p> +Grace said nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” he went on, emphatically, “’tis +Winterborne’s affair has done this. Oh yes, ’tis. So let me say one +word. Promise me that you will not meet him again without my knowledge.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never do meet him, father, either without your knowledge or with +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“So much the better. I don’t like the look of this at all. And I +say it not out of harshness to him, poor fellow, but out of tenderness to you. +For how could a woman, brought up delicately as you have been, bear the +roughness of a life with him?” +</p> + +<p> +She sighed; it was a sigh of sympathy with Giles, complicated by a sense of the +intractability of circumstances. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +At that same hour, and almost at that same minute, there was a conversation +about Winterborne in progress in the village street, opposite Mr. +Melbury’s gates, where Timothy Tangs the elder and Robert Creedle had +accidentally met. +</p> + +<p> +The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had heard what was all over the parish, the +skin of his face being drawn two ways on the matter—towards brightness in +respect of it as news, and towards concern in respect of it as circumstance. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, that poor little lonesome thing, Marty South, is likely to lose her +father. He was almost well, but is much worse again. A man all skin and grief +he ever were, and if he leave Little Hintock for a better land, won’t it +make some difference to your Maister Winterborne, neighbor Creedle?” +</p> + +<p> +“Can I be a prophet in Israel?” said Creedle. “Won’t +it! I was only shaping of such a thing yesterday in my poor, long-seeing way, +and all the work of the house upon my one shoulders! You know what it means? It +is upon John South’s life that all Mr. Winterborne’s houses hang. +If so be South die, and so make his decease, thereupon the law is that the +houses fall without the least chance of absolution into HER hands at the House. +I told him so; but the words of the faithful be only as wind!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2> + +<p> +The news was true. The life—the one fragile life—that had been used +as a measuring-tape of time by law, was in danger of being frayed away. It was +the last of a group of lives which had served this purpose, at the end of whose +breathings the small homestead occupied by South himself, the larger one of +Giles Winterborne, and half a dozen others that had been in the possession of +various Hintock village families for the previous hundred years, and were now +Winterborne’s, would fall in and become part of the encompassing estate. +</p> + +<p> +Yet a short two months earlier Marty’s father, aged fifty-five years, +though something of a fidgety, anxious being, would have been looked on as a +man whose existence was so far removed from hazardous as any in the parish, and +as bidding fair to be prolonged for another quarter of a century. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne walked up and down his garden next day thinking of the contingency. +The sense that the paths he was pacing, the cabbage-plots, the apple-trees, his +dwelling, cider-cellar, wring-house, stables, and weathercock, were all +slipping away over his head and beneath his feet, as if they were painted on a +magic-lantern slide, was curious. In spite of John South’s late +indisposition he had not anticipated danger. To inquire concerning his health +had been to show less sympathy than to remain silent, considering the material +interest he possessed in the woodman’s life, and he had, accordingly, +made a point of avoiding Marty’s house. +</p> + +<p> +While he was here in the garden somebody came to fetch him. It was Marty +herself, and she showed her distress by her unconsciousness of a cropped poll. +</p> + +<p> +“Father is still so much troubled in his mind about that tree,” she +said. “You know the tree I mean, Mr. Winterborne? the tall one in front +of the house, that he thinks will blow down and kill us. Can you come and see +if you can persuade him out of his notion? I can do nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +He accompanied her to the cottage, and she conducted him upstairs. John South +was pillowed up in a chair between the bed and the window exactly opposite the +latter, towards which his face was turned. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, neighbor Winterborne,” he said. “I wouldn’t have +minded if my life had only been my own to lose; I don’t vallie it in much +of itself, and can let it go if ’tis required of me. But to think what +’tis worth to you, a young man rising in life, that do trouble me! It +seems a trick of dishonesty towards ye to go off at fifty-five! I could bear +up, I know I could, if it were not for the tree—yes, the tree, ’tis +that’s killing me. There he stands, threatening my life every minute that +the wind do blow. He’ll come down upon us and squat us dead; and what +will ye do when the life on your property is taken away?” +</p> + +<p> +“Never you mind me—that’s of no consequence,” said +Giles. “Think of yourself alone.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked out of the window in the direction of the woodman’s gaze. The +tree was a tall elm, familiar to him from childhood, which stood at a distance +of two-thirds its own height from the front of South’s dwelling. Whenever +the wind blew, as it did now, the tree rocked, naturally enough; and the sight +of its motion and sound of its sighs had gradually bred the terrifying illusion +in the woodman’s mind that it would descend and kill him. Thus he would +sit all day, in spite of persuasion, watching its every sway, and listening to +the melancholy Gregorian melodies which the air wrung out of it. This fear it +apparently was, rather than any organic disease which was eating away the +health of John South. +</p> + +<p> +As the tree waved, South waved his head, making it his flugel-man with abject +obedience. “Ah, when it was quite a small tree,” he said, +“and I was a little boy, I thought one day of chopping it off with my +hook to make a clothes-line prop with. But I put off doing it, and then I again +thought that I would; but I forgot it, and didn’t. And at last it got too +big, and now ’tis my enemy, and will be the death o’ me. Little did +I think, when I let that sapling stay, that a time would come when it would +torment me, and dash me into my grave.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no,” said Winterborne and Marty, soothingly. But they thought +it possible that it might hasten him into his grave, though in another way than +by falling. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you what,” added Winterborne, “I’ll climb up +this afternoon and shroud off the lower boughs, and then it won’t be so +heavy, and the wind won’t affect it so.” +</p> + +<p> +“She won’t allow it—a strange woman come from nobody knows +where—she won’t have it done.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean Mrs. Charmond? Oh, she doesn’t know there’s such a +tree on her estate. Besides, shrouding is not felling, and I’ll risk that +much.” +</p> + +<p> +He went out, and when afternoon came he returned, took a billhook from the +woodman’s shed, and with a ladder climbed into the lower part of the +tree, where he began lopping off—“shrouding,” as they called +it at Hintock—the lowest boughs. Each of these quivered under his attack, +bent, cracked, and fell into the hedge. Having cut away the lowest tier, he +stepped off the ladder, climbed a few steps higher, and attacked those at the +next level. Thus he ascended with the progress of his work far above the top of +the ladder, cutting away his perches as he went, and leaving nothing but a bare +stem below him. +</p> + +<p> +The work was troublesome, for the tree was large. The afternoon wore on, +turning dark and misty about four o’clock. From time to time Giles cast +his eyes across towards the bedroom window of South, where, by the flickering +fire in the chamber, he could see the old man watching him, sitting motionless +with a hand upon each arm of the chair. Beside him sat Marty, also straining +her eyes towards the skyey field of his operations. +</p> + +<p> +A curious question suddenly occurred to Winterborne, and he stopped his +chopping. He was operating on another person’s property to prolong the +years of a lease by whose termination that person would considerably benefit. +In that aspect of the case he doubted if he ought to go on. On the other hand +he was working to save a man’s life, and this seemed to empower him to +adopt arbitrary measures. +</p> + +<p> +The wind had died down to a calm, and while he was weighing the circumstances +he saw coming along the road through the increasing mist a figure which, +indistinct as it was, he knew well. It was Grace Melbury, on her way out from +the house, probably for a short evening walk before dark. He arranged himself +for a greeting from her, since she could hardly avoid passing immediately +beneath the tree. +</p> + +<p> +But Grace, though she looked up and saw him, was just at that time too full of +the words of her father to give him any encouragement. The years-long regard +that she had had for him was not kindled by her return into a flame of +sufficient brilliancy to make her rebellious. Thinking that she might not see +him, he cried, “Miss Melbury, here I am.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked up again. She was near enough to see the expression of his face, and +the nails in his soles, silver-bright with constant walking. But she did not +reply; and dropping her glance again, went on. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne’s face grew strange; he mused, and proceeded automatically +with his work. Grace meanwhile had not gone far. She had reached a gate, +whereon she had leaned sadly, and whispered to herself, “What shall I +do?” +</p> + +<p> +A sudden fog came on, and she curtailed her walk, passing under the tree again +on her return. Again he addressed her. “Grace,” he said, when she +was close to the trunk, “speak to me.” She shook her head without +stopping, and went on to a little distance, where she stood observing him from +behind the hedge. +</p> + +<p> +Her coldness had been kindly meant. If it was to be done, she had said to +herself, it should be begun at once. While she stood out of observation Giles +seemed to recognize her meaning; with a sudden start he worked on, climbing +higher, and cutting himself off more and more from all intercourse with the +sublunary world. At last he had worked himself so high up the elm, and the mist +had so thickened, that he could only just be discerned as a dark-gray spot on +the light-gray sky: he would have been altogether out of notice but for the +stroke of his billhook and the flight of a bough downward, and its crash upon +the hedge at intervals. +</p> + +<p> +It was not to be done thus, after all: plainness and candor were best. She went +back a third time; he did not see her now, and she lingeringly gazed up at his +unconscious figure, loath to put an end to any kind of hope that might live on +in him still. “Giles— Mr. Winterborne,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He was so high amid the fog that he did not hear. “Mr. +Winterborne!” she cried again, and this time he stopped, looked down, and +replied. +</p> + +<p> +“My silence just now was not accident,” she said, in an unequal +voice. “My father says it is best not to think too much of +that—engagement, or understanding between us, that you know of. I, too, +think that upon the whole he is right. But we are friends, you know, Giles, and +almost relations.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” he answered, as if without surprise, in a voice which +barely reached down the tree. “I have nothing to say in objection—I +cannot say anything till I’ve thought a while.” +</p> + +<p> +She added, with emotion in her tone, “For myself, I would have married +you—some day—I think. But I give way, for I see it would be +unwise.” +</p> + +<p> +He made no reply, but sat back upon a bough, placed his elbow in a fork, and +rested his head upon his hand. Thus he remained till the fog and the night had +completely enclosed him from her view. +</p> + +<p> +Grace heaved a divided sigh, with a tense pause between, and moved onward, her +heart feeling uncomfortably big and heavy, and her eyes wet. Had Giles, instead +of remaining still, immediately come down from the tree to her, would she have +continued in that filial acquiescent frame of mind which she had announced to +him as final? If it be true, as women themselves have declared, that one of +their sex is never so much inclined to throw in her lot with a man for good and +all as five minutes after she has told him such a thing cannot be, the +probabilities are that something might have been done by the appearance of +Winterborne on the ground beside Grace. But he continued motionless and silent +in that gloomy Niflheim or fog-land which involved him, and she proceeded on +her way. +</p> + +<p> +The spot seemed now to be quite deserted. The light from South’s window +made rays on the fog, but did not reach the tree. A quarter of an hour passed, +and all was blackness overhead. Giles had not yet come down. +</p> + +<p> +Then the tree seemed to shiver, then to heave a sigh; a movement was audible, +and Winterborne dropped almost noiselessly to the ground. He had thought the +matter out, and having returned the ladder and billhook to their places, +pursued his way homeward. He would not allow this incident to affect his outer +conduct any more than the danger to his leaseholds had done, and went to bed as +usual. Two simultaneous troubles do not always make a double trouble; and thus +it came to pass that Giles’s practical anxiety about his houses, which +would have been enough to keep him awake half the night at any other time, was +displaced and not reinforced by his sentimental trouble about Grace Melbury. +This severance was in truth more like a burial of her than a rupture with her; +but he did not realize so much at present; even when he arose in the morning he +felt quite moody and stern: as yet the second note in the gamut of such +emotions, a tender regret for his loss, had not made itself heard. +</p> + +<p> +A load of oak timber was to be sent away that morning to a builder whose works +were in a town many miles off. The proud trunks were taken up from the silent +spot which had known them through the buddings and sheddings of their growth +for the foregoing hundred years; chained down like slaves to a heavy timber +carriage with enormous red wheels, and four of the most powerful of +Melbury’s horses were harnessed in front to draw them. +</p> + +<p> +The horses wore their bells that day. There were sixteen to the team, carried +on a frame above each animal’s shoulders, and tuned to scale, so as to +form two octaves, running from the highest note on the right or off-side of the +leader to the lowest on the left or near-side of the shaft-horse. Melbury was +among the last to retain horse-bells in that neighborhood; for, living at +Little Hintock, where the lanes yet remained as narrow as before the days of +turnpike roads, these sound-signals were still as useful to him and his +neighbors as they had ever been in former times. Much backing was saved in the +course of a year by the warning notes they cast ahead; moreover, the tones of +all the teams in the district being known to the carters of each, they could +tell a long way off on a dark night whether they were about to encounter +friends or strangers. +</p> + +<p> +The fog of the previous evening still lingered so heavily over the woods that +the morning could not penetrate the trees till long after its time. The load +being a ponderous one, the lane crooked, and the air so thick, Winterborne set +out, as he often did, to accompany the team as far as the corner, where it +would turn into a wider road. +</p> + +<p> +So they rumbled on, shaking the foundations of the roadside cottages by the +weight of their progress, the sixteen bells chiming harmoniously over all, till +they had risen out of the valley and were descending towards the more open +route, the sparks rising from their creaking skid and nearly setting fire to +the dead leaves alongside. +</p> + +<p> +Then occurred one of the very incidents against which the bells were an +endeavor to guard. Suddenly there beamed into their eyes, quite close to them, +the two lamps of a carriage, shorn of rays by the fog. Its approach had been +quite unheard, by reason of their own noise. The carriage was a covered one, +while behind it could be discerned another vehicle laden with luggage. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne went to the head of the team, and heard the coachman telling the +carter that he must turn back. The carter declared that this was impossible. +</p> + +<p> +“You can turn if you unhitch your string-horses,” said the +coachman. +</p> + +<p> +“It is much easier for you to turn than for us,” said Winterborne. +“We’ve five tons of timber on these wheels if we’ve an +ounce.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I’ve another carriage with luggage at my back.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne admitted the strength of the argument. “But even with +that,” he said, “you can back better than we. And you ought to, for +you could hear our bells half a mile off.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you could see our lights.” +</p> + +<p> +“We couldn’t, because of the fog.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, our time’s precious,” said the coachman, haughtily. +“You are only going to some trumpery little village or other in the +neighborhood, while we are going straight to Italy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Driving all the way, I suppose,” said Winterborne, sarcastically. +</p> + +<p> +The argument continued in these terms till a voice from the interior of the +carriage inquired what was the matter. It was a lady’s. +</p> + +<p> +She was briefly informed of the timber people’s obstinacy; and then Giles +could hear her telling the footman to direct the timber people to turn their +horses’ heads. +</p> + +<p> +The message was brought, and Winterborne sent the bearer back to say that he +begged the lady’s pardon, but that he could not do as she requested; that +though he would not assert it to be impossible, it was impossible by comparison +with the slight difficulty to her party to back their light carriages. As fate +would have it, the incident with Grace Melbury on the previous day made Giles +less gentle than he might otherwise have shown himself, his confidence in the +sex being rudely shaken. +</p> + +<p> +In fine, nothing could move him, and the carriages were compelled to back till +they reached one of the sidings or turnouts constructed in the bank for the +purpose. Then the team came on ponderously, and the clanging of its sixteen +bells as it passed the discomfited carriages, tilted up against the bank, lent +a particularly triumphant tone to the team’s progress—a tone which, +in point of fact, did not at all attach to its conductor’s feelings. +</p> + +<p> +Giles walked behind the timber, and just as he had got past the yet stationary +carriages he heard a soft voice say, “Who is that rude man? Not +Melbury?” The sex of the speaker was so prominent in the voice that +Winterborne felt a pang of regret. +</p> + +<p> +“No, ma’am. A younger man, in a smaller way of business in Little +Hintock. Winterborne is his name.” +</p> + +<p> +Thus they parted company. “Why, Mr. Winterborne,” said the wagoner, +when they were out of hearing, “that was She—Mrs. Charmond! +Who’d ha’ thought it? What in the world can a woman that does +nothing be cock-watching out here at this time o’ day for? Oh, going to +Italy—yes to be sure, I heard she was going abroad, she can’t +endure the winter here.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne was vexed at the incident; the more so that he knew Mr. Melbury, in +his adoration of Hintock House, would be the first to blame him if it became +known. But saying no more, he accompanied the load to the end of the lane, and +then turned back with an intention to call at South’s to learn the result +of the experiment of the preceding evening. +</p> + +<p> +It chanced that a few minutes before this time Grace Melbury, who now rose soon +enough to breakfast with her father, in spite of the unwontedness of the hour, +had been commissioned by him to make the same inquiry at South’s. Marty +had been standing at the door when Miss Melbury arrived. Almost before the +latter had spoken, Mrs. Charmond’s carriages, released from the +obstruction up the lane, came bowling along, and the two girls turned to regard +the spectacle. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but there was sufficient light for them to +discern her outline between the carriage windows. A noticeable feature in her +<i>tournure</i> was a magnificent mass of braided locks. +</p> + +<p> +“How well she looks this morning!” said Grace, forgetting Mrs. +Charmond’s slight in her generous admiration. “Her hair so becomes +her worn that way. I have never seen any more beautiful!” +</p> + +<p> +“Nor have I, miss,” said Marty, dryly, unconsciously stroking her +crown. +</p> + +<p> +Grace watched the carriages with lingering regret till they were out of sight. +She then learned of Marty that South was no better. Before she had come away +Winterborne approached the house, but seeing that one of the two girls standing +on the door-step was Grace, he suddenly turned back again and sought the +shelter of his own home till she should have gone away. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> + +<p> +The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne’s mind +the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from her to +the fact that several cottages and other houses in the two Hintocks, now his +own, would fall into her possession in the event of South’s death. He +marvelled what people could have been thinking about in the past to invent such +precarious tenures as these; still more, what could have induced his ancestors +at Hintock, and other village people, to exchange their old copyholds for +life-leases. But having naturally succeeded to these properties through his +father, he had done his best to keep them in order, though he was much struck +with his father’s negligence in not insuring South’s life. +</p> + +<p> +After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went upstairs, turned +over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay between the mattress and +the sacking. In this he kept his leases, which had remained there unopened ever +since his father’s death. It was the usual hiding-place among rural +lifeholders for such documents. Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them +over. They were ordinary leases for three lives, which a member of the South +family, some fifty years before this time, had accepted of the lord of the +manor in lieu of certain copyholds and other rights, in consideration of having +the dilapidated houses rebuilt by said lord. They had come into his +father’s possession chiefly through his mother, who was a South. +</p> + +<p> +Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter, which +Winterborne had never seen before. It bore a remote date, the handwriting being +that of some solicitor or agent, and the signature the landholder’s. It +was to the effect that at any time before the last of the stated lives should +drop, Mr. Giles Winterborne, senior, or his representative, should have the +privilege of adding his own and his son’s life to the life remaining on +payment of a merely nominal sum; the concession being in consequence of the +elder Winterborne’s consent to demolish one of the houses and relinquish +its site, which stood at an awkward corner of the lane and impeded the way. +</p> + +<p> +The house had been pulled down years before. Why Giles’s father had not +taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his son’s lives it +was impossible to say. The likelihood was that death alone had hindered him in +the execution of his project, as it surely was, the elder Winterborne having +been a man who took much pleasure in dealing with house property in his small +way. +</p> + +<p> +Since one of the Souths still survived, there was not much doubt that Giles +could do what his father had left undone, as far as his own life was concerned. +This possibility cheered him much, for by those houses hung many things. +Melbury’s doubt of the young man’s fitness to be the husband of +Grace had been based not a little on the precariousness of his holdings in +Little and Great Hintock. He resolved to attend to the business at once, the +fine for renewal being a sum that he could easily muster. His scheme, however, +could not be carried out in a day; and meanwhile he would run up to +South’s, as he had intended to do, to learn the result of the experiment +with the tree. +</p> + +<p> +Marty met him at the door. “Well, Marty,” he said; and was +surprised to read in her face that the case was not so hopeful as he had +imagined. +</p> + +<p> +“I am sorry for your labor,” she said. “It is all lost. He +says the tree seems taller than ever.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne looked round at it. Taller the tree certainly did seem, the +gauntness of its now naked stem being more marked than before. +</p> + +<p> +“It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had done to it this +morning,” she added. “He declares it will come down upon us and +cleave us, like ‘the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Well; can I do anything else?” asked he. +</p> + +<p> +“The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—you’ve had the doctor?” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t send for him. Mrs. Charmond, before she left, heard that +father was ill, and told him to attend him at her expense.” +</p> + +<p> +“That was very good of her. And he says it ought to be cut down. We +mustn’t cut it down without her knowledge, I suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +He went up-stairs. There the old man sat, staring at the now gaunt tree as if +his gaze were frozen on to its trunk. Unluckily the tree waved afresh by this +time, a wind having sprung up and blown the fog away, and his eyes turned with +its wavings. +</p> + +<p> +They heard footsteps—a man’s, but of a lighter type than usual. +“There is Doctor Fitzpiers again,” she said, and descended. +Presently his tread was heard on the naked stairs. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick-chamber just as a doctor is more or less wont to +do on such occasions, and pre-eminently when the room is that of a humble +cottager, looking round towards the patient with that preoccupied gaze which so +plainly reveals that he has wellnigh forgotten all about the case and the whole +circumstances since he dismissed them from his mind at his last exit from the +same apartment. He nodded to Winterborne, with whom he was already a little +acquainted, recalled the case to his thoughts, and went leisurely on to where +South sat. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed, handsome man. His eyes were dark +and impressive, and beamed with the light either of energy or of +susceptivity—it was difficult to say which; it might have been a little +of both. That quick, glittering, practical eye, sharp for the surface of things +and for nothing beneath it, he had not. But whether his apparent depth of +vision was real, or only an artistic accident of his corporeal moulding, +nothing but his deeds could reveal. +</p> + +<p> +His face was rather soft than stern, charming than grand, pale than flushed; +his nose—if a sketch of his features be <i>de rigueur</i> for a person of +his pretensions—was artistically beautiful enough to have been worth +doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy, and was hence devoid of those +knotty irregularities which often mean power; while the double-cyma or +classical curve of his mouth was not without a looseness in its close. +Nevertheless, either from his readily appreciative mien, or his reflective +manner, or the instinct towards profound things which was said to possess him, +his presence bespoke the philosopher rather than the dandy or macaroni—an +effect which was helped by the absence of trinkets or other trivialities from +his attire, though this was more finished and up to date than is usually the +case among rural practitioners. +</p> + +<p> +Strict people of the highly respectable class, knowing a little about him by +report, might have said that he seemed likely to err rather in the possession +of too many ideas than too few; to be a dreamy ’ist of some sort, or too +deeply steeped in some false kind of ’ism. However this may be, it will +be seen that he was undoubtedly a somewhat rare kind of gentleman and doctor to +have descended, as from the clouds, upon Little Hintock. +</p> + +<p> +“This is an extraordinary case,” he said at last to Winterborne, +after examining South by conversation, look, and touch, and learning that the +craze about the elm was stronger than ever. “Come down-stairs, and +I’ll tell you what I think.” +</p> + +<p> +They accordingly descended, and the doctor continued, “The tree must be +cut down, or I won’t answer for his life.” +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis Mrs. Charmond’s tree, and I suppose we must get +permission?” said Giles. “If so, as she is gone away, I must speak +to her agent.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—never mind whose tree it is—what’s a tree beside a +life! Cut it down. I have not the honor of knowing Mrs. Charmond as yet, but I +am disposed to risk that much with her.” +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis timber,” rejoined Giles, more scrupulous than he would +have been had not his own interests stood so closely involved. +“They’ll never fell a stick about here without it being marked +first, either by her or the agent.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then we’ll inaugurate a new era forthwith. How long has he +complained of the tree?” asked the doctor of Marty. +</p> + +<p> +“Weeks and weeks, sir. The shape of it seems to haunt him like an evil +spirit. He says that it is exactly his own age, that it has got human sense, +and sprouted up when he was born on purpose to rule him, and keep him as its +slave. Others have been like it afore in Hintock.” +</p> + +<p> +They could hear South’s voice up-stairs “Oh, he’s rocking +this way; he must come! And then my poor life, that’s worth houses upon +houses, will be squashed out o’ me. Oh! oh!” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s how he goes on,” she added. “And he’ll +never look anywhere else but out of the window, and scarcely have the curtains +drawn.” +</p> + +<p> +“Down with it, then, and hang Mrs. Charmond,” said Mr. Fitzpiers. +“The best plan will be to wait till the evening, when it is dark, or +early in the morning before he is awake, so that he doesn’t see it fall, +for that would terrify him worse than ever. Keep the blind down till I come, +and then I’ll assure him, and show him that his trouble is over.” +</p> + +<p> +The doctor then departed, and they waited till the evening. When it was dusk, +and the curtains drawn, Winterborne directed a couple of woodmen to bring a +crosscut-saw, and the tall, threatening tree was soon nearly off at its base. +He would not fell it completely then, on account of the possible crash, but +next morning, before South was awake, they went and lowered it cautiously, in a +direction away from the cottage. It was a business difficult to do quite +silently; but it was done at last, and the elm of the same birth-year as the +woodman’s lay stretched upon the ground. The weakest idler that passed +could now set foot on marks formerly made in the upper forks by the shoes of +adventurous climbers only; once inaccessible nests could be examined +microscopically; and on swaying extremities where birds alone had perched, the +by-standers sat down. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as it was broad daylight the doctor came, and Winterborne entered the +house with him. Marty said that her father was wrapped up and ready, as usual, +to be put into his chair. They ascended the stairs, and soon seated him. He +began at once to complain of the tree, and the danger to his life and +Winterborne’s house-property in consequence. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor signalled to Giles, who went and drew back the printed cotton +curtains. “’Tis gone, see,” said Mr. Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as the old man saw the vacant patch of sky in place of the branched +column so familiar to his gaze, he sprang up, speechless, his eyes rose from +their hollows till the whites showed all round; he fell back, and a bluish +whiteness overspread him. +</p> + +<p> +Greatly alarmed, they put him on the bed. As soon as he came a little out of +his fit, he gasped, “Oh, it is gone!—where?—where?” +</p> + +<p> +His whole system seemed paralyzed by amazement. They were thunder-struck at the +result of the experiment, and did all they could. Nothing seemed to avail. +Giles and Fitzpiers went and came, but uselessly. He lingered through the day, +and died that evening as the sun went down. +</p> + +<p> +“D—d if my remedy hasn’t killed him!” murmured the +doctor. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2> + +<p> +When Melbury heard what had happened he seemed much moved, and walked +thoughtfully about the premises. On South’s own account he was genuinely +sorry; and on Winterborne’s he was the more grieved in that this +catastrophe had so closely followed the somewhat harsh dismissal of Giles as +the betrothed of his daughter. +</p> + +<p> +He was quite angry with circumstances for so heedlessly inflicting on Giles a +second trouble when the needful one inflicted by himself was all that the +proper order of events demanded. “I told Giles’s father when he +came into those houses not to spend too much money on lifehold property held +neither for his own life nor his son’s,” he exclaimed. “But +he wouldn’t listen to me. And now Giles has to suffer for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Poor Giles!” murmured Grace. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, Grace, between us two, it is very, very remarkable. It is almost as +if I had foreseen this; and I am thankful for your escape, though I am +sincerely sorry for Giles. Had we not dismissed him already, we could hardly +have found it in our hearts to dismiss him now. So I say, be thankful. +I’ll do all I can for him as a friend; but as a pretender to the position +of my son-in law, that can never be thought of more.” +</p> + +<p> +And yet at that very moment the impracticability to which poor +Winterborne’s suit had been reduced was touching Grace’s heart to a +warmer sentiment on his behalf than she had felt for years concerning him. +</p> + +<p> +He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone in the old familiar house which had +ceased to be his, taking a calm if somewhat dismal survey of affairs. The +pendulum of the clock bumped every now and then against one side of the case in +which it swung, as the muffled drum to his worldly march. Looking out of the +window he could perceive that a paralysis had come over Creedle’s +occupation of manuring the garden, owing, obviously, to a conviction that they +might not be living there long enough to profit by next season’s crop. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at the leases again and the letter attached. There was no doubt that +he had lost his houses by an accident which might easily have been circumvented +if he had known the true conditions of his holding. The time for performance +had now lapsed in strict law; but might not the intention be considered by the +landholder when she became aware of the circumstances, and his moral right to +retain the holdings for the term of his life be conceded? +</p> + +<p> +His heart sank within him when he perceived that despite all the legal +reciprocities and safeguards prepared and written, the upshot of the matter +amounted to this, that it depended upon the mere caprice—good or +ill—of the woman he had met the day before in such an unfortunate way, +whether he was to possess his houses for life or no. +</p> + +<p> +While he was sitting and thinking a step came to the door, and Melbury +appeared, looking very sorry for his position. Winterborne welcomed him by a +word and a look, and went on with his examination of the parchments. His +visitor sat down. +</p> + +<p> +“Giles,” he said, “this is very awkward, and I am sorry for +it. What are you going to do?” +</p> + +<p> +Giles informed him of the real state of affairs, and how barely he had missed +availing himself of his chance of renewal. +</p> + +<p> +“What a misfortune! Why was this neglected? Well, the best thing you can +do is to write and tell her all about it, and throw yourself upon her +generosity.” +</p> + +<p> +“I would rather not,” murmured Giles. +</p> + +<p> +“But you must,” said Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +In short, he argued so cogently that Giles allowed himself to be persuaded, and +the letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and sent to Hintock House, whence, as +he knew, it would at once be forwarded to her. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury feeling that he had done so good an action in coming as almost to +extenuate his previous arbitrary conduct to nothing, went home; and Giles was +left alone to the suspense of waiting for a reply from the divinity who shaped +the ends of the Hintock population. By this time all the villagers knew of the +circumstances, and being wellnigh like one family, a keen interest was the +result all round. +</p> + +<p> +Everybody thought of Giles; nobody thought of Marty. Had any of them looked in +upon her during those moonlight nights which preceded the burial of her father, +they would have seen the girl absolutely alone in the house with the dead man. +Her own chamber being nearest the stairs, the coffin had been placed there for +convenience; and at a certain hour of the night, when the moon arrived opposite +the window, its beams streamed across the still profile of South, sublimed by +the august presence of death, and onward a few feet farther upon the face of +his daughter, lying in her little bed in the stillness of a repose almost as +dignified as that of her companion—the repose of a guileless soul that +had nothing more left on earth to lose, except a life which she did not +overvalue. +</p> + +<p> +South was buried, and a week passed, and Winterborne watched for a reply from +Mrs. Charmond. Melbury was very sanguine as to its tenor; but Winterborne had +not told him of the encounter with her carriage, when, if ever he had heard an +affronted tone on a woman’s lips, he had heard it on hers. +</p> + +<p> +The postman’s time for passing was just after Melbury’s men had +assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, who when not busy on his own +account would lend assistance there, used to go out into the lane every morning +and meet the post-man at the end of one of the green rides through the hazel +copse, in the straight stretch of which his laden figure could be seen a long +way off. Grace also was very anxious; more anxious than her father; more, +perhaps, than Winterborne himself. This anxiety led her into the spar-house on +some pretext or other almost every morning while they were awaiting the reply. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers too, though he did not personally appear, was much interested, and +not altogether easy in his mind; for he had been informed by an authority of +what he had himself conjectured, that if the tree had been allowed to stand, +the old man would have gone on complaining, but might have lived for twenty +years. +</p> + +<p> +Eleven times had Winterborne gone to that corner of the ride, and looked up its +long straight slope through the wet grays of winter dawn. But though the +postman’s bowed figure loomed in view pretty regularly, he brought +nothing for Giles. On the twelfth day the man of missives, while yet in the +extreme distance, held up his hand, and Winterborne saw a letter in it. He took +it into the spar-house before he broke the seal, and those who were there +gathered round him while he read, Grace looking in at the door. +</p> + +<p> +The letter was not from Mrs. Charmond herself, but her agent at Sherton. +Winterborne glanced it over and looked up. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all over,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” said they altogether. +</p> + +<p> +“Her lawyer is instructed to say that Mrs. Charmond sees no reason for +disturbing the natural course of things, particularly as she contemplates +pulling the houses down,” he said, quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“Only think of that!” said several. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne had turned away, and said vehemently to himself, “Then let +her pull ’em down, and be d—d to her!” +</p> + +<p> +Creedle looked at him with a face of seven sorrows, saying, “Ah, +’twas that sperrit that lost ’em for ye, maister!” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne subdued his feelings, and from that hour, whatever they were, kept +them entirely to himself. There could be no doubt that, up to this last moment, +he had nourished a feeble hope of regaining Grace in the event of this +negotiation turning out a success. Not being aware of the fact that her father +could have settled upon her a fortune sufficient to enable both to live in +comfort, he deemed it now an absurdity to dream any longer of such a vanity as +making her his wife, and sank into silence forthwith. +</p> + +<p> +Yet whatever the value of taciturnity to a man among strangers, it is apt to +express more than talkativeness when he dwells among friends. The countryman +who is obliged to judge the time of day from changes in external nature sees a +thousand successive tints and traits in the landscape which are never discerned +by him who hears the regular chime of a clock, because they are never in +request. In like manner do we use our eyes on our taciturn comrade. The +infinitesimal movement of muscle, curve, hair, and wrinkle, which when +accompanied by a voice goes unregarded, is watched and translated in the lack +of it, till virtually the whole surrounding circle of familiars is charged with +the reserved one’s moods and meanings. +</p> + +<p> +This was the condition of affairs between Winterborne and his neighbors after +his stroke of ill-luck. He held his tongue; and they observed him, and knew +that he was discomposed. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Melbury, in his compunction, thought more of the matter than any one else, +except his daughter. Had Winterborne been going on in the old fashion, +Grace’s father could have alluded to his disapproval of the alliance +every day with the greatest frankness; but to speak any further on the subject +he could not find it in his heart to do now. He hoped that Giles would of his +own accord make some final announcement that he entirely withdrew his +pretensions to Grace, and so get the thing past and done with. For though Giles +had in a measure acquiesced in the wish of her family, he could make matters +unpleasant if he chose to work upon Grace; and hence, when Melbury saw the +young man approaching along the road one day, he kept friendliness and +frigidity exactly balanced in his eye till he could see whether Giles’s +manner was presumptive or not. +</p> + +<p> +His manner was that of a man who abandoned all claims. “I am glad to meet +ye, Mr. Melbury,” he said, in a low voice, whose quality he endeavored to +make as practical as possible. “I am afraid I shall not be able to keep +that mare I bought, and as I don’t care to sell her, I should +like—if you don’t object—to give her to Miss Melbury. The +horse is very quiet, and would be quite safe for her.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Melbury was rather affected at this. “You sha’n’t hurt +your pocket like that on our account, Giles. Grace shall have the horse, but +I’ll pay you what you gave for her, and any expense you may have been put +to for her keep.” +</p> + +<p> +He would not hear of any other terms, and thus it was arranged. They were now +opposite Melbury’s house, and the timber-merchant pressed Winterborne to +enter, Grace being out of the way. +</p> + +<p> +“Pull round the settle, Giles,” said the timber-merchant, as soon +as they were within. “I should like to have a serious talk with +you.” +</p> + +<p> +Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne frankly, and in quite a friendly way. +He declared that he did not like to be hard on a man when he was in difficulty; +but he really did not see how Winterborne could marry his daughter now, without +even a house to take her to. +</p> + +<p> +Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness of his situation. But from a +momentary feeling that he would like to know Grace’s mind from her own +lips, he did not speak out positively there and then. He accordingly departed +somewhat abruptly, and went home to consider whether he would seek to bring +about a meeting with her. +</p> + +<p> +In the evening, while he sat quietly pondering, he fancied that he heard a +scraping on the wall outside his house. The boughs of a monthly rose which grew +there made such a noise sometimes, but as no wind was stirring he knew that it +could not be the rose-tree. He took up the candle and went out. Nobody was +near. As he turned, the light flickered on the whitewashed rough case of the +front, and he saw words written thereon in charcoal, which he read as follows: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“O Giles, you’ve lost your dwelling-place,<br /> +And therefore, Giles, you’ll lose your Grace.” +</p> + +<p> +Giles went in-doors. He had his suspicions as to the scrawler of those lines, +but he could not be sure. What suddenly filled his heart far more than +curiosity about their authorship was a terrible belief that they were turning +out to be true, try to see Grace as he might. They decided the question for +him. He sat down and wrote a formal note to Melbury, in which he briefly stated +that he was placed in such a position as to make him share to the full +Melbury’s view of his own and his daughter’s promise, made some +years before; to wish that it should be considered as cancelled, and they +themselves quite released from any obligation on account of it. +</p> + +<p> +Having fastened up this their plenary absolution, he determined to get it out +of his hands and have done with it; to which end he went off to Melbury’s +at once. It was now so late that the family had all retired; he crept up to the +house, thrust the note under the door, and stole away as silently as he had +come. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury himself was the first to rise the next morning, and when he had read +the letter his relief was great. “Very honorable of Giles, very +honorable,” he kept saying to himself. “I shall not forget him. Now +to keep her up to her own true level.” +</p> + +<p> +It happened that Grace went out for an early ramble that morning, passing +through the door and gate while her father was in the spar-house. To go in her +customary direction she could not avoid passing Winterborne’s house. The +morning sun was shining flat upon its white surface, and the words, which still +remained, were immediately visible to her. She read them. Her face flushed to +crimson. She could see Giles and Creedle talking together at the back; the +charred spar-gad with which the lines had been written lay on the ground +beneath the wall. Feeling pretty sure that Winterborne would observe her +action, she quickly went up to the wall, rubbed out “lose” and +inserted “keep” in its stead. Then she made the best of her way +home without looking behind her. Giles could draw an inference now if he chose. +</p> + +<p> +There could not be the least doubt that gentle Grace was warming to more +sympathy with, and interest in, Giles Winterborne than ever she had done while +he was her promised lover; that since his misfortune those social shortcomings +of his, which contrasted so awkwardly with her later experiences of life, had +become obscured by the generous revival of an old romantic attachment to him. +Though mentally trained and tilled into foreignness of view, as compared with +her youthful time, Grace was not an ambitious girl, and might, if left to +herself, have declined Winterborne without much discontent or unhappiness. Her +feelings just now were so far from latent that the writing on the wall had thus +quickened her to an unusual rashness. +</p> + +<p> +Having returned from her walk she sat at breakfast silently. When her +step-mother had left the room she said to her father, “I have made up my +mind that I should like my engagement to Giles to continue, for the present at +any rate, till I can see further what I ought to do.” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury looked much surprised. +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense,” he said, sharply. “You don’t know what you +are talking about. Look here.” +</p> + +<p> +He handed across to her the letter received from Giles. +</p> + +<p> +She read it, and said no more. Could he have seen her write on the wall? She +did not know. Fate, it seemed, would have it this way, and there was nothing to +do but to acquiesce. +</p> + +<p> +It was a few hours after this that Winterborne, who, curiously enough, had +<i>not</i> perceived Grace writing, was clearing away the tree from the front +of South’s late dwelling. He saw Marty standing in her door-way, a slim +figure in meagre black, almost without womanly contours as yet. He went up to +her and said, “Marty, why did you write that on my wall last night? It +<i>was</i> you, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Because it was the truth. I didn’t mean to let it stay, Mr. +Winterborne; but when I was going to rub it out you came, and I was obliged to +run off.” +</p> + +<p> +“Having prophesied one thing, why did you alter it to another? Your +predictions can’t be worth much.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have not altered it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you have.” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is altered. Go and see.” +</p> + +<p> +She went, and read that, in spite of losing his dwelling-place, he would +<i>keep</i> his Grace. Marty came back surprised. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I never,” she said. “Who can have made such nonsense +of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Who, indeed?” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“I have rubbed it all out, as the point of it is quite gone.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d no business to rub it out. I didn’t tell you to. I +meant to let it stay a little longer.” +</p> + +<p> +“Some idle boy did it, no doubt,” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetrator was unsuspected, +Winterborne said no more, and dismissed the matter from his mind. +</p> + +<p> +From this day of his life onward for a considerable time, Winterborne, though +not absolutely out of his house as yet, retired into the background of human +life and action thereabout—a feat not particularly difficult of +performance anywhere when the doer has the assistance of a lost prestige. +Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her write, made no further sign, and the +frail bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly launched was stranded and +lost. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2> + +<p> +Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the hill, in a house of much less +pretension, both as to architecture and as to magnitude, than the +timber-merchant’s. The latter had, without doubt, been once the manorial +residence appertaining to the snug and modest domain of Little Hintock, of +which the boundaries were now lost by its absorption with others of its kind +into the adjoining estate of Mrs. Charmond. Though the Melburys themselves were +unaware of the fact, there was every reason to believe—at least so the +parson said—that the owners of that little manor had been Melbury’s +own ancestors, the family name occurring in numerous documents relating to +transfers of land about the time of the civil wars. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Fitzpiers’s dwelling, on the contrary, was small, cottage-like, and +comparatively modern. It had been occupied, and was in part occupied still, by +a retired farmer and his wife, who, on the surgeon’s arrival in quest of +a home, had accommodated him by receding from their front rooms into the +kitchen quarter, whence they administered to his wants, and emerged at regular +intervals to receive from him a not unwelcome addition to their income. +</p> + +<p> +The cottage and its garden were so regular in their arrangement that they might +have been laid out by a Dutch designer of the time of William and Mary. In a +low, dense hedge, cut to wedge-shape, was a door over which the hedge formed an +arch, and from the inside of the door a straight path, bordered with clipped +box, ran up the slope of the garden to the porch, which was exactly in the +middle of the house front, with two windows on each side. Right and left of the +path were first a bed of gooseberry bushes; next of currant; next of raspberry; +next of strawberry; next of old-fashioned flowers; at the corners opposite the +porch being spheres of box resembling a pair of school globes. Over the roof of +the house could be seen the orchard, on yet higher ground, and behind the +orchard the forest-trees, reaching up to the crest of the hill. +</p> + +<p> +Opposite the garden door and visible from the parlor window was a swing-gate +leading into a field, across which there ran a footpath. The swing-gate had +just been repainted, and on one fine afternoon, before the paint was dry, and +while gnats were still dying thereon, the surgeon was standing in his +sitting-room abstractedly looking out at the different pedestrians who passed +and repassed along that route. Being of a philosophical stamp, he perceived +that the character of each of these travellers exhibited itself in a somewhat +amusing manner by his or her method of handling the gate. +</p> + +<p> +As regarded the men, there was not much variety: they gave the gate a kick and +passed through. The women were more contrasting. To them the sticky wood-work +was a barricade, a disgust, a menace, a treachery, as the case might be. +</p> + +<p> +The first that he noticed was a bouncing woman with her skirts tucked up and +her hair uncombed. She grasped the gate without looking, giving it a +supplementary push with her shoulder, when the white imprint drew from her an +exclamation in language not too refined. She went to the green bank, sat down +and rubbed herself in the grass, cursing the while. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +The next was a girl, with her hair cropped short, in whom the surgeon +recognized the daughter of his late patient, the woodman South. Moreover, a +black bonnet that she wore by way of mourning unpleasantly reminded him that he +had ordered the felling of a tree which had caused her parent’s death and +Winterborne’s losses. She walked and thought, and not recklessly; but her +preoccupation led her to grasp unsuspectingly the bar of the gate, and touch it +with her arm. Fitzpiers felt sorry that she should have soiled that new black +frock, poor as it was, for it was probably her only one. She looked at her hand +and arm, seemed but little surprised, wiped off the disfigurement with an +almost unmoved face, and as if without abandoning her original thoughts. Thus +she went on her way. +</p> + +<p> +Then there came over the green quite a different sort of personage. She walked +as delicately as if she had been bred in town, and as firmly as if she had been +bred in the country; she seemed one who dimly knew her appearance to be +attractive, but who retained some of the charm of being ignorant of that fact +by forgetting it in a general pensiveness. She approached the gate. To let such +a creature touch it even with a tip of her glove was to Fitzpiers almost like +letting her proceed to tragical self-destruction. He jumped up and looked for +his hat, but was unable to find the right one; glancing again out of the window +he saw that he was too late. Having come up, she stopped, looked at the gate, +picked up a little stick, and using it as a bayonet, pushed open the obstacle +without touching it at all. +</p> + +<p> +He steadily watched her till she had passed out of sight, recognizing her as +the very young lady whom he had seen once before and been unable to identify. +Whose could that emotional face be? All the others he had seen in Hintock as +yet oppressed him with their crude rusticity; the contrast offered by this +suggested that she hailed from elsewhere. +</p> + +<p> +Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first time of seeing her; +but he now went a little further with them, and considered that as there had +been no carriage seen or heard lately in that spot she could not have come a +very long distance. She must be somebody staying at Hintock House? Possibly +Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard so much—at any rate an inmate, and +this probability was sufficient to set a mild radiance in the surgeon’s +somewhat dull sky. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had been perusing. It happened to be that of +a German metaphysician, for the doctor was not a practical man, except by fits, +and much preferred the ideal world to the real, and the discovery of principles +to their application. The young lady remained in his thoughts. He might have +followed her; but he was not constitutionally active, and preferred a +conjectural pursuit. However, when he went out for a ramble just before dusk he +insensibly took the direction of Hintock House, which was the way that Grace +had been walking, it having happened that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond +that day, and she had walked to the brow of a hill whence the house could be +seen, returning by another route. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, overlooking the +manor-house. The shutters were shut, and only one chimney smoked. The mere +aspect of the place was enough to inform him that Mrs. Charmond had gone away +and that nobody else was staying there. Fitzpiers felt a vague disappointment +that the young lady was not Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard so much; and +without pausing longer to gaze at a carcass from which the spirit had flown, he +bent his steps homeward. +</p> + +<p> +Later in the evening Fitzpiers was summoned to visit a cottage patient about +two miles distant. Like the majority of young practitioners in his position he +was far from having assumed the dignity of being driven his rounds by a servant +in a brougham that flashed the sunlight like a mirror; his way of getting about +was by means of a gig which he drove himself, hitching the rein of the horse to +the gate post, shutter hook, or garden paling of the domicile under visitation, +or giving pennies to little boys to hold the animal during his +stay—pennies which were well earned when the cases to be attended were of +a certain cheerful kind that wore out the patience of the little boys. +</p> + +<p> +On this account of travelling alone, the night journeys which Fitzpiers had +frequently to take were dismal enough, a serious apparent perversity in nature +ruling that whenever there was to be a birth in a particularly inaccessible and +lonely place, that event should occur in the night. The surgeon, having been of +late years a town man, hated the solitary midnight woodland. He was not +altogether skilful with the reins, and it often occurred to his mind that if in +some remote depths of the trees an accident were to happen, the fact of his +being alone might be the death of him. Hence he made a practice of picking up +any countryman or lad whom he chanced to pass by, and under the disguise of +treating him to a nice drive, obtained his companionship on the journey, and +his convenient assistance in opening gates. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor had started on his way out of the village on the night in question +when the light of his lamps fell upon the musing form of Winterborne, walking +leisurely along, as if he had no object in life. Winterborne was a better class +of companion than the doctor usually could get, and he at once pulled up and +asked him if he would like a drive through the wood that fine night. +</p> + +<p> +Giles seemed rather surprised at the doctor’s friendliness, but said that +he had no objection, and accordingly mounted beside Mr. Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +They drove along under the black boughs which formed a network upon the stars, +all the trees of a species alike in one respect, and no two of them alike in +another. Looking up as they passed under a horizontal bough they sometimes saw +objects like large tadpoles lodged diametrically across it, which Giles +explained to be pheasants there at roost; and they sometimes heard the report +of a gun, which reminded him that others knew what those tadpole shapes +represented as well as he. +</p> + +<p> +Presently the doctor said what he had been going to say for some time: +</p> + +<p> +“Is there a young lady staying in this neighborhood—a very +attractive girl—with a little white boa round her neck, and white fur +round her gloves?” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne of course knew in a moment that Grace, whom he had caught the +doctor peering at, was represented by these accessories. With a wary grimness, +partly in his character, partly induced by the circumstances, he evaded an +answer by saying, “I saw a young lady talking to Mrs. Charmond the other +day; perhaps it was she.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers concluded from this that Winterborne had not seen him looking over +the hedge. “It might have been,” he said. “She is quite a +gentlewoman—the one I mean. She cannot be a permanent resident in Hintock +or I should have seen her before. Nor does she look like one.” +</p> + +<p> +“She is not staying at Hintock House?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; it is closed.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then perhaps she is staying at one of the cottages, or +farmhouses?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—you mistake. She was a different sort of girl +altogether.” As Giles was nobody, Fitzpiers treated him accordingly, and +apostrophized the night in continuation: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,<br /> +A power, that from its objects scarcely drew<br /> +One impulse of her being—in her lightness<br /> +Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,<br /> +Which wanders through the waste air’s pathless blue,<br /> +To nourish some far desert: she did seem<br /> +Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,<br /> +Like the bright shade of some immortal dream<br /> +Which walks, when tempests sleep, the wave of life’s dark +stream.” +</p> + +<p> +The consummate charm of the lines seemed to Winterborne, though he divined that +they were a quotation, to be somehow the result of his lost love’s charms +upon Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +“You seem to be mightily in love with her, sir,” he said, with a +sensation of heart-sickness, and more than ever resolved not to mention Grace +by name. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—I am not that, Winterborne; people living insulated, as I do +by the solitude of this place, get charged with emotive fluid like a Leyden-jar +with electric, for want of some conductor at hand to disperse it. Human love is +a subjective thing—the essence itself of man, as that great thinker +Spinoza the philosopher says—<i>ipsa hominis essentia</i>—it is joy +accompanied by an idea which we project against any suitable object in the line +of our vision, just as the rainbow iris is projected against an oak, ash, or +elm tree indifferently. So that if any other young lady had appeared instead of +the one who did appear, I should have felt just the same interest in her, and +have quoted precisely the same lines from Shelley about her, as about this one +I saw. Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it is what we call being in love down in these parts, whether or +no,” said Winterborne. +</p> + +<p> +“You are right enough if you admit that I am in love with something in my +own head, and no thing in itself outside it at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it part of a country doctor’s duties to learn that view of +things, may I ask, sir?” said Winterborne, adopting the Socratic +εἰρωνεία with such well-assumed +simplicity that Fitzpiers answered, readily, +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no. The real truth is, Winterborne, that medical practice in places +like this is a very rule-of-thumb matter; a bottle of bitter stuff for this and +that old woman—the bitterer the better—compounded from a few simple +stereotyped prescriptions; occasional attendance at births, where mere presence +is almost sufficient, so healthy and strong are the people; and a lance for an +abscess now and then. Investigation and experiment cannot be carried on without +more appliances than one has here—though I have attempted it a +little.” +</p> + +<p> +Giles did not enter into this view of the case; what he had been struck with +was the curious parallelism between Mr. Fitzpiers’s manner and +Grace’s, as shown by the fact of both of them straying into a subject of +discourse so engrossing to themselves that it made them forget it was foreign +to him. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing further passed between himself and the doctor in relation to Grace till +they were on their way back. They had stopped at a way-side inn for a glass of +brandy and cider hot, and when they were again in motion, Fitzpiers, possibly a +little warmed by the liquor, resumed the subject by saying, “I should +like very much to know who that young lady was.” +</p> + +<p> +“What difference can it make, if she’s only the tree your rainbow +falls on?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! ha! True.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have no wife, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have no wife, and no idea of one. I hope to do better things than +marry and settle in Hintock. Not but that it is well for a medical man to be +married, and sometimes, begad, ’twould be pleasant enough in this place, +with the wind roaring round the house, and the rain and the boughs beating +against it. I hear that you lost your life-holds by the death of South?” +</p> + +<p> +“I did. I lost in more ways than one.” +</p> + +<p> +They had reached the top of Hintock Lane or Street, if it could be called such +where three-quarters of the road-side consisted of copse and orchard. One of +the first houses to be passed was Melbury’s. A light was shining from a +bedroom window facing lengthwise of the lane. Winterborne glanced at it, and +saw what was coming. He had withheld an answer to the doctor’s inquiry to +hinder his knowledge of Grace; but, as he thought to himself, “who hath +gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment?” +he could not hinder what was doomed to arrive, and might just as well have been +outspoken. As they came up to the house, Grace’s figure was distinctly +visible, drawing the two white curtains together which were used here instead +of blinds. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, there she is!” said Fitzpiers. “How does she come +there?” +</p> + +<p> +“In the most natural way in the world. It is her home. Mr. Melbury is her +father.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, indeed—indeed—indeed! How comes he to have a daughter of +that stamp?” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne laughed coldly. “Won’t money do anything,” he +said, “if you’ve promising material to work upon? Why +shouldn’t a Hintock girl, taken early from home, and put under proper +instruction, become as finished as any other young lady, if she’s got +brains and good looks to begin with?” +</p> + +<p> +“No reason at all why she shouldn’t,” murmured the surgeon, +with reflective disappointment. “Only I didn’t anticipate quite +that kind of origin for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you think an inch or two less of her now.” There was a little +tremor in Winterborne’s voice as he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the doctor, with recovered warmth, “I am not so +sure that I think less of her. At first it was a sort of blow; but, dammy! +I’ll stick up for her. She’s charming, every inch of her!” +</p> + +<p> +“So she is,” said Winterborne, “but not to me.” +</p> + +<p> +From this ambiguous expression of the reticent woodlander’s, Dr. +Fitzpiers inferred that Giles disliked Miss Melbury because of some haughtiness +in her bearing towards him, and had, on that account, withheld her name. The +supposition did not tend to diminish his admiration for her. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2> + +<p> +Grace’s exhibition of herself, in the act of pulling-to the +window-curtains, had been the result of an unfortunate incident in the house +that day—nothing less than the illness of Grammer Oliver, a woman who had +never till now lain down for such a reason in her life. Like others to whom +unbroken years of health has made the idea of keeping their bed almost as +repugnant as death itself, she had continued on foot till she literally fell on +the floor; and though she had, as yet, been scarcely a day off duty, she had +sickened into quite a different personage from the independent Grammer of the +yard and spar-house. Ill as she was, on one point she was firm. On no account +would she see a doctor; in other words, Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +The room in which Grace had been discerned was not her own, but the old +woman’s. On the girl’s way to bed she had received a message from +Grammer, to the effect that she would much like to speak to her that night. +</p> + +<p> +Grace entered, and set the candle on a low chair beside the bed, so that the +profile of Grammer as she lay cast itself in a keen shadow upon the whitened +wall, her large head being still further magnified by an enormous turban, which +was, really, her petticoat wound in a wreath round her temples. Grace put the +room a little in order, and approaching the sick woman, said, “I am come, +Grammer, as you wish. Do let us send for the doctor before it gets +later.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will not have him,” said Grammer Oliver, decisively. +</p> + +<p> +“Then somebody to sit up with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t abear it! No; I wanted to see you, Miss Grace, because +’ch have something on my mind. Dear Miss Grace, <i>I took that money of +the doctor, after all!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“What money?” +</p> + +<p> +“The ten pounds.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace did not quite understand. +</p> + +<p> +“The ten pounds he offered me for my head, because I’ve a large +brain. I signed a paper when I took the money, not feeling concerned about it +at all. I have not liked to tell ye that it was really settled with him, +because you showed such horror at the notion. Well, having thought it over more +at length, I wish I hadn’t done it; and it weighs upon my mind. John +South’s death of fear about the tree makes me think that I shall die of +this....’Ch have been going to ask him again to let me off, but I +hadn’t the face.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve spent some of the money—more’n two pounds +o’t. It do wherrit me terribly; and I shall die o’ the thought of +that paper I signed with my holy cross, as South died of his trouble.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you ask him to burn the paper he will, I’m sure, and think no +more of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Ch have done it once already, miss. But he laughed cruel like. +‘Yours is such a fine brain, Grammer,’ ’er said, ‘that +science couldn’t afford to lose you. Besides, you’ve taken my +money.’...Don’t let your father know of this, please, on no account +whatever!” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no. I will let you have the money to return to him.” +</p> + +<p> +Grammer rolled her head negatively upon the pillow. “Even if I should be +well enough to take it to him, he won’t like it. Though why he should so +particular want to look into the works of a poor old woman’s head-piece +like mine when there’s so many other folks about, I don’t know. I +know how he’ll answer me: ‘A lonely person like you, +Grammer,’ er woll say. ‘What difference is it to you what becomes +of ye when the breath’s out of your body?’ Oh, it do trouble me! If +you only knew how he do chevy me round the chimmer in my dreams, you’d +pity me. How I could do it I can’t think! But ’ch was always so +rackless!...If I only had anybody to plead for me!” +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Melbury would, I am sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay; but he wouldn’t hearken to she! It wants a younger face than +hers to work upon such as he.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace started with comprehension. “You don’t think he would do it +for me?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, wouldn’t he!” +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t go to him, Grammer, on any account. I don’t know +him at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, if I were a young lady,” said the artful Grammer, “and +could save a poor old woman’s skellington from a heathen doctor instead +of a Christian grave, I would do it, and be glad to. But nobody will do +anything for a poor old familiar friend but push her out of the way.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are very ungrateful, Grammer, to say that. But you are ill, I know, +and that’s why you speak so. Now believe me, you are not going to die +yet. Remember you told me yourself that you meant to keep him waiting many a +year.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, one can joke when one is well, even in old age; but in sickness +one’s gayety falters to grief; and that which seemed small looks large; +and the grim far-off seems near.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace’s eyes had tears in them. “I don’t like to go to him on +such an errand, Grammer,” she said, brokenly. “But I will, to ease +your mind.” +</p> + +<p> +It was with extreme reluctance that Grace cloaked herself next morning for the +undertaking. She was all the more indisposed to the journey by reason of +Grammer’s allusion to the effect of a pretty face upon Dr. Fitzpiers; and +hence she most illogically did that which, had the doctor never seen her, would +have operated to stultify the sole motive of her journey; that is to say, she +put on a woollen veil, which hid all her face except an occasional spark of her +eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Her own wish that nothing should be known of this strange and grewsome +proceeding, no less than Grammer Oliver’s own desire, led Grace to take +every precaution against being discovered. She went out by the garden door as +the safest way, all the household having occupations at the other side. The +morning looked forbidding enough when she stealthily opened it. The battle +between frost and thaw was continuing in mid-air: the trees dripped on the +garden-plots, where no vegetables would grow for the dripping, though they were +planted year after year with that curious mechanical regularity of country +people in the face of hopelessness; the moss which covered the once broad +gravel terrace was swamped; and Grace stood irresolute. Then she thought of +poor Grammer, and her dreams of the doctor running after her, scalpel in hand, +and the possibility of a case so curiously similar to South’s ending in +the same way; thereupon she stepped out into the drizzle. +</p> + +<p> +The nature of her errand, and Grammer Oliver’s account of the compact she +had made, lent a fascinating horror to Grace’s conception of Fitzpiers. +She knew that he was a young man; but her single object in seeking an interview +with him put all considerations of his age and social aspect from her mind. +Standing as she stood, in Grammer Oliver’s shoes, he was simply a +remorseless Jove of the sciences, who would not have mercy, and would have +sacrifice; a man whom, save for this, she would have preferred to avoid +knowing. But since, in such a small village, it was improbable that any long +time could pass without their meeting, there was not much to deplore in her +having to meet him now. +</p> + +<p> +But, as need hardly be said, Miss Melbury’s view of the doctor as a +merciless, unwavering, irresistible scientist was not quite in accordance with +fact. The real Dr. Fitzpiers was a man of too many hobbies to show likelihood +of rising to any great eminence in the profession he had chosen, or even to +acquire any wide practice in the rural district he had marked out as his field +of survey for the present. In the course of a year his mind was accustomed to +pass in a grand solar sweep through all the zodiacal signs of the intellectual +heaven. Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes in the Bull; one month he would +be immersed in alchemy, another in poesy; one month in the Twins of astrology +and astronomy; then in the Crab of German literature and metaphysics. In +justice to him it must be stated that he took such studies as were immediately +related to his own profession in turn with the rest, and it had been in a month +of anatomical ardor without the possibility of a subject that he had proposed +to Grammer Oliver the terms she had mentioned to her mistress. +</p> + +<p> +As may be inferred from the tone of his conversation with Winterborne, he had +lately plunged into abstract philosophy with much zest; perhaps his keenly +appreciative, modern, unpractical mind found this a realm more to his taste +than any other. Though his aims were desultory, Fitzpiers’s mental +constitution was not without its admirable side; a keen inquirer he honestly +was, even if the midnight rays of his lamp, visible so far through the trees of +Hintock, lighted rank literatures of emotion and passion as often as, or +oftener than, the books and <i>matériel</i> of science. +</p> + +<p> +But whether he meditated the Muses or the philosophers, the loneliness of +Hintock life was beginning to tell upon his impressionable nature. Winter in a +solitary house in the country, without society, is tolerable, nay, even +enjoyable and delightful, given certain conditions, but these are not the +conditions which attach to the life of a professional man who drops down into +such a place by mere accident. They were present to the lives of Winterborne, +Melbury, and Grace; but not to the doctor’s. They are old +association—an almost exhaustive biographical or historical acquaintance +with every object, animate and inanimate, within the observer’s horizon. +He must know all about those invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet +have traversed the fields which look so gray from his windows; recall whose +creaking plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands planted +the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose horses and hounds have +torn through that underwood; what birds affect that particular brake; what +domestic dramas of love, jealousy, revenge, or disappointment have been enacted +in the cottages, the mansion, the street, or on the green. The spot may have +beauty, grandeur, salubrity, convenience; but if it lack memories it will +ultimately pall upon him who settles there without opportunity of intercourse +with his kind. +</p> + +<p> +In such circumstances, maybe, an old man dreams of an ideal friend, till he +throws himself into the arms of any impostor who chooses to wear that title on +his face. A young man may dream of an ideal friend likewise, but some humor of +the blood will probably lead him to think rather of an ideal mistress, and at +length the rustle of a woman’s dress, the sound of her voice, or the +transit of her form across the field of his vision, will enkindle his soul with +a flame that blinds his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +The discovery of the attractive Grace’s name and family would have been +enough in other circumstances to lead the doctor, if not to put her personality +out of his head, to change the character of his interest in her. Instead of +treasuring her image as a rarity, he would at most have played with it as a +toy. He was that kind of a man. But situated here he could not go so far as +amative cruelty. He dismissed all reverential thought about her, but he could +not help taking her seriously. +</p> + +<p> +He went on to imagine the impossible. So far, indeed, did he go in this futile +direction that, as others are wont to do, he constructed dialogues and scenes +in which Grace had turned out to be the mistress of Hintock Manor-house, the +mysterious Mrs. Charmond, particularly ready and willing to be wooed by himself +and nobody else. “Well, she isn’t that,” he said, finally. +“But she’s a very sweet, nice, exceptional girl.” +</p> + +<p> +The next morning he breakfasted alone, as usual. It was snowing with a +fine-flaked desultoriness just sufficient to make the woodland gray, without +ever achieving whiteness. There was not a single letter for Fitzpiers, only a +medical circular and a weekly newspaper. +</p> + +<p> +To sit before a large fire on such mornings, and read, and gradually acquire +energy till the evening came, and then, with lamp alight, and feeling full of +vigor, to pursue some engrossing subject or other till the small hours, had +hitherto been his practice. But to-day he could not settle into his chair. That +self-contained position he had lately occupied, in which the only attention +demanded was the concentration of the inner eye, all outer regard being quite +gratuitous, seemed to have been taken by insidious stratagem, and for the first +time he had an interest outside the house. He walked from one window to +another, and became aware that the most irksome of solitudes is not the +solitude of remoteness, but that which is just outside desirable company. +</p> + +<p> +The breakfast hour went by heavily enough, and the next followed, in the same +half-snowy, half-rainy style, the weather now being the inevitable relapse +which sooner or later succeeds a time too radiant for the season, such as they +had enjoyed in the late midwinter at Hintock. To people at home there these +changeful tricks had their interests; the strange mistakes that some of the +more sanguine trees had made in budding before their month, to be incontinently +glued up by frozen thawings now; the similar sanguine errors of impulsive birds +in framing nests that were now swamped by snow-water, and other such incidents, +prevented any sense of wearisomeness in the minds of the natives. But these +were features of a world not familiar to Fitzpiers, and the inner visions to +which he had almost exclusively attended having suddenly failed in their power +to absorb him, he felt unutterably dreary. +</p> + +<p> +He wondered how long Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. The season was +unpropitious for accidental encounters with her out-of-doors, and except by +accident he saw not how they were to become acquainted. One thing was +clear—any acquaintance with her could only, with a due regard to his +future, be casual, at most of the nature of a flirtation; for he had high aims, +and they would some day lead him into other spheres than this. +</p> + +<p> +Thus desultorily thinking he flung himself down upon the couch, which, as in +many draughty old country houses, was constructed with a hood, being in fact a +legitimate development from the settle. He tried to read as he reclined, but +having sat up till three o’clock that morning, the book slipped from his +hand and he fell asleep. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2> + +<p> +It was at this time that Grace approached the house. Her knock, always soft in +virtue of her nature, was softer to-day by reason of her strange errand. +However, it was heard by the farmer’s wife who kept the house, and Grace +was admitted. Opening the door of the doctor’s room the housewife glanced +in, and imagining Fitzpiers absent, asked Miss Melbury to enter and wait a few +minutes while she should go and find him, believing him to be somewhere on the +premises. Grace acquiesced, went in, and sat down close to the door. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round the room, and started at +perceiving a handsome man snugly ensconced in the couch, like the recumbent +figure within some canopied mural tomb of the fifteenth century, except that +his hands were by no means clasped in prayer. She had no doubt that this was +the doctor. Awaken him herself she could not, and her immediate impulse was to +go and pull the broad ribbon with a brass rosette which hung at one side of the +fireplace. But expecting the landlady to re-enter in a moment she abandoned +this intention, and stood gazing in great embarrassment at the reclining +philosopher. +</p> + +<p> +The windows of Fitzpiers’s soul being at present shuttered, he probably +appeared less impressive than in his hours of animation; but the light +abstracted from his material presence by sleep was more than counterbalanced by +the mysterious influence of that state, in a stranger, upon the consciousness +of a beholder so sensitive. So far as she could criticise at all, she became +aware that she had encountered a specimen of creation altogether unusual in +that locality. The occasions on which Grace had observed men of this stamp were +when she had been far removed away from Hintock, and even then such examples as +had met her eye were at a distance, and mainly of coarser fibre than the one +who now confronted her. +</p> + +<p> +She nervously wondered why the woman had not discovered her mistake and +returned, and went again towards the bell-pull. Approaching the chimney her +back was to Fitzpiers, but she could see him in the glass. An indescribable +thrill passed through her as she perceived that the eyes of the reflected image +were open, gazing wonderingly at her, and under the curious unexpectedness of +the sight she became as if spellbound, almost powerless to turn her head and +regard the original. However, by an effort she did turn, when there he lay +asleep the same as before. +</p> + +<p> +Her startled perplexity as to what he could be meaning was sufficient to lead +her to precipitately abandon her errand. She crossed quickly to the door, +opened and closed it noiselessly, and went out of the house unobserved. By the +time that she had gone down the path and through the garden door into the lane +she had recovered her equanimity. Here, screened by the hedge, she stood and +considered a while. +</p> + +<p> +Drip, drip, drip, fell the rain upon her umbrella and around; she had come out +on such a morning because of the seriousness of the matter in hand; yet now she +had allowed her mission to be stultified by a momentary tremulousness +concerning an incident which perhaps had meant nothing after all. +</p> + +<p> +In the mean time her departure from the room, stealthy as it had been, had +roused Fitzpiers, and he sat up. In the reflection from the mirror which Grace +had beheld there was no mystery; he had opened his eyes for a few moments, but +had immediately relapsed into unconsciousness, if, indeed, he had ever been +positively awake. That somebody had just left the room he was certain, and that +the lovely form which seemed to have visited him in a dream was no less than +the real presentation of the person departed he could hardly doubt. +</p> + +<p> +Looking out of the window a few minutes later, down the box-edged gravel-path +which led to the bottom, he saw the garden door gently open, and through it +enter the young girl of his thoughts, Grace having just at this juncture +determined to return and attempt the interview a second time. That he saw her +coming instead of going made him ask himself if his first impression of her +were not a dream indeed. She came hesitatingly along, carrying her umbrella so +low over her head that he could hardly see her face. When she reached the point +where the raspberry bushes ended and the strawberry bed began, she made a +little pause. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers feared that she might not be coming to him even now, and hastily +quitting the room, he ran down the path to meet her. The nature of her errand +he could not divine, but he was prepared to give her any amount of +encouragement. +</p> + +<p> +“I beg pardon, Miss Melbury,” he said. “I saw you from the +window, and fancied you might imagine that I was not at home—if it is I +you were coming for.” +</p> + +<p> +“I was coming to speak one word to you, nothing more,” she replied. +“And I can say it here.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no. Please do come in. Well, then, if you will not come into the +house, come as far as the porch.” +</p> + +<p> +Thus pressed she went on to the porch, and they stood together inside it, +Fitzpiers closing her umbrella for her. +</p> + +<p> +“I have merely a request or petition to make,” she said. “My +father’s servant is ill—a woman you know—and her illness is +serious.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sorry to hear it. You wish me to come and see her at once?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I particularly wish you not to come.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, indeed.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; and she wishes the same. It would make her seriously worse if you +were to come. It would almost kill her....My errand is of a peculiar and +awkward nature. It is concerning a subject which weighs on her mind—that +unfortunate arrangement she made with you, that you might have her +body—after death.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! Grammer Oliver, the old woman with the fine head. Seriously ill, is +she!” +</p> + +<p> +“And <i>so</i> disturbed by her rash compact! I have brought the money +back—will you please return to her the agreement she signed?” Grace +held out to him a couple of five-pound notes which she had kept ready tucked in +her glove. +</p> + +<p> +Without replying or considering the notes, Fitzpiers allowed his thoughts to +follow his eyes, and dwell upon Grace’s personality, and the sudden close +relation in which he stood to her. The porch was narrow; the rain increased. It +ran off the porch and dripped on the creepers, and from the creepers upon the +edge of Grace’s cloak and skirts. +</p> + +<p> +“The rain is wetting your dress; please do come in,” he said. +“It really makes my heart ache to let you stay here.” +</p> + +<p> +Immediately inside the front door was the door of his sitting-room; he flung it +open, and stood in a coaxing attitude. Try how she would, Grace could not +resist the supplicatory mandate written in the face and manner of this man, and +distressful resignation sat on her as she glided past him into the +room—brushing his coat with her elbow by reason of the narrowness. +</p> + +<p> +He followed her, shut the door—which she somehow had hoped he would leave +open—and placing a chair for her, sat down. The concern which Grace felt +at the development of these commonplace incidents was, of course, mainly owing +to the strange effect upon her nerves of that view of him in the mirror gazing +at her with open eyes when she had thought him sleeping, which made her fancy +that his slumber might have been a feint based on inexplicable reasons. +</p> + +<p> +She again proffered the notes; he awoke from looking at her as at a piece of +live statuary, and listened deferentially as she said, “Will you then +reconsider, and cancel the bond which poor Grammer Oliver so foolishly +gave?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll cancel it without reconsideration. Though you will allow me +to have my own opinion about her foolishness. Grammer is a very wise woman, and +she was as wise in that as in other things. You think there was something very +fiendish in the compact, do you not, Miss Melbury? But remember that the most +eminent of our surgeons in past times have entered into such agreements.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not fiendish—strange.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, that may be, since strangeness is not in the nature of a thing, but +in its relation to something extrinsic—in this case an unessential +observer.” +</p> + +<p> +He went to his desk, and searching a while found a paper, which be unfolded and +brought to her. A thick cross appeared in ink at the bottom—evidently +from the hand of Grammer. Grace put the paper in her pocket with a look of much +relief. +</p> + +<p> +As Fitzpiers did not take up the money (half of which had come from +Grace’s own purse), she pushed it a little nearer to him. “No, no. +I shall not take it from the old woman,” he said. “It is more +strange than the fact of a surgeon arranging to obtain a subject for dissection +that our acquaintance should be formed out of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid you think me uncivil in showing my dislike to the notion. +But I did not mean to be.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, no.” He looked at her, as he had done before, with puzzled +interest. “I cannot think, I cannot think,” he murmured. +“Something bewilders me greatly.” He still reflected and hesitated. +“Last night I sat up very late,” he at last went on, “and on +that account I fell into a little nap on that couch about half an hour ago. And +during my few minutes of unconsciousness I dreamed—what do you +think?—that you stood in the room.” +</p> + +<p> +Should she tell? She merely blushed. +</p> + +<p> +“You may imagine,” Fitzpiers continued, now persuaded that it had, +indeed, been a dream, “that I should not have dreamed of you without +considerable thinking about you first.” +</p> + +<p> +He could not be acting; of that she felt assured. +</p> + +<p> +“I fancied in my vision that you stood there,” he said, pointing to +where she had paused. “I did not see you directly, but reflected in the +glass. I thought, what a lovely creature! The design is for once carried out. +Nature has at last recovered her lost union with the Idea! My thoughts ran in +that direction because I had been reading the work of a transcendental +philosopher last night; and I dare say it was the dose of Idealism that I +received from it that made me scarcely able to distinguish between reality and +fancy. I almost wept when I awoke, and found that you had appeared to me in +Time, but not in Space, alas!” +</p> + +<p> +At moments there was something theatrical in the delivery of Fitzpiers’s +effusion; yet it would have been inexact to say that it was intrinsically +theatrical. It often happens that in situations of unrestraint, where there is +no thought of the eye of criticism, real feeling glides into a mode of +manifestation not easily distinguishable from rodomontade. A veneer of +affectation overlies a bulk of truth, with the evil consequence, if perceived, +that the substance is estimated by the superficies, and the whole rejected. +</p> + +<p> +Grace, however, was no specialist in men’s manners, and she admired the +sentiment without thinking of the form. And she was embarrassed: “lovely +creature” made explanation awkward to her gentle modesty. +</p> + +<p> +“But can it be,” said he, suddenly, “that you really were +here?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have to confess that I have been in the room once before,” +faltered she. “The woman showed me in, and went away to fetch you; but as +she did not return, I left.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you saw me asleep,” he murmured, with the faintest show of +humiliation. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—<i>if</i> you were asleep, and did not deceive me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you say if?” +</p> + +<p> +“I saw your eyes open in the glass, but as they were closed when I looked +round upon you, I thought you were perhaps deceiving me. +</p> + +<p> +“Never,” said Fitzpiers, fervently—“never could I +deceive you.” +</p> + +<p> +Foreknowledge to the distance of a year or so in either of them might have +spoiled the effect of that pretty speech. Never deceive her! But they knew +nothing, and the phrase had its day. +</p> + +<p> +Grace began now to be anxious to terminate the interview, but the compelling +power of Fitzpiers’s atmosphere still held her there. She was like an +inexperienced actress who, having at last taken up her position on the boards, +and spoken her speeches, does not know how to move off. The thought of Grammer +occurred to her. “I’ll go at once and tell poor Grammer of your +generosity,” she said. “It will relieve her at once.” +</p> + +<p> +“Grammer’s a nervous disease, too—how singular!” he +answered, accompanying her to the door. “One moment; look at +this—it is something which may interest you.” +</p> + +<p> +He had thrown open the door on the other side of the passage, and she saw a +microscope on the table of the confronting room. “Look into it, please; +you’ll be interested,” he repeated. +</p> + +<p> +She applied her eye, and saw the usual circle of light patterned all over with +a cellular tissue of some indescribable sort. “What do you think that +is?” said Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +She did not know. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a fragment of old John South’s brain, which I am +investigating.” +</p> + +<p> +She started back, not with aversion, but with wonder as to how it should have +got there. Fitzpiers laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Here am I,” he said, “endeavoring to carry on simultaneously +the study of physiology and transcendental philosophy, the material world and +the ideal, so as to discover if possible a point of contrast between them; and +your finer sense is quite offended!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, Mr. Fitzpiers,” said Grace, earnestly. “It is not so +at all. I know from seeing your light at night how deeply you meditate and +work. Instead of condemning you for your studies, I admire you very +much!” +</p> + +<p> +Her face, upturned from the microscope, was so sweet, sincere, and +self-forgetful in its aspect that the susceptible Fitzpiers more than wished to +annihilate the lineal yard which separated it from his own. Whether anything of +the kind showed in his eyes or not, Grace remained no longer at the microscope, +but quickly went her way into the rain. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2> + +<p> +Instead of resuming his investigation of South’s brain, which perhaps was +not so interesting under the microscope as might have been expected from the +importance of that organ in life, Fitzpiers reclined and ruminated on the +interview. Grace’s curious susceptibility to his presence, though it was +as if the currents of her life were disturbed rather than attracted by him, +added a special interest to her general charm. Fitzpiers was in a distinct +degree scientific, being ready and zealous to interrogate all physical +manifestations, but primarily he was an idealist. He believed that behind the +imperfect lay the perfect; that rare things were to be discovered amid a bulk +of commonplace; that results in a new and untried case might be different from +those in other cases where the conditions had been precisely similar. Regarding +his own personality as one of unbounded possibilities, because it was his +own—notwithstanding that the factors of his life had worked out a sorry +product for thousands—he saw nothing but what was regular in his +discovery at Hintock of an altogether exceptional being of the other sex, who +for nobody else would have had any existence. +</p> + +<p> +One habit of Fitzpiers’s—commoner in dreamers of more advanced age +than in men of his years—was that of talking to himself. He paced round +his room with a selective tread upon the more prominent blooms of the carpet, +and murmured, “This phenomenal girl will be the light of my life while I +am at Hintock; and the special beauty of the situation is that our attitude and +relations to each other will be purely spiritual. Socially we can never be +intimate. Anything like matrimonial intentions towards her, charming as she is, +would be absurd. They would spoil the ethereal character of my regard. And, +indeed, I have other aims on the practical side of my life.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers bestowed a regulation thought on the advantageous marriage he was +bound to make with a woman of family as good as his own, and of purse much +longer. But as an object of contemplation for the present, as objective spirit +rather than corporeal presence, Grace Melbury would serve to keep his soul +alive, and to relieve the monotony of his days. +</p> + +<p> +His first notion—acquired from the mere sight of her without +converse—that of an idle and vulgar flirtation with a +timber-merchant’s pretty daughter, grated painfully upon him now that he +had found what Grace intrinsically was. Personal intercourse with such as she +could take no lower form than intellectual communion, and mutual explorations +of the world of thought. Since he could not call at her father’s, having +no practical views, cursory encounters in the lane, in the wood, coming and +going to and from church, or in passing her dwelling, were what the +acquaintance would have to feed on. +</p> + +<p> +Such anticipated glimpses of her now and then realized themselves in the event. +Rencounters of not more than a minute’s duration, frequently repeated, +will build up mutual interest, even an intimacy, in a lonely place. Theirs grew +as imperceptibly as the tree-twigs budded. There never was a particular moment +at which it could be said they became friends; yet a delicate understanding now +existed between two who in the winter had been strangers. +</p> + +<p> +Spring weather came on rather suddenly, the unsealing of buds that had long +been swollen accomplishing itself in the space of one warm night. The rush of +sap in the veins of the trees could almost be heard. The flowers of late April +took up a position unseen, and looked as if they had been blooming a long +while, though there had been no trace of them the day before yesterday; birds +began not to mind getting wet. In-door people said they had heard the +nightingale, to which out-door people replied contemptuously that they had +heard him a fortnight before. +</p> + +<p> +The young doctor’s practice being scarcely so large as a London +surgeon’s, he frequently walked in the wood. Indeed such practice as he +had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have been necessary for +developing it to exceptional proportions. One day, book in hand, he walked in a +part of the wood where the trees were mainly oaks. It was a calm afternoon, and +there was everywhere around that sign of great undertakings on the part of +vegetable nature which is apt to fill reflective human beings who are not +undertaking much themselves with a sudden uneasiness at the contrast. He heard +in the distance a curious sound, something like the quack of a duck, which, +though it was common enough here about this time, was not common to him. +</p> + +<p> +Looking through the trees Fitzpiers soon perceived the origin of the noise. The +barking season had just commenced, and what he had heard was the tear of the +ripping tool as it ploughed its way along the sticky parting between the trunk +and the rind. Melbury did a large business in bark, and as he was Grace’s +father, and possibly might be found on the spot, Fitzpiers was attracted to the +scene even more than he might have been by its intrinsic interest. When he got +nearer he recognized among the workmen the two Timothys, and Robert Creedle, +who probably had been “lent” by Winterborne; Marty South also +assisted. +</p> + +<p> +Each tree doomed to this flaying process was first attacked by Creedle. With a +small billhook he carefully freed the collar of the tree from twigs and patches +of moss which incrusted it to a height of a foot or two above the ground, an +operation comparable to the “little toilet” of the +executioner’s victim. After this it was barked in its erect position to a +point as high as a man could reach. If a fine product of vegetable nature could +ever be said to look ridiculous it was the case now, when the oak stood +naked-legged, and as if ashamed, till the axe-man came and cut a ring round it, +and the two Timothys finished the work with the crosscut-saw. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as it had fallen the barkers attacked it like locusts, and in a short +time not a particle of rind was left on the trunk and larger limbs. Marty South +was an adept at peeling the upper parts, and there she stood encaged amid the +mass of twigs and buds like a great bird, running her tool into the smallest +branches, beyond the farthest points to which the skill and patience of the men +enabled them to proceed—branches which, in their lifetime, had swayed +high above the bulk of the wood, and caught the latest and earliest rays of the +sun and moon while the lower part of the forest was still in darkness. +</p> + +<p> +“You seem to have a better instrument than they, Marty,” said +Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +“No, sir,” she said, holding up the tool—a horse’s +leg-bone fitted into a handle and filed to an edge—“’tis only +that they’ve less patience with the twigs, because their time is worth +more than mine.” +</p> + +<p> +A little shed had been constructed on the spot, of thatched hurdles and boughs, +and in front of it was a fire, over which a kettle sung. Fitzpiers sat down +inside the shelter, and went on with his reading, except when he looked up to +observe the scene and the actors. The thought that he might settle here and +become welded in with this sylvan life by marrying Grace Melbury crossed his +mind for a moment. Why should he go farther into the world than where he was? +The secret of quiet happiness lay in limiting the ideas and aspirations; these +men’s thoughts were conterminous with the margin of the Hintock +woodlands, and why should not his be likewise limited—a small practice +among the people around him being the bound of his desires? +</p> + +<p> +Presently Marty South discontinued her operations upon the quivering boughs, +came out from the reclining oak, and prepared tea. When it was ready the men +were called; and Fitzpiers being in a mood to join, sat down with them. +</p> + +<p> +The latent reason of his lingering here so long revealed itself when the faint +creaking of the joints of a vehicle became audible, and one of the men said, +“Here’s he.” Turning their heads they saw Melbury’s gig +approaching, the wheels muffled by the yielding moss. +</p> + +<p> +The timber-merchant was on foot leading the horse, looking back at every few +steps to caution his daughter, who kept her seat, where and how to duck her +head so as to avoid the overhanging branches. They stopped at the spot where +the bark-ripping had been temporarily suspended; Melbury cursorily examined the +heaps of bark, and drawing near to where the workmen were sitting down, +accepted their shouted invitation to have a dish of tea, for which purpose he +hitched the horse to a bough. Grace declined to take any of their beverage, and +remained in her place in the vehicle, looking dreamily at the sunlight that +came in thin threads through the hollies with which the oaks were interspersed. +</p> + +<p> +When Melbury stepped up close to the shelter, he for the first time perceived +that the doctor was present, and warmly appreciated Fitzpiers’s +invitation to sit down on the log beside him. +</p> + +<p> +“Bless my heart, who would have thought of finding you here,” he +said, obviously much pleased at the circumstance. “I wonder now if my +daughter knows you are so nigh at hand. I don’t expect she do.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked out towards the gig wherein Grace sat, her face still turned in the +opposite direction. “She doesn’t see us. Well, never mind: let her +be.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace was indeed quite unconscious of Fitzpiers’s propinquity. She was +thinking of something which had little connection with the scene before +her—thinking of her friend, lost as soon as found, Mrs. Charmond; of her +capricious conduct, and of the contrasting scenes she was possibly enjoying at +that very moment in other climes, to which Grace herself had hoped to be +introduced by her friend’s means. She wondered if this patronizing lady +would return to Hintock during the summer, and whether the acquaintance which +had been nipped on the last occasion of her residence there would develop on +the next. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury told ancient timber-stories as he sat, relating them directly to +Fitzpiers, and obliquely to the men, who had heard them often before. Marty, +who poured out tea, was just saying, “I think I’ll take out a cup +to Miss Grace,” when they heard a clashing of the gig-harness, and +turning round Melbury saw that the horse had become restless, and was jerking +about the vehicle in a way which alarmed its occupant, though she refrained +from screaming. Melbury jumped up immediately, but not more quickly than +Fitzpiers; and while her father ran to the horse’s head and speedily +began to control him, Fitzpiers was alongside the gig assisting Grace to +descend. Her surprise at his appearance was so great that, far from making a +calm and independent descent, she was very nearly lifted down in his arms. He +relinquished her when she touched ground, and hoped she was not frightened. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, not much,” she managed to say. “There was no +danger—unless he had run under the trees where the boughs are low enough +to hit my head.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which was by no means an impossibility, and justifies any amount of +alarm.” +</p> + +<p> +He referred to what he thought he saw written in her face, and she could not +tell him that this had little to do with the horse, but much with himself. His +contiguity had, in fact, the same effect upon her as on those former occasions +when he had come closer to her than usual—that of producing in her an +unaccountable tendency to tearfulness. Melbury soon put the horse to rights, +and seeing that Grace was safe, turned again to the work-people. His +daughter’s nervous distress had passed off in a few moments, and she said +quite gayly to Fitzpiers as she walked with him towards the group, +“There’s destiny in it, you see. I was doomed to join in your +picnic, although I did not intend to do so.” +</p> + +<p> +Marty prepared her a comfortable place, and she sat down in the circle, and +listened to Fitzpiers while he drew from her father and the bark-rippers sundry +narratives of their fathers’, their grandfathers’, and their own +adventures in these woods; of the mysterious sights they had seen—only to +be accounted for by supernatural agency; of white witches and black witches; +and the standard story of the spirits of the two brothers who had fought and +fallen, and had haunted Hintock House till they were exorcised by the priest, +and compelled to retreat to a swamp in this very wood, whence they were +returning to their old quarters at the rate of a cock’s stride every +New-year’s Day, old style; hence the local saying, “On +New-year’s tide, a cock’s stride.” +</p> + +<p> +It was a pleasant time. The smoke from the little fire of peeled sticks rose +between the sitters and the sunlight, and behind its blue veil stretched the +naked arms of the prostrate trees. The smell of the uncovered sap mingled with +the smell of the burning wood, and the sticky inner surface of the scattered +bark glistened as it revealed its pale madder hues to the eye. Melbury was so +highly satisfied at having Fitzpiers as a sort of guest that he would have sat +on for any length of time, but Grace, on whom Fitzpiers’s eyes only too +frequently alighted, seemed to think it incumbent upon her to make a show of +going; and her father thereupon accompanied her to the vehicle. +</p> + +<p> +As the doctor had helped her out of it he appeared to think that he had +excellent reasons for helping her in, and performed the attention lingeringly +enough. +</p> + +<p> +“What were you almost in tears about just now?” he asked, softly. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she said: and the words were strictly true. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury mounted on the other side, and they drove on out of the grove, their +wheels silently crushing delicate-patterned mosses, hyacinths, primroses, +lords-and-ladies, and other strange and ordinary plants, and cracking up little +sticks that lay across the track. Their way homeward ran along the crest of a +lofty hill, whence on the right they beheld a wide valley, differing both in +feature and atmosphere from that of the Hintock precincts. It was the cider +country, which met the woodland district on the axis of this hill. Over the +vale the air was blue as sapphire—such a blue as outside that +apple-valley was never seen. Under the blue the orchards were in a blaze of +bloom, some of the richly flowered trees running almost up to where they drove +along. Over a gate which opened down the incline a man leaned on his arms, +regarding this fair promise so intently that he did not observe their passing. +</p> + +<p> +“That was Giles,” said Melbury, when they had gone by. +</p> + +<p> +“Was it? Poor Giles,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and his hands. If no +blight happens before the setting the apple yield will be such as we have not +had for years.” +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, in the wood they had come from, the men had sat on so long that they +were indisposed to begin work again that evening; they were paid by the ton, +and their time for labor was as they chose. They placed the last gatherings of +bark in rows for the curers, which led them farther and farther away from the +shed; and thus they gradually withdrew as the sun went down. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers lingered yet. He had opened his book again, though he could hardly +see a word in it, and sat before the dying fire, scarcely knowing of the +men’s departure. He dreamed and mused till his consciousness seemed to +occupy the whole space of the woodland around, so little was there of jarring +sight or sound to hinder perfect unity with the sentiment of the place. The +idea returned upon him of sacrificing all practical aims to live in calm +contentment here, and instead of going on elaborating new conceptions with +infinite pains, to accept quiet domesticity according to oldest and homeliest +notions. These reflections detained him till the wood was embrowned with the +coming night, and the shy little bird of this dusky time had begun to pour out +all the intensity of his eloquence from a bush not very far off. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers’s eyes commanded as much of the ground in front as was open. +Entering upon this he saw a figure, whose direction of movement was towards the +spot where he sat. The surgeon was quite shrouded from observation by the +recessed shadow of the hut, and there was no reason why he should move till the +stranger had passed by. The shape resolved itself into a woman’s; she was +looking on the ground, and walking slowly as if searching for something that +had been lost, her course being precisely that of Mr. Melbury’s gig. +Fitzpiers by a sort of divination jumped to the idea that the figure was +Grace’s; her nearer approach made the guess a certainty. +</p> + +<p> +Yes, she was looking for something; and she came round by the prostrate trees +that would have been invisible but for the white nakedness which enabled her to +avoid them easily. Thus she approached the heap of ashes, and acting upon what +was suggested by a still shining ember or two, she took a stick and stirred the +heap, which thereupon burst into a flame. On looking around by the light thus +obtained she for the first time saw the illumined face of Fitzpiers, precisely +in the spot where she had left him. +</p> + +<p> +Grace gave a start and a scream: the place had been associated with him in her +thoughts, but she had not expected to find him there still. Fitzpiers lost not +a moment in rising and going to her side. +</p> + +<p> +“I frightened you dreadfully, I know,” he said. “I ought to +have spoken; but I did not at first expect it to be you. I have been sitting +here ever since.” +</p> + +<p> +He was actually supporting her with his arm, as though under the impression +that she was quite overcome, and in danger of falling. As soon as she could +collect her ideas she gently withdrew from his grasp, and explained what she +had returned for: in getting up or down from the gig, or when sitting by the +hut fire, she had dropped her purse. +</p> + +<p> +“Now we will find it,” said Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +He threw an armful of last year’s leaves on to the fire, which made the +flame leap higher, and the encompassing shades to weave themselves into a +denser contrast, turning eve into night in a moment. By this radiance they +groped about on their hands and knees, till Fitzpiers rested on his elbow, and +looked at Grace. “We must always meet in odd circumstances,” he +said; “and this is one of the oddest. I wonder if it means +anything?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, I am sure it doesn’t,” said Grace in haste, quickly +assuming an erect posture. “Pray don’t say it any more.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope there was not much money in the purse,” said Fitzpiers, +rising to his feet more slowly, and brushing the leaves from his trousers. +</p> + +<p> +“Scarcely any. I cared most about the purse itself, because it was given +me. Indeed, money is of little more use at Hintock than on Crusoe’s +island; there’s hardly any way of spending it.” +</p> + +<p> +They had given up the search when Fitzpiers discerned something by his foot. +“Here it is,” he said, “so that your father, mother, friend, +or <i>admirer</i> will not have his or her feelings hurt by a sense of your +negligence after all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, he knows nothing of what I do now.” +</p> + +<p> +“The admirer?” said Fitzpiers, slyly. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know if you would call him that,” said Grace, with +simplicity. “The admirer is a superficial, conditional creature, and this +person is quite different.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has all the cardinal virtues.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps—though I don’t know them precisely.” +</p> + +<p> +“You unconsciously practise them, Miss Melbury, which is better. +According to Schleiermacher they are Self-control, Perseverance, Wisdom, and +Love; and his is the best list that I know.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid poor—” She was going to say that she feared +Winterborne—the giver of the purse years before—had not much +perseverance, though he had all the other three; but she determined to go no +further in this direction, and was silent. +</p> + +<p> +These half-revelations made a perceptible difference in Fitzpiers. His sense of +personal superiority wasted away, and Grace assumed in his eyes the true aspect +of a mistress in her lover’s regard. +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Melbury,” he said, suddenly, “I divine that this +virtuous man you mention has been refused by you?” +</p> + +<p> +She could do no otherwise than admit it. +</p> + +<p> +“I do not inquire without good reason. God forbid that I should kneel in +another’s place at any shrine unfairly. But, my dear Miss Melbury, now +that he is gone, may I draw near?” +</p> + +<p> +“I—I can’t say anything about that!” she cried, +quickly. “Because when a man has been refused you feel pity for him, and +like him more than you did before.” +</p> + +<p> +This increasing complication added still more value to Grace in the +surgeon’s eyes: it rendered her adorable. “But cannot you +say?” he pleaded, distractedly. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d rather not—I think I must go home at once.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” said Fitzpiers. But as he did not move she felt it +awkward to walk straight away from him; and so they stood silently together. A +diversion was created by the accident of two birds, that had either been +roosting above their heads or nesting there, tumbling one over the other into +the hot ashes at their feet, apparently engrossed in a desperate quarrel that +prevented the use of their wings. They speedily parted, however, and flew up, +and were seen no more. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the end of what is called love!” said some one. +</p> + +<p> +The speaker was neither Grace nor Fitzpiers, but Marty South, who approached +with her face turned up to the sky in her endeavor to trace the birds. Suddenly +perceiving Grace, she exclaimed, “Oh, Miss Melbury! I have been following +they pigeons, and didn’t see you. And here’s Mr. +Winterborne!” she continued, shyly, as she looked towards Fitzpiers, who +stood in the background. +</p> + +<p> +“Marty,” Grace interrupted. “I want you to walk home with +me—will you? Come along.” And without lingering longer she took +hold of Marty’s arm and led her away. +</p> + +<p> +They went between the spectral arms of the peeled trees as they lay, and onward +among the growing trees, by a path where there were no oaks, and no barking, +and no Fitzpiers—nothing but copse-wood, between which the primroses +could be discerned in pale bunches. “I didn’t know Mr. Winterborne +was there,” said Marty, breaking the silence when they had nearly reached +Grace’s door. +</p> + +<p> +“Nor was he,” said Grace. +</p> + +<p> +“But, Miss Melbury, I saw him.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Grace. “It was somebody else. Giles Winterborne is +nothing to me.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2> + +<p> +The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the woodland seemed +to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque body of infinitely larger +shape and importance. The boughs cast green shades, which hurt the complexion +of the girls who walked there; and a fringe of them which overhung Mr. +Melbury’s garden dripped on his seed-plots when it rained, pitting their +surface all over as with pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in such +a place were no good at all. The two trees that had creaked all the winter left +off creaking, the whir of the night-jar, however, forming a very satisfactory +continuation of uncanny music from that quarter. Except at mid-day the sun was +not seen complete by the Hintock people, but rather in the form of numerous +little stars staring through the leaves. +</p> + +<p> +Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as the hour grew +later, and nine o’clock drew on, the irradiation of the daytime became +broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of indistinctness. Imagination +could trace upon the trunks and boughs strange faces and figures shaped by the +dying lights; the surfaces of the holly-leaves would here and there shine like +peeping eyes, while such fragments of the sky as were visible between the +trunks assumed the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven tongues. This was before +the moonrise. Later on, when that planet was getting command of the upper +heaven, and consequently shining with an unbroken face into such open glades as +there were in the neighborhood of the hamlet, it became apparent that the +margin of the wood which approached the timber-merchant’s premises was +not to be left to the customary stillness of that reposeful time. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers having heard a voice or voices, was looking over his garden +gate—where he now looked more frequently than into his +books—fancying that Grace might be abroad with some friends. He was now +irretrievably committed in heart to Grace Melbury, though he was by no means +sure that she was so far committed to him. That the Idea had for once +completely fulfilled itself in the objective substance—which he had +hitherto deemed an impossibility—he was enchanted enough to fancy must be +the case at last. It was not Grace who had passed, however, but several of the +ordinary village girls in a group—some steadily walking, some in a mood +of wild gayety. He quietly asked his landlady, who was also in the garden, what +these girls were intending, and she informed him that it being Old Midsummer +Eve, they were about to attempt some spell or enchantment which would afford +them a glimpse of their future partners for life. She declared it to be an +ungodly performance, and one which she for her part would never countenance; +saying which, she entered her house and retired to bed. +</p> + +<p> +The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of maidens slowly up the road. +They had turned into the wood at an opening between Melbury’s and Marty +South’s; but Fitzpiers could easily track them by their voices, low as +they endeavored to keep their tones. +</p> + +<p> +In the mean time other inhabitants of Little Hintock had become aware of the +nocturnal experiment about to be tried, and were also sauntering stealthily +after the frisky maidens. Miss Melbury had been informed by Marty South during +the day of the proposed peep into futurity, and, being only a girl like the +rest, she was sufficiently interested to wish to see the issue. The moon was so +bright and the night so calm that she had no difficulty in persuading Mrs. +Melbury to accompany her; and thus, joined by Marty, these went onward in the +same direction. +</p> + +<p> +Passing Winterborne’s house, they heard a noise of hammering. Marty +explained it. This was the last night on which his paternal roof would shelter +him, the days of grace since it fell into hand having expired; and Giles was +taking down his cupboards and bedsteads with a view to an early exit next +morning. His encounter with Mrs. Charmond had cost him dearly. +</p> + +<p> +When they had proceeded a little farther Marty was joined by Grammer Oliver +(who was as young as the youngest in such matters), and Grace and Mrs. Melbury +went on by themselves till they had arrived at the spot chosen by the village +daughters, whose primary intention of keeping their expedition a secret had +been quite defeated. Grace and her step-mother paused by a holly-tree; and at a +little distance stood Fitzpiers under the shade of a young oak, intently +observing Grace, who was in the full rays of the moon. +</p> + +<p> +He watched her without speaking, and unperceived by any but Marty and Grammer, +who had drawn up on the dark side of the same holly which sheltered Mrs. and +Miss Melbury on its bright side. The two former conversed in low tones. +</p> + +<p> +“If they two come up in Wood next Midsummer Night they’ll come as +one,” said Grammer, signifying Fitzpiers and Grace. “Instead of my +skellington he’ll carry home her living carcass before long. But though +she’s a lady in herself, and worthy of any such as he, it do seem to me +that he ought to marry somebody more of the sort of Mrs. Charmond, and that +Miss Grace should make the best of Winterborne.” +</p> + +<p> +Marty returned no comment; and at that minute the girls, some of whom were from +Great Hintock, were seen advancing to work the incantation, it being now about +midnight. +</p> + +<p> +“Directly we see anything we’ll run home as fast as we can,” +said one, whose courage had begun to fail her. To this the rest assented, not +knowing that a dozen neighbors lurked in the bushes around. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish we had not thought of trying this,” said another, +“but had contented ourselves with the hole-digging to-morrow at twelve, +and hearing our husbands’ trades. It is too much like having dealings +with the Evil One to try to raise their forms.” +</p> + +<p> +However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly began to march forward in +a skirmishing line through the trees towards the deeper recesses of the wood. +As far as the listeners could gather, the particular form of black-art to be +practised on this occasion was one connected with the sowing of hemp-seed, a +handful of which was carried by each girl. At the moment of their advance they +looked back, and discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who, alone of all the +observers, stood in the full face of the moonlight, deeply engrossed in the +proceedings. By contrast with her life of late years they made her feel as if +she had receded a couple of centuries in the world’s history. She was +rendered doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and after a few whispered +words, one of the girls—a bouncing maiden, plighted to young Timothy +Tangs—asked her if she would join in. Grace, with some excitement, said +that she would, and moved on a little in the rear of the rest. +</p> + +<p> +Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceedings beyond the faintest +occasional rustle of leaves. Grammer whispered again to Marty: “Why +didn’t ye go and try your luck with the rest of the maids?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe in it,” said Marty, shortly. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, half the parish is here—the silly hussies should have kept it +quiet. I see Mr. Winterborne through the leaves, just come up with Robert +Creedle. Marty, we ought to act the part o’ Providence sometimes. Do go +and tell him that if he stands just behind the bush at the bottom of the slope, +Miss Grace must pass down it when she comes back, and she will most likely rush +into his arms; for as soon as the clock strikes, they’ll bundle back +home—along like hares. I’ve seen such larries before.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think I’d better?” said Marty, reluctantly. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, he’ll bless ye for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want that kind of blessing.” But after a +moment’s thought she went and delivered the information; and Grammer had +the satisfaction of seeing Giles walk slowly to the bend in the leafy defile +along which Grace would have to return. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had perceived Fitzpiers and +Winterborne, and also the move of the latter. An improvement on Grammer’s +idea entered the mind of Mrs. Melbury, for she had lately discerned what her +husband had not—that Grace was rapidly fascinating the surgeon. She +therefore drew near to Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +“You should be where Mr. Winterborne is standing,” she said to him, +significantly. “She will run down through that opening much faster than +she went up it, if she is like the rest of the girls.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice. He went across to Winterborne and +stood beside him. Each knew the probable purpose of the other in standing +there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers scorning to look upon Winterborne as a +rival, and Winterborne adhering to the off-hand manner of indifference which +had grown upon him since his dismissal. +</p> + +<p> +Neither Grammer nor Marty South had seen the surgeon’s manoeuvre, and, +still to help Winterborne, as she supposed, the old woman suggested to the +wood-girl that she should walk forward at the heels of Grace, and +“tole” her down the required way if she showed a tendency to run in +another direction. Poor Marty, always doomed to sacrifice desire to obligation, +walked forward accordingly, and waited as a beacon, still and silent, for the +retreat of Grace and her giddy companions, now quite out of hearing. +</p> + +<p> +The first sound to break the silence was the distant note of Great Hintock +clock striking the significant hour. About a minute later that quarter of the +wood to which the girls had wandered resounded with the flapping of disturbed +birds; then two or three hares and rabbits bounded down the glade from the same +direction, and after these the rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs +denoted the hurried approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gowns soon +became visible. Miss Melbury, having gone forward quite in the rear of the +rest, was one of the first to return, and the excitement being contagious, she +ran laughing towards Marty, who still stood as a hand-post to guide her; then, +passing on, she flew round the fatal bush where the undergrowth narrowed to a +gorge. Marty arrived at her heels just in time to see the result. Fitzpiers had +quickly stepped forward in front of Winterborne, who, disdaining to shift his +position, had turned on his heel, and then the surgeon did what he would not +have thought of doing but for Mrs. Melbury’s encouragement and the +sentiment of an eve which effaced conventionality. Stretching out his arms as +the white figure burst upon him, he captured her in a moment, as if she had +been a bird. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” cried Grace, in her fright. +</p> + +<p> +“You are in my arms, dearest,” said Fitzpiers, “and I am +going to claim you, and keep you there all our two lives!” +</p> + +<p> +She rested on him like one utterly mastered, and it was several seconds before +she recovered from this helplessness. Subdued screams and struggles, audible +from neighboring brakes, revealed that there had been other lurkers thereabout +for a similar purpose. Grace, unlike most of these companions of hers, instead +of gasping and writhing, said in a trembling voice, “Mr. Fitzpiers, will +you let me go?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly,” he said, laughing; “as soon as you have +recovered.” +</p> + +<p> +She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly pushed him aside, and +glided on her path, the moon whitening her hot blush away. But it had been +enough—new relations between them had begun. +</p> + +<p> +The case of the other girls was different, as has been said. They wrestled and +tittered, only escaping after a desperate struggle. Fitzpiers could hear these +enactments still going on after Grace had left him, and he remained on the spot +where he had caught her, Winterborne having gone away. On a sudden another girl +came bounding down the same descent that had been followed by Grace—a +fine-framed young woman with naked arms. Seeing Fitzpiers standing there, she +said, with playful effrontery, “May’st kiss me if ‘canst +catch me, Tim!” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers recognized her as Suke Damson, a hoydenish damsel of the hamlet, who +was plainly mistaking him for her lover. He was impulsively disposed to profit +by her error, and as soon as she began racing away he started in pursuit. +</p> + +<p> +On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking over her +shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand; but so cunningly +dodging about among the trees and moon-shades that she never allowed him to get +dangerously near her. Thus they ran and doubled, Fitzpiers warming with the +chase, till the sound of their companions had quite died away. He began to lose +hope of ever overtaking her, when all at once, by way of encouragement, she +turned to a fence in which there was a stile and leaped over it. Outside the +scene was a changed one—a meadow, where the half-made hay lay about in +heaps, in the uninterrupted shine of the now high moon. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers saw in a moment that, having taken to open ground, she had placed +herself at his mercy, and he promptly vaulted over after her. She flitted a +little way down the mead, when all at once her light form disappeared as if it +had sunk into the earth. She had buried herself in one of the hay-cocks. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let her escape him thus. He +approached, and set about turning over the heaps one by one. As soon as he +paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was directed anew by an imitative kiss which +came from her hiding-place, and by snatches of a local ballad in the smallest +voice she could assume: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“O come in from the foggy, foggy dew.” +</p> + +<p> +In a minute or two he uncovered her. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, ’tis not Tim!” said she, burying her face. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason of its mildness, +stooped and imprinted the purposed kiss, then sunk down on the next hay-cock, +panting with his race. +</p> + +<p> +“Whom do you mean by Tim?” he asked, presently. +</p> + +<p> +“My young man, Tim Tangs,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, honor bright, did you really think it was he?” +</p> + +<p> +“I did at first.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you didn’t at last?” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t at last.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you much mind that it was not?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she answered, slyly. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning. In the moonlight Suke looked very +beautiful, the scratches and blemishes incidental to her out-door occupation +being invisible under these pale rays. While they remain silent the coarse whir +of the eternal night-jar burst sarcastically from the top of a tree at the +nearest corner of the wood. Besides this not a sound of any kind reached their +ears, the time of nightingales being now past, and Hintock lying at a distance +of two miles at least. In the opposite direction the hay-field stretched away +into remoteness till it was lost to the eye in a soft mist. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2> + +<p> +When the general stampede occurred Winterborne had also been looking on, and +encountering one of the girls, had asked her what caused them all to fly. +</p> + +<p> +She said with solemn breathlessness that they had seen something very different +from what they had hoped to see, and that she for one would never attempt such +unholy ceremonies again. “We saw Satan pursuing us with his hour-glass. +It was terrible!” +</p> + +<p> +This account being a little incoherent, Giles went forward towards the spot +from which the girls had retreated. After listening there a few minutes he +heard slow footsteps rustling over the leaves, and looking through a tangled +screen of honeysuckle which hung from a bough, he saw in the open space beyond +a short stout man in evening-dress, carrying on one arm a light overcoat and +also his hat, so awkwardly arranged as possibly to have suggested the +“hour-glass” to his timid observers—if this were the person +whom the girls had seen. With the other hand he silently gesticulated and the +moonlight falling upon his bare brow showed him to have dark hair and a high +forehead of the shape seen oftener in old prints and paintings than in real +life. His curious and altogether alien aspect, his strange gestures, like those +of one who is rehearsing a scene to himself, and the unusual place and hour, +were sufficient to account for any trepidation among the Hintock daughters at +encountering him. +</p> + +<p> +He paused, and looked round, as if he had forgotten where he was; not observing +Giles, who was of the color of his environment. The latter advanced into the +light. The gentleman held up his hand and came towards Giles, the two meeting +half-way. +</p> + +<p> +“I have lost my way,” said the stranger. “Perhaps you can put +me in the path again.” He wiped his forehead with the air of one +suffering under an agitation more than that of simple fatigue. +</p> + +<p> +“The turnpike-road is over there,” said Giles +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want the turnpike-road,” said the gentleman, +impatiently. “I came from that. I want Hintock House. Is there not a path +to it across here?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, yes, a sort of path. But it is hard to find from this point. +I’ll show you the way, sir, with great pleasure.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks, my good friend. The truth is that I decided to walk across the +country after dinner from the hotel at Sherton, where I am staying for a day or +two. But I did not know it was so far.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is about a mile to the house from here.” +</p> + +<p> +They walked on together. As there was no path, Giles occasionally stepped in +front and bent aside the underboughs of the trees to give his companion a +passage, saying every now and then when the twigs, on being released, flew back +like whips, “Mind your eyes, sir.” To which the stranger replied, +“Yes, yes,” in a preoccupied tone. +</p> + +<p> +So they went on, the leaf-shadows running in their usual quick succession over +the forms of the pedestrians, till the stranger said, +</p> + +<p> +“Is it far?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not much farther,” said Winterborne. “The plantation runs up +into a corner here, close behind the house.” He added with hesitation, +“You know, I suppose, sir, that Mrs. Charmond is not at home?” +</p> + +<p> +“You mistake,” said the other, quickly. “Mrs. Charmond has +been away for some time, but she’s at home now.” +</p> + +<p> +Giles did not contradict him, though he felt sure that the gentleman was wrong. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a native of this place?” the stranger said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you are happy in having a home. It is what I don’t +possess.” +</p> + +<p> +“You come from far, seemingly?” +</p> + +<p> +“I come now from the south of Europe.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, indeed, sir. You are an Italian, or Spanish, or French gentleman, +perhaps?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not either.” +</p> + +<p> +Giles did not fill the pause which ensued, and the gentleman, who seemed of an +emotional nature, unable to resist friendship, at length answered the question. +</p> + +<p> +“I am an Italianized American, a South Carolinian by birth,” he +said. “I left my native country on the failure of the Southern cause, and +have never returned to it since.” +</p> + +<p> +He spoke no more about himself, and they came to the verge of the wood. Here, +striding over the fence out upon the upland sward, they could at once see the +chimneys of the house in the gorge immediately beneath their position, silent, +still, and pale. +</p> + +<p> +“Can you tell me the time?” the gentleman asked. “My watch +has stopped.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is between twelve and one,” said Giles. +</p> + +<p> +His companion expressed his astonishment. “I thought it between nine and +ten at latest! Dear me—dear me!” +</p> + +<p> +He now begged Giles to return, and offered him a gold coin, which looked like a +sovereign, for the assistance rendered. Giles declined to accept anything, to +the surprise of the stranger, who, on putting the money back into his pocket, +said, awkwardly, “I offered it because I want you to utter no word about +this meeting with me. Will you promise?” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne promised readily. He thereupon stood still while the other ascended +the slope. At the bottom he looked back dubiously. Giles would no longer remain +when he was so evidently desired to leave, and returned through the boughs to +Hintock. +</p> + +<p> +He suspected that this man, who seemed so distressed and melancholy, might be +that lover and persistent wooer of Mrs. Charmond whom he had heard so +frequently spoken of, and whom it was said she had treated cavalierly. But he +received no confirmation of his suspicion beyond a report which reached him a +few days later that a gentleman had called up the servants who were taking care +of Hintock House at an hour past midnight; and on learning that Mrs. Charmond, +though returned from abroad, was as yet in London, he had sworn bitterly, and +gone away without leaving a card or any trace of himself. +</p> + +<p> +The girls who related the story added that he sighed three times before he +swore, but this part of the narrative was not corroborated. Anyhow, such a +gentleman had driven away from the hotel at Sherton next day in a carriage +hired at that inn. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2> + +<p> +The sunny, leafy week which followed the tender doings of Midsummer Eve brought +a visitor to Fitzpiers’s door; a voice that he knew sounded in the +passage. Mr. Melbury had called. At first he had a particular objection to +enter the parlor, because his boots were dusty, but as the surgeon insisted he +waived the point and came in. +</p> + +<p> +Looking neither to the right nor to the left, hardly at Fitzpiers himself, he +put his hat under his chair, and with a preoccupied gaze at the floor, he said, +“I’ve called to ask you, doctor, quite privately, a question that +troubles me. I’ve a daughter, Grace, an only daughter, as you may have +heard. Well, she’s been out in the dew—on Midsummer Eve in +particular she went out in thin slippers to watch some vagary of the Hintock +maids—and she’s got a cough, a distinct hemming and hacking, that +makes me uneasy. Now, I have decided to send her away to some seaside place for +a change—” +</p> + +<p> +“Send her away!” Fitzpiers’s countenance had fallen. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. And the question is, where would you advise me to send her?” +</p> + +<p> +The timber-merchant had happened to call at a moment when Fitzpiers was at the +spring-tide of a sentiment that Grace was a necessity of his existence. The +sudden pressure of her form upon his breast as she came headlong round the bush +had never ceased to linger with him, ever since he adopted the manoeuvre for +which the hour and the moonlight and the occasion had been the only excuse. Now +she was to be sent away. Ambition? it could be postponed. Family? culture and +reciprocity of tastes had taken the place of family nowadays. He allowed +himself to be carried forward on the wave of his desire. +</p> + +<p> +“How strange, how very strange it is,” he said, “that you +should have come to me about her just now. I have been thinking every day of +coming to you on the very same errand.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!—you have noticed, too, that her health——” +</p> + +<p> +“I have noticed nothing the matter with her health, because there is +nothing. But, Mr. Melbury, I have seen your daughter several times by accident. +I have admired her infinitely, and I was coming to ask you if I may become +better acquainted with her—pay my addresses to her?” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury was looking down as he listened, and did not see the air of +half-misgiving at his own rashness that spread over Fitzpiers’s face as +he made this declaration. +</p> + +<p> +“You have—got to know her?” said Melbury, a spell of dead +silence having preceded his utterance, during which his emotion rose with +almost visible effect. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +“And you wish to become better acquainted with her? You mean with a view +to marriage—of course that is what you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said the young man. “I mean, get acquainted with her, +with a view to being her accepted lover; and if we suited each other, what +would naturally follow.” +</p> + +<p> +The timber-merchant was much surprised, and fairly agitated; his hand trembled +as he laid by his walking-stick. “This takes me unawares,” said he, +his voice wellnigh breaking down. “I don’t mean that there is +anything unexpected in a gentleman being attracted by her; but it did not occur +to me that it would be you. I always said,” continued he, with a lump in +his throat, “that my Grace would make a mark at her own level some day. +That was why I educated her. I said to myself, ‘I’ll do it, cost +what it may;’ though her mother-law was pretty frightened at my paying +out so much money year after year. I knew it would tell in the end. +‘Where you’ve not good material to work on, such doings would be +waste and vanity,’ I said. ‘But where you have that material it is +sure to be worth while.’” +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad you don’t object,” said Fitzpiers, almost wishing +that Grace had not been quite so cheap for him. +</p> + +<p> +“If she is willing I don’t object, certainly. Indeed,” added +the honest man, “it would be deceit if I were to pretend to feel anything +else than highly honored personally; and it is a great credit to her to have +drawn to her a man of such good professional station and venerable old family. +That huntsman-fellow little thought how wrong he was about her! Take her and +welcome, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll endeavor to ascertain her mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes. But she will be agreeable, I should think. She ought to +be.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope she may. Well, now you’ll expect to see me +frequently.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes. But, name it all—about her cough, and her going away. I +had quite forgot that that was what I came about.” +</p> + +<p> +“I assure you,” said the surgeon, “that her cough can only be +the result of a slight cold, and it is not necessary to banish her to any +seaside place at all.” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury looked unconvinced, doubting whether he ought to take Fitzpiers’s +professional opinion in circumstances which naturally led him to wish to keep +her there. The doctor saw this, and honestly dreading to lose sight of her, he +said, eagerly, “Between ourselves, if I am successful with her I will +take her away myself for a month or two, as soon as we are married, which I +hope will be before the chilly weather comes on. This will be so very much +better than letting her go now.” +</p> + +<p> +The proposal pleased Melbury much. There could be hardly any danger in +postponing any desirable change of air as long as the warm weather lasted, and +for such a reason. Suddenly recollecting himself, he said, “Your time +must be precious, doctor. I’ll get home-along. I am much obliged to ye. +As you will see her often, you’ll discover for yourself if anything +serious is the matter.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can assure you it is nothing,” said Fitzpiers, who had seen +Grace much oftener already than her father knew of. +</p> + +<p> +When he was gone Fitzpiers paused, silent, registering his sensations, like a +man who has made a plunge for a pearl into a medium of which he knows not the +density or temperature. But he had done it, and Grace was the sweetest girl +alive. +</p> + +<p> +As for the departed visitor, his own last words lingered in Melbury’s +ears as he walked homeward; he felt that what he had said in the emotion of the +moment was very stupid, ungenteel, and unsuited to a dialogue with an educated +gentleman, the smallness of whose practice was more than compensated by the +former greatness of his family. He had uttered thoughts before they were +weighed, and almost before they were shaped. They had expressed in a certain +sense his feeling at Fitzpiers’s news, but yet they were not right. +Looking on the ground, and planting his stick at each tread as if it were a +flag-staff, he reached his own precincts, where, as he passed through the +court, he automatically stopped to look at the men working in the shed and +around. One of them asked him a question about wagon-spokes. +</p> + +<p> +“Hey?” said Melbury, looking hard at him. The man repeated the +words. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury stood; then turning suddenly away without answering, he went up the +court and entered the house. As time was no object with the journeymen, except +as a thing to get past, they leisurely surveyed the door through which he had +disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +“What maggot has the gaffer got in his head now?” said Tangs the +elder. “Sommit to do with that chiel of his! When you’ve got a maid +of yer own, John Upjohn, that costs ye what she costs him, that will take the +squeak out of your Sunday shoes, John! But you’ll never be tall enough to +accomplish such as she; and ’tis a lucky thing for ye, John, as things +be. Well, he ought to have a dozen—that would bring him to reason. I see +’em walking together last Sunday, and when they came to a puddle he +lifted her over like a halfpenny doll. He ought to have a dozen; he’d let +’em walk through puddles for themselves then.” +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Melbury had entered the house with the look of a man who sees a +vision before him. His wife was in the room. Without taking off his hat he sat +down at random. +</p> + +<p> +“Luce—we’ve done it!” he said. “Yes—the +thing is as I expected. The spell, that I foresaw might be worked, has worked. +She’s done it, and done it well. Where is she—Grace, I mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“Up in her room—what has happened!” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Melbury explained the circumstances as coherently as he could. “I +told you so,” he said. “A maid like her couldn’t stay hid +long, even in a place like this. But where is Grace? Let’s have her down. +Here—Gra-a-ace!” +</p> + +<p> +She appeared after a reasonable interval, for she was sufficiently spoiled by +this father of hers not to put herself in a hurry, however impatient his tones. +“What is it, father?” said she, with a smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you scamp, what’s this you’ve been doing? Not home here +more than six months, yet, instead of confining yourself to your father’s +rank, making havoc in the educated classes.” +</p> + +<p> +Though accustomed to show herself instantly appreciative of her father’s +meanings, Grace was fairly unable to look anyhow but at a loss now. +</p> + +<p> +“No, no—of course you don’t know what I mean, or you pretend +you don’t; though, for my part, I believe women can see these things +through a double hedge. But I suppose I must tell ye. Why, you’ve flung +your grapnel over the doctor, and he’s coming courting forthwith.” +</p> + +<p> +“Only think of that, my dear! Don’t you feel it a triumph?” +said Mrs. Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“Coming courting! I’ve done nothing to make him,” Grace +exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“’Twasn’t necessary that you should, ’Tis voluntary +that rules in these things....Well, he has behaved very honorably, and asked my +consent. You’ll know what to do when he gets here, I dare say. I +needn’t tell you to make it all smooth for him.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean, to lead him on to marry me?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do. Haven’t I educated you for it?” +</p> + +<p> +Grace looked out of the window and at the fireplace with no animation in her +face. “Why is it settled off-hand in this way?” said she, +coquettishly. “You’ll wait till you hear what I think of him, I +suppose?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, of course. But you see what a good thing it will be.” +</p> + +<p> +She weighed the statement without speaking. +</p> + +<p> +“You will be restored to the society you’ve been taken away +from,” continued her father; “for I don’t suppose he’ll +stay here long.” +</p> + +<p> +She admitted the advantage; but it was plain that though Fitzpiers exercised a +certain fascination over her when he was present, or even more, an almost +psychic influence, and though his impulsive act in the wood had stirred her +feelings indescribably, she had never regarded him in the light of a destined +husband. “I don’t know what to answer,” she said. “I +have learned that he is very clever.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s all right, and he’s coming here to see you.” +</p> + +<p> +A premonition that she could not resist him if he came strangely moved her. +“Of course, father, you remember that it is only lately that +Giles—” +</p> + +<p> +“You know that you can’t think of him. He has given up all claim to +you.” +</p> + +<p> +She could not explain the subtleties of her feeling as he could state his +opinion, even though she had skill in speech, and her father had none. That +Fitzpiers acted upon her like a dram, exciting her, throwing her into a novel +atmosphere which biassed her doings until the influence was over, when she felt +something of the nature of regret for the mood she had experienced—still +more if she reflected on the silent, almost sarcastic, criticism apparent in +Winterborne’s air towards her—could not be told to this worthy +couple in words. +</p> + +<p> +It so happened that on this very day Fitzpiers was called away from Hintock by +an engagement to attend some medical meetings, and his visits, therefore, did +not begin at once. A note, however, arrived from him addressed to Grace, +deploring his enforced absence. As a material object this note was pretty and +superfine, a note of a sort that she had been unaccustomed to see since her +return to Hintock, except when a school friend wrote to her—a rare +instance, for the girls were respecters of persons, and many cooled down +towards the timber-dealer’s daughter when she was out of sight. Thus the +receipt of it pleased her, and she afterwards walked about with a reflective +air. +</p> + +<p> +In the evening her father, who knew that the note had come, said, “Why be +ye not sitting down to answer your letter? That’s what young folks did in +my time.” +</p> + +<p> +She replied that it did not require an answer. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you know best,” he said. Nevertheless, he went about his +business doubting if she were right in not replying; possibly she might be so +mismanaging matters as to risk the loss of an alliance which would bring her +much happiness. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury’s respect for Fitzpiers was based less on his professional +position, which was not much, than on the standing of his family in the county +in by-gone days. That implicit faith in members of long-established families, +as such, irrespective of their personal condition or character, which is still +found among old-fashioned people in the rural districts reached its full +intensity in Melbury. His daughter’s suitor was descended from a family +he had heard of in his grandfather’s time as being once great, a family +which had conferred its name upon a neighboring village; how, then, could +anything be amiss in this betrothal? +</p> + +<p> +“I must keep her up to this,” he said to his wife. “She sees +it is for her happiness; but still she’s young, and may want a little +prompting from an older tongue.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2> + +<p> +With this in view he took her out for a walk, a custom of his when he wished to +say anything specially impressive. Their way was over the top of that lofty +ridge dividing their woodland from the cider district, whence they had in the +spring beheld the miles of apple-trees in bloom. All was now deep green. The +spot recalled to Grace’s mind the last occasion of her presence there, +and she said, “The promise of an enormous apple-crop is fulfilling +itself, is it not? I suppose Giles is getting his mills and presses +ready.” +</p> + +<p> +This was just what her father had not come there to talk about. Without +replying he raised his arm, and moved his finger till he fixed it at a point. +“There,” he said, “you see that plantation reaching over the +hill like a great slug, and just behind the hill a particularly green sheltered +bottom? That’s where Mr. Fitzpiers’s family were lords of the manor +for I don’t know how many hundred years, and there stands the village of +Buckbury Fitzpiers. A wonderful property ’twas—wonderful!” +</p> + +<p> +“But they are not lords of the manor there now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, no. But good and great things die as well as little and foolish. +The only ones representing the family now, I believe, are our doctor and a +maiden lady living I don’t know where. You can’t help being happy, +Grace, in allying yourself with such a romantical family. You’ll feel as +if you’ve stepped into history.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve been at Hintock as long as they’ve been at Buckbury; +is it not so? You say our name occurs in old deeds continually.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—as yeomen, copyholders, and such like. But think how much +better this will be for ’ee. You’ll be living a high intellectual +life, such as has now become natural to you; and though the doctor’s +practice is small here, he’ll no doubt go to a dashing town when +he’s got his hand in, and keep a stylish carriage, and you’ll be +brought to know a good many ladies of excellent society. If you should ever +meet me then, Grace, you can drive past me, looking the other way. I +shouldn’t expect you to speak to me, or wish such a thing, unless it +happened to be in some lonely, private place where ’twouldn’t lower +ye at all. Don’t think such men as neighbor Giles your equal. He and I +shall be good friends enough, but he’s not for the like of you. +He’s lived our rough and homely life here, and his wife’s life must +be rough and homely likewise.” +</p> + +<p> +So much pressure could not but produce some displacement. As Grace was left +very much to herself, she took advantage of one fine day before +Fitzpiers’s return to drive into the aforesaid vale where stood the +village of Buckbury Fitzpiers. Leaving her father’s man at the inn with +the horse and gig, she rambled onward to the ruins of a castle, which stood in +a field hard by. She had no doubt that it represented the ancient stronghold of +the Fitzpiers family. +</p> + +<p> +The remains were few, and consisted mostly of remnants of the lower vaulting, +supported on low stout columns surmounted by the <i>crochet</i> capital of the +period. The two or three arches of these vaults that were still in position +were utilized by the adjoining farmer as shelter for his calves, the floor +being spread with straw, amid which the young creatures rustled, cooling their +thirsty tongues by licking the quaint Norman carving, which glistened with the +moisture. It was a degradation of even such a rude form of art as this to be +treatad so grossly, she thought, and for the first time the family of Fitzpiers +assumed in her imagination the hues of a melancholy romanticism. +</p> + +<p> +It was soon time to drive home, and she traversed the distance with a +preoccupied mind. The idea of so modern a man in science and aesthetics as the +young surgeon springing out of relics so ancient was a kind of novelty she had +never before experienced. The combination lent him a social and intellectual +interest which she dreaded, so much weight did it add to the strange influence +he exercised upon her whenever he came near her. +</p> + +<p> +In an excitement which was not love, not ambition, rather a fearful +consciousness of hazard in the air, she awaited his return. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile her father was awaiting him also. In his house there was an old work +on medicine, published towards the end of the last century, and to put himself +in harmony with events Melbury spread this work on his knees when he had done +his day’s business, and read about Galen, Hippocrates, and +Herophilus—of the dogmatic, the empiric, the hermetical, and other sects +of practitioners that have arisen in history; and thence proceeded to the +classification of maladies and the rules for their treatment, as laid down in +this valuable book with absolute precision. Melbury regretted that the treatise +was so old, fearing that he might in consequence be unable to hold as complete +a conversation as he could wish with Mr. Fitzpiers, primed, no doubt, with more +recent discoveries. +</p> + +<p> +The day of Fitzpiers’s return arrived, and he sent to say that he would +call immediately. In the little time that was afforded for putting the house in +order the sweeping of Melbury’s parlor was as the sweeping of the parlor +at the Interpreter’s which wellnigh choked the Pilgrim. At the end of it +Mrs. Melbury sat down, folded her hands and lips, and waited. Her husband +restlessly walked in and out from the timber-yard, stared at the interior of +the room, jerked out “ay, ay,” and retreated again. Between four +and five Fitzpiers arrived, hitching his horse to the hook outside the door. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as he had walked in and perceived that Grace was not in the room, he +seemed to have a misgiving. Nothing less than her actual presence could long +keep him to the level of this impassioned enterprise, and that lacking he +appeared as one who wished to retrace his steps. +</p> + +<p> +He mechanically talked at what he considered a woodland matron’s level of +thought till a rustling was heard on the stairs, and Grace came in. Fitzpiers +was for once as agitated as she. Over and above the genuine emotion which she +raised in his heart there hung the sense that he was casting a die by impulse +which he might not have thrown by judgment. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Melbury was not in the room. Having to attend to matters in the yard, he +had delayed putting on his afternoon coat and waistcoat till the doctor’s +appearance, when, not wishing to be backward in receiving him, he entered the +parlor hastily buttoning up those garments. Grace’s fastidiousness was a +little distressed that Fitzpiers should see by this action the strain his visit +was putting upon her father; and to make matters worse for her just then, old +Grammer seemed to have a passion for incessantly pumping in the back kitchen, +leaving the doors open so that the banging and splashing were distinct above +the parlor conversation. +</p> + +<p> +Whenever the chat over the tea sank into pleasant desultoriness Mr. Melbury +broke in with speeches of labored precision on very remote topics, as if he +feared to let Fitzpiers’s mind dwell critically on the subject nearest +the hearts of all. In truth a constrained manner was natural enough in Melbury +just now, for the greatest interest of his life was reaching its crisis. Could +the real have been beheld instead of the corporeal merely, the corner of the +room in which he sat would have been filled with a form typical of anxious +suspense, large-eyed, tight-lipped, awaiting the issue. That paternal hopes and +fears so intense should be bound up in the person of one child so peculiarly +circumstanced, and not have dispersed themselves over the larger field of a +whole family, involved dangerous risks to future happiness. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers did not stay more than an hour, but that time had apparently advanced +his sentiments towards Grace, once and for all, from a vaguely liquescent to an +organic shape. She would not have accompanied him to the door in response to +his whispered “Come!” if her mother had not said in a +matter-of-fact way, “Of course, Grace; go to the door with Mr. +Fitzpiers.” Accordingly Grace went, both her parents remaining in the +room. When the young pair were in the great brick-floored hall the lover took +the girl’s hand in his, drew it under his arm, and thus led her on to the +door, where he stealthily kissed her. +</p> + +<p> +She broke from him trembling, blushed and turned aside, hardly knowing how +things had advanced to this. Fitzpiers drove off, kissing his hand to her, and +waving it to Melbury who was visible through the window. Her father returned +the surgeon’s action with a great flourish of his own hand and a +satisfied smile. +</p> + +<p> +The intoxication that Fitzpiers had, as usual, produced in Grace’s brain +during the visit passed off somewhat with his withdrawal. She felt like a woman +who did not know what she had been doing for the previous hour, but supposed +with trepidation that the afternoon’s proceedings, though vague, had +amounted to an engagement between herself and the handsome, coercive, +irresistible Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +This visit was a type of many which followed it during the long summer days of +that year. Grace was borne along upon a stream of reasonings, arguments, and +persuasions, supplemented, it must be added, by inclinations of her own at +times. No woman is without aspirations, which may be innocent enough within +certain limits; and Grace had been so trained socially, and educated +intellectually, as to see clearly enough a pleasure in the position of wife to +such a man as Fitzpiers. His material standing of itself, either present or +future, had little in it to give her ambition, but the possibilities of a +refined and cultivated inner life, of subtle psychological intercourse, had +their charm. It was this rather than any vulgar idea of marrying well which +caused her to float with the current, and to yield to the immense influence +which Fitzpiers exercised over her whenever she shared his society. +</p> + +<p> +Any observer would shrewdly have prophesied that whether or not she loved him +as yet in the ordinary sense, she was pretty sure to do so in time. +</p> + +<p> +One evening just before dusk they had taken a rather long walk together, and +for a short cut homeward passed through the shrubberies of Hintock +House—still deserted, and still blankly confronting with its sightless +shuttered windows the surrounding foliage and slopes. Grace was tired, and they +approached the wall, and sat together on one of the stone sills—still +warm with the sun that had been pouring its rays upon them all the afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +“This place would just do for us, would it not, dearest,” said her +betrothed, as they sat, turning and looking idly at the old facade. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” said Grace, plainly showing that no such fancy had ever +crossed her mind. “She is away from home still,” Grace added in a +minute, rather sadly, for she could not forget that she had somehow lost the +valuable friendship of the lady of this bower. +</p> + +<p> +“Who is?—oh, you mean Mrs. Charmond. Do you know, dear, that at one +time I thought you lived here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed!” said Grace. “How was that?” +</p> + +<p> +He explained, as far as he could do so without mentioning his disappointment at +finding it was otherwise; and then went on: “Well, never mind that. Now I +want to ask you something. There is one detail of our wedding which I am sure +you will leave to me. My inclination is not to be married at the horrid little +church here, with all the yokels staring round at us, and a droning parson +reading.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where, then, can it be? At a church in town?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. Not at a church at all. At a registry office. It is a quieter, +snugger, and more convenient place in every way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said she, with real distress. “How can I be married +except at church, and with all my dear friends round me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yeoman Winterborne among them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—why not? You know there was nothing serious between him and +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“You see, dear, a noisy bell-ringing marriage at church has this +objection in our case: it would be a thing of report a long way round. Now I +would gently, as gently as possible, indicate to you how inadvisable such +publicity would be if we leave Hintock, and I purchase the practice that I +contemplate purchasing at Budmouth—hardly more than twenty miles off. +Forgive my saying that it will be far better if nobody there knows where you +come from, nor anything about your parents. Your beauty and knowledge and +manners will carry you anywhere if you are not hampered by such retrospective +criticism.” +</p> + +<p> +“But could it not be a quiet ceremony, even at church?” she +pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see the necessity of going there!” he said, a trifle +impatiently. “Marriage is a civil contract, and the shorter and simpler +it is made the better. People don’t go to church when they take a house, +or even when they make a will.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Edgar—I don’t like to hear you speak like that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, well—I didn’t mean to. But I have mentioned as much to +your father, who has made no objection; and why should you?” +</p> + +<p> +She gave way, deeming the point one on which she ought to allow sentiment to +give way to policy—if there were indeed policy in his plan. But she was +indefinably depressed as they walked homeward. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2> + +<p> +He left her at the door of her father’s house. As he receded, and was +clasped out of sight by the filmy shades, he impressed Grace as a man who +hardly appertained to her existence at all. Cleverer, greater than herself, one +outside her mental orbit, as she considered him, he seemed to be her ruler +rather than her equal, protector, and dear familiar friend. +</p> + +<p> +The disappointment she had experienced at his wish, the shock given to her +girlish sensibilities by his irreverent views of marriage, together with the +sure and near approach of the day fixed for committing her future to his +keeping, made her so restless that she could scarcely sleep at all that night. +She rose when the sparrows began to walk out of the roof-holes, sat on the +floor of her room in the dim light, and by-and-by peeped out behind the +window-curtains. It was even now day out-of-doors, though the tones of morning +were feeble and wan, and it was long before the sun would be perceptible in +this overshadowed vale. Not a sound came from any of the out-houses as yet. The +tree-trunks, the road, the out-buildings, the garden, every object wore that +aspect of mesmeric fixity which the suspensive quietude of daybreak lends to +such scenes. Outside her window helpless immobility seemed to be combined with +intense consciousness; a meditative inertness possessed all things, +oppressively contrasting with her own active emotions. Beyond the road were +some cottage roofs and orchards; over these roofs and over the apple-trees +behind, high up the slope, and backed by the plantation on the crest, was the +house yet occupied by her future husband, the rough-cast front showing whitely +through its creepers. The window-shutters were closed, the bedroom curtains +closely drawn, and not the thinnest coil of smoke rose from the rugged +chimneys. +</p> + +<p> +Something broke the stillness. The front door of the house she was gazing at +opened softly, and there came out into the porch a female figure, wrapped in a +large shawl, beneath which was visible the white skirt of a long loose garment. +A gray arm, stretching from within the porch, adjusted the shawl over the +woman’s shoulders; it was withdrawn and disappeared, the door closing +behind her. +</p> + +<p> +The woman went quickly down the box-edged path between the raspberries and +currants, and as she walked her well-developed form and gait betrayed her +individuality. It was Suke Damson, the affianced one of simple young Tim Tangs. +At the bottom of the garden she entered the shelter of the tall hedge, and only +the top of her head could be seen hastening in the direction of her own +dwelling. +</p> + +<p> +Grace had recognized, or thought she recognized, in the gray arm stretching +from the porch, the sleeve of a dressing-gown which Mr. Fitzpiers had been +wearing on her own memorable visit to him. Her face fired red. She had just +before thought of dressing herself and taking a lonely walk under the trees, so +coolly green this early morning; but she now sat down on her bed and fell into +reverie. It seemed as if hardly any time had passed when she heard the +household moving briskly about, and breakfast preparing down-stairs; though, on +rousing herself to robe and descend, she found that the sun was throwing his +rays completely over the tree-tops, a progress of natural phenomena denoting +that at least three hours had elapsed since she last looked out of the window. +</p> + +<p> +When attired she searched about the house for her father; she found him at last +in the garden, stooping to examine the potatoes for signs of disease. Hearing +her rustle, he stood up and stretched his back and arms, saying, “Morning +t’ye, Gracie. I congratulate ye. It is only a month to-day to the +time!” +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer, but, without lifting her dress, waded between the dewy rows +of tall potato-green into the middle of the plot where he was. +</p> + +<p> +“I have been thinking very much about my position this morning—ever +since it was light,” she began, excitedly, and trembling so that she +could hardly stand. “And I feel it is a false one. I wish not to marry +Mr. Fitzpiers. I wish not to marry anybody; but I’ll marry Giles +Winterborne if you say I must as an alternative.” +</p> + +<p> +Her father’s face settled into rigidity, he turned pale, and came +deliberately out of the plot before he answered her. She had never seen him +look so incensed before. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, hearken to me,” he said. “There’s a time for a +woman to alter her mind; and there’s a time when she can no longer alter +it, if she has any right eye to her parents’ honor and the seemliness of +things. That time has come. I won’t say to ye, you <i>shall</i> marry +him. But I will say that if you refuse, I shall forever be ashamed and a-weary +of ye as a daughter, and shall look upon you as the hope of my life no more. +What do you know about life and what it can bring forth, and how you ought to +act to lead up to best ends? Oh, you are an ungrateful maid, Grace; +you’ve seen that fellow Giles, and he has got over ye; that’s where +the secret lies, I’ll warrant me!” +</p> + +<p> +“No, father, no! It is not Giles—it is something I cannot tell you +of—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, make fools of us all; make us laughing-stocks; break it off; have +your own way.” +</p> + +<p> +“But who knows of the engagement as yet? how can breaking it disgrace +you?” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury then by degrees admitted that he had mentioned the engagement to this +acquaintance and to that, till she perceived that in his restlessness and pride +he had published it everywhere. She went dismally away to a bower of laurel at +the top of the garden. Her father followed her. +</p> + +<p> +“It is that Giles Winterborne!” he said, with an upbraiding gaze at +her. +</p> + +<p> +“No, it is not; though for that matter you encouraged him once,” +she said, troubled to the verge of despair. “It is not Giles, it is Mr. +Fitzpiers.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve had a tiff—a lovers’ tiff—that’s +all, I suppose!” +</p> + +<p> +“It is some woman—” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, ay; you are jealous. The old story. Don’t tell me. Now do you +bide here. I’ll send Fitzpiers to you. I saw him smoking in front of his +house but a minute by-gone.” +</p> + +<p> +He went off hastily out of the garden-gate and down the lane. But she would not +stay where she was; and edging through a slit in the garden-fence, walked away +into the wood. Just about here the trees were large and wide apart, and there +was no undergrowth, so that she could be seen to some distance; a sylph-like, +greenish-white creature, as toned by the sunlight and leafage. She heard a +foot-fall crushing dead leaves behind her, and found herself reconnoitered by +Fitzpiers himself, approaching gay and fresh as the morning around them. +</p> + +<p> +His remote gaze at her had been one of mild interest rather than of rapture. +But she looked so lovely in the green world about her, her pink cheeks, her +simple light dress, and the delicate flexibility of her movement acquired such +rarity from their wild-wood setting, that his eyes kindled as he drew near. +</p> + +<p> +“My darling, what is it? Your father says you are in the pouts, and +jealous, and I don’t know what. Ha! ha! ha! as if there were any rival to +you, except vegetable nature, in this home of recluses! We know better.” +</p> + +<p> +“Jealous; oh no, it is not so,” said she, gravely. +“That’s a mistake of his and yours, sir. I spoke to him so closely +about the question of marriage with you that he did not apprehend my state of +mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“But there’s something wrong—eh?” he asked, eying her +narrowly, and bending to kiss her. She shrank away, and his purposed kiss +miscarried. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” he said, more seriously for this little defeat. +</p> + +<p> +She made no answer beyond, “Mr. Fitzpiers, I have had no breakfast, I +must go in.” +</p> + +<p> +“Come,” he insisted, fixing his eyes upon her. “Tell me at +once, I say.” +</p> + +<p> +It was the greater strength against the smaller; but she was mastered less by +his manner than by her own sense of the unfairness of silence. “I looked +out of the window,” she said, with hesitation. “I’ll tell you +by-and-by. I must go in-doors. I have had no breakfast.” +</p> + +<p> +By a sort of divination his conjecture went straight to the fact. “Nor +I,” said he, lightly. “Indeed, I rose late to-day. I have had a +broken night, or rather morning. A girl of the village—I don’t know +her name—came and rang at my bell as soon as it was light—between +four and five, I should think it was—perfectly maddened with an aching +tooth. As no-body heard her ring, she threw some gravel at my window, till at +last I heard her and slipped on my dressing-gown and went down. The poor thing +begged me with tears in her eyes to take out her tormentor, if I dragged her +head off. Down she sat and out it came—a lovely molar, not a speck upon +it; and off she went with it in her handkerchief, much contented, though it +would have done good work for her for fifty years to come.” +</p> + +<p> +It was all so plausible—so completely explained. Knowing nothing of the +incident in the wood on old Midsummer-eve, Grace felt that her suspicions were +unworthy and absurd, and with the readiness of an honest heart she jumped at +the opportunity of honoring his word. At the moment of her mental liberation +the bushes about the garden had moved, and her father emerged into the shady +glade. “Well, I hope it is made up?” he said, cheerily. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” said Fitzpiers, with his eyes fixed on Grace, whose eyes +were shyly bent downward. +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” said her father, “tell me, the pair of ye, that you +still mean to take one another for good and all; and on the strength o’t +you shall have another couple of hundred paid down. I swear it by the +name.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers took her hand. “We declare it, do we not, my dear Grace?” +said he. +</p> + +<p> +Relieved of her doubt, somewhat overawed, and ever anxious to please, she was +disposed to settle the matter; yet, womanlike, she would not relinquish her +opportunity of asking a concession of some sort. “If our wedding can be +at church, I say yes,” she answered, in a measured voice. “If not, +I say no.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers was generous in his turn. “It shall be so,” he rejoined, +gracefully. “To holy church we’ll go, and much good may it do +us.” +</p> + +<p> +They returned through the bushes indoors, Grace walking, full of thought +between the other two, somewhat comforted, both by Fitzpiers’s ingenious +explanation and by the sense that she was not to be deprived of a religious +ceremony. “So let it be,” she said to herself. “Pray God it +is for the best.” +</p> + +<p> +From this hour there was no serious attempt at recalcitration on her part. +Fitzpiers kept himself continually near her, dominating any rebellious impulse, +and shaping her will into passive concurrence with all his desires. Apart from +his lover-like anxiety to possess her, the few golden hundreds of the +timber-dealer, ready to hand, formed a warm background to Grace’s lovely +face, and went some way to remove his uneasiness at the prospect of endangering +his professional and social chances by an alliance with the family of a simple +countryman. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +The interim closed up its perspective surely and silently. Whenever Grace had +any doubts of her position, the sense of contracting time was like a shortening +chamber: at other moments she was comparatively blithe. Day after day waxed and +waned; the one or two woodmen who sawed, shaped, spokeshaved on her +father’s premises at this inactive season of the year, regularly came and +unlocked the doors in the morning, locked them in the evening, supped, leaned +over their garden-gates for a whiff of evening air, and to catch any last and +farthest throb of news from the outer world, which entered and expired at +Little Hintock like the exhausted swell of a wave in some innermost cavern of +some innermost creek of an embayed sea; yet no news interfered with the nuptial +purpose at their neighbor’s house. The sappy green twig-tips of the +season’s growth would not, she thought, be appreciably woodier on the day +she became a wife, so near was the time; the tints of the foliage would hardly +have changed. Everything was so much as usual that no itinerant stranger would +have supposed a woman’s fate to be hanging in the balance at that +summer’s decline. +</p> + +<p> +But there were preparations, imaginable readily enough by those who had special +knowledge. In the remote and fashionable town of Sandbourne something was +growing up under the hands of several persons who had never seen Grace Melbury, +never would see her, or care anything about her at all, though their creation +had such interesting relation to her life that it would enclose her very heart +at a moment when that heart would beat, if not with more emotional ardor, at +least with more emotional turbulence than at any previous time. +</p> + +<p> +Why did Mrs. Dollery’s van, instead of passing along at the end of the +smaller village to Great Hintock direct, turn one Saturday night into Little +Hintock Lane, and never pull up till it reached Mr. Melbury’s gates? The +gilding shine of evening fell upon a large, flat box not less than a yard +square, and safely tied with cord, as it was handed out from under the tilt +with a great deal of care. But it was not heavy for its size; Mrs. Dollery +herself carried it into the house. Tim Tangs, the hollow-turner, Bawtree, Suke +Damson, and others, looked knowing, and made remarks to each other as they +watched its entrance. Melbury stood at the door of the timber-shed in the +attitude of a man to whom such an arrival was a trifling domestic detail with +which he did not condescend to be concerned. Yet he well divined the contents +of that box, and was in truth all the while in a pleasant exaltation at the +proof that thus far, at any rate, no disappointment had supervened. While Mrs. +Dollery remained—which was rather long, from her sense of the importance +of her errand—he went into the out-house; but as soon as she had had her +say, been paid, and had rumbled away, he entered the dwelling, to find there +what he knew he should find—his wife and daughter in a flutter of +excitement over the wedding-gown, just arrived from the leading dress-maker of +Sandbourne watering-place aforesaid. +</p> + +<p> +During these weeks Giles Winterborne was nowhere to be seen or heard of. At the +close of his tenure in Hintock he had sold some of his furniture, packed up the +rest—a few pieces endeared by associations, or necessary to his +occupation—in the house of a friendly neighbor, and gone away. People +said that a certain laxity had crept into his life; that he had never gone near +a church latterly, and had been sometimes seen on Sundays with unblacked boots, +lying on his elbow under a tree, with a cynical gaze at surrounding objects. He +was likely to return to Hintock when the cider-making season came round, his +apparatus being stored there, and travel with his mill and press from village +to village. +</p> + +<p> +The narrow interval that stood before the day diminished yet. There was in +Grace’s mind sometimes a certain anticipative satisfaction, the +satisfaction of feeling that she would be the heroine of an hour; moreover, she +was proud, as a cultivated woman, to be the wife of a cultivated man. It was an +opportunity denied very frequently to young women in her position, nowadays not +a few; those in whom parental discovery of the value of education has implanted +tastes which parental circles fail to gratify. But what an attenuation was this +cold pride of the dream of her youth, in which she had pictured herself walking +in state towards the altar, flushed by the purple light and bloom of her own +passion, without a single misgiving as to the sealing of the bond, and +fervently receiving as her due +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“The homage of a thousand hearts; the fond, deep love of one.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Everything had been clear then, in imagination; now something was undefined. +She had little carking anxieties; a curious fatefulness seemed to rule her, and +she experienced a mournful want of some one to confide in. +</p> + +<p> +The day loomed so big and nigh that her prophetic ear could, in fancy, catch +the noise of it, hear the murmur of the villagers as she came out of church, +imagine the jangle of the three thin-toned Hintock bells. The dialogues seemed +to grow louder, and the ding-ding-dong of those three crazed bells more +persistent. She awoke: the morning had come. +</p> + +<p> +Five hours later she was the wife of Fitzpiers. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap25"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2> + +<p> +The chief hotel at Sherton-Abbas was an old stone-fronted inn with a yawning +arch, under which vehicles were driven by stooping coachmen to back premises of +wonderful commodiousness. The windows to the street were mullioned into narrow +lights, and only commanded a view of the opposite houses; hence, perhaps, it +arose that the best and most luxurious private sitting-room that the inn could +afford over-looked the nether parts of the establishment, where beyond the yard +were to be seen gardens and orchards, now bossed, nay incrusted, with scarlet +and gold fruit, stretching to infinite distance under a luminous lavender mist. +The time was early autumn, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“When the fair apples, red as evening sky,<br /> +Do bend the tree unto the fruitful ground,<br /> +When juicy pears, and berries of black dye,<br /> +Do dance in air, and call the eyes around.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +The landscape confronting the window might, indeed, have been part of the +identical stretch of country which the youthful Chatterton had in his mind. +</p> + +<p> +In this room sat she who had been the maiden Grace Melbury till the finger of +fate touched her and turned her to a wife. It was two months after the wedding, +and she was alone. Fitzpiers had walked out to see the abbey by the light of +sunset, but she had been too fatigued to accompany him. They had reached the +last stage of a long eight-weeks’ tour, and were going on to Hintock that +night. +</p> + +<p> +In the yard, between Grace and the orchards, there progressed a scene natural +to the locality at this time of the year. An apple-mill and press had been +erected on the spot, to which some men were bringing fruit from divers points +in mawn-baskets, while others were grinding them, and others wringing down the +pomace, whose sweet juice gushed forth into tubs and pails. The superintendent +of these proceedings, to whom the others spoke as master, was a young yeoman of +prepossessing manner and aspect, whose form she recognized in a moment. He had +hung his coat to a nail of the out-house wall, and wore his shirt-sleeves +rolled up beyond his elbows, to keep them unstained while he rammed the pomace +into the bags of horse-hair. Fragments of apple-rind had alighted upon the brim +of his hat—probably from the bursting of a bag—while brown pips of +the same fruit were sticking among the down upon his fine, round arms. +</p> + +<p> +She realized in a moment how he had come there. Down in the heart of the apple +country nearly every farmer kept up a cider-making apparatus and wring-house +for his own use, building up the pomace in great straw “cheeses,” +as they were called; but here, on the margin of Pomona’s plain, was a +debatable land neither orchard nor sylvan exclusively, where the apple produce +was hardly sufficient to warrant each proprietor in keeping a mill of his own. +This was the field of the travelling cider-maker. His press and mill were fixed +to wheels instead of being set up in a cider-house; and with a couple of +horses, buckets, tubs, strainers, and an assistant or two, he wandered from +place to place, deriving very satisfactory returns for his trouble in such a +prolific season as the present. +</p> + +<p> +The back parts of the town were just now abounding with apple-gatherings. They +stood in the yards in carts, baskets, and loose heaps; and the blue, stagnant +air of autumn which hung over everything was heavy with a sweet cidery smell. +Cakes of pomace lay against the walls in the yellow sun, where they were drying +to be used as fuel. Yet it was not the great make of the year as yet; before +the standard crop came in there accumulated, in abundant times like this, a +large superfluity of early apples, and windfalls from the trees of later +harvest, which would not keep long. Thus, in the baskets, and quivering in the +hopper of the mill, she saw specimens of mixed dates, including the mellow +countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards, stubbards, ratheripes, and +other well-known friends of her ravenous youth. +</p> + +<p> +Grace watched the head-man with interest. The slightest sigh escaped her. +Perhaps she thought of the day—not so far distant—when that friend +of her childhood had met her by her father’s arrangement in this same +town, warm with hope, though diffident, and trusting in a promise rather +implied than given. Or she might have thought of days earlier yet—days of +childhood—when her mouth was somewhat more ready to receive a kiss from +his than was his to bestow one. However, all that was over. She had felt +superior to him then, and she felt superior to him now. +</p> + +<p> +She wondered why he never looked towards her open window. She did not know that +in the slight commotion caused by their arrival at the inn that afternoon +Winterborne had caught sight of her through the archway, had turned red, and +was continuing his work with more concentrated attention on the very account of +his discovery. Robert Creedle, too, who travelled with Giles, had been +incidentally informed by the hostler that Dr. Fitzpiers and his young wife were +in the hotel, after which news Creedle kept shaking his head and saying to +himself, “Ah!” very audibly, between his thrusts at the screw of +the cider-press. +</p> + +<p> +“Why the deuce do you sigh like that, Robert?” asked Winterborne, +at last. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, maister—’tis my thoughts—’tis my +thoughts!...Yes, ye’ve lost a hundred load o’ timber well seasoned; +ye’ve lost five hundred pound in good money; ye’ve lost the +stone-windered house that’s big enough to hold a dozen families; +ye’ve lost your share of half a dozen good wagons and their +horses—all lost!—through your letting slip she that was once yer +own!” +</p> + +<p> +“Good God, Creedle, you’ll drive me mad!” said Giles, +sternly. “Don’t speak of that any more!” +</p> + +<p> +Thus the subject had ended in the yard. Meanwhile, the passive cause of all +this loss still regarded the scene. She was beautifully dressed; she was seated +in the most comfortable room that the inn afforded; her long journey had been +full of variety, and almost luxuriously performed—for Fitzpiers did not +study economy where pleasure was in question. Hence it perhaps arose that Giles +and all his belongings seemed sorry and common to her for the +moment—moving in a plane so far removed from her own of late that she +could scarcely believe she had ever found congruity therein. “No—I +could never have married him!” she said, gently shaking her head. +“Dear father was right. It would have been too coarse a life for +me.” And she looked at the rings of sapphire and opal upon her white and +slender fingers that had been gifts from Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +Seeing that Giles still kept his back turned, and with a little of the +above-described pride of life—easily to be understood, and possibly +excused, in a young, inexperienced woman who thought she had married +well—she said at last, with a smile on her lips, “Mr. +Winterborne!” +</p> + +<p> +He appeared to take no heed, and she said a second time, “Mr. +Winterborne!” +</p> + +<p> +Even now he seemed not to hear, though a person close enough to him to see the +expression of his face might have doubted it; and she said a third time, with a +timid loudness, “Mr. Winterborne! What, have you forgotten my +voice?” She remained with her lips parted in a welcoming smile. +</p> + +<p> +He turned without surprise, and came deliberately towards the window. +“Why do you call me?” he said, with a sternness that took her +completely unawares, his face being now pale. “Is it not enough that you +see me here moiling and muddling for my daily bread while you are sitting there +in your success, that you can’t refrain from opening old wounds by +calling out my name?” +</p> + +<p> +She flushed, and was struck dumb for some moments; but she forgave his +unreasoning anger, knowing so well in what it had its root. “I am sorry I +offended you by speaking,” she replied, meekly. “Believe me, I did +not intend to do that. I could hardly sit here so near you without a word of +recognition.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne’s heart had swollen big, and his eyes grown moist by this +time, so much had the gentle answer of that familiar voice moved him. He +assured her hurriedly, and without looking at her, that he was not angry. He +then managed to ask her, in a clumsy, constrained way, if she had had a +pleasant journey, and seen many interesting sights. She spoke of a few places +that she had visited, and so the time passed till he withdrew to take his place +at one of the levers which pulled round the screw. +</p> + +<p> +Forgotten her voice! Indeed, he had not forgotten her voice, as his bitterness +showed. But though in the heat of the moment he had reproached her keenly, his +second mood was a far more tender one—that which could regard her +renunciation of such as he as her glory and her privilege, his own fidelity +notwithstanding. He could have declared with a contemporary poet— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + “If I forget,<br /> +The salt creek may forget the ocean;<br /> + If I forget<br /> +The heart whence flows my heart’s bright motion,<br /> +May I sink meanlier than the worst<br /> +Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst,<br /> + If I forget. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + “Though you forget,<br /> +No word of mine shall mar your pleasure;<br /> + Though you forget,<br /> +You filled my barren life with treasure,<br /> +You may withdraw the gift you gave;<br /> +You still are queen, I still am slave,<br /> + Though you forget.” +</p> + +<p> +She had tears in her eyes at the thought that she could not remind him of what +he ought to have remembered; that not herself but the pressure of events had +dissipated the dreams of their early youth. Grace was thus unexpectedly worsted +in her encounter with her old friend. She had opened the window with a faint +sense of triumph, but he had turned it into sadness; she did not quite +comprehend the reason why. In truth it was because she was not cruel enough in +her cruelty. If you have to use the knife, use it, say the great surgeons; and +for her own peace Grace should have contemned Winterborne thoroughly or not at +all. As it was, on closing the window an indescribable, some might have said +dangerous, pity quavered in her bosom for him. +</p> + +<p> +Presently her husband entered the room, and told her what a wonderful sunset +there was to be seen. +</p> + +<p> +“I have not noticed it. But I have seen somebody out there that we +know,” she replied, looking into the court. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers followed the direction of her eyes, and said he did not recognize +anybody. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, Mr. Winterborne—there he is, cider-making. He combines that +with his other business, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—that fellow,” said Fitzpiers, his curiosity becoming +extinct. +</p> + +<p> +She, reproachfully: “What, call Mr. Winterborne a fellow, Edgar? It is +true I was just saying to myself that I never could have married him; but I +have much regard for him, and always shall.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, do by all means, my dear one. I dare say I am inhuman, and +supercilious, and contemptibly proud of my poor old ramshackle family; but I do +honestly confess to you that I feel as if I belonged to a different species +from the people who are working in that yard.” +</p> + +<p> +“And from me too, then. For my blood is no better than theirs.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her with a droll sort of awakening. It was, indeed, a startling +anomaly that this woman of the tribe without should be standing there beside +him as his wife, if his sentiments were as he had said. In their travels +together she had ranged so unerringly at his level in ideas, tastes, and habits +that he had almost forgotten how his heart had played havoc with his principles +in taking her to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah YOU—you are refined and educated into something quite +different,” he said, self-assuringly. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t quite like to think that,” she murmured with soft +regret. “And I think you underestimate Giles Winterborne. Remember, I was +brought up with him till I was sent away to school, so I cannot be radically +different. At any rate, I don’t feel so. That is, no doubt, my fault, and +a great blemish in me. But I hope you will put up with it, Edgar.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers said that he would endeavor to do so; and as it was now getting on +for dusk, they prepared to perform the last stage of their journey, so as to +arrive at Hintock before it grew very late. +</p> + +<p> +In less than half an hour they started, the cider-makers in the yard having +ceased their labors and gone away, so that the only sounds audible there now +were the trickling of the juice from the tightly screwed press, and the buzz of +a single wasp, which had drunk itself so tipsy that it was unconscious of +nightfall. Grace was very cheerful at the thought of being soon in her sylvan +home, but Fitzpiers sat beside her almost silent. An indescribable +oppressiveness had overtaken him with the near approach of the journey’s +end and the realities of life that lay there. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t say a word, Edgar,” she observed. +“Aren’t you glad to get back? I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have friends here. I have none.” +</p> + +<p> +“But my friends are yours.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—in that sense.” +</p> + +<p> +The conversation languished, and they drew near the end of Hintock Lane. It had +been decided that they should, at least for a time, take up their abode in her +father’s roomy house, one wing of which was quite at their service, being +almost disused by the Melburys. Workmen had been painting, papering, and +whitewashing this set of rooms in the wedded pair’s absence; and so +scrupulous had been the timber-dealer that there should occur no hitch or +disappointment on their arrival, that not the smallest detail remained undone. +To make it all complete a ground-floor room had been fitted up as a surgery, +with an independent outer door, to which Fitzpiers’s brass plate was +screwed—for mere ornament, such a sign being quite superfluous where +everybody knew the latitude and longitude of his neighbors for miles round. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury and his wife welcomed the twain with affection, and all the house with +deference. They went up to explore their rooms, that opened from a passage on +the left hand of the staircase, the entrance to which could be shut off on the +landing by a door that Melbury had hung for the purpose. A friendly fire was +burning in the grate, although it was not cold. Fitzpiers said it was too soon +for any sort of meal, they only having dined shortly before leaving +Sherton-Abbas. He would walk across to his old lodging, to learn how his locum +tenens had got on in his absence. +</p> + +<p> +In leaving Melbury’s door he looked back at the house. There was economy +in living under that roof, and economy was desirable, but in some way he was +dissatisfied with the arrangement; it immersed him so deeply in son-in-lawship +to Melbury. He went on to his former residence. His deputy was out, and +Fitzpiers fell into conversation with his former landlady. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Mrs. Cox, what’s the best news?” he asked of her, with +cheery weariness. +</p> + +<p> +She was a little soured at losing by his marriage so profitable a tenant as the +surgeon had proved to be during his residence under her roof; and the more so +in there being hardly the remotest chance of her getting such another settler +in the Hintock solitudes. “’Tis what I don’t wish to repeat, +sir; least of all to you,” she mumbled. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind me, Mrs. Cox; go ahead.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is what people say about your hasty marrying, Dr. Fitzpiers. Whereas +they won’t believe you know such clever doctrines in physic as they once +supposed of ye, seeing as you could marry into Mr. Melbury’s family, +which is only Hintock-born, such as me.” +</p> + +<p> +“They are kindly welcome to their opinion,” said Fitzpiers, not +allowing himself to recognize that he winced. “Anything else?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; <i>she’s</i> come home at last.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who’s she?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Charmond.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, indeed!” said Fitzpiers, with but slight interest. +“I’ve never seen her.” +</p> + +<p> +“She has seen you, sir, whether or no.” +</p> + +<p> +“Never.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; she saw you in some hotel or street for a minute or two while you +were away travelling, and accidentally heard your name; and when she made some +remark about you, Miss Ellis—that’s her maid—told her you was +on your wedding-tower with Mr. Melbury’s daughter; and she said, +‘He ought to have done better than that. I fear he has spoiled his +chances,’ she says.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers did not talk much longer to this cheering housewife, and walked home +with no very brisk step. He entered the door quietly, and went straight +up-stairs to the drawing-room extemporized for their use by Melbury in his and +his bride’s absence, expecting to find her there as he had left her. The +fire was burning still, but there were no lights. He looked into the next +apartment, fitted up as a little dining-room, but no supper was laid. He went +to the top of the stairs, and heard a chorus of voices in the +timber-merchant’s parlor below, Grace’s being occasionally +intermingled. +</p> + +<p> +Descending, and looking into the room from the door-way, he found quite a large +gathering of neighbors and other acquaintances, praising and congratulating +Mrs. Fitzpiers on her return, among them being the dairyman, Farmer Bawtree, +and the master-blacksmith from Great Hintock; also the cooper, the +hollow-turner, the exciseman, and some others, with their wives, who lived hard +by. Grace, girl that she was, had quite forgotten her new dignity and her +husband’s; she was in the midst of them, blushing, and receiving their +compliments with all the pleasure of old-comradeship. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers experienced a profound distaste for the situation. Melbury was +nowhere in the room, but Melbury’s wife, perceiving the doctor, came to +him. “We thought, Grace and I,” she said, “that as they have +called, hearing you were come, we could do no less than ask them to supper; and +then Grace proposed that we should all sup together, as it is the first night +of your return.” +</p> + +<p> +By this time Grace had come round to him. “Is it not good of them to +welcome me so warmly?” she exclaimed, with tears of friendship in her +eyes. “After so much good feeling I could not think of our shutting +ourselves up away from them in our own dining-room.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly not—certainly not,” said Fitzpiers; and he entered +the room with the heroic smile of a martyr. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as they sat down to table Melbury came in, and seemed to see at once +that Fitzpiers would much rather have received no such demonstrative reception. +He thereupon privately chid his wife for her forwardness in the matter. Mrs. +Melbury declared that it was as much Grace’s doing as hers, after which +there was no more to be said by that young woman’s tender father. By this +time Fitzpiers was making the best of his position among the wide-elbowed and +genial company who sat eating and drinking and laughing and joking around him; +and getting warmed himself by the good cheer, was obliged to admit that, after +all, the supper was not the least enjoyable he had ever known. +</p> + +<p> +At times, however, the words about his having spoiled his opportunities, +repeated to him as those of Mrs. Charmond, haunted him like a handwriting on +the wall. Then his manner would become suddenly abstracted. At one moment he +would mentally put an indignant query why Mrs. Charmond or any other woman +should make it her business to have opinions about his opportunities; at +another he thought that he could hardly be angry with her for taking an +interest in the doctor of her own parish. Then he would drink a glass of grog +and so get rid of the misgiving. These hitches and quaffings were soon +perceived by Grace as well as by her father; and hence both of them were much +relieved when the first of the guests to discover that the hour was growing +late rose and declared that he must think of moving homeward. At the words +Melbury rose as alertly as if lifted by a spring, and in ten minutes they were +gone. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, Grace,” said her husband as soon as he found himself alone +with her in their private apartments, “we’ve had a very pleasant +evening, and everybody has been very kind. But we must come to an understanding +about our way of living here. If we continue in these rooms there must be no +mixing in with your people below. I can’t stand it, and that’s the +truth.” +</p> + +<p> +She had been sadly surprised at the suddenness of his distaste for those +old-fashioned woodland forms of life which in his courtship he had professed to +regard with so much interest. But she assented in a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“We must be simply your father’s tenants,” he continued, +“and our goings and comings must be as independent as if we lived +elsewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly, Edgar—I quite see that it must be so.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you joined in with all those people in my absence, without knowing +whether I should approve or disapprove. When I came I couldn’t help +myself at all.” +</p> + +<p> +She, sighing: “Yes—I see I ought to have waited; though they came +unexpectedly, and I thought I had acted for the best.” +</p> + +<p> +Thus the discussion ended, and the next day Fitzpiers went on his old rounds as +usual. But it was easy for so super-subtle an eye as his to discern, or to +think he discerned, that he was no longer regarded as an extrinsic, unfathomed +gentleman of limitless potentiality, scientific and social; but as Mr. +Melbury’s compeer, and therefore in a degree only one of themselves. The +Hintock woodlandlers held with all the strength of inherited conviction to the +aristocratic principle, and as soon as they had discovered that Fitzpiers was +one of the old Buckbury Fitzpierses they had accorded to him for nothing a +touching of hat-brims, promptness of service, and deference of approach, which +Melbury had to do without, though he paid for it over and over. But now, having +proved a traitor to his own cause by this marriage, Fitzpiers was believed in +no more as a superior hedged by his own divinity; while as doctor he began to +be rated no higher than old Jones, whom they had so long despised. +</p> + +<p> +His few patients seemed in his two months’ absence to have dwindled +considerably in number, and no sooner had he returned than there came to him +from the Board of Guardians a complaint that a pauper had been neglected by his +substitute. In a fit of pride Fitzpiers resigned his appointment as one of the +surgeons to the union, which had been the nucleus of his practice here. +</p> + +<p> +At the end of a fortnight he came in-doors one evening to Grace more briskly +than usual. “They have written to me again about that practice in +Budmouth that I once negotiated for,” he said to her. “The premium +asked is eight hundred pounds, and I think that between your father and myself +it ought to be raised. Then we can get away from this place forever.” +</p> + +<p> +The question had been mooted between them before, and she was not unprepared to +consider it. They had not proceeded far with the discussion when a knock came +to the door, and in a minute Grammer ran up to say that a message had arrived +from Hintock House requesting Dr. Fitzpiers to attend there at once. Mrs. +Charmond had met with a slight accident through the overturning of her +carriage. +</p> + +<p> +“This is something, anyhow,” said Fitzpiers, rising with an +interest which he could not have defined. “I have had a presentiment that +this mysterious woman and I were to be better acquainted.” +</p> + +<p> +The latter words were murmured to himself alone. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night,” said Grace, as soon as he was ready. “I shall +be asleep, probably, when you return.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night,” he replied, inattentively, and went down-stairs. It +was the first time since their marriage that he had left her without a kiss. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2> + +<p> +Winterborne’s house had been pulled down. On this account his face had +been seen but fitfully in Hintock; and he would probably have disappeared from +the place altogether but for his slight business connection with Melbury, on +whose premises Giles kept his cider-making apparatus, now that he had no place +of his own to stow it in. Coming here one evening on his way to a hut beyond +the wood where he now slept, he noticed that the familiar brown-thatched pinion +of his paternal roof had vanished from its site, and that the walls were +levelled. In present circumstances he had a feeling for the spot that might +have been called morbid, and when he had supped in the hut aforesaid he made +use of the spare hour before bedtime to return to Little Hintock in the +twilight and ramble over the patch of ground on which he had first seen the +day. +</p> + +<p> +He repeated this evening visit on several like occasions. Even in the gloom he +could trace where the different rooms had stood; could mark the shape of the +kitchen chimney-corner, in which he had roasted apples and potatoes in his +boyhood, cast his bullets, and burned his initials on articles that did and did +not belong to him. The apple-trees still remained to show where the garden had +been, the oldest of them even now retaining the crippled slant to north-east +given them by the great November gale of 1824, which carried a brig bodily over +the Chesil Bank. They were at present bent to still greater obliquity by the +heaviness of their produce. Apples bobbed against his head, and in the grass +beneath he crunched scores of them as he walked. There was nobody to gather +them now. +</p> + +<p> +It was on the evening under notice that, half sitting, half leaning against one +of these inclined trunks, Winterborne had become lost in his thoughts, as +usual, till one little star after another had taken up a position in the piece +of sky which now confronted him where his walls and chimneys had formerly +raised their outlines. The house had jutted awkwardly into the road, and the +opening caused by its absence was very distinct. +</p> + +<p> +In the silence the trot of horses and the spin of carriage-wheels became +audible; and the vehicle soon shaped itself against the blank sky, bearing down +upon him with the bend in the lane which here occurred, and of which the house +had been the cause. He could discern the figure of a woman high up on the +driving-seat of a phaeton, a groom being just visible behind. Presently there +was a slight scrape, then a scream. Winterborne went across to the spot, and +found the phaeton half overturned, its driver sitting on the heap of rubbish +which had once been his dwelling, and the man seizing the horses’ heads. +The equipage was Mrs. Charmond’s, and the unseated charioteer that lady +herself. +</p> + +<p> +To his inquiry if she were hurt she made some incoherent reply to the effect +that she did not know. The damage in other respects was little or none: the +phaeton was righted, Mrs. Charmond placed in it, and the reins given to the +servant. It appeared that she had been deceived by the removal of the house, +imagining the gap caused by the demolition to be the opening of the road, so +that she turned in upon the ruins instead of at the bend a few yards farther +on. +</p> + +<p> +“Drive home—drive home!” cried the lady, impatiently; and +they started on their way. They had not, however, gone many paces when, the air +being still, Winterborne heard her say “Stop; tell that man to call the +doctor—Mr. Fitzpiers—and send him on to the House. I find I am hurt +more seriously than I thought.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne took the message from the groom and proceeded to the doctor’s +at once. Having delivered it, he stepped back into the darkness, and waited +till he had seen Fitzpiers leave the door. He stood for a few minutes looking +at the window which by its light revealed the room where Grace was sitting, and +went away under the gloomy trees. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Fitzpiers duly arrived at Hintock House, whose doors he now saw open for the +first time. Contrary to his expectation there was visible no sign of that +confusion or alarm which a serious accident to the mistress of the abode would +have occasioned. He was shown into a room at the top of the staircase, cosily +and femininely draped, where, by the light of the shaded lamp, he saw a woman +of full round figure reclining upon a couch in such a position as not to +disturb a pile of magnificent hair on the crown of her head. A deep purple +dressing-gown formed an admirable foil to the peculiarly rich brown of her +hair-plaits; her left arm, which was naked nearly up to the shoulder, was +thrown upward, and between the fingers of her right hand she held a cigarette, +while she idly breathed from her plump lips a thin stream of smoke towards the +ceiling. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor’s first feeling was a sense of his exaggerated prevision in +having brought appliances for a serious case; the next, something more curious. +While the scene and the moment were new to him and unanticipated, the sentiment +and essence of the moment were indescribably familiar. What could be the cause +of it? Probably a dream. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Charmond did not move more than to raise her eyes to him, and he came and +stood by her. She glanced up at his face across her brows and forehead, and +then he observed a blush creep slowly over her decidedly handsome cheeks. Her +eyes, which had lingered upon him with an inquiring, conscious expression, were +hastily withdrawn, and she mechanically applied the cigarette again to her +lips. +</p> + +<p> +For a moment he forgot his errand, till suddenly arousing himself he addressed +her, formally condoled with her, and made the usual professional inquiries +about what had happened to her, and where she was hurt. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what I want you to tell me,” she murmured, in tones +of indefinable reserve. “I quite believe in you, for I know you are very +accomplished, because you study so hard.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll do my best to justify your good opinion,” said the +young man, bowing. “And none the less that I am happy to find the +accident has not been serious.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am very much shaken,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” he replied; and completed his examination, which +convinced him that there was really nothing the matter with her, and more than +ever puzzled him as to why he had been fetched, since she did not appear to be +a timid woman. “You must rest a while, and I’ll send +something,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I forgot,” she returned. “Look here.” And she +showed him a little scrape on her arm—the full round arm that was +exposed. “Put some court-plaster on that, please.” +</p> + +<p> +He obeyed. “And now,” she said, “before you go I want to put +a question to you. Sit round there in front of me, on that low chair, and bring +the candles, or one, to the little table. Do you smoke? Yes? That’s +right—I am learning. Take one of these; and here’s a light.” +She threw a matchbox across. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers caught it, and having lit up, regarded her from his new position, +which, with the shifting of the candles, for the first time afforded him a full +view of her face. “How many years have passed since first we met!” +she resumed, in a voice which she mainly endeavored to maintain at its former +pitch of composure, and eying him with daring bashfulness. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>We</i> met, do you say?” +</p> + +<p> +She nodded. “I saw you recently at an hotel in London, when you were +passing through, I suppose, with your bride, and I recognized you as one I had +met in my girlhood. Do you remember, when you were studying at Heidelberg, an +English family that was staying there, who used to walk—” +</p> + +<p> +“And the young lady who wore a long tail of rare-colored hair—ah, I +see it before my eyes!—who lost her gloves on the Great Terrace—who +was going back in the dusk to find them—to whom I said, ‘I’ll +go for them,’ and you said, ‘Oh, they are not worth coming all the +way up again for.’ I <i>do</i> remember, and how very long we stayed +talking there! I went next morning while the dew was on the grass: there they +lay—the little fingers sticking out damp and thin. I see them now! I +picked them up, and then—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” +</p> + +<p> +“I kissed them,” he rejoined, rather shamefacedly. +</p> + +<p> +“But you had hardly ever seen me except in the dusk?” +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind. I was young then, and I kissed them. I wondered how I could +make the most of my <i>trouvaille</i>, and decided that I would call at your +hotel with them that afternoon. It rained, and I waited till next day. I +called, and you were gone.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered she, with dry melancholy. “My mother, knowing +my disposition, said she had no wish for such a chit as me to go falling in +love with an impecunious student, and spirited me away to Baden. As it is all +over and past I’ll tell you one thing: I should have sent you a line +passing warm had I known your name. That name I never knew till my maid said, +as you passed up the hotel stairs a month ago, ‘There’s Dr. +Fitzpiers.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Good Heaven!” said Fitzpiers, musingly. “How the time comes +back to me! The evening, the morning, the dew, the spot. When I found that you +really were gone it was as if a cold iron had been passed down my back. I went +up to where you had stood when I last saw you—I flung myself on the +grass, and—being not much more than a boy—my eyes were literally +blinded with tears. Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I couldn’t +forget your voice.” +</p> + +<p> +“For how long?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—ever so long. Days and days.” +</p> + +<p> +“Days and days! <i>Only</i> days and days? Oh, the heart of a man! Days +and days!” +</p> + +<p> +“But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was +not a full-blown love—it was the merest bud—red, fresh, vivid, but +small. It was a colossal passion in posse, a giant in embryo. It never +matured.” +</p> + +<p> +“So much the better, perhaps.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps. But see how powerless is the human will against predestination. +We were prevented meeting; we have met. One feature of the case remains the +same amid many changes. You are still rich, and I am still poor. Better than +that, you have (judging by your last remark) outgrown the foolish, impulsive +passions of your early girl-hood. I have not outgrown mine.” +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon,” said she, with vibrations of strong feeling in +her words. “I have been placed in a position which hinders such +outgrowings. Besides, I don’t believe that the genuine subjects of +emotion do outgrow them; I believe that the older such people get the worse +they are. Possibly at ninety or a hundred they may feel they are cured; but a +mere threescore and ten won’t do it—at least for me.” +</p> + +<p> +He gazed at her in undisguised admiration. Here was a soul of souls! +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Charmond, you speak truly,” he exclaimed. “But you +speak sadly as well. Why is that?” +</p> + +<p> +“I always am sad when I come here,” she said, dropping to a low +tone with a sense of having been too demonstrative. +</p> + +<p> +“Then may I inquire why you came?” +</p> + +<p> +“A man brought me. Women are always carried about like corks upon the +waves of masculine desires....I hope I have not alarmed you; but Hintock has +the curious effect of bottling up the emotions till one can no longer hold +them; I am often obliged to fly away and discharge my sentiments somewhere, or +I should die outright.” +</p> + +<p> +“There is very good society in the county for those who have the +privilege of entering it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps so. But the misery of remote country life is that your neighbors +have no toleration for difference of opinion and habit. My neighbors think I am +an atheist, except those who think I am a Roman Catholic; and when I speak +disrespectfully of the weather or the crops they think I am a +blasphemer.” +</p> + +<p> +She broke into a low musical laugh at the idea. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t wish me to stay any longer?” he inquired, when he +found that she remained musing. +</p> + +<p> +“No—I think not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then tell me that I am to be gone.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why? Cannot you go without?” +</p> + +<p> +“I may consult my own feelings only, if left to myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, if you do, what then? Do you suppose you’ll be in my +way?” +</p> + +<p> +“I feared it might be so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then fear no more. But good-night. Come to-morrow and see if I am going +on right. This renewal of acquaintance touches me. I have already a friendship +for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“If it depends upon myself it shall last forever.” +</p> + +<p> +“My best hopes that it may. Good-by.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers went down the stairs absolutely unable to decide whether she had sent +for him in the natural alarm which might have followed her mishap, or with the +single view of making herself known to him as she had done, for which the +capsize had afforded excellent opportunity. Outside the house he mused over the +spot under the light of the stars. It seemed very strange that he should have +come there more than once when its inhabitant was absent, and observed the +house with a nameless interest; that he should have assumed off-hand before he +knew Grace that it was here she lived; that, in short, at sundry times and +seasons the individuality of Hintock House should have forced itself upon him +as appertaining to some existence with which he was concerned. +</p> + +<p> +The intersection of his temporal orbit with Mrs. Charmond’s for a day or +two in the past had created a sentimental interest in her at the time, but it +had been so evanescent that in the ordinary onward roll of affairs he would +scarce ever have recalled it again. To find her here, however, in these +somewhat romantic circumstances, magnified that by-gone and transitory +tenderness to indescribable proportions. +</p> + +<p> +On entering Little Hintock he found himself regarding it in a new +way—from the Hintock House point of view rather than from his own and the +Melburys’. The household had all gone to bed, and as he went up-stairs he +heard the snore of the timber-merchant from his quarter of the building, and +turned into the passage communicating with his own rooms in a strange access of +sadness. A light was burning for him in the chamber; but Grace, though in bed, +was not asleep. In a moment her sympathetic voice came from behind the +curtains. +</p> + +<p> +“Edgar, is she very seriously hurt?” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers had so entirely lost sight of Mrs. Charmond as a patient that he was +not on the instant ready with a reply. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” he said. “There are no bones broken, but she is +shaken. I am going again to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +Another inquiry or two, and Grace said, +</p> + +<p> +“Did she ask for me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—I think she did—I don’t quite remember; but I am +under the impression that she spoke of you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Cannot you recollect at all what she said?” +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot, just this minute.” +</p> + +<p> +“At any rate she did not talk much about me?” said Grace with +disappointment. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you did, perhaps,” she added, innocently fishing for a +compliment. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—you may depend upon that!” replied he, warmly, though +scarcely thinking of what he was saying, so vividly was there present to his +mind the personality of Mrs. Charmond. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap27"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2> + +<p> +The doctor’s professional visit to Hintock House was promptly repeated +the next day and the next. He always found Mrs. Charmond reclining on a sofa, +and behaving generally as became a patient who was in no great hurry to lose +that title. On each occasion he looked gravely at the little scratch on her +arm, as if it had been a serious wound. +</p> + +<p> +He had also, to his further satisfaction, found a slight scar on her temple, +and it was very convenient to put a piece of black plaster on this conspicuous +part of her person in preference to gold-beater’s skin, so that it might +catch the eyes of the servants, and make his presence appear decidedly +necessary, in case there should be any doubt of the fact. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—you hurt me!” she exclaimed one day. +</p> + +<p> +He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under which the scrape had +turned the color of an unripe blackberry previous to vanishing altogether. +“Wait a moment, then—I’ll damp it,” said Fitzpiers. He +put his lips to the place and kept them there till the plaster came off easily. +“It was at your request I put it on,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“I know it,” she replied. “Is that blue vein still in my +temple that used to show there? The scar must be just upon it. If the cut had +been a little deeper it would have spilt my hot blood indeed!” Fitzpiers +examined so closely that his breath touched her tenderly, at which their eyes +rose to an encounter—hers showing themselves as deep and mysterious as +interstellar space. She turned her face away suddenly. “Ah! none of that! +none of that—I cannot coquet with you!” she cried. +“Don’t suppose I consent to for one moment. Our poor, brief, +youthful hour of love-making was too long ago to bear continuing now. It is as +well that we should understand each other on that point before we go +further.” +</p> + +<p> +“Coquet! Nor I with you. As it was when I found the historic gloves, so +it is now. I might have been and may be foolish; but I am no trifler. I +naturally cannot forget that little space in which I flitted across the field +of your vision in those days of the past, and the recollection opens up all +sorts of imaginings.” +</p> + +<p> +“Suppose my mother had not taken me away?” she murmured, her dreamy +eyes resting on the swaying tip of a distant tree. +</p> + +<p> +“I should have seen you again.” +</p> + +<p> +“And then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Then the fire would have burned higher and higher. What would have +immediately followed I know not; but sorrow and sickness of heart at +last.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—that’s the end of all love, according to Nature’s +law. I can give no other reason.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t speak like that,” she exclaimed. “Since we +are only picturing the possibilities of that time, don’t, for +pity’s sake, spoil the picture.” Her voice sank almost to a whisper +as she added, with an incipient pout upon her full lips, “Let me think at +least that if you had really loved me at all seriously, you would have loved me +for ever and ever!” +</p> + +<p> +“You are right—think it with all your heart,” said he. +“It is a pleasant thought, and costs nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +She weighed that remark in silence a while. “Did you ever hear anything +of me from then till now?” she inquired. +</p> + +<p> +“Not a word.” +</p> + +<p> +“So much the better. I had to fight the battle of life as well as you. I +may tell you about it some day. But don’t ever ask me to do it, and +particularly do not press me to tell you now.” +</p> + +<p> +Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender acquaintance on the +romantic slopes above the Neckar were stretched out in retrospect to the length +and importance of years; made to form a canvas for infinite fancies, idle +dreams, luxurious melancholies, and sweet, alluring assertions which could +neither be proved nor disproved. Grace was never mentioned between them, but a +rumor of his proposed domestic changes somehow reached her ears. +</p> + +<p> +“Doctor, you are going away,” she exclaimed, confronting him with +accusatory reproach in her large dark eyes no less than in her rich cooing +voice. “Oh yes, you are,” she went on, springing to her feet with +an air which might almost have been called passionate. “It is no use +denying it. You have bought a practice at Budmouth. I don’t blame you. +Nobody can live at Hintock—least of all a professional man who wants to +keep abreast of recent discovery. And there is nobody here to induce such a one +to stay for other reasons. That’s right, that’s right—go +away!” +</p> + +<p> +“But no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, though I am +indeed in treaty for it. And, my dear friend, if I continue to feel about the +business as I feel at this moment—perhaps I may conclude never to go at +all.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you hate Hintock, and everybody and everything in it that you +don’t mean to take away with you?” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory tones, and she lapsed +into the frivolous archness under which she hid passions of no mean +strength—strange, smouldering, erratic passions, kept down like a stifled +conflagration, but bursting out now here, now there—the only certain +element in their direction being its unexpectedness. If one word could have +expressed her it would have been Inconsequence. She was a woman of +perversities, delighting in frequent contrasts. She liked mystery, in her life, +in her love, in her history. To be fair to her, there was nothing in the latter +which she had any great reason to be ashamed of, and many things of which she +might have been proud; but it had never been fathomed by the honest minds of +Hintock, and she rarely volunteered her experiences. As for her capricious +nature, the people on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that +marvellous subtlety of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found +in sons of the soil and dependants generally, they managed to get along under +her government rather better than they would have done beneath a more equable +rule. +</p> + +<p> +Now, with regard to the doctor’s notion of leaving Hintock, he had +advanced further towards completing the purchase of the Budmouth +surgeon’s good-will than he had admitted to Mrs. Charmond. The whole +matter hung upon what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four hours. The evening +after leaving her he went out into the lane, and walked and pondered between +the high hedges, now greenish-white with wild clematis—here called +“old-man’s beard,” from its aspect later in the year. +</p> + +<p> +The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, after which his +departure from Hintock would be irrevocable. But could he go away, remembering +what had just passed? The trees, the hills, the leaves, the grass—each +had been endowed and quickened with a subtle charm since he had discovered the +person and history, and, above all, mood of their owner. There was every +temporal reason for leaving; it would be entering again into a world which he +had only quitted in a passion for isolation, induced by a fit of Achillean +moodiness after an imagined slight. His wife herself saw the awkwardness of +their position here, and cheerfully welcomed the purposed change, towards which +every step had been taken but the last. But could he find it in his +heart—as he found it clearly enough in his conscience—to go away? +</p> + +<p> +He drew a troubled breath, and went in-doors. Here he rapidly penned a letter, +wherein he withdrew once for all from the treaty for the Budmouth practice. As +the postman had already left Little Hintock for that night, he sent one of +Melbury’s men to intercept a mail-cart on another turnpike-road, and so +got the letter off. +</p> + +<p> +The man returned, met Fitzpiers in the lane, and told him the thing was done. +Fitzpiers went back to his house musing. Why had he carried out this +impulse—taken such wild trouble to effect a probable injury to his own +and his young wife’s prospects? His motive was fantastic, glowing, +shapeless as the fiery scenery about the western sky. Mrs. Charmond could +overtly be nothing more to him than a patient now, and to his wife, at the +outside, a patron. In the unattached bachelor days of his first sojourning here +how highly proper an emotional reason for lingering on would have appeared to +troublesome dubiousness. Matrimonial ambition is such an honorable thing. +</p> + +<p> +“My father has told me that you have sent off one of the men with a late +letter to Budmouth,” cried Grace, coming out vivaciously to meet him +under the declining light of the sky, wherein hung, solitary, the folding star. +“I said at once that you had finally agreed to pay the premium they ask, +and that the tedious question had been settled. When do we go, Edgar?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have altered my mind,” said he. “They want too +much—seven hundred and fifty is too large a sum—and in short, I +have declined to go further. We must wait for another opportunity. I fear I am +not a good business-man.” He spoke the last words with a momentary +faltering at the great foolishness of his act; for, as he looked in her fair +and honorable face, his heart reproached him for what he had done. +</p> + +<p> +Her manner that evening showed her disappointment. Personally she liked the +home of her childhood much, and she was not ambitious. But her husband had +seemed so dissatisfied with the circumstances hereabout since their marriage +that she had sincerely hoped to go for his sake. +</p> + +<p> +It was two or three days before he visited Mrs. Charmond again. The morning had +been windy, and little showers had sowed themselves like grain against the +walls and window-panes of the Hintock cottages. He went on foot across the +wilder recesses of the park, where slimy streams of green moisture, exuding +from decayed holes caused by old amputations, ran down the bark of the oaks and +elms, the rind below being coated with a lichenous wash as green as emerald. +They were stout-trunked trees, that never rocked their stems in the fiercest +gale, responding to it entirely by crooking their limbs. Wrinkled like an old +crone’s face, and antlered with dead branches that rose above the foliage +of their summits, they were nevertheless still green—though yellow had +invaded the leaves of other trees. +</p> + +<p> +She was in a little boudoir or writing-room on the first floor, and Fitzpiers +was much surprised to find that the window-curtains were closed and a +red-shaded lamp and candles burning, though out-of-doors it was broad daylight. +Moreover, a large fire was burning in the grate, though it was not cold. +</p> + +<p> +“What does it all mean?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She sat in an easy-chair, her face being turned away. “Oh,” she +murmured, “it is because the world is so dreary outside. Sorrow and +bitterness in the sky, and floods of agonized tears beating against the panes. +I lay awake last night, and I could hear the scrape of snails creeping up the +window-glass; it was so sad! My eyes were so heavy this morning that I could +have wept my life away. I cannot bear you to see my face; I keep it away from +you purposely. Oh! why were we given hungry hearts and wild desires if we have +to live in a world like this? Why should Death only lend what Life is compelled +to borrow—rest? Answer that, Dr. Fitzpiers.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must eat of a second tree of knowledge before <i>you</i> can do it, +Felice Charmond.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then, when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I become full of +fears, till I think I shall die for very fear. The terrible insistencies of +society—how severe they are, and cold and inexorable—ghastly +towards those who are made of wax and not of stone. Oh, I am afraid of them; a +stab for this error, and a stab for that—correctives and regulations +framed that society may tend to perfection—an end which I don’t +care for in the least. Yet for this, all I do care for has to be stunted and +starved.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers had seated himself near her. “What sets you in this mournful +mood?” he asked, gently. (In reality he knew that it was the result of a +loss of tone from staying in-doors so much, but he did not say so.) +</p> + +<p> +“My reflections. Doctor, you must not come here any more. They begin to +think it a farce already. I say you must come no more. There—don’t +be angry with me;” and she jumped up, pressed his hand, and looked +anxiously at him. “It is necessary. It is best for both you and +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“But,” said Fitzpiers, gloomily, “what have we done?” +</p> + +<p> +“Done—we have done nothing. Perhaps we have thought the more. +However, it is all vexation. I am going away to Middleton Abbey, near +Shottsford, where a relative of my late husband lives, who is confined to her +bed. The engagement was made in London, and I can’t get out of it. +Perhaps it is for the best that I go there till all this is past. When are you +going to enter on your new practice, and leave Hintock behind forever, with +your pretty wife on your arm?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have refused the opportunity. I love this place too well to +depart.” +</p> + +<p> +“You <i>have?</i>” she said, regarding him with wild uncertainty. +“Why do you ruin yourself in that way? Great Heaven, what have I +done!” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing. Besides, you are going away.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes; but only to Middleton Abbey for a month or two. Yet perhaps I +shall gain strength there—particularly strength of mind—I require +it. And when I come back I shall be a new woman; and you can come and see me +safely then, and bring your wife with you, and we’ll be friends—she +and I. Oh, how this shutting up of one’s self does lead to indulgence in +idle sentiments. I shall not wish you to give your attendance to me after +to-day. But I am glad that you are not going away—if your remaining does +not injure your prospects at all.” +</p> + +<p> +As soon as he had left the room the mild friendliness she had preserved in her +tone at parting, the playful sadness with which she had conversed with him, +equally departed from her. She became as heavy as lead—just as she had +been before he arrived. Her whole being seemed to dissolve in a sad +powerlessness to do anything, and the sense of it made her lips tremulous and +her closed eyes wet. His footsteps again startled her, and she turned round. +</p> + +<p> +“I returned for a moment to tell you that the evening is going to be +fine. The sun is shining; so do open your curtains and put out those lights. +Shall I do it for you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Please—if you don’t mind.” +</p> + +<p> +He drew back the window-curtains, whereupon the red glow of the lamp and the +two candle-flames became almost invisible with the flood of late autumn +sunlight that poured in. “Shall I come round to you?” he asked, her +back being towards him. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I am crying, and I don’t want to see you.” +</p> + +<p> +He stood a moment irresolute, and regretted that he had killed the rosy, +passionate lamplight by opening the curtains and letting in garish day. +</p> + +<p> +“Then I am going,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” she answered, stretching one hand round to him, and +patting her eyes with a handkerchief held in the other. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I write a line to you at—” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no.” A gentle reasonableness came into her tone as she added, +“It must not be, you know. It won’t do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well. Good-by.” The next moment he was gone. +</p> + +<p> +In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged the maid who dressed +her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitzpiers’s marriage. +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Fitzpiers was once supposed to favor Mr. Winterborne,” said +the young woman. +</p> + +<p> +“And why didn’t she marry him?” said Mrs. Charmond. +</p> + +<p> +“Because, you see, ma’am, he lost his houses.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lost his houses? How came he to do that?” +</p> + +<p> +“The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your agent +wouldn’t renew them, though it is said that Mr. Winterborne had a very +good claim. That’s as I’ve heard it, ma’am, and it was +through it that the match was broke off.” +</p> + +<p> +Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. Charmond sunk into a mood +of dismal self-reproach. “In refusing that poor man his reasonable +request,” she said to herself, “I foredoomed my rejuvenated +girlhood’s romance. Who would have thought such a business matter could +have nettled my own heart like this? Now for a winter of regrets and agonies +and useless wishes, till I forget him in the spring. Oh! I am glad I am going +away.” +</p> + +<p> +She left her chamber and went down to dine with a sigh. On the stairs she stood +opposite the large window for a moment, and looked out upon the lawn. It was +not yet quite dark. Half-way up the steep green slope confronting her stood old +Timothy Tangs, who was shortening his way homeward by clambering here where +there was no road, and in opposition to express orders that no path was to be +made there. Tangs had momentarily stopped to take a pinch of snuff; but +observing Mrs. Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to get over the top out of +hail. His precipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a barrel +to the bottom, his snuffbox rolling in front of him. +</p> + +<p> +Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers; her constitutional +cloud of misery; the sorrowful drops that still hung upon her eyelashes, all +made way for the incursive mood started by the spectacle. She burst into an +immoderate fit of laughter, her very gloom of the previous hour seeming to +render it the more uncontrollable. It had not died out of her when she reached +the dining-room; and even here, before the servants, her shoulders suddenly +shook as the scene returned upon her; and the tears of her hilarity mingled +with the remnants of those engendered by her grief. +</p> + +<p> +She resolved to be sad no more. She drank two glasses of champagne, and a +little more still after those, and amused herself in the evening with singing +little amatory songs. +</p> + +<p> +“I must do something for that poor man Winterborne, however,” she +said. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap28"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2> + +<p> +A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmond had left Hintock House. Middleton Abbey, +the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles distant by road, eighteen by +bridle-paths and footways. +</p> + +<p> +Grace observed, for the first time, that her husband was restless, that at +moments he even was disposed to avoid her. The scrupulous civility of mere +acquaintanceship crept into his manner; yet, when sitting at meals, he seemed +hardly to hear her remarks. Her little doings interested him no longer, while +towards her father his bearing was not far from supercilious. It was plain that +his mind was entirely outside her life, whereabouts outside it she could not +tell; in some region of science, possibly, or of psychological literature. But +her hope that he was again immersing himself in those lucubrations which before +her marriage had made his light a landmark in Hintock, was founded simply on +the slender fact that he often sat up late. +</p> + +<p> +One evening she discovered him leaning over a gate on Rub-Down Hill, the gate +at which Winterborne had once been standing, and which opened on the brink of a +steep, slanting down directly into Blackmoor Vale, or the Vale of the White +Hart, extending beneath the eye at this point to a distance of many miles. His +attention was fixed on the landscape far away, and Grace’s approach was +so noiseless that he did not hear her. When she came close she could see his +lips moving unconsciously, as to some impassioned visionary theme. +</p> + +<p> +She spoke, and Fitzpiers started. “What are you looking at?” she +asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! I was contemplating our old place of Buckbury, in my idle +way,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that cradle and +tomb of his ancestral dignity; but she made no further observation, and taking +his arm walked home beside him almost in silence. She did not know that +Middleton Abbey lay in the direction of his gaze. “Are you going to have +out Darling this afternoon?” she asked, presently. Darling being the +light-gray mare which Winterborne had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers now +constantly used, the animal having turned out a wonderful bargain, in combining +a perfect docility with an almost human intelligence; moreover, she was not too +young. Fitzpiers was unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these qualities. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he replied, “but not to drive. I am riding her. I +practise crossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I can take +much shorter cuts on horseback.” +</p> + +<p> +He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week, only since Mrs. +Charmond’s absence, his universal practice hitherto having been to drive. +</p> + +<p> +Some few days later, Fitzpiers started on the back of this horse to see a +patient in the aforesaid Vale. It was about five o’clock in the evening +when he went away, and at bedtime he had not reached home. There was nothing +very singular in this, though she was not aware that he had any patient more +than five or six miles distant in that direction. The clock had struck one +before Fitzpiers entered the house, and he came to his room softly, as if +anxious not to disturb her. +</p> + +<p> +The next morning she was stirring considerably earlier than he. +</p> + +<p> +In the yard there was a conversation going on about the mare; the man who +attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that the latter was +“hag-rid;” for when he had arrived at the stable that morning she +was in such a state as no horse could be in by honest riding. It was true that +the doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so that she was not looked +after as she would have been if he had groomed and fed her; but that did not +account for the appearance she presented, if Mr. Fitzpiers’s journey had +been only where he had stated. The phenomenal exhaustion of Darling, as thus +related, was sufficient to develop a whole series of tales about riding witches +and demons, the narration of which occupied a considerable time. +</p> + +<p> +Grace returned in-doors. In passing through the outer room she picked up her +husband’s overcoat which he had carelessly flung down across a chair. A +turnpike ticket fell out of the breast-pocket, and she saw that it had been +issued at Middleton Gate. He had therefore visited Middleton the previous +night, a distance of at least five-and-thirty miles on horseback, there and +back. +</p> + +<p> +During the day she made some inquiries, and learned for the first time that +Mrs. Charmond was staying at Middleton Abbey. She could not resist an +inference—strange as that inference was. +</p> + +<p> +A few days later he prepared to start again, at the same time and in the same +direction. She knew that the state of the cottager who lived that way was a +mere pretext; she was quite sure he was going to Mrs. Charmond. Grace was +amazed at the mildness of the passion which the suspicion engendered in her. +She was but little excited, and her jealousy was languid even to death. It told +tales of the nature of her affection for him. In truth, her antenuptial regard +for Fitzpiers had been rather of the quality of awe towards a superior being +than of tender solicitude for a lover. It had been based upon mystery and +strangeness—the mystery of his past, of his knowledge, of his +professional skill, of his beliefs. When this structure of ideals was +demolished by the intimacy of common life, and she found him as merely human as +the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demand for an enduring +and stanch affection—a sympathetic interdependence, wherein mutual +weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive alliance. Fitzpiers had +furnished none of that single-minded confidence and truth out of which alone +such a second union could spring; hence it was with a controllable emotion that +she now watched the mare brought round. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll walk with you to the hill if you are not in a great +hurry,” she said, rather loath, after all, to let him go. +</p> + +<p> +“Do; there’s plenty of time,” replied her husband. +Accordingly he led along the horse, and walked beside her, impatient enough +nevertheless. Thus they proceeded to the turnpike road, and ascended Rub-Down +Hill to the gate he had been leaning over when she surprised him ten days +before. This was the end of her excursion. Fitzpiers bade her adieu with +affection, even with tenderness, and she observed that he looked weary-eyed. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you go to-night?” she said. “You have been called up +two nights in succession already.” +</p> + +<p> +“I must go,” he answered, almost gloomily. “Don’t wait +up for me.” With these words he mounted his horse, passed through the +gate which Grace held open for him, and ambled down the steep bridle-track to +the valley. +</p> + +<p> +She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then his journey onward. His +way was east, the evening sun which stood behind her back beaming full upon him +as soon as he got out from the shade of the hill. Notwithstanding this untoward +proceeding she was determined to be loyal if he proved true; and the +determination to love one’s best will carry a heart a long way towards +making that best an ever-growing thing. The conspicuous coat of the active +though blanching mare made horse and rider easy objects for the vision. Though +Darling had been chosen with such pains by Winterborne for Grace, she had never +ridden the sleek creature; but her husband had found the animal exceedingly +convenient, particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of staying +power being left in Darling yet. Fitzpiers, like others of his character, while +despising Melbury and his station, did not at all disdain to spend +Melbury’s money, or appropriate to his own use the horse which belonged +to Melbury’s daughter. +</p> + +<p> +And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through the gorgeous autumn +landscape of White Hart Vale, surrounded by orchards lustrous with the reds of +apple-crops, berries, and foliage, the whole intensified by the gilding of the +declining sun. The earth this year had been prodigally bountiful, and now was +the supreme moment of her bounty. In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed +with haws and blackberries; acorns cracked underfoot, and the burst husks of +chestnuts lay exposing their auburn contents as if arranged by anxious sellers +in a fruit-market. In all this proud show some kernels were unsound as her own +situation, and she wondered if there were one world in the universe where the +fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow. +</p> + +<p> +Herr Tannhäuser still moved on, his plodding steed rendering him distinctly +visible yet. Could she have heard Fitzpiers’s voice at that moment she +would have found him murmuring— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“...Towards the loadstar of my one desire<br /> +I flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the owlet light.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +But he was a silent spectacle to her now. Soon he rose out of the valley, and +skirted a high plateau of the chalk formation on his right, which rested +abruptly upon the fruity district of loamy clay, the character and herbage of +the two formations being so distinct that the calcareous upland appeared but as +a deposit of a few years’ antiquity upon the level vale. He kept along +the edge of this high, unenclosed country, and the sky behind him being deep +violet, she could still see white Darling in relief upon it—a mere speck +now—a Wouvermans eccentricity reduced to microscopic dimensions. Upon +this high ground he gradually disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +Thus she had beheld the pet animal purchased for her own use, in pure love of +her, by one who had always been true, impressed to convey her husband away from +her to the side of a new-found idol. While she was musing on the vicissitudes +of horses and wives, she discerned shapes moving up the valley towards her, +quite near at hand, though till now hidden by the hedges. Surely they were +Giles Winterborne, with his two horses and cider-apparatus, conducted by Robert +Creedle. Up, upward they crept, a stray beam of the sun alighting every now and +then like a star on the blades of the pomace-shovels, which had been converted +to steel mirrors by the action of the malic acid. She opened the gate when he +came close, and the panting horses rested as they achieved the ascent. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, Giles?” said she, under a sudden impulse to be +familiar with him. +</p> + +<p> +He replied with much more reserve. “You are going for a walk, Mrs. +Fitzpiers?” he added. “It is pleasant just now.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I am returning,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and Winterborne walked by her +side in the rear of the apple-mill. +</p> + +<p> +He looked and smelt like Autumn’s very brother, his face being sunburnt +to wheat-color, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots and leggings dyed with +fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat +sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that atmosphere of cider which at +its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those +who have been born and bred among the orchards. Her heart rose from its late +sadness like a released spring; her senses revelled in the sudden lapse back to +nature unadorned. The consciousness of having to be genteel because of her +husband’s profession, the veneer of artificiality which she had acquired +at the fashionable schools, were thrown off, and she became the crude, country +girl of her latent, earliest instincts. +</p> + +<p> +Nature was bountiful, she thought. No sooner had she been starved off by Edgar +Fitzpiers than another being, impersonating bare and undiluted manliness, had +arisen out of the earth, ready to hand. This was an excursion of the +imagination which she did not encourage, and she said suddenly, to disguise the +confused regard which had followed her thoughts, “Did you meet my +husband?” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne, with some hesitation, “Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where did you meet him?” +</p> + +<p> +“At Calfhay Cross. I come from Middleton Abbey; I have been making there +for the last week.” +</p> + +<p> +“Haven’t they a mill of their own?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but it’s out of repair.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think—I heard that Mrs. Charmond had gone there to stay?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. I have seen her at the windows once or twice.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace waited an interval before she went on: “Did Mr. Fitzpiers take the +way to Middleton?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes...I met him on Darling.” As she did not reply, he added, with +a gentler inflection, “You know why the mare was called that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—of course,” she answered, quickly. +</p> + +<p> +They had risen so far over the crest of the hill that the whole west sky was +revealed. Between the broken clouds they could see far into the recesses of +heaven, the eye journeying on under a species of golden arcades, and past fiery +obstructions, fancied cairns, logan-stones, stalactites and stalagmite of +topaz. Deeper than this their gaze passed thin flakes of incandescence, till it +plunged into a bottomless medium of soft green fire. +</p> + +<p> +Her abandonment to the luscious time after her sense of ill-usage, her revolt +for the nonce against social law, her passionate desire for primitive life, may +have showed in her face. Winterborne was looking at her, his eyes lingering on +a flower that she wore in her bosom. Almost with the abstraction of a +somnambulist he stretched out his hand and gently caressed the flower. +</p> + +<p> +She drew back. “What are you doing, Giles Winterborne!” she +exclaimed, with a look of severe surprise. The evident absence of all +premeditation from the act, however, speedily led her to think that it was not +necessary to stand upon her dignity here and now. “You must bear in mind, +Giles,” she said, kindly, “that we are not as we were; and some +people might have said that what you did was taking a liberty.” +</p> + +<p> +It was more than she need have told him; his action of forgetfulness had made +him so angry with himself that he flushed through his tan. “I don’t +know what I am coming to!” he exclaimed, savagely. “Ah—I was +not once like this!” Tears of vexation were in his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“No, now—it was nothing. I was too reproachful.” +</p> + +<p> +“It would not have occurred to me if I had not seen something like it +done elsewhere—at Middleton lately,” he said, thoughtfully, after a +while. +</p> + +<p> +“By whom?” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t ask it.” +</p> + +<p> +She scanned him narrowly. “I know quite well enough,” she returned, +indifferently. “It was by my husband, and the woman was Mrs. Charmond. +Association of ideas reminded you when you saw me....Giles—tell me all +you know about that—please do, Giles! But no—I won’t hear it. +Let the subject cease. And as you are my friend, say nothing to my +father.” +</p> + +<p> +They reached a place where their ways divided. Winterborne continued along the +highway which kept outside the copse, and Grace opened a gate that entered it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap29"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2> + +<p> +She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand by nut-bushes, just +now heavy with clusters of twos and threes and fours. A little way on, the +track she pursued was crossed by a similar one at right angles. Here Grace +stopped; some few yards up the transverse ride the buxom Suke Damson was +visible—her gown tucked up high through her pocket-hole, and no bonnet on +her head—in the act of pulling down boughs from which she was gathering +and eating nuts with great rapidity, her lover Tim Tangs standing near her +engaged in the same pleasant meal. +</p> + +<p> +Crack, crack went Suke’s jaws every second or two. By an automatic chain +of thought Grace’s mind reverted to the tooth-drawing scene described by +her husband; and for the first time she wondered if that narrative were really +true, Susan’s jaws being so obviously sound and strong. Grace turned up +towards the nut-gatherers, and conquered her reluctance to speak to the girl +who was a little in advance of Tim. “Good-evening, Susan,” she +said. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-evening, Miss Melbury” (crack). +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Fitzpiers.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, ma’am—Mrs. Fitzpiers,” said Suke, with a +peculiar smile. +</p> + +<p> +Grace, not to be daunted, continued: “Take care of your teeth, Suke. That +accounts for the toothache.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what an ache is, either in tooth, ear, or head, thank +the Lord” (crack). +</p> + +<p> +“Nor the loss of one, either?” +</p> + +<p> +“See for yourself, ma’am.” She parted her red lips, and +exhibited the whole double row, full up and unimpaired. +</p> + +<p> +“You have never had one drawn?” +</p> + +<p> +“Never.” +</p> + +<p> +“So much the better for your stomach,” said Mrs. Fitzpiers, in an +altered voice. And turning away quickly, she went on. +</p> + +<p> +As her husband’s character thus shaped itself under the touch of time, +Grace was almost startled to find how little she suffered from that jealous +excitement which is conventionally attributed to all wives in such +circumstances. But though possessed by none of that feline wildness which it +was her moral duty to experience, she did not fail to know that she had made a +frightful mistake in her marriage. Acquiescence in her father’s wishes +had been degradation to herself. People are not given premonitions for nothing; +she should have obeyed her impulse on that early morning, and steadfastly +refused her hand. +</p> + +<p> +Oh, that plausible tale which her then betrothed had told her about +Suke—the dramatic account of her entreaties to him to draw the aching +enemy, and the fine artistic touch he had given to the story by explaining that +it was a lovely molar without a flaw! +</p> + +<p> +She traced the remainder of the woodland track dazed by the complications of +her position. If his protestations to her before their marriage could be +believed, her husband had felt affection of some sort for herself and this +woman simultaneously; and was now again spreading the same emotion over Mrs. +Charmond and herself conjointly, his manner being still kind and fond at times. +But surely, rather than that, he must have played the hypocrite towards her in +each case with elaborate completeness; and the thought of this sickened her, +for it involved the conjecture that if he had not loved her, his only motive +for making her his wife must have been her little fortune. Yet here Grace made +a mistake, for the love of men like Fitzpiers is unquestionably of such quality +as to bear division and transference. He had indeed, once declared, though not +to her, that on one occasion he had noticed himself to be possessed by five +distinct infatuations at the same time. Therein it differed from the highest +affection as the lower orders of the animal world differ from advanced +organisms, partition causing, not death, but a multiplied existence. He had +loved her sincerely, and had by no means ceased to love her now. But such +double and treble barrelled hearts were naturally beyond her conception. +</p> + +<p> +Of poor Suke Damson, Grace thought no more. She had had her day. +</p> + +<p> +“If he does not love me I will not love him!” said Grace, proudly. +And though these were mere words, it was a somewhat formidable thing for +Fitzpiers that her heart was approximating to a state in which it might be +possible to carry them out. That very absence of hot jealousy which made his +courses so easy, and on which, indeed, he congratulated himself, meant, unknown +to either wife or husband, more mischief than the inconvenient watchfulness of +a jaundiced eye. +</p> + +<p> +Her sleep that night was nervous. The wing allotted to her and her husband had +never seemed so lonely. At last she got up, put on her dressing-gown, and went +down-stairs. Her father, who slept lightly, heard her descend, and came to the +stair-head. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that you, Grace? What’s the matter?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing more than that I am restless. Edgar is detained by a case at +Owlscombe in White Hart Vale.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how’s that? I saw the woman’s husband at Great Hintock +just afore bedtime; and she was going on well, and the doctor gone then.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then he’s detained somewhere else,” said Grace. “Never +mind me; he will soon be home. I expect him about one.” +</p> + +<p> +She went back to her room, and dozed and woke several times. One o’clock +had been the hour of his return on the last occasion; but it passed now by a +long way, and Fitzpiers did not come. Just before dawn she heard the men +stirring in the yard; and the flashes of their lanterns spread every now and +then through her window-blind. She remembered that her father had told her not +to be disturbed if she noticed them, as they would be rising early to send off +four loads of hurdles to a distant sheep-fair. Peeping out, she saw them +bustling about, the hollow-turner among the rest; he was loading his +wares—wooden-bowls, dishes, spigots, spoons, cheese-vats, funnels, and so +on—upon one of her father’s wagons, who carried them to the fair +for him every year out of neighborly kindness. +</p> + +<p> +The scene and the occasion would have enlivened her but that her husband was +still absent; though it was now five o’clock. She could hardly suppose +him, whatever his infatuation, to have prolonged to a later hour than ten an +ostensibly professional call on Mrs. Charmond at Middleton; and he could have +ridden home in two hours and a half. What, then, had become of him? That he had +been out the greater part of the two preceding nights added to her uneasiness. +</p> + +<p> +She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird twilight of advancing +day chilling the rays from the lanterns, and making the men’s faces wan. +As soon as Melbury saw her he came round, showing his alarm. +</p> + +<p> +“Edgar is not come,” she said. “And I have reason to know +that he’s not attending anybody. He has had no rest for two nights before +this. I was going to the top of the hill to look for him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll come with you,” said Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +She begged him not to hinder himself; but he insisted, for he saw a peculiar +and rigid gloom in her face over and above her uneasiness, and did not like the +look of it. Telling the men he would be with them again soon, he walked beside +her into the turnpike-road, and partly up the hill whence she had watched +Fitzpiers the night before across the Great White Hart or Blackmoor Valley. +They halted beneath a half-dead oak, hollow, and disfigured with white tumors, +its roots spreading out like accipitrine claws grasping the ground. A chilly +wind circled round them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring +lime-tree, supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the +boughs downward like fledglings from their nest. The vale was wrapped in a dim +atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtain edged with +pink. There was no sign nor sound of Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +“It is no use standing here,” said her father. “He may come +home fifty ways...why, look here!—here be Darling’s +tracks—turned homeward and nearly blown dry and hard! He must have come +in hours ago without your seeing him.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has not done that,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +They went back hastily. On entering their own gates they perceived that the men +had left the wagons, and were standing round the door of the stable which had +been appropriated to the doctor’s use. “Is there anything the +matter?” cried Grace. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, ma’am. All’s well that ends well,” said old +Timothy Tangs. “I’ve heard of such things before—among +workfolk, though not among your gentle people—that’s true.” +</p> + +<p> +They entered the stable, and saw the pale shape of Darling standing in the +middle of her stall, with Fitzpiers on her back, sound asleep. Darling was +munching hay as well as she could with the bit in her month, and the reins, +which had fallen from Fitzpiers’s hand, hung upon her neck. +</p> + +<p> +Grace went and touched his hand; shook it before she could arouse him. He +moved, started, opened his eyes, and exclaimed, “Ah, Felice!...Oh, +it’s Grace. I could not see in the gloom. What—am I in the +saddle?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said she. “How do you come here?” +</p> + +<p> +He collected his thoughts, and in a few minutes stammered, “I was riding +along homeward through the vale, very, very sleepy, having been up so much of +late. When I came opposite Holywell spring the mare turned her head that way, +as if she wanted to drink. I let her go in, and she drank; I thought she would +never finish. While she was drinking, the clock of Owlscombe Church struck +twelve. I distinctly remember counting the strokes. From that moment I +positively recollect nothing till I saw you here by my side.” +</p> + +<p> +“The name! If it had been any other horse he’d have had a broken +neck!” murmured Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis wonderful, sure, how a quiet hoss will bring a man home at +such times!” said John Upjohn. “And what’s more wonderful +than keeping your seat in a deep, slumbering sleep? I’ve knowed men +drowze off walking home from randies where the mead and other liquors have gone +round well, and keep walking for more than a mile on end without waking. Well, +doctor, I don’t care who the man is, ’tis a mercy you wasn’t +a drownded, or a splintered, or a hanged up to a tree like Absalom—also a +handsome gentleman like yerself, as the prophets say.” +</p> + +<p> +“True,” murmured old Timothy. “From the soul of his foot to +the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Or leastwise you might ha’ been a-wownded into tatters +a’most, and no doctor to jine your few limbs together within seven +mile!” +</p> + +<p> +While this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpiers had dismounted, and taking +Grace’s arm walked stiffly in-doors with her. Melbury stood staring at +the horse, which, in addition to being very weary, was spattered with mud. +There was no mud to speak of about the Hintocks just now—only in the +clammy hollows of the vale beyond Owlscombe, the stiff soil of which retained +moisture for weeks after the uplands were dry. While they were rubbing down the +mare, Melbury’s mind coupled with the foreign quality of the mud the name +he had heard unconsciously muttered by the surgeon when Grace took his +hand—“Felice.” Who was Felice? Why, Mrs. Charmond; and she, +as he knew, was staying at Middleton. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury had indeed pounced upon the image that filled Fitzpiers’s +half-awakened soul—wherein there had been a picture of a recent interview +on a lawn with a capriciously passionate woman who had begged him not to come +again in tones whose vibration incited him to disobey. “What are you +doing here? Why do you pursue me? Another belongs to you. If they were to see +you they would seize you as a thief!” And she had turbulently admitted to +his wringing questions that her visit to Middleton had been undertaken less +because of the invalid relative than in shamefaced fear of her own weakness if +she remained near his home. A triumph then it was to Fitzpiers, poor and +hampered as he had become, to recognize his real conquest of this beauty, +delayed so many years. His was the selfish passion of Congreve’s +Millamont, to whom love’s supreme delight lay in “that heart which +others bleed for, bleed for me.” +</p> + +<p> +When the horse had been attended to Melbury stood uneasily here and there about +his premises; he was rudely disturbed in the comfortable views which had lately +possessed him on his domestic concerns. It is true that he had for some days +discerned that Grace more and more sought his company, preferred supervising +his kitchen and bakehouse with her step-mother to occupying herself with the +lighter details of her own apartments. She seemed no longer able to find in her +own hearth an adequate focus for her life, and hence, like a weak queen-bee +after leading off to an independent home, had hovered again into the parent +hive. But he had not construed these and other incidents of the kind till now. +</p> + +<p> +Something was wrong in the dove-cot. A ghastly sense that he alone would be +responsible for whatever unhappiness should be brought upon her for whom he +almost solely lived, whom to retain under his roof he had faced the numerous +inconveniences involved in giving up the best part of his house to Fitzpiers. +There was no room for doubt that, had he allowed events to take their natural +course, she would have accepted Winterborne, and realized his old dream of +restitution to that young man’s family. +</p> + +<p> +That Fitzpiers could allow himself to look on any other creature for a moment +than Grace filled Melbury with grief and astonishment. In the pure and simple +life he had led it had scarcely occurred to him that after marriage a man might +be faithless. That he could sweep to the heights of Mrs. Charmond’s +position, lift the veil of Isis, so to speak, would have amazed Melbury by its +audacity if he had not suspected encouragement from that quarter. What could he +and his simple Grace do to countervail the passions of such as those two +sophisticated beings—versed in the world’s ways, armed with every +apparatus for victory? In such an encounter the homely timber-dealer felt as +inferior as a bow-and-arrow savage before the precise weapons of modern +warfare. +</p> + +<p> +Grace came out of the house as the morning drew on. The village was silent, +most of the folk having gone to the fair. Fitzpiers had retired to bed, and was +sleeping off his fatigue. She went to the stable and looked at poor Darling: in +all probability Giles Winterborne, by obtaining for her a horse of such +intelligence and docility, had been the means of saving her husband’s +life. She paused over the strange thought; and then there appeared her father +behind her. She saw that he knew things were not as they ought to be, from the +troubled dulness of his eye, and from his face, different points of which had +independent motions, twitchings, and tremblings, unknown to himself, and +involuntary. +</p> + +<p> +“He was detained, I suppose, last night?” said Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes; a bad case in the vale,” she replied, calmly. +</p> + +<p> +“Nevertheless, he should have stayed at home.” +</p> + +<p> +“But he couldn’t, father.” +</p> + +<p> +Her father turned away. He could hardly bear to see his whilom truthful girl +brought to the humiliation of having to talk like that. +</p> + +<p> +That night carking care sat beside Melbury’s pillow, and his stiff limbs +tossed at its presence. “I can’t lie here any longer,” he +muttered. Striking a light, he wandered about the room. “What have I +done—what have I done for her?” he said to his wife, who had +anxiously awakened. “I had long planned that she should marry the son of +the man I wanted to make amends to; do ye mind how I told you all about it, +Lucy, the night before she came home? Ah! but I was not content with doing +right, I wanted to do more!” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t raft yourself without good need, George,” she replied. +“I won’t quite believe that things are so much amiss. I won’t +believe that Mrs. Charmond has encouraged him. Even supposing she has +encouraged a great many, she can have no motive to do it now. What so likely as +that she is not yet quite well, and doesn’t care to let another doctor +come near her?” +</p> + +<p> +He did not heed. “Grace used to be so busy every day, with fixing a +curtain here and driving a tin-tack there; but she cares for no employment +now!” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know anything of Mrs. Charmond’s past history? Perhaps that +would throw some light upon things. Before she came here as the wife of old +Charmond four or five years ago, not a soul seems to have heard aught of her. +Why not make inquiries? And then do ye wait and see more; there’ll be +plenty of opportunity. Time enough to cry when you know ’tis a crying +matter; and ’tis bad to meet troubles half-way.” +</p> + +<p> +There was some good-sense in the notion of seeing further. Melbury resolved to +inquire and wait, hoping still, but oppressed between-whiles with much fear. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap30"></a>CHAPTER XXX.</h2> + +<p> +Examine Grace as her father might, she would admit nothing. For the present, +therefore, he simply watched. +</p> + +<p> +The suspicion that his darling child was being slighted wrought almost a +miraculous change in Melbury’s nature. No man so furtive for the time as +the ingenuous countryman who finds that his ingenuousness has been abused. +Melbury’s heretofore confidential candor towards his gentlemanly +son-in-law was displaced by a feline stealth that did injury to his every +action, thought, and mood. He knew that a woman once given to a man for life +took, as a rule, her lot as it came and made the best of it, without external +interference; but for the first time he asked himself why this so generally +should be so. Moreover, this case was not, he argued, like ordinary cases. +Leaving out the question of Grace being anything but an ordinary woman, her +peculiar situation, as it were in mid-air between two planes of society, +together with the loneliness of Hintock, made a husband’s neglect a far +more tragical matter to her than it would be to one who had a large circle of +friends to fall back upon. Wisely or unwisely, and whatever other fathers did, +he resolved to fight his daughter’s battle still. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Charmond had returned. But Hintock House scarcely gave forth signs of +life, so quietly had she reentered it. He went to church at Great Hintock one +afternoon as usual, there being no service at the smaller village. A few +minutes before his departure, he had casually heard Fitzpiers, who was no +church-goer, tell his wife that he was going to walk in the wood. Melbury +entered the building and sat down in his pew; the parson came in, then Mrs. +Charmond, then Mr. Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +The service proceeded, and the jealous father was quite sure that a mutual +consciousness was uninterruptedly maintained between those two; he fancied that +more than once their eyes met. At the end, Fitzpiers so timed his movement into +the aisle that it exactly coincided with Felice Charmond’s from the +opposite side, and they walked out with their garments in contact, the surgeon +being just that two or three inches in her rear which made it convenient for +his eyes to rest upon her cheek. The cheek warmed up to a richer tone. +</p> + +<p> +This was a worse feature in the flirtation than he had expected. If she had +been playing with him in an idle freak the game might soon have wearied her; +but the smallest germ of passion—and women of the world do not change +color for nothing—was a threatening development. The mere presence of +Fitzpiers in the building, after his statement, was wellnigh conclusive as far +as he was concerned; but Melbury resolved yet to watch. +</p> + +<p> +He had to wait long. Autumn drew shiveringly to its end. One day something +seemed to be gone from the gardens; the tenderer leaves of vegetables had +shrunk under the first smart frost, and hung like faded linen rags; then the +forest leaves, which had been descending at leisure, descended in haste and in +multitudes, and all the golden colors that had hung overhead were now crowded +together in a degraded mass underfoot, where the fallen myriads got redder and +hornier, and curled themselves up to rot. The only suspicious features in Mrs. +Charmond’s existence at this season were two: the first, that she lived +with no companion or relative about her, which, considering her age and +attractions, was somewhat unusual conduct for a young widow in a lonely +country-house; the other, that she did not, as in previous years, start from +Hintock to winter abroad. In Fitzpiers, the only change from his last +autumn’s habits lay in his abandonment of night study—his lamp +never shone from his new dwelling as from his old. +</p> + +<p> +If the suspected ones met, it was by such adroit contrivances that even +Melbury’s vigilance could not encounter them together. A simple call at +her house by the doctor had nothing irregular about it, and that he had paid +two or three such calls was certain. What had passed at those interviews was +known only to the parties themselves; but that Felice Charmond was under some +one’s influence Melbury soon had opportunity of perceiving. +</p> + +<p> +Winter had come on. Owls began to be noisy in the mornings and evenings, and +flocks of wood-pigeons made themselves prominent again. One day in February, +about six months after the marriage of Fitzpiers, Melbury was returning from +Great Hintock on foot through the lane, when he saw before him the surgeon also +walking. Melbury would have overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiers turned +in through a gate to one of the rambling drives among the trees at this side of +the wood, which led to nowhere in particular, and the beauty of whose +serpentine curves was the only justification of their existence. Felice almost +simultaneously trotted down the lane towards the timber-dealer, in a little +basket-carriage which she sometimes drove about the estate, unaccompanied by a +servant. She turned in at the same place without having seen either Melbury or +apparently Fitzpiers. Melbury was soon at the spot, despite his aches and his +sixty years. Mrs. Charmond had come up with the doctor, who was standing +immediately behind the carriage. She had turned to him, her arm being thrown +carelessly over the back of the seat. They looked in each other’s faces +without uttering a word, an arch yet gloomy smile wreathing her lips. Fitzpiers +clasped her hanging hand, and, while she still remained in the same listless +attitude, looking volumes into his eyes, he stealthily unbuttoned her glove, +and stripped her hand of it by rolling back the gauntlet over the fingers, so +that it came off inside out. He then raised her hand to his month, she still +reclining passively, watching him as she might have watched a fly upon her +dress. At last she said, “Well, sir, what excuse for this +disobedience?” +</p> + +<p> +“I make none.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then go your way, and let me go mine.” She snatched away her hand, +touched the pony with the whip, and left him standing there, holding the +reversed glove. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury’s first impulse was to reveal his presence to Fitzpiers, and +upbraid him bitterly. But a moment’s thought was sufficient to show him +the futility of any such simple proceeding. There was not, after all, so much +in what he had witnessed as in what that scene might be the surface and froth +of—probably a state of mind on which censure operates as an aggravation +rather than as a cure. Moreover, he said to himself that the point of attack +should be the woman, if either. He therefore kept out of sight, and musing +sadly, even tearfully—for he was meek as a child in matters concerning +his daughter—continued his way towards Hintock. +</p> + +<p> +The insight which is bred of deep sympathy was never more finely exemplified +than in this instance. Through her guarded manner, her dignified speech, her +placid countenance, he discerned the interior of Grace’s life only too +truly, hidden as were its incidents from every outer eye. +</p> + +<p> +These incidents had become painful enough. Fitzpiers had latterly developed an +irritable discontent which vented itself in monologues when Grace was present +to hear them. The early morning of this day had been dull, after a night of +wind, and on looking out of the window Fitzpiers had observed some of +Melbury’s men dragging away a large limb which had been snapped off a +beech-tree. Everything was cold and colorless. +</p> + +<p> +“My good Heaven!” he said, as he stood in his dressing-gown. +“This is life!” He did not know whether Grace was awake or not, and +he would not turn his head to ascertain. “Ah, fool,” he went on to +himself, “to clip your own wings when you were free to soar!...But I +could not rest till I had done it. Why do I never recognize an opportunity till +I have missed it, nor the good or ill of a step till it is irrevocable!...I +fell in love....Love, indeed!— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“‘Love’s but the frailty of the mind<br /> +When ’tis not with ambition joined;<br /> +A sickly flame which if not fed, expires,<br /> +And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires!’ +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Ah, old author of ‘The Way of the World,’ you knew—you +knew!” Grace moved. He thought she had heard some part of his soliloquy. +He was sorry—though he had not taken any precaution to prevent her. +</p> + +<p> +He expected a scene at breakfast, but she only exhibited an extreme reserve. It +was enough, however, to make him repent that he should have done anything to +produce discomfort; for he attributed her manner entirely to what he had said. +But Grace’s manner had not its cause either in his sayings or in his +doings. She had not heard a single word of his regrets. Something even nearer +home than her husband’s blighted prospects—if blighted they +were—was the origin of her mood, a mood that was the mere continuation of +what her father had noticed when he would have preferred a passionate jealousy +in her, as the more natural. +</p> + +<p> +She had made a discovery—one which to a girl of honest nature was almost +appalling. She had looked into her heart, and found that her early interest in +Giles Winterborne had become revitalized into luxuriant growth by her widening +perceptions of what was great and little in life. His homeliness no longer +offended her acquired tastes; his comparative want of so-called culture did not +now jar on her intellect; his country dress even pleased her eye; his exterior +roughness fascinated her. Having discovered by marriage how much that was +humanly not great could co-exist with attainments of an exceptional order, +there was a revulsion in her sentiments from all that she had formerly clung to +in this kind: honesty, goodness, manliness, tenderness, devotion, for her only +existed in their purity now in the breasts of unvarnished men; and here was one +who had manifested them towards her from his youth up. +</p> + +<p> +There was, further, that never-ceasing pity in her soul for Giles as a man whom +she had wronged—a man who had been unfortunate in his worldly +transactions; while, not without a touch of sublimity, he had, like Horatio, +borne himself throughout his scathing +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +It was these perceptions, and no subtle catching of her husband’s +murmurs, that had bred the abstraction visible in her. +</p> + +<p> +When her father approached the house after witnessing the interview between +Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond, Grace was looking out of her sitting-room window, +as if she had nothing to do, or think of, or care for. He stood still. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, Grace,” he said, regarding her fixedly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, father,” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“Waiting for your dear husband?” he inquired, speaking with the +sarcasm of pitiful affection. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—not especially. He has a great many patients to see this +afternoon.” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury came quite close. “Grace, what’s the use of talking like +that, when you know—Here, come down and walk with me out in the garden, +child.” +</p> + +<p> +He unfastened the door in the ivy-laced wall, and waited. This apparent +indifference alarmed him. He would far rather that she had rushed in all the +fire of jealousy to Hintock House, regardless of conventionality, confronted +and attacked Felice Charmond <i>unguibus et rostro</i>, and accused her even in +exaggerated shape of stealing away her husband. Such a storm might have cleared +the air. +</p> + +<p> +She emerged in a minute or two, and they went inside together. “You know +as well as I do,” he resumed, “that there is something threatening +mischief to your life; and yet you pretend you do not. Do you suppose I +don’t see the trouble in your face every day? I am very sure that this +quietude is wrong conduct in you. You should look more into matters.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to +action.” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions—did she not feel jealous? was +she not indignant? but a natural delicacy restrained him. “You are very +tame and let-alone, I am bound to say,” he remarked, pointedly. +</p> + +<p> +“I am what I feel, father,” she repeated. +</p> + +<p> +He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the scene of her offering +to wed Winterborne instead of Fitzpiers in the last days before her marriage; +and he asked himself if it could be the fact that she loved Winterborne, now +that she had lost him, more than she had ever done when she was comparatively +free to choose him. +</p> + +<p> +“What would you have me do?” she asked, in a low voice. +</p> + +<p> +He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical matter before +them. “I would have you go to Mrs. Charmond,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Go to Mrs. Charmond—what for?” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—if I must speak plain, dear Grace—to ask her, appeal to +her in the name of your common womanhood, and your many like sentiments on +things, not to make unhappiness between you and your husband. It lies with her +entirely to do one or the other—that I can see.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace’s face had heated at her father’s words, and the very rustle +of her skirts upon the box-edging bespoke hauteur. “I shall not think of +going to her, father—of course I could not!” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Why—don’t ’ee want to be happier than you be at +present?” said Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t wish to be more humiliated. If I have anything to bear I +can bear it in silence.” +</p> + +<p> +“But, my dear maid, you are too young—you don’t know what the +present state of things may lead to. Just see the harm done a’ready! Your +husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a bigger practice if it had not +been for this. Although it has gone such a little way, it is poisoning your +future even now. Mrs. Charmond is thoughtlessly bad, not bad by calculation; +and just a word to her now might save ’ee a peck of woes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, I loved her once,” said Grace, with a broken articulation, +“and she would not care for me then! Now I no longer love her. Let her do +her worst: I don’t care.” +</p> + +<p> +“You ought to care. You have got into a very good position to start with. +You have been well educated, well tended, and you have become the wife of a +professional man of unusually good family. Surely you ought to make the best of +your position.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see that I ought. I wish I had never got into it. I wish +you had never, never thought of educating me. I wish I worked in the woods like +Marty South. I hate genteel life, and I want to be no better than she.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” said her amazed father. +</p> + +<p> +“Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and troubles. I +say again, I wish you had never sent me to those fashionable schools you set +your mind on. It all arose out of that, father. If I had stayed at home I +should have married—” She closed up her mouth suddenly and was +silent; and he saw that she was not far from crying. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury was much grieved. “What, and would you like to have grown up as +we be here in Hintock—knowing no more, and with no more chance of seeing +good life than we have here?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. I have never got any happiness outside Hintock that I know of, and +I have suffered many a heartache at being sent away. Oh, the misery of those +January days when I had got back to school, and left you all here in the wood +so happy. I used to wonder why I had to bear it. And I was always a little +despised by the other girls at school, because they knew where I came from, and +that my parents were not in so good a station as theirs.” +</p> + +<p> +Her poor father was much hurt at what he thought her ingratitude and +intractability. He had admitted to himself bitterly enough that he should have +let young hearts have their way, or rather should have helped on her affection +for Winterborne, and given her to him according to his original plan; but he +was not prepared for her deprecation of those attainments whose completion had +been a labor of years, and a severe tax upon his purse. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” he said, with much heaviness of spirit. “If you +don’t like to go to her I don’t wish to force you.” +</p> + +<p> +And so the question remained for him still: how should he remedy this perilous +state of things? For days he sat in a moody attitude over the fire, a pitcher +of cider standing on the hearth beside him, and his drinking-horn inverted upon +the top of it. He spent a week and more thus composing a letter to the chief +offender, which he would every now and then attempt to complete, and suddenly +crumple up in his hand. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap31"></a>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2> + +<p> +As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom of the +woodmen’s homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little began to have +ears for a rumor of the events out of which had grown the timber-dealer’s +troubles. It took the form of a wide sprinkling of conjecture, wherein no man +knew the exact truth. Tantalizing phenomena, at once showing and concealing the +real relationship of the persons concerned, caused a diffusion of excited +surprise. Honest people as the woodlanders were, it was hardly to be expected +that they could remain immersed in the study of their trees and gardens amid +such circumstances, or sit with their backs turned like the good burghers of +Coventry at the passage of the beautiful lady. +</p> + +<p> +Rumor, for a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in this case as +in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the hills, which, with individual +variations, made a mourner of Ariadne, a by-word of Vashti, and a corpse of the +Countess Amy. There were rencounters accidental and contrived, stealthy +correspondence, sudden misgivings on one side, sudden self-reproaches on the +other. The inner state of the twain was one as of confused noise that would not +allow the accents of calmer reason to be heard. Determinations to go in this +direction, and headlong plunges in that; dignified safeguards, undignified +collapses; not a single rash step by deliberate intention, and all against +judgment. +</p> + +<p> +It was all that Melbury had expected and feared. It was more, for he had +overlooked the publicity that would be likely to result, as it now had done. +What should he do—appeal to Mrs. Charmond himself, since Grace would not? +He bethought himself of Winterborne, and resolved to consult him, feeling the +strong need of some friend of his own sex to whom he might unburden his mind. +</p> + +<p> +He had entirely lost faith in his own judgment. That judgment on which he had +relied for so many years seemed recently, like a false companion unmasked, to +have disclosed unexpected depths of hypocrisy and speciousness where all had +seemed solidity. He felt almost afraid to form a conjecture on the weather, or +the time, or the fruit-promise, so great was his self-abasement. +</p> + +<p> +It was a rimy evening when he set out to look for Giles. The woods seemed to be +in a cold sweat; beads of perspiration hung from every bare twig; the sky had +no color, and the trees rose before him as haggard, gray phantoms, whose days +of substantiality were passed. Melbury seldom saw Winterborne now, but he +believed him to be occupying a lonely hut just beyond the boundary of Mrs. +Charmond’s estate, though still within the circuit of the woodland. The +timber-merchant’s thin legs stalked on through the pale, damp scenery, +his eyes on the dead leaves of last year; while every now and then a hasty +“Ay?” escaped his lips in reply to some bitter proposition. +</p> + +<p> +His notice was attracted by a thin blue haze of smoke, behind which arose +sounds of voices and chopping: bending his steps that way, he saw Winterborne +just in front of him. It just now happened that Giles, after being for a long +time apathetic and unemployed, had become one of the busiest men in the +neighborhood. It is often thus; fallen friends, lost sight of, we expect to +find starving; we discover them going on fairly well. Without any solicitation, +or desire for profit on his part, he had been asked to execute during that +winter a very large order for hurdles and other copse-ware, for which purpose +he had been obliged to buy several acres of brushwood standing. He was now +engaged in the cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work +daily like an automaton. +</p> + +<p> +The hazel-tree did not belie its name to-day. The whole of the copse-wood where +the mist had cleared returned purest tints of that hue, amid which Winterborne +himself was in the act of making a hurdle, the stakes being driven firmly into +the ground in a row, over which he bent and wove the twigs. Beside him was a +square, compact pile like the altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already +finished, which bristled on all sides with the sharp points of their stakes. At +a little distance the men in his employ were assisting him to carry out his +contract. Rows of copse-wood lay on the ground as it had fallen under the axe; +and a shelter had been constructed near at hand, in front of which burned the +fire whose smoke had attracted him. The air was so dank that the smoke hung +heavy, and crept away amid the bushes without rising from the ground. +</p> + +<p> +After wistfully regarding Winterborne a while, Melbury drew nearer, and briefly +inquired of Giles how he came to be so busily engaged, with an undertone of +slight surprise that Winterborne could seem so thriving after being deprived of +Grace. Melbury was not without emotion at the meeting; for Grace’s +affairs had divided them, and ended their intimacy of old times. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne explained just as briefly, without raising his eyes from his +occupation of chopping a bough that he held in front of him. +</p> + +<p> +“’Twill be up in April before you get it all cleared,” said +Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, there or thereabouts,” said Winterborne, a chop of the +billhook jerking the last word into two pieces. +</p> + +<p> +There was another interval; Melbury still looked on, a chip from +Winterborne’s hook occasionally flying against the waistcoat and legs of +his visitor, who took no heed. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, Giles—you should have been my partner. You should have been my +son-in-law,” the old man said at last. “It would have been far +better for her and for me.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne saw that something had gone wrong with his former friend, and +throwing down the switch he was about to interweave, he responded only too +readily to the mood of the timber-dealer. “Is she ill?” he said, +hurriedly. +</p> + +<p> +“No, no.” Melbury stood without speaking for some minutes, and +then, as though he could not bring himself to proceed, turned to go away. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night and walked +after Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir,” he said, +“especially since we don’t stand as we used to stand to one +another; but I hope it is well with them all over your way?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Melbury—“no.” He stopped, and struck +the smooth trunk of a young ash-tree with the flat of his hand. “I would +that his ear had been where that rind is!” he exclaimed; “I should +have treated him to little compared wi what he deserves.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” said Winterborne, “don’t be in a hurry to go +home. I’ve put some cider down to warm in my shelter here, and +we’ll sit and drink it and talk this over.” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and they went back to where +the fire was, and sat down under the screen, the other woodmen having gone. He +drew out the cider-mug from the ashes and they drank together. +</p> + +<p> +“Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now,” repeated +Melbury. “I’ll tell you why for the first time.” +</p> + +<p> +He thereupon told Winterborne, as with great relief, the story of how he won +away Giles’s father’s chosen one—by nothing worse than a +lover’s cajoleries, it is true, but by means which, except in love, would +certainly have been pronounced cruel and unfair. He explained how he had always +intended to make reparation to Winterborne the father by giving Grace to +Winterborne the son, till the devil tempted him in the person of Fitzpiers, and +he broke his virtuous vow. +</p> + +<p> +“How highly I thought of that man, to be sure! Who’d have supposed +he’d have been so weak and wrong-headed as this! You ought to have had +her, Giles, and there’s an end on’t.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne knew how to preserve his calm under this unconsciously cruel +tearing of a healing wound to which Melbury’s concentration on the more +vital subject had blinded him. The young man endeavored to make the best of the +case for Grace’s sake. +</p> + +<p> +“She would hardly have been happy with me,” he said, in the dry, +unimpassioned voice under which he hid his feelings. “I was not well +enough educated: too rough, in short. I couldn’t have surrounded her with +the refinements she looked for, anyhow, at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense—you are quite wrong there,” said the unwise old +man, doggedly. “She told me only this day that she hates refinements and +such like. All that my trouble and money bought for her in that way is thrown +away upon her quite. She’d fain be like Marty South—think o’ +that! That’s the top of her ambition! Perhaps she’s right. Giles, +she loved you—under the rind; and, what’s more, she loves ye +still—worse luck for the poor maid!” +</p> + +<p> +If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up he might +have held his peace. Winterborne was silent a long time. The darkness had +closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of the fog from the branches +quickened as it turned to fine rain. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, she never cared much for me,” Giles managed to say, as he +stirred the embers with a brand. +</p> + +<p> +“She did, and does, I tell ye,” said the other, obstinately. +“However, all that’s vain talking now. What I come to ask you about +is a more practical matter—how to make the best of things as they are. I +am thinking of a desperate step—of calling on the woman Charmond. I am +going to appeal to her, since Grace will not. ’Tis she who holds the +balance in her hands—not he. While she’s got the will to lead him +astray he will follow—poor, unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer—and +how long she’ll do it depends upon her whim. Did ye ever hear anything +about her character before she came to Hintock?” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe,” +replied Giles, with the same level quietude, as he regarded the red coals. +“One who has smiled where she has not loved and loved where she has not +married. Before Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a play-actress.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hey? But how close you have kept all this, Giles! What besides?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Charmond was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the north, +twenty or thirty years older than she. He married her and retired, and came +down here and bought this property, as they do nowadays.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes—I know all about that; but the other I did not know. I +fear it bodes no good. For how can I go and appeal to the forbearance of a +woman in this matter who has made cross-loves and crooked entanglements her +trade for years? I thank ye, Giles, for finding it out; but it makes my plan +the harder that she should have belonged to that unstable tribe.” +</p> + +<p> +Another pause ensued, and they looked gloomily at the smoke that beat about the +hurdles which sheltered them, through whose weavings a large drop of rain fell +at intervals and spat smartly into the fire. Mrs. Charmond had been no friend +to Winterborne, but he was manly, and it was not in his heart to let her be +condemned without a trial. +</p> + +<p> +“She is said to be generous,” he answered. “You might not +appeal to her in vain.” +</p> + +<p> +“It shall be done,” said Melbury, rising. “For good or for +evil, to Mrs. Charmond I’ll go.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap32"></a>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2> + +<p> +At nine o’clock the next morning Melbury dressed himself up in shining +broadcloth, creased with folding and smelling of camphor, and started for +Hintock House. He was the more impelled to go at once by the absence of his +son-in-law in London for a few days, to attend, really or ostensibly, some +professional meetings. He said nothing of his destination either to his wife or +to Grace, fearing that they might entreat him to abandon so risky a project, +and went out unobserved. He had chosen his time with a view, as he supposed, of +conveniently catching Mrs. Charmond when she had just finished her breakfast, +before any other business people should be about, if any came. Plodding +thoughtfully onward, he crossed a glade lying between Little Hintock Woods and +the plantation which abutted on the park; and the spot being open, he was +discerned there by Winterborne from the copse on the next hill, where he and +his men were working. Knowing his mission, the younger man hastened down from +the copse and managed to intercept the timber-merchant. +</p> + +<p> +“I have been thinking of this, sir,” he said, “and I am of +opinion that it would be best to put off your visit for the present.” +</p> + +<p> +But Melbury would not even stop to hear him. His mind was made up, the appeal +was to be made; and Winterborne stood and watched him sadly till he entered the +second plantation and disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury rang at the tradesmen’s door of the manor-house, and was at once +informed that the lady was not yet visible, as indeed he might have guessed had +he been anybody but the man he was. Melbury said he would wait, whereupon the +young man informed him in a neighborly way that, between themselves, she was in +bed and asleep. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind,” said Melbury, retreating into the court, +“I’ll stand about here.” Charged so fully with his mission, +he shrank from contact with anybody. +</p> + +<p> +But he walked about the paved court till he was tired, and still nobody came to +him. At last he entered the house and sat down in a small waiting-room, from +which he got glimpses of the kitchen corridor, and of the white-capped maids +flitting jauntily hither and thither. They had heard of his arrival, but had +not seen him enter, and, imagining him still in the court, discussed freely the +possible reason of his calling. They marvelled at his temerity; for though most +of the tongues which had been let loose attributed the chief blame-worthiness +to Fitzpiers, these of her household preferred to regard their mistress as the +deeper sinner. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury sat with his hands resting on the familiar knobbed thorn walking-stick, +whose growing he had seen before he enjoyed its use. The scene to him was not +the material environment of his person, but a tragic vision that travelled with +him like an envelope. Through this vision the incidents of the moment but +gleamed confusedly here and there, as an outer landscape through the +high-colored scenes of a stained window. He waited thus an hour, an hour and a +half, two hours. He began to look pale and ill, whereupon the butler, who came +in, asked him to have a glass of wine. Melbury roused himself and said, +“No, no. Is she almost ready?” +</p> + +<p> +“She is just finishing breakfast,” said the butler. “She will +soon see you now. I am just going up to tell her you are here.” +</p> + +<p> +“What! haven’t you told her before?” said Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” said the other. “You see you came so very +early.” +</p> + +<p> +At last the bell rang: Mrs. Charmond could see him. She was not in her private +sitting-room when he reached it, but in a minute he heard her coming from the +front staircase, and she entered where he stood. +</p> + +<p> +At this time of the morning Mrs. Charmond looked her full age and more. She +might almost have been taken for the typical <i>femme de trente ans</i>, though +she was really not more than seven or eight and twenty. There being no fire in +the room, she came in with a shawl thrown loosely round her shoulders, and +obviously without the least suspicion that Melbury had called upon any other +errand than timber. Felice was, indeed, the only woman in the parish who had +not heard the rumor of her own weaknesses; she was at this moment living in a +fool’s paradise in respect of that rumor, though not in respect of the +weaknesses themselves, which, if the truth be told, caused her grave +misgivings. +</p> + +<p> +“Do sit down, Mr. Melbury. You have felled all the trees that were to be +purchased by you this season, except the oaks, I believe.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“How very nice! It must be so charming to work in the woods just +now!” +</p> + +<p> +She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous person’s +affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of the perfect social +machine. Hence her words “very nice,” “so charming,” +were uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them sound absurdly unreal. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes,” said Melbury, in a reverie. He did not take a chair, +and she also remained standing. Resting upon his stick, he began: “Mrs. +Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter—at least to +me—than tree-throwing. And whatever mistakes I make in my manner of +speaking upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set ’em down to my +want of practice, and not to my want of care.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease. She might have begun to guess his meaning; +but apart from that, she had such dread of contact with anything painful, +harsh, or even earnest, that his preliminaries alone were enough to distress +her. “Yes, what is it?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I am an old man,” said Melbury, “whom, somewhat late in +life, God thought fit to bless with one child, and she a daughter. Her mother +was a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us when the child was +young, and the child became precious as the apple of my eye to me, for she was +all I had left to love. For her sake entirely I married as second wife a +homespun woman who had been kind as a mother to her. In due time the question +of her education came on, and I said, ‘I will educate the maid well, if I +live upon bread to do it.’ Of her possible marriage I could not bear to +think, for it seemed like a death that she should cleave to another man, and +grow to think his house her home rather than mine. But I saw it was the law of +nature that this should be, and that it was for the maid’s happiness that +she should have a home when I was gone; and I made up my mind without a murmur +to help it on for her sake. In my youth I had wronged my dead friend, and to +make amends I determined to give her, my most precious possession, to my +friend’s son, seeing that they liked each other well. Things came about +which made me doubt if it would be for my daughter’s happiness to do +this, inasmuch as the young man was poor, and she was delicately reared. +Another man came and paid court to her—one her equal in breeding and +accomplishments; in every way it seemed to me that he only could give her the +home which her training had made a necessity almost. I urged her on, and she +married him. But, ma’am, a fatal mistake was at the root of my reckoning. +I found that this well-born gentleman I had calculated on so surely was not +stanch of heart, and that therein lay a danger of great sorrow for my daughter. +Madam, he saw you, and you know the rest....I have come to make no +demands—to utter no threats; I have come simply as a father in great +grief about this only child, and I beseech you to deal kindly with my daughter, +and to do nothing which can turn her husband’s heart away from her +forever. Forbid him your presence, ma’am, and speak to him on his duty as +one with your power over him well can do, and I am hopeful that the rent +between them may be patched up. For it is not as if you would lose by so doing; +your course is far higher than the courses of a simple professional man, and +the gratitude you would win from me and mine by your kindness is more than I +can say.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Charmond had first rushed into a mood of indignation on comprehending +Melbury’s story; hot and cold by turns, she had murmured, “Leave +me, leave me!” But as he seemed to take no notice of this, his words +began to influence her, and when he ceased speaking she said, with hurried, hot +breath, “What has led you to think this of me? Who says I have won your +daughter’s husband away from her? Some monstrous calumnies are +afloat—of which I have known nothing until now!” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury started, and looked at her simply. “But surely, ma’am, you +know the truth better than I?” +</p> + +<p> +Her features became a little pinched, and the touches of powder on her handsome +face for the first time showed themselves as an extrinsic film. “Will you +leave me to myself?” she said, with a faintness which suggested a guilty +conscience. “This is so utterly unexpected—you obtain admission to +my presence by misrepresentation—” +</p> + +<p> +“As God’s in heaven, ma’am, that’s not true. I made no +pretence; and I thought in reason you would know why I had come. This +gossip—” +</p> + +<p> +“I have heard nothing of it. Tell me of it, I say.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell you, ma’am—not I. What the gossip is, no matter. What +really is, you know. Set facts right, and the scandal will right of itself. But +pardon me—I speak roughly; and I came to speak gently, to coax you, beg +you to be my daughter’s friend. She loved you once, ma’am; you +began by liking her. Then you dropped her without a reason, and it hurt her +warm heart more than I can tell ye. But you were within your right as the +superior, no doubt. But if you would consider her position now—surely, +surely, you would do her no harm!” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly I would do her no harm—I—” Melbury’s +eye met hers. It was curious, but the allusion to Grace’s former love for +her seemed to touch her more than all Melbury’s other arguments. +“Oh, Melbury,” she burst out, “you have made me so unhappy! +How could you come to me like this! It is too dreadful! Now go away—go, +go!” +</p> + +<p> +“I will,” he said, in a husky tone. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as he was out of the room she went to a corner and there sat and +writhed under an emotion in which hurt pride and vexation mingled with better +sentiments. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Charmond’s mobile spirit was subject to these fierce periods of +stress and storm. She had never so clearly perceived till now that her soul was +being slowly invaded by a delirium which had brought about all this; that she +was losing judgment and dignity under it, becoming an animated impulse only, a +passion incarnate. A fascination had led her on; it was as if she had been +seized by a hand of velvet; and this was where she found +herself—overshadowed with sudden night, as if a tornado had passed by. +</p> + +<p> +While she sat, or rather crouched, unhinged by the interview, lunch-time came, +and then the early afternoon, almost without her consciousness. Then “a +strange gentleman who says it is not necessary to give his name,” was +suddenly announced. +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot see him, whoever he may be. I am not at home to anybody.” +</p> + +<p> +She heard no more of her visitor; and shortly after, in an attempt to recover +some mental serenity by violent physical exercise, she put on her hat and cloak +and went out-of-doors, taking a path which led her up the slopes to the nearest +spur of the wood. She disliked the woods, but they had the advantage of being a +place in which she could walk comparatively unobserved. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap33"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2> + +<p> +There was agitation to-day in the lives of all whom these matters concerned. It +was not till the Hintock dinner-time—one o’clock—that Grace +discovered her father’s absence from the house after a departure in the +morning under somewhat unusual conditions. By a little reasoning and inquiry +she was able to come to a conclusion on his destination, and to divine his +errand. +</p> + +<p> +Her husband was absent, and her father did not return. He had, in truth, gone +on to Sherton after the interview, but this Grace did not know. In an +indefinite dread that something serious would arise out of Melbury’s +visit by reason of the inequalities of temper and nervous irritation to which +he was subject, something possibly that would bring her much more misery than +accompanied her present negative state of mind, she left the house about three +o’clock, and took a loitering walk in the woodland track by which she +imagined he would come home. This track under the bare trees and over the +cracking sticks, screened and roofed in from the outer world of wind and cloud +by a net-work of boughs, led her slowly on till in time she had left the larger +trees behind her and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his men +were clearing the undergrowth. +</p> + +<p> +Had Giles’s attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would not have +seen her; but ever since Melbury’s passage across the opposite glade in +the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled as Grace herself; and her +advent now was the one appearance which, since her father’s avowal, could +arrest him more than Melbury’s return with his tidings. Fearing that +something might be the matter, he hastened up to her. +</p> + +<p> +She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious of the late +pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly. “I am only looking +for my father,” she said, in an unnecessarily apologetic intonation. +</p> + +<p> +“I was looking for him too,” said Giles. “I think he may +perhaps have gone on farther.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?” she said, turning +her large tender eyes anxiously upon him. “Did he tell you what +for?” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that her father +had visited him the evening before, and that their old friendship was quite +restored, on which she guessed the rest. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!” she cried. +And then they stood facing each other, fearing each other, troubling each +other’s souls. Grace experienced acute misery at the sight of these +wood-cutting scenes, because she had estranged herself from them, craving, even +to its defects and inconveniences, that homely sylvan life of her father which +in the best probable succession of events would shortly be denied her. +</p> + +<p> +At a little distance, on the edge of the clearing, Marty South was shaping +spar-gads to take home for manufacture during the evenings. While Winterborne +and Mrs. Fitzpiers stood looking at her in their mutual embarrassment at each +other’s presence, they beheld approaching the girl a lady in a dark fur +mantle and a black hat, having a white veil tied picturesquely round it. She +spoke to Marty, who turned and courtesied, and the lady fell into conversation +with her. It was Mrs. Charmond. +</p> + +<p> +On leaving her house, Mrs. Charmond had walked on and onward under the fret and +fever of her mind with more vigor than she was accustomed to show in her normal +moods—a fever which the solace of a cigarette did not entirely allay. +Reaching the coppice, she listlessly observed Marty at work, threw away her +cigarette, and came near. Chop, chop, chop, went Marty’s little billhook +with never more assiduity, till Mrs. Charmond spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“Who is that young lady I see talking to the woodman yonder?” she +asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Fitzpiers, ma’am,” said Marty. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Mrs. Charmond, with something like a start; for she had +not recognized Grace at that distance. “And the man she is talking +to?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s Mr. Winterborne.” +</p> + +<p> +A redness stole into Marty’s face as she mentioned Giles’s name, +which Mrs. Charmond did not fail to notice informed her of the state of the +girl’s heart. “Are you engaged to him?” she asked, softly. +</p> + +<p> +“No, ma’am,” said Marty. “<i>She</i> was once; and I +think—” +</p> + +<p> +But Marty could not possibly explain the complications of her thoughts on this +matter—which were nothing less than one of extraordinary acuteness for a +girl so young and inexperienced—namely, that she saw danger to two hearts +naturally honest in Grace being thrown back into Winterborne’s society by +the neglect of her husband. Mrs. Charmond, however, with the almost +supersensory means to knowledge which women have on such occasions, quite +understood what Marty had intended to convey, and the picture thus exhibited to +her of lives drifting away, involving the wreck of poor Marty’s hopes, +prompted her to more generous resolves than all Melbury’s remonstrances +had been able to stimulate. +</p> + +<p> +Full of the new feeling, she bade the girl good-afternoon, and went on over the +stumps of hazel to where Grace and Winterborne were standing. They saw her +approach, and Winterborne said, “She is coming to you; it is a good omen. +She dislikes me, so I’ll go away.” He accordingly retreated to +where he had been working before Grace came, and Grace’s formidable rival +approached her, each woman taking the other’s measure as she came near. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear—Mrs. Fitzpiers,” said Felice Charmond, with some inward +turmoil which stopped her speech. “I have not seen you for a long +time.” +</p> + +<p> +She held out her hand tentatively, while Grace stood like a wild animal on +first confronting a mirror or other puzzling product of civilization. Was it +really Mrs. Charmond speaking to her thus? If it was, she could no longer form +any guess as to what it signified. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to talk with you,” said Mrs. Charmond, imploringly, for the +gaze of the young woman had chilled her through. “Can you walk on with me +till we are quite alone?” +</p> + +<p> +Sick with distaste, Grace nevertheless complied, as by clockwork and they moved +evenly side by side into the deeper recesses of the woods. They went farther, +much farther than Mrs. Charmond had meant to go; but she could not begin her +conversation, and in default of it kept walking. +</p> + +<p> +“I have seen your father,” she at length resumed. +“And—I am much troubled by what he told me.” +</p> + +<p> +“What did he tell you? I have not been admitted to his confidence on +anything he may have said to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevertheless, why should I repeat to you what you can easily +divine?” +</p> + +<p> +“True—true,” returned Grace, mournfully. “Why should +you repeat what we both know to be in our minds already?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Fitzpiers, your husband—” The moment that the +speaker’s tongue touched the dangerous subject a vivid look of +self-consciousness flashed over her, in which her heart revealed, as by a +lightning gleam, what filled it to overflowing. So transitory was the +expression that none but a sensitive woman, and she in Grace’s position, +would have had the power to catch its meaning. Upon her the phase was not lost. +</p> + +<p> +“Then you <i>do</i> love him!” she exclaimed, in a tone of much +surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean, my young friend?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” cried Grace, “I thought till now that you had only +been cruelly flirting with my husband, to amuse your idle moments—a rich +lady with a poor professional gentleman whom in her heart she despised not much +less than her who belongs to him. But I guess from your manner that you love +him desperately, and I don’t hate you as I did before.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, indeed,” continued Mrs. Fitzpiers, with a trembling tongue, +“since it is not playing in your case at all, but <i>real</i>. Oh, I do +pity you, more than I despise you, for <i>you</i> will s-s-suffer most!” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Charmond was now as much agitated as Grace. “I ought not to allow +myself to argue with you,” she exclaimed. “I demean myself by doing +it. But I liked you once, and for the sake of that time I try to tell you how +mistaken you are!” Much of her confusion resulted from her wonder and +alarm at finding herself in a sense dominated mentally and emotionally by this +simple school-girl. “I do not love him,” she went on, with +desperate untruth. “It was a kindness—my making somewhat more of +him than one usually does of one’s doctor. I was lonely; I +talked—well, I trifled with him. I am very sorry if such child’s +playing out of pure friendship has been a serious matter to you. Who could have +expected it? But the world is so simple here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, that’s affectation,” said Grace, shaking her head. +“It is no use—you <i>love</i> him. I can see in your face that in +this matter of my husband you have not let your acts belie your feelings. +During these last four or six months you have been terribly indiscreet; but you +have not been insincere, and that almost disarms me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>have</i> been insincere—if you will have the word—I +mean I <i>have</i> coquetted, and do <i>not</i> love him!” +</p> + +<p> +But Grace clung to her position like a limpet. “You may have trifled with +others, but him you love as you never loved another man.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well—I won’t argue,” said Mrs. Charmond, laughing +faintly. “And you come to reproach me for it, child.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Grace, magnanimously. “You may go on loving him if +you like—I don’t mind at all. You’ll find it, let me tell +you, a bitterer business for yourself than for me in the end. He’ll get +tired of you soon, as tired as can be—you don’t know him so well as +I—and then you may wish you had never seen him!” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Charmond had grown quite pale and weak under this prophecy. It was +extraordinary that Grace, whom almost every one would have characterized as a +gentle girl, should be of stronger fibre than her interlocutor. “You +exaggerate—cruel, silly young woman,” she reiterated, writhing with +little agonies. “It is nothing but playful friendship—nothing! It +will be proved by my future conduct. I shall at once refuse to see him +more—since it will make no difference to my heart, and much to my +name.” +</p> + +<p> +“I question if you will refuse to see him again,” said Grace, +dryly, as with eyes askance she bent a sapling down. “But I am not +incensed against you as you are against me,” she added, abandoning the +tree to its natural perpendicular. “Before I came I had been despising +you for wanton cruelty; now I only pity you for misplaced affection. When Edgar +has gone out of the house in hope of seeing you, at seasonable hours and +unseasonable; when I have found him riding miles and miles across the country +at midnight, and risking his life, and getting covered with mud, to get a +glimpse of you, I have called him a foolish man—the plaything of a +finished coquette. I thought that what was getting to be a tragedy to me was a +comedy to you. But now I see that tragedy lies on YOUR side of the situation no +less than on mine, and more; that if I have felt trouble at my position, you +have felt anguish at yours; that if I have had disappointments, you have had +despairs. Heaven may fortify <i>me</i>—God help <i>you!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot attempt to reply to your raving eloquence,” returned the +other, struggling to restore a dignity which had completely collapsed. +“My acts will be my proofs. In the world which you have seen nothing of, +friendships between men and women are not unknown, and it would have been +better both for you and your father if you had each judged me more +respectfully, and left me alone. As it is I wish never to see or speak to you, +madam, any more.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace bowed, and Mrs. Charmond turned away. The two went apart in directly +opposite courses, and were soon hidden from each other by their umbrageous +surroundings and by the shadows of eve. +</p> + +<p> +In the excitement of their long argument they had walked onward and zigzagged +about without regarding direction or distance. All sound of the woodcutters had +long since faded into remoteness, and even had not the interval been too great +for hearing them they would have been silent and homeward bound at this +twilight hour. But Grace went on her course without any misgiving, though there +was much underwood here, with only the narrowest passages for walking, across +which brambles hung. She had not, however, traversed this the wildest part of +the wood since her childhood, and the transformation of outlines had been +great; old trees which once were landmarks had been felled or blown down, and +the bushes which then had been small and scrubby were now large and +overhanging. She soon found that her ideas as to direction were +vague—that she had indeed no ideas as to direction at all. If the evening +had not been growing so dark, and the wind had not put on its night moan so +distinctly, Grace would not have minded; but she was rather frightened now, and +began to strike across hither and thither in random courses. +</p> + +<p> +Denser grew the darkness, more developed the wind-voices, and still no +recognizable spot or outlet of any kind appeared, nor any sound of the Hintocks +floated near, though she had wandered probably between one and two hours, and +began to be weary. She was vexed at her foolishness, since the ground she had +covered, if in a straight line, must inevitably have taken her out of the wood +to some remote village or other; but she had wasted her forces in +countermarches; and now, in much alarm, wondered if she would have to pass the +night here. She stood still to meditate, and fancied that between the soughing +of the wind she heard shuffling footsteps on the leaves heavier than those of +rabbits or hares. Though fearing at first to meet anybody on the chance of his +being a friend, she decided that the fellow night-rambler, even if a poacher, +would not injure her, and that he might possibly be some one sent to search for +her. She accordingly shouted a rather timid “Hoi!” +</p> + +<p> +The cry was immediately returned by the other person; and Grace running at once +in the direction whence it came beheld an indistinct figure hastening up to her +as rapidly. They were almost in each other’s arms when she recognized in +her vis-a-vis the outline and white veil of her whom she had parted from an +hour and a half before—Mrs. Charmond. +</p> + +<p> +“I have lost my way, I have lost my way,” cried that lady. +“Oh—is it indeed you? I am so glad to meet you or anybody. I have +been wandering up and down ever since we parted, and am nearly dead with terror +and misery and fatigue!” +</p> + +<p> +“So am I,” said Grace. “What <i>shall</i> we, <i>shall</i> we +do?” +</p> + +<p> +“You won’t go away from me?” asked her companion, anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“No, indeed. Are you very tired?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can scarcely move, and I am scratched dreadfully about the +ankles.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace reflected. “Perhaps, as it is dry under foot, the best thing for us +to do would be to sit down for half an hour, and then start again when we have +thoroughly rested. By walking straight we must come to a track leading +somewhere before the morning.” +</p> + +<p> +They found a clump of bushy hollies which afforded a shelter from the wind, and +sat down under it, some tufts of dead fern, crisp and dry, that remained from +the previous season forming a sort of nest for them. But it was cold, +nevertheless, on this March night, particularly for Grace, who with the +sanguine prematureness of youth in matters of dress, had considered it +spring-time, and hence was not so warmly clad as Mrs. Charmond, who still wore +her winter fur. But after sitting a while the latter lady shivered no less than +Grace as the warmth imparted by her hasty walking began to go off, and they +felt the cold air drawing through the holly leaves which scratched their backs +and shoulders. Moreover, they could hear some drops of rain falling on the +trees, though none reached the nook in which they had ensconced themselves. +</p> + +<p> +“If we were to cling close together,” said Mrs. Charmond, “we +should keep each other warm. But,” she added, in an uneven voice, +“I suppose you won’t come near me for the world!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because—well, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. I will—I don’t hate you at all.” +</p> + +<p> +They consequently crept up to one another, and being in the dark, lonely and +weary, did what neither had dreamed of doing beforehand, clasped each other +closely, Mrs. Charmond’s furs consoling Grace’s cold face, and each +one’s body as she breathed alternately heaving against that of her +companion. +</p> + +<p> +When a few minutes had been spent thus, Mrs. Charmond said, “I am so +wretched!” in a heavy, emotional whisper. +</p> + +<p> +“You are frightened,” said Grace, kindly. “But there is +nothing to fear; I know these woods well.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not at all frightened at the wood, but I am at other things.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Charmond embraced Grace more and more tightly, and the younger woman could +feel her neighbor’s breathings grow deeper and more spasmodic, as though +uncontrollable feelings were germinating. +</p> + +<p> +“After I had left you,” she went on, “I regretted something I +had said. I have to make a confession—I must make it!” she +whispered, brokenly, the instinct to indulge in warmth of sentiment which had +led this woman of passions to respond to Fitzpiers in the first place leading +her now to find luxurious comfort in opening her heart to his wife. “I +said to you I could give him up without pain or deprivation—that he had +only been my pastime. That was untrue—it was said to deceive you. I could +not do it without much pain; and, what is more dreadful, I <i>cannot</i> give +him up—even if I would—of myself alone.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why? Because you love him, you mean.” +</p> + +<p> +Felice Charmond denoted assent by a movement. +</p> + +<p> +“I knew I was right!” said Grace, exaltedly. “But that should +not deter you,” she presently added, in a moral tone. “Oh, do +struggle against it, and you will conquer!” +</p> + +<p> +“You are so simple, so simple!” cried Felice. “You think, +because you guessed my assumed indifference to him to be a sham, that you know +the extremes that people are capable of going to! But a good deal more may have +been going on than you have fathomed with all your insight. I <i>cannot</i> +give him up until he chooses to give up me.” +</p> + +<p> +“But surely you are the superior in station and in every way, and the cut +must come from you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tchut! Must I tell verbatim, you simple child? Oh, I suppose I must! I +shall eat away my heart if I do not let out all, after meeting you like this +and finding how guileless you are.” She thereupon whispered a few words +in the girl’s ear, and burst into a violent fit of sobbing. +</p> + +<p> +Grace started roughly away from the shelter of the fur, and sprang to her feet. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, thunderstruck at a revelation +transcending her utmost suspicion. “Can it be—can it be!” +</p> + +<p> +She turned as if to hasten away. But Felice Charmond’s sobs came to her +ear: deep darkness circled her about, the funereal trees rocked and chanted +their diriges and placebos around her, and she did not know which way to go. +After a moment of energy she felt mild again, and turned to the motionless +woman at her feet. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you rested?” she asked, in what seemed something like her own +voice grown ten years older. +</p> + +<p> +Without an answer Mrs. Charmond slowly rose. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean to betray me!” she said from the bitterest depths of her +soul. “Oh fool, fool I!” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Grace, shortly. “I mean no such thing. But let us +be quick now. We have a serious undertaking before us. Think of nothing but +going straight on.” +</p> + +<p> +They walked on in profound silence, pulling back boughs now growing wet, and +treading down woodbine, but still keeping a pretty straight course. Grace began +to be thoroughly worn out, and her companion too, when, on a sudden, they broke +into the deserted highway at the hill-top on which the Sherton man had waited +for Mrs. Dollery’s van. Grace recognized the spot as soon as she looked +around her. +</p> + +<p> +“How we have got here I cannot tell,” she said, with cold civility. +“We have made a complete circuit of Little Hintock. The hazel copse is +quite on the other side. Now we have only to follow the road.” +</p> + +<p> +They dragged themselves onward, turned into the lane, passed the track to +Little Hintock, and so reached the park. +</p> + +<p> +“Here I turn back,” said Grace, in the same passionless voice. +“You are quite near home.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Charmond stood inert, seeming appalled by her late admission. +</p> + +<p> +“I have told you something in a moment of irresistible desire to unburden +my soul which all but a fool would have kept silent as the grave,” she +said. “I cannot help it now. Is it to be a secret—or do you mean +war?” +</p> + +<p> +“A secret, certainly,” said Grace, mournfully. “How can you +expect war from such a helpless, wretched being as I!” +</p> + +<p> +“And I’ll do my best not to see him. I am his slave; but I’ll +try.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace was naturally kind; but she could not help using a small dagger now. +</p> + +<p> +“Pray don’t distress yourself,” she said, with exquisitely +fine scorn. “You may keep him—for me.” Had she been wounded +instead of mortified she could not have used the words; but Fitzpiers’s +hold upon her heart was slight. +</p> + +<p> +They parted thus and there, and Grace went moodily homeward. Passing +Marty’s cottage she observed through the window that the girl was writing +instead of chopping as usual, and wondered what her correspondence could be. +Directly afterwards she met people in search of her, and reached the house to +find all in serious alarm. She soon explained that she had lost her way, and +her general depression was attributed to exhaustion on that account. +</p> + +<p> +Could she have known what Marty was writing she would have been surprised. +</p> + +<p> +The rumor which agitated the other folk of Hintock had reached the young girl, +and she was penning a letter to Fitzpiers, to tell him that Mrs. Charmond wore +her hair. It was poor Marty’s only card, and she played it, knowing +nothing of fashion, and thinking her revelation a fatal one for a lover. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap34"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2> + +<p> +It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting between Grace +and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, that Fitzpiers, just returned from London, was +travelling from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock in a hired carriage. In his eye there +was a doubtful light, and the lines of his refined face showed a vague +disquietude. He appeared now like one of those who impress the beholder as +having suffered wrong in being born. +</p> + +<p> +His position was in truth gloomy, and to his appreciative mind it seemed even +gloomier than it was. His practice had been slowly dwindling of late, and now +threatened to die out altogether, the irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing +patients up to Fitzpiers’s very door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the +latest and greatest cause of his unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man, +the second branch of his sadness grew out of a remedial measure proposed for +the first—a letter from Felice Charmond imploring him not to see her +again. To bring about their severance still more effectually, she added, she +had decided during his absence upon almost immediate departure for the +Continent. +</p> + +<p> +The time was that dull interval in a woodlander’s life which coincides +with great activity in the life of the woodland itself—a period following +the close of the winter tree-cutting, and preceding the barking season, when +the saps are just beginning to heave with the force of hydraulic lifts inside +all the trunks of the forest. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne’s contract was completed, and the plantations were deserted. +It was dusk; there were no leaves as yet; the nightingales would not begin to +sing for a fortnight; and “the Mother of the Months” was in her +most attenuated phase—starved and bent to a mere bowed skeleton, which +glided along behind the bare twigs in Fitzpiers’s company. +</p> + +<p> +When he reached home he went straight up to his wife’s sitting-room. He +found it deserted, and without a fire. He had mentioned no day for his return; +nevertheless, he wondered why she was not there waiting to receive him. On +descending to the other wing of the house and inquiring of Mrs. Melbury, he +learned with much surprise that Grace had gone on a visit to an acquaintance at +Shottsford-Forum three days earlier; that tidings had on this morning reached +her father of her being very unwell there, in consequence of which he had +ridden over to see her. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers went up-stairs again, and the little drawing-room, now lighted by a +solitary candle, was not rendered more cheerful by the entrance of Grammer +Oliver with an apronful of wood, which she threw on the hearth while she raked +out the grate and rattled about the fire-irons, with a view to making things +comfortable. Fitzpiers considered that Grace ought to have let him know her +plans more accurately before leaving home in a freak like this. He went +desultorily to the window, the blind of which had not been pulled down, and +looked out at the thin, fast-sinking moon, and at the tall stalk of smoke +rising from the top of Suke Damson’s chimney, signifying that the young +woman had just lit her fire to prepare supper. +</p> + +<p> +He became conscious of a discussion in progress on the opposite side of the +court. Somebody had looked over the wall to talk to the sawyers, and was +telling them in a loud voice news in which the name of Mrs. Charmond soon +arrested his ears. +</p> + +<p> +“Grammer, don’t make so much noise with that grate,” said the +surgeon; at which Grammer reared herself upon her knees and held the fuel +suspended in her hand, while Fitzpiers half opened the casement. +</p> + +<p> +“She is off to foreign lands again at last—hev made up her mind +quite sudden-like—and it is thoughted she’ll leave in a day or two. +She’s been all as if her mind were low for some days past—with a +sort of sorrow in her face, as if she reproached her own soul. She’s the +wrong sort of woman for Hintock—hardly knowing a beech from a +woak—that I own. But I don’t care who the man is, she’s been +a very kind friend to me. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, the day after to-morrow is the Sabbath day, and without charity we +are but tinkling simples; but this I do say, that her going will be a blessed +thing for a certain married couple who remain.” +</p> + +<p> +The fire was lighted, and Fitzpiers sat down in front of it, restless as the +last leaf upon a tree. “A sort of sorrow in her face, as if she +reproached her own soul.” Poor Felice. How Felice’s frame must be +pulsing under the conditions of which he had just heard the caricature; how her +fair temples must ache; what a mood of wretchedness she must be in! But for the +mixing up of his name with hers, and her determination to sunder their too +close acquaintance on that account, she would probably have sent for him +professionally. She was now sitting alone, suffering, perhaps wishing that she +had not forbidden him to come again. +</p> + +<p> +Unable to remain in this lonely room any longer, or to wait for the meal which +was in course of preparation, he made himself ready for riding, descended to +the yard, stood by the stable-door while Darling was being saddled, and rode +off down the lane. He would have preferred walking, but was weary with his +day’s travel. +</p> + +<p> +As he approached the door of Marty South’s cottage, which it was +necessary to pass on his way, she came from the porch as if she had been +awaiting him, and met him in the middle of the road, holding up a letter. +Fitzpiers took it without stopping, and asked over his shoulder from whom it +came. +</p> + +<p> +Marty hesitated. “From me,” she said, shyly, though with noticeable +firmness. +</p> + +<p> +This letter contained, in fact, Marty’s declaration that she was the +original owner of Mrs. Charmond’s supplementary locks, and enclosed a +sample from the native stock, which had grown considerably by this time. It was +her long contemplated apple of discord, and much her hand trembled as she +handed the document up to him. +</p> + +<p> +But it was impossible on account of the gloom for Fitzpiers to read it then, +while he had the curiosity to do so, and he put it in his pocket. His +imagination having already centred itself on Hintock House, in his pocket the +letter remained unopened and forgotten, all the while that Marty was hopefully +picturing its excellent weaning effect upon him. +</p> + +<p> +He was not long in reaching the precincts of the Manor House. He drew rein +under a group of dark oaks commanding a view of the front, and reflected a +while. His entry would not be altogether unnatural in the circumstances of her +possible indisposition; but upon the whole he thought it best to avoid riding +up to the door. By silently approaching he could retreat unobserved in the +event of her not being alone. Thereupon he dismounted, hitched Darling to a +stray bough hanging a little below the general browsing line of the trees, and +proceeded to the door on foot. +</p> + +<p> +In the mean time Melbury had returned from Shottsford-Forum. The great court or +quadrangle of the timber-merchant’s house, divided from the shady lane by +an ivy-covered wall, was entered by two white gates, one standing near each +extremity of the wall. It so happened that at the moment when Fitzpiers was +riding out at the lower gate on his way to the Manor House, Melbury was +approaching the upper gate to enter it. Fitzpiers being in front of Melbury was +seen by the latter, but the surgeon, never turning his head, did not observe +his father-in-law, ambling slowly and silently along under the trees, though +his horse too was a gray one. +</p> + +<p> +“How is Grace?” said his wife, as soon as he entered. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury looked gloomy. “She is not at all well,” he said. “I +don’t like the looks of her at all. I couldn’t bear the notion of +her biding away in a strange place any longer, and I begged her to let me get +her home. At last she agreed to it, but not till after much persuading. I was +then sorry that I rode over instead of driving; but I have hired a nice +comfortable carriage—the easiest-going I could get—and she’ll +be here in a couple of hours or less. I rode on ahead to tell you to get her +room ready; but I see her husband has come back.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Mrs. Melbury. She expressed her concern that her +husband had hired a carriage all the way from Shottsford. “What it will +cost!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care what it costs!” he exclaimed, testily. “I +was determined to get her home. Why she went away I can’t think! She acts +in a way that is not at all likely to mend matters as far as I can see.” +(Grace had not told her father of her interview with Mrs. Charmond, and the +disclosure that had been whispered in her startled ear.) “Since Edgar is +come,” he continued, “he might have waited in till I got home, to +ask me how she was, if only for a compliment. I saw him go out; where is he +gone?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Melbury did not know positively; but she told her husband that there was +not much doubt about the place of his first visit after an absence. She had, in +fact, seen Fitzpiers take the direction of the Manor House. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury said no more. It was exasperating to him that just at this moment, when +there was every reason for Fitzpiers to stay indoors, or at any rate to ride +along the Shottsford road to meet his ailing wife, he should be doing despite +to her by going elsewhere. The old man went out-of-doors again; and his horse +being hardly unsaddled as yet, he told Upjohn to retighten the girths, when he +again mounted, and rode off at the heels of the surgeon. +</p> + +<p> +By the time that Melbury reached the park, he was prepared to go any lengths in +combating this rank and reckless errantry of his daughter’s husband. He +would fetch home Edgar Fitzpiers to-night by some means, rough or fair: in his +view there could come of his interference nothing worse than what existed at +present. And yet to every bad there is a worse. +</p> + +<p> +He had entered by the bridle-gate which admitted to the park on this side, and +cantered over the soft turf almost in the tracks of Fitzpiers’s horse, +till he reached the clump of trees under which his precursor had halted. The +whitish object that was indistinctly visible here in the gloom of the boughs he +found to be Darling, as left by Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +“D—n him! why did he not ride up to the house in an honest +way?” said Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +He profited by Fitzpiers’s example; dismounting, he tied his horse under +an adjoining tree, and went on to the house on foot, as the other had done. He +was no longer disposed to stick at trifles in his investigation, and did not +hesitate to gently open the front door without ringing. +</p> + +<p> +The large square hall, with its oak floor, staircase, and wainscot, was lighted +by a dim lamp hanging from a beam. Not a soul was visible. He went into the +corridor and listened at a door which he knew to be that of the drawing-room; +there was no sound, and on turning the handle he found the room empty. A fire +burning low in the grate was the sole light of the apartment; its beams flashed +mockingly on the somewhat showy Versaillese furniture and gilding here, in +style as unlike that of the structural parts of the building as it was possible +to be, and probably introduced by Felice to counteract the fine old-English +gloom of the place. Disappointed in his hope of confronting his son-in-law +here, he went on to the dining-room; this was without light or fire, and +pervaded by a cold atmosphere, which signified that she had not dined there +that day. +</p> + +<p> +By this time Melbury’s mood had a little mollified. Everything here was +so pacific, so unaggressive in its repose, that he was no longer incited to +provoke a collision with Fitzpiers or with anybody. The comparative stateliness +of the apartments influenced him to an emotion, rather than to a belief, that +where all was outwardly so good and proper there could not be quite that +delinquency within which he had suspected. It occurred to him, too, that even +if his suspicion were justified, his abrupt, if not unwarrantable, entry into +the house might end in confounding its inhabitant at the expense of his +daughter’s dignity and his own. Any ill result would be pretty sure to +hit Grace hardest in the long-run. He would, after all, adopt the more rational +course, and plead with Fitzpiers privately, as he had pleaded with Mrs. +Charmond. +</p> + +<p> +He accordingly retreated as silently as he had come. Passing the door of the +drawing-room anew, he fancied that he heard a noise within which was not the +crackling of the fire. Melbury gently reopened the door to a distance of a few +inches, and saw at the opposite window two figures in the act of stepping +out—a man and a woman—in whom he recognized the lady of the house +and his son-in-law. In a moment they had disappeared amid the gloom of the +lawn. +</p> + +<p> +He returned into the hall, and let himself out by the carriage-entrance door, +coming round to the lawn front in time to see the two figures parting at the +railing which divided the precincts of the house from the open park. Mrs. +Charmond turned to hasten back immediately that Fitzpiers had left her side, +and he was speedily absorbed into the duskiness of the trees. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury waited till Mrs. Charmond had re-entered the drawing-room, and then +followed after Fitzpiers, thinking that he would allow the latter to mount and +ride ahead a little way before overtaking him and giving him a piece of his +mind. His son-in-law might possibly see the second horse near his own; but that +would do him no harm, and might prepare him for what he was to expect. +</p> + +<p> +The event, however, was different from the plan. On plunging into the thick +shade of the clump of oaks, he could not perceive his horse Blossom anywhere; +but feeling his way carefully along, he by-and-by discerned Fitzpiers’s +mare Darling still standing as before under the adjoining tree. For a moment +Melbury thought that his own horse, being young and strong, had broken away +from her fastening; but on listening intently he could hear her ambling +comfortably along a little way ahead, and a creaking of the saddle which showed +that she had a rider. Walking on as far as the small gate in the corner of the +park, he met a laborer, who, in reply to Melbury’s inquiry if he had seen +any person on a gray horse, said that he had only met Dr. Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +It was just what Melbury had begun to suspect: Fitzpiers had mounted the mare +which did not belong to him in mistake for his own—an oversight easily +explicable, in a man ever unwitting in horse-flesh, by the darkness of the spot +and the near similarity of the animals in appearance, though Melbury’s +was readily enough seen to be the grayer horse by day. He hastened back, and +did what seemed best in the circumstances—got upon old Darling, and rode +rapidly after Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury had just entered the wood, and was winding along the cart-way which led +through it, channelled deep in the leaf-mould with large ruts that were formed +by the timber-wagons in fetching the spoil of the plantations, when all at once +he descried in front, at a point where the road took a turning round a large +chestnut-tree, the form of his own horse Blossom, at which Melbury quickened +Darling’s pace, thinking to come up with Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +Nearer view revealed that the horse had no rider. At Melbury’s approach +it galloped friskily away under the trees in a homeward direction. Thinking +something was wrong, the timber-merchant dismounted as soon as he reached the +chestnut, and after feeling about for a minute or two discovered Fitzpiers +lying on the ground. +</p> + +<p> +“Here—help!” cried the latter as soon as he felt +Melbury’s touch; “I have been thrown off, but there’s not +much harm done, I think.” +</p> + +<p> +Since Melbury could not now very well read the younger man the lecture he had +intended, and as friendliness would be hypocrisy, his instinct was to speak not +a single word to his son-in-law. He raised Fitzpiers into a sitting posture, +and found that he was a little stunned and stupefied, but, as he had said, not +otherwise hurt. How this fall had come about was readily conjecturable: +Fitzpiers, imagining there was only old Darling under him, had been taken +unawares by the younger horse’s sprightliness. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury was a traveller of the old-fashioned sort; having just come from +Shottsford-Forum, he still had in his pocket the pilgrim’s flask of rum +which he always carried on journeys exceeding a dozen miles, though he seldom +drank much of it. He poured it down the surgeon’s throat, with such +effect that he quickly revived. Melbury got him on his legs; but the question +was what to do with him. He could not walk more than a few steps, and the other +horse had gone away. +</p> + +<p> +With great exertion Melbury contrived to get him astride Darling, mounting +himself behind, and holding Fitzpiers round his waist with one arm. Darling +being broad, straight-backed, and high in the withers, was well able to carry +double, at any rate as far as Hintock, and at a gentle pace. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap35"></a>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2> + +<p> +The mare paced along with firm and cautious tread through the copse where +Winterborne had worked, and into the heavier soil where the oaks grew; past +Great Willy, the largest oak in the wood, and thence towards Nellcombe Bottom, +intensely dark now with overgrowth, and popularly supposed to be haunted by the +spirits of the fratricides exorcised from Hintock House. +</p> + +<p> +By this time Fitzpiers was quite recovered as to physical strength. But he had +eaten nothing since making a hasty breakfast in London that morning, his +anxiety about Felice having hurried him away from home before dining; as a +consequence, the old rum administered by his father-in-law flew to the young +man’s head and loosened his tongue, without his ever having recognized +who it was that had lent him a kindly hand. He began to speak in desultory +sentences, Melbury still supporting him. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve come all the way from London to-day,” said Fitzpiers. +“Ah, that’s the place to meet your equals. I live at +Hintock—worse, at Little Hintock—and I am quite lost there. +There’s not a man within ten miles of Hintock who can comprehend me. I +tell you, Farmer What’s-your-name, that I’m a man of education. I +know several languages; the poets and I are familiar friends; I used to read +more in metaphysics than anybody within fifty miles; and since I gave that up +there’s nobody can match me in the whole county of Wessex as a scientist. +Yet I an doomed to live with tradespeople in a miserable little hole like +Hintock!” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed!” muttered Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers, increasingly energized by the alcohol, here reared himself up +suddenly from the bowed posture he had hitherto held, thrusting his shoulders +so violently against Melbury’s breast as to make it difficult for the old +man to keep a hold on the reins. “People don’t appreciate me +here!” the surgeon exclaimed; lowering his voice, he added, softly and +slowly, “except one—except one!...A passionate soul, as warm as she +is clever, as beautiful as she is warm, and as rich as she is beautiful. I say, +old fellow, those claws of yours clutch me rather tight—rather like the +eagle’s, you know, that ate out the liver of Pro—Pre—the man +on Mount Caucasus. People don’t appreciate me, I say, except <i>her!</i> +Ah, gods, I am an unlucky man! She would have been mine, she would have taken +my name; but unfortunately it cannot be so. I stooped to mate beneath me, and +now I rue it.” +</p> + +<p> +The position was becoming a very trying one for Melbury, corporeally and +mentally. He was obliged to steady Fitzpiers with his left arm, and he began to +hate the contact. He hardly knew what to do. It was useless to remonstrate with +Fitzpiers, in his intellectual confusion from the rum and from the fall. He +remained silent, his hold upon his companion, however, being stern rather than +compassionate. +</p> + +<p> +“You hurt me a little, farmer—though I am much obliged to you for +your kindness. People don’t appreciate me, I say. Between ourselves, I am +losing my practice here; and why? Because I see matchless attraction where +matchless attraction is, both in person and position. I mention no names, so +nobody will be the wiser. But I have lost her, in a legitimate sense, that is. +If I were a free man now, things have come to such a pass that she could not +refuse me; while with her fortune (which I don’t covet for itself) I +should have a chance of satisfying an honorable ambition—a chance I have +never had yet, and now never, never shall have, probably!” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury, his heart throbbing against the other’s backbone, and his brain +on fire with indignation, ventured to mutter huskily, “Why?” +</p> + +<p> +The horse ambled on some steps before Fitzpiers replied, “Because I am +tied and bound to another by law, as tightly as I am to you by your +arm—not that I complain of your arm—I thank you for helping me. +Well, where are we? Not nearly home yet?...Home, say I. It <i>is</i> a home! +When I might have been at the other house over there.” In a stupefied way +he flung his hand in the direction of the park. “I was just two months +too early in committing myself. Had I only seen the other first—” +</p> + +<p> +Here the old man’s arm gave Fitzpiers a convulsive shake. “What are +you doing?” continued the latter. “Keep still, please, or put me +down. I was saying that I lost her by a mere little two months! There is no +chance for me now in this world, and it makes me reckless—reckless! +Unless, indeed, anything should happen to the other one. She is amiable enough; +but if anything should happen to her—and I hear she is ill—well, if +it <i>should</i>, I should be free—and my fame, my happiness, would be +insured.” +</p> + +<p> +These were the last words that Fitzpiers uttered in his seat in front of the +timber-merchant. Unable longer to master himself, Melbury, the skin of his face +compressed, whipped away his spare arm from Fitzpiers’s waist, and seized +him by the collar. +</p> + +<p> +“You heartless villain—after all that we have done for ye!” +he cried, with a quivering lip. “And the money of hers that you’ve +had, and the roof we’ve provided to shelter ye! It is to me, George +Melbury, that you dare to talk like that!” The exclamation was +accompanied by a powerful swing from the shoulder, which flung the young man +head-long into the road, Fitzpiers fell with a heavy thud upon the stumps of +some undergrowth which had been cut during the winter preceding. Darling +continued her walk for a few paces farther and stopped. +</p> + +<p> +“God forgive me!” Melbury murmured, repenting of what he had done. +“He tried me too sorely; and now perhaps I’ve murdered him!” +</p> + +<p> +He turned round in the saddle and looked towards the spot on which Fitzpiers +had fallen. To his great surprise he beheld the surgeon rise to his feet with a +bound, as if unhurt, and walk away rapidly under the trees. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury listened till the rustle of Fitzpiers’s footsteps died away. +“It might have been a crime, but for the mercy of Providence in providing +leaves for his fall,” he said to himself. And then his mind reverted to +the words of Fitzpiers, and his indignation so mounted within him that he +almost wished the fall had put an end to the young man there and then. +</p> + +<p> +He had not ridden far when he discerned his own gray mare standing under some +bushes. Leaving Darling for a moment, Melbury went forward and easily caught +the younger animal, now disheartened at its freak. He then made the pair of +them fast to a tree, and turning back, endeavored to find some trace of +Fitzpiers, feeling pitifully that, after all, he had gone further than he +intended with the offender. +</p> + +<p> +But though he threaded the wood hither and thither, his toes ploughing layer +after layer of the little horny scrolls that had once been leaves, he could not +find him. He stood still listening and looking round. The breeze was oozing +through the network of boughs as through a strainer; the trunks and larger +branches stood against the light of the sky in the forms of writhing men, +gigantic candelabra, pikes, halberds, lances, and whatever besides the fancy +chose to make of them. Giving up the search, Melbury came back to the horses, +and walked slowly homeward, leading one in each hand. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +It happened that on this self-same evening a boy had been returning from Great +to Little Hintock about the time of Fitzpiers’s and Melbury’s +passage home along that route. A horse-collar that had been left at the +harness-mender’s to be repaired was required for use at five +o’clock next morning, and in consequence the boy had to fetch it +overnight. He put his head through the collar, and accompanied his walk by +whistling the one tune he knew, as an antidote to fear. +</p> + +<p> +The boy suddenly became aware of a horse trotting rather friskily along the +track behind him, and not knowing whether to expect friend or foe, prudence +suggested that he should cease his whistling and retreat among the trees till +the horse and his rider had gone by; a course to which he was still more +inclined when he found how noiselessly they approached, and saw that the horse +looked pale, and remembered what he had read about Death in the Revelation. He +therefore deposited the collar by a tree, and hid himself behind it. The +horseman came on, and the youth, whose eyes were as keen as telescopes, to his +great relief recognized the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +As Melbury surmised, Fitzpiers had in the darkness taken Blossom for Darling, +and he had not discovered his mistake when he came up opposite the boy, though +he was somewhat surprised at the liveliness of his usually placid mare. The +only other pair of eyes on the spot whose vision was keen as the young +carter’s were those of the horse; and, with that strongly conservative +objection to the unusual which animals show, Blossom, on eying the collar under +the tree—quite invisible to Fitzpiers—exercised none of the +patience of the older horse, but shied sufficiently to unseat so second-rate an +equestrian as the surgeon. +</p> + +<p> +He fell, and did not move, lying as Melbury afterwards found him. The boy ran +away, salving his conscience for the desertion by thinking how vigorously he +would spread the alarm of the accident when he got to Hintock—which he +uncompromisingly did, incrusting the skeleton event with a load of dramatic +horrors. +</p> + +<p> +Grace had returned, and the fly hired on her account, though not by her +husband, at the Crown Hotel, Shottsford-Forum, had been paid for and dismissed. +The long drive had somewhat revived her, her illness being a feverish +intermittent nervousness which had more to do with mind than body, and she +walked about her sitting-room in something of a hopeful mood. Mrs. Melbury had +told her as soon as she arrived that her husband had returned from London. He +had gone out, she said, to see a patient, as she supposed, and he must soon be +back, since he had had no dinner or tea. Grace would not allow her mind to +harbor any suspicion of his whereabouts, and her step-mother said nothing of +Mrs. Charmond’s rumored sorrows and plans of departure. +</p> + +<p> +So the young wife sat by the fire, waiting silently. She had left Hintock in a +turmoil of feeling after the revelation of Mrs. Charmond, and had intended not +to be at home when her husband returned. But she had thought the matter over, +and had allowed her father’s influence to prevail and bring her back; and +now somewhat regretted that Edgar’s arrival had preceded hers. +</p> + +<p> +By-and-by Mrs. Melbury came up-stairs with a slight air of flurry and +abruptness. +</p> + +<p> +“I have something to tell—some bad news,” she said. +“But you must not be alarmed, as it is not so bad as it might have been. +Edgar has been thrown off his horse. We don’t think he is hurt much. It +happened in the wood the other side of Nellcombe Bottom, where ’tis said +the ghosts of the brothers walk.” +</p> + +<p> +She went on to give a few of the particulars, but none of the invented horrors +that had been communicated by the boy. “I thought it better to tell you +at once,” she added, “in case he should not be very well able to +walk home, and somebody should bring him.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Melbury really thought matters much worse than she represented, and Grace +knew that she thought so. She sat down dazed for a few minutes, returning a +negative to her step-mother’s inquiry if she could do anything for her. +“But please go into the bedroom,” Grace said, on second thoughts, +“and see if all is ready there—in case it is serious.” Mrs. +Melbury thereupon called Grammer, and they did as directed, supplying the room +with everything they could think of for the accommodation of an injured man. +</p> + +<p> +Nobody was left in the lower part of the house. Not many minutes passed when +Grace heard a knock at the door—a single knock, not loud enough to reach +the ears of those in the bedroom. She went to the top of the stairs and said, +faintly, “Come up,” knowing that the door stood, as usual in such +houses, wide open. +</p> + +<p> +Retreating into the gloom of the broad landing she saw rise up the stairs a +woman whom at first she did not recognize, till her voice revealed her to be +Suke Damson, in great fright and sorrow. A streak of light from the partially +closed door of Grace’s room fell upon her face as she came forward, and +it was drawn and pale. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Miss Melbury—I would say Mrs. Fitzpiers,” she said, +wringing her hands. “This terrible news. Is he dead? Is he hurted very +bad? Tell me; I couldn’t help coming; please forgive me, Miss +Melbury—Mrs. Fitzpiers I would say!” +</p> + +<p> +Grace sank down on the oak chest which stood on the landing, and put her hands +to her now flushed face and head. Could she order Suke Damson down-stairs and +out of the house? Her husband might be brought in at any moment, and what would +happen? But could she order this genuinely grieved woman away? +</p> + +<p> +There was a dead silence of half a minute or so, till Suke said, “Why +don’t ye speak? Is he here? Is he dead? If so, why can’t I see +him—would it be so very wrong?” +</p> + +<p> +Before Grace had answered somebody else came to the door below—a +foot-fall light as a roe’s. There was a hurried tapping upon the panel, +as if with the impatient tips of fingers whose owner thought not whether a +knocker were there or no. Without a pause, and possibly guided by the stray +beam of light on the landing, the newcomer ascended the staircase as the first +had done. Grace was sufficiently visible, and the lady, for a lady it was, came +to her side. +</p> + +<p> +“I could make nobody hear down-stairs,” said Felice Charmond, with +lips whose dryness could almost be heard, and panting, as she stood like one +ready to sink on the floor with distress. “What is—the +matter—tell me the worst! Can he live?” She looked at Grace +imploringly, without perceiving poor Suke, who, dismayed at such a presence, +had shrunk away into the shade. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Charmond’s little feet were covered with mud; she was quite +unconscious of her appearance now. “I have heard such a dreadful +report,” she went on; “I came to ascertain the truth of it. Is +he—killed?” +</p> + +<p> +“She won’t tell us—he’s dying—he’s in that +room!” burst out Suke, regardless of consequences, as she heard the +distant movements of Mrs. Melbury and Grammer in the bedroom at the end of the +passage. +</p> + +<p> +“Where?” said Mrs. Charmond; and on Suke pointing out the +direction, she made as if to go thither. +</p> + +<p> +Grace barred the way. “He is not there,” she said. “I have +not seen him any more than you. I have heard a report only—not so bad as +you think. It must have been exaggerated to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Please do not conceal anything—let me know all!” said +Felice, doubtingly. +</p> + +<p> +“You shall know all I know—you have a perfect right to +know—who can have a better than either of you?” said Grace, with a +delicate sting which was lost upon Felice Charmond now. “I repeat, I have +only heard a less alarming account than you have heard; how much it means, and +how little, I cannot say. I pray God that it means not much—in common +humanity. You probably pray the same—<i>for other reasons</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +She regarded them both there in the dim light a while. +</p> + +<p> +They stood dumb in their trouble, not stinging back at her; not heeding her +mood. A tenderness spread over Grace like a dew. It was well, very well, +conventionally, to address either one of them in the wife’s regulation +terms of virtuous sarcasm, as woman, creature, or thing, for losing their +hearts to her husband. But life, what was it, and who was she? She had, like +the singer of the psalm of Asaph, been plagued and chastened all the day long; +but could she, by retributive words, in order to please herself—the +individual—“offend against the generation,” as he would not? +</p> + +<p> +“He is dying, perhaps,” blubbered Suke Damson, putting her apron to +her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +In their gestures and faces there were anxieties, affection, agony of heart, +all for a man who had wronged them—had never really behaved towards +either of them anyhow but selfishly. Neither one but would have wellnigh +sacrificed half her life to him, even now. The tears which his possibly +critical situation could not bring to her eyes surged over at the contemplation +of these fellow-women. She turned to the balustrade, bent herself upon it, and +wept. +</p> + +<p> +Thereupon Felice began to cry also, without using her handkerchief, and letting +the tears run down silently. While these three poor women stood together thus, +pitying another though most to be pitied themselves, the pacing of a horse or +horses became audible in the court, and in a moment Melbury’s voice was +heard calling to his stableman. Grace at once started up, ran down the stairs +and out into the quadrangle as her father crossed it towards the door. +“Father, what is the matter with him?” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Who—Edgar?” said Melbury, abruptly. “Matter? Nothing. +What, my dear, and have you got home safe? Why, you are better already! But you +ought not to be out in the air like this.” +</p> + +<p> +“But he has been thrown off his horse!” +</p> + +<p> +“I know; I know. I saw it. He got up again, and walked off as well as +ever. A fall on the leaves didn’t hurt a spry fellow like him. He did not +come this way,” he added, significantly. “I suppose he went to look +for his horse. I tried to find him, but could not. But after seeing him go away +under the trees I found the horse, and have led it home for safety. So he must +walk. Now, don’t you stay out here in this night air.” +</p> + +<p> +She returned to the house with her father. When she had again ascended to the +landing and to her own rooms beyond it was a great relief to her to find that +both Petticoat the First and Petticoat the Second of her <i>Bien-aimé</i> had +silently disappeared. They had, in all probability, heard the words of her +father, and departed with their anxieties relieved. +</p> + +<p> +Presently her parents came up to Grace, and busied themselves to see that she +was comfortable. Perceiving soon that she would prefer to be left alone they +went away. +</p> + +<p> +Grace waited on. The clock raised its voice now and then, but her husband did +not return. At her father’s usual hour for retiring he again came in to +see her. “Do not stay up,” she said, as soon as he entered. +“I am not at all tired. I will sit up for him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think it will be useless, Grace,” said Melbury, slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have had a bitter quarrel with him; and on that account I hardly think +he will return to-night.” +</p> + +<p> +“A quarrel? Was that after the fall seen by the boy?” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury nodded an affirmative, without taking his eyes off the candle. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; it was as we were coming home together,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Something had been swelling up in Grace while her father was speaking. +“How could you want to quarrel with him?” she cried, suddenly. +“Why could you not let him come home quietly if he were inclined to? He +is my husband; and now you have married me to him surely you need not provoke +him unnecessarily. First you induce me to accept him, and then you do things +that divide us more than we should naturally be divided!” +</p> + +<p> +“How can you speak so unjustly to me, Grace?” said Melbury, with +indignant sorrow. “<i>I</i> divide you from your husband, indeed! You +little think—” +</p> + +<p> +He was inclined to say more—to tell her the whole story of the encounter, +and that the provocation he had received had lain entirely in hearing her +despised. But it would have greatly distressed her, and he forbore. “You +had better lie down. You are tired,” he said, soothingly. +“Good-night.” +</p> + +<p> +The household went to bed, and a silence fell upon the dwelling, broken only by +the occasional skirr of a halter in Melbury’s stables. Despite her +father’s advice Grace still waited up. But nobody came. +</p> + +<p> +It was a critical time in Grace’s emotional life that night. She thought +of her husband a good deal, and for the nonce forgot Winterborne. +</p> + +<p> +“How these unhappy women must have admired Edgar!” she said to +herself. “How attractive he must be to everybody; and, indeed, he is +attractive.” The possibility is that, piqued by rivalry, these ideas +might have been transformed into their corresponding emotions by a show of the +least reciprocity in Fitzpiers. There was, in truth, a love-bird yearning to +fly from her heart; and it wanted a lodging badly. +</p> + +<p> +But no husband came. The fact was that Melbury had been much mistaken about the +condition of Fitzpiers. People do not fall headlong on stumps of underwood with +impunity. Had the old man been able to watch Fitzpiers narrowly enough, he +would have observed that on rising and walking into the thicket he dropped +blood as he went; that he had not proceeded fifty yards before he showed signs +of being dizzy, and, raising his hands to his head, reeled and fell down. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap36"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h2> + +<p> +Grace was not the only one who watched and meditated in Hintock that night. +Felice Charmond was in no mood to retire to rest at a customary hour; and over +her drawing-room fire at the Manor House she sat as motionless and in as deep a +reverie as Grace in her little apartment at the homestead. +</p> + +<p> +Having caught ear of Melbury’s intelligence while she stood on the +landing at his house, and been eased of much of her mental distress, her sense +of personal decorum returned upon her with a rush. She descended the stairs and +left the door like a ghost, keeping close to the walls of the building till she +got round to the gate of the quadrangle, through which she noiselessly passed +almost before Grace and her father had finished their discourse. Suke Damson +had thought it well to imitate her superior in this respect, and, descending +the back stairs as Felice descended the front, went out at the side door and +home to her cottage. +</p> + +<p> +Once outside Melbury’s gates Mrs. Charmond ran with all her speed to the +Manor House, without stopping or turning her head, and splitting her thin boots +in her haste. She entered her own dwelling, as she had emerged from it, by the +drawing-room window. In other circumstances she would have felt some timidity +at undertaking such an unpremeditated excursion alone; but her anxiety for +another had cast out her fear for herself. +</p> + +<p> +Everything in her drawing-room was just as she had left it—the candles +still burning, the casement closed, and the shutters gently pulled to, so as to +hide the state of the window from the cursory glance of a servant entering the +apartment. She had been gone about three-quarters of an hour by the clock, and +nobody seemed to have discovered her absence. Tired in body but tense in mind, +she sat down, palpitating, round-eyed, bewildered at what she had done. +</p> + +<p> +She had been betrayed by affrighted love into a visit which, now that the +emotion instigating it had calmed down under her belief that Fitzpiers was in +no danger, was the saddest surprise to her. This was how she had set about +doing her best to escape her passionate bondage to him! Somehow, in declaring +to Grace and to herself the unseemliness of her infatuation, she had grown a +convert to its irresistibility. If Heaven would only give her strength; but +Heaven never did! One thing was indispensable; she must go away from Hintock if +she meant to withstand further temptation. The struggle was too wearying, too +hopeless, while she remained. It was but a continual capitulation of conscience +to what she dared not name. +</p> + +<p> +By degrees, as she sat, Felice’s mind—helped perhaps by the +anticlimax of learning that her lover was unharmed after all her fright about +him—grew wondrously strong in wise resolve. For the moment she was in a +mood, in the words of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, “to run mad with +discretion;” and was so persuaded that discretion lay in departure that +she wished to set about going that very minute. Jumping up from her seat, she +began to gather together some small personal knick-knacks scattered about the +room, to feel that preparations were really in train. +</p> + +<p> +While moving here and there she fancied that she heard a slight noise +out-of-doors, and stood still. Surely it was a tapping at the window. A thought +entered her mind, and burned her cheek. He had come to that window before; yet +was it possible that he should dare to do so now! All the servants were in bed, +and in the ordinary course of affairs she would have retired also. Then she +remembered that on stepping in by the casement and closing it, she had not +fastened the window-shutter, so that a streak of light from the interior of the +room might have revealed her vigil to an observer on the lawn. How all things +conspired against her keeping faith with Grace! +</p> + +<p> +The tapping recommenced, light as from the bill of a little bird; her +illegitimate hope overcame her vow; she went and pulled back the shutter, +determining, however, to shake her head at him and keep the casement securely +closed. +</p> + +<p> +What she saw outside might have struck terror into a heart stouter than a +helpless woman’s at midnight. In the centre of the lowest pane of the +window, close to the glass, was a human face, which she barely recognized as +the face of Fitzpiers. It was surrounded with the darkness of the night +without, corpse-like in its pallor, and covered with blood. As disclosed in the +square area of the pane it met her frightened eyes like a replica of the +Sudarium of St. Veronica. +</p> + +<p> +He moved his lips, and looked at her imploringly. Her rapid mind pieced +together in an instant a possible concatenation of events which might have led +to this tragical issue. She unlatched the casement with a terrified hand, and +bending down to where he was crouching, pressed her face to his with passionate +solicitude. She assisted him into the room without a word, to do which it was +almost necessary to lift him bodily. Quickly closing the window and fastening +the shutters, she bent over him breathlessly. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you hurt much—much?” she cried, faintly. “Oh, oh, +how is this!” +</p> + +<p> +“Rather much—but don’t be frightened,” he answered in a +difficult whisper, and turning himself to obtain an easier position if +possible. “A little water, please.” +</p> + +<p> +She ran across into the dining-room, and brought a bottle and glass, from which +he eagerly drank. He could then speak much better, and with her help got upon +the nearest couch. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you dying, Edgar?” she said. “Do speak to me!” +</p> + +<p> +“I am half dead,” said Fitzpiers. “But perhaps I shall get +over it....It is chiefly loss of blood.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I thought your fall did not hurt you,” said she. “Who +did this?” +</p> + +<p> +“Felice—my father-in-law!...I have crawled to you more than a mile +on my hands and knees—God, I thought I should never have got here!...I +have come to you—be-cause you are the only friend—I have in the +world now....I can never go back to Hintock—never—to the roof of +the Melburys! Not poppy nor mandragora will ever medicine this bitter +feud!...If I were only well again—” +</p> + +<p> +“Let me bind your head, now that you have rested.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—but wait a moment—it has stopped bleeding, fortunately, +or I should be a dead man before now. While in the wood I managed to make a +tourniquet of some half-pence and my handkerchief, as well as I could in the +dark....But listen, dear Felice! Can you hide me till I am well? Whatever +comes, I can be seen in Hintock no more. My practice is nearly gone, you +know—and after this I would not care to recover it if I could.” +</p> + +<p> +By this time Felice’s tears began to blind her. Where were now her +discreet plans for sundering their lives forever? To administer to him in his +pain, and trouble, and poverty, was her single thought. The first step was to +hide him, and she asked herself where. A place occurred to her mind. +</p> + +<p> +She got him some wine from the dining-room, which strengthened him much. Then +she managed to remove his boots, and, as he could now keep himself upright by +leaning upon her on one side and a walking-stick on the other, they went thus +in slow march out of the room and up the stairs. At the top she took him along +a gallery, pausing whenever he required rest, and thence up a smaller staircase +to the least used part of the house, where she unlocked a door. Within was a +lumber-room, containing abandoned furniture of all descriptions, built up in +piles which obscured the light of the windows, and formed between them nooks +and lairs in which a person would not be discerned even should an eye gaze in +at the door. The articles were mainly those that had belonged to the previous +owner of the house, and had been bought in by the late Mr. Charmond at the +auction; but changing fashion, and the tastes of a young wife, had caused them +to be relegated to this dungeon. +</p> + +<p> +Here Fitzpiers sat on the floor against the wall till she had hauled out +materials for a bed, which she spread on the floor in one of the aforesaid +nooks. She obtained water and a basin, and washed the dried blood from his face +and hands; and when he was comfortably reclining, fetched food from the larder. +While he ate her eyes lingered anxiously on his face, following its every +movement with such loving-kindness as only a fond woman can show. +</p> + +<p> +He was now in better condition, and discussed his position with her. +</p> + +<p> +“What I fancy I said to Melbury must have been enough to enrage any man, +if uttered in cold blood, and with knowledge of his presence. But I did not +know him, and I was stupefied by what he had given me, so that I hardly was +aware of what I said. Well—the veil of that temple is rent in twain!...As +I am not going to be seen again in Hintock, my first efforts must be directed +to allay any alarm that may be felt at my absence, before I am able to get +clear away. Nobody must suspect that I have been hurt, or there will be a +country talk about me. Felice, I must at once concoct a letter to check all +search for me. I think if you can bring me a pen and paper I may be able to do +it now. I could rest better if it were done. Poor thing! how I tire her with +running up and down!” +</p> + +<p> +She fetched writing materials, and held up the blotting-book as a support to +his hand, while he penned a brief note to his nominal wife. +</p> + +<p> +“The animosity shown towards me by your father,” he wrote, in this +coldest of marital epistles, “is such that I cannot return again to a +roof which is his, even though it shelters you. A parting is unavoidable, as +you are sure to be on his side in this division. I am starting on a journey +which will take me a long way from Hintock, and you must not expect to see me +there again for some time.” +</p> + +<p> +He then gave her a few directions bearing upon his professional engagements and +other practical matters, concluding without a hint of his destination, or a +notion of when she would see him again. He offered to read the note to Felice +before he closed it up, but she would not hear or see it; that side of his +obligations distressed her beyond endurance. She turned away from Fitzpiers, +and sobbed bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +“If you can get this posted at a place some miles away,” he +whispered, exhausted by the effort of writing—“at Shottsford or +Port-Bredy, or still better, Budmouth—it will divert all suspicion from +this house as the place of my refuge.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will drive to one or other of the places myself—anything to keep +it unknown,” she murmured, her voice weighted with vague foreboding, now +that the excitement of helping him had passed away. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers told her that there was yet one thing more to be done. “In +creeping over the fence on to the lawn,” he said, “I made the rail +bloody, and it shows rather much on the white paint—I could see it in the +dark. At all hazards it should be washed off. Could you do that also, +Felice?” +</p> + +<p> +What will not women do on such devoted occasions? weary as she was she went all +the way down the rambling staircases to the ground-floor, then to search for a +lantern, which she lighted and hid under her cloak; then for a wet sponge, and +next went forth into the night. The white railing stared out in the darkness at +her approach, and a ray from the enshrouded lantern fell upon the +blood—just where he had told her it would be found. She shuddered. It was +almost too much to bear in one day—but with a shaking hand she sponged +the rail clean, and returned to the house. +</p> + +<p> +The time occupied by these several proceedings was not much less than two +hours. When all was done, and she had smoothed his extemporized bed, and placed +everything within his reach that she could think of, she took her leave of him, +and locked him in. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap37"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h2> + +<p> +When her husband’s letter reached Grace’s hands, bearing upon it +the postmark of a distant town, it never once crossed her mind that Fitzpiers +was within a mile of her still. She felt relieved that he did not write more +bitterly of the quarrel with her father, whatever its nature might have been; +but the general frigidity of his communication quenched in her the incipient +spark that events had kindled so shortly before. +</p> + +<p> +From this centre of information it was made known in Hintock that the doctor +had gone away, and as none but the Melbury household was aware that he did not +return on the night of his accident, no excitement manifested itself in the +village. +</p> + +<p> +Thus the early days of May passed by. None but the nocturnal birds and animals +observed that late one evening, towards the middle of the month, a closely +wrapped figure, with a crutch under one arm and a stick in his hand, crept out +from Hintock House across the lawn to the shelter of the trees, taking thence a +slow and laborious walk to the nearest point of the turnpike-road. The +mysterious personage was so disguised that his own wife would hardly have known +him. Felice Charmond was a practised hand at make-ups, as well she might be; +and she had done her utmost in padding and painting Fitzpiers with the old +materials of her art in the recesses of the lumber-room. +</p> + +<p> +In the highway he was met by a covered carriage, which conveyed him to +Sherton-Abbas, whence he proceeded to the nearest port on the south coast, and +immediately crossed the Channel. +</p> + +<p> +But it was known to everybody that three days after this time Mrs. Charmond +executed her long-deferred plan of setting out for a long term of travel and +residence on the Continent. She went off one morning as unostentatiously as +could be, and took no maid with her, having, she said, engaged one to meet her +at a point farther on in her route. After that, Hintock House, so frequently +deserted, was again to be let. Spring had not merged in summer when a clinching +rumor, founded on the best of evidence, reached the parish and neighborhood. +Mrs. Charmond and Fitzpiers had been seen together in Baden, in relations which +set at rest the question that had agitated the little community ever since the +winter. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury had entered the Valley of Humiliation even farther than Grace. His +spirit seemed broken. +</p> + +<p> +But once a week he mechanically went to market as usual, and here, as he was +passing by the conduit one day, his mental condition expressed largely by his +gait, he heard his name spoken by a voice formerly familiar. He turned and saw +a certain Fred Beaucock—once a promising lawyer’s clerk and local +dandy, who had been called the cleverest fellow in Sherton, without whose +brains the firm of solicitors employing him would be nowhere. But later on +Beaucock had fallen into the mire. He was invited out a good deal, sang songs +at agricultural meetings and burgesses’ dinners; in sum, victualled +himself with spirits more frequently than was good for the clever brains or +body either. He lost his situation, and after an absence spent in trying his +powers elsewhere, came back to his native town, where, at the time of the +foregoing events in Hintock, he gave legal advice for astonishingly small +fees—mostly carrying on his profession on public-house settles, in whose +recesses he might often have been overheard making country-people’s wills +for half a crown; calling with a learned voice for pen-and-ink and a halfpenny +sheet of paper, on which he drew up the testament while resting it in a little +space wiped with his hand on the table amid the liquid circles formed by the +cups and glasses. An idea implanted early in life is difficult to uproot, and +many elderly tradespeople still clung to the notion that Fred Beaucock knew a +great deal of law. +</p> + +<p> +It was he who had called Melbury by name. “You look very down, Mr. +Melbury—very, if I may say as much,” he observed, when the +timber-merchant turned. “But I know—I know. A very sad +case—very. I was bred to the law, as you know, and am professionally no +stranger to such matters. Well, Mrs. Fitzpiers has her remedy.” +</p> + +<p> +“How—what—a remedy?” said Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“Under the new law, sir. A new court was established last year, and under +the new statute, twenty and twenty-one Vic., cap. eighty-five, unmarrying is as +easy as marrying. No more Acts of Parliament necessary; no longer one law for +the rich and another for the poor. But come inside—I was just going to +have a nibleykin of rum hot—I’ll explain it all to you.” +</p> + +<p> +The intelligence amazed Melbury, who saw little of newspapers. And though he +was a severely correct man in his habits, and had no taste for entering a +tavern with Fred Beaucock—nay, would have been quite uninfluenced by such +a character on any other matter in the world—such fascination lay in the +idea of delivering his poor girl from bondage, that it deprived him of the +critical faculty. He could not resist the ex-lawyer’s clerk, and entered +the inn. +</p> + +<p> +Here they sat down to the rum, which Melbury paid for as a matter of course, +Beaucock leaning back in the settle with a legal gravity which would hardly +allow him to be conscious of the spirits before him, though they nevertheless +disappeared with mysterious quickness. +</p> + +<p> +How much of the exaggerated information on the then new divorce laws which +Beaucock imparted to his listener was the result of ignorance, and how much of +dupery, was never ascertained. But he related such a plausible story of the +ease with which Grace could become a free woman that her father was irradiated +with the project; and though he scarcely wetted his lips, Melbury never knew +how he came out of the inn, or when or where he mounted his gig to pursue his +way homeward. But home he found himself, his brain having all the way seemed to +ring sonorously as a gong in the intensity of its stir. Before he had seen +Grace, he was accidentally met by Winterborne, who found his face shining as if +he had, like the Law-giver, conversed with an angel. +</p> + +<p> +He relinquished his horse, and took Winterborne by the arm to a heap of +rendlewood—as barked oak was here called—which lay under a +privet-hedge. +</p> + +<p> +“Giles,” he said, when they had sat down upon the logs, +“there’s a new law in the land! Grace can be free quite easily. I +only knew it by the merest accident. I might not have found it out for the next +ten years. She can get rid of him—d’ye hear?—get rid of him. +Think of that, my friend Giles!” +</p> + +<p> +He related what he had learned of the new legal remedy. A subdued tremulousness +about the mouth was all the response that Winterborne made; and Melbury added, +“My boy, you shall have her yet—if you want her.” His +feelings had gathered volume as he said this, and the articulate sound of the +old idea drowned his sight in mist. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you sure—about this new law?” asked Winterborne, so +disquieted by a gigantic exultation which loomed alternately with fearful doubt +that he evaded the full acceptance of Melbury’s last statement. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury said that he had no manner of doubt, for since his talk with Beaucock +it had come into his mind that he had seen some time ago in the weekly paper an +allusion to such a legal change; but, having no interest in those desperate +remedies at the moment, he had passed it over. “But I’m not going +to let the matter rest doubtful for a single day,” he continued. “I +am going to London. Beaucock will go with me, and we shall get the best advice +as soon as we possibly can. Beaucock is a thorough lawyer—nothing the +matter with him but a fiery palate. I knew him as the stay and refuge of +Sherton in knots of law at one time.” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne’s replies were of the vaguest. The new possibility was almost +unthinkable by him at the moment. He was what was called at Hintock “a +solid-going fellow;” he maintained his abeyant mood, not from want of +reciprocity, but from a taciturn hesitancy, taught by life as he knew it. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” continued the timber-merchant, a temporary crease or two of +anxiety supplementing those already established in his forehead by time and +care, “Grace is not at all well. Nothing constitutional, you know; but +she has been in a low, nervous state ever since that night of fright. I +don’t doubt but that she will be all right soon....I wonder how she is +this evening?” He rose with the words, as if he had too long forgotten +her personality in the excitement of her previsioned career. +</p> + +<p> +They had sat till the evening was beginning to dye the garden brown, and now +went towards Melbury’s house, Giles a few steps in the rear of his old +friend, who was stimulated by the enthusiasm of the moment to outstep the +ordinary walking of Winterborne. He felt shy of entering Grace’s presence +as her reconstituted lover—which was how her father’s manner would +be sure to present him—before definite information as to her future state +was forthcoming; it seemed too nearly like the act of those who rush in where +angels fear to tread. +</p> + +<p> +A chill to counterbalance all the glowing promise of the day was prompt enough +in coming. No sooner had he followed the timber-merchant in at the door than he +heard Grammer inform him that Mrs. Fitzpiers was still more unwell than she had +been in the morning. Old Dr. Jones being in the neighborhood they had called +him in, and he had instantly directed them to get her to bed. They were not, +however, to consider her illness serious—a feverish, nervous attack the +result of recent events, was what she was suffering from, and she would +doubtless be well in a few days. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne, therefore, did not remain, and his hope of seeing her that evening +was disappointed. Even this aggravation of her morning condition did not +greatly depress Melbury. He knew, he said, that his daughter’s +constitution was sound enough. It was only these domestic troubles that were +pulling her down. Once free she would be blooming again. Melbury diagnosed +rightly, as parents usually do. +</p> + +<p> +He set out for London the next morning, Jones having paid another visit and +assured him that he might leave home without uneasiness, especially on an +errand of that sort, which would the sooner put an end to her suspense. +</p> + +<p> +The timber-merchant had been away only a day or two when it was told in Hintock +that Mr. Fitzpiers’s hat had been found in the wood. Later on in the +afternoon the hat was brought to Melbury, and, by a piece of ill-fortune, into +Grace’s presence. It had doubtless lain in the wood ever since his fall +from the horse, but it looked so clean and uninjured—the summer weather +and leafy shelter having much favored its preservation—that Grace could +not believe it had remained so long concealed. A very little of fact was enough +to set her fevered fancy at work at this juncture; she thought him still in the +neighborhood; she feared his sudden appearance; and her nervous malady +developed consequences so grave that Dr. Jones began to look serious, and the +household was alarmed. +</p> + +<p> +It was the beginning of June, and the cuckoo at this time of the summer +scarcely ceased his cry for more than two or three hours during the night. The +bird’s note, so familiar to her ears from infancy, was now absolute +torture to the poor girl. On the Friday following the Wednesday of +Melbury’s departure, and the day after the discovery of Fitzpiers’s +hat, the cuckoo began at two o’clock in the morning with a sudden cry +from one of Melbury’s apple-trees, not three yards from the window of +Grace’s room. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, he is coming!” she cried, and in her terror sprang clean from +the bed out upon the floor. +</p> + +<p> +These starts and frights continued till noon; and when the doctor had arrived +and had seen her, and had talked with Mrs. Melbury, he sat down and meditated. +That ever-present terror it was indispensable to remove from her mind at all +hazards; and he thought how this might be done. +</p> + +<p> +Without saying a word to anybody in the house, or to the disquieted Winterborne +waiting in the lane below, Dr. Jones went home and wrote to Mr. Melbury at the +London address he had obtained from his wife. The gist of his communication was +that Mrs. Fitzpiers should be assured as soon as possible that steps were being +taken to sever the bond which was becoming a torture to her; that she would +soon be free, and was even then virtually so. “If you can say it <i>at +once</i> it may be the means of averting much harm,” he said. +“Write to herself; not to me.” +</p> + +<p> +On Saturday he drove over to Hintock, and assured her with mysterious +pacifications that in a day or two she might expect to receive some assuring +news. So it turned out. When Sunday morning came there was a letter for Grace +from her father. It arrived at seven o’clock, the usual time at which the +toddling postman passed by Hintock; at eight Grace awoke, having slept an hour +or two for a wonder, and Mrs. Melbury brought up the letter. +</p> + +<p> +“Can you open it yourself?” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, yes!” said Grace, with feeble impatience. She tore the +envelope, unfolded the sheet, and read; when a creeping blush tinctured her +white neck and cheek. +</p> + +<p> +Her father had exercised a bold discretion. He informed her that she need have +no further concern about Fitzpiers’s return; that she would shortly be a +free woman; and therefore, if she should desire to wed her old +lover—which he trusted was the case, since it was his own deep +wish—she would be in a position to do so. In this Melbury had not written +beyond his belief. But he very much stretched the facts in adding that the +legal formalities for dissolving her union were practically settled. The truth +was that on the arrival of the doctor’s letter poor Melbury had been much +agitated, and could with difficulty be prevented by Beaucock from returning to +her bedside. What was the use of his rushing back to Hintock? Beaucock had +asked him. The only thing that could do her any good was a breaking of the +bond. Though he had not as yet had an interview with the eminent solicitor they +were about to consult, he was on the point of seeing him; and the case was +clear enough. Thus the simple Melbury, urged by his parental alarm at her +danger by the representations of his companion, and by the doctor’s +letter, had yielded, and sat down to tell her roundly that she was virtually +free. +</p> + +<p> +“And you’d better write also to the gentleman,” suggested +Beaucock, who, scenting notoriety and the germ of a large practice in the case, +wished to commit Melbury to it irretrievably; to effect which he knew that +nothing would be so potent as awakening the passion of Grace for Winterborne, +so that her father might not have the heart to withdraw from his attempt to +make her love legitimate when he discovered that there were difficulties in the +way. +</p> + +<p> +The nervous, impatient Melbury was much pleased with the idea of +“starting them at once,” as he called it. To put his long-delayed +reparative scheme in train had become a passion with him now. He added to the +letter addressed to his daughter a passage hinting that she ought to begin to +encourage Winterborne, lest she should lose him altogether; and he wrote to +Giles that the path was virtually open for him at last. Life was short, he +declared; there were slips betwixt the cup and the lip; her interest in him +should be reawakened at once, that all might be ready when the good time came +for uniting them. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap38"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h2> + +<p> +At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed than he was moved in heart. +The novelty of the avowal rendered what it carried with it inapprehensible by +him in its entirety. +</p> + +<p> +Only a few short months ago completely estranged from this +family—beholding Grace going to and fro in the distance, clothed with the +alienating radiance of obvious superiority, the wife of the then popular and +fashionable Fitzpiers, hopelessly outside his social boundary down to so recent +a time that flowers then folded were hardly faded yet—he was now asked by +that jealously guarding father of hers to take courage—to get himself +ready for the day when he should be able to claim her. +</p> + +<p> +The old times came back to him in dim procession. How he had been snubbed; how +Melbury had despised his Christmas party; how that sweet, coy Grace herself had +looked down upon him and his household arrangements, and poor Creedle’s +contrivances! +</p> + +<p> +Well, he could not believe it. Surely the adamantine barrier of marriage with +another could not be pierced like this! It did violence to custom. Yet a new +law might do anything. But was it at all within the bounds of probability that +a woman who, over and above her own attainments, had been accustomed to those +of a cultivated professional man, could ever be the wife of such as he? +</p> + +<p> +Since the date of his rejection he had almost grown to see the reasonableness +of that treatment. He had said to himself again and again that her father was +right; that the poor ceorl, Giles Winterborne, would never have been able to +make such a dainty girl happy. Yet, now that she had stood in a position +farther removed from his own than at first, he was asked to prepare to woo her. +He was full of doubt. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless, it was not in him to show backwardness. To act so promptly as +Melbury desired him to act seemed, indeed, scarcely wise, because of the +uncertainty of events. Giles knew nothing of legal procedure, but he did know +that for him to step up to Grace as a lover before the bond which bound her was +actually dissolved was simply an extravagant dream of her father’s +overstrained mind. He pitied Melbury for his almost childish enthusiasm, and +saw that the aging man must have suffered acutely to be weakened to this +unreasoning desire. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne was far too magnanimous to harbor any cynical conjecture that the +timber-merchant, in his intense affection for Grace, was courting him now +because that young lady, when disunited, would be left in an anomalous +position, to escape which a bad husband was better than none. He felt quite +sure that his old friend was simply on tenterhooks of anxiety to repair the +almost irreparable error of dividing two whom Nature had striven to join +together in earlier days, and that in his ardor to do this he was oblivious of +formalities. The cautious supervision of his past years had overleaped itself +at last. Hence, Winterborne perceived that, in this new beginning, the +necessary care not to compromise Grace by too early advances must be exercised +by himself. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps Winterborne was not quite so ardent as heretofore. There is no such +thing as a stationary love: men are either loving more or loving less. But +Giles himself recognized no decline in his sense of her dearness. If the flame +did indeed burn lower now than when he had fetched her from Sherton at her last +return from school, the marvel was small. He had been laboring ever since his +rejection and her marriage to reduce his former passion to a docile friendship, +out of pure regard to its expediency; and their separation may have helped him +to a partial success. +</p> + +<p> +A week and more passed, and there was no further news of Melbury. But the +effect of the intelligence he had already transmitted upon the elastic-nerved +daughter of the woods had been much what the old surgeon Jones had surmised. It +had soothed her perturbed spirit better than all the opiates in the +pharmacopoeia. She had slept unbrokenly a whole night and a day. The “new +law” was to her a mysterious, beneficent, godlike entity, lately +descended upon earth, that would make her as she once had been without trouble +or annoyance. Her position fretted her, its abstract features rousing an +aversion which was even greater than her aversion to the personality of him who +had caused it. It was mortifying, productive of slights, undignified. Him she +could forget; her circumstances she had always with her. +</p> + +<p> +She saw nothing of Winterborne during the days of her recovery; and perhaps on +that account her fancy wove about him a more romantic tissue than it could have +done if he had stood before her with all the specks and flaws inseparable from +corporeity. He rose upon her memory as the fruit-god and the wood-god in +alternation; sometimes leafy, and smeared with green lichen, as she had seen +him among the sappy boughs of the plantations; sometimes cider-stained, and +with apple-pips in the hair of his arms, as she had met him on his return from +cider-making in White Hart Vale, with his vats and presses beside him. In her +secret heart she almost approximated to her father’s enthusiasm in +wishing to show Giles once for all how she still regarded him. The question +whether the future would indeed bring them together for life was a standing +wonder with her. She knew that it could not with any propriety do so just yet. +But reverently believing in her father’s sound judgment and knowledge, as +good girls are wont to do, she remembered what he had written about her giving +a hint to Winterborne lest there should be risk in delay, and her feelings were +not averse to such a step, so far as it could be done without danger at this +early stage of the proceedings. +</p> + +<p> +From being a frail phantom of her former equable self she returned in bounds to +a condition of passable philosophy. She bloomed again in the face in the course +of a few days, and was well enough to go about as usual. One day Mrs. Melbury +proposed that for a change she should be driven in the gig to Sherton market, +whither Melbury’s man was going on other errands. Grace had no business +whatever in Sherton; but it crossed her mind that Winterborne would probably be +there, and this made the thought of such a drive interesting. +</p> + +<p> +On the way she saw nothing of him; but when the horse was walking slowly +through the obstructions of Sheep Street, she discerned the young man on the +pavement. She thought of that time when he had been standing under his +apple-tree on her return from school, and of the tender opportunity then missed +through her fastidiousness. Her heart rose in her throat. She abjured all such +fastidiousness now. Nor did she forget the last occasion on which she had +beheld him in that town, making cider in the court-yard of the Earl of Wessex +Hotel, while she was figuring as a fine lady in the balcony above. +</p> + +<p> +Grace directed the man to set her down there in the midst, and immediately went +up to her lover. Giles had not before observed her, and his eyes now +suppressedly looked his pleasure, without the embarrassment that had formerly +marked him at such meetings. +</p> + +<p> +When a few words had been spoken, she said, archly, “I have nothing to +do. Perhaps you are deeply engaged?” +</p> + +<p> +“I? Not a bit. My business now at the best of times is small, I am sorry +to say.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then, I am going into the Abbey. Come along with me.” +</p> + +<p> +The proposition had suggested itself as a quick escape from publicity, for many +eyes were regarding her. She had hoped that sufficient time had elapsed for the +extinction of curiosity; but it was quite otherwise. The people looked at her +with tender interest as the deserted girl-wife—without obtrusiveness, and +without vulgarity; but she was ill prepared for scrutiny in any shape. +</p> + +<p> +They walked about the Abbey aisles, and presently sat down. Not a soul was in +the building save themselves. She regarded a stained window, with her head +sideways, and tentatively asked him if he remembered the last time they were in +that town alone. +</p> + +<p> +He remembered it perfectly, and remarked, “You were a proud miss then, +and as dainty as you were high. Perhaps you are now?” +</p> + +<p> +Grace slowly shook her head. “Affliction has taken all that out of +me,” she answered, impressively. “Perhaps I am too far the other +way now.” As there was something lurking in this that she could not +explain, she added, so quickly as not to allow him time to think of it, +“Has my father written to you at all?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Winterborne. +</p> + +<p> +She glanced ponderingly up at him. “Not about me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +His mouth was lined with charactery which told her that he had been bidden to +take the hint as to the future which she had been bidden to give. The +unexpected discovery sent a scarlet pulsation through Grace for the moment. +However, it was only Giles who stood there, of whom she had no fear; and her +self-possession returned. +</p> + +<p> +“He said I was to sound you with a view to—what you will +understand, if you care to,” continued Winterborne, in a low voice. +Having been put on this track by herself, he was not disposed to abandon it in +a hurry. +</p> + +<p> +They had been children together, and there was between them that familiarity as +to personal affairs which only such acquaintanceship can give. “You know, +Giles,” she answered, speaking in a very practical tone, “that that +is all very well; but I am in a very anomalous position at present, and I +cannot say anything to the point about such things as those.” +</p> + +<p> +“No?” he said, with a stray air as regarded the subject. He was +looking at her with a curious consciousness of discovery. He had not been +imagining that their renewed intercourse would show her to him thus. For the +first time he realized an unexpectedness in her, which, after all, should not +have been unexpected. She before him was not the girl Grace Melbury whom he +used to know. Of course, he might easily have prefigured as much; but it had +never occurred to him. She was a woman who had been married; she had moved on; +and without having lost her girlish modesty, she had lost her girlish shyness. +The inevitable change, though known to him, had not been heeded; and it struck +him into a momentary fixity. The truth was that he had never come into close +comradeship with her since her engagement to Fitzpiers, with the brief +exception of the evening encounter on Rubdown Hill, when she met him with his +cider apparatus; and that interview had been of too cursory a kind for insight. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne had advanced, too. He could criticise her. Times had been when to +criticise a single trait in Grace Melbury would have lain as far beyond his +powers as to criticise a deity. This thing was sure: it was a new woman in many +ways whom he had come out to see; a creature of more ideas, more dignity, and, +above all, more assurance, than the original Grace had been capable of. He +could not at first decide whether he were pleased or displeased at this. But +upon the whole the novelty attracted him. +</p> + +<p> +She was so sweet and sensitive that she feared his silence betokened something +in his brain of the nature of an enemy to her. “What are you thinking of +that makes those lines come in your forehead?” she asked. “I did +not mean to offend you by speaking of the time being premature as yet.” +</p> + +<p> +Touched by the genuine loving-kindness which had lain at the foundation of +these words, and much moved, Winterborne turned his face aside, as he took her +by the hand. He was grieved that he had criticised her. +</p> + +<p> +“You are very good, dear Grace,” he said, in a low voice. +“You are better, much better, than you used to be.” +</p> + +<p> +“How?” +</p> + +<p> +He could not very well tell her how, and said, with an evasive smile, +“You are prettier;” which was not what he really had meant. He then +remained still holding her right hand in his own right, so that they faced in +opposite ways; and as he did not let go, she ventured upon a tender +remonstrance. +</p> + +<p> +“I think we have gone as far as we ought to go at present—and far +enough to satisfy my poor father that we are the same as ever. You see, Giles, +my case is not settled yet, and if—Oh, suppose I <i>never</i> get +free!—there should be any hitch or informality!” +</p> + +<p> +She drew a catching breath, and turned pale. The dialogue had been affectionate +comedy up to this point. The gloomy atmosphere of the past, and the still +gloomy horizon of the present, had been for the interval forgotten. Now the +whole environment came back, the due balance of shade among the light was +restored. +</p> + +<p> +“It is sure to be all right, I trust?” she resumed, in uneasy +accents. “What did my father say the solicitor had told him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—that all is sure enough. The case is so clear—nothing +could be clearer. But the legal part is not yet quite done and finished, as is +natural.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—of course not,” she said, sunk in meek thought. +“But father said it was <i>almost</i>—did he not? Do you know +anything about the new law that makes these things so easy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing—except the general fact that it enables ill-assorted +husbands and wives to part in a way they could not formerly do without an Act +of Parliament.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you to sign a paper, or swear anything? Is it something like +that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I believe so.” +</p> + +<p> +“How long has it been introduced?” +</p> + +<p> +“About six months or a year, the lawyer said, I think.” +</p> + +<p> +To hear these two poor Arcadian innocents talk of imperial law would have made +a humane person weep who should have known what a dangerous structure they were +building up on their supposed knowledge. They remained in thought, like +children in the presence of the incomprehensible. +</p> + +<p> +“Giles,” she said, at last, “it makes me quite weary when I +think how serious my situation is, or has been. Shall we not go out from here +now, as it may seem rather fast of me—our being so long together, I +mean—if anybody were to see us? I am almost sure,” she added, +uncertainly, “that I ought not to let you hold my hand yet, knowing that +the documents—or whatever it may be—have not been signed; so that +I—am still as married as ever—or almost. My dear father has +forgotten himself. Not that I feel morally bound to any one else, after what +has taken place—no woman of spirit could—now, too, that several +months have passed. But I wish to keep the proprieties as well as I can.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes. Still, your father reminds us that life is short. I myself +feel that it is; that is why I wished to understand you in this that we have +begun. At times, dear Grace, since receiving your father’s letter, I am +as uneasy and fearful as a child at what he said. If one of us were to die +before the formal signing and sealing that is to release you have been +done—if we should drop out of the world and never have made the most of +this little, short, but real opportunity, I should think to myself as I sunk +down dying, ‘Would to my God that I had spoken out my whole +heart—given her one poor little kiss when I had the chance to give it! +But I never did, although she had promised to be mine some day; and now I never +can.’ That’s what I should think.” +</p> + +<p> +She had begun by watching the words from his lips with a mournful regard, as +though their passage were visible; but as he went on she dropped her glance. +“Yes,” she said, “I have thought that, too. And, because I +have thought it, I by no means meant, in speaking of the proprieties, to be +reserved and cold to you who loved me so long ago, or to hurt your heart as I +used to do at that thoughtless time. Oh, not at all, indeed! But—ought I +to allow you?—oh, it is too quick—surely!” Her eyes filled +with tears of bewildered, alarmed emotion. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne was too straightforward to influence her further against her better +judgment. “Yes—I suppose it is,” he said, repentantly. +“I’ll wait till all is settled. What did your father say in that +last letter?” +</p> + +<p> +He meant about his progress with the petition; but she, mistaking him, frankly +spoke of the personal part. “He said—what I have implied. Should I +tell more plainly?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—don’t, if it is a secret.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all. I will tell every word, straight out, Giles, if you wish. He +said I was to encourage you. There. But I cannot obey him further to-day. Come, +let us go now.” She gently slid her hand from his, and went in front of +him out of the Abbey. +</p> + +<p> +“I was thinking of getting some dinner,” said Winterborne, changing +to the prosaic, as they walked. “And you, too, must require something. Do +let me take you to a place I know.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace was almost without a friend in the world outside her father’s +house; her life with Fitzpiers had brought her no society; had sometimes, +indeed, brought her deeper solitude and inconsideration than any she had ever +known before. Hence it was a treat to her to find herself again the object of +thoughtful care. But she questioned if to go publicly to dine with Giles +Winterborne were not a proposal, due rather to his unsophistication than to his +discretion. She said gently that she would much prefer his ordering her lunch +at some place and then coming to tell her it was ready, while she remained in +the Abbey porch. Giles saw her secret reasoning, thought how hopelessly blind +to propriety he was beside her, and went to do as she wished. +</p> + +<p> +He was not absent more than ten minutes, and found Grace where he had left her. +“It will be quite ready by the time you get there,” he said, and +told her the name of the inn at which the meal had been ordered, which was one +that she had never heard of. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll find it by inquiry,” said Grace, setting out. +</p> + +<p> +“And shall I see you again?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—come to me there. It will not be like going together. I +shall want you to find my father’s man and the gig for me.” +</p> + +<p> +He waited on some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, till he thought her +lunch ended, and that he might fairly take advantage of her invitation to start +her on her way home. He went straight to The Three Tuns—a little tavern +in a side street, scrupulously clean, but humble and inexpensive. On his way he +had an occasional misgiving as to whether the place had been elegant enough for +her; and as soon as he entered it, and saw her ensconced there, he perceived +that he had blundered. +</p> + +<p> +Grace was seated in the only dining-room that the simple old hostelry could +boast of, which was also a general parlor on market-days; a long, low +apartment, with a sanded floor herring-boned with a broom; a wide, +red-curtained window to the street, and another to the garden. Grace had +retreated to the end of the room looking out upon the latter, the front part +being full of a mixed company which had dropped in since he was there. +</p> + +<p> +She was in a mood of the greatest depression. On arriving, and seeing what the +tavern was like, she had been taken by surprise; but having gone too far to +retreat, she had heroically entered and sat down on the well-scrubbed settle, +opposite the narrow table with its knives and steel forks, tin pepper-boxes, +blue salt-cellars, and posters advertising the sale of bullocks against the +wall. The last time that she had taken any meal in a public place it had been +with Fitzpiers at the grand new Earl of Wessex Hotel in that town, after a two +months’ roaming and sojourning at the gigantic hotels of the Continent. +How could she have expected any other kind of accommodation in present +circumstances than such as Giles had provided? And yet how unprepared she was +for this change! The tastes that she had acquired from Fitzpiers had been +imbibed so subtly that she hardly knew she possessed them till confronted by +this contrast. The elegant Fitzpiers, in fact, at that very moment owed a long +bill at the above-mentioned hotel for the luxurious style in which he used to +put her up there whenever they drove to Sherton. But such is social sentiment, +that she had been quite comfortable under those debt-impending conditions, +while she felt humiliated by her present situation, which Winterborne had paid +for honestly on the nail. +</p> + +<p> +He had noticed in a moment that she shrunk from her position, and all his +pleasure was gone. It was the same susceptibility over again which had spoiled +his Christmas party long ago. +</p> + +<p> +But he did not know that this recrudescence was only the casual result of +Grace’s apprenticeship to what she was determined to learn in spite of +it—a consequence of one of those sudden surprises which confront +everybody bent upon turning over a new leaf. She had finished her lunch, which +he saw had been a very mincing performance; and he brought her out of the house +as soon as he could. +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” he said, with great sad eyes, “you have not finished +at all well, I know. Come round to the Earl of Wessex. I’ll order a tea +there. I did not remember that what was good enough for me was not good enough +for you.” +</p> + +<p> +Her face faded into an aspect of deep distress when she saw what had happened. +“Oh no, Giles,” she said, with extreme pathos; “certainly +not. Why do you—say that when you know better? You <i>ever</i> will +misunderstand me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed, that’s not so, Mrs. Fitzpiers. Can you deny that you felt +out of place at The Three Tuns?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. Well, since you make me speak, I do not deny +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And yet I have felt at home there these twenty years. Your husband used +always to take you to the Earl of Wessex, did he not?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she reluctantly admitted. How could she explain in the +street of a market-town that it was her superficial and transitory taste which +had been offended, and not her nature or her affection? Fortunately, or +unfortunately, at that moment they saw Melbury’s man driving vacantly +along the street in search of her, the hour having passed at which he had been +told to take her up. Winterborne hailed him, and she was powerless then to +prolong the discourse. She entered the vehicle sadly, and the horse trotted +away. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap39"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX.</h2> + +<p> +All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of a pleasant +time, forgetting the pleasant time itself. He feared anew that they could never +be happy together, even should she be free to choose him. She was accomplished; +he was unrefined. It was the original difficulty, which he was too sensitive to +recklessly ignore, as some men would have done in his place. +</p> + +<p> +He was one of those silent, unobtrusive beings who want little from others in +the way of favor or condescension, and perhaps on that very account scrutinize +those others’ behavior too closely. He was not versatile, but one in whom +a hope or belief which had once had its rise, meridian, and decline seldom +again exactly recurred, as in the breasts of more sanguine mortals. He had once +worshipped her, laid out his life to suit her, wooed her, and lost her. Though +it was with almost the same zest, it was with not quite the same hope, that he +had begun to tread the old tracks again, and allowed himself to be so charmed +with her that day. +</p> + +<p> +Move another step towards her he would not. He would even repulse her—as +a tribute to conscience. It would be sheer sin to let her prepare a pitfall for +her happiness not much smaller than the first by inveigling her into a union +with such as he. Her poor father was now blind to these subtleties, which he +had formerly beheld as in noontide light. It was his own duty to declare +them—for her dear sake. +</p> + +<p> +Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her solicitous embarrassment +was not lessened the next morning when another letter from her father was put +into her hands. Its tenor was an intenser strain of the one that had preceded +it. After stating how extremely glad he was to hear that she was better, and +able to get out-of-doors, he went on: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“This is a wearisome business, the solicitor we have come to see being +out of town. I do not know when I shall get home. My great anxiety in this +delay is still lest you should lose Giles Winterborne. I cannot rest at night +for thinking that while our business is hanging fire he may become estranged, +or go away from the neighborhood. I have set my heart upon seeing him your +husband, if you ever have another. Do, then, Grace, give him some temporary +encouragement, even though it is over-early. For when I consider the past I do +think God will forgive me and you for being a little forward. I have another +reason for this, my dear. I feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late +affairs have still further helped me that way. And until this thing is done I +cannot rest in peace.” +</p> + +<p> +He added a postscript: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-morrow. Possibly, +therefore, I shall return in the evening after you get this.” +</p> + +<p> +The paternal longing ran on all fours with her own desire; and yet in +forwarding it yesterday she had been on the brink of giving offence. While +craving to be a country girl again just as her father requested; to put off the +old Eve, the fastidious miss—or rather madam—completely, her first +attempt had been beaten by the unexpected vitality of that fastidiousness. Her +father on returning and seeing the trifling coolness of Giles would be sure to +say that the same perversity which had led her to make difficulties about +marrying Fitzpiers was now prompting her to blow hot and cold with poor +Winterborne. +</p> + +<p> +If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching the stops of her +delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to let her drift away +from him again (if she would) on the wind of her estranging education, he could +not have acted more seductively than he did that day. He chanced to be +superintending some temporary work in a field opposite her windows. She could +not discover what he was doing, but she read his mood keenly and truly: she +could see in his coming and going an air of determined abandonment of the whole +landscape that lay in her direction. +</p> + +<p> +Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father coming in the +evening—which meant, she supposed, that all formalities would be in +train, her marriage virtually annulled, and she be free to be won +again—how could she look him in the face if he should see them estranged +thus? +</p> + +<p> +It was a fair green evening in June. She was seated in the garden, in the +rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes—made of peeled +oak-branches that came to Melbury’s premises as refuse after +barking-time. The mass of full-juiced leafage on the heights around her was +just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly spent wind which, even in its +enfeebled state, did not reach her shelter. All day she had expected Giles to +call—to inquire how she had got home, or something or other; but he had +not come. And he still tantalized her by going athwart and across that orchard +opposite. She could see him as she sat. +</p> + +<p> +A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him a letter. She +knew from this that Creedle had just come from Sherton, and had called as usual +at the post-office for anything that had arrived by the afternoon post, of +which there was no delivery at Hintock. She pondered on what the letter might +contain—particularly whether it were a second refresher for Winterborne +from her father, like her own of the morning. +</p> + +<p> +But it appeared to have no bearing upon herself whatever. Giles read its +contents; and almost immediately turned away to a gap in the hedge of the +orchard—if that could be called a hedge which, owing to the drippings of +the trees, was little more than a bank with a bush upon it here and there. He +entered the plantation, and was no doubt going that way homeward to the +mysterious hut he occupied on the other side of the woodland. +</p> + +<p> +The sad sands were running swiftly through Time’s glass; she had often +felt it in these latter days; and, like Giles, she felt it doubly now after the +solemn and pathetic reminder in her father’s communication. Her freshness +would pass, the long-suffering devotion of Giles might suddenly end—might +end that very hour. Men were so strange. The thought took away from her all her +former reticence, and made her action bold. She started from her seat. If the +little breach, quarrel, or whatever it might be called, of yesterday, was to be +healed up it must be done by her on the instant. She crossed into the orchard, +and clambered through the gap after Giles, just as he was diminishing to a +faun-like figure under the green canopy and over the brown floor. +</p> + +<p> +Grace had been wrong—very far wrong—in assuming that the letter had +no reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the wood after its +perusal. It was, sad to say, because the missive had so much reference to +herself that he had thus turned away. He feared that his grieved discomfiture +might be observed. The letter was from Beaucock, written a few hours later than +Melbury’s to his daughter. It announced failure. +</p> + +<p> +Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was the moment +when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. During his absence in +town with Melbury, the lawyer’s clerk had naturally heard a great deal of +the timber-merchant’s family scheme of justice to Giles, and his +communication was to inform Winterborne at the earliest possible moment that +their attempt had failed, in order that the young man should not place himself +in a false position towards Grace in the belief of its coming success. The news +was, in sum, that Fitzpiers’s conduct had not been sufficiently cruel to +Grace to enable her to snap the bond. She was apparently doomed to be his wife +till the end of the chapter. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne quite forgot his superficial differences with the poor girl under +the warm rush of deep and distracting love for her which the almost tragical +information engendered. +</p> + +<p> +To renounce her forever—that was then the end of it for him, after all. +There was no longer any question about suitability, or room for tiffs on petty +tastes. The curtain had fallen again between them. She could not be his. The +cruelty of their late revived hope was now terrible. How could they all have +been so simple as to suppose this thing could be done? +</p> + +<p> +It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming behind him, he turned and +saw her hastening on between the thickets. He perceived in an instant that she +did not know the blighting news. +</p> + +<p> +“Giles, why didn’t you come across to me?” she asked, with +arch reproach. “Didn’t you see me sitting there ever so +long?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for her +unexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of behavior in the +conjuncture. His manner made her think that she had been too chiding in her +speech; and a mild scarlet wave passed over her as she resolved to soften it. +</p> + +<p> +“I have had another letter from my father,” she hastened to +continue. “He thinks he may come home this evening. And—in view of +his hopes—it will grieve him if there is any little difference between +us, Giles.” +</p> + +<p> +“There is none,” he said, sadly regarding her from the face +downward as he pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare. +</p> + +<p> +“Still—I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my being +uncomfortable at the inn.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have, Grace, I’m sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you speak in quite an unhappy way,” she returned, coming up +close to him with the most winning of the many pretty airs that appertained to +her. “Don’t you think you will ever be happy, Giles?” +</p> + +<p> +He did not reply for some instants. “When the sun shines on the north +front of Sherton Abbey—that’s when my happiness will come to +me!” said he, staring as it were into the earth. +</p> + +<p> +“But—then that means that there is something more than my offending +you in not liking The Three Tuns. If it is because I—did not like to let +you kiss me in the Abbey—well, you know, Giles, that it was not on +account of my cold feelings, but because I did certainly, just then, think it +was rather premature, in spite of my poor father. That was the true +reason—the sole one. But I do not want to be hard—God knows I do +not,” she said, her voice fluctuating. “And perhaps—as I am +on the verge of freedom—I am not right, after all, in thinking there is +any harm in your kissing me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh God!” said Winterborne within himself. His head was turned +askance as he still resolutely regarded the ground. For the last several +minutes he had seen this great temptation approaching him in regular siege; and +now it had come. The wrong, the social sin, of now taking advantage of the +offer of her lips had a magnitude, in the eyes of one whose life had been so +primitive, so ruled by purest household laws, as Giles’s, which can +hardly be explained. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you say anything?” she asked, timidly. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—only that—” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean that it must <i>be already</i> settled, since my father is +coming home?” she said, gladly. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne, though fighting valiantly against himself all this +while—though he would have protected Grace’s good repute as the +apple of his eye—was a man; and, as Desdemona said, men are not gods. In +face of the agonizing seductiveness shown by her, in her unenlightened +school-girl simplicity about the laws and ordinances, he betrayed a man’s +weakness. Since it was so—since it had come to this, that Grace, deeming +herself free to do it, was virtually asking him to demonstrate that he loved +her—since he could demonstrate it only too truly—since life was +short and love was strong—he gave way to the temptation, notwithstanding +that he perfectly well knew her to be wedded irrevocably to Fitzpiers. Indeed, +he cared for nothing past or future, simply accepting the present and what it +brought, desiring once in his life to clasp in his arms her he had watched over +and loved so long. +</p> + +<p> +She started back suddenly from his embrace, influenced by a sort of +inspiration. “Oh, I suppose,” she stammered, “that I am +really free?—that this is right? Is there <i>really</i> a new law? Father +cannot have been too sanguine in saying—” +</p> + +<p> +He did not answer, and a moment afterwards Grace burst into tears in spite of +herself. “Oh, why does not my father come home and explain,” she +sobbed, “and let me know clearly what I am? It is too trying, this, to +ask me to—and then to leave me so long in so vague a state that I do not +know what to do, and perhaps do wrong!” +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne felt like a very Cain, over and above his previous sorrow. How he +had sinned against her in not telling her what he knew. He turned aside; the +feeling of his cruelty mounted higher and higher. How could he have dreamed of +kissing her? He could hardly refrain from tears. Surely nothing more pitiable +had ever been known than the condition of this poor young thing, now as +heretofore the victim of her father’s well-meant but blundering policy. +</p> + +<p> +Even in the hour of Melbury’s greatest assurance Winterborne had harbored +a suspicion that no law, new or old, could undo Grace’s marriage without +her appearance in public; though he was not sufficiently sure of what might +have been enacted to destroy by his own words her pleasing idea that a mere +dash of the pen, on her father’s testimony, was going to be sufficient. +But he had never suspected the sad fact that the position was irremediable. +</p> + +<p> +Poor Grace, perhaps feeling that she had indulged in too much fluster for a +mere kiss, calmed herself at finding how grave he was. +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad we are friends again anyhow,” she said, smiling through +her tears. “Giles, if you had only shown half the boldness before I +married that you show now, you would have carried me off for your own first +instead of second. If we do marry, I hope you will never think badly of me for +encouraging you a little, but my father is <i>so</i> impatient, you know, as +his years and infirmities increase, that he will wish to see us a little +advanced when he comes. That is my only excuse.” +</p> + +<p> +To Winterborne all this was sadder than it was sweet. How could she so trust +her father’s conjectures? He did not know how to tell her the truth and +shame himself. And yet he felt that it must be done. “We may have been +wrong,” he began, almost fearfully, “in supposing that it can all +be carried out while we stay here at Hintock. I am not sure but that people may +have to appear in a public court even under the new Act; and if there should be +any difficulty, and we cannot marry after all—” +</p> + +<p> +Her cheeks became slowly bloodless. “Oh, Giles,” she said, grasping +his arm, “you have heard something! What—cannot my father conclude +it there and now? Surely he has done it? Oh, Giles, Giles, don’t deceive +me. What terrible position am I in?” +</p> + +<p> +He could not tell her, try as he would. The sense of her implicit trust in his +honor absolutely disabled him. “I cannot inform you,” he murmured, +his voice as husky as that of the leaves underfoot. “Your father will +soon be here. Then we shall know. I will take you home.” +</p> + +<p> +Inexpressibly dear as she was to him, he offered her his arm with the most +reserved air, as he added, correctingly, “I will take you, at any rate, +into the drive.” +</p> + +<p> +Thus they walked on together. Grace vibrating between happiness and misgiving. +It was only a few minutes’ walk to where the drive ran, and they had +hardly descended into it when they heard a voice behind them cry, “Take +out that arm!” +</p> + +<p> +For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, more loudly and +hoarsely, +</p> + +<p> +“Take out that arm!” +</p> + +<p> +It was Melbury’s. He had returned sooner than they expected, and now came +up to them. Grace’s hand had been withdrawn like lightning on her hearing +the second command. “I don’t blame you—I don’t blame +you,” he said, in the weary cadence of one broken down with scourgings. +“But you two must walk together no more—I have been +surprised—I have been cruelly deceived—Giles, don’t say +anything to me; but go away!” +</p> + +<p> +He was evidently not aware that Winterborne had known the truth before he +brought it; and Giles would not stay to discuss it with him then. When the +young man had gone Melbury took his daughter in-doors to the room he used as +his office. There he sat down, and bent over the slope of the bureau, her +bewildered gaze fixed upon him. +</p> + +<p> +When Melbury had recovered a little he said, “You are now, as ever, +Fitzpiers’s wife. I was deluded. He has not done you <i>enough</i> harm. +You are still subject to his beck and call.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then let it be, and never mind, father,” she said, with dignified +sorrow. “I can bear it. It is your trouble that grieves me most.” +She stooped over him, and put her arm round his neck, which distressed Melbury +still more. “I don’t mind at all what comes to me,” Grace +continued; “whose wife I am, or whose I am not. I do love Giles; I cannot +help that; and I have gone further with him than I should have done if I had +known exactly how things were. But I do not reproach you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then Giles did not tell you?” said Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said she. “He could not have known it. His behavior to +me proved that he did not know.” +</p> + +<p> +Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to the solitude of her +chamber. +</p> + +<p> +Her heavy disquietude had many shapes; and for a time she put aside the +dominant fact to think of her too free conduct towards Giles. His love-making +had been brief as it was sweet; but would he on reflection contemn her for +forwardness? How could she have been so simple as to suppose she was in a +position to behave as she had done! Thus she mentally blamed her ignorance; and +yet in the centre of her heart she blessed it a little for what it had +momentarily brought her. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap40"></a>CHAPTER XL.</h2> + +<p> +Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be suppressed and +hide-bound for a while. Grace seldom showed herself outside the house, never +outside the garden; for she feared she might encounter Giles Winterborne; and +that she could not bear. +</p> + +<p> +This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun appeared likely +to continue for an indefinite time. She had learned that there was one +possibility in which her formerly imagined position might become real, and only +one; that her husband’s absence should continue long enough to amount to +positive desertion. But she never allowed her mind to dwell much upon the +thought; still less did she deliberately hope for such a result. Her regard for +Winterborne had been rarefied by the shock which followed its avowal into an +ethereal emotion that had little to do with living and doing. +</p> + +<p> +As for Giles, he was lying—or rather sitting—ill at his hut. A +feverish indisposition which had been hanging about him for some time, the +result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to acquire virulence with +the prostration of his hopes. But not a soul knew of his languor, and he did +not think the case serious enough to send for a medical man. After a few days +he was better again, and crept about his home in a great coat, attending to his +simple wants as usual with his own hands. So matters stood when the limpid +inertion of Grace’s pool-like existence was disturbed as by a geyser. She +received a letter from Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +Such a terrible letter it was in its import, though couched in the gentlest +language. In his absence Grace had grown to regard him with toleration, and her +relation to him with equanimity, till she had almost forgotten how trying his +presence would be. He wrote briefly and unaffectedly; he made no excuses, but +informed her that he was living quite alone, and had been led to think that +they ought to be together, if she would make up her mind to forgive him. He +therefore purported to cross the Channel to Budmouth by the steamer on a day he +named, which she found to be three days after the time of her present reading. +</p> + +<p> +He said that he could not come to Hintock for obvious reasons, which her father +would understand even better than herself. As the only alternative she was to +be on the quay to meet the steamer when it arrived from the opposite coast, +probably about half an hour before midnight, bringing with her any luggage she +might require; join him there, and pass with him into the twin vessel, which +left immediately the other entered the harbor; returning thus with him to his +continental dwelling-place, which he did not name. He had no intention of +showing himself on land at all. +</p> + +<p> +The troubled Grace took the letter to her father, who now continued for long +hours by the fireless summer chimney-corner, as if he thought it were winter, +the pitcher of cider standing beside him, mostly untasted, and coated with a +film of dust. After reading it he looked up. +</p> + +<p> +“You sha’n’t go,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“I had felt I would not,” she answered. “But I did not know +what you would say.” +</p> + +<p> +“If he comes and lives in England, not too near here and in a respectable +way, and wants you to come to him, I am not sure that I’ll oppose him in +wishing it,” muttered Melbury. “I’d stint myself to keep you +both in a genteel and seemly style. But go abroad you never shall with my +consent.” +</p> + +<p> +There the question rested that day. Grace was unable to reply to her husband in +the absence of an address, and the morrow came, and the next day, and the +evening on which he had requested her to meet him. Throughout the whole of it +she remained within the four walls of her room. +</p> + +<p> +The sense of her harassment, carking doubt of what might be impending, hung +like a cowl of blackness over the Melbury household. They spoke almost in +whispers, and wondered what Fitzpiers would do next. It was the hope of every +one that, finding she did not arrive, he would return again to France; and as +for Grace, she was willing to write to him on the most kindly terms if he would +only keep away. +</p> + +<p> +The night passed, Grace lying tense and wide awake, and her relatives, in great +part, likewise. When they met the next morning they were pale and anxious, +though neither speaking of the subject which occupied all their thoughts. The +day passed as quietly as the previous ones, and she began to think that in the +rank caprice of his moods he had abandoned the idea of getting her to join him +as quickly as it was formed. All on a sudden, some person who had just come +from Sherton entered the house with the news that Mr. Fitzpiers was on his way +home to Hintock. He had been seen hiring a carriage at the Earl of Wessex +Hotel. +</p> + +<p> +Her father and Grace were both present when the intelligence was announced. +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” said Melbury, “we must make the best of what has been +a very bad matter. The man is repenting; the partner of his shame, I hear, is +gone away from him to Switzerland, so that chapter of his life is probably +over. If he chooses to make a home for ye I think you should not say him nay, +Grace. Certainly he cannot very well live at Hintock without a blow to his +pride; but if he can bear that, and likes Hintock best, why, there’s the +empty wing of the house as it was before.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, father!” said Grace, turning white with dismay. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” said he, a little of his former doggedness returning. He +was, in truth, disposed to somewhat more leniency towards her husband just now +than he had shown formerly, from a conviction that he had treated him +over-roughly in his anger. “Surely it is the most respectable thing to +do?” he continued. “I don’t like this state that you are +in—neither married nor single. It hurts me, and it hurts you, and it will +always be remembered against us in Hintock. There has never been any scandal +like it in the family before.” +</p> + +<p> +“He will be here in less than an hour,” murmured Grace. The +twilight of the room prevented her father seeing the despondent misery of her +face. The one intolerable condition, the condition she had deprecated above all +others, was that of Fitzpiers’s reinstatement there. “Oh, I +won’t, I won’t see him,” she said, sinking down. She was +almost hysterical. +</p> + +<p> +“Try if you cannot,” he returned, moodily. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, I will, I will,” she went on, inconsequently. +“I’ll try;” and jumping up suddenly, she left the room. +</p> + +<p> +In the darkness of the apartment to which she flew nothing could have been seen +during the next half-hour; but from a corner a quick breathing was audible from +this impressible creature, who combined modern nerves with primitive emotions, +and was doomed by such coexistence to be numbered among the distressed, and to +take her scourgings to their exquisite extremity. +</p> + +<p> +The window was open. On this quiet, late summer evening, whatever sound arose +in so secluded a district—the chirp of a bird, a call from a voice, the +turning of a wheel—extended over bush and tree to unwonted distances. +Very few sounds did arise. But as Grace invisibly breathed in the brown glooms +of the chamber, the small remote noise of light wheels came in to her, +accompanied by the trot of a horse on the turnpike-road. There seemed to be a +sudden hitch or pause in the progress of the vehicle, which was what first drew +her attention to it. She knew the point whence the sound proceeded—the +hill-top over which travellers passed on their way hitherward from Sherton +Abbas—the place at which she had emerged from the wood with Mrs. +Charmond. Grace slid along the floor, and bent her head over the window-sill, +listening with open lips. The carriage had stopped, and she heard a man use +exclamatory words. Then another said, “What the devil is the matter with +the horse?” She recognized the voice as her husband’s. +</p> + +<p> +The accident, such as it had been, was soon remedied, and the carriage could be +heard descending the hill on the Hintock side, soon to turn into the lane +leading out of the highway, and then into the “drong” which led out +of the lane to the house where she was. +</p> + +<p> +A spasm passed through Grace. The Daphnean instinct, exceptionally strong in +her as a girl, had been revived by her widowed seclusion; and it was not +lessened by her affronted sentiments towards the comer, and her regard for +another man. She opened some little ivory tablets that lay on the +dressing-table, scribbled in pencil on one of them, “I am gone to visit +one of my school-friends,” gathered a few toilet necessaries into a +hand-bag, and not three minutes after that voice had been heard, her slim form, +hastily wrapped up from observation, might have been seen passing out of the +back door of Melbury’s house. Thence she skimmed up the garden-path, +through the gap in the hedge, and into the mossy cart-track under the trees +which led into the depth of the woods. +</p> + +<p> +The leaves overhead were now in their latter green—so opaque, that it was +darker at some of the densest spots than in winter-time, scarce a crevice +existing by which a ray could get down to the ground. But in open places she +could see well enough. Summer was ending: in the daytime singing insects hung +in every sunbeam; vegetation was heavy nightly with globes of dew; and after +showers creeping damps and twilight chills came up from the hollows. The +plantations were always weird at this hour of eve—more spectral far than +in the leafless season, when there were fewer masses and more minute lineality. +The smooth surfaces of glossy plants came out like weak, lidless eyes; there +were strange faces and figures from expiring lights that had somehow wandered +into the canopied obscurity; while now and then low peeps of the sky between +the trunks were like sheeted shapes, and on the tips of boughs sat faint cloven +tongues. +</p> + +<p> +But Grace’s fear just now was not imaginative or spiritual, and she +heeded these impressions but little. She went on as silently as she could, +avoiding the hollows wherein leaves had accumulated, and stepping upon +soundless moss and grass-tufts. She paused breathlessly once or twice, and +fancied that she could hear, above the beat of her strumming pulse, the vehicle +containing Fitzpiers turning in at the gate of her father’s premises. She +hastened on again. +</p> + +<p> +The Hintock woods owned by Mrs. Charmond were presently left behind, and those +into which she next plunged were divided from the latter by a bank, from whose +top the hedge had long ago perished—starved for want of sun. It was with +some caution that Grace now walked, though she was quite free from any of the +commonplace timidities of her ordinary pilgrimages to such spots. She feared no +lurking harms, but that her effort would be all in vain, and her return to the +house rendered imperative. +</p> + +<p> +She had walked between three and four miles when that prescriptive comfort and +relief to wanderers in woods—a distant light—broke at last upon her +searching eyes. It was so very small as to be almost sinister to a stranger, +but to her it was what she sought. She pushed forward, and the dim outline of a +dwelling was disclosed. +</p> + +<p> +The house was a square cot of one story only, sloping up on all sides to a +chimney in the midst. It had formerly been the home of a charcoal-burner, in +times when that fuel was still used in the county houses. Its only appurtenance +was a paled enclosure, there being no garden, the shade of the trees preventing +the growth of vegetables. She advanced to the window whence the rays of light +proceeded, and the shutters being as yet unclosed, she could survey the whole +interior through the panes. +</p> + +<p> +The room within was kitchen, parlor, and scullery all in one; the natural +sandstone floor was worn into hills and dales by long treading, so that none of +the furniture stood level, and the table slanted like a desk. A fire burned on +the hearth, in front of which revolved the skinned carcass of a rabbit, +suspended by a string from a nail. Leaning with one arm on the mantle-shelf +stood Winterborne, his eyes on the roasting animal, his face so rapt that +speculation could build nothing on it concerning his thoughts, more than that +they were not with the scene before him. She thought his features had changed a +little since she saw them last. The fire-light did not enable her to perceive +that they were positively haggard. +</p> + +<p> +Grace’s throat emitted a gasp of relief at finding the result so nearly +as she had hoped. She went to the door and tapped lightly. +</p> + +<p> +He seemed to be accustomed to the noises of woodpeckers, squirrels, and such +small creatures, for he took no notice of her tiny signal, and she knocked +again. This time he came and opened the door. When the light of the room fell +upon her face he started, and, hardly knowing what he did, crossed the +threshold to her, placing his hands upon her two arms, while surprise, joy, +alarm, sadness, chased through him by turns. With Grace it was the same: even +in this stress there was the fond fact that they had met again. Thus they +stood, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Long tears upon their faces, waxen white<br /> +With extreme sad delight.” +</p> + +<p> +He broke the silence by saying in a whisper, “Come in.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, Giles!” she answered, hurriedly, stepping yet farther back +from the door. “I am passing by—and I have called on you—I +won’t enter. Will you help me? I am afraid. I want to get by a roundabout +way to Sherton, and so to Exbury. I have a school-fellow there—but I +cannot get to Sherton alone. Oh, if you will only accompany me a little way! +Don’t condemn me, Giles, and be offended! I was obliged to come to you +because—I have no other help here. Three months ago you were my lover; +now you are only my friend. The law has stepped in, and forbidden what we +thought of. It must not be. But we can act honestly, and yet you can be my +friend for one little hour? I have no other—” +</p> + +<p> +She could get no further. Covering her eyes with one hand, by an effort of +repression she wept a silent trickle, without a sigh or sob. Winterborne took +her other hand. “What has happened?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“He has come.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a stillness as of death, till Winterborne asked, “You mean +this, Grace—that I am to help you to get away?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said she. “Appearance is no matter, when the reality +is right. I have said to myself I can trust you.” +</p> + +<p> +Giles knew from this that she did not suspect his treachery—if it could +be called such—earlier in the summer, when they met for the last time as +lovers; and in the intensity of his contrition for that tender wrong, he +determined to deserve her faith now at least, and so wipe out that reproach +from his conscience. “I’ll come at once,” he said. +“I’ll light a lantern.” +</p> + +<p> +He unhooked a dark-lantern from a nail under the eaves and she did not notice +how his hand shook with the slight strain, or dream that in making this offer +he was taxing a convalescence which could ill afford such self-sacrifice. The +lantern was lit, and they started. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap41"></a>CHAPTER XLI.</h2> + +<p> +The first hundred yards of their course lay under motionless trees, whose upper +foliage began to hiss with falling drops of rain. By the time that they emerged +upon a glade it rained heavily. +</p> + +<p> +“This is awkward,” said Grace, with an effort to hide her concern. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne stopped. “Grace,” he said, preserving a strictly +business manner which belied him, “you cannot go to Sherton +to-night.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I must!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why? It is nine miles from here. It is almost an impossibility in this +rain.” +</p> + +<p> +“True—<i>why?</i>” she replied, mournfully, at the end of a +silence. “What is reputation to me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Now hearken,” said Giles. “You won’t—go back to +your—” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, no! Don’t make me!” she cried, piteously. +</p> + +<p> +“Then let us turn.” They slowly retraced their steps, and again +stood before his door. “Now, this house from this moment is yours, and +not mine,” he said, deliberately. “I have a place near by where I +can stay very well.” +</p> + +<p> +Her face had drooped. “Oh!” she murmured, as she saw the dilemma. +“What have I done!” +</p> + +<p> +There was a smell of something burning within, and he looked through the +window. The rabbit that he had been cooking to coax a weak appetite was +beginning to char. “Please go in and attend to it,” he said. +“Do what you like. Now I leave. You will find everything about the hut +that is necessary.” +</p> + +<p> +“But, Giles—your supper,” she exclaimed. “An out-house +would do for me—anything—till to-morrow at day-break!” +</p> + +<p> +He signified a negative. “I tell you to go in—you may catch agues +out here in your delicate state. You can give me my supper through the window, +if you feel well enough. I’ll wait a while.” +</p> + +<p> +He gently urged her to pass the door-way, and was relieved when he saw her +within the room sitting down. Without so much as crossing the threshold +himself, he closed the door upon her, and turned the key in the lock. Tapping +at the window, he signified that she should open the casement, and when she had +done this he handed in the key to her. +</p> + +<p> +“You are locked in,” he said; “and your own mistress.” +</p> + +<p> +Even in her trouble she could not refrain from a faint smile at his +scrupulousness, as she took the door-key. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you feel better?” he went on. “If so, and you wish to +give me some of your supper, please do. If not, it is of no importance. I can +get some elsewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +The grateful sense of his kindness stirred her to action, though she only knew +half what that kindness really was. At the end of some ten minutes she again +came to the window, pushed it open, and said in a whisper, “Giles!” +He at once emerged from the shade, and saw that she was preparing to hand him +his share of the meal upon a plate. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t like to treat you so hardly,” she murmured, with +deep regret in her words as she heard the rain pattering on the leaves. +“But—I suppose it is best to arrange like this?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” he said, quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“I feel that I could never have reached Sherton.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was impossible.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you sure you have a snug place out there?” (With renewed +misgiving.) +</p> + +<p> +“Quite. Have you found everything you want? I am afraid it is rather +rough accommodation.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can I notice defects? I have long passed that stage, and you know it, +Giles, or you ought to.” +</p> + +<p> +His eyes sadly contemplated her face as its pale responsiveness modulated +through a crowd of expressions that showed only too clearly to what a pitch she +was strung. If ever Winterborne’s heart fretted his bosom it was at this +sight of a perfectly defenceless creature conditioned by such circumstances. He +forgot his own agony in the satisfaction of having at least found her a +shelter. He took his plate and cup from her hands, saying, “Now +I’ll push the shutter to, and you will find an iron pin on the inside, +which you must fix into the bolt. Do not stir in the morning till I come and +call you.” +</p> + +<p> +She expressed an alarmed hope that he would not go very far away. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—I shall be quite within hail,” said Winterborne. +</p> + +<p> +She bolted the window as directed, and he retreated. His snug place proved to +be a wretched little shelter of the roughest kind, formed of four hurdles +thatched with brake-fern. Underneath were dry sticks, hay, and other litter of +the sort, upon which he sat down; and there in the dark tried to eat his meal. +But his appetite was quite gone. He pushed the plate aside, and shook up the +hay and sacks, so as to form a rude couch, on which he flung himself down to +sleep, for it was getting late. +</p> + +<p> +But sleep he could not, for many reasons, of which not the least was thought of +his charge. He sat up, and looked towards the cot through the damp obscurity. +With all its external features the same as usual, he could scarcely believe +that it contained the dear friend—he would not use a warmer +name—who had come to him so unexpectedly, and, he could not help +admitting, so rashly. +</p> + +<p> +He had not ventured to ask her any particulars; but the position was pretty +clear without them. Though social law had negatived forever their opening +paradise of the previous June, it was not without stoical pride that he +accepted the present trying conjuncture. There was one man on earth in whom she +believed absolutely, and he was that man. That this crisis could end in nothing +but sorrow was a view for a moment effaced by this triumphant thought of her +trust in him; and the purity of the affection with which he responded to that +trust rendered him more than proof against any frailty that besieged him in +relation to her. +</p> + +<p> +The rain, which had never ceased, now drew his attention by beginning to drop +through the meagre screen that covered him. He rose to attempt some remedy for +this discomfort, but the trembling of his knees and the throbbing of his pulse +told him that in his weakness he was unable to fence against the storm, and he +lay down to bear it as best he might. He was angry with himself for his +feebleness—he who had been so strong. It was imperative that she should +know nothing of his present state, and to do that she must not see his face by +daylight, for its color would inevitably betray him. +</p> + +<p> +The next morning, accordingly, when it was hardly light, he rose and dragged +his stiff limbs about the precincts, preparing for her everything she could +require for getting breakfast within. On the bench outside the window-sill he +placed water, wood, and other necessaries, writing with a piece of chalk beside +them, “It is best that I should not see you. Put my breakfast on the +bench.” +</p> + +<p> +At seven o’clock he tapped at her window, as he had promised, retreating +at once, that she might not catch sight of him. But from his shelter under the +boughs he could see her very well, when, in response to his signal, she opened +the window and the light fell upon her face. The languid largeness of her eyes +showed that her sleep had been little more than his own, and the pinkness of +their lids, that her waking hours had not been free from tears. +</p> + +<p> +She read the writing, seemed, he thought, disappointed, but took up the +materials he had provided, evidently thinking him some way off. Giles waited +on, assured that a girl who, in spite of her culture, knew what country life +was, would find no difficulty in the simple preparation of their food. +</p> + +<p> +Within the cot it was all very much as he conjectured, though Grace had slept +much longer than he. After the loneliness of the night, she would have been +glad to see him; but appreciating his feeling when she read the writing, she +made no attempt to recall him. She found abundance of provisions laid in, his +plan being to replenish his buttery weekly, and this being the day after the +victualling van had called from Sherton. When the meal was ready, she put what +he required outside, as she had done with the supper; and, notwithstanding her +longing to see him, withdrew from the window promptly, and left him to himself. +</p> + +<p> +It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its fall. As she +heard no more of Winterborne, she concluded that he had gone away to his daily +work, and forgotten that he had promised to accompany her to Sherton; an +erroneous conclusion, for he remained all day, by force of his condition, +within fifty yards of where she was. The morning wore on; and in her doubt when +to start, and how to travel, she lingered yet, keeping the door carefully +bolted, lest an intruder should discover her. Locked in this place, she was +comparatively safe, at any rate, and doubted if she would be safe elsewhere. +</p> + +<p> +The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade and drip of the +leafage. Autumn, this year, was coming in with rains. Gazing, in her enforced +idleness, from the one window of the living-room, she could see various small +members of the animal community that lived unmolested there—creatures of +hair, fluff, and scale, the toothed kind and the billed kind; underground +creatures, jointed and ringed—circumambulating the hut, under the +impression that, Giles having gone away, nobody was there; and eying it +inquisitively with a view to winter-quarters. Watching these neighbors, who +knew neither law nor sin, distracted her a little from her trouble; and she +managed to while away some portion of the afternoon by putting Giles’s +home in order and making little improvements which she deemed that he would +value when she was gone. +</p> + +<p> +Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise amid the trees, +resembling a cough; but as it never came any nearer she concluded that it was a +squirrel or a bird. +</p> + +<p> +At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger fire for the evenings +were chilly. As soon as it was too dark—which was comparatively +early—to discern the human countenance in this place of shadows, there +came to the window to her great delight, a tapping which she knew from its +method to be Giles’s. +</p> + +<p> +She opened the casement instantly, and put out her hand to him, though she +could only just perceive his outline. He clasped her fingers, and she noticed +the heat of his palm and its shakiness. +</p> + +<p> +“He has been walking fast, in order to get here quickly,” she +thought. How could she know that he had just crawled out from the straw of the +shelter hard by; and that the heat of his hand was feverishness? +</p> + +<p> +“My dear, good Giles!” she burst out, impulsively. +</p> + +<p> +“Anybody would have done it for you,” replied Winterborne, with as +much matter-of-fact as he could summon. +</p> + +<p> +“About my getting to Exbury?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I have been thinking,” responded Giles, with tender deference, +“that you had better stay where you are for the present, if you wish not +to be caught. I need not tell you that the place is yours as long as you like; +and perhaps in a day or two, finding you absent, he will go away. At any rate, +in two or three days I could do anything to assist—such as make +inquiries, or go a great way towards Sherton-Abbas with you; for the cider +season will soon be coming on, and I want to run down to the Vale to see how +the crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton road. But for a day or two I am +busy here.” He was hoping that by the time mentioned he would be strong +enough to engage himself actively on her behalf. “I hope you do not feel +over-much melancholy in being a prisoner?” +</p> + +<p> +She declared that she did not mind it; but she sighed. +</p> + +<p> +From long acquaintance they could read each other’s heart-symptoms like +books of large type. “I fear you are sorry you came,” said Giles, +“and that you think I should have advised you more firmly than I did not +to stay.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, dear, dear friend,” answered Grace, with a heaving bosom. +“Don’t think that that is what I regret. What I regret is my +enforced treatment of you—dislodging you, excluding you from your own +house. Why should I not speak out? You know what I feel for you—what I +have felt for no other living man, what I shall never feel for a man again! But +as I have vowed myself to somebody else than you, and cannot be released, I +must behave as I do behave, and keep that vow. I am not bound to him by any +divine law, after what he has done; but I have promised, and I will pay.” +</p> + +<p> +The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things as she would +require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon, an occupation which +diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic views of her attitude towards +him, and of her life in general. The only infringement—if infringement it +could be called—of his predetermined bearing towards her was an +involuntary pressing of her hand to his lips when she put it through the +casement to bid him good-night. He knew she was weeping, though he could not +see her tears. +</p> + +<p> +She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly appropriating the cottage. +But it would only be for a day or two more, she thought, since go she must. +</p> + +<p> +He replied, yearningly, “I—I don’t like you to go +away.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Giles,” said she, “I know—I know! But—I am a +woman, and you are a man. I cannot speak more plainly. ‘Whatsoever things +are pure, whatsoever things are of good report’—you know what is in +my mind, because you know me so well.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Grace, yes. I do not at all mean that the question between us has +not been settled by the fact of your marriage turning out hopelessly +unalterable. I merely meant—well, a feeling no more.” +</p> + +<p> +“In a week, at the outside, I should be discovered if I stayed here: and +I think that by law he could compel me to return to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; perhaps you are right. Go when you wish, dear Grace.” +</p> + +<p> +His last words that evening were a hopeful remark that all might be well with +her yet; that Mr. Fitzpiers would not intrude upon her life, if he found that +his presence cost her so much pain. Then the window was closed, the shutters +folded, and the rustle of his footsteps died away. +</p> + +<p> +No sooner had she retired to rest that night than the wind began to rise, and, +after a few prefatory blasts, to be accompanied by rain. The wind grew more +violent, and as the storm went on, it was difficult to believe that no opaque +body, but only an invisible colorless thing, was trampling and climbing over +the roof, making branches creak, springing out of the trees upon the chimney, +popping its head into the flue, and shrieking and blaspheming at every corner +of the walls. As in the old story, the assailant was a spectre which could be +felt but not seen. She had never before been so struck with the devilry of a +gusty night in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in spirit +as she was now. She seemed almost to be apart from herself—a vacuous +duplicate only. The recent self of physical animation and clear intentions was +not there. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so low as to smite the roof +in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth of an adversary, to be +followed by a trickle of rain, as blood from the wound. To all this weather +Giles must be more or less exposed; how much, she did not know. +</p> + +<p> +At last Grace could hardly endure the idea of such a hardship in relation to +him. Whatever he was suffering, it was she who had caused it; he vacated his +house on account of her. She was not worth such self-sacrifice; she should not +have accepted it of him. And then, as her anxiety increased with increasing +thought, there returned upon her mind some incidents of her late intercourse +with him, which she had heeded but little at the time. The look of his +face—what had there been about his face which seemed different from its +appearance as of yore? Was it not thinner, less rich in hue, less like that of +ripe autumn’s brother to whom she had formerly compared him? And his +voice; she had distinctly noticed a change in tone. And his gait; surely it had +been feebler, stiffer, more like the gait of a weary man. That slight +occasional noise she had heard in the day, and attributed to squirrels, it +might have been his cough after all. +</p> + +<p> +Thus conviction took root in her perturbed mind that Winterborne was ill, or +had been so, and that he had carefully concealed his condition from her that +she might have no scruples about accepting a hospitality which by the nature of +the case expelled her entertainer. +</p> + +<p> +“My own, own, true l——, my dear kind friend!” she cried +to herself. “Oh, it shall not be—it shall not be!” +</p> + +<p> +She hastily wrapped herself up, and obtained a light, with which she entered +the adjoining room, the cot possessing only one floor. Setting down the candle +on the table here, she went to the door with the key in her hand, and placed it +in the lock. Before turning it she paused, her fingers still clutching it; and +pressing her other hand to her forehead, she fell into agitating thought. +</p> + +<p> +A tattoo on the window, caused by the tree-droppings blowing against it, +brought her indecision to a close. She turned the key and opened the door. +</p> + +<p> +The darkness was intense, seeming to touch her pupils like a substance. She +only now became aware how heavy the rainfall had been and was; the dripping of +the eaves splashed like a fountain. She stood listening with parted lips, and +holding the door in one hand, till her eyes, growing accustomed to the +obscurity, discerned the wild brandishing of their boughs by the adjoining +trees. At last she cried loudly with an effort, “Giles! you may come +in!” +</p> + +<p> +There was no immediate answer to her cry, and overpowered by her own temerity, +Grace retreated quickly, shut the door, and stood looking on the floor. But it +was not for long. She again lifted the latch, and with far more determination +than at first. +</p> + +<p> +“Giles, Giles!” she cried, with the full strength of her voice, and +without any of the shamefacedness that had characterized her first cry. +“Oh, come in—come in! Where are you? I have been wicked. I have +thought too much of myself! Do you hear? I don’t want to keep you out any +longer. I cannot bear that you should suffer so. Gi-i-iles!” +</p> + +<p> +A reply! It was a reply! Through the darkness and wind a voice reached her, +floating upon the weather as though a part of it. +</p> + +<p> +“Here I am—all right. Don’t trouble about me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you want to come in? Are you not wet? <i>Come to me! I +don’t mind what they say, or what they think any more.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“I am all right,” he repeated. “It is not necessary for me to +come. Good-night! good-night!” +</p> + +<p> +Grace sighed, turned and shut the door slowly. Could she have been mistaken +about his health? Perhaps, after all, she had perceived a change in him because +she had not seen him for so long. Time sometimes did his ageing work in jerks, +as she knew. Well, she had done all she could. He would not come in. She +retired to rest again. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap42"></a>CHAPTER XLII.</h2> + +<p> +The next morning Grace was at the window early. She felt determined to see him +somehow that day, and prepared his breakfast eagerly. Eight o’clock +struck, and she had remembered that he had not come to arouse her by a +knocking, as usual, her own anxiety having caused her to stir. +</p> + +<p> +The breakfast was set in its place without. But he did not arrive to take it; +and she waited on. Nine o’clock arrived, and the breakfast was cold; and +still there was no Giles. A thrush, that had been repeating itself a good deal +on an opposite bush for some time, came and took a morsel from the plate and +bolted it, waited, looked around, and took another. At ten o’clock she +drew in the tray, and sat down to her own solitary meal. He must have been +called away on business early, the rain having cleared off. +</p> + +<p> +Yet she would have liked to assure herself, by thoroughly exploring the +precincts of the hut, that he was nowhere in its vicinity; but as the day was +comparatively fine, the dread lest some stray passenger or woodman should +encounter her in such a reconnoitre paralyzed her wish. The solitude was +further accentuated to-day by the stopping of the clock for want of winding, +and the fall into the chimney-corner of flakes of soot loosened by the rains. +At noon she heard a slight rustling outside the window, and found that it was +caused by an eft which had crept out of the leaves to bask in the last sun-rays +that would be worth having till the following May. +</p> + +<p> +She continually peeped out through the lattice, but could see little. In front +lay the brown leaves of last year, and upon them some yellowish-green ones of +this season that had been prematurely blown down by the gale. Above stretched +an old beech, with vast armpits, and great pocket-holes in its sides where +branches had been amputated in past times; a black slug was trying to climb it. +Dead boughs were scattered about like ichthyosauri in a museum, and beyond them +were perishing woodbine stems resembling old ropes. +</p> + +<p> +From the other window all she could see were more trees, jacketed with lichen +and stockinged with moss. At their roots were stemless yellow fungi like lemons +and apricots, and tall fungi with more stem than stool. Next were more trees +close together, wrestling for existence, their branches disfigured with wounds +resulting from their mutual rubbings and blows. It was the struggle between +these neighbors that she had heard in the night. Beneath them were the rotting +stumps of those of the group that had been vanquished long ago, rising from +their mossy setting like decayed teeth from green gums. Farther on were other +tufts of moss in islands divided by the shed leaves—variety upon variety, +dark green and pale green; moss-like little fir-trees, like plush, like +malachite stars, like nothing on earth except moss. +</p> + +<p> +The strain upon Grace’s mind in various ways was so great on this the +most desolate day she had passed there that she felt it would be well-nigh +impossible to spend another in such circumstances. The evening came at last; +the sun, when its chin was on the earth, found an opening through which to +pierce the shade, and stretched irradiated gauzes across the damp atmosphere, +making the wet trunks shine, and throwing splotches of such ruddiness on the +leaves beneath the beech that they were turned to gory hues. When night at last +arrived, and with it the time for his return, she was nearly broken down with +suspense. +</p> + +<p> +The simple evening meal, partly tea, partly supper, which Grace had prepared, +stood waiting upon the hearth; and yet Giles did not come. It was now nearly +twenty-four hours since she had seen him. As the room grew darker, and only the +firelight broke against the gloom of the walls, she was convinced that it would +be beyond her staying power to pass the night without hearing from him or from +somebody. Yet eight o’clock drew on, and his form at the window did not +appear. +</p> + +<p> +The meal remained untasted. Suddenly rising from before the hearth of +smouldering embers, where she had been crouching with her hands clasped over +her knees, she crossed the room, unlocked the door, and listened. Every breath +of wind had ceased with the decline of day, but the rain had resumed the steady +dripping of the night before. Grace might have stood there five minutes when +she fancied she heard that old sound, a cough, at no great distance; and it was +presently repeated. If it were Winterborne’s, he must be near her; why, +then, had he not visited her? +</p> + +<p> +A horrid misgiving that he could not visit her took possession of Grace, and +she looked up anxiously for the lantern, which was hanging above her head. To +light it and go in the direction of the sound would be the obvious way to solve +the dread problem; but the conditions made her hesitate, and in a moment a cold +sweat pervaded her at further sounds from the same quarter. +</p> + +<p> +They were low mutterings; at first like persons in conversation, but gradually +resolving themselves into varieties of one voice. It was an endless monologue, +like that we sometimes hear from inanimate nature in deep secret places where +water flows, or where ivy leaves flap against stones; but by degrees she was +convinced that the voice was Winterborne’s. Yet who could be his +listener, so mute and patient; for though he argued so rapidly and +persistently, nobody replied. +</p> + +<p> +A dreadful enlightenment spread through the mind of Grace. “Oh,” +she cried, in her anguish, as she hastily prepared herself to go out, +“how selfishly correct I am always—too, too correct! Cruel +propriety is killing the dearest heart that ever woman clasped to her +own.” +</p> + +<p> +While speaking thus to herself she had lit the lantern, and hastening out +without further thought, took the direction whence the mutterings had +proceeded. The course was marked by a little path, which ended at a distance of +about forty yards in a small erection of hurdles, not much larger than a shock +of corn, such as were frequent in the woods and copses when the cutting season +was going on. It was too slight even to be called a hovel, and was not high +enough to stand upright in; appearing, in short, to be erected for the +temporary shelter of fuel. The side towards Grace was open, and turning the +light upon the interior, she beheld what her prescient fear had pictured in +snatches all the way thither. +</p> + +<p> +Upon the straw within, Winterborne lay in his clothes, just as she had seen him +during the whole of her stay here, except that his hat was off, and his hair +matted and wild. +</p> + +<p> +Both his clothes and the straw were saturated with rain. His arms were flung +over his head; his face was flushed to an unnatural crimson. His eyes had a +burning brightness, and though they met her own, she perceived that he did not +recognize her. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my Giles,” she cried, “what have I done to you!” +</p> + +<p> +But she stopped no longer even to reproach herself. She saw that the first +thing to be thought of was to get him indoors. +</p> + +<p> +How Grace performed that labor she never could have exactly explained. But by +dint of clasping her arms round him, rearing him into a sitting posture, and +straining her strength to the uttermost, she put him on one of the hurdles that +was loose alongside, and taking the end of it in both her hands, dragged him +along the path to the entrance of the hut, and, after a pause for breath, in at +the door-way. +</p> + +<p> +It was somewhat singular that Giles in his semi-conscious state acquiesced +unresistingly in all that she did. But he never for a moment recognized +her—continuing his rapid conversation to himself, and seeming to look +upon her as some angel, or other supernatural creature of the visionary world +in which he was mentally living. The undertaking occupied her more than ten +minutes; but by that time, to her great thankfulness, he was in the inner room, +lying on the bed, his damp outer clothing removed. +</p> + +<p> +Then the unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. There was +something in his look which agonized her, in the rush of his thoughts, +accelerating their speed from minute to minute. He seemed to be passing through +the universe of ideas like a comet—erratic, inapprehensible, untraceable. +</p> + +<p> +Grace’s distraction was almost as great as his. In a few moments she +firmly believed he was dying. Unable to withstand her impulse, she knelt down +beside him, kissed his hands and his face and his hair, exclaiming, in a low +voice, “How could I? How could I?” +</p> + +<p> +Her timid morality had, indeed, underrated his chivalry till now, though she +knew him so well. The purity of his nature, his freedom from the grosser +passions, his scrupulous delicacy, had never been fully understood by Grace +till this strange self-sacrifice in lonely juxtaposition to her own person was +revealed. The perception of it added something that was little short of +reverence to the deep affection for him of a woman who, herself, had more of +Artemis than of Aphrodite in her constitution. +</p> + +<p> +All that a tender nurse could do, Grace did; and the power to express her +solicitude in action, unconscious though the sufferer was, brought her mournful +satisfaction. She bathed his hot head, wiped his perspiring hands, moistened +his lips, cooled his fiery eyelids, sponged his heated skin, and administered +whatever she could find in the house that the imagination could conceive as +likely to be in any way alleviating. That she might have been the cause, or +partially the cause, of all this, interfused misery with her sorrow. +</p> + +<p> +Six months before this date a scene, almost similar in its mechanical parts, +had been enacted at Hintock House. It was between a pair of persons most +intimately connected in their lives with these. Outwardly like as it had been, +it was yet infinite in spiritual difference, though a woman’s devotion +had been common to both. +</p> + +<p> +Grace rose from her attitude of affection, and, bracing her energies, saw that +something practical must immediately be done. Much as she would have liked, in +the emotion of the moment, to keep him entirely to herself, medical assistance +was necessary while there remained a possibility of preserving him alive. Such +assistance was fatal to her own concealment; but even had the chance of +benefiting him been less than it was, she would have run the hazard for his +sake. The question was, where should she get a medical man, competent and near? +</p> + +<p> +There was one such man, and only one, within accessible distance; a man who, if +it were possible to save Winterborne’s life, had the brain most likely to +do it. If human pressure could bring him, that man ought to be brought to the +sick Giles’s side. The attempt should be made. +</p> + +<p> +Yet she dreaded to leave her patient, and the minutes raced past, and yet she +postponed her departure. At last, when it was after eleven o’clock, +Winterborne fell into a fitful sleep, and it seemed to afford her an +opportunity. +</p> + +<p> +She hastily made him as comfortable as she could, put on her things, cut a new +candle from the bunch hanging in the cupboard, and having set it up, and placed +it so that the light did not fall upon his eyes, she closed the door and +started. +</p> + +<p> +The spirit of Winterborne seemed to keep her company and banish all sense of +darkness from her mind. The rains had imparted a phosphorescence to the pieces +of touchwood and rotting leaves that lay about her path, which, as scattered by +her feet, spread abroad like spilt milk. She would not run the hazard of losing +her way by plunging into any short, unfrequented track through the denser parts +of the woodland, but followed a more open course, which eventually brought her +to the highway. Once here, she ran along with great speed, animated by a +devoted purpose which had much about it that was stoical; and it was with +scarcely any faltering of spirit that, after an hour’s progress, she +passed over Rubdown Hill, and onward towards that same Hintock, and that same +house, out of which she had fled a few days before in irresistible alarm. But +that had happened which, above all other things of chance and change, could +make her deliberately frustrate her plan of flight and sink all regard of +personal consequences. +</p> + +<p> +One speciality of Fitzpiers’s was respected by Grace as much as +ever—his professional skill. In this she was right. Had his persistence +equalled his insight, instead of being the spasmodic and fitful thing it was, +fame and fortune need never have remained a wish with him. His freedom from +conventional errors and crusted prejudices had, indeed, been such as to retard +rather than accelerate his advance in Hintock and its neighborhood, where +people could not believe that nature herself effected cures, and that the +doctor’s business was only to smooth the way. +</p> + +<p> +It was past midnight when Grace arrived opposite her father’s house, now +again temporarily occupied by her husband, unless he had already gone away. +Ever since her emergence from the denser plantations about Winterborne’s +residence a pervasive lightness had hung in the damp autumn sky, in spite of +the vault of cloud, signifying that a moon of some age was shining above its +arch. The two white gates were distinct, and the white balls on the pillars, +and the puddles and damp ruts left by the recent rain, had a cold, corpse-eyed +luminousness. She entered by the lower gate, and crossed the quadrangle to the +wing wherein the apartments that had been hers since her marriage were situate, +till she stood under a window which, if her husband were in the house, gave +light to his bedchamber. +</p> + +<p> +She faltered, and paused with her hand on her heart, in spite of herself. Could +she call to her presence the very cause of all her foregoing troubles? +Alas!—old Jones was seven miles off; Giles was possibly dying—what +else could she do? +</p> + +<p> +It was in a perspiration, wrought even more by consciousness than by exercise, +that she picked up some gravel, threw it at the panes, and waited to see the +result. The night-bell which had been fixed when Fitzpiers first took up his +residence there still remained; but as it had fallen into disuse with the +collapse of his practice, and his elopement, she did not venture to pull it +now. +</p> + +<p> +Whoever slept in the room had heard her signal, slight as it was. In half a +minute the window was opened, and a voice said “Yes?” inquiringly. +Grace recognized her husband in the speaker at once. Her effort was now to +disguise her own accents. +</p> + +<p> +“Doctor,” she said, in as unusual a tone as she could command, +“a man is dangerously ill in One-chimney Hut, out towards Delborough, and +you must go to him at once—in all mercy!” +</p> + +<p> +“I will, readily.” +</p> + +<p> +The alacrity, surprise, and pleasure expressed in his reply amazed her for a +moment. But, in truth, they denoted the sudden relief of a man who, having got +back in a mood of contrition, from erratic abandonment to fearful joys, found +the soothing routine of professional practice unexpectedly opening anew to him. +The highest desire of his soul just now was for a respectable life of +painstaking. If this, his first summons since his return, had been to attend +upon a cat or dog, he would scarcely have refused it in the circumstances. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know the way?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“One-chimney Hut,” she repeated. +“And—immediately!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes,” said Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +Grace remained no longer. She passed out of the white gate without slamming it, +and hastened on her way back. Her husband, then, had re-entered her +father’s house. How he had been able to effect a reconciliation with the +old man, what were the terms of the treaty between them, she could not so much +as conjecture. Some sort of truce must have been entered into, that was all she +could say. But close as the question lay to her own life, there was a more +urgent one which banished it; and she traced her steps quickly along the +meandering track-ways. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, Fitzpiers was preparing to leave the house. The state of his mind, +over and above his professional zeal, was peculiar. At Grace’s first +remark he had not recognized or suspected her presence; but as she went on, he +was awakened to the great resemblance of the speaker’s voice to his +wife’s. He had taken in such good faith the statement of the household on +his arrival, that she had gone on a visit for a time because she could not at +once bring her mind to be reconciled to him, that he could not quite actually +believe this comer to be she. It was one of the features of Fitzpiers’s +repentant humor at this date that, on receiving the explanation of her absence, +he had made no attempt to outrage her feelings by following her; though nobody +had informed him how very shortly her departure had preceded his entry, and of +all that might have been inferred from her precipitancy. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury, after much alarm and consideration, had decided not to follow her +either. He sympathized with her flight, much as he deplored it; moreover, the +tragic color of the antecedent events that he had been a great means of +creating checked his instinct to interfere. He prayed and trusted that she had +got into no danger on her way (as he supposed) to Sherton, and thence to +Exbury, if that were the place she had gone to, forbearing all inquiry which +the strangeness of her departure would have made natural. A few months before +this time a performance by Grace of one-tenth the magnitude of this would have +aroused him to unwonted investigation. +</p> + +<p> +It was in the same spirit that he had tacitly assented to Fitzpiers’s +domicilation there. The two men had not met face to face, but Mrs. Melbury had +proposed herself as an intermediary, who made the surgeon’s re-entrance +comparatively easy to him. Everything was provisional, and nobody asked +questions. Fitzpiers had come in the performance of a plan of penitence, which +had originated in circumstances hereafter to be explained; his self-humiliation +to the very bass-string was deliberate; and as soon as a call reached him from +the bedside of a dying man his desire was to set to work and do as much good as +he could with the least possible fuss or show. He therefore refrained from +calling up a stableman to get ready any horse or gig, and set out for +One-chimney Hut on foot, as Grace had done. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap43"></a>CHAPTER XLIII.</h2> + +<p> +She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and approached the +sufferer. He had begun anew those terrible mutterings, and his hands were cold. +As soon as she saw him there returned to her that agony of mind which the +stimulus of her journey had thrown off for a time. +</p> + +<p> +Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, forgot all things but the +fact that lying there before her was he who had loved her more than the mere +lover would have loved; had martyred himself for her comfort, cared more for +her self-respect than she had thought of caring. This mood continued till she +heard quick, smart footsteps without; she knew whose footsteps they were. +</p> + +<p> +Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, holding Giles’s +hand, so that when her husband entered the patient lay between herself and him. +He stood transfixed at first, noticing Grace only. Slowly he dropped his glance +and discerned who the prostrate man was. Strangely enough, though Grace’s +distaste for her husband’s company had amounted almost to dread, and +culminated in actual flight, at this moment her last and least feeling was +personal. Sensitive femininity was eclipsed by self-effacing purpose, and that +it was a husband who stood there was forgotten. The first look that possessed +her face was relief; satisfaction at the presence of the physician obliterated +thought of the man, which only returned in the form of a sub-consciousness that +did not interfere with her words. +</p> + +<p> +“Is he dying—is there any hope?” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Grace!” said Fitzpiers, in an indescribable whisper—more +than invocating, if not quite deprecatory. +</p> + +<p> +He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic +character—though that was striking enough to a man who called himself the +husband of the sufferer’s friend and nurse—but in its character as +the counterpart of one that had its hour many months before, in which he had +figured as the patient, and the woman had been Felice Charmond. +</p> + +<p> +“Is he in great danger—can you save him?” she cried again. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined Winterborne as he +stood. His inspection was concluded in a mere glance. Before he spoke he looked +at her contemplatively as to the effect of his coming words. +</p> + +<p> +“He is dying,” he said, with dry precision. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing can be done, by me or any other man. It will soon be all over. +The extremities are dead already.” His eyes still remained fixed on her; +the conclusion to which he had come seeming to end his interest, professional +and otherwise, in Winterborne forever. +</p> + +<p> +“But it cannot be! He was well three days ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not well, I suspect. This seems like a secondary attack, which has +followed some previous illness—possibly typhoid—it may have been +months ago, or recently.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah—he was not well—you are right. He was ill—he was +ill when I came.” +</p> + +<p> +There was nothing more to do or say. She crouched down at the side of the bed, +and Fitzpiers took a seat. Thus they remained in silence, and long as it lasted +she never turned her eyes, or apparently her thoughts, at all to her husband. +He occasionally murmured, with automatic authority, some slight directions for +alleviating the pain of the dying man, which she mechanically obeyed, bending +over him during the intervals in silent tears. +</p> + +<p> +Winterborne never recovered consciousness of what was passing; and that he was +going became soon perceptible also to her. In less than an hour the delirium +ceased; then there was an interval of somnolent painlessness and soft +breathing, at the end of which Winterborne passed quietly away. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Then Fitzpiers broke the silence. “Have you lived here long?” said +he. +</p> + +<p> +Grace was wild with sorrow—with all that had befallen her—with the +cruelties that had attacked her—with life—with Heaven. She answered +at random. “Yes. By what right do you ask?” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t think I claim any right,” said Fitzpiers, sadly. +“It is for you to do and say what you choose. I admit, quite as much as +you feel, that I am a vagabond—a brute—not worthy to possess the +smallest fragment of you. But here I am, and I have happened to take sufficient +interest in you to make that inquiry.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is everything to me!” said Grace, hardly heeding her husband, +and laying her hand reverently on the dead man’s eyelids, where she kept +it a long time, pressing down their lashes with gentle touches, as if she were +stroking a little bird. +</p> + +<p> +He watched her a while, and then glanced round the chamber where his eyes fell +upon a few dressing necessaries that she had brought. +</p> + +<p> +“Grace—if I may call you so,” he said, “I have been +already humiliated almost to the depths. I have come back since you refused to +join me elsewhere—I have entered your father’s house, and borne all +that that cost me without flinching, because I have felt that I deserved +humiliation. But is there a yet greater humiliation in store for me? You say +you have been living here—that he is everything to you. Am I to draw from +that the obvious, the extremest inference?” +</p> + +<p> +Triumph at any price is sweet to men and women—especially the latter. It +was her first and last opportunity of repaying him for the cruel contumely +which she had borne at his hands so docilely. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she answered; and there was that in her subtly compounded +nature which made her feel a thrill of pride as she did so. +</p> + +<p> +Yet the moment after she had so mightily belied her character she half +repented. Her husband had turned as white as the wall behind him. It seemed as +if all that remained to him of life and spirit had been abstracted at a stroke. +Yet he did not move, and in his efforts at self-control closed his mouth +together as a vice. His determination was fairly successful, though she saw how +very much greater than she had expected her triumph had been. Presently he +looked across at Winterborne. +</p> + +<p> +“Would it startle you to hear,” he said, as if he hardly had breath +to utter the words, “that she who was to me what he was to you is dead +also?” +</p> + +<p> +“Dead—<i>she</i> dead?” exclaimed Grace. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Felice Charmond is where this young man is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Never!” said Grace, vehemently. +</p> + +<p> +He went on without heeding the insinuation: “And I came back to try to +make it up with you—but—” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers rose, and moved across the room to go away, looking downward with the +droop of a man whose hope was turned to apathy, if not despair. In going round +the door his eye fell upon her once more. She was still bending over the body +of Winterborne, her face close to the young man’s. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you been kissing him during his illness?” asked her husband. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Since his fevered state set in?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“On his lips?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you will do well to take a few drops of this in water as soon as +possible.” He drew a small phial from his pocket and returned to offer it +to her. +</p> + +<p> +Grace shook her head. +</p> + +<p> +“If you don’t do as I tell you you may soon be like him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care. I wish to die.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll put it here,” said Fitzpiers, placing the bottle on a +ledge beside him. “The sin of not having warned you will not be upon my +head at any rate, among my other sins. I am now going, and I will send somebody +to you. Your father does not know that you are here, so I suppose I shall be +bound to tell him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers left the cot, and the stroke of his feet was soon immersed in the +silence that pervaded the spot. Grace remained kneeling and weeping, she hardly +knew how long, and then she sat up, covered poor Giles’s features, and +went towards the door where her husband had stood. No sign of any other comer +greeted her ear, the only perceptible sounds being the tiny cracklings of the +dead leaves, which, like a feather-bed, had not yet done rising to their normal +level where indented by the pressure of her husband’s receding footsteps. +It reminded her that she had been struck with the change in his aspect; the +extremely intellectual look that had always been in his face was wrought to a +finer phase by thinness, and a care-worn dignity had been superadded. She +returned to Winterborne’s side, and during her meditations another tread +drew near the door, entered the outer room, and halted at the entrance of the +chamber where Grace was. +</p> + +<p> +“What—Marty!” said Grace. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. I have heard,” said Marty, whose demeanor had lost all its +girlishness under the stroke that seemed almost literally to have bruised her. +</p> + +<p> +“He died for me!” murmured Grace, heavily. +</p> + +<p> +Marty did not fully comprehend; and she answered, “He belongs to neither +of us now, and your beauty is no more powerful with him than my plainness. I +have come to help you, ma’am. He never cared for me, and he cared much +for you; but he cares for us both alike now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh don’t, don’t, Marty!” +</p> + +<p> +Marty said no more, but knelt over Winterborne from the other side. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you meet my hus—Mr. Fitzpiers?” +</p> <p> +“No!” +</p> <p> +“Then what brought you here?” +</p> + +<p> +“I come this way sometimes. I have got to go to the farther side of the +wood this time of the year, and am obliged to get there before four +o’clock in the morning, to begin heating the oven for the early baking. I +have passed by here often at this time.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace looked at her quickly. “Then did you know I was here?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, ma’am.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you tell anybody?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. I knew you lived in the hut, that he had gied it up to ye, and +lodged out himself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you know where he lodged?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. That I couldn’t find out. Was it at Delborough?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. It was not there, Marty. Would it had been! It would have +saved—saved—” To check her tears she turned, and seeing a +book on the window-bench, took it up. “Look, Marty, this is a Psalter. He +was not an outwardly religious man, but he was pure and perfect in his heart. +Shall we read a psalm over him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—we will—with all my heart!” +</p> + +<p> +Grace opened the thin brown book, which poor Giles had kept at hand mainly for +the convenience of whetting his pen-knife upon its leather covers. She began to +read in that rich, devotional voice peculiar to women only on such occasions. +When it was over, Marty said, “I should like to pray for his soul.” +</p> + +<p> +“So should I,” said her companion. “But we must not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why? Nobody would know.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace could not resist the argument, influenced as she was by the sense of +making amends for having neglected him in the body; and their tender voices +united and filled the narrow room with supplicatory murmurs that a Calvinist +might have envied. They had hardly ended when now and more numerous foot-falls +were audible, also persons in conversation, one of whom Grace recognized as her +father. +</p> + +<p> +She rose, and went to the outer apartment, in which there was only such light +as beamed from the inner one. Melbury and Mrs. Melbury were standing there. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t reproach you, Grace,” said her father, with an +estranged manner, and in a voice not at all like his old voice. “What has +come upon you and us is beyond reproach, beyond weeping, and beyond wailing. +Perhaps I drove you to it. But I am hurt; I am scourged; I am astonished. In +the face of this there is nothing to be said.” +</p> + +<p> +Without replying, Grace turned and glided back to the inner chamber. +“Marty,” she said, quickly, “I cannot look my father in the +face until he knows the true circumstances of my life here. Go and tell +him—what you have told me—what you saw—that he gave up his +house to me.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty went, and after a short +absence returned. Then Grace rose, and going out asked her father if he had met +her husband. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“And you know all that has happened?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do. Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting ye of worse than +rashness—I ought to know ye better. Are you coming with me to what was +once your home?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. I stay here with HIM. Take no account of me any more.” +</p> + +<p> +The unwonted, perplexing, agitating relations in which she had stood to +Winterborne quite lately—brought about by Melbury’s own +contrivance—could not fail to soften the natural anger of a parent at her +more recent doings. “My daughter, things are bad,” he rejoined. +“But why do you persevere to make ’em worse? What good can you do +to Giles by staying here with him? Mind, I ask no questions. I don’t +inquire why you decided to come here, or anything as to what your course would +have been if he had not died, though I know there’s no deliberate harm in +ye. As for me, I have lost all claim upon you, and I make no complaint. But I +do say that by coming back with me now you will show no less kindness to him, +and escape any sound of shame. +</p> + +<p> +“But I don’t wish to escape it.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you don’t on your own account, cannot you wish to on mine and +hers? Nobody except our household knows that you have left home. Then why +should you, by a piece of perverseness, bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to +the grave?” +</p> + +<p> +“If it were not for my husband—” she began, moved by his +words. “But how can I meet him there? How can any woman who is not a mere +man’s creature join him after what has taken place?” +</p> + +<p> +“He would go away again rather than keep you out of my house.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know that, father?” +</p> + +<p> +“We met him on our way here, and he told us so,” said Mrs. Melbury. +“He had said something like it before. He seems very much upset +altogether.” +</p> + +<p> +“He declared to her when he came to our house that he would wait for time +and devotion to bring about his forgiveness,” said her husband. +“That was it, wasn’t it, Lucy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. That he would not intrude upon you, Grace, till you gave him +absolute permission,” Mrs. Melbury added. +</p> + +<p> +This antecedent considerateness in Fitzpiers was as welcome to Grace as it was +unexpected; and though she did not desire his presence, she was sorry that by +her retaliatory fiction she had given him a different reason for avoiding her. +She made no further objections to accompanying her parents, taking them into +the inner room to give Winterborne a last look, and gathering up the two or +three things that belonged to her. While she was doing this the two women came +who had been called by Melbury, and at their heels poor Creedle. +</p> + +<p> +“Forgive me, but I can’t rule my mourning nohow as a man should, +Mr. Melbury,” he said. “I ha’n’t seen him since +Thursday se’night, and have wondered for days and days where he’s +been keeping. There was I expecting him to come and tell me to wash out the +cider-barrels against the making, and here was he— Well, I’ve +knowed him from table-high; I knowed his father—used to bide about upon +two sticks in the sun afore he died!—and now I’ve seen the end of +the family, which we can ill afford to lose, wi’ such a scanty lot of +good folk in Hintock as we’ve got. And now Robert Creedle will be nailed +up in parish boards ’a b’lieve; and noboby will glutch down a sigh +for he!” +</p> + +<p> +They started for home, Marty and Creedle remaining behind. For a time Grace and +her father walked side by side without speaking. It was just in the blue of the +dawn, and the chilling tone of the sky was reflected in her cold, wet face. The +whole wood seemed to be a house of death, pervaded by loss to its uttermost +length and breadth. Winterborne was gone, and the copses seemed to show the +want of him; those young trees, so many of which he had planted, and of which +he had spoken so truly when he said that he should fall before they fell, were +at that very moment sending out their roots in the direction that he had given +them with his subtle hand. +</p> + +<p> +“One thing made it tolerable to us that your husband should come back to +the house,” said Melbury at last—“the death of Mrs. +Charmond.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, yes,” said Grace, arousing slightly to the recollection, +“he told me so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did he tell you how she died? It was no such death as Giles’s. She +was shot—by a disappointed lover. It occurred in Germany. The unfortunate +man shot himself afterwards. He was that South Carolina gentleman of very +passionate nature who used to haunt this place to force her to an interview, +and followed her about everywhere. So ends the brilliant Felice +Charmond—once a good friend to me—but no friend to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can forgive her,” said Grace, absently. “Did Edgar tell +you of this?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; but he put a London newspaper, giving an account of it, on the hall +table, folded in such a way that we should see it. It will be in the Sherton +paper this week, no doubt. To make the event more solemn still to him, he had +just before had sharp words with her, and left her. He told Lucy this, as +nothing about him appears in the newspaper. And the cause of the quarrel was, +of all people, she we’ve left behind us.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean Marty?” Grace spoke the words but perfunctorily. For, +pertinent and pointed as Melbury’s story was, she had no heart for it +now. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Marty South.” Melbury persisted in his narrative, to divert +her from her present grief, if possible. “Before he went away she wrote +him a letter, which he kept in his, pocket a long while before reading. He +chanced to pull it out in Mrs. Charmond’s, presence, and read it out +loud. It contained something which teased her very much, and that led to the +rupture. She was following him to make it up when she met with her terrible +death.” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury did not know enough to give the gist of the incident, which was that +Marty South’s letter had been concerning a certain personal adornment +common to herself and Mrs. Charmond. Her bullet reached its billet at last. The +scene between Fitzpiers and Felice had been sharp, as only a scene can be which +arises out of the mortification of one woman by another in the presence of a +lover. True, Marty had not effected it by word of mouth; the charge about the +locks of hair was made simply by Fitzpiers reading her letter to him aloud to +Felice in the playfully ironical tones of one who had become a little weary of +his situation, and was finding his friend, in the phrase of George Herbert, a +“flat delight.” He had stroked those false tresses with his hand +many a time without knowing them to be transplanted, and it was impossible when +the discovery was so abruptly made to avoid being finely satirical, despite her +generous disposition. +</p> + +<p> +That was how it had begun, and tragedy had been its end. On his abrupt +departure she had followed him to the station but the train was gone; and in +travelling to Baden in search of him she had met his rival, whose reproaches +led to an altercation, and the death of both. Of that precipitate scene of +passion and crime Fitzpiers had known nothing till he saw an account of it in +the papers, where, fortunately for himself, no mention was made of his prior +acquaintance with the unhappy lady; nor was there any allusion to him in the +subsequent inquiry, the double death being attributed to some gambling losses, +though, in point of fact, neither one of them had visited the tables. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury and his daughter drew near their house, having seen but one living +thing on their way, a squirrel, which did not run up its tree, but, dropping +the sweet chestnut which it carried, cried chut-chut-chut, and stamped with its +hind legs on the ground. When the roofs and chimneys of the homestead began to +emerge from the screen of boughs, Grace started, and checked herself in her +abstracted advance. +</p> + +<p> +“You clearly understand,” she said to her step-mother some of her +old misgiving returning, “that I am coming back only on condition of his +leaving as he promised? Will you let him know this, that there may be no +mistake?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Melbury, who had some long private talks with Fitzpiers, assured Grace +that she need have no doubts on that point, and that he would probably be gone +by the evening. Grace then entered with them into Melbury’s wing of the +house, and sat down listlessly in the parlor, while her step-mother went to +Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +The prompt obedience to her wishes which the surgeon showed did honor to him, +if anything could. Before Mrs. Melbury had returned to the room Grace, who was +sitting on the parlor window-bench, saw her husband go from the door under the +increasing light of morning, with a bag in his hand. While passing through the +gate he turned his head. The firelight of the room she sat in threw her figure +into dark relief against the window as she looked through the panes, and he +must have seen her distinctly. In a moment he went on, the gate fell to, and he +disappeared. At the hut she had declared that another had displaced him; and +now she had banished him. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap44"></a>CHAPTER XLIV.</h2> + +<p> +Fitzpiers had hardly been gone an hour when Grace began to sicken. The next day +she kept her room. Old Jones was called in; he murmured some statements in +which the words “feverish symptoms” occurred. Grace heard them, and +guessed the means by which she had brought this visitation upon herself. +</p> + +<p> +One day, while she still lay there with her head throbbing, wondering if she +were really going to join him who had gone before, Grammer Oliver came to her +bedside. “I don’t know whe’r this is meant for you to take, +ma’am,” she said, “but I have found it on the table. It was +left by Marty, I think, when she came this morning.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace turned her hot eyes upon what Grammer held up. It was the phial left at +the hut by her husband when he had begged her to take some drops of its +contents if she wished to preserve herself from falling a victim to the malady +which had pulled down Winterborne. She examined it as well as she could. The +liquid was of an opaline hue, and bore a label with an inscription in Italian. +He had probably got it in his wanderings abroad. She knew but little Italian, +but could understand that the cordial was a febrifuge of some sort. Her father, +her mother, and all the household were anxious for her recovery, and she +resolved to obey her husband’s directions. Whatever the risk, if any, she +was prepared to run it. A glass of water was brought, and the drops dropped in. +</p> + +<p> +The effect, though not miraculous, was remarkable. In less than an hour she +felt calmer, cooler, better able to reflect—less inclined to fret and +chafe and wear herself away. She took a few drops more. From that time the +fever retreated, and went out like a damped conflagration. +</p> + +<p> +“How clever he is!” she said, regretfully. “Why could he not +have had more principle, so as to turn his great talents to good account? +Perhaps he has saved my useless life. But he doesn’t know it, and +doesn’t care whether he has saved it or not; and on that account will +never be told by me! Probably he only gave it to me in the arrogance of his +skill, to show the greatness of his resources beside mine, as Elijah drew down +fire from heaven.” +</p> + +<p> +As soon as she had quite recovered from this foiled attack upon her life, Grace +went to Marty South’s cottage. The current of her being had again set +towards the lost Giles Winterborne. +</p> + +<p> +“Marty,” she said, “we both loved him. We will go to his +grave together.” +</p> + +<p> +Great Hintock church stood at the upper part of the village, and could be +reached without passing through the street. In the dusk of the late September +day they went thither by secret ways, walking mostly in silence side by side, +each busied with her own thoughts. Grace had a trouble exceeding +Marty’s—that haunting sense of having put out the light of his life +by her own hasty doings. She had tried to persuade herself that he might have +died of his illness, even if she had not taken possession of his house. +Sometimes she succeeded in her attempt; sometimes she did not. +</p> + +<p> +They stood by the grave together, and though the sun had gone down, they could +see over the woodland for miles, and down to the vale in which he had been +accustomed to descend every year, with his portable mill and press, to make +cider about this time. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps Grace’s first grief, the discovery that if he had lived he could +never have claimed her, had some power in softening this, the second. On +Marty’s part there was the same consideration; never would she have been +his. As no anticipation of gratified affection had been in existence while he +was with them, there was none to be disappointed now that he had gone. +</p> + +<p> +Grace was abased when, by degrees, she found that she had never understood +Giles as Marty had done. Marty South alone, of all the women in Hintock and the +world, had approximated to Winterborne’s level of intelligent intercourse +with nature. In that respect she had formed the complement to him in the other +sex, had lived as his counterpart, had subjoined her thought to his as a +corollary. +</p> + +<p> +The casual glimpses which the ordinary population bestowed upon that wondrous +world of sap and leaves called the Hintock woods had been with these two, Giles +and Marty, a clear gaze. They had been possessed of its finer mysteries as of +commonplace knowledge; had been able to read its hieroglyphs as ordinary +writing; to them the sights and sounds of night, winter, wind, storm, amid +those dense boughs, which had to Grace a touch of the uncanny, and even the +supernatural, were simple occurrences whose origin, continuance, and laws they +foreknew. They had planted together, and together they had felled; together +they had, with the run of the years, mentally collected those remoter signs and +symbols which, seen in few, were of runic obscurity, but all together made an +alphabet. From the light lashing of the twigs upon their faces, when brushing +through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the species of the tree +whence they stretched; from the quality of the wind’s murmur through a +bough they could in like manner name its sort afar off. They knew by a glance +at a trunk if its heart were sound, or tainted with incipient decay, and by the +state of its upper twigs, the stratum that had been reached by its roots. The +artifices of the seasons were seen by them from the conjuror’s own point +of view, and not from that of the spectator’s. +</p> + +<p> +“He ought to have married <i>you</i>, Marty, and nobody else in the +world!” said Grace, with conviction, after thinking somewhat in the above +strain. +</p> + +<p> +Marty shook her head. “In all our out-door days and years together, +ma’am,” she replied, “the one thing he never spoke of to me +was love; nor I to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody else knew—not +even my father, though he came nearest knowing—the tongue of the trees +and fruits and flowers themselves.” +</p> + +<p> +She could indulge in mournful fancies like this to Marty; but the hard core to +her grief—which Marty’s had not—remained. Had she been sure +that Giles’s death resulted entirely from his exposure, it would have +driven her well-nigh to insanity; but there was always that bare possibility +that his exposure had only precipitated what was inevitable. She longed to +believe that it had not done even this. +</p> + +<p> +There was only one man whose opinion on the circumstances she would be at all +disposed to trust. Her husband was that man. Yet to ask him it would be +necessary to detail the true conditions in which she and Winterborne had lived +during these three or four critical days that followed her flight; and in +withdrawing her original defiant announcement on that point, there seemed a +weakness she did not care to show. She never doubted that Fitzpiers would +believe her if she made a clean confession of the actual situation; but to +volunteer the correction would seem like signalling for a truce, and that, in +her present frame of mind, was what she did not feel the need of. +</p> + +<p> +It will probably not appear a surprising statement, after what has been already +declared of Fitzpiers, that the man whom Grace’s fidelity could not keep +faithful was stung into passionate throbs of interest concerning her by her +avowal of the contrary. +</p> + +<p> +He declared to himself that he had never known her dangerously full compass if +she were capable of such a reprisal; and, melancholy as it may be to admit the +fact, his own humiliation and regret engendered a smouldering admiration of +her. +</p> + +<p> +He passed a month or two of great misery at Exbury, the place to which he had +retired—quite as much misery indeed as Grace, could she have known of it, +would have been inclined to inflict upon any living creature, how much soever +he might have wronged her. Then a sudden hope dawned upon him; he wondered if +her affirmation were true. He asked himself whether it were not the act of a +woman whose natural purity and innocence had blinded her to the contingencies +of such an announcement. His wide experience of the sex had taught him that, in +many cases, women who ventured on hazardous matters did so because they lacked +an imagination sensuous enough to feel their full force. In this light +Grace’s bold avowal might merely have denoted the desperation of one who +was a child to the realities of obliquity. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers’s mental sufferings and suspense led him at last to take a +melancholy journey to the neighborhood of Little Hintock; and here he hovered +for hours around the scene of the purest emotional experiences that he had ever +known in his life. He walked about the woods that surrounded Melbury’s +house, keeping out of sight like a criminal. It was a fine evening, and on his +way homeward he passed near Marty South’s cottage. As usual she had +lighted her candle without closing her shutters; he saw her within as he had +seen her many times before. +</p> + +<p> +She was polishing tools, and though he had not wished to show himself, he could +not resist speaking in to her through the half-open door. “What are you +doing that for, Marty?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I want to clean them. They are not mine.” He could see, +indeed, that they were not hers, for one was a spade, large and heavy, and +another was a bill-hook which she could only have used with both hands. The +spade, though not a new one, had been so completely burnished that it was +bright as silver. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers somehow divined that they were Giles Winterborne’s, and he put +the question to her. +</p> + +<p> +She replied in the affirmative. “I am going to keep ’em,” she +said, “but I can’t get his apple-mill and press. I wish could; it +is going to be sold, they say.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I will buy it for you,” said Fitzpiers. “That will be +making you a return for a kindness you did me.” His glance fell upon the +girl’s rare-colored hair, which had grown again. “Oh, Marty, those +locks of yours—and that letter! But it was a kindness to send it, +nevertheless,” he added, musingly. +</p> + +<p> +After this there was confidence between them—such confidence as there had +never been before. Marty was shy, indeed, of speaking about the letter, and her +motives in writing it; but she thanked him warmly for his promise of the +cider-press. She would travel with it in the autumn season, as he had done, she +said. She would be quite strong enough, with old Creedle as an assistant. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! there was one nearer to him than you,” said Fitzpiers, +referring to Winterborne. “One who lived where he lived, and was with him +when he died.” +</p> + +<p> +Then Marty, suspecting that he did not know the true circumstances, from the +fact that Mrs. Fitzpiers and himself were living apart, told him of +Giles’s generosity to Grace in giving up his house to her at the risk, +and possibly the sacrifice, of his own life. When the surgeon heard it he +almost envied Giles his chivalrous character. He expressed a wish to Marty that +his visit to her should be kept secret, and went home thoughtful, feeling that +in more that one sense his journey to Hintock had not been in vain. +</p> + +<p> +He would have given much to win Grace’s forgiveness then. But whatever he +dared hope for in that kind from the future, there was nothing to be done yet, +while Giles Winterborne’s memory was green. To wait was imperative. A +little time might melt her frozen thoughts, and lead her to look on him with +toleration, if not with love. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap45"></a>CHAPTER XLV.</h2> + +<p> +Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had been passed by Grace in the +soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she and Marty had devoted +themselves. Twice a week the pair went in the dusk to Great Hintock, and, like +the two mourners in <i>Cymbeline</i>, sweetened his sad grave with their +flowers and their tears. Sometimes Grace thought that it was a pity neither one +of them had been his wife for a little while, and given the world a copy of him +who was so valuable in their eyes. Nothing ever had brought home to her with +such force as this death how little acquirements and culture weigh beside +sterling personal character. While her simple sorrow for his loss took a softer +edge with the lapse of the autumn and winter seasons, her self-reproach at +having had a possible hand in causing it knew little abatement. +</p> + +<p> +Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the fall and decay of the +leaf. Discussion of the almost contemporaneous death of Mrs. Charmond abroad +had waxed and waned. Fitzpiers had had a marvellous escape from being dragged +into the inquiry which followed it, through the accident of their having parted +just before under the influence of Marty South’s letter—the tiny +instrument of a cause deep in nature. +</p> + +<p> +Her body was not brought home. It seemed to accord well with the fitful fever +of that impassioned woman’s life that she should not have found a native +grave. She had enjoyed but a life-interest in the estate, which, after her +death, passed to a relative of her husband’s—one who knew not +Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be to blot out every vestige of her. +</p> + +<p> +On a certain day in February—the cheerful day of St. Valentine, in +fact—a letter reached Mrs. Fitzpiers, which had been mentally promised +her for that particular day a long time before. +</p> + +<p> +It announced that Fitzpiers was living at some midland town, where he had +obtained a temporary practice as assistant to some local medical man, whose +curative principles were all wrong, though he dared not set them right. He had +thought fit to communicate with her on that day of tender traditions to inquire +if, in the event of his obtaining a substantial practice that he had in view +elsewhere, she could forget the past and bring herself to join him. +</p> + +<p> +There the practical part ended; he then went on— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“My last year of experience has added ten years to my age, dear Grace and +dearest wife that ever erring man undervalued. You may be absolutely +indifferent to what I say, but let me say it: I have never loved any woman +alive or dead as I love, respect, and honor you at this present moment. What +you told me in the pride and haughtiness of your heart I never believed [this, +by the way, was not strictly true]; but even if I had believed it, it could +never have estranged me from you. Is there any use in telling you—no, +there is not—that I dream of your ripe lips more frequently than I say my +prayers; that the old familiar rustle of your dress often returns upon my mind +till it distracts me? If you could condescend even only to see me again you +would be breathing life into a corpse. My pure, pure Grace, modest as a +turtledove, how came I ever to possess you? For the sake of being present in +your mind on this lovers’ day, I think I would almost rather have you +hate me a little than not think of me at all. You may call my fancies +whimsical; but remember, sweet, lost one, that ‘nature is one in love, +and where ’tis fine it sends some instance of itself.’ I will not +intrude upon you further now. Make me a little bit happy by sending back one +line to say that you will consent, at any rate, to a short interview. I will +meet you and leave you as a mere acquaintance, if you will only afford me this +slight means of making a few explanations, and of putting my position before +you. Believe me, in spite of all you may do or feel, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +Your lover always (once your husband),<br /> +<br /> +“E.F.” +</p> + +<p> +It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first on which Grace +had ever received a love-letter from him, his courtship having taken place +under conditions which rendered letter-writing unnecessary. Its perusal, +therefore, had a certain novelty for her. She thought that, upon the whole, he +wrote love-letters very well. But the chief rational interest of the letter to +the reflective Grace lay in the chance that such a meeting as he proposed would +afford her of setting her doubts at rest, one way or the other, on her actual +share in Winterborne’s death. The relief of consulting a skilled mind, +the one professional man who had seen Giles at that time, would be immense. As +for that statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which at the +time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared to admit to him +that his belief was the true one; for in wronging herself as she did when she +made it, she had done what to her was a far more serious thing, wronged +Winterborne’s memory. +</p> + +<p> +Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or out of it, Grace +replied to the letter. She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on two conditions, of which +the first was that the place of meeting should be the top of Rubdown Hill, the +second that he would not object to Marty South accompanying her. +</p> + +<p> +Whatever part, much or little, there may have been in Fitzpiers’s +so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the bursting of spring +when her brief reply came. It was one of the few pleasures that he had +experienced of late years at all resembling those of his early youth. He +promptly replied that he accepted the conditions, and named the day and hour at +which he would be on the spot she mentioned. +</p> + +<p> +A few minutes before three on the appointed day found him climbing the +well-known hill, which had been the axis of so many critical movements in their +lives during his residence at Hintock. +</p> + +<p> +The sight of each homely and well-remembered object swelled the regret that +seldom left him now. Whatever paths might lie open to his future, the soothing +shades of Hintock were forbidden him forever as a permanent dwelling-place. +</p> + +<p> +He longed for the society of Grace. But to lay offerings on her slighted altar +was his first aim, and until her propitiation was complete he would constrain +her in no way to return to him. The least reparation that he could make, in a +case where he would gladly have made much, would be to let her feel herself +absolutely free to choose between living with him and without him. +</p> + +<p> +Moreover, a subtlist in emotions, he cultivated as under glasses strange and +mournful pleasures that he would not willingly let die just at present. To show +any forwardness in suggesting a <i>modus vivendi</i> to Grace would be to put +an end to these exotics. To be the vassal of her sweet will for a time, he +demanded no more, and found solace in the contemplation of the soft miseries +she caused him. +</p> + +<p> +Approaching the hill-top with a mind strung to these notions, Fitzpiers +discerned a gay procession of people coming over the crest, and was not long in +perceiving it to be a wedding-party. +</p> + +<p> +Though the wind was keen the women were in light attire, and the flowered +waistcoats of the men had a pleasing vividness of pattern. Each of the gentler +ones clung to the arm of her partner so tightly as to have with him one step, +rise, swing, gait, almost one centre of gravity. In the buxom bride Fitzpiers +recognized no other than Suke Damson, who in her light gown looked a giantess; +the small husband beside her he saw to be Tim Tangs. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers could not escape, for they had seen him; though of all the beauties +of the world whom he did not wish to meet Suke was the chief. But he put the +best face on the matter that he could and came on, the approaching company +evidently discussing him and his separation from Mrs. Fitzpiers. As the couples +closed upon him he expressed his congratulations. +</p> + +<p> +“We be just walking round the parishes to show ourselves a bit,” +said Tim. “First we het across to Delborough, then athwart to here, and +from here we go to Rubdown and Millshot, and then round by the cross-roads +home. Home says I, but it won’t be that long! We be off next +month.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed. Where to?” +</p> + +<p> +Tim informed him that they were going to New Zealand. Not but that he would +have been contented with Hintock, but his wife was ambitious and wanted to +leave, so he had given way. +</p> + +<p> +“Then good-by,” said Fitzpiers; “I may not see you +again.” He shook hands with Tim and turned to the bride. “Good-by, +Suke,” he said, taking her hand also. “I wish you and your husband +prosperity in the country you have chosen.” With this he left them, and +hastened on to his appointment. +</p> + +<p> +The wedding-party re-formed and resumed march likewise. But in restoring his +arm to Suke, Tim noticed that her full and blooming countenance had undergone a +change. “Holloa! me dear—what’s the matter?” said Tim. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing to speak o’,” said she. But to give the lie to her +assertion she was seized with lachrymose twitches, that soon produced a +dribbling face. +</p> + +<p> +“How—what the devil’s this about!” exclaimed the +bridegroom. +</p> + +<p> +“She’s a little wee bit overcome, poor dear!” said the first +bridesmaid, unfolding her handkerchief and wiping Suke’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I never did like parting from people!” said Suke, as soon as she +could speak. +</p> + +<p> +“Why him in particular?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—he’s such a clever doctor, that ’tis a thousand +pities we sha’n’t see him any more! There’ll be no such +clever doctor as he in New Zealand, if I should require one; and the thought +o’t got the better of my feelings!” +</p> + +<p> +They walked on, but Tim’s face had grown rigid and pale, for he recalled +slight circumstances, disregarded at the time of their occurrence. The former +boisterous laughter of the wedding-party at the groomsman’s jokes was +heard ringing through the woods no more. +</p> + +<p> +By this time Fitzpiers had advanced on his way to the top of the hill, where he +saw two figures emerging from the bank on the right hand. These were the +expected ones, Grace and Marty South, who had evidently come there by a short +and secret path through the wood. Grace was muffled up in her winter dress, and +he thought that she had never looked so seductive as at this moment, in the +noontide bright but heatless sun, and the keen wind, and the purplish-gray +masses of brushwood around. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers continued to regard the nearing picture, till at length their glances +met for a moment, when she demurely sent off hers at a tangent and gave him the +benefit of her three-quarter face, while with courteous completeness of conduct +he lifted his hat in a large arc. Marty dropped behind; and when Fitzpiers held +out his hand, Grace touched it with her fingers. +</p> + +<p> +“I have agreed to be here mostly because I wanted to ask you something +important,” said Mrs. Fitzpiers, her intonation modulating in a direction +that she had not quite wished it to take. +</p> + +<p> +“I am most attentive,” said her husband. “Shall we take to +the wood for privacy?” +</p> + +<p> +Grace demurred, and Fitzpiers gave in, and they kept the public road. +</p> + +<p> +At any rate she would take his arm? This also was gravely negatived, the +refusal being audible to Marty. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” he inquired. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Mr. Fitzpiers—how can you ask?” +</p> + +<p> +“Right, right,” said he, his effusiveness shrivelled up. +</p> + +<p> +As they walked on she returned to her inquiry. “It is about a matter that +may perhaps be unpleasant to you. But I think I need not consider that too +carefully.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all,” said Fitzpiers, heroically. +</p> + +<p> +She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne’s death, and +related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness had come upon +him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to which he had betaken +himself, his concealment from her of the hardships that he was undergoing, all +that he had put up with, all that he had done for her in his scrupulous +considerateness. The retrospect brought her to tears as she asked him if he +thought that the sin of having driven him to his death was upon her. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her narrative +indirectly revealed, the actual harmlessness of an escapade with her lover, +which had at first, by her own showing, looked so grave, and he did not care to +inquire whether that harmlessness had been the result of aim or of accident. +With regard to her question, he declared that in his judgment no human being +could answer it. He thought that upon the whole the balance of probabilities +turned in her favor. Winterborne’s apparent strength, during the last +months of his life, must have been delusive. It had often occurred that after a +first attack of that insidious disease a person’s apparent recovery was a +physiological mendacity. +</p> + +<p> +The relief which came to Grace lay almost as much in sharing her knowledge of +the particulars with an intelligent mind as in the assurances Fitzpiers gave +her. “Well, then, to put this case before you, and obtain your +professional opinion, was chiefly why I consented to come here to-day,” +said she, when he had reached the aforesaid conclusion. +</p> + +<p> +“For no other reason at all?” he asked, ruefully. +</p> + +<p> +“It was nearly the whole.” +</p> + +<p> +They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty starlings feeding in the +grass, and he started the talk again by saying, in a low voice, “And yet +I love you more than ever I loved you in my life.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace did not move her eyes from the birds, and folded her delicate lips as if +to keep them in subjection. +</p> + +<p> +“It is a different kind of love altogether,” said he. “Less +passionate; more profound. It has nothing to do with the material conditions of +the object at all; much to do with her character and goodness, as revealed by +closer observation. ‘Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with +dearer love.’” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s out of <i>Measure for Measure</i>,” said she, +slyly. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—I meant it as a citation,” blandly replied Fitzpiers. +“Well, then, why not give me a very little bit of your heart +again?” +</p> + +<p> +The crash of a felled tree in the remote depths of the wood recalled the past +at that moment, and all the homely faithfulness of Winterborne. +“Don’t ask it! My heart is in the grave with Giles,” she +replied, stanchly. +</p> + +<p> +“Mine is with you—in no less deep a grave, I fear, according to +that.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am very sorry; but it cannot be helped.” +</p> + +<p> +“How can you be sorry for me, when you wilfully keep open the +grave?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—that’s not so,” returned Grace, quickly, and +moved to go away from him. +</p> + +<p> +“But, dearest Grace,” said he, “you have condescended to +come; and I thought from it that perhaps when I had passed through a long state +of probation you would be generous. But if there can be no hope of our getting +completely reconciled, treat me gently—wretch though I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“I did not say you were a wretch, nor have I ever said so.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you have such a contemptuous way of looking at me that I fear you +think so.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace’s heart struggled between the wish not to be harsh and the fear +that she might mislead him. “I cannot look contemptuous unless I feel +contempt,” she said, evasively. “And all I feel is +lovelessness.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have been very bad, I know,” he returned. “But unless you +can really love me again, Grace, I would rather go away from you forever. I +don’t want you to receive me again for duty’s sake, or anything of +that sort. If I had not cared more for your affection and forgiveness than my +own personal comfort, I should never have come back here. I could have obtained +a practice at a distance, and have lived my own life without coldness or +reproach. But I have chosen to return to the one spot on earth where my name is +tarnished—to enter the house of a man from whom I have had worse +treatment than from any other man alive—all for you!” +</p> + +<p> +This was undeniably true, and it had its weight with Grace, who began to look +as if she thought she had been shockingly severe. +</p> + +<p> +“Before you go,” he continued, “I want to know your pleasure +about me—what you wish me to do, or not to do.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are independent of me, and it seems a mockery to ask that. Far be it +from me to advise. But I will think it over. I rather need advice myself than +stand in a position to give it.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> don’t need advice, wisest, dearest woman that ever +lived. If you did—” +</p> + +<p> +“Would you give it to me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Would you act upon what I gave?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s not a fair inquiry,” said she, smiling despite her +gravity. “I don’t mind hearing it—what you do really think +the most correct and proper course for me.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is so easy for me to say, and yet I dare not, for it would be +provoking you to remonstrances.” +</p> + +<p> +Knowing, of course, what the advice would be, she did not press him further, +and was about to beckon Marty forward and leave him, when he interrupted her +with, “Oh, one moment, dear Grace—you will meet me again?” +</p> + +<p> +She eventually agreed to see him that day fortnight. Fitzpiers expostulated at +the interval, but the half-alarmed earnestness with which she entreated him not +to come sooner made him say hastily that he submitted to her will—that he +would regard her as a friend only, anxious for his reform and well-being, till +such time as she might allow him to exceed that privilege. +</p> + +<p> +All this was to assure her; it was only too clear that he had not won her +confidence yet. It amazed Fitzpiers, and overthrew all his deductions from +previous experience, to find that this girl, though she had been married to +him, could yet be so coy. Notwithstanding a certain fascination that it carried +with it, his reflections were sombre as he went homeward; he saw how deep had +been his offence to produce so great a wariness in a gentle and once +unsuspicious soul. +</p> + +<p> +He was himself too fastidious to care to coerce her. To be an object of +misgiving or dislike to a woman who shared his home was what he could not +endure the thought of. Life as it stood was more tolerable. +</p> + +<p> +When he was gone, Marty joined Mrs. Fitzpiers. She would fain have consulted +Marty on the question of Platonic relations with her former husband, as she +preferred to regard him. But Marty showed no great interest in their affairs, +so Grace said nothing. They came onward, and saw Melbury standing at the scene +of the felling which had been audible to them, when, telling Marty that she +wished her meeting with Mr. Fitzpiers to be kept private, she left the girl to +join her father. At any rate, she would consult him on the expediency of +occasionally seeing her husband. +</p> + +<p> +Her father was cheerful, and walked by her side as he had done in earlier days. +“I was thinking of you when you came up,” he said. “I have +considered that what has happened is for the best. Since your husband is gone +away, and seems not to wish to trouble you, why, let him go, and drop out of +your life. Many women are worse off. You can live here comfortably enough, and +he can emigrate, or do what he likes for his good. I wouldn’t mind +sending him the further sum of money he might naturally expect to come to him, +so that you may not be bothered with him any more. He could hardly have gone on +living here without speaking to me, or meeting me; and that would have been +very unpleasant on both sides.” +</p> + +<p> +These remarks checked her intention. There was a sense of weakness in following +them by saying that she had just met her husband by appointment. “Then +you would advise me not to communicate with him?” she observed. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall never advise ye again. You are your own mistress—do as you +like. But my opinion is that if you don’t live with him, you had better +live without him, and not go shilly-shallying and playing bopeep. You sent him +away; and now he’s gone. Very well; trouble him no more.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace felt a guiltiness—she hardly knew why—and made no confession. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap46"></a>CHAPTER XLVI.</h2> + +<p> +The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed in-doors a great deal. She +became quite a student, reading more than she had done since her marriage But +her seclusion was always broken for the periodical visit to Winterborne’s +grave with Marty, which was kept up with pious strictness, for the purpose of +putting snow-drops, primroses, and other vernal flowers thereon as they came. +</p> + +<p> +One afternoon at sunset she was standing just outside her father’s +garden, which, like the rest of the Hintock enclosures, abutted into the wood. +A slight foot-path led along here, forming a secret way to either of the houses +by getting through its boundary hedge. Grace was just about to adopt this mode +of entry when a figure approached along the path, and held up his hand to +detain her. It was her husband. +</p> + +<p> +“I am delighted,” he said, coming up out of breath; and there +seemed no reason to doubt his words. “I saw you some way off—I was +afraid you would go in before I could reach you.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is a week before the time,” said she, reproachfully. “I +said a fortnight from the last meeting.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear, you don’t suppose I could wait a fortnight without trying +to get a glimpse of you, even though you had declined to meet me! Would it make +you angry to know that I have been along this path at dusk three or four times +since our last meeting? Well, how are you?” +</p> + +<p> +She did not refuse her hand, but when he showed a wish to retain it a moment +longer than mere formality required, she made it smaller, so that it slipped +away from him, with again that same alarmed look which always followed his +attempts in this direction. He saw that she was not yet out of the elusive +mood; not yet to be treated presumingly; and he was correspondingly careful to +tranquillize her. +</p> + +<p> +His assertion had seemed to impress her somewhat. “I had no idea you came +so often,” she said. “How far do you come from?” +</p> + +<p> +“From Exbury. I always walk from Sherton-Abbas, for if I hire, people +will know that I come; and my success with you so far has not been great enough +to justify such overtness. Now, my dear one—as I <i>must</i> call +you—I put it to you: will you see me a little oftener as the spring +advances?” +</p> + +<p> +Grace lapsed into unwonted sedateness, and avoiding the question, said, +“I wish you would concentrate on your profession, and give up those +strange studies that used to distract you so much. I am sure you would get +on.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is the very thing I am doing. I was going to ask you to +burn—or, at least, get rid of—all my philosophical literature. It +is in the bookcases in your rooms. The fact is, I never cared much for abstruse +studies.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am so glad to hear you say that. And those other books—those +piles of old plays—what good are they to a medical man?” +</p> + +<p> +“None whatever!” he replied, cheerfully. “Sell them at +Sherton for what they will fetch.” +</p> + +<p> +“And those dreadful old French romances, with their horrid spellings of +‘filz’ and ‘ung’ and ‘ilz’ and +‘mary’ and ‘ma foy?’” +</p> + +<p> +“You haven’t been reading them, Grace?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—I just looked into them, that was all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Make a bonfire of ’em directly you get home. I meant to do it +myself. I can’t think what possessed me ever to collect them. I have only +a few professional hand-books now, and am quite a practical man. I am in hopes +of having some good news to tell you soon, and then do you think you +could—come to me again?” +</p> + +<p> +“I would rather you did not press me on that just now,” she +replied, with some feeling. “You have said you mean to lead a new, +useful, effectual life; but I should like to see you put it in practice for a +little while before you address that query to me. Besides—I could not +live with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +Grace was silent a few instants. “I go with Marty to Giles’s grave. +We swore we would show him that devotion. And I mean to keep it up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I wouldn’t mind that at all. I have no right to expect +anything else, and I will not wish you to keep away. I liked the man as well as +any I ever knew. In short, I would accompany you a part of the way to the +place, and smoke a cigar on the stile while I waited till you came back.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you haven’t given up smoking?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—ahem—no. I have thought of doing so, but—” +</p> + +<p> +His extreme complacence had rather disconcerted Grace, and the question about +smoking had been to effect a diversion. Presently she said, firmly, and with a +moisture in her eye that he could not see, as her mind returned to poor +Giles’s “frustrate ghost,” “I don’t like +you—to speak lightly on that subject, if you did speak lightly. To be +frank with you—quite frank—I think of him as my betrothed lover +still. I cannot help it. So that it would be wrong for me to join you.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers was now uneasy. “You say your betrothed lover still,” he +rejoined. “When, then, were you betrothed to him, or engaged, as we +common people say?” +</p> + +<p> +“When you were away.” +</p> + +<p> +“How could that be?” +</p> + +<p> +Grace would have avoided this; but her natural candor led her on. “It was +when I was under the impression that my marriage with you was about to be +annulled, and that he could then marry me. So I encouraged him to love +me.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers winced visibly; and yet, upon the whole, she was right in telling it. +Indeed, his perception that she was right in her absolute sincerity kept up his +affectionate admiration for her under the pain of the rebuff. Time had been +when the avowal that Grace had deliberately taken steps to replace him would +have brought him no sorrow. But she so far dominated him now that he could not +bear to hear her words, although the object of her high regard was no more. +</p> + +<p> +“It is rough upon me—that!” he said, bitterly. “Oh, +Grace—I did not know you—tried to get rid of me! I suppose it is of +no use, but I ask, cannot you hope to—find a little love in your heart +for me again?” +</p> + +<p> +“If I could I would oblige you; but I fear I cannot!” she replied, +with illogical ruefulness. “And I don’t see why you should mind my +having had one lover besides yourself in my life, when you have had so +many.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I can tell you honestly that I love you better than all of them put +together, and that’s what you will not tell me!” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sorry; but I fear I cannot,” she said, sighing again. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder if you ever will?” He looked musingly into her indistinct +face, as if he would read the future there. “Now have pity, and tell me: +will you try?” +</p> + +<p> +“To love you again?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; if you can.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know how to reply,” she answered, her embarrassment +proving her truth. “Will you promise to leave me quite free as to seeing +you or not seeing you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly. Have I given any ground for you to doubt my first promise in +that respect?” +</p> + +<p> +She was obliged to admit that he had not. +</p> + +<p> +“Then I think that you might get your heart out of that grave,” +said he, with playful sadness. “It has been there a long time.” +</p> + +<p> +She faintly shook her head, but said, “I’ll try to think of you +more—if I can.” +</p> + +<p> +With this Fitzpiers was compelled to be satisfied, and he asked her when she +would meet him again. +</p> + +<p> +“As we arranged—in a fortnight.” +</p> + +<p> +“If it must be a fortnight it must!” +</p> + +<p> +“This time at least. I’ll consider by the day I see you again if I +can shorten the interval.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, be that as it may, I shall come at least twice a week to look at +your window.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must do as you like about that. Good-night.” +</p> + +<p> +“Say ‘husband.’” +</p> + +<p> +She seemed almost inclined to give him the word; but exclaiming, “No, no; +I cannot,” slipped through the garden-hedge and disappeared. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Fitzpiers did not exaggerate when he told her that he should haunt the +precincts of the dwelling. But his persistence in this course did not result in +his seeing her much oftener than at the fortnightly interval which she had +herself marked out as proper. At these times, however, she punctually appeared, +and as the spring wore on the meetings were kept up, though their character +changed but little with the increase in their number. +</p> + +<p> +The small garden of the cottage occupied by the Tangs family—father, son, +and now son’s wife—aligned with the larger one of the timber-dealer +at its upper end; and when young Tim, after leaving work at Melbury’s, +stood at dusk in the little bower at the corner of his enclosure to smoke a +pipe, he frequently observed the surgeon pass along the outside track +before-mentioned. Fitzpiers always walked loiteringly, pensively, looking with +a sharp eye into the gardens one after another as he proceeded; for Fitzpiers +did not wish to leave the now absorbing spot too quickly, after travelling so +far to reach it; hoping always for a glimpse of her whom he passionately +desired to take to his arms anew. +</p> + +<p> +Now Tim began to be struck with these loitering progresses along the garden +boundaries in the gloaming, and wondered what they boded. It was, naturally, +quite out of his power to divine the singular, sentimental revival in +Fitzpiers’s heart; the fineness of tissue which could take a deep, +emotional—almost also an artistic—pleasure in being the yearning +<i>innamorato</i> of a woman he once had deserted, would have seemed an +absurdity to the young sawyer. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers were separated; therefore +the question of affection as between them was settled. But his Suke had, since +that meeting on their marriage-day, repentantly admitted, to the urgency of his +questioning, a good deal concerning her past levities. Putting all things +together, he could hardly avoid connecting Fitzpiers’s mysterious visits +to this spot with Suke’s residence under his roof. But he made himself +fairly easy: the vessel in which they were about to emigrate sailed that month; +and then Suke would be out of Fitzpiers’s way forever. +</p> + +<p> +The interval at last expired, and the eve of their departure arrived. They were +pausing in the room of the cottage allotted to them by Tim’s father, +after a busy day of preparation, which left them weary. In a corner stood their +boxes, crammed and corded, their large case for the hold having already been +sent away. The firelight shone upon Suke’s fine face and form as she +stood looking into it, and upon the face of Tim seated in a corner, and upon +the walls of his father’s house, which he was beholding that night almost +for the last time. +</p> + +<p> +Tim Tangs was not happy. This scheme of emigration was dividing him from his +father—for old Tangs would on no account leave Hintock—and had it +not been for Suke’s reputation and his own dignity, Tim would at the last +moment have abandoned the project. As he sat in the back part of the room he +regarded her moodily, and the fire and the boxes. One thing he had particularly +noticed this evening—she was very restless; fitful in her actions, unable +to remain seated, and in a marked degree depressed. +</p> + +<p> +“Sorry that you be going, after all, Suke?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She sighed involuntarily. “I don’t know but that I be,” she +answered. “’Tis natural, isn’t it, when one is going +away?” +</p> + +<p> +“But you wasn’t born here as I was.” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s folk left behind that you’d fain have with +’ee, I reckon?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you think that?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve seen things and I’ve heard things; and, Suke, I say +’twill be a good move for me to get ’ee away. I don’t mind +his leavings abroad, but I do mind ’em at home.” +</p> + +<p> +Suke’s face was not changed from its aspect of listless indifference by +the words. She answered nothing; and shortly after he went out for his +customary pipe of tobacco at the top of the garden. +</p> + +<p> +The restlessness of Suke had indeed owed its presence to the gentleman of +Tim’s suspicions, but in a different—and it must be added in +justice to her—more innocent sense than he supposed, judging from former +doings. She had accidentally discovered that Fitzpiers was in the habit of +coming secretly once or twice a week to Hintock, and knew that this evening was +a favorite one of the seven for his journey. As she was going next day to leave +the country, Suke thought there could be no great harm in giving way to a +little sentimentality by obtaining a glimpse of him quite unknown to himself or +to anybody, and thus taking a silent last farewell. Aware that +Fitzpiers’s time for passing was at hand she thus betrayed her feeling. +No sooner, therefore, had Tim left the room than she let herself noiselessly +out of the house, and hastened to the corner of the garden, whence she could +witness the surgeon’s transit across the scene—if he had not +already gone by. +</p> + +<p> +Her light cotton dress was visible to Tim lounging in the arbor of the opposite +corner, though he was hidden from her. He saw her stealthily climb into the +hedge, and so ensconce herself there that nobody could have the least doubt her +purpose was to watch unseen for a passer-by. +</p> + +<p> +He went across to the spot and stood behind her. Suke started, having in her +blundering way forgotten that he might be near. She at once descended from the +hedge. +</p> + +<p> +“So he’s coming to-night,” said Tim, laconically. “And +we be always anxious to see our dears.” +</p> + +<p> +“He <i>is</i> coming to-night,” she replied, with defiance. +“And we <i>be</i> anxious for our dears.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then will you step in-doors, where your dear will soon jine ’ee? +We’ve to mouster by half-past three to-morrow, and if we don’t get +to bed by eight at latest our faces will be as long as clock-cases all +day.” +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated for a minute, but ultimately obeyed, going slowly down the garden +to the house, where he heard the door-latch click behind her. +</p> + +<p> +Tim was incensed beyond measure. His marriage had so far been a total failure, +a source of bitter regret; and the only course for improving his case, that of +leaving the country, was a sorry, and possibly might not be a very effectual +one. Do what he would, his domestic sky was likely to be overcast to the end of +the day. Thus he brooded, and his resentment gathered force. He craved a means +of striking one blow back at the cause of his cheerless plight, while he was +still on the scene of his discomfiture. For some minutes no method suggested +itself, and then he had an idea. +</p> + +<p> +Coming to a sudden resolution, he hastened along the garden, and entered the +one attached to the next cottage, which had formerly been the dwelling of a +game-keeper. Tim descended the path to the back of the house, where only an old +woman lived at present, and reaching the wall he stopped. Owing to the slope of +the ground the roof-eaves of the linhay were here within touch, and he thrust +his arm up under them, feeling about in the space on the top of the wall-plate. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, I thought my memory didn’t deceive me!” he lipped +silently. +</p> + +<p> +With some exertion he drew down a cobwebbed object curiously framed in iron, +which clanked as he moved it. It was about three feet in length and half as +wide. Tim contemplated it as well as he could in the dying light of day, and +raked off the cobwebs with his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“That will spoil his pretty shins for’n, I reckon!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +It was a man-trap. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap47"></a>CHAPTER XLVII.</h2> + +<p> +Were the inventors of automatic machines to be ranged according to the +excellence of their devices for producing sound artistic torture, the creator +of the man-trap would occupy a very respectable if not a very high place. +</p> + +<p> +It should rather, however, be said, the inventor of the particular form of +man-trap of which this found in the keeper’s out-house was a specimen. +For there were other shapes and other sizes, instruments which, if placed in a +row beside one of the type disinterred by Tim, would have worn the subordinate +aspect of the bears, wild boars, or wolves in a travelling menagerie, as +compared with the leading lion or tiger. In short, though many varieties had +been in use during those centuries which we are accustomed to look back upon as +the true and only period of merry England—in the rural districts more +especially—and onward down to the third decade of the nineteenth century, +this model had borne the palm, and had been most usually followed when the +orchards and estates required new ones. +</p> + +<p> +There had been the toothless variety used by the softer-hearted +landlords—quite contemptible in their clemency. The jaws of these +resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left nothing but gums. +There were also the intermediate or half-toothed sorts, probably devised by the +middle-natured squires, or those under the influence of their wives: two inches +of mercy, two inches of cruelty, two inches of mere nip, two inches of probe, +and so on, through the whole extent of the jaws. There were also, as a class +apart, the bruisers, which did not lacerate the flesh, but only crushed the +bone. +</p> + +<p> +The sight of one of these gins when set produced a vivid impression that it was +endowed with life. It exhibited the combined aspects of a shark, a crocodile, +and a scorpion. Each tooth was in the form of a tapering spine, two and a +quarter inches long, which, when the jaws were closed, stood in alternation +from this side and from that. When they were open, the two halves formed a +complete circle between two and three feet in diameter, the plate or +treading-place in the midst being about a foot square, while from beneath +extended in opposite directions the soul of the apparatus, the pair of springs, +each one being of a stiffness to render necessary a lever or the whole weight +of the body when forcing it down. +</p> + +<p> +There were men at this time still living at Hintock who remembered when the gin +and others like it were in use. Tim Tangs’s great-uncle had endured a +night of six hours in this very trap, which lamed him for life. Once a keeper +of Hintock woods set it on the track of a poacher, and afterwards, coming back +that way, forgetful of what he had done, walked into it himself. The wound +brought on lockjaw, of which he died. This event occurred during the thirties, +and by the year 1840 the use of such implements was well-nigh discontinued in +the neighborhood. But being made entirely of iron, they by no means +disappeared, and in almost every village one could be found in some nook or +corner as readily as this was found by Tim. It had, indeed, been a fearful +amusement of Tim and other Hintock lads—especially those who had a dim +sense of becoming renowned poachers when they reached their prime—to drag +out this trap from its hiding, set it, and throw it with billets of wood, which +were penetrated by the teeth to the depth of near an inch. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as he had examined the trap, and found that the hinges and springs were +still perfect, he shouldered it without more ado, and returned with his burden +to his own garden, passing on through the hedge to the path immediately outside +the boundary. Here, by the help of a stout stake, he set the trap, and laid it +carefully behind a bush while he went forward to reconnoitre. As has been +stated, nobody passed this way for days together sometimes; but there was just +a possibility that some other pedestrian than the one in request might arrive, +and it behooved Tim to be careful as to the identity of his victim. +</p> + +<p> +Going about a hundred yards along the rising ground to the right, he reached a +ridge whereon a large and thick holly grew. Beyond this for some distance the +wood was more open, and the course which Fitzpiers must pursue to reach the +point, if he came to-night, was visible a long way forward. +</p> + +<p> +For some time there was no sign of him or of anybody. Then there shaped itself +a spot out of the dim mid-distance, between the masses of brushwood on either +hand. And it enlarged, and Tim could hear the brushing of feet over the tufts +of sour-grass. The airy gait revealed Fitzpiers even before his exact outline +could be seen. +</p> + +<p> +Tim Tangs turned about, and ran down the opposite side of the hill, till he was +again at the head of his own garden. It was the work of a few moments to drag +out the man-trap, very gently—that the plate might not be disturbed +sufficiently to throw it—to a space between a pair of young oaks which, +rooted in contiguity, grew apart upward, forming a V-shaped opening between; +and, being backed up by bushes, left this as the only course for a +foot-passenger. In it he laid the trap with the same gentleness of handling, +locked the chain round one of the trees, and finally slid back the guard which +was placed to keep the gin from accidentally catching the arms of him who set +it, or, to use the local and better word, “toiled” it. +</p> + +<p> +Having completed these arrangements, Tim sprang through the adjoining hedge of +his father’s garden, ran down the path, and softly entered the house. +</p> + +<p> +Obedient to his order, Suke had gone to bed; and as soon as he had bolted the +door, Tim unlaced and kicked off his boots at the foot of the stairs, and +retired likewise, without lighting a candle. His object seemed to be to undress +as soon as possible. Before, however, he had completed the operation, a long +cry resounded without—penetrating, but indescribable. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that?” said Suke, starting up in bed. +</p> + +<p> +“Sounds as if somebody had caught a hare in his gin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” said she. “It was not a hare, ’twas louder. +Hark!” +</p> + +<p> +“Do ’ee get to sleep,” said Tim. “How be you going to +wake at half-past three else?” +</p> + +<p> +She lay down and was silent. Tim stealthily opened the window and listened. +Above the low harmonies produced by the instrumentation of the various species +of trees around the premises he could hear the twitching of a chain from the +spot whereon he had set the man-trap. But further human sound there was none. +</p> + +<p> +Tim was puzzled. In the haste of his project he had not calculated upon a cry; +but if one, why not more? He soon ceased to essay an answer, for Hintock was +dead to him already. In half a dozen hours he would be out of its precincts for +life, on his way to the antipodes. He closed the window and lay down. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +The hour which had brought these movements of Tim to birth had been operating +actively elsewhere. Awaiting in her father’s house the minute of her +appointment with her husband, Grace Fitzpiers deliberated on many things. +Should she inform her father before going out that the estrangement of herself +and Edgar was not so complete as he had imagined, and deemed desirable for her +happiness? If she did so she must in some measure become the apologist of her +husband, and she was not prepared to go so far. +</p> + +<p> +As for him, he kept her in a mood of considerate gravity. He certainly had +changed. He had at his worst times always been gentle in his manner towards +her. Could it be that she might make of him a true and worthy husband yet? She +had married him; there was no getting over that; and ought she any longer to +keep him at a distance? His suave deference to her lightest whim on the +question of his comings and goings, when as her lawful husband he might show a +little independence, was a trait in his character as unexpected as it was +engaging. If she had been his empress, and he her thrall, he could not have +exhibited a more sensitive care to avoid intruding upon her against her will. +</p> + +<p> +Impelled by a remembrance she took down a prayer-book and turned to the +marriage-service. Reading it slowly through, she became quite appalled at her +recent off-handedness, when she rediscovered what awfully solemn promises she +had made him at those chancel steps not so very long ago. +</p> + +<p> +She became lost in long ponderings on how far a person’s conscience might +be bound by vows made without at the time a full recognition of their force. +That particular sentence, beginning “Whom God hath joined +together,” was a staggerer for a gentlewoman of strong devotional +sentiment. She wondered whether God really did join them together. Before she +had done deliberating the time of her engagement drew near, and she went out of +the house almost at the moment that Tim Tangs retired to his own. +</p> + +<p> +The position of things at that critical juncture was briefly as follows. +</p> + +<p> +Two hundred yards to the right of the upper end of Tangs’s garden +Fitzpiers was still advancing, having now nearly reached the summit of the +wood-clothed ridge, the path being the actual one which further on passed +between the two young oaks. Thus far it was according to Tim’s +conjecture. But about two hundred yards to the left, or rather less, was +arising a condition which he had not divined, the emergence of Grace as +aforesaid from the upper corner of her father’s garden, with the view of +meeting Tim’s intended victim. Midway between husband and wife was the +diabolical trap, silent, open, ready. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers’s walk that night had been cheerful, for he was convinced that +the slow and gentle method he had adopted was promising success. The very +restraint that he was obliged to exercise upon himself, so as not to kill the +delicate bud of returning confidence, fed his flame. He walked so much more +rapidly than Grace that, if they continued advancing as they had begun, he +would reach the trap a good half-minute before she could reach the same spot. +</p> + +<p> +But here a new circumstance came in; to escape the unpleasantness of being +watched or listened to by lurkers—naturally curious by reason of their +strained relations—they had arranged that their meeting for to-night +should be at the holm-tree on the ridge above named. So soon, accordingly, as +Fitzpiers reached the tree he stood still to await her. +</p> + +<p> +He had not paused under the prickly foliage more than two minutes when he +thought he heard a scream from the other side of the ridge. Fitzpiers wondered +what it could mean; but such wind as there was just now blew in an adverse +direction, and his mood was light. He set down the origin of the sound to one +of the superstitious freaks or frolicsome scrimmages between sweethearts that +still survived in Hintock from old-English times; and waited on where he stood +till ten minutes had passed. Feeling then a little uneasy, his mind reverted to +the scream; and he went forward over the summit and down the embowered incline, +till he reached the pair of sister oaks with the narrow opening between them. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers stumbled and all but fell. Stretching down his hand to ascertain the +obstruction, it came in contact with a confused mass of silken drapery and +iron-work that conveyed absolutely no explanatory idea to his mind at all. It +was but the work of a moment to strike a match; and then he saw a sight which +congealed his blood. +</p> + +<p> +The man-trap was thrown; and between its jaws was part of a woman’s +clothing—a patterned silk skirt—gripped with such violence that the +iron teeth had passed through it, skewering its tissue in a score of places. He +immediately recognized the skirt as that of one of his wife’s +gowns—the gown that she had worn when she met him on the very last +occasion. +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers had often studied the effect of these instruments when examining the +collection at Hintock House, and the conception instantly flashed through him +that Grace had been caught, taken out mangled by some chance passer, and +carried home, some of her clothes being left behind in the difficulty of +getting her free. The shock of this conviction, striking into the very current +of high hope, was so great that he cried out like one in corporal agony, and in +his misery bowed himself down to the ground. +</p> + +<p> +Of all the degrees and qualities of punishment that Fitzpiers had undergone +since his sins against Grace first began, not any even approximated in +intensity to this. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my own—my darling! Oh, cruel Heaven—it is too much, +this!” he cried, writhing and rocking himself over the sorry accessories +of her he deplored. +</p> + +<p> +The voice of his distress was sufficiently loud to be audible to any one who +might have been there to hear it; and one there was. Right and left of the +narrow pass between the oaks were dense bushes; and now from behind these a +female figure glided, whose appearance even in the gloom was, though graceful +in outline, noticeably strange. +</p> + +<p> +She was in white up to the waist, and figured above. She was, in short, Grace, +his wife, lacking the portion of her dress which the gin retained. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be grieved about me—don’t, dear Edgar!” +she exclaimed, rushing up and bending over him. “I am not hurt a bit! I +was coming on to find you after I had released myself, but I heard footsteps; +and I hid away, because I was without some of my clothing, and I did not know +who the person might be.” +</p> + +<p> +Fitzpiers had sprung to his feet, and his next act was no less unpremeditated +by him than it was irresistible by her, and would have been so by any woman not +of Amazonian strength. He clasped his arms completely round, pressed her to his +breast, and kissed her passionately. +</p> + +<p> +“You are not dead!—you are not hurt! Thank God—thank +God!” he said, almost sobbing in his delight and relief from the horror +of his apprehension. “Grace, my wife, my love, how is this—what has +happened?” +</p> + +<p> +“I was coming on to you,” she said as distinctly as she could in +the half-smothered state of her face against his. “I was trying to be as +punctual as possible, and as I had started a minute late I ran along the path +very swiftly—fortunately for myself. Just when I had passed between these +trees I felt something clutch at my dress from behind with a noise, and the +next moment I was pulled backward by it, and fell to the ground. I screamed +with terror, thinking it was a man lying down there to murder me, but the next +moment I discovered it was iron, and that my clothes were caught in a trap. I +pulled this way and that, but the thing would not let go, drag it as I would, +and I did not know what to do. I did not want to alarm my father or anybody, as +I wished nobody to know of these meetings with you; so I could think of no +other plan than slipping off my skirt, meaning to run on and tell you what a +strange accident had happened to me. But when I had just freed myself by +leaving the dress behind, I heard steps, and not being sure it was you, I did +not like to be seen in such a pickle, so I hid away.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was only your speed that saved you! One or both of your legs would +have been broken if you had come at ordinary walking pace.” +</p> + +<p> +“Or yours, if you had got here first,” said she, beginning to +realize the whole ghastliness of the possibility. “Oh, Edgar, there has +been an Eye watching over us to-night, and we should be thankful indeed!” +</p> + +<p> +He continued to press his face to hers. “You are mine—mine again +now.” +</p> + +<p> +She gently owned that she supposed she was. “I heard what you said when +you thought I was injured,” she went on, shyly, “and I know that a +man who could suffer as you were suffering must have a tender regard for me. +But how does this awful thing come here?” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose it has something to do with poachers.” Fitzpiers was +still so shaken by the sense of her danger that he was obliged to sit awhile, +and it was not until Grace said, “If I could only get my skirt out nobody +would know anything about it,” that he bestirred himself. +</p> + +<p> +By their united efforts, each standing on one of the springs of the trap, they +pressed them down sufficiently to insert across the jaws a billet which they +dragged from a faggot near at hand; and it was then possible to extract the +silk mouthful from the monster’s bite, creased and pierced with many +holes, but not torn. Fitzpiers assisted her to put it on again; and when her +customary contours were thus restored they walked on together, Grace taking his +arm, till he effected an improvement by clasping it round her waist. +</p> + +<p> +The ice having been broken in this unexpected manner, she made no further +attempt at reserve. “I would ask you to come into the house,” she +said, “but my meetings with you have been kept secret from my father, and +I should like to prepare him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind, dearest. I could not very well have accepted the invitation. +I shall never live here again—as much for your sake as for mine. I have +news to tell you on this very point, but my alarm had put it out of my head. I +have bought a practice, or rather a partnership, in the Midlands, and I must go +there in a week to take up permanent residence. My poor old great-aunt died +about eight months ago, and left me enough to do this. I have taken a little +furnished house for a time, till we can get one of our own.” +</p> + +<p> +He described the place, and the surroundings, and the view from the windows, +and Grace became much interested. “But why are you not there now?” +she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Because I cannot tear myself away from here till I have your promise. +Now, darling, you will accompany me there—will you not? To-night has +settled that.” +</p> + +<p> +Grace’s tremblings had gone off, and she did not say nay. They went on +together. +</p> + +<p> +The adventure, and the emotions consequent upon the reunion which that event +had forced on, combined to render Grace oblivious of the direction of their +desultory ramble, till she noticed they were in an encircled glade in the +densest part of the wood, whereon the moon, that had imperceptibly added its +rays to the scene, shone almost vertically. It was an exceptionally soft, balmy +evening for the time of year, which was just that transient period in the May +month when beech-trees have suddenly unfolded large limp young leaves of the +softness of butterflies’ wings. Boughs bearing such leaves hung low +around, and completely enclosed them, so that it was as if they were in a great +green vase, which had moss for its bottom and leaf sides. +</p> + +<p> +The clouds having been packed in the west that evening so as to retain the +departing glare a long while, the hour had seemed much earlier than it was. But +suddenly the question of time occurred to her. +</p> + +<p> +“I must go back,” she said; and without further delay they set +their faces towards Hintock. As they walked he examined his watch by the aid of +the now strong moonlight. +</p> + +<p> +“By the gods, I think I have lost my train!” said Fitzpiers. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear me—whereabouts are we?” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“Two miles in the direction of Sherton.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then do you hasten on, Edgar. I am not in the least afraid. I recognize +now the part of the wood we are in and I can find my way back quite easily. +I’ll tell my father that we have made it up. I wish I had not kept our +meetings so private, for it may vex him a little to know I have been seeing +you. He is getting old and irritable, that was why I did not. Good-by.” +</p> + +<p> +“But, as I must stay at the Earl of Wessex to-night, for I cannot +possibly catch the train, I think it would be safer for you to let me take care +of you.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what will my father think has become of me? He does not know in the +least where I am—he thinks I only went into the garden for a few +minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +“He will surely guess—somebody has seen me for certain. I’ll +go all the way back with you to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“But that newly done-up place—the Earl of Wessex!” +</p> + +<p> +“If you are so very particular about the publicity I will stay at the +Three Tuns.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—it is not that I am particular—but I haven’t a +brush or comb or anything!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap48"></a>CHAPTER XLVIII.</h2> + +<p> +All the evening Melbury had been coming to his door, saying, “I wonder +where in the world that girl is! Never in all my born days did I know her bide +out like this! She surely said she was going into the garden to get some +parsley.” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury searched the garden, the parsley-bed, and the orchard, but could find +no trace of her, and then he made inquiries at the cottages of such of his +workmen as had not gone to bed, avoiding Tangs’s because he knew the +young people were to rise early to leave. In these inquiries one of the +men’s wives somewhat incautiously let out the fact that she had heard a +scream in the wood, though from which direction she could not say. +</p> + +<p> +This set Melbury’s fears on end. He told the men to light lanterns, and +headed by himself they started, Creedle following at the last moment with quite +a burden of grapnels and ropes, which he could not be persuaded to leave +behind, and the company being joined by the hollow-turner and the man who kept +the cider-house as they went along. +</p> + +<p> +They explored the precincts of the village, and in a short time lighted upon +the man-trap. Its discovery simply added an item of fact without helping their +conjectures; but Melbury’s indefinite alarm was greatly increased when, +holding a candle to the ground, he saw in the teeth of the instrument some +frayings from Grace’s clothing. No intelligence of any kind was gained +till they met a woodman of Delborough, who said that he had seen a lady +answering to the description her father gave of Grace, walking through the wood +on a gentleman’s arm in the direction of Sherton. +</p> + +<p> +“Was he clutching her tight?” said Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—rather,” said the man. +</p> + +<p> +“Did she walk lame?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, ’tis true her head hung over towards him a bit.” +</p> + +<p> +Creedle groaned tragically. +</p> + +<p> +Melbury, not suspecting the presence of Fitzpiers, coupled this account with +the man-trap and the scream; he could not understand what it all meant; but the +sinister event of the trap made him follow on. Accordingly, they bore away +towards the town, shouting as they went, and in due course emerged upon the +highway. +</p> + +<p> +Nearing Sherton-Abbas, the previous information was confirmed by other +strollers, though the gentleman’s supporting arm had disappeared from +these later accounts. At last they were so near Sherton that Melbury informed +his faithful followers that he did not wish to drag them farther at so late an +hour, since he could go on alone and inquire if the woman who had been seen +were really Grace. But they would not leave him alone in his anxiety, and +trudged onward till the lamplight from the town began to illuminate their +fronts. At the entrance to the High Street they got fresh scent of the pursued, +but coupled with the new condition that the lady in the costume described had +been going up the street alone. +</p> + +<p> +“Faith!—I believe she’s mesmerized, or walking in her +sleep,” said Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +However, the identity of this woman with Grace was by no means certain; but +they plodded along the street. Percombe, the hair-dresser, who had despoiled +Marty of her tresses, was standing at his door, and they duly put inquiries to +him. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah—how’s Little Hintock folk by now?” he said, before +replying. “Never have I been over there since one winter night some three +year ago—and then I lost myself finding it. How can ye live in such a +one-eyed place? Great Hintock is bad enough—hut Little Hintock—the +bats and owls would drive me melancholy-mad! It took two days to raise my +sperrits to their true pitch again after that night I went there. Mr. Melbury, +sir, as a man’s that put by money, why not retire and live here, and see +something of the world?” +</p> + +<p> +The responses at last given by him to their queries guided them to the building +that offered the best accommodation in Sherton—having been enlarged +contemporaneously with the construction of the railway—namely, the Earl +of Wessex Hotel. +</p> + +<p> +Leaving the others without, Melbury made prompt inquiry here. His alarm was +lessened, though his perplexity was increased, when he received a brief reply +that such a lady was in the house. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know if it is my daughter?” asked Melbury. +</p> + +<p> +The waiter did not. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know the lady’s name?” +</p> + +<p> +Of this, too, the household was ignorant, the hotel having been taken by +brand-new people from a distance. They knew the gentleman very well by sight, +and had not thought it necessary to ask him to enter his name. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, the gentleman appears again now,” said Melbury to himself. +“Well, I want to see the lady,” he declared. +</p> + +<p> +A message was taken up, and after some delay the shape of Grace appeared +descending round the bend of the stair-case, looking as if she lived there, but +in other respects rather guilty and frightened. +</p> + +<p> +“Why—what the name—” began her father. “I thought +you went out to get parsley!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes—I did—but it is all right,” said Grace, in a +flurried whisper. “I am not alone here. I am here with Edgar. It is +entirely owing to an accident, father.” +</p> + +<p> +“Edgar! An accident! How does he come here? I thought he was two hundred +mile off.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, so he is—I mean he has got a beautiful practice two hundred +miles off; he has bought it with his own money, some that came to him. But he +travelled here, and I was nearly caught in a man-trap, and that’s how it +is I am here. We were just thinking of sending a messenger to let you +know.” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury did not seem to be particularly enlightened by this explanation. +</p> + +<p> +“You were caught in a man-trap?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; my dress was. That’s how it arose. Edgar is up-stairs in his +own sitting-room,” she went on. “He would not mind seeing you, I am +sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, faith, I don’t want to see him! I have seen him too often +a’ready. I’ll see him another time, perhaps, if ’tis to +oblige ’ee.” +</p> + +<p> +“He came to see me; he wanted to consult me about this large partnership +I speak of, as it is very promising.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I am glad to hear it,” said Melbury, dryly. +</p> + +<p> +A pause ensued, during which the inquiring faces and whity-brown clothes of +Melbury’s companions appeared in the door-way. +</p> + +<p> +“Then bain’t you coming home with us?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I—I think not,” said Grace, blushing. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m—very well—you are your own mistress,” he +returned, in tones which seemed to assert otherwise. “Good-night;” +and Melbury retreated towards the door. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be angry, father,” she said, following him a few +steps. “I have done it for the best.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little misled in this. +However, good-night. I must get home along.” +</p> + +<p> +He left the hotel, not without relief, for to be under the eyes of strangers +while he conversed with his lost child had embarrassed him much. His +search-party, too, had looked awkward there, having rushed to the task of +investigation—some in their shirt sleeves, others in their leather +aprons, and all much stained—just as they had come from their work of +barking, and not in their Sherton marketing attire; while Creedle, with his +ropes and grapnels and air of impending tragedy, had added melancholy to +gawkiness. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, neighbors,” said Melbury, on joining them, “as it is +getting late, we’ll leg it home again as fast as we can. I ought to tell +you that there has been some mistake—some arrangement entered into +between Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn’t quite understand—an +important practice in the Midland counties has come to him, which made it +necessary for her to join him to-night—so she says. That’s all it +was—and I’m sorry I dragged you out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the hollow-turner, “here be we six mile from +home, and night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to our name. +I say, we’ll have a mossel and a drop o’ summat to strengthen our +nerves afore we vamp all the way back again? My throat’s as dry as a kex. +What d’ye say so’s?” +</p> + +<p> +They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to the antique +and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of the Three Tuns was the +only radiant object. As soon as they had stumbled down into the room Melbury +ordered them to be served, when they made themselves comfortable by the long +table, and stretched out their legs upon the herring-boned sand of the floor. +Melbury himself, restless as usual, walked to the door while he waited for +them, and looked up and down the street. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go +out in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that have got to get +up at five o’clock to morrow,” said a bark-ripper; who, not working +regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in strong opinions. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t speak so warm as that,” said the hollow-turner, +“but if ’tis right for couples to make a country talk about their +separating, and excite the neighbors, and then make fools of ’em like +this, why, I haven’t stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty year.” +</p> + +<p> +All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in these +enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and Creedle chimed in +with, “Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn’t +she ha’ bode with her father, and been faithful?” Poor Creedle was +thinking of his old employer. +</p> + +<p> +“But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony,” said +Farmer Bawtree. “I knowed a man and wife—faith, I don’t mind +owning, as there’s no strangers here, that the pair were my own +relations—they’d be at it that hot one hour that you’d hear +the poker and the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the +house with the movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you’d hear +’em singing ‘The Spotted Cow’ together as peaceable as two +holy twins; yes—and very good voices they had, and would strike in like +professional ballet-singers to one another’s support in the high +notes.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I knowed a woman, and the husband o’ her went away for +four-and-twenty year,” said the bark-ripper. “And one night he came +home when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down himself on the +other side of the chimney-corner. ‘Well,’ says she, ‘have ye +got any news?’ ‘Don’t know as I have,’ says he; +‘have you?’ ‘No,’ says she, ‘except that my +daughter by my second husband was married last month, which was a year after I +was made a widow by him.’ ‘Oh! Anything else?’ he says. +‘No,’ says she. And there they sat, one on each side of that +chimney-corner, and were found by their neighbors sound asleep in their chairs, +not having known what to talk about at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I don’t care who the man is,” said Creedle, +“they required a good deal to talk about, and that’s true. It +won’t be the same with these.” +</p> + +<p> +“No. He is such a projick, you see. And she is a wonderful scholar +too!” +</p> + +<p> +“What women do know nowadays!” observed the hollow-turner. +“You can’t deceive ’em as you could in my time.” +</p> + +<p> +“What they knowed then was not small,” said John Upjohn. +“Always a good deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife +that is now, the skilfulness that she would show in keeping me on her pretty +side as she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you’ve noticed that +she’s got a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t say I’ve noticed it particular much,” said the +hollow-turner, blandly. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, “she has. All +women under the sun be prettier one side than t’other. And, as I was +saying, the pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were +unending! I warrant that whether we were going with the sun or against the sun, +uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart of hers was always towards +the hedge, and that dimple towards me. There was I, too simple to see her +wheelings and turnings; and she so artful, though two years younger, that she +could lead me with a cotton thread, like a blind ram; for that was in the third +climate of our courtship. No; I don’t think the women have got cleverer, +for they was never otherwise.” +</p> + +<p> +“How many climates may there be in courtship, Mr. Upjohn?” inquired +a youth—the same who had assisted at Winterborne’s Christmas party. +</p> + +<p> +“Five—from the coolest to the hottest—leastwise there was +five in mine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can ye give us the chronicle of ’em, Mr. Upjohn?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—I could. I could certainly. But ’tis quite unnecessary. +They’ll come to ye by nater, young man, too soon for your good.” +</p> + +<p> +“At present Mrs. Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your mis’ess +could lead you,” the hollow-turner remarked. “She’s got him +quite tame. But how long ’twill last I can’t say. I happened to be +setting a wire on the top of my garden one night when he met her on the other +side of the hedge; and the way she queened it, and fenced, and kept that poor +feller at a distance, was enough to freeze yer blood. I should never have +supposed it of such a girl.” +</p> + +<p> +Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having declared themselves +refreshed, they all started on the homeward journey, which was by no means +cheerless under the rays of the high moon. Having to walk the whole distance +they came by a foot-path rather shorter than the highway, though difficult +except to those who knew the country well. This brought them by way of Great +Hintock; and passing the church-yard they observed, as they talked, a +motionless figure standing by the gate. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it was Marty South,” said the hollow-turner, +parenthetically. +</p> + +<p> +“I think ’twas; ’a was always a lonely maid,” said +Upjohn. And they passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more. +</p> + +<p> +It was Marty, as they had supposed. That evening had been the particular one of +the week upon which Grace and herself had been accustomed to privately deposit +flowers on Giles’s grave, and this was the first occasion since his +death, eight months earlier, on which Grace had failed to keep her appointment. +Marty had waited in the road just outside Little Hintock, where her +fellow-pilgrim had been wont to join her, till she was weary; and at last, +thinking that Grace had missed her and gone on alone, she followed the way to +Great Hintock, but saw no Grace in front of her. It got later, and Marty +continued her walk till she reached the church-yard gate; but still no Grace. +Yet her sense of comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave alone, +and still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, she stood there with her +little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and her feet chilled by the damp +ground, till more than two hours had passed. +</p> + +<p> +She then heard the footsteps of Melbury’s men, who presently passed on +their return from the search. In the silence of the night Marty could not help +hearing fragments of their conversation, from which she acquired a general idea +of what had occurred, and where Mrs. Fitzpiers then was. +</p> + +<p> +Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the church-yard, going +to a secluded corner behind the bushes, where rose the unadorned stone that +marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne. As this solitary and silent girl +stood there in the moonlight, a straight slim figure, clothed in a plaitless +gown, the contours of womanhood so undeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible, +the marks of poverty and toil effaced by the misty hour, she touched sublimity +at points, and looked almost like a being who had rejected with indifference +the attribute of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism. She stooped +down and cleared away the withered flowers that Grace and herself had laid +there the previous week, and put her fresh ones in their place. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, my own, own love,” she whispered, “you are mine, and +on’y mine; for she has forgot ’ee at last, although for her you +died. But I—whenever I get up I’ll think of ’ee, and whenever +I lie down I’ll think of ’ee. Whenever I plant the young larches +I’ll think that none can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a +gad, and whenever I turn the cider-wring, I’ll say none could do it like +you. If ever I forget your name, let me forget home and Heaven!—But no, +no, my love, I never can forget ’ee; for you was a <i>good</i> man, and +did good things!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOODLANDERS ***</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This file should be named 482-h.htm or 482-h.zip</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in https://www.gutenberg.org/4/8/482/</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a873b1f --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #482 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/482) diff --git a/old/482.txt b/old/482.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c500a6c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/482.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15398 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woodlanders, by Thomas Hardy + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Woodlanders + +Author: Thomas Hardy + +Posting Date: August 30, 2008 [EBook #482] +Release Date: April, 1996 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOODLANDERS *** + + + + + + +THE WOODLANDERS + + +by + +Thomas Hardy + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should trace the +forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to +the south shore of England, would find himself during the latter half +of his journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands, +interspersed with apple-orchards. Here the trees, timber or +fruit-bearing, as the case may be, make the wayside hedges ragged by +their drip and shade, stretching over the road with easeful +horizontality, as if they found the unsubstantial air an adequate +support for their limbs. At one place, where a hill is crossed, the +largest of the woods shows itself bisected by the high-way, as the head +of thick hair is bisected by the white line of its parting. The spot +is lonely. + +The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree +that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like +stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of +what is with what might be probably accounts for this. To step, for +instance, at the place under notice, from the hedge of the plantation +into the adjoining pale thoroughfare, and pause amid its emptiness for +a moment, was to exchange by the act of a single stride the simple +absence of human companionship for an incubus of the forlorn. + +At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone winter's day, there +stood a man who had entered upon the scene much in the aforesaid +manner. Alighting into the road from a stile hard by, he, though by no +means a "chosen vessel" for impressions, was temporarily influenced by +some such feeling of being suddenly more alone than before he had +emerged upon the highway. + +It could be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress that +he did not belong to the country proper; and from his air, after a +while, that though there might be a sombre beauty in the scenery, music +in the breeze, and a wan procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment +of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly puzzled about the way. The +dead men's work that had been expended in climbing that hill, the +blistered soles that had trodden it, and the tears that had wetted it, +were not his concern; for fate had given him no time for any but +practical things. + +He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground with his +walking-stick. A closer glance at his face corroborated the testimony +of his clothes. It was self-complacent, yet there was small apparent +ground for such complacence. Nothing irradiated it; to the eye of the +magician in character, if not to the ordinary observer, the expression +enthroned there was absolute submission to and belief in a little +assortment of forms and habitudes. + +At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as he desired, or +seemed likely to appear that night. But presently a slight noise of +laboring wheels and the steady dig of a horse's shoe-tips became +audible; and there loomed in the notch of the hill and plantation that +the road formed here at the summit a carrier's van drawn by a single +horse. When it got nearer, he said, with some relief to himself, "'Tis +Mrs. Dollery's--this will help me." + +The vehicle was half full of passengers, mostly women. He held up his +stick at its approach, and the woman who was driving drew rein. + +"I've been trying to find a short way to Little Hintock this last +half-hour, Mrs. Dollery," he said. "But though I've been to Great +Hintock and Hintock House half a dozen times I am at fault about the +small village. You can help me, I dare say?" + +She assured him that she could--that as she went to Great Hintock her +van passed near it--that it was only up the lane that branched out of +the lane into which she was about to turn--just ahead. "Though," +continued Mrs. Dollery, "'tis such a little small place that, as a town +gentleman, you'd need have a candle and lantern to find it if ye don't +know where 'tis. Bedad! I wouldn't live there if they'd pay me to. +Now at Great Hintock you do see the world a bit." + +He mounted and sat beside her, with his feet outside, where they were +ever and anon brushed over by the horse's tail. + +This van, driven and owned by Mrs. Dollery, was rather a movable +attachment of the roadway than an extraneous object, to those who knew +it well. The old horse, whose hair was of the roughness and color of +heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and hoofs were distorted by +harness and drudgery from colthood--though if all had their rights, he +ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been picking the herbage of some +Eastern plain instead of tugging here--had trodden this road almost +daily for twenty years. Even his subjection was not made congruous +throughout, for the harness being too short, his tail was not drawn +through the crupper, so that the breeching slipped awkwardly to one +side. He knew every subtle incline of the seven or eight miles of +ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas--the market-town to which he +journeyed--as accurately as any surveyor could have learned it by a +Dumpy level. + +The vehicle had a square black tilt which nodded with the motion of the +wheels, and at a point in it over the driver's head was a hook to which +the reins were hitched at times, when they formed a catenary curve from +the horse's shoulders. Somewhere about the axles was a loose chain, +whose only known purpose was to clink as it went. Mrs. Dollery, having +to hop up and down many times in the service of her passengers, wore, +especially in windy weather, short leggings under her gown for +modesty's sake, and instead of a bonnet a felt hat tied down with a +handkerchief, to guard against an earache to which she was frequently +subject. In the rear of the van was a glass window, which she cleaned +with her pocket-handkerchief every market-day before starting. Looking +at the van from the back, the spectator could thus see through its +interior a square piece of the same sky and landscape that he saw +without, but intruded on by the profiles of the seated passengers, who, +as they rumbled onward, their lips moving and heads nodding in animated +private converse, remained in happy unconsciousness that their +mannerisms and facial peculiarities were sharply defined to the public +eye. + +This hour of coming home from market was the happy one, if not the +happiest, of the week for them. Snugly ensconced under the tilt, they +could forget the sorrows of the world without, and survey life and +recapitulate the incidents of the day with placid smiles. + +The passengers in the back part formed a group to themselves, and while +the new-comer spoke to the proprietress, they indulged in a +confidential chat about him as about other people, which the noise of +the van rendered inaudible to himself and Mrs. Dollery, sitting forward. + +"'Tis Barber Percombe--he that's got the waxen woman in his window at +the top of Abbey Street," said one. "What business can bring him from +his shop out here at this time and not a journeyman hair-cutter, but a +master-barber that's left off his pole because 'tis not genteel!" + +They listened to his conversation, but Mr. Percombe, though he had +nodded and spoken genially, seemed indisposed to gratify the curiosity +which he had aroused; and the unrestrained flow of ideas which had +animated the inside of the van before his arrival was checked +thenceforward. + +Thus they rode on till they turned into a half-invisible little lane, +whence, as it reached the verge of an eminence, could be discerned in +the dusk, about half a mile to the right, gardens and orchards sunk in +a concave, and, as it were, snipped out of the woodland. From this +self-contained place rose in stealthy silence tall stems of smoke, +which the eye of imagination could trace downward to their root on +quiet hearth-stones festooned overhead with hams and flitches. It was +one of those sequestered spots outside the gates of the world where may +usually be found more meditation than action, and more passivity than +meditation; where reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results in +inferences wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less +than in other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean +are enacted in the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and +closely knit interdependence of the lives therein. + +This place was the Little Hintock of the master-barber's search. The +coming night gradually obscured the smoke of the chimneys, but the +position of the sequestered little world could still be distinguished +by a few faint lights, winking more or less ineffectually through the +leafless boughs, and the undiscerned songsters they bore, in the form +of balls of feathers, at roost among them. + +Out of the lane followed by the van branched a yet smaller lane, at the +corner of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dollery's van going on to the +larger village, whose superiority to the despised smaller one as an +exemplar of the world's movements was not particularly apparent in its +means of approach. + +"A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, is in league +with the devil, lives in the place you be going to--not because there's +anybody for'n to cure there, but because 'tis the middle of his +district." + +The observation was flung at the barber by one of the women at parting, +as a last attempt to get at his errand that way. + +But he made no reply, and without further pause the pedestrian plunged +towards the umbrageous nook, and paced cautiously over the dead leaves +which nearly buried the road or street of the hamlet. As very few +people except themselves passed this way after dark, a majority of the +denizens of Little Hintock deemed window-curtains unnecessary; and on +this account Mr. Percombe made it his business to stop opposite the +casements of each cottage that he came to, with a demeanor which showed +that he was endeavoring to conjecture, from the persons and things he +observed within, the whereabouts of somebody or other who resided here. + +Only the smaller dwellings interested him; one or two houses, whose +size, antiquity, and rambling appurtenances signified that +notwithstanding their remoteness they must formerly have been, if they +were not still, inhabited by people of a certain social standing, being +neglected by him entirely. Smells of pomace, and the hiss of +fermenting cider, which reached him from the back quarters of other +tenements, revealed the recent occupation of some of the inhabitants, +and joined with the scent of decay from the perishing leaves underfoot. + +Half a dozen dwellings were passed without result. The next, which +stood opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance, +the flickering brightness from the inside shining up the chimney and +making a luminous mist of the emerging smoke. The interior, as seen +through the window, caused him to draw up with a terminative air and +watch. The house was rather large for a cottage, and the door, which +opened immediately into the living-room, stood ajar, so that a ribbon +of light fell through the opening into the dark atmosphere without. +Every now and then a moth, decrepit from the late season, would flit +for a moment across the out-coming rays and disappear again into the +night. + + + +CHAPTER II. + +In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a girl +seated on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of the fire, +which was ample and of wood. With a bill-hook in one hand and a +leather glove, much too large for her, on the other, she was making +spars, such as are used by thatchers, with great rapidity. She wore a +leather apron for this purpose, which was also much too large for her +figure. On her left hand lay a bundle of the straight, smooth sticks +called spar-gads--the raw material of her manufacture; on her right, a +heap of chips and ends--the refuse--with which the fire was maintained; +in front, a pile of the finished articles. To produce them she took up +each gad, looked critically at it from end to end, cut it to length, +split it into four, and sharpened each of the quarters with dexterous +blows, which brought it to a triangular point precisely resembling that +of a bayonet. + +Beside her, in case she might require more light, a brass candlestick +stood on a little round table, curiously formed of an old coffin-stool, +with a deal top nailed on, the white surface of the latter contrasting +oddly with the black carved oak of the substructure. The social +position of the household in the past was almost as definitively shown +by the presence of this article as that of an esquire or nobleman by +his old helmets or shields. It had been customary for every well-to-do +villager, whose tenure was by copy of court-roll, or in any way more +permanent than that of the mere cotter, to keep a pair of these stools +for the use of his own dead; but for the last generation or two a +feeling of cui bono had led to the discontinuance of the custom, and +the stools were frequently made use of in the manner described. + +The young woman laid down the bill-hook for a moment and examined the +palm of her right hand, which, unlike the other, was ungloved, and +showed little hardness or roughness about it. The palm was red and +blistering, as if this present occupation were not frequent enough with +her to subdue it to what it worked in. As with so many right hands +born to manual labor, there was nothing in its fundamental shape to +bear out the physiological conventionalism that gradations of birth, +gentle or mean, show themselves primarily in the form of this member. +Nothing but a cast of the die of destiny had decided that the girl +should handle the tool; and the fingers which clasped the heavy ash +haft might have skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string, had +they only been set to do it in good time. + +Her face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by a +life of solitude. Where the eyes of a multitude beat like waves upon a +countenance they seem to wear away its individuality; but in the still +water of privacy every tentacle of feeling and sentiment shoots out in +visible luxuriance, to be interpreted as readily as a child's look by +an intruder. In years she was no more than nineteen or twenty, but the +necessity of taking thought at a too early period of life had forced +the provisional curves of her childhood's face to a premature finality. +Thus she had but little pretension to beauty, save in one prominent +particular--her hair. Its abundance made it almost unmanageable; its +color was, roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, brown, but +careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that its +true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation to chestnut. + +On this one bright gift of Time to the particular victim of his now +before us the new-comer's eyes were fixed; meanwhile the fingers of his +right hand mechanically played over something sticking up from his +waistcoat-pocket--the bows of a pair of scissors, whose polish made +them feebly responsive to the light within. In her present beholder's +mind the scene formed by the girlish spar-maker composed itself into a +post-Raffaelite picture of extremest quality, wherein the girl's hair +alone, as the focus of observation, was depicted with intensity and +distinctness, and her face, shoulders, hands, and figure in general, +being a blurred mass of unimportant detail lost in haze and obscurity. + +He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and entered. The young +woman turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor, and +exclaiming, "Oh, Mr. Percombe, how you frightened me!" quite lost her +color for a moment. + +He replied, "You should shut your door--then you'd hear folk open it." + +"I can't," she said; "the chimney smokes so. Mr. Percombe, you look as +unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge. Surely you +have not come out here on my account--for--" + +"Yes--to have your answer about this." He touched her head with his +cane, and she winced. "Do you agree?" he continued. "It is necessary +that I should know at once, as the lady is soon going away, and it +takes time to make up." + +"Don't press me--it worries me. I was in hopes you had thought no more +of it. I can NOT part with it--so there!" + +"Now, look here, Marty," said the barber, sitting down on the +coffin-stool table. "How much do you get for making these spars?" + +"Hush--father's up-stairs awake, and he don't know that I am doing his +work." + +"Well, now tell me," said the man, more softly. "How much do you get?" + +"Eighteenpence a thousand," she said, reluctantly. + +"Who are you making them for?" + +"Mr. Melbury, the timber-dealer, just below here." + +"And how many can you make in a day?" + +"In a day and half the night, three bundles--that's a thousand and a +half." + +"Two and threepence." The barber paused. "Well, look here," he +continued, with the remains of a calculation in his tone, which +calculation had been the reduction to figures of the probable monetary +magnetism necessary to overpower the resistant force of her present +purse and the woman's love of comeliness, "here's a sovereign--a gold +sovereign, almost new." He held it out between his finger and thumb. +"That's as much as you'd earn in a week and a half at that rough man's +work, and it's yours for just letting me snip off what you've got too +much of." + +The girl's bosom moved a very little. "Why can't the lady send to some +other girl who don't value her hair--not to me?" she exclaimed. + +"Why, simpleton, because yours is the exact shade of her own, and 'tis +a shade you can't match by dyeing. But you are not going to refuse me +now I've come all the way from Sherton o' purpose?" + +"I say I won't sell it--to you or anybody." + +"Now listen," and he drew up a little closer beside her. "The lady is +very rich, and won't be particular to a few shillings; so I will +advance to this on my own responsibility--I'll make the one sovereign +two, rather than go back empty-handed." + +"No, no, no!" she cried, beginning to be much agitated. "You are +a-tempting me, Mr. Percombe. You go on like the Devil to Dr. Faustus +in the penny book. But I don't want your money, and won't agree. Why +did you come? I said when you got me into your shop and urged me so +much, that I didn't mean to sell my hair!" The speaker was hot and +stern. + +"Marty, now hearken. The lady that wants it wants it badly. And, +between you and me, you'd better let her have it. 'Twill be bad for +you if you don't." + +"Bad for me? Who is she, then?" + +The barber held his tongue, and the girl repeated the question. + +"I am not at liberty to tell you. And as she is going abroad soon it +makes no difference who she is at all." + +"She wants it to go abroad wi'?" + +Percombe assented by a nod. The girl regarded him reflectively. +"Barber Percombe," she said, "I know who 'tis. 'Tis she at the +House--Mrs. Charmond!" + +"That's my secret. However, if you agree to let me have it, I'll tell +you in confidence." + +"I'll certainly not let you have it unless you tell me the truth. It is +Mrs. Charmond." + +The barber dropped his voice. "Well--it is. You sat in front of her +in church the other day, and she noticed how exactly your hair matched +her own. Ever since then she's been hankering for it, and at last +decided to get it. As she won't wear it till she goes off abroad, she +knows nobody will recognize the change. I'm commissioned to get it for +her, and then it is to be made up. I shouldn't have vamped all these +miles for any less important employer. Now, mind--'tis as much as my +business with her is worth if it should be known that I've let out her +name; but honor between us two, Marty, and you'll say nothing that +would injure me?" + +"I don't wish to tell upon her," said Marty, coolly. "But my hair is +my own, and I'm going to keep it." + +"Now, that's not fair, after what I've told you," said the nettled +barber. "You see, Marty, as you are in the same parish, and in one of +her cottages, and your father is ill, and wouldn't like to turn out, it +would be as well to oblige her. I say that as a friend. But I won't +press you to make up your mind to-night. You'll be coming to market +to-morrow, I dare say, and you can call then. If you think it over +you'll be inclined to bring what I want, I know." + +"I've nothing more to say," she answered. + +Her companion saw from her manner that it was useless to urge her +further by speech. "As you are a trusty young woman," he said, "I'll +put these sovereigns up here for ornament, that you may see how +handsome they are. Bring the hair to-morrow, or return the +sovereigns." He stuck them edgewise into the frame of a small mantle +looking-glass. "I hope you'll bring it, for your sake and mine. I +should have thought she could have suited herself elsewhere; but as +it's her fancy it must be indulged if possible. If you cut it off +yourself, mind how you do it so as to keep all the locks one way." He +showed her how this was to be done. + +"But I sha'nt," she replied, with laconic indifference. "I value my +looks too much to spoil 'em. She wants my hair to get another lover +with; though if stories are true she's broke the heart of many a noble +gentleman already." + +"Lord, it's wonderful how you guess things, Marty," said the barber. +"I've had it from them that know that there certainly is some foreign +gentleman in her eye. However, mind what I ask." + +"She's not going to get him through me." + +Percombe had retired as far as the door; he came back, planted his cane +on the coffin-stool, and looked her in the face. "Marty South," he +said, with deliberate emphasis, "YOU'VE GOT A LOVER YOURSELF, and +that's why you won't let it go!" + +She reddened so intensely as to pass the mild blush that suffices to +heighten beauty; she put the yellow leather glove on one hand, took up +the hook with the other, and sat down doggedly to her work without +turning her face to him again. He regarded her head for a moment, went +to the door, and with one look back at her, departed on his way +homeward. + +Marty pursued her occupation for a few minutes, then suddenly laying +down the bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the back of the room, +where she opened a door which disclosed a staircase so whitely scrubbed +that the grain of the wood was wellnigh sodden away by such cleansing. +At the top she gently approached a bedroom, and without entering, said, +"Father, do you want anything?" + +A weak voice inside answered in the negative; adding, "I should be all +right by to-morrow if it were not for the tree!" + +"The tree again--always the tree! Oh, father, don't worry so about +that. You know it can do you no harm." + +"Who have ye had talking to ye down-stairs?" + +"A Sherton man called--nothing to trouble about," she said, soothingly. +"Father," she went on, "can Mrs. Charmond turn us out of our house if +she's minded to?" + +"Turn us out? No. Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is turned +out of my body. 'Tis life-hold, like Ambrose Winterborne's. But when +my life drops 'twill be hers--not till then." His words on this subject +so far had been rational and firm enough. But now he lapsed into his +moaning strain: "And the tree will do it--that tree will soon be the +death of me." + +"Nonsense, you know better. How can it be?" She refrained from further +speech, and descended to the ground-floor again. + +"Thank Heaven, then," she said to herself, "what belongs to me I keep." + + + +CHAPTER III. + +The lights in the village went out, house after house, till there only +remained two in the darkness. One of these came from a residence on +the hill-side, of which there is nothing to say at present; the other +shone from the window of Marty South. Precisely the same outward effect +was produced here, however, by her rising when the clock struck ten and +hanging up a thick cloth curtain. The door it was necessary to keep +ajar in hers, as in most cottages, because of the smoke; but she +obviated the effect of the ribbon of light through the chink by hanging +a cloth over that also. She was one of those people who, if they have +to work harder than their neighbors, prefer to keep the necessity a +secret as far as possible; and but for the slight sounds of +wood-splintering which came from within, no wayfarer would have +perceived that here the cottager did not sleep as elsewhere. + +Eleven, twelve, one o'clock struck; the heap of spars grew higher, and +the pile of chips and ends more bulky. Even the light on the hill had +now been extinguished; but still she worked on. When the temperature +of the night without had fallen so low as to make her chilly, she +opened a large blue umbrella to ward off the draught from the door. +The two sovereigns confronted her from the looking-glass in such a +manner as to suggest a pair of jaundiced eyes on the watch for an +opportunity. Whenever she sighed for weariness she lifted her gaze +towards them, but withdrew it quickly, stroking her tresses with her +fingers for a moment, as if to assure herself that they were still +secure. When the clock struck three she arose and tied up the spars +she had last made in a bundle resembling those that lay against the +wall. + +She wrapped round her a long red woollen cravat and opened the door. +The night in all its fulness met her flatly on the threshold, like the +very brink of an absolute void, or the antemundane Ginnung-Gap believed +in by her Teuton forefathers. For her eyes were fresh from the blaze, +and here there was no street-lamp or lantern to form a kindly +transition between the inner glare and the outer dark. A lingering +wind brought to her ear the creaking sound of two over-crowded branches +in the neighboring wood which were rubbing each other into wounds, and +other vocalized sorrows of the trees, together with the screech of +owls, and the fluttering tumble of some awkward wood-pigeon +ill-balanced on its roosting-bough. + +But the pupils of her young eyes soon expanded, and she could see well +enough for her purpose. Taking a bundle of spars under each arm, and +guided by the serrated line of tree-tops against the sky, she went some +hundred yards or more down the lane till she reached a long open shed, +carpeted around with the dead leaves that lay about everywhere. Night, +that strange personality, which within walls brings ominous +introspectiveness and self-distrust, but under the open sky banishes +such subjective anxieties as too trivial for thought, inspired Marty +South with a less perturbed and brisker manner now. She laid the spars +on the ground within the shed and returned for more, going to and fro +till her whole manufactured stock were deposited here. + +This erection was the wagon-house of the chief man of business +hereabout, Mr. George Melbury, the timber, bark, and copse-ware +merchant for whom Marty's father did work of this sort by the piece. +It formed one of the many rambling out-houses which surrounded his +dwelling, an equally irregular block of building, whose immense +chimneys could just be discerned even now. The four huge wagons under +the shed were built on those ancient lines whose proportions have been +ousted by modern patterns, their shapes bulging and curving at the base +and ends like Trafalgar line-of-battle ships, with which venerable +hulks, indeed, these vehicles evidenced a constructed spirit curiously +in harmony. One was laden with sheep-cribs, another with hurdles, +another with ash poles, and the fourth, at the foot of which she had +placed her thatching-spars was half full of similar bundles. + +She was pausing a moment with that easeful sense of accomplishment +which follows work done that has been a hard struggle in the doing, +when she heard a woman's voice on the other side of the hedge say, +anxiously, "George!" In a moment the name was repeated, with "Do come +indoors! What are you doing there?" + +The cart-house adjoined the garden, and before Marty had moved she saw +enter the latter from the timber-merchant's back door an elderly woman +sheltering a candle with her hand, the light from which cast a moving +thorn-pattern of shade on Marty's face. Its rays soon fell upon a man +whose clothes were roughly thrown on, standing in advance of the +speaker. He was a thin, slightly stooping figure, with a small nervous +mouth and a face cleanly shaven; and he walked along the path with his +eyes bent on the ground. In the pair Marty South recognized her +employer Melbury and his wife. She was the second Mrs. Melbury, the +first having died shortly after the birth of the timber-merchant's only +child. + +"'Tis no use to stay in bed," he said, as soon as she came up to where +he was pacing restlessly about. "I can't sleep--I keep thinking of +things, and worrying about the girl, till I'm quite in a fever of +anxiety." He went on to say that he could not think why "she (Marty +knew he was speaking of his daughter) did not answer his letter. She +must be ill--she must, certainly," he said. + +"No, no. 'Tis all right, George," said his wife; and she assured him +that such things always did appear so gloomy in the night-time, if +people allowed their minds to run on them; that when morning came it +was seen that such fears were nothing but shadows. "Grace is as well as +you or I," she declared. + +But he persisted that she did not see all--that she did not see as much +as he. His daughter's not writing was only one part of his worry. On +account of her he was anxious concerning money affairs, which he would +never alarm his mind about otherwise. The reason he gave was that, as +she had nobody to depend upon for a provision but himself, he wished +her, when he was gone, to be securely out of risk of poverty. + +To this Mrs. Melbury replied that Grace would be sure to marry well, +and that hence a hundred pounds more or less from him would not make +much difference. + +Her husband said that that was what she, Mrs. Melbury, naturally +thought; but there she was wrong, and in that lay the source of his +trouble. "I have a plan in my head about her," he said; "and according +to my plan she won't marry a rich man." + +"A plan for her not to marry well?" said his wife, surprised. + +"Well, in one sense it is that," replied Melbury. "It is a plan for +her to marry a particular person, and as he has not so much money as +she might expect, it might be called as you call it. I may not be able +to carry it out; and even if I do, it may not be a good thing for her. +I want her to marry Giles Winterborne." + +His companion repeated the name. "Well, it is all right," she said, +presently. "He adores the very ground she walks on; only he's close, +and won't show it much." + +Marty South appeared startled, and could not tear herself away. + +Yes, the timber-merchant asserted, he knew that well enough. +Winterborne had been interested in his daughter for years; that was +what had led him into the notion of their union. And he knew that she +used to have no objection to him. But it was not any difficulty about +that which embarrassed him. It was that, since he had educated her so +well, and so long, and so far above the level of daughters thereabout, +it was "wasting her" to give her to a man of no higher standing than +the young man in question. + +"That's what I have been thinking," said Mrs. Melbury. + +"Well, then, Lucy, now you've hit it," answered the timber-merchant, +with feeling. "There lies my trouble. I vowed to let her marry him, +and to make her as valuable as I could to him by schooling her as many +years and as thoroughly as possible. I mean to keep my vow. I made it +because I did his father a terrible wrong; and it was a weight on my +conscience ever since that time till this scheme of making amends +occurred to me through seeing that Giles liked her." + +"Wronged his father?" asked Mrs. Melbury. + +"Yes, grievously wronged him," said her husband. + +"Well, don't think of it to-night," she urged. "Come indoors." + +"No, no, the air cools my head. I shall not stay long." He was silent +a while; then he told her, as nearly as Marty could gather, that his +first wife, his daughter Grace's mother, was first the sweetheart of +Winterborne's father, who loved her tenderly, till he, the speaker, won +her away from him by a trick, because he wanted to marry her himself. +He sadly went on to say that the other man's happiness was ruined by +it; that though he married Winterborne's mother, it was but a +half-hearted business with him. Melbury added that he was afterwards +very miserable at what he had done; but that as time went on, and the +children grew up, and seemed to be attached to each other, he +determined to do all he could to right the wrong by letting his +daughter marry the lad; not only that, but to give her the best +education he could afford, so as to make the gift as valuable a one as +it lay in his power to bestow. "I still mean to do it," said Melbury. + +"Then do," said she. + +"But all these things trouble me," said he; "for I feel I am +sacrificing her for my own sin; and I think of her, and often come down +here and look at this." + +"Look at what?" asked his wife. + +He took the candle from her hand, held it to the ground, and removed a +tile which lay in the garden-path. "'Tis the track of her shoe that +she made when she ran down here the day before she went away all those +months ago. I covered it up when she was gone; and when I come here +and look at it, I ask myself again, why should she be sacrificed to a +poor man?" + +"It is not altogether a sacrifice," said the woman. "He is in love +with her, and he's honest and upright. If she encourages him, what can +you wish for more?" + +"I wish for nothing definite. But there's a lot of things possible for +her. Why, Mrs. Charmond is wanting some refined young lady, I hear, to +go abroad with her--as companion or something of the kind. She'd jump +at Grace." + +"That's all uncertain. Better stick to what's sure." + +"True, true," said Melbury; "and I hope it will be for the best. Yes, +let me get 'em married up as soon as I can, so as to have it over and +done with." He continued looking at the imprint, while he added, +"Suppose she should be dying, and never make a track on this path any +more?" + +"She'll write soon, depend upon't. Come, 'tis wrong to stay here and +brood so." + +He admitted it, but said he could not help it. "Whether she write or +no, I shall fetch her in a few days." And thus speaking, he covered the +track, and preceded his wife indoors. + +Melbury, perhaps, was an unlucky man in having within him the sentiment +which could indulge in this foolish fondness about the imprint of a +daughter's footstep. Nature does not carry on her government with a +view to such feelings, and when advancing years render the open hearts +of those who possess them less dexterous than formerly in shutting +against the blast, they must suffer "buffeting at will by rain and +storm" no less than Little Celandines. + +But her own existence, and not Mr. Melbury's, was the centre of Marty's +consciousness, and it was in relation to this that the matter struck +her as she slowly withdrew. + +"That, then, is the secret of it all," she said. "And Giles +Winterborne is not for me, and the less I think of him the better." + +She returned to her cottage. The sovereigns were staring at her from +the looking-glass as she had left them. With a preoccupied +countenance, and with tears in her eyes, she got a pair of scissors, +and began mercilessly cutting off the long locks of her hair, arranging +and tying them with their points all one way, as the barber had +directed. Upon the pale scrubbed deal of the coffin-stool table they +stretched like waving and ropy weeds over the washed gravel-bed of a +clear stream. + +She would not turn again to the little looking-glass, out of humanity +to herself, knowing what a deflowered visage would look back at her, +and almost break her heart; she dreaded it as much as did her own +ancestral goddess Sif the reflection in the pool after the rape of her +locks by Loke the malicious. She steadily stuck to business, wrapped +the hair in a parcel, and sealed it up, after which she raked out the +fire and went to bed, having first set up an alarum made of a candle +and piece of thread, with a stone attached. + +But such a reminder was unnecessary to-night. Having tossed till about +five o'clock, Marty heard the sparrows walking down their long holes in +the thatch above her sloping ceiling to their orifice at the eaves; +whereupon she also arose, and descended to the ground-floor again. + +It was still dark, but she began moving about the house in those +automatic initiatory acts and touches which represent among housewives +the installation of another day. While thus engaged she heard the +rumbling of Mr. Melbury's wagons, and knew that there, too, the day's +toil had begun. + +An armful of gads thrown on the still hot embers caused them to blaze +up cheerfully and bring her diminished head-gear into sudden prominence +as a shadow. At this a step approached the door. + +"Are folk astir here yet?" inquired a voice she knew well. + +"Yes, Mr. Winterborne," said Marty, throwing on a tilt bonnet, which +completely hid the recent ravages of the scissors. "Come in!" + +The door was flung back, and there stepped in upon the mat a man not +particularly young for a lover, nor particularly mature for a person of +affairs. There was reserve in his glance, and restraint upon his +mouth. He carried a horn lantern which hung upon a swivel, and +wheeling as it dangled marked grotesque shapes upon the shadier part of +the walls. + +He said that he had looked in on his way down, to tell her that they +did not expect her father to make up his contract if he was not well. +Mr. Melbury would give him another week, and they would go their +journey with a short load that day. + +"They are done," said Marty, "and lying in the cart-house." + +"Done!" he repeated. "Your father has not been too ill to work after +all, then?" + +She made some evasive reply. "I'll show you where they be, if you are +going down," she added. + +They went out and walked together, the pattern of the air-holes in the +top of the lantern being thrown upon the mist overhead, where they +appeared of giant size, as if reaching the tent-shaped sky. They had no +remarks to make to each other, and they uttered none. Hardly anything +could be more isolated or more self-contained than the lives of these +two walking here in the lonely antelucan hour, when gray shades, +material and mental, are so very gray. And yet, looked at in a certain +way, their lonely courses formed no detached design at all, but were +part of the pattern in the great web of human doings then weaving in +both hemispheres, from the White Sea to Cape Horn. + +The shed was reached, and she pointed out the spars. Winterborne +regarded them silently, then looked at her. + +"Now, Marty, I believe--" he said, and shook his head. + +"What?" + +"That you've done the work yourself." + +"Don't you tell anybody, will you, Mr. Winterborne?" she pleaded, by +way of answer. "Because I am afraid Mr. Melbury may refuse my work if +he knows it is mine." + +"But how could you learn to do it? 'Tis a trade." + +"Trade!" said she. "I'd be bound to learn it in two hours." + +"Oh no, you wouldn't, Mrs. Marty." Winterborne held down his lantern, +and examined the cleanly split hazels as they lay. "Marty," he said, +with dry admiration, "your father with his forty years of practice +never made a spar better than that. They are too good for the +thatching of houses--they are good enough for the furniture. But I +won't tell. Let me look at your hands--your poor hands!" + +He had a kindly manner of a quietly severe tone; and when she seemed +reluctant to show her hands, he took hold of one and examined it as if +it were his own. Her fingers were blistered. + +"They'll get harder in time," she said. "For if father continues ill, +I shall have to go on wi' it. Now I'll help put 'em up in wagon." + +Winterborne without speaking set down his lantern, lifted her as she +was about to stoop over the bundles, placed her behind him, and began +throwing up the bundles himself. "Rather than you should do it I +will," he said. "But the men will be here directly. Why, +Marty!--whatever has happened to your head? Lord, it has shrunk to +nothing--it looks an apple upon a gate-post!" + +Her heart swelled, and she could not speak. At length she managed to +groan, looking on the ground, "I've made myself ugly--and +hateful--that's what I've done!" + +"No, no," he answered. "You've only cut your hair--I see now." + +"Then why must you needs say that about apples and gate-posts?" + +"Let me see." + +"No, no!" She ran off into the gloom of the sluggish dawn. He did not +attempt to follow her. When she reached her father's door she stood on +the step and looked back. Mr. Melbury's men had arrived, and were +loading up the spars, and their lanterns appeared from the distance at +which she stood to have wan circles round them, like eyes weary with +watching. She observed them for a few seconds as they set about +harnessing the horses, and then went indoors. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and +presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged like +a dead-born child. The villagers everywhere had already bestirred +themselves, rising at this time of the year at the far less dreary hour +of absolute darkness. It had been above an hour earlier, before a +single bird had untucked his head, that twenty lights were struck in as +many bedrooms, twenty pairs of shutters opened, and twenty pairs of +eyes stretched to the sky to forecast the weather for the day. + +Owls that had been catching mice in the out-houses, rabbits that had +been eating the wintergreens in the gardens, and stoats that had been +sucking the blood of the rabbits, discerning that their human neighbors +were on the move, discreetly withdrew from publicity, and were seen and +heard no more that day. + +The daylight revealed the whole of Mr. Melbury's homestead, of which +the wagon-sheds had been an outlying erection. It formed three sides +of an open quadrangle, and consisted of all sorts of buildings, the +largest and central one being the dwelling itself. The fourth side of +the quadrangle was the public road. + +It was a dwelling-house of respectable, roomy, almost dignified aspect; +which, taken with the fact that there were the remains of other such +buildings thereabout, indicated that Little Hintock had at some time or +other been of greater importance than now, as its old name of Hintock +St. Osmond also testified. The house was of no marked antiquity, yet +of well-advanced age; older than a stale novelty, but no canonized +antique; faded, not hoary; looking at you from the still distinct +middle-distance of the early Georgian time, and awakening on that +account the instincts of reminiscence more decidedly than the remoter +and far grander memorials which have to speak from the misty reaches of +mediaevalism. The faces, dress, passions, gratitudes, and revenues of +the great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers who had been the first to +gaze from those rectangular windows, and had stood under that +key-stoned doorway, could be divined and measured by homely standards +of to-day. It was a house in whose reverberations queer old personal +tales were yet audible if properly listened for; and not, as with those +of the castle and cloister, silent beyond the possibility of echo. + +The garden-front remained much as it had always been, and there was a +porch and entrance that way. But the principal house-door opened on +the square yard or quadrangle towards the road, formerly a regular +carriage entrance, though the middle of the area was now made use of +for stacking timber, fagots, bundles, and other products of the wood. +It was divided from the lane by a lichen-coated wall, in which hung a +pair of gates, flanked by piers out of the perpendicular, with a round +white ball on the top of each. + +The building on the left of the enclosure was a long-backed erection, +now used for spar-making, sawing, crib-framing, and copse-ware +manufacture in general. Opposite were the wagon-sheds where Marty had +deposited her spars. + +Here Winterborne had remained after the girl's abrupt departure, to see +that the wagon-loads were properly made up. Winterborne was connected +with the Melbury family in various ways. In addition to the +sentimental relationship which arose from his father having been the +first Mrs. Melbury's lover, Winterborne's aunt had married and +emigrated with the brother of the timber-merchant many years before--an +alliance that was sufficient to place Winterborne, though the poorer, +on a footing of social intimacy with the Melburys. As in most villages +so secluded as this, intermarriages were of Hapsburgian frequency among +the inhabitants, and there were hardly two houses in Little Hintock +unrelated by some matrimonial tie or other. + +For this reason a curious kind of partnership existed between Melbury +and the younger man--a partnership based upon an unwritten code, by +which each acted in the way he thought fair towards the other, on a +give-and-take principle. Melbury, with his timber and copse-ware +business, found that the weight of his labor came in winter and spring. +Winterborne was in the apple and cider trade, and his requirements in +cartage and other work came in the autumn of each year. Hence horses, +wagons, and in some degree men, were handed over to him when the apples +began to fall; he, in return, lending his assistance to Melbury in the +busiest wood-cutting season, as now. + +Before he had left the shed a boy came from the house to ask him to +remain till Mr. Melbury had seen him. Winterborne thereupon crossed +over to the spar-house where two or three men were already at work, two +of them being travelling spar-makers from White-hart Lane, who, when +this kind of work began, made their appearance regularly, and when it +was over disappeared in silence till the season came again. + +Firewood was the one thing abundant in Little Hintock; and a blaze of +gad-cuds made the outhouse gay with its light, which vied with that of +the day as yet. In the hollow shades of the roof could be seen +dangling etiolated arms of ivy which had crept through the joints of +the tiles and were groping in vain for some support, their leaves being +dwarfed and sickly for want of sunlight; others were pushing in with +such force at the eaves as to lift from their supports the shelves that +were fixed there. + +Besides the itinerant journey-workers there were also present John +Upjohn, engaged in the hollow-turnery trade, who lived hard by; old +Timothy Tangs and young Timothy Tangs, top and bottom sawyers, at work +in Mr. Melbury's pit outside; Farmer Bawtree, who kept the cider-house, +and Robert Creedle, an old man who worked for Winterborne, and stood +warming his hands; these latter being enticed in by the ruddy blaze, +though they had no particular business there. None of them call for +any remark except, perhaps, Creedle. To have completely described him +it would have been necessary to write a military memoir, for he wore +under his smock-frock a cast-off soldier's jacket that had seen hot +service, its collar showing just above the flap of the frock; also a +hunting memoir, to include the top-boots that he had picked up by +chance; also chronicles of voyaging and shipwreck, for his pocket-knife +had been given him by a weather-beaten sailor. But Creedle carried +about with him on his uneventful rounds these silent testimonies of +war, sport, and adventure, and thought nothing of their associations or +their stories. + +Copse-work, as it was called, being an occupation which the secondary +intelligence of the hands and arms could carry on without requiring the +sovereign attention of the head, the minds of its professors wandered +considerably from the objects before them; hence the tales, chronicles, +and ramifications of family history which were recounted here were of a +very exhaustive kind, and sometimes so interminable as to defy +description. + +Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not arrived, stepped back again +outside the door; and the conversation interrupted by his momentary +presence flowed anew, reaching his ears as an accompaniment to the +regular dripping of the fog from the plantation boughs around. + +The topic at present handled was a highly popular and frequent one--the +personal character of Mrs. Charmond, the owner of the surrounding woods +and groves. + +"My brother-in-law told me, and I have no reason to doubt it," said +Creedle, "that she'd sit down to her dinner with a frock hardly higher +than her elbows. 'Oh, you wicked woman!' he said to himself when he +first see her, 'you go to your church, and sit, and kneel, as if your +knee-jints were greased with very saint's anointment, and tell off your +Hear-us-good-Lords like a business man counting money; and yet you can +eat your victuals such a figure as that!' Whether she's a reformed +character by this time I can't say; but I don't care who the man is, +that's how she went on when my brother-in-law lived there." + +"Did she do it in her husband's time?" + +"That I don't know--hardly, I should think, considering his temper. +Ah!" Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance into physical form by +slowly resigning his head to obliquity and letting his eyes water. +"That man! 'Not if the angels of heaven come down, Creedle,' he said, +'shall you do another day's work for me!' Yes--he'd say +anything--anything; and would as soon take a winged creature's name in +vain as yours or mine! Well, now I must get these spars home-along, and +to-morrow, thank God, I must see about using 'em." + +An old woman now entered upon the scene. She was Mr. Melbury's +servant, and passed a great part of her time in crossing the yard +between the house-door and the spar-shed, whither she had come now for +fuel. She had two facial aspects--one, of a soft and flexible kind, +she used indoors when assisting about the parlor or upstairs; the +other, with stiff lines and corners, when she was bustling among the +men in the spar-house or out-of-doors. + +"Ah, Grammer Oliver," said John Upjohn, "it do do my heart good to see +a old woman like you so dapper and stirring, when I bear in mind that +after fifty one year counts as two did afore! But your smoke didn't +rise this morning till twenty minutes past seven by my beater; and +that's late, Grammer Oliver." + +"If you was a full-sized man, John, people might take notice of your +scornful meanings. But your growing up was such a scrimped and scanty +business that really a woman couldn't feel hurt if you were to spit +fire and brimstone itself at her. Here," she added, holding out a +spar-gad to one of the workmen, from which dangled a long +black-pudding--"here's something for thy breakfast, and if you want tea +you must fetch it from in-doors." + +"Mr. Melbury is late this morning," said the bottom-sawyer. + +"Yes. 'Twas a dark dawn," said Mrs. Oliver. "Even when I opened the +door, so late as I was, you couldn't have told poor men from gentlemen, +or John from a reasonable-sized object. And I don't think maister's +slept at all well to-night. He's anxious about his daughter; and I +know what that is, for I've cried bucketfuls for my own." + +When the old woman had gone Creedle said, + +"He'll fret his gizzard green if he don't soon hear from that maid of +his. Well, learning is better than houses and lands. But to keep a +maid at school till she is taller out of pattens than her mother was in +'em--'tis tempting Providence." + +"It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl," said young +Timothy Tangs. + +"I can mind her mother," said the hollow-turner. "Always a teuny, +delicate piece; her touch upon your hand was as soft and cool as wind. +She was inoculated for the small-pox and had it beautifully fine, just +about the time that I was out of my apprenticeship--ay, and a long +apprenticeship 'twas. I served that master of mine six years and three +hundred and fourteen days." + +The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, as if, considering +their number, they were a rather more remarkable fact than the years. + +"Mr. Winterborne's father walked with her at one time," said old +Timothy Tangs. "But Mr. Melbury won her. She was a child of a woman, +and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever she and her +husband came to a puddle in their walks together he'd take her up like +a half-penny doll and put her over without dirting her a speck. And if +he keeps the daughter so long at boarding-school, he'll make her as +nesh as her mother was. But here he comes." + +Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury crossing the court +from his door. He was carrying an open letter in his hand, and came +straight to Winterborne. His gloom of the preceding night had quite +gone. + +"I'd no sooner made up my mind, Giles, to go and see why Grace didn't +come or write than I get a letter from her--'Clifton: Wednesday. My +dear father,' says she, 'I'm coming home to-morrow' (that's to-day), +'but I didn't think it worth while to write long beforehand.' The +little rascal, and didn't she! Now, Giles, as you are going to Sherton +market to-day with your apple-trees, why not join me and Grace there, +and we'll drive home all together?" + +He made the proposal with cheerful energy; he was hardly the same man +as the man of the small dark hours. Ever it happens that even among +the moodiest the tendency to be cheered is stronger than the tendency +to be cast down; and a soul's specific gravity stands permanently less +than that of the sea of troubles into which it is thrown. + +Winterborne, though not demonstrative, replied to this suggestion with +something like alacrity. There was not much doubt that Marty's grounds +for cutting off her hair were substantial enough, if Ambrose's eyes had +been a reason for keeping it on. As for the timber-merchant, it was +plain that his invitation had been given solely in pursuance of his +scheme for uniting the pair. He had made up his mind to the course as +a duty, and was strenuously bent upon following it out. + +Accompanied by Winterborne, he now turned towards the door of the +spar-house, when his footsteps were heard by the men as aforesaid. + +"Well, John, and Lot," he said, nodding as he entered. "A rimy +morning." + +"'Tis, sir!" said Creedle, energetically; for, not having as yet been +able to summon force sufficient to go away and begin work, he felt the +necessity of throwing some into his speech. "I don't care who the man +is, 'tis the rimiest morning we've had this fall." + +"I heard you wondering why I've kept my daughter so long at +boarding-school," resumed Mr. Melbury, looking up from the letter which +he was reading anew by the fire, and turning to them with the +suddenness that was a trait in him. "Hey?" he asked, with affected +shrewdness. "But you did, you know. Well, now, though it is my own +business more than anybody else's, I'll tell ye. When I was a boy, +another boy--the pa'son's son--along with a lot of others, asked me +'Who dragged Whom round the walls of What?' and I said, 'Sam Barrett, +who dragged his wife in a chair round the tower corner when she went to +be churched.' They laughed at me with such torrents of scorn that I +went home ashamed, and couldn't sleep for shame; and I cried that night +till my pillow was wet: till at last I thought to myself there and +then--'They may laugh at me for my ignorance, but that was father's +fault, and none o' my making, and I must bear it. But they shall never +laugh at my children, if I have any: I'll starve first!' Thank God, +I've been able to keep her at school without sacrifice; and her +scholarship is such that she stayed on as governess for a time. Let +'em laugh now if they can: Mrs. Charmond herself is not better informed +than my girl Grace." + +There was something between high indifference and humble emotion in his +delivery, which made it difficult for them to reply. Winterborne's +interest was of a kind which did not show itself in words; listening, +he stood by the fire, mechanically stirring the embers with a spar-gad. + +"You'll be, then, ready, Giles?" Melbury continued, awaking from a +reverie. "Well, what was the latest news at Shottsford yesterday, Mr. +Bawtree?" + +"Well, Shottsford is Shottsford still--you can't victual your carcass +there unless you've got money; and you can't buy a cup of genuine +there, whether or no....But as the saying is, 'Go abroad and you'll +hear news of home.' It seems that our new neighbor, this young Dr. +What's-his-name, is a strange, deep, perusing gentleman; and there's +good reason for supposing he has sold his soul to the wicked one." + +"'Od name it all," murmured the timber-merchant, unimpressed by the +news, but reminded of other things by the subject of it; "I've got to +meet a gentleman this very morning? and yet I've planned to go to +Sherton Abbas for the maid." + +"I won't praise the doctor's wisdom till I hear what sort of bargain +he's made," said the top-sawyer. + +"'Tis only an old woman's tale," said Bawtree. "But it seems that he +wanted certain books on some mysterious science or black-art, and in +order that the people hereabout should not know anything about his dark +readings, he ordered 'em direct from London, and not from the Sherton +book-seller. The parcel was delivered by mistake at the pa'son's, and +he wasn't at home; so his wife opened it, and went into hysterics when +she read 'em, thinking her husband had turned heathen, and 'twould be +the ruin of the children. But when he came he said he knew no more +about 'em than she; and found they were this Mr. Fitzpier's property. +So he wrote 'Beware!' outside, and sent 'em on by the sexton." + +"He must be a curious young man," mused the hollow-turner. + +"He must," said Timothy Tangs. + +"Nonsense," said Mr. Melbury, authoritatively, "he's only a gentleman +fond of science and philosophy and poetry, and, in fact, every kind of +knowledge; and being lonely here, he passes his time in making such +matters his hobby." + +"Well," said old Timothy, "'tis a strange thing about doctors that the +worse they be the better they be. I mean that if you hear anything of +this sort about 'em, ten to one they can cure ye as nobody else can." + +"True," said Bawtree, emphatically. "And for my part I shall take my +custom from old Jones and go to this one directly I've anything the +matter with me. That last medicine old Jones gave me had no taste in +it at all." + +Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed man, did not listen to these +recitals, being moreover preoccupied with the business appointment +which had come into his head. He walked up and down, looking on the +floor--his usual custom when undecided. That stiffness about the arm, +hip, and knee-joint which was apparent when he walked was the net +product of the divers sprains and over-exertions that had been required +of him in handling trees and timber when a young man, for he was of the +sort called self-made, and had worked hard. He knew the origin of +every one of these cramps: that in his left shoulder had come of +carrying a pollard, unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home; that in one +leg was caused by the crash of an elm against it when they were +felling; that in the other was from lifting a bole. On many a morrow +after wearying himself by these prodigious muscular efforts, he had +risen from his bed fresh as usual; his lassitude had departed, +apparently forever; and confident in the recuperative power of his +youth, he had repeated the strains anew. But treacherous Time had been +only hiding ill results when they could be guarded against, for greater +accumulation when they could not. In his declining years the store had +been unfolded in the form of rheumatisms, pricks, and spasms, in every +one of which Melbury recognized some act which, had its consequence +been contemporaneously made known, he would wisely have abstained from +repeating. + +On a summons by Grammer Oliver to breakfast, he left the shed. Reaching +the kitchen, where the family breakfasted in winter to save +house-labor, he sat down by the fire, and looked a long time at the +pair of dancing shadows cast by each fire-iron and dog-knob on the +whitewashed chimney-corner--a yellow one from the window, and a blue +one from the fire. + +"I don't quite know what to do to-day," he said to his wife at last. +"I've recollected that I promised to meet Mrs. Charmond's steward in +Round Wood at twelve o'clock, and yet I want to go for Grace." + +"Why not let Giles fetch her by himself? 'Twill bring 'em together all +the quicker." + +"I could do that--but I should like to go myself. I always have gone, +without fail, every time hitherto. It has been a great pleasure to +drive into Sherton, and wait and see her arrive; and perhaps she'll be +disappointed if I stay away." + +"You may be disappointed, but I don't think she will, if you send +Giles," said Mrs. Melbury, dryly. + +"Very well--I'll send him." + +Melbury was often persuaded by the quietude of his wife's words when +strenuous argument would have had no effect. This second Mrs. Melbury +was a placid woman, who had been nurse to his child Grace before her +mother's death. After that melancholy event little Grace had clung to +the nurse with much affection; and ultimately Melbury, in dread lest +the only woman who cared for the girl should be induced to leave her, +persuaded the mild Lucy to marry him. The arrangement--for it was +little more--had worked satisfactorily enough; Grace had thriven, and +Melbury had not repented. + +He returned to the spar-house and found Giles near at hand, to whom he +explained the change of plan. "As she won't arrive till five o'clock, +you can get your business very well over in time to receive her," said +Melbury. "The green gig will do for her; you'll spin along quicker +with that, and won't be late upon the road. Her boxes can be called +for by one of the wagons." + +Winterborne, knowing nothing of the timber-merchant's restitutory aims, +quietly thought all this to be a kindly chance. Wishing even more than +her father to despatch his apple-tree business in the market before +Grace's arrival, he prepared to start at once. + +Melbury was careful that the turnout should be seemly. The gig-wheels, +for instance, were not always washed during winter-time before a +journey, the muddy roads rendering that labor useless; but they were +washed to-day. The harness was blacked, and when the rather elderly +white horse had been put in, and Winterborne was in his seat ready to +start, Mr. Melbury stepped out with a blacking-brush, and with his own +hands touched over the yellow hoofs of the animal. + +"You see, Giles," he said, as he blacked, "coming from a fashionable +school, she might feel shocked at the homeliness of home; and 'tis +these little things that catch a dainty woman's eye if they are +neglected. We, living here alone, don't notice how the whitey-brown +creeps out of the earth over us; but she, fresh from a city--why, +she'll notice everything!" + +"That she will," said Giles. + +"And scorn us if we don't mind." + +"Not scorn us." + +"No, no, no--that's only words. She's too good a girl to do that. But +when we consider what she knows, and what she has seen since she last +saw us, 'tis as well to meet her views as nearly as possible. Why, +'tis a year since she was in this old place, owing to her going abroad +in the summer, which I agreed to, thinking it best for her; and +naturally we shall look small, just at first--I only say just at first." + +Mr. Melbury's tone evinced a certain exultation in the very sense of +that inferiority he affected to deplore; for this advanced and refined +being, was she not his own all the time? Not so Giles; he felt +doubtful--perhaps a trifle cynical--for that strand was wound into him +with the rest. He looked at his clothes with misgiving, then with +indifference. + +It was his custom during the planting season to carry a specimen +apple-tree to market with him as an advertisement of what he dealt in. +This had been tied across the gig; and as it would be left behind in +the town, it would cause no inconvenience to Miss Grace Melbury coming +home. + +He drove away, the twigs nodding with each step of the horse; and +Melbury went in-doors. Before the gig had passed out of sight, Mr. +Melbury reappeared and shouted after-- + +"Here, Giles," he said, breathlessly following with some wraps, "it may +be very chilly to-night, and she may want something extra about her. +And, Giles," he added, when the young man, having taken the articles, +put the horse in motion once more, "tell her that I should have come +myself, but I had particular business with Mrs. Charmond's agent, which +prevented me. Don't forget." + +He watched Winterborne out of sight, saying, with a jerk--a shape into +which emotion with him often resolved itself--"There, now, I hope the +two will bring it to a point and have done with it! 'Tis a pity to let +such a girl throw herself away upon him--a thousand pities!...And yet +'tis my duty for his father's sake." + + + +CHAPTER V. + +Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and +without discomposure. Had he regarded his inner self spectacularly, as +lovers are now daily more wont to do, he might have felt pride in the +discernment of a somewhat rare power in him--that of keeping not only +judgment but emotion suspended in difficult cases. But he noted it +not. Neither did he observe what was also the fact, that though he +cherished a true and warm feeling towards Grace Melbury, he was not +altogether her fool just now. It must be remembered that he had not +seen her for a year. + +Arrived at the entrance to a long flat lane, which had taken the spirit +out of many a pedestrian in times when, with the majority, to travel +meant to walk, he saw before him the trim figure of a young woman in +pattens, journeying with that steadfast concentration which means +purpose and not pleasure. He was soon near enough to see that she was +Marty South. Click, click, click went the pattens; and she did not +turn her head. + +She had, however, become aware before this that the driver of the +approaching gig was Giles. She had shrunk from being overtaken by him +thus; but as it was inevitable, she had braced herself up for his +inspection by closing her lips so as to make her mouth quite +unemotional, and by throwing an additional firmness into her tread. + +"Why do you wear pattens, Marty? The turnpike is clean enough, although +the lanes are muddy." + +"They save my boots." + +"But twelve miles in pattens--'twill twist your feet off. Come, get up +and ride with me." + +She hesitated, removed her pattens, knocked the gravel out of them +against the wheel, and mounted in front of the nodding specimen +apple-tree. She had so arranged her bonnet with a full border and +trimmings that her lack of long hair did not much injure her +appearance; though Giles, of course, saw that it was gone, and may have +guessed her motive in parting with it, such sales, though infrequent, +being not unheard of in that locality. + +But nature's adornment was still hard by--in fact, within two feet of +him, though he did not know it. In Marty's basket was a brown paper +packet, and in the packet the chestnut locks, which, by reason of the +barber's request for secrecy, she had not ventured to intrust to other +hands. + +Giles asked, with some hesitation, how her father was getting on. + +He was better, she said; he would be able to work in a day or two; he +would be quite well but for his craze about the tree falling on him. + +"You know why I don't ask for him so often as I might, I suppose?" said +Winterborne. "Or don't you know?" + +"I think I do." + +"Because of the houses?" + +She nodded. + +"Yes. I am afraid it may seem that my anxiety is about those houses, +which I should lose by his death, more than about him. Marty, I do feel +anxious about the houses, since half my income depends upon them; but I +do likewise care for him; and it almost seems wrong that houses should +be leased for lives, so as to lead to such mixed feelings." + +"After father's death they will be Mrs. Charmond's?" + +"They'll be hers." + +"They are going to keep company with my hair," she thought. + +Thus talking, they reached the town. By no pressure would she ride up +the street with him. "That's the right of another woman," she said, +with playful malice, as she put on her pattens. "I wonder what you are +thinking of! Thank you for the lift in that handsome gig. Good-by." + +He blushed a little, shook his head at her, and drove on ahead into the +streets--the churches, the abbey, and other buildings on this clear +bright morning having the liny distinctness of architectural drawings, +as if the original dream and vision of the conceiving master-mason, +some mediaeval Vilars or other unknown to fame, were for a few minutes +flashed down through the centuries to an unappreciative age. Giles saw +their eloquent look on this day of transparency, but could not construe +it. He turned into the inn-yard. + +Marty, following the same track, marched promptly to the +hair-dresser's, Mr. Percombe's. Percombe was the chief of his trade in +Sherton Abbas. He had the patronage of such county offshoots as had +been obliged to seek the shelter of small houses in that ancient town, +of the local clergy, and so on, for some of whom he had made wigs, +while others among them had compensated for neglecting him in their +lifetime by patronizing him when they were dead, and letting him shave +their corpses. On the strength of all this he had taken down his pole, +and called himself "Perruquier to the aristocracy." + +Nevertheless, this sort of support did not quite fill his children's +mouths, and they had to be filled. So, behind his house there was a +little yard, reached by a passage from the back street, and in that +yard was a pole, and under the pole a shop of quite another description +than the ornamental one in the front street. Here on Saturday nights +from seven till ten he took an almost innumerable succession of +twopences from the farm laborers who flocked thither in crowds from the +country. And thus he lived. + +Marty, of course, went to the front shop, and handed her packet to him +silently. "Thank you," said the barber, quite joyfully. "I hardly +expected it after what you said last night." + +She turned aside, while a tear welled up and stood in each eye at this +reminder. + +"Nothing of what I told you," he whispered, there being others in the +shop. "But I can trust you, I see." + +She had now reached the end of this distressing business, and went +listlessly along the street to attend to other errands. These occupied +her till four o'clock, at which time she recrossed the market-place. +It was impossible to avoid rediscovering Winterborne every time she +passed that way, for standing, as he always did at this season of the +year, with his specimen apple-tree in the midst, the boughs rose above +the heads of the crowd, and brought a delightful suggestion of orchards +among the crowded buildings there. When her eye fell upon him for the +last time he was standing somewhat apart, holding the tree like an +ensign, and looking on the ground instead of pushing his produce as he +ought to have been doing. He was, in fact, not a very successful +seller either of his trees or of his cider, his habit of speaking his +mind, when he spoke at all, militating against this branch of his +business. + +While she regarded him he suddenly lifted his eyes in a direction away +from Marty, his face simultaneously kindling with recognition and +surprise. She followed his gaze, and saw walking across to him a +flexible young creature in whom she perceived the features of her she +had known as Miss Grace Melbury, but now looking glorified and refined +above her former level. Winterborne, being fixed to the spot by his +apple-tree, could not advance to meet her; he held out his spare hand +with his hat in it, and with some embarrassment beheld her coming on +tiptoe through the mud to the middle of the square where he stood. + +Miss Melbury's arrival so early was, as Marty could see, unexpected by +Giles, which accounted for his not being ready to receive her. Indeed, +her father had named five o'clock as her probable time, for which +reason that hour had been looming out all the day in his forward +perspective, like an important edifice on a plain. Now here she was +come, he knew not how, and his arranged welcome stultified. + +His face became gloomy at her necessity for stepping into the road, and +more still at the little look of embarrassment which appeared on hers +at having to perform the meeting with him under an apple-tree ten feet +high in the middle of the market-place. Having had occasion to take off +the new gloves she had bought to come home in, she held out to him a +hand graduating from pink at the tips of the fingers to white at the +palm; and the reception formed a scene, with the tree over their heads, +which was not by any means an ordinary one in Sherton Abbas streets. + +Nevertheless, the greeting on her looks and lips was of a restrained +type, which perhaps was not unnatural. For true it was that Giles +Winterborne, well-attired and well-mannered as he was for a yeoman, +looked rough beside her. It had sometimes dimly occurred to him, in +his ruminating silence at Little Hintock, that external phenomena--such +as the lowness or height or color of a hat, the fold of a coat, the +make of a boot, or the chance attitude or occupation of a limb at the +instant of view--may have a great influence upon feminine opinion of a +man's worth--so frequently founded on non-essentials; but a certain +causticity of mental tone towards himself and the world in general had +prevented to-day, as always, any enthusiastic action on the strength of +that reflection; and her momentary instinct of reserve at first sight +of him was the penalty he paid for his laxness. + +He gave away the tree to a by-stander, as soon as he could find one who +would accept the cumbersome gift, and the twain moved on towards the +inn at which he had put up. Marty made as if to step forward for the +pleasure of being recognized by Miss Melbury; but abruptly checking +herself, she glided behind a carrier's van, saying, dryly, "No; I baint +wanted there," and critically regarded Winterborne's companion. + +It would have been very difficult to describe Grace Melbury with +precision, either now or at any time. Nay, from the highest point of +view, to precisely describe a human being, the focus of a universe--how +impossible! But, apart from transcendentalism, there never probably +lived a person who was in herself more completely a reductio ad +absurdum of attempts to appraise a woman, even externally, by items of +face and figure. Speaking generally, it may be said that she was +sometimes beautiful, at other times not beautiful, according to the +state of her health and spirits. + +In simple corporeal presentment she was of a fair and clear complexion, +rather pale than pink, slim in build and elastic in movement. Her look +expressed a tendency to wait for others' thoughts before uttering her +own; possibly also to wait for others' deeds before her own doing. In +her small, delicate mouth, which had perhaps hardly settled down to its +matured curves, there was a gentleness that might hinder sufficient +self-assertion for her own good. She had well-formed eyebrows which, +had her portrait been painted, would probably have been done in Prout's +or Vandyke brown. + +There was nothing remarkable in her dress just now, beyond a natural +fitness and a style that was recent for the streets of Sherton. But, +indeed, had it been the reverse, and quite striking, it would have +meant just as little. For there can be hardly anything less connected +with a woman's personality than drapery which she has neither designed, +manufactured, cut, sewed, or even seen, except by a glance of approval +when told that such and such a shape and color must be had because it +has been decided by others as imperative at that particular time. + +What people, therefore, saw of her in a cursory view was very little; +in truth, mainly something that was not she. The woman herself was a +shadowy, conjectural creature who had little to do with the outlines +presented to Sherton eyes; a shape in the gloom, whose true description +could only be approximated by putting together a movement now and a +glance then, in that patient and long-continued attentiveness which +nothing but watchful loving-kindness ever troubles to give. + + +There was a little delay in their setting out from the town, and Marty +South took advantage of it to hasten forward, with the view of escaping +them on the way, lest they should feel compelled to spoil their +tete-a-tete by asking her to ride. She walked fast, and one-third of +the journey was done, and the evening rapidly darkening, before she +perceived any sign of them behind her. Then, while ascending a hill, +she dimly saw their vehicle drawing near the lowest part of the +incline, their heads slightly bent towards each other; drawn together, +no doubt, by their souls, as the heads of a pair of horses well in hand +are drawn in by the rein. She walked still faster. + +But between these and herself there was a carriage, apparently a +brougham, coming in the same direction, with lighted lamps. When it +overtook her--which was not soon, on account of her pace--the scene was +much darker, and the lights glared in her eyes sufficiently to hide the +details of the equipage. + +It occurred to Marty that she might take hold behind this carriage and +so keep along with it, to save herself the mortification of being +overtaken and picked up for pity's sake by the coming pair. +Accordingly, as the carriage drew abreast of her in climbing the long +ascent, she walked close to the wheels, the rays of the nearest lamp +penetrating her very pores. She had only just dropped behind when the +carriage stopped, and to her surprise the coachman asked her, over his +shoulder, if she would ride. What made the question more surprising +was that it came in obedience to an order from the interior of the +vehicle. + +Marty gladly assented, for she was weary, very weary, after working all +night and keeping afoot all day. She mounted beside the coachman, +wondering why this good-fortune had happened to her. He was rather a +great man in aspect, and she did not like to inquire of him for some +time. + +At last she said, "Who has been so kind as to ask me to ride?" + +"Mrs. Charmond," replied her statuesque companion. + +Marty was stirred at the name, so closely connected with her last +night's experiences. "Is this her carriage?" she whispered. + +"Yes; she's inside." + +Marty reflected, and perceived that Mrs. Charmond must have recognized +her plodding up the hill under the blaze of the lamp; recognized, +probably, her stubbly poll (since she had kept away her face), and +thought that those stubbles were the result of her own desire. + +Marty South was not so very far wrong. Inside the carriage a pair of +bright eyes looked from a ripely handsome face, and though behind those +bright eyes was a mind of unfathomed mysteries, beneath them there beat +a heart capable of quick extempore warmth--a heart which could, indeed, +be passionately and imprudently warm on certain occasions. At present, +after recognizing the girl, she had acted on a mere impulse, possibly +feeling gratified at the denuded appearance which signified the success +of her agent in obtaining what she had required. + +"'Tis wonderful that she should ask ye," observed the magisterial +coachman, presently. "I have never known her do it before, for as a +rule she takes no interest in the village folk at all." + +Marty said no more, but occasionally turned her head to see if she +could get a glimpse of the Olympian creature who as the coachman had +truly observed, hardly ever descended from her clouds into the Tempe of +the parishioners. But she could discern nothing of the lady. She also +looked for Miss Melbury and Winterborne. The nose of their horse +sometimes came quite near the back of Mrs. Charmond's carriage. But +they never attempted to pass it till the latter conveyance turned +towards the park gate, when they sped by. Here the carriage drew up +that the gate might be opened, and in the momentary silence Marty heard +a gentle oral sound, soft as a breeze. + +"What's that?" she whispered. + +"Mis'ess yawning." + +"Why should she yawn?" + +"Oh, because she's been used to such wonderfully good life, and finds +it dull here. She'll soon be off again on account of it." + +"So rich and so powerful, and yet to yawn!" the girl murmured. "Then +things don't fay with she any more than with we!" + +Marty now alighted; the lamp again shone upon her, and as the carriage +rolled on, a soft voice said to her from the interior, "Good-night." + +"Good-night, ma'am," said Marty. But she had not been able to see the +woman who began so greatly to interest her--the second person of her +own sex who had operated strongly on her mind that day. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +Meanwhile, Winterborne and Grace Melbury had also undergone their +little experiences of the same homeward journey. + +As he drove off with her out of the town the glances of people fell +upon them, the younger thinking that Mr. Winterborne was in a pleasant +place, and wondering in what relation he stood towards her. +Winterborne himself was unconscious of this. Occupied solely with the +idea of having her in charge, he did not notice much with outward eye, +neither observing how she was dressed, nor the effect of the picture +they together composed in the landscape. + +Their conversation was in briefest phrase for some time, Grace being +somewhat disconcerted, through not having understood till they were +about to start that Giles was to be her sole conductor in place of her +father. When they were in the open country he spoke. + +"Don't Brownley's farm-buildings look strange to you, now they have +been moved bodily from the hollow where the old ones stood to the top +of the hill?" + +She admitted that they did, though she should not have seen any +difference in them if he had not pointed it out. + +"They had a good crop of bitter-sweets; they couldn't grind them all" +(nodding towards an orchard where some heaps of apples had been left +lying ever since the ingathering). + +She said "Yes," but looking at another orchard. + +"Why, you are looking at John-apple-trees! You know bitter-sweets--you +used to well enough!" + +"I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is getting too dark to +distinguish." + +Winterborne did not continue. It seemed as if the knowledge and +interest which had formerly moved Grace's mind had quite died away from +her. He wondered whether the special attributes of his image in the +past had evaporated like these other things. + +However that might be, the fact at present was merely this, that where +he was seeing John-apples and farm-buildings she was beholding a far +remoter scene--a scene no less innocent and simple, indeed, but much +contrasting--a broad lawn in the fashionable suburb of a fast city, the +evergreen leaves shining in the evening sun, amid which bounding girls, +gracefully clad in artistic arrangements of blue, brown, red, black, +and white, were playing at games, with laughter and chat, in all the +pride of life, the notes of piano and harp trembling in the air from +the open windows adjoining. Moreover, they were girls--and this was a +fact which Grace Melbury's delicate femininity could not lose sight +of--whose parents Giles would have addressed with a deferential Sir or +Madam. Beside this visioned scene the homely farmsteads did not quite +hold their own from her present twenty-year point of survey. For all +his woodland sequestration, Giles knew the primitive simplicity of the +subject he had started, and now sounded a deeper note. + +"'Twas very odd what we said to each other years ago; I often think of +it. I mean our saying that if we still liked each other when you were +twenty and I twenty-five, we'd--" + +"It was child's tattle." + +"H'm!" said Giles, suddenly. + +"I mean we were young," said she, more considerately. That gruff +manner of his in making inquiries reminded her that he was unaltered in +much. + +"Yes....I beg your pardon, Miss Melbury; your father SENT me to meet +you to-day." + +"I know it, and I am glad of it." + +He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: "At that time you were +sitting beside me at the back of your father's covered car, when we +were coming home from gypsying, all the party being squeezed in +together as tight as sheep in an auction-pen. It got darker and +darker, and I said--I forget the exact words--but I put my arm round +your waist and there you let it stay till your father, sitting in front +suddenly stopped telling his story to Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe. +The flash shone into the car, and showed us all up distinctly; my arm +flew from your waist like lightning; yet not so quickly but that some +of 'em had seen, and laughed at us. Yet your father, to our amazement, +instead of being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed quite pleased. +Have you forgot all that, or haven't you?" + +She owned that she remembered it very well, now that he mentioned the +circumstances. "But, goodness! I must have been in short frocks," she +said. + +"Come now, Miss Melbury, that won't do! Short frocks, indeed! You know +better, as well as I." + +Grace thereupon declared that she would not argue with an old friend +she valued so highly as she valued him, saying the words with the easy +elusiveness that will be polite at all costs. It might possibly be +true, she added, that she was getting on in girlhood when that event +took place; but if it were so, then she was virtually no less than an +old woman now, so far did the time seem removed from her present. "Do +you ever look at things philosophically instead of personally?" she +asked. + +"I can't say that I do," answered Giles, his eyes lingering far ahead +upon a dark spot, which proved to be a brougham. + +"I think you may, sometimes, with advantage," said she. "Look at +yourself as a pitcher drifting on the stream with other pitchers, and +consider what contrivances are most desirable for avoiding cracks in +general, and not only for saving your poor one. Shall I tell you all +about Bath or Cheltenham, or places on the Continent that I visited +last summer?" + +"With all my heart." + +She then described places and persons in such terms as might have been +used for that purpose by any woman to any man within the four seas, so +entirely absent from that description was everything specially +appertaining to her own existence. When she had done she said, gayly, +"Now do you tell me in return what has happened in Hintock since I have +been away." + +"Anything to keep the conversation away from her and me," said Giles +within him. + +It was true cultivation had so far advanced in the soil of Miss +Melbury's mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of that +she knew well, and had the greatest interest in developing--that is to +say, herself. + +He had not proceeded far with his somewhat bald narration when they +drew near the carriage that had been preceding them for some time. +Miss Melbury inquired if he knew whose carriage it was. + +Winterborne, although he had seen it, had not taken it into account. +On examination, he said it was Mrs. Charmond's. + +Grace watched the vehicle and its easy roll, and seemed to feel more +nearly akin to it than to the one she was in. + +"Pooh! We can polish off the mileage as well as they, come to that," +said Winterborne, reading her mind; and rising to emulation at what it +bespoke, he whipped on the horse. This it was which had brought the +nose of Mr. Melbury's old gray close to the back of Mrs. Charmond's +much-eclipsing vehicle. + +"There's Marty South sitting up with the coachman," said he, discerning +her by her dress. + +"Ah, poor Marty! I must ask her to come to see me this very evening. +How does she happen to be riding there?" + +"I don't know. It is very singular." + +Thus these people with converging destinies went along the road +together, till Winterborne, leaving the track of the carriage, turned +into Little Hintock, where almost the first house was the +timber-merchant's. Pencils of dancing light streamed out of the +windows sufficiently to show the white laurestinus flowers, and glance +over the polished leaves of laurel. The interior of the rooms could be +seen distinctly, warmed up by the fire-flames, which in the parlor were +reflected from the glass of the pictures and bookcase, and in the +kitchen from the utensils and ware. + +"Let us look at the dear place for a moment before we call them," she +said. + +In the kitchen dinner was preparing; for though Melbury dined at one +o'clock at other times, to-day the meal had been kept back for Grace. +A rickety old spit was in motion, its end being fixed in the fire-dog, +and the whole kept going by means of a cord conveyed over pulleys along +the ceiling to a large stone suspended in a corner of the room. Old +Grammer Oliver came and wound it up with a rattle like that of a mill. + +In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury's head fell on the wall and +ceiling; but before the girl had regarded this room many moments their +presence was discovered, and her father and stepmother came out to +welcome her. + +The character of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces some +shyness in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait frequent in +rural households, and one which stands in curiously inverse relation to +most of the peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people of +towns. Thus hiding their warmer feelings under commonplace talk all +round, Grace's reception produced no extraordinary demonstrations. But +that more was felt than was enacted appeared from the fact that her +father, in taking her in-doors, quite forgot the presence of Giles +without, as did also Grace herself. He said nothing, but took the gig +round to the yard and called out from the spar-house the man who +particularly attended to these matters when there was no conversation +to draw him off among the copse-workers inside. Winterborne then +returned to the door with the intention of entering the house. + +The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in +themselves. The fire was, as before, the only light, and it irradiated +Grace's face and hands so as to make them look wondrously smooth and +fair beside those of the two elders; shining also through the loose +hair about her temples as sunlight through a brake. Her father was +surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so much had she developed and +progressed in manner and stature since he last had set eyes on her. + +Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door, +mechanically tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters carved +in the jambs--initials of by-gone generations of householders who had +lived and died there. + +No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the family; +they had forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that he had +brought her home. Still, he was a little surprised that her father's +eagerness to send him for Grace should have resulted in such an +anticlimax as this. + +He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking back +when he reached the turning, from which he could get a last glimpse of +the timber-merchant's roof. He hazarded guesses as to what Grace was +saying just at that moment, and murmured, with some self-derision, +"nothing about me!" He looked also in the other direction, and saw +against the sky the thatched hip and solitary chimney of Marty's +cottage, and thought of her too, struggling bravely along under that +humble shelter, among her spar-gads and pots and skimmers. + +At the timber-merchant's, in the mean time, the conversation flowed; +and, as Giles Winterborne had rightly enough deemed, on subjects in +which he had no share. Among the excluding matters there was, for one, +the effect upon Mr. Melbury of the womanly mien and manners of his +daughter, which took him so much unawares that, though it did not make +him absolutely forget the existence of her conductor homeward, thrust +Giles's image back into quite the obscurest cellarage of his brain. +Another was his interview with Mrs. Charmond's agent that morning, at +which the lady herself had been present for a few minutes. Melbury had +purchased some standing timber from her a long time before, and now +that the date had come for felling it he was left to pursue almost his +own course. This was what the household were actually talking of +during Giles's cogitation without; and Melbury's satisfaction with the +clear atmosphere that had arisen between himself and the deity of the +groves which enclosed his residence was the cause of a counterbalancing +mistiness on the side towards Winterborne. + +"So thoroughly does she trust me," said Melbury, "that I might fell, +top, or lop, on my own judgment, any stick o' timber whatever in her +wood, and fix the price o't, and settle the matter. But, name it all! +I wouldn't do such a thing. However, it may be useful to have this +good understanding with her....I wish she took more interest in the +place, and stayed here all the year round." + +"I am afraid 'tis not her regard for you, but her dislike of Hintock, +that makes her so easy about the trees," said Mrs. Melbury. + +When dinner was over, Grace took a candle and began to ramble +pleasurably through the rooms of her old home, from which she had +latterly become wellnigh an alien. Each nook and each object revived a +memory, and simultaneously modified it. The chambers seemed lower than +they had appeared on any previous occasion of her return, the surfaces +of both walls and ceilings standing in such relations to the eye that +it could not avoid taking microscopic note of their irregularities and +old fashion. Her own bedroom wore at once a look more familiar than +when she had left it, and yet a face estranged. The world of little +things therein gazed at her in helpless stationariness, as though they +had tried and been unable to make any progress without her presence. +Over the place where her candle had been accustomed to stand, when she +had used to read in bed till the midnight hour, there was still the +brown spot of smoke. She did not know that her father had taken +especial care to keep it from being cleaned off. + +Having concluded her perambulation of this now uselessly commodious +edifice, Grace began to feel that she had come a long journey since the +morning; and when her father had been up himself, as well as his wife, +to see that her room was comfortable and the fire burning, she prepared +to retire for the night. No sooner, however, was she in bed than her +momentary sleepiness took itself off, and she wished she had stayed up +longer. She amused herself by listening to the old familiar noises +that she could hear to be still going on down-stairs, and by looking +towards the window as she lay. The blind had been drawn up, as she +used to have it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim +tree-tops against the sky on the neighboring hill. Beneath this +meeting-line of light and shade nothing was visible save one solitary +point of light, which blinked as the tree-twigs waved to and fro before +its beams. From its position it seemed to radiate from the window of a +house on the hill-side. The house had been empty when she was last at +home, and she wondered who inhabited the place now. + +Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, and she was +watching the light quite idly, when it gradually changed color, and at +length shone blue as sapphire. Thus it remained several minutes, and +then it passed through violet to red. + +Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she sat up +in bed, and stared steadily at the shine. An appearance of this sort, +sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less than a marvel in +Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet. Almost every diurnal and +nocturnal effect in that woodland place had hitherto been the direct +result of the regular terrestrial roll which produced the season's +changes; but here was something dissociated from these normal +sequences, and foreign to local habit and knowledge. + +It was about this moment that Grace heard the household below preparing +to retire, the most emphatic noise in the proceeding being that of her +father bolting the doors. Then the stairs creaked, and her father and +mother passed her chamber. The last to come was Grammer Oliver. + +Grace slid out of bed, ran across the room, and lifting the latch, +said, "I am not asleep, Grammer. Come in and talk to me." + +Before the old woman had entered, Grace was again under the bedclothes. +Grammer set down her candlestick, and seated herself on the edge of +Miss Melbury's coverlet. + +"I want you to tell me what light that is I see on the hill-side," said +Grace. + +Mrs. Oliver looked across. "Oh, that," she said, "is from the +doctor's. He's often doing things of that sort. Perhaps you don't +know that we've a doctor living here now--Mr. Fitzpiers by name?" + +Grace admitted that she had not heard of him. + +"Well, then, miss, he's come here to get up a practice. I know him +very well, through going there to help 'em scrub sometimes, which your +father said I might do, if I wanted to, in my spare time. Being a +bachelor-man, he've only a lad in the house. Oh yes, I know him very +well. Sometimes he'll talk to me as if I were his own mother." + +"Indeed." + +"Yes. 'Grammer,' he said one day, when I asked him why he came here +where there's hardly anybody living, 'I'll tell you why I came here. I +took a map, and I marked on it where Dr. Jones's practice ends to the +north of this district, and where Mr. Taylor's ends on the south, and +little Jimmy Green's on the east, and somebody else's to the west. +Then I took a pair of compasses, and found the exact middle of the +country that was left between these bounds, and that middle was Little +Hintock; so here I am....' But, Lord, there: poor young man!" + +"Why?" + +"He said, 'Grammer Oliver, I've been here three months, and although +there are a good many people in the Hintocks and the villages round, +and a scattered practice is often a very good one, I don't seem to get +many patients. And there's no society at all; and I'm pretty near +melancholy mad,' he said, with a great yawn. 'I should be quite if it +were not for my books, and my lab--laboratory, and what not. Grammer, +I was made for higher things.' And then he'd yawn and yawn again." + +"Was he really made for higher things, do you think? I mean, is he +clever?" + +"Well, no. How can he be clever? He may be able to jine up a broken +man or woman after a fashion, and put his finger upon an ache if you +tell him nearly where 'tis; but these young men--they should live to my +time of life, and then they'd see how clever they were at +five-and-twenty! And yet he's a projick, a real projick, and says the +oddest of rozums. 'Ah, Grammer,' he said, at another time, 'let me +tell you that Everything is Nothing. There's only Me and not Me in the +whole world.' And he told me that no man's hands could help what they +did, any more than the hands of a clock....Yes, he's a man of strange +meditations, and his eyes seem to see as far as the north star." + +"He will soon go away, no doubt." + +"I don't think so." Grace did not say "Why?" and Grammer hesitated. At +last she went on: "Don't tell your father or mother, miss, if I let you +know a secret." + +Grace gave the required promise. + +"Well, he talks of buying me; so he won't go away just yet." + +"Buying you!--how?" + +"Not my soul--my body, when I'm dead. One day when I was there +cleaning, he said, 'Grammer, you've a large brain--a very large organ +of brain,' he said. 'A woman's is usually four ounces less than a +man's; but yours is man's size.' Well, then--hee, hee!--after he'd +flattered me a bit like that, he said he'd give me ten pounds to have +me as a natomy after my death. Well, knowing I'd no chick nor chiel +left, and nobody with any interest in me, I thought, faith, if I can be +of any use to my fellow-creatures after I'm gone they are welcome to my +services; so I said I'd think it over, and would most likely agree and +take the ten pounds. Now this is a secret, miss, between us two. The +money would be very useful to me; and I see no harm in it." + +"Of course there's no harm. But oh, Grammer, how can you think to do +it? I wish you hadn't told me." + +"I wish I hadn't--if you don't like to know it, miss. But you needn't +mind. Lord--hee, hee!--I shall keep him waiting many a year yet, bless +ye!" + +"I hope you will, I am sure." + +The girl thereupon fell into such deep reflection that conversation +languished, and Grammer Oliver, taking her candle, wished Miss Melbury +good-night. The latter's eyes rested on the distant glimmer, around +which she allowed her reasoning fancy to play in vague eddies that +shaped the doings of the philosopher behind that light on the lines of +intelligence just received. It was strange to her to come back from +the world to Little Hintock and find in one of its nooks, like a +tropical plant in a hedgerow, a nucleus of advanced ideas and practices +which had nothing in common with the life around. Chemical +experiments, anatomical projects, and metaphysical conceptions had +found a strange home here. + +Thus she remained thinking, the imagined pursuits of the man behind the +light intermingling with conjectural sketches of his personality, till +her eyes fell together with their own heaviness, and she slept. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +Kaleidoscopic dreams of a weird alchemist-surgeon, Grammer Oliver's +skeleton, and the face of Giles Winterborne, brought Grace Melbury to +the morning of the next day. It was fine. A north wind was +blowing--that not unacceptable compromise between the atmospheric +cutlery of the eastern blast and the spongy gales of the west quarter. +She looked from her window in the direction of the light of the +previous evening, and could just discern through the trees the shape of +the surgeon's house. Somehow, in the broad, practical daylight, that +unknown and lonely gentleman seemed to be shorn of much of the interest +which had invested his personality and pursuits in the hours of +darkness, and as Grace's dressing proceeded he faded from her mind. + +Meanwhile, Winterborne, though half assured of her father's favor, was +rendered a little restless by Miss Melbury's behavior. Despite his dry +self-control, he could not help looking continually from his own door +towards the timber-merchant's, in the probability of somebody's +emergence therefrom. His attention was at length justified by the +appearance of two figures, that of Mr. Melbury himself, and Grace +beside him. They stepped out in a direction towards the densest +quarter of the wood, and Winterborne walked contemplatively behind +them, till all three were soon under the trees. + +Although the time of bare boughs had now set in, there were sheltered +hollows amid the Hintock plantations and copses in which a more tardy +leave-taking than on windy summits was the rule with the foliage. This +caused here and there an apparent mixture of the seasons; so that in +some of the dells that they passed by holly-berries in full red were +found growing beside oak and hazel whose leaves were as yet not far +removed from green, and brambles whose verdure was rich and deep as in +the month of August. To Grace these well-known peculiarities were as +an old painting restored. + +Now could be beheld that change from the handsome to the curious which +the features of a wood undergo at the ingress of the winter months. +Angles were taking the place of curves, and reticulations of +surfaces--a change constituting a sudden lapse from the ornate to the +primitive on Nature's canvas, and comparable to a retrogressive step +from the art of an advanced school of painting to that of the Pacific +Islander. + +Winterborne followed, and kept his eye upon the two figures as they +threaded their way through these sylvan phenomena. Mr. Melbury's long +legs, and gaiters drawn in to the bone at the ankles, his slight stoop, +his habit of getting lost in thought and arousing himself with an +exclamation of "Hah!" accompanied with an upward jerk of the head, +composed a personage recognizable by his neighbors as far as he could +be seen. It seemed as if the squirrels and birds knew him. One of the +former would occasionally run from the path to hide behind the arm of +some tree, which the little animal carefully edged round pari passu +with Melbury and his daughters movement onward, assuming a mock manner, +as though he were saying, "Ho, ho; you are only a timber-merchant, and +carry no gun!" + +They went noiselessly over mats of starry moss, rustled through +interspersed tracts of leaves, skirted trunks with spreading roots, +whose mossed rinds made them like hands wearing green gloves; elbowed +old elms and ashes with great forks, in which stood pools of water that +overflowed on rainy days, and ran down their stems in green cascades. +On older trees still than these, huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs. +Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what +it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a +city slum. The leaf was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper +was interrupted; the lichen eat the vigor of the stalk, and the ivy +slowly strangled to death the promising sapling. + +They dived amid beeches under which nothing grew, the younger boughs +still retaining their hectic leaves, that rustled in the breeze with a +sound almost metallic, like the sheet-iron foliage of the fabled +Jarnvid wood. Some flecks of white in Grace's drapery had enabled +Giles to keep her and her father in view till this time; but now he +lost sight of them, and was obliged to follow by ear--no difficult +matter, for on the line of their course every wood-pigeon rose from its +perch with a continued clash, dashing its wings against the branches +with wellnigh force enough to break every quill. By taking the track +of this noise he soon came to a stile. + +Was it worth while to go farther? He examined the doughy soil at the +foot of the stile, and saw among the large sole-and-heel tracks an +impression of a slighter kind from a boot that was obviously not local, +for Winterborne knew all the cobblers' patterns in that district, +because they were very few to know. The mud-picture was enough to make +him swing himself over and proceed. + +The character of the woodland now changed. The bases of the smaller +trees were nibbled bare by rabbits, and at divers points heaps of +fresh-made chips, and the newly-cut stool of a tree, stared white +through the undergrowth. There had been a large fall of timber this +year, which explained the meaning of some sounds that soon reached him. + +A voice was shouting intermittently in a sort of human bark, which +reminded Giles that there was a sale of trees and fagots that very day. +Melbury would naturally be present. Thereupon Winterborne remembered +that he himself wanted a few fagots, and entered upon the scene. + +A large group of buyers stood round the auctioneer, or followed him +when, between his pauses, he wandered on from one lot of plantation +produce to another, like some philosopher of the Peripatetic school +delivering his lectures in the shady groves of the Lyceum. His +companions were timber-dealers, yeomen, farmers, villagers, and others; +mostly woodland men, who on that account could afford to be curious in +their walking-sticks, which consequently exhibited various +monstrosities of vegetation, the chief being cork-screw shapes in black +and white thorn, brought to that pattern by the slow torture of an +encircling woodbine during their growth, as the Chinese have been said +to mould human beings into grotesque toys by continued compression in +infancy. Two women, wearing men's jackets on their gowns, conducted in +the rear of the halting procession a pony-cart containing a tapped +barrel of beer, from which they drew and replenished horns that were +handed round, with bread-and-cheese from a basket. + +The auctioneer adjusted himself to circumstances by using his +walking-stick as a hammer, and knocked down the lot on any convenient +object that took his fancy, such as the crown of a little boy's head, +or the shoulders of a by-stander who had no business there except to +taste the brew; a proceeding which would have been deemed humorous but +for the air of stern rigidity which that auctioneer's face preserved, +tending to show that the eccentricity was a result of that absence of +mind which is engendered by the press of affairs, and no freak of fancy +at all. + +Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the rest of the Peripatetics, and +Grace beside him, clinging closely to his arm, her modern attire +looking almost odd where everything else was old-fashioned, and +throwing over the familiar garniture of the trees a homeliness that +seemed to demand improvement by the addition of a few contemporary +novelties also. Grace seemed to regard the selling with the interest +which attaches to memories revived after an interval of obliviousness. + +Winterborne went and stood close to them; the timber-merchant spoke, +and continued his buying; Grace merely smiled. To justify his presence +there Winterborne began bidding for timber and fagots that he did not +want, pursuing the occupation in an abstracted mood, in which the +auctioneer's voice seemed to become one of the natural sounds of the +woodland. A few flakes of snow descended, at the sight of which a +robin, alarmed at these signs of imminent winter, and seeing that no +offence was meant by the human invasion, came and perched on the tip of +the fagots that were being sold, and looked into the auctioneer's face, +while waiting for some chance crumb from the bread-basket. Standing a +little behind Grace, Winterborne observed how one flake would sail +downward and settle on a curl of her hair, and how another would choose +her shoulder, and another the edge of her bonnet, which took up so much +of his attention that his biddings proceeded incoherently; and when the +auctioneer said, every now and then, with a nod towards him, "Yours, +Mr. Winterborne," he had no idea whether he had bought fagots, poles, +or logwood. + +He regretted, with some causticity of humor, that her father should +show such inequalities of temperament as to keep Grace tightly on his +arm to-day, when he had quite lately seemed anxious to recognize their +betrothal as a fact. And thus musing, and joining in no conversation +with other buyers except when directly addressed, he followed the +assemblage hither and thither till the end of the auction, when Giles +for the first time realized what his purchases had been. Hundreds of +fagots, and divers lots of timber, had been set down to him, when all +he had required had been a few bundles of spray for his odd man Robert +Creedle's use in baking and lighting fires. + +Business being over, he turned to speak to the timber merchant. But +Melbury's manner was short and distant; and Grace, too, looked vexed +and reproachful. Winterborne then discovered that he had been +unwittingly bidding against her father, and picking up his favorite +lots in spite of him. With a very few words they left the spot and +pursued their way homeward. + +Giles was extremely sorry at what he had done, and remained standing +under the trees, all the other men having strayed silently away. He +saw Melbury and his daughter pass down a glade without looking back. +While they moved slowly through it a lady appeared on horseback in the +middle distance, the line of her progress converging upon that of +Melbury's. They met, Melbury took off his hat, and she reined in her +horse. A conversation was evidently in progress between Grace and her +father and this equestrian, in whom he was almost sure that he +recognized Mrs. Charmond, less by her outline than by the livery of the +groom who had halted some yards off. + +The interlocutors did not part till after a prolonged pause, during +which much seemed to be said. When Melbury and Grace resumed their +walk it was with something of a lighter tread than before. + +Winterborne then pursued his own course homeward. He was unwilling to +let coldness grow up between himself and the Melburys for any trivial +reason, and in the evening he went to their house. On drawing near the +gate his attention was attracted by the sight of one of the bedrooms +blinking into a state of illumination. In it stood Grace lighting +several candles, her right hand elevating the taper, her left hand on +her bosom, her face thoughtfully fixed on each wick as it kindled, as +if she saw in every flame's growth the rise of a life to maturity. He +wondered what such unusual brilliancy could mean to-night. On getting +in-doors he found her father and step-mother in a state of suppressed +excitement, which at first he could not comprehend. + +"I am sorry about my biddings to-day," said Giles. "I don't know what +I was doing. I have come to say that any of the lots you may require +are yours." + +"Oh, never mind--never mind," replied the timber-merchant, with a +slight wave of his hand, "I have so much else to think of that I nearly +had forgot it. Just now, too, there are matters of a different kind +from trade to attend to, so don't let it concern ye." + +As the timber-merchant spoke, as it were, down to him from a higher +moral plane than his own, Giles turned to Mrs. Melbury. + +"Grace is going to the House to-morrow," she said, quietly. "She is +looking out her things now. I dare say she is wanting me this minute +to assist her." Thereupon Mrs. Melbury left the room. + +Nothing is more remarkable than the independent personality of the +tongue now and then. Mr. Melbury knew that his words had been a sort +of boast. He decried boasting, particularly to Giles; yet whenever the +subject was Grace, his judgment resigned the ministry of speech in +spite of him. + +Winterborne felt surprise, pleasure, and also a little apprehension at +the news. He repeated Mrs. Melbury's words. + +"Yes," said paternal pride, not sorry to have dragged out of him what +he could not in any circumstances have kept in. "Coming home from the +woods this afternoon we met Mrs. Charmond out for a ride. She spoke to +me on a little matter of business, and then got acquainted with Grace. +'Twas wonderful how she took to Grace in a few minutes; that +freemasonry of education made 'em close at once. Naturally enough she +was amazed that such an article--ha, ha!--could come out of my house. +At last it led on to Mis'ess Grace being asked to the House. So she's +busy hunting up her frills and furbelows to go in." As Giles remained +in thought without responding, Melbury continued: "But I'll call her +down-stairs." + +"No, no; don't do that, since she's busy," said Winterborne. + +Melbury, feeling from the young man's manner that his own talk had been +too much at Giles and too little to him, repented at once. His face +changed, and he said, in lower tones, with an effort, "She's yours, +Giles, as far as I am concerned." + +"Thanks--my best thanks....But I think, since it is all right between +us about the biddings, that I'll not interrupt her now. I'll step +homeward, and call another time." + +On leaving the house he looked up at the bedroom again. Grace, +surrounded by a sufficient number of candles to answer all purposes of +self-criticism, was standing before a cheval-glass that her father had +lately bought expressly for her use; she was bonneted, cloaked, and +gloved, and glanced over her shoulder into the mirror, estimating her +aspect. Her face was lit with the natural elation of a young girl +hoping to inaugurate on the morrow an intimate acquaintance with a new, +interesting, and powerful friend. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +The inspiriting appointment which had led Grace Melbury to indulge in a +six-candle illumination for the arrangement of her attire, carried her +over the ground the next morning with a springy tread. Her sense of +being properly appreciated on her own native soil seemed to brighten +the atmosphere and herbage around her, as the glowworm's lamp +irradiates the grass. Thus she moved along, a vessel of emotion going +to empty itself on she knew not what. + +Twenty minutes' walking through copses, over a stile, and along an +upland lawn brought her to the verge of a deep glen, at the bottom of +which Hintock House appeared immediately beneath her eye. To describe +it as standing in a hollow would not express the situation of the +manor-house; it stood in a hole, notwithstanding that the hole was full +of beauty. From the spot which Grace had reached a stone could easily +have been thrown over or into, the birds'-nested chimneys of the +mansion. Its walls were surmounted by a battlemented parapet; but the +gray lead roofs were quite visible behind it, with their gutters, laps, +rolls, and skylights, together with incised letterings and +shoe-patterns cut by idlers thereon. + +The front of the house exhibited an ordinary manorial presentation of +Elizabethan windows, mullioned and hooded, worked in rich snuff-colored +freestone from local quarries. The ashlar of the walls, where not +overgrown with ivy and other creepers, was coated with lichen of every +shade, intensifying its luxuriance with its nearness to the ground, +till, below the plinth, it merged in moss. + +Above the house to the back was a dense plantation, the roots of whose +trees were above the level of the chimneys. The corresponding high +ground on which Grace stood was richly grassed, with only an old tree +here and there. A few sheep lay about, which, as they ruminated, +looked quietly into the bedroom windows. The situation of the house, +prejudicial to humanity, was a stimulus to vegetation, on which account +an endless shearing of the heavy-armed ivy was necessary, and a +continual lopping of trees and shrubs. It was an edifice built in +times when human constitutions were damp-proof, when shelter from the +boisterous was all that men thought of in choosing a dwelling-place, +the insidious being beneath their notice; and its hollow site was an +ocular reminder, by its unfitness for modern lives, of the fragility to +which these have declined. The highest architectural cunning could +have done nothing to make Hintock House dry and salubrious; and +ruthless ignorance could have done little to make it unpicturesque. It +was vegetable nature's own home; a spot to inspire the painter and poet +of still life--if they did not suffer too much from the relaxing +atmosphere--and to draw groans from the gregariously disposed. Grace +descended the green escarpment by a zigzag path into the drive, which +swept round beneath the slope. The exterior of the house had been +familiar to her from her childhood, but she had never been inside, and +the approach to knowing an old thing in a new way was a lively +experience. It was with a little flutter that she was shown in; but +she recollected that Mrs. Charmond would probably be alone. Up to a +few days before this time that lady had been accompanied in her +comings, stayings, and goings by a relative believed to be her aunt; +latterly, however, these two ladies had separated, owing, it was +supposed, to a quarrel, and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate. Being +presumably a woman who did not care for solitude, this deprivation +might possibly account for her sudden interest in Grace. + +Mrs. Charmond was at the end of a gallery opening from the hall when +Miss Melbury was announced, and saw her through the glass doors between +them. She came forward with a smile on her face, and told the young +girl it was good of her to come. + +"Ah! you have noticed those," she said, seeing that Grace's eyes were +attracted by some curious objects against the walls. "They are +man-traps. My husband was a connoisseur in man-traps and spring-guns +and such articles, collecting them from all his neighbors. He knew the +histories of all these--which gin had broken a man's leg, which gun had +killed a man. That one, I remember his saying, had been set by a +game-keeper in the track of a notorious poacher; but the keeper, +forgetting what he had done, went that way himself, received the charge +in the lower part of his body, and died of the wound. I don't like +them here, but I've never yet given directions for them to be taken +away." She added, playfully, "Man-traps are of rather ominous +significance where a person of our sex lives, are they not?" + +Grace was bound to smile; but that side of womanliness was one which +her inexperience had no great zest in contemplating. + +"They are interesting, no doubt, as relics of a barbarous time happily +past," she said, looking thoughtfully at the varied designs of these +instruments of torture--some with semi-circular jaws, some with +rectangular; most of them with long, sharp teeth, but a few with none, +so that their jaws looked like the blank gums of old age. + +"Well, we must not take them too seriously," said Mrs. Charmond, with +an indolent turn of her head, and they moved on inward. When she had +shown her visitor different articles in cabinets that she deemed likely +to interest her, some tapestries, wood-carvings, ivories, miniatures, +and so on--always with a mien of listlessness which might either have +been constitutional, or partly owing to the situation of the +place--they sat down to an early cup of tea. + +"Will you pour it out, please? Do," she said, leaning back in her +chair, and placing her hand above her forehead, while her almond +eyes--those long eyes so common to the angelic legions of early Italian +art--became longer, and her voice more languishing. She showed that +oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps most frequent in women of +darker complexion and more lymphatic temperament than Mrs. Charmond's +was; who lingeringly smile their meanings to men rather than speak +them, who inveigle rather than prompt, and take advantage of currents +rather than steer. + +"I am the most inactive woman when I am here," she said. "I think +sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but float +about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams. But that cannot be +really my destiny, and I must struggle against such fancies." + +"I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion--it is quite sad! I wish I +could tend you and make you very happy." + +There was something so sympathetic, so appreciative, in the sound of +Grace's voice, that it impelled people to play havoc with their +customary reservations in talking to her. "It is tender and kind of +you to feel that," said Mrs. Charmond. "Perhaps I have given you the +notion that my languor is more than it really is. But this place +oppresses me, and I have a plan of going abroad a good deal. I used to +go with a relative, but that arrangement has dropped through." +Regarding Grace with a final glance of criticism, she seemed to make up +her mind to consider the young girl satisfactory, and continued: "Now I +am often impelled to record my impressions of times and places. I have +often thought of writing a 'New Sentimental Journey.' But I cannot +find energy enough to do it alone. When I am at different places in +the south of Europe I feel a crowd of ideas and fancies thronging upon +me continually, but to unfold writing-materials, take up a cold steel +pen, and put these impressions down systematically on cold, smooth +paper--that I cannot do. So I have thought that if I always could have +somebody at my elbow with whom I am in sympathy, I might dictate any +ideas that come into my head. And directly I had made your +acquaintance the other day it struck me that you would suit me so well. +Would you like to undertake it? You might read to me, too, if +desirable. Will you think it over, and ask your parents if they are +willing?" + +"Oh yes," said Grace. "I am almost sure they would be very glad." + +"You are so accomplished, I hear; I should be quite honored by such +intellectual company." + +Grace, modestly blushing, deprecated any such idea. + +"Do you keep up your lucubrations at Little Hintock?" + +"Oh no. Lucubrations are not unknown at Little Hintock; but they are +not carried on by me." + +"What--another student in that retreat?" + +"There is a surgeon lately come, and I have heard that he reads a great +deal--I see his light sometimes through the trees late at night." + +"Oh yes--a doctor--I believe I was told of him. It is a strange place +for him to settle in." + +"It is a convenient centre for a practice, they say. But he does not +confine his studies to medicine, it seems. He investigates theology +and metaphysics and all sorts of subjects." + +"What is his name?" + +"Fitzpiers. He represents a very old family, I believe, the +Fitzpierses of Buckbury-Fitzpiers--not a great many miles from here." + +"I am not sufficiently local to know the history of the family. I was +never in the county till my husband brought me here." Mrs. Charmond did +not care to pursue this line of investigation. Whatever mysterious +merit might attach to family antiquity, it was one which, though she +herself could claim it, her adaptable, wandering weltburgerliche nature +had grown tired of caring about--a peculiarity that made her a contrast +to her neighbors. "It is of rather more importance to know what the +man is himself than what his family is," she said, "if he is going to +practise upon us as a surgeon. Have you seen him?" + +Grace had not. "I think he is not a very old man," she added. + +"Has he a wife?" + +"I am not aware that he has." + +"Well, I hope he will be useful here. I must get to know him when I +come back. It will be very convenient to have a medical man--if he is +clever--in one's own parish. I get dreadfully nervous sometimes, +living in such an outlandish place; and Sherton is so far to send to. +No doubt you feel Hintock to be a great change after watering-place +life." + +"I do. But it is home. It has its advantages and its disadvantages." +Grace was thinking less of the solitude than of the attendant +circumstances. + +They chatted on for some time, Grace being set quite at her ease by her +entertainer. Mrs. Charmond was far too well-practised a woman not to +know that to show a marked patronage to a sensitive young girl who +would probably be very quick to discern it, was to demolish her dignity +rather than to establish it in that young girl's eyes. So, being +violently possessed with her idea of making use of this gentle +acquaintance, ready and waiting at her own door, she took great pains +to win her confidence at starting. + +Just before Grace's departure the two chanced to pause before a mirror +which reflected their faces in immediate juxtaposition, so as to bring +into prominence their resemblances and their contrasts. Both looked +attractive as glassed back by the faithful reflector; but Grace's +countenance had the effect of making Mrs. Charmond appear more than her +full age. There are complexions which set off each other to great +advantage, and there are those which antagonize, the one killing or +damaging its neighbor unmercifully. This was unhappily the case here. +Mrs. Charmond fell into a meditation, and replied abstractedly to a +cursory remark of her companion's. However, she parted from her young +friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her know as +soon as her mind was made up on the arrangement she had suggested. + +When Grace had ascended nearly to the top of the adjoining slope she +looked back, and saw that Mrs. Charmond still stood at the door, +meditatively regarding her. + + +Often during the previous night, after his call on the Melburys, +Winterborne's thoughts ran upon Grace's announced visit to Hintock +House. Why could he not have proposed to walk with her part of the +way? Something told him that she might not, on such an occasion, care +for his company. + +He was still more of that opinion when, standing in his garden next +day, he saw her go past on the journey with such a pretty pride in the +event. He wondered if her father's ambition, which had purchased for +her the means of intellectual light and culture far beyond those of any +other native of the village, would conduce to the flight of her future +interests above and away from the local life which was once to her the +movement of the world. + +Nevertheless, he had her father's permission to win her if he could; +and to this end it became desirable to bring matters soon to a crisis, +if he ever hoped to do so. If she should think herself too good for +him, he could let her go and make the best of his loss; but until he +had really tested her he could not say that she despised his suit. The +question was how to quicken events towards an issue. + +He thought and thought, and at last decided that as good a way as any +would be to give a Christmas party, and ask Grace and her parents to +come as chief guests. + +These ruminations were occupying him when there became audible a slight +knocking at his front door. He descended the path and looked out, and +beheld Marty South, dressed for out-door work. + +"Why didn't you come, Mr. Winterborne?" she said. "I've been waiting +there hours and hours, and at last I thought I must try to find you." + +"Bless my soul, I'd quite forgot," said Giles. + +What he had forgotten was that there was a thousand young fir-trees to +be planted in a neighboring spot which had been cleared by the +wood-cutters, and that he had arranged to plant them with his own +hands. He had a marvellous power of making trees grow. Although he +would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly, there was a sort of +sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or beech that he was +operating on, so that the roots took hold of the soil in a few days. +When, on the other hand, any of the journeymen planted, although they +seemed to go through an identically similar process, one quarter of the +trees would die away during the ensuing August. + +Hence Winterborne found delight in the work even when, as at present, +he contracted to do it on portions of the woodland in which he had no +personal interest. Marty, who turned her hand to anything, was usually +the one who performed the part of keeping the trees in a perpendicular +position while he threw in the mould. + +He accompanied her towards the spot, being stimulated yet further to +proceed with the work by the knowledge that the ground was close to the +way-side along which Grace must pass on her return from Hintock House. + +"You've a cold in the head, Marty," he said, as they walked. "That +comes of cutting off your hair." + +"I suppose it do. Yes; I've three headaches going on in my head at the +same time." + +"Three headaches!" + +"Yes, a rheumatic headache in my poll, a sick headache over my eyes, +and a misery headache in the middle of my brain. However, I came out, +for I thought you might be waiting and grumbling like anything if I was +not there." + +The holes were already dug, and they set to work. Winterborne's +fingers were endowed with a gentle conjuror's touch in spreading the +roots of each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress, under which +the delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their proper directions +for growth. He put most of these roots towards the south-west; for, he +said, in forty years' time, when some great gale is blowing from that +quarter, the trees will require the strongest holdfast on that side to +stand against it and not fall. + +"How they sigh directly we put 'em upright, though while they are lying +down they don't sigh at all," said Marty. + +"Do they?" said Giles. "I've never noticed it." + +She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her +finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not to +cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled--probably long +after the two planters should be felled themselves. + +"It seems to me," the girl continued, "as if they sigh because they are +very sorry to begin life in earnest--just as we be." + +"Just as we be?" He looked critically at her. "You ought not to feel +like that, Marty." + +Her only reply was turning to take up the next tree; and they planted +on through a great part of the day, almost without another word. +Winterborne's mind ran on his contemplated evening-party, his +abstraction being such that he hardly was conscious of Marty's presence +beside him. From the nature of their employment, in which he handled +the spade and she merely held the tree, it followed that he got good +exercise and she got none. But she was an heroic girl, and though her +out-stretched hand was chill as a stone, and her cheeks blue, and her +cold worse than ever, she would not complain while he was disposed to +continue work. But when he paused she said, "Mr. Winterborne, can I +run down the lane and back to warm my feet?" + +"Why, yes, of course," he said, awakening anew to her existence. +"Though I was just thinking what a mild day it is for the season. Now I +warrant that cold of yours is twice as bad as it was. You had no +business to chop that hair off, Marty; it serves you almost right. +Look here, cut off home at once." + +"A run down the lane will be quite enough." + +"No, it won't. You ought not to have come out to-day at all." + +"But I should like to finish the--" + +"Marty, I tell you to go home," said he, peremptorily. "I can manage +to keep the rest of them upright with a stick or something." + +She went away without saying any more. When she had gone down the +orchard a little distance she looked back. Giles suddenly went after +her. + +"Marty, it was for your good that I was rough, you know. But warm +yourself in your own way, I don't care." + +When she had run off he fancied he discerned a woman's dress through +the holly-bushes which divided the coppice from the road. It was Grace +at last, on her way back from the interview with Mrs. Charmond. He +threw down the tree he was planting, and was about to break through the +belt of holly when he suddenly became aware of the presence of another +man, who was looking over the hedge on the opposite side of the way +upon the figure of the unconscious Grace. He appeared as a handsome +and gentlemanly personage of six or eight and twenty, and was quizzing +her through an eye-glass. Seeing that Winterborne was noticing him, he +let his glass drop with a click upon the rail which protected the +hedge, and walked away in the opposite direction. Giles knew in a +moment that this must be Mr. Fitzpiers. When he was gone, Winterborne +pushed through the hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting +object of their contemplation. + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +"I heard the bushes move long before I saw you," she began. "I said +first, 'it is some terrible beast;' next, 'it is a poacher;' next, 'it +is a friend!'" + +He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing, not her speech, but the +question whether he should tell her that she had been watched. He +decided in the negative. + +"You have been to the house?" he said. "But I need not ask." The fact +was that there shone upon Miss Melbury's face a species of exaltation, +which saw no environing details nor his own occupation; nothing more +than his bare presence. + +"Why need you not ask?" + +"Your face is like the face of Moses when he came down from the Mount." + +She reddened a little and said, "How can you be so profane, Giles +Winterborne?" + +"How can you think so much of that class of people? Well, I beg pardon; +I didn't mean to speak so freely. How do you like her house and her?" + +"Exceedingly. I had not been inside the walls since I was a child, +when it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond's late +husband bought the property. She is SO nice!" And Grace fell into such +an abstracted gaze at the imaginary image of Mrs. Charmond and her +niceness that it almost conjured up a vision of that lady in mid-air +before them. + +"She has only been here a month or two, it seems, and cannot stay much +longer, because she finds it so lonely and damp in winter. She is going +abroad. Only think, she would like me to go with her." + +Giles's features stiffened a little at the news. "Indeed; what for? +But I won't keep you standing here. Hoi, Robert!" he cried to a +swaying collection of clothes in the distance, which was the figure of +Creedle his man. "Go on filling in there till I come back." + +"I'm a-coming, sir; I'm a-coming." + +"Well, the reason is this," continued she, as they went on +together--"Mrs. Charmond has a delightful side to her character--a +desire to record her impressions of travel, like Alexandre Dumas, and +Mery, and Sterne, and others. But she cannot find energy enough to do +it herself." And Grace proceeded to explain Mrs. Charmond's proposal at +large. "My notion is that Mery's style will suit her best, because he +writes in that soft, emotional, luxurious way she has," Grace said, +musingly. + +"Indeed!" said Winterborne, with mock awe. "Suppose you talk over my +head a little longer, Miss Grace Melbury?" + +"Oh, I didn't mean it!" she said, repentantly, looking into his eyes. +"And as for myself, I hate French books. And I love dear old Hintock, +AND THE PEOPLE IN IT, fifty times better than all the Continent. But +the scheme; I think it an enchanting notion, don't you, Giles?" + +"It is well enough in one sense, but it will take you away," said he, +mollified. + +"Only for a short time. We should return in May." + +"Well, Miss Melbury, it is a question for your father." + +Winterborne walked with her nearly to her house. He had awaited her +coming, mainly with the view of mentioning to her his proposal to have +a Christmas party; but homely Christmas gatherings in the venerable and +jovial Hintock style seemed so primitive and uncouth beside the lofty +matters of her converse and thought that he refrained. + +As soon as she was gone he turned back towards the scene of his +planting, and could not help saying to himself as he walked, that this +engagement of his was a very unpromising business. Her outing to-day +had not improved it. A woman who could go to Hintock House and be +friendly with its mistress, enter into the views of its mistress, talk +like her, and dress not much unlike her, why, she would hardly be +contented with him, a yeoman, now immersed in tree-planting, even +though he planted them well. "And yet she's a true-hearted girl," he +said, thinking of her words about Hintock. "I must bring matters to a +point, and there's an end of it." + +When he reached the plantation he found that Marty had come back, and +dismissing Creedle, he went on planting silently with the girl as +before. + +"Suppose, Marty," he said, after a while, looking at her extended arm, +upon which old scratches from briers showed themselves purple in the +cold wind--"suppose you know a person, and want to bring that person to +a good understanding with you, do you think a Christmas party of some +sort is a warming-up thing, and likely to be useful in hastening on the +matter?" + +"Is there to be dancing?" + +"There might be, certainly." + +"Will He dance with She?" + +"Well, yes." + +"Then it might bring things to a head, one way or the other; I won't be +the one to say which." + +"It shall be done," said Winterborne, not to her, though he spoke the +words quite loudly. And as the day was nearly ended, he added, "Here, +Marty, I'll send up a man to plant the rest to-morrow. I've other +things to think of just now." + +She did not inquire what other things, for she had seen him walking +with Grace Melbury. She looked towards the western sky, which was now +aglow like some vast foundery wherein new worlds were being cast. +Across it the bare bough of a tree stretched horizontally, revealing +every twig against the red, and showing in dark profile every beck and +movement of three pheasants that were settling themselves down on it in +a row to roost. + +"It will be fine to-morrow," said Marty, observing them with the +vermilion light of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, "for they are +a-croupied down nearly at the end of the bough. If it were going to be +stormy they'd squeeze close to the trunk. The weather is almost all +they have to think of, isn't it, Mr. Winterborne? and so they must be +lighter-hearted than we." + +"I dare say they are," said Winterborne. + + +Before taking a single step in the preparations, Winterborne, with no +great hopes, went across that evening to the timber-merchant's to +ascertain if Grace and her parents would honor him with their presence. +Having first to set his nightly gins in the garden, to catch the +rabbits that ate his winter-greens, his call was delayed till just +after the rising of the moon, whose rays reached the Hintock houses but +fitfully as yet, on account of the trees. Melbury was crossing his yard +on his way to call on some one at the larger village, but he readily +turned and walked up and down the path with the young man. + +Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of living on a much smaller scale +than the Melburys did, would not for the world imply that his +invitation was to a gathering of any importance. So he put it in the +mild form of "Can you come in for an hour, when you have done business, +the day after to-morrow; and Mrs. and Miss Melbury, if they have +nothing more pressing to do?" + +Melbury would give no answer at once. "No, I can't tell you to-day," +he said. "I must talk it over with the women. As far as I am +concerned, my dear Giles, you know I'll come with pleasure. But how do +I know what Grace's notions may be? You see, she has been away among +cultivated folks a good while; and now this acquaintance with Mrs. +Charmond--Well, I'll ask her. I can say no more." + +When Winterborne was gone the timber-merchant went on his way. He knew +very well that Grace, whatever her own feelings, would either go or not +go, according as he suggested; and his instinct was, for the moment, to +suggest the negative. His errand took him past the church, and the way +to his destination was either across the church-yard or along-side it, +the distances being the same. For some reason or other he chose the +former way. + +The moon was faintly lighting up the gravestones, and the path, and the +front of the building. Suddenly Mr. Melbury paused, turned ill upon +the grass, and approached a particular headstone, where he read, "In +memory of John Winterborne," with the subjoined date and age. It was +the grave of Giles's father. + +The timber-merchant laid his hand upon the stone, and was humanized. +"Jack, my wronged friend!" he said. "I'll be faithful to my plan of +making amends to 'ee." + +When he reached home that evening, he said to Grace and Mrs. Melbury, +who were working at a little table by the fire, + +"Giles wants us to go down and spend an hour with him the day after +to-morrow; and I'm thinking, that as 'tis Giles who asks us, we'll go." + +They assented without demur, and accordingly the timber-merchant sent +Giles the next morning an answer in the affirmative. + + + +Winterborne, in his modesty, or indifference, had mentioned no +particular hour in his invitation; and accordingly Mr. Melbury and his +family, expecting no other guests, chose their own time, which chanced +to be rather early in the afternoon, by reason of the somewhat quicker +despatch than usual of the timber-merchant's business that day. To +show their sense of the unimportance of the occasion, they walked quite +slowly to the house, as if they were merely out for a ramble, and going +to nothing special at all; or at most intending to pay a casual call +and take a cup of tea. + +At this hour stir and bustle pervaded the interior of Winterborne's +domicile from cellar to apple-loft. He had planned an elaborate high +tea for six o'clock or thereabouts, and a good roaring supper to come +on about eleven. Being a bachelor of rather retiring habits, the whole +of the preparations devolved upon himself and his trusty man and +familiar, Robert Creedle, who did everything that required doing, from +making Giles's bed to catching moles in his field. He was a survival +from the days when Giles's father held the homestead, and Giles was a +playing boy. + +These two, with a certain dilatoriousness which appertained to both, +were now in the heat of preparation in the bake-house, expecting nobody +before six o'clock. Winterborne was standing before the brick oven in +his shirt-sleeves, tossing in thorn sprays, and stirring about the +blazing mass with a long-handled, three-pronged Beelzebub kind of fork, +the heat shining out upon his streaming face and making his eyes like +furnaces, the thorns crackling and sputtering; while Creedle, having +ranged the pastry dishes in a row on the table till the oven should be +ready, was pressing out the crust of a final apple-pie with a +rolling-pin. A great pot boiled on the fire, and through the open door +of the back kitchen a boy was seen seated on the fender, emptying the +snuffers and scouring the candlesticks, a row of the latter standing +upside down on the hob to melt out the grease. + +Looking up from the rolling-pin, Creedle saw passing the window first +the timber-merchant, in his second-best suit, Mrs. Melbury in her best +silk, and Grace in the fashionable attire which, in part brought home +with her from the Continent, she had worn on her visit to Mrs. +Charmond's. The eyes of the three had been attracted to the +proceedings within by the fierce illumination which the oven threw out +upon the operators and their utensils. + +"Lord, Lord! if they baint come a'ready!" said Creedle. + +"No--hey?" said Giles, looking round aghast; while the boy in the +background waved a reeking candlestick in his delight. As there was no +help for it, Winterborne went to meet them in the door-way. + +"My dear Giles, I see we have made a mistake in the time," said the +timber-merchant's wife, her face lengthening with concern. + +"Oh, it is not much difference. I hope you'll come in." + +"But this means a regular randyvoo!" said Mr. Melbury, accusingly, +glancing round and pointing towards the bake-house with his stick. + +"Well, yes," said Giles. + +"And--not Great Hintock band, and dancing, surely?" + +"I told three of 'em they might drop in if they'd nothing else to do," +Giles mildly admitted. + +"Now, why the name didn't ye tell us 'twas going to be a serious kind +of thing before? How should I know what folk mean if they don't say? +Now, shall we come in, or shall we go home and come back along in a +couple of hours?" + +"I hope you'll stay, if you'll be so good as not to mind, now you are +here. I shall have it all right and tidy in a very little time. I +ought not to have been so backward." Giles spoke quite anxiously for +one of his undemonstrative temperament; for he feared that if the +Melburys once were back in their own house they would not be disposed +to turn out again. + +"'Tis we ought not to have been so forward; that's what 'tis," said Mr. +Melbury, testily. "Don't keep us here in the sitting-room; lead on to +the bakehouse, man. Now we are here we'll help ye get ready for the +rest. Here, mis'ess, take off your things, and help him out in his +baking, or he won't get done to-night. I'll finish heating the oven, +and set you free to go and skiver up them ducks." His eye had passed +with pitiless directness of criticism into yet remote recesses of +Winterborne's awkwardly built premises, where the aforesaid birds were +hanging. + +"And I'll help finish the tarts," said Grace, cheerfully. + +"I don't know about that," said her father. "'Tisn't quite so much in +your line as it is in your mother-law's and mine." + +"Of course I couldn't let you, Grace!" said Giles, with some distress. + +"I'll do it, of course," said Mrs. Melbury, taking off her silk train, +hanging it up to a nail, carefully rolling back her sleeves, pinning +them to her shoulders, and stripping Giles of his apron for her own use. + +So Grace pottered idly about, while her father and his wife helped on +the preparations. A kindly pity of his household management, which +Winterborne saw in her eyes whenever he caught them, depressed him much +more than her contempt would have done. + +Creedle met Giles at the pump after a while, when each of the others +was absorbed in the difficulties of a cuisine based on utensils, +cupboards, and provisions that were strange to them. He groaned to the +young man in a whisper, "This is a bruckle het, maister, I'm much +afeared! Who'd ha' thought they'd ha' come so soon?" + +The bitter placidity of Winterborne's look adumbrated the misgivings he +did not care to express. "Have you got the celery ready?" he asked, +quickly. + +"Now that's a thing I never could mind; no, not if you'd paid me in +silver and gold. And I don't care who the man is, I says that a stick +of celery that isn't scrubbed with the scrubbing-brush is not clean." + +"Very well, very well! I'll attend to it. You go and get 'em +comfortable in-doors." + +He hastened to the garden, and soon returned, tossing the stalks to +Creedle, who was still in a tragic mood. "If ye'd ha' married, d'ye +see, maister," he said, "this caddle couldn't have happened to us." + +Everything being at last under way, the oven set, and all done that +could insure the supper turning up ready at some time or other, Giles +and his friends entered the parlor, where the Melburys again dropped +into position as guests, though the room was not nearly so warm and +cheerful as the blazing bakehouse. Others now arrived, among them +Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner, and tea went off very well. + +Grace's disposition to make the best of everything, and to wink at +deficiencies in Winterborne's menage, was so uniform and persistent +that he suspected her of seeing even more deficiencies than he was +aware of. That suppressed sympathy which had showed in her face ever +since her arrival told him as much too plainly. + +"This muddling style of house-keeping is what you've not lately been +used to, I suppose?" he said, when they were a little apart. + +"No; but I like it; it reminds me so pleasantly that everything here in +dear old Hintock is just as it used to be. The oil is--not quite nice; +but everything else is." + +"The oil?" + +"On the chairs, I mean; because it gets on one's dress. Still, mine is +not a new one." + +Giles found that Creedle, in his zeal to make things look bright, had +smeared the chairs with some greasy kind of furniture-polish, and +refrained from rubbing it dry in order not to diminish the mirror-like +effect that the mixture produced as laid on. Giles apologized and +called Creedle; but he felt that the Fates were against him. + + + +CHAPTER X. + +Supper-time came, and with it the hot-baked meats from the oven, laid on a +snowy cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated with folds, as in +Flemish "Last Suppers." Creedle and the boy fetched and carried with +amazing alacrity, the latter, to mollify his superior and make things +pleasant, expressing his admiration of Creedle's cleverness when they +were alone. + +"I s'pose the time when you learned all these knowing things, Mr. +Creedle, was when you was in the militia?" + +"Well, yes. I seed the world at that time somewhat, certainly, and +many ways of strange dashing life. Not but that Giles has worked hard +in helping me to bring things to such perfection to-day. 'Giles,' says +I, though he's maister. Not that I should call'n maister by rights, +for his father growed up side by side with me, as if one mother had +twinned us and been our nourishing." + +"I s'pose your memory can reach a long way back into history, Mr. +Creedle?" + +"Oh yes. Ancient days, when there was battles and famines and +hang-fairs and other pomps, seem to me as yesterday. Ah, many's the +patriarch I've seed come and go in this parish! There, he's calling for +more plates. Lord, why can't 'em turn their plates bottom upward for +pudding, as they used to do in former days?" + +Meanwhile, in the adjoining room Giles was presiding in a +half-unconscious state. He could not get over the initial failures in +his scheme for advancing his suit, and hence he did not know that he +was eating mouthfuls of bread and nothing else, and continually +snuffing the two candles next him till he had reduced them to mere +glimmers drowned in their own grease. Creedle now appeared with a +specially prepared dish, which he served by elevating the little +three-legged pot that contained it, and tilting the contents into a +dish, exclaiming, simultaneously, "Draw back, gentlemen and ladies, +please!" + +A splash followed. Grace gave a quick, involuntary nod and blink, and +put her handkerchief to her face. + +"Good heavens! what did you do that for, Creedle?" said Giles, sternly, +and jumping up. + +"'Tis how I do it when they baint here, maister," mildly expostulated +Creedle, in an aside audible to all the company. + +"Well, yes--but--" replied Giles. He went over to Grace, and hoped +none of it had gone into her eye. + +"Oh no," she said. "Only a sprinkle on my face. It was nothing." + +"Kiss it and make it well," gallantly observed Mr. Bawtree. + +Miss Melbury blushed. + +The timber-merchant said, quickly, "Oh, it is nothing! She must bear +these little mishaps." But there could be discerned in his face +something which said "I ought to have foreseen this." + +Giles himself, since the untoward beginning of the feast, had not quite +liked to see Grace present. He wished he had not asked such people as +Bawtree and the hollow-turner. He had done it, in dearth of other +friends, that the room might not appear empty. In his mind's eye, +before the event, they had been the mere background or padding of the +scene, but somehow in reality they were the most prominent personages +there. + +After supper they played cards, Bawtree and the hollow-turner +monopolizing the new packs for an interminable game, in which a lump of +chalk was incessantly used--a game those two always played wherever +they were, taking a solitary candle and going to a private table in a +corner with the mien of persons bent on weighty matters. The rest of +the company on this account were obliged to put up with old packs for +their round game, that had been lying by in a drawer ever since the +time that Giles's grandmother was alive. Each card had a great stain +in the middle of its back, produced by the touch of generations of damp +and excited thumbs now fleshless in the grave; and the kings and queens +wore a decayed expression of feature, as if they were rather an +impecunious dethroned race of monarchs hiding in obscure slums than +real regal characters. Every now and then the comparatively few +remarks of the players at the round game were harshly intruded on by +the measured jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner from the +back of the room: + + "And I' will hold' a wa'-ger with you' + That all' these marks' are thirt'-y two!" + +accompanied by rapping strokes with the chalk on the table; then an +exclamation, an argument, a dealing of the cards; then the commencement +of the rhymes anew. + +The timber-merchant showed his feelings by talking with a satisfied +sense of weight in his words, and by praising the party in a +patronizing tone, when Winterborne expressed his fear that he and his +were not enjoying themselves. + +"Oh yes, yes; pretty much. What handsome glasses those are! I didn't +know you had such glasses in the house. Now, Lucy" (to his wife), "you +ought to get some like them for ourselves." And when they had abandoned +cards, and Winterborne was talking to Melbury by the fire, it was the +timber-merchant who stood with his back to the mantle in a proprietary +attitude, from which post of vantage he critically regarded Giles's +person, rather as a superficies than as a solid with ideas and feelings +inside it, saying, "What a splendid coat that one is you have on, +Giles! I can't get such coats. You dress better than I." + +After supper there was a dance, the bandsmen from Great Hintock having +arrived some time before. Grace had been away from home so long that +she had forgotten the old figures, and hence did not join in the +movement. Then Giles felt that all was over. As for her, she was +thinking, as she watched the gyrations, of a very different measure +that she had been accustomed to tread with a bevy of sylph-like +creatures in muslin, in the music-room of a large house, most of whom +were now moving in scenes widely removed from this, both as regarded +place and character. + +A woman she did not know came and offered to tell her fortune with the +abandoned cards. Grace assented to the proposal, and the woman told +her tale unskilfully, for want of practice, as she declared. + +Mr. Melbury was standing by, and exclaimed, contemptuously, "Tell her +fortune, indeed! Her fortune has been told by men of science--what do +you call 'em? Phrenologists. You can't teach her anything new. She's +been too far among the wise ones to be astonished at anything she can +hear among us folks in Hintock." + +At last the time came for breaking up, Melbury and his family being the +earliest to leave, the two card-players still pursuing their game +doggedly in the corner, where they had completely covered Giles's +mahogany table with chalk scratches. The three walked home, the +distance being short and the night clear. + +"Well, Giles is a very good fellow," said Mr. Melbury, as they struck +down the lane under boughs which formed a black filigree in which the +stars seemed set. + +"Certainly he is," said Grace, quickly, and in such a tone as to show +that he stood no lower, if no higher, in her regard than he had stood +before. + +When they were opposite an opening through which, by day, the doctor's +house could be seen, they observed a light in one of his rooms, +although it was now about two o'clock. + +"The doctor is not abed yet," said Mrs. Melbury. + +"Hard study, no doubt," said her husband. + +"One would think that, as he seems to have nothing to do about here by +day, he could at least afford to go to bed early at night. 'Tis +astonishing how little we see of him." + +Melbury's mind seemed to turn with much relief to the contemplation of +Mr. Fitzpiers after the scenes of the evening. "It is natural enough," +he replied. "What can a man of that sort find to interest him in +Hintock? I don't expect he'll stay here long." + +His mind reverted to Giles's party, and when they were nearly home he +spoke again, his daughter being a few steps in advance: "It is hardly +the line of life for a girl like Grace, after what she's been +accustomed to. I didn't foresee that in sending her to boarding-school +and letting her travel, and what not, to make her a good bargain for +Giles, I should be really spoiling her for him. Ah, 'tis a thousand +pities! But he ought to have her--he ought!" + +At this moment the two exclusive, chalk-mark men, having at last really +finished their play, could be heard coming along in the rear, +vociferously singing a song to march-time, and keeping vigorous step to +the same in far-reaching strides-- + + "She may go, oh! + She may go, oh! + She may go to the d---- for me!" + + +The timber-merchant turned indignantly to Mrs. Melbury. "That's the +sort of society we've been asked to meet," he said. "For us old folk +it didn't matter; but for Grace--Giles should have known better!" + + +Meanwhile, in the empty house from which the guests had just cleared +out, the subject of their discourse was walking from room to room +surveying the general displacement of furniture with no ecstatic +feeling; rather the reverse, indeed. At last he entered the bakehouse, +and found there Robert Creedle sitting over the embers, also lost in +contemplation. Winterborne sat down beside him. + +"Well, Robert, you must be tired. You'd better get on to bed." + +"Ay, ay, Giles--what do I call ye? Maister, I would say. But 'tis well +to think the day IS done, when 'tis done." + +Winterborne had abstractedly taken the poker, and with a wrinkled +forehead was ploughing abroad the wood-embers on the broad hearth, till +it was like a vast scorching Sahara, with red-hot bowlders lying about +everywhere. "Do you think it went off well, Creedle?" he asked. + +"The victuals did; that I know. And the drink did; that I steadfastly +believe, from the holler sound of the barrels. Good, honest drink +'twere, the headiest mead I ever brewed; and the best wine that berries +could rise to; and the briskest Horner-and-Cleeves cider ever wrung +down, leaving out the spice and sperrits I put into it, while that +egg-flip would ha' passed through muslin, so little curdled 'twere. +'Twas good enough to make any king's heart merry--ay, to make his whole +carcass smile. Still, I don't deny I'm afeared some things didn't go +well with He and his." Creedle nodded in a direction which signified +where the Melburys lived. + +"I'm afraid, too, that it was a failure there!" + +"If so, 'twere doomed to be so. Not but what that snail might as well +have come upon anybody else's plate as hers." + +"What snail?" + +"Well, maister, there was a little one upon the edge of her plate when +I brought it out; and so it must have been in her few leaves of +wintergreen." + +"How the deuce did a snail get there?" + +"That I don't know no more than the dead; but there my gentleman was." + +"But, Robert, of all places, that was where he shouldn't have been!" + +"Well, 'twas his native home, come to that; and where else could we +expect him to be? I don't care who the man is, snails and caterpillars +always will lurk in close to the stump of cabbages in that tantalizing +way." + +"He wasn't alive, I suppose?" said Giles, with a shudder on Grace's +account. + +"Oh no. He was well boiled. I warrant him well boiled. God forbid +that a LIVE snail should be seed on any plate of victuals that's served +by Robert Creedle....But Lord, there; I don't mind 'em myself--them +small ones, for they were born on cabbage, and they've lived on +cabbage, so they must be made of cabbage. But she, the close-mouthed +little lady, she didn't say a word about it; though 'twould have made +good small conversation as to the nater of such creatures; especially +as wit ran short among us sometimes." + +"Oh yes--'tis all over!" murmured Giles to himself, shaking his head +over the glooming plain of embers, and lining his forehead more than +ever. "Do you know, Robert," he said, "that she's been accustomed to +servants and everything superfine these many years? How, then, could +she stand our ways?" + +"Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and-nob elsewhere. +They shouldn't have schooled her so monstrous high, or else bachelor +men shouldn't give randys, or if they do give 'em, only to their own +race." + +"Perhaps that's true," said Winterborne, rising and yawning a sigh. + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +"'Tis a pity--a thousand pities!" her father kept saying next morning +at breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom. + +But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne's suit at +this stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored to promote--was, +indeed, mechanically promoting at this moment? A crisis was +approaching, mainly as a result of his contrivances, and it would have +to be met. + +But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: since seeing what +an immense change her last twelve months of absence had produced in his +daughter, after the heavy sum per annum that he had been spending for +several years upon her education, he was reluctant to let her marry +Giles Winterborne, indefinitely occupied as woodsman, cider-merchant, +apple-farmer, and what not, even were she willing to marry him herself. + +"She will be his wife if you don't upset her notion that she's bound to +accept him as an understood thing," said Mrs. Melbury. "Bless ye, +she'll soon shake down here in Hintock, and be content with Giles's way +of living, which he'll improve with what money she'll have from you. +'Tis the strangeness after her genteel life that makes her feel +uncomfortable at first. Why, when I saw Hintock the first time I +thought I never could like it. But things gradually get familiar, and +stone floors seem not so very cold and hard, and the hooting of the +owls not so very dreadful, and loneliness not so very lonely, after a +while." + +"Yes, I believe ye. That's just it. I KNOW Grace will gradually sink +down to our level again, and catch our manners and way of speaking, and +feel a drowsy content in being Giles's wife. But I can't bear the +thought of dragging down to that old level as promising a piece of +maidenhood as ever lived--fit to ornament a palace wi'--that I've taken +so much trouble to lift up. Fancy her white hands getting redder every +day, and her tongue losing its pretty up-country curl in talking, and +her bounding walk becoming the regular Hintock shail and wamble!" + +"She may shail, but she'll never wamble," replied his wife, decisively. + +When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her lying in bed so late; +not so much moved by a particular objection to that form of indulgence +as discomposed by these other reflections. + +The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down. "You used to +complain with justice when I was a girl," she said. "But I am a woman +now, and can judge for myself....But it is not that; it is something +else!" Instead of sitting down she went outside the door. + +He was sorry. The petulance that relatives show towards each other is +in truth directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped +the situation no less for the offenders than the offended, but is too +elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor humanity in irritated +mood. Melbury followed her. She had rambled on to the paddock, where +the white frost lay, and where starlings in flocks of twenties and +thirties were walking about, watched by a comfortable family of +sparrows perched in a line along the string-course of the chimney, +preening themselves in the rays of the sun. + +"Come in to breakfast, my girl," he said. "And as to Giles, use your +own mind. Whatever pleases you will please me." + +"I am promised to him, father; and I cannot help thinking that in honor +I ought to marry him, whenever I do marry." + +He had a strong suspicion that somewhere in the bottom of her heart +there pulsed an old simple indigenous feeling favorable to Giles, +though it had become overlaid with implanted tastes. But he would not +distinctly express his views on the promise. "Very well," he said. +"But I hope I sha'n't lose you yet. Come in to breakfast. What did +you think of the inside of Hintock House the other day?" + +"I liked it much." + +"Different from friend Winterborne's?" + +She said nothing; but he who knew her was aware that she meant by her +silence to reproach him with drawing cruel comparisons. + +"Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come again--when, did you say?" + +"She thought Tuesday, but would send the day before to let me know if +it suited her." And with this subject upon their lips they entered to +breakfast. + +Tuesday came, but no message from Mrs. Charmond. Nor was there any on +Wednesday. In brief, a fortnight slipped by without a sign, and it +looked suspiciously as if Mrs. Charmond were not going further in the +direction of "taking up" Grace at present. + +Her father reasoned thereon. Immediately after his daughter's two +indubitable successes with Mrs. Charmond--the interview in the wood and +a visit to the House--she had attended Winterborne's party. No doubt +the out-and-out joviality of that gathering had made it a topic in the +neighborhood, and that every one present as guests had been widely +spoken of--Grace, with her exceptional qualities, above all. What, +then, so natural as that Mrs. Charmond should have heard the village +news, and become quite disappointed in her expectations of Grace at +finding she kept such company? + +Full of this post hoc argument, Mr. Melbury overlooked the infinite +throng of other possible reasons and unreasons for a woman changing her +mind. For instance, while knowing that his Grace was attractive, he +quite forgot that Mrs. Charmond had also great pretensions to beauty. +In his simple estimate, an attractive woman attracted all around. + +So it was settled in his mind that her sudden mingling with the +villagers at the unlucky Winterborne's was the cause of her most +grievous loss, as he deemed it, in the direction of Hintock House. + +"'Tis a thousand pities!" he would repeat to himself. "I am ruining +her for conscience' sake!" + +It was one morning later on, while these things were agitating his +mind, that, curiously enough, something darkened the window just as +they finished breakfast. Looking up, they saw Giles in person mounted +on horseback, and straining his neck forward, as he had been doing for +some time, to catch their attention through the window. Grace had been +the first to see him, and involuntarily exclaimed, "There he is--and a +new horse!" + +On their faces as they regarded Giles were written their suspended +thoughts and compound feelings concerning him, could he have read them +through those old panes. But he saw nothing: his features just now +were, for a wonder, lit up with a red smile at some other idea. So +they rose from breakfast and went to the door, Grace with an anxious, +wistful manner, her father in a reverie, Mrs. Melbury placid and +inquiring. "We have come out to look at your horse," she said. + +It could be seen that he was pleased at their attention, and explained +that he had ridden a mile or two to try the animal's paces. "I bought +her," he added, with warmth so severely repressed as to seem +indifference, "because she has been used to carry a lady." + +Still Mr. Melbury did not brighten. Mrs. Melbury said, "And is she +quiet?" + +Winterborne assured her that there was no doubt of it. "I took care of +that. She's five-and-twenty, and very clever for her age." + +"Well, get off and come in," said Melbury, brusquely; and Giles +dismounted accordingly. + +This event was the concrete result of Winterborne's thoughts during the +past week or two. The want of success with his evening party he had +accepted in as philosophic a mood as he was capable of; but there had +been enthusiasm enough left in him one day at Sherton Abbas market to +purchase this old mare, which had belonged to a neighboring parson with +several daughters, and was offered him to carry either a gentleman or a +lady, and to do odd jobs of carting and agriculture at a pinch. This +obliging quadruped seemed to furnish Giles with a means of reinstating +himself in Melbury's good opinion as a man of considerateness by +throwing out future possibilities to Grace. + +The latter looked at him with intensified interest this morning, in the +mood which is altogether peculiar to woman's nature, and which, when +reduced into plain words, seems as impossible as the penetrability of +matter--that of entertaining a tender pity for the object of her own +unnecessary coldness. The imperturbable poise which marked Winterborne +in general was enlivened now by a freshness and animation that set a +brightness in his eye and on his cheek. Mrs. Melbury asked him to have +some breakfast, and he pleasurably replied that he would join them, +with his usual lack of tactical observation, not perceiving that they +had all finished the meal, that the hour was inconveniently late, and +that the note piped by the kettle denoted it to be nearly empty; so +that fresh water had to be brought in, trouble taken to make it boil, +and a general renovation of the table carried out. Neither did he +know, so full was he of his tender ulterior object in buying that +horse, how many cups of tea he was gulping down one after another, nor +how the morning was slipping, nor how he was keeping the family from +dispersing about their duties. + +Then he told throughout the humorous story of the horse's purchase, +looking particularly grim at some fixed object in the room, a way he +always looked when he narrated anything that amused him. While he +was still thinking of the scene he had described, Grace rose and +said, "I have to go and help my mother now, Mr. Winterborne." + +"H'm!" he ejaculated, turning his eyes suddenly upon her. + +She repeated her words with a slight blush of awkwardness; whereupon +Giles, becoming suddenly conscious, too conscious, jumped up, saying, +"To be sure, to be sure!" wished them quickly good-morning, and bolted +out of the house. + +Nevertheless he had, upon the whole, strengthened his position, with +her at least. Time, too, was on his side, for (as her father saw with +some regret) already the homeliness of Hintock life was fast becoming +effaced from her observation as a singularity; just as the first +strangeness of a face from which we have for years been separated +insensibly passes off with renewed intercourse, and tones itself down +into simple identity with the lineaments of the past. + +Thus Mr. Melbury went out of the house still unreconciled to the +sacrifice of the gem he had been at such pains in mounting. He fain +could hope, in the secret nether chamber of his mind, that something +would happen, before the balance of her feeling had quite turned in +Winterborne's favor, to relieve his conscience and preserve her on her +elevated plane. + +He could not forget that Mrs. Charmond had apparently abandoned all +interest in his daughter as suddenly as she had conceived it, and was +as firmly convinced as ever that the comradeship which Grace had shown +with Giles and his crew by attending his party had been the cause. + +Matters lingered on thus. And then, as a hoop by gentle knocks on this +side and on that is made to travel in specific directions, the little +touches of circumstance in the life of this young girl shaped the +curves of her career. + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +It was a day of rather bright weather for the season. Miss Melbury +went out for a morning walk, and her ever-regardful father, having an +hour's leisure, offered to walk with her. The breeze was fresh and +quite steady, filtering itself through the denuded mass of twigs +without swaying them, but making the point of each ivy-leaf on the +trunks scratch its underlying neighbor restlessly. Grace's lips sucked +in this native air of hers like milk. They soon reached a place where +the wood ran down into a corner, and went outside it towards +comparatively open ground. Having looked round about, they were +intending to re-enter the copse when a fox quietly emerged with a +dragging brush, trotted past them tamely as a domestic cat, and +disappeared amid some dead fern. They walked on, her father merely +observing, after watching the animal, "They are hunting somewhere near." + +Farther up they saw in the mid-distance the hounds running hither and +thither, as if there were little or no scent that day. Soon divers +members of the hunt appeared on the scene, and it was evident from +their movements that the chase had been stultified by general +puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of the intended victim. In a +minute a farmer rode up to the two pedestrians, panting with acteonic +excitement, and Grace being a few steps in advance, he addressed her, +asking if she had seen the fox. + +"Yes," said she. "We saw him some time ago--just out there." + +"Did you cry Halloo?" + +"We said nothing." + +"Then why the d---- didn't you, or get the old buffer to do it for you?" +said the man, as he cantered away. + +She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observing her +father's face, saw that it was quite red. + +"He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!" said the old man, in the +tone of one whose heart was bruised, though it was not by the epithet +applied to himself. "And he wouldn't if he had been a gentleman. +'Twas not the language to use to a woman of any niceness. You, so well +read and cultivated--how could he expect ye to know what tom-boy +field-folk are in the habit of doing? If so be you had just come from +trimming swedes or mangolds--joking with the rough work-folk and all +that--I could have stood it. But hasn't it cost me near a hundred a +year to lift you out of all that, so as to show an example to the +neighborhood of what a woman can be? Grace, shall I tell you the secret +of it? 'Twas because I was in your company. If a black-coated squire +or pa'son had been walking with you instead of me he wouldn't have +spoken so." + +"No, no, father; there's nothing in you rough or ill-mannered!" + +"I tell you it is that! I've noticed, and I've noticed it many times, +that a woman takes her color from the man she's walking with. The +woman who looks an unquestionable lady when she's with a polished-up +fellow, looks a mere tawdry imitation article when she's hobbing and +nobbing with a homely blade. You sha'n't be treated like that for +long, or at least your children sha'n't. You shall have somebody to +walk with you who looks more of a dandy than I--please God you shall!" + +"But, my dear father," she said, much distressed, "I don't mind at all. +I don't wish for more honor than I already have!" + +"A perplexing and ticklish possession is a daughter," according to +Menander or some old Greek poet, and to nobody was one ever more so +than to Melbury, by reason of her very dearness to him. As for Grace, +she began to feel troubled; she did not perhaps wish there and then to +unambitiously devote her life to Giles Winterborne, but she was +conscious of more and more uneasiness at the possibility of being the +social hope of the family. + +"You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?" asked her +father, in continuation of the subject. + +Despite her feeling she assented to this. His reasoning had not been +without its weight upon her. + +"Grace," he said, just before they had reached the house, "if it costs +me my life you shall marry well! To-day has shown me that whatever a +young woman's niceness, she stands for nothing alone. You shall marry +well." + +He breathed heavily, and his breathing was caught up by the breeze, +which seemed to sigh a soft remonstrance. + +She looked calmly at him. "And how about Mr. Winterborne?" she asked. +"I mention it, father, not as a matter of sentiment, but as a question +of keeping faith." + +The timber-merchant's eyes fell for a moment. "I don't know--I don't +know," he said. "'Tis a trying strait. Well, well; there's no hurry. +We'll wait and see how he gets on." + +That evening he called her into his room, a snug little apartment +behind the large parlor. It had at one time been part of the +bakehouse, with the ordinary oval brick oven in the wall; but Mr. +Melbury, in turning it into an office, had built into the cavity an +iron safe, which he used for holding his private papers. The door of +the safe was now open, and his keys were hanging from it. + +"Sit down, Grace, and keep me company," he said. "You may amuse +yourself by looking over these." He threw out a heap of papers before +her. + +"What are they?" she asked. + +"Securities of various sorts." He unfolded them one by one. "Papers +worth so much money each. Now here's a lot of turnpike bonds for one +thing. Would you think that each of these pieces of paper is worth two +hundred pounds?" + +"No, indeed, if you didn't say so." + +"'Tis so, then. Now here are papers of another sort. They are for +different sums in the three-per-cents. Now these are Port Breedy +Harbor bonds. We have a great stake in that harbor, you know, because +I send off timber there. Open the rest at your pleasure. They'll +interest ye." + +"Yes, I will, some day," said she, rising. + +"Nonsense, open them now. You ought to learn a little of such matters. +A young lady of education should not be ignorant of money affairs +altogether. Suppose you should be left a widow some day, with your +husband's title-deeds and investments thrown upon your hands--" + +"Don't say that, father--title-deeds; it sounds so vain!" + +"It does not. Come to that, I have title-deeds myself. There, that +piece of parchment represents houses in Sherton Abbas." + +"Yes, but--" She hesitated, looked at the fire, and went on in a low +voice: "If what has been arranged about me should come to anything, my +sphere will be quite a middling one." + +"Your sphere ought not to be middling," he exclaimed, not in passion, +but in earnest conviction. "You said you never felt more at home, more +in your element, anywhere than you did that afternoon with Mrs. +Charmond, when she showed you her house and all her knick-knacks, and +made you stay to tea so nicely in her drawing-room--surely you did!" + +"Yes, I did say so," admitted Grace. + +"Was it true?" + +"Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeling is less strong now, perhaps." + +"Ah! Now, though you don't see it, your feeling at the time was the +right one, because your mind and body were just in full and fresh +cultivation, so that going there with her was like meeting like. Since +then you've been biding with us, and have fallen back a little, and so +you don't feel your place so strongly. Now, do as I tell ye, and look +over these papers and see what you'll be worth some day. For they'll +all be yours, you know; who have I got to leave 'em to but you? +Perhaps when your education is backed up by what these papers +represent, and that backed up by another such a set and their owner, +men such as that fellow was this morning may think you a little more +than a buffer's girl." + +So she did as commanded, and opened each of the folded representatives +of hard cash that her father put before her. To sow in her heart +cravings for social position was obviously his strong desire, though in +direct antagonism to a better feeling which had hitherto prevailed with +him, and had, indeed, only succumbed that morning during the ramble. + +She wished that she was not his worldly hope; the responsibility of +such a position was too great. She had made it for herself mainly by +her appearance and attractive behavior to him since her return. "If I +had only come home in a shabby dress, and tried to speak roughly, this +might not have happened," she thought. She deplored less the fact than +the sad possibilities that might lie hidden therein. + +Her father then insisted upon her looking over his checkbook and +reading the counterfoils. This, also, she obediently did, and at last +came to two or three which had been drawn to defray some of the late +expenses of her clothes, board, and education. + +"I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses and wagons and corn," she +said, looking up sorrily. + +"I didn't want you to look at those; I merely meant to give you an idea +of my investment transactions. But if you do cost as much as they, +never mind. You'll yield a better return." + +"Don't think of me like that!" she begged. "A mere chattel." + +"A what? Oh, a dictionary word. Well, as that's in your line I don't +forbid it, even if it tells against me," he said, good-humoredly. And +he looked her proudly up and down. + +A few minutes later Grammer Oliver came to tell them that supper was +ready, and in giving the information she added, incidentally, "So we +shall soon lose the mistress of Hintock House for some time, I hear, +Maister Melbury. Yes, she's going off to foreign parts to-morrow, for +the rest of the winter months; and be-chok'd if I don't wish I could do +the same, for my wynd-pipe is furred like a flue." + +When the old woman had left the room, Melbury turned to his daughter +and said, "So, Grace, you've lost your new friend, and your chance of +keeping her company and writing her travels is quite gone from ye!" + +Grace said nothing. + +"Now," he went on, emphatically, "'tis Winterborne's affair has done +this. Oh yes, 'tis. So let me say one word. Promise me that you will +not meet him again without my knowledge." + +"I never do meet him, father, either without your knowledge or with it." + +"So much the better. I don't like the look of this at all. And I say +it not out of harshness to him, poor fellow, but out of tenderness to +you. For how could a woman, brought up delicately as you have been, +bear the roughness of a life with him?" + +She sighed; it was a sigh of sympathy with Giles, complicated by a +sense of the intractability of circumstances. + + +At that same hour, and almost at that same minute, there was a +conversation about Winterborne in progress in the village street, +opposite Mr. Melbury's gates, where Timothy Tangs the elder and Robert +Creedle had accidentally met. + +The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had heard what was all over the +parish, the skin of his face being drawn two ways on the +matter--towards brightness in respect of it as news, and towards +concern in respect of it as circumstance. + +"Why, that poor little lonesome thing, Marty South, is likely to lose +her father. He was almost well, but is much worse again. A man all +skin and grief he ever were, and if he leave Little Hintock for a +better land, won't it make some difference to your Maister Winterborne, +neighbor Creedle?" + +"Can I be a prophet in Israel?" said Creedle. "Won't it! I was only +shaping of such a thing yesterday in my poor, long-seeing way, and all +the work of the house upon my one shoulders! You know what it means? It +is upon John South's life that all Mr. Winterborne's houses hang. If +so be South die, and so make his decease, thereupon the law is that the +houses fall without the least chance of absolution into HER hands at +the House. I told him so; but the words of the faithful be only as +wind!" + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +The news was true. The life--the one fragile life--that had been used +as a measuring-tape of time by law, was in danger of being frayed away. +It was the last of a group of lives which had served this purpose, at +the end of whose breathings the small homestead occupied by South +himself, the larger one of Giles Winterborne, and half a dozen others +that had been in the possession of various Hintock village families for +the previous hundred years, and were now Winterborne's, would fall in +and become part of the encompassing estate. + +Yet a short two months earlier Marty's father, aged fifty-five years, +though something of a fidgety, anxious being, would have been looked on +as a man whose existence was so far removed from hazardous as any in +the parish, and as bidding fair to be prolonged for another quarter of +a century. + +Winterborne walked up and down his garden next day thinking of the +contingency. The sense that the paths he was pacing, the +cabbage-plots, the apple-trees, his dwelling, cider-cellar, +wring-house, stables, and weathercock, were all slipping away over his +head and beneath his feet, as if they were painted on a magic-lantern +slide, was curious. In spite of John South's late indisposition he had +not anticipated danger. To inquire concerning his health had been to +show less sympathy than to remain silent, considering the material +interest he possessed in the woodman's life, and he had, accordingly, +made a point of avoiding Marty's house. + +While he was here in the garden somebody came to fetch him. It was +Marty herself, and she showed her distress by her unconsciousness of a +cropped poll. + +"Father is still so much troubled in his mind about that tree," she +said. "You know the tree I mean, Mr. Winterborne? the tall one in +front of the house, that he thinks will blow down and kill us. Can you +come and see if you can persuade him out of his notion? I can do +nothing." + +He accompanied her to the cottage, and she conducted him upstairs. +John South was pillowed up in a chair between the bed and the window +exactly opposite the latter, towards which his face was turned. + +"Ah, neighbor Winterborne," he said. "I wouldn't have minded if my +life had only been my own to lose; I don't vallie it in much of itself, +and can let it go if 'tis required of me. But to think what 'tis worth +to you, a young man rising in life, that do trouble me! It seems a +trick of dishonesty towards ye to go off at fifty-five! I could bear +up, I know I could, if it were not for the tree--yes, the tree, 'tis +that's killing me. There he stands, threatening my life every minute +that the wind do blow. He'll come down upon us and squat us dead; and +what will ye do when the life on your property is taken away?" + +"Never you mind me--that's of no consequence," said Giles. "Think of +yourself alone." + +He looked out of the window in the direction of the woodman's gaze. +The tree was a tall elm, familiar to him from childhood, which stood at +a distance of two-thirds its own height from the front of South's +dwelling. Whenever the wind blew, as it did now, the tree rocked, +naturally enough; and the sight of its motion and sound of its sighs +had gradually bred the terrifying illusion in the woodman's mind that +it would descend and kill him. Thus he would sit all day, in spite of +persuasion, watching its every sway, and listening to the melancholy +Gregorian melodies which the air wrung out of it. This fear it +apparently was, rather than any organic disease which was eating away +the health of John South. + +As the tree waved, South waved his head, making it his flugel-man with +abject obedience. "Ah, when it was quite a small tree," he said, "and +I was a little boy, I thought one day of chopping it off with my hook +to make a clothes-line prop with. But I put off doing it, and then I +again thought that I would; but I forgot it, and didn't. And at last +it got too big, and now 'tis my enemy, and will be the death o' me. +Little did I think, when I let that sapling stay, that a time would +come when it would torment me, and dash me into my grave." + +"No, no," said Winterborne and Marty, soothingly. But they thought it +possible that it might hasten him into his grave, though in another way +than by falling. + +"I tell you what," added Winterborne, "I'll climb up this afternoon and +shroud off the lower boughs, and then it won't be so heavy, and the +wind won't affect it so." + +"She won't allow it--a strange woman come from nobody knows where--she +won't have it done." + +"You mean Mrs. Charmond? Oh, she doesn't know there's such a tree on +her estate. Besides, shrouding is not felling, and I'll risk that +much." + +He went out, and when afternoon came he returned, took a billhook from +the woodman's shed, and with a ladder climbed into the lower part of +the tree, where he began lopping off--"shrouding," as they called it at +Hintock--the lowest boughs. Each of these quivered under his attack, +bent, cracked, and fell into the hedge. Having cut away the lowest +tier, he stepped off the ladder, climbed a few steps higher, and +attacked those at the next level. Thus he ascended with the progress +of his work far above the top of the ladder, cutting away his perches +as he went, and leaving nothing but a bare stem below him. + +The work was troublesome, for the tree was large. The afternoon wore +on, turning dark and misty about four o'clock. From time to time Giles +cast his eyes across towards the bedroom window of South, where, by the +flickering fire in the chamber, he could see the old man watching him, +sitting motionless with a hand upon each arm of the chair. Beside him +sat Marty, also straining her eyes towards the skyey field of his +operations. + +A curious question suddenly occurred to Winterborne, and he stopped his +chopping. He was operating on another person's property to prolong the +years of a lease by whose termination that person would considerably +benefit. In that aspect of the case he doubted if he ought to go on. +On the other hand he was working to save a man's life, and this seemed +to empower him to adopt arbitrary measures. + +The wind had died down to a calm, and while he was weighing the +circumstances he saw coming along the road through the increasing mist +a figure which, indistinct as it was, he knew well. It was Grace +Melbury, on her way out from the house, probably for a short evening +walk before dark. He arranged himself for a greeting from her, since +she could hardly avoid passing immediately beneath the tree. + +But Grace, though she looked up and saw him, was just at that time too +full of the words of her father to give him any encouragement. The +years-long regard that she had had for him was not kindled by her +return into a flame of sufficient brilliancy to make her rebellious. +Thinking that she might not see him, he cried, "Miss Melbury, here I +am." + +She looked up again. She was near enough to see the expression of his +face, and the nails in his soles, silver-bright with constant walking. +But she did not reply; and dropping her glance again, went on. + +Winterborne's face grew strange; he mused, and proceeded automatically +with his work. Grace meanwhile had not gone far. She had reached a +gate, whereon she had leaned sadly, and whispered to herself, "What +shall I do?" + +A sudden fog came on, and she curtailed her walk, passing under the +tree again on her return. Again he addressed her. "Grace," he said, +when she was close to the trunk, "speak to me." She shook her head +without stopping, and went on to a little distance, where she stood +observing him from behind the hedge. + +Her coldness had been kindly meant. If it was to be done, she had said +to herself, it should be begun at once. While she stood out of +observation Giles seemed to recognize her meaning; with a sudden start +he worked on, climbing higher, and cutting himself off more and more +from all intercourse with the sublunary world. At last he had worked +himself so high up the elm, and the mist had so thickened, that he +could only just be discerned as a dark-gray spot on the light-gray sky: +he would have been altogether out of notice but for the stroke of his +billhook and the flight of a bough downward, and its crash upon the +hedge at intervals. + +It was not to be done thus, after all: plainness and candor were best. +She went back a third time; he did not see her now, and she lingeringly +gazed up at his unconscious figure, loath to put an end to any kind of +hope that might live on in him still. "Giles-- Mr. Winterborne," she +said. + +He was so high amid the fog that he did not hear. "Mr. Winterborne!" +she cried again, and this time he stopped, looked down, and replied. + +"My silence just now was not accident," she said, in an unequal voice. +"My father says it is best not to think too much of that--engagement, +or understanding between us, that you know of. I, too, think that upon +the whole he is right. But we are friends, you know, Giles, and almost +relations." + +"Very well," he answered, as if without surprise, in a voice which +barely reached down the tree. "I have nothing to say in objection--I +cannot say anything till I've thought a while." + +She added, with emotion in her tone, "For myself, I would have married +you--some day--I think. But I give way, for I see it would be unwise." + +He made no reply, but sat back upon a bough, placed his elbow in a +fork, and rested his head upon his hand. Thus he remained till the fog +and the night had completely enclosed him from her view. + +Grace heaved a divided sigh, with a tense pause between, and moved +onward, her heart feeling uncomfortably big and heavy, and her eyes +wet. Had Giles, instead of remaining still, immediately come down from +the tree to her, would she have continued in that filial acquiescent +frame of mind which she had announced to him as final? If it be true, +as women themselves have declared, that one of their sex is never so +much inclined to throw in her lot with a man for good and all as five +minutes after she has told him such a thing cannot be, the +probabilities are that something might have been done by the appearance +of Winterborne on the ground beside Grace. But he continued motionless +and silent in that gloomy Niflheim or fog-land which involved him, and +she proceeded on her way. + +The spot seemed now to be quite deserted. The light from South's +window made rays on the fog, but did not reach the tree. A quarter of +an hour passed, and all was blackness overhead. Giles had not yet come +down. + +Then the tree seemed to shiver, then to heave a sigh; a movement was +audible, and Winterborne dropped almost noiselessly to the ground. He +had thought the matter out, and having returned the ladder and billhook +to their places, pursued his way homeward. He would not allow this +incident to affect his outer conduct any more than the danger to his +leaseholds had done, and went to bed as usual. Two simultaneous +troubles do not always make a double trouble; and thus it came to pass +that Giles's practical anxiety about his houses, which would have been +enough to keep him awake half the night at any other time, was +displaced and not reinforced by his sentimental trouble about Grace +Melbury. This severance was in truth more like a burial of her than a +rupture with her; but he did not realize so much at present; even when +he arose in the morning he felt quite moody and stern: as yet the +second note in the gamut of such emotions, a tender regret for his +loss, had not made itself heard. + +A load of oak timber was to be sent away that morning to a builder +whose works were in a town many miles off. The proud trunks were taken +up from the silent spot which had known them through the buddings and +sheddings of their growth for the foregoing hundred years; chained down +like slaves to a heavy timber carriage with enormous red wheels, and +four of the most powerful of Melbury's horses were harnessed in front +to draw them. + +The horses wore their bells that day. There were sixteen to the team, +carried on a frame above each animal's shoulders, and tuned to scale, +so as to form two octaves, running from the highest note on the right +or off-side of the leader to the lowest on the left or near-side of the +shaft-horse. Melbury was among the last to retain horse-bells in that +neighborhood; for, living at Little Hintock, where the lanes yet +remained as narrow as before the days of turnpike roads, these +sound-signals were still as useful to him and his neighbors as they had +ever been in former times. Much backing was saved in the course of a +year by the warning notes they cast ahead; moreover, the tones of all +the teams in the district being known to the carters of each, they +could tell a long way off on a dark night whether they were about to +encounter friends or strangers. + +The fog of the previous evening still lingered so heavily over the +woods that the morning could not penetrate the trees till long after +its time. The load being a ponderous one, the lane crooked, and the +air so thick, Winterborne set out, as he often did, to accompany the +team as far as the corner, where it would turn into a wider road. + +So they rumbled on, shaking the foundations of the roadside cottages by +the weight of their progress, the sixteen bells chiming harmoniously +over all, till they had risen out of the valley and were descending +towards the more open route, the sparks rising from their creaking skid +and nearly setting fire to the dead leaves alongside. + +Then occurred one of the very incidents against which the bells were an +endeavor to guard. Suddenly there beamed into their eyes, quite close +to them, the two lamps of a carriage, shorn of rays by the fog. Its +approach had been quite unheard, by reason of their own noise. The +carriage was a covered one, while behind it could be discerned another +vehicle laden with luggage. + +Winterborne went to the head of the team, and heard the coachman +telling the carter that he must turn back. The carter declared that +this was impossible. + +"You can turn if you unhitch your string-horses," said the coachman. + +"It is much easier for you to turn than for us," said Winterborne. +"We've five tons of timber on these wheels if we've an ounce." + +"But I've another carriage with luggage at my back." + +Winterborne admitted the strength of the argument. "But even with +that," he said, "you can back better than we. And you ought to, for +you could hear our bells half a mile off." + +"And you could see our lights." + +"We couldn't, because of the fog." + +"Well, our time's precious," said the coachman, haughtily. "You are +only going to some trumpery little village or other in the +neighborhood, while we are going straight to Italy." + +"Driving all the way, I suppose," said Winterborne, sarcastically. + +The argument continued in these terms till a voice from the interior of +the carriage inquired what was the matter. It was a lady's. + +She was briefly informed of the timber people's obstinacy; and then +Giles could hear her telling the footman to direct the timber people to +turn their horses' heads. + +The message was brought, and Winterborne sent the bearer back to say +that he begged the lady's pardon, but that he could not do as she +requested; that though he would not assert it to be impossible, it was +impossible by comparison with the slight difficulty to her party to +back their light carriages. As fate would have it, the incident with +Grace Melbury on the previous day made Giles less gentle than he might +otherwise have shown himself, his confidence in the sex being rudely +shaken. + +In fine, nothing could move him, and the carriages were compelled to +back till they reached one of the sidings or turnouts constructed in +the bank for the purpose. Then the team came on ponderously, and the +clanging of its sixteen bells as it passed the discomfited carriages, +tilted up against the bank, lent a particularly triumphant tone to the +team's progress--a tone which, in point of fact, did not at all attach +to its conductor's feelings. + +Giles walked behind the timber, and just as he had got past the yet +stationary carriages he heard a soft voice say, "Who is that rude man? +Not Melbury?" The sex of the speaker was so prominent in the voice that +Winterborne felt a pang of regret. + +"No, ma'am. A younger man, in a smaller way of business in Little +Hintock. Winterborne is his name." + +Thus they parted company. "Why, Mr. Winterborne," said the wagoner, +when they were out of hearing, "that was She--Mrs. Charmond! Who'd ha' +thought it? What in the world can a woman that does nothing be +cock-watching out here at this time o' day for? Oh, going to Italy--yes +to be sure, I heard she was going abroad, she can't endure the winter +here." + +Winterborne was vexed at the incident; the more so that he knew Mr. +Melbury, in his adoration of Hintock House, would be the first to blame +him if it became known. But saying no more, he accompanied the load to +the end of the lane, and then turned back with an intention to call at +South's to learn the result of the experiment of the preceding evening. + +It chanced that a few minutes before this time Grace Melbury, who now +rose soon enough to breakfast with her father, in spite of the +unwontedness of the hour, had been commissioned by him to make the same +inquiry at South's. Marty had been standing at the door when Miss +Melbury arrived. Almost before the latter had spoken, Mrs. Charmond's +carriages, released from the obstruction up the lane, came bowling +along, and the two girls turned to regard the spectacle. + +Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but there was sufficient light for them +to discern her outline between the carriage windows. A noticeable +feature in her tournure was a magnificent mass of braided locks. + +"How well she looks this morning!" said Grace, forgetting Mrs. +Charmond's slight in her generous admiration. "Her hair so becomes her +worn that way. I have never seen any more beautiful!" + +"Nor have I, miss," said Marty, dryly, unconsciously stroking her crown. + +Grace watched the carriages with lingering regret till they were out of +sight. She then learned of Marty that South was no better. Before she +had come away Winterborne approached the house, but seeing that one of +the two girls standing on the door-step was Grace, he suddenly turned +back again and sought the shelter of his own home till she should have +gone away. + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne's mind +the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from +her to the fact that several cottages and other houses in the two +Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession in the event of +South's death. He marvelled what people could have been thinking about +in the past to invent such precarious tenures as these; still more, +what could have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and other village +people, to exchange their old copyholds for life-leases. But having +naturally succeeded to these properties through his father, he had done +his best to keep them in order, though he was much struck with his +father's negligence in not insuring South's life. + +After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went upstairs, +turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay between +the mattress and the sacking. In this he kept his leases, which had +remained there unopened ever since his father's death. It was the +usual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents. +Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them over. They were +ordinary leases for three lives, which a member of the South family, +some fifty years before this time, had accepted of the lord of the +manor in lieu of certain copyholds and other rights, in consideration +of having the dilapidated houses rebuilt by said lord. They had come +into his father's possession chiefly through his mother, who was a +South. + +Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter, which +Winterborne had never seen before. It bore a remote date, the +handwriting being that of some solicitor or agent, and the signature +the landholder's. It was to the effect that at any time before the +last of the stated lives should drop, Mr. Giles Winterborne, senior, or +his representative, should have the privilege of adding his own and his +son's life to the life remaining on payment of a merely nominal sum; +the concession being in consequence of the elder Winterborne's consent +to demolish one of the houses and relinquish its site, which stood at +an awkward corner of the lane and impeded the way. + +The house had been pulled down years before. Why Giles's father had +not taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his son's +lives it was impossible to say. The likelihood was that death alone +had hindered him in the execution of his project, as it surely was, the +elder Winterborne having been a man who took much pleasure in dealing +with house property in his small way. + +Since one of the Souths still survived, there was not much doubt that +Giles could do what his father had left undone, as far as his own life +was concerned. This possibility cheered him much, for by those houses +hung many things. Melbury's doubt of the young man's fitness to be the +husband of Grace had been based not a little on the precariousness of +his holdings in Little and Great Hintock. He resolved to attend to the +business at once, the fine for renewal being a sum that he could easily +muster. His scheme, however, could not be carried out in a day; and +meanwhile he would run up to South's, as he had intended to do, to +learn the result of the experiment with the tree. + +Marty met him at the door. "Well, Marty," he said; and was surprised +to read in her face that the case was not so hopeful as he had imagined. + +"I am sorry for your labor," she said. "It is all lost. He says the +tree seems taller than ever." + +Winterborne looked round at it. Taller the tree certainly did seem, +the gauntness of its now naked stem being more marked than before. + +"It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had done to it this +morning," she added. "He declares it will come down upon us and cleave +us, like 'the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.'" + +"Well; can I do anything else?" asked he. + +"The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down." + +"Oh--you've had the doctor?" + +"I didn't send for him. Mrs. Charmond, before she left, heard that +father was ill, and told him to attend him at her expense." + +"That was very good of her. And he says it ought to be cut down. We +mustn't cut it down without her knowledge, I suppose." + +He went up-stairs. There the old man sat, staring at the now gaunt +tree as if his gaze were frozen on to its trunk. Unluckily the tree +waved afresh by this time, a wind having sprung up and blown the fog +away, and his eyes turned with its wavings. + +They heard footsteps--a man's, but of a lighter type than usual. "There +is Doctor Fitzpiers again," she said, and descended. Presently his +tread was heard on the naked stairs. + +Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick-chamber just as a doctor is more or less +wont to do on such occasions, and pre-eminently when the room is that +of a humble cottager, looking round towards the patient with that +preoccupied gaze which so plainly reveals that he has wellnigh +forgotten all about the case and the whole circumstances since he +dismissed them from his mind at his last exit from the same apartment. +He nodded to Winterborne, with whom he was already a little acquainted, +recalled the case to his thoughts, and went leisurely on to where South +sat. + +Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed, handsome man. His eyes +were dark and impressive, and beamed with the light either of energy or +of susceptivity--it was difficult to say which; it might have been a +little of both. That quick, glittering, practical eye, sharp for the +surface of things and for nothing beneath it, he had not. But whether +his apparent depth of vision was real, or only an artistic accident of +his corporeal moulding, nothing but his deeds could reveal. + +His face was rather soft than stern, charming than grand, pale than +flushed; his nose--if a sketch of his features be de rigueur for a +person of his pretensions--was artistically beautiful enough to have +been worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy, and was hence +devoid of those knotty irregularities which often mean power; while the +double-cyma or classical curve of his mouth was not without a looseness +in its close. Nevertheless, either from his readily appreciative mien, +or his reflective manner, or the instinct towards profound things which +was said to possess him, his presence bespoke the philosopher rather +than the dandy or macaroni--an effect which was helped by the absence +of trinkets or other trivialities from his attire, though this was more +finished and up to date than is usually the case among rural +practitioners. + +Strict people of the highly respectable class, knowing a little about +him by report, might have said that he seemed likely to err rather in +the possession of too many ideas than too few; to be a dreamy 'ist of +some sort, or too deeply steeped in some false kind of 'ism. However +this may be, it will be seen that he was undoubtedly a somewhat rare +kind of gentleman and doctor to have descended, as from the clouds, +upon Little Hintock. + +"This is an extraordinary case," he said at last to Winterborne, after +examining South by conversation, look, and touch, and learning that the +craze about the elm was stronger than ever. "Come down-stairs, and I'll +tell you what I think." + +They accordingly descended, and the doctor continued, "The tree must be +cut down, or I won't answer for his life." + +"'Tis Mrs. Charmond's tree, and I suppose we must get permission?" said +Giles. "If so, as she is gone away, I must speak to her agent." + +"Oh--never mind whose tree it is--what's a tree beside a life! Cut it +down. I have not the honor of knowing Mrs. Charmond as yet, but I am +disposed to risk that much with her." + +"'Tis timber," rejoined Giles, more scrupulous than he would have been +had not his own interests stood so closely involved. "They'll never +fell a stick about here without it being marked first, either by her or +the agent." + +"Then we'll inaugurate a new era forthwith. How long has he complained +of the tree?" asked the doctor of Marty. + +"Weeks and weeks, sir. The shape of it seems to haunt him like an evil +spirit. He says that it is exactly his own age, that it has got human +sense, and sprouted up when he was born on purpose to rule him, and +keep him as its slave. Others have been like it afore in Hintock." + +They could hear South's voice up-stairs "Oh, he's rocking this way; he +must come! And then my poor life, that's worth houses upon houses, will +be squashed out o' me. Oh! oh!" + +"That's how he goes on," she added. "And he'll never look anywhere +else but out of the window, and scarcely have the curtains drawn." + +"Down with it, then, and hang Mrs. Charmond," said Mr. Fitzpiers. "The +best plan will be to wait till the evening, when it is dark, or early +in the morning before he is awake, so that he doesn't see it fall, for +that would terrify him worse than ever. Keep the blind down till I +come, and then I'll assure him, and show him that his trouble is over." + +The doctor then departed, and they waited till the evening. When it +was dusk, and the curtains drawn, Winterborne directed a couple of +woodmen to bring a crosscut-saw, and the tall, threatening tree was +soon nearly off at its base. He would not fell it completely then, on +account of the possible crash, but next morning, before South was +awake, they went and lowered it cautiously, in a direction away from +the cottage. It was a business difficult to do quite silently; but it +was done at last, and the elm of the same birth-year as the woodman's +lay stretched upon the ground. The weakest idler that passed could now +set foot on marks formerly made in the upper forks by the shoes of +adventurous climbers only; once inaccessible nests could be examined +microscopically; and on swaying extremities where birds alone had +perched, the by-standers sat down. + +As soon as it was broad daylight the doctor came, and Winterborne +entered the house with him. Marty said that her father was wrapped up +and ready, as usual, to be put into his chair. They ascended the +stairs, and soon seated him. He began at once to complain of the tree, +and the danger to his life and Winterborne's house-property in +consequence. + +The doctor signalled to Giles, who went and drew back the printed +cotton curtains. "'Tis gone, see," said Mr. Fitzpiers. + +As soon as the old man saw the vacant patch of sky in place of the +branched column so familiar to his gaze, he sprang up, speechless, his +eyes rose from their hollows till the whites showed all round; he fell +back, and a bluish whiteness overspread him. + +Greatly alarmed, they put him on the bed. As soon as he came a little +out of his fit, he gasped, "Oh, it is gone!--where?--where?" + +His whole system seemed paralyzed by amazement. They were +thunder-struck at the result of the experiment, and did all they could. +Nothing seemed to avail. Giles and Fitzpiers went and came, but +uselessly. He lingered through the day, and died that evening as the +sun went down. + +"D--d if my remedy hasn't killed him!" murmured the doctor. + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +When Melbury heard what had happened he seemed much moved, and walked +thoughtfully about the premises. On South's own account he was +genuinely sorry; and on Winterborne's he was the more grieved in that +this catastrophe had so closely followed the somewhat harsh dismissal +of Giles as the betrothed of his daughter. + +He was quite angry with circumstances for so heedlessly inflicting on +Giles a second trouble when the needful one inflicted by himself was +all that the proper order of events demanded. "I told Giles's father +when he came into those houses not to spend too much money on lifehold +property held neither for his own life nor his son's," he exclaimed. +"But he wouldn't listen to me. And now Giles has to suffer for it." + +"Poor Giles!" murmured Grace. + +"Now, Grace, between us two, it is very, very remarkable. It is almost +as if I had foreseen this; and I am thankful for your escape, though I +am sincerely sorry for Giles. Had we not dismissed him already, we +could hardly have found it in our hearts to dismiss him now. So I say, +be thankful. I'll do all I can for him as a friend; but as a pretender +to the position of my son-in law, that can never be thought of more." + +And yet at that very moment the impracticability to which poor +Winterborne's suit had been reduced was touching Grace's heart to a +warmer sentiment on his behalf than she had felt for years concerning +him. + +He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone in the old familiar house which +had ceased to be his, taking a calm if somewhat dismal survey of +affairs. The pendulum of the clock bumped every now and then against +one side of the case in which it swung, as the muffled drum to his +worldly march. Looking out of the window he could perceive that a +paralysis had come over Creedle's occupation of manuring the garden, +owing, obviously, to a conviction that they might not be living there +long enough to profit by next season's crop. + +He looked at the leases again and the letter attached. There was no +doubt that he had lost his houses by an accident which might easily +have been circumvented if he had known the true conditions of his +holding. The time for performance had now lapsed in strict law; but +might not the intention be considered by the landholder when she became +aware of the circumstances, and his moral right to retain the holdings +for the term of his life be conceded? + +His heart sank within him when he perceived that despite all the legal +reciprocities and safeguards prepared and written, the upshot of the +matter amounted to this, that it depended upon the mere caprice--good +or ill--of the woman he had met the day before in such an unfortunate +way, whether he was to possess his houses for life or no. + +While he was sitting and thinking a step came to the door, and Melbury +appeared, looking very sorry for his position. Winterborne welcomed him +by a word and a look, and went on with his examination of the +parchments. His visitor sat down. + +"Giles," he said, "this is very awkward, and I am sorry for it. What +are you going to do?" + +Giles informed him of the real state of affairs, and how barely he had +missed availing himself of his chance of renewal. + +"What a misfortune! Why was this neglected? Well, the best thing you +can do is to write and tell her all about it, and throw yourself upon +her generosity." + +"I would rather not," murmured Giles. + +"But you must," said Melbury. + +In short, he argued so cogently that Giles allowed himself to be +persuaded, and the letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and sent to +Hintock House, whence, as he knew, it would at once be forwarded to her. + +Melbury feeling that he had done so good an action in coming as almost +to extenuate his previous arbitrary conduct to nothing, went home; and +Giles was left alone to the suspense of waiting for a reply from the +divinity who shaped the ends of the Hintock population. By this time +all the villagers knew of the circumstances, and being wellnigh like +one family, a keen interest was the result all round. + +Everybody thought of Giles; nobody thought of Marty. Had any of them +looked in upon her during those moonlight nights which preceded the +burial of her father, they would have seen the girl absolutely alone in +the house with the dead man. Her own chamber being nearest the stairs, +the coffin had been placed there for convenience; and at a certain hour +of the night, when the moon arrived opposite the window, its beams +streamed across the still profile of South, sublimed by the august +presence of death, and onward a few feet farther upon the face of his +daughter, lying in her little bed in the stillness of a repose almost +as dignified as that of her companion--the repose of a guileless soul +that had nothing more left on earth to lose, except a life which she +did not overvalue. + +South was buried, and a week passed, and Winterborne watched for a +reply from Mrs. Charmond. Melbury was very sanguine as to its tenor; +but Winterborne had not told him of the encounter with her carriage, +when, if ever he had heard an affronted tone on a woman's lips, he had +heard it on hers. + +The postman's time for passing was just after Melbury's men had +assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, who when not busy on his +own account would lend assistance there, used to go out into the lane +every morning and meet the post-man at the end of one of the green +rides through the hazel copse, in the straight stretch of which his +laden figure could be seen a long way off. Grace also was very +anxious; more anxious than her father; more, perhaps, than Winterborne +himself. This anxiety led her into the spar-house on some pretext or +other almost every morning while they were awaiting the reply. + +Fitzpiers too, though he did not personally appear, was much +interested, and not altogether easy in his mind; for he had been +informed by an authority of what he had himself conjectured, that if +the tree had been allowed to stand, the old man would have gone on +complaining, but might have lived for twenty years. + +Eleven times had Winterborne gone to that corner of the ride, and +looked up its long straight slope through the wet grays of winter dawn. +But though the postman's bowed figure loomed in view pretty regularly, +he brought nothing for Giles. On the twelfth day the man of missives, +while yet in the extreme distance, held up his hand, and Winterborne +saw a letter in it. He took it into the spar-house before he broke the +seal, and those who were there gathered round him while he read, Grace +looking in at the door. + +The letter was not from Mrs. Charmond herself, but her agent at +Sherton. Winterborne glanced it over and looked up. + +"It's all over," he said. + +"Ah!" said they altogether. + +"Her lawyer is instructed to say that Mrs. Charmond sees no reason for +disturbing the natural course of things, particularly as she +contemplates pulling the houses down," he said, quietly. + +"Only think of that!" said several. + +Winterborne had turned away, and said vehemently to himself, "Then let +her pull 'em down, and be d--d to her!" + +Creedle looked at him with a face of seven sorrows, saying, "Ah, 'twas +that sperrit that lost 'em for ye, maister!" + +Winterborne subdued his feelings, and from that hour, whatever they +were, kept them entirely to himself. There could be no doubt that, up +to this last moment, he had nourished a feeble hope of regaining Grace +in the event of this negotiation turning out a success. Not being +aware of the fact that her father could have settled upon her a fortune +sufficient to enable both to live in comfort, he deemed it now an +absurdity to dream any longer of such a vanity as making her his wife, +and sank into silence forthwith. + +Yet whatever the value of taciturnity to a man among strangers, it is +apt to express more than talkativeness when he dwells among friends. +The countryman who is obliged to judge the time of day from changes in +external nature sees a thousand successive tints and traits in the +landscape which are never discerned by him who hears the regular chime +of a clock, because they are never in request. In like manner do we +use our eyes on our taciturn comrade. The infinitesimal movement of +muscle, curve, hair, and wrinkle, which when accompanied by a voice +goes unregarded, is watched and translated in the lack of it, till +virtually the whole surrounding circle of familiars is charged with the +reserved one's moods and meanings. + +This was the condition of affairs between Winterborne and his neighbors +after his stroke of ill-luck. He held his tongue; and they observed +him, and knew that he was discomposed. + +Mr. Melbury, in his compunction, thought more of the matter than any +one else, except his daughter. Had Winterborne been going on in the +old fashion, Grace's father could have alluded to his disapproval of +the alliance every day with the greatest frankness; but to speak any +further on the subject he could not find it in his heart to do now. He +hoped that Giles would of his own accord make some final announcement +that he entirely withdrew his pretensions to Grace, and so get the +thing past and done with. For though Giles had in a measure acquiesced +in the wish of her family, he could make matters unpleasant if he chose +to work upon Grace; and hence, when Melbury saw the young man +approaching along the road one day, he kept friendliness and frigidity +exactly balanced in his eye till he could see whether Giles's manner +was presumptive or not. + +His manner was that of a man who abandoned all claims. "I am glad to +meet ye, Mr. Melbury," he said, in a low voice, whose quality he +endeavored to make as practical as possible. "I am afraid I shall not +be able to keep that mare I bought, and as I don't care to sell her, I +should like--if you don't object--to give her to Miss Melbury. The +horse is very quiet, and would be quite safe for her." + +Mr. Melbury was rather affected at this. "You sha'n't hurt your pocket +like that on our account, Giles. Grace shall have the horse, but I'll +pay you what you gave for her, and any expense you may have been put to +for her keep." + +He would not hear of any other terms, and thus it was arranged. They +were now opposite Melbury's house, and the timber-merchant pressed +Winterborne to enter, Grace being out of the way. + +"Pull round the settle, Giles," said the timber-merchant, as soon as +they were within. "I should like to have a serious talk with you." + +Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne frankly, and in quite a +friendly way. He declared that he did not like to be hard on a man +when he was in difficulty; but he really did not see how Winterborne +could marry his daughter now, without even a house to take her to. + +Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness of his situation. But from a +momentary feeling that he would like to know Grace's mind from her own +lips, he did not speak out positively there and then. He accordingly +departed somewhat abruptly, and went home to consider whether he would +seek to bring about a meeting with her. + +In the evening, while he sat quietly pondering, he fancied that he +heard a scraping on the wall outside his house. The boughs of a +monthly rose which grew there made such a noise sometimes, but as no +wind was stirring he knew that it could not be the rose-tree. He took +up the candle and went out. Nobody was near. As he turned, the light +flickered on the whitewashed rough case of the front, and he saw words +written thereon in charcoal, which he read as follows: + + "O Giles, you've lost your dwelling-place, + And therefore, Giles, you'll lose your Grace." + + +Giles went in-doors. He had his suspicions as to the scrawler of those +lines, but he could not be sure. What suddenly filled his heart far +more than curiosity about their authorship was a terrible belief that +they were turning out to be true, try to see Grace as he might. They +decided the question for him. He sat down and wrote a formal note to +Melbury, in which he briefly stated that he was placed in such a +position as to make him share to the full Melbury's view of his own and +his daughter's promise, made some years before; to wish that it should +be considered as cancelled, and they themselves quite released from any +obligation on account of it. + +Having fastened up this their plenary absolution, he determined to get +it out of his hands and have done with it; to which end he went off to +Melbury's at once. It was now so late that the family had all retired; +he crept up to the house, thrust the note under the door, and stole +away as silently as he had come. + +Melbury himself was the first to rise the next morning, and when he had +read the letter his relief was great. "Very honorable of Giles, very +honorable," he kept saying to himself. "I shall not forget him. Now +to keep her up to her own true level." + +It happened that Grace went out for an early ramble that morning, +passing through the door and gate while her father was in the +spar-house. To go in her customary direction she could not avoid +passing Winterborne's house. The morning sun was shining flat upon its +white surface, and the words, which still remained, were immediately +visible to her. She read them. Her face flushed to crimson. She +could see Giles and Creedle talking together at the back; the charred +spar-gad with which the lines had been written lay on the ground +beneath the wall. Feeling pretty sure that Winterborne would observe +her action, she quickly went up to the wall, rubbed out "lose" and +inserted "keep" in its stead. Then she made the best of her way home +without looking behind her. Giles could draw an inference now if he +chose. + +There could not be the least doubt that gentle Grace was warming to +more sympathy with, and interest in, Giles Winterborne than ever she +had done while he was her promised lover; that since his misfortune +those social shortcomings of his, which contrasted so awkwardly with +her later experiences of life, had become obscured by the generous +revival of an old romantic attachment to him. Though mentally trained +and tilled into foreignness of view, as compared with her youthful +time, Grace was not an ambitious girl, and might, if left to herself, +have declined Winterborne without much discontent or unhappiness. Her +feelings just now were so far from latent that the writing on the wall +had thus quickened her to an unusual rashness. + +Having returned from her walk she sat at breakfast silently. When her +step-mother had left the room she said to her father, "I have made up +my mind that I should like my engagement to Giles to continue, for the +present at any rate, till I can see further what I ought to do." + +Melbury looked much surprised. + +"Nonsense," he said, sharply. "You don't know what you are talking +about. Look here." + +He handed across to her the letter received from Giles. + +She read it, and said no more. Could he have seen her write on the +wall? She did not know. Fate, it seemed, would have it this way, and +there was nothing to do but to acquiesce. + +It was a few hours after this that Winterborne, who, curiously enough, +had NOT perceived Grace writing, was clearing away the tree from the +front of South's late dwelling. He saw Marty standing in her door-way, +a slim figure in meagre black, almost without womanly contours as yet. +He went up to her and said, "Marty, why did you write that on my wall +last night? It WAS you, you know." + +"Because it was the truth. I didn't mean to let it stay, Mr. +Winterborne; but when I was going to rub it out you came, and I was +obliged to run off." + +"Having prophesied one thing, why did you alter it to another? Your +predictions can't be worth much." + +"I have not altered it." + +"But you have." + +"No." + +"It is altered. Go and see." + +She went, and read that, in spite of losing his dwelling-place, he +would KEEP his Grace. Marty came back surprised. + +"Well, I never," she said. "Who can have made such nonsense of it?" + +"Who, indeed?" said he. + +"I have rubbed it all out, as the point of it is quite gone." + +"You'd no business to rub it out. I didn't tell you to. I meant to +let it stay a little longer." + +"Some idle boy did it, no doubt," she murmured. + +As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetrator was +unsuspected, Winterborne said no more, and dismissed the matter from +his mind. + +From this day of his life onward for a considerable time, Winterborne, +though not absolutely out of his house as yet, retired into the +background of human life and action thereabout--a feat not particularly +difficult of performance anywhere when the doer has the assistance of a +lost prestige. Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her write, made no +further sign, and the frail bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly +launched was stranded and lost. + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the hill, in a house of much less +pretension, both as to architecture and as to magnitude, than the +timber-merchant's. The latter had, without doubt, been once the +manorial residence appertaining to the snug and modest domain of Little +Hintock, of which the boundaries were now lost by its absorption with +others of its kind into the adjoining estate of Mrs. Charmond. Though +the Melburys themselves were unaware of the fact, there was every +reason to believe--at least so the parson said--that the owners of that +little manor had been Melbury's own ancestors, the family name +occurring in numerous documents relating to transfers of land about the +time of the civil wars. + +Mr. Fitzpiers's dwelling, on the contrary, was small, cottage-like, and +comparatively modern. It had been occupied, and was in part occupied +still, by a retired farmer and his wife, who, on the surgeon's arrival +in quest of a home, had accommodated him by receding from their front +rooms into the kitchen quarter, whence they administered to his wants, +and emerged at regular intervals to receive from him a not unwelcome +addition to their income. + +The cottage and its garden were so regular in their arrangement that +they might have been laid out by a Dutch designer of the time of +William and Mary. In a low, dense hedge, cut to wedge-shape, was a +door over which the hedge formed an arch, and from the inside of the +door a straight path, bordered with clipped box, ran up the slope of +the garden to the porch, which was exactly in the middle of the house +front, with two windows on each side. Right and left of the path were +first a bed of gooseberry bushes; next of currant; next of raspberry; +next of strawberry; next of old-fashioned flowers; at the corners +opposite the porch being spheres of box resembling a pair of school +globes. Over the roof of the house could be seen the orchard, on yet +higher ground, and behind the orchard the forest-trees, reaching up to +the crest of the hill. + +Opposite the garden door and visible from the parlor window was a +swing-gate leading into a field, across which there ran a footpath. +The swing-gate had just been repainted, and on one fine afternoon, +before the paint was dry, and while gnats were still dying thereon, the +surgeon was standing in his sitting-room abstractedly looking out at +the different pedestrians who passed and repassed along that route. +Being of a philosophical stamp, he perceived that the character of each +of these travellers exhibited itself in a somewhat amusing manner by +his or her method of handling the gate. + +As regarded the men, there was not much variety: they gave the gate a +kick and passed through. The women were more contrasting. To them the +sticky wood-work was a barricade, a disgust, a menace, a treachery, as +the case might be. + +The first that he noticed was a bouncing woman with her skirts tucked +up and her hair uncombed. She grasped the gate without looking, giving +it a supplementary push with her shoulder, when the white imprint drew +from her an exclamation in language not too refined. She went to the +green bank, sat down and rubbed herself in the grass, cursing the while. + +"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the doctor. + +The next was a girl, with her hair cropped short, in whom the surgeon +recognized the daughter of his late patient, the woodman South. +Moreover, a black bonnet that she wore by way of mourning unpleasantly +reminded him that he had ordered the felling of a tree which had caused +her parent's death and Winterborne's losses. She walked and thought, +and not recklessly; but her preoccupation led her to grasp +unsuspectingly the bar of the gate, and touch it with her arm. +Fitzpiers felt sorry that she should have soiled that new black frock, +poor as it was, for it was probably her only one. She looked at her +hand and arm, seemed but little surprised, wiped off the disfigurement +with an almost unmoved face, and as if without abandoning her original +thoughts. Thus she went on her way. + +Then there came over the green quite a different sort of personage. +She walked as delicately as if she had been bred in town, and as firmly +as if she had been bred in the country; she seemed one who dimly knew +her appearance to be attractive, but who retained some of the charm of +being ignorant of that fact by forgetting it in a general pensiveness. +She approached the gate. To let such a creature touch it even with a +tip of her glove was to Fitzpiers almost like letting her proceed to +tragical self-destruction. He jumped up and looked for his hat, but +was unable to find the right one; glancing again out of the window he +saw that he was too late. Having come up, she stopped, looked at the +gate, picked up a little stick, and using it as a bayonet, pushed open +the obstacle without touching it at all. + +He steadily watched her till she had passed out of sight, recognizing +her as the very young lady whom he had seen once before and been unable +to identify. Whose could that emotional face be? All the others he had +seen in Hintock as yet oppressed him with their crude rusticity; the +contrast offered by this suggested that she hailed from elsewhere. + +Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first time of +seeing her; but he now went a little further with them, and considered +that as there had been no carriage seen or heard lately in that spot +she could not have come a very long distance. She must be somebody +staying at Hintock House? Possibly Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard +so much--at any rate an inmate, and this probability was sufficient to +set a mild radiance in the surgeon's somewhat dull sky. + +Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had been perusing. It happened to be +that of a German metaphysician, for the doctor was not a practical man, +except by fits, and much preferred the ideal world to the real, and the +discovery of principles to their application. The young lady remained +in his thoughts. He might have followed her; but he was not +constitutionally active, and preferred a conjectural pursuit. However, +when he went out for a ramble just before dusk he insensibly took the +direction of Hintock House, which was the way that Grace had been +walking, it having happened that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond that +day, and she had walked to the brow of a hill whence the house could be +seen, returning by another route. + +Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, overlooking the +manor-house. The shutters were shut, and only one chimney smoked. The +mere aspect of the place was enough to inform him that Mrs. Charmond +had gone away and that nobody else was staying there. Fitzpiers felt a +vague disappointment that the young lady was not Mrs. Charmond, of whom +he had heard so much; and without pausing longer to gaze at a carcass +from which the spirit had flown, he bent his steps homeward. + +Later in the evening Fitzpiers was summoned to visit a cottage patient +about two miles distant. Like the majority of young practitioners in +his position he was far from having assumed the dignity of being driven +his rounds by a servant in a brougham that flashed the sunlight like a +mirror; his way of getting about was by means of a gig which he drove +himself, hitching the rein of the horse to the gate post, shutter hook, +or garden paling of the domicile under visitation, or giving pennies to +little boys to hold the animal during his stay--pennies which were well +earned when the cases to be attended were of a certain cheerful kind +that wore out the patience of the little boys. + +On this account of travelling alone, the night journeys which Fitzpiers +had frequently to take were dismal enough, a serious apparent +perversity in nature ruling that whenever there was to be a birth in a +particularly inaccessible and lonely place, that event should occur in +the night. The surgeon, having been of late years a town man, hated +the solitary midnight woodland. He was not altogether skilful with the +reins, and it often occurred to his mind that if in some remote depths +of the trees an accident were to happen, the fact of his being alone +might be the death of him. Hence he made a practice of picking up any +countryman or lad whom he chanced to pass by, and under the disguise of +treating him to a nice drive, obtained his companionship on the +journey, and his convenient assistance in opening gates. + +The doctor had started on his way out of the village on the night in +question when the light of his lamps fell upon the musing form of +Winterborne, walking leisurely along, as if he had no object in life. +Winterborne was a better class of companion than the doctor usually +could get, and he at once pulled up and asked him if he would like a +drive through the wood that fine night. + +Giles seemed rather surprised at the doctor's friendliness, but said +that he had no objection, and accordingly mounted beside Mr. Fitzpiers. + +They drove along under the black boughs which formed a network upon the +stars, all the trees of a species alike in one respect, and no two of +them alike in another. Looking up as they passed under a horizontal +bough they sometimes saw objects like large tadpoles lodged +diametrically across it, which Giles explained to be pheasants there at +roost; and they sometimes heard the report of a gun, which reminded him +that others knew what those tadpole shapes represented as well as he. + +Presently the doctor said what he had been going to say for some time: + +"Is there a young lady staying in this neighborhood--a very attractive +girl--with a little white boa round her neck, and white fur round her +gloves?" + +Winterborne of course knew in a moment that Grace, whom he had caught +the doctor peering at, was represented by these accessaries. With a +wary grimness, partly in his character, partly induced by the +circumstances, he evaded an answer by saying, "I saw a young lady +talking to Mrs. Charmond the other day; perhaps it was she." + +Fitzpiers concluded from this that Winterborne had not seen him looking +over the hedge. "It might have been," he said. "She is quite a +gentlewoman--the one I mean. She cannot be a permanent resident in +Hintock or I should have seen her before. Nor does she look like one." + +"She is not staying at Hintock House?" + +"No; it is closed." + +"Then perhaps she is staying at one of the cottages, or farmhouses?" + +"Oh no--you mistake. She was a different sort of girl altogether." As +Giles was nobody, Fitzpiers treated him accordingly, and apostrophized +the night in continuation: + + "'She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, + A power, that from its objects scarcely drew + One impulse of her being--in her lightness + Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew, + Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue, + To nourish some far desert: she did seem + Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew, + Like the bright shade of some immortal dream + Which walks, when tempests sleep, the wave of life's dark stream.'" + + +The consummate charm of the lines seemed to Winterborne, though he +divined that they were a quotation, to be somehow the result of his +lost love's charms upon Fitzpiers. + +"You seem to be mightily in love with her, sir," he said, with a +sensation of heart-sickness, and more than ever resolved not to mention +Grace by name. + +"Oh no--I am not that, Winterborne; people living insulated, as I do by +the solitude of this place, get charged with emotive fluid like a +Leyden-jar with electric, for want of some conductor at hand to +disperse it. Human love is a subjective thing--the essence itself of +man, as that great thinker Spinoza the philosopher says--ipsa hominis +essentia--it is joy accompanied by an idea which we project against any +suitable object in the line of our vision, just as the rainbow iris is +projected against an oak, ash, or elm tree indifferently. So that if +any other young lady had appeared instead of the one who did appear, I +should have felt just the same interest in her, and have quoted +precisely the same lines from Shelley about her, as about this one I +saw. Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!" + +"Well, it is what we call being in love down in these parts, whether or +no," said Winterborne. + +"You are right enough if you admit that I am in love with something in +my own head, and no thing in itself outside it at all." + +"Is it part of a country doctor's duties to learn that view of things, +may I ask, sir?" said Winterborne, adopting the Socratic {Greek word: +irony} with such well-assumed simplicity that Fitzpiers answered, +readily, + +"Oh no. The real truth is, Winterborne, that medical practice in +places like this is a very rule-of-thumb matter; a bottle of bitter +stuff for this and that old woman--the bitterer the better--compounded +from a few simple stereotyped prescriptions; occasional attendance at +births, where mere presence is almost sufficient, so healthy and strong +are the people; and a lance for an abscess now and then. Investigation +and experiment cannot be carried on without more appliances than one +has here--though I have attempted it a little." + +Giles did not enter into this view of the case; what he had been struck +with was the curious parallelism between Mr. Fitzpiers's manner and +Grace's, as shown by the fact of both of them straying into a subject +of discourse so engrossing to themselves that it made them forget it +was foreign to him. + +Nothing further passed between himself and the doctor in relation to +Grace till they were on their way back. They had stopped at a way-side +inn for a glass of brandy and cider hot, and when they were again in +motion, Fitzpiers, possibly a little warmed by the liquor, resumed the +subject by saying, "I should like very much to know who that young lady +was." + +"What difference can it make, if she's only the tree your rainbow falls +on?" + +"Ha! ha! True." + +"You have no wife, sir?" + +"I have no wife, and no idea of one. I hope to do better things than +marry and settle in Hintock. Not but that it is well for a medical man +to be married, and sometimes, begad, 'twould be pleasant enough in this +place, with the wind roaring round the house, and the rain and the +boughs beating against it. I hear that you lost your life-holds by the +death of South?" + +"I did. I lost in more ways than one." + +They had reached the top of Hintock Lane or Street, if it could be +called such where three-quarters of the road-side consisted of copse +and orchard. One of the first houses to be passed was Melbury's. A +light was shining from a bedroom window facing lengthwise of the lane. +Winterborne glanced at it, and saw what was coming. He had withheld an +answer to the doctor's inquiry to hinder his knowledge of Grace; but, +as he thought to himself, "who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who +hath bound the waters in a garment?" he could not hinder what was +doomed to arrive, and might just as well have been outspoken. As they +came up to the house, Grace's figure was distinctly visible, drawing +the two white curtains together which were used here instead of blinds. + +"Why, there she is!" said Fitzpiers. "How does she come there?" + +"In the most natural way in the world. It is her home. Mr. Melbury is +her father." + +"Oh, indeed--indeed--indeed! How comes he to have a daughter of that +stamp?" + +Winterborne laughed coldly. "Won't money do anything," he said, "if +you've promising material to work upon? Why shouldn't a Hintock girl, +taken early from home, and put under proper instruction, become as +finished as any other young lady, if she's got brains and good looks to +begin with?" + +"No reason at all why she shouldn't," murmured the surgeon, with +reflective disappointment. "Only I didn't anticipate quite that kind +of origin for her." + +"And you think an inch or two less of her now." There was a little +tremor in Winterborne's voice as he spoke. + +"Well," said the doctor, with recovered warmth, "I am not so sure that +I think less of her. At first it was a sort of blow; but, dammy! I'll +stick up for her. She's charming, every inch of her!" + +"So she is," said Winterborne, "but not to me." + +From this ambiguous expression of the reticent woodlander's, Dr. +Fitzpiers inferred that Giles disliked Miss Melbury because of some +haughtiness in her bearing towards him, and had, on that account, +withheld her name. The supposition did not tend to diminish his +admiration for her. + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +Grace's exhibition of herself, in the act of pulling-to the +window-curtains, had been the result of an unfortunate incident in the +house that day--nothing less than the illness of Grammer Oliver, a +woman who had never till now lain down for such a reason in her life. +Like others to whom unbroken years of health has made the idea of +keeping their bed almost as repugnant as death itself, she had +continued on foot till she literally fell on the floor; and though she +had, as yet, been scarcely a day off duty, she had sickened into quite +a different personage from the independent Grammer of the yard and +spar-house. Ill as she was, on one point she was firm. On no account +would she see a doctor; in other words, Fitzpiers. + +The room in which Grace had been discerned was not her own, but the old +woman's. On the girl's way to bed she had received a message from +Grammer, to the effect that she would much like to speak to her that +night. + +Grace entered, and set the candle on a low chair beside the bed, so +that the profile of Grammer as she lay cast itself in a keen shadow +upon the whitened wall, her large head being still further magnified by +an enormous turban, which was, really, her petticoat wound in a wreath +round her temples. Grace put the room a little in order, and +approaching the sick woman, said, "I am come, Grammer, as you wish. Do +let us send for the doctor before it gets later." + +"I will not have him," said Grammer Oliver, decisively. + +"Then somebody to sit up with you." + +"Can't abear it! No; I wanted to see you, Miss Grace, because 'ch have +something on my mind. Dear Miss Grace, I TOOK THAT MONEY OF THE +DOCTOR, AFTER ALL!" + +"What money?" + +"The ten pounds." + +Grace did not quite understand. + +"The ten pounds he offered me for my head, because I've a large brain. +I signed a paper when I took the money, not feeling concerned about it +at all. I have not liked to tell ye that it was really settled with +him, because you showed such horror at the notion. Well, having +thought it over more at length, I wish I hadn't done it; and it weighs +upon my mind. John South's death of fear about the tree makes me think +that I shall die of this....'Ch have been going to ask him again to let +me off, but I hadn't the face." + +"Why?" + +"I've spent some of the money--more'n two pounds o't. It do wherrit me +terribly; and I shall die o' the thought of that paper I signed with my +holy cross, as South died of his trouble." + + "If you ask him to burn the paper he will, I'm sure, and think no +more of it." + + "'Ch have done it once already, miss. But he laughed cruel like. +'Yours is such a fine brain, Grammer,' 'er said, 'that science couldn't +afford to lose you. Besides, you've taken my money.'...Don't let your +father know of this, please, on no account whatever!" + +"No, no. I will let you have the money to return to him." + +Grammer rolled her head negatively upon the pillow. "Even if I should +be well enough to take it to him, he won't like it. Though why he +should so particular want to look into the works of a poor old woman's +head-piece like mine when there's so many other folks about, I don't +know. I know how he'll answer me: 'A lonely person like you, Grammer,' +er woll say. 'What difference is it to you what becomes of ye when the +breath's out of your body?' Oh, it do trouble me! If you only knew how +he do chevy me round the chimmer in my dreams, you'd pity me. How I +could do it I can't think! But 'ch was always so rackless!...If I only +had anybody to plead for me!" + +"Mrs. Melbury would, I am sure." + +"Ay; but he wouldn't hearken to she! It wants a younger face than hers +to work upon such as he." + +Grace started with comprehension. "You don't think he would do it for +me?" she said. + +"Oh, wouldn't he!" + +"I couldn't go to him, Grammer, on any account. I don't know him at +all." + +"Ah, if I were a young lady," said the artful Grammer, "and could save +a poor old woman's skellington from a heathen doctor instead of a +Christian grave, I would do it, and be glad to. But nobody will do +anything for a poor old familiar friend but push her out of the way." + +"You are very ungrateful, Grammer, to say that. But you are ill, I +know, and that's why you speak so. Now believe me, you are not going +to die yet. Remember you told me yourself that you meant to keep him +waiting many a year." + +"Ay, one can joke when one is well, even in old age; but in sickness +one's gayety falters to grief; and that which seemed small looks large; +and the grim far-off seems near." + +Grace's eyes had tears in them. "I don't like to go to him on such an +errand, Grammer," she said, brokenly. "But I will, to ease your mind." + +It was with extreme reluctance that Grace cloaked herself next morning +for the undertaking. She was all the more indisposed to the journey by +reason of Grammer's allusion to the effect of a pretty face upon Dr. +Fitzpiers; and hence she most illogically did that which, had the +doctor never seen her, would have operated to stultify the sole motive +of her journey; that is to say, she put on a woollen veil, which hid +all her face except an occasional spark of her eyes. + +Her own wish that nothing should be known of this strange and grewsome +proceeding, no less than Grammer Oliver's own desire, led Grace to take +every precaution against being discovered. She went out by the garden +door as the safest way, all the household having occupations at the +other side. The morning looked forbidding enough when she stealthily +opened it. The battle between frost and thaw was continuing in +mid-air: the trees dripped on the garden-plots, where no vegetables +would grow for the dripping, though they were planted year after year +with that curious mechanical regularity of country people in the face +of hopelessness; the moss which covered the once broad gravel terrace +was swamped; and Grace stood irresolute. Then she thought of poor +Grammer, and her dreams of the doctor running after her, scalpel in +hand, and the possibility of a case so curiously similar to South's +ending in the same way; thereupon she stepped out into the drizzle. + +The nature of her errand, and Grammer Oliver's account of the compact +she had made, lent a fascinating horror to Grace's conception of +Fitzpiers. She knew that he was a young man; but her single object in +seeking an interview with him put all considerations of his age and +social aspect from her mind. Standing as she stood, in Grammer Oliver's +shoes, he was simply a remorseless Jove of the sciences, who would not +have mercy, and would have sacrifice; a man whom, save for this, she +would have preferred to avoid knowing. But since, in such a small +village, it was improbable that any long time could pass without their +meeting, there was not much to deplore in her having to meet him now. + +But, as need hardly be said, Miss Melbury's view of the doctor as a +merciless, unwavering, irresistible scientist was not quite in +accordance with fact. The real Dr. Fitzpiers was a man of too many +hobbies to show likelihood of rising to any great eminence in the +profession he had chosen, or even to acquire any wide practice in the +rural district he had marked out as his field of survey for the +present. In the course of a year his mind was accustomed to pass in a +grand solar sweep through all the zodiacal signs of the intellectual +heaven. Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes in the Bull; one month +he would be immersed in alchemy, another in poesy; one month in the +Twins of astrology and astronomy; then in the Crab of German literature +and metaphysics. In justice to him it must be stated that he took such +studies as were immediately related to his own profession in turn with +the rest, and it had been in a month of anatomical ardor without the +possibility of a subject that he had proposed to Grammer Oliver the +terms she had mentioned to her mistress. + +As may be inferred from the tone of his conversation with Winterborne, +he had lately plunged into abstract philosophy with much zest; perhaps +his keenly appreciative, modern, unpractical mind found this a realm +more to his taste than any other. Though his aims were desultory, +Fitzpiers's mental constitution was not without its admirable side; a +keen inquirer he honestly was, even if the midnight rays of his lamp, +visible so far through the trees of Hintock, lighted rank literatures +of emotion and passion as often as, or oftener than, the books and +materiel of science. + +But whether he meditated the Muses or the philosophers, the loneliness +of Hintock life was beginning to tell upon his impressionable nature. +Winter in a solitary house in the country, without society, is +tolerable, nay, even enjoyable and delightful, given certain +conditions, but these are not the conditions which attach to the life +of a professional man who drops down into such a place by mere +accident. They were present to the lives of Winterborne, Melbury, and +Grace; but not to the doctor's. They are old association--an almost +exhaustive biographical or historical acquaintance with every object, +animate and inanimate, within the observer's horizon. He must know all +about those invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet have +traversed the fields which look so gray from his windows; recall whose +creaking plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands +planted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose horses +and hounds have torn through that underwood; what birds affect that +particular brake; what domestic dramas of love, jealousy, revenge, or +disappointment have been enacted in the cottages, the mansion, the +street, or on the green. The spot may have beauty, grandeur, +salubrity, convenience; but if it lack memories it will ultimately pall +upon him who settles there without opportunity of intercourse with his +kind. + +In such circumstances, maybe, an old man dreams of an ideal friend, +till he throws himself into the arms of any impostor who chooses to +wear that title on his face. A young man may dream of an ideal friend +likewise, but some humor of the blood will probably lead him to think +rather of an ideal mistress, and at length the rustle of a woman's +dress, the sound of her voice, or the transit of her form across the +field of his vision, will enkindle his soul with a flame that blinds +his eyes. + +The discovery of the attractive Grace's name and family would have been +enough in other circumstances to lead the doctor, if not to put her +personality out of his head, to change the character of his interest in +her. Instead of treasuring her image as a rarity, he would at most +have played with it as a toy. He was that kind of a man. But situated +here he could not go so far as amative cruelty. He dismissed all +reverential thought about her, but he could not help taking her +seriously. + +He went on to imagine the impossible. So far, indeed, did he go in +this futile direction that, as others are wont to do, he constructed +dialogues and scenes in which Grace had turned out to be the mistress +of Hintock Manor-house, the mysterious Mrs. Charmond, particularly +ready and willing to be wooed by himself and nobody else. "Well, she +isn't that," he said, finally. "But she's a very sweet, nice, +exceptional girl." + +The next morning he breakfasted alone, as usual. It was snowing with a +fine-flaked desultoriness just sufficient to make the woodland gray, +without ever achieving whiteness. There was not a single letter for +Fitzpiers, only a medical circular and a weekly newspaper. + +To sit before a large fire on such mornings, and read, and gradually +acquire energy till the evening came, and then, with lamp alight, and +feeling full of vigor, to pursue some engrossing subject or other till +the small hours, had hitherto been his practice. But to-day he could +not settle into his chair. That self-contained position he had lately +occupied, in which the only attention demanded was the concentration of +the inner eye, all outer regard being quite gratuitous, seemed to have +been taken by insidious stratagem, and for the first time he had an +interest outside the house. He walked from one window to another, and +became aware that the most irksome of solitudes is not the solitude of +remoteness, but that which is just outside desirable company. + +The breakfast hour went by heavily enough, and the next followed, in +the same half-snowy, half-rainy style, the weather now being the +inevitable relapse which sooner or later succeeds a time too radiant +for the season, such as they had enjoyed in the late midwinter at +Hintock. To people at home there these changeful tricks had their +interests; the strange mistakes that some of the more sanguine trees +had made in budding before their month, to be incontinently glued up by +frozen thawings now; the similar sanguine errors of impulsive birds in +framing nests that were now swamped by snow-water, and other such +incidents, prevented any sense of wearisomeness in the minds of the +natives. But these were features of a world not familiar to Fitzpiers, +and the inner visions to which he had almost exclusively attended +having suddenly failed in their power to absorb him, he felt +unutterably dreary. + +He wondered how long Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. The +season was unpropitious for accidental encounters with her +out-of-doors, and except by accident he saw not how they were to become +acquainted. One thing was clear--any acquaintance with her could only, +with a due regard to his future, be casual, at most of the nature of a +flirtation; for he had high aims, and they would some day lead him into +other spheres than this. + +Thus desultorily thinking he flung himself down upon the couch, which, +as in many draughty old country houses, was constructed with a hood, +being in fact a legitimate development from the settle. He tried to +read as he reclined, but having sat up till three o'clock that morning, +the book slipped from his hand and he fell asleep. + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +It was at this time that Grace approached the house. Her knock, always +soft in virtue of her nature, was softer to-day by reason of her +strange errand. However, it was heard by the farmer's wife who kept +the house, and Grace was admitted. Opening the door of the doctor's +room the housewife glanced in, and imagining Fitzpiers absent, asked +Miss Melbury to enter and wait a few minutes while she should go and +find him, believing him to be somewhere on the premises. Grace +acquiesced, went in, and sat down close to the door. + +As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round the room, and +started at perceiving a handsome man snugly ensconced in the couch, +like the recumbent figure within some canopied mural tomb of the +fifteenth century, except that his hands were by no means clasped in +prayer. She had no doubt that this was the doctor. Awaken him herself +she could not, and her immediate impulse was to go and pull the broad +ribbon with a brass rosette which hung at one side of the fireplace. +But expecting the landlady to re-enter in a moment she abandoned this +intention, and stood gazing in great embarrassment at the reclining +philosopher. + +The windows of Fitzpiers's soul being at present shuttered, he probably +appeared less impressive than in his hours of animation; but the light +abstracted from his material presence by sleep was more than +counterbalanced by the mysterious influence of that state, in a +stranger, upon the consciousness of a beholder so sensitive. So far as +she could criticise at all, she became aware that she had encountered a +specimen of creation altogether unusual in that locality. The +occasions on which Grace had observed men of this stamp were when she +had been far removed away from Hintock, and even then such examples as +had met her eye were at a distance, and mainly of coarser fibre than +the one who now confronted her. + +She nervously wondered why the woman had not discovered her mistake and +returned, and went again towards the bell-pull. Approaching the chimney +her back was to Fitzpiers, but she could see him in the glass. An +indescribable thrill passed through her as she perceived that the eyes +of the reflected image were open, gazing wonderingly at her, and under +the curious unexpectedness of the sight she became as if spellbound, +almost powerless to turn her head and regard the original. However, by +an effort she did turn, when there he lay asleep the same as before. + +Her startled perplexity as to what he could be meaning was sufficient +to lead her to precipitately abandon her errand. She crossed quickly +to the door, opened and closed it noiselessly, and went out of the +house unobserved. By the time that she had gone down the path and +through the garden door into the lane she had recovered her equanimity. +Here, screened by the hedge, she stood and considered a while. + +Drip, drip, drip, fell the rain upon her umbrella and around; she had +come out on such a morning because of the seriousness of the matter in +hand; yet now she had allowed her mission to be stultified by a +momentary tremulousness concerning an incident which perhaps had meant +nothing after all. + +In the mean time her departure from the room, stealthy as it had been, +had roused Fitzpiers, and he sat up. In the reflection from the mirror +which Grace had beheld there was no mystery; he had opened his eyes for +a few moments, but had immediately relapsed into unconsciousness, if, +indeed, he had ever been positively awake. That somebody had just left +the room he was certain, and that the lovely form which seemed to have +visited him in a dream was no less than the real presentation of the +person departed he could hardly doubt. + +Looking out of the window a few minutes later, down the box-edged +gravel-path which led to the bottom, he saw the garden door gently +open, and through it enter the young girl of his thoughts, Grace having +just at this juncture determined to return and attempt the interview a +second time. That he saw her coming instead of going made him ask +himself if his first impression of her were not a dream indeed. She +came hesitatingly along, carrying her umbrella so low over her head +that he could hardly see her face. When she reached the point where +the raspberry bushes ended and the strawberry bed began, she made a +little pause. + +Fitzpiers feared that she might not be coming to him even now, and +hastily quitting the room, he ran down the path to meet her. The +nature of her errand he could not divine, but he was prepared to give +her any amount of encouragement. + +"I beg pardon, Miss Melbury," he said. "I saw you from the window, and +fancied you might imagine that I was not at home--if it is I you were +coming for." + +"I was coming to speak one word to you, nothing more," she replied. +"And I can say it here." + +"No, no. Please do come in. Well, then, if you will not come into the +house, come as far as the porch." + +Thus pressed she went on to the porch, and they stood together inside +it, Fitzpiers closing her umbrella for her. + +"I have merely a request or petition to make," she said. "My father's +servant is ill--a woman you know--and her illness is serious." + +"I am sorry to hear it. You wish me to come and see her at once?" + +"No; I particularly wish you not to come." + +"Oh, indeed." + +"Yes; and she wishes the same. It would make her seriously worse if +you were to come. It would almost kill her....My errand is of a +peculiar and awkward nature. It is concerning a subject which weighs +on her mind--that unfortunate arrangement she made with you, that you +might have her body--after death." + +"Oh! Grammer Oliver, the old woman with the fine head. Seriously ill, +is she!" + +"And SO disturbed by her rash compact! I have brought the money +back--will you please return to her the agreement she signed?" Grace +held out to him a couple of five-pound notes which she had kept ready +tucked in her glove. + +Without replying or considering the notes, Fitzpiers allowed his +thoughts to follow his eyes, and dwell upon Grace's personality, and +the sudden close relation in which he stood to her. The porch was +narrow; the rain increased. It ran off the porch and dripped on the +creepers, and from the creepers upon the edge of Grace's cloak and +skirts. + +"The rain is wetting your dress; please do come in," he said. "It +really makes my heart ache to let you stay here." + +Immediately inside the front door was the door of his sitting-room; he +flung it open, and stood in a coaxing attitude. Try how she would, +Grace could not resist the supplicatory mandate written in the face and +manner of this man, and distressful resignation sat on her as she +glided past him into the room--brushing his coat with her elbow by +reason of the narrowness. + +He followed her, shut the door--which she somehow had hoped he would +leave open--and placing a chair for her, sat down. The concern which +Grace felt at the development of these commonplace incidents was, of +course, mainly owing to the strange effect upon her nerves of that view +of him in the mirror gazing at her with open eyes when she had thought +him sleeping, which made her fancy that his slumber might have been a +feint based on inexplicable reasons. + +She again proffered the notes; he awoke from looking at her as at a +piece of live statuary, and listened deferentially as she said, "Will +you then reconsider, and cancel the bond which poor Grammer Oliver so +foolishly gave?" + +"I'll cancel it without reconsideration. Though you will allow me to +have my own opinion about her foolishness. Grammer is a very wise +woman, and she was as wise in that as in other things. You think there +was something very fiendish in the compact, do you not, Miss Melbury? +But remember that the most eminent of our surgeons in past times have +entered into such agreements." + +"Not fiendish--strange." + +"Yes, that may be, since strangeness is not in the nature of a thing, +but in its relation to something extrinsic--in this case an unessential +observer." + +He went to his desk, and searching a while found a paper, which be +unfolded and brought to her. A thick cross appeared in ink at the +bottom--evidently from the hand of Grammer. Grace put the paper in her +pocket with a look of much relief. + +As Fitzpiers did not take up the money (half of which had come from +Grace's own purse), she pushed it a little nearer to him. "No, no. I +shall not take it from the old woman," he said. "It is more strange +than the fact of a surgeon arranging to obtain a subject for dissection +that our acquaintance should be formed out of it." + +"I am afraid you think me uncivil in showing my dislike to the notion. +But I did not mean to be." + +"Oh no, no." He looked at her, as he had done before, with puzzled +interest. "I cannot think, I cannot think," he murmured. "Something +bewilders me greatly." He still reflected and hesitated. "Last night +I sat up very late," he at last went on, "and on that account I fell +into a little nap on that couch about half an hour ago. And during my +few minutes of unconsciousness I dreamed--what do you think?--that you +stood in the room." + +Should she tell? She merely blushed. + +"You may imagine," Fitzpiers continued, now persuaded that it had, +indeed, been a dream, "that I should not have dreamed of you without +considerable thinking about you first." + +He could not be acting; of that she felt assured. + +"I fancied in my vision that you stood there," he said, pointing to +where she had paused. "I did not see you directly, but reflected in +the glass. I thought, what a lovely creature! The design is for once +carried out. Nature has at last recovered her lost union with the +Idea! My thoughts ran in that direction because I had been reading the +work of a transcendental philosopher last night; and I dare say it was +the dose of Idealism that I received from it that made me scarcely able +to distinguish between reality and fancy. I almost wept when I awoke, +and found that you had appeared to me in Time, but not in Space, alas!" + +At moments there was something theatrical in the delivery of +Fitzpiers's effusion; yet it would have been inexact to say that it was +intrinsically theatrical. It often happens that in situations of +unrestraint, where there is no thought of the eye of criticism, real +feeling glides into a mode of manifestation not easily distinguishable +from rodomontade. A veneer of affectation overlies a bulk of truth, +with the evil consequence, if perceived, that the substance is +estimated by the superficies, and the whole rejected. + +Grace, however, was no specialist in men's manners, and she admired the +sentiment without thinking of the form. And she was embarrassed: +"lovely creature" made explanation awkward to her gentle modesty. + +"But can it be," said he, suddenly, "that you really were here?" + +"I have to confess that I have been in the room once before," faltered +she. "The woman showed me in, and went away to fetch you; but as she +did not return, I left." + +"And you saw me asleep," he murmured, with the faintest show of +humiliation. + +"Yes--IF you were asleep, and did not deceive me." + +"Why do you say if?" + +"I saw your eyes open in the glass, but as they were closed when I +looked round upon you, I thought you were perhaps deceiving me. + +"Never," said Fitzpiers, fervently--"never could I deceive you." + +Foreknowledge to the distance of a year or so in either of them might +have spoiled the effect of that pretty speech. Never deceive her! But +they knew nothing, and the phrase had its day. + +Grace began now to be anxious to terminate the interview, but the +compelling power of Fitzpiers's atmosphere still held her there. She +was like an inexperienced actress who, having at last taken up her +position on the boards, and spoken her speeches, does not know how to +move off. The thought of Grammer occurred to her. "I'll go at once +and tell poor Grammer of your generosity," she said. "It will relieve +her at once." + +"Grammer's a nervous disease, too--how singular!" he answered, +accompanying her to the door. "One moment; look at this--it is +something which may interest you." + +He had thrown open the door on the other side of the passage, and she +saw a microscope on the table of the confronting room. "Look into it, +please; you'll be interested," he repeated. + +She applied her eye, and saw the usual circle of light patterned all +over with a cellular tissue of some indescribable sort. "What do you +think that is?" said Fitzpiers. + +She did not know. + +"That's a fragment of old John South's brain, which I am investigating." + +She started back, not with aversion, but with wonder as to how it +should have got there. Fitzpiers laughed. + +"Here am I," he said, "endeavoring to carry on simultaneously the study +of physiology and transcendental philosophy, the material world and the +ideal, so as to discover if possible a point of contrast between them; +and your finer sense is quite offended!" + +"Oh no, Mr. Fitzpiers," said Grace, earnestly. "It is not so at all. +I know from seeing your light at night how deeply you meditate and +work. Instead of condemning you for your studies, I admire you very +much!" + +Her face, upturned from the microscope, was so sweet, sincere, and +self-forgetful in its aspect that the susceptible Fitzpiers more than +wished to annihilate the lineal yard which separated it from his own. +Whether anything of the kind showed in his eyes or not, Grace remained +no longer at the microscope, but quickly went her way into the rain. + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +Instead of resuming his investigation of South's brain, which perhaps +was not so interesting under the microscope as might have been expected +from the importance of that organ in life, Fitzpiers reclined and +ruminated on the interview. Grace's curious susceptibility to his +presence, though it was as if the currents of her life were disturbed +rather than attracted by him, added a special interest to her general +charm. Fitzpiers was in a distinct degree scientific, being ready and +zealous to interrogate all physical manifestations, but primarily he +was an idealist. He believed that behind the imperfect lay the +perfect; that rare things were to be discovered amid a bulk of +commonplace; that results in a new and untried case might be different +from those in other cases where the conditions had been precisely +similar. Regarding his own personality as one of unbounded +possibilities, because it was his own--notwithstanding that the factors +of his life had worked out a sorry product for thousands--he saw +nothing but what was regular in his discovery at Hintock of an +altogether exceptional being of the other sex, who for nobody else +would have had any existence. + +One habit of Fitzpiers's--commoner in dreamers of more advanced age +than in men of his years--was that of talking to himself. He paced +round his room with a selective tread upon the more prominent blooms of +the carpet, and murmured, "This phenomenal girl will be the light of my +life while I am at Hintock; and the special beauty of the situation is +that our attitude and relations to each other will be purely spiritual. +Socially we can never be intimate. Anything like matrimonial +intentions towards her, charming as she is, would be absurd. They +would spoil the ethereal character of my regard. And, indeed, I have +other aims on the practical side of my life." + +Fitzpiers bestowed a regulation thought on the advantageous marriage he +was bound to make with a woman of family as good as his own, and of +purse much longer. But as an object of contemplation for the present, +as objective spirit rather than corporeal presence, Grace Melbury would +serve to keep his soul alive, and to relieve the monotony of his days. + +His first notion--acquired from the mere sight of her without +converse--that of an idle and vulgar flirtation with a +timber-merchant's pretty daughter, grated painfully upon him now that +he had found what Grace intrinsically was. Personal intercourse with +such as she could take no lower form than intellectual communion, and +mutual explorations of the world of thought. Since he could not call +at her father's, having no practical views, cursory encounters in the +lane, in the wood, coming and going to and from church, or in passing +her dwelling, were what the acquaintance would have to feed on. + +Such anticipated glimpses of her now and then realized themselves in +the event. Rencounters of not more than a minute's duration, +frequently repeated, will build up mutual interest, even an intimacy, +in a lonely place. Theirs grew as imperceptibly as the tree-twigs +budded. There never was a particular moment at which it could be said +they became friends; yet a delicate understanding now existed between +two who in the winter had been strangers. + +Spring weather came on rather suddenly, the unsealing of buds that had +long been swollen accomplishing itself in the space of one warm night. +The rush of sap in the veins of the trees could almost be heard. The +flowers of late April took up a position unseen, and looked as if they +had been blooming a long while, though there had been no trace of them +the day before yesterday; birds began not to mind getting wet. In-door +people said they had heard the nightingale, to which out-door people +replied contemptuously that they had heard him a fortnight before. + +The young doctor's practice being scarcely so large as a London +surgeon's, he frequently walked in the wood. Indeed such practice as +he had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have been +necessary for developing it to exceptional proportions. One day, book +in hand, he walked in a part of the wood where the trees were mainly +oaks. It was a calm afternoon, and there was everywhere around that +sign of great undertakings on the part of vegetable nature which is apt +to fill reflective human beings who are not undertaking much themselves +with a sudden uneasiness at the contrast. He heard in the distance a +curious sound, something like the quack of a duck, which, though it was +common enough here about this time, was not common to him. + +Looking through the trees Fitzpiers soon perceived the origin of the +noise. The barking season had just commenced, and what he had heard +was the tear of the ripping tool as it ploughed its way along the +sticky parting between the trunk and the rind. Melbury did a large +business in bark, and as he was Grace's father, and possibly might be +found on the spot, Fitzpiers was attracted to the scene even more than +he might have been by its intrinsic interest. When he got nearer he +recognized among the workmen the two Timothys, and Robert Creedle, who +probably had been "lent" by Winterborne; Marty South also assisted. + +Each tree doomed to this flaying process was first attacked by Creedle. +With a small billhook he carefully freed the collar of the tree from +twigs and patches of moss which incrusted it to a height of a foot or +two above the ground, an operation comparable to the "little toilet" of +the executioner's victim. After this it was barked in its erect +position to a point as high as a man could reach. If a fine product of +vegetable nature could ever be said to look ridiculous it was the case +now, when the oak stood naked-legged, and as if ashamed, till the +axe-man came and cut a ring round it, and the two Timothys finished the +work with the crosscut-saw. + +As soon as it had fallen the barkers attacked it like locusts, and in a +short time not a particle of rind was left on the trunk and larger +limbs. Marty South was an adept at peeling the upper parts, and there +she stood encaged amid the mass of twigs and buds like a great bird, +running her tool into the smallest branches, beyond the farthest points +to which the skill and patience of the men enabled them to +proceed--branches which, in their lifetime, had swayed high above the +bulk of the wood, and caught the latest and earliest rays of the sun +and moon while the lower part of the forest was still in darkness. + +"You seem to have a better instrument than they, Marty," said Fitzpiers. + +"No, sir," she said, holding up the tool--a horse's leg-bone fitted +into a handle and filed to an edge--"'tis only that they've less +patience with the twigs, because their time is worth more than mine." + +A little shed had been constructed on the spot, of thatched hurdles and +boughs, and in front of it was a fire, over which a kettle sung. +Fitzpiers sat down inside the shelter, and went on with his reading, +except when he looked up to observe the scene and the actors. The +thought that he might settle here and become welded in with this sylvan +life by marrying Grace Melbury crossed his mind for a moment. Why +should he go farther into the world than where he was? The secret of +quiet happiness lay in limiting the ideas and aspirations; these men's +thoughts were conterminous with the margin of the Hintock woodlands, +and why should not his be likewise limited--a small practice among the +people around him being the bound of his desires? + +Presently Marty South discontinued her operations upon the quivering +boughs, came out from the reclining oak, and prepared tea. When it was +ready the men were called; and Fitzpiers being in a mood to join, sat +down with them. + +The latent reason of his lingering here so long revealed itself when +the faint creaking of the joints of a vehicle became audible, and one +of the men said, "Here's he." Turning their heads they saw Melbury's +gig approaching, the wheels muffled by the yielding moss. + +The timber-merchant was on foot leading the horse, looking back at +every few steps to caution his daughter, who kept her seat, where and +how to duck her head so as to avoid the overhanging branches. They +stopped at the spot where the bark-ripping had been temporarily +suspended; Melbury cursorily examined the heaps of bark, and drawing +near to where the workmen were sitting down, accepted their shouted +invitation to have a dish of tea, for which purpose he hitched the +horse to a bough. Grace declined to take any of their beverage, and +remained in her place in the vehicle, looking dreamily at the sunlight +that came in thin threads through the hollies with which the oaks were +interspersed. + +When Melbury stepped up close to the shelter, he for the first time +perceived that the doctor was present, and warmly appreciated +Fitzpiers's invitation to sit down on the log beside him. + +"Bless my heart, who would have thought of finding you here," he said, +obviously much pleased at the circumstance. "I wonder now if my +daughter knows you are so nigh at hand. I don't expect she do." + +He looked out towards the gig wherein Grace sat, her face still turned +in the opposite direction. "She doesn't see us. Well, never mind: let +her be." + +Grace was indeed quite unconscious of Fitzpiers's propinquity. She was +thinking of something which had little connection with the scene before +her--thinking of her friend, lost as soon as found, Mrs. Charmond; of +her capricious conduct, and of the contrasting scenes she was possibly +enjoying at that very moment in other climes, to which Grace herself +had hoped to be introduced by her friend's means. She wondered if this +patronizing lady would return to Hintock during the summer, and whether +the acquaintance which had been nipped on the last occasion of her +residence there would develop on the next. + +Melbury told ancient timber-stories as he sat, relating them directly +to Fitzpiers, and obliquely to the men, who had heard them often +before. Marty, who poured out tea, was just saying, "I think I'll take +out a cup to Miss Grace," when they heard a clashing of the +gig-harness, and turning round Melbury saw that the horse had become +restless, and was jerking about the vehicle in a way which alarmed its +occupant, though she refrained from screaming. Melbury jumped up +immediately, but not more quickly than Fitzpiers; and while her father +ran to the horse's head and speedily began to control him, Fitzpiers +was alongside the gig assisting Grace to descend. Her surprise at his +appearance was so great that, far from making a calm and independent +descent, she was very nearly lifted down in his arms. He relinquished +her when she touched ground, and hoped she was not frightened. + +"Oh no, not much," she managed to say. "There was no danger--unless he +had run under the trees where the boughs are low enough to hit my head." + +"Which was by no means an impossibility, and justifies any amount of +alarm." + +He referred to what he thought he saw written in her face, and she +could not tell him that this had little to do with the horse, but much +with himself. His contiguity had, in fact, the same effect upon her as +on those former occasions when he had come closer to her than +usual--that of producing in her an unaccountable tendency to +tearfulness. Melbury soon put the horse to rights, and seeing that +Grace was safe, turned again to the work-people. His daughter's +nervous distress had passed off in a few moments, and she said quite +gayly to Fitzpiers as she walked with him towards the group, "There's +destiny in it, you see. I was doomed to join in your picnic, although +I did not intend to do so." + +Marty prepared her a comfortable place, and she sat down in the circle, +and listened to Fitzpiers while he drew from her father and the +bark-rippers sundry narratives of their fathers', their grandfathers', +and their own adventures in these woods; of the mysterious sights they +had seen--only to be accounted for by supernatural agency; of white +witches and black witches; and the standard story of the spirits of the +two brothers who had fought and fallen, and had haunted Hintock House +till they were exorcised by the priest, and compelled to retreat to a +swamp in this very wood, whence they were returning to their old +quarters at the rate of a cock's stride every New-year's Day, old +style; hence the local saying, "On New-year's tide, a cock's stride." + +It was a pleasant time. The smoke from the little fire of peeled +sticks rose between the sitters and the sunlight, and behind its blue +veil stretched the naked arms of the prostrate trees. The smell of the +uncovered sap mingled with the smell of the burning wood, and the +sticky inner surface of the scattered bark glistened as it revealed its +pale madder hues to the eye. Melbury was so highly satisfied at having +Fitzpiers as a sort of guest that he would have sat on for any length +of time, but Grace, on whom Fitzpiers's eyes only too frequently +alighted, seemed to think it incumbent upon her to make a show of +going; and her father thereupon accompanied her to the vehicle. + +As the doctor had helped her out of it he appeared to think that he had +excellent reasons for helping her in, and performed the attention +lingeringly enough. + +"What were you almost in tears about just now?" he asked, softly. + +"I don't know," she said: and the words were strictly true. + +Melbury mounted on the other side, and they drove on out of the grove, +their wheels silently crushing delicate-patterned mosses, hyacinths, +primroses, lords-and-ladies, and other strange and ordinary plants, and +cracking up little sticks that lay across the track. Their way +homeward ran along the crest of a lofty hill, whence on the right they +beheld a wide valley, differing both in feature and atmosphere from +that of the Hintock precincts. It was the cider country, which met the +woodland district on the axis of this hill. Over the vale the air was +blue as sapphire--such a blue as outside that apple-valley was never +seen. Under the blue the orchards were in a blaze of bloom, some of +the richly flowered trees running almost up to where they drove along. +Over a gate which opened down the incline a man leaned on his arms, +regarding this fair promise so intently that he did not observe their +passing. + +"That was Giles," said Melbury, when they had gone by. + +"Was it? Poor Giles," said she. + +"All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and his hands. If no +blight happens before the setting the apple yield will be such as we +have not had for years." + +Meanwhile, in the wood they had come from, the men had sat on so long +that they were indisposed to begin work again that evening; they were +paid by the ton, and their time for labor was as they chose. They +placed the last gatherings of bark in rows for the curers, which led +them farther and farther away from the shed; and thus they gradually +withdrew as the sun went down. + +Fitzpiers lingered yet. He had opened his book again, though he could +hardly see a word in it, and sat before the dying fire, scarcely +knowing of the men's departure. He dreamed and mused till his +consciousness seemed to occupy the whole space of the woodland around, +so little was there of jarring sight or sound to hinder perfect unity +with the sentiment of the place. The idea returned upon him of +sacrificing all practical aims to live in calm contentment here, and +instead of going on elaborating new conceptions with infinite pains, to +accept quiet domesticity according to oldest and homeliest notions. +These reflections detained him till the wood was embrowned with the +coming night, and the shy little bird of this dusky time had begun to +pour out all the intensity of his eloquence from a bush not very far +off. + +Fitzpiers's eyes commanded as much of the ground in front as was open. +Entering upon this he saw a figure, whose direction of movement was +towards the spot where he sat. The surgeon was quite shrouded from +observation by the recessed shadow of the hut, and there was no reason +why he should move till the stranger had passed by. The shape resolved +itself into a woman's; she was looking on the ground, and walking +slowly as if searching for something that had been lost, her course +being precisely that of Mr. Melbury's gig. Fitzpiers by a sort of +divination jumped to the idea that the figure was Grace's; her nearer +approach made the guess a certainty. + +Yes, she was looking for something; and she came round by the prostrate +trees that would have been invisible but for the white nakedness which +enabled her to avoid them easily. Thus she approached the heap of +ashes, and acting upon what was suggested by a still shining ember or +two, she took a stick and stirred the heap, which thereupon burst into +a flame. On looking around by the light thus obtained she for the +first time saw the illumined face of Fitzpiers, precisely in the spot +where she had left him. + +Grace gave a start and a scream: the place had been associated with him +in her thoughts, but she had not expected to find him there still. +Fitzpiers lost not a moment in rising and going to her side. + +"I frightened you dreadfully, I know," he said. "I ought to have +spoken; but I did not at first expect it to be you. I have been +sitting here ever since." + +He was actually supporting her with his arm, as though under the +impression that she was quite overcome, and in danger of falling. As +soon as she could collect her ideas she gently withdrew from his grasp, +and explained what she had returned for: in getting up or down from the +gig, or when sitting by the hut fire, she had dropped her purse. + +"Now we will find it," said Fitzpiers. + +He threw an armful of last year's leaves on to the fire, which made the +flame leap higher, and the encompassing shades to weave themselves into +a denser contrast, turning eve into night in a moment. By this +radiance they groped about on their hands and knees, till Fitzpiers +rested on his elbow, and looked at Grace. "We must always meet in odd +circumstances," he said; "and this is one of the oddest. I wonder if +it means anything?" + +"Oh no, I am sure it doesn't," said Grace in haste, quickly assuming an +erect posture. "Pray don't say it any more." + +"I hope there was not much money in the purse," said Fitzpiers, rising +to his feet more slowly, and brushing the leaves from his trousers. + +"Scarcely any. I cared most about the purse itself, because it was +given me. Indeed, money is of little more use at Hintock than on +Crusoe's island; there's hardly any way of spending it." + +They had given up the search when Fitzpiers discerned something by his +foot. "Here it is," he said, "so that your father, mother, friend, or +ADMIRER will not have his or her feelings hurt by a sense of your +negligence after all." + +"Oh, he knows nothing of what I do now." + +"The admirer?" said Fitzpiers, slyly. + +"I don't know if you would call him that," said Grace, with simplicity. +"The admirer is a superficial, conditional creature, and this person is +quite different." + +"He has all the cardinal virtues." + +"Perhaps--though I don't know them precisely." + +"You unconsciously practise them, Miss Melbury, which is better. +According to Schleiermacher they are Self-control, Perseverance, +Wisdom, and Love; and his is the best list that I know." + +"I am afraid poor--" She was going to say that she feared +Winterborne--the giver of the purse years before--had not much +perseverance, though he had all the other three; but she determined to +go no further in this direction, and was silent. + +These half-revelations made a perceptible difference in Fitzpiers. His +sense of personal superiority wasted away, and Grace assumed in his +eyes the true aspect of a mistress in her lover's regard. + +"Miss Melbury," he said, suddenly, "I divine that this virtuous man you +mention has been refused by you?" + +She could do no otherwise than admit it. + +"I do not inquire without good reason. God forbid that I should kneel +in another's place at any shrine unfairly. But, my dear Miss Melbury, +now that he is gone, may I draw near?" + +"I--I can't say anything about that!" she cried, quickly. "Because when +a man has been refused you feel pity for him, and like him more than +you did before." + +This increasing complication added still more value to Grace in the +surgeon's eyes: it rendered her adorable. "But cannot you say?" he +pleaded, distractedly. + +"I'd rather not--I think I must go home at once." + +"Oh yes," said Fitzpiers. But as he did not move she felt it awkward +to walk straight away from him; and so they stood silently together. A +diversion was created by the accident of two birds, that had either +been roosting above their heads or nesting there, tumbling one over the +other into the hot ashes at their feet, apparently engrossed in a +desperate quarrel that prevented the use of their wings. They speedily +parted, however, and flew up, and were seen no more. + +"That's the end of what is called love!" said some one. + +The speaker was neither Grace nor Fitzpiers, but Marty South, who +approached with her face turned up to the sky in her endeavor to trace +the birds. Suddenly perceiving Grace, she exclaimed, "Oh, Miss +Melbury! I have been following they pigeons, and didn't see you. And +here's Mr. Winterborne!" she continued, shyly, as she looked towards +Fitzpiers, who stood in the background. + +"Marty," Grace interrupted. "I want you to walk home with me--will +you? Come along." And without lingering longer she took hold of Marty's +arm and led her away. + +They went between the spectral arms of the peeled trees as they lay, +and onward among the growing trees, by a path where there were no oaks, +and no barking, and no Fitzpiers--nothing but copse-wood, between +which the primroses could be discerned in pale bunches. "I didn't know +Mr. Winterborne was there," said Marty, breaking the silence when they +had nearly reached Grace's door. + +"Nor was he," said Grace. + +"But, Miss Melbury, I saw him." + +"No," said Grace. "It was somebody else. Giles Winterborne is nothing +to me." + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the +woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque body +of infinitely larger shape and importance. The boughs cast green +shades, which hurt the complexion of the girls who walked there; and a +fringe of them which overhung Mr. Melbury's garden dripped on his +seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface all over as with +pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in such a place were no +good at all. The two trees that had creaked all the winter left off +creaking, the whir of the night-jar, however, forming a very +satisfactory continuation of uncanny music from that quarter. Except +at mid-day the sun was not seen complete by the Hintock people, but +rather in the form of numerous little stars staring through the leaves. + +Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as the +hour grew later, and nine o'clock drew on, the irradiation of the +daytime became broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of +indistinctness. Imagination could trace upon the trunks and boughs +strange faces and figures shaped by the dying lights; the surfaces of +the holly-leaves would here and there shine like peeping eyes, while +such fragments of the sky as were visible between the trunks assumed +the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven tongues. This was before the +moonrise. Later on, when that planet was getting command of the upper +heaven, and consequently shining with an unbroken face into such open +glades as there were in the neighborhood of the hamlet, it became +apparent that the margin of the wood which approached the +timber-merchant's premises was not to be left to the customary +stillness of that reposeful time. + +Fitzpiers having heard a voice or voices, was looking over his garden +gate--where he now looked more frequently than into his books--fancying +that Grace might be abroad with some friends. He was now irretrievably +committed in heart to Grace Melbury, though he was by no means sure +that she was so far committed to him. That the Idea had for once +completely fulfilled itself in the objective substance--which he had +hitherto deemed an impossibility--he was enchanted enough to fancy must +be the case at last. It was not Grace who had passed, however, but +several of the ordinary village girls in a group--some steadily +walking, some in a mood of wild gayety. He quietly asked his landlady, +who was also in the garden, what these girls were intending, and she +informed him that it being Old Midsummer Eve, they were about to +attempt some spell or enchantment which would afford them a glimpse of +their future partners for life. She declared it to be an ungodly +performance, and one which she for her part would never countenance; +saying which, she entered her house and retired to bed. + +The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of maidens slowly up +the road. They had turned into the wood at an opening between +Melbury's and Marty South's; but Fitzpiers could easily track them by +their voices, low as they endeavored to keep their tones. + +In the mean time other inhabitants of Little Hintock had become aware +of the nocturnal experiment about to be tried, and were also sauntering +stealthily after the frisky maidens. Miss Melbury had been informed by +Marty South during the day of the proposed peep into futurity, and, +being only a girl like the rest, she was sufficiently interested to +wish to see the issue. The moon was so bright and the night so calm +that she had no difficulty in persuading Mrs. Melbury to accompany her; +and thus, joined by Marty, these went onward in the same direction. + +Passing Winterborne's house, they heard a noise of hammering. Marty +explained it. This was the last night on which his paternal roof would +shelter him, the days of grace since it fell into hand having expired; +and Giles was taking down his cupboards and bedsteads with a view to an +early exit next morning. His encounter with Mrs. Charmond had cost him +dearly. + +When they had proceeded a little farther Marty was joined by Grammer +Oliver (who was as young as the youngest in such matters), and Grace +and Mrs. Melbury went on by themselves till they had arrived at the +spot chosen by the village daughters, whose primary intention of +keeping their expedition a secret had been quite defeated. Grace and +her step-mother paused by a holly-tree; and at a little distance stood +Fitzpiers under the shade of a young oak, intently observing Grace, who +was in the full rays of the moon. + +He watched her without speaking, and unperceived by any but Marty and +Grammer, who had drawn up on the dark side of the same holly which +sheltered Mrs. and Miss Melbury on its bright side. The two former +conversed in low tones. + +"If they two come up in Wood next Midsummer Night they'll come as one," +said Grammer, signifying Fitzpiers and Grace. "Instead of my +skellington he'll carry home her living carcass before long. But though +she's a lady in herself, and worthy of any such as he, it do seem to me +that he ought to marry somebody more of the sort of Mrs. Charmond, and +that Miss Grace should make the best of Winterborne." + +Marty returned no comment; and at that minute the girls, some of whom +were from Great Hintock, were seen advancing to work the incantation, +it being now about midnight. + +"Directly we see anything we'll run home as fast as we can," said one, +whose courage had begun to fail her. To this the rest assented, not +knowing that a dozen neighbors lurked in the bushes around. + +"I wish we had not thought of trying this," said another, "but had +contented ourselves with the hole-digging to-morrow at twelve, and +hearing our husbands' trades. It is too much like having dealings with +the Evil One to try to raise their forms." + +However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly began to march +forward in a skirmishing line through the trees towards the deeper +recesses of the wood. As far as the listeners could gather, the +particular form of black-art to be practised on this occasion was one +connected with the sowing of hemp-seed, a handful of which was carried +by each girl. At the moment of their advance they looked back, and +discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who, alone of all the observers, +stood in the full face of the moonlight, deeply engrossed in the +proceedings. By contrast with her life of late years they made her +feel as if she had receded a couple of centuries in the world's +history. She was rendered doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and +after a few whispered words, one of the girls--a bouncing maiden, +plighted to young Timothy Tangs--asked her if she would join in. +Grace, with some excitement, said that she would, and moved on a little +in the rear of the rest. + +Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceedings beyond the +faintest occasional rustle of leaves. Grammer whispered again to +Marty: "Why didn't ye go and try your luck with the rest of the maids?" + +"I don't believe in it," said Marty, shortly. + +"Why, half the parish is here--the silly hussies should have kept it +quiet. I see Mr. Winterborne through the leaves, just come up with +Robert Creedle. Marty, we ought to act the part o' Providence +sometimes. Do go and tell him that if he stands just behind the bush +at the bottom of the slope, Miss Grace must pass down it when she comes +back, and she will most likely rush into his arms; for as soon as the +clock strikes, they'll bundle back home--along like hares. I've seen +such larries before." + +"Do you think I'd better?" said Marty, reluctantly. + +"Oh yes, he'll bless ye for it." + +"I don't want that kind of blessing." But after a moment's thought she +went and delivered the information; and Grammer had the satisfaction of +seeing Giles walk slowly to the bend in the leafy defile along which +Grace would have to return. + +Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had perceived Fitzpiers and +Winterborne, and also the move of the latter. An improvement on +Grammer's idea entered the mind of Mrs. Melbury, for she had lately +discerned what her husband had not--that Grace was rapidly fascinating +the surgeon. She therefore drew near to Fitzpiers. + +"You should be where Mr. Winterborne is standing," she said to him, +significantly. "She will run down through that opening much faster +than she went up it, if she is like the rest of the girls." + +Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice. He went across to +Winterborne and stood beside him. Each knew the probable purpose of +the other in standing there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers scorning to +look upon Winterborne as a rival, and Winterborne adhering to the +off-hand manner of indifference which had grown upon him since his +dismissal. + +Neither Grammer nor Marty South had seen the surgeon's manoeuvre, and, +still to help Winterborne, as she supposed, the old woman suggested to +the wood-girl that she should walk forward at the heels of Grace, and +"tole" her down the required way if she showed a tendency to run in +another direction. Poor Marty, always doomed to sacrifice desire to +obligation, walked forward accordingly, and waited as a beacon, still +and silent, for the retreat of Grace and her giddy companions, now +quite out of hearing. + +The first sound to break the silence was the distant note of Great +Hintock clock striking the significant hour. About a minute later that +quarter of the wood to which the girls had wandered resounded with the +flapping of disturbed birds; then two or three hares and rabbits +bounded down the glade from the same direction, and after these the +rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs denoted the hurried +approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gowns soon became +visible. Miss Melbury, having gone forward quite in the rear of the +rest, was one of the first to return, and the excitement being +contagious, she ran laughing towards Marty, who still stood as a +hand-post to guide her; then, passing on, she flew round the fatal bush +where the undergrowth narrowed to a gorge. Marty arrived at her heels +just in time to see the result. Fitzpiers had quickly stepped forward +in front of Winterborne, who, disdaining to shift his position, had +turned on his heel, and then the surgeon did what he would not have +thought of doing but for Mrs. Melbury's encouragement and the sentiment +of an eve which effaced conventionality. Stretching out his arms as +the white figure burst upon him, he captured her in a moment, as if she +had been a bird. + +"Oh!" cried Grace, in her fright. + +"You are in my arms, dearest," said Fitzpiers, "and I am going to claim +you, and keep you there all our two lives!" + +She rested on him like one utterly mastered, and it was several seconds +before she recovered from this helplessness. Subdued screams and +struggles, audible from neighboring brakes, revealed that there had +been other lurkers thereabout for a similar purpose. Grace, unlike +most of these companions of hers, instead of gasping and writhing, said +in a trembling voice, "Mr. Fitzpiers, will you let me go?" + +"Certainly," he said, laughing; "as soon as you have recovered." + +She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly pushed him +aside, and glided on her path, the moon whitening her hot blush away. +But it had been enough--new relations between them had begun. + +The case of the other girls was different, as has been said. They +wrestled and tittered, only escaping after a desperate struggle. +Fitzpiers could hear these enactments still going on after Grace had +left him, and he remained on the spot where he had caught her, +Winterborne having gone away. On a sudden another girl came bounding +down the same descent that had been followed by Grace--a fine-framed +young woman with naked arms. Seeing Fitzpiers standing there, she +said, with playful effrontery, "May'st kiss me if 'canst catch me, Tim!" + +Fitzpiers recognized her as Suke Damson, a hoydenish damsel of the +hamlet, who was plainly mistaking him for her lover. He was +impulsively disposed to profit by her error, and as soon as she began +racing away he started in pursuit. + +On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking over +her shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand; but so +cunningly dodging about among the trees and moon-shades that she never +allowed him to get dangerously near her. Thus they ran and doubled, +Fitzpiers warming with the chase, till the sound of their companions +had quite died away. He began to lose hope of ever overtaking her, +when all at once, by way of encouragement, she turned to a fence in +which there was a stile and leaped over it. Outside the scene was a +changed one--a meadow, where the half-made hay lay about in heaps, in +the uninterrupted shine of the now high moon. + +Fitzpiers saw in a moment that, having taken to open ground, she had +placed herself at his mercy, and he promptly vaulted over after her. +She flitted a little way down the mead, when all at once her light form +disappeared as if it had sunk into the earth. She had buried herself in +one of the hay-cocks. + +Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let her escape him +thus. He approached, and set about turning over the heaps one by one. +As soon as he paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was directed anew by +an imitative kiss which came from her hiding-place, and by snatches of +a local ballad in the smallest voice she could assume: + + "O come in from the foggy, foggy dew." + + +In a minute or two he uncovered her. + +"Oh, 'tis not Tim!" said she, burying her face. + +Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason of its +mildness, stooped and imprinted the purposed kiss, then sunk down on +the next hay-cock, panting with his race. + +"Whom do you mean by Tim?" he asked, presently. + +"My young man, Tim Tangs," said she. + +"Now, honor bright, did you really think it was he?" + +"I did at first." + +"But you didn't at last?" + +"I didn't at last." + +"Do you much mind that it was not?" + +"No," she answered, slyly. + +Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning. In the moonlight Suke looked +very beautiful, the scratches and blemishes incidental to her out-door +occupation being invisible under these pale rays. While they remain +silent the coarse whir of the eternal night-jar burst sarcastically +from the top of a tree at the nearest corner of the wood. Besides this +not a sound of any kind reached their ears, the time of nightingales +being now past, and Hintock lying at a distance of two miles at least. +In the opposite direction the hay-field stretched away into remoteness +till it was lost to the eye in a soft mist. + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +When the general stampede occurred Winterborne had also been looking +on, and encountering one of the girls, had asked her what caused them +all to fly. + +She said with solemn breathlessness that they had seen something very +different from what they had hoped to see, and that she for one would +never attempt such unholy ceremonies again. "We saw Satan pursuing us +with his hour-glass. It was terrible!" + +This account being a little incoherent, Giles went forward towards the +spot from which the girls had retreated. After listening there a few +minutes he heard slow footsteps rustling over the leaves, and looking +through a tangled screen of honeysuckle which hung from a bough, he saw +in the open space beyond a short stout man in evening-dress, carrying +on one arm a light overcoat and also his hat, so awkwardly arranged as +possibly to have suggested the "hour-glass" to his timid observers--if +this were the person whom the girls had seen. With the other hand he +silently gesticulated and the moonlight falling upon his bare brow +showed him to have dark hair and a high forehead of the shape seen +oftener in old prints and paintings than in real life. His curious and +altogether alien aspect, his strange gestures, like those of one who is +rehearsing a scene to himself, and the unusual place and hour, were +sufficient to account for any trepidation among the Hintock daughters +at encountering him. + +He paused, and looked round, as if he had forgotten where he was; not +observing Giles, who was of the color of his environment. The latter +advanced into the light. The gentleman held up his hand and came +towards Giles, the two meeting half-way. + +"I have lost my way," said the stranger. "Perhaps you can put me in +the path again." He wiped his forehead with the air of one suffering +under an agitation more than that of simple fatigue. + +"The turnpike-road is over there," said Giles + +"I don't want the turnpike-road," said the gentleman, impatiently. "I +came from that. I want Hintock House. Is there not a path to it +across here?" + +"Well, yes, a sort of path. But it is hard to find from this point. +I'll show you the way, sir, with great pleasure." + +"Thanks, my good friend. The truth is that I decided to walk across +the country after dinner from the hotel at Sherton, where I am staying +for a day or two. But I did not know it was so far." + +"It is about a mile to the house from here." + +They walked on together. As there was no path, Giles occasionally +stepped in front and bent aside the underboughs of the trees to give +his companion a passage, saying every now and then when the twigs, on +being released, flew back like whips, "Mind your eyes, sir." To which +the stranger replied, "Yes, yes," in a preoccupied tone. + +So they went on, the leaf-shadows running in their usual quick +succession over the forms of the pedestrians, till the stranger said, + +"Is it far?" + +"Not much farther," said Winterborne. "The plantation runs up into a +corner here, close behind the house." He added with hesitation, "You +know, I suppose, sir, that Mrs. Charmond is not at home?" + +"You mistake," said the other, quickly. "Mrs. Charmond has been away +for some time, but she's at home now." + +Giles did not contradict him, though he felt sure that the gentleman +was wrong. + +"You are a native of this place?" the stranger said. + +"Yes." + +"Well, you are happy in having a home. It is what I don't possess." + +"You come from far, seemingly?" + +"I come now from the south of Europe." + +"Oh, indeed, sir. You are an Italian, or Spanish, or French gentleman, +perhaps?" + +"I am not either." + +Giles did not fill the pause which ensued, and the gentleman, who +seemed of an emotional nature, unable to resist friendship, at length +answered the question. + +"I am an Italianized American, a South Carolinian by birth," he said. +"I left my native country on the failure of the Southern cause, and +have never returned to it since." + +He spoke no more about himself, and they came to the verge of the wood. +Here, striding over the fence out upon the upland sward, they could at +once see the chimneys of the house in the gorge immediately beneath +their position, silent, still, and pale. + +"Can you tell me the time?" the gentleman asked. "My watch has +stopped." + +"It is between twelve and one," said Giles. + +His companion expressed his astonishment. "I thought it between nine +and ten at latest! Dear me--dear me!" + +He now begged Giles to return, and offered him a gold coin, which +looked like a sovereign, for the assistance rendered. Giles declined +to accept anything, to the surprise of the stranger, who, on putting +the money back into his pocket, said, awkwardly, "I offered it because +I want you to utter no word about this meeting with me. Will you +promise?" + +Winterborne promised readily. He thereupon stood still while the other +ascended the slope. At the bottom he looked back dubiously. Giles +would no longer remain when he was so evidently desired to leave, and +returned through the boughs to Hintock. + +He suspected that this man, who seemed so distressed and melancholy, +might be that lover and persistent wooer of Mrs. Charmond whom he had +heard so frequently spoken of, and whom it was said she had treated +cavalierly. But he received no confirmation of his suspicion beyond a +report which reached him a few days later that a gentleman had called +up the servants who were taking care of Hintock House at an hour past +midnight; and on learning that Mrs. Charmond, though returned from +abroad, was as yet in London, he had sworn bitterly, and gone away +without leaving a card or any trace of himself. + +The girls who related the story added that he sighed three times before +he swore, but this part of the narrative was not corroborated. Anyhow, +such a gentleman had driven away from the hotel at Sherton next day in +a carriage hired at that inn. + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +The sunny, leafy week which followed the tender doings of Midsummer Eve +brought a visitor to Fitzpiers's door; a voice that he knew sounded in +the passage. Mr. Melbury had called. At first he had a particular +objection to enter the parlor, because his boots were dusty, but as the +surgeon insisted he waived the point and came in. + +Looking neither to the right nor to the left, hardly at Fitzpiers +himself, he put his hat under his chair, and with a preoccupied gaze at +the floor, he said, "I've called to ask you, doctor, quite privately, a +question that troubles me. I've a daughter, Grace, an only daughter, +as you may have heard. Well, she's been out in the dew--on Midsummer +Eve in particular she went out in thin slippers to watch some vagary of +the Hintock maids--and she's got a cough, a distinct hemming and +hacking, that makes me uneasy. Now, I have decided to send her away to +some seaside place for a change--" + +"Send her away!" Fitzpiers's countenance had fallen. + +"Yes. And the question is, where would you advise me to send her?" + +The timber-merchant had happened to call at a moment when Fitzpiers was +at the spring-tide of a sentiment that Grace was a necessity of his +existence. The sudden pressure of her form upon his breast as she came +headlong round the bush had never ceased to linger with him, ever since +he adopted the manoeuvre for which the hour and the moonlight and the +occasion had been the only excuse. Now she was to be sent away. +Ambition? it could be postponed. Family? culture and reciprocity of +tastes had taken the place of family nowadays. He allowed himself to +be carried forward on the wave of his desire. + +"How strange, how very strange it is," he said, "that you should have +come to me about her just now. I have been thinking every day of +coming to you on the very same errand." + +"Ah!--you have noticed, too, that her health----" + +"I have noticed nothing the matter with her health, because there is +nothing. But, Mr. Melbury, I have seen your daughter several times by +accident. I have admired her infinitely, and I was coming to ask you +if I may become better acquainted with her--pay my addresses to her?" + +Melbury was looking down as he listened, and did not see the air of +half-misgiving at his own rashness that spread over Fitzpiers's face as +he made this declaration. + +"You have--got to know her?" said Melbury, a spell of dead silence +having preceded his utterance, during which his emotion rose with +almost visible effect. + +"Yes," said Fitzpiers. + +"And you wish to become better acquainted with her? You mean with a +view to marriage--of course that is what you mean?" + +"Yes," said the young man. "I mean, get acquainted with her, with a +view to being her accepted lover; and if we suited each other, what +would naturally follow." + +The timber-merchant was much surprised, and fairly agitated; his hand +trembled as he laid by his walking-stick. "This takes me unawares," +said he, his voice wellnigh breaking down. "I don't mean that there is +anything unexpected in a gentleman being attracted by her; but it did +not occur to me that it would be you. I always said," continued he, +with a lump in his throat, "that my Grace would make a mark at her own +level some day. That was why I educated her. I said to myself, 'I'll +do it, cost what it may;' though her mother-law was pretty frightened +at my paying out so much money year after year. I knew it would tell +in the end. 'Where you've not good material to work on, such doings +would be waste and vanity,' I said. 'But where you have that material +it is sure to be worth while.'" + +"I am glad you don't object," said Fitzpiers, almost wishing that Grace +had not been quite so cheap for him. + +"If she is willing I don't object, certainly. Indeed," added the +honest man, "it would be deceit if I were to pretend to feel anything +else than highly honored personally; and it is a great credit to her to +have drawn to her a man of such good professional station and venerable +old family. That huntsman-fellow little thought how wrong he was about +her! Take her and welcome, sir." + +"I'll endeavor to ascertain her mind." + +"Yes, yes. But she will be agreeable, I should think. She ought to +be." + +"I hope she may. Well, now you'll expect to see me frequently." + +"Oh yes. But, name it all--about her cough, and her going away. I had +quite forgot that that was what I came about." + +"I assure you," said the surgeon, "that her cough can only be the +result of a slight cold, and it is not necessary to banish her to any +seaside place at all." + +Melbury looked unconvinced, doubting whether he ought to take +Fitzpiers's professional opinion in circumstances which naturally led +him to wish to keep her there. The doctor saw this, and honestly +dreading to lose sight of her, he said, eagerly, "Between ourselves, if +I am successful with her I will take her away myself for a month or +two, as soon as we are married, which I hope will be before the chilly +weather comes on. This will be so very much better than letting her go +now." + +The proposal pleased Melbury much. There could be hardly any danger in +postponing any desirable change of air as long as the warm weather +lasted, and for such a reason. Suddenly recollecting himself, he said, +"Your time must be precious, doctor. I'll get home-along. I am much +obliged to ye. As you will see her often, you'll discover for yourself +if anything serious is the matter." + +"I can assure you it is nothing," said Fitzpiers, who had seen Grace +much oftener already than her father knew of. + +When he was gone Fitzpiers paused, silent, registering his sensations, +like a man who has made a plunge for a pearl into a medium of which he +knows not the density or temperature. But he had done it, and Grace +was the sweetest girl alive. + +As for the departed visitor, his own last words lingered in Melbury's +ears as he walked homeward; he felt that what he had said in the +emotion of the moment was very stupid, ungenteel, and unsuited to a +dialogue with an educated gentleman, the smallness of whose practice +was more than compensated by the former greatness of his family. He +had uttered thoughts before they were weighed, and almost before they +were shaped. They had expressed in a certain sense his feeling at +Fitzpiers's news, but yet they were not right. Looking on the ground, +and planting his stick at each tread as if it were a flag-staff, he +reached his own precincts, where, as he passed through the court, he +automatically stopped to look at the men working in the shed and +around. One of them asked him a question about wagon-spokes. + +"Hey?" said Melbury, looking hard at him. The man repeated the words. + +Melbury stood; then turning suddenly away without answering, he went up +the court and entered the house. As time was no object with the +journeymen, except as a thing to get past, they leisurely surveyed the +door through which he had disappeared. + +"What maggot has the gaffer got in his head now?" said Tangs the elder. +"Sommit to do with that chiel of his! When you've got a maid of yer +own, John Upjohn, that costs ye what she costs him, that will take the +squeak out of your Sunday shoes, John! But you'll never be tall enough +to accomplish such as she; and 'tis a lucky thing for ye, John, as +things be. Well, he ought to have a dozen--that would bring him to +reason. I see 'em walking together last Sunday, and when they came to +a puddle he lifted her over like a halfpenny doll. He ought to have a +dozen; he'd let 'em walk through puddles for themselves then." + +Meanwhile Melbury had entered the house with the look of a man who sees +a vision before him. His wife was in the room. Without taking off his +hat he sat down at random. + +"Luce--we've done it!" he said. "Yes--the thing is as I expected. The +spell, that I foresaw might be worked, has worked. She's done it, and +done it well. Where is she--Grace, I mean?" + +"Up in her room--what has happened!" + +Mr. Melbury explained the circumstances as coherently as he could. "I +told you so," he said. "A maid like her couldn't stay hid long, even +in a place like this. But where is Grace? Let's have her down. +Here--Gra-a-ace!" + +She appeared after a reasonable interval, for she was sufficiently +spoiled by this father of hers not to put herself in a hurry, however +impatient his tones. "What is it, father?" said she, with a smile. + +"Why, you scamp, what's this you've been doing? Not home here more than +six months, yet, instead of confining yourself to your father's rank, +making havoc in the educated classes." + +Though accustomed to show herself instantly appreciative of her +father's meanings, Grace was fairly unable to look anyhow but at a loss +now. + +"No, no--of course you don't know what I mean, or you pretend you +don't; though, for my part, I believe women can see these things +through a double hedge. But I suppose I must tell ye. Why, you've +flung your grapnel over the doctor, and he's coming courting forthwith." + +"Only think of that, my dear! Don't you feel it a triumph?" said Mrs. +Melbury. + +"Coming courting! I've done nothing to make him," Grace exclaimed. + +"'Twasn't necessary that you should, 'Tis voluntary that rules in these +things....Well, he has behaved very honorably, and asked my consent. +You'll know what to do when he gets here, I dare say. I needn't tell +you to make it all smooth for him." + +"You mean, to lead him on to marry me?" + +"I do. Haven't I educated you for it?" + +Grace looked out of the window and at the fireplace with no animation +in her face. "Why is it settled off-hand in this way?" said she, +coquettishly. "You'll wait till you hear what I think of him, I +suppose?" + +"Oh yes, of course. But you see what a good thing it will be." + +She weighed the statement without speaking. + +"You will be restored to the society you've been taken away from," +continued her father; "for I don't suppose he'll stay here long." + +She admitted the advantage; but it was plain that though Fitzpiers +exercised a certain fascination over her when he was present, or even +more, an almost psychic influence, and though his impulsive act in the +wood had stirred her feelings indescribably, she had never regarded him +in the light of a destined husband. "I don't know what to answer," she +said. "I have learned that he is very clever." + +"He's all right, and he's coming here to see you." + +A premonition that she could not resist him if he came strangely moved +her. "Of course, father, you remember that it is only lately that +Giles--" + +"You know that you can't think of him. He has given up all claim to +you." + +She could not explain the subtleties of her feeling as he could state +his opinion, even though she had skill in speech, and her father had +none. That Fitzpiers acted upon her like a dram, exciting her, +throwing her into a novel atmosphere which biassed her doings until the +influence was over, when she felt something of the nature of regret for +the mood she had experienced--still more if she reflected on the +silent, almost sarcastic, criticism apparent in Winterborne's air +towards her--could not be told to this worthy couple in words. + +It so happened that on this very day Fitzpiers was called away from +Hintock by an engagement to attend some medical meetings, and his +visits, therefore, did not begin at once. A note, however, arrived +from him addressed to Grace, deploring his enforced absence. As a +material object this note was pretty and superfine, a note of a sort +that she had been unaccustomed to see since her return to Hintock, +except when a school friend wrote to her--a rare instance, for the +girls were respecters of persons, and many cooled down towards the +timber-dealer's daughter when she was out of sight. Thus the receipt +of it pleased her, and she afterwards walked about with a reflective +air. + +In the evening her father, who knew that the note had come, said, "Why +be ye not sitting down to answer your letter? That's what young folks +did in my time." + +She replied that it did not require an answer. + +"Oh, you know best," he said. Nevertheless, he went about his business +doubting if she were right in not replying; possibly she might be so +mismanaging matters as to risk the loss of an alliance which would +bring her much happiness. + +Melbury's respect for Fitzpiers was based less on his professional +position, which was not much, than on the standing of his family in the +county in by-gone days. That implicit faith in members of +long-established families, as such, irrespective of their personal +condition or character, which is still found among old-fashioned people +in the rural districts reached its full intensity in Melbury. His +daughter's suitor was descended from a family he had heard of in his +grandfather's time as being once great, a family which had conferred +its name upon a neighboring village; how, then, could anything be amiss +in this betrothal? + +"I must keep her up to this," he said to his wife. "She sees it is for +her happiness; but still she's young, and may want a little prompting +from an older tongue." + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +With this in view he took her out for a walk, a custom of his when he +wished to say anything specially impressive. Their way was over the +top of that lofty ridge dividing their woodland from the cider +district, whence they had in the spring beheld the miles of apple-trees +in bloom. All was now deep green. The spot recalled to Grace's mind +the last occasion of her presence there, and she said, "The promise of +an enormous apple-crop is fulfilling itself, is it not? I suppose +Giles is getting his mills and presses ready." + +This was just what her father had not come there to talk about. Without +replying he raised his arm, and moved his finger till he fixed it at a +point. "There," he said, "you see that plantation reaching over the +hill like a great slug, and just behind the hill a particularly green +sheltered bottom? That's where Mr. Fitzpiers's family were lords of +the manor for I don't know how many hundred years, and there stands the +village of Buckbury Fitzpiers. A wonderful property 'twas--wonderful!" + +"But they are not lords of the manor there now." + +"Why, no. But good and great things die as well as little and foolish. +The only ones representing the family now, I believe, are our doctor +and a maiden lady living I don't know where. You can't help being +happy, Grace, in allying yourself with such a romantical family. +You'll feel as if you've stepped into history." + +"We've been at Hintock as long as they've been at Buckbury; is it not +so? You say our name occurs in old deeds continually." + +"Oh yes--as yeomen, copyholders, and such like. But think how much +better this will be for 'ee. You'll be living a high intellectual +life, such as has now become natural to you; and though the doctor's +practice is small here, he'll no doubt go to a dashing town when he's +got his hand in, and keep a stylish carriage, and you'll be brought to +know a good many ladies of excellent society. If you should ever meet +me then, Grace, you can drive past me, looking the other way. I +shouldn't expect you to speak to me, or wish such a thing, unless it +happened to be in some lonely, private place where 'twouldn't lower ye +at all. Don't think such men as neighbor Giles your equal. He and I +shall be good friends enough, but he's not for the like of you. He's +lived our rough and homely life here, and his wife's life must be rough +and homely likewise." + +So much pressure could not but produce some displacement. As Grace was +left very much to herself, she took advantage of one fine day before +Fitzpiers's return to drive into the aforesaid vale where stood the +village of Buckbury Fitzpiers. Leaving her father's man at the inn +with the horse and gig, she rambled onward to the ruins of a castle, +which stood in a field hard by. She had no doubt that it represented +the ancient stronghold of the Fitzpiers family. + +The remains were few, and consisted mostly of remnants of the lower +vaulting, supported on low stout columns surmounted by the crochet +capital of the period. The two or three arches of these vaults that +were still in position were utilized by the adjoining farmer as shelter +for his calves, the floor being spread with straw, amid which the young +creatures rustled, cooling their thirsty tongues by licking the quaint +Norman carving, which glistened with the moisture. It was a +degradation of even such a rude form of art as this to be treatad so +grossly, she thought, and for the first time the family of Fitzpiers +assumed in her imagination the hues of a melancholy romanticism. + +It was soon time to drive home, and she traversed the distance with a +preoccupied mind. The idea of so modern a man in science and +aesthetics as the young surgeon springing out of relics so ancient was +a kind of novelty she had never before experienced. The combination +lent him a social and intellectual interest which she dreaded, so much +weight did it add to the strange influence he exercised upon her +whenever he came near her. + +In an excitement which was not love, not ambition, rather a fearful +consciousness of hazard in the air, she awaited his return. + +Meanwhile her father was awaiting him also. In his house there was an +old work on medicine, published towards the end of the last century, +and to put himself in harmony with events Melbury spread this work on +his knees when he had done his day's business, and read about Galen, +Hippocrates, and Herophilus--of the dogmatic, the empiric, the +hermetical, and other sects of practitioners that have arisen in +history; and thence proceeded to the classification of maladies and the +rules for their treatment, as laid down in this valuable book with +absolute precision. Melbury regretted that the treatise was so old, +fearing that he might in consequence be unable to hold as complete a +conversation as he could wish with Mr. Fitzpiers, primed, no doubt, +with more recent discoveries. + +The day of Fitzpiers's return arrived, and he sent to say that he would +call immediately. In the little time that was afforded for putting the +house in order the sweeping of Melbury's parlor was as the sweeping of +the parlor at the Interpreter's which wellnigh choked the Pilgrim. At +the end of it Mrs. Melbury sat down, folded her hands and lips, and +waited. Her husband restlessly walked in and out from the timber-yard, +stared at the interior of the room, jerked out "ay, ay," and retreated +again. Between four and five Fitzpiers arrived, hitching his horse to +the hook outside the door. + +As soon as he had walked in and perceived that Grace was not in the +room, he seemed to have a misgiving. Nothing less than her actual +presence could long keep him to the level of this impassioned +enterprise, and that lacking he appeared as one who wished to retrace +his steps. + +He mechanically talked at what he considered a woodland matron's level +of thought till a rustling was heard on the stairs, and Grace came in. +Fitzpiers was for once as agitated as she. Over and above the genuine +emotion which she raised in his heart there hung the sense that he was +casting a die by impulse which he might not have thrown by judgment. + +Mr. Melbury was not in the room. Having to attend to matters in the +yard, he had delayed putting on his afternoon coat and waistcoat till +the doctor's appearance, when, not wishing to be backward in receiving +him, he entered the parlor hastily buttoning up those garments. +Grace's fastidiousness was a little distressed that Fitzpiers should +see by this action the strain his visit was putting upon her father; +and to make matters worse for her just then, old Grammer seemed to have +a passion for incessantly pumping in the back kitchen, leaving the +doors open so that the banging and splashing were distinct above the +parlor conversation. + +Whenever the chat over the tea sank into pleasant desultoriness Mr. +Melbury broke in with speeches of labored precision on very remote +topics, as if he feared to let Fitzpiers's mind dwell critically on the +subject nearest the hearts of all. In truth a constrained manner was +natural enough in Melbury just now, for the greatest interest of his +life was reaching its crisis. Could the real have been beheld instead +of the corporeal merely, the corner of the room in which he sat would +have been filled with a form typical of anxious suspense, large-eyed, +tight-lipped, awaiting the issue. That paternal hopes and fears so +intense should be bound up in the person of one child so peculiarly +circumstanced, and not have dispersed themselves over the larger field +of a whole family, involved dangerous risks to future happiness. + +Fitzpiers did not stay more than an hour, but that time had apparently +advanced his sentiments towards Grace, once and for all, from a vaguely +liquescent to an organic shape. She would not have accompanied him to +the door in response to his whispered "Come!" if her mother had not +said in a matter-of-fact way, "Of course, Grace; go to the door with +Mr. Fitzpiers." Accordingly Grace went, both her parents remaining in +the room. When the young pair were in the great brick-floored hall the +lover took the girl's hand in his, drew it under his arm, and thus led +her on to the door, where he stealthily kissed her. + +She broke from him trembling, blushed and turned aside, hardly knowing +how things had advanced to this. Fitzpiers drove off, kissing his hand +to her, and waving it to Melbury who was visible through the window. +Her father returned the surgeon's action with a great flourish of his +own hand and a satisfied smile. + +The intoxication that Fitzpiers had, as usual, produced in Grace's +brain during the visit passed off somewhat with his withdrawal. She +felt like a woman who did not know what she had been doing for the +previous hour, but supposed with trepidation that the afternoon's +proceedings, though vague, had amounted to an engagement between +herself and the handsome, coercive, irresistible Fitzpiers. + + +This visit was a type of many which followed it during the long summer +days of that year. Grace was borne along upon a stream of reasonings, +arguments, and persuasions, supplemented, it must be added, by +inclinations of her own at times. No woman is without aspirations, +which may be innocent enough within certain limits; and Grace had been +so trained socially, and educated intellectually, as to see clearly +enough a pleasure in the position of wife to such a man as Fitzpiers. +His material standing of itself, either present or future, had little +in it to give her ambition, but the possibilities of a refined and +cultivated inner life, of subtle psychological intercourse, had their +charm. It was this rather than any vulgar idea of marrying well which +caused her to float with the current, and to yield to the immense +influence which Fitzpiers exercised over her whenever she shared his +society. + +Any observer would shrewdly have prophesied that whether or not she +loved him as yet in the ordinary sense, she was pretty sure to do so in +time. + +One evening just before dusk they had taken a rather long walk +together, and for a short cut homeward passed through the shrubberies +of Hintock House--still deserted, and still blankly confronting with +its sightless shuttered windows the surrounding foliage and slopes. +Grace was tired, and they approached the wall, and sat together on one +of the stone sills--still warm with the sun that had been pouring its +rays upon them all the afternoon. + +"This place would just do for us, would it not, dearest," said her +betrothed, as they sat, turning and looking idly at the old facade. + +"Oh yes," said Grace, plainly showing that no such fancy had ever +crossed her mind. "She is away from home still," Grace added in a +minute, rather sadly, for she could not forget that she had somehow +lost the valuable friendship of the lady of this bower. + +"Who is?--oh, you mean Mrs. Charmond. Do you know, dear, that at one +time I thought you lived here." + +"Indeed!" said Grace. "How was that?" + +He explained, as far as he could do so without mentioning his +disappointment at finding it was otherwise; and then went on: "Well, +never mind that. Now I want to ask you something. There is one detail +of our wedding which I am sure you will leave to me. My inclination is +not to be married at the horrid little church here, with all the yokels +staring round at us, and a droning parson reading." + +"Where, then, can it be? At a church in town?" + +"No. Not at a church at all. At a registry office. It is a quieter, +snugger, and more convenient place in every way." + +"Oh," said she, with real distress. "How can I be married except at +church, and with all my dear friends round me?" + +"Yeoman Winterborne among them." + +"Yes--why not? You know there was nothing serious between him and me." + +"You see, dear, a noisy bell-ringing marriage at church has this +objection in our case: it would be a thing of report a long way round. +Now I would gently, as gently as possible, indicate to you how +inadvisable such publicity would be if we leave Hintock, and I purchase +the practice that I contemplate purchasing at Budmouth--hardly more +than twenty miles off. Forgive my saying that it will be far better if +nobody there knows where you come from, nor anything about your +parents. Your beauty and knowledge and manners will carry you anywhere +if you are not hampered by such retrospective criticism." + +"But could it not be a quiet ceremony, even at church?" she pleaded. + +"I don't see the necessity of going there!" he said, a trifle +impatiently. "Marriage is a civil contract, and the shorter and +simpler it is made the better. People don't go to church when they +take a house, or even when they make a will." + +"Oh, Edgar--I don't like to hear you speak like that." + +"Well, well--I didn't mean to. But I have mentioned as much to your +father, who has made no objection; and why should you?" + +She gave way, deeming the point one on which she ought to allow +sentiment to give way to policy--if there were indeed policy in his +plan. But she was indefinably depressed as they walked homeward. + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +He left her at the door of her father's house. As he receded, and was +clasped out of sight by the filmy shades, he impressed Grace as a man +who hardly appertained to her existence at all. Cleverer, greater than +herself, one outside her mental orbit, as she considered him, he seemed +to be her ruler rather than her equal, protector, and dear familiar +friend. + +The disappointment she had experienced at his wish, the shock given to +her girlish sensibilities by his irreverent views of marriage, together +with the sure and near approach of the day fixed for committing her +future to his keeping, made her so restless that she could scarcely +sleep at all that night. She rose when the sparrows began to walk out +of the roof-holes, sat on the floor of her room in the dim light, and +by-and-by peeped out behind the window-curtains. It was even now day +out-of-doors, though the tones of morning were feeble and wan, and it +was long before the sun would be perceptible in this overshadowed vale. +Not a sound came from any of the out-houses as yet. The tree-trunks, +the road, the out-buildings, the garden, every object wore that aspect +of mesmeric fixity which the suspensive quietude of daybreak lends to +such scenes. Outside her window helpless immobility seemed to be +combined with intense consciousness; a meditative inertness possessed +all things, oppressively contrasting with her own active emotions. +Beyond the road were some cottage roofs and orchards; over these roofs +and over the apple-trees behind, high up the slope, and backed by the +plantation on the crest, was the house yet occupied by her future +husband, the rough-cast front showing whitely through its creepers. +The window-shutters were closed, the bedroom curtains closely drawn, +and not the thinnest coil of smoke rose from the rugged chimneys. + +Something broke the stillness. The front door of the house she was +gazing at opened softly, and there came out into the porch a female +figure, wrapped in a large shawl, beneath which was visible the white +skirt of a long loose garment. A gray arm, stretching from within the +porch, adjusted the shawl over the woman's shoulders; it was withdrawn +and disappeared, the door closing behind her. + +The woman went quickly down the box-edged path between the raspberries +and currants, and as she walked her well-developed form and gait +betrayed her individuality. It was Suke Damson, the affianced one of +simple young Tim Tangs. At the bottom of the garden she entered the +shelter of the tall hedge, and only the top of her head could be seen +hastening in the direction of her own dwelling. + +Grace had recognized, or thought she recognized, in the gray arm +stretching from the porch, the sleeve of a dressing-gown which Mr. +Fitzpiers had been wearing on her own memorable visit to him. Her face +fired red. She had just before thought of dressing herself and taking +a lonely walk under the trees, so coolly green this early morning; but +she now sat down on her bed and fell into reverie. It seemed as if +hardly any time had passed when she heard the household moving briskly +about, and breakfast preparing down-stairs; though, on rousing herself +to robe and descend, she found that the sun was throwing his rays +completely over the tree-tops, a progress of natural phenomena +denoting that at least three hours had elapsed since she last looked +out of the window. + +When attired she searched about the house for her father; she found him +at last in the garden, stooping to examine the potatoes for signs of +disease. Hearing her rustle, he stood up and stretched his back and +arms, saying, "Morning t'ye, Gracie. I congratulate ye. It is only a +month to-day to the time!" + +She did not answer, but, without lifting her dress, waded between the +dewy rows of tall potato-green into the middle of the plot where he was. + +"I have been thinking very much about my position this morning--ever +since it was light," she began, excitedly, and trembling so that she +could hardly stand. "And I feel it is a false one. I wish not to +marry Mr. Fitzpiers. I wish not to marry anybody; but I'll marry Giles +Winterborne if you say I must as an alternative." + +Her father's face settled into rigidity, he turned pale, and came +deliberately out of the plot before he answered her. She had never +seen him look so incensed before. + +"Now, hearken to me," he said. "There's a time for a woman to alter +her mind; and there's a time when she can no longer alter it, if she +has any right eye to her parents' honor and the seemliness of things. +That time has come. I won't say to ye, you SHALL marry him. But I +will say that if you refuse, I shall forever be ashamed and a-weary of +ye as a daughter, and shall look upon you as the hope of my life no +more. What do you know about life and what it can bring forth, and how +you ought to act to lead up to best ends? Oh, you are an ungrateful +maid, Grace; you've seen that fellow Giles, and he has got over ye; +that's where the secret lies, I'll warrant me!" + +"No, father, no! It is not Giles--it is something I cannot tell you +of--" + +"Well, make fools of us all; make us laughing-stocks; break it off; +have your own way." + +"But who knows of the engagement as yet? how can breaking it disgrace +you?" + +Melbury then by degrees admitted that he had mentioned the engagement +to this acquaintance and to that, till she perceived that in his +restlessness and pride he had published it everywhere. She went +dismally away to a bower of laurel at the top of the garden. Her +father followed her. + +"It is that Giles Winterborne!" he said, with an upbraiding gaze at her. + +"No, it is not; though for that matter you encouraged him once," she +said, troubled to the verge of despair. "It is not Giles, it is Mr. +Fitzpiers." + +"You've had a tiff--a lovers' tiff--that's all, I suppose!" + +"It is some woman--" + +"Ay, ay; you are jealous. The old story. Don't tell me. Now do you +bide here. I'll send Fitzpiers to you. I saw him smoking in front of +his house but a minute by-gone." + +He went off hastily out of the garden-gate and down the lane. But she +would not stay where she was; and edging through a slit in the +garden-fence, walked away into the wood. Just about here the trees +were large and wide apart, and there was no undergrowth, so that she +could be seen to some distance; a sylph-like, greenish-white creature, +as toned by the sunlight and leafage. She heard a foot-fall crushing +dead leaves behind her, and found herself reconnoitered by Fitzpiers +himself, approaching gay and fresh as the morning around them. + +His remote gaze at her had been one of mild interest rather than of +rapture. But she looked so lovely in the green world about her, her +pink cheeks, her simple light dress, and the delicate flexibility of +her movement acquired such rarity from their wild-wood setting, that +his eyes kindled as he drew near. + +"My darling, what is it? Your father says you are in the pouts, and +jealous, and I don't know what. Ha! ha! ha! as if there were any rival +to you, except vegetable nature, in this home of recluses! We know +better." + +"Jealous; oh no, it is not so," said she, gravely. "That's a mistake +of his and yours, sir. I spoke to him so closely about the question of +marriage with you that he did not apprehend my state of mind." + +"But there's something wrong--eh?" he asked, eying her narrowly, and +bending to kiss her. She shrank away, and his purposed kiss miscarried. + +"What is it?" he said, more seriously for this little defeat. + +She made no answer beyond, "Mr. Fitzpiers, I have had no breakfast, I +must go in." + +"Come," he insisted, fixing his eyes upon her. "Tell me at once, I +say." + +It was the greater strength against the smaller; but she was mastered +less by his manner than by her own sense of the unfairness of silence. +"I looked out of the window," she said, with hesitation. "I'll tell +you by-and-by. I must go in-doors. I have had no breakfast." + +By a sort of divination his conjecture went straight to the fact. "Nor +I," said he, lightly. "Indeed, I rose late to-day. I have had a +broken night, or rather morning. A girl of the village--I don't know +her name--came and rang at my bell as soon as it was light--between +four and five, I should think it was--perfectly maddened with an aching +tooth. As no-body heard her ring, she threw some gravel at my window, +till at last I heard her and slipped on my dressing-gown and went down. +The poor thing begged me with tears in her eyes to take out her +tormentor, if I dragged her head off. Down she sat and out it came--a +lovely molar, not a speck upon it; and off she went with it in her +handkerchief, much contented, though it would have done good work for +her for fifty years to come." + +It was all so plausible--so completely explained. Knowing nothing of +the incident in the wood on old Midsummer-eve, Grace felt that her +suspicions were unworthy and absurd, and with the readiness of an +honest heart she jumped at the opportunity of honoring his word. At +the moment of her mental liberation the bushes about the garden had +moved, and her father emerged into the shady glade. "Well, I hope it is +made up?" he said, cheerily. + +"Oh yes," said Fitzpiers, with his eyes fixed on Grace, whose eyes were +shyly bent downward. + +"Now," said her father, "tell me, the pair of ye, that you still mean +to take one another for good and all; and on the strength o't you shall +have another couple of hundred paid down. I swear it by the name." + +Fitzpiers took her hand. "We declare it, do we not, my dear Grace?" +said he. + +Relieved of her doubt, somewhat overawed, and ever anxious to please, +she was disposed to settle the matter; yet, womanlike, she would not +relinquish her opportunity of asking a concession of some sort. "If +our wedding can be at church, I say yes," she answered, in a measured +voice. "If not, I say no." + +Fitzpiers was generous in his turn. "It shall be so," he rejoined, +gracefully. "To holy church we'll go, and much good may it do us." + +They returned through the bushes indoors, Grace walking, full of +thought between the other two, somewhat comforted, both by Fitzpiers's +ingenious explanation and by the sense that she was not to be deprived +of a religious ceremony. "So let it be," she said to herself. "Pray +God it is for the best." + +From this hour there was no serious attempt at recalcitration on her +part. Fitzpiers kept himself continually near her, dominating any +rebellious impulse, and shaping her will into passive concurrence with +all his desires. Apart from his lover-like anxiety to possess her, the +few golden hundreds of the timber-dealer, ready to hand, formed a warm +background to Grace's lovely face, and went some way to remove his +uneasiness at the prospect of endangering his professional and social +chances by an alliance with the family of a simple countryman. + + +The interim closed up its perspective surely and silently. Whenever +Grace had any doubts of her position, the sense of contracting time was +like a shortening chamber: at other moments she was comparatively +blithe. Day after day waxed and waned; the one or two woodmen who +sawed, shaped, spokeshaved on her father's premises at this inactive +season of the year, regularly came and unlocked the doors in the +morning, locked them in the evening, supped, leaned over their +garden-gates for a whiff of evening air, and to catch any last and +farthest throb of news from the outer world, which entered and expired +at Little Hintock like the exhausted swell of a wave in some innermost +cavern of some innermost creek of an embayed sea; yet no news +interfered with the nuptial purpose at their neighbor's house. The +sappy green twig-tips of the season's growth would not, she thought, +be appreciably woodier on the day she became a wife, so near was the +time; the tints of the foliage would hardly have changed. Everything +was so much as usual that no itinerant stranger would have supposed a +woman's fate to be hanging in the balance at that summer's decline. + +But there were preparations, imaginable readily enough by those who had +special knowledge. In the remote and fashionable town of Sandbourne +something was growing up under the hands of several persons who had +never seen Grace Melbury, never would see her, or care anything about +her at all, though their creation had such interesting relation to her +life that it would enclose her very heart at a moment when that heart +would beat, if not with more emotional ardor, at least with more +emotional turbulence than at any previous time. + +Why did Mrs. Dollery's van, instead of passing along at the end of the +smaller village to Great Hintock direct, turn one Saturday night into +Little Hintock Lane, and never pull up till it reached Mr. Melbury's +gates? The gilding shine of evening fell upon a large, flat box not +less than a yard square, and safely tied with cord, as it was handed +out from under the tilt with a great deal of care. But it was not +heavy for its size; Mrs. Dollery herself carried it into the house. +Tim Tangs, the hollow-turner, Bawtree, Suke Damson, and others, looked +knowing, and made remarks to each other as they watched its entrance. +Melbury stood at the door of the timber-shed in the attitude of a man +to whom such an arrival was a trifling domestic detail with which he +did not condescend to be concerned. Yet he well divined the contents +of that box, and was in truth all the while in a pleasant exaltation at +the proof that thus far, at any rate, no disappointment had supervened. +While Mrs. Dollery remained--which was rather long, from her sense of +the importance of her errand--he went into the out-house; but as soon +as she had had her say, been paid, and had rumbled away, he entered the +dwelling, to find there what he knew he should find--his wife and +daughter in a flutter of excitement over the wedding-gown, just arrived +from the leading dress-maker of Sandbourne watering-place aforesaid. + +During these weeks Giles Winterborne was nowhere to be seen or heard +of. At the close of his tenure in Hintock he had sold some of his +furniture, packed up the rest--a few pieces endeared by associations, +or necessary to his occupation--in the house of a friendly neighbor, +and gone away. People said that a certain laxity had crept into his +life; that he had never gone near a church latterly, and had been +sometimes seen on Sundays with unblacked boots, lying on his elbow +under a tree, with a cynical gaze at surrounding objects. He was +likely to return to Hintock when the cider-making season came round, +his apparatus being stored there, and travel with his mill and press +from village to village. + +The narrow interval that stood before the day diminished yet. There was +in Grace's mind sometimes a certain anticipative satisfaction, the +satisfaction of feeling that she would be the heroine of an hour; +moreover, she was proud, as a cultivated woman, to be the wife of a +cultivated man. It was an opportunity denied very frequently to young +women in her position, nowadays not a few; those in whom parental +discovery of the value of education has implanted tastes which parental +circles fail to gratify. But what an attenuation was this cold pride +of the dream of her youth, in which she had pictured herself walking in +state towards the altar, flushed by the purple light and bloom of her +own passion, without a single misgiving as to the sealing of the bond, +and fervently receiving as her due + + "The homage of a thousand hearts; the fond, deep love of one." + + +Everything had been clear then, in imagination; now something was +undefined. She had little carking anxieties; a curious fatefulness +seemed to rule her, and she experienced a mournful want of some one to +confide in. + +The day loomed so big and nigh that her prophetic ear could, in fancy, +catch the noise of it, hear the murmur of the villagers as she came out +of church, imagine the jangle of the three thin-toned Hintock bells. +The dialogues seemed to grow louder, and the ding-ding-dong of those +three crazed bells more persistent. She awoke: the morning had come. + +Five hours later she was the wife of Fitzpiers. + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +The chief hotel at Sherton-Abbas was an old stone-fronted inn with a +yawning arch, under which vehicles were driven by stooping coachmen to +back premises of wonderful commodiousness. The windows to the street +were mullioned into narrow lights, and only commanded a view of the +opposite houses; hence, perhaps, it arose that the best and most +luxurious private sitting-room that the inn could afford over-looked +the nether parts of the establishment, where beyond the yard were to be +seen gardens and orchards, now bossed, nay incrusted, with scarlet and +gold fruit, stretching to infinite distance under a luminous lavender +mist. The time was early autumn, + + "When the fair apples, red as evening sky, + Do bend the tree unto the fruitful ground, + When juicy pears, and berries of black dye, + Do dance in air, and call the eyes around." + + +The landscape confronting the window might, indeed, have been part of +the identical stretch of country which the youthful Chatterton had in +his mind. + +In this room sat she who had been the maiden Grace Melbury till the +finger of fate touched her and turned her to a wife. It was two months +after the wedding, and she was alone. Fitzpiers had walked out to see +the abbey by the light of sunset, but she had been too fatigued to +accompany him. They had reached the last stage of a long eight-weeks' +tour, and were going on to Hintock that night. + +In the yard, between Grace and the orchards, there progressed a scene +natural to the locality at this time of the year. An apple-mill and +press had been erected on the spot, to which some men were bringing +fruit from divers points in mawn-baskets, while others were grinding +them, and others wringing down the pomace, whose sweet juice gushed +forth into tubs and pails. The superintendent of these proceedings, to +whom the others spoke as master, was a young yeoman of prepossessing +manner and aspect, whose form she recognized in a moment. He had hung +his coat to a nail of the out-house wall, and wore his shirt-sleeves +rolled up beyond his elbows, to keep them unstained while he rammed the +pomace into the bags of horse-hair. Fragments of apple-rind had +alighted upon the brim of his hat--probably from the bursting of a +bag--while brown pips of the same fruit were sticking among the down +upon his fine, round arms. + +She realized in a moment how he had come there. Down in the heart of +the apple country nearly every farmer kept up a cider-making apparatus +and wring-house for his own use, building up the pomace in great straw +"cheeses," as they were called; but here, on the margin of Pomona's +plain, was a debatable land neither orchard nor sylvan exclusively, +where the apple produce was hardly sufficient to warrant each +proprietor in keeping a mill of his own. This was the field of the +travelling cider-maker. His press and mill were fixed to wheels +instead of being set up in a cider-house; and with a couple of horses, +buckets, tubs, strainers, and an assistant or two, he wandered from +place to place, deriving very satisfactory returns for his trouble in +such a prolific season as the present. + +The back parts of the town were just now abounding with +apple-gatherings. They stood in the yards in carts, baskets, and loose +heaps; and the blue, stagnant air of autumn which hung over everything +was heavy with a sweet cidery smell. Cakes of pomace lay against the +walls in the yellow sun, where they were drying to be used as fuel. +Yet it was not the great make of the year as yet; before the standard +crop came in there accumulated, in abundant times like this, a large +superfluity of early apples, and windfalls from the trees of later +harvest, which would not keep long. Thus, in the baskets, and +quivering in the hopper of the mill, she saw specimens of mixed dates, +including the mellow countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards, +stubbards, ratheripes, and other well-known friends of her ravenous +youth. + +Grace watched the head-man with interest. The slightest sigh escaped +her. Perhaps she thought of the day--not so far distant--when that +friend of her childhood had met her by her father's arrangement in this +same town, warm with hope, though diffident, and trusting in a promise +rather implied than given. Or she might have thought of days earlier +yet--days of childhood--when her mouth was somewhat more ready to +receive a kiss from his than was his to bestow one. However, all that +was over. She had felt superior to him then, and she felt superior to +him now. + +She wondered why he never looked towards her open window. She did not +know that in the slight commotion caused by their arrival at the inn +that afternoon Winterborne had caught sight of her through the archway, +had turned red, and was continuing his work with more concentrated +attention on the very account of his discovery. Robert Creedle, too, +who travelled with Giles, had been incidentally informed by the hostler +that Dr. Fitzpiers and his young wife were in the hotel, after which +news Creedle kept shaking his head and saying to himself, "Ah!" very +audibly, between his thrusts at the screw of the cider-press. + +"Why the deuce do you sigh like that, Robert?" asked Winterborne, at +last. + +"Ah, maister--'tis my thoughts--'tis my thoughts!...Yes, ye've lost a +hundred load o' timber well seasoned; ye've lost five hundred pound in +good money; ye've lost the stone-windered house that's big enough to +hold a dozen families; ye've lost your share of half a dozen good +wagons and their horses--all lost!--through your letting slip she that +was once yer own!" + +"Good God, Creedle, you'll drive me mad!" said Giles, sternly. "Don't +speak of that any more!" + +Thus the subject had ended in the yard. Meanwhile, the passive cause +of all this loss still regarded the scene. She was beautifully +dressed; she was seated in the most comfortable room that the inn +afforded; her long journey had been full of variety, and almost +luxuriously performed--for Fitzpiers did not study economy where +pleasure was in question. Hence it perhaps arose that Giles and all +his belongings seemed sorry and common to her for the moment--moving in +a plane so far removed from her own of late that she could scarcely +believe she had ever found congruity therein. "No--I could never have +married him!" she said, gently shaking her head. "Dear father was +right. It would have been too coarse a life for me." And she looked at +the rings of sapphire and opal upon her white and slender fingers that +had been gifts from Fitzpiers. + +Seeing that Giles still kept his back turned, and with a little of the +above-described pride of life--easily to be understood, and possibly +excused, in a young, inexperienced woman who thought she had married +well--she said at last, with a smile on her lips, "Mr. Winterborne!" + +He appeared to take no heed, and she said a second time, "Mr. +Winterborne!" + +Even now he seemed not to hear, though a person close enough to him to +see the expression of his face might have doubted it; and she said a +third time, with a timid loudness, "Mr. Winterborne! What, have you +forgotten my voice?" She remained with her lips parted in a welcoming +smile. + +He turned without surprise, and came deliberately towards the window. +"Why do you call me?" he said, with a sternness that took her +completely unawares, his face being now pale. "Is it not enough that +you see me here moiling and muddling for my daily bread while you are +sitting there in your success, that you can't refrain from opening old +wounds by calling out my name?" + +She flushed, and was struck dumb for some moments; but she forgave his +unreasoning anger, knowing so well in what it had its root. "I am sorry +I offended you by speaking," she replied, meekly. "Believe me, I did +not intend to do that. I could hardly sit here so near you without a +word of recognition." + +Winterborne's heart had swollen big, and his eyes grown moist by this +time, so much had the gentle answer of that familiar voice moved him. +He assured her hurriedly, and without looking at her, that he was not +angry. He then managed to ask her, in a clumsy, constrained way, if +she had had a pleasant journey, and seen many interesting sights. She +spoke of a few places that she had visited, and so the time passed till +he withdrew to take his place at one of the levers which pulled round +the screw. + +Forgotten her voice! Indeed, he had not forgotten her voice, as his +bitterness showed. But though in the heat of the moment he had +reproached her keenly, his second mood was a far more tender one--that +which could regard her renunciation of such as he as her glory and her +privilege, his own fidelity notwithstanding. He could have declared +with a contemporary poet-- + + "If I forget, + The salt creek may forget the ocean; + If I forget + The heart whence flows my heart's bright motion, + May I sink meanlier than the worst + Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst, + If I forget. + + "Though you forget, + No word of mine shall mar your pleasure; + Though you forget, + You filled my barren life with treasure, + You may withdraw the gift you gave; + You still are queen, I still am slave, + Though you forget." + + +She had tears in her eyes at the thought that she could not remind him +of what he ought to have remembered; that not herself but the pressure +of events had dissipated the dreams of their early youth. Grace was +thus unexpectedly worsted in her encounter with her old friend. She +had opened the window with a faint sense of triumph, but he had turned +it into sadness; she did not quite comprehend the reason why. In truth +it was because she was not cruel enough in her cruelty. If you have to +use the knife, use it, say the great surgeons; and for her own peace +Grace should have contemned Winterborne thoroughly or not at all. As +it was, on closing the window an indescribable, some might have said +dangerous, pity quavered in her bosom for him. + +Presently her husband entered the room, and told her what a wonderful +sunset there was to be seen. + +"I have not noticed it. But I have seen somebody out there that we +know," she replied, looking into the court. + +Fitzpiers followed the direction of her eyes, and said he did not +recognize anybody. + +"Why, Mr. Winterborne--there he is, cider-making. He combines that +with his other business, you know." + +"Oh--that fellow," said Fitzpiers, his curiosity becoming extinct. + +She, reproachfully: "What, call Mr. Winterborne a fellow, Edgar? It is +true I was just saying to myself that I never could have married him; +but I have much regard for him, and always shall." + +"Well, do by all means, my dear one. I dare say I am inhuman, and +supercilious, and contemptibly proud of my poor old ramshackle family; +but I do honestly confess to you that I feel as if I belonged to a +different species from the people who are working in that yard." + +"And from me too, then. For my blood is no better than theirs." + +He looked at her with a droll sort of awakening. It was, indeed, a +startling anomaly that this woman of the tribe without should be +standing there beside him as his wife, if his sentiments were as he had +said. In their travels together she had ranged so unerringly at his +level in ideas, tastes, and habits that he had almost forgotten how his +heart had played havoc with his principles in taking her to him. + +"Ah YOU--you are refined and educated into something quite different," +he said, self-assuringly. + +"I don't quite like to think that," she murmured with soft regret. "And +I think you underestimate Giles Winterborne. Remember, I was brought +up with him till I was sent away to school, so I cannot be radically +different. At any rate, I don't feel so. That is, no doubt, my fault, +and a great blemish in me. But I hope you will put up with it, Edgar." + +Fitzpiers said that he would endeavor to do so; and as it was now +getting on for dusk, they prepared to perform the last stage of their +journey, so as to arrive at Hintock before it grew very late. + +In less than half an hour they started, the cider-makers in the yard +having ceased their labors and gone away, so that the only sounds +audible there now were the trickling of the juice from the tightly +screwed press, and the buzz of a single wasp, which had drunk itself so +tipsy that it was unconscious of nightfall. Grace was very cheerful at +the thought of being soon in her sylvan home, but Fitzpiers sat beside +her almost silent. An indescribable oppressiveness had overtaken him +with the near approach of the journey's end and the realities of life +that lay there. + +"You don't say a word, Edgar," she observed. "Aren't you glad to get +back? I am." + +"You have friends here. I have none." + +"But my friends are yours." + +"Oh yes--in that sense." + +The conversation languished, and they drew near the end of Hintock +Lane. It had been decided that they should, at least for a time, take +up their abode in her father's roomy house, one wing of which was quite +at their service, being almost disused by the Melburys. Workmen had +been painting, papering, and whitewashing this set of rooms in the +wedded pair's absence; and so scrupulous had been the timber-dealer +that there should occur no hitch or disappointment on their arrival, +that not the smallest detail remained undone. To make it all complete a +ground-floor room had been fitted up as a surgery, with an independent +outer door, to which Fitzpiers's brass plate was screwed--for mere +ornament, such a sign being quite superfluous where everybody knew the +latitude and longitude of his neighbors for miles round. + +Melbury and his wife welcomed the twain with affection, and all the +house with deference. They went up to explore their rooms, that opened +from a passage on the left hand of the staircase, the entrance to which +could be shut off on the landing by a door that Melbury had hung for +the purpose. A friendly fire was burning in the grate, although it was +not cold. Fitzpiers said it was too soon for any sort of meal, they +only having dined shortly before leaving Sherton-Abbas. He would walk +across to his old lodging, to learn how his locum tenens had got on in +his absence. + +In leaving Melbury's door he looked back at the house. There was +economy in living under that roof, and economy was desirable, but in +some way he was dissatisfied with the arrangement; it immersed him so +deeply in son-in-lawship to Melbury. He went on to his former +residence. His deputy was out, and Fitzpiers fell into conversation +with his former landlady. + +"Well, Mrs. Cox, what's the best news?" he asked of her, with cheery +weariness. + +She was a little soured at losing by his marriage so profitable a +tenant as the surgeon had proved to be during his residence under her +roof; and the more so in there being hardly the remotest chance of her +getting such another settler in the Hintock solitudes. "'Tis what I +don't wish to repeat, sir; least of all to you," she mumbled. + +"Never mind me, Mrs. Cox; go ahead." + +"It is what people say about your hasty marrying, Dr. Fitzpiers. +Whereas they won't believe you know such clever doctrines in physic as +they once supposed of ye, seeing as you could marry into Mr. Melbury's +family, which is only Hintock-born, such as me." + +"They are kindly welcome to their opinion," said Fitzpiers, not +allowing himself to recognize that he winced. "Anything else?" + +"Yes; SHE'S come home at last." + +"Who's she?" + +"Mrs. Charmond." + +"Oh, indeed!" said Fitzpiers, with but slight interest. "I've never +seen her." + +"She has seen you, sir, whether or no." + +"Never." + +"Yes; she saw you in some hotel or street for a minute or two while you +were away travelling, and accidentally heard your name; and when she +made some remark about you, Miss Ellis--that's her maid--told her you +was on your wedding-tower with Mr. Melbury's daughter; and she said, +'He ought to have done better than that. I fear he has spoiled his +chances,' she says." + +Fitzpiers did not talk much longer to this cheering housewife, and +walked home with no very brisk step. He entered the door quietly, and +went straight up-stairs to the drawing-room extemporized for their use +by Melbury in his and his bride's absence, expecting to find her there +as he had left her. The fire was burning still, but there were no +lights. He looked into the next apartment, fitted up as a little +dining-room, but no supper was laid. He went to the top of the stairs, +and heard a chorus of voices in the timber-merchant's parlor below, +Grace's being occasionally intermingled. + +Descending, and looking into the room from the door-way, he found quite +a large gathering of neighbors and other acquaintances, praising and +congratulating Mrs. Fitzpiers on her return, among them being the +dairyman, Farmer Bawtree, and the master-blacksmith from Great Hintock; +also the cooper, the hollow-turner, the exciseman, and some others, +with their wives, who lived hard by. Grace, girl that she was, had +quite forgotten her new dignity and her husband's; she was in the midst +of them, blushing, and receiving their compliments with all the +pleasure of old-comradeship. + +Fitzpiers experienced a profound distaste for the situation. Melbury +was nowhere in the room, but Melbury's wife, perceiving the doctor, +came to him. "We thought, Grace and I," she said, "that as they have +called, hearing you were come, we could do no less than ask them to +supper; and then Grace proposed that we should all sup together, as it +is the first night of your return." + +By this time Grace had come round to him. "Is it not good of them to +welcome me so warmly?" she exclaimed, with tears of friendship in her +eyes. "After so much good feeling I could not think of our shutting +ourselves up away from them in our own dining-room." + +"Certainly not--certainly not," said Fitzpiers; and he entered the room +with the heroic smile of a martyr. + +As soon as they sat down to table Melbury came in, and seemed to see at +once that Fitzpiers would much rather have received no such +demonstrative reception. He thereupon privately chid his wife for her +forwardness in the matter. Mrs. Melbury declared that it was as much +Grace's doing as hers, after which there was no more to be said by that +young woman's tender father. By this time Fitzpiers was making the +best of his position among the wide-elbowed and genial company who sat +eating and drinking and laughing and joking around him; and getting +warmed himself by the good cheer, was obliged to admit that, after all, +the supper was not the least enjoyable he had ever known. + +At times, however, the words about his having spoiled his +opportunities, repeated to him as those of Mrs. Charmond, haunted him +like a handwriting on the wall. Then his manner would become suddenly +abstracted. At one moment he would mentally put an indignant query why +Mrs. Charmond or any other woman should make it her business to have +opinions about his opportunities; at another he thought that he could +hardly be angry with her for taking an interest in the doctor of her +own parish. Then he would drink a glass of grog and so get rid of the +misgiving. These hitches and quaffings were soon perceived by Grace as +well as by her father; and hence both of them were much relieved when +the first of the guests to discover that the hour was growing late rose +and declared that he must think of moving homeward. At the words +Melbury rose as alertly as if lifted by a spring, and in ten minutes +they were gone. + +"Now, Grace," said her husband as soon as he found himself alone with +her in their private apartments, "we've had a very pleasant evening, +and everybody has been very kind. But we must come to an understanding +about our way of living here. If we continue in these rooms there must +be no mixing in with your people below. I can't stand it, and that's +the truth." + +She had been sadly surprised at the suddenness of his distaste for +those old-fashioned woodland forms of life which in his courtship he +had professed to regard with so much interest. But she assented in a +moment. + +"We must be simply your father's tenants," he continued, "and our +goings and comings must be as independent as if we lived elsewhere." + +"Certainly, Edgar--I quite see that it must be so." + +"But you joined in with all those people in my absence, without knowing +whether I should approve or disapprove. When I came I couldn't help +myself at all." + +She, sighing: "Yes--I see I ought to have waited; though they came +unexpectedly, and I thought I had acted for the best." + +Thus the discussion ended, and the next day Fitzpiers went on his old +rounds as usual. But it was easy for so super-subtle an eye as his to +discern, or to think he discerned, that he was no longer regarded as an +extrinsic, unfathomed gentleman of limitless potentiality, scientific +and social; but as Mr. Melbury's compeer, and therefore in a degree +only one of themselves. The Hintock woodlandlers held with all the +strength of inherited conviction to the aristocratic principle, and as +soon as they had discovered that Fitzpiers was one of the old Buckbury +Fitzpierses they had accorded to him for nothing a touching of +hat-brims, promptness of service, and deference of approach, which +Melbury had to do without, though he paid for it over and over. But +now, having proved a traitor to his own cause by this marriage, +Fitzpiers was believed in no more as a superior hedged by his own +divinity; while as doctor he began to be rated no higher than old +Jones, whom they had so long despised. + +His few patients seemed in his two months' absence to have dwindled +considerably in number, and no sooner had he returned than there came +to him from the Board of Guardians a complaint that a pauper had been +neglected by his substitute. In a fit of pride Fitzpiers resigned his +appointment as one of the surgeons to the union, which had been the +nucleus of his practice here. + +At the end of a fortnight he came in-doors one evening to Grace more +briskly than usual. "They have written to me again about that practice +in Budmouth that I once negotiated for," he said to her. "The premium +asked is eight hundred pounds, and I think that between your father and +myself it ought to be raised. Then we can get away from this place +forever." + +The question had been mooted between them before, and she was not +unprepared to consider it. They had not proceeded far with the +discussion when a knock came to the door, and in a minute Grammer ran +up to say that a message had arrived from Hintock House requesting Dr. +Fitzpiers to attend there at once. Mrs. Charmond had met with a slight +accident through the overturning of her carriage. + +"This is something, anyhow," said Fitzpiers, rising with an interest +which he could not have defined. "I have had a presentiment that this +mysterious woman and I were to be better acquainted." + +The latter words were murmured to himself alone. + +"Good-night," said Grace, as soon as he was ready. "I shall be asleep, +probably, when you return." + +"Good-night," he replied, inattentively, and went down-stairs. It was +the first time since their marriage that he had left her without a kiss. + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +Winterborne's house had been pulled down. On this account his face had +been seen but fitfully in Hintock; and he would probably have +disappeared from the place altogether but for his slight business +connection with Melbury, on whose premises Giles kept his cider-making +apparatus, now that he had no place of his own to stow it in. Coming +here one evening on his way to a hut beyond the wood where he now +slept, he noticed that the familiar brown-thatched pinion of his +paternal roof had vanished from its site, and that the walls were +levelled. In present circumstances he had a feeling for the spot that +might have been called morbid, and when he had supped in the hut +aforesaid he made use of the spare hour before bedtime to return to +Little Hintock in the twilight and ramble over the patch of ground on +which he had first seen the day. + +He repeated this evening visit on several like occasions. Even in the +gloom he could trace where the different rooms had stood; could mark +the shape of the kitchen chimney-corner, in which he had roasted apples +and potatoes in his boyhood, cast his bullets, and burned his initials +on articles that did and did not belong to him. The apple-trees still +remained to show where the garden had been, the oldest of them even now +retaining the crippled slant to north-east given them by the great +November gale of 1824, which carried a brig bodily over the Chesil +Bank. They were at present bent to still greater obliquity by the +heaviness of their produce. Apples bobbed against his head, and in the +grass beneath he crunched scores of them as he walked. There was +nobody to gather them now. + +It was on the evening under notice that, half sitting, half leaning +against one of these inclined trunks, Winterborne had become lost in +his thoughts, as usual, till one little star after another had taken up +a position in the piece of sky which now confronted him where his walls +and chimneys had formerly raised their outlines. The house had jutted +awkwardly into the road, and the opening caused by its absence was very +distinct. + +In the silence the trot of horses and the spin of carriage-wheels +became audible; and the vehicle soon shaped itself against the blank +sky, bearing down upon him with the bend in the lane which here +occurred, and of which the house had been the cause. He could discern +the figure of a woman high up on the driving-seat of a phaeton, a groom +being just visible behind. Presently there was a slight scrape, then a +scream. Winterborne went across to the spot, and found the phaeton +half overturned, its driver sitting on the heap of rubbish which had +once been his dwelling, and the man seizing the horses' heads. The +equipage was Mrs. Charmond's, and the unseated charioteer that lady +herself. + +To his inquiry if she were hurt she made some incoherent reply to the +effect that she did not know. The damage in other respects was little +or none: the phaeton was righted, Mrs. Charmond placed in it, and the +reins given to the servant. It appeared that she had been deceived by +the removal of the house, imagining the gap caused by the demolition to +be the opening of the road, so that she turned in upon the ruins +instead of at the bend a few yards farther on. + +"Drive home--drive home!" cried the lady, impatiently; and they started +on their way. They had not, however, gone many paces when, the air +being still, Winterborne heard her say "Stop; tell that man to call the +doctor--Mr. Fitzpiers--and send him on to the House. I find I am hurt +more seriously than I thought." + +Winterborne took the message from the groom and proceeded to the +doctor's at once. Having delivered it, he stepped back into the +darkness, and waited till he had seen Fitzpiers leave the door. He +stood for a few minutes looking at the window which by its light +revealed the room where Grace was sitting, and went away under the +gloomy trees. + + +Fitzpiers duly arrived at Hintock House, whose doors he now saw open +for the first time. Contrary to his expectation there was visible no +sign of that confusion or alarm which a serious accident to the +mistress of the abode would have occasioned. He was shown into a room +at the top of the staircase, cosily and femininely draped, where, by +the light of the shaded lamp, he saw a woman of full round figure +reclining upon a couch in such a position as not to disturb a pile of +magnificent hair on the crown of her head. A deep purple dressing-gown +formed an admirable foil to the peculiarly rich brown of her +hair-plaits; her left arm, which was naked nearly up to the shoulder, +was thrown upward, and between the fingers of her right hand she held a +cigarette, while she idly breathed from her plump lips a thin stream of +smoke towards the ceiling. + +The doctor's first feeling was a sense of his exaggerated prevision in +having brought appliances for a serious case; the next, something more +curious. While the scene and the moment were new to him and +unanticipated, the sentiment and essence of the moment were +indescribably familiar. What could be the cause of it? Probably a +dream. + +Mrs. Charmond did not move more than to raise her eyes to him, and he +came and stood by her. She glanced up at his face across her brows and +forehead, and then he observed a blush creep slowly over her decidedly +handsome cheeks. Her eyes, which had lingered upon him with an +inquiring, conscious expression, were hastily withdrawn, and she +mechanically applied the cigarette again to her lips. + +For a moment he forgot his errand, till suddenly arousing himself he +addressed her, formally condoled with her, and made the usual +professional inquiries about what had happened to her, and where she +was hurt. + +"That's what I want you to tell me," she murmured, in tones of +indefinable reserve. "I quite believe in you, for I know you are very +accomplished, because you study so hard." + +"I'll do my best to justify your good opinion," said the young man, +bowing. "And none the less that I am happy to find the accident has +not been serious." + +"I am very much shaken," she said. + +"Oh yes," he replied; and completed his examination, which convinced +him that there was really nothing the matter with her, and more than +ever puzzled him as to why he had been fetched, since she did not +appear to be a timid woman. "You must rest a while, and I'll send +something," he said. + +"Oh, I forgot," she returned. "Look here." And she showed him a little +scrape on her arm--the full round arm that was exposed. "Put some +court-plaster on that, please." + +He obeyed. "And now," she said, "before you go I want to put a +question to you. Sit round there in front of me, on that low chair, +and bring the candles, or one, to the little table. Do you smoke? Yes? +That's right--I am learning. Take one of these; and here's a light." +She threw a matchbox across. + +Fitzpiers caught it, and having lit up, regarded her from his new +position, which, with the shifting of the candles, for the first time +afforded him a full view of her face. "How many years have passed +since first we met!" she resumed, in a voice which she mainly +endeavored to maintain at its former pitch of composure, and eying him +with daring bashfulness. + +"WE met, do you say?" + +She nodded. "I saw you recently at an hotel in London, when you were +passing through, I suppose, with your bride, and I recognized you as +one I had met in my girlhood. Do you remember, when you were studying +at Heidelberg, an English family that was staying there, who used to +walk--" + +"And the young lady who wore a long tail of rare-colored hair--ah, I +see it before my eyes!--who lost her gloves on the Great Terrace--who +was going back in the dusk to find them--to whom I said, 'I'll go for +them,' and you said, 'Oh, they are not worth coming all the way up +again for.' I DO remember, and how very long we stayed talking there! I +went next morning while the dew was on the grass: there they lay--the +little fingers sticking out damp and thin. I see them now! I picked +them up, and then--" + +"Well?" + +"I kissed them," he rejoined, rather shamefacedly. + +"But you had hardly ever seen me except in the dusk?" + +"Never mind. I was young then, and I kissed them. I wondered how I +could make the most of my trouvaille, and decided that I would call at +your hotel with them that afternoon. It rained, and I waited till next +day. I called, and you were gone." + +"Yes," answered she, with dry melancholy. "My mother, knowing my +disposition, said she had no wish for such a chit as me to go falling +in love with an impecunious student, and spirited me away to Baden. As +it is all over and past I'll tell you one thing: I should have sent you +a line passing warm had I known your name. That name I never knew till +my maid said, as you passed up the hotel stairs a month ago, 'There's +Dr. Fitzpiers.'" + +"Good Heaven!" said Fitzpiers, musingly. "How the time comes back to +me! The evening, the morning, the dew, the spot. When I found that +you really were gone it was as if a cold iron had been passed down my +back. I went up to where you had stood when I last saw you--I flung +myself on the grass, and--being not much more than a boy--my eyes were +literally blinded with tears. Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I +couldn't forget your voice." + +"For how long?" + +"Oh--ever so long. Days and days." + +"Days and days! ONLY days and days? Oh, the heart of a man! Days and +days!" + +"But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was +not a full-blown love--it was the merest bud--red, fresh, vivid, but +small. It was a colossal passion in posse, a giant in embryo. It +never matured." + +"So much the better, perhaps." + +"Perhaps. But see how powerless is the human will against +predestination. We were prevented meeting; we have met. One feature +of the case remains the same amid many changes. You are still rich, +and I am still poor. Better than that, you have (judging by your last +remark) outgrown the foolish, impulsive passions of your early +girl-hood. I have not outgrown mine." + +"I beg your pardon," said she, with vibrations of strong feeling in her +words. "I have been placed in a position which hinders such +outgrowings. Besides, I don't believe that the genuine subjects of +emotion do outgrow them; I believe that the older such people get the +worse they are. Possibly at ninety or a hundred they may feel they are +cured; but a mere threescore and ten won't do it--at least for me." + +He gazed at her in undisguised admiration. Here was a soul of souls! + +"Mrs. Charmond, you speak truly," he exclaimed. "But you speak sadly +as well. Why is that?" + +"I always am sad when I come here," she said, dropping to a low tone +with a sense of having been too demonstrative. + +"Then may I inquire why you came?" + +"A man brought me. Women are always carried about like corks upon the +waves of masculine desires....I hope I have not alarmed you; but +Hintock has the curious effect of bottling up the emotions till one can +no longer hold them; I am often obliged to fly away and discharge my +sentiments somewhere, or I should die outright." + +"There is very good society in the county for those who have the +privilege of entering it." + +"Perhaps so. But the misery of remote country life is that your +neighbors have no toleration for difference of opinion and habit. My +neighbors think I am an atheist, except those who think I am a Roman +Catholic; and when I speak disrespectfully of the weather or the crops +they think I am a blasphemer." + +She broke into a low musical laugh at the idea. + +"You don't wish me to stay any longer?" he inquired, when he found that +she remained musing. + +"No--I think not." + +"Then tell me that I am to be gone." + +"Why? Cannot you go without?" + +"I may consult my own feelings only, if left to myself." + +"Well, if you do, what then? Do you suppose you'll be in my way?" + +"I feared it might be so." + +"Then fear no more. But good-night. Come to-morrow and see if I am +going on right. This renewal of acquaintance touches me. I have +already a friendship for you." + +"If it depends upon myself it shall last forever." + +"My best hopes that it may. Good-by." + +Fitzpiers went down the stairs absolutely unable to decide whether she +had sent for him in the natural alarm which might have followed her +mishap, or with the single view of making herself known to him as she +had done, for which the capsize had afforded excellent opportunity. +Outside the house he mused over the spot under the light of the stars. +It seemed very strange that he should have come there more than once +when its inhabitant was absent, and observed the house with a nameless +interest; that he should have assumed off-hand before he knew Grace +that it was here she lived; that, in short, at sundry times and seasons +the individuality of Hintock House should have forced itself upon him +as appertaining to some existence with which he was concerned. + +The intersection of his temporal orbit with Mrs. Charmond's for a day +or two in the past had created a sentimental interest in her at the +time, but it had been so evanescent that in the ordinary onward roll of +affairs he would scarce ever have recalled it again. To find her here, +however, in these somewhat romantic circumstances, magnified that +by-gone and transitory tenderness to indescribable proportions. + +On entering Little Hintock he found himself regarding it in a new +way--from the Hintock House point of view rather than from his own and +the Melburys'. The household had all gone to bed, and as he went +up-stairs he heard the snore of the timber-merchant from his quarter of +the building, and turned into the passage communicating with his own +rooms in a strange access of sadness. A light was burning for him in +the chamber; but Grace, though in bed, was not asleep. In a moment her +sympathetic voice came from behind the curtains. + +"Edgar, is she very seriously hurt?" + +Fitzpiers had so entirely lost sight of Mrs. Charmond as a patient that +he was not on the instant ready with a reply. + +"Oh no," he said. "There are no bones broken, but she is shaken. I am +going again to-morrow." + +Another inquiry or two, and Grace said, + +"Did she ask for me?" + +"Well--I think she did--I don't quite remember; but I am under the +impression that she spoke of you." + +"Cannot you recollect at all what she said?" + +"I cannot, just this minute." + +"At any rate she did not talk much about me?" said Grace with +disappointment. + +"Oh no." + +"But you did, perhaps," she added, innocently fishing for a compliment. + +"Oh yes--you may depend upon that!" replied he, warmly, though scarcely +thinking of what he was saying, so vividly was there present to his +mind the personality of Mrs. Charmond. + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +The doctor's professional visit to Hintock House was promptly repeated +the next day and the next. He always found Mrs. Charmond reclining on +a sofa, and behaving generally as became a patient who was in no great +hurry to lose that title. On each occasion he looked gravely at the +little scratch on her arm, as if it had been a serious wound. + +He had also, to his further satisfaction, found a slight scar on her +temple, and it was very convenient to put a piece of black plaster on +this conspicuous part of her person in preference to gold-beater's +skin, so that it might catch the eyes of the servants, and make his +presence appear decidedly necessary, in case there should be any doubt +of the fact. + +"Oh--you hurt me!" she exclaimed one day. + +He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under which the +scrape had turned the color of an unripe blackberry previous to +vanishing altogether. "Wait a moment, then--I'll damp it," said +Fitzpiers. He put his lips to the place and kept them there till the +plaster came off easily. "It was at your request I put it on," said he. + +"I know it," she replied. "Is that blue vein still in my temple that +used to show there? The scar must be just upon it. If the cut had +been a little deeper it would have spilt my hot blood indeed!" +Fitzpiers examined so closely that his breath touched her tenderly, at +which their eyes rose to an encounter--hers showing themselves as deep +and mysterious as interstellar space. She turned her face away +suddenly. "Ah! none of that! none of that--I cannot coquet with you!" +she cried. "Don't suppose I consent to for one moment. Our poor, +brief, youthful hour of love-making was too long ago to bear continuing +now. It is as well that we should understand each other on that point +before we go further." + +"Coquet! Nor I with you. As it was when I found the historic gloves, +so it is now. I might have been and may be foolish; but I am no +trifler. I naturally cannot forget that little space in which I +flitted across the field of your vision in those days of the past, and +the recollection opens up all sorts of imaginings." + +"Suppose my mother had not taken me away?" she murmured, her dreamy +eyes resting on the swaying tip of a distant tree. + +"I should have seen you again." + +"And then?" + +"Then the fire would have burned higher and higher. What would have +immediately followed I know not; but sorrow and sickness of heart at +last." + +"Why?" + +"Well--that's the end of all love, according to Nature's law. I can +give no other reason." + +"Oh, don't speak like that," she exclaimed. "Since we are only +picturing the possibilities of that time, don't, for pity's sake, spoil +the picture." Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she added, with an +incipient pout upon her full lips, "Let me think at least that if you +had really loved me at all seriously, you would have loved me for ever +and ever!" + +"You are right--think it with all your heart," said he. "It is a +pleasant thought, and costs nothing." + +She weighed that remark in silence a while. "Did you ever hear +anything of me from then till now?" she inquired. + +"Not a word." + +"So much the better. I had to fight the battle of life as well as you. +I may tell you about it some day. But don't ever ask me to do it, and +particularly do not press me to tell you now." + +Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender acquaintance +on the romantic slopes above the Neckar were stretched out in +retrospect to the length and importance of years; made to form a canvas +for infinite fancies, idle dreams, luxurious melancholies, and sweet, +alluring assertions which could neither be proved nor disproved. Grace +was never mentioned between them, but a rumor of his proposed domestic +changes somehow reached her ears. + +"Doctor, you are going away," she exclaimed, confronting him with +accusatory reproach in her large dark eyes no less than in her rich +cooing voice. "Oh yes, you are," she went on, springing to her feet +with an air which might almost have been called passionate. "It is no +use denying it. You have bought a practice at Budmouth. I don't blame +you. Nobody can live at Hintock--least of all a professional man who +wants to keep abreast of recent discovery. And there is nobody here to +induce such a one to stay for other reasons. That's right, that's +right--go away!" + +"But no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, though I am +indeed in treaty for it. And, my dear friend, if I continue to feel +about the business as I feel at this moment--perhaps I may conclude +never to go at all." + +"But you hate Hintock, and everybody and everything in it that you +don't mean to take away with you?" + +Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory tones, and she +lapsed into the frivolous archness under which she hid passions of no +mean strength--strange, smouldering, erratic passions, kept down like a +stifled conflagration, but bursting out now here, now there--the only +certain element in their direction being its unexpectedness. If one +word could have expressed her it would have been Inconsequence. She +was a woman of perversities, delighting in frequent contrasts. She +liked mystery, in her life, in her love, in her history. To be fair to +her, there was nothing in the latter which she had any great reason to +be ashamed of, and many things of which she might have been proud; but +it had never been fathomed by the honest minds of Hintock, and she +rarely volunteered her experiences. As for her capricious nature, the +people on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that marvellous +subtlety of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found in +sons of the soil and dependants generally, they managed to get along +under her government rather better than they would have done beneath a +more equable rule. + +Now, with regard to the doctor's notion of leaving Hintock, he had +advanced further towards completing the purchase of the Budmouth +surgeon's good-will than he had admitted to Mrs. Charmond. The whole +matter hung upon what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four hours. +The evening after leaving her he went out into the lane, and walked and +pondered between the high hedges, now greenish-white with wild +clematis--here called "old-man's beard," from its aspect later in the +year. + +The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, after which his +departure from Hintock would be irrevocable. But could he go away, +remembering what had just passed? The trees, the hills, the leaves, the +grass--each had been endowed and quickened with a subtle charm since he +had discovered the person and history, and, above all, mood of their +owner. There was every temporal reason for leaving; it would be +entering again into a world which he had only quitted in a passion for +isolation, induced by a fit of Achillean moodiness after an imagined +slight. His wife herself saw the awkwardness of their position here, +and cheerfully welcomed the purposed change, towards which every step +had been taken but the last. But could he find it in his heart--as he +found it clearly enough in his conscience--to go away? + +He drew a troubled breath, and went in-doors. Here he rapidly penned a +letter, wherein he withdrew once for all from the treaty for the +Budmouth practice. As the postman had already left Little Hintock for +that night, he sent one of Melbury's men to intercept a mail-cart on +another turnpike-road, and so got the letter off. + +The man returned, met Fitzpiers in the lane, and told him the thing was +done. Fitzpiers went back to his house musing. Why had he carried out +this impulse--taken such wild trouble to effect a probable injury to +his own and his young wife's prospects? His motive was fantastic, +glowing, shapeless as the fiery scenery about the western sky. Mrs. +Charmond could overtly be nothing more to him than a patient now, and +to his wife, at the outside, a patron. In the unattached bachelor days +of his first sojourning here how highly proper an emotional reason for +lingering on would have appeared to troublesome dubiousness. +Matrimonial ambition is such an honorable thing. + +"My father has told me that you have sent off one of the men with a +late letter to Budmouth," cried Grace, coming out vivaciously to meet +him under the declining light of the sky, wherein hung, solitary, the +folding star. "I said at once that you had finally agreed to pay the +premium they ask, and that the tedious question had been settled. When +do we go, Edgar?" + +"I have altered my mind," said he. "They want too much--seven hundred +and fifty is too large a sum--and in short, I have declined to go +further. We must wait for another opportunity. I fear I am not a good +business-man." He spoke the last words with a momentary faltering at +the great foolishness of his act; for, as he looked in her fair and +honorable face, his heart reproached him for what he had done. + +Her manner that evening showed her disappointment. Personally she +liked the home of her childhood much, and she was not ambitious. But +her husband had seemed so dissatisfied with the circumstances hereabout +since their marriage that she had sincerely hoped to go for his sake. + +It was two or three days before he visited Mrs. Charmond again. The +morning had been windy, and little showers had sowed themselves like +grain against the walls and window-panes of the Hintock cottages. He +went on foot across the wilder recesses of the park, where slimy +streams of green moisture, exuding from decayed holes caused by old +amputations, ran down the bark of the oaks and elms, the rind below +being coated with a lichenous wash as green as emerald. They were +stout-trunked trees, that never rocked their stems in the fiercest +gale, responding to it entirely by crooking their limbs. Wrinkled like +an old crone's face, and antlered with dead branches that rose above +the foliage of their summits, they were nevertheless still +green--though yellow had invaded the leaves of other trees. + +She was in a little boudoir or writing-room on the first floor, and +Fitzpiers was much surprised to find that the window-curtains were +closed and a red-shaded lamp and candles burning, though out-of-doors +it was broad daylight. Moreover, a large fire was burning in the +grate, though it was not cold. + +"What does it all mean?" he asked. + +She sat in an easy-chair, her face being turned away. "Oh," she +murmured, "it is because the world is so dreary outside. Sorrow and +bitterness in the sky, and floods of agonized tears beating against the +panes. I lay awake last night, and I could hear the scrape of snails +creeping up the window-glass; it was so sad! My eyes were so heavy this +morning that I could have wept my life away. I cannot bear you to see +my face; I keep it away from you purposely. Oh! why were we given +hungry hearts and wild desires if we have to live in a world like this? +Why should Death only lend what Life is compelled to borrow--rest? +Answer that, Dr. Fitzpiers." + +"You must eat of a second tree of knowledge before you can do it, +Felice Charmond." + +"Then, when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I become full of +fears, till I think I shall die for very fear. The terrible +insistencies of society--how severe they are, and cold and +inexorable--ghastly towards those who are made of wax and not of stone. +Oh, I am afraid of them; a stab for this error, and a stab for +that--correctives and regulations framed that society may tend to +perfection--an end which I don't care for in the least. Yet for this, +all I do care for has to be stunted and starved." + +Fitzpiers had seated himself near her. "What sets you in this mournful +mood?" he asked, gently. (In reality he knew that it was the result of +a loss of tone from staying in-doors so much, but he did not say so.) + +"My reflections. Doctor, you must not come here any more. They begin +to think it a farce already. I say you must come no more. There--don't +be angry with me;" and she jumped up, pressed his hand, and looked +anxiously at him. "It is necessary. It is best for both you and me." + +"But," said Fitzpiers, gloomily, "what have we done?" + +"Done--we have done nothing. Perhaps we have thought the more. +However, it is all vexation. I am going away to Middleton Abbey, near +Shottsford, where a relative of my late husband lives, who is confined +to her bed. The engagement was made in London, and I can't get out of +it. Perhaps it is for the best that I go there till all this is past. +When are you going to enter on your new practice, and leave Hintock +behind forever, with your pretty wife on your arm?" + +"I have refused the opportunity. I love this place too well to depart." + +"You HAVE?" she said, regarding him with wild uncertainty. +"Why do you ruin yourself in that way? Great Heaven, what have I done!" + +"Nothing. Besides, you are going away." + +"Oh yes; but only to Middleton Abbey for a month or two. Yet perhaps I +shall gain strength there--particularly strength of mind--I require it. +And when I come back I shall be a new woman; and you can come and see +me safely then, and bring your wife with you, and we'll be friends--she +and I. Oh, how this shutting up of one's self does lead to indulgence +in idle sentiments. I shall not wish you to give your attendance to me +after to-day. But I am glad that you are not going away--if your +remaining does not injure your prospects at all." + +As soon as he had left the room the mild friendliness she had preserved +in her tone at parting, the playful sadness with which she had +conversed with him, equally departed from her. She became as heavy as +lead--just as she had been before he arrived. Her whole being seemed +to dissolve in a sad powerlessness to do anything, and the sense of it +made her lips tremulous and her closed eyes wet. His footsteps again +startled her, and she turned round. + +"I returned for a moment to tell you that the evening is going to be +fine. The sun is shining; so do open your curtains and put out those +lights. Shall I do it for you?" + +"Please--if you don't mind." + +He drew back the window-curtains, whereupon the red glow of the lamp +and the two candle-flames became almost invisible with the flood of +late autumn sunlight that poured in. "Shall I come round to you?" he +asked, her back being towards him. + +"No," she replied. + +"Why not?" + +"Because I am crying, and I don't want to see you." + +He stood a moment irresolute, and regretted that he had killed the +rosy, passionate lamplight by opening the curtains and letting in +garish day. + +"Then I am going," he said. + +"Very well," she answered, stretching one hand round to him, and +patting her eyes with a handkerchief held in the other. + +"Shall I write a line to you at--" + +"No, no." A gentle reasonableness came into her tone as she added, "It +must not be, you know. It won't do." + +"Very well. Good-by." The next moment he was gone. + +In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged the maid who +dressed her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitzpiers's marriage. + +"Mrs. Fitzpiers was once supposed to favor Mr. Winterborne," said the +young woman. + +"And why didn't she marry him?" said Mrs. Charmond. + +"Because, you see, ma'am, he lost his houses." + +"Lost his houses? How came he to do that?" + +"The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your agent +wouldn't renew them, though it is said that Mr. Winterborne had a very +good claim. That's as I've heard it, ma'am, and it was through it that +the match was broke off." + +Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. Charmond sunk into +a mood of dismal self-reproach. "In refusing that poor man his +reasonable request," she said to herself, "I foredoomed my rejuvenated +girlhood's romance. Who would have thought such a business matter +could have nettled my own heart like this? Now for a winter of regrets +and agonies and useless wishes, till I forget him in the spring. Oh! I +am glad I am going away." + +She left her chamber and went down to dine with a sigh. On the stairs +she stood opposite the large window for a moment, and looked out upon +the lawn. It was not yet quite dark. Half-way up the steep green +slope confronting her stood old Timothy Tangs, who was shortening his +way homeward by clambering here where there was no road, and in +opposition to express orders that no path was to be made there. Tangs +had momentarily stopped to take a pinch of snuff; but observing Mrs. +Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to get over the top out of hail. +His precipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a barrel +to the bottom, his snuffbox rolling in front of him. + +Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers; her +constitutional cloud of misery; the sorrowful drops that still hung +upon her eyelashes, all made way for the incursive mood started by the +spectacle. She burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, her very +gloom of the previous hour seeming to render it the more +uncontrollable. It had not died out of her when she reached the +dining-room; and even here, before the servants, her shoulders suddenly +shook as the scene returned upon her; and the tears of her hilarity +mingled with the remnants of those engendered by her grief. + +She resolved to be sad no more. She drank two glasses of champagne, +and a little more still after those, and amused herself in the evening +with singing little amatory songs. + +"I must do something for that poor man Winterborne, however," she said. + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmond had left Hintock House. Middleton +Abbey, the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles distant by +road, eighteen by bridle-paths and footways. + +Grace observed, for the first time, that her husband was restless, that +at moments he even was disposed to avoid her. The scrupulous civility +of mere acquaintanceship crept into his manner; yet, when sitting at +meals, he seemed hardly to hear her remarks. Her little doings +interested him no longer, while towards her father his bearing was not +far from supercilious. It was plain that his mind was entirely outside +her life, whereabouts outside it she could not tell; in some region of +science, possibly, or of psychological literature. But her hope that +he was again immersing himself in those lucubrations which before her +marriage had made his light a landmark in Hintock, was founded simply +on the slender fact that he often sat up late. + +One evening she discovered him leaning over a gate on Rub-Down Hill, +the gate at which Winterborne had once been standing, and which opened +on the brink of a steep, slanting down directly into Blackmoor Vale, or +the Vale of the White Hart, extending beneath the eye at this point to +a distance of many miles. His attention was fixed on the landscape far +away, and Grace's approach was so noiseless that he did not hear her. +When she came close she could see his lips moving unconsciously, as to +some impassioned visionary theme. + +She spoke, and Fitzpiers started. "What are you looking at?" she asked. + +"Oh! I was contemplating our old place of Buckbury, in my idle way," he +said. + +It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that +cradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity; but she made no further +observation, and taking his arm walked home beside him almost in +silence. She did not know that Middleton Abbey lay in the direction of +his gaze. "Are you going to have out Darling this afternoon?" she +asked, presently. Darling being the light-gray mare which Winterborne +had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers now constantly used, the +animal having turned out a wonderful bargain, in combining a perfect +docility with an almost human intelligence; moreover, she was not too +young. Fitzpiers was unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these +qualities. + +"Yes," he replied, "but not to drive. I am riding her. I practise +crossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I can take much +shorter cuts on horseback." + +He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week, only +since Mrs. Charmond's absence, his universal practice hitherto having +been to drive. + +Some few days later, Fitzpiers started on the back of this horse to see +a patient in the aforesaid Vale. It was about five o'clock in the +evening when he went away, and at bedtime he had not reached home. +There was nothing very singular in this, though she was not aware that +he had any patient more than five or six miles distant in that +direction. The clock had struck one before Fitzpiers entered the +house, and he came to his room softly, as if anxious not to disturb her. + +The next morning she was stirring considerably earlier than he. + +In the yard there was a conversation going on about the mare; the man +who attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that the latter +was "hag-rid;" for when he had arrived at the stable that morning she +was in such a state as no horse could be in by honest riding. It was +true that the doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so that +she was not looked after as she would have been if he had groomed and +fed her; but that did not account for the appearance she presented, if +Mr. Fitzpiers's journey had been only where he had stated. The +phenomenal exhaustion of Darling, as thus related, was sufficient to +develop a whole series of tales about riding witches and demons, the +narration of which occupied a considerable time. + +Grace returned in-doors. In passing through the outer room she picked +up her husband's overcoat which he had carelessly flung down across a +chair. A turnpike ticket fell out of the breast-pocket, and she saw +that it had been issued at Middleton Gate. He had therefore visited +Middleton the previous night, a distance of at least five-and-thirty +miles on horseback, there and back. + +During the day she made some inquiries, and learned for the first time +that Mrs. Charmond was staying at Middleton Abbey. She could not +resist an inference--strange as that inference was. + +A few days later he prepared to start again, at the same time and in +the same direction. She knew that the state of the cottager who lived +that way was a mere pretext; she was quite sure he was going to Mrs. +Charmond. Grace was amazed at the mildness of the passion which the +suspicion engendered in her. She was but little excited, and her +jealousy was languid even to death. It told tales of the nature of her +affection for him. In truth, her antenuptial regard for Fitzpiers had +been rather of the quality of awe towards a superior being than of +tender solicitude for a lover. It had been based upon mystery and +strangeness--the mystery of his past, of his knowledge, of his +professional skill, of his beliefs. When this structure of ideals was +demolished by the intimacy of common life, and she found him as merely +human as the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demand +for an enduring and stanch affection--a sympathetic interdependence, +wherein mutual weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive +alliance. Fitzpiers had furnished none of that single-minded +confidence and truth out of which alone such a second union could +spring; hence it was with a controllable emotion that she now watched +the mare brought round. + +"I'll walk with you to the hill if you are not in a great hurry," she +said, rather loath, after all, to let him go. + +"Do; there's plenty of time," replied her husband. Accordingly he led +along the horse, and walked beside her, impatient enough nevertheless. +Thus they proceeded to the turnpike road, and ascended Rub-Down Hill to +the gate he had been leaning over when she surprised him ten days +before. This was the end of her excursion. Fitzpiers bade her adieu +with affection, even with tenderness, and she observed that he looked +weary-eyed. + +"Why do you go to-night?" she said. "You have been called up two +nights in succession already." + +"I must go," he answered, almost gloomily. "Don't wait up for me." +With these words he mounted his horse, passed through the gate which +Grace held open for him, and ambled down the steep bridle-track to the +valley. + +She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then his journey +onward. His way was east, the evening sun which stood behind her back +beaming full upon him as soon as he got out from the shade of the hill. +Notwithstanding this untoward proceeding she was determined to be loyal +if he proved true; and the determination to love one's best will carry +a heart a long way towards making that best an ever-growing thing. The +conspicuous coat of the active though blanching mare made horse and +rider easy objects for the vision. Though Darling had been chosen with +such pains by Winterborne for Grace, she had never ridden the sleek +creature; but her husband had found the animal exceedingly convenient, +particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of staying +power being left in Darling yet. Fitzpiers, like others of his +character, while despising Melbury and his station, did not at all +disdain to spend Melbury's money, or appropriate to his own use the +horse which belonged to Melbury's daughter. + +And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through the gorgeous +autumn landscape of White Hart Vale, surrounded by orchards lustrous +with the reds of apple-crops, berries, and foliage, the whole +intensified by the gilding of the declining sun. The earth this year +had been prodigally bountiful, and now was the supreme moment of her +bounty. In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed with haws and +blackberries; acorns cracked underfoot, and the burst husks of +chestnuts lay exposing their auburn contents as if arranged by anxious +sellers in a fruit-market. In all this proud show some kernels were +unsound as her own situation, and she wondered if there were one world +in the universe where the fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow. + +Herr Tannhauser still moved on, his plodding steed rendering him +distinctly visible yet. Could she have heard Fitzpiers's voice at that +moment she would have found him murmuring-- + + "...Towards the loadstar of my one desire + I flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the owlet light." + + +But he was a silent spectacle to her now. Soon he rose out of the +valley, and skirted a high plateau of the chalk formation on his right, +which rested abruptly upon the fruity district of loamy clay, the +character and herbage of the two formations being so distinct that the +calcareous upland appeared but as a deposit of a few years' antiquity +upon the level vale. He kept along the edge of this high, unenclosed +country, and the sky behind him being deep violet, she could still see +white Darling in relief upon it--a mere speck now--a Wouvermans +eccentricity reduced to microscopic dimensions. Upon this high ground +he gradually disappeared. + +Thus she had beheld the pet animal purchased for her own use, in pure +love of her, by one who had always been true, impressed to convey her +husband away from her to the side of a new-found idol. While she was +musing on the vicissitudes of horses and wives, she discerned shapes +moving up the valley towards her, quite near at hand, though till now +hidden by the hedges. Surely they were Giles Winterborne, with his two +horses and cider-apparatus, conducted by Robert Creedle. Up, upward +they crept, a stray beam of the sun alighting every now and then like a +star on the blades of the pomace-shovels, which had been converted to +steel mirrors by the action of the malic acid. She opened the gate +when he came close, and the panting horses rested as they achieved the +ascent. + +"How do you do, Giles?" said she, under a sudden impulse to be familiar +with him. + +He replied with much more reserve. "You are going for a walk, Mrs. +Fitzpiers?" he added. "It is pleasant just now." + +"No, I am returning," said she. + +The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and Winterborne walked +by her side in the rear of the apple-mill. + +He looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt +to wheat-color, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots and leggings +dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of +apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that +atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an +indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among +the orchards. Her heart rose from its late sadness like a released +spring; her senses revelled in the sudden lapse back to nature +unadorned. The consciousness of having to be genteel because of her +husband's profession, the veneer of artificiality which she had +acquired at the fashionable schools, were thrown off, and she became +the crude, country girl of her latent, earliest instincts. + +Nature was bountiful, she thought. No sooner had she been starved off +by Edgar Fitzpiers than another being, impersonating bare and undiluted +manliness, had arisen out of the earth, ready to hand. This was an +excursion of the imagination which she did not encourage, and she said +suddenly, to disguise the confused regard which had followed her +thoughts, "Did you meet my husband?" + +Winterborne, with some hesitation, "Yes." + +"Where did you meet him?" + +"At Calfhay Cross. I come from Middleton Abbey; I have been making +there for the last week." + +"Haven't they a mill of their own?" + +"Yes, but it's out of repair." + +"I think--I heard that Mrs. Charmond had gone there to stay?" + +"Yes. I have seen her at the windows once or twice." + +Grace waited an interval before she went on: "Did Mr. Fitzpiers take +the way to Middleton?" + +"Yes...I met him on Darling." As she did not reply, he added, with a +gentler inflection, "You know why the mare was called that?" + +"Oh yes--of course," she answered, quickly. + +They had risen so far over the crest of the hill that the whole west +sky was revealed. Between the broken clouds they could see far into +the recesses of heaven, the eye journeying on under a species of golden +arcades, and past fiery obstructions, fancied cairns, logan-stones, +stalactites and stalagmite of topaz. Deeper than this their gaze +passed thin flakes of incandescence, till it plunged into a bottomless +medium of soft green fire. + +Her abandonment to the luscious time after her sense of ill-usage, her +revolt for the nonce against social law, her passionate desire for +primitive life, may have showed in her face. Winterborne was looking +at her, his eyes lingering on a flower that she wore in her bosom. +Almost with the abstraction of a somnambulist he stretched out his hand +and gently caressed the flower. + +She drew back. "What are you doing, Giles Winterborne!" she exclaimed, +with a look of severe surprise. The evident absence of all +premeditation from the act, however, speedily led her to think that it +was not necessary to stand upon her dignity here and now. "You must +bear in mind, Giles," she said, kindly, "that we are not as we were; +and some people might have said that what you did was taking a liberty." + +It was more than she need have told him; his action of forgetfulness +had made him so angry with himself that he flushed through his tan. "I +don't know what I am coming to!" he exclaimed, savagely. "Ah--I was +not once like this!" Tears of vexation were in his eyes. + +"No, now--it was nothing. I was too reproachful." + +"It would not have occurred to me if I had not seen something like it +done elsewhere--at Middleton lately," he said, thoughtfully, after a +while. + +"By whom?" + +"Don't ask it." + +She scanned him narrowly. "I know quite well enough," she returned, +indifferently. "It was by my husband, and the woman was Mrs. Charmond. +Association of ideas reminded you when you saw me....Giles--tell me all +you know about that--please do, Giles! But no--I won't hear it. Let +the subject cease. And as you are my friend, say nothing to my father." + +They reached a place where their ways divided. Winterborne continued +along the highway which kept outside the copse, and Grace opened a gate +that entered it. + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand by +nut-bushes, just now heavy with clusters of twos and threes and fours. +A little way on, the track she pursued was crossed by a similar one at +right angles. Here Grace stopped; some few yards up the transverse +ride the buxom Suke Damson was visible--her gown tucked up high through +her pocket-hole, and no bonnet on her head--in the act of pulling down +boughs from which she was gathering and eating nuts with great +rapidity, her lover Tim Tangs standing near her engaged in the same +pleasant meal. + +Crack, crack went Suke's jaws every second or two. By an automatic +chain of thought Grace's mind reverted to the tooth-drawing scene +described by her husband; and for the first time she wondered if that +narrative were really true, Susan's jaws being so obviously sound and +strong. Grace turned up towards the nut-gatherers, and conquered her +reluctance to speak to the girl who was a little in advance of Tim. +"Good-evening, Susan," she said. + +"Good-evening, Miss Melbury" (crack). + +"Mrs. Fitzpiers." + +"Oh yes, ma'am--Mrs. Fitzpiers," said Suke, with a peculiar smile. + +Grace, not to be daunted, continued: "Take care of your teeth, Suke. +That accounts for the toothache." + +"I don't know what an ache is, either in tooth, ear, or head, thank the +Lord" (crack). + +"Nor the loss of one, either?" + +"See for yourself, ma'am." She parted her red lips, and exhibited the +whole double row, full up and unimpaired. + +"You have never had one drawn?" + +"Never." + +"So much the better for your stomach," said Mrs. Fitzpiers, in an +altered voice. And turning away quickly, she went on. + +As her husband's character thus shaped itself under the touch of time, +Grace was almost startled to find how little she suffered from that +jealous excitement which is conventionally attributed to all wives in +such circumstances. But though possessed by none of that feline +wildness which it was her moral duty to experience, she did not fail to +know that she had made a frightful mistake in her marriage. +Acquiescence in her father's wishes had been degradation to herself. +People are not given premonitions for nothing; she should have obeyed +her impulse on that early morning, and steadfastly refused her hand. + +Oh, that plausible tale which her then betrothed had told her about +Suke--the dramatic account of her entreaties to him to draw the aching +enemy, and the fine artistic touch he had given to the story by +explaining that it was a lovely molar without a flaw! + +She traced the remainder of the woodland track dazed by the +complications of her position. If his protestations to her before +their marriage could be believed, her husband had felt affection of +some sort for herself and this woman simultaneously; and was now again +spreading the same emotion over Mrs. Charmond and herself conjointly, +his manner being still kind and fond at times. But surely, rather than +that, he must have played the hypocrite towards her in each case with +elaborate completeness; and the thought of this sickened her, for it +involved the conjecture that if he had not loved her, his only motive +for making her his wife must have been her little fortune. Yet here +Grace made a mistake, for the love of men like Fitzpiers is +unquestionably of such quality as to bear division and transference. +He had indeed, once declared, though not to her, that on one occasion +he had noticed himself to be possessed by five distinct infatuations at +the same time. Therein it differed from the highest affection as the +lower orders of the animal world differ from advanced organisms, +partition causing, not death, but a multiplied existence. He had loved +her sincerely, and had by no means ceased to love her now. But such +double and treble barrelled hearts were naturally beyond her conception. + +Of poor Suke Damson, Grace thought no more. She had had her day. + +"If he does not love me I will not love him!" said Grace, proudly. And +though these were mere words, it was a somewhat formidable thing for +Fitzpiers that her heart was approximating to a state in which it might +be possible to carry them out. That very absence of hot jealousy which +made his courses so easy, and on which, indeed, he congratulated +himself, meant, unknown to either wife or husband, more mischief than +the inconvenient watchfulness of a jaundiced eye. + +Her sleep that night was nervous. The wing allotted to her and her +husband had never seemed so lonely. At last she got up, put on her +dressing-gown, and went down-stairs. Her father, who slept lightly, +heard her descend, and came to the stair-head. + +"Is that you, Grace? What's the matter?" he said. + +"Nothing more than that I am restless. Edgar is detained by a case at +Owlscombe in White Hart Vale." + +"But how's that? I saw the woman's husband at Great Hintock just afore +bedtime; and she was going on well, and the doctor gone then." + +"Then he's detained somewhere else," said Grace. "Never mind me; he +will soon be home. I expect him about one." + +She went back to her room, and dozed and woke several times. One +o'clock had been the hour of his return on the last occasion; but it +passed now by a long way, and Fitzpiers did not come. Just before dawn +she heard the men stirring in the yard; and the flashes of their +lanterns spread every now and then through her window-blind. She +remembered that her father had told her not to be disturbed if she +noticed them, as they would be rising early to send off four loads of +hurdles to a distant sheep-fair. Peeping out, she saw them bustling +about, the hollow-turner among the rest; he was loading his +wares--wooden-bowls, dishes, spigots, spoons, cheese-vats, funnels, and +so on--upon one of her father's wagons, who carried them to the fair +for him every year out of neighborly kindness. + +The scene and the occasion would have enlivened her but that her +husband was still absent; though it was now five o'clock. She could +hardly suppose him, whatever his infatuation, to have prolonged to a +later hour than ten an ostensibly professional call on Mrs. Charmond at +Middleton; and he could have ridden home in two hours and a half. +What, then, had become of him? That he had been out the greater part of +the two preceding nights added to her uneasiness. + +She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird twilight of +advancing day chilling the rays from the lanterns, and making the men's +faces wan. As soon as Melbury saw her he came round, showing his alarm. + +"Edgar is not come," she said. "And I have reason to know that he's +not attending anybody. He has had no rest for two nights before this. +I was going to the top of the hill to look for him." + +"I'll come with you," said Melbury. + +She begged him not to hinder himself; but he insisted, for he saw a +peculiar and rigid gloom in her face over and above her uneasiness, and +did not like the look of it. Telling the men he would be with them +again soon, he walked beside her into the turnpike-road, and partly up +the hill whence she had watched Fitzpiers the night before across the +Great White Hart or Blackmoor Valley. They halted beneath a half-dead +oak, hollow, and disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading out +like accipitrine claws grasping the ground. A chilly wind circled +round them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime-tree, +supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the boughs +downward like fledglings from their nest. The vale was wrapped in a +dim atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtain +edged with pink. There was no sign nor sound of Fitzpiers. + +"It is no use standing here," said her father. "He may come home fifty +ways...why, look here!--here be Darling's tracks--turned homeward and +nearly blown dry and hard! He must have come in hours ago without your +seeing him." + +"He has not done that," said she. + +They went back hastily. On entering their own gates they perceived +that the men had left the wagons, and were standing round the door of +the stable which had been appropriated to the doctor's use. "Is there +anything the matter?" cried Grace. + +"Oh no, ma'am. All's well that ends well," said old Timothy Tangs. +"I've heard of such things before--among workfolk, though not among +your gentle people--that's true." + +They entered the stable, and saw the pale shape of Darling standing in +the middle of her stall, with Fitzpiers on her back, sound asleep. +Darling was munching hay as well as she could with the bit in her +month, and the reins, which had fallen from Fitzpiers's hand, hung upon +her neck. + +Grace went and touched his hand; shook it before she could arouse him. +He moved, started, opened his eyes, and exclaimed, "Ah, Felice!...Oh, +it's Grace. I could not see in the gloom. What--am I in the saddle?" + +"Yes," said she. "How do you come here?" + +He collected his thoughts, and in a few minutes stammered, "I was +riding along homeward through the vale, very, very sleepy, having been +up so much of late. When I came opposite Holywell spring the mare +turned her head that way, as if she wanted to drink. I let her go in, +and she drank; I thought she would never finish. While she was +drinking, the clock of Owlscombe Church struck twelve. I distinctly +remember counting the strokes. From that moment I positively recollect +nothing till I saw you here by my side." + +"The name! If it had been any other horse he'd have had a broken neck!" +murmured Melbury. + +"'Tis wonderful, sure, how a quiet hoss will bring a man home at such +times!" said John Upjohn. "And what's more wonderful than keeping your +seat in a deep, slumbering sleep? I've knowed men drowze off walking +home from randies where the mead and other liquors have gone round +well, and keep walking for more than a mile on end without waking. +Well, doctor, I don't care who the man is, 'tis a mercy you wasn't a +drownded, or a splintered, or a hanged up to a tree like Absalom--also +a handsome gentleman like yerself, as the prophets say." + +"True," murmured old Timothy. "From the soul of his foot to the crown +of his head there was no blemish in him." + +"Or leastwise you might ha' been a-wownded into tatters a'most, and no +doctor to jine your few limbs together within seven mile!" + +While this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpiers had dismounted, and +taking Grace's arm walked stiffly in-doors with her. Melbury stood +staring at the horse, which, in addition to being very weary, was +spattered with mud. There was no mud to speak of about the Hintocks +just now--only in the clammy hollows of the vale beyond Owlscombe, the +stiff soil of which retained moisture for weeks after the uplands were +dry. While they were rubbing down the mare, Melbury's mind coupled +with the foreign quality of the mud the name he had heard unconsciously +muttered by the surgeon when Grace took his hand--"Felice." Who was +Felice? Why, Mrs. Charmond; and she, as he knew, was staying at +Middleton. + +Melbury had indeed pounced upon the image that filled Fitzpiers's +half-awakened soul--wherein there had been a picture of a recent +interview on a lawn with a capriciously passionate woman who had begged +him not to come again in tones whose vibration incited him to disobey. +"What are you doing here? Why do you pursue me? Another belongs to you. +If they were to see you they would seize you as a thief!" And she had +turbulently admitted to his wringing questions that her visit to +Middleton had been undertaken less because of the invalid relative than +in shamefaced fear of her own weakness if she remained near his home. +A triumph then it was to Fitzpiers, poor and hampered as he had become, +to recognize his real conquest of this beauty, delayed so many years. +His was the selfish passion of Congreve's Millamont, to whom love's +supreme delight lay in "that heart which others bleed for, bleed for +me." + +When the horse had been attended to Melbury stood uneasily here and +there about his premises; he was rudely disturbed in the comfortable +views which had lately possessed him on his domestic concerns. It is +true that he had for some days discerned that Grace more and more +sought his company, preferred supervising his kitchen and bakehouse +with her step-mother to occupying herself with the lighter details of +her own apartments. She seemed no longer able to find in her own +hearth an adequate focus for her life, and hence, like a weak queen-bee +after leading off to an independent home, had hovered again into the +parent hive. But he had not construed these and other incidents of the +kind till now. + +Something was wrong in the dove-cot. A ghastly sense that he alone +would be responsible for whatever unhappiness should be brought upon +her for whom he almost solely lived, whom to retain under his roof he +had faced the numerous inconveniences involved in giving up the best +part of his house to Fitzpiers. There was no room for doubt that, had +he allowed events to take their natural course, she would have accepted +Winterborne, and realized his old dream of restitution to that young +man's family. + +That Fitzpiers could allow himself to look on any other creature for a +moment than Grace filled Melbury with grief and astonishment. In the +pure and simple life he had led it had scarcely occurred to him that +after marriage a man might be faithless. That he could sweep to the +heights of Mrs. Charmond's position, lift the veil of Isis, so to +speak, would have amazed Melbury by its audacity if he had not +suspected encouragement from that quarter. What could he and his +simple Grace do to countervail the passions of such as those two +sophisticated beings--versed in the world's ways, armed with every +apparatus for victory? In such an encounter the homely timber-dealer +felt as inferior as a bow-and-arrow savage before the precise weapons +of modern warfare. + +Grace came out of the house as the morning drew on. The village was +silent, most of the folk having gone to the fair. Fitzpiers had +retired to bed, and was sleeping off his fatigue. She went to the +stable and looked at poor Darling: in all probability Giles +Winterborne, by obtaining for her a horse of such intelligence and +docility, had been the means of saving her husband's life. She paused +over the strange thought; and then there appeared her father behind +her. She saw that he knew things were not as they ought to be, from +the troubled dulness of his eye, and from his face, different points of +which had independent motions, twitchings, and tremblings, unknown to +himself, and involuntary. + +"He was detained, I suppose, last night?" said Melbury. + +"Oh yes; a bad case in the vale," she replied, calmly. + +"Nevertheless, he should have stayed at home." + +"But he couldn't, father." + +Her father turned away. He could hardly bear to see his whilom +truthful girl brought to the humiliation of having to talk like that. + +That night carking care sat beside Melbury's pillow, and his stiff +limbs tossed at its presence. "I can't lie here any longer," he +muttered. Striking a light, he wandered about the room. "What have I +done--what have I done for her?" he said to his wife, who had anxiously +awakened. "I had long planned that she should marry the son of the man +I wanted to make amends to; do ye mind how I told you all about it, +Lucy, the night before she came home? Ah! but I was not content with +doing right, I wanted to do more!" + +"Don't raft yourself without good need, George," she replied. "I won't +quite believe that things are so much amiss. I won't believe that Mrs. +Charmond has encouraged him. Even supposing she has encouraged a great +many, she can have no motive to do it now. What so likely as that she +is not yet quite well, and doesn't care to let another doctor come near +her?" + +He did not heed. "Grace used to be so busy every day, with fixing a +curtain here and driving a tin-tack there; but she cares for no +employment now!" + +"Do you know anything of Mrs. Charmond's past history? Perhaps that +would throw some light upon things. Before she came here as the wife +of old Charmond four or five years ago, not a soul seems to have heard +aught of her. Why not make inquiries? And then do ye wait and see +more; there'll be plenty of opportunity. Time enough to cry when you +know 'tis a crying matter; and 'tis bad to meet troubles half-way." + +There was some good-sense in the notion of seeing further. Melbury +resolved to inquire and wait, hoping still, but oppressed +between-whiles with much fear. + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +Examine Grace as her father might, she would admit nothing. For the +present, therefore, he simply watched. + +The suspicion that his darling child was being slighted wrought almost +a miraculous change in Melbury's nature. No man so furtive for the +time as the ingenuous countryman who finds that his ingenuousness has +been abused. Melbury's heretofore confidential candor towards his +gentlemanly son-in-law was displaced by a feline stealth that did +injury to his every action, thought, and mood. He knew that a woman +once given to a man for life took, as a rule, her lot as it came and +made the best of it, without external interference; but for the first +time he asked himself why this so generally should be so. Moreover, +this case was not, he argued, like ordinary cases. Leaving out the +question of Grace being anything but an ordinary woman, her peculiar +situation, as it were in mid-air between two planes of society, +together with the loneliness of Hintock, made a husband's neglect a far +more tragical matter to her than it would be to one who had a large +circle of friends to fall back upon. Wisely or unwisely, and whatever +other fathers did, he resolved to fight his daughter's battle still. + +Mrs. Charmond had returned. But Hintock House scarcely gave forth +signs of life, so quietly had she reentered it. He went to church at +Great Hintock one afternoon as usual, there being no service at the +smaller village. A few minutes before his departure, he had casually +heard Fitzpiers, who was no church-goer, tell his wife that he was +going to walk in the wood. Melbury entered the building and sat down +in his pew; the parson came in, then Mrs. Charmond, then Mr. Fitzpiers. + +The service proceeded, and the jealous father was quite sure that a +mutual consciousness was uninterruptedly maintained between those two; +he fancied that more than once their eyes met. At the end, Fitzpiers +so timed his movement into the aisle that it exactly coincided with +Felice Charmond's from the opposite side, and they walked out with +their garments in contact, the surgeon being just that two or three +inches in her rear which made it convenient for his eyes to rest upon +her cheek. The cheek warmed up to a richer tone. + +This was a worse feature in the flirtation than he had expected. If she +had been playing with him in an idle freak the game might soon have +wearied her; but the smallest germ of passion--and women of the world +do not change color for nothing--was a threatening development. The +mere presence of Fitzpiers in the building, after his statement, was +wellnigh conclusive as far as he was concerned; but Melbury resolved +yet to watch. + +He had to wait long. Autumn drew shiveringly to its end. One day +something seemed to be gone from the gardens; the tenderer leaves of +vegetables had shrunk under the first smart frost, and hung like faded +linen rags; then the forest leaves, which had been descending at +leisure, descended in haste and in multitudes, and all the golden +colors that had hung overhead were now crowded together in a degraded +mass underfoot, where the fallen myriads got redder and hornier, and +curled themselves up to rot. The only suspicious features in Mrs. +Charmond's existence at this season were two: the first, that she lived +with no companion or relative about her, which, considering her age and +attractions, was somewhat unusual conduct for a young widow in a lonely +country-house; the other, that she did not, as in previous years, +start from Hintock to winter abroad. In Fitzpiers, the only change +from his last autumn's habits lay in his abandonment of night +study--his lamp never shone from his new dwelling as from his old. + +If the suspected ones met, it was by such adroit contrivances that even +Melbury's vigilance could not encounter them together. A simple call +at her house by the doctor had nothing irregular about it, and that he +had paid two or three such calls was certain. What had passed at those +interviews was known only to the parties themselves; but that Felice +Charmond was under some one's influence Melbury soon had opportunity of +perceiving. + +Winter had come on. Owls began to be noisy in the mornings and +evenings, and flocks of wood-pigeons made themselves prominent again. +One day in February, about six months after the marriage of Fitzpiers, +Melbury was returning from Great Hintock on foot through the lane, when +he saw before him the surgeon also walking. Melbury would have +overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiers turned in through a gate to +one of the rambling drives among the trees at this side of the wood, +which led to nowhere in particular, and the beauty of whose serpentine +curves was the only justification of their existence. Felice almost +simultaneously trotted down the lane towards the timber-dealer, in a +little basket-carriage which she sometimes drove about the estate, +unaccompanied by a servant. She turned in at the same place without +having seen either Melbury or apparently Fitzpiers. Melbury was soon at +the spot, despite his aches and his sixty years. Mrs. Charmond had +come up with the doctor, who was standing immediately behind the +carriage. She had turned to him, her arm being thrown carelessly over +the back of the seat. They looked in each other's faces without +uttering a word, an arch yet gloomy smile wreathing her lips. +Fitzpiers clasped her hanging hand, and, while she still remained in +the same listless attitude, looking volumes into his eyes, he +stealthily unbuttoned her glove, and stripped her hand of it by rolling +back the gauntlet over the fingers, so that it came off inside out. He +then raised her hand to his month, she still reclining passively, +watching him as she might have watched a fly upon her dress. At last +she said, "Well, sir, what excuse for this disobedience?" + +"I make none." + +"Then go your way, and let me go mine." She snatched away her hand, +touched the pony with the whip, and left him standing there, holding +the reversed glove. + +Melbury's first impulse was to reveal his presence to Fitzpiers, and +upbraid him bitterly. But a moment's thought was sufficient to show +him the futility of any such simple proceeding. There was not, after +all, so much in what he had witnessed as in what that scene might be +the surface and froth of--probably a state of mind on which censure +operates as an aggravation rather than as a cure. Moreover, he said to +himself that the point of attack should be the woman, if either. He +therefore kept out of sight, and musing sadly, even tearfully--for he +was meek as a child in matters concerning his daughter--continued his +way towards Hintock. + +The insight which is bred of deep sympathy was never more finely +exemplified than in this instance. Through her guarded manner, her +dignified speech, her placid countenance, he discerned the interior of +Grace's life only too truly, hidden as were its incidents from every +outer eye. + +These incidents had become painful enough. Fitzpiers had latterly +developed an irritable discontent which vented itself in monologues +when Grace was present to hear them. The early morning of this day had +been dull, after a night of wind, and on looking out of the window +Fitzpiers had observed some of Melbury's men dragging away a large limb +which had been snapped off a beech-tree. Everything was cold and +colorless. + +"My good Heaven!" he said, as he stood in his dressing-gown. "This is +life!" He did not know whether Grace was awake or not, and he would not +turn his head to ascertain. "Ah, fool," he went on to himself, "to +clip your own wings when you were free to soar!...But I could not rest +till I had done it. Why do I never recognize an opportunity till I +have missed it, nor the good or ill of a step till it is +irrevocable!...I fell in love....Love, indeed!-- + + "'Love's but the frailty of the mind + When 'tis not with ambition joined; + A sickly flame which if not fed, expires, + And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires!' + +Ah, old author of 'The Way of the World,' you knew--you knew!" Grace +moved. He thought she had heard some part of his soliloquy. He was +sorry--though he had not taken any precaution to prevent her. + +He expected a scene at breakfast, but she only exhibited an extreme +reserve. It was enough, however, to make him repent that he should +have done anything to produce discomfort; for he attributed her manner +entirely to what he had said. But Grace's manner had not its cause +either in his sayings or in his doings. She had not heard a single word +of his regrets. Something even nearer home than her husband's blighted +prospects--if blighted they were--was the origin of her mood, a mood +that was the mere continuation of what her father had noticed when he +would have preferred a passionate jealousy in her, as the more natural. + +She had made a discovery--one which to a girl of honest nature was +almost appalling. She had looked into her heart, and found that her +early interest in Giles Winterborne had become revitalized into +luxuriant growth by her widening perceptions of what was great and +little in life. His homeliness no longer offended her acquired tastes; +his comparative want of so-called culture did not now jar on her +intellect; his country dress even pleased her eye; his exterior +roughness fascinated her. Having discovered by marriage how much that +was humanly not great could co-exist with attainments of an exceptional +order, there was a revulsion in her sentiments from all that she had +formerly clung to in this kind: honesty, goodness, manliness, +tenderness, devotion, for her only existed in their purity now in the +breasts of unvarnished men; and here was one who had manifested them +towards her from his youth up. + +There was, further, that never-ceasing pity in her soul for Giles as a +man whom she had wronged--a man who had been unfortunate in his worldly +transactions; while, not without a touch of sublimity, he had, like +Horatio, borne himself throughout his scathing + + "As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing." + + +It was these perceptions, and no subtle catching of her husband's +murmurs, that had bred the abstraction visible in her. + +When her father approached the house after witnessing the interview +between Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond, Grace was looking out of her +sitting-room window, as if she had nothing to do, or think of, or care +for. He stood still. + +"Ah, Grace," he said, regarding her fixedly. + +"Yes, father," she murmured. + +"Waiting for your dear husband?" he inquired, speaking with the sarcasm +of pitiful affection. + +"Oh no--not especially. He has a great many patients to see this +afternoon." + +Melbury came quite close. "Grace, what's the use of talking like that, +when you know--Here, come down and walk with me out in the garden, +child." + +He unfastened the door in the ivy-laced wall, and waited. This +apparent indifference alarmed him. He would far rather that she had +rushed in all the fire of jealousy to Hintock House, regardless of +conventionality, confronted and attacked Felice Charmond _unguibus et +rostro_, and accused her even in exaggerated shape of stealing away her +husband. Such a storm might have cleared the air. + +She emerged in a minute or two, and they went inside together. "You +know as well as I do," he resumed, "that there is something threatening +mischief to your life; and yet you pretend you do not. Do you suppose I +don't see the trouble in your face every day? I am very sure that this +quietude is wrong conduct in you. You should look more into matters." + +"I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to action." + +Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions--did she not feel jealous? +was she not indignant? but a natural delicacy restrained him. "You are +very tame and let-alone, I am bound to say," he remarked, pointedly. + +"I am what I feel, father," she repeated. + +He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the scene of her +offering to wed Winterborne instead of Fitzpiers in the last days +before her marriage; and he asked himself if it could be the fact that +she loved Winterborne, now that she had lost him, more than she had +ever done when she was comparatively free to choose him. + +"What would you have me do?" she asked, in a low voice. + +He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical +matter before them. "I would have you go to Mrs. Charmond," he said. + +"Go to Mrs. Charmond--what for?" said she. + +"Well--if I must speak plain, dear Grace--to ask her, appeal to her in +the name of your common womanhood, and your many like sentiments on +things, not to make unhappiness between you and your husband. It lies +with her entirely to do one or the other--that I can see." + +Grace's face had heated at her father's words, and the very rustle of +her skirts upon the box-edging bespoke hauteur. "I shall not think of +going to her, father--of course I could not!" she answered. + +"Why--don't 'ee want to be happier than you be at present?" said +Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself. + +"I don't wish to be more humiliated. If I have anything to bear I can +bear it in silence." + +"But, my dear maid, you are too young--you don't know what the present +state of things may lead to. Just see the harm done a'ready! Your +husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a bigger practice if it had +not been for this. Although it has gone such a little way, it is +poisoning your future even now. Mrs. Charmond is thoughtlessly bad, +not bad by calculation; and just a word to her now might save 'ee a +peck of woes." + +"Ah, I loved her once," said Grace, with a broken articulation, "and +she would not care for me then! Now I no longer love her. Let her do +her worst: I don't care." + +"You ought to care. You have got into a very good position to start +with. You have been well educated, well tended, and you have become +the wife of a professional man of unusually good family. Surely you +ought to make the best of your position." + +"I don't see that I ought. I wish I had never got into it. I wish you +had never, never thought of educating me. I wish I worked in the woods +like Marty South. I hate genteel life, and I want to be no better than +she." + +"Why?" said her amazed father. + +"Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and troubles. +I say again, I wish you had never sent me to those fashionable schools +you set your mind on. It all arose out of that, father. If I had +stayed at home I should have married--" She closed up her mouth +suddenly and was silent; and he saw that she was not far from crying. + +Melbury was much grieved. "What, and would you like to have grown up +as we be here in Hintock--knowing no more, and with no more chance of +seeing good life than we have here?" + +"Yes. I have never got any happiness outside Hintock that I know of, +and I have suffered many a heartache at being sent away. Oh, the +misery of those January days when I had got back to school, and left +you all here in the wood so happy. I used to wonder why I had to bear +it. And I was always a little despised by the other girls at school, +because they knew where I came from, and that my parents were not in so +good a station as theirs." + +Her poor father was much hurt at what he thought her ingratitude and +intractability. He had admitted to himself bitterly enough that he +should have let young hearts have their way, or rather should have +helped on her affection for Winterborne, and given her to him according +to his original plan; but he was not prepared for her deprecation of +those attainments whose completion had been a labor of years, and a +severe tax upon his purse. + +"Very well," he said, with much heaviness of spirit. "If you don't +like to go to her I don't wish to force you." + +And so the question remained for him still: how should he remedy this +perilous state of things? For days he sat in a moody attitude over the +fire, a pitcher of cider standing on the hearth beside him, and his +drinking-horn inverted upon the top of it. He spent a week and more +thus composing a letter to the chief offender, which he would every now +and then attempt to complete, and suddenly crumple up in his hand. + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + +As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom of +the woodmen's homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little began to +have ears for a rumor of the events out of which had grown the +timber-dealer's troubles. It took the form of a wide sprinkling of +conjecture, wherein no man knew the exact truth. Tantalizing phenomena, +at once showing and concealing the real relationship of the persons +concerned, caused a diffusion of excited surprise. Honest people as +the woodlanders were, it was hardly to be expected that they could +remain immersed in the study of their trees and gardens amid such +circumstances, or sit with their backs turned like the good burghers of +Coventry at the passage of the beautiful lady. + +Rumor, for a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in this +case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the hills, which, +with individual variations, made a mourner of Ariadne, a by-word of +Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy. There were rencounters +accidental and contrived, stealthy correspondence, sudden misgivings on +one side, sudden self-reproaches on the other. The inner state of the +twain was one as of confused noise that would not allow the accents of +calmer reason to be heard. Determinations to go in this direction, and +headlong plunges in that; dignified safeguards, undignified collapses; +not a single rash step by deliberate intention, and all against +judgment. + +It was all that Melbury had expected and feared. It was more, for he +had overlooked the publicity that would be likely to result, as it now +had done. What should he do--appeal to Mrs. Charmond himself, since +Grace would not? He bethought himself of Winterborne, and resolved to +consult him, feeling the strong need of some friend of his own sex to +whom he might unburden his mind. + +He had entirely lost faith in his own judgment. That judgment on which +he had relied for so many years seemed recently, like a false companion +unmasked, to have disclosed unexpected depths of hypocrisy and +speciousness where all had seemed solidity. He felt almost afraid to +form a conjecture on the weather, or the time, or the fruit-promise, so +great was his self-abasement. + +It was a rimy evening when he set out to look for Giles. The woods +seemed to be in a cold sweat; beads of perspiration hung from every +bare twig; the sky had no color, and the trees rose before him as +haggard, gray phantoms, whose days of substantiality were passed. +Melbury seldom saw Winterborne now, but he believed him to be occupying +a lonely hut just beyond the boundary of Mrs. Charmond's estate, though +still within the circuit of the woodland. The timber-merchant's thin +legs stalked on through the pale, damp scenery, his eyes on the dead +leaves of last year; while every now and then a hasty "Ay?" escaped his +lips in reply to some bitter proposition. + +His notice was attracted by a thin blue haze of smoke, behind which +arose sounds of voices and chopping: bending his steps that way, he saw +Winterborne just in front of him. It just now happened that Giles, +after being for a long time apathetic and unemployed, had become one of +the busiest men in the neighborhood. It is often thus; fallen friends, +lost sight of, we expect to find starving; we discover them going on +fairly well. Without any solicitation, or desire for profit on his +part, he had been asked to execute during that winter a very large +order for hurdles and other copse-ware, for which purpose he had been +obliged to buy several acres of brushwood standing. He was now engaged +in the cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work +daily like an automaton. + +The hazel-tree did not belie its name to-day. The whole of the +copse-wood where the mist had cleared returned purest tints of that +hue, amid which Winterborne himself was in the act of making a hurdle, +the stakes being driven firmly into the ground in a row, over which he +bent and wove the twigs. Beside him was a square, compact pile like +the altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already finished, which bristled +on all sides with the sharp points of their stakes. At a little +distance the men in his employ were assisting him to carry out his +contract. Rows of copse-wood lay on the ground as it had fallen under +the axe; and a shelter had been constructed near at hand, in front of +which burned the fire whose smoke had attracted him. The air was so +dank that the smoke hung heavy, and crept away amid the bushes without +rising from the ground. + +After wistfully regarding Winterborne a while, Melbury drew nearer, and +briefly inquired of Giles how he came to be so busily engaged, with an +undertone of slight surprise that Winterborne could seem so thriving +after being deprived of Grace. Melbury was not without emotion at the +meeting; for Grace's affairs had divided them, and ended their intimacy +of old times. + +Winterborne explained just as briefly, without raising his eyes from +his occupation of chopping a bough that he held in front of him. + +"'Twill be up in April before you get it all cleared," said Melbury. + +"Yes, there or thereabouts," said Winterborne, a chop of the billhook +jerking the last word into two pieces. + +There was another interval; Melbury still looked on, a chip from +Winterborne's hook occasionally flying against the waistcoat and legs +of his visitor, who took no heed. + +"Ah, Giles--you should have been my partner. You should have been my +son-in-law," the old man said at last. "It would have been far better +for her and for me." + +Winterborne saw that something had gone wrong with his former friend, +and throwing down the switch he was about to interweave, he responded +only too readily to the mood of the timber-dealer. "Is she ill?" he +said, hurriedly. + +"No, no." Melbury stood without speaking for some minutes, and then, as +though he could not bring himself to proceed, turned to go away. + +Winterborne told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night and +walked after Melbury. + +"Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir," he said, +"especially since we don't stand as we used to stand to one another; +but I hope it is well with them all over your way?" + +"No," said Melbury--"no." He stopped, and struck the smooth trunk of a +young ash-tree with the flat of his hand. "I would that his ear had +been where that rind is!" he exclaimed; "I should have treated him to +little compared wi what he deserves." + +"Now," said Winterborne, "don't be in a hurry to go home. I've put +some cider down to warm in my shelter here, and we'll sit and drink it +and talk this over." + +Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and they went back +to where the fire was, and sat down under the screen, the other woodmen +having gone. He drew out the cider-mug from the ashes and they drank +together. + +"Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now," repeated +Melbury. "I'll tell you why for the first time." + +He thereupon told Winterborne, as with great relief, the story of how +he won away Giles's father's chosen one--by nothing worse than a +lover's cajoleries, it is true, but by means which, except in love, +would certainly have been pronounced cruel and unfair. He explained +how he had always intended to make reparation to Winterborne the father +by giving Grace to Winterborne the son, till the devil tempted him in +the person of Fitzpiers, and he broke his virtuous vow. + +"How highly I thought of that man, to be sure! Who'd have supposed he'd +have been so weak and wrong-headed as this! You ought to have had her, +Giles, and there's an end on't." + +Winterborne knew how to preserve his calm under this unconsciously +cruel tearing of a healing wound to which Melbury's concentration on +the more vital subject had blinded him. The young man endeavored to +make the best of the case for Grace's sake. + +"She would hardly have been happy with me," he said, in the dry, +unimpassioned voice under which he hid his feelings. "I was not well +enough educated: too rough, in short. I couldn't have surrounded her +with the refinements she looked for, anyhow, at all." + +"Nonsense--you are quite wrong there," said the unwise old man, +doggedly. "She told me only this day that she hates refinements and +such like. All that my trouble and money bought for her in that way is +thrown away upon her quite. She'd fain be like Marty South--think o' +that! That's the top of her ambition! Perhaps she's right. Giles, she +loved you--under the rind; and, what's more, she loves ye still--worse +luck for the poor maid!" + +If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up he +might have held his peace. Winterborne was silent a long time. The +darkness had closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of the fog +from the branches quickened as it turned to fine rain. + +"Oh, she never cared much for me," Giles managed to say, as he stirred +the embers with a brand. + +"She did, and does, I tell ye," said the other, obstinately. "However, +all that's vain talking now. What I come to ask you about is a more +practical matter--how to make the best of things as they are. I am +thinking of a desperate step--of calling on the woman Charmond. I am +going to appeal to her, since Grace will not. 'Tis she who holds the +balance in her hands--not he. While she's got the will to lead him +astray he will follow--poor, unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer--and +how long she'll do it depends upon her whim. Did ye ever hear anything +about her character before she came to Hintock?" + +"She's been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe," replied Giles, +with the same level quietude, as he regarded the red coals. "One who +has smiled where she has not loved and loved where she has not married. +Before Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a play-actress." + +"Hey? But how close you have kept all this, Giles! What besides?" + +"Mr. Charmond was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the north, +twenty or thirty years older than she. He married her and retired, and +came down here and bought this property, as they do nowadays." + +"Yes, yes--I know all about that; but the other I did not know. I fear +it bodes no good. For how can I go and appeal to the forbearance of a +woman in this matter who has made cross-loves and crooked entanglements +her trade for years? I thank ye, Giles, for finding it out; but it +makes my plan the harder that she should have belonged to that unstable +tribe." + +Another pause ensued, and they looked gloomily at the smoke that beat +about the hurdles which sheltered them, through whose weavings a large +drop of rain fell at intervals and spat smartly into the fire. Mrs. +Charmond had been no friend to Winterborne, but he was manly, and it +was not in his heart to let her be condemned without a trial. + +"She is said to be generous," he answered. "You might not appeal to +her in vain." + +"It shall be done," said Melbury, rising. "For good or for evil, to +Mrs. Charmond I'll go." + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + +At nine o'clock the next morning Melbury dressed himself up in shining +broadcloth, creased with folding and smelling of camphor, and started +for Hintock House. He was the more impelled to go at once by the +absence of his son-in-law in London for a few days, to attend, really +or ostensibly, some professional meetings. He said nothing of his +destination either to his wife or to Grace, fearing that they might +entreat him to abandon so risky a project, and went out unobserved. He +had chosen his time with a view, as he supposed, of conveniently +catching Mrs. Charmond when she had just finished her breakfast, before +any other business people should be about, if any came. Plodding +thoughtfully onward, he crossed a glade lying between Little Hintock +Woods and the plantation which abutted on the park; and the spot being +open, he was discerned there by Winterborne from the copse on the next +hill, where he and his men were working. Knowing his mission, the +younger man hastened down from the copse and managed to intercept the +timber-merchant. + +"I have been thinking of this, sir," he said, "and I am of opinion that +it would be best to put off your visit for the present." + +But Melbury would not even stop to hear him. His mind was made up, the +appeal was to be made; and Winterborne stood and watched him sadly till +he entered the second plantation and disappeared. + +Melbury rang at the tradesmen's door of the manor-house, and was at +once informed that the lady was not yet visible, as indeed he might +have guessed had he been anybody but the man he was. Melbury said he +would wait, whereupon the young man informed him in a neighborly way +that, between themselves, she was in bed and asleep. + +"Never mind," said Melbury, retreating into the court, "I'll stand +about here." Charged so fully with his mission, he shrank from contact +with anybody. + +But he walked about the paved court till he was tired, and still nobody +came to him. At last he entered the house and sat down in a small +waiting-room, from which he got glimpses of the kitchen corridor, and +of the white-capped maids flitting jauntily hither and thither. They +had heard of his arrival, but had not seen him enter, and, imagining +him still in the court, discussed freely the possible reason of his +calling. They marvelled at his temerity; for though most of the +tongues which had been let loose attributed the chief blame-worthiness +to Fitzpiers, these of her household preferred to regard their mistress +as the deeper sinner. + +Melbury sat with his hands resting on the familiar knobbed thorn +walking-stick, whose growing he had seen before he enjoyed its use. +The scene to him was not the material environment of his person, but a +tragic vision that travelled with him like an envelope. Through this +vision the incidents of the moment but gleamed confusedly here and +there, as an outer landscape through the high-colored scenes of a +stained window. He waited thus an hour, an hour and a half, two hours. +He began to look pale and ill, whereupon the butler, who came in, asked +him to have a glass of wine. Melbury roused himself and said, "No, no. +Is she almost ready?" + +"She is just finishing breakfast," said the butler. "She will soon see +you now. I am just going up to tell her you are here." + +"What! haven't you told her before?" said Melbury. + +"Oh no," said the other. "You see you came so very early." + +At last the bell rang: Mrs. Charmond could see him. She was not in her +private sitting-room when he reached it, but in a minute he heard her +coming from the front staircase, and she entered where he stood. + +At this time of the morning Mrs. Charmond looked her full age and more. +She might almost have been taken for the typical femme de trente ans, +though she was really not more than seven or eight and twenty. There +being no fire in the room, she came in with a shawl thrown loosely +round her shoulders, and obviously without the least suspicion that +Melbury had called upon any other errand than timber. Felice was, +indeed, the only woman in the parish who had not heard the rumor of her +own weaknesses; she was at this moment living in a fool's paradise in +respect of that rumor, though not in respect of the weaknesses +themselves, which, if the truth be told, caused her grave misgivings. + +"Do sit down, Mr. Melbury. You have felled all the trees that were to +be purchased by you this season, except the oaks, I believe." + +"Yes," said Melbury. + +"How very nice! It must be so charming to work in the woods just now!" + +She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous person's +affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of the perfect +social machine. Hence her words "very nice," "so charming," were +uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them sound absurdly unreal. + +"Yes, yes," said Melbury, in a reverie. He did not take a chair, and +she also remained standing. Resting upon his stick, he began: "Mrs. +Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter--at least to +me--than tree-throwing. And whatever mistakes I make in my manner of +speaking upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set 'em down to my +want of practice, and not to my want of care." + +Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease. She might have begun to guess his +meaning; but apart from that, she had such dread of contact with +anything painful, harsh, or even earnest, that his preliminaries alone +were enough to distress her. "Yes, what is it?" she said. + +"I am an old man," said Melbury, "whom, somewhat late in life, God +thought fit to bless with one child, and she a daughter. Her mother +was a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us when the +child was young, and the child became precious as the apple of my eye +to me, for she was all I had left to love. For her sake entirely I +married as second wife a homespun woman who had been kind as a mother +to her. In due time the question of her education came on, and I said, +'I will educate the maid well, if I live upon bread to do it.' Of her +possible marriage I could not bear to think, for it seemed like a death +that she should cleave to another man, and grow to think his house her +home rather than mine. But I saw it was the law of nature that this +should be, and that it was for the maid's happiness that she should +have a home when I was gone; and I made up my mind without a murmur to +help it on for her sake. In my youth I had wronged my dead friend, and +to make amends I determined to give her, my most precious possession, +to my friend's son, seeing that they liked each other well. Things came +about which made me doubt if it would be for my daughter's happiness to +do this, inasmuch as the young man was poor, and she was delicately +reared. Another man came and paid court to her--one her equal in +breeding and accomplishments; in every way it seemed to me that he only +could give her the home which her training had made a necessity almost. +I urged her on, and she married him. But, ma'am, a fatal mistake was +at the root of my reckoning. I found that this well-born gentleman I +had calculated on so surely was not stanch of heart, and that therein +lay a danger of great sorrow for my daughter. Madam, he saw you, and +you know the rest....I have come to make no demands--to utter no +threats; I have come simply as a father in great grief about this only +child, and I beseech you to deal kindly with my daughter, and to do +nothing which can turn her husband's heart away from her forever. +Forbid him your presence, ma'am, and speak to him on his duty as one +with your power over him well can do, and I am hopeful that the rent +between them may be patched up. For it is not as if you would lose by +so doing; your course is far higher than the courses of a simple +professional man, and the gratitude you would win from me and mine by +your kindness is more than I can say." + +Mrs. Charmond had first rushed into a mood of indignation on +comprehending Melbury's story; hot and cold by turns, she had murmured, +"Leave me, leave me!" But as he seemed to take no notice of this, his +words began to influence her, and when he ceased speaking she said, +with hurried, hot breath, "What has led you to think this of me? Who +says I have won your daughter's husband away from her? Some monstrous +calumnies are afloat--of which I have known nothing until now!" + +Melbury started, and looked at her simply. "But surely, ma'am, you +know the truth better than I?" + +Her features became a little pinched, and the touches of powder on her +handsome face for the first time showed themselves as an extrinsic +film. "Will you leave me to myself?" she said, with a faintness which +suggested a guilty conscience. "This is so utterly unexpected--you +obtain admission to my presence by misrepresentation--" + +"As God's in heaven, ma'am, that's not true. I made no pretence; and I +thought in reason you would know why I had come. This gossip--" + +"I have heard nothing of it. Tell me of it, I say." + +"Tell you, ma'am--not I. What the gossip is, no matter. What really +is, you know. Set facts right, and the scandal will right of itself. +But pardon me--I speak roughly; and I came to speak gently, to coax +you, beg you to be my daughter's friend. She loved you once, ma'am; +you began by liking her. Then you dropped her without a reason, and it +hurt her warm heart more than I can tell ye. But you were within your +right as the superior, no doubt. But if you would consider her +position now--surely, surely, you would do her no harm!" + +"Certainly I would do her no harm--I--" Melbury's eye met hers. It was +curious, but the allusion to Grace's former love for her seemed to +touch her more than all Melbury's other arguments. "Oh, Melbury," she +burst out, "you have made me so unhappy! How could you come to me like +this! It is too dreadful! Now go away--go, go!" + +"I will," he said, in a husky tone. + +As soon as he was out of the room she went to a corner and there sat +and writhed under an emotion in which hurt pride and vexation mingled +with better sentiments. + +Mrs. Charmond's mobile spirit was subject to these fierce periods of +stress and storm. She had never so clearly perceived till now that her +soul was being slowly invaded by a delirium which had brought about all +this; that she was losing judgment and dignity under it, becoming an +animated impulse only, a passion incarnate. A fascination had led her +on; it was as if she had been seized by a hand of velvet; and this was +where she found herself--overshadowed with sudden night, as if a +tornado had passed by. + +While she sat, or rather crouched, unhinged by the interview, +lunch-time came, and then the early afternoon, almost without her +consciousness. Then "a strange gentleman who says it is not necessary +to give his name," was suddenly announced. + +"I cannot see him, whoever he may be. I am not at home to anybody." + +She heard no more of her visitor; and shortly after, in an attempt to +recover some mental serenity by violent physical exercise, she put on +her hat and cloak and went out-of-doors, taking a path which led her up +the slopes to the nearest spur of the wood. She disliked the woods, +but they had the advantage of being a place in which she could walk +comparatively unobserved. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +There was agitation to-day in the lives of all whom these matters +concerned. It was not till the Hintock dinner-time--one o'clock--that +Grace discovered her father's absence from the house after a departure +in the morning under somewhat unusual conditions. By a little +reasoning and inquiry she was able to come to a conclusion on his +destination, and to divine his errand. + +Her husband was absent, and her father did not return. He had, in +truth, gone on to Sherton after the interview, but this Grace did not +know. In an indefinite dread that something serious would arise out of +Melbury's visit by reason of the inequalities of temper and nervous +irritation to which he was subject, something possibly that would bring +her much more misery than accompanied her present negative state of +mind, she left the house about three o'clock, and took a loitering walk +in the woodland track by which she imagined he would come home. This +track under the bare trees and over the cracking sticks, screened and +roofed in from the outer world of wind and cloud by a net-work of +boughs, led her slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees +behind her and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his +men were clearing the undergrowth. + +Had Giles's attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would not +have seen her; but ever since Melbury's passage across the opposite +glade in the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled as Grace +herself; and her advent now was the one appearance which, since her +father's avowal, could arrest him more than Melbury's return with his +tidings. Fearing that something might be the matter, he hastened up to +her. + +She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious of +the late pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly. "I am +only looking for my father," she said, in an unnecessarily apologetic +intonation. + +"I was looking for him too," said Giles. "I think he may perhaps have +gone on farther." + +"Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?" she said, turning her +large tender eyes anxiously upon him. "Did he tell you what for?" + +Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that her +father had visited him the evening before, and that their old +friendship was quite restored, on which she guessed the rest. + +"Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!" she cried. +And then they stood facing each other, fearing each other, troubling +each other's souls. Grace experienced acute misery at the sight of +these wood-cutting scenes, because she had estranged herself from them, +craving, even to its defects and inconveniences, that homely sylvan +life of her father which in the best probable succession of events +would shortly be denied her. + +At a little distance, on the edge of the clearing, Marty South was +shaping spar-gads to take home for manufacture during the evenings. +While Winterborne and Mrs. Fitzpiers stood looking at her in their +mutual embarrassment at each other's presence, they beheld approaching +the girl a lady in a dark fur mantle and a black hat, having a white +veil tied picturesquely round it. She spoke to Marty, who turned and +courtesied, and the lady fell into conversation with her. It was Mrs. +Charmond. + +On leaving her house, Mrs. Charmond had walked on and onward under the +fret and fever of her mind with more vigor than she was accustomed to +show in her normal moods--a fever which the solace of a cigarette did +not entirely allay. Reaching the coppice, she listlessly observed +Marty at work, threw away her cigarette, and came near. Chop, chop, +chop, went Marty's little billhook with never more assiduity, till Mrs. +Charmond spoke. + +"Who is that young lady I see talking to the woodman yonder?" she asked. + +"Mrs. Fitzpiers, ma'am," said Marty. + +"Oh," said Mrs. Charmond, with something like a start; for she had not +recognized Grace at that distance. "And the man she is talking to?" + +"That's Mr. Winterborne." + +A redness stole into Marty's face as she mentioned Giles's name, which +Mrs. Charmond did not fail to notice informed her of the state of the +girl's heart. "Are you engaged to him?" she asked, softly. + +"No, ma'am," said Marty. "SHE was once; and I think--" + +But Marty could not possibly explain the complications of her thoughts +on this matter--which were nothing less than one of extraordinary +acuteness for a girl so young and inexperienced--namely, that she saw +danger to two hearts naturally honest in Grace being thrown back into +Winterborne's society by the neglect of her husband. Mrs. Charmond, +however, with the almost supersensory means to knowledge which women +have on such occasions, quite understood what Marty had intended to +convey, and the picture thus exhibited to her of lives drifting away, +involving the wreck of poor Marty's hopes, prompted her to more +generous resolves than all Melbury's remonstrances had been able to +stimulate. + +Full of the new feeling, she bade the girl good-afternoon, and went on +over the stumps of hazel to where Grace and Winterborne were standing. +They saw her approach, and Winterborne said, "She is coming to you; it +is a good omen. She dislikes me, so I'll go away." He accordingly +retreated to where he had been working before Grace came, and Grace's +formidable rival approached her, each woman taking the other's measure +as she came near. + +"Dear--Mrs. Fitzpiers," said Felice Charmond, with some inward turmoil +which stopped her speech. "I have not seen you for a long time." + +She held out her hand tentatively, while Grace stood like a wild animal +on first confronting a mirror or other puzzling product of +civilization. Was it really Mrs. Charmond speaking to her thus? If it +was, she could no longer form any guess as to what it signified. + +"I want to talk with you," said Mrs. Charmond, imploringly, for the +gaze of the young woman had chilled her through. "Can you walk on with +me till we are quite alone?" + +Sick with distaste, Grace nevertheless complied, as by clockwork and +they moved evenly side by side into the deeper recesses of the woods. +They went farther, much farther than Mrs. Charmond had meant to go; but +she could not begin her conversation, and in default of it kept walking. + +"I have seen your father," she at length resumed. "And--I am much +troubled by what he told me." + +"What did he tell you? I have not been admitted to his confidence on +anything he may have said to you." + +"Nevertheless, why should I repeat to you what you can easily divine?" + +"True--true," returned Grace, mournfully. "Why should you repeat what +we both know to be in our minds already?" + +"Mrs. Fitzpiers, your husband--" The moment that the speaker's tongue +touched the dangerous subject a vivid look of self-consciousness +flashed over her, in which her heart revealed, as by a lightning gleam, +what filled it to overflowing. So transitory was the expression that +none but a sensitive woman, and she in Grace's position, would have had +the power to catch its meaning. Upon her the phase was not lost. + +"Then you DO love him!" she exclaimed, in a tone of much surprise. + +"What do you mean, my young friend?" + +"Why," cried Grace, "I thought till now that you had only been cruelly +flirting with my husband, to amuse your idle moments--a rich lady with +a poor professional gentleman whom in her heart she despised not much +less than her who belongs to him. But I guess from your manner that +you love him desperately, and I don't hate you as I did before." + +"Yes, indeed," continued Mrs. Fitzpiers, with a trembling tongue, +"since it is not playing in your case at all, but REAL. Oh, I do pity +you, more than I despise you, for you will s-s-suffer most!" + +Mrs. Charmond was now as much agitated as Grace. "I ought not to allow +myself to argue with you," she exclaimed. "I demean myself by doing +it. But I liked you once, and for the sake of that time I try to tell +you how mistaken you are!" Much of her confusion resulted from her +wonder and alarm at finding herself in a sense dominated mentally and +emotionally by this simple school-girl. "I do not love him," she went +on, with desperate untruth. "It was a kindness--my making somewhat +more of him than one usually does of one's doctor. I was lonely; I +talked--well, I trifled with him. I am very sorry if such child's +playing out of pure friendship has been a serious matter to you. Who +could have expected it? But the world is so simple here." + +"Oh, that's affectation," said Grace, shaking her head. "It is no +use--you love him. I can see in your face that in this matter of my +husband you have not let your acts belie your feelings. During these +last four or six months you have been terribly indiscreet; but you have +not been insincere, and that almost disarms me." + +"I HAVE been insincere--if you will have the word--I mean I HAVE +coquetted, and do NOT love him!" + +But Grace clung to her position like a limpet. "You may have trifled +with others, but him you love as you never loved another man." + +"Oh, well--I won't argue," said Mrs. Charmond, laughing faintly. "And +you come to reproach me for it, child." + +"No," said Grace, magnanimously. "You may go on loving him if you +like--I don't mind at all. You'll find it, let me tell you, a bitterer +business for yourself than for me in the end. He'll get tired of you +soon, as tired as can be--you don't know him so well as I--and then you +may wish you had never seen him!" + +Mrs. Charmond had grown quite pale and weak under this prophecy. It was +extraordinary that Grace, whom almost every one would have +characterized as a gentle girl, should be of stronger fibre than her +interlocutor. "You exaggerate--cruel, silly young woman," she +reiterated, writhing with little agonies. "It is nothing but playful +friendship--nothing! It will be proved by my future conduct. I shall +at once refuse to see him more--since it will make no difference to my +heart, and much to my name." + +"I question if you will refuse to see him again," said Grace, dryly, as +with eyes askance she bent a sapling down. "But I am not incensed +against you as you are against me," she added, abandoning the tree to +its natural perpendicular. "Before I came I had been despising you for +wanton cruelty; now I only pity you for misplaced affection. When +Edgar has gone out of the house in hope of seeing you, at seasonable +hours and unseasonable; when I have found him riding miles and miles +across the country at midnight, and risking his life, and getting +covered with mud, to get a glimpse of you, I have called him a foolish +man--the plaything of a finished coquette. I thought that what was +getting to be a tragedy to me was a comedy to you. But now I see that +tragedy lies on YOUR side of the situation no less than on MINE, and +more; that if I have felt trouble at my position, you have felt anguish +at yours; that if I have had disappointments, you have had despairs. +Heaven may fortify me--God help you!" + +"I cannot attempt to reply to your raving eloquence," returned the +other, struggling to restore a dignity which had completely collapsed. +"My acts will be my proofs. In the world which you have seen nothing +of, friendships between men and women are not unknown, and it would +have been better both for you and your father if you had each judged me +more respectfully, and left me alone. As it is I wish never to see or +speak to you, madam, any more." + +Grace bowed, and Mrs. Charmond turned away. The two went apart in +directly opposite courses, and were soon hidden from each other by +their umbrageous surroundings and by the shadows of eve. + +In the excitement of their long argument they had walked onward and +zigzagged about without regarding direction or distance. All sound of +the woodcutters had long since faded into remoteness, and even had not +the interval been too great for hearing them they would have been +silent and homeward bound at this twilight hour. But Grace went on her +course without any misgiving, though there was much underwood here, +with only the narrowest passages for walking, across which brambles +hung. She had not, however, traversed this the wildest part of the +wood since her childhood, and the transformation of outlines had been +great; old trees which once were landmarks had been felled or blown +down, and the bushes which then had been small and scrubby were now +large and overhanging. She soon found that her ideas as to direction +were vague--that she had indeed no ideas as to direction at all. If +the evening had not been growing so dark, and the wind had not put on +its night moan so distinctly, Grace would not have minded; but she was +rather frightened now, and began to strike across hither and thither in +random courses. + +Denser grew the darkness, more developed the wind-voices, and still no +recognizable spot or outlet of any kind appeared, nor any sound of the +Hintocks floated near, though she had wandered probably between one and +two hours, and began to be weary. She was vexed at her foolishness, +since the ground she had covered, if in a straight line, must +inevitably have taken her out of the wood to some remote village or +other; but she had wasted her forces in countermarches; and now, in +much alarm, wondered if she would have to pass the night here. She +stood still to meditate, and fancied that between the soughing of the +wind she heard shuffling footsteps on the leaves heavier than those of +rabbits or hares. Though fearing at first to meet anybody on the chance +of his being a friend, she decided that the fellow night-rambler, even +if a poacher, would not injure her, and that he might possibly be some +one sent to search for her. She accordingly shouted a rather timid +"Hoi!" + +The cry was immediately returned by the other person; and Grace running +at once in the direction whence it came beheld an indistinct figure +hastening up to her as rapidly. They were almost in each other's arms +when she recognized in her vis-a-vis the outline and white veil of her +whom she had parted from an hour and a half before--Mrs. Charmond. + +"I have lost my way, I have lost my way," cried that lady. "Oh--is it +indeed you? I am so glad to meet you or anybody. I have been wandering +up and down ever since we parted, and am nearly dead with terror and +misery and fatigue!" + +"So am I," said Grace. "What shall we, shall we do?" + +"You won't go away from me?" asked her companion, anxiously. + +"No, indeed. Are you very tired?" + +"I can scarcely move, and I am scratched dreadfully about the ankles." + +Grace reflected. "Perhaps, as it is dry under foot, the best thing for +us to do would be to sit down for half an hour, and then start again +when we have thoroughly rested. By walking straight we must come to a +track leading somewhere before the morning." + +They found a clump of bushy hollies which afforded a shelter from the +wind, and sat down under it, some tufts of dead fern, crisp and dry, +that remained from the previous season forming a sort of nest for them. +But it was cold, nevertheless, on this March night, particularly for +Grace, who with the sanguine prematureness of youth in matters of +dress, had considered it spring-time, and hence was not so warmly clad +as Mrs. Charmond, who still wore her winter fur. But after sitting a +while the latter lady shivered no less than Grace as the warmth +imparted by her hasty walking began to go off, and they felt the cold +air drawing through the holly leaves which scratched their backs and +shoulders. Moreover, they could hear some drops of rain falling on the +trees, though none reached the nook in which they had ensconced +themselves. + +"If we were to cling close together," said Mrs. Charmond, "we should +keep each other warm. But," she added, in an uneven voice, "I suppose +you won't come near me for the world!" + +"Why not?" + +"Because--well, you know." + +"Yes. I will--I don't hate you at all." + +They consequently crept up to one another, and being in the dark, +lonely and weary, did what neither had dreamed of doing beforehand, +clasped each other closely, Mrs. Charmond's furs consoling Grace's cold +face, and each one's body as she breathed alternately heaving against +that of her companion. + +When a few minutes had been spent thus, Mrs. Charmond said, "I am so +wretched!" in a heavy, emotional whisper. + +"You are frightened," said Grace, kindly. "But there is nothing to +fear; I know these woods well." + +"I am not at all frightened at the wood, but I am at other things." + +Mrs. Charmond embraced Grace more and more tightly, and the younger +woman could feel her neighbor's breathings grow deeper and more +spasmodic, as though uncontrollable feelings were germinating. + +"After I had left you," she went on, "I regretted something I had said. +I have to make a confession--I must make it!" she whispered, brokenly, +the instinct to indulge in warmth of sentiment which had led this woman +of passions to respond to Fitzpiers in the first place leading her now +to find luxurious comfort in opening her heart to his wife. "I said to +you I could give him up without pain or deprivation--that he had only +been my pastime. That was untrue--it was said to deceive you. I could +not do it without much pain; and, what is more dreadful, I cannot give +him up--even if I would--of myself alone." + +"Why? Because you love him, you mean." + +Felice Charmond denoted assent by a movement. + +"I knew I was right!" said Grace, exaltedly. "But that should not +deter you," she presently added, in a moral tone. "Oh, do struggle +against it, and you will conquer!" + +"You are so simple, so simple!" cried Felice. "You think, because you +guessed my assumed indifference to him to be a sham, that you know the +extremes that people are capable of going to! But a good deal more may +have been going on than you have fathomed with all your insight. I +CANNOT give him up until he chooses to give up me." + +"But surely you are the superior in station and in every way, and the +cut must come from you." + +"Tchut! Must I tell verbatim, you simple child? Oh, I suppose I must! I +shall eat away my heart if I do not let out all, after meeting you like +this and finding how guileless you are." She thereupon whispered a few +words in the girl's ear, and burst into a violent fit of sobbing. + +Grace started roughly away from the shelter of the fur, and sprang to +her feet. + +"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed, thunderstruck at a revelation transcending +her utmost suspicion. "Can it be--can it be!" + +She turned as if to hasten away. But Felice Charmond's sobs came to +her ear: deep darkness circled her about, the funereal trees rocked and +chanted their diriges and placebos around her, and she did not know +which way to go. After a moment of energy she felt mild again, and +turned to the motionless woman at her feet. + +"Are you rested?" she asked, in what seemed something like her own +voice grown ten years older. + +Without an answer Mrs. Charmond slowly rose. + +"You mean to betray me!" she said from the bitterest depths of her +soul. "Oh fool, fool I!" + +"No," said Grace, shortly. "I mean no such thing. But let us be quick +now. We have a serious undertaking before us. Think of nothing but +going straight on." + +They walked on in profound silence, pulling back boughs now growing +wet, and treading down woodbine, but still keeping a pretty straight +course. Grace began to be thoroughly worn out, and her companion too, +when, on a sudden, they broke into the deserted highway at the hill-top +on which the Sherton man had waited for Mrs. Dollery's van. Grace +recognized the spot as soon as she looked around her. + +"How we have got here I cannot tell," she said, with cold civility. +"We have made a complete circuit of Little Hintock. The hazel copse is +quite on the other side. Now we have only to follow the road." + +They dragged themselves onward, turned into the lane, passed the track +to Little Hintock, and so reached the park. + +"Here I turn back," said Grace, in the same passionless voice. "You are +quite near home." + +Mrs. Charmond stood inert, seeming appalled by her late admission. + +"I have told you something in a moment of irresistible desire to +unburden my soul which all but a fool would have kept silent as the +grave," she said. "I cannot help it now. Is it to be a secret--or do +you mean war?" + +"A secret, certainly," said Grace, mournfully. "How can you expect war +from such a helpless, wretched being as I!" + +"And I'll do my best not to see him. I am his slave; but I'll try." + +Grace was naturally kind; but she could not help using a small dagger +now. + +"Pray don't distress yourself," she said, with exquisitely fine scorn. +"You may keep him--for me." Had she been wounded instead of mortified +she could not have used the words; but Fitzpiers's hold upon her heart +was slight. + +They parted thus and there, and Grace went moodily homeward. Passing +Marty's cottage she observed through the window that the girl was +writing instead of chopping as usual, and wondered what her +correspondence could be. Directly afterwards she met people in search +of her, and reached the house to find all in serious alarm. She soon +explained that she had lost her way, and her general depression was +attributed to exhaustion on that account. + +Could she have known what Marty was writing she would have been +surprised. + +The rumor which agitated the other folk of Hintock had reached the +young girl, and she was penning a letter to Fitzpiers, to tell him that +Mrs. Charmond wore her hair. It was poor Marty's only card, and she +played it, knowing nothing of fashion, and thinking her revelation a +fatal one for a lover. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting between +Grace and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, that Fitzpiers, just returned from +London, was travelling from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock in a hired +carriage. In his eye there was a doubtful light, and the lines of his +refined face showed a vague disquietude. He appeared now like one of +those who impress the beholder as having suffered wrong in being born. + +His position was in truth gloomy, and to his appreciative mind it +seemed even gloomier than it was. His practice had been slowly +dwindling of late, and now threatened to die out altogether, the +irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing patients up to Fitzpiers's very +door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest cause of +his unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man, the second branch of +his sadness grew out of a remedial measure proposed for the first--a +letter from Felice Charmond imploring him not to see her again. To +bring about their severance still more effectually, she added, she had +decided during his absence upon almost immediate departure for the +Continent. + +The time was that dull interval in a woodlander's life which coincides +with great activity in the life of the woodland itself--a period +following the close of the winter tree-cutting, and preceding the +barking season, when the saps are just beginning to heave with the +force of hydraulic lifts inside all the trunks of the forest. + +Winterborne's contract was completed, and the plantations were +deserted. It was dusk; there were no leaves as yet; the nightingales +would not begin to sing for a fortnight; and "the Mother of the Months" +was in her most attenuated phase--starved and bent to a mere bowed +skeleton, which glided along behind the bare twigs in Fitzpiers's +company. + +When he reached home he went straight up to his wife's sitting-room. +He found it deserted, and without a fire. He had mentioned no day for +his return; nevertheless, he wondered why she was not there waiting to +receive him. On descending to the other wing of the house and +inquiring of Mrs. Melbury, he learned with much surprise that Grace had +gone on a visit to an acquaintance at Shottsford-Forum three days +earlier; that tidings had on this morning reached her father of her +being very unwell there, in consequence of which he had ridden over to +see her. + +Fitzpiers went up-stairs again, and the little drawing-room, now +lighted by a solitary candle, was not rendered more cheerful by the +entrance of Grammer Oliver with an apronful of wood, which she threw on +the hearth while she raked out the grate and rattled about the +fire-irons, with a view to making things comfortable. Fitzpiers +considered that Grace ought to have let him know her plans more +accurately before leaving home in a freak like this. He went +desultorily to the window, the blind of which had not been pulled down, +and looked out at the thin, fast-sinking moon, and at the tall stalk of +smoke rising from the top of Suke Damson's chimney, signifying that the +young woman had just lit her fire to prepare supper. + +He became conscious of a discussion in progress on the opposite side of +the court. Somebody had looked over the wall to talk to the sawyers, +and was telling them in a loud voice news in which the name of Mrs. +Charmond soon arrested his ears. + +"Grammer, don't make so much noise with that grate," said the surgeon; +at which Grammer reared herself upon her knees and held the fuel +suspended in her hand, while Fitzpiers half opened the casement. + +"She is off to foreign lands again at last--hev made up her mind quite +sudden-like--and it is thoughted she'll leave in a day or two. She's +been all as if her mind were low for some days past--with a sort of +sorrow in her face, as if she reproached her own soul. She's the wrong +sort of woman for Hintock--hardly knowing a beech from a woak--that I +own. But I don't care who the man is, she's been a very kind friend to +me. + +"Well, the day after to-morrow is the Sabbath day, and without charity +we are but tinkling simples; but this I do say, that her going will be +a blessed thing for a certain married couple who remain." + +The fire was lighted, and Fitzpiers sat down in front of it, restless +as the last leaf upon a tree. "A sort of sorrow in her face, as if she +reproached her own soul." Poor Felice. How Felice's frame must be +pulsing under the conditions of which he had just heard the caricature; +how her fair temples must ache; what a mood of wretchedness she must be +in! But for the mixing up of his name with hers, and her determination +to sunder their too close acquaintance on that account, she would +probably have sent for him professionally. She was now sitting alone, +suffering, perhaps wishing that she had not forbidden him to come again. + +Unable to remain in this lonely room any longer, or to wait for the +meal which was in course of preparation, he made himself ready for +riding, descended to the yard, stood by the stable-door while Darling +was being saddled, and rode off down the lane. He would have preferred +walking, but was weary with his day's travel. + +As he approached the door of Marty South's cottage, which it was +necessary to pass on his way, she came from the porch as if she had +been awaiting him, and met him in the middle of the road, holding up a +letter. Fitzpiers took it without stopping, and asked over his +shoulder from whom it came. + +Marty hesitated. "From me," she said, shyly, though with noticeable +firmness. + +This letter contained, in fact, Marty's declaration that she was the +original owner of Mrs. Charmond's supplementary locks, and enclosed a +sample from the native stock, which had grown considerably by this +time. It was her long contemplated apple of discord, and much her hand +trembled as she handed the document up to him. + +But it was impossible on account of the gloom for Fitzpiers to read it +then, while he had the curiosity to do so, and he put it in his pocket. +His imagination having already centred itself on Hintock House, in his +pocket the letter remained unopened and forgotten, all the while that +Marty was hopefully picturing its excellent weaning effect upon him. + +He was not long in reaching the precincts of the Manor House. He drew +rein under a group of dark oaks commanding a view of the front, and +reflected a while. His entry would not be altogether unnatural in the +circumstances of her possible indisposition; but upon the whole he +thought it best to avoid riding up to the door. By silently approaching +he could retreat unobserved in the event of her not being alone. +Thereupon he dismounted, hitched Darling to a stray bough hanging a +little below the general browsing line of the trees, and proceeded to +the door on foot. + +In the mean time Melbury had returned from Shottsford-Forum. The great +court or quadrangle of the timber-merchant's house, divided from the +shady lane by an ivy-covered wall, was entered by two white gates, one +standing near each extremity of the wall. It so happened that at the +moment when Fitzpiers was riding out at the lower gate on his way to +the Manor House, Melbury was approaching the upper gate to enter it. +Fitzpiers being in front of Melbury was seen by the latter, but the +surgeon, never turning his head, did not observe his father-in-law, +ambling slowly and silently along under the trees, though his horse too +was a gray one. + +"How is Grace?" said his wife, as soon as he entered. + +Melbury looked gloomy. "She is not at all well," he said. "I don't +like the looks of her at all. I couldn't bear the notion of her biding +away in a strange place any longer, and I begged her to let me get her +home. At last she agreed to it, but not till after much persuading. I +was then sorry that I rode over instead of driving; but I have hired a +nice comfortable carriage--the easiest-going I could get--and she'll be +here in a couple of hours or less. I rode on ahead to tell you to get +her room ready; but I see her husband has come back." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Melbury. She expressed her concern that her husband +had hired a carriage all the way from Shottsford. "What it will cost!" +she said. + +"I don't care what it costs!" he exclaimed, testily. "I was determined +to get her home. Why she went away I can't think! She acts in a way +that is not at all likely to mend matters as far as I can see." (Grace +had not told her father of her interview with Mrs. Charmond, and the +disclosure that had been whispered in her startled ear.) "Since Edgar +is come," he continued, "he might have waited in till I got home, to +ask me how she was, if only for a compliment. I saw him go out; where +is he gone?" + +Mrs. Melbury did not know positively; but she told her husband that +there was not much doubt about the place of his first visit after an +absence. She had, in fact, seen Fitzpiers take the direction of the +Manor House. + +Melbury said no more. It was exasperating to him that just at this +moment, when there was every reason for Fitzpiers to stay indoors, or +at any rate to ride along the Shottsford road to meet his ailing wife, +he should be doing despite to her by going elsewhere. The old man went +out-of-doors again; and his horse being hardly unsaddled as yet, he +told Upjohn to retighten the girths, when he again mounted, and rode +off at the heels of the surgeon. + +By the time that Melbury reached the park, he was prepared to go any +lengths in combating this rank and reckless errantry of his daughter's +husband. He would fetch home Edgar Fitzpiers to-night by some means, +rough or fair: in his view there could come of his interference nothing +worse than what existed at present. And yet to every bad there is a +worse. + +He had entered by the bridle-gate which admitted to the park on this +side, and cantered over the soft turf almost in the tracks of +Fitzpiers's horse, till he reached the clump of trees under which his +precursor had halted. The whitish object that was indistinctly visible +here in the gloom of the boughs he found to be Darling, as left by +Fitzpiers. + +"D--n him! why did he not ride up to the house in an honest way?" said +Melbury. + +He profited by Fitzpiers's example; dismounting, he tied his horse +under an adjoining tree, and went on to the house on foot, as the other +had done. He was no longer disposed to stick at trifles in his +investigation, and did not hesitate to gently open the front door +without ringing. + +The large square hall, with its oak floor, staircase, and wainscot, was +lighted by a dim lamp hanging from a beam. Not a soul was visible. He +went into the corridor and listened at a door which he knew to be that +of the drawing-room; there was no sound, and on turning the handle he +found the room empty. A fire burning low in the grate was the sole +light of the apartment; its beams flashed mockingly on the somewhat +showy Versaillese furniture and gilding here, in style as unlike that +of the structural parts of the building as it was possible to be, and +probably introduced by Felice to counteract the fine old-English gloom +of the place. Disappointed in his hope of confronting his son-in-law +here, he went on to the dining-room; this was without light or fire, +and pervaded by a cold atmosphere, which signified that she had not +dined there that day. + +By this time Melbury's mood had a little mollified. Everything here +was so pacific, so unaggressive in its repose, that he was no longer +incited to provoke a collision with Fitzpiers or with anybody. The +comparative stateliness of the apartments influenced him to an emotion, +rather than to a belief, that where all was outwardly so good and +proper there could not be quite that delinquency within which he had +suspected. It occurred to him, too, that even if his suspicion were +justified, his abrupt, if not unwarrantable, entry into the house might +end in confounding its inhabitant at the expense of his daughter's +dignity and his own. Any ill result would be pretty sure to hit Grace +hardest in the long-run. He would, after all, adopt the more rational +course, and plead with Fitzpiers privately, as he had pleaded with Mrs. +Charmond. + +He accordingly retreated as silently as he had come. Passing the door +of the drawing-room anew, he fancied that he heard a noise within which +was not the crackling of the fire. Melbury gently reopened the door to +a distance of a few inches, and saw at the opposite window two figures +in the act of stepping out--a man and a woman--in whom he recognized +the lady of the house and his son-in-law. In a moment they had +disappeared amid the gloom of the lawn. + +He returned into the hall, and let himself out by the carriage-entrance +door, coming round to the lawn front in time to see the two figures +parting at the railing which divided the precincts of the house from +the open park. Mrs. Charmond turned to hasten back immediately that +Fitzpiers had left her side, and he was speedily absorbed into the +duskiness of the trees. + +Melbury waited till Mrs. Charmond had re-entered the drawing-room, and +then followed after Fitzpiers, thinking that he would allow the latter +to mount and ride ahead a little way before overtaking him and giving +him a piece of his mind. His son-in-law might possibly see the second +horse near his own; but that would do him no harm, and might prepare +him for what he was to expect. + +The event, however, was different from the plan. On plunging into the +thick shade of the clump of oaks, he could not perceive his horse +Blossom anywhere; but feeling his way carefully along, he by-and-by +discerned Fitzpiers's mare Darling still standing as before under the +adjoining tree. For a moment Melbury thought that his own horse, being +young and strong, had broken away from her fastening; but on listening +intently he could hear her ambling comfortably along a little way +ahead, and a creaking of the saddle which showed that she had a rider. +Walking on as far as the small gate in the corner of the park, he met a +laborer, who, in reply to Melbury's inquiry if he had seen any person +on a gray horse, said that he had only met Dr. Fitzpiers. + +It was just what Melbury had begun to suspect: Fitzpiers had mounted +the mare which did not belong to him in mistake for his own--an +oversight easily explicable, in a man ever unwitting in horse-flesh, by +the darkness of the spot and the near similarity of the animals in +appearance, though Melbury's was readily enough seen to be the grayer +horse by day. He hastened back, and did what seemed best in the +circumstances--got upon old Darling, and rode rapidly after Fitzpiers. + +Melbury had just entered the wood, and was winding along the cart-way +which led through it, channelled deep in the leaf-mould with large ruts +that were formed by the timber-wagons in fetching the spoil of the +plantations, when all at once he descried in front, at a point where +the road took a turning round a large chestnut-tree, the form of his +own horse Blossom, at which Melbury quickened Darling's pace, thinking +to come up with Fitzpiers. + +Nearer view revealed that the horse had no rider. At Melbury's +approach it galloped friskily away under the trees in a homeward +direction. Thinking something was wrong, the timber-merchant +dismounted as soon as he reached the chestnut, and after feeling about +for a minute or two discovered Fitzpiers lying on the ground. + +"Here--help!" cried the latter as soon as he felt Melbury's touch; "I +have been thrown off, but there's not much harm done, I think." + +Since Melbury could not now very well read the younger man the lecture +he had intended, and as friendliness would be hypocrisy, his instinct +was to speak not a single word to his son-in-law. He raised Fitzpiers +into a sitting posture, and found that he was a little stunned and +stupefied, but, as he had said, not otherwise hurt. How this fall had +come about was readily conjecturable: Fitzpiers, imagining there was +only old Darling under him, had been taken unawares by the younger +horse's sprightliness. + +Melbury was a traveller of the old-fashioned sort; having just come +from Shottsford-Forum, he still had in his pocket the pilgrim's flask +of rum which he always carried on journeys exceeding a dozen miles, +though he seldom drank much of it. He poured it down the surgeon's +throat, with such effect that he quickly revived. Melbury got him on +his legs; but the question was what to do with him. He could not walk +more than a few steps, and the other horse had gone away. + +With great exertion Melbury contrived to get him astride Darling, +mounting himself behind, and holding Fitzpiers round his waist with one +arm. Darling being broad, straight-backed, and high in the withers, +was well able to carry double, at any rate as far as Hintock, and at a +gentle pace. + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + +The mare paced along with firm and cautious tread through the copse +where Winterborne had worked, and into the heavier soil where the oaks +grew; past Great Willy, the largest oak in the wood, and thence towards +Nellcombe Bottom, intensely dark now with overgrowth, and popularly +supposed to be haunted by the spirits of the fratricides exorcised from +Hintock House. + +By this time Fitzpiers was quite recovered as to physical strength. +But he had eaten nothing since making a hasty breakfast in London that +morning, his anxiety about Felice having hurried him away from home +before dining; as a consequence, the old rum administered by his +father-in-law flew to the young man's head and loosened his tongue, +without his ever having recognized who it was that had lent him a +kindly hand. He began to speak in desultory sentences, Melbury still +supporting him. + +"I've come all the way from London to-day," said Fitzpiers. "Ah, +that's the place to meet your equals. I live at Hintock--worse, at +Little Hintock--and I am quite lost there. There's not a man within +ten miles of Hintock who can comprehend me. I tell you, Farmer +What's-your-name, that I'm a man of education. I know several +languages; the poets and I are familiar friends; I used to read more in +metaphysics than anybody within fifty miles; and since I gave that up +there's nobody can match me in the whole county of Wessex as a +scientist. Yet I an doomed to live with tradespeople in a miserable +little hole like Hintock!" + +"Indeed!" muttered Melbury. + +Fitzpiers, increasingly energized by the alcohol, here reared himself +up suddenly from the bowed posture he had hitherto held, thrusting his +shoulders so violently against Melbury's breast as to make it difficult +for the old man to keep a hold on the reins. "People don't appreciate +me here!" the surgeon exclaimed; lowering his voice, he added, softly +and slowly, "except one--except one!...A passionate soul, as warm as +she is clever, as beautiful as she is warm, and as rich as she is +beautiful. I say, old fellow, those claws of yours clutch me rather +tight--rather like the eagle's, you know, that ate out the liver of +Pro--Pre--the man on Mount Caucasus. People don't appreciate me, I +say, except HER. Ah, gods, I am an unlucky man! She would have been +mine, she would have taken my name; but unfortunately it cannot be so. +I stooped to mate beneath me, and now I rue it." + +The position was becoming a very trying one for Melbury, corporeally +and mentally. He was obliged to steady Fitzpiers with his left arm, +and he began to hate the contact. He hardly knew what to do. It was +useless to remonstrate with Fitzpiers, in his intellectual confusion +from the rum and from the fall. He remained silent, his hold upon his +companion, however, being stern rather than compassionate. + +"You hurt me a little, farmer--though I am much obliged to you for your +kindness. People don't appreciate me, I say. Between ourselves, I am +losing my practice here; and why? Because I see matchless attraction +where matchless attraction is, both in person and position. I mention +no names, so nobody will be the wiser. But I have lost her, in a +legitimate sense, that is. If I were a free man now, things have come +to such a pass that she could not refuse me; while with her fortune +(which I don't covet for itself) I should have a chance of satisfying +an honorable ambition--a chance I have never had yet, and now never, +never shall have, probably!" + +Melbury, his heart throbbing against the other's backbone, and his +brain on fire with indignation, ventured to mutter huskily, "Why?" + +The horse ambled on some steps before Fitzpiers replied, "Because I am +tied and bound to another by law, as tightly as I am to you by your +arm--not that I complain of your arm--I thank you for helping me. +Well, where are we? Not nearly home yet?...Home, say I. It is a home! +When I might have been at the other house over there." In a stupefied +way he flung his hand in the direction of the park. "I was just two +months too early in committing myself. Had I only seen the other +first--" + +Here the old man's arm gave Fitzpiers a convulsive shake. "What are +you doing?" continued the latter. "Keep still, please, or put me down. +I was saying that I lost her by a mere little two months! There is no +chance for me now in this world, and it makes me reckless--reckless! +Unless, indeed, anything should happen to the other one. She is +amiable enough; but if anything should happen to her--and I hear she is +ill--well, if it should, I should be free--and my fame, my happiness, +would be insured." + +These were the last words that Fitzpiers uttered in his seat in front +of the timber-merchant. Unable longer to master himself, Melbury, the +skin of his face compressed, whipped away his spare arm from +Fitzpiers's waist, and seized him by the collar. + +"You heartless villain--after all that we have done for ye!" he cried, +with a quivering lip. "And the money of hers that you've had, and the +roof we've provided to shelter ye! It is to me, George Melbury, that +you dare to talk like that!" The exclamation was accompanied by a +powerful swing from the shoulder, which flung the young man head-long +into the road, Fitzpiers fell with a heavy thud upon the stumps of some +undergrowth which had been cut during the winter preceding. Darling +continued her walk for a few paces farther and stopped. + +"God forgive me!" Melbury murmured, repenting of what he had done. "He +tried me too sorely; and now perhaps I've murdered him!" + +He turned round in the saddle and looked towards the spot on which +Fitzpiers had fallen. To his great surprise he beheld the surgeon rise +to his feet with a bound, as if unhurt, and walk away rapidly under the +trees. + +Melbury listened till the rustle of Fitzpiers's footsteps died away. +"It might have been a crime, but for the mercy of Providence in +providing leaves for his fall," he said to himself. And then his mind +reverted to the words of Fitzpiers, and his indignation so mounted +within him that he almost wished the fall had put an end to the young +man there and then. + +He had not ridden far when he discerned his own gray mare standing +under some bushes. Leaving Darling for a moment, Melbury went forward +and easily caught the younger animal, now disheartened at its freak. +He then made the pair of them fast to a tree, and turning back, +endeavored to find some trace of Fitzpiers, feeling pitifully that, +after all, he had gone further than he intended with the offender. + +But though he threaded the wood hither and thither, his toes ploughing +layer after layer of the little horny scrolls that had once been +leaves, he could not find him. He stood still listening and looking +round. The breeze was oozing through the network of boughs as through +a strainer; the trunks and larger branches stood against the light of +the sky in the forms of writhing men, gigantic candelabra, pikes, +halberds, lances, and whatever besides the fancy chose to make of them. +Giving up the search, Melbury came back to the horses, and walked +slowly homeward, leading one in each hand. + + +It happened that on this self-same evening a boy had been returning +from Great to Little Hintock about the time of Fitzpiers's and +Melbury's passage home along that route. A horse-collar that had been +left at the harness-mender's to be repaired was required for use at +five o'clock next morning, and in consequence the boy had to fetch it +overnight. He put his head through the collar, and accompanied his +walk by whistling the one tune he knew, as an antidote to fear. + +The boy suddenly became aware of a horse trotting rather friskily along +the track behind him, and not knowing whether to expect friend or foe, +prudence suggested that he should cease his whistling and retreat among +the trees till the horse and his rider had gone by; a course to which +he was still more inclined when he found how noiselessly they +approached, and saw that the horse looked pale, and remembered what he +had read about Death in the Revelation. He therefore deposited the +collar by a tree, and hid himself behind it. The horseman came on, and +the youth, whose eyes were as keen as telescopes, to his great relief +recognized the doctor. + +As Melbury surmised, Fitzpiers had in the darkness taken Blossom for +Darling, and he had not discovered his mistake when he came up opposite +the boy, though he was somewhat surprised at the liveliness of his +usually placid mare. The only other pair of eyes on the spot whose +vision was keen as the young carter's were those of the horse; and, +with that strongly conservative objection to the unusual which animals +show, Blossom, on eying the collar under the tree--quite invisible to +Fitzpiers--exercised none of the patience of the older horse, but shied +sufficiently to unseat so second-rate an equestrian as the surgeon. + +He fell, and did not move, lying as Melbury afterwards found him. The +boy ran away, salving his conscience for the desertion by thinking how +vigorously he would spread the alarm of the accident when he got to +Hintock--which he uncompromisingly did, incrusting the skeleton event +with a load of dramatic horrors. + +Grace had returned, and the fly hired on her account, though not by her +husband, at the Crown Hotel, Shottsford-Forum, had been paid for and +dismissed. The long drive had somewhat revived her, her illness being +a feverish intermittent nervousness which had more to do with mind than +body, and she walked about her sitting-room in something of a hopeful +mood. Mrs. Melbury had told her as soon as she arrived that her +husband had returned from London. He had gone out, she said, to see a +patient, as she supposed, and he must soon be back, since he had had no +dinner or tea. Grace would not allow her mind to harbor any suspicion +of his whereabouts, and her step-mother said nothing of Mrs. Charmond's +rumored sorrows and plans of departure. + +So the young wife sat by the fire, waiting silently. She had left +Hintock in a turmoil of feeling after the revelation of Mrs. Charmond, +and had intended not to be at home when her husband returned. But she +had thought the matter over, and had allowed her father's influence to +prevail and bring her back; and now somewhat regretted that Edgar's +arrival had preceded hers. + +By-and-by Mrs. Melbury came up-stairs with a slight air of flurry and +abruptness. + +"I have something to tell--some bad news," she said. "But you must not +be alarmed, as it is not so bad as it might have been. Edgar has been +thrown off his horse. We don't think he is hurt much. It happened in +the wood the other side of Nellcombe Bottom, where 'tis said the ghosts +of the brothers walk." + +She went on to give a few of the particulars, but none of the invented +horrors that had been communicated by the boy. "I thought it better to +tell you at once," she added, "in case he should not be very well able +to walk home, and somebody should bring him." + +Mrs. Melbury really thought matters much worse than she represented, +and Grace knew that she thought so. She sat down dazed for a few +minutes, returning a negative to her step-mother's inquiry if she could +do anything for her. "But please go into the bedroom," Grace said, on +second thoughts, "and see if all is ready there--in case it is +serious." Mrs. Melbury thereupon called Grammer, and they did as +directed, supplying the room with everything they could think of for +the accommodation of an injured man. + +Nobody was left in the lower part of the house. Not many minutes +passed when Grace heard a knock at the door--a single knock, not loud +enough to reach the ears of those in the bedroom. She went to the top +of the stairs and said, faintly, "Come up," knowing that the door +stood, as usual in such houses, wide open. + +Retreating into the gloom of the broad landing she saw rise up the +stairs a woman whom at first she did not recognize, till her voice +revealed her to be Suke Damson, in great fright and sorrow. A streak +of light from the partially closed door of Grace's room fell upon her +face as she came forward, and it was drawn and pale. + +"Oh, Miss Melbury--I would say Mrs. Fitzpiers," she said, wringing her +hands. "This terrible news. Is he dead? Is he hurted very bad? Tell +me; I couldn't help coming; please forgive me, Miss Melbury--Mrs. +Fitzpiers I would say!" + +Grace sank down on the oak chest which stood on the landing, and put +her hands to her now flushed face and head. Could she order Suke +Damson down-stairs and out of the house? Her husband might be brought +in at any moment, and what would happen? But could she order this +genuinely grieved woman away? + +There was a dead silence of half a minute or so, till Suke said, "Why +don't ye speak? Is he here? Is he dead? If so, why can't I see +him--would it be so very wrong?" + +Before Grace had answered somebody else came to the door below--a +foot-fall light as a roe's. There was a hurried tapping upon the +panel, as if with the impatient tips of fingers whose owner thought not +whether a knocker were there or no. Without a pause, and possibly +guided by the stray beam of light on the landing, the newcomer ascended +the staircase as the first had done. Grace was sufficiently visible, +and the lady, for a lady it was, came to her side. + +"I could make nobody hear down-stairs," said Felice Charmond, with lips +whose dryness could almost be heard, and panting, as she stood like one +ready to sink on the floor with distress. "What is--the matter--tell +me the worst! Can he live?" She looked at Grace imploringly, without +perceiving poor Suke, who, dismayed at such a presence, had shrunk away +into the shade. + +Mrs. Charmond's little feet were covered with mud; she was quite +unconscious of her appearance now. "I have heard such a dreadful +report," she went on; "I came to ascertain the truth of it. Is +he--killed?" + +"She won't tell us--he's dying--he's in that room!" burst out Suke, +regardless of consequences, as she heard the distant movements of Mrs. +Melbury and Grammer in the bedroom at the end of the passage. + +"Where?" said Mrs. Charmond; and on Suke pointing out the direction, +she made as if to go thither. + +Grace barred the way. "He is not there," she said. "I have not seen +him any more than you. I have heard a report only--not so bad as you +think. It must have been exaggerated to you." + +"Please do not conceal anything--let me know all!" said Felice, +doubtingly. + +"You shall know all I know--you have a perfect right to know--who can +have a better than either of you?" said Grace, with a delicate sting +which was lost upon Felice Charmond now. "I repeat, I have only heard +a less alarming account than you have heard; how much it means, and how +little, I cannot say. I pray God that it means not much--in common +humanity. You probably pray the same--for other reasons." + +She regarded them both there in the dim light a while. + +They stood dumb in their trouble, not stinging back at her; not heeding +her mood. A tenderness spread over Grace like a dew. It was well, +very well, conventionally, to address either one of them in the wife's +regulation terms of virtuous sarcasm, as woman, creature, or thing, for +losing their hearts to her husband. But life, what was it, and who was +she? She had, like the singer of the psalm of Asaph, been plagued and +chastened all the day long; but could she, by retributive words, in +order to please herself--the individual--"offend against the +generation," as he would not? + +"He is dying, perhaps," blubbered Suke Damson, putting her apron to her +eyes. + +In their gestures and faces there were anxieties, affection, agony of +heart, all for a man who had wronged them--had never really behaved +towards either of them anyhow but selfishly. Neither one but would +have wellnigh sacrificed half her life to him, even now. The tears +which his possibly critical situation could not bring to her eyes +surged over at the contemplation of these fellow-women. She turned to +the balustrade, bent herself upon it, and wept. + +Thereupon Felice began to cry also, without using her handkerchief, and +letting the tears run down silently. While these three poor women +stood together thus, pitying another though most to be pitied +themselves, the pacing of a horse or horses became audible in the +court, and in a moment Melbury's voice was heard calling to his +stableman. Grace at once started up, ran down the stairs and out into +the quadrangle as her father crossed it towards the door. "Father, +what is the matter with him?" she cried. + +"Who--Edgar?" said Melbury, abruptly. "Matter? Nothing. What, my +dear, and have you got home safe? Why, you are better already! But you +ought not to be out in the air like this." + +"But he has been thrown off his horse!" + +"I know; I know. I saw it. He got up again, and walked off as well as +ever. A fall on the leaves didn't hurt a spry fellow like him. He did +not come this way," he added, significantly. "I suppose he went to +look for his horse. I tried to find him, but could not. But after +seeing him go away under the trees I found the horse, and have led it +home for safety. So he must walk. Now, don't you stay out here in this +night air." + +She returned to the house with her father. When she had again ascended +to the landing and to her own rooms beyond it was a great relief to her +to find that both Petticoat the First and Petticoat the Second of her +Bien-aime had silently disappeared. They had, in all probability, +heard the words of her father, and departed with their anxieties +relieved. + +Presently her parents came up to Grace, and busied themselves to see +that she was comfortable. Perceiving soon that she would prefer to be +left alone they went away. + +Grace waited on. The clock raised its voice now and then, but her +husband did not return. At her father's usual hour for retiring he +again came in to see her. "Do not stay up," she said, as soon as he +entered. "I am not at all tired. I will sit up for him." + +"I think it will be useless, Grace," said Melbury, slowly. + +"Why?" + +"I have had a bitter quarrel with him; and on that account I hardly +think he will return to-night." + +"A quarrel? Was that after the fall seen by the boy?" + +Melbury nodded an affirmative, without taking his eyes off the candle. + +"Yes; it was as we were coming home together," he said. + +Something had been swelling up in Grace while her father was speaking. +"How could you want to quarrel with him?" she cried, suddenly. "Why +could you not let him come home quietly if he were inclined to? He is +my husband; and now you have married me to him surely you need not +provoke him unnecessarily. First you induce me to accept him, and then +you do things that divide us more than we should naturally be divided!" + +"How can you speak so unjustly to me, Grace?" said Melbury, with +indignant sorrow. "I divide you from your husband, indeed! You little +think--" + +He was inclined to say more--to tell her the whole story of the +encounter, and that the provocation he had received had lain entirely +in hearing her despised. But it would have greatly distressed her, and +he forbore. "You had better lie down. You are tired," he said, +soothingly. "Good-night." + +The household went to bed, and a silence fell upon the dwelling, broken +only by the occasional skirr of a halter in Melbury's stables. Despite +her father's advice Grace still waited up. But nobody came. + +It was a critical time in Grace's emotional life that night. She +thought of her husband a good deal, and for the nonce forgot +Winterborne. + +"How these unhappy women must have admired Edgar!" she said to herself. +"How attractive he must be to everybody; and, indeed, he is +attractive." The possibility is that, piqued by rivalry, these ideas +might have been transformed into their corresponding emotions by a show +of the least reciprocity in Fitzpiers. There was, in truth, a +love-bird yearning to fly from her heart; and it wanted a lodging badly. + +But no husband came. The fact was that Melbury had been much mistaken +about the condition of Fitzpiers. People do not fall headlong on +stumps of underwood with impunity. Had the old man been able to watch +Fitzpiers narrowly enough, he would have observed that on rising and +walking into the thicket he dropped blood as he went; that he had not +proceeded fifty yards before he showed signs of being dizzy, and, +raising his hands to his head, reeled and fell down. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + +Grace was not the only one who watched and meditated in Hintock that +night. Felice Charmond was in no mood to retire to rest at a customary +hour; and over her drawing-room fire at the Manor House she sat as +motionless and in as deep a reverie as Grace in her little apartment at +the homestead. + +Having caught ear of Melbury's intelligence while she stood on the +landing at his house, and been eased of much of her mental distress, +her sense of personal decorum returned upon her with a rush. She +descended the stairs and left the door like a ghost, keeping close to +the walls of the building till she got round to the gate of the +quadrangle, through which she noiselessly passed almost before Grace +and her father had finished their discourse. Suke Damson had thought it +well to imitate her superior in this respect, and, descending the back +stairs as Felice descended the front, went out at the side door and +home to her cottage. + +Once outside Melbury's gates Mrs. Charmond ran with all her speed to +the Manor House, without stopping or turning her head, and splitting +her thin boots in her haste. She entered her own dwelling, as she had +emerged from it, by the drawing-room window. In other circumstances she +would have felt some timidity at undertaking such an unpremeditated +excursion alone; but her anxiety for another had cast out her fear for +herself. + +Everything in her drawing-room was just as she had left it--the candles +still burning, the casement closed, and the shutters gently pulled to, +so as to hide the state of the window from the cursory glance of a +servant entering the apartment. She had been gone about three-quarters +of an hour by the clock, and nobody seemed to have discovered her +absence. Tired in body but tense in mind, she sat down, palpitating, +round-eyed, bewildered at what she had done. + +She had been betrayed by affrighted love into a visit which, now that +the emotion instigating it had calmed down under her belief that +Fitzpiers was in no danger, was the saddest surprise to her. This was +how she had set about doing her best to escape her passionate bondage +to him! Somehow, in declaring to Grace and to herself the unseemliness +of her infatuation, she had grown a convert to its irresistibility. If +Heaven would only give her strength; but Heaven never did! One thing +was indispensable; she must go away from Hintock if she meant to +withstand further temptation. The struggle was too wearying, too +hopeless, while she remained. It was but a continual capitulation of +conscience to what she dared not name. + +By degrees, as she sat, Felice's mind--helped perhaps by the anticlimax +of learning that her lover was unharmed after all her fright about +him--grew wondrously strong in wise resolve. For the moment she was in +a mood, in the words of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, "to run mad with +discretion;" and was so persuaded that discretion lay in departure that +she wished to set about going that very minute. Jumping up from her +seat, she began to gather together some small personal knick-knacks +scattered about the room, to feel that preparations were really in +train. + +While moving here and there she fancied that she heard a slight noise +out-of-doors, and stood still. Surely it was a tapping at the window. +A thought entered her mind, and burned her cheek. He had come to that +window before; yet was it possible that he should dare to do so now! +All the servants were in bed, and in the ordinary course of affairs she +would have retired also. Then she remembered that on stepping in by +the casement and closing it, she had not fastened the window-shutter, +so that a streak of light from the interior of the room might have +revealed her vigil to an observer on the lawn. How all things +conspired against her keeping faith with Grace! + +The tapping recommenced, light as from the bill of a little bird; her +illegitimate hope overcame her vow; she went and pulled back the +shutter, determining, however, to shake her head at him and keep the +casement securely closed. + +What she saw outside might have struck terror into a heart stouter than +a helpless woman's at midnight. In the centre of the lowest pane of +the window, close to the glass, was a human face, which she barely +recognized as the face of Fitzpiers. It was surrounded with the +darkness of the night without, corpse-like in its pallor, and covered +with blood. As disclosed in the square area of the pane it met her +frightened eyes like a replica of the Sudarium of St. Veronica. + +He moved his lips, and looked at her imploringly. Her rapid mind +pieced together in an instant a possible concatenation of events which +might have led to this tragical issue. She unlatched the casement with +a terrified hand, and bending down to where he was crouching, pressed +her face to his with passionate solicitude. She assisted him into the +room without a word, to do which it was almost necessary to lift him +bodily. Quickly closing the window and fastening the shutters, she +bent over him breathlessly. + +"Are you hurt much--much?" she cried, faintly. "Oh, oh, how is this!" + +"Rather much--but don't be frightened," he answered in a difficult +whisper, and turning himself to obtain an easier position if possible. +"A little water, please." + +She ran across into the dining-room, and brought a bottle and glass, +from which he eagerly drank. He could then speak much better, and with +her help got upon the nearest couch. + +"Are you dying, Edgar?" she said. "Do speak to me!" + +"I am half dead," said Fitzpiers. "But perhaps I shall get over +it....It is chiefly loss of blood." + +"But I thought your fall did not hurt you," said she. "Who did this?" + +"Felice--my father-in-law!...I have crawled to you more than a mile on +my hands and knees--God, I thought I should never have got here!...I +have come to you--be-cause you are the only friend--I have in the world +now....I can never go back to Hintock--never--to the roof of the +Melburys! Not poppy nor mandragora will ever medicine this bitter +feud!...If I were only well again--" + +"Let me bind your head, now that you have rested." + +"Yes--but wait a moment--it has stopped bleeding, fortunately, or I +should be a dead man before now. While in the wood I managed to make a +tourniquet of some half-pence and my handkerchief, as well as I could +in the dark....But listen, dear Felice! Can you hide me till I am well? +Whatever comes, I can be seen in Hintock no more. My practice is nearly +gone, you know--and after this I would not care to recover it if I +could." + +By this time Felice's tears began to blind her. Where were now her +discreet plans for sundering their lives forever? To administer to him +in his pain, and trouble, and poverty, was her single thought. The +first step was to hide him, and she asked herself where. A place +occurred to her mind. + +She got him some wine from the dining-room, which strengthened him +much. Then she managed to remove his boots, and, as he could now keep +himself upright by leaning upon her on one side and a walking-stick on +the other, they went thus in slow march out of the room and up the +stairs. At the top she took him along a gallery, pausing whenever he +required rest, and thence up a smaller staircase to the least used part +of the house, where she unlocked a door. Within was a lumber-room, +containing abandoned furniture of all descriptions, built up in piles +which obscured the light of the windows, and formed between them nooks +and lairs in which a person would not be discerned even should an eye +gaze in at the door. The articles were mainly those that had belonged +to the previous owner of the house, and had been bought in by the late +Mr. Charmond at the auction; but changing fashion, and the tastes of a +young wife, had caused them to be relegated to this dungeon. + +Here Fitzpiers sat on the floor against the wall till she had hauled +out materials for a bed, which she spread on the floor in one of the +aforesaid nooks. She obtained water and a basin, and washed the dried +blood from his face and hands; and when he was comfortably reclining, +fetched food from the larder. While he ate her eyes lingered anxiously +on his face, following its every movement with such loving-kindness as +only a fond woman can show. + +He was now in better condition, and discussed his position with her. + +"What I fancy I said to Melbury must have been enough to enrage any +man, if uttered in cold blood, and with knowledge of his presence. But +I did not know him, and I was stupefied by what he had given me, so +that I hardly was aware of what I said. Well--the veil of that temple +is rent in twain!...As I am not going to be seen again in Hintock, my +first efforts must be directed to allay any alarm that may be felt at +my absence, before I am able to get clear away. Nobody must suspect +that I have been hurt, or there will be a country talk about me. +Felice, I must at once concoct a letter to check all search for me. I +think if you can bring me a pen and paper I may be able to do it now. +I could rest better if it were done. Poor thing! how I tire her with +running up and down!" + +She fetched writing materials, and held up the blotting-book as a +support to his hand, while he penned a brief note to his nominal wife. + +"The animosity shown towards me by your father," he wrote, in this +coldest of marital epistles, "is such that I cannot return again to a +roof which is his, even though it shelters you. A parting is +unavoidable, as you are sure to be on his side in this division. I am +starting on a journey which will take me a long way from Hintock, and +you must not expect to see me there again for some time." + +He then gave her a few directions bearing upon his professional +engagements and other practical matters, concluding without a hint of +his destination, or a notion of when she would see him again. He +offered to read the note to Felice before he closed it up, but she +would not hear or see it; that side of his obligations distressed her +beyond endurance. She turned away from Fitzpiers, and sobbed bitterly. + +"If you can get this posted at a place some miles away," he whispered, +exhausted by the effort of writing--"at Shottsford or Port-Bredy, or +still better, Budmouth--it will divert all suspicion from this house as +the place of my refuge." + +"I will drive to one or other of the places myself--anything to keep it +unknown," she murmured, her voice weighted with vague foreboding, now +that the excitement of helping him had passed away. + +Fitzpiers told her that there was yet one thing more to be done. "In +creeping over the fence on to the lawn," he said, "I made the rail +bloody, and it shows rather much on the white paint--I could see it in +the dark. At all hazards it should be washed off. Could you do that +also, Felice?" + +What will not women do on such devoted occasions? weary as she was she +went all the way down the rambling staircases to the ground-floor, +then to search for a lantern, which she lighted and hid under her +cloak; then for a wet sponge, and next went forth into the night. The +white railing stared out in the darkness at her approach, and a ray +from the enshrouded lantern fell upon the blood--just where he had told +her it would be found. She shuddered. It was almost too much to bear +in one day--but with a shaking hand she sponged the rail clean, and +returned to the house. + +The time occupied by these several proceedings was not much less than +two hours. When all was done, and she had smoothed his extemporized +bed, and placed everything within his reach that she could think of, +she took her leave of him, and locked him in. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + +When her husband's letter reached Grace's hands, bearing upon it the +postmark of a distant town, it never once crossed her mind that +Fitzpiers was within a mile of her still. She felt relieved that he +did not write more bitterly of the quarrel with her father, whatever +its nature might have been; but the general frigidity of his +communication quenched in her the incipient spark that events had +kindled so shortly before. + +From this centre of information it was made known in Hintock that the +doctor had gone away, and as none but the Melbury household was aware +that he did not return on the night of his accident, no excitement +manifested itself in the village. + +Thus the early days of May passed by. None but the nocturnal birds and +animals observed that late one evening, towards the middle of the +month, a closely wrapped figure, with a crutch under one arm and a +stick in his hand, crept out from Hintock House across the lawn to the +shelter of the trees, taking thence a slow and laborious walk to the +nearest point of the turnpike-road. The mysterious personage was so +disguised that his own wife would hardly have known him. Felice +Charmond was a practised hand at make-ups, as well she might be; and +she had done her utmost in padding and painting Fitzpiers with the old +materials of her art in the recesses of the lumber-room. + +In the highway he was met by a covered carriage, which conveyed him to +Sherton-Abbas, whence he proceeded to the nearest port on the south +coast, and immediately crossed the Channel. + +But it was known to everybody that three days after this time Mrs. +Charmond executed her long-deferred plan of setting out for a long term +of travel and residence on the Continent. She went off one morning as +unostentatiously as could be, and took no maid with her, having, she +said, engaged one to meet her at a point farther on in her route. +After that, Hintock House, so frequently deserted, was again to be let. +Spring had not merged in summer when a clinching rumor, founded on the +best of evidence, reached the parish and neighborhood. Mrs. Charmond +and Fitzpiers had been seen together in Baden, in relations which set +at rest the question that had agitated the little community ever since +the winter. + +Melbury had entered the Valley of Humiliation even farther than Grace. +His spirit seemed broken. + +But once a week he mechanically went to market as usual, and here, as +he was passing by the conduit one day, his mental condition expressed +largely by his gait, he heard his name spoken by a voice formerly +familiar. He turned and saw a certain Fred Beaucock--once a promising +lawyer's clerk and local dandy, who had been called the cleverest +fellow in Sherton, without whose brains the firm of solicitors +employing him would be nowhere. But later on Beaucock had fallen into +the mire. He was invited out a good deal, sang songs at agricultural +meetings and burgesses' dinners; in sum, victualled himself with +spirits more frequently than was good for the clever brains or body +either. He lost his situation, and after an absence spent in trying +his powers elsewhere, came back to his native town, where, at the time +of the foregoing events in Hintock, he gave legal advice for +astonishingly small fees--mostly carrying on his profession on +public-house settles, in whose recesses he might often have been +overheard making country-people's wills for half a crown; calling with +a learned voice for pen-and-ink and a halfpenny sheet of paper, on +which he drew up the testament while resting it in a little space wiped +with his hand on the table amid the liquid circles formed by the cups +and glasses. An idea implanted early in life is difficult to uproot, +and many elderly tradespeople still clung to the notion that Fred +Beaucock knew a great deal of law. + +It was he who had called Melbury by name. "You look very down, Mr. +Melbury--very, if I may say as much," he observed, when the +timber-merchant turned. "But I know--I know. A very sad case--very. +I was bred to the law, as you know, and am professionally no stranger +to such matters. Well, Mrs. Fitzpiers has her remedy." + +"How--what--a remedy?" said Melbury. + +"Under the new law, sir. A new court was established last year, and +under the new statute, twenty and twenty-one Vic., cap. eighty-five, +unmarrying is as easy as marrying. No more Acts of Parliament +necessary; no longer one law for the rich and another for the poor. +But come inside--I was just going to have a nibleykin of rum hot--I'll +explain it all to you." + +The intelligence amazed Melbury, who saw little of newspapers. And +though he was a severely correct man in his habits, and had no taste +for entering a tavern with Fred Beaucock--nay, would have been quite +uninfluenced by such a character on any other matter in the world--such +fascination lay in the idea of delivering his poor girl from bondage, +that it deprived him of the critical faculty. He could not resist the +ex-lawyer's clerk, and entered the inn. + +Here they sat down to the rum, which Melbury paid for as a matter of +course, Beaucock leaning back in the settle with a legal gravity which +would hardly allow him to be conscious of the spirits before him, +though they nevertheless disappeared with mysterious quickness. + +How much of the exaggerated information on the then new divorce laws +which Beaucock imparted to his listener was the result of ignorance, +and how much of dupery, was never ascertained. But he related such a +plausible story of the ease with which Grace could become a free woman +that her father was irradiated with the project; and though he scarcely +wetted his lips, Melbury never knew how he came out of the inn, or when +or where he mounted his gig to pursue his way homeward. But home he +found himself, his brain having all the way seemed to ring sonorously +as a gong in the intensity of its stir. Before he had seen Grace, he +was accidentally met by Winterborne, who found his face shining as if +he had, like the Law-giver, conversed with an angel. + +He relinquished his horse, and took Winterborne by the arm to a heap of +rendlewood--as barked oak was here called--which lay under a +privet-hedge. + +"Giles," he said, when they had sat down upon the logs, "there's a new +law in the land! Grace can be free quite easily. I only knew it by the +merest accident. I might not have found it out for the next ten years. +She can get rid of him--d'ye hear?--get rid of him. Think of that, my +friend Giles!" + +He related what he had learned of the new legal remedy. A subdued +tremulousness about the mouth was all the response that Winterborne +made; and Melbury added, "My boy, you shall have her yet--if you want +her." His feelings had gathered volume as he said this, and the +articulate sound of the old idea drowned his sight in mist. + +"Are you sure--about this new law?" asked Winterborne, so disquieted by +a gigantic exultation which loomed alternately with fearful doubt that +he evaded the full acceptance of Melbury's last statement. + +Melbury said that he had no manner of doubt, for since his talk with +Beaucock it had come into his mind that he had seen some time ago in +the weekly paper an allusion to such a legal change; but, having no +interest in those desperate remedies at the moment, he had passed it +over. "But I'm not going to let the matter rest doubtful for a single +day," he continued. "I am going to London. Beaucock will go with me, +and we shall get the best advice as soon as we possibly can. Beaucock +is a thorough lawyer--nothing the matter with him but a fiery palate. +I knew him as the stay and refuge of Sherton in knots of law at one +time." + +Winterborne's replies were of the vaguest. The new possibility was +almost unthinkable by him at the moment. He was what was called at +Hintock "a solid-going fellow;" he maintained his abeyant mood, not +from want of reciprocity, but from a taciturn hesitancy, taught by life +as he knew it. + +"But," continued the timber-merchant, a temporary crease or two of +anxiety supplementing those already established in his forehead by time +and care, "Grace is not at all well. Nothing constitutional, you know; +but she has been in a low, nervous state ever since that night of +fright. I don't doubt but that she will be all right soon....I wonder +how she is this evening?" He rose with the words, as if he had too long +forgotten her personality in the excitement of her previsioned career. + +They had sat till the evening was beginning to dye the garden brown, +and now went towards Melbury's house, Giles a few steps in the rear of +his old friend, who was stimulated by the enthusiasm of the moment to +outstep the ordinary walking of Winterborne. He felt shy of entering +Grace's presence as her reconstituted lover--which was how her +father's manner would be sure to present him--before definite +information as to her future state was forthcoming; it seemed too +nearly like the act of those who rush in where angels fear to tread. + +A chill to counterbalance all the glowing promise of the day was prompt +enough in coming. No sooner had he followed the timber-merchant in at +the door than he heard Grammer inform him that Mrs. Fitzpiers was still +more unwell than she had been in the morning. Old Dr. Jones being in +the neighborhood they had called him in, and he had instantly directed +them to get her to bed. They were not, however, to consider her +illness serious--a feverish, nervous attack the result of recent +events, was what she was suffering from, and she would doubtless be +well in a few days. + +Winterborne, therefore, did not remain, and his hope of seeing her that +evening was disappointed. Even this aggravation of her morning +condition did not greatly depress Melbury. He knew, he said, that his +daughter's constitution was sound enough. It was only these domestic +troubles that were pulling her down. Once free she would be blooming +again. Melbury diagnosed rightly, as parents usually do. + +He set out for London the next morning, Jones having paid another visit +and assured him that he might leave home without uneasiness, especially +on an errand of that sort, which would the sooner put an end to her +suspense. + +The timber-merchant had been away only a day or two when it was told in +Hintock that Mr. Fitzpiers's hat had been found in the wood. Later on +in the afternoon the hat was brought to Melbury, and, by a piece of +ill-fortune, into Grace's presence. It had doubtless lain in the wood +ever since his fall from the horse, but it looked so clean and +uninjured--the summer weather and leafy shelter having much favored its +preservation--that Grace could not believe it had remained so long +concealed. A very little of fact was enough to set her fevered fancy +at work at this juncture; she thought him still in the neighborhood; +she feared his sudden appearance; and her nervous malady developed +consequences so grave that Dr. Jones began to look serious, and the +household was alarmed. + +It was the beginning of June, and the cuckoo at this time of the summer +scarcely ceased his cry for more than two or three hours during the +night. The bird's note, so familiar to her ears from infancy, was now +absolute torture to the poor girl. On the Friday following the +Wednesday of Melbury's departure, and the day after the discovery of +Fitzpiers's hat, the cuckoo began at two o'clock in the morning with a +sudden cry from one of Melbury's apple-trees, not three yards from the +window of Grace's room. + +"Oh, he is coming!" she cried, and in her terror sprang clean from the +bed out upon the floor. + +These starts and frights continued till noon; and when the doctor had +arrived and had seen her, and had talked with Mrs. Melbury, he sat down +and meditated. That ever-present terror it was indispensable to remove +from her mind at all hazards; and he thought how this might be done. + +Without saying a word to anybody in the house, or to the disquieted +Winterborne waiting in the lane below, Dr. Jones went home and wrote to +Mr. Melbury at the London address he had obtained from his wife. The +gist of his communication was that Mrs. Fitzpiers should be assured as +soon as possible that steps were being taken to sever the bond which +was becoming a torture to her; that she would soon be free, and was +even then virtually so. "If you can say it AT ONCE it may be the means +of averting much harm," he said. "Write to herself; not to me." + +On Saturday he drove over to Hintock, and assured her with mysterious +pacifications that in a day or two she might expect to receive some +assuring news. So it turned out. When Sunday morning came there was a +letter for Grace from her father. It arrived at seven o'clock, the +usual time at which the toddling postman passed by Hintock; at eight +Grace awoke, having slept an hour or two for a wonder, and Mrs. Melbury +brought up the letter. + +"Can you open it yourself?" said she. + +"Oh yes, yes!" said Grace, with feeble impatience. She tore the +envelope, unfolded the sheet, and read; when a creeping blush tinctured +her white neck and cheek. + +Her father had exercised a bold discretion. He informed her that she +need have no further concern about Fitzpiers's return; that she would +shortly be a free woman; and therefore, if she should desire to wed her +old lover--which he trusted was the case, since it was his own deep +wish--she would be in a position to do so. In this Melbury had not +written beyond his belief. But he very much stretched the facts in +adding that the legal formalities for dissolving her union were +practically settled. The truth was that on the arrival of the doctor's +letter poor Melbury had been much agitated, and could with difficulty +be prevented by Beaucock from returning to her bedside. What was the +use of his rushing back to Hintock? Beaucock had asked him. The only +thing that could do her any good was a breaking of the bond. Though he +had not as yet had an interview with the eminent solicitor they were +about to consult, he was on the point of seeing him; and the case was +clear enough. Thus the simple Melbury, urged by his parental alarm at +her danger by the representations of his companion, and by the doctor's +letter, had yielded, and sat down to tell her roundly that she was +virtually free. + +"And you'd better write also to the gentleman," suggested Beaucock, +who, scenting notoriety and the germ of a large practice in the case, +wished to commit Melbury to it irretrievably; to effect which he knew +that nothing would be so potent as awakening the passion of Grace for +Winterborne, so that her father might not have the heart to withdraw +from his attempt to make her love legitimate when he discovered that +there were difficulties in the way. + +The nervous, impatient Melbury was much pleased with the idea of +"starting them at once," as he called it. To put his long-delayed +reparative scheme in train had become a passion with him now. He added +to the letter addressed to his daughter a passage hinting that she +ought to begin to encourage Winterborne, lest she should lose him +altogether; and he wrote to Giles that the path was virtually open for +him at last. Life was short, he declared; there were slips betwixt the +cup and the lip; her interest in him should be reawakened at once, that +all might be ready when the good time came for uniting them. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + +At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed than he was moved in +heart. The novelty of the avowal rendered what it carried with it +inapprehensible by him in its entirety. + +Only a few short months ago completely estranged from this +family--beholding Grace going to and fro in the distance, clothed with +the alienating radiance of obvious superiority, the wife of the then +popular and fashionable Fitzpiers, hopelessly outside his social +boundary down to so recent a time that flowers then folded were hardly +faded yet--he was now asked by that jealously guarding father of hers +to take courage--to get himself ready for the day when he should be +able to claim her. + +The old times came back to him in dim procession. How he had been +snubbed; how Melbury had despised his Christmas party; how that sweet, +coy Grace herself had looked down upon him and his household +arrangements, and poor Creedle's contrivances! + +Well, he could not believe it. Surely the adamantine barrier of +marriage with another could not be pierced like this! It did violence +to custom. Yet a new law might do anything. But was it at all within +the bounds of probability that a woman who, over and above her own +attainments, had been accustomed to those of a cultivated professional +man, could ever be the wife of such as he? + +Since the date of his rejection he had almost grown to see the +reasonableness of that treatment. He had said to himself again and +again that her father was right; that the poor ceorl, Giles +Winterborne, would never have been able to make such a dainty girl +happy. Yet, now that she had stood in a position farther removed from +his own than at first, he was asked to prepare to woo her. He was full +of doubt. + +Nevertheless, it was not in him to show backwardness. To act so +promptly as Melbury desired him to act seemed, indeed, scarcely wise, +because of the uncertainty of events. Giles knew nothing of legal +procedure, but he did know that for him to step up to Grace as a lover +before the bond which bound her was actually dissolved was simply an +extravagant dream of her father's overstrained mind. He pitied Melbury +for his almost childish enthusiasm, and saw that the aging man must +have suffered acutely to be weakened to this unreasoning desire. + +Winterborne was far too magnanimous to harbor any cynical conjecture +that the timber-merchant, in his intense affection for Grace, was +courting him now because that young lady, when disunited, would be left +in an anomalous position, to escape which a bad husband was better than +none. He felt quite sure that his old friend was simply on tenterhooks +of anxiety to repair the almost irreparable error of dividing two whom +Nature had striven to join together in earlier days, and that in his +ardor to do this he was oblivious of formalities. The cautious +supervision of his past years had overleaped itself at last. Hence, +Winterborne perceived that, in this new beginning, the necessary care +not to compromise Grace by too early advances must be exercised by +himself. + +Perhaps Winterborne was not quite so ardent as heretofore. There is no +such thing as a stationary love: men are either loving more or loving +less. But Giles himself recognized no decline in his sense of her +dearness. If the flame did indeed burn lower now than when he had +fetched her from Sherton at her last return from school, the marvel was +small. He had been laboring ever since his rejection and her marriage +to reduce his former passion to a docile friendship, out of pure regard +to its expediency; and their separation may have helped him to a +partial success. + +A week and more passed, and there was no further news of Melbury. But +the effect of the intelligence he had already transmitted upon the +elastic-nerved daughter of the woods had been much what the old surgeon +Jones had surmised. It had soothed her perturbed spirit better than +all the opiates in the pharmacopoeia. She had slept unbrokenly a whole +night and a day. The "new law" was to her a mysterious, beneficent, +godlike entity, lately descended upon earth, that would make her as she +once had been without trouble or annoyance. Her position fretted her, +its abstract features rousing an aversion which was even greater than +her aversion to the personality of him who had caused it. It was +mortifying, productive of slights, undignified. Him she could forget; +her circumstances she had always with her. + +She saw nothing of Winterborne during the days of her recovery; and +perhaps on that account her fancy wove about him a more romantic tissue +than it could have done if he had stood before her with all the specks +and flaws inseparable from corporeity. He rose upon her memory as the +fruit-god and the wood-god in alternation; sometimes leafy, and smeared +with green lichen, as she had seen him among the sappy boughs of the +plantations; sometimes cider-stained, and with apple-pips in the hair +of his arms, as she had met him on his return from cider-making in +White Hart Vale, with his vats and presses beside him. In her secret +heart she almost approximated to her father's enthusiasm in wishing to +show Giles once for all how she still regarded him. The question +whether the future would indeed bring them together for life was a +standing wonder with her. She knew that it could not with any +propriety do so just yet. But reverently believing in her father's +sound judgment and knowledge, as good girls are wont to do, she +remembered what he had written about her giving a hint to Winterborne +lest there should be risk in delay, and her feelings were not averse to +such a step, so far as it could be done without danger at this early +stage of the proceedings. + +From being a frail phantom of her former equable self she returned in +bounds to a condition of passable philosophy. She bloomed again in the +face in the course of a few days, and was well enough to go about as +usual. One day Mrs. Melbury proposed that for a change she should be +driven in the gig to Sherton market, whither Melbury's man was going on +other errands. Grace had no business whatever in Sherton; but it +crossed her mind that Winterborne would probably be there, and this +made the thought of such a drive interesting. + +On the way she saw nothing of him; but when the horse was walking +slowly through the obstructions of Sheep Street, she discerned the +young man on the pavement. She thought of that time when he had been +standing under his apple-tree on her return from school, and of the +tender opportunity then missed through her fastidiousness. Her heart +rose in her throat. She abjured all such fastidiousness now. Nor did +she forget the last occasion on which she had beheld him in that town, +making cider in the court-yard of the Earl of Wessex Hotel, while she +was figuring as a fine lady in the balcony above. + +Grace directed the man to set her down there in the midst, and +immediately went up to her lover. Giles had not before observed her, +and his eyes now suppressedly looked his pleasure, without the +embarrassment that had formerly marked him at such meetings. + +When a few words had been spoken, she said, archly, "I have nothing to +do. Perhaps you are deeply engaged?" + +"I? Not a bit. My business now at the best of times is small, I am +sorry to say." + +"Well, then, I am going into the Abbey. Come along with me." + +The proposition had suggested itself as a quick escape from publicity, +for many eyes were regarding her. She had hoped that sufficient time +had elapsed for the extinction of curiosity; but it was quite +otherwise. The people looked at her with tender interest as the +deserted girl-wife--without obtrusiveness, and without vulgarity; but +she was ill prepared for scrutiny in any shape. + +They walked about the Abbey aisles, and presently sat down. Not a soul +was in the building save themselves. She regarded a stained window, +with her head sideways, and tentatively asked him if he remembered the +last time they were in that town alone. + +He remembered it perfectly, and remarked, "You were a proud miss then, +and as dainty as you were high. Perhaps you are now?" + +Grace slowly shook her head. "Affliction has taken all that out of +me," she answered, impressively. "Perhaps I am too far the other way +now." As there was something lurking in this that she could not +explain, she added, so quickly as not to allow him time to think of it, +"Has my father written to you at all?" + +"Yes," said Winterborne. + +She glanced ponderingly up at him. "Not about me?" + +"Yes." + +His mouth was lined with charactery which told her that he had been +bidden to take the hint as to the future which she had been bidden to +give. The unexpected discovery sent a scarlet pulsation through Grace +for the moment. However, it was only Giles who stood there, of whom +she had no fear; and her self-possession returned. + +"He said I was to sound you with a view to--what you will understand, +if you care to," continued Winterborne, in a low voice. Having been +put on this track by herself, he was not disposed to abandon it in a +hurry. + +They had been children together, and there was between them that +familiarity as to personal affairs which only such acquaintanceship can +give. "You know, Giles," she answered, speaking in a very practical +tone, "that that is all very well; but I am in a very anomalous +position at present, and I cannot say anything to the point about such +things as those." + +"No?" he said, with a stray air as regarded the subject. He was +looking at her with a curious consciousness of discovery. He had not +been imagining that their renewed intercourse would show her to him +thus. For the first time he realized an unexpectedness in her, which, +after all, should not have been unexpected. She before him was not the +girl Grace Melbury whom he used to know. Of course, he might easily +have prefigured as much; but it had never occurred to him. She was a +woman who had been married; she had moved on; and without having lost +her girlish modesty, she had lost her girlish shyness. The inevitable +change, though known to him, had not been heeded; and it struck him +into a momentary fixity. The truth was that he had never come into +close comradeship with her since her engagement to Fitzpiers, with the +brief exception of the evening encounter on Rubdown Hill, when she met +him with his cider apparatus; and that interview had been of too +cursory a kind for insight. + +Winterborne had advanced, too. He could criticise her. Times had been +when to criticise a single trait in Grace Melbury would have lain as +far beyond his powers as to criticise a deity. This thing was sure: it +was a new woman in many ways whom he had come out to see; a creature of +more ideas, more dignity, and, above all, more assurance, than the +original Grace had been capable of. He could not at first decide +whether he were pleased or displeased at this. But upon the whole the +novelty attracted him. + +She was so sweet and sensitive that she feared his silence betokened +something in his brain of the nature of an enemy to her. "What are you +thinking of that makes those lines come in your forehead?" she asked. +"I did not mean to offend you by speaking of the time being premature +as yet." + +Touched by the genuine loving-kindness which had lain at the foundation +of these words, and much moved, Winterborne turned his face aside, as +he took her by the hand. He was grieved that he had criticised her. + +"You are very good, dear Grace," he said, in a low voice. "You are +better, much better, than you used to be." + +"How?" + +He could not very well tell her how, and said, with an evasive smile, +"You are prettier;" which was not what he really had meant. He then +remained still holding her right hand in his own right, so that they +faced in opposite ways; and as he did not let go, she ventured upon a +tender remonstrance. + +"I think we have gone as far as we ought to go at present--and far +enough to satisfy my poor father that we are the same as ever. You see, +Giles, my case is not settled yet, and if--Oh, suppose I NEVER get +free!--there should be any hitch or informality!" + +She drew a catching breath, and turned pale. The dialogue had been +affectionate comedy up to this point. The gloomy atmosphere of the +past, and the still gloomy horizon of the present, had been for the +interval forgotten. Now the whole environment came back, the due +balance of shade among the light was restored. + +"It is sure to be all right, I trust?" she resumed, in uneasy accents. +"What did my father say the solicitor had told him?" + +"Oh--that all is sure enough. The case is so clear--nothing could be +clearer. But the legal part is not yet quite done and finished, as is +natural." + +"Oh no--of course not," she said, sunk in meek thought. "But father +said it was ALMOST--did he not? Do you know anything about the new law +that makes these things so easy?" + +"Nothing--except the general fact that it enables ill-assorted husbands +and wives to part in a way they could not formerly do without an Act of +Parliament." + +"Have you to sign a paper, or swear anything? Is it something like +that?" + +"Yes, I believe so." + +"How long has it been introduced?" + +"About six months or a year, the lawyer said, I think." + +To hear these two poor Arcadian innocents talk of imperial law would +have made a humane person weep who should have known what a dangerous +structure they were building up on their supposed knowledge. They +remained in thought, like children in the presence of the +incomprehensible. + +"Giles," she said, at last, "it makes me quite weary when I think how +serious my situation is, or has been. Shall we not go out from here +now, as it may seem rather fast of me--our being so long together, I +mean--if anybody were to see us? I am almost sure," she added, +uncertainly, "that I ought not to let you hold my hand yet, knowing +that the documents--or whatever it may be--have not been signed; so +that I--am still as married as ever--or almost. My dear father has +forgotten himself. Not that I feel morally bound to any one else, +after what has taken place--no woman of spirit could--now, too, that +several months have passed. But I wish to keep the proprieties as well +as I can." + +"Yes, yes. Still, your father reminds us that life is short. I myself +feel that it is; that is why I wished to understand you in this that we +have begun. At times, dear Grace, since receiving your father's +letter, I am as uneasy and fearful as a child at what he said. If one +of us were to die before the formal signing and sealing that is to +release you have been done--if we should drop out of the world and +never have made the most of this little, short, but real opportunity, I +should think to myself as I sunk down dying, 'Would to my God that I +had spoken out my whole heart--given her one poor little kiss when I +had the chance to give it! But I never did, although she had promised +to be mine some day; and now I never can.' That's what I should think." + +She had begun by watching the words from his lips with a mournful +regard, as though their passage were visible; but as he went on she +dropped her glance. "Yes," she said, "I have thought that, too. And, +because I have thought it, I by no means meant, in speaking of the +proprieties, to be reserved and cold to you who loved me so long ago, +or to hurt your heart as I used to do at that thoughtless time. Oh, +not at all, indeed! But--ought I to allow you?--oh, it is too +quick--surely!" Her eyes filled with tears of bewildered, alarmed +emotion. + +Winterborne was too straightforward to influence her further against +her better judgment. "Yes--I suppose it is," he said, repentantly. +"I'll wait till all is settled. What did your father say in that last +letter?" + +He meant about his progress with the petition; but she, mistaking him, +frankly spoke of the personal part. "He said--what I have implied. +Should I tell more plainly?" + +"Oh no--don't, if it is a secret." + +"Not at all. I will tell every word, straight out, Giles, if you wish. +He said I was to encourage you. There. But I cannot obey him further +to-day. Come, let us go now." She gently slid her hand from his, and +went in front of him out of the Abbey. + +"I was thinking of getting some dinner," said Winterborne, changing to +the prosaic, as they walked. "And you, too, must require something. +Do let me take you to a place I know." + +Grace was almost without a friend in the world outside her father's +house; her life with Fitzpiers had brought her no society; had +sometimes, indeed, brought her deeper solitude and inconsideration than +any she had ever known before. Hence it was a treat to her to find +herself again the object of thoughtful care. But she questioned if to +go publicly to dine with Giles Winterborne were not a proposal, due +rather to his unsophistication than to his discretion. She said gently +that she would much prefer his ordering her lunch at some place and +then coming to tell her it was ready, while she remained in the Abbey +porch. Giles saw her secret reasoning, thought how hopelessly blind to +propriety he was beside her, and went to do as she wished. + +He was not absent more than ten minutes, and found Grace where he had +left her. "It will be quite ready by the time you get there," he said, +and told her the name of the inn at which the meal had been ordered, +which was one that she had never heard of. + +"I'll find it by inquiry," said Grace, setting out. + +"And shall I see you again?" + +"Oh yes--come to me there. It will not be like going together. I +shall want you to find my father's man and the gig for me." + +He waited on some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, till he thought +her lunch ended, and that he might fairly take advantage of her +invitation to start her on her way home. He went straight to The Three +Tuns--a little tavern in a side street, scrupulously clean, but humble +and inexpensive. On his way he had an occasional misgiving as to +whether the place had been elegant enough for her; and as soon as he +entered it, and saw her ensconced there, he perceived that he had +blundered. + +Grace was seated in the only dining-room that the simple old hostelry +could boast of, which was also a general parlor on market-days; a long, +low apartment, with a sanded floor herring-boned with a broom; a wide, +red-curtained window to the street, and another to the garden. Grace +had retreated to the end of the room looking out upon the latter, the +front part being full of a mixed company which had dropped in since he +was there. + +She was in a mood of the greatest depression. On arriving, and seeing +what the tavern was like, she had been taken by surprise; but having +gone too far to retreat, she had heroically entered and sat down on the +well-scrubbed settle, opposite the narrow table with its knives and +steel forks, tin pepper-boxes, blue salt-cellars, and posters +advertising the sale of bullocks against the wall. The last time that +she had taken any meal in a public place it had been with Fitzpiers at +the grand new Earl of Wessex Hotel in that town, after a two months' +roaming and sojourning at the gigantic hotels of the Continent. How +could she have expected any other kind of accommodation in present +circumstances than such as Giles had provided? And yet how unprepared +she was for this change! The tastes that she had acquired from +Fitzpiers had been imbibed so subtly that she hardly knew she possessed +them till confronted by this contrast. The elegant Fitzpiers, in fact, +at that very moment owed a long bill at the above-mentioned hotel for +the luxurious style in which he used to put her up there whenever they +drove to Sherton. But such is social sentiment, that she had been +quite comfortable under those debt-impending conditions, while she felt +humiliated by her present situation, which Winterborne had paid for +honestly on the nail. + +He had noticed in a moment that she shrunk from her position, and all +his pleasure was gone. It was the same susceptibility over again which +had spoiled his Christmas party long ago. + +But he did not know that this recrudescence was only the casual result +of Grace's apprenticeship to what she was determined to learn in spite +of it--a consequence of one of those sudden surprises which confront +everybody bent upon turning over a new leaf. She had finished her +lunch, which he saw had been a very mincing performance; and he brought +her out of the house as soon as he could. + +"Now," he said, with great sad eyes, "you have not finished at all +well, I know. Come round to the Earl of Wessex. I'll order a tea +there. I did not remember that what was good enough for me was not +good enough for you." + +Her face faded into an aspect of deep distress when she saw what had +happened. "Oh no, Giles," she said, with extreme pathos; "certainly +not. Why do you--say that when you know better? You EVER will +misunderstand me." + +"Indeed, that's not so, Mrs. Fitzpiers. Can you deny that you felt out +of place at The Three Tuns?" + +"I don't know. Well, since you make me speak, I do not deny it." + +"And yet I have felt at home there these twenty years. Your husband +used always to take you to the Earl of Wessex, did he not?" + +"Yes," she reluctantly admitted. How could she explain in the street +of a market-town that it was her superficial and transitory taste which +had been offended, and not her nature or her affection? Fortunately, or +unfortunately, at that moment they saw Melbury's man driving vacantly +along the street in search of her, the hour having passed at which he +had been told to take her up. Winterborne hailed him, and she was +powerless then to prolong the discourse. She entered the vehicle +sadly, and the horse trotted away. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + +All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of a +pleasant time, forgetting the pleasant time itself. He feared anew +that they could never be happy together, even should she be free to +choose him. She was accomplished; he was unrefined. It was the +original difficulty, which he was too sensitive to recklessly ignore, +as some men would have done in his place. + +He was one of those silent, unobtrusive beings who want little from +others in the way of favor or condescension, and perhaps on that very +account scrutinize those others' behavior too closely. He was not +versatile, but one in whom a hope or belief which had once had its +rise, meridian, and decline seldom again exactly recurred, as in the +breasts of more sanguine mortals. He had once worshipped her, laid out +his life to suit her, wooed her, and lost her. Though it was with +almost the same zest, it was with not quite the same hope, that he had +begun to tread the old tracks again, and allowed himself to be so +charmed with her that day. + +Move another step towards her he would not. He would even repulse +her--as a tribute to conscience. It would be sheer sin to let her +prepare a pitfall for her happiness not much smaller than the first by +inveigling her into a union with such as he. Her poor father was now +blind to these subtleties, which he had formerly beheld as in noontide +light. It was his own duty to declare them--for her dear sake. + + +Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her solicitous +embarrassment was not lessened the next morning when another letter +from her father was put into her hands. Its tenor was an intenser +strain of the one that had preceded it. After stating how extremely +glad he was to hear that she was better, and able to get out-of-doors, +he went on: + +"This is a wearisome business, the solicitor we have come to see being +out of town. I do not know when I shall get home. My great anxiety in +this delay is still lest you should lose Giles Winterborne. I cannot +rest at night for thinking that while our business is hanging fire he +may become estranged, or go away from the neighborhood. I have set my +heart upon seeing him your husband, if you ever have another. Do, +then, Grace, give him some temporary encouragement, even though it is +over-early. For when I consider the past I do think God will forgive +me and you for being a little forward. I have another reason for this, +my dear. I feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late affairs have +still further helped me that way. And until this thing is done I +cannot rest in peace." + +He added a postscript: + +"I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-morrow. +Possibly, therefore, I shall return in the evening after you get this." + + +The paternal longing ran on all fours with her own desire; and yet in +forwarding it yesterday she had been on the brink of giving offence. +While craving to be a country girl again just as her father requested; +to put off the old Eve, the fastidious miss--or rather +madam--completely, her first attempt had been beaten by the unexpected +vitality of that fastidiousness. Her father on returning and seeing +the trifling coolness of Giles would be sure to say that the same +perversity which had led her to make difficulties about marrying +Fitzpiers was now prompting her to blow hot and cold with poor +Winterborne. + +If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching the stops of +her delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to let her +drift away from him again (if she would) on the wind of her estranging +education, he could not have acted more seductively than he did that +day. He chanced to be superintending some temporary work in a field +opposite her windows. She could not discover what he was doing, but +she read his mood keenly and truly: she could see in his coming and +going an air of determined abandonment of the whole landscape that lay +in her direction. + +Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father coming in the +evening--which meant, she supposed, that all formalities would be in +train, her marriage virtually annulled, and she be free to be won +again--how could she look him in the face if he should see them +estranged thus? + +It was a fair green evening in June. She was seated in the garden, in +the rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes--made of peeled +oak-branches that came to Melbury's premises as refuse after +barking-time. The mass of full-juiced leafage on the heights around +her was just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly spent wind which, +even in its enfeebled state, did not reach her shelter. All day she +had expected Giles to call--to inquire how she had got home, or +something or other; but he had not come. And he still tantalized her +by going athwart and across that orchard opposite. She could see him +as she sat. + +A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him a +letter. She knew from this that Creedle had just come from Sherton, +and had called as usual at the post-office for anything that had +arrived by the afternoon post, of which there was no delivery at +Hintock. She pondered on what the letter might contain--particularly +whether it were a second refresher for Winterborne from her father, +like her own of the morning. + +But it appeared to have no bearing upon herself whatever. Giles read +its contents; and almost immediately turned away to a gap in the hedge +of the orchard--if that could be called a hedge which, owing to the +drippings of the trees, was little more than a bank with a bush upon it +here and there. He entered the plantation, and was no doubt going that +way homeward to the mysterious hut he occupied on the other side of the +woodland. + +The sad sands were running swiftly through Time's glass; she had often +felt it in these latter days; and, like Giles, she felt it doubly now +after the solemn and pathetic reminder in her father's communication. +Her freshness would pass, the long-suffering devotion of Giles might +suddenly end--might end that very hour. Men were so strange. The +thought took away from her all her former reticence, and made her +action bold. She started from her seat. If the little breach, +quarrel, or whatever it might be called, of yesterday, was to be healed +up it must be done by her on the instant. She crossed into the +orchard, and clambered through the gap after Giles, just as he was +diminishing to a faun-like figure under the green canopy and over the +brown floor. + +Grace had been wrong--very far wrong--in assuming that the letter had +no reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the wood +after its perusal. It was, sad to say, because the missive had so much +reference to herself that he had thus turned away. He feared that his +grieved discomfiture might be observed. The letter was from Beaucock, +written a few hours later than Melbury's to his daughter. It announced +failure. + +Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was the +moment when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. During +his absence in town with Melbury, the lawyer's clerk had naturally +heard a great deal of the timber-merchant's family scheme of justice to +Giles, and his communication was to inform Winterborne at the earliest +possible moment that their attempt had failed, in order that the young +man should not place himself in a false position towards Grace in the +belief of its coming success. The news was, in sum, that Fitzpiers's +conduct had not been sufficiently cruel to Grace to enable her to snap +the bond. She was apparently doomed to be his wife till the end of the +chapter. + +Winterborne quite forgot his superficial differences with the poor girl +under the warm rush of deep and distracting love for her which the +almost tragical information engendered. + +To renounce her forever--that was then the end of it for him, after +all. There was no longer any question about suitability, or room for +tiffs on petty tastes. The curtain had fallen again between them. She +could not be his. The cruelty of their late revived hope was now +terrible. How could they all have been so simple as to suppose this +thing could be done? + +It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming behind him, he +turned and saw her hastening on between the thickets. He perceived in +an instant that she did not know the blighting news. + +"Giles, why didn't you come across to me?" she asked, with arch +reproach. "Didn't you see me sitting there ever so long?" + +"Oh yes," he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for her +unexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of behavior +in the conjuncture. His manner made her think that she had been too +chiding in her speech; and a mild scarlet wave passed over her as she +resolved to soften it. + +"I have had another letter from my father," she hastened to continue. +"He thinks he may come home this evening. And--in view of his +hopes--it will grieve him if there is any little difference between us, +Giles." + +"There is none," he said, sadly regarding her from the face downward as +he pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare. + +"Still--I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my being +uncomfortable at the inn." + +"I have, Grace, I'm sure." + +"But you speak in quite an unhappy way," she returned, coming up close +to him with the most winning of the many pretty airs that appertained +to her. "Don't you think you will ever be happy, Giles?" + +He did not reply for some instants. "When the sun shines on the north +front of Sherton Abbey--that's when my happiness will come to me!" said +he, staring as it were into the earth. + +"But--then that means that there is something more than my offending +you in not liking The Three Tuns. If it is because I--did not like to +let you kiss me in the Abbey--well, you know, Giles, that it was not on +account of my cold feelings, but because I did certainly, just then, +think it was rather premature, in spite of my poor father. That was +the true reason--the sole one. But I do not want to be hard--God knows +I do not," she said, her voice fluctuating. "And perhaps--as I am on +the verge of freedom--I am not right, after all, in thinking there is +any harm in your kissing me." + +"Oh God!" said Winterborne within himself. His head was turned askance +as he still resolutely regarded the ground. For the last several +minutes he had seen this great temptation approaching him in regular +siege; and now it had come. The wrong, the social sin, of now taking +advantage of the offer of her lips had a magnitude, in the eyes of one +whose life had been so primitive, so ruled by purest household laws, as +Giles's, which can hardly be explained. + +"Did you say anything?" she asked, timidly. + +"Oh no--only that--" + +"You mean that it must BE settled, since my father is coming home?" she +said, gladly. + +Winterborne, though fighting valiantly against himself all this +while--though he would have protected Grace's good repute as the apple +of his eye--was a man; and, as Desdemona said, men are not gods. In +face of the agonizing seductiveness shown by her, in her unenlightened +school-girl simplicity about the laws and ordinances, he betrayed a +man's weakness. Since it was so--since it had come to this, that +Grace, deeming herself free to do it, was virtually asking him to +demonstrate that he loved her--since he could demonstrate it only too +truly--since life was short and love was strong--he gave way to the +temptation, notwithstanding that he perfectly well knew her to be +wedded irrevocably to Fitzpiers. Indeed, he cared for nothing past or +future, simply accepting the present and what it brought, desiring once +in his life to clasp in his arms her he had watched over and loved so +long. + +She started back suddenly from his embrace, influenced by a sort of +inspiration. "Oh, I suppose," she stammered, "that I am really +free?--that this is right? Is there REALLY a new law? Father cannot +have been too sanguine in saying--" + +He did not answer, and a moment afterwards Grace burst into tears in +spite of herself. "Oh, why does not my father come home and explain," +she sobbed, "and let me know clearly what I am? It is too trying, this, +to ask me to--and then to leave me so long in so vague a state that I +do not know what to do, and perhaps do wrong!" + +Winterborne felt like a very Cain, over and above his previous sorrow. +How he had sinned against her in not telling her what he knew. He +turned aside; the feeling of his cruelty mounted higher and higher. +How could he have dreamed of kissing her? He could hardly refrain from +tears. Surely nothing more pitiable had ever been known than the +condition of this poor young thing, now as heretofore the victim of her +father's well-meant but blundering policy. + +Even in the hour of Melbury's greatest assurance Winterborne had +harbored a suspicion that no law, new or old, could undo Grace's +marriage without her appearance in public; though he was not +sufficiently sure of what might have been enacted to destroy by his own +words her pleasing idea that a mere dash of the pen, on her father's +testimony, was going to be sufficient. But he had never suspected the +sad fact that the position was irremediable. + +Poor Grace, perhaps feeling that she had indulged in too much fluster +for a mere kiss, calmed herself at finding how grave he was. "I am +glad we are friends again anyhow," she said, smiling through her tears. +"Giles, if you had only shown half the boldness before I married that +you show now, you would have carried me off for your own first instead +of second. If we do marry, I hope you will never think badly of me for +encouraging you a little, but my father is SO impatient, you know, as +his years and infirmities increase, that he will wish to see us a +little advanced when he comes. That is my only excuse." + +To Winterborne all this was sadder than it was sweet. How could she so +trust her father's conjectures? He did not know how to tell her the +truth and shame himself. And yet he felt that it must be done. "We +may have been wrong," he began, almost fearfully, "in supposing that it +can all be carried out while we stay here at Hintock. I am not sure +but that people may have to appear in a public court even under the new +Act; and if there should be any difficulty, and we cannot marry after +all--" + +Her cheeks became slowly bloodless. "Oh, Giles," she said, grasping +his arm, "you have heard something! What--cannot my father conclude it +there and now? Surely he has done it? Oh, Giles, Giles, don't deceive +me. What terrible position am I in?" + +He could not tell her, try as he would. The sense of her implicit +trust in his honor absolutely disabled him. "I cannot inform you," he +murmured, his voice as husky as that of the leaves underfoot. "Your +father will soon be here. Then we shall know. I will take you home." + +Inexpressibly dear as she was to him, he offered her his arm with the +most reserved air, as he added, correctingly, "I will take you, at any +rate, into the drive." + +Thus they walked on together. Grace vibrating between happiness and +misgiving. It was only a few minutes' walk to where the drive ran, and +they had hardly descended into it when they heard a voice behind them +cry, "Take out that arm!" + +For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, more loudly and +hoarsely, + +"Take out that arm!" + +It was Melbury's. He had returned sooner than they expected, and now +came up to them. Grace's hand had been withdrawn like lightning on her +hearing the second command. "I don't blame you--I don't blame you," +he said, in the weary cadence of one broken down with scourgings. "But +you two must walk together no more--I have been surprised--I have been +cruelly deceived--Giles, don't say anything to me; but go away!" + +He was evidently not aware that Winterborne had known the truth before +he brought it; and Giles would not stay to discuss it with him then. +When the young man had gone Melbury took his daughter in-doors to the +room he used as his office. There he sat down, and bent over the slope +of the bureau, her bewildered gaze fixed upon him. + +When Melbury had recovered a little he said, "You are now, as ever, +Fitzpiers's wife. I was deluded. He has not done you ENOUGH harm. +You are still subject to his beck and call." + +"Then let it be, and never mind, father," she said, with dignified +sorrow. "I can bear it. It is your trouble that grieves me most." She +stooped over him, and put her arm round his neck, which distressed +Melbury still more. "I don't mind at all what comes to me," Grace +continued; "whose wife I am, or whose I am not. I do love Giles; I +cannot help that; and I have gone further with him than I should have +done if I had known exactly how things were. But I do not reproach you." + +"Then Giles did not tell you?" said Melbury. + +"No," said she. "He could not have known it. His behavior to me +proved that he did not know." + +Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to the solitude of +her chamber. + +Her heavy disquietude had many shapes; and for a time she put aside the +dominant fact to think of her too free conduct towards Giles. His +love-making had been brief as it was sweet; but would he on reflection +contemn her for forwardness? How could she have been so simple as to +suppose she was in a position to behave as she had done! Thus she +mentally blamed her ignorance; and yet in the centre of her heart she +blessed it a little for what it had momentarily brought her. + + + +CHAPTER XL. + +Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be suppressed +and hide-bound for a while. Grace seldom showed herself outside the +house, never outside the garden; for she feared she might encounter +Giles Winterborne; and that she could not bear. + +This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun appeared +likely to continue for an indefinite time. She had learned that there +was one possibility in which her formerly imagined position might +become real, and only one; that her husband's absence should continue +long enough to amount to positive desertion. But she never allowed her +mind to dwell much upon the thought; still less did she deliberately +hope for such a result. Her regard for Winterborne had been rarefied +by the shock which followed its avowal into an ethereal emotion that +had little to do with living and doing. + +As for Giles, he was lying--or rather sitting--ill at his hut. A +feverish indisposition which had been hanging about him for some time, +the result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to acquire +virulence with the prostration of his hopes. But not a soul knew of +his languor, and he did not think the case serious enough to send for a +medical man. After a few days he was better again, and crept about his +home in a great coat, attending to his simple wants as usual with his +own hands. So matters stood when the limpid inertion of Grace's +pool-like existence was disturbed as by a geyser. She received a +letter from Fitzpiers. + +Such a terrible letter it was in its import, though couched in the +gentlest language. In his absence Grace had grown to regard him with +toleration, and her relation to him with equanimity, till she had +almost forgotten how trying his presence would be. He wrote briefly +and unaffectedly; he made no excuses, but informed her that he was +living quite alone, and had been led to think that they ought to be +together, if she would make up her mind to forgive him. He therefore +purported to cross the Channel to Budmouth by the steamer on a day he +named, which she found to be three days after the time of her present +reading. + +He said that he could not come to Hintock for obvious reasons, which +her father would understand even better than herself. As the only +alternative she was to be on the quay to meet the steamer when it +arrived from the opposite coast, probably about half an hour before +midnight, bringing with her any luggage she might require; join him +there, and pass with him into the twin vessel, which left immediately +the other entered the harbor; returning thus with him to his +continental dwelling-place, which he did not name. He had no intention +of showing himself on land at all. + +The troubled Grace took the letter to her father, who now continued for +long hours by the fireless summer chimney-corner, as if he thought it +were winter, the pitcher of cider standing beside him, mostly untasted, +and coated with a film of dust. After reading it he looked up. + +"You sha'n't go," said he. + +"I had felt I would not," she answered. "But I did not know what you +would say." + +"If he comes and lives in England, not too near here and in a +respectable way, and wants you to come to him, I am not sure that I'll +oppose him in wishing it," muttered Melbury. "I'd stint myself to keep +you both in a genteel and seemly style. But go abroad you never shall +with my consent." + +There the question rested that day. Grace was unable to reply to her +husband in the absence of an address, and the morrow came, and the next +day, and the evening on which he had requested her to meet him. +Throughout the whole of it she remained within the four walls of her +room. + +The sense of her harassment, carking doubt of what might be impending, +hung like a cowl of blackness over the Melbury household. They spoke +almost in whispers, and wondered what Fitzpiers would do next. It was +the hope of every one that, finding she did not arrive, he would return +again to France; and as for Grace, she was willing to write to him on +the most kindly terms if he would only keep away. + +The night passed, Grace lying tense and wide awake, and her relatives, +in great part, likewise. When they met the next morning they were pale +and anxious, though neither speaking of the subject which occupied all +their thoughts. The day passed as quietly as the previous ones, and +she began to think that in the rank caprice of his moods he had +abandoned the idea of getting her to join him as quickly as it was +formed. All on a sudden, some person who had just come from Sherton +entered the house with the news that Mr. Fitzpiers was on his way home +to Hintock. He had been seen hiring a carriage at the Earl of Wessex +Hotel. + +Her father and Grace were both present when the intelligence was +announced. + +"Now," said Melbury, "we must make the best of what has been a very bad +matter. The man is repenting; the partner of his shame, I hear, is +gone away from him to Switzerland, so that chapter of his life is +probably over. If he chooses to make a home for ye I think you should +not say him nay, Grace. Certainly he cannot very well live at Hintock +without a blow to his pride; but if he can bear that, and likes Hintock +best, why, there's the empty wing of the house as it was before." + +"Oh, father!" said Grace, turning white with dismay. + +"Why not?" said he, a little of his former doggedness returning. He +was, in truth, disposed to somewhat more leniency towards her husband +just now than he had shown formerly, from a conviction that he had +treated him over-roughly in his anger. "Surely it is the most +respectable thing to do?" he continued. "I don't like this state that +you are in--neither married nor single. It hurts me, and it hurts you, +and it will always be remembered against us in Hintock. There has +never been any scandal like it in the family before." + +"He will be here in less than an hour," murmured Grace. The twilight +of the room prevented her father seeing the despondent misery of her +face. The one intolerable condition, the condition she had deprecated +above all others, was that of Fitzpiers's reinstatement there. "Oh, I +won't, I won't see him," she said, sinking down. She was almost +hysterical. + +"Try if you cannot," he returned, moodily. + +"Oh yes, I will, I will," she went on, inconsequently. "I'll try;" and +jumping up suddenly, she left the room. + +In the darkness of the apartment to which she flew nothing could have +been seen during the next half-hour; but from a corner a quick +breathing was audible from this impressible creature, who combined +modern nerves with primitive emotions, and was doomed by such +coexistence to be numbered among the distressed, and to take her +scourgings to their exquisite extremity. + +The window was open. On this quiet, late summer evening, whatever +sound arose in so secluded a district--the chirp of a bird, a call from +a voice, the turning of a wheel--extended over bush and tree to +unwonted distances. Very few sounds did arise. But as Grace invisibly +breathed in the brown glooms of the chamber, the small remote noise of +light wheels came in to her, accompanied by the trot of a horse on the +turnpike-road. There seemed to be a sudden hitch or pause in the +progress of the vehicle, which was what first drew her attention to it. +She knew the point whence the sound proceeded--the hill-top over which +travellers passed on their way hitherward from Sherton Abbas--the place +at which she had emerged from the wood with Mrs. Charmond. Grace slid +along the floor, and bent her head over the window-sill, listening with +open lips. The carriage had stopped, and she heard a man use +exclamatory words. Then another said, "What the devil is the matter +with the horse?" She recognized the voice as her husband's. + +The accident, such as it had been, was soon remedied, and the carriage +could be heard descending the hill on the Hintock side, soon to turn +into the lane leading out of the highway, and then into the "drong" +which led out of the lane to the house where she was. + +A spasm passed through Grace. The Daphnean instinct, exceptionally +strong in her as a girl, had been revived by her widowed seclusion; and +it was not lessened by her affronted sentiments towards the comer, and +her regard for another man. She opened some little ivory tablets that +lay on the dressing-table, scribbled in pencil on one of them, "I am +gone to visit one of my school-friends," gathered a few toilet +necessaries into a hand-bag, and not three minutes after that voice +had been heard, her slim form, hastily wrapped up from observation, +might have been seen passing out of the back door of Melbury's house. +Thence she skimmed up the garden-path, through the gap in the hedge, +and into the mossy cart-track under the trees which led into the depth +of the woods. + +The leaves overhead were now in their latter green--so opaque, that it +was darker at some of the densest spots than in winter-time, scarce a +crevice existing by which a ray could get down to the ground. But in +open places she could see well enough. Summer was ending: in the +daytime singing insects hung in every sunbeam; vegetation was heavy +nightly with globes of dew; and after showers creeping damps and +twilight chills came up from the hollows. The plantations were always +weird at this hour of eve--more spectral far than in the leafless +season, when there were fewer masses and more minute lineality. The +smooth surfaces of glossy plants came out like weak, lidless eyes; +there were strange faces and figures from expiring lights that had +somehow wandered into the canopied obscurity; while now and then low +peeps of the sky between the trunks were like sheeted shapes, and on +the tips of boughs sat faint cloven tongues. + +But Grace's fear just now was not imaginative or spiritual, and she +heeded these impressions but little. She went on as silently as she +could, avoiding the hollows wherein leaves had accumulated, and +stepping upon soundless moss and grass-tufts. She paused breathlessly +once or twice, and fancied that she could hear, above the beat of her +strumming pulse, the vehicle containing Fitzpiers turning in at the +gate of her father's premises. She hastened on again. + +The Hintock woods owned by Mrs. Charmond were presently left behind, +and those into which she next plunged were divided from the latter by a +bank, from whose top the hedge had long ago perished--starved for want +of sun. It was with some caution that Grace now walked, though she was +quite free from any of the commonplace timidities of her ordinary +pilgrimages to such spots. She feared no lurking harms, but that her +effort would be all in vain, and her return to the house rendered +imperative. + +She had walked between three and four miles when that prescriptive +comfort and relief to wanderers in woods--a distant light--broke at +last upon her searching eyes. It was so very small as to be almost +sinister to a stranger, but to her it was what she sought. She pushed +forward, and the dim outline of a dwelling was disclosed. + +The house was a square cot of one story only, sloping up on all sides +to a chimney in the midst. It had formerly been the home of a +charcoal-burner, in times when that fuel was still used in the county +houses. Its only appurtenance was a paled enclosure, there being no +garden, the shade of the trees preventing the growth of vegetables. +She advanced to the window whence the rays of light proceeded, and the +shutters being as yet unclosed, she could survey the whole interior +through the panes. + +The room within was kitchen, parlor, and scullery all in one; the +natural sandstone floor was worn into hills and dales by long treading, +so that none of the furniture stood level, and the table slanted like a +desk. A fire burned on the hearth, in front of which revolved the +skinned carcass of a rabbit, suspended by a string from a nail. +Leaning with one arm on the mantle-shelf stood Winterborne, his eyes on +the roasting animal, his face so rapt that speculation could build +nothing on it concerning his thoughts, more than that they were not +with the scene before him. She thought his features had changed a +little since she saw them last. The fire-light did not enable her to +perceive that they were positively haggard. + +Grace's throat emitted a gasp of relief at finding the result so nearly +as she had hoped. She went to the door and tapped lightly. + +He seemed to be accustomed to the noises of woodpeckers, squirrels, and +such small creatures, for he took no notice of her tiny signal, and she +knocked again. This time he came and opened the door. When the light +of the room fell upon her face he started, and, hardly knowing what he +did, crossed the threshold to her, placing his hands upon her two arms, +while surprise, joy, alarm, sadness, chased through him by turns. With +Grace it was the same: even in this stress there was the fond fact that +they had met again. Thus they stood, + + "Long tears upon their faces, waxen white + With extreme sad delight." + + +He broke the silence by saying in a whisper, "Come in." + +"No, no, Giles!" she answered, hurriedly, stepping yet farther back +from the door. "I am passing by--and I have called on you--I won't +enter. Will you help me? I am afraid. I want to get by a roundabout +way to Sherton, and so to Exbury. I have a school-fellow there--but I +cannot get to Sherton alone. Oh, if you will only accompany me a +little way! Don't condemn me, Giles, and be offended! I was obliged to +come to you because--I have no other help here. Three months ago you +were my lover; now you are only my friend. The law has stepped in, and +forbidden what we thought of. It must not be. But we can act +honestly, and yet you can be my friend for one little hour? I have no +other--" + +She could get no further. Covering her eyes with one hand, by an +effort of repression she wept a silent trickle, without a sigh or sob. +Winterborne took her other hand. "What has happened?" he said. + +"He has come." + +There was a stillness as of death, till Winterborne asked, "You mean +this, Grace--that I am to help you to get away?" + +"Yes," said she. "Appearance is no matter, when the reality is right. +I have said to myself I can trust you." + +Giles knew from this that she did not suspect his treachery--if it +could be called such--earlier in the summer, when they met for the last +time as lovers; and in the intensity of his contrition for that tender +wrong, he determined to deserve her faith now at least, and so wipe out +that reproach from his conscience. "I'll come at once," he said. +"I'll light a lantern." + +He unhooked a dark-lantern from a nail under the eaves and she did not +notice how his hand shook with the slight strain, or dream that in +making this offer he was taxing a convalescence which could ill afford +such self-sacrifice. The lantern was lit, and they started. + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + +The first hundred yards of their course lay under motionless trees, +whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling drops of rain. By the +time that they emerged upon a glade it rained heavily. + +"This is awkward," said Grace, with an effort to hide her concern. + +Winterborne stopped. "Grace," he said, preserving a strictly business +manner which belied him, "you cannot go to Sherton to-night." + +"But I must!" + +"Why? It is nine miles from here. It is almost an impossibility in +this rain." + +"True--WHY?" she replied, mournfully, at the end of a silence. "What is +reputation to me?" + +"Now hearken," said Giles. "You won't--go back to your--" + +"No, no, no! Don't make me!" she cried, piteously. + +"Then let us turn." They slowly retraced their steps, and again stood +before his door. "Now, this house from this moment is yours, and not +mine," he said, deliberately. "I have a place near by where I can stay +very well." + +Her face had drooped. "Oh!" she murmured, as she saw the dilemma. +"What have I done!" + +There was a smell of something burning within, and he looked through +the window. The rabbit that he had been cooking to coax a weak +appetite was beginning to char. "Please go in and attend to it," he +said. "Do what you like. Now I leave. You will find everything about +the hut that is necessary." + +"But, Giles--your supper," she exclaimed. "An out-house would do for +me--anything--till to-morrow at day-break!" + +He signified a negative. "I tell you to go in--you may catch agues out +here in your delicate state. You can give me my supper through the +window, if you feel well enough. I'll wait a while." + +He gently urged her to pass the door-way, and was relieved when he saw +her within the room sitting down. Without so much as crossing the +threshold himself, he closed the door upon her, and turned the key in +the lock. Tapping at the window, he signified that she should open the +casement, and when she had done this he handed in the key to her. + +"You are locked in," he said; "and your own mistress." + +Even in her trouble she could not refrain from a faint smile at his +scrupulousness, as she took the door-key. + +"Do you feel better?" he went on. "If so, and you wish to give me some +of your supper, please do. If not, it is of no importance. I can get +some elsewhere." + +The grateful sense of his kindness stirred her to action, though she +only knew half what that kindness really was. At the end of some ten +minutes she again came to the window, pushed it open, and said in a +whisper, "Giles!" He at once emerged from the shade, and saw that she +was preparing to hand him his share of the meal upon a plate. + +"I don't like to treat you so hardly," she murmured, with deep regret +in her words as she heard the rain pattering on the leaves. "But--I +suppose it is best to arrange like this?" + +"Oh yes," he said, quickly. + +"I feel that I could never have reached Sherton." + +"It was impossible." + +"Are you sure you have a snug place out there?" (With renewed +misgiving.) + +"Quite. Have you found everything you want? I am afraid it is rather +rough accommodation." + +"Can I notice defects? I have long passed that stage, and you know it, +Giles, or you ought to." + +His eyes sadly contemplated her face as its pale responsiveness +modulated through a crowd of expressions that showed only too clearly +to what a pitch she was strung. If ever Winterborne's heart fretted +his bosom it was at this sight of a perfectly defenceless creature +conditioned by such circumstances. He forgot his own agony in the +satisfaction of having at least found her a shelter. He took his plate +and cup from her hands, saying, "Now I'll push the shutter to, and you +will find an iron pin on the inside, which you must fix into the bolt. +Do not stir in the morning till I come and call you." + +She expressed an alarmed hope that he would not go very far away. + +"Oh no--I shall be quite within hail," said Winterborne. + +She bolted the window as directed, and he retreated. His snug place +proved to be a wretched little shelter of the roughest kind, formed of +four hurdles thatched with brake-fern. Underneath were dry sticks, +hay, and other litter of the sort, upon which he sat down; and there in +the dark tried to eat his meal. But his appetite was quite gone. He +pushed the plate aside, and shook up the hay and sacks, so as to form a +rude couch, on which he flung himself down to sleep, for it was getting +late. + +But sleep he could not, for many reasons, of which not the least was +thought of his charge. He sat up, and looked towards the cot through +the damp obscurity. With all its external features the same as usual, +he could scarcely believe that it contained the dear friend--he would +not use a warmer name--who had come to him so unexpectedly, and, he +could not help admitting, so rashly. + +He had not ventured to ask her any particulars; but the position was +pretty clear without them. Though social law had negatived forever +their opening paradise of the previous June, it was not without stoical +pride that he accepted the present trying conjuncture. There was one +man on earth in whom she believed absolutely, and he was that man. +That this crisis could end in nothing but sorrow was a view for a +moment effaced by this triumphant thought of her trust in him; and the +purity of the affection with which he responded to that trust rendered +him more than proof against any frailty that besieged him in relation +to her. + +The rain, which had never ceased, now drew his attention by beginning +to drop through the meagre screen that covered him. He rose to attempt +some remedy for this discomfort, but the trembling of his knees and the +throbbing of his pulse told him that in his weakness he was unable to +fence against the storm, and he lay down to bear it as best he might. +He was angry with himself for his feebleness--he who had been so +strong. It was imperative that she should know nothing of his present +state, and to do that she must not see his face by daylight, for its +color would inevitably betray him. + +The next morning, accordingly, when it was hardly light, he rose and +dragged his stiff limbs about the precincts, preparing for her +everything she could require for getting breakfast within. On the +bench outside the window-sill he placed water, wood, and other +necessaries, writing with a piece of chalk beside them, "It is best +that I should not see you. Put my breakfast on the bench." + +At seven o'clock he tapped at her window, as he had promised, +retreating at once, that she might not catch sight of him. But from +his shelter under the boughs he could see her very well, when, in +response to his signal, she opened the window and the light fell upon +her face. The languid largeness of her eyes showed that her sleep had +been little more than his own, and the pinkness of their lids, that her +waking hours had not been free from tears. + +She read the writing, seemed, he thought, disappointed, but took up the +materials he had provided, evidently thinking him some way off. Giles +waited on, assured that a girl who, in spite of her culture, knew what +country life was, would find no difficulty in the simple preparation of +their food. + +Within the cot it was all very much as he conjectured, though Grace had +slept much longer than he. After the loneliness of the night, she +would have been glad to see him; but appreciating his feeling when she +read the writing, she made no attempt to recall him. She found +abundance of provisions laid in, his plan being to replenish his +buttery weekly, and this being the day after the victualling van had +called from Sherton. When the meal was ready, she put what he required +outside, as she had done with the supper; and, notwithstanding her +longing to see him, withdrew from the window promptly, and left him to +himself. + +It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its fall. +As she heard no more of Winterborne, she concluded that he had gone +away to his daily work, and forgotten that he had promised to accompany +her to Sherton; an erroneous conclusion, for he remained all day, by +force of his condition, within fifty yards of where she was. The +morning wore on; and in her doubt when to start, and how to travel, she +lingered yet, keeping the door carefully bolted, lest an intruder +should discover her. Locked in this place, she was comparatively safe, +at any rate, and doubted if she would be safe elsewhere. + +The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade and +drip of the leafage. Autumn, this year, was coming in with rains. +Gazing, in her enforced idleness, from the one window of the +living-room, she could see various small members of the animal +community that lived unmolested there--creatures of hair, fluff, and +scale, the toothed kind and the billed kind; underground creatures, +jointed and ringed--circumambulating the hut, under the impression +that, Giles having gone away, nobody was there; and eying it +inquisitively with a view to winter-quarters. Watching these +neighbors, who knew neither law nor sin, distracted her a little from +her trouble; and she managed to while away some portion of the +afternoon by putting Giles's home in order and making little +improvements which she deemed that he would value when she was gone. + +Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise amid the trees, +resembling a cough; but as it never came any nearer she concluded that +it was a squirrel or a bird. + +At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger fire for the +evenings were chilly. As soon as it was too dark--which was +comparatively early--to discern the human countenance in this place of +shadows, there came to the window to her great delight, a tapping which +she knew from its method to be Giles's. + +She opened the casement instantly, and put out her hand to him, though +she could only just perceive his outline. He clasped her fingers, and +she noticed the heat of his palm and its shakiness. + +"He has been walking fast, in order to get here quickly," she thought. +How could she know that he had just crawled out from the straw of the +shelter hard by; and that the heat of his hand was feverishness? + +"My dear, good Giles!" she burst out, impulsively. + +"Anybody would have done it for you," replied Winterborne, with as much +matter-of-fact as he could summon. + +"About my getting to Exbury?" she said. + +"I have been thinking," responded Giles, with tender deference, "that +you had better stay where you are for the present, if you wish not to +be caught. I need not tell you that the place is yours as long as you +like; and perhaps in a day or two, finding you absent, he will go away. +At any rate, in two or three days I could do anything to assist--such +as make inquiries, or go a great way towards Sherton-Abbas with you; +for the cider season will soon be coming on, and I want to run down to +the Vale to see how the crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton road. +But for a day or two I am busy here." He was hoping that by the time +mentioned he would be strong enough to engage himself actively on her +behalf. "I hope you do not feel over-much melancholy in being a +prisoner?" + +She declared that she did not mind it; but she sighed. + +From long acquaintance they could read each other's heart-symptoms like +books of large type. "I fear you are sorry you came," said Giles, "and +that you think I should have advised you more firmly than I did not to +stay." + +"Oh no, dear, dear friend," answered Grace, with a heaving bosom. +"Don't think that that is what I regret. What I regret is my enforced +treatment of you--dislodging you, excluding you from your own house. +Why should I not speak out? You know what I feel for you--what I have +felt for no other living man, what I shall never feel for a man again! +But as I have vowed myself to somebody else than you, and cannot be +released, I must behave as I do behave, and keep that vow. I am not +bound to him by any divine law, after what he has done; but I have +promised, and I will pay." + +The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things as +she would require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon, an +occupation which diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic views +of her attitude towards him, and of her life in general. The only +infringement--if infringement it could be called--of his predetermined +bearing towards her was an involuntary pressing of her hand to his lips +when she put it through the casement to bid him good-night. He knew +she was weeping, though he could not see her tears. + +She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly appropriating the +cottage. But it would only be for a day or two more, she thought, +since go she must. + +He replied, yearningly, "I--I don't like you to go away." + +"Oh, Giles," said she, "I know--I know! But--I am a woman, and you are +a man. I cannot speak more plainly. 'Whatsoever things are pure, +whatsoever things are of good report'--you know what is in my mind, +because you know me so well." + +"Yes, Grace, yes. I do not at all mean that the question between us +has not been settled by the fact of your marriage turning out +hopelessly unalterable. I merely meant--well, a feeling no more." + +"In a week, at the outside, I should be discovered if I stayed here: +and I think that by law he could compel me to return to him." + +"Yes; perhaps you are right. Go when you wish, dear Grace." + +His last words that evening were a hopeful remark that all might be +well with her yet; that Mr. Fitzpiers would not intrude upon her life, +if he found that his presence cost her so much pain. Then the window +was closed, the shutters folded, and the rustle of his footsteps died +away. + +No sooner had she retired to rest that night than the wind began to +rise, and, after a few prefatory blasts, to be accompanied by rain. +The wind grew more violent, and as the storm went on, it was difficult +to believe that no opaque body, but only an invisible colorless thing, +was trampling and climbing over the roof, making branches creak, +springing out of the trees upon the chimney, popping its head into the +flue, and shrieking and blaspheming at every corner of the walls. As +in the old story, the assailant was a spectre which could be felt but +not seen. She had never before been so struck with the devilry of a +gusty night in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in +spirit as she was now. She seemed almost to be apart from herself--a +vacuous duplicate only. The recent self of physical animation and +clear intentions was not there. + +Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so low as to smite +the roof in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth of an +adversary, to be followed by a trickle of rain, as blood from the +wound. To all this weather Giles must be more or less exposed; how +much, she did not know. + +At last Grace could hardly endure the idea of such a hardship in +relation to him. Whatever he was suffering, it was she who had caused +it; he vacated his house on account of her. She was not worth such +self-sacrifice; she should not have accepted it of him. And then, as +her anxiety increased with increasing thought, there returned upon her +mind some incidents of her late intercourse with him, which she had +heeded but little at the time. The look of his face--what had there +been about his face which seemed different from its appearance as of +yore? Was it not thinner, less rich in hue, less like that of ripe +autumn's brother to whom she had formerly compared him? And his voice; +she had distinctly noticed a change in tone. And his gait; surely it +had been feebler, stiffer, more like the gait of a weary man. That +slight occasional noise she had heard in the day, and attributed to +squirrels, it might have been his cough after all. + +Thus conviction took root in her perturbed mind that Winterborne was +ill, or had been so, and that he had carefully concealed his condition +from her that she might have no scruples about accepting a hospitality +which by the nature of the case expelled her entertainer. + +"My own, own, true l----, my dear kind friend!" she cried to herself. +"Oh, it shall not be--it shall not be!" + +She hastily wrapped herself up, and obtained a light, with which she +entered the adjoining room, the cot possessing only one floor. Setting +down the candle on the table here, she went to the door with the key in +her hand, and placed it in the lock. Before turning it she paused, her +fingers still clutching it; and pressing her other hand to her +forehead, she fell into agitating thought. + +A tattoo on the window, caused by the tree-droppings blowing against +it, brought her indecision to a close. She turned the key and opened +the door. + +The darkness was intense, seeming to touch her pupils like a substance. +She only now became aware how heavy the rainfall had been and was; the +dripping of the eaves splashed like a fountain. She stood listening +with parted lips, and holding the door in one hand, till her eyes, +growing accustomed to the obscurity, discerned the wild brandishing of +their boughs by the adjoining trees. At last she cried loudly with an +effort, "Giles! you may come in!" + +There was no immediate answer to her cry, and overpowered by her own +temerity, Grace retreated quickly, shut the door, and stood looking on +the floor. But it was not for long. She again lifted the latch, and +with far more determination than at first. + +"Giles, Giles!" she cried, with the full strength of her voice, and +without any of the shamefacedness that had characterized her first cry. +"Oh, come in--come in! Where are you? I have been wicked. I have +thought too much of myself! Do you hear? I don't want to keep you out +any longer. I cannot bear that you should suffer so. Gi-i-iles!" + +A reply! It was a reply! Through the darkness and wind a voice reached +her, floating upon the weather as though a part of it. + +"Here I am--all right. Don't trouble about me." + +"Don't you want to come in? Are you not ill? I don't mind what they +say, or what they think any more." + +"I am all right," he repeated. "It is not necessary for me to come. +Good-night! good-night!" + +Grace sighed, turned and shut the door slowly. Could she have been +mistaken about his health? Perhaps, after all, she had perceived a +change in him because she had not seen him for so long. Time sometimes +did his ageing work in jerks, as she knew. Well, she had done all she +could. He would not come in. She retired to rest again. + + + +CHAPTER XLII. + +The next morning Grace was at the window early. She felt determined to +see him somehow that day, and prepared his breakfast eagerly. Eight +o'clock struck, and she had remembered that he had not come to arouse +her by a knocking, as usual, her own anxiety having caused her to stir. + +The breakfast was set in its place without. But he did not arrive to +take it; and she waited on. Nine o'clock arrived, and the breakfast +was cold; and still there was no Giles. A thrush, that had been +repeating itself a good deal on an opposite bush for some time, came +and took a morsel from the plate and bolted it, waited, looked around, +and took another. At ten o'clock she drew in the tray, and sat down to +her own solitary meal. He must have been called away on business +early, the rain having cleared off. + +Yet she would have liked to assure herself, by thoroughly exploring the +precincts of the hut, that he was nowhere in its vicinity; but as the +day was comparatively fine, the dread lest some stray passenger or +woodman should encounter her in such a reconnoitre paralyzed her wish. +The solitude was further accentuated to-day by the stopping of the +clock for want of winding, and the fall into the chimney-corner of +flakes of soot loosened by the rains. At noon she heard a slight +rustling outside the window, and found that it was caused by an eft +which had crept out of the leaves to bask in the last sun-rays that +would be worth having till the following May. + +She continually peeped out through the lattice, but could see little. +In front lay the brown leaves of last year, and upon them some +yellowish-green ones of this season that had been prematurely blown +down by the gale. Above stretched an old beech, with vast armpits, and +great pocket-holes in its sides where branches had been amputated in +past times; a black slug was trying to climb it. Dead boughs were +scattered about like ichthyosauri in a museum, and beyond them were +perishing woodbine stems resembling old ropes. + +From the other window all she could see were more trees, jacketed with +lichen and stockinged with moss. At their roots were stemless yellow +fungi like lemons and apricots, and tall fungi with more stem than +stool. Next were more trees close together, wrestling for existence, +their branches disfigured with wounds resulting from their mutual +rubbings and blows. It was the struggle between these neighbors that +she had heard in the night. Beneath them were the rotting stumps of +those of the group that had been vanquished long ago, rising from their +mossy setting like decayed teeth from green gums. Farther on were +other tufts of moss in islands divided by the shed leaves--variety upon +variety, dark green and pale green; moss-like little fir-trees, like +plush, like malachite stars, like nothing on earth except moss. + +The strain upon Grace's mind in various ways was so great on this the +most desolate day she had passed there that she felt it would be +well-nigh impossible to spend another in such circumstances. The +evening came at last; the sun, when its chin was on the earth, found an +opening through which to pierce the shade, and stretched irradiated +gauzes across the damp atmosphere, making the wet trunks shine, and +throwing splotches of such ruddiness on the leaves beneath the beech +that they were turned to gory hues. When night at last arrived, and +with it the time for his return, she was nearly broken down with +suspense. + +The simple evening meal, partly tea, partly supper, which Grace had +prepared, stood waiting upon the hearth; and yet Giles did not come. +It was now nearly twenty-four hours since she had seen him. As the room +grew darker, and only the firelight broke against the gloom of the +walls, she was convinced that it would be beyond her staying power to +pass the night without hearing from him or from somebody. Yet eight +o'clock drew on, and his form at the window did not appear. + +The meal remained untasted. Suddenly rising from before the hearth of +smouldering embers, where she had been crouching with her hands clasped +over her knees, she crossed the room, unlocked the door, and listened. +Every breath of wind had ceased with the decline of day, but the rain +had resumed the steady dripping of the night before. Grace might have +stood there five minutes when she fancied she heard that old sound, a +cough, at no great distance; and it was presently repeated. If it were +Winterborne's, he must be near her; why, then, had he not visited her? + +A horrid misgiving that he could not visit her took possession of +Grace, and she looked up anxiously for the lantern, which was hanging +above her head. To light it and go in the direction of the sound would +be the obvious way to solve the dread problem; but the conditions made +her hesitate, and in a moment a cold sweat pervaded her at further +sounds from the same quarter. + +They were low mutterings; at first like persons in conversation, but +gradually resolving themselves into varieties of one voice. It was an +endless monologue, like that we sometimes hear from inanimate nature in +deep secret places where water flows, or where ivy leaves flap against +stones; but by degrees she was convinced that the voice was +Winterborne's. Yet who could be his listener, so mute and patient; for +though he argued so rapidly and persistently, nobody replied. + +A dreadful enlightenment spread through the mind of Grace. "Oh," she +cried, in her anguish, as she hastily prepared herself to go out, "how +selfishly correct I am always--too, too correct! Cruel propriety is +killing the dearest heart that ever woman clasped to her own." + +While speaking thus to herself she had lit the lantern, and hastening +out without further thought, took the direction whence the mutterings +had proceeded. The course was marked by a little path, which ended at +a distance of about forty yards in a small erection of hurdles, not +much larger than a shock of corn, such as were frequent in the woods +and copses when the cutting season was going on. It was too slight +even to be called a hovel, and was not high enough to stand upright in; +appearing, in short, to be erected for the temporary shelter of fuel. +The side towards Grace was open, and turning the light upon the +interior, she beheld what her prescient fear had pictured in snatches +all the way thither. + +Upon the straw within, Winterborne lay in his clothes, just as she had +seen him during the whole of her stay here, except that his hat was +off, and his hair matted and wild. + +Both his clothes and the straw were saturated with rain. His arms were +flung over his head; his face was flushed to an unnatural crimson. His +eyes had a burning brightness, and though they met her own, she +perceived that he did not recognize her. + +"Oh, my Giles," she cried, "what have I done to you!" + +But she stopped no longer even to reproach herself. She saw that the +first thing to be thought of was to get him indoors. + +How Grace performed that labor she never could have exactly explained. +But by dint of clasping her arms round him, rearing him into a sitting +posture, and straining her strength to the uttermost, she put him on +one of the hurdles that was loose alongside, and taking the end of it +in both her hands, dragged him along the path to the entrance of the +hut, and, after a pause for breath, in at the door-way. + +It was somewhat singular that Giles in his semi-conscious state +acquiesced unresistingly in all that she did. But he never for a +moment recognized her--continuing his rapid conversation to himself, +and seeming to look upon her as some angel, or other supernatural +creature of the visionary world in which he was mentally living. The +undertaking occupied her more than ten minutes; but by that time, to +her great thankfulness, he was in the inner room, lying on the bed, his +damp outer clothing removed. + +Then the unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. There +was something in his look which agonized her, in the rush of his +thoughts, accelerating their speed from minute to minute. He seemed to +be passing through the universe of ideas like a comet--erratic, +inapprehensible, untraceable. + +Grace's distraction was almost as great as his. In a few moments she +firmly believed he was dying. Unable to withstand her impulse, she +knelt down beside him, kissed his hands and his face and his hair, +exclaiming, in a low voice, "How could I? How could I?" + +Her timid morality had, indeed, underrated his chivalry till now, +though she knew him so well. The purity of his nature, his freedom +from the grosser passions, his scrupulous delicacy, had never been +fully understood by Grace till this strange self-sacrifice in lonely +juxtaposition to her own person was revealed. The perception of it +added something that was little short of reverence to the deep +affection for him of a woman who, herself, had more of Artemis than of +Aphrodite in her constitution. + +All that a tender nurse could do, Grace did; and the power to express +her solicitude in action, unconscious though the sufferer was, brought +her mournful satisfaction. She bathed his hot head, wiped his +perspiring hands, moistened his lips, cooled his fiery eyelids, sponged +his heated skin, and administered whatever she could find in the house +that the imagination could conceive as likely to be in any way +alleviating. That she might have been the cause, or partially the +cause, of all this, interfused misery with her sorrow. + +Six months before this date a scene, almost similar in its mechanical +parts, had been enacted at Hintock House. It was between a pair of +persons most intimately connected in their lives with these. Outwardly +like as it had been, it was yet infinite in spiritual difference, +though a woman's devotion had been common to both. + +Grace rose from her attitude of affection, and, bracing her energies, +saw that something practical must immediately be done. Much as she +would have liked, in the emotion of the moment, to keep him entirely to +herself, medical assistance was necessary while there remained a +possibility of preserving him alive. Such assistance was fatal to her +own concealment; but even had the chance of benefiting him been less +than it was, she would have run the hazard for his sake. The question +was, where should she get a medical man, competent and near? + +There was one such man, and only one, within accessible distance; a man +who, if it were possible to save Winterborne's life, had the brain most +likely to do it. If human pressure could bring him, that man ought to +be brought to the sick Giles's side. The attempt should be made. + +Yet she dreaded to leave her patient, and the minutes raced past, and +yet she postponed her departure. At last, when it was after eleven +o'clock, Winterborne fell into a fitful sleep, and it seemed to afford +her an opportunity. + +She hastily made him as comfortable as she could, put on her things, +cut a new candle from the bunch hanging in the cupboard, and having set +it up, and placed it so that the light did not fall upon his eyes, she +closed the door and started. + +The spirit of Winterborne seemed to keep her company and banish all +sense of darkness from her mind. The rains had imparted a +phosphorescence to the pieces of touchwood and rotting leaves that lay +about her path, which, as scattered by her feet, spread abroad like +spilt milk. She would not run the hazard of losing her way by plunging +into any short, unfrequented track through the denser parts of the +woodland, but followed a more open course, which eventually brought her +to the highway. Once here, she ran along with great speed, animated by +a devoted purpose which had much about it that was stoical; and it was +with scarcely any faltering of spirit that, after an hour's progress, +she passed over Rubdown Hill, and onward towards that same Hintock, and +that same house, out of which she had fled a few days before in +irresistible alarm. But that had happened which, above all other things +of chance and change, could make her deliberately frustrate her plan of +flight and sink all regard of personal consequences. + +One speciality of Fitzpiers's was respected by Grace as much as +ever--his professional skill. In this she was right. Had his +persistence equalled his insight, instead of being the spasmodic and +fitful thing it was, fame and fortune need never have remained a wish +with him. His freedom from conventional errors and crusted prejudices +had, indeed, been such as to retard rather than accelerate his advance +in Hintock and its neighborhood, where people could not believe that +nature herself effected cures, and that the doctor's business was only +to smooth the way. + +It was past midnight when Grace arrived opposite her father's house, +now again temporarily occupied by her husband, unless he had already +gone away. Ever since her emergence from the denser plantations about +Winterborne's residence a pervasive lightness had hung in the damp +autumn sky, in spite of the vault of cloud, signifying that a moon of +some age was shining above its arch. The two white gates were distinct, +and the white balls on the pillars, and the puddles and damp ruts left +by the recent rain, had a cold, corpse-eyed luminousness. She entered +by the lower gate, and crossed the quadrangle to the wing wherein the +apartments that had been hers since her marriage were situate, till she +stood under a window which, if her husband were in the house, gave +light to his bedchamber. + +She faltered, and paused with her hand on her heart, in spite of +herself. Could she call to her presence the very cause of all her +foregoing troubles? Alas!--old Jones was seven miles off; Giles was +possibly dying--what else could she do? + +It was in a perspiration, wrought even more by consciousness than by +exercise, that she picked up some gravel, threw it at the panes, and +waited to see the result. The night-bell which had been fixed when +Fitzpiers first took up his residence there still remained; but as it +had fallen into disuse with the collapse of his practice, and his +elopement, she did not venture to pull it now. + +Whoever slept in the room had heard her signal, slight as it was. In +half a minute the window was opened, and a voice said "Yes?" +inquiringly. Grace recognized her husband in the speaker at once. Her +effort was now to disguise her own accents. + +"Doctor," she said, in as unusual a tone as she could command, "a man +is dangerously ill in One-chimney Hut, out towards Delborough, and you +must go to him at once--in all mercy!" + +"I will, readily." + +The alacrity, surprise, and pleasure expressed in his reply amazed her +for a moment. But, in truth, they denoted the sudden relief of a man +who, having got back in a mood of contrition, from erratic abandonment +to fearful joys, found the soothing routine of professional practice +unexpectedly opening anew to him. The highest desire of his soul just +now was for a respectable life of painstaking. If this, his first +summons since his return, had been to attend upon a cat or dog, he +would scarcely have refused it in the circumstances. + +"Do you know the way?" she asked. + +"Yes," said he. + +"One-chimney Hut," she repeated. "And--immediately!" + +"Yes, yes," said Fitzpiers. + +Grace remained no longer. She passed out of the white gate without +slamming it, and hastened on her way back. Her husband, then, had +re-entered her father's house. How he had been able to effect a +reconciliation with the old man, what were the terms of the treaty +between them, she could not so much as conjecture. Some sort of truce +must have been entered into, that was all she could say. But close as +the question lay to her own life, there was a more urgent one which +banished it; and she traced her steps quickly along the meandering +track-ways. + +Meanwhile, Fitzpiers was preparing to leave the house. The state of +his mind, over and above his professional zeal, was peculiar. At +Grace's first remark he had not recognized or suspected her presence; +but as she went on, he was awakened to the great resemblance of the +speaker's voice to his wife's. He had taken in such good faith the +statement of the household on his arrival, that she had gone on a visit +for a time because she could not at once bring her mind to be +reconciled to him, that he could not quite actually believe this comer +to be she. It was one of the features of Fitzpiers's repentant humor +at this date that, on receiving the explanation of her absence, he had +made no attempt to outrage her feelings by following her; though nobody +had informed him how very shortly her departure had preceded his entry, +and of all that might have been inferred from her precipitancy. + +Melbury, after much alarm and consideration, had decided not to follow +her either. He sympathized with her flight, much as he deplored it; +moreover, the tragic color of the antecedent events that he had been a +great means of creating checked his instinct to interfere. He prayed +and trusted that she had got into no danger on her way (as he supposed) +to Sherton, and thence to Exbury, if that were the place she had gone +to, forbearing all inquiry which the strangeness of her departure would +have made natural. A few months before this time a performance by +Grace of one-tenth the magnitude of this would have aroused him to +unwonted investigation. + +It was in the same spirit that he had tacitly assented to Fitzpiers's +domicilation there. The two men had not met face to face, but Mrs. +Melbury had proposed herself as an intermediary, who made the surgeon's +re-entrance comparatively easy to him. Everything was provisional, and +nobody asked questions. Fitzpiers had come in the performance of a +plan of penitence, which had originated in circumstances hereafter to +be explained; his self-humiliation to the very bass-string was +deliberate; and as soon as a call reached him from the bedside of a +dying man his desire was to set to work and do as much good as he could +with the least possible fuss or show. He therefore refrained from +calling up a stableman to get ready any horse or gig, and set out for +One-chimney Hut on foot, as Grace had done. + + + +CHAPTER XLIII. + +She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and approached +the sufferer. He had begun anew those terrible mutterings, and his +hands were cold. As soon as she saw him there returned to her that +agony of mind which the stimulus of her journey had thrown off for a +time. + +Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, forgot all things +but the fact that lying there before her was he who had loved her more +than the mere lover would have loved; had martyred himself for her +comfort, cared more for her self-respect than she had thought of +caring. This mood continued till she heard quick, smart footsteps +without; she knew whose footsteps they were. + +Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, holding Giles's +hand, so that when her husband entered the patient lay between herself +and him. He stood transfixed at first, noticing Grace only. Slowly he +dropped his glance and discerned who the prostrate man was. Strangely +enough, though Grace's distaste for her husband's company had amounted +almost to dread, and culminated in actual flight, at this moment her +last and least feeling was personal. Sensitive femininity was eclipsed +by self-effacing purpose, and that it was a husband who stood there was +forgotten. The first look that possessed her face was relief; +satisfaction at the presence of the physician obliterated thought of +the man, which only returned in the form of a sub-consciousness that +did not interfere with her words. + +"Is he dying--is there any hope?" she cried. + +"Grace!" said Fitzpiers, in an indescribable whisper--more than +invocating, if not quite deprecatory. + +He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic +character--though that was striking enough to a man who called himself +the husband of the sufferer's friend and nurse--but in its character as +the counterpart of one that had its hour many months before, in which +he had figured as the patient, and the woman had been Felice Charmond. + +"Is he in great danger--can you save him?" she cried again. + +Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined +Winterborne as he stood. His inspection was concluded in a mere +glance. Before he spoke he looked at her contemplatively as to the +effect of his coming words. + +"He is dying," he said, with dry precision. + +"What?" said she. + +"Nothing can be done, by me or any other man. It will soon be all +over. The extremities are dead already." His eyes still remained +fixed on her; the conclusion to which he had come seeming to end his +interest, professional and otherwise, in Winterborne forever. + +"But it cannot be! He was well three days ago." + +"Not well, I suspect. This seems like a secondary attack, which has +followed some previous illness--possibly typhoid--it may have been +months ago, or recently." + +"Ah--he was not well--you are right. He was ill--he was ill when I +came." + +There was nothing more to do or say. She crouched down at the side of +the bed, and Fitzpiers took a seat. Thus they remained in silence, and +long as it lasted she never turned her eyes, or apparently her +thoughts, at all to her husband. He occasionally murmured, with +automatic authority, some slight directions for alleviating the pain of +the dying man, which she mechanically obeyed, bending over him during +the intervals in silent tears. + +Winterborne never recovered consciousness of what was passing; and that +he was going became soon perceptible also to her. In less than an hour +the delirium ceased; then there was an interval of somnolent +painlessness and soft breathing, at the end of which Winterborne passed +quietly away. + + +Then Fitzpiers broke the silence. "Have you lived here long?" said he. + +Grace was wild with sorrow--with all that had befallen her--with the +cruelties that had attacked her--with life--with Heaven. She answered +at random. "Yes. By what right do you ask?" + +"Don't think I claim any right," said Fitzpiers, sadly. "It is for you +to do and say what you choose. I admit, quite as much as you feel, +that I am a vagabond--a brute--not worthy to possess the smallest +fragment of you. But here I am, and I have happened to take sufficient +interest in you to make that inquiry." + +"He is everything to me!" said Grace, hardly heeding her husband, and +laying her hand reverently on the dead man's eyelids, where she kept it +a long time, pressing down their lashes with gentle touches, as if she +were stroking a little bird. + +He watched her a while, and then glanced round the chamber where his +eyes fell upon a few dressing necessaries that she had brought. + +"Grace--if I may call you so," he said, "I have been already humiliated +almost to the depths. I have come back since you refused to join me +elsewhere--I have entered your father's house, and borne all that that +cost me without flinching, because I have felt that I deserved +humiliation. But is there a yet greater humiliation in store for me? +You say you have been living here--that he is everything to you. Am I +to draw from that the obvious, the extremest inference?" + +Triumph at any price is sweet to men and women--especially the latter. +It was her first and last opportunity of repaying him for the cruel +contumely which she had borne at his hands so docilely. + +"Yes," she answered; and there was that in her subtly compounded nature +which made her feel a thrill of pride as she did so. + +Yet the moment after she had so mightily belied her character she half +repented. Her husband had turned as white as the wall behind him. It +seemed as if all that remained to him of life and spirit had been +abstracted at a stroke. Yet he did not move, and in his efforts at +self-control closed his mouth together as a vice. His determination +was fairly successful, though she saw how very much greater than she +had expected her triumph had been. Presently he looked across at +Winterborne. + +"Would it startle you to hear," he said, as if he hardly had breath to +utter the words, "that she who was to me what he was to you is dead +also?" + +"Dead--SHE dead?" exclaimed Grace. + +"Yes. Felice Charmond is where this young man is." + +"Never!" said Grace, vehemently. + +He went on without heeding the insinuation: "And I came back to try to +make it up with you--but--" + +Fitzpiers rose, and moved across the room to go away, looking downward +with the droop of a man whose hope was turned to apathy, if not +despair. In going round the door his eye fell upon her once more. She +was still bending over the body of Winterborne, her face close to the +young man's. + +"Have you been kissing him during his illness?" asked her husband. + +"Yes." + +"Since his fevered state set in?" + +"Yes." + +"On his lips?" + +"Yes." + +"Then you will do well to take a few drops of this in water as soon as +possible." He drew a small phial from his pocket and returned to offer +it to her. + +Grace shook her head. + +"If you don't do as I tell you you may soon be like him." + +"I don't care. I wish to die." + +"I'll put it here," said Fitzpiers, placing the bottle on a ledge +beside him. "The sin of not having warned you will not be upon my head +at any rate, among my other sins. I am now going, and I will send +somebody to you. Your father does not know that you are here, so I +suppose I shall be bound to tell him?" + +"Certainly." + +Fitzpiers left the cot, and the stroke of his feet was soon immersed in +the silence that pervaded the spot. Grace remained kneeling and +weeping, she hardly knew how long, and then she sat up, covered poor +Giles's features, and went towards the door where her husband had +stood. No sign of any other comer greeted her ear, the only +perceptible sounds being the tiny cracklings of the dead leaves, which, +like a feather-bed, had not yet done rising to their normal level where +indented by the pressure of her husband's receding footsteps. It +reminded her that she had been struck with the change in his aspect; +the extremely intellectual look that had always been in his face was +wrought to a finer phase by thinness, and a care-worn dignity had been +superadded. She returned to Winterborne's side, and during her +meditations another tread drew near the door, entered the outer room, +and halted at the entrance of the chamber where Grace was. + +"What--Marty!" said Grace. + +"Yes. I have heard," said Marty, whose demeanor had lost all its +girlishness under the stroke that seemed almost literally to have +bruised her. + +"He died for me!" murmured Grace, heavily. + +Marty did not fully comprehend; and she answered, "He belongs to +neither of us now, and your beauty is no more powerful with him than my +plainness. I have come to help you, ma'am. He never cared for me, and +he cared much for you; but he cares for us both alike now." + +"Oh don't, don't, Marty!" + +Marty said no more, but knelt over Winterborne from the other side. + +"Did you meet my hus--Mr. Fitzpiers?" + +"No!" + +"Then what brought you here?" + +"I come this way sometimes. I have got to go to the farther side of +the wood this time of the year, and am obliged to get there before four +o'clock in the morning, to begin heating the oven for the early baking. +I have passed by here often at this time." + +Grace looked at her quickly. "Then did you know I was here?" + +"Yes, ma'am." + +"Did you tell anybody?" + +"No. I knew you lived in the hut, that he had gied it up to ye, and +lodged out himself." + +"Did you know where he lodged?" + +"No. That I couldn't find out. Was it at Delborough?" + +"No. It was not there, Marty. Would it had been! It would have +saved--saved--" To check her tears she turned, and seeing a book on the +window-bench, took it up. "Look, Marty, this is a Psalter. He was not +an outwardly religious man, but he was pure and perfect in his heart. +Shall we read a psalm over him?" + +"Oh yes--we will--with all my heart!" + +Grace opened the thin brown book, which poor Giles had kept at hand +mainly for the convenience of whetting his pen-knife upon its leather +covers. She began to read in that rich, devotional voice peculiar to +women only on such occasions. When it was over, Marty said, "I should +like to pray for his soul." + +"So should I," said her companion. "But we must not." + +"Why? Nobody would know." + +Grace could not resist the argument, influenced as she was by the sense +of making amends for having neglected him in the body; and their tender +voices united and filled the narrow room with supplicatory murmurs that +a Calvinist might have envied. They had hardly ended when now and more +numerous foot-falls were audible, also persons in conversation, one of +whom Grace recognized as her father. + +She rose, and went to the outer apartment, in which there was only such +light as beamed from the inner one. Melbury and Mrs. Melbury were +standing there. + +"I don't reproach you, Grace," said her father, with an estranged +manner, and in a voice not at all like his old voice. "What has come +upon you and us is beyond reproach, beyond weeping, and beyond wailing. +Perhaps I drove you to it. But I am hurt; I am scourged; I am +astonished. In the face of this there is nothing to be said." + +Without replying, Grace turned and glided back to the inner chamber. +"Marty," she said, quickly, "I cannot look my father in the face until +he knows the true circumstances of my life here. Go and tell him--what +you have told me--what you saw--that he gave up his house to me." + +She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty went, and after a +short absence returned. Then Grace rose, and going out asked her +father if he had met her husband. + +"Yes," said Melbury. + +"And you know all that has happened?" + +"I do. Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting ye of worse than rashness--I +ought to know ye better. Are you coming with me to what was once your +home?" + +"No. I stay here with HIM. Take no account of me any more." + +The unwonted, perplexing, agitating relations in which she had stood to +Winterborne quite lately--brought about by Melbury's own +contrivance--could not fail to soften the natural anger of a parent at +her more recent doings. "My daughter, things are bad," he rejoined. +"But why do you persevere to make 'em worse? What good can you do to +Giles by staying here with him? Mind, I ask no questions. I don't +inquire why you decided to come here, or anything as to what your +course would have been if he had not died, though I know there's no +deliberate harm in ye. As for me, I have lost all claim upon you, and +I make no complaint. But I do say that by coming back with me now you +will show no less kindness to him, and escape any sound of shame. + +"But I don't wish to escape it." + +"If you don't on your own account, cannot you wish to on mine and hers? +Nobody except our household knows that you have left home. Then why +should you, by a piece of perverseness, bring down my gray hairs with +sorrow to the grave?" + +"If it were not for my husband--" she began, moved by his words. "But +how can I meet him there? How can any woman who is not a mere man's +creature join him after what has taken place?" + +"He would go away again rather than keep you out of my house." + +"How do you know that, father?" + +"We met him on our way here, and he told us so," said Mrs. Melbury. +"He had said something like it before. He seems very much upset +altogether." + +"He declared to her when he came to our house that he would wait for +time and devotion to bring about his forgiveness," said her husband. +"That was it, wasn't it, Lucy?" + +"Yes. That he would not intrude upon you, Grace, till you gave him +absolute permission," Mrs. Melbury added. + +This antecedent considerateness in Fitzpiers was as welcome to Grace as +it was unexpected; and though she did not desire his presence, she was +sorry that by her retaliatory fiction she had given him a different +reason for avoiding her. She made no further objections to +accompanying her parents, taking them into the inner room to give +Winterborne a last look, and gathering up the two or three things that +belonged to her. While she was doing this the two women came who had +been called by Melbury, and at their heels poor Creedle. + +"Forgive me, but I can't rule my mourning nohow as a man should, Mr. +Melbury," he said. "I ha'n't seen him since Thursday se'night, and +have wondered for days and days where he's been keeping. There was I +expecting him to come and tell me to wash out the cider-barrels against +the making, and here was he-- Well, I've knowed him from table-high; I +knowed his father--used to bide about upon two sticks in the sun afore +he died!--and now I've seen the end of the family, which we can ill +afford to lose, wi' such a scanty lot of good folk in Hintock as we've +got. And now Robert Creedle will be nailed up in parish boards 'a +b'lieve; and noboby will glutch down a sigh for he!" + +They started for home, Marty and Creedle remaining behind. For a time +Grace and her father walked side by side without speaking. It was just +in the blue of the dawn, and the chilling tone of the sky was reflected +in her cold, wet face. The whole wood seemed to be a house of death, +pervaded by loss to its uttermost length and breadth. Winterborne was +gone, and the copses seemed to show the want of him; those young trees, +so many of which he had planted, and of which he had spoken so truly +when he said that he should fall before they fell, were at that very +moment sending out their roots in the direction that he had given them +with his subtle hand. + +"One thing made it tolerable to us that your husband should come back +to the house," said Melbury at last--"the death of Mrs. Charmond." + +"Ah, yes," said Grace, arousing slightly to the recollection, "he told +me so." + +"Did he tell you how she died? It was no such death as Giles's. She +was shot--by a disappointed lover. It occurred in Germany. The +unfortunate man shot himself afterwards. He was that South Carolina +gentleman of very passionate nature who used to haunt this place to +force her to an interview, and followed her about everywhere. So ends +the brilliant Felice Charmond--once a good friend to me--but no friend +to you." + +"I can forgive her," said Grace, absently. "Did Edgar tell you of +this?" + +"No; but he put a London newspaper, giving an account of it, on the +hall table, folded in such a way that we should see it. It will be in +the Sherton paper this week, no doubt. To make the event more solemn +still to him, he had just before had sharp words with her, and left +her. He told Lucy this, as nothing about him appears in the newspaper. +And the cause of the quarrel was, of all people, she we've left behind +us." + +"Do you mean Marty?" Grace spoke the words but perfunctorily. For, +pertinent and pointed as Melbury's story was, she had no heart for it +now. + +"Yes. Marty South." Melbury persisted in his narrative, to divert her +from her present grief, if possible. "Before he went away she wrote +him a letter, which he kept in his, pocket a long while before reading. +He chanced to pull it out in Mrs. Charmond's, presence, and read it out +loud. It contained something which teased her very much, and that led +to the rupture. She was following him to make it up when she met with +her terrible death." + +Melbury did not know enough to give the gist of the incident, which was +that Marty South's letter had been concerning a certain personal +adornment common to herself and Mrs. Charmond. Her bullet reached its +billet at last. The scene between Fitzpiers and Felice had been sharp, +as only a scene can be which arises out of the mortification of one +woman by another in the presence of a lover. True, Marty had not +effected it by word of mouth; the charge about the locks of hair was +made simply by Fitzpiers reading her letter to him aloud to Felice in +the playfully ironical tones of one who had become a little weary of +his situation, and was finding his friend, in the phrase of George +Herbert, a "flat delight." He had stroked those false tresses with his +hand many a time without knowing them to be transplanted, and it was +impossible when the discovery was so abruptly made to avoid being +finely satirical, despite her generous disposition. + +That was how it had begun, and tragedy had been its end. On his abrupt +departure she had followed him to the station but the train was gone; +and in travelling to Baden in search of him she had met his rival, +whose reproaches led to an altercation, and the death of both. Of that +precipitate scene of passion and crime Fitzpiers had known nothing till +he saw an account of it in the papers, where, fortunately for himself, +no mention was made of his prior acquaintance with the unhappy lady; +nor was there any allusion to him in the subsequent inquiry, the double +death being attributed to some gambling losses, though, in point of +fact, neither one of them had visited the tables. + +Melbury and his daughter drew near their house, having seen but one +living thing on their way, a squirrel, which did not run up its tree, +but, dropping the sweet chestnut which it carried, cried +chut-chut-chut, and stamped with its hind legs on the ground. When the +roofs and chimneys of the homestead began to emerge from the screen of +boughs, Grace started, and checked herself in her abstracted advance. + +"You clearly understand," she said to her step-mother some of her old +misgiving returning, "that I am coming back only on condition of his +leaving as he promised? Will you let him know this, that there may be +no mistake?" + +Mrs. Melbury, who had some long private talks with Fitzpiers, assured +Grace that she need have no doubts on that point, and that he would +probably be gone by the evening. Grace then entered with them into +Melbury's wing of the house, and sat down listlessly in the parlor, +while her step-mother went to Fitzpiers. + +The prompt obedience to her wishes which the surgeon showed did honor +to him, if anything could. Before Mrs. Melbury had returned to the +room Grace, who was sitting on the parlor window-bench, saw her husband +go from the door under the increasing light of morning, with a bag in +his hand. While passing through the gate he turned his head. The +firelight of the room she sat in threw her figure into dark relief +against the window as she looked through the panes, and he must have +seen her distinctly. In a moment he went on, the gate fell to, and he +disappeared. At the hut she had declared that another had displaced +him; and now she had banished him. + + + +CHAPTER XLIV. + +Fitzpiers had hardly been gone an hour when Grace began to sicken. The +next day she kept her room. Old Jones was called in; he murmured some +statements in which the words "feverish symptoms" occurred. Grace +heard them, and guessed the means by which she had brought this +visitation upon herself. + +One day, while she still lay there with her head throbbing, wondering +if she were really going to join him who had gone before, Grammer +Oliver came to her bedside. "I don't know whe'r this is meant for you +to take, ma'am," she said, "but I have found it on the table. It was +left by Marty, I think, when she came this morning." + +Grace turned her hot eyes upon what Grammer held up. It was the phial +left at the hut by her husband when he had begged her to take some +drops of its contents if she wished to preserve herself from falling a +victim to the malady which had pulled down Winterborne. She examined +it as well as she could. The liquid was of an opaline hue, and bore a +label with an inscription in Italian. He had probably got it in his +wanderings abroad. She knew but little Italian, but could understand +that the cordial was a febrifuge of some sort. Her father, her mother, +and all the household were anxious for her recovery, and she resolved +to obey her husband's directions. Whatever the risk, if any, she was +prepared to run it. A glass of water was brought, and the drops +dropped in. + +The effect, though not miraculous, was remarkable. In less than an +hour she felt calmer, cooler, better able to reflect--less inclined to +fret and chafe and wear herself away. She took a few drops more. From +that time the fever retreated, and went out like a damped conflagration. + +"How clever he is!" she said, regretfully. "Why could he not have had +more principle, so as to turn his great talents to good account? +Perhaps he has saved my useless life. But he doesn't know it, and +doesn't care whether he has saved it or not; and on that account will +never be told by me! Probably he only gave it to me in the arrogance of +his skill, to show the greatness of his resources beside mine, as +Elijah drew down fire from heaven." + +As soon as she had quite recovered from this foiled attack upon her +life, Grace went to Marty South's cottage. The current of her being +had again set towards the lost Giles Winterborne. + +"Marty," she said, "we both loved him. We will go to his grave +together." + +Great Hintock church stood at the upper part of the village, and could +be reached without passing through the street. In the dusk of the late +September day they went thither by secret ways, walking mostly in +silence side by side, each busied with her own thoughts. Grace had a +trouble exceeding Marty's--that haunting sense of having put out the +light of his life by her own hasty doings. She had tried to persuade +herself that he might have died of his illness, even if she had not +taken possession of his house. Sometimes she succeeded in her attempt; +sometimes she did not. + +They stood by the grave together, and though the sun had gone down, +they could see over the woodland for miles, and down to the vale in +which he had been accustomed to descend every year, with his portable +mill and press, to make cider about this time. + +Perhaps Grace's first grief, the discovery that if he had lived he +could never have claimed her, had some power in softening this, the +second. On Marty's part there was the same consideration; never would +she have been his. As no anticipation of gratified affection had been +in existence while he was with them, there was none to be disappointed +now that he had gone. + +Grace was abased when, by degrees, she found that she had never +understood Giles as Marty had done. Marty South alone, of all the +women in Hintock and the world, had approximated to Winterborne's level +of intelligent intercourse with nature. In that respect she had formed +the complement to him in the other sex, had lived as his counterpart, +had subjoined her thought to his as a corollary. + +The casual glimpses which the ordinary population bestowed upon that +wondrous world of sap and leaves called the Hintock woods had been with +these two, Giles and Marty, a clear gaze. They had been possessed of +its finer mysteries as of commonplace knowledge; had been able to read +its hieroglyphs as ordinary writing; to them the sights and sounds of +night, winter, wind, storm, amid those dense boughs, which had to Grace +a touch of the uncanny, and even the supernatural, were simple +occurrences whose origin, continuance, and laws they foreknew. They +had planted together, and together they had felled; together they had, +with the run of the years, mentally collected those remoter signs and +symbols which, seen in few, were of runic obscurity, but all together +made an alphabet. From the light lashing of the twigs upon their faces, +when brushing through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the +species of the tree whence they stretched; from the quality of the +wind's murmur through a bough they could in like manner name its sort +afar off. They knew by a glance at a trunk if its heart were sound, or +tainted with incipient decay, and by the state of its upper twigs, the +stratum that had been reached by its roots. The artifices of the +seasons were seen by them from the conjuror's own point of view, and +not from that of the spectator's. + +"He ought to have married YOU, Marty, and nobody else in the world!" +said Grace, with conviction, after thinking somewhat in the above +strain. + +Marty shook her head. "In all our out-door days and years together, +ma'am," she replied, "the one thing he never spoke of to me was love; +nor I to him." + +"Yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody else knew--not even +my father, though he came nearest knowing--the tongue of the trees and +fruits and flowers themselves." + +She could indulge in mournful fancies like this to Marty; but the hard +core to her grief--which Marty's had not--remained. Had she been sure +that Giles's death resulted entirely from his exposure, it would have +driven her well-nigh to insanity; but there was always that bare +possibility that his exposure had only precipitated what was +inevitable. She longed to believe that it had not done even this. + +There was only one man whose opinion on the circumstances she would be +at all disposed to trust. Her husband was that man. Yet to ask him it +would be necessary to detail the true conditions in which she and +Winterborne had lived during these three or four critical days that +followed her flight; and in withdrawing her original defiant +announcement on that point, there seemed a weakness she did not care to +show. She never doubted that Fitzpiers would believe her if she made a +clean confession of the actual situation; but to volunteer the +correction would seem like signalling for a truce, and that, in her +present frame of mind, was what she did not feel the need of. + + +It will probably not appear a surprising statement, after what has been +already declared of Fitzpiers, that the man whom Grace's fidelity could +not keep faithful was stung into passionate throbs of interest +concerning her by her avowal of the contrary. + +He declared to himself that he had never known her dangerously full +compass if she were capable of such a reprisal; and, melancholy as it +may be to admit the fact, his own humiliation and regret engendered a +smouldering admiration of her. + +He passed a month or two of great misery at Exbury, the place to which +he had retired--quite as much misery indeed as Grace, could she have +known of it, would have been inclined to inflict upon any living +creature, how much soever he might have wronged her. Then a sudden +hope dawned upon him; he wondered if her affirmation were true. He +asked himself whether it were not the act of a woman whose natural +purity and innocence had blinded her to the contingencies of such an +announcement. His wide experience of the sex had taught him that, in +many cases, women who ventured on hazardous matters did so because they +lacked an imagination sensuous enough to feel their full force. In +this light Grace's bold avowal might merely have denoted the +desperation of one who was a child to the realities of obliquity. + +Fitzpiers's mental sufferings and suspense led him at last to take a +melancholy journey to the neighborhood of Little Hintock; and here he +hovered for hours around the scene of the purest emotional experiences +that he had ever known in his life. He walked about the woods that +surrounded Melbury's house, keeping out of sight like a criminal. It +was a fine evening, and on his way homeward he passed near Marty +South's cottage. As usual she had lighted her candle without closing +her shutters; he saw her within as he had seen her many times before. + +She was polishing tools, and though he had not wished to show himself, +he could not resist speaking in to her through the half-open door. +"What are you doing that for, Marty?" + +"Because I want to clean them. They are not mine." He could see, +indeed, that they were not hers, for one was a spade, large and heavy, +and another was a bill-hook which she could only have used with both +hands. The spade, though not a new one, had been so completely +burnished that it was bright as silver. + +Fitzpiers somehow divined that they were Giles Winterborne's, and he +put the question to her. + +She replied in the affirmative. "I am going to keep 'em," she said, +"but I can't get his apple-mill and press. I wish could; it is going +to be sold, they say." + +"Then I will buy it for you," said Fitzpiers. "That will be making you +a return for a kindness you did me." His glance fell upon the girl's +rare-colored hair, which had grown again. "Oh, Marty, those locks of +yours--and that letter! But it was a kindness to send it, +nevertheless," he added, musingly. + +After this there was confidence between them--such confidence as there +had never been before. Marty was shy, indeed, of speaking about the +letter, and her motives in writing it; but she thanked him warmly for +his promise of the cider-press. She would travel with it in the autumn +season, as he had done, she said. She would be quite strong enough, +with old Creedle as an assistant. + +"Ah! there was one nearer to him than you," said Fitzpiers, referring +to Winterborne. "One who lived where he lived, and was with him when +he died." + +Then Marty, suspecting that he did not know the true circumstances, +from the fact that Mrs. Fitzpiers and himself were living apart, told +him of Giles's generosity to Grace in giving up his house to her at the +risk, and possibly the sacrifice, of his own life. When the surgeon +heard it he almost envied Giles his chivalrous character. He expressed +a wish to Marty that his visit to her should be kept secret, and went +home thoughtful, feeling that in more that one sense his journey to +Hintock had not been in vain. + +He would have given much to win Grace's forgiveness then. But whatever +he dared hope for in that kind from the future, there was nothing to be +done yet, while Giles Winterborne's memory was green. To wait was +imperative. A little time might melt her frozen thoughts, and lead her +to look on him with toleration, if not with love. + + + +CHAPTER XLV. + +Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had been passed by Grace +in the soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she and Marty had +devoted themselves. Twice a week the pair went in the dusk to Great +Hintock, and, like the two mourners in Cymbeline, sweetened his sad +grave with their flowers and their tears. Sometimes Grace thought that +it was a pity neither one of them had been his wife for a little while, +and given the world a copy of him who was so valuable in their eyes. +Nothing ever had brought home to her with such force as this death how +little acquirements and culture weigh beside sterling personal +character. While her simple sorrow for his loss took a softer edge with +the lapse of the autumn and winter seasons, her self-reproach at having +had a possible hand in causing it knew little abatement. + +Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the fall and decay of +the leaf. Discussion of the almost contemporaneous death of Mrs. +Charmond abroad had waxed and waned. Fitzpiers had had a marvellous +escape from being dragged into the inquiry which followed it, through +the accident of their having parted just before under the influence of +Marty South's letter--the tiny instrument of a cause deep in nature. + +Her body was not brought home. It seemed to accord well with the +fitful fever of that impassioned woman's life that she should not have +found a native grave. She had enjoyed but a life-interest in the +estate, which, after her death, passed to a relative of her +husband's--one who knew not Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be to +blot out every vestige of her. + +On a certain day in February--the cheerful day of St. Valentine, in +fact--a letter reached Mrs. Fitzpiers, which had been mentally promised +her for that particular day a long time before. + +It announced that Fitzpiers was living at some midland town, where he +had obtained a temporary practice as assistant to some local medical +man, whose curative principles were all wrong, though he dared not set +them right. He had thought fit to communicate with her on that day of +tender traditions to inquire if, in the event of his obtaining a +substantial practice that he had in view elsewhere, she could forget +the past and bring herself to join him. + +There the practical part ended; he then went on-- + + +"My last year of experience has added ten years to my age, dear Grace +and dearest wife that ever erring man undervalued. You may be +absolutely indifferent to what I say, but let me say it: I have never +loved any woman alive or dead as I love, respect, and honor you at this +present moment. What you told me in the pride and haughtiness of your +heart I never believed [this, by the way, was not strictly true]; but +even if I had believed it, it could never have estranged me from you. +Is there any use in telling you--no, there is not--that I dream of your +ripe lips more frequently than I say my prayers; that the old familiar +rustle of your dress often returns upon my mind till it distracts me? +If you could condescend even only to see me again you would be +breathing life into a corpse. My pure, pure Grace, modest as a +turtledove, how came I ever to possess you? For the sake of being +present in your mind on this lovers' day, I think I would almost rather +have you hate me a little than not think of me at all. You may call my +fancies whimsical; but remember, sweet, lost one, that 'nature is one +in love, and where 'tis fine it sends some instance of itself.' I will +not intrude upon you further now. Make me a little bit happy by +sending back one line to say that you will consent, at any rate, to a +short interview. I will meet you and leave you as a mere acquaintance, +if you will only afford me this slight means of making a few +explanations, and of putting my position before you. Believe me, in +spite of all you may do or feel, + +Your lover always (once your husband), + + "E." + + +It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first on which +Grace had ever received a love-letter from him, his courtship having +taken place under conditions which rendered letter-writing unnecessary. +Its perusal, therefore, had a certain novelty for her. She thought +that, upon the whole, he wrote love-letters very well. But the chief +rational interest of the letter to the reflective Grace lay in the +chance that such a meeting as he proposed would afford her of setting +her doubts at rest, one way or the other, on her actual share in +Winterborne's death. The relief of consulting a skilled mind, the one +professional man who had seen Giles at that time, would be immense. As +for that statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which +at the time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared to +admit to him that his belief was the true one; for in wronging herself +as she did when she made it, she had done what to her was a far more +serious thing, wronged Winterborne's memory. + +Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or out of it, +Grace replied to the letter. She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on two +conditions, of which the first was that the place of meeting should be +the top of Rubdown Hill, the second that he would not object to Marty +South accompanying her. + +Whatever part, much or little, there may have been in Fitzpiers's +so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the bursting +of spring when her brief reply came. It was one of the few pleasures +that he had experienced of late years at all resembling those of his +early youth. He promptly replied that he accepted the conditions, and +named the day and hour at which he would be on the spot she mentioned. + +A few minutes before three on the appointed day found him climbing the +well-known hill, which had been the axis of so many critical movements +in their lives during his residence at Hintock. + +The sight of each homely and well-remembered object swelled the regret +that seldom left him now. Whatever paths might lie open to his future, +the soothing shades of Hintock were forbidden him forever as a +permanent dwelling-place. + +He longed for the society of Grace. But to lay offerings on her +slighted altar was his first aim, and until her propitiation was +complete he would constrain her in no way to return to him. The least +reparation that he could make, in a case where he would gladly have +made much, would be to let her feel herself absolutely free to choose +between living with him and without him. + +Moreover, a subtlist in emotions, he cultivated as under glasses +strange and mournful pleasures that he would not willingly let die just +at present. To show any forwardness in suggesting a modus vivendi to +Grace would be to put an end to these exotics. To be the vassal of her +sweet will for a time, he demanded no more, and found solace in the +contemplation of the soft miseries she caused him. + +Approaching the hill-top with a mind strung to these notions, Fitzpiers +discerned a gay procession of people coming over the crest, and was not +long in perceiving it to be a wedding-party. + +Though the wind was keen the women were in light attire, and the +flowered waistcoats of the men had a pleasing vividness of pattern. +Each of the gentler ones clung to the arm of her partner so tightly as +to have with him one step, rise, swing, gait, almost one centre of +gravity. In the buxom bride Fitzpiers recognized no other than Suke +Damson, who in her light gown looked a giantess; the small husband +beside her he saw to be Tim Tangs. + +Fitzpiers could not escape, for they had seen him; though of all the +beauties of the world whom he did not wish to meet Suke was the chief. +But he put the best face on the matter that he could and came on, the +approaching company evidently discussing him and his separation from +Mrs. Fitzpiers. As the couples closed upon him he expressed his +congratulations. + +"We be just walking round the parishes to show ourselves a bit," said +Tim. "First we het across to Delborough, then athwart to here, and +from here we go to Rubdown and Millshot, and then round by the +cross-roads home. Home says I, but it won't be that long! We be off +next month." + +"Indeed. Where to?" + +Tim informed him that they were going to New Zealand. Not but that he +would have been contented with Hintock, but his wife was ambitious and +wanted to leave, so he had given way. + +"Then good-by," said Fitzpiers; "I may not see you again." He shook +hands with Tim and turned to the bride. "Good-by, Suke," he said, +taking her hand also. "I wish you and your husband prosperity in the +country you have chosen." With this he left them, and hastened on to +his appointment. + +The wedding-party re-formed and resumed march likewise. But in +restoring his arm to Suke, Tim noticed that her full and blooming +countenance had undergone a change. "Holloa! me dear--what's the +matter?" said Tim. + +"Nothing to speak o'," said she. But to give the lie to her assertion +she was seized with lachrymose twitches, that soon produced a dribbling +face. + +"How--what the devil's this about!" exclaimed the bridegroom. + +"She's a little wee bit overcome, poor dear!" said the first +bridesmaid, unfolding her handkerchief and wiping Suke's eyes. + +"I never did like parting from people!" said Suke, as soon as she could +speak. + +"Why him in particular?" + +"Well--he's such a clever doctor, that 'tis a thousand pities we +sha'n't see him any more! There'll be no such clever doctor as he in +New Zealand, if I should require one; and the thought o't got the +better of my feelings!" + +They walked on, but Tim's face had grown rigid and pale, for he +recalled slight circumstances, disregarded at the time of their +occurrence. The former boisterous laughter of the wedding-party at the +groomsman's jokes was heard ringing through the woods no more. + +By this time Fitzpiers had advanced on his way to the top of the hill, +where he saw two figures emerging from the bank on the right hand. +These were the expected ones, Grace and Marty South, who had evidently +come there by a short and secret path through the wood. Grace was +muffled up in her winter dress, and he thought that she had never +looked so seductive as at this moment, in the noontide bright but +heatless sun, and the keen wind, and the purplish-gray masses of +brushwood around. + +Fitzpiers continued to regard the nearing picture, till at length their +glances met for a moment, when she demurely sent off hers at a tangent +and gave him the benefit of her three-quarter face, while with +courteous completeness of conduct he lifted his hat in a large arc. +Marty dropped behind; and when Fitzpiers held out his hand, Grace +touched it with her fingers. + +"I have agreed to be here mostly because I wanted to ask you something +important," said Mrs. Fitzpiers, her intonation modulating in a +direction that she had not quite wished it to take. + +"I am most attentive," said her husband. "Shall we take to the wood +for privacy?" + +Grace demurred, and Fitzpiers gave in, and they kept the public road. + +At any rate she would take his arm? This also was gravely negatived, +the refusal being audible to Marty. + +"Why not?" he inquired. + +"Oh, Mr. Fitzpiers--how can you ask?" + +"Right, right," said he, his effusiveness shrivelled up. + +As they walked on she returned to her inquiry. "It is about a matter +that may perhaps be unpleasant to you. But I think I need not consider +that too carefully." + +"Not at all," said Fitzpiers, heroically. + +She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne's death, and +related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness had come +upon him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to which he had +betaken himself, his concealment from her of the hardships that he was +undergoing, all that he had put up with, all that he had done for her +in his scrupulous considerateness. The retrospect brought her to tears +as she asked him if he thought that the sin of having driven him to his +death was upon her. + +Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her +narrative indirectly revealed, the actual harmlessness of an escapade +with her lover, which had at first, by her own showing, looked so +grave, and he did not care to inquire whether that harmlessness had +been the result of aim or of accident. With regard to her question, he +declared that in his judgment no human being could answer it. He +thought that upon the whole the balance of probabilities turned in her +favor. Winterborne's apparent strength, during the last months of his +life, must have been delusive. It had often occurred that after a +first attack of that insidious disease a person's apparent recovery was +a physiological mendacity. + +The relief which came to Grace lay almost as much in sharing her +knowledge of the particulars with an intelligent mind as in the +assurances Fitzpiers gave her. "Well, then, to put this case before +you, and obtain your professional opinion, was chiefly why I consented +to come here to-day," said she, when he had reached the aforesaid +conclusion. + +"For no other reason at all?" he asked, ruefully. + +"It was nearly the whole." + +They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty starlings feeding +in the grass, and he started the talk again by saying, in a low voice, +"And yet I love you more than ever I loved you in my life." + +Grace did not move her eyes from the birds, and folded her delicate +lips as if to keep them in subjection. + +"It is a different kind of love altogether," said he. "Less +passionate; more profound. It has nothing to do with the material +conditions of the object at all; much to do with her character and +goodness, as revealed by closer observation. 'Love talks with better +knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.'" + +"That's out of 'Measure for Measure,'" said she, slyly. + +"Oh yes--I meant it as a citation," blandly replied Fitzpiers. "Well, +then, why not give me a very little bit of your heart again?" + +The crash of a felled tree in the remote depths of the wood recalled +the past at that moment, and all the homely faithfulness of +Winterborne. "Don't ask it! My heart is in the grave with Giles," she +replied, stanchly. + +"Mine is with you--in no less deep a grave, I fear, according to that." + +"I am very sorry; but it cannot be helped." + +"How can you be sorry for me, when you wilfully keep open the grave?" + +"Oh no--that's not so," returned Grace, quickly, and moved to go away +from him. + +"But, dearest Grace," said he, "you have condescended to come; and I +thought from it that perhaps when I had passed through a long state of +probation you would be generous. But if there can be no hope of our +getting completely reconciled, treat me gently--wretch though I am." + +"I did not say you were a wretch, nor have I ever said so." + +"But you have such a contemptuous way of looking at me that I fear you +think so." + +Grace's heart struggled between the wish not to be harsh and the fear +that she might mislead him. "I cannot look contemptuous unless I feel +contempt," she said, evasively. "And all I feel is lovelessness." + +"I have been very bad, I know," he returned. "But unless you can +really love me again, Grace, I would rather go away from you forever. +I don't want you to receive me again for duty's sake, or anything of +that sort. If I had not cared more for your affection and forgiveness +than my own personal comfort, I should never have come back here. I +could have obtained a practice at a distance, and have lived my own +life without coldness or reproach. But I have chosen to return to the +one spot on earth where my name is tarnished--to enter the house of a +man from whom I have had worse treatment than from any other man +alive--all for you!" + +This was undeniably true, and it had its weight with Grace, who began +to look as if she thought she had been shockingly severe. + +"Before you go," he continued, "I want to know your pleasure about +me--what you wish me to do, or not to do." + +"You are independent of me, and it seems a mockery to ask that. Far be +it from me to advise. But I will think it over. I rather need advice +myself than stand in a position to give it." + +"YOU don't need advice, wisest, dearest woman that ever lived. If you +did--" + +"Would you give it to me?" + +"Would you act upon what I gave?" + +"That's not a fair inquiry," said she, smiling despite her gravity. "I +don't mind hearing it--what you do really think the most correct and +proper course for me." + +"It is so easy for me to say, and yet I dare not, for it would be +provoking you to remonstrances." + +Knowing, of course, what the advice would be, she did not press him +further, and was about to beckon Marty forward and leave him, when he +interrupted her with, "Oh, one moment, dear Grace--you will meet me +again?" + +She eventually agreed to see him that day fortnight. Fitzpiers +expostulated at the interval, but the half-alarmed earnestness with +which she entreated him not to come sooner made him say hastily that he +submitted to her will--that he would regard her as a friend only, +anxious for his reform and well-being, till such time as she might +allow him to exceed that privilege. + +All this was to assure her; it was only too clear that he had not won +her confidence yet. It amazed Fitzpiers, and overthrew all his +deductions from previous experience, to find that this girl, though she +had been married to him, could yet be so coy. Notwithstanding a certain +fascination that it carried with it, his reflections were sombre as he +went homeward; he saw how deep had been his offence to produce so great +a wariness in a gentle and once unsuspicious soul. + +He was himself too fastidious to care to coerce her. To be an object +of misgiving or dislike to a woman who shared his home was what he +could not endure the thought of. Life as it stood was more tolerable. + +When he was gone, Marty joined Mrs. Fitzpiers. She would fain have +consulted Marty on the question of Platonic relations with her former +husband, as she preferred to regard him. But Marty showed no great +interest in their affairs, so Grace said nothing. They came onward, and +saw Melbury standing at the scene of the felling which had been audible +to them, when, telling Marty that she wished her meeting with Mr. +Fitzpiers to be kept private, she left the girl to join her father. At +any rate, she would consult him on the expediency of occasionally +seeing her husband. + +Her father was cheerful, and walked by her side as he had done in +earlier days. "I was thinking of you when you came up," he said. "I +have considered that what has happened is for the best. Since your +husband is gone away, and seems not to wish to trouble you, why, let +him go, and drop out of your life. Many women are worse off. You can +live here comfortably enough, and he can emigrate, or do what he likes +for his good. I wouldn't mind sending him the further sum of money he +might naturally expect to come to him, so that you may not be bothered +with him any more. He could hardly have gone on living here without +speaking to me, or meeting me; and that would have been very unpleasant +on both sides." + +These remarks checked her intention. There was a sense of weakness in +following them by saying that she had just met her husband by +appointment. "Then you would advise me not to communicate with him?" +she observed. + +"I shall never advise ye again. You are your own mistress--do as you +like. But my opinion is that if you don't live with him, you had +better live without him, and not go shilly-shallying and playing +bopeep. You sent him away; and now he's gone. Very well; trouble him +no more." + +Grace felt a guiltiness--she hardly knew why--and made no confession. + + + +CHAPTER XLVI. + +The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed in-doors a great deal. +She became quite a student, reading more than she had done since her +marriage But her seclusion was always broken for the periodical visit +to Winterborne's grave with Marty, which was kept up with pious +strictness, for the purpose of putting snow-drops, primroses, and other +vernal flowers thereon as they came. + +One afternoon at sunset she was standing just outside her father's +garden, which, like the rest of the Hintock enclosures, abutted into +the wood. A slight foot-path led along here, forming a secret way to +either of the houses by getting through its boundary hedge. Grace was +just about to adopt this mode of entry when a figure approached along +the path, and held up his hand to detain her. It was her husband. + +"I am delighted," he said, coming up out of breath; and there seemed no +reason to doubt his words. "I saw you some way off--I was afraid you +would go in before I could reach you." + +"It is a week before the time," said she, reproachfully. "I said a +fortnight from the last meeting." + +"My dear, you don't suppose I could wait a fortnight without trying to +get a glimpse of you, even though you had declined to meet me! Would it +make you angry to know that I have been along this path at dusk three +or four times since our last meeting? Well, how are you?" + +She did not refuse her hand, but when he showed a wish to retain it a +moment longer than mere formality required, she made it smaller, so +that it slipped away from him, with again that same alarmed look which +always followed his attempts in this direction. He saw that she was not +yet out of the elusive mood; not yet to be treated presumingly; and he +was correspondingly careful to tranquillize her. + +His assertion had seemed to impress her somewhat. "I had no idea you +came so often," she said. "How far do you come from?" + +"From Exbury. I always walk from Sherton-Abbas, for if I hire, people +will know that I come; and my success with you so far has not been +great enough to justify such overtness. Now, my dear one--as I MUST +call you--I put it to you: will you see me a little oftener as the +spring advances?" + +Grace lapsed into unwonted sedateness, and avoiding the question, said, +"I wish you would concentrate on your profession, and give up those +strange studies that used to distract you so much. I am sure you would +get on." + +"It is the very thing I am doing. I was going to ask you to burn--or, +at least, get rid of--all my philosophical literature. It is in the +bookcases in your rooms. The fact is, I never cared much for abstruse +studies." + +"I am so glad to hear you say that. And those other books--those piles +of old plays--what good are they to a medical man?" + +"None whatever!" he replied, cheerfully. "Sell them at Sherton for +what they will fetch." + +"And those dreadful old French romances, with their horrid spellings of +'filz' and 'ung' and 'ilz' and 'mary' and 'ma foy?'" + +"You haven't been reading them, Grace?" + +"Oh no--I just looked into them, that was all." + +"Make a bonfire of 'em directly you get home. I meant to do it myself. +I can't think what possessed me ever to collect them. I have only a +few professional hand-books now, and am quite a practical man. I am in +hopes of having some good news to tell you soon, and then do you think +you could--come to me again?" + +"I would rather you did not press me on that just now," she replied, +with some feeling. "You have said you mean to lead a new, useful, +effectual life; but I should like to see you put it in practice for a +little while before you address that query to me. Besides--I could not +live with you." + +"Why not?" + +Grace was silent a few instants. "I go with Marty to Giles's grave. +We swore we would show him that devotion. And I mean to keep it up." + +"Well, I wouldn't mind that at all. I have no right to expect anything +else, and I will not wish you to keep away. I liked the man as well as +any I ever knew. In short, I would accompany you a part of the way to +the place, and smoke a cigar on the stile while I waited till you came +back." + +"Then you haven't given up smoking?" + +"Well--ahem--no. I have thought of doing so, but--" + +His extreme complacence had rather disconcerted Grace, and the question +about smoking had been to effect a diversion. Presently she said, +firmly, and with a moisture in her eye that he could not see, as her +mind returned to poor Giles's "frustrate ghost," "I don't like you--to +speak lightly on that subject, if you did speak lightly. To be frank +with you--quite frank--I think of him as my betrothed lover still. I +cannot help it. So that it would be wrong for me to join you." + +Fitzpiers was now uneasy. "You say your betrothed lover still," he +rejoined. "When, then, were you betrothed to him, or engaged, as we +common people say?" + +"When you were away." + +"How could that be?" + +Grace would have avoided this; but her natural candor led her on. "It +was when I was under the impression that my marriage with you was about +to be annulled, and that he could then marry me. So I encouraged him +to love me." + +Fitzpiers winced visibly; and yet, upon the whole, she was right in +telling it. Indeed, his perception that she was right in her absolute +sincerity kept up his affectionate admiration for her under the pain of +the rebuff. Time had been when the avowal that Grace had deliberately +taken steps to replace him would have brought him no sorrow. But she +so far dominated him now that he could not bear to hear her words, +although the object of her high regard was no more. + +"It is rough upon me--that!" he said, bitterly. "Oh, Grace--I did not +know you--tried to get rid of me! I suppose it is of no use, but I +ask, cannot you hope to--find a little love in your heart for me again?" + +"If I could I would oblige you; but I fear I cannot!" she replied, with +illogical ruefulness. "And I don't see why you should mind my having +had one lover besides yourself in my life, when you have had so many." + +"But I can tell you honestly that I love you better than all of them +put together, and that's what you will not tell me!" + +"I am sorry; but I fear I cannot," she said, sighing again. + +"I wonder if you ever will?" He looked musingly into her indistinct +face, as if he would read the future there. "Now have pity, and tell +me: will you try?" + +"To love you again?" + +"Yes; if you can." + +"I don't know how to reply," she answered, her embarrassment proving +her truth. "Will you promise to leave me quite free as to seeing you +or not seeing you?" + +"Certainly. Have I given any ground for you to doubt my first promise +in that respect?" + +She was obliged to admit that he had not. + +"Then I think that you might get your heart out of that grave," said +he, with playful sadness. "It has been there a long time." + +She faintly shook her head, but said, "I'll try to think of you +more--if I can." + +With this Fitzpiers was compelled to be satisfied, and he asked her +when she would meet him again. + +"As we arranged--in a fortnight." + +"If it must be a fortnight it must!" + +"This time at least. I'll consider by the day I see you again if I can +shorten the interval." + +"Well, be that as it may, I shall come at least twice a week to look at +your window." + +"You must do as you like about that. Good-night." + +"Say 'husband.'" + +She seemed almost inclined to give him the word; but exclaiming, "No, +no; I cannot," slipped through the garden-hedge and disappeared. + + +Fitzpiers did not exaggerate when he told her that he should haunt the +precincts of the dwelling. But his persistence in this course did not +result in his seeing her much oftener than at the fortnightly interval +which she had herself marked out as proper. At these times, however, +she punctually appeared, and as the spring wore on the meetings were +kept up, though their character changed but little with the increase in +their number. + +The small garden of the cottage occupied by the Tangs family--father, +son, and now son's wife--aligned with the larger one of the +timber-dealer at its upper end; and when young Tim, after leaving work +at Melbury's, stood at dusk in the little bower at the corner of his +enclosure to smoke a pipe, he frequently observed the surgeon pass +along the outside track before-mentioned. Fitzpiers always walked +loiteringly, pensively, looking with a sharp eye into the gardens one +after another as he proceeded; for Fitzpiers did not wish to leave the +now absorbing spot too quickly, after travelling so far to reach it; +hoping always for a glimpse of her whom he passionately desired to take +to his arms anew. + +Now Tim began to be struck with these loitering progresses along the +garden boundaries in the gloaming, and wondered what they boded. It +was, naturally, quite out of his power to divine the singular, +sentimental revival in Fitzpiers's heart; the fineness of tissue which +could take a deep, emotional--almost also an artistic--pleasure in +being the yearning inamorato of a woman he once had deserted, would +have seemed an absurdity to the young sawyer. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers +were separated; therefore the question of affection as between them was +settled. But his Suke had, since that meeting on their marriage-day, +repentantly admitted, to the urgency of his questioning, a good deal +concerning her past levities. Putting all things together, he could +hardly avoid connecting Fitzpiers's mysterious visits to this spot with +Suke's residence under his roof. But he made himself fairly easy: the +vessel in which they were about to emigrate sailed that month; and then +Suke would be out of Fitzpiers's way forever. + +The interval at last expired, and the eve of their departure arrived. +They were pausing in the room of the cottage allotted to them by Tim's +father, after a busy day of preparation, which left them weary. In a +corner stood their boxes, crammed and corded, their large case for the +hold having already been sent away. The firelight shone upon Suke's +fine face and form as she stood looking into it, and upon the face of +Tim seated in a corner, and upon the walls of his father's house, which +he was beholding that night almost for the last time. + +Tim Tangs was not happy. This scheme of emigration was dividing him +from his father--for old Tangs would on no account leave Hintock--and +had it not been for Suke's reputation and his own dignity, Tim would at +the last moment have abandoned the project. As he sat in the back part +of the room he regarded her moodily, and the fire and the boxes. One +thing he had particularly noticed this evening--she was very restless; +fitful in her actions, unable to remain seated, and in a marked degree +depressed. + +"Sorry that you be going, after all, Suke?" he said. + +She sighed involuntarily. "I don't know but that I be," she answered. +"'Tis natural, isn't it, when one is going away?" + +"But you wasn't born here as I was." + +"No." + +"There's folk left behind that you'd fain have with 'ee, I reckon?" + +"Why do you think that?" + +"I've seen things and I've heard things; and, Suke, I say 'twill be a +good move for me to get 'ee away. I don't mind his leavings abroad, +but I do mind 'em at home." + +Suke's face was not changed from its aspect of listless indifference by +the words. She answered nothing; and shortly after he went out for his +customary pipe of tobacco at the top of the garden. + +The restlessness of Suke had indeed owed its presence to the gentleman +of Tim's suspicions, but in a different--and it must be added in +justice to her--more innocent sense than he supposed, judging from +former doings. She had accidentally discovered that Fitzpiers was in +the habit of coming secretly once or twice a week to Hintock, and knew +that this evening was a favorite one of the seven for his journey. As +she was going next day to leave the country, Suke thought there could +be no great harm in giving way to a little sentimentality by obtaining +a glimpse of him quite unknown to himself or to anybody, and thus +taking a silent last farewell. Aware that Fitzpiers's time for passing +was at hand she thus betrayed her feeling. No sooner, therefore, had +Tim left the room than she let herself noiselessly out of the house, +and hastened to the corner of the garden, whence she could witness the +surgeon's transit across the scene--if he had not already gone by. + +Her light cotton dress was visible to Tim lounging in the arbor of the +opposite corner, though he was hidden from her. He saw her stealthily +climb into the hedge, and so ensconce herself there that nobody could +have the least doubt her purpose was to watch unseen for a passer-by. + +He went across to the spot and stood behind her. Suke started, having +in her blundering way forgotten that he might be near. She at once +descended from the hedge. + +"So he's coming to-night," said Tim, laconically. "And we be always +anxious to see our dears." + +"He IS coming to-night," she replied, with defiance. "And we BE +anxious for our dears." + +"Then will you step in-doors, where your dear will soon jine 'ee? We've +to mouster by half-past three to-morrow, and if we don't get to bed by +eight at latest our faces will be as long as clock-cases all day." + +She hesitated for a minute, but ultimately obeyed, going slowly down +the garden to the house, where he heard the door-latch click behind her. + +Tim was incensed beyond measure. His marriage had so far been a total +failure, a source of bitter regret; and the only course for improving +his case, that of leaving the country, was a sorry, and possibly might +not be a very effectual one. Do what he would, his domestic sky was +likely to be overcast to the end of the day. Thus he brooded, and his +resentment gathered force. He craved a means of striking one blow back +at the cause of his cheerless plight, while he was still on the scene +of his discomfiture. For some minutes no method suggested itself, and +then he had an idea. + +Coming to a sudden resolution, he hastened along the garden, and +entered the one attached to the next cottage, which had formerly been +the dwelling of a game-keeper. Tim descended the path to the back of +the house, where only an old woman lived at present, and reaching the +wall he stopped. Owing to the slope of the ground the roof-eaves of +the linhay were here within touch, and he thrust his arm up under them, +feeling about in the space on the top of the wall-plate. + +"Ah, I thought my memory didn't deceive me!" he lipped silently. + +With some exertion he drew down a cobwebbed object curiously framed in +iron, which clanked as he moved it. It was about three feet in length +and half as wide. Tim contemplated it as well as he could in the dying +light of day, and raked off the cobwebs with his hand. + +"That will spoil his pretty shins for'n, I reckon!" he said. + +It was a man-trap. + + + +CHAPTER XLVII. + +Were the inventors of automatic machines to be ranged according to the +excellence of their devices for producing sound artistic torture, the +creator of the man-trap would occupy a very respectable if not a very +high place. + +It should rather, however, be said, the inventor of the particular form +of man-trap of which this found in the keeper's out-house was a +specimen. For there were other shapes and other sizes, instruments +which, if placed in a row beside one of the type disinterred by Tim, +would have worn the subordinate aspect of the bears, wild boars, or +wolves in a travelling menagerie, as compared with the leading lion or +tiger. In short, though many varieties had been in use during those +centuries which we are accustomed to look back upon as the true and +only period of merry England--in the rural districts more +especially--and onward down to the third decade of the nineteenth +century, this model had borne the palm, and had been most usually +followed when the orchards and estates required new ones. + +There had been the toothless variety used by the softer-hearted +landlords--quite contemptible in their clemency. The jaws of these +resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left nothing but +gums. There were also the intermediate or half-toothed sorts, +probably devised by the middle-natured squires, or those under the +influence of their wives: two inches of mercy, two inches of cruelty, +two inches of mere nip, two inches of probe, and so on, through the +whole extent of the jaws. There were also, as a class apart, the +bruisers, which did not lacerate the flesh, but only crushed the bone. + +The sight of one of these gins when set produced a vivid impression +that it was endowed with life. It exhibited the combined aspects of a +shark, a crocodile, and a scorpion. Each tooth was in the form of a +tapering spine, two and a quarter inches long, which, when the jaws +were closed, stood in alternation from this side and from that. When +they were open, the two halves formed a complete circle between two and +three feet in diameter, the plate or treading-place in the midst being +about a foot square, while from beneath extended in opposite directions +the soul of the apparatus, the pair of springs, each one being of a +stiffness to render necessary a lever or the whole weight of the body +when forcing it down. + +There were men at this time still living at Hintock who remembered when +the gin and others like it were in use. Tim Tangs's great-uncle had +endured a night of six hours in this very trap, which lamed him for +life. Once a keeper of Hintock woods set it on the track of a poacher, +and afterwards, coming back that way, forgetful of what he had done, +walked into it himself. The wound brought on lockjaw, of which he +died. This event occurred during the thirties, and by the year 1840 +the use of such implements was well-nigh discontinued in the +neighborhood. But being made entirely of iron, they by no means +disappeared, and in almost every village one could be found in some +nook or corner as readily as this was found by Tim. It had, indeed, +been a fearful amusement of Tim and other Hintock lads--especially +those who had a dim sense of becoming renowned poachers when they +reached their prime--to drag out this trap from its hiding, set it, and +throw it with billets of wood, which were penetrated by the teeth to +the depth of near an inch. + +As soon as he had examined the trap, and found that the hinges and +springs were still perfect, he shouldered it without more ado, and +returned with his burden to his own garden, passing on through the +hedge to the path immediately outside the boundary. Here, by the help +of a stout stake, he set the trap, and laid it carefully behind a bush +while he went forward to reconnoitre. As has been stated, nobody +passed this way for days together sometimes; but there was just a +possibility that some other pedestrian than the one in request might +arrive, and it behooved Tim to be careful as to the identity of his +victim. + +Going about a hundred yards along the rising ground to the right, he +reached a ridge whereon a large and thick holly grew. Beyond this for +some distance the wood was more open, and the course which Fitzpiers +must pursue to reach the point, if he came to-night, was visible a +long way forward. + +For some time there was no sign of him or of anybody. Then there +shaped itself a spot out of the dim mid-distance, between the masses of +brushwood on either hand. And it enlarged, and Tim could hear the +brushing of feet over the tufts of sour-grass. The airy gait revealed +Fitzpiers even before his exact outline could be seen. + +Tim Tangs turned about, and ran down the opposite side of the hill, +till he was again at the head of his own garden. It was the work of a +few moments to drag out the man-trap, very gently--that the plate might +not be disturbed sufficiently to throw it--to a space between a pair of +young oaks which, rooted in contiguity, grew apart upward, forming a +V-shaped opening between; and, being backed up by bushes, left this as +the only course for a foot-passenger. In it he laid the trap with the +same gentleness of handling, locked the chain round one of the trees, +and finally slid back the guard which was placed to keep the gin from +accidentally catching the arms of him who set it, or, to use the local +and better word, "toiled" it. + +Having completed these arrangements, Tim sprang through the adjoining +hedge of his father's garden, ran down the path, and softly entered the +house. + +Obedient to his order, Suke had gone to bed; and as soon as he had +bolted the door, Tim unlaced and kicked off his boots at the foot of +the stairs, and retired likewise, without lighting a candle. His object +seemed to be to undress as soon as possible. Before, however, he had +completed the operation, a long cry resounded without--penetrating, but +indescribable. + +"What's that?" said Suke, starting up in bed. + +"Sounds as if somebody had caught a hare in his gin." + +"Oh no," said she. "It was not a hare, 'twas louder. Hark!" + +"Do 'ee get to sleep," said Tim. "How be you going to wake at +half-past three else?" + +She lay down and was silent. Tim stealthily opened the window and +listened. Above the low harmonies produced by the instrumentation of +the various species of trees around the premises he could hear the +twitching of a chain from the spot whereon he had set the man-trap. +But further human sound there was none. + +Tim was puzzled. In the haste of his project he had not calculated +upon a cry; but if one, why not more? He soon ceased to essay an +answer, for Hintock was dead to him already. In half a dozen hours he +would be out of its precincts for life, on his way to the antipodes. +He closed the window and lay down. + + +The hour which had brought these movements of Tim to birth had been +operating actively elsewhere. Awaiting in her father's house the +minute of her appointment with her husband, Grace Fitzpiers deliberated +on many things. Should she inform her father before going out that the +estrangement of herself and Edgar was not so complete as he had +imagined, and deemed desirable for her happiness? If she did so she +must in some measure become the apologist of her husband, and she was +not prepared to go so far. + +As for him, he kept her in a mood of considerate gravity. He certainly +had changed. He had at his worst times always been gentle in his +manner towards her. Could it be that she might make of him a true and +worthy husband yet? She had married him; there was no getting over +that; and ought she any longer to keep him at a distance? His suave +deference to her lightest whim on the question of his comings and +goings, when as her lawful husband he might show a little independence, +was a trait in his character as unexpected as it was engaging. If she +had been his empress, and he her thrall, he could not have exhibited a +more sensitive care to avoid intruding upon her against her will. + +Impelled by a remembrance she took down a prayer-book and turned to the +marriage-service. Reading it slowly through, she became quite appalled +at her recent off-handedness, when she rediscovered what awfully solemn +promises she had made him at those chancel steps not so very long ago. + +She became lost in long ponderings on how far a person's conscience +might be bound by vows made without at the time a full recognition of +their force. That particular sentence, beginning "Whom God hath joined +together," was a staggerer for a gentlewoman of strong devotional +sentiment. She wondered whether God really did join them together. +Before she had done deliberating the time of her engagement drew near, +and she went out of the house almost at the moment that Tim Tangs +retired to his own. + +The position of things at that critical juncture was briefly as follows. + +Two hundred yards to the right of the upper end of Tangs's garden +Fitzpiers was still advancing, having now nearly reached the summit of +the wood-clothed ridge, the path being the actual one which further on +passed between the two young oaks. Thus far it was according to Tim's +conjecture. But about two hundred yards to the left, or rather less, +was arising a condition which he had not divined, the emergence of +Grace as aforesaid from the upper corner of her father's garden, with +the view of meeting Tim's intended victim. Midway between husband and +wife was the diabolical trap, silent, open, ready. + +Fitzpiers's walk that night had been cheerful, for he was convinced +that the slow and gentle method he had adopted was promising success. +The very restraint that he was obliged to exercise upon himself, so as +not to kill the delicate bud of returning confidence, fed his flame. +He walked so much more rapidly than Grace that, if they continued +advancing as they had begun, he would reach the trap a good half-minute +before she could reach the same spot. + +But here a new circumstance came in; to escape the unpleasantness of +being watched or listened to by lurkers--naturally curious by reason of +their strained relations--they had arranged that their meeting for +to-night should be at the holm-tree on the ridge above named. So soon, +accordingly, as Fitzpiers reached the tree he stood still to await her. + +He had not paused under the prickly foliage more than two minutes when +he thought he heard a scream from the other side of the ridge. +Fitzpiers wondered what it could mean; but such wind as there was just +now blew in an adverse direction, and his mood was light. He set down +the origin of the sound to one of the superstitious freaks or +frolicsome scrimmages between sweethearts that still survived in +Hintock from old-English times; and waited on where he stood till ten +minutes had passed. Feeling then a little uneasy, his mind reverted to +the scream; and he went forward over the summit and down the embowered +incline, till he reached the pair of sister oaks with the narrow +opening between them. + +Fitzpiers stumbled and all but fell. Stretching down his hand to +ascertain the obstruction, it came in contact with a confused mass of +silken drapery and iron-work that conveyed absolutely no explanatory +idea to his mind at all. It was but the work of a moment to strike a +match; and then he saw a sight which congealed his blood. + +The man-trap was thrown; and between its jaws was part of a woman's +clothing--a patterned silk skirt--gripped with such violence that the +iron teeth had passed through it, skewering its tissue in a score of +places. He immediately recognized the skirt as that of one of his +wife's gowns--the gown that she had worn when she met him on the very +last occasion. + +Fitzpiers had often studied the effect of these instruments when +examining the collection at Hintock House, and the conception instantly +flashed through him that Grace had been caught, taken out mangled by +some chance passer, and carried home, some of her clothes being left +behind in the difficulty of getting her free. The shock of this +conviction, striking into the very current of high hope, was so great +that he cried out like one in corporal agony, and in his misery bowed +himself down to the ground. + +Of all the degrees and qualities of punishment that Fitzpiers had +undergone since his sins against Grace first began, not any even +approximated in intensity to this. + +"Oh, my own--my darling! Oh, cruel Heaven--it is too much, this!" he +cried, writhing and rocking himself over the sorry accessaries of her +he deplored. + +The voice of his distress was sufficiently loud to be audible to any +one who might have been there to hear it; and one there was. Right and +left of the narrow pass between the oaks were dense bushes; and now +from behind these a female figure glided, whose appearance even in the +gloom was, though graceful in outline, noticeably strange. + +She was in white up to the waist, and figured above. She was, in +short, Grace, his wife, lacking the portion of her dress which the gin +retained. + +"Don't be grieved about me--don't, dear Edgar!" she exclaimed, rushing +up and bending over him. "I am not hurt a bit! I was coming on to find +you after I had released myself, but I heard footsteps; and I hid away, +because I was without some of my clothing, and I did not know who the +person might be." + +Fitzpiers had sprung to his feet, and his next act was no less +unpremeditated by him than it was irresistible by her, and would have +been so by any woman not of Amazonian strength. He clasped his arms +completely round, pressed her to his breast, and kissed her +passionately. + +"You are not dead!--you are not hurt! Thank God--thank God!" he said, +almost sobbing in his delight and relief from the horror of his +apprehension. "Grace, my wife, my love, how is this--what has +happened?" + +"I was coming on to you," she said as distinctly as she could in the +half-smothered state of her face against his. "I was trying to be as +punctual as possible, and as I had started a minute late I ran along +the path very swiftly--fortunately for myself. Just when I had passed +between these trees I felt something clutch at my dress from behind +with a noise, and the next moment I was pulled backward by it, and fell +to the ground. I screamed with terror, thinking it was a man lying +down there to murder me, but the next moment I discovered it was iron, +and that my clothes were caught in a trap. I pulled this way and that, +but the thing would not let go, drag it as I would, and I did not know +what to do. I did not want to alarm my father or anybody, as I wished +nobody to know of these meetings with you; so I could think of no other +plan than slipping off my skirt, meaning to run on and tell you what a +strange accident had happened to me. But when I had just freed myself +by leaving the dress behind, I heard steps, and not being sure it was +you, I did not like to be seen in such a pickle, so I hid away." + +"It was only your speed that saved you! One or both of your legs would +have been broken if you had come at ordinary walking pace." + +"Or yours, if you had got here first," said she, beginning to realize +the whole ghastliness of the possibility. "Oh, Edgar, there has been +an Eye watching over us to-night, and we should be thankful indeed!" + +He continued to press his face to hers. "You are mine--mine again now." + +She gently owned that she supposed she was. "I heard what you said +when you thought I was injured," she went on, shyly, "and I know that a +man who could suffer as you were suffering must have a tender regard +for me. But how does this awful thing come here?" + +"I suppose it has something to do with poachers." Fitzpiers was still +so shaken by the sense of her danger that he was obliged to sit awhile, +and it was not until Grace said, "If I could only get my skirt out +nobody would know anything about it," that he bestirred himself. + +By their united efforts, each standing on one of the springs of the +trap, they pressed them down sufficiently to insert across the jaws a +billet which they dragged from a faggot near at hand; and it was then +possible to extract the silk mouthful from the monster's bite, creased +and pierced with many holes, but not torn. Fitzpiers assisted her to +put it on again; and when her customary contours were thus restored +they walked on together, Grace taking his arm, till he effected an +improvement by clasping it round her waist. + +The ice having been broken in this unexpected manner, she made no +further attempt at reserve. "I would ask you to come into the house," +she said, "but my meetings with you have been kept secret from my +father, and I should like to prepare him." + +"Never mind, dearest. I could not very well have accepted the +invitation. I shall never live here again--as much for your sake as +for mine. I have news to tell you on this very point, but my alarm had +put it out of my head. I have bought a practice, or rather a +partnership, in the Midlands, and I must go there in a week to take up +permanent residence. My poor old great-aunt died about eight months +ago, and left me enough to do this. I have taken a little furnished +house for a time, till we can get one of our own." + +He described the place, and the surroundings, and the view from the +windows, and Grace became much interested. "But why are you not there +now?" she said. + +"Because I cannot tear myself away from here till I have your promise. +Now, darling, you will accompany me there--will you not? To-night has +settled that." + +Grace's tremblings had gone off, and she did not say nay. They went on +together. + +The adventure, and the emotions consequent upon the reunion which that +event had forced on, combined to render Grace oblivious of the +direction of their desultory ramble, till she noticed they were in an +encircled glade in the densest part of the wood, whereon the moon, that +had imperceptibly added its rays to the scene, shone almost vertically. +It was an exceptionally soft, balmy evening for the time of year, which +was just that transient period in the May month when beech-trees have +suddenly unfolded large limp young leaves of the softness of +butterflies' wings. Boughs bearing such leaves hung low around, and +completely enclosed them, so that it was as if they were in a great +green vase, which had moss for its bottom and leaf sides. + +The clouds having been packed in the west that evening so as to retain +the departing glare a long while, the hour had seemed much earlier than +it was. But suddenly the question of time occurred to her. + +"I must go back," she said; and without further delay they set their +faces towards Hintock. As they walked he examined his watch by the aid +of the now strong moonlight. + +"By the gods, I think I have lost my train!" said Fitzpiers. + +"Dear me--whereabouts are we?" said she. + +"Two miles in the direction of Sherton." + +"Then do you hasten on, Edgar. I am not in the least afraid. I +recognize now the part of the wood we are in and I can find my way back +quite easily. I'll tell my father that we have made it up. I wish I +had not kept our meetings so private, for it may vex him a little to +know I have been seeing you. He is getting old and irritable, that was +why I did not. Good-by." + +"But, as I must stay at the Earl of Wessex to-night, for I cannot +possibly catch the train, I think it would be safer for you to let me +take care of you." + +"But what will my father think has become of me? He does not know in +the least where I am--he thinks I only went into the garden for a few +minutes." + +"He will surely guess--somebody has seen me for certain. I'll go all +the way back with you to-morrow." + +"But that newly done-up place--the Earl of Wessex!" + +"If you are so very particular about the publicity I will stay at the +Three Tuns." + +"Oh no--it is not that I am particular--but I haven't a brush or comb +or anything!" + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII. + +All the evening Melbury had been coming to his door, saying, "I wonder +where in the world that girl is! Never in all my born days did I know +her bide out like this! She surely said she was going into the garden +to get some parsley." + +Melbury searched the garden, the parsley-bed, and the orchard, but +could find no trace of her, and then he made inquiries at the cottages +of such of his workmen as had not gone to bed, avoiding Tangs's because +he knew the young people were to rise early to leave. In these +inquiries one of the men's wives somewhat incautiously let out the fact +that she had heard a scream in the wood, though from which direction +she could not say. + +This set Melbury's fears on end. He told the men to light lanterns, +and headed by himself they started, Creedle following at the last +moment with quite a burden of grapnels and ropes, which he could not be +persuaded to leave behind, and the company being joined by the +hollow-turner and the man who kept the cider-house as they went along. + +They explored the precincts of the village, and in a short time lighted +upon the man-trap. Its discovery simply added an item of fact without +helping their conjectures; but Melbury's indefinite alarm was greatly +increased when, holding a candle to the ground, he saw in the teeth of +the instrument some frayings from Grace's clothing. No intelligence of +any kind was gained till they met a woodman of Delborough, who said +that he had seen a lady answering to the description her father gave of +Grace, walking through the wood on a gentleman's arm in the direction +of Sherton. + +"Was he clutching her tight?" said Melbury. + +"Well--rather," said the man. + +"Did she walk lame?" + +"Well, 'tis true her head hung over towards him a bit." + +Creedle groaned tragically. + +Melbury, not suspecting the presence of Fitzpiers, coupled this account +with the man-trap and the scream; he could not understand what it all +meant; but the sinister event of the trap made him follow on. +Accordingly, they bore away towards the town, shouting as they went, +and in due course emerged upon the highway. + +Nearing Sherton-Abbas, the previous information was confirmed by other +strollers, though the gentleman's supporting arm had disappeared from +these later accounts. At last they were so near Sherton that Melbury +informed his faithful followers that he did not wish to drag them +farther at so late an hour, since he could go on alone and inquire if +the woman who had been seen were really Grace. But they would not +leave him alone in his anxiety, and trudged onward till the lamplight +from the town began to illuminate their fronts. At the entrance to the +High Street they got fresh scent of the pursued, but coupled with the +new condition that the lady in the costume described had been going up +the street alone. + +"Faith!--I believe she's mesmerized, or walking in her sleep," said +Melbury. + +However, the identity of this woman with Grace was by no means certain; +but they plodded along the street. Percombe, the hair-dresser, who +had despoiled Marty of her tresses, was standing at his door, and they +duly put inquiries to him. + +"Ah--how's Little Hintock folk by now?" he said, before replying. +"Never have I been over there since one winter night some three year +ago--and then I lost myself finding it. How can ye live in such a +one-eyed place? Great Hintock is bad enough--hut Little Hintock--the +bats and owls would drive me melancholy-mad! It took two days to raise +my sperrits to their true pitch again after that night I went there. +Mr. Melbury, sir, as a man's that put by money, why not retire and live +here, and see something of the world?" + +The responses at last given by him to their queries guided them to the +building that offered the best accommodation in Sherton--having been +enlarged contemporaneously with the construction of the +railway--namely, the Earl of Wessex Hotel. + +Leaving the others without, Melbury made prompt inquiry here. His +alarm was lessened, though his perplexity was increased, when he +received a brief reply that such a lady was in the house. + +"Do you know if it is my daughter?" asked Melbury. + +The waiter did not. + +"Do you know the lady's name?" + +Of this, too, the household was ignorant, the hotel having been taken +by brand-new people from a distance. They knew the gentleman very well +by sight, and had not thought it necessary to ask him to enter his name. + +"Oh, the gentleman appears again now," said Melbury to himself. "Well, +I want to see the lady," he declared. + +A message was taken up, and after some delay the shape of Grace +appeared descending round the bend of the stair-case, looking as if she +lived there, but in other respects rather guilty and frightened. + +"Why--what the name--" began her father. "I thought you went out to +get parsley!" + +"Oh, yes--I did--but it is all right," said Grace, in a flurried +whisper. "I am not alone here. I am here with Edgar. It is entirely +owing to an accident, father." + +"Edgar! An accident! How does he come here? I thought he was two +hundred mile off." + +"Yes, so he is--I mean he has got a beautiful practice two hundred +miles off; he has bought it with his own money, some that came to him. +But he travelled here, and I was nearly caught in a man-trap, and +that's how it is I am here. We were just thinking of sending a +messenger to let you know." + +Melbury did not seem to be particularly enlightened by this explanation. + +"You were caught in a man-trap?" + +"Yes; my dress was. That's how it arose. Edgar is up-stairs in his +own sitting-room," she went on. "He would not mind seeing you, I am +sure." + +"Oh, faith, I don't want to see him! I have seen him too often a'ready. +I'll see him another time, perhaps, if 'tis to oblige 'ee." + +"He came to see me; he wanted to consult me about this large +partnership I speak of, as it is very promising." + +"Oh, I am glad to hear it," said Melbury, dryly. + +A pause ensued, during which the inquiring faces and whity-brown +clothes of Melbury's companions appeared in the door-way. + +"Then bain't you coming home with us?" he asked. + +"I--I think not," said Grace, blushing. + +"H'm--very well--you are your own mistress," he returned, in tones +which seemed to assert otherwise. "Good-night;" and Melbury retreated +towards the door. + +"Don't be angry, father," she said, following him a few steps. "I have +done it for the best." + +"I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little misled in this. +However, good-night. I must get home along." + +He left the hotel, not without relief, for to be under the eyes of +strangers while he conversed with his lost child had embarrassed him +much. His search-party, too, had looked awkward there, having rushed +to the task of investigation--some in their shirt sleeves, others in +their leather aprons, and all much stained--just as they had come from +their work of barking, and not in their Sherton marketing attire; while +Creedle, with his ropes and grapnels and air of impending tragedy, had +added melancholy to gawkiness. + +"Now, neighbors," said Melbury, on joining them, "as it is getting +late, we'll leg it home again as fast as we can. I ought to tell you +that there has been some mistake--some arrangement entered into between +Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn't quite understand--an important +practice in the Midland counties has come to him, which made it +necessary for her to join him to-night--so she says. That's all it +was--and I'm sorry I dragged you out." + +"Well," said the hollow-turner, "here be we six mile from home, and +night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to our name. +I say, we'll have a mossel and a drop o' summat to strengthen our +nerves afore we vamp all the way back again? My throat's as dry as a +kex. What d'ye say so's?" + +They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to the +antique and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of the Three +Tuns was the only radiant object. As soon as they had stumbled down +into the room Melbury ordered them to be served, when they made +themselves comfortable by the long table, and stretched out their legs +upon the herring-boned sand of the floor. Melbury himself, restless as +usual, walked to the door while he waited for them, and looked up and +down the street. + +"I'd gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go out +in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that have got to +get up at five o'clock to morrow," said a bark-ripper; who, not working +regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in strong opinions. + +"I don't speak so warm as that," said the hollow-turner, "but if 'tis +right for couples to make a country talk about their separating, and +excite the neighbors, and then make fools of 'em like this, why, I +haven't stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty year." + +All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in these +enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and Creedle chimed +in with, "Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn't she +ha' bode with her father, and been faithful?" Poor Creedle was thinking +of his old employer. + +"But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony," said +Farmer Bawtree. "I knowed a man and wife--faith, I don't mind owning, +as there's no strangers here, that the pair were my own +relations--they'd be at it that hot one hour that you'd hear the poker +and the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the house +with the movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you'd hear 'em +singing 'The Spotted Cow' together as peaceable as two holy twins; +yes--and very good voices they had, and would strike in like +professional ballet-singers to one another's support in the high notes." + +"And I knowed a woman, and the husband o' her went away for +four-and-twenty year," said the bark-ripper. "And one night he came home +when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down himself on +the other side of the chimney-corner. 'Well,' says she, 'have ye got +any news?' 'Don't know as I have,' says he; 'have you?' 'No,' says +she, 'except that my daughter by my second husband was married last +month, which was a year after I was made a widow by him.' 'Oh! +Anything else?' he says. 'No,' says she. And there they sat, one on +each side of that chimney-corner, and were found by their neighbors +sound asleep in their chairs, not having known what to talk about at +all." + +"Well, I don't care who the man is," said Creedle, "they required a +good deal to talk about, and that's true. It won't be the same with +these." + +"No. He is such a projick, you see. And she is a wonderful scholar +too!" + +"What women do know nowadays!" observed the hollow-turner. "You can't +deceive 'em as you could in my time." + +"What they knowed then was not small," said John Upjohn. "Always a +good deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife that is +now, the skilfulness that she would show in keeping me on her pretty +side as she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you've noticed that +she's got a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?" + +"I can't say I've noticed it particular much," said the hollow-turner, +blandly. + +"Well," continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, "she has. All women under +the sun be prettier one side than t'other. And, as I was saying, the +pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were unending! +I warrant that whether we were going with the sun or against the sun, +uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart of hers was always +towards the hedge, and that dimple towards me. There was I, too simple +to see her wheelings and turnings; and she so artful, though two years +younger, that she could lead me with a cotton thread, like a blind ram; +for that was in the third climate of our courtship. No; I don't think +the women have got cleverer, for they was never otherwise." + +"How many climates may there be in courtship, Mr. Upjohn?" inquired a +youth--the same who had assisted at Winterborne's Christmas party. + +"Five--from the coolest to the hottest--leastwise there was five in +mine." + +"Can ye give us the chronicle of 'em, Mr. Upjohn?" + +"Yes--I could. I could certainly. But 'tis quite unnecessary. They'll +come to ye by nater, young man, too soon for your good." + +"At present Mrs. Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your mis'ess could +lead you," the hollow-turner remarked. "She's got him quite tame. But +how long 'twill last I can't say. I happened to be setting a wire on +the top of my garden one night when he met her on the other side of the +hedge; and the way she queened it, and fenced, and kept that poor +feller at a distance, was enough to freeze yer blood. I should never +have supposed it of such a girl." + +Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having declared +themselves refreshed, they all started on the homeward journey, which +was by no means cheerless under the rays of the high moon. Having to +walk the whole distance they came by a foot-path rather shorter than +the highway, though difficult except to those who knew the country +well. This brought them by way of Great Hintock; and passing the +church-yard they observed, as they talked, a motionless figure standing +by the gate. + +"I think it was Marty South," said the hollow-turner, parenthetically. + +"I think 'twas; 'a was always a lonely maid," said Upjohn. And they +passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more. + +It was Marty, as they had supposed. That evening had been the +particular one of the week upon which Grace and herself had been +accustomed to privately deposit flowers on Giles's grave, and this was +the first occasion since his death, eight months earlier, on which +Grace had failed to keep her appointment. Marty had waited in the road +just outside Little Hintock, where her fellow-pilgrim had been wont to +join her, till she was weary; and at last, thinking that Grace had +missed her and gone on alone, she followed the way to Great Hintock, +but saw no Grace in front of her. It got later, and Marty continued +her walk till she reached the church-yard gate; but still no Grace. +Yet her sense of comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave +alone, and still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, she stood +there with her little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and her +feet chilled by the damp ground, till more than two hours had passed. + +She then heard the footsteps of Melbury's men, who presently passed on +their return from the search. In the silence of the night Marty could +not help hearing fragments of their conversation, from which she +acquired a general idea of what had occurred, and where Mrs. Fitzpiers +then was. + +Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the church-yard, +going to a secluded corner behind the bushes, where rose the +unadorned stone that marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne. As this +solitary and silent girl stood there in the moonlight, a straight slim +figure, clothed in a plaitless gown, the contours of womanhood so +undeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible, the marks of poverty and +toil effaced by the misty hour, she touched sublimity at points, and +looked almost like a being who had rejected with indifference the +attribute of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism. She +stooped down and cleared away the withered flowers that Grace and +herself had laid there the previous week, and put her fresh ones in +their place. + +"Now, my own, own love," she whispered, "you are mine, and on'y mine; +for she has forgot 'ee at last, although for her you died. But +I--whenever I get up I'll think of 'ee, and whenever I lie down I'll +think of 'ee. Whenever I plant the young larches I'll think that none +can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a gad, and whenever I +turn the cider-wring, I'll say none could do it like you. If ever I +forget your name, let me forget home and Heaven!--But no, no, my love, +I never can forget 'ee; for you was a GOOD man, and did good things!" + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woodlanders, by Thomas Hardy + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOODLANDERS *** + +***** This file should be named 482.txt or 482.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/8/482/ + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +THE WOODLANDERS +by Thomas Hardy + + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should +trace the forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line +from Bristol to the south shore of England, would find himself +during the latter half of his journey in the vicinity of some +extensive woodlands, interspersed with apple-orchards. Here the +trees, timber or fruit-bearing, as the case may be, make the way- +side hedges ragged by their drip and shade, stretching over the +road with easeful horizontality, as if they found the +unsubstantial air an adequate support for their limbs. At one +place, where a hill is crossed, the largest of the woods shows +itself bisected by the high-way, as the head of thick hair is +bisected by the white line of its parting. The spot is lonely. + +The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a +degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a +tomb-like stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. +The contrast of what is with what might be probably accounts for +this. To step, for instance, at the place under notice, from the +hedge of the plantation into the adjoining pale thoroughfare, and +pause amid its emptiness for a moment, was to exchange by the act +of a single stride the simple absence of human companionship for +an incubus of the forlorn. + +At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone winter's day, +there stood a man who had entered upon the scene much in the +aforesaid manner. Alighting into the road from a stile hard by, +he, though by no means a "chosen vessel" for impressions, was +temporarily influenced by some such feeling of being suddenly more +alone than before he had emerged upon the highway. + +It could be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress +that he did not belong to the country proper; and from his air, +after a while, that though there might be a sombre beauty in the +scenery, music in the breeze, and a wan procession of coaching +ghosts in the sentiment of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly +puzzled about the way. The dead men's work that had been expended +in climbing that hill, the blistered soles that had trodden it, +and the tears that had wetted it, were not his concern; for fate +had given him no time for any but practical things. + +He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground +with his walking-stick. A closer glance at his face corroborated +the testimony of his clothes. It was self-complacent, yet there +was small apparent ground for such complacence. Nothing +irradiated it; to the eye of the magician in character, if not to +the ordinary observer, the expression enthroned there was absolute +submission to and belief in a little assortment of forms and +habitudes. + +At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as he +desired, or seemed likely to appear that night. But presently a +slight noise of laboring wheels and the steady dig of a horse's +shoe-tips became audible; and there loomed in the notch of the +hill and plantation that the road formed here at the summit a +carrier's van drawn by a single horse. When it got nearer, he +said, with some relief to himself, "'Tis Mrs. Dollery's--this will +help me." + +The vehicle was half full of passengers, mostly women. He held up +his stick at its approach, and the woman who was driving drew +rein. + +"I've been trying to find a short way to Little Hintock this last +half-hour, Mrs. Dollery," he said. "But though I've been to Great +Hintock and Hintock House half a dozen times I am at fault about +the small village. You can help me, I dare say?" + +She assured him that she could--that as she went to Great Hintock +her van passed near it--that it was only up the lane that branched +out of the lane into which she was about to turn--just ahead. +"Though," continued Mrs. Dollery, "'tis such a little small place +that, as a town gentleman, you'd need have a candle and lantern to +find it if ye don't know where 'tis. Bedad! I wouldn't live there +if they'd pay me to. Now at Great Hintock you do see the world a +bit." + +He mounted and sat beside her, with his feet outside, where they +were ever and anon brushed over by the horse's tail. + +This van, driven and owned by Mrs. Dollery, was rather a movable +attachment of the roadway than an extraneous object, to those who +knew it well. The old horse, whose hair was of the roughness and +color of heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and hoofs were +distorted by harness and drudgery from colthood--though if all had +their rights, he ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been +picking the herbage of some Eastern plain instead of tugging here-- +had trodden this road almost daily for twenty years. Even his +subjection was not made congruous throughout, for the harness +being too short, his tail was not drawn through the crupper, so +that the breeching slipped awkwardly to one side. He knew every +subtle incline of the seven or eight miles of ground between +Hintock and Sherton Abbas--the market-town to which he journeyed-- +as accurately as any surveyor could have learned it by a Dumpy +level. + +The vehicle had a square black tilt which nodded with the motion +of the wheels, and at a point in it over the driver's head was a +hook to which the reins were hitched at times, when they formed a +catenary curve from the horse's shoulders. Somewhere about the +axles was a loose chain, whose only known purpose was to clink as +it went. Mrs. Dollery, having to hop up and down many times in +the service of her passengers, wore, especially in windy weather, +short leggings under her gown for modesty's sake, and instead of a +bonnet a felt hat tied down with a handkerchief, to guard against +an earache to which she was frequently subject. In the rear of +the van was a glass window, which she cleaned with her pocket- +handkerchief every market-day before starting. Looking at the van +from the back, the spectator could thus see through its interior a +square piece of the same sky and landscape that he saw without, +but intruded on by the profiles of the seated passengers, who, as +they rumbled onward, their lips moving and heads nodding in +animated private converse, remained in happy unconsciousness that +their mannerisms and facial peculiarities were sharply defined to +the public eye. + +This hour of coming home from market was the happy one, if not the +happiest, of the week for them. Snugly ensconced under the tilt, +they could forget the sorrows of the world without, and survey +life and recapitulate the incidents of the day with placid smiles. + +The passengers in the back part formed a group to themselves, and +while the new-comer spoke to the proprietress, they indulged in a +confidential chat about him as about other people, which the noise +of the van rendered inaudible to himself and Mrs. Dollery, sitting +forward. + +"'Tis Barber Percombe--he that's got the waxen woman in his window +at the top of Abbey Street," said one. "What business can bring +him from his shop out here at this time and not a journeyman hair- +cutter, but a master-barber that's left off his pole because 'tis +not genteel!" + +They listened to his conversation, but Mr. Percombe, though he had +nodded and spoken genially, seemed indisposed to gratify the +curiosity which he had aroused; and the unrestrained flow of ideas +which had animated the inside of the van before his arrival was +checked thenceforward. + +Thus they rode on till they turned into a half-invisible little +lane, whence, as it reached the verge of an eminence, could be +discerned in the dusk, about half a mile to the right, gardens and +orchards sunk in a concave, and, as it were, snipped out of the +woodland. From this self-contained place rose in stealthy silence +tall stems of smoke, which the eye of imagination could trace +downward to their root on quiet hearth-stones festooned overhead +with hams and flitches. It was one of those sequestered spots +outside the gates of the world where may usually be found more +meditation than action, and more passivity than meditation; where +reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results in inferences +wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less than in +other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean are +enacted in the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and +closely knit interdependence of the lives therein. + +This place was the Little Hintock of the master-barber's search. +The coming night gradually obscured the smoke of the chimneys, but +the position of the sequestered little world could still be +distinguished by a few faint lights, winking more or less +ineffectually through the leafless boughs, and the undiscerned +songsters they bore, in the form of balls of feathers, at roost +among them. + +Out of the lane followed by the van branched a yet smaller lane, +at the corner of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dollery's van +going on to the larger village, whose superiority to the despised +smaller one as an exemplar of the world's movements was not +particularly apparent in its means of approach. + +"A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, is in +league with the devil, lives in the place you be going to--not +because there's anybody for'n to cure there, but because 'tis the +middle of his district." + +The observation was flung at the barber by one of the women at +parting, as a last attempt to get at his errand that way. + +But he made no reply, and without further pause the pedestrian +plunged towards the umbrageous nook, and paced cautiously over the +dead leaves which nearly buried the road or street of the hamlet. +As very few people except themselves passed this way after dark, a +majority of the denizens of Little Hintock deemed window-curtains +unnecessary; and on this account Mr. Percombe made it his business +to stop opposite the casements of each cottage that he came to, +with a demeanor which showed that he was endeavoring to +conjecture, from the persons and things he observed within, the +whereabouts of somebody or other who resided here. + +Only the smaller dwellings interested him; one or two houses, +whose size, antiquity, and rambling appurtenances signified that +notwithstanding their remoteness they must formerly have been, if +they were not still, inhabited by people of a certain social +standing, being neglected by him entirely. Smells of pomace, and +the hiss of fermenting cider, which reached him from the back +quarters of other tenements, revealed the recent occupation of +some of the inhabitants, and joined with the scent of decay from +the perishing leaves underfoot. + +Half a dozen dwellings were passed without result. The next, +which stood opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of +radiance, the flickering brightness from the inside shining up the +chimney and making a luminous mist of the emerging smoke. The +interior, as seen through the window, caused him to draw up with a +terminative air and watch. The house was rather large for a +cottage, and the door, which opened immediately into the living- +room, stood ajar, so that a ribbon of light fell through the +opening into the dark atmosphere without. Every now and then a +moth, decrepit from the late season, would flit for a moment +across the out-coming rays and disappear again into the night. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a +girl seated on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of +the fire, which was ample and of wood. With a bill-hook in one +hand and a leather glove, much too large for her, on the other, +she was making spars, such as are used by thatchers, with great +rapidity. She wore a leather apron for this purpose, which was +also much too large for her figure. On her left hand lay a bundle +of the straight, smooth sticks called spar-gads--the raw material +of her manufacture; on her right, a heap of chips and ends--the +refuse--with which the fire was maintained; in front, a pile of +the finished articles. To produce them she took up each gad, +looked critically at it from end to end, cut it to length, split +it into four, and sharpened each of the quarters with dexterous +blows, which brought it to a triangular point precisely resembling +that of a bayonet. + +Beside her, in case she might require more light, a brass +candlestick stood on a little round table, curiously formed of an +old coffin-stool, with a deal top nailed on, the white surface of +the latter contrasting oddly with the black carved oak of the +substructure. The social position of the household in the past +was almost as definitively shown by the presence of this article +as that of an esquire or nobleman by his old helmets or shields. +It had been customary for every well-to-do villager, whose tenure +was by copy of court-roll, or in any way more permanent than that +of the mere cotter, to keep a pair of these stools for the use of +his own dead; but for the last generation or two a feeling of cui +bono had led to the discontinuance of the custom, and the stools +were frequently made use of in the manner described. + +The young woman laid down the bill-hook for a moment and examined +the palm of her right hand, which, unlike the other, was ungloved, +and showed little hardness or roughness about it. The palm was +red and blistering, as if this present occupation were not +frequent enough with her to subdue it to what it worked in. As +with so many right hands born to manual labor, there was nothing +in its fundamental shape to bear out the physiological +conventionalism that gradations of birth, gentle or mean, show +themselves primarily in the form of this member. Nothing but a +cast of the die of destiny had decided that the girl should handle +the tool; and the fingers which clasped the heavy ash haft might +have skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string, had they +only been set to do it in good time. + +Her face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by +a life of solitude. Where the eyes of a multitude beat like waves +upon a countenance they seem to wear away its individuality; but +in the still water of privacy every tentacle of feeling and +sentiment shoots out in visible luxuriance, to be interpreted as +readily as a child's look by an intruder. In years she was no +more than nineteen or twenty, but the necessity of taking thought +at a too early period of life had forced the provisional curves of +her childhood's face to a premature finality. Thus she had but +little pretension to beauty, save in one prominent particular--her +hair. Its abundance made it almost unmanageable; its color was, +roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, brown, but +careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that +its true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation to chestnut. + +On this one bright gift of Time to the particular victim of his +now before us the new-comer's eyes were fixed; meanwhile the +fingers of his right hand mechanically played over something +sticking up from his waistcoat-pocket--the bows of a pair of +scissors, whose polish made them feebly responsive to the light +within. In her present beholder's mind the scene formed by the +girlish spar-maker composed itself into a post-Raffaelite picture +of extremest quality, wherein the girl's hair alone, as the focus +of observation, was depicted with intensity and distinctness, and +her face, shoulders, hands, and figure in general, being a blurred +mass of unimportant detail lost in haze and obscurity. + +He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and entered. The +young woman turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor, +and exclaiming, "Oh, Mr. Percombe, how you frightened me!" quite +lost her color for a moment. + +He replied, "You should shut your door--then you'd hear folk open +it." + +"I can't," she said; "the chimney smokes so. Mr. Percombe, you +look as unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge. +Surely you have not come out here on my account--for--" + +"Yes--to have your answer about this." He touched her head with +his cane, and she winced. "Do you agree?" he continued. "It is +necessary that I should know at once, as the lady is soon going +away, and it takes time to make up." + +"Don't press me--it worries me. I was in hopes you had thought no +more of it. I can NOT part with it--so there!" + +"Now, look here, Marty," said the barber, sitting down on the +coffin-stool table. "How much do you get for making these spars?" + +"Hush--father's up-stairs awake, and he don't know that I am doing +his work." + +"Well, now tell me," said the man, more softly. "How much do you +get?" + +"Eighteenpence a thousand," she said, reluctantly. + +"Who are you making them for?" + +"Mr. Melbury, the timber-dealer, just below here." + +"And how many can you make in a day?" + +"In a day and half the night, three bundles--that's a thousand and +a half." + +"Two and threepence." The barber paused. "Well, look here," he +continued, with the remains of a calculation in his tone, which +calculation had been the reduction to figures of the probable +monetary magnetism necessary to overpower the resistant force of +her present purse and the woman's love of comeliness, "here's a +sovereign--a gold sovereign, almost new." He held it out between +his finger and thumb. "That's as much as you'd earn in a week and +a half at that rough man's work, and it's yours for just letting +me snip off what you've got too much of." + +The girl's bosom moved a very little. "Why can't the lady send to +some other girl who don't value her hair--not to me?" she +exclaimed. + +"Why, simpleton, because yours is the exact shade of her own, and +'tis a shade you can't match by dyeing. But you are not going to +refuse me now I've come all the way from Sherton o' purpose?" + +"I say I won't sell it--to you or anybody." + +"Now listen," and he drew up a little closer beside her. "The +lady is very rich, and won't be particular to a few shillings; so +I will advance to this on my own responsibility--I'll make the one +sovereign two, rather than go back empty-handed." + +"No, no, no!" she cried, beginning to be much agitated. "You are +a-tempting me, Mr. Percombe. You go on like the Devil to Dr. +Faustus in the penny book. But I don't want your money, and won't +agree. Why did you come? I said when you got me into your shop +and urged me so much, that I didn't mean to sell my hair!" The +speaker was hot and stern. + +"Marty, now hearken. The lady that wants it wants it badly. And, +between you and me, you'd better let her have it. 'Twill be bad +for you if you don't." + +"Bad for me? Who is she, then?" + +The barber held his tongue, and the girl repeated the question. + +"I am not at liberty to tell you. And as she is going abroad soon +it makes no difference who she is at all." + +"She wants it to go abroad wi'?" + +Percombe assented by a nod. The girl regarded him reflectively. +"Barber Percombe," she said, "I know who 'tis. 'Tis she at the +House--Mrs. Charmond!" + +"That's my secret. However, if you agree to let me have it, I'll +tell you in confidence." + +"I'll certainly not let you have it unless you tell me the truth. +It is Mrs. Charmond." + +The barber dropped his voice. "Well--it is. You sat in front of +her in church the other day, and she noticed how exactly your hair +matched her own. Ever since then she's been hankering for it, and +at last decided to get it. As she won't wear it till she goes off +abroad, she knows nobody will recognize the change. I'm +commissioned to get it for her, and then it is to be made up. I +shouldn't have vamped all these miles for any less important +employer. Now, mind--'tis as much as my business with her is +worth if it should be known that I've let out her name; but honor +between us two, Marty, and you'll say nothing that would injure +me?" + +"I don't wish to tell upon her," said Marty, coolly. "But my hair +is my own, and I'm going to keep it." + +"Now, that's not fair, after what I've told you," said the nettled +barber. "You see, Marty, as you are in the same parish, and in +one of her cottages, and your father is ill, and wouldn't like to +turn out, it would be as well to oblige her. I say that as a +friend. But I won't press you to make up your mind to-night. +You'll be coming to market to-morrow, I dare say, and you can call +then. If you think it over you'll be inclined to bring what I +want, I know." + +"I've nothing more to say," she answered. + +Her companion saw from her manner that it was useless to urge her +further by speech. "As you are a trusty young woman," he said, +"I'll put these sovereigns up here for ornament, that you may see +how handsome they are. Bring the hair to-morrow, or return the +sovereigns." He stuck them edgewise into the frame of a small +mantle looking-glass. "I hope you'll bring it, for your sake and +mine. I should have thought she could have suited herself +elsewhere; but as it's her fancy it must be indulged if possible. +If you cut it off yourself, mind how you do it so as to keep all +the locks one way." He showed her how this was to be done. + +"But I sha'nt," she replied, with laconic indifference. "I value +my looks too much to spoil 'em. She wants my hair to get another +lover with; though if stories are true she's broke the heart of +many a noble gentleman already." + +"Lord, it's wonderful how you guess things, Marty," said the +barber. "I've had it from them that know that there certainly is +some foreign gentleman in her eye. However, mind what I ask." + +"She's not going to get him through me." + +Percombe had retired as far as the door; he came back, planted his +cane on the coffin-stool, and looked her in the face. "Marty +South," he said, with deliberate emphasis, "YOU'VE GOT A LOVER +YOURSELF, and that's why you won't let it go!" + +She reddened so intensely as to pass the mild blush that suffices +to heighten beauty; she put the yellow leather glove on one hand, +took up the hook with the other, and sat down doggedly to her work +without turning her face to him again. He regarded her head for a +moment, went to the door, and with one look back at her, departed +on his way homeward. + +Marty pursued her occupation for a few minutes, then suddenly +laying down the bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the back of +the room, where she opened a door which disclosed a staircase so +whitely scrubbed that the grain of the wood was wellnigh sodden +away by such cleansing. At the top she gently approached a +bedroom, and without entering, said, "Father, do you want +anything?" + +A weak voice inside answered in the negative; adding, "I should be +all right by to-morrow if it were not for the tree!" + +"The tree again--always the tree! Oh, father, don't worry so about +that. You know it can do you no harm." + +"Who have ye had talking to ye down-stairs?" + +"A Sherton man called--nothing to trouble about," she said, +soothingly. "Father," she went on, "can Mrs. Charmond turn us out +of our house if she's minded to?" + +"Turn us out? No. Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is +turned out of my body. 'Tis life-hold, like Ambrose +Winterborne's. But when my life drops 'twill be hers--not till +then." His words on this subject so far had been rational and firm +enough. But now he lapsed into his moaning strain: "And the tree +will do it--that tree will soon be the death of me." + +"Nonsense, you know better. How can it be?" She refrained from +further speech, and descended to the ground-floor again. + +"Thank Heaven, then," she said to herself, "what belongs to me I +keep." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +The lights in the village went out, house after house, till there +only remained two in the darkness. One of these came from a +residence on the hill-side, of which there is nothing to say at +present; the other shone from the window of Marty South. +Precisely the same outward effect was produced here, however, by +her rising when the clock struck ten and hanging up a thick cloth +curtain. The door it was necessary to keep ajar in hers, as in +most cottages, because of the smoke; but she obviated the effect +of the ribbon of light through the chink by hanging a cloth over +that also. She was one of those people who, if they have to work +harder than their neighbors, prefer to keep the necessity a secret +as far as possible; and but for the slight sounds of wood- +splintering which came from within, no wayfarer would have +perceived that here the cottager did not sleep as elsewhere. + +Eleven, twelve, one o'clock struck; the heap of spars grew higher, +and the pile of chips and ends more bulky. Even the light on the +hill had now been extinguished; but still she worked on. When the +temperature of the night without had fallen so low as to make her +chilly, she opened a large blue umbrella to ward off the draught +from the door. The two sovereigns confronted her from the +looking-glass in such a manner as to suggest a pair of jaundiced +eyes on the watch for an opportunity. Whenever she sighed for +weariness she lifted her gaze towards them, but withdrew it +quickly, stroking her tresses with her fingers for a moment, as if +to assure herself that they were still secure. When the clock +struck three she arose and tied up the spars she had last made in +a bundle resembling those that lay against the wall. + +She wrapped round her a long red woollen cravat and opened the +door. The night in all its fulness met her flatly on the +threshold, like the very brink of an absolute void, or the +antemundane Ginnung-Gap believed in by her Teuton forefathers. +For her eyes were fresh from the blaze, and here there was no +street-lamp or lantern to form a kindly transition between the +inner glare and the outer dark. A lingering wind brought to her +ear the creaking sound of two over-crowded branches in the +neighboring wood which were rubbing each other into wounds, and +other vocalized sorrows of the trees, together with the screech of +owls, and the fluttering tumble of some awkward wood-pigeon ill- +balanced on its roosting-bough. + +But the pupils of her young eyes soon expanded, and she could see +well enough for her purpose. Taking a bundle of spars under each +arm, and guided by the serrated line of tree-tops against the sky, +she went some hundred yards or more down the lane till she reached +a long open shed, carpeted around with the dead leaves that lay +about everywhere. Night, that strange personality, which within +walls brings ominous introspectiveness and self-distrust, but +under the open sky banishes such subjective anxieties as too +trivial for thought, inspired Marty South with a less perturbed +and brisker manner now. She laid the spars on the ground within +the shed and returned for more, going to and fro till her whole +manufactured stock were deposited here. + +This erection was the wagon-house of the chief man of business +hereabout, Mr. George Melbury, the timber, bark, and copse-ware +merchant for whom Marty's father did work of this sort by the +piece. It formed one of the many rambling out-houses which +surrounded his dwelling, an equally irregular block of building, +whose immense chimneys could just be discerned even now. The four +huge wagons under the shed were built on those ancient lines whose +proportions have been ousted by modern patterns, their shapes +bulging and curving at the base and ends like Trafalgar line-of- +battle ships, with which venerable hulks, indeed, these vehicles +evidenced a constructed spirit curiously in harmony. One was +laden with sheep-cribs, another with hurdles, another with ash +poles, and the fourth, at the foot of which she had placed her +thatching-spars was half full of similar bundles. + +She was pausing a moment with that easeful sense of accomplishment +which follows work done that has been a hard struggle in the +doing, when she heard a woman's voice on the other side of the +hedge say, anxiously, "George!" In a moment the name was repeated, +with "Do come indoors! What are you doing there?" + +The cart-house adjoined the garden, and before Marty had moved she +saw enter the latter from the timber-merchant's back door an +elderly woman sheltering a candle with her hand, the light from +which cast a moving thorn-pattern of shade on Marty's face. Its +rays soon fell upon a man whose clothes were roughly thrown on, +standing in advance of the speaker. He was a thin, slightly +stooping figure, with a small nervous mouth and a face cleanly +shaven; and he walked along the path with his eyes bent on the +ground. In the pair Marty South recognized her employer Melbury +and his wife. She was the second Mrs. Melbury, the first having +died shortly after the birth of the timber-merchant's only child. + +"'Tis no use to stay in bed," he said, as soon as she came up to +where he was pacing restlessly about. "I can't sleep--I keep +thinking of things, and worrying about the girl, till I'm quite in +a fever of anxiety." He went on to say that he could not think +why "she (Marty knew he was speaking of his daughter) did not +answer his letter. She must be ill--she must, certainly," he +said. + +"No, no. 'Tis all right, George," said his wife; and she assured +him that such things always did appear so gloomy in the night- +time, if people allowed their minds to run on them; that when +morning came it was seen that such fears were nothing but shadows. +"Grace is as well as you or I," she declared. + +But he persisted that she did not see all--that she did not see as +much as he. His daughter's not writing was only one part of his +worry. On account of her he was anxious concerning money affairs, +which he would never alarm his mind about otherwise. The reason +he gave was that, as she had nobody to depend upon for a provision +but himself, he wished her, when he was gone, to be securely out +of risk of poverty. + +To this Mrs. Melbury replied that Grace would be sure to marry +well, and that hence a hundred pounds more or less from him would +not make much difference. + +Her husband said that that was what she, Mrs. Melbury, naturally +thought; but there she was wrong, and in that lay the source of +his trouble. "I have a plan in my head about her," he said; "and +according to my plan she won't marry a rich man." + +"A plan for her not to marry well?" said his wife, surprised. + +"Well, in one sense it is that," replied Melbury. "It is a plan +for her to marry a particular person, and as he has not so much +money as she might expect, it might be called as you call it. I +may not be able to carry it out; and even if I do, it may not be a +good thing for her. I want her to marry Giles Winterborne." + +His companion repeated the name. "Well, it is all right," she +said, presently. "He adores the very ground she walks on; only +he's close, and won't show it much." + +Marty South appeared startled, and could not tear herself away. + +Yes, the timber-merchant asserted, he knew that well enough. +Winterborne had been interested in his daughter for years; that +was what had led him into the notion of their union. And he knew +that she used to have no objection to him. But it was not any +difficulty about that which embarrassed him. It was that, since +he had educated her so well, and so long, and so far above the +level of daughters thereabout, it was "wasting her" to give her to +a man of no higher standing than the young man in question. + +"That's what I have been thinking," said Mrs. Melbury. + +"Well, then, Lucy, now you've hit it," answered the timber- +merchant, with feeling. "There lies my trouble. I vowed to let +her marry him, and to make her as valuable as I could to him by +schooling her as many years and as thoroughly as possible. I mean +to keep my vow. I made it because I did his father a terrible +wrong; and it was a weight on my conscience ever since that time +till this scheme of making amends occurred to me through seeing +that Giles liked her." + +"Wronged his father?" asked Mrs. Melbury. + +"Yes, grievously wronged him," said her husband. + +"Well, don't think of it to-night," she urged. "Come indoors." + +"No, no, the air cools my head. I shall not stay long." He was +silent a while; then he told her, as nearly as Marty could gather, +that his first wife, his daughter Grace's mother, was first the +sweetheart of Winterborne's father, who loved her tenderly, till +he, the speaker, won her away from him by a trick, because he +wanted to marry her himself. He sadly went on to say that the +other man's happiness was ruined by it; that though he married +Winterborne's mother, it was but a half-hearted business with him. +Melbury added that he was afterwards very miserable at what he had +done; but that as time went on, and the children grew up, and +seemed to be attached to each other, he determined to do all he +could to right the wrong by letting his daughter marry the lad; +not only that, but to give her the best education he could afford, +so as to make the gift as valuable a one as it lay in his power to +bestow. "I still mean to do it," said Melbury. + +"Then do," said she. + +"But all these things trouble me," said he; "for I feel I am +sacrificing her for my own sin; and I think of her, and often come +down here and look at this." + +"Look at what?" asked his wife. + +He took the candle from her hand, held it to the ground, and +removed a tile which lay in the garden-path. "'Tis the track of +her shoe that she made when she ran down here the day before she +went away all those months ago. I covered it up when she was +gone; and when I come here and look at it, I ask myself again, why +should she be sacrificed to a poor man?" + +"It is not altogether a sacrifice," said the woman. "He is in +love with her, and he's honest and upright. If she encourages +him, what can you wish for more?" + +"I wish for nothing definite. But there's a lot of things +possible for her. Why, Mrs. Charmond is wanting some refined +young lady, I hear, to go abroad with her--as companion or +something of the kind. She'd jump at Grace." + +"That's all uncertain. Better stick to what's sure." + +"True, true," said Melbury; "and I hope it will be for the best. +Yes, let me get 'em married up as soon as I can, so as to have it +over and done with." He continued looking at the imprint, while he +added, "Suppose she should be dying, and never make a track on +this path any more?" + +"She'll write soon, depend upon't. Come, 'tis wrong to stay here +and brood so." + +He admitted it, but said he could not help it. "Whether she write +or no, I shall fetch her in a few days." And thus speaking, he +covered the track, and preceded his wife indoors. + +Melbury, perhaps, was an unlucky man in having within him the +sentiment which could indulge in this foolish fondness about the +imprint of a daughter's footstep. Nature does not carry on her +government with a view to such feelings, and when advancing years +render the open hearts of those who possess them less dexterous +than formerly in shutting against the blast, they must suffer +"buffeting at will by rain and storm" no less than Little +Celandines. + +But her own existence, and not Mr. Melbury's, was the centre of +Marty's consciousness, and it was in relation to this that the +matter struck her as she slowly withdrew. + +"That, then, is the secret of it all," she said. "And Giles +Winterborne is not for me, and the less I think of him the +better." + +She returned to her cottage. The sovereigns were staring at her +from the looking-glass as she had left them. With a preoccupied +countenance, and with tears in her eyes, she got a pair of +scissors, and began mercilessly cutting off the long locks of her +hair, arranging and tying them with their points all one way, as +the barber had directed. Upon the pale scrubbed deal of the +coffin-stool table they stretched like waving and ropy weeds over +the washed gravel-bed of a clear stream. + +She would not turn again to the little looking-glass, out of +humanity to herself, knowing what a deflowered visage would look +back at her, and almost break her heart; she dreaded it as much as +did her own ancestral goddess Sif the reflection in the pool after +the rape of her locks by Loke the malicious. She steadily stuck +to business, wrapped the hair in a parcel, and sealed it up, after +which she raked out the fire and went to bed, having first set up +an alarum made of a candle and piece of thread, with a stone +attached. + +But such a reminder was unnecessary to-night. Having tossed till +about five o'clock, Marty heard the sparrows walking down their +long holes in the thatch above her sloping ceiling to their +orifice at the eaves; whereupon she also arose, and descended to +the ground-floor again. + +It was still dark, but she began moving about the house in those +automatic initiatory acts and touches which represent among +housewives the installation of another day. While thus engaged +she heard the rumbling of Mr. Melbury's wagons, and knew that +there, too, the day's toil had begun. + +An armful of gads thrown on the still hot embers caused them to +blaze up cheerfully and bring her diminished head-gear into sudden +prominence as a shadow. At this a step approached the door. + +"Are folk astir here yet?" inquired a voice she knew well. + +"Yes, Mr. Winterborne," said Marty, throwing on a tilt bonnet, +which completely hid the recent ravages of the scissors. "Come +in!" + +The door was flung back, and there stepped in upon the mat a man +not particularly young for a lover, nor particularly mature for a +person of affairs. There was reserve in his glance, and restraint +upon his mouth. He carried a horn lantern which hung upon a +swivel, and wheeling as it dangled marked grotesque shapes upon +the shadier part of the walls. + +He said that he had looked in on his way down, to tell her that +they did not expect her father to make up his contract if he was +not well. Mr. Melbury would give him another week, and they would +go their journey with a short load that day. + +"They are done," said Marty, "and lying in the cart-house." + +"Done!" he repeated. "Your father has not been too ill to work +after all, then?" + +She made some evasive reply. "I'll show you where they be, if you +are going down," she added. + +They went out and walked together, the pattern of the air-holes in +the top of the lantern being thrown upon the mist overhead, where +they appeared of giant size, as if reaching the tent-shaped sky. +They had no remarks to make to each other, and they uttered none. +Hardly anything could be more isolated or more self-contained than +the lives of these two walking here in the lonely antelucan hour, +when gray shades, material and mental, are so very gray. And yet, +looked at in a certain way, their lonely courses formed no +detached design at all, but were part of the pattern in the great +web of human doings then weaving in both hemispheres, from the +White Sea to Cape Horn. + +The shed was reached, and she pointed out the spars. Winterborne +regarded them silently, then looked at her. + +"Now, Marty, I believe--" he said, and shook his head. + +"What?" + +"That you've done the work yourself." + +"Don't you tell anybody, will you, Mr. Winterborne?" she pleaded, +by way of answer. "Because I am afraid Mr. Melbury may refuse my +work if he knows it is mine." + +"But how could you learn to do it? 'Tis a trade." + +"Trade!" said she. "I'd be bound to learn it in two hours." + +"Oh no, you wouldn't, Mrs. Marty." Winterborne held down his +lantern, and examined the cleanly split hazels as they lay. +"Marty," he said, with dry admiration, "your father with his forty +years of practice never made a spar better than that. They are +too good for the thatching of houses--they are good enough for the +furniture. But I won't tell. Let me look at your hands--your +poor hands!" + +He had a kindly manner of a quietly severe tone; and when she +seemed reluctant to show her hands, he took hold of one and +examined it as if it were his own. Her fingers were blistered. + +"They'll get harder in time," she said. "For if father continues +ill, I shall have to go on wi' it. Now I'll help put 'em up in +wagon." + +Winterborne without speaking set down his lantern, lifted her as +she was about to stoop over the bundles, placed her behind him, +and began throwing up the bundles himself. "Rather than you +should do it I will," he said. "But the men will be here +directly. Why, Marty!--whatever has happened to your head? Lord, +it has shrunk to nothing--it looks an apple upon a gate-post!" + +Her heart swelled, and she could not speak. At length she managed +to groan, looking on the ground, "I've made myself ugly--and +hateful--that's what I've done!" + +"No, no," he answered. "You've only cut your hair--I see now. + +"Then why must you needs say that about apples and gate-posts?" + +"Let me see." + +"No, no!" She ran off into the gloom of the sluggish dawn. He did +not attempt to follow her. When she reached her father's door she +stood on the step and looked back. Mr. Melbury's men had arrived, +and were loading up the spars, and their lanterns appeared from +the distance at which she stood to have wan circles round them, +like eyes weary with watching. She observed them for a few +seconds as they set about harnessing the horses, and then went +indoors. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and +presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged +like a dead-born child. The villagers everywhere had already +bestirred themselves, rising at this time of the year at the far +less dreary hour of absolute darkness. It had been above an hour +earlier, before a single bird had untucked his head, that twenty +lights were struck in as many bedrooms, twenty pairs of shutters +opened, and twenty pairs of eyes stretched to the sky to forecast +the weather for the day. + +Owls that had been catching mice in the out-houses, rabbits that +had been eating the wintergreens in the gardens, and stoats that +had been sucking the blood of the rabbits, discerning that their +human neighbors were on the move, discreetly withdrew from +publicity, and were seen and heard no more that day. + +The daylight revealed the whole of Mr. Melbury's homestead, of +which the wagon-sheds had been an outlying erection. It formed +three sides of an open quadrangle, and consisted of all sorts of +buildings, the largest and central one being the dwelling itself. +The fourth side of the quadrangle was the public road. + +It was a dwelling-house of respectable, roomy, almost dignified +aspect; which, taken with the fact that there were the remains of +other such buildings thereabout, indicated that Little Hintock had +at some time or other been of greater importance than now, as its +old name of Hintock St. Osmond also testified. The house was of +no marked antiquity, yet of well-advanced age; older than a stale +novelty, but no canonized antique; faded, not hoary; looking at +you from the still distinct middle-distance of the early Georgian +time, and awakening on that account the instincts of reminiscence +more decidedly than the remoter and far grander memorials which +have to speak from the misty reaches of mediaevalism. The faces, +dress, passions, gratitudes, and revenues of the great-great- +grandfathers and grandmothers who had been the first to gaze from +those rectangular windows, and had stood under that key-stoned +doorway, could be divined and measured by homely standards of to- +day. It was a house in whose reverberations queer old personal +tales were yet audible if properly listened for; and not, as with +those of the castle and cloister, silent beyond the possibility of +echo. + +The garden-front remained much as it had always been, and there +was a porch and entrance that way. But the principal house-door +opened on the square yard or quadrangle towards the road, formerly +a regular carriage entrance, though the middle of the area was now +made use of for stacking timber, fagots, bundles, and other +products of the wood. It was divided from the lane by a lichen- +coated wall, in which hung a pair of gates, flanked by piers out +of the perpendicular, with a round white ball on the top of each. + +The building on the left of the enclosure was a long-backed +erection, now used for spar-making, sawing, crib-framing, and +copse-ware manufacture in general. Opposite were the wagon-sheds +where Marty had deposited her spars. + +Here Winterborne had remained after the girl's abrupt departure, +to see that the wagon-loads were properly made up. Winterborne +was connected with the Melbury family in various ways. In +addition to the sentimental relationship which arose from his +father having been the first Mrs. Melbury's lover, Winterborne's +aunt had married and emigrated with the brother of the timber- +merchant many years before--an alliance that was sufficient to +place Winterborne, though the poorer, on a footing of social +intimacy with the Melburys. As in most villages so secluded as +this, intermarriages were of Hapsburgian frequency among the +inhabitants, and there were hardly two houses in Little Hintock +unrelated by some matrimonial tie or other. + +For this reason a curious kind of partnership existed between +Melbury and the younger man--a partnership based upon an unwritten +code, by which each acted in the way he thought fair towards the +other, on a give-and-take principle. Melbury, with his timber and +copse-ware business, found that the weight of his labor came in +winter and spring. Winterborne was in the apple and cider trade, +and his requirements in cartage and other work came in the autumn +of each year. Hence horses, wagons, and in some degree men, were +handed over to him when the apples began to fall; he, in return, +lending his assistance to Melbury in the busiest wood-cutting +season, as now. + +Before he had left the shed a boy came from the house to ask him +to remain till Mr. Melbury had seen him. Winterborne thereupon +crossed over to the spar-house where two or three men were already +at work, two of them being travelling spar-makers from White-hart +Lane, who, when this kind of work began, made their appearance +regularly, and when it was over disappeared in silence till the +season came again. + +Firewood was the one thing abundant in Little Hintock; and a blaze +of gad-cuds made the outhouse gay with its light, which vied with +that of the day as yet. In the hollow shades of the roof could be +seen dangling etiolated arms of ivy which had crept through the +joints of the tiles and were groping in vain for some support, +their leaves being dwarfed and sickly for want of sunlight; others +were pushing in with such force at the eaves as to lift from their +supports the shelves that were fixed there. + +Besides the itinerant journey-workers there were also present John +Upjohn, engaged in the hollow-turnery trade, who lived hard by; +old Timothy Tangs and young Timothy Tangs, top and bottom sawyers, +at work in Mr. Melbury's pit outside; Farmer Bawtree, who kept the +cider-house, and Robert Creedle, an old man who worked for +Winterborne, and stood warming his hands; these latter being +enticed in by the ruddy blaze, though they had no particular +business there. None of them call for any remark except, perhaps, +Creedle. To have completely described him it would have been +necessary to write a military memoir, for he wore under his smock- +frock a cast-off soldier's jacket that had seen hot service, its +collar showing just above the flap of the frock; also a hunting +memoir, to include the top-boots that he had picked up by chance; +also chronicles of voyaging and shipwreck, for his pocket-knife +had been given him by a weather-beaten sailor. But Creedle +carried about with him on his uneventful rounds these silent +testimonies of war, sport, and adventure, and thought nothing of +their associations or their stories. + +Copse-work, as it was called, being an occupation which the +secondary intelligence of the hands and arms could carry on +without requiring the sovereign attention of the head, the minds +of its professors wandered considerably from the objects before +them; hence the tales, chronicles, and ramifications of family +history which were recounted here were of a very exhaustive kind, +and sometimes so interminable as to defy description. + +Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not arrived, stepped back +again outside the door; and the conversation interrupted by his +momentary presence flowed anew, reaching his ears as an +accompaniment to the regular dripping of the fog from the +plantation boughs around. + +The topic at present handled was a highly popular and frequent +one--the personal character of Mrs. Charmond, the owner of the +surrounding woods and groves. + +"My brother-in-law told me, and I have no reason to doubt it," +said Creedle, "that she'd sit down to her dinner with a frock +hardly higher than her elbows. 'Oh, you wicked woman!' he said to +himself when he first see her, 'you go to your church, and sit, +and kneel, as if your knee-jints were greased with very saint's +anointment, and tell off your Hear-us-good-Lords like a business +man counting money; and yet you can eat your victuals such a +figure as that!' Whether she's a reformed character by this time I +can't say; but I don't care who the man is, that's how she went on +when my brother-in-law lived there." + +"Did she do it in her husband's time?" + +"That I don't know--hardly, I should think, considering his +temper. Ah!" Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance into physical +form by slowly resigning his head to obliquity and letting his +eyes water. "That man! 'Not if the angels of heaven come down, +Creedle,' he said, 'shall you do another day's work for me!' Yes-- +he'd say anything--anything; and would as soon take a winged +creature's name in vain as yours or mine! Well, now I must get +these spars home-along, and to-morrow, thank God, I must see about +using 'em." + +An old woman now entered upon the scene. She was Mr. Melbury's +servant, and passed a great part of her time in crossing the yard +between the house-door and the spar-shed, whither she had come now +for fuel. She had two facial aspects--one, of a soft and flexible +kind, she used indoors when assisting about the parlor or up- +stairs; the other, with stiff lines and corners, when she was +bustling among the men in the spar-house or out-of-doors. + +"Ah, Grammer Oliver," said John Upjohn, "it do do my heart good to +see a old woman like you so dapper and stirring, when I bear in +mind that after fifty one year counts as two did afore! But your +smoke didn't rise this morning till twenty minutes past seven by +my beater; and that's late, Grammer Oliver." + +"If you was a full-sized man, John, people might take notice of +your scornful meanings. But your growing up was such a scrimped +and scanty business that really a woman couldn't feel hurt if you +were to spit fire and brimstone itself at her. Here," she added, +holding out a spar-gad to one of the workmen, from which dangled a +long black-pudding--"here's something for thy breakfast, and if +you want tea you must fetch it from in-doors." + +"Mr. Melbury is late this morning," said the bottom-sawyer. + +"Yes. 'Twas a dark dawn," said Mrs. Oliver. "Even when I opened +the door, so late as I was, you couldn't have told poor men from +gentlemen, or John from a reasonable-sized object. And I don't +think maister's slept at all well to-night. He's anxious about +his daughter; and I know what that is, for I've cried bucketfuls +for my own." + +When the old woman had gone Creedle said, + +"He'll fret his gizzard green if he don't soon hear from that maid +of his. Well, learning is better than houses and lands. But to +keep a maid at school till she is taller out of pattens than her +mother was in 'em--'tis tempting Providence." + +"It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl," said +young Timothy Tangs. + +"I can mind her mother," said the hollow-turner. "Always a teuny, +delicate piece; her touch upon your hand was as soft and cool as +wind. She was inoculated for the small-pox and had it beautifully +fine, just about the time that I was out of my apprenticeship--ay, +and a long apprenticeship 'twas. I served that master of mine six +years and three hundred and fourteen days." + +The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, as if, +considering their number, they were a rather more remarkable fact +than the years. + +"Mr. Winterborne's father walked with her at one time," said old +Timothy Tangs. "But Mr. Melbury won her. She was a child of a +woman, and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever +she and her husband came to a puddle in their walks together he'd +take her up like a half-penny doll and put her over without +dirting her a speck. And if he keeps the daughter so long at +boarding-school, he'll make her as nesh as her mother was. But +here he comes." + +Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury crossing the +court from his door. He was carrying an open letter in his hand, +and came straight to Winterborne. His gloom of the preceding +night had quite gone. + +"I'd no sooner made up my mind, Giles, to go and see why Grace +didn't come or write than I get a letter from her--'Clifton: +Wednesday. My dear father,' says she, 'I'm coming home to-morrow' +(that's to-day), 'but I didn't think it worth while to write long +beforehand.' The little rascal, and didn't she! Now, Giles, as you +are going to Sherton market to-day with your apple-trees, why not +join me and Grace there, and we'll drive home all together?" + +He made the proposal with cheerful energy; he was hardly the same +man as the man of the small dark hours. Ever it happens that even +among the moodiest the tendency to be cheered is stronger than the +tendency to be cast down; and a soul's specific gravity stands +permanently less than that of the sea of troubles into which it is +thrown. + +Winterborne, though not demonstrative, replied to this suggestion +with something like alacrity. There was not much doubt that +Marty's grounds for cutting off her hair were substantial enough, +if Ambrose's eyes had been a reason for keeping it on. As for the +timber-merchant, it was plain that his invitation had been given +solely in pursuance of his scheme for uniting the pair. He had +made up his mind to the course as a duty, and was strenuously bent +upon following it out. + +Accompanied by Winterborne, he now turned towards the door of the +spar-house, when his footsteps were heard by the men as aforesaid. + +"Well, John, and Lot," he said, nodding as he entered. "A rimy +morning." + +"'Tis, sir!" said Creedle, energetically; for, not having as yet +been able to summon force sufficient to go away and begin work, he +felt the necessity of throwing some into his speech. "I don't +care who the man is, 'tis the rimiest morning we've had this +fall." + +"I heard you wondering why I've kept my daughter so long at +boarding-school," resumed Mr. Melbury, looking up from the letter +which he was reading anew by the fire, and turning to them with +the suddenness that was a trait in him. "Hey?" he asked, with +affected shrewdness. "But you did, you know. Well, now, though +it is my own business more than anybody else's, I'll tell ye. +When I was a boy, another boy--the pa'son's son--along with a lot +of others, asked me 'Who dragged Whom round the walls of What?' +and I said, 'Sam Barrett, who dragged his wife in a chair round +the tower corner when she went to be churched.' They laughed at me +with such torrents of scorn that I went home ashamed, and couldn't +sleep for shame; and I cried that night till my pillow was wet: +till at last I thought to myself there and then--'They may laugh +at me for my ignorance, but that was father's fault, and none o' +my making, and I must bear it. But they shall never laugh at my +children, if I have any: I'll starve first!' Thank God, I've been +able to keep her at school without sacrifice; and her scholarship +is such that she stayed on as governess for a time. Let 'em laugh +now if they can: Mrs. Charmond herself is not better informed than +my girl Grace." + +There was something between high indifference and humble emotion +in his delivery, which made it difficult for them to reply. +Winterborne's interest was of a kind which did not show itself in +words; listening, he stood by the fire, mechanically stirring the +embers with a spar-gad. + +"You'll be, then, ready, Giles?" Melbury continued, awaking from a +reverie. "Well, what was the latest news at Shottsford yesterday, +Mr. Bawtree?" + +"Well, Shottsford is Shottsford still--you can't victual your +carcass there unless you've got money; and you can't buy a cup of +genuine there, whether or no....But as the saying is, 'Go abroad +and you'll hear news of home.' It seems that our new neighbor, +this young Dr. What's-his-name, is a strange, deep, perusing +gentleman; and there's good reason for supposing he has sold his +soul to the wicked one." + +"'Od name it all," murmured the timber-merchant, unimpressed by +the news, but reminded of other things by the subject of it; "I've +got to meet a gentleman this very morning? and yet I've planned to +go to Sherton Abbas for the maid." + +"I won't praise the doctor's wisdom till I hear what sort of +bargain he's made," said the top-sawyer. + +"'Tis only an old woman's tale," said Bawtree. "But it seems that +he wanted certain books on some mysterious science or black-art, +and in order that the people hereabout should not know anything +about his dark readings, he ordered 'em direct from London, and +not from the Sherton book-seller. The parcel was delivered by +mistake at the pa'son's, and he wasn't at home; so his wife opened +it, and went into hysterics when she read 'em, thinking her +husband had turned heathen, and 'twould be the ruin of the +children. But when he came he said he knew no more about 'em than +she; and found they were this Mr. Fitzpier's property. So he +wrote 'Beware!' outside, and sent 'em on by the sexton." + +"He must be a curious young man," mused the hollow-turner. + +"He must," said Timothy Tangs. + +"Nonsense," said Mr. Melbury, authoritatively, "he's only a +gentleman fond of science and philosophy and poetry, and, in fact, +every kind of knowledge; and being lonely here, he passes his time +in making such matters his hobby." + +"Well," said old Timothy, "'tis a strange thing about doctors that +the worse they be the better they be. I mean that if you hear +anything of this sort about 'em, ten to one they can cure ye as +nobody else can." + +"True," said Bawtree, emphatically. "And for my part I shall take +my custom from old Jones and go to this one directly I've anything +the matter with me. That last medicine old Jones gave me had no +taste in it at all." + +Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed man, did not listen to +these recitals, being moreover preoccupied with the business +appointment which had come into his head. He walked up and down, +looking on the floor--his usual custom when undecided. That +stiffness about the arm, hip, and knee-joint which was apparent +when he walked was the net product of the divers sprains and over- +exertions that had been required of him in handling trees and +timber when a young man, for he was of the sort called self-made, +and had worked hard. He knew the origin of every one of these +cramps: that in his left shoulder had come of carrying a pollard, +unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home; that in one leg was caused +by the crash of an elm against it when they were felling; that in +the other was from lifting a bole. On many a morrow after +wearying himself by these prodigious muscular efforts, he had +risen from his bed fresh as usual; his lassitude had departed, +apparently forever; and confident in the recuperative power of his +youth, he had repeated the strains anew. But treacherous Time had +been only hiding ill results when they could be guarded against, +for greater accumulation when they could not. In his declining +years the store had been unfolded in the form of rheumatisms, +pricks, and spasms, in every one of which Melbury recognized some +act which, had its consequence been contemporaneously made known, +he would wisely have abstained from repeating. + +On a summons by Grammer Oliver to breakfast, he left the shed. +Reaching the kitchen, where the family breakfasted in winter to +save house-labor, he sat down by the fire, and looked a long time +at the pair of dancing shadows cast by each fire-iron and dog-knob +on the whitewashed chimney-corner--a yellow one from the window, +and a blue one from the fire. + +"I don't quite know what to do to-day," he said to his wife at +last. "I've recollected that I promised to meet Mrs. Charmond's +steward in Round Wood at twelve o'clock, and yet I want to go for +Grace." + +"Why not let Giles fetch her by himself? 'Twill bring 'em together +all the quicker." + +"I could do that--but I should like to go myself. I always have +gone, without fail, every time hitherto. It has been a great +pleasure to drive into Sherton, and wait and see her arrive; and +perhaps she'll be disappointed if I stay away." + +"Yon may be disappointed, but I don't think she will, if you send +Giles," said Mrs. Melbury, dryly. + +"Very well--I'll send him." + +Melbury was often persuaded by the quietude of his wife's words +when strenuous argument would have had no effect. This second +Mrs. Melbury was a placid woman, who had been nurse to his child +Grace before her mother's death. After that melancholy event +little Grace had clung to the nurse with much affection; and +ultimately Melbury, in dread lest the only woman who cared for the +girl should be induced to leave her, persuaded the mild Lucy to +marry him. The arrangement--for it was little more--had worked +satisfactorily enough; Grace had thriven, and Melbury had not +repented. + +He returned to the spar-house and found Giles near at hand, to +whom he explained the change of plan. "As she won't arrive till +five o'clock, you can get your business very well over in time to +receive her," said Melbury. "The green gig will do for her; +you'll spin along quicker with that, and won't be late upon the +road. Her boxes can be called for by one of the wagons." + +Winterborne, knowing nothing of the timber-merchant's restitutory +aims, quietly thought all this to be a kindly chance. Wishing +even more than her father to despatch his apple-tree business in +the market before Grace's arrival, he prepared to start at once. + +Melbury was careful that the turnout should be seemly. The gig- +wheels, for instance, were not always washed during winter-time +before a journey, the muddy roads rendering that labor useless; +but they were washed to-day. The harness was blacked, and when +the rather elderly white horse had been put in, and Winterborne +was in his seat ready to start, Mr. Melbury stepped out with a +blacking-brush, and with his own hands touched over the yellow +hoofs of the animal. + +"You see, Giles," he said, as he blacked, "coming from a +fashionable school, she might feel shocked at the homeliness of +home; and 'tis these little things that catch a dainty woman's eye +if they are neglected. We, living here alone, don't notice how +the whitey-brown creeps out of the earth over us; but she, fresh +from a city--why, she'll notice everything!" + +"That she will," said Giles. + +"And scorn us if we don't mind." + +"Not scorn us." + +"No, no, no--that's only words. She's too good a girl to do that. +But when we consider what she knows, and what she has seen since +she last saw us, 'tis as well to meet her views as nearly as +possible. Why, 'tis a year since she was in this old place, owing +to her going abroad in the summer, which I agreed to, thinking it +best for her; and naturally we shall look small, just at first--I +only say just at first." + +Mr. Melbury's tone evinced a certain exultation in the very sense +of that inferiority he affected to deplore; for this advanced and +refined being, was she not his own all the time? Not so Giles; he +felt doubtful--perhaps a trifle cynical--for that strand was wound +into him with the rest. He looked at his clothes with misgiving, +then with indifference. + +It was his custom during the planting season to carry a specimen +apple-tree to market with him as an advertisement of what he dealt +in. This had been tied across the gig; and as it would be left +behind in the town, it would cause no inconvenience to Miss Grace +Melbury coming home. + +He drove away, the twigs nodding with each step of the horse; and +Melbury went in-doors. Before the gig had passed out of sight, +Mr. Melbury reappeared and shouted after-- + +"Here, Giles, "he said, breathlessly following with some wraps, +"it may be very chilly to-night, and she may want something extra +about her. And, Giles," he added, when the young man, having +taken the articles, put the horse in motion once more, "tell her +that I should have come myself, but I had particular business with +Mrs. Charmond's agent, which prevented me. Don't forget." + +He watched Winterborne out of sight, saying, with a jerk--a shape +into which emotion with him often resolved itself--"There, now, I +hope the two will bring it to a point and have done with it! 'Tis +a pity to let such a girl throw herself away upon him--a thousand +pities!...And yet 'tis my duty for his father's sake." + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and +without discomposure. Had he regarded his inner self +spectacularly, as lovers are now daily more wont to do, he might +have felt pride in the discernment of a somewhat rare power in +him--that of keeping not only judgment but emotion suspended in +difficult cases. But he noted it not. Neither did he observe +what was also the fact, that though he cherished a true and warm +feeling towards Grace Melbury, he was not altogether her fool just +now. It must be remembered that he had not seen her for a year. + +Arrived at the entrance to a long flat lane, which had taken the +spirit out of many a pedestrian in times when, with the majority, +to travel meant to walk, he saw before him the trim figure of a +young woman in pattens, journeying with that steadfast +concentration which means purpose and not pleasure. He was soon +near enough to see that she was Marty South. Click, click, click +went the pattens; and she did not turn her head. + +She had, however, become aware before this that the driver of the +approaching gig was Giles. She had shrunk from being overtaken by +him thus; but as it was inevitable, she had braced herself up for +his inspection by closing her lips so as to make her mouth quite +unemotional, and by throwing an additional firmness into her +tread. + +"Why do you wear pattens, Marty? The turnpike is clean enough, +although the lanes are muddy." + +"They save my boots." + +"But twelve miles in pattens--'twill twist your feet off. Come, +get up and ride with me." + +She hesitated, removed her pattens, knocked the gravel out of them +against the wheel, and mounted in front of the nodding specimen +apple-tree. She had so arranged her bonnet with a full border and +trimmings that her lack of long hair did not much injure her +appearance; though Giles, of course, saw that it was gone, and may +have guessed her motive in parting with it, such sales, though +infrequent, being not unheard of in that locality. + +But nature's adornment was still hard by--in fact, within two feet +of him, though he did not know it. In Marty's basket was a brown +paper packet, and in the packet the chestnut locks, which, by +reason of the barber's request for secrecy, she had not ventured +to intrust to other hands. + +Giles asked, with some hesitation, how her father was getting on. + +He was better, she said; he would be able to work in a day or two; +he would be quite well but for his craze about the tree falling on +him. + +"You know why I don't ask for him so often as I might, I suppose?" +said Winterborne. "Or don't you know?" + +"I think I do." + +"Because of the houses?" + +She nodded. + +"Yes. I am afraid it may seem that my anxiety is about those +houses, which I should lose by his death, more than about him. +Marty, I do feel anxious about the houses, since half my income +depends upon them; but I do likewise care for him; and it almost +seems wrong that houses should be leased for lives, so as to lead +to such mixed feelings." + +"After father's death they will be Mrs. Charmond's?" + +"They'll be hers." + +"They are going to keep company with my hair," she thought. + +Thus talking, they reached the town. By no pressure would she +ride up the street with him. "That's the right of another woman," +she said, with playful malice, as she put on her pattens. "I +wonder what you are thinking of! Thank you for the lift in that +handsome gig. Good-by." + +He blushed a little, shook his head at her, and drove on ahead +into the streets--the churches, the abbey, and other buildings on +this clear bright morning having the liny distinctness of +architectural drawings, as if the original dream and vision of the +conceiving master-mason, some mediaeval Vilars or other unknown to +fame, were for a few minutes flashed down through the centuries to +an unappreciative age. Giles saw their eloquent look on this day +of transparency, but could not construe it. He turned into the +inn-yard. + +Marty, following the same track, marched promptly to the hair- +dresser's, Mr. Percombe's. Percombe was the chief of his trade in +Sherton Abbas. He had the patronage of such county offshoots as +had been obliged to seek the shelter of small houses in that +ancient town, of the local clergy, and so on, for some of whom he +had made wigs, while others among them had compensated for +neglecting him in their lifetime by patronizing him when they were +dead, and letting him shave their corpses. On the strength of all +this he had taken down his pole, and called himself "Perruquier to +the aristocracy." + +Nevertheless, this sort of support did not quite fill his +children's mouths, and they had to be filled. So, behind his +house there was a little yard, reached by a passage from the back +street, and in that yard was a pole, and under the pole a shop of +quite another description than the ornamental one in the front +street. Here on Saturday nights from seven till ten he took an +almost innumerable succession of twopences from the farm laborers +who flocked thither in crowds from the country. And thus he +lived. + +Marty, of course, went to the front shop, and handed her packet to +him silently. "Thank you," said the barber, quite joyfully. "I +hardly expected it after what you said last night." + +She turned aside, while a tear welled up and stood in each eye at +this reminder. + +"Nothing of what I told you," he whispered, there being others in +the shop. "But I can trust you, I see." + +She had now reached the end of this distressing business, and went +listlessly along the street to attend to other errands. These +occupied her till four o'clock, at which time she recrossed the +market-place. It was impossible to avoid rediscovering +Winterborne every time she passed that way, for standing, as he +always did at this season of the year, with his specimen apple- +tree in the midst, the boughs rose above the heads of the crowd, +and brought a delightful suggestion of orchards among the crowded +buildings there. When her eye fell upon him for the last time he +was standing somewhat apart, holding the tree like an ensign, and +looking on the ground instead of pushing his produce as he ought +to have been doing. He was, in fact, not a very successful seller +either of his trees or of his cider, his habit of speaking his +mind, when he spoke at all, militating against this branch of his +business. + +While she regarded him he suddenly lifted his eyes in a direction +away from Marty, his face simultaneously kindling with recognition +and surprise. She followed his gaze, and saw walking across to +him a flexible young creature in whom she perceived the features +of her she had known as Miss Grace Melbury, but now looking +glorified and refined above her former level. Winterborne, being +fixed to the spot by his apple-tree, could not advance to meet +her; he held out his spare hand with his hat in it, and with some +embarrassment beheld her coming on tiptoe through the mud to the +middle of the square where he stood. + +Miss Melbury's arrival so early was, as Marty could see, +unexpected by Giles, which accounted for his not being ready to +receive her. Indeed, her father had named five o'clock as her +probable time, for which reason that hour had been looming out all +the day in his forward perspective, like an important edifice on a +plain. Now here she was come, he knew not how, and his arranged +welcome stultified. + +His face became gloomy at her necessity for stepping into the +road, and more still at the little look of embarrassment which +appeared on hers at having to perform the meeting with him under +an apple-tree ten feet high in the middle of the market-place. +Having had occasion to take off the new gloves she had bought to +come home in, she held out to him a hand graduating from pink at +the tips of the fingers to white at the palm; and the reception +formed a scene, with the tree over their heads, which was not by +any means an ordinary one in Sherton Abbas streets. + +Nevertheless, the greeting on her looks and lips was of a +restrained type, which perhaps was not unnatural. For true it was +that Giles Winterborne, well-attired and well-mannered as he was +for a yeoman, looked rough beside her. It had sometimes dimly +occurred to him, in his ruminating silence at Little Hintock, that +external phenomena--such as the lowness or height or color of a +hat, the fold of a coat, the make of a boot, or the chance +attitude or occupation of a limb at the instant of view--may have +a great influence upon feminine opinion of a man's worth--so +frequently founded on non-essentials; but a certain causticity of +mental tone towards himself and the world in general had prevented +to-day, as always, any enthusiastic action on the strength of that +reflection; and her momentary instinct of reserve at first sight +of him was the penalty he paid for his laxness. + +He gave away the tree to a by-stander, as soon as he could find +one who would accept the cumbersome gift, and the twain moved on +towards the inn at which he had put up. Marty made as if to step +forward for the pleasure of being recognized by Miss Melbury; but +abruptly checking herself, she glided behind a carrier's van, +saying, dryly, "No; I baint wanted there," and critically regarded +Winterborne's companion. + +It would have been very difficult to describe Grace Melbury with +precision, either now or at any time. Nay, from the highest point +of view, to precisely describe a human being, the focus of a +universe--how impossible! But, apart from transcendentalism, there +never probably lived a person who was in herself more completely a +reductio ad absurdum of attempts to appraise a woman, even +externally, by items of face and figure. Speaking generally, it +may be said that she was sometimes beautiful, at other times not +beautiful, according to the state of her health and spirits. + +In simple corporeal presentment she was of a fair and clear +complexion, rather pale than pink, slim in build and elastic in +movement. Her look expressed a tendency to wait for others' +thoughts before uttering her own; possibly also to wait for +others' deeds before her own doing. In her small, delicate mouth, +which had perhaps hardly settled down to its matured curves, there +was a gentleness that might hinder sufficient self-assertion for +her own good. She had well-formed eyebrows which, had her +portrait been painted, would probably have been done in Prout's or +Vandyke brown. + +There was nothing remarkable in her dress just now, beyond a +natural fitness and a style that was recent for the streets of +Sherton. But, indeed, had it been the reverse, and quite +striking, it would have meant just as little. For there can be +hardly anything less connected with a woman's personality than +drapery which she has neither designed, manufactured, cut, sewed, +or even seen, except by a glance of approval when told that such +and such a shape and color must be had because it has been decided +by others as imperative at that particular time. + +What people, therefore, saw of her in a cursory view was very +little; in truth, mainly something that was not she. The woman +herself was a shadowy, conjectural creature who had little to do +with the outlines presented to Sherton eyes; a shape in the gloom, +whose true description could only be approximated by putting +together a movement now and a glance then, in that patient and +long-continued attentiveness which nothing but watchful loving- +kindness ever troubles to give. + + + +There was a little delay in their setting out from the town, and +Marty South took advantage of it to hasten forward, with the view +of escaping them on the way, lest they should feel compelled to +spoil their tete-a-tete by asking her to ride. She walked fast, +and one-third of the journey was done, and the evening rapidly +darkening, before she perceived any sign of them behind her. +Then, while ascending a hill, she dimly saw their vehicle drawing +near the lowest part of the incline, their heads slightly bent +towards each other; drawn together, no doubt, by their souls, as +the heads of a pair of horses well in hand are drawn in by the +rein. She walked still faster. + +But between these and herself there was a carriage, apparently a +brougham, coming in the same direction, with lighted lamps. When +it overtook her--which was not soon, on account of her pace--the +scene was much darker, and the lights glared in her eyes +sufficiently to hide the details of the equipage. + +It occurred to Marty that she might take hold behind this carriage +and so keep along with it, to save herself the mortification of +being overtaken and picked up for pity's sake by the coming pair. +Accordingly, as the carriage drew abreast of her in climbing the +long ascent, she walked close to the wheels, the rays of the +nearest lamp penetrating her very pores. She had only just +dropped behind when the carriage stopped, and to her surprise the +coachman asked her, over his shoulder, if she would ride. What +made the question more surprising was that it came in obedience to +an order from the interior of the vehicle. + +Marty gladly assented, for she was weary, very weary, after +working all night and keeping afoot all day. She mounted beside +the coachman, wondering why this good-fortune had happened to her. +He was rather a great man in aspect, and she did not like to +inquire of him for some time. + +At last she said, "Who has been so kind as to ask me to ride?" + +"Mrs. Charmond," replied her statuesque companion. + +Marty was stirred at the name, so closely connected with her last +night's experiences. "Is this her carriage?" she whispered. + +"Yes; she's inside." + +Marty reflected, and perceived that Mrs. Charmond must have +recognized her plodding up the hill under the blaze of the lamp; +recognized, probably, her stubbly poll (since she had kept away +her face), and thought that those stubbles were the result of her +own desire. + +Marty South was not so very far wrong. Inside the carriage a pair +of bright eyes looked from a ripely handsome face, and though +behind those bright eyes was a mind of unfathomed mysteries, +beneath them there beat a heart capable of quick extempore warmth-- +a heart which could, indeed, be passionately and imprudently warm +on certain occasions. At present, after recognizing the girl, she +had acted on a mere impulse, possibly feeling gratified at the +denuded appearance which signified the success of her agent in +obtaining what she had required. + +"'Tis wonderful that she should ask ye," observed the magisterial +coachman, presently. "I have never known her do it before, for as +a rule she takes no interest in the village folk at all." + +Marty said no more, but occasionally turned her head to see if she +could get a glimpse of the Olympian creature who as the coachman +had truly observed, hardly ever descended from her clouds into the +Tempe of the parishioners. But she could discern nothing of the +lady. She also looked for Miss Melbury and Winterborne. The nose +of their horse sometimes came quite near the back of Mrs. +Charmond's carriage. But they never attempted to pass it till the +latter conveyance turned towards the park gate, when they sped by. +Here the carriage drew up that the gate might be opened, and in +the momentary silence Marty heard a gentle oral sound, soft as a +breeze. + +"What's that?" she whispered. + +"Mis'ess yawning." + +"Why should she yawn?" + +"Oh, because she's been used to such wonderfully good life, and +finds it dull here. She'll soon be off again on account of it." + +"So rich and so powerful, and yet to yawn!" the girl murmured. +"Then things don't fay with she any more than with we!" + +Marty now alighted; the lamp again shone upon her, and as the +carriage rolled on, a soft voice said to her from the interior, +"Good-night." + +"Good-night, ma'am," said Marty. But she had not been able to see +the woman who began so greatly to interest her--the second person +of her own sex who had operated strongly on her mind that day. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +Meanwhile, Winterborne and Grace Melbury had also undergone their +little experiences of the same homeward journey. + +As he drove off with her out of the town the glances of people +fell upon them, the younger thinking that Mr. Winterborne was in a +pleasant place, and wondering in what relation he stood towards +her. Winterborne himself was unconscious of this. Occupied +solely with the idea of having her in charge, he did not notice +much with outward eye, neither observing how she was dressed, nor +the effect of the picture they together composed in the landscape. + +Their conversation was in briefest phrase for some time, Grace +being somewhat disconcerted, through not having understood till +they were about to start that Giles was to be her sole conductor +in place of her father. When they were in the open country he +spoke. + +"Don't Brownley's farm-buildings look strange to you, now they +have been moved bodily from the hollow where the old ones stood to +the top of the hill?" + +She admitted that they did, though she should not have seen any +difference in them if he had not pointed it out. + +"They had a good crop of bitter-sweets; they couldn't grind them +all" (nodding towards an orchard where some heaps of apples had +been left lying ever since the ingathering). + +She said "Yes," but looking at another orchard. + +"Why, you are looking at John-apple-trees! You know bitter-sweets-- +you used to well enough!" + +"I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is getting too dark to +distinguish." + +Winterborne did not continue. It seemed as if the knowledge and +interest which had formerly moved Grace's mind had quite died away +from her. He wondered whether the special attributes of his image +in the past had evaporated like these other things. + +However that might be, the fact at present was merely this, that +where he was seeing John-apples and farm-buildings she was +beholding a far remoter scene--a scene no less innocent and +simple, indeed, but much contrasting--a broad lawn in the +fashionable suburb of a fast city, the evergreen leaves shining in +the evening sun, amid which bounding girls, gracefully clad in +artistic arrangements of blue, brown, red, black, and white, were +playing at games, with laughter and chat, in all the pride of +life, the notes of piano and harp trembling in the air from the +open windows adjoining. Moreover, they were girls--and this was a +fact which Grace Melbury's delicate femininity could not lose +sight of--whose parents Giles would have addressed with a +deferential Sir or Madam. Beside this visioned scene the homely +farmsteads did not quite hold their own from her present twenty- +year point of survey. For all his woodland sequestration, Giles +knew the primitive simplicity of the subject he had started, and +now sounded a deeper note. + +"'Twas very odd what we said to each other years ago; I often +think of it. I mean our saying that if we still liked each other +when you were twenty and I twenty-five, we'd--" + +"It was child's tattle." + +"H'm!" said Giles, suddenly. + +"I mean we were young," said she, more considerately. That gruff +manner of his in making inquiries reminded her that he was +unaltered in much. + +"Yes....I beg your pardon, Miss Melbury; your father SENT me to +meet you to-day." + +"I know it, and I am glad of it." + +He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: "At that time you +were sitting beside me at the back of your father's covered car, +when we were coming home from gypsying, all the party being +squeezed in together as tight as sheep in an auction-pen. It got +darker and darker, and I said--I forget the exact words--but I put +my arm round your waist and there you let it stay till your +father, sitting in front suddenly stopped telling his story to +Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe. The flash shone into the car, +and showed us all up distinctly; my arm flew from your waist like +lightning; yet not so quickly but that some of 'em had seen, and +laughed at us. Yet your father, to our amazement, instead of +being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed quite pleased. Have you +forgot all that, or haven't you?" + +She owned that she remembered it very well, now that he mentioned +the circumstances. "But, goodness! I must have been in short +frocks," she said. + +"Come now, Miss Melbury, that won't do! Short frocks, indeed! You +know better, as well as I." + +Grace thereupon declared that she would not argue with an old +friend she valued so highly as she valued him, saying the words +with the easy elusiveness that will be polite at all costs. It +might possibly be true, she added, that she was getting on in +girlhood when that event took place; but if it were so, then she +was virtually no less than an old woman now, so far did the time +seem removed from her present. "Do you ever look at things +philosophically instead of personally?" she asked. + +"I can't say that I do," answered Giles, his eyes lingering far +ahead upon a dark spot, which proved to be a brougham. + +"I think you may, sometimes, with advantage," said she. "Look at +yourself as a pitcher drifting on the stream with other pitchers, +and consider what contrivances are most desirable for avoiding +cracks in general, and not only for saving your poor one. Shall I +tell you all about Bath or Cheltenham, or places on the Continent +that I visited last summer?" + +"With all my heart." + +She then described places and persons in such terms as might have +been used for that purpose by any woman to any man within the four +seas, so entirely absent from that description was everything +specially appertaining to her own existence. When she had done +she said, gayly, "Now do you tell me in return what has happened +in Hintock since I have been away." + +"Anything to keep the conversation away from her and me," said +Giles within him. + +It was true cultivation had so far advanced in the soil of Miss +Melbury's mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of +that she knew well, and had the greatest interest in developing-- +that is to say, herself. + +He had not proceeded far with his somewhat bald narration when +they drew near the carriage that had been preceding them for some +time. Miss Melbury inquired if he knew whose carriage it was. + +Winterborne, although he had seen it, had not taken it into +account. On examination, he said it was Mrs. Charmond's. + +Grace watched the vehicle and its easy roll, and seemed to feel +more nearly akin to it than to the one she was in. + +"Pooh! We can polish off the mileage as well as they, come to +that," said Winterborne, reading her mind; and rising to emulation +at what it bespoke, he whipped on the horse. This it was which +had brought the nose of Mr. Melbury's old gray close to the back +of Mrs. Charmond's much-eclipsing vehicle. + +"There's Marty South Sitting up with the coachman," said he, +discerning her by her dress. + +"Ah, poor Marty! I must ask her to come to see me this very +evening. How does she happen to be riding there?" + +"I don't know. It is very singular." + +Thus these people with converging destinies went along the road +together, till Winterborne, leaving the track of the carriage, +turned into Little Hintock, where almost the first house was the +timber-merchant's. Pencils of dancing light streamed out of the +windows sufficiently to show the white laurestinus flowers, and +glance over the polished leaves of laurel. The interior of the +rooms could be seen distinctly, warmed up by the fire-flames, +which in the parlor were reflected from the glass of the pictures +and bookcase, and in the kitchen from the utensils and ware. + +"Let us look at the dear place for a moment before we call them," +she said. + +In the kitchen dinner was preparing; for though Melbury dined at +one o'clock at other times, to-day the meal had been kept back for +Grace. A rickety old spit was in motion, its end being fixed in +the fire-dog, and the whole kept going by means of a cord conveyed +over pulleys along the ceiling to a large stone suspended in a +corner of the room. Old Grammer Oliver came and wound it up with +a rattle like that of a mill. + +In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury's head fell on the +wall and ceiling; but before the girl had regarded this room many +moments their presence was discovered, and her father and step- +mother came out to welcome her. + +The character of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces +some shyness in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait +frequent in rural households, and one which stands in curiously +inverse relation to most of the peculiarities distinguishing +villagers from the people of towns. Thus hiding their warmer +feelings under commonplace talk all round, Grace's reception +produced no extraordinary demonstrations. But that more was felt +than was enacted appeared from the fact that her father, in taking +her in-doors, quite forgot the presence of Giles without, as did +also Grace herself. He said nothing, but took the gig round to +the yard and called out from the spar-house the man who +particularly attended to these matters when there was no +conversation to draw him off among the copse-workers inside. +Winterborne then returned to the door with the intention of +entering the house. + +The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in +themselves. The fire was, as before, the only light, and it +irradiated Grace's face and hands so as to make them look +wondrously smooth and fair beside those of the two elders; shining +also through the loose hair about her temples as sunlight through +a brake. Her father was surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so +much had she developed and progressed in manner and stature since +he last had set eyes on her. + +Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door, +mechanically tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters +carved in the jambs--initials of by-gone generations of +householders who had lived and died there. + +No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the +family; they had forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that +he had brought her home. Still, he was a little surprised that +her father's eagerness to send him for Grace should have resulted +in such an anticlimax as this. + +He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking +back when he reached the turning, from which he could get a last +glimpse of the timber-merchant's roof. He hazarded guesses as to +what Grace was saying just at that moment, and murmured, with some +self-derision, "nothing about me!" He looked also in the other +direction, and saw against the sky the thatched hip and solitary +chimney of Marty's cottage, and thought of her too, struggling +bravely along under that humble shelter, among her spar-gads and +pots and skimmers. + +At the timber-merchant's, in the mean time, the conversation +flowed; and, as Giles Winterborne had rightly enough deemed, on +subjects in which he had no share. Among the excluding matters +there was, for one, the effect upon Mr. Melbury of the womanly +mien and manners of his daughter, which took him so much unawares +that, though it did not make him absolutely forget the existence +of her conductor homeward, thrust Giles's image back into quite +the obscurest cellarage of his brain. Another was his interview +with Mrs. Charmond's agent that morning, at which the lady herself +had been present for a few minutes. Melbury had purchased some +standing timber from her a long time before, and now that the date +had come for felling it he was left to pursue almost his own +course. This was what the household were actually talking of +during Giles's cogitation without; and Melbury's satisfaction with +the clear atmosphere that had arisen between himself and the deity +of the groves which enclosed his residence was the cause of a +counterbalancing mistiness on the side towards Winterborne. + +"So thoroughly does she trust me," said Melbury, "that I might +fell, top, or lop, on my own judgment, any stick o' timber +whatever in her wood, and fix the price o't, and settle the +matter. But, name it all! I wouldn't do such a thing. However, +it may be useful to have this good understanding with her....I +wish she took more interest in the place, and stayed here all the +year round." + +"I am afraid 'tis not her regard for you, but her dislike of +Hintock, that makes her so easy about the trees," said Mrs. +Melbury. + +When dinner was over, Grace took a candle and began to ramble +pleasurably through the rooms of her old home, from which she had +latterly become wellnigh an alien. Each nook and each object +revived a memory, and simultaneously modified it. The chambers +seemed lower than they had appeared on any previous occasion of +her return, the surfaces of both walls and ceilings standing in +such relations to the eye that it could not avoid taking +microscopic note of their irregularities and old fashion. Her own +bedroom wore at once a look more familiar than when she had left +it, and yet a face estranged. The world of little things therein +gazed at her in helpless stationariness, as though they had tried +and been unable to make any progress without her presence. Over +the place where her candle had been accustomed to stand, when she +had used to read in bed till the midnight hour, there was still +the brown spot of smoke. She did not know that her father had +taken especial care to keep it from being cleaned off. + +Having concluded her perambulation of this now uselessly +commodious edifice, Grace began to feel that she had come a long +journey since the morning; and when her father had been up +himself, as well as his wife, to see that her room was comfortable +and the fire burning, she prepared to retire for the night. No +sooner, however, was she in bed than her momentary sleepiness took +itself off, and she wished she had stayed up longer. She amused +herself by listening to the old familiar noises that she could +hear to be still going on down-stairs, and by looking towards the +window as she lay. The blind had been drawn up, as she used to +have it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim tree-tops +against the sky on the neighboring hill. Beneath this meeting- +line of light and shade nothing was visible save one solitary +point of light, which blinked as the tree-twigs waved to and fro +before its beams. From its position it seemed to radiate from the +window of a house on the hill-side. The house had been empty when +she was last at home, and she wondered who inhabited the place +now. + +Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, and she +was watching the light quite idly, when it gradually changed +color, and at length shone blue as sapphire. Thus it remained +several minutes, and then it passed through violet to red. + +Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she +sat up in bed, and stared steadily at the shine. An appearance of +this sort, sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less +than a marvel in Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet. Almost +every diurnal and nocturnal effect in that woodland place had +hitherto been the direct result of the regular terrestrial roll +which produced the season's changes; but here was something +dissociated from these normal sequences, and foreign to local +habit and knowledge. + +It was about this moment that Grace heard the household below +preparing to retire, the most emphatic noise in the proceeding +being that of her father bolting the doors. Then the stairs +creaked, and her father and mother passed her chamber. The last +to come was Grammer Oliver. + +Grace slid out of bed, ran across the room, and lifting the latch, +said, "I am not asleep, Grammer. Come in and talk to me." + +Before the old woman had entered, Grace was again under the +bedclothes. Grammer set down her candlestick, and seated herself +on the edge of Miss Melbury's coverlet. + +"I want you to tell me what light that is I see on the hill-side," +said Grace. + +Mrs. Oliver looked across. "Oh, that," she said, "is from the +doctor's. He's often doing things of that sort. Perhaps you +don't know that we've a doctor living here now--Mr. Fitzpiers by +name?" + +Grace admitted that she had not heard of him. + +"Well, then, miss, he's come here to get up a practice. I know +him very well, through going there to help 'em scrub sometimes, +which your father said I might do, if I wanted to, in my spare +time. Being a bachelor-man, he've only a lad in the house. Oh +yes, I know him very well. Sometimes he'll talk to me as if I +were his own mother." + +"Indeed." + +"Yes. 'Grammer,' he said one day, when I asked him why he came +here where there's hardly anybody living, 'I'll tell you why I +came here. I took a map, and I marked on it where Dr. Jones's +practice ends to the north of this district, and where Mr. +Taylor's ends on the south, and little Jimmy Green's on the east, +and somebody else's to the west. Then I took a pair of compasses, +and found the exact middle of the country that was left between +these bounds, and that middle was Little Hintock; so here I +am....' But, Lord, there: poor young man!" + +"Why?" + +"He said, 'Grammer Oliver, I've been here three months, and +although there are a good many people in the Hintocks and the +villages round, and a scattered practice is often a very good one, +I don't seem to get many patients. And there's no society at all; +and I'm pretty near melancholy mad,' he said, with a great yawn. +'I should be quite if it were not for my books, and my lab-- +laboratory, and what not. Grammer, I was made for higher things.' +And then he'd yawn and yawn again." + +"Was he really made for higher things, do you think? I mean, is he +clever?" + +"Well, no. How can he be clever? He may be able to jine up a +broken man or woman after a fashion, and put his finger upon an +ache if you tell him nearly where 'tis; but these young men--they +should live to my time of life, and then they'd see how clever +they were at five-and-twenty! And yet he's a projick, a real +projick, and says the oddest of rozums. 'Ah, Grammer,' he said, +at another time, 'let me tell you that Everything is Nothing. +There's only Me and not Me in the whole world.' And he told me +that no man's hands could help what they did, any more than the +hands of a clock....Yes, he's a man of strange meditations, and +his eyes seem to see as far as the north star." + +"He will soon go away, no doubt." + +"I don't think so." Grace did not say "Why?" and Grammer +hesitated. At last she went on: "Don't tell your father or +mother, miss, if I let you know a secret." + +Grace gave the required promise. + +"Well, he talks of buying me; so he won't go away just yet." + +"Buying you!--how?" + +"Not my soul--my body, when I'm dead. One day when I was there +cleaning, he said, 'Grammer, you've a large brain--a very large +organ of brain,' he said. 'A woman's is usually four ounces less +than a man's; but yours is man's size.' Well, then--hee, hee!-- +after he'd flattered me a bit like that, he said he'd give me ten +pounds to have me as a natomy after my death. Well, knowing I'd +no chick nor chiel left, and nobody with any interest in me, I +thought, faith, if I can be of any use to my fellow-creatures +after I'm gone they are welcome to my services; so I said I'd +think it over, and would most likely agree and take the ten +pounds. Now this is a secret, miss, between us two. The money +would be very useful to me; and I see no harm in it." + +"Of course there's no harm. But oh, Grammer, how can you think to +do it? I wish you hadn't told me." + +"I wish I hadn't--if you don't like to know it, miss. But you +needn't mind. Lord--hee, hee!--I shall keep him waiting many a +year yet, bless ye!" + +"I hope you will, I am sure." + +The girl thereupon fell into such deep reflection that +conversation languished, and Grammer Oliver, taking her candle, +wished Miss Melbury good-night. The latter's eyes rested on the +distant glimmer, around which she allowed her reasoning fancy to +play in vague eddies that shaped the doings of the philosopher +behind that light on the lines of intelligence just received. It +was strange to her to come back from the world to Little Hintock +and find in one of its nooks, like a tropical plant in a hedge- +row, a nucleus of advanced ideas and practices which had nothing +in common with the life around. Chemical experiments, anatomical +projects, and metaphysical conceptions had found a strange home +here. + +Thus she remained thinking, the imagined pursuits of the man +behind the light intermingling with conjectural sketches of his +personality, till her eyes fell together with their own heaviness, +and she slept. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +Kaleidoscopic dreams of a weird alchemist-surgeon, Grammer +Oliver's skeleton, and the face of Giles Winterborne, brought +Grace Melbury to the morning of the next day. It was fine. A +north wind was blowing--that not unacceptable compromise between +the atmospheric cutlery of the eastern blast and the spongy gales +of the west quarter. She looked from her window in the direction +of the light of the previous evening, and could just discern +through the trees the shape of the surgeon's house. Somehow, in +the broad, practical daylight, that unknown and lonely gentleman +seemed to be shorn of much of the interest which had invested his +personality and pursuits in the hours of darkness, and as Grace's +dressing proceeded he faded from her mind. + +Meanwhile, Winterborne, though half assured of her father's favor, +was rendered a little restless by Miss Melbury's behavior. +Despite his dry self-control, he could not help looking +continually from his own door towards the timber-merchant's, in +the probability of somebody's emergence therefrom. His attention +was at length justified by the appearance of two figures, that of +Mr. Melbury himself, and Grace beside him. They stepped out in a +direction towards the densest quarter of the wood, and Winterborne +walked contemplatively behind them, till all three were soon under +the trees. + +Although the time of bare boughs had now set in, there were +sheltered hollows amid the Hintock plantations and copses in which +a more tardy leave-taking than on windy summits was the rule with +the foliage. This caused here and there an apparent mixture of +the seasons; so that in some of the dells that they passed by +holly-berries in full red were found growing beside oak and hazel +whose leaves were as yet not far removed from green, and brambles +whose verdure was rich and deep as in the month of August. To +Grace these well-known peculiarities were as an old painting +restored. + +Now could be beheld that change from the handsome to the curious +which the features of a wood undergo at the ingress of the winter +months. Angles were taking the place of curves, and reticulations +of surfaces--a change constituting a sudden lapse from the ornate +to the primitive on Nature's canvas, and comparable to a +retrogressive step from the art of an advanced school of painting +to that of the Pacific Islander. + +Winterborne followed, and kept his eye upon the two figures as +they threaded their way through these sylvan phenomena. Mr. +Melbury's long legs, and gaiters drawn in to the bone at the +ankles, his slight stoop, his habit of getting lost in thought and +arousing himself with an exclamation of "Hah!" accompanied with an +upward jerk of the head, composed a personage recognizable by his +neighbors as far as he could be seen. It seemed as if the +squirrels and birds knew him. One of the former would +occasionally run from the path to hide behind the arm of some +tree, which the little animal carefully edged round pari passu +with Melbury and his daughters movement onward, assuming a mock +manner, as though he were saying, "Ho, ho; you are only a timber- +merchant, and carry no gun!" + +They went noiselessly over mats of starry moss, rustled through +interspersed tracts of leaves, skirted trunks with spreading +roots, whose mossed rinds made them like hands wearing green +gloves; elbowed old elms and ashes with great forks, in which +stood pools of water that overflowed on rainy days, and ran down +their stems in green cascades. On older trees still than these, +huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs. Here, as everywhere, the +Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what it is, was as obvious +as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum. The leaf +was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was interrupted; +the lichen eat the vigor of the stalk, and the ivy slowly +strangled to death the promising sapling. + +They dived amid beeches under which nothing grew, the younger +boughs still retaining their hectic leaves, that rustled in the +breeze with a sound almost metallic, like the sheet-iron foliage +of the fabled Jarnvid wood. Some flecks of white in Grace's +drapery had enabled Giles to keep her and her father in view till +this time; but now he lost sight of them, and was obliged to +follow by ear--no difficult matter, for on the line of their +course every wood-pigeon rose from its perch with a continued +clash, dashing its wings against the branches with wellnigh force +enough to break every quill. By taking the track of this noise he +soon came to a stile. + +Was it worth while to go farther? He examined the doughy soil at +the foot of the stile, and saw among the large sole-and-heel +tracks an impression of a slighter kind from a boot that was +obviously not local, for Winterborne knew all the cobblers' +patterns in that district, because they were very few to know. +The mud-picture was enough to make him swing himself over and +proceed. + +The character of the woodland now changed. The bases of the +smaller trees were nibbled bare by rabbits, and at divers points +heaps of fresh-made chips, and the newly-cut stool of a tree, +stared white through the undergrowth. There had been a large fall +of timber this year, which explained the meaning of some sounds +that soon reached him. + +A voice was shouting intermittently in a sort of human bark, which +reminded Giles that there was a sale of trees and fagots that very +day. Melbury would naturally be present. Thereupon Winterborne +remembered that he himself wanted a few fagots, and entered upon +the scene. + +A large group of buyers stood round the auctioneer, or followed +him when, between his pauses, he wandered on from one lot of +plantation produce to another, like some philosopher of the +Peripatetic school delivering his lectures in the shady groves of +the Lyceum. His companions were timber-dealers, yeomen, farmers, +villagers, and others; mostly woodland men, who on that account +could afford to be curious in their walking-sticks, which +consequently exhibited various monstrosities of vegetation, the +chief being cork-screw shapes in black and white thorn, brought to +that pattern by the slow torture of an encircling woodbine during +their growth, as the Chinese have been said to mould human beings +into grotesque toys by continued compression in infancy. Two +women, wearing men's jackets on their gowns, conducted in the rear +of the halting procession a pony-cart containing a tapped barrel +of beer, from which they drew and replenished horns that were +handed round, with bread-and-cheese from a basket. + +The auctioneer adjusted himself to circumstances by using his +walking-stick as a hammer, and knocked down the lot on any +convenient object that took his fancy, such as the crown of a +little boy's head, or the shoulders of a by-stander who had no +business there except to taste the brew; a proceeding which would +have been deemed humorous but for the air of stern rigidity which +that auctioneer's face preserved, tending to show that the +eccentricity was a result of that absence of mind which is +engendered by the press of affairs, and no freak of fancy at all. + +Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the rest of the +Peripatetics, and Grace beside him, clinging closely to his arm, +her modern attire looking almost odd where everything else was +old-fashioned, and throwing over the familiar garniture of the +trees a homeliness that seemed to demand improvement by the +addition of a few contemporary novelties also. Grace seemed to +regard the selling with the interest which attaches to memories +revived after an interval of obliviousness. + +Winterborne went and stood close to them; the timber-merchant +spoke, and continued his buying; Grace merely smiled. To justify +his presence there Winterborne began bidding for timber and fagots +that he did not want, pursuing the occupation in an abstracted +mood, in which the auctioneer's voice seemed to become one of the +natural sounds of the woodland. A few flakes of snow descended, +at the sight of which a robin, alarmed at these signs of imminent +winter, and seeing that no offence was meant by the human +invasion, came and perched on the tip of the fagots that were +being sold, and looked into the auctioneer's face, while waiting +for some chance crumb from the bread-basket. Standing a little +behind Grace, Winterborne observed how one flake would sail +downward and settle on a curl of her hair, and how another would +choose her shoulder, and another the edge of her bonnet, which +took up so much of his attention that his biddings proceeded +incoherently; and when the auctioneer said, every now and then, +with a nod towards him, "Yours, Mr. Winterborne," he had no idea +whether he had bought fagots, poles, or logwood. + +He regretted, with some causticity of humor, that her father +should show such inequalities of temperament as to keep Grace +tightly on his arm to-day, when he had quite lately seemed anxious +to recognize their betrothal as a fact. And thus musing, and +joining in no conversation with other buyers except when directly +addressed, he followed the assemblage hither and thither till the +end of the auction, when Giles for the first time realized what +his purchases had been. Hundreds of fagots, and divers lots of +timber, had been set down to him, when all he had required had +been a few bundles of spray for his odd man Robert Creedle's use +in baking and lighting fires. + +Business being over, he turned to speak to the timber merchant. +But Melbury's manner was short and distant; and Grace, too, looked +vexed and reproachful. Winterborne then discovered that he had +been unwittingly bidding against her father, and picking up his +favorite lots in spite of him. With a very few words they left +the spot and pursued their way homeward. + +Giles was extremely sorry at what he had done, and remained +standing under the trees, all the other men having strayed +silently away. He saw Melbury and his daughter pass down a glade +without looking back. While they moved slowly through it a lady +appeared on horseback in the middle distance, the line of her +progress converging upon that of Melbury's. They met, Melbury +took off his hat, and she reined in her horse. A conversation was +evidently in progress between Grace and her father and this +equestrian, in whom he was almost sure that he recognized Mrs. +Charmond, less by her outline than by the livery of the groom who +had halted some yards off. + +The interlocutors did not part till after a prolonged pause, +during which much seemed to be said. When Melbury and Grace +resumed their walk it was with something of a lighter tread than +before. + +Winterborne then pursued his own course homeward. He was +unwilling to let coldness grow up between himself and the Melburys +for any trivial reason, and in the evening he went to their house. +On drawing near the gate his attention was attracted by the sight +of one of the bedrooms blinking into a state of illumination. In +it stood Grace lighting several candles, her right hand elevating +the taper, her left hand on her bosom, her face thoughtfully fixed +on each wick as it kindled, as if she saw in every flame's growth +the rise of a life to maturity. He wondered what such unusual +brilliancy could mean to-night. On getting in-doors he found her +father and step-mother in a state of suppressed excitement, which +at first he could not comprehend. + +"I am sorry about my biddings to-day," said Giles. "I don't know +what I was doing. I have come to say that any of the lots you may +require are yours." + +"Oh, never mind--never mind," replied the timber-merchant, with a +slight wave of his hand, "I have so much else to think of that I +nearly had forgot it. Just now, too, there are matters of a +different kind from trade to attend to, so don't let it concern +ye." + +As the timber-merchant spoke, as it were, down to him from a +higher moral plane than his own, Giles turned to Mrs. Melbury. + +"Grace is going to the House to-morrow," she said, quietly. "She +is looking out her things now. I dare say she is wanting me this +minute to assist her." Thereupon Mrs. Melbury left the room. + +Nothing is more remarkable than the independent personality of the +tongue now and then. Mr. Melbury knew that his words had been a +sort of boast. He decried boasting, particularly to Giles; yet +whenever the subject was Grace, his judgment resigned the ministry +of speech in spite of him. + +Winterborne felt surprise, pleasure, and also a little +apprehension at the news. He repeated Mrs. Melbury's words. + +"Yes," said paternal pride, not sorry to have dragged out of him +what he could not in any circumstances have kept in. "Coming home +from the woods this afternoon we met Mrs. Charmond out for a ride. +She spoke to me on a little matter of business, and then got +acquainted with Grace. 'Twas wonderful how she took to Grace in a +few minutes; that freemasonry of education made 'em close at once. +Naturally enough she was amazed that such an article--ha, ha!-- +could come out of my house. At last it led on to Mis'ess Grace +being asked to the House. So she's busy hunting up her frills and +furbelows to go in." As Giles remained in thought without +responding, Melbury continued: "But I'll call her down-stairs." + +"No, no; don't do that, since she's busy," said Winterborne. + +Melbury, feeling from the young man's manner that his own talk had +been too much at Giles and too little to him, repented at once. +His face changed, and he said, in lower tones, with an effort, +"She's yours, Giles, as far as I am concerned." + +"Thanks--my best thanks....But I think, since it is all right +between us about the biddings, that I'll not interrupt her now. +I'll step homeward, and call another time." + +On leaving the house he looked up at the bedroom again. Grace, +surrounded by a sufficient number of candles to answer all +purposes of self-criticism, was standing before a cheval-glass +that her father had lately bought expressly for her use; she was +bonneted, cloaked, and gloved, and glanced over her shoulder into +the mirror, estimating her aspect. Her face was lit with the +natural elation of a young girl hoping to inaugurate on the morrow +an intimate acquaintance with a new, interesting, and powerful +friend. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +The inspiriting appointment which had led Grace Melbury to indulge +in a six-candle illumination for the arrangement of her attire, +carried her over the ground the next morning with a springy tread. +Her sense of being properly appreciated on her own native soil +seemed to brighten the atmosphere and herbage around her, as the +glowworm's lamp irradiates the grass. Thus she moved along, a +vessel of emotion going to empty itself on she knew not what. + +Twenty minutes' walking through copses, over a stile, and along an +upland lawn brought her to the verge of a deep glen, at the bottom +of which Hintock House appeared immediately beneath her eye. To +describe it as standing in a hollow would not express the +situation of the manor-house; it stood in a hole, notwithstanding +that the hole was full of beauty. From the spot which Grace had +reached a stone could easily have been thrown over or into, the +birds'-nested chimneys of the mansion. Its walls were surmounted +by a battlemented parapet; but the gray lead roofs were quite +visible behind it, with their gutters, laps, rolls, and skylights, +together with incised letterings and shoe-patterns cut by idlers +thereon. + +The front of the house exhibited an ordinary manorial presentation +of Elizabethan windows, mullioned and hooded, worked in rich +snuff-colored freestone from local quarries. The ashlar of the +walls, where not overgrown with ivy and other creepers, was coated +with lichen of every shade, intensifying its luxuriance with its +nearness to the ground, till, below the plinth, it merged in moss. + +Above the house to the back was a dense plantation, the roots of +whose trees were above the level of the chimneys. The +corresponding high ground on which Grace stood was richly grassed, +with only an old tree here and there. A few sheep lay about, +which, as they ruminated, looked quietly into the bedroom windows. +The situation of the house, prejudicial to humanity, was a +stimulus to vegetation, on which account an endless shearing of +the heavy-armed ivy was necessary, and a continual lopping of +trees and shrubs. It was an edifice built in times when human +constitutions were damp-proof, when shelter from the boisterous +was all that men thought of in choosing a dwelling-place, the +insidious being beneath their notice; and its hollow site was an +ocular reminder, by its unfitness for modern lives, of the +fragility to which these have declined. The highest architectural +cunning could have done nothing to make Hintock House dry and +salubrious; and ruthless ignorance could have done little to make +it unpicturesque. It was vegetable nature's own home; a spot to +inspire the painter and poet of still life--if they did not suffer +too much from the relaxing atmosphere--and to draw groans from the +gregariously disposed. Grace descended the green escarpment by a +zigzag path into the drive, which swept round beneath the slope. +The exterior of the house had been familiar to her from her +childhood, but she had never been inside, and the approach to +knowing an old thing in a new way was a lively experience. It was +with a little flutter that she was shown in; but she recollected +that Mrs. Charmond would probably be alone. Up to a few days +before this time that lady had been accompanied in her comings, +stayings, and goings by a relative believed to be her aunt; +latterly, however, these two ladies had separated, owing, it was +supposed, to a quarrel, and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate. +Being presumably a woman who did not care for solitude, this +deprivation might possibly account for her sudden interest in +Grace. + +Mrs. Charmond was at the end of a gallery opening from the hall +when Miss Melbury was announced, and saw her through the glass +doors between them. She came forward with a smile on her face, +and told the young girl it was good of her to come. + +"Ah! you have noticed those," she said, seeing that Grace's eyes +were attracted by some curious objects against the walls. "They +are man-traps. My husband was a connoisseur in man-traps and +spring-guns and such articles, collecting them from all his +neighbors. He knew the histories of all these--which gin had +broken a man's leg, which gun had killed a man. That one, I +remember his saying, had been set by a game-keeper in the track of +a notorious poacher; but the keeper, forgetting what he had done, +went that way himself, received the charge in the lower part of +his body, and died of the wound. I don't like them here, but I've +never yet given directions for them to be taken away." She added, +playfully, "Man-traps are of rather ominous significance where a +person of our sex lives, are they not?" + +Grace was bound to smile; but that side of womanliness was one +which her inexperience had no great zest in contemplating. + +"They are interesting, no doubt, as relics of a barbarous time +happily past," she said, looking thoughtfully at the varied +designs of these instruments of torture--some with semi-circular +jaws, some with rectangular; most of them with long, sharp teeth, +but a few with none, so that their jaws looked like the blank gums +of old age. + +"Well, we must not take them too seriously," said Mrs. Charmond, +with an indolent turn of her head, and they moved on inward. When +she had shown her visitor different articles in cabinets that she +deemed likely to interest her, some tapestries, wood-carvings, +ivories, miniatures, and so on--always with a mien of listlessness +which might either have been constitutional, or partly owing to +the situation of the place--they sat down to an early cup of tea. + +"Will you pour it out, please? Do," she said, leaning back in her +chair, and placing her hand above her forehead, while her almond +eyes--those long eyes so common to the angelic legions of early +Italian art--became longer, and her voice more languishing. She +showed that oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps most +frequent in women of darker complexion and more lymphatic +temperament than Mrs. Charmond's was; who lingeringly smile their +meanings to men rather than speak them, who inveigle rather than +prompt, and take advantage of currents rather than steer. + +"I am the most inactive woman when I am here," she said. "I think +sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but +float about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams. But that +cannot be really my destiny, and I must struggle against such +fancies." + +"I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion--it is quite sad! I wish +I could tend you and make you very happy." + +There was something so sympathetic, so appreciative, in the sound +of Grace's voice, that it impelled people to play havoc with their +customary reservations in talking to her. "It is tender and kind +of you to feel that," said Mrs. Charmond. "Perhaps I have given +you the notion that my languor is more than it really is. But +this place oppresses me, and I have a plan of going abroad a good +deal. I used to go with a relative, but that arrangement has +dropped through." Regarding Grace with a final glance of +criticism, she seemed to make up her mind to consider the young +girl satisfactory, and continued: "Now I am often impelled to +record my impressions of times and places. I have often thought +of writing a 'New Sentimental Journey.' But I cannot find energy +enough to do it alone. When I am at different places in the south +of Europe I feel a crowd of ideas and fancies thronging upon me +continually, but to unfold writing-materials, take up a cold steel +pen, and put these impressions down systematically on cold, smooth +paper--that I cannot do. So I have thought that if I always could +have somebody at my elbow with whom I am in sympathy, I might +dictate any ideas that come into my head. And directly I had made +your acquaintance the other day it struck me that you would suit +me so well. Would you like to undertake it? You might read to +me, too, if desirable. Will you think it over, and ask your +parents if they are willing?" + +"Oh yes," said Grace. "I am almost sure they would be very glad." + +"You are so accomplished, I hear; I should be quite honored by +such intellectual company." + +Grace, modestly blushing, deprecated any such idea. + +"Do you keep up your lucubrations at Little Hintock?" + +"Oh no. Lucubrations are not unknown at Little Hintock; but they +are not carried on by me." + +"What--another student in that retreat?" + +"There is a surgeon lately come, and I have heard that he reads a +great deal--I see his light sometimes through the trees late at +night." + +"Oh yes--a doctor--I believe I was told of him. It is a strange +place for him to settle in." + +"It is a convenient centre for a practice, they say. But he does +not confine his studies to medicine, it seems. He investigates +theology and metaphysics and all sorts of subjects." + +"What is his name?" + +"Fitzpiers. He represents a very old family, I believe, the +Fitzpierses of Buckbury-Fitzpiers--not a great many miles from +here." + +"I am not sufficiently local to know the history of the family. I +was never in the county till my husband brought me here." Mrs. +Charmond did not care to pursue this line of investigation. +Whatever mysterious merit might attach to family antiquity, it was +one which, though she herself could claim it, her adaptable, +wandering weltburgerliche nature had grown tired of caring about-- +a peculiarity that made her a contrast to her neighbors. "It is +of rather more importance to know what the man is himself than +what his family is," she said, "if he is going to practise upon us +as a surgeon. Have you seen him?" + +Grace had not. "I think he is not a very old man," she added. + +"Has he a wife?" + +"I am not aware that he has." + +"Well, I hope he will be useful here. I must get to know him when +I come back. It will be very convenient to have a medical man--if +he is clever--in one's own parish. I get dreadfully nervous +sometimes, living in such an outlandish place; and Sherton is so +far to send to. No doubt you feel Hintock to be a great change +after watering-place life." + +"I do. But it is home. It has its advantages and its +disadvantages." Grace was thinking less of the solitude than of +the attendant circumstances. + +They chatted on for some time, Grace being set quite at her ease +by her entertainer. Mrs. Charmond was far too well-practised a +woman not to know that to show a marked patronage to a sensitive +young girl who would probably be very quick to discern it, was to +demolish her dignity rather than to establish it in that young +girl's eyes. So, being violently possessed with her idea of +making use of this gentle acquaintance, ready and waiting at her +own door, she took great pains to win her confidence at starting. + +Just before Grace's departure the two chanced to pause before a +mirror which reflected their faces in immediate juxtaposition, so +as to bring into prominence their resemblances and their +contrasts. Both looked attractive as glassed back by the faithful +reflector; but Grace's countenance had the effect of making Mrs. +Charmond appear more than her full age. There are complexions +which set off each other to great advantage, and there are those +which antagonize, the one killing or damaging its neighbor +unmercifully. This was unhappily the case here. Mrs. Charmond +fell into a meditation, and replied abstractedly to a cursory +remark of her companion's. However, she parted from her young +friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her know +as soon as her mind was made up on the arrangement she had +suggested. + +When Grace had ascended nearly to the top of the adjoining slope +she looked back, and saw that Mrs. Charmond still stood at the +door, meditatively regarding her. + + + +Often during the previous night, after his call on the Melburys, +Winterborne's thoughts ran upon Grace's announced visit to Hintock +House. Why could he not have proposed to walk with her part of +the way? Something told him that she might not, on such an +occasion, care for his company. + +He was still more of that opinion when, standing in his garden +next day, he saw her go past on the journey with such a pretty +pride in the event. He wondered if her father's ambition, which +had purchased for her the means of intellectual light and culture +far beyond those of any other native of the village, would conduce +to the flight of her future interests above and away from the +local life which was once to her the movement of the world. + +Nevertheless, he had her father's permission to win her if he +could; and to this end it became desirable to bring matters soon +to a crisis, if he ever hoped to do so. If she should think +herself too good for him, he could let her go and make the best of +his loss; but until he had really tested her he could not say that +she despised his suit. The question was how to quicken events +towards an issue. + +He thought and thought, and at last decided that as good a way as +any would be to give a Christmas party, and ask Grace and her +parents to come as chief guests. + +These ruminations were occupying him when there became audible a +slight knocking at his front door. He descended the path and +looked out, and beheld Marty South, dressed for out-door work. + +"Why didn't you come, Mr. Winterborne?" she said. "I've been +waiting there hours and hours, and at last I thought I must try to +find you." + +"Bless my soul, I'd quite forgot," said Giles. + +What he had forgotten was that there was a thousand young fir- +trees to be planted in a neighboring spot which had been cleared +by the wood-cutters, and that he had arranged to plant them with +his own hands. He had a marvellous power of making trees grow. +Although he would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly, +there was a sort of sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or +beech that he was operating on, so that the roots took hold of the +soil in a few days. When, on the other hand, any of the +journeymen planted, although they seemed to go through an +identically similar process, one quarter of the trees would die +away during the ensuing August. + +Hence Winterborne found delight in the work even when, as at +present, he contracted to do it on portions of the woodland in +which he had no personal interest. Marty, who turned her hand to +anything, was usually the one who performed the part of keeping +the trees in a perpendicular position while he threw in the mould. + +He accompanied her towards the spot, being stimulated yet further +to proceed with the work by the knowledge that the ground was +close to the way-side along which Grace must pass on her return +from Hintock House. + +"You've a cold in the head, Marty," he said, as they walked. +"That comes of cutting off your hair." + +"I suppose it do. Yes; I've three headaches going on in my head +at the same time." + +"Three headaches!" + +"Yes, a rheumatic headache in my poll, a sick headache over my +eyes, and a misery headache in the middle of my brain. However, I +came out, for I thought you might be waiting and grumbling like +anything if I was not there." + +The holes were already dug, and they set to work. Winterborne's +fingers were endowed with a gentle conjuror's touch in spreading +the roots of each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress, +under which the delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their +proper directions for growth. He put most of these roots towards +the south-west; for, he said, in forty years' time, when some +great gale is blowing from that quarter, the trees will require +the strongest holdfast on that side to stand against it and not +fall. + +"How they sigh directly we put 'em upright, though while they are +lying down they don't sigh at all," said Marty. + +"Do they?" said Giles. "I've never noticed it." + +She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her +finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not +to cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled-- +probably long after the two planters should be felled themselves. + +"It seems to me," the girl continued, "as if they sigh because +they are very sorry to begin life in earnest--just as we be." + +"Just as we be?" He looked critically at her. "You ought not to +feel like that, Marty." + +Her only reply was turning to take up the next tree; and they +planted on through a great part of the day, almost without another +word. Winterborne's mind ran on his contemplated evening-party, +his abstraction being such that he hardly was conscious of Marty's +presence beside him. From the nature of their employment, in +which he handled the spade and she merely held the tree, it +followed that he got good exercise and she got none. But she was +an heroic girl, and though her out-stretched hand was chill as a +stone, and her cheeks blue, and her cold worse than ever, she +would not complain while he was disposed to continue work. But +when he paused she said, "Mr. Winterborne, can I run down the lane +and back to warm my feet?" + +"Why, yes, of course," he said, awakening anew to her existence. +"Though I was just thinking what a mild day it is for the season. +Now I warrant that cold of yours is twice as bad as it was. You +had no business to chop that hair off, Marty; it serves you almost +right. Look here, cut off home at once." + +"A run down the lane will be quite enough." + +"No, it won't. You ought not to have come out to-day at all." + +"But I should like to finish the--" + +"Marty, I tell you to go home," said he, peremptorily. "I can +manage to keep the rest of them upright with a stick or +something." + +She went away without saying any more. When she had gone down the +orchard a little distance she looked back. Giles suddenly went +after her. + +"Marty, it was for your good that I was rough, you know. But warm +yourself in your own way, I don't care." + +When she had run off he fancied he discerned a woman's dress +through the holly-bushes which divided the coppice from the road. +It was Grace at last, on her way back from the interview with Mrs. +Charmond. He threw down the tree he was planting, and was about +to break through the belt of holly when he suddenly became aware +of the presence of another man, who was looking over the hedge on +the opposite side of the way upon the figure of the unconscious +Grace. He appeared as a handsome and gentlemanly personage of six +or eight and twenty, and was quizzing her through an eye-glass. +Seeing that Winterborne was noticing him, he let his glass drop +with a click upon the rail which protected the hedge, and walked +away in the opposite direction. Giles knew in a moment that this +must be Mr. Fitzpiers. When he was gone, Winterborne pushed +through the hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting +object of their contemplation. + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +"I heard the bushes move long before I saw you," she began. "I +said first, 'it is some terrible beast;' next, 'it is a poacher;' +next, 'it is a friend!'" + +He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing, not her speech, but +the question whether he should tell her that she had been watched. +He decided in the negative. + +"You have been to the house?" he said. "But I need not ask." The +fact was that there shone upon Miss Melbury's face a species of +exaltation, which saw no environing details nor his own +occupation; nothing more than his bare presence. + +"Why need you not ask?" + +"Your face is like the face of Moses when he came down from the +Mount." + +She reddened a little and said, "How can you be so profane, Giles +Winterborne?" + +"How can you think so much of that class of people? Well, I beg +pardon; I didn't mean to speak so freely. How do you like her +house and her?" + +"Exceedingly. I had not been inside the walls since I was a +child, when it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond's +late husband bought the property. She is SO nice!" And Grace fell +into such an abstracted gaze at the imaginary image of Mrs. +Charmond and her niceness that it almost conjured up a vision of +that lady in mid-air before them. + +"She has only been here a month or two, it seems, and cannot stay +much longer, because she finds it so lonely and damp in winter. +She is going abroad. Only think, she would like me to go with +her." + +Giles's features stiffened a little at the news. "Indeed; what +for? But I won't keep you standing here. Hoi, Robert!" he cried +to a swaying collection of clothes in the distance, which was the +figure of Creedle his man. "Go on filling in there till I come +back." + +"I'm a-coming, sir; I'm a-coming." + +"Well, the reason is this," continued she, as they went on +together--" Mrs. Charmond has a delightful side to her character-- +a desire to record her impressions of travel, like Alexandre +Dumas, and Mery, and Sterne, and others. But she cannot find +energy enough to do it herself." And Grace proceeded to explain +Mrs. Charmond's proposal at large. "My notion is that Mery's +style will suit her best, because he writes in that soft, +emotional, luxurious way she has," Grace said, musingly. + +"Indeed!" said Winterborne, with mock awe. "Suppose you talk over +my head a little longer, Miss Grace Melbury?" + +"Oh, I didn't mean it!" she said, repentantly, looking into his +eyes. "And as for myself, I hate French books. And I love dear +old Hintock, AND THE PEOPLE IN IT, fifty times better than all the +Continent. But the scheme; I think it an enchanting notion, don't +you, Giles?" + +"It is well enough in one sense, but it will take yon away," said +he, mollified. + +"Only for a short time. We should return in May." + +"Well, Miss Melbury, it is a question for your father." + +Winterborne walked with her nearly to her house. He had awaited +her coming, mainly with the view of mentioning to her his proposal +to have a Christmas party; but homely Christmas gatherings in the +venerable and jovial Hintock style seemed so primitive and uncouth +beside the lofty matters of her converse and thought that he +refrained. + +As soon as she was gone he turned back towards the scene of his +planting, and could not help saying to himself as he walked, that +this engagement of his was a very unpromising business. Her +outing to-day had not improved it. A woman who could go to +Hintock House and be friendly with its mistress, enter into the +views of its mistress, talk like her, and dress not much unlike +her, why, she would hardly be contented with him, a yeoman, now +immersed in tree-planting, even though he planted them well. "And +yet she's a true-hearted girl," he said, thinking of her words +about Hintock. "I must bring matters to a point, and there's an +end of it." + +When he reached the plantation he found that Marty had come back, +and dismissing Creedle, he went on planting silently with the girl +as before. + +"Suppose, Marty," he said, after a while, looking at her extended +arm, upon which old scratches from briers showed themselves purple +in the cold wind--"suppose you know a person, and want to bring +that person to a good understanding with you, do you think a +Christmas party of some sort is a warming-up thing, and likely to +be useful in hastening on the matter?" + +"Is there to be dancing?" + +"There might be, certainly." + +"Will He dance with She?" + +"Well, yes." + +"Then it might bring things to a head, one way or the other; I +won't be the one to say which." + +"It shall be done," said Winterborne, not to her, though he spoke +the words quite loudly. And as the day was nearly ended, he +added, "Here, Marty, I'll send up a man to plant the rest to- +morrow. I've other things to think of just now." + +She did not inquire what other things, for she had seen him +walking with Grace Melbury. She looked towards the western sky, +which was now aglow like some vast foundery wherein new worlds +were being cast. Across it the bare bough of a tree stretched +horizontally, revealing every twig against the red, and showing in +dark profile every beck and movement of three pheasants that were +settling themselves down on it in a row to roost. + +"It will be fine to-morrow," said Marty, observing them with the +vermilion light of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, "for they +are a-croupied down nearly at the end of the bough. If it were +going to be stormy they'd squeeze close to the trunk. The weather +is almost all they have to think of, isn't it, Mr. Winterborne? +and so they must be lighter-hearted than we." + +"I dare say they are," said Winterborne. + + + +Before taking a single step in the preparations, Winterborne, with +no great hopes, went across that evening to the timber-merchant's +to ascertain if Grace and her parents would honor him with their +presence. Having first to set his nightly gins in the garden, to +catch the rabbits that ate his winter-greens, his call was delayed +till just after the rising of the moon, whose rays reached the +Hintock houses but fitfully as yet, on account of the trees. +Melbury was crossing his yard on his way to call on some one at +the larger village, but he readily turned and walked up and down +the path with the young man. + +Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of living on a much smaller +scale than the Melburys did, would not for the world imply that +his invitation was to a gathering of any importance. So he put it +in the mild form of "Can you come in for an hour, when you have +done business, the day after to-morrow; and Mrs. and Miss Melbury, +if they have nothing more pressing to do?" + +Melbury would give no answer at once. "No, I can't tell you to- +day," he said. "I must talk it over with the women. As far as I +am concerned, my dear Giles, you know I'll come with pleasure. +But how do I know what Grace's notions may be? You see, she has +been away among cultivated folks a good while; and now this +acquaintance with Mrs. Charmond--Well, I'll ask her. I can say no +more." + +When Winterborne was gone the timber-merchant went on his way. He +knew very well that Grace, whatever her own feelings, would either +go or not go, according as he suggested; and his instinct was, for +the moment, to suggest the negative. His errand took him past the +church, and the way to his destination was either across the +church-yard or along-side it, the distances being the same. For +some reason or other he chose the former way. + +The moon was faintly lighting up the gravestones, and the path, +and the front of the building. Suddenly Mr. Melbury paused, +turned ill upon the grass, and approached a particular headstone, +where he read, "In memory of John Winterborne," with the subjoined +date and age. It was the grave of Giles's father. + +The timber-merchant laid his hand upon the stone, and was +humanized. "Jack, my wronged friend!" he said. "I'll be faithful +to my plan of making amends to 'ee." + +When he reached home that evening, he said to Grace and Mrs. +Melbury, who were working at a little table by the fire, + +"Giles wants us to go down and spend an hour with him the day +after to-morrow; and I'm thinking, that as 'tis Giles who asks us, +we'll go." + +They assented without demur, and accordingly the timber-merchant +sent Giles the next morning an answer in the affirmative. + + + +Winterborne, in his modesty, or indifference, had mentioned no +particular hour in his invitation; and accordingly Mr. Melbury and +his family, expecting no other guests, chose their own time, which +chanced to be rather early in the afternoon, by reason of the +somewhat quicker despatch than usual of the timber-merchant's +business that day. To show their sense of the unimportance of the +occasion, they walked quite slowly to the house, as if they were +merely out for a ramble, and going to nothing special at all; or +at most intending to pay a casual call and take a cup of tea. + +At this hour stir and bustle pervaded the interior of +Winterborne's domicile from cellar to apple-loft. He had planned +an elaborate high tea for six o'clock or thereabouts, and a good +roaring supper to come on about eleven. Being a bachelor of +rather retiring habits, the whole of the preparations devolved +upon himself and his trusty man and familiar, Robert Creedle, who +did everything that required doing, from making Giles's bed to +catching moles in his field. He was a survival from the days when +Giles's father held the homestead, and Giles was a playing boy. + +These two, with a certain dilatoriousness which appertained to +both, were now in the heat of preparation in the bake-house, +expecting nobody before six o'clock. Winterborne was standing +before the brick oven in his shirt-sleeves, tossing in thorn +sprays, and stirring about the blazing mass with a long-handled, +three-pronged Beelzebub kind of fork, the heat shining out upon +his streaming face and making his eyes like furnaces, the thorns +crackling and sputtering; while Creedle, having ranged the pastry +dishes in a row on the table till the oven should be ready, was +pressing out the crust of a final apple-pie with a rolling-pin. A +great pot boiled on the fire, and through the open door of the +back kitchen a boy was seen seated on the fender, emptying the +snuffers and scouring the candlesticks, a row of the latter +standing upside down on the hob to melt out the grease + +Looking up from the rolling-pin, Creedle saw passing the window +first the timber-merchant, in his second-best suit, Mrs. Melbury +in her best silk, and Grace in the fashionable attire which, in +part brought home with her from the Continent, she had worn on her +visit to Mrs. Charmond's. The eyes of the three had been +attracted to the proceedings within by the fierce illumination +which the oven threw out upon the operators and their utensils. + +"Lord, Lord! if they baint come a'ready!" said Creedle. + +"No--hey?" said Giles, looking round aghast; while the boy in the +background waved a reeking candlestick in his delight. As there +was no help for it, Winterborne went to meet them in the door-way. + +"My dear Giles, I see we have made a mistake in the time," said +the timber-merchant's wife, her face lengthening with concern. + +"Oh, it is not much difference. I hope you'll come in." + +"But this means a regular randyvoo!" said Mr. Melbury, accusingly, +glancing round and pointing towards the bake-house with his stick. + +"Well, yes," said Giles. + +"And--not Great Hintock band, and dancing, surely?" + +"I told three of 'em they might drop in if they'd nothing else to +do," Giles mildly admitted. + +"Now, why the name didn't ye tell us 'twas going to be a serious +kind of thing before? How should I know what folk mean if they +don't say? Now, shall we come in, or shall we go home and come +back along in a couple of hours?" + +"I hope you'll stay, if you'll be so good as not to mind, now you +are here. I shall have it all right and tidy in a very little +time. I ought not to have been so backward." Giles spoke quite +anxiously for one of his undemonstrative temperament; for he +feared that if the Melburys once were back in their own house they +would not be disposed to turn out again. + +"'Tis we ought not to have been so forward; that's what 'tis," +said Mr. Melbury, testily. "Don't keep us here in the sitting- +room; lead on to the bakehouse, man. Now we are here we'll help +ye get ready for the rest. Here, mis'ess, take off your things, +and help him out in his baking, or he won't get done to-night. +I'll finish heating the oven, and set you free to go and skiver up +them ducks." His eye had passed with pitiless directness of +criticism into yet remote recesses of Winterborne's awkwardly +built premises, where the aforesaid birds were hanging. + +"And I'll help finish the tarts," said Grace, cheerfully. + +"I don't know about that," said her father. "'Tisn't quite so +much in your line as it is in your mother-law's and mine." + +"Of course I couldn't let you, Grace!" said Giles, with some +distress. + +"I'll do it, of course," said Mrs. Melbury, taking off her silk +train, hanging it up to a nail, carefully rolling back her +sleeves, pinning them to her shoulders, and stripping Giles of his +apron for her own use. + +So Grace pottered idly about, while her father and his wife helped +on the preparations. A kindly pity of his household management, +which Winterborne saw in her eyes whenever he caught them, +depressed him much more than her contempt would have done. + +Creedle met Giles at the pump after a while, when each of the +others was absorbed in the difficulties of a cuisine based on +utensils, cupboards, and provisions that were strange to them. He +groaned to the young man in a whisper, "This is a bruckle het, +maister, I'm much afeared! Who'd ha' thought they'd ha' come so +soon?" + +The bitter placidity of Winterborne's look adumbrated the +misgivings he did not care to express. "Have you got the celery +ready?" he asked, quickly. + +"Now that's a thing I never could mind; no, not if you'd paid me +in silver and gold. And I don't care who the man is, I says that +a stick of celery that isn't scrubbed with the scrubbing-brush is +not clean." + +"Very well, very well! I'll attend to it. You go and get 'em +comfortable in-doors." + +He hastened to the garden, and soon returned, tossing the stalks +to Creedle, who was still in a tragic mood. "If ye'd ha' married, +d'ye see, maister," he said, "this caddle couldn't have happened +to us." + +Everything being at last under way, the oven set, and all done +that could insure the supper turning up ready at some time or +other, Giles and his friends entered the parlor, where the +Melburys again dropped into position as guests, though the room +was not nearly so warm and cheerful as the blazing bakehouse. +Others now arrived, among them Farmer Bawtree and the hollow- +turner, and tea went off very well. + +Grace's disposition to make the best of everything, and to wink at +deficiencies in Winterborne's menage, was so uniform and +persistent that he suspected her of seeing even more deficiencies +than he was aware of. That suppressed sympathy which had showed +in her face ever since her arrival told him as much too plainly. + +"This muddling style of house-keeping is what you've not lately +been used to, I suppose?" he said, when they were a little apart. + +"No; but I like it; it reminds me so pleasantly that everything +here in dear old Hintock is just as it used to be. The oil is-- +not quite nice; but everything else is." + +"The oil?" + +"On the chairs, I mean; because it gets on one's dress. Still, +mine is not a new one." + +Giles found that Creedle, in his zeal to make things look bright, +had smeared the chairs with some greasy kind of furniture-polish, +and refrained from rubbing it dry in order not to diminish the +mirror-like effect that the mixture produced as laid on. Giles +apologized and called Creedle; but he felt that the Fates were +against him. + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +Supper-time came, and with it the hot-baked from the oven, laid on +a snowy cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated with folds, as +in Flemish "Last Suppers." Creedle and the boy fetched and +carried with amazing alacrity, the latter, to mollify his superior +and make things pleasant, expressing his admiration of Creedle's +cleverness when they were alone. + +"I s'pose the time when you learned all these knowing things, Mr. +Creedle, was when you was in the militia?" + +"Well, yes. I seed the world at that time somewhat, certainly, +and many ways of strange dashing life. Not but that Giles has +worked hard in helping me to bring things to such perfection to- +day. 'Giles,' says I, though he's maister. Not that I should +call'n maister by rights, for his father growed up side by side +with me, as if one mother had twinned us and been our nourishing." + +"I s'pose your memory can reach a long way back into history, Mr. +Creedle?" + +"Oh yes. Ancient days, when there was battles and famines and +hang-fairs and other pomps, seem to me as yesterday. Ah, many's +the patriarch I've seed come and go in this parish! There, he's +calling for more plates. Lord, why can't 'em turn their plates +bottom upward for pudding, as they used to do in former days?" + +Meanwhile, in the adjoining room Giles was presiding in a half- +unconscious state. He could not get over the initial failures in +his scheme for advancing his suit, and hence he did not know that +he was eating mouthfuls of bread and nothing else, and continually +snuffing the two candles next him till he had reduced them to mere +glimmers drowned in their own grease. Creedle now appeared with a +specially prepared dish, which he served by elevating the little +three-legged pot that contained it, and tilting the contents into +a dish, exclaiming, simultaneously, "Draw back, gentlemen and +ladies, please!" + +A splash followed. Grace gave a quick, involuntary nod and blink, +and put her handkerchief to her face. + +"Good heavens! what did you do that for, Creedle?" said Giles, +sternly, and jumping up. + +"'Tis how I do it when they baint here, maister," mildly +expostulated Creedle, in an aside audible to all the company. + +"Well, yes--but--" replied Giles. He went over to Grace, and +hoped none of it had gone into her eye. + +"Oh no," she said. "Only a sprinkle on my face. It was nothing." + +"Kiss it and make it well," gallantly observed Mr. Bawtree. + +Miss Melbury blushed. + +The timber-merchant said, quickly, "Oh, it is nothing! She must +bear these little mishaps." But there could be discerned in his +face something which said "I ought to have foreseen this." + +Giles himself, since the untoward beginning of the feast, had not +quite liked to see Grace present. He wished he had not asked such +people as Bawtree and the hollow-turner. He had done it, in +dearth of other friends, that the room might not appear empty. In +his mind's eye, before the event, they had been the mere +background or padding of the scene, but somehow in reality they +were the most prominent personages there. + +After supper they played cards, Bawtree and the hollow-turner +monopolizing the new packs for an interminable game, in which a +lump of chalk was incessantly used--a game those two always played +wherever they were, taking a solitary candle and going to a +private table in a corner with the mien of persons bent on weighty +matters. The rest of the company on this account were obliged to +put up with old packs for their round game, that had been lying by +in a drawer ever since the time that Gliles's grandmother was +alive. Each card had a great stain in the middle of its back, +produced by the touch of generations of damp and excited thumbs +now fleshless in the grave; and the kings and queens wore a +decayed expression of feature, as if they were rather an +impecunious dethroned race of monarchs hiding in obscure slums +than real regal characters. Every now and then the comparatively +few remarks of the players at the round game were harshly intruded +on by the measured jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner +from the back of the room: + + + "And I' will hold' a wa'-ger with you' + That all' these marks' are thirt'-y two!" + + +accompanied by rapping strokes with the chalk on the table; then +an exclamation, an argument, a dealing of the cards; then the +commencement of the rhymes anew. + +The timber-merchant showed his feelings by talking with a +satisfied sense of weight in his words, and by praising the party +in a patronizing tone, when Winterborne expressed his fear that he +and his were not enjoying themselves. + +"Oh yes, yes; pretty much. What handsome glasses those are! I +didn't know you had such glasses in the house. Now, Lucy" (to his +wife), "you ought to get some like them for ourselves." And when +they had abandoned cards, and Winterborne was talking to Melbury +by the fire, it was the timber-merchant who stood with his back to +the mantle in a proprietary attitude, from which post of vantage +he critically regarded Giles's person, rather as a superficies +than as a solid with ideas and feelings inside it, saying, "What a +splendid coat that one is you have on, Giles! I can't get such +coats. You dress better than I." + +After supper there was a dance, the bandsmen from Great Hintock +having arrived some time before. Grace had been away from home so +long that she had forgotten the old figures, and hence did not +join in the movement. Then Giles felt that all was over. As for +her, she was thinking, as she watched the gyrations, of a very +different measure that she had been accustomed to tread with a +bevy of sylph-like creatures in muslin, in the music-room of a +large house, most of whom were now moving in scenes widely removed +from this, both as regarded place and character. + +A woman she did not know came and offered to tell her fortune with +the abandoned cards. Grace assented to the proposal, and the +woman told her tale unskilfully, for want of practice, as she +declared. + +Mr. Melbury was standing by, and exclaimed, contemptuously, "Tell +her fortune, indeed! Her fortune has been told by men of science-- +what do you call 'em? Phrenologists. You can't teach her anything +new. She's been too far among the wise ones to be astonished at +anything she can hear among us folks in Hintock." + +At last the time came for breaking up, Melbury and his family +being the earliest to leave, the two card-players still pursuing +their game doggedly in the corner, where they had completely +covered Giles's mahogany table with chalk scratches. The three +walked home, the distance being short and the night clear. + +"Well, Giles is a very good fellow," said Mr. Melbury, as they +struck down the lane under boughs which formed a black filigree in +which the stars seemed set. + +"Certainly he is, said Grace, quickly, and in such a tone as to +show that he stood no lower, if no higher, in her regard than he +had stood before. + +When they were opposite an opening through which, by day, the +doctor's house could be seen, they observed a light in one of his +rooms, although it was now about two o'clock. + +"The doctor is not abed yet," said Mrs. Melbury. + +"Hard study, no doubt," said her husband. + +"One would think that, as he seems to have nothing to do about +here by day, he could at least afford to go to bed early at night. +'Tis astonishing how little we see of him." + +Melbury's mind seemed to turn with much relief to the +contemplation of Mr. Fitzpiers after the scenes of the evening. +"It is natural enough," he replied. "What can a man of that sort +find to interest him in Hintock? I don't expect he'll stay here +long." + +His mind reverted to Giles's party, and when they were nearly home +he spoke again, his daughter being a few steps in advance: "It is +hardly the line of life for a girl like Grace, after what she's +been accustomed to. I didn't foresee that in sending her to +boarding-school and letting her travel, and what not, to make her +a good bargain for Giles, I should be really spoiling her for him. +Ah, 'tis a thousand pities! But he ought to have her--he ought!" + +At this moment the two exclusive, chalk-mark men, having at last +really finished their play, could be heard coming along in the +rear, vociferously singing a song to march-time, and keeping +vigorous step to the same in far-reaching strides-- + + + "She may go, oh! + She may go, oh! + She may go to the d---- for me!" + + +The timber-merchant turned indignantly to Mrs. Melbury. "That's +the sort of society we've been asked to meet," he said. "For us +old folk it didn't matter; but for Grace--Giles should have known +better!" + + + +Meanwhile, in the empty house from which the guests had just +cleared out, the subject of their discourse was walking from room +to room surveying the general displacement of furniture with no +ecstatic feeling; rather the reverse, indeed. At last he entered +the bakehouse, and found there Robert Creedle sitting over the +embers, also lost in contemplation. Winterborne sat down beside +him. + +"Well, Robert, you must be tired. You'd better get on to bed." + +"Ay, ay, Giles--what do I call ye? Maister, I would say. But 'tis +well to think the day IS done, when 'tis done." + +Winterborne had abstractedly taken the poker, and with a wrinkled +forehead was ploughing abroad the wood-embers on the broad hearth, +till it was like a vast scorching Sahara, with red-hot bowlders +lying about everywhere. "Do you think it went off well, Creedle?" +he asked. + +"The victuals did; that I know. And the drink did; that I +steadfastly believe, from the holler sound of the barrels. Good, +honest drink 'twere, the headiest mead I ever brewed; and the best +wine that berries could rise to; and the briskest Horner-and- +Cleeves cider ever wrung down, leaving out the spice and sperrits +I put into it, while that egg-flip would ha' passed through +muslin, so little curdled 'twere. 'Twas good enough to make any +king's heart merry--ay, to make his whole carcass smile. Still, I +don't deny I'm afeared some things didn't go well with He and +his." Creedle nodded in a direction which signified where the +Melburys lived. + +"I'm afraid, too, that it was a failure there!" + +"If so, 'twere doomed to be so. Not but what that snail might as +well have come upon anybody else's plate as hers." + +"What snail?" + +"Well, maister, there was a little one upon the edge of her plate +when I brought it out; and so it must have been in her few leaves +of wintergreen." + +"How the deuce did a snail get there?" + +"That I don't know no more than the dead; but there my gentleman +was." + +"But, Robert, of all places, that was where he shouldn't have +been!" + +"Well, 'twas his native home, come to that; and where else could +we expect him to be? I don't care who the man is, snails and +caterpillars always will lurk in close to the stump of cabbages in +that tantalizing way." + +"He wasn't alive, I suppose?" said Giles, with a shudder on +Grace's account. + +"Oh no. He was well boiled. I warrant him well boiled. God +forbid that a LIVE snail should be seed on any plate of victuals +that's served by Robert Creedle....But Lord, there; I don't mind +'em myself--them small ones, for they were born on cabbage, and +they've lived on cabbage, so they must be made of cabbage. But +she, the close-mouthed little lady, she didn't say a word about +it; though 'twould have made good small conversation as to the +nater of such creatures; especially as wit ran short among us +sometimes." + +"Oh yes--'tis all over!" murmured Giles to himself, shaking his +head over the glooming plain of embers, and lining his forehead +more than ever. "Do you know, Robert," he said, "that she's been +accustomed to servants and everything superfine these many years? +How, then, could she stand our ways?" + +"Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and-nob +elsewhere. They shouldn't have schooled her so monstrous high, or +else bachelor men shouldn't give randys, or if they do give 'em, +only to their own race." + +"Perhaps that's true," said Winterborne, rising and yawning a +sigh. + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +"'Tis a pity--a thousand pities!" her father kept saying next +morning at breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom. + +But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne's +suit at this stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored to +promote--was, indeed, mechanically promoting at this moment? A +crisis was approaching, mainly as a result of his contrivances, +and it would have to be met. + +But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: since seeing +what an immense change her last twelve months of absence had +produced in his daughter, after the heavy sum per annum that he +had been spending for several years upon her education, he was +reluctant to let her marry Giles Winterborne, indefinitely +occupied as woodsman, cider-merchant, apple-farmer, and what not, +even were she willing to marry him herself. + +"She will be his wife if you don't upset her notion that she's +bound to accept him as an understood thing," said Mrs. Melbury. +"Bless ye, she'll soon shake down here in Hintock, and be content +with Giles's way of living, which he'll improve with what money +she'll have from you. 'Tis the strangeness after her genteel life +that makes her feel uncomfortable at first. Why, when I saw +Hintock the first time I thought I never could like it. But +things gradually get familiar, and stone floors seem not so very +cold and hard, and the hooting of the owls not so very dreadful, +and loneliness not so very lonely, after a while." + +"Yes, I believe ye. That's just it. I KNOW Grace will gradually +sink down to our level again, and catch our manners and way of +speaking, and feel a drowsy content in being Giles's wife. But I +can't bear the thought of dragging down to that old level as +promising a piece of maidenhood as ever lived--fit to ornament a +palace wi'--that I've taken so much trouble to lift up. Fancy her +white hands getting redder every day, and her tongue losing its +pretty up-country curl in talking, and her bounding walk becoming +the regular Hintock shail and wamble!" + +"She may shail, but she'll never wamble," replied his wife, +decisively. + +When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her lying in bed so +late; not so much moved by a particular objection to that form of +indulgence as discomposed by these other reflections. + +The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down. "You used +to complain with justice when I was a girl," she said. "But I am +a woman now, and can judge for myself....But it is not that; it is +something else!" Instead of sitting down she went outside the +door. + +He was sorry. The petulance that relatives show towards each +other is in truth directed against that intangible Causality which +has shaped the situation no less for the offenders than the +offended, but is too elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor +humanity in irritated mood. Melbury followed her. She had +rambled on to the paddock, where the white frost lay, and where +starlings in flocks of twenties and thirties were walking about, +watched by a comfortable family of sparrows perched in a line +along the string-course of the chimney, preening themselves in the +rays of the sun. + +"Come in to breakfast, my girl," he said. "And as to Giles, use +your own mind. Whatever pleases you will please me." + +"I am promised to him, father; and I cannot help thinking that in +honor I ought to marry him, whenever I do marry." + +He had a strong suspicion that somewhere in the bottom of her +heart there pulsed an old simple indigenous feeling favorable to +Giles, though it had become overlaid with implanted tastes. But +he would not distinctly express his views on the promise. "Very +well," he said. "But I hope I sha'n't lose you yet. Come in to +breakfast. What did you think of the inside of Hintock House the +other day?" + +"I liked it much." + +"Different from friend Winterborne's?" + +She said nothing; but he who knew her was aware that she meant by +her silence to reproach him with drawing cruel comparisons. + +"Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come again--when, did you say?" + +"She thought Tuesday, but would send the day before to let me know +if it suited her." And with this subject upon their lips they +entered to breakfast. + +Tuesday came, but no message from Mrs. Charmond. Nor was there +any on Wednesday. In brief, a fortnight slipped by without a +sign, and it looked suspiciously as if Mrs. Charmond were not +going further in the direction of "taking up" Grace at present. + +Her father reasoned thereon. Immediately after his daughter's two +indubitable successes with Mrs. Charmond--the interview in the +wood and a visit to the House--she had attended Winterborne's +party. No doubt the out-and-out joviality of that gathering had +made it a topic in the neighborhood, and that every one present as +guests had been widely spoken of--Grace, with her exceptional +qualities, above all. What, then, so natural as that Mrs. +Charmond should have heard the village news, and become quite +disappointed in her expectations of Grace at finding she kept such +company? + +Full of this post hoc argument, Mr. Melbury overlooked the +infinite throng of other possible reasons and unreasons for a +woman changing her mind. For instance, while knowing that his +Grace was attractive, he quite forgot that Mrs. Charmond had also +great pretensions to beauty. In his simple estimate, an +attractive woman attracted all around. + +So it was settled in his mind that her sudden mingling with the +villagers at the unlucky Winterborne's was the cause of her most +grievous loss, as he deemed it, in the direction of Hintock House. + +"'Tis a thousand pities!" he would repeat to himself. "I am +ruining her for conscience' sake!" + +It was one morning later on, while these things were agitating his +mind, that, curiously enough, something darkened the window just +as they finished breakfast. Looking up, they saw Giles in person +mounted on horseback, and straining his neck forward, as he had +been doing for some time, to catch their attention through the +window. Grace had been the first to see him, and involuntarily +exclaimed, "There he is--and a new horse!" + +On their faces as they regarded Giles were written their suspended +thoughts and compound feelings concerning him, could he have read +them through those old panes. But he saw nothing: his features +just now were, for a wonder, lit up with a red smile at some other +idea. So they rose from breakfast and went to the door, Grace +with an anxious, wistful manner, her father in a reverie, Mrs. +Melbury placid and inquiring. "We have come out to look at your +horse," she said. + +It could be seen that he was pleased at their attention, and +explained that he had ridden a mile or two to try the animal's +paces. "I bought her," he added, with warmth so severely +repressed as to seem indifference, "because she has been used to +carry a lady." + +Still Mr. Melbury did not brighten. Mrs. Melbury said, "And is +she quiet?" + +Winterborne assured her that there was no doubt of it. "I took +care of that. She's five-and-twenty, and very clever for her +age." + +"Well, get off and come in," said Melbury, brusquely; and Giles +dismounted accordingly. + +This event was the concrete result of Winterborne's thoughts +during the past week or two. The want of success with his evening +party he had accepted in as philosophic a mood as he was capable +of; but there had been enthusiasm enough left in him one day at +Sherton Abbas market to purchase this old mare, which had belonged +to a neighboring parson with several daughters, and was offered +him to carry either a gentleman or a lady, and to do odd jobs of +carting and agriculture at a pinch. This obliging quadruped +seemed to furnish Giles with a means of reinstating himself in +Melbury's good opinion as a man of considerateness by throwing out +future possibilities to Grace. + +The latter looked at him with intensified interest this morning, +in the mood which is altogether peculiar to woman's nature, and +which, when reduced into plain words, seems as impossible as the +penetrability of matter--that of entertaining a tender pity for +the object of her own unnecessary coldness. The imperturbable +poise which marked Winterborne in general was enlivened now by a +freshness and animation that set a brightness in his eye and on +his cheek. Mrs. Melbury asked him to have some breakfast, and he +pleasurably replied that he would join them, with his usual lack +of tactical observation, not perceiving that they had all finished +the meal, that the hour was inconveniently late, and that the note +piped by the kettle denoted it to be nearly empty; so that fresh +water had to be brought in, trouble taken to make it boil, and a +general renovation of the table carried out. Neither did he know, +so full was he of his tender ulterior object in buying that horse, +how many cups of tea he was gulping down one after another, nor +how the morning was slipping, nor how he was keeping the family +from dispersing about their duties. + +Then he told throughout the humorous story of the horse's +purchase,looking particularly grim at some fixed object in the +room, a way he always looked when he narrated anything that amused +him. While he was still thinking of the scene he had described, +Grace rose and said, "I have to go and help my mother now, Mr. +Winterborne." + +"H'm!" he ejaculated, turning his eyes suddenly upon her. + +She repeated her words with a slight blush of awkwardness; +whereupon Giles, becoming suddenly conscious, too conscious, +jumped up, saying, "To be sure, to be sure!" wished them quickly +good-morning, and bolted out of the house. + +Nevertheless he had, upon the whole, strengthened his position, +with her at least. Time, too, was on his side, for (as her father +saw with some regret) already the homeliness of Hintock life was +fast becoming effaced from her observation as a singularity; just +as the first strangeness of a face from which we have for years +been separated insensibly passes off with renewed intercourse, and +tones itself down into simple identity with the lineaments of the +past. + +Thus Mr. Melbury went out of the house still unreconciled to the +sacrifice of the gem he had been at such pains in mounting. He +fain could hope, in the secret nether chamber of his mind, that +something would happen, before the balance of her feeling had +quite turned in Winterborne's favor, to relieve his conscience and +preserve her on her elevated plane. + +He could not forget that Mrs. Charmond had apparently abandoned +all interest in his daughter as suddenly as she had conceived it, +and was as firmly convinced as ever that the comradeship which +Grace had shown with Giles and his crew by attending his party had +been the cause. + +Matters lingered on thus. And then, as a hoop by gentle knocks on +this side and on that is made to travel in specific directions, +the little touches of circumstance in the life of this young girl +shaped the curves of her career. + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + +It was a day of rather bright weather for the season. Miss +Melbury went out for a morning walk, and her ever-regardful +father, having an hour's leisure, offered to walk with her. The +breeze was fresh and quite steady, filtering itself through the +denuded mass of twigs without swaying them, but making the point +of each ivy-leaf on the trunks scratch its underlying neighbor +restlessly. Grace's lips sucked in this native air of hers like +milk. They soon reached a place where the wood ran down into a +corner, and went outside it towards comparatively open ground. +Having looked round about, they were intending to re-enter the +copse when a fox quietly emerged with a dragging brush, trotted +past them tamely as a domestic cat, and disappeared amid some dead +fern. They walked on, her father merely observing, after watching +the animal, "They are hunting somewhere near." + +Farther up they saw in the mid-distance the hounds running hither +and thither, as if there were little or no scent that day. Soon +divers members of the hunt appeared on the scene, and it was +evident from their movements that the chase had been stultified by +general puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of the intended +victim. In a minute a farmer rode up to the two pedestrians, +panting with acteonic excitement, and Grace being a few steps in +advance, he addressed her, asking if she had seen the fox. + +"Yes," said she. "We saw him some time ago--just out there." + +"Did you cry Halloo?" + +"We said nothing." + +"Then why the d--- didn't you, or get the old buffer to do it for +you?" said the man, as he cantered away. + +She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observing her +father's face, saw that it was quite red. + +"He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!" said the old man, +in the tone of one whose heart was bruised, though it was not by +the epithet applied to himself. "And he wouldn't if he had been a +gentleman. 'Twas not the language to use to a woman of any +niceness. You, so well read and cultivated--how could he expect +ye to know what tom-boy field-folk are in the habit of doing? If +so be you had just come from trimming swedes or mangolds--joking +with the rough work-folk and all that--I could have stood it. But +hasn't it cost me near a hundred a year to lift you out of all +that, so as to show an example to the neighborhood of what a woman +can be? Grace, shall I tell you the secret of it? 'Twas because I +was in your company. If a black-coated squire or pa'son had been +walking with you instead of me he wouldn't have spoken so." + +"No, no, father; there's nothing in you rough or ill-mannered!" + +"I tell you it is that! I've noticed, and I've noticed it many +times, that a woman takes her color from the man she's walking +with. The woman who looks an unquestionable lady when she's with +a polished-up fellow, looks a mere tawdry imitation article when +she's hobbing and nobbing with a homely blade. You sha'n't be +treated like that for long, or at least your children sha'n't. +You shall have somebody to walk with you who looks more of a dandy +than I--please God you shall!" + +"But, my dear father," she said, much distressed, "I don't mind at +all. I don't wish for more honor than I already have!" + +"A perplexing and ticklish possession is a daughter," according to +Menander or some old Greek poet, and to nobody was one ever more +so than to Melbury, by reason of her very dearness to him. As for +Grace, she began to feel troubled; she did not perhaps wish there +and then to unambitiously devote her life to Giles Winterborne, +but she was conscious of more and more uneasiness at the +possibility of being the social hope of the family. + +"You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?" asked her +father, in continuation of the subject. + +Despite her feeling she assented to this. His reasoning had not +been without its weight upon her. + +"Grace," he said, just before they had reached the house, "if it +costs me my life you shall marry well! To-day has shown me that +whatever a young woman's niceness, she stands for nothing alone. +You shall marry well." + +He breathed heavily, and his breathing was caught up by the +breeze, which seemed to sigh a soft remonstrance. + +She looked calmly at him. "And how about Mr. Winterborne?" she +asked. "I mention it, father, not as a matter of sentiment, but +as a question of keeping faith." + +The timber-merchant's eyes fell for a moment. "I don't know--I +don't know," he said. "'Tis a trying strait. Well, well; there's +no hurry. We'll wait and see how he gets on." + +That evening he called her into his room, a snug little apartment +behind the large parlor. It had at one time been part of the +bakehouse, with the ordinary oval brick oven in the wall; but Mr. +Melbury, in turning it into an office, had built into the cavity +an iron safe, which he used for holding his private papers. The +door of the safe was now open, and his keys were hanging from it. + +"Sit down, Grace, and keep me company," he said. "You may amuse +yourself by looking over these." He threw out a heap of papers +before her. + +"What are they?" she asked. + +"Securities of various sorts." He unfolded them one by one. +"Papers worth so much money each. Now here's a lot of turnpike +bonds for one thing. Would you think that each of these pieces of +paper is worth two hundred pounds?" + +"No, indeed, if you didn't say so." + +"'Tis so, then. Now here are papers of another sort. They are +for different sums in the three-per-cents. Now these are Port +Breedy Harbor bonds. We have a great stake in that harbor, you +know, because I send off timber there. Open the rest at your +pleasure. They'll interest ye." + +"Yes, I will, some day," said she, rising. + +"Nonsense, open them now. You ought to learn a little of such +matters. A young lady of education should not be ignorant of +money affairs altogether. Suppose you should be left a widow some +day, with your husband's title-deeds and investments thrown upon +your hands--" + +"Don't say that, father--title-deeds; it sounds so vain!" + +"It does not. Come to that, I have title-deeds myself. There, +that piece of parchment represents houses in Sherton Abbas." + +"Yes, but--" She hesitated, looked at the fire, and went on in a +low voice: "If what has been arranged about me should come to +anything, my sphere will be quite a middling one." + +"Your sphere ought not to be middling," he exclaimed, not in +passion, but in earnest conviction. "You said you never felt more +at home, more in your element, anywhere than you did that +afternoon with Mrs. Charmond, when she showed you her house and +all her knick-knacks, and made you stay to tea so nicely in her +drawing-room--surely you did!" + +"Yes, I did say so," admitted Grace. + +"Was it true?" + +"Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeling is less strong now, +perhaps." + +"Ah! Now, though you don't see it, your feeling at the time was +the right one, because your mind and body were just in full and +fresh cultivation, so that going there with her was like meeting +like. Since then you've been biding with us, and have fallen back +a little, and so you don't feel your place so strongly. Now, do +as I tell ye, and look over these papers and see what you'll be +worth some day. For they'll all be yours, you know; who have I +got to leave 'em to but you? Perhaps when your education is +backed up by what these papers represent, and that backed up by +another such a set and their owner, men such as that fellow was +this morning may think you a little more than a buffer's girl." + +So she did as commanded, and opened each of the folded +representatives of hard cash that her father put before her. To +sow in her heart cravings for social position was obviously his +strong desire, though in direct antagonism to a better feeling +which had hitherto prevailed with him, and had, indeed, only +succumbed that morning during the ramble. + +She wished that she was not his worldly hope; the responsibility +of such a position was too great. She had made it for herself +mainly by her appearance and attractive behavior to him since her +return. "If I had only come home in a shabby dress, and tried to +speak roughly, this might not have happened," she thought. She +deplored less the fact than the sad possibilities that might lie +hidden therein. + +Her father then insisted upon her looking over his checkbook and +reading the counterfoils. This, also, she obediently did, and at +last came to two or three which had been drawn to defray some of +the late expenses of her clothes, board, and education. + +"I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses and wagons and corn," +she said, looking up sorrily. + +"I didn't want you to look at those; I merely meant to give you an +idea of my investment transactions. But if you do cost as much as +they, never mind. You'll yield a better return." + +"Don't think of me like that!" she begged. "A mere chattel." + +"A what? Oh, a dictionary word. Well, as that's in your line I +don't forbid it, even if it tells against me," he said, good- +humoredly. And he looked her proudly up and down. + +A few minutes later Grammer Oliver came to tell them that supper +was ready, and in giving the information she added, incidentally, +"So we shall soon lose the mistress of Hintock House for some +time, I hear, Maister Melbury. Yes, she's going off to foreign +parts to-morrow, for the rest of the winter months; and be-chok'd +if I don't wish I could do the same, for my wynd-pipe is furred +like a flue." + +When the old woman had left the room, Melbury turned to his +daughter and said, "So, Grace, you've lost your new friend, and +your chance of keeping her company and writing her travels is +quite gone from ye!" + +Grace said nothing. + +"Now," he went on, emphatically, "'tis Winterborne's affair has +done this. Oh yes, 'tis. So let me say one word. Promise me +that you will not meet him again without my knowledge." + +"I never do meet him, father, either without your knowledge or +with it." + +"So much the better. I don't like the look of this at all. And I +say it not out of harshness to him, poor fellow, but out of +tenderness to you. For how could a woman, brought up delicately +as you have been, bear the roughness of a life with him?" + +She sighed; it was a sigh of sympathy with Giles, complicated by a +sense of the intractability of circumstances. + + + +At that same hour, and almost at that same minute, there was a +conversation about Winterborne in progress in the village street, +opposite Mr. Melbury's gates, where Timothy Tangs the elder and +Robert Creedle had accidentally met. + +The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had heard what was all over +the parish, the skin of his face being drawn two ways on the +matter--towards brightness in respect of it as news, and towards +concern in respect of it as circumstance. + +"Why, that poor little lonesome thing, Marty South, is likely to +lose her father. He was almost well, but is much worse again. A +man all skin and grief he ever were, and if he leave Little +Hintock for a better land, won't it make some difference to your +Maister Winterborne, neighbor Creedle?" + +"Can I be a prophet in Israel?" said Creedle. "Won't it! I was +only shaping of such a thing yesterday in my poor, long-seeing +way, and all the work of the house upon my one shoulders! You know +what it means? It is upon John South's life that all Mr. +Winterborne's houses hang. If so be South die, and so make his +decease, thereupon the law is that the houses fall without the +least chance of absolution into HER hands at the House. I told +him so; but the words of the faithful be only as wind!" + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + +The news was true. The life--the one fragile life--that had been +used as a measuring-tape of time by law, was in danger of being +frayed away. It was the last of a group of lives which had served +this purpose, at the end of whose breathings the small homestead +occupied by South himself, the larger one of Giles Winterborne, +and half a dozen others that had been in the possession of various +Hintock village families for the previous hundred years, and were +now Winterborne's, would fall in and become part of the +encompassing estate. + +Yet a short two months earlier Marty's father, aged fifty-five +years, though something of a fidgety, anxious being, would have +been looked on as a man whose existence was so far removed from +hazardous as any in the parish, and as bidding fair to be +prolonged for another quarter of a century. + +Winterborne walked up and down his garden next day thinking of the +contingency. The sense that the paths he was pacing, the cabbage- +plots, the apple-trees, his dwelling, cider-cellar, wring-house, +stables, and weathercock, were all slipping away over his head and +beneath his feet, as if they were painted on a magic-lantern +slide, was curious. In spite of John South's late indisposition +he had not anticipated danger. To inquire concerning his health +had been to show less sympathy than to remain silent, considering +the material interest he possessed in the woodman's life, and he +had, accordingly, made a point of avoiding Marty's house. + +While he was here in the garden somebody came to fetch him. It +was Marty herself, and she showed her distress by her +unconsciousness of a cropped poll. + +"Father is still so much troubled in his mind about that tree," +she said. "You know the tree I mean, Mr. Winterborne? the tall +one in front of the house, that he thinks will blow down and kill +us. Can you come and see if you can persuade him out of his +notion? I can do nothing." + +He accompanied her to the cottage, and she conducted him up- +stairs. John South was pillowed up in a chair between the bed and +the window exactly opposite the latter, towards which his face was +turned. + +"Ah, neighbor Winterborne," he said. "I wouldn't have minded if +my life had only been my own to lose; I don't vallie it in much of +itself, and can let it go if 'tis required of me. But to think +what 'tis worth to you, a young man rising in life, that do +trouble me! It seems a trick of dishonesty towards ye to go off at +fifty-five! I could bear up, I know I could, if it were not for +the tree--yes, the tree, 'tis that's killing me. There he stands, +threatening my life every minute that the wind do blow. He'll +come down upon us and squat us dead; and what will ye do when the +life on your property is taken away?" + +"Never you mind me--that's of no consequence," said Giles. "Think +of yourself alone." + +He looked out of the window in the direction of the woodman's +gaze. The tree was a tall elm, familiar to him from childhood, +which stood at a distance of two-thirds its own height from the +front of South's dwelling. Whenever the wind blew, as it did now, +the tree rocked, naturally enough; and the sight of its motion and +sound of its sighs had gradually bred the terrifying illusion in +the woodman's mind that it would descend and kill him. Thus he +would sit all day, in spite of persuasion, watching its every +sway, and listening to the melancholy Gregorian melodies which the +air wrung out of it. This fear it apparently was, rather than any +organic disease which was eating away the health of John South. + +As the tree waved, South waved his head, making it his flugel-man +with abject obedience. "Ah, when it was quite a small tree," he +said, "and I was a little boy, I thought one day of chopping it +off with my hook to make a clothes-line prop with. But I put off +doing it, and then I again thought that I would; but I forgot it, +and didn't. And at last it got too big, and now 'tis my enemy, +and will be the death o' me. Little did I think, when I let that +sapling stay, that a time would come when it would torment me, and +dash me into my grave." + +"No, no," said Winterborne and Marty, soothingly. But they +thought it possible that it might hasten him into his grave, +though in another way than by falling. + +"I tell you what," added Winterborne, "I'll climb up this +afternoon and shroud off the lower boughs, and then it won't be so +heavy, and the wind won't affect it so." + +"She won't allow it--a strange woman come from nobody knows where-- +she won't have it done." + +"You mean Mrs. Charmond? Oh, she doesn't know there's such a tree +on her estate. Besides, shrouding is not felling, and I'll risk +that much." + +He went out, and when afternoon came he returned, took a billhook +from the woodman's shed, and with a ladder climbed into the lower +part of the tree, where he began lopping off--"shrouding," as they +called it at Hintock--the lowest boughs. Each of these quivered +under his attack, bent, cracked, and fell into the hedge. Having +cut away the lowest tier, he stepped off the ladder, climbed a few +steps higher, and attacked those at the next level. Thus he +ascended with the progress of his work far above the top of the +ladder, cutting away his perches as he went, and leaving nothing +but a bare stem below him. + +The work was troublesome, for the tree was large. The afternoon +wore on, turning dark and misty about four o'clock. From time to +time Giles cast his eyes across towards the bedroom window of +South, where, by the flickering fire in the chamber, he could see +the old man watching him, sitting motionless with a hand upon each +arm of the chair. Beside him sat Marty, also straining her eyes +towards the skyey field of his operations. + +A curious question suddenly occurred to Winterborne, and he +stopped his chopping. He was operating on another person's +property to prolong the years of a lease by whose termination that +person would considerably benefit. In that aspect of the case he +doubted if he ought to go on. On the other hand he was working to +save a man's life, and this seemed to empower him to adopt +arbitrary measures. + +The wind had died down to a calm, and while he was weighing the +circumstances he saw coming along the road through the increasing +mist a figure which, indistinct as it was, he knew well. It was +Grace Melbury, on her way out from the house, probably for a short +evening walk before dark. He arranged himself for a greeting from +her, since she could hardly avoid passing immediately beneath the +tree. + +But Grace, though she looked up and saw him, was just at that time +too full of the words of her father to give him any encouragement. +The years-long regard that she had had for him was not kindled by +her return into a flame of sufficient brilliancy to make her +rebellious. Thinking that she might not see him, he cried, "Miss +Melbury, here I am." + +She looked up again. She was near enough to see the expression of +his face, and the nails in his soles, silver-bright with constant +walking. But she did not reply; and dropping her glance again, +went on. + +Winterborne's face grew strange; he mused, and proceeded +automatically with his work. Grace meanwhile had not gone far. +She had reached a gate, whereon she had leaned sadly, and +whispered to herself, "What shall I do?" + +A sudden fog came on, and she curtailed her walk, passing under +the tree again on her return. Again he addressed her. "Grace," +he said, when she was close to the trunk, "speak to me." She shook +her head without stopping, and went on to a little distance, where +she stood observing him from behind the hedge. + +Her coldness had been kindly meant. If it was to be done, she had +said to herself, it should be begun at once. While she stood out +of observation Giles seemed to recognize her meaning; with a +sudden start he worked on, climbing higher, and cutting himself +off more and more from all intercourse with the sublunary world. +At last he had worked himself so high up the elm, and the mist had +so thickened, that he could only just be discerned as a dark-gray +spot on the light-gray sky: he would have been altogether out of +notice but for the stroke of his billhook and the flight of a +bough downward, and its crash upon the hedge at intervals. + +It was not to be done thus, after all: plainness and candor were +best. She went back a third time; he did not see her now, and she +lingeringly gazed up at his unconscious figure, loath to put an +end to any kind of hope that might live on in him still. "Giles-- +Mr. Winterborne," she said. + +He was so high amid the fog that he did not hear. "Mr. +Winterborne!" she cried again, and this time he stopped, looked +down, and replied. + +"My silence just now was not accident," she said, in an unequal +voice. "My father says it is best not to think too much of that-- +engagement, or understanding between us, that you know of. I, +too, think that upon the whole he is right. But we are friends, +you know, Giles, and almost relations." + +"Very well," he answered, as if without surprise, in a voice which +barely reached down the tree. "I have nothing to say in +objection--I cannot say anything till I've thought a while." + +She added, with emotion in her tone, "For myself, I would have +married you--some day--I think. But I give way, for I see it +would be unwise." + +He made no reply, but sat back upon a bough, placed his elbow in a +fork, and rested his head upon his hand. Thus he remained till +the fog and the night had completely enclosed him from her view. + +Grace heaved a divided sigh, with a tense pause between, and moved +onward, her heart feeling uncomfortably big and heavy, and her +eyes wet. Had Giles, instead of remaining still, immediately come +down from the tree to her, would she have continued in that filial +acquiescent frame of mind which she had announced to him as final? +If it be true, as women themselves have declared, that one of +their sex is never so much inclined to throw in her lot with a man +for good and all as five minutes after she has told him such a +thing cannot be, the probabilities are that something might have +been done by the appearance of Winterborne on the ground beside +Grace. But he continued motionless and silent in that gloomy +Niflheim or fog-land which involved him, and she proceeded on her +way. + +The spot seemed now to be quite deserted. The light from South's +window made rays on the fog, but did not reach the tree. A +quarter of an hour passed, and all was blackness overhead. Giles +had not yet come down. + +Then the tree seemed to shiver, then to heave a sigh; a movement +was audible, and Winterborne dropped almost noiselessly to the +ground. He had thought the matter out, and having returned the +ladder and billhook to their places, pursued his way homeward. He +would not allow this incident to affect his outer conduct any more +than the danger to his leaseholds had done, and went to bed as +usual. Two simultaneous troubles do not always make a double +trouble; and thus it came to pass that Giles's practical anxiety +about his houses, which would have been enough to keep him awake +half the night at any other time, was displaced and not reinforced +by his sentimental trouble about Grace Melbury. This severance +was in truth more like a burial of her than a rupture with her; +but he did not realize so much at present; even when he arose in +the morning he felt quite moody and stern: as yet the second note +in the gamut of such emotions, a tender regret for his loss, had +not made itself heard. + +A load of oak timber was to be sent away that morning to a builder +whose works were in a town many miles off. The proud trunks were +taken up from the silent spot which had known them through the +buddings and sheddings of their growth for the foregoing hundred +years; chained down like slaves to a heavy timber carriage with +enormous red wheels, and four of the most powerful of Melbury's +horses were harnessed in front to draw them. + +The horses wore their bells that day. There were sixteen to the +team, carried on a frame above each animal's shoulders, and tuned +to scale, so as to form two octaves, running from the highest note +on the right or off-side of the leader to the lowest on the left +or near-side of the shaft-horse. Melbury was among the last to +retain horse-bells in that neighborhood; for, living at Little +Hintock, where the lanes yet remained as narrow as before the days +of turnpike roads, these sound-signals were still as useful to him +and his neighbors as they had ever been in former times. Much +backing was saved in the course of a year by the warning notes +they cast ahead; moreover, the tones of all the teams in the +district being known to the carters of each, they could tell a +long way off on a dark night whether they were about to encounter +friends or strangers. + +The fog of the previous evening still lingered so heavily over the +woods that the morning could not penetrate the trees till long +after its time. The load being a ponderous one, the lane crooked, +and the air so thick, Winterborne set out, as he often did, to +accompany the team as far as the corner, where it would turn into +a wider road. + +So they rumbled on, shaking the foundations of the roadside +cottages by the weight of their progress, the sixteen bells +chiming harmoniously over all, till they had risen out of the +valley and were descending towards the more open route, the sparks +rising from their creaking skid and nearly setting fire to the +dead leaves alongside. + +Then occurred one of the very incidents against which the bells +were an endeavor to guard. Suddenly there beamed into their eyes, +quite close to them, the two lamps of a carriage, shorn of rays by +the fog. Its approach had been quite unheard, by reason of their +own noise. The carriage was a covered one, while behind it could +be discerned another vehicle laden with luggage. + +Winterborne went to the head of the team, and heard the coachman +telling the carter that he must turn back. The carter declared +that this was impossible. + +"You can turn if you unhitch your string-horses," said the +coachman. + +"It is much easier for you to turn than for us," said Winterborne. +"We've five tons of timber on these wheels if we've an ounce." + +"But I've another carriage with luggage at my back." + +Winterborne admitted the strength of the argument. "But even with +that," he said, "you can back better than we. And you ought to, +for you could hear our bells half a mile off." + +"And you could see our lights." + +"We couldn't, because of the fog." + +"Well, our time's precious," said the coachman, haughtily. "You +are only going to some trumpery little village or other in the +neighborhood, while we are going straight to Italy." + +"Driving all the way, I suppose," said Winterborne, sarcastically. + +The argument continued in these terms till a voice from the +interior of the carriage inquired what was the matter. It was a +lady's. + +She was briefly informed of the timber people's obstinacy; and +then Giles could hear her telling the footman to direct the timber +people to turn their horses' heads. + +The message was brought, and Winterborne sent the bearer back to +say that he begged the lady's pardon, but that he could not do as +she requested; that though he would not assert it to be +impossible, it was impossible by comparison with the slight +difficulty to her party to back their light carriages. As fate +would have it, the incident with Grace Melbury on the previous day +made Giles less gentle than he might otherwise have shown himself, +his confidence in the sex being rudely shaken. + +In fine, nothing could move him, and the carriages were compelled +to back till they reached one of the sidings or turnouts +constructed in the bank for the purpose. Then the team came on +ponderously, and the clanging of its sixteen bells as it passed +the discomfited carriages, tilted up against the bank, lent a +particularly triumphant tone to the team's progress--a tone which, +in point of fact, did not at all attach to its conductor's +feelings. + +Giles walked behind the timber, and just as he had got past the +yet stationary carriages he heard a soft voice say, "Who is that +rude man? Not Melbury?" The sex of the speaker was so prominent in +the voice that Winterborne felt a pang of regret. + +"No, ma'am. A younger man, in a smaller way of business in Little +Hintock. Winterborne is his name." + +Thus they parted company. "Why, Mr. Winterborne," said the +wagoner, when they were out of hearing, "that was She--Mrs. +Charmond! Who'd ha' thought it? What in the world can a woman that +does nothing be cock-watching out here at this time o' day for? +Oh, going to Italy--yes to be sure, I heard she was going abroad, +she can't endure the winter here." + +Winterborne was vexed at the incident; the more so that he knew +Mr. Melbury, in his adoration of Hintock House, would be the first +to blame him if it became known. But saying no more, he +accompanied the load to the end of the lane, and then turned back +with an intention to call at South's to learn the result of the +experiment of the preceding evening. + +It chanced that a few minutes before this time Grace Melbury, who +now rose soon enough to breakfast with her father, in spite of the +unwontedness of the hour, had been commissioned by him to make the +same inquiry at South's. Marty had been standing at the door when +Miss Melbury arrived. Almost before the latter had spoken, Mrs. +Charmond's carriages, released from the obstruction up the lane, +came bowling along, and the two girls turned to regard the +spectacle. + +Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but there was sufficient light for +them to discern her outline between the carriage windows. A +noticeable feature in her tournure was a magnificent mass of +braided locks. + +"How well she looks this morning!" said Grace, forgetting Mrs. +Charmond's slight in her generous admiration. "Her hair so +becomes her worn that way. I have never seen any more beautiful!" + +"Nor have I, miss," said Marty, dryly, unconsciously stroking her +crown. + +Grace watched the carriages with lingering regret till they were +out of sight. She then learned of Marty that South was no better. +Before she had come away Winterborne approached the house, but +seeing that one of the two girls standing on the door-step was +Grace, he suddenly turned back again and sought the shelter of his +own home till she should have gone away. + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + +The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne's +mind the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel +went from her to the fact that several cottages and other houses +in the two Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession +in the event of South's death. He marvelled what people could +have been thinking about in the past to invent such precarious +tenures as these; still more, what could have induced his +ancestors at Hintock, and other village people, to exchange their +old copyholds for life-leases. But having naturally succeeded to +these properties through his father, he had done his best to keep +them in order, though he was much struck with his father's +negligence in not insuring South's life. + +After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went up- +stairs, turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which +lay between the mattress and the sacking. In this he kept his +leases, which had remained there unopened ever since his father's +death. It was the usual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for +such documents. Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them +over. They were ordinary leases for three lives, which a member +of the South family, some fifty years before this time, had +accepted of the lord of the manor in lieu of certain copyholds and +other rights, in consideration of having the dilapidated houses +rebuilt by said lord. They had come into his father's possession +chiefly through his mother, who was a South. + +Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter, +which Winterborne had never seen before. It bore a remote date, +the handwriting being that of some solicitor or agent, and the +signature the landholder's. It was to the effect that at any time +before the last of the stated lives should drop, Mr. Giles +Winterborne, senior, or his representative, should have the +privilege of adding his own and his son's life to the life +remaining on payment of a merely nominal sum; the concession being +in consequence of the elder Winterborne's consent to demolish one +of the houses and relinquish its site, which stood at an awkward +corner of the lane and impeded the way. + +The house had been pulled down years before. Why Giles's father +had not taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his +son's lives it was impossible to say. The likelihood was that +death alone had hindered him in the execution of his project, as +it surely was, the elder Winterborne having been a man who took +much pleasure in dealing with house property in his small way. + +Since one of the Souths still survived, there was not much doubt +that Giles could do what his father had left undone, as far as his +own life was concerned. This possibility cheered him much, for by +those houses hung many things. Melbury's doubt of the young man's +fitness to be the husband of Grace had been based not a little on +the precariousness of his holdings in Little and Great Hintock. +He resolved to attend to the business at once, the fine for +renewal being a sum that he could easily muster. His scheme, +however, could not be carried out in a day; and meanwhile he would +run up to South's, as he had intended to do, to learn the result +of the experiment with the tree. + +Marty met him at the door. "Well, Marty," he said; and was +surprised to read in her face that the case was not so hopeful as +he had imagined. + +"I am sorry for your labor," she said. "It is all lost. He says +the tree seems taller than ever." + +Winterborne looked round at it. Taller the tree certainly did +seem, the gauntness of its now naked stem being more marked than +before. + +"It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had done to it +this morning," she added. "He declares it will come down upon us +and cleave us, like 'the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.'" + +"Well; can I do anything else?" asked he. + +"The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down." + +"Oh--you've had the doctor?" + +"I didn't send for him Mrs. Charmond, before she left, heard that +father was ill, and told him to attend him at her expense." + +"That was very good of her. And he says it ought to be cut down. +We mustn't cut it down without her knowledge, I suppose." + +He went up-stairs. There the old man sat, staring at the now +gaunt tree as if his gaze were frozen on to its trunk. Unluckily +the tree waved afresh by this time, a wind having sprung up and +blown the fog away, and his eyes turned with its wavings. + +They heard footsteps--a man's, but of a lighter type than usual. +"There is Doctor Fitzpiers again," she said, and descended. +Presently his tread was heard on the naked stairs. + +Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick-chamber just as a doctor is more or +less wont to do on such occasions, and pre-eminently when the room +is that of a humble cottager, looking round towards the patient +with that preoccupied gaze which so plainly reveals that he has +wellnigh forgotten all about the case and the whole circumstances +since he dismissed them from his mind at his last exit from the +same apartment. He nodded to Winterborne, with whom he was +already a little acquainted, recalled the case to his thoughts, +and went leisurely on to where South sat. + +Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed, handsome man. His +eyes were dark and impressive, and beamed with the light either of +energy or of susceptivity--it was difficult to say which; it might +have been a little of both. That quick, glittering, practical +eye, sharp for the surface of things and for nothing beneath it, +he had not. But whether his apparent depth of vision was real, or +only an artistic accident of his corporeal moulding, nothing but +his deeds could reveal. + +His face was rather soft than stern, charming than grand, pale +than flushed; his nose--if a sketch of his features be de rigueur +for a person of his pretensions--was artistically beautiful enough +to have been worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy, +and was hence devoid of those knotty irregularities which often +mean power; while the double-cyma or classical curve of his mouth +was not without a looseness in its close. Nevertheless, either +from his readily appreciative mien, or his reflective manner, or +the instinct towards profound things which was said to possess +him, his presence bespoke the philosopher rather than the dandy or +macaroni--an effect which was helped by the absence of trinkets or +other trivialities from his attire, though this was more finished +and up to date than is usually the case among rural practitioners. + +Strict people of the highly respectable class, knowing a little +about him by report, might have said that he seemed likely to err +rather in the possession of too many ideas than too few; to be a +dreamy 'ist of some sort, or too deeply steeped in some false kind +of 'ism. However this may be, it will be seen that he was +undoubtedly a somewhat rare kind of gentleman and doctor to have +descended, as from the clouds, upon Little Hintock. + +"This is an extraordinary case," he said at last to Winterborne, +after examining South by conversation, look, and touch, and +learning that the craze about the elm was stronger than ever. +"Come down-stairs, and I'll tell you what I think." + +They accordingly descended, and the doctor continued, "The tree +must be cut down, or I won't answer for his life." + +"'Tis Mrs. Charmond's tree, and I suppose we must get permission?" +said Giles. "If so, as she is gone away, I must speak to her +agent." + +"Oh--never mind whose tree it is--what's a tree beside a life! Cut +it down. I have not the honor of knowing Mrs. Charmond as yet, +but I am disposed to risk that much with her." + +"'Tis timber," rejoined Giles, more scrupulous than he would have +been had not his own interests stood so closely involved. +"They'll never fell a stick about here without it being marked +first, either by her or the agent." + +"Then we'll inaugurate a new era forthwith. How long has he +complained of the tree?" asked the doctor of Marty. + +"Weeks and weeks, sir. The shape of it seems to haunt him like an +evil spirit. He says that it is exactly his own age, that it has +got human sense, and sprouted up when he was born on purpose to +rule him, and keep him as its slave. Others have been like it +afore in Hintock." + +They could hear South's voice up-stairs "Oh, he's rocking this +way; he must come! And then my poor life, that's worth houses upon +houses, will be squashed out o' me. Oh! oh!" + +"That's how he goes on," she added. "And he'll never look +anywhere else but out of the window, and scarcely have the +curtains drawn." + +"Down with it, then, and hang Mrs. Charmond," said Mr. Fitzpiers. +"The best plan will be to wait till the evening, when it is dark, +or early in the morning before he is awake, so that he doesn't see +it fall, for that would terrify him worse than ever. Keep the +blind down till I come, and then I'll assure him, and show him +that his trouble is over." + +The doctor then departed, and they waited till the evening. When +it was dusk, and the curtains drawn, Winterborne directed a couple +of woodmen to bring a crosscut-saw, and the tall, threatening tree +was soon nearly off at its base. He would not fell it completely +then, on account of the possible crash, but next morning, before +South was awake, they went and lowered it cautiously, in a +direction away from the cottage. It was a business difficult to +do quite silently; but it was done at last, and the elm of the +same birth-year as the woodman's lay stretched upon the ground. +The weakest idler that passed could now set foot on marks formerly +made in the upper forks by the shoes of adventurous climbers only; +once inaccessible nests could be examined microscopically; and on +swaying extremities where birds alone had perched, the by-standers +sat down. + +As soon as it was broad daylight the doctor came, and Winterborne +entered the house with him. Marty said that her father was +wrapped up and ready, as usual, to be put into his chair. They +ascended the stairs, and soon seated him. He began at once to +complain of the tree, and the danger to his life and Winterborne's +house-property in consequence. + +The doctor signalled to Giles, who went and drew back the printed +cotton curtains. "'Tis gone, see," said Mr. Fitzpiers. + +As soon as the old man saw the vacant patch of sky in place of the +branched column so familiar to his gaze, he sprang up, speechless, +his eyes rose from their hollows till the whites showed all round; +he fell back, and a bluish whiteness overspread him. + +Greatly alarmed, they put him on the bed. As soon as he came a +little out of his fit, he gasped, "Oh, it is gone!--where?-- +where?" + +His whole system seemed paralyzed by amazement. They were +thunder-struck at the result of the experiment, and did all they +could. Nothing seemed to avail. Giles and Fitzpiers went and +came, but uselessly. He lingered through the day, and died that +evening as the sun went down. + +"D--d if my remedy hasn't killed him!" murmured the doctor. + + + +CHAPTER XV. + + +When Melbury heard what had happened he seemed much moved, and +walked thoughtfully about the premises. On South's own account he +was genuinely sorry; and on Winterborne's he was the more grieved +in that this catastrophe had so closely followed the somewhat +harsh dismissal of Giles as the betrothed of his daughter. + +He was quite angry with circumstances for so heedlessly inflicting +on Giles a second trouble when the needful one inflicted by +himself was all that the proper order of events demanded. "I told +Giles's father when he came into those houses not to spend too +much money on lifehold property held neither for his own life nor +his son's," he exclaimed. "But he wouldn't listen to me. And now +Giles has to suffer for it." + +"Poor Giles!" murmured Grace. + +"Now, Grace, between us two, it is very, very remarkable. It is +almost as if I had foreseen this; and I am thankful for your +escape, though I am sincerely sorry for Giles. Had we not +dismissed him already, we could hardly have found it in our hearts +to dismiss him now. So I say, be thankful. I'll do all I can for +him as a friend; but as a pretender to the position of my son-in +law, that can never be thought of more." + +And yet at that very moment the impracticability to which poor +Winterborne's suit had been reduced was touching Grace's heart to +a warmer sentiment on his behalf than she had felt for years +concerning him. + +He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone in the old familiar house +which had ceased to be his, taking a calm if somewhat dismal +survey of affairs. The pendulum of the clock bumped every now and +then against one side of the case in which it swung, as the +muffled drum to his worldly march. Looking out of the window he +could perceive that a paralysis had come over Creedle's occupation +of manuring the garden, owing, obviously, to a conviction that +they might not be living there long enough to profit by next +season's crop. + +He looked at the leases again and the letter attached. There was +no doubt that he had lost his houses by an accident which might +easily have been circumvented if he had known the true conditions +of his holding. The time for performance had now lapsed in strict +law; but might not the intention be considered by the landholder +when she became aware of the circumstances, and his moral right to +retain the holdings for the term of his life be conceded? + +His heart sank within him when he perceived that despite all the +legal reciprocities and safeguards prepared and written, the +upshot of the matter amounted to this, that it depended upon the +mere caprice--good or ill--of the woman he had met the day before +in such an unfortunate way, whether he was to possess his houses +for life or no. + +While he was sitting and thinking a step came to the door, and +Melbury appeared, looking very sorry for his position. +Winterborne welcomed him by a word and a look, and went on with +his examination of the parchments. His visitor sat down. + +"Giles," he said, "this is very awkward, and I am sorry for it. +What are you going to do?" + +Giles informed him of the real state of affairs, and how barely he +had missed availing himself of his chance of renewal. + +"What a misfortune! Why was this neglected? Well, the best thing +you can do is to write and tell her all about it, and throw +yourself upon her generosity." + +"I would rather not," murmured Giles. + +"But you must," said Melbury. + +In short, he argued so cogently that Giles allowed himself to be +persuaded, and the letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and sent to +Hintock House, whence, as he knew, it would at once be forwarded +to her. + +Melbury feeling that he had done so good an action in coming as +almost to extenuate his previous arbitrary conduct to nothing, +went home; and Giles was left alone to the suspense of waiting for +a reply from the divinity who shaped the ends of the Hintock +population. By this time all the villagers knew of the +circumstances, and being wellnigh like one family, a keen interest +was the result all round. + +Everybody thought of Giles; nobody thought of Marty. Had any of +them looked in upon her during those moonlight nights which +preceded the burial of her father, they would have seen the girl +absolutely alone in the house with the dead man. Her own chamber +being nearest the stairs, the coffin had been placed there for +convenience; and at a certain hour of the night, when the moon +arrived opposite the window, its beams streamed across the still +profile of South, sublimed by the august presence of death, and +onward a few feet farther upon the face of his daughter, lying in +her little bed in the stillness of a repose almost as dignified as +that of her companion--the repose of a guileless soul that had +nothing more left on earth to lose, except a life which she did +not overvalue. + +South was buried, and a week passed, and Winterborne watched for a +reply from Mrs. Charmond. Melbury was very sanguine as to its +tenor; but Winterborne had not told him of the encounter with her +carriage, when, if ever he had heard an affronted tone on a +woman's lips, he had heard it on hers. + +The postman's time for passing was just after Melbury's men had +assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, who when not busy on +his own account would lend assistance there, used to go out into +the lane every morning and meet the post-man at the end of one of +the green rides through the hazel copse, in the straight stretch +of which his laden figure could be seen a long way off. Grace +also was very anxious; more anxious than her father; more, +perhaps, than Winterborne himself. This anxiety led her into the +spar-house on some pretext or other almost every morning while +they were awaiting the reply. + +Fitzpiers too, though he did not personally appear, was much +interested, and not altogether easy in his mind; for he had been +informed by an authority of what he had himself conjectured, that +if the tree had been allowed to stand, the old man would have gone +on complaining, but might have lived for twenty years. + +Eleven times had Winterborne gone to that corner of the ride, and +looked up its long straight slope through the wet grays of winter +dawn. But though the postman's bowed figure loomed in view pretty +regularly, he brought nothing for Giles. On the twelfth day the +man of missives, while yet in the extreme distance, held up his +hand, and Winterborne saw a letter in it. He took it into the +spar-house before he broke the seal, and those who were there +gathered round him while he read, Grace looking in at the door. + +The letter was not from Mrs. Charmond herself, but her agent at +Sherton. Winterborne glanced it over and looked up. + +"It's all over," he said. + +"Ah!" said they altogether. + +"Her lawyer is instructed to say that Mrs. Charmond sees no reason +for disturbing the natural course of things, particularly as she +contemplates pulling the houses down," he said, quietly. + +"Only think of that!" said several. + +Winterborne had turned away, and said vehemently to himself, "Then +let her pull 'em down, and be d--d to her!" + +Creedle looked at him with a face of seven sorrows, saying, "Ah, +'twas that sperrit that lost 'em for ye, maister!" + +Winterborne subdued his feelings, and from that hour, whatever +they were, kept them entirely to himself. There could be no doubt +that, up to this last moment, he had nourished a feeble hope of +regaining Grace in the event of this negotiation turning out a +success. Not being aware of the fact that her father could have +settled upon her a fortune sufficient to enable both to live in +comfort, he deemed it now an absurdity to dream any longer of such +a vanity as making her his wife, and sank into silence forthwith. + +Yet whatever the value of taciturnity to a man among strangers, it +is apt to express more than talkativeness when he dwells among +friends. The countryman who is obliged to judge the time of day +from changes in external nature sees a thousand successive tints +and traits in the landscape which are never discerned by him who +hears the regular chime of a clock, because they are never in +request. In like manner do we use our eyes on our taciturn +comrade. The infinitesimal movement of muscle, curve, hair, and +wrinkle, which when accompanied by a voice goes unregarded, is +watched and translated in the lack of it, till virtually the whole +surrounding circle of familiars is charged with the reserved one's +moods and meanings. + +This was the condition of affairs between Winterborne and his +neighbors after his stroke of ill-luck. He held his tongue; and +they observed him, and knew that he was discomposed. + +Mr. Melbury, in his compunction, thought more of the matter than +any one else, except his daughter. Had Winterborne been going on +in the old fashion, Grace's father could have alluded to his +disapproval of the alliance every day with the greatest frankness; +but to speak any further on the subject he could not find it in +his heart to do now. He hoped that Giles would of his own accord +make some final announcement that he entirely withdrew his +pretensions to Grace, and so get the thing past and done with. +For though Giles had in a measure acquiesced in the wish of her +family, he could make matters unpleasant if he chose to work upon +Grace; and hence, when Melbury saw the young man approaching along +the road one day, he kept friendliness and frigidity exactly +balanced in his eye till he could see whether Giles's manner was +presumptive or not. + +His manner was that of a man who abandoned all claims. "I am glad +to meet ye, Mr. Melbury," he said, in a low voice, whose quality +he endeavored to make as practical as possible. "I am afraid I +shall not be able to keep that mare I bought, and as I don't care +to sell her, I should like--if you don't object--to give her to +Miss Melbury. The horse is very quiet, and would be quite safe +for her." + +Mr. Melbury was rather affected at this. "You sha'n't hurt your +pocket like that on our account, Giles. Grace shall have the +horse, but I'll pay you what you gave for her, and any expense you +may have been put to for her keep." + +He would not hear of any other terms, and thus it was arranged. +They were now opposite Melbury's house, and the timber-merchant +pressed Winterborne to enter, Grace being out of the way. + +"Pull round the settle, Giles," said the timber-merchant, as soon +as they were within. "I should like to have a serious talk with +you." + +Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne frankly, and in quite a +friendly way. He declared that he did not like to be hard on a +man when he was in difficulty; but he really did not see how +Winterborne could marry his daughter now, without even a house to +take her to. + +Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness of his situation. But +from a momentary feeling that he would like to know Grace's mind +from her own lips, he did not speak out positively there and then. +He accordingly departed somewhat abruptly, and went home to +consider whether he would seek to bring about a meeting with her. + +In the evening, while he sat quietly pondering, he fancied that he +heard a scraping on the wall outside his house. The boughs of a +monthly rose which grew there made such a noise sometimes, but as +no wind was stirring he knew that it could not be the rose-tree. +He took up the candle and went out. Nobody was near. As he +turned, the light flickered on the whitewashed rough case of the +front, and he saw words written thereon in charcoal, which he read +as follows: + + + "O Giles, you've lost your dwelling-place, + And therefore, Giles, you'll lose your Grace." + + +Giles went in-doors. He had his suspicions as to the scrawler of +those lines, but he could not be sure. What suddenly filled his +heart far more than curiosity about their authorship was a +terrible belief that they were turning out to be true, try to see +Grace as he might. They decided the question for him. He sat +down and wrote a formal note to Melbury, in which he briefly +stated that he was placed in such a position as to make him share +to the full Melbury's view of his own and his daughter's promise, +made some years before; to wish that it should be considered as +cancelled, and they themselves quite released from any obligation +on account of it. + +Having fastened up this their plenary absolution, he determined to +get it out of his hands and have done with it; to which end he +went off to Melbury's at once. It was now so late that the family +had all retired; he crept up to the house, thrust the note under +the door, and stole away as silently as he had come. + +Melbury himself was the first to rise the next morning, and when +he had read the letter his relief was great. "Very honorable of +Giles, very honorable," he kept saying to himself. "I shall not +forget him. Now to keep her up to her own true level." + +It happened that Grace went out for an early ramble that morning, +passing through the door and gate while her father was in the +spar-house. To go in her customary direction she could not avoid +passing Winterborne's house. The morning sun was shining flat +upon its white surface, and the words, which still remained, were +immediately visible to her. She read them. Her face flushed to +crimson. She could see Giles and Creedle talking together at the +back; the charred spar-gad with which the lines had been written +lay on the ground beneath the wall. Feeling pretty sure that +Winterborne would observe her action, she quickly went up to the +wall, rubbed out "lose" and inserted "keep" in its stead. Then +she made the best of her way home without looking behind her. +Giles could draw an inference now if he chose. + +There could not be the least doubt that gentle Grace was warming +to more sympathy with, and interest in, Giles Winterborne than +ever she had done while he was her promised lover; that since his +misfortune those social shortcomings of his, which contrasted so +awkwardly with her later experiences of life, had become obscured +by the generous revival of an old romantic attachment to him. +Though mentally trained and tilled into foreignness of view, as +compared with her youthful time, Grace was not an ambitious girl, +and might, if left to herself, have declined Winterborne without +much discontent or unhappiness. Her feelings just now were so far +from latent that the writing on the wall had thus quickened her to +an unusual rashness. + +Having returned from her walk she sat at breakfast silently. When +her step-mother had left the room she said to her father, "I have +made up my mind that I should like my engagement to Giles to +continue, for the present at any rate, till I can see further what +I ought to do." + +Melbury looked much surprised. + +"Nonsense," he said, sharply. "You don't know what you are +talking about. Look here." + +He handed across to her the letter received from Giles. + +She read it, and said no more. Could he have seen her write on +the wall? She did not know. Fate, it seemed, would have it this +way, and there was nothing to do but to acquiesce. + +It was a few hours after this that Winterborne, who, curiously +enough, had NOT perceived Grace writing, was clearing away the +tree from the front of South's late dwelling. He saw Marty +standing in her door-way, a slim figure in meagre black, almost +without womanly contours as yet. He went up to her and said, +"Marty, why did you write that on my wall last night? It WAS you, +you know." + +"Because it was the truth. I didn't mean to let it stay, Mr. +Winterborne; but when I was going to rub it out you came, and I +was obliged to run off." + +"Having prophesied one thing, why did you alter it to another? +Your predictions can't be worth much." + +"I have not altered it." + +"But you have." + +"No." + +"It is altered. Go and see." + +She went, and read that, in spite of losing his dwelling-place, he +would KEEP his Grace. Marty came back surprised. + +"Well, I never," she said. "Who can have made such nonsense of +it?" + +"Who, indeed?" said he. + +"I have rubbed it all out, as the point of it is quite gone." + +"You'd no business to rub it out. I didn't tell you to. I meant +to let it stay a little longer." + +"Some idle boy did it, no doubt," she murmured. + +As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetrator was +unsuspected, Winterborne said no more, and dismissed the matter +from his mind. + +From this day of his life onward for a considerable time, +Winterborne, though not absolutely out of his house as yet, +retired into the background of human life and action thereabout--a +feat not particularly difficult of performance anywhere when the +doer has the assistance of a lost prestige. Grace, thinking that +Winterborne saw her write, made no further sign, and the frail +bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly launched was stranded +and lost. + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + + +Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the hill, in a house of much +less pretension, both as to architecture and as to magnitude, than +the timber-merchant's. The latter had, without doubt, been once +the manorial residence appertaining to the snug and modest domain +of Little Hintock, of which the boundaries were now lost by its +absorption with others of its kind into the adjoining estate of +Mrs. Charmond. Though the Melburys themselves were unaware of the +fact, there was every reason to believe--at least so the parson +said that the owners of that little manor had been Melbury's own +ancestors, the family name occurring in numerous documents +relating to transfers of land about the time of the civil wars. + +Mr. Fitzpiers's dwelling, on the contrary, was small, cottage- +like, and comparatively modern. It had been occupied, and was in +part occupied still, by a retired farmer and his wife, who, on the +surgeon's arrival in quest of a home, had accommodated him by +receding from their front rooms into the kitchen quarter, whence +they administered to his wants, and emerged at regular intervals +to receive from him a not unwelcome addition to their income. + +The cottage and its garden were so regular in their arrangement +that they might have been laid out by a Dutch designer of the time +of William and Mary. In a low, dense hedge, cut to wedge-shape, +was a door over which the hedge formed an arch, and from the +inside of the door a straight path, bordered with clipped box, ran +up the slope of the garden to the porch, which was exactly in the +middle of the house front, with two windows on each side. Right +and left of the path were first a bed of gooseberry bushes; next +of currant; next of raspberry; next of strawberry; next of old- +fashioned flowers; at the corners opposite the porch being spheres +of box resembling a pair of school globes. Over the roof of the +house could be seen the orchard, on yet higher ground, and behind +the orchard the forest-trees, reaching up to the crest of the +hill. + +Opposite the garden door and visible from the parlor window was a +swing-gate leading into a field, across which there ran a foot- +path. The swing-gate had just been repainted, and on one fine +afternoon, before the paint was dry, and while gnats were still +dying thereon, the surgeon was standing in his sitting-room +abstractedly looking out at the different pedestrians who passed +and repassed along that route. Being of a philosophical stamp, he +perceived that the chararter of each of these travellers exhibited +itself in a somewhat amusing manner by his or her method of +handling the gate. + +As regarded the men, there was not much variety: they gave the +gate a kick and passed through. The women were more contrasting. +To them the sticky wood-work was a barricade, a disgust, a menace, +a treachery, as the case might be. + +The first that he noticed was a bouncing woman with her skirts +tucked up and her hair uncombed. She grasped the gate without +looking, giving it a supplementary push with her shoulder, when +the white imprint drew from her an exclamation in language not too +refined. She went to the green bank, sat down and rubbed herself +in the grass, cursing the while. + +"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the doctor. + +The next was a girl, with her hair cropped short, in whom the +surgeon recognized the daughter of his late patient, the woodman +South. Moreover, a black bonnet that she wore by way of mourning +unpleasantly reminded him that he had ordered the felling of a +tree which had caused her parent's death and Winterborne's losses. +She walked and thought, and not recklessly; but her preoccupation +led her to grasp unsuspectingly the bar of the gate, and touch it +with her arm. Fitzpiers felt sorry that she should have soiled +that new black frock, poor as it was, for it was probably her only +one. She looked at her hand and arm, seemed but little surprised, +wiped off the disfigurement with an almost unmoved face, and as if +without abandoning her original thoughts. Thus she went on her +way. + +Then there came over the green quite a different sort of +personage. She walked as delicately as if she had been bred in +town, and as firmly as if she had been bred in the country; she +seemed one who dimly knew her appearance to be attractive, but who +retained some of the charm of being ignorant of that fact by +forgetting it in a general pensiveness. She approached the gate. +To let such a creature touch it even with a tip of her glove was +to Fitzpiers almost like letting her proceed to tragical self- +destruction. He jumped up and looked for his hat, but was unable +to find the right one; glancing again out of the window he saw +that he was too late. Having come up, she stopped, looked at the +gate, picked up a little stick, and using it as a bayonet, pushed +open the obstacle without touching it at all. + +He steadily watched her till she had passed out of sight, +recognizing her as the very young lady whom he had seen once +before and been unable to identify. Whose could that emotional +face be? All the others he had seen in Hintock as yet oppressed +him with their crude rusticity; the contrast offered by this +suggested that she hailed from elsewhere. + +Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first time of +seeing her; but he now went a little further with them, and +considered that as there had been no carriage seen or heard lately +in that spot she could not have come a very long distance. She +must be somebody staying at Hintock House? Possibly Mrs. Charmond, +of whom he had heard so much--at any rate an inmate, and this +probability was sufficient to set a mild radiance in the surgeon's +somewhat dull sky. + +Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had been perusing. It happened +to be that of a German metaphysician, for the doctor was not a +practical man, except by fits, and much preferred the ideal world +to the real, and the discovery of principles to their application. +The young lady remained in his thoughts. He might have followed +her; but he was not constitutionally active, and preferred a +conjectural pursuit. However, when he went out for a ramble just +before dusk he insensibly took the direction of Hintock House, +which was the way that Grace had been walking, it having happened +that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond that day, and she had +walked to the brow of a hill whence the house could be seen, +returning by another route. + +Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, overlooking +the manor-house. The shutters were shut, and only one chimney +smoked. The mere aspect of the place was enough to inform him +that Mrs. Charmond had gone away and that nobody else was staying +there. Fitzpiers felt a vague disappointment that the young lady +was not Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard so much; and without +pausing longer to gaze at a carcass from which the spirit had +flown, he bent his steps homeward. + +Later in the evening Fitzpiers was summoned to visit a cottage +patient about two miles distant. Like the majority of young +practitioners in his position he was far from having assumed the +dignity of being driven his rounds by a servant in a brougham that +flashed the sunlight like a mirror; his way of getting about was +by means of a gig which he drove himself, hitching the rein of the +horse to the gate post, shutter hook, or garden paling of the +domicile under visitation, or giving pennies to little boys to +hold the animal during his stay--pennies which were well earned +when the cases to be attended were of a certain cheerful kind that +wore out the patience of the little boys. + +On this account of travelling alone, the night journeys which +Fitzpiers had frequently to take were dismal enough, a serious +apparent perversity in nature ruling that whenever there was to be +a birth in a particularly inaccessible and lonely place, that +event should occur in the night. The surgeon, having been of late +years a town man, hated the solitary midnight woodland. He was +not altogether skilful with the reins, and it often occurred to +his mind that if in some remote depths of the trees an accident +were to happen, the fact of his being alone might be the death of +him. Hence he made a practice of picking up any countryman or lad +whom he chanced to pass by, and under the disguise of treating him +to a nice drive, obtained his companionship on the journey, and +his convenient assistance in opening gates. + +The doctor had started on his way out of the village on the night +in question when the light of his lamps fell upon the musing form +of Winterborne, walking leisurely along, as if he had no object in +life. Winterborne was a better class of companion than the doctor +usually could get, and he at once pulled up and asked him if he +would like a drive through the wood that fine night. + +Giles seemed rather surprised at the doctor's friendliness, but +said that he had no objection, and accordingly mounted beside Mr. +Fitzpiers. + +They drove along under the black boughs which formed a network +upon the stars, all the trees of a species alike in one respect, +and no two of them alike in another. Looking up as they passed +under a horizontal bough they sometimes saw objects like large +tadpoles lodged diametrically across it, which Giles explained to +be pheasants there at roost; and they sometimes heard the report +of a gun, which reminded him that others knew what those tadpole +shapes represented as well as he. + +Presently the doctor said what he had been going to say for some +time: + +"Is there a young lady staying in this neighborhood--a very +attractive girl--with a little white boa round her neck, and white +fur round her gloves?" + +Winterborne of course knew in a moment that Grace, whom he had +caught the doctor peering at, was represented by these +accessaries. With a wary grimness, partly in his character, +partly induced by the circumstances, he evaded an answer by +saying, "I saw a young lady talking to Mrs. Charmond the other +day; perhaps it was she." + +Fitzpiers concluded from this that Winterborne had not seen him +looking over the hedge. "It might have been," he said. "She is +quite a gentlewoman--the one I mean. She cannot be a permanent +resident in Hintock or I should have seen her before. Nor does +she look like one." + +"She is not staying at Hintock House?" + +"No; it is closed." + +"Then perhaps she is staying at one of the cottages, or farm- +houses?" + +"Oh no--you mistake. She was a different sort of girl +altogether." As Giles was nobody, Fitzpiers treated him +accordingly, and apostrophized the night in continuation: + + + "'She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, + A power, that from its objects scarcely drew + One impulse of her being--in her lightness + Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew, + Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue, + To nourish some far desert: she did seem + Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew, + Like the bright shade of some immortal dream + Which walks, when tempests sleep, the wave of life's dark +stream.'" + + +The consummate charm of the lines seemed to Winterborne, though he +divined that they were a quotation, to be somehow the result of +his lost love's charms upon Fitzpiers. + +"You seem to be mightily in love with her, sir," he said, with a +sensation of heart-sickness, and more than ever resolved not to +mention Grace by name. + +"Oh no--I am not that, Winterborne; people living insulated, as I +do by the solitude of this place, get charged with emotive fluid +like a Leyden-jar with electric, for want of some conductor at +hand to disperse it. Human love is a subjective thing--the +essence itself of man, as that great thinker Spinoza the +philosopher says--ipsa hominis essentia--it is joy accompanied by +an idea which we project against any suitable object in the line +of our vision, just as the rainbow iris is projected against an +oak, ash, or elm tree indifferently. So that if any other young +lady had appeared instead of the one who did appear, I should have +felt just the same interest in her, and have quoted precisely the +same lines from Shelley about her, as about this one I saw. Such +miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!" + +"Well, it is what we call being in love down in these parts, +whether or no," said Winterborne. + +"You are right enough if you admit that I am in love with +something in my own head, and no thing in itself outside it at +all." + +"Is it part of a country doctor's duties to learn that view of +things, may I ask, sir?" said Winterborne, adopting the Socratic +{Greek word: irony} with such well-assumed simplicity that +Fitzpiers answered, readily, + +"Oh no. The real truth is, Winterborne, that medical practice in +places like this is a very rule-of-thumb matter; a bottle of +bitter stuff for this and that old woman--the bitterer the better-- +compounded from a few simple stereotyped prescriptions; +occasional attendance at births, where mere presence is almost +sufficient, so healthy and strong are the people; and a lance for +an abscess now and then. Investigation and experiment cannot be +carried on without more appliances than one has here--though I +have attempted it a little." + +Giles did not enter into this view of the case; what he had been +struck with was the curious parallelism between Mr. Fitzpiers's +manner and Grace's, as shown by the fact of both of them straying +into a subject of discourse so engrossing to themselves that it +made them forget it was foreign to him. + +Nothing further passed between himself and the doctor in relation +to Grace till they were on their way back. They had stopped at a +way-side inn for a glass of brandy and cider hot, and when they +were again in motion, Fitzpiers, possibly a little warmed by the +liquor, resumed the subject by saying, "I should like very much to +know who that young lady was." + +"What difference can it make, if she's only the tree your rainbow +falls on?" + +"Ha! ha! True." + +"You have no wife, sir?" + +"I have no wife, and no idea of one. I hope to do better things +than marry and settle in Hintock. Not but that it is well for a +medical man to be married, and sometimes, begad, 'twould be +pleasant enough in this place, with the wind roaring round the +house, and the rain and the boughs beating against it. I hear +that you lost your life-holds by the death of South?" + +"I did. I lost in more ways than one." + +They had reached the top of Hintock Lane or Street, if it could be +called such where three-quarters of the road-side consisted of +copse and orchard. One of the first houses to be passed was +Melbury's. A light was shining from a bedroom window facing +lengthwise of the lane. Winterborne glanced at it, and saw what +was coming. He had withheld an answer to the doctor's inquiry to +hinder his knowledge of Grace; but, as he thought to himself, "who +hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in +a garment?" he could not hinder what was doomed to arrive, and +might just as well have been outspoken. As they came up to the +house, Grace's figure was distinctly visible, drawing the two +white curtains together which were used here instead of blinds. + +"Why, there she is!" said Fitzpiers. "How does she come there?" + +"In the most natural way in the world. It is her home. Mr. +Melbury is her father." + +"Oh, indeed--indeed--indeed! How comes he to have a daughter of +that stamp?" + +Winterborne laughed coldly. "Won't money do anything," he said, +"if you've promising material to work upon? Why shouldn't a +Hintock girl, taken early from home, and put under proper +instruction, become as finished as any other young lady, if she's +got brains and good looks to begin with?" + +"No reason at all why she shouldn't," murmured the surgeon, with +reflective disappointment. "Only I didn't anticipate quite that +kind of origin for her." + +"And you think an inch or two less of her now." There was a little +tremor in Winterborne's voice as he spoke. + +"Well," said the doctor, with recovered warmth, "I am not so sure +that I think less of her. At first it was a sort of blow; but, +dammy! I'll stick up for her. She's charming, every inch of her!" + +"So she is," said Winterborne, "but not to me." + +From this ambiguous expression of the reticent woodlander's, Dr. +Fitzpiers inferred that Giles disliked Miss Melbury because of +some haughtiness in her bearing towards him, and had, on that +account, withheld her name. The supposition did not tend to +diminish his admiration for her. + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + + +Grace's exhibition of herself, in the act of pulling-to the +window-curtains, had been the result of an unfortunate incident in +the house that day--nothing less than the illness of Grammer +Oliver, a woman who had never till now lain down for such a reason +in her life. Like others to whom unbroken years of health has +made the idea of keeping their bed almost as repugnant as death +itself, she had continued on foot till she literally fell on the +floor; and though she had, as yet, been scarcely a day off duty, +she had sickened into quite a different personage from the +independent Grammer of the yard and spar-house. Ill as she was, +on one point she was firm. On no account would she see a doctor; +in other words, Fitzpiers. + +The room in which Grace had been discerned was not her own, but +the old woman's. On the girl's way to bed she had received a +message from Grammer, to the effect that she would much like to +speak to her that night. + +Grace entered, and set the candle on a low chair beside the bed, +so that the profile of Grammer as she lay cast itself in a keen +shadow upon the whitened wall, her large head being still further +magnified by an enormous turban, which was, really, her petticoat +wound in a wreath round her temples. Grace put the room a little +in order, and approaching the sick woman, said, "I am come, +Grammer, as you wish. Do let us send for the doctor before it +gets later." + +"I will not have him," said Grammer Oliver, decisively. + +"Then somebody to sit up with you." + +"Can't abear it! No; I wanted to see you, Miss Grace, because 'ch +have something on my mind. Dear Miss Grace, I TOOK THAT MONEY OF +THE DOCTOR, AFTER ALL!" + +"What money?" + +"The ten pounds." + +Grace did not quite understand. + +"The ten pounds he offered me for my head, because I've a large +brain. I signed a paper when I took the money, not feeling +concerned about it at all. I have not liked to tell ye that it +was really settled with him, because you showed such horror at the +notion. Well, having thought it over more at length, I wish I +hadn't done it; and it weighs upon my mind. John South's death of +fear about the tree makes me think that I shall die of this....'Ch +have been going to ask him again to let me off, but I hadn't the +face." + +"Why?" + +"I've spent some of the money--more'n two pounds o't. It do +wherrit me terribly; and I shall die o' the thought of that paper +I signed with my holy cross, as South died of his trouble." + + "If you ask him to burn the paper he will, I'm sure, and think no +more of it." + + "'Ch have done it once already, miss. But he laughed cruel like. +'Yours is such a fine brain, Grammer, 'er said, 'that science +couldn't afford to lose you. Besides, you've taken my +money.'...Don't let your father know of this, please, on no +account whatever!" + +"No, no. I will let you have the money to return to him." + +Grammer rolled her head negatively upon the pillow. "Even if I +should be well enough to take it to him, he won't like it. Though +why he should so particular want to look into the works of a poor +old woman's head-piece like mine when there's so many other folks +about, I don't know. I know how he'll answer me: 'A lonely person +like you, Grammer,' er woll say. 'What difference is it to you +what becomes of ye when the breath's out of your body?' Oh, it do +trouble me! If you only knew how he do chevy me round the chimmer +in my dreams, you'd pity me. How I could do it I can't think! But +'ch was always so rackless!...If I only had anybody to plead for +me!" + +"Mrs. Melbury would, I am sure." + +"Ay; but he wouldn't hearken to she! It wants a younger face than +hers to work upon such as he." + +Grace started with comprehension. "You don't think he would do it +for me?" she said. + +"Oh, wouldn't he!" + +"I couldn't go to him, Grammer, on any account. I don't know him +at all." + +"Ah, if I were a young lady," said the artful Grammer, "and could +save a poor old woman's skellington from a heathen doctor instead +of a Christian grave, I would do it, and be glad to. But nobody +will do anything for a poor old familiar friend but push her out +of the way." + +You are very ungrateful, Grammer, to say that. But you are ill, I +know, and that's why you speak so. Now believe me, you are not +going to die yet. Remember you told me yourself that you meant to +keep him waiting many a year." + +"Ay, one can joke when one is well, even in old age; but in +sickness one's gayety falters to grief; and that which seemed +small looks large; and the grim far-off seems near." + +Grace's eyes had tears in them. "I don't like to go to him on +such an errand, Grammer," she said, brokenly. "But I will, to +ease your mind." + +It was with extreme reluctance that Grace cloaked herself next +morning for the undertaking. She was all the more indisposed to +the journey by reason of Grammer's allusion to the effect of a +pretty face upon Dr. Fitzpiers; and hence she most illogically did +that which, had the doctor never seen her, would have operated to +stultify the sole motive of her journey; that is to say, she put +on a woollen veil, which hid all her face except an occasional +spark of her eyes. + +Her own wish that nothing should be known of this strange and +grewsome proceeding, no less than Grammer Oliver's own desire, led +Grace to take every precaution against being discovered. She went +out by the garden door as the safest way, all the household having +occupations at the other side. The morning looked forbidding +enough when she stealthily opened it. The battle between frost +and thaw was continuing in mid-air: the trees dripped on the +garden-plots, where no vegetables would grow for the dripping, +though they were planted year after year with that curious +mechanical regularity of country people in the face of +hopelessness; the moss which covered the once broad gravel terrace +was swamped; and Grace stood irresolute. Then she thought of poor +Grammer, and her dreams of the doctor running after her, scalpel +in hand, and the possibility of a case so curiously similar to +South's ending in the same way; thereupon she stepped out into the +drizzle. + +The nature of her errand, and Grammer Oliver's account of the +compact she had made, lent a fascinating horror to Grace's +conception of Fitzpiers. She knew that he was a young man; but +her single object in seeking an interview with him put all +considerations of his age and social aspect from her mind. +Standing as she stood, in Grammer Oliver's shoes, he was simply a +remorseless Jove of the sciences, who would not have mercy, and +would have sacrifice; a man whom, save for this, she would have +preferred to avoid knowing. But since, in such a small village, +it was improbable that any long time could pass without their +meeting, there was not much to deplore in her having to meet him +now. + +But, as need hardly be said, Miss Melbury's view of the doctor as +a merciless, unwavering, irresistible scientist was not quite in +accordance with fact. The real Dr. Fitzpiers w as a man of too +many hobbies to show likelihood of rising to any great eminence in +the profession he had chosen, or even to acquire any wide practice +in the rural district he had marked out as his field of survey for +the present. In the course of a year his mind was accustomed to +pass in a grand solar sweep through all the zodiacal signs of the +intellectual heaven. Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes in +the Bull; one month he would be immersed in alchemy, another in +poesy; one month in the Twins of astrology and astronomy; then in +the Crab of German literature and metaphysics. In justice to him +it must be stated that he took such studies as were immediately +related to his own profession in turn with the rest, and it had +been in a month of anatomical ardor without the possibility of a +subject that he had proposed to Grammer Oliver the terms she had +mentioned to her mistress. + +As may be inferred from the tone of his conversation with +Winterborne, he had lately plunged into abstract philosophy with +much zest; perhaps his keenly appreciative, modern, unpractical +mind found this a realm more to his taste than any other. Though +his aims were desultory, Fitzpiers's mental constitution was not +without its admirable side; a keen inquirer he honestly was, even +if the midnight rays of his lamp, visible so far through the trees +of Hintock, lighted rank literatures of emotion and passion as +often as, or oftener than, the books and materiel of science. + +But whether he meditated the Muses or the philosophers, the +loneliness of Hintock life was beginning to tell upon his +impressionable nature. Winter in a solitary house in the country, +without society, is tolerable, nay, even enjoyable and delightful, +given certain conditions, but these are not the conditions which +attach to the life of a professional man who drops down into such +a place by mere accident. They were present to the lives of +Winterborne, Melbury, and Grace; but not to the doctor's. They +are old association--an almost exhaustive biographical or +historical acquaintance with every object, animate and inanimate, +within the observer's horizon. He must know all about those +invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet have traversed the +fields which look so gray from his windows; recall whose creaking +plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands +planted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose +horses and hounds have torn through that underwood; what birds +affect that particular brake; what domestic dramas of love, +jealousy, revenge, or disappointment have been enacted in the +cottages, the mansion, the street, or on the green. The spot may +have beauty, grandeur, salubrity, convenience; but if it lack +memories it will ultimately pall upon him who settles there +without opportunity of intercourse with his kind. + +In such circumstances, maybe, an old man dreams of an ideal +friend, till he throws himself into the arms of any impostor who +chooses to wear that title on his face. A young man may dream of +an ideal friend likewise, but some humor of the blood will +probably lead him to think rather of an ideal mistress, and at +length the rustle of a woman's dress, the sound of her voice, or +the transit of her form across the field of his vision, will +enkindle his soul with a flame that blinds his eyes. + +The discovery of the attractive Grace's name and family would have +been enough in other circumstances to lead the doctor, if not to +put her personality out of his head, to change the character of +his interest in her. Instead of treasuring her image as a rarity, +he would at most have played with it as a toy. He was that kind +of a man. But situated here he could not go so far as amative +cruelty. He dismissed all reverential thought about her, but he +could not help taking her seriously. + +He went on to imagine the impossible. So far, indeed, did he go +in this futile direction that, as others are wont to do, he +constructed dialogues and scenes in which Grace had turned out to +be the mistress of Hintock Manor-house, the mysterious Mrs. +Charmond, particularly ready and willing to be wooed by himself +and nobody else. "Well, she isn't that," he said, finally. "But +she's a very sweet, nice, exceptional girl." + +The next morning he breakfasted alone, as usual. It was snowing +with a fine-flaked desultoriness just sufficient to make the +woodland gray, without ever achieving whiteness. There was not a +single letter for Fitzpiers, only a medical circular and a weekly +newspaper. + +To sit before a large fire on such mornings, and read, and +gradually acquire energy till the evening came, and then, with +lamp alight, and feeling full of vigor, to pursue some engrossing +subject or other till the small hours, had hitherto been his +practice. But to-day he could not settle into his chair. That +self-contained position he had lately occupied, in which the only +attention demanded was the concentration of the inner eye, all +outer regard being quite gratuitous, seemed to have been taken by +insidious stratagem, and for the first time he had an interest +outside the house. He walked from one window to another, and +became aware that the most irksome of solitudes is not the +solitude of remoteness, but that which is just outside desirable +company. + +The breakfast hour went by heavily enough, and the next followed, +in the same half-snowy, half-rainy style, the weather now being +the inevitable relapse which sooner or later succeeds a time too +radiant for the season, such as they had enjoyed in the late +midwinter at Hintock. To people at home there these changeful +tricks had their interests; the strange mistakes that some of the +more sanguine trees had made in budding before their month, to be +incontinently glued up by frozen thawings now; the similar +sanguine errors of impulsive birds in framing nests that were now +swamped by snow-water, and other such incidents, prevented any +sense of wearisomeness in the minds of the natives. But these +were features of a world not familiar to Fitzpiers, and the inner +visions to which he had almost exclusively attended having +suddenly failed in their power to absorb him, he felt unutterably +dreary. + +He wondered how long Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. +The season was unpropitious for accidental encounters with her +out-of-doors, and except by accident he saw not how they were to +become acquainted. One thing was clear--any acquaintance with her +could only, with a due regard to his future, be casual, at most of +the nature of a flirtation; for he had high aims, and they would +some day lead him into other spheres than this. + +Thus desultorily thinking he flung himself down upon the couch, +which, as in many draughty old country houses, was constructed +with a hood, being in fact a legitimate development from the +settle. He tried to read as he reclined, but having sat up till +three o'clock that morning, the book slipped from his hand and he +fell asleep. + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + + +It was at this time that Grace approached the house. Her knock, +always soft in virtue of her nature, was softer to-day by reason +of her strange errand. However, it was heard by the farmer's wife +who kept the house, and Grace was admitted. Opening the door of +the doctor's room the housewife glanced in, and imagining +Fitzpiers absent, asked Miss Melbury to enter and wait a few +minutes while she should go and find him, believing him to be +somewhere on the premises. Grace acquiesced, went in, and sat +down close to the door. + +As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round the room, +and started at perceiving a handsome man snugly ensconced in the +couch, like the recumbent figure within some canopied mural tomb +of the fifteenth century, except that his hands were by no means +clasped in prayer. She had no doubt that this was the doctor. +Awaken him herself she could not, and her immediate impulse was to +go and pull the broad ribbon with a brass rosette which hung at +one side of the fireplace. But expecting the landlady to re-enter +in a moment she abandoned this intention, and stood gazing in +great embarrassment at the reclining philosopher. + +The windows of Fitzpiers's soul being at present shuttered, he +probably appeared less impressive than in his hours of animation; +but the light abstracted from his material presence by sleep was +more than counterbalanced by the mysterious influence of that +state, in a stranger, upon the consciousness of a beholder so +sensitive. So far as she could criticise at all, she became aware +that she had encountered a specimen of creation altogether unusual +in that locality. The occasions on which Grace had observed men +of this stamp were when she had been far removed away from +Hintock, and even then such examples as had met her eye were at a +distance, and mainly of coarser fibre than the one who now +confronted her. + +She nervously wondered why the woman had not discovered her +mistake and returned, and went again towards the bell-pull. +Approaching the chimney her back was to Fitzpiers, but she could +see him in the glass. An indescribable thrill passed through her +as she perceived that the eyes of the reflected image were open, +gazing wonderingly at her, and under the curious unexpectedness of +the sight she became as if spellbound, almost powerless to turn +her head and regard the original. However, by an effort she did +turn, when there he lay asleep the same as before. + +Her startled perplexity as to what he could be meaning was +sufficient to lead her to precipitately abandon her errand. She +crossed quickly to the door, opened and closed it noiselessly, and +went out of the house unobserved. By the time that she had gone +down the path and through the garden door into the lane she had +recovered her equanimity. Here, screened by the hedge, she stood +and considered a while. + +Drip, drip, drip, fell the rain upon her umbrella and around; she +had come out on such a morning because of the seriousness of the +matter in hand; yet now she had allowed her mission to be +stultified by a momentary tremulousness concerning an incident +which perhaps had meant nothing after all. + +In the mean time her departure from the room, stealthy as it had +been, had roused Fitzpiers, and he sat up. In the reflection from +the mirror which Grace had beheld there was no mystery; he had +opened his eyes for a few moments, but had immediately relapsed +into unconsciousness, if, indeed, he had ever been positively +awake. That somebody had just left the room he was certain, and +that the lovely form which seemed to have visited him in a dream +was no less than the real presentation of the person departed he +could hardly doubt. + +Looking out of the window a few minutes later, down the box-edged +gravel-path which led to the bottom, he saw the garden door gently +open, and through it enter the young girl of his thoughts, Grace +having just at this juncture determined to return and attempt the +interview a second time. That he saw her coming instead of going +made him ask himself if his first impression of her were not a +dream indeed. She came hesitatingly along, carrying her umbrella +so low over her head that he could hardly see her face. When she +reached the point where the raspberry bushes ended and the +strawberry bed began, she made a little pause. + +Fitzpiers feared that she might not be coming to him even now, and +hastily quitting the room, he ran down the path to meet her. The +nature of her errand he could not divine, but he was prepared to +give her any amount of encouragement. + +"I beg pardon, Miss Melbury," he said. "I saw you from the +window, and fancied you might imagine that I was not at home--if +it is I you were coming for." + +"I was coming to speak one word to you, nothing more," she +replied. "And I can say it here." + +"No, no. Please do come in. Well, then, if you will not come +into the house, come as far as the porch." + +Thus pressed she went on to the porch, and they stood together +inside it, Fitzpiers closing her umbrella for her. + +"I have merely a request or petition to make," she said. "My +father's servant is ill--a woman you know--and her illness is +serious." + +"I am sorry to hear it. You wish me to come and see her at once?" + +"No; I particularly wish you not to come." + +"Oh, indeed." + +"Yes; and she wishes the same. It would make her seriously worse +if you were to come. It would almost kill her....My errand is of +a peculiar and awkward nature. It is concerning a subject which +weighs on her mind--that unfortunate arrangement she made with +you, that you might have her body--after death." + +"Oh! Grammer Oliver, the old woman with the fine head. Seriously +ill, is she!" + +"And SO disturbed by her rash compact! I have brought the money +back--will you please return to her the agreement she signed?" +Grace held out to him a couple of five-pound notes which she had +kept ready tucked in her glove. + +Without replying or considering the notes, Fitzpiers allowed his +thoughts to follow his eyes, and dwell upon Grace's personality, +and the sudden close relation in which he stood to her. The porch +was narrow; the rain increased. It ran off the porch and dripped +on the creepers, and from the creepers upon the edge of Grace's +cloak and skirts. + +"The rain is wetting your dress; please do come in," he said. "It +really makes my heart ache to let you stay here." + +Immediately inside the front door was the door of his sitting- +room; he flung it open, and stood in a coaxing attitude. Try how +she would, Grace could not resist the supplicatory mandate written +in the face and manner of this man, and distressful resignation +sat on her as she glided past him into the room--brushing his coat +with her elbow by reason of the narrowness. + +He followed her, shut the door--which she somehow had hoped he +would leave open--and placing a chair for her, sat down. The +concern which Grace felt at the development of these commonplace +incidents was, of course, mainly owing to the strange effect upon +her nerves of that view of him in the mirror gazing at her with +open eyes when she had thought him sleeping, which made her fancy +that his slumber might have been a feint based on inexplicable +reasons. + +She again proffered the notes; he awoke from looking at her as at +a piece of live statuary, and listened deferentially as she said, +"Will you then reconsider, and cancel the bond which poor Grammer +Oliver so foolishly gave?" + +"I'll cancel it without reconsideration. Though you will allow me +to have my own opinion about her foolishness. Grammer is a very +wise woman, and she was as wise in that as in other things. You +think there was something very fiendish in the compact, do you +not, Miss Melbury? But remember that the most eminent of our +surgeons in past times have entered into such agreements." + +"Not fiendish--strange." + +"Yes, that may be, since strangeness is not in the nature of a +thing, but in its relation to something extrinsic--in this case an +unessential observer." + +He went to his desk, and searching a while found a paper, which be +unfolded and brought to her. A thick cross appeared in ink at the +bottom--evidently from the hand of Grammer. Grace put the paper +in her pocket with a look of much relief. + +As Fitzpiers did not take up the money (half of which had come +from Grace's own purse), she pushed it a little nearer to him. +"No, no. I shall not take it from the old woman," he said. "It +is more strange than the fact of a surgeon arranging to obtain a +subject for dissection that our acquaintance should be formed out +of it." + +"I am afraid you think me uncivil in showing my dislike to the +notion. But I did not mean to be." + +"Oh no, no." He looked at her, as he had done before, with +puzzled interest. "I cannot think, I cannot think," he murmured. +"Something bewilders me greatly." He still reflected and +hesitated. "Last night I sat up very late," he at last went on, +"and on that account I fell into a little nap on that couch about +half an hour ago. And during my few minutes of unconsciousness I +dreamed--what do you think?--that you stood in the room." + +Should she tell? She merely blushed. + +"You may imagine," Fitzpiers continued, now persuaded that it had, +indeed, been a dream, "that I should not have dreamed of you +without considerable thinking about you first." + +He could not be acting; of that she felt assured. + +"I fancied in my vision that you stood there," he said, pointing +to where she had paused. "I did not see you directly, but +reflected in the glass. I thought, what a lovely creature! The +design is for once carried out. Nature has at last recovered her +lost union with the Idea! My thoughts ran in that direction +because I had been reading the work of a transcendental +philosopher last night; and I dare say it was the dose of Idealism +that I received from it that made me scarcely able to distinguish +between reality and fancy. I almost wept when I awoke, and found +that you had appeared to me in Time, but not in Space, alas!" + +At moments there was something theatrical in the delivery of +Fitzpiers's effusion; yet it would have been inexact to say that +it was intrinsically theatrical. It often happens that in +situations of unrestraint, where there is no thought of the eye of +criticism, real feeling glides into a mode of manifestation not +easily distinguishable from rodomontade. A veneer of affectation +overlies a bulk of truth, with the evil consequence, if perceived, +that the substance is estimated by the superficies, and the whole +rejected. + +Grace, however, was no specialist in men's manners, and she +admired the sentiment without thinking of the form. And she was +embarrassed: "lovely creature" made explanation awkward to her +gentle modesty. + +"But can it be," said he, suddenly, "that you really were here?" + +"I have to confess that I have been in the room once before," +faltered she. "The woman showed me in, and went away to fetch +you; but as she did not return, I left." + +"And you saw me asleep," he murmured, with the faintest show of +humiliation. + +"Yes--IF you were asleep, and did not deceive me." + +"Why do you say if?" + +"I saw your eyes open in the glass, but as they were closed when I +looked round upon you, I thought you were perhaps deceiving me. + +"Never," said Fitzpiers, fervently--"never could I deceive you." + +Foreknowledge to the distance of a year or so in either of them +might have spoiled the effect of that pretty speech. Never +deceive her! But they knew nothing, and the phrase had its day. + +Grace began now to be anxious to terminate the interview, but the +compelling power of Fitzpiers's atmosphere still held her there. +She was like an inexperienced actress who, having at last taken up +her position on the boards, and spoken her speeches, does not know +how to move off. The thought of Grammer occurred to her. "I'll +go at once and tell poor Grammer of your generosity," she said. +"It will relieve her at once." + +"Grammer's a nervous disease, too--how singular!" he answered, +accompanying her to the door. "One moment; look at this--it is +something which may interest you." + +He had thrown open the door on the other side of the passage, and +she saw a microscope on the table of the confronting room. "Look +into it, please; you'll be interested," he repeated. + +She applied her eye, and saw the usual circle of light patterned +all over with a cellular tissue of some indescribable sort. "What +do you think that is?" said Fitzpiers. + +She did not know. + +"That's a fragment of old John South's brain, which I am +investigating." + +She started back, not with aversion, but with wonder as to how it +should have got there. Fitzpiers laughed. + +"Here am I," he said, "endeavoring to carry on simultaneously the +study of physiology and transcendental philosophy, the material +world and the ideal, so as to discover if possible a point of +contrast between them; and your finer sense is quite offended!" + +"Oh no, Mr. Fitzpiers," said Grace, earnestly. "It is not so at +all. I know from seeing your light at night how deeply you +meditate and work. Instead of condemning you for your studies, I +admire you very much!" + +Her face, upturned from the microscope, was so sweet, sincere, and +self-forgetful in its aspect that the susceptible Fitzpiers more +than wished to annihilate the lineal yard which separated it from +his own. Whether anything of the kind showed in his eyes or not, +Grace remained no longer at the microscope, but quickly went her +way into the rain. + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + + +Instead of resuming his investigation of South's brain, which +perhaps was not so interesting under the microscope as might have +been expected from the importance of that organ in life, Fitzpiers +reclined and ruminated on the interview. Grace's curious +susceptibility to his presence, though it was as if the currents +of her life were disturbed rather than attracted by him, added a +special interest to her general charm. Fitzpiers was in a +distinct degree scientific, being ready and zealous to interrogate +all physical manifestations, but primarily he was an idealist. He +believed that behind the imperfect lay the perfect; that rare +things were to be discovered amid a bulk of commonplace; that +results in a new and untried case might be different from those in +other cases where the conditions had been precisely similar. +Regarding his own personality as one of unbounded possibilities, +because it was his own--notwithstanding that the factors of his +life had worked out a sorry product for thousands--he saw nothing +but what was regular in his discovery at Hintock of an altogether +exceptional being of the other sex, who for nobody else would have +had any existence. + +One habit of Fitzpiers's--commoner in dreamers of more advanced +age than in men of his years--was that of talking to himself. He +paced round his room with a selective tread upon the more +prominent blooms of the carpet, and murmured, "This phenomenal +girl will be the light of my life while I am at Hintock; and the +special beauty of the situation is that our attitude and relations +to each other will be purely spiritual. Socially we can never be +intimate. Anything like matrimonial intentions towards her, +charming as she is, would be absurd. They would spoil the +ethereal character of my regard. And, indeed, I have other aims +on the practical side of my life." + +Fitzpiers bestowed a regulation thought on the advantageous +marriage he was bound to make with a woman of family as good as +his own, and of purse much longer. But as an object of +contemplation for the present, as objective spirit rather than +corporeal presence, Grace Melbury would serve to keep his soul +alive, and to relieve the monotony of his days. + +His first notion--acquired from the mere sight of her without +converse--that of an idle and vulgar flirtation with a timber- +merchant's pretty daughter, grated painfully upon him now that he +had found what Grace intrinsically was. Personal intercourse with +such as she could take no lower form than intellectual communion, +and mutual explorations of the world of thought. Since he could +not call at her father's, having no practical views, cursory +encounters in the lane, in the wood, coming and going to and from +church, or in passing her dwelling, were what the acquaintance +would have to feed on. + +Such anticipated glimpses of her now and then realized themselves +in the event. Rencounters of not more than a minute's duration, +frequently repeated, will build up mutual interest, even an +intimacy, in a lonely place. Theirs grew as imperceptibly as the +tree-twigs budded. There never was a particular moment at which +it could be said they became friends; yet a delicate understanding +now existed between two who in the winter had been strangers. + +Spring weather came on rather suddenly, the unsealing of buds that +had long been swollen accomplishing itself in the space of one +warm night. The rush of sap in the veins of the trees could +almost be heard. The flowers of late April took up a position +unseen, and looked as if they had been blooming a long while, +though there had been no trace of them the day before yesterday; +birds began not to mind getting wet. In-door people said they had +heard the nightingale, to which out-door people replied +contemptuously that they had heard him a fortnight before. + +The young doctor's practice being scarcely so large as a London +surgeon's, he frequently walked in the wood. Indeed such practice +as he had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have +been necessary for developing it to exceptional proportions. One +day, book in hand, he walked in a part of the wood where the trees +were mainly oaks. It was a calm afternoon, and there was +everywhere around that sign of great undertakings on the part of +vegetable nature which is apt to fill reflective human beings who +are not undertaking much themselves with a sudden uneasiness at +the contrast. He heard in the distance a curious sound, something +like the quack of a duck, which, though it was common enough here +about this time, was not common to him. + +Looking through the trees Fitzpiers soon perceived the origin of +the noise. The barking season had just commenced, and what he had +heard was the tear of the ripping tool as it ploughed its way +along the sticky parting between the trunk and the rind. Melbury +did a large business in bark, and as he was Grace's father, and +possibly might be found on the spot, Fitzpiers was attracted to +the scene even more than he might have been by its intrinsic +interest. When he got nearer he recognized among the workmen the +two Timothys, and Robert Creedle, who probably had been "lent" by +Winterborne; Marty South also assisted. + +Each tree doomed to this flaying process was first attacked by +Creedle. With a small billhook he carefully freed the collar of +the tree from twigs and patches of moss which incrusted it to a +height of a foot or two above the ground, an operation comparable +to the "little toilet" of the executioner's victim. After this it +was barked in its erect position to a point as high as a man could +reach. If a fine product of vegetable nature could ever be said +to look ridiculous it was the case now, when the oak stood naked- +legged, and as if ashamed, till the axe-man came and cut a ring +round it, and the two Timothys finished the work with the +crosscut-saw. + +As soon as it had fallen the barkers attacked it like locusts, and +in a short time not a particle of rind was left on the trunk and +larger limbs. Marty South was an adept at peeling the upper +parts, and there she stood encaged amid the mass of twigs and buds +like a great bird, running her tool into the smallest branches, +beyond the farthest points to which the skill and patience of the +men enabled them to proceed--branches which, in their lifetime, +had swayed high above the bulk of the wood, and caught the latest +and earliest rays of the sun and moon while the lower part of the +forest was still in darkness. + +"You seem to have a better instrument than they, Marty," said +Fitzpiers. + +"No, sir," she said, holding up the tool--a horse's leg-bone +fitted into a handle and filed to an edge--"'tis only that they've +less patience with the twigs, because their time is worth more +than mine." + +A little shed had been constructed on the spot, of thatched +hurdles and boughs, and in front of it was a fire, over which a +kettle sung. Fitzpiers sat down inside the shelter, and went on +with his reading, except when he looked up to observe the scene +and the actors. The thought that he might settle here and become +welded in with this sylvan life by marrying Grace Melbury crossed +his mind for a moment. Why should he go farther into the world +than where he was? The secret of quiet happiness lay in limiting +the ideas and aspirations; these men's thoughts were conterminous +with the margin of the Hintock woodlands, and why should not his +be likewise limited--a small practice among the people around him +being the bound of his desires? + +Presently Marty South discontinued her operations upon the +quivering boughs, came out from the reclining oak, and prepared +tea. When it was ready the men were called; and Fitzpiers being +in a mood to join, sat down with them. + +The latent reason of his lingering here so long revealed itself +when the faint creaking of the joints of a vehicle became audible, +and one of the men said, "Here's he." Turning their heads they saw +Melbury's gig approaching, the wheels muffled by the yielding +moss. + +The timber-merchant was on foot leading the horse, looking back at +every few steps to caution his daughter, who kept her seat, where +and how to duck her head so as to avoid the overhanging branches. +They stopped at the spot where the bark-ripping had been +temporarily suspended; Melbury cursorily examined the heaps of +bark, and drawing near to where the workmen were sitting down, +accepted their shouted invitation to have a dish of tea, for which +purpose he hitched the horse to a bough. (Grace declined to take +any of their beverage, and remained in her place in the vehicle, +looking dreamily at the sunlight that came in thin threads through +the hollies with which the oaks were interspersed. + +When Melbury stepped up close to the shelter, he for the first +time perceived that the doctor was present, and warmly appreciated +Fitzpiers's invitation to sit down on the log beside him. + +"Bless my heart, who would have thought of finding you here," he +said, obviously much pleased at the circumstance. "I wonder now +if my daughter knows you are so nigh at hand. I don't expect she +do." + +He looked out towards the gig wherein Grace sat, her face still +turned in the opposite direction. "She doesn't see us. Well, +never mind: let her be." + +Grace was indeed quite unconscious of Fitzpiers's propinquity. +She was thinking of something which had little connection with the +scene before her--thinking of her friend, lost as soon as found, +Mrs. Charmond; of her capricious conduct, and of the contrasting +scenes she was possibly enjoying at that very moment in other +climes, to which Grace herself had hoped to be introduced by her +friend's means. She wondered if this patronizing lady would +return to Hintock during the summer, and whether the acquaintance +which had been nipped on the last occasion of her residence there +would develop on the next. + +Melbury told ancient timber-stories as he sat, relating them +directly to Fitzpiers, and obliquely to the men, who had heard +them often before. Marty, who poured out tea, was just saying, "I +think I'll take out a cup to Miss Grace," when they heard a +clashing of the gig-harness, and turning round Melbury saw that +the horse had become restless, and was jerking about the vehicle +in a way which alarmed its occupant, though she refrained from +screaming. Melbury jumped up immediately, but not more quickly +than Fitzpiers; and while her father ran to the horse's head and +speedily began to control him, Fitzpiers was alongside the gig +assisting Grace to descend. Her surprise at his appearance was so +great that, far from making a calm and independent descent, she +was very nearly lifted down in his arms. He relinquished her when +she touched ground, and hoped she was not frightened. + +"Oh no, not much," she managed to say. "There was no danger-- +unless he had run under the trees where the boughs are low enough +to hit my head." + +"Which was by no means an impossibility, and justifies any amount +of alarm." + +He referred to what he thought he saw written in her face, and she +could not tell him that this had little to do with the horse, but +much with himself. His contiguity had, in fact, the same effect +upon her as on those former occasions when he had come closer to +her than usual--that of producing in her an unaccountable tendency +to tearfulness. Melbury soon put the horse to rights, and seeing +that Grace was safe, turned again to the work-people. His +daughter's nervous distress had passed off in a few moments, and +she said quite gayly to Fitzpiers as she walked with him towards +the group, "There's destiny in it, you see. I was doomed to join +in your picnic, although I did not intend to do so." + +Marty prepared her a comfortable place, and she sat down in the +circle, and listened to Fitzpiers while he drew from her father +and the bark-rippers sundry narratives of their fathers', their +grandfathers', and their own adventures in these woods; of the +mysterious sights they had seen--only to be accounted for by +supernatural agency; of white witches and black witches; and the +standard story of the spirits of the two brothers who had fought +and fallen, and had haunted Hintock House till they were exorcised +by the priest, and compelled to retreat to a swamp in this very +wood, whence they were returning to their old quarters at the rate +of a cock's stride every New-year's Day, old style; hence the +local saying, "On New-year's tide, a cock's stride." + +It was a pleasant time. The smoke from the little fire of peeled +sticks rose between the sitters and the sunlight, and behind its +blue veil stretched the naked arms of the prostrate trees The +smell of the uncovered sap mingled with the smell of the burning +wood, and the sticky inner surface of the scattered bark glistened +as it revealed its pale madder hues to the eye. Melbury was so +highly satisfied at having Fitzpiers as a sort of guest that he +would have sat on for any length of time, but Grace, on whom +Fitzpiers's eyes only too frequently alighted, seemed to think it +incumbent upon her to make a show of going; and her father +thereupon accompanied her to the vehicle. + +As the doctor had helped her out of it he appeared to think that +he had excellent reasons for helping her in, and performed the +attention lingeringly enough. + +"What were you almost in tears about just now?" he asked, softly. + +"I don't know," she said: and the words were strictly true. + +Melbury mounted on the other side, and they drove on out of the +grove, their wheels silently crushing delicate-patterned mosses, +hyacinths, primroses, lords-and-ladies, and other strange and +ordinary plants, and cracking up little sticks that lay across the +track. Their way homeward ran along the crest of a lofty hill, +whence on the right they beheld a wide valley, differing both in +feature and atmosphere from that of the Hintock precincts. It was +the cider country, which met the woodland district on the axis of +this hill. Over the vale the air was blue as sapphire--such a +blue as outside that apple-valley was never seen. Under the blue +the orchards were in a blaze of bloom, some of the richly flowered +trees running almost up to where they drove along. Over a gate +which opened down the incline a man leaned on his arms, regarding +this fair promise so intently that he did not observe their +passing. + +"That was Giles," said Melbury, when they had gone by. + +"Was it? Poor Giles," said she. + +"All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and his hands. +If no blight happens before the setting the apple yield will be +such as we have not had for years." + +Meanwhile, in the wood they had come from, the men had sat on so +long that they were indisposed to begin work again that evening; +they were paid by the ton, and their time for labor was as they +chose. They placed the last gatherings of bark in rows for the +curers, which led them farther and farther away from the shed; and +thus they gradually withdrew as the sun went down. + +Fitzpiers lingered yet. He had opened his book again, though he +could hardly see a word in it, and sat before the dying fire, +scarcely knowing of the men's departure. He dreamed and mused +till his consciousness seemed to occupy the whole space of the +woodland around, so little was there of jarring sight or sound to +hinder perfect unity with the sentiment of the place. The idea +returned upon him of sacrificing all practical aims to live in +calm contentment here, and instead of going on elaborating new +conceptions with infinite pains, to accept quiet domesticity +according to oldest and homeliest notions. These reflections +detained him till the wood was embrowned with the coming night, +and the shy little bird of this dusky time had begun to pour out +all the intensity of his eloquence from a bush not very far off. + +Fitzpiers's eyes commanded as much of the ground in front as was +open. Entering upon this he saw a figure, whose direction of +movement was towards the spot where he sat. The surgeon was quite +shrouded from observation by the recessed shadow of the hut, and +there was no reason why he should move till the stranger had +passed by. The shape resolved itself into a woman's; she was +looking on the ground, and walking slowly as if searching for +something that had been lost, her course being precisely that of +Mr. Melbury's gig. Fitzpiers by a sort of divination jumped to +the idea that the figure was Grace's; her nearer approach made the +guess a certainty. + +Yes, she was looking for something; and she came round by the +prostrate trees that would have been invisible but for the white +nakedness which enabled her to avoid them easily. Thus she +approached the heap of ashes, and acting upon what was suggested +by a still shining ember or two, she took a stick and stirred the +heap, which thereupon burst into a flame. On looking around by +the light thus obtained she for the first time saw the illumined +face of Fitzpiers, precisely in the spot where she had left him. + +Grace gave a start and a scream: the place had been associated +with him in her thoughts, but she had not expected to find him +there still. Fitzpiers lost not a moment in rising and going to +her side. + +"I frightened you dreadfully, I know," he said. "I ought to have +spoken; but I did not at first expect it to be you. I have been +sitting here ever since." + +He was actually supporting her with his arm, as though under the +impression that she was quite overcome, and in danger of falling. +As soon as she could collect her ideas she gently withdrew from +his grasp, and explained what she had returned for: in getting up +or down from the gig, or when sitting by the hut fire, she had +dropped her purse. + +"Now we will find it," said Fitzpiers. + +He threw an armful of last year's leaves on to the fire, which +made the flame leap higher, and the encompassing shades to weave +themselves into a denser contrast, turning eve into night in a +moment. By this radiance they groped about on their hands and +knees, till Fitzpiers rested on his elbow, and looked at Grace. +"We must always meet in odd circumstances," he said; "and this is +one of the oddest. I wonder if it means anything?" + +"Oh no, I am sure it doesn't," said Grace in haste, quickly +assuming an erect posture. "Pray don't say it any more." + +"I hope there was not much money in the purse," said Fitzpiers, +rising to his feet more slowly, and brushing the leaves from his +trousers. + +"Scarcely any. I cared most about the purse itself, because it +was given me. Indeed, money is of little more use at Hintock than +on Crusoe's island; there's hardly any way of spending it." + +They had given up the search when Fitzpiers discerned something by +his foot. "Here it is," he said, "so that your father, mother, +friend, or ADMIRER will not have his or her feelings hurt by a +sense of your negligence after all." + +"Oh, he knows nothing of what I do now." + +"The admirer?" said Fitzpiers, slyly. + +"I don't know if you would call him that," said Grace, with +simplicity. "The admirer is a superficial, conditional creature, +and this person is quite different." + +"He has all the cardinal virtues." + +"Perhaps--though I don't know them precisely." + +"You unconsciously practise them, Miss Melbury, which is better. +According to Schleiermacher they are Self-control, Perseverance, +Wisdom, and Love; and his is the best list that I know." + +"I am afraid poor--" She was going to say that she feared +Winterborne--the giver of the purse years before--had not much +perseverance, though he had all the other three; but she +determined to go no further in this direction, and was silent. + +These half-revelations made a perceptible difference in Fitzpiers. +His sense of personal superiority wasted away, and Grace assumed +in his eyes the true aspect of a mistress in her lover's regard. + +"Miss Melbury," he said, suddenly, "I divine that this virtuous +man you mention has been refused by you?" + +She could do no otherwise than admit it. + +"I do not inquire without good reason. God forbid that I should +kneel in another's place at any shrine unfairly. But, my dear +Miss Melbury, now that he is gone, may I draw near?" + +"I--I can't say anything about that!" she cried, quickly. +"Because when a man has been refused you feel pity for him, and +like him more than you did before." + +This increasing complication added still more value to Grace in +the surgeon's eyes: it rendered her adorable. "But cannot you +say?" he pleaded, distractedly. + +"I'd rather not--I think I must go home at once." + +"Oh yes," said Fitzpiers. But as he did not move she felt it +awkward to walk straight away from him; and so they stood silently +together. A diversion was created by the accident of two birds, +that had either been roosting above their heads or nesting there, +tumbling one over the other into the hot ashes at their feet, +apparently engrossed in a desperate quarrel that prevented the use +of their wings. They speedily parted, however, and flew up, and +were seen no more. + +"That's the end of what is called love!" said some one. + +The speaker was neither Grace nor Fitzpiers, but Marty South, who +approached with her face turned up to the sky in her endeavor to +trace the birds. Suddenly perceiving Grace, she exclaimed, "Oh, +Miss Melbury! I have been following they pigeons, and didn't see +you. And here's Mr. Winterborne!" she continued, shyly, as she +looked towards Fitzpiers, who stood in the background. + +"Marty," Grace interrupted. "I want you to walk home with me-- +will you? Come along." And without lingering longer she took hold +of Marty's arm and led her away. + +They went between the spectral arms of the peeled trees as they +lay, and onward among the growing trees, by a path where there +were no oaks, and no barking, and no Fitzpiers--nothing but copse- +wood, between which the primroses could be discerned in pale +bunches. "I didn't know Mr. Winterborne was there," said Marty, +breaking the silence when they had nearly reached Grace's door. + +"Nor was he," said Grace. + +"But, Miss Melbury, I saw him." + +"No," said Grace. "It was somebody else. Giles Winterborne is +nothing to me." + + + +CHAPTER XX. + + +The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the +woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque +body of infinitely larger shape and importance. The boughs cast +green shades, which hurt the complexion of the girls who walked +there; and a fringe of them which overhung Mr. Melbury's garden +dripped on his seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface +all over as with pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in +such a place were no good at all. The two trees that had creaked +all the winter left off creaking, the whir of the night-jar, +however, forming a very satisfactory continuation of uncanny music +from that quarter. Except at mid-day the sun was not seen +complete by the Hintock people, but rather in the form of numerous +little stars staring through the leaves. + +Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as +the hour grew later, and nine o'clock drew on, the irradiation of +the daytime became broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of +indistinctness. Imagination could trace upon the trunks and +boughs strange faces and figures shaped by the dying lights; the +surfaces of the holly-leaves would here and there shine like +peeping eyes, while such fragments of the sky as were visible +between the trunks assumed the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven +tongues. This was before the moonrise. Later on, when that +planet was getting command of the upper heaven, and consequently +shining with an unbroken face into such open glades as there were +in the neighborhood of the hamlet, it became apparent that the +margin of the wood which approached the timber-merchant's premises +was not to be left to the customary stillness of that reposeful +time. + +Fitzpiers having heard a voice or voices, was looking over his +garden gate--where he now looked more frequently than into his +books--fancying that Grace might be abroad with some friends. He +was now irretrievably committed in heart to Grace Melbury, though +he was by no means sure that she was so far committed to him. +That the Idea had for once completely fulfilled itself in the +objective substance--which he had hitherto deemed an +impossibility--he was enchanted enough to fancy must be the case +at last. It was not Grace who had passed, however, but several of +the ordinary village girls in a group--some steadily walking, some +in a mood of wild gayety. He quietly asked his landlady, who was +also in the garden, what these girls were intending, and she +informed him that it being Old Midsummer Eve, they were about to +attempt some spell or enchantment which would afford them a +glimpse of their future partners for life. She declared it to be +an ungodly performance, and one which she for her part would never +countenance; saying which, she entered her house and retired to +bed. + +The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of maidens slowly +up the road. They had turned into the wood at an opening between +Melbury's and Marty South's; but Fitzpiers could easily track them +by their voices, low as they endeavored to keep their tones. + +In the mean time other inhabitants of Little Hintock had become +aware of the nocturnal experiment about to be tried, and were also +sauntering stealthily after the frisky maidens. Miss Melbury had +been informed by Marty South during the day of the proposed peep +into futurity, and, being only a girl like the rest, she was +sufficiently interested to wish to see the issue. The moon was so +bright and the night so calm that she had no difficulty in +persuading Mrs. Melbury to accompany her; and thus, joined by +Marty, these went onward in the same direction. + +Passing Winterborne's house, they heard a noise of hammering. +Marty explained it. This was the last night on which his paternal +roof would shelter him, the days of grace since it fell into hand +having expired; and Giles was taking down his cupboards and +bedsteads with a view to an early exit next morning. His +encounter with Mrs. Charmond had cost him dearly. + +When they had proceeded a little farther Marty was joined by +Grammer Oliver (who was as young as the youngest in such matters), +and Grace and Mrs. Melbury went on by themselves till they had +arrived at the spot chosen by the village daughters, whose primary +intention of keeping their expedition a secret had been quite +defeated. Grace and her step-mother paused by a holly-tree; and +at a little distance stood Fitzpiers under the shade of a young +oak, intently observing Grace, who was in the full rays of the +moon. + +He watched her without speaking, and unperceived by any but Marty +and Grammer, who had drawn up on the dark side of the same holly +which sheltered Mrs. and Miss Melbury on its bright side. The two +former conversed in low tones. + +"If they two come up in Wood next Midsummer Night they'll come as +one," said Grammer, signifying Fitzpiers and Grace. "Instead of +my skellington he'll carry home her living carcass before long. +But though she's a lady in herself, and worthy of any such as he, +it do seem to me that he ought to marry somebody more of the sort +of Mrs. Charmond, and that Miss Grace should make the best of +Winterborne." + +Marty returned no comment; and at that minute the girls, some of +whom were from Great Hintock, were seen advancing to work the +incantation, it being now about midnight. + +"Directly we see anything we'll run home as fast as we can," said +one, whose courage had begun to fail her. To this the rest +assented, not knowing that a dozen neighbors lurked in the bushes +around. + +"I wish we had not thought of trying this," said another, "but had +contented ourselves with the hole-digging to-morrow at twelve, and +hearing our husbands' trades. It is too much like having dealings +with the Evil One to try to raise their forms." + +However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly began to +march forward in a skirmishing line through the trees towards the +deeper recesses of the wood. As far as the listeners could +gather, the particular form of black-art to be practised on this +occasion was one connected with the sowing of hemp-seed, a handful +of which was carried by each girl. At the moment of their advance +they looked back, and discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who, +alone of all the observers, stood in the full face of the +moonlight, deeply engrossed in the proceedings. By contrast with +her life of late years they made her feel as if she had receded a +couple of centuries in the world's history. She was rendered +doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and after a few whispered +words, one of the girls--a bouncing maiden, plighted to young +Timothy Tangs--asked her if she would join in. Grace, with some +excitement, said that she would, and moved on a little in the rear +of the rest. + +Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceedings beyond +the faintest occasional rustle of leaves. Grammer whispered again +to Marty: "Why didn't ye go and try your luck with the rest of the +maids?" + +"I don't believe in it," said Marty, shortly. + +"Why, half the parish is here--the silly hussies should have kept +it quiet. I see Mr. Winterborne through the leaves, just come up +with Robert Creedle. Marty, we ought to act the part o' +Providence sometimes. Do go and tell him that if he stands just +behind the bush at the bottom of the slope, Miss Grace must pass +down it when she comes back, and she will most likely rush into +his arms; for as soon as the clock strikes, they'll bundle back +home--along like hares. I've seen such larries before." + +"Do you think I'd better?" said Marty, reluctantly. + +"Oh yes, he'll bless ye for it." + +"I don't want that kind of blessing." But after a moment's thought +she went and delivered the information; and Grammer had the +satisfaction of seeing Giles walk slowly to the bend in the leafy +defile along which Grace would have to return. + +Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had perceived Fitzpiers +and Winterborne, and also the move of the latter. An improvement +on Grammer's idea entered the mind of Mrs. Melbury, for she had +lately discerned what her husband had not--that Grace was rapidly +fascinating the surgeon. She therefore drew near to Fitzpiers. + +"You should be where Mr. Winterborne is standing," she said to +him, significantly. "She will run down through that opening much +faster than she went up it, if she is like the rest of the girls." + +Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice. He went across to +Winterborne and stood beside him. Each knew the probable purpose +of the other in standing there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers +scorning to look upon Winterborne as a rival, and Winterborne +adhering to the off-hand manner of indifference which had grown +upon him since his dismissal. + +Neither Grammer nor Marty South had seen the surgeon's manoeuvre, +and, still to help Winterborne, as she supposed, the old woman +suggested to the wood-girl that she should walk forward at the +heels of Grace, and "tole" her down the required way if she showed +a tendency to run in another direction. Poor Marty, always doomed +to sacrifice desire to obligation, walked forward accordingly, and +waited as a beacon, still and silent, for the retreat of Grace and +her giddy companions, now quite out of hearing. + +The first sound to break the silence was the distant note of Great +Hintock clock striking the significant hour. About a minute later +that quarter of the wood to which the girls had wandered resounded +with the flapping of disturbed birds; then two or three hares and +rabbits bounded down the glade from the same direction, and after +these the rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs denoted +the hurried approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gowns +soon became visible. Miss Melbury, having gone forward quite in +the rear of the rest, was one of the first to return, and the +excitement being contagious, she ran laughing towards Marty, who +still stood as a hand-post to guide her; then, passing on, she +flew round the fatal bush where the undergrowth narrowed to a +gorge. Marty arrived at her heels just in time to see the result. +Fitzpiers had quickly stepped forward in front of Winterborne, +who, disdaining to shift his position, had turned on his heel, and +then the surgeon did what he would not have thought of doing but +for Mrs. Melbury's encouragement and the sentiment of an eve which +effaced conventionality. Stretching out his arms as the white +figure burst upon him, he captured her in a moment, as if she had +been a bird. + +"Oh!" cried Grace, in her fright. + +"You are in my arms, dearest," said Fitzpiers, "and I am going to +claim you, and keep you there all our two lives!" + +She rested on him like one utterly mastered, and it was several +seconds before she recovered from this helplessness. Subdued +screams and struggles, audible from neighboring brakes, revealed +that there had been other lurkers thereabout for a similar +purpose. Grace, unlike most of these companions of hers, instead +of gasping and writhing, said in a trembling voice, "Mr. +Fitzpiers, will you let me go?" + +"Certainly," he said, laughing; "as soon as you have recovered." + +She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly pushed him +aside, and glided on her path, the moon whitening her hot blush +away. But it had been enough--new relations between them had +begun. + +The case of the other girls was different, as has been said. They +wrestled and tittered, only escaping after a desperate struggle. +Fitzpiers could hear these enactments still going on after Grace +had left him, and he remained on the spot where he had caught her, +Winterborne having gone away. On a sudden another girl came +bounding down the same descent that had been followed by Grace--a +fine-framed young woman with naked arms. Seeing Fitzpiers +standing there, she said, with playful effrontery, "May'st kiss me +if 'canst catch me, Tim!" + +Fitzpiers recognized her as Suke Damson, a hoydenish damsel of +the hamlet, who was plainly mistaking him for her lover. He was +impulsively disposed to profit by her error, and as soon as she +began racing away he started in pursuit. + +On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking +over her shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand; +but so cunningly dodging about among the trees and moon-shades +that she never allowed him to get dangerously near her. Thus they +ran and doubled, Fitzpiers warming with the chase, till the sound +of their companions had quite died away. He began to lose hope of +ever overtaking her, when all at once, by way of encouragement, +she turned to a fence in which there was a stile and leaped over +it. Outside the scene was a changed one--a meadow, where the +half-made hay lay about in heaps, in the uninterrupted shine of +the now high moon. + +Fitzpiers saw in a moment that, having taken to open ground, she +had placed herself at his mercy, and he promptly vaulted over +after her. She flitted a little way down the mead, when all at +once her light form disappeared as if it had sunk into the earth. +She had buried herself in one of the hay-cocks. + +Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let her escape +him thus. He approached, and set about turning over the heaps one +by one. As soon as he paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was +directed anew by an imitative kiss which came from her hiding- +place, and by snatches of a local ballad in the smallest voice she +could assume: + + + "O come in from the foggy, foggy dew." + + +In a minute or two he uncovered her. + +"Oh, 'tis not Tim!" said she, burying her face. + +Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason of its +mildness, stooped and imprinted the purposed kiss, then sunk down +on the next hay-cock, panting with his race. + +"Whom do you mean by Tim?" he asked, presently. + +"My young man, Tim Tangs," said she. + +"Now, honor bright, did you really think it was he?" + +"I did at first." + +"But you didn't at last?" + +"I didn't at last." + +"Do you much mind that it was not?" + +"No," she answered, slyly. + +Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning. In the moonlight Suke +looked very beautiful, the scratches and blemishes incidental to +her out-door occupation being invisible under these pale rays. +While they remain silent the coarse whir of the eternal night-jar +burst sarcastically from the top of a tree at the nearest corner +of the wood. Besides this not a sound of any kind reached their +ears, the time of nightingales being now past, and Hintock lying +at a distance of two miles at least. In the opposite direction +the hay-field stretched away into remoteness till it was lost to +the eye in a soft mist. + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + + +When the general stampede occurred Winterborne had also been +looking on, and encountering one of the girls, had asked her what +caused them all to fly. + +She said with solemn breathlessness that they had seen something +very different from what they had hoped to see, and that she for +one would never attempt such unholy ceremonies again. "We saw +Satan pursuing us with his hour-glass. It was terrible!" + +This account being a little incoherent, Giles went forward towards +the spot from which the girls had retreated. After listening +there a few minutes he heard slow footsteps rustling over the +leaves, and looking through a tangled screen of honeysuckle which +hung from a bough, he saw in the open space beyond a short stout +man in evening-dress, carrying on one arm a light overcoat and +also his hat, so awkwardly arranged as possibly to have suggested +the "hour-glass" to his timid observers--if this were the person +whom the girls had seen. With the other hand he silently +gesticulated and the moonlight falling upon his bare brow showed +him to have dark hair and a high forehead of the shape seen +oftener in old prints and paintings than in real life. His +curious and altogether alien aspect, his strange gestures, like +those of one who is rehearsing a scene to himself, and the unusual +place and hour, were sufficient to account for any trepidation +among the Hintock daughters at encountering him. + +He paused, and looked round, as if he had forgotten where he was; +not observing Giles, who was of the color of his environment. The +latter advanced into the light. The gentleman held up his hand +and came towards Giles, the two meeting half-way. + +"I have lost my way," said the stranger. "Perhaps you can put me +in the path again." He wiped his forehead with the air of one +suffering under an agitation more than that of simple fatigue. + +"The turnpike-road is over there," said Giles + +"I don't want the turnpike-road," said the gentleman, impatiently. +"I came from that. I want Hintock House. Is there not a path to +it across here?" + +"Well, yes, a sort of path. But it is hard to find from this +point. I'll show you the way, sir, with great pleasure." + +"Thanks, my good friend. The truth is that I decided to walk +across the country after dinner from the hotel at Sherton, where I +am staying for a day or two. But I did not know it was so far." + +"It is about a mile to the house from here." + +They walked on together. As there was no path, Giles occasionally +stepped in front and bent aside the underboughs of the trees to +give his companion a passage, saying every now and then when the +twigs, on being released, flew back like whips, "Mind your eyes, +sir." To which the stranger replied, "Yes, yes," in a preoccupied +tone. + +So they went on, the leaf-shadows running in their usual quick +succession over the forms of the pedestrians, till the stranger +said, + +"Is it far?" + +"Not much farther," said Winterborne. "The plantation runs up +into a corner here, close behind the house." He added with +hesitation, "You know, I suppose, sir, that Mrs. Charmond is not +at home?" + +"You mistake," said the other, quickly. "Mrs. Charmond has been +away for some time, but she's at home now." + +Giles did not contradict him, though he felt sure that the +gentleman was wrong. + +"You are a native of this place?" the stranger said. + +"Yes." + +"Well, you are happy in having a home. It is what I don't +possess." + +"You come from far, seemingly?" + +"I come now from the south of Europe." + +"Oh, indeed, sir. You are an Italian, or Spanish, or French +gentleman, perhaps?" + +"I am not either." + +Giles did not fill the pause which ensued, and the gentleman, who +seemed of an emotional nature, unable to resist friendship, at +length answered the question. + +"I am an Italianized American, a South Carolinian by birth," he +said. "I left my native country on the failure of the Southern +cause, and have never returned to it since." + +He spoke no more about himself, and they came to the verge of the +wood. Here, striding over the fence out upon the upland sward, +they could at once see the chimneys of the house in the gorge +immediately beneath their position, silent, still, and pale. + +"Can you tell me the time?" the gentleman asked. "My watch has +stopped." + +"It is between twelve and one," said Giles. + +His companion expressed his astonishment. "I thought it between +nine and ten at latest! Dear me--dear me!" + +He now begged Giles to return, and offered him a gold coin, which +looked like a sovereign, for the assistance rendered. Giles +declined to accept anything, to the surprise of the stranger, who, +on putting the money back into his pocket, said, awkwardly, "I +offered it because I want you to utter no word about this meeting +with me. Will you promise?" + +Winterborne promised readily. He thereupon stood still while the +other ascended the slope. At the bottom he looked back dubiously. +Giles would no longer remain when he was so evidently desired to +leave, and returned through the boughs to Hintock. + +He suspected that this man, who seemed so distressed and +melancholy, might be that lover and persistent wooer of Mrs. +Charmond whom he had heard so frequently spoken of, and whom it +was said she had treated cavalierly. But he received no +confirmation of his suspicion beyond a report which reached him a +few days later that a gentleman had called up the servants who +were taking care of Hintock House at an hour past midnight; and on +learning that Mrs. Charmond, though returned from abroad, was as +yet in London, he had sworn bitterly, and gone away without +leaving a card or any trace of himself. + +The girls who related the story added that he sighed three times +before he swore, but this part of the narrative was not +corroborated. Anyhow, such a gentleman had driven away from the +hotel at Sherton next day in a carriage hired at that inn. + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + + +The sunny, leafy week which followed the tender doings of +Midsummer Eve brought a visitor to Fitzpiers's door; a voice that +he knew sounded in the passage. Mr. Melbury had called. At first +he had a particular objection to enter the parlor, because his +boots were dusty, but as the surgeon insisted he waived the point +and came in. + +Looking neither to the right nor to the left, hardly at Fitzpiers +himself, he put his hat under his chair, and with a preoccupied +gaze at the floor, he said, "I've called to ask you, doctor, quite +privately, a question that troubles me. I've a daughter, Grace, +an only daughter, as you may have heard. Well, she's been out in +the dew--on Midsummer Eve in particular she went out in thin +slippers to watch some vagary of the Hintock maids--and she's got +a cough, a distinct hemming and hacking, that makes me uneasy. +Now, I have decided to send her away to some seaside place for a +change--" + +"Send her away!" Fitzpiers's countenance had fallen. + +"Yes. And the question is, where would you advise me to send +her?" + +The timber-merchant had happened to call at a moment when +Fitzpiers was at the spring-tide of a sentiment that Grace was a +necessity of his existence. The sudden pressure of her form upon +his breast as she came headlong round the bush had never ceased to +linger with him, ever since he adopted the manoeuvre for which the +hour and the moonlight and the occasion had been the only excuse. +Now she was to be sent away. Ambition? it could be postponed. +Family? culture and reciprocity of tastes had taken the place of +family nowadays. He allowed himself to be carried forward on the +wave of his desire. + +"How strange, how very strange it is," he said, "that you should +have come to me about her just now. I have been thinking every +day of coming to you on the very same errand." + +"Ah!--you have noticed, too, that her health----" + +"I have noticed nothing the matter with her health, because there +is nothing. But, Mr. Melbury, I have seen your daughter several +times by accident. I have admired her infinitely, and I was +coming to ask you if I may become better acquainted with her--pay +my addresses to her?" + +Melbury was looking down as he listened, and did not see the air +of half-misgiving at his own rashness that spread over Fitzpiers's +face as he made this declaration. + +"You have--got to know her?" said Melbury, a spell of dead silence +having preceded his utterance, during which his emotion rose with +almost visible effect. + +"Yes," said Fitzpiers. + +"And you wish to become better acquainted with her? You mean with +a view to marriage--of course that is what you mean?" + +"Yes," said the young man. "I mean, get acquainted with her, with +a view to being her accepted lover; and if we suited each other, +what would naturally follow." + +The timber-merchant was much surprised, and fairly agitated; his +hand trembled as he laid by his walking-stick. "This takes me +unawares," said he, his voice wellnigh breaking down. "I don't +mean that there is anything unexpected in a gentleman being +attracted by her; but it did not occur to me that it would be you. +I always said," continued he, with a lump in his throat, "that my +Grace would make a mark at her own level some day. That was why I +educated her. I said to myself, 'I'll do it, cost what it may;' +though her mother-law was pretty frightened at my paying out so +much money year after year. I knew it would tell in the end. +'Where you've not good material to work on, such doings would be +waste and vanity,' I said. 'But where you have that material it +is sure to be worth while.'" + +"I am glad you don't object," said Fitzpiers, almost wishing that +Grace had not been quite so cheap for him. + +"If she is willing I don't object, certainly. Indeed," added the +honest man, "it would be deceit if I were to pretend to feel +anything else than highly honored personally; and it is a great +credit to her to have drawn to her a man of such good professional +station and venerable old family. That huntsman-fellow little +thought how wrong he was about her! Take her and welcome, sir." + +"I'll endeavor to ascertain her mind." + +"Yes, yes. But she will be agreeable, I should think. She ought +to be." + +"I hope she may. Well, now you'll expect to see me frequently." + +"Oh yes. But, name it all--about her cough, and her going away. +I had quite forgot that that was what I came about." + +"I assure you," said the surgeon, "that her cough can only be the +result of a slight cold, and it is not necessary to banish her to +any seaside place at all." + +Melbury looked unconvinced, doubting whether he ought to take +Fitzpiers's professional opinion in circumstances which naturally +led him to wish to keep her there. The doctor saw this, and +honestly dreading to lose sight of her, he said, eagerly, 'Between +ourselves, if I am successful with her I will take her away myself +for a month or two, as soon as we are married, which I hope will +be before the chilly weather comes on. This will be so very much +better than letting her go now." + +The proposal pleased Melbury much. There could be hardly any +danger in postponing any desirable change of air as long as the +warm weather lasted, and for such a reason. Suddenly recollecting +himself, he said, "Your time must be precious, doctor. I'll get +home-along. I am much obliged to ye. As you will see her often, +you'll discover for yourself if anything serious is the matter." + +"I can assure you it is nothing," said Fitzpiers, who had seen +Grace much oftener already than her father knew of. + +When he was gone Fitzpiers paused, silent, registering his +sensations, like a man who has made a plunge for a pearl into a +medium of which he knows not the density or temperature. But he +had done it, and Grace was the sweetest girl alive. + +As for the departed visitor, his own last words lingered in +Melbury's ears as he walked homeward; he felt that what he had +said in the emotion of the moment was very stupid, ungenteel, and +unsuited to a dialogue with an educated gentleman, the smallness +of whose practice was more than compensated by the former +greatness of his family. He had uttered thoughts before they were +weighed, and almost before they were shaped. They had expressed +in a certain sense his feeling at Fitzpiers's news, but yet they +were not right. Looking on the ground, and planting his stick at +each tread as if it were a flag-staff, he reached his own +precincts, where, as he passed through the court, he automatically +stopped to look at the men working in the shed and around. One of +them asked him a question about wagon-spokes. + +"Hey?" said Melbury, looking hard at him. The man repeated the +words. + +Melbury stood; then turning suddenly away without answering, he +went up the court and entered the house. As time was no object +with the journeymen, except as a thing to get past, they leisurely +surveyed the door through which he had disappeared. + +"What maggot has the gaffer got in his head now?" said Tangs the +elder. "Sommit to do with that chiel of his! When you've got a +maid of yer own, John Upjohn, that costs ye what she costs him, +that will take the squeak out of your Sunday shoes, John! But +you'll never be tall enough to accomplish such as she; and 'tis a +lucky thing for ye, John, as things be. Well, be ought to have a +dozen--that would bring him to reason. I see 'em walking together +last Sunday, and when they came to a puddle he lifted her over +like a halfpenny doll. He ought to have a dozen; he'd let 'em +walk through puddles for themselves then." + +Meanwhile Melbury had entered the house with the look of a man who +sees a vision before him. His wife was in the room. Without +taking off his hat he sat down at random. + +"Luce--we've done it!" he said. "Yes--the thing is as I expected. +The spell, that I foresaw might be worked, has worked. She's done +it, and done it well. Where is she--Grace, I mean?" + +"Up in her room--what has happened!" + +Mr. Melbury explained the circumstances as coherently as he could. +"I told you so," he said. "A maid like her couldn't stay hid +long, even in a place like this. But where is Grace? Let's have +her down. Here--Gra-a-ace!" + +She appeared after a reasonable interval, for she was sufficiently +spoiled by this father of hers not to put herself in a hurry, +however impatient his tones. "What is it, father?" said she, with +a smile. + +"Why, you scamp, what's this you've been doing? Not home here more +than six months, yet, instead of confining yourself to your +father's rank, making havoc in the educated classes." + +Though accustomed to show herself instantly appreciative of her +father's meanings, Grace was fairly unable to look anyhow but at a +loss now. + +"No, no--of course you don't know what I mean, or you pretend you +don't; though, for my part, I believe women can see these things +through a double hedge. But I suppose I must tell ye. Why, +you've flung your grapnel over the doctor, and he's coming +courting forthwith." + +"Only think of that, my dear! Don't you feel it a triumph?" said +Mrs. Melbury. + +"Coming courting! I've done nothing to make him," Grace exclaimed. + +"'Twasn't necessary that you should, 'Tis voluntary that rules in +these things....Well, he has behaved very honorably, and asked my +consent. You'll know what to do when he gets here, I dare say. I +needn't tell you to make it all smooth for him." + +"You mean, to lead him on to marry me?" + +"I do. Haven't I educated you for it?" + +Grace looked out of the window and at the fireplace with no +animation in her face. "Why is it settled off-hand in this way?" +said she, coquettishly. "You'll wait till you hear what I think +of him, I suppose?" + +"Oh yes, of course. But you see what a good thing it will be." + +She weighed the statement without speaking. + +"You will be restored to the society you've been taken away from," +continued her father; "for I don't suppose he'll stay here long." + +She admitted the advantage; but it was plain that though Fitzpiers +exercised a certain fascination over her when he was present, or +even more, an almost psychic influence, and though his impulsive +act in the wood had stirred her feelings indescribably, she had +never regarded him in the light of a destined husband. "I don't +know what to answer," she said. "I have learned that he is very +clever." + +"He's all right, and he's coming here to see you." + +A premonition that she could not resist him if he came strangely +moved her. "Of course, father, you remember that it is only +lately that Giles--" + +"You know that you can't think of him. He has given up all claim +to you." + +She could not explain the subtleties of her feeling as he could +state his opinion, even though she had skill in speech, and her +father had none. That Fitzpiers acted upon her like a dram, +exciting her, throwing her into a novel atmosphere which biassed +her doings until the influence was over, when she felt something +of the nature of regret for the mood she had experienced--still +more if she reflected on the silent, almost sarcastic, criticism +apparent in Winterborne's air towards her--could not be told to +this worthy couple in words. + +It so happened that on this very day Fitzpiers was called away +from Hintock by an engagement to attend some medical meetings, and +his visits, therefore, did not begin at once. A note, however, +arrived from him addressed to Grace, deploring his enforced +absence. As a material object this note was pretty and superfine, +a note of a sort that she had been unaccustomed to see since her +return to Hintock, except when a school friend wrote to her--a +rare instance, for the girls were respecters of persons, and many +cooled down towards the timber-dealer's daughter when she was out +of sight. Thus the receipt of it pleased her, and she afterwards +walked about with a reflective air. + +In the evening her father, who knew that the note had come, said, +"Why be ye not sitting down to answer your letter? That's what +young folks did in my time." + +She replied that it did not require an answer. + +"Oh, you know best," he said. Nevertheless, he went about his +business doubting if she were right in not replying; possibly she +might be so mismanaging matters as to risk the loss of an alliance +which would bring her much happiness. + +Melbury's respect for Fitzpiers was based less on his professional +position, which was not much, than on the standing of his family +in the county in by-gone days. That implicit faith in members of +long-established families, as such, irrespective of their personal +condition or character, which is still found among old-fashioned +people in the rural districts reached its full intensity in +Melbury. His daughter's suitor was descended from a family he had +heard of in his grandfather's time as being once great, a family +which had conferred its name upon a neighboring village; how, +then, could anything be amiss in this betrothal? + +"I must keep her up to this," he said to his wife. "She sees it +is for her happiness; but still she's young, and may want a little +prompting from an older tongue." + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + + +With this in view he took her out for a walk, a custom of his when +he wished to say anything specially impressive. Their way was +over the top of that lofty ridge dividing their woodland from the +cider district, whence they had in the spring beheld the miles of +apple-trees in bloom. All was now deep green. The spot recalled +to Grace's mind the last occasion of her presence there, and she +said, "The promise of an enormous apple-crop is fulfilling itself, +is it not? I suppose Giles is getting his mills and presses +ready." + +This was just what her father had not come there to talk about. +Without replying he raised his arm, and moved his finger till he +fixed it at a point. "There," he said, "you see that plantation +reaching over the hill like a great slug, and just behind the hill +a particularly green sheltered bottom? That's where Mr. +Fitzpiers's family were lords of the manor for I don't know how +many hundred years, and there stands the village of Buckbury +Fitzpiers. A wonderful property 'twas--wonderful!" + +"But they are not lords of the manor there now." + +"Why, no. But good and great things die as well as little and +foolish. The only ones representing the family now, I believe, +are our doctor and a maiden lady living I don't know where. You +can't help being happy, Grace, in allying yourself with such a +romantical family. You'll feel as if you've stepped into +history." + +"We've been at Hintock as long as they've been at Buckbury; is it +not so? You say our name occurs in old deeds continually." + +"Oh yes--as yeomen, copyholders, and such like. But think how +much better this will be for 'ee. You'll be living a high +intellectual life, such as has now become natural to you; and +though the doctor's practice is small here, he'll no doubt go to a +dashing town when he's got his hand in, and keep a stylish +carriage, and you'll be brought to know a good many ladies of +excellent society. If you should ever meet me then, Grace, you +can drive past me, looking the other way. I shouldn't expect you +to speak to me, or wish such a thing, unless it happened to be in +some lonely, private place where 'twouldn't lower ye at all. +Don't think such men as neighbor Giles your equal. He and I shall +be good friends enough, but he's not for the like of you. He's +lived our rough and homely life here, and his wife's life must be +rough and homely likewise." + +So much pressure could not but produce some displacement. As +Grace was left very much to herself, she took advantage of one +fine day before Fitzpiers's return to drive into the aforesaid +vale where stood the village of Buckbury Fitzpiers. Leaving her +father's man at the inn with the horse and gig, she rambled onward +to the ruins of a castle, which stood in a field hard by. She had +no doubt that it represented the ancient stronghold of the +Fitzpiers family. + +The remains were few, and consisted mostly of remnants of the +lower vaulting, supported on low stout columns surmounted by the +crochet capital of the period. The two or three arches of these +vaults that were still in position were utilized by the adjoining +farmer as shelter for his calves, the floor being spread with +straw, amid which the young creatures rustled, cooling their +thirsty tongues by licking the quaint Norman carving, which +glistened with the moisture. It was a degradation of even such a +rude form of art as this to be treatad so grossly, she thought, +and for the first time the family of Fitzpiers assumed in her +imagination the hues of a melancholy romanticism. + +It was soon time to drive home, and she traversed the distance +with a preoccupied mind. The idea of so modern a man in science +and aesthetics as the young surgeon springing out of relics so +ancient was a kind of novelty she had never before experienced. +The combination lent him a social and intellectual interest which +she dreaded, so much weight did it add to the strange influence he +exercised upon her whenever he came near her. + +In an excitement which was not love, not ambition, rather a +fearful consciousness of hazard in the air, she awaited his +return. + +Meanwhile her father was awaiting him also. In his house there +was an old work on medicine, published towards the end of the last +century, and to put himself in harmony with events Melbury spread +this work on his knees when he had done his day's business, and +read about Galen, Hippocrates, and Herophilus--of the dogmatic, +the empiric, the hermetical, and other sects of practitioners that +have arisen in history; and thence proceeded to the classification +of maladies and the rules for their treatment, as laid down in +this valuable book with absolute precision. Melbury regretted +that the treatise was so old, fearing that he might in consequence +be unable to hold as complete a conversation as he could wish with +Mr. Fitzpiers, primed, no doubt, with more recent discoveries. + +The day of Fitzpiers's return arrived, and he sent to say that he +would call immediately. In the little time that was afforded for +putting the house in order the sweeping of Melbury's parlor was as +the sweeping of the parlor at the Interpreter's which wellnigh +choked the Pilgrim. At the end of it Mrs. Melbury sat down, +folded her hands and lips, and waited. Her husband restlessly +walked in and out from the timber-yard, stared at the interior of +the room, jerked out "ay, ay," and retreated again. Between four +and five Fitzpiers arrived, hitching his horse to the hook outside +the door. + +As soon as he had walked in and perceived that Grace was not in +the room, he seemed to have a misgiving. Nothing less than her +actual presence could long keep him to the level of this +impassioned enterprise, and that lacking he appeared as one who +wished to retrace his steps. + +He mechanically talked at what he considered a woodland matron's +level of thought till a rustling was heard on the stairs, and +Grace came in. Fitzpiers was for once as agitated as she. Over +and above the genuine emotion which she raised in his heart there +hung the sense that he was casting a die by impulse which he might +not have thrown by judgment. + +Mr. Melbury was not in the room. Having to attend to matters in +the yard, he had delayed putting on his afternoon coat and +waistcoat till the doctor's appearance, when, not wishing to be +backward in receiving him, he entered the parlor hastily buttoning +up those garments. Grace's fastidiousness was a little distressed +that Fitzpiers should see by this action the strain his visit was +putting upon her father; and to make matters worse for her just +then, old Grammer seemed to have a passion for incessantly pumping +in the back kitchen, leaving the doors open so that the banging +and splashing were distinct above the parlor conversation. + +Whenever the chat over the tea sank into pleasant desultoriness +Mr. Melbury broke in with speeches of labored precision on very +remote topics, as if he feared to let Fitzpiers's mind dwell +critically on the subject nearest the hearts of all. In truth a +constrained manner was natural enough in Melbury just now, for the +greatest interest of his life was reaching its crisis. Could the +real have been beheld instead of the corporeal merely, the corner +of the room in which he sat would have been filled with a form +typical of anxious suspense, large-eyed, tight-lipped, awaiting +the issue. That paternal hopes and fears so intense should be +bound up in the person of one child so peculiarly circumstanced, +and not have dispersed themselves over the larger field of a whole +family, involved dangerous risks to future happiness. + +Fitzpiers did not stay more than an hour, but that time had +apparently advanced his sentiments towards Grace, once and for +all, from a vaguely liquescent to an organic shape. She would not +have accompanied him to the door in response to his whispered +"Come!" if her mother had not said in a matter-of-fact way, "Of +course, Grace; go to the door with Mr. Fitzpiers." Accordingly +Grace went, both her parents remaining in the room. When the +young pair were in the great brick-floored hall the lover took the +girl's hand in his, drew it under his arm, and thus led her on to +the door, where he stealthily kissed her. + +She broke from him trembling, blushed and turned aside, hardly +knowing how things had advanced to this. Fitzpiers drove off, +kissing his hand to her, and waving it to Melbury who was visible +through the window. Her father returned the surgeon's action with +a great flourish of his own hand and a satisfied smile. + +The intoxication that Fitzpiers had, as usual, produced in Grace's +brain during the visit passed off somewhat with his withdrawal. +She felt like a woman who did not know what she had been doing for +the previous hour, but supposed with trepidation that the +afternoon's proceedings, though vague, had amounted to an +engagement between herself and the handsome, coercive, +irresistible Fitzpiers. + + + +This visit was a type of many which followed it during the long +summer days of that year. Grace was borne along upon a stream of +reasonings, arguments, and persuasions, supplemented, it must be +added, by inclinations of her own at times. No woman is without +aspirations, which may be innocent enough within certain limits; +and Grace had been so trained socially, and educated +intellectually, as to see clearly enough a pleasure in the +position of wife to such a man as Fitzpiers. His material +standing of itself, either present or future, had little in it to +give her ambition, but the possibilities of a refined and +cultivated inner life, of subtle psychological intercourse, had +their charm. It was this rather than any vulgar idea of marrying +well which caused her to float with the current, and to yield to +the immense influence which Fitzpiers exercised over her whenever +she shared his society. + +Any observer would shrewdly have prophesied that whether or not +she loved him as yet in the ordinary sense, she was pretty sure to +do so in time. + +One evening just before dusk they had taken a rather long walk +together, and for a short cut homeward passed through the +shrubberies of Hintock House--still deserted, and still blankly +confronting with its sightless shuttered windows the surrounding +foliage and slopes. Grace was tired, and they approached the +wall, and sat together on one of the stone sills--still warm with +the sun that had been pouring its rays upon them all the +afternoon. + +"This place would just do for us, would it not, dearest," said her +betrothed, as they sat, turning and looking idly at the old +facade. + +"Oh yes," said Grace, plainly showing that no such fancy had ever +crossed her mind. "She is away from home still," Grace added in a +minute, rather sadly, for she could not forget that she had +somehow lost the valuable friendship of the lady of this bower. + +"Who is?--oh, you mean Mrs. Charmond. Do you know, dear, that at +one time I thought you lived here." + +"Indeed!" said Grace. "How was that?" + +He explained, as far as he could do so without mentioning his +disappointment at finding it was otherwise; and then went on: +"Well, never mind that. Now I want to ask you something. There +is one detail of our wedding which I am sure you will leave to me. +My inclination is not to be married at the horrid little church +here, with all the yokels staring round at us, and a droning +parson reading." + +"Where, then, can it be? At a church in town?" + +"No. Not at a church at all. At a registry office. It is a +quieter, snugger, and more convenient place in every way." + +"Oh," said she, with real distress. "How can I be married except +at church, and with all my dear friends round me?" + +"Yeoman Winterborne among them." + +"Yes--why not? You know there was nothing serious between him and +me " + +"You see, dear, a noisy bell-ringing marriage at church has this +objection in our case: it would be a thing of report a long way +round. Now I would gently, as gently as possible, indicate to you +how inadvisable such publicity would be if we leave Hintock, and I +purchase the practice that I contemplate purchasing at Budmouth-- +hardly more than twenty miles off. Forgive my saying that it will +be far better if nobody there knows where you come from, nor +anything about your parents. Your beauty and knowledge and +manners will carry you anywhere if you are not hampered by such +retrospective criticism." + +"But could it not be a quiet ceremony, even at church?" she +pleaded. + +"I don't see the necessity of going there!" he said, a trifle +impatiently. "Marriage is a civil contract, and the shorter and +simpler it is made the better. People don't go to church when +they take a house, or even when they make a will." + +"Oh, Edgar--I don't like to hear you speak like that." + +"Well, well--I didn't mean to. But I have mentioned as much to +your father, who has made no objection; and why should you?" + +She gave way, deeming the point one on which she ought to allow +sentiment to give way to policy--if there were indeed policy in +his plan. But she was indefinably depressed as they walked +homeward. + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + + +He left her at the door of her father's house. As he receded, and +was clasped out of sight by the filmy shades, he impressed Grace +as a man who hardly appertained to her existence at all. +Cleverer, greater than herself, one outside her mental orbit, as +she considered him, he seemed to be her ruler rather than her +equal, protector, and dear familiar friend. + +The disappointment she had experienced at his wish, the shock +given to her girlish sensibilities by his irreverent views of +marriage, together with the sure and near approach of the day +fixed for committing her future to his keeping, made her so +restless that she could scarcely sleep at all that night. She +rose when the sparrows began to walk out of the roof-holes, sat on +the floor of her room in the dim light, and by-and-by peeped out +behind the window-curtains. It was even now day out-of-doors, +though the tones of morning were feeble and wan, and it was long +before the sun would be perceptible in this overshadowed vale. +Not a sound came from any of the out-houses as yet. The tree- +trunks, the road, the out-buildings, the garden, every object wore +that aspect of mesmeric fixity which the suspensive quietude of +daybreak lends to such scenes. Outside her window helpless +immobility seemed to be combined with intense consciousness; a +meditative inertness possessed all things, oppressively +contrasting with her own active emotions. Beyond the road were +some cottage roofs and orchards; over these roofs and over the +apple-trees behind, high up the slope, and backed by the +plantation on the crest, was the house yet occupied by her future +husband, the rough-cast front showing whitely through its +creepers. The window-shutters were closed, the bedroom curtains +closely drawn, and not the thinnest coil of smoke rose from the +rugged chimneys. + +Something broke the stillness. The front door of the house she +was gazing at opened softly, and there came out into the porch a +female figure, wrapped in a large shawl, beneath which was visible +the white skirt of a long loose garment. A gray arm, stretching +from within the porch, adjusted the shawl over the woman's +shoulders; it was withdrawn and disappeared, the door closing +behind her. + +The woman went quickly down the box-edged path between the +raspberries and currants, and as she walked her well-developed +form and gait betrayed her individuality. It was Suke Damson, the +affianced one of simple young Tim Tangs. At the bottom of the +garden she entered the shelter of the tall hedge, and only the top +of her head could be seen hastening in the direction of her own +dwelling. + +Grace had recognized, or thought she recognized, in the gray arm +stretching from the porch, the sleeve of a dressing-gown which Mr. +Fitzpiers had been wearing on her own memorable visit to him. Her +face fired red. She had just before thought of dressing herself +and taking a lonely walk under the trees, so coolly green this +early morning; but she now sat down on her bed and fell into +reverie. It seemed as if hardly any time had passed when she +heard the household moving briskly about, and breakfast preparing +down-stairs; though, on rousing herself to robe and descend, she +found that the sun was throwing his rays completely over the tree- +tops, a progress of natural phenomena denoting that at least three +hours had elapsed since she last looked out of the window. + +When attired she searched about the house for her father; she +found him at last in the garden, stooping to examine the potatoes +for signs of disease. Hearing her rustle, he stood up and +stretched his back and arms, saying, "Morning t'ye, Gracie. I +congratulate ye. It is only a month to-day to the time!" + +She did not answer, but, without lifting her dress, waded between +the dewy rows of tall potato-green into the middle of the plot +where he was. + +"I have been thinking very much about my position this morning-- +ever since it was light," she began, excitedly, and trembling so +that she could hardly stand. "And I feel it is a false one. I +wish not to marry Mr. Fitzpiers. I wish not to marry anybody; but +I'll marry Giles Winterborne if you say I must as an alternative." + +Her father's face settled into rigidity, he turned pale, and came +deliberately out of the plot before he answered her. She had +never seen him look so incensed before. + +"Now, hearken to me," he said. "There's a time for a woman to +alter her mind; and there's a time when she can no longer alter +it, if she has any right eye to her parents' honor and the +seemliness of things. That time has come. I won't say to ye, you +SHALL marry him. But I will say that if you refuse, I shall +forever be ashamed and a-weary of ye as a daughter, and shall look +upon you as the hope of my life no more. What do you know about +life and what it can bring forth, and how you ought to act to lead +up to best ends? Oh, you are an ungrateful maid, Grace; you've +seen that fellow Giles, and he has got over ye; that's where the +secret lies, I'll warrant me!" + +"No, father, no! It is not Giles--it is something I cannot tell +you of--" + +"Well, make fools of us all; make us laughing-stocks; break it +off; have your own way." + +"But who knows of the engagement as yet? how can breaking it +disgrace you?" + +Melbury then by degrees admitted that he had mentioned the +engagement to this acquaintance and to that, till she perceived +that in his restlessness and pride he had published it everywhere. +She went dismally away to a bower of laurel at the top of the +garden. Her father followed her. + +"It is that Giles Winterborne!" he said, with an upbraiding gaze +at her. + +"No, it is not; though for that matter you encouraged him once," +she said, troubled to the verge of despair. "It is not Giles, it +is Mr. Fitzpiers." + +"You've had a tiff--a lovers' tiff--that's all, I suppose + +"It is some woman--" + +"Ay, ay; you are jealous. The old story. Don't tell me. Now do +you bide here. I'll send Fitzpiers to you. I saw him smoking in +front of his house but a minute by-gone." + +He went off hastily out of the garden-gate and down the lane. But +she would not stay where she was; and edging through a slit in the +garden-fence, walked away into the wood. Just about here the +trees were large and wide apart, and there was no undergrowth, so +that she could be seen to some distance; a sylph-like, greenish- +white creature, as toned by the sunlight and leafage. She heard a +foot-fall crushing dead leaves behind her, and found herself +reconnoitered by Fitzpiers himself, approaching gay and fresh as +the morning around them. + +His remote gaze at her had been one of mild interest rather than +of rapture. But she looked so lovely in the green world about +her, her pink cheeks, her simple light dress, and the delicate +flexibility of her movement acquired such rarity from their wild- +wood setting, that his eyes kindled as he drew near. + +"My darling, what is it? Your father says you are in the pouts, +and jealous, and I don't know what. Ha! ha! ha! as if there were +any rival to you, except vegetable nature, in this home of +recluses! We know better." + +"Jealous; oh no, it is not so," said she, gravely. "That's a +mistake of his and yours, sir. I spoke to him so closely about +the question of marriage with you that he did not apprehend my +state of mind." + +"But there's something wrong--eh?" he asked, eying her narrowly, +and bending to kiss her. She shrank away, and his purposed kiss +miscarried. + +"What is it?" he said, more seriously for this little defeat. + +She made no answer beyond, "Mr. Fitzpiers, I have had no +breakfast, I must go in." + +"Come," he insisted, fixing his eyes upon her. "Tell me at once, +I say." + +It was the greater strength against the smaller; but she was +mastered less by his manner than by her own sense of the +unfairness of silence. "I looked out of the window," she said, +with hesitation. "I'll tell you by-and-by. I must go in-doors. +I have had no breakfast." + +By a sort of divination his conjecture went straight to the fact. +"Nor I," said he, lightly. "Indeed, I rose late to-day. I have +had a broken night, or rather morning. A girl of the village--I +don't know her name--came and rang at my bell as soon as it was +light--between four and five, I should think it was--perfectly +maddened with an aching tooth. As no-body heard her ring, she +threw some gravel at my window, till at last I heard her and +slipped on my dressing-gown and went down. The poor thing begged +me with tears in her eyes to take out her tormentor, if I dragged +her head off. Down she sat and out it came--a lovely molar, not a +speck upon it; and off she went with it in her handkerchief, much +contented, though it would have done good work for her for fifty +years to come." + +It was all so plausible--so completely explained. knowing nothing +of the incident in the wood on old Midsummer-eve, Grace felt that +her suspicions were unworthy and absurd, and with the readiness of +an honest heart she jumped at the opportunity of honoring his +word. At the moment of her mental liberation the bushes about the +garden had moved, and her father emerged into the shady glade. +"Well, I hope it is made up?" he said, cheerily. + +"Oh yes," said Fitzpiers, with his eyes fixed on Grace, whose eyes +were shyly bent downward. + +"Now," said her father, "tell me, the pair of ye, that you still +mean to take one another for good and all; and on the strength o't +you shall have another couple of hundred paid down. I swear it by +the name." + +Fitzpiers took her hand. "We declare it, do we not, my dear +Grace?" said he. + +Relieved of her doubt, somewhat overawed, and ever anxious to +please, she was disposed to settle the matter; yet, womanlike, she +would not relinquish her opportunity of asking a concession of +some sort. "If our wedding can be at church, I say yes," she +answered, in a measured voice. "If not, I say no." + +Fitzpiers was generous in his turn. "It shall be so," he +rejoined, gracefully. "To holy church we'll go, and much good may +it do us." + +They returned through the bushes indoors, Grace walking, full of +thought between the other two, somewhat comforted, both by +Fitzpiers's ingenious explanation and by the sense that she was +not to be deprived of a religious ceremony. "So let it be," she +said to herself. "Pray God it is for the best." + +From this hour there was no serious attempt at recalcitration on +her part. Fitzpiers kept himself continually near her, dominating +any rebellious impulse, and shaping her will into passive +concurrence with all his desires. Apart from his lover-like +anxiety to possess her, the few golden hundreds of the timber- +dealer, ready to hand, formed a warm background to Grace's lovely +face, and went some way to remove his uneasiness at the prospect +of endangering his professional and social chances by an alliance +with the family of a simple countryman. + + + +The interim closed up its perspective surely and silently. +Whenever Grace had any doubts of her position, the sense of +contracting time was like a shortening chamber: at other moments +she was comparatively blithe. Day after day waxed and waned; the +one or two woodmen who sawed, shaped, spokeshaved on her father's +premises at this inactive season of the year, regularly came and +unlocked the doors in the morning, locked them in the evening, +supped, leaned over their garden-gates for a whiff of evening air, +and to catch any last and farthest throb of news from the outer +world, which entered and expired at Little Hintock like the +exhausted swell of a wave in some innermost cavern of some +innermost creek of an embayed sea; yet no news interfered with the +nuptial purpose at their neighbor's house. The sappy green twig- +tips of the season's growth would not, she thought, be appreciably +woodier on the day she became a wife, so near was the time; the +tints of the foliage would hardly have changed. Everything was so +much as usual that no itinerant stranger would have supposed a +woman's fate to be hanging in the balance at that summer's +decline. + +But there were preparations, imaginable readily enough by those +who had special knowledge. In the remote and fashionable town of +Sandbourne something was growing up under the hands of several +persons who had never seen Grace Melbury, never would see her, or +care anything about her at all, though their creation had such +interesting relation to her life that it would enclose her very +heart at a moment when that heart would beat, if not with more +emotional ardor, at least with more emotional turbulence than at +any previous time. + +Why did Mrs. Dollery's van, instead of passing along at the end of +the smaller village to Great Hintock direct, turn one Saturday +night into Little Hintock Lane, and never pull up till it reached +Mr. Melbury's gates? The gilding shine of evening fell upon a +large, flat box not less than a yard square, and safely tied with +cord, as it was handed out from under the tilt with a great deal +of care. But it was not heavy for its size; Mrs. Dollery herself +carried it into the house. Tim Tangs, the hollow-turner, Bawtree, +Suke Damson, and others, looked knowing, and made remarks to each +other as they watched its entrance. Melbury stood at the door of +the timber-shed in the attitude of a man to whom such an arrival +was a trifling domestic detail with which he did not condescend to +be concerned. Yet he well divined the contents of that box, and +was in truth all the while in a pleasant exaltation at the proof +that thus far, at any rate, no disappointment had supervened. +While Mrs. Dollery remained--which was rather long, from her sense +of the importance of her errand--he went into the out-house; but +as soon as she had had her say, been paid, and had rumbled away, +he entered the dwelling, to find there what he knew he should +find--his wife and daughter in a flutter of excitement over the +wedding-gown, just arrived from the leading dress-maker of +Sandbourne watering-place aforesaid. + +During these weeks Giles Winterborne was nowhere to be seen or +heard of. At the close of his tenure in Hintock he had sold some +of his furniture, packed up the rest--a few pieces endeared by +associations, or necessary to his occupation--in the house of a +friendly neighbor, and gone away. People said that a certain +laxity had crept into his life; that he had never gone near a +church latterly, and had been sometimes seen on Sundays with +unblacked boots, lying on his elbow under a tree, with a cynical +gaze at surrounding objects. He was likely to return to Hintock +when the cider-making season came round, his apparatus being +stored there, and travel with his mill and press from village to +village. + +The narrow interval that stood before the day diminished yet. +There was in Grace's mind sometimes a certain anticipative +satisfaction, the satisfaction of feeling that she would be the +heroine of an hour; moreover, she was proud, as a cultivated +woman, to be the wife of a cultivated man. It was an opportunity +denied very frequently to young women in her position, nowadays +not a few; those in whom parental discovery of the value of +education has implanted tastes which parental circles fail to +gratify. But what an attenuation was this cold pride of the dream +of her youth, in which she had pictured herself walking in state +towards the altar, flushed by the purple light and bloom of her +own passion, without a single misgiving as to the sealing of the +bond, and fervently receiving as her due + + +"The homage of a thousand hearts; the fond, deep love of one." + + +Everything had been clear then, in imagination; now something was +undefined. She had little carking anxieties; a curious +fatefulness seemed to rule her, and she experienced a mournful +want of some one to confide in. + +The day loomed so big and nigh that her prophetic ear could, in +fancy, catch the noise of it, hear the murmur of the villagers as +she came out of church, imagine the jangle of the three thin-toned +Hintock bells. The dialogues seemed to grow louder, and the ding- +ding-dong of those three crazed bells more persistent. She awoke: +the morning had come. + +Five hours later she was the wife of Fitzpiers. + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + + +The chief hotel at Sherton-Abbas was an old stone-fronted inn with +a yawning arch, under which vehicles were driven by stooping +coachmen to back premises of wonderful commodiousness. The +windows to the street were mullioned into narrow lights, and only +commanded a view of the opposite houses; hence, perhaps, it arose +that the best and most luxurious private sitting-room that the inn +could afford over-looked the nether parts of the establishment, +where beyond the yard were to be seen gardens and orchards, now +bossed, nay incrusted, with scarlet and gold fruit, stretching to +infinite distance under a luminous lavender mist. The time was +early autumn, + + + "When the fair apples, red as evening sky, + Do bend the tree unto the fruitful ground, + When juicy pears, and berries of black dye, + Do dance in air, and call the eyes around." + + +The landscape confronting the window might, indeed, have been part +of the identical stretch of country which the youthful Chatterton +had in his mind. + +In this room sat she who had been the maiden Grace Melbury till +the finger of fate touched her and turned her to a wife. It was +two months after the wedding, and she was alone. Fitzpiers had +walked out to see the abbey by the light of sunset, but she had +been too fatigued to accompany him. They had reached the last +stage of a long eight-weeks' tour, and were going on to Hintock +that night. + +In the yard, between Grace and the orchards, there progressed a +scene natural to the locality at this time of the year. An apple- +mill and press had been erected on the spot, to which some men +were bringing fruit from divers points in mawn-baskets, while +others were grinding them, and others wringing down the pomace, +whose sweet juice gushed forth into tubs and pails. The +superintendent of these proceedings, to whom the others spoke as +master, was a young yeoman of prepossessing manner and aspect, +whose form she recognized in a moment. He had hung his coat to a +nail of the out-house wall, and wore his shirt-sleeves rolled up +beyond his elbows, to keep them unstained while he rammed the +pomace into the bags of horse-hair. Fragments of apple-rind had +alighted upon the brim of his hat--probably from the bursting of a +bag--while brown pips of the same fruit were sticking among the +down upon his fine, round arms. + +She realized in a moment how he had come there. Down in the heart +of the apple country nearly every farmer kept up a cider-making +apparatus and wring-house for his own use, building up the pomace +in great straw "cheeses," as they were called; but here, on the +margin of Pomona's plain, was a debatable land neither orchard nor +sylvan exclusively, where the apple produce was hardly sufficient +to warrant each proprietor in keeping a mill of his own. This was +the field of the travelling cider-maker. His press and mill were +fixed to wheels instead of being set up in a cider-house; and with +a couple of horses, buckets, tubs, strainers, and an assistant or +two, he wandered from place to place, deriving very satisfactory +returns for his trouble in such a prolific season as the present. + +The back parts of the town were just now abounding with apple- +gatherings. They stood in the yards in carts, baskets, and loose +heaps; and the blue. stagnant air of autumn which hung over +everything was heavy with a sweet cidery smell. Cakes of pomace +lay against the walls in the yellow sun, where they were drying to +be used as fuel. Yet it was not the great make of the year as +yet; before the standard crop came in there accumulated, in +abundant times like this, a large superfluity of early apples, and +windfalls from the trees of later harvest, which would not keep +long. Thus, in the baskets, and quivering in the hopper of the +mill, she saw specimens of mixed dates, including the mellow +countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards, stubbards, +ratheripes, and other well-known friends of her ravenous youth. + +Grace watched the head-man with interest. The slightest sigh +escaped her. Perhaps she thought of the day--not so far distant-- +when that friend of her childhood had met her by her father's +arrangement in this same town, warm with hope, though diffident, +and trusting in a promise rather implied than given. Or she might +have thought of days earlier yet--days of childhood--when her +mouth was somewhat more ready to receive a kiss from his than was +his to bestow one. However, all that was over. She had felt +superior to him then, and she felt superior to him now. + +She wondered why he never looked towards her open window. She did +not know that in the slight commotion caused by their arrival at +the inn that afternoon Winterborne had caught sight of her through +the archway, had turned red, and was continuing his work with more +concentrated attention on the very account of his discovery. +Robert Creedle, too, who travelled with Giles, had been +incidentally informed by the hostler that Dr. Fitzpiers and his +young wife were in the hotel, after which news Creedle kept +shaking his head and saying to himself, "Ah!" very audibly, +between his thrusts at the screw of the cider-press. + +"Why the deuce do you sigh like that, Robert?" asked Winterborne, +at last. + +"Ah, maister--'tis my thoughts--'tis my thoughts!...Yes, ye've +lost a hundred load o' timber well seasoned; ye've lost five +hundred pound in good money; ye've lost the stone-windered house +that's big enough to hold a dozen families; ye've lost your share +of half a dozen good wagons and their horses--all lost!--through +your letting slip she that was once yer own!" + +"Good God, Creedle, you'll drive me mad!" said Giles, sternly. +"Don't speak of that any more!" + +Thus the subject had ended in the yard. Meanwhile, the passive +cause of all this loss still regarded the scene. She was +beautifully dressed; she was seated in the most comfortable room +that the inn afforded; her long journey had been full of variety, +and almost luxuriously performed--for Fitzpiers did not study +economy where pleasure was in question. Hence it perhaps arose +that Giles and all his belongings seemed sorry and common to her +for the moment--moving in a plane so far removed from her own of +late that she could scarcely believe she had ever found congruity +therein. "No--I could never have married him!" she said, gently +shaking her head. "Dear father was right. It would have been too +coarse a life for me." And she looked at the rings of sapphire and +opal upon her white and slender fingers that had been gifts from +Fitzpiers. + +Seeing that Giles still kept his back turned, and with a little of +the above-described pride of life--easily to be understood, and +possibly excused, in a young, inexperienced woman who thought she +had married well--she said at last, with a smile on her lips, "Mr. +Winterborne!" + +He appeared to take no heed, and she said a second time, "Mr. +Winterborne!" + +Even now he seemed not to hear, though a person close enough to +him to see the expression of his face might have doubted it; and +she said a third time, with a timid loudness, "Mr. Winterborne! +What, have you forgotten my voice?" She remained with her lips +parted in a welcoming smile. + +He turned without surprise, and came deliberately towards the +window. "Why do you call me?" he said, with a sternness that took +her completely unawares, his face being now pale. "Is it not +enough that you see me here moiling and muddling for my daily +bread while you are sitting there in your success, that you can't +refrain from opening old wounds by calling out my name?" + +She flushed, and was struck dumb for some moments; but she forgave +his unreasoning anger, knowing so well in what it had its root. +"I am sorry I offended you by speaking," she replied, meekly. +"Believe me, I did not intend to do that. I could hardly sit here +so near you without a word of recognition." + +Winterborne's heart had swollen big, and his eyes grown moist by +this time, so much had the gentle answer of that familiar voice +moved him. He assured her hurriedly, and without looking at her, +that he was not angry. He then managed to ask her, in a clumsy, +constrained way, if she had had a pleasant journey, and seen many +interesting sights. She spoke of a few places that she had +visited, and so the time passed till he withdrew to take his place +at one of the levers which pulled round the screw. + +Forgotten her voice! Indeed, he had not forgotten her voice, as +his bitterness showed. But though in the heat of the moment he +had reproached her keenly, his second mood was a far more tender +one--that which could regard her renunciation of such as he as her +glory and her privilege, his own fidelity notwithstanding. He +could have declared with a contemporary poet-- + + + "If I forget, + The salt creek may forget the ocean; + If I forget + The heart whence flows my heart's bright motion, + May I sink meanlier than the worst + Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst, + If I forget. + + "Though you forget, + No word of mine shall mar your pleasure; + Though you forget, + You filled my barren life with treasure, + You may withdraw the gift you gave; + You still are queen, I still am slave, + Though you forget." + + +She had tears in her eyes at the thought that she could not remind +him of what he ought to have remembered; that not herself but the +pressure of events had dissipated the dreams of their early youth. +Grace was thus unexpectedly worsted in her encounter with her old +friend. She had opened the window with a faint sense of triumph, +but he had turned it into sadness; she did not quite comprehend +the reason why. In truth it was because she was not cruel enough +in her cruelty. If you have to use the knife, use it, say the +great surgeons; and for her own peace Grace should have contemned +Winterborne thoroughly or not at all. As it was, on closing the +window an indescribable, some might have said dangerous, pity +quavered in her bosom for him. + +Presently her husband entered the room, and told her what a +wonderful sunset there was to be seen. + +"I have not noticed it. But I have seen somebody out there that +we know," she replied, looking into the court. + +Fitzpiers followed the direction of her eyes, and said he did not +recognize anybody. + +"Why, Mr. Winterborne--there he is, cider-making. He combines +that with his other business, you know." + +"Oh--that fellow," said Fitzpiers, his curiosity becoming extinct. + +She, reproachfully: "What, call Mr. Winterborne a fellow, Edgar? +It is true I was just saying to myself that I never could have +married him; but I have much regard for him, and always shall." + +"Well, do by all means, my dear one. I dare say I am inhuman, and +supercilious, and contemptibly proud of my poor old ramshackle +family; but I do honestly confess to you that I feel as if I +belonged to a different species from the people who are working in +that yard." + +"And from me too, then. For my blood is no better than theirs." + +He looked at her with a droll sort of awakening. It was, indeed, +a startling anomaly that this woman of the tribe without should be +standing there beside him as his wife, if his sentiments were as +he had said. In their travels together she had ranged so +unerringly at his level in ideas, tastes, and habits that he had +almost forgotten how his heart had played havoc with his +principles in taking her to him. + +"Ah YOU--you are refined and educated into something quite +different," he said, self-assuringly. + +"I don't quite like to think that," she murmured with soft regret. +"And I think you underestimate Giles Winterborne. Remember, I was +brought up with him till I was sent away to school, so I cannot be +radically different. At any rate, I don't feel so. That is, no +doubt, my fault, and a great blemish in me. But I hope you will +put up with it, Edgar." + +Fitzpiers said that he would endeavor to do so; and as it was now +getting on for dusk, they prepared to perform the last stage of +their journey, so as to arrive at Hintock before it grew very +late. + +In less than half an hour they started, the cider-makers in the +yard having ceased their labors and gone away, so that the only +sounds audible there now were the trickling of the juice from the +tightly screwed press, and the buzz of a single wasp, which had +drunk itself so tipsy that it was unconscious of nightfall. Grace +was very cheerful at the thought of being soon in her sylvan home, +but Fitzpiers sat beside her almost silent. An indescribable +oppressiveness had overtaken him with the near approach of the +journey's end and the realities of life that lay there. + +"You don't say a word, Edgar," she observed. "Aren't you glad to +get back? I am." + +"You have friends here. I have none." + +"But my friends are yours." + +"Oh yes--in that sense." + +The conversation languished, and they drew near the end of Hintock +Lane. It had been decided that they should, at least for a time, +take up their abode in her father's roomy house, one wing of which +was quite at their service, being almost disused by the Melburys. +Workmen had been painting, papering, and whitewashing this set of +rooms in the wedded pair's absence; and so scrupulous had been the +timber-dealer that there should occur no hitch or disappointment +on their arrival, that not the smallest detail remained undone. +To make it all complete a ground-floor room had been fitted up as +a surgery, with an independent outer door, to which Fitzpiers's +brass plate was screwed--for mere ornament, such a sign being +quite superfluous where everybody knew the latitude and longitude +of his neighbors for miles round. + +Melbury and his wife welcomed the twain with affection, and all +the house with deference. They went up to explore their rooms, +that opened from a passage on the left hand of the staircase, the +entrance to which could be shut off on the landing by a door that +Melbury had hung for the purpose. A friendly fire was burning in +the grate, although it was not cold. Fitzpiers said it was too +soon for any sort of meal, they only having dined shortly before +leaving Sherton-Abbas. He would walk across to his old lodging, +to learn how his locum tenens had got on in his absence. + +In leaving Melbury's door he looked back at the house. There was +economy in living under that roof, and economy was desirable, but +in some way he was dissatisfied with the arrangement; it immersed +him so deeply in son-in-lawship to Melbury. He went on to his +former residence. His deputy was out, and Fitzpiers fell into +conversation with his former landlady. + +"Well, Mrs. Cox, what's the best news?" he asked of her, with +cheery weariness. + +She was a little soured at losing by his marriage so profitable a +tenant as the surgeon had proved to be duling his residence under +her roof; and the more so in there being hardly the remotest +chance of her getting such another settler in the Hintock +solitudes. "'Tis what I don't wish to repeat, sir; least of all +to you," she mumbled. + +"Never mind me, Mrs. Cox; go ahead." + +"It is what people say about your hasty marrying, Dr. Fitzpiers. +Whereas they won't believe you know such clever doctrines in +physic as they once supposed of ye, seeing as you could marry into +Mr. Melbury's family, which is only Hintock-born, such as me." + +"They are kindly welcome to their opinion," said Fitzpiers, not +allowing himself to recognize that he winced. "Anything else?" + +"Yes; SHE'S come home at last." + +"Who's she?" + +"Mrs. Charmond." + +"Oh, indeed!" said Fitzpiers, with but slight interest. "I've +never seen her." + +"She has seen you, sir, whether or no." + +"Never." + +"Yes; she saw you in some hotel or street for a minute or two +while you were away travelling, and accidentally heard your name; +and when she made some remark about you, Miss Ellis--that's her +maid--told her you was on your wedding-tower with Mr. Melbury's +daughter; and she said, 'He ought to have done better than that. +I fear he has spoiled his chances,' she says." + +Fitzpiers did not talk much longer to this cheering housewife, and +walked home with no very brisk step. He entered the door quietly, +and went straight up-stairs to the drawing-room extemporized for +their use by Melbury in his and his bride's absence, expecting to +find her there as he had left her. The fire was burning still, +but there were no lights. He looked into the next apartment, +fitted up as a little dining-room, but no supper was laid. He +went to the top of the stairs, and heard a chorus of voices in the +timber-merchant's parlor below, Grace's being occasionally +intermingled. + +Descending, and looking into the room from the door-way, he found +quite a large gathering of neighbors and other acquaintances, +praising and congratulating Mrs. Fitzpiers on her return, among +them being the dairyman, Farmer Bawtree, and the master-blacksmith +from Great Hintock; also the cooper, the hollow-turner, the +exciseman, and some others, with their wives, who lived hard by. +Grace, girl that she was, had quite forgotten her new dignity and +her husband's; she was in the midst of them, blushing, and +receiving their compliments with all the pleasure of old- +comradeship. + +Fitzpiers experienced a profound distaste for the situation. +Melbury was nowhere in the room, but Melbury's wife, perceiving +the doctor, came to him. "We thought, Grace and I," she said, +"that as they have called, hearing you were come, we could do no +less than ask them to supper; and then Grace proposed that we +should all sup together, as it is the first night of your return." + +By this time Grace had come round to him. "Is it not good of them +to welcome me so warmly?" she exclaimed, with tears of friendship +in her eyes. "After so much good feeling I could not think of our +shutting ourselves up away from them in our own dining-room." + +"Certainly not--certainly not," said Fitzpiers; and he entered the +room with the heroic smile of a martyr. + +As soon as they sat down to table Melbury came in, and seemed to +see at once that Fitzpiers would much rather have received no such +demonstrative reception. He thereupon privately chid his wife for +her forwardness in the matter. Mrs. Melbury declared that it was +as much Grace's doing as hers, after which there was no more to be +said by that young woman's tender father. By this time Fitzpiers +was making the best of his position among the wide-elbowed and +genial company who sat eating and drinking and laughing and joking +around him; and getting warmed himself by the good cheer, was +obliged to admit that, after all, the supper was not the least +enjoyable he had ever known. + +At times, however, the words about his having spoiled his +opportunities, repeated to him as those of Mrs. Charmond, haunted +him like a handwriting on the wall. Then his manner would become +suddenly abstracted. At one moment he would mentally put an +indignant query why Mrs. Charmond or any other woman should make +it her business to have opinions about his opportunities; at +another he thought that he could hardly be angry with her for +taking an interest in the doctor of her own parish. Then he would +drink a glass of grog and so get rid of the misgiving. These +hitches and quaffings were soon perceived by Grace as well as by +her father; and hence both of them were much relieved when the +first of the guests to discover that the hour was growing late +rose and declared that he must think of moving homeward. At the +words Melbury rose as alertly as if lifted by a spring, and in ten +minutes they were gone. + +"Now, Grace," said her husband as soon as he found himself alone +with her in their private apartments, "we've had a very pleasant +evening, and everybody has been very kind. But we must come to an +understanding about our way of living here. If we continue in +these rooms there must be no mixing in with your people below. I +can't stand it, and that's the truth." + +She had been sadly surprised at the suddenness of his distaste for +those old-fashioned woodland forms of life which in his courtship +he had professed to regard with so much interest. But she +assented in a moment. + +"We must be simply your father's tenants," he continued, "and our +goings and comings must be as independent as if we lived +elsewhere." + +"Certainly, Edgar--I quite see that it must be so." + +"But you joined in with all those people in my absence, without +knowing whether I should approve or disapprove. When I came I +couldn't help myself at all." + +She, sighing: "Yes--I see I ought to have waited; though they came +unexpectedly, and I thought I had acted for the best." + +Thus the discussion ended, and the next day Fitzpiers went on his +old rounds as usual. But it was easy for so super-subtle an eye +as his to discern, or to think he discerned, that he was no longer +regarded as an extrinsic, unfathomed gentleman of limitless +potentiality, scientific and social; but as Mr. Melbury's compeer, +and therefore in a degree only one of themselves. The Hintock +woodlandlers held with all the strength of inherited conviction to +the aristocratic principle, and as soon as they had discovered +that Fitzpiers was one of the old Buckbury Fitzpierses they had +accorded to him for nothing a touching of hat-brims, promptness of +service, and deference of approach, which Melbury had to do +without, though he paid for it over and over. But now, having +proved a traitor to his own cause by this marriage, Fitzpiers was +believed in no more as a superior hedged by his own divinity; +while as doctor he began to be rated no higher than old Jones, +whom they had so long despised. + +His few patients seemed in his two months' absence to have +dwindled considerably in number, and no sooner had he returned +than there came to him from the Board of Guardians a complaint +that a pauper had been neglected by his substitute. In a fit of +pride Fitzpiers resigned his appointment as one of the surgeons to +the union, which had been the nucleus of his practice here. + +At the end of a fortnight he came in-doors one evening to Grace +more briskly than usual. "They have written to me again about +that practice in Budmouth that I once negotiated for," he said to +her. "The premium asked is eight hundred pounds, and I think that +between your father and myself it ought to be raised. Then we can +get away from this place forever." + +The question had been mooted between them before, and she was not +unprepared to consider it. They had not proceeded far with the +discussion when a knock came to the door, and in a minute Grammer +ran up to say that a message had arrived from Hintock House +requesting Dr. Fitzpiers to attend there at once. Mrs. Charmond +had met with a slight accident through the overturning of her +carriage. + +"This is something, anyhow," said Fitzpiers, rising with an +interest which he could not have defined. "I have had a +presentiment that this mysterious woman and I were to be better +acquainted." + +The latter words were murmured to himself alone. + +"Good-night," said Grace, as soon as he was ready. "I shall be +asleep, probably, when you return." + +"Good-night, "he replied, inattentively, and went down-stairs. It +was the first time since their marriage that he had left her +without a kiss. + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + + +Winterborne's house had been pulled down. On this account his +face had been seen but fitfully in Hintock; and he would probably +have disappeared from the place altogether but for his slight +business connection with Melbury, on whose premises Giles kept his +cider-making apparatus, now that he had no place of his own to +stow it in. Coming here one evening on his way to a hut beyond +the wood where he now slept, he noticed that the familiar brown- +thatched pinion of his paternal roof had vanished from its site, +and that the walls were levelled. In present circumstances he had +a feeling for the spot that might have been called morbid, and +when he had supped in the hut aforesaid he made use of the spare +hour before bedtime to return to Little Hintock in the twilight +and ramble over the patch of ground on which he had first seen the +day. + +He repeated this evening visit on several like occasions. Even in +the gloom he could trace where the different rooms had stood; +could mark the shape of the kitchen chimney-corner, in which he +had roasted apples and potatoes in his boyhood, cast his bullets, +and burned his initials on articles that did and did not belong to +him. The apple-trees still remained to show where the garden had +been, the oldest of them even now retaining the crippled slant to +north-east given them by the great November gale of 1824, which +carried a brig bodily over the Chesil Bank. They were at present +bent to still greater obliquity by the heaviness of their produce. +Apples bobbed against his head, and in the grass beneath he +crunched scores of them as he walked. There was nobody to gather +them now. + +It was on the evening under notice that, half sitting, half +leaning against one of these inclined trunks, Winterborne had +become lost in his thoughts, as usual, till one little star after +another had taken up a position in the piece of sky which now +confronted him where his walls and chimneys had formerly raised +their outlines. The house had jutted awkwardly into the road, and +the opening caused by its absence was very distinct. + +In the silence the trot of horses and the spin of carriage-wheels +became audible; and the vehicle soon shaped itself against the +blank sky, bearing down upon him with the bend in the lane which +here occurred, and of which the house had been the cause. He +could discern the figure of a woman high up on the driving-seat of +a phaeton, a groom being just visible behind. Presently there was +a slight scrape, then a scream. Winterborne went across to the +spot, and found the phaeton half overturned, its driver sitting on +the heap of rubbish which had once been his dwelling, and the man +seizing the horses' heads. The equipage was Mrs. Charmond's, and +the unseated charioteer that lady herself. + +To his inquiry if she were hurt she made some incoherent reply to +the effect that she did not know. The damage in other respects +was little or none: the phaeton was righted, Mrs. Charmond placed +in it, and the reins given to the servant. It appeared that she +had been deceived by the removal of the house, imagining the gap +caused by the demolition to be the opening of the road, so that +she turned in upon the ruins instead of at the bend a few yards +farther on. + +"Drive home--drive home!" cried the lady, impatiently; and they +started on their way. They had not, however, gone many paces +when, the air being still, Winterborne heard her say "Stop; tell +that man to call the doctor--Mr. Fitzpiers--and send him on to the +House. I find I am hurt more seriously than I thought." + +Winterborne took the message from the groom and proceeded to the +doctor's at once. Having delivered it, he stepped back into the +darkness, and waited till he had seen Fitzpiers leave the door. +He stood for a few minutes looking at the window which by its +light revealed the room where Grace was sitting, and went away +under the gloomy trees. + + + +Fitzpiers duly arrived at Hintock House, whose doors he now saw +open for the first time. Contrary to his expectation there was +visible no sign of that confusion or alarm which a serious +accident to the mistress of the abode would have occasioned. He +was shown into a room at the top of the staircase, cosily and +femininely draped, where, by the light of the shaded lamp, he saw +a woman of full round figure reclining upon a couch in such a +position as not to disturb a pile of magnificent hair on the crown +of her head. A deep purple dressing-gown formed an admirable foil +to the peculiarly rich brown of her hair-plaits; her left arm, +which was naked nearly up to the shoulder, was thrown upward, and +between the fingers of her right hand she held a cigarette, while +she idly breathed from her plump lips a thin stream of smoke +towards the ceiling. + +The doctor's first feeling was a sense of his exaggerated +prevision in having brought appliances for a serious case; the +next, something more curious. While the scene and the moment were +new to him and unanticipated, the sentiment and essence of the +moment were indescribably familiar. What could be the cause of +it? Probably a dream. + +Mrs. Charmond did not move more than to raise her eyes to him, and +he came and stood by her. She glanced up at his face across her +brows and forehead, and then he observed a blush creep slowly over +her decidedly handsome cheeks. Her eyes, which had lingered upon +him with an inquiring, conscious expression, were hastily +withdrawn, and she mechanically applied the cigarette again to her +lips. + +For a moment he forgot his errand, till suddenly arousing himself +he addressed her, formally condoled with her, and made the usual +professional inquiries about what had happened to her, and where +she was hurt. + +"That's what I want you to tell me," she murmured, in tones of +indefinable reserve. "I quite believe in you, for I know you are +very accomplished, because you study so hard." + +"I'll do my best to justify your good opinion," said the young +man, bowing. "And none the less that I am happy to find the +accident has not been serious." + +"I am very much shaken," she said. + +"Oh yes," he replied; and completed his examination, which +convinced him that there was really nothing the matter with her, +and more than ever puzzled him as to why he had been fetched, +since she did not appear to be a timid woman. "You must rest a +while, and I'll send something," he said. + +"Oh, I forgot," she returned. "Look here." And she showed him a +little scrape on her arm--the full round arm that was exposed. +"Put some court-plaster on that, please." + +He obeyed. "And now," she said, "before you go I want to put a +question to you. Sit round there in front of me, on that low +chair, and bring the candles, or one, to the little table. Do you +smoke? Yes? That's right--I am learning. Take one of these; and +here's a light." She threw a matchbox across. + +Fitzpiers caught it, and having lit up, regarded her from his new +position, which, with the shifting of the candles, for the first +time afforded him a full view of her face. "How many years have +passed since first we met!" she resumed, in a voice which she +mainly endeavored to maintain at its former pitch of composure, +and eying him with daring bashfulness. + +"WE met, do you say?" + +She nodded. "I saw you recently at an hotel in London, when you +were passing through, I suppose, with your bride, and I recognized +you as one I had met in my girlhood. Do you remember, when you +were studying at Heidelberg, an English family that was staying +there, who used to walk--" + +"And the young lady who wore a long tail of rare-colored hair--ah, +I see it before my eyes!--who lost her gloves on the Great +Terrace--who was going back in the dusk to find them--to whom I +said, 'I'll go for them,' and you said, 'Oh, they are not worth +coming all the way up again for.' I DO remember, and how very long +we stayed talking there! I went next morning while the dew was on +the grass: there they lay--the little fingers sticking out damp +and thin. I see them now! I picked them up, and then--" + +"Well?" + +"I kissed them," he rejoined, rather shamefacedly. + +"But you had hardly ever seen me except in the dusk?" + +"Never mind. I was young then, and I kissed them. I wondered how +I could make the most of my trouvaille, and decided that I would +call at your hotel with them that afternoon. It rained, and I +waited till next day. I called, and you were gone." + +"Yes," answered she, with dry melancholy. "My mother, knowing my +disposition, said she had no wish for such a chit as me to go +falling in love with an impecunious student, and spirited me away +to Baden. As it is all over and past I'll tell you one thing: I +should have sent you a line passing warm had I known your name. +That name I never knew till my maid said, as you passed up the +hotel stairs a month ago, 'There's Dr. Fitzpiers.'" + +"Good Heaven!" said Fitzpiers, musingly. "How the time comes back +to me! The evening, the morning, the dew, the spot. When I found +that you really were gone it was as if a cold iron had been passed +down my back. I went up to where you had stood when I last saw +you---I flung myself on the grass, and--being not much more than a +boy--my eyes were literally blinded with tears. Nameless, unknown +to me as you were, I couldn't forget your voice." + +"For how long?" + +"Oh--ever so long. Days and days." + +"Days and days! ONLY days and days? Oh, the heart of a man! Days +and days!" + +"But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. +It was not a full-blown love--it was the merest bud--red, fresh, +vivid, but small. It was a colossal passion in posse, a giant in +embryo. It never matured." + +"So much the better, perhaps." + +"Perhaps. But see how powerless is the human will against +predestination. We were prevented meeting; we have met. One +feature of the case remains the same amid many changes. You are +still rich, and I am still poor. Better than that, you have +(judging by your last remark) outgrown the foolish, impulsive +passions of your early girl-hood. I have not outgrown mine." + +"I beg your pardon," said she, with vibrations of strong feeling +in her words. "I have been placed in a position which hinders +such outgrowings. Besides, I don't believe that the genuine +subjects of emotion do outgrow them; I believe that the older such +people get the worse they are. Possibly at ninety or a hundred +they may feel they are cured; but a mere threescore and ten won't +do it--at least for me." + +He gazed at her in undisguised admiration. Here was a soul of +souls! + +"Mrs. Charmond, you speak truly," he exclaimed. "But you speak +sadly as well. Why is that?" + +"I always am sad when I come here," she said, dropping to a low +tone with a sense of having been too demonstrative. + +"Then may I inquire why you came?" + +"A man brought me. Women are always carried about like corks upon +the waves of masculine desires....I hope I have not alarmed you; +but Hintock has the curious effect of bottling up the emotions +till one can no longer hold them; I am often obliged to fly away +and discharge my sentiments somewhere, or I should die outright." + +"There is very good society in the county for those who have the +privilege of entering it." + +"Perhaps so. But the misery of remote country life is that your +neighbors have no toleration for difference of opinion and habit. +My neighbors think I am an atheist, except those who think I am a +Roman Catholic; and when I speak disrespectfully of the weather or +the crops they think I am a blasphemer." + +She broke into a low musical laugh at the idea. + +"You don't wish me to stay any longer?" he inquired, when he found +that she remained musing. + +"No--I think not." + +"Then tell me that I am to be gone." + +"Why? Cannot you go without?" + +"I may consult my own feelings only, if left to myself." + +"Well, if you do, what then? Do you suppose you'll be in my way?" + +"I feared it might be so." + +"Then fear no more. But good-night. Come to-morrow and see if I +am going on right. This renewal of acquaintance touches me. I +have already a friendship for you." + +"If it depends upon myself it shall last forever." + +"My best hopes that it may. Good-by." + +Fitzpiers went down the stairs absolutely unable to decide whether +she had sent for him in the natural alarm which might have +followed her mishap, or with the single view of making herself +known to him as she had done, for which the capsize had afforded +excellent opportunity. Outside the house he mused over the spot +under the light of the stars. It seemed very strange that he +should have come there more than once when its inhabitant was +absent, and observed the house with a nameless interest; that he +should have assumed off-hand before he knew Grace that it was here +she lived; that, in short, at sundry times and seasons the +individuality of Hintock House should have forced itself upon him +as appertaining to some existence with which he was concerned. + +The intersection of his temporal orbit with Mrs. Charmond's for a +day or two in the past had created a sentimental interest in her +at the time, but it had been so evanescent that in the ordinary +onward roll of affairs he would scarce ever have recalled it +again. To find her here, however, in these somewhat romantic +circumstances, magnified that by-gone and transitory tenderness to +indescribable proportions. + +On entering Little Hintock he found himself regarding it in a new +way--from the Hintock House point of view rather than from his own +and the Melburys'. The household had all gone to bed, and as he +went up-stairs he heard the snore of the timber-merchant from his +quarter of the building, and turned into the passage communicating +with his own rooms in a strange access of sadness. A light was +burning for him in the chamber; but Grace, though in bed, was not +asleep. In a moment her sympathetic voice came from behind the +curtains. + +"Edgar, is she very seriously hurt?" + +Fitzpiers had so entirely lost sight of Mrs. Charmond as a patient +that he was not on the instant ready with a reply. + +"Oh no," he said. "There are no bones broken, but she is shaken. +I am going again to-morrow." + +Another inquiry or two, and Grace said, + +"Did she ask for me?" + +"Well--I think she did--I don't quite remember; but I am under the +impression that she spoke of you." + +"Cannot you recollect at all what she said?" + +"I cannot, just this minute." + +"At any rate she did not talk much about me?" said Grace with +disappointment. + +"Oh no." + +"But you did, perhaps," she added, innocently fishing for a +compliment. + +"Oh yes--you may depend upon that!" replied he, warmly, though +scarcely thinking of what he was saving, so vividly was there +present to his mind the personality of Mrs. Charmond. + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + + +The doctor's professional visit to Hintock House was promptly +repeated the next day and the next. He always found Mrs. Charmond +reclining on a sofa, and behaving generally as became a patient +who was in no great hurry to lose that title. On each occasion he +looked gravely at the little scratch on her arm, as if it had been +a serious wound. + +He had also, to his further satisfaction, found a slight scar on +her temple, and it was very convenient to put a piece of black +plaster on this conspicuous part of her person in preference to +gold-beater's skin, so that it might catch the eyes of the +servants, and make his presence appear decidedly necessary, in +case there should be any doubt of the fact. + +"Oh--you hurt me!" she exclaimed one day. + +He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under which the +scrape had turned the color of an unripe blackberry previous to +vanishing altogether. "Wait a moment, then--I'll damp it," said +Fitzpiers. He put his lips to the place and kept them there till +the plaster came off easily. "It was at your request I put it +on," said he. + +"I know it," she replied. "Is that blue vein still in my temple +that used to show there? The scar must be just upon it. If the +cut had been a little deeper it would have spilt my hot blood +indeed!" Fitzpiers examined so closely that his breath touched her +tenderly, at which their eyes rose to an encounter--hers showing +themselves as deep and mysterious as interstellar space. She +turned her face away suddenly. "Ah! none of that! none of that--I +cannot coquet with you!" she cried. "Don't suppose I consent to +for one moment. Our poor, brief, youthful hour of love-making was +too long ago to bear continuing now. It is as well that we should +understand each other on that point before we go further." + +"Coquet! Nor I with you. As it was when I found the historic +gloves, so it is now. I might have been and may be foolish; but I +am no trifler. I naturally cannot forget that little space in +which I flitted across the field of your vision in those days of +the past, and the recollection opens up all sorts of imaginings." + +"Suppose my mother had not taken me away?" she murmured, her +dreamy eyes resting on the swaying tip of a distant tree. + +"I should have seen you again." + +"And then?" + +"Then the fire would have burned higher and higher. What would +have immediately followed I know not; but sorrow and sickness of +heart at last." + +"Why?" + +"Well--that's the end of all love, according to Nature's law. I +can give no other reason." + +"Oh, don't speak like that," she exclaimed. "Since we are only +picturing the possibilities of that time, don't, for pity's sake, +spoil the picture." Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she +added, with an incipient pout upon her full lips, "Let me think at +least that if you had really loved me at all seriously, you would +have loved me for ever and ever!" + +"You are right--think it with all your heart," said he. "It is a +pleasant thought, and costs nothing." + +She weighed that remark in silence a while. "Did you ever hear +anything of me from then till now?" she inquired. + +"Not a word." + +"So much the better. I had to fight the battle of life as well as +you. I may tell you about it some day. But don't ever ask me to +do it, and particularly do not press me to tell you now." + +Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender +acquaintance on the romantic slopes above the Neckar were +stretched out in retrospect to the length and importance of years; +made to form a canvas for infinite fancies, idle dreams, luxurious +melancholies, and sweet, alluring assertions which could neither +be proved nor disproved. Grace was never mentioned between them, +but a rumor of his proposed domestic changes somehow reached her +ears. + +"Doctor, you are going away," she exclaimed, confronting him with +accusatory reproach in her large dark eyes no less than in her +rich cooing voice. "Oh yes, you are," she went on, springing to +her feet with an air which might almost have been called +passionate. "It is no use denying it. You have bought a practice +at Budmouth. I don't blame you. Nobody can live at Hintock-- +least of all a professional man who wants to keep abreast of +recent discovery. And there is nobody here to induce such a one +to stay for other reasons. That's right, that's right--go away!" + +"But no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, though I +am indeed in treaty for it. And, my dear friend, if I continue to +feel about the business as I feel at this moment--perhaps I may +conclude never to go at all." + +"But you hate Hintock, and everybody and everything in it that you +don't mean to take away with you?" + +Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory tones, and +she lapsed into the frivolous archness under which she hid +passions of no mean strength--strange, smouldering, erratic +passions, kept down like a stifled conflagration, but bursting out +now here, now there--the only certain element in their direction +being its unexpectedness. If one word could have expressed her it +would have been Inconsequence. She was a woman of perversities, +delighting in frequent contrasts. She liked mystery, in her life, +in her love, in her history. To be fair to her, there was nothing +in the latter which she had any great reason to be ashamed of, and +many things of which she might have been proud; but it had never +been fathomed by the honest minds of Hintock, and she rarely +volunteered her experiences. As for her capricious nature, the +people on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that +marvellous subtlety of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, +that is found in sons of the soil and dependants generally, they +managed to get along under her government rather better than they +would have done beneath a more equable rule. + +Now, with regard to the doctor's notion of leaving Hintock, he had +advanced furthur towards completing the purchase of the Budmouth +surgeon's good-will than he had admitted to Mrs. Charmond. The +whole matter hung upon what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four +hours. The evening after leaving her he went out into the lane, +and walked and pondered between the high hedges, now greenish- +white with wild clematis--here called "old-man's beard," from its +aspect later in the year. + +The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, after which +his departure from Hintock would be irrevocable. But could he go +away, remembering what had just passed? The trees, the hills, the +leaves, the grass--each had been endowed and quickened with a +subtle charm since he had discovered the person and history, and, +above all, mood of their owner. There was every temporal reason +for leaving; it would be entering again into a world which he had +only quitted in a passion for isolation, induced by a fit of +Achillean moodiness after an imagined slight. His wife herself +saw the awkwardness of their position here, and cheerfully +welcomed the purposed change, towards which every step had been +taken but the last. But could he find it in his heart--as he +found it clearly enough in his conscience--to go away? + +He drew a troubled breath, and went in-doors. Here he rapidly +penned a letter, wherein he withdrew once for all from the treaty +for the Budmouth practice. As the postman had already left Little +Hintock for that night, he sent one of Melbury's men to intercept +a mail-cart on another turnpike-road, and so got the letter off. + +The man returned, met Fitzpiers in the lane, and told him the +thing was done. Fitzpiers went back to his house musing. Why had +he carried out this impulse--taken such wild trouble to effect a +probable injury to his own and his young wife's prospects? His +motive was fantastic, glowing, shapeless as the fiery scenery +about the western sky. Mrs. Charmond could overtly be nothing +more to him than a patient now, and to his wife, at the outside, a +patron. In the unattached bachelor days of his first sojourning +here how highly proper an emotional reason for lingering on would +have appeared to troublesome dubiousness. Matrimonial ambition is +such an honorable thing. + +"My father has told me that you have sent off one of the men with +a late letter to Budmouth," cried Grace, coming out vivaciously to +meet him under the declining light of the sky, wherein hung, +solitary, the folding star. "I said at once that you had finally +agreed to pay the premium they ask, and that the tedious question +had been settled. When do we go, Edgar?" + +"I have altered my mind," said he. "They want too much--seven +hundred and fifty is too large a sum--and in short, I have +declined to go further. We must wait for another opportunity. I +fear I am not a good business-man." He spoke the last words with a +momentary faltering at the great foolishness of his act; for, as +he looked in her fair and honorable face, his heart reproached him +for what he had done. + +Her manner that evening showed her disappointment. Personally she +liked the home of her childhood much, and she was not ambitious. +But her husband had seemed so dissatisfied with the circumstances +hereabout since their marriage that she had sincerely hoped to go +for his sake. + +It was two or three days before he visited Mrs. Charmond again. +The morning had been windy, and little showers had sowed +themselves like grain against the walls and window-panes of the +Hintock cottages. He went on foot across the wilder recesses of +the park, where slimy streams of green moisture, exuding from +decayed holes caused by old amputations, ran down the bark of the +oaks and elms, the rind below being coated with a lichenous wash +as green as emerald. They were stout-trunked trees, that never +rocked their stems in the fiercest gale, responding to it entirely +by crooking their limbs. Wrinkled like an old crone's face, and +antlered with dead branches that rose above the foliage of their +summits, they were nevertheless still green--though yellow had +invaded the leaves of other trees. + +She was in a little boudoir or writing-room on the first floor, +and Fitzpiers was much surprised to find that the window-curtains +were closed and a red-shaded lamp and candles burning, though out- +of-doors it was broad daylight. Moreover, a large fire was +burning in the grate, though it was not cold. + +"What does it all mean?" he asked. + +She sat in an easy-chair, her face being turned away. "Oh," she +murmured, "it is because the world is so dreary outside. Sorrow +and bitterness in the sky, and floods of agonized tears beating +against the panes. I lay awake last night, and I could hear the +scrape of snails creeping up the window-glass; it was so sad! My +eyes were so heavy this morning that I could have wept my life +away. I cannot bear you to see my face; I keep it away from you +purposely. Oh! why were we given hungry hearts and wild desires +if we have to live in a world like this? Why should Death only +lend what Life is compelled to borrow--rest? Answer that, Dr. +Fitzpiers." + +"You must eat of a second tree of knowledge before you can do it, +Felice Charmond." + +"Then, when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I become full +of fears, till I think I shall die for very fear. The terrible +insistencies of society--how severe they are, and cold and +inexorable--ghastly towards those who are made of wax and not of +stone. Oh, I am afraid of them; a stab for this error, and a stab +for that--correctives and regulations framed that society may tend +to perfection--an end which I don't care for in the least. Yet +for this, all I do care for has to be stunted and starved." + +Fitzpiers had seated himself near her. "What sets you in this +mournful mood?" he asked, gently. (In reality he knew that it was +the result of a loss of tone from staying in-doors so much, but he +did not say so.) + +"My reflections. Doctor, you must not come here any more. They +begin to think it a farce already. I say you must come no more. +There--don't be angry with me;" and she jumped up, pressed his +hand, and looked anxiously at him. "It is necessary. It is best +for both you and me." + +"But," said Fitzpiers, gloomily, "what have we done?" + +"Done--we have done nothing. Perhaps we have thought the more. +However, it is all vexation. I am going away to Middleton Abbey, +near Shottsford, where a relative of my late husband lives, who is +confined to her bed. The engagement was made in London, and I +can't get out of it. Perhaps it is for the best that I go there +till all this is past. When are you going to enter on your new +practice, and leave Hintock behind forever, with your pretty wife +on your arm?" + +"I have refused the opportunity. I love this place too well to +depart." + +"You HAVE?" she said, regarding him with wild uncertainty. + +"Why do you ruin yourself in that way? Great Heaven, what have I +done!" + +"Nothing. Besides, you are going away." + +"Oh yes; but only to Middleton Abbey for a month or two. Yet +perhaps I shall gain strength there--particularly strength of +mind--I require it. And when I come back I shall be a new woman; +and you can come and see me safely then, and bring your wife with +you, and we'll be friends--she and I. Oh, how this shutting up of +one's self does lead to indulgence in idle sentiments. I shall +not wish you to give your attendance to me after to-day. But I am +glad that you are not going away--if your remaining does not +injure your prospects at all." + +As soon as he had left the room the mild friendliness she had +preserved in her tone at parting, the playful sadness with which +she had conversed with him, equally departed from her. She became +as heavy as lead--just as she had been before he arrived. Her +whole being seemed to dissolve in a sad powerlessness to do +anything, and the sense of it made her lips tremulous and her +closed eyes wet. His footsteps again startled her, and she turned +round. + +"I returned for a moment to tell you that the evening is going to +be fine. The sun is shining; so do open your curtains and put out +those lights. Shall I do it for you?" + +"Please--if you don't mind." + +He drew back the window-curtains, whereupon the red glow of the +lamp and the two candle-flames became almost invisible with the +flood of late autumn sunlight that poured in. "Shall I come round +to you?" he asked, her back being towards him. + +"No," she replied. + +"Why not?" + +"Because I am crying, and I don't want to see you." + +He stood a moment irresolute, and regretted that he had killed the +rosy, passionate lamplight by opening the curtains and letting in +garish day. + +"Then I am going," he said. + +"Very well," she answered, stretching one hand round to him, and +patting her eyes with a handkerchief held in the other. + +"Shall I write a line to you at--" + +"No, no." A gentle reasonableness came into her tone as she added, +"It must not be, you know. It won't do." + +"Very well. Good-by." The next moment he was gone. + +In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged the maid +who dressed her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitzpiers's marriage. + +"Mrs. Fitzpiers was once supposed to favor Mr. Winterborne," said +the young woman. + +"And why didn't she marry him?" said Mrs. Charmond. + +"Because, you see, ma'am, he lost his houses." + +"Lost his houses? How came he to do that?" + +"The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your +agent wouldn't renew them, though it is said that Mr. Winterborne +had a very good claim. That's as I've heard it, ma'am, and it was +through it that the match was broke off." + +Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. Charmond sunk +into a mood of dismal self-reproach. "In refusing that poor man +his reasonable request," she said to herself, "I foredoomed my +rejuvenated girlhood's romance. Who would have thought such a +business matter could have nettled my own heart like this? Now for +a winter of regrets and agonies and useless wishes, till I forget +him in the spring. Oh! I am glad I am going away." + +She left her chamber and went down to dine with a sigh. On the +stairs she stood opposite the large window for a moment, and +looked out upon the lawn. It was not yet quite dark. Half-way up +the steep green slope confronting her stood old Timothy Tangs, who +was shortening his way homeward by clambering here where there was +no road, and in opposition to express orders that no path was to +be made there. Tangs had momentarily stopped to take a pinch of +snuff; but observing Mrs. Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to +get over the top out of hail. His precipitancy made him miss his +footing, and he rolled like a barrel to the bottom, his snuffbox +rolling in front of him. + +Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers; her +constitutional cloud of misery; the sorrowful drops that still +hung upon her eyelashes, all made way for the incursive mood +started by the spectacle. She burst into an immoderate fit of +laughter, her very gloom of the previous hour seeming to render it +the more uncontrollable. It had not died out of her when she +reached the dining-room; and even here, before the servants, her +shoulders suddenly shook as the scene returned upon her; and the +tears of her hilarity mingled with the remnants of those +engendered by her grief. + +She resolved to be sad no more. She drank two glasses of +champagne, and a little more still after those, and amused herself +in the evening with singing little amatory songs. + +"I must do something for that poor man Winterborne, however," she +said. + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + + +A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmond had left Hintock House. +Middleton Abbey, the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles +distant by road, eighteen by bridle-paths and footways. + +Grace observed, for the first time, that her husband was restless, +that at moments he even was disposed to avoid her. The scrupulous +civility of mere acquaintanceship crept into his manner; yet, when +sitting at meals, he seemed hardly to hear her remarks. Her +little doings interested him no longer, while towards her father +his bearing was not far from supercilious. It was plain that his +mind was entirely outside her life, whereabouts outside it she +could not tell; in some region of science, possibly, or of +psychological literature. But her hope that he was again +immersing himself in those lucubrations which before her marriage +had made his light a landmark in Hintock, was founded simply on +the slender fact that he often sat up late. + +One evening she discovered him leaning over a gate on Rub-Down +Hill, the gate at which Winterborne had once been standing, and +which opened on the brink of a steep, slanting down directly into +Blackmoor Vale, or the Vale of the White Hart, extending beneath +the eye at this point to a distance of many miles. His attention +was fixed on the landscape far away, and Grace's approach was so +noiseless that he did not hear her. When she came close she could +see his lips moving unconsciously, as to some impassioned +visionary theme. + +She spoke, and Fitzpiers started. "What are you looking at?" she +asked. + +"Oh! I was contemplating our old place of Buckbury, in my idle +way," he said. + +It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that +cradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity; but she made no further +observation, and taking his arm walked home beside him almost in +silence. She did not know that Middleton Abbey lay in the +direction of his gaze. "Are you going to have out Darling this +afternoon?" she asked, presently. Darling being the light-gray +mare which Winterborne had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers +now constantly used, the animal having turned out a wonderful +bargain, in combining a perfect docility with an almost human +intelligence; moreover, she was not too young. Fitzpiers was +unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these qualities. + +"Yes," he replied, "but not to drive. I am riding her. I +practise crossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I +can take much shorter cuts on horseback." + +He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week, +only since Mrs. Charmond's absence, his universal practice +hitherto having been to drive. + +Some few days later, Fitzpiers started on the back of this horse +to see a patient in the aforesaid Vale. It was about five o'clock +in the evening when he went away, and at bedtime he had not +reached home. There was nothing very singular in this, though she +was not aware that he had any patient more than five or six miles +distant in that direction. The clock had struck one before +Fitzpiers entered the house, and he came to his room softly, as if +anxious not to disturb her. + +The next morning she was stirring considerably earlier than he. + +In the yard there was a conversation going on about the mare; the +man who attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that +the latter was "hag-rid;" for when he had arrived at the stable +that morning she was in such a state as no horse could be in by +honest riding. It was true that the doctor had stabled her +himself when he got home, so that she was not looked after as she +would have been if he had groomed and fed her; but that did not +account for the appearance she presented, if Mr. Fitzpiers's +journey had been only where he had stated. The phenomenal +exhaustion of Darling, as thus related, was sufficient to develop +a whole series of tales about riding witches and demons, the +narration of which occupied a considerable time. + +Grace returned in-doors. In passing through the outer room she +picked up her husband's overcoat which he had carelessly flung +down across a chair. A turnpike ticket fell out of the breast- +pocket, and she saw that it had been issued at Middleton Gate. He +had therefore visited Middleton the previous night, a distance of +at least five-and-thirty miles on horseback, there and back. + +During the day she made some inquiries, and learned for the first +time that Mrs. Charmond was staying at Middleton Abbey. She could +not resist an inference--strange as that inference was. + +A few days later he prepared to start again, at the same time and +in the same direction. She knew that the state of the cottager +who lived that way was a mere pretext; she was quite sure he was +going to Mrs. Charmond. Grace was amazed at the mildness of the +passion which the suspicion engendered in her. She was but little +excited, and her jealousy was languid even to death. It told +tales of the nature of her affection for him. In truth, her +antenuptial regard for Fitzpiers had been rather of the quality of +awe towards a superior being than of tender solicitude for a +lover. It had been based upon mystery and strangeness--the +mystery of his past, of his knowledge, of his professional skill, +of his beliefs. When this structure of ideals was demolished by +the intimacy of common life, and she found him as merely human as +the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demand for +an enduring and stanch affection--a sympathetic interdependence, +wherein mutual weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive +alliance. Fitzpiers had furnished none of that single-minded +confidence and truth out of which alone such a second union could +spring; hence it was with a controllable emotion that she now +watched the mare brought round. + +"I'll walk with you to the hill if you are not in a great hurry," +she said, rather loath, after all, to let him go. + +"Do; there's plenty of time," replied her husband. Accordingly he +led along the horse, and walked beside her, impatient enough +nevertheless. Thus they proceeded to the turnpike road, and +ascended Rub-Down Hill to the gate he had been leaning over when +she surprised him ten days before. This was the end of her +excursion. Fitzpiers bade her adieu with affection, even with +tenderness, and she observed that he looked weary-eyed. + +"Why do you go to-night?" she said. "You have been called up two +nights in succession already." + +"I must go," he answered, almost gloomily. "Don't wait up for +me." With these words he mounted his horse, passed through the +gate which Grace held open for him, and ambled down the steep +bridle-track to the valley. + +She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then his journey +onward. His way was east, the evening sun which stood behind her +back beaming full upon him as soon as he got out from the shade of +the hill. Notwithstanding this untoward proceeding she was +determined to be loyal if he proved true; and the determination to +love one's best will carry a heart a long way towards making that +best an ever-growing thing. The conspicuous coat of the active +though blanching mare made horse and rider easy objects for the +vision. Though Darling had been chosen with such pains by +Winterborne for Grace, she had never ridden the sleek creature; +but her husband had found the animal exceedingly convenient, +particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of +staying power being left in Darling yet. Fitzpiers, like others +of his character, while despising Melbury and his station, did not +at all disdain to spend Melbury's money, or appropriate to his own +use the horse which belonged to Melbury's daughter. + +And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through the +gorgeous autumn landscape of White Hart Vale, surrounded by +orchards lustrous with the reds of apple-crops, berries, and +foliage, the whole intensified by the gilding of the declining +sun. The earth this year had been prodigally bountiful, and now +was the supreme moment of her bounty. In the poorest spots the +hedges were bowed with haws and blackberries; acorns cracked +underfoot, and the burst husks of chestnuts lay exposing their +auburn contents as if arranged by anxious sellers in a fruit- +market. In all this proud show some kernels were unsound as her +own situation, and she wondered if there were one world in the +universe where the fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow. + +Herr Tannhauser still moved on, his plodding steed rendering him +distinctly visible yet. Could she have heard Fitzpiers's voice at +that moment she would have found him murmuring-- + + + "...Towards the loadstar of my one desire + I flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the owlet light." + + +But he was a silent spectacle to her now. Soon he rose out of the +valley, and skirted a high plateau of the chalk formation on his +right, which rested abruptly upon the fruity district of loamy +clay, the character and herbage of the two formations being so +distinct that the calcareous upland appeared but as a deposit of a +few years' antiquity upon the level vale. He kept along the edge +of this high, unenclosed country, and the sky behind him being +deep violet, she could still see white Darling in relief upon it-- +a mere speck now--a Wouvermans eccentricity reduced to microscopic +dimensions. Upon this high ground he gradually disappeared. + +Thus she had beheld the pet animal purchased for her own use, in +pure love of her, by one who had always been true, impressed to +convey her husband away from her to the side of a new-found idol. +While she was musing on the vicissitudes of horses and wives, she +discerned shapes moving up the valley towards her, quite near at +hand, though till now hidden by the hedges. Surely they were +Giles Winterborne, with his two horses and cider-apparatus, +conducted by Robert Creedle. Up, upward they crept, a stray beam +of the sun alighting every now and then like a star on the blades +of the pomace-shovels, which had been converted to steel mirrors +by the action of the malic acid. She opened the gate when he came +close, and the panting horses rested as they achieved the ascent. + +"How do you do, Giles?" said she, under a sudden impulse to be +familiar with him. + +He replied with much more reserve. "You are going for a walk, +Mrs. Fitzpiers?" he added. "It is pleasant just now." + +"No, I am returning," said she. + +The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and Winterborne +walked by her side in the rear of the apple-mill. + +He looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being +sunburnt to wheat-color, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots +and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the +sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere +about him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return each +season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have +been born and bred among the orchards. Her heart rose from its +late sadness like a released spring; her senses revelled in the +sudden lapse back to nature unadorned. The consciousness of +having to be genteel because of her husband's profession, the +veneer of artificiality which she had acquired at the fashionable +schools, were thrown off, and she became the crude, country girl +of her latent, earliest instincts. + +Nature was bountiful, she thought. No sooner had she been starved +off by Edgar Fitzpiers than another being, impersonating bare and +undiluted manliness, had arisen out of the earth, ready to hand. +This was an excursion of the imagination which she did not +encourage, and she said suddenly, to disguise the confused regard +which had followed her thoughts, "Did you meet my husband?" + +Winterborne, with some hesitation, "Yes." + +"Where did you meet him?" + +"At Calfhay Cross. I come from Middleton Abbey; I have been +making there for the last week." + +"Haven't they a mill of their own?" + +"Yes, but it's out of repair." + +"I think--I heard that Mrs. Charmond had gone there to stay?" + +"Yes. I have seen her at the windows once or twice." + +Grace waited an interval before she went on: "Did Mr. Fitzpiers +take the way to Middleton?" + +"Yes...I met him on Darling." As she did not reply, he added, with +a gentler inflection, "You know why the mare was called that?" + +"Oh yes--of course," she answered, quickly. + +They had risen so far over the crest of the hill that the whole +west sky was revealed. Between the broken clouds they could see +far into the recesses of heaven, the eye journeying on under a +species of golden arcades, and past fiery obstructions, fancied +cairns, logan-stones, stalactites and stalagmite of topaz. Deeper +than this their gaze passed thin flakes of incandescence, till it +plunged into a bottomless medium of soft green fire. + +Her abandonment to the luscious time after her sense of ill-usage, +her revolt for the nonce against social law, her passionate desire +for primitive life, may have showed in her face. Winterborne was +looking at her, his eyes lingering on a flower that she wore in +her bosom. Almost with the abstraction of a somnambulist he +stretched out his hand and gently caressed the flower. + +She drew back. "What are you doing, Giles Winterborne!" she +exclaimed, with a look of severe surprise. The evident absence of +all premeditation from the act, however, speedily led her to think +that it was not necessary to stand upon her dignity here and now. +"You must bear in mind, Giles," she said, kindly, "that we are not +as we were; and some people might have said that what you did was +taking a liberty." + +It was more than she need have told him; his action of +forgetfulness had made him so angry with himself that he flushed +through his tan. "I don't know what I am coming to!" he +exclaimed, savagely. "Ah--I was not once like this!" Tears of +vexation were in his eyes. + +"No, now--it was nothing. I was too reproachful." + +"It would not have occurred to me if I had not seen something like +it done elsewhere--at Middleton lately," he said, thoughtfully, +after a while. + +"By whom?" + +"Don't ask it." + +She scanned him narrowly. "I know quite well enough," she +returned, indifferently. "It was by my husband, and the woman was +Mrs. Charmond. Association of ideas reminded you when you saw +me....Giles--tell me all you know about that--please do, Giles! +But no--I won't hear it. Let the subject cease. And as you are +my friend, say nothing to my father." + +They reached a place where their ways divided. Winterborne +continued along the highway which kept outside the copse, and +Grace opened a gate that entered it. + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + + +She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand by +nut-bushes, just now heavy with clusters of twos and threes and +fours. A little way on, the track she pursued was crossed by a +similar one at right angles. Here Grace stopped; some few yards +up the transverse ride the buxom Suke Damson was visible--her gown +tucked up high through her pocket-hole, and no bonnet on her head-- +in the act of pulling down boughs from which she was gathering +and eating nuts with great rapidity, her lover Tim Tangs standing +near her engaged in the same pleasant meal. + +Crack, crack went Suke's jaws every second or two. By an +automatic chain of thought Grace's mind reverted to the tooth- +drawing scene described by her husband; and for the first time she +wondered if that narrative were really true, Susan's jaws being so +obviously sound and strong. Grace turned up towards the nut- +gatherers, and conquered her reluctance to speak to the girl who +was a little in advance of Tim. "Good-evening, Susan," she said. + +"Good-evening, Miss Melbury" (crack). + +"Mrs. Fitzpiers." + +"Oh yes, ma'am--Mrs. Fitzpiers," said Suke, with a peculiar smile. + +Grace, not to be daunted, continued: "Take care of your teeth, +Suke. That accounts for the toothache." + +"I don't know what an ache is, either in tooth, ear, or head, +thank the Lord" (crack). + +"Nor the loss of one, either?" + +"See for yourself, ma'am." She parted her red lips, and exhibited +the whole double row, full up and unimpaired. + +"You have never had one drawn?" + +"Never." + +"So much the better for your stomach," said Mrs. Fitzpiers, in an +altered voice. And turning away quickly, she went on. + +As her husband's character thus shaped itself under the touch of +time, Grace was almost startled to find how little she suffered +from that jealous excitement which is conventionally attributed to +all wives in such circumstances. But though possessed by none of +that feline wildness which it was her moral duty to experience, +she did not fail to know that she had made a frightful mistake in +her marriage. Acquiescence in her father's wishes had been +degradation to herself. People are not given premonitions for +nothing; she should have obeyed her impulse on that early morning, +and steadfastly refused her hand. + +Oh, that plausible tale which her then betrothed had told her +about Suke--the dramatic account of her entreaties to him to draw +the aching enemy, and the fine artistic touch he had given to the +story by explaining that it was a lovely molar without a flaw! + +She traced the remainder of the woodland track dazed by the +complications of her position. If his protestations to her before +their marriage could be believed, her husband had felt affection +of some sort for herself and this woman simultaneously; and was +now again spreading the same emotion over Mrs. Charmond and +herself conjointly, his manner being still kind and fond at times. +But surely, rather than that, he must have played the hypocrite +towards her in each case with elaborate completeness; and the +thought of this sickened her, for it involved the conjecture that +if he had not loved her, his only motive for making her his wife +must have been her little fortune. Yet here Grace made a mistake, +for the love of men like Fitzpiers is unquestionably of such +quality as to bear division and transference. He had indeed, once +declared, though not to her, that on one occasion he had noticed +himself to be possessed by five distinct infatuations at the same +time. Therein it differed from the highest affection as the lower +orders of the animal world differ from advanced organisms, +partition causing, not death, but a multiplied existence. He had +loved her sincerely, and had by no means ceased to love her now. +But such double and treble barrelled hearts were naturally beyond +her conception. + +Of poor Suke Damson, Grace thought no more. She had had her day. + +"If he does not love me I will not love him!" said Grace, proudly. +And though these were mere words, it was a somewhat formidable +thing for Fitzpiers that her heart was approximating to a state in +which it might be possible to carry them out. That very absence +of hot jealousy which made his courses so easy, and on which, +indeed, he congratulated himself, meant, unknown to either wife or +husband, more mischief than the inconvenient watchfulness of a +jaundiced eye. + +Her sleep that night was nervous. The wing allotted to her and +her husband had never seemed so lonely. At last she got up, put +on her dressing-gown, and went down-stairs. Her father, who slept +lightly, heard her descend, and came to the stair-head. + +"Is that you, Grace? What's the matter?" he said. + +"Nothing more than that I am restless. Edgar is detained by a +case at Owlscombe in White Hart Vale." + +"But how's that? I saw the woman's husband at Great Hintock just +afore bedtime; and she was going on well, and the doctor gone +then." + +"Then he's detained somewhere else," said Grace. "Never mind me; +he will soon be home. I expect him about one." + +She went back to her room, and dozed and woke several times. One +o'clock had been the hour of his return on the last occasion; but +it passed now by a long way, and Fitzpiers did not come. Just +before dawn she heard the men stirring in the yard; and the +flashes of their lanterns spread every now and then through her +window-blind. She remembered that her father had told her not to +be disturbed if she noticed them, as they would be rising early to +send off four loads of hurdles to a distant sheep-fair. Peeping +out, she saw them bustling about, the hollow-turner among the +rest; he was loading his wares--wooden-bowls, dishes, spigots, +spoons, cheese-vats, funnels, and so on--upon one of her father's +wagons, who carried them to the fair for him every year out of +neighborly kindness. + +The scene and the occasion would have enlivened her but that her +husband was still absent; though it was now five o'clock. She +could hardly suppose him, whatever his infatuation, to have +prolonged to a later hour than ten an ostensibly professional call +on Mrs. Charmond at Middleton; and he could have ridden home in +two hours and a half. What, then, had become of him? That he had +been out the greater part of the two preceding nights added to her +uneasiness. + +She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird twilight +of advancing day chilling the rays from the lanterns, and making +the men's faces wan. As soon as Melbury saw her he came round, +showing his alarm. + +"Edgar is not come," she said. "And I have reason to know that +he's not attending anybody. He has had no rest for two nights +before this. I was going to the top of the hill to look for him." + +"I'll come with you," said Melbury. + +She begged him not to hinder himself; but he insisted, for he saw +a peculiar and rigid gloom in her face over and above her +uneasiness, and did not like the look of it. Telling the men he +would be with them again soon, he walked beside her into the +turnpike-road, and partly up the hill whence she had watched +Fitzpiers the night before across the Great White Hart or +Blackmoor Valley. They halted beneath a half-dead oak, hollow, +and disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading out like +accipitrine claws grasping the ground. A chilly wind circled +round them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime- +tree, supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of +the boughs downward like fledglings from their nest. The vale was +wrapped in a dim atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was +like a livid curtain edged with pink. There was no sign nor sound +of Fitzpiers. + +"It is no use standing here," said her father. "He may come home +fifty ways...why, look here!--here be Darling's tracks--turned +homeward and nearly blown dry and hard! He must have come in hours +ago without your seeing him." + +"He has not done that," said she. + +They went back hastily. On entering their own gates they +perceived that the men had left the wagons, and were standing +round the door of the stable which had been appropriated to the +doctor's use. "Is there anything the matter?" cried Grace. + +"Oh no, ma'am. All's well that ends well," said old Timothy +Tangs. "I've heard of such things before--among workfolk, though +not among your gentle people--that's true." + +They entered the stable, and saw the pale shape of Darling +standing in the middle of her stall, with Fitzpiers on her back, +sound asleep. Darling was munching hay as well as she could with +the bit in her month, and the reins, which had fallen from +Fitzpiers's hand, hung upon her neck. + +Grace went and touched his hand; shook it before she could arouse +him. He moved, started, opened his eyes, and exclaimed, "Ah, +Felice!...Oh, it's Grace. I could not see in the gloom. What--am +I in the saddle?" + +"Yes," said she. "How do you come here?" + +He collected his thoughts, and in a few minutes stammered, "I was +riding along homeward through the vale, very, very sleepy, having +been up so much of late. When I came opposite Holywell spring the +mare turned her head that way, as if she wanted to drink. I let +her go in, and she drank; I thought she would never finish. While +she was drinking, the clock of Owlscombe Church struck twelve. I +distinctly remember counting the strokes. From that moment I +positively recollect nothing till I saw you here by my side." + +"The name! If it had been any other horse he'd have had a broken +neck!" murmured Melbury. + +"'Tis wonderful, sure, how a quiet hoss will bring a man home at +such times!" said John Upjohn. "And what's more wonderful than +keeping your seat in a deep, slumbering sleep? I've knowed men +drowze off walking home from randies where the mead and other +liquors have gone round well, and keep walking for more than a +mile on end without waking. Well, doctor, I don't care who the +man is, 'tis a mercy you wasn't a drownded, or a splintered, or a +hanged up to a tree like Absalom--also a handsome gentleman like +yerself, as the prophets say." + +"True," murmured old Timothy. "From the soul of his foot to the +crown of his head there was no blemish in him." + +"Or leastwise you might ha' been a-wownded into tatters a'most, +and no doctor to jine your few limbs together within seven mile!" + +While this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpiers had dismounted, +and taking Grace's arm walked stiffly in-doors with her. Melbury +stood staring at the horse, which, in addition to being very +weary, was spattered with mud. There was no mud to speak of about +the Hintocks just now--only in the clammy hollows of the vale +beyond Owlscombe, the stiff soil of which retained moisture for +weeks after the uplands were dry. While they were rubbing down +the mare, Melbury's mind coupled with the foreign quality of the +mud the name he had heard unconsciously muttered by the surgeon +when Grace took his hand--"Felice." Who was Felice? Why, Mrs. +Charmond; and she, as he knew, was staying at Middleton. + +Melbury had indeed pounced upon the image that filled Fitzpiers's +half-awakened soul--wherein there had been a picture of a recent +interview on a lawn with a capriciously passionate woman who had +begged him not to come again in tones whose vibration incited him +to disobey. "What are you doing here? Why do you pursue me? +Another belongs to you. If they were to see you they would seize +you as a thief!" And she had turbulently admitted to his wringing +questions that her visit to Middleton had been undertaken less +because of the invalid relative than in shamefaced fear of her own +weakness if she remained near his home. A triumph then it was to +Fitzpiers, poor and hampered as he had become, to recognize his +real conquest of this beauty, delayed so many years. His was the +selfish passion of Congreve's Millamont, to whom love's supreme +delight lay in "that heart which others bleed for, bleed for me." + +When the horse had been attended to Melbury stood uneasily here +and there about his premises; he was rudely disturbed in the +comfortable views which had lately possessed him on his domestic +concerns. It is true that he had for some days discerned that +Grace more and more sought his company, preferred supervising his +kitchen and bakehouse with her step-mother to occupying herself +with the lighter details of her own apartments. She seemed no +longer able to find in her own hearth an adequate focus for her +life, and hence, like a weak queen-bee after leading off to an +independent home, had hovered again into the parent hive. But he +had not construed these and other incidents of the kind till now. + +Something was wrong in the dove-cot. A ghastly sense that he +alone would be responsible for whatever unhappiness should be +brought upon her for whom he almost solely lived, whom to retain +under his roof he had faced the numerous inconveniences involved +in giving up the best part of his house to Fitzpiers. There was +no room for doubt that, had he allowed events to take their +natural course, she would have accepted Winterborne, and realized +his old dream of restitution to that young man's family. + +That Fitzpiers could allow himself to look on any other creature +for a moment than Grace filled Melbury with grief and +astonishment. In the pure and simple life he had led it had +scarcely occurred to him that after marriage a man might be +faithless. That he could sweep to the heights of Mrs. Charmond's +position, lift the veil of Isis, so to speak, would have amazed +Melbury by its audacity if he had not suspected encouragement from +that quarter. What could he and his simple Grace do to +countervail the passions of such as those two sophisticated +beings--versed in the world's ways, armed with every apparatus for +victory? In such an encounter the homely timber-dealer felt as +inferior as a bow-and-arrow savage before the precise weapons of +modern warfare. + +Grace came out of the house as the morning drew on. The village +was silent, most of the folk having gone to the fair. Fitzpiers +had retired to bed, and was sleeping off his fatigue. She went to +the stable and looked at poor Darling: in all probability Giles +Winterborne, by obtaining for her a horse of such intelligence and +docility, had been the means of saving her husband's life. She +paused over the strange thought; and then there appeared her +father behind her. She saw that he knew things were not as they +ought to be, from the troubled dulness of his eye, and from his +face, different points of which had independent motions, +twitchings, and tremblings, unknown to himself, and involuntary. + +"He was detained, I suppose, last night?" said Melbury. + +"Oh yes; a bad case in the vale," she replied, calmly. + +"Nevertheless, he should have stayed at home." + +"But he couldn't, father." + +Her father turned away. He could hardly bear to see his whilom +truthful girl brought to the humiliation of having to talk like +that. + +That night carking care sat beside Melbury's pillow, and his stiff +limbs tossed at its presence. "I can't lie here any longer," he +muttered. Striking a light, he wandered about the room. "What +have I done--what have I done for her?" he said to his wife, who +had anxiously awakened. "I had long planned that she should marry +the son of the man I wanted to make amends to; do ye mind how I +told you all about it, Lucy, the night before she came home? Ah! +but I was not content with doing right, I wanted to do more!" + +"Don't raft yourself without good need, George," she replied. "I +won't quite believe that things are so much amiss. I won't +believe that Mrs. Charmond has encouraged him. Even supposing she +has encouraged a great many, she can have no motive to do it now. +What so likely as that she is not yet quite well, and doesn't care +to let another doctor come near her?" + +He did not heed. "Grace used to be so busy every day, with fixing +a curtain here and driving a tin-tack there; but she cares for no +employment now!" + +"Do you know anything of Mrs. Charmond's past history? Perhaps +that would throw some light upon things. Pefore she came here as +the wife of old Charmond four or five years ago, not a soul seems +to have heard aught of her. Why not make inquiries? And then do +ye wait and see more; there'll be plenty of opportnnity. Time +enough to cry when you know 'tis a crying matter; and 'tis bad to +meet troubles half-way." + +There was some good-sense in the notion of seeing further. +Melbury resolved to inquire and wait, hoping still, hut oppressed +between-whiles with much fear. + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + + +Examine Grace as her father might, she would admit nothing. For +the present, therefore, he simply watched. + +The suspicion that his darling child was being slighted wrought +almost a miraculous change in Melbury's nature. No man so furtive +for the time as the ingenuous countryman who finds that his +ingenuousness has been abused. Melbury's heretofore confidential +candor towards his gentlemanly son-in-law was displaced by a +feline stealth that did injnry to his every action, thought, and +mood. He knew that a woman once given to a man for life took, as +a rule, her lot as it came and made the best of it, without +external interference; but for the first time he asked himself why +this so generally should be so. Moreover, this case was not, he +argued, like ordinary cases. Leaving out the question of Grace +being anything but an ordinary woman, her peculiar situation, as +it were in mid-air between two planes of society, together with +the loneliness of Hintock, made a husband's neglect a far more +tragical matter to her than it would be to one who had a large +circle of friends to fall back upon. Wisely or unwisely, and +whatever other fathers did, he resolved to fight his daughter's +battle still. + +Mrs. Charmond had returned. But Hintock House scarcely gave forth +signs of life, so quietly had she reentered it. He went to church +at Great Hintock one afternoon as usual, there being no service at +the smaller village. A few minutes before his departure, he had +casually heard Fitzpiers, who was no church-goer, tell his wife +that he was going to walk in the wood. Melbury entered the +building and sat down in his pew; the parson came in, then Mrs. +Charmond, then Mr. Fitzpiers. + +The service proceeded, and the jealons father was quite sure that +a mutual consciousness was uninterruptedly maintained between +those two; he fancied that more than once their eyes met. At the +end, Fitzpiers so timed his movement into the aisle that it +exactly coincided with Felice Charmond's from the opposite side, +and they walked out with their garments in contact, the surgeon +being just that two or three inches in her rear which made it +convenient for his eyes to rest upon her cheek. The cheek warmed +up to a richer tone. + +This was a worse feature in the flirtation than he had expected. +If she had been playing with him in an idle freak the game might +soon have wearied her; but the smallest germ of passion--and women +of the world do not change color for nothing--was a threatening +development. The mere presence of Fitzpiers in the building, +after his statement, was wellnigh conclusive as far as he was +concerned; but Melbury resolved yet to watch. + +He had to wait long. Autumn drew shiveringly to its end. One day +something seemed to be gone from the gardens; the tenderer leaves +of vegetables had shrunk under the first smart frost, and hung +like faded linen rags; then the forest leaves, which had been +descending at leisure, descended in haste and in multitudes, and +all the golden colors that had hung overhead were now crowded +together in a degraded mass underfoot, where the fallen myriads +got redder and hornier, and curled themselves up to rot. The only +suspicious features in Mrs. Charmond's existence at this season +were two: the first, that she lived with no companion or relative +about her, which, considering her age and attractions, was +somewhat unusual conduct for a young widow in a lonely country- +house; the other, that she did not, as in previous years, start +from Hintock to winter abroad. In Fitzpiers, the only change from +his last autnmn's habits lay in his abandonment of night study-- +his lamp never shone from his new dwelling as from his old. + +If the suspected ones met, it was by such adroit contrivances that +even Melbury's vigilance could not encounter them together. A +simple call at her house by the doctor had nothing irregular about +it, and that he had paid two or three such calls was certain. +What had passed at those interviews was known only to the parties +themselves; but that Felice Charmond was under some one's +influence Melbury soon had opportunity of perceiving. + +Winter had come on. Owls began to be noisy in the mornings and +evenings, and flocks of wood-pigeons made themselves prominent +again. One day in February, about six months after the marriage +of Fitzpiers, Melbury was returning from Great Hintock on foot +through the lane, when he saw before him the surgeon also walking. +Melbury would have overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiers +turned in through a gate to one of the rambling drives among the +trees at this side of the wood, which led to nowhere in +particular, and the beauty of whose serpentine curves was the only +justification of their existence. Felice almost simultaneously +trotted down the lane towards the timber-dealer, in a little +basket-carriage which she sometimes drove about the estate, +unaccompanied by a servant. She turned in at the same place +without having seen either Melbury or apparently Fitzpiers. +Melbury was soon at the spot, despite his aches and his sixty +years. Mrs. Charmond had come up with the doctor, who was +standing immediately behind the carriage. She had turned to him, +her arm being thrown carelessly over the back of the seat. They +looked in each other's faces without uttering a word, an arch yet +gloomy smile wreathing her lips. Fitzpiers clasped her hanging +hand, and, while she still remained in the same listless attitude, +looking volumes into his eyes, he stealthily unbuttoned her glove, +and stripped her hand of it by rolling back the gauntlet over the +fingers, so that it came off inside out. He then raised her hand +to his month, she still reclining passively, watching him as she +might have watched a fly upon her dress. At last she said, "Well, +sir, what excuse for this disobedience?" + +"I make none." + +"Then go your way, and let me go mine." She snatched away her +hand, touched the pony with the whip, and left him standing there, +holding the reversed glove. + +Melbury's first impulse was to reveal his presence to Fitzpiers, +and upbraid him bitterly. But a moment's thought was sufficient +to show him the futility of any such simple proceeding. There was +not, after all, so much in what he had witnessed as in what that +scene might be the surface and froth of--probably a state of mind +on which censure operates as an aggravation rather than as a cure. +Moreover, he said to himself that the point of attack should be +the woman, if either. He therefore kept out of sight, and musing +sadly, even tearfully--for he was meek as a child in matters +concerning his daughter--continued his way towards Hintock. + +The insight which is bred of deep sympathy was never more finely +exemplified than in this instance. Through her guarded manner, +her dignified speech, her placid countenance, he discerned the +interior of Grace's life only too truly, hidden as were its +incidents from every outer eye. + +These incidents had become painful enough. Fitzpiers had latterly +developed an irritable discontent which vented itself in +monologues when Grace was present to hear them. The early morning +of this day had been dull, after a night of wind, and on looking +out of the window Fitzpiers had observed some of Melbury's men +dragging away a large limb which had been snapped off a beech- +tree. Everything was cold and colorless. + +"My good Heaven!" he said, as he stood in his dressing-gown. +"This is life!" He did not know whether Grace was awake or not, +and he would not turn his head to ascertain. "Ah, fool," he went +on to himself, "to clip your own wings when you were free to +soar!...But I could not rest till I had done it. Why do I never +recognize an opportunity till I have missed it, nor the good or +ill of a step till it is irrevocable!...I fell in love....Love, +indeed!-- + + + "'Love's but the frailty of the mind + When 'tis not with ambition joined; + A sickly flame which if not fed, expires, + And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires!' + + +Ah, old author of 'The Way of the World,' you knew--you knew!" +Grace moved. He thought she had heard some part of his soliloquy. +He was sorry--though he had not taken any precaution to prevent +her. + +He expected a scene at breakfast, but she only exhibited an +extreme reserve. It was enough, however, to make him repent that +he should have done anything to produce discomfort; for he +attributed her manner entirely to what he had said. But Grace's +manner had not its cause either in his sayings or in his doings. +She had not heard a single word of his regrets. Something even +nearer home than her husband's blighted prospects--if blighted +they were--was the origin of her mood, a mood that was the mere +continuation of what her father had noticed when he would have +preferred a passionate jealousy in her, as the more natural. + +She had made a discovery--one which to a girl of honest nature was +almost appalling. She had looked into her heart, and found that +her early interest in Giles Winterborne had become revitalized +into luxuriant growth by her widening perceptions of what was +great and little in life. His homeliness no longer offended her +acquired tastes; his comparative want of so-called culture did not +now jar on her intellect; his country dress even pleased her eye; +his exterior roughness fascinated her. Having discovered by +marriage how much that was humanly not great could co-exist with +attainments of an exceptional order, there was a revulsion in her +sentiments from all that she had formerly clung to in this kind: +honesty, goodness, manliness, tenderness, devotion, for her only +existed in their purity now in the breasts of unvarnished men; and +here was one who had manifested them towards her from his youth +up. + +There was, further, that never-ceasing pity in her soul for Giles +as a man whom she had wronged--a man who had been unfortunate in +his worldly transactions; while, not without a touch of sublimity, +he had, like Horatio, borne himself throughout his scathing + + + "As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing." + + +It was these perceptions, and no subtle catching of her husband's +murmurs, that had bred the abstraction visible in her. + +When her father approached the house after witnessing the +interview between Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond, Grace was looking +out of her sitting-room window, as if she had nothing to do, or +think of, or care for. He stood still. + +"Ah, Grace," he said, regarding her fixedly. + +"Yes, father," she murmured. + +"Waiting for your dear husband?" he inquired, speaking with the +sarcasm of pitiful affection. + +"Oh no--not especially. He has a great many patients to see this +afternoon." + +Melbury came quite close. "Grace, what's the use of talking like +that, when you know--Here, come down and walk with me out in the +garden, child." + +He unfastened the door in the ivy-laced wall, and waited. This +apparent indifference alarmed him. He would far rather that she +had rushed in all the fire of jealousy to Hintock House, +regardless of conventionality, confronted and attacked Felice +Charmond unguibus et rostro, and accused her even in exaggerated +shape of stealing away her husband. Such a storm might have +cleared the air. + +She emerged in a minute or two, and they went inside together. +"You know as well as I do," he resumed, "that there is something +threatening mischief to your life; and yet you pretend you do not. +Do you suppose I don't see the trouble in your face every day? I +am very sure that this quietude is wrong conduct in you. You +should look more into matters." + +"I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to +action." + +Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions--did she not feel +jealous? was she not indignant? but a natural delicacy restrained +him. "You are very tame and let-alone, I am bound to say," he +remarked, pointedly. + +"I am what I feel, father," she repeated. + +He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the scene of +her offering to wed Winterborne instead of Fitzpiers in the last +days before her marriage; and he asked himself if it could be the +fact that she loved Winterborne, now that she had lost him, more +than she had ever done when she was comparatively free to choose +him. + +"What would you have me do?" she asked, in a low voice. + +He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical +matter before them. "I would have you go to Mrs. Charmond," he +said. + +"Go to Mrs. Charmond--what for?" said she. + +"Well--if I must speak plain, dear Grace--to ask her, appeal to +her in the name of your common womanhood, and your many like +sentiments on things, not to make unhappiness between you and your +husband. It lies with her entirely to do one or the other--that I +can see." + +Grace's face had heated at her father's words, and the very rustle +of her skirts upon the box-edging bespoke hauteur. "I shall not +think of going to her, father--of course I could not!" she +answered. + +"Why--don't 'ee want to be happier than you be at present?" said +Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself. + +"I don't wish to be more humiliated. If I have anything to bear I +can bear it in silence." + +"But, my dear maid, you are too young--you don't know what the +present state of things may lead to. Just see the harm done +a'ready! Your husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a bigger +practice if it had not been for this. Although it has gone such a +little way, it is poisoning your future even now. Mrs. Charmond +is thoughtlessly bad, not bad by calculation; and just a word to +her now might save 'ee a peck of woes." + +"Ah, I loved her once," said Grace, with a broken articulation, +"and she would not care for me then! Now I no longer love her. +Let her do her worst: I don't care." + +"You ought to care. You have got into a very good position to +start with. You have been well educated, well tended, and you +have become the wife of a professional man of unusually good +family. Surely you ought to make the best of your position." + +"I don't see that I ought. I wish I had never got into it. I +wish you had never, never thought of educating me. I wish I +worked in the woods like Marty South. I hate genteel life, and I +want to be no better than she." + +"Why?" said her amazed father. + +"Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and +troubles. I say again, I wish you had never sent me to those +fashionable schools you set your mind on. It all arose out of +that, father. If I had stayed at home I should have married--" +She closed up her mouth suddenly and was silent; and be saw that +she was not far from crying. + +Melbury was much grieved. "What, and would you like to have grown +up as we be here in Hintock--knowing no more, and with no more +chance of seeing good life than we have here?" + +"Yes. I have never got any happiness outside Hintock that I know +of, and I have suffered many a heartache at being sent away. Oh, +the misery of those January days when I had got back to school, +and left you all here in the wood so happy. I used to wonder why +I had to bear it. And I was always a little despised by the other +girls at school, because they knew where I came from, and that my +parents were not in so good a station as theirs." + +Her poor father was much hurt at what he thought her ingratitude +and intractability. He had admitted to himself bitterly enough +that he should have let young hearts have their way, or rather +should have helped on her affection for Winterborne, and given her +to him according to his original plan; but he was not prepared for +her deprecation of those attainments whose completion had been a +labor of years, and a severe tax upon his purse. + +"Very well," he said, with much heaviness of spirit. "If you +don't like to go to her I don't wish to force you." + +And so the question remained for him still: how should he remedy +this perilous state of things? For days he sat in a moody +attitude over the fire, a pitcher of cider standing on the hearth +beside him, and his drinking-horn inverted upon the top of it. He +spent a week and more thus composing a letter to the chief +offender, which he would every now and then attempt to complete, +and suddenly crumple up in his hand. + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + + +As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom +of the woodmen's homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little +began to have ears for a rumor of the events out of which had +grown the timber-dealer's troubles. It took the form of a wide +sprinkling of conjecture, wherein no man knew the exact truth. +Tantalizing phenomena, at once showing and concealing the real +relationship of the persons concerned, caused a diffusion of +excited surprise. Honest people as the woodlanders were, it was +hardly to be expected that they could remain immersed in the study +of their trees and gardens amid such circumstances, or sit with +their backs turned like the good burghers of Coventry at the +passage of the beautiful lady. + +Rumor, for a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in +this case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the +hills, which, with individual variations, made a mourner of +Ariadne, a by-word of Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy. +There were rencounters accidental and contrived, stealthy +correspondence, sudden misgivings on one side, sudden self- +reproaches on the other. The inner state of the twain was one as +of confused noise that would not allow the accents of calmer +reason to be heard. Determinations to go in this direction, and +headlong plunges in that; dignified safeguards, undignified +collapses; not a single rash step by deliberate intention, and all +against judgment. + +It was all that Melbury had expected and feared. It was more, for +he had overlooked the publicity that would be likely to result, as +it now had done. What should he do--appeal to Mrs. Charmond +himself, since Grace would not? He bethought himself of +Winterborne, and resolved to consult him, feeling the strong need +of some friend of his own sex to whom he might unburden his mind. + +He had entirely lost faith in his own judgment. That judgment on +which he had relied for so many years seemed recently, like a +false companion unmasked, to have disclosed unexpected depths of +hypocrisy and speciousness where all had seemed solidity. He felt +almost afraid to form a conjecture on the weather, or the time, or +the fruit-promise, so great was his self-abasement. + +It was a rimy evening when he set out to look for Giles. The +woods seemed to be in a cold sweat; beads of perspiration hung +from every bare twig; the sky had no color, and the trees rose +before him as haggard, gray phantoms, whose days of substantiality +were passed. Melbury seldom saw Winterborne now, but he believed +him to be occupying a lonely hut just beyond the boundary of Mrs. +Charmond's estate, though still within the circuit of the +woodland. The timber-merchant's thin legs stalked on through the +pale, damp scenery, his eyes on the dead leaves of last year; +while every now and then a hasty "Ay?" escaped his lips in reply +to some bitter proposition. + +His notice was attracted by a thin blue haze of smoke, behind +which arose sounds of voices and chopping: bending his steps that +way, he saw Winterborne just in front of him. It just now +happened that Giles, after being for a long time apathetic and +unemployed, had become one of the busiest men in the neighborhood. +It is often thus; fallen friends, lost sight of, we expect to find +starving; we discover them going on fairly well. Without any +solicitation, or desire for profit on his part, he had been asked +to execute during that winter a very large order for hurdles and +other copse-ware, for which purpose he had been obliged to buy +several acres of brushwood standing. He was now engaged in the +cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work +daily like an automaton. + +The hazel-tree did not belie its name to-day. The whole of the +copse-wood where the mist had cleared returned purest tints of +that hue, amid which Winterborne himself was in the act of making +a hurdle, the stakes being driven firmly into the ground in a row, +over which he bent and wove the twigs. Beside him was a square, +compact pile like the altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already +finished, which bristled on all sides with the sharp points of +their stakes. At a little distance the men in his employ were +assisting him to carry out his contract. Rows of copse-wood lay +on the ground as it had fallen under the axe; and a shelter had +been constructed near at hand, in front of which burned the fire +whose smoke had attracted him. The air was so dank that the smoke +hung heavy, and crept away amid the bushes without rising from the +ground. + +After wistfully regarding Winterborne a while, Melbury drew +nearer, and briefly inquired of Giles how he came to be so busily +engaged, with an undertone of slight surprise that Winterborne +could seem so thriving after being deprived of Grace. Melbury was +not without emotion at the meeting; for Grace's affairs had +divided them, and ended their intimacy of old times. + +Winterborne explained just as briefly, without raising his eyes +from his occupation of chopping a bough that he held in front of +him. + +"'Twill be up in April before you get it all cleared," said +Melbury. + +"Yes, there or thereabouts," said Winterborne, a chop of the +billhook jerking the last word into two pieces. + +There was another interval; Melbury still looked on, a chip from +Winterborne's hook occasionally flying against the waistcoat and +legs of his visitor, who took no heed. + +"Ah, Giles--you should have been my partner. You should have been +my son-in-law," the old man said at last. "It would have been far +better for her and for me." + +Winterborne saw that something had gone wrong with his former +friend, and throwing down the switch he was about to interweave, +he responded only too readily to the mood of the timber-dealer. +"Is she ill?" he said, hurriedly. + +"No, no." Melbury stood without speaking for some minutes, and +then, as though he could not bring himself to proceed, turned to +go away. + +Winterborne told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night +and walked after Melbury. + +"Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir," he said, +"especially since we don't stand as we used to stand to one +another; but I hope it is well with them all over your way?" + +"No," said Melbury--"no." He stopped, and struck the smooth trunk +of a young ash-tree with the flat of his hand. "I would that his +ear had been where that rind is!" he exclaimed; "I should have +treated him to little compared wi what he deserves." + +"Now," said Winterborne, "don't be in a hurry to go home. I've +put some cider down to warm in my shelter here, and we'll sit and +drink it and talk this over." + +Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and they went +back to where the fire was, and sat down under the screen, the +other woodmen having gone. He drew out the cider-mug from the +ashes and they drank together. + +"Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now," repeated +Melbury. "I'll tell you why for the first time." + +He thereupon told Winterborne, as with great relief, the story of +how he won away Giles's father's chosen one--by nothing worse than +a lover's cajoleries, it is true, but by means which, except in +love, would certainly have been pronounced cruel and unfair. He +explained how he had always intended to make reparation to +Winterborne the father by giving Grace to Winterborne the son, +till the devil tempted him in the person of Fitzpiers, and he +broke his virtuous vow. + +"How highly I thought of that man, to be sure! Who'd have supposed +he'd have been so weak and wrong-headed as this! You ought to have +had her, Giles, and there's an end on't." + +Winterborne knew how to preserve his calm under this unconsciously +cruel tearing of a healing wound to which Melbury's concentration +on the more vital subject had blinded him. The young man +endeavored to make the best of the case for Grace's sake. + +"She would hardly have been happy with me," he said, in the dry, +unimpassioned voice under which he hid his feelings. "I was not +well enough educated: too rough, in short. I couldn't have +surrounded her with the refinements she looked for, anyhow, at +all." + +"Nonsense--you are quite wrong there," said the unwise old man, +doggedly. "She told me only this day that she hates refinements +and such like. All that my trouble and money bought for her in +that way is thrown away upon her quite. She'd fain be like Marty +South--think o' that! That's the top of her ambition! Perhaps +she's right. Giles, she loved you--under the rind; and, what's +more, she loves ye still--worse luck for the poor maid!" + +If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up +he might have held his peace. Winterborne was silent a long time. +The darkness had closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of +the fog from the branches quickened as it turned to fine rain. + +"Oh, she never cared much for me," Giles managed to say, as he +stirred the embers with a brand. + +"She did, and does, I tell ye," said the other, obstinately. +"However, all that's vain talking now. What I come to ask you +about is a more practical matter--how to make the best of things +as they are. I am thinking of a desperate step--of calling on the +woman Charmond. I am going to appeal to her, since Grace will +not. 'Tis she who holds the balance in her hands--not he. While +she's got the will to lead him astray he will follow--poor, +unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer--and how long she'll do it +depends upon her whim. Did ye ever hear anything about her +character before she came to Hintock?" + +"She's been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe," replied +Giles, with the same level quietude, as he regarded the red coals. +"One who has smiled where she has not loved and loved where she +has not married. Before Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a +play-actress." + +"Hey?" But how close you have kept all this, Giles! What +besides?" + +"Mr. Charmond was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the +north, twenty or thirty years older than she. He married her and +retired, and came down here and bought this property, as they do +nowadays." + +"Yes, yes--I know all about that; but the other I did not know. I +fear it bodes no good. For how can I go and appeal to the +forbearance of a woman in this matter who has made cross-loves and +crooked entanglements her trade for years? I thank ye, Giles, for +finding it out; but it makes my plan the harder that she should +have belonged to that unstable tribe." + +Another pause ensued, and they looked gloomily at the smoke that +beat about the hurdles which sheltered them, through whose +weavings a large drop of rain fell at intervals and spat smartly +into the fire. Mrs. Charmond had been no friend to Winterborne, +but he was manly, and it was not in his heart to let her be +condemned without a trial. + +"She is said to be generous," he answered. "You might not appeal +to her in vain." + +"It shall be done," said Melbury, rising. "For good or for evil, +to Mrs. Charmond I'll go." + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + + +At nine o'clock the next morning Melbury dressed himself up in +shining broadcloth, creased with folding and smelling of camphor, +and started for Hintock House. He was the more impelled to go at +once by the absence of his son-in-law in London for a few days, to +attend, really or ostensibly, some professional meetings. He said +nothing of his destination either to his wife or to Grace, fearing +that they might entreat him to abandon so risky a project, and +went out unobserved. He had chosen his time with a view, as he +supposed, of conveniently catching Mrs. Charmond when she had just +finished her breakfast, before any other business people should be +about, if any came. Plodding thoughtfully onward, he crossed a +glade lying between Little Hintock Woods and the plantation which +abutted on the park; and the spot being open, he was discerned +there by Winterborne from the copse on the next hill, where he and +his men were working. Knowing his mission, the younger man +hastened down from the copse and managed to intercept the timber- +merchant. + +"I have been thinking of this, sir," he said, "and I am of opinion +that it would be best to put off your visit for the present." + +But Melbury would not even stop to hear him. His mind was made +up, the appeal was to be made; and Winterborne stood and watched +him sadly till he entered the second plantation and disappeared. + +Melbury rang at the tradesmen's door of the manor-house, and was +at once informed that the lady was not yet visible, as indeed he +might have guessed had he been anybody but the man he was. +Melbury said he would wait, whereupon the young man informed him +in a neighborly way that, between themselves, she was in bed and +asleep. + +"Never mind," said Melbury, retreating into the court, "I'll stand +about here." Charged so fully with his mission, he shrank from +contact with anybody. + +But he walked about the paved court till he was tired, and still +nobody came to him. At last he entered the house and sat down in +a small waiting-room, from which he got glimpses of the kitchen +corridor, and of the white-capped maids flitting jauntily hither +and thither. They had heard of his arrival, but had not seen him +enter, and, imagining him still in the court, discussed freely the +possible reason of his calling. They marvelled at his temerity; +for though most of the tongues which had been let loose attributed +the chief blame-worthiness to Fitzpiers, these of her household +preferred to regard their mistress as the deeper sinner. + +Melbury sat with his hands resting on the familiar knobbed thorn +walking-stick, whose growing he had seen before he enjoyed its +use. The scene to him was not the material environment of his +person, but a tragic vision that travelled with him like an +envelope. Through this vision the incidents of the moment but +gleamed confusedly here and there, as an outer landscape through +the high-colored scenes of a stained window. He waited thus an +hour, an hour and a half, two hours. He began to look pale and +ill, whereupon the butler, who came in, asked him to have a glass +of wine. Melbury roused himself and said, "No, no. Is she almost +ready?" + +"She is just finishing breakfast," said the butler. "She will +soon see you now. I am just going up to tell her you are here." + +"What! haven't you told her before?" said Melbury. + +"Oh no," said the other. "You see you came so very early." + +At last the bell rang: Mrs. Charmond could see him. She was not +in her private sitting-room when he reached it, but in a minute he +heard her coming from the front staircase, and she entered where +he stood. + +At this time of the morning Mrs. Charmond looked her full age and +more. She might almost have been taken for the typical femme de +trente ans, though she was really not more than seven or eight and +twenty. There being no fire in the room, she came in with a shawl +thrown loosely round her shoulders, and obviously without the +least suspicion that Melbury had called upon any other errand than +timber. Felice was, indeed, the only woman in the parish who had +not heard the rumor of her own weaknesses; she was at this moment +living in a fool's paradise in respect of that rumor, though not +in respect of the weaknesses themselves, which, if the truth be +told, caused her grave misgivings. + +"Do sit down, Mr. Melbury. You have felled all the trees that +were to be purchased by you this season, except the oaks, I +believe." + +"Yes," said Melbury. + +"How very nice! It must be so charming to work in the woods just +now!" + +She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous +person's affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of +the perfect social machine. Hence her words "very nice," "so +charming," were uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them +sound absurdly unreal. + +"Yes, yes," said Melbury, in a reverie. He did not take a chair, +and she also remained standing. Resting upon his stick, he began: +"Mrs. Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter--at least +to me--than tree-throwing. And whatever mistakes I make in my +manner of speaking upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set +'em down to my want of practice, and not to my want of care." + +Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease. She might have begun to guess +his meaning; but apart from that, she had such dread of contact +with anything painful, harsh, or even earnest, that his +preliminaries alone were enough to distress her. "Yes, what is +it?" she said. + +"I am an old man," said Melbury, "whom, somewhat late in life, God +thought fit to bless with one child, and she a daughter. Her +mother was a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us +when the child was young, and the child became precious as the +apple of my eye to me, for she was all I had left to love. For +her sake entirely I married as second wife a homespun woman who +had been kind as a mother to her. In due time the question of her +education came on, and I said, 'I will educate the maid well, if I +live upon bread to do it.' Of her possible marriage I could not +bear to think, for it seemed like a death that she should cleave +to another man, and grow to think his house her home rather than +mine. But I saw it was the law of nature that this should be, and +that it was for the maid's happiness that she should have a home +when I was gone; and I made up my mind without a murmur to help it +on for her sake. In my youth I had wronged my dead friend, and to +make amends I determined to give her, my most precious possession, +to my friend's son, seeing that they liked each other well. +Things came about which made me doubt if it would be for my +daughter's happiness to do this, inasmuch as the young man was +poor, and she was delicately reared. Another man came and paid +court to her--one her equal in breeding and accomplishments; in +every way it seemed to me that he only could give her the home +which her training had made a necessity almost. I urged her on, +and she married him. But, ma'am, a fatal mistake was at the root +of my reckoning. I found that this well-born gentleman I had +calculated on so surely was not stanch of heart, and that therein +lay a danger of great sorrow for my daughter. Madam, he saw you, +and you know the rest....I have come to make no demands--to utter +no threats; I have come simply as a father in great grief about +this only child, and I beseech you to deal kindly with my +daughter, and to do nothing which can turn her husband's heart +away from her forever. Forbid him your presence, ma'am, and speak +to him on his duty as one with your power over him well can do, +and I am hopeful that the rent between them may be patched up. +For it is not as if you would lose by so doing; your course is far +higher than the courses of a simple professional man, and the +gratitude you would win from me and mine by your kindness is more +than I can say." + +Mrs. Charmond had first rushed into a mood of indignation on +comprehending Melbury's story; hot and cold by turns, she had +murmured, "Leave me, leave me!" But as he seemed to take no notice +of this, his words began to influence her, and when he ceased +speaking she said, with hurried, hot breath, "What has led you to +think this of me? Who says I have won your daughter's husband +away from her? Some monstrous calumnies are afloat--of which I +have known nothing until now!" + +Melbury started, and looked at her simply. "But surely, ma'am, +you know the truth better than I?" + +Her features became a little pinched, and the touches of powder on +her handsome face for the first time showed themselves as an +extrinsic film. "Will you leave me to myself?" she said, with a +faintness which suggested a guilty conscience. "This is so +utterly unexpected--you obtain admission to my presence by +misrepresentation--" + +"As God's in heaven, ma'am, that's not true. I made no pretence; +and I thought in reason you would know why I had come. This +gossip--" + +"I have heard nothing of it. Tell me of it, I say." + +"Tell you, ma'am--not I. What the gossip is, no matter. What +really is, you know. Set facts right, and the scandal will right +of itself. But pardon me--I speak roughly; and I came to speak +gently, to coax you, beg you to be my daughter's friend. She +loved you once, ma'am; you began by liking her. Then you dropped +her without a reason, and it hurt her warm heart more than I can +tell ye. But you were within your right as the superior, no +doubt. But if you would consider her position now--surely, +surely, you would do her no harm!" + +"Certainly I would do her no harm--I--" Melbury's eye met hers. +It was curious, but the allusion to Grace's former love for her +seemed to touch her more than all Melbury's other arguments. "Oh, +Melbury," she burst out, "you have made me so unhappy! How could +you come to me like this! It is too dreadful! Now go away--go, +go!" + +"I will," he said, in a husky tone. + +As soon as he was out of the room she went to a corner and there +sat and writhed under an emotion in which hurt pride and vexation +mingled with better sentiments. + +Mrs. Charmond's mobile spirit was subject to these fierce periods +of stress and storm. She had never so clearly perceived till now +that her soul was being slowly invaded by a delirium which had +brought about all this; that she was losing judgment and dignity +under it, becoming an animated impulse only, a passion incarnate. +A fascination had led her on; it was as if she had been seized by +a hand of velvet; and this was where she found herself-- +overshadowed with sudden night, as if a tornado had passed by. + +While she sat, or rather crouched, unhinged by the interview, +lunch-time came, and then the early afternoon, almost without her +consciousness. Then "a strange gentleman who says it is not +necessary to give his name," was suddenly announced. + +"I cannot see him, whoever he may be. I am not at home to +anybody." + +She heard no more of her visitor; and shortly after, in an attempt +to recover some mental serenity by violent physical exercise, she +put on her hat and cloak and went out-of-doors, taking a path +which led her up the slopes to the nearest spur of the wood. She +disliked the woods, but they had the advantage of being a place in +which she could walk comparatively unobserved. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + + +There was agitation to-day in the lives of all whom these matters +concerned. It was not till the Hintock dinner-time--one o'clock-- +that Grace discovered her father's absence from the house after a +departure in the morning under somewhat unusual conditions. By a +little reasoning and inquiry she was able to come to a conclusion +on his destination, and to divine his errand. + +Her husband was absent, and her father did not return. He had, in +truth, gone on to Sherton after the interview, but this Grace did +not know. In an indefinite dread that something serious would +arise out of Melbury's visit by reason of the inequalities of +temper and nervous irritation to which he was subject, something +possibly that would bring her much more misery than accompanied +her present negative state of mind, she left the house about three +o'clock, and took a loitering walk in the woodland track by which +she imagined he would come home. This track under the bare trees +and over the cracking sticks, screened and roofed in from the +outer world of wind and cloud by a net-work of boughs, led her +slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees behind her +and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his men +were clearing the undergrowth. + +Had Giles's attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would +not have seen her; but ever since Melbury's passage across the +opposite glade in the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled +as Grace herself; and her advent now was the one appearance which, +since her father's avowal, could arrest him more than Melbury's +return with his tidings. Fearing that something might be the +matter, he hastened up to her. + +She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious +of the late pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly. +"I am only looking for my father," she said, in an unnecessarily +apologetic intonation. + +"I was looking for him too," said Giles. "I think he may perhaps +have gone on farther." + +"Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?" she said, +turning her large tender eyes anxiously upon him. "Did he tell +you what for?" + +Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that +her father had visited him the evening before, and that their old +friendship was quite restored, on which she guessed the rest. + +"Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!" she +cried. And then they stood facing each other, fearing each other, +troubling each other's souls. Grace experienced acute misery at +the sight of these wood-cutting scenes, because she had estranged +herself from them, craving, even to its defects and +inconveniences, that homely sylvan life of her father which in the +best probable succession of events would shortly be denied her. + +At a little distance, on the edge of the clearing, Marty South was +shaping spar-gads to take home for manufacture during the +evenings. While Winterborne and Mrs. Fitzpiers stood looking at +her in their mutual embarrassment at each other's presence, they +beheld approaching the girl a lady in a dark fur mantle and a +black hat, having a white veil tied picturesquely round it. She +spoke to Marty, who turned and courtesied, and the lady fell into +conversation with her. It was Mrs. Charmond. + +On leaving her house, Mrs. Charmond had walked on and onward under +the fret and fever of her mind with more vigor than she was +accustomed to show in her normal moods--a fever which the solace +of a cigarette did not entirely allay. Reaching the coppice, she +listlessly observed Marty at work, threw away her cigarette, and +came near. Chop, chop, chop, went Marty's little billhook with +never more assiduity, till Mrs. Charmond spoke. + +"Who is that young lady I see talking to the woodman yonder?" she +asked. + +"Mrs. Fitzpiers, ma'am," said Marty. + +"Oh," said Mrs. Charmond, with something like a start; for she had +not recognized Grace at that distance. "And the man she is +talking to?" + +"That's Mr. Winterborne." + +A redness stole into Marty's face as she mentioned Giles's name, +which Mrs. Charmond did not fail to notice informed her of the +state of the girl's heart. "Are you engaged to him?" she asked, +softly. + +"No, ma'am," said Marty. "SHE was once; and I think--" + +But Marty could not possibly explain the complications of her +thoughts on this matter--which were nothing less than one of +extraordinary acuteness for a girl so young and inexperienced-- +namely, that she saw danger to two hearts naturally honest in +Grace being thrown back into Winterborne's society by the neglect +of her husband. Mrs. Charmond, however, with the almost +supersensory means to knowledge which women have on such +occasions, quite understood what Marty had intended to convey, and +the picture thus exhibited to her of lives drifting away, +involving the wreck of poor Marty's hopes, prompted her to more +generous resolves than all Melbury's remonstrances had been able +to stimulate. + +Full of the new feeling, she bade the girl good-afternoon, and +went on over the stumps of hazel to where Grace and Winterborne +were standing. They saw her approach, and Winterborne said, "She +is coming to you; it is a good omen. She dislikes me, so I'll go +away." He accordingly retreated to where he had been working +before Grace came, and Grace's formidable rival approached her, +each woman taking the other's measure as she came near. + +"Dear--Mrs. Fitzpiers," said Felice Charmond, with some inward +turmoil which stopped her speech. "I have not seen you for a long +time." + +She held out her hand tentatively, while Grace stood like a wild +animal on first confronting a mirror or other puzzling product of +civilization. Was it really Mrs. Charmond speaking to her thus? +If it was, she could no longer form any guess as to what it +signified. + +"I want to talk with you," said Mrs. Charmond, imploringly, for +the gaze of the young woman had chilled her through. "Can you +walk on with me till we are quite alone?" + +Sick with distaste, Grace nevertheless complied, as by clockwork +and they moved evenly side by side into the deeper recesses of the +woods. They went farther, much farther than Mrs. Charmond had +meant to go; but she could not begin her conversation, and in +default of it kept walking. + +"I have seen your father," she at length resumed. "And--I am much +troubled by what he told me." + +"What did he tell you? I have not been admitted to his confidence +on anything he may have said to you." + +"Nevertheless, why should I repeat to you what you can easily +divine?" + +"True--true," returned Grace, mournfully. "Why should you repeat +what we both know to be in our minds already?" + +"Mrs. Fitzpiers, your husband--" The moment that the speaker's +tongue touched the dangerous subject a vivid look of self- +consciousness flashed over her, in which her heart revealed, as by +a lightning gleam, what filled it to overflowing. So transitory +was the expression that none but a sensitive woman, and she in +Grace's position, would have had the power to catch its meaning. +Upon her the phase was not lost. + +"Then you DO love him!" she exclaimed, in a tone of much surprise. + +"What do you mean, my young friend?" + +"Why," cried Grace, "I thought till now that you had only been +cruelly flirting with my husband, to amuse your idle moments--a +rich lady with a poor professional gentleman whom in her heart she +despised not much less than her who belongs to him. But I guess +from your manner that you love him desperately, and I don't hate +you as I did before." + +"Yes, indeed," continued Mrs. Fitzpiers, with a trembling tongue, +"since it is not playing in your case at all, but REAL. Oh, I do +pity you, more than I despise you, for you will s-s-suffer most!" + +Mrs. Charmond was now as much agitated as Grace. "I ought not to +allow myself to argue with you," she exclaimed. "I demean myself +by doing it. But I liked you once, and for the sake of that time +I try to tell you how mistaken you are!" Much of her confusion +resulted from her wonder and alarm at finding herself in a sense +dominated mentally and emotionally by this simple school-girl. "I +do not love him," she went on, with desperate untruth. "It was a +kindness--my making somewhat more of him than one usually does of +one's doctor. I was lonely; I talked--well, I trifled with him. +I am very sorry if such child's playing out of pure friendship has +been a serious matter to you. Who could have expected it? But the +world is so simple here." + +"Oh, that's affectation," said Grace, shaking her head. "It is no +use--you love him. I can see in your face that in this matter of +my husband you have not let your acts belie your feelings. During +these last four or six months you have been terribly indiscreet; +but you have not been insincere, and that almost disarms me." + +"I HAVE been insincere--if you will have the word--I mean I HAVE +coquetted, and do NOT love him!" + +But Grace clung to her position like a limpet. "You may have +trifled with others, but him you love as you never loved another +man." + +"Oh, well--I won't argue," said Mrs. Charmond, laughing faintly. +"And you come to reproach me for it, child." + +"No," said Grace, magnanimously. "You may go on loving him if you +like--I don't mind at all. You'll find it, let me tell you, a +bitterer business for yourself than for me in the end. He'll get +tired of you soon, as tired as can be--you don't know him so well +as I--and then you may wish you had never seen him!" + +Mrs. Charmond had grown quite pale and weak under this prophecy. +It was extraordinary that Grace, whom almost every one would have +characterized as a gentle girl, should be of stronger fibre than +her interlocutor. "You exaggerate--cruel, silly young woman," she +reiterated, writhing with little agonies. "It is nothing but +playful friendship--nothing! It will be proved by my future +conduct. I shall at once refuse to see him more--since it will +make no difference to my heart, and much to my name." + +"I question if you will refuse to see him again," said Grace, +dryly, as with eyes askance she bent a sapling down. "But I am +not incensed against you as you are against me," she added, +abandoning the tree to its natural perpendicular. "Before I came +I had been despising you for wanton cruelty; now I only pity you +for misplaced affection. When Edgar has gone out of the house in +hope of seeing you, at seasonable hours and unseasonable; when I +have found him riding miles and miles across the country at +midnight, and risking his life, and getting covered with mud, to +get a glimpse of you, I have called him a foolish man--the +plaything of a finished coquette. I thought that what was getting +to be a tragedy to me was a comedy to you. But now I see that +tragedy lies on YOUR side of the situation no less than on MINE, +and more; that if I have felt trouble at my position, you have +felt anguish at yours; that if I have had disappointments, you +have had despairs. Heaven may fortify me--God help you!" + +"I cannot attempt to reply to your raving eloquence," returned the +other, struggling to restore a dignity which had completely +collapsed. "My acts will be my proofs. In the world which you +have seen nothing of, friendships between men and women are not +unknown, and it would have been better both for you and your +father if you had each judged me more respectfully, and left me +alone. As it is I wish never to see or speak to you, madam, any +more." + +Grace bowed, and Mrs. Charmond turned away. The two went apart in +directly opposite courses, and were soon hidden from each other by +their umbrageous surroundings and by the shadows of eve. + +In the excitement of their long argument they had walked onward +and zigzagged about without regarding direction or distance. All +sound of the woodcutters had long since faded into remoteness, and +even had not the interval been too great for hearing them they +would have been silent and homeward bound at this twilight hour. +But Grace went on her course without any misgiving, though there +was much underwood here, with only the narrowest passages for +walking, across which brambles hung. She had not, however, +traversed this the wildest part of the wood since her childhood, +and the transformation of outlines had been great; old trees which +once were landmarks had been felled or blown down, and the bushes +which then had been small and scrubby were now large and +overhanging. She soon found that her ideas as to direction were +vague--that she had indeed no ideas as to direction at all. If +the evening had not been growing so dark, and the wind had not put +on its night moan so distinctly, Grace would not have minded; but +she was rather frightened now, and began to strike across hither +and thither in random courses. + +Denser grew the darkness, more developed the wind-voices, and +still no recognizable spot or outlet of any kind appeared, nor any +sound of the Hintocks floated near, though she had wandered +probably between one and two hours, and began to be weary. She +was vexed at her foolishness, since the ground she had covered, if +in a straight line, must inevitably have taken her out of the wood +to some remote village or other; but she had wasted her forces in +countermarches; and now, in much alarm, wondered if she would have +to pass the night here. She stood still to meditate, and fancied +that between the soughing of the wind she heard shuffling +footsteps on the leaves heavier than those of rabbits or hares. +Though fearing at first to meet anybody on the chance of his being +a friend, she decided that the fellow night-rambler, even if a +poacher, would not injure her, and that he might possibly be some +one sent to search for her. She accordingly shouted a rather +timid "Hoi!" + +The cry was immediately returned by the other person; and Grace +running at once in the direction whence it came beheld an +indistinct figure hastening up to her as rapidly. They were +almost in each other's arms when she recognized in her vis-a-vis +the outline and white veil of her whom she had parted from an hour +and a half before--Mrs. Charmond. + +"I have lost my way, I have lost my way," cried that lady. "Oh-- +is it indeed you? I am so glad to meet you or anybody. I have +been wandering up and down ever since we parted, and am nearly +dead with terror and misery and fatigue!" + +"So am I," said Grace. "What shall we, shall we do?" + +"You won't go away from me?" asked her companion, anxiously. + +"No, indeed. Are you very tired?" + +"I can scarcely move, and I am scratched dreadfully about the +ankles." + +Grace reflected. "Perhaps, as it is dry under foot, the best +thing for us to do would be to sit down for half an hour, and then +start again when we have thoroughly rested. By walking straight +we must come to a track leading somewhere before the morning." + +They found a clump of bushy hollies which afforded a shelter from +the wind, and sat down under it, some tufts of dead fern, crisp +and dry, that remained from the previous season forming a sort of +nest for them. But it was cold, nevertheless, on this March +night, particularly for Grace, who with the sanguine prematureness +of youth in matters of dress, had considered it spring-time, and +hence was not so warmly clad as Mrs. Charmond, who still wore her +winter fur. But after sitting a while the latter lady shivered no +less than Grace as the warmth imparted by her hasty walking began +to go off, and they felt the cold air drawing through the holly +leaves which scratched their backs and shoulders. Moreover, they +could hear some drops of rain falling on the trees, though none +reached the nook in which they had ensconced themselves. + +"If we were to cling close together," said Mrs. Charmond, "we +should keep each other warm. But," she added, in an uneven voice, +"I suppose you won't come near me for the world!" + +"Why not?" + +"Because--well, you know." + +"Yes. I will--I don't hate you at all." + +They consequently crept up to one another, and being in the dark, +lonely and weary, did what neither had dreamed of doing +beforehand, clasped each other closely, Mrs. Charmond's furs +consoling Grace's cold face, and each one's body as she breathed +alternately heaving against that of her companion. + +When a few minutes had been spent thus, Mrs. Charmond said, "I am +so wretched!" in a heavy, emotional whisper. + +"You are frightened," said Grace, kindly. "But there is nothing +to fear; I know these woods well." + +"I am not at all frightened at the wood, but I am at other +things." + +Mrs. Charmond embraced Grace more and more tightly, and the +younger woman could feel her neighbor's breathings grow deeper and +more spasmodic, as though uncontrollable feelings were +germinating. + +"After I had left you," she went on, "I regretted something I had +said. I have to make a confession--I must make it!" she +whispered, brokenly, the instinct to indulge in warmth of +sentiment which had led this woman of passions to respond to +Fitzpiers in the first place leading her now to find luxurious +comfort in opening her heart to his wife. "I said to you I could +give him up without pain or deprivation--that he had only been my +pastime. That was untrue--it was said to deceive you. I could +not do it without much pain; and, what is more dreadful, I cannot +give him up--even if I would--of myself alone." + +"Why? Because you love him, you mean." + +Felice Charmond denoted assent by a movement. + +"I knew I was right!" said Grace, exaltedly. "But that should not +deter you," she presently added, in a moral tone. "Oh, do +struggle against it, and you will conquer!" + +"You are so simple, so simple!" cried Felice. "You think, because +you guessed my assumed indifference to him to be a sham, that you +know the extremes that people are capable of going to! But a good +deal more may have been going on than you have fathomed with all +your insight. I CANNOT give him up until he chooses to give up +me." + +"But surely you are the superior in station and in every way, and +the cut must come from you." + +"Tchut! Must I tell verbatim, you simple child? Oh, I suppose I +must! I shall eat away my heart if I do not let out all, after +meeting you like this and finding how guileless you are." She +thereupon whispered a few words in the girl's ear, and burst into +a violent fit of sobbing. + +Grace started roughly away from the shelter of the fur, and sprang +to her feet. + +"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed, thunderstruck at a revelation +transcending her utmost suspicion. "Can it be--can it be!" + +She turned as if to hasten away. But Felice Charmond's sobs came +to her ear: deep darkness circled her about, the funereal trees +rocked and chanted their diriges and placebos around her, and she +did not know which way to go. After a moment of energy she felt +mild again, and turned to the motionless woman at her feet. + +"Are you rested?" she asked, in what seemed something like her own +voice grown ten years older. + +Without an answer Mrs. Charmond slowly rose. + +"You mean to betray me!" she said from the bitterest depths of her +soul. "Oh fool, fool I!" + +"No," said Grace, shortly. "I mean no such thing. But let us be +quick now. We have a serious undertaking before us. Think of +nothing but going straight on." + +They walked on in profound silence, pulling back boughs now +growing wet, and treading down woodbine, but still keeping a +pretty straight course. Grace began to be thoroughly worn out, +and her companion too, when, on a sudden, they broke into the +deserted highway at the hill-top on which the Sherton man had +waited for Mrs. Dollery's van. Grace recognized the spot as soon +as she looked around her. + +"How we have got here I cannot tell," she said, with cold +civility. "We have made a complete circuit of Little Hintock. +The hazel copse is quite on the other side. Now we have only to +follow the road." + +They dragged themselves onward, turned into the lane, passed the +track to Little Hintock, and so reached the park. + +"Here I turn back," said Grace, in the same passionless voice. +"You are quite near home." + +Mrs. Charmond stood inert, seeming appalled by her late admission. + +"I have told you something in a moment of irresistible desire to +unburden my soul which all but a fool would have kept silent as +the grave," she said. "I cannot help it now. Is it to be a +secret--or do you mean war?" + +"A secret, certainly," said Grace, mournfully. "How can you +expect war from such a helpless, wretched being as I!" + +"And I'll do my best not to see him. I am his slave; but I'll +try." + +Grace was naturally kind; but she could not help using a small +dagger now. + +"Pray don't distress yourself," she said, with exquisitely fine +scorn. "You may keep him--for me." Had she been wounded instead +of mortified she could not have used the words; but Fitzpiers's +hold upon her heart was slight. + +They parted thus and there, and Grace went moodily homeward. +Passing Marty's cottage she observed through the window that the +girl was writing instead of chopping as usual, and wondered what +her correspondence could be. Directly afterwards she met people +in search of her, and reached the house to find all in serious +alarm. She soon explained that she had lost her way, and her +general depression was attributed to exhaustion on that account. + +Could she have known what Marty was writing she would have been +surprised. + +The rumor which agitated the other folk of Hintock had reached the +young girl, and she was penning a letter to Fitzpiers, to tell him +that Mrs. Charmond wore her hair. It was poor Marty's only card, +and she played it, knowing nothing of fashion, and thinking her +revelation a fatal one for a lover. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + + +It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting +between Grace and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, that Fitzpiers, just +returned from London, was travelling from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock +in a hired carriage. In his eye there was a doubtful light, and +the lines of his refined face showed a vague disquietude. He +appeared now like one of those who impress the beholder as having +suffered wrong in being born. + +His position was in truth gloomy, and to his appreciative mind it +seemed even gloomier than it was. His practice had been slowly +dwindling of late, and now threatened to die out altogether, the +irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing patients up to Fitzpiers's +very door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest +cause of his unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man, the +second branch of his sadness grew out of a remedial measure +proposed for the first--a letter from Felice Charmond imploring +him not to see her again. To bring about their severance still +more effectually, she added, she had decided during his absence +upon almost immediate departure for the Continent. + +The time was that dull interval in a woodlander's life which +coincides with great activity in the life of the woodland itself-- +a period following the close of the winter tree-cutting, and +preceding the barking season, when the saps are just beginning to +heave with the force of hydraulic lifts inside all the trunks of +the forest. + +Winterborne's contract was completed, and the plantations were +deserted. It was dusk; there were no leaves as yet; the +nightingales would not begin to sing for a fortnight; and "the +Mother of the Months" was in her most attenuated phase--starved +and bent to a mere bowed skeleton, which glided along behind the +bare twigs in Fitzpiers's company + +When he reached home he went straight up to his wife's sitting- +room. He found it deserted, and without a fire. He had mentioned +no day for his return; nevertheless, he wondered why she was not +there waiting to receive him. On descending to the other wing of +the house and inquiring of Mrs. Melbury, he learned with much +surprise that Grace had gone on a visit to an acquaintance at +Shottsford-Forum three days earlier; that tidings had on this +morning reached her father of her being very unwell there, in +consequence of which he had ridden over to see her. + +Fitzpiers went up-stairs again, and the little drawing-room, now +lighted by a solitary candle, was not rendered more cheerful by +the entrance of Grammer Oliver with an apronful of wood, which she +threw on the hearth while she raked out the grate and rattled +about the fire-irons, with a view to making things comfortable. +Fitzpiers considered that Grace ought to have let him know her +plans more accurately before leaving home in a freak like this. +He went desultorily to the window, the blind of which had not been +pulled down, and looked out at the thin, fast-sinking moon, and at +the tall stalk of smoke rising from the top of Suke Damson's +chimney, signifying that the young woman had just lit her fire to +prepare supper. + +He became conscious of a discussion in progress on the opposite +side of the court. Somebody had looked over the wall to talk to +the sawyers, and was telling them in a loud voice news in which +the name of Mrs. Charmond soon arrested his ears. + +"Grammer, don't make so much noise with that grate," said the +surgeon; at which Grammer reared herself upon her knees and held +the fuel suspended in her hand, while Fitzpiers half opened the +casement. + +"She is off to foreign lands again at last--hev made up her mind +quite sudden-like--and it is thoughted she'll leave in a day or +two. She's been all as if her mind were low for some days past-- +with a sort of sorrow in her face, as if she reproached her own +soul. She's the wrong sort of woman for Hintock--hardly knowing a +beech from a woak--that I own. But I don't care who the man is, +she's been a very kind friend to me. + +"Well, the day after to-morrow is the Sabbath day, and without +charity we are but tinkling simples; but this I do say, that her +going will be a blessed thing for a certain married couple who +remain." + +The fire was lighted, and Fitzpiers sat down in front of it, +restless as the last leaf upon a tree. "A sort of sorrow in her +face, as if she reproached her own soul." Poor Felice. How +Felice's frame must be pulsing under the conditions of which he +had just heard the caricature; how her fair temples must ache; +what a mood of wretchedness she must be in! But for the mixing up +of his name with hers, and her determination to sunder their too +close acquaintance on that account, she would probably have sent +for him professionally. She was now sitting alone, suffering, +perhaps wishing that she had not forbidden him to come again. + +Unable to remain in this lonely room any longer, or to wait for +the meal which was in course of preparation, he made himself ready +for riding, descended to the yard, stood by the stable-door while +Darling was being saddled, and rode off down the lane. He would +have preferred walking, but was weary with his day's travel. + +As he approached the door of Marty South's cottage, which it was +necessary to pass on his way, she came from the porch as if she +had been awaiting him, and met him in the middle of the road, +holding up a letter. Fitzpiers took it without stopping, and +asked over his shoulder from whom it came. + +Marty hesitated. "From me," she said, shyly, though with +noticeable firmness. + +This letter contained, in fact, Marty's declaration that she was +the original owner of Mrs. Charmond's supplementary locks, and +enclosed a sample from the native stock, which had grown +considerably by this time. It was her long contemplated apple of +discord, and much her hand trembled as she handed the document up +to him. + +But it was impossible on account of the gloom for Fitzpiers to +read it then, while he had the curiosity to do so, and he put it +in his pocket. His imagination having already centred itself on +Hintock House, in his pocket the letter remained unopened and +forgotten, all the while that Marty was hopefully picturing its +excellent weaning effect upon him. + +He was not long in reaching the precincts of the Manor House. He +drew rein under a group of dark oaks commanding a view of the +front, and reflected a while. His entry would not be altogether +unnatural in the circumstances of her possible indisposition; but +upon the whole he thought it best to avoid riding up to the door. +By silently approaching he could retreat unobserved in the event +of her not being alone. Thereupon he dismounted, hitched Darling +to a stray bough hanging a little below the general browsing line +of the trees, and proceeded to the door on foot. + +In the mean time Melbury had returned from Shottsford-Forum. The +great court or quadrangle of the timber-merchant's house, divided +from the shady lane by an ivy-covered wall, was entered by two +white gates, one standing near each extremity of the wall. It so +happened that at the moment when Fitzpiers was riding out at the +lower gate on his way to the Manor House, Melbury was approaching +the upper gate to enter it. Fitzpiers being in front of Melbury +was seen by the latter, but the surgeon, never turning his head, +did not observe his father-in-law, ambling slowly and silently +along under the trees, though his horse too was a gray one. + +"How is Grace?" said his wife, as soon as he entered. + +Melbury looked gloomy. "She is not at all well," he said. "I +don't like the looks of her at all. I couldn't bear the notion of +her biding away in a strange place any longer, and I begged her to +let me get her home. At last she agreed to it, but not till after +much persuading. I was then sorry that I rode over instead of +driving; but I have hired a nice comfortable carriage--the +easiest-going I could get--and she'll be here in a couple of hours +or less. I rode on ahead to tell you to get her room ready; but I +see her husband has come back." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Melbury. She expressed her concern that her +husband had hired a carriage all the way from Shottsford. "What +it will cost!" she said. + +"I don't care what it costs!" he exclaimed, testily. "I was +determined to get her home. Why she went away I can't think! She +acts in a way that is not at all likely to mend matters as far as +I can see." (Grace had not told her father of her interview with +Mrs. Charmond, and the disclosure that had been whispered in her +startled ear.) "Since Edgar is come," he continued, "he might have +waited in till I got home, to ask me how she was, if only for a +compliment. I saw him go out; where is he gone?" + +Mrs. Melbury did not know positively; but she told her husband +that there was not much doubt about the place of his first visit +after an absence. She had, in fact, seen Fitzpiers take the +direction of the Manor House. + +Melbury said no more. It was exasperating to him that just at +this moment, when there was every reason for Fitzpiers to stay +indoors, or at any rate to ride along the Shottsford road to meet +his ailing wife, he should be doing despite to her by going +elsewhere. The old man went out-of-doors again; and his horse +being hardly unsaddled as yet, he told Upjohn to retighten the +girths, when he again mounted, and rode off at the heels of the +surgeon. + +By the time that Melbury reached the park, he was prepared to go +any lengths in combating this rank and reckless errantry of his +daughter's husband. He would fetch home Edgar Fitzpiers to-night +by some means, rough or fair: in his view there could come of his +interference nothing worse than what existed at present. And yet +to every bad there is a worse. + +He had entered by the bridle-gate which admitted to the park on +this side, and cantered over the soft turf almost in the tracks of +Fitzpiers's horse, till he reached the clump of trees under which +his precursor had halted. The whitish object that was +indistinctly visible here in the gloom of the boughs he found to +be Darling, as left by Fitzpiers. + +"D--n him! why did he not ride up to the house in an honest way?" +said Melbury. + +He profited by Fitzpiers's example; dismounting, he tied his horse +under an adjoining tree, and went on to the house on foot, as the +other had done. He was no longer disposed to stick at trifles in +his investigation, and did not hesitate to gently open the front +door without ringing. + +The large square hall, with its oak floor, staircase, and +wainscot, was lighted by a dim lamp hanging from a beam. Not a +soul was visible. He went into the corridor and listened at a +door which he knew to be that of the drawing-room; there was no +sound, and on turning the handle he found the room empty. A fire +burning low in the grate was the sole light of the apartment; its +beams flashed mockingly on the somewhat showy Versaillese +furniture and gilding here, in style as unlike that of the +structural parts of the building as it was possible to be, and +probably introduced by Felice to counteract the fine old-English +gloom of the place. Disappointed in his hope of confronting his +son-in-law here, he went on to the dining-room; this was without +light or fire, and pervaded by a cold atmosphere, which signified +that she had not dined there that day. + +By this time Melbury's mood had a little mollified. Everything +here was so pacific, so unaggressive in its repose, that he was no +longer incited to provoke a collision with Fitzpiers or with +anybody. The comparative stateliness of the apartments influenced +him to an emotion, rather than to a belief, that where all was +outwardly so good and proper there could not be quite that +delinquency within which he had suspected. It occurred to him, +too, that even if his suspicion were justified, his abrupt, if not +unwarrantable, entry into the house might end in confounding its +inhabitant at the expense of his daughter's dignity and his own. +Any ill result would be pretty sure to hit Grace hardest in the +long-run. He would, after all, adopt the more rational course, +and plead with Fitzpiers privately, as he had pleaded with Mrs. +Charmond. + +He accordingly retreated as silently as he had come. Passing the +door of the drawing-room anew, he fancied that he heard a noise +within which was not the crackling of the fire. Melbury gently +reopened the door to a distance of a few inches, and saw at the +opposite window two figures in the act of stepping out--a man and +a woman--in whom he recognized the lady of the house and his son- +in-law. In a moment they had disappeared amid the gloom of the +lawn. + +He returned into the hall, and let himself out by the carriage- +entrance door, coming round to the lawn front in time to see the +two figures parting at the railing which divided the precincts of +the house from the open park. Mrs. Charmond turned to hasten back +immediately that Fitzpiers had left her side, and he was speedily +absorbed into the duskiness of the trees. + +Melbury waited till Mrs. Charmond had re-entered the drawing-room, +and then followed after Fitzpiers, thinking that he would allow +the latter to mount and ride ahead a little way before overtaking +him and giving him a piece of his mind. His son-in-law might +possibly see the second horse near his own; but that would do him +no harm, and might prepare him for what he was to expect. + +The event, however, was different from the plan. On plunging into +the thick shade of the clump of oaks, he could not perceive his +horse Blossom anywhere; but feeling his way carefully along, he +by-and-by discerned Fitzpiers's mare Darling still standing as +before under the adjoining tree. For a moment Melbury thought +that his own horse, being young and strong, had broken away from +her fastening; but on listening intently he could hear her ambling +comfortably along a little way ahead, and a creaking of the saddle +which showed that she had a rider. Walking on as far as the small +gate in the corner of the park, he met a laborer, who, in reply to +Melbury's inquiry if he had seen any person on a gray horse, said +that he had only met Dr. Fitzpiers. + +It was just what Melbury had begun to suspect: Fitzpiers had +mounted the mare which did not belong to him in mistake for his +own--an oversight easily explicable, in a man ever unwitting in +horse-flesh, by the darkness of the spot and the near similarity +of the animals in appearance, though Melbury's was readily enough +seen to be the grayer horse by day. He hastened back, and did +what seemed best in the circumstances--got upon old Darling, and +rode rapidly after Fitzpiers. + +Melbury had just entered the wood, and was winding along the cart- +way which led through it, channelled deep in the leaf-mould with +large ruts that were formed by the timber-wagons in fetching the +spoil of the plantations, when all at once he descried in front, +at a point where the road took a turning round a large chestnut- +tree, the form of his own horse Blossom, at which Melbury +quickened Darling's pace, thinking to come up with Fitzpiers. + +Nearer view revealed that the horse had no rider. At Melbury's +approach it galloped friskily away under the trees in a homeward +direction. Thinking something was wrong, the timber-merchant +dismounted as soon as he reached the chestnut, and after feeling +about for a minute or two discovered Fitzpiers lying on the +ground. + +"Here--help!" cried the latter as soon as he felt Melbury's touch; +"I have been thrown off, but there's not much harm done, I think." + +Since Melbury could not now very well read the younger man the +lecture he had intended, and as friendliness would be hypocrisy, +his instinct was to speak not a single word to his son-in-law. He +raised Fitzpiers into a sitting posture, and found that he was a +little stunned and stupefied, but, as he had said, not otherwise +hurt. How this fall had come about was readily conjecturable: +Fitzpiers, imagining there was only old Darling under him, had +been taken unawares by the younger horse's sprightliness. + +Melbury was a traveller of the old-fashioned sort; having just +come from Shottsford-Forum, he still had in his pocket the +pilgrim's flask of rum which he always carried on journeys +exceeding a dozen miles, though he seldom drank much of it. He +poured it down the surgeon's throat, with such effect that he +quickly revived. Melbury got him on his legs; but the question +was what to do with him. He could not walk more than a few steps, +and the other horse had gone away. + +With great exertion Melbury contrived to get him astride Darling, +mounting himself behind, and holding Fitzpiers round his waist +with one arm. Darling being broad, straight-backed, and high in +the withers, was well able to carry double, at any rate as far as +Hintock, and at a gentle pace. + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + + +The mare paced along with firm and cautious tread through the +copse where Winterborne had worked, and into the heavier soil +where the oaks grew; past Great Willy, the largest oak in the +wood, and thence towards Nellcombe Bottom, intensely dark now with +overgrowth, and popularly supposed to be haunted by the spirits of +the fratricides exorcised from Hintock House. + +By this time Fitzpiers was quite recovered as to physical +strength. But he had eaten nothing since making a hasty breakfast +in London that morning, his anxiety about Felice having hurried +him away from home before dining; as a consequence, the old rum +administered by his father-in-law flew to the young man's head and +loosened his tongue, without his ever having recognized who it was +that had lent him a kindly hand. He began to speak in desultory +sentences, Melbury still supporting him. + +"I've come all the way from London to-day," said Fitzpiers. "Ah, +that's the place to meet your equals. I live at Hintock--worse, +at Little Hintock--and I am quite lost there. There's not a man +within ten miles of Hintock who can comprehend me. I tell you, +Farmer What's-your-name, that I'm a man of education. I know +several languages; the poets and I are familiar friends; I used to +read more in metaphysics than anybody within fifty miles; and +since I gave that up there's nobody can match me in the whole +county of Wessex as a scientist. Yet I an doomed to live with +tradespeople in a miserable little hole like Hintock!" + +"Indeed!" muttered Melbury. + +Fitzpiers, increasingly energized by the alcohol, here reared +himself up suddenly from the bowed posture he had hitherto held, +thrusting his shoulders so violently against Melbury's breast as +to make it difficult for the old man to keep a hold on the reins. +"People don't appreciate me here!" the surgeon exclaimed; lowering +his voice, he added, softly and slowly, "except one--except +one!...A passionate soul, as warm as she is clever, as beautiful +as she is warm, and as rich as she is beautiful. I say, old +fellow, those claws of yours clutch me rather tight--rather like +the eagle's, you know, that ate out the liver of Pro--Pre--the man +on Mount Caucasus. People don't appreciate me, I say, except HER. +Ah, gods, I am an unlucky man! She would have been mine, she +would have taken my name; but unfortunately it cannot be so. I +stooped to mate beneath me, and now I rue it." + +The position was becoming a very trying one for Melbury, +corporeally and mentally. He was obliged to steady Fitzpiers with +his left arm, and he began to hate the contact. He hardly knew +what to do. It was useless to remonstrate with Fitzpiers, in his +intellectual confusion from the rum and from the fall. He +remained silent, his hold upon his companion, however, being stern +rather than compassionate. + +"You hurt me a little, farmer--though I am much obliged to you for +your kindness. People don't appreciate me, I say. Between +ourselves, I am losing my practice here; and why? Because I see +matchless attraction where matchless attraction is, both in person +and position. I mention no names, so nobody will be the wiser. +But I have lost her, in a legitimate sense, that is. If I were a +free man now, things have come to such a pass that she could not +refuse me; while with her fortune (which I don't covet for itself) +I should have a chance of satisfying an honorable ambition--a +chance I have never had yet, and now never, never shall have, +probably!" + +Melbury, his heart throbbing against the other's backbone, and his +brain on fire with indignation, ventured to mutter huskily, "Why?" + +The horse ambled on some steps before Fitzpiers replied, "Because +I am tied and bound to another by law, as tightly as I am to you +by your arm--not that I complain of your arm--I thank you for +helping me. Well, where are we? Not nearly home yet?...Home, say +I. It is a home! When I might have been at the other house over +there." In a stupefied way he flung his hand in the direction of +the park. "I was just two months too early in committing myself. +Had I only seen the other first--" + +Here the old man's arm gave Fitzpiers a convulsive shake. "What +are you doing?" continued the latter. "Keep still, please, or put +me down. I was saying that I lost her by a mere little two +months! There is no chance for me now in this world, and it makes +me reckless--reckless! Unless, indeed, anything should happen to +the other one. She is amiable enough; but if anything should +happen to her--and I hear she is ill--well, if it should, I should +be free--and my fame, my happiness, would be insured." + +These were the last words that Fitzpiers uttered in his seat in +front of the timber-merchant. Unable longer to master himself, +Melbury, the skin of his face compressed, whipped away his spare +arm from Fitzpiers's waist, and seized him by the collar. + +"You heartless villain--after all that we have done for ye!" he +cried, with a quivering lip. "And the money of hers that you've +had, and the roof we've provided to shelter ye! It is to me, +George Melbury, that you dare to talk like that!" The exclamation +was accompanied by a powerful swing from the shoulder, which flung +the young man head-long into the road, Fitzpiers fell with a heavy +thud upon the stumps of some undergrowth which had been cut during +the winter preceding. Darling continued her walk for a few paces +farther and stopped. + +"God forgive me!" Melbury murmured, repenting of what he had done. +"He tried me too sorely; and now perhaps I've murdered him!" + +He turned round in the saddle and looked towards the spot on which +Fitzpiers had fallen. To his great surprise he beheld the surgeon +rise to his feet with a bound, as if unhurt, and walk away rapidly +under the trees. + +Melbury listened till the rustle of Fitzpiers's footsteps died +away. "It might have been a crime, but for the mercy of +Providence in providing leaves for his fall," he said to himself. +And then his mind reverted to the words of Fitzpiers, and his +indignation so mounted within him that he almost wished the fall +had put an end to the young man there and then. + +He had not ridden far when he discerned his own gray mare standing +under some bushes. Leaving Darling for a moment, Melbury went +forward and easily caught the younger animal, now disheartened at +its freak. He then made the pair of them fast to a tree, and +turning back, endeavored to find some trace of Fitzpiers, feeling +pitifully that, after all, he had gone further than he intended +with the offender. + +But though he threaded the wood hither and thither, his toes +ploughing layer after layer of the little horny scrolls that had +once been leaves, he could not find him. He stood still listening +and looking round. The breeze was oozing through the network of +boughs as through a strainer; the trunks and larger branches stood +against the light of the sky in the forms of writhing men, +gigantic candelabra, pikes, halberds, lances, and whatever besides +the fancy chose to make of them. Giving up the search, Melbury +came back to the horses, and walked slowly homeward, leading one +in each hand. + + + +It happened that on this self-same evening a boy had been +returning from Great to Little Hintock about the time of +Fitzpiers's and Melbury's passage home along that route. A horse- +collar that had been left at the harness-mender's to be repaired +was required for use at five o'clock next morning, and in +consequence the boy had to fetch it overnight. He put his head +through the collar, and accompanied his walk by whistling the one +tune he knew, as an antidote to fear. + +The boy suddenly became aware of a horse trotting rather friskily +along the track behind him, and not knowing whether to expect +friend or foe, prudence suggested that he should cease his +whistling and retreat among the trees till the horse and his rider +had gone by; a course to which he was still more inclined when he +found how noiselessly they approached, and saw that the horse +looked pale, and remembered what he had read about Death in the +Revelation. He therefore deposited the collar by a tree, and hid +himself behind it. The horseman came on, and the youth, whose +eyes were as keen as telescopes, to his great relief recognized +the doctor. + +As Melbury surmised, Fitzpiers had in the darkness taken Blossom +for Darling, and he had not discovered his mistake when he came up +opposite the boy, though he was somewhat surprised at the +liveliness of his usually placid mare. The only other pair of +eyes on the spot whose vision was keen as the young carter's were +those of the horse; and, with that strongly conservative objection +to the unusual which animals show, Blossom, on eying the collar +under the tree--quite invisible to Fitzpiers--exercised none of +the patience of the older horse, but shied sufficiently to unseat +so second-rate an equestrian as the surgeon. + +He fell, and did not move, lying as Melbury afterwards found him. +The boy ran away, salving his conscience for the desertion by +thinking how vigorously he would spread the alarm of the accident +when he got to Hintock--which he uncompromisingly did, incrusting +the skeleton event with a load of dramatic horrors. + +Grace had returned, and the fly hired on her account, though not +by her husband, at the Crown Hotel, Shottsford-Forum, had been +paid for and dismissed. The long drive had somewhat revived her, +her illness being a feverish intermittent nervousness which had +more to do with mind than body, and she walked about her sitting- +room in something of a hopeful mood. Mrs. Melbury had told her as +soon as she arrived that her husband had returned from London. He +had gone out, she said, to see a patient, as she supposed, and he +must soon be back, since he had had no dinner or tea. Grace would +not allow her mind to harbor any suspicion of his whereabouts, and +her step-mother said nothing of Mrs. Charmond's rumored sorrows +and plans of departure. + +So the young wife sat by the fire, waiting silently. She had left +Hintock in a turmoil of feeling after the revelation of Mrs. +Charmond, and had intended not to be at home when her husband +returned. But she had thought the matter over, and had allowed +her father's influence to prevail and bring her back; and now +somewhat regretted that Edgar's arrival had preceded hers. + +By-and-by Mrs. Melbury came up-stairs with a slight air of flurry +and abruptness. + +"I have something to tell--some bad news," she said. "But you +must not be alarmed, as it is not so bad as it might have been. +Edgar has been thrown off his horse. We don't think he is hurt +much. It happened in the wood the other side of Nellcombe Bottom, +where 'tis said the ghosts of the brothers walk." + +She went on to give a few of the particulars, but none of the +invented horrors that had been communicated by the boy. "I +thought it better to tell you at once," she added, "in case he +should not be very well able to walk home, and somebody should +bring him." + +Mrs. Melbury really thought matters much worse than she +represented, and Grace knew that she thought so. She sat down +dazed for a few minutes, returning a negative to her step-mother's +inquiry if she could do anything for her. "But please go into the +bedroom," Grace said, on second thoughts, "and see if all is ready +there--in case it is serious." Mrs. Melbury thereupon called +Grammer, and they did as directed, supplying the room with +everything they could think of for the accommodation of an injured +man. + +Nobody was left in the lower part of the house. Not many minutes +passed when Grace heard a knock at the door--a single knock, not +loud enough to reach the ears of those in the bedroom. She went +to the top of the stairs and said, faintly, "Come up," knowing +that the door stood, as usual in such houses, wide open. + +Retreating into the gloom of the broad landing she saw rise up the +stairs a woman whom at first she did not recognize, till her voice +revealed her to be Suke Damson, in great fright and sorrow. A +streak of light from the partially closed door of Grace's room +fell upon her face as she came forward, and it was drawn and pale. + +"Oh, Miss Melbury--I would say Mrs. Fitzpiers," she said, wringing +her hands. "This terrible news. Is he dead? Is he hurted very +bad? Tell me; I couldn't help coming; please forgive me, Miss +Melbury--Mrs. Fitzpiers I would say!" + +Grace sank down on the oak chest which stood on the landing, and +put her hands to her now flushed face and head. Could she order +Suke Damson down-stairs and out of the house? Her husband might be +brought in at any moment, and what would happen? But could she +order this genuinely grieved woman away? + +There was a dead silence of half a minute or so, till Suke said, +"Why don't ye speak? Is he here? Is he dead? If so, why can't I +see him--would it be so very wrong?" + +Before Grace had answered somebody else came to the door below--a +foot-fall light as a roe's. There was a hurried tapping upon the +panel, as if with the impatient tips of fingers whose owner +thought not whether a knocker were there or no. Without a pause, +and possibly guided by the stray beam of light on the landing, the +newcomer ascended the staircase as the first had done. Grace was +sufficiently visible, and the lady, for a lady it was, came to her +side. + +"I could make nobody hear down-stairs," said Felice Charmond, with +lips whose dryness could almost be heard, and panting, as she +stood like one ready to sink on the floor with distress. "What +is--the matter--tell me the worst! Can he live?" She looked at +Grace imploringly, without perceiving poor Suke, who, dismayed at +such a presence, had shrunk away into the shade. + +Mrs. Charmond's little feet were covered with mud; she was quite +unconscious of her appearance now. "I have heard such a dreadful +report," she went on; "I came to ascertain the truth of it. Is +he--killed?" + +"She won't tell us--he's dying--he's in that room!" burst out +Suke, regardless of consequences, as she heard the distant +movements of Mrs. Melbury and Grammer in the bedroom at the end of +the passage. + +"Where?" said Mrs. Charmond; and on Suke pointing out the +direction, she made as if to go thither. + +Grace barred the way. "He is not there," she said. "I have not +seen him any more than you. I have heard a report only--not so +bad as you think. It must have been exaggerated to you." + +"Please do not conceal anything--let me know all!" said Felice, +doubtingly. + +"You shall know all I know--you have a perfect right to know--who +can have a better than either of you?" said Grace, with a delicate +sting which was lost upon Felice Charmond now. "I repeat, I have +only heard a less alarming account than you have heard; how much +it means, and how little, I cannot say. I pray God that it means +not much--in common humanity. You probably pray the same--for +other reasons." + +She regarded them both there in the dim light a while. + +They stood dumb in their trouble, not stinging back at her; not +heeding her mood. A tenderness spread over Grace like a dew. It +was well, very well, conventionally, to address either one of them +in the wife's regulation terms of virtuous sarcasm, as woman, +creature, or thing, for losing their hearts to her husband. But +life, what was it, and who was she? She had, like the singer of +the psalm of Asaph, been plagued and chastened all the day long; +but could she, by retributive words, in order to please herself-- +the individual--"offend against the generation," as he would not? + +"He is dying, perhaps," blubbered Suke Damson, putting her apron +to her eyes. + +In their gestures and faces there were anxieties, affection, agony +of heart, all for a man who had wronged them--had never really +behaved towards either of them anyhow but selfishly. Neither one +but would have wellnigh sacrificed half her life to him, even now. +The tears which his possibly critical situation could not bring to +her eyes surged over at the contemplation of these fellow-women. +She turned to the balustrade, bent herself upon it, and wept. + +Thereupon Felice began to cry also, without using her +handkerchief, and letting the tears run down silently. While +these three poor women stood together thus, pitying another though +most to be pitied themselves, the pacing of a horse or horses +became audible in the court, and in a moment Melbury's voice was +heard calling to his stableman. Grace at once started up, ran +down the stairs and out into the quadrangle as her father crossed +it towards the door. "Father, what is the matter with him?" she +cried. + +"Who--Edgar?" said Melbury, abruptly. "Matter? Nothing. What, my +dear, and have you got home safe? Why, you are better already! But +you ought not to be out in the air like this." + +"But he has been thrown off his horse!" + +"I know; I know. I saw it. He got up again, and walked off as +well as ever. A fall on the leaves didn't hurt a spry fellow like +him. He did not come this way," he added, significantly. "I +suppose he went to look for his horse. I tried to find him, but +could not. But after seeing him go away under the trees I found +the horse, and have led it home for safety. So he must walk. +Now, don't you stay out here in this night air. + +She returned to the house with her father. when she had again +ascended to the landing and to her own rooms beyond it was a great +relief to her to find that both Petticoat the First and Petticoat +the Second of her Bien-aime had silently disappeared. They had, +in all probability, heard the words of her father, and departed +with their anxieties relieved. + +Presently her parents came up to Grace, and busied themselves to +see that she was comfortable. Perceiving soon that she would +prefer to be left alone they went away. + +Grace waited on. The clock raised its voice now and then, but her +husband did not return. At her father's usual hour for retiring +he again came in to see her. "Do not stay up," she said, as soon +as he entered. "I am not at all tired. I will sit up for him." + +"I think it will be useless, Grace," said Melbury, slowly. + +"Why?" + +"I have had a bitter quarrel with him; and on that account I +hardly think he will return to-night." + +"A quarrel? Was that after the fall seen by the boy?" + +Melbury nodded an affirmative, without taking his eyes off the +candle. + +"Yes; it was as we were coming home together," he said. + +Something had been swelling up in Grace while her father was +speaking. "How could you want to quarrel with him?" she cried, +suddenly. "Why could you not let him come home quietly if he were +inclined to? He is my husband; and now you have married me to him +surely you need not provoke him unnecessarily. First you induce +me to accept him, and then you do things that divide us more than +we should naturally be divided!" + +"How can you speak so unjustly to me, Grace?" said Melbury, with +indignant sorrow. "I divide you from your husband, indeed! You +little think--" + +He was inclined to say more--to tell her the whole story of the +encounter, and that the provocation he had received had lain +entirely in hearing her despised. But it would have greatly +distressed her, and he forbore. "You had better lie down. You +are tired," he said, soothingly. "Good-night." + +The household went to bed, and a silence fell upon the dwelling, +broken only by the occasional skirr of a halter in Melbury's +stables. Despite her father's advice Grace still waited up. But +nobody came. + +It was a critical time in Grace's emotional life that night. She +thought of her husband a good deal, and for the nonce forgot +Winterborne. + +"How these unhappy women must have admired Edgar!" she said to +herself. "How attractive he must be to everybody; and, indeed, he +is attractive." The possibility is that, piqued by rivalry, these +ideas might have been transformed into their corresponding +emotions by a show of the least reciprocity in Fitzpiers. There +was, in truth, a love-bird yearning to fly from her heart; and it +wanted a lodging badly. + +But no husband came. The fact was that Melbury had been much +mistaken about the condition of Fitzpiers. People do not fall +headlong on stumps of underwood with impunity. Had the old man +been able to watch Fitzpiers narrowly enough, he would have +observed that on rising and walking into the thicket he dropped +blood as he went; that he had not proceeded fifty yards before he +showed signs of being dizzy, and, raising his hands to his head, +reeled and fell down. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + + +Grace was not the only one who watched and meditated in Hintock +that night. Felice Charmond was in no mood to retire to rest at a +customary hour; and over her drawing-room fire at the Manor House +she sat as motionless and in as deep a reverie as Grace in her +little apartment at the homestead. + +Having caught ear of Melbury's intelligence while she stood on the +landing at his house, and been eased of much of her mental +distress, her sense of personal decorum returned upon her with a +rush. She descended the stairs and left the door like a ghost, +keeping close to the walls of the building till she got round to +the gate of the quadrangle, through which she noiselessly passed +almost before Grace and her father had finished their discourse. +Suke Damson had thought it well to imitate her superior in this +respect, and, descending the back stairs as Felice descended the +front, went out at the side door and home to her cottage. + +Once outside Melbury's gates Mrs. Charmond ran with all her speed +to the Manor House, without stopping or turning her head, and +splitting her thin boots in her haste. She entered her own +dwelling, as she had emerged from it, by the drawing-room window. +In other circumstances she would have felt some timidity at +undertaking such an unpremeditated excursion alone; but her +anxiety for another had cast out her fear for herself. + +Everything in her drawing-room was just as she had left it--the +candles still burning, the casement closed, and the shutters +gently pulled to, so as to hide the state of the window from the +cursory glance of a servant entering the apartment. She had been +gone about three-quarters of an hour by the clock, and nobody +seemed to have discovered her absence. Tired in body but tense in +mind, she sat down, palpitating, round-eyed, bewildered at what +she had done. + +She had been betrayed by affrighted love into a visit which, now +that the emotion instigating it had calmed down under her belief +that Fitzpiers was in no danger, was the saddest surprise to her. +This was how she had set about doing her best to escape her +passionate bondage to him! Somehow, in declaring to Grace and to +herself the unseemliness of her infatuation, she had grown a +convert to its irresistibility. If Heaven would only give her +strength; but Heaven never did! One thing was indispensable; she +must go away from Hintock if she meant to withstand further +temptation. The struggle was too wearying, too hopeless, while +she remained. It was but a continual capitulation of conscience +to what she dared not name. + +By degrees, as she sat, Felice's mind--helped perhaps by the +anticlimax of learning that her lover was unharmed after all her +fright about him--grew wondrously strong in wise resolve. For the +moment she was in a mood, in the words of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, +"to run mad with discretion;" and was so persuaded that discretion +lay in departure that she wished to set about going that very +minute. Jumping up from her seat, she began to gather together +some small personal knick-knacks scattered about the room, to feel +that preparations were really in train. + +While moving here and there she fancied that she heard a slight +noise out-of-doors, and stood still. Surely it was a tapping at +the window. A thought entered her mind, and burned her cheek. He +had come to that window before; yet was it possible that he should +dare to do so now! All the servants were in bed, and in the +ordinary course of affairs she would have retired also. Then she +remembered that on stepping in by the casement and closing it, she +had not fastened the window-shutter, so that a streak of light +from the interior of the room might have revealed her vigil to an +observer on the lawn. How all things conspired against her +keeping faith with Grace! + +The tapping recommenced, light as from the bill of a little bird; +her illegitimate hope overcame her vow; she went and pulled back +the shutter, determining, however, to shake her head at him and +keep the casement securely closed. + +What she saw outside might have struck terror into a heart stouter +than a helpless woman's at midnight. In the centre of the lowest +pane of the window, close to the glass, was a human face, which +she barely recognized as the face of Fitzpiers. It was surrounded +with the darkness of the night without, corpse-like in its pallor, +and covered with blood. As disclosed in the square area of the +pane it met her frightened eyes like a replica of the Sudarium of +St. Veronica. + +He moved his lips, and looked at her imploringly. Her rapid mind +pieced together in an instant a possible concatenation of events +which might have led to this tragical issue. She unlatched the +casement with a terrified hand, and bending down to where he was +crouching, pressed her face to his with passionate solicitude. +She assisted him into the room without a word, to do which it was +almost necessary to lift him bodily. Quickly closing the window +and fastening the shutters, she bent over him breathlessly. + +"Are you hurt much--much?" she cried, faintly. "Oh, oh, how is +this!" + +"Rather much--but don't be frightened," he answered in a difficult +whisper, and turning himself to obtain an easier position if +possible. "A little water, please." + +She ran across into the dining-room, and brought a bottle and +glass, from which he eagerly drank. He could then speak much +better, and with her help got upon the nearest couch. + +"Are you dying, Edgar?" she said. "Do speak to me!" + +"I am half dead," said Fitzpiers. "But perhaps I shall get over +it....It is chiefly loss of blood." + +"But I thought your fall did not hurt you," said she. "Who did +this?" + +"Felice--my father-in-law!...I have crawled to you more than a +mile on my hands and knees--God, I thought I should never have got +here!...I have come to you--be-cause you are the only friend--I +have in the world now....I can never go back to Hintock--never--to +the roof of the Melburys! Not poppy nor mandragora will ever +medicine this bitter feud!...If I were only well again--" + +"Let me bind your head, now that you have rested." + +"Yes--but wait a moment--it has stopped bleeding, fortunately, or +I should be a dead man before now. While in the wood I managed to +make a tourniquet of some half-pence and my handkerchief, as well +as I could in the dark....But listen, dear Felice! Can you hide me +till I am well? Whatever comes, I can be seen in Hintock no more. +My practice is nearly gone, you know--and after this I would not +care to recover it if I could." + +By this time Felice's tears began to blind her. Where were now +her discreet plans for sundering their lives forever? To +administer to him in his pain, and trouble, and poverty, was her +single thought. The first step was to hide him, and she asked +herself where. A place occurred to her mind. + +She got him some wine from the dining-room, which strengthened him +much. Then she managed to remove his boots, and, as he could now +keep himself upright by leaning upon her on one side and a +walking-stick on the other, they went thus in slow march out of +the room and up the stairs. At the top she took him along a +gallery, pausing whenever he required rest, and thence up a +smaller staircase to the least used part of the house, where she +unlocked a door. Within was a lumber-room, containing abandoned +furniture of all descriptions, built up in piles which obscured +the light of the windows, and formed between them nooks and lairs +in which a person would not be discerned even should an eye gaze +in at the door. The articles were mainly those that had belonged +to the previous owner of the house, and had been bought in by the +late Mr. Charmond at the auction; but changing fashion, and the +tastes of a young wife, had caused them to be relegated to this +dungeon. + +Here Fitzpiers sat on the floor against the wall till she had +hauled out materials for a bed, which she spread on the floor in +one of the aforesaid nooks. She obtained water and a basin, and +washed the dried blood from his face and hands; and when he was +comfortably reclining, fetched food from the larder. While he ate +her eyes lingered anxiously on his face, following its every +movement with such loving-kindness as only a fond woman can show. + +He was now in better condition, and discussed his position with +her. + +"What I fancy I said to Melbury must have been enough to enrage +any man, if uttered in cold blood, and with knowledge of his +presence. But I did not know him, and I was stupefied by what he +had given me, so that I hardly was aware of what I said. Well-- +the veil of that temple is rent in twain!...As I am not going to +be seen again in Hintock, my first efforts must be directed to +allay any alarm that may be felt at my absence, before I am able +to get clear away. Nobody must suspect that I have been hurt, or +there will be a country talk about me. Felice, I must at once +concoct a letter to check all search for me. I think if you can +bring me a pen and paper I may be able to do it now. I could rest +better if it were done. Poor thing! how I tire her with running +up and down!" + +She fetched writing materials, and held up the blotting-book as a +support to his hand, while he penned a brief note to his nominal +wife. + +"The animosity shown towards me by your father," he wrote, in this +coldest of marital epistles, "is such that I cannot return again +to a roof which is his, even though it shelters you. A parting is +unavoidable, as you are sure to be on his side in this division. +I am starting on a journey which will take me a long way from +Hintock, and you must not expect to see me there again for some +time." + +He then gave her a few directions bearing upon his professional +engagements and other practical matters, concluding without a hint +of his destination, or a notion of when she would see him again. +He offered to read the note to Felice before he closed it up, but +she would not hear or see it; that side of his obligations +distressed her beyond endurance. She turned away from Fitzpiers, +and sobbed bitterly. + +"If you can get this posted at a place some miles away," he +whispered, exhausted by the effort of writing--"at Shottsford or +Port-Bredy, or still better, Budmouth--it will divert all +suspicion from this house as the place of my refuge." + +"I will drive to one or other of the places myself--anything to +keep it unknown," she murmured, her voice weighted with vague +foreboding, now that the excitement of helping him had passed +away. + +Fitzpiers told her that there was yet one thing more to he done. +"In creeping over the fence on to the lawn," he said, "I made the +rail bloody, and it shows rather much on the white paint--I could +see it in the dark. At all hazards it should be washed off. +Could you do that also, Felice?" + +What will not women do on such devoted occasions? weary as she was +she went all the way down the rambling staircases to the ground- +floor, then to search for a lantern, which she lighted and hid +under her cloak; then for a wet sponge, and next went forth into +the night. The white railing stared out in the darkness at her +approach, and a ray from the enshrouded lantern fell upon the +blood--just where he had told her it would be found. she +shuddered. It was almost too much to bear in one day--but with a +shaking hand she sponged the rail clean, and returned to the +house. + +The time occupied by these several proceedings was not much less +than two hours. When all was done, and she had smoothed his +extemporized bed, and placed everything within his reach that she +could think of, she took her leave of him, and locked him in. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + + +When her husband's letter reached Grace's hands, bearing upon it +the postmark of a distant town, it never once crossed her mind +that Fitzpiers was within a mile of her still. she felt relieved +that he did not write more bitterly of the quarrel with her +father, whatever its nature might have been; but the general +frigidity of his communication quenched in her the incipient spark +that events had kindled so shortly before. + +From this centre of information it was made known in Hintock that +the doctor had gone away, and as none but the Melbury household +was aware that he did not return on the night of his accident, no +excitement manifested itself in the village. + +Thus the early days of May passed by. None but the nocturnal +birds and animals observed that late one evening, towards the +middle of the month, a closely wrapped figure, with a crutch under +one arm and a stick in his hand, crept out from Hintock House +across the lawn to the shelter of the trees, taking thence a slow +and laborious walk to the nearest point of the turnpike-road. The +mysterious personage was so disguised that his own wife would +hardly have known him. Felice Charmond was a practised hand at +make-ups, as well she might be; and she had done her utmost in +padding and painting Fitzpiers with the old materials of her art +in the recesses of the lumber-room. + +In the highway he was met by a covered carriage, which conveyed +him to Sherton-Abbas, whence he proceeded to the nearest port on +the south coast, and immediately crossed the Channel. + +But it was known to everybody that three days after this time Mrs. +Charmond executed her long-deferred plan of setting out for a long +term of travel and residence on the Continent. She went off one +morning as unostentatiously as could be, and took no maid with +her, having, she said, engaged one to meet her at a point farther +on in her route. After that, Hintock House, so frequently +deserted, was again to be let. Spring had not merged in summer +when a clinching rumor, founded on the best of evidence, reached +the parish and neighborhood. Mrs. Charmond and Fitzpiers had been +seen together in Baden, in relations which set at rest the +question that had agitated the little community ever since the +winter. + +Melbury had entered the Valley of Humiliation even farther than +Grace. His spirit seemed broken. + +But once a week he mechanically went to market as usual, and here, +as he was passing by the conduit one day, his mental condition +expressed largely by his gait, he heard his name spoken by a voice +formerly familiar. He turned and saw a certain Fred Beaucock-- +once a promising lawyer's clerk and local dandy, who had been +called the cleverest fellow in Sherton, without whose brains the +firm of solicitors employing him would be nowhere. But later on +Beaucock had fallen into the mire. He was invited out a good +deal, sang songs at agricultural meetings and burgesses' dinners; +in sum, victualled himself with spirits more frequently than was +good for the clever brains or body either. He lost his situation, +and after an absence spent in trying his powers elsewhere, came +back to his native town, where, at the time of the foregoing +events in Hintock, he gave legal advice for astonishingly small +fees--mostly carrying on his profession on public-house settles, +in whose recesses he might often have been overheard making +country-people's wills for half a crown; calling with a learned +voice for pen-and-ink and a halfpenny sheet of paper, on which he +drew up the testament while resting it in a little space wiped +with his hand on the table amid the liquid circles formed by the +cups and glasses. An idea implanted early in life is difficult to +uproot, and many elderly tradespeople still clung to the notion +that Fred Beaucock knew a great deal of law. + +It was he who had called Melbury by name. "You look very down, +Mr. Melbury--very, if I may say as much," he observed, when the +timber-merchant turned. "But I know--I know. A very sad case-- +very. I was bred to the law, as you know, and am professionally +no stranger to such matters. Well, Mrs. Fitzpiers has her +remedy." + +"How--what--a remedy?" said Melbury. + +"Under the new law, sir. A new court was established last year, +and under the new statute, twenty and twenty-one Vic., cap. +eighty-five, unmarrying is as easy as marrying. No more Acts of +Parliament necessary; no longer one law for the rich and another +for the poor. But come inside--I was just going to have a +nibleykin of rum hot--I'll explain it all to you." + +The intelligence amazed Melbury, who saw little of newspapers. +And though he was a severely correct man in his habits, and had no +taste for entering a tavern with Fred Beaucock--nay, would have +been quite uninfluenced by such a character on any other matter in +the world--such fascination lay in the idea of delivering his poor +girl from bondage, that it deprived him of the critical faculty. +He could not resist the ex-lawyer's clerk, and entered the inn. + +Here they sat down to the rum, which Melbury paid for as a matter +of course, Beaucock leaning back in the settle with a legal +gravity which would hardly allow him to be conscious of the +spirits before him, though they nevertheless disappeared with +mysterious quickness. + +How much of the exaggerated information on the then new divorce +laws which Beaucock imparted to his listener was the result of +ignorance, and how much of dupery, was never ascertained. But he +related such a plausible story of the ease with which Grace could +become a free woman that her father was irradiated with the +project; and though he scarcely wetted his lips, Melbury never +knew how he came out of the inn, or when or where he mounted his +gig to pursue his way homeward. But home he found himself, his +brain having all the way seemed to ring sonorously as a gong in +the intensity of its stir. Before he had seen Grace, he was +accidentally met by Winterborne, who found his face shining as if +he had, like the Law-giver, conversed with an angel. + +He relinquished his horse, and took Winterborne by the arm to a +heap of rendlewood--as barked oak was here called--which lay under +a privet-hedge. + +"Giles," he said, when they had sat down upon the logs, "there's a +new law in the land! Grace can be free quite easily. I only knew +it by the merest accident. I might not have found it out for the +next ten years. She can get rid of him--d'ye hear?--get rid of +him. Think of that, my friend Giles!" + +He related what he had learned of the new legal remedy. A subdued +tremulousness about the mouth was all the response that +Winterborne made; and Melbury added, "My boy, you shall have her +yet--if you want her." His feelings had gathered volume as he said +this, and the articulate sound of the old idea drowned his sight +in mist. + +"Are you sure--about this new law?" asked Winterborne, so +disquieted by a gigantic exultation which loomed alternately with +fearful doubt that he evaded the full acceptance of Melbury's last +statement. + +Melbury said that he had no manner of doubt, for since his talk +with Beaucock it had come into his mind that he had seen some time +ago in the weekly paper an allusion to such a legal change; but, +having no interest in those desperate remedies at the moment, he +had passed it over. "But I'm not going to let the matter rest +doubtful for a single day," he continued. "I am going to London. +Beaucock will go with me, and we shall get the best advice as soon +as we possibly can. Beaucock is a thorough lawyer--nothing the +matter with him but a fiery palate. I knew him as the stay and +refuge of Sherton in knots of law at one time." + +Winterborne's replies were of the vaguest. The new possibility +was almost unthinkable by him at the moment. He was what was +called at Hintock "a solid-going fellow;" he maintained his +abeyant mood, not from want of reciprocity, but from a taciturn +hesitancy, taught by life as he knew it. + +"But," continued the timber-merchant, a temporary crease or two of +anxiety supplementing those already established in his forehead by +time and care, "Grace is not at all well. Nothing constitutional, +you know; but she has been in a low, nervous state ever since that +night of fright. I don't doubt but that she will be all right +soon....I wonder how she is this evening?" He rose with the words, +as if he had too long forgotten her personality in the excitement +of her previsioned career. + +They had sat till the evening was beginning to dye the garden +brown, and now went towards Melbury's house, Giles a few steps in +the rear of his old friend, who was stimulated by the enthusiasm +of the moment to outstep the ordinary walking of Winterborne. He +felt shy of entering Grace's presence as her reconstituted lover-- +which was how her father's manner would be sure to present him-- +before definite information as to her future state was +forthcoming; it seemed too nearly like the act of those who rush +in where angels fear to tread. + +A chill to counterbalance all the glowing promise of the day was +prompt enough in coming. No sooner had he followed the timber- +merchant in at the door than he heard Grammer inform him that Mrs. +Fitzpiers was still more unwell than she had been in the morning. +Old Dr. Jones being in the neighborhood they had called him in, +and he had instantly directed them to get her to bed. They were +not, however, to consider her illness serious--a feverish, nervous +attack the result of recent events, was what she was suffering +from, and she would doubtless be well in a few days. + +Winterborne, therefore, did not remain, and his hope of seeing her +that evening was disappointed. Even this aggravation of her +morning condition did not greatly depress Melbury. He knew, he +said, that his daughter's constitution was sound enough. It was +only these domestic troubles that were pulling her down. Once +free she would be blooming again. Melbury diagnosed rightly, as +parents usually do. + +He set out for London the next morning, Jones having paid another +visit and assured him that he might leave home without uneasiness, +especially on an errand of that sort, which would the sooner put +an end to her suspense. + +The timber-merchant had been away only a day or two when it was +told in Hintock that Mr. Fitzpiers's hat had been found in the +wood. Later on in the afternoon the hat was brought to Melbury, +and, by a piece of ill-fortune, into Grace's presence. It had +doubtless lain in the wood ever since his fall from the horse, but +it looked so clean and uninjured--the summer weather and leafy +shelter having much favored its preservation--that Grace could not +believe it had remained so long concealed. A very little of fact +was enough to set her fevered fancy at work at this juncture; she +thought him still in the neighborhood; she feared his sudden +appearance; and her nervous malady developed consequences so grave +that Dr. Jones began to look serious, and the household was +alarmed. + +It was the beginning of June, and the cuckoo at this time of the +summer scarcely ceased his cry for more than two or three hours +during the night. The bird's note, so familiar to her ears from +infancy, was now absolute torture to the poor girl. On the Friday +following the Wednesday of Melbury's departure, and the day after +the discovery of Fitzpiers's hat, the cuckoo began at two o'clock +in the morning with a sudden cry from one of Melbury's apple- +trees, not three yards from the window of Grace's room. + +"Oh, he is coming!" she cried, and in her terror sprang clean from +the bed out upon the floor. + +These starts and frights continued till noon; and when the doctor +had arrived and had seen her, and had talked with Mrs. Melbury, he +sat down and meditated. That ever-present terror it was +indispensable to remove from her mind at all hazards; and he +thought how this might be done. + +Without saying a word to anybody in the house, or to the +disquieted Winterborne waiting in the lane below, Dr. Jones went +home and wrote to Mr. Melbury at the London address he had +obtained from his wife. The gist of his communication was that +Mrs. Fitzpiers should be assured as soon as possible that steps +were being taken to sever the bond which was becoming a torture to +her; that she would soon be free, and was even then virtually so. +"If you can say it AT ONCE it may be the means of averting much +harm," he said. "Write to herself; not to me." + +On Saturday he drove over to Hintock, and assured her with +mysterious pacifications that in a day or two she might expect to +receive some assuring news. So it turned out. When Sunday +morning came there was a letter for Grace from her father. It +arrived at seven o'clock, the usual time at which the toddling +postman passed by Hintock; at eight Grace awoke, having slept an +hour or two for a wonder, and Mrs. Melbury brought up the letter. + +"Can you open it yourself?" said she. + +"Oh yes, yes!" said Grace, with feeble impatience. She tore the +envelope, unfolded the sheet, and read; when a creeping blush +tinctured her white neck and cheek. + +Her father had exercised a bold discretion. He informed her that +she need have no further concern about Fitzpiers's return; that +she would shortly be a free woman; and therefore, if she should +desire to wed her old lover--which he trusted was the case, since +it was his own deep wish--she would be in a position to do so. In +this Melbury had not written beyond his belief. But he very much +stretched the facts in adding that the legal formalities for +dissolving her union were practically settled. The truth was that +on the arrival of the doctor's letter poor Melbury had been much +agitated, and could with difficulty be prevented by Beaucock from +returning to her bedside. What was the use of his rushing back to +Hintock? Beaucock had asked him. The only thing that could do her +any good was a breaking of the bond. Though he had not as yet had +an interview with the eminent solicitor they were about to +consult, he was on the point of seeing him; and the case was clear +enough. Thus the simple Melbury, urged by his parental alarm at +her danger by the representations of his companion, and by the +doctor's letter, had yielded, and sat down to tell her roundly +that she was virtually free. + +"And you'd better write also to the gentleman," suggested +Beaucock, who, scenting notoriety and the germ of a large practice +in the case, wished to commit Melbury to it irretrievably; to +effect which he knew that nothing would be so potent as awakening +the passion of Grace for Winterborne, so that her father might not +have the heart to withdraw from his attempt to make her love +legitimate when he discovered that there were difficulties in the +way. + +The nervous, impatient Melbury was much pleased with the idea of +"starting them at once," as he called it. To put his long-delayed +reparative scheme in train had become a passion with him now. He +added to the letter addressed to his daughter a passage hinting +that she ought to begin to encourage Winterborne, lest she should +lose him altogether; and he wrote to Giles that the path was +virtually open for him at last. Life was short, he declared; +there were slips betwixt the cup and the lip; her interest in him +should be reawakened at once, that all might be ready when the +good time came for uniting them. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + + +At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed than he was +moved in heart. The novelty of the avowal rendered what it +carried with it inapprehensible by him in its entirety. + +Only a few short months ago completely estranged from this family-- +beholding Grace going to and fro in the distance, clothed with +the alienating radiance of obvious superiority, the wife of the +then popular and fashionable Fitzpiers, hopelessly outside his +social boundary down to so recent a time that flowers then folded +were hardly faded yet--he was now asked by that jealously guarding +father of hers to take courage--to get himself ready for the day +when he should be able to claim her. + +The old times came back to him in dim procession. How he had been +snubbed; how Melbury had despised his Christmas party; how that +sweet, coy Grace herself had looked down upon him and his +household arrangements, and poor Creedle's contrivances! + +Well, he could not believe it. Surely the adamantine barrier of +marriage with another could not be pierced like this! It did +violence to custom. Yet a new law might do anything. But was it +at all within the bounds of probability that a woman who, over and +above her own attainments, had been accustomed to those of a +cultivated professional man, could ever be the wife of such as he? + +Since the date of his rejection he had almost grown to see the +reasonableness of that treatment. He had said to himself again +and again that her father was right; that the poor ceorl, Giles +Winterborne, would never have been able to make such a dainty girl +happy. Yet, now that she had stood in a position farther removed +from his own than at first, he was asked to prepare to woo her. +He was full of doubt. + +Nevertheless, it was not in him to show backwardness. To act so +promptly as Melbury desired him to act seemed, indeed, scarcely +wise, because of the uncertainty of events. Giles knew nothing of +legal procedure, but he did know that for him to step up to Grace +as a lover before the bond which bound her was actually dissolved +was simply an extravagant dream of her father's overstrained mind. +He pitied Melbury for his almost childish enthusiasm, and saw that +the aging man must have suffered acutely to be weakened to this +unreasoning desire. + +Winterborne was far too magnanimous to harbor any cynical +conjecture that the timber-merchant, in his intense affection for +Grace, was courting him now because that young lady, when +disunited, would be left in an anomalous position, to escape which +a bad husband was better than none. He felt quite sure that his +old friend was simply on tenterhooks of anxiety to repair the +almost irreparable error of dividing two whom Nature had striven +to join together in earlier days, and that in his ardor to do this +he was oblivious of formalities. The cautious supervision of his +past years had overleaped itself at last. hence, Winterborne +perceived that, in this new beginning, the necessary care not to +compromise Grace by too early advances must be exercised by +himself. + +Perhaps Winterborne was not quite so ardent as heretofore. There +is no such thing as a stationary love: men are either loving more +or loving less. But Giles himself recognized no decline in his +sense of her dearness. If the flame did indeed burn lower now +than when he had fetched her from Sherton at her last return from +school, the marvel was small. He had been laboring ever since his +rejection and her marriage to reduce his former passion to a +docile friendship, out of pure regard to its expediency; and their +separation may have helped him to a partial success. + +A week and more passed, and there was no further news of Melbury. +But the effect of the intelligence he had already transmitted upon +the elastic-nerved daughter of the woods had been much what the +old surgeon Jones had surmised. It had soothed her perturbed +spirit better than all the opiates in the pharmacopoeia. She had +slept unbrokenly a whole night and a day. The "new law" was to +her a mysterious, beneficent, godlike entity, lately descended +upon earth, that would make her as she once had been without +trouble or annoyance. Her position fretted her, its abstract +features rousing an aversion which was even greater than her +aversion to the personality of him who had caused it. It was +mortifying, productive of slights, undignified. Him she could +forget; her circumstances she had always with her. + +She saw nothing of Winterborne during the days of her recovery; +and perhaps on that account her fancy wove about him a more +romantic tissue than it could have done if he had stood before her +with all the specks and flaws inseparable from corporeity. He +rose upon her memory as the fruit-god and the wood-god in +alternation; sometimes leafy, and smeared with green lichen, as +she had seen him among the sappy boughs of the plantations; +sometimes cider-stained, and with apple-pips in the hair of his +arms, as she had met him on his return from cider-making in White +Hart Vale, with his vats and presses beside him. In her secret +heart she almost approximated to her father's enthusiasm in +wishing to show Giles once for all how she still regarded him. +The question whether the future would indeed bring them together +for life was a standing wonder with her. She knew that it could +not with any propriety do so just yet. But reverently believing +in her father's sound judgment and knowledge, as good girls are +wont to do, she remembered what he had written about her giving a +hint to Winterborne lest there should be risk in delay, and her +feelings were not averse to such a step, so far as it could be +done without danger at this early stage of the proceedings. + +From being a frail phantom of her former equable self she returned +in bounds to a condition of passable philosophy. She bloomed +again in the face in the course of a few days, and was well enough +to go about as usual. One day Mrs. Melbury proposed that for a +change she should be driven in the gig to Sherton market, whither +Melbury's man was going on other errands. Grace had no business +whatever in Sherton; but it crossed her mind that Winterborne +would probably be there, and this made the thought of such a drive +interesting. + +On the way she saw nothing of him; but when the horse was walking +slowly through the obstructions of Sheep Street, she discerned the +young man on the pavement. She thought of that time when he had +been standing under his apple-tree on her return from school, and +of the tender opportunity then missed through her fastidiousness. +Her heart rose in her throat. She abjured all such fastidiousness +now. Nor did she forget the last occasion on which she had beheld +him in that town, making cider in the court-yard of the Earl of +Wessex Hotel, while she was figuring as a fine lady in the balcony +above. + +Grace directed the man to set her down there in the midst, and +immediately went up to her lover. Giles had not before observed +her, and his eyes now suppressedly looked his pleasure, without +the embarrassment that had formerly marked him at such meetings. + +When a few words had been spoken, she said, archly, "I have +nothing to do. Perhaps you are deeply engaged?" + +"I? Not a bit. My business now at the best of times is small, I +am sorry to say." + +"Well, then, I am going into the Abbey. Come along with me." + +The proposition had suggested itself as a quick escape from +publicity, for many eyes were regarding her. She had hoped that +sufficient time had elapsed for the extinction of curiosity; but +it was quite otherwise. The people looked at her with tender +interest as the deserted girl-wife--without obtrusiveness, and +without vulgarity; but she was ill prepared for scrutiny in any +shape. + +They walked about the Abbey aisles, and presently sat down. Not a +soul was in the building save themselves. She regarded a stained +window, with her head sideways, and tentatively asked him if he +remembered the last time they were in that town alone. + +He remembered it perfectly, and remarked, "You were a proud miss +then, and as dainty as you were high. Perhaps you are now?" + +Grace slowly shook her head. "Affliction has taken all that out +of me," she answered, impressively. "Perhaps I am too far the +other way now." As there was something lurking in this that she +could not explain, she added, so quickly as not to allow him time +to think of it, "Has my father written to you at all?" + +"Yes," said Winterborne. + +She glanced ponderingly up at him. "Not about me?" + +"Yes." + +His mouth was lined with charactery which told her that he had +been bidden to take the hint as to the future which she had been +bidden to give. The unexpected discovery sent a scarlet pulsation +through Grace for the moment. However, it was only Giles who +stood there, of whom she had no fear; and her self-possession +returned. + +"He said I was to sound you with a view to--what you will +understand, if you care to," continued Winterborne, in a low +voice. Having been put on this track by herself, he was not +disposed to abandon it in a hurry. + +They had been children together, and there was between them that +familiarity as to personal affairs which only such +acquaintanceship can give. "You know, Giles," she answered, +speaking in a very practical tone, "that that is all very well; +but I am in a very anomalous position at present, and I cannot say +anything to the point about such things as those." + +"No?" he said, with a stray air as regarded the subject. He was +looking at her with a curious consciousness of discovery. He had +not been imagining that their renewed intercourse would show her +to him thus. For the first time he realized an unexpectedness in +her, which, after all, should not have been unexpected. She +before him was not the girl Grace Melbury whom he used to know. +Of course, he might easily have prefigured as much; but it had +never occurred to him. She was a woman who had been married; she +had moved on; and without having lost her girlish modesty, she had +lost her girlish shyness. The inevitable change, though known to +him, had not been heeded; and it struck him into a momentary +fixity. The truth was that he had never come into close +comradeship with her since her engagement to Fitzpiers, with the +brief exception of the evening encounter on Rubdown Hill, when she +met him with his cider apparatus; and that interview had been of +too cursory a kind for insight. + +Winterborne had advanced, too. He could criticise her. Times had +been when to criticise a single trait in Grace Melbury would have +lain as far beyond his powers as to criticise a deity. This thing +was sure: it was a new woman in many ways whom he had come out to +see; a creature of more ideas, more dignity, and, above all, more +assurance, than the original Grace had been capable of. He could +not at first decide whether he were pleased or displeased at this. +But upon the whole the novelty attracted him. + +She was so sweet and sensitive that she feared his silence +betokened something in his brain of the nature of an enemy to her. +"What are you thinking of that makes those lines come in your +forehead?" she asked. "I did not mean to offend you by speaking +of the time being premature as yet." + +Touched by the genuine loving-kindness which had lain at the +foundation of these words, and much moved, Winterborne turned his +face aside, as he took her by the hand. He was grieved that he +had criticised her. + +"You are very good, dear Grace," he said, in a low voice. "You +are better, much better, than you used to be." + +"How?" + +He could not very well tell her how, and said, with an evasive +smile, "You are prettier;" which was not what he really had meant. +He then remained still holding her right hand in his own right, so +that they faced in opposite ways; and as he did not let go, she +ventured upon a tender remonstrance. + +"I think we have gone as far as we ought to go at present--and far +enough to satisfy my poor father that we are the same as ever. +You see, Giles, my case is not settled yet, and if--Oh, suppose I +NEVER get free!--there should be any hitch or informality!" + +She drew a catching breath, and turned pale. The dialogue had +been affectionate comedy up to this point. The gloomy atmosphere +of the past, and the still gloomy horizon of the present, had been +for the interval forgotten. Now the whole environment came back, +the due balance of shade among the light was restored. + +"It is sure to be all right, I trust?" she resumed, in uneasy +accents. "What did my father say the solicitor had told him?" + +"Oh--that all is sure enough. The case is so clear--nothing could +be clearer. But the legal part is not yet quite done and +finished, as is natural." + +"Oh no--of course not," she said, sunk in meek thought. "But +father said it was ALMOST--did he not? Do you know anything about +the new law that makes these things so easy?" + +"Nothing--except the general fact that it enables ill-assorted +husbands and wives to part in a way they could not formerly do +without an Act of Parliament." + +"Have you to sign a paper, or swear anything? Is it something like +that?" + +"Yes, I believe so." + +"How long has it been introduced?" + +"About six months or a year, the lawyer said, I think." + +To hear these two poor Arcadian innocents talk of imperial law +would have made a humane person weep who should have known what a +dangerous structure they were building up on their supposed +knowledge. They remained in thought, like children in the +presence of the incomprehensible. + +"Giles," she said, at last, "it makes me quite weary when I think +how serious my situation is, or has been. Shall we not go out +from here now, as it may seem rather fast of me--our being so long +together, I mean--if anybody were to see us? I am almost sure," +she added, uncertainly, "that I ought not to let you hold my hand +yet, knowing that the documents--or whatever it may be--have not +been signed; so that I--am still as married as ever--or almost. +My dear father has forgotten himself. Not that I feel morally +bound to any one else, after what has taken place--no woman of +spirit could--now, too, that several months have passed. But I +wish to keep the proprieties as well as I can." + +"Yes, yes. Still, your father reminds us that life is short. I +myself feel that it is; that is why I wished to understand you in +this that we have begun. At times, dear Grace, since receiving +your father's letter, I am as uneasy and fearful as a child at +what he said. If one of us were to die before the formal signing +and sealing that is to release you have been done--if we should +drop out of the world and never have made the most of this little, +short, but real opportunity, I should think to myself as I sunk +down dying, 'Would to my God that I had spoken out my whole heart-- +given her one poor little kiss when I had the chance to give it! +But I never did, although she had promised to be mine some day; +and now I never can.' That's what I should think." + +She had begun by watching the words from his lips with a mournful +regard, as though their passage were visible; but as he went on +she dropped her glance. "Yes," she said, "I have thought that, +too. And, because I have thought it, I by no means meant, in +speaking of the proprieties, to be reserved and cold to you who +loved me so long ago, or to hurt your heart as I used to do at +that thoughtless time. Oh, not at all, indeed! But--ought I to +allow you?--oh, it is too quick--surely!" Her eyes filled with +tears of bewildered, alarmed emotion. + +Winterborne was too straightforward to influence her further +against her better judgment. "Yes--I suppose it is," he said, +repentantly. "I'll wait till all is settled. What did your +father say in that last letter?" + +He meant about his progress with the petition; but she, mistaking +him, frankly spoke of the personal part. "He said--what I have +implied. Should I tell more plainly?" + +"Oh no--don't, if it is a secret." + +"Not at all. I will tell every word, straight out, Giles, if you +wish. He said I was to encourage you. There. But I cannot obey +him further to-day. Come, let us go now." She gently slid her +hand from his, and went in front of him out of the Abbey. + +"I was thinking of getting some dinner," said Winterborne, +changing to the prosaic, as they walked. "And you, too, must +require something. Do let me take you to a place I know." + +Grace was almost without a friend in the world outside her +father's house; her life with Fitzpiers had brought her no +society; had sometimes, indeed, brought her deeper solitude and +inconsideration than any she had ever known before. Hence it was +a treat to her to find herself again the object of thoughtful +care. But she questioned if to go publicly to dine with Giles +Winterborne were not a proposal, due rather to his +unsophistication than to his discretion. She said gently that she +would much prefer his ordering her lunch at some place and then +coming to tell her it was ready, while she remained in the Abbey +porch. Giles saw her secret reasoning, thought how hopelessly +blind to propriety he was beside her, and went to do as she +wished. + +He was not absent more than ten minutes, and found Grace where he +had left her. "It will be quite ready by the time you get there," +he said, and told her the name of the inn at which the meal had +been ordered, which was one that she had never heard of. + +"I'll find it by inquiry," said Grace, setting out. + +"And shall I see you again?" + +"Oh yes--come to me there. It will not be like going together. I +shall want you to find my father's man and the gig for me." + +He waited on some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, till he +thought her lunch ended, and that he might fairly take advantage +of her invitation to start her on her way home. He went straight +to The Three Tuns--a little tavern in a side street, scrupulously +clean, but humble and inexpensive. On his way he had an +occasional misgiving as to whether the place had been elegant +enough for her; and as soon as he entered it, and saw her +ensconced there, he perceived that he had blundered. + +Grace was seated in the only dining-room that the simple old +hostelry could boast of, which was also a general parlor on +market-days; a long, low apartment, with a sanded floor herring- +boned with a broom; a wide, red-curtained window to the street, +and another to the garden. Grace had retreated to the end of the +room looking out upon the latter, the front part being full of a +mixed company which had dropped in since he was there. + +She was in a mood of the greatest depression. On arriving, and +seeing what the tavern was like, she had been taken by surprise; +but having gone too far to retreat, she had heroically entered and +sat down on the well-scrubbed settle, opposite the narrow table +with its knives and steel forks, tin pepper-boxes, blue salt- +cellars, and posters advertising the sale of bullocks against the +wall. The last time that she had taken any meal in a public place +it had been with Fitzpiers at the grand new Earl of Wessex Hotel +in that town, after a two months' roaming and sojourning at the +gigantic hotels of the Continent. How could she have expected any +other kind of accommodation in present circumstances than such as +Giles had provided? And yet how unprepared she was for this +change! The tastes that she had acquired from Fitzpiers had been +imbibed so subtly that she hardly knew she possessed them till +confronted by this contrast. The elegant Fitzpiers, in fact, at +that very moment owed a long bill at the above-mentioned hotel for +the luxurious style in which he used to put her up there whenever +they drove to Sherton. But such is social sentiment, that she had +been quite comfortable under those debt-impending conditions, +while she felt humiliated by her present situation, which +Winterborne had paid for honestly on the nail. + +He had noticed in a moment that she shrunk from her position, and +all his pleasure was gone. It was the same susceptibility over +again which had spoiled his Christmas party long ago. + +But he did not know that this recrudescence was only the casual +result of Grace's apprenticeship to what she was determined to +learn in spite of it--a consequence of one of those sudden +surprises which confront everybody bent upon turning over a new +leaf. She had finished her lunch, which he saw had been a very +mincing performance; and he brought her out of the house as soon +as he could. + +"Now," he said, with great sad eyes, "you have not finished at all +well, I know. Come round to the Earl of Wessex. I'll order a tea +there. I did not remember that what was good enough for me was +not good enough for you." + +Her face faded into an aspect of deep distress when she saw what +had happened. "Oh no, Giles," she said, with extreme pathos; +"certainly not. Why do you--say that when you know better? You +EVER will misunderstand me." + +"Indeed, that's not so, Mrs. Fitzpiers. Can you deny that you +felt out of place at The Three Tuns?" + +"I don't know. Well, since you make me speak, I do not deny it." + +"And yet I have felt at home there these twenty years. Your +husband used always to take you to the Earl of Wessex, did he +not?" + +"Yes," she reluctantly admitted. How could she explain in the +street of a market-town that it was her superficial and transitory +taste which had been offended, and not her nature or her +affection? Fortunately, or unfortunately, at that moment they saw +Melbury's man driving vacantly along the street in search of her, +the hour having passed at which he had been told to take her up. +Winterborne hailed him, and she was powerless then to prolong the +discourse. She entered the vehicle sadly, and the horse trotted +away. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + + +All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of +a pleasant time, forgetting the pleasant time itself. He feared +anew that they could never be happy together, even should she be +free to choose him. She was accomplished; he was unrefined. It +was the original difficulty, which he was too sensitive to +recklessly ignore, as some men would have done in his place. + +He was one of those silent, unobtrusive beings who want little +from others in the way of favor or condescension, and perhaps on +that very account scrutinize those others' behavior too closely. +He was not versatile, but one in whom a hope or belief which had +once had its rise, meridian, and decline seldom again exactly +recurred, as in the breasts of more sanguine mortals. He had once +worshipped her, laid out his life to suit her, wooed her, and lost +her. Though it was with almost the same zest, it was with not +quite the same hope, that he had begun to tread the old tracks +again, and allowed himself to be so charmed with her that day. + +Move another step towards her he would not. He would even repulse +her--as a tribute to conscience. It would be sheer sin to let her +prepare a pitfall for her happiness not much smaller than the +first by inveigling her into a union with such as he. Her poor +father was now blind to these subtleties, which he had formerly +beheld as in noontide light. It was his own duty to declare them-- +for her dear sake. + + + +Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her solicitous +embarrassment was not lessened the next morning when another +letter from her father was put into her hands. Its tenor was an +intenser strain of the one that had preceded it. After stating +how extremely glad he was to hear that she was better, and able to +get out-of-doors, he went on: + +"This is a wearisome business, the solicitor we have come to see +being out of town. I do not know when I shall get home. My great +anxiety in this delay is still lest you should lose Giles +Winterborne. I cannot rest at night for thinking that while our +business is hanging fire he may become estranged, or go away from +the neighborhood. I have set my heart upon seeing him your +husband, if you ever have another. Do, then, Grace, give him some +temporary encouragement, even though it is over-early. For when I +consider the past I do think God will forgive me and you for being +a little forward. I have another reason for this, my dear. I +feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late affairs have still +further helped me that way. And until this thing is done I cannot +rest in peace." + +He added a postscript: + +"I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-morrow. +Possibly, therefore, I shall return in the evening after you get +this." + + + +The paternal longing ran on all fours with her own desire; and yet +in forwarding it yesterday she had been on the brink of giving +offence. While craving to be a country girl again just as her +father requested; to put off the old Eve, the fastidious miss--or +rather madam--completely, her first attempt had been beaten by the +unexpected vitality of that fastidiousness. Her father on +returning and seeing the trifling coolness of Giles would be sure +to say that the same perversity which had led her to make +difficulties about marrying Fitzpiers was now prompting her to +blow hot and cold with poor Winterborne. + +If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching the stops +of her delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to +let her drift away from him again (if she would) on the wind of +her estranging education, he could not have acted more seductively +than he did that day. He chanced to be superintending some +temporary work in a field opposite her windows. She could not +discover what he was doing, but she read his mood keenly and +truly: she could see in his coming and going an air of determined +abandonment of the whole landscape that lay in her direction. + +Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father coming in +the evening--which meant, she supposed, that all formalities would +be in train, her marriage virtually annulled, and she be free to +be won again--how could she look him in the face if he should see +them estranged thus? + +It was a fair green evening in June. She was seated in the +garden, in the rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes-- +made of peeled oak-branches that came to Melbury's premises as +refuse after barking-time. The mass of full-juiced leafage on the +heights around her was just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly +spent wind which, even in its enfeebled state, did not reach her +shelter. All day she had expected Giles to call--to inquire how +she had got home, or something or other; but he had not come. And +he still tantalized her by going athwart and across that orchard +opposite. She could see him as she sat. + +A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him a +letter. She knew from this that Creedle had just come from +Sherton, and had called as usual at the post-office for anything +that had arrived by the afternoon post, of which there was no +delivery at Hintock. She pondered on what the letter might +contain--particularly whether it were a second refresher for +Winterborne from her father, like her own of the morning. + +But it appeared to have no bearing upon herself whatever. Giles +read its contents; and almost immediately turned away to a gap in +the hedge of the orchard--if that could be called a hedge which, +owing to the drippings of the trees, was little more than a bank +with a bush upon it here and there. He entered the plantation, +and was no doubt going that way homeward to the mysterious hut he +occupied on the other side of the woodland. + +The sad sands were running swiftly through Time's glass; she had +often felt it in these latter days; and, like Giles, she felt it +doubly now after the solemn and pathetic reminder in her father's +communication. Her freshness would pass, the long-suffering +devotion of Giles might suddenly end--might end that very hour. +Men were so strange. The thought took away from her all her +former reticence, and made her action bold. She started from her +seat. If the little breach, quarrel, or whatever it might be +called, of yesterday, was to be healed up it must be done by her +on the instant. She crossed into the orchard, and clambered +through the gap after Giles, just as he was diminishing to a faun- +like figure under the green canopy and over the brown floor. + +Grace had been wrong--very far wrong--in assuming that the letter +had no reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the +wood after its perusal. It was, sad to say, because the missive +had so much reference to herself that he had thus turned away. He +feared that his grieved discomfiture might be observed. The +letter was from Beaucock, written a few hours later than Melbury's +to his daughter. It announced failure. + +Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was +the moment when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. +During his absence in town with Melbury, the lawyer's clerk had +naturally heard a great deal of the timber-merchant's family +scheme of justice to Giles, and his communication was to inform +Winterborne at the earliest possible moment that their attempt had +failed, in order that the young man should not place himself in a +false position towards Grace in the belief of its coming success. +The news was, in sum, that Fitzpiers's conduct had not been +sufficiently cruel to Grace to enable her to snap the bond. She +was apparently doomed to be his wife till the end of the chapter. + +Winterborne quite forgot his superficial differences with the poor +girl under the warm rush of deep and distracting love for her +which the almost tragical information engendered. + +To renounce her forever--that was then the end of it for him, +after all. There was no longer any question about suitability, or +room for tiffs on petty tastes. The curtain had fallen again +between them. She could not be his. The cruelty of their late +revived hope was now terrible. How could they all have been so +simple as to suppose this thing could be done? + +It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming behind him, he +turned and saw her hastening on between the thickets. He +perceived in an instant that she did not know the blighting news. + +"Giles, why didn't you come across to me?" she asked, with arch +reproach. "Didn't you see me sitting there ever so long?" + +"Oh yes," he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for her +unexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of +behavior in the conjuncture. His manner made her think that she +had been too chiding in her speech; and a mild scarlet wave passed +over her as she resolved to soften it. + +"I have had another letter from my father," she hastened to +continue. "He thinks he may come home this evening. And--in view +of his hopes--it will grieve him if there is any little difference +between us, Giles." + +"There is none," he said, sadly regarding her from the face +downward as he pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare. + +"Still--I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my being +uncomfortable at the inn." + +"I have, Grace, I'm sure." + +"But you speak in quite an unhappy way," she returned, coming up +close to him with the most winning of the many pretty airs that +appertained to her. "Don't you think you will ever be happy, +Giles?" + +He did not reply for some instants. "When the sun shines on the +north front of Sherton Abbey--that's when my happiness will come +to me!" said he, staring as it were into the earth. + +"But--then that means that there is something more than my +offending you in not liking The Three Tuns. If it is because I-- +did not like to let you kiss me in the Abbey--well, you know, +Giles, that it was not on account of my cold feelings, but because +I did certainly, just then, think it was rather premature, in +spite of my poor father. That was the true reason--the sole one. +But I do not want to be hard--God knows I do not," she said, her +voice fluctuating. "And perhaps--as I am on the verge of freedom-- +I am not right, after all, in thinking there is any harm in your +kissing me." + +"Oh God!" said Winterborne within himself. His head was turned +askance as he still resolutely regarded the ground. For the last +several minutes he had seen this great temptation approaching him +in regular siege; and now it had come. The wrong, the social sin, +of now taking advantage of the offer of her lips had a magnitude, +in the eyes of one whose life had been so primitive, so ruled by +purest household laws, as Giles's, which can hardly be explained. + +"Did you say anything?" she asked, timidly. + +"Oh no--only that--" + +"You mean that it must BE settled, since my father is coming +home?" she said, gladly. + +Winterborne, though fighting valiantly against himself all this +while--though he would have protected Grace's good repute as the +apple of his eye--was a man; and, as Desdemona said, men are not +gods. In face of the agonizing seductiveness shown by her, in her +unenlightened school-girl simplicity about the laws and +ordinances, he betrayed a man's weakness. Since it was so--since +it had come to this, that Grace, deeming herself free to do it, +was virtually asking him to demonstrate that he loved her--since +he could demonstrate it only too truly--since life was short and +love was strong--he gave way to the temptation, notwithstanding +that he perfectly well knew her to be wedded irrevocably to +Fitzpiers. Indeed, he cared for nothing past or future, simply +accepting the present and what it brought, desiring once in his +life to clasp in his arms her he had watched over and loved so +long. + +She started back suddenly from his embrace, influenced by a sort +of inspiration. "Oh, I suppose," she stammered, "that I am really +free?--that this is right? Is there REALLY a new law? Father +cannot have been too sanguine in saying--" + +He did not answer, and a moment afterwards Grace burst into tears +in spite of herself. "Oh, why does not my father come home and +explain," she sobbed, "and let me know clearly what I am? It is +too trying, this, to ask me to--and then to leave me so long in so +vague a state that I do not know what to do, and perhaps do +wrong!" + +Winterborne felt like a very Cain, over and above his previous +sorrow. How he had sinned against her in not telling her what he +knew. He turned aside; the feeling of his cruelty mounted higher +and higher. How could he have dreamed of kissing her? He could +hardly refrain from tears. Surely nothing more pitiable had ever +been known than the condition of this poor young thing, now as +heretofore the victim of her father's well-meant but blundering +policy. + +Even in the hour of Melbury's greatest assurance Winterborne had +harbored a suspicion that no law, new or old, could undo Grace's +marriage without her appearance in public; though he was not +sufficiently sure of what might have been enacted to destroy by +his own words her pleasing idea that a mere dash of the pen, on +her father's testimony, was going to be sufficient. But he had +never suspected the sad fact that the position was irremediable. + +Poor Grace, perhaps feeling that she had indulged in too much +fluster for a mere kiss, calmed herself at finding how grave he +was. "I am glad we are friends again anyhow," she said, smiling +through her tears. "Giles, if you had only shown half the +boldness before I married that you show now, you would have +carried me off for your own first instead of second. If we do +marry, I hope you will never think badly of me for encouraging you +a little, but my father is SO impatient, you know, as his years +and infirmities increase, that he will wish to see us a little +advanced when he comes. That is my only excuse." + +To Winterborne all this was sadder than it was sweet. How could +she so trust her father's conjectures? He did not know how to tell +her the truth and shame himself. And yet he felt that it must be +done. "We may have been wrong," he began, almost fearfully, "in +supposing that it can all be carried out while we stay here at +Hintock. I am not sure but that people may have to appear in a +public court even under the new Act; and if there should be any +difficulty, and we cannot marry after all--" + +Her cheeks became slowly bloodless. "Oh, Giles," she said, +grasping his arm, "you have heard something! What--cannot my +father conclude it there and now? Surely he has done it? Oh, +Giles, Giles, don't deceive me. What terrible position am I in?" + +He could not tell her, try as he would. The sense of her implicit +trust in his honor absolutely disabled him. "I cannot inform +you," he murmured, his voice as husky as that of the leaves +underfoot. "Your father will soon be here. Then we shall know. +I will take you home." + +Inexpressibly dear as she was to him, he offered her his arm with +the most reserved air, as he added, correctingly, "I will take +you, at any rate, into the drive." + +Thus they walked on together. Grace vibrating between happiness +and misgiving. It was only a few minutes' walk to where the drive +ran, and they had hardly descended into it when they heard a voice +behind them cry, "Take out that arm!" + +For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, more +loudly and hoarsely, + +"Take out that arm!" + +It was Melbury's. He had returned sooner than they expected, and +now came up to them. Grace's hand had been withdrawn like +lightning on her hearing the second command. "I don't blame you-- +I don't blame you," he said, in the weary cadence of one broken +down with scourgings. "But you two must walk together no more--I +have been surprised--I have been cruelly deceived--Giles, don't +say anything to me; but go away!" + +He was evidently not aware that Winterborne had known the truth +before he brought it; and Giles would not stay to discuss it with +him then. When the young man had gone Melbury took his daughter +in-doors to the room he used as his office. There he sat down, +and bent over the slope of the bureau, her bewildered gaze fixed +upon him. + +When Melbury had recovered a little he said, "You are now, as +ever, Fitzpiers's wife. I was deluded. He has not done you +ENOUGH harm. You are still subject to his beck and call." + +"Then let it be, and never mind, father," she said, with dignified +sorrow. "I can bear it. It is your trouble that grieves me +most." She stooped over him, and put her arm round his neck, which +distressed Melbury still more. "I don't mind at all what comes to +me," Grace continued; "whose wife I am, or whose I am not. I do +love Giles; I cannot help that; and I have gone further with him +than I should have done if I had known exactly how things were. +But I do not reproach you." + +"Then Giles did not tell you?" said Melbury. + +"No," said she. "He could not have known it. His behavior to me +proved that he did not know." + +Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to the solitude +of her chamber. + +Her heavy disquietude had many shapes; and for a time she put +aside the dominant fact to think of her too free conduct towards +Giles. His love-making had been brief as it was sweet; but would +he on reflection contemn her for forwardness? How could she have +been so simple as to suppose she was in a position to behave as +she had done! Thus she mentally blamed her ignorance; and yet in +the centre of her heart she blessed it a little for what it had +momentarily brought her. + + + +CHAPTER XL. + + +Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be +suppressed and hide-bound for a while. Grace seldom showed +herself outside the house, never outside the garden; for she +feared she might encounter Giles Winterborne; and that she could +not bear. + +This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun +appeared likely to continue for an indefinite time. She had +learned that there was one possibility in which her formerly +imagined position might become real, and only one; that her +husband's absence should continue long enough to amount to +positive desertion. But she never allowed her mind to dwell much +upon the thought; still less did she deliberately hope for such a +result. Her regard for Winterborne had been rarefied by the shock +which followed its avowal into an ethereal emotion that had little +to do with living and doing. + +As for Giles, he was lying--or rather sitting--ill at his hut. A +feverish indisposition which had been hanging about him for some +time, the result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to +acquire virulence with the prostration of his hopes. But not a +soul knew of his languor, and he did not think the case serious +enough to send for a medical man. After a few days he was better +again, and crept about his home in a great coat, attending to his +simple wants as usual with his own hands. So matters stood when +the limpid inertion of Grace's pool-like existence was disturbed +as by a geyser. She received a letter from Fitzpiers. + +Such a terrible letter it was in its import, though couched in the +gentlest language. In his absence Grace had grown to regard him +with toleration, and her relation to him with equanimity, till she +had almost forgotten how trying his presence would be. He wrote +briefly and unaffectedly; he made no excuses, but informed her +that he was living quite alone, and had been led to think that +they ought to be together, if she would make up her mind to +forgive him. He therefore purported to cross the Channel to +Budmouth by the steamer on a day he named, which she found to be +three days after the time of her present reading. + +He said that he could not come to Hintock for obvious reasons, +which her father would understand even better than herself. As +the only alternative she was to be on the quay to meet the steamer +when it arrived from the opposite coast, probably about half an +hour before midnight, bringing with her any luggage she might +require; join him there, and pass with him into the twin vessel, +which left immediately the other entered the harbor; returning +thus with him to his continental dwelling-place, which he did not +name. He had no intention of showing himself on land at all. + +The troubled Grace took the letter to her father, who now +continued for long hours by the fireless summer chimney-corner, as +if he thought it were winter, the pitcher of cider standing beside +him, mostly untasted, and coated with a film of dust. After +reading it he looked up. + +"You sha'n't go," said he. + +"I had felt I would not," she answered. "But I did not know what +you would say." + +"If he comes and lives in England, not too near here and in a +respectable way, and wants you to come to him, I am not sure that +I'll oppose him in wishing it," muttered Melbury. "I'd stint +myself to keep you both in a genteel and seemly style. But go +abroad you never shall with my consent." + +There the question rested that day. Grace was unable to reply to +her husband in the absence of an address, and the morrow came, and +the next day, and the evening on which he had requested her to +meet him. Throughout the whole of it she remained within the four +walls of her room. + +The sense of her harassment, carking doubt of what might be +impending, hung like a cowl of blackness over the Melbury +household. They spoke almost in whispers, and wondered what +Fitzpiers would do next. It was the hope of every one that, +finding she did not arrive, he would return again to France; and +as for Grace, she was willing to write to him on the most kindly +terms if he would only keep away. + +The night passed, Grace lying tense and wide awake, and her +relatives, in great part, likewise. When they met the next +morning they were pale and anxious, though neither speaking of the +subject which occupied all their thoughts. The day passed as +quietly as the previous ones, and she began to think that in the +rank caprice of his moods he had abandoned the idea of getting her +to join him as quickly as it was formed. All on a sudden, some +person who had just come from Sherton entered the house with the +news that Mr. Fitzpiers was on his way home to Hintock. He had +been seen hiring a carriage at the Earl of Wessex Hotel. + +Her father and Grace were both present when the intelligence was +announced. + +"Now," said Melbury, "we must make the best of what has been a +very bad matter. The man is repenting; the partner of his shame, +I hear, is gone away from him to Switzerland, so that chapter of +his life is probably over. If he chooses to make a home for ye I +think you should not say him nay, Grace. Certainly he cannot very +well live at Hintock without a blow to his pride; but if he can +bear that, and likes Hintock best, why, there's the empty wing of +the house as it was before." + +"Oh, father!" said Grace, turning white with dismay. + +"Why not?" said he, a little of his former doggedness returning. +He was, in truth, disposed to somewhat more leniency towards her +husband just now than he had shown formerly, from a conviction +that he had treated him over-roughly in his anger. "Surely it is +the most respectable thing to do?" he continued. "I don't like +this state that you are in--neither married nor single. It hurts +me, and it hurts you, and it will always be remembered against us +in Hintock. There has never been any scandal like it in the +family before." + +"He will be here in less than an hour," murmured Grace. The +twilight of the room prevented her father seeing the despondent +misery of her face. The one intolerable condition, the condition +she had deprecated above all others, was that of Fitzpiers's +reinstatement there. "Oh, I won't, I won't see him," she said, +sinking down. She was almost hysterical. + +"Try if you cannot," he returned, moodily. + +"Oh yes, I will, I will," she went on, inconsequently. "I'll +try;" and jumping up suddenly, she left the room. + +In the darkness of the apartment to which she flew nothing could +have been seen during the next half-hour; but from a corner a +quick breathing was audible from this impressible creature, who +combined modern nerves with primitive emotions, and was doomed by +such coexistence to be numbered among the distressed, and to take +her scourgings to their exquisite extremity. + +The window was open. On this quiet, late summer evening, whatever +sound arose in so secluded a district--the chirp of a bird, a call +from a voice, the turning of a wheel--extended over bush and tree +to unwonted distances. Very few sounds did arise. But as Grace +invisibly breathed in the brown glooms of the chamber, the small +remote noise of light wheels came in to her, accompanied by the +trot of a horse on the turnpike-road. There seemed to be a sudden +hitch or pause in the progress of the vehicle, which was what +first drew her attention to it. She knew the point whence the +sound proceeded--the hill-top over which travellers passed on +their way hitherward from Sherton Abbas--the place at which she +had emerged from the wood with Mrs. Charmond. Grace slid along +the floor, and bent her head over the window-sill, listening with +open lips. The carriage had stopped, and she heard a man use +exclamatory words. Then another said, "What the devil is the +matter with the horse?" She recognized the voice as her husband's. + +The accident, such as it had been, was soon remedied, and the +carriage could be heard descending the hill on the Hintock side, +soon to turn into the lane leading out of the highway, and then +into the "drong" which led out of the lane to the house where she +was. + +A spasm passed through Grace. The Daphnean instinct, +exceptionally strong in her as a girl, had been revived by her +widowed seclusion; and it was not lessened by her affronted +sentiments towards the comer, and her regard for another man. She +opened some little ivory tablets that lay on the dressing-table, +scribbled in pencil on one of them, "I am gone to visit one of my +school-friends," gathered a few toilet necessaries into a hand- +bag, and not three minutes after that voice had been heard, her +slim form, hastily wrapped up from observation, might have been +seen passing out of the back door of Melbury's house. Thence she +skimmed up the garden-path, through the gap in the hedge, and into +the mossy cart-track under the trees which led into the depth of +the woods. + +The leaves overhead were now in their latter green--so opaque, +that it was darker at some of the densest spots than in winter- +time, scarce a crevice existing by which a ray could get down to +the ground. But in open places she could see well enough. Summer +was ending: in the daytime singing insects hung in every sunbeam; +vegetation was heavy nightly with globes of dew; and after showers +creeping damps and twilight chills came up from the hollows. The +plantations were always weird at this hour of eve--more spectral +far than in the leafless season, when there were fewer masses and +more minute lineality. The smooth surfaces of glossy plants came +out like weak, lidless eyes; there were strange faces and figures +from expiring lights that had somehow wandered into the canopied +obscurity; while now and then low peeps of the sky between the +trunks were like sheeted shapes, and on the tips of boughs sat +faint cloven tongues. + +But Grace's fear just now was not imaginative or spiritual, and +she heeded these impressions but little. She went on as silently +as she could, avoiding the hollows wherein leaves had accumulated, +and stepping upon soundless moss and grass-tufts. She paused +breathlessly once or twice, and fancied that she could hear, above +the beat of her strumming pulse, the vehicle containing Fitzpiers +turning in at the gate of her father's premises. She hastened on +again. + +The Hintock woods owned by Mrs. Charmond were presently left +behind, and those into which she next plunged were divided from +the latter by a bank, from whose top the hedge had long ago +perished--starved for want of sun. It was with some caution that +Grace now walked, though she was quite free from any of the +commonplace timidities of her ordinary pilgrimages to such spots. +She feared no lurking harms, but that her effort would be all in +vain, and her return to the house rendered imperative. + +She had walked between three and four miles when that prescriptive +comfort and relief to wanderers in woods--a distant light--broke +at last upon her searching eyes. It was so very small as to be +almost sinister to a stranger, but to her it was what she sought. +She pushed forward, and the dim outline of a dwelling was +disclosed. + +The house was a square cot of one story only, sloping up on all +sides to a chimney in the midst. It had formerly been the home of +a charcoal-burner, in times when that fuel was still used in the +county houses. Its only appurtenance was a paled enclosure, there +being no garden, the shade of the trees preventing the growth of +vegetables. She advanced to the window whence the rays of light +proceeded, and the shutters being as yet unclosed, she could +survey the whole interior through the panes. + +The room within was kitchen, parlor, and scullery all in one; the +natural sandstone floor was worn into hills and dales by long +treading, so that none of the furniture stood level, and the table +slanted like a desk. A fire burned on the hearth, in front of +which revolved the skinned carcass of a rabbit, suspended by a +string from a nail. Leaning with one arm on the mantle-shelf +stood Winterborne, his eyes on the roasting animal, his face so +rapt that speculation could build nothing on it concerning his +thoughts, more than that they were not with the scene before him. +She thought his features had changed a little since she saw them +last. The fire-light did not enable her to perceive that they +were positively haggard. + +Grace's throat emitted a gasp of relief at finding the result so +nearly as she had hoped. She went to the door and tapped lightly. + +He seemed to be accustomed to the noises of woodpeckers, +squirrels, and such small creatures, for he took no notice of her +tiny signal, and she knocked again. This time he came and opened +the door. When the light of the room fell upon her face he +started, and, hardly knowing what he did, crossed the threshold to +her, placing his hands upon her two arms, while surprise, joy, +alarm, sadness, chased through him by turns. With Grace it was +the same: even in this stress there was the fond fact that they +had met again. Thus they stood, + + + "Long tears upon their faces, waxen white + With extreme sad delight." + + +He broke the silence by saying in a whisper, "Come in." + +"No, no, Giles!" she answered, hurriedly, stepping yet farther +back from the door. "I am passing by--and I have called on you--I +won't enter. Will you help me? I am afraid. I want to get by a +roundabout way to Sherton, and so to Exbury. I have a school- +fellow there--but I cannot get to Sherton alone. Oh, if you will +only accompany me a little way! Don't condemn me, Giles, and be +offended! I was obliged to come to you because--I have no other +help here. Three months ago you were my lover; now you are only +my friend. The law has stepped in, and forbidden what we thought +of. It must not be. But we can act honestly, and yet you can be +my friend for one little hour? I have no other--" + +She could get no further. Covering her eyes with one hand, by an +effort of repression she wept a silent trickle, without a sigh or +sob. Winterborne took her other hand. "What has happened?" he +said. + +"He has come." + +There was a stillness as of death, till Winterborne asked, "You +mean this, Grace--that I am to help you to get away?" + +"Yes," said she. "Appearance is no matter, when the reality is +right. I have said to myself I can trust you." + +Giles knew from this that she did not suspect his treachery--if it +could be called such--earlier in the summer, when they met for the +last time as lovers; and in the intensity of his contrition for +that tender wrong, he determined to deserve her faith now at +least, and so wipe out that reproach from his conscience. "I'll +come at once," he said. "I'll light a lantern." + +He unhooked a dark-lantern from a nail under the eaves and she did +not notice how his hand shook with the slight strain, or dream +that in making this offer he was taxing a convalescence which +could ill afford such self-sacrifice. The lantern was lit, and +they started. + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + + +The first hundred yards of their course lay under motionless +trees, whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling drops of +rain. By the time that they emerged upon a glade it rained +heavily. + +"This is awkward," said Grace, with an effort to hide her concern. + +Winterborne stopped. "Grace," he said, preserving a strictly +business manner which belied him, "you cannot go to Sherton to- +night." + +"But I must!" + +"Why? It is nine miles from here. It is almost an impossibility +in this rain." + +"True--WHY?" she replied, mournfully, at the end of a silence. +"What is reputation to me?" + +"Now hearken," said Giles. "You won't--go back to your--" + +"No, no, no! Don't make me!" she cried, piteously. + +"Then let us turn." They slowly retraced their steps, and again +stood before his door. "Now, this house from this moment is +yours, and not mine," he said, deliberately. "I have a place near +by where I can stay very well." + +Her face had drooped. "Oh!" she murmured, as she saw the dilemma. +"What have I done!" + +There was a smell of something burning within, and he looked +through the window. The rabbit that he had been cooking to coax a +weak appetite was beginning to char. "Please go in and attend to +it," he said. "Do what you like. Now I leave. You will find +everything about the hut that is necessary." + +"But, Giles--your supper," she exclaimed. "An out-house would do +for me--anything--till to-morrow at day-break!" + +He signified a negative. "I tell you to go in--you may catch +agues out here in your delicate state. You can give me my supper +through the window, if you feel well enough. I'll wait a while." + +He gently urged her to pass the door-way, and was relieved when he +saw her within the room sitting down. Without so much as crossing +the threshold himself, he closed the door upon her, and turned the +key in the lock. Tapping at the window, he signified that she +should open the casement, and when she had done this he handed in +the key to her. + +"You are locked in," he said; "and your own mistress." + +Even in her trouble she could not refrain from a faint smile at +his scrupulousness, as she took the door-key. + +"Do you feel better?" he went on. "If so, and you wish to give me +some of your supper, please do. If not, it is of no importance. +I can get some elsewhere." + +The grateful sense of his kindness stirred her to action, though +she only knew half what that kindness really was. At the end of +some ten minutes she again came to the window, pushed it open, and +said in a whisper, "Giles!" He at once emerged from the shade, +and saw that she was preparing to hand him his share of the meal +upon a plate. + +"I don't like to treat you so hardly," she murmured, with deep +regret in her words as she heard the rain pattering on the leaves. +"But--I suppose it is best to arrange like this?" + +"Oh yes," he said, quickly. + +"I feel that I could never have reached Sherton." + +"It was impossible." + +"Are you sure you have a snug place out there?" (With renewed +misgiving.) + +"Quite. Have you found everything you want? I am afraid it is +rather rough accommodation." + +"Can I notice defects? I have long passed that stage, and you +know it, Giles, or you ought to." + +His eyes sadly contemplated her face as its pale responsiveness +modulated through a crowd of expressions that showed only too +clearly to what a pitch she was strung. If ever Winterborne's +heart fretted his bosom it was at this sight of a perfectly +defenceless creature conditioned by such circumstances. He forgot +his own agony in the satisfaction of having at least found her a +shelter. He took his plate and cup from her hands, saying, "Now +I'll push the shutter to, and you will find an iron pin on the +inside, which you must fix into the bolt. Do not stir in the +morning till I come and call you." + +She expressed an alarmed hope that he would not go very far away. + +"Oh no--I shall be quite within hail," said Winterborne. + +She bolted the window as directed, and he retreated. His snug +place proved to be a wretched little shelter of the roughest kind, +formed of four hurdles thatched with brake-fern. Underneath were +dry sticks, hay, and other litter of the sort, upon which he sat +down; and there in the dark tried to eat his meal. But his +appetite was quite gone. He pushed the plate aside, and shook up +the hay and sacks, so as to form a rude couch, on which he flung +himself down to sleep, for it was getting late. + +But sleep he could not, for many reasons, of which not the least +was thought of his charge. He sat up, and looked towards the cot +through the damp obscurity. With all its external features the +same as usual, he could scarcely believe that it contained the +dear friend--he would not use a warmer name--who had come to him +so unexpectedly, and, he could not help admitting, so rashly. + +He had not ventured to ask her any particulars; but the position +was pretty clear without them. Though social law had negatived +forever their opening paradise of the previous June, it was not +without stoical pride that he accepted the present trying +conjuncture. There was one man on earth in whom she believed +absolutely, and he was that man. That this crisis could end in +nothing but sorrow was a view for a moment effaced by this +triumphant thought of her trust in him; and the purity of the +affection with which he responded to that trust rendered him more +than proof against any frailty that besieged him in relation to +her. + +The rain, which had never ceased, now drew his attention by +beginning to drop through the meagre screen that covered him. He +rose to attempt some remedy for this discomfort, but the trembling +of his knees and the throbbing of his pulse told him that in his +weakness he was unable to fence against the storm, and he lay down +to bear it as best he might. He was angry with himself for his +feebleness--he who had been so strong. It was imperative that she +should know nothing of his present state, and to do that she must +not see his face by daylight, for its color would inevitably +betray him. + +The next morning, accordingly, when it was hardly light, he rose +and dragged his stiff limbs about the precincts, preparing for her +everything she could require for getting breakfast within. On the +bench outside the window-sill he placed water, wood, and other +necessaries, writing with a piece of chalk beside them, "It is +best that I should not see you. Put my breakfast on the bench." + +At seven o'clock he tapped at her window, as he had promised, +retreating at once, that she might not catch sight of him. But +from his shelter under the boughs he could see her very well, +when, in response to his signal, she opened the window and the +light fell upon her face. The languid largeness of her eyes +showed that her sleep had been little more than his own, and the +pinkness of their lids, that her waking hours had not been free +from tears. + +She read the writing, seemed, he thought, disappointed, but took +up the materials he had provided, evidently thinking him some way +off. Giles waited on, assured that a girl who, in spite of her +culture, knew what country life was, would find no difficulty in +the simple preparation of their food. + +Within the cot it was all very much as he conjectured, though +Grace had slept much longer than he. After the loneliness of the +night, she would have been glad to see him; but appreciating his +feeling when she read the writing, she made no attempt to recall +him. She found abundance of provisions laid in, his plan being to +replenish his buttery weekly, and this being the day after the +victualling van had called from Sherton. When the meal was ready, +she put what he required outside, as she had done with the supper; +and, notwithstanding her longing to see him, withdrew from the +window promptly, and left him to himself. + +It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its +fall. As she heard no more of Winterborne, she concluded that he +had gone away to his daily work, and forgotten that he had +promised to accompany her to Sherton; an erroneous conclusion, for +he remained all day, by force of his condition, within fifty yards +of where she was. The morning wore on; and in her doubt when to +start, and how to travel, she lingered yet, keeping the door +carefully bolted, lest an intruder should discover her. Locked in +this place, she was comparatively safe, at any rate, and doubted +if she would be safe elsewhere. + +The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade +and drip of the leafage. Autumn, this year, was coming in with +rains. Gazing, in her enforced idleness, from the one window of +the living-room, she could see various small members of the animal +community that lived unmolested there--creatures of hair, fluff, +and scale, the toothed kind and the billed kind; underground +creatures, jointed and ringed--circumambulating the hut, under the +impression that, Giles having gone away, nobody was there; and +eying it inquisitively with a view to winter-quarters. Watching +these neighbors, who knew neither law nor sin, distracted her a +little from her trouble; and she managed to while away some +portion of the afternoon by putting Giles's home in order and +making little improvements which she deemed that he would value +when she was gone. + +Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise amid the +trees, resembling a cough; but as it never came any nearer she +concluded that it was a squirrel or a bird. + +At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger fire for +the evenings were chilly. As soon as it was too dark--which was +comparatively early--to discern the human countenance in this +place of shadows, there came to the window to her great delight, a +tapping which she knew from its method to be Giles's. + +She opened the casement instantly, and put out her hand to him, +though she could only just perceive his outline. He clasped her +fingers, and she noticed the heat of his palm and its shakiness. + +"He has been walking fast, in order to get here quickly," she +thought. How could she know that he had just crawled out from the +straw of the shelter hard by; and that the heat of his hand was +feverishness? + +"My dear, good Giles!" she burst out, impulsively. + +"Anybody would have done it for you," replied Winterborne, with as +much matter-of-fact as he could summon. + +"About my getting to Exbury?" she said. + +"I have been thinking," responded Giles, with tender deference, +"that you had better stay where you are for the present, if you +wish not to be caught. I need not tell you that the place is +yours as long as you like; and perhaps in a day or two, finding +you absent, he will go away. At any rate, in two or three days I +could do anything to assist--such as make inquiries, or go a great +way towards Sherton-Abbas with you; for the cider season will soon +be coming on, and I want to run down to the Vale to see how the +crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton road. But for a day or +two I am busy here." He was hoping that by the time mentioned he +would be strong enough to engage himself actively on her behalf. +"I hope you do not feel over-much melancholy in being a prisoner?" + +She declared that she did not mind it; but she sighed. + +From long acquaintance they could read each other's heart-symptoms +like books of large type. "I fear you are sorry you came," said +Giles, "and that you think I should have advised you more firmly +than I did not to stay." + +"Oh no, dear, dear friend," answered Grace, with a heaving bosom. +"Don't think that that is what I regret. What I regret is my +enforced treatment of you--dislodging you, excluding you from your +own house. Why should I not speak out? You know what I feel for +you--what I have felt for no other living man, what I shall never +feel for a man again! But as I have vowed myself to somebody else +than you, and cannot be released, I must behave as I do behave, +and keep that vow. I am not bound to him by any divine law, after +what he has done; but I have promised, and I will pay." + +The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things +as she would require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon, +an occupation which diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic +views of her attitude towards him, and of her life in general. +The only infringement--if infringement it could be called--of his +predetermined bearing towards her was an involuntary pressing of +her hand to his lips when she put it through the casement to bid +him good-night. He knew she was weeping, though he could not see +her tears. + +She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly appropriating +the cottage. But it would only be for a day or two more, she +thought, since go she must. + +He replied, yearningly, "I--I don't like you to go away." + +"Oh, Giles," said she, "I know--I know! But--I am a woman, and you +are a man. I cannot speak more plainly. 'Whatsoever things are +pure, whatsoever things are of good report'--you know what is in +my mind, because you know me so well." + +"Yes, Grace, yes. I do not at all mean that the question between +us has not been settled by the fact of your marriage turning out +hopelessly unalterable. I merely meant--well, a feeling no more." + +"In a week, at the outside, I should be discovered if I stayed +here: and I think that by law he could compel me to return to +him." + +"Yes; perhaps you are right. Go when you wish, dear Grace." + +His last words that evening were a hopeful remark that all might +be well with her yet; that Mr. Fitzpiers would not intrude upon +her life, if he found that his presence cost her so much pain. +Then the window was closed, the shutters folded, and the rustle of +his footsteps died away. + +No sooner had she retired to rest that night than the wind began +to rise, and, after a few prefatory blasts, to be accompanied by +rain. The wind grew more violent, and as the storm went on, it +was difficult to believe that no opaque body, but only an +invisible colorless thing, was trampling and climbing over the +roof, making branches creak, springing out of the trees upon the +chimney, popping its head into the flue, and shrieking and +blaspheming at every corner of the walls. As in the old story, +the assailant was a spectre which could be felt but not seen. She +had never before been so struck with the devilry of a gusty night +in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in spirit +as she was now. She seemed almost to be apart from herself--a +vacuous duplicate only. The recent self of physical animation and +clear intentions was not there. + +Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so low as to +smite the roof in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth +of an adversary, to be followed by a trickle of rain, as blood +from the wound. To all this weather Giles must be more or less +exposed; how much, she did not know. + +At last Grace could hardly endure the idea of such a hardship in +relation to him. Whatever he was suffering, it was she who had +caused it; he vacated his house on account of her. She was not +worth such self-sacrifice; she should not have accepted it of him. +And then, as her anxiety increased with increasing thought, there +returned upon her mind some incidents of her late intercourse with +him, which she had heeded but little at the time. The look of his +face--what had there been about his face which seemed different +from its appearance as of yore? Was it not thinner, less rich in +hue, less like that of ripe autumn's brother to whom she had +formerly compared him? And his voice; she had distinctly noticed a +change in tone. And his gait; surely it had been feebler, +stiffer, more like the gait of a weary man. That slight +occasional noise she had heard in the day, and attributed to +squirrels, it might have been his cough after all. + +Thus conviction took root in her perturbed mind that Winterborne +was ill, or had been so, and that he had carefully concealed his +condition from her that she might have no scruples about accepting +a hospitality which by the nature of the case expelled her +entertainer. + +"My own, own, true l---, my dear kind friend!" she cried to +herself. "Oh, it shall not be--it shall not be!" + +She hastily wrapped herself up, and obtained a light, with which +she entered the adjoining room, the cot possessing only one floor. +Setting down the candle on the table here, she went to the door +with the key in her hand, and placed it in the lock. Before +turning it she paused, her fingers still clutching it; and +pressing her other hand to her forehead, she fell into agitating +thought. + +A tattoo on the window, caused by the tree-droppings blowing +against it, brought her indecision to a close. She turned the key +and opened the door. + +The darkness was intense, seeming to touch her pupils like a +substance. She only now became aware how heavy the rainfall had +been and was; the dripping of the eaves splashed like a fountain. +She stood listening with parted lips, and holding the door in one +hand, till her eyes, growing accustomed to the obscurity, +discerned the wild brandishing of their boughs by the adjoining +trees. At last she cried loudly with an effort, "Giles! you may +come in!" + +There was no immediate answer to her cry, and overpowered by her +own temerity, Grace retreated quickly, shut the door, and stood +looking on the floor. But it was not for long. She again lifted +the latch, and with far more determination than at first. + +"Giles, Giles!" she cried, with the full strength of her voice, +and without any of the shamefacedness that had characterized her +first cry. "Oh, come in--come in! Where are you? I have been +wicked. I have thought too much of myself! Do you hear? I don't +want to keep you out any longer. I cannot bear that you should +suffer so. Gi-i-iles!" + +A reply! It was a reply! Through the darkness and wind a voice +reached her, floating upon the weather as though a part of it. + +"Here I am--all right. Don't trouble about me." + +"Don't you want to come in? Are you not ill? I don't mind what +they say, or what they think any more." + +"I am all right," he repeated. "It is not necessary for me to +come. Good-night! good-night!" + +Grace sighed, turned and shut the door slowly. Could she have +been mistaken about his health? Perhaps, after all, she had +perceived a change in him because she had not seen him for so +long. Time sometimes did his ageing work in jerks, as she knew. +Well, she had done all she could. He would not come in. She +retired to rest again. + + + +CHAPTER XLII. + + +The next morning Grace was at the window early. She felt +determined to see him somehow that day, and prepared his breakfast +eagerly. Eight o'clock struck, and she had remembered that he had +not come to arouse her by a knocking, as usual, her own anxiety +having caused her to stir. + +The breakfast was set in its place without. But he did not arrive +to take it; and she waited on. Nine o'clock arrived, and the +breakfast was cold; and still there was no Giles. A thrush, that +had been repeating itself a good deal on an opposite bush for some +time, came and took a morsel from the plate and bolted it, waited, +looked around, and took another. At ten o'clock she drew in the +tray, and sat down to her own solitary meal. He must have been +called away on business early, the rain having cleared off. + +Yet she would have liked to assure herself, by thoroughly +exploring the precincts of the hut, that he was nowhere in its +vicinity; but as the day was comparatively fine, the dread lest +some stray passenger or woodman should encounter her in such a +reconnoitre paralyzed her wish. The solitude was further +accentuated to-day by the stopping of the clock for want of +winding, and the fall into the chimney-corner of flakes of soot +loosened by the rains. At noon she heard a slight rustling +outside the window, and found that it was caused by an eft which +had crept out of the leaves to bask in the last sun-rays that +would be worth having till the following May. + +She continually peeped out through the lattice, but could see +little. In front lay the brown leaves of last year, and upon them +some yellowish-green ones of this season that had been prematurely +blown down by the gale. Above stretched an old beech, with vast +armpits, and great pocket-holes in its sides where branches had +been amputated in past times; a black slug was trying to climb it. +Dead boughs were scattered about like ichthyosauri in a museum, +and beyond them were perishing woodbine stems resembling old +ropes. + +From the other window all she could see were more trees, jacketed +with lichen and stockinged with moss. At their roots were +stemless yellow fungi like lemons and apricots, and tall fungi +with more stem than stool. Next were more trees close together, +wrestling for existence, their branches disfigured with wounds +resulting from their mutual rubbings and blows. It was the +struggle between these neighbors that she had heard in the night. +Beneath them were the rotting stumps of those of the group that +had been vanquished long ago, rising from their mossy setting like +decayed teeth from green gums. Farther on were other tufts of +moss in islands divided by the shed leaves--variety upon variety, +dark green and pale green; moss-like little fir-trees, like plush, +like malachite stars, like nothing on earth except moss. + +The strain upon Grace's mind in various ways was so great on this +the most desolate day she had passed there that she felt it would +be well-nigh impossible to spend another in such circumstances. +The evening came at last; the sun, when its chin was on the earth, +found an opening through which to pierce the shade, and stretched +irradiated gauzes across the damp atmosphere, making the wet +trunks shine, and throwing splotches of such ruddiness on the +leaves beneath the beech that they were turned to gory hues. When +night at last arrived, and with it the time for his return, she +was nearly broken down with suspense. + +The simple evening meal, partly tea, partly supper, which Grace +had prepared, stood waiting upon the hearth; and yet Giles did not +come. It was now nearly twenty-four hours since she had seen him. +As the room grew darker, and only the firelight broke against the +gloom of the walls, she was convinced that it would be beyond her +staying power to pass the night without hearing from him or from +somebody. Yet eight o'clock drew on, and his form at the window +did not appear. + +The meal remained untasted. Suddenly rising from before the +hearth of smouldering embers, where she had been crouching with +her hands clasped over her knees, she crossed the room, unlocked +the door, and listened. Every breath of wind had ceased with the +decline of day, but the rain had resumed the steady dripping of +the night before. Grace might have stood there five minutes when +she fancied she heard that old sound, a cough, at no great +distance; and it was presently repeated. If it were +Winterborne's, he must be near her; why, then, had he not visited +her? + +A horrid misgiving that he could not visit her took possession of +Grace, and she looked up anxiously for the lantern, which was +hanging above her head. To light it and go in the direction of +the sound would be the obvious way to solve the dread problem; but +the conditions made her hesitate, and in a moment a cold sweat +pervaded her at further sounds from the same quarter. + +They were low mutterings; at first like persons in conversation, +but gradually resolving themselves into varieties of one voice. +It was an endless monologue, like that we sometimes hear from +inanimate nature in deep secret places where water flows, or where +ivy leaves flap against stones; but by degrees she was convinced +that the voice was Winterborne's. Yet who could be his listener, +so mute and patient; for though he argued so rapidly and +persistently, nobody replied. + +A dreadful enlightenment spread through the mind of Grace. "Oh," +she cried, in her anguish, as she hastily prepared herself to go +out, "how selfishly correct I am always--too, too correct! Cruel +propriety is killing the dearest heart that ever woman clasped to +her own." + +While speaking thus to herself she had lit the lantern, and +hastening out without further thought, took the direction whence +the mutterings had proceeded. The course was marked by a little +path, which ended at a distance of about forty yards in a small +erection of hurdles, not much larger than a shock of corn, such as +were frequent in the woods and copses when the cutting season was +going on. It was too slight even to be called a hovel, and was +not high enough to stand upright in; appearing, in short, to be +erected for the temporary shelter of fuel. The side towards Grace +was open, and turning the light upon the interior, she beheld what +her prescient fear had pictured in snatches all the way thither. + +Upon the straw within, Winterborne lay in his clothes, just as she +had seen him during the whole of her stay here, except that his +hat was off, and his hair matted and wild. + +Both his clothes and the straw were saturated with rain. His arms +were flung over his head; his face was flushed to an unnatural +crimson. His eyes had a burning brightness, and though they met +her own, she perceived that he did not recognize her. + +"Oh, my Giles," she cried, "what have I done to you!" + +But she stopped no longer even to reproach herself. She saw that +the first thing to be thought of was to get him indoors. + +How Grace performed that labor she never could have exactly +explained. But by dint of clasping her arms round him, rearing +him into a sitting posture, and straining her strength to the +uttermost, she put him on one of the hurdles that was loose +alongside, and taking the end of it in both her hands, dragged him +along the path to the entrance of the hut, and, after a pause for +breath, in at the door-way. + +It was somewhat singular that Giles in his semi-conscious state +acquiesced unresistingly in all that she did. But he never for a +moment recognized her--continuing his rapid conversation to +himself, and seeming to look upon her as some angel, or other +supernatural creature of the visionary world in which he was +mentally living. The undertaking occupied her more than ten +minutes; but by that time, to her great thankfulness, he was in +the inner room, lying on the bed, his damp outer clothing removed. + +Then the unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. +There was something in his look which agonized her, in the rush of +his thoughts, accelerating their speed from minute to minute. He +seemed to be passing through the universe of ideas like a comet-- +erratic, inapprehensible, untraceable. + +Grace's distraction was almost as great as his. In a few moments +she firmly believed he was dying. Unable to withstand her +impulse, she knelt down beside him, kissed his hands and his face +and his hair, exclaiming, in a low voice, "How could I? How could +I?" + +Her timid morality had, indeed, underrated his chivalry till now, +though she knew him so well. The purity of his nature, his +freedom from the grosser passions, his scrupulous delicacy, had +never been fully understood by Grace till this strange self- +sacrifice in lonely juxtaposition to her own person was revealed. +The perception of it added something that was little short of +reverence to the deep affection for him of a woman who, herself, +had more of Artemis than of Aphrodite in her constitution. + +All that a tender nurse could do, Grace did; and the power to +express her solicitude in action, unconscious though the sufferer +was, brought her mournful satisfaction. She bathed his hot head, +wiped his perspiring hands, moistened his lips, cooled his fiery +eyelids, sponged his heated skin, and administered whatever she +could find in the house that the imagination could conceive as +likely to be in any way alleviating. That she might have been the +cause, or partially the cause, of all this, interfused misery with +her sorrow. + +Six months before this date a scene, almost similar in its +mechanical parts, had been enacted at Hintock House. It was +between a pair of persons most intimately connected in their lives +with these. Outwardly like as it had been, it was yet infinite in +spiritual difference, though a woman's devotion had been common to +both. + +Grace rose from her attitude of affection, and, bracing her +energies, saw that something practical must immediately be done. +Much as she would have liked, in the emotion of the moment, to +keep him entirely to herself, medical assistance was necessary +while there remained a possibility of preserving him alive. Such +assistance was fatal to her own concealment; but even had the +chance of benefiting him been less than it was, she would have run +the hazard for his sake. The question was, where should she get a +medical man, competent and near? + +There was one such man, and only one, within accessible distance; +a man who, if it were possible to save Winterborne's life, had the +brain most likely to do it. If human pressure could bring him, +that man ought to be brought to the sick Giles's side. The +attempt should be made. + +Yet she dreaded to leave her patient, and the minutes raced past, +and yet she postponed her departure. At last, when it was after +eleven o'clock, Winterborne fell into a fitful sleep, and it +seemed to afford her an opportunity. + +She hastily made him as comfortable as she could, put on her +things, cut a new candle from the bunch hanging in the cupboard, +and having set it up, and placed it so that the light did not fall +upon his eyes, she closed the door and started. + +The spirit of Winterborne seemed to keep her company and banish +all sense of darkness from her mind. The rains had imparted a +phosphorescence to the pieces of touchwood and rotting leaves that +lay about her path, which, as scattered by her feet, spread abroad +like spilt milk. She would not run the hazard of losing her way +by plunging into any short, unfrequented track through the denser +parts of the woodland, but followed a more open course, which +eventually brought her to the highway. Once here, she ran along +with great speed, animated by a devoted purpose which had much +about it that was stoical; and it was with scarcely any faltering +of spirit that, after an hour's progress, she passed over Rubdown +Hill, and onward towards that same Hintock, and that same house, +out of which she had fled a few days before in irresistible alarm. +But that had happened which, above all other things of chance and +change, could make her deliberately frustrate her plan of flight +and sink all regard of personal consequences. + +One speciality of Fitzpiers's was respected by Grace as much as +ever--his professional skill. In this she was right. Had his +persistence equalled his insight, instead of being the spasmodic +and fitful thing it was, fame and fortune need never have remained +a wish with him. His freedom from conventional errors and crusted +prejudices had, indeed, been such as to retard rather than +accelerate his advance in Hintock and its neighborhood, where +people could not believe that nature herself effected cures, and +that the doctor's business was only to smooth the way. + +It was past midnight when Grace arrived opposite her father's +house, now again temporarily occupied by her husband, unless he +had already gone away. Ever since her emergence from the denser +plantations about Winterborne's residence a pervasive lightness +had hung in the damp autumn sky, in spite of the vault of cloud, +signifying that a moon of some age was shining above its arch. +The two white gates were distinct, and the white balls on the +pillars, and the puddles and damp ruts left by the recent rain, +had a cold, corpse-eyed luminousness. She entered by the lower +gate, and crossed the quadrangle to the wing wherein the +apartments that had been hers since her marriage were situate, +till she stood under a window which, if her husband were in the +house, gave light to his bedchamber. + +She faltered, and paused with her hand on her heart, in spite of +herself. Could she call to her presence the very cause of all her +foregoing troubles? Alas!--old Jones was seven miles off; Giles +was possibly dying--what else could she do? + +It was in a perspiration, wrought even more by consciousness than +by exercise, that she picked up some gravel, threw it at the +panes, and waited to see the result. The night-bell which had +been fixed when Fitzpiers first took up his residence there still +remained; but as it had fallen into disuse with the collapse of +his practice, and his elopement, she did not venture to pull it +now. + +Whoever slept in the room had heard her signal, slight as it was. +In half a minute the window was opened, and a voice said "Yes?" +inquiringly. Grace recognized her husband in the speaker at once. +Her effort was now to disguise her own accents. + +"Doctor," she said, in as unusual a tone as she could command, "a +man is dangerously ill in One-chimney Hut, out towards Delborough, +and you must go to him at once--in all mercy!" + +"I will, readily." + +The alacrity, surprise, and pleasure expressed in his reply amazed +her for a moment. But, in truth, they denoted the sudden relief +of a man who, having got back in a mood of contrition, from +erratic abandonment to fearful joys, found the soothing routine of +professional practice unexpectedly opening anew to him. The +highest desire of his soul just now was for a respectable life of +painstaking. If this, his first summons since his return, had +been to attend upon a cat or dog, he would scarcely have refused +it in the circumstances. + +"Do you know the way?" she asked. + +"Yes," said he. + +"One-chimney Hut," she repeated. "And--immediately!" + +"Yes, yes," said Fitzpiers. + +Grace remained no longer. She passed out of the white gate +without slamming it, and hastened on her way back. Her husband, +then, had re-entered her father's house. How he had been able to +effect a reconciliation with the old man, what were the terms of +the treaty between them, she could not so much as conjecture. +Some sort of truce must have been entered into, that was all she +could say. But close as the question lay to her own life, there +was a more urgent one which banished it; and she traced her steps +quickly along the meandering track-ways. + +Meanwhile, Fitzpiers was preparing to leave the house. The state +of his mind, over and above his professional zeal, was peculiar. +At Grace's first remark he had not recognized or suspected her +presence; but as she went on, he was awakened to the great +resemblance of the speaker's voice to his wife's. He had taken in +such good faith the statement of the household on his arrival, +that she had gone on a visit for a time because she could not at +once bring her mind to be reconciled to him, that he could not +quite actually believe this comer to be she. It was one of the +features of Fitzpiers's repentant humor at this date that, on +receiving the explanation of her absence, he had made no attempt +to outrage her feelings by following her; though nobody had +informed him how very shortly her departure had preceded his +entry, and of all that might have been inferred from her +precipitancy. + +Melbury, after much alarm and consideration, had decided not to +follow her either. He sympathized with her flight, much as he +deplored it; moreover, the tragic color of the antecedent events +that he had been a great means of creating checked his instinct to +interfere. He prayed and trusted that she had got into no danger +on her way (as he supposed) to Sherton, and thence to Exbury, if +that were the place she had gone to, forbearing all inquiry which +the strangeness of her departure would have made natural. A few +months before this time a performance by Grace of one-tenth the +magnitude of this would have aroused him to unwonted +investigation. + +It was in the same spirit that he had tacitly assented to +Fitzpiers's domicilation there. The two men had not met face to +face, but Mrs. Melbury had proposed herself as an intermediary, +who made the surgeon's re-entrance comparatively easy to him. +Everything was provisional, and nobody asked questions. Fitzpiers +had come in the performance of a plan of penitence, which had +originated in circumstances hereafter to be explained; his self- +humiliation to the very bass-string was deliberate; and as soon as +a call reached him from the bedside of a dying man his desire was +to set to work and do as much good as he could with the least +possible fuss or show. He therefore refrained from calling up a +stableman to get ready any horse or gig, and set out for One- +chimney Hut on foot, as Grace had done. + + + +CHAPTER XLIII. + + +She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and +approached the sufferer. He had begun anew those terrible +mutterings, and his hands were cold. As soon as she saw him there +returned to her that agony of mind which the stimulus of her +journey had thrown off for a time. + +Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, forgot all +things but the fact that lying there before her was he who had +loved her more than the mere lover would have loved; had martyred +himself for her comfort, cared more for her self-respect than she +had thought of caring. This mood continued till she heard quick, +smart footsteps without; she knew whose footsteps they were. + +Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, holding +Giles's hand, so that when her husband entered the patient lay +between herself and him. He stood transfixed at first, noticing +Grace only. Slowly he dropped his glance and discerned who the +prostrate man was. Strangely enough, though Grace's distaste for +her husband's company had amounted almost to dread, and culminated +in actual flight, at this moment her last and least feeling was +personal. Sensitive femininity was eclipsed by self-effacing +purpose, and that it was a husband who stood there was forgotten. +The first look that possessed her face was relief; satisfaction at +the presence of the physician obliterated thought of the man, +which only returned in the form of a sub-consciousness that did +not interfere with her words. + +"Is he dying--is there any hope?" she cried. + +"Grace!" said Fitzpiers, in an indescribable whisper--more than +invocating, if not quite deprecatory. + +He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic +character--though that was striking enough to a man who called +himself the husband of the sufferer's friend and nurse--but in its +character as the counterpart of one that had its hour many months +before, in which he had figured as the patient, and the woman had +been Felice Charmond. + +"Is he in great danger--can you save him?" she cried again. + +Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined +Winterborne as he stood. His inspection was concluded in a mere +glance. Before he spoke he looked at her contemplatively as to +the effect of his coming words. + +"He is dying," he said, with dry precision. + +"What?" said she. + +"Nothing can be done, by me or any other man. It will soon be all +over. The extremities are dead already." His eyes still remained +fixed on her; the conclusion to which he had come seeming to end +his interest, professional and otherwise, in Winterborne forever. + +"But it cannot be! He was well three days ago." + +"Not well, I suspect. This seems like a secondary attack, which +has followed some previous illness--possibly typhoid--it may have +been months ago, or recently." + +"Ah--he was not well--you are right. He was ill--he was ill when +I came." + +There was nothing more to do or say. She crouched down at the +side of the bed, and Fitzpiers took a seat. Thus they remained in +silence, and long as it lasted she never turned her eyes, or +apparently her thoughts, at all to her husband. He occasionally +murmured, with automatic authority, some slight directions for +alleviating the pain of the dying man, which she mechanically +obeyed, bending over him during the intervals in silent tears. + +Winterborne never recovered consciousness of what was passing; and +that he was going became soon perceptible also to her. In less +than an hour the delirium ceased; then there was an interval of +somnolent painlessness and soft breathing, at the end of which +Winterborne passed quietly away. + + + +Then Fitzpiers broke the silence. "Have you lived here long?" +said he. + +Grace was wild with sorrow--with all that had befallen her--with +the cruelties that had attacked her--with life--with Heaven. She +answered at random. "Yes. By what right do you ask?" + +"Don't think I claim any right," said Fitzpiers, sadly. "It is +for you to do and say what you choose. I admit, quite as much as +you feel, that I am a vagabond--a brute--not worthy to possess the +smallest fragment of you. But here I am, and I have happened to +take sufficient interest in you to make that inquiry." + +"He is everything to me!" said Grace, hardly heeding her husband, +and laying her hand reverently on the dead man's eyelids, where +she kept it a long time, pressing down their lashes with gentle +touches, as if she were stroking a little bird. + +He watched her a while, and then glanced round the chamber where +his eyes fell upon a few dressing necessaries that she had +brought. + +"Grace--if I may call you so," he said, "I have been already +humiliated almost to the depths. I have come back since you +refused to join me elsewhere--I have entered your father's house, +and borne all that that cost me without flinching, because I have +felt that I deserved humiliation. But is there a yet greater +humiliation in store for me? You say you have been living here-- +that he is everything to you. Am I to draw from that the obvious, +the extremest inference?" + +Triumph at any price is sweet to men and women--especially the +latter. It was her first and last opportunity of repaying him for +the cruel contumely which she had borne at his hands so docilely. + +"Yes," she answered; and there was that in her subtly compounded +nature which made her feel a thrill of pride as she did so. + +Yet the moment after she had so mightily belied her character she +half repented. Her husband had turned as white as the wall behind +him. It seemed as if all that remained to him of life and spirit +had been abstracted at a stroke. Yet he did not move, and in his +efforts at self-control closed his mouth together as a vice. His +determination was fairly successful, though she saw how very much +greater than she had expected her triumph had been. Presently he +looked across at Winterborne. + +"Would it startle you to hear," he said, as if he hardly had +breath to utter the words, "that she who was to me what he was to +you is dead also?" + +"Dead--SHE dead?" exclaimed Grace. + +"Yes. Felice Charmond is where this young man is." + +"Never!" said Grace, vehemently. + +He went on without heeding the insinuation: "And I came back to +try to make it up with you--but--" + +Fitzpiers rose, and moved across the room to go away, looking +downward with the droop of a man whose hope was turned to apathy, +if not despair. In going round the door his eye fell upon her +once more. She was still bending over the body of Winterborne, +her face close to the young man's. + +"Have you been kissing him during his illness?" asked her husband. + +"Yes." + +"Since his fevered state set in?" + +"Yes." + +"On his lips?" + +"Yes." + +"Then you will do well to take a few drops of this in water as +soon as possible." He drew a small phial from his pocket and +returned to offer it to her. + +Grace shook her head. + +"If you don't do as I tell you you may soon be like him." + +"I don't care. I wish to die." + +"I'll put it here," said Fitzpiers, placing the bottle on a ledge +beside him. "The sin of not having warned you will not be upon my +head at any rate, among my other sins. I am now going, and I will +send somebody to you. Your father does not know that you are +here, so I suppose I shall be bound to tell him?" + +"Certainly." + +Fitzpiers left the cot, and the stroke of his feet was soon +immersed in the silence that prevaded the spot. Grace remained +kneeling and weeping, she hardly knew how long, and then she sat +up, covered poor Giles's features, and went towards the door where +her husband had stood. No sign of any other comer greeted her +ear, the only perceptible sounds being the tiny cracklings of the +dead leaves, which, like a feather-bed, had not yet done rising to +their normal level where indented by the pressure of her husband's +receding footsteps. It reminded her that she had been struck with +the change in his aspect; the extremely intellectual look that had +always been in his face was wrought to a finer phase by thinness, +and a care-worn dignity had been superadded. She returned to +Winterborne's side, and during her meditations another tread drew +near the door, entered the outer room, and halted at the entrance +of the chamber where Grace was. + +"What--Marty!" said Grace. + +"Yes. I have heard," said Marty, whose demeanor had lost all its +girlishness under the stroke that seemed almost literally to have +bruised her. + +"He died for me!" murmured Grace, heavily. + +Marty did not fully comprehend; and she answered, "He belongs to +neither of us now, and your beauty is no more powerful with him +than my plainness. I have come to help you, ma'am. He never +cared for me, and he cared much for you; but he cares for us both +alike now." + +"Oh don't, don't, Marty!" + +Marty said no more, but knelt over Winterborne from the other +side. + +"Did you meet my hus--Mr. Fitzpiers?" + +"Then what brought you here?" + +"I come this way sometimes. I have got to go to the farther side +of the wood this time of the year, and am obliged to get there +before four o'clock in the morning, to begin heating the oven for +the early baking. I have passed by here often at this time." + +Grace looked at her quickly. "Then did you know I was here?" + +"Yes, ma'am." + +"Did you tell anybody?" + +"No. I knew you lived in the hut, that he had gied it up to ye, +and lodged out himself." + +"Did you know where he lodged?" + +"No. That I couldn't find out. Was it at Delborough?" + +"No. It was not there, Marty. Would it had been! It would have +saved--saved--" To check her tears she turned, and seeing a book +on the window-bench, took it up. "Look, Marty, this is a Psalter. +He was not an outwardly religious man, but he was pure and perfect +in his heart. Shall we read a psalm over him?" + +"Oh yes--we will--with all my heart!" + +Grace opened the thin brown book, which poor Giles had kept at +hand mainly for the convenience of whetting his pen-knife upon its +leather covers. She began to read in that rich, devotional voice +peculiar to women only on such occasions. When it was over, Marty +said, "I should like to pray for his soul." + +"So should I," said her companion. "But we must not." + +"Why? Nobody would know." + +Grace could not resist the argument, influenced as she was by the +sense of making amends for having neglected him in the body; and +their tender voices united and filled the narrow room with +supplicatory murmurs that a Calvinist might have envied. They had +hardly ended when now and more numerous foot-falls were audible, +also persons in conversation, one of whom Grace recognized as her +father. + +She rose, and went to the outer apartment, in which there was only +such light as beamed from the inner one. Melbury and Mrs. Melbury +were standing there. + +"I don't reproach you, Grace," said her father, with an estranged +manner, and in a voice not at all like his old voice. "What has +come upon you and us is beyond reproach, beyond weeping, and +beyond wailing. Perhaps I drove you to it. But I am hurt; I am +scourged; I am astonished. In the face of this there is nothing +to be said." + +Without replying, Grace turned and glided back to the inner +chamber. "Marty," she said, quickly, "I cannot look my father in +the face until he knows the true circumstances of my life here. +Go and tell him--what you have told me--what you saw--that he gave +up his house to me." + +She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty went, and +after a short absence returned. Then Grace rose, and going out +asked her father if he had met her husband. + +"Yes," said Melbury. + +"And you know all that has happened?" + +"I do. Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting ye of worse than +rashness--I ought to know ye better. Are you coming with me to +what was once your home?" + +"No. I stay here with HIM. Take no account of me any more." + +The unwonted, perplexing, agitating relations in which she had +stood to Winterborne quite lately--brought about by Melbury's own +contrivance--could not fail to soften the natural anger of a +parent at her more recent doings. "My daughter, things are bad," +he rejoined. "But why do you persevere to make 'em worse? What +good can you do to Giles by staying here with him? Mind, I ask no +questions. I don't inquire why you decided to come here, or +anything as to what your course would have been if he had not +died, though I know there's no deliberate harm in ye. As for me, +I have lost all claim upon you, and I make no complaint. But I do +say that by coming back with me now you will show no less kindness +to him, and escape any sound of shame. + +"But I don't wish to escape it." + +"If you don't on your own account, cannot you wish to on mine and +hers? Nobody except our household knows that you have left home. +Then why should you, by a piece of perverseness, bring down my +gray hairs with sorrow to the grave?" + +"If it were not for my husband--" she began, moved by his words. +"But how can I meet him there? How can any woman who is not a mere +man's creature join him after what has taken place?" + +"He would go away again rather than keep you out of my house." + +"How do you know that, father?" + +"We met him on our way here, and he told us so," said Mrs. +Melbury. "He had said something like it before. He seems very +much upset altogether." + +"He declared to her when he came to our house that he would wait +for time and devotion to bring about his forgiveness," said her +husband. "That was it, wasn't it, Lucy?" + +"Yes. That he would not intrude upon you, Grace, till you gave +him absolute permission," Mrs. Melbury added. + +This antecedent considerateness in Fitzpiers was as welcome to +Grace as it was unexpected; and though she did not desire his +presence, she was sorry that by her retaliatory fiction she had +given him a different reason for avoiding her. She made no +further objections to accompanying her parents, taking them into +the inner room to give Winterborne a last look, and gathering up +the two or three things that belonged to her. While she was doing +this the two women came who had been called by Melbury, and at +their heels poor Creedle. + +"Forgive me, but I can't rule my mourning nohow as a man should, +Mr. Melbury," he said. "I ha'n't seen him since Thursday +se'night, and have wondered for days and days where he's been +keeping. There was I expecting him to come and tell me to wash +out the cider-barrels against the making, and here was he-- Well, +I've knowed him from table-high; I knowed his father--used to bide +about upon two sticks in the sun afore he died!--and now I've seen +the end of the family, which we can ill afford to lose, wi' such a +scanty lot of good folk in Hintock as we've got. And now Robert +Creedle will be nailed up in parish boards 'a b'lieve; and noboby +will glutch down a sigh for he!" + +They started for home, Marty and Creedle remaining behind. For a +time Grace and her father walked side by side without speaking. +It was just in the blue of the dawn, and the chilling tone of the +sky was reflected in her cold, wet face. The whole wood seemed to +be a house of death, pervaded by loss to its uttermost length and +breadth. Winterborne was gone, and the copses seemed to show the +want of him; those young trees, so many of which he had planted, +and of which he had spoken so truly when he said that he should +fall before they fell, were at that very moment sending out their +roots in the direction that he had given them with his subtle +hand. + +"One thing made it tolerable to us that your husband should come +back to the house," said Melbury at last--"the death of Mrs. +Charmond." + +"Ah, yes," said Grace, arousing slightly to the recollection, "he +told me so." + +"Did he tell you how she died? It was no such death as Giles's. +She was shot--by a disappointed lover. It occurred in Germany. +The unfortunate man shot himself afterwards. He was that South +Carolina gentleman of very passionate nature who used to haunt +this place to force her to an interview, and followed her about +everywhere. So ends the brilliant Felice Charmond--once a good +friend to me--but no friend to you." + +"I can forgive her," said Grace, absently. "Did Edgar tell you of +this?" + +"No; but he put a London newspaper, giving an account of it, on +the hall table, folded in such a way that we should see it. It +will be in the Sherton paper this week, no doubt. To make the +event more solemn still to him, he had just before had sharp words +with her, and left her. He told Lucy this, as nothing about him +appears in the newspaper. And the cause of the quarrel was, of +all people, she we've left behind us." + +"Do you mean Marty?" Grace spoke the words but perfunctorily. +For, pertinent and pointed as Melbury's story was, she had no +heart for it now. + +"Yes. Marty South." Melbury persisted in his narrative, to +divert her from her present grief, if possible. "Before he went +away she wrote him a letter, which he kept in his, pocket a long +while before reading. He chanced to pull it out in Mrs. +Charmond's, presence, and read it out loud. It contained +something which teased her very much, and that led to the rupture. +She was following him to make it up when she met with her terrible +death." + +Melbury did not know enough to give the gist of the incident, +which was that Marty South's letter had been concerning a certain +personal adornment common to herself and Mrs. Charmond. Her +bullet reached its billet at last. The scene between Fitzpiers +and Felice had been sharp, as only a scene can be which arises out +of the mortification of one woman by another in the presence of a +lover. True, Marty had not effected it by word of mouth; the +charge about the locks of hair was made simply by Fitzpiers +reading her letter to him aloud to Felice in the playfully +ironical tones of one who had become a little weary of his +situation, and was finding his friend, in the phrase of George +Herbert, a "flat delight." He had stroked those false tresses +with his hand many a time without knowing them to be transplanted, +and it was impossible when the discovery was so abruptly made to +avoid being finely satirical, despite her generous disposition. + +That was how it had begun, and tragedy had been its end. On his +abrupt departure she had followed him to the station but the train +was gone; and in travelling to Baden in search of him she had met +his rival, whose reproaches led to an altercation, and the death +of both. Of that precipitate scene of passion and crime Fitzpiers +had known nothing till he saw an account of it in the papers, +where, fortunately for himself, no mention was made of his prior +acquaintance with the unhappy lady; nor was there any allusion to +him in the subsequent inquiry, the double death being attributed +to some gambling losses, though, in point of fact, neither one of +them had visited the tables. + +Melbury and his daughter drew near their house, having seen but +one living thing on their way, a squirrel, which did not run up +its tree, but, dropping the sweet chestnut which it carried, cried +chut-chut-chut, and stamped with its hind legs on the ground. +When the roofs and chimneys of the homestead began to emerge from +the screen of boughs, Grace started, and checked herself in her +abstracted advance. + +"You clearly understand," she said to her step-mother some of her +old misgiving returning, "that I am coming back only on condition +of his leaving as he promised? Will you let him know this, that +there may be no mistake?" + +Mrs. Melbury, who had some long private talks with Fitzpiers, +assured Grace that she need have no doubts on that point, and that +he would probably be gone by the evening. Grace then entered with +them into Melbury's wing of the house, and sat down listlessly in +the parlor, while her step-mother went to Fitzpiers. + +The prompt obedience to her wishes which the surgeon showed did +honor to him, if anything could. Before Mrs. Melbury had returned +to the room Grace, who was sitting on the parlor window-bench, saw +her husband go from the door under the increasing light of +morning, with a bag in his hand. While passing through the gate +he turned his head. The firelight of the room she sat in threw +her figure into dark relief against the window as she looked +through the panes, and he must have seen her distinctly. In a +moment he went on, the gate fell to, and he disappeared. At the +hut she had declared that another had displaced him; and now she +had banished him. + + + +CHAPTER XLIV. + + +Fitzpiers had hardly been gone an hour when Grace began to sicken. +The next day she kept her room. Old Jones was called in; he +murmured some statements in which the words "feverish symptoms" +occurred. Grace heard them, and guessed the means by which she +had brought this visitation upon herself. + +One day, while she still lay there with her head throbbing, +wondering if she were really going to join him who had gone +before, Grammer Oliver came to her bedside. "I don't know whe'r +this is meant for you to take, ma'am," she said, "but I have found +it on the table. It was left by Marty, I think, when she came +this morning." + +Grace turned her hot eyes upon what Grammer held up. It was the +phial left at the hut by her husband when he had begged her to +take some drops of its contents if she wished to preserve herself +from falling a victim to the malady which had pulled down +Winterborne. She examined it as well as she could. The liquid +was of an opaline hue, and bore a label with an inscription in +Italian. He had probably got it in his wanderings abroad. She +knew but little Italian, but could understand that the cordial was +a febrifuge of some sort. Her father, her mother, and all the +household were anxious for her recovery, and she resolved to obey +her husband's directions. Whatever the risk, if any, she was +prepared to run it. A glass of water was brought, and the drops +dropped in. + +The effect, though not miraculous, was remarkable. In less than +an hour she felt calmer, cooler, better able to reflect--less +inclined to fret and chafe and wear herself away. She took a few +drops more. From that time the fever retreated, and went out like +a damped conflagration. + +"How clever he is!" she said, regretfully. "Why could he not have +had more principle, so as to turn his great talents to good +account? Perhaps he has saved my useless life. But he doesn't +know it, and doesn't care whether he has saved it or not; and on +that account will never be told by me! Probably he only gave it to +me in the arrogance of his skill, to show the greatness of his +resources beside mine, as Elijah drew down fire from heaven." + +As soon as she had quite recovered from this foiled attack upon +her life, Grace went to Marty South's cottage. The current of her +being had again set towards the lost Giles Winterborne. + +"Marty," she said, "we both loved him. We will go to his grave +together." + +Great Hintock church stood at the upper part of the village, and +could be reached without passing through the street. In the dusk +of the late September day they went thither by secret ways, +walking mostly in silence side by side, each busied with her own +thoughts. Grace had a trouble exceeding Marty's--that haunting +sense of having put out the light of his life by her own hasty +doings. She had tried to persuade herself that he might have died +of his illness, even if she had not taken possession of his house. +Sometimes she succeeded in her attempt; sometimes she did not. + +They stood by the grave together, and though the sun had gone +down, they could see over the woodland for miles, and down to the +vale in which he had been accustomed to descend every year, with +his portable mill and press, to make cider about this time. + +Perhaps Grace's first grief, the discovery that if he had lived he +could never have claimed her, had some power in softening this, +the second. On Marty's part there was the same consideration; +never would she have been his. As no anticipation of gratified +affection had been in existence while he was with them, there was +none to be disappointed now that he had gone. + +Grace was abased when, by degrees, she found that she had never +understood Giles as Marty had done. Marty South alone, of all the +women in Hintock and the world, had approximated to Winterborne's +level of intelligent intercourse with nature. In that respect she +had formed the complement to him in the other sex, had lived as +his counterpart, had subjoined her thought to his as a corollary. + +The casual glimpses which the ordinary population bestowed upon +that wondrous world of sap and leaves called the Hintock woods had +been with these two, Giles and Marty, a clear gaze. They had been +possessed of its finer mysteries as of commonplace knowledge; had +been able to read its hieroglyphs as ordinary writing; to them the +sights and sounds of night, winter, wind, storm, amid those dense +boughs, which had to Grace a touch of the uncanny, and even the +supernatural, were simple occurrences whose origin, continuance, +and laws they foreknew. They had planted together, and together +they had felled; together they had, with the run of the years, +mentally collected those remoter signs and symbols which, seen in +few, were of runic obscurity, but all together made an alphabet. +From the light lashing of the twigs upon their faces, when +brushing through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the +species of the tree whence they stretched; from the quality of the +wind's murmur through a bough they could in like manner name its +sort afar off. They knew by a glance at a trunk if its heart were +sound, or tainted with incipient decay, and by the state of its +upper twigs, the stratum that had been reached by its roots. The +artifices of the seasons were seen by them from the conjuror's own +point of view, and not from that of the spectator's. + +"He ought to have married YOU, Marty, and nobody else in the +world!" said Grace, with conviction, after thinking somewhat in +the above strain. + +Marty shook her head. "In all our out-door days and years +together, ma'am," she replied, "the one thing he never spoke of to +me was love; nor I to him." + +"Yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody else knew--not +even my father, though he came nearest knowing--the tongue of the +trees and fruits and flowers themselves." + +She could indulge in mournful fancies like this to Marty; but the +hard core to her grief--which Marty's had not--remained. Had she +been sure that Giles's death resulted entirely from his exposure, +it would have driven her well-nigh to insanity; but there was +always that bare possibility that his exposure had only +precipitated what was inevitable. She longed to believe that it +had not done even this. + +There was only one man whose opinion on the circumstances she +would be at all disposed to trust. Her husband was that man. Yet +to ask him it would be necessary to detail the true conditions in +which she and Winterborne had lived during these three or four +critical days that followed her flight; and in withdrawing her +original defiant announcement on that point, there seemed a +weakness she did not care to show. She never doubted that +Fitzpiers would believe her if she made a clean confession of the +actual situation; but to volunteer the correction would seem like +signalling for a truce, and that, in her present frame of mind, +was what she did not feel the need of. + + + +It will probably not appear a surprising statement, after what has +been already declared of Fitzpiers, that the man whom Grace's +fidelity could not keep faithful was stung into passionate throbs +of interest concerning her by her avowal of the contrary. + +He declared to himself that he had never known her dangerously +full compass if she were capable of such a reprisal; and, +melancholy as it may be to admit the fact, his own humiliation and +regret engendered a smouldering admiration of her. + +He passed a month or two of great misery at Exbury, the place to +which he had retired--quite as much misery indeed as Grace, could +she have known of it, would have been inclined to inflict upon any +living creature, how much soever he might have wronged her. Then +a sudden hope dawned upon him; he wondered if her affirmation were +true. He asked himself whether it were not the act of a woman +whose natural purity and innocence had blinded her to the +contingencies of such an announcement. His wide experience of the +sex had taught him that, in many cases, women who ventured on +hazardous matters did so because they lacked an imagination +sensuous enough to feel their full force. In this light Grace's +bold avowal might merely have denoted the desperation of one who +was a child to the realities of obliquity. + +Fitzpiers's mental sufferings and suspense led him at last to take +a melancholy journey to the neighborhood of Little Hintock; and +here he hovered for hours around the scene of the purest emotional +experiences that he had ever known in his life. He walked about +the woods that surrounded Melbury's house, keeping out of sight +like a criminal. It was a fine evening, and on his way homeward +he passed near Marty South's cottage. As usual she had lighted +her candle without closing her shutters; he saw her within as he +had seen her many times before. + +She was polishing tools, and though he had not wished to show +himself, he could not resist speaking in to her through the half- +open door. "What are you doing that for, Marty?" + +"Because I want to clean them. They are not mine." He could see, +indeed, that they were not hers, for one was a spade, large and +heavy, and another was a bill-hook which she could only have used +with both hands. The spade, though not a new one, had been so +completely burnished that it was bright as silver. + +Fitzpiers somehow divined that they were Giles Winterborne's, and +he put the question to her. + +She replied in the affirmative. "I am going to keep 'em," she +said, "but I can't get his apple-mill and press. I wish could; it +is going to be sold, they say." + +"Then I will buy it for you," said Fitzpiers. "That will be +making you a return for a kindness you did me." His glance fell +upon the girl's rare-colored hair, which had grown again. "Oh, +Marty, those locks of yours--and that letter! But it was a +kindness to send it, nevertheless," he added, musingly. + +After this there was confidence between them--such confidence as +there had never been before. Marty was shy, indeed, of speaking +about the letter, and her motives in writing it; but she thanked +him warmly for his promise of the cider-press. She would travel +with it in the autumn season, as he had done, she said. She would +be quite strong enough, with old Creedle as an assistant. + +"Ah! there was one nearer to him than you," said Fitzpiers, +referring to Winterborne. "One who lived where he lived, and was +with him when he died." + +Then Marty, suspecting that he did not know the true +circumstances, from the fact that Mrs. Fitzpiers and himself were +living apart, told him of Giles's generosity to Grace in giving up +his house to her at the risk, and possibly the sacrifice, of his +own life. When the surgeon heard it he almost envied Giles his +chivalrous character. He expressed a wish to Marty that his visit +to her should be kept secret, and went home thoughtful, feeling +that in more that one sense his journey to Hintock had not been in +vain. + +He would have given much to win Grace's forgiveness then. But +whatever he dared hope for in that kind from the future, there was +nothing to be done yet, while Giles Winterborne's memory was +green. To wait was imperative. A little time might melt her +frozen thoughts, and lead her to look on him with toleration, if +not with love. + + + +CHAPTER XLV. + + +Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had been passed by +Grace in the soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she +and Marty had devoted themselves. Twice a week the pair went in +the dusk to Great Hintock, and, like the two mourners in +Cymbeline, sweetened his sad grave with their flowers and their +tears. Sometimes Grace thought that it was a pity neither one of +them had been his wife for a little while, and given the world a +copy of him who was so valuable in their eyes. Nothing ever had +brought home to her with such force as this death how little +acquirements and culture weigh beside sterling personal character. +While her simple sorrow for his loss took a softer edge with the +lapse of the autumn and winter seasons, her self-reproach at +having had a possible hand in causing it knew little abatement. + +Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the fall and +decay of the leaf. Discussion of the almost contemporaneous death +of Mrs. Charmond abroad had waxed and waned. Fitzpiers had had a +marvellous escape from being dragged into the inquiry which +followed it, through the accident of their having parted just +before under the influence of Marty South's letter--the tiny +instrument of a cause deep in nature. + +Her body was not brought home. It seemed to accord well with the +fitful fever of that impassioned woman's life that she should not +have found a native grave. She had enjoyed but a life-interest in +the estate, which, after her death, passed to a relative of her +husband's--one who knew not Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be +to blot out every vestige of her. + +On a certain day in February--the cheerful day of St. Valentine, +in fact--a letter reached Mrs. Fitzpiers, which had been mentally +promised her for that particular day a long time before. + +It announced that Fitzpiers was living at some midland town, where +he had obtained a temporary practice as assistant to some local +medical man, whose curative principles were all wrong, though he +dared not set them right. He had thought fit to communicate with +her on that day of tender traditions to inquire if, in the event +of his obtaining a substantial practice that he had in view +elsewhere, she could forget the past and bring herself to join +him. + +There the practical part ended; he then went on-- + + +"My last year of experience has added ten years to my age, dear +Grace and dearest wife that ever erring man undervalued. You may +be absolutely indifferent to what I say, but let me say it: I have +never loved any woman alive or dead as I love, respect, and honor +you at this present moment. What you told me in the pride and +haughtiness of your heart I never believed [this, by the way, was +not strictly true]; but even if I had believed it, it could never +have estranged me from you. Is there any use in telling you--no, +there is not--that I dream of your ripe lips more frequently than +I say my prayers; that the old familiar rustle of your dress often +returns upon my mind till it distracts me? If you could condescend +even only to see me again you would be breathing life into a +corpse. My pure, pure Grace, modest as a turtledove, how came I +ever to possess you? For the sake of being present in your mind on +this lovers' day, I think I would almost rather have you hate me a +little than not think of me at all. You may call my fancies +whimsical; but remember, sweet, lost one, that 'nature is one in +love, and where 'tis fine it sends some instance of itself.' I +will not intrude upon you further now. Make me a little bit happy +by sending back one line to say that you will consent, at any +rate, to a short interview. I will meet you and leave you as a +mere acquaintance, if you will only afford me this slight means of +making a few explanations, and of putting my position before you. +Believe me, in spite of all you may do or feel, Your lover +always (once your husband), + + "E." + + +It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first on +which Grace had ever received a love-letter from him, his +courtship having taken place under conditions which rendered +letter-writing unnecessary. Its perusal, therefore, had a certain +novelty for her. She thought that, upon the whole, he wrote love- +letters very well. But the chief rational interest of the letter +to the reflective Grace lay in the chance that such a meeting as +he proposed would afford her of setting her doubts at rest, one +way or the other, on her actual share in Winterborne's death. The +relief of consulting a skilled mind, the one professional man who +had seen Giles at that time, would be immense. As for that +statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which at +the time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared +to admit to him that his belief was the true one; for in wronging +herself as she did when she made it, she had done what to her was +a far more serious thing, wronged Winterborne's memory. + +Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or out of +it, Grace replied to the letter. She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on +two conditions, of which the first was that the place of meeting +should be the top of Rubdown Hill, the second that he would not +object to Marty South accompanying her. + +Whatever part, much or little, there may have been in Fitzpiers's +so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the +bursting of spring when her brief reply came. It was one of the +few pleasures that he had experienced of late years at all +resembling those of his early youth. He promptly replied that he +accepted the conditions, and named the day and hour at which he +would be on the spot she mentioned. + +A few minutes before three on the appointed day found him climbing +the well-known hill, which had been the axis of so many critical +movements in their lives during his residence at Hintock. + +The sight of each homely and well-remembered object swelled the +regret that seldom left him now. Whatever paths might lie open to +his future, the soothing shades of Hintock were forbidden him +forever as a permanent dwelling-place. + +He longed for the society of Grace. But to lay offerings on her +slighted altar was his first aim, and until her propitiation was +complete he would constrain her in no way to return to him. The +least reparation that he could make, in a case where he would +gladly have made much, would be to let her feel herself absolutely +free to choose between living with him and without him. + +Moreover, a subtlist in emotions, he cultivated as under glasses +strange and mournful pleasures that he would not willingly let die +just at present. To show any forwardness in suggesting a modus +vivendi to Grace would be to put an end to these exotics. To be +the vassal of her sweet will for a time, he demanded no more, and +found solace in the contemplation of the soft miseries she caused +him. + +Approaching the hill-top with a mind strung to these notions, +Fitzpiers discerned a gay procession of people coming over the +crest, and was not long in perceiving it to be a wedding-party. + +Though the wind was keen the women were in light attire, and the +flowered waistcoats of the men had a pleasing vividness of +pattern. Each of the gentler ones clung to the arm of her partner +so tightly as to have with him one step, rise, swing, gait, almost +one centre of gravity. In the buxom bride Fitzpiers recognized no +other than Suke Damson, who in her light gown looked a giantess; +the small husband beside her he saw to be Tim Tangs. + +Fitzpiers could not escape, for they had seen him; though of all +the beauties of the world whom he did not wish to meet Suke was +the chief. But he put the best face on the matter that he could +and came on, the approaching company evidently discussing him and +his separation from Mrs. Fitzpiers. As the couples closed upon +him he expressed his congratulations. + +"We be just walking round the parishes to show ourselves a bit," +said Tim. "First we het across to Delborough, then athwart to +here, and from here we go to Rubdown and Millshot, and then round +by the cross-roads home. Home says I, but it won't be that long! +We be off next month." + +"Indeed. Where to?" + +Tim informed him that they were going to New Zealand. Not but +that he would have been contented with Hintock, but his wife was +ambitious and wanted to leave, so he had given way. + +"Then good-by," said Fitzpiers; "I may not see you again." He +shook hands with Tim and turned to the bride. "Good-by, Suke," he +said, taking her hand also. "I wish you and your husband +prosperity in the country you have chosen." With this he left +them, and hastened on to his appointment. + +The wedding-party re-formed and resumed march likewise. But in +restoring his arm to Suke, Tim noticed that her full and blooming +countenance had undergone a change. "Holloa! me dear--what's the +matter?" said Tim. + +"Nothing to speak o'," said she. But to give the lie to her +assertion she was seized with lachrymose twitches, that soon +produced a dribbling face. + +"How--what the devil's this about!" exclaimed the bridegroom. + +"She's a little wee bit overcome, poor dear!" said the first +bridesmaid, unfolding her handkerchief and wiping Suke's eyes. + +"I never did like parting from people!" said Suke, as soon as she +could speak. + +"Why him in particular?" + +"Well--he's such a clever doctor, that 'tis a thousand pities we +sha'n't see him any more! There'll be no such clever doctor as he +in New Zealand, if I should require one; and the thought o't got +the better of my feelings!" + +They walked on, but Tim's face had grown rigid and pale, for he +recalled slight circumstances, disregarded at the time of their +occurrence. The former boisterous laughter of the wedding-party +at the groomsman's jokes was heard ringing through the woods no +more. + +By this time Fitzpiers had advanced on his way to the top of the +hill, where he saw two figures emerging from the bank on the right +hand. These were the expected ones, Grace and Marty South, who +had evidently come there by a short and secret path through the +wood. Grace was muffled up in her winter dress, and he thought +that she had never looked so seductive as at this moment, in the +noontide bright but heatless sun, and the keen wind, and the +purplish-gray masses of brushwood around. + +Fitzpiers continued to regard the nearing picture, till at length +their glances met for a moment, when she demurely sent off hers at +a tangent and gave him the benefit of her three-quarter face, +while with courteous completeness of conduct he lifted his hat in +a large arc. Marty dropped behind; and when Fitzpiers held out +his hand, Grace touched it with her fingers. + +"I have agreed to be here mostly because I wanted to ask you +something important," said Mrs. Fitzpiers, her intonation +modulating in a direction that she had not quite wished it to +take. + +"I am most attentive," said her husband. "Shall we take to the +wood for privacy?" + +Grace demurred, and Fitzpiers gave in, and they kept the public +road. + +At any rate she would take his arm? This also was gravely +negatived, the refusal being audible to Marty. + +"Why not?" he inquired. + +"Oh, Mr. Fitzpiers--how can you ask?" + +"Right, right," said he, his effusiveness shrivelled up. + +As they walked on she returned to her inquiry. "It is about a +matter that may perhaps be unpleasant to you. But I think I need +not consider that too carefully." + +"Not at all," said Fitzpiers, heroically. + +She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne's death, +and related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness +had come upon him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to +which he had betaken himself, his concealment from her of the +hardships that he was undergoing, all that he had put up with, all +that he had done for her in his scrupulous considerateness. The +retrospect brought her to tears as she asked him if he thought +that the sin of having driven him to his death was upon her. + +Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her +narrative indirectly revealed, the actual harmlessness of an +escapade with her lover, which had at first, by her own showing, +looked so grave, and he did not care to inquire whether that +harmlessness had been the result of aim or of accident. With +regard to her question, he declared that in his judgment no human +being could answer it. He thought that upon the whole the balance +of probabilities turned in her favor. Winterborne's apparent +strength, during the last months of his life, must have been +delusive. It had often occurred that after a first attack of that +insidious disease a person's apparent recovery was a physiological +mendacity. + +The relief which came to Grace lay almost as much in sharing her +knowledge of the particulars with an intelligent mind as in the +assurances Fitzpiers gave her. "Well, then, to put this case +before you, and obtain your professional opinion, was chiefly why +I consented to come here to-day," said she, when he had reached +the aforesaid conclusion. + +"For no other reason at all?" he asked, ruefully. + +"It was nearly the whole." + +They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty starlings +feeding in the grass, and he started the talk again by saying, in +a low voice, "And yet I love you more than ever I loved you in my +life." + +Grace did not move her eyes from the birds, and folded her +delicate lips as if to keep them in subjection. + +"It is a different kind of love altogether," said he. "Less +passionate; more profound. It has nothing to do with the material +conditions of the object at all; much to do with her character and +goodness, as revealed by closer observation. 'Love talks with +better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.'" + +"That's out of 'Measure for Measure,'" said she, slyly. + +"Oh yes--I meant it as a citation," blandly replied Fitzpiers. +"Well, then, why not give me a very little bit of your heart +again?" + +The crash of a felled tree in the remote depths of the wood +recalled the past at that moment, and all the homely faithfulness +of Winterborne. "Don't ask it! My heart is in the grave with +Giles," she replied, stanchly. + +"Mine is with you--in no less deep a grave, I fear, according to +that." + +"I am very sorry; but it cannot be helped." + +"How can you be sorry for me, when you wilfully keep open the +grave?" + +"Oh no--that's not so," returned Grace, quickly, and moved to go +away from him. + +"But, dearest Grace," said he, "you have condescended to come; and +I thought from it that perhaps when I had passed through a long +state of probation you would be generous. But if there can be no +hope of our getting completely reconciled, treat me gently--wretch +though I am." + +"I did not say you were a wretch, nor have I ever said so." + +"But you have such a contemptuous way of looking at me that I fear +you think so." + +Grace's heart struggled between the wish not to be harsh and the +fear that she might mislead him. "I cannot look contemptuous +unless I feel contempt," she said, evasively. "And all I feel is +lovelessness." + +"I have been very bad, I know," he returned. "But unless you can +really love me again, Grace, I would rather go away from you +forever. I don't want you to receive me again for duty's sake, or +anything of that sort. If I had not cared more for your affection +and forgiveness than my own personal comfort, I should never have +come back here. I could have obtained a practice at a distance, +and have lived my own life without coldness or reproach. But I +have chosen to return to the one spot on earth where my name is +tarnished--to enter the house of a man from whom I have had worse +treatment than from any other man alive--all for you!" + +This was undeniably true, and it had its weight with Grace, who +began to look as if she thought she had been shockingly severe. + +"Before you go," he continued, "I want to know your pleasure about +me--what you wish me to do, or not to do." + +"You are independent of me, and it seems a mockery to ask that. +Far be it from me to advise. But I will think it over. I rather +need advice myself than stand in a position to give it." + +"YOU don't need advice, wisest, dearest woman that ever lived. If +you did--" + +"Would you give it to me?" + +"Would you act upon what I gave?" + +"That's not a fair inquiry," said she, smiling despite her +gravity. "I don't mind hearing it--what you do really think the +most correct and proper course for me." + +"It is so easy for me to say, and yet I dare not, for it would be +provoking you to remonstrances." + +Knowing, of course, what the advice would be, she did not press +him further, and was about to beckon Marty forward and leave him, +when he interrupted her with, "Oh, one moment, dear Grace--you +will meet me again?" + +She eventually agreed to see him that day fortnight. Fitzpiers +expostulated at the interval, but the half-alarmed earnestness +with which she entreated him not to come sooner made him say +hastily that he submitted to her will--that he would regard her as +a friend only, anxious for his reform and well-being, till such +time as she might allow him to exceed that privilege. + +All this was to assure her; it was only too clear that he had not +won her confidence yet. It amazed Fitzpiers, and overthrew all +his deductions from previous experience, to find that this girl, +though she had been married to him, could yet be so coy. +Notwithstanding a certain fascination that it carried with it, his +reflections were sombre as he went homeward; he saw how deep had +been his offence to produce so great a wariness in a gentle and +once unsuspicious soul. + +He was himself too fastidious to care to coerce her. To be an +object of misgiving or dislike to a woman who shared his home was +what he could not endure the thought of. Life as it stood was +more tolerable. + +When he was gone, Marty joined Mrs. Fitzpiers. She would fain +have consulted Marty on the question of Platonic relations with +her former husband, as she preferred to regard him. But Marty +showed no great interest in their affairs, so Grace said nothing. +They came onward, and saw Melbury standing at the scene of the +felling which had been audible to them, when, telling Marty that +she wished her meeting with Mr. Fitzpiers to be kept private, she +left the girl to join her father. At any rate, she would consult +him on the expediency of occasionally seeing her husband. + +Her father was cheerful, and walked by her side as he had done in +earlier days. "I was thinking of you when you came up," he said. +"I have considered that what has happened is for the best. Since +your husband is gone away, and seems not to wish to trouble you, +why, let him go, and drop out of your life. Many women are worse +off. You can live here comfortably enough, and he can emigrate, +or do what he likes for his good. I wouldn't mind sending him the +further sum of money he might naturally expect to come to him, so +that you may not be bothered with him any more. He could hardly +have gone on living here without speaking to me, or meeting me; +and that would have been very unpleasant on both sides." + +These remarks checked her intention. There was a sense of +weakness in following them by saying that she had just met her +husband by appointment. "Then you would advise me not to +communicate with him?" she observed. + +"I shall never advise ye again. You are your own mistress--do as +you like. But my opinion is that if you don't live with him, you +had better live without him, and not go shilly-shallying and +playing bopeep. You sent him away; and now he's gone. Very well; +trouble him no more." + +Grace felt a guiltiness--she hardly knew why--and made no +confession. + + + +CHAPTER XLVI. + + +The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed in-doors a great +deal. She became quite a student, reading more than she had done +since her marriage But her seclusion was always broken for the +periodical visit to Winterborne's grave with Marty, which was kept +up with pious strictness, for the purpose of putting snow-drops, +primroses, and other vernal flowers thereon as they came. + +One afternoon at sunset she was standing just outside her father's +garden, which, like the rest of the Hintock enclosures, abutted +into the wood. A slight foot-path led along here, forming a +secret way to either of the houses by getting through its boundary +hedge. Grace was just about to adopt this mode of entry when a +figure approached along the path, and held up his hand to detain +her. It was her husband. + +"I am delighted," he said, coming up out of breath; and there +seemed no reason to doubt his words. "I saw you some way off--I +was afraid you would go in before I could reach you." + +"It is a week before the time," said she, reproachfully. "I said +a fortnight from the last meeting." + +"My dear, you don't suppose I could wait a fortnight without +trying to get a glimpse of you, even though you had declined to +meet me! Would it make you angry to know that I have been along +this path at dusk three or four times since our last meeting? +Well, how are you?" + +She did not refuse her hand, but when he showed a wish to retain +it a moment longer than mere formality required, she made it +smaller, so that it slipped away from him, with again that same +alarmed look which always followed his attempts in this direction. +He saw that she was not yet out of the elusive mood; not yet to be +treated presumingly; and he was correspondingly careful to +tranquillize her. + +His assertion had seemed to impress her somewhat. "I had no idea +you came so often," she said. "How far do you come from?" + +"From Exbury. I always walk from Sherton-Abbas, for if I hire, +people will know that I come; and my success with you so far has +not been great enough to justify such overtness. Now, my dear +one--as I MUST call you--I put it to you: will you see me a little +oftener as the spring advances?" + +Grace lapsed into unwonted sedateness, and avoiding the question, +said, "I wish you would concentrate on your profession, and give +up those strange studies that used to distract you so much. I am +sure you would get on." + +"It is the very thing I am doing. I was going to ask you to burn-- +or, at least, get rid of--all my philosophical literature. It is +in the bookcases in your rooms. The fact is, I never cared much +for abstruse studies." + +"I am so glad to hear you say that. And those other books--those +piles of old plays--what good are they to a medical man?" + +"None whatever!" he replied, cheerfully. "Sell them at Sherton +for what they will fetch." + +"And those dreadful old French romances, with their horrid +spellings of 'filz' and 'ung' and 'ilz' and 'mary' and 'ma foy?'" + +"You haven't been reading them, Grace?" + +"Oh no--I just looked into them, that was all." + +"Make a bonfire of 'em directly you get home. I meant to do it +myself. I can't think what possessed me ever to collect them. I +have only a few professional hand-books now, and am quite a +practical man. I am in hopes of having some good news to tell you +soon, and then do you think you could--come to me again?" + +"I would rather you did not press me on that just now," she +replied, with some feeling. "You have said you mean to lead a +new, useful, effectual life; but I should like to see you put it +in practice for a little while before you address that query to +me. Besides--I could not live with you." + +"Why not?" + +Grace was silent a few instants. "I go with Marty to Giles's +grave. We swore we would show him that devotion. And I mean to +keep it up." + +"Well, I wouldn't mind that at all. I have no right to expect +anything else, and I will not wish you to keep away. I liked the +man as well as any I ever knew. In short, I would accompany you a +part of the way to the place, and smoke a cigar on the stile while +I waited till you came back." + +"Then you haven't given up smoking?" + +"Well--ahem--no. I have thought of doing so, but--" + +His extreme complacence had rather disconcerted Grace, and the +question about smoking had been to effect a diversion. Presently +she said, firmly, and with a moisture in her eye that he could not +see, as her mind returned to poor Giles's "frustrate ghost," "I +don't like you--to speak lightly on that subject, if you did speak +lightly. To be frank with you--quite frank--I think of him as my +betrothed lover still. I cannot help it. So that it would be +wrong for me to join you." + +Fitzpiers was now uneasy. "You say your betrothed lover still," +he rejoined. "When, then, were you betrothed to him, or engaged, +as we common people say?" + +"When you were away." + +"How could that be?" + +Grace would have avoided this; but her natural candor led her on. +"It was when I was under the impression that my marriage with you +was about to be annulled, and that he could then marry me. So I +encouraged him to love me." + +Fitzpiers winced visibly; and yet, upon the whole, she was right +in telling it. Indeed, his perception that she was right in her +absolute sincerity kept up his affectionate admiration for her +under the pain of the rebuff. Time had been when the avowal that +Grace had deliberately taken steps to replace him would have +brought him no sorrow. But she so far dominated him now that he +could not bear to hear her words, although the object of her high +regard was no more. + +"It is rough upon me--that!" he said, bitterly. "Oh, Grace--I did +not know you--tried to get rid of me! I suppose it is of no use, +but I ask, cannot you hope to--find a little love in your heart +for me again?" + +"If I could I would oblige you; but I fear I cannot!" she replied, +with illogical ruefulness. "And I don't see why you should mind +my having had one lover besides yourself in my life, when you have +had so many." + +"But I can tell you honestly that I love you better than all of +them put together, and that's what you will not tell me!" + +"I am sorry; but I fear I cannot," she said, sighing again. + +"I wonder if you ever will?" He looked musingly into her +indistinct face, as if he would read the future there. "Now have +pity, and tell me: will you try?" + +"To love you again?" + +"Yes; if you can." + +"I don't know how to reply," she answered, her embarrassment +proving her truth. "Will you promise to leave me quite free as to +seeing you or not seeing you?" + +"Certainly. Have I given any ground for you to doubt my first +promise in that respect?" + +She was obliged to admit that he had not. + +"Then I think that you might get your heart out of that grave," +said he, with playful sadness. "It has been there a long time." + +She faintly shook her head, but said, "I'll try to think of you +more--if I can." + +With this Fitzpiers was compelled to be satisfied, and he asked +her when she would meet him again. + +"As we arranged--in a fortnight." + +"If it must be a fortnight it must!" + +"This time at least. I'll consider by the day I see you again if +I can shorten the interval." + +"Well, be that as it may, I shall come at least twice a week to +look at your window." + +"You must do as you like about that. Good-night." + +"Say 'husband.'" + +She seemed almost inclined to give him the word; but exclaiming, +"No, no; I cannot," slipped through the garden-hedge and +disappeared. + + + +Fitzpiers did not exaggerate when he told her that he should haunt +the precincts of the dwelling. But his persistence in this course +did not result in his seeing her much oftener than at the +fortnightly interval which she had herself marked out as proper. +At these times, however, she punctually appeared, and as the +spring wore on the meetings were kept up, though their character +changed but little with the increase in their number. + +The small garden of the cottage occupied by the Tangs family-- +father, son, and now son's wife--aligned with the larger one of +the timber-dealer at its upper end; and when young Tim, after +leaving work at Melbury's, stood at dusk in the little bower at +the corner of his enclosure to smoke a pipe, he frequently +observed the surgeon pass along the outside track before- +mentioned. Fitzpiers always walked loiteringly, pensively, +looking with a sharp eye into the gardens one after another as he +proceeded; for Fitzpiers did not wish to leave the now absorbing +spot too quickly, after travelling so far to reach it; hoping +always for a glimpse of her whom he passionately desired to take +to his arms anew. + +Now Tim began to be struck with these loitering progresses along +the garden boundaries in the gloaming, and wondered what they +boded. It was, naturally, quite out of his power to divine the +singular, sentimental revival in Fitzpiers's heart; the fineness +of tissue which could take a deep, emotional--almost also an +artistic--pleasure in being the yearning inamorato of a woman he +once had deserted, would have seemed an absurdity to the young +sawyer. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers were separated; therefore the +question of affection as between them was settled. But his Suke +had, since that meeting on their marriage-day, repentantly +admitted, to the urgency of his questioning, a good deal +concerning her past levities. Putting all things together, he +could hardly avoid connecting Fitzpiers's mysterious visits to +this spot with Suke's residence under his roof. But he made +himself fairly easy: the vessel in which they were about to +emigrate sailed that month; and then Suke would be out of +Fitzpiers's way forever. + +The interval at last expired, and the eve of their departure +arrived. They were pausing in the room of the cottage allotted to +them by Tim's father, after a busy day of preparation, which left +them weary. In a corner stood their boxes, crammed and corded, +their large case for the hold having already been sent away. The +firelight shone upon Suke's fine face and form as she stood +looking into it, and upon the face of Tim seated in a corner, and +upon the walls of his father's house, which he was beholding that +night almost for the last time. + +Tim Tangs was not happy. This scheme of emigration was dividing +him from his father--for old Tangs would on no account leave +Hintock--and had it not been for Suke's reputation and his own +dignity, Tim would at the last moment have abandoned the project. +As he sat in the back part of the room he regarded her moodily, +and the fire and the boxes. One thing he had particularly noticed +this evening--she was very restless; fitful in her actions, unable +to remain seated, and in a marked degree depressed. + +"Sorry that you be going, after all, Suke?" he said. + +She sighed involuntarily. "I don't know but that I be," she +answered. "'Tis natural, isn't it, when one is going away?" + +"But you wasn't born here as I was." + +"No." + +"There's folk left behind that you'd fain have with 'ee, I +reckon?" + +"Why do you think that?" + +"I've seen things and I've heard things; and, Suke, I say 'twill +be a good move for me to get 'ee away. I don't mind his leavings +abroad, but I do mind 'em at home." + +Suke's face was not changed from its aspect of listless +indifference by the words. She answered nothing; and shortly +after he went out for his customary pipe of tobacco at the top of +the garden. + +The restlessness of Suke had indeed owed its presence to the +gentleman of Tim's suspicions, but in a different--and it must be +added in justice to her--more innocent sense than he supposed, +judging from former doings. She had accidentally discovered that +Fitzpiers was in the habit of coming secretly once or twice a week +to Hintock, and knew that this evening was a favorite one of the +seven for his journey. As she was going next day to leave the +country, Suke thought there could be no great harm in giving way +to a little sentimentality by obtaining a glimpse of him quite +unknown to himself or to anybody, and thus taking a silent last +farewell. Aware that Fitzpiers's time for passing was at hand she +thus betrayed her feeling. No sooner, therefore, had Tim left the +room than she let herself noiselessly out of the house, and +hastened to the corner of the garden, whence she could witness the +surgeon's transit across the scene--if he had not already gone by. + +Her light cotton dress was visible to Tim lounging in the arbor of +the opposite corner, though he was hidden from her. He saw her +stealthily climb into the hedge, and so ensconce herself there +that nobody could have the least doubt her purpose was to watch +unseen for a passer-by. + +He went across to the spot and stood behind her. Suke started, +having in her blundering way forgotten that he might be near. She +at once descended from the hedge. + +"So he's coming to-night," said Tim, laconically. "And we be +always anxious to see our dears." + +"He IS coming to-night," she replied, with defiance. "And we BE +anxious for our dears." + +"Then will you step in-doors, where your dear will soon jine 'ee? +We've to mouster by half-past three to-morrow, and if we don't get +to bed by eight at latest our faces will be as long as clock-cases +all day." + +She hesitated for a minute, but ultimately obeyed, going slowly +down the garden to the house, where he heard the door-latch click +behind her. + +Tim was incensed beyond measure. His marriage had so far been a +total failure, a source of bitter regret; and the only course for +improving his case, that of leaving the country, was a sorry, and +possibly might not be a very effectual one. Do what he would, his +domestic sky was likely to be overcast to the end of the day. +Thus he brooded, and his resentment gathered force. He craved a +means of striking one blow back at the cause of his cheerless +plight, while he was still on the scene of his discomfiture. For +some minutes no method suggested itself, and then he had an idea. + +Coming to a sudden resolution, he hastened along the garden, and +entered the one attached to the next cottage, which had formerly +been the dwelling of a game-keeper. Tim descended the path to the +back of the house, where only an old woman lived at present, and +reaching the wall he stopped. Owing to the slope of the ground +the roof-eaves of the linhay were here within touch, and he thrust +his arm up under them, feeling about in the space on the top of +the wall-plate. + +"Ah, I thought my memory didn't deceive me!" he lipped silently. + +With some exertion he drew down a cobwebbed object curiously +framed in iron, which clanked as he moved it. It was about three +feet in length and half as wide. Tim contemplated it as well as +he could in the dying light of day, and raked off the cobwebs with +his hand. + +"That will spoil his pretty shins for'n, I reckon!" he said. + +It was a man-trap. + + + +CHAPTER XLVII. + + +Were the inventors of automatic machines to be ranged according to +the excellence of their devices for producing sound artistic +torture, the creator of the man-trap would occupy a very +respectable if not a very high place. + +It should rather, however, be said, the inventor of the particular +form of man-trap of which this found in the keeper's out-house was +a specimen. For there were other shapes and other sizes, +instruments which, if placed in a row beside one of the type +disinterred by Tim, would have worn the subordinate aspect of the +bears, wild boars, or wolves in a travelling menagerie, as +compared with the leading lion or tiger. In short, though many +varieties had been in use during those centuries which we are +accustomed to look back upon as the true and only period of merry +England--in the rural districts more especially--and onward down +to the third decade of the nineteenth century, this model had +borne the palm, and had been most usually followed when the +orchards and estates required new ones. + +There had been the toothless variety used by the softer-hearted +landlords--quite contemptible in their clemency. The jaws of +these resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left +nothing but gums. There were also the intermediate or half- +toothed sorts, probably devised by the middle-natured squires, or +those under the influence of their wives: two inches of mercy, two +inches of cruelty, two inches of mere nip, two inches of probe, +and so on, through the whole extent of the jaws. There were also, +as a class apart, the bruisers, which did not lacerate the flesh, +but only crushed the bone + +The sight of one of these gins when set produced a vivid +impression that it was endowed with life. It exhibited the +combined aspects of a shark, a crocodile, and a scorpion. Each +tooth was in the form of a tapering spine, two and a quarter +inches long, which, when the jaws were closed, stood in +alternation from this side and from that. When they were open, +the two halves formed a complete circle between two and three feet +in diameter, the plate or treading-place in the midst being about +a foot square, while from beneath extended in opposite directions +the soul of the apparatus, the pair of springs, each one being of +a stiffness to render necessary a lever or the whole weight of the +body when forcing it down. + +There were men at this time still living at Hintock who remembered +when the gin and others like it were in use. Tim Tangs's great- +uncle had endured a night of six hours in this very trap, which +lamed him for life. Once a keeper of Hintock woods set it on the +track of a poacher, and afterwards, coming back that way, +forgetful of what he had done, walked into it himself. The wound +brought on lockjaw, of which he died. This event occurred during +the thirties, and by the year 1840 the use of such implements was +well-nigh discontinued in the neighborhood. But being made +entirely of iron, they by no means disappeared, and in almost +every village one could be found in some nook or corner as readily +as this was found by Tim. It had, indeed, been a fearful +amusement of Tim and other Hintock lads--especially those who had +a dim sense of becoming renowned poachers when they reached their +prime--to drag out this trap from its hiding, set it, and throw it +with billets of wood, which were penetrated by the teeth to the +depth of near an inch. + +As soon as he had examined the trap, and found that the hinges and +springs were still perfect, he shouldered it without more ado, and +returned with his burden to his own garden, passing on through the +hedge to the path immediately outside the boundary. Here, by the +help of a stout stake, he set the trap, and laid it carefully +behind a bush while he went forward to reconnoitre. As has been +stated, nobody passed this way for days together sometimes; but +there was just a possibility that some other pedestrian than the +one in request might arrive, and it behooved Tim to be careful as +to the identity of his victim. + +Going about a hundred yards along the rising ground to the right, +he reached a ridge whereon a large and thick holly grew. Beyond +this for some distance the wood was more open, and the course +which Fitzpiers must pursue to reach the point, if he came to- +night, was visible a long way forward. + +For some time there was no sign of him or of anybody. Then there +shaped itself a spot out of the dim mid-distance, between the +masses of brushwood on either hand. And it enlarged, and Tim +could hear the brushing of feet over the tufts of sour-grass. The +airy gait revealed Fitzpiers even before his exact outline could +be seen. + +Tim Tangs turned about, and ran down the opposite side of the +hill, till he was again at the head of his own garden. It was the +work of a few moments to drag out the man-trap, very gently--that +the plate might not be disturbed sufficiently to throw it--to a +space between a pair of young oaks which, rooted in contiguity, +grew apart upward, forming a V-shaped opening between; and, being +backed up by bushes, left this as the only course for a foot- +passenger. In it he laid the trap with the same gentleness of +handling, locked the chain round one of the trees, and finally +slid back the guard which was placed to keep the gin from +accidentally catching the arms of him who set it, or, to use the +local and better word, "toiled" it. + +Having completed these arrangements, Tim sprang through the +adjoining hedge of his father's garden, ran down the path, and +softly entered the house. + +Obedient to his order, Suke had gone to bed; and as soon as he had +bolted the door, Tim unlaced and kicked off his boots at the foot +of the stairs, and retired likewise, without lighting a candle. +His object seemed to be to undress as soon as possible. Before, +however, he had completed the operation, a long cry resounded +without--penetrating, but indescribable. + +"What's that?" said Suke, starting up in bed. + +"Sounds as if somebody had caught a hare in his gin." + +"Oh no," said she. "It was not a hare, 'twas louder. Hark!" + +"Do 'ee get to sleep," said Tim. "How be you going to wake at +half-past three else?" + +She lay down and was silent. Tim stealthily opened the window and +listened. Above the low harmonies produced by the instrumentation +of the various species of trees around the premises he could hear +the twitching of a chain from the spot whereon he had set the man- +trap. But further human sound there was none. + +Tim was puzzled. In the haste of his project he had not +calculated upon a cry; but if one, why not more? He soon ceased to +essay an answer, for Hintock was dead to him already. In half a +dozen hours he would be out of its precincts for life, on his way +to the antipodes. He closed the window and lay down. + + + +The hour which had brought these movements of Tim to birth had +been operating actively elsewhere. Awaiting in her father's house +the minute of her appointment with her husband, Grace Fitzpiers +deliberated on many things. Should she inform her father before +going out that the estrangement of herself and Edgar was not so +complete as he had imagined, and deemed desirable for her +happiness? If she did so she must in some measure become the +apologist of her husband, and she was not prepared to go so far. + +As for him, he kept her in a mood of considerate gravity. He +certainly had changed. He had at his worst times always been +gentle in his manner towards her. Could it be that she might make +of him a true and worthy husband yet? She had married him; there +was no getting over that; and ought she any longer to keep him at +a distance? His suave deference to her lightest whim on the +question of his comings and goings, when as her lawful husband he +might show a little independence, was a trait in his character as +unexpected as it was engaging. If she had been his empress, and +he her thrall, he could not have exhibited a more sensitive care +to avoid intruding upon her against her will. + +Impelled by a remembrance she took down a prayer-book and turned +to the marriage-service. Reading it slowly through, she became +quite appalled at her recent off-handedness, when she rediscovered +what awfully solemn promises she had made him at those chancel +steps not so very long ago. + +She became lost in long ponderings on how far a person's +conscience might be bound by vows made without at the time a full +recognition of their force. That particular sentence, beginning +"Whom God hath joined together," was a staggerer for a gentlewoman +of strong devotional sentiment. She wondered whether God really +did join them together. Before she had done deliberating the time +of her engagement drew near, and she went out of the house almost +at the moment that Tim Tangs retired to his own. + +The position of things at that critical juncture was briefly as +follows. + +Two hundred yards to the right of the upper end of Tangs's garden +Fitzpiers was still advancing, having now nearly reached the +summit of the wood-clothed ridge, the path being the actual one +which further on passed between the two young oaks. Thus far it +was according to Tim's conjecture. But about two hundred yards to +the left, or rather less, was arising a condition which he had not +divined, the emergence of Grace as aforesaid from the upper corner +of her father's garden, with the view of meeting Tim's intended +victim. Midway between husband and wife was the diabolical trap, +silent, open, ready. + +Fitzpiers's walk that night had been cheerful, for he was +convinced that the slow and gentle method he had adopted was +promising success. The very restraint that he was obliged to +exercise upon himself, so as not to kill the delicate bud of +returning confidence, fed his flame. He walked so much more +rapidly than Grace that, if they continued advancing as they had +begun, he would reach the trap a good half-minute before she could +reach the same spot. + +But here a new circumstance came in; to escape the unpleasantness +of being watched or listened to by lurkers--naturally curious by +reason of their strained relations--they had arranged that their +meeting for to-night should be at the holm-tree on the ridge above +named. So soon, accordingly, as Fitzpiers reached the tree he +stood still to await her. + +He had not paused under the prickly foliage more than two minutes +when he thought he heard a scream from the other side of the +ridge. Fitzpiers wondered what it could mean; but such wind as +there was just now blew in an adverse direction, and his mood was +light. He set down the origin of the sound to one of the +superstitious freaks or frolicsome scrimmages between sweethearts +that still survived in Hintock from old-English times; and waited +on where he stood till ten minutes had passed. Feeling then a +little uneasy, his mind reverted to the scream; and he went +forward over the summit and down the embowered incline, till he +reached the pair of sister oaks with the narrow opening between +them. + +Fitzpiers stumbled and all but fell. Stretching down his hand to +ascertain the obstruction, it came in contact with a confused mass +of silken drapery and iron-work that conveyed absolutely no +explanatory idea to his mind at all. It was but the work of a +moment to strike a match; and then he saw a sight which congealed +his blood. + +The man-trap was thrown; and between its jaws was part of a +woman's clothing--a patterned silk skirt--gripped with such +violence that the iron teeth had passed through it, skewering its +tissue in a score of places. He immediately recognized the skirt +as that of one of his wife's gowns--the gown that she had worn +when she met him on the very last occasion. + +Fitzpiers had often studied the effect of these instruments when +examining the collection at Hintock House, and the conception +instantly flashed through him that Grace had been caught, taken +out mangled by some chance passer, and carried home, some of her +clothes being left behind in the difficulty of getting her free. +The shock of this conviction, striking into the very current of +high hope, was so great that he cried out like one in corporal +agony, and in his misery bowed himself down to the ground. + +Of all the degrees and qualities of punishment that Fitzpiers had +undergone since his sins against Grace first began, not any even +approximated in intensity to this. + +"Oh, my own--my darling! Oh, cruel Heaven--it is too much, this!" +he cried, writhing and rocking himself over the sorry accessaries +of her he deplored. + +The voice of his distress was sufficiently loud to be audible to +any one who might have been there to hear it; and one there was. +Right and left of the narrow pass between the oaks were dense +bushes; and now from behind these a female figure glided, whose +appearance even in the gloom was, though graceful in outline, +noticeably strange. + +She was in white up to the waist, and figured above. She was, in +short, Grace, his wife, lacking the portion of her dress which the +gin retained. + +"Don't be grieved about me--don't, dear Edgar!" she exclaimed, +rushing up and bending over him. "I am not hurt a bit! I was +coming on to find you after I had released myself, but I heard +footsteps; and I hid away, because I was without some of my +clothing, and I did not know who the person might be." + +Fitzpiers had sprung to his feet, and his next act was no less +unpremeditated by him than it was irresistible by her, and would +have been so by any woman not of Amazonian strength. He clasped +his arms completely round, pressed her to his breast, and kissed +her passionately. + +"You are not dead!--you are not hurt! Thank God--thank God!" he +said, almost sobbing in his delight and relief from the horror of +his apprehension. "Grace, my wife, my love, how is this--what has +happened?" + +"I was coming on to you," she said as distinctly as she could in +the half-smothered state of her face against his. "I was trying +to be as punctual as possible, and as I had started a minute late +I ran along the path very swiftly--fortunately for myself. Just +when I had passed between these trees I felt something clutch at +my dress from behind with a noise, and the next moment I was +pulled backward by it, and fell to the ground. I screamed with +terror, thinking it was a man lying down there to murder me, but +the next moment I discovered it was iron, and that my clothes were +caught in a trap. I pulled this way and that, but the thing would +not let go, drag it as I would, and I did not know what to do. I +did not want to alarm my father or anybody, as I wished nobody to +know of these meetings with you; so I could think of no other plan +than slipping off my skirt, meaning to run on and tell you what a +strange accident had happened to me. But when I had just freed +myself by leaving the dress behind, I heard steps, and not being +sure it was you, I did not like to be seen in such a pickle, so I +hid away." + +"It was only your speed that saved you! One or both of your legs +would have been broken if you had come at ordinary walking pace." + +"Or yours, if you had got here first," said she, beginning to +realize the whole ghastliness of the possibility. "Oh, Edgar, +there has been an Eye watching over us to-night, and we should be +thankful indeed!" + +He continued to press his face to hers. "You are mine--mine again +now." + +She gently owned that she supposed she was. "I heard what you +said when you thought I was injured," she went on, shyly, "and I +know that a man who could suffer as you were suffering must have a +tender regard for me. But how does this awful thing come here?" + +"I suppose it has something to do with poachers." Fitzpiers was +still so shaken by the sense of her danger that he was obliged to +sit awhile, and it was not until Grace said, "If I could only get +my skirt out nobody would know anything about it," that he +bestirred himself. + +By their united efforts, each standing on one of the springs of +the trap, they pressed them down sufficiently to insert across the +jaws a billet which they dragged from a faggot near at hand; and +it was then possible to extract the silk mouthful from the +monster's bite, creased and pierced with many holes, but not torn. +Fitzpiers assisted her to put it on again; and when her customary +contours were thus restored they walked on together, Grace taking +his arm, till he effected an improvement by clasping it round her +waist. + +The ice having been broken in this unexpected manner, she made no +further attempt at reserve. "I would ask you to come into the +house," she said, "but my meetings with you have been kept secret +from my father, and I should like to prepare him." + +"Never mind, dearest. I could not very well have accepted the +invitation. I shall never live here again--as much for your sake +as for mine. I have news to tell you on this very point, but my +alarm had put it out of my head. I have bought a practice, or +rather a partnership, in the Midlands, and I must go there in a +week to take up permanent residence. My poor old great-aunt died +about eight months ago, and left me enough to do this. I have +taken a little furnished house for a time, till we can get one of +our own." + +He described the place, and the surroundings, and the view from +the windows, and Grace became much interested. "But why are you +not there now?" she said. + +"Because I cannot tear myself away from here till I have your +promise. Now, darling, you will accompany me there--will you not? +To-night has settled that." + +Grace's tremblings had gone off, and she did not say nay. They +went on together. + +The adventure, and the emotions consequent upon the reunion which +that event had forced on, combined to render Grace oblivious of +the direction of their desultory ramble, till she noticed they +were in an encircled glade in the densest part of the wood, +whereon the moon, that had imperceptibly added its rays to the +scene, shone almost vertically. It was an exceptionally soft, +balmy evening for the time of year, which was just that transient +period in the May month when beech-trees have suddenly unfolded +large limp young leaves of the softness of butterflies' wings. +Boughs bearing such leaves hung low around, and completely +enclosed them, so that it was as if they were in a great green +vase, which had moss for its bottom and leaf sides. + +The clouds having been packed in the west that evening so as to +retain the departing glare a long while, the hour had seemed much +earlier than it was. But suddenly the question of time occurred +to her. + +"I must go back," she said; and without further delay they set +their faces towards Hintock. As they walked he examined his watch +by the aid of the now strong moonlight. + +"By the gods, I think I have lost my train!" said Fitzpiers. + +"Dear me--whereabouts are we?" said she. + +"Two miles in the direction of Sherton." + +"Then do you hasten on, Edgar. I am not in the least afraid. I +recognize now the part of the wood we are in and I can find my way +back quite easily. I'll tell my father that we have made it up. +I wish I had not kept our meetings so private, for it may vex him +a little to know I have been seeing you. He is getting old and +irritable, that was why I did not. Good-by." + +"But, as I must stay at the Earl of Wessex to-night, for I cannot +possibly catch the train, I think it would be safer for you to let +me take care of you." + +"But what will my father think has become of me? He does not know +in the least where I am--he thinks I only went into the garden for +a few minutes." + +"He will surely guess--somebody has seen me for certain. I'll go +all the way back with you to-morrow." + +"But that newly done-up place--the Earl of Wessex!" + +"If you are so very particular about the publicity I will stay at +the Three Tuns." + +"Oh no--it is not that I am particular--but I haven't a brush or +comb or anything!" + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII + + +All the evening Melbury had been coming to his door, saying, "I +wonder where in the world that girl is! Never in all my born days +did I know her bide out like this! She surely said she was going +into the garden to get some parsley." + +Melbury searched the garden, the parsley-bed, and the orchard, but +could find no trace of her, and then he made inquiries at the +cottages of such of his workmen as had not gone to bed, avoiding +Tangs's because he knew the young people were to rise early to +leave. In these inquiries one of the men's wives somewhat +incautiously let out the fact that she had heard a scream in the +wood, though from which direction she could not say. + +This set Melbury's fears on end. He told the men to light +lanterns, and headed by himself they started, Creedle following at +the last moment with quite a burden of grapnels and ropes, which +he could not be persuaded to leave behind, and the company being +joined by the hollow-turner and the man who kept the cider-house +as they went along. + +They explored the precincts of the village, and in a short time +lighted upon the man-trap. Its discovery simply added an item of +fact without helping their conjectures; but Melbury's indefinite +alarm was greatly increased when, holding a candle to the ground, +he saw in the teeth of the instrument some frayings from Grace's +clothing. No intelligence of any kind was gained till they met a +woodman of Delborough, who said that he had seen a lady answering +to the description her father gave of Grace, walking through the +wood on a gentleman's arm in the direction of Sherton. + +"Was he clutching her tight?" said Melbury. + +"Well--rather," said the man. + +"Did she walk lame?" + +"Well, 'tis true her head hung over towards him a bit." + +Creedle groaned tragically. + +Melbury, not suspecting the presence of Fitzpiers, coupled this +account with the man-trap and the scream; he could not understand +what it all meant; but the sinister event of the trap made him +follow on. Accordingly, they bore away towards the town, shouting +as they went, and in due course emerged upon the highway. + +Nearing Sherton-Abbas, the previous information was confirmed by +other strollers, though the gentleman's supporting arm had +disappeared from these later accounts. At last they were so near +Sherton that Melbury informed his faithful followers that he did +not wish to drag them farther at so late an hour, since he could +go on alone and inquire if the woman who had been seen were really +Grace. But they would not leave him alone in his anxiety, and +trudged onward till the lamplight from the town began to +illuminate their fronts. At the entrance to the High Street they +got fresh scent of the pursued, but coupled with the new condition +that the lady in the costume described had been going up the +street alone. + +"Faith!--I believe she's mesmerized, or walking in her sleep," +said Melbury. + +However, the identity of this woman with Grace was by no means +certain; but they plodded along the street. Percombe, the hair- +dresser, who had despoiled Marty of her tresses, was standing at +his door, and they duly put inquiries to him. + +"Ah--how's Little Hintock folk by now?" he said, before replying. +"Never have I been over there since one winter night some three +year ago--and then I lost myself finding it. How can ye live in +such a one-eyed place? Great Hintock is bad enough--hut Little +Hintock--the bats and owls would drive me melancholy-mad! It took +two days to raise my sperrits to their true pitch again after that +night I went there. Mr. Melbury, sir, as a man's that put by +money, why not retire and live here, and see something of the +world?" + +The responses at last given by him to their queries guided them to +the building that offered the best accommodation in Sherton-- +having been enlarged contemporaneously with the construction of +the railway--namely, the Earl of Wessex Hotel. + +Leaving the others without, Melbury made prompt inquiry here. His +alarm was lessened, though his perplexity was increased, when he +received a brief reply that such a lady was in the house. + +"Do you know if it is my daughter?" asked Melbury. + +The waiter did not. + +"Do you know the lady's name?" + +Of this, too, the household was ignorant, the hotel having been +taken by brand-new people from a distance. They knew the +gentleman very well by sight, and had not thought it necessary to +ask him to enter his name. + +"Oh, the gentleman appears again now," said Melbury to himself. +"Well, I want to see the lady," he declared. + +A message was taken up, and after some delay the shape of Grace +appeared descending round the bend of the stair-case, looking as +if she lived there, but in other respects rather guilty and +frightened. + +"Why--what the name--" began her father. "I thought you went out +to get parsley!" + +"Oh, yes--I did--but it is all right," said Grace, in a flurried +whisper. "I am not alone here. I am here with Edgar. It is +entirely owing to an accident, father." + +"Edgar! An accident! How does he come here? I thought he was two +hundred mile off." + +"Yes, so he is--I mean he has got a beautiful practice two hundred +miles off; he has bought it with his own money, some that came to +him. But he travelled here, and I was nearly caught in a man- +trap, and that's how it is I am here. We were just thinking of +sending a messenger to let you know." + +Melbury did not seem to be particularly enlightened by this +explanation. + +"You were caught in a man-trap?" + +"Yes; my dress was. That's how it arose. Edgar is up-stairs in +his own sitting-room," she went on. "He would not mind seeing +you, I am sure." + +"Oh, faith, I don't want to see him! I have seen him too often +a'ready. I'll see him another time, perhaps, if 'tis to oblige +'ee." + +"He came to see me; he wanted to consult me about this large +partnership I speak of, as it is very promising." + +"Oh, I am glad to hear it," said Melbury, dryly. + +A pause ensued, during which the inquiring faces and whity-brown +clothes of Melbury's companions appeared in the door-way. + +"Then bain't you coming home with us?" he asked. + +"I--I think not," said Grace, blushing. + +"H'm--very well--you are your own mistress," he returned, in tones +which seemed to assert otherwise. "Good-night;" and Melbury +retreated towards the door. + +"Don't be angry, father," she said, following him a few steps. "I +have done it for the best." + +"I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little misled in +this. However, good-night. I must get home along." + +He left the hotel, not without relief, for to be under the eyes of +strangers while he conversed with his lost child had embarrassed +him much. His search-party, too, had looked awkward there, having +rushed to the task of investigation--some in their shirt sleeves, +others in their leather aprons, and all much stained--just as they +had come from their work of barking, and not in their Sherton +marketing attire; while Creedle, with his ropes and grapnels and +air of impending tragedy, had added melancholy to gawkiness. + +"Now, neighbors," said Melbury, on joining them, "as it is getting +late, we'll leg it home again as fast as we can. I ought to tell +you that there has been some mistake--some arrangement entered +into between Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn't quite +understand--an important practice in the Midland counties has come +to him, which made it necessary for her to join him to-night--so +she says. That's all it was--and I'm sorry I dragged you out." + +"Well," said the hollow-turner, "here be we six mile from home, +and night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to +our name. I say, we'll have a mossel and a drop o' summat to +strengthen our nerves afore we vamp all the way back again? My +throat's as dry as a kex. What d'ye say so's?" + +They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to +the antique and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of +the Three Tuns was the only radiant object. As soon as they had +stumbled down into the room Melbury ordered them to be served, +when they made themselves comfortable by the long table, and +stretched out their legs upon the herring-boned sand of the floor. +Melbury himself, restless as usual, walked to the door while he +waited for them, and looked up and down the street. + +"I'd gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go +out in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that +have got to get up at five o'clock to morrow," said a bark-ripper; +who, not working regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in +strong opinions. + +"I don't speak so warm as that," said the hollow-turner, "but if +'tis right for couples to make a country talk about their +separating, and excite the neighbors, and then make fools of 'em +like this, why, I haven't stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty +year." + +All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in +these enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and +Creedle chimed in with, "Ah, young women do wax wanton in these +days! Why couldn't she ha' bode with her father, and been +faithful?" Poor Creedle was thinking of his old employer. + +"But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony," +said Farmer Bawtree. "I knowed a man and wife--faith, I don't +mind owning, as there's no strangers here, that the pair were my +own relations--they'd be at it that hot one hour that you'd hear +the poker and the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee +across the house with the movements of their vengeance; and the +next hour you'd hear 'em singing 'The Spotted Cow' together as +peaceable as two holy twins; yes--and very good voices they had, +and would strike in like professional ballet-singers to one +another's support in the high notes." + +"And I knowed a woman, and the husband o' her went away for four- +and-twenty year," said the bark-ripper. "And one night he came +home when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down +himself on the other side of the chimney-corner. 'Well,' says +she, 'have ye got any news?' 'Don't know as I have,' says he; +'have you?' 'No,' says she, 'except that my daughter by my second +husband was married last month, which was a year after I was made +a widow by him.' 'Oh! Anything else?' he says. 'No,' says she. +And there they sat, one on each side of that chimney-corner, and +were found by their neighbors sound asleep in their chairs, not +having known what to talk about at all." + +"Well, I don't care who the man is," said Creedle, "they required +a good deal to talk about, and that's true. It won't be the same +with these." + +"No. He is such a projick, you see. And she is a wonderful +scholar too!" + +"What women do know nowadays!" observed the hollow-turner. "You +can't deceive 'em as you could in my time." + +"What they knowed then was not small," said John Upjohn. "Always +a good deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife +that is now, the skilfulness that she would show in keeping me on +her pretty side as she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps +you've noticed that she's got a pretty side to her face as well as +a plain one?" + +"I can't say I've noticed it particular much," said the hollow- +turner, blandly. + +"Well," continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, "she has. All women +under the sun be prettier one side than t'other. And, as I was +saying, the pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty +side were unending! I warrant that whether we were going with the +sun or against the sun, uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, +that wart of hers was always towards the hedge, and that dimple +towards me. There was I, too simple to see her wheelings and +turnings; and she so artful, though two years younger, that she +could lead me with a cotton thread, like a blind ram; for that was +in the third climate of our courtship. No; I don't think the +women have got cleverer, for they was never otherwise." + +"How many climates may there be in courtship, Mr. Upjohn?" +inquired a youth--the same who had assisted at Winterborne's +Christmas party. + +"Five--from the coolest to the hottest--leastwise there was five +in mine." + +"Can ye give us the chronicle of 'em, Mr. Upjohn?" + +"Yes--I could. I could certainly. But 'tis quite unnecessary. +They'll come to ye by nater, young man, too soon for your good." + +"At present Mrs. Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your mis'ess +could lead you," the hollow-turner remarked. "She's got him quite +tame. But how long 'twill last I can't say. I happened to be +setting a wire on the top of my garden one night when he met her +on the other side of the hedge; and the way she queened it, and +fenced, and kept that poor feller at a distance, was enough to +freeze yer blood. I should never have supposed it of such a +girl." + +Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having declared +themselves refreshed, they all started on the homeward journey, +which was by no means cheerless under the rays of the high moon. +Having to walk the whole distance they came by a foot-path rather +shorter than the highway, though difficult except to those who +knew the country well. This brought them by way of Great Hintock; +and passing the church-yard they observed, as they talked, a +motionless figure standing by the gate. + +"I think it was Marty South," said the hollow-turner, +parenthetically. + +"I think 'twas; 'a was always a lonely maid," said Upjohn. And +they passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more. + +It was Marty, as they had supposed. That evening had been the +particular one of the week upon which Grace and herself had been +accustomed to privately deposit flowers on Giles's grave, and this +was the first occasion since his death, eight months earlier, on +which Grace had failed to keep her appointment. Marty had waited +in the road just outside Little Hintock, where her fellow-pilgrim +had been wont to join her, till she was weary; and at last, +thinking that Grace had missed her and gone on alone, she followed +the way to Great Hintock, but saw no Grace in front of her. It +got later, and Marty continued her walk till she reached the +church-yard gate; but still no Grace. Yet her sense of +comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave alone, and +still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, she stood there +with her little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and her +feet chilled by the damp ground, till more than two hours had +passed. + +She then heard the footsteps of Melbury's men, who presently +passed on their return from the search. In the silence of the +night Marty could not help hearing fragments of their +conversation, from which she acquired a general idea of what had +occurred, and where Mrs. Fitzpiers then was. + +Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the church- +yard, going to a secluded corner behind the bushes, where rose the +unadorned stone that marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne. As +this solitary and silent girl stood there in the moonlight, a +straight slim figure, clothed in a plaitless gown, the contours of +womanhood so undeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible, the marks +of poverty and toil effaced by the misty hour, she touched +sublimity at points, and looked almost like a being who had +rejected with indifference the attribute of sex for the loftier +quality of abstract humanism. She stooped down and cleared away +the withered flowers that Grace and herself had laid there the +previous week, and put her fresh ones in their place. + +"Now, my own, own love," she whispered, "you are mine, and on'y +mine; for she has forgot 'ee at last, although for her you died. +But I--whenever I get up I'll think of 'ee, and whenever I lie +down I'll think of 'ee. Whenever I plant the young larches I'll +think that none can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a +gad, and whenever I turn the cider-wring, I'll say none could do +it like you. If ever I forget your name, let me forget home and +Heaven!--But no, no, my love, I never can forget 'ee; for you was +a GOOD man, and did good things!" + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Woodlanders, by Thomas Hardy + + diff --git a/old/woodl10.zip b/old/woodl10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..08f9bd1 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/woodl10.zip |