 33 There was agitation today in the lives of all whom these matters concerned. It was not till the hinting 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 Sheraton 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 wooden 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 winds and cloud by a network of bows, led her slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees behind her and swept round into the coppice where winter-born 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? Winter-born 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, kissing 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, Margie South was shaping spar-gads to take home for manufacture during the evenings. While Winter-born 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 fermentel and a black hat, having a white veil tied picturesquely round it. She spoke to Margie, who turned and curtsied, and the lady fell into conversation with her. It was Mrs. Charmonds. On leaving her house, Mrs. Charmonds 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 cellists of a cigarette did not entirely allay. Reaching the compass, she listlessly observed Margie at work, threw away her cigarette, and came near. Chop, chop, chop, went Margie's little bill-hook, with nevermore assiduity, to Mrs. Charmonds spoke. Who is that young lady I see talking to the woodman yonder, she asked? Mrs. Fitzpiers, ma'am, said Margie. Oh, said Mrs. Charmonds, with something like a start, for she had not recognized grace at that distance. And the man she is talking to. A redness stole into Margie's face, as she mentioned Giles's name, which Mrs. Charmonds 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 Margie. She was once, and I think. But Margie 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 and grace being thrown back into winter-born society by the neglect of her husband. Mrs. Charmonds, however, with the almost supersensory means to knowledge which women have on such occasions, quite understood what Margie had intended to convey, and the picture thus exhibited to her of lives drifting away, involving the wreck of poor Margie'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 winter-born were standing. They saw her approach, and winter-born 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 Charmonds, 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. Charmonds 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. Charmonds imploringly, for the gaze of the young woman had chilled her through. Can you walk on with me, so 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. Charmonds 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, went 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 phrase 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, of which 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 suffer most. Mrs. Charmond was now as much agitated as Grace. I ought not to allow myself to argue with you, she exclaimed. I do mean myself by doing it. But I liked you once, and for the sake of that time I tried 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 schoolgirl. 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 your 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 you love him, as you never loved another man. Oh, well, I won't argue, said Mrs. Charmonds, laughing faintly. And you come to approach me for it, childs. 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. Charmonds had grown quite pale and weak under this prophecy. It was extraordinary that Grace, whom almost everyone would have characterized as a gentle girl, should be of stronger fiber 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 ascance 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 croquette. 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. Charmin turned away. The two went apart in directly opposite courses and were soon hidden from each other by their unbridled 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 sounds 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, but 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-mown 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, for any sound of the hintics floated near, though she had wondered 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 counter-marches, 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 sowing 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 someone sent to search for her. She accordingly shouted a rather timid, Hoy! The cry was immediately returned by the other person, and Grace, running at once in the direction once 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. Charmonds. 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. I am scratched dreadfully about the ankles. Grace reflected, perhaps as it is dry underfoot, 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 a sanguine prematureness of youth, in matters of dress, had considered it springtime, and hence was not so warmly clad as Mrs. Charmonds, who still wore her winter fur. But after sitting awhile 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. Charmonds, we should keep each other warm. But she added, in an uneven voice, I suppose you won't come near me for the worlds. 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. Charmonds' 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. Charmonds 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 frightened at the wood, but I am at other things. Mrs. Charmonds embraced Grace more and more tightly, and the younger woman could feel her neighbor's breathing grow deeper and more spesmotic, as though uncontrollable feelings were germinating. After I had left you, she went on, I regretted something I had said. I have a confession. I must make it, she whispered, brokenly, the instinct to indulge in warmth of sentiment, which she 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, and 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 Charmonds denoted a sense by a movement. I knew I was right, said Grace exultedly. 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 me up. But surely you are the superior in station and in every way. And the cut must come from you. To shoot, 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 Charmin's sobs came to her ear. Deep darkness circled her about. The funeral trees rocked and chanted their dirges 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 10 years older? Without an answer, Mrs. Charmin slowly rose. You mean to betray me? She said, from the bitterest steps 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 bows, 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, all of a sudden, they broke into the deserted highway at the hilltop on which the certain man had waited for Mrs. Dollary'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 hintic. The hazel cops 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 hintic, and so reached the park. Here I turn back, said Grace, in the same passionless voice. You are quite near home. Mrs. Charman 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 hold upon her heart with slights. 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 rumour 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 were 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. END OF 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 Sheridan 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 impressed the beholder as having suffered wrong in being born. This 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 patience up to Fitzpiers' very door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest cause of his unpopularity. And yet, so illogical as 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 proceeding the barking season, when the saps are just beginning to heave with a 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 more bowed skeleton, which glided along behind the bear twigs in Fitzpiers 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 Shattsford Forum three days earlier, that tidings had on this morning reached her father, of her being very unwell there, and consequence of which he had ridden over to see her. Fitzpiers went upstairs again, and the little drawing-room, now lighted by a solitary candle, was not rendered more cheerful by the entrance of Grammar Oliver with an apron full 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 desaltorily 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 Suek Dampson's chimney, signifying that the young woman had just let 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 soyers, and was telling them in a loud voice news in which the name of Mrs. Charmond soon arrested his ears. Grammar don't make so much noise with that grate, said the surgeon, at which Grammar reared herself upon her knees and held the fuel suspended in her hands, while Fitzpiers half-opened the casements. She is off to foreign lands again at last, have made up her mind quite sudden-like, and it is thought that 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 beach from a woke. 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 tomorrow is the Sabbath day, and without charity, we are but tinkling symbols. 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 own name with hers, and her determination to thunder their two 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 Sal'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 owner of Mrs. Charman'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 centered itself on Hintick 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 rain under a group of dark oaks, commanding a view of the fronts, 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 events of her not being alone. Thereupon he dismounted, hitched darling to a stray bow hanging a little below the general browsing line of the trees, and proceeded to the door on foot. In the meantime, Melbury had returned from Shotsford Forum. The great court, or quadrangle, of the timber merchant's house, divided from the shady lane by an ivy-colored 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 was 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 take 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 Shotsford. 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. Charmonds, and the disclosure that had been whispered in her startled ear. Since Edgar has 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 Shotsford 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 unsettled as yet, he told up John to retighten the Curds, 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 existed at present, and yet to every bad there is a worse. He had entered by the bridal gate, which admitted to the park on this side, and cantered over the soft turf almost in the tracks of Fitzpiers' 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 bows 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' 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 Wayne Scott, 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 Versailles 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 final 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 statelyness 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 suspicions 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 Gray's 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, 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 a hastened 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 ladder 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' mare, 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, and oversight easily explicable in a man ever unwitting in horse-flash 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 cartway which led through it, channeled deep in the leaf mold, with large ruts that were formed by the timber wagons infetching the spoil of the plantations. When all at once, he described in front, at a point where the road took a turning round to 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 friscally away under the trees in a Homer direction. When 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 is 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, no 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 traveler of the old-fashioned sort. Having just come from Shotsford Forum, he still had, in his pocket, the pilgrims' 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 a stride, 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 hintic, and at a gentle pace. End of CHAPTER XXXIV CHAPTER XXXV of the Woodlanders. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reporting by James O'Connor The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy CHAPTER XXXV The mare paced along with firm and cautious tread through the cops where Winterborne had worked, and into the heaviest soil where the oaks grew, past Great Willie, the largest oak in the wood, and thence towards Nelcombe Bottom, intensely dark now with overgrowth, and popularly supposed to be haunted by the spirits of the fratricides exercised 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, and 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 into sultry sentences, Melbury still supporting him. I've come all the way from London today, 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 am 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 am doomed to live with tradespeople in a miserable little hole like Hintock. Indeed, muttered Melbury. Fitzpiers increasingly energized by the alcohol. He had reared himself up suddenly. From the bode 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 eagles 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 ru 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 the legitimate sense that is. If I were a free man now, things have come to such a past that she could not refuse me, while with her fortune, which I don't cover 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. And lest, 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 headlong 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 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 grey mare standing under some bushes. Leaving Darling for a moment, Melbury went forward and easily caught the younger animal, now disinhottened 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 plowing layer after layer of the little hawny 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-caller that had been left at the harness-menders 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 friscally 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 summarized, Fitzpiers had in the darkness taken blossom for dolling, 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 codders were those of the horse, and with that strongly conservative objection to the unusual which animals show, blossom, on eyeing 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, encrusting 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, Shotsford 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 hover any suspicion of his whereabouts, and her stepmother said nothing of Mrs. Charmon's room of sorrows and plans of departure. So the young wife sat by the fire, waiting silently. She had left in talk in a turmoil of feeling after the revelation of Mrs. Charmon, 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 upstairs 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 has hurt much. It happened in the wood, the other side of Malcolm Bottom, where it is said the ghosts of the brother's 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 it 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 stepmother'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 Grammar, 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 Suek 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, Mrs. Melbury! I would say Mrs. Fitzpiers, she said, ringing her hands. This terrible news! Is he dead? Is he hurt very bad? Tell me! I couldn't help coming. Please forgive me, Mrs. 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 Suek Damson downstairs 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 Suek said, Why don't she 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 footfall light as a rose. 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 here downstairs, 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 Suek, 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 Suek, regardless of consequences, as she heard the distant movements of Mrs. Malbury and Grammer in the bedroom at the end of the passage. Where, said Mrs. Charmond, and on Suek 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 count than you have heard. How much it means than 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 Asap, been played 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? Is he dying perhaps, blubbered Supe Dampson, 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 well-nice 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, pitting another, though most to be pity 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 in 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 let 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 I and Petticoat II of her BNM had silently disappeared. They had in all probability heard the words of her father and appotted with their anxieties relieved. Only 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 ended. 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 bit of 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 seem 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 forebore. 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, spoken only by the occasional skier 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 father Nance forgot when to born. 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, peaked 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 lovebird yearning to fly from her hut, 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 head long 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. End of Chapter 35, Recording by James O'Connor, Randolph, Massachusetts, July 2009 Chapter 36 of The Woodlanders This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by James O'Connor The Woodlanders by Thomas Hoddy, Chapter 36 Grace was not the only one who watched and meditated in Hintalk that night. Felice Chaman 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. Supe 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. Chaman 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 candle still burning, the casement closed, and the shutters gently pulled too, 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 a frightened 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 love 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 Montague, to run mad with discretion, and was so persuaded that discretion lay into poture that she wished to set about going that very minute. Jumping up from her seat, she began to gather together some small personal knickknacks 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 ever tie it 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 Tara into a hot stouter than a helpless woman's at midnight. In the center 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 power, 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 cut upon the nearest couch. "'Are you dying, Edgar?' she said. "'Do speak to me.' "'I am half-did,' 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 me. "'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 because 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 bit of 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 hay-pence in my handkerchief, as well as I could in the dark. But listen, dear police, 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 get a recovered if I could. By this time Felice's tears began to blind her. Where were now her discrete 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 match 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 in a basin and washed the dried blood from his face and hands, and when he was comfortably reclining, fetched food from the ladder. 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 and 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 pinned 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 Shotsford, or Port Ready, or still better, Budmouth, it will divert all suspicion from this house as the place of my refuge. I will drive to one of the other of the places myself, anything to keep it unknown, she murmured. Her voice waded with fague 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 railings stared out in the darkness at her approach. An array 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. When her husband's letter reached Grace's hands, bearing upon at 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 morbidly 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 center of information it was made known in Hintock that the doctor had gone away, and as none but the Malbury 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 mince 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 practiced 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, when she 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 un-austentatiously as could be, and took no maid with her, having, she said, engaged one to meet her at a point farther on in her root. After that Hintak 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. Everybody had entered the valley of humiliation, even father-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 middle condition expressed largely by his gate, he heard his name spoken by a voice formerly familiar. He turned and saw a certain Fred Bocock, once a promising lawyers-clock and a 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 Bocock had fallen into the mire. He was invited out a good deal, sang songs at agricultural meetings and Burgess's dinners, in some, victualed 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 forgoing 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 pin and ink and a hay-pinny 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 Bocock 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, 20 and 21 Vic, Cap 85, unmarrying is as easy as marrying. No more acts of polyamint necessary. No longer one law for the rich and another for the poor. But come inside. I was just going to have a nibblekin 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 Bocock, 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. Bocock leaning back in the settle with illegal 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 Bocock 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 wedded his lips, Melbury never knew how he came out of the inn or when aware he mounted his jig to pursue his way home. But home he found himself, his brain having all the way seemed to ring sonoriously 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 Rindlewood, as Bocock was here called, which lay under a privet-edge. 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, dear here. 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 Bocock, 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. Bocock will go with me, and we shall get the best advice as soon as we possibly can. Bocock is a thorough lawyer. Nothing the matter with him but a fiery pallet. I knew him as the stay and refuge of Sheridan 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 tender 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 pre-visioned career. They had sat till the evening was beginning to die 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 growing promise of the day was prompt enough in coming. Though sooner had he followed the timber merchant in at the door than he heard grammar 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 it in 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 lane 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 winter-born waiting in the lane below, Dr. Jones Winholman 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 tour, 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, right 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 for 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 tintured 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 Bocock from returning to her bedside. What was the use of his rushing back to Hintock, Bocock 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 imminent 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 Bocock, who, senting 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 winter-born, 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 stodding 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 winter-born, 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.