 43 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 modded himself for her comfort. He had more for her self-respect than she had thought of Carrie. 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' 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. Her 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 subconsciousness 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 fully charmant. 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 a 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. He 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, vending 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? This 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, oddly 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 was stroking a little bird. He watched her awhile, 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. What 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? Prime fit any prices sweet to men and women, especially the latter. It was her first and last opportunity of repaying him for the cruel countenly 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 of 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. What it stoddle you to hear, he said, as if he hardly had breathed out of 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 to spare. When 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 vial 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 featherbed, 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 super-added. She returned to winter-borne side, and during her meditations another tread grew 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 winter-borne from the other side. Did you meet my husband, 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 geeted up to you, 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. What 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 salter. 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 wetting his pin-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 a narrow room with supplicatory murmurs that a Calvinist might have envied. They had hardly ended when now and more numerous footfalls were audible. Several 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 beam from the inner one. Melbury and Mrs. Melbury were standing there. I don't reproach you, Grace, said her father, within a strange 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, but give me, Grace, for suspecting you worse than rashness. I ought to know you 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 unwanted, 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 him 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 ye, 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 morning know-how as a man should, Mr. Melbury, he said. I hadn't seen him since Thursday night, and have wandered 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 known him from table-high, I've known his father, used to bite about upon two sticks in the sun before he died. And now I've seen the end of the family, which we can ill afford to lose. We such a scanty lot of good-poken hentock as we've got. And now Robert Creedle will be nailed up in parish boards, I believe, and nobody will glitch 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 corpses seemed to show the want of him. Those young trees, so many of which he had planted, and all 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, folding in such a way that we should see it. It will be in the Sheridan paper this week, no doubt. To make the event more solemn still to him, he had just before had shopped 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. A 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. Charmon'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. Charmon. 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 modification of one woman by another in the presence of a lover. True, Marty had not affected it by word of mouth. The charge about the locks of hair was made simply by Fitzpiers reading her letter to him, allowed 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 traveling to Baden in search of him she had met his rival, whose reproaches led to an altercation and the death of both. Of that precipitous 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 illusion 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. Belbury and his daughter drew near their house, having seen but one living thing on their way, a squirrel, which did not learn 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 stepmother, some of her old misgiving return, that I am coming back only on condition of his leaving as he promised. Can 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 power, while her stepmother 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 pile of 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 fire-light 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 too, and he disappeared. At the hut she had declared that another had displaced him, and now she had banished him. End of Chapter 43, recording by James O'Connor, Randolph, Massachusetts, July 2009. Fitzpiers had hardly been gone an hour when Grace began to sicken. The next day she kept her room. While 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, Grandma Oliver came to her bedside. I don't know where 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 Grandma held up. It was the vile 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 Winterborn. She examined it as well as she could. The liquid was 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 fibrofuge of some sort. Her father, her mother, and all of 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 threaten, shave, 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 have not had more principal? 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 child's when her born. 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 desk of the late September day, they went tethered by secret ways, walking mostly in silence side by side, each busy with her own thoughts. Grace had a trouble exceeding Marty's, the haunting sense of having put out the lights 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 then the sun had gone down. They could see over the woodland for miles and down in the veil 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 was gone. Grace was abashed when, by degrees, she found that she had never understood Giles as Marty had done. Marty's 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 compliment to him in the other sex, had lived as his counterpart, had subjoined her thoughts 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 clair gaze. They had been possessed of its finer mysteries as of commonplace knowledge, had been able to read its hieroglyphs as ordinary writings to them the sights and sounds of night, winter, wind, storm, amid those dense boughs, which had to grace the touch of the uncanny and even the supernatural, were simply 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 remote signs and symbols, which seen in few were of runic obscurity, but all together made an alphabet. From the light lashings of the twigs upon their faces, when brushing through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the species of the tree once they stretched. From the quality of the wind's murmur through the bow, they could, in like manner, name its sort of far off. They knew by a glance at a trunk if its heart were sound, or tainted with the insipid decay, and by the state of its upper twigs, the stratum had been reached by its roots. The artifices of the seasons were seen by them from the conjurer's own point of view, and not from that of the spectators. He ought of married you, Marnie, and nobody else in the world, said Grace, with conviction, after thinking somewhat in the above strained, Marnie shook her head. In all of our outdoor days and years together, ma'am, she had replied, the one thing he never spoke 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 tongues of the trees and the fruits and the flowers themselves. She could indulge in mournful fancies like this to Mardi, but the hardcore of her grief, which Mardi'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 this circumstance that 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 Winterborn had lived through those 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 had made a clean confession of the actual situation, but to volunteer the correction would seem like signaling for a truce, and that, in her present state of mind, was what she did not feel the need of. It will probably not appear a surprising statement after what has already declared 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 would never know 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 regretting gendered a smoldering 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 so ever he might have wronged her. Then a sudden hope dawned on 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. Fitzpierre's mental suffering and suspense led him at last to take melancholy journey to the neighborhood of Little Hintock, and here he hovered for hours around the scene of the purest emotional experience that he had ever known in his life. He walked about the woods that surrounded Melbury's house, keeping out a sight like a criminal. It was a fine evening and on his way home weren't 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 into her through the half open door. What are you doing that for Marty? Because I want to clean them. They were not mine. He could see indeed that they were not hers, for one was a spade large and heavy, and another was a billhook, which she could only have used with both hands. The spade, though not new, had been so completely burnished that was bright as silver. Fitzpiers somehow divined that they were Giles Winterborn's, and he put the question to her. She replied in the affirmative. I am going to keep them, she said, but I can't get his apple mill and press. I wish I 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 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 said 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 Winterborn, 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' generosity to Grace and 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' 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 than one sense his journey to Hintock had not been in vain. He would have given much to Wingrace's forgiveness then, but whatever he dared hope for, in that kind from the future, there was nothing to be done yet. While Giles' Winterborn's memory was green, to wait was imperative. A little time might melt her frozen thoughts and lead her to look on him with tolerance, if not with love. End of Chapter 44 Recording by Ray Smith, Phoenix, Arizona Chapter 45 of The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Anna Knight Chapter 45 Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborn 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 Simba-line, 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 requirements and culture weigh besides 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-approach, 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. Fitzpiss 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 husbands, one who knew not for least, 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. Fitzpiss, which had been mentally promised her for that particular day a long time before. It announced that Fitzpiss 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 earring 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 honour 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 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 turtle dove, how came I ever to possess you? For the sake of being present in your mind on this lover's day, I think I would almost rather have you hate me a little than not think of me at all. You make all my fancies whimsical, but remember, sweet, lost one, that nature is one in love, and where it is 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 love are 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 have ford her of setting her doubts at rest, one way or the other, on her actual share in winter-born'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 winter-born'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 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 subtlest 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 hilltop 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 lighter tyre, and the flowered waist-coast 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, gate, almost one centre of gravity. In the bucksome bride Fitzpiers recognised no other than Sukey Dampson, 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, Sukey 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 head across to Delborough, then a thwart to here, and from here we go to rub down and mill shot, and then round by the crossroads 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-bye, said Fitzpiers, I may not see you again. He shook hands with Tim and turned to the bride. Goodbye, Sukey, 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 reformed and resumed March likewise, but in restoring his arm to Sukey, Tim noticed that her full and blooming countenance had undergone a change. Hello, my dear, what's the matter? said Tim. Nothing to speak of, she said, but to give light to her assertion she was seized with lack remote twitches, that soon produced a dribbling faith. 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 Sukey's eyes. I never did like parting from people, said Sukey, as soon as she could speak. Why him in particular? Well, he's such a clever doctor, that just a thousand pitties we shan'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 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 thereby 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 grey masses of brushwood around. Fitzpiers continued to regard the nearing picture, till at length their glances met for a moment, when she demurely sent hers off 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 demured, and Fitzpiers gave in, and they kept the public road. At any rate, she would take his arm. This also was gravely negative, the refusal being audible to Marty. Why not, he inquired. Oh, Mr Fitzpiers, how can you ask? Right, right, said he, his effusiveness, shriveled 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, particularising 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 favour. 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 today, she said, 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 let 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 fell-tree in the remote depths of the wood recalled the past at that moment, and all the homely faithfulness of winter-born. Don't ask it. My heart is in the grave with giles, she replied staunchly. Mine is with you in no less deeper grave, I fear, according to that. I am very sorry, but it cannot be helped. How can you be sorry for me when you willfully 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 worth 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, why is this 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 mighty 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 so 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 somber as he went homeward. He saw how deep had been his offence to produce so great awareness 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 stored, was more tolerable. When he was gone, Marty joined Mrs. Fitzpiers. She would feign 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 forward and saw Melbury standing at the scene of the felling, which had been audible to them, when, telling Marty that she had 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, 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 you 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 bow-peep. 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. End of Chapter 45 of The Woodlanders, read by Anna Knight. Chapter 46 of The Woodlanders This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ted Nugent, The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy, Chapter 46 The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed indoors the 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 trickness, for the purpose of putting snowdrops, primroses, and other vernal flowers they own as they came. One afternoon at sunset, she was standing just outside her father's garden, which, like the rest of the hintok encloses, aborted into the wood, a slight footpath 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 pot, and hand up his hand to detain her. It was her husband. I'm 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 it would go in before I could reach you. It is a week before the time, said she, reproachfully. I said the fortnight from the last meeting. My dear, you don't suppose I could wait the fortnight, without trying to get the 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, the same melancholic 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 transqualize her. His assertion has seemed to impress her somewhat. I had no idea you came so often, she said. How far do you come from? From Xbury, I always walk from Chirton Abbas, for if I hire, people will know that I come, and my success with you so far had not been great enough to justify such openness. Now, my dear one, as I must call you, I put it to you. Will you see me a little often as this brings advances? Grace laps into unwanted 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'm sure it would get on. It is the very thing I'm doing. I was going to ask you to burn, or, at least, get rid of all my philosophical literature. It is in the book cases in your rooms. The fact is, I never cared much for F's true studies. I'm so glad to hear you say that, and those other books, those piles of old plays, what good are they to a medical man? I mean, none whatever, he replied cheerfully, sell them at Chirton for what they will fetch, and those dreadful old French romances with the horror spellings of Fills, and Ong, and Ills, and Mary, and Mophoi? You haven't been reading them, Grace. Oh no, I just looked into them. That was all. Make a bonfire of them 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 handbooks now, and I'm 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 it would mean to lead a new, useful, effective 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 to few incidents. I go with Marty to Giant'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 like the man, as well as any I ever knew. In short, I would accompany you or part of the way to the place, and smoke a cigar on the stove, while I waited till you came back. Then, you haven't given up smoking? Well, no, I have thought of doing so, but his extreme complications had rather disconcerted Grace, and the question about smoking had been to affect the diversion. Presently, she said, firmly, and with the moisture in her eyes that he could not see, as her mind returned to poor Giant's frustrated 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 distraught lover still. I cannot help it, so that it would be wrong for me to join you. His pious was now uneasy. You say you're distraught lover still, he rejoined. When then, will you be trove to him, or engage just as we common people say? When you were away, how could that be? Grace would have avoided this, but her natural candle led her on. It was when I was under the impression that my marriage with you was about to be or not, and that he could then marry me, so I encouraged him to love me. His pious winced visibly, and dear, upon the whole, she was right in telling it. Indeed, his perception that she was right in her absolute sincerity kept up his defectionate admiration for her under the pin 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 have lied to you, but I fear I cannot, she replied, worth in logical roughness, and I don't see why you should mind my having had one lover beside 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'm 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 could 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, worth playful sadness, it has been there a long time. She faintly shook her head, but said, I will try to think of you more if I can. With this, his pious 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 you 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 words, but exclaiming, No, no, I cannot slip through the garden hedge and disappeared. His pious did not exaggerate when he told her that he should home 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 this time, however, she punctually appeared and as the spring wore on, the meetings were capped up, though the character changed but little with the increase in their number. The small garden of the cottage occupied by the tank's family, father, son, and now son's wife, alight with the larger one of the timber dealer at his upper end. And when young Tim, after leaving work at Melbury's, stood at dusk in the little bower at the corner of his sink closer to smoke a pipe. He frequently observed the surgeon pass along the outside track before mention. His pious always walked loiteringly, pensively, looking with a sharp eye into the gardens, one after another as he proceeded. For his pious did not wish to leave the now-absorbing spot too quickly after traveling so far through Richard, hoping always for a glimpse of her, whom he passionately desired to take to his arms so new. Now Tim began to be struck with his loitering progresses along the garden boundaries into the glooming and wondered what they bordered. It was, naturally, quite out of his power to divine the singular, sentimental revival into his pious heart. The finest of tissue, which could take a deep, emotional, almost also an artistic pleasure in being the journey enumerator of a woman he once had deserted, would have seemed an absurdity to the young soya. Mr. and Mrs. Vispires were separated, therefore the question of her fiction as between them was settled. But his suki had, since that meeting on their marriage day, repentently admitted to the urgency of his questioning a good deal concerning her past lavities. Putting all things together, he could hardly avoid connecting Vispires' mysterious visit to this port, with suki's residence under his roof. But he made himself fairly easy, the vessel in which they were about to emigrate, still that month. And then, su could be out of Vispires' way forever. The interval at last expired, and the eve of the 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 wary. In the corners stood their boxes, crammed and corded, their large case for the whole having already been sent away. The firelight shone upon suki'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 Tang's was not happy, this scheme of emigration was dividing him from his father, for all Tangs would, on no account, live hint up. And had it not been for suki's reputation and his own dignity, Tim would at the last moments have abandoned the project. As he sat in the back of the room, he regarded her moodyly, 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 mock degree depressed. Sorry that she be going after all suki, he said. She signed involuntarily. I don't know about that I be, she answered. This natural, isn't it, when one is going away? But she wasn't born here as I was, no. There's folk lapped behind that you then have the eye reckon. Why do you think that? I've seen things, and I've heard things, and suki, I say, it will be a good move for me to get thee away. I don't mind his living so broad, but I do mind them at home. Suki's face was not changed from his 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 suki had indeed doled his presence to the gentleman of team suspicions, but in a different, and it must be added injustice to her, more innocent sense than he supposed, judging from former doings. She had accidentally discovered that his pious was in the habit of coming secretly once or twice a week to hint up, and knew that this evening was the favorite one of the seven for his journey. As she was going next day to leave the country, suki 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 his pious time for passing was at hand, she thus betrayed her feeling. No sooner, therefore, had team left the room, than she let herself noiselessly out of the house, and hastened to the corner of the garden, when she could witness the surgeon transit the cross the scene if he had not already gone by. Her light cotton dress was visible to team, lounging in the arbor of the opposite corner, though he was hidden from her. He saw her still thoroughly climb into the hedge, and so, in scorns herself there, that nobody could have the least doubt, her purpose was to watch unseen for a passerby. He went to cross to the spot, and stood behind her. Suki started, having in her blundering way forgotten that he might be near, she at once descended from the hedge. So he is coming tonight, said team, leconically, and we be always anxious to see our dears. He is coming tonight, she replied, with defiance, and we be anxious for our dears. Then will lose tap indoors, where you deal with Zundini? We've to master by half past three tomorrow, 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. Team was incensed beyond measure, his marriage has so far been a total failure, a source of bitter regrets, and the only cause for improving his case that of leaving the country was a sorry and possibly might not be a very effective 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 his force. He created a means of striking one blowback, other cause of his chillest flight, while he was still on the sins of his discomforture. For some minutes, no method suggested itself, and then he had an idea. Coming to a certain resolution, he hastened along the garden, and entered the one attached to the next cottage, which had formerly been the dwelling of a gamekeeper. Team descended the pot to the back of the house, where only an old woman lived at present, and reaching the well, he stopped. Owing to the slope of the ground, the roof-eaves of the Linhai were here within touch, and he thrust his arm up under them, filling a bound in the space on the top of the world plate. Ah, I thought my memory didn't deceive me, he lived 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. Team contemplated it, as well as he could, in the dying light of the day, and raked off the cobwebs with his hand. That will spoil his pretty sheen's foreign eye-waken, he said. It was a man-trap. The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy, Chapter 47 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 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 outhouse 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 traveling 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 19th century, this model had borne the palm, and had been most usually followed when the orchards in the 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-tooth 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 crush 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 an 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 sole of the apparatus. A 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 in Hintok who remembered when the jinn and others like it were in use. Tim Tang's great uncle had endured a night of six hours in this very trap, which blamed him for life. Once the keeper of Hintok 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 30s, and by the year 1840 the use of such implements was well-nigh discontinued in the neighborhood. But being 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 Hintok 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 beneath a bush while he went forward to Wreckentryer. As had 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 where on a large thick holly grew. Beyond this, for some distance, the wood was more open, and the course that Fitzpiers must pursue to reach the point, if he came tonight, 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 gate revealed Fitzpiers even before his exact outline could be seen. Tim Tang's 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 contiquity, 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 around 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 said 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, Suka 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 Suka, starting up in bed. Sounds as if somebody had caught a hair in his gin. Oh no, she said, it's not a hair, it was louder. Hark! Do we get some 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 mantrap. 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 Hintak 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. As for him, he kept her in a mood of considerable gravity. He certainly had changed. He had at his worst times always been gentle in his manner toward 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 as imperious, 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 a recent off-handedness when she rediscovered what awfully solemn promises she had made him at those chancell 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 gentle woman of strong devotional sentiment. She wondered whether God really did join them together. Before she had then deliberating the time of her engagement drew near, and she went out of the house almost at the moment that Tim Tang's retired to his own. The position of things at that critical juncture was briefly as follows. 200 yards to the right of the upper end of Tang's garden, Fitzbears was still advancing, having now nearly reached the summit of the woodclothed 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 200 yards to the left, or rather less, was arising a condition which he had not defined, 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. Fitzbears' 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 had 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 relation, they had arranged that their meeting for tonight should be at the home tree on the ridge above named. So soon, accordingly, as Fitzbears 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. Fitzbears 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. Fitzbears stumbled and all but fell, stretching down his hand to ascertain the obstruction. It came in contact with a confused mass of silk and drapery, and ironwork that conveyed absolutely no explanatory idea in 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 mantrap 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. Fitzbeard had often studied the effect of these instruments when examining the collection of Hintock House, and the conception instantly flashed through him that Grace had been caught, taken out mangled by some chanced 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 his high hope, was so great that he cried out like one in corporeal agony, and in his misery bowed himself to the ground. Of all the degrees and qualities of punishment that Fitzbeard 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, rithering and rocking himself over the sorry accessories of her he deplored. The voice of his distress was sufficiently loud to be audible to anyone who might have been there to hear it, and one was there. 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, whacking the portion of her dress, which the gin retained. Don't be grieved about me. Don't, dear Edgar," she explained, 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. Fitzbears 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 around her, 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 life, my love, how is this? What has happened? I was coming on to you, she said, as distinctly as she could in her half-smothered state of her face against his. I was trying to be as punctual as possible, and I had started a minute late, so 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 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 these meetings with you. So I could think of no other plan than slipping off my skirt, meaning to run to you 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 your legs would have been broken if you had not come at an ordinary pace. It was only your speed that saved you. One or both of your legs would have been broken if you had come at an ordinary walking pace, or yours if you had got here first, said she, beginning to realize the whole gasliness of the possibility. Oh Edgar, there has been an eye watching over us tonight, 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, Fitzbeer was still so shaken by the sense of her danger that he was obliged to sit a while, and it was not until Grace said, if I could only get my skirt out nobody would know anything about it, that he bestowed himself. By the united efforts each standing on one of the springs of the trap, they pressed them down sufficiently to assert across the jaw as 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. Fitzbeer's 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 affected an improvement by clasping it around her waist. The ice had been broken in this unexpected manner, she made no further attempts 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 at 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. I must go there in a week and 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? Tonight 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 to the direction of their desultery ramble, till she noticed they were in an encircled glade in the densest part of the wood, were on the moon that had imperceptibly added its rays to the scene, shown 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 beach trees had suddenly unfolded large, limp, young leaves of the softness of butterfly wings. Bows 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 toward Hintuck. As they walked, he examined his watch by the age of the now strong moonlight. By the gods, I think I have lost my train, said Fitzbears. Dear me, whereabouts are we? she said. Two miles in the direction of Sherton. Then do we 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 meeting so private, for it may vex him a little to know that I have been seeing you. He is getting old and irritable. That was why I did not. Goodbye. But as I must stay at the Earl of Wessex tonight, for I cannot possibly catch the train, I think it would be safer for you to let me take care of you. But what my father think has become of me. He does not know in the least where I am. He thinks I only went to the garden for a few minutes. He will surely guess somebody has seen me for certain. I'll go to all the way back with you tomorrow. 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 tunes. Oh no, it's not that I am particular, but I have in a brush or a comb or anything. End of Chapter 47. Recording by Nicholas Faulner. The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy