 27 The doctor's professional visit to Hintock House was promptly repeated the next day, and he always found Mrs. Charmond reclining in a sofa and behaving generally as became a patient who was in no great hurry to lose that title. On each occasion he looked gravely at the little scratch in her arm as if it had been a serious wound. He had also, to his further satisfaction, found a slight scar on her temple, and it was very convenient to put a piece of black plaster on this conspicuous part of her person in preference to gold beater's skin so that it might catch the eyes of the servants and make his presence appear decidedly necessary in case there should be any doubt of the fact. Oh, you hurt me, she exclaimed one day. He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under which this creep had turned the colour of an unright blackberry previous to vanishing altogether. Wait a moment then, I'll damp it, said Fitzpiers. He put his lips to the place and kept them there till the plaster came off easily. It was at your request, I put it on, said he. I know it, she replied. Is that blue vein still in my temple that used to show there? The scar must be just upon it. If the cut had been a little deeper, it would have spilt my hot blood indeed. Fitzpiers examined so closely that his breath touched her tenderly, at which her eyes rose to an encounter, hers showing themselves as deep and mysterious as in stellar space. She turned her face away suddenly. Ah, none of that, none of that. I cannot coquette with you, she cried. Don't suppose I can send to for one moment our poor, brief, youthful hour of love-making was too long ago to bear continuing now. It is as well that we should understand each other on that point before we go further. Coquette, nor I with you, as it was when I found the historic loves so it is now. I might have been, and may be foolish, but I am no trifler. I naturally cannot forget that little space in which I flittered across the field of your vision in those days of the past, and the recollection opens up all sorts of imaginings. Suppose my mother had not taken me away, she murmured, her dreamy eyes resting on the swaying tip of a distant tree. I should have seen you again. And then? Then the fire would have burned higher and higher, what would have immediately followed I know not, but sorrow and sickness of heart at last. Why? Well, that's the end of all love, according to nature's law. I can give no other reason. Oh, don't speak like that, she exclaimed, since we are only picturing the possibilities of that time. Don't, for pity's sake, spoil the picture. Her voice sang almost to a whisper, as she added, with an incipient pout upon her full lips. Let me think at least that if you had really loved me at all seriously, you would have loved me for ever and ever. You are right. Think it with all your heart, city. It is a pleasant thought and costs nothing. She weighed that remark in silence a while. Did you ever hear anything of me from then till now, she inquired? Not a word. So much the better. I had to fight the battle of life as well as you. I may tell you about it some day, but don't ever ask me to do it, and particularly do not press me to tell you now. Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender acquaintance on the romantic slopes above the Neckar were stretched out in retrospect to the length and importance of years, made to form a canvas for infinite fancies, idle dreams, luxurious melancholys, and sweet alluring assertions which could neither be proved nor disproved. Grace was never mentioned between them, but a rumour of his proposed domestic changes somehow reached her ears. Doctor, you are going away, Shakespeare exclaimed, confronting him with accusatory reproach in her large dark eyes, no less than in her rich, cooing voice. Oh, yes you are. She went on, springing to her feet, with an air which might almost have been called passionate. It is no use denying it. You have bought a practice at Budmouth. I don't blame you. Nobody can live at Hintock, least of all a professional man who wants to keep a breast of recent discovery, and there is nobody here to induce such a one to stay for other reasons. That's right. That's right. Go away. But no, I have not actually bought the practices yet, though I am indeed in treaty for it. And my dear friend, if I continue to feel about the business, as I feel at this moment, perhaps I may conclude, never to go at all. But you hate Hintock, and everybody and everything in it that you don't mean to take away with you. Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory tones, and she lapsed into the frivolous archness under which she hid passions of no mean strength. Strange, smoldering, erratic passions kept down like a stifled conflagration, but bursting out now here, now there, the only certain element in their direction being its unexpectedness. If one could have expressed her, it would have been inconsequence. She was a woman of perversities, delighting in frequent contrasts. She liked mystery in her life, in her love, in her history. To be fair to her, there was nothing in the latter which had any great reason to be ashamed of, and many things of which she might have been proud. But it had never been fathomed by the honest minds of Hintock, and she rarely volunteered her experiences. As for her capricious nature, the people on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that marvellous subtlety of contrivance and steering round odd tempers that is found in sons of the soil and dependents generally, they managed to get along under her government rather better than they would have done beneath the more equable rule. Now with regard to the doctor's notion of leaving Hintock, he had advanced further towards completing the purchase of the buddhmath's surgeon's goodwill, then he had admitted to Mrs. Charmond. The whole matter hung upon what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four hours. The evening after leaving her, he went out into the lane and walked and pondered between the high hedges, now greenish-white, with wild clematis, here called Old Mansbeard, from its aspect later in the year. The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, after which his departure from Hintock would be irrevocable. But could he go away, remembering what he had just passed? The trees, the hills, the leaves, the grass, each had been endowed and quickened with a subtle charm since he had discovered the person and history, and above all, mood of their owner. There was every temporal reason for leaving it. It would be entering again into a world which he had only quitted in a passion for isolation, induced by a fit of incillian moodiness after an imagined slight. His wife herself saw the awkwardness of their position here, and cheerfully welcomed the purpose to change, towards which every step had been taken but the last. But could he find it in his heart, as he found it clearly enough in his conscience to go away? He drew a troubled breath and went indoors. Here he rapidly penned a letter, wherein he withdrew once and for all from the treaty for the bud-mud practice. As the postman had already left Little Hintock for that night, he sent one of Melbury's men to intercept a mail cart on another turnpike road, and so got the letter off. The man returned, met Fitzpiers in the lane, and told him the thing was done. Fitzpiers went back to his house musing. Why had he carried out this impulse, taken such wild trouble to affect a probable injury to his own and his young wife's prospects? His moat was fantastic, glowing, shapeless as the fiery scenery about the western sky. Mrs. Sherman could overtly be nothing more to him than a patient now, and to his wife at the outside of Patron. In the unattached bachelor days of his first subjourning here, how highly proper an emotional reason for lingering on would have appeared to troublesome deviousness. Matrimonial ambition is such an honourable thing. My father has told me that you have sent off one of the men with a late letter to Budmouth, Cripe Grace, coming out vivaciously to meet him under the declining light of the sky, wherein hung, solitary, the folding star. I said at once that you had finally agreed to pay the premium they ask, and that the tedious question has been settled. When do we go, Edgar? I have altered my mind, said he. They want too much. Seven hundred and fifty is too large a sum, and in short I have declined to go further. We must wait for another opportunity. I fear I am not a good businessman. He spoke the last words with a momentary faltering at the great foolishness of his act, for as he looked in her fair and honourable face his heart reproached him for what he had done. Her manner that evening showed her disappointment. Personally she liked the home of her childhood much, and she was not ambitious. But her husband had seemed so dissatisfied with the circumstances hereabout since their marriage that she had sincerely hoped to go for his sake. It was two or three days before he visited Mrs. Charmond again. The morning had been windy, and little showers had sowed themselves like grain against the walls and window panes of the Hintock cottages. He went on foot across the wilder recesses of the park, where slimy streams of grape moisture exuding from the decayed holes caused by old amputations, ran down the bark of the oaks and alms, the rind below being coated with a lichenous wash as green as emerald. They were stout trunked trees that never rocked their stems in the fiercest gale, responding to it entirely by croaking their limbs, wrinkled like an old crone's face, and antlered with dead branches that rose above the foliage of their summits. They were nevertheless green, though yellow had invaded the leaves of other trees. She was in a little boudoir or writing-room on the first floor, and Fitzpiers was much surprised to find that the window curtains were closed and a red shaded lamp and candles burning, though out of doors it was broad daylight. Moreover, a large fire was burning in the grate, though it was not cold. What does it all mean? he asked. She sat in an easy chair, her face being turned away. Oh, she murmured. It is because the world is so dreary outside, sorrow and bitterness in the sky, and floods of agonised tears beating against the pain. I lay awake last night, and I could hear the scrape of snails creeping up the window-glass. It was so sad. My eyes were so heavy this morning that I could have wept my life away. I cannot bear you to see my face. I keep it away from you purposely. Oh, why were we given hungry hearts and wild desires if we have to live in a world like this? Why should death only lend what life is compelled to borrow? Rest? Answer that, Dr. Fitzpiers. You must eat of a second tree of knowledge before you can do it, Felicia Armand. Then when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I become full of fears till I think I shall die for very fear. The terrible insistencies of society, how severe they are and cold and inexorable, ghastly towards those who are made of wax and not of stone. Oh, I am afraid of them. A stab for this error, a stab for that, correctives and regulations, frame that society may tend to perfection, an end which I don't care for in the least. Yet for this all I do care for has come to be stunted and starved. Fitzpiers had seated himself near her. What sets you in this mournful mood, he asked gently. In reality he knew that it was the result of a loss of tone from staying indoors so much, but he did not say so. My reflections. Doctor, you must not come here any more. They begin to think it a farce already. I say you must come no more. There, don't be angry with me. And she jumped up and pressed his hand and looked anxiousy at him. It is necessary. It is best for both you and me. But, said Fitzpiers gloomily, what have we done? Done? We have done nothing. Perhaps we have thought the more. However, it is all fixation. I am going away to Middletown Abbey, near Shansford, where a relative of my late husband lives who is confined to her bed. The engagement was made in London and I can't get out of it. Perhaps it is for the best that I go there till all this is past. When are you going to enter on your new practice and leave Hintock behind forever with your pretty wife on your arm? I have refused the opportunity. I love this place too well to depart. You have? She said regarding him with wild uncertainty. Why do you root yourself in that way? Great Heaven, what have I done? Nothing. Besides, you are going away. Oh yes, but only to Middletown Abbey for a month or two. Yet perhaps I shall gain strength there. Particularly strength of mind. I require it. And when I come back, I shall be a new woman, and you can come and see me safely then, and bring your wife with you, and we'll be friends, she and I. Oh, how this shutting up of oneself does lead to indulgence in idle sentiments. I shall not wish you to give me your attendance to me after today, but I am glad that you are not going away, if your remaining does not injure your prospects at all. As soon as he had left the room, the mild friendliness she had preserved in her tone of parting, the playful sadness with which she had conversed with him, equally departed from her. She became as heavy as lead, just as she had been before he arrived. Her whole being seemed to dissolve in a sad powerlessness to do anything, and the sense of it made her lips tremulous, and her closed eyes wet. His footsteps again startled her, and she turned around. I return for a moment to tell you that the evening is going to be fine. The sun is shining, so do open your curtains and put out those lights. Shall I do it for you? Please, if you don't mind. He drew back the window-cartons, whereupon the red glow of the lamp and the two candle-flames became almost invisible with the flood of late autumn sunlight that poured in. Shall I come round to you? he asked, her back being towards him. No, she replied. Why not? Because I am crying, and I don't want to see you. He stood for a moment, he resolute, and regretted that he had killed the rosy, passionate lamp-light by opening the curtains and letting in the garish day. Then I am going, he said. Very well, she answered, stretching one hand round to him, and patting her eyes with a handkerchief held in the other. Shall I write a line to you at? No, no. A gentle reasonableness came into her tone as she added. It must not be, you know. It won't do. Very well. Well. Good-bye. The next moment he was gone. In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged the maid who dressed her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitzpiers's marriage. Mrs. Fitzpiers was once opposed to favour Mr. Winterborne, said the young woman. And why didn't she marry him? said Mrs. Charmond. Because, you see, ma'am, he lost his houses. Lost his houses? How came he to do that? The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your agent wouldn't renew them. Though it is said that Mr. Winterborne had a very good claim. That's as I've heard it, ma'am, and it was through it that the match was broke off. Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. Charmond sunk into a mood of dismal self-approach. In refusing that poor man his reasonable request, she said to herself, I fordoomed my rejuvenated girl-huds romance. Who would have thought that such a business matter could have netted my own heart like this? Now for a winter of regrets and agonies and useless wishes till I forget him in the spring. Oh, I am glad I'm going away. She left her chamber and went down to dine with a sigh. On the stairs she stood opposite the large window for a moment, and looked out upon the lawn. It was not yet quite dark. Halfway up the steep green slope confronting her stood old timity Tangs, who was shortening his way homeward by clamouring here where there was no road, and in opposition to express orders that no pat was to be made there. Tangs had momentarily stopped to take a pinch of snuff, but observing Mrs. Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to get over the top out of hail. His precipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a barrel to the bottom, his snuff box rolling out in front of him. Her indefinite idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers, her constitutional cloud of misery, the sourful drops that still hung upon her eyelashes, all made way for the incursive mood started by the spectacle. She burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, her very gloom of the previous sour, seeming to render it more uncontrollable. It had not died out of her when she reached the dining-room, and even here before the servants her shoulders suddenly shook as the scene returned upon her, and the tears of her hilarity mingled with the remnants of those engendered by her grief. She resolved to be sad no more. She drank two glasses of champagne, and a little more still after those, and amused herself in the evening with singing little ametry songs. I must do something for that poor man winter-born, however, she said. CHAPTER XXVIII. A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmone had left Hintock House. Middleton Abbey, the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles distant by road, eighteen by bridal paths and footways. Grace observed for the first time that her husband was restless, that at moments he even was disposed to avoid her. The scrupulous civility of mere acquaintanceship crept into his manner. Yet, when sitting at meals, he seemed hardly to hear her remarks. Her little doings interested him no longer, while towards her father his bearing was not far from superlicious. It was plain that his mind was entirely outside her life, whereabouts outside it she could not tell, in some region of science possibly, or of psychological literature. But her hope that he was again immersing himself in those lucubrations which before her marriage had made his light a landmark in Hintock, was founded simply on the slender fact that he often sat up late. One evening she discovered him leaning over a gate on Rubdown Hill, the gate at which winter-born had once been standing, and which opened on the brink of a steep, slanting down directly into Blackmore Vale, or the Vale of the White Heart, extending beneath the eye at this point to a distance of many miles. His attention was fixed on the landscape far away, and Grace's approach was so noiseless that he did not hear her. When she came close, she could see his lips moving unconsciously as to some impassioned visionary theme. She spoke, and Fitzpie started. What are you looking at? she asked. Oh, I was contemplating our old place of Buckbury in my idle way, he said. It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that cradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity, but she made no further observation, and taking his arm walked home beside him almost in silence. She did not know that Middleton Abbey lay in the direction of his gaze. Are you going to have out darling this afternoon? She asked presently, darling being the light-grey mare which winter-born had bought for Grace and which Fitzpie now constantly used, the animal having turned out a wonderful bargain in combining a perfect docility with an almost human intelligence. Moreover, she was not too young. Fitzpie was unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these qualities. Yes, he replied, but not to drive. I am riding her. I practice crossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I can take much shorter cuts on horseback. He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week, only since Mrs. Charmon's absence, his universal practice hitherto having been to drive. Some few days later, Fitzpie started on the back of this horse to see a patient in the aforesaid veil. It was about five o'clock in the evening when he went away, and at bedtime he had not reached home. There was nothing very singular in this, though she was not aware that he had any patient more than five or six miles distant in that direction. The clock had struck one before Fitzpie entered the house, and he came to his room softly, as if anxious not to disturb her. The next morning she was stirring considerably earlier than he. In the yard there was a conversation going on about the mare. The man who attended to the horses, darling included, insisted that the latter was Hagrid. For when he had arrived at the stable that morning, she was in such a state as no horse could be in by honest riding. It was true that the doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so that she was not looked after as she would have been if he had groomed and fed her. But that did not account for the appearance she presented if Mr. Fitzpie's journey had been only where he had stated. The phenomenal exhaustion of darling, as thus related, was sufficient to develop a whole series of tales about riding witches and demons, the narration of which occupied a considerable time. Grace returned indoors. In passing through the outer room, she picked up her husband's overcoat which he had carelessly flung down across a chair. A turnpike ticket fell out of the breast pocket and she saw that it had been issued at Middleton Gate. He had therefore visited Middleton the previous night, a distance of at least five and thirty miles on horseback, fair and back. During the day she made some inquiries and learned for the first time that Mrs. Charmond was staying at Middleton Abbey. She could not resist an inference, strange as that inference was. A few days later he prepared to start again at the same time and in the same direction. She knew that the state of the cottageer who lived that way was a mere pretext. She was quite sure that he was going to Mrs. Charmond. Grace was amazed at the mildness of the passion which the suspicion engendered in her. She was but little excited and her jealousy was languid even to death. It told tales of the nature of her affection for him. In truth her anti-nuptial regard for Fitzpiae had been rather of the quality of awe towards a superior being than of tender solicitude for a lover. It had been based upon mystery and strangeness, the mystery of his past, of his knowledge, of his professional skill, of his beliefs. When the structure of ideals was demolished by the intimacy of common life and she found him as merely human as the Hintak people themselves, a new foundation was in demand for an enduring and staunch affection, a sympathetic interdependence wherein mutual weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive alliance. Fitzpiae had furnished none of that single-minded confidence and truth out of which alone such a second union could spring. Hence it was with a controllable emotion that she now watched the mayor brought round. I'll walk with you to the hill if you are not in a great hurry, she said, rather loath after all to let him go. Do there's plenty of time, replied her husband. Accordingly he led along the horse and walked beside her impatient enough nevertheless. Thus they proceeded to the Turnpike Road and ascended Rubdown Hill to the gate he had been leaning over when she surprised him ten days before. This was the end of her excursion. Fitzpiae bade her adieu with affection, even with tenderness, and she observed that he looked weary-eyed. Why do you go to-night, she said? You have been called up two nights in succession already. I must go, he answered almost gloomily. Don't wait up for me. With these words he mounted his horse, passed through the gate which Grace held open for him, and ambled down the steep bridal track to the valley. She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then his journey onward. His way was east, the evening sun which stood behind her back beaming full upon him as soon as he got out from the shade of the hill. Notwithstanding this untoward proceeding, she was determined to be loyal if he proved true. And the determination to love one's best will carry a heart a long way towards making that best an ever-growing thing. The conspicuous coat of the active though blanching mare made horse and rider easy objects for the vision. Though Darling had been chosen with such pains by winterburn for Grace, she had never ridden the sleek creature, but her husband had found the animal exceedingly convenient, particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of staying power being left in Darling yet. Fitzpiae, like others of his character, while despising Melbury and his station, did not at all disdain to spend Melbury's money, or to appropriate to his own use the horse which belonged to Melbury's daughter. And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through the gorgeous autumn landscape of Whiteheart bale, surrounded by orchards lustrous with the reds of apple crops, berries, and foliage, the whole intensified by the gilding of the declining sun. The earth this year had been prodigly bountiful, and now was the supreme moment of her bounty. In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed with haws and blackberries, acorns cracked underfoot, and the burst husks of chestnuts lay exposing their auburn contents as if arranged by anxious sellers in a fruit market. In all this proud show some kernels were unsound as her own situation, and she wondered if there were one world in the universe where the fruit had no worm and marriage no sorrow. Her tanhouser still moved on, his plotting steed rendering him distinctly visible yet. Could she have heard Fitzpiae's voice at that moment she would have found him murmuring. Towards the lodestar of my one desire I flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the owlet light. But he was a silent spectacle to her now. Soon he rose out of the valley and skirted a high plateau of the chalk formation on his right, which rested abruptly upon the fruity district of Lomi Clay, the character and herbage of the two formations being so distinct that the calcareous upland appeared but as a deposit of a few years antiquity upon the level bail. He kept along the ridge of this high, unenclosed country, and the sky behind him being deep violet, she could still see white darling in relief upon it, a mere speck now, a Wooverman's eccentricity reduced to microscopic dimensions. Upon this high ground he gradually disappeared. Thus she had beheld the pet animal purchased for her own use in pure love of her by one who had always been true, impressed to convey her husband away from her to the side of a new found idol. While she was musing on the vicissitudes of horses and wives, she discerned shapes moving up the valley towards her quite near at hand, though till now hidden by the hedges. Surely they were Giles winter-born with his two horses and cider apparatus, conducted by Robert Cretel. Up upward they crept, a stray beam of the sun alighting now and then, like a star on the blades of the pommies' shovels, which had been converted to steel mirrors by the action of the malloc acid. She opened the gate when he came close, and the panting horses rested as they achieved the ascent. How do you do, Giles? said she, under a sudden impulse to be familiar with him. He replied with much more reserve. You are going for a walk, Mrs. Fitzpiae? He added. It is pleasant just now. No, I am returning, said she. The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and winter-born walked by her side in the rear of the apple mill. He looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt to weak color, his eyes blue as cornflowers, his boots and leggings dyed with fruit stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that atmosphere of cider, which at its first return each season, has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards. Her heart rose from its late sadness like a released spring. Her senses reveled in the sudden lapse back to nature unadorned. The consciousness of having to be genteel because of her husband's profession, the veneer of artificiality which she had acquired at the fashionable schools, were thrown off, and she became the crude country girl of her latent earliest instincts. Nature was bountiful, she thought. No sooner had she been starved off by Edgar Fitzpiae than another being impersonating bare and undiluted manliness had arisen out of the earth ready to hand. This was an excursion of the imagination which she did not encourage, and she said suddenly to disguise the confused regard which had followed her thoughts, did you meet my husband? Winter-born with some hesitation, yes. Where did you meet him? At Calfay Cross. I came from Middleton Abbey. I have been making there for the last week. Haven't they a mill of their own? Yes, but it's out of repair. I think I heard that Mrs. Charmond had gone there to stay. Yes, I have seen her at the windows once or twice. Grace waited an interval before she went on. Did Mr. Fitzpiae take the way to Middleton? Yes, I met him on Darling. As she did not reply, he added with gentler inflection. You know why the mare was called that? Oh, yes, of course, she answered quickly. They had risen so far over the crust of the hill that the whole west sky was revealed. Between the broken clouds they could see far into the recesses of heaven, the eye journeying on under a species of golden arcades, and past fiery obstructions, fancied cairns, logan stones, stalactites, and stalagmite of topaz. Deeper than this, their gaze passed thin flakes of incandescence, till it plunged into a bottomless medium of soft green fire. Her abandonment to the luscious time after her sense of ill usage, her revolt for the nonce against social law, her passionate desire for primitive life, may have showed in her face. Winterborne was looking at her, his eyes lingering on a flower that she wore in her bosom. Almost with the abstraction of a somnambulist, he reached out his hand and gently caressed the flower. She drew back. What are you doing, Giles Winterborne? She exclaimed with a look of severe surprise. The evident absence of all premeditation from the act, however, speedily led her to think that it was not necessary to stand upon her dignity here and now. You must bear in mind, Giles, she said kindly, that we are not as we were, and some people might have said that what you did was taking a liberty. It was more than she need have told him, his action of forgetfulness had made him so angry with himself that he flushed through his tan. I don't know what I am coming to, he exclaimed savagely. Ah, I was not once like this. Tears of vexation were in his eyes. No, now it was nothing. I was too reproachful. It would not have occurred to me if I had not seen something like it done elsewhere at Middleton lately, he said thoughtfully after a while. By whom? Don't ask it. She scanned him narrowly. I know quite well enough, she returned indifferently. It was by my husband and the woman was Mrs. Charmon. Association of ideas reminded you when you saw me. Giles, tell me all you know about that. Please do, Giles. But no, I won't hear it. Let the subject seize. And as you are my friend, say nothing to my father. They reached a place where their ways divided. Winterborne continued along the highway, which kept outside the coves, and Grace opened a gate that entered it. End of Chapter 28 Chapter 29 of The Woodlanders All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy Chapter 29 She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand by nut bushes, just now heavy with clusters of twos and threes and fours. A little way on, the track she pursued was crossed by a similar one at right angles. Here Grace stopped. Some few yards up the transverse ride, the buxom's souk damson was visible. Her gown tucked up high through her pocket hole, and no bonnet on her head. In the act of pulling down bows, from which she was gathering and eating nuts with great rapidity, her lover Tim Tangs, standing near her, engaged in the same pleasant meal. Crack, crack went souk's jaws every second or two. By an automatic chain of thought, Grace's mind reverted to the tooth drawing scene described by her husband. And for the first time, she wondered if that narrative were really true. Susan's jaws being so obviously sound and strong. Grace turned up towards the nut gatherers and conquered her reluctance to speak to the girl who was a little in advance of Tim. Good evening, Susan, she said. Good evening, Miss Melbury, crack. Mrs. Fitzpiae. Oh, yes, ma'am, Mrs. Fitzpiae, said souk with a peculiar smile. Grace, not to be daunted, continued. Take care of your teeth, souk, that accounts for the toothache. I don't know what an ache is, either in tooth, ear, or head, thank the Lord, crack. Nor the loss of one, either. See for yourself, ma'am, she parted her red lips and exhibited a whole double row, full up and unimpaired. You've never had one drawn? Never. So much the better for your stomach, said Mrs. Fitzpiae in an altered voice, and turning away quickly she went on. As her husband's character thus shaped itself under the touch of time, Grace was almost startled to find how little she suffered from that jealous excitement, which is conventionally attributed to all wives in such circumstances. But though possessed by nothing of that feline wildness, which it was her moral duty to experience, she did not fail to know that she had made a frightful mistake in her marriage. Acquiescence in her father's wishes had been degradation to herself. People were not given premonitions for nothing. She should have obeyed her impulse on that early morning, and steadfastly refused her hand. Oh, that plausible tale which her then betrothed had told her about souk, the dramatic account of her entreaties to him to draw the aching enemy, and the fine artistic touch he had given to the story by explaining that it was a lovely molar without a flaw. She traced the remainder of the woodland track, dazed by the complications of her position. If his protestations to her before their marriage could be believed, her husband had felt affection of some sort for herself and this woman simultaneously, and was now again spreading the same emotion over Mrs. Charmon and herself conjointly. His manner being still kind and fond at times. But surely, rather than that, he must have played the hypocrite towards her in each case with elaborate completeness, and the thought of this sickened her, for it involved the conjecture that if he had not loved her, his only motive for making her his wife must have been her little fortune. Yet here Grace made a mistake, for the love of men like Fitzpie is unquestionably of such quality as to bear division and transference. He had indeed once declared, though not to her, that on one occasion he had noticed himself to be possessed by five distinct infatuations at the same time. Therein it differed from the highest affection, as the lower orders of the animal world differ from advanced organisms, partition causing not death, but a multiplied existence. He had loved her sincerely, and had by no means ceased to love her now. But such double and treble-barreled hearts were naturally beyond her conception. Of poor Suke Damson, Grace thought no more. She had had her day. If he does not love me, I will not love him, said Grace proudly, and though these were mere words, it was a somewhat formidable thing for Fitzpie that her heart was approximating to a state in which it might be possible to carry them out. That very absence of hot jealousy, which made his courses so easy, and on which indeed he congratulated himself, meant, unknown to either wife or husband, more mischief than the inconvenient watchfulness of a jaundiced eye. Her sleep that night was nervous. The wing allotted to her and her husband had never seemed so lonely. At last she got up, put on her dressing gown, and went downstairs. Her father, who slept lightly, heard her descend, and came to the stair-head. Is that you, Grace? What's the matter? he said. Nothing more than that I am restless. Edgar is detained by a case at Owl's Comb in Whiteheart Vale. But how's that? I saw the woman's husband at Great Hintock just before bedtime, and she was going on well, and the doctor gone then. Then he's detained somewhere else, said Grace. Never mind me, he will soon be home. I expect him about one. She went back to her room and dozed and woke several times. One o'clock had been the hour of his return on the last occasion, but it passed now by a long way, and Fitzpie did not come. Just before dawn she heard the men stirring in the yard, and the flashes of their lanterns spread every now and then through her window-blind. She remembered that her father had told her not to be disturbed if she noticed them, as they would be rising early to send off four loads of hurdles to a distant sheep fair. Peeping out, she saw them bustling about. The hollow-turner among the rest, he was loading his wares, wooden bowls, dishes, spigots, spoons, cheese vats, funnels, and so on. Upon one of her father's wagons, who carried them to the fair for him every year out of neighborly kindness. The scene and the occasion would have enlivened her, but that her husband was still absent, though it was now five o'clock. She could hardly suppose him, whatever his infatuation, to have prolonged to a later hour than ten an ostensibly professional call on Mrs. Charmon at Middleton, and he could have ridden home in two hours and a half. What then had become of him? That he had been out the greater part of the two preceding nights added to her uneasiness. She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird twilight of advancing day, chilling the rays from the lanterns, and making the men's faces wan. As soon as Melbury saw her, he came round, showing his alarm. Edgar is not come, she said, and I have reason to know that he's not attending anybody. He has had no rest for two nights before this. I was going to the top of the hill to look for him. I'll come with you, said Melbury. She begged him not to hinder himself, but he insisted, for he saw a peculiar and rigid gloom in her face over and above her uneasiness, and did not like the look of it, telling the men he would be with them again soon, he walked beside her into the Turnpike Road, and partly up the hill once she had watched Fitzpie the night before across the great White Heart or Blackmore Valley. They halted beneath a half-dead oak, hollow, and disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading out like exipatrine claws grasping the ground. A chilly wind circled around them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime tree, supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the boughs downward like fledglings from their nest. The veil was wrapped in a dim atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtain edged with pink. There was no sign nor sound of Fitzpie. It's no use standing here, said her father. He may come home fifty ways. Why, look here! Here be Darling's tracks, turned homeward, and nearly blown dry and hard. He must have come in hours ago without your seeing him. He has not done that, said she. They went back hastily. On entering their own gates, they perceived that the men had left the wagons, and were standing round the door of the stable, which had been appropriated to the doctor's use. Is there anything the matter? cried Grace. Oh no, ma'am, all's well that ends well, said old Timothy Tangs. I've heard of such things before, among work folk, though not among your gentle people, that's true. They entered the stable, and saw the pale shape of Darling standing in the middle of her stall, with Fitzpie on her back, sound asleep. Darling was munching hay as well as she could with the bit in her mouth, and the reins which had fallen from Fitzpie's hand hung upon her neck. Grace went and touched his hand, shook it before she could arouse him. He moved, started, opened his eyes, and exclaimed, Ah, Felice! Oh, it's Grace. I could not see in the gloom. What, am I in the saddle? Yes, said she. How do you come here? He collected his thoughts, and in a few minutes stammered. I was riding along homeward through the veil, very, very sleepy, having been up so much of late. When I came opposite Holy Well Spring, the mare turned her head that way, as if she wanted to drink. I let her go in, and she drank. I thought she would never finish. While she was drinking, the clock of Alskum Church struck twelve. I distinctly remember counting the strokes. From that moment I positively recollect nothing until I saw you here by my side. The name, if it had been any other horse, he'd have had a broken neck, murmured Melbury. Tis wonderful sure how a quiet husk will bring a man home at such times, said John Upjohn. And what's more wonderful than keeping your seat in a deep slumbering sleep? I've known men drows off walking home from Randy's, where the mead and other liquors have gone round Well, and keep walking for more than a mile on end without waking. Well, doctor, I don't care who the man is, tis a mercy you weren't a-drounded or a-splintered, or a hanged up to a tree like Absalom, also a handsome gentleman like yourself, as the prophets say. True, murmured old Timothy, from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. Or, at least wise, you might have been around it into tatters almost, and no doctor to join your few limbs together within seven mile. While this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpia had dismounted, and taking Grace's arm walked stiffly indoors with her. Melbury stood staring at the horse, which, in addition to being very weary, was spattered with mud. There was no mud to speak of about the Hintox just now, only in the clammy hollows of the veil beyond Owl's comb, the stiff soil of which retained moisture for weeks after the uplands were dry. While they were rubbing down the mare, Melbury's mind coupled with the foreign quality of the mud, the name he had heard unconsciously muttered by the surgeon when Grace took his hand, Feliz. Who was Feliz? Why, Mrs. Charmon, and she, as he knew, was staying at Middleton. Melbury had, indeed, pounced upon the image that filled Fitzpia's half-awakened soul, wherein there had been a picture of a recent interview on Alon with a capriciously passionate woman who had begged him not to come again in tones whose vibration incited him to disobey. What are you doing here? Why do you pursue me? Another belongs to you. If they were to see you, they would seize you as a thief. And she had turbulently admitted to his ringing questions that her visit to Middleton had been undertaken less because of the invalid relative than in shame-faced fear of her own weakness if she remained near his home. A triumph then it was to Fitzpia, poor and hampered as he had become, to recognize his real conquest of this beauty delayed so many years. His was the selfish passion of Congraves Millamond to whom love supreme delight lay in that heart which others bleed for, bleed for me. When the horse had been attended to, Melbury stood uneasily here and there about his premises. He was rudely disturbed in the comfortable views which had lately possessed him on his domestic concerns. It is true that he had for some days discerned that Grace Moore and Moore sought his company, preferred supervising his kitchen and bake house with her stepmother, to occupying herself with the lighter details of her own apartments. She seemed no longer able to find in her own hearth an adequate focus for her life, and hence, like a weak queen bee, after leading off to an independent home, had hovered again into the parent hive. But he had not construed these and other incidents of the kind till now. Something was wrong in the dove-coat, a ghastly sense that he alone would be responsible for whatever unhappiness should be brought upon her for whom he almost solely lived, whom to retain under his roof he had faced the numerous inconveniences involved in giving up the best part of his house to Fitzpia. There was no room for doubt that, had he allowed events to take their natural course, she would have accepted Winterborne and realized his old dream of restitution to that young man's family. That Fitzpia could allow himself to look on any other creature for a moment than Grace, filled Melbury with grief and astonishment. In the pure and simple life he had led, it had scarcely occurred to him that after marriage a man might be faithless, that he could sweep to the heights of Mrs. Charmon's position, lift the veil of Isis, so to speak, would have amazed Melbury by its audacity if he had not suspected encouragement from that quarter. What could he and his simple Grace do to countervail the passions of such as those two sophisticated beings, first in the world's ways, armed with every apparatus for victory? In such an encounter the homely timber dealer felt as inferior as a bow and arrow savage before the precise weapons of modern warfare. Grace came out of the house as the morning drew on. The village was silent, most of the folk having gone to the fair. Fitzpia had retired to bed and was sleeping off his fatigue. She went to the stable and looked at poor darling, in all probability Giles Winterborn, by obtaining for her a horse of such intelligence and docility, had been the means of saving her husband's life. She paused over the strange thought, and then there appeared her father behind her. She saw that he knew things were not as they ought to be from the troubled dullness of his eye and from his face, different points of which had independent motions, twitchings, and tremblings, unknown to himself and involuntary. He was detained, I suppose, last night, said Melbury. Oh, yes, a bad case in the veil, she replied calmly. Nevertheless he should have stayed at home. But he couldn't, father. Her father turned away. He could hardly bear to see his Willam truthful girl brought to the humiliation of having to talk like that. That night, carking care sat beside Melbury's pillow and his stiff limbs tossed at its presence. I can't lie here any longer, he muttered. Striking a light, he wandered about the room. What have I done? What have I done for her? he said to his wife, who had anxiously awakened. I had long planned that she should marry the son of the man I wanted to make amends to. Do ye not mind how I told you all about it, Lucy, the night before she came home? Ah, but I was not content with doing right. I wanted to do more. Don't raft yourself without good need, George, she replied. I won't quite believe that things are so much amiss. I won't believe that Mrs. Charmon has encouraged him, even supposing that she has encouraged a great many. She can have no motive to do it now. What's so likely is that she is not yet quite well, and doesn't care to let another doctor come near her. He did not heed. Race used to be so busy every day with fixing a curtain here and driving a tin-tack there. But she cares for no employment now. Do you know anything of Mrs. Charmon's past history? Perhaps that would throw some light upon things. Before she came here as the wife of old Charmon four or five years ago, not a soul seems to have heard odd of her. Why not make inquiries, and then do ye wait and see more? There'll be plenty of opportunity, time enough to cry when you know Tiz a crying matter, and Tiz bad to meet troubles halfway. There was some good sense in the notion of seeing further. Melbury resolved to inquire and wait, hoping still, but oppressed between wiles with much fear. CHAPTER XXXXX. Examine Grace as her father might, she would admit nothing. For the present, therefore, he simply watched. The suspicion that his darling child was being slighted brought almost a miraculous change in Melbury's nature. No man so furtive for the time as the ingenuous countryman who finds that his ingenuousness has been abused. Melbury's here to four confidential candor towards his gentlemanly son-in-law was displaced by a feline stealth that did injury to his every action, thought, and mood. He knew that a woman once given to a man for life took as a rule her lot as it came, and made the best of it without external interference. But for the first time he asked himself why this so generally should be so. Moreover, this case was not, he argued, like ordinary cases. Leaving out the question of Grace being anything but an ordinary woman, her peculiar situation as it were in mid-air between two planes of society, together with the loneliness of Hintock, made a husband's neglect a far more tragical matter to her than it would be to one who had a large circle of friends to fall back upon. Wisely or unwisely, and whatever other fathers did, he resolved to fight his daughter's battle still. Mrs. Charmone had returned, but Hintock house scarcely gave forth signs of life, so quietly had she re-entered it. He went to church at great Hintock one afternoon as usual, there being no service at the smaller village. A few minutes before his departure, he had casually heard Fitzpiae, who was no churchgoer, tell his wife that he was going to walk in the wood. Melbury entered the building and sat down in his pew. The parson came in, then Mrs. Charmone, then Mr. Fitzpiae. The service proceeded, and the jealous father was quite sure that a mutual consciousness was uninterruptedly maintained between those two. He fancied that more than once their eyes met. At the end, Fitzpiae so timed his movement into the aisle that it exactly coincided with Felice Charmone's from the opposite side, and they walked out with their garments in contact, the surgeon being just that two or three inches in her rear which made it convenient for his eyes to rest upon her cheek. The cheek warmed up to a richer tone. This was a worse feature in the flirtation than he had expected. If she had been playing with him in an idle freak, the game might soon have wearied her. But the smallest germ of passion, and women of the world do not change color for nothing, was a threatening development. The mere presence of Fitzpiae in the building after his statement was well nigh conclusive as far as he was concerned. But Melbury resolved yet to watch. He had to wait long. Autumn drew shiveringly to its end. One day something seemed to be gone from the gardens. The tenderer leaves of vegetables had shrunk under the first smart frost and hung like faded linen rags. Then the forest leaves which had been descending at leisure descended in haste and in multitudes, and all the golden colors that had hung overhead were now crowded together in a degraded mass underfoot where the fallen myriads got redder and hornier and curled themselves up to rot. The only suspicious features in Mrs. Charmone's existence at this season were two. The first that she lived with no companion or relative about her, which considering her age and attractions, was somewhat unusual conduct for a young widow in a lonely country house. The other that she did not as in previous years start from Hintock to Winter Abroad. In Fitzpiae the only change from his last Autumn's habits lay in his abandonment of night study, his lamp never shown from his new dwelling as from his old. If the suspected ones met, it was by such a droid contrivances that even Melbury's vigilance could not encounter them together. A simple call at her house by the doctor had nothing irregular about it, and that he had paid two or three such calls was certain. What had passed at those interviews was known only to the parties themselves, but that Felice Charmone was under someone's influence Melbury soon had opportunity of perceiving. Winter had come on. Owls began to be noisy in the mornings and evenings, and flocks of wood pigeons made themselves prominent again. One day in February, about six months after the marriage of Fitzpiae, Melbury was returning from great Hintock on foot through the lane when he saw before him the surgeon also walking. Melbury would have overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiae turned in through a gate to one of the rambling drives along the trees at this side of the wood which led to nowhere in particular and the beauty of those serpentine curves was the only justification of their existence. Felice almost simultaneously trotted down the lane towards the timber dealer in a little basket carriage which she sometimes drove about the estate unaccompanied by a servant. She turned in at the same place without having seen either Melbury or apparently Fitzpiae. Melbury was soon at the spot despite his aches and his sixty years. Mrs. Charmon had come up with the doctor who was standing immediately behind the carriage. She had turned to him, her arm being thrown carelessly over the back of the seat. They looked in each other's faces without uttering a word, an arch yet gloomy smile reading her lips. Fitzpiae clasped her hanging hand and while she still remained in the same listless attitude looking volumes into his eyes, he stealthily unbuttoned her glove and stripped her hand of it by rolling back the gauntlet over the fingers so that it came off inside out. He then raised her hand to his mouth, she still reclining passively, watching him as she might have watched a fly upon her dress. At last she said, well, sir, what excuse for this disobedience? I make none. Then go your way and let me go mine. She snatched away her hand, touched the pony with the whip, and left him standing there holding the reversed glove. Melbury's first impulse was to reveal his presence to Fitzpiae and upbraid him bitterly, but a moment's thought was sufficient to show him the futility of any such simple proceeding. There was not, after all, so much in what he had witnessed as in what that scene might be the surface and froth of, probably a state of mind on which censure operates as an aggravation rather than as a cure. Moreover, he said to himself that the point of attack should be the woman if either. He therefore kept out of sight and musing sadly even tearfully, for he was meek as a child in matters concerning his daughter, continued his way towards Hintock. The insight which is bread of deep sympathy was never more finely exemplified than in this instance. Through her guarded manner, her dignified speech, her placid countenance, he discerned the interior of Grace's life only too truly, hidden as were its incidents from every outer eye. These incidents had become painfully not. Fitzpiae had latterly developed an irritable discontent which vented itself in monologues when Grace was present to hear them. The early morning of this day had been dull after a night of wind, and on looking out of the window, Fitzpiae had observed some of Melbury's men dragging away a large limb which had been snapped off a beech tree. Everything was cold and colorless. My good heaven, he said as he stood in his dressing gown, this is life. He did not know whether Grace was awake or not, and he would not turn his head to ascertain. Ah, fool, he went on to himself, to clip your own wings when you were free to soar, but I could not rest till I had done it. Why do I never recognize an opportunity till I have missed it, nor the good or ill of a step till it is irrevocable? I fell in love, love indeed. Loves but the frailty of the mind when his knot with ambition joined, a sickly flame which, if not fed, expires, and feeding wastes in self-consuming fires. Ah, old author of the Way of the World, you knew, you knew. Grace moved. He thought she had heard some part of his soliloquy. He was sorry, though he had not taken any precaution to prevent her. He expected a scene at breakfast, but she only exhibited an extreme reserve. It was enough, however, to make him repent that he should have done anything to produce discomfort, for he attributed her manner entirely to what he had said. But Grace's manner had not its cause either in his sayings or in his doings. She had not heard a single word of his regrets, something even nearer home than her husband's blighted prospects, if blighted they were, was the origin of her mood, a mood that was the mere continuation of what her father had noticed when he would have preferred a passionate jealousy in her as the more natural. She had made a discovery, one which to a girl of honest nature was almost appalling. She had looked into her heart and found that her early interest in Giles Winterborne had become revitalized into luxuriant growth by her widening perceptions of what was great and little in life. His homeliness no longer offended her acquired tastes. His comparative want of so-called culture did not now jar on her intellect. His country dress even pleased her eye. His exterior roughness fascinated her. Having discovered by marriage how much that was humanly not great could co-insist with attainments of an exceptional order, there was a revulsion in her sentiments from all that she had formerly clung to in this kind. Honesty, goodness, manliness, tenderness, devotion for her only existed in their purity now in the breasts of unvarnished men, and here was one who had manifested them towards her from his youth up. There was further that never ceasing pity in her soul for Giles as a man whom she had wronged, a man who had been unfortunate in his worldly transactions, while not without a touch of sublimity he had like Horatio born himself throughout his skating as one in suffering all that suffers nothing. It was these perceptions and no subtle catching of her husband's murmurs that had bred the abstraction visible in her. When her father approached the house after witnessing the interview between Fitzpia and Mrs. Charmon, Grace was looking out of her sitting-room window as if she had nothing to do or think of or care for. He stood still. Ah, Grace, he said regarding her fixedly. Yes, father, she murmured. Waiting for your dear husband, he inquired, speaking with the sarcasm of pitiful affection. Oh, no, not especially. He has a great many patience to see this afternoon. Melbury came quite close. Grace, what's the use of talking like that when you know, here, come down and walk with me out in the garden, child? He unfastened the door in the ivy-laced wall and waited. This apparent indifference alarmed him. He would far rather that she had rushed in all the fire of jealousy to Hintock House, regardless of conventionality, confronted and attacked Fully Charmon un Guibis et Rostro, and accused her even in exaggerated shape of stealing away her husband. Such a storm might have cleared the air. She emerged in a minute or two and they went inside together. You know as well as I do, he resumed, that there is something threatening mischief to your life, and yet you pretend you do not. Do you suppose I don't see the trouble in your face every day? I am very sure that this quietude is wrong conducting you. You should look more into matters. I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to action. Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions. Did she not feel jealous? Was she not indignant? But a natural delicacy restrained him. You are very tame and let alone I am bound to say, he remarked pointedly. I am what I feel, Father, she repeated. He glanced at her and there returned upon his mind the scene of her offering to wed Winterborn instead of Fitzpiae in the last days before her marriage, and he asked himself if it could be the fact that she loved Winterborn now that she had lost him more than she had ever done when she was comparatively free to choose him. What would you have me do? she asked in a low voice. He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical matter before them. I would have you go to Mrs. Charmon, he said. Go to Mrs. Charmon, what for? said she. Well, if I must speak plain, dear Grace, to ask her, appeal to her in the name of your common womanhood and your many-like sentiments on things, not to make unhappiness between you and your husband, it lies with her entirely to do one or the other, that I can see. Grace's face had heeded at her father's words, and the very rustle of her skirts upon the box edging bespoke hot to her. I shall not think of going to her father, of course I could not, she answered. Why, don't you want to be happier than you be at present? said Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself. I don't wish to be more humiliated. If I have anything to bear, I can bear it in silence. But, my dear maid, you are too young. You don't know what the present state of things may lead to. Just see the harm done already. Your husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a larger practice if it had not been for this. Although it has gone such a little way, it is poisoning your future even now. Mrs. Charmon is thoughtlessly bad, not bad by calculation, and just a word to her now might save you a peck of woes. Ah, I loved her once, said Grace with a broken articulation, and she would not care for me then. Now I no longer love her. Let her do her worst, I don't care. You ought to care. You have got into a very good position to start with. You have been well educated, well tended, and you have become the wife of a professional man of unusually good family. Surely you ought to make the best of your position. I don't see that I ought. I wish I had never got into it. I wish you had never, never thought of educating me. I wish I worked in the woods like Marty South. I hate gentile life, and I want to be no better than she. Why? said her amazed father. Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and troubles. I say again, I wish you had never sent me to those fashionable schools you set your mind on. It all arose out of that, father. If I had stayed at home, I should have married. She closed up her mouth suddenly and was silent, and he saw that she was not far from crying. Melbury was much grieved. What, and you would like to have grown up as we be here in Hintock, knowing no more, and with no more chance of seeing good life than we have here? Yes, I have never got any happiness outside Hintock that I know of, and I have suffered many a heartache at being sent away. Oh, the misery of those January days when I had got back to school, and left you all here in the woods so happy. I used to wonder why I had to bear it, and I was always a little despised by the other girls at school, because they knew where I came from, and that my parents were not in so good a station as theirs. Her poor father was much hurt at what he thought her ingratitude and intractability. He had admitted to himself bitterly enough that he should have let young hearts have their way, or rather should have helped on her affection for Winterborne and given her to him according to his original plan. But he was not prepared for her deprecation of those attainments whose completion had been a labor of years and a severe tax upon his purse. Very well, he said, with much heaviness of spirit. If you don't like to go to her, I don't wish to force you. And so the question remained for him still. How should he remedy this perilous state of things? For days he sat in a moody attitude over the fire, a pitcher of cider standing on the hearth beside him, and his drinking-horn inverted upon the top of it. He spent a week and more thus composing a letter to the chief offender, which he would every now and then attempt to complete, and suddenly crumple up in his hand. CHAPTER 31 As February merged in March and lighter evenings broke the gloom of the woodman's homeward journey, the Hintox great and little began to have ears for a rumour of the events out of which had grown the timber dealer's troubles. It took the form of a wide sprinkling of conjecture wherein no man knew the exact truth. Tentalizing phenomena, at once showing and concealing the real relationship of the person's concern, caused the diffusion of excited surprise. Honest people, as the woodlanders were, it was hardly to be expected that they could remain immersed in the study of their trees and gardens, amid such circumstances, or sit with their backs turned like the good birds of Coventry at the passage of the beautiful lady. Rumour, for a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in this case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the hills, which, with individual variations, made a mourner of Ariadne, a byword of Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy. There were encounters accidental and contrived, stealthy correspondence, certain misgivings on one side, certain self-reproaches on the other. The inner state of the twain was one as of confused noise that would not allow the extents of calmer reason to be heard. Determinations to go in this direction, and headlong plungers in that, dignified safeguards, undignified collapses, not a single rash step by deliberate intention, and all against judgment. It was all that Melbury had expected and feared. It was more, for he had overlooked the publicity that would be likely to result as it now had done. What should he do? Appeal to Mrs. Charmond himself, since Grace would not? He bethought himself of winter-born, and resolved to consult him, feeling the strong need of some friend of his own sex to whom he might unburden his mind. He had entirely lost faith in his own judgment. That judgment on which he had relied for so many years seemed recently, like a false companion unmasked, to have disclosed unexpected depth of hypocrisy and speciousness where all had seemed solidity. He felt almost afraid to form a conjecture on the weather, or the time, or the fruit promise, so great was his self-abasement. It was a rhymy evening when he set out to look for tires. The woods seemed to be in a cold sweat. Beads of perspiration hung from every bare twig. The sky had no color, and the trees rose before him as haggard, gray phantoms, whose days of substantiality were passed. Melbury seldom saw winter-born now, but he believed him to be occupying a lonely hut just beyond the boundary of Mrs. Charmond's estate, though still within the circuit of the woodland. The timber merchants, thin legs, talked on through the pale, damp scenery, his eyes on the dead leaves of last year. While every now and then a hasty eye escaped his lips in reply to some bitter proposition. His notice was attracted by a thin blue haze of smoke, behind which a rose sounds of voices and chopping. Bending his steps that way, he saw winter-born just in front of him. It just now happened that Giles, after being for a long time apathetic and unemployed, had become one of the busiest men in the neighborhood. It is often thus, fallen friends, lost sight of, we expect to find starving. We discover them going on fairly well. Without any solicitation or desire for profit on his part, he had been asked to execute during that winter a very large order for hurdles and other cobswear, for which purpose he had been obliged to buy several acres of brushwood standing. He was now engaged in the cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work daily like an automaton. The hazel tree did not belay its name today. The hole of the cobswood where the mist had cleared, returned purest tints of that hue, amid which winter-born himself was in the act of making a hurdle, the stakes being driven firmly into the ground in a row, over which he bent and moved the twigs. Beside him was a square, compact pile like the altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already finished, which bristled on all sides with the sharp points of their stakes. At a little distance, the men in his employ were assisting him to carry out his contract. Rows of cobswood lay on the ground as it had fallen under the axe, and a shelter had been constructed near at hand, in front of which burned the fire whose smoke had attracted him. The air was so dank that the smoke hung heavy and crept away amid the bushes without rising from the ground. After wistfully regarding winter-born a while, Melbury drew nearer and briefly inquired of Giles how he came to be so busily engaged with an undertone of slight surprise that winter-born could seem so thriving after being deprived of grace. Melbury was not without emotion at the meeting, for Grace's affairs had divided them and ended their intimacy of old times. Winter-born explained just as briefly, without raising his eyes from his occupation of chopping a bow that he held in front of him. It will be up in April before you get it all cleared, said Melbury. Yes, there are thereabouts, said Winter-born, a chop of the bill hook jerking the last word into two pieces. There was another interval. Melbury still looked on, a chip from Winter-born's hook occasionally flying against the waistcoat and legs of his visitor, who took no heed. Ah, Giles, you should have been my partner. You should have been my son-in-law, the old man said at last. It would have been far better for her and for me. Winter-born saw that something had gone wrong with his former friend, and, throwing down the switch he was about to interweave, he responded only too readily to the mood of the timber dealer. Is she ill? he said hurriedly. No, no. Melbury stood without speaking for some minutes, and then, as though he could not bring himself to proceed, turned to go away. Winter-born told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night and walked after Melbury. Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir, he said, especially since we don't stand as we used to stand to one another. But I hope it is well with them all over your way. No, said Melbury. No. He stopped, and struck the smooth trunk of a young ash tree with the flat of his hand. I would that his ear had been where that rend is, he exclaimed. I should have treated him too little compared with what he deserves. Now, said Winter-born, don't be in a hurry to go home. I've put some cider down to warm in my shelter here, and will sit and drink it and talk this over. Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and they went back to where the fire was, and sat down under the screen, the other woodman having gone. He drew out the cider mug from the ashes, and they drank together. Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now, repeated Melbury. I'll tell you why for the first time. He thereupon told Winter-born, as with great relief, the story of how he won away Giles' father's chosen one, by nothing worse than a lover's catereries, it is true, but by means which, except in love, would certainly have been pronounced cruel and unfair. He explained how he had always intended to make reparation to Winter-born the father, by giving grace to Winter-born the son, till the devil tempted him in the person of Fitzpiers, and he broke his virtuous vow. How highly I thought of that man to be sure! Who'd have supposed he'd have been so weak and wrong-headed as this? You ought to have had her, Giles, and there's an end on it. Winter-born knew how to preserve his calm under this unconsciously cruel tearing of a healing wound, to which Melbury's concentration on the more vital subject had blinded him. The young man endeavored to make the best of the case for grace's sake. She would hardly have been happy with me, he said, in the dry, an impassioned voice under which he hid his feelings. I was not well enough educated, too rough, in short. I couldn't have surrounded her with the refinements she looked for, anyhow, at all. Nonsense, you are quite wrong there, said the unwise old man, dodgedly. She told me only this day that she hates refinements and such like. All that might trouble and money bought for her in that way is thrown away upon a quiet. She'd faint be like Marty's self. Think of that. That's the top of her ambition. Perhaps she's right. Giles, she loved you, under the rind. And, what's more, she loves you still. Worse luck for the poor maid. If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up, he might have held his peace. Winterborne was silent a long time. The darkness had closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of the fog from the branches quickened as it turned to fine rain. Oh, she never cared much for me, Giles managed to say, as he stirred the ambush with a brand. She did, and does, I tell ya, said the other, obstinately. However, all that's vain talking now. What I come to ask you about is a more practical matter. How to make the best of things as they are. I am thinking of a desperate step. Of calling on the woman charmant. I am going to appeal to her, since Grace will not. Tis she who holds the balance in her hands, not he. While she's got the will to lead him astray, he will follow. Poor and practical, lofty notion dreamer. And how long she'll do it depends upon her whim. Did ye ever hear anything about her character before she came to Hintock? She's been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe, replied Giles, with the same level of quietude as he regarded the red-colds. One who has smiled where she has not loved, and loved where she has not married. Before Mr. Charmant made her his wife, she was a play actress. Hey, but how close you have kept all this, Giles. What, besides? Mr. Charmant was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the North, twenty or thirty years older than she. He married her and retired, and came down here and bought this property, as they do nowadays. Yes, yes, I know all about that. But the other I did not know. I fear it bodes no good. For how can I go and appeal to the forbearance of a woman in this matter, who has made cross-loves and crooked entanglements her trade for years? I thank you, Giles, for finding it out. But it makes my plan the harder that she should have belonged to that unstable tribe. Another pause and shoot. And they looked gloomily at the smoke that beat about the hurdles which sheltered them, through whose weaving the large drop of rain fell at intervals and sped smartly into the fire. Mrs. Charmant had been no friend to winter-born, but he was manny, and it was not in his heart to let her be condemned without a trial. She is said to be generous, he answered. You might not appeal to her in vain. It shall be done, said Melbury, rising. For good or for evil, to Mrs. Charmant I'll go. End of chapter. End of chapter. Recording by Nadine Kurt Boulet. Chapter 32 OF THE WOODLANDERS At nine o'clock the next morning Melbury dressed himself up in shining broadcloth, creased with folding and smelling of camphor, and started for Hintock House. He was the more impelled to go at once by the absence of his son-in-law in London for a few days, to attend, really or ostensibly, some professional meetings. He said nothing of his destination either to his wife or to Grace, fearing that they might entreat him to abandon so risky a project, and went out unobserved. He had chosen his time with a view, as he supposed, of conveniently catching Mrs. Charmant when she had just finished her breakfast, before any other business people should be about, if any came. Plotting thoughtfully onward he crossed a glade lying between little Hintock Woods and the plantation which abutted on the park, and the spot being open, he was discerned there by winter-born from the cops on the next hill, where he and his men were working. Knowing his mission, the younger man hastened down from the cops and managed to intercept the timber merchant. I have been thinking of this, sir, he said, and I am of opinion that it would be best to put off your visit for the present. But Melbury would not even stop to hear him, his mind was made up, the appeal was to be made, and winter-born stood and watched him sadly till he entered the second plantation and disappeared. Melbury rang at the tradesman's door of the Manor House, and was at once informed that the lady was not yet visible, as indeed he might have guessed had he been anybody but the man he was. Melbury said he would wait, whereupon the young man informed him in a neighborly way that, between themselves, she was in bed and asleep. Never mind, said Melbury, retreating into the court, all stand about here. Charged so fully with his mission, he shrank from contact with anybody. But he walked about the paved court till he was tired, and still nobody came to him. At last he entered the house and sat down in a small waiting-room, from which he got glimpses of the kitchen corridor and of the white-capped maids flitting jauntily hither and thither. They had heard of his arrival, but had not seen him enter, and, imagining him still in the court, discussed freely the possible reason of his calling. They marveled at his temerity, for though most of the tongues which had been let loose attributed the chief blameworthiness to Fitzpiers, these of her household preferred to regard their mistress as the deeper sinner. Melbury sat with his hands resting on the familiar knobbed thorn walking-stick, whose growing he had seen before he enjoyed its use. The scene to him was not the material environment of his person, but a tragic vision that traveled with him like an envelope. Through this vision, the incidents of the moment but gleamed confusedly here and there, as an outer landscape through the high-colored scenes of a stained window. He waited thus an hour, an hour and a half, two hours. He began to look pale and ill, whereupon the butler, who came in, asked him to have a glass of wine. Melbury roused himself and said, No, no. Is she almost ready? She is just finishing breakfast, said the butler. She will soon see you now. I am just going up to tell her you are here. What? Haven't you told her before? said Melbury. Oh, no, said the other. You see, you came so very early. At last the bell rang. Mrs. Charmond could see him. She was not in her private sitting-room when he reached it, but in a minute he heard her coming from the front star-case, and she entered where he stood. At this time of the morning Mrs. Charmond looked her full age and more. She might almost have been taken for the typical femme de trente ans, though she was really not more than seven or eight and twenty. There being no fire in the room, she came in with a shawl thrown loosely round her shoulders, and obviously without the least suspicion that Melbury had called upon any other errand than timber. Felice was indeed the only woman in the parish who had not heard the rumour of her own weaknesses. She was at this moment living in a fool's paradise in respect of that rumour, though not in respect of the weaknesses themselves which, if the truth be told, caused her grave misgivings. Do sit down, Mr. Melbury. You have felled all the trees that were to be purchased by you this season except the oaks, I believe. Yes, said Melbury. How very nice! It must be so charming to work in the woods just now. She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous person's affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of the perfect social machine. Hence her words, very nice, so charming, were uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them sound absurdly unreal. Yes, yes, said Melbury, in a reverie. He did not take a chair, and she also remained standing. Resting upon his stick, he began, Mrs. Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter, at least to me, than tree-throwing, and whatever mistakes I make in my manner of speaking upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set him down to my want of practice and not to my want of care. Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease. She might have begun to guess his meaning, but apart from that she had such dread of contact with anything painful, harsh, or even earnest, that his preliminaries alone were enough to distress her. Yes, what is it? she said. I am an old man, said Melbury, whom, somewhat late in life, God thought fit to bless with one child, and she a daughter. Her mother was a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us when the child was young, and the child became precious as the apple of my eye to me, for she was all I had left to love. For her sake entirely I married as second wife a homespun woman who had been kind as a mother to her. In due time the question of her education came on, and I said, I will educate the maid well if I live upon bread to do it. Of her possible marriage I could not bear to think, for it seemed like a death that she could cleave to another man and grow to think his house her home rather than mine. But I saw it was the law of nature that this should be, and that it was for the maid's happiness that she should have a home when I was gone, and I made up my mind without a murmur to help it on for her sake. In my youth I had wronged my dear friend, and to make amends I determined to give her my most precious possession to my friend's son, seeing that they liked each other well. Things came about which made me doubt if it would be for my daughter's happiness to do this, in as much as the young man was poor, and she was delicately reared. Another man came and paid court to her, won her equal in breeding and accomplishments. In every way it seemed to me that he only could give her the home which her training had made a necessity almost. I urged her on, and she married him. But, ma'am, a fatal mistake was at the root of my reckoning. I found that this well-born gentleman I had calculated on so surely was not staunch of heart, and that therein lie a danger of great sorrow for my daughter. Madam, he saw you, and you know the rest. I have come to make no demands, to utter no threats. I have come simply as a father in great grief about his only child, and I beseech you to deal kindly with my daughter, and to do nothing which can turn her husband's heart away from her for ever. Forbid him your presence, ma'am, and speak to him on his duty as one with your power over him well can do, and I am hopeful that the rent between them may be patched up, for it is not as if you would lose by so doing, your course is far higher than the courses of a simple professional man, and the gratitude you would win from me and mine by your kindness is more than I can say. Mrs. Charmad had first rushed into a mood of indignation on comprehending Melbury's story, hot and cold by turns, she had murmured, Leave me, leave me! But as he seemed to take no notice of this, his words began to influence her, and when he ceased speaking she said with hurried hot breath, What has led you to think this of me? Who says I have won your daughter's husband away from her? Some monstrous column news are afloat, of which I have known nothing until now! Melbury started, and looked at her simply. But surely, ma'am, you know the truth better than I. Her features became a little pinched, and the touches of powder on her handsome face for the first time showed themselves as an extrinsic film. Will you leave me to myself? she said, with a faintness which suggested a guilty conscience. This is so utterly unexpected. You obtain admission to my presence by misrepresentation, as God's in heaven, man, that's not true. I made no pretense, and I thought in reason you would know why I had come. This gossip, I have heard nothing of it. Tell me of it, I say. Tell you, ma'am. Not I. What the gossip is, no matter. What really is, you know. Set facts straight, and the scandal will right of itself. But pardon me, I speak roughly, and I came to speak gently, to coax you, beg you to be my daughter's friend. She loved you once, ma'am. You began by liking her, then you dropped her without a reason, and it hurt her warm heart more than I can tell ye. But you were within your right as the superior, no doubt. But if you would consider her position now, surely, surely you would do her no harm. Certainly I would do her no harm. I— Melbury's I met hers. It was curious, but the allusion to Grace's former love for her seemed to touch her more than all Melbury's other arguments. Oh, Melbury, she burst out, you have made me so unhappy. How could you come to me like this? It is too dreadful. Now go away! Go! Go! I will, he said, in a husky tone. As soon as he was out of the room she went to a corner and sat there and writhed under an emotion in which hurt pride and vexation mingled with better sentiments. Mrs. Charman's mobile spirit was subject to these fierce periods of stress and storm. She had never so clearly perceived till now that her soul was being slowly invaded by a delirium which had brought about all this, that she was losing judgment and dignity under it, becoming an animated impulse only, a passion incarnate. A fascination had led her on. It was as if she had been seized by a hand of velvet, and this was where she found herself, overshadowed with sudden night, as if a tornado had passed by. While she sat, or rather crouched, unhinged by the interview, lunchtime came, and then the early afternoon almost without her consciousness. Then a strange gentleman who says it is not necessary to give his name was suddenly announced. I cannot see him, whoever he may be. I am not at home to anybody. She heard no more of her visitor, and shortly after, in an attempt to recover some mental serenity by violent physical exercise, she put on her hat and cloak and went out of doors, taking a path which led her up the slopes to the nearest spur of the wood. She disliked the woods, but they had the advantage of being a place in which she could walk comparatively unobserved.