CHAPTER XI.
"'Tis a pity--a thousand pities!" her father kept saying next morningat breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom.
But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne's suit atthis stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored to promote--was,indeed, mechanically promoting at this moment? A crisis wasapproaching, mainly as a result of his contrivances, and it would haveto be met.
But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: since seeing whatan immense change her last twelve months of absence had produced in hisdaughter, after the heavy sum per annum that he had been spending forseveral years upon her education, he was reluctant to let her marryGiles Winterborne, indefinitely occupied as woodsman, cider-merchant,apple-farmer, and what not, even were she willing to marry him herself.
"She will be his wife if you don't upset her notion that she's bound toaccept him as an understood thing," said Mrs. Melbury. "Bless ye,she'll soon shake down here in Hintock, and be content with Giles's wayof living, which he'll improve with what money she'll have from you.'Tis the strangeness after her genteel life that makes her feeluncomfortable at first. Why, when I saw Hintock the first time Ithought I never could like it. But things gradually get familiar, andstone floors seem not so very cold and hard, and the hooting of theowls not so very dreadful, and loneliness not so very lonely, after awhile."
"Yes, I believe ye. That's just it. I KNOW Grace will gradually sinkdown to our level again, and catch our manners and way of speaking, andfeel a drowsy content in being Giles's wife. But I can't bear thethought of dragging down to that old level as promising a piece ofmaidenhood as ever lived--fit to ornament a palace wi'--that I've takenso much trouble to lift up. Fancy her white hands getting redder everyday, and her tongue losing its pretty up-country curl in talking, andher bounding walk becoming the regular Hintock shail and wamble!"
"She may shail, but she'll never wamble," replied his wife, decisively.
When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her lying in bed so late;not so much moved by a particular objection to that form of indulgenceas discomposed by these other reflections.
The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down. "You used tocomplain with justice when I was a girl," she said. "But I am a womannow, and can judge for myself....But it is not that; it is somethingelse!" Instead of sitting down she went outside the door.
He was sorry. The petulance that relatives show towards each other isin truth directed against that intangible Causality which has shapedthe situation no less for the offenders than the offended, but is tooelusive to be discerned and cornered by poor humanity in irritatedmood. Melbury followed her. She had rambled on to the paddock, wherethe white frost lay, and where starlings in flocks of twenties andthirties were walking about, watched by a comfortable family ofsparrows perched in a line along the string-course of the chimney,preening themselves in the rays of the sun.
"Come in to breakfast, my girl," he said. "And as to Giles, use yourown mind. Whatever pleases you will please me."
"I am promised to him, father; and I cannot help thinking that in honorI ought to marry him, whenever I do marry."
He had a strong suspicion that somewhere in the bottom of her heartthere pulsed an old simple indigenous feeling favorable to Giles,though it had become overlaid with implanted tastes. But he would notdistinctly express his views on the promise. "Very well," he said."But I hope I sha'n't lose you yet. Come in to breakfast. What didyou think of the inside of Hintock House the other day?"
"I liked it much."
"Different from friend Winterborne's?"
She said nothing; but he who knew her was aware that she meant by hersilence to reproach him with drawing cruel comparisons.
"Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come again--when, did you say?"
"She thought Tuesday, but would send the day before to let me know ifit suited her." And with this subject upon their lips they entered tobreakfast.
Tuesday came, but no message from Mrs. Charmond. Nor was there any onWednesday. In brief, a fortnight slipped by without a sign, and itlooked suspiciously as if Mrs. Charmond were not going further in thedirection of "taking up" Grace at present.
Her father reasoned thereon. Immediately after his daughter's twoindubitable successes with Mrs. Charmond--the interview in the wood anda visit to the House--she had attended Winterborne's party. No doubtthe out-and-out joviality of that gathering had made it a topic in theneighborhood, and that every one present as guests had been widelyspoken of--Grace, with her exceptional qualities, above all. What,then, so natural as that Mrs. Charmond should have heard the villagenews, and become quite disappointed in her expectations of Grace atfinding she kept such company?
Full of this post hoc argument, Mr. Melbury overlooked the infinitethrong of other possible reasons and unreasons for a woman changing hermind. For instance, while knowing that his Grace was attractive, hequite forgot that Mrs. Charmond had also great pretensions to beauty.In his simple estimate, an attractive woman attracted all around.
So it was settled in his mind that her sudden mingling with thevillagers at the unlucky Winterborne's was the cause of her mostgrievous loss, as he deemed it, in the direction of Hintock House.
"'Tis a thousand pities!" he would repeat to himself. "I am ruiningher for conscience' sake!"
It was one morning later on, while these things were agitating hismind, that, curiously enough, something darkened the window just asthey finished breakfast. Looking up, they saw Giles in person mountedon horseback, and straining his neck forward, as he had been doing forsome time, to catch their attention through the window. Grace had beenthe first to see him, and involuntarily exclaimed, "There he is--and anew horse!"
On their faces as they regarded Giles were written their suspendedthoughts and compound feelings concerning him, could he have read themthrough those old panes. But he saw nothing: his features just nowwere, for a wonder, lit up with a red smile at some other idea. Sothey rose from breakfast and went to the door, Grace with an anxious,wistful manner, her father in a reverie, Mrs. Melbury placid andinquiring. "We have come out to look at your horse," she said.
It could be seen that he was pleased at their attention, and explainedthat he had ridden a mile or two to try the animal's paces. "I boughther," he added, with warmth so severely repressed as to seemindifference, "because she has been used to carry a lady."
Still Mr. Melbury did not brighten. Mrs. Melbury said, "And is shequiet?"
Winterborne assured her that there was no doubt of it. "I took care ofthat. She's five-and-twenty, and very clever for her age."
"Well, get off and come in," said Melbury, brusquely; and Gilesdismounted accordingly.
This event was the concrete result of Winterborne's thoughts during thepast week or two. The want of success with his evening party he hadaccepted in as philosophic a mood as he was capable of; but there hadbeen enthusiasm enough left in him one day at Sherton Abbas market topurchase this old mare, which had belonged to a neighboring parson withseveral daughters, and was offered him to carry either a gentleman or alady, and to do odd jobs of carting and agriculture at a pinch. Thisobliging quadruped seemed to furnish Giles with a means of reinstatinghimself in Melbury's good opinion as a man of considerateness bythrowing out future possibilities to Grace.
The latter looked at him with intensified interest this morning, in themood which is altogether peculiar to woman's nature, and which, whenreduced into plain words, seems as impossible as the penetrability ofmatter--that of entertaining a tender pity for the object of her ownunnecessary coldness. The imperturbable poise which marked Winterbornein general was enlivened now by a freshness and animation that set abrightness in his eye and on his cheek. Mrs. Melbury asked him to havesome breakfast, and he pleasurably replied that he would join them,with his usual lack of tactical observation, not perceiving that theyhad all finished the meal, that the hour was inconveniently late, andthat the note piped by the kettle denote
d it to be nearly empty; sothat fresh water had to be brought in, trouble taken to make it boil,and a general renovation of the table carried out. Neither did heknow, so full was he of his tender ulterior object in buying thathorse, how many cups of tea he was gulping down one after another, norhow the morning was slipping, nor how he was keeping the family fromdispersing about their duties.
Then he told throughout the humorous story of the horse's purchase,looking particularly grim at some fixed object in the room, a way healways looked when he narrated anything that amused him. While hewas still thinking of the scene he had described, Grace rose andsaid, "I have to go and help my mother now, Mr. Winterborne."
"H'm!" he ejaculated, turning his eyes suddenly upon her.
She repeated her words with a slight blush of awkwardness; whereuponGiles, becoming suddenly conscious, too conscious, jumped up, saying,"To be sure, to be sure!" wished them quickly good-morning, and boltedout of the house.
Nevertheless he had, upon the whole, strengthened his position, withher at least. Time, too, was on his side, for (as her father saw withsome regret) already the homeliness of Hintock life was fast becomingeffaced from her observation as a singularity; just as the firststrangeness of a face from which we have for years been separatedinsensibly passes off with renewed intercourse, and tones itself downinto simple identity with the lineaments of the past.
Thus Mr. Melbury went out of the house still unreconciled to thesacrifice of the gem he had been at such pains in mounting. He faincould hope, in the secret nether chamber of his mind, that somethingwould happen, before the balance of her feeling had quite turned inWinterborne's favor, to relieve his conscience and preserve her on herelevated plane.
He could not forget that Mrs. Charmond had apparently abandoned allinterest in his daughter as suddenly as she had conceived it, and wasas firmly convinced as ever that the comradeship which Grace had shownwith Giles and his crew by attending his party had been the cause.
Matters lingered on thus. And then, as a hoop by gentle knocks on thisside and on that is made to travel in specific directions, the littletouches of circumstance in the life of this young girl shaped thecurves of her career.