CHAPTER XIV.
The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne's mindthe image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went fromher to the fact that several cottages and other houses in the twoHintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession in the event ofSouth's death. He marvelled what people could have been thinking aboutin the past to invent such precarious tenures as these; still more,what could have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and other villagepeople, to exchange their old copyholds for life-leases. But havingnaturally succeeded to these properties through his father, he had donehis best to keep them in order, though he was much struck with hisfather's negligence in not insuring South's life.
After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went upstairs,turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay betweenthe mattress and the sacking. In this he kept his leases, which hadremained there unopened ever since his father's death. It was theusual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents.Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them over. They wereordinary leases for three lives, which a member of the South family,some fifty years before this time, had accepted of the lord of themanor in lieu of certain copyholds and other rights, in considerationof having the dilapidated houses rebuilt by said lord. They had comeinto his father's possession chiefly through his mother, who was aSouth.
Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter, whichWinterborne had never seen before. It bore a remote date, thehandwriting being that of some solicitor or agent, and the signaturethe landholder's. It was to the effect that at any time before thelast of the stated lives should drop, Mr. Giles Winterborne, senior, orhis representative, should have the privilege of adding his own and hisson's life to the life remaining on payment of a merely nominal sum;the concession being in consequence of the elder Winterborne's consentto demolish one of the houses and relinquish its site, which stood atan awkward corner of the lane and impeded the way.
The house had been pulled down years before. Why Giles's father hadnot taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his son'slives it was impossible to say. The likelihood was that death alonehad hindered him in the execution of his project, as it surely was, theelder Winterborne having been a man who took much pleasure in dealingwith house property in his small way.
Since one of the Souths still survived, there was not much doubt thatGiles could do what his father had left undone, as far as his own lifewas concerned. This possibility cheered him much, for by those houseshung many things. Melbury's doubt of the young man's fitness to be thehusband of Grace had been based not a little on the precariousness ofhis holdings in Little and Great Hintock. He resolved to attend to thebusiness at once, the fine for renewal being a sum that he could easilymuster. His scheme, however, could not be carried out in a day; andmeanwhile he would run up to South's, as he had intended to do, tolearn the result of the experiment with the tree.
Marty met him at the door. "Well, Marty," he said; and was surprisedto read in her face that the case was not so hopeful as he had imagined.
"I am sorry for your labor," she said. "It is all lost. He says thetree seems taller than ever."
Winterborne looked round at it. Taller the tree certainly did seem,the gauntness of its now naked stem being more marked than before.
"It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had done to it thismorning," she added. "He declares it will come down upon us and cleaveus, like 'the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.'"
"Well; can I do anything else?" asked he.
"The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down."
"Oh--you've had the doctor?"
"I didn't send for him. Mrs. Charmond, before she left, heard thatfather was ill, and told him to attend him at her expense."
"That was very good of her. And he says it ought to be cut down. Wemustn't cut it down without her knowledge, I suppose."
He went up-stairs. There the old man sat, staring at the now gaunttree as if his gaze were frozen on to its trunk. Unluckily the treewaved afresh by this time, a wind having sprung up and blown the fogaway, and his eyes turned with its wavings.
They heard footsteps--a man's, but of a lighter type than usual. "Thereis Doctor Fitzpiers again," she said, and descended. Presently histread was heard on the naked stairs.
Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick-chamber just as a doctor is more or lesswont to do on such occasions, and pre-eminently when the room is thatof a humble cottager, looking round towards the patient with thatpreoccupied gaze which so plainly reveals that he has wellnighforgotten all about the case and the whole circumstances since hedismissed them from his mind at his last exit from the same apartment.He nodded to Winterborne, with whom he was already a little acquainted,recalled the case to his thoughts, and went leisurely on to where Southsat.
Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed, handsome man. His eyeswere dark and impressive, and beamed with the light either of energy orof susceptivity--it was difficult to say which; it might have been alittle of both. That quick, glittering, practical eye, sharp for thesurface of things and for nothing beneath it, he had not. But whetherhis apparent depth of vision was real, or only an artistic accident ofhis corporeal moulding, nothing but his deeds could reveal.
His face was rather soft than stern, charming than grand, pale thanflushed; his nose--if a sketch of his features be de rigueur for aperson of his pretensions--was artistically beautiful enough to havebeen worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy, and was hencedevoid of those knotty irregularities which often mean power; while thedouble-cyma or classical curve of his mouth was not without a loosenessin its close. Nevertheless, either from his readily appreciative mien,or his reflective manner, or the instinct towards profound things whichwas said to possess him, his presence bespoke the philosopher ratherthan the dandy or macaroni--an effect which was helped by the absenceof trinkets or other trivialities from his attire, though this was morefinished and up to date than is usually the case among ruralpractitioners.
Strict people of the highly respectable class, knowing a little abouthim by report, might have said that he seemed likely to err rather inthe possession of too many ideas than too few; to be a dreamy 'ist ofsome sort, or too deeply steeped in some false kind of 'ism. Howeverthis may be, it will be seen that he was undoubtedly a somewhat rarekind of gentleman and doctor to have descended, as from the clouds,upon Little Hintock.
"This is an extraordinary case," he said at last to Winterborne, afterexamining South by conversation, look, and touch, and learning that thecraze about the elm was stronger than ever. "Come down-stairs, and I'lltell you what I think."
They accordingly descended, and the doctor continued, "The tree must becut down, or I won't answer for his life."
"'Tis Mrs. Charmond's tree, and I suppose we must get permission?" saidGiles. "If so, as she is gone away, I must speak to her agent."
"Oh--never mind whose tree it is--what's a tree beside a life! Cut itdown. I have not the honor of knowing Mrs. Charmond as yet, but I amdisposed to risk that much with her."
"'Tis timber," rejoined Giles, more scrupulous than he would have beenhad not his own interests stood so closely involved. "They'll neverfell a stick about here without it being marked first, either by her orthe agent."
"Then we'll inaugurate a new era forthwith. How long has he complainedof the tree?" asked the doctor of Marty.
"Weeks and weeks, sir. The shape of it seems to haunt him like an evilspirit. He says that it is exactly his own age, that it has got humansense, and sprouted up when he was born on purpose to rule him, andkeep him as its slave. Others have been like it afore in Hintock."
They could hear South's voice up-stairs "Oh, he's rocking this way; hemust come! And then my poor life, that's worth houses upon houses, willbe squashed out o' me. Oh! oh!"
"That's how he goes on," she added. "And he'll never look anywhereelse but out of the window, and scarcely have the cur
tains drawn."
"Down with it, then, and hang Mrs. Charmond," said Mr. Fitzpiers. "Thebest plan will be to wait till the evening, when it is dark, or earlyin the morning before he is awake, so that he doesn't see it fall, forthat would terrify him worse than ever. Keep the blind down till Icome, and then I'll assure him, and show him that his trouble is over."
The doctor then departed, and they waited till the evening. When itwas dusk, and the curtains drawn, Winterborne directed a couple ofwoodmen to bring a crosscut-saw, and the tall, threatening tree wassoon nearly off at its base. He would not fell it completely then, onaccount of the possible crash, but next morning, before South wasawake, they went and lowered it cautiously, in a direction away fromthe cottage. It was a business difficult to do quite silently; but itwas done at last, and the elm of the same birth-year as the woodman'slay stretched upon the ground. The weakest idler that passed could nowset foot on marks formerly made in the upper forks by the shoes ofadventurous climbers only; once inaccessible nests could be examinedmicroscopically; and on swaying extremities where birds alone hadperched, the by-standers sat down.
As soon as it was broad daylight the doctor came, and Winterborneentered the house with him. Marty said that her father was wrapped upand ready, as usual, to be put into his chair. They ascended thestairs, and soon seated him. He began at once to complain of the tree,and the danger to his life and Winterborne's house-property inconsequence.
The doctor signalled to Giles, who went and drew back the printedcotton curtains. "'Tis gone, see," said Mr. Fitzpiers.
As soon as the old man saw the vacant patch of sky in place of thebranched column so familiar to his gaze, he sprang up, speechless, hiseyes rose from their hollows till the whites showed all round; he fellback, and a bluish whiteness overspread him.
Greatly alarmed, they put him on the bed. As soon as he came a littleout of his fit, he gasped, "Oh, it is gone!--where?--where?"
His whole system seemed paralyzed by amazement. They werethunder-struck at the result of the experiment, and did all they could.Nothing seemed to avail. Giles and Fitzpiers went and came, butuselessly. He lingered through the day, and died that evening as thesun went down.
"D--d if my remedy hasn't killed him!" murmured the doctor.