CHAPTER XVII.
Grace's exhibition of herself, in the act of pulling-to thewindow-curtains, had been the result of an unfortunate incident in thehouse that day--nothing less than the illness of Grammer Oliver, awoman who had never till now lain down for such a reason in her life.Like others to whom unbroken years of health has made the idea ofkeeping their bed almost as repugnant as death itself, she hadcontinued on foot till she literally fell on the floor; and though shehad, as yet, been scarcely a day off duty, she had sickened into quitea different personage from the independent Grammer of the yard andspar-house. Ill as she was, on one point she was firm. On no accountwould she see a doctor; in other words, Fitzpiers.
The room in which Grace had been discerned was not her own, but the oldwoman's. On the girl's way to bed she had received a message fromGrammer, to the effect that she would much like to speak to her thatnight.
Grace entered, and set the candle on a low chair beside the bed, sothat the profile of Grammer as she lay cast itself in a keen shadowupon the whitened wall, her large head being still further magnified byan enormous turban, which was, really, her petticoat wound in a wreathround her temples. Grace put the room a little in order, andapproaching the sick woman, said, "I am come, Grammer, as you wish. Dolet us send for the doctor before it gets later."
"I will not have him," said Grammer Oliver, decisively.
"Then somebody to sit up with you."
"Can't abear it! No; I wanted to see you, Miss Grace, because 'ch havesomething on my mind. Dear Miss Grace, I TOOK THAT MONEY OF THEDOCTOR, AFTER ALL!"
"What money?"
"The ten pounds."
Grace did not quite understand.
"The ten pounds he offered me for my head, because I've a large brain.I signed a paper when I took the money, not feeling concerned about itat all. I have not liked to tell ye that it was really settled withhim, because you showed such horror at the notion. Well, havingthought it over more at length, I wish I hadn't done it; and it weighsupon my mind. John South's death of fear about the tree makes me thinkthat I shall die of this....'Ch have been going to ask him again to letme off, but I hadn't the face."
"Why?"
"I've spent some of the money--more'n two pounds o't. It do wherrit meterribly; and I shall die o' the thought of that paper I signed with myholy cross, as South died of his trouble."
"If you ask him to burn the paper he will, I'm sure, and think nomore of it."
"'Ch have done it once already, miss. But he laughed cruel like.'Yours is such a fine brain, Grammer, 'er said, 'that science couldn'tafford to lose you. Besides, you've taken my money.'...Don't let yourfather know of this, please, on no account whatever!"
"No, no. I will let you have the money to return to him."
Grammer rolled her head negatively upon the pillow. "Even if I shouldbe well enough to take it to him, he won't like it. Though why heshould so particular want to look into the works of a poor old woman'shead-piece like mine when there's so many other folks about, I don'tknow. I know how he'll answer me: 'A lonely person like you, Grammer,'er woll say. 'What difference is it to you what becomes of ye when thebreath's out of your body?' Oh, it do trouble me! If you only knew howhe do chevy me round the chimmer in my dreams, you'd pity me. How Icould do it I can't think! But 'ch was always so rackless!...If I onlyhad anybody to plead for me!"
"Mrs. Melbury would, I am sure."
"Ay; but he wouldn't hearken to she! It wants a younger face than hersto work upon such as he."
Grace started with comprehension. "You don't think he would do it forme?" she said.
"Oh, wouldn't he!"
"I couldn't go to him, Grammer, on any account. I don't know him atall."
"Ah, if I were a young lady," said the artful Grammer, "and could savea poor old woman's skellington from a heathen doctor instead of aChristian grave, I would do it, and be glad to. But nobody will doanything for a poor old familiar friend but push her out of the way."
"You are very ungrateful, Grammer, to say that. But you are ill, Iknow, and that's why you speak so. Now believe me, you are not goingto die yet. Remember you told me yourself that you meant to keep himwaiting many a year."
"Ay, one can joke when one is well, even in old age; but in sicknessone's gayety falters to grief; and that which seemed small looks large;and the grim far-off seems near."
Grace's eyes had tears in them. "I don't like to go to him on such anerrand, Grammer," she said, brokenly. "But I will, to ease your mind."
It was with extreme reluctance that Grace cloaked herself next morningfor the undertaking. She was all the more indisposed to the journey byreason of Grammer's allusion to the effect of a pretty face upon Dr.Fitzpiers; and hence she most illogically did that which, had thedoctor never seen her, would have operated to stultify the sole motiveof her journey; that is to say, she put on a woollen veil, which hidall her face except an occasional spark of her eyes.
Her own wish that nothing should be known of this strange and grewsomeproceeding, no less than Grammer Oliver's own desire, led Grace to takeevery precaution against being discovered. She went out by the gardendoor as the safest way, all the household having occupations at theother side. The morning looked forbidding enough when she stealthilyopened it. The battle between frost and thaw was continuing inmid-air: the trees dripped on the garden-plots, where no vegetableswould grow for the dripping, though they were planted year after yearwith that curious mechanical regularity of country people in the faceof hopelessness; the moss which covered the once broad gravel terracewas swamped; and Grace stood irresolute. Then she thought of poorGrammer, and her dreams of the doctor running after her, scalpel inhand, and the possibility of a case so curiously similar to South'sending in the same way; thereupon she stepped out into the drizzle.
The nature of her errand, and Grammer Oliver's account of the compactshe had made, lent a fascinating horror to Grace's conception ofFitzpiers. She knew that he was a young man; but her single object inseeking an interview with him put all considerations of his age andsocial aspect from her mind. Standing as she stood, in Grammer Oliver'sshoes, he was simply a remorseless Jove of the sciences, who would nothave mercy, and would have sacrifice; a man whom, save for this, shewould have preferred to avoid knowing. But since, in such a smallvillage, it was improbable that any long time could pass without theirmeeting, there was not much to deplore in her having to meet him now.
But, as need hardly be said, Miss Melbury's view of the doctor as amerciless, unwavering, irresistible scientist was not quite inaccordance with fact. The real Dr. Fitzpiers was a man of too manyhobbies to show likelihood of rising to any great eminence in theprofession he had chosen, or even to acquire any wide practice in therural district he had marked out as his field of survey for thepresent. In the course of a year his mind was accustomed to pass in agrand solar sweep through all the zodiacal signs of the intellectualheaven. Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes in the Bull; one monthhe would be immersed in alchemy, another in poesy; one month in theTwins of astrology and astronomy; then in the Crab of German literatureand metaphysics. In justice to him it must be stated that he took suchstudies as were immediately related to his own profession in turn withthe rest, and it had been in a month of anatomical ardor without thepossibility of a subject that he had proposed to Grammer Oliver theterms she had mentioned to her mistress.
As may be inferred from the tone of his conversation with Winterborne,he had lately plunged into abstract philosophy with much zest; perhapshis keenly appreciative, modern, unpractical mind found this a realmmore to his taste than any other. Though his aims were desultory,Fitzpiers's mental constitution was not without its admirable side; akeen inquirer he honestly was, even if the midnight rays of his lamp,visible so far through the trees of Hintock, lighted rank literaturesof emotion and passion as often as, or oftener than, the books andmateriel of science.
But whether he meditated the Muses or the philosophers, the lonelinessof H
intock life was beginning to tell upon his impressionable nature.Winter in a solitary house in the country, without society, istolerable, nay, even enjoyable and delightful, given certainconditions, but these are not the conditions which attach to the lifeof a professional man who drops down into such a place by mereaccident. They were present to the lives of Winterborne, Melbury, andGrace; but not to the doctor's. They are old association--an almostexhaustive biographical or historical acquaintance with every object,animate and inanimate, within the observer's horizon. He must know allabout those invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet havetraversed the fields which look so gray from his windows; recall whosecreaking plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose handsplanted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose horsesand hounds have torn through that underwood; what birds affect thatparticular brake; what domestic dramas of love, jealousy, revenge, ordisappointment have been enacted in the cottages, the mansion, thestreet, or on the green. The spot may have beauty, grandeur,salubrity, convenience; but if it lack memories it will ultimately pallupon him who settles there without opportunity of intercourse with hiskind.
In such circumstances, maybe, an old man dreams of an ideal friend,till he throws himself into the arms of any impostor who chooses towear that title on his face. A young man may dream of an ideal friendlikewise, but some humor of the blood will probably lead him to thinkrather of an ideal mistress, and at length the rustle of a woman'sdress, the sound of her voice, or the transit of her form across thefield of his vision, will enkindle his soul with a flame that blindshis eyes.
The discovery of the attractive Grace's name and family would have beenenough in other circumstances to lead the doctor, if not to put herpersonality out of his head, to change the character of his interest inher. Instead of treasuring her image as a rarity, he would at mosthave played with it as a toy. He was that kind of a man. But situatedhere he could not go so far as amative cruelty. He dismissed allreverential thought about her, but he could not help taking herseriously.
He went on to imagine the impossible. So far, indeed, did he go inthis futile direction that, as others are wont to do, he constructeddialogues and scenes in which Grace had turned out to be the mistressof Hintock Manor-house, the mysterious Mrs. Charmond, particularlyready and willing to be wooed by himself and nobody else. "Well, sheisn't that," he said, finally. "But she's a very sweet, nice,exceptional girl."
The next morning he breakfasted alone, as usual. It was snowing with afine-flaked desultoriness just sufficient to make the woodland gray,without ever achieving whiteness. There was not a single letter forFitzpiers, only a medical circular and a weekly newspaper.
To sit before a large fire on such mornings, and read, and graduallyacquire energy till the evening came, and then, with lamp alight, andfeeling full of vigor, to pursue some engrossing subject or other tillthe small hours, had hitherto been his practice. But to-day he couldnot settle into his chair. That self-contained position he had latelyoccupied, in which the only attention demanded was the concentration ofthe inner eye, all outer regard being quite gratuitous, seemed to havebeen taken by insidious stratagem, and for the first time he had aninterest outside the house. He walked from one window to another, andbecame aware that the most irksome of solitudes is not the solitude ofremoteness, but that which is just outside desirable company.
The breakfast hour went by heavily enough, and the next followed, inthe same half-snowy, half-rainy style, the weather now being theinevitable relapse which sooner or later succeeds a time too radiantfor the season, such as they had enjoyed in the late midwinter atHintock. To people at home there these changeful tricks had theirinterests; the strange mistakes that some of the more sanguine treeshad made in budding before their month, to be incontinently glued up byfrozen thawings now; the similar sanguine errors of impulsive birds inframing nests that were now swamped by snow-water, and other suchincidents, prevented any sense of wearisomeness in the minds of thenatives. But these were features of a world not familiar to Fitzpiers,and the inner visions to which he had almost exclusively attendedhaving suddenly failed in their power to absorb him, he feltunutterably dreary.
He wondered how long Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. Theseason was unpropitious for accidental encounters with herout-of-doors, and except by accident he saw not how they were to becomeacquainted. One thing was clear--any acquaintance with her could only,with a due regard to his future, be casual, at most of the nature of aflirtation for he had high aims, and they would some day lead him intoother spheres than this.
Thus desultorily thinking he flung himself down upon the couch, which,as in many draughty old country houses, was constructed with a hood,being in fact a legitimate development from the settle. He tried toread as he reclined, but having sat up till three o'clock that morning,the book slipped from his hand and he fell asleep.