CHAPTER XL.
Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be suppressedand hide-bound for a while. Grace seldom showed herself outside thehouse, never outside the garden; for she feared she might encounterGiles Winterborne; and that she could not bear.
This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun appearedlikely to continue for an indefinite time. She had learned that therewas one possibility in which her formerly imagined position mightbecome real, and only one; that her husband's absence should continuelong enough to amount to positive desertion. But she never allowed hermind to dwell much upon the thought; still less did she deliberatelyhope for such a result. Her regard for Winterborne had been rarefiedby the shock which followed its avowal into an ethereal emotion thathad little to do with living and doing.
As for Giles, he was lying--or rather sitting--ill at his hut. Afeverish indisposition which had been hanging about him for some time,the result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to acquirevirulence with the prostration of his hopes. But not a soul knew ofhis languor, and he did not think the case serious enough to send for amedical man. After a few days he was better again, and crept about hishome in a great coat, attending to his simple wants as usual with hisown hands. So matters stood when the limpid inertion of Grace'spool-like existence was disturbed as by a geyser. She received aletter from Fitzpiers.
Such a terrible letter it was in its import, though couched in thegentlest language. In his absence Grace had grown to regard him withtoleration, and her relation to him with equanimity, till she hadalmost forgotten how trying his presence would be. He wrote brieflyand unaffectedly; he made no excuses, but informed her that he wasliving quite alone, and had been led to think that they ought to betogether, if she would make up her mind to forgive him. He thereforepurported to cross the Channel to Budmouth by the steamer on a day henamed, which she found to be three days after the time of her presentreading.
He said that he could not come to Hintock for obvious reasons, whichher father would understand even better than herself. As the onlyalternative she was to be on the quay to meet the steamer when itarrived from the opposite coast, probably about half an hour beforemidnight, bringing with her any luggage she might require; join himthere, and pass with him into the twin vessel, which left immediatelythe other entered the harbor; returning thus with him to hiscontinental dwelling-place, which he did not name. He had no intentionof showing himself on land at all.
The troubled Grace took the letter to her father, who now continued forlong hours by the fireless summer chimney-corner, as if he thought itwere winter, the pitcher of cider standing beside him, mostly untasted,and coated with a film of dust. After reading it he looked up.
"You sha'n't go," said he.
"I had felt I would not," she answered. "But I did not know what youwould say."
"If he comes and lives in England, not too near here and in arespectable way, and wants you to come to him, I am not sure that I'lloppose him in wishing it," muttered Melbury. "I'd stint myself to keepyou both in a genteel and seemly style. But go abroad you never shallwith my consent."
There the question rested that day. Grace was unable to reply to herhusband in the absence of an address, and the morrow came, and the nextday, and the evening on which he had requested her to meet him.Throughout the whole of it she remained within the four walls of herroom.
The sense of her harassment, carking doubt of what might be impending,hung like a cowl of blackness over the Melbury household. They spokealmost in whispers, and wondered what Fitzpiers would do next. It wasthe hope of every one that, finding she did not arrive, he would returnagain to France; and as for Grace, she was willing to write to him onthe most kindly terms if he would only keep away.
The night passed, Grace lying tense and wide awake, and her relatives,in great part, likewise. When they met the next morning they were paleand anxious, though neither speaking of the subject which occupied alltheir thoughts. The day passed as quietly as the previous ones, andshe began to think that in the rank caprice of his moods he hadabandoned the idea of getting her to join him as quickly as it wasformed. All on a sudden, some person who had just come from Shertonentered the house with the news that Mr. Fitzpiers was on his way hometo Hintock. He had been seen hiring a carriage at the Earl of WessexHotel.
Her father and Grace were both present when the intelligence wasannounced.
"Now," said Melbury, "we must make the best of what has been a very badmatter. The man is repenting; the partner of his shame, I hear, isgone away from him to Switzerland, so that chapter of his life isprobably over. If he chooses to make a home for ye I think you shouldnot say him nay, Grace. Certainly he cannot very well live at Hintockwithout a blow to his pride; but if he can bear that, and likes Hintockbest, why, there's the empty wing of the house as it was before."
"Oh, father!" said Grace, turning white with dismay.
"Why not?" said he, a little of his former doggedness returning. Hewas, in truth, disposed to somewhat more leniency towards her husbandjust now than he had shown formerly, from a conviction that he hadtreated him over-roughly in his anger. "Surely it is the mostrespectable thing to do?" he continued. "I don't like this state thatyou are in--neither married nor single. It hurts me, and it hurts you,and it will always be remembered against us in Hintock. There hasnever been any scandal like it in the family before."
"He will be here in less than an hour," murmured Grace. The twilightof the room prevented her father seeing the despondent misery of herface. The one intolerable condition, the condition she had deprecatedabove all others, was that of Fitzpiers's reinstatement there. "Oh, Iwon't, I won't see him," she said, sinking down. She was almosthysterical.
"Try if you cannot," he returned, moodily.
"Oh yes, I will, I will," she went on, inconsequently. "I'll try;" andjumping up suddenly, she left the room.
In the darkness of the apartment to which she flew nothing could havebeen seen during the next half-hour; but from a corner a quickbreathing was audible from this impressible creature, who combinedmodern nerves with primitive emotions, and was doomed by suchcoexistence to be numbered among the distressed, and to take herscourgings to their exquisite extremity.
The window was open. On this quiet, late summer evening, whateversound arose in so secluded a district--the chirp of a bird, a call froma voice, the turning of a wheel--extended over bush and tree tounwonted distances. Very few sounds did arise. But as Grace invisiblybreathed in the brown glooms of the chamber, the small remote noise oflight wheels came in to her, accompanied by the trot of a horse on theturnpike-road. There seemed to be a sudden hitch or pause in theprogress of the vehicle, which was what first drew her attention to it.She knew the point whence the sound proceeded--the hill-top over whichtravellers passed on their way hitherward from Sherton Abbas--the placeat which she had emerged from the wood with Mrs. Charmond. Grace slidalong the floor, and bent her head over the window-sill, listening withopen lips. The carriage had stopped, and she heard a man useexclamatory words. Then another said, "What the devil is the matterwith the horse?" She recognized the voice as her husband's.
The accident, such as it had been, was soon remedied, and the carriagecould be heard descending the hill on the Hintock side, soon to turninto the lane leading out of the highway, and then into the "drong"which led out of the lane to the house where she was.
A spasm passed through Grace. The Daphnean instinct, exceptionallystrong in her as a girl, had been revived by her widowed seclusion andit was not lessened by her affronted sentiments towards the comer, andher regard for another man. She opened some little ivory tablets thatlay on the dressing-table, scribbled in pencil on one of them, "I amgone to visit one of my school-friends," gathered a few toiletnecessaries into a hand-bag, and not three minutes after that voicehad been heard, her slim form, hastily wrapped up from observation,might have been seen passing out of the back door of Melbury's house.Thence sh
e skimmed up the garden-path, through the gap in the hedge,and into the mossy cart-track under the trees which led into the depthof the woods.
The leaves overhead were now in their latter green--so opaque, that itwas darker at some of the densest spots than in winter-time, scarce acrevice existing by which a ray could get down to the ground. But inopen places she could see well enough. Summer was ending: in thedaytime singing insects hung in every sunbeam; vegetation was heavynightly with globes of dew; and after showers creeping damps andtwilight chills came up from the hollows. The plantations were alwaysweird at this hour of eve--more spectral far than in the leaflessseason, when there were fewer masses and more minute lineality. Thesmooth surfaces of glossy plants came out like weak, lidless eyes;there were strange faces and figures from expiring lights that hadsomehow wandered into the canopied obscurity; while now and then lowpeeps of the sky between the trunks were like sheeted shapes, and onthe tips of boughs sat faint cloven tongues.
But Grace's fear just now was not imaginative or spiritual, and sheheeded these impressions but little. She went on as silently as shecould, avoiding the hollows wherein leaves had accumulated, andstepping upon soundless moss and grass-tufts. She paused breathlesslyonce or twice, and fancied that she could hear, above the beat of herstrumming pulse, the vehicle containing Fitzpiers turning in at thegate of her father's premises. She hastened on again.
The Hintock woods owned by Mrs. Charmond were presently left behind,and those into which she next plunged were divided from the latter by abank, from whose top the hedge had long ago perished--starved for wantof sun. It was with some caution that Grace now walked, though she wasquite free from any of the commonplace timidities of her ordinarypilgrimages to such spots. She feared no lurking harms, but that hereffort would be all in vain, and her return to the house renderedimperative.
She had walked between three and four miles when that prescriptivecomfort and relief to wanderers in woods--a distant light--broke atlast upon her searching eyes. It was so very small as to be almostsinister to a stranger, but to her it was what she sought. She pushedforward, and the dim outline of a dwelling was disclosed.
The house was a square cot of one story only, sloping up on all sidesto a chimney in the midst. It had formerly been the home of acharcoal-burner, in times when that fuel was still used in the countyhouses. Its only appurtenance was a paled enclosure, there being nogarden, the shade of the trees preventing the growth of vegetables.She advanced to the window whence the rays of light proceeded, and theshutters being as yet unclosed, she could survey the whole interiorthrough the panes.
The room within was kitchen, parlor, and scullery all in one; thenatural sandstone floor was worn into hills and dales by long treading,so that none of the furniture stood level, and the table slanted like adesk. A fire burned on the hearth, in front of which revolved theskinned carcass of a rabbit, suspended by a string from a nail.Leaning with one arm on the mantle-shelf stood Winterborne, his eyes onthe roasting animal, his face so rapt that speculation could buildnothing on it concerning his thoughts, more than that they were notwith the scene before him. She thought his features had changed alittle since she saw them last. The fire-light did not enable her toperceive that they were positively haggard.
Grace's throat emitted a gasp of relief at finding the result so nearlyas she had hoped. She went to the door and tapped lightly.
He seemed to be accustomed to the noises of woodpeckers, squirrels, andsuch small creatures, for he took no notice of her tiny signal, and sheknocked again. This time he came and opened the door. When the lightof the room fell upon her face he started, and, hardly knowing what hedid, crossed the threshold to her, placing his hands upon her two arms,while surprise, joy, alarm, sadness, chased through him by turns. WithGrace it was the same: even in this stress there was the fond fact thatthey had met again. Thus they stood,
"Long tears upon their faces, waxen white With extreme sad delight."
He broke the silence by saying in a whisper, "Come in."
"No, no, Giles!" she answered, hurriedly, stepping yet farther backfrom the door. "I am passing by--and I have called on you--I won'tenter. Will you help me? I am afraid. I want to get by a roundaboutway to Sherton, and so to Exbury. I have a school-fellow there--but Icannot get to Sherton alone. Oh, if you will only accompany me alittle way! Don't condemn me, Giles, and be offended! I was obliged tocome to you because--I have no other help here. Three months ago youwere my lover; now you are only my friend. The law has stepped in, andforbidden what we thought of. It must not be. But we can acthonestly, and yet you can be my friend for one little hour? I have noother--"
She could get no further. Covering her eyes with one hand, by aneffort of repression she wept a silent trickle, without a sigh or sob.Winterborne took her other hand. "What has happened?" he said.
"He has come."
There was a stillness as of death, till Winterborne asked, "You meanthis, Grace--that I am to help you to get away?"
"Yes," said she. "Appearance is no matter, when the reality is right.I have said to myself I can trust you."
Giles knew from this that she did not suspect his treachery--if itcould be called such--earlier in the summer, when they met for the lasttime as lovers; and in the intensity of his contrition for that tenderwrong, he determined to deserve her faith now at least, and so wipe outthat reproach from his conscience. "I'll come at once," he said."I'll light a lantern."
He unhooked a dark-lantern from a nail under the eaves and she did notnotice how his hand shook with the slight strain, or dream that inmaking this offer he was taxing a convalescence which could ill affordsuch self-sacrifice. The lantern was lit, and they started.