Book: The Woodlanders

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Marty returned no comment; and at that minute the girls, some of
whom were from Great Hintock, were seen advancing to work the
incantation, it being now about midnight.

"Directly we see anything we'll run home as fast as we can," said
one, whose courage had begun to fail her. To this the rest
assented, not knowing that a dozen neighbors lurked in the bushes
around.

"I wish we had not thought of trying this," said another, "but had
contented ourselves with the hole-digging to-morrow at twelve, and
hearing our husbands' trades. It is too much like having dealings
with the Evil One to try to raise their forms."

However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly began to
march forward in a skirmishing line through the trees towards the
deeper recesses of the wood. As far as the listeners could
gather, the particular form of black-art to be practised on this
occasion was one connected with the sowing of hemp-seed, a handful
of which was carried by each girl. At the moment of their advance
they looked back, and discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who,
alone of all the observers, stood in the full face of the
moonlight, deeply engrossed in the proceedings. By contrast with
her life of late years they made her feel as if she had receded a
couple of centuries in the world's history. She was rendered
doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and after a few whispered
words, one of the girls--a bouncing maiden, plighted to young
Timothy Tangs--asked her if she would join in. Grace, with some
excitement, said that she would, and moved on a little in the rear
of the rest.

Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceedings beyond
the faintest occasional rustle of leaves. Grammer whispered again
to Marty: "Why didn't ye go and try your luck with the rest of the
maids?"

"I don't believe in it," said Marty, shortly.

"Why, half the parish is here--the silly hussies should have kept
it quiet. I see Mr. Winterborne through the leaves, just come up
with Robert Creedle. Marty, we ought to act the part o'
Providence sometimes. Do go and tell him that if he stands just
behind the bush at the bottom of the slope, Miss Grace must pass
down it when she comes back, and she will most likely rush into
his arms; for as soon as the clock strikes, they'll bundle back
home--along like hares. I've seen such larries before."

"Do you think I'd better?" said Marty, reluctantly.

"Oh yes, he'll bless ye for it."

"I don't want that kind of blessing." But after a moment's thought
she went and delivered the information; and Grammer had the
satisfaction of seeing Giles walk slowly to the bend in the leafy
defile along which Grace would have to return.

Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had perceived Fitzpiers
and Winterborne, and also the move of the latter. An improvement
on Grammer's idea entered the mind of Mrs. Melbury, for she had
lately discerned what her husband had not--that Grace was rapidly
fascinating the surgeon. She therefore drew near to Fitzpiers.

"You should be where Mr. Winterborne is standing," she said to
him, significantly. "She will run down through that opening much
faster than she went up it, if she is like the rest of the girls."

Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice. He went across to
Winterborne and stood beside him. Each knew the probable purpose
of the other in standing there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers
scorning to look upon Winterborne as a rival, and Winterborne
adhering to the off-hand manner of indifference which had grown
upon him since his dismissal.

Neither Grammer nor Marty South had seen the surgeon's manoeuvre,
and, still to help Winterborne, as she supposed, the old woman
suggested to the wood-girl that she should walk forward at the
heels of Grace, and "tole" her down the required way if she showed
a tendency to run in another direction. Poor Marty, always doomed
to sacrifice desire to obligation, walked forward accordingly, and
waited as a beacon, still and silent, for the retreat of Grace and
her giddy companions, now quite out of hearing.

The first sound to break the silence was the distant note of Great
Hintock clock striking the significant hour. About a minute later
that quarter of the wood to which the girls had wandered resounded
with the flapping of disturbed birds; then two or three hares and
rabbits bounded down the glade from the same direction, and after
these the rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs denoted
the hurried approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gowns
soon became visible. Miss Melbury, having gone forward quite in
the rear of the rest, was one of the first to return, and the
excitement being contagious, she ran laughing towards Marty, who
still stood as a hand-post to guide her; then, passing on, she
flew round the fatal bush where the undergrowth narrowed to a
gorge. Marty arrived at her heels just in time to see the result.
Fitzpiers had quickly stepped forward in front of Winterborne,
who, disdaining to shift his position, had turned on his heel, and
then the surgeon did what he would not have thought of doing but
for Mrs. Melbury's encouragement and the sentiment of an eve which
effaced conventionality. Stretching out his arms as the white
figure burst upon him, he captured her in a moment, as if she had
been a bird.

"Oh!" cried Grace, in her fright.

"You are in my arms, dearest," said Fitzpiers, "and I am going to
claim you, and keep you there all our two lives!"

She rested on him like one utterly mastered, and it was several
seconds before she recovered from this helplessness. Subdued
screams and struggles, audible from neighboring brakes, revealed
that there had been other lurkers thereabout for a similar
purpose. Grace, unlike most of these companions of hers, instead
of gasping and writhing, said in a trembling voice, "Mr.
Fitzpiers, will you let me go?"

"Certainly," he said, laughing; "as soon as you have recovered."

She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly pushed him
aside, and glided on her path, the moon whitening her hot blush
away. But it had been enough--new relations between them had
begun.

The case of the other girls was different, as has been said. They
wrestled and tittered, only escaping after a desperate struggle.
Fitzpiers could hear these enactments still going on after Grace
had left him, and he remained on the spot where he had caught her,
Winterborne having gone away. On a sudden another girl came
bounding down the same descent that had been followed by Grace--a
fine-framed young woman with naked arms. Seeing Fitzpiers
standing there, she said, with playful effrontery, "May'st kiss me
if 'canst catch me, Tim!"

Fitzpiers recognized her as Suke Damson, a hoydenish damsel of
the hamlet, who was plainly mistaking him for her lover. He was
impulsively disposed to profit by her error, and as soon as she
began racing away he started in pursuit.

On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking
over her shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand;
but so cunningly dodging about among the trees and moon-shades
that she never allowed him to get dangerously near her. Thus they
ran and doubled, Fitzpiers warming with the chase, till the sound
of their companions had quite died away. He began to lose hope of
ever overtaking her, when all at once, by way of encouragement,
she turned to a fence in which there was a stile and leaped over
it. Outside the scene was a changed one--a meadow, where the
half-made hay lay about in heaps, in the uninterrupted shine of
the now high moon.

Fitzpiers saw in a moment that, having taken to open ground, she
had placed herself at his mercy, and he promptly vaulted over
after her. She flitted a little way down the mead, when all at
once her light form disappeared as if it had sunk into the earth.
She had buried herself in one of the hay-cocks.

Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let her escape
him thus. He approached, and set about turning over the heaps one
by one. As soon as he paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was
directed anew by an imitative kiss which came from her hiding-
place, and by snatches of a local ballad in the smallest voice she
could assume:


"O come in from the foggy, foggy dew."


In a minute or two he uncovered her.

"Oh, 'tis not Tim!" said she, burying her face.

Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason of its
mildness, stooped and imprinted the purposed kiss, then sunk down
on the next hay-cock, panting with his race.

"Whom do you mean by Tim?" he asked, presently.

"My young man, Tim Tangs," said she.

"Now, honor bright, did you really think it was he?"

"I did at first."

"But you didn't at last?"

"I didn't at last."

"Do you much mind that it was not?"

"No," she answered, slyly.

Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning. In the moonlight Suke
looked very beautiful, the scratches and blemishes incidental to
her out-door occupation being invisible under these pale rays.
While they remain silent the coarse whir of the eternal night-jar
burst sarcastically from the top of a tree at the nearest corner
of the wood. Besides this not a sound of any kind reached their
ears, the time of nightingales being now past, and Hintock lying
at a distance of two miles at least. In the opposite direction
the hay-field stretched away into remoteness till it was lost to
the eye in a soft mist.



CHAPTER XXI.


When the general stampede occurred Winterborne had also been
looking on, and encountering one of the girls, had asked her what
caused them all to fly.

She said with solemn breathlessness that they had seen something
very different from what they had hoped to see, and that she for
one would never attempt such unholy ceremonies again. "We saw
Satan pursuing us with his hour-glass. It was terrible!"

This account being a little incoherent, Giles went forward towards
the spot from which the girls had retreated. After listening
there a few minutes he heard slow footsteps rustling over the
leaves, and looking through a tangled screen of honeysuckle which
hung from a bough, he saw in the open space beyond a short stout
man in evening-dress, carrying on one arm a light overcoat and
also his hat, so awkwardly arranged as possibly to have suggested
the "hour-glass" to his timid observers--if this were the person
whom the girls had seen. With the other hand he silently
gesticulated and the moonlight falling upon his bare brow showed
him to have dark hair and a high forehead of the shape seen
oftener in old prints and paintings than in real life. His
curious and altogether alien aspect, his strange gestures, like
those of one who is rehearsing a scene to himself, and the unusual
place and hour, were sufficient to account for any trepidation
among the Hintock daughters at encountering him.

He paused, and looked round, as if he had forgotten where he was;
not observing Giles, who was of the color of his environment. The
latter advanced into the light. The gentleman held up his hand
and came towards Giles, the two meeting half-way.

"I have lost my way," said the stranger. "Perhaps you can put me
in the path again." He wiped his forehead with the air of one
suffering under an agitation more than that of simple fatigue.

"The turnpike-road is over there," said Giles

"I don't want the turnpike-road," said the gentleman, impatiently.
"I came from that. I want Hintock House. Is there not a path to
it across here?"

"Well, yes, a sort of path. But it is hard to find from this
point. I'll show you the way, sir, with great pleasure."

"Thanks, my good friend. The truth is that I decided to walk
across the country after dinner from the hotel at Sherton, where I
am staying for a day or two. But I did not know it was so far."

"It is about a mile to the house from here."

They walked on together. As there was no path, Giles occasionally
stepped in front and bent aside the underboughs of the trees to
give his companion a passage, saying every now and then when the
twigs, on being released, flew back like whips, "Mind your eyes,
sir." To which the stranger replied, "Yes, yes," in a preoccupied
tone.

So they went on, the leaf-shadows running in their usual quick
succession over the forms of the pedestrians, till the stranger
said,

"Is it far?"

"Not much farther," said Winterborne. "The plantation runs up
into a corner here, close behind the house." He added with
hesitation, "You know, I suppose, sir, that Mrs. Charmond is not
at home?"

"You mistake," said the other, quickly. "Mrs. Charmond has been
away for some time, but she's at home now."

Giles did not contradict him, though he felt sure that the
gentleman was wrong.

"You are a native of this place?" the stranger said.

"Yes."

"Well, you are happy in having a home. It is what I don't
possess."

"You come from far, seemingly?"

"I come now from the south of Europe."

"Oh, indeed, sir. You are an Italian, or Spanish, or French
gentleman, perhaps?"

"I am not either."

Giles did not fill the pause which ensued, and the gentleman, who
seemed of an emotional nature, unable to resist friendship, at
length answered the question.

"I am an Italianized American, a South Carolinian by birth," he
said. "I left my native country on the failure of the Southern
cause, and have never returned to it since."

He spoke no more about himself, and they came to the verge of the
wood. Here, striding over the fence out upon the upland sward,
they could at once see the chimneys of the house in the gorge
immediately beneath their position, silent, still, and pale.

"Can you tell me the time?" the gentleman asked. "My watch has
stopped."

"It is between twelve and one," said Giles.

His companion expressed his astonishment. "I thought it between
nine and ten at latest! Dear me--dear me!"

He now begged Giles to return, and offered him a gold coin, which
looked like a sovereign, for the assistance rendered. Giles
declined to accept anything, to the surprise of the stranger, who,
on putting the money back into his pocket, said, awkwardly, "I
offered it because I want you to utter no word about this meeting
with me. Will you promise?"

Winterborne promised readily. He thereupon stood still while the
other ascended the slope. At the bottom he looked back dubiously.
Giles would no longer remain when he was so evidently desired to
leave, and returned through the boughs to Hintock.

He suspected that this man, who seemed so distressed and
melancholy, might be that lover and persistent wooer of Mrs.
Charmond whom he had heard so frequently spoken of, and whom it
was said she had treated cavalierly. But he received no
confirmation of his suspicion beyond a report which reached him a
few days later that a gentleman had called up the servants who
were taking care of Hintock House at an hour past midnight; and on
learning that Mrs. Charmond, though returned from abroad, was as
yet in London, he had sworn bitterly, and gone away without
leaving a card or any trace of himself.

The girls who related the story added that he sighed three times
before he swore, but this part of the narrative was not
corroborated. Anyhow, such a gentleman had driven away from the
hotel at Sherton next day in a carriage hired at that inn.



CHAPTER XXII.


The sunny, leafy week which followed the tender doings of
Midsummer Eve brought a visitor to Fitzpiers's door; a voice that
he knew sounded in the passage. Mr. Melbury had called. At first
he had a particular objection to enter the parlor, because his
boots were dusty, but as the surgeon insisted he waived the point
and came in.

Looking neither to the right nor to the left, hardly at Fitzpiers
himself, he put his hat under his chair, and with a preoccupied
gaze at the floor, he said, "I've called to ask you, doctor, quite
privately, a question that troubles me. I've a daughter, Grace,
an only daughter, as you may have heard. Well, she's been out in
the dew--on Midsummer Eve in particular she went out in thin
slippers to watch some vagary of the Hintock maids--and she's got
a cough, a distinct hemming and hacking, that makes me uneasy.
Now, I have decided to send her away to some seaside place for a
change--"

"Send her away!" Fitzpiers's countenance had fallen.

"Yes. And the question is, where would you advise me to send
her?"

The timber-merchant had happened to call at a moment when
Fitzpiers was at the spring-tide of a sentiment that Grace was a
necessity of his existence. The sudden pressure of her form upon
his breast as she came headlong round the bush had never ceased to
linger with him, ever since he adopted the manoeuvre for which the
hour and the moonlight and the occasion had been the only excuse.
Now she was to be sent away. Ambition? it could be postponed.
Family? culture and reciprocity of tastes had taken the place of
family nowadays. He allowed himself to be carried forward on the
wave of his desire.

"How strange, how very strange it is," he said, "that you should
have come to me about her just now. I have been thinking every
day of coming to you on the very same errand."

"Ah!--you have noticed, too, that her health----"

"I have noticed nothing the matter with her health, because there
is nothing. But, Mr. Melbury, I have seen your daughter several
times by accident. I have admired her infinitely, and I was
coming to ask you if I may become better acquainted with her--pay
my addresses to her?"

Melbury was looking down as he listened, and did not see the air
of half-misgiving at his own rashness that spread over Fitzpiers's
face as he made this declaration.

"You have--got to know her?" said Melbury, a spell of dead silence
having preceded his utterance, during which his emotion rose with
almost visible effect.

"Yes," said Fitzpiers.

"And you wish to become better acquainted with her? You mean with
a view to marriage--of course that is what you mean?"

"Yes," said the young man. "I mean, get acquainted with her, with
a view to being her accepted lover; and if we suited each other,
what would naturally follow."

The timber-merchant was much surprised, and fairly agitated; his
hand trembled as he laid by his walking-stick. "This takes me
unawares," said he, his voice wellnigh breaking down. "I don't
mean that there is anything unexpected in a gentleman being
attracted by her; but it did not occur to me that it would be you.
I always said," continued he, with a lump in his throat, "that my
Grace would make a mark at her own level some day. That was why I
educated her. I said to myself, 'I'll do it, cost what it may;'
though her mother-law was pretty frightened at my paying out so
much money year after year. I knew it would tell in the end.
'Where you've not good material to work on, such doings would be
waste and vanity,' I said. 'But where you have that material it
is sure to be worth while.'"

"I am glad you don't object," said Fitzpiers, almost wishing that
Grace had not been quite so cheap for him.

"If she is willing I don't object, certainly. Indeed," added the
honest man, "it would be deceit if I were to pretend to feel
anything else than highly honored personally; and it is a great
credit to her to have drawn to her a man of such good professional
station and venerable old family. That huntsman-fellow little
thought how wrong he was about her! Take her and welcome, sir."

"I'll endeavor to ascertain her mind."

"Yes, yes. But she will be agreeable, I should think. She ought
to be."

"I hope she may. Well, now you'll expect to see me frequently."

"Oh yes. But, name it all--about her cough, and her going away.
I had quite forgot that that was what I came about."

"I assure you," said the surgeon, "that her cough can only be the
result of a slight cold, and it is not necessary to banish her to
any seaside place at all."

Melbury looked unconvinced, doubting whether he ought to take
Fitzpiers's professional opinion in circumstances which naturally
led him to wish to keep her there. The doctor saw this, and
honestly dreading to lose sight of her, he said, eagerly, 'Between
ourselves, if I am successful with her I will take her away myself
for a month or two, as soon as we are married, which I hope will
be before the chilly weather comes on. This will be so very much
better than letting her go now."

The proposal pleased Melbury much. There could be hardly any
danger in postponing any desirable change of air as long as the
warm weather lasted, and for such a reason. Suddenly recollecting
himself, he said, "Your time must be precious, doctor. I'll get
home-along. I am much obliged to ye. As you will see her often,
you'll discover for yourself if anything serious is the matter."

"I can assure you it is nothing," said Fitzpiers, who had seen
Grace much oftener already than her father knew of.

When he was gone Fitzpiers paused, silent, registering his
sensations, like a man who has made a plunge for a pearl into a
medium of which he knows not the density or temperature. But he
had done it, and Grace was the sweetest girl alive.

As for the departed visitor, his own last words lingered in
Melbury's ears as he walked homeward; he felt that what he had
said in the emotion of the moment was very stupid, ungenteel, and
unsuited to a dialogue with an educated gentleman, the smallness
of whose practice was more than compensated by the former
greatness of his family. He had uttered thoughts before they were
weighed, and almost before they were shaped. They had expressed
in a certain sense his feeling at Fitzpiers's news, but yet they
were not right. Looking on the ground, and planting his stick at
each tread as if it were a flag-staff, he reached his own
precincts, where, as he passed through the court, he automatically
stopped to look at the men working in the shed and around. One of
them asked him a question about wagon-spokes.

"Hey?" said Melbury, looking hard at him. The man repeated the
words.

Melbury stood; then turning suddenly away without answering, he
went up the court and entered the house. As time was no object
with the journeymen, except as a thing to get past, they leisurely
surveyed the door through which he had disappeared.

"What maggot has the gaffer got in his head now?" said Tangs the
elder. "Sommit to do with that chiel of his! When you've got a
maid of yer own, John Upjohn, that costs ye what she costs him,
that will take the squeak out of your Sunday shoes, John! But
you'll never be tall enough to accomplish such as she; and 'tis a
lucky thing for ye, John, as things be. Well, be ought to have a
dozen--that would bring him to reason. I see 'em walking together
last Sunday, and when they came to a puddle he lifted her over
like a halfpenny doll. He ought to have a dozen; he'd let 'em
walk through puddles for themselves then."

Meanwhile Melbury had entered the house with the look of a man who
sees a vision before him. His wife was in the room. Without
taking off his hat he sat down at random.

"Luce--we've done it!" he said. "Yes--the thing is as I expected.
The spell, that I foresaw might be worked, has worked. She's done
it, and done it well. Where is she--Grace, I mean?"

"Up in her room--what has happened!"

Mr. Melbury explained the circumstances as coherently as he could.
"I told you so," he said. "A maid like her couldn't stay hid
long, even in a place like this. But where is Grace? Let's have
her down. Here--Gra-a-ace!"

She appeared after a reasonable interval, for she was sufficiently
spoiled by this father of hers not to put herself in a hurry,
however impatient his tones. "What is it, father?" said she, with
a smile.

"Why, you scamp, what's this you've been doing? Not home here more
than six months, yet, instead of confining yourself to your
father's rank, making havoc in the educated classes."

Though accustomed to show herself instantly appreciative of her
father's meanings, Grace was fairly unable to look anyhow but at a
loss now.

"No, no--of course you don't know what I mean, or you pretend you
don't; though, for my part, I believe women can see these things
through a double hedge. But I suppose I must tell ye. Why,
you've flung your grapnel over the doctor, and he's coming
courting forthwith."

"Only think of that, my dear! Don't you feel it a triumph?" said
Mrs. Melbury.

"Coming courting! I've done nothing to make him," Grace exclaimed.

"'Twasn't necessary that you should, 'Tis voluntary that rules in
these things....Well, he has behaved very honorably, and asked my
consent. You'll know what to do when he gets here, I dare say. I
needn't tell you to make it all smooth for him."

"You mean, to lead him on to marry me?"

"I do. Haven't I educated you for it?"

Grace looked out of the window and at the fireplace with no
animation in her face. "Why is it settled off-hand in this way?"
said she, coquettishly. "You'll wait till you hear what I think
of him, I suppose?"

"Oh yes, of course. But you see what a good thing it will be."

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