Book: The Woodlanders

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Woodlanders





"'Love's but the frailty of the mind
When 'tis not with ambition joined;
A sickly flame which if not fed, expires,
And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires!'


Ah, old author of 'The Way of the World,' you knew--you knew!"
Grace moved. He thought she had heard some part of his soliloquy.
He was sorry--though he had not taken any precaution to prevent
her.

He expected a scene at breakfast, but she only exhibited an
extreme reserve. It was enough, however, to make him repent that
he should have done anything to produce discomfort; for he
attributed her manner entirely to what he had said. But Grace's
manner had not its cause either in his sayings or in his doings.
She had not heard a single word of his regrets. Something even
nearer home than her husband's blighted prospects--if blighted
they were--was the origin of her mood, a mood that was the mere
continuation of what her father had noticed when he would have
preferred a passionate jealousy in her, as the more natural.

She had made a discovery--one which to a girl of honest nature was
almost appalling. She had looked into her heart, and found that
her early interest in Giles Winterborne had become revitalized
into luxuriant growth by her widening perceptions of what was
great and little in life. His homeliness no longer offended her
acquired tastes; his comparative want of so-called culture did not
now jar on her intellect; his country dress even pleased her eye;
his exterior roughness fascinated her. Having discovered by
marriage how much that was humanly not great could co-exist with
attainments of an exceptional order, there was a revulsion in her
sentiments from all that she had formerly clung to in this kind:
honesty, goodness, manliness, tenderness, devotion, for her only
existed in their purity now in the breasts of unvarnished men; and
here was one who had manifested them towards her from his youth
up.

There was, further, that never-ceasing pity in her soul for Giles
as a man whom she had wronged--a man who had been unfortunate in
his worldly transactions; while, not without a touch of sublimity,
he had, like Horatio, borne himself throughout his scathing


"As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing."


It was these perceptions, and no subtle catching of her husband's
murmurs, that had bred the abstraction visible in her.

When her father approached the house after witnessing the
interview between Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond, Grace was looking
out of her sitting-room window, as if she had nothing to do, or
think of, or care for. He stood still.

"Ah, Grace," he said, regarding her fixedly.

"Yes, father," she murmured.

"Waiting for your dear husband?" he inquired, speaking with the
sarcasm of pitiful affection.

"Oh no--not especially. He has a great many patients to see this
afternoon."

Melbury came quite close. "Grace, what's the use of talking like
that, when you know--Here, come down and walk with me out in the
garden, child."

He unfastened the door in the ivy-laced wall, and waited. This
apparent indifference alarmed him. He would far rather that she
had rushed in all the fire of jealousy to Hintock House,
regardless of conventionality, confronted and attacked Felice
Charmond unguibus et rostro, and accused her even in exaggerated
shape of stealing away her husband. Such a storm might have
cleared the air.

She emerged in a minute or two, and they went inside together.
"You know as well as I do," he resumed, "that there is something
threatening mischief to your life; and yet you pretend you do not.
Do you suppose I don't see the trouble in your face every day? I
am very sure that this quietude is wrong conduct in you. You
should look more into matters."

"I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to
action."

Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions--did she not feel
jealous? was she not indignant? but a natural delicacy restrained
him. "You are very tame and let-alone, I am bound to say," he
remarked, pointedly.

"I am what I feel, father," she repeated.

He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the scene of
her offering to wed Winterborne instead of Fitzpiers in the last
days before her marriage; and he asked himself if it could be the
fact that she loved Winterborne, now that she had lost him, more
than she had ever done when she was comparatively free to choose
him.

"What would you have me do?" she asked, in a low voice.

He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical
matter before them. "I would have you go to Mrs. Charmond," he
said.

"Go to Mrs. Charmond--what for?" said she.

"Well--if I must speak plain, dear Grace--to ask her, appeal to
her in the name of your common womanhood, and your many like
sentiments on things, not to make unhappiness between you and your
husband. It lies with her entirely to do one or the other--that I
can see."

Grace's face had heated at her father's words, and the very rustle
of her skirts upon the box-edging bespoke hauteur. "I shall not
think of going to her, father--of course I could not!" she
answered.

"Why--don't 'ee want to be happier than you be at present?" said
Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself.

"I don't wish to be more humiliated. If I have anything to bear I
can bear it in silence."

"But, my dear maid, you are too young--you don't know what the
present state of things may lead to. Just see the harm done
a'ready! Your husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a bigger
practice if it had not been for this. Although it has gone such a
little way, it is poisoning your future even now. Mrs. Charmond
is thoughtlessly bad, not bad by calculation; and just a word to
her now might save 'ee a peck of woes."

"Ah, I loved her once," said Grace, with a broken articulation,
"and she would not care for me then! Now I no longer love her.
Let her do her worst: I don't care."

"You ought to care. You have got into a very good position to
start with. You have been well educated, well tended, and you
have become the wife of a professional man of unusually good
family. Surely you ought to make the best of your position."

"I don't see that I ought. I wish I had never got into it. I
wish you had never, never thought of educating me. I wish I
worked in the woods like Marty South. I hate genteel life, and I
want to be no better than she."

"Why?" said her amazed father.

"Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and
troubles. I say again, I wish you had never sent me to those
fashionable schools you set your mind on. It all arose out of
that, father. If I had stayed at home I should have married--"
She closed up her mouth suddenly and was silent; and be saw that
she was not far from crying.

Melbury was much grieved. "What, and would you like to have grown
up as we be here in Hintock--knowing no more, and with no more
chance of seeing good life than we have here?"

"Yes. I have never got any happiness outside Hintock that I know
of, and I have suffered many a heartache at being sent away. Oh,
the misery of those January days when I had got back to school,
and left you all here in the wood so happy. I used to wonder why
I had to bear it. And I was always a little despised by the other
girls at school, because they knew where I came from, and that my
parents were not in so good a station as theirs."

Her poor father was much hurt at what he thought her ingratitude
and intractability. He had admitted to himself bitterly enough
that he should have let young hearts have their way, or rather
should have helped on her affection for Winterborne, and given her
to him according to his original plan; but he was not prepared for
her deprecation of those attainments whose completion had been a
labor of years, and a severe tax upon his purse.

"Very well," he said, with much heaviness of spirit. "If you
don't like to go to her I don't wish to force you."

And so the question remained for him still: how should he remedy
this perilous state of things? For days he sat in a moody
attitude over the fire, a pitcher of cider standing on the hearth
beside him, and his drinking-horn inverted upon the top of it. He
spent a week and more thus composing a letter to the chief
offender, which he would every now and then attempt to complete,
and suddenly crumple up in his hand.



CHAPTER XXXI.


As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom
of the woodmen's homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little
began to have ears for a rumor of the events out of which had
grown the timber-dealer's troubles. It took the form of a wide
sprinkling of conjecture, wherein no man knew the exact truth.
Tantalizing phenomena, at once showing and concealing the real
relationship of the persons concerned, caused a diffusion of
excited surprise. Honest people as the woodlanders were, it was
hardly to be expected that they could remain immersed in the study
of their trees and gardens amid such circumstances, or sit with
their backs turned like the good burghers of Coventry at the
passage of the beautiful lady.

Rumor, for a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in
this case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the
hills, which, with individual variations, made a mourner of
Ariadne, a by-word of Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy.
There were rencounters accidental and contrived, stealthy
correspondence, sudden misgivings on one side, sudden self-
reproaches on the other. The inner state of the twain was one as
of confused noise that would not allow the accents of calmer
reason to be heard. Determinations to go in this direction, and
headlong plunges in that; dignified safeguards, undignified
collapses; not a single rash step by deliberate intention, and all
against judgment.

It was all that Melbury had expected and feared. It was more, for
he had overlooked the publicity that would be likely to result, as
it now had done. What should he do--appeal to Mrs. Charmond
himself, since Grace would not? He bethought himself of
Winterborne, and resolved to consult him, feeling the strong need
of some friend of his own sex to whom he might unburden his mind.

He had entirely lost faith in his own judgment. That judgment on
which he had relied for so many years seemed recently, like a
false companion unmasked, to have disclosed unexpected depths of
hypocrisy and speciousness where all had seemed solidity. He felt
almost afraid to form a conjecture on the weather, or the time, or
the fruit-promise, so great was his self-abasement.

It was a rimy evening when he set out to look for Giles. The
woods seemed to be in a cold sweat; beads of perspiration hung
from every bare twig; the sky had no color, and the trees rose
before him as haggard, gray phantoms, whose days of substantiality
were passed. Melbury seldom saw Winterborne now, but he believed
him to be occupying a lonely hut just beyond the boundary of Mrs.
Charmond's estate, though still within the circuit of the
woodland. The timber-merchant's thin legs stalked on through the
pale, damp scenery, his eyes on the dead leaves of last year;
while every now and then a hasty "Ay?" escaped his lips in reply
to some bitter proposition.

His notice was attracted by a thin blue haze of smoke, behind
which arose sounds of voices and chopping: bending his steps that
way, he saw Winterborne just in front of him. It just now
happened that Giles, after being for a long time apathetic and
unemployed, had become one of the busiest men in the neighborhood.
It is often thus; fallen friends, lost sight of, we expect to find
starving; we discover them going on fairly well. Without any
solicitation, or desire for profit on his part, he had been asked
to execute during that winter a very large order for hurdles and
other copse-ware, for which purpose he had been obliged to buy
several acres of brushwood standing. He was now engaged in the
cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work
daily like an automaton.

The hazel-tree did not belie its name to-day. The whole of the
copse-wood where the mist had cleared returned purest tints of
that hue, amid which Winterborne himself was in the act of making
a hurdle, the stakes being driven firmly into the ground in a row,
over which he bent and wove the twigs. Beside him was a square,
compact pile like the altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already
finished, which bristled on all sides with the sharp points of
their stakes. At a little distance the men in his employ were
assisting him to carry out his contract. Rows of copse-wood lay
on the ground as it had fallen under the axe; and a shelter had
been constructed near at hand, in front of which burned the fire
whose smoke had attracted him. The air was so dank that the smoke
hung heavy, and crept away amid the bushes without rising from the
ground.

After wistfully regarding Winterborne a while, Melbury drew
nearer, and briefly inquired of Giles how he came to be so busily
engaged, with an undertone of slight surprise that Winterborne
could seem so thriving after being deprived of Grace. Melbury was
not without emotion at the meeting; for Grace's affairs had
divided them, and ended their intimacy of old times.

Winterborne explained just as briefly, without raising his eyes
from his occupation of chopping a bough that he held in front of
him.

"'Twill be up in April before you get it all cleared," said
Melbury.

"Yes, there or thereabouts," said Winterborne, a chop of the
billhook jerking the last word into two pieces.

There was another interval; Melbury still looked on, a chip from
Winterborne's hook occasionally flying against the waistcoat and
legs of his visitor, who took no heed.

"Ah, Giles--you should have been my partner. You should have been
my son-in-law," the old man said at last. "It would have been far
better for her and for me."

Winterborne saw that something had gone wrong with his former
friend, and throwing down the switch he was about to interweave,
he responded only too readily to the mood of the timber-dealer.
"Is she ill?" he said, hurriedly.

"No, no." Melbury stood without speaking for some minutes, and
then, as though he could not bring himself to proceed, turned to
go away.

Winterborne told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night
and walked after Melbury.

"Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir," he said,
"especially since we don't stand as we used to stand to one
another; but I hope it is well with them all over your way?"

"No," said Melbury--"no." He stopped, and struck the smooth trunk
of a young ash-tree with the flat of his hand. "I would that his
ear had been where that rind is!" he exclaimed; "I should have
treated him to little compared wi what he deserves."

"Now," said Winterborne, "don't be in a hurry to go home. I've
put some cider down to warm in my shelter here, and we'll sit and
drink it and talk this over."

Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and they went
back to where the fire was, and sat down under the screen, the
other woodmen having gone. He drew out the cider-mug from the
ashes and they drank together.

"Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now," repeated
Melbury. "I'll tell you why for the first time."

He thereupon told Winterborne, as with great relief, the story of
how he won away Giles's father's chosen one--by nothing worse than
a lover's cajoleries, it is true, but by means which, except in
love, would certainly have been pronounced cruel and unfair. He
explained how he had always intended to make reparation to
Winterborne the father by giving Grace to Winterborne the son,
till the devil tempted him in the person of Fitzpiers, and he
broke his virtuous vow.

"How highly I thought of that man, to be sure! Who'd have supposed
he'd have been so weak and wrong-headed as this! You ought to have
had her, Giles, and there's an end on't."

Winterborne knew how to preserve his calm under this unconsciously
cruel tearing of a healing wound to which Melbury's concentration
on the more vital subject had blinded him. The young man
endeavored to make the best of the case for Grace's sake.

"She would hardly have been happy with me," he said, in the dry,
unimpassioned voice under which he hid his feelings. "I was not
well enough educated: too rough, in short. I couldn't have
surrounded her with the refinements she looked for, anyhow, at
all."

"Nonsense--you are quite wrong there," said the unwise old man,
doggedly. "She told me only this day that she hates refinements
and such like. All that my trouble and money bought for her in
that way is thrown away upon her quite. She'd fain be like Marty
South--think o' that! That's the top of her ambition! Perhaps
she's right. Giles, she loved you--under the rind; and, what's
more, she loves ye still--worse luck for the poor maid!"

If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up
he might have held his peace. Winterborne was silent a long time.
The darkness had closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of
the fog from the branches quickened as it turned to fine rain.

"Oh, she never cared much for me," Giles managed to say, as he
stirred the embers with a brand.

"She did, and does, I tell ye," said the other, obstinately.
"However, all that's vain talking now. What I come to ask you
about is a more practical matter--how to make the best of things
as they are. I am thinking of a desperate step--of calling on the
woman Charmond. I am going to appeal to her, since Grace will
not. 'Tis she who holds the balance in her hands--not he. While
she's got the will to lead him astray he will follow--poor,
unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer--and how long she'll do it
depends upon her whim. Did ye ever hear anything about her
character before she came to Hintock?"

"She's been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe," replied
Giles, with the same level quietude, as he regarded the red coals.
"One who has smiled where she has not loved and loved where she
has not married. Before Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a
play-actress."

"Hey?" But how close you have kept all this, Giles! What
besides?"

"Mr. Charmond was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the
north, twenty or thirty years older than she. He married her and
retired, and came down here and bought this property, as they do
nowadays."

"Yes, yes--I know all about that; but the other I did not know. I
fear it bodes no good. For how can I go and appeal to the
forbearance of a woman in this matter who has made cross-loves and
crooked entanglements her trade for years? I thank ye, Giles, for
finding it out; but it makes my plan the harder that she should
have belonged to that unstable tribe."

Another pause ensued, and they looked gloomily at the smoke that
beat about the hurdles which sheltered them, through whose
weavings a large drop of rain fell at intervals and spat smartly
into the fire. Mrs. Charmond had been no friend to Winterborne,
but he was manly, and it was not in his heart to let her be
condemned without a trial.

"She is said to be generous," he answered. "You might not appeal
to her in vain."

"It shall be done," said Melbury, rising. "For good or for evil,
to Mrs. Charmond I'll go."



CHAPTER XXXII.


At nine o'clock the next morning Melbury dressed himself up in
shining broadcloth, creased with folding and smelling of camphor,
and started for Hintock House. He was the more impelled to go at
once by the absence of his son-in-law in London for a few days, to
attend, really or ostensibly, some professional meetings. He said
nothing of his destination either to his wife or to Grace, fearing
that they might entreat him to abandon so risky a project, and
went out unobserved. He had chosen his time with a view, as he
supposed, of conveniently catching Mrs. Charmond when she had just
finished her breakfast, before any other business people should be
about, if any came. Plodding thoughtfully onward, he crossed a
glade lying between Little Hintock Woods and the plantation which
abutted on the park; and the spot being open, he was discerned
there by Winterborne from the copse on the next hill, where he and
his men were working. Knowing his mission, the younger man
hastened down from the copse and managed to intercept the timber-
merchant.

"I have been thinking of this, sir," he said, "and I am of opinion
that it would be best to put off your visit for the present."

But Melbury would not even stop to hear him. His mind was made
up, the appeal was to be made; and Winterborne stood and watched
him sadly till he entered the second plantation and disappeared.

Melbury rang at the tradesmen's door of the manor-house, and was
at once informed that the lady was not yet visible, as indeed he
might have guessed had he been anybody but the man he was.
Melbury said he would wait, whereupon the young man informed him
in a neighborly way that, between themselves, she was in bed and
asleep.

"Never mind," said Melbury, retreating into the court, "I'll stand
about here." Charged so fully with his mission, he shrank from
contact with anybody.

But he walked about the paved court till he was tired, and still
nobody came to him. At last he entered the house and sat down in
a small waiting-room, from which he got glimpses of the kitchen
corridor, and of the white-capped maids flitting jauntily hither
and thither. They had heard of his arrival, but had not seen him
enter, and, imagining him still in the court, discussed freely the
possible reason of his calling. They marvelled at his temerity;
for though most of the tongues which had been let loose attributed
the chief blame-worthiness to Fitzpiers, these of her household
preferred to regard their mistress as the deeper sinner.

Melbury sat with his hands resting on the familiar knobbed thorn
walking-stick, whose growing he had seen before he enjoyed its
use. The scene to him was not the material environment of his
person, but a tragic vision that travelled with him like an
envelope. Through this vision the incidents of the moment but
gleamed confusedly here and there, as an outer landscape through
the high-colored scenes of a stained window. He waited thus an
hour, an hour and a half, two hours. He began to look pale and
ill, whereupon the butler, who came in, asked him to have a glass
of wine. Melbury roused himself and said, "No, no. Is she almost
ready?"

"She is just finishing breakfast," said the butler. "She will
soon see you now. I am just going up to tell her you are here."

"What! haven't you told her before?" said Melbury.

"Oh no," said the other. "You see you came so very early."

At last the bell rang: Mrs. Charmond could see him. She was not
in her private sitting-room when he reached it, but in a minute he
heard her coming from the front staircase, and she entered where
he stood.

At this time of the morning Mrs. Charmond looked her full age and
more. She might almost have been taken for the typical femme de
trente ans, though she was really not more than seven or eight and
twenty. There being no fire in the room, she came in with a shawl
thrown loosely round her shoulders, and obviously without the
least suspicion that Melbury had called upon any other errand than
timber. Felice was, indeed, the only woman in the parish who had
not heard the rumor of her own weaknesses; she was at this moment
living in a fool's paradise in respect of that rumor, though not
in respect of the weaknesses themselves, which, if the truth be
told, caused her grave misgivings.

"Do sit down, Mr. Melbury. You have felled all the trees that
were to be purchased by you this season, except the oaks, I
believe."

"Yes," said Melbury.

"How very nice! It must be so charming to work in the woods just
now!"

She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous
person's affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of
the perfect social machine. Hence her words "very nice," "so
charming," were uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them
sound absurdly unreal.

"Yes, yes," said Melbury, in a reverie. He did not take a chair,
and she also remained standing. Resting upon his stick, he began:
"Mrs. Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter--at least
to me--than tree-throwing. And whatever mistakes I make in my
manner of speaking upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set
'em down to my want of practice, and not to my want of care."

Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease. She might have begun to guess
his meaning; but apart from that, she had such dread of contact
with anything painful, harsh, or even earnest, that his
preliminaries alone were enough to distress her. "Yes, what is
it?" she said.

"I am an old man," said Melbury, "whom, somewhat late in life, God
thought fit to bless with one child, and she a daughter. Her
mother was a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us
when the child was young, and the child became precious as the
apple of my eye to me, for she was all I had left to love. For
her sake entirely I married as second wife a homespun woman who
had been kind as a mother to her. In due time the question of her
education came on, and I said, 'I will educate the maid well, if I
live upon bread to do it.' Of her possible marriage I could not
bear to think, for it seemed like a death that she should cleave
to another man, and grow to think his house her home rather than
mine. But I saw it was the law of nature that this should be, and
that it was for the maid's happiness that she should have a home
when I was gone; and I made up my mind without a murmur to help it
on for her sake. In my youth I had wronged my dead friend, and to
make amends I determined to give her, my most precious possession,
to my friend's son, seeing that they liked each other well.
Things came about which made me doubt if it would be for my
daughter's happiness to do this, inasmuch as the young man was
poor, and she was delicately reared. Another man came and paid
court to her--one her equal in breeding and accomplishments; in
every way it seemed to me that he only could give her the home
which her training had made a necessity almost. I urged her on,
and she married him. But, ma'am, a fatal mistake was at the root
of my reckoning. I found that this well-born gentleman I had
calculated on so surely was not stanch of heart, and that therein
lay a danger of great sorrow for my daughter. Madam, he saw you,
and you know the rest....I have come to make no demands--to utter
no threats; I have come simply as a father in great grief about
this only child, and I beseech you to deal kindly with my
daughter, and to do nothing which can turn her husband's heart
away from her forever. Forbid him your presence, ma'am, and speak
to him on his duty as one with your power over him well can do,
and I am hopeful that the rent between them may be patched up.
For it is not as if you would lose by so doing; your course is far
higher than the courses of a simple professional man, and the
gratitude you would win from me and mine by your kindness is more
than I can say."

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