Book: The Woodlanders

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Woodlanders




She drew a catching breath, and turned pale. The dialogue had
been affectionate comedy up to this point. The gloomy atmosphere
of the past, and the still gloomy horizon of the present, had been
for the interval forgotten. Now the whole environment came back,
the due balance of shade among the light was restored.

"It is sure to be all right, I trust?" she resumed, in uneasy
accents. "What did my father say the solicitor had told him?"

"Oh--that all is sure enough. The case is so clear--nothing could
be clearer. But the legal part is not yet quite done and
finished, as is natural."

"Oh no--of course not," she said, sunk in meek thought. "But
father said it was ALMOST--did he not? Do you know anything about
the new law that makes these things so easy?"

"Nothing--except the general fact that it enables ill-assorted
husbands and wives to part in a way they could not formerly do
without an Act of Parliament."

"Have you to sign a paper, or swear anything? Is it something like
that?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"How long has it been introduced?"

"About six months or a year, the lawyer said, I think."

To hear these two poor Arcadian innocents talk of imperial law
would have made a humane person weep who should have known what a
dangerous structure they were building up on their supposed
knowledge. They remained in thought, like children in the
presence of the incomprehensible.

"Giles," she said, at last, "it makes me quite weary when I think
how serious my situation is, or has been. Shall we not go out
from here now, as it may seem rather fast of me--our being so long
together, I mean--if anybody were to see us? I am almost sure,"
she added, uncertainly, "that I ought not to let you hold my hand
yet, knowing that the documents--or whatever it may be--have not
been signed; so that I--am still as married as ever--or almost.
My dear father has forgotten himself. Not that I feel morally
bound to any one else, after what has taken place--no woman of
spirit could--now, too, that several months have passed. But I
wish to keep the proprieties as well as I can."

"Yes, yes. Still, your father reminds us that life is short. I
myself feel that it is; that is why I wished to understand you in
this that we have begun. At times, dear Grace, since receiving
your father's letter, I am as uneasy and fearful as a child at
what he said. If one of us were to die before the formal signing
and sealing that is to release you have been done--if we should
drop out of the world and never have made the most of this little,
short, but real opportunity, I should think to myself as I sunk
down dying, 'Would to my God that I had spoken out my whole heart--
given her one poor little kiss when I had the chance to give it!
But I never did, although she had promised to be mine some day;
and now I never can.' That's what I should think."

She had begun by watching the words from his lips with a mournful
regard, as though their passage were visible; but as he went on
she dropped her glance. "Yes," she said, "I have thought that,
too. And, because I have thought it, I by no means meant, in
speaking of the proprieties, to be reserved and cold to you who
loved me so long ago, or to hurt your heart as I used to do at
that thoughtless time. Oh, not at all, indeed! But--ought I to
allow you?--oh, it is too quick--surely!" Her eyes filled with
tears of bewildered, alarmed emotion.

Winterborne was too straightforward to influence her further
against her better judgment. "Yes--I suppose it is," he said,
repentantly. "I'll wait till all is settled. What did your
father say in that last letter?"

He meant about his progress with the petition; but she, mistaking
him, frankly spoke of the personal part. "He said--what I have
implied. Should I tell more plainly?"

"Oh no--don't, if it is a secret."

"Not at all. I will tell every word, straight out, Giles, if you
wish. He said I was to encourage you. There. But I cannot obey
him further to-day. Come, let us go now." She gently slid her
hand from his, and went in front of him out of the Abbey.

"I was thinking of getting some dinner," said Winterborne,
changing to the prosaic, as they walked. "And you, too, must
require something. Do let me take you to a place I know."

Grace was almost without a friend in the world outside her
father's house; her life with Fitzpiers had brought her no
society; had sometimes, indeed, brought her deeper solitude and
inconsideration than any she had ever known before. Hence it was
a treat to her to find herself again the object of thoughtful
care. But she questioned if to go publicly to dine with Giles
Winterborne were not a proposal, due rather to his
unsophistication than to his discretion. She said gently that she
would much prefer his ordering her lunch at some place and then
coming to tell her it was ready, while she remained in the Abbey
porch. Giles saw her secret reasoning, thought how hopelessly
blind to propriety he was beside her, and went to do as she
wished.

He was not absent more than ten minutes, and found Grace where he
had left her. "It will be quite ready by the time you get there,"
he said, and told her the name of the inn at which the meal had
been ordered, which was one that she had never heard of.

"I'll find it by inquiry," said Grace, setting out.

"And shall I see you again?"

"Oh yes--come to me there. It will not be like going together. I
shall want you to find my father's man and the gig for me."

He waited on some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, till he
thought her lunch ended, and that he might fairly take advantage
of her invitation to start her on her way home. He went straight
to The Three Tuns--a little tavern in a side street, scrupulously
clean, but humble and inexpensive. On his way he had an
occasional misgiving as to whether the place had been elegant
enough for her; and as soon as he entered it, and saw her
ensconced there, he perceived that he had blundered.

Grace was seated in the only dining-room that the simple old
hostelry could boast of, which was also a general parlor on
market-days; a long, low apartment, with a sanded floor herring-
boned with a broom; a wide, red-curtained window to the street,
and another to the garden. Grace had retreated to the end of the
room looking out upon the latter, the front part being full of a
mixed company which had dropped in since he was there.

She was in a mood of the greatest depression. On arriving, and
seeing what the tavern was like, she had been taken by surprise;
but having gone too far to retreat, she had heroically entered and
sat down on the well-scrubbed settle, opposite the narrow table
with its knives and steel forks, tin pepper-boxes, blue salt-
cellars, and posters advertising the sale of bullocks against the
wall. The last time that she had taken any meal in a public place
it had been with Fitzpiers at the grand new Earl of Wessex Hotel
in that town, after a two months' roaming and sojourning at the
gigantic hotels of the Continent. How could she have expected any
other kind of accommodation in present circumstances than such as
Giles had provided? And yet how unprepared she was for this
change! The tastes that she had acquired from Fitzpiers had been
imbibed so subtly that she hardly knew she possessed them till
confronted by this contrast. The elegant Fitzpiers, in fact, at
that very moment owed a long bill at the above-mentioned hotel for
the luxurious style in which he used to put her up there whenever
they drove to Sherton. But such is social sentiment, that she had
been quite comfortable under those debt-impending conditions,
while she felt humiliated by her present situation, which
Winterborne had paid for honestly on the nail.

He had noticed in a moment that she shrunk from her position, and
all his pleasure was gone. It was the same susceptibility over
again which had spoiled his Christmas party long ago.

But he did not know that this recrudescence was only the casual
result of Grace's apprenticeship to what she was determined to
learn in spite of it--a consequence of one of those sudden
surprises which confront everybody bent upon turning over a new
leaf. She had finished her lunch, which he saw had been a very
mincing performance; and he brought her out of the house as soon
as he could.

"Now," he said, with great sad eyes, "you have not finished at all
well, I know. Come round to the Earl of Wessex. I'll order a tea
there. I did not remember that what was good enough for me was
not good enough for you."

Her face faded into an aspect of deep distress when she saw what
had happened. "Oh no, Giles," she said, with extreme pathos;
"certainly not. Why do you--say that when you know better? You
EVER will misunderstand me."

"Indeed, that's not so, Mrs. Fitzpiers. Can you deny that you
felt out of place at The Three Tuns?"

"I don't know. Well, since you make me speak, I do not deny it."

"And yet I have felt at home there these twenty years. Your
husband used always to take you to the Earl of Wessex, did he
not?"

"Yes," she reluctantly admitted. How could she explain in the
street of a market-town that it was her superficial and transitory
taste which had been offended, and not her nature or her
affection? Fortunately, or unfortunately, at that moment they saw
Melbury's man driving vacantly along the street in search of her,
the hour having passed at which he had been told to take her up.
Winterborne hailed him, and she was powerless then to prolong the
discourse. She entered the vehicle sadly, and the horse trotted
away.



CHAPTER XXXIX.


All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of
a pleasant time, forgetting the pleasant time itself. He feared
anew that they could never be happy together, even should she be
free to choose him. She was accomplished; he was unrefined. It
was the original difficulty, which he was too sensitive to
recklessly ignore, as some men would have done in his place.

He was one of those silent, unobtrusive beings who want little
from others in the way of favor or condescension, and perhaps on
that very account scrutinize those others' behavior too closely.
He was not versatile, but one in whom a hope or belief which had
once had its rise, meridian, and decline seldom again exactly
recurred, as in the breasts of more sanguine mortals. He had once
worshipped her, laid out his life to suit her, wooed her, and lost
her. Though it was with almost the same zest, it was with not
quite the same hope, that he had begun to tread the old tracks
again, and allowed himself to be so charmed with her that day.

Move another step towards her he would not. He would even repulse
her--as a tribute to conscience. It would be sheer sin to let her
prepare a pitfall for her happiness not much smaller than the
first by inveigling her into a union with such as he. Her poor
father was now blind to these subtleties, which he had formerly
beheld as in noontide light. It was his own duty to declare them--
for her dear sake.



Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her solicitous
embarrassment was not lessened the next morning when another
letter from her father was put into her hands. Its tenor was an
intenser strain of the one that had preceded it. After stating
how extremely glad he was to hear that she was better, and able to
get out-of-doors, he went on:

"This is a wearisome business, the solicitor we have come to see
being out of town. I do not know when I shall get home. My great
anxiety in this delay is still lest you should lose Giles
Winterborne. I cannot rest at night for thinking that while our
business is hanging fire he may become estranged, or go away from
the neighborhood. I have set my heart upon seeing him your
husband, if you ever have another. Do, then, Grace, give him some
temporary encouragement, even though it is over-early. For when I
consider the past I do think God will forgive me and you for being
a little forward. I have another reason for this, my dear. I
feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late affairs have still
further helped me that way. And until this thing is done I cannot
rest in peace."

He added a postscript:

"I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-morrow.
Possibly, therefore, I shall return in the evening after you get
this."



The paternal longing ran on all fours with her own desire; and yet
in forwarding it yesterday she had been on the brink of giving
offence. While craving to be a country girl again just as her
father requested; to put off the old Eve, the fastidious miss--or
rather madam--completely, her first attempt had been beaten by the
unexpected vitality of that fastidiousness. Her father on
returning and seeing the trifling coolness of Giles would be sure
to say that the same perversity which had led her to make
difficulties about marrying Fitzpiers was now prompting her to
blow hot and cold with poor Winterborne.

If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching the stops
of her delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to
let her drift away from him again (if she would) on the wind of
her estranging education, he could not have acted more seductively
than he did that day. He chanced to be superintending some
temporary work in a field opposite her windows. She could not
discover what he was doing, but she read his mood keenly and
truly: she could see in his coming and going an air of determined
abandonment of the whole landscape that lay in her direction.

Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father coming in
the evening--which meant, she supposed, that all formalities would
be in train, her marriage virtually annulled, and she be free to
be won again--how could she look him in the face if he should see
them estranged thus?

It was a fair green evening in June. She was seated in the
garden, in the rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes--
made of peeled oak-branches that came to Melbury's premises as
refuse after barking-time. The mass of full-juiced leafage on the
heights around her was just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly
spent wind which, even in its enfeebled state, did not reach her
shelter. All day she had expected Giles to call--to inquire how
she had got home, or something or other; but he had not come. And
he still tantalized her by going athwart and across that orchard
opposite. She could see him as she sat.

A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him a
letter. She knew from this that Creedle had just come from
Sherton, and had called as usual at the post-office for anything
that had arrived by the afternoon post, of which there was no
delivery at Hintock. She pondered on what the letter might
contain--particularly whether it were a second refresher for
Winterborne from her father, like her own of the morning.

But it appeared to have no bearing upon herself whatever. Giles
read its contents; and almost immediately turned away to a gap in
the hedge of the orchard--if that could be called a hedge which,
owing to the drippings of the trees, was little more than a bank
with a bush upon it here and there. He entered the plantation,
and was no doubt going that way homeward to the mysterious hut he
occupied on the other side of the woodland.

The sad sands were running swiftly through Time's glass; she had
often felt it in these latter days; and, like Giles, she felt it
doubly now after the solemn and pathetic reminder in her father's
communication. Her freshness would pass, the long-suffering
devotion of Giles might suddenly end--might end that very hour.
Men were so strange. The thought took away from her all her
former reticence, and made her action bold. She started from her
seat. If the little breach, quarrel, or whatever it might be
called, of yesterday, was to be healed up it must be done by her
on the instant. She crossed into the orchard, and clambered
through the gap after Giles, just as he was diminishing to a faun-
like figure under the green canopy and over the brown floor.

Grace had been wrong--very far wrong--in assuming that the letter
had no reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the
wood after its perusal. It was, sad to say, because the missive
had so much reference to herself that he had thus turned away. He
feared that his grieved discomfiture might be observed. The
letter was from Beaucock, written a few hours later than Melbury's
to his daughter. It announced failure.

Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was
the moment when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way.
During his absence in town with Melbury, the lawyer's clerk had
naturally heard a great deal of the timber-merchant's family
scheme of justice to Giles, and his communication was to inform
Winterborne at the earliest possible moment that their attempt had
failed, in order that the young man should not place himself in a
false position towards Grace in the belief of its coming success.
The news was, in sum, that Fitzpiers's conduct had not been
sufficiently cruel to Grace to enable her to snap the bond. She
was apparently doomed to be his wife till the end of the chapter.

Winterborne quite forgot his superficial differences with the poor
girl under the warm rush of deep and distracting love for her
which the almost tragical information engendered.

To renounce her forever--that was then the end of it for him,
after all. There was no longer any question about suitability, or
room for tiffs on petty tastes. The curtain had fallen again
between them. She could not be his. The cruelty of their late
revived hope was now terrible. How could they all have been so
simple as to suppose this thing could be done?

It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming behind him, he
turned and saw her hastening on between the thickets. He
perceived in an instant that she did not know the blighting news.

"Giles, why didn't you come across to me?" she asked, with arch
reproach. "Didn't you see me sitting there ever so long?"

"Oh yes," he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for her
unexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of
behavior in the conjuncture. His manner made her think that she
had been too chiding in her speech; and a mild scarlet wave passed
over her as she resolved to soften it.

"I have had another letter from my father," she hastened to
continue. "He thinks he may come home this evening. And--in view
of his hopes--it will grieve him if there is any little difference
between us, Giles."

"There is none," he said, sadly regarding her from the face
downward as he pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare.

"Still--I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my being
uncomfortable at the inn."

"I have, Grace, I'm sure."

"But you speak in quite an unhappy way," she returned, coming up
close to him with the most winning of the many pretty airs that
appertained to her. "Don't you think you will ever be happy,
Giles?"

He did not reply for some instants. "When the sun shines on the
north front of Sherton Abbey--that's when my happiness will come
to me!" said he, staring as it were into the earth.

"But--then that means that there is something more than my
offending you in not liking The Three Tuns. If it is because I--
did not like to let you kiss me in the Abbey--well, you know,
Giles, that it was not on account of my cold feelings, but because
I did certainly, just then, think it was rather premature, in
spite of my poor father. That was the true reason--the sole one.
But I do not want to be hard--God knows I do not," she said, her
voice fluctuating. "And perhaps--as I am on the verge of freedom--
I am not right, after all, in thinking there is any harm in your
kissing me."

"Oh God!" said Winterborne within himself. His head was turned
askance as he still resolutely regarded the ground. For the last
several minutes he had seen this great temptation approaching him
in regular siege; and now it had come. The wrong, the social sin,
of now taking advantage of the offer of her lips had a magnitude,
in the eyes of one whose life had been so primitive, so ruled by
purest household laws, as Giles's, which can hardly be explained.

"Did you say anything?" she asked, timidly.

"Oh no--only that--"

"You mean that it must BE settled, since my father is coming
home?" she said, gladly.

Winterborne, though fighting valiantly against himself all this
while--though he would have protected Grace's good repute as the
apple of his eye--was a man; and, as Desdemona said, men are not
gods. In face of the agonizing seductiveness shown by her, in her
unenlightened school-girl simplicity about the laws and
ordinances, he betrayed a man's weakness. Since it was so--since
it had come to this, that Grace, deeming herself free to do it,
was virtually asking him to demonstrate that he loved her--since
he could demonstrate it only too truly--since life was short and
love was strong--he gave way to the temptation, notwithstanding
that he perfectly well knew her to be wedded irrevocably to
Fitzpiers. Indeed, he cared for nothing past or future, simply
accepting the present and what it brought, desiring once in his
life to clasp in his arms her he had watched over and loved so
long.

She started back suddenly from his embrace, influenced by a sort
of inspiration. "Oh, I suppose," she stammered, "that I am really
free?--that this is right? Is there REALLY a new law? Father
cannot have been too sanguine in saying--"

He did not answer, and a moment afterwards Grace burst into tears
in spite of herself. "Oh, why does not my father come home and
explain," she sobbed, "and let me know clearly what I am? It is
too trying, this, to ask me to--and then to leave me so long in so
vague a state that I do not know what to do, and perhaps do
wrong!"

Winterborne felt like a very Cain, over and above his previous
sorrow. How he had sinned against her in not telling her what he
knew. He turned aside; the feeling of his cruelty mounted higher
and higher. How could he have dreamed of kissing her? He could
hardly refrain from tears. Surely nothing more pitiable had ever
been known than the condition of this poor young thing, now as
heretofore the victim of her father's well-meant but blundering
policy.

Even in the hour of Melbury's greatest assurance Winterborne had
harbored a suspicion that no law, new or old, could undo Grace's
marriage without her appearance in public; though he was not
sufficiently sure of what might have been enacted to destroy by
his own words her pleasing idea that a mere dash of the pen, on
her father's testimony, was going to be sufficient. But he had
never suspected the sad fact that the position was irremediable.

Poor Grace, perhaps feeling that she had indulged in too much
fluster for a mere kiss, calmed herself at finding how grave he
was. "I am glad we are friends again anyhow," she said, smiling
through her tears. "Giles, if you had only shown half the
boldness before I married that you show now, you would have
carried me off for your own first instead of second. If we do
marry, I hope you will never think badly of me for encouraging you
a little, but my father is SO impatient, you know, as his years
and infirmities increase, that he will wish to see us a little
advanced when he comes. That is my only excuse."

To Winterborne all this was sadder than it was sweet. How could
she so trust her father's conjectures? He did not know how to tell
her the truth and shame himself. And yet he felt that it must be
done. "We may have been wrong," he began, almost fearfully, "in
supposing that it can all be carried out while we stay here at
Hintock. I am not sure but that people may have to appear in a
public court even under the new Act; and if there should be any
difficulty, and we cannot marry after all--"

Her cheeks became slowly bloodless. "Oh, Giles," she said,
grasping his arm, "you have heard something! What--cannot my
father conclude it there and now? Surely he has done it? Oh,
Giles, Giles, don't deceive me. What terrible position am I in?"

He could not tell her, try as he would. The sense of her implicit
trust in his honor absolutely disabled him. "I cannot inform
you," he murmured, his voice as husky as that of the leaves
underfoot. "Your father will soon be here. Then we shall know.
I will take you home."

Inexpressibly dear as she was to him, he offered her his arm with
the most reserved air, as he added, correctingly, "I will take
you, at any rate, into the drive."

Thus they walked on together. Grace vibrating between happiness
and misgiving. It was only a few minutes' walk to where the drive
ran, and they had hardly descended into it when they heard a voice
behind them cry, "Take out that arm!"

For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, more
loudly and hoarsely,

"Take out that arm!"

It was Melbury's. He had returned sooner than they expected, and
now came up to them. Grace's hand had been withdrawn like
lightning on her hearing the second command. "I don't blame you--
I don't blame you," he said, in the weary cadence of one broken
down with scourgings. "But you two must walk together no more--I
have been surprised--I have been cruelly deceived--Giles, don't
say anything to me; but go away!"

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