Book: The Woodlanders

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Woodlanders




"I do. But it is home. It has its advantages and its
disadvantages." Grace was thinking less of the solitude than of
the attendant circumstances.

They chatted on for some time, Grace being set quite at her ease
by her entertainer. Mrs. Charmond was far too well-practised a
woman not to know that to show a marked patronage to a sensitive
young girl who would probably be very quick to discern it, was to
demolish her dignity rather than to establish it in that young
girl's eyes. So, being violently possessed with her idea of
making use of this gentle acquaintance, ready and waiting at her
own door, she took great pains to win her confidence at starting.

Just before Grace's departure the two chanced to pause before a
mirror which reflected their faces in immediate juxtaposition, so
as to bring into prominence their resemblances and their
contrasts. Both looked attractive as glassed back by the faithful
reflector; but Grace's countenance had the effect of making Mrs.
Charmond appear more than her full age. There are complexions
which set off each other to great advantage, and there are those
which antagonize, the one killing or damaging its neighbor
unmercifully. This was unhappily the case here. Mrs. Charmond
fell into a meditation, and replied abstractedly to a cursory
remark of her companion's. However, she parted from her young
friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her know
as soon as her mind was made up on the arrangement she had
suggested.

When Grace had ascended nearly to the top of the adjoining slope
she looked back, and saw that Mrs. Charmond still stood at the
door, meditatively regarding her.



Often during the previous night, after his call on the Melburys,
Winterborne's thoughts ran upon Grace's announced visit to Hintock
House. Why could he not have proposed to walk with her part of
the way? Something told him that she might not, on such an
occasion, care for his company.

He was still more of that opinion when, standing in his garden
next day, he saw her go past on the journey with such a pretty
pride in the event. He wondered if her father's ambition, which
had purchased for her the means of intellectual light and culture
far beyond those of any other native of the village, would conduce
to the flight of her future interests above and away from the
local life which was once to her the movement of the world.

Nevertheless, he had her father's permission to win her if he
could; and to this end it became desirable to bring matters soon
to a crisis, if he ever hoped to do so. If she should think
herself too good for him, he could let her go and make the best of
his loss; but until he had really tested her he could not say that
she despised his suit. The question was how to quicken events
towards an issue.

He thought and thought, and at last decided that as good a way as
any would be to give a Christmas party, and ask Grace and her
parents to come as chief guests.

These ruminations were occupying him when there became audible a
slight knocking at his front door. He descended the path and
looked out, and beheld Marty South, dressed for out-door work.

"Why didn't you come, Mr. Winterborne?" she said. "I've been
waiting there hours and hours, and at last I thought I must try to
find you."

"Bless my soul, I'd quite forgot," said Giles.

What he had forgotten was that there was a thousand young fir-
trees to be planted in a neighboring spot which had been cleared
by the wood-cutters, and that he had arranged to plant them with
his own hands. He had a marvellous power of making trees grow.
Although he would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly,
there was a sort of sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or
beech that he was operating on, so that the roots took hold of the
soil in a few days. When, on the other hand, any of the
journeymen planted, although they seemed to go through an
identically similar process, one quarter of the trees would die
away during the ensuing August.

Hence Winterborne found delight in the work even when, as at
present, he contracted to do it on portions of the woodland in
which he had no personal interest. Marty, who turned her hand to
anything, was usually the one who performed the part of keeping
the trees in a perpendicular position while he threw in the mould.

He accompanied her towards the spot, being stimulated yet further
to proceed with the work by the knowledge that the ground was
close to the way-side along which Grace must pass on her return
from Hintock House.

"You've a cold in the head, Marty," he said, as they walked.
"That comes of cutting off your hair."

"I suppose it do. Yes; I've three headaches going on in my head
at the same time."

"Three headaches!"

"Yes, a rheumatic headache in my poll, a sick headache over my
eyes, and a misery headache in the middle of my brain. However, I
came out, for I thought you might be waiting and grumbling like
anything if I was not there."

The holes were already dug, and they set to work. Winterborne's
fingers were endowed with a gentle conjuror's touch in spreading
the roots of each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress,
under which the delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their
proper directions for growth. He put most of these roots towards
the south-west; for, he said, in forty years' time, when some
great gale is blowing from that quarter, the trees will require
the strongest holdfast on that side to stand against it and not
fall.

"How they sigh directly we put 'em upright, though while they are
lying down they don't sigh at all," said Marty.

"Do they?" said Giles. "I've never noticed it."

She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her
finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not
to cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled--
probably long after the two planters should be felled themselves.

"It seems to me," the girl continued, "as if they sigh because
they are very sorry to begin life in earnest--just as we be."

"Just as we be?" He looked critically at her. "You ought not to
feel like that, Marty."

Her only reply was turning to take up the next tree; and they
planted on through a great part of the day, almost without another
word. Winterborne's mind ran on his contemplated evening-party,
his abstraction being such that he hardly was conscious of Marty's
presence beside him. From the nature of their employment, in
which he handled the spade and she merely held the tree, it
followed that he got good exercise and she got none. But she was
an heroic girl, and though her out-stretched hand was chill as a
stone, and her cheeks blue, and her cold worse than ever, she
would not complain while he was disposed to continue work. But
when he paused she said, "Mr. Winterborne, can I run down the lane
and back to warm my feet?"

"Why, yes, of course," he said, awakening anew to her existence.
"Though I was just thinking what a mild day it is for the season.
Now I warrant that cold of yours is twice as bad as it was. You
had no business to chop that hair off, Marty; it serves you almost
right. Look here, cut off home at once."

"A run down the lane will be quite enough."

"No, it won't. You ought not to have come out to-day at all."

"But I should like to finish the--"

"Marty, I tell you to go home," said he, peremptorily. "I can
manage to keep the rest of them upright with a stick or
something."

She went away without saying any more. When she had gone down the
orchard a little distance she looked back. Giles suddenly went
after her.

"Marty, it was for your good that I was rough, you know. But warm
yourself in your own way, I don't care."

When she had run off he fancied he discerned a woman's dress
through the holly-bushes which divided the coppice from the road.
It was Grace at last, on her way back from the interview with Mrs.
Charmond. He threw down the tree he was planting, and was about
to break through the belt of holly when he suddenly became aware
of the presence of another man, who was looking over the hedge on
the opposite side of the way upon the figure of the unconscious
Grace. He appeared as a handsome and gentlemanly personage of six
or eight and twenty, and was quizzing her through an eye-glass.
Seeing that Winterborne was noticing him, he let his glass drop
with a click upon the rail which protected the hedge, and walked
away in the opposite direction. Giles knew in a moment that this
must be Mr. Fitzpiers. When he was gone, Winterborne pushed
through the hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting
object of their contemplation.



CHAPTER IX.


"I heard the bushes move long before I saw you," she began. "I
said first, 'it is some terrible beast;' next, 'it is a poacher;'
next, 'it is a friend!'"

He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing, not her speech, but
the question whether he should tell her that she had been watched.
He decided in the negative.

"You have been to the house?" he said. "But I need not ask." The
fact was that there shone upon Miss Melbury's face a species of
exaltation, which saw no environing details nor his own
occupation; nothing more than his bare presence.

"Why need you not ask?"

"Your face is like the face of Moses when he came down from the
Mount."

She reddened a little and said, "How can you be so profane, Giles
Winterborne?"

"How can you think so much of that class of people? Well, I beg
pardon; I didn't mean to speak so freely. How do you like her
house and her?"

"Exceedingly. I had not been inside the walls since I was a
child, when it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond's
late husband bought the property. She is SO nice!" And Grace fell
into such an abstracted gaze at the imaginary image of Mrs.
Charmond and her niceness that it almost conjured up a vision of
that lady in mid-air before them.

"She has only been here a month or two, it seems, and cannot stay
much longer, because she finds it so lonely and damp in winter.
She is going abroad. Only think, she would like me to go with
her."

Giles's features stiffened a little at the news. "Indeed; what
for? But I won't keep you standing here. Hoi, Robert!" he cried
to a swaying collection of clothes in the distance, which was the
figure of Creedle his man. "Go on filling in there till I come
back."

"I'm a-coming, sir; I'm a-coming."

"Well, the reason is this," continued she, as they went on
together--" Mrs. Charmond has a delightful side to her character--
a desire to record her impressions of travel, like Alexandre
Dumas, and Mery, and Sterne, and others. But she cannot find
energy enough to do it herself." And Grace proceeded to explain
Mrs. Charmond's proposal at large. "My notion is that Mery's
style will suit her best, because he writes in that soft,
emotional, luxurious way she has," Grace said, musingly.

"Indeed!" said Winterborne, with mock awe. "Suppose you talk over
my head a little longer, Miss Grace Melbury?"

"Oh, I didn't mean it!" she said, repentantly, looking into his
eyes. "And as for myself, I hate French books. And I love dear
old Hintock, AND THE PEOPLE IN IT, fifty times better than all the
Continent. But the scheme; I think it an enchanting notion, don't
you, Giles?"

"It is well enough in one sense, but it will take yon away," said
he, mollified.

"Only for a short time. We should return in May."

"Well, Miss Melbury, it is a question for your father."

Winterborne walked with her nearly to her house. He had awaited
her coming, mainly with the view of mentioning to her his proposal
to have a Christmas party; but homely Christmas gatherings in the
venerable and jovial Hintock style seemed so primitive and uncouth
beside the lofty matters of her converse and thought that he
refrained.

As soon as she was gone he turned back towards the scene of his
planting, and could not help saying to himself as he walked, that
this engagement of his was a very unpromising business. Her
outing to-day had not improved it. A woman who could go to
Hintock House and be friendly with its mistress, enter into the
views of its mistress, talk like her, and dress not much unlike
her, why, she would hardly be contented with him, a yeoman, now
immersed in tree-planting, even though he planted them well. "And
yet she's a true-hearted girl," he said, thinking of her words
about Hintock. "I must bring matters to a point, and there's an
end of it."

When he reached the plantation he found that Marty had come back,
and dismissing Creedle, he went on planting silently with the girl
as before.

"Suppose, Marty," he said, after a while, looking at her extended
arm, upon which old scratches from briers showed themselves purple
in the cold wind--"suppose you know a person, and want to bring
that person to a good understanding with you, do you think a
Christmas party of some sort is a warming-up thing, and likely to
be useful in hastening on the matter?"

"Is there to be dancing?"

"There might be, certainly."

"Will He dance with She?"

"Well, yes."

"Then it might bring things to a head, one way or the other; I
won't be the one to say which."

"It shall be done," said Winterborne, not to her, though he spoke
the words quite loudly. And as the day was nearly ended, he
added, "Here, Marty, I'll send up a man to plant the rest to-
morrow. I've other things to think of just now."

She did not inquire what other things, for she had seen him
walking with Grace Melbury. She looked towards the western sky,
which was now aglow like some vast foundery wherein new worlds
were being cast. Across it the bare bough of a tree stretched
horizontally, revealing every twig against the red, and showing in
dark profile every beck and movement of three pheasants that were
settling themselves down on it in a row to roost.

"It will be fine to-morrow," said Marty, observing them with the
vermilion light of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, "for they
are a-croupied down nearly at the end of the bough. If it were
going to be stormy they'd squeeze close to the trunk. The weather
is almost all they have to think of, isn't it, Mr. Winterborne?
and so they must be lighter-hearted than we."

"I dare say they are," said Winterborne.



Before taking a single step in the preparations, Winterborne, with
no great hopes, went across that evening to the timber-merchant's
to ascertain if Grace and her parents would honor him with their
presence. Having first to set his nightly gins in the garden, to
catch the rabbits that ate his winter-greens, his call was delayed
till just after the rising of the moon, whose rays reached the
Hintock houses but fitfully as yet, on account of the trees.
Melbury was crossing his yard on his way to call on some one at
the larger village, but he readily turned and walked up and down
the path with the young man.

Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of living on a much smaller
scale than the Melburys did, would not for the world imply that
his invitation was to a gathering of any importance. So he put it
in the mild form of "Can you come in for an hour, when you have
done business, the day after to-morrow; and Mrs. and Miss Melbury,
if they have nothing more pressing to do?"

Melbury would give no answer at once. "No, I can't tell you to-
day," he said. "I must talk it over with the women. As far as I
am concerned, my dear Giles, you know I'll come with pleasure.
But how do I know what Grace's notions may be? You see, she has
been away among cultivated folks a good while; and now this
acquaintance with Mrs. Charmond--Well, I'll ask her. I can say no
more."

When Winterborne was gone the timber-merchant went on his way. He
knew very well that Grace, whatever her own feelings, would either
go or not go, according as he suggested; and his instinct was, for
the moment, to suggest the negative. His errand took him past the
church, and the way to his destination was either across the
church-yard or along-side it, the distances being the same. For
some reason or other he chose the former way.

The moon was faintly lighting up the gravestones, and the path,
and the front of the building. Suddenly Mr. Melbury paused,
turned ill upon the grass, and approached a particular headstone,
where he read, "In memory of John Winterborne," with the subjoined
date and age. It was the grave of Giles's father.

The timber-merchant laid his hand upon the stone, and was
humanized. "Jack, my wronged friend!" he said. "I'll be faithful
to my plan of making amends to 'ee."

When he reached home that evening, he said to Grace and Mrs.
Melbury, who were working at a little table by the fire,

"Giles wants us to go down and spend an hour with him the day
after to-morrow; and I'm thinking, that as 'tis Giles who asks us,
we'll go."

They assented without demur, and accordingly the timber-merchant
sent Giles the next morning an answer in the affirmative.



Winterborne, in his modesty, or indifference, had mentioned no
particular hour in his invitation; and accordingly Mr. Melbury and
his family, expecting no other guests, chose their own time, which
chanced to be rather early in the afternoon, by reason of the
somewhat quicker despatch than usual of the timber-merchant's
business that day. To show their sense of the unimportance of the
occasion, they walked quite slowly to the house, as if they were
merely out for a ramble, and going to nothing special at all; or
at most intending to pay a casual call and take a cup of tea.

At this hour stir and bustle pervaded the interior of
Winterborne's domicile from cellar to apple-loft. He had planned
an elaborate high tea for six o'clock or thereabouts, and a good
roaring supper to come on about eleven. Being a bachelor of
rather retiring habits, the whole of the preparations devolved
upon himself and his trusty man and familiar, Robert Creedle, who
did everything that required doing, from making Giles's bed to
catching moles in his field. He was a survival from the days when
Giles's father held the homestead, and Giles was a playing boy.

These two, with a certain dilatoriousness which appertained to
both, were now in the heat of preparation in the bake-house,
expecting nobody before six o'clock. Winterborne was standing
before the brick oven in his shirt-sleeves, tossing in thorn
sprays, and stirring about the blazing mass with a long-handled,
three-pronged Beelzebub kind of fork, the heat shining out upon
his streaming face and making his eyes like furnaces, the thorns
crackling and sputtering; while Creedle, having ranged the pastry
dishes in a row on the table till the oven should be ready, was
pressing out the crust of a final apple-pie with a rolling-pin. A
great pot boiled on the fire, and through the open door of the
back kitchen a boy was seen seated on the fender, emptying the
snuffers and scouring the candlesticks, a row of the latter
standing upside down on the hob to melt out the grease

Looking up from the rolling-pin, Creedle saw passing the window
first the timber-merchant, in his second-best suit, Mrs. Melbury
in her best silk, and Grace in the fashionable attire which, in
part brought home with her from the Continent, she had worn on her
visit to Mrs. Charmond's. The eyes of the three had been
attracted to the proceedings within by the fierce illumination
which the oven threw out upon the operators and their utensils.

"Lord, Lord! if they baint come a'ready!" said Creedle.

"No--hey?" said Giles, looking round aghast; while the boy in the
background waved a reeking candlestick in his delight. As there
was no help for it, Winterborne went to meet them in the door-way.

"My dear Giles, I see we have made a mistake in the time," said
the timber-merchant's wife, her face lengthening with concern.

"Oh, it is not much difference. I hope you'll come in."

"But this means a regular randyvoo!" said Mr. Melbury, accusingly,
glancing round and pointing towards the bake-house with his stick.

"Well, yes," said Giles.

"And--not Great Hintock band, and dancing, surely?"

"I told three of 'em they might drop in if they'd nothing else to
do," Giles mildly admitted.

"Now, why the name didn't ye tell us 'twas going to be a serious
kind of thing before? How should I know what folk mean if they
don't say? Now, shall we come in, or shall we go home and come
back along in a couple of hours?"

"I hope you'll stay, if you'll be so good as not to mind, now you
are here. I shall have it all right and tidy in a very little
time. I ought not to have been so backward." Giles spoke quite
anxiously for one of his undemonstrative temperament; for he
feared that if the Melburys once were back in their own house they
would not be disposed to turn out again.

"'Tis we ought not to have been so forward; that's what 'tis,"
said Mr. Melbury, testily. "Don't keep us here in the sitting-
room; lead on to the bakehouse, man. Now we are here we'll help
ye get ready for the rest. Here, mis'ess, take off your things,
and help him out in his baking, or he won't get done to-night.
I'll finish heating the oven, and set you free to go and skiver up
them ducks." His eye had passed with pitiless directness of
criticism into yet remote recesses of Winterborne's awkwardly
built premises, where the aforesaid birds were hanging.

"And I'll help finish the tarts," said Grace, cheerfully.

"I don't know about that," said her father. "'Tisn't quite so
much in your line as it is in your mother-law's and mine."

"Of course I couldn't let you, Grace!" said Giles, with some
distress.

"I'll do it, of course," said Mrs. Melbury, taking off her silk
train, hanging it up to a nail, carefully rolling back her
sleeves, pinning them to her shoulders, and stripping Giles of his
apron for her own use.

So Grace pottered idly about, while her father and his wife helped
on the preparations. A kindly pity of his household management,
which Winterborne saw in her eyes whenever he caught them,
depressed him much more than her contempt would have done.

Creedle met Giles at the pump after a while, when each of the
others was absorbed in the difficulties of a cuisine based on
utensils, cupboards, and provisions that were strange to them. He
groaned to the young man in a whisper, "This is a bruckle het,
maister, I'm much afeared! Who'd ha' thought they'd ha' come so
soon?"

The bitter placidity of Winterborne's look adumbrated the
misgivings he did not care to express. "Have you got the celery
ready?" he asked, quickly.

"Now that's a thing I never could mind; no, not if you'd paid me
in silver and gold. And I don't care who the man is, I says that
a stick of celery that isn't scrubbed with the scrubbing-brush is
not clean."

"Very well, very well! I'll attend to it. You go and get 'em
comfortable in-doors."

He hastened to the garden, and soon returned, tossing the stalks
to Creedle, who was still in a tragic mood. "If ye'd ha' married,
d'ye see, maister," he said, "this caddle couldn't have happened
to us."

Everything being at last under way, the oven set, and all done
that could insure the supper turning up ready at some time or
other, Giles and his friends entered the parlor, where the
Melburys again dropped into position as guests, though the room
was not nearly so warm and cheerful as the blazing bakehouse.
Others now arrived, among them Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-
turner, and tea went off very well.

Grace's disposition to make the best of everything, and to wink at
deficiencies in Winterborne's menage, was so uniform and
persistent that he suspected her of seeing even more deficiencies
than he was aware of. That suppressed sympathy which had showed
in her face ever since her arrival told him as much too plainly.

"This muddling style of house-keeping is what you've not lately
been used to, I suppose?" he said, when they were a little apart.

"No; but I like it; it reminds me so pleasantly that everything
here in dear old Hintock is just as it used to be. The oil is--
not quite nice; but everything else is."

"The oil?"

"On the chairs, I mean; because it gets on one's dress. Still,
mine is not a new one."

Giles found that Creedle, in his zeal to make things look bright,
had smeared the chairs with some greasy kind of furniture-polish,
and refrained from rubbing it dry in order not to diminish the
mirror-like effect that the mixture produced as laid on. Giles
apologized and called Creedle; but he felt that the Fates were
against him.



CHAPTER X.


Supper-time came, and with it the hot-baked from the oven, laid on
a snowy cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated with folds, as
in Flemish "Last Suppers." Creedle and the boy fetched and
carried with amazing alacrity, the latter, to mollify his superior
and make things pleasant, expressing his admiration of Creedle's
cleverness when they were alone.

"I s'pose the time when you learned all these knowing things, Mr.
Creedle, was when you was in the militia?"

"Well, yes. I seed the world at that time somewhat, certainly,
and many ways of strange dashing life. Not but that Giles has
worked hard in helping me to bring things to such perfection to-
day. 'Giles,' says I, though he's maister. Not that I should
call'n maister by rights, for his father growed up side by side
with me, as if one mother had twinned us and been our nourishing."

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