Book: The Woodlanders

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Woodlanders




Winterborne was vexed at the incident; the more so that he knew
Mr. Melbury, in his adoration of Hintock House, would be the first
to blame him if it became known. But saying no more, he
accompanied the load to the end of the lane, and then turned back
with an intention to call at South's to learn the result of the
experiment of the preceding evening.

It chanced that a few minutes before this time Grace Melbury, who
now rose soon enough to breakfast with her father, in spite of the
unwontedness of the hour, had been commissioned by him to make the
same inquiry at South's. Marty had been standing at the door when
Miss Melbury arrived. Almost before the latter had spoken, Mrs.
Charmond's carriages, released from the obstruction up the lane,
came bowling along, and the two girls turned to regard the
spectacle.

Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but there was sufficient light for
them to discern her outline between the carriage windows. A
noticeable feature in her tournure was a magnificent mass of
braided locks.

"How well she looks this morning!" said Grace, forgetting Mrs.
Charmond's slight in her generous admiration. "Her hair so
becomes her worn that way. I have never seen any more beautiful!"

"Nor have I, miss," said Marty, dryly, unconsciously stroking her
crown.

Grace watched the carriages with lingering regret till they were
out of sight. She then learned of Marty that South was no better.
Before she had come away Winterborne approached the house, but
seeing that one of the two girls standing on the door-step was
Grace, he suddenly turned back again and sought the shelter of his
own home till she should have gone away.



CHAPTER XIV.


The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne's
mind the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel
went from her to the fact that several cottages and other houses
in the two Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession
in the event of South's death. He marvelled what people could
have been thinking about in the past to invent such precarious
tenures as these; still more, what could have induced his
ancestors at Hintock, and other village people, to exchange their
old copyholds for life-leases. But having naturally succeeded to
these properties through his father, he had done his best to keep
them in order, though he was much struck with his father's
negligence in not insuring South's life.

After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went up-
stairs, turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which
lay between the mattress and the sacking. In this he kept his
leases, which had remained there unopened ever since his father's
death. It was the usual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for
such documents. Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them
over. They were ordinary leases for three lives, which a member
of the South family, some fifty years before this time, had
accepted of the lord of the manor in lieu of certain copyholds and
other rights, in consideration of having the dilapidated houses
rebuilt by said lord. They had come into his father's possession
chiefly through his mother, who was a South.

Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter,
which Winterborne had never seen before. It bore a remote date,
the handwriting being that of some solicitor or agent, and the
signature the landholder's. It was to the effect that at any time
before the last of the stated lives should drop, Mr. Giles
Winterborne, senior, or his representative, should have the
privilege of adding his own and his son's life to the life
remaining on payment of a merely nominal sum; the concession being
in consequence of the elder Winterborne's consent to demolish one
of the houses and relinquish its site, which stood at an awkward
corner of the lane and impeded the way.

The house had been pulled down years before. Why Giles's father
had not taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his
son's lives it was impossible to say. The likelihood was that
death alone had hindered him in the execution of his project, as
it surely was, the elder Winterborne having been a man who took
much pleasure in dealing with house property in his small way.

Since one of the Souths still survived, there was not much doubt
that Giles could do what his father had left undone, as far as his
own life was concerned. This possibility cheered him much, for by
those houses hung many things. Melbury's doubt of the young man's
fitness to be the husband of Grace had been based not a little on
the precariousness of his holdings in Little and Great Hintock.
He resolved to attend to the business at once, the fine for
renewal being a sum that he could easily muster. His scheme,
however, could not be carried out in a day; and meanwhile he would
run up to South's, as he had intended to do, to learn the result
of the experiment with the tree.

Marty met him at the door. "Well, Marty," he said; and was
surprised to read in her face that the case was not so hopeful as
he had imagined.

"I am sorry for your labor," she said. "It is all lost. He says
the tree seems taller than ever."

Winterborne looked round at it. Taller the tree certainly did
seem, the gauntness of its now naked stem being more marked than
before.

"It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had done to it
this morning," she added. "He declares it will come down upon us
and cleave us, like 'the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.'"

"Well; can I do anything else?" asked he.

"The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down."

"Oh--you've had the doctor?"

"I didn't send for him Mrs. Charmond, before she left, heard that
father was ill, and told him to attend him at her expense."

"That was very good of her. And he says it ought to be cut down.
We mustn't cut it down without her knowledge, I suppose."

He went up-stairs. There the old man sat, staring at the now
gaunt tree as if his gaze were frozen on to its trunk. Unluckily
the tree waved afresh by this time, a wind having sprung up and
blown the fog away, and his eyes turned with its wavings.

They heard footsteps--a man's, but of a lighter type than usual.
"There is Doctor Fitzpiers again," she said, and descended.
Presently his tread was heard on the naked stairs.

Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick-chamber just as a doctor is more or
less wont to do on such occasions, and pre-eminently when the room
is that of a humble cottager, looking round towards the patient
with that preoccupied gaze which so plainly reveals that he has
wellnigh forgotten all about the case and the whole circumstances
since he dismissed them from his mind at his last exit from the
same apartment. He nodded to Winterborne, with whom he was
already a little acquainted, recalled the case to his thoughts,
and went leisurely on to where South sat.

Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed, handsome man. His
eyes were dark and impressive, and beamed with the light either of
energy or of susceptivity--it was difficult to say which; it might
have been a little of both. That quick, glittering, practical
eye, sharp for the surface of things and for nothing beneath it,
he had not. But whether his apparent depth of vision was real, or
only an artistic accident of his corporeal moulding, nothing but
his deeds could reveal.

His face was rather soft than stern, charming than grand, pale
than flushed; his nose--if a sketch of his features be de rigueur
for a person of his pretensions--was artistically beautiful enough
to have been worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy,
and was hence devoid of those knotty irregularities which often
mean power; while the double-cyma or classical curve of his mouth
was not without a looseness in its close. Nevertheless, either
from his readily appreciative mien, or his reflective manner, or
the instinct towards profound things which was said to possess
him, his presence bespoke the philosopher rather than the dandy or
macaroni--an effect which was helped by the absence of trinkets or
other trivialities from his attire, though this was more finished
and up to date than is usually the case among rural practitioners.

Strict people of the highly respectable class, knowing a little
about him by report, might have said that he seemed likely to err
rather in the possession of too many ideas than too few; to be a
dreamy 'ist of some sort, or too deeply steeped in some false kind
of 'ism. However this may be, it will be seen that he was
undoubtedly a somewhat rare kind of gentleman and doctor to have
descended, as from the clouds, upon Little Hintock.

"This is an extraordinary case," he said at last to Winterborne,
after examining South by conversation, look, and touch, and
learning that the craze about the elm was stronger than ever.
"Come down-stairs, and I'll tell you what I think."

They accordingly descended, and the doctor continued, "The tree
must be cut down, or I won't answer for his life."

"'Tis Mrs. Charmond's tree, and I suppose we must get permission?"
said Giles. "If so, as she is gone away, I must speak to her
agent."

"Oh--never mind whose tree it is--what's a tree beside a life! Cut
it down. I have not the honor of knowing Mrs. Charmond as yet,
but I am disposed to risk that much with her."

"'Tis timber," rejoined Giles, more scrupulous than he would have
been had not his own interests stood so closely involved.
"They'll never fell a stick about here without it being marked
first, either by her or the agent."

"Then we'll inaugurate a new era forthwith. How long has he
complained of the tree?" asked the doctor of Marty.

"Weeks and weeks, sir. The shape of it seems to haunt him like an
evil spirit. He says that it is exactly his own age, that it has
got human sense, and sprouted up when he was born on purpose to
rule him, and keep him as its slave. Others have been like it
afore in Hintock."

They could hear South's voice up-stairs "Oh, he's rocking this
way; he must come! And then my poor life, that's worth houses upon
houses, will be squashed out o' me. Oh! oh!"

"That's how he goes on," she added. "And he'll never look
anywhere else but out of the window, and scarcely have the
curtains drawn."

"Down with it, then, and hang Mrs. Charmond," said Mr. Fitzpiers.
"The best plan will be to wait till the evening, when it is dark,
or early in the morning before he is awake, so that he doesn't see
it fall, for that would terrify him worse than ever. Keep the
blind down till I come, and then I'll assure him, and show him
that his trouble is over."

The doctor then departed, and they waited till the evening. When
it was dusk, and the curtains drawn, Winterborne directed a couple
of woodmen to bring a crosscut-saw, and the tall, threatening tree
was soon nearly off at its base. He would not fell it completely
then, on account of the possible crash, but next morning, before
South was awake, they went and lowered it cautiously, in a
direction away from the cottage. It was a business difficult to
do quite silently; but it was done at last, and the elm of the
same birth-year as the woodman's lay stretched upon the ground.
The weakest idler that passed could now set foot on marks formerly
made in the upper forks by the shoes of adventurous climbers only;
once inaccessible nests could be examined microscopically; and on
swaying extremities where birds alone had perched, the by-standers
sat down.

As soon as it was broad daylight the doctor came, and Winterborne
entered the house with him. Marty said that her father was
wrapped up and ready, as usual, to be put into his chair. They
ascended the stairs, and soon seated him. He began at once to
complain of the tree, and the danger to his life and Winterborne's
house-property in consequence.

The doctor signalled to Giles, who went and drew back the printed
cotton curtains. "'Tis gone, see," said Mr. Fitzpiers.

As soon as the old man saw the vacant patch of sky in place of the
branched column so familiar to his gaze, he sprang up, speechless,
his eyes rose from their hollows till the whites showed all round;
he fell back, and a bluish whiteness overspread him.

Greatly alarmed, they put him on the bed. As soon as he came a
little out of his fit, he gasped, "Oh, it is gone!--where?--
where?"

His whole system seemed paralyzed by amazement. They were
thunder-struck at the result of the experiment, and did all they
could. Nothing seemed to avail. Giles and Fitzpiers went and
came, but uselessly. He lingered through the day, and died that
evening as the sun went down.

"D--d if my remedy hasn't killed him!" murmured the doctor.



CHAPTER XV.


When Melbury heard what had happened he seemed much moved, and
walked thoughtfully about the premises. On South's own account he
was genuinely sorry; and on Winterborne's he was the more grieved
in that this catastrophe had so closely followed the somewhat
harsh dismissal of Giles as the betrothed of his daughter.

He was quite angry with circumstances for so heedlessly inflicting
on Giles a second trouble when the needful one inflicted by
himself was all that the proper order of events demanded. "I told
Giles's father when he came into those houses not to spend too
much money on lifehold property held neither for his own life nor
his son's," he exclaimed. "But he wouldn't listen to me. And now
Giles has to suffer for it."

"Poor Giles!" murmured Grace.

"Now, Grace, between us two, it is very, very remarkable. It is
almost as if I had foreseen this; and I am thankful for your
escape, though I am sincerely sorry for Giles. Had we not
dismissed him already, we could hardly have found it in our hearts
to dismiss him now. So I say, be thankful. I'll do all I can for
him as a friend; but as a pretender to the position of my son-in
law, that can never be thought of more."

And yet at that very moment the impracticability to which poor
Winterborne's suit had been reduced was touching Grace's heart to
a warmer sentiment on his behalf than she had felt for years
concerning him.

He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone in the old familiar house
which had ceased to be his, taking a calm if somewhat dismal
survey of affairs. The pendulum of the clock bumped every now and
then against one side of the case in which it swung, as the
muffled drum to his worldly march. Looking out of the window he
could perceive that a paralysis had come over Creedle's occupation
of manuring the garden, owing, obviously, to a conviction that
they might not be living there long enough to profit by next
season's crop.

He looked at the leases again and the letter attached. There was
no doubt that he had lost his houses by an accident which might
easily have been circumvented if he had known the true conditions
of his holding. The time for performance had now lapsed in strict
law; but might not the intention be considered by the landholder
when she became aware of the circumstances, and his moral right to
retain the holdings for the term of his life be conceded?

His heart sank within him when he perceived that despite all the
legal reciprocities and safeguards prepared and written, the
upshot of the matter amounted to this, that it depended upon the
mere caprice--good or ill--of the woman he had met the day before
in such an unfortunate way, whether he was to possess his houses
for life or no.

While he was sitting and thinking a step came to the door, and
Melbury appeared, looking very sorry for his position.
Winterborne welcomed him by a word and a look, and went on with
his examination of the parchments. His visitor sat down.

"Giles," he said, "this is very awkward, and I am sorry for it.
What are you going to do?"

Giles informed him of the real state of affairs, and how barely he
had missed availing himself of his chance of renewal.

"What a misfortune! Why was this neglected? Well, the best thing
you can do is to write and tell her all about it, and throw
yourself upon her generosity."

"I would rather not," murmured Giles.

"But you must," said Melbury.

In short, he argued so cogently that Giles allowed himself to be
persuaded, and the letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and sent to
Hintock House, whence, as he knew, it would at once be forwarded
to her.

Melbury feeling that he had done so good an action in coming as
almost to extenuate his previous arbitrary conduct to nothing,
went home; and Giles was left alone to the suspense of waiting for
a reply from the divinity who shaped the ends of the Hintock
population. By this time all the villagers knew of the
circumstances, and being wellnigh like one family, a keen interest
was the result all round.

Everybody thought of Giles; nobody thought of Marty. Had any of
them looked in upon her during those moonlight nights which
preceded the burial of her father, they would have seen the girl
absolutely alone in the house with the dead man. Her own chamber
being nearest the stairs, the coffin had been placed there for
convenience; and at a certain hour of the night, when the moon
arrived opposite the window, its beams streamed across the still
profile of South, sublimed by the august presence of death, and
onward a few feet farther upon the face of his daughter, lying in
her little bed in the stillness of a repose almost as dignified as
that of her companion--the repose of a guileless soul that had
nothing more left on earth to lose, except a life which she did
not overvalue.

South was buried, and a week passed, and Winterborne watched for a
reply from Mrs. Charmond. Melbury was very sanguine as to its
tenor; but Winterborne had not told him of the encounter with her
carriage, when, if ever he had heard an affronted tone on a
woman's lips, he had heard it on hers.

The postman's time for passing was just after Melbury's men had
assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, who when not busy on
his own account would lend assistance there, used to go out into
the lane every morning and meet the post-man at the end of one of
the green rides through the hazel copse, in the straight stretch
of which his laden figure could be seen a long way off. Grace
also was very anxious; more anxious than her father; more,
perhaps, than Winterborne himself. This anxiety led her into the
spar-house on some pretext or other almost every morning while
they were awaiting the reply.

Fitzpiers too, though he did not personally appear, was much
interested, and not altogether easy in his mind; for he had been
informed by an authority of what he had himself conjectured, that
if the tree had been allowed to stand, the old man would have gone
on complaining, but might have lived for twenty years.

Eleven times had Winterborne gone to that corner of the ride, and
looked up its long straight slope through the wet grays of winter
dawn. But though the postman's bowed figure loomed in view pretty
regularly, he brought nothing for Giles. On the twelfth day the
man of missives, while yet in the extreme distance, held up his
hand, and Winterborne saw a letter in it. He took it into the
spar-house before he broke the seal, and those who were there
gathered round him while he read, Grace looking in at the door.

The letter was not from Mrs. Charmond herself, but her agent at
Sherton. Winterborne glanced it over and looked up.

"It's all over," he said.

"Ah!" said they altogether.

"Her lawyer is instructed to say that Mrs. Charmond sees no reason
for disturbing the natural course of things, particularly as she
contemplates pulling the houses down," he said, quietly.

"Only think of that!" said several.

Winterborne had turned away, and said vehemently to himself, "Then
let her pull 'em down, and be d--d to her!"

Creedle looked at him with a face of seven sorrows, saying, "Ah,
'twas that sperrit that lost 'em for ye, maister!"

Winterborne subdued his feelings, and from that hour, whatever
they were, kept them entirely to himself. There could be no doubt
that, up to this last moment, he had nourished a feeble hope of
regaining Grace in the event of this negotiation turning out a
success. Not being aware of the fact that her father could have
settled upon her a fortune sufficient to enable both to live in
comfort, he deemed it now an absurdity to dream any longer of such
a vanity as making her his wife, and sank into silence forthwith.

Yet whatever the value of taciturnity to a man among strangers, it
is apt to express more than talkativeness when he dwells among
friends. The countryman who is obliged to judge the time of day
from changes in external nature sees a thousand successive tints
and traits in the landscape which are never discerned by him who
hears the regular chime of a clock, because they are never in
request. In like manner do we use our eyes on our taciturn
comrade. The infinitesimal movement of muscle, curve, hair, and
wrinkle, which when accompanied by a voice goes unregarded, is
watched and translated in the lack of it, till virtually the whole
surrounding circle of familiars is charged with the reserved one's
moods and meanings.

This was the condition of affairs between Winterborne and his
neighbors after his stroke of ill-luck. He held his tongue; and
they observed him, and knew that he was discomposed.

Mr. Melbury, in his compunction, thought more of the matter than
any one else, except his daughter. Had Winterborne been going on
in the old fashion, Grace's father could have alluded to his
disapproval of the alliance every day with the greatest frankness;
but to speak any further on the subject he could not find it in
his heart to do now. He hoped that Giles would of his own accord
make some final announcement that he entirely withdrew his
pretensions to Grace, and so get the thing past and done with.
For though Giles had in a measure acquiesced in the wish of her
family, he could make matters unpleasant if he chose to work upon
Grace; and hence, when Melbury saw the young man approaching along
the road one day, he kept friendliness and frigidity exactly
balanced in his eye till he could see whether Giles's manner was
presumptive or not.

His manner was that of a man who abandoned all claims. "I am glad
to meet ye, Mr. Melbury," he said, in a low voice, whose quality
he endeavored to make as practical as possible. "I am afraid I
shall not be able to keep that mare I bought, and as I don't care
to sell her, I should like--if you don't object--to give her to
Miss Melbury. The horse is very quiet, and would be quite safe
for her."

Mr. Melbury was rather affected at this. "You sha'n't hurt your
pocket like that on our account, Giles. Grace shall have the
horse, but I'll pay you what you gave for her, and any expense you
may have been put to for her keep."

He would not hear of any other terms, and thus it was arranged.
They were now opposite Melbury's house, and the timber-merchant
pressed Winterborne to enter, Grace being out of the way.

"Pull round the settle, Giles," said the timber-merchant, as soon
as they were within. "I should like to have a serious talk with
you."

Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne frankly, and in quite a
friendly way. He declared that he did not like to be hard on a
man when he was in difficulty; but he really did not see how
Winterborne could marry his daughter now, without even a house to
take her to.

Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness of his situation. But
from a momentary feeling that he would like to know Grace's mind
from her own lips, he did not speak out positively there and then.
He accordingly departed somewhat abruptly, and went home to
consider whether he would seek to bring about a meeting with her.

In the evening, while he sat quietly pondering, he fancied that he
heard a scraping on the wall outside his house. The boughs of a
monthly rose which grew there made such a noise sometimes, but as
no wind was stirring he knew that it could not be the rose-tree.
He took up the candle and went out. Nobody was near. As he
turned, the light flickered on the whitewashed rough case of the
front, and he saw words written thereon in charcoal, which he read
as follows:


"O Giles, you've lost your dwelling-place,
And therefore, Giles, you'll lose your Grace."


Giles went in-doors. He had his suspicions as to the scrawler of
those lines, but he could not be sure. What suddenly filled his
heart far more than curiosity about their authorship was a
terrible belief that they were turning out to be true, try to see
Grace as he might. They decided the question for him. He sat
down and wrote a formal note to Melbury, in which he briefly
stated that he was placed in such a position as to make him share
to the full Melbury's view of his own and his daughter's promise,
made some years before; to wish that it should be considered as
cancelled, and they themselves quite released from any obligation
on account of it.

Having fastened up this their plenary absolution, he determined to
get it out of his hands and have done with it; to which end he
went off to Melbury's at once. It was now so late that the family
had all retired; he crept up to the house, thrust the note under
the door, and stole away as silently as he had come.

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