The Woodlanders

by Thomas Hardy

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  It was at this time that Grace approached the house. Her knock, alwayssoft in virtue of her nature, was softer to-day by reason of herstrange errand. However, it was heard by the farmer's wife who keptthe house, and Grace was admitted. Opening the door of the doctor'sroom the housewife glanced in, and imagining Fitzpiers absent, askedMiss Melbury to enter and wait a few minutes while she should go andfind him, believing him to be somewhere on the premises. Graceacquiesced, went in, and sat down close to the door.

  As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round the room, andstarted at perceiving a handsome man snugly ensconced in the couch,like the recumbent figure within some canopied mural tomb of thefifteenth century, except that his hands were by no means clasped inprayer. She had no doubt that this was the doctor. Awaken him herselfshe could not, and her immediate impulse was to go and pull the broadribbon with a brass rosette which hung at one side of the fireplace.But expecting the landlady to re-enter in a moment she abandoned thisintention, and stood gazing in great embarrassment at the recliningphilosopher.

  The windows of Fitzpiers's soul being at present shuttered, he probablyappeared less impressive than in his hours of animation but the lightabstracted from his material presence by sleep was more thancounterbalanced by the mysterious influence of that state, in astranger, upon the consciousness of a beholder so sensitive. So far asshe could criticise at all, she became aware that she had encountered aspecimen of creation altogether unusual in that locality. Theoccasions on which Grace had observed men of this stamp were when shehad been far removed away from Hintock, and even then such examples ashad met her eye were at a distance, and mainly of coarser fibre thanthe one who now confronted her.

  She nervously wondered why the woman had not discovered her mistake andreturned, and went again towards the bell-pull. Approaching the chimneyher back was to Fitzpiers, but she could see him in the glass. Anindescribable thrill passed through her as she perceived that the eyesof the reflected image were open, gazing wonderingly at her, and underthe curious unexpectedness of the sight she became as if spellbound,almost powerless to turn her head and regard the original. However, byan effort she did turn, when there he lay asleep the same as before.

  Her startled perplexity as to what he could be meaning was sufficientto lead her to precipitately abandon her errand. She crossed quicklyto the door, opened and closed it noiselessly, and went out of thehouse unobserved. By the time that she had gone down the path andthrough the garden door into the lane she had recovered her equanimity.Here, screened by the hedge, she stood and considered a while.

  Drip, drip, drip, fell the rain upon her umbrella and around; she hadcome out on such a morning because of the seriousness of the matter inhand; yet now she had allowed her mission to be stultified by amomentary tremulousness concerning an incident which perhaps had meantnothing after all.

  In the mean time her departure from the room, stealthy as it had been,had roused Fitzpiers, and he sat up. In the reflection from the mirrorwhich Grace had beheld there was no mystery; he had opened his eyes fora few moments, but had immediately relapsed into unconsciousness, if,indeed, he had ever been positively awake. That somebody had just leftthe room he was certain, and that the lovely form which seemed to havevisited him in a dream was no less than the real presentation of theperson departed he could hardly doubt.

  Looking out of the window a few minutes later, down the box-edgedgravel-path which led to the bottom, he saw the garden door gentlyopen, and through it enter the young girl of his thoughts, Grace havingjust at this juncture determined to return and attempt the interview asecond time. That he saw her coming instead of going made him askhimself if his first impression of her were not a dream indeed. Shecame hesitatingly along, carrying her umbrella so low over her headthat he could hardly see her face. When she reached the point wherethe raspberry bushes ended and the strawberry bed began, she made alittle pause.

  Fitzpiers feared that she might not be coming to him even now, andhastily quitting the room, he ran down the path to meet her. Thenature of her errand he could not divine, but he was prepared to giveher any amount of encouragement.

  "I beg pardon, Miss Melbury," he said. "I saw you from the window, andfancied you might imagine that I was not at home--if it is I you werecoming for."

  "I was coming to speak one word to you, nothing more," she replied."And I can say it here."

  "No, no. Please do come in. Well, then, if you will not come into thehouse, come as far as the porch."

  Thus pressed she went on to the porch, and they stood together insideit, Fitzpiers closing her umbrella for her.

  "I have merely a request or petition to make," she said. "My father'sservant is ill--a woman you know--and her illness is serious."

  "I am sorry to hear it. You wish me to come and see her at once?"

  "No; I particularly wish you not to come."

  "Oh, indeed."

  "Yes; and she wishes the same. It would make her seriously worse ifyou were to come. It would almost kill her....My errand is of apeculiar and awkward nature. It is concerning a subject which weighson her mind--that unfortunate arrangement she made with you, that youmight have her body--after death."

  "Oh! Grammer Oliver, the old woman with the fine head. Seriously ill,is she!"

  "And SO disturbed by her rash compact! I have brought the moneyback--will you please return to her the agreement she signed?" Graceheld out to him a couple of five-pound notes which she had kept readytucked in her glove.

  Without replying or considering the notes, Fitzpiers allowed histhoughts to follow his eyes, and dwell upon Grace's personality, andthe sudden close relation in which he stood to her. The porch wasnarrow; the rain increased. It ran off the porch and dripped on thecreepers, and from the creepers upon the edge of Grace's cloak andskirts.

  "The rain is wetting your dress; please do come in," he said. "Itreally makes my heart ache to let you stay here."

  Immediately inside the front door was the door of his sitting-room; heflung it open, and stood in a coaxing attitude. Try how she would,Grace could not resist the supplicatory mandate written in the face andmanner of this man, and distressful resignation sat on her as sheglided past him into the room--brushing his coat with her elbow byreason of the narrowness.

  He followed her, shut the door--which she somehow had hoped he wouldleave open--and placing a chair for her, sat down. The concern whichGrace felt at the development of these commonplace incidents was, ofcourse, mainly owing to the strange effect upon her nerves of that viewof him in the mirror gazing at her with open eyes when she had thoughthim sleeping, which made her fancy that his slumber might have been afeint based on inexplicable reasons.

  She again proffered the notes; he awoke from looking at her as at apiece of live statuary, and listened deferentially as she said, "Willyou then reconsider, and cancel the bond which poor Grammer Oliver sofoolishly gave?"

  "I'll cancel it without reconsideration. Though you will allow me tohave my own opinion about her foolishness. Grammer is a very wisewoman, and she was as wise in that as in other things. You think therewas something very fiendish in the compact, do you not, Miss Melbury?But remember that the most eminent of our surgeons in past times haveentered into such agreements."

  "Not fiendish--strange."

  "Yes, that may be, since strangeness is not in the nature of a thing,but in its relation to something extrinsic--in this case an unessentialobserver."

  He went to his desk, and searching a while found a paper, which beunfolded and brought to her. A thick cross appeared in ink at thebottom--evidently from the hand of Grammer. Grace put the paper in herpocket with a look of much relief.

  As Fitzpiers did not take up the money (half of which had come fromGrace's own purse), she pushed it a little nearer to him. "No, no. Ishall not take it from the old woman," he said. "It is more strangethan the fact of a surgeon arranging to obtain a subject for dissectionthat our acquaintance sh
ould be formed out of it."

  "I am afraid you think me uncivil in showing my dislike to the notion.But I did not mean to be."

  "Oh no, no." He looked at her, as he had done before, with puzzledinterest. "I cannot think, I cannot think," he murmured. "Somethingbewilders me greatly." He still reflected and hesitated. "Last nightI sat up very late," he at last went on, "and on that account I fellinto a little nap on that couch about half an hour ago. And during myfew minutes of unconsciousness I dreamed--what do you think?--that youstood in the room."

  Should she tell? She merely blushed.

  "You may imagine," Fitzpiers continued, now persuaded that it had,indeed, been a dream, "that I should not have dreamed of you withoutconsiderable thinking about you first."

  He could not be acting; of that she felt assured.

  "I fancied in my vision that you stood there," he said, pointing towhere she had paused. "I did not see you directly, but reflected inthe glass. I thought, what a lovely creature! The design is for oncecarried out. Nature has at last recovered her lost union with theIdea! My thoughts ran in that direction because I had been reading thework of a transcendental philosopher last night; and I dare say it wasthe dose of Idealism that I received from it that made me scarcely ableto distinguish between reality and fancy. I almost wept when I awoke,and found that you had appeared to me in Time, but not in Space, alas!"

  At moments there was something theatrical in the delivery ofFitzpiers's effusion yet it would have been inexact to say that it wasintrinsically theatrical. It often happens that in situations ofunrestraint, where there is no thought of the eye of criticism, realfeeling glides into a mode of manifestation not easily distinguishablefrom rodomontade. A veneer of affectation overlies a bulk of truth,with the evil consequence, if perceived, that the substance isestimated by the superficies, and the whole rejected.

  Grace, however, was no specialist in men's manners, and she admired thesentiment without thinking of the form. And she was embarrassed:"lovely creature" made explanation awkward to her gentle modesty.

  "But can it be," said he, suddenly, "that you really were here?"

  "I have to confess that I have been in the room once before," falteredshe. "The woman showed me in, and went away to fetch you; but as shedid not return, I left."

  "And you saw me asleep," he murmured, with the faintest show ofhumiliation.

  "Yes--IF you were asleep, and did not deceive me."

  "Why do you say if?"

  "I saw your eyes open in the glass, but as they were closed when Ilooked round upon you, I thought you were perhaps deceiving me.

  "Never," said Fitzpiers, fervently--"never could I deceive you."

  Foreknowledge to the distance of a year or so in either of them mighthave spoiled the effect of that pretty speech. Never deceive her! Butthey knew nothing, and the phrase had its day.

  Grace began now to be anxious to terminate the interview, but thecompelling power of Fitzpiers's atmosphere still held her there. Shewas like an inexperienced actress who, having at last taken up herposition on the boards, and spoken her speeches, does not know how tomove off. The thought of Grammer occurred to her. "I'll go at onceand tell poor Grammer of your generosity," she said. "It will relieveher at once."

  "Grammer's a nervous disease, too--how singular!" he answered,accompanying her to the door. "One moment; look at this--it issomething which may interest you."

  He had thrown open the door on the other side of the passage, and shesaw a microscope on the table of the confronting room. "Look into it,please; you'll be interested," he repeated.

  She applied her eye, and saw the usual circle of light patterned allover with a cellular tissue of some indescribable sort. "What do youthink that is?" said Fitzpiers.

  She did not know.

  "That's a fragment of old John South's brain, which I am investigating."

  She started back, not with aversion, but with wonder as to how itshould have got there. Fitzpiers laughed.

  "Here am I," he said, "endeavoring to carry on simultaneously the studyof physiology and transcendental philosophy, the material world and theideal, so as to discover if possible a point of contrast between them;and your finer sense is quite offended!"

  "Oh no, Mr. Fitzpiers," said Grace, earnestly. "It is not so at all.I know from seeing your light at night how deeply you meditate andwork. Instead of condemning you for your studies, I admire you verymuch!"

  Her face, upturned from the microscope, was so sweet, sincere, andself-forgetful in its aspect that the susceptible Fitzpiers more thanwished to annihilate the lineal yard which separated it from his own.Whether anything of the kind showed in his eyes or not, Grace remainedno longer at the microscope, but quickly went her way into the rain.