The Woodlanders

by Thomas Hardy

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmond had left Hintock House. MiddletonAbbey, the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles distant byroad, eighteen by bridle-paths and footways.

  Grace observed, for the first time, that her husband was restless, thatat moments he even was disposed to avoid her. The scrupulous civilityof mere acquaintanceship crept into his manner; yet, when sitting atmeals, he seemed hardly to hear her remarks. Her little doingsinterested him no longer, while towards her father his bearing was notfar from supercilious. It was plain that his mind was entirely outsideher life, whereabouts outside it she could not tell; in some region ofscience, possibly, or of psychological literature. But her hope thathe was again immersing himself in those lucubrations which before hermarriage had made his light a landmark in Hintock, was founded simplyon the slender fact that he often sat up late.

  One evening she discovered him leaning over a gate on Rub-Down Hill,the gate at which Winterborne had once been standing, and which openedon the brink of a steep, slanting down directly into Blackmoor Vale, orthe Vale of the White Hart, extending beneath the eye at this point toa distance of many miles. His attention was fixed on the landscape faraway, and Grace's approach was so noiseless that he did not hear her.When she came close she could see his lips moving unconsciously, as tosome impassioned visionary theme.

  She spoke, and Fitzpiers started. "What are you looking at?" she asked.

  "Oh! I was contemplating our old place of Buckbury, in my idle way," hesaid.

  It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of thatcradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity; but she made no furtherobservation, and taking his arm walked home beside him almost insilence. She did not know that Middleton Abbey lay in the direction ofhis gaze. "Are you going to have out Darling this afternoon?" sheasked, presently. Darling being the light-gray mare which Winterbornehad bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers now constantly used, theanimal having turned out a wonderful bargain, in combining a perfectdocility with an almost human intelligence; moreover, she was not tooyoung. Fitzpiers was unfamiliar with horses, and he valued thesequalities.

  "Yes," he replied, "but not to drive. I am riding her. I practisecrossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I can take muchshorter cuts on horseback."

  He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week, onlysince Mrs. Charmond's absence, his universal practice hitherto havingbeen to drive.

  Some few days later, Fitzpiers started on the back of this horse to seea patient in the aforesaid Vale. It was about five o'clock in theevening when he went away, and at bedtime he had not reached home.There was nothing very singular in this, though she was not aware thathe had any patient more than five or six miles distant in thatdirection. The clock had struck one before Fitzpiers entered thehouse, and he came to his room softly, as if anxious not to disturb her.

  The next morning she was stirring considerably earlier than he.

  In the yard there was a conversation going on about the mare; the manwho attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that the latterwas "hag-rid;" for when he had arrived at the stable that morning shewas in such a state as no horse could be in by honest riding. It wastrue that the doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so thatshe was not looked after as she would have been if he had groomed andfed her; but that did not account for the appearance she presented, ifMr. Fitzpiers's journey had been only where he had stated. Thephenomenal exhaustion of Darling, as thus related, was sufficient todevelop a whole series of tales about riding witches and demons, thenarration of which occupied a considerable time.

  Grace returned in-doors. In passing through the outer room she pickedup her husband's overcoat which he had carelessly flung down across achair. A turnpike ticket fell out of the breast-pocket, and she sawthat it had been issued at Middleton Gate. He had therefore visitedMiddleton the previous night, a distance of at least five-and-thirtymiles on horseback, there and back.

  During the day she made some inquiries, and learned for the first timethat Mrs. Charmond was staying at Middleton Abbey. She could notresist an inference--strange as that inference was.

  A few days later he prepared to start again, at the same time and inthe same direction. She knew that the state of the cottager who livedthat way was a mere pretext; she was quite sure he was going to Mrs.Charmond. Grace was amazed at the mildness of the passion which thesuspicion engendered in her. She was but little excited, and herjealousy was languid even to death. It told tales of the nature of heraffection for him. In truth, her antenuptial regard for Fitzpiers hadbeen rather of the quality of awe towards a superior being than oftender solicitude for a lover. It had been based upon mystery andstrangeness--the mystery of his past, of his knowledge, of hisprofessional skill, of his beliefs. When this structure of ideals wasdemolished by the intimacy of common life, and she found him as merelyhuman as the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demandfor an enduring and stanch affection--a sympathetic interdependence,wherein mutual weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensivealliance. Fitzpiers had furnished none of that single-mindedconfidence and truth out of which alone such a second union couldspring; hence it was with a controllable emotion that she now watchedthe mare brought round.

  "I'll walk with you to the hill if you are not in a great hurry," shesaid, rather loath, after all, to let him go.

  "Do; there's plenty of time," replied her husband. Accordingly he ledalong the horse, and walked beside her, impatient enough nevertheless.Thus they proceeded to the turnpike road, and ascended Rub-Down Hill tothe gate he had been leaning over when she surprised him ten daysbefore. This was the end of her excursion. Fitzpiers bade her adieuwith affection, even with tenderness, and she observed that he lookedweary-eyed.

  "Why do you go to-night?" she said. "You have been called up twonights in succession already."

  "I must go," he answered, almost gloomily. "Don't wait up for me."With these words he mounted his horse, passed through the gate whichGrace held open for him, and ambled down the steep bridle-track to thevalley.

  She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then his journeyonward. His way was east, the evening sun which stood behind her backbeaming full upon him as soon as he got out from the shade of the hill.Notwithstanding this untoward proceeding she was determined to be loyalif he proved true; and the determination to love one's best will carrya heart a long way towards making that best an ever-growing thing. Theconspicuous coat of the active though blanching mare made horse andrider easy objects for the vision. Though Darling had been chosen withsuch pains by Winterborne for Grace, she had never ridden the sleekcreature; but her husband had found the animal exceedingly convenient,particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of stayingpower being left in Darling yet. Fitzpiers, like others of hischaracter, while despising Melbury and his station, did not at alldisdain to spend Melbury's money, or appropriate to his own use thehorse which belonged to Melbury's daughter.

  And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through the gorgeousautumn landscape of White Hart Vale, surrounded by orchards lustrouswith the reds of apple-crops, berries, and foliage, the wholeintensified by the gilding of the declining sun. The earth this yearhad been prodigally bountiful, and now was the supreme moment of herbounty. In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed with haws andblackberries; acorns cracked underfoot, and the burst husks ofchestnuts lay exposing their auburn contents as if arranged by anxioussellers in a fruit-market. In all this proud show some kernels wereunsound as her own situation, and she wondered if there were one worldin the universe where the fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow.

  Herr Tannhauser still moved on, his plodding steed rendering himdistinctly visible yet. Could she have heard Fitzpiers's voice at thatmoment she would have found him murmuring--

  "...Towards the loadstar of my one desire I flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the owlet light."

 
; But he was a silent spectacle to her now. Soon he rose out of thevalley, and skirted a high plateau of the chalk formation on his right,which rested abruptly upon the fruity district of loamy clay, thecharacter and herbage of the two formations being so distinct that thecalcareous upland appeared but as a deposit of a few years' antiquityupon the level vale. He kept along the edge of this high, unenclosedcountry, and the sky behind him being deep violet, she could still seewhite Darling in relief upon it--a mere speck now--a Wouvermanseccentricity reduced to microscopic dimensions. Upon this high groundhe gradually disappeared.

  Thus she had beheld the pet animal purchased for her own use, in purelove of her, by one who had always been true, impressed to convey herhusband away from her to the side of a new-found idol. While she wasmusing on the vicissitudes of horses and wives, she discerned shapesmoving up the valley towards her, quite near at hand, though till nowhidden by the hedges. Surely they were Giles Winterborne, with his twohorses and cider-apparatus, conducted by Robert Creedle. Up, upwardthey crept, a stray beam of the sun alighting every now and then like astar on the blades of the pomace-shovels, which had been converted tosteel mirrors by the action of the malic acid. She opened the gatewhen he came close, and the panting horses rested as they achieved theascent.

  "How do you do, Giles?" said she, under a sudden impulse to be familiarwith him.

  He replied with much more reserve. "You are going for a walk, Mrs.Fitzpiers?" he added. "It is pleasant just now."

  "No, I am returning," said she.

  The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and Winterborne walkedby her side in the rear of the apple-mill.

  He looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being sunburntto wheat-color, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots and leggingsdyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice ofapples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him thatatmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such anindescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred amongthe orchards. Her heart rose from its late sadness like a releasedspring; her senses revelled in the sudden lapse back to natureunadorned. The consciousness of having to be genteel because of herhusband's profession, the veneer of artificiality which she hadacquired at the fashionable schools, were thrown off, and she becamethe crude, country girl of her latent, earliest instincts.

  Nature was bountiful, she thought. No sooner had she been starved offby Edgar Fitzpiers than another being, impersonating bare and undilutedmanliness, had arisen out of the earth, ready to hand. This was anexcursion of the imagination which she did not encourage, and she saidsuddenly, to disguise the confused regard which had followed herthoughts, "Did you meet my husband?"

  Winterborne, with some hesitation, "Yes."

  "Where did you meet him?"

  "At Calfhay Cross. I come from Middleton Abbey; I have been makingthere for the last week."

  "Haven't they a mill of their own?"

  "Yes, but it's out of repair."

  "I think--I heard that Mrs. Charmond had gone there to stay?"

  "Yes. I have seen her at the windows once or twice."

  Grace waited an interval before she went on: "Did Mr. Fitzpiers takethe way to Middleton?"

  "Yes...I met him on Darling." As she did not reply, he added, with agentler inflection, "You know why the mare was called that?"

  "Oh yes--of course," she answered, quickly.

  They had risen so far over the crest of the hill that the whole westsky was revealed. Between the broken clouds they could see far intothe recesses of heaven, the eye journeying on under a species of goldenarcades, and past fiery obstructions, fancied cairns, logan-stones,stalactites and stalagmite of topaz. Deeper than this their gazepassed thin flakes of incandescence, till it plunged into a bottomlessmedium of soft green fire.

  Her abandonment to the luscious time after her sense of ill-usage, herrevolt for the nonce against social law, her passionate desire forprimitive life, may have showed in her face. Winterborne was lookingat her, his eyes lingering on a flower that she wore in her bosom.Almost with the abstraction of a somnambulist he stretched out his handand gently caressed the flower.

  She drew back. "What are you doing, Giles Winterborne!" she exclaimed,with a look of severe surprise. The evident absence of allpremeditation from the act, however, speedily led her to think that itwas not necessary to stand upon her dignity here and now. "You mustbear in mind, Giles," she said, kindly, "that we are not as we were;and some people might have said that what you did was taking a liberty."

  It was more than she need have told him; his action of forgetfulnesshad made him so angry with himself that he flushed through his tan. "Idon't know what I am coming to!" he exclaimed, savagely. "Ah--I wasnot once like this!" Tears of vexation were in his eyes.

  "No, now--it was nothing. I was too reproachful."

  "It would not have occurred to me if I had not seen something like itdone elsewhere--at Middleton lately," he said, thoughtfully, after awhile.

  "By whom?"

  "Don't ask it."

  She scanned him narrowly. "I know quite well enough," she returned,indifferently. "It was by my husband, and the woman was Mrs. Charmond.Association of ideas reminded you when you saw me....Giles--tell me allyou know about that--please do, Giles! But no--I won't hear it. Letthe subject cease. And as you are my friend, say nothing to my father."

  They reached a place where their ways divided. Winterborne continuedalong the highway which kept outside the copse, and Grace opened a gatethat entered it.