The Woodlanders

by Thomas Hardy

  CHAPTER XXXIX.

  All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of apleasant time, forgetting the pleasant time itself. He feared anewthat they could never be happy together, even should she be free tochoose him. She was accomplished; he was unrefined. It was theoriginal 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 fromothers in the way of favor or condescension, and perhaps on that veryaccount scrutinize those others' behavior too closely. He was notversatile, but one in whom a hope or belief which had once had itsrise, meridian, and decline seldom again exactly recurred, as in thebreasts of more sanguine mortals. He had once worshipped her, laid outhis life to suit her, wooed her, and lost her. Though it was withalmost the same zest, it was with not quite the same hope, that he hadbegun to tread the old tracks again, and allowed himself to be socharmed with her that day.

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

  Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her solicitousembarrassment was not lessened the next morning when another letterfrom her father was put into her hands. Its tenor was an intenserstrain of the one that had preceded it. After stating how extremelyglad 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 beingout of town. I do not know when I shall get home. My great anxiety inthis delay is still lest you should lose Giles Winterborne. I cannotrest at night for thinking that while our business is hanging fire hemay become estranged, or go away from the neighborhood. I have set myheart upon seeing him your husband, if you ever have another. Do,then, Grace, give him some temporary encouragement, even though it isover-early. For when I consider the past I do think God will forgiveme and you for being a little forward. I have another reason for this,my dear. I feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late affairs havestill further helped me that way. And until this thing is done Icannot 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 inforwarding 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 rathermadam--completely, her first attempt had been beaten by the unexpectedvitality of that fastidiousness. Her father on returning and seeingthe trifling coolness of Giles would be sure to say that the sameperversity which had led her to make difficulties about marryingFitzpiers was now prompting her to blow hot and cold with poorWinterborne.

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

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

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

  A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him aletter. She knew from this that Creedle had just come from Sherton,and had called as usual at the post-office for anything that hadarrived by the afternoon post, of which there was no delivery atHintock. She pondered on what the letter might contain--particularlywhether 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 readits contents; and almost immediately turned away to a gap in the hedgeof the orchard--if that could be called a hedge which, owing to thedrippings of the trees, was little more than a bank with a bush upon ithere and there. He entered the plantation, and was no doubt going thatway homeward to the mysterious hut he occupied on the other side of thewoodland.

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

  Grace had been wrong--very far wrong--in assuming that the letter hadno reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the woodafter its perusal. It was, sad to say, because the missive had so muchreference to herself that he had thus turned away. He feared that hisgrieved discomfiture might be observed. The letter was from Beaucock,written a few hours later than Melbury's to his daughter. It announcedfailure.

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

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

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

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

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

  "Oh yes," he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for herunexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of behaviorin the conjuncture. His manner made her think that she had been toochiding in her speec
h; and a mild scarlet wave passed over her as sheresolved 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 hishopes--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 ashe pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare.

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

  "I have, Grace, I'm sure."

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

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

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

  "Oh God!" said Winterborne within himself. His head was turned askanceas he still resolutely regarded the ground. For the last severalminutes he had seen this great temptation approaching him in regularsiege; and now it had come. The wrong, the social sin, of now takingadvantage of the offer of her lips had a magnitude, in the eyes of onewhose life had been so primitive, so ruled by purest household laws, asGiles'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?" shesaid, gladly.

  Winterborne, though fighting valiantly against himself all thiswhile--though he would have protected Grace's good repute as the appleof his eye--was a man; and, as Desdemona said, men are not gods. Inface of the agonizing seductiveness shown by her, in her unenlightenedschool-girl simplicity about the laws and ordinances, he betrayed aman's weakness. Since it was so--since it had come to this, thatGrace, deeming herself free to do it, was virtually asking him todemonstrate that he loved her--since he could demonstrate it only tootruly--since life was short and love was strong--he gave way to thetemptation, notwithstanding that he perfectly well knew her to bewedded irrevocably to Fitzpiers. Indeed, he cared for nothing past orfuture, simply accepting the present and what it brought, desiring oncein his life to clasp in his arms her he had watched over and loved solong.

  She started back suddenly from his embrace, influenced by a sort ofinspiration. "Oh, I suppose," she stammered, "that I am reallyfree?--that this is right? Is there REALLY a new law? Father cannothave been too sanguine in saying--"

  He did not answer, and a moment afterwards Grace burst into tears inspite 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 Ido 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. Heturned aside; the feeling of his cruelty mounted higher and higher.How could he have dreamed of kissing her? He could hardly refrain fromtears. Surely nothing more pitiable had ever been known than thecondition of this poor young thing, now as heretofore the victim of herfather's well-meant but blundering policy.

  Even in the hour of Melbury's greatest assurance Winterborne hadharbored a suspicion that no law, new or old, could undo Grace'smarriage without her appearance in public; though he was notsufficiently sure of what might have been enacted to destroy by his ownwords her pleasing idea that a mere dash of the pen, on her father'stestimony, was going to be sufficient. But he had never suspected thesad fact that the position was irremediable.

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

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

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

  He could not tell her, try as he would. The sense of her implicittrust in his honor absolutely disabled him. "I cannot inform you," hemurmured, his voice as husky as that of the leaves underfoot. "Yourfather 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 themost reserved air, as he added, correctingly, "I will take you, at anyrate, into the drive."

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

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

  "Take out that arm!"

  It was Melbury's. He had returned sooner than they expected, and nowcame up to them. Grace's hand had been withdrawn like lightning on herhearing 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. "Butyou two must walk together no more--I have been surprised--I have beencruelly deceived--Giles, don't say anything to me; but go away!"

  He was evidently not aware that Winterborne had known the truth beforehe brought it; and Giles would not stay to discuss it with him then.When the young man had gone Melbury took his daughter in-doors to theroom he used as his office. There he sat down, and bent over the slopeof the bureau, her bewildered gaze fixed upon him.

  When Melbury had recovered a little he said, "You are now, as ever,Fitzpiers's wife. I was deluded. He has not done you ENOUGH harm.You are still subject to his beck and call."

  "Then let it be, and never mind, father," she said, with dignifiedsorrow. "I can bear it. It is your trouble that grieves me most." Shestooped over him, and put her arm round his neck, which distressedMelbury still more. "I don't mind at all what comes to me," Gracecontinued; "whose wife I am, or whose I am not. I do love Giles; Icannot help that; and I have gone further with him than I should havedone if I had known exactly how things were. But I do not reproach you."

  "Then Giles did not tell you?" said Melbury.

  "No," said she. "He could not have known it. His behavior to meproved that he did not know."

  Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to the solitude ofher chamber.

  Her heavy disquietude had many shapes; and for a time she put aside thedominant fact to think of her too free conduct towards Giles. Hislove-making had been brief as it was sweet; but would he on reflectioncontemn her for forwardness? How c
ould she have been so simple as tosuppose she was in a position to behave as she had done! Thus shementally blamed her ignorance; and yet in the centre of her heart sheblessed it a little for what it had momentarily brought her.