The Woodlanders

by Thomas Hardy

  CHAPTER XLVIII

  All the evening Melbury had been coming to his door, saying, "I wonderwhere in the world that girl is! Never in all my born days did I knowher bide out like this! She surely said she was going into the gardento get some parsley."

  Melbury searched the garden, the parsley-bed, and the orchard, butcould find no trace of her, and then he made inquiries at the cottagesof such of his workmen as had not gone to bed, avoiding Tangs's becausehe knew the young people were to rise early to leave. In theseinquiries one of the men's wives somewhat incautiously let out the factthat she had heard a scream in the wood, though from which directionshe could not say.

  This set Melbury's fears on end. He told the men to light lanterns,and headed by himself they started, Creedle following at the lastmoment with quite a burden of grapnels and ropes, which he could not bepersuaded to leave behind, and the company being joined by thehollow-turner and the man who kept the cider-house as they went along.

  They explored the precincts of the village, and in a short time lightedupon the man-trap. Its discovery simply added an item of fact withouthelping their conjectures; but Melbury's indefinite alarm was greatlyincreased when, holding a candle to the ground, he saw in the teeth ofthe instrument some frayings from Grace's clothing. No intelligence ofany kind was gained till they met a woodman of Delborough, who saidthat he had seen a lady answering to the description her father gave ofGrace, walking through the wood on a gentleman's arm in the directionof Sherton.

  "Was he clutching her tight?" said Melbury.

  "Well--rather," said the man.

  "Did she walk lame?"

  "Well, 'tis true her head hung over towards him a bit."

  Creedle groaned tragically.

  Melbury, not suspecting the presence of Fitzpiers, coupled this accountwith the man-trap and the scream; he could not understand what it allmeant; but the sinister event of the trap made him follow on.Accordingly, they bore away towards the town, shouting as they went,and in due course emerged upon the highway.

  Nearing Sherton-Abbas, the previous information was confirmed by otherstrollers, though the gentleman's supporting arm had disappeared fromthese later accounts. At last they were so near Sherton that Melburyinformed his faithful followers that he did not wish to drag themfarther at so late an hour, since he could go on alone and inquire ifthe woman who had been seen were really Grace. But they would notleave him alone in his anxiety, and trudged onward till the lamplightfrom the town began to illuminate their fronts. At the entrance to theHigh Street they got fresh scent of the pursued, but coupled with thenew condition that the lady in the costume described had been going upthe street alone.

  "Faith!--I believe she's mesmerized, or walking in her sleep," saidMelbury.

  However, the identity of this woman with Grace was by no means certain;but they plodded along the street. Percombe, the hair-dresser, whohad despoiled Marty of her tresses, was standing at his door, and theyduly put inquiries to him.

  "Ah--how's Little Hintock folk by now?" he said, before replying."Never have I been over there since one winter night some three yearago--and then I lost myself finding it. How can ye live in such aone-eyed place? Great Hintock is bad enough--hut Little Hintock--thebats and owls would drive me melancholy-mad! It took two days to raisemy sperrits to their true pitch again after that night I went there.Mr. Melbury, sir, as a man's that put by money, why not retire and livehere, and see something of the world?"

  The responses at last given by him to their queries guided them to thebuilding that offered the best accommodation in Sherton--having beenenlarged contemporaneously with the construction of therailway--namely, the Earl of Wessex Hotel.

  Leaving the others without, Melbury made prompt inquiry here. Hisalarm was lessened, though his perplexity was increased, when hereceived a brief reply that such a lady was in the house.

  "Do you know if it is my daughter?" asked Melbury.

  The waiter did not.

  "Do you know the lady's name?"

  Of this, too, the household was ignorant, the hotel having been takenby brand-new people from a distance. They knew the gentleman very wellby sight, and had not thought it necessary to ask him to enter his name.

  "Oh, the gentleman appears again now," said Melbury to himself. "Well,I want to see the lady," he declared.

  A message was taken up, and after some delay the shape of Graceappeared descending round the bend of the stair-case, looking as if shelived there, but in other respects rather guilty and frightened.

  "Why--what the name--" began her father. "I thought you went out toget parsley!"

  "Oh, yes--I did--but it is all right," said Grace, in a flurriedwhisper. "I am not alone here. I am here with Edgar. It is entirelyowing to an accident, father."

  "Edgar! An accident! How does he come here? I thought he was twohundred mile off."

  "Yes, so he is--I mean he has got a beautiful practice two hundredmiles off; he has bought it with his own money, some that came to him.But he travelled here, and I was nearly caught in a man-trap, andthat's how it is I am here. We were just thinking of sending amessenger to let you know."

  Melbury did not seem to be particularly enlightened by this explanation.

  "You were caught in a man-trap?"

  "Yes; my dress was. That's how it arose. Edgar is up-stairs in hisown sitting-room," she went on. "He would not mind seeing you, I amsure."

  "Oh, faith, I don't want to see him! I have seen him too often a'ready.I'll see him another time, perhaps, if 'tis to oblige 'ee."

  "He came to see me; he wanted to consult me about this largepartnership I speak of, as it is very promising."

  "Oh, I am glad to hear it," said Melbury, dryly.

  A pause ensued, during which the inquiring faces and whity-brownclothes of Melbury's companions appeared in the door-way.

  "Then bain't you coming home with us?" he asked.

  "I--I think not," said Grace, blushing.

  "H'm--very well--you are your own mistress," he returned, in toneswhich seemed to assert otherwise. "Good-night;" and Melbury retreatedtowards the door.

  "Don't be angry, father," she said, following him a few steps. "I havedone it for the best."

  "I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little misled in this.However, good-night. I must get home along."

  He left the hotel, not without relief, for to be under the eyes ofstrangers while he conversed with his lost child had embarrassed himmuch. His search-party, too, had looked awkward there, having rushedto the task of investigation--some in their shirt sleeves, others intheir leather aprons, and all much stained--just as they had come fromtheir work of barking, and not in their Sherton marketing attire; whileCreedle, with his ropes and grapnels and air of impending tragedy, hadadded melancholy to gawkiness.

  "Now, neighbors," said Melbury, on joining them, "as it is gettinglate, we'll leg it home again as fast as we can. I ought to tell youthat there has been some mistake--some arrangement entered into betweenMr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn't quite understand--an importantpractice in the Midland counties has come to him, which made itnecessary for her to join him to-night--so she says. That's all itwas--and I'm sorry I dragged you out."

  "Well," said the hollow-turner, "here be we six mile from home, andnight-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to our name.I say, we'll have a mossel and a drop o' summat to strengthen ournerves afore we vamp all the way back again? My throat's as dry as akex. What d'ye say so's?"

  They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to theantique and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of the ThreeTuns was the only radiant object. As soon as they had stumbled downinto the room Melbury ordered them to be served, when they madethemselves comfortable by the long table, and stretched out their legsupon the herring-boned sand of the floor. Melbury himself, restless asusual, walked to the door while he waited for them, and looked up anddown the street.

  "I'd gie her a good shaki
ng if she were my maid; pretending to go outin the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that have got toget up at five o'clock to morrow," said a bark-ripper; who, not workingregularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in strong opinions.

  "I don't speak so warm as that," said the hollow-turner, "but if 'tisright for couples to make a country talk about their separating, andexcite the neighbors, and then make fools of 'em like this, why, Ihaven't stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty year."

  All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in theseenigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and Creedle chimedin with, "Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn't sheha' bode with her father, and been faithful?" Poor Creedle was thinkingof his old employer.

  "But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony," saidFarmer Bawtree. "I knowed a man and wife--faith, I don't mind owning,as there's no strangers here, that the pair were my ownrelations--they'd be at it that hot one hour that you'd hear the pokerand the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the housewith the movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you'd hear 'emsinging 'The Spotted Cow' together as peaceable as two holy twins;yes--and very good voices they had, and would strike in likeprofessional ballet-singers to one another's support in the high notes."

  "And I knowed a woman, and the husband o' her went away forfour-and-twenty year," said the bark-ripper. "And one night he came homewhen she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down himself onthe other side of the chimney-corner. 'Well,' says she, 'have ye gotany news?' 'Don't know as I have,' says he; 'have you?' 'No,' saysshe, 'except that my daughter by my second husband was married lastmonth, which was a year after I was made a widow by him.' 'Oh!Anything else?' he says. 'No,' says she. And there they sat, one oneach side of that chimney-corner, and were found by their neighborssound asleep in their chairs, not having known what to talk about atall."

  "Well, I don't care who the man is," said Creedle, "they required agood deal to talk about, and that's true. It won't be the same withthese."

  "No. He is such a projick, you see. And she is a wonderful scholartoo!"

  "What women do know nowadays!" observed the hollow-turner. "You can'tdeceive 'em as you could in my time."

  "What they knowed then was not small," said John Upjohn. "Always agood deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife that isnow, the skilfulness that she would show in keeping me on her prettyside as she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you've noticed thatshe's got a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?"

  "I can't say I've noticed it particular much," said the hollow-turner,blandly.

  "Well," continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, "she has. All women underthe sun be prettier one side than t'other. And, as I was saying, thepains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were unending!I warrant that whether we were going with the sun or against the sun,uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart of hers was alwaystowards the hedge, and that dimple towards me. There was I, too simpleto see her wheelings and turnings; and she so artful, though two yearsyounger, that she could lead me with a cotton thread, like a blind ram;for that was in the third climate of our courtship. No; I don't thinkthe women have got cleverer, for they was never otherwise."

  "How many climates may there be in courtship, Mr. Upjohn?" inquired ayouth--the same who had assisted at Winterborne's Christmas party.

  "Five--from the coolest to the hottest--leastwise there was five inmine."

  "Can ye give us the chronicle of 'em, Mr. Upjohn?"

  "Yes--I could. I could certainly. But 'tis quite unnecessary. They'llcome to ye by nater, young man, too soon for your good."

  "At present Mrs. Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your mis'ess couldlead you," the hollow-turner remarked. "She's got him quite tame. Buthow long 'twill last I can't say. I happened to be setting a wire onthe top of my garden one night when he met her on the other side of thehedge; and the way she queened it, and fenced, and kept that poorfeller at a distance, was enough to freeze yer blood. I should neverhave supposed it of such a girl."

  Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having declaredthemselves refreshed, they all started on the homeward journey, whichwas by no means cheerless under the rays of the high moon. Having towalk the whole distance they came by a foot-path rather shorter thanthe highway, though difficult except to those who knew the countrywell. This brought them by way of Great Hintock; and passing thechurch-yard they observed, as they talked, a motionless figure standingby the gate.

  "I think it was Marty South," said the hollow-turner, parenthetically.

  "I think 'twas; 'a was always a lonely maid," said Upjohn. And theypassed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more.

  It was Marty, as they had supposed. That evening had been theparticular one of the week upon which Grace and herself had beenaccustomed to privately deposit flowers on Giles's grave, and this wasthe first occasion since his death, eight months earlier, on whichGrace had failed to keep her appointment. Marty had waited in the roadjust outside Little Hintock, where her fellow-pilgrim had been wont tojoin her, till she was weary; and at last, thinking that Grace hadmissed her and gone on alone, she followed the way to Great Hintock,but saw no Grace in front of her. It got later, and Marty continuedher walk till she reached the church-yard gate; but still no Grace.Yet her sense of comradeship would not allow her to go on to the gravealone, and still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, she stoodthere with her little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and herfeet chilled by the damp ground, till more than two hours had passed.

  She then heard the footsteps of Melbury's men, who presently passed ontheir return from the search. In the silence of the night Marty couldnot help hearing fragments of their conversation, from which sheacquired a general idea of what had occurred, and where Mrs. Fitzpiersthen was.

  Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the church-yard,going to a secluded corner behind the bushes, where rose theunadorned stone that marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne. As thissolitary and silent girl stood there in the moonlight, a straight slimfigure, clothed in a plaitless gown, the contours of womanhood soundeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible, the marks of poverty andtoil effaced by the misty hour, she touched sublimity at points, andlooked almost like a being who had rejected with indifference theattribute of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism. Shestooped down and cleared away the withered flowers that Grace andherself had laid there the previous week, and put her fresh ones intheir place.

  "Now, my own, own love," she whispered, "you are mine, and on'y mine;for she has forgot 'ee at last, although for her you died. ButI--whenever I get up I'll think of 'ee, and whenever I lie down I'llthink of 'ee. Whenever I plant the young larches I'll think that nonecan plant as you planted; and whenever I split a gad, and whenever Iturn the cider-wring, I'll say none could do it like you. If ever Iforget your name, let me forget home and Heaven!--But no, no, my love,I never can forget 'ee; for you was a GOOD man, and did good things!"