by Thomas Hardy
She weighed that remark in silence a while. “Did you ever hear anything of me from then till now?” she inquired.
“Not a word.”
“So much the better. I had to fight the battle of life as well as you. I may tell you about it some day. But don’t ever ask me to do it, and particularly do not press me to tell you now.”
Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender acquaintance on the romantic slopes above the Neckar were stretched out in retrospect to the length and importance of years; made to form a canvas for infinite fancies, idle dreams, luxurious melancholies, and sweet, alluring assertions which could neither be proved nor disproved. Grace was never mentioned between them, but a rumor of his proposed domestic changes somehow reached her ears.
“Doctor, you are going away,” she exclaimed, confronting him with accusatory reproach in her large dark eyes no less than in her rich cooing voice. “Oh yes, you are,” she went on, springing to her feet with an air which might almost have been called passionate. “It is no use denying it. You have bought a practice at Budmouth. I don’t blame you. Nobody can live at Hintock — least of all a professional man who wants to keep abreast of recent discovery. And there is nobody here to induce such a one to stay for other reasons. That’s right, that’s right — go away!”
“But no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, though I am indeed in treaty for it. And, my dear friend, if I continue to feel about the business as I feel at this moment — perhaps I may conclude never to go at all.”
“But you hate Hintock, and everybody and everything in it that you don’t mean to take away with you?”
Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory tones, and she lapsed into the frivolous archness under which she hid passions of no mean strength — strange, smouldering, erratic passions, kept down like a stifled conflagration, but bursting out now here, now there — the only certain element in their direction being its unexpectedness. If one word could have expressed her it would have been Inconsequence. She was a woman of perversities, delighting in frequent contrasts. She liked mystery, in her life, in her love, in her history. To be fair to her, there was nothing in the latter which she had any great reason to be ashamed of, and many things of which she might have been proud; but it had never been fathomed by the honest minds of Hintock, and she rarely volunteered her experiences. As for her capricious nature, the people on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that marvellous subtlety of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found in sons of the soil and dependants generally, they managed to get along under her government rather better than they would have done beneath a more equable rule.
Now, with regard to the doctor’s notion of leaving Hintock, he had advanced further towards completing the purchase of the Budmouth surgeon’s good-will than he had admitted to Mrs. Charmond. The whole matter hung upon what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four hours. The evening after leaving her he went out into the lane, and walked and pondered between the high hedges, now greenish-white with wild clematis — here called “old-man’s beard,” from its aspect later in the year.
The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, after which his departure from Hintock would be irrevocable. But could he go away, remembering what had just passed? The trees, the hills, the leaves, the grass — each had been endowed and quickened with a subtle charm since he had discovered the person and history, and, above all, mood of their owner. There was every temporal reason for leaving; it would be entering again into a world which he had only quitted in a passion for isolation, induced by a fit of Achillean moodiness after an imagined slight. His wife herself saw the awkwardness of their position here, and cheerfully welcomed the purposed change, towards which every step had been taken but the last. But could he find it in his heart — as he found it clearly enough in his conscience — to go away?
He drew a troubled breath, and went in-doors. Here he rapidly penned a letter, wherein he withdrew once for all from the treaty for the Budmouth practice. As the postman had already left Little Hintock for that night, he sent one of Melbury’s men to intercept a mail-cart on another turnpike-road, and so got the letter off.
The man returned, met Fitzpiers in the lane, and told him the thing was done. Fitzpiers went back to his house musing. Why had he carried out this impulse — taken such wild trouble to effect a probable injury to his own and his young wife’s prospects? His motive was fantastic, glowing, shapeless as the fiery scenery about the western sky. Mrs. Charmond could overtly be nothing more to him than a patient now, and to his wife, at the outside, a patron. In the unattached bachelor days of his first sojourning here how highly proper an emotional reason for lingering on would have appeared to troublesome dubiousness. Matrimonial ambition is such an honourable thing.
“My father has told me that you have sent off one of the men with a late letter to Budmouth,” cried Grace, coming out vivaciously to meet him under the declining light of the sky, wherein hung, solitary, the folding star. “I said at once that you had finally agreed to pay the premium they ask, and that the tedious question had been settled. When do we go, Edgar?”
“I have altered my mind,” said he. “They want too much — seven hundred and fifty is too large a sum — and in short, I have declined to go further. We must wait for another opportunity. I fear I am not a good business-man.” He spoke the last words with a momentary faltering at the great foolishness of his act; for, as he looked in her fair and honourable face, his heart reproached him for what he had done.
Her manner that evening showed her disappointment. Personally she liked the home of her childhood much, and she was not ambitious. But her husband had seemed so dissatisfied with the circumstances hereabout since their marriage that she had sincerely hoped to go for his sake.
It was two or three days before he visited Mrs. Charmond again. The morning had been windy, and little showers had sowed themselves like grain against the walls and window-panes of the Hintock cottages. He went on foot across the wilder recesses of the park, where slimy streams of green moisture, exuding from decayed holes caused by old amputations, ran down the bark of the oaks and elms, the rind below being coated with a lichenous wash as green as emerald. They were stout-trunked trees, that never rocked their stems in the fiercest gale, responding to it entirely by crooking their limbs. Wrinkled like an old crone’s face, and antlered with dead branches that rose above the foliage of their summits, they were nevertheless still green — though yellow had invaded the leaves of other trees.
She was in a little boudoir or writing-room on the first floor, and Fitzpiers was much surprised to find that the window-curtains were closed and a red-shaded lamp and candles burning, though out-of-doors it was broad daylight. Moreover, a large fire was burning in the grate, though it was not cold.
“What does it all mean?” he asked.
She sat in an easy-chair, her face being turned away. “Oh,” she murmured, “it is because the world is so dreary outside. Sorrow and bitterness in the sky, and floods of agonized tears beating against the panes. I lay awake last night, and I could hear the scrape of snails creeping up the window-glass; it was so sad! My eyes were so heavy this morning that I could have wept my life away. I cannot bear you to see my face; I keep it away from you purposely. Oh! why were we given hungry hearts and wild desires if we have to live in a world like this? Why should Death only lend what Life is compelled to borrow — rest? Answer that, Dr. Fitzpiers.”
“You must eat of a second tree of knowledge before you can do it, Felice Charmond.”
“Then, when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I become full of fears, till I think I shall die for very fear. The terrible insistencies of society — how severe they are, and cold and inexorable — ghastly towards those who are made of wax and not of stone. Oh, I am afraid of them; a stab for this error, and a stab for that — correctives and regulations framed that society may tend to perfection — an end which I don’t care for in the least. Yet
for this, all I do care for has to be stunted and starved.”
Fitzpiers had seated himself near her. “What sets you in this mournful mood?” he asked, gently. (In reality he knew that it was the result of a loss of tone from staying in-doors so much, but he did not say so.)
“My reflections. Doctor, you must not come here any more. They begin to think it a farce already. I say you must come no more. There — don’t be angry with me;” and she jumped up, pressed his hand, and looked anxiously at him. “It is necessary. It is best for both you and me.”
“But,” said Fitzpiers, gloomily, “what have we done?”
“Done — we have done nothing. Perhaps we have thought the more. However, it is all vexation. I am going away to Middleton Abbey, near Shottsford, where a relative of my late husband lives, who is confined to her bed. The engagement was made in London, and I can’t get out of it. Perhaps it is for the best that I go there till all this is past. When are you going to enter on your new practice, and leave Hintock behind forever, with your pretty wife on your arm?”
“I have refused the opportunity. I love this place too well to depart.”
“You HAVE?” she said, regarding him with wild uncertainty.
“Why do you ruin yourself in that way? Great Heaven, what have I done!”
“Nothing. Besides, you are going away.”
“Oh yes; but only to Middleton Abbey for a month or two. Yet perhaps I shall gain strength there — particularly strength of mind — I require it. And when I come back I shall be a new woman; and you can come and see me safely then, and bring your wife with you, and we’ll be friends — she and I. Oh, how this shutting up of one’s self does lead to indulgence in idle sentiments. I shall not wish you to give your attendance to me after to-day. But I am glad that you are not going away — if your remaining does not injure your prospects at all.”
As soon as he had left the room the mild friendliness she had preserved in her tone at parting, the playful sadness with which she had conversed with him, equally departed from her. She became as heavy as lead — just as she had been before he arrived. Her whole being seemed to dissolve in a sad powerlessness to do anything, and the sense of it made her lips tremulous and her closed eyes wet. His footsteps again startled her, and she turned round.
“I returned for a moment to tell you that the evening is going to be fine. The sun is shining; so do open your curtains and put out those lights. Shall I do it for you?”
“Please — if you don’t mind.”
He drew back the window-curtains, whereupon the red glow of the lamp and the two candle-flames became almost invisible with the flood of late autumn sunlight that poured in. “Shall I come round to you?” he asked, her back being towards him.
“No,” she replied.
“Why not?”
“Because I am crying, and I don’t want to see you.”
He stood a moment irresolute, and regretted that he had killed the rosy, passionate lamplight by opening the curtains and letting in garish day.
“Then I am going,” he said.
“Very well,” she answered, stretching one hand round to him, and patting her eyes with a handkerchief held in the other.
“Shall I write a line to you at — ”
“No, no.” A gentle reasonableness came into her tone as she added, “It must not be, you know. It won’t do.”
“Very well. Good-by.” The next moment he was gone.
In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged the maid who dressed her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitzpiers’s marriage.
“Mrs. Fitzpiers was once supposed to favour Mr. Winterborne,” said the young woman.
“And why didn’t she marry him?” said Mrs. Charmond.
“Because, you see, ma’am, he lost his houses.”
“Lost his houses? How came he to do that?”
“The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your agent wouldn’t renew them, though it is said that Mr. Winterborne had a very good claim. That’s as I’ve heard it, ma’am, and it was through it that the match was broke off.”
Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. Charmond sunk into a mood of dismal self-reproach. “In refusing that poor man his reasonable request,” she said to herself, “I foredoomed my rejuvenated girlhood’s romance. Who would have thought such a business matter could have nettled my own heart like this? Now for a winter of regrets and agonies and useless wishes, till I forget him in the spring. Oh! I am glad I am going away.”
She left her chamber and went down to dine with a sigh. On the stairs she stood opposite the large window for a moment, and looked out upon the lawn. It was not yet quite dark. Half-way up the steep green slope confronting her stood old Timothy Tangs, who was shortening his way homeward by clambering here where there was no road, and in opposition to express orders that no path was to be made there. Tangs had momentarily stopped to take a pinch of snuff; but observing Mrs. Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to get over the top out of hail. His precipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a barrel to the bottom, his snuffbox rolling in front of him.
Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers; her constitutional cloud of misery; the sorrowful drops that still hung upon her eyelashes, all made way for the incursive mood started by the spectacle. She burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, her very gloom of the previous hour seeming to render it the more uncontrollable. It had not died out of her when she reached the dining-room; and even here, before the servants, her shoulders suddenly shook as the scene returned upon her; and the tears of her hilarity mingled with the remnants of those engendered by her grief.
She resolved to be sad no more. She drank two glasses of champagne, and a little more still after those, and amused herself in the evening with singing little amatory songs.
“I must do something for that poor man Winterborne, however,” she said.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmond had left Hintock House. Middleton Abbey, the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles distant by road, eighteen by bridle-paths and footways.
Grace observed, for the first time, that her husband was restless, that at moments he even was disposed to avoid her. The scrupulous civility of mere acquaintanceship crept into his manner; yet, when sitting at meals, he seemed hardly to hear her remarks. Her little doings interested him no longer, while towards her father his bearing was not far from supercilious. It was plain that his mind was entirely outside her life, whereabouts outside it she could not tell; in some region of science, possibly, or of psychological literature. But her hope that he was again immersing himself in those lucubrations which before her marriage had made his light a landmark in Hintock, was founded simply on 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 opened on the brink of a steep, slanting down directly into Blackmoor Vale, or the Vale of the White Hart, extending beneath the eye at this point to a distance of many miles. His attention was fixed on the landscape far away, 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 to some 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,” he said.
It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that cradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity; but she made no further observation, and taking his arm walked home beside him almost in silence. She did not know that Middleton Abbey lay in the direction of his gaze. “Are you going to have out Darling this afternoon?” she asked, presently. Darling being the light-gray mare which Winterborne had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers now constantly used, the animal having turned out a wonderful bargain, in combining a perfect docility with an almost human in
telligence; moreover, she was not too young. Fitzpiers was unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these qualities.
“Yes,” he replied, “but not to drive. I am riding her. I practise crossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I can take much shorter cuts on horseback.”
He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week, only since Mrs. Charmond’s absence, his universal practice hitherto having been to drive.
Some few days later, Fitzpiers started on the back of this horse to see a patient in the aforesaid Vale. It was about five o’clock in the evening when he went away, and at bedtime he had not reached home. There was nothing very singular in this, though she was not aware that he had any patient more than five or six miles distant in that direction. The clock had struck one before Fitzpiers entered the house, 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 man who attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that the latter was “hag-rid;” for when he had arrived at the stable that morning she was in such a state as no horse could be in by honest riding. It was true that the doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so that she was not looked after as she would have been if he had groomed and fed her; but that did not account for the appearance she presented, if Mr. Fitzpiers’s journey had been only where he had stated. The phenomenal exhaustion of Darling, as thus related, was sufficient to develop a whole series of tales about riding witches and demons, the narration of which occupied a considerable time.
Grace returned in-doors. In passing through the outer room she picked up her husband’s overcoat which he had carelessly flung down across a chair. A turnpike ticket fell out of the breast-pocket, and she saw that it had been issued at Middleton Gate. He had therefore visited Middleton the previous night, a distance of at least five-and-thirty miles on horseback, there and back.