by Thomas Hardy
“How — what the devil’s this about!” exclaimed the bridegroom.
“She’s a little wee bit overcome, poor dear!” said the first bridesmaid, unfolding her handkerchief and wiping Suke’s eyes.
“I never did like parting from people!” said Suke, as soon as she could speak.
“Why him in particular?”
“Well — he’s such a clever doctor, that ‘tis a thousand pities we sha’n’t see him any more! There’ll be no such clever doctor as he in New Zealand, if I should require one; and the thought o’t got the better of my feelings!”
They walked on, but Tim’s face had grown rigid and pale, for he recalled slight circumstances, disregarded at the time of their occurrence. The former boisterous laughter of the wedding-party at the groomsman’s jokes was heard ringing through the woods no more.
By this time Fitzpiers had advanced on his way to the top of the hill, where he saw two figures emerging from the bank on the right hand. These were the expected ones, Grace and Marty South, who had evidently come there by a short and secret path through the wood. Grace was muffled up in her winter dress, and he thought that she had never looked so seductive as at this moment, in the noontide bright but heatless sun, and the keen wind, and the purplish-gray masses of brushwood around.
Fitzpiers continued to regard the nearing picture, till at length their glances met for a moment, when she demurely sent off hers at a tangent and gave him the benefit of her three-quarter face, while with courteous completeness of conduct he lifted his hat in a large arc. Marty dropped behind; and when Fitzpiers held out his hand, Grace touched it with her fingers.
“I have agreed to be here mostly because I wanted to ask you something important,” said Mrs. Fitzpiers, her intonation modulating in a direction that she had not quite wished it to take.
“I am most attentive,” said her husband. “Shall we take to the wood for privacy?”
Grace demurred, and Fitzpiers gave in, and they kept the public road.
At any rate she would take his arm? This also was gravely negatived, the refusal being audible to Marty.
“Why not?” he inquired.
“Oh, Mr. Fitzpiers — how can you ask?”
“Right, right,” said he, his effusiveness shrivelled up.
As they walked on she returned to her inquiry. “It is about a matter that may perhaps be unpleasant to you. But I think I need not consider that too carefully.”
“Not at all,” said Fitzpiers, heroically.
She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne’s death, and related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness had come upon him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to which he had betaken himself, his concealment from her of the hardships that he was undergoing, all that he had put up with, all that he had done for her in his scrupulous considerateness. The retrospect brought her to tears as she asked him if he thought that the sin of having driven him to his death was upon her.
Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her narrative indirectly revealed, the actual harmlessness of an escapade with her lover, which had at first, by her own showing, looked so grave, and he did not care to inquire whether that harmlessness had been the result of aim or of accident. With regard to her question, he declared that in his judgment no human being could answer it. He thought that upon the whole the balance of probabilities turned in her favour. Winterborne’s apparent strength, during the last months of his life, must have been delusive. It had often occurred that after a first attack of that insidious disease a person’s apparent recovery was a physiological mendacity.
The relief which came to Grace lay almost as much in sharing her knowledge of the particulars with an intelligent mind as in the assurances Fitzpiers gave her. “Well, then, to put this case before you, and obtain your professional opinion, was chiefly why I consented to come here to-day,” said she, when he had reached the aforesaid conclusion.
“For no other reason at all?” he asked, ruefully.
“It was nearly the whole.”
They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty starlings feeding in the grass, and he started the talk again by saying, in a low voice, “And yet I love you more than ever I loved you in my life.”
Grace did not move her eyes from the birds, and folded her delicate lips as if to keep them in subjection.
“It is a different kind of love altogether,” said he. “Less passionate; more profound. It has nothing to do with the material conditions of the object at all; much to do with her character and goodness, as revealed by closer observation. ‘Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.’“
“That’s out of ‘Measure for Measure,’“ said she, slyly.
“Oh yes — I meant it as a citation,” blandly replied Fitzpiers. “Well, then, why not give me a very little bit of your heart again?”
The crash of a felled tree in the remote depths of the wood recalled the past at that moment, and all the homely faithfulness of Winterborne. “Don’t ask it! My heart is in the grave with Giles,” she replied, stanchly.
“Mine is with you — in no less deep a grave, I fear, according to that.”
“I am very sorry; but it cannot be helped.”
“How can you be sorry for me, when you wilfully keep open the grave?”
“Oh no — that’s not so,” returned Grace, quickly, and moved to go away from him.
“But, dearest Grace,” said he, “you have condescended to come; and I thought from it that perhaps when I had passed through a long state of probation you would be generous. But if there can be no hope of our getting completely reconciled, treat me gently — wretch though I am.”
“I did not say you were a wretch, nor have I ever said so.”
“But you have such a contemptuous way of looking at me that I fear you think so.”
Grace’s heart struggled between the wish not to be harsh and the fear that she might mislead him. “I cannot look contemptuous unless I feel contempt,” she said, evasively. “And all I feel is lovelessness.”
“I have been very bad, I know,” he returned. “But unless you can really love me again, Grace, I would rather go away from you forever. I don’t want you to receive me again for duty’s sake, or anything of that sort. If I had not cared more for your affection and forgiveness than my own personal comfort, I should never have come back here. I could have obtained a practice at a distance, and have lived my own life without coldness or reproach. But I have chosen to return to the one spot on earth where my name is tarnished — to enter the house of a man from whom I have had worse treatment than from any other man alive — all for you!”
This was undeniably true, and it had its weight with Grace, who began to look as if she thought she had been shockingly severe.
“Before you go,” he continued, “I want to know your pleasure about me — what you wish me to do, or not to do.”
“You are independent of me, and it seems a mockery to ask that. Far be it from me to advise. But I will think it over. I rather need advice myself than stand in a position to give it.”
“YOU don’t need advice, wisest, dearest woman that ever lived. If you did — ”
“Would you give it to me?”
“Would you act upon what I gave?”
“That’s not a fair inquiry,” said she, smiling despite her gravity. “I don’t mind hearing it — what you do really think the most correct and proper course for me.”
“It is so easy for me to say, and yet I dare not, for it would be provoking you to remonstrances.”
Knowing, of course, what the advice would be, she did not press him further, and was about to beckon Marty forward and leave him, when he interrupted her with, “Oh, one moment, dear Grace — you will meet me again?”
She eventually agreed to see him that day fortnight. Fitzpiers expostulated at the interval, but the half-alarmed earnestness with which she entreated him not to come sooner made him say hastily t
hat he submitted to her will — that he would regard her as a friend only, anxious for his reform and well-being, till such time as she might allow him to exceed that privilege.
All this was to assure her; it was only too clear that he had not won her confidence yet. It amazed Fitzpiers, and overthrew all his deductions from previous experience, to find that this girl, though she had been married to him, could yet be so coy. Notwithstanding a certain fascination that it carried with it, his reflections were sombre as he went homeward; he saw how deep had been his offence to produce so great a wariness in a gentle and once unsuspicious soul.
He was himself too fastidious to care to coerce her. To be an object of misgiving or dislike to a woman who shared his home was what he could not endure the thought of. Life as it stood was more tolerable.
When he was gone, Marty joined Mrs. Fitzpiers. She would fain have consulted Marty on the question of Platonic relations with her former husband, as she preferred to regard him. But Marty showed no great interest in their affairs, so Grace said nothing. They came onward, and saw Melbury standing at the scene of the felling which had been audible to them, when, telling Marty that she wished her meeting with Mr. Fitzpiers to be kept private, she left the girl to join her father. At any rate, she would consult him on the expediency of occasionally seeing her husband.
Her father was cheerful, and walked by her side as he had done in earlier days. “I was thinking of you when you came up,” he said. “I have considered that what has happened is for the best. Since your husband is gone away, and seems not to wish to trouble you, why, let him go, and drop out of your life. Many women are worse off. You can live here comfortably enough, and he can emigrate, or do what he likes for his good. I wouldn’t mind sending him the further sum of money he might naturally expect to come to him, so that you may not be bothered with him any more. He could hardly have gone on living here without speaking to me, or meeting me; and that would have been very unpleasant on both sides.”
These remarks checked her intention. There was a sense of weakness in following them by saying that she had just met her husband by appointment. “Then you would advise me not to communicate with him?” she observed.
“I shall never advise ye again. You are your own mistress — do as you like. But my opinion is that if you don’t live with him, you had better live without him, and not go shilly-shallying and playing bopeep. You sent him away; and now he’s gone. Very well; trouble him no more.”
Grace felt a guiltiness — she hardly knew why — and made no confession.
CHAPTER XLVI.
The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed in-doors a great deal. She became quite a student, reading more than she had done since her marriage But her seclusion was always broken for the periodical visit to Winterborne’s grave with Marty, which was kept up with pious strictness, for the purpose of putting snow-drops, primroses, and other vernal flowers thereon as they came.
One afternoon at sunset she was standing just outside her father’s garden, which, like the rest of the Hintock enclosures, abutted into the wood. A slight foot-path led along here, forming a secret way to either of the houses by getting through its boundary hedge. Grace was just about to adopt this mode of entry when a figure approached along the path, and held up his hand to detain her. It was her husband.
“I am delighted,” he said, coming up out of breath; and there seemed no reason to doubt his words. “I saw you some way off — I was afraid you would go in before I could reach you.”
“It is a week before the time,” said she, reproachfully. “I said a fortnight from the last meeting.”
“My dear, you don’t suppose I could wait a fortnight without trying to get a glimpse of you, even though you had declined to meet me! Would it make you angry to know that I have been along this path at dusk three or four times since our last meeting? Well, how are you?”
She did not refuse her hand, but when he showed a wish to retain it a moment longer than mere formality required, she made it smaller, so that it slipped away from him, with again that same alarmed look which always followed his attempts in this direction. He saw that she was not yet out of the elusive mood; not yet to be treated presumingly; and he was correspondingly careful to tranquillize her.
His assertion had seemed to impress her somewhat. “I had no idea you came so often,” she said. “How far do you come from?”
“From Exbury. I always walk from Sherton-Abbas, for if I hire, people will know that I come; and my success with you so far has not been great enough to justify such overtness. Now, my dear one — as I MUST call you — I put it to you: will you see me a little oftener as the spring advances?”
Grace lapsed into unwonted sedateness, and avoiding the question, said, “I wish you would concentrate on your profession, and give up those strange studies that used to distract you so much. I am sure you would get on.”
“It is the very thing I am doing. I was going to ask you to burn — or, at least, get rid of — all my philosophical literature. It is in the bookcases in your rooms. The fact is, I never cared much for abstruse studies.”
“I am so glad to hear you say that. And those other books — those piles of old plays — what good are they to a medical man?”
“None whatever!” he replied, cheerfully. “Sell them at Sherton for what they will fetch.”
“And those dreadful old French romances, with their horrid spellings of ‘filz’ and ‘ung’ and ‘ilz’ and ‘mary’ and ‘ma foy?’“
“You haven’t been reading them, Grace?”
“Oh no — I just looked into them, that was all.”
“Make a bonfire of ‘em directly you get home. I meant to do it myself. I can’t think what possessed me ever to collect them. I have only a few professional hand-books now, and am quite a practical man. I am in hopes of having some good news to tell you soon, and then do you think you could — come to me again?”
“I would rather you did not press me on that just now,” she replied, with some feeling. “You have said you mean to lead a new, useful, effectual life; but I should like to see you put it in practice for a little while before you address that query to me. Besides — I could not live with you.”
“Why not?”
Grace was silent a few instants. “I go with Marty to Giles’s grave. We swore we would show him that devotion. And I mean to keep it up.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind that at all. I have no right to expect anything else, and I will not wish you to keep away. I liked the man as well as any I ever knew. In short, I would accompany you a part of the way to the place, and smoke a cigar on the stile while I waited till you came back.”
“Then you haven’t given up smoking?”
“Well — ahem — no. I have thought of doing so, but — ”
His extreme complacence had rather disconcerted Grace, and the question about smoking had been to effect a diversion. Presently she said, firmly, and with a moisture in her eye that he could not see, as her mind returned to poor Giles’s “frustrate ghost,” “I don’t like you — to speak lightly on that subject, if you did speak lightly. To be frank with you — quite frank — I think of him as my betrothed lover still. I cannot help it. So that it would be wrong for me to join you.”
Fitzpiers was now uneasy. “You say your betrothed lover still,” he rejoined. “When, then, were you betrothed to him, or engaged, as we common people say?”
“When you were away.”
“How could that be?”
Grace would have avoided this; but her natural candor led her on. “It was when I was under the impression that my marriage with you was about to be annulled, and that he could then marry me. So I encouraged him to love me.”
Fitzpiers winced visibly; and yet, upon the whole, she was right in telling it. Indeed, his perception that she was right in her absolute sincerity kept up his affectionate admiration for her under the pain of the rebuff. Time had been when the avowal that Grace had deliberately taken steps to replace him
would have brought him no sorrow. But she so far dominated him now that he could not bear to hear her words, although the object of her high regard was no more.
“It is rough upon me — that!” he said, bitterly. “Oh, Grace — I did not know you — tried to get rid of me! I suppose it is of no use, but I ask, cannot you hope to — find a little love in your heart for me again?”
“If I could I would oblige you; but I fear I cannot!” she replied, with illogical ruefulness. “And I don’t see why you should mind my having had one lover besides yourself in my life, when you have had so many.”
“But I can tell you honestly that I love you better than all of them put together, and that’s what you will not tell me!”
“I am sorry; but I fear I cannot,” she said, sighing again.
“I wonder if you ever will?” He looked musingly into her indistinct face, as if he would read the future there. “Now have pity, and tell me: will you try?”
“To love you again?”
“Yes; if you can.”
“I don’t know how to reply,” she answered, her embarrassment proving her truth. “Will you promise to leave me quite free as to seeing you or not seeing you?”
“Certainly. Have I given any ground for you to doubt my first promise in that respect?”
She was obliged to admit that he had not.
“Then I think that you might get your heart out of that grave,” said he, with playful sadness. “It has been there a long time.”
She faintly shook her head, but said, “I’ll try to think of you more — if I can.”
With this Fitzpiers was compelled to be satisfied, and he asked her when she would meet him again.
“As we arranged — in a fortnight.”
“If it must be a fortnight it must!”
“This time at least. I’ll consider by the day I see you again if I can shorten the interval.”
“Well, be that as it may, I shall come at least twice a week to look at your window.”
“You must do as you like about that. Good-night.”
“Say ‘husband.’“