CHAPTER XXIX.
She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand bynut-bushes, just now heavy with clusters of twos and threes and fours.A little way on, the track she pursued was crossed by a similar one atright angles. Here Grace stopped; some few yards up the transverseride the buxom Suke Damson was visible--her gown tucked up high throughher pocket-hole, and no bonnet on her head--in the act of pulling downboughs from which she was gathering and eating nuts with greatrapidity, her lover Tim Tangs standing near her engaged in the samepleasant meal.
Crack, crack went Suke's jaws every second or two. By an automaticchain of thought Grace's mind reverted to the tooth-drawing scenedescribed by her husband; and for the first time she wondered if thatnarrative were really true, Susan's jaws being so obviously sound andstrong. Grace turned up towards the nut-gatherers, and conquered herreluctance to speak to the girl who was a little in advance of Tim."Good-evening, Susan," she said.
"Good-evening, Miss Melbury" (crack).
"Mrs. Fitzpiers."
"Oh yes, ma'am--Mrs. Fitzpiers," said Suke, with a peculiar smile.
Grace, not to be daunted, continued: "Take care of your teeth, Suke.That accounts for the toothache."
"I don't know what an ache is, either in tooth, ear, or head, thank theLord" (crack).
"Nor the loss of one, either?"
"See for yourself, ma'am." She parted her red lips, and exhibited thewhole double row, full up and unimpaired.
"You have never had one drawn?"
"Never."
"So much the better for your stomach," said Mrs. Fitzpiers, in analtered voice. And turning away quickly, she went on.
As her husband's character thus shaped itself under the touch of time,Grace was almost startled to find how little she suffered from thatjealous excitement which is conventionally attributed to all wives insuch circumstances. But though possessed by none of that felinewildness which it was her moral duty to experience, she did not fail toknow that she had made a frightful mistake in her marriage.Acquiescence in her father's wishes had been degradation to herself.People are not given premonitions for nothing; she should have obeyedher impulse on that early morning, and steadfastly refused her hand.
Oh, that plausible tale which her then betrothed had told her aboutSuke--the dramatic account of her entreaties to him to draw the achingenemy, and the fine artistic touch he had given to the story byexplaining that it was a lovely molar without a flaw!
She traced the remainder of the woodland track dazed by thecomplications of her position. If his protestations to her beforetheir marriage could be believed, her husband had felt affection ofsome sort for herself and this woman simultaneously; and was now againspreading the same emotion over Mrs. Charmond and herself conjointly,his manner being still kind and fond at times. But surely, rather thanthat, he must have played the hypocrite towards her in each case withelaborate completeness; and the thought of this sickened her, for itinvolved the conjecture that if he had not loved her, his only motivefor making her his wife must have been her little fortune. Yet hereGrace made a mistake, for the love of men like Fitzpiers isunquestionably of such quality as to bear division and transference.He had indeed, once declared, though not to her, that on one occasionhe had noticed himself to be possessed by five distinct infatuations atthe same time. Therein it differed from the highest affection as thelower orders of the animal world differ from advanced organisms,partition causing, not death, but a multiplied existence. He had lovedher sincerely, and had by no means ceased to love her now. But suchdouble and treble barrelled hearts were naturally beyond her conception.
Of poor Suke Damson, Grace thought no more. She had had her day.
"If he does not love me I will not love him!" said Grace, proudly. Andthough these were mere words, it was a somewhat formidable thing forFitzpiers that her heart was approximating to a state in which it mightbe possible to carry them out. That very absence of hot jealousy whichmade his courses so easy, and on which, indeed, he congratulatedhimself, meant, unknown to either wife or husband, more mischief thanthe inconvenient watchfulness of a jaundiced eye.
Her sleep that night was nervous. The wing allotted to her and herhusband had never seemed so lonely. At last she got up, put on herdressing-gown, and went down-stairs. Her father, who slept lightly,heard her descend, and came to the stair-head.
"Is that you, Grace? What's the matter?" he said.
"Nothing more than that I am restless. Edgar is detained by a case atOwlscombe in White Hart Vale."
"But how's that? I saw the woman's husband at Great Hintock just aforebedtime; and she was going on well, and the doctor gone then."
"Then he's detained somewhere else," said Grace. "Never mind me; hewill soon be home. I expect him about one."
She went back to her room, and dozed and woke several times. Oneo'clock had been the hour of his return on the last occasion but itpassed now by a long way, and Fitzpiers did not come. Just before dawnshe heard the men stirring in the yard; and the flashes of theirlanterns spread every now and then through her window-blind. Sheremembered that her father had told her not to be disturbed if shenoticed them, as they would be rising early to send off four loads ofhurdles to a distant sheep-fair. Peeping out, she saw them bustlingabout, the hollow-turner among the rest; he was loading hiswares--wooden-bowls, dishes, spigots, spoons, cheese-vats, funnels, andso on--upon one of her father's wagons, who carried them to the fairfor him every year out of neighborly kindness.
The scene and the occasion would have enlivened her but that herhusband was still absent; though it was now five o'clock. She couldhardly suppose him, whatever his infatuation, to have prolonged to alater hour than ten an ostensibly professional call on Mrs. Charmond atMiddleton and he could have ridden home in two hours and a half.What, then, had become of him? That he had been out the greater part ofthe two preceding nights added to her uneasiness.
She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird twilight ofadvancing day chilling the rays from the lanterns, and making the men'sfaces wan. As soon as Melbury saw her he came round, showing his alarm.
"Edgar is not come," she said. "And I have reason to know that he'snot attending anybody. He has had no rest for two nights before this.I was going to the top of the hill to look for him."
"I'll come with you," said Melbury.
She begged him not to hinder himself; but he insisted, for he saw apeculiar and rigid gloom in her face over and above her uneasiness, anddid not like the look of it. Telling the men he would be with themagain soon, he walked beside her into the turnpike-road, and partly upthe hill whence she had watched Fitzpiers the night before across theGreat White Hart or Blackmoor Valley. They halted beneath a half-deadoak, hollow, and disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading outlike accipitrine claws grasping the ground. A chilly wind circledround them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime-tree,supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the boughsdownward like fledglings from their nest. The vale was wrapped in adim atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtainedged with pink. There was no sign nor sound of Fitzpiers.
"It is no use standing here," said her father. "He may come home fiftyways...why, look here!--here be Darling's tracks--turned homeward andnearly blown dry and hard! He must have come in hours ago without yourseeing him."
"He has not done that," said she.
They went back hastily. On entering their own gates they perceivedthat the men had left the wagons, and were standing round the door ofthe stable which had been appropriated to the doctor's use. "Is thereanything the matter?" cried Grace.
"Oh no, ma'am. All's well that ends well," said old Timothy Tangs."I've heard of such things before--among workfolk, though not amongyour gentle people--that's true."
They entered the stable, and saw the pale shape of Darling standing inthe middle of her stall, with Fitzpiers on her back, sound asleep.Darling was munching hay as well as she could wit
h the bit in hermonth, and the reins, which had fallen from Fitzpiers's hand, hung uponher neck.
Grace went and touched his hand; shook it before she could arouse him.He moved, started, opened his eyes, and exclaimed, "Ah, Felice!...Oh,it's Grace. I could not see in the gloom. What--am I in the saddle?"
"Yes," said she. "How do you come here?"
He collected his thoughts, and in a few minutes stammered, "I wasriding along homeward through the vale, very, very sleepy, having beenup so much of late. When I came opposite Holywell spring the mareturned her head that way, as if she wanted to drink. I let her go in,and she drank; I thought she would never finish. While she wasdrinking, the clock of Owlscombe Church struck twelve. I distinctlyremember counting the strokes. From that moment I positively recollectnothing till I saw you here by my side."
"The name! If it had been any other horse he'd have had a broken neck!"murmured Melbury.
"'Tis wonderful, sure, how a quiet hoss will bring a man home at suchtimes!" said John Upjohn. "And what's more wonderful than keeping yourseat in a deep, slumbering sleep? I've knowed men drowze off walkinghome from randies where the mead and other liquors have gone roundwell, and keep walking for more than a mile on end without waking.Well, doctor, I don't care who the man is, 'tis a mercy you wasn't adrownded, or a splintered, or a hanged up to a tree like Absalom--alsoa handsome gentleman like yerself, as the prophets say."
"True," murmured old Timothy. "From the soul of his foot to the crownof his head there was no blemish in him."
"Or leastwise you might ha' been a-wownded into tatters a'most, and nodoctor to jine your few limbs together within seven mile!"
While this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpiers had dismounted, andtaking Grace's arm walked stiffly in-doors with her. Melbury stoodstaring at the horse, which, in addition to being very weary, wasspattered with mud. There was no mud to speak of about the Hintocksjust now--only in the clammy hollows of the vale beyond Owlscombe, thestiff soil of which retained moisture for weeks after the uplands weredry. While they were rubbing down the mare, Melbury's mind coupledwith the foreign quality of the mud the name he had heard unconsciouslymuttered by the surgeon when Grace took his hand--"Felice." Who wasFelice? Why, Mrs. Charmond; and she, as he knew, was staying atMiddleton.
Melbury had indeed pounced upon the image that filled Fitzpiers'shalf-awakened soul--wherein there had been a picture of a recentinterview on a lawn with a capriciously passionate woman who had beggedhim not to come again in tones whose vibration incited him to disobey."What are you doing here? Why do you pursue me? Another belongs to you.If they were to see you they would seize you as a thief!" And she hadturbulently admitted to his wringing questions that her visit toMiddleton had been undertaken less because of the invalid relative thanin shamefaced fear of her own weakness if she remained near his home.A triumph then it was to Fitzpiers, poor and hampered as he had become,to recognize his real conquest of this beauty, delayed so many years.His was the selfish passion of Congreve's Millamont, to whom love'ssupreme delight lay in "that heart which others bleed for, bleed forme."
When the horse had been attended to Melbury stood uneasily here andthere about his premises; he was rudely disturbed in the comfortableviews which had lately possessed him on his domestic concerns. It istrue that he had for some days discerned that Grace more and moresought his company, preferred supervising his kitchen and bakehousewith her step-mother to occupying herself with the lighter details ofher own apartments. She seemed no longer able to find in her ownhearth an adequate focus for her life, and hence, like a weak queen-beeafter leading off to an independent home, had hovered again into theparent hive. But he had not construed these and other incidents of thekind till now.
Something was wrong in the dove-cot. A ghastly sense that he alonewould be responsible for whatever unhappiness should be brought uponher for whom he almost solely lived, whom to retain under his roof hehad faced the numerous inconveniences involved in giving up the bestpart of his house to Fitzpiers. There was no room for doubt that, hadhe allowed events to take their natural course, she would have acceptedWinterborne, and realized his old dream of restitution to that youngman's family.
That Fitzpiers could allow himself to look on any other creature for amoment than Grace filled Melbury with grief and astonishment. In thepure and simple life he had led it had scarcely occurred to him thatafter marriage a man might be faithless. That he could sweep to theheights of Mrs. Charmond's position, lift the veil of Isis, so tospeak, would have amazed Melbury by its audacity if he had notsuspected encouragement from that quarter. What could he and hissimple Grace do to countervail the passions of such as those twosophisticated beings--versed in the world's ways, armed with everyapparatus for victory? In such an encounter the homely timber-dealerfelt as inferior as a bow-and-arrow savage before the precise weaponsof modern warfare.
Grace came out of the house as the morning drew on. The village wassilent, most of the folk having gone to the fair. Fitzpiers hadretired to bed, and was sleeping off his fatigue. She went to thestable and looked at poor Darling: in all probability GilesWinterborne, by obtaining for her a horse of such intelligence anddocility, had been the means of saving her husband's life. She pausedover the strange thought; and then there appeared her father behindher. She saw that he knew things were not as they ought to be, fromthe troubled dulness of his eye, and from his face, different points ofwhich had independent motions, twitchings, and tremblings, unknown tohimself, and involuntary.
"He was detained, I suppose, last night?" said Melbury.
"Oh yes; a bad case in the vale," she replied, calmly.
"Nevertheless, he should have stayed at home."
"But he couldn't, father."
Her father turned away. He could hardly bear to see his whilomtruthful girl brought to the humiliation of having to talk like that.
That night carking care sat beside Melbury's pillow, and his stifflimbs tossed at its presence. "I can't lie here any longer," hemuttered. Striking a light, he wandered about the room. "What have Idone--what have I done for her?" he said to his wife, who had anxiouslyawakened. "I had long planned that she should marry the son of the manI wanted to make amends to; do ye mind how I told you all about it,Lucy, the night before she came home? Ah! but I was not content withdoing right, I wanted to do more!"
"Don't raft yourself without good need, George," she replied. "I won'tquite believe that things are so much amiss. I won't believe that Mrs.Charmond has encouraged him. Even supposing she has encouraged a greatmany, she can have no motive to do it now. What so likely as that sheis not yet quite well, and doesn't care to let another doctor come nearher?"
He did not heed. "Grace used to be so busy every day, with fixing acurtain here and driving a tin-tack there; but she cares for noemployment now!"
"Do you know anything of Mrs. Charmond's past history? Perhaps thatwould throw some light upon things. Before she came here as the wifeof old Charmond four or five years ago, not a soul seems to have heardaught of her. Why not make inquiries? And then do ye wait and seemore; there'll be plenty of opportunity. Time enough to cry when youknow 'tis a crying matter; and 'tis bad to meet troubles half-way."
There was some good-sense in the notion of seeing further. Melburyresolved to inquire and wait, hoping still, but oppressedbetween-whiles with much fear.