CHAPTER XXXVII.
When her husband's letter reached Grace's hands, bearing upon it thepostmark of a distant town, it never once crossed her mind thatFitzpiers was within a mile of her still. She felt relieved that hedid not write more bitterly of the quarrel with her father, whateverits nature might have been; but the general frigidity of hiscommunication quenched in her the incipient spark that events hadkindled so shortly before.
From this centre of information it was made known in Hintock that thedoctor had gone away, and as none but the Melbury household was awarethat he did not return on the night of his accident, no excitementmanifested itself in the village.
Thus the early days of May passed by. None but the nocturnal birds andanimals observed that late one evening, towards the middle of themonth, a closely wrapped figure, with a crutch under one arm and astick in his hand, crept out from Hintock House across the lawn to theshelter of the trees, taking thence a slow and laborious walk to thenearest point of the turnpike-road. The mysterious personage was sodisguised that his own wife would hardly have known him. FeliceCharmond was a practised hand at make-ups, as well she might be; andshe had done her utmost in padding and painting Fitzpiers with the oldmaterials of her art in the recesses of the lumber-room.
In the highway he was met by a covered carriage, which conveyed him toSherton-Abbas, whence he proceeded to the nearest port on the southcoast, and immediately crossed the Channel.
But it was known to everybody that three days after this time Mrs.Charmond executed her long-deferred plan of setting out for a long termof travel and residence on the Continent. She went off one morning asunostentatiously as could be, and took no maid with her, having, shesaid, engaged one to meet her at a point farther on in her route.After that, Hintock House, so frequently deserted, was again to be let.Spring had not merged in summer when a clinching rumor, founded on thebest of evidence, reached the parish and neighborhood. Mrs. Charmondand Fitzpiers had been seen together in Baden, in relations which setat rest the question that had agitated the little community ever sincethe winter.
Melbury had entered the Valley of Humiliation even farther than Grace.His spirit seemed broken.
But once a week he mechanically went to market as usual, and here, ashe was passing by the conduit one day, his mental condition expressedlargely by his gait, he heard his name spoken by a voice formerlyfamiliar. He turned and saw a certain Fred Beaucock--once a promisinglawyer's clerk and local dandy, who had been called the cleverestfellow in Sherton, without whose brains the firm of solicitorsemploying him would be nowhere. But later on Beaucock had fallen intothe mire. He was invited out a good deal, sang songs at agriculturalmeetings and burgesses' dinners; in sum, victualled himself withspirits more frequently than was good for the clever brains or bodyeither. He lost his situation, and after an absence spent in tryinghis powers elsewhere, came back to his native town, where, at the timeof the foregoing events in Hintock, he gave legal advice forastonishingly small fees--mostly carrying on his profession onpublic-house settles, in whose recesses he might often have beenoverheard making country-people's wills for half a crown; calling witha learned voice for pen-and-ink and a halfpenny sheet of paper, onwhich he drew up the testament while resting it in a little space wipedwith his hand on the table amid the liquid circles formed by the cupsand glasses. An idea implanted early in life is difficult to uproot,and many elderly tradespeople still clung to the notion that FredBeaucock knew a great deal of law.
It was he who had called Melbury by name. "You look very down, Mr.Melbury--very, if I may say as much," he observed, when thetimber-merchant turned. "But I know--I know. A very sad case--very.I was bred to the law, as you know, and am professionally no strangerto such matters. Well, Mrs. Fitzpiers has her remedy."
"How--what--a remedy?" said Melbury.
"Under the new law, sir. A new court was established last year, andunder the new statute, twenty and twenty-one Vic., cap. eighty-five,unmarrying is as easy as marrying. No more Acts of Parliamentnecessary; no longer one law for the rich and another for the poor.But come inside--I was just going to have a nibleykin of rum hot--I'llexplain it all to you."
The intelligence amazed Melbury, who saw little of newspapers. Andthough he was a severely correct man in his habits, and had no tastefor entering a tavern with Fred Beaucock--nay, would have been quiteuninfluenced by such a character on any other matter in the world--suchfascination lay in the idea of delivering his poor girl from bondage,that it deprived him of the critical faculty. He could not resist theex-lawyer's clerk, and entered the inn.
Here they sat down to the rum, which Melbury paid for as a matter ofcourse, Beaucock leaning back in the settle with a legal gravity whichwould hardly allow him to be conscious of the spirits before him,though they nevertheless disappeared with mysterious quickness.
How much of the exaggerated information on the then new divorce lawswhich Beaucock imparted to his listener was the result of ignorance,and how much of dupery, was never ascertained. But he related such aplausible story of the ease with which Grace could become a free womanthat her father was irradiated with the project; and though he scarcelywetted his lips, Melbury never knew how he came out of the inn, or whenor where he mounted his gig to pursue his way homeward. But home hefound himself, his brain having all the way seemed to ring sonorouslyas a gong in the intensity of its stir. Before he had seen Grace, hewas accidentally met by Winterborne, who found his face shining as ifhe had, like the Law-giver, conversed with an angel.
He relinquished his horse, and took Winterborne by the arm to a heap ofrendlewood--as barked oak was here called--which lay under aprivet-hedge.
"Giles," he said, when they had sat down upon the logs, "there's a newlaw in the land! Grace can be free quite easily. I only knew it by themerest accident. I might not have found it out for the next ten years.She can get rid of him--d'ye hear?--get rid of him. Think of that, myfriend Giles!"
He related what he had learned of the new legal remedy. A subduedtremulousness about the mouth was all the response that Winterbornemade; and Melbury added, "My boy, you shall have her yet--if you wanther." His feelings had gathered volume as he said this, and thearticulate sound of the old idea drowned his sight in mist.
"Are you sure--about this new law?" asked Winterborne, so disquieted bya gigantic exultation which loomed alternately with fearful doubt thathe evaded the full acceptance of Melbury's last statement.
Melbury said that he had no manner of doubt, for since his talk withBeaucock it had come into his mind that he had seen some time ago inthe weekly paper an allusion to such a legal change; but, having nointerest in those desperate remedies at the moment, he had passed itover. "But I'm not going to let the matter rest doubtful for a singleday," he continued. "I am going to London. Beaucock will go with me,and we shall get the best advice as soon as we possibly can. Beaucockis a thorough lawyer--nothing the matter with him but a fiery palate.I knew him as the stay and refuge of Sherton in knots of law at onetime."
Winterborne's replies were of the vaguest. The new possibility wasalmost unthinkable by him at the moment. He was what was called atHintock "a solid-going fellow;" he maintained his abeyant mood, notfrom want of reciprocity, but from a taciturn hesitancy, taught by lifeas he knew it.
"But," continued the timber-merchant, a temporary crease or two ofanxiety supplementing those already established in his forehead by timeand care, "Grace is not at all well. Nothing constitutional, you know;but she has been in a low, nervous state ever since that night offright. I don't doubt but that she will be all right soon....I wonderhow she is this evening?" He rose with the words, as if he had too longforgotten her personality in the excitement of her previsioned career.
They had sat till the evening was beginning to dye the garden brown,and now went towards Melbury's house, Giles a few steps in the rear ofhis old friend, who was stimulated by the enthusiasm of the moment tooutstep the ordinary walking of Winterborne. He felt shy of enteringGrace's
presence as her reconstituted lover--which was how herfather's manner would be sure to present him--before definiteinformation as to her future state was forthcoming; it seemed toonearly like the act of those who rush in where angels fear to tread.
A chill to counterbalance all the glowing promise of the day was promptenough in coming. No sooner had he followed the timber-merchant in atthe door than he heard Grammer inform him that Mrs. Fitzpiers was stillmore unwell than she had been in the morning. Old Dr. Jones being inthe neighborhood they had called him in, and he had instantly directedthem to get her to bed. They were not, however, to consider herillness serious--a feverish, nervous attack the result of recentevents, was what she was suffering from, and she would doubtless bewell in a few days.
Winterborne, therefore, did not remain, and his hope of seeing her thatevening was disappointed. Even this aggravation of her morningcondition did not greatly depress Melbury. He knew, he said, that hisdaughter's constitution was sound enough. It was only these domestictroubles that were pulling her down. Once free she would be bloomingagain. Melbury diagnosed rightly, as parents usually do.
He set out for London the next morning, Jones having paid another visitand assured him that he might leave home without uneasiness, especiallyon an errand of that sort, which would the sooner put an end to hersuspense.
The timber-merchant had been away only a day or two when it was told inHintock that Mr. Fitzpiers's hat had been found in the wood. Later onin the afternoon the hat was brought to Melbury, and, by a piece ofill-fortune, into Grace's presence. It had doubtless lain in the woodever since his fall from the horse, but it looked so clean anduninjured--the summer weather and leafy shelter having much favored itspreservation--that Grace could not believe it had remained so longconcealed. A very little of fact was enough to set her fevered fancyat work at this juncture; she thought him still in the neighborhood;she feared his sudden appearance; and her nervous malady developedconsequences so grave that Dr. Jones began to look serious, and thehousehold was alarmed.
It was the beginning of June, and the cuckoo at this time of the summerscarcely ceased his cry for more than two or three hours during thenight. The bird's note, so familiar to her ears from infancy, was nowabsolute torture to the poor girl. On the Friday following theWednesday of Melbury's departure, and the day after the discovery ofFitzpiers's hat, the cuckoo began at two o'clock in the morning with asudden cry from one of Melbury's apple-trees, not three yards from thewindow of Grace's room.
"Oh, he is coming!" she cried, and in her terror sprang clean from thebed out upon the floor.
These starts and frights continued till noon and when the doctor hadarrived and had seen her, and had talked with Mrs. Melbury, he sat downand meditated. That ever-present terror it was indispensable to removefrom her mind at all hazards; and he thought how this might be done.
Without saying a word to anybody in the house, or to the disquietedWinterborne waiting in the lane below, Dr. Jones went home and wrote toMr. Melbury at the London address he had obtained from his wife. Thegist of his communication was that Mrs. Fitzpiers should be assured assoon as possible that steps were being taken to sever the bond whichwas becoming a torture to her; that she would soon be free, and waseven then virtually so. "If you can say it AT ONCE it may be the meansof averting much harm," he said. "Write to herself; not to me."
On Saturday he drove over to Hintock, and assured her with mysteriouspacifications that in a day or two she might expect to receive someassuring news. So it turned out. When Sunday morning came there was aletter for Grace from her father. It arrived at seven o'clock, theusual time at which the toddling postman passed by Hintock; at eightGrace awoke, having slept an hour or two for a wonder, and Mrs. Melburybrought up the letter.
"Can you open it yourself?" said she.
"Oh yes, yes!" said Grace, with feeble impatience. She tore theenvelope, unfolded the sheet, and read; when a creeping blush tincturedher white neck and cheek.
Her father had exercised a bold discretion. He informed her that sheneed have no further concern about Fitzpiers's return; that she wouldshortly be a free woman; and therefore, if she should desire to wed herold lover--which he trusted was the case, since it was his own deepwish--she would be in a position to do so. In this Melbury had notwritten beyond his belief. But he very much stretched the facts inadding that the legal formalities for dissolving her union werepractically settled. The truth was that on the arrival of the doctor'sletter poor Melbury had been much agitated, and could with difficultybe prevented by Beaucock from returning to her bedside. What was theuse of his rushing back to Hintock? Beaucock had asked him. The onlything that could do her any good was a breaking of the bond. Though hehad not as yet had an interview with the eminent solicitor they wereabout to consult, he was on the point of seeing him; and the case wasclear enough. Thus the simple Melbury, urged by his parental alarm ather danger by the representations of his companion, and by the doctor'sletter, had yielded, and sat down to tell her roundly that she wasvirtually free.
"And you'd better write also to the gentleman," suggested Beaucock,who, scenting notoriety and the germ of a large practice in the case,wished to commit Melbury to it irretrievably; to effect which he knewthat nothing would be so potent as awakening the passion of Grace forWinterborne, so that her father might not have the heart to withdrawfrom his attempt to make her love legitimate when he discovered thatthere were difficulties in the way.
The nervous, impatient Melbury was much pleased with the idea of"starting them at once," as he called it. To put his long-delayedreparative scheme in train had become a passion with him now. He addedto the letter addressed to his daughter a passage hinting that sheought to begin to encourage Winterborne, lest she should lose himaltogether; and he wrote to Giles that the path was virtually open forhim at last. Life was short, he declared; there were slips betwixt thecup and the lip; her interest in him should be reawakened at once, thatall might be ready when the good time came for uniting them.