CHAPTER VI.
Meanwhile, Winterborne and Grace Melbury had also undergone theirlittle experiences of the same homeward journey.
As he drove off with her out of the town the glances of people fellupon them, the younger thinking that Mr. Winterborne was in a pleasantplace, and wondering in what relation he stood towards her.Winterborne himself was unconscious of this. Occupied solely with theidea of having her in charge, he did not notice much with outward eye,neither observing how she was dressed, nor the effect of the picturethey together composed in the landscape.
Their conversation was in briefest phrase for some time, Grace beingsomewhat disconcerted, through not having understood till they wereabout to start that Giles was to be her sole conductor in place of herfather. When they were in the open country he spoke.
"Don't Brownley's farm-buildings look strange to you, now they havebeen moved bodily from the hollow where the old ones stood to the topof the hill?"
She admitted that they did, though she should not have seen anydifference in them if he had not pointed it out.
"They had a good crop of bitter-sweets; they couldn't grind them all"(nodding towards an orchard where some heaps of apples had been leftlying ever since the ingathering).
She said "Yes," but looking at another orchard.
"Why, you are looking at John-apple-trees! You know bitter-sweets--youused to well enough!"
"I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is getting too dark todistinguish."
Winterborne did not continue. It seemed as if the knowledge andinterest which had formerly moved Grace's mind had quite died away fromher. He wondered whether the special attributes of his image in thepast had evaporated like these other things.
However that might be, the fact at present was merely this, that wherehe was seeing John-apples and farm-buildings she was beholding a farremoter scene--a scene no less innocent and simple, indeed, but muchcontrasting--a broad lawn in the fashionable suburb of a fast city, theevergreen leaves shining in the evening sun, amid which bounding girls,gracefully clad in artistic arrangements of blue, brown, red, black,and white, were playing at games, with laughter and chat, in all thepride of life, the notes of piano and harp trembling in the air fromthe open windows adjoining. Moreover, they were girls--and this was afact which Grace Melbury's delicate femininity could not lose sightof--whose parents Giles would have addressed with a deferential Sir orMadam. Beside this visioned scene the homely farmsteads did not quitehold their own from her present twenty-year point of survey. For allhis woodland sequestration, Giles knew the primitive simplicity of thesubject he had started, and now sounded a deeper note.
"'Twas very odd what we said to each other years ago; I often think ofit. I mean our saying that if we still liked each other when you weretwenty and I twenty-five, we'd--"
"It was child's tattle."
"H'm!" said Giles, suddenly.
"I mean we were young," said she, more considerately. That gruffmanner of his in making inquiries reminded her that he was unaltered inmuch.
"Yes....I beg your pardon, Miss Melbury; your father SENT me to meetyou to-day."
"I know it, and I am glad of it."
He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: "At that time you weresitting beside me at the back of your father's covered car, when wewere coming home from gypsying, all the party being squeezed intogether as tight as sheep in an auction-pen. It got darker anddarker, and I said--I forget the exact words--but I put my arm roundyour waist and there you let it stay till your father, sitting in frontsuddenly stopped telling his story to Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe.The flash shone into the car, and showed us all up distinctly; my armflew from your waist like lightning; yet not so quickly but that someof 'em had seen, and laughed at us. Yet your father, to our amazement,instead of being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed quite pleased.Have you forgot all that, or haven't you?"
She owned that she remembered it very well, now that he mentioned thecircumstances. "But, goodness! I must have been in short frocks," shesaid.
"Come now, Miss Melbury, that won't do! Short frocks, indeed! You knowbetter, as well as I."
Grace thereupon declared that she would not argue with an old friendshe valued so highly as she valued him, saying the words with the easyelusiveness that will be polite at all costs. It might possibly betrue, she added, that she was getting on in girlhood when that eventtook place; but if it were so, then she was virtually no less than anold woman now, so far did the time seem removed from her present. "Doyou ever look at things philosophically instead of personally?" sheasked.
"I can't say that I do," answered Giles, his eyes lingering far aheadupon a dark spot, which proved to be a brougham.
"I think you may, sometimes, with advantage," said she. "Look atyourself as a pitcher drifting on the stream with other pitchers, andconsider what contrivances are most desirable for avoiding cracks ingeneral, and not only for saving your poor one. Shall I tell you allabout Bath or Cheltenham, or places on the Continent that I visitedlast summer?"
"With all my heart."
She then described places and persons in such terms as might have beenused for that purpose by any woman to any man within the four seas, soentirely absent from that description was everything speciallyappertaining to her own existence. When she had done she said, gayly,"Now do you tell me in return what has happened in Hintock since I havebeen away."
"Anything to keep the conversation away from her and me," said Gileswithin him.
It was true cultivation had so far advanced in the soil of MissMelbury's mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of thatshe knew well, and had the greatest interest in developing--that is tosay, herself.
He had not proceeded far with his somewhat bald narration when theydrew near the carriage that had been preceding them for some time.Miss Melbury inquired if he knew whose carriage it was.
Winterborne, although he had seen it, had not taken it into account.On examination, he said it was Mrs. Charmond's.
Grace watched the vehicle and its easy roll, and seemed to feel morenearly akin to it than to the one she was in.
"Pooh! We can polish off the mileage as well as they, come to that,"said Winterborne, reading her mind; and rising to emulation at what itbespoke, he whipped on the horse. This it was which had brought thenose of Mr. Melbury's old gray close to the back of Mrs. Charmond'smuch-eclipsing vehicle.
"There's Marty South Sitting up with the coachman," said he, discerningher by her dress.
"Ah, poor Marty! I must ask her to come to see me this very evening.How does she happen to be riding there?"
"I don't know. It is very singular."
Thus these people with converging destinies went along the roadtogether, till Winterborne, leaving the track of the carriage, turnedinto Little Hintock, where almost the first house was thetimber-merchant's. Pencils of dancing light streamed out of thewindows sufficiently to show the white laurestinus flowers, and glanceover the polished leaves of laurel. The interior of the rooms could beseen distinctly, warmed up by the fire-flames, which in the parlor werereflected from the glass of the pictures and bookcase, and in thekitchen from the utensils and ware.
"Let us look at the dear place for a moment before we call them," shesaid.
In the kitchen dinner was preparing; for though Melbury dined at oneo'clock at other times, to-day the meal had been kept back for Grace.A rickety old spit was in motion, its end being fixed in the fire-dog,and the whole kept going by means of a cord conveyed over pulleys alongthe ceiling to a large stone suspended in a corner of the room. OldGrammer Oliver came and wound it up with a rattle like that of a mill.
In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury's head fell on the wall andceiling; but before the girl had regarded this room many moments theirpresence was discovered, and her father and stepmother came out towelcome her.
The character of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces someshyness in showing strong emotion among each
other: a trait frequent inrural households, and one which stands in curiously inverse relation tomost of the peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people oftowns. Thus hiding their warmer feelings under commonplace talk allround, Grace's reception produced no extraordinary demonstrations. Butthat more was felt than was enacted appeared from the fact that herfather, in taking her in-doors, quite forgot the presence of Gileswithout, as did also Grace herself. He said nothing, but took the giground to the yard and called out from the spar-house the man whoparticularly attended to these matters when there was no conversationto draw him off among the copse-workers inside. Winterborne thenreturned to the door with the intention of entering the house.
The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed inthemselves. The fire was, as before, the only light, and it irradiatedGrace's face and hands so as to make them look wondrously smooth andfair beside those of the two elders; shining also through the loosehair about her temples as sunlight through a brake. Her father wassurveying her in a dazed conjecture, so much had she developed andprogressed in manner and stature since he last had set eyes on her.
Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door,mechanically tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters carvedin the jambs--initials of by-gone generations of householders who hadlived and died there.
No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the family;they had forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that he hadbrought her home. Still, he was a little surprised that her father'seagerness to send him for Grace should have resulted in such ananticlimax as this.
He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking backwhen he reached the turning, from which he could get a last glimpse ofthe timber-merchant's roof. He hazarded guesses as to what Grace wassaying just at that moment, and murmured, with some self-derision,"nothing about me!" He looked also in the other direction, and sawagainst the sky the thatched hip and solitary chimney of Marty'scottage, and thought of her too, struggling bravely along under thathumble shelter, among her spar-gads and pots and skimmers.
At the timber-merchant's, in the mean time, the conversation flowed;and, as Giles Winterborne had rightly enough deemed, on subjects inwhich he had no share. Among the excluding matters there was, for one,the effect upon Mr. Melbury of the womanly mien and manners of hisdaughter, which took him so much unawares that, though it did not makehim absolutely forget the existence of her conductor homeward, thrustGiles's image back into quite the obscurest cellarage of his brain.Another was his interview with Mrs. Charmond's agent that morning, atwhich the lady herself had been present for a few minutes. Melbury hadpurchased some standing timber from her a long time before, and nowthat the date had come for felling it he was left to pursue almost hisown course. This was what the household were actually talking ofduring Giles's cogitation without; and Melbury's satisfaction with theclear atmosphere that had arisen between himself and the deity of thegroves which enclosed his residence was the cause of a counterbalancingmistiness on the side towards Winterborne.
"So thoroughly does she trust me," said Melbury, "that I might fell,top, or lop, on my own judgment, any stick o' timber whatever in herwood, and fix the price o't, and settle the matter. But, name it all!I wouldn't do such a thing. However, it may be useful to have thisgood understanding with her....I wish she took more interest in theplace, and stayed here all the year round."
"I am afraid 'tis not her regard for you, but her dislike of Hintock,that makes her so easy about the trees," said Mrs. Melbury.
When dinner was over, Grace took a candle and began to ramblepleasurably through the rooms of her old home, from which she hadlatterly become wellnigh an alien. Each nook and each object revived amemory, and simultaneously modified it. The chambers seemed lower thanthey had appeared on any previous occasion of her return, the surfacesof both walls and ceilings standing in such relations to the eye thatit could not avoid taking microscopic note of their irregularities andold fashion. Her own bedroom wore at once a look more familiar thanwhen she had left it, and yet a face estranged. The world of littlethings therein gazed at her in helpless stationariness, as though theyhad tried and been unable to make any progress without her presence.Over the place where her candle had been accustomed to stand, when shehad used to read in bed till the midnight hour, there was still thebrown spot of smoke. She did not know that her father had takenespecial care to keep it from being cleaned off.
Having concluded her perambulation of this now uselessly commodiousedifice, Grace began to feel that she had come a long journey since themorning; and when her father had been up himself, as well as his wife,to see that her room was comfortable and the fire burning, she preparedto retire for the night. No sooner, however, was she in bed than hermomentary sleepiness took itself off, and she wished she had stayed uplonger. She amused herself by listening to the old familiar noisesthat she could hear to be still going on down-stairs, and by lookingtowards the window as she lay. The blind had been drawn up, as sheused to have it when a girl, and she could just discern the dimtree-tops against the sky on the neighboring hill. Beneath thismeeting-line of light and shade nothing was visible save one solitarypoint of light, which blinked as the tree-twigs waved to and fro beforeits beams. From its position it seemed to radiate from the window of ahouse on the hill-side. The house had been empty when she was last athome, and she wondered who inhabited the place now.
Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, and she waswatching the light quite idly, when it gradually changed color, and atlength shone blue as sapphire. Thus it remained several minutes, andthen it passed through violet to red.
Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she sat upin bed, and stared steadily at the shine. An appearance of this sort,sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less than a marvel inHintock, as Grace had known the hamlet. Almost every diurnal andnocturnal effect in that woodland place had hitherto been the directresult of the regular terrestrial roll which produced the season'schanges; but here was something dissociated from these normalsequences, and foreign to local habit and knowledge.
It was about this moment that Grace heard the household below preparingto retire, the most emphatic noise in the proceeding being that of herfather bolting the doors. Then the stairs creaked, and her father andmother passed her chamber. The last to come was Grammer Oliver.
Grace slid out of bed, ran across the room, and lifting the latch,said, "I am not asleep, Grammer. Come in and talk to me."
Before the old woman had entered, Grace was again under the bedclothes.Grammer set down her candlestick, and seated herself on the edge ofMiss Melbury's coverlet.
"I want you to tell me what light that is I see on the hill-side," saidGrace.
Mrs. Oliver looked across. "Oh, that," she said, "is from thedoctor's. He's often doing things of that sort. Perhaps you don'tknow that we've a doctor living here now--Mr. Fitzpiers by name?"
Grace admitted that she had not heard of him.
"Well, then, miss, he's come here to get up a practice. I know himvery well, through going there to help 'em scrub sometimes, which yourfather said I might do, if I wanted to, in my spare time. Being abachelor-man, he've only a lad in the house. Oh yes, I know him verywell. Sometimes he'll talk to me as if I were his own mother."
"Indeed."
"Yes. 'Grammer,' he said one day, when I asked him why he came herewhere there's hardly anybody living, 'I'll tell you why I came here. Itook a map, and I marked on it where Dr. Jones's practice ends to thenorth of this district, and where Mr. Taylor's ends on the south, andlittle Jimmy Green's on the east, and somebody else's to the west.Then I took a pair of compasses, and found the exact middle of thecountry that was left between these bounds, and that middle was LittleHintock; so here I am....' But, Lord, there: poor young man!"
"Why?"
"He said, 'Grammer Oliver, I've been here three months, and althoughthere are a good many p
eople in the Hintocks and the villages round,and a scattered practice is often a very good one, I don't seem to getmany patients. And there's no society at all; and I'm pretty nearmelancholy mad,' he said, with a great yawn. 'I should be quite if itwere not for my books, and my lab--laboratory, and what not. Grammer,I was made for higher things.' And then he'd yawn and yawn again."
"Was he really made for higher things, do you think? I mean, is heclever?"
"Well, no. How can he be clever? He may be able to jine up a brokenman or woman after a fashion, and put his finger upon an ache if youtell him nearly where 'tis; but these young men--they should live to mytime of life, and then they'd see how clever they were atfive-and-twenty! And yet he's a projick, a real projick, and says theoddest of rozums. 'Ah, Grammer,' he said, at another time, 'let metell you that Everything is Nothing. There's only Me and not Me in thewhole world.' And he told me that no man's hands could help what theydid, any more than the hands of a clock....Yes, he's a man of strangemeditations, and his eyes seem to see as far as the north star."
"He will soon go away, no doubt."
"I don't think so." Grace did not say "Why?" and Grammer hesitated. Atlast she went on: "Don't tell your father or mother, miss, if I let youknow a secret."
Grace gave the required promise.
"Well, he talks of buying me; so he won't go away just yet."
"Buying you!--how?"
"Not my soul--my body, when I'm dead. One day when I was therecleaning, he said, 'Grammer, you've a large brain--a very large organof brain,' he said. 'A woman's is usually four ounces less than aman's; but yours is man's size.' Well, then--hee, hee!--after he'dflattered me a bit like that, he said he'd give me ten pounds to haveme as a natomy after my death. Well, knowing I'd no chick nor chielleft, and nobody with any interest in me, I thought, faith, if I can beof any use to my fellow-creatures after I'm gone they are welcome to myservices; so I said I'd think it over, and would most likely agree andtake the ten pounds. Now this is a secret, miss, between us two. Themoney would be very useful to me; and I see no harm in it."
"Of course there's no harm. But oh, Grammer, how can you think to doit? I wish you hadn't told me."
"I wish I hadn't--if you don't like to know it, miss. But you needn'tmind. Lord--hee, hee!--I shall keep him waiting many a year yet, blessye!"
"I hope you will, I am sure."
The girl thereupon fell into such deep reflection that conversationlanguished, and Grammer Oliver, taking her candle, wished Miss Melburygood-night. The latter's eyes rested on the distant glimmer, aroundwhich she allowed her reasoning fancy to play in vague eddies thatshaped the doings of the philosopher behind that light on the lines ofintelligence just received. It was strange to her to come back fromthe world to Little Hintock and find in one of its nooks, like atropical plant in a hedgerow, a nucleus of advanced ideas and practiceswhich had nothing in common with the life around. Chemicalexperiments, anatomical projects, and metaphysical conceptions hadfound a strange home here.
Thus she remained thinking, the imagined pursuits of the man behind thelight intermingling with conjectural sketches of his personality, tillher eyes fell together with their own heaviness, and she slept.