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THE WOODLANDERS

VOL. I.

^

THE WOODLANDERS

BY

THOMAS HARDY

IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.

Ilontion
MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND NEW YORK
1887

The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserz-cd.

EiCHARD Clay and Sons,

LONDON AND BUNGAY.

THE WOODLANDERS.

CHAPTER I.

The rambler who, for old association's
sake, should trace the forsaken coach-road
running almost in a meridional line from
Bristol to the south shore of E norland,
would find himself during the latter half of
his journey in the vicinity of some extensive
woodlands, interspersed with apple-orchards.
Here the trees, timber or fruit-bearinor as the
case may be, make the wayside hedges
ragged by their drip and shade, their lower
limbs stretching in level repose over the

VOL. I. IJ

2 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

road, as thoue^i reclininor on the Insubstantial
air. At one place, where Rubdon Hill Is
crossed, a bank slopes up to the trees on the
left hand, while on the right spreads a deep
and silent vale. The spot Is lonely, and
when the days are darkening the many gay
ones now^ perished who have rolled over the
hill, the blistered soles that have trodden It,
and the tears that have wetted It, return
upon the mind of the loiterer.

The physiognomy of a deserted highway
expresses solitude to a degree that Is not
reached by mere dales or downs, and be-
speaks a tomb-like stillness more emphatic
than that of glades and pools. The contrast
of what Is with what might be, probably
accounts for this. To step, for Instance, at
the place under notice, from the edge of the
plantation Into the adjoining pale thorough-
fare, and pause amid Its emptiness for a
moment, was to exchanq;e by the act of a

THE WOODLANDERS.

single stride the simple absence of human
companionship for an incubus of the forlorn.

At this spot, on the lowering evening of a
by-gone winter's day, there stood a man who
had thus indirectly entered upon the scene
from a stile hard by, and was temporarily
influenced by some such feeling of being
suddenly more alone than before he had
emerged upon the highway.

It could be seen by a glance at his rather
finical style of dress that he did not belong to
the country proper ; and from his air, after a
while, that thouQ^h there mi^rht be a sombre
beauty in the scenery, music in the breeze,
and a wan procession of coaching ghosts in
the sentiment of this old turnpike-road, he
was mainly puzzled about the way.

He looked north and south, and mechani-
cally prodded the ground with his walking-
stick. A closer glance at his face corroborated
the testimony of his clothes. Nothing

B 2

THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

irradiated It ; the expression enthroned there
was absokite submission to and beHef In a
Httle assortment of forms and habitudes.

At first not a soul appeared who could
enlighten him as he desired, or seemed likely
to appear that night. But presently a slight
noise of labouring wheels, and the steady dig
of a horse's shoe-tips became audible ; and
there loomed, in the notch of hill and planta-
tion that the road formed here, a carrier's
van drawn by a single horse.

The vehicle was half full of passengers,
mostly women. He held up his stick at Its
approach, and the woman who v/as driving
drew rein.

'' I've been trying to find a short w^ay to
Little Hintock this last half hour, Mrs.
Dollery," he said. '' But though I've been
to Great Hintock and Hintock House half a
dozen times, I am at fault about the small
village. You can help me, I dare say ? "

THE WOODLAXDERS.

She assured him that she could — that as
she went to Great Hintock her van passed
near it — that it was only up the lane branch-
ing out of the road into ^^hich she was about
to turn. "Though," continued ]\Irs. Dollery,
" 'tis such a little small place that, as a
town gentleman, you'd need have a candle
and lantern to find it if ye don't know
where 'tis. Bedad I I wouldn't live there it
they'd pay me to. Xow at Great Hintock
you do see the world a bit."

He mounted and sat beside her, with his
feet outwards, where they were ever and anon
brushed over by the horse's tail.

This van was rather a movable attachment
of the roadway than an extraneous object,
to those who knew it well. The old horse,
whose hair was of the rouQrhness and colour
of heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and
hoofs were distorted by harness and drudg-
ery from colthood — though if all had their

THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

rights he ought, symmetrical in outHne, to

have been picking the herbage of some

Eastern plain instead of tugging here — had

trodden this road almost daily for twenty

years. Even his subjection was not made

congruous throughout, for, the harness ^being

too short, his tail was not drawn through

the crupper, so that the breeching slipped

awkwardly to one side. He knew every

subtle incline of the six or seven miles of

ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas

— the market town to which he journeyed

— as accurately as any surveyor could have

learnt it by a Dumpy level.

The vehicle had a square black tilt which
nodded with the motion of the wheels, and
at a point in it over the driver's head was
a hook to which the reins were hitched at
times, forming a catenary curve from the
horse's shoulders. Somewhere about the
axles was a loose chain, whose only known

THE WOODLAXDERS.

purpose was to clink as It went. Mrs.
Dollery, having to hop up and down many
times in the service of her passengers, wore,
especially In windy weather, short leggings
under her gown for modesty's sake ; and
instead of a bonnet a felt hat tied down
with a handkerchief, to guard against an
ear-ache to which she was frequently subject.
In the rear of the van was a glass window
which she cleaned with her pocket-hand
kerchief every market-day before starting.
Looking at the van from the back, the
spectator could thus see, through Its interior,
a square piece of the same sky and land
scape that he saw without, but intruded on
by the profiles of the seated passengers, who,
as they rumbled onward, their lips mo\ing
and heads nodding In aniniated private
converse, remained In happy unconsciousness
that their mannerisms and facial peculiarities
were sharply defined to the public eye.

8 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

This hour of coming home from market
was the happy one, if not the happiest, of
the week for them. vSnugly ensconced under
the tilt they coukl forget the sorrows of the
world without, and survey life and recapitu-
late the incidents of the day with placid
smiles.

The passengers in the back part formed
a group to themselves, and while the new-
comer spoke to the proprietress, they
indulged in a confidential chat about him
as about other people, which the noise of
the van rendered^*'inaudible to himself and
Mrs. Dollery sitting forward.

" 'Tis Barber Percomb — he that's got the
waxen woman in his window," said one
" What business can bring him out here
at this time, and not a journeyman hair-
cutter, but a master-barber that's left off
his pole because 'tis not genteel?"

Thev listened to his conversation, but

THE WOODLAXDERS.

the barber, though he had nodded and
spoken genially, seemed indisposed to gratify
the curiosity that he had aroused ; and the
unrestrained flow of ideas which had ani-
mated the inside of the van before his
arrival was checked thenceforward.

Thus they rode on till they turned into
a half-Invisible little lane, whence, as it
reached the verge of an eminence, could
be discerned in the dusk, about half a mile
to the right, gardens and orchards sunk in
a concave, and, as it were, snipped out of
the woodland. From this self-contained
place rose in stealthy silence tall stems of
smoke, which the eve of imacrination could
trace downward to their root on quiet
hearthstones, festooned overhead with hams
and flitches. It was one of those sequestered
spots outside the gates of the world where
may usually be found more meditation than
action, and more listlessness than medita-

lo THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

tion ; where reasoning proceeds on narrow
premisses, and results in inferences wildly
imaginative ; yet where, from time to time,
no less than in other places, dramas of a
grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean are
enacted in the real, by virtue of the con-
centrated passions and closely-knit inter-
dependence of the lives therein.

This place was the Little HIntock of the
master-barber's search. The coming ni^ht
gradually obscured the smoke of the chimneys,
but the position of the wood-environed com-
munity could still be distinguished by a few
faint lights, winking more or less ineffectually
throucrh the leafless bouo^hs and the undls-
cernlble songsters they bore, in the form
of balls of feathers, at roost among them.

Out of the lane followed by the van
branched a yet smaller lane, at the corner
of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dollery's
van going on to the larger village, whose

THE WOODLANDERS. li

superiority to the despised smaller one as
an exemplar of the \vorld's movements was
not particularly apparent in its means of
approach.

"A very clever and learned young doctor,
who, they say, is in league with the devil,
lives in the place you be going to— not
because there's anybody for'n to cure there,
but because 'tis the middle of his district."

The observation was flung at the barber
by one of the women at parting, as a last
attempt to get at his errand that way.

But he made no reply, and without further
pause plunged towards the umbrageous nook,
and paced cautiousl)' over the dead leaves
which nearly buried the road or street of the
hamlet. As very few people except them-
selves passed this way after dark, a majority
of the denizens of Little Hintock deemed
window-curtains unnecessary ; and on this
account their visitor made it his business to

12 • THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

Stop opposite the casements of each cottage
that he came to, with a demeanour which
showed that he was endeavouring to conjec-
ture, from the persons and things he observed
within, the whereabouts of somebody or other
who resided here.

Only the smaller dwellings interested him ;
one or two houses, whose size, antiquity, and
rambling appurtenances signified that not-
withstanding their remoteness they must
formerly have been, if they were not still,
inhabited by people of a certain social
standing, being neglected by him entirely.
Smells of pomace, and the hiss of fermenting
cider, which reached him from the back
quarters of other tenements, revealed the
recent occupation of some of the inhabitants,
and joined with the scent of decay from the
perishing leaves under foot.

Half a dozen dwellings were passed without
result. The next, which stood opposite a tall

THE WOODLANDERS. 13

tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance,
the flickering brightness from the inside
shining up the chimney and making a lumi-
nous mist of the emerging smoke. The
interior, as seen through the window, caused
him to draw up with a terminative air and
watch. The house was rather large for a
cottage, and the door, which opened imme-
diately into the living-room, stood ajar, so
that a riband of light fell through the opening
into the dark atmosphere without. Every
now and then a moth, decrepit from the late
season, would flit for a moment across the
outcoming rays and disappear again into the
night.

CHAPTER II.

In the room from which this cheerful blaze
proceeded he beheld a girl seated on a willow
chair, and busily working by the light of the
fire, which was ample and of wood. With a
bill-hook in one hand, and a leather glove,
much too large for her, on the other, she w^as
making spars, such as are used by thatchers,
with great rapidity. She wore a leather
apron for this purpose, w^hlch was also much
too laree for her figure. On her left hand
lay a bundle of the straight, smooth hazel
rods called spar-gads — the raw material of
her manufacture ; on her right a heap of

CH. II. THE WOODLAXDERS. 15

chips and ends — the refuse — \vlth which the
fire was maintained ; in front, a pile of the
finished articles. To produce them she took
up each gad, looked crincally at it from
end to end, cut it to length, split it into four,
and sharpened each of the quarters with
dexterous blows, which brought it to a
triangular point precisely resembling that of
a bayonet.

Beside her, in case she might require
more li^-ht, a brass candlestick stood on a
little round table, curiously formed of an
old coffin-stool, with a deal top nailed on,
the white surface of the latter contrastinor
oddly with the black carved oak of the
substructure. The social position of the
household in the past was almost as defini-
tively shown by the presence of this article
as that of an esquire or nobleman by his
old helmets or shields. It had been customary
for every well-to-do villager, whose tenure

i6 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

was by copy of court-roll, or In any way
more permanent than that of the mere cotter,
to keep a pair of these stools for the use
of his own dead ; but changes had led to
the discontinuance of the custom, and the
stools were frequently made use of in the
manner described.

The voune woman laid down the bill-
hook for a moment and examined the palm
of her right hand, which, unlike the other,
was uneloved, and showed little hardness
or roughness about it. The palm was red
and blistering, as if this present occupation
were not frequent enough with her to sub-
due it to what it worked in. As with so
many right hands born to manual labour,
there was nothing in its fundamental shape
to bear out the physiological convention-
alism that gradations of birth, gentle or
mean, show themselves primarily in the
form of this member. Nothing but a cast

THE WOODLAXDERS.

of the die of destiny had decided that the
girl should handle the tool ; and the fingers
which clasped the heavy ash haft might have
skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string,
had they only been set to do It in good time.
Her face had the usual fulness of expres-
sion which is developed by a life of solitude.
\Vhere the eyes of a multitude continuously
beat like waves upon a countenance they
seem to wear away Its individuality ; but
In the still water of privacy every tentacle
of feeling and sentiment shoots out in visible
luxuriance, to be Interpreted as readily as
a printed book by an Intruder. In years
she was no more than nineteen or twenty,
but the necessity of taking thought at a
too early period of life had forced the pro-
visional curves of her childhood's face to
a premature finality. Thus she had but
little pretension to beauty, save In one pro-
minent particular — her hair. Its abundance
VOL. I. C

i8 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

made it almost unmanageable ; Its colour
was, roughly speaking, and as seen here
by firelight, brown ; but careful notice, or
an observation by day, would have revealed
that Its true shade was a rare and beautiful
approximation to chestnut.

On this one bright gift of Time to the
particular victim of his now before us the
newcomer's eyes were fixed ; meanwhile the
fingers of his right hand mechanically played
over something sticking up from his waist-
coat pocket — the bows of a pair of scissors,
whose polish made them feebly responsive
to the light from within the house. In
her present beholder's mind the scene formed
by the girlish spar-maker composed Itself
into an impression-picture of extremest
type, wherein the girl's hair alone, as the
focus of observation, w^as depicted with
intensity and distinctness, while her face,
shoulders, hands, and figure In general,

THE WOODLANDERS.

were a blurred mass of unimportant detail,
lost In haze and obscurity.

He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the
door and entered. The young woman turned
at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor,
and exclaiming, " Oh, Mr. Percomb, how
you frightened me ! " quite lost her colour for
a moment.

He replied, " You should shut your door —
then you'd hear folk open It."

" I can't," she said ; *' the chimney smokes
so. Mr. Percomb, you look as unnatural
away from your wigs as a canary in a thorn-
hedge. Surely you have not come out here
on my account — for — "

"Yes — to have your answer about this."
He touched her hair with his cane, and she
winced. " Do you agree ? " he continued.
"It is necessary that I should know at once,
as the lady is soon going away, and It takes
time to make u^^."

C 2

THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

'* Don't press me — it worries me. I was In
hopes you had thought no more of It. I can
not part with it — so there ! "

" Now look here, Marty," said the other,
sitting down on the coffin-stool table.
" How much do you get for making these
spars :

" Hush — father's up stairs awake, and he
don't know^ that I am doing his work."

" Well, now tell me/' said the man more
softly. " How much do you get ?"

" Eighteenpence a thousand," she said
reluctantly.

" Who are you making them for ? "

*' Mr. Melbury, the timber-dealer, just
]:)elow here."

" And how many can you make in a
day ? "

" In a day and half the night, three bundles
— that's a thousand and a half"

'' Two and threepence." Her visitor

THE WOODLANDERS.

paused. " Well, look here/' he continued,
with the remains of a computation in his tone,
which computation had been to fix the
probable sum of money necessary to
outweigh her present resources, and her
women's love of comeliness, " here's a
sovereign — a gold sovereign, almost new."
He held it out between his finder and thumb.
''That's as much as you'd earn in a week
and a half at that rouoh man's-work, and
it's yours for just letting me snip oft' what
you've got too much of."

The girl's bosom moved a very little.
'•' Why can't the lady send to some other girl
who don't value her hair — not to me ? "
she exclaimed.

" Why, simpleton, because yours is the
exact shade of her own, and 'tis a shade you
can't match by dyeing. But you are not
o;oinQf to refuse me now I've come all the
way from Sherton on purpose ? "

22 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

" I say I won't sell it — to you or any-
body."

" Now listen," and he drew up a little
closer beside her. '' The lady is very rich,
and won't be particular to a few shillings ; so
I will advance to this on my own responsibility
— I'll make the one sovereio^n two, rather
than go back empty-handed."

" No, no, no ! " she cried,- beginning to be
much agitated. '' You are a tempting me.
You OTQ on like the Devil to Dr. Faustus in
the penny book. But I don't want your
money, and won't agree. Why did you come?
I said when you got me into your shop and
urged me so much that I didn't mean to sell
my hair ! " The speaker was hot and stern.

" Marty, now hearken. The lady that
wants it wants it badly. And, between you
and me, you'd better let her have it. 'Twill
be bad for you if you don't."

'' Bad for me ? Who is she then ? "

11. THE WOODLANDERS. 23

The wig-maker held his tongue, and the
girl repeated the question.

" I am not at Hberty to tell you. And as
she is going abroad soon it makes no
difference who she is at all."

"She wants it to go abroad wi' .-^ "' He
assented by a nod.

The girl regarded him reflectively. '" Xow,
Mr.- Percomb," she said, '' I know who 'tis.
'Tis she at the House — Mrs. Charmond ! "

" That's mv secret. However, if vou ao:ree
to let me have it, Til tell you in confidence.''

*' I'll certainly not let you have it unless
you tell me the truth. It is Mrs. Charmond."

The man dropped his voice. " Well — it is.
You sat in front of her in church the other
day, and she noticed how exactly your hair
matches her own. Ever since then she's
been hankering for it, to help out hers, and at
last decided to e^t it. As she won't wear it
till she goes off abroad, she knows nobody

24 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

will recognise the change. I'm commissioned
to get it for her, and then it is to be made up.
I shouldn't have vamped all these miles for
any less important employer. Now, mind —
'tis as much as my business with her is worth
If it should be known that I've let out her
name ; but honour between us two, Marty,
and you'll say nothing that would Injure me ? "

" I don't wish to tell upon her," said
"Marty coolly. " But my hair Is my own,
and I'm going to keep it."

*' Now that's not fair, after what I've
told you," said the nettled emissary. " You
see, Marty, as you are In the same parish,
and In one of this lady's cottages, and
your father Is 111, and wouldn't like to turn
out, It would be as well to oblige her. I
say that as a friend. But I won't press
you to make up your mind to-night. You'll
be coming to market to-morrow, I dare say,
and you can call then. If you think it

THE WOODLANDERS. 25

over you'll be inclined to bring what I
want, I know."

" I've nothing more to say," she answered.

Her companion saw from her manner
that it was useless to urge her further by
speech. " As you are a trusty young
woman," he said, " I'll put these sovereigns
up here, for ornament, that you may see
how handsome they are. Bring the article
to-morrow, or return the sovereigns." He
stuck them edgewise into the frame of a
small mantel looking-glass. " I hope you'll
bring it ; for your sake and mine. I should
have thought she could have suited herself
elsewhere ; but as it's her fancy it must be
indulged if possible. If you cut it off
yourself mind how you do it, so as to
keep all the locks one way." He showed
her how this was to be done.

" But I sha'n't," she replied with laconic
indifference. " I value my looks too much

26 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

to Spoil 'em. She wants my curls to get
another lover with ; though if stories are
true she's broke the heart of many a noble
gentleman already."

'' Lord, it's wonderful how you guess
things, Marty," said the barber. " I've
had it from those that know that there
certainly is some foreign gentleman in her
eye. However, mind what I ask."

" She's not going to get him through me."

Percomb had retired as far as the door ;
he came back, planted his cane on the
coffin-stool, and looked her in the face.
" Marty South," he said with deliberate
emphasis, '' yoitve got a lover yourself, and
that's why you won't let it go ! "

She reddened so intensely as to pass the
mild blush that suffices to heighten beauty ;
she put the yellow leather glove on one
hand, took up the hook with the other,
and sat down doggedly to her work without

II. THE WOODLANDERS. 27

turning her face to him again. He regarded
her head for a moment, went to the door,
and with one look back at her departed
on his way homeward.

Marty pursued her occupation for a few
minutes ; then suddenly laying down the
bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the
back of the room, where she opened a door
which disclosed a staircase so whitely
scrubbed that the grain of the wood was
well-nigh sodden away by cleansing. At
the top she gently approached a bedroom,
and without entering said, " Father, do you
want anything ? "

A weak voice inside answered in the
negative, adding, '' I should be all right
by to-morrow if it were not for the
tree ! "

" The tree again — always the tree ! Oh,
father, don't worry so about that. You
know it can do you no harm."

28 THE WOODLANDERS. CH. Ii.

" Who have ye had talking to ye down
stairs ? "

''A Sherton man called — nothing to trouble
about," she said soothingly. '' Father," she
went on, ''can Mrs. Charmond turn us out of
our house if she's minded to ? "

'' Turn us out ? No. Nobody can turn
us out till my poor soul is turned out of my
body. 'Tis lifehold, like Giles Winterborne's.
But when my life drops 'twill be hers — not
till then." His words on this subject so far
had been rational and firm enough. But now
he lapsed into his moaning strain : "And the
tree will do it — that tree will soon be the
death of me."

" Nonsense, you know better. How can
it be ? " She refrained from furtlier speech,
and descended to the ground floor again.

'' Thank Heaven, then," she said to
herself, "what belongs to me I keep."

CHAPTER III.

The lights In the village went out, house
after house, till there only remained two in
the darkness. One of these came from a
residence on the hill-side, of which there is
something to be said later on ; the other
shone from the window of ]^Iarty South.
Precisely the same extinguished effect was
produced here, however, by her rising \\ hen
the clock struck ten and hanging up a thick
cloth curtain. The door it was necessary to
keep ajar In hers as in most cottages, because
of the smoke ; but she ob\ iated the eft'ect of
the riband of light through the chink by

30 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

hanorincr a cloth over that also. She was one

o o

of those people who, If they have to work
harder than their neighbours, prefer to keep
the necessity a secret as far as possible ; and,
but for the slight sounds of wood-spllntering
which came from within, no wayfarer would
have perceived that here the cottager did not
sleep as elsewhere.

Eleven, twelve, one o'clock struck ; the
heap of spars grew higher, and the pile of
chips and ends more bulky. Even the light
on the hill had nov/ been extinguished ; but
still she worked on. When the temperature
of the nieht without had fallen so low as to
make her chilly, she opened a large blue
umbrella to ward off the drausfht from the
door. The two sovereigns confronted her
from the looking-glass In such a manner as
to suggest a pair of jaundiced eyes on the
watch for an opportunity. Whenever she
sighed for weariness she lifted her gaze

III. THE WOODLANDERS. 31

towards them, but withdrew it quickly,
stroking her tresses for a moment, as if to
assure herself that they were still secure.
When the clock struck three she arose and
tied up the spars she had last made in a
bundle resemblinss: those that lav against
the wall.

She wrapped round her a long red woollen
cravat, and opened the door. The night in
all its fulness met her flatly on the threshold,
like the very brink of an absolute void, or the
ante-mundane Ginnung-Gap believed in by
her Teuton forefathers. For her eyes were
fresh from the blaze, and here there was no
street lamp or lantern to form a kindly
transition between the inner glare and the
outer dark. A lingering wind brought to
her ear the creakinof sound of two over-
crowded branches in the neiii^hbourincr wood,
which were rubbing each other into wounds,
and other vocalised sorrows of the trees,

32 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

together with the screech of owls, and the
flutterlnor tumble of some awkward wood-
pigeon Ill-balanced on Its roosting bough.

But the pupils of her young eyes soon
expanded, and she could see well enough for
her purpose. Taking a bundle of spars
under each arm, and guided by the serrated
line of tree-tops against the sky, she went
some hundred yards or more down the lane
till she reached a long open shed, carpeted
around with the dead leaves that lay about
everywhere. Night, that strange personality,
which within walls brings ominous Introspec-
tlveness and self-distrust, but under the open
sky banishes such subjective anxieties as too
trivial for thought, gave to Marty South a
less perturbed and brisker manner now. She
laid the spars on the ground within the shed
and returned for more, going to and fro till
her whole manufactured stock was deposited
here.

III. THE WOODLANDERS. 33

This erection was the waggon-house of the
chief man of business hereabout, ]\Ir. George
Melbury, the timber, bark, and copse-ware
merchant for whom ^Marty's father did work
of this sort by the piece. It formed one
of the manv rambHnof outhouses which sur-
rounded his dwelHng, an equally irregular
block of building, whose immense chimneys
could just be discerned even now. The four
huQre waororons under the shed were built on
those ancient lines whose proportions have
been ousted by modern patterns, their shapes
bulging and curving at the base and ends
like Trafalgar line-of-battle ships, with which
venerable hulks, indeed, these vehicles
evidenced a constructive spirit curiously in
harmony. One was laden with sheep-cribs,
another with hurdles, another with ash-poles,
and the fourth, at the foot of which she
had placed her thatching-spars, was half
full of similar bundles.

VOL. I. D

34 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

She was pausing a moment with that
easeful sense of accompHshment which
follows work done that has been a hard
struggle in the doing, when she heard a
woman's voice on the other side of the
hedge say anxiously, " George ! "

In a moment the name was repeated,
with " Do come indoors ! What are you
doing there ? "

The cart-house adjoined the garden, and
before Marty had moved she saw enter the
latter from the timber-merchant's back door
an elderly woman sheltering a candle w^ith
her hand, the light from which cast a moving
thorn-pattern of shade on Marty's face.
Its rays soon fell upon a man whose clothes
were carelessly thrown on, standing in
advance of the speaker. He was a thin,
slightly stooping figure, with a small nervous
mouth, and a face cleanly shaven ; and he
walked along the path with his eyes bent

III. THE WOODLANDERS. 35

on the ground. In the pair Marty South
recognised her employer Melbury and his
wife. She was the second Mrs. Melbury,
the first having died shordy after the birth
of the timber-merchant's only child.

*' 'Tis no use to stay in bed ! " he said
as soon as she came up to w^here he was
pacing restlessly about. " I can't sleep. I
keep thinking of things."

" What things ? "

He did not answer.

"The lady at the Great House?"

'' No."

" The turnpike bonds ? "

" No. Though I wish I hadn't got
em.

"The ghosts of the Two Brothers?"

He shook his head.

"Not about Grace ? "

"Yes. 'Tis she."

(Grace was the speaker's only daughter.)

D 2

36 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

** Why worry about her ? "

" First, I cannot think why she doesn't
answer my letter. She must be ill."

" No, no. Things only appear so gloomy
in the night-time."

" Second, I have not invested any money
specially for her, to put her out of the reach
of poverty if my affairs fail."

" They are safe. Besides, she is sure to
marry well."

" You are wrong. That's my third
trouble. I have a plan in my head about
her, and according to my plan she won't
marry well."

"A plan for her not to marry well .-^ "
said his wife, surprised.

*' In one sense. It is a plan for her to
marry a particular person, and he is poor.
It is Giles W'interborne."

" Giles Winterborne ? Well, it is all
right. Love will make up for his want of

III. THE WOODLANDERS. 37

money. He adores the very ground she
walks on."

(Marty South started, and could not tear
herself away.)

'' Yes," said the timber-merchant ; " I
know that well. There will be no lack of
that with him. But since I have educated
her so well, and so long, and so far above
the level of the daughters hereabout, it is
wasting her to give her to a man of no
higher standing than he."

" Then why do it ? " she asked.

*' Ah ! — now you've hit it ! Lucy, it is in
obedience to a solemn resolve I made ....
I made it because I did his father a terrible
wrong ; and it has been a weight on my
conscience ever since that time, till this
scheme of making amends occurred to me
through seeing that Giles liked her."

"Wronged his father.'*" asked Mrs.
Melbury.

38 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

" Yes, grievously wronged him," said her
husband.

''Well, don't think of it to-night," she
urged. " Come indoors."

'* No, no ; the air cools my head. I shall
not stay long."

He was silent awhile; then he told her
that his first wife, his daughter's mother,
was first the promised of Winterborne's
father, who loved her tenderly, till he, the
speaker, won her away from him by a
trick, because he wanted to marry her
himself. He went on to say that the other
man's happiness was ruined by it ; that
though he married Winterborne's mother,
it was but a half-hearted business with him.
Melbury added that he was afterwards very
miserable at what he had done ; but that
as time went on, and the children grew up,
and seemed to be attached to each other,
he determined to do all he could to right

III. THE WOODLANDERS. 39

the wrong by letting his daughter marry
the lad ; not only that, but to give her the
best education he could afford, so as to
make the gift as valuable a one as it lay
in his power to bestow. " I still mean to
do it," said Melbury.

" Then do," said she.

'' But all these things trouble me," said
he ; " for I feel I am sacrificing her for
my own sin ; and I think of her, and often
come down here and look at this."

'* Look at what ? " asked his wife.

He took the candle from her hand, held
it to the o^round, and removed a tile which
lay in the garden-path. *' 'Tis the track
of her shoe that she made when she ran
down here the day before she went away
all those months ago. I covered it up when
she was gone ; and when I come here and
look at it, I ask myself again, why should
she be sacrificed to a poor man ? "

40 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

"It is not altogether a sacrifice," said
the woman. "He is in love with her,
and he's honest and upright. If she en-
courages him, what can you w^ish for more ? "

" I wish for nothinor definite. But there's

o

a lot of things possible for her. Why,
Mrs. Charmond is wanting some refined
young lady, I hear, to go abroad with
her — as companion or something of the
kind. She'd jump at Grace."

" That's all uncertain. Better stick to
what's sure."

''True, true," said Melbury ; "and I
hope it will be for the best. Yes, let mc
get 'em married up as soon as I can, so
as to have it over and done with." He
continued looking at the imprint, while he
added, " Suppose she should be dying, and
never make a track on this path any more ? "

" She'll write soon, depend upon't. Come,
'tis wrong to stay here and brood so."

III. THE WOODLANDERS.

41

He admitted it, but said he could not
help it. "Whether she write or no, I shall
fetch her in a few days." And thus speak-
ing he covered the track, and preceded his
wife indoors.

Melbury perhaps was an unlucky man
in havinof within him the sentiment which
could indulge in this foolish fondness about
the imprint of a daughter's footstep. Nature
does not carry on her government with a
view to such feelings ; and when advancing
years render the opened hearts of those who
possess them less dexterous than formerly
in shutting against the blast, they must
suffer '' buffeting at will by rain and storm "
no less than little celandines.

But her own existence, and not Mr.
Melbury's, was the centre of ^Marty's con-
sciousness, and it was in relation to this
that the matter struck her as she slowly
withdrew.

42 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

" That, then, is the secret of it all," she
said. '' And Giles Winterborne is not for
nie, and the less I think of him the better."

She returned to her cottaofe. The
sovereigns were staring at her from the
looking-glass as she had left them. With
a preoccupied countenance, and with tears in
her eyes, she got a pair of scissors, and
began mercilessly cutting off the long locks
of her hair, arranging and tying them with
their points all one way, as the barber had
directed. Upon the pale scrubbed deal
of the coflin-stool table they stretched like
waving and ropy weeds over the washed
white bed of a stream.

She would not turn again to the little
looking-glass out of humanity to herself,
knowing what a deflowered visage would
look back at her, and almost break her
heart ; she dreaded it as much as did her
own ancestral goddess the reflection in the

III. THE WOODLANDERS. 43

pool after the rape of her locks by Loke
the Malicious. She steadily stuck to busi-
ness, wrapped the hair in a parcel, and
sealed it up ; after which she raked out
the fire and went to bed, having first set
up an alarum made of a candle and piece
of thread, with a stone attached

But such a reminder was unnecessary to-
night. Havinor tossed about till five o'clock,
Marty heard the sparrows walking down
their lon^f holes in the thatch above her
sloping ceiling to their exits at the eaves ;
whereupon she also arose, and descended
to the ground floor again.

It was still dark, but she began moving
about the house in those automatic initiatory
acts and touches which represent among
housewives the installation of another day.
While thus eno^ao^ed she heard the rumblino-
of Mr. Melbury's waggons, and knew that
there, too, the day's toil had begun.

44 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

An armful of gads thrown on the still hot
embers caused them to blaze up cheerfully,
and bring her diminished head-gear into
sudden prominence as a shadow. At this a
step approached the door.

'' Are folk astir here yet ? " inquired a
voice she knew well.

*' Yes, Mr. Winterborne," said Marty,
throwing on a tilt bonnet, which completely
hid the recent ravages of the scissors.
'* Come in ! "

The door was flung back, and there
stepped in upon the mat a m^in, not parti-
cularly young for a lover, nor particularly
mature for a person of affairs — each of which
functions he in some degree discharged.
There was reserve in his glance, and re-
straint upon his mouth. He carried a horn
lantern which hung upon a swivel, and,
wheeling as it dangled, marked grotesque
shapes upon the shadier part of the walls.

III. THE WOODLANDERS. 45

He said that he had looked In on his way
down, to tell her that they did not expect her
father to make up his contract if he was not
well. ]Mr. ]\Ielbury would give him another
week, and they would go their journey with
a short load that day.

" They are done," said Marty, " and lying
in the cart-house."

" Done ?" he repeated. " Your father has
not been too ill to work after all, then ? "

She made some evasive reply. " I'll show
you where they be, if you are going down,"
she added.

They went out and walked together, the
pattern of the air-holes in the top of the
lantern being thrown upon the mist over-
head, where they appeared of giant size, as
if reaching the tent-shaped sky. They had
no remarks to m.ake to each other, and they
uttered none. Hardly anything could be
more isolated or more self-contained than the

46 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

lives of these two walking here in the lonely
hour before day, when grey shades, material
and mental, are so very grey. And yet,
looked at in a certain way, their lonely
courses formed no detached design at all,
but w-ere part of the pattern in the great w^eb
of human doings then weaving in both hemi-
spheres, from the White Sea to Cape Horn.

The shed was reached, and she pointed
out the spars. WInterborne regarded them
silently, then looked at her.

" Now, Marty, I believe " he said, and

shook his head.

-What?"

" That you've done the work yourself"

" Don't you tell anybody, will you, Mr.
W'interborne ? " she pleaded by way of
answer. " Because I am afraid Mr. Melbury
may refuse my w^ork If he knows It Is mine."

" But how could you learn to do It ? 'TIs
a trade."

III. THE WOODLANDERS. 47

" Trade ! " said she. " I'd be bound to
learn it in two hours."

" Oh, no, you wouldn't, iNIrs. Marty."
Winterborne held down his lantern, and
examined the cleanly split hazels as they lay
'' Marty," he said w^ith dry admiration, "your
father with his forty years of practice never
made a spar better than that. They are too
Qfood for the thatchinQ^ of houses ; they are
good enough for the furniture. But I won't
tell. Let me look at your hands — your
poor hands ! "

He had a kindly manner of a quietly severe
tone ; and when she seemed reluctant to show
her hands he took hold of one and examined
it as if it were his own. Her finQ:ers were
blistered.

" They'll get harder in time," she said.
" For if father continues ill I shall have to
go on wi^ it. Now I'll help put 'em up in
waggon."

48 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

Winterborne without speaking set down
his lantern, lifted her like a doll as she was
about to stoop over the bundles, placed her
behind him, and began throwing up the
bundles himself. " Rather than you should
do it I will," he said. " But the men will be
here directly. Why, Marty — whatever has
happened to your head ? Lord, it has
shrunk to nothing — it looks like an apple
upon a gate-post ! "

Her heart swelled, and she could not
speak. At length she managed to groan,
looking on the ground, " I've made myself
ugly — and hateful — that's what I've done ! "

''No, no," he answered, ''You've only
cut your hair — I see now."

" Then why must you needs say that about
apples and gate-posts ? "

" Let me see ! "

For answer she ran off into the gloom of
the sluggish dawn. He did not attempt to

III. THE WOODLANDERS. 49

follow her. When she reached her father's
door she stood on the step and looked back.
Mr. Melbury's men had arrived, and were
loading up the spars ; and their lanterns
appeared from the distance at which she
stood to have wan circles round them, like
eyes weary with watching. She observed
them for a few seconds as they set about
harnessins: the horses, and then went
indoors.

VOL. T,

CHAPTER IV.

There was now a distinct manifestation of
morning in the air, and presently the bleared
white visage of a sunless winter day emerged
like a dead-born child. The woodlanders
everywhere had already bestirred themselves,
rising at this time of the year at the far less
dreary hour of absolute darkness. It had
been above an hour earlier, before a single
bird had untucked his head, that twenty
lights were struck in as many bedrooms,
twenty pairs of shutters opened, and twenty
pairs of eyes stretched to the sky to forecast
the weather for the day.

CH. IV. THE WOODLAXDERS.

Owls that had been catching mice In the
outhouses, rabbits that had been eating the
winter-greens In the gardens, and stoats that
had been sucklno: the blood of the rabbits,
discerning that their human neighbours were
on the move, discreetly withdrew from pub-
licity, and were seen and heard no more
till nightfall.

The daylight revealed the whole of Mr.
Melbury's homestead, of which the waggon-
sheds had been an out-lying erection. It
formed three sides of an open quadrangle,
and consisted of all sorts of buildings, the
largest and central one being the dwelling
Itself. The fourth side of the quadrangle
was the public road.

It was a dwelling-house of respectable,
roomy, almost dignified aspect, which, taken
with the fact that there were the remains
of other such buildings hereabout, indicated
that Little HIntock had at some time or

E 2

52 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

Other been of greater importance than now,
as its old name of Hintock St. Osmond also
testified. The house was of no marked
antiquity ; yet of well-advanced age ; older
than a stale novelty, but no canonised
antique ; faded, not hoary ; looking at you
from the still distinct middle-distance of the
early Georgian time, and awakening on that
account the instincts of reminiscence more
decidedly than the remoter, and far grander,
memorials which have to speak from the
misty reaches of mediaevalism. The faces,
dress, passions, gratitudes, and revenges of the
great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers
who had been the first to o^aze from those
rectangular windows, and had stood under
that keystoned doorway, could be divined
and measured by homely standards of to-day.
It was a house in whose reverberations queer
old personal tales were yet audible if properly
listened for ; and not, as with those of the

IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 53

castle and cloister, silent beyond the
possibility of echo.

The garden-front remained much as it had
always been, and there was a porch and
entrance that way. But the principal house-
door opened on the square yard or quad-
rangle towards the road, formerly a regular
carriage entrance ; though the middle of the
area was now made use of for stacking
timber, faggots, bundles, and other products
of the wood. It was divided from the lane
by a lichen-coated wall, in which hung a pair
of gates, flanked by piers out of the perpen-
dicular, with a round white ball on the top
of each.

The building on the left of the inclosure
was a long-backed erection, now used for
spar-making, sawing, crib -framing, and copse-
ware manufacture in general. Opposite
were the waggon-sheds where Marty had
deposited her spars.

54 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

Pi ere WInterborne had remained after the
girl's abrupt departure, to see that the loads
were properly made up. Winterborne was
connected with the Melbury family In various
ways. In addition to the sentimental rela-
tionship which arose from his father having
been the first Mrs. Melbury's lover, Winter-
borne's aunt had married and emigrated with
the brother of the timber-merchant many
years before — an alliance that was sufficient
to place WInterborne, though the poorer,
on a footing of social intimacy with the
Melburys. As in most villages so secluded
as this, Intermarriages were of Hapsburglan
frequency among the inhabitants, and there
were hardly two houses in Little Hintock
unrelated by some matrimonial tie or
other.

For this reason a curious kind of part-
nership existed between Melbury and the
younger man — a partnership based upon an

THE WOODLAXDERS. 55

unwritten code, by which each acted in the
way he thought fair towards the other, on a
give-and-take principle. Melbury, with his
timber and copse-ware business, found that
the weight of his labour came in winter and
spring. Wlnterborne was In the apple and
cider trade, and his requirements in cartage
and other work came in the autumn of each
year. Hence horses, waggons, and In some
degree men, were handed over to him when
the apples began to fall ; he in return, lend-
ino^ his assistance to Melburv in the busiest
wood-cutting season, as now.

Before he had left the shed a boy came
from the house to ask him to remain till Mr.
Melbury had seen him. Wlnterborne there-
upon crossed over to the spar-house where
some journeymen were already at work, two
of them being travelling spar-makers from
White- Hart Lane, who, when the fall of the
leaf began, made their appearance regularly,

56 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

and when winter was over disappeared in
silence till the season came again.

Firewood was the one thing abundant in
Little Hintock ; and a blaze of gad-ends
made the outhouse gay with its light, which
vied with that of the day as yet. In the hollow
shades of the roof could be seen pale dangling
arms of ivy which had crept through the joints
of the tiles and were groping in vain for some
support, their leaves being dwarfed and
sickly for want of sunlight ; others were
pushing in with such force at the eaves as to
lift from their supports the shelves that were
fixed there.

Besides the itinerant journey - workers
there w^ere also present John Upjohn, Mel-
bury's regular man ; a neighbour engaged
in the hollows-turnery trade ; Old Timothy
Tangs and young Timothy Tangs, top and
bottom sawyers at work in Mr. Melbury's
pit outside ; Farmer Cawtree, who kept the

IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 57

cider-house, and Robert Creedle, an old man
who worked for Winterborne, and stood
warming his hands ; these latter having been
enticed in by the ruddy blaze, though they
had no particular business there. None of
them call for any remark, except perhaps
Creedle. To have completely described him
it would have been necessary to write a
military memoir, for he wore under his
smock-frock a cast-off soldier's jacket that
had seen hot service, its collar showing just
above the flap of the frock ; also a hunting
memoir, to include the top-boots that he had
picked up by chance ; also chronicles of
voyaging and shipwreck, for his pocket-knife
had been given him by a weather-beaten
sailor. But Creedle carried about with him
on his uneventful rounds these silent tes-
timonies of war, sport, and adventure, and
thought nothing of their associations or their
stories.

58 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

Copse-work, as it was called, being an
occupation which the secondary intelligence
of the hands and arms, could carry on with-
out requiring the sovereign attention of the
head, the minds of its professors wandered
considerably from the objects before them ;
hence the tales, chronicles, and ramifications
of family history which were recounted here
were of a very exhaustive kind.

Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not
arrived, stepped back again outside the door ;
and the conversation interrupted by his mo-
mentary presence flowed anew, reaching his
ears as an accompaniment to the regular
dripping of the fog from the plantation
boughs around.

The topic at present handled was a highly
popular and frequent one — the personal cha-
racter of Mrs. Charmond, the owner of the
surrounding woods and groves.

" My brother-in-law told me, and I have

IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 59

no reason to doubt it," said Creedle, '' that
she'd sit down to her dinner with a frock
hardly higher than her elbows. ' Oh, you
wicked woman ! ' he said to himself when he
first see her, ' you go to your church, and sit,
and kneel, as if your knee-jints were greased
with very saint's anointment, and tell off your
hear-us-good- Lords as pat as a business man
counting money ; and yet you can eat your
victuals such a fig^ure as that ! ' Whether
she's a reformed character by this time I
can't say ; but I don't care who the man is,
that's how she went on when my brother-in-
law lived there."

" Did she do it In her husband's time ?

"That I don't know — hardly, I should

think, considering his temper. Ah ! "

Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance
into physical form by slowly resigning his
head to obliquity and letting his eyes water.
" That man ! ' Not if the angels of heaven

6o THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

come down, Creedle,' he said, 'shall you
do another day's work for me ! ' Yes — he
w^ould as soon take a winged creature's
name in vain as yours or mine ! Well,
now I must get these spars home-along,
and to-morrow, thank God, I must see
about using 'em."

An old woman now entered upon the
scene. She was Mr. Melbury's servant,
and passed a great part of her time in
crossing the yard between the house-door
and the spar-shed, whither she had come
now for fuel. She had two facial aspects —
one, of a soft and flexible kind, which she
used indoors ; the other, with stiff lines
and corners, which she assumed when
bustling among the men outside.

" Ah, Grammer Oliver," said John Upjohn,
"it do do my heart good to see a old
woman like you so dapper and stirring,
when I bear In mind that, after fifty, one

IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 6r

year counts as two did afore ! But your
smoke didn't rise this morning till twenty
minutes past seven by my beater ; and
that's late, Grammer Oliver."

" If you was a full-sized man, John, I
might take notice of your scornful meanings.
But really a woman couldn't feel hurt if
such smallness were to spit fire and
brimstone itself at her. Here," she added,
holding out a spar-gad to one of the
workmen, from which dauQ^led a lona black-
pudding, " here's something for thy break-
fast, and if you want tea you must fetch
it from indoors."

" ^Ir. Melbury is late this morning," said
the bottom-sawyer,

"Yes. 'Twas a dark dawn," said Mrs.
Oliver. " Even when I opened the door,
so late as I was, you couldn't have told
poor men from gentlemen, or John from a
reasonable-sized object. And I don't think

62 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

malster's slept at all well to-night. He's
anxious about his daughter ; and I know
what that is, for I've cried bucketfuls for
my own. '

When the old woman had gone Creedle
said : —

'' He'll fret his heart green if he don't
soon hear from that rnaid of his. Well,
learninof Is better than houses and lands.
But to keep a maid at school till she is
taller out of pattens than her mother was
in 'em — 'tis tempting Providence."

"It seems no time ago that she was a
little playward girl," said young Timothy
Tangs.

'' I can mind her mother," said the hollow-
turner. " Alway a teuny, delicate piece ; her
touch upon your hand was as soft as wind.
She w^as inoculated for the small-pox and
had it beautifully fine, just about the time
that I was out of my apprenticeship — ay,

IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 63

and a long apprenticeship 'twas. I served
that master of mine six years and three
hundred and fourteen days."

The hohow-turner pronounced the days
with emphasis, as if, considering their
number, they were a rather more remarkable
fact than the years.

*' Mr. Winterborne's father walked
with her at one time," said old Timothy
Tangs. ** But Mr. Melbury won her. She
was a child of a woman, and would cry like
rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever she
and her husband came to a puddle in their
walks together he'd take her up like a half-
penny doll and put her over without dirting
her a speck. And if he keeps the daughter
so long at boarding school he'll make her
as nesh as her mother was. But here he
comes."

Just before this moment Winterborne had
seen Melbury crossing the court from his

64 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

door. He was carrying an open letter in
his hand, and came straight to Winterborne.
His gloom of the preceding night had quite
gone.

" I'd no sooner made up my mind, Giles,
to go and see why Grace didn't come or
write than I get a letter from her — ' My dear
father,' says she, * I'm coming home to-
morrow (that's to-day), but I didn't think it
worth while to write long beforehand.' The
little rascal, and didn't she ! Now, Giles, as
you are going to Sherton market to-day
with your apple-trees, w^hy not join me
and Grace there, and we'll drive home all
together ? "

He made the proposal with cheerful
energy ; he was hardly the same man as the
man of the small dark hours. Even among
the moodiest, the tendency to hit cheered
is stronger than the tendency to be cast
down ; and a soul's specific gravity stands

IV. THE WOODLAXDERS. 65

permanently less than that of the sea of
troubles into which it is thrown.

Winterborne, though not demonstrative,
replied to this suggestion with alacrity.
There was not much doubt that ]\Iarty's
grounds for cutting off her hair were substan-
tial enough, if this man's eyes had been a
reason for keeping it on. As for the timber-
merchant, it was plain that his invitation had
been given solely in pursuance of his scheme
for uniting the pair. He had made up his
mind to the course as a duty, and was
strenuously bent upon following it out.

Accompanied by Winterborne he now-
turned towards the door of the spar-house,
when his footsteps were heard by the men
as aforesaid.

"Well, John, and Robert," he said,
noddino^, as he entered. " A rimv morninor."

" 'Tis, sir/' said Creedle, energetically, for
not having as yet been able to summon

VOL. I. • F

66 THE WOOD LANDERS. CHAP.

force sufficient to go away and begin work
he felt the necessity of throwing some into
his speech. " I don't care who the man is,
'tis the rimiest morning we've had this
falh"

" I heard you wondering why I've kept
my daughter so long at boarding-school,"
resumed Mr. Melbury, looking up from the
letter which he was reading anew by the
fire, and turning to them with the sudden-
ness that w^as a trait in him. " Hey.^" he
asked with affected shrewdness. " But you
did, you know\ Well now, though it is my
own business more than anybody else's, I'll
tell ye. When I w^as a boy another boy —
the pa'son's son — along with a lot of others,
asked me, ' Who dragged Whom round the
walls of What ? ' and I said, * Sam Barrett,
who draeeed his w^ife in a chair round the
tower when she went to be churched.' They
laughed at me so much that I went home

IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 67

ashamed, and couldn't sleep for shame ; and
I cried that night till my pillow was wet ;
till I thought to myself — ' They may laugh at
me for my ignorance, but that was father's
fault, and none o" my making, and I must
bear it. But they shall never laugh at my
children, if I have any: I'll starve first!'
Thank God I've been able to keep her at
school at the figure of near a hundred a year ;
and her scholarship is such that she has
stayed on as governess for a time. Let 'em
laugh now if they can : Mrs. Charmond
herself is not better informed than my girl
Grace."

There was something between high In-
difference and humble emotion in his delivery,
which made it difficult for them to reply.
WInterborne's interest was of a kind which
did not show itself in words ; listening, he
stood by the fire, mechanically stirring the
embers with a spar-gad.

F 2

68 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

''You'll be, then, ready, Giles ?" Melbury
continued, avvaklne from a reverie. " Well,
what was the latest news at Shottsford
yesterday, Mr. Cawtree ? "

'' Oh, well, Shottsford Is Shottsford still
— you can't victual your carcase there unless
you've got money ; and you can't buy a cup
of genuine there, whether or no. . . . But as
the saying Is * Go abroad and you'll hear
news of home.' It seems that our new
nelehbour, this younof Doctor What's-his-
name, Is a strange, deep, perusing gentleman ;
and there's good reason for supposing he has
sold his soul to the wicked one."

" 'Od name It all," murmured the timber-
merchant, unimpressed by the news, but re-
minded of other things by the subject of it ;
" I've got to meet a gentleman this very
morning, and yet I've planned to go to
Sherton Abbas for the maid."

" I won't praise the doctor's wisdom till

IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 69

I hear what sort of bargain he's made,"
said the top-sawyer.

" 'Tis only an old woman's tale," said
Cawtree. " But it seems that he wanted
certain books on some mysterious black art.
and in order that the people hereabout should
not know anything about them, he ordered
'em direct from London, and not from the
Sherton bookseller. The parcel was delivered
by mistake at the pa'son's, and as he wasn't
at hom^e his wife opened it, and went into
hysterics when she read 'em, thinking her
husband had turned heathen, and 'twould be
the ruin of the children. But when he came
he knew no more about *em than she ; and
found they were this Mr. Fitzpiers's property.
So he wrote ' Beware ! ' outside, and sent
'em on by the sexton."

*' He must be a curious young man,"'
mused the hollow-turner.

" He must," said Timothy Tangs.

70 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

" Nonsense," said Mr. Melbury, authorita-
tively, " he's only a gentleman fond of science,
and philosophy, and poetry, and, in fact,
every kind of knowledge ; and being lonely
here he passes his time in making such
matters his hobby."

" Well," said old Timothy, " 'tis a strange
thing about doctors that the worse they be
the better they be. I mean that if you hear
anything of this sort about 'em, ten to one
they can cure ye as nobody else can."

** True," said Cawtree, emphatically. ''And
for my part I shall take my custom from old
Jones and go to this one directly I've any-
thing the matter inside me. That last
medicine old Jones gave me had no taste
in it at all."

Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed
man, did not listen to these recitals, being,
moreover, preoccupied with the business
appointment which had come into his head.

IV. THE WOODLAXDERS.

He walked up and down, looking on the
floor — his usual custom when undecided.
That stiffness about the arm, hip, and knee-
joint, which was apparent when he walked,
was the net product of the divers sprains and
over-exertions that had been required of him
in handling trees and timber when a young
man, for he was of the sort called self-made,
and had worked hard. He knew the origin
of every one of these cramps ; that in his left
shoulder had come of carrying a pollard,
unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home ;
that in one leg was caused by the crash of
an elm ao^ainst it when thev were fellinor ;
that in the other was from lifting a bole. On
many a morrow after wearvincr himself bv
these prodigious muscular eftbrts, he had
risen from his bed fresh as usual ; and
confident in the recuperative power of his
youth, he had repeated the strains anew.
But treacherous Time had been onlv hidinqr

72 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

ill results when they could be guarded
against, for greater effect when they could
not. Now in his declining years the store
had been unfolded in the form of rheuma-
tisms, pricks, and spasms, in every one of
which Melbury recognised some act, which,
had its consequence been contemporaneously
made known, he would wisely have abstained
from repeating.

On a summons by Grammer Oliver to
breakfast he went to the kitchen, where
the family breakfasted in winter to save
house-labour ; and sitting down by the fire
looked a long time at the pair of dancing ,
shadows cast by each fire-Iron and dog-
knob on the whitewashed chimney-corner
— a yellow one from the window, and a
blue one from the fire.

'' I don't quite know what to do to-day,"
he said to his wife at last. *' IVe recollected
that I promised to meet Mrs. Charmond's

IV. THE WOODLAXDERS. 73

Steward in Round Wood at twelve o'clock,
and yet I want to go for Grace."

'* Why not let Giles fetch her by himself ?
'Twill bring 'em together all the quicker."

" I could do that — but I always have
gone, without fail, every time hitherto,
and perhaps she'll be disappointed if 1
stay away."

" You may be disappointed, but I don't
think she will, if you send Giles," said
Mrs. Melbury drily.

'' Very well — I'll send him."

Melbury was often persuaded by the
quietude of his wife's words when strenuous
argument would have had no effect. This
second Mrs. Melbury was a placid woman,
who had been nurse to his child Grace
after her mother's death. Little Grace
had clung to the nurse with much affection ;
and ultimately Melbury, in dread lest the
only w^oman who cared for the girl should

74 THE WOODLANDERS. chap

be induced to leave her, persuaded the
mild Lucy to marry him. The arrange-
ment— for it was little more — had worked
satisfactorily enough ; Grace had thriven,
and IMelbury had not repented.

He returned to the spar-house and found
Giles near at hand, to w^iom he explained
the change of plan, " As she won't arrive
till five o'clock, you can get your busi-
ness very w^ell over in time to receive her,"
said Melbury. "The green gig will do for
her ; you'll spin along quicker with that, and
Avon't be late upon the road. Her boxes can
be called for by one of the waggons."

Winterborne, knowinor nothinof of the
timber-merchant's restitutory aims, quietly
thought all this to be a kindly chance.
Wishing, even more than her father, to
despatch his apple-tree business in the
market before Grace's arrival, he prepared
to start at once.

i

IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 75

Melbury was careful that the turn-out
should be seemly. The gig-wheels, for
instance, were not always washed during
winter-time before a journey, the muddy
roads rendering that labour useless ; but
they were washed to-day. The harness
was blacked, and when the grey horse had
been put in, and Winterborne was in his
seat ready to start, Mr. ^Nlelbury stepped
out with a blacking-brush and with his
own hands touched over the yellow hoofs
of the animal.

"You see, Giles," he said as he blacked,
" coming from a fashionable school she
mieht feel shocked at the homeliness of
home ; and 'tis these little things that catch
a dainty woman's eye if they are neglected.
We, living here alone, don't notice how
the whitey-brown creeps out of the earth
over us ; but she, fresh from a city — why,
she'll notice everything ! "

76 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

" That she will," said Giles.

" And scorn us if we don't mind."

" Not scorn us."

*' No, no, no — that's only words. She's
too good a girl to do that. But when we
consider what she knows, and what she
has seen since she last saw us, 'tis as
well to meet her views. Why, 'tis a year
since she was in this old place, owing to
her going abroad in the summer ; and
naturally we shall look small, just at first
— I only say just at first."

Mr. Melbury's tone evinced a certain
exultation in the very sense of that inferior-
ity he affected to deplore ; for this advanced
and refined being, was she not his own all
the time ? Not so Giles ; he felt doubtful.
He looked at his clothes with misgiving ;
but said nothing.

It was his custom during the planting
season to carry a specimen apple-tree to

IV. THE WOODLANDERS. ^^

market with him as an advertisement ot
what he dealt in. This had been tied across
the gig ; and mounting in front he drove
away, the twigs nodding with each step
of the horse. Melbury went indoors.
Before the gig had passed out of sight
Mr. Melbury reappeared and shouted after —

"Here, Giles," he said, breathlessly follow-
ing with some wraps, " it may be very chilly
to-night, and she may want something extra
about her. And Giles," he added, when
the young man put the horse in motion
once more ; '' tell her that I should have
come myself, but I had particular business
with Mrs. Charmond's agent which pre
vented me. Don't forget."

He watched Winterborne out of sight
under the boughs, where cobwebs glistened
in the now clearing air, lengthening and
shortening their shine like elastic needles ;
he saw the woodpigeons rise as Giles drove

78 THE VVOODLANDERS. CH. iv.

past them ; and said to himself with a jerk
— a shape into which emotion with him
often resolved itself — " There now, I hope
the two will bring it to a point, and have
done w^ith It ! 'TIs a pity to let such a
girl throw herself away upon him — a
thousand pities ! . . . And yet 'tis my duty,
for his father's sake."

CHAPTER V.

WiNTERBORNE Sped OH his way to Sherton
Abbas without elation and without discom-
posure. Had he regarded his inner self
spectacularly, as lovers are now daily more
wont to do, he might have felt pride in
the discernment of a somewhat rare power
in him — that of keeping not only judgment
but emotion suspended in difficult cases.
But he noted it not.

Arrived at the entrance to a long flat
lane, which had taken the spirit out of
many a pedestrian in times when, with the
majority, to travel meant to walk, he saw

8o THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

before him the trim figure of a young
woman In pattens, journeying with that
steadfast concentration which means purpose
and not pleasure. He was soon near enough
to see that she was Marty South. CHck,
click, cHck, went the pattens ; and she did
not turn her head.

Yet she had seen him, and shrank from
being overtaken by him thus ; but as It
was Inevitable, she braced herself up for
his Inspection by closing her lips so as to
make her mouth quite unemotional, and by
throwing an additional firmness into her
tread.

" Why do you wear pattens, Marty ? The
turnpike Is clean enough although the lanes
are muddy."

** They save my boots."

''But twelve miles In pattens— -'twill twist
your feet off. Come, get up and ride with
me."

I

THE WOODLANDERS. 8i

She hesitated, removed her pattens,
knocked the gravel out of them against the
wheel, and mounted in front of the nodding
specimen apple tree. She had so arranged
her bonnet with a full border and trimmings
that her lack of lone hair did not much
injure her appearance ; though Giles of
course saw that it was gone, and may have
guessed her motive in parting with it, such
sales though infrequent being not unheard
of in that locality.

But nature's adornment was still hard by,
in fact, within two feet of him. In Marty's
basket was a brown-paper packet, and in
the packet the chestnut locks, which, by
reason of the barber's request for secrecy,
she had not ventured to intrust to other
hands.

Giles asked, with some hesitation, how
her father was getting on.

He was better, she said ; he would be

VOL. I. G

82 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

able to work in a day or two ; he would
be quite well but for his craze about the
tree falling on him.

" You know why I don't ask for him so
often as I might, I suppose ? " said Winter-
borne. " Or don't you know ? "
- I think I do."
" Because of the houses ? "
She nodded.

'' Yes. 1 am afraid it may seem that my
anxiety is about those houses which I should
lose by his death, more than about him.
Marty, I do feel anxious about the houses,
since half my Income depends upon them ;
but I do likewise care for him ; and it almost
seems wrong that houses should be leased
for lives, so as to lead to such mixed
feelings."

" After father's death they will be Mrs.
Charmond's ?"

" They'll be hers."

V. THE WOODLAXDERS. 83

" They are going to keep company with
my hair," she thought.

Thus talking they reached the town. By
no pressure would she ride up the street
with him. "That's the rieht of another
woman," she said with playful malice as
she put on her pattens. '' I wonder what
you are thinking of I Thank you for the
lift in that handsome gig. Good-bye."

He blushed a little, shook his head at
her, and drove on ahead into the streets ;
the churches, the abbey, and other buildings
on this clear bright morning having the
linear distinctness of architectural drawings,
as if the original dream and vision of the
conceiving master-mason were for a few
minutes flashed down through the centuries
to an unappreciative age. Giles saw their
eloquent look on this day of transparency,
but could not construe it. He turned into
the inn- yard.

G 2

84 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

Marty, followincy the same track, marched
promptly to the hairdresser's. Percomb was
the chief of his trade in Sherton Abbas.
He had the patronage of such county off-
shoots as had been obHged to seek the
shelter of small houses in that ancient town,
of the local clergy, and so on ; for some
of whom he had made wigs, while others
among them had compensated for neglecting
him in their lifetime by patronising him
when they were dead, and letting him shave
their corpses. On the strength of all this
he had taken down his pole, and called
himself " Perruquier to the aristocracy."

Nevertheless this sort of support did not
quite fill his children's mouths, and they
had to be filled. So behind his house there
was a little yard reached by a passage from
the back street, and In that yard was a pole,
and under the pole a shop of quite another
description than the ornamental one In the

V. THE WOODLAXDERS. ^s

front Street. Here on Saturday nights from
seven till ten he took an almost innumerable
succession of twopences from the farm-
labourers who flocked thither in crowds from
the country. And thus he lived.

Marty, of course, went to the front shop,
and handed her packet to him silently.

" Thank you," said the barber quite
joyfully. " I hardly expected it after what
you said last night."

She turned aside, while a tear welled up
and stood in each eye at this reminder.

*' Nothing of what I told you," he whis-
pered. '' But I can trust you, I see."

She had now reached the end of this
distressing business ; and went listlessly
alono: the street to attend to other errands.
These occupied her till four o'clock, at which
time she re-crossed the market-place. It
was impossible to avoid re-discovering
Winterborne every time she passed that

86 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

way, for standing, as he always did at this
season of the year, with his specimen apple-
tree in the midst, the boughs rose above
the heads of the farmers, and brought a
delightful suggestion of orchards into the
heart of the town.

When her eye fell upon him for the last
time he was standing somewhat apart, hold-
ing the tree like an ensign, and looking on
the ground Instead of pushing his produce
as he ouofht to have been doin^. He was,
in fact, not a very successful seller either of
his trees or of his cider, his habit of speaking
his mind when he spoke at all militating
against this branch of his business.

While she regarded him he lifted his eyes
In a direction away from Marty, and his face
kindled with recognition and surprise. She
followed his gaze, and saw walking across
to him a flexible young creature in whom
she perceived the features of her she had

V. THE WOODLANDERS. Sj

known as Miss Grace ]Melbury, but now
looking glorified and refined to much above
her former level. W'interborne, being fixed
to the spot by his apple-tree, could not
advance to meet her : he held out his spare
hand with his hat in it, and with some em-
barrassment beheld her coming on tip-toe
through the mud to the middle of the square
where he stood.

Miss Melbury, as ]\Iarty could see, had
not been expected by Giles so early. In-
deed, her father had named five o'clock as
her probable time, for which reason that
hour had been loomino: out all the dav in
his forward perspective, like an important
edifice on a dull plain. Now here she was
come, he knew not how, and his arranged
welcome stultified.

His face became gloomy at her necessity
for stepping into the road, and more still at
the little look of embarrassment she showed

8S THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

at having to perform the meeting with him
under an apple-tree ten feet high in the
middle of the market-place. Having had
occasion to take off the new gloves she had
bought to come home in, she held out to
him a hand graduating from pink at the tips
of the fingers to white at the palm ; and the
reception formed a scene, with the tree over
their heads, W'hich was not by any means an
ordinary one in Sherton Abbas streets.

Nevertheless the greeting in her looks and
on her lips had a restrained shape, which
perhaps was not unnatural. For true it w^as
that Giles Winterborne, though well-attired
and w^ell-mannered for a yeoman, looked
rough beside her. It had sometimes dimly
occurred to him, in his ruminating silences
at Little Hintock, that external phenomena
— such as the lowness or height or colour of
a hat, the fold of a coat, the make of a
boot, or the chance attitude or occupation of

V. THE WOODLANDERS. 89

a limb at the instant of view — may have a
great influence upon feminine opinion of a
man's worth, so frequently founded on non-
essentials ; but a certain causticity of mental
tone towards himself and the world in
general had prevented to-day, as always,
any enthusiastic action on the strength of
that reflection, and her momentary instinct
of reserve at first si^rht of him was the
penalty he paid for his laxness.

He gave away the tree to a bystander, as
soon as he could find one who would accept
the cumbersome mit and the twain moved
on towards the inn at which he had put up.
Marty made as if to step forward for the
pleasure of being recognised by ]\Iiss Mcl-
bury ; but abruptly checking herself she
glided behind a carrier's van, saying dryly,
"No; I baint wanted there;" and critically
regarded Winterborne's companion.

It would have been very difficult to describe

90 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

Grace Melbury with precision, either then or
at any time. Nay, from the highest point of
view, to precisely describe a human being,
the focus of a universe, how impossible !
But, apart from transcendentalism, there
never probably lived a person who was in
herself more completely a rediictio ad ab-
surdum of attempts to appraise a woman,
even externally, by items of face and figure.

Speaking generally, it may be said that
she was sometimes beautiful, at other times
not beautiful, according to the state of her
health and spirits.

In simple corporeal presentment she was
of a fair and clear complexion, rather pale
than pink, slim in build and elastic in move-
ment. Her look expressed a tendency to
wait for others' thoughts before uttering her
own : possibly also to wait for others' deeds
before her own doing. In her small, delicate
mouth, which had hardly settled down to its

i

V. THE WO CD LANDERS. 91

matured curves, there was a gentleness that
mieht hinder sufficient self-assertion for her
own good. She had well-formed eyebrows
which, had her portrait been painted, would
probably have been done in Prout's or
Vandyke brown.

There was nothinof remarkable in her
dress just now, beyond a natural fitness, and
a style that was recent for the streets of
Sherton. But, had it been the reverse, and
quite striking, it would have meant just as
little. For there can be hardlv anvthinc;: less
connected with a woman's personality than
drapery which she has neither designed,
manufactured, cut, sewed, nor even seen,
except by a glance of approval when told
that such and such a shape and colour must
be had because it has been decided by others
as imperative at that particular time.

What people therefore saw of her in a
cursory view was very little ; in truth, mainly

92 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

something that was not she. The woman
herself w^as a shadowy conjectural creature
who had little to do with the outlines pre-
sented to Sherton eyes : a shape in the
gloom, whose true quality could only be
approximated by putting together a move-
ment now and a glance then, in that patient
attention w^hich nothinor but w^atchful lovine-
kindness ever troubles to give.

There was a little delay in their setting
out from the town, and Marty South took
advantage of it to hasten forward, wdth the
view of escaping them on the way, lest they
should feel compelled to spoil their tete-a-tete
by asking her to ride. She walked fast, and
one-third of the journey was done, and the
evening rapidly darkening, before she per-
ceived any sign of them behind her. Then,
while ascending a hill, she dimly saw their
vehicle drawing near the lowest part of the

V. THE WOODLANDERS. 93

incline, their heads sHghtly bent towards
each other, drawn together, no doubt, by
their souls ; as the heads of a pair of horses
well in hand are drawn in by the rein. She
walked still faster.

But between these and herself there was a
carriage, apparently a brougham, coming in
the same direction, with lighted lamps.
When it overtook her — which was not soon
on account of her pace — the scene was much
darker, and the lights glared in her eyes
sufficiently to hide the details of the
equipage.

It occurred to Marty that she might take
hold behind this carriage and so keep along
with it, to save herself from the patronage of
being overtaken and picked up for pity's
sake by the coming pair. Accordingly, as
the carriage drew abreast of her in climbinof
the long ascent, she walked close to the
wheels, the rays of the nearest lamp pene-

94 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

trating her very pores. She had only just
dropped behind when the carriage stopped,
and to her surprise the coachman asked her,
over his shoulder, If she would ride. What
made the question more surprising was that
it came in obedience to an order from the
interior of the vehicle.

Marty gladly assented, for she was weary,
very weary, after working all night and
keeping afoot all day. She mounted beside
the coachman, wondering why this good
fortune had happened to her. He was rather
a great man in aspect, and she did not like
to inquire of him for some time.

At last she said, " Who has been so kind
as to ask me to ride ? "

" Mrs. Charmond,'' replied her statuesque
companion.

Marty was stirred at the name, so closely
connected with her last night's experiences.
"Is this her carriage ? " she whispered.

i

V. THE WOODLANDERS. 95

" Yes ; she's Inside."

Marty reflected, and perceived that Mrs.
Charmond must have recognised her plodding
up the hill under the blaze of the lamp ; re-
cognised, probably, her stubbly poll (since she
had kept away her face), and thought that those
stubbles were the result of her own desire.

Marty South was not so very far wrong.
Inside the carriage a pair of bright eyes
looked from a ripe handsome face, and
though behind those bright eyes was a mind
of unfathomed mysteries, beneath them there
beat a heart capable of quick, extempore
warmth — a heart which could indeed be
passionately and imprudently warm on cer-
tain occasions. At present, after recognising
the girl, she had acted on a mere impulse,
possibly feeling gratified at the denuded
appearance which signified the success of her
agent in obtaining what she had required.
" 'Tis wonderful that she should ask ye,"

96 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

observed the magisterial coachman presently.
'' I have never known her do it before, for
as a rule she takes no interest in the village
folk at all."

Marty said no more, but occasionally
turned her head to see if she could get a
glimpse of the Olympian creature who, as
the coachman had truly observed, hardly
ever descended from her clouds into the
Tempe-vale of the parishioners. But she
could discern nothing of the lady. She
also looked for Miss Melbury and Winter-
borne. The nose of their horse sometimes
came quite near the back of Mrs. Char-
mond's carriage. But they never attempted
to pass it till the latter conveyance turned
towards the park gate, when they sped by.
Here the carriage drew up that the gate
might be opened ; and in the momentary
silence Marty heard a gentle oral sound,
soft as a breeze.

V. THE WOODLAXDERS. 97

" What's that ?" she whispered.

'' Mis'ess yawning."

" Why should she yawn ? "

" Oh, because she's been used to such
wonderful good life, and finds It dull here.
She'll soon be off acrain on account of It."

" So rich and so powerful, and yet to
yawn ! " the girl murmured. " Then things
don't fay with she any more than with we ! "

Marty now alighted ; the lamp again
shone upon her, and as the carriage rolled
on, a voice said to her from the Interior,
'* Good niorht."

'* Good night, ma'am," said Marty. But
she had not been able to see the woman
who began so greatly to Interest her — the
second person of her own sex who had
operated strongly on her mind that day.

VOL. L H

CHAPTER VI.

Meanwhile Winterborne and Grace
INIelbury had also undergone their httle
experiences.

As he drove off with her out of the town
the glances of people fell upon them, the
younger thinking that Mr. Winterborne
was in a pleasant place, and wondering
in what relation he stood towards her.
Winterborne himself was unconscious of
this. Occupied solely with the idea of
having her in charge, he did not notice
much with outward eye.

Their conversation was In briefest phrase

CH. VI. THE WOODLAx\DERS. 99

for some time, Grace being somewhat dis-
concerted, throuirh not havinor understood
till they were about to start that Giles was
to be her sole conductor, in place of her
father. AMien they were in the open
country he spoke.

'' Don't Brownlev's farm-buildinors look
strange to you, now they have been moved
bodily from the hollow where the old ones
stood to the top of the hill ? "

She admitted that they did, though she
should not have seen any difference 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 left lying ever since the

inoratherlne.

She said "Yes," but looking at another
orchard.

" Why, you are looking at John-apple-

II 2

THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

trees ! You know bitter-sweets — you used
to well enoucrh ? "

o

" I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is
Qfettine too dark to distinofuish."

Winterborne did not continue. It seemed
as if the knowledo^e and interests which
had formerly moved Grace's mind had
quite died away from her. He wondered
whether the special attributes of his image
in the past had evaporated like these other
things.

However that might be, the fact at
present was merely this, that where he was
seeing John-apples and farm-buildings she
was beholdinor a much contrastin^r scene : a
broad lawn in the fashionable suburb of a
fast city, the evergreen leaves shining in
the evening sun, amid which bounding
girls, gracefully clad in artistic arrange-
ments of blue, brown, red, and white, were
playing at games, with laughter and chat,

VI. THE WOODLAXDERS. loi

in all the pride of life, the notes of piano
and harp trembling in the air from the
open windows adjoining. ^Moreover they
were girls — and this was a fact which Grace
IVIelbury's delicate femininity could not
lose sight of — whose parents Giles would
have addressed with a deferential Sir or
Madam. Beside this visioned scene the
homely farmsteads did not quite hold their
own from her present twenty-year point
of survey. For all his woodland sequestra-
tion Giles knew the primitive simplicity of
the subject he had started, and now sounded
a deeper note.

*' 'Twas very odd what we said to each
other vears cl^zo ; I often think of it. I
mean our savincr that if we still liked each
other when you were twenty and I twenty-
five, we'd "

" It was child's tattle."

" }Vm ?" said Giles suddenly.

I02 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

" I mean we were young," said she more
considerately. That abrupt manner of his
in making inquiries reminded her that he
was unaltered.

''Yes ... I beg your pardon, Miss
Melbury ; your father sent me to meet you
to-day."

" I know it, and I am glad of it." And
she looked at him affectionately.

He seemed satisfied with her and went
on — ''At that time you were sitting beside
me at the back of your father's covered
car, when we were coming home from
gipsying, all the party being squeezed in
together as tight as sheep in an auction-
pen. It got darker and darker, and I
said — I forget the exact words — but I put
my arm round your waist, and there you
let it stay till your father, sitting in front,
suddenly stopped telling his story to Farmer
Bollen, to light his pipe. The flash shone

VI. THE WOODLANDERS. 103

into the car, and showed us all up distinctly ;
my arm flew from your waist like lightning,
yet not so quickly but that some of 'em
had seen, and lauc^hed at us. Yet vour
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 the circum-
stances. '' But I must have been in short
frocks/' she said slily.

'' Come now, Miss Melbury, that won't
do ! Short frocks Indeed ! You know
better as well as I."

Grace thereupon declared that she would
not areue with an old friend she valued so
highly as she valued him, but if It were
as he said, then she was virtually no less
than an old woman now, so far did the
time seem removed from her present.

104 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

" But old feelings come to life again in
some people," she added softly.

''And in others they have never died!"
said he.

"Ah — they are Love's very oiunest and
best, I suppose ! I don't pretend to rank
so high as they."

'' It's not a they — it's a he."

Grace sighed.

" Shall I tell you all about Bath or
Cheltenham, or places on the Continent
that I visited last summer ? " she said.

"With all my heart."

She then described places and persons,
avoiding, however, what he most wished
to hear — everything specially appertaining
to her own existence. When she had
done she said gaily, " Now do you tell
me in return what has happened in Hintock
since I have been aw^ay."

" Anything to keep the conversation

VI. THE WOODLAXDERS. 105

away from her and me," said Giles within
him.

It was true ; cultivation had so far ad-
vanced in the soil of !Miss Melbury"s mind
as to lead her to talk of anything save of
that she knew well, and had the greatest
interest in developing — herself She had
fallen from the orood old Hintock wavs.

He had not proceeded far with his some-
what bald narration when they drew near
a carriage that had been preceding them
for some time in the dusk. ?^Iiss ]\Ielbury
inquired if he knew whose carriage it was.

Winterborne, although he had seen it,
had not taken it into account. On ex-
amination he said it was Mrs. Charmond's.

Grace watched the vehicle and its easy
roll, and seemed to feel more nearly 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 Winter-

io6 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

borne, reading her mind ; and rising to
emulation at what it bespoke he whipped
on the horse. This it was which had
brought the nose of Mr. IMelbury's old
grey close to the back of ^Irs. Charmond's
much eclipsing vehicle.

" There's Marty South sitting up with
the coachman," said he, discerning her 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 des-
tinies went along the road together, till
Winterborne, leaving the track of the
carriage, turned into Little Hintock, where
almost the first house was the timber-
merchant's. Pencils of light streamed out
of the windows sufficiently to show the
white laurestinus flowers, and glance against

VT. THE WOODLAXDERS. 107

the polished leaves of laurel. The Interior
of the rooms could be seen distinctly,
warmed up by the fire-flames, which in
the parlour were reflected from the pictures
and book-case, and in the kitchen from
the utensils and ware.

" Let us look at the dear place for a
moment before we call them," she said.

In the kitchen dinner was preparing ;
for thouQ^h Melburv dined at one o'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
along the ceiling to a large stone suspended
in a corner of the room. Old Grammer
Oliver came and wound it up with a rattle
like that of a mill.

In the parlour a colossal shade of Mrs.
Melburv's head fell on the wall and ceiling ;

io8 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

but before the irlrl had regarded this room
many moments their presence was dis-
covered, and her father and stepmother
came out to welcome her.

The character of the ?ylelbury family was
of that kind which evinces some shyness
in showing strong" emotion among each
other ; a trait frequent in rural households,
and one curiously inverse to most of the
peculiarities distinguishing villagers from
the people of towns. Thus hiding
their warmer feelings under commonplace
talk all round, Grace's reception produced
no extraordinary demonstrations. But that
more was felt than was enacted appeared
from the fact that her father, in takin^r
her indoors, quite forgot the presence of
Giles without, as did also Grace herself.

He said nothino^ • but took the £!;ior round
to the yard and called out from the spar-
house the man who attended to these

VI. THE WOODLANDERS. 109

matters, when there was no conversation
among the spar-makers to particularly en-
gage him. WInterborne then returned to
the door with the Intention of entering the
house.

The family had gone Into the parlour,
and were still absorbed In themselves. The
fire w^as as before the only light, and It
Irradiated Grace's face and hands so as to
make them look wondrously smooth and
fair beside those of the two elders ; shining
also through the loose hair about her
temples as sunlight through a brake. Her
father was surveying her in a dazed con-
jecture, so much had she developed and
progressed In manner and stature since he
last had set eyes on her.

Observinor these thincrs WInterborne re-
malned dubious by the door, mechanically
tracing with his fingers certain time-worn
letters carved In the jambs, — initials of

no THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

bygone generations of householders who
had Hved 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 had brought her home. Still,
he was a little surprised that her father's
eaeerness to send him for Grace should
have resulted in such indifference as this.

He walked softly aw^ay into the lane
towards his own house, looking back when
he reached the turning, from which he
could get a last glimpse of the timber-
merchant's roof. He hazarded guesses as
to what Grace was saying just at that
moment, and murmured with some self-
derision, " nothing about me!" He looked
also in the other direction, and saw against
the sky the thatched hip and solitary
chimney of Marty's cottage, and thought
of her too, struggling bravely along under

VI. THE WOODLAXDERS. in

that humble shelter, among her spar-gads
and pots and skimmers.

At the timber-merchant's, in the mean-
time, conversation flowed ; and as Giles
Winterborne had rightly enough deemed,
on subjects in which he had no share.
AmoncT the excluding- matters there was,
as chief, the effect upon ]\Ir. Melbury of
the womanly mien and manners of his
daughter, which took him so much unawares
that it thrust the image of her conductor
homeward back into quite the obscurest
cellarage of his brain.

Another was his interview with Mrs.
Charmond's agent that morning, at which
the lady herself had been present for a
few minutes. Melbury had purchased some
standincT timber from her a lon£{ time
before, and now that the date had come
for felling it he was left to pursue almost

112 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

his own course. This was what the house-
hold were actually talking of during Giles's
cogitation without.

'' 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 her wood, and fix the
price o't, and settle the matter. But name
It all, I wouldn't do such a thing. How-
ever, it may be useful to have this good
understanding with her. ... I wish she
took more Interest In the place, and stayed
here all the year round."

" I am afraid 'tis not her regard for you,
but her dislike o( Hintock, that makes
her so easy about the trees," said Mrs.
Melbury.

When dinner w^as over, Grace took a
candle and began to ramble pleasurably
through the rooms of her old home, from
which she had latterly become well-nigh

VI. THE WOODLANDERS. 113

an alien. Each nook and each object revived
a memory, and simultaneously modified it.
The chambers seemed lower than they had
appeared on any previous occasion of her
return, the surfaces of both walls and
ceilings standing in such near relations to
the eye that it could not avoid taking
microscopic note of their irregularities and
old fashion. Her own bedroom wore at
once a look more familiar than when she
had left it, and yet a face estranged. The
world of little things therein gazed at her
in helpless statlonariness, as though they
had tried and been unable to make any
progress without her presence. Over the
place where her candle had been accustomed
to stand, when she had used to read in
bed till the midniorht hour, there was still
the brown spot of smoke. She did not
know that her father had taken especial
care to keep it from being cleaned off.

VOL. I. I

THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

Having concluded her perambulation of
this now uselessly commodious edifice,
Grace began to feel that she had come a
long journey since the morning ; and when
her father had been up himself, as well as
his wife, to see that her room was com-
fortable and the fire burning, she prepared
to retire for the night.

No sooner, however, was she in bed than
her momentary sleepiness took itself off,
and she wished she had stayed up longer.
She amused herself by listening to the
old familiar noises that she could hear to
be still going on down stairs, and by look-
ing towards the window as she lay. The
blind had been drawn up. as she used to
have it when a girl, and she could just
discern the dim tree-tops against the sky
on the neighbouring hill. Beneath this
meeting-line of light and shade nothing
was visible save one solitary point of light,

VI. THE WOODLAXDERS. 115

which blinked as the tree-twigs waved to
and fro before its beams.

From its position it seemed to radiate
from the window of a house on the hill-
side. The house had been empty when
she was last at home, and she wondered
who inhabited the place now.

Her conjectures, however, were not
intently carried on, and she was watching
the light quite idly, when it gradually
changed colour, and at length shone blue
as sapphire. Thus it remained several
minutes, and then it passed through violet
to red.

Her curiosity was so widely awakened
by the phenomenon that she sat up in bed,
and stared steadily at the shine. An appear-
ance of this sort, sufficient to excite attention
anywhere, was no less than a marvel in
Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet.
Almost every diurnal and nocturnal effect

I 2

ii6 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

in that woodland place had hitherto been
the direct result of the regular terrestrial
roll which produced the season's changes ;
but here was something dissociated from
these normal sequences, and foreign to
local knowledge.

It was about this moment that Grace
heard the household below preparing to
retire, the most emphatic noise in the
proceeding being that of her father bolting
the doors. Then the stairs creaked, and
her father and mother 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 her-
self on the edge of Miss Melbury's
coverlet.

VI. THE WOODLANDERS. 117

'' I want you to tell me what light that is
I see on the hill-side,'^ said Grace.

Mrs. Oliver looked across. " Oh, that,"
she said, '•' is from the doctor's. He's often
doing things of that sort. Perhaps you
don't know 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. Though he belongs to the oldest,

ancientest family in the county, he's stooped

to make hisself useful like any common

genius. I know him very well, through

going there to help 'em scrub sometimes,

which your father said I might do if I

wanted to in my spare time. Being a

bachelor-man he've only lodgings. Oh, yes,

I know him very well. Sometimes he'll talk

to me as if 1 were his own mother."

*' Indeed."

Ii8 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

" Yes. * Grammer,' he said one day when
I asked him why he came here w^here there's
hardly anybody hving, ' I'll tell you why
I came here. I took a map, and I marked
on it where Dr. Jones's practice ends to
the north of this district, and where Mr.
Taylor's ends on the south, and little Jimmy
Green's on the east, and somebody else's
to the west. Then I took a pair of com-
passes, and found the exact middle of the
country that was left between these bounds,
and that middle was Little Hintock ; so
here I am.' .... But, Lord, there : poor
young man ! "

''Why?"

'' He said, ' Grammer Oliver, Lve been
here three months, and although there are
a good many people in the Hintocks and
the villages round, and a scattered practice
is often a very good one, I don't seem to
get many patients. And there's no society

VI. THE WOODLAXDERS. 119

at all ; and I'm pretty near melancholy mad,'
he said, with a great yawn. ' I should be
quite if it were not for my books, and my
lab — laboratory, and what not. Grammer,
I was made for hlo-her thincrs.' And then
he'd yawn and yawn again."

** Was he really made for higher things,
do you think? Is he clever?"

" Well, no. How can he be clever ? He
may be able to jine up a broken man or
woman after a fashion, and put his finger
upon an ache if you tell him nearly where
'tis ; but these young men — they should live
to my time of life, and then they'd see how
clever they were at five-and-twenty ! And
yet he's a projick, a real projick, and says
the oddest of rozums. ' Ah, Grammer,' he
said at another time. ' Let me tell you that
Everything is Nothing. There's only Me
and Not Me in the whole world.' And
he told me that no man's hands could help

I20 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

what they did, any more than the hands of

a clock Yes, he's a man of strange

meditations, 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. At last she went on, " Don't
tell your father or mother, miss, if I let
you know 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 w^hen I was there cleaning, he
said, ' Grammer, you've a large brain — a
very large organ of brain,' he said. 'A
woman's is usually four ounces less than a
man's ; but yours is man's size.' Well, then
— hee, hee ! — after he'd flattered me a bit

VI. THE WOODLANDERS. 121

like that, he said he'd give me ten pounds
to have me as a natomy after my death.
Well, knowing I'd no chick nor chiel left,
and nobody with any interest in me, I
thought, faith, if I can be of any use to
my fellow-creatures after I'm gone they are
welcome to me ; so I said I'd think it over,
and would most likely agree and take the
ten pounds. Now^ this is a secret, miss,
between us two. The money 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 do it ? 1
wish you hadn't told me."

" I wish I hadn't — if you don't like to
know it, miss. But you needn't mind.
Lord, hee, hee ! I shall keep him waiting
many a year yet, bless ye ! "

" I hope you will, I am sure."

The girl thereupon fell into such deep
reflection that conversation languished, and

122 THE WOODLANDERS. CH. vi.

Grammer Oliver taking her candle wished
Miss Melbury good-night.

The latter s eyes rested on the distant
glimmer, around which she allowed her
reasoning fancy to play in vague eddies
that shaped the doings of the philosopher
behind that light on the lines of intelli-
gence just received. It was strange to her
to come back from the world to Little
Hintock and find in one of its nooks, like
a tropical plant in a hedgerow, a nucleus
of advanced ideas and practices which had
nothine in common with the life around.
Chemical experiments, anatomical projects,
and metaphysical conceptions had found a
strange home here.

Thus she remained thinking, the imagined
pursuits of the man behind the light inter-
mingling with conjectural sketches of his
personality, till her eyes fell together with
their own heaviness, and she slept.

CHAPTER VII.

Kaleidoscopic dreams of a weird alche-
mlst-sureeon, Grammer Oliver's skeleton,
and the face of Giles Winterborne, brought
Grace Melbury to the morning of the next
day. It was fine. A north wind was
blowing — that not unacceptable compromise
between the atmospheric cutlery of the
eastern blast and the spongy gales of the
west quarter. She looked from her window
in the direction of the light of the previous
evening, and could just discern through the
trees the shape of the surgeon's house.
Somehow, In the broad, practical daylight,

124 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

that unknown and lonely gentleman seemed
to be shorn of much of the interest which
had invested his personality and pursuits in
the hours of darkness, and as Grace's dressing
proceeded he faded from her mind.

Meanwhile Winterborne, though half-
assured of her father's favour, was rendered
a little restless by Miss Melbury's behaviour.
Despite his shy self-control, he could not help
looking continually from his own door towards
the timber-merchant's in the probability of
somebod)''s emergence therefrom.

His attention was at length justified by
the appearance of two figures, that of Mr.
Melbury himself, and Grace beside him.
They stepped out in a direction towards
the densest quarter of the wood, and
Winterborne walked contemplatively behind
them, till all three were soon under the trees.

Althouofh the time of bare boughs had
now set in, there w^ere sheltered hollows

VII. THE WOODLANDERS. 125

amid the HIntock plantations and copses in
which a more tardy leave-taking than on
windy summits was the rule with the foliage.
This caused here and there an apparent
mixture of the seasons ; so that in some of
the dells they passed by holly-berries in full
red growing beside oak and hazel whose
leaves were as yet not far removed from
green, and brambles whose verdure was rich
and deep as in the month of August. To
Grace these well-known peculiarities were as
an old painting restored.

Now could be beheld that change from the
handsome to the curious which the features
of a wood undero^o at the ingfress of the
winter months. Angles were taking the
place of curves, and reticulations of sur-
faces— a change constituting a sudden lapse
from the ornate to the primitive on Nature's
canvas, and comparable to a retrogres-
sive step from the art of an advanced

126 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

school of painting to that of the Pacific
Islander.

\\^interborne followed, and kept his eye
upon the two figures as they threaded their
way through these sylvan masses. Mr.
Melbury's long legs, his gaiters drawn in
to the bone at the ankles, his slight stoop,
his habit of ofettincr lost in thought and
arousine himself with an exclamation of
" Hah ! " accompanied with an upw^ard jerk
of the head, composed a personage recognis-
able by his neighbours as far as he could be
seen. It seemed as if the squirrels and birds
knew him. One of the former would occa-
sionally run from the path to hide behind the
arm of some tree, which the little animal
carefully edged round pari passu with
Melbury and his daughter's movement
onward, assuming a mock manner, as
though he were saying, ''Ho, ho ; you are
only a timber-merchant, and carry no gun ! "

VII. THE WOODLANDERS. 127

They went noiselessly over mats of starry-
moss, rustled through interspersed tracts of
leaves, skirted trunks with spreading roots,
whose mossed rinds made them like hands
wearing green gloves ; elbowed old elms
and ashes with great forks, in which stood
pools of water that overflowed on rainy days,
and ran down their stems in green cascades.
On older trees still than these huge lobes of
fungi grew like lungs. Here, as everywhere,
the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life
what it is, was as obvious as it could be
among the depraved crowds of a city slum.
The leaf was deformed, the curve was
crippled, the taper was interrupted ; the
lichen ate the vigour of the stalk, and the
ivy slowly strangled to death the promising
sapling.

They dived amid beeches under which
nothing grew, the younger boughs still
retaining their hectic leaves, that rustled in

128 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

the breeze with a sound almost metallic, like
the sheet-iron foliage of the fabled Jarnvid
wood. Some flecks of white in Grace's
drapery had enabled Giles to keep her and
her father in view till this time ; but now he
lost sight of them, and was obliged to follow
by ear — no difficult matter, for on the line of
their course every wood-pigeon rose from its
perch with a continued clash, dashing its
wings against the branches with well-nigh
force enough to break every quill. By
taking the track of this noise he soon came
to a stile.

Was it worth while to go further ? He
examined the doughy soil at the foot of the
stile, and saw amoncrst the larcre sole-and-
heel tracks an impression of a slighter kind,
from a boot that was obviously not local, for
Winterborne knew all the cobblers' patterns
in that district, because they were very few
to know. The mud-picture was enough

VII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 129

to make him swing himself over and
proceed.

The character of the woodland now-
changed. The bases of the smaller trees
were nibbled bare by rabbits, and at divers
points heaps of fresh-made chips, and the
newly-cut stool of a tree, stared white
through the undergrowth. There had been
a large fall of timber this year, which ex-
plained the meaning of some sounds thai
soon reached him.

A voice was shouting Intermittently in a
sort of human bark, remindinof Giles that
there was a sale of trees and faggots that
very day. Melbury would naturally be
present. Thereupon WInterborne remem-
bered that he himself wanted a few faggots,
and entered upon the scene.

A large group of buyers stood round the
auctioneer, or followed him when, between
his pauses, he wandered on from one lot of

VOL. I. K

I30 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

plantation produce to another, like some
philosopher of the Peripatetic school deliver-
ing his lectures in the shady groves of the
Lyceum. His companions were timber-
dealers, yeomen, farmers, villagers, and
others ; mostly woodland men, who on that
account could afford to be curious in their
walking-sticks, which consequently exhibited
various monstrosities of vegetation, the chief
being corkscrew shapes in black and white
thorn, brought to that pattern by the slow
torture of an encircling woodbine during
their growth, as the Chinese have been said
to mould human beings into grotesque toys
by continued compression in Infancy. Two
women, wearing men's jackets on their
gowns, conducted in the rear of the halting-
procession a pony-cart containing bread and
cheese, with a barrel of strong ale for the
select, and cider in milking-pails, into
which anybody dipped who chose.

VII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 131

The auctioneer adjusted himself to
circumstances by usin::^ his walking-stick
as a hammer, and knocked down the lot on
any convenient object that took his fancy,
such as the crown of a little boy's head, or
the shoulders of a bystander who had no
business there except to taste the brew ; a
proceeding which would have been deemed
humorous but for the air of stern rimditv
which the auctioneer's face preserved, tend-
ing to show that the eccentricity was a result
of that absence of mind which is eno^endered
by the press of affairs, and no freak of
fancy at all.

Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the
rest of the Peripatetics, and Grace beside
him, clinging closely to his arm ; her modern
attire looking almost odd where everything
else was old-fashioned, and throwing over
the familiar garniture of the trees a homeli-
ness that seemed to demand improvement

K 2

132 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP-

by the addition of a few contemporary
novelties also. Grace seemed to regard the
selling with the interest which attaches
to memories revived after an interval of
obliviousness.

Winterborne went and stood close to
them ; the timber-merchant spoke, and
continued his buying ; Grace merely smiled.
To justify his presence there Winterborne
began bidding for timber and faggots that
he did not want, pursuing the occupation in
an abstracted mood, in which the auctioneer's
voice seemed to become one of the natural
sounds of the woodland.

A few flakes of snow descended, at the
sight of which a robin, alarmed at these
signs of imminent winter, and seeing that no
offence was meant by the human invasion,
came and perched on the tip of the faggots
that were being sold, and looked into the
auctioneer's face, whilst waiting for some

VII. THE WOODLANDERS. 133

chance crumb from the bread-basket. Stand-
ing a Httle behind Grace, Winterborne
observed how one flake would sail down-
ward and settle on a curl of her hair, and
how another would choose her shoulder,
and another the edore of her bonnet, which
took up so much of his attention that his bid-
dings proceeded incoherently ; and when
the auctioneer said every now and then,
with a nod towards him, ''' Yours, ]\Ir.
Winterborne,'' he had no idea whether he
had bought faggots, poles, or log-wood.

He regretted that her father should show
such inequalities of temperament as to keep
Grace tightly on his arm to-day, when he
had quite lately seemed anxious to recognise
their betrothal as a fact. And thus musing,
and joining in no conversation with other
buyers except when directly addressed, he
followed the assemblage hither and thither
till the end of the auction, when Giles for

134 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

the first time realised what his purchases
had been. Hundreds of faggots, and divers
lots of timber, had been set down to him,
when all he had required had been a few
bundles of spray for his man Robert
Creedle's use in baking and lighting fires.

Business being over, he turned to speak
to the timber-merchant. But Melbury's
manner was short and distant; and Grace too
looked vexed and reproachful. Winterborne
then discovered that he had been unwittingly
bidding against her father, and picking up his
favourite lots in spite of him. With a very
few words they left the spot, and pursued
their way homeward.

Giles was extremely blank at what he had
done, and remained standing under the trees,
all the other men having strayed silently
away. He saw Melbury and his daughter
pass down a glade without looking back.
While they moved slowly through it a lady

VII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 135

appeared on horseback in the middle distance,
the hne of her progress converging upon that
of Melbury's. They met, Melbury took off
his hat, and she reined in her horse. A
conversation was evidently in progress
between Grace and her father and this
equestrian, in whom he was almost sure
that he recognised ]\Irs. Charmond, less by
her outline than by the livery of the groom
who had halted some yards off.

The interlocutors did not part till after
a prolonged pause, during which much
seemed to be said. When Melbury and
Grace resumed their walk it was with
something of a lighter tread than before.

Winterborne then pursued his own course
homeward. He was unwilling to let coldness
grow up between himself and the Melburys
for any trivial reason, and in the evening he
went to their house. On drawing near the
gate his attention was attracted by the sight

136 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

of one of the bedrooms blinking into a state
of illumination. In it stood Grace lighting
several candles, her right hand elevating the
taper, her left hand on her bosom, her face
thoughtfully fixed on each wick as it kindled,
as if she saw in every flame's growth the rise
of a life to maturity. He wondered what
such unusual brilliancy could mean to-night.

On getting indoors he found her father
and stepmother in a state of suppressed
excitement, which at first he could not
comprehend.

" I am sorry about my biddings to-day,"
said Giles. " I don't know what I was
doing. I have come to say that any of
the lots you may require are yours.''

"Oh, never mind — never mind," replied
the timber merchant with a slight wave of
his hand. '' I have so much else to think
ot that I nearly had forgot it. Just now,
too, there are matters of a different kind

vii. THE WOODLANDERS. 137

from trade to attend to, so don't let it
concern ye."

As the timber-merchant spoke, as it were,
down to him from a higher plane than his
own, Giles turned to Mrs. Melbury.

" Grace is oroinc^ to the House to-morrow,"
she said quietly. " She is looking out her
thino^s now. I dare sav she is wanting me
this minute to assist her." Thereupon Mrs.
iNIelbury left the room.

Nothing is more remarkable than the in-
dependent personality of the tongue now
and then. Mr. INIelbury knew that his
words had been a sort of boast. He decried
boasting, particularly to Giles ; yet whenever
the subject was Grace, his judgment resigned
the ministry of speech in spite of him.

Winterborne felt surprise, pleasure, and
also a little apprehension at the news.
He repeated Mrs. Melbury's words.

'•' Yes," said paternal pride, not sorry to

138 THE WOQDLANDERS. chap.

have dragged out of him what he could
not In any circumstances have kept In.
" Comlne home from the woods this after-
noon we met Mrs. Charmond out for a
ride. She spoke to me on a Httle matter of
business and then got acquainted with Grace.
'Twas wonderful how she took to Grace In a
few minutes ; that freemasonry of education
made 'em close at once. Naturally enough
she w^as amazed that such an article — ha —
ha ! — could come out of my house. At
last It led on to Mis'ess Grace belno^ asked
to the House. So she's busy hunting up her
frills and furbelows to go In." As Giles
remained In thought without responding,
Melbury continued : " But I'll call her down
stairs ? "

" No, no ; don't do that, since she's busy,"
said WInterborne.

Melbury, feeling from the young man's
manner that his own talk had been too much

VII. THE WOODLANDERS. 139

at Giles and too little to him, repented at
once. His face changed, and he said, in
lower tones, with an effort : " She's yours,
Giles, as far as I am concerned."

" Thanks — my best thanks, sir. But I
think, since it is all right between us about
the biddings, that 111 not interrupt her now.
I'll step homeward, and call another time."

On leaving the house he looked up at the
bedroom aealn. Grace, surrounded bv a
sufficient number of candles to answer all
purposes of self-criticism was standing before
a cheval glass that her father had lately
bought expressly for her use ; she was
bonneted, cloaked, and cfloved, and o^lanced
over her shoulder into the mirror, estimat-
ing her aspect. Her face was lit with the
natural elation of a young girl hoping to
inaugurate on the morrow an intimate
acquaintance with a new, interesting, and
powerful friend.

CHAPTER VHI.

The inspiriting appointment which had
led Grace Melbury to indulge in a six-candle
illumination for the arrangement of her attire
carried her over the ground the next
morning with a springy tread. Her sense
of being properly appreciated on her own
native soil seemed to brighten the atmosphere
and herbage around her, as the elow-worm's
lamp irradiates the grass. Thus she moved
along, avessel of emotion, going to empty
itself on she knew not what.

Twenty minutes' w^alking through copses,
over a stile, and along an upland law^n,

CH. VIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 141

brought her to the verge of a deep glen, in
which Hintock House appeared, immediately
beneath her eye. To describe it as standing
in a hollow would not express the situation
of the manor-house ; it stood in a hole. But
the hole was full of beauty. From the spot
which Grace had reached, a stone could easily
have been thrown over or into the birds'-
nested chimneys of the mansion. Its w^alls
were surmounted by a battlemented parapet ;
but the grey lead roofs were quite visible
behind it, with their gutters, laps, rolls,
and skylights, together with incised letter-
ings and shoe-patterns cut by idlers
thereon.

The front of the house was an ordinary
manorial presentation of Elizabethan windows,
mullioned and hooded, worked in rich snuff-
coloured freestone from local quarries. The
ashlar of the walls, where not overgrown
with ivy and other creepers, was coated

142 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

with lichen of every shade, intensifying its
luxuriance with its nearness to the ground
till, below the plinth, it merged in moss.

Above the house to the back was a dense
plantation, the roots of whose trees were
above the level of the chimneys. The cor-
responding high ground on which Grace
stood was richly grassed, wuth only an old
tree here and there. A few sheep lay about,
which as they ruminated looked quietly into
the bedroom windows.

The situation of the house, prejudicial to
humanity, was a stimulus to vegetation, on
which account an endless shearing of the
heavy-armed ivy went on, and a continual
lopping of trees and shrubs. It was an edifice
built in times when human constitutions were
damp-proof, when shelter from the boisterous
was all that men thought of in choosing a
dwelling-place, the insidious being beneath
their notice ; and its hollow site was an ocular

VIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 143

reminder by Its unfitness for modern lives of
the fragility to which these have declined.

The highest architectural cunning could
have done nothing to make Hintock House
dry and salubrious ; and ruthless ignorance
could have done little to make it un-
plcturesque. It was vegetable nature's own
home ; a spot to inspire the painter and poet
of still life — If they did not suffer too much
from the relaxing atmosphere — and to draw
groans from the gregariously disposed.

Grace descended U;c green escarpment by
a zigzag path Into the drive, which swept
round beneath the slope. The exterior of
the house had been familiar to her from her
childhood, but she had never been Inside, and
the approach to knowing an old thing In a
new way was a lively experience.

It was with a little flutter that she was
shown in ; but she recollected that Mrs.
Charmond would probably be alone. Up to

144 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

a few days before this time that lady had
been accompanied in her comings, stayings,
and goings by a relative, believed to be her
aunt ; latterly, however, these two ladies had
separated, owing, it was supposed, to a quarrel ;
and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate.
Being presumably a woman who did not care
for solitude, this deprivation might possibly
account for her sudden interest in Grace.

Mrs. Charmond was at the end of a gallery
opening from the hall when Miss Melbury
was announced, and saw her through the
glass doors between them. She came forward
with a smile on her face, and told the young
o-irl it was eood of her to come.

"Ah! you have noticed those," she said,
seeing that Grace's eyes were attracted b)^
some curious objects against the walls.
" They are man-traps. My husband was a
connoisseur in man-traps and spring-guns
and such articles, collecting them from all his

VIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 145

neighbours. He knew the histories of all
these — which gin had broken a man's leg
which eun had killed a man. I don't like
them here; but I've never yet given direc-
tions for them to be taken away.'' She
added playfully, " Man-traps are of rather
ominous significance where a person of ou r
sex lives, are they not ? "

Grace was bound to smile ; but that side
of womanliness was one which her inex-
perience had no great zest in contemplating.

" They are interesting, no doubt, as relics
of a barbarous time happily past," she said,
looking thoughtfully at the varied designs of
the instruments.

" Well, we must not take them too
seriously," said Mrs. Charmond with an in-
dolent turn of her head, and they moved
on inwards.

When she had shown her visitor different
articles in cabinets that she deemed likely to

VOL. I. L

146 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

interest her, some tapestries, wood carvings,
ivories, miniatures, and so on — always with
a mien of listlessness which might either
have been constitutional, or partly owing to
the situation of the place — they sat down
to an early cup of tea.

''Will you pour it out, please? Do," she
said, leaning back in her chair, and placing
her hand above her forehead, while her
almond eyes — those long eyes so common
to the angelic legions of early Italian art —
became longer, and her voice more lan-
guishing. She showed that oblique-mannered
softness which Is perhaps most frequent In
women of darker comiplexlon and more
lymphatic temperament than Mrs. Char-
mond's was ; women who lingeringly smile
their meanings to men rather than speak
them, who Inveigle rather than prompt, and
take advantage of currents rather than steer.

*' I am the most Inactive woman when I

VIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 147

am here," she said. " I think sometimes I
was born to live and do nothing, nothing,
nothing but float about, as we fancy we do
sometimes in dreams. But that cannot be
really my destiny, and I must struggle
against such fancies."

" I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion
— it is quite sad ! I wish I could tend you
and make you very happy."

There was something so sympathetic, so
responsive in the sound of Grace's voice,
that it impelled people to play havoc with
their customary reservations in talking to
her. " It is tender and kind of you to feel
that," said Mrs. Charmond. *' Perhaps I
have given you the notion that my languor
is more than it really is. But this place
oppresses me, and I have a plan of going
abroad a good deal. I used to go with a
relative, but that arrangement has dropped
through."

o

L 2

148 THE WOODLANDERS. chap-

Reofardinor Grace with a final Q^lance of
criticism she seemed to make up her mind
to consider the vouncr ^"irl satisfactory, and
continued :

''Now I am often impelled to record my
impressions of times and places. I have
often thouQ-ht of writinQ^ a jVeza Sentimental
Joitrney. But I cannot find energy enough
to do it alone. When I am at different
places in the south of Europe I feel a crowd
of ideas and fancies thronging upon me
continually ; but to unfold writing materials,
take up a cold steel pen, and put these im-
pressions down systematically on cold smooth
paper — that I cannot do. So I have thought
that if I always could have somebody at my
elbow with whom I am in sympathy, I might
dictate any ideas that come into my head.
And directly I had made your acquaintance
the other day it struck me that you would suit
me so well. Would vou like to undertake it?

VIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 149

You might read to me, too, if desirable.
Will you think it over, and ask your parents
if they are willing ? "

''Oh, yes," said Grace. '"I am almost
sure they would be very glad."

'' You are so accomplished, I hear ; I
should be quite honoured by such intellectual
company."

Grace, modestly blushing, deprecated any
such idea.

" Do you keep up your lucubrations at
Little Hintock ? "

'' Oh, no . . . Lucubrations are not un-
known at Little Hintock ; but they are
not carried on by me."

'* What — another student in that retreat ? "

" There is a surgeon lately come, and I
have heard that he reads a great deal — I
see his light sometimes through the trees
late at night."

" Oh, yes — a doctor — I believe I was told

I50 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

of him. It is a strange place for him to
settle in."

*'Itisa convenient centre for a practice,
they say. But he does not confine his
studies to medicine, It seems. He investi-
gates theology, and metaphysics, and all
sorts of subjects."

*' What Is his name ? "

'' Fitzplers. He represents a very old
family, I believe, the FItzpIerses of
Buckbiiry- Fitzplers — not a great many miles
from here."

'' I am not sufficiently local to know the
history of the family. I was never In
the country till my husband brought me
here."

Mrs. Charmond did not care to pursue
this line of investigation. Whatever myster-
ious merit might attach to family antiquity,
it was one which her adaptable, wandering,
weltbih^gerliche nature had grown tired of

VIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 151

caring about — a peculiarity that made her
a contrast to her neighbours.

'• It Is of rather more importance to know
what the man is himself than what his family
is," she said, " If he Is going to practise upon
us as a surgeon. Heaven send him skill 1
Have you seen him ? "

Grace had not. " I think he Is not a
very old man/' she added.

" Has he a wife ? "

'' I am not aware that he has."

"Well, I hope he will be useful here. I
must get t o know him when I come back.
It will be very convenient to have a medical
man — if he is clever — in one's own parish.
I get dreadfully nervous sometimes, living
in such an outlandish place ; and Sherton is
so far to send to. Xo doubt you feel Hintock
to be a great change after watering-place
ife."

" I do. But it Is home. It has its

J52 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

advantao^es and its disadvantaores." Grace
was thinkinor less of the solitude than
of the attendant circumstances.

They chatted on for some time, Grace
being set quite at her ease by her entertainer.
^Irs. Charmond was far too well-practised a
woman not to know that to show a marked
patronage to a sensitive young girl who
would probably be very quick to discern it
was to demolish her dignity rather than to
establish it in that young girl's eyes. So
being violently possessed with her idea of
making use of this gentle acquaintance, ready
and waiting at her own door, she took great
pains to win her confidence at starting.

Just before Grace's departure the two
chanced to pause before a mirror which
reflected their faces in immediate juxta-
position, so as to bring into prominence
their resemblances and their contrasts.
Both looked attractive as glassed back by

VIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 153

the faithful reflector ; but Grace's countenance
had the effect of making ]\Irs. Charmond
appear more than her full age. There are
complexions which set oft" each other to great
advantage, and there are those which
antaoronlse, the one killino- or damaorino- Its
neighbour unmercifully.

This was unhappily the case here. Mrs.
Charmond fell Into a meditation, and replied
abstractedly to a cursory remark of her
companion's. However she parted from
her young friend In the kindliest tones, pro-
mising to send and let her know as soon as
her mind was made up on the arrangement
she had suo-aested.

When Grace had ascended nearly to the
top of the adjoining slope she looked back,
and saw that [Mrs. Charmond still stood at
the door meditatively regarding her.

Often during the previous night, after his

154 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

call on the Melburys, Winterborne's thoughts
had run upon Grace's announced visit to
Hintock House. Why had he not proposed
to walk with her part of the way ? Some-
thing told him that she might not, on such
an occasion, have cared for his company.

He was still more of that opinion when,
standing in his garden next day, he saw her
go past on the journey with such a pretty
pride in the event. He wondered if her
fathers ambition, which had purchased for
her the means of intellectual light and
culture far beyond those of any other native
of the village, would conduce to the flight
of her future interests above and away
from the local life which was once to her
movement of the the world.

Nevertheless, he had her father's per-
mission to win her if he could ; and to this
end it became desirable to brinof matters soon
to a crisis. If she should think herself too

VIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 155

good for him, he must let her go, and make
the best of his loss. The question was how-
to quicken events towards an issue.

He thought and thought, and at last
decided that as good a way as any would be
to give a Christmas party, and ask Grace
and her parents to come as chief guests.

These ruminations were occupying him
when there became audible a slio;ht knocking
at his front door. He descended the path,
and looked out, and beheld ]\Iarty South,
dressed for out-door work.

"Why didn't you come, ?vlr. Winter-
borne ?" she said. '"' I've been waiting there
hours and hours, and at last I thought I
must try to find you."

'' Bless my soul, I'd quite forgot," said
Giles.

What he had forcrotten was that there were
a thousand young fir-trees to be planted in a
neighbouring spot which had been cleared

15^ THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP

by the woodcutters, and that he had arranged
to plant them with his own hands. He had
a marvellous power of making trees grow.
Although he would seem to shovel in the
earth quite carelessly there was a sort of
sympathy between himself and the fir, oak,
or beech that he was operating on ; so that
the roots took hold of the soil in a few days.
When, on the other hand, any of the journey-
men planted, although they seemed to go
through an identically similar process, one
quarter of the trees would die away during
the ensuing August.

Hence Winterborne found delight in the
work even when, as at present, he contracted
to do it on portions of the woodland in which
he had no personal interest. Marty, who
turned her hand to anything, was usually the
one who performed the part of keeping the
trees in a perpendicular position whilst he
threw in the mould.

VIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 157

He accompanied her towards the spot.
being stimulated yet further to proceed with
the work by the knowledge that the ground
was close to the wayside alonof which Grace
must pass on her return from Hintock
House.

"You've a cold in the head, ]^Iarty," he
said as they walked. " That comes of
cutting off vour hair."

" I suppose it do. Yes ; I've three head-
aches going on in my head at the same time."
'*' Three headaches ! "

"Yes, ]\Ir. Winterborne ; a rheumatic
headache in my poll, a sick headache over
my eyes, and a misery headache in the
middle of my brain. However, I came out,
for I thouq-ht vou mic^ht be waitinq; and
grumbling like anything if I was not there."
The holes were already dug, and they set
to work. Winterborne's finsfers were
endowed with a gentle conjuror's touch in

158 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

spreading the roots of each httle tree,
resulting in a sort of caress under which the
delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their
proper directions for growth. He put most
of these roots towards the south-west ; for,
he said, in forty years' time, when some great
gale is blowing from that quarter, the trees
will require the strongest holdfast on that
side to stand against it and not fall.

'' How they sigh directly we put 'em
upright, though while they are lying down
they don't sigh at all," said Marty.

'* Do they ? " said Giles. " I've never
noticed It."

She erected one of the young pines into
Its hole, and held up her finger ; the soft
musical breathing Instantly set in which was
not to cease night or day till the grown
tree should be felled — probably long after
the two planters should be felled themselves.

*' It seems to me," the girl continued, '' as

VIII. THE WOOD LANDERS. 159

if they sigh because they are very sorry to
begin Hfe in earnest — just as we be."

"Just as we be?" He looked critically
at her. " You ought not to feel like that,
Marty."

Her only reply was turning to take up the
next tree ; and they planted on through
a great part of the day, almost without
another word. Winterborne's mind ran on
his contemplated evening-party, his abstrac-
tion being such that he hardly was conscious
of Marty's presence beside him.

From the nature of their employment, in
which he handled the spade and she merely
held the tree, it followed that he got good
exercise and she got none. But she was a
heroic eirl, and thoucrh her outstretched hand
was chill as a stone, and her cheeks blue,
and her cold worse than ever, she would not
complain whilst he was disposed to continue
work. But when he paused she said, " Mr.

i6o THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

Winterborne, can I run down the lane and
back to warm my feet ? "

" Why, yes, of course," he said, awakening
anew to her existence. " Though I was just
thinking what a mild day It Is for the sea-
son. Now I warrant that cold of yours Is
twice as bad as It was. You had no business
to chop that hair off, Marty ; It serves you
almost right. Look here, cut off home at
once."

"A run down the lane will be quite
enough."

''No It won't. You ought not to have
come out to-day at all."

" But I should like to finish the "

" Marty, I tell you to go home," said he
peremptorily. " I can manage to keep the
rest of them upright with a stick or some-
thing."

She went away without saying any more.
When she had eone down the orchard a

VIII. THE WOODLANDERS. i6i

little distance she looked back. Giles
suddenly went after her.

'' Marty, it was for your good that I was
rough, you know. But warm yourself in
your own way, I don't care."

When she had run off he fancied he dis-
cerned a woman's dress through the holly
bushes which divided the coppice from the
road. It was Grace at last, on her way back
from the interview with Mrs. Charmond-
He threw down the tree he was planting,
and was about to break through the belt of
holly when he suddenly became aware of
the presence of another man, who was look-
ing over the hedge on the opposite side of
the way upon the figure of the unconscious
Grace.

The stranger appeared as a handsome and
gentlemanly personage of six or eight and
twenty, and he was quizzing her through an
eyeglass. Seeing that Winterbornc was

VOL. I. M

i62 THE WOODLANDERS. CH. viii.

noticing him he let his glass drop with a
click upon the rail which protected the hedge,
and walked away In the opposite direction.

Giles knew in a moment that this must be
Mr. Fitzpiers. When he was gone Winter-
borne pushed through the holly, and emerged
close beside the Interesting object of their
contemplation.

CHAPTER IX.

" I HEARD the bushes move long before I
saw you," she began. '' I said first, ' it is
some terrible beast ' ; next, ' it is a poacher ' ;
next, ' it is a friend ! ' "

He regarded her with a slight smile,
weighing, not her speech, but the question
whether he should tell her that she had
been flatteringly watched by a gentleman.
He decided in the negative.

"You have been to the House i^" he
said. '* But I need not ask."' The fact was
that there shone upon Miss Melbury s
face a species of exaltation, which saw no

I^I 2

i64 THE VVOODLANDERS. CHAP.

environing details ; not even Giles's occupa-
tion ; only his bare presence.
" Why need you not ask ? "
" Your face is like the face of Moses when
he came down from the Mount."

She reddened a little and said, " How can
you be so profane, Giles Winterborne ? "

" How can you think so much of that
class of people ? Well, I beg pardon, I
didn't mean to speak so freely. How do
you like her house and her ? "

" Exceedingly. I had not been Inside the
walls since I was a child, when it used to be
let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond's late
husband bought the property. She is so
nice ! " And Grace fell into such an ab-
stracted eaze at the mental imao^e of Mrs.
Charmond and her niceness that It almost
conjured up a vision of that lady to Giles
himself.

'' She has onlv been here a month or two

IX. THE WOODLAXDERS. 165

it seems, and cannot stay much longer, be-
cause she finds it so lonely and damp in
winter. She is s^oincr abroad. Only think,
she would like m.e to go with her ! "

Giles's features stiffened a little at the
news. " Indeed ; what for ? But I won't
keep you standing here. Hoi, Robert I " he
cried to a swaying collection of old clothes
in the distance, which composed the figure
of Creedle, his man. '' Go on fiUinor in there

o

till I come back."

" I'm a coming, sir ; Tm a coming."
''Well, the reason is this/' continued she
as they went on together, " Mrs. Charmond
has a delightful side to her character — a
desire to record her impressions of travel,
like Alexandre Dumas and Mery, and Sterne
and others. But she cannot find enerory

o ^

enough to do it herself.'' And Grace pro-
ceeded to explain Mrs. Charmond's proposal
at large. " My notion is that Mery's style

i66 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

will suit her best, because he writes in that
soft, emotional, luxurious way she has,"
Grace said musingly.

''Indeed!" said Winterborne, sighing.
" Suppose you talk over my head a little
longer, Miss Grace Melbury."

*' Oh, I didn't mean it ! " she said repent-
antly looking into his eyes. " And as for
myself, I hate French books. And I love
dear old Hintock, a7id the people in it, fifty
times better than all the Continent. But the
scheme ; I think it an enchanting notion,
don't you, Giles ? "

'' It is well enough in one sense,
but It will take you away," said he,
mollified.

'' Only for a short time. We should
return in May."

'* Well, Miss Melbury ; it is a question
for your father."

Winterborne walked with her nearly to

IX. THE WOODLANDERS. 167

her house. He had awaited her coming,
mainly with the view of mentioning to her
his. proposal to have a Christmas party ;
but homely Christmas gatherings in the
jovial Hintock style seemed so primitive
and uncouth beside the lofty matters of
her converse that he refrained.

As soon as she was gone he turned back
towards the scene of his planting, and could
not help saying to himself as he walked,
that this engagement of his was a very un-
promising business. Her outing to-day had
not improved it. A woman who could go
to Hintock House, and be friendly with its
mistress ; enter into the views of its mistress,
talk like her, and dress not much unlike
her : why, she would hardly be contented
with him, a yeoman, immersed in tree plant-
ing, even though he planted them well.
" And yet she's a true-hearted girl," he
said, thinking of her words about Hintock.

i68 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

" I must bring matters to a point, and
there's an end of it."

When he reached the place of work he
found that Marty had come back, and
dismissing Creedle he went on planting
silently with the girl as before.

" Suppose, Marty," he said after a while,
looking at her extended arm, upon which
old scratches from briars showed themselves
purple in the cold wind, '' Suppose you
know a person, and want to bring that
person to a good understanding with
you, do you think a Christmas party of
some sort is a warming up thing, and
likely to be useful in hastening on the
matter ? "

" Is there to be dancinnr ? "

" There might be, certainly."

''Will He dance with Her?"

"Well, yes."

"Then it might bring things to a head,

IX. THE WOODLANDERS. 169

one way or the other, I won^t be the maid
to say which."

" It shall be done," said Winterborne,
not to her, though he spoke the words quite
loudly. And as the day was nearly ended,
he added, '' Here, ]\Iarty, I'll send up a
man to- plant the rest to-morrow. I've
other things to think of just now."

She did not inquire what other things,
for she had seen him walking with Grace
Melbury. She looked towards the western
sky, which was now aglow like some vast
foundry wherein new worlds were being
cast. Across it the bare bough of a tree
stretched horizontally, revealing every twig
against the evening fire, and showing in
dark profile every beck and movement of
three pheasants that were settling themselves
down on it in a row to roost.

" It will be fine to-morrow," said Marty,
observing them with the vermilion light

I70 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, '' for
they are a-croupied down nearly at the end
of the bough. If it were going to be stormy
they'd squeeze close to the trunk. The
weather is almost all they have to think of,
isn't it, Mr. Winterborne ? and so' they
must be lighter-hearted than we."

" I dare say they are," said Winterborne.

Before taking a single step in the pre
parations, Winterborne, w^ith no great hopes,
went across that evening to the timber-
merchant's to ascertain if Grace and her
parents would honour him with their
presence. Having first to set his nightly
gins in the garden, to catch the rabbits
that ate his winter-greens, his call was
delayed till just after the rising of the
moon, whose rays reached the Hintock
houses but fitfully as yet, on account of
the trees. Melbury was crossing his yard

IX. THE WOODLANDERS. 171

on his way to call on some one at the
larger village, but he readily turned and
walked up and down with the young man.

Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of
living on a much smaller scale than the
Melburys* did, would not for the world
imply that his invitation was to a gathering
of any importance. So he put it in the
mild form of "Can you come in for an
hour when you have done business, the da)-
after to-morrow^; and ]\Irs. and Miss Alel-
bury, if they have nothing more pressing
to do ? "

Melbury would give no answ^er at once.
''No, I can't tell you to-day," he said. '* 1
must talk it over with the women. As far
as I am concerned, my dear Giles, you know
I'll come with pleasure. But how do 1
know what Grace's notions may be ? You
see, she has been away amongst cultivated
folks a good while ; and now this acquaint-

172 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

ance with Mrs. Charmond — well, I'll ask
her. I can say no more."

When Winterborne was gone the timber-
merchant went on his way. He knew very
well that Grace, whatever her own feelings,
would either go or not go, according as he
sueeested ; and his instinct was, for the
moment, to suggest staying at home. His
errand took him near the church, and the
way to his destination was equally easy
across the churchyard or outside it. For
some reason or other he chose the former
way.

The moon was faintly lighting up the
grave-stones, and the path, and the front
of the building. Suddenly Mr. Melbury
paused, turned in upon the grass, and
approached a particular headstone, where
he read, "In memory of John Winterborne,"
with the subjoined date and age. It was
the grave of Giles's father.

IX. THE WOODLANDERS. 173

The timber-merchant laid his hand upon
the stone, and was humanised. "Jack, my
wronged friend!" he said, ''I'll be faithful
to my plan of making amends to thee."

When he reached home that evening,
he said to Grace and ]Mrs. Melbury, who
were working at a little table by the fire,
'' Giles wants us to go down and spend an
hour with him the day after to-morrow ;
and I'm thinking, that as 'tis Giles who
asks us, we'll go."

They assented without demur ; and the
timber-merchant sent Giles the next morning
an answer in the affirmative.

Winterborne, in his modesty, had men-
tioned no particular hour in his invitation to
the Melburys, though he had to the inferior
guests, therefore Mr. Melbury and his
family, expecting no other people, chose their
own time, which chanced to be rather early

174 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

In the afternoon, by reason of the somewhat
quicker despatch than usual of the timber-
merchant's business that day.

They showed their sense of the unimport-
ance of the occasion by w^alklng quite slowly
to the house, as if they were merely out
for a ramble, and going to nothing special
at all ; or at most Intending to pay a casual
call and take a cup of tea.

At this hour stir and bustle pervaded
the Interior of WInterborne's domicile from
cellar to apple-loft. He had planned an
elaborate hleh tea for six o'clock or there-
abouts, and a good roaring supper to come
on about eleven. Being a bachelor of rather
retiring habits, the whole of the preparations
devolved upon himself and his trusty man
and familiar Robert Creedle, who did every-
thing that required doing, from making
Giles's bed to catching moles in his field.
He was a survival from the days when

IX. THE WOODLAXDERS. 175

Giles's father held the homestead, and Giles
was a playing boy.

These two, with a certain dilatoriness
which appertained to both, were now in
the heat of preparation in the bakehouse,
expecting nobody before six o'clock.
Winterborne was standing before the brick
oven In his shirt-sleeves, tossing In thorn
sprays, and stirring about the blazing mass
with a long-handled, three-pronged, Beelze-
bub kind of fork, the heat shining out upon
his streaming face and making his eyes
like furnaces ; the thorns crackling and
sputtering ; while Creedle, having ranged
the pastry dishes In a row on the table till
the oven should be ready, was pressing out
the crust of a final apple-pie with a rolling-
pin. A great pot boiled on the fire ; and
through the open door of the back-kitchen
a boy was seen seated on the fender, empty-
Inor the snuffers and scourlnor the candle-

o o

176 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

Sticks, a row of the latter standing upside
down on the hob to melt out the grease.

Looking up from the rolling-pin, Creedle
saw passing the window first the timber-
merchant, in his second-best suit, next
Mrs. Melbury in her best silk, and behind
them Grace in the fashionable attire which,
lately brought home with her from the
Continent, she had worn on her visit to
Mrs. Charmond's. The eyes of the three
had been attracted through the window
to the proceedings within by the fierce
illumination which the oven threw out
upon the operators and their utensils.

" Lord, Lord ; if they baint come a'ready ! "
said Creedle.

*' No — hey ? " said Giles, looking round
aghast ; while the boy in the back-
Q^round waved a reeking candlestick in his
delight.

As there was no help for it Winterborne

IX. THE WOODLAXDERS. 177

hastily rolled down his shirt-sleeves and
went to meet them in the doorway.

" My dear Giles, I see we have made a
mistake in the time," said the timber-
merchant's wife, her face lengthening with
concern.

" Oh, It is not much difference. I hope
you'll come in."

" But this means a regular randyvoo ! "
said Mr. ]\Ielbury accusingly, as he glanced
round and pointed towards the viands in the
bakehouse v/ith his stick.

" Well, yes," said Giles.

'* And — not Great Hintock band, and
dancing, surely ? "

" I told three of 'em they might drop in
if they'd nothing else to do," Giles mildly
admitted.

*' Now, why the name didn't ye tell us
afore that 'twas crolncr to be a bounclnof kind
of thing ? How should I know what folk

VOL. I. N

178 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

mean If they don't say ? Now, shall we
come in, or shall we go home, and come
back-along in a couple of hours ? "

'' I hope you'll stay, if you'll be so good
as not to mind, now you are here ! I shall
have it all right and tidy in a very little
time. I ouo^ht not to have been so back-
ward ; but Creedle is rather slow."

Giles spoke quite anxiously for one of his
undemonstrative temperament ; for he feared
that if the Melburys once were back in their
own house they would not be disposed to
turn out again.

'''Tis we ouQ^ht not to have been so for-
ward ; that's what 'tis," said Mr. Melbury
testily. " Don't keep us here in your best
sitting-room ; lead on to the bakehouse, man.
Now we are here we'll help ye get ready for
the rest. Here, mis'ess, take off your things,
and help him out in his baking, or he won't
get done to-night. I'll finish heating the

IX. THE WOODLAXDERS. 179

oven, and set you free to go and skiver up
them ducks." His eye had passed with
pitiless directness of criticism into yet re-
moter recesses of Winterborne's awkwardly
built premises, where the aforesaid birds
were hanging.

"And I'll help finish the tarts," said
Grace cheerfully.

" I don't know about that," said her
father. " 'Tisn't quite so much in your
line as it is in your mother-law's and
mine."

" Of course I couldn't let you, Grace ! "
said Giles, with some distress.

" I'll do it, of course," said ^Irs. Melbury,
taking off her silk train, hanging it up to a
nail, carefully rolling back her sleeves, pin-
ning them to her shoulders, and stripping
Giles of his apron for her own use.

So Grace pottered idly about while her
father and his wife helped on the pre-

N 2

So THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

parations. A kindly pity of his household
management, which Winterborne saw in her
eyes whenever he caught them, depressed
him much more than her contempt would
have done.

Creedle met Giles at the pump after a
while, when each of the others was absorbed
in the difficulties of a cidsine based on uten-
sils, cupboards, and provisions that were
strange to them. He groaned to the young
man in a whisper, " This is a bruckle het,
maister, I'm much afeard ! Who'd ha'
thought they'd ha' come so soon ! "

The bitter placidity of Winterborne's look
hinted the misgivings he did not care to ex-
press. "Have you got the celery ready?"
he asked quickly.

'' Now, that's a thincr I never could mind ;
no, not if you'd pay me in silver and gold ! "
said Creedle. ''And I don't care who the
man is, I says that a stick of celery that

IX. THE WOODLANDERS. i8i

isn't scrubbed with the scrubbing-brush, is
not clean."

''Very well, very well! I'll attend to it.
You eo and Qfet 'em comfortable indoors."

He hastened to the garden, and soon re-
turned, tossinof the stalks to Creedle, who
w^as still in a tragic mood. " If ye'd ha' mar-
ried, d'ye see, maister," he murmured, " this
calamity couldn't have happened to us ! "

Everything being at last under way, the
oven set, and all done that could insure the
supper turning up ready at some time or
other, Giles and his friends entered the par-
lour, where the Melburys again dropped into
position as guests, though the room was not
nearly so warm and cheerful as the blazing
bakehouse. Others now^ arrived, among
them Farmer Cawtree, and the hollow-turner,
and tea went off very well.

Grace's disposition to make the best ot
everything, and to wink at deficiencies in

iS2 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

Winterborne's way of living, was so uniform
and persistent that he suspected her of see-
incr even more deficiencies than he was aware
of. That suppressed sympathy which had
showed in her face ever since her arrival
told him as much too plainly.

'' This muddling style of housekeeping
is what youVe not lately been used to, I
suppose ? " he said when they were a
little apart.

'' No ; but I like it ; it reminds me so
pleasantly that everything here in dear old
Hintock is just as it used to be. The oil is
— not quite nice ; but everything else is."

"The oil?"

" On the chairs, I mean ; because it gets
on one's dress. Still, mine is not a new
one.

Giles found that the boy, in his zeal to
make things look bright, had smeared the
chairs with some greasy furniture-polish, and

IX. THE WOODLANDERS. 1S3

refrained from rubbing it dry in order not
to diminish the mirror-Hke effect that the
mixture produced as laid on. Giles apolo-
gised and scolded the boy ; but he felt that
the fates were ao^ainst him.

CHAPTER X.

Supper-time came, and with it the hot-
baked meats from the oven, laid on a snowy
cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated
with folds as in Flemish Last - Suppers.
Creedle and the boy fetched and carried with
amazing alacrity ; the latter, to mollify his
superior, and make things pleasant, express-
ing his admiration of Creedle's cleverness
when they were alone.

" I s'pose the time when you learnt all
these knowing things, Mr. Creedle, was
when you was in the militia ? "

''Well, yes. I seed the world that year

CH. X. THE WOODLANDERS. 185

somewhat, certainly, and mastered many arts
of strange dashing Hfe. Not but that Giles
has worked hard in helping me to bring
things to such perfection to-day. ' Giles,'
says I, though he's maister. Not that I
should call'n maister by rights, for his father
growed up side by side with me, as if
one mother had twinned us and been our
nourishinof."

*' I s'pose your memory can reach a long
way back into history, Mr. Creedle ? "

" Oh, yes. Ancient days, when there was
battles, and famines, and hang-fairs, and
other pomps, seem to me as yesterday. Ah,
many's the patriarch I've seed come and go
in this parish ! There, he's calling for more
plates. Lord, why can t 'em turn their
plates bottom upward for pudding, as we
bucks used to do in former days ! "

Meanwhile in the adjoining room Giles
was presiding in a half unconscious state.

i86 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

He could not get over the Initial failures in
his scheme for advancing his suit ; and hence
he did not know that he was eating mouth-
fuls of bread and nothing else, and continu-
ally snuffing the two candles next him till
he had reduced them to mere glimmers
drowned in their own grease. Creedle now
appeared with a specially prepared dish,
which he served by elevating the little
three-legged pot that contained it, and tilt-
ing the contents into a platter, exclaiming
simultaneously, '' Draw back, gentlemen and
ladies, please ! "

A splash followed. Grace gave a quick
involuntary nod and blink, and put her
handkerchief to her face.

" Good heavens, what did you do that for,
Creedle ? " said Giles, sternly, jumping up.

"'Tis how I do it when they baint
here, maister," mildly expostulated Creedle,
in an aside audible to all the company.

X. THE WOODLAXDERS. 187

"Well yes — but — " replied Giles. He
went over to Grace, and hoped none of
it had gone into her eye.

''Oh, no," she said. ''Only a sprinkle
on my face. It was nothing."

" Kiss It and make it well," gallantly
observed ^Ir. Cawtree.

Miss IMelbury blushed.

The timber-merchant replied quickly,
"Oh, it is nothing! She must bear these
little mishaps." But there could be dis-
cerned In his face something which said,
" I ought to have foreseen all this, and
kept her away."

Giles himself, since the untoward be-
ginning of the feast, had not quite liked
to see Grace present. He wished he had
not asked such people as Cawtree and
the hollow-turner. He had done It, In
dearth of other friends, that the room
might not appear empty. In his mind's

i88 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

eye, before the event, they had been the
mere background or padding of the scene ;
but somehow in the reahty they were the
most prominent personages there.

After supper they played cards ; Cawtree
and the hollow-turner monopolising the
new packs for an interminable game, in
which a lump of chalk w^as incessantly
used — a game those two always played
wherever they were, taking a solitary
candle and going to a private table in a
corner with the mien of persons bent on
weighty matters. The rest of the company
on this account were obliged to put up
with old packs for their round game, that
had been lying by in a drawer ever since
the time that Giles's grandmother was
alive. Each card had a great stain in the
middle of its back, produced by the touch
of generations of damp and excited thumbs,
now fleshless in the grave ; and the kings

THE WOODLANDERS.

and queens wore a decayed expression of
feature, as if they were rather an im-
pecunious dethroned race of monarchs
hidinor in obscure slums than real reo^al
characters. Every now and then the com-
paratively few remarks of the players at
the round game were harshly intruded on
by the measured jingle of Farmer Cawtree
and the hollow-turner from the back of
the room : —

"And r will hold' a wa'-ger with you'
That air these marks' are thirt'-y-two ! "

accompanied by rapping strokes with the
chalk on the table ; then an exclamation,
an argument, a dealing of the cards ; then
the commencement of the rhymes anew.

The timber-merchant showed his feel-
ings by talking with a reserved weight in
his words, and by praising the party in
a patronising tone, when Winterbornc

I90 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

expressed his fear that he and his were
not enjoying themselves.

*' Oh yes, yes; pretty much. What
handsome glasses those are ! I didn't
know you had such glasses in the house.
Now, Lucy [to his wife], you ought to
get some like them for ourselves." And
when they had abandoned cards, and
Winterborne was talking to Melbury by
the fire, it was the timber-merchant who
stood with his back to the mantel in a
proprietary attitude ; from which post of
vantage he critically regarded Giles's
person, rather as a superficies than as a
solid with ideas and feelings inside it ;
saying, *' What a splendid coat that one
is you have on, Giles. I can't get such
coats. You dress better than I."

After supper there was a dance, the
bandsmen from Great Hintock having
arrived some time before. Grace had been

X. THE WOODLANDERS. 191

away from home so long, and was so
drilled In new dances, that she had
forgotten the old figures, and hence did
not join In the movement. Then Giles
felt that all was over. As for her, she
was thinking, as she watched the gyrations,
of a very different measure that she had
been accustomed to tread with a bevy of
sylph-lIke creatures In muslin, In the music-
room of a laro^e house, most of whom
were now moving In scenes widely removed
from this, both as regarded place and
character.

A woman she did not know came and
offered to tell her fortune with the
abandoned cards. Grace assented to the
proposal, and the woman told her tale
unskilfully, for want of practice, as she
declared.

Mr. Melbury was standing by, and
exclaimed contemptuously, " Tell her

192 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

fortune, Indeed ! Her fortune has been
told by men of science — what do you call
'em ? Phrenologists. You can't teach her
anything new. She's been too far among
the wise ones to be astonished at anything
she can hear among us folks In HIntock.''

At last the time came for breaking up,
INIelbury and his family being the earliest
to leave, the two card-players still pursuing
their game doggedly in the corner, where
they had completely covered Giles's
mahogany table with chalk scratches. The
Melburys walked home, the distance being
short and the night clear.

''Well, Giles is a very good fellow,"
said Mr. Melbury, as they struck down
the lane under bouehs which formed a
black filigree in which the stars seemed
set.

" Certainly he is," said Grace, quickly,
and In such a tone as to show that he

X. THE WOODLANDERS. 193

Stood no lower, if no hicrher, in her regard
than he had stood before.

When they were opposite an opening
through which, by day, the doctor's house
could be seen, thev observed a lieht in
one of his rooms, although it was now
about two o'clock.

"The doctor is not abed yet," said
Mrs. Melbury.

'' Hard study, no doubt," said her husband.
" One would think that, as he seems to have
nothing to do about here by day, he could
at least afford to go to bed early at night.
'Tis astonishing how little we see of him."
Melbury's mind seemed to turn with
much relief to the contemplation of Mr.
Fitzpiers after the scenes of the evening.
"It is natural enough," he replied. "What
can a man of that sort fmd to interest
him in Hintock ? I don't expect he'll stay
here loner."

VOL. I. O

194 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

His thoughts then reverted to Giles's
party, and when they were nearly home
he spoke again, his daughter being a few
steps in advance : " It Is hardly the line
of life for a girl like Grace, after what
she's been accustomed to. I didn't foresee
that, in sending her to boarding-school, and
letting her travel, and what not, to make
her a good bargain for Giles, I should be
really spoiling her for him. Ah 'tis a
thousand pities ! But he ought to have
her — he ought ! "

At this moment the two exclusive, chalk-
mark men, having at last really finished
their play, could be heard coming along in
the rear, vociferously singing a song to
march-time, and keeping vigorous step to
the same in far-reaching strides —

" She may go, oh I
She may go, oh !
She may go to the devil for me !

X. THE WOODLANDERS. 195

The timber-merchant turned indignantly
to Mrs. Melbury. '' That's the sort of
society we've been asked to meet," he
said. " For us old folk it didn't matter ;
but for Grace — Giles should have known
better ! "

Meanwhile, in the empty house from
which the guests had just cleared out, the
subject of their discourse was walking from
room to room surveying the general dis-
placement of furniture with no ecstatic
feeling ; rather the reverse, indeed. At
last he entered the bakehouse, and found
there Robert Creedle sitting over the
embers, also lost in contemplation.
Winterborne sat down beside him.

''Well, Robert, you must be tired. You'd
better get on to bed."

'' Ay, ay, Giles — what do I call ye ?
Maister, I would say. But 'tis well

0 2

196 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

to think the day is done, when 'tis
done."

Winterborne had abstractedly taken the
poker, and with a wrinkled forehead was
ploughing abroad the wood-embers on the
wide hearth, till it was like a vast scorching
Sahara, with red-hot boulders lying about
everywhere. " Do you think it went off
well, Creedle ? " he asked.

"The victuals did; that I know. And
the drink did ; that I steadfastly believe,
from the holler sound of the barrels. Good
honest drink 'twere, the headiest mead I ever
brewed ; and the best wine that berries could
rise to ; and the briskest Horner-and-Cleeves
cider ever wTung down, leaving out the spice
and sperrits I put into it, while that egg-flip
would ha passed through muslin, so little
criddled 'twere. 'Twas good enough to
make any king's heart merry — ay, to make
his whole carcase smile ! Still, I don't deny

X. THE WOODLANDERS. 197

I'm afeard some things didn't go \vell with
He and his." Creedle nodded In a direction
which signified where the Melburys Hved.

'' I'm afraid, too, that It was a failure
there ! "

" If so, 'twere doomed to be so. Not but
what that snail might as well have come
upon anybody else's plate as hers."

^' What snail ? "

" Well, malster, there was a little small
one upon the edge of her plate when I
brought It out ; and so It must have been
in her few leaves of winter-ereen."

'* How the deuce did a snail get there ?"

" That I don't know no more than the
dead ; but there my gentleman was."

" But, Robert, of all places, that was
wdiere he shouldn't have been."

" Well, 'twas his native home, come to
that ; and where else could we expect him to
be ? I don't care who the man is, snails and

198 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

caterpillars always will lurk in close to the
stump of cabbages in that tantalising way."

" He wasn't alive, I suppose ? " said Giles,
with a shudder on Grace's account.

*' Oh, no. He was well boiled. I warrant
him well boiled. God forbid that a live snail
should be seed on any plate of victuals that's
served by Robert Creedle. . . . But Lord,
there ; I don't mind 'em myself — them green
ones ; for they were born on cabbage, and
they've lived on cabbage, so they must be
inade of cabbage. But she, the close-mouthed
little lady, she didn't say a word about it ;
though 'twould have made good small con-
versation as to the nater of such creatures ;
especially as wit ran short among us
sometimes."

" Oh, yes — 'tis all over ! " murmured Giles
to himself, shaking his head over the gloom-
ing plain of embers, and lining his forehead
more than ever. " Do you know, Robert,"

X. THE WOODLANDERS. 199

he said, '' that she's been accustomed to
servants and everything superfine these
many years ? How, then, could she stand
our ways ? "

*' Well, all I can say is, then, that she
ought to hob-and-nob elsewhere. They
shouldn't have schooled her so monstrous
high, or else bachelor-men shouldn't give
randys, or if they do give 'em, only to
their own race."

*' Perhaps that's true," said Winterborne,
rising and yawning a sigh.

CHAPTER XL

'* 'Tis a pity — a thousand pities ! " her
father kept saying next morning at
breakfast, Grace being still in her
bedroom.

Here was the fact, which could not be
disguised : since seeing what an immense
change her last twelve months of absence
had produced in his daughter, after the
heavy sum per annum that he had been
spending for several years upon her educa-
tion, he was reluctant to let her marry
Giles Winterborne, indefinitely occupied as
woodsman, cider-merchant, apple-farmer, and

CH. XL THE WOODLANDERS. 201

what-not, even were she wilhng to marry
him herself.

But how could he, with any self-respect,
obstruct Winterborne's suit at this stage, and
nullify a scheme he had laboured to promote —
was, indeed, mechanically promoting at this
moment ? A crisis was approaching, mainly
as a result of his contrivances ; and it would
have to be met.

" She will be his wife, if you don't upset
her notion that she's bound to accept him as
an understood thing," said Mrs. Melbury.
** Bless you, she'll soon shake down here in
Hintock and be content with Giles's way of
living, which he'll improve with what money
she'll have from you. 'Tis the strangeness
after her orenteel life that makes her feel
uncomfortable at first. Why, when / saw
Hintock the first time I thought I never
could like it. But things gradually get
familiar, and stone floors seem not so very

202 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

cold and hard, and the hooting of owls not
so very dreadful, and loneliness not so very
lonely, after a while."

'' Yes, I believe ye. That's just it. I
know Grace will gradually sink down to our
level again, and catch our manners and w^ay
of speaking, and feel a drowsy content in
being Giles's wife. But I can't bear the
thought of dragging down to that old level
as promising a piece of maidenhood as ever
lived — fit to ornament a palace wi', that I've
taken so much trouble to lift up. Fancy her
white hands getting redder every day, and
her tongue losing its pretty up-country curl
In talking, and her bounding walk becoming
the regular HIntock shall-and-wamble."

" She may shall ; but she'll never wamble,"
replied his wife decisively.

When Grace came down stairs he com-
plained of her lying in bed so late ; not so
much moved by a particular objection to that

XI. THE WOODLANDERS. 203

form of indulgence as discomposed by these
other reflections.

The corners of her pretty mouth dropped
a Httle down. " You used to complain with
justice when I was a girl," she said ; '' but
I am a woman now, and can judge for
myself. .... But It Is not that ; It is
something else!" Instead of sitting down
she went outside the door.

He was sorry. The petulance that
relatives show towards each other is In
truth directed ao-alnst that Intancrlble Cause

o o

'which has shaped the situation no less for
the offenders than the offended, but Is too
elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor
humanity in irritated mood. Melbury fol-
lowed her. She had rambled on to the
paddock, where the white frost lay, making
the grass rustle like paper-shavings under
their feet ; and where starllni^s In flocks of
twenties and thirties were walking: about,

204 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

watched by a comfortable family of sparrows
perched in a line along the string-course of
the chimney, and preening themselves in the
rays of the sun.

'' Come in to breakfast, my girl," he said.
" And as to Giles, use your own mind.
Whatever pleases you will please me."

" I am promised to him, father ; and I
cannot help thinking that in honour I ought
to marry him, whenever I do marry."

He had a strong suspicion that somewhere
in the bottom of her heart there pulsed an
old simple indigenous feeling favourable to
Giles, though it had become overlaid with
implanted tastes. " Very well," he said.
'' But I hope I sha'n't lose you yet. Come
in to breakfast. What did you think of the
inside of Hintock House the other day ? "

'' I liked it much."

" Different from friend Winterborne's ? "

She said nothing ; but he who knew her

XJ. THE WOODLAXDERS. 205

was aware that she meant by her silence to
reproach him with drawing cruel com-
parisons.

" Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come
again — when, did you say ? "

'' She thought Tuesday ; but would send
the day before to let me know if It suited
her." And with this subject upon their lips
they entered to breakfast.

Tuesday came, but no message from
]\Irs. Charmond. Xor was there any on
Wednesday. In brief, a fortnight slipped by
v;ithout a sign, and It looked suspiciously
as If ^Irs. Charmond was not Q^olne further

o o

in the direction of " taking up " Grace
at present.

Her father reasoned thereon. Immediately
after his daughter's two Indubitable successes
with Mrs. Charmond — the interview in the
wood and the visit to the House — she had
attended Winterborne's party. Xo doubt

2o6 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

the out-and-out joviality of that gathering
had made it a topic in the neighbourhood,
and that every one present as guests had
been widely spoken of — Grace, with her
exceptional qualities, above all. What then
so natural as that Mrs. Charmond should
have heard the village news, and become
quite disappointed in her expectations of
Grace at finding she kept such company ?

Full of this /^Jj/ Jioc argument, Mr. Melbury
overlooked the infinite throng of other
possible reasons and unreasons for a woman
changing her mind. For instance, while
knowing that his Grace was attractive, he
quite forgot that Mrs. Charmond had also
great pretensions to beauty.

So it was settled in his mind that her
sudden mingling with the villagers at the
unlucky Winterborne's was the cause of her
most crrievous loss, as he deemed it, in the
direction of Hintock House.

XI. THE WOODLANDERS. 207

" 'Tis a great sacrifice ! " he would repeat
to himself. " I am ruininor her for conscience'
sake ! "

It was one morning later on, while these
things were agitating his mind, that some-
thing darkened the window just as they
finished breakfast. Looking up they saw
Giles in person, mounted on horseback, and
straining his neck forward, as he had been
doing for some time, to catch their attention
throuQ^h the window. Grace had been the
first to see him, and Involuntarily exclaimed,
" There he Is — and a new horse ! "

On their faces, as they regarded Giles,
were written their suspended thoughts and
compound feelings concerning him, could he
have read them through those old panes.
But he saw nothing : his features just now
were, for a wonder, lit up with a red smile
at some other Idea. So they rose from
breakfast and went to the door, Grace with

2o8 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

an anxious, wistful manner, her father in a
reverie, Mrs. IMelbury placid and inquiring.

"We have come out to look at your
horse," she said.

It could be seen that he was pleased at
their attention, and explained that he had
ridden a mile or two to try the animal's
paces. " I bought her," he added, with
warmth so severely repressed as to seem
indifference, '' because she has been used
to carry a lady."

Still ]\Ir. IMelbury did not brighten. Mrs.
Melbury said, " And is she quiet ? "

Winterborne assured her that there was
no doubt of it. '' 1 took care of that. She's
fifteen, and very clever for her age."

"Well, get off and come in," said Melbury
brusquely ; and Giles dismounted accordingly.

This event was the concrete result of
Winterborne's thoughts during the past
week or two. The want of success with his

XI. THE WOODLANDERS. 209

evening-party he had accepted in as philo-
sophic a mood as he was capable of ; but
there had been enthusiasm enough left in
him one day at Sherton Abbas market to
purchase this mare, which had belonged to a
neighbouring parson with several daughters,
and was offered him to carry either a gentle-
man or a lady, and to do odd jobs of carting
and agriculture at a pinch. This obliging
quadruped seemed to furnish Giles with a
means of reinstating himself in Melbury's
good opinion as a man of considerateness,
by throwing out equestrian possibilities to
Grace.

The latter looked at him with intensified
interest this morning, in the mood which is
altogether peculiar to woman's nature, and
which, when reduced into plain words, seems
as impossible as the penetrability of matter
— that of entertaining a tender pity for the
object of her own unnecessary coldness.

VOL. I. p

2IO THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

The Imperturbable poise which marked
Winterborne in sfeneral was enhvened now
by a freshness and animation that set a
brightness In his eye and on his cheek.
Mrs. Melbury asked him to have some
breakfast, and he pleasurably repHed that
he would join them, not perceiving that they
had all finished the meal, and that the note
piped by the kettle denoted It to be nearly
empty ; so that fresh water had to be
brought in, and a general renovation of the
table carried out. Neither did he know,
so full was he of his tender ulterior object
in buying that horse, how the morning was
slipping away, nor how he was keeplne the
family from dispersing about their duties.

Then he told throucrhout the humorous
story of the horse's purchase, looking par-
ticularly grim at some fixed object in the
room, a way he ahvays looked when he
narrated anything that amused him. While

XI. THE WOODLANDERS. 211

he was still thinkincr of the scene he had

o

described, Grace rose and said, " I have to
go and help my mother now, Mr. Winter-
borne."

** H'm ?" he ejaculated, turning his eyes
suddenly upon her.

She repeated her words with a slight
blush of awkwardness ; whereupon Giles,
becoming suddenly conscious, too conscious,
jumped up, saying, " To be sure, to be
sure ! " and wished them quickly good
morning.

Nevertheless he had upon the whole
strengthened his position, with her at least.
Time, too, was on his side, for (as her father
saw with some regret) already the homeliness
of Hintock life was fast becominQf effaced
from her observation as a singularity ; as
the momentary strangeness of a face
from which we have for years been separ-
ated insensibly passes off with renewed

p 2

12 THE WOODLANDERS. CH. xi

intercourse, and tones itself down into
Jentity with the Hneaments of the past.

Thus Mr. Melbury went out of the house
still unreconciled to the sacrifice of the gem
he had been at such pains in mounting.
He fain could hope, in the secret nether
chamber of his mind, that something would
happen, before the balance of her feeling
had quite turned in Winterborne's favour,
to relieve his conscience and preserve her
on her elevated plane.

CHAPTER XII.

It was a day of rather bright weather
for the season. Miss Melbury went out
for a morning walk, and her ever-regardful
father, having an hour's leisure, offered to
walk with her.

The breeze was fresh and quite steady,
filtering itself through the denuded mass of
twigs without swaying them, but making
the point of each ivy-leaf on the trunks
scratch its underlying neighbour restlessly.
Grace's lips sucked in this native air of
hers like milk. They soon reached a place
where the wood ran down into a corner,

214 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

and went outside it towards comparatively
open ground. Having looked round about,
they were intending to re-enter the copse
when a fox quietly emerged with a dragging
brush, trotted past them tamely as a
domestic cat, and disappeared amid some
dead fern. They walked on, her father
merely observing, after watching the animal,
" They are hunting somewhere near."

Further up they saw in the mid-distance
the hounds running hither and thither, as if
the scent lay cold that day. Soon divers
members of the hunt appeared on the scene,
and it was evident from their movements
that the chase had been stultified by general
puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of
the intended victim. In a minute a gentle-
man farmer panting with Actseonic excitement,
rode up to the two pedestrians, and Grace
being a few steps in advance he addressed
her, asking if she had seen the fox.

XII. THE WOODLANDERS. 215

"Yes," said she. "I saw him some time
ago — just out there."

" Did you cry Halloo ? "

'' I said nothing."

" Then why the devil didn't you, or get
the old buffer to do it for you ? " said the
man as he cantered away.

She looked rather disconcerted at this
reply, and observing her father's face saw
that it was quite red.

" He ought not to have spoken to ye like
that ! " said the old man in the tone of one
whose heart was bruised, though it was not
by the epithet applied to himself. "And he
wouldn't if he had been a eentleman. 'Twas
not the language to use to a woman of any
niceness. You so well read and cultivated —
how could he expect ye to go shouting a view-
halloo like a farm tomboy ! Hasn't it cost
me near a hundred a year to lift you out of
all that, so as to show an example to the

2i6 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

neighbourhood of what a woman can be ?
Grace, shall I tell you the secret of it ? 'Twas
because / was in your company. If a black-
coated squire or pa'son had been walking
with you instead of me he wouldn't have
spoken so."

** No, no, father ; there's nothing in you
rouQ^h or ill-mannered ! "

'' I tell you it is that! I've noticed, and
I've noticed it many times, that a woman
takes her colour from the man she's walking
with. The w^oman who looks an unquestion-
able lady when she's with a polished-up
fellow, looks a tawdry imitation article when
she's bobbing and nobbing with a homely
blade. You sha'n't be treated like that for
long, or at least your children sha'n't. You
shall have somebody to walk with you who
looks more of a dandy than I — please God
you shall ! "

" But, my dear father," she said, much

XII. THE WOODLANDERS. 217

distressed, " I don't mind at all. I don't
wish for more honour than I already have ! "

" A perplexing and ticklish possession is
a daughter," according to a Greek poet, and
to nobody was one ever more so than to
Melbury. As for Grace, she began to feel
troubled ; she did not perhaps wish, there
and then, to unambitiously devote her life
to Giles Winterborne, but she was more
and more uneasy at being the social hope
of the family.

"You would like to have more honour,
if it pleases me ? " asked her father in con-
tinuation of the subject.

Despite her feeling she assented to this.
His reasoninor had been not without wei^rht
upon her.

'' Grace," he said, just before they had
reached the house, " if it costs me my life
you shall marry well ! To-day has shown
me that whatever a young woman's niceness,

THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

she stands for nothing alone. You shall
marry well."

He breathed heavily, and his breathing
was caught up by the breeze, w^hich seemed
to sigh a soft remonstrance.

She looked calmly at him. '* And how
about j\Ir. Winterborne ? " she asked. " I
mention it, father, not as a matter of senti-
ment, but as a question of keeping faith."

The timber-merchant's eyes fell for a
moment. " I don't know — I don't know,"
he said. " 'Tis a trvino: strait. Well, well ;
there's no hurry. We'll wait and see how
he gets on."

That eveninfj he called her into his room,
a snug little apartment behind the large
parlour. It had at one time been part of the
bakehouse, with the ordinary oval brick oven
in the wall ; but Mr. Melbury in turning it
into an ofhce had built into the cavity an iron

XII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 219

safe, which he used for holdincr his private
papers. The door of the safe was now open,
and his kevs were hancfinsf from it.

'* Sit down, Grace, and keep me company,"
he said. '' You may amuse yourself by look-
ing over these." He threw out a heap of
papers before her.

" What are they ? " she asked.

''Securities of various sorts." He un-
folded them one by one. " Papers worth so
much money each. Xow here's a lot of
turnpike bonds, for one thing. Would you
think that each of these pieces of paper is
worth two hundred pounds ? "

'' No, indeed, if you didn't say so."

" 'Tis so then. Now here are papers of
another sort. They are for difterent sums
in the three per cents. Now these are
Port-Breedy Harbour bonds. We have
a great stake in that harbour, you know,
because I send oft' timber there. Open

220 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

the rest at your pleasure. They'll interest
ye."

" Yes, I will, some day," said she rising.

" Nonsense, open them now. You ought
to learn a little of such matters. A young
lady of education should not be ignorant of
money affairs altogether. Suppose you
should be left a widow some day, with your
husband's title deeds and investments thrown
upon your hands "

** Don't say that, father. Title deeds ; it
sounds so vain ! "

"It does not. Come to that, I have title
deeds myself. There, that piece of parch-
ment represents houses in Sherton Abbas."

" Yes, but — " She hesitated, looked at
the fire, and w^ent on in a low voice, "If
what has been arranged about me should
come to anything, my sphere will be quite
a middling one."

"Your sphere ought not to be middling,"

XII. THE WOODLANDERS. 221

he exclaimed. " You said you never felt
more at home, more in your element, any-
where than you did that afternoon with Mrs.
Charmond, when she showed you her house,
and all her knick-knacks, and made you stay
to tea so nicely in her drawing-room, surely
you did ! "

" Yes, I did say so," admitted Grace.

"Was it true ?"

'' Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeline
is less strong now, perhaps."

" Ah ! Now, though you don't see it, your
feeling at the time was the right one, because
your mind and body were just in full and
fresh cultivation, so that Qroino- there with her
was like meeting like. Since then you've
been staying with us, and have fallen back a
little, and so you don't feel your place so
strongly. Now do as I tell you, and look over
these papers, and see what you'll be worth
some day. For they'll all be yours, you

222 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

know ; Avho have I got to leave 'em to but
you ? Perhaps when your education is
backed up by what these papers represent,
and that backed up by another such a set and
their owner, men such as that fellow was this
morning may think you a little more than a
buffer's girl."

So she did as commanded, and opened
each of the folded representatives of hard
cash that her father put before her. To sow
in her heart cravings for social position was
obviously his strong desire, though in direct
antagonism to a better feeling which had
hitherto prevailed with him, and had, indeed,
only succumbed that morning during the
ramble.

She wished that she was not his worldly
hope ; the responsibility of such a position
was too crreat. She had made it for herself
mainly by her appearance and attractive
behaviour to him since her return. '* If I

XII. THE WOODLANDERS. 223

had only come home in a shabby dress, and
tried to speak roughly, this might not have
happened," she thought. She deplored less
the fact, however, than the contingencies

Her father then insisted upon her looking
over his cheque book and reading the
counterfoils. This also she obediently did,
and at last came to two or three which had
been drawn to defray some of the late ex-
penses of her clothes, board, and education.

" I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses
and waggons and corn ! " she said, looking
up sorrily.

'' I didn't want you to look at those ; I
merely meant to give you an idea of my
investment transactions. But if you do cost
as much as they, never mind. You'll yield
a better return."

" Don't think of me like that ! " she
begged. " A mere chattel."

" A what ? Oh, a dictionary word. Well,

224 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

as that's in your line I don't forbid it, even if
it tells against me," he said good-humouredly.
And he looked her proudly up and down.

A few minutes later G rammer Oliver
came to tell them that supper was ready,
and in orivinor the information she added
incidentally, '' So we shall soon lose the
mistress of Hintock House for some time,
I hear, Maister Melbury. Yes, she's going
off to foreign parts to-morrow, for the rest
of the winter months ; and be-chok'd if I
don't W'ish I could do the same, for my
wind-pipe is furred like a flue."

When the old woman had left the room,
Melbury turned to his daughter and said,
" So, Grace, you've lost your new friend,
and your chance of keeping her company
and writing her travels is quite gone
from ye ! "

Grace said nothing.

" Now," he w^ent on emphatically, " 'tis

XII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 225

Winterborne's affair has done this. Oh yes,
'tis. So let me say one word. Promise me
that you will not meet him again without
my knowledge."

" I never do meet him, father, either
without your knowledge or with It."

" So much the better. I don't like the
look of this at all. And I say it not out
of harshness to him, poor fellow, but out
of tenderness to you. For how could a
woman, brought up delicately as you have
been, bear the roughness of a life with
him ? "

She sighed ; it was a sigh of sympathy
with Giles, complicated by a sense of the
intractability of circumstances.

At that same hour, and almost at that
same minute, there was a conversation
about Winterborne in progress In the village
street, opposite Mr. Melbury's gates, where

VOL. I. Q

226 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP,

Timothy Tangs the elder and Robert Creedle
had accidentally met.

The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had
heard what was all over the parish, the skin
of his face being drawn two ways on the
matter — towards brightness in respect of it
as news, and towards concern in respect of
its bearings.

''Why that poor little lonesome thing,
Marty South, is likely to lose her father.
He was almost well, but is much worse
again ; a man all skin and grief he ever
were ; and If he leave Little Hintock for a
better land, won't it make some difference
to your good man Winterborne, neighbour
Creedle ? "

"Can I be a prophet in Hintock?" said
Creedle. " I was only shaping of such a
thing yesterday in my poor long-seeing
way! It is upon John South's life that all
Mr. Winterborne's houses hang. If so be

XII. THE WOODLANDERS. 227

South die and so make his decease, there-
upon the law ordains that the houses fall
without the least chance of absolution into
Her hands at the House. I told him so ;
but the words of the faithful be only as
wind ! "

O 2

CHAPTER XIII.

The news was true. The life — the one
fragile life — that had been used as a
measuring-tape of time by law, was in
danger of being frayed away. It was the
last of a group of lives which had served
this purpose, at the end of whose breathings
the small homestead occupied by South
himself, the larger one of Giles Winterborne,
and half a dozen others that had been in the
possession of various Hintock village families
for the previous hundred years, and were
now Winterborne's, would fall in and become
part of the encompassing estate.

CH. XIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 229

Winterborne walked up and down his
garden next day thinking of the contingency.
The sense that the paths he was pacing, the
cabbage-plots, the apple-trees, his dwelling,
cider-cellar, wring-house, stables, weather-
cock, were all slipping away over his head
and beneath his feet as if they were painted
on a magic lantern slide, was curious. In
spite of John South's late indisposition he
had not anticipated danger.

Whilst he was here in the garden some-
body came to fetch him. It was Marty
herself, and she showed her distress by her
unconsciousness of a cropped poll.

" Father is still so much troubled in his
mind about that tree," she said. ''You
know the tree I mean, Mr. Winterborne ?
the tall one in front of the house that he
thinks will blow down and kill us. Can you
come and see if you can persuade him out
oi^ his notion ? I can do nothing."

230 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

He accompanied her to the cottage, and
she conducted him up stairs. John South
was pillowed up in a chair between the bed
and the window, exactly opposite the latter,
towards which his face was turned.

'' Ah, neighbour Winterborne," he said.
" I wouldn't have minded if my life had
only been my own to lose ; I don't vallie it
in much of itself, and can let it go if 'tis
required of me. But to think what 'tis worth
to you, a young man rising in life, that do
trouble me ! It seems a trick of dishonesty
towards ye to go off at fifty-five ! I could
bear up, I know I could, if it were not for
the tree — yes, the tree 'tis that's killing me.
There he stands, threatening my life every
minute that the wind do blow. He'll come
down upon us, and squat us dead ; and what
will ye do when the life on your property
is taken away ! "

" Never you mind me — that's of no

xm. THE WOODLANDERS. 231

consequence," said Giles. '' Think of yourself
alone."

He looked out of the window in the
direction of the woodman's gaze. The tree
was a tall elm, familiar to him from child-
hood, which stood at a distance of two-
thirds its own heio^ht from the front of
South's dwellincr. Whenever the wind blew,
as it did now, the tree rocked, naturally
enough ; and the sight of its motion, and
sound of its sighs, had gradually bred the
terrifying illusion in the woodman's mind.
Thus he would sit all day, in spite of per-
suasion, watching its every sway, and listen-
ing to the melancholy Gregorian melodies
which the air wrung out of it. This fear
it apparently was, rather than any organic
disease, which was eating away the health
of John South.

As the tree waved South waved his head,
making it his fugleman with abject obudi-

232 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

ence. " Ah, when it was quite a small tree,"
he said, ''and I was a little boy, I thought
one day of chopping it off with my hook to
make a clothes-line prop with. But I put
off doing it, and then I again thought that
I would ; but I forgot it, and didn't. And
at last it got too big, and now 'tis my
enemy, and will be the death of me. Little
did I think, when I let that sapling stay,
that a time would come when it would
torment me, and dash me into my grave."

'' No, no," said Winterborne and Marty
soothingly. But they thought it possible
that it might hasten him into his grave,
though in another way than by falling.

'' I tell you what," added Winterborne ;
'' I'll climb up this afternoon, and shroud
off the lower boughs, and then it won't
be so heavy, and the wind won't affect
it so."

" She won't allow it — a strange woman

xm. THE WOODLAXDERS. 233

come from nobody knows where — she
won't have it done."

*• You mean Mrs. Charmond ? Oh, she
doesn't know there's such a tree on her
estate. Besides, shrouding is not felHng,
and I'll risk that much."

He went out, and when afternoon came
he returned, took a bill-hook from the
shed, and with a ladder climbed into the
lower part of the tree, where he began
lopping off — ''shrouding" as they called
it at Hintock — the lowest bouo-hs. Each
of these quivered under his attack, bent,
cracked, and fell into the hedge. Having
cut away the lowest tier he stepped off
the ladder, climbed a few steps higher,
and attacked those at the next level. Thus
he ascended with the progress of his work
far above the top of the ladder, cutting
away his perches as he v.^ent, and Icaving
nothing but a bare stem below him.

2M THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

The work was troublesome, for the tree
was large. The afternoon wore on, turning
dark and misty about four o'clock. From
time to time Giles cast his eyes across
towards the bedroom-window of South,
where, by the flickering fire in the
chamber, he could see the old man watch-
ing him, sitting motionless with a hand
upon each arm of the chair. Beside him.
sat Marty, also straining her eyes towards
the skyey field of his operations.

A curious question suddenly occurred to
Winterborne, and he stopped his chopping.
He was operating on another person's
property to prolong the years of a lease
by whose termination that person would
considerably benefit. In that aspect of
the case he doubted if he ought to go on.
On the other hand he was working to save
a man's life, and this seemed to empower
him to adopt arbitrary measures.

XIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 235

The wind had died down to a calm,
and while he was weighing the circum-
stances he saw cominor alonof the road
through the increasing mist a figure which,
indistinct as it was, he knew well. It
was Grace Melbury, on her way out from
the house, probably for a short evening
walk before dark. He arranged himself
for a greeting from her, since she could
hardly avoid passing immediately beneath
the tree.

But Grace, though she looked up and
saw him, was just at that time too full of
the words of her father to give him any
encouragement. The years-long regard
that she had had for him was not kindled
by her return into a flame of sufficient
brilliancy to make her rebellious. Think-
inor that she might not see him, he cried,
" Miss Melbury, here I am."

She turned up her head again. She

236 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

was near enough to see the expression of
his face, and the nails in his soles, silver-
bright with constant walking. But she
did not reply ; and dropping her glance
again went on.

Winterborne's face grew strange ; he
mused, and proceeded automatically with
his work. Grace meanwhile had not gone
far. She had reached a gate, whereon
she had leant sadly, and whispered to
herself, '' What shall I do ? "

A sudden fog came on, and she curtailed
her w-alk, passing under the tree again on
her return. Again he addressed her.
'' Grace," he said, when she was close to
the trunk, ''speak to me." She gazed
straight up, shook her head without
stopping, and went on to a little distance,
where she stood observing him from
behind the hedge.

Her coldness had been kindly meant.

XIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 237

If it was to be done, she had said to
herself, it should be begun at once.
While she stood out of observation Giles
seemed to recognise her meaning • with
a sudden start he worked on, climbing
higher into the sky, and cutting himself
off more and more from all intercourse
with the sublunary world. At last he
had worked himself so high up the elm,
and the mist had so thickened, that he
could only just be discerned as a dark
grey spot on the light grey zenith ; he
would have been altogether out of notice
but for the stroke of his bill-hook, and
the flight of a bough downward, and its
crash upon the hedge at intervals.

It was not to be done thus, after all :
plainness and candour were best. She
went back a third time ; he did not see
her now, and she lingeringly gazed up at
his unconscious figure, loth to put an end

238 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

to any kind of hope that might hve on
in him still.

"Giles — Mr. Winterborne." she said.

His work so rustled the boughs that
he did not hear.

*' Mr. Winterborne!" she cried again,
and this time he stopped, looked down,
and replied.

*' My silence just now was not accident,"
she said in an unequal voice. " My father
says it is better for us not to think too
much of that — engagement, or understand-
ing, between us, that you know of. I,
too, think that upon the whole he is right.
But we are friends, you know, Giles, and
almost relations."

''\^ery well," he answered, in an en-
feebled voice which barely reached down
the tree. " I have nothing to say, Grace —
I cannot say anything till I've thought a
while ! "

XIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 259

She added, with emotion in her tone,
" For myself I would have married you —
some day — I think. But I give way, for
I see it would be unwise.''

He made no reply, but sat back upon
a bough, placed his elbow in a fork, and
rested his head upon his hand. Thus he
remained till the fog and the night had
completely inclosed him from her view.

Grace heaved a divided sigh, with a
tense pause between, and moved onward,
her heart feeling uncomfortably big and
heavy, and her eyes wet. Had Giles,
instead of remaining still, immediately come
down from the tree to her, would she
have continued in that filial, acquiescent
frame of mind which she had announced
to him as final ? If it be true, as women
themselves have declared, that one of
their sex is never so much inclined to
throw in her lot with a man for good and

240 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

all as hve minutes after she has told him
such a thing cannot be, the probabilities
are that something might have been clone
by the appearance of Winterborne on the
ground beside Grace. But he continued
motionless and silent in that gloomy
Niflheim or fog-land which involved him,
and she proceeded on her way.

The spot seemed now to be quite
deserted. The lifjht from South's window
made rays on the fog, but did not reach
the tree. A quarter of an hour passed,
and all was blackness overhead. Giles
had not yet come down.

Then the tree seemed to shiver, then
to heave a sieh : a movement was audible,
and Winterborne dropped almost noiselessly
to the ground. He had thought the matter
out ; and having returned the ladder and
bill-hook to their places, pursued his way
homeward. He would not allow this

XIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 241

incident to affect his outer conduct any
more than the dano-er to his leaseholds
had done, and went to bed as usual.

Two simultaneous troubles do not always
make a double trouble ; and thus it came
to pass that Giles's practical anxiety about
his houses, which would have been enough
to keep him awake half the night at any
other time, was displaced and not re-
inforced by his sentimental trouble about
Grace Melbury. This severance was in
truth more like a burial of her than a
rupture with her, but he did not realise
so much at present ; even when he arose
in the morning he felt quite moody and
stern ; as vet the second note in the eamut
of such emotions, a distractinof regret for
his loss, had not made itself heard.

A load of oak timber was to be sent
away that morning to a builder whose works
were in a town many miles off. The trunks

VOL. I. K

2+2 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

were chained down to a heavy timber car-
riage with enormous red wheels, and four of
the most powerful of Melbury's horses were
harnessed in front to draw them.

The horses wore their bells that day.
There were sixteen to the team, carried on
a frame above each animal's shoulders, and
tuned to scale, so as to form two octaves,
running from the highest note on the right
or off-side of the leader to the lowest on the
left or near-side of the shaft-horse. Melbury
was amono; the last to retain horse-bells in
that neighbourhood ; for living at Little
Hintock, where the lanes yet remained as
narrow as before the days of turnpike roads,
these sound-signals were still as useful to
him and his neighbours as they had ever
been in former times. Much backing was
saved in the course of a year by the warning
notes they cast ahead ; moreover the tones
of all the teams in the district being known

XIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 243

to the carters of each, they could tell a long
way off on a dark night whether they were
about to encounter friends or strangers.

The fog of the previous evening still
lingered so heavily over the woods that the
morning could not penetrate the trees till
long after Its time. The load being a
ponderous one. the lane crooked, and the
air so thick, Winterborne set out, as he
often did, to accompany the team as far as
the corner, where It would turn Into a
wider road.

So they rumbled on, shaking the founda-
tions of the roadside cottages by the weight
of their progress, the sixteen bells chiming
harmoniously over all, till they had risen out
of the valley and were descending towards
the more open route, the sparks rising from
their creaking skid and nearly setting fire
to the dead leaves alongside.

Then occurred one of the very Incidents

R 2

244 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

against which the bells were an endeavour
to guard. Suddenly there beamed into their
eyes, quite close to them, the two lamps of
a carriage, haloed by the fog. Its approach
had been quite unheard by reason of their
own noise. The carriaQ;e was a covered
one, while behind it could be discerned
another vehicle laden with luggage.

Winterborne went to the head of the
team, and heard the coachman telling the
carter that he must turn back. The carter
declared that this was impossible.

" You can turn if you unhitch your string-
horses," said the coachman.

"It is much easier for you to turn than
for us," said Winterborne. " We've five
ton of timber on these wheels if we've
an ounce."

*' But I've another carriage with luggage
at my back."

Winterborne admitted the strength of the

XIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 245

argument. " But even with that," he said,
" you can back better than we. And you
ought to, for you could hear our bells
half a mile off."

'' And you could see our lights."
*'We couldn't, because of the fog."
" Well, our time's precious," said the
coachman haughtily. " You are only going
to some trumpery little village or other in
the neighbourhood, while we are going
straight to Italy."

" Driving all the way, I suppose ? " said
Winterborne sarcastically.

The contention continued in these terms
till a voice from the interior of the carriage
inquired what w^as the matter. It was a
lady's voice.

She was briefly informed of the timber
people's obstinacy ; and then Giles could
hear her telling the footman to direct the
timber people to turn their horses' heads.

246 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

The message was brought, and Winter-
borne sent the bearer back to say that he
begged the lady's pardon, but that he could
not do as she requested ; that though he
would not assert it to be impossible, it was
impossible by comparison with the slight
difficulty to her party to back their light
carriages. As fate would have it, the in-
cident wath Grace Melbury on the previous
day made Giles less gentle than he might
otherwise have shown himself, his confidence
in the sex being rudely shaken.

In fine, nothing could move him, and the
carriages were compelled to back till they
reached one of the sidings or turn-outs con-
structed in the bank for the purpose. Then
the team came on ponderously, and the
clanging of its sixteen bells as it passed
the discomfited carriages tilted up against
the bank, lent a particularly triumphant tone
to the team's progress — a tone which, in

XIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 247

point of fact, did not at all attach to its
conductor's feelings.

Giles walked behind the timber, and just
as he had got past the yet stationary car-
riages he heard a soft voice say, ''Who is
that rude man ? Not Melbury ? " The
sex of the speaker was so prominent in
the voice that Winterborne felt a pang of
regret.

" No, ma'am. A younger man, in a
smaller way of business in Little Hintock.
Winterborne is his name."

Thus they parted company. "Why, Mr.
Winterborne," said the waggoner when they
were out of hearing, " that was she — Mrs.
Charmond ! Who'd ha' thought it ? Wlrdt
in the world can a woman that does nothing
be cock-watching out here at this time o'
day for ? Oh, going to Italy^ — yes, to be
sure, I heard she was going abroad. She
can't endure the winter here."

248 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

Winterborne was vexed at the incident ;
the more so that he knew Mr. Melbury, in
his adoration of Hintock House, would be
the first to blame him, if it became known.
He accompanied the load to the end of the
lane, and then turned back with an intention
to call at South's to learn the result of the
experiment of the preceding evening.

It chanced that a few minutes before this
time Grace Melbury, who now rose soon
enough to breakfast with her father, in spite
of the unwontedness of the hour, had been
commissioned by him to make the same in-
quiry at South's. Marty had been standing
at the door when Miss Melbury arrived.
Almost before the latter had spoken, Mrs.
Charmond's carriages, released from the ob-
struction up the lane, came bowling along,
and the two girls turned to regard the
spectacle.

Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but

XIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 249

there was sufficient light for them to discern
her outHne between the carriage windows.
A noticeable feature in her tourmire was a
magnificent mass of braided locks.

" How well she looks this morning!" said
Grace, forgetting Mrs. Charmond's slight in
her generous admiration. ''Her hair so
becomes her worn that way. I have never
seen any more beautiful ! "

** Nor have I, miss," said Marty drily,
and unconsciously stroking her crown.

Grace watched the carriages with lingering
regret till they were out of sight. She then
learnt of Marty that South was no better.
Before she had come away Winterborne
approached the house, but seeing that one
of the two girls standing on the door-
step was Grace he suddenly turned back
again, and sought the shelter of his own
home till she should have gone away.

CHAPTER XIV.

The encounter with the carnages forced
Winterborne's mind back ao-ain to the
houses of his which would fall into Mrs.
Charmond's possession in the event of
South's death. He marvelled what could
have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and
other village people, to exchange their old
copyholds for life-leases. And he was much
struck with his father's negligence in not
insuring South's life.

After breakfast he went up stairs, turned
over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas
bag which lay between the mattress and

CH. XIV. THE WOODLANDERS. 251

the sacking. In this he kept his leases,
which had remained there unopened ever
since his father's death. It was the usual
hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such
documents. Winterborne sat down on the
bed, and looked them over. They were
ordinary leases for three lives, which a
member of the South family, some fifty
years before this time, had accepted of the
lord of the manor in lieu of certain copy-
holds and other rights, in consideration of
having the dilapidated houses rebuilt by
the said lord. They had come into his
father's possession chiefly through his
mother, who was a South.

Pinned to the corner of one of the in-
dentures was a letter, which Winterborne
had never seen before. It bore a remote
date, the handwriting being that of some
solicitor or agent, and the signature the
landholder's. It was to the effect that at

252 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

any time before the last of the stated Hves
should drop Mr. John Winterborne, or his
representative, should have the privilege
of adding his own and his son's life to the
life remaining on payment of a merely
nominal sum ; the concession being in con-
sequence of the elder Winterborne's consent
to demolish one of the houses and relin-
quish its site, which stood at an awkward
corner of the lane, and impeded the w^ay.

The house had been pulled down )ears
before. Why Giles's father had not taken
advantage of his privilege to insert his own
and his son's lives it was impossible to say.
In all likelihood death alone had hindered
him in the execution of that project, the
elder Winterborne havino^ been a man
w^ho took much pleasure in dealing with
house property, in his small way.

Since one of the Souths still survived
there was not much doubt that Giles could

XIV. THE WOODLANDERS. 253

do what his father had left undone, as far
as his own life was concerned. This possi-
bility cheered him much ; for by those
houses hung many things. Melbury's
doubt of the vouno^ man's fitness to be
the husband of Grace had been based not a
little on the precariousness of his holdings
in Little and Great Hintock. He resolved
to attend to the business at once, the fine
for renewal belno: a sum that he could
easily muster.

His scheme, however, could not be
carried out In a day ; and meanwhile he
would run up to South's as he had Intended
to do, to learn the result of the experiment
with the tree.

Marty met him at the door. " Well,
Marty," he said ; and was surprised to read
In her face that the case was not so hopeful
as he had imagined.

*' I am sorry for your labour," she said.

254 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

"It is all lost. He says the tree seems
taller than ever."

WInterborne looked round at it. Taller
the tree certainly did seem, the gauntness
of its now naked stem being more marked
than before.

"It quite terrified him when he first saw
what you had done to it this morning," she
added. "He declares it will come down
upon us and cleave us, like ' the sword of
the Lord and of Gideon.' "

" Well ; can I do anything else ? " asked
he.

'' The doctor says the tree ought to be
cut down."

"Oh — you've had the doctor?"

" I didn't send for him. Mrs. Charmond
before she left heard that father was ill,
and told him to attend him at her expense."

" That was very good of her. And he
says it ought to be cut down. We mustn't

XIV. THE WOODLAXDERS. 255

cut it down without her knowledge, I
suppose."

He went up stairs. There the old man
sat, staring at the now gaunt tree as if his
gaze were frozen on to its trunk. Unluckily
the tree waved afresh by this time, a wind
having sprung up and blown the fog away ;
and his eves turned with its wavines.

They heard footsteps — a man's, but of
a lighter weight than usual. " There is
Dr. Fitzpiers again," she said, and
descended. Presently his tread was heard
on the naked stairs.

]Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick chamber
as a doctor is wont to do on such occasions
and pre-eminendy when the room is that
of the humble cottager ; looking round
towards the patient with that preoccupied
gaze which so plainly reveals that he has
well-nigh forgotten all about the case and
the circumstances since he dismissed them

256 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

from his mind at his last exit from the same
apartm.ent. He nodded to Winterborne,
who had not seen him since his peep over
the hedge at Grace, recalled the case to
his thoughts, and went leisurely on to
where South sat.

Edred Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a
finely formed, handsome man. His eyes
were dark and impressive, and beamed with
the light either of energy or of susceptivlty
— it was difficult to say which ; It might
have been a little of both. That quick,
glittering, empirical eye, sharp for the
surface of things if for nothing beneath, he
had not. But whether his apparent depth
of vision were real, or only an artistic
accident of his corporeal moulding, nothing
but his deeds could reveal.

His face was rather soft than stern,
charming than grand, pale than flushed ;
his nose — if a sketch of his features be de

XIV. THE WOODLANDERS. 257

rigueur for a person of his pretensions —
was artistically beautiful enough to have
been worth modelling by any sculptor not
over busy, and was hence devoid of those
knottv irreofularities which often mean
Dovver ; while the classical curve of his
mouth was not without a looseness in its
close. Either from his readily appreciative
mien, or his reflective manner, his presence
bespoke the philosopher rather than the
dandy — an effect which was helped by the
absence of trinkets or other trivialities from
his attire, though this was more finished
and up to date than is usually the case
among rural practitioners.

Strict people of the highly respectable
class, knowing a little about him by report,
said that he seemed likely to err rather in
the possession of too many ideas than too
few ; to be a dreamy 'ist of some sort, or
too deeply steeped in some false kind of

VOL. I. s

158 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

ism. However this may be, it will be seen
that he was undoubtedly a somewhat rare
kind of gentleman and doctor to have
descended, as from the clouds, upon Little
Hintock.

*' This is an extraordinary case/' he said
at last to Winterborne, after examining
South by conversation, look, and touch,
and learning that the craze about the elm
w^as stronger than ever. " Come dow^n
stairs and I'll tell you what I think."

They accordingly descended, and the
doctor continued, '' The tree must be cut
down, or I won't answer for his life."

'' 'Tis Mrs. Charmond's tree ; and I sup-
pose we must get permission ? " said Giles.

" Oh — never mind whose tree it is — what's
a tree beside a life ! Cut it down. I have
not the honour of knowing Mrs. Charmond
as yet ; but I am disposed to risk that much
with her."

XIV. THE WOODLANDERS. 259

"'Tis timber," rejoined Giles. "They
never fell a stick about here without its
being marked first,, either by her or the
agent."

" Then we'll inauofurate a new era forth-

o

with. How long has he complained of the
tree .^ " asked the doctor of iMartv.

" Weeks and weeks, sir. The shape of it
seems to haunt him like an evil spirit. He
says that it is exactly his own age, that it
has got human sense, and sprouted up
when he was born on purpose to rule him,
and keep him as its slave. Others have
been like it afore in Hintock."

They could hear South's voice up stairs.
" Oh, he's rocking this way ; he must come !
And then my poor life, that's worth houses
upon houses, will be squashed out o' me.
Oh ! Oh ! "

'' That's how he goes on," she added.

"And he'll never look anywhere else but

s 2

26o THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

out of the window, and scarcely have the
curtains drawn."

" Down with it, then, and hang Mrs.
Charmond," said Mr. Fitzpiers. ** The best
plan will be to wait till the evening, when
it is dark, or early in the morning before he
is aw^ake, so that he doesn't see it fall, for
that would terrify him worse than ever.
Keep the blind down till I come, and then
I'll assure him, and show him that his
trouble is over."

The doctor departed, and they waited till
the evening. When it was dusk, and the
curtains drawn, Winterborne directed a couple
of woodmen to bring a cross-cut saw ; and
the tall threatening tree was soon nearly off
at its base. Next morning, before South
was awake, they went and lowered it
cautiously, in a direction away from the
cottage. It was a business difficult to do
quite silently, but it was done at last, and

XIV. THE WOODLANDERS. 261

the elm of the same birth-year as the
woodman's lay stretched upon the ground.
The weakest idler that passed could now
set foot on marks formerly made in the
upper forks by the shoes of adventurous
climbers only ; once inaccessible nests could
be examined microscopically ; and on sway-
ing extremities where birds alone had
perched the bystanders sat down.

As soon as it was broad davlio^ht the
doctor came, and Winterborne entered the
house with him. Marty said that her father
was wrapped up and ready, as usual, to be
put into his chair. They ascended the stairs,
and soon seated him. He began at once to
complain of the tree, and the danger to his
life, and Winterborne's house property in
consequence.

The doctor signalled to Giles, who went
and drew back the printed cotton curtains.
'' 'Tis gone, see," said Mr. Fitzpiers.

262 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

As soon as the old man saw the vacant
patch of sky in place of the branched column
so familiar to his gaze, he sprang up, speech-
less ; his eyes rose from their hollows till the
whites showed all round, he fell back, and
a bluish whiteness overspread him.

Greatly alarmed they put him on the bed.
As soon as he came a little out of his fit,
he gasped, '' Oh. it is gone ! — where —
where ? "

His whole system seemed paralysed by
amazement. They were thunderstruck at
the result of the experiment, and did all
they could. Nothing seemed to avail.
Giles and Fitzpiers went and came, but
uselessly. He lingered through the day,
and died that evening as the sun went
down.

'' D d if my remedy hasn't killed

him ! " murmured the doctor.

Dismissing the subject he went down

XIV. THE. WOODLANDERS. 263

Stairs. When going out of the house he
turned suddenly to Giles and said, "Who
was that young lady we looked at over the
hedge the other day ? "

Giles shook his head, as if he did not
remember.

CHAPTER XV.

When Melbury heard what had happened
he seemed much moved, and walked thought-
fully about the premises. On South's own
account he was genuinely sorry ; and on
Winterborne's he was the more grieved
in that this catastrophe had so closely
followed the somewhat harsh suggestion to
Giles to draw off from his daughter.

He was quite angry with circumstances
for so heedlessly inflicting on Giles a second
trouble when the needful one inflicted by
himself was all that the proper order of
events demanded. *' I told Giles's father

CH. XV. THE WOGDLAXDERS. 265

when he came into those houses not to
spend too much money on Hfehold property
held neither for his own Hfe nor his son's,"
he exclaimed ; " but he wouldn't listen to
me. x\nd now Giles has to suffer for it.'

"Poor Giles!" murmured Grace.

" Now, Grace, between us two, it is ver)-,
very remarkable. It is almost as if I had
foreseen this ; and I am thankful for your
escape, though I am sincerely sorry for
Giles. Had we not dismissed him already
we could hardly have found it in our hearts
to dismiss him now. So I say, be thankful,
ril do all I can for him as a friend ; but
as a pretender to the position of my son-
in-law, that can never be thought of more."

And yet at that very moment the im-
practicability to which poor Winterborne's
suit had been reduced was touching Grace's
heart to a warmer sentiment on his behalf
than she had felt for vears concerninor him.

266 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone
In the familiar house which had ceased to
be his ; taking a calm If somewhat dismal
survey of affairs. The pendulum of the
clock bumped every now and then against
one side of the case In which It swung, as
the muffled drum to his worldlv march.
Looking out of the window he could
perceive that a paralysis had come over
Creedle's occupation of manuring the garden,
owing, obviously, to a conviction that they
might not be living there long enough to
profit by next season's crop.

He looked at the leases again and the
letter attached. There was no doubt that
he had lost his houses by an accident which
might easily have been circumvented if he
had known the true conditions of his holding.
The time for performance had now lapsed
In strict law ; but why should not the inten-
tion be considered by the landholder when

XV. THE WOODLAXDERS. 267

she became aware of the circumstances, and
his moral right to retain the holdings for
the term of his life be conceded ?

His heart sank within him when he per-
ceived that, despite all the legal reciprocities
and safeguards prepared and written, the
upshot of the matter was that It depended
upon the mere caprice of the woman he
had met the day before In such an un-
fortunate way, whether he was to possess
his houses for life or no.

While he was sitting and thinking a step
came to the door, and ]\Ielbury appeared,
looking very sorry for his position. Winter-
borne welcomed him by a word and a nod
and went on with his examination of the
parchments. His visitor sat down.

''Giles," he said, "this Is very awkward,
and I am sorry for It. What are you going
to do ? "

Giles informed him of the real state of

268 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

affairs, and how barely he had missed avail-
ing himself of his chance of renewal.

''What a misfortune! Why was this
neglected ? Well, the best thing you can
do is to write and tell her all about it, and
throw yourself upon her generosity."

" I would rather not," murmured Giles.

** But you must," said Melbury.

In short, he argued so cogently that Giles
allowed himself to be persuaded, and the
letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and
sent to Hintock House, whence, as he knew,
it would at once be forwarded to her.

Melbury, feeling that he had done so
good an action in coming as to extenuate his
previous arbitrary conduct, went home ; and
Giles was left alone to the suspense of
waiting for a reply from the divinity who
shaped the ends of the Hintock population.
By this time all the villagers knew of the
ircumstances, and being well-nigh like one

XV. THE WOODLANDERS. 269

family a keen interest was the result all
round.

Everybody thought of Giles ; nobody
thought of Marty. Had any of them
looked in upon her during those moonlight
nights which preceded the burial of her
father thev would have seen the eirl abso-
lutely alone in the house with the dead man.
Her own chamber beinor nearest the stairs,
the coffin had been placed there for con-
venience ; and at a certain hour of the
night, when the moon arrived opposite the
window, its beams streamed across the still
profile of South, sublimed by the august
presence of death, and onward a few feet
further upon the face of his daughter, lying
in her little bed in the stillness of a repose
almost as dignified as that of her com-
panion— the repose of a guileless soul that
had nothing more left on earth to lose,
except a life which she did not over-value.

70 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

South was burled, and a week passed, and
Winterborne watched for a reply from Mrs.
Charmond. Melbury was very sanguine as
to its tenour ; but Winterborne had not told
him of the encounter w^ith her carriage,
when, if ever he had heard an affronted
tone on a woman's lips, he had heard it
on hers.

The postman's time for passing was just
after Melbury's men had assembled in the
spar-house ; and Winterborne, w^ho when
not busy on his own account would lend
assistance there, used to go out into the
lane every morning and meet the postman
at the end of one of the green rides through
the hazel-copse, in the straight stretch of
which his laden figure could be seen a long
w^ay off. Grace also was very anxious ;
more anxious than her father, more perhaps
than Winterborne himself This anxiety
led her into the spar-house on some pretext

XV. THE WOODLAXDERS. 271

or Other almost every morning whilst they
were awaltinor the answer.

Eleven times had Winterborne gone to
that corner of the ride, and looked up its
long straight slope through the wet greys of
winter dawn. But though the postman's
bowed figure loomed In view pretty regu-
larly, he brought nothing for Giles. On the
twelfth day the man of missives, while yet
in the extreme distance, held up his hand,
and Winterborne saw a letter in it. He
took It into the spar-house before he broke
the seal, and those who were there gathered
round him while he read, Grace lookincr in
at the door.

The letter was not from Mrs. Charmond
herself, but from her agent at Sherton.
Winterborne glanced it over and looked up.

" It's all over," he said.

'' Ah ! " said they all together.

" Her lawver is instructed to sav that Mrs.

272 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

Charmond sees no reason for disturbing the
natural course of things, particularly as she
contemplates pulling the houses down," he
said quietly.

" Only think of that ! " said several.

Winterborne had turned away, and said
vehemently to himself, "Then let her pull
"em down, and be d d to her ! "

Creedle looked at him with a face of seven
sorrows, saying, ' ' Ah, 'twas that sperrit that
lost 'em for ye, maister ! "

Winterborne subdued his feelings, and
from that hour, whatever they were, kept
them entirely to himself. Yet whatever the
value of taciturnity to a man among strangers,
it is apt to express more than talkativeness
when he dwells amono^ friends. The countrv-
man, who is obliged to judge the time of day
from changes in external nature, sees a
thousand successive tints and traits in the
landscape which are never discerned by him

XV. THE WOODLANDERS. 273

who hears the regular chime of a clock,
because they are never in request. In like
manner do we use our eyes on our taciturn
comrade. The infinitesimal movement of
muscle, curve, hair, and wrinkle, which
when accompanied by a voice goes unre-
garded, is watched and translated in the
lack of it, till virtually the whole surrounding
circle of familiars is charged with the re-
served one's moods and meanings.

So with Winterborne and his neighbours
after his stroke of ill-luck. He held his
tongue ; and they observed him, and knew
that he was discomposed.

Encountering Alelburyone day, his manner
was that of a man who abandoned all claims.
" I am glad to meet ye, Mr. Melbury," he
said, in a low voice, whose quality he endea-
voured to make as practical as possible. '' I
am afraid I shall not after this be able to
keep that mare I bought for the use of — a

VOL. I. T

THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

possible wife, and as I don't care to sell her,
I should like, if you don't object, to give
her to Miss Melbury. The horse is very
quiet, and would be quite safe for her."

Mr. Melbury was rather affected at this.
" You sha'n't hurt your pocket like that on
our account, Giles. Grace shall have the
horse, but I'll pay you what you gave for
her, and any expense you may have been
put to for her keep."

He would not hear of any other terms,
and thus it was arranged. They were now
opposite Melbury's house, and the timber-
merchant pressed Winterborne to enter,
Grace being out of the way.

'' Pull round the settle, Giles," said the
timber-merchant as soon as they were
within. " I should like to have a serious
talk with you."

Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne
frankly, and in quite a friendly way. He

XV. THE WOODLANDERS. 275

declared that he did not Hke to be hard on a
man when he was in difficulty ; but he really
did not see how Winterborne could marry his
daughter now, without even a house to take
her to.

Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness
of his situation, but from a momentary gasp
of hope — a feeling that he would like to know
Grace's mind from her own lips, he did not
speak out positively even then. He accord-
ingly departed somewhat abruptly, and went
home to consider whether he would seek to
bring about a meeting with her.

In the evening while he sat quietly ponder-
ing he fancied that he heard a scraping on
the wall outside his house. The boughs of a
monthly rose which grew there made such a
noise sometimes, but as no wind was stirring
he knew that it could not be the rose-tree.
He took up the candle and went out.
Nobody was near. As he turned the light

T 2

276 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

flickered on the whitewashed rough-cast of
the front, and he saw words written thereon
in charcoal, which he read as follows : —

"Oh, Giles, you've lost your dwelling-place,
And therefore, Giles, you'll lose your Grace."

Giles went indoors. He had his suspicions
as to the scrawler of those lines, but he could
not be sure. What filled his heart far more
than curiosity about their authorship was a
terrible belief that they were turning out to
be true, try to regain Grace as he might.
They decided the question for him. He sat
down and wrote a formal note to Melbury,
stating that he shared to the full Melbury's
view of his own and his daughter's promise,
made some years before ; he wished that it
should be considered as cancelled, and they
themselves quite released from any obligation
on account of it.

Having fastened up this their plenary

XV. THE WOODLANDERS. 277

absolution, he determined to get It out of
his hands, and have done with It ; to which
end he went off to ]\Ielbury's at once. It
was now so late that the family had all
retired ; he crept up to the house, thrust
the note under the door, and stole away as
silently as he had come.

Melbury himself was the first to rise the
next morning, and when he had read the
letter his relief was great, for he knew that
Giles could have made matters unpleasant if
he had chosen to work upon Grace. " \^ery
honourable of Giles, very honourable," he
kept saying to himself. " I shall not forget
him. Now to keep her up to her own true
level."

It happened that Grace went out for an
early ramble that morning, and to go In her
customary direction she could not avoid pass-
ing Winterborne's house. The morning sun
was shining flat upon Its white surface, and

278 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

the words, which still remained, were imme-
diately visible to her. She read them. Her
face flushed to crimson. She could see Giles
and Creedle talking together at the back ; the
charred spar-gad with which the lines had
been written lay on the ground beneath the
wall. Feeling pretty sure that Winterborne
would observe her action, she quickly went
up to the wall, rubbed out " lose " and in-
serted " keep " in its stead. Then she made
the best of her way home without looking
behind her. Giles could draw an inference
now if he chose.

There could not be the least doubt that
gentle Grace was warming to more sympathy
with, and interest in, Winterborne than ever
she had done while he was her promised
lover ; that since his misfortune those social
shortcomings of his, which contrasted so
awkwardly w^ith her later experiences of
life, had become obscured by the generous

XV. THE WOODLANDERS. 279

revival of an old romantic attachment to him.
Though mentally trained and tilled into
foreignness of view, as compared with her
youthful time, Grace was not an ambitious
girl, and might, if left to herself, have de-
clined upon Winterborne without much
discontent. Her feelings just now were
so far from latent that the writing on
the w^all had quickened her to an unusual
rashness.

Havinof returned from her walk she sat
at breakfast silently. When her stepmother
had left the room she said to her father, " I
have made up my mind that I should like
my engagement to Giles to continue."

Melbury looked much surprised.

'' Nonsense," he said sharply. *' You don't
know what you are talking about. Look
here."

He handed across to her the letter
received from Giles.

28o THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

She read it and said no more. Could he
have seen her write on the wall ? She did
not know. Fate, it seemed, would have it
this way, and there was nothing to do but
to acquiesce.

It was a few hours after this that Winter-
borne who, curiously enough, had not
perceived Grace writing, was clearing away
the tree from the front of South's late
dwelling. He saw Marty standing in her
doorway, a slim figure in meagre black,
almost w^ithout womanly contours as yet.
He went up to her and said :

'* Marty, why did you wTite that on my
wall last night .'* It was you, you know."

'' Because it was the truth."

'' Having prophesied one thing, why did
you alter it to another ? Your predictions
can't be worth much."

'' I have not altered it."

" But you have."

XV. THE WOODLANDERS. 28]

'^ No."

" It is altered. Go and see."

She went, and read that in spite of losing
his dwelling-place he would keep his Grace.
Marty came back surprised.

*' Well," she said. "Who can have
made such nonsense of it?"

" Who indeed ? " said he.

" I have rubbed it all out, as the point
of it is quite gone."

'' You'd no business to rub it out ; I
meant to let it stay a little longer."

"Some idle boy altered it no doubt,"
she murmured.

As this seemed very probable Winter-
borne said no more, and dismissed the
matter from his mind.

From this day of his life onward for a
considerable time Winterborne, thou^rh not
absolutely out of his house as yet, retired
into the background of human life and

282 THE WOODLANDERS. CH. xv.

action thereabout — a feat not particularly
difficult of performance anywhere when the
doer has the assistance of a lost prestige.
Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her
write, made no further sign, and the frail
barque of fidelity that she had thus timidly
launched was stranded and lost.

CHAPTER XVI.

Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the
hill, in a house of much less pretension,
both as to architecture and as to maQ^nitude,
than the timber merchant's. The latter had
without doubt been once the manorial
residence appertaining to the snug and
modest domain of Little Hintock, of which
the boundaries were now lost by its absorp-
tion into the adjoining estate of Mrs.
Charmond. Though the ^lelburys them-
selves were unaware of the fact, there was
every reason to believe — at least so the
parson said — that the owners of that little

284 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

manor had been Melbury s own ancestors,
the family name occurring in numerous
documents relating to transfers of land about
the time of the civil wars.

Mr. Fitzpiers's dwelling, on the contrary,
was small, box-like, and comparatively
modern. It had been occupied, and was in
part occupied still, by a retired farmer and
his wife, who, on the surgeon's arrival in
quest of a home, had accommodated him by
receding from their front rooms into the

o

kitchen quarter, w^hence they administered
to his wants, and emerged at regular inter-
vals to receive from him a not unwelcome
addition to their income.

The cottage and its garden were so re-
gular in their plan that they might have
been laid out by a Dutch designer of the
time of William and Mary. In a low, dense
hedge was a door, over which the hedge
formed an arch, and from the Inside of the

XVI. THE WOODLANDERS. 285

door a straight path, bordered with chpped
box, ran up the slope of the garden to the
porch, which was exactly in the middle of
the house-front, with two windows on each
side. Right and left of the path were first
a bed of gooseberry-bushes ; next of cur-
rant ; next of raspberry ; next of strawberry ;
next of old-fashioned flowers ; at the corners
opposite the porch being spheres of box re-
sembling a pair of school globes. Over the
roof of the house could be seen the orchard
on yet higher ground, and behind the
orchard the forest-trees, reaching up to the
crest of the hill.

Opposite the garden door and visible
from the parlour window w'as a swing-gate
leading into a field, across w-hich there ran
a footpath. The swing-gate had just been
re-painted, and on one fine afternoon, before
the paint was dry, and while gnats stuck
dying thereon, the surgeon was standing in

286 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

his room abstractedly looking out at the
different pedestrians who passed along that
route. Being of a philosophical stamp he
perceived that the character of each of
these travellers exhibited itself in a some-
what amusing manner by his or her method
of handling the gate.

As regarded the men there was not much
variety : they gave the gate a kick and
passed through. The women were more
contrasting. To them the sticky wood work
was a barricade, a disgust, a menace, a
treachery, as the case might be.

The first that he noticed was a bouncinQ-
young woman with her skirts tucked up and
her hair wild. Fitzpiers knew her as Suke
Damson. She grasped the gate without
looking, giving it a supplementary push with
her shoulder, when the white imprint drew
from her an exclamation in language not
too refined. She went to the green bank,

XVI. THE WOODLAXDERS. 287

sat down and rubbed herself in the grass,
cursing the while.

"Ha! ha! ha!" laucrhed the doctor.

The next was a girl with her hair cropped
short, in whom the surgeon recognised the
daughter of his late patient, the woodman
South. jNIoreover a black bonnet that she
wore by way of mourning unpleasantly re-
minded him that he had ordered a tree
felling which had caused her parent's death.
She walked in thought, and not recklessly ;
but her preoccupation led her to grasp
without suspicion the bar of the gate, and
touch it with her arm. Fitzpiers felt sorr\-
that she should have soiled that new black
frock, poor as it was, for it was probabl)-
her only one. She looked at her hand and
arm, seemed but little surprised, wiped off
the disfigurement with an unmoved face,
and as if without abandonincj her oricrinal
thoughts. Thus she went on her way.

288 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

Then there came over the green quite a
different sort of personage. She walked as
delicately as If she had been bred In town,
and as firmly as If she had been bred In
the country ; she seemed one who dimly
knew her appearance to be attractive, but
who retained some of the charm of Ig-
norance by forgetting self In a general
penslveness. She approached the gate.

To let such a creature touch It even with
the tip of her glove was to FItzpIers almost
like letting her proceed to tragical self-
destruction. He jumped up and looked for
his hat, but was unable to find the right one ;
glancing again out of the w^Indow he saw
that he was too late. Having come up she
looked at the gate, picked up a little stick,
and using it as a bayonet pushed open the
obstacle without touching It at all.

He steadily watched her out of sight,
recognising her as the very young lady

XVI. THE WOODLANDERS. 289

whom he had seen once before and been
unable to Identify. Whose could that emo-
tional face be ? All the others he had seen
in Hintock as yet oppressed him with their
crude rusticity ; the contrast offered by this
suggested that she hailed from elsewhere.

Precisely these thoughts had occurred to
him at the first time of seeing her ; but he
now went a little further with them, and
considered that as there had been no car-
riage lately in that spot she could not have
come a very long distance. She must be
somebody staying at Hintock House — pos-
sibly Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had
heard so much — at any rate an inmate ;
and this probability was sufficient to set a
mild radiance in the surgeon's somewhat
dull sky.

Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had
been perusing. It happened to be that of
a German metaphysician, for the doctor was

VOL. I. U

290 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

not a practical man, except by fits, and
much preferred the ideal world to the real,
and the discovery of principles to their
application. The young lady remained In
his thouo^hts. He mlg^ht have followed her ;

o o

but he was not constitutionally active, and
preferred a conjectural pursuit. However,
when he went out for a ramble just before
dusk he insensibly took the direction of
HIntock House, which was the way Grace
had been walkinof, her mind havlnof run on
Mrs. Charmond that day ; though she had
returned long since by another route.

Fitzpiers reached the edge of the glen,
overlooking the manor-house. The shutters
were shut, and only one chimney smoked.
The mere aspect of the place was enough
to inform him that Mrs. Charmond had
gone away, and that nobody else was stay-
ing there. Fitzpiers felt a vague disap-
pointment that the young lady was not

XVI. THE WOODLANDERS. 291

Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard so
much ; and without pausing longer to gaze
at a carcase from which the spirit had flown
he bent his steps homeward.

Later in the evening Fitzpiers was sum-
moned to visit a cottage -patient about two
miles distant. Like the majority of young
practitioners in his vicinity he was far from
having assumed the dignity of being driven
his rounds by a servant in a brougham
that flashed the sunlight like a mirror ; his
way of getting about was by means of a
gig which he drove himself, hitching the
rein of the horse to the gate-post, shutter-
hook, or garden - paling of the domicile
under visitation, or giving pennies to little
boys to hold the animal during his stay —
pennies which were well earned when the
cases to be attended were of a certain
cheerful kind that wore out the patience of
the little boys.

u 2

»92 THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

On this account of travelling alone the
night-journeys which Fitzpiers had fre-
quently to take were dismal enough, an
apparent perversity in nature ruling that
whenever there was to be a birth in a par-
ticularly inaccessible and lonely place that
event should occur in the night. The sur-
geon, having been of late years a town
man, hated the solitary midnight woodland
He was not altogether skilful with the
reins, and it often occurred to his mind
that if in some remote depths of the trees
an accident were to happen, his being alone
might be the death of him. Hence he
made a practice of picking up any country-
man or lad w^hom he chanced to pass by,
and under the disguise of treating him to
a nice drive obtained his companionship on
the journey, and his convenient assistance
in opening gates.

The doctor had started on his way out

XVI. THE WOODLAXDERS. 293

of the village on the night in question when
the light of his lamps fell upon the musing
form of Winterborne, walking leisurely along,
as if he had no object in life. Winterborne
was a better class of companion than the
doctor usually could get, and he at once
pulled up and asked him if he would
like a drive through the wood that fine
night.

Giles seemed rather surprised at the
doctor's friendliness, but said that he had
no objection, and accordingly mounted
beside JMr. Fitzpiers.

They drove along under the black
boughs which formed a network upon the
stars. Looking up as they passed under a
horizontal bough they sometimes saw objects
like large tadpoles lodged diametrically
across it, which Giles explained to be
pheasants at roost ; and they sometimes
heard the report of a gun, which reminded

»94 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

him that others knew what those tadpole
shapes represented as well as he.

Presently the doctor said what he had
been going to say for some time :

" Is there a young lady staying in this
neighbourhood — a very attractive girl —
w^ith a little white boa round her neck,
and white fur round her gloves ? "

Winterborne, of course, knew in a
moment that Grace, whom he had caught
the doctor peering at, was represented by
these accessories. With a wary grimness
induced by the circumstances, he evaded
an answer by saying, " I saw a young
lady talking to Mrs. Charmond the other
day ; perhaps it was she."

" It might have been," said Fitzpiers.
'' She is quite a gentlewoman — the one I
mean. She cannot be a permanent resi-
dent in Hintock, or I should have seen
her before. Nor does she look like one."

XVI. THE WOODLAXDERS. 295

*' She is not stavinc/ at Hintock House?"

*' No ; It Is closed.*'

** Then perhaps she Is staying at one
of the cottages, or farmhouses ? "

'* Oh no — you mistake. She was a
different sort of girl altogether." As Giles
was nobody FItzpIers treated him accord-
ingly, and rhapsodised to the night in
continuation :

" She mov^ed upon this earth a shape of brightness,
A power, that from its objects scarcely drew
One impulse of her being— in her lightness
Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,
Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue.
To nourish some far desert : she did seem
Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,
Like the bright shade of some immortal dream
Which walks, when tempests sleep, the wave of life's dark
stream."

The charm of the lines seemed to
Winterborne to be somehow the resuh
of his lost Love's charms upon Fitzplers.

*' You seem to be mightily In love with

ig6 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

her, sir," he said, with a sensation of heart-
sickness, and more than ever resolved not
to mention Grace by name.

'' Oh, no — I am not that, Winterborne ;
people living insulated, as I do by the
solitude of this place, get charged with
emotive fluid like a Leyden jar with
electric, for want of some conductor at
hand to disperse it. Human love is a
subjective thing — the essence itself of man,
as that great thinker Spinoza the philoso-
pher says — 2j)sa Jioniinis essentia — it is joy
accompanied by an idea which we project
against any suitable object in the line of
our vision, just as the rainbow iris is
projected against an oak, ash, or elm tree
indifferently. So that if any other young
lady had appeared instead of the one who
did appear. I should have felt just the
same interest in her, and have quoted
precisely the same lines from Shelley about

XVI. THE WOODLANDERS. 297

her, as about this one I saw. Such
miserable creatures of circumstance are
we all!"

" Well, it is what we call being in
love down in these parts, whether or no,"
said W'interborne.

" You are riQ^ht enouc^h if vou admit
that I am in love with something in my
own head, and no thing-in-itself outside
it at all."

" Is it part of a country doctor's duties
to learn that view of things, may I ask,
sir ? " said W'interborne, adopting the
Socratic elpojveia with such well-assumed
simplicity that Fitzpiers answered readily —

" Oh, no. The real truth is, Winter-
borne, that medical practice in places like
this is a very rule of thumb matter ; a
bottle of bitter stuff for this and that old
woman — the bitterer the better — com-
pounded from a few simple stereotyped

298 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP.

prescriptions ; occasional attendance at
births, where mere presence is almost
sufficient, so healthy and strong are the
people ; and a lance for an abscess now
and then. Investigation and experiment
cannot be carried pn without more
appliances than one has here — though I
have attempted a little."

Giles did not enter into this view of
the case ; what he had been struck with
was the curious parallelism between Mr.
Fitzpiers's manner and Grace's, as shown
by the fact of both of them straying into
a subject of discourse so engrossing to
themselves that it made them forget it
was foreign to him.

Nothing further passed between himself
and the doctor in relation to Grace till
they were on their way back. They had
stopped at a wayside inn for a glass
of brandy-and-cider hot, and when they

XVI. THE WOODLANDERS. 299

were again in motion Fitzpiers, possibly
a little warmed by the liquor, resumed the
subject by saying, " I should like very
much to know who that young lady was.''

''What difterence can it make, if she's
only the tree your rainbow falls on ? "

- Ha, ha ! True."

" You have no wife, sir ? "

*' I have no wife ; and no idea of one.
I hope to do better things than marry
and settle in Hintock. Not but that it is
well for a medical man to be married ;
and sometimes, begad, 'twould be pleasant
enough in this place, with the wind roar-
ing round the house, and the rain and the
boughs beating against it. I hear that
you lost your lifeholds by the death of
South ? "

" I did. I lost by that in more ways
than one."

They had reached the top of Hintock

-,oo THE WOODLANDERS. chap.

Lane or Street, if it could be called such
where three-quarters of the roadside con-
sisted of copse and orchard. One of the
tirst houses to be passed was Melbury's.
A light was shining from a bedroom window
facing lengthwise of the lane. Winterborne
glanced at it, and saw what was coming.
He had withheld an answer to the doctor's
inquiry, to hinder his knowledge of Grace.
But " who hath gathered the wind in his
fists ? who hath bound the waters in a
Q;arment ? " — he could not hinder what was
doomed to arrive, and might just as well
have been outspoken. As they came up
to the house Grace's figure was distinctly
visible, drawing the two white curtains
toofether w^hich were used here instead of
blinds.

''Why, there she is!" said Fitzpiers.
" How in the name of Heaven does she
come there ? "

XVI. THE WOODLANDERS. 301

"In the most natural way in the world.
It is her home. Mr. Melbury is her
father."

" Indeed — indeed — indeed I How comes
he to have a daughter of that sort ? "

Winterborne laughed coldly. '' Won't
money do anything," he said, " if you've
promising material to work upon ? Why
shouldn't a Hintock girl, taken early from
home, and put under proper instruction,
become as finished as any other young
lady, if she's got brains and good looks
to begin with ? "

" No reason at all why she shouldn't,
murmured the surgeon with reflective dis-
appointment. '' Only I didn't anticipate
quite that kind of origin for her."

''And you think an inch or two less of
her now." There was a little tremor in
Winterborne's voice as he spoke.

"Well," said the doctor with recovered

302 THE WOODLANDERS. ch. xvi.

warmth ; "I am not so sure that I think
less of her. At first it was a sort of
blow ; but dammy, I'll stick up for her.
She's charming, every inch of her ! "

'' So she is," said Winterborne. . . . '' But
not for me ! "

From this ambiguous expression of the
reticent woodlander, Dr. Fitzpiers inferred
that Giles disliked Miss Melbury, possibly
for some haughtiness in her bearing towards
him, and had, on that account, withheld her
name. The supposition did not tend to
diminish his admiration for her.

END OF VOL. I.

f

RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LONDON AND BUNGAY.

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