CHAPTER XXXI.

As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom of

the woodmen’s homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little began to

have ears for a rumor of the events out of which had grown the

timber-dealer’s troubles. It took the form of a wide sprinkling of

conjecture, wherein no man knew the exact truth. Tantalizing phenomena,

at once showing and concealing the real relationship of the persons

concerned, caused a diffusion of excited surprise. Honest people as the

woodlanders were, it was hardly to be expected that they could remain

immersed in the study of their trees and gardens amid such

circumstances, or sit with their backs turned like the good burghers of

Coventry at the passage of the beautiful lady.

Rumor, for a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in this

case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the hills, which,

with individual variations, made a mourner of Ariadne, a by-word of

Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy. There were rencounters

accidental and contrived, stealthy correspondence, sudden misgivings on

one side, sudden self-reproaches on the other. The inner state of the

twain was one as of confused noise that would not allow the accents of

calmer reason to be heard. Determinations to go in this direction, and

headlong plunges in that; dignified safeguards, undignified collapses;

not a single rash step by deliberate intention, and all against

judgment.

It was all that Melbury had expected and feared. It was more, for he

had overlooked the publicity that would be likely to result, as it now

had done. What should he do—appeal to Mrs. Charmond himself, since

Grace would not? He bethought himself of Winterborne, and resolved to

consult him, feeling the strong need of some friend of his own sex to

whom he might unburden his mind.

He had entirely lost faith in his own judgment. That judgment on which

he had relied for so many years seemed recently, like a false companion

unmasked, to have disclosed unexpected depths of hypocrisy and

speciousness where all had seemed solidity. He felt almost afraid to

form a conjecture on the weather, or the time, or the fruit-promise, so

great was his self-abasement.

It was a rimy evening when he set out to look for Giles. The woods

seemed to be in a cold sweat; beads of perspiration hung from every

bare twig; the sky had no color, and the trees rose before him as

haggard, gray phantoms, whose days of substantiality were passed.

Melbury seldom saw Winterborne now, but he believed him to be occupying

a lonely hut just beyond the boundary of Mrs. Charmond’s estate, though

still within the circuit of the woodland. The timber-merchant’s thin

legs stalked on through the pale, damp scenery, his eyes on the dead

leaves of last year; while every now and then a hasty “Ay?” escaped his

lips in reply to some bitter proposition.

His notice was attracted by a thin blue haze of smoke, behind which

arose sounds of voices and chopping: bending his steps that way, he saw

Winterborne just in front of him. It just now happened that Giles,

after being for a long time apathetic and unemployed, had become one of

the busiest men in the neighborhood. It is often thus; fallen friends,

lost sight of, we expect to find starving; we discover them going on

fairly well. Without any solicitation, or desire for profit on his

part, he had been asked to execute during that winter a very large

order for hurdles and other copse-ware, for which purpose he had been

obliged to buy several acres of brushwood standing. He was now engaged

in the cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work

daily like an automaton.

The hazel-tree did not belie its name to-day. The whole of the

copse-wood where the mist had cleared returned purest tints of that

hue, amid which Winterborne himself was in the act of making a hurdle,

the stakes being driven firmly into the ground in a row, over which he

bent and wove the twigs. Beside him was a square, compact pile like the

altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already finished, which bristled on

all sides with the sharp points of their stakes. At a little distance

the men in his employ were assisting him to carry out his contract.

Rows of copse-wood lay on the ground as it had fallen under the axe;

and a shelter had been constructed near at hand, in front of which

burned the fire whose smoke had attracted him. The air was so dank that

the smoke hung heavy, and crept away amid the bushes without rising

from the ground.

After wistfully regarding Winterborne a while, Melbury drew nearer, and

briefly inquired of Giles how he came to be so busily engaged, with an

undertone of slight surprise that Winterborne could seem so thriving

after being deprived of Grace. Melbury was not without emotion at the

meeting; for Grace’s affairs had divided them, and ended their intimacy

of old times.

Winterborne explained just as briefly, without raising his eyes from

his occupation of chopping a bough that he held in front of him.

“’Twill be up in April before you get it all cleared,” said Melbury.

“Yes, there or thereabouts,” said Winterborne, a chop of the billhook

jerking the last word into two pieces.

There was another interval; Melbury still looked on, a chip from

Winterborne’s hook occasionally flying against the waistcoat and legs

of his visitor, who took no heed.

“Ah, Giles—you should have been my partner. You should have been my

son-in-law,” the old man said at last. “It would have been far better

for her and for me.”

Winterborne saw that something had gone wrong with his former friend,

and throwing down the switch he was about to interweave, he responded

only too readily to the mood of the timber-dealer. “Is she ill?” he

said, hurriedly.

“No, no.” Melbury stood without speaking for some minutes, and then, as

though he could not bring himself to proceed, turned to go away.

Winterborne told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night and

walked after Melbury.

“Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir,” he said,

“especially since we don’t stand as we used to stand to one another;

but I hope it is well with them all over your way?”

“No,” said Melbury—“no.” He stopped, and struck the smooth trunk of a

young ash-tree with the flat of his hand. “I would that his ear had

been where that rind is!” he exclaimed; “I should have treated him to

little compared wi’ what he deserves.”

“Now,” said Winterborne, “don’t be in a hurry to go home. I’ve put some

cider down to warm in my shelter here, and we’ll sit and drink it and

talk this over.”

Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and they went back

to where the fire was, and sat down under the screen, the other woodmen

having gone. He drew out the cider-mug from the ashes and they drank

together.

“Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now,” repeated

Melbury. “I’ll tell you why for the first time.”

He thereupon told Winterborne, as with great relief, the story of how

he won away Giles’s father’s chosen one—by nothing worse than a lover’s

cajoleries, it is true, but by means which, except in love, would

certainly have been pronounced cruel and unfair. He explained how he

had always intended to make reparation to Winterborne the father by

giving Grace to Winterborne the son, till the devil tempted him in the

person of Fitzpiers, and he broke his virtuous vow.

“How highly I thought of that man, to be sure! Who’d have supposed he’d

have been so weak and wrong-headed as this! You ought to have had her,

Giles, and there’s an end on’t.”

Winterborne knew how to preserve his calm under this unconsciously

cruel tearing of a healing wound to which Melbury’s concentration on

the more vital subject had blinded him. The young man endeavored to

make the best of the case for Grace’s sake.

“She would hardly have been happy with me,” he said, in the dry,

unimpassioned voice under which he hid his feelings. “I was not well

enough educated: too rough, in short. I couldn’t have surrounded her

with the refinements she looked for, anyhow, at all.”

“Nonsense—you are quite wrong there,” said the unwise old man,

doggedly. “She told me only this day that she hates refinements and

such like. All that my trouble and money bought for her in that way is

thrown away upon her quite. She’d fain be like Marty South—think o’

that! That’s the top of her ambition! Perhaps she’s right. Giles, she

loved you—under the rind; and, what’s more, she loves ye still—worse

luck for the poor maid!”

If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up he

might have held his peace. Winterborne was silent a long time. The

darkness had closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of the fog

from the branches quickened as it turned to fine rain.

“Oh, she never cared much for me,” Giles managed to say, as he stirred

the embers with a brand.

“She did, and does, I tell ye,” said the other, obstinately. “However,

all that’s vain talking now. What I come to ask you about is a more

practical matter—how to make the best of things as they are. I am

thinking of a desperate step—of calling on the woman Charmond. I am

going to appeal to her, since Grace will not. ’Tis she who holds the

balance in her hands—not he. While she’s got the will to lead him

astray he will follow—poor, unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer—and how

long she’ll do it depends upon her whim. Did ye ever hear anything

about her character before she came to Hintock?”

“She’s been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe,” replied Giles,

with the same level quietude, as he regarded the red coals. “One who

has smiled where she has not loved and loved where she has not married.

Before Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a play-actress.”

“Hey? But how close you have kept all this, Giles! What besides?”

“Mr. Charmond was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the north,

twenty or thirty years older than she. He married her and retired, and

came down here and bought this property, as they do nowadays.”

“Yes, yes—I know all about that; but the other I did not know. I fear

it bodes no good. For how can I go and appeal to the forbearance of a

woman in this matter who has made cross-loves and crooked entanglements

her trade for years? I thank ye, Giles, for finding it out; but it

makes my plan the harder that she should have belonged to that unstable

tribe.”

Another pause ensued, and they looked gloomily at the smoke that beat

about the hurdles which sheltered them, through whose weavings a large

drop of rain fell at intervals and spat smartly into the fire. Mrs.

Charmond had been no friend to Winterborne, but he was manly, and it

was not in his heart to let her be condemned without a trial.

“She is said to be generous,” he answered. “You might not appeal to her

in vain.”

“It shall be done,” said Melbury, rising. “For good or for evil, to

Mrs. Charmond I’ll go.”