CHAPTER XXXIX.

All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of a

pleasant time, forgetting the pleasant time itself. He feared anew that

they could never be happy together, even should she be free to choose

him. She was accomplished; he was unrefined. It was the original

difficulty, which he was too sensitive to recklessly ignore, as some

men would have done in his place.

He was one of those silent, unobtrusive beings who want little from

others in the way of favor or condescension, and perhaps on that very

account scrutinize those others’ behavior too closely. He was not

versatile, but one in whom a hope or belief which had once had its

rise, meridian, and decline seldom again exactly recurred, as in the

breasts of more sanguine mortals. He had once worshipped her, laid out

his life to suit her, wooed her, and lost her. Though it was with

almost the same zest, it was with not quite the same hope, that he had

begun to tread the old tracks again, and allowed himself to be so

charmed with her that day.

Move another step towards her he would not. He would even repulse

her—as a tribute to conscience. It would be sheer sin to let her

prepare a pitfall for her happiness not much smaller than the first by

inveigling her into a union with such as he. Her poor father was now

blind to these subtleties, which he had formerly beheld as in noontide

light. It was his own duty to declare them—for her dear sake.

Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her solicitous

embarrassment was not lessened the next morning when another letter

from her father was put into her hands. Its tenor was an intenser

strain of the one that had preceded it. After stating how extremely

glad he was to hear that she was better, and able to get out-of-doors,

he went on:

“This is a wearisome business, the solicitor we have come to see being

out of town. I do not know when I shall get home. My great anxiety in

this delay is still lest you should lose Giles Winterborne. I cannot

rest at night for thinking that while our business is hanging fire he

may become estranged, or go away from the neighborhood. I have set my

heart upon seeing him your husband, if you ever have another. Do, then,

Grace, give him some temporary encouragement, even though it is

over-early. For when I consider the past I do think God will forgive me

and you for being a little forward. I have another reason for this, my

dear. I feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late affairs have still

further helped me that way. And until this thing is done I cannot rest

in peace.”

He added a postscript:

“I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-morrow.

Possibly, therefore, I shall return in the evening after you get this.”

The paternal longing ran on all fours with her own desire; and yet in

forwarding it yesterday she had been on the brink of giving offence.

While craving to be a country girl again just as her father requested;

to put off the old Eve, the fastidious miss—or rather madam—completely,

her first attempt had been beaten by the unexpected vitality of that

fastidiousness. Her father on returning and seeing the trifling

coolness of Giles would be sure to say that the same perversity which

had led her to make difficulties about marrying Fitzpiers was now

prompting her to blow hot and cold with poor Winterborne.

If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching the stops of

her delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to let her

drift away from him again (if she would) on the wind of her estranging

education, he could not have acted more seductively than he did that

day. He chanced to be superintending some temporary work in a field

opposite her windows. She could not discover what he was doing, but she

read his mood keenly and truly: she could see in his coming and going

an air of determined abandonment of the whole landscape that lay in her

direction.

Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father coming in the

evening—which meant, she supposed, that all formalities would be in

train, her marriage virtually annulled, and she be free to be won

again—how could she look him in the face if he should see them

estranged thus?

It was a fair green evening in June. She was seated in the garden, in

the rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes—made of peeled

oak-branches that came to Melbury’s premises as refuse after

barking-time. The mass of full-juiced leafage on the heights around her

was just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly spent wind which, even

in its enfeebled state, did not reach her shelter. All day she had

expected Giles to call—to inquire how she had got home, or something or

other; but he had not come. And he still tantalized her by going

athwart and across that orchard opposite. She could see him as she sat.

A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him a

letter. She knew from this that Creedle had just come from Sherton, and

had called as usual at the post-office for anything that had arrived by

the afternoon post, of which there was no delivery at Hintock. She

pondered on what the letter might contain—particularly whether it were

a second refresher for Winterborne from her father, like her own of the

morning.

But it appeared to have no bearing upon herself whatever. Giles read

its contents; and almost immediately turned away to a gap in the hedge

of the orchard—if that could be called a hedge which, owing to the

drippings of the trees, was little more than a bank with a bush upon it

here and there. He entered the plantation, and was no doubt going that

way homeward to the mysterious hut he occupied on the other side of the

woodland.

The sad sands were running swiftly through Time’s glass; she had often

felt it in these latter days; and, like Giles, she felt it doubly now

after the solemn and pathetic reminder in her father’s communication.

Her freshness would pass, the long-suffering devotion of Giles might

suddenly end—might end that very hour. Men were so strange. The thought

took away from her all her former reticence, and made her action bold.

She started from her seat. If the little breach, quarrel, or whatever

it might be called, of yesterday, was to be healed up it must be done

by her on the instant. She crossed into the orchard, and clambered

through the gap after Giles, just as he was diminishing to a faun-like

figure under the green canopy and over the brown floor.

Grace had been wrong—very far wrong—in assuming that the letter had no

reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the wood after

its perusal. It was, sad to say, because the missive had so much

reference to herself that he had thus turned away. He feared that his

grieved discomfiture might be observed. The letter was from Beaucock,

written a few hours later than Melbury’s to his daughter. It announced

failure.

Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was the

moment when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. During

his absence in town with Melbury, the lawyer’s clerk had naturally

heard a great deal of the timber-merchant’s family scheme of justice to

Giles, and his communication was to inform Winterborne at the earliest

possible moment that their attempt had failed, in order that the young

man should not place himself in a false position towards Grace in the

belief of its coming success. The news was, in sum, that Fitzpiers’s

conduct had not been sufficiently cruel to Grace to enable her to snap

the bond. She was apparently doomed to be his wife till the end of the

chapter.

Winterborne quite forgot his superficial differences with the poor girl

under the warm rush of deep and distracting love for her which the

almost tragical information engendered.

To renounce her forever—that was then the end of it for him, after all.

There was no longer any question about suitability, or room for tiffs

on petty tastes. The curtain had fallen again between them. She could

not be his. The cruelty of their late revived hope was now terrible.

How could they all have been so simple as to suppose this thing could

be done?

It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming behind him, he

turned and saw her hastening on between the thickets. He perceived in

an instant that she did not know the blighting news.

“Giles, why didn’t you come across to me?” she asked, with arch

reproach. “Didn’t you see me sitting there ever so long?”

“Oh yes,” he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for her

unexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of behavior

in the conjuncture. His manner made her think that she had been too

chiding in her speech; and a mild scarlet wave passed over her as she

resolved to soften it.

“I have had another letter from my father,” she hastened to continue.

“He thinks he may come home this evening. And—in view of his hopes—it

will grieve him if there is any little difference between us, Giles.”

“There is none,” he said, sadly regarding her from the face downward as

he pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare.

“Still—I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my being

uncomfortable at the inn.”

“I have, Grace, I’m sure.”

“But you speak in quite an unhappy way,” she returned, coming up close

to him with the most winning of the many pretty airs that appertained

to her. “Don’t you think you will ever be happy, Giles?”

He did not reply for some instants. “When the sun shines on the north

front of Sherton Abbey—that’s when my happiness will come to me!” said

he, staring as it were into the earth.

“But—then that means that there is something more than my offending you

in not liking The Three Tuns. If it is because I—did not like to let

you kiss me in the Abbey—well, you know, Giles, that it was not on

account of my cold feelings, but because I did certainly, just then,

think it was rather premature, in spite of my poor father. That was the

true reason—the sole one. But I do not want to be hard—God knows I do

not,” she said, her voice fluctuating. “And perhaps—as I am on the

verge of freedom—I am not right, after all, in thinking there is any

harm in your kissing me.”

“Oh God!” said Winterborne within himself. His head was turned askance

as he still resolutely regarded the ground. For the last several

minutes he had seen this great temptation approaching him in regular

siege; and now it had come. The wrong, the social sin, of now taking

advantage of the offer of her lips had a magnitude, in the eyes of one

whose life had been so primitive, so ruled by purest household laws, as

Giles’s, which can hardly be explained.

“Did you say anything?” she asked, timidly.

“Oh no—only that—”

“You mean that it must _be already_ settled, since my father is coming

home?” she said, gladly.

Winterborne, though fighting valiantly against himself all this

while—though he would have protected Grace’s good repute as the apple

of his eye—was a man; and, as Desdemona said, men are not gods. In face

of the agonizing seductiveness shown by her, in her unenlightened

school-girl simplicity about the laws and ordinances, he betrayed a

man’s weakness. Since it was so—since it had come to this, that Grace,

deeming herself free to do it, was virtually asking him to demonstrate

that he loved her—since he could demonstrate it only too truly—since

life was short and love was strong—he gave way to the temptation,

notwithstanding that he perfectly well knew her to be wedded

irrevocably to Fitzpiers. Indeed, he cared for nothing past or future,

simply accepting the present and what it brought, desiring once in his

life to clasp in his arms her he had watched over and loved so long.

She started back suddenly from his embrace, influenced by a sort of

inspiration. “Oh, I suppose,” she stammered, “that I am really

free?—that this is right? Is there _really_ a new law? Father cannot

have been too sanguine in saying—”

He did not answer, and a moment afterwards Grace burst into tears in

spite of herself. “Oh, why does not my father come home and explain,”

she sobbed, “and let me know clearly what I am? It is too trying, this,

to ask me to—and then to leave me so long in so vague a state that I do

not know what to do, and perhaps do wrong!”

Winterborne felt like a very Cain, over and above his previous sorrow.

How he had sinned against her in not telling her what he knew. He

turned aside; the feeling of his cruelty mounted higher and higher. How

could he have dreamed of kissing her? He could hardly refrain from

tears. Surely nothing more pitiable had ever been known than the

condition of this poor young thing, now as heretofore the victim of her

father’s well-meant but blundering policy.

Even in the hour of Melbury’s greatest assurance Winterborne had

harbored a suspicion that no law, new or old, could undo Grace’s

marriage without her appearance in public; though he was not

sufficiently sure of what might have been enacted to destroy by his own

words her pleasing idea that a mere dash of the pen, on her father’s

testimony, was going to be sufficient. But he had never suspected the

sad fact that the position was irremediable.

Poor Grace, perhaps feeling that she had indulged in too much fluster

for a mere kiss, calmed herself at finding how grave he was.

“I am glad we are friends again anyhow,” she said, smiling through her

tears. “Giles, if you had only shown half the boldness before I married

that you show now, you would have carried me off for your own first

instead of second. If we do marry, I hope you will never think badly of

me for encouraging you a little, but my father is _so_ impatient, you

know, as his years and infirmities increase, that he will wish to see

us a little advanced when he comes. That is my only excuse.”

To Winterborne all this was sadder than it was sweet. How could she so

trust her father’s conjectures? He did not know how to tell her the

truth and shame himself. And yet he felt that it must be done. “We may

have been wrong,” he began, almost fearfully, “in supposing that it can

all be carried out while we stay here at Hintock. I am not sure but

that people may have to appear in a public court even under the new

Act; and if there should be any difficulty, and we cannot marry after

all—”

Her cheeks became slowly bloodless. “Oh, Giles,” she said, grasping his

arm, “you have heard something! What—cannot my father conclude it there

and now? Surely he has done it? Oh, Giles, Giles, don’t deceive me.

What terrible position am I in?”

He could not tell her, try as he would. The sense of her implicit trust

in his honor absolutely disabled him. “I cannot inform you,” he

murmured, his voice as husky as that of the leaves underfoot. “Your

father will soon be here. Then we shall know. I will take you home.”

Inexpressibly dear as she was to him, he offered her his arm with the

most reserved air, as he added, correctingly, “I will take you, at any

rate, into the drive.”

Thus they walked on together. Grace vibrating between happiness and

misgiving. It was only a few minutes’ walk to where the drive ran, and

they had hardly descended into it when they heard a voice behind them

cry, “Take out that arm!”

For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, more loudly and

hoarsely,

“Take out that arm!”

It was Melbury’s. He had returned sooner than they expected, and now

came up to them. Grace’s hand had been withdrawn like lightning on her

hearing the second command. “I don’t blame you—I don’t blame you,” he

said, in the weary cadence of one broken down with scourgings. “But you

two must walk together no more—I have been surprised—I have been

cruelly deceived—Giles, don’t say anything to me; but go away!”

He was evidently not aware that Winterborne had known the truth before

he brought it; and Giles would not stay to discuss it with him then.

When the young man had gone Melbury took his daughter in-doors to the

room he used as his office. There he sat down, and bent over the slope

of the bureau, her bewildered gaze fixed upon him.

When Melbury had recovered a little he said, “You are now, as ever,

Fitzpiers’s wife. I was deluded. He has not done you _enough_ harm. You

are still subject to his beck and call.”

“Then let it be, and never mind, father,” she said, with dignified

sorrow. “I can bear it. It is your trouble that grieves me most.” She

stooped over him, and put her arm round his neck, which distressed

Melbury still more. “I don’t mind at all what comes to me,” Grace

continued; “whose wife I am, or whose I am not. I do love Giles; I

cannot help that; and I have gone further with him than I should have

done if I had known exactly how things were. But I do not reproach

you.”

“Then Giles did not tell you?” said Melbury.

“No,” said she. “He could not have known it. His behavior to me proved

that he did not know.”

Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to the solitude of

her chamber.

Her heavy disquietude had many shapes; and for a time she put aside the

dominant fact to think of her too free conduct towards Giles. His

love-making had been brief as it was sweet; but would he on reflection

contemn her for forwardness? How could she have been so simple as to

suppose she was in a position to behave as she had done! Thus she

mentally blamed her ignorance; and yet in the centre of her heart she

blessed it a little for what it had momentarily brought her.