CHAPTER XLI.

The first hundred yards of their course lay under motionless trees,

whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling drops of rain. By the

time that they emerged upon a glade it rained heavily.

“This is awkward,” said Grace, with an effort to hide her concern.

Winterborne stopped. “Grace,” he said, preserving a strictly business

manner which belied him, “you cannot go to Sherton to-night.”

“But I must!”

“Why? It is nine miles from here. It is almost an impossibility in this

rain.”

“True—_why?_” she replied, mournfully, at the end of a silence. “What

is reputation to me?”

“Now hearken,” said Giles. “You won’t—go back to your—”

“No, no, no! Don’t make me!” she cried, piteously.

“Then let us turn.” They slowly retraced their steps, and again stood

before his door. “Now, this house from this moment is yours, and not

mine,” he said, deliberately. “I have a place near by where I can stay

very well.”

Her face had drooped. “Oh!” she murmured, as she saw the dilemma. “What

have I done!”

There was a smell of something burning within, and he looked through

the window. The rabbit that he had been cooking to coax a weak appetite

was beginning to char. “Please go in and attend to it,” he said. “Do

what you like. Now I leave. You will find everything about the hut that

is necessary.”

“But, Giles—your supper,” she exclaimed. “An out-house would do for

me—anything—till to-morrow at day-break!”

He signified a negative. “I tell you to go in—you may catch agues out

here in your delicate state. You can give me my supper through the

window, if you feel well enough. I’ll wait a while.”

He gently urged her to pass the door-way, and was relieved when he saw

her within the room sitting down. Without so much as crossing the

threshold himself, he closed the door upon her, and turned the key in

the lock. Tapping at the window, he signified that she should open the

casement, and when she had done this he handed in the key to her.

“You are locked in,” he said; “and your own mistress.”

Even in her trouble she could not refrain from a faint smile at his

scrupulousness, as she took the door-key.

“Do you feel better?” he went on. “If so, and you wish to give me some

of your supper, please do. If not, it is of no importance. I can get

some elsewhere.”

The grateful sense of his kindness stirred her to action, though she

only knew half what that kindness really was. At the end of some ten

minutes she again came to the window, pushed it open, and said in a

whisper, “Giles!” He at once emerged from the shade, and saw that she

was preparing to hand him his share of the meal upon a plate.

“I don’t like to treat you so hardly,” she murmured, with deep regret

in her words as she heard the rain pattering on the leaves. “But—I

suppose it is best to arrange like this?”

“Oh yes,” he said, quickly.

“I feel that I could never have reached Sherton.”

“It was impossible.”

“Are you sure you have a snug place out there?” (With renewed

misgiving.)

“Quite. Have you found everything you want? I am afraid it is rather

rough accommodation.”

“Can I notice defects? I have long passed that stage, and you know it,

Giles, or you ought to.”

His eyes sadly contemplated her face as its pale responsiveness

modulated through a crowd of expressions that showed only too clearly

to what a pitch she was strung. If ever Winterborne’s heart fretted his

bosom it was at this sight of a perfectly defenceless creature

conditioned by such circumstances. He forgot his own agony in the

satisfaction of having at least found her a shelter. He took his plate

and cup from her hands, saying, “Now I’ll push the shutter to, and you

will find an iron pin on the inside, which you must fix into the bolt.

Do not stir in the morning till I come and call you.”

She expressed an alarmed hope that he would not go very far away.

“Oh no—I shall be quite within hail,” said Winterborne.

She bolted the window as directed, and he retreated. His snug place

proved to be a wretched little shelter of the roughest kind, formed of

four hurdles thatched with brake-fern. Underneath were dry sticks, hay,

and other litter of the sort, upon which he sat down; and there in the

dark tried to eat his meal. But his appetite was quite gone. He pushed

the plate aside, and shook up the hay and sacks, so as to form a rude

couch, on which he flung himself down to sleep, for it was getting

late.

But sleep he could not, for many reasons, of which not the least was

thought of his charge. He sat up, and looked towards the cot through

the damp obscurity. With all its external features the same as usual,

he could scarcely believe that it contained the dear friend—he would

not use a warmer name—who had come to him so unexpectedly, and, he

could not help admitting, so rashly.

He had not ventured to ask her any particulars; but the position was

pretty clear without them. Though social law had negatived forever

their opening paradise of the previous June, it was not without stoical

pride that he accepted the present trying conjuncture. There was one

man on earth in whom she believed absolutely, and he was that man. That

this crisis could end in nothing but sorrow was a view for a moment

effaced by this triumphant thought of her trust in him; and the purity

of the affection with which he responded to that trust rendered him

more than proof against any frailty that besieged him in relation to

her.

The rain, which had never ceased, now drew his attention by beginning

to drop through the meagre screen that covered him. He rose to attempt

some remedy for this discomfort, but the trembling of his knees and the

throbbing of his pulse told him that in his weakness he was unable to

fence against the storm, and he lay down to bear it as best he might.

He was angry with himself for his feebleness—he who had been so strong.

It was imperative that she should know nothing of his present state,

and to do that she must not see his face by daylight, for its color

would inevitably betray him.

The next morning, accordingly, when it was hardly light, he rose and

dragged his stiff limbs about the precincts, preparing for her

everything she could require for getting breakfast within. On the bench

outside the window-sill he placed water, wood, and other necessaries,

writing with a piece of chalk beside them, “It is best that I should

not see you. Put my breakfast on the bench.”

At seven o’clock he tapped at her window, as he had promised,

retreating at once, that she might not catch sight of him. But from his

shelter under the boughs he could see her very well, when, in response

to his signal, she opened the window and the light fell upon her face.

The languid largeness of her eyes showed that her sleep had been little

more than his own, and the pinkness of their lids, that her waking

hours had not been free from tears.

She read the writing, seemed, he thought, disappointed, but took up the

materials he had provided, evidently thinking him some way off. Giles

waited on, assured that a girl who, in spite of her culture, knew what

country life was, would find no difficulty in the simple preparation of

their food.

Within the cot it was all very much as he conjectured, though Grace had

slept much longer than he. After the loneliness of the night, she would

have been glad to see him; but appreciating his feeling when she read

the writing, she made no attempt to recall him. She found abundance of

provisions laid in, his plan being to replenish his buttery weekly, and

this being the day after the victualling van had called from Sherton.

When the meal was ready, she put what he required outside, as she had

done with the supper; and, notwithstanding her longing to see him,

withdrew from the window promptly, and left him to himself.

It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its fall.

As she heard no more of Winterborne, she concluded that he had gone

away to his daily work, and forgotten that he had promised to accompany

her to Sherton; an erroneous conclusion, for he remained all day, by

force of his condition, within fifty yards of where she was. The

morning wore on; and in her doubt when to start, and how to travel, she

lingered yet, keeping the door carefully bolted, lest an intruder

should discover her. Locked in this place, she was comparatively safe,

at any rate, and doubted if she would be safe elsewhere.

The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade and

drip of the leafage. Autumn, this year, was coming in with rains.

Gazing, in her enforced idleness, from the one window of the

living-room, she could see various small members of the animal

community that lived unmolested there—creatures of hair, fluff, and

scale, the toothed kind and the billed kind; underground creatures,

jointed and ringed—circumambulating the hut, under the impression that,

Giles having gone away, nobody was there; and eying it inquisitively

with a view to winter-quarters. Watching these neighbors, who knew

neither law nor sin, distracted her a little from her trouble; and she

managed to while away some portion of the afternoon by putting Giles’s

home in order and making little improvements which she deemed that he

would value when she was gone.

Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise amid the trees,

resembling a cough; but as it never came any nearer she concluded that

it was a squirrel or a bird.

At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger fire for the

evenings were chilly. As soon as it was too dark—which was

comparatively early—to discern the human countenance in this place of

shadows, there came to the window to her great delight, a tapping which

she knew from its method to be Giles’s.

She opened the casement instantly, and put out her hand to him, though

she could only just perceive his outline. He clasped her fingers, and

she noticed the heat of his palm and its shakiness.

“He has been walking fast, in order to get here quickly,” she thought.

How could she know that he had just crawled out from the straw of the

shelter hard by; and that the heat of his hand was feverishness?

“My dear, good Giles!” she burst out, impulsively.

“Anybody would have done it for you,” replied Winterborne, with as much

matter-of-fact as he could summon.

“About my getting to Exbury?” she said.

“I have been thinking,” responded Giles, with tender deference, “that

you had better stay where you are for the present, if you wish not to

be caught. I need not tell you that the place is yours as long as you

like; and perhaps in a day or two, finding you absent, he will go away.

At any rate, in two or three days I could do anything to assist—such as

make inquiries, or go a great way towards Sherton-Abbas with you; for

the cider season will soon be coming on, and I want to run down to the

Vale to see how the crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton road. But

for a day or two I am busy here.” He was hoping that by the time

mentioned he would be strong enough to engage himself actively on her

behalf. “I hope you do not feel over-much melancholy in being a

prisoner?”

She declared that she did not mind it; but she sighed.

From long acquaintance they could read each other’s heart-symptoms like

books of large type. “I fear you are sorry you came,” said Giles, “and

that you think I should have advised you more firmly than I did not to

stay.”

“Oh no, dear, dear friend,” answered Grace, with a heaving bosom.

“Don’t think that that is what I regret. What I regret is my enforced

treatment of you—dislodging you, excluding you from your own house. Why

should I not speak out? You know what I feel for you—what I have felt

for no other living man, what I shall never feel for a man again! But

as I have vowed myself to somebody else than you, and cannot be

released, I must behave as I do behave, and keep that vow. I am not

bound to him by any divine law, after what he has done; but I have

promised, and I will pay.”

The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things as

she would require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon, an

occupation which diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic views

of her attitude towards him, and of her life in general. The only

infringement—if infringement it could be called—of his predetermined

bearing towards her was an involuntary pressing of her hand to his lips

when she put it through the casement to bid him good-night. He knew she

was weeping, though he could not see her tears.

She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly appropriating the

cottage. But it would only be for a day or two more, she thought, since

go she must.

He replied, yearningly, “I—I don’t like you to go away.”

“Oh, Giles,” said she, “I know—I know! But—I am a woman, and you are a

man. I cannot speak more plainly. ‘Whatsoever things are pure,

whatsoever things are of good report’—you know what is in my mind,

because you know me so well.”

“Yes, Grace, yes. I do not at all mean that the question between us has

not been settled by the fact of your marriage turning out hopelessly

unalterable. I merely meant—well, a feeling no more.”

“In a week, at the outside, I should be discovered if I stayed here:

and I think that by law he could compel me to return to him.”

“Yes; perhaps you are right. Go when you wish, dear Grace.”

His last words that evening were a hopeful remark that all might be

well with her yet; that Mr. Fitzpiers would not intrude upon her life,

if he found that his presence cost her so much pain. Then the window

was closed, the shutters folded, and the rustle of his footsteps died

away.

No sooner had she retired to rest that night than the wind began to

rise, and, after a few prefatory blasts, to be accompanied by rain. The

wind grew more violent, and as the storm went on, it was difficult to

believe that no opaque body, but only an invisible colorless thing, was

trampling and climbing over the roof, making branches creak, springing

out of the trees upon the chimney, popping its head into the flue, and

shrieking and blaspheming at every corner of the walls. As in the old

story, the assailant was a spectre which could be felt but not seen.

She had never before been so struck with the devilry of a gusty night

in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in spirit as

she was now. She seemed almost to be apart from herself—a vacuous

duplicate only. The recent self of physical animation and clear

intentions was not there.

Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so low as to smite

the roof in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth of an

adversary, to be followed by a trickle of rain, as blood from the

wound. To all this weather Giles must be more or less exposed; how

much, she did not know.

At last Grace could hardly endure the idea of such a hardship in

relation to him. Whatever he was suffering, it was she who had caused

it; he vacated his house on account of her. She was not worth such

self-sacrifice; she should not have accepted it of him. And then, as

her anxiety increased with increasing thought, there returned upon her

mind some incidents of her late intercourse with him, which she had

heeded but little at the time. The look of his face—what had there been

about his face which seemed different from its appearance as of yore?

Was it not thinner, less rich in hue, less like that of ripe autumn’s

brother to whom she had formerly compared him? And his voice; she had

distinctly noticed a change in tone. And his gait; surely it had been

feebler, stiffer, more like the gait of a weary man. That slight

occasional noise she had heard in the day, and attributed to squirrels,

it might have been his cough after all.

Thus conviction took root in her perturbed mind that Winterborne was

ill, or had been so, and that he had carefully concealed his condition

from her that she might have no scruples about accepting a hospitality

which by the nature of the case expelled her entertainer.

“My own, own, true l——, my dear kind friend!” she cried to herself.

“Oh, it shall not be—it shall not be!”

She hastily wrapped herself up, and obtained a light, with which she

entered the adjoining room, the cot possessing only one floor. Setting

down the candle on the table here, she went to the door with the key in

her hand, and placed it in the lock. Before turning it she paused, her

fingers still clutching it; and pressing her other hand to her

forehead, she fell into agitating thought.

A tattoo on the window, caused by the tree-droppings blowing against

it, brought her indecision to a close. She turned the key and opened

the door.

The darkness was intense, seeming to touch her pupils like a substance.

She only now became aware how heavy the rainfall had been and was; the

dripping of the eaves splashed like a fountain. She stood listening

with parted lips, and holding the door in one hand, till her eyes,

growing accustomed to the obscurity, discerned the wild brandishing of

their boughs by the adjoining trees. At last she cried loudly with an

effort, “Giles! you may come in!”

There was no immediate answer to her cry, and overpowered by her own

temerity, Grace retreated quickly, shut the door, and stood looking on

the floor. But it was not for long. She again lifted the latch, and

with far more determination than at first.

“Giles, Giles!” she cried, with the full strength of her voice, and

without any of the shamefacedness that had characterized her first cry.

“Oh, come in—come in! Where are you? I have been wicked. I have thought

too much of myself! Do you hear? I don’t want to keep you out any

longer. I cannot bear that you should suffer so. Gi-i-iles!”

A reply! It was a reply! Through the darkness and wind a voice reached

her, floating upon the weather as though a part of it.

“Here I am—all right. Don’t trouble about me.”

“Don’t you want to come in? Are you not wet? _Come to me! I don’t mind

what they say, or what they think any more._”

“I am all right,” he repeated. “It is not necessary for me to come.

Good-night! good-night!”

Grace sighed, turned and shut the door slowly. Could she have been

mistaken about his health? Perhaps, after all, she had perceived a

change in him because she had not seen him for so long. Time sometimes

did his ageing work in jerks, as she knew. Well, she had done all she

could. He would not come in. She retired to rest again.