CHAPTER XLVIII.

All the evening Melbury had been coming to his door, saying, “I wonder

where in the world that girl is! Never in all my born days did I know

her bide out like this! She surely said she was going into the garden

to get some parsley.”

Melbury searched the garden, the parsley-bed, and the orchard, but

could find no trace of her, and then he made inquiries at the cottages

of such of his workmen as had not gone to bed, avoiding Tangs’s because

he knew the young people were to rise early to leave. In these

inquiries one of the men’s wives somewhat incautiously let out the fact

that she had heard a scream in the wood, though from which direction

she could not say.

This set Melbury’s fears on end. He told the men to light lanterns, and

headed by himself they started, Creedle following at the last moment

with quite a burden of grapnels and ropes, which he could not be

persuaded to leave behind, and the company being joined by the

hollow-turner and the man who kept the cider-house as they went along.

They explored the precincts of the village, and in a short time lighted

upon the man-trap. Its discovery simply added an item of fact without

helping their conjectures; but Melbury’s indefinite alarm was greatly

increased when, holding a candle to the ground, he saw in the teeth of

the instrument some frayings from Grace’s clothing. No intelligence of

any kind was gained till they met a woodman of Delborough, who said

that he had seen a lady answering to the description her father gave of

Grace, walking through the wood on a gentleman’s arm in the direction

of Sherton.

“Was he clutching her tight?” said Melbury.

“Well—rather,” said the man.

“Did she walk lame?”

“Well, ’tis true her head hung over towards him a bit.”

Creedle groaned tragically.

Melbury, not suspecting the presence of Fitzpiers, coupled this account

with the man-trap and the scream; he could not understand what it all

meant; but the sinister event of the trap made him follow on.

Accordingly, they bore away towards the town, shouting as they went,

and in due course emerged upon the highway.

Nearing Sherton-Abbas, the previous information was confirmed by other

strollers, though the gentleman’s supporting arm had disappeared from

these later accounts. At last they were so near Sherton that Melbury

informed his faithful followers that he did not wish to drag them

farther at so late an hour, since he could go on alone and inquire if

the woman who had been seen were really Grace. But they would not leave

him alone in his anxiety, and trudged onward till the lamplight from

the town began to illuminate their fronts. At the entrance to the High

Street they got fresh scent of the pursued, but coupled with the new

condition that the lady in the costume described had been going up the

street alone.

“Faith!—I believe she’s mesmerized, or walking in her sleep,” said

Melbury.

However, the identity of this woman with Grace was by no means certain;

but they plodded along the street. Percombe, the hair-dresser, who had

despoiled Marty of her tresses, was standing at his door, and they duly

put inquiries to him.

“Ah—how’s Little Hintock folk by now?” he said, before replying. “Never

have I been over there since one winter night some three year ago—and

then I lost myself finding it. How can ye live in such a one-eyed

place? Great Hintock is bad enough—hut Little Hintock—the bats and owls

would drive me melancholy-mad! It took two days to raise my sperrits to

their true pitch again after that night I went there. Mr. Melbury, sir,

as a man’s that put by money, why not retire and live here, and see

something of the world?”

The responses at last given by him to their queries guided them to the

building that offered the best accommodation in Sherton—having been

enlarged contemporaneously with the construction of the railway—namely,

the Earl of Wessex Hotel.

Leaving the others without, Melbury made prompt inquiry here. His alarm

was lessened, though his perplexity was increased, when he received a

brief reply that such a lady was in the house.

“Do you know if it is my daughter?” asked Melbury.

The waiter did not.

“Do you know the lady’s name?”

Of this, too, the household was ignorant, the hotel having been taken

by brand-new people from a distance. They knew the gentleman very well

by sight, and had not thought it necessary to ask him to enter his

name.

“Oh, the gentleman appears again now,” said Melbury to himself. “Well,

I want to see the lady,” he declared.

A message was taken up, and after some delay the shape of Grace

appeared descending round the bend of the stair-case, looking as if she

lived there, but in other respects rather guilty and frightened.

“Why—what the name—” began her father. “I thought you went out to get

parsley!”

“Oh, yes—I did—but it is all right,” said Grace, in a flurried whisper.

“I am not alone here. I am here with Edgar. It is entirely owing to an

accident, father.”

“Edgar! An accident! How does he come here? I thought he was two

hundred mile off.”

“Yes, so he is—I mean he has got a beautiful practice two hundred miles

off; he has bought it with his own money, some that came to him. But he

travelled here, and I was nearly caught in a man-trap, and that’s how

it is I am here. We were just thinking of sending a messenger to let

you know.”

Melbury did not seem to be particularly enlightened by this

explanation.

“You were caught in a man-trap?”

“Yes; my dress was. That’s how it arose. Edgar is up-stairs in his own

sitting-room,” she went on. “He would not mind seeing you, I am sure.”

“Oh, faith, I don’t want to see him! I have seen him too often a’ready.

I’ll see him another time, perhaps, if ’tis to oblige ’ee.”

“He came to see me; he wanted to consult me about this large

partnership I speak of, as it is very promising.”

“Oh, I am glad to hear it,” said Melbury, dryly.

A pause ensued, during which the inquiring faces and whity-brown

clothes of Melbury’s companions appeared in the door-way.

“Then bain’t you coming home with us?” he asked.

“I—I think not,” said Grace, blushing.

“H’m—very well—you are your own mistress,” he returned, in tones which

seemed to assert otherwise. “Good-night;” and Melbury retreated towards

the door.

“Don’t be angry, father,” she said, following him a few steps. “I have

done it for the best.”

“I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little misled in this.

However, good-night. I must get home along.”

He left the hotel, not without relief, for to be under the eyes of

strangers while he conversed with his lost child had embarrassed him

much. His search-party, too, had looked awkward there, having rushed to

the task of investigation—some in their shirt sleeves, others in their

leather aprons, and all much stained—just as they had come from their

work of barking, and not in their Sherton marketing attire; while

Creedle, with his ropes and grapnels and air of impending tragedy, had

added melancholy to gawkiness.

“Now, neighbors,” said Melbury, on joining them, “as it is getting

late, we’ll leg it home again as fast as we can. I ought to tell you

that there has been some mistake—some arrangement entered into between

Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn’t quite understand—an important

practice in the Midland counties has come to him, which made it

necessary for her to join him to-night—so she says. That’s all it

was—and I’m sorry I dragged you out.”

“Well,” said the hollow-turner, “here be we six mile from home, and

night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to our name. I

say, we’ll have a mossel and a drop o’ summat to strengthen our nerves

afore we vamp all the way back again? My throat’s as dry as a kex. What

d’ye say so’s?”

They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to the

antique and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of the Three

Tuns was the only radiant object. As soon as they had stumbled down

into the room Melbury ordered them to be served, when they made

themselves comfortable by the long table, and stretched out their legs

upon the herring-boned sand of the floor. Melbury himself, restless as

usual, walked to the door while he waited for them, and looked up and

down the street.

“I’d gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go out

in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that have got to

get up at five o’clock to morrow,” said a bark-ripper; who, not working

regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in strong opinions.

“I don’t speak so warm as that,” said the hollow-turner, “but if ’tis

right for couples to make a country talk about their separating, and

excite the neighbors, and then make fools of ’em like this, why, I

haven’t stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty year.”

All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in these

enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and Creedle chimed

in with, “Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn’t she

ha’ bode with her father, and been faithful?” Poor Creedle was thinking

of his old employer.

“But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony,” said

Farmer Bawtree. “I knowed a man and wife—faith, I don’t mind owning, as

there’s no strangers here, that the pair were my own relations—they’d

be at it that hot one hour that you’d hear the poker and the tongs and

the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the house with the

movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you’d hear ’em singing

‘The Spotted Cow’ together as peaceable as two holy twins; yes—and very

good voices they had, and would strike in like professional

ballet-singers to one another’s support in the high notes.”

“And I knowed a woman, and the husband o’ her went away for

four-and-twenty year,” said the bark-ripper. “And one night he came

home when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down

himself on the other side of the chimney-corner. ‘Well,’ says she,

‘have ye got any news?’ ‘Don’t know as I have,’ says he; ‘have you?’

‘No,’ says she, ‘except that my daughter by my second husband was

married last month, which was a year after I was made a widow by him.’

‘Oh! Anything else?’ he says. ‘No,’ says she. And there they sat, one

on each side of that chimney-corner, and were found by their neighbors

sound asleep in their chairs, not having known what to talk about at

all.”

“Well, I don’t care who the man is,” said Creedle, “they required a

good deal to talk about, and that’s true. It won’t be the same with

these.”

“No. He is such a projick, you see. And she is a wonderful scholar

too!”

“What women do know nowadays!” observed the hollow-turner. “You can’t

deceive ’em as you could in my time.”

“What they knowed then was not small,” said John Upjohn. “Always a good

deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife that is now,

the skilfulness that she would show in keeping me on her pretty side as

she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you’ve noticed that she’s got

a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?”

“I can’t say I’ve noticed it particular much,” said the hollow-turner,

blandly.

“Well,” continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, “she has. All women under

the sun be prettier one side than t’other. And, as I was saying, the

pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were unending!

I warrant that whether we were going with the sun or against the sun,

uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart of hers was always

towards the hedge, and that dimple towards me. There was I, too simple

to see her wheelings and turnings; and she so artful, though two years

younger, that she could lead me with a cotton thread, like a blind ram;

for that was in the third climate of our courtship. No; I don’t think

the women have got cleverer, for they was never otherwise.”

“How many climates may there be in courtship, Mr. Upjohn?” inquired a

youth—the same who had assisted at Winterborne’s Christmas party.

“Five—from the coolest to the hottest—leastwise there was five in

mine.”

“Can ye give us the chronicle of ’em, Mr. Upjohn?”

“Yes—I could. I could certainly. But ’tis quite unnecessary. They’ll

come to ye by nater, young man, too soon for your good.”

“At present Mrs. Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your mis’ess could

lead you,” the hollow-turner remarked. “She’s got him quite tame. But

how long ’twill last I can’t say. I happened to be setting a wire on

the top of my garden one night when he met her on the other side of the

hedge; and the way she queened it, and fenced, and kept that poor

feller at a distance, was enough to freeze yer blood. I should never

have supposed it of such a girl.”

Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having declared

themselves refreshed, they all started on the homeward journey, which

was by no means cheerless under the rays of the high moon. Having to

walk the whole distance they came by a foot-path rather shorter than

the highway, though difficult except to those who knew the country

well. This brought them by way of Great Hintock; and passing the

church-yard they observed, as they talked, a motionless figure standing

by the gate.

“I think it was Marty South,” said the hollow-turner, parenthetically.

“I think ’twas; ’a was always a lonely maid,” said Upjohn. And they

passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more.

It was Marty, as they had supposed. That evening had been the

particular one of the week upon which Grace and herself had been

accustomed to privately deposit flowers on Giles’s grave, and this was

the first occasion since his death, eight months earlier, on which

Grace had failed to keep her appointment. Marty had waited in the road

just outside Little Hintock, where her fellow-pilgrim had been wont to

join her, till she was weary; and at last, thinking that Grace had

missed her and gone on alone, she followed the way to Great Hintock,

but saw no Grace in front of her. It got later, and Marty continued her

walk till she reached the church-yard gate; but still no Grace. Yet her

sense of comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave alone,

and still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, she stood there with

her little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and her feet chilled

by the damp ground, till more than two hours had passed.

She then heard the footsteps of Melbury’s men, who presently passed on

their return from the search. In the silence of the night Marty could

not help hearing fragments of their conversation, from which she

acquired a general idea of what had occurred, and where Mrs. Fitzpiers

then was.

Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the church-yard,

going to a secluded corner behind the bushes, where rose the unadorned

stone that marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne. As this solitary

and silent girl stood there in the moonlight, a straight slim figure,

clothed in a plaitless gown, the contours of womanhood so undeveloped

as to be scarcely perceptible, the marks of poverty and toil effaced by

the misty hour, she touched sublimity at points, and looked almost like

a being who had rejected with indifference the attribute of sex for the

loftier quality of abstract humanism. She stooped down and cleared away

the withered flowers that Grace and herself had laid there the previous

week, and put her fresh ones in their place.

“Now, my own, own love,” she whispered, “you are mine, and on’y mine;

for she has forgot ’ee at last, although for her you died. But

I—whenever I get up I’ll think of ’ee, and whenever I lie down I’ll

think of ’ee. Whenever I plant the young larches I’ll think that none

can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a gad, and whenever I

turn the cider-wring, I’ll say none could do it like you. If ever I

forget your name, let me forget home and Heaven!—But no, no, my love, I

never can forget ’ee; for you was a _good_ man, and did good things!”