CHAPTER V.

Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and

without discomposure. 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.

Neither did he observe what was also the fact, that though he cherished

a true and warm feeling towards Grace Melbury, he was not altogether

her fool just now. It must be remembered that he had not seen her for a

year.

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 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. Click, click, click went the pattens; and she did not turn

her head.

She had, however, become aware before this that the driver of the

approaching gig was Giles. She had shrunk from being overtaken by him

thus; but as it was inevitable, she had 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.”

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 long 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, though he did not know it. 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 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

Winterborne. “Or don’t you know?”

“I think I do.”

“Because of the houses?”

She nodded.

“Yes. I 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.”

“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 right of another woman,” she said,

with playful malice, as she put on her pattens. “I wonder what you are

thinking of! Thank you for the lift in that handsome gig. Good-by.”

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 liny distinctness of architectural drawings,

as if the original dream and vision of the conceiving master-mason,

some mediaeval Vilars or other unknown to fame, 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.

Marty, following the same track, marched promptly to the

hair-dresser’s, Mr. Percombe’s. Percombe was the chief of his trade in

Sherton Abbas. He had the patronage of such county offshoots as had

been obliged 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 patronizing 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 front street. Here on Saturday nights

from seven till ten he took an almost innumerable succession of

twopences from the farm laborers 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 whispered, there being others in the

shop. “But I can trust you, I see.”

She had now reached the end of this distressing business, and went

listlessly along the street to attend to other errands. These occupied

her till four o’clock, at which time she recrossed the market-place. It

was impossible to avoid rediscovering Winterborne every time she passed

that 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 crowd, and brought a delightful suggestion of orchards

among the crowded buildings there. When her eye fell upon him for the

last time he was standing somewhat apart, holding the tree like an

ensign, and looking on the ground instead of pushing his produce as he

ought to have been doing. 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 suddenly lifted his eyes in a direction away

from Marty, his face simultaneously kindling 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 known as Miss Grace Melbury, but now looking glorified and refined

above her former level. Winterborne, 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 embarrassment beheld her coming on

tiptoe through the mud to the middle of the square where he stood.

Miss Melbury’s arrival so early was, as Marty could see, unexpected by

Giles, which accounted for his not being ready to receive her. Indeed,

her father had named five o’clock as her probable time, for which

reason that hour had been looming out all the day in his forward

perspective, like an important edifice on a 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 which appeared on hers

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,

which was not by any means an ordinary one in Sherton Abbas streets.

Nevertheless, the greeting on her looks and lips was of a restrained

type, which perhaps was not unnatural. For true it was that Giles

Winterborne, well-attired and well-mannered as he was for a yeoman,

looked rough beside her. It had sometimes dimly occurred to him, in his

ruminating silence at Little Hintock, that external phenomena—such as

the lowness or height or color of a hat, the fold of a coat, the make

of a boot, or the chance attitude or occupation of 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 sight

of him was the penalty he paid for his laxness.

He gave away the tree to a by-stander, as soon as he could find one who

would accept the cumbersome gift, 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 recognized by Miss Melbury; 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 Grace Melbury with

precision, either now 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 _reductio ad

absurdum_ 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 movement. 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 perhaps hardly settled down to its

matured curves, there was a gentleness that might 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 nothing remarkable in her dress just now, beyond a natural

fitness and a style that was recent for the streets of Sherton. But,

indeed, had it been the reverse, and quite striking, it would have

meant just as little. For there can be hardly anything less connected

with a woman’s personality than drapery which she has neither designed,

manufactured, cut, sewed, or even seen, except by a glance of approval

when told that such and such a shape and color 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 something that was not she. The woman herself was a

shadowy, conjectural creature who had little to do with the outlines

presented to Sherton eyes; a shape in the gloom, whose true description

could only be approximated by putting together a movement now and a

glance then, in that patient and long-continued attentiveness which

nothing but watchful loving-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, with the view of escaping

them on the way, lest they should feel compelled to spoil their

_tête-à-tête_ by asking her to ride. She walked fast, and one-third of

the journey was done, and the evening rapidly darkening, before she

perceived any sign of them behind her. Then, while ascending a hill,

she dimly saw their vehicle drawing near the lowest part of the

incline, their heads slightly 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 the mortification of being

overtaken and picked up for pity’s sake by the coming pair.

Accordingly, as the carriage drew abreast of her in climbing the long

ascent, she walked close to the wheels, the rays of the nearest lamp

penetrating 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.

“Yes; she’s inside.”

Marty reflected, and perceived that Mrs. Charmond must have recognized

her plodding up the hill under the blaze of the lamp; recognized,

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 ripely 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 certain occasions. At present,

after recognizing 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,” 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 of

the parishioners. But she could discern nothing of the lady. She also

looked for Miss Melbury and Winterborne. The nose of their horse

sometimes came quite near the back of Mrs. Charmond’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.

“What’s that?” she whispered.

“Mis’ess yawning.”

“Why should she yawn?”

“Oh, because she’s been used to such wonderfully good life, and finds

it dull here. She’ll soon be off again 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 soft voice said to her from the interior, “Good-night.”

“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.