The Woodlanders Thomas Hardy (the reader ebook TXT) 📖

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 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 schoolgirl 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