The Woodlanders Thomas Hardy (the reader ebook TXT) 📖

“He has all the cardinal virtues.”

“Perhaps⁠—though I don’t know them precisely.”

“You unconsciously practise them, Miss Melbury, which is better. According to Schleiermacher they are Self-control, Perseverance, Wisdom, and Love; and his is the best list that I know.”

“I am afraid poor⁠—” She was going to say that she feared Winterborne⁠—the giver of the purse years before⁠—had not much perseverance, though he had all the other three; but she determined to go no further in this direction, and was silent.

These half-revelations made a perceptible difference in Fitzpiers. His sense of personal superiority wasted away, and Grace assumed in his eyes the true aspect of a mistress in her lover’s regard.

“Miss Melbury,” he said, suddenly, “I divine that this virtuous man you mention has been refused by you?”

She could do no otherwise than admit it.

“I do not inquire without good reason. God forbid that I should kneel in another’s place at any shrine unfairly. But, my dear Miss Melbury, now that he is gone, may I draw near?”

“I⁠—I can’t say anything about that!” she cried, quickly. “Because when a man has been refused you feel pity for him, and like him more than you did before.”

This increasing complication added still more value to Grace in the surgeon’s eyes: it rendered her adorable. “But cannot you say?” he pleaded, distractedly.

“I’d rather not⁠—I think I must go home at once.”

“Oh yes,” said Fitzpiers. But as he did not move she felt it awkward to walk straight away from him; and so they stood silently together. A diversion was created by the accident of two birds, that had either been roosting above their heads or nesting there, tumbling one over the other into the hot ashes at their feet, apparently engrossed in a desperate quarrel that prevented the use of their wings. They speedily parted, however, and flew up, and were seen no more.

“That’s the end of what is called love!” said someone.

The speaker was neither Grace nor Fitzpiers, but Marty South, who approached with her face turned up to the sky in her endeavor to trace the birds. Suddenly perceiving Grace, she exclaimed, “Oh, Miss Melbury! I have been following they pigeons, and didn’t see you. And here’s Mr. Winterborne!” she continued, shyly, as she looked towards Fitzpiers, who stood in the background.

“Marty,” Grace interrupted. “I want you to walk home with me⁠—will you? Come along.” And without lingering longer she took hold of Marty’s arm and led her away.

They went between the spectral arms of the peeled trees as they lay, and onward among the growing trees, by a path where there were no oaks, and no barking, and no Fitzpiers⁠—nothing but copse-wood, between which the primroses could be discerned in pale bunches. “I didn’t know Mr. Winterborne was there,” said Marty, breaking the silence when they had nearly reached Grace’s door.

“Nor was he,” said Grace.

“But, Miss Melbury, I saw him.”

“No,” said Grace. “It was somebody else. Giles Winterborne is nothing to me.”

The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque body of infinitely larger shape and importance. The boughs cast green shades, which hurt the complexion of the girls who walked there; and a fringe of them which overhung Mr. Melbury’s garden dripped on his seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface all over as with pockmarks, till Melbury declared that gardens in such a place were no good at all. The two trees that had creaked all the winter left off creaking, the whir of the nightjar, however, forming a very satisfactory continuation of uncanny music from that quarter. Except at midday the sun was not seen complete by the Hintock people, but rather in the form of numerous little stars staring through the leaves.

Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as the hour grew later, and nine o’clock drew on, the irradiation of the daytime became broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of indistinctness. Imagination could trace upon the trunks and boughs strange faces and figures shaped by the dying lights; the surfaces of the holly-leaves would here and there shine like peeping eyes, while such fragments of the sky as were visible between the trunks assumed the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven tongues. This was before the moonrise. Later on, when that planet was getting command of the upper heaven, and consequently shining with an unbroken face into such open glades as there were in the neighborhood of the hamlet, it became apparent that the margin of the wood which approached the timber-merchant’s premises was not to be left to the customary stillness of that reposeful time.

Fitzpiers having heard a voice or voices, was looking over his garden gate⁠—where he now looked more frequently than into his books⁠—fancying that Grace might be abroad with some friends. He was now irretrievably committed in heart to Grace Melbury, though he was by no means sure that she was so far committed to him. That the Idea had for once completely fulfilled itself in the objective substance⁠—which he had hitherto deemed an impossibility⁠—he was enchanted enough to fancy must be the case at last. It was not Grace who had passed, however, but several of the ordinary village girls in a group⁠—some steadily walking, some in a mood of wild gayety. He quietly asked his landlady, who was also in the garden, what these girls were intending, and she informed him that it being Old Midsummer Eve, they were about to attempt some spell or enchantment which would afford them a glimpse of their future partners for life. She declared it to be an ungodly performance, and one which she for her part would never countenance; saying which, she entered her house and retired to bed.

The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of maidens slowly up the road. They had turned into the wood at an opening between