by Thomas Hardy
CHAPTER XXVII.
The doctor's professional visit to Hintock House was promptly repeatedthe next day and the next. He always found Mrs. Charmond reclining ona sofa, and behaving generally as became a patient who was in no greathurry to lose that title. On each occasion he looked gravely at thelittle scratch on her arm, as if it had been a serious wound.
He had also, to his further satisfaction, found a slight scar on hertemple, and it was very convenient to put a piece of black plaster onthis conspicuous part of her person in preference to gold-beater'sskin, so that it might catch the eyes of the servants, and make hispresence appear decidedly necessary, in case there should be any doubtof the fact.
"Oh--you hurt me!" she exclaimed one day.
He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under which thescrape had turned the color of an unripe blackberry previous tovanishing altogether. "Wait a moment, then--I'll damp it," saidFitzpiers. He put his lips to the place and kept them there till theplaster came off easily. "It was at your request I put it on," said he.
"I know it," she replied. "Is that blue vein still in my temple thatused to show there? The scar must be just upon it. If the cut hadbeen a little deeper it would have spilt my hot blood indeed!"Fitzpiers examined so closely that his breath touched her tenderly, atwhich their eyes rose to an encounter--hers showing themselves as deepand mysterious as interstellar space. She turned her face awaysuddenly. "Ah! none of that! none of that--I cannot coquet with you!"she cried. "Don't suppose I consent to for one moment. Our poor,brief, youthful hour of love-making was too long ago to bear continuingnow. It is as well that we should understand each other on that pointbefore we go further."
"Coquet! Nor I with you. As it was when I found the historic gloves,so it is now. I might have been and may be foolish; but I am notrifler. I naturally cannot forget that little space in which Iflitted across the field of your vision in those days of the past, andthe recollection opens up all sorts of imaginings."
"Suppose my mother had not taken me away?" she murmured, her dreamyeyes resting on the swaying tip of a distant tree.
"I should have seen you again."
"And then?"
"Then the fire would have burned higher and higher. What would haveimmediately followed I know not; but sorrow and sickness of heart atlast."
"Why?"
"Well--that's the end of all love, according to Nature's law. I cangive no other reason."
"Oh, don't speak like that," she exclaimed. "Since we are onlypicturing the possibilities of that time, don't, for pity's sake, spoilthe picture." Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she added, with anincipient pout upon her full lips, "Let me think at least that if youhad really loved me at all seriously, you would have loved me for everand ever!"
"You are right--think it with all your heart," said he. "It is apleasant thought, and costs nothing."
She weighed that remark in silence a while. "Did you ever hearanything of me from then till now?" she inquired.
"Not a word."
"So much the better. I had to fight the battle of life as well as you.I may tell you about it some day. But don't ever ask me to do it, andparticularly do not press me to tell you now."
Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender acquaintanceon the romantic slopes above the Neckar were stretched out inretrospect to the length and importance of years; made to form a canvasfor infinite fancies, idle dreams, luxurious melancholies, and sweet,alluring assertions which could neither be proved nor disproved. Gracewas never mentioned between them, but a rumor of his proposed domesticchanges somehow reached her ears.
"Doctor, you are going away," she exclaimed, confronting him withaccusatory reproach in her large dark eyes no less than in her richcooing voice. "Oh yes, you are," she went on, springing to her feetwith an air which might almost have been called passionate. "It is nouse denying it. You have bought a practice at Budmouth. I don't blameyou. Nobody can live at Hintock--least of all a professional man whowants to keep abreast of recent discovery. And there is nobody here toinduce such a one to stay for other reasons. That's right, that'sright--go away!"
"But no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, though I amindeed in treaty for it. And, my dear friend, if I continue to feelabout the business as I feel at this moment--perhaps I may concludenever to go at all."
"But you hate Hintock, and everybody and everything in it that youdon't mean to take away with you?"
Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory tones, and shelapsed into the frivolous archness under which she hid passions of nomean strength--strange, smouldering, erratic passions, kept down like astifled conflagration, but bursting out now here, now there--the onlycertain element in their direction being its unexpectedness. If oneword could have expressed her it would have been Inconsequence. Shewas a woman of perversities, delighting in frequent contrasts. Sheliked mystery, in her life, in her love, in her history. To be fair toher, there was nothing in the latter which she had any great reason tobe ashamed of, and many things of which she might have been proud; butit had never been fathomed by the honest minds of Hintock, and sherarely volunteered her experiences. As for her capricious nature, thepeople on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that marvelloussubtlety of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found insons of the soil and dependants generally, they managed to get alongunder her government rather better than they would have done beneath amore equable rule.
Now, with regard to the doctor's notion of leaving Hintock, he hadadvanced further towards completing the purchase of the Budmouthsurgeon's good-will than he had admitted to Mrs. Charmond. The wholematter hung upon what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four hours.The evening after leaving her he went out into the lane, and walked andpondered between the high hedges, now greenish-white with wildclematis--here called "old-man's beard," from its aspect later in theyear.
The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, after which hisdeparture from Hintock would be irrevocable. But could he go away,remembering what had just passed? The trees, the hills, the leaves, thegrass--each had been endowed and quickened with a subtle charm since hehad discovered the person and history, and, above all, mood of theirowner. There was every temporal reason for leaving; it would beentering again into a world which he had only quitted in a passion forisolation, induced by a fit of Achillean moodiness after an imaginedslight. His wife herself saw the awkwardness of their position here,and cheerfully welcomed the purposed change, towards which every stephad been taken but the last. But could he find it in his heart--as hefound it clearly enough in his conscience--to go away?
He drew a troubled breath, and went in-doors. Here he rapidly penned aletter, wherein he withdrew once for all from the treaty for theBudmouth practice. As the postman had already left Little Hintock forthat night, he sent one of Melbury's men to intercept a mail-cart onanother turnpike-road, and so got the letter off.
The man returned, met Fitzpiers in the lane, and told him the thing wasdone. Fitzpiers went back to his house musing. Why had he carried outthis impulse--taken such wild trouble to effect a probable injury tohis own and his young wife's prospects? His motive was fantastic,glowing, shapeless as the fiery scenery about the western sky. Mrs.Charmond could overtly be nothing more to him than a patient now, andto his wife, at the outside, a patron. In the unattached bachelor daysof his first sojourning here how highly proper an emotional reason forlingering on would have appeared to troublesome dubiousness.Matrimonial ambition is such an honorable thing.
"My father has told me that you have sent off one of the men with alate letter to Budmouth," cried Grace, coming out vivaciously to meethim under the declining light of the sky, wherein hung, solitary, thefolding star. "I said at once that you had finally agreed to pay thepremium they ask, and that the tedious question had been settled. Whendo we go, Edgar?"
"I have altered my mind," said he. "They want too much--seven hundredand fi
fty is too large a sum--and in short, I have declined to gofurther. We must wait for another opportunity. I fear I am not a goodbusiness-man." He spoke the last words with a momentary faltering atthe great foolishness of his act; for, as he looked in her fair andhonorable face, his heart reproached him for what he had done.
Her manner that evening showed her disappointment. Personally sheliked the home of her childhood much, and she was not ambitious. Buther husband had seemed so dissatisfied with the circumstances hereaboutsince their marriage that she had sincerely hoped to go for his sake.
It was two or three days before he visited Mrs. Charmond again. Themorning had been windy, and little showers had sowed themselves likegrain against the walls and window-panes of the Hintock cottages. Hewent on foot across the wilder recesses of the park, where slimystreams of green moisture, exuding from decayed holes caused by oldamputations, ran down the bark of the oaks and elms, the rind belowbeing coated with a lichenous wash as green as emerald. They werestout-trunked trees, that never rocked their stems in the fiercestgale, responding to it entirely by crooking their limbs. Wrinkled likean old crone's face, and antlered with dead branches that rose abovethe foliage of their summits, they were nevertheless stillgreen--though yellow had invaded the leaves of other trees.
She was in a little boudoir or writing-room on the first floor, andFitzpiers was much surprised to find that the window-curtains wereclosed and a red-shaded lamp and candles burning, though out-of-doorsit was broad daylight. Moreover, a large fire was burning in thegrate, though it was not cold.
"What does it all mean?" he asked.
She sat in an easy-chair, her face being turned away. "Oh," shemurmured, "it is because the world is so dreary outside. Sorrow andbitterness in the sky, and floods of agonized tears beating against thepanes. I lay awake last night, and I could hear the scrape of snailscreeping up the window-glass; it was so sad! My eyes were so heavy thismorning that I could have wept my life away. I cannot bear you to seemy face; I keep it away from you purposely. Oh! why were we givenhungry hearts and wild desires if we have to live in a world like this?Why should Death only lend what Life is compelled to borrow--rest?Answer that, Dr. Fitzpiers."
"You must eat of a second tree of knowledge before you can do it,Felice Charmond."
"Then, when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I become full offears, till I think I shall die for very fear. The terribleinsistencies of society--how severe they are, and cold andinexorable--ghastly towards those who are made of wax and not of stone.Oh, I am afraid of them; a stab for this error, and a stab forthat--correctives and regulations framed that society may tend toperfection--an end which I don't care for in the least. Yet for this,all I do care for has to be stunted and starved."
Fitzpiers had seated himself near her. "What sets you in this mournfulmood?" he asked, gently. (In reality he knew that it was the result ofa loss of tone from staying in-doors so much, but he did not say so.)
"My reflections. Doctor, you must not come here any more. They beginto think it a farce already. I say you must come no more. There--don'tbe angry with me;" and she jumped up, pressed his hand, and lookedanxiously at him. "It is necessary. It is best for both you and me."
"But," said Fitzpiers, gloomily, "what have we done?"
"Done--we have done nothing. Perhaps we have thought the more.However, it is all vexation. I am going away to Middleton Abbey, nearShottsford, where a relative of my late husband lives, who is confinedto her bed. The engagement was made in London, and I can't get out ofit. Perhaps it is for the best that I go there till all this is past.When are you going to enter on your new practice, and leave Hintockbehind forever, with your pretty wife on your arm?"
"I have refused the opportunity. I love this place too well to depart."
"You HAVE?" she said, regarding him with wild uncertainty.
"Why do you ruin yourself in that way? Great Heaven, what have I done!"
"Nothing. Besides, you are going away."
"Oh yes; but only to Middleton Abbey for a month or two. Yet perhaps Ishall gain strength there--particularly strength of mind--I require it.And when I come back I shall be a new woman; and you can come and seeme safely then, and bring your wife with you, and we'll be friends--sheand I. Oh, how this shutting up of one's self does lead to indulgencein idle sentiments. I shall not wish you to give your attendance to meafter to-day. But I am glad that you are not going away--if yourremaining does not injure your prospects at all."
As soon as he had left the room the mild friendliness she had preservedin her tone at parting, the playful sadness with which she hadconversed with him, equally departed from her. She became as heavy aslead--just as she had been before he arrived. Her whole being seemedto dissolve in a sad powerlessness to do anything, and the sense of itmade her lips tremulous and her closed eyes wet. His footsteps againstartled her, and she turned round.
"I returned for a moment to tell you that the evening is going to befine. The sun is shining; so do open your curtains and put out thoselights. Shall I do it for you?"
"Please--if you don't mind."
He drew back the window-curtains, whereupon the red glow of the lampand the two candle-flames became almost invisible with the flood oflate autumn sunlight that poured in. "Shall I come round to you?" heasked, her back being towards him.
"No," she replied.
"Why not?"
"Because I am crying, and I don't want to see you."
He stood a moment irresolute, and regretted that he had killed therosy, passionate lamplight by opening the curtains and letting ingarish day.
"Then I am going," he said.
"Very well," she answered, stretching one hand round to him, andpatting her eyes with a handkerchief held in the other.
"Shall I write a line to you at--"
"No, no." A gentle reasonableness came into her tone as she added, "Itmust not be, you know. It won't do."
"Very well. Good-by." The next moment he was gone.
In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged the maid whodressed her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitzpiers's marriage.
"Mrs. Fitzpiers was once supposed to favor Mr. Winterborne," said theyoung woman.
"And why didn't she marry him?" said Mrs. Charmond.
"Because, you see, ma'am, he lost his houses."
"Lost his houses? How came he to do that?"
"The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your agentwouldn't renew them, though it is said that Mr. Winterborne had a verygood claim. That's as I've heard it, ma'am, and it was through it thatthe match was broke off."
Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. Charmond sunk intoa mood of dismal self-reproach. "In refusing that poor man hisreasonable request," she said to herself, "I foredoomed my rejuvenatedgirlhood's romance. Who would have thought such a business mattercould have nettled my own heart like this? Now for a winter of regretsand agonies and useless wishes, till I forget him in the spring. Oh! Iam glad I am going away."
She left her chamber and went down to dine with a sigh. On the stairsshe stood opposite the large window for a moment, and looked out uponthe lawn. It was not yet quite dark. Half-way up the steep greenslope confronting her stood old Timothy Tangs, who was shortening hisway homeward by clambering here where there was no road, and inopposition to express orders that no path was to be made there. Tangshad momentarily stopped to take a pinch of snuff; but observing Mrs.Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to get over the top out of hail.His precipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a barrelto the bottom, his snuffbox rolling in front of him.
Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers; herconstitutional cloud of misery; the sorrowful drops that still hungupon her eyelashes, all made way for the incursive mood started by thespectacle. She burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, her verygloom of the previous hour seeming to render it the moreuncontrollable. It had not died out of her when she reached thed
ining-room; and even here, before the servants, her shoulders suddenlyshook as the scene returned upon her; and the tears of her hilaritymingled with the remnants of those engendered by her grief.
She resolved to be sad no more. She drank two glasses of champagne,and a little more still after those, and amused herself in the eveningwith singing little amatory songs.
"I must do something for that poor man Winterborne, however," she said.
