The Woodlanders: Chapter 36

Chapter 36

CHAPTER XXXVI.


Grace was not the only one who watched and meditated in Hintock
that night.  Felice Charmond was in no mood to retire to rest at a
customary hour; and over her drawing-room fire at the Manor House
she sat as motionless and in as deep a reverie as Grace in her
little apartment at the homestead.

Having caught ear of Melbury's intelligence while she stood on the
landing at his house, and been eased of much of her mental
distress, her sense of personal decorum returned upon her with a
rush.  She descended the stairs and left the door like a ghost,
keeping close to the walls of the building till she got round to
the gate of the quadrangle, through which she noiselessly passed
almost before Grace and her father had finished their discourse.
Suke Damson had thought it well to imitate her superior in this
respect, and, descending the back stairs as Felice descended the
front, went out at the side door and home to her cottage.

Once outside Melbury's gates Mrs. Charmond ran with all her speed
to the Manor House, without stopping or turning her head, and
splitting her thin boots in her haste.  She entered her own
dwelling, as she had emerged from it, by the drawing-room window.
In other circumstances she would have felt some timidity at
undertaking such an unpremeditated excursion alone; but her
anxiety for another had cast out her fear for herself.

Everything in her drawing-room was just as she had left it--the
candles still burning, the casement closed, and the shutters
gently pulled to, so as to hide the state of the window from the
cursory glance of a servant entering the apartment.  She had been
gone about three-quarters of an hour by the clock, and nobody
seemed to have discovered her absence.  Tired in body but tense in
mind, she sat down, palpitating, round-eyed, bewildered at what
she had done.

She had been betrayed by affrighted love into a visit which, now
that the emotion instigating it had calmed down under her belief
that Fitzpiers was in no danger, was the saddest surprise to her.
This was how she had set about doing her best to escape her
passionate bondage to him! Somehow, in declaring to Grace and to
herself the unseemliness of her infatuation, she had grown a
convert to its irresistibility.  If Heaven would only give her
strength; but Heaven never did! One thing was indispensable; she
must go away from Hintock if she meant to withstand further
temptation.  The struggle was too wearying, too hopeless, while
she remained.  It was but a continual capitulation of conscience
to what she dared not name.

By degrees, as she sat, Felice's mind--helped perhaps by the
anticlimax of learning that her lover was unharmed after all her
fright about him--grew wondrously strong in wise resolve.  For the
moment she was in a mood, in the words of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu,
"to run mad with discretion;" and was so persuaded that discretion
lay in departure that she wished to set about going that very
minute.  Jumping up from her seat, she began to gather together
some small personal knick-knacks scattered about the room, to feel
that preparations were really in train.

While moving here and there she fancied that she heard a slight
noise out-of-doors, and stood still.  Surely it was a tapping at
the window.  A thought entered her mind, and burned her cheek.  He
had come to that window before; yet was it possible that he should
dare to do so now! All the servants were in bed, and in the
ordinary course of affairs she would have retired also.  Then she
remembered that on stepping in by the casement and closing it, she
had not fastened the window-shutter, so that a streak of light
from the interior of the room might have revealed her vigil to an
observer on the lawn.  How all things conspired against her
keeping faith with Grace!

The tapping recommenced, light as from the bill of a little bird;
her illegitimate hope overcame her vow; she went and pulled back
the shutter, determining, however, to shake her head at him and
keep the casement securely closed.

What she saw outside might have struck terror into a heart stouter
than a helpless woman's at midnight.  In the centre of the lowest
pane of the window, close to the glass, was a human face, which
she barely recognized as the face of Fitzpiers.  It was surrounded
with the darkness of the night without, corpse-like in its pallor,
and covered with blood.  As disclosed in the square area of the
pane it met her frightened eyes like a replica of the Sudarium of
St. Veronica.

He moved his lips, and looked at her imploringly.  Her rapid mind
pieced together in an instant a possible concatenation of events
which might have led to this tragical issue.  She unlatched the
casement with a terrified hand, and bending down to where he was
crouching, pressed her face to his with passionate solicitude.
She assisted him into the room without a word, to do which it was
almost necessary to lift him bodily.  Quickly closing the window
and fastening the shutters, she bent over him breathlessly.

"Are you hurt much--much?" she cried, faintly.  "Oh, oh, how is
this!"

"Rather much--but don't be frightened," he answered in a difficult
whisper, and turning himself to obtain an easier position if
possible.  "A little water, please."

She ran across into the dining-room, and brought a bottle and
glass, from which he eagerly drank.  He could then speak much
better, and with her help got upon the nearest couch.

"Are you dying, Edgar?" she said.  "Do speak to me!"

"I am half dead," said Fitzpiers.  "But perhaps I shall get over
it....It is chiefly loss of blood."

"But I thought your fall did not hurt you," said she.  "Who did
this?"

"Felice--my father-in-law!...I have crawled to you more than a
mile on my hands and knees--God, I thought I should never have got
here!...I have come to you--be-cause you are the only friend--I
have in the world now....I can never go back to Hintock--never--to
the roof of the Melburys! Not poppy nor mandragora will ever
medicine this bitter feud!...If I were only well again--"

"Let me bind your head, now that you have rested."

"Yes--but wait a moment--it has stopped bleeding, fortunately, or
I should be a dead man before now.  While in the wood I managed to
make a tourniquet of some half-pence and my handkerchief, as well
as I could in the dark....But listen, dear Felice! Can you hide me
till I am well? Whatever comes, I can be seen in Hintock no more.
My practice is nearly gone, you know--and after this I would not
care to recover it if I could."

By this time Felice's tears began to blind her.  Where were now
her discreet plans for sundering their lives forever? To
administer to him in his pain, and trouble, and poverty, was her
single thought.  The first step was to hide him, and she asked
herself where.  A place occurred to her mind.

She got him some wine from the dining-room, which strengthened him
much.  Then she managed to remove his boots, and, as he could now
keep himself upright by leaning upon her on one side and a
walking-stick on the other, they went thus in slow march out of
the room and up the stairs.  At the top she took him along a
gallery, pausing whenever he required rest, and thence up a
smaller staircase to the least used part of the house, where she
unlocked a door.  Within was a lumber-room, containing abandoned
furniture of all descriptions, built up in piles which obscured
the light of the windows, and formed between them nooks and lairs
in which a person would not be discerned even should an eye gaze
in at the door.  The articles were mainly those that had belonged
to the previous owner of the house, and had been bought in by the
late Mr. Charmond at the auction; but changing fashion, and the
tastes of a young wife, had caused them to be relegated to this
dungeon.

Here Fitzpiers sat on the floor against the wall till she had
hauled out materials for a bed, which she spread on the floor in
one of the aforesaid nooks.  She obtained water and a basin, and
washed the dried blood from his face and hands; and when he was
comfortably reclining, fetched food from the larder.  While he ate
her eyes lingered anxiously on his face, following its every
movement with such loving-kindness as only a fond woman can show.

He was now in better condition, and discussed his position with
her.

"What I fancy I said to Melbury must have been enough to enrage
any man, if uttered in cold blood, and with knowledge of his
presence.  But I did not know him, and I was stupefied by what he
had given me, so that I hardly was aware of what I said.  Well--
the veil of that temple is rent in twain!...As I am not going to
be seen again in Hintock, my first efforts must be directed to
allay any alarm that may be felt at my absence, before I am able
to get clear away.  Nobody must suspect that I have been hurt, or
there will be a country talk about me.  Felice, I must at once
concoct a letter to check all search for me.  I think if you can
bring me a pen and paper I may be able to do it now.  I could rest
better if it were done.  Poor thing! how I tire her with running
up and down!"

She fetched writing materials, and held up the blotting-book as a
support to his hand, while he penned a brief note to his nominal
wife.

"The animosity shown towards me by your father," he wrote, in this
coldest of marital epistles, "is such that I cannot return again
to a roof which is his, even though it shelters you.  A parting is
unavoidable, as you are sure to be on his side in this division.
I am starting on a journey which will take me a long way from
Hintock, and you must not expect to see me there again for some
time."

He then gave her a few directions bearing upon his professional
engagements and other practical matters, concluding without a hint
of his destination, or a notion of when she would see him again.
He offered to read the note to Felice before he closed it up, but
she would not hear or see it; that side of his obligations
distressed her beyond endurance.  She turned away from Fitzpiers,
and sobbed bitterly.

"If you can get this posted at a place some miles away," he
whispered, exhausted by the effort of writing--"at Shottsford or
Port-Bredy, or still better, Budmouth--it will divert all
suspicion from this house as the place of my refuge."

"I will drive to one or other of the places myself--anything to
keep it unknown," she murmured, her voice weighted with vague
foreboding, now that the excitement of helping him had passed
away.

Fitzpiers told her that there was yet one thing more to he done.
"In creeping over the fence on to the lawn," he said, "I made the
rail bloody, and it shows rather much on the white paint--I could
see it in the dark.  At all hazards it should be washed off.
Could you do that also, Felice?"

What will not women do on such devoted occasions? weary as she was
she went all the way down the rambling staircases to the ground-
floor, then to search for a lantern, which she lighted and hid
under her cloak; then for a wet sponge, and next went forth into
the night.  The white railing stared out in the darkness at her
approach, and a ray from the enshrouded lantern fell upon the
blood--just where he had told her it would be found.  she
shuddered.  It was almost too much to bear in one day--but with a
shaking hand she sponged the rail clean, and returned to the
house.

The time occupied by these several proceedings was not much less
than two hours.  When all was done, and she had smoothed his
extemporized bed, and placed everything within his reach that she
could think of, she took her leave of him, and locked him in.

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