The Woodlanders: Chapter 4

Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV.


There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and
presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged
like a dead-born child.  The villagers everywhere had already
bestirred themselves, rising at this time of the year at the far
less dreary hour of absolute darkness.  It had been above an hour
earlier, before a single bird had untucked his head, that twenty
lights were struck in as many bedrooms, twenty pairs of shutters
opened, and twenty pairs of eyes stretched to the sky to forecast
the weather for the day.

Owls that had been catching mice in the out-houses, rabbits that
had been eating the wintergreens in the gardens, and stoats that
had been sucking the blood of the rabbits, discerning that their
human neighbors were on the move, discreetly withdrew from
publicity, and were seen and heard no more that day.

The daylight revealed the whole of Mr. Melbury's homestead, of
which the wagon-sheds had been an outlying erection.  It formed
three sides of an open quadrangle, and consisted of all sorts of
buildings, the largest and central one being the dwelling itself.
The fourth side of the quadrangle was the public road.

It was a dwelling-house of respectable, roomy, almost dignified
aspect; which, taken with the fact that there were the remains of
other such buildings thereabout, indicated that Little Hintock had
at some time or other been of greater importance than now, as its
old name of Hintock St. Osmond also testified.  The house was of
no marked antiquity, yet of well-advanced age; older than a stale
novelty, but no canonized antique; faded, not hoary; looking at
you from the still distinct middle-distance of the early Georgian
time, and awakening on that account the instincts of reminiscence
more decidedly than the remoter and far grander memorials which
have to speak from the misty reaches of mediaevalism.  The faces,
dress, passions, gratitudes, and revenues of the great-great-
grandfathers and grandmothers who had been the first to gaze from
those rectangular windows, and had stood under that key-stoned
doorway, could be divined and measured by homely standards of to-
day.  It was a house in whose reverberations queer old personal
tales were yet audible if properly listened for; and not, as with
those of the castle and cloister, silent beyond the possibility of
echo.

The garden-front remained much as it had always been, and there
was a porch and entrance that way.  But the principal house-door
opened on the square yard or quadrangle towards the road, formerly
a regular carriage entrance, though the middle of the area was now
made use of for stacking timber, fagots, bundles, and other
products of the wood.  It was divided from the lane by a lichen-
coated wall, in which hung a pair of gates, flanked by piers out
of the perpendicular, with a round white ball on the top of each.

The building on the left of the enclosure was a long-backed
erection, now used for spar-making, sawing, crib-framing, and
copse-ware manufacture in general.  Opposite were the wagon-sheds
where Marty had deposited her spars.

Here Winterborne had remained after the girl's abrupt departure,
to see that the wagon-loads were properly made up.  Winterborne
was connected with the Melbury family in various ways.  In
addition to the sentimental relationship which arose from his
father having been the first Mrs. Melbury's lover, Winterborne's
aunt had married and emigrated with the brother of the timber-
merchant many years before--an alliance that was sufficient to
place Winterborne, though the poorer, on a footing of social
intimacy with the Melburys.  As in most villages so secluded as
this, intermarriages were of Hapsburgian frequency among the
inhabitants, and there were hardly two houses in Little Hintock
unrelated by some matrimonial tie or other.

For this reason a curious kind of partnership existed between
Melbury and the younger man--a partnership based upon an unwritten
code, by which each acted in the way he thought fair towards the
other, on a give-and-take principle.  Melbury, with his timber and
copse-ware business, found that the weight of his labor came in
winter and spring.  Winterborne was in the apple and cider trade,
and his requirements in cartage and other work came in the autumn
of each year.  Hence horses, wagons, and in some degree men, were
handed over to him when the apples began to fall; he, in return,
lending his assistance to Melbury in the busiest wood-cutting
season, as now.

Before he had left the shed a boy came from the house to ask him
to remain till Mr. Melbury had seen him.  Winterborne thereupon
crossed over to the spar-house where two or three men were already
at work, two of them being travelling spar-makers from White-hart
Lane, who, when this kind of work began, made their appearance
regularly, and when it was over disappeared in silence till the
season came again.

Firewood was the one thing abundant in Little Hintock; and a blaze
of gad-cuds made the outhouse gay with its light, which vied with
that of the day as yet.  In the hollow shades of the roof could be
seen dangling etiolated arms of ivy which had crept through the
joints of the tiles and were groping in vain for some support,
their leaves being dwarfed and sickly for want of sunlight; others
were pushing in with such force at the eaves as to lift from their
supports the shelves that were fixed there.

Besides the itinerant journey-workers there were also present John
Upjohn, engaged in the hollow-turnery trade, who lived hard by;
old Timothy Tangs and young Timothy Tangs, top and bottom sawyers,
at work in Mr. Melbury's pit outside; Farmer Bawtree, who kept the
cider-house, and Robert Creedle, an old man who worked for
Winterborne, and stood warming his hands; these latter being
enticed in by the ruddy blaze, though they had no particular
business there.  None of them call for any remark except, perhaps,
Creedle.  To have completely described him it would have been
necessary to write a military memoir, for he wore under his smock-
frock a cast-off soldier's jacket that had seen hot service, its
collar showing just above the flap of the frock; also a hunting
memoir, to include the top-boots that he had picked up by chance;
also chronicles of voyaging and shipwreck, for his pocket-knife
had been given him by a weather-beaten sailor.  But Creedle
carried about with him on his uneventful rounds these silent
testimonies of war, sport, and adventure, and thought nothing of
their associations or their stories.

Copse-work, as it was called, being an occupation which the
secondary intelligence of the hands and arms could carry on
without requiring the sovereign attention of the head, the minds
of its professors wandered considerably from the objects before
them; hence the tales, chronicles, and ramifications of family
history which were recounted here were of a very exhaustive kind,
and sometimes so interminable as to defy description.

Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not arrived, stepped back
again outside the door; and the conversation interrupted by his
momentary presence flowed anew, reaching his ears as an
accompaniment to the regular dripping of the fog from the
plantation boughs around.

The topic at present handled was a highly popular and frequent
one--the personal character of Mrs. Charmond, the owner of the
surrounding woods and groves.

"My brother-in-law told me, and I have no reason to doubt it,"
said Creedle, "that she'd sit down to her dinner with a frock
hardly higher than her elbows.  'Oh, you wicked woman!' he said to
himself when he first see her, 'you go to your church, and sit,
and kneel, as if your knee-jints were greased with very saint's
anointment, and tell off your Hear-us-good-Lords like a business
man counting money; and yet you can eat your victuals such a
figure as that!' Whether she's a reformed character by this time I
can't say; but I don't care who the man is, that's how she went on
when my brother-in-law lived there."

"Did she do it in her husband's time?"

"That I don't know--hardly, I should think, considering his
temper.  Ah!" Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance into physical
form by slowly resigning his head to obliquity and letting his
eyes water.  "That man! 'Not if the angels of heaven come down,
Creedle,' he said, 'shall you do another day's work for me!' Yes--
he'd say anything--anything; and would as soon take a winged
creature's name in vain as yours or mine! Well, now I must get
these spars home-along, and to-morrow, thank God, I must see about
using 'em."

An old woman now entered upon the scene.  She was Mr. Melbury's
servant, and passed a great part of her time in crossing the yard
between the house-door and the spar-shed, whither she had come now
for fuel.  She had two facial aspects--one, of a soft and flexible
kind, she used indoors when assisting about the parlor or up-
stairs; the other, with stiff lines and corners, when she was
bustling among the men in the spar-house or out-of-doors.

"Ah, Grammer Oliver," said John Upjohn, "it do do my heart good to
see a old woman like you so dapper and stirring, when I bear in
mind that after fifty one year counts as two did afore! But your
smoke didn't rise this morning till twenty minutes past seven by
my beater; and that's late, Grammer Oliver."

"If you was a full-sized man, John, people might take notice of
your scornful meanings.  But your growing up was such a scrimped
and scanty business that really a woman couldn't feel hurt if you
were to spit fire and brimstone itself at her.  Here," she added,
holding out a spar-gad to one of the workmen, from which dangled a
long black-pudding--"here's something for thy breakfast, and if
you want tea you must fetch it from in-doors."

"Mr. Melbury is late this morning," said the bottom-sawyer.

"Yes.  'Twas a dark dawn," said Mrs. Oliver.  "Even when I opened
the door, so late as I was, you couldn't have told poor men from
gentlemen, or John from a reasonable-sized object.  And I don't
think maister's slept at all well to-night.  He's anxious about
his daughter; and I know what that is, for I've cried bucketfuls
for my own."

When the old woman had gone Creedle said,

"He'll fret his gizzard green if he don't soon hear from that maid
of his.  Well, learning is better than houses and lands.  But to
keep a maid at school till she is taller out of pattens than her
mother was in 'em--'tis tempting Providence."

"It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl," said
young Timothy Tangs.

"I can mind her mother," said the hollow-turner.  "Always a teuny,
delicate piece; her touch upon your hand was as soft and cool as
wind.  She was inoculated for the small-pox and had it beautifully
fine, just about the time that I was out of my apprenticeship--ay,
and a long apprenticeship 'twas.  I served that master of mine six
years and three hundred and fourteen days."

The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, as if,
considering their number, they were a rather more remarkable fact
than the years.

"Mr. Winterborne's father walked with her at one time," said old
Timothy Tangs.  "But Mr. Melbury won her.  She was a child of a
woman, and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her.  Whenever
she and her husband came to a puddle in their walks together he'd
take her up like a half-penny doll and put her over without
dirting her a speck.  And if he keeps the daughter so long at
boarding-school, he'll make her as nesh as her mother was.  But
here he comes."

Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury crossing the
court from his door.  He was carrying an open letter in his hand,
and came straight to Winterborne.  His gloom of the preceding
night had quite gone.

"I'd no sooner made up my mind, Giles, to go and see why Grace
didn't come or write than I get a letter from her--'Clifton:
Wednesday.  My dear father,' says she, 'I'm coming home to-morrow'
(that's to-day), 'but I didn't think it worth while to write long
beforehand.' The little rascal, and didn't she! Now, Giles, as you
are going to Sherton market to-day with your apple-trees, why not
join me and Grace there, and we'll drive home all together?"

He made the proposal with cheerful energy; he was hardly the same
man as the man of the small dark hours.  Ever it happens that even
among the moodiest the tendency to be cheered is stronger than the
tendency to be cast down; and a soul's specific gravity stands
permanently less than that of the sea of troubles into which it is
thrown.

Winterborne, though not demonstrative, replied to this suggestion
with something like alacrity.  There was not much doubt that
Marty's grounds for cutting off her hair were substantial enough,
if Ambrose's eyes had been a reason for keeping it on.  As for the
timber-merchant, it was plain that his invitation had been given
solely in pursuance of his scheme for uniting the pair.  He had
made up his mind to the course as a duty, and was strenuously bent
upon following it out.

Accompanied by Winterborne, he now turned towards the door of the
spar-house, when his footsteps were heard by the men as aforesaid.

"Well, John, and Lot," he said, nodding as he entered.  "A rimy
morning."

"'Tis, sir!" said Creedle, energetically; for, not having as yet
been able to summon force sufficient to go away and begin work, he
felt the necessity of throwing some into his speech.  "I don't
care who the man is, 'tis the rimiest morning we've had this
fall."

"I heard you wondering why I've kept my daughter so long at
boarding-school," resumed Mr. Melbury, looking up from the letter
which he was reading anew by the fire, and turning to them with
the suddenness that was a trait in him.  "Hey?" he asked, with
affected shrewdness.  "But you did, you know.  Well, now, though
it is my own business more than anybody else's, I'll tell ye.
When I was a boy, another boy--the pa'son's son--along with a lot
of others, asked me 'Who dragged Whom round the walls of What?'
and I said, 'Sam Barrett, who dragged his wife in a chair round
the tower corner when she went to be churched.' They laughed at me
with such torrents of scorn that I went home ashamed, and couldn't
sleep for shame; and I cried that night till my pillow was wet:
till at last I thought to myself there and then--'They may laugh
at me for my ignorance, but that was father's fault, and none o'
my making, and I must bear it.  But they shall never laugh at my
children, if I have any: I'll starve first!' Thank God, I've been
able to keep her at school without sacrifice; and her scholarship
is such that she stayed on as governess for a time.  Let 'em laugh
now if they can: Mrs. Charmond herself is not better informed than
my girl Grace."

There was something between high indifference and humble emotion
in his delivery, which made it difficult for them to reply.
Winterborne's interest was of a kind which did not show itself in
words; listening, he stood by the fire, mechanically stirring the
embers with a spar-gad.

"You'll be, then, ready, Giles?" Melbury continued, awaking from a
reverie.  "Well, what was the latest news at Shottsford yesterday,
Mr. Bawtree?"

"Well, Shottsford is Shottsford still--you can't victual your
carcass there unless you've got money; and you can't buy a cup of
genuine there, whether or no....But as the saying is, 'Go abroad
and you'll hear news of home.' It seems that our new neighbor,
this young Dr. What's-his-name, is a strange, deep, perusing
gentleman; and there's good reason for supposing he has sold his
soul to the wicked one."

"'Od name it all," murmured the timber-merchant, unimpressed by
the news, but reminded of other things by the subject of it; "I've
got to meet a gentleman this very morning? and yet I've planned to
go to Sherton Abbas for the maid."

"I won't praise the doctor's wisdom till I hear what sort of
bargain he's made," said the top-sawyer.

"'Tis only an old woman's tale," said Bawtree.  "But it seems that
he wanted certain books on some mysterious science or black-art,
and in order that the people hereabout should not know anything
about his dark readings, he ordered 'em direct from London, and
not from the Sherton book-seller.  The parcel was delivered by
mistake at the pa'son's, and he wasn't at home; so his wife opened
it, and went into hysterics when she read 'em, thinking her
husband had turned heathen, and 'twould be the ruin of the
children.  But when he came he said he knew no more about 'em than
she; and found they were this Mr. Fitzpier's property.  So he
wrote 'Beware!' outside, and sent 'em on by the sexton."

"He must be a curious young man," mused the hollow-turner.

"He must," said Timothy Tangs.

"Nonsense," said Mr. Melbury, authoritatively, "he's only a
gentleman fond of science and philosophy and poetry, and, in fact,
every kind of knowledge; and being lonely here, he passes his time
in making such matters his hobby."

"Well," said old Timothy, "'tis a strange thing about doctors that
the worse they be the better they be.  I mean that if you hear
anything of this sort about 'em, ten to one they can cure ye as
nobody else can."

"True," said Bawtree, emphatically.  "And for my part I shall take
my custom from old Jones and go to this one directly I've anything
the matter with me.  That last medicine old Jones gave me had no
taste in it at all."

Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed man, did not listen to
these recitals, being moreover preoccupied with the business
appointment which had come into his head.  He walked up and down,
looking on the floor--his usual custom when undecided.  That
stiffness about the arm, hip, and knee-joint which was apparent
when he walked was the net product of the divers sprains and over-
exertions that had been required of him in handling trees and
timber when a young man, for he was of the sort called self-made,
and had worked hard.  He knew the origin of every one of these
cramps: that in his left shoulder had come of carrying a pollard,
unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home; that in one leg was caused
by the crash of an elm against it when they were felling; that in
the other was from lifting a bole.  On many a morrow after
wearying himself by these prodigious muscular efforts, he had
risen from his bed fresh as usual; his lassitude had departed,
apparently forever; and confident in the recuperative power of his
youth, he had repeated the strains anew.  But treacherous Time had
been only hiding ill results when they could be guarded against,
for greater accumulation when they could not.  In his declining
years the store had been unfolded in the form of rheumatisms,
pricks, and spasms, in every one of which Melbury recognized some
act which, had its consequence been contemporaneously made known,
he would wisely have abstained from repeating.

On a summons by Grammer Oliver to breakfast, he left the shed.
Reaching the kitchen, where the family breakfasted in winter to
save house-labor, he sat down by the fire, and looked a long time
at the pair of dancing shadows cast by each fire-iron and dog-knob
on the whitewashed chimney-corner--a yellow one from the window,
and a blue one from the fire.

"I don't quite know what to do to-day," he said to his wife at
last.  "I've recollected that I promised to meet Mrs. Charmond's
steward in Round Wood at twelve o'clock, and yet I want to go for
Grace."

"Why not let Giles fetch her by himself? 'Twill bring 'em together
all the quicker."

"I could do that--but I should like to go myself.  I always have
gone, without fail, every time hitherto.  It has been a great
pleasure to drive into Sherton, and wait and see her arrive; and
perhaps she'll be disappointed if I stay away."

"Yon may be disappointed, but I don't think she will, if you send
Giles," said Mrs. Melbury, dryly.

"Very well--I'll send him."

Melbury was often persuaded by the quietude of his wife's words
when strenuous argument would have had no effect.  This second
Mrs. Melbury was a placid woman, who had been nurse to his child
Grace before her mother's death.  After that melancholy event
little Grace had clung to the nurse with much affection; and
ultimately Melbury, in dread lest the only woman who cared for the
girl should be induced to leave her, persuaded the mild Lucy to
marry him.  The arrangement--for it was little more--had worked
satisfactorily enough; Grace had thriven, and Melbury had not
repented.

He returned to the spar-house and found Giles near at hand, to
whom he explained the change of plan.  "As she won't arrive till
five o'clock, you can get your business very well over in time to
receive her," said Melbury.  "The green gig will do for her;
you'll spin along quicker with that, and won't be late upon the
road.  Her boxes can be called for by one of the wagons."

Winterborne, knowing nothing of the timber-merchant's restitutory
aims, quietly thought all this to be a kindly chance.  Wishing
even more than her father to despatch his apple-tree business in
the market before Grace's arrival, he prepared to start at once.

Melbury was careful that the turnout should be seemly.  The gig-
wheels, for instance, were not always washed during winter-time
before a journey, the muddy roads rendering that labor useless;
but they were washed to-day.  The harness was blacked, and when
the rather elderly white horse had been put in, and Winterborne
was in his seat ready to start, Mr. Melbury stepped out with a
blacking-brush, and with his own hands touched over the yellow
hoofs of the animal.

"You see, Giles," he said, as he blacked, "coming from a
fashionable school, she might feel shocked at the homeliness of
home; and 'tis these little things that catch a dainty woman's eye
if they are neglected.  We, living here alone, don't notice how
the whitey-brown creeps out of the earth over us; but she, fresh
from a city--why, she'll notice everything!"

"That she will," said Giles.

"And scorn us if we don't mind."

"Not scorn us."

"No, no, no--that's only words.  She's too good a girl to do that.
But when we consider what she knows, and what she has seen since
she last saw us, 'tis as well to meet her views as nearly as
possible.  Why, 'tis a year since she was in this old place, owing
to her going abroad in the summer, which I agreed to, thinking it
best for her; and naturally we shall look small, just at first--I
only say just at first."

Mr. Melbury's tone evinced a certain exultation in the very sense
of that inferiority he affected to deplore; for this advanced and
refined being, was she not his own all the time?  Not so Giles; he
felt doubtful--perhaps a trifle cynical--for that strand was wound
into him with the rest.  He looked at his clothes with misgiving,
then with indifference.

It was his custom during the planting season to carry a specimen
apple-tree to market with him as an advertisement of what he dealt
in.  This had been tied across the gig; and as it would be left
behind in the town, it would cause no inconvenience to Miss Grace
Melbury coming home.

He drove away, the twigs nodding with each step of the horse; and
Melbury went in-doors.  Before the gig had passed out of sight,
Mr. Melbury reappeared and shouted after--

"Here, Giles, "he said, breathlessly following with some wraps,
"it may be very chilly to-night, and she may want something extra
about her.  And, Giles," he added, when the young man, having
taken the articles, put the horse in motion once more, "tell her
that I should have come myself, but I had particular business with
Mrs. Charmond's agent, which prevented me.  Don't forget."

He watched Winterborne out of sight, saying, with a jerk--a shape
into which emotion with him often resolved itself--"There, now, I
hope the two will bring it to a point and have done with it! 'Tis
a pity to let such a girl throw herself away upon him--a thousand
pities!...And yet 'tis my duty for his father's sake."

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