Томас Харди – The Woodlanders (страница 20)
“How the deuce did a snail get there?”
“That I don’t know no more than the dead; but there my gentleman was.”
“But, Robert, of all places, that was where he shouldn’t have been!”
“Well, ’twas his native home, come to that; and where else could we expect him to be? I don’t care who the man is, snails and caterpillars always will lurk in close to the stump of cabbages in that tantalizing way.”
“He wasn’t alive, I suppose?” said Giles, with a shudder on Grace’s account.
“Oh no. He was well boiled. I warrant him well boiled. God forbid that a
“Oh yes—’tis all over!” murmured Giles to himself, shaking his head over the glooming plain of embers, and lining his forehead more than ever. “Do you know, Robert,” he said, “that she’s been accustomed to servants and everything superfine these many years? How, then, could she stand our ways?”
“Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and-nob elsewhere. They shouldn’t have schooled her so monstrous high, or else bachelor men shouldn’t give randys, or if they do give ’em, only to their own race.”
“Perhaps that’s true,” said Winterborne, rising and yawning a sigh.
“’Tis a pity—a thousand pities!” her father kept saying next morning at breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom.
But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne’s suit at this stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored to promote—was, indeed, mechanically promoting at this moment? A crisis was approaching, mainly as a result of his contrivances, and it would have to be met.
But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: since seeing what an immense change her last twelve months of absence had produced in his daughter, after the heavy sum per annum that he had been spending for several years upon her education, he was reluctant to let her marry Giles Winterborne, indefinitely occupied as woodsman, cider-merchant, apple-farmer, and what not, even were she willing to marry him herself.
“She will be his wife if you don’t upset her notion that she’s bound to accept him as an understood thing,” said Mrs. Melbury. “Bless ye, she’ll soon shake down here in Hintock, and be content with Giles’s way of living, which he’ll improve with what money she’ll have from you. ’Tis the strangeness after her genteel life that makes her feel uncomfortable at first. Why, when
“Yes, I believe ye. That’s just it. I
“She may shail, but she’ll never wamble,” replied his wife, decisively.
When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her lying in bed so late; not so much moved by a particular objection to that form of indulgence as discomposed by these other reflections.
The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down. “You used to complain with justice when I was a girl,” she said. “But I am a woman now, and can judge for myself … But it is not that; it is something else!” Instead of sitting down she went outside the door.
He was sorry. The petulance that relatives show towards each other is in truth directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped the situation no less for the offenders than the offended, but is too elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor humanity in irritated mood. Melbury followed her. She had rambled on to the paddock, where the white frost lay, and where starlings in flocks of twenties and thirties were walking about, watched by a comfortable family of sparrows perched in a line along the string-course of the chimney, preening themselves in the rays of the sun.
“Come in to breakfast, my girl,” he said. “And as to Giles, use your own mind. Whatever pleases you will please me.”
“I am promised to him, father; and I cannot help thinking that in honor I ought to marry him, whenever I do marry.”
He had a strong suspicion that somewhere in the bottom of her heart there pulsed an old simple indigenous feeling favorable to Giles, though it had become overlaid with implanted tastes. But he would not distinctly express his views on the promise. “Very well,” he said. “But I hope I sha’n’t lose you yet. Come in to breakfast. What did you think of the inside of Hintock House the other day?”
“I liked it much.”
“Different from friend Winterborne’s?”
She said nothing; but he who knew her was aware that she meant by her silence to reproach him with drawing cruel comparisons.
“Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come again—when, did you say?”
“She thought Tuesday, but would send the day before to let me know if it suited her.” And with this subject upon their lips they entered to breakfast.
Tuesday came, but no message from Mrs. Charmond. Nor was there any on Wednesday. In brief, a fortnight slipped by without a sign, and it looked suspiciously as if Mrs. Charmond were not going further in the direction of “taking up” Grace at present.
Her father reasoned thereon. Immediately after his daughter’s two indubitable successes with Mrs. Charmond—the interview in the wood and a visit to the House—she had attended Winterborne’s party. No doubt the out-and-out joviality of that gathering had made it a topic in the neighborhood, and that every one present as guests had been widely spoken of—Grace, with her exceptional qualities, above all. What, then, so natural as that Mrs. Charmond should have heard the village news, and become quite disappointed in her expectations of Grace at finding she kept such company?
Full of this
So it was settled in his mind that her sudden mingling with the villagers at the unlucky Winterborne’s was the cause of her most grievous loss, as he deemed it, in the direction of Hintock House.
“’Tis a thousand pities!” he would repeat to himself. “I am ruining her for conscience’ sake!”
It was one morning later on, while these things were agitating his mind, that, curiously enough, something darkened the window just as they finished breakfast. Looking up, they saw Giles in person mounted on horseback, and straining his neck forward, as he had been doing for some time, to catch their attention through the window. Grace had been the first to see him, and involuntarily exclaimed, “There he is—and a new horse!”
On their faces as they regarded Giles were written their suspended thoughts and compound feelings concerning him, could he have read them through those old panes. But he saw nothing: his features just now were, for a wonder, lit up with a red smile at some other idea. So they rose from breakfast and went to the door, Grace with an anxious, wistful manner, her father in a reverie, Mrs. Melbury placid and inquiring. “We have come out to look at your horse,” she said.
It could be seen that he was pleased at their attention, and explained that he had ridden a mile or two to try the animal’s paces. “I bought her,” he added, with warmth so severely repressed as to seem indifference, “because she has been used to carry a lady.”
Still Mr. Melbury did not brighten. Mrs. Melbury said, “And is she quiet?”
Winterborne assured her that there was no doubt of it. “I took care of that. She’s five-and-twenty, and very clever for her age.”
“Well, get off and come in,” said Melbury, brusquely; and Giles dismounted accordingly.
This event was the concrete result of Winterborne’s thoughts during the past week or two. The want of success with his evening party he had accepted in as philosophic a mood as he was capable of; but there had been enthusiasm enough left in him one day at Sherton Abbas market to purchase this old mare, which had belonged to a neighboring parson with several daughters, and was offered him to carry either a gentleman or a lady, and to do odd jobs of carting and agriculture at a pinch. This obliging quadruped seemed to furnish Giles with a means of reinstating himself in Melbury’s good opinion as a man of considerateness by throwing out future possibilities to Grace.