There was agitation today in the lives of all whom these matters concerned. It was not till the Hintock dinner-time — one o’clock — that Grace discovered her father’s absence from the house after a departure in the morning under somewhat unusual conditions. By a little reasoning and inquiry she was able to come to a conclusion on his destination, and to divine his errand.
Her husband was absent, and her father did not return. He had, in truth, gone on to Sherton after the interview, but this Grace did not know. In an indefinite dread that something serious would arise out of Melbury’s visit by reason of the inequalities of temper and nervous irritation to which he was subject, something possibly that would bring her much more misery than accompanied her present negative state of mind, she left the house about three o’clock, and took a loitering walk in the woodland track by which she imagined he would come home. This track under the bare trees and over the cracking sticks, screened and roofed in from the outer world of wind and cloud by a net-work of boughs, led her slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees behind her and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his men were clearing the undergrowth.
Had Giles’s attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would not have seen her; but ever since Melbury’s passage across the opposite glade in the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled as Grace herself; and her advent now was the one appearance which, since her father’s avowal, could arrest him more than Melbury’s return with his tidings. Fearing that something might be the matter, he hastened up to her.
She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious of the late pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly. “I am only looking for my father,” she said, in an unnecessarily apologetic intonation.
“I was looking for him too,” said Giles. “I think he may perhaps have gone on farther.”
“Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?” she said, turning her large tender eyes anxiously upon him. “Did he tell you what for?”
Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that her father had visited him the evening before, and that their old friendship was quite restored, on which she guessed the rest.
“Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!” she cried. And then they stood facing each other, fearing each other, troubling each other’s souls. Grace experienced acute misery at the sight of these wood-cutting scenes, because she had estranged herself from them, craving, even to its defects and inconveniences, that homely sylvan life of her father which in the best probable succession of events would shortly be denied her.
At a little distance, on the edge of the clearing, Marty South was shaping spar-gads to take home for manufacture during the evenings. While Winterborne and Mrs. Fitzpiers stood looking at her in their mutual embarrassment at each other’s presence, they beheld approaching the girl a lady in a dark fur mantle and a black hat, having a white veil tied picturesquely round it. She spoke to Marty, who turned and courtesied, and the lady fell into conversation with her. It was Mrs. Charmond.
On leaving her house, Mrs. Charmond had walked on and onward under the fret and fever of her mind with more vigor than she was accustomed to show in her normal moods — a fever which the solace of a cigarette did not entirely allay. Reaching the coppice, she listlessly observed Marty at work, threw away her cigarette, and came near. Chop, chop, chop, went Marty’s little billhook with never more assiduity, till Mrs. Charmond spoke.
“Who is that young lady I see talking to the woodman yonder?” she asked.
“Mrs. Fitzpiers, ma’am,” said Marty.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Charmond, with something like a start; for she had not recognized Grace at that distance. “And the man she is talking to?”
“That’s Mr. Winterborne.”
A redness stole into Marty’s face as she mentioned Giles’s name, which Mrs. Charmond did not fail to notice informed her of the state of the girl’s heart. “Are you engaged to him?” she asked, softly.
“No, ma’am,” said Marty. “SHE was once; and I think —”
But Marty could not possibly explain the complications of her thoughts on this matter — which were nothing less than one of extraordinary acuteness for a girl so young and inexperienced — namely, that she saw danger to two hearts naturally honest in Grace being thrown back into Winterborne’s society by the neglect of her husband. Mrs. Charmond, however, with the almost supersensory means to knowledge which women have on such occasions, quite understood what Marty had intended to convey, and the picture thus exhibited to her of lives drifting away, involving the wreck of poor Marty’s hopes, prompted her to more generous resolves than all Melbury’s remonstrances had been able to stimulate.
Full of the new feeling, she bade the girl good-afternoon, and went on over the stumps of hazel to where Grace and Winterborne were standing. They saw her approach, and Winterborne said, “She is coming to you; it is a good omen. She dislikes me, so I’ll go away.” He accordingly retreated to where he had been working before Grace came, and Grace’s formidable rival approached her, each woman taking the other’s measure as she came near.
“Dear — Mrs. Fitzpiers,” said Felice Charmond, with some inward turmoil which stopped her speech. “I have not seen you for a long time.”
She held out her hand tentatively, while Grace stood like a wild animal on first confronting a mirror or other puzzling product of civilization. Was it really Mrs. Charmond speaking to her thus? If it was, she could no longer form any guess as to what it signified.
“I want to talk with you,” said Mrs. Charmond, imploringly, for the gaze of the young woman had chilled her through. “Can you walk on with me till we are quite alone?”
Sick with distaste, Grace nevertheless complied, as by clockwork and they moved evenly side by side into the deeper recesses of the woods. They went farther, much farther than Mrs. Charmond had meant to go; but she could not begin her conversation, and in default of it kept walking.
“I have seen your father,” she at length resumed. “And — I am much troubled by what he told me.”
“What did he tell you? I have not been admitted to his confidence on anything he may have said to you.”
“Nevertheless, why should I repeat to you what you can easily divine?”
“True — true,” returned Grace, mournfully. “Why should you repeat what we both know to be in our minds already?”
“Mrs. Fitzpiers, your husband —” The moment that the speaker’s tongue touched the dangerous subject a vivid look of self-consciousness flashed over her, in which her heart revealed, as by a lightning gleam, what filled it to overflowing. So transitory was the expression that none but a sensitive woman, and she in Grace’s position, would have had the power to catch its meaning. Upon her the phase was not lost.
“Then you DO love him!” she exclaimed, in a tone of much surprise.
“What do you mean, my young friend?”
“Why,” cried Grace, “I thought till now that you had only been cruelly flirting with my husband, to amuse your idle moments — a rich lady with a poor professional gentleman whom in her heart she despised not much less than her who belongs to him. But I guess from your manner that you love him desperately, and I don’t hate you as I did before.”
“Yes, indeed,” continued Mrs. Fitzpiers, with a trembling tongue, “since it is not playing in your case at all, but REAL. Oh, I do pity you, more than I despise you, for you will s-s-suffer most!”
Mrs. Charmond was now as much agitated as Grace. “I ought not to allow myself to argue with you,” she exclaimed. “I demean myself by doing it. But I liked you once, and for the sake of that time I try to tell you how mistaken you are!” Much of her confusion resulted from her wonder and alarm at finding herself in a sense dominated mentally and emotionally by this simple school-girl. “I do not love him,” she went on, with desperate untruth. “It was a kindness — my making somewhat more of him than one usually does of one’s doctor. I was lonely; I talked — well, I trifled with him. I am very sorry if such child’s playing out of pure friendship has been a serious matter to you. Who could have expected it? But the world is so simple here.”
“Oh, that’s affectation,” said Grace, shaking her head. “It is no use — you love him. I can see in your face that in this matter of my husband you have not let your acts belie your feelings. During these last four or six months you have been terribly indiscreet; but you have not been insincere, and that almost disarms me.”
“I HAVE been insincere — if you will have the word — I mean I HAVE coquetted, and do NOT love him!”
But Grace clung to her position like a limpet. “You may have trifled with others, but him you love as you never loved another man.”
“Oh, well — I won’t argue,” said Mrs. Charmond, laughing faintly. “And you come to reproach me for it, child.”
“No,” said Grace, magnanimously. “You may go on loving him if you like — I don’t mind at all. You’ll find it, let me tell you, a bitterer business for yourself than for me in the end. He’ll get tired of you soon, as tired as can be — you don’t know him so well as I— and then you may wish you had never seen him!”
Mrs. Charmond had grown quite pale and weak under this prophecy. It was extraordinary that Grace, whom almost every one would have characterized as a gentle girl, should be of stronger fibre than her interlocutor. “You exaggerate — cruel, silly young woman,” she reiterated, writhing with little agonies. “It is nothing but playful friendship — nothing! It will be proved by my future conduct. I shall at once refuse to see him more — since it will make no difference to my heart, and much to my name.”
“I question if you will refuse to see him again,” said Grace, dryly, as with eyes askance she bent a sapling down. “But I am not incensed against you as you are against me,” she added, abandoning the tree to its natural perpendicular. “Before I came I had been despising you for wanton cruelty; now I only pity you for misplaced affection. When Edgar has gone out of the house in hope of seeing you, at seasonable hours and unseasonable; when I have found him riding miles and miles across the country at midnight, and risking his life, and getting covered with mud, to get a glimpse of you, I have called him a foolish man — the plaything of a finished coquette. I thought that what was getting to be a tragedy to me was a comedy to you. But now I see that tragedy lies on YOUR side of the situation no less than on MINE, and more; that if I have felt trouble............