Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had been passed by Grace in the soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she and Marty had devoted themselves. Twice a week the pair went in the dusk to Great Hintock, and, like the two mourners in Cymbeline, sweetened his sad grave with their flowers and their tears. Sometimes Grace thought that it was a pity neither one of them had been his wife for a little while, and given the world a copy of him who was so valuable in their eyes. Nothing ever had brought home to her with such force as this death how little acquirements and culture weigh beside sterling personal character. While her simple sorrow for his loss took a softer edge with the lapse of the autumn and winter seasons, her self-reproach at having had a possible hand in causing it knew little abatement.
Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the fall and decay of the leaf. Discussion of the almost contemporaneous death of Mrs. Charmond abroad had waxed and waned. Fitzpiers had had a marvellous escape from being dragged into the inquiry which followed it, through the accident of their having parted just before under the influence of Marty South’s letter — the tiny instrument of a cause deep in nature.
Her body was not brought home. It seemed to accord well with the fitful fever of that impassioned woman’s life that she should not have found a native grave. She had enjoyed but a life-interest in the estate, which, after her death, passed to a relative of her husband’s — one who knew not Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be to blot out every vestige of her.
On a certain day in February — the cheerful day of St. Valentine, in fact — a letter reached Mrs. Fitzpiers, which had been mentally promised her for that particular day a long time before.
It announced that Fitzpiers was living at some midland town, where he had obtained a temporary practice as assistant to some local medical man, whose curative principles were all wrong, though he dared not set them right. He had thought fit to communicate with her on that day of tender traditions to inquire if, in the event of his obtaining a substantial practice that he had in view elsewhere, she could forget the past and bring herself to join him.
There the practical part ended; he then went on —
“My last year of experience has added ten years to my age, dear Grace and dearest wife that ever erring man undervalued. You may be absolutely indifferent to what I say, but let me say it: I have never loved any woman alive or dead as I love, respect, and honor you at this present moment. What you told me in the pride and haughtiness of your heart I never believed [this, by the way, was not strictly true]; but even if I had believed it, it could never have estranged me from you. Is there any use in telling you — no, there is not — that I dream of your ripe lips more frequently than I say my prayers; that the old familiar rustle of your dress often returns upon my mind till it distracts me? If you could condescend even only to see me again you would be breathing life into a corpse. My pure, pure Grace, modest as a turtledove, how came I ever to possess you? For the sake of being present in your mind on this lovers’ day, I think I would almost rather have you hate me a little than not think of me at all. You may call my fancies whimsical; but remember, sweet, lost one, that ‘nature is one in love, and where ’tis fine it sends some instance of itself.’ I will not intrude upon you further now. Make me a little bit happy by sending back one line to say that you will consent, at any rate, to a short interview. I will meet you and leave you as a mere acquaintance, if you will only afford me this slight means of making a few explanations, and of putting my position before you. Believe me, in spite of all you may do or feel, Your lover always (once your husband),
“E.”
It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first on which Grace had ever received a love-letter from him, his courtship having taken place under conditions which rendered letter-writing unnecessary. Its perusal, therefore, had a certain novelty for her. She thought that, upon the whole, he wrote love-letters very well. But the chief rational interest of the letter to the reflective Grace lay in the chance that such a meeting as he proposed would afford her of setting her doubts at rest, one way or the other, on her actual share in Winterborne’s death. The relief of consulting a skilled mind, the one professional man who had seen Giles at that time, would be immense. As for that statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which at the time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared to admit to him that his belief was the true one; for in wronging herself as she did when she made it, she had done what to her was a far more serious thing, wronged Winterborne’s memory.
Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or out of it, Grace replied to the letter. She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on two conditions, of which the first was that the place of meeting should be the top of Rubdown Hill, the second that he would not object to Marty South accompanying her.
Whatever part, much or little, there may have been in Fitzpiers’s so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the bursting of spring when her brief reply came. It was one of the few pleasures that he had experienced of late years at all resembling those of his early youth. He promptly replied that he accepted the conditions, and named the day and hour at which he would be on the spot she mentioned.
A few minutes before three on the appointed day found him climbing the well-known hill, which had been the axis of so many critical movements in their lives during his residence at Hintock.
The sight of each homely and well-remembered object swelled the regret that seldom left him now. Whatever paths might lie open to his future, the soothing shades of Hintock were forbidden him forever as a permanent dwelling-place.
He longed for the society of Grace. But to lay offerings on her slighted altar was his first aim, and until her propitiation was complete he would constrain her in no way to return to him. The least reparation that he could make, in a case where he would gladly have made much, would be to let her feel herself absolutely free to choose between living with him and without him.
Moreover, a subtlist in emotions, he cultivated as under glasses strange and mournful pleasures that he would not willingly let die just at present. To show any forwardness in suggesting a modus vivendi to Grace would be to put an end to these exotics. To be the vassal of her sweet will for a time, he demanded no more, and found solace in the contemplation of the soft miseries she caused him.
Approaching the hill-top with a mind strung to these notions, Fitzpiers discerned a gay procession of people coming over the crest, and was not long in perceiving it to be a wedding-party.
Though the wind was keen the women were in light attire, and the flowered waistcoats of the men had a pleasing vividness of pattern. Each of the gentler ones clung to the arm of her partner so tightly as to have with him one step, rise, swing, gait, almost one centre of gravity. In the buxom bride Fitzpiers recognized no other than Suke Damson, who in her light gown looked a giantess; the small husband beside her he saw to be Tim Tangs.
Fitzpiers could not escape, for they had seen him; though of all the beauties of the world whom he did not wish to meet Suke was the chief. But he put the best face on the matter that he could and came on, the approaching company evidently discussing him and his separation from Mrs. Fitzpiers. As the couples closed upon him he expressed his congratulations.
“We be just walking round the parishes to show ourselves a bit,” said Tim. “First we het across to Delborough, then athwart to here, and from here we go to Rubdown and Millshot, and then round by the cross-roads home. Home says I, but it won’t be that long! We be off next month.”
“Indeed. Where to?”
Tim informed him that they were going to New Zealand. Not but that he would have been contented with Hintock, but his wife was ambitious and wanted to leave, so he had given way.
“Then good-by,” said Fitzpiers; “I may not see you again.” He shook hands with Tim and turned to the bride. “Good-by, Suke,” he said, taking her hand also. “I wish you and your husband prosperity in the country you have chosen.” With this he left them, and hastened on to his appointment.
The wedding-party re-formed and resumed march likewise. But in restoring his arm to Suke, Tim noticed that her full and blooming countenance had undergone a change. “Holloa! me dear — what’s the matter?” said Tim.
“Nothing to speak o’,” said she. But to give the lie to her assertion she was seized with lachrymose twitches, that soon produced a dribbling face.
“How — what the devil’s this about!” exclaimed the bridegroom.
“She’s a little wee bit overcome, poor dear!” said the first bridesmaid, unfolding her handkerchief and wiping Suke’s eyes.
“I never did like parting from people!” said Suke, as soon as she could speak.
“Why him in particular?”
“Well — he’s such a clever doctor, that ’tis a thousand pities we sha’n’t see him any more! There’ll be no such clever doctor as he in New Zealand, if I should require one; and the thought o’t got the better of my feelings!”
They walked on, but Tim’s face had grown rigid and pale, for he recalled slight circumstances, disregarded at the time of their occurrence. The former boisterous laughter of the wedding-party at the groomsman’s jokes was heard ringing through the woods no more.
By this time Fitzpiers had advanced on his way to the top of the hill, where he saw two figures emerging from the bank on the right hand. These were the expected ones, Grace and Marty South, who had evidently come there by a short and secret path through the wood. Grace was muffled up in her winter dress, and he thought that she had n............