The Woodlanders Part 2, Thomas Hardy [e textbook reader txt] 📗
- Author: Thomas Hardy
Book online «The Woodlanders Part 2, Thomas Hardy [e textbook reader txt] 📗». Author Thomas Hardy
"Oh Yes, Yes!" Said Grace, With Feeble Impatience. She Tore The
Envelope, Unfolded the Sheet, And Read; When A Creeping blush
Tinctured her White Neck And Cheek.
Her Father Had Exercised a Bold Discretion. He Informed her That
She Need have No Further Concern About Fitzpiers'S Return; That
She Would Shortly Be A Free Woman; And Therefore, If She Should
Desire To Wed her Old Lover--Which He Trusted was The Case, Since
It Was His Own Deep Wish--She Would Be In a Position To Do So. In
This Melbury Had Not Written Beyond His Belief. But He Very Much
Stretched the Facts In adding that The Legal Formalities For
Dissolving her Union Were Practically Settled. The Truth Was That
On The Arrival Of The Doctor'S Letter Poor Melbury Had Been Much
Agitated, And Could With Difficulty Be Prevented by Beaucock From
Returning to Her Bedside. What Was The Use Of His Rushing back To
Hintock? Beaucock Had Asked him. The Only Thing that Could Do Her
Any Good Was A Breaking of The Bond. Though He Had Not As Yet Had
An Interview With The Eminent Solicitor They Were About To
Consult, He Was On The Point Of Seeing him; And The Case Was Clear
Enough. Thus The Simple Melbury, Urged by His Parental Alarm At
Her Danger By The Representations Of His Companion, And By The
Doctor'S Letter, Had Yielded, And Sat Down To Tell Her Roundly
Part 2 Chapter 12 Pg 73That She Was Virtually Free.
"And You'D Better Write Also To The Gentleman," Suggested
Beaucock, Who, Scenting notoriety And The Germ Of A Large Practice
In The Case, Wished to Commit Melbury To It Irretrievably; To
Effect Which He Knew That Nothing would Be So Potent As Awakening
The Passion Of Grace For Winterborne, So That Her Father Might Not
Have The Heart To Withdraw From His Attempt To Make Her Love
Legitimate When He Discovered that There Were Difficulties In the
Way.
The Nervous, Impatient Melbury Was Much Pleased with The Idea Of
"Starting them At Once," As He Called it. To Put His Long-Delayed
Reparative Scheme In train Had Become A Passion With Him Now. He
Added to The Letter Addressed to His Daughter A Passage Hinting
That She Ought To Begin To Encourage Winterborne, Lest She Should
Lose Him Altogether; And He Wrote To Giles That The Path Was
Virtually Open For Him At Last. Life Was Short, He Declared;
There Were Slips Betwixt The Cup And The Lip; Her Interest In him
Should Be Reawakened at Once, That All Might Be Ready When The
Good Time Came For Uniting them.
Part 2 Chapter 13 Pg 74
At These Warm Words Winterborne Was Not Less Dazed than He Was
Moved in heart. The Novelty Of The Avowal Rendered what It
Carried with It Inapprehensible By Him In its Entirety.
Only A Few Short Months Ago Completely Estranged from This Family--
Beholding grace Going to And Fro In the Distance, Clothed with
The Alienating radiance Of Obvious Superiority, The Wife Of The
Then Popular And Fashionable Fitzpiers, Hopelessly Outside His
Social Boundary Down To So Recent A Time That Flowers Then Folded
Were Hardly Faded yet--He Was Now Asked by That Jealously Guarding
Father Of Hers To Take Courage--To Get Himself Ready For The Day
When He Should Be Able To Claim Her.
The Old Times Came Back To Him In dim Procession. How He Had Been
Snubbed; How Melbury Had Despised his Christmas Party; How That
Sweet, Coy Grace Herself Had Looked down Upon Him And His
Household Arrangements, And Poor Creedle'S Contrivances!
Well, He Could Not Believe It. Surely The Adamantine Barrier Of
Marriage With Another Could Not Be Pierced like This! It Did
Violence To Custom. Yet A New Law Might Do Anything. But Was It
At All Within The Bounds Of Probability That A Woman Who, Over And
Above Her Own Attainments, Had Been Accustomed to Those Of A
Cultivated professional Man, Could Ever Be The Wife Of Such As He?
Part 2 Chapter 13 Pg 75
Since The Date Of His Rejection He Had Almost Grown To See The
Reasonableness Of That Treatment. He Had Said To Himself Again
And Again That Her Father Was Right; That The Poor Ceorl, Giles
Winterborne, Would Never Have Been Able To Make Such A Dainty Girl
Happy. Yet, Now That She Had Stood In a Position Farther Removed
From His Own Than At First, He Was Asked to Prepare To Woo Her.
He Was Full Of Doubt.
Nevertheless, It Was Not In him To Show Backwardness. To Act So
Promptly As Melbury Desired him To Act Seemed, Indeed, Scarcely
Wise, Because Of The Uncertainty Of Events. Giles Knew Nothing of
Legal Procedure, But He Did Know That For Him To Step Up To Grace
As A Lover Before The Bond Which Bound Her Was Actually Dissolved
Was Simply An Extravagant Dream Of Her Father'S Overstrained mind.
He Pitied melbury For His Almost Childish Enthusiasm, And Saw That
The Aging man Must Have Suffered acutely To Be Weakened to This
Unreasoning desire.
Winterborne Was Far Too Magnanimous To Harbor Any Cynical
Conjecture That The Timber-Merchant, In his Intense Affection For
Grace, Was Courting him Now Because That Young Lady, When
Disunited, Would Be Left In an Anomalous Position, To Escape Which
A Bad Husband Was Better Than None. He Felt Quite Sure That His
Old Friend Was Simply On Tenterhooks Of Anxiety To Repair The
Almost Irreparable Error Of Dividing two Whom Nature Had Striven
To Join Together In earlier Days, And That In his Ardor To Do This
He Was Oblivious Of Formalities. The Cautious Supervision Of His
Past Years Had Overleaped itself At Last. Hence, Winterborne
Perceived that, In this New Beginning, The Necessary Care Not To
Compromise Grace By Too Early Advances Must Be Exercised by
Himself.
Perhaps Winterborne Was Not Quite So Ardent As Heretofore. There
Is No Such Thing as A Stationary Love: Men Are Either Loving more
Or Loving less. But Giles Himself Recognized no Decline In his
Sense Of Her Dearness. If The Flame Did Indeed burn Lower Now
Than When He Had Fetched her From Sherton At Her Last Return From
School, The Marvel Was Small. He Had Been Laboring ever Since His
Rejection And Her Marriage To Reduce His Former Passion To A
Docile Friendship, Out Of Pure Regard To Its Expediency; And Their
Separation May Have Helped him To A Partial Success.
A Week And More Passed, And There Was No Further News Of Melbury.
But The Effect Of The Intelligence He Had Already Transmitted upon
The Elastic-Nerved daughter Of The Woods Had Been Much What The
Old Surgeon Jones Had Surmised. It Had Soothed her Perturbed
Spirit Better Than All The Opiates In the Pharmacopoeia. She Had
Slept Unbrokenly A Whole Night And A Day. The "New Law" Was To
Her A Mysterious, Beneficent, Godlike Entity, Lately Descended
Upon Earth, That Would Make Her As She Once Had Been Without
Trouble Or Annoyance. Her Position Fretted her, Its Abstract
Features Rousing an Aversion Which Was Even Greater Than Her
Aversion To The Personality Of Him Who Had Caused it. It Was
Mortifying, Productive Of Slights, Undignified. Him She Could
Forget; Her Circumstances She Had Always With Her.
She Saw Nothing of Winterborne During the Days Of Her Recovery;
And Perhaps On That Account Her Fancy Wove About Him A More
Part 2 Chapter 13 Pg 76Romantic Tissue Than It Could Have Done If He Had Stood Before Her
With All The Specks And Flaws Inseparable From Corporeity. He
Rose Upon Her Memory As The Fruit-God And The Wood-God In
Alternation; Sometimes Leafy, And Smeared with Green Lichen, As
She Had Seen Him Among The Sappy Boughs Of The Plantations;
Sometimes Cider-Stained, And With Apple-Pips In the Hair Of His
Arms, As She Had Met Him On His Return From Cider-Making in white
Hart Vale, With His Vats And Presses Beside Him. In her Secret
Heart She Almost Approximated to Her Father'S Enthusiasm In
Wishing to Show Giles Once For All How She Still Regarded him.
The Question Whether The Future Would Indeed bring them Together
For Life Was A Standing wonder With Her. She Knew That It Could
Not With Any Propriety Do So Just Yet. But Reverently Believing
In Her Father'S Sound Judgment And Knowledge, As Good Girls Are
Wont To Do, She Remembered what He Had Written About Her Giving a
Hint To Winterborne Lest There Should Be Risk In delay, And Her
Feelings Were Not Averse To Such A Step, So Far As It Could Be
Done Without Danger At This Early Stage Of The Proceedings.
From Being a Frail Phantom Of Her Former Equable Self She Returned
In Bounds To A Condition Of Passable Philosophy. She Bloomed
Again In the Face In the Course Of A Few Days, And Was Well Enough
To Go About As Usual. One Day Mrs. Melbury Proposed that For A
Change She Should Be Driven In the Gig To Sherton Market, Whither
Melbury'S Man Was Going on Other Errands. Grace Had No Business
Whatever In sherton; But It Crossed her Mind That Winterborne
Would Probably Be There, And This Made The Thought Of Such A Drive
Interesting.
On The Way She Saw Nothing of Him; But When The Horse Was Walking
Slowly Through The Obstructions Of Sheep Street, She Discerned the
Young Man On The Pavement. She Thought Of That Time When He Had
Been Standing under His Apple-Tree On Her Return From School, And
Of The Tender Opportunity Then Missed through Her Fastidiousness.
Her Heart Rose In her Throat. She Abjured all Such Fastidiousness
Now. Nor Did She Forget The Last Occasion On Which She Had Beheld
Him In that Town, Making cider In the Court-Yard Of The Earl Of
Wessex Hotel, While She Was Figuring as A Fine Lady In the
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