The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy (best books to read for women .txt) 📗

usual, he could scarcely believe that it contained the dear friend⁠—he would not use a warmer name⁠—who had come to him so unexpectedly, and, he could not help admitting, so rashly.

He had not ventured to ask her any particulars; but the position was pretty clear without them. Though social law had negatived forever their opening paradise of the previous June, it was not without stoical pride that he accepted the present trying conjuncture. There was one man on earth in whom she believed absolutely, and he was that man. That this crisis could end in nothing but sorrow was a view for a moment effaced by this triumphant thought of her trust in him; and the purity of the affection with which he responded to that trust rendered him more than proof against any frailty that besieged him in relation to her.

The rain, which had never ceased, now drew his attention by beginning to drop through the meagre screen that covered him. He rose to attempt some remedy for this discomfort, but the trembling of his knees and the throbbing of his pulse told him that in his weakness he was unable to fence against the storm, and he lay down to bear it as best he might. He was angry with himself for his feebleness⁠—he who had been so strong. It was imperative that she should know nothing of his present state, and to do that she must not see his face by daylight, for its color would inevitably betray him.

The next morning, accordingly, when it was hardly light, he rose and dragged his stiff limbs about the precincts, preparing for her everything she could require for getting breakfast within. On the bench outside the windowsill he placed water, wood, and other necessaries, writing with a piece of chalk beside them, “It is best that I should not see you. Put my breakfast on the bench.”

At seven o’clock he tapped at her window, as he had promised, retreating at once, that she might not catch sight of him. But from his shelter under the boughs he could see her very well, when, in response to his signal, she opened the window and the light fell upon her face. The languid largeness of her eyes showed that her sleep had been little more than his own, and the pinkness of their lids, that her waking hours had not been free from tears.

She read the writing, seemed, he thought, disappointed, but took up the materials he had provided, evidently thinking him some way off. Giles waited on, assured that a girl who, in spite of her culture, knew what country life was, would find no difficulty in the simple preparation of their food.

Within the cot it was all very much as he conjectured, though Grace had slept much longer than he. After the loneliness of the night, she would have been glad to see him; but appreciating his feeling when she read the writing, she made no attempt to recall him. She found abundance of provisions laid in, his plan being to replenish his buttery weekly, and this being the day after the victualling van had called from Sherton. When the meal was ready, she put what he required outside, as she had done with the supper; and, notwithstanding her longing to see him, withdrew from the window promptly, and left him to himself.

It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its fall. As she heard no more of Winterborne, she concluded that he had gone away to his daily work, and forgotten that he had promised to accompany her to Sherton; an erroneous conclusion, for he remained all day, by force of his condition, within fifty yards of where she was. The morning wore on; and in her doubt when to start, and how to travel, she lingered yet, keeping the door carefully bolted, lest an intruder should discover her. Locked in this place, she was comparatively safe, at any rate, and doubted if she would be safe elsewhere.

The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade and drip of the leafage. Autumn, this year, was coming in with rains. Gazing, in her enforced idleness, from the one window of the living-room, she could see various small members of the animal community that lived unmolested there⁠—creatures of hair, fluff, and scale, the toothed kind and the billed kind; underground creatures, jointed and ringed⁠—circumambulating the hut, under the impression that, Giles having gone away, nobody was there; and eying it inquisitively with a view to winter-quarters. Watching these neighbors, who knew neither law nor sin, distracted her a little from her trouble; and she managed to while away some portion of the afternoon by putting Giles’s home in order and making little improvements which she deemed that he would value when she was gone.

Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise amid the trees, resembling a cough; but as it never came any nearer she concluded that it was a squirrel or a bird.

At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger fire for the evenings were chilly. As soon as it was too dark⁠—which was comparatively early⁠—to discern the human countenance in this place of shadows, there came to the window to her great delight, a tapping which she knew from its method to be Giles’s.

She opened the casement instantly, and put out her hand to him, though she could only just perceive his outline. He clasped her fingers, and she noticed the heat of his palm and its shakiness.

“He has been walking fast, in order to get here quickly,” she thought. How could she know that he had just crawled out from the straw of the shelter hard by; and that the heat of his hand was feverishness?

“My dear, good Giles!” she burst out, impulsively.

“Anybody would have done it for you,” replied Winterborne, with as much matter-of-fact as he could summon.

“About my getting to Exbury?” she