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

“I have been thinking,” responded Giles, with tender deference, “that you had better stay where you are for the present, if you wish not to be caught. I need not tell you that the place is yours as long as you like; and perhaps in a day or two, finding you absent, he will go away. At any rate, in two or three days I could do anything to assist⁠—such as make inquiries, or go a great way towards Sherton-Abbas with you; for the cider season will soon be coming on, and I want to run down to the Vale to see how the crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton road. But for a day or two I am busy here.” He was hoping that by the time mentioned he would be strong enough to engage himself actively on her behalf. “I hope you do not feel overmuch melancholy in being a prisoner?”

She declared that she did not mind it; but she sighed.

From long acquaintance they could read each other’s heart-symptoms like books of large type. “I fear you are sorry you came,” said Giles, “and that you think I should have advised you more firmly than I did not to stay.”

“Oh no, dear, dear friend,” answered Grace, with a heaving bosom. “Don’t think that that is what I regret. What I regret is my enforced treatment of you⁠—dislodging you, excluding you from your own house. Why should I not speak out? You know what I feel for you⁠—what I have felt for no other living man, what I shall never feel for a man again! But as I have vowed myself to somebody else than you, and cannot be released, I must behave as I do behave, and keep that vow. I am not bound to him by any divine law, after what he has done; but I have promised, and I will pay.”

The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things as she would require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon, an occupation which diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic views of her attitude towards him, and of her life in general. The only infringement⁠—if infringement it could be called⁠—of his predetermined bearing towards her was an involuntary pressing of her hand to his lips when she put it through the casement to bid him good night. He knew she was weeping, though he could not see her tears.

She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly appropriating the cottage. But it would only be for a day or two more, she thought, since go she must.

He replied, yearningly, “I⁠—I don’t like you to go away.”

“Oh, Giles,” said she, “I know⁠—I know! But⁠—I am a woman, and you are a man. I cannot speak more plainly. ‘Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report’⁠—you know what is in my mind, because you know me so well.”

“Yes, Grace, yes. I do not at all mean that the question between us has not been settled by the fact of your marriage turning out hopelessly unalterable. I merely meant⁠—well, a feeling no more.”

“In a week, at the outside, I should be discovered if I stayed here: and I think that by law he could compel me to return to him.”

“Yes; perhaps you are right. Go when you wish, dear Grace.”

His last words that evening were a hopeful remark that all might be well with her yet; that Mr. Fitzpiers would not intrude upon her life, if he found that his presence cost her so much pain. Then the window was closed, the shutters folded, and the rustle of his footsteps died away.

No sooner had she retired to rest that night than the wind began to rise, and, after a few prefatory blasts, to be accompanied by rain. The wind grew more violent, and as the storm went on, it was difficult to believe that no opaque body, but only an invisible colorless thing, was trampling and climbing over the roof, making branches creak, springing out of the trees upon the chimney, popping its head into the flue, and shrieking and blaspheming at every corner of the walls. As in the old story, the assailant was a spectre which could be felt but not seen. She had never before been so struck with the devilry of a gusty night in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in spirit as she was now. She seemed almost to be apart from herself⁠—a vacuous duplicate only. The recent self of physical animation and clear intentions was not there.

Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so low as to smite the roof in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth of an adversary, to be followed by a trickle of rain, as blood from the wound. To all this weather Giles must be more or less exposed; how much, she did not know.

At last Grace could hardly endure the idea of such a hardship in relation to him. Whatever he was suffering, it was she who had caused it; he vacated his house on account of her. She was not worth such self-sacrifice; she should not have accepted it of him. And then, as her anxiety increased with increasing thought, there returned upon her mind some incidents of her late intercourse with him, which she had heeded but little at the time. The look of his face⁠—what had there been about his face which seemed different from its appearance as of yore? Was it not thinner, less rich in hue, less like that of ripe autumn’s brother to whom she had formerly compared him? And his voice; she had distinctly noticed a change in tone. And his gait; surely it had been feebler, stiffer, more like the gait of a weary man. That slight occasional noise she had heard in the day, and attributed to squirrels, it might have been his cough after all.

Thus conviction took root in