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

day of rather bright weather for the season. Miss Melbury went out for a morning walk, and her ever-regardful father, having an hour’s leisure, offered to walk with her. The breeze was fresh and quite steady, filtering itself through the denuded mass of twigs without swaying them, but making the point of each ivy-leaf on the trunks scratch its underlying neighbor restlessly. Grace’s lips sucked in this native air of hers like milk. They soon reached a place where the wood ran down into a corner, and went outside it towards comparatively open ground. Having looked round about, they were intending to re-enter the copse when a fox quietly emerged with a dragging brush, trotted past them tamely as a domestic cat, and disappeared amid some dead fern. They walked on, her father merely observing, after watching the animal, “They are hunting somewhere near.”

Farther up they saw in the mid-distance the hounds running hither and thither, as if there were little or no scent that day. Soon diverse members of the hunt appeared on the scene, and it was evident from their movements that the chase had been stultified by general puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of the intended victim. In a minute a farmer rode up to the two pedestrians, panting with acteonic excitement, and Grace being a few steps in advance, he addressed her, asking if she had seen the fox.

“Yes,” said she. “We saw him some time ago⁠—just out there.”

“Did you cry Halloo?”

“We said nothing.”

“Then why the devil didn’t you, or get the old buffer to do it for you?” said the man, as he cantered away.

She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observing her father’s face, saw that it was quite red.

“He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!” said the old man, in the tone of one whose heart was bruised, though it was not by the epithet applied to himself. “And he wouldn’t if he had been a gentleman. ’Twas not the language to use to a woman of any niceness. You, so well read and cultivated⁠—how could he expect ye to know what tomboy field-folk are in the habit of doing? If so be you had just come from trimming swedes or mangolds⁠—joking with the rough work-folk and all that⁠—I could have stood it. But hasn’t it cost me near a hundred a year to lift you out of all that, so as to show an example to the neighborhood of what a woman can be? Grace, shall I tell you the secret of it? ’Twas because I was in your company. If a black-coated squire or pa’son had been walking with you instead of me he wouldn’t have spoken so.”

“No, no, father; there’s nothing in you rough or ill-mannered!”

“I tell you it is that! I’ve noticed, and I’ve noticed it many times, that a woman takes her color from the man she’s walking with. The woman who looks an unquestionable lady when she’s with a polished-up fellow, looks a mere tawdry imitation article when she’s hobbing and nobbing with a homely blade. You shan’t be treated like that for long, or at least your children shan’t. You shall have somebody to walk with you who looks more of a dandy than I⁠—please God you shall!”

“But, my dear father,” she said, much distressed, “I don’t mind at all. I don’t wish for more honor than I already have!”

“A perplexing and ticklish possession is a daughter,” according to Menander or some old Greek poet, and to nobody was one ever more so than to Melbury, by reason of her very dearness to him. As for Grace, she began to feel troubled; she did not perhaps wish there and then to unambitiously devote her life to Giles Winterborne, but she was conscious of more and more uneasiness at the possibility of being the social hope of the family.

“You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?” asked her father, in continuation of the subject.

Despite her feeling she assented to this. His reasoning had not been without its weight upon her.

“Grace,” he said, just before they had reached the house, “if it costs me my life you shall marry well! Today has shown me that whatever a young woman’s niceness, she stands for nothing alone. You shall marry well.”

He breathed heavily, and his breathing was caught up by the breeze, which seemed to sigh a soft remonstrance.

She looked calmly at him. “And how about Mr. Winterborne?” she asked. “I mention it, father, not as a matter of sentiment, but as a question of keeping faith.”

The timber-merchant’s eyes fell for a moment. “I don’t know⁠—I don’t know,” he said. “ ’Tis a trying strait. Well, well; there’s no hurry. We’ll wait and see how he gets on.”

That evening he called her into his room, a snug little apartment behind the large parlor. It had at one time been part of the bakehouse, with the ordinary oval brick oven in the wall; but Mr. Melbury, in turning it into an office, had built into the cavity an iron safe, which he used for holding his private papers. The door of the safe was now open, and his keys were hanging from it.

“Sit down, Grace, and keep me company,” he said. “You may amuse yourself by looking over these.” He threw out a heap of papers before her.

“What are they?” she asked.

“Securities of various sorts.” He unfolded them one by one. “Papers worth so much money each. Now here’s a lot of turnpike bonds for one thing. Would you think that each of these pieces of paper is worth two hundred pounds?”

“No, indeed, if you didn’t say so.”

“ ’Tis so, then. Now here are papers of another sort. They are for different sums in the three-per-cents. Now these are Port Breedy Harbor bonds. We have a great stake in that harbor, you know, because I send off timber there. Open the rest at your pleasure. They’ll interest ye.”

“Yes, I will, some day,” said she, rising.

“Nonsense, open them now.