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

adoration of Hintock House, would be the first to blame him if it became known. But saying no more, he accompanied the load to the end of the lane, and then turned back with an intention to call at South’s to learn the result of the experiment of the preceding evening.

It chanced that a few minutes before this time Grace Melbury, who now rose soon enough to breakfast with her father, in spite of the unwontedness of the hour, had been commissioned by him to make the same inquiry at South’s. Marty had been standing at the door when Miss Melbury arrived. Almost before the latter had spoken, Mrs. Charmond’s carriages, released from the obstruction up the lane, came bowling along, and the two girls turned to regard the spectacle.

Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but there was sufficient light for them to discern her outline between the carriage windows. A noticeable feature in her tournure was a magnificent mass of braided locks.

“How well she looks this morning!” said Grace, forgetting Mrs. Charmond’s slight in her generous admiration. “Her hair so becomes her worn that way. I have never seen any more beautiful!”

“Nor have I, miss,” said Marty, dryly, unconsciously stroking her crown.

Grace watched the carriages with lingering regret till they were out of sight. She then learned of Marty that South was no better. Before she had come away Winterborne approached the house, but seeing that one of the two girls standing on the doorstep was Grace, he suddenly turned back again and sought the shelter of his own home till she should have gone away.

XIV

The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne’s mind the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from her to the fact that several cottages and other houses in the two Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession in the event of South’s death. He marvelled what people could have been thinking about in the past to invent such precarious tenures as these; still more, what could have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and other village people, to exchange their old copyholds for life-leases. But having naturally succeeded to these properties through his father, he had done his best to keep them in order, though he was much struck with his father’s negligence in not insuring South’s life.

After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went upstairs, turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay between the mattress and the sacking. In this he kept his leases, which had remained there unopened ever since his father’s death. It was the usual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents. Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them over. They were ordinary leases for three lives, which a member of the South family, some fifty years before this time, had accepted of the lord of the manor in lieu of certain copyholds and other rights, in consideration of having the dilapidated houses rebuilt by said lord. They had come into his father’s possession chiefly through his mother, who was a South.

Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter, which Winterborne had never seen before. It bore a remote date, the handwriting being that of some solicitor or agent, and the signature the landholder’s. It was to the effect that at any time before the last of the stated lives should drop, Mr. Giles Winterborne, senior, or his representative, should have the privilege of adding his own and his son’s life to the life remaining on payment of a merely nominal sum; the concession being in consequence of the elder Winterborne’s consent to demolish one of the houses and relinquish its site, which stood at an awkward corner of the lane and impeded the way.

The house had been pulled down years before. Why Giles’s father had not taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his son’s lives it was impossible to say. The likelihood was that death alone had hindered him in the execution of his project, as it surely was, the elder Winterborne having been a man who took much pleasure in dealing with house property in his small way.

Since one of the Souths still survived, there was not much doubt that Giles could do what his father had left undone, as far as his own life was concerned. This possibility cheered him much, for by those houses hung many things. Melbury’s doubt of the young man’s fitness to be the husband of Grace had been based not a little on the precariousness of his holdings in Little and Great Hintock. He resolved to attend to the business at once, the fine for renewal being a sum that he could easily muster. His scheme, however, could not be carried out in a day; and meanwhile he would run up to South’s, as he had intended to do, to learn the result of the experiment with the tree.

Marty met him at the door. “Well, Marty,” he said; and was surprised to read in her face that the case was not so hopeful as he had imagined.

“I am sorry for your labor,” she said. “It is all lost. He says the tree seems taller than ever.”

Winterborne looked round at it. Taller the tree certainly did seem, the gauntness of its now naked stem being more marked than before.

“It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had done to it this morning,” she added. “He declares it will come down upon us and cleave us, like ‘the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.’ ”

“Well; can I do anything else?” asked he.

“The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down.”

“Oh⁠—you’ve had the doctor?”

“I didn’t send for him. Mrs. Charmond, before she left, heard that father was ill, and told him to attend him at her expense.”

“That was very good of her. And he says it ought to be cut down. We mustn’t cut it down without her