The Woodlanders - Page 166/314

"But you hate Hintock, and everybody and everything in it that you

don't mean to take away with you?"

Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory tones, and she

lapsed into the frivolous archness under which she hid passions of no

mean strength--strange, smouldering, erratic passions, kept down like a

stifled conflagration, but bursting out now here, now there--the only

certain element in their direction being its unexpectedness. If one

word could have expressed her it would have been Inconsequence. She

was a woman of perversities, delighting in frequent contrasts. She

liked mystery, in her life, in her love, in her history. To be fair to

her, there was nothing in the latter which she had any great reason to

be ashamed of, and many things of which she might have been proud; but

it had never been fathomed by the honest minds of Hintock, and she

rarely volunteered her experiences. As for her capricious nature, the

people on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that marvellous

subtlety of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found in

sons of the soil and dependants generally, they managed to get along

under her government rather better than they would have done beneath a

more equable rule.

Now, with regard to the doctor's notion of leaving Hintock, he had

advanced further towards completing the purchase of the Budmouth

surgeon's good-will than he had admitted to Mrs. Charmond. The whole

matter hung upon what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four hours.

The evening after leaving her he went out into the lane, and walked and

pondered between the high hedges, now greenish-white with wild

clematis--here called "old-man's beard," from its aspect later in the

year.

The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, after which his

departure from Hintock would be irrevocable. But could he go away,

remembering what had just passed? The trees, the hills, the leaves, the

grass--each had been endowed and quickened with a subtle charm since he

had discovered the person and history, and, above all, mood of their

owner. There was every temporal reason for leaving; it would be

entering again into a world which he had only quitted in a passion for

isolation, induced by a fit of Achillean moodiness after an imagined

slight. His wife herself saw the awkwardness of their position here,

and cheerfully welcomed the purposed change, towards which every step

had been taken but the last. But could he find it in his heart--as he

found it clearly enough in his conscience--to go away?

He drew a troubled breath, and went in-doors. Here he rapidly penned a

letter, wherein he withdrew once for all from the treaty for the

Budmouth practice. As the postman had already left Little Hintock for

that night, he sent one of Melbury's men to intercept a mail-cart on

another turnpike-road, and so got the letter off.