It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting between
Grace and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, that Fitzpiers, just returned from
London, was travelling from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock in a hired
carriage. In his eye there was a doubtful light, and the lines of his
refined face showed a vague disquietude. He appeared now like one of
those who impress the beholder as having suffered wrong in being born.
His position was in truth gloomy, and to his appreciative mind it
seemed even gloomier than it was. His practice had been slowly
dwindling of late, and now threatened to die out altogether, the
irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing patients up to Fitzpiers's very
door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest cause of
his unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man, the second branch of
his sadness grew out of a remedial measure proposed for the first--a
letter from Felice Charmond imploring him not to see her again. To
bring about their severance still more effectually, she added, she had
decided during his absence upon almost immediate departure for the
Continent.
The time was that dull interval in a woodlander's life which coincides
with great activity in the life of the woodland itself--a period
following the close of the winter tree-cutting, and preceding the
barking season, when the saps are just beginning to heave with the
force of hydraulic lifts inside all the trunks of the forest.
Winterborne's contract was completed, and the plantations were
deserted. It was dusk; there were no leaves as yet; the nightingales
would not begin to sing for a fortnight; and "the Mother of the Months"
was in her most attenuated phase--starved and bent to a mere bowed
skeleton, which glided along behind the bare twigs in Fitzpiers's
company.
When he reached home he went straight up to his wife's sitting-room.
He found it deserted, and without a fire. He had mentioned no day for
his return; nevertheless, he wondered why she was not there waiting to
receive him. On descending to the other wing of the house and
inquiring of Mrs. Melbury, he learned with much surprise that Grace had
gone on a visit to an acquaintance at Shottsford-Forum three days
earlier; that tidings had on this morning reached her father of her
being very unwell there, in consequence of which he had ridden over to
see her.
Fitzpiers went up-stairs again, and the little drawing-room, now
lighted by a solitary candle, was not rendered more cheerful by the
entrance of Grammer Oliver with an apronful of wood, which she threw on
the hearth while she raked out the grate and rattled about the
fire-irons, with a view to making things comfortable. Fitzpiers
considered that Grace ought to have let him know her plans more
accurately before leaving home in a freak like this. He went
desultorily to the window, the blind of which had not been pulled down,
and looked out at the thin, fast-sinking moon, and at the tall stalk of
smoke rising from the top of Suke Damson's chimney, signifying that the
young woman had just lit her fire to prepare supper.