The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the
woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque body
of infinitely larger shape and importance. The boughs cast green
shades, which hurt the complexion of the girls who walked there; and a
fringe of them which overhung Mr. Melbury’s garden dripped on his
seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface all over as with
pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in such a place were no
good at all. The two trees that had creaked all the winter left off
creaking, the whir of the night-jar, however, forming a very
satisfactory continuation of uncanny music from that quarter. Except at
mid-day the sun was not seen complete by the Hintock people, but rather
in the form of numerous little stars staring through the leaves.
Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as the
hour grew later, and nine o’clock drew on, the irradiation of the
daytime became broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of
indistinctness. Imagination could trace upon the trunks and boughs
strange faces and figures shaped by the dying lights; the surfaces of
the holly-leaves would here and there shine like peeping eyes, while
such fragments of the sky as were visible between the trunks assumed
the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven tongues. This was before the
moonrise. Later on, when that planet was getting command of the upper
heaven, and consequently shining with an unbroken face into such open
glades as there were in the neighborhood of the hamlet, it became
apparent that the margin of the wood which approached the
timber-merchant’s premises was not to be left to the customary
stillness of that reposeful time.
Fitzpiers having heard a voice or voices, was looking over his garden
gate—where he now looked more frequently than into his books—fancying
that Grace might be abroad with some friends. He was now irretrievably
committed in heart to Grace Melbury, though he was by no means sure
that she was so far committed to him. That the Idea had for once
completely fulfilled itself in the objective substance—which he had
hitherto deemed an impossibility—he was enchanted enough to fancy must
be the case at last. It was not Grace who had passed, however, but
several of the ordinary village girls in a group—some steadily walking,
some in a mood of wild gayety. He quietly asked his landlady, who was
also in the garden, what these girls were intending, and she informed
him that it being Old Midsummer Eve, they were about to attempt some
spell or enchantment which would afford them a glimpse of their future
partners for life. She declared it to be an ungodly performance, and
one which she for her part would never countenance; saying which, she
entered her house and retired to bed.
The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of maidens slowly up
the road. They had turned into the wood at an opening between Melbury’s
and Marty South’s; but Fitzpiers could easily track them by their
voices, low as they endeavored to keep their tones.
In the mean time other inhabitants of Little Hintock had become aware
of the nocturnal experiment about to be tried, and were also sauntering
stealthily after the frisky maidens. Miss Melbury had been informed by
Marty South during the day of the proposed peep into futurity, and,
being only a girl like the rest, she was sufficiently interested to
wish to see the issue. The moon was so bright and the night so calm
that she had no difficulty in persuading Mrs. Melbury to accompany her;
and thus, joined by Marty, these went onward in the same direction.
Passing Winterborne’s house, they heard a noise of hammering. Marty
explained it. This was the last night on which his paternal roof would
shelter him, the days of grace since it fell into hand having expired;
and Giles was taking down his cupboards and bedsteads with a view to an
early exit next morning. His encounter with Mrs. Charmond had cost him
dearly.
When they had proceeded a little farther Marty was joined by Grammer
Oliver (who was as young as the youngest in such matters), and Grace
and Mrs. Melbury went on by themselves till they had arrived at the
spot chosen by the village daughters, whose primary intention of
keeping their expedition a secret had been quite defeated. Grace and
her step-mother paused by a holly-tree; and at a little distance stood
Fitzpiers under the shade of a young oak, intently observing Grace, who
was in the full rays of the moon.
He watched her without speaking, and unperceived by any but Marty and
Grammer, who had drawn up on the dark side of the same holly which
sheltered Mrs. and Miss Melbury on its bright side. The two former
conversed in low tones.
“If they two come up in Wood next Midsummer Night they’ll come as one,”
said Grammer, signifying Fitzpiers and Grace. “Instead of my
skellington he’ll carry home her living carcass before long. But though
she’s a lady in herself, and worthy of any such as he, it do seem to me
that he ought to marry somebody more of the sort of Mrs. Charmond, and
that Miss Grace should make the best of Winterborne.”
Marty returned no comment; and at that minute the girls, some of whom
were from Great Hintock, were seen advancing to work the incantation,
it being now about midnight.
“Directly we see anything we’ll run home as fast as we can,” said one,
whose courage had begun to fail her. To this the rest assented, not
knowing that a dozen neighbors lurked in the bushes around.
“I wish we had not thought of trying this,” said another, “but had
contented ourselves with the hole-digging to-morrow at twelve, and
hearing our husbands’ trades. It is too much like having dealings with
the Evil One to try to raise their forms.”
However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly began to march
forward in a skirmishing line through the trees towards the deeper
recesses of the wood. As far as the listeners could gather, the
particular form of black-art to be practised on this occasion was one
connected with the sowing of hemp-seed, a handful of which was carried
by each girl. At the moment of their advance they looked back, and
discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who, alone of all the observers,
stood in the full face of the moonlight, deeply engrossed in the
proceedings. By contrast with her life of late years they made her feel
as if she had receded a couple of centuries in the world’s history. She
was rendered doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and after a few
whispered words, one of the girls—a bouncing maiden, plighted to young
Timothy Tangs—asked her if she would join in. Grace, with some
excitement, said that she would, and moved on a little in the rear of
the rest.
Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceedings beyond the
faintest occasional rustle of leaves. Grammer whispered again to Marty:
“Why didn’t ye go and try your luck with the rest of the maids?”
“I don’t believe in it,” said Marty, shortly.
“Why, half the parish is here—the silly hussies should have kept it
quiet. I see Mr. Winterborne through the leaves, just come up with
Robert Creedle. Marty, we ought to act the part o’ Providence
sometimes. Do go and tell him that if he stands just behind the bush at
the bottom of the slope, Miss Grace must pass down it when she comes
back, and she will most likely rush into his arms; for as soon as the
clock strikes, they’ll bundle back home—along like hares. I’ve seen
such larries before.”
“Do you think I’d better?” said Marty, reluctantly.
“Oh yes, he’ll bless ye for it.”
“I don’t want that kind of blessing.” But after a moment’s thought she
went and delivered the information; and Grammer had the satisfaction of
seeing Giles walk slowly to the bend in the leafy defile along which
Grace would have to return.
Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had perceived Fitzpiers and
Winterborne, and also the move of the latter. An improvement on
Grammer’s idea entered the mind of Mrs. Melbury, for she had lately
discerned what her husband had not—that Grace was rapidly fascinating
the surgeon. She therefore drew near to Fitzpiers.
“You should be where Mr. Winterborne is standing,” she said to him,
significantly. “She will run down through that opening much faster than
she went up it, if she is like the rest of the girls.”
Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice. He went across to
Winterborne and stood beside him. Each knew the probable purpose of the
other in standing there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers scorning to look
upon Winterborne as a rival, and Winterborne adhering to the off-hand
manner of indifference which had grown upon him since his dismissal.
Neither Grammer nor Marty South had seen the surgeon’s manoeuvre, and,
still to help Winterborne, as she supposed, the old woman suggested to
the wood-girl that she should walk forward at the heels of Grace, and
“tole” her down the required way if she showed a tendency to run in
another direction. Poor Marty, always doomed to sacrifice desire to
obligation, walked forward accordingly, and waited as a beacon, still
and silent, for the retreat of Grace and her giddy companions, now
quite out of hearing.
The first sound to break the silence was the distant note of Great
Hintock clock striking the significant hour. About a minute later that
quarter of the wood to which the girls had wandered resounded with the
flapping of disturbed birds; then two or three hares and rabbits
bounded down the glade from the same direction, and after these the
rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs denoted the hurried
approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gowns soon became
visible. Miss Melbury, having gone forward quite in the rear of the
rest, was one of the first to return, and the excitement being
contagious, she ran laughing towards Marty, who still stood as a
hand-post to guide her; then, passing on, she flew round the fatal bush
where the undergrowth narrowed to a gorge. Marty arrived at her heels
just in time to see the result. Fitzpiers had quickly stepped forward
in front of Winterborne, who, disdaining to shift his position, had
turned on his heel, and then the surgeon did what he would not have
thought of doing but for Mrs. Melbury’s encouragement and the sentiment
of an eve which effaced conventionality. Stretching out his arms as the
white figure burst upon him, he captured her in a moment, as if she had
been a bird.
“Oh!” cried Grace, in her fright.
“You are in my arms, dearest,” said Fitzpiers, “and I am going to claim
you, and keep you there all our two lives!”
She rested on him like one utterly mastered, and it was several seconds
before she recovered from this helplessness. Subdued screams and
struggles, audible from neighboring brakes, revealed that there had
been other lurkers thereabout for a similar purpose. Grace, unlike most
of these companions of hers, instead of gasping and writhing, said in a
trembling voice, “Mr. Fitzpiers, will you let me go?”
“Certainly,” he said, laughing; “as soon as you have recovered.”
She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly pushed him
aside, and glided on her path, the moon whitening her hot blush away.
But it had been enough—new relations between them had begun.
The case of the other girls was different, as has been said. They
wrestled and tittered, only escaping after a desperate struggle.
Fitzpiers could hear these enactments still going on after Grace had
left him, and he remained on the spot where he had caught her,
Winterborne having gone away. On a sudden another girl came bounding
down the same descent that had been followed by Grace—a fine-framed
young woman with naked arms. Seeing Fitzpiers standing there, she said,
with playful effrontery, “May’st kiss me if ‘canst catch me, Tim!”
Fitzpiers recognized her as Suke Damson, a hoydenish damsel of the
hamlet, who was plainly mistaking him for her lover. He was impulsively
disposed to profit by her error, and as soon as she began racing away
he started in pursuit.
On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking over
her shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand; but so
cunningly dodging about among the trees and moon-shades that she never
allowed him to get dangerously near her. Thus they ran and doubled,
Fitzpiers warming with the chase, till the sound of their companions
had quite died away. He began to lose hope of ever overtaking her, when
all at once, by way of encouragement, she turned to a fence in which
there was a stile and leaped over it. Outside the scene was a changed
one—a meadow, where the half-made hay lay about in heaps, in the
uninterrupted shine of the now high moon.
Fitzpiers saw in a moment that, having taken to open ground, she had
placed herself at his mercy, and he promptly vaulted over after her.
She flitted a little way down the mead, when all at once her light form
disappeared as if it had sunk into the earth. She had buried herself in
one of the hay-cocks.
Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let her escape him
thus. He approached, and set about turning over the heaps one by one.
As soon as he paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was directed anew by
an imitative kiss which came from her hiding-place, and by snatches of
a local ballad in the smallest voice she could assume:
“O come in from the foggy, foggy dew.”
In a minute or two he uncovered her.
“Oh, ’tis not Tim!” said she, burying her face.
Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason of its
mildness, stooped and imprinted the purposed kiss, then sunk down on
the next hay-cock, panting with his race.
“Whom do you mean by Tim?” he asked, presently.
“My young man, Tim Tangs,” said she.
“Now, honor bright, did you really think it was he?”
“I did at first.”
“But you didn’t at last?”
“I didn’t at last.”
“Do you much mind that it was not?”
“No,” she answered, slyly.
Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning. In the moonlight Suke looked
very beautiful, the scratches and blemishes incidental to her out-door
occupation being invisible under these pale rays. While they remain
silent the coarse whir of the eternal night-jar burst sarcastically
from the top of a tree at the nearest corner of the wood. Besides this
not a sound of any kind reached their ears, the time of nightingales
being now past, and Hintock lying at a distance of two miles at least.
In the opposite direction the hay-field stretched away into remoteness
till it was lost to the eye in a soft mist.