“I can’t say that I do,” answered Giles, his eyes lingering far ahead upon a dark spot, which proved to be a brougham.
“I think you may, sometimes, with advantage,” said she. “Look at yourself as a pitcher drifting on the stream with other pitchers, and consider what contrivances are most desirable for avoiding cracks in general, and not only for saving your poor one. Shall I tell you all about Bath or Cheltenham, or places on the Continent that I visited last summer?”
“With all my heart.”
She then described places and persons in such terms as might have been used for that purpose by any woman to any man within the four seas, so entirely absent from that description was everything specially appertaining to her own existence. When she had done she said, gayly, “Now do you tell me in return what has happened in Hintock since I have been away.”
“Anything to keep the conversation away from her and me,” said Giles within him.
It was true cultivation had so far advanced in the soil of Miss Melbury’s mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of that she knew well, and had the greatest interest in developing—that is to say, herself.
He had not proceeded far with his somewhat bald narration when they drew near the carriage that had been preceding them for some time. Miss Melbury inquired if he knew whose carriage it was.
Winterborne, although he had seen it, had not taken it into account. On examination, he said it was Mrs. Charmond’s.
Grace watched the vehicle and its easy roll, and seemed to feel more nearly akin to it than to the one she was in.
“Pooh! We can polish off the mileage as well as they, come to that,” said Winterborne, reading her mind; and rising to emulation at what it bespoke, he whipped on the horse. This it was which had brought the nose of Mr. Melbury’s old gray close to the back of Mrs. Charmond’s much-eclipsing vehicle.
“There’s Marty South sitting up with the coachman,” said he, discerning her by her dress.
“Ah, poor Marty! I must ask her to come to see me this very evening. How does she happen to be riding there?”
“I don’t know. It is very singular.”
Thus these people with converging destinies went along the road together, till Winterborne, leaving the track of the carriage, turned into Little Hintock, where almost the first house was the timber-merchant’s. Pencils of dancing light streamed out of the windows sufficiently to show the white laurestinus flowers, and glance over the polished leaves of laurel. The interior of the rooms could be seen distinctly, warmed up by the fire-flames, which in the parlor were reflected from the glass of the pictures and bookcase, and in the kitchen from the utensils and ware.
“Let us look at the dear place for a moment before we call them,” she said.
In the kitchen dinner was preparing; for though Melbury dined at one o’clock at other times, today the meal had been kept back for Grace. A rickety old spit was in motion, its end being fixed in the firedog, and the whole kept going by means of a cord conveyed over pulleys along the ceiling to a large stone suspended in a corner of the room. Old Grammer Oliver came and wound it up with a rattle like that of a mill.
In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury’s head fell on the wall and ceiling; but before the girl had regarded this room many moments their presence was discovered, and her father and stepmother came out to welcome her.
The character of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces some shyness in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait frequent in rural households, and one which stands in curiously inverse relation to most of the peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people of towns. Thus hiding their warmer feelings under commonplace talk all round, Grace’s reception produced no extraordinary demonstrations. But that more was felt than was enacted appeared from the fact that her father, in taking her indoors, quite forgot the presence of Giles without, as did also Grace herself. He said nothing, but took the gig round to the yard and called out from the spar-house the man who particularly attended to these matters when there was no conversation to draw him off among the copse-workers inside. Winterborne then returned to the door with the intention of entering the house.
The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in themselves. The fire was, as before, the only light, and it irradiated Grace’s face and hands so as to make them look wondrously smooth and fair beside those of the two elders; shining also through the loose hair about her temples as sunlight through a brake. Her father was surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so much had she developed and progressed in manner and stature since he last had set eyes on her.
Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door, mechanically tracing with his fingers certain timeworn letters carved in the jambs—initials of bygone generations of householders who had lived and died there.
No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the family; they had forgotten him, and it was enough for today that he had brought her home. Still, he was a little surprised that her father’s eagerness to send him for Grace should have resulted in such an anticlimax as this.
He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking back when he reached the turning, from which he could get a last glimpse of the timber-merchant’s roof. He hazarded guesses as to what Grace was saying just at that moment, and murmured, with some self-derision, “nothing about me!” He looked also in the other direction, and saw
