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At nine o'clock the next morning Melbury dressed himself up in shining broadcloth, creased with folding and smelling of camphor, and started for Hintock House. He was the more impelled to go at once by the absence of his son-in-law in London for a few days, to attend, really or ostensibly, some professional meetings.
Even his subjection was not made congruous throughout, for the harness being too short, his tail was not drawn through the crupper, so that the breeching slipped awkwardly to one side. He knew every subtle incline of the seven or eight miles of ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas the market-town to which he journeyed as accurately as any surveyor could have learned it by a Dumpy level.
Why, our little Retty Priddle here, you know, is one of the Paridelles the old family that used to own lots o' the lands out by King's Hintock, now owned by the Earl o' Wessex, afore even he or his was heard of. Well, Mr Clare found this out, and spoke quite scornful to the poor girl for days. 'Ah! he says to her, 'you'll never make a good dairymaid!
He dismissed all reverential thought about her, but he could not help taking her seriously. He went on to imagine the impossible. So far, indeed, did he go in this futile direction that, as others are wont to do, he constructed dialogues and scenes in which Grace had turned out to be the mistress of Hintock Manor-house, the mysterious Mrs.
Not but that he would have been contented with Hintock, but his wife was ambitious and wanted to leave, so he had given way. "Then good-by," said Fitzpiers; "I may not see you again." He shook hands with Tim and turned to the bride. "Good-by, Suke," he said, taking her hand also. "I wish you and your husband prosperity in the country you have chosen."
Six months before this date a scene, almost similar in its mechanical parts, had been enacted at Hintock House. It was between a pair of persons most intimately connected in their lives with these. Outwardly like as it had been, it was yet infinite in spiritual difference, though a woman's devotion had been common to both.
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.
One evening just before dusk they had taken a rather long walk together, and for a short cut homeward passed through the shrubberies of Hintock House still deserted, and still blankly confronting with its sightless shuttered windows the surrounding foliage and slopes.
You have bought a practice at Budmouth. I don't blame you. Nobody can live at Hintock least of all a professional man who wants to keep abreast of recent discovery. And there is nobody here to induce such a one to stay for other reasons. That's right, that's right go away!" "But no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, though I am indeed in treaty for it.
I am going away to Middleton Abbey, near Shottsford, where a relative of my late husband lives, who is confined to her bed. The engagement was made in London, and I can't get out of it. Perhaps it is for the best that I go there till all this is past. When are you going to enter on your new practice, and leave Hintock behind forever, with your pretty wife on your arm?"
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