登陆注册
5291400000109

第109章 CHAPTER XXXVIII.(1)

At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed than he was moved in heart. The novelty of the avowal rendered what it carried with it inapprehensible by him in its entirety.

Only a few short months ago completely estranged from this family-- beholding Grace going to and fro in the distance, clothed with the alienating radiance of obvious superiority, the wife of the then popular and fashionable Fitzpiers, hopelessly outside his social boundary down to so recent a time that flowers then folded were hardly faded yet--he was now asked by that jealously guarding father of hers to take courage--to get himself ready for the day when he should be able to claim her.

The old times came back to him in dim procession. How he had been snubbed; how Melbury had despised his Christmas party; how that sweet, coy Grace herself had looked down upon him and his household arrangements, and poor Creedle's contrivances!

Well, he could not believe it. Surely the adamantine barrier of marriage with another could not be pierced like this! It did violence to custom. Yet a new law might do anything. But was it at all within the bounds of probability that a woman who, over and above her own attainments, had been accustomed to those of a cultivated professional man, could ever be the wife of such as he?

Since the date of his rejection he had almost grown to see the reasonableness of that treatment. He had said to himself again and again that her father was right; that the poor ceorl, Giles Winterborne, would never have been able to make such a dainty girl happy. Yet, now that she had stood in a position farther removed from his own than at first, he was asked to prepare to woo her.

He was full of doubt.

Nevertheless, it was not in him to show backwardness. To act so promptly as Melbury desired him to act seemed, indeed, scarcely wise, because of the uncertainty of events. Giles knew nothing of legal procedure, but he did know that for him to step up to Grace as a lover before the bond which bound her was actually dissolved was simply an extravagant dream of her father's overstrained mind.

He pitied Melbury for his almost childish enthusiasm, and saw that the aging man must have suffered acutely to be weakened to this unreasoning desire.

Winterborne was far too magnanimous to harbor any cynical conjecture that the timber-merchant, in his intense affection for Grace, was courting him now because that young lady, when disunited, would be left in an anomalous position, to escape which a bad husband was better than none. He felt quite sure that his old friend was simply on tenterhooks of anxiety to repair the almost irreparable error of dividing two whom Nature had striven to join together in earlier days, and that in his ardor to do this he was oblivious of formalities. The cautious supervision of his past years had overleaped itself at last. hence, Winterborne perceived that, in this new beginning, the necessary care not to compromise Grace by too early advances must be exercised by himself.

Perhaps Winterborne was not quite so ardent as heretofore. There is no such thing as a stationary love: men are either loving more or loving less. But Giles himself recognized no decline in his sense of her dearness. If the flame did indeed burn lower now than when he had fetched her from Sherton at her last return from school, the marvel was small. He had been laboring ever since his rejection and her marriage to reduce his former passion to a docile friendship, out of pure regard to its expediency; and their separation may have helped him to a partial success.

A week and more passed, and there was no further news of Melbury.

But the effect of the intelligence he had already transmitted upon the elastic-nerved daughter of the woods had been much what the old surgeon Jones had surmised. It had soothed her perturbed spirit better than all the opiates in the pharmacopoeia. She had slept unbrokenly a whole night and a day. The "new law" was to her a mysterious, beneficent, godlike entity, lately descended upon earth, that would make her as she once had been without trouble or annoyance. Her position fretted her, its abstract features rousing an aversion which was even greater than her aversion to the personality of him who had caused it. It was mortifying, productive of slights, undignified. Him she could forget; her circumstances she had always with her.

She saw nothing of Winterborne during the days of her recovery; and perhaps on that account her fancy wove about him a more romantic tissue than it could have done if he had stood before her with all the specks and flaws inseparable from corporeity. He rose upon her memory as the fruit-god and the wood-god in alternation; sometimes leafy, and smeared with green lichen, as she had seen him among the sappy boughs of the plantations; sometimes cider-stained, and with apple-pips in the hair of his arms, as she had met him on his return from cider-making in White Hart Vale, with his vats and presses beside him. In her secret heart she almost approximated to her father's enthusiasm in wishing to show Giles once for all how she still regarded him.

The question whether the future would indeed bring them together for life was a standing wonder with her. She knew that it could not with any propriety do so just yet. But reverently believing in her father's sound judgment and knowledge, as good girls are wont to do, she remembered what he had written about her giving a hint to Winterborne lest there should be risk in delay, and her feelings were not averse to such a step, so far as it could be done without danger at this early stage of the proceedings.

同类推荐
  • 妙法莲华经广量天地品

    妙法莲华经广量天地品

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • Robert Louis Stevenson

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 周易参同契注·储华谷

    周易参同契注·储华谷

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 学山诗话

    学山诗话

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 明实录宣宗实录

    明实录宣宗实录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 第二颗太阳的味道

    第二颗太阳的味道

    童年是每个人专属的东西,是我们用一生都无法磨灭的事实,但是只要有爱存在,再灰暗的事实也会在爱的阳光中慢慢的挥散,取而的只有爱和阳光的味道……,故事的主人公将演绎出怎样的故事,让我们共同期待……
  • 花下獠牙:绝宠天价嫡女

    花下獠牙:绝宠天价嫡女

    继母暗害,亲爹默许,造就她与生母的悲剧。死后重生,楚清幽发誓,让他们付出代价!与此同时被迫卷入皇室斗争,却发现幽王府里神秘力量。入宫从军,楚清幽一生风风火火,幸得所爱之人。只是这争斗不休,阴谋层出不穷。且看楚清幽是否能够化险为夷,风生水起!
  • 死亡游戏

    死亡游戏

    故事会编辑部编著的《死亡游戏》为“中国当代故事文学读本”悬念推理系列之六,不仅收入了当今故事界优秀作者的短篇精品力作,还首次整合了《故事会》杂志创刊以来尚未开发的悬念推理中篇故事资源。故事悬念迭起,疑云密布,让热爱悬疑推理故事的读者尽享阅读故事的乐趣。
  • 植物园的大影展(科学知识游览车)

    植物园的大影展(科学知识游览车)

    《植物园的大影展》本书为你讲述关于植物的各种科普知识。本书知识全面、内容精炼、通俗易懂,能够培养读者的科学兴趣和爱好,达到普及科学知识的目的,具有很强的可读性、启发性和知识性,是广大读者了解科技、增长知识、开阔视野、提高素质、激发探索和启迪智慧的良好科普读物。
  • 寒玖传

    寒玖传

    暖阳之下,一女子独站帝都城楼,唯美风雅的面容在常人视角下显得美丽绝伦。“慕容清,你夺我一生所爱,我要你倾国来葬!”眼神中所散发的恨,足以动憾这看似稳固的江山社稷。原来的长安王妃,现在的寒襄皇后,慕容清一声所爱的女人,难道终究是一场空……“慕容清,如今可还依稀记得,我曾是你的妻子,你的王妃,你一生要保护的人!”在这背后究竟隐藏着多少不为人知秘密……
  • 总裁大人寄宿在我体内

    总裁大人寄宿在我体内

    C大考古专业学霸——林北望C城首富,某生物科技公司总裁——陆寒彻在一个古墓现场,机缘巧合之下,灵魂寄宿在了女主身上。看霸道总裁和考古学学霸林北望上演的一出灵魂寄宿在一体的奇妙故事。林北望:其实我们是同行。陆寒彻:你一个挖土的……林北望:我挖土,你吃土啊—他环抱她身后,在他的耳边低沉诱惑的说到,“叫我名字。”她呆愣住,不由自主的轻唤,“陆寒彻。”他的灵魂便进入了她的身体里。趁着她是魂体的状态,他穿着她的皮囊,对外宣布她是他的未婚妻。他陪着她一路寻找失踪母亲的下落,保护她不受人追杀。她陪着他一路寻找灵魂归体的方法,她温暖了他的世界。—这是个,互撩、互怼、互爱,双强、双洁的绝爽宠文。—每日两更。
  • 蒋廷黻回忆录·增补版

    蒋廷黻回忆录·增补版

    蒋廷黻作为一个有着特殊经历和身份的“重要人物”,其回忆录有着较为重要的史料参考价值。本书系作者退休后在哥伦比亚大学口述自传的中文译本,1979年由台湾传记文学出版社出版,曾引起海内外学界广泛关注。蒋廷黻一生经历复杂,亲历了时代的风云变幻。他以学者的眼光与头脑进行观察思考,有人所未道之处。加之长期身处高位,回忆录中披露的大量鲜为人知的史事,更是研究近现代历史的珍贵资料。这是该书的主要价值所在,也是我们出版该书的着眼点。
  • 世界著名企业的品牌攻略

    世界著名企业的品牌攻略

    品牌的成功塑造会使消费者形成一定的忠诚度、信任度、追随度;品牌可以利用其市场扩展的能力,带动企业进入新的市场;品牌可以通过资本运营等形式进行扩张。总之,品牌作为市场竞争的武器,常常会为企业还来意想不到的收获。本书精选汇集了世界上22家著名跨国公司的品牌战略,通过对其品牌战略的历史、发展、运用、定位等各个方面的详细讲解、分析、揭示了世界著名企业成功的奥秘。
  • 腹黑竹马:小青梅,萌翻了!

    腹黑竹马:小青梅,萌翻了!

    以前,她缠着他哄着他依着他喜欢他,他却爱搭不理。现在,他弥补她倒追她使出各种招数:“你是我的苹果手机。”她怒:“别人都是优乐美,益达,飘柔,怎么到你这儿就是手机?”他搂住她的腰:“因为爱疯啦!可是却迷路了。”她问:“去哪儿?”他指着她的心:“去你心里!”高冷傲娇竹马倒追迷糊呆萌青梅,把你捧在手里,含在嘴里,记在心里,看在眼里……
  • 进化导师

    进化导师

    晨曦人类,行者为尊。噬能灵族,古之传承。黑魔四族,命系奎卡。异兽种群,数以亿计。……一个原本不属于这里的灵魂重生了。所有智者翘首期盼,无数强者阵前听令,他们尊重他、敬畏他、崇拜他。这个冷峻的少年带给他们希望,使他们强大,令他们更加了解这个宇宙。他是罗星,他是宇宙万族的进化导师。