"Ah, Giles--you should have been my partner. You should have been my son-in-law," the old man said at last. "It would have been far better for her and for me."
Winterborne saw that something had gone wrong with his former friend, and throwing down the switch he was about to interweave, he responded only too readily to the mood of the timber-dealer.
"Is she ill?" he said, hurriedly.
"No, no." Melbury stood without speaking for some minutes, and then, as though he could not bring himself to proceed, turned to go away.
Winterborne told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night and walked after Melbury.
"Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir," he said, "especially since we don't stand as we used to stand to one another; but I hope it is well with them all over your way?"
"No," said Melbury--"no." He stopped, and struck the smooth trunk of a young ash-tree with the flat of his hand. "I would that his ear had been where that rind is!" he exclaimed; "I should have treated him to little compared wi what he deserves."
"Now," said Winterborne, "don't be in a hurry to go home. I've put some cider down to warm in my shelter here, and we'll sit and drink it and talk this over."
Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and they went back to where the fire was, and sat down under the screen, the other woodmen having gone. He drew out the cider-mug from the ashes and they drank together.
"Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now," repeated Melbury. "I'll tell you why for the first time."
He thereupon told Winterborne, as with great relief, the story of how he won away Giles's father's chosen one--by nothing worse than a lover's cajoleries, it is true, but by means which, except in love, would certainly have been pronounced cruel and unfair. He explained how he had always intended to make reparation to Winterborne the father by giving Grace to Winterborne the son, till the devil tempted him in the person of Fitzpiers, and he broke his virtuous vow.
"How highly I thought of that man, to be sure! Who'd have supposed he'd have been so weak and wrong-headed as this! You ought to have had her, Giles, and there's an end on't."
Winterborne knew how to preserve his calm under this unconsciously cruel tearing of a healing wound to which Melbury's concentration on the more vital subject had blinded him. The young man endeavored to make the best of the case for Grace's sake.
"She would hardly have been happy with me," he said, in the dry, unimpassioned voice under which he hid his feelings. "I was not well enough educated: too rough, in short. I couldn't have surrounded her with the refinements she looked for, anyhow, at all."
"Nonsense--you are quite wrong there," said the unwise old man, doggedly. "She told me only this day that she hates refinements and such like. All that my trouble and money bought for her in that way is thrown away upon her quite. She'd fain be like Marty South--think o' that! That's the top of her ambition! Perhaps she's right. Giles, she loved you--under the rind; and, what's more, she loves ye still--worse luck for the poor maid!"
If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up he might have held his peace. Winterborne was silent a long time.
The darkness had closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of the fog from the branches quickened as it turned to fine rain.
"Oh, she never cared much for me," Giles managed to say, as he stirred the embers with a brand.
"She did, and does, I tell ye," said the other, obstinately.
"However, all that's vain talking now. What I come to ask you about is a more practical matter--how to make the best of things as they are. I am thinking of a desperate step--of calling on the woman Charmond. I am going to appeal to her, since Grace will not. 'Tis she who holds the balance in her hands--not he. While she's got the will to lead him astray he will follow--poor, unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer--and how long she'll do it depends upon her whim. Did ye ever hear anything about her character before she came to Hintock?"
"She's been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe," replied Giles, with the same level quietude, as he regarded the red coals.
"One who has smiled where she has not loved and loved where she has not married. Before Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a play-actress."
"Hey?" But how close you have kept all this, Giles! What besides?"
"Mr. Charmond was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the north, twenty or thirty years older than she. He married her and retired, and came down here and bought this property, as they do nowadays."
"Yes, yes--I know all about that; but the other I did not know. I fear it bodes no good. For how can I go and appeal to the forbearance of a woman in this matter who has made cross-loves and crooked entanglements her trade for years? I thank ye, Giles, for finding it out; but it makes my plan the harder that she should have belonged to that unstable tribe."
Another pause ensued, and they looked gloomily at the smoke that beat about the hurdles which sheltered them, through whose weavings a large drop of rain fell at intervals and spat smartly into the fire. Mrs. Charmond had been no friend to Winterborne, but he was manly, and it was not in his heart to let her be condemned without a trial.
"She is said to be generous," he answered. "You might not appeal to her in vain."
"It shall be done," said Melbury, rising. "For good or for evil, to Mrs. Charmond I'll go."
