Thomas Hardy - The Woodlanders

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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.Grace Melbury, the only daughter of a timber-merchant, arrives home in Little Hintock after an expensive education and her father looks to find a husband for her. There are two rivals for her hand: Giles Winterborne, a good-hearted yeoman and her childhood sweetheart, and Edred Fitzpiers, an ambitious young doctor of good family. Fitzpiers wins her, but the mismatch brings unhappiness not just to the young couple, but to a wider circle in the woodland community.‘The Woodlanders’ is one of Hardy’s most powerful works and the one he liked best. With brooding sexual undertones, it addresses themes about which the author held strong views – the laws of divorce, the inequalities of society, and the uncertainty of land tenure.

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When the old woman had gone Creedle said,

“He’ll fret his gizzard green if he don’t soon hear from that maid of his. Well, learning is better than houses and lands. But to keep a maid at school till she is taller out of pattens than her mother was in ’em—’tis tempting Providence.”

“It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl,” said young Timothy Tangs.

“I can mind her mother,” said the hollow-turner. “Always a teuny, delicate piece; her touch upon your hand was as soft and cool as wind. She was inoculated for the small-pox and had it beautifully fine, just about the time that I was out of my apprenticeship—ay, and a long apprenticeship ’twas. I served that master of mine six years and three hundred and fourteen days.”

The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, as if, considering their number, they were a rather more remarkable fact than the years.

“Mr. Winterborne’s father walked with her at one time,” said old Timothy Tangs. “But Mr. Melbury won her. She was a child of a woman, and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever she and her husband came to a puddle in their walks together he’d take her up like a half-penny doll and put her over without dirting her a speck. And if he keeps the daughter so long at boarding-school, he’ll make her as nesh as her mother was. But here he comes.”

Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury crossing the court from his door. He was carrying an open letter in his hand, and came straight to Winterborne. His gloom of the preceding night had quite gone.

“I’d no sooner made up my mind, Giles, to go and see why Grace didn’t come or write than I get a letter from her—‘Clifton: Wednesday. My dear father,’ says she, ‘I’m coming home to-morrow’ (that’s to-day), ‘but I didn’t think it worth while to write long beforehand.’ The little rascal, and didn’t she! Now, Giles, as you are going to Sherton market to-day with your apple-trees, why not join me and Grace there, and we’ll drive home all together?”

He made the proposal with cheerful energy; he was hardly the same man as the man of the small dark hours. Ever it happens that even among the moodiest the tendency to be cheered is stronger than the tendency to be cast down; and a soul’s specific gravity stands permanently less than that of the sea of troubles into which it is thrown.

Winterborne, though not demonstrative, replied to this suggestion with something like alacrity. There was not much doubt that Marty’s grounds for cutting off her hair were substantial enough, if Ambrose’s eyes had been a reason for keeping it on. As for the timber-merchant, it was plain that his invitation had been given solely in pursuance of his scheme for uniting the pair. He had made up his mind to the course as a duty, and was strenuously bent upon following it out.

Accompanied by Winterborne, he now turned towards the door of the spar-house, when his footsteps were heard by the men as aforesaid.

“Well, John, and Lot,” he said, nodding as he entered. “A rimy morning.”

“’Tis, sir!” said Creedle, energetically; for, not having as yet been able to summon force sufficient to go away and begin work, he felt the necessity of throwing some into his speech. “I don’t care who the man is, ’tis the rimiest morning we’ve had this fall.”

“I heard you wondering why I’ve kept my daughter so long at boarding-school,” resumed Mr. Melbury, looking up from the letter which he was reading anew by the fire, and turning to them with the suddenness that was a trait in him. “Hey?” he asked, with affected shrewdness. “But you did, you know. Well, now, though it is my own business more than anybody else’s, I’ll tell ye. When I was a boy, another boy—the pa’son’s son—along with a lot of others, asked me ‘Who dragged Whom round the walls of What?’ and I said, ‘Sam Barrett, who dragged his wife in a chair round the tower corner when she went to be churched.’ They laughed at me with such torrents of scorn that I went home ashamed, and couldn’t sleep for shame; and I cried that night till my pillow was wet: till at last I thought to myself there and then—‘They may laugh at me for my ignorance, but that was father’s fault, and none o’ my making, and I must bear it. But they shall never laugh at my children, if I have any: I’ll starve first!’ Thank God, I’ve been able to keep her at school without sacrifice; and her scholarship is such that she stayed on as governess for a time. Let ’em laugh now if they can: Mrs. Charmond herself is not better informed than my girl Grace.”

There was something between high indifference and humble emotion in his delivery, which made it difficult for them to reply. Winterborne’s interest was of a kind which did not show itself in words; listening, he stood by the fire, mechanically stirring the embers with a spar-gad.

“You’ll be, then, ready, Giles?” Melbury continued, awaking from a reverie. “Well, what was the latest news at Shottsford yesterday, Mr. Bawtree?”

“Well, Shottsford is Shottsford still—you can’t victual your carcass there unless you’ve got money; and you can’t buy a cup of genuine there, whether or no … But as the saying is, ‘Go abroad and you’ll hear news of home.’ It seems that our new neighbor, this young Dr. What’s-his-name, is a strange, deep, perusing gentleman; and there’s good reason for supposing he has sold his soul to the wicked one.”

“’Od name it all,” murmured the timber-merchant, unimpressed by the news, but reminded of other things by the subject of it; “I’ve got to meet a gentleman this very morning? and yet I’ve planned to go to Sherton Abbas for the maid.”

“I won’t praise the doctor’s wisdom till I hear what sort of bargain he’s made,” said the top-sawyer.

“’Tis only an old woman’s tale,” said Bawtree. “But it seems that he wanted certain books on some mysterious science or black-art, and in order that the people hereabout should not know anything about his dark readings, he ordered ’em direct from London, and not from the Sherton book-seller. The parcel was delivered by mistake at the pa’son’s, and he wasn’t at home; so his wife opened it, and went into hysterics when she read ’em, thinking her husband had turned heathen, and ’twould be the ruin of the children. But when he came he said he knew no more about ’em than she; and found they were this Mr. Fitzpier’s property. So he wrote ‘Beware!’ outside, and sent ’em on by the sexton.”

“He must be a curious young man,” mused the hollow-turner.

“He must,” said Timothy Tangs.

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Melbury, authoritatively, “he’s only a gentleman fond of science and philosophy and poetry, and, in fact, every kind of knowledge; and being lonely here, he passes his time in making such matters his hobby.”

“Well,” said old Timothy, “’tis a strange thing about doctors that the worse they be the better they be. I mean that if you hear anything of this sort about ’em, ten to one they can cure ye as nobody else can.”

“True,” said Bawtree, emphatically. “And for my part I shall take my custom from old Jones and go to this one directly I’ve anything the matter with me. That last medicine old Jones gave me had no taste in it at all.”

Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed man, did not listen to these recitals, being moreover preoccupied with the business appointment which had come into his head. He walked up and down, looking on the floor—his usual custom when undecided. That stiffness about the arm, hip, and knee-joint which was apparent when he walked was the net product of the divers sprains and over-exertions that had been required of him in handling trees and timber when a young man, for he was of the sort called self-made, and had worked hard. He knew the origin of every one of these cramps: that in his left shoulder had come of carrying a pollard, unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home; that in one leg was caused by the crash of an elm against it when they were felling; that in the other was from lifting a bole. On many a morrow after wearying himself by these prodigious muscular efforts, he had risen from his bed fresh as usual; his lassitude had departed, apparently forever; and confident in the recuperative power of his youth, he had repeated the strains anew. But treacherous Time had been only hiding ill results when they could be guarded against, for greater accumulation when they could not. In his declining years the store had been unfolded in the form of rheumatisms, pricks, and spasms, in every one of which Melbury recognized some act which, had its consequence been contemporaneously made known, he would wisely have abstained from repeating.

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