Meanwhile, Winterborne and Grace Melbury had also undergone their
little experiences of the same homeward journey.
As he drove off with her out of the town the glances of people
fell upon them, the younger thinking that Mr. Winterborne was in a
pleasant place, and wondering in what relation he stood towards
her. Winterborne himself was unconscious of this. Occupied
solely with the idea of having her in charge, he did not notice
much with outward eye, neither observing how she was dressed, nor
the effect of the picture they together composed in the landscape.
Their conversation was in briefest phrase for some time, Grace
being somewhat disconcerted, through not having understood till
they were about to start that Giles was to be her sole conductor
in place of her father. When they were in the open country he
spoke.
"Don't Brownley's farm-buildings look strange to you, now they
have been moved bodily from the hollow where the old ones stood to
the top of the hill?"
She admitted that they did, though she should not have seen any
difference in them if he had not pointed it out.
"They had a good crop of bitter-sweets; they couldn't grind them
all" (nodding towards an orchard where some heaps of apples had
been left lying ever since the ingathering).
She said "Yes," but looking at another orchard.
"Why, you are looking at John-apple-trees! You know bitter-sweets—you used to well enough!"
"I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is getting too dark to
distinguish."
Winterborne did not continue. It seemed as if the knowledge and
interest which had formerly moved Grace's mind had quite died away
from her. He wondered whether the special attributes of his image
in the past had evaporated like these other things.
However that might be, the fact at present was merely this, that
where he was seeing John-apples and farm-buildings she was
beholding a far remoter scene—a scene no less innocent and
simple, indeed, but much contrasting—a broad lawn in the
fashionable suburb of a fast city, the evergreen leaves shining in
the evening sun, amid which bounding girls, gracefully clad in
artistic arrangements of blue, brown, red, black, and white, were
playing at games, with laughter and chat, in all the pride of
life, the notes of piano and harp trembling in the air from the
open windows adjoining. Moreover, they were girls—and this was a
fact which Grace Melbury's delicate femininity could not lose
sight of—whose parents Giles would have addressed with a
deferential Sir or Madam. Beside this visioned scene the homely
farmsteads did not quite hold their own from her present twenty-year point of survey. For all his woodland sequestration, Giles knew the primitive simplicity of the subject he had started, and now sounded a deeper note.
"'Twas very odd what we said to each other years ago; I often
think of it. I mean our saying that if we still liked each other
when you were twenty and I twenty-five, we'd—"
"It was child's tattle."
"H'm!" said Giles, suddenly.
"I mean we were young," said she, more considerately. That gruff
manner of his in making inquiries reminded her that he was
unaltered in much.
"Yes....I beg your pardon, Miss Melbury; your father SENT me to
meet you to-day."
"I know it, and I am glad of it."
He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: "At that time you
were sitting beside me at the back of your father's covered car, when we were coming home from gypsying, all the party being squeezed in together as tight as sheep in an auction-pen. It got darker and darker, and I said—I forget the exact words—but I put my arm round your waist and there you let it stay till your father, sitting in front suddenly stopped telling his story to Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe. The flash shone into the car, and showed us all up distinctly; my arm flew from your waist like lightning; yet not so quickly but that some of 'em had seen, and laughed at us. Yet your father, to our amazement, instead of being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed quite pleased. Have you forgot all that, or haven't you?"
She owned that she remembered it very well, now that he mentioned
the circumstances. "But, goodness! I must have been in short
frocks," she said.
"Come now, Miss Melbury, that won't do! Short frocks, indeed! You
know better, as well as I."