Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first time of
seeing her; but he now went a little further with them, and considered
that as there had been no carriage seen or heard lately in that spot
she could not have come a very long distance. She must be somebody
staying at Hintock House? Possibly Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard
so much--at any rate an inmate, and this probability was sufficient to
set a mild radiance in the surgeon's somewhat dull sky.
Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had been perusing. It happened to be
that of a German metaphysician, for the doctor was not a practical man,
except by fits, and much preferred the ideal world to the real, and the
discovery of principles to their application. The young lady remained
in his thoughts. He might have followed her; but he was not
constitutionally active, and preferred a conjectural pursuit. However,
when he went out for a ramble just before dusk he insensibly took the
direction of Hintock House, which was the way that Grace had been
walking, it having happened that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond that
day, and she had walked to the brow of a hill whence the house could be
seen, returning by another route.
Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, overlooking the
manor-house. The shutters were shut, and only one chimney smoked. The
mere aspect of the place was enough to inform him that Mrs. Charmond
had gone away and that nobody else was staying there. Fitzpiers felt a
vague disappointment that the young lady was not Mrs. Charmond, of whom
he had heard so much; and without pausing longer to gaze at a carcass
from which the spirit had flown, he bent his steps homeward.
Later in the evening Fitzpiers was summoned to visit a cottage patient
about two miles distant. Like the majority of young practitioners in
his position he was far from having assumed the dignity of being driven
his rounds by a servant in a brougham that flashed the sunlight like a
mirror; his way of getting about was by means of a gig which he drove
himself, hitching the rein of the horse to the gate post, shutter hook,
or garden paling of the domicile under visitation, or giving pennies to
little boys to hold the animal during his stay--pennies which were well
earned when the cases to be attended were of a certain cheerful kind
that wore out the patience of the little boys.
On this account of travelling alone, the night journeys which Fitzpiers
had frequently to take were dismal enough, a serious apparent
perversity in nature ruling that whenever there was to be a birth in a
particularly inaccessible and lonely place, that event should occur in
the night. The surgeon, having been of late years a town man, hated
the solitary midnight woodland. He was not altogether skilful with the
reins, and it often occurred to his mind that if in some remote depths
of the trees an accident were to happen, the fact of his being alone
might be the death of him. Hence he made a practice of picking up any
countryman or lad whom he chanced to pass by, and under the disguise of
treating him to a nice drive, obtained his companionship on the
journey, and his convenient assistance in opening gates.