Chapter 35

CHAPTER XXXV.

The mare paced along with firm and cautious tread through the
copse where Winterborne had worked, and into the heavier soil
where the oaks grew; past Great Willy, the largest oak in the
wood, and thence towards Nellcombe Bottom, intensely dark now with
overgrowth, and popularly supposed to be haunted by the spirits of
the fratricides exorcised from Hintock House.

By this time Fitzpiers was quite recovered as to physical
strength. But he had eaten nothing since making a hasty breakfast
in London that morning, his anxiety about Felice having hurried
him away from home before dining; as a consequence, the old rum
administered by his father-in-law flew to the young man's head and
loosened his tongue, without his ever having recognized who it was
that had lent him a kindly hand. He began to speak in desultory
sentences, Melbury still supporting him.

"I've come all the way from London to-day," said Fitzpiers. "Ah,
that's the place to meet your equals. I live at Hintock--worse,
at Little Hintock--and I am quite lost there. There's not a man
within ten miles of Hintock who can comprehend me. I tell you,
Farmer What's-your-name, that I'm a man of education. I know
several languages; the poets and I are familiar friends; I used to
read more in metaphysics than anybody within fifty miles; and
since I gave that up there's nobody can match me in the whole
county of Wessex as a scientist. Yet I an doomed to live with
tradespeople in a miserable little hole like Hintock!"

"Indeed!" muttered Melbury.

Fitzpiers, increasingly energized by the alcohol, here reared
himself up suddenly from the bowed posture he had hitherto held,
thrusting his shoulders so violently against Melbury's breast as
to make it difficult for the old man to keep a hold on the reins.
"People don't appreciate me here!" the surgeon exclaimed; lowering
his voice, he added, softly and slowly, "except one--except
one!...A passionate soul, as warm as she is clever, as beautiful
as she is warm, and as rich as she is beautiful. I say, old
fellow, those claws of yours clutch me rather tight--rather like
the eagle's, you know, that ate out the liver of Pro--Pre--the man
on Mount Caucasus. People don't appreciate me, I say, except HER.
Ah, gods, I am an unlucky man! She would have been mine, she
would have taken my name; but unfortunately it cannot be so. I
stooped to mate beneath me, and now I rue it."

The position was becoming a very trying one for Melbury,
corporeally and mentally. He was obliged to steady Fitzpiers with
his left arm, and he began to hate the contact. He hardly knew
what to do. It was useless to remonstrate with Fitzpiers, in his
intellectual confusion from the rum and from the