Between six and seven o’clock in the evening of the same day a young man descended the hills into the valley of the Exe, at a point about midway between Silverthorn and the residence of Margery’s grandmother, four miles to the east.
He was a thoroughbred son of the country, as far removed from what is known as the provincial, as the latter is from the out-and-out gentleman of culture. His trousers and waistcoat were of fustian, almost white, but he wore a jacket of old-fashioned blue West-of-England cloth, so well preserved that evidently the article was relegated to a box whenever its owner engaged in such active occupations as he usually pursued. His complexion was fair, almost florid, and he had scarcely any beard.
A novel attraction about this young man, which a glancing stranger would know nothing of, was a rare and curious freshness of atmosphere that appertained to him, to his clothes, to all his belongings, even to the room in which he had been sitting. It might almost have been said that by adding him and his implements to an over-crowded apartment you made it healthful. This resulted from his trade. He was a lime-burner; he handled lime daily; and in return the lime rendered him an incarnation of salubrity. His hair was dry, fair, and frizzled, the latter possibly by the operation of the same caustic agent. He carried as a walking-stick a green sapling, whose growth had been contorted to a corkscrew pattern by a twining honeysuckle.
As he descended to the level ground of the water-meadows he cast his glance westward, with a frequency that revealed him to be in search of some object in the distance. It was rather difficult to do this, the low sunlight dazzling his eyes by glancing from the river away there, and from the ‘carriers’ (as they were called) in his path—narrow artificial brooks for conducting the water over the grass. His course was something of a zigzag from the necessity of finding points in these carriers convenient for jumping. Thus peering and leaping and winding, he drew near the Exe, the central river of the miles-long mead.
A moving spot became visible to him in the direction of his scrutiny, mixed up with the rays of the same river. The spot got nearer, and revealed itself to be a slight thing of pink cotton and shepherd’s plaid, which pursued a path on the brink of the stream. The young man so shaped his trackless course as to impinge on the path a little ahead of this coloured form, and when he drew near her he smiled and reddened. The girl smiled back to him; but her smile had not the life in it that the young man’s had shown.
‘My dear Margery—here I am!’ he said gladly in an undertone, as with a last leap he crossed the last intervening carrier, and stood at her side.
‘You’ve come all the way from the kiln, on purpose to meet me, and you shouldn’t have done it,’ she reproachfully returned.
‘We finished there at four, so it was no trouble; and if it had been—why, I should ha’ come.’
A small sigh was the response.
‘What, you are not even so glad to see me as you would be to see your dog or cat?’ he continued. ‘Come, Mis’ess Margery, this is rather hard. But, by George, how tired you dew look! Why, if you’d been up all night your eyes couldn’t be more like tea-saucers. You’ve walked tew far, that’s what it is. The weather is getting warm now, and the air of these low-lying meads is not strengthening in summer. I wish you lived up on higher ground with me, beside the kiln. You’d get as strong as a hoss! Well, there; all that will come in time.’
Instead of saying yes, the fair maid repressed another sigh.
‘What, won’t it, then?’ he said.
‘I suppose so,’ she answered. ‘If it is to be, it is.’
‘Well said—very well said, my dear.’
‘And if it isn’t to be it isn’t.’
‘What? Who’s been putting that into your head? Your grumpy granny, I suppose. However, how is she? Margery, I have been thinking to-day—in fact, I was thinking it yesterday and all the week—that really we might settle our little business this summer.’
‘This summer?’ she repeated, with some dismay. ‘But the partnership? Remember it was not to be till after that was completed.’
‘There I have you!’ said he, taking the liberty to pat her shoulder, and the further liberty of advancing his hand behind it to the other. ‘The partnership is settled. ’Tis “Vine and Hayward, lime-burners,” now, and “Richard Vine” no longer. Yes, Cousin Richard has settled it so, for a time at least, and ’tis to be painted on the carts this week—blue letters—yaller ground. I’ll boss one of ’em, and drive en round to your door as soon as the paint is dry, to show ’ee how it looks?’
‘Oh, I am sure you needn’t take that trouble, Jim; I can see it quite well enough in my mind,’ replied the young girl—not without a flitting accent of superiority.
‘Hullo,’ said Jim, taking her by the shoulders, and looking at her hard. ‘What dew that bit of incivility mean? Now, Margery, let’s sit down here, and have this cleared.’ He rapped with his stick upon the rail of a little bridge they were crossing, and seated himself firmly, leaving a place for her.
‘But I want to get home-along,’ dear Jim, she coaxed.
‘Fidgets. Sit down, there’s a dear. I want a straightforward answer, if you please. In what month, and on what day of the month, will you marry me?’
‘O, Jim,’ she said, sitting gingerly on the edge, ‘that’s too plain-spoken for you yet. Before I look at it in that business light I should have to—to—’
‘But your father has settled it long ago, and you said it should be as soon as I became a partner. So, dear, you must not mind a plain man wanting a plain answer. Come, name your time.’
She did not reply at once. What thoughts were passing through her brain during the interval? Not images raised by his words, but whirling figures of men and women in red and white and blue, reflected from a glassy floor, in movements timed by the thrilling beats of the Drum Polka. At last she said slowly, ‘Jim, you don’t know the world, and what a woman’s wants can be.’
‘But I can make you comfortable. I am in lodgings as yet, but I can have a house for the asking; and as to furniture, you shall choose of the best for yourself—the very best.’
‘The best! Far are you from knowing what that is!’ said the little woman. ‘There be ornaments such as you never dream of; work-tables that would set you in amaze; silver candlesticks, tea and coffee pots that would dazzle your eyes; tea-cups, and saucers, gilded all over with guinea-gold; heavy velvet curtains, gold clocks, pictures, and looking-glasses beyond your very dreams. So don’t say I shall have the best.’
‘H’m!’ said Jim gloomily; and fell into reflection. ‘Where did you get those high notions from, Margery?’ he presently inquired. ‘I’ll swear you hadn’t got ’em a week ago.’ She did not answer, and he added, ‘Yewdon’t expect to have such things, I hope; deserve them as you may?’
‘I was not exactly speaking of what I wanted,’ she said severely. ‘I said, things a womancouldwant. And since you wish to know what Icanwant to quite satisfy me, I assure you I can want those!’
‘You are a pink-and-white conundrum, Margery,’ he said; ‘and I give you up for to-night. Anybody would think the devil had showed you all the kingdoms of the world since I saw you last!’
She reddened. ‘Perhaps he has!’ she murmured; then arose, he following her; and they soon reached Margery’s home, approaching it from the lower or meadow side—the opposite to that of the garden top, where she had met the Baron.
‘You’ll come in, won’t you, Jim?’ she said, with more ceremony than heartiness.
‘No—I think not to-night,’ he answered. ‘I’ll consider what you’ve said.’
‘You are very good, Jim,’ she returned lightly. ‘Good-bye.’
Jim thoughtfully retraced his steps. He was a village character, and he had a villager’s simplicity: that is, the simplicity which comes from the lack of a complicated experience. But simple by nature he certainly was not. Among the rank and file of rustics he was quite a Talleyrand, or rather had been one, till he lost a good deal of his self-command by falling in love.
Now, however, that the charming object of his distraction was out of sight he could deliberate, and measure, and weigh things with some approach to keenness. The substance of his queries was, What change had come over Margery—whence these new notions?
Ponder as he would he could evolve no answer save one, which, eminently unsatisfactory as it was, he felt it would be unreasonable not to accept: that she was simply skittish and ambitious by nature, and would not be hunted into matrimony till he had provided a well-adorned home.
Jim retrod the miles to the kiln, and looked to the fires. The kiln stood in a peculiar, interesting, even impressive spot. It was at the end of a short ravine in a limestone formation, and all around was an open hilly down. The nearest house was that of Jim’s cousin and partner, which stood on the outskirts of the down beside the turnpike-road. From this house a little lane wound between the steep escarpments of the ravine till it reached the kiln, which faced down the miniature valley, commanding it as a fort might command a defile.
The idea of a fort in this association owed little to imagination. For on the nibbled green steep above the kiln stood a bye-gone, worn-out specimen of such an erection, huge, impressive, and difficult to scale even now in its decay. It was a British castle or entrenchment, with triple rings of defence, rising roll behind roll, their outlines cutting sharply against the sky, and Jim’s kiln nearly undermining their base. When the lime-kiln flared up in the night, which it often did, its fires lit up the front of these ramparts to a great majesty. They were old friends of his, and while keeping up the heat through the long darkness, as it was sometimes his duty to do, he would imagine the dancing lights and shades about the stupendous earthwork to be the forms of those giants who (he supposed) had heaped it up. Often he clambered upon it, and walked about the summit, thinking out the problems connected with his business, his partner, his future, his Margery.
It was what he did this evening, continuing the meditation on the young girl’s manner that he had begun upon the road, and still, as then, finding no clue to the change.
While thus engaged he observed a man coming up the ravine to the kiln. Business messages were almost invariably left at the house below, and Jim watched the man with the interest excited by a belief that he had come on a personal matter. On nearer approach Jim recognized him as the gardener at Mount Lodge some miles away. If this meant business, the Baron (of whose arrival Jim had vaguely heard) was a new and unexpected customer.
It meant nothing else, apparently. The man’s errand was simply to inform Jim that the Baron required a load of lime for the garden.
‘You might have saved yourself trouble by leaving word at Mr. Vine’s,’ said Jim.
‘I was to see you personally,’ said the gardener, ‘and to say that the Baron would like to inquire of you about the different qualities of lime proper for such purposes.’
‘Couldn’t you tell him yourself?’ said Jim.
‘He said I was to tell you that,’ replied the gardener; ‘and it wasn’t for me to interfere.’
No motive other than the ostensible one could possibly be conjectured by Jim Hayward at this time; and the next morning he started with great pleasure, in his best business suit of clothes. By eleven o’clock he and his horse and cart had arrived on the Baron’s premises, and the lime was deposited where directed; an exceptional spot, just within view of the windows of the south front.
Baron von Xanten, pale and melancholy, was sauntering in the sun on the slope between the house and the all-the-year-round. He looked across to where Jim and the gardener were standing, and the identity of Hayward being established by what he brought, the Baron came down, and the gardener withdrew.
The Baron’s first inquiries were, as Jim had been led to suppose they would be, on the exterminating effects of lime upon slugs and snails in its different conditions of slaked and unslaked, ground and in the lump. He appeared to be much interested by Jim’s explanations, and eyed the young man closely whenever he had an opportunity.
‘And I hope trade is prosperous with you this year,’ said the Baron.
‘Very, my noble lord,’ replied Jim, who, in his uncertainty on the proper method of address, wisely concluded that it was better to err by giving too much honour than by giving too little. ‘In short, trade is looking so well that I’ve become a partner in the firm.’
‘Indeed; I am glad to hear it. So now you are settled in life.’
‘Well, my lord; I am hardly settled, even now. For I’ve got to finish it—I mean, to get married.’
‘That’s an easy matter, compared with the partnership.’
‘Now a man might think so, my baron,’ said Jim, getting more confidential. ‘But the real truth is, ’tis the hardest part of all for me.’
‘Your suit prospers, I hope?’
‘It don’t,’ said Jim. ‘It don’t at all just at present. In short, I can’t for the life o’ me think what’s come over the young woman lately.’ And he fell into deep reflection.
Though Jim did not observe it, the Baron’s brow became shadowed with self-reproach as he heard those simple words, and his eyes had a look of pity. ‘Indeed—since when?’ he asked.
‘Since yesterday, my noble lord.’ Jim spoke meditatively. He was resolving upon a bold stroke. Why not make a confidant of this kind gentleman, instead of the parson, as he had intended? The thought was no sooner conceived than acted on. ‘My lord,’ he resumed, ‘I have heard that you are a nobleman of great scope and talent, who has seen more strange countries and characters than I have ever heard of, and know the insides of men well. Therefore I would fain put a question to your noble lordship, if I may so trouble you, and having nobody else in the world who could inform me so trewly.’
‘Any advice I can give is at your service, Hayward. What do you wish to know?’
‘It is this, my baron. What can I do to bring down a young woman’s ambition that’s got to such a towering height there’s no reaching it or compassing it: how get her to be pleased with me and my station as she used to be when I first knew her?’
‘Truly, that’s a hard question, my man. What does she aspire to?’
‘She’s got a craze for fine furniture.’
‘How long has she had it?’
‘Only just now.’
The Baron seemed still more to experience regret.
‘What furniture does she specially covet?’ he asked.
‘Silver candlesticks, work-tables, looking-glasses, gold tea-things, silver tea-pots, gold clocks, curtains, pictures, and I don’t know what all—things I shall never get if I live to be a hundred—not so much that I couldn’t raise the money to buy ’em, as that to put it to other uses, or save it for a rainy day.’
‘You think the possession of those articles would make her happy?’
‘I really think they might, my lord.’
‘Good. Open your pocket-book and write as I tell you.’
Jim in some astonishment did as commanded, and elevating his pocket-book against the garden-wall, thoroughly moistened his pencil, and wrote at the Baron’s dictation:
‘Pair of silver candlesticks: inlaid work-table and work-box: one large mirror: two small ditto: one gilt china tea and coffee service: one silver tea-pot, coffee-pot, sugar-basin, jug, and dozen spoons: French clock: pair of curtains: six large pictures.’
‘Now,’ said the Baron, ‘tear out that leaf and give it to me. Keep a close tongue about this; go home, and don’t be surprised at anything that may come to your door.’
‘But, my noble lord, you don’t mean that your lordship is going to give—’
‘Never mind what I am going to do. Only keep your own counsel. I perceive that, though a plain countryman, you are by no means deficient in tact and understanding. If sending these things to you gives me pleasure, why should you object? The fact is, Hayward, I occasionally take an interest in people, and like to do a little for them. I take an interest in you. Now go home, and a week hence invite Marg—the young woman and her father, to tea with you. The rest is in your own hands.’
A question often put to Jim in after times was why it had not occurred to him at once that the Baron’s liberal conduct must have been dictated by something more personal than sudden spontaneous generosity to him, a stranger. To which Jim always answered that, admitting the existence of such generosity, there had appeared nothing remarkable in the Baron selecting himself as its object. The Baron had told him that he took an interest in him; and self-esteem, even with the most modest, is usually sufficient to over-ride any little difficulty that might occur to an outsider in accounting for a preference. He moreover considered that foreign noblemen, rich and eccentric, might have habits of acting which were quite at variance with those of their English compeers.
So he drove off homeward with a lighter heart than he had known for several days. To have a foreign gentleman take a fancy to him—what a triumph to a plain sort of fellow, who had scarcely expected the Baron to look in his face. It would be a fine story to tell Margery when the Baron gave him liberty to speak out.
Jim lodged at the house of his cousin and partner, Richard Vine, a widower of fifty odd years. Having failed in the development of a household of direct descendants this tradesman had been glad to let his chambers to his much younger relative, when the latter entered on the business of lime manufacture; and their intimacy had led to a partnership. Jim lived upstairs; his partner lived down, and the furniture of all the rooms was so plain and old fashioned as to excite the special dislike of Miss Margery Tucker, and even to prejudice her against Jim for tolerating it. Not only were the chairs and tables queer, but, with due regard to the principle that a man’s surroundings should bear the impress of that man’s life and occupation, the chief ornaments of the dwelling were a curious collection of calcinations, that had been discovered from time to time in the lime-kiln—misshapen ingots of strange substance, some of them like Pompeian remains.
The head of the firm was a quiet-living, narrow-minded, though friendly, man of fifty; and he took a serious interest in Jim’s love-suit, frequently inquiring how it progressed, and assuring Jim that if he chose to marry he might have all the upper floor at a low rent, he, Mr. Vine, contenting himself entirely with the ground level. It had been so convenient for discussing business matters to have Jim in the same house, that he did not wish any change to be made in consequence of a change in Jim’s domestic estate. Margery knew of this wish, and of Jim’s concurrent feeling; and did not like the idea at all.
About four days after the young man’s interview with the Baron, there drew up in front of Jim’s house at noon a waggon laden with cases and packages, large and small. They were all addressed to ‘Mr. Hayward,’ and they had come from the largest furnishing ware-houses in that part of England.
Three-quarters of an hour were occupied in getting the cases to Jim’s rooms. The wary Jim did not show the amazement he felt at his patron’s munificence; and presently the senior partner came into the passage, and wondered what was lumbering upstairs.
‘Oh—it’s only some things of mine,’ said Jim coolly.
‘Bearing upon the coming event—eh?’ said his partner.
‘Exactly,’ replied Jim.
Mr. Vine, with some astonishment at the number of cases, shortly after went away to the kiln; whereupon Jim shut himself into his rooms, and there he might have been heard ripping up and opening boxes with a cautious hand, afterwards appearing outside the door with them empty, and carrying them off to the outhouse.
A triumphant look lit up his face when, a little later in the afternoon, he sent into the vale to the dairy, and invited Margery and her father to his house to supper.
She was not unsociable that day, and, her father expressing a hard and fast acceptance of the invitation, she perforce agreed to go with him. Meanwhile at home, Jim made himself as mysteriously busy as before in those rooms of his, and when his partner returned he too was asked to join in the supper.
At dusk Hayward went to the door, where he stood till he heard the voices of his guests from the direction of the low grounds, now covered with their frequent fleece of fog. The voices grew more distinct, and then on the white surface of the fog there appeared two trunkless heads, from which bodies and a horse and cart gradually extended as the approaching pair rose towards the house.
When they had entered Jim pressed Margery’s hand and conducted her up to his rooms, her father waiting below to say a few words to the senior lime-burner.
‘Bless me,’ said Jim to her, on entering the sitting-room; ‘I quite forgot to get a light beforehand; but I’ll have one in a jiffy.’
Margery stood in the middle of the dark room, while Jim struck a match; and then the young girl’s eyes were conscious of a burst of light, and the rise into being of a pair of handsome silver candlesticks containing two candles that Jim was in the act of lighting.
‘Why—where—you have candlesticks like that?’ said Margery. Her eyes flew round the room as the growing candle-flames showed other articles. ‘Pictures too—and lovely china—why I knew nothing of this, I declare.’
‘Yes—a few things that came to me by accident,’ said Jim in quiet tones.
‘And a great gold clock under a glass, and a cupid swinging for a pendulum; and O what a lovely work-table—woods of every colour—and a work-box to match. May I look inside that work-box, Jim?—whose is it?’
‘O yes; look at it, of course. It is a poor enough thing, but ’tis mine; and it will belong to the woman I marry, whoever she may be, as well as all the other things here.’
‘And the curtains and the looking-glasses: why I declare I can see myself in a hundred places.’
‘That tea-set,’ said Jim, placidly pointing to a gorgeous china service and a large silver tea-pot on the side table, ‘I don’t use at present, being a bachelor-man; but, says I to myself, “whoever I marry will want some such things for giving her parties; or I can sell em”—but I haven’t took steps for’t yet—’
‘Sell ’em—no, I should think not,’ said Margery with earnest reproach. ‘Why, I hope you wouldn’t be so foolish! Why, this is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of when I told you of the things women could want—of course not meaning myself particularly. I had no idea that you had such valuable—’
Margery was unable to speak coherently, so much was she amazed at the wealth of Jim’s possessions.
At this moment her father and the lime-burner came upstairs; and to appear womanly and proper to Mr. Vine, Margery repressed the remainder of her surprise.
As for the two elderly worthies, it was not till they entered the room and sat down that their slower eyes discerned anything brilliant in the appointments. Then one of them stole a glance at some article, and the other at another; but each being unwilling to express his wonder in the presence of his neighbours, they received the objects before them with quite an accustomed air; the lime-burner inwardly trying to conjecture what all this meant, and the dairyman musing that if Jim’s business allowed him to accumulate at this rate, the sooner Margery became his wife the better. Margery retreated to the work-table, work-box, and tea-service, which she examined with hushed exclamations.
An entertainment thus surprisingly begun could not fail to progress well. Whenever Margery’s crusty old father felt the need of a civil sentence, the flash of Jim’s fancy articles inspired him to one; while the lime-burner, having reasoned away his first ominous thought that all this had come out of the firm, also felt proud and blithe.
Jim accompanied his dairy friends part of the way home before they mounted. Her father, finding that Jim wanted to speak to her privately, and that she exhibited some elusiveness, turned to Margery and said; ‘Come, come, my lady; no more of this nonsense. You just step behind with that young man, and I and the cart will wait for you.’
Margery, a little scared at her father’s peremptoriness, obeyed. It was plain that Jim had won the old man by that night’s stroke, if he had not won her.
‘I know what you are going to say, Jim,’ she began, less ardently now, for she was no longer under the novel influence of the shining silver and glass. ‘Well, as you desire it, and as my father desires it, and as I suppose it will be the best course for me, I will fix the day—not this evening, but as soon as I can think it over.’
Notwithstanding a press of business, Jim went and did his duty in thanking the Baron. The latter saw him in his fishing-tackle room, an apartment littered with every appliance that a votary of the rod could require.
‘And when is the wedding-day to be, Hayward?’ the Baron asked, after Jim had told him that matters were settled.
‘It is not quite certain yet, my noble lord,’ said Jim cheerfully. ‘But I hope ’twill not be long after the time when God A’mighty christens the little apples.’
‘And when is that?’
‘St. Swithin’s—the middle of July. ’Tis to be some time in that month, she tells me.’
When Jim was gone the Baron seemed meditative. He went out, ascended the mount, and entered the weather-screen, where he looked at the seats, as though re-enacting in his fancy the scene of that memorable morning of fog. He turned his eyes to the angle of the shelter, round which Margery had suddenly appeared like a vision, and it was plain that he would not have minded her appearing there then. The juncture had indeed been such an impressive and critical one that she must have seemed rather a heavenly messenger than a passing milkmaid, more especially to a man like the Baron, who, despite the mystery of his origin and life, revealed himself to be a melancholy, emotional character—the Jacques of this forest and stream.
Behind the mount the ground rose yet higher, ascending to a plantation which sheltered the house. The Baron strolled up here, and bent his gaze over the distance. The valley of the Exe lay before him, with its shining river, the brooks that fed it, and the trickling springs that fed the brooks. The situation of Margery’s house was visible, though not the house itself; and the Baron gazed that way for an infinitely long time, till, remembering himself, he moved on.
Instead of returning to the house he went along the ridge till he arrived at the verge of Chillington Wood, and in the same desultory manner roamed under the trees, not pausing till he had come to Three-Walks-End, and the hollow elm hard by. He peeped in at the rift. In the soft dry layer of touch-wood that floored the hollow Margery’s tracks were still visible, as she had made them there when dressing for the ball.
‘Little Margery!’ murmured the Baron.
In a moment he thought better of this mood, and turned to go home. But behold, a form stood behind him—that of the girl whose name had been on his lips.
She was in utter confusion. ‘I—I—did not know you were here, sir!’ she began. ‘I was out for a little walk.’ She could get no further; her eyes filled with tears. That spice of wilfulness, even hardness, which characterized her in Jim’s company, magically disappeared in the presence of the Baron.
‘Never mind, never mind,’ said he, masking under a severe manner whatever he felt. ‘The meeting is awkward, and ought not to have occurred, especially if as I suppose, you are shortly to be married to James Hayward. But it cannot be helped now. You had no idea I was here, of course. Neither had I of seeing you. Remember you cannot be too careful,’ continued the Baron, in the same grave tone; ‘and I strongly request you as a friend to do your utmost to avoid meetings like this. When you saw me before I turned, why did you not go away?’
‘I did not see you, sir. I did not think of seeing you. I was walking this way, and I only looked in to see the tree.’
‘That shows you have been thinking of things you should not think of,’ returned the Baron. ‘Good morning.’
Margery could answer nothing. A browbeaten glance, almost of misery, was all she gave him. He took a slow step away from her; then turned suddenly back and, stooping, impulsively kissed her cheek, taking her as much by surprise as ever a woman was taken in her life.
Immediately after he went off with a flushed face and rapid strides, which he did not check till he was within his own boundaries.
The haymaking season now set in vigorously, and the weir-hatches were all drawn in the meads to drain off the water. The streams ran themselves dry, and there was no longer any difficulty in walking about among them. The Baron could very well witness from the elevations about his house the activity which followed these preliminaries. The white shirt-sleeves of the mowers glistened in the sun, the scythes flashed, voices echoed, snatches of song floated about, and there were glimpses of red waggon-wheels, purple gowns, and many-coloured handkerchiefs.
The Baron had been told that the haymaking was to be followed by the wedding, and had he gone down the vale to the dairy he would have had evidence to that effect. Dairyman Tucker’s house was in a whirlpool of bustle, and among other difficulties was that of turning the cheese-room into a genteel apartment for the time being, and hiding the awkwardness of having to pass through the milk-house to get to the parlour door. These household contrivances appeared to interest Margery much more than the great question of dressing for the ceremony and the ceremony itself. In all relating to that she showed an indescribable backwardness, which later on was well remembered.
‘If it were only somebody else, and I was one of the bridesmaids, I really think I should like it better!’ she murmured one afternoon.
‘Away with thee—that’s only your shyness!’ said one of the milkmaids.
It is said that about this time the Baron seemed to feel the effects of solitude strongly. Solitude revives the simple instincts of primitive man, and lonely country nooks afford rich soil for wayward emotions. Moreover, idleness waters those unconsidered impulses which a short season of turmoil would stamp out. It is difficult to speak with any exactness of the bearing of such conditions on the mind of the Baron—a man of whom so little was ever truly known—but there is no doubt that his mind ran much on Margery as an individual, without reference to her rank or quality, or to the question whether she would marry Jim Hayward that summer. She was the single lovely human thing within his present horizon, for he lived in absolute seclusion; and her image unduly affected him.
But, leaving conjecture, let me state what happened.
One Saturday evening, two or three weeks after his accidental meeting with her in the wood, he wrote the note following:—
Dear Margery,—You must not suppose that, because I spoke somewhat severely to you at our chance encounter by the hollow tree, I have any feeling against you. Far from it. Now, as ever, I have the most grateful sense of your considerate kindness to me on a momentous occasion which shall be nameless.You solemnly promised to come and see me whenever I should send for you. Can you call for five minutes as soon as possible, and disperse those plaguy glooms from which I am so unfortunate as to suffer? If you refuse I will not answer for the consequences.I shall be in the summer shelter of the mount to-morrow morning at half-past ten. If you come I shall be grateful. I have also something for you.Yours,X.
Dear Margery,—
You must not suppose that, because I spoke somewhat severely to you at our chance encounter by the hollow tree, I have any feeling against you. Far from it. Now, as ever, I have the most grateful sense of your considerate kindness to me on a momentous occasion which shall be nameless.
You solemnly promised to come and see me whenever I should send for you. Can you call for five minutes as soon as possible, and disperse those plaguy glooms from which I am so unfortunate as to suffer? If you refuse I will not answer for the consequences.
I shall be in the summer shelter of the mount to-morrow morning at half-past ten. If you come I shall be grateful. I have also something for you.
Yours,X.
In keeping with the tenor of this epistle the desponding, self-oppressed Baron ascended the mount on Sunday morning and sat down. There was nothing here to signify exactly the hour, but before the church bells had begun he heard somebody approaching at the back. The light footstep moved timidly, first to one recess, and then to another; then to the third, where he sat in the shade. Poor Margery stood before him.
She looked worn and weary, and her little shoes and the skirts of her dress were covered with dust. The weather was sultry, the sun being already high and powerful, and rain had not fallen for weeks. The Baron, who walked little, had thought nothing of the effects of this heat and drought in inducing fatigue. A distance which had been but a reasonable exercise on a foggy morning was a drag for Margery now. She was out of breath; and anxiety, even unhappiness was written on her everywhere.
He rose to his feet, and took her hand. He was vexed with himself at sight of her. ‘My dear little girl!’ he said. ‘You are tired—you should not have come.’
‘You sent for me, sir; and I was afraid you were ill; and my promise to you was sacred.’
He bent over her, looking upon her downcast face, and still holding her hand; then he dropped it, and took a pace or two backwards.
‘It was a whim, nothing more,’ he said, sadly. ‘I wanted to see my little friend, to express good wishes—and to present her with this.’ He held forward a small morocco case, and showed her how to open it, disclosing a pretty locket, set with pearls. ‘It is intended as a wedding present,’ he continued. ‘To be returned to me again if you do not marry Jim this summer—it is to be this summer, I think?’
‘It was, sir,’ she said with agitation. ‘But it is so no longer. And, therefore, I cannot take this.’
‘What do you say?’
‘It was to have been to-day; but now it cannot be.’
‘The wedding to-day—Sunday?’ he cried.
‘We fixed Sunday not to hinder much time at this busy season of the year,’ replied she.
‘And have you, then, put it off—surely not?’
‘You sent for me, and I have come,’ she answered humbly, like an obedient familiar in the employ of some great enchanter. Indeed, the Baron’s power over this innocent girl was curiously like enchantment, or mesmeric influence. It was so masterful that the sexual element was almost eliminated. It was that of Prospero over the gentle Ariel. And yet it was probably only that of the cosmopolite over the recluse, of the experienced man over the simple maid.
‘You have come—on your wedding-day!—O Margery, this is a mistake. Of course, you should not have obeyed me, since, though I thought your wedding would be soon, I did not know it was to-day.’
‘I promised you, sir; and I would rather keep my promise to you than be married to Jim.’
‘That must not be—the feeling is wrong!’ he murmured, looking at the distant hills. ‘There seems to be a fate in all this; I get out of the frying-pan into the fire. What a recompense to you for your goodness! The fact is, I was out of health and out of spirits, so I—but no more of that. Now instantly to repair this tremendous blunder that we have made—that’s the question.’
After a pause, he went on hurriedly, ‘Walk down the hill; get into the road. By that time I shall be there with a phaeton. We may get back in time. What time is it now? If not, no doubt the wedding can be to-morrow; so all will come right again. Don’t cry, my dear girl. Keep the locket, of course—you’ll marry Jim.’
He hastened down towards the stables, and she went on as directed. It seemed as if he must have put in the horse himself, so quickly did he reappear with the phaeton on the open road. Margery silently took her seat, and the Baron seemed cut to the quick with self-reproach as he noticed the listless indifference with which she acted. There was no doubt that in her heart she had preferred obeying the apparently important mandate that morning to becoming Jim’s wife; but there was no less doubt that had the Baron left her alone she would quietly have gone to the altar.
He drove along furiously, in a cloud of dust. There was much to contemplate in that peaceful Sunday morning—the windless trees and fields, the shaking sunlight, the pause in human stir. Yet neither of them heeded, and thus they drew near to the dairy. His first expressed intention had been to go indoors with her, but this he abandoned as impolitic in the highest degree.
‘You may be soon enough,’ he said, springing down, and helping her to follow. ‘Tell the truth: say you were sent for to receive a wedding present—that it was a mistake on my part—a mistake on yours; and I think they’ll forgive . . . And, Margery, my last request to you is this: that if I send for you again, you do not come. Promise solemnly, my dear girl, that any such request shall be unheeded.’
Her lips moved, but the promise was not articulated. ‘O, sir, I cannot promise it!’ she said at last.
‘But you must; your salvation may depend on it!’ he insisted almost sternly. ‘You don’t know what I am.’
‘Then, sir, I promise,’ she replied. ‘Now leave me to myself, please, and I’ll go indoors and manage matters.’
He turned the horse and drove away, but only for a little distance. Out of sight he pulled rein suddenly. ‘Only to go back and propose it to her, and she’d come!’ he murmured.
He stood up in the phaeton, and by this means he could see over the hedge. Margery still sat listlessly in the same place; there was not a lovelier flower in the field. ‘No,’ he said; ‘no, no—never!’ He reseated himself, and the wheels sped lightly back over the soft dust to Mount Lodge.
Meanwhile Margery had not moved. If the Baron could dissimulate on the side of severity she could dissimulate on the side of calm. He did not know what had been veiled by the quiet promise to manage matters indoors. Rising at length she first turned away from the house; and, by-and-by, having apparently forgotten till then that she carried it in her hand, she opened the case, and looked at the locket. This seemed to give her courage. She turned, set her face towards the dairy in good earnest, and though her heart faltered when the gates came in sight, she kept on and drew near the door.
On the threshold she stood listening. The house was silent. Decorations were visible in the passage, and also the carefully swept and sanded path to the gate, which she was to have trodden as a bride; but the sparrows hopped over it as if it were abandoned; and all appeared to have been checked at its climacteric, like a clock stopped on the strike. Till this moment of confronting the suspended animation of the scene she had not realized the full shock of the convulsion which her disappearance must have caused. It is quite certain—apart from her own repeated assurances to that effect in later years—that in hastening off that morning to her sudden engagement, Margery had not counted the cost of such an enterprise; while a dim notion that she might get back again in time for the ceremony, if the message meant nothing serious, should also be mentioned in her favour. But, upon the whole, she had obeyed the call with an unreasoning obedience worthy of a disciple in primitive times. A conviction that the Baron’s life might depend upon her presence—for she had by this time divined the tragical event she had interrupted on the foggy morning—took from her all will to judge and consider calmly. The simple affairs of her and hers seemed nothing beside the possibility of harm to him.
A well-known step moved on the sanded floor within, and she went forward. That she saw her father’s face before her, just within the door, can hardly be said: it was rather Reproach and Rage in a human mask.
‘What! ye have dared to come back alive, hussy, to look upon the dupery you have practised on honest people! You’ve mortified us all; I don’t want to see ’ee; I don’t want to hear ’ee; I don’t want to know anything!’ He walked up and down the room, unable to command himself. ‘Nothing but being dead could have excused ’ee for not meeting and marrying that man this morning; and yet you have the brazen impudence to stand there as well as ever! What be you here for?’
‘I’ve come back to marry Jim, if he wants me to,’ she said faintly. ‘And if not—perhaps so much the better. I was sent for this morning early. I thought—.’ She halted. To say that she had thought a man’s death might happen by his own hand if she did not go to him, would never do. ‘I was obliged to go,’ she said. ‘I had given my word.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us then, so that the wedding could be put off, without making fools o’ us?’
‘Because I was afraid you wouldn’t let me go, and I had made up my mind to go.’
‘To go where?’
She was silent; till she said, ‘I will tell Jim all, and why it was; and if he’s any friend of mine he’ll excuse me.’
‘Not Jim—he’s no such fool. Jim had put all ready for you, Jim had called at your house, a-dressed up in his new wedding clothes, and a-smiling like the sun; Jim had told the parson, had got the ringers in tow, and the clerk awaiting; and then—you wasgone! Then Jim turned as pale as rendlewood, and busted out, “If she don’t marry me to-day,” ’a said, “she don’t marry me at all! No; let her look elsewhere for a husband. For tew years I’ve put up with her haughty tricks and her takings,” ’a said. “I’ve droudged and I’ve traipsed, I’ve bought and I’ve sold, all wi’ an eye to her; I’ve suffered horseflesh,” he says—yes, them was his noble words—“but I’ll suffer it no longer. She shall go!” “Jim,” says I, “you be a man. If she’s alive, I commend ’ee; if she’s dead, pity my old age.” “She isn’t dead,” says he; “for I’ve just heard she was seen walking off across the fields this morning, looking all of a scornful triumph.” He turned round and went, and the rest o’ the neighbours went; and here be I left to the reproach o’t.’
‘He was too hasty,’ murmured Margery. ‘For now he’s said this I can’t marry him to-morrow, as I might ha’ done; and perhaps so much the better.’
‘You can be so calm about it, can ye? Be my arrangements nothing, then, that you should break ’em up, and say off hand what wasn’t done to-day might ha’ been done to-morrow, and such flick-flack? Out o’ my sight! I won’t hear any more. I won’t speak to ’ee any more.’
‘I’ll go away, and then you’ll be sorry!’
‘Very well, go. Sorry—not I.’
He turned and stamped his way into the cheese-room. Margery went upstairs. She too was excited now, and instead of fortifying herself in her bedroom till her father’s rage had blown over, as she had often done on lesser occasions, she packed up a bundle of articles, crept down again, and went out of the house. She had a place of refuge in these cases of necessity, and her father knew it, and was less alarmed at seeing her depart than he might otherwise have been. This place was Rook’s Gate, the house of her grandmother, who always took Margery’s part when that young woman was particularly in the wrong.
The devious way she pursued, to avoid the vicinity of Mount Lodge, was tedious, and she was already weary. But the cottage was a restful place to arrive at, for she was her own mistress there—her grandmother never coming down stairs—and Edy, the woman who lived with and attended her, being a cipher except in muscle and voice. The approach was by a straight open road, bordered by thin lank trees, all sloping away from the south-west wind-quarter, and the scene bore a strange resemblance to certain bits of Dutch landscape which have been imprinted on the world’s eye by Hobbema and his school.
Having explained to her granny that the wedding was put off; and that she had come to stay, one of Margery’s first acts was carefully to pack up the locket and case, her wedding present from the Baron. The conditions of the gift were unfulfilled, and she wished it to go back instantly. Perhaps, in the intricacies of her bosom, there lurked a greater satisfaction with the reason for returning the present than she would have felt just then with a reason for keeping it.
To send the article was difficult. In the evening she wrapped herself up, searched and found a gauze veil that had been used by her grandmother in past years for hiving swarms of bees, buried her face in it, and sallied forth with a palpitating heart till she drew near the tabernacle of her demi-god the Baron. She ventured only to the back-door, where she handed in the parcel addressed to him, and quickly came away.
Now it seems that during the day the Baron had been unable to learn the result of his attempt to return Margery in time for the event he had interrupted. Wishing, for obvious reasons, to avoid direct inquiry by messenger, and being too unwell to go far himself, he could learn no particulars. He was sitting in thought after a lonely dinner when the parcel intimating failure as brought in. The footman, whose curiosity had been excited by the mode of its arrival, peeped through the keyhole after closing the door, to learn what the packet meant. Directly the Baron had opened it he thrust out his feet vehemently from his chair, and began cursing his ruinous conduct in bringing about such a disaster, for the return of the locket denoted not only no wedding that day, but none to-morrow, or at any time.
‘I have done that innocent woman a great wrong!’ he murmured. ‘Deprived her of, perhaps, her only opportunity of becoming mistress of a happy home!’
A considerable period of inaction followed among all concerned.
Nothing tended to dissipate the obscurity which veiled the life of the Baron. The position he occupied in the minds of the country-folk around was one which combined the mysteriousness of a legendary character with the unobtrusive deeds of a modern gentleman. To this day whoever takes the trouble to go down to Silverthorn in Lower Wessex and make inquiries will find existing there almost a superstitious feeling for the moody melancholy stranger who resided in the Lodge some forty years ago.
Whence he came, whither he was going, were alike unknown. It was said that his mother had been an English lady of noble family who had married a foreigner not unheard of in circles where men pile up ‘the cankered heaps of strange-achieved gold’—that he had been born and educated in England, taken abroad, and so on. But the facts of a life in such cases are of little account beside the aspect of a life; and hence, though doubtless the years of his existence contained their share of trite and homely circumstance, the curtain which masked all this was never lifted to gratify such a theatre of spectators as those at Silverthorn. Therein lay his charm. His life was a vignette, of which the central strokes only were drawn with any distinctness, the environment shading away to a blank.
He might have been said to resemble that solitary bird the heron. The still, lonely stream was his frequent haunt: on its banks he would stand for hours with his rod, looking into the water, beholding the tawny inhabitants with the eye of a philosopher, and seeming to say, ‘Bite or don’t bite—it’s all the same to me.’ He was often mistaken for a ghost by children; and for a pollard willow by men, when, on their way home in the dusk, they saw him motionless by some rushy bank, unobservant of the decline of day.
Why did he come to fish near Silverthorn? That was never explained. As far as was known he had no relatives near; the fishing there was not exceptionally good; the society thereabout was decidedly meagre. That he had committed some folly or hasty act, that he had been wrongfully accused of some crime, thus rendering his seclusion from the world desirable for a while, squared very well with his frequent melancholy. But such as he was there he lived, well supplied with fishing-tackle, and tenant of a furnished house, just suited to the requirements of such an eccentric being as he.