Transcribed from the 1920 Macmillan and Co. _A Changed Man and Other
Tales_ edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org





                  THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A MILKMAID.


CHAPTER I.


IT was half-past four o’clock (by the testimony of the land-surveyor, my
authority for the particulars of this story, a gentleman with the
faintest curve of humour on his lips); it was half-past four o’clock on a
May morning in the eighteen forties.  A dense white fog hung over the
Valley of the Exe, ending against the hills on either side.

But though nothing in the vale could be seen from higher ground, notes of
differing kinds gave pretty clear indications that bustling life was
going on there.  This audible presence and visual absence of an active
scene had a peculiar effect above the fog level.  Nature had laid a white
hand over the creatures ensconced within the vale, as a hand might be
laid over a nest of chirping birds.

The noises that ascended through the pallid coverlid were perturbed
lowings, mingled with human voices in sharps and flats, and the bark of a
dog.  These, followed by the slamming of a gate, explained as well as
eyesight could have done, to any inhabitant of the district, that
Dairyman Tucker’s under-milker was driving the cows from the meads into
the stalls.  When a rougher accent joined in the vociferations of man and
beast, it would have been realized that the dairy-farmer himself had come
out to meet the cows, pail in hand, and white pinafore on; and when,
moreover, some women’s voices joined in the chorus, that the cows were
stalled and proceedings about to commence.

A hush followed, the atmosphere being so stagnant that the milk could be
heard buzzing into the pails, together with occasional words of the
milkmaids and men.

‘Don’t ye bide about long upon the road, Margery.  You can be back again
by skimming-time.’

The rough voice of Dairyman Tucker was the vehicle of this remark.  The
barton-gate slammed again, and in two or three minutes a something became
visible, rising out of the fog in that quarter.

The shape revealed itself as that of a woman having a young and agile
gait.  The colours and other details of her dress were then disclosed—a
bright pink cotton frock (because winter was over); a small woollen shawl
of shepherd’s plaid (because summer was not come); a white handkerchief
tied over her head-gear, because it was so foggy, so damp, and so early;
and a straw bonnet and ribbons peeping from under the handkerchief,
because it was likely to be a sunny May day.

Her face was of the hereditary type among families down in these parts:
sweet in expression, perfect in hue, and somewhat irregular in feature.
Her eyes were of a liquid brown.  On her arm she carried a withy basket,
in which lay several butter-rolls in a nest of wet cabbage-leaves.  She
was the ‘Margery’ who had been told not to ‘bide about long upon the
road.’

She went on her way across the fields, sometimes above the fog, sometimes
below it, not much perplexed by its presence except when the track was so
indefinite that it ceased to be a guide to the next stile.  The dampness
was such that innumerable earthworms lay in couples across the path till,
startled even by her light tread, they withdrew suddenly into their
holes.  She kept clear of all trees.  Why was that?  There was no danger
of lightning on such a morning as this.  But though the roads were dry
the fog had gathered in the boughs, causing them to set up such a
dripping as would go clean through the protecting handkerchief like
bullets, and spoil the ribbons beneath.  The beech and ash were
particularly shunned, for they dripped more maliciously than any.  It was
an instance of woman’s keen appreciativeness of nature’s moods and
peculiarities: a man crossing those fields might hardly have perceived
that the trees dripped at all.

In less than an hour she had traversed a distance of four miles, and
arrived at a latticed cottage in a secluded spot.  An elderly woman,
scarce awake, answered her knocking.  Margery delivered up the butter,
and said, ‘How is granny this morning?  I can’t stay to go up to her, but
tell her I have returned what we owed her.’

Her grandmother was no worse than usual: and receiving back the empty
basket the girl proceeded to carry out some intention which had not been
included in her orders.  Instead of returning to the light labours of
skimming-time, she hastened on, her direction being towards a little
neighbouring town.  Before, however, Margery had proceeded far, she met
the postman, laden to the neck with letter-bags, of which he had not yet
deposited one.

‘Are the shops open yet, Samuel?’ she said.

‘O no,’ replied that stooping pedestrian, not waiting to stand upright.
‘They won’t be open yet this hour, except the saddler and ironmonger and
little tacker-haired machine-man for the farm folk.  They downs their
shutters at half-past six, then the baker’s at half-past seven, then the
draper’s at eight.’

‘O, the draper’s at eight.’  It was plain that Margery had wanted the
draper’s.

The postman turned up a side-path, and the young girl, as though deciding
within herself that if she could not go shopping at once she might as
well get back for the skimming, retraced her steps.

The public road home from this point was easy but devious.  By far the
nearest way was by getting over a fence, and crossing the private grounds
of a picturesque old country-house, whose chimneys were just visible
through the trees.  As the house had been shut up for many months, the
girl decided to take the straight cut.  She pushed her way through the
laurel bushes, sheltering her bonnet with the shawl as an additional
safeguard, scrambled over an inner boundary, went along through more
shrubberies, and stood ready to emerge upon the open lawn.  Before doing
so she looked around in the wary manner of a poacher.  It was not the
first time that she had broken fence in her life; but somehow, and all of
a sudden, she had felt herself too near womanhood to indulge in such
practices with freedom.  However, she moved forth, and the house-front
stared her in the face, at this higher level unobscured by fog.

It was a building of the medium size, and unpretending, the façade being
of stone; and of the Italian elevation made familiar by Inigo Jones and
his school.  There was a doorway to the lawn, standing at the head of a
flight of steps.  The shutters of the house were closed, and the blinds
of the bedrooms drawn down.  Her perception of the fact that no crusty
caretaker could see her from the windows led her at once to slacken her
pace, and stroll through the flower-beds coolly.  A house unblinded is a
possible spy, and must be treated accordingly; a house with the shutters
together is an insensate heap of stone and mortar, to be faced with
indifference.

On the other side of the house the greensward rose to an eminence,
whereon stood one of those curious summer shelters sometimes erected on
exposed points of view, called an all-the-year-round.  In the present
case it consisted of four walls radiating from a centre like the arms of
a turnstile, with seats in each angle, so that whencesoever the wind
came, it was always possible to find a screened corner from which to
observe the landscape.

The milkmaid’s trackless course led her up the hill and past this
erection.  At ease as to being watched and scolded as an intruder, her
mind flew to other matters; till, at the moment when she was not a yard
from the shelter, she heard a foot or feet scraping on the gravel behind
it.  Some one was in the all-the-year-round, apparently occupying the
seat on the other side; as was proved when, on turning, she saw an elbow,
a man’s elbow, projecting over the edge.

Now the young woman did not much like the idea of going down the hill
under the eyes of this person, which she would have to do if she went on,
for as an intruder she was liable to be called back and questioned upon
her business there.  Accordingly she crept softly up and sat in the seat
behind, intending to remain there until her companion should leave.

This he by no means seemed in a hurry to do.  What could possibly have
brought him there, what could detain him there, at six o’clock on a
morning of mist when there was nothing to be seen or enjoyed of the vale
beneath, puzzled her not a little.  But he remained quite still, and
Margery grew impatient.  She discerned the track of his feet in the dewy
grass, forming a line from the house steps, which announced that he was
an inhabitant and not a chance passer-by.  At last she peeped round.




CHAPTER II.


A fine-framed dark-mustachioed gentleman, in dressing-gown and slippers,
was sitting there in the damp without a hat on.  With one hand he was
tightly grasping his forehead, the other hung over his knee.  The
attitude bespoke with sufficient clearness a mental condition of anguish.
He was quite a different being from any of the men to whom her eyes were
accustomed.  She had never seen mustachios before, for they were not worn
by civilians in Lower Wessex at this date.  His hands and his face were
white—to her view deadly white—and he heeded nothing outside his own
existence.  There he remained as motionless as the bushes around him;
indeed, he scarcely seemed to breathe.

Having imprudently advanced thus far, Margery’s wish was to get back
again in the same unseen manner; but in moving her foot for the purpose
it grated on the gravel.  He started up with an air of bewilderment, and
slipped something into the pocket of his dressing-gown.  She was almost
certain that it was a pistol.  The pair stood looking blankly at each
other.

‘My Gott, who are you?’ he asked sternly, and with not altogether an
English articulation.  ‘What do you do here?’

Margery had already begun to be frightened at her boldness in invading
the lawn and pleasure-seat.  The house had a master, and she had not
known of it.  ‘My name is Margaret Tucker, sir,’ she said meekly.  ‘My
father is Dairyman Tucker.  We live at Silverthorn Dairy-house.’

‘What were you doing here at this hour of the morning?’

She told him, even to the fact that she had climbed over the fence.

‘And what made you peep round at me?’

‘I saw your elbow, sir; and I wondered what you were doing?’

‘And what was I doing?’

‘Nothing.  You had one hand on your forehead and the other on your knee.
I do hope you are not ill, sir, or in deep trouble?’  Margery had
sufficient tact to say nothing about the pistol.

‘What difference would it make to you if I were ill or in trouble?  You
don’t know me.’

She returned no answer, feeling that she might have taken a liberty in
expressing sympathy.  But, looking furtively up at him, she discerned to
her surprise that he seemed affected by her humane wish, simply as it had
been expressed.  She had scarcely conceived that such a tall dark man
could know what gentle feelings were.

‘Well, I am much obliged to you for caring how I am,’ said he with a
faint smile and an affected lightness of manner which, even to her, only
rendered more apparent the gloom beneath.  ‘I have not slept this past
night.  I suffer from sleeplessness.  Probably you do not.’

Margery laughed a little, and he glanced with interest at the comely
picture she presented; her fresh face, brown hair, candid eyes,
unpractised manner, country dress, pink hands, empty wicker-basket, and
the handkerchief over her bonnet.

‘Well,’ he said, after his scrutiny, ‘I need hardly have asked such a
question of one who is Nature’s own image . . . Ah, but my good little
friend,’ he added, recurring to his bitter tone and sitting wearily down,
‘you don’t know what great clouds can hang over some people’s lives, and
what cowards some men are in face of them.  To escape themselves they
travel, take picturesque houses, and engage in country sports.  But here
it is so dreary, and the fog was horrible this morning!’

‘Why, this is only the pride of the morning!’ said Margery.  ‘By-and-by
it will be a beautiful day.’

She was going on her way forthwith; but he detained her—detained her with
words, talking on every innocent little subject he could think of.  He
had an object in keeping her there more serious than his words would
imply.  It was as if he feared to be left alone.

While they still stood, the misty figure of the postman, whom Margery had
left a quarter of an hour earlier to follow his sinuous course, crossed
the grounds below them on his way to the house.  Signifying to Margery by
a wave of his hand that she was to step back out of sight, in the hinder
angle of the shelter, the gentleman beckoned to the postman to bring the
bag to where he stood.  The man did so, and again resumed his journey.

The stranger unlocked the bag and threw it on the seat, having taken one
letter from within.  This he read attentively, and his countenance
changed.

The change was almost phantasmagorial, as if the sun had burst through
the fog upon that face: it became clear, bright, almost radiant.  Yet it
was but a change that may take place in the commonest human being,
provided his countenance be not too wooden, or his artifice have not
grown to second nature.  He turned to Margery, who was again edging off,
and, seizing her hand, appeared as though he were about to embrace her.
Checking his impulse, he said, ‘My guardian child—my good friend—you have
saved me!’

‘What from?’ she ventured to ask.

‘That you may never know.’

She thought of the weapon, and guessed that the letter he had just
received had effected this change in his mood, but made no observation
till he went on to say, ‘What did you tell me was your name, dear girl?’

She repeated her name.

‘Margaret Tucker.’  He stooped, and pressed her hand.  ‘Sit down for a
moment—one moment,’ he said, pointing to the end of the seat, and taking
the extremest further end for himself, not to discompose her.  She sat
down.

‘It is to ask a question,’ he went on, ‘and there must be confidence
between us.  You have saved me from an act of madness!  What can I do for
you?’

‘Nothing, sir.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Father is very well off, and we don’t want anything.’

‘But there must be some service I can render, some kindness, some votive
offering which I could make, and so imprint on your memory as long as you
live that I am not an ungrateful man?’

‘Why should you be grateful to me, sir?’

He shook his head.  ‘Some things are best left unspoken.  Now think.
What would you like to have best in the world?’

Margery made a pretence of reflecting—then fell to reflecting seriously;
but the negative was ultimately as undisturbed as ever: she could not
decide on anything she would like best in the world; it was too
difficult, too sudden.

‘Very well—don’t hurry yourself.  Think it over all day.  I ride this
afternoon.  You live—where?’

‘Silverthorn Dairy-house.’

‘I will ride that way homeward this evening.  Do you consider by eight
o’clock what little article, what little treat, you would most like of
any.’

‘I will, sir,’ said Margery, now warming up to the idea.  ‘Where shall I
meet you?  Or will you call at the house, sir?’

‘Ah—no.  I should not wish the circumstances known out of which our
acquaintance rose.  It would be more proper—but no.’

Margery, too, seemed rather anxious that he should not call.  ‘I could
come out, sir,’ she said.  ‘My father is odd-tempered, and perhaps—’

It was agreed that she should look over a stile at the top of her
father’s garden, and that he should ride along a bridle-path outside, to
receive her answer.  ‘Margery,’ said the gentleman in conclusion, ‘now
that you have discovered me under ghastly conditions, are you going to
reveal them, and make me an object for the gossip of the curious?’

‘No, no, sir!’ she replied earnestly.  ‘Why should I do that?’

‘You will never tell?’

‘Never, never will I tell what has happened here this morning.’

‘Neither to your father, nor to your friends, nor to any one?’

‘To no one at all,’ she said.

‘It is sufficient,’ he answered.  ‘You mean what you say, my dear maiden.
Now you want to leave me.  Good-bye!’

She descended the hill, walking with some awkwardness; for she felt the
stranger’s eyes were upon her till the fog had enveloped her from his
gaze.  She took no notice now of the dripping from the trees; she was
lost in thought on other things.  Had she saved this handsome,
melancholy, sleepless, foreign gentleman who had had a trouble on his
mind till the letter came?  What had he been going to do?  Margery could
guess that he had meditated death at his own hand.  Strange as the
incident had been in itself; to her it had seemed stranger even than it
was.  Contrasting colours heighten each other by being juxtaposed; it is
the same with contrasting lives.

Reaching the opposite side of the park there appeared before her for the
third time that little old man, the foot-post.  As the turnpike-road ran,
the postman’s beat was twelve miles a day; six miles out from the town,
and six miles back at night.  But what with zigzags, devious ways,
offsets to country seats, curves to farms, looped courses, and triangles
to outlying hamlets, the ground actually covered by him was nearer
one-and-twenty miles.  Hence it was that Margery, who had come straight,
was still abreast of him, despite her long pause.

The weighty sense that she was mixed up in a tragical secret with an
unknown and handsome stranger prevented her joining very readily in chat
with the postman for some time.  But a keen interest in her adventure
caused her to respond at once when the bowed man of mails said, ‘You hit
athwart the grounds of Mount Lodge, Miss Margery, or you wouldn’t ha’ met
me here.  Well, somebody hey took the old place at last.’

In acknowledging her route Margery brought herself to ask who the new
gentleman might be.

‘Guide the girl’s heart!  What! don’t she know?  And yet how should
ye—he’s only just a-come.—Well, nominal, he’s a fishing gentleman, come
for the summer only.  But, more to the subject, he’s a foreign noble
that’s lived in England so long as to be without any true country: some
of his letters call him Baron, some Squire, so that ’a must be born to
something that can’t be earned by elbow-grease and Christian conduct.  He
was out this morning a-watching the fog.  “Postman,” ’a said,
“good-morning: give me the bag.”  O, yes, ’a’s a civil genteel nobleman
enough.’

‘Took the house for fishing, did he?’

‘That’s what they say, and as it can be for nothing else I suppose it’s
true.  But, in final, his health’s not good, ’a b’lieve; he’s been living
too rithe.  The London smoke got into his wyndpipe, till ’a couldn’t eat.
However, I shouldn’t mind having the run of his kitchen.’

‘And what is his name?’

‘Ah—there you have me!  ’Tis a name no man’s tongue can tell, or even
woman’s, except by pen-and-ink and good scholarship.  It begins with X,
and who, without the machinery of a clock in’s inside, can speak that?
But here ’tis—from his letters.’  The postman with his walking-stick
wrote upon the ground,

                            ‘BARON VON XANTEN’




CHAPTER III.


The day, as she had prognosticated, turned out fine; for weather-wisdom
was imbibed with their milk-sops by the children of the Exe Vale.  The
impending meeting excited Margery, and she performed her duties in her
father’s house with mechanical unconsciousness.

Milking, skimming, cheesemaking were done.  Her father was asleep in the
settle, the milkmen and maids were gone home to their cottages, and the
clock showed a quarter to eight.  She dressed herself with care, went to
the top of the garden, and looked over the stile.  The view was eastward,
and a great moon hung before her in a sky which had not a cloud.  Nothing
was moving except on the minutest scale, and she remained leaning over,
the night-hawk sounding his croud from the bough of an isolated tree on
the open hill side.

Here Margery waited till the appointed time had passed by three-quarters
of an hour; but no Baron came.  She had been full of an idea, and her
heart sank with disappointment.  Then at last the pacing of a horse
became audible on the soft path without, leading up from the water-meads,
simultaneously with which she beheld the form of the stranger, riding
home, as he had said.

The moonlight so flooded her face as to make her very conspicuous in the
garden-gap.  ‘Ah my maiden—what is your name—Margery!’ he said.  ‘How
came you here?  But of course I remember—we were to meet.  And it was to
be at eight—_proh pudor_!—I have kept you waiting!’

‘It doesn’t matter, sir.  I’ve thought of something.’

‘Thought of something?’

‘Yes, sir.  You said this morning that I was to think what I would like
best in the world, and I have made up my mind.’

‘I did say so—to be sure I did,’ he replied, collecting his thoughts.  ‘I
remember to have had good reason for gratitude to you.’  He placed his
hand to his brow, and in a minute alighted, and came up to her with the
bridle in his hand.  ‘I was to give you a treat or present, and you could
not think of one.  Now you have done so.  Let me hear what it is, and
I’ll be as good as my word.’

‘To go to the Yeomanry Ball that’s to be given this month.’

‘The Yeomanry Ball—Yeomanry Ball?’ he murmured, as if, of all requests in
the world, this was what he had least expected.  ‘Where is what you call
the Yeomanry Ball?’

‘At Exonbury.’

‘Have you ever been to it before?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Or to any ball?’

‘No.’

‘But did I not say a gift—a present?’

‘Or a treat?’

‘Ah, yes, or a treat,’ he echoed, with the air of one who finds himself
in a slight fix.  ‘But with whom would you propose to go?’

‘I don’t know.  I have not thought of that yet.’

‘You have no friend who could take you, even if I got you an invitation?’

Margery looked at the moon.  ‘No one who can dance,’ she said; adding,
with hesitation, ‘I was thinking that perhaps—’

‘But, my dear Margery,’ he said, stopping her, as if he half-divined what
her simple dream of a cavalier had been; ‘it is very odd that you can
think of nothing else than going to a Yeomanry Ball.  Think again.  You
are sure there is nothing else?’

‘Quite sure, sir,’ she decisively answered.  At first nobody would have
noticed in that pretty young face any sign of decision; yet it was
discoverable.  The mouth, though soft, was firm in line; the eyebrows
were distinct, and extended near to each other.  ‘I have thought of it
all day,’ she continued, sadly.  ‘Still, sir, if you are sorry you
offered me anything, I can let you off.’

‘Sorry?—Certainly not, Margery,’ be said, rather nettled.  ‘I’ll show you
that whatever hopes I have raised in your breast I am honourable enough
to gratify.  If it lies in my power,’ he added with sudden firmness, ‘you
_shall_ go to the Yeomanry Ball.  In what building is it to be held?’

‘In the Assembly Rooms.’

‘And would you be likely to be recognized there?  Do you know many
people?’

‘Not many, sir.  None, I may say.  I know nobody who goes to balls.’

‘Ah, well; you must go, since you wish it; and if there is no other way
of getting over the difficulty of having nobody to take you, I’ll take
you myself.  Would you like me to do so?  I can dance.’

‘O, yes, sir; I know that, and I thought you might offer to do it.  But
would you bring me back again?’

‘Of course I’ll bring you back.  But, by-the-bye, can _you_ dance?’

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘Reels, and jigs, and country-dances like the New-Rigged-Ship, and
Follow-my-Lover, and Haste-to-the-Wedding, and the College Hornpipe, and
the Favourite Quickstep, and Captain White’s dance.’

‘A very good list—a very good! but unluckily I fear they don’t dance any
of those now.  But if you have the instinct we may soon cure your
ignorance.  Let me see you dance a moment.’

She stood out into the garden-path, the stile being still between them,
and seizing a side of her skirt with each hand, performed the movements
which are even yet far from uncommon in the dances of the villagers of
merry England.  But her motions, though graceful, were not precisely
those which appear in the figures of a modern ball-room.

‘Well, my good friend, it is a very pretty sight,’ he said, warming up to
the proceedings.  ‘But you dance too well—you dance all over your
person—and that’s too thorough a way for the present day.  I should say
it was exactly how they danced in the time of your poet Chaucer; but as
people don’t dance like it now, we must consider.  First I must inquire
more about this ball, and then I must see you again.’

‘If it is a great trouble to you, sir, I—’

‘O no, no.  I will think it over.  So far so good.’

The Baron mentioned an evening and an hour when he would be passing that
way again; then mounted his horse and rode away.

On the next occasion, which was just when the sun was changing places
with the moon as an illuminator of Silverthorn Dairy, she found him at
the spot before her, and unencumbered by a horse.  The melancholy that
had so weighed him down at their first interview, and had been
perceptible at their second, had quite disappeared.  He pressed her right
hand between both his own across the stile.

‘My good maiden, Gott bless you!’ said he warmly.  ‘I cannot help
thinking of that morning!  I was too much over-shadowed at first to take
in the whole force of it.  You do not know all; but your presence was a
miraculous intervention.  Now to more cheerful matters.   I have a great
deal to tell—that is, if your wish about the ball be still the same?’

‘O yes, sir—if you don’t object.’

‘Never think of my objecting.  What I have found out is something which
simplifies matters amazingly.  In addition to your Yeomanry Ball at
Exonbury, there is also to be one in the next county about the same time.
This ball is not to be held at the Town Hall of the county-town as usual,
but at Lord Toneborough’s, who is colonel of the regiment, and who, I
suppose, wishes to please the yeomen because his brother is going to
stand for the county.  Now I find I could take you there very well, and
the great advantage of that ball over the Yeomanry Ball in this county
is, that there you would be absolutely unknown, and I also.  But do you
prefer your own neighbourhood?’

‘O no, sir.  It is a ball I long to see—I don’t know what it is like; it
does not matter where.’

‘Good.  Then I shall be able to make much more of you there, where there
is no possibility of recognition.  That being settled, the next thing is
the dancing.  Now reels and such things do not do.  For think of
this—there is a new dance at Almack’s and everywhere else, over which the
world has gone crazy.’

‘How dreadful!’

‘Ah—but that is a mere expression—gone mad.  It is really an ancient
Scythian dance; but, such is the power of fashion, that, having once been
adopted by Society, this dance has made the tour of the Continent in one
season.’

‘What is its name, sir?’

‘The polka.  Young people, who always dance, are ecstatic about it, and
old people, who have not danced for years, have begun to dance again, on
its account.  All share the excitement.  It arrived in London only some
few months ago—it is now all over the country.  Now this is your
opportunity, my good Margery.  To learn this one dance will be enough.
They will dance scarce anything else at that ball.  While, to crown all,
it is the easiest dance in the world, and as I know it quite well I can
practise you in the step.  Suppose we try?’

Margery showed some hesitation before crossing the stile: it was a
Rubicon in more ways than one.  But the curious reverence which was
stealing over her for all that this stranger said and did was too much
for prudence.  She crossed the stile.

Withdrawing with her to a nook where two high hedges met, and where the
grass was elastic and dry, he lightly rested his arm on her waist, and
practised with her the new step of fascination.  Instead of music he
whispered numbers, and she, as may be supposed, showed no slight aptness
in following his instructions.  Thus they moved round together, the
moon-shadows from the twigs racing over their forms as they turned.

The interview lasted about half an hour.  Then he somewhat abruptly
handed her over the stile and stood looking at her from the other side.

‘Well,’ he murmured, ‘what has come to pass is strange!  My whole
business after this will be to recover my right mind!’

Margery always declared that there seemed to be some power in the
stranger that was more than human, something magical and compulsory, when
he seized her and gently trotted her round.  But lingering emotions may
have led her memory to play pranks with the scene, and her vivid
imagination at that youthful age must be taken into account in believing
her.  However, there is no doubt that the stranger, whoever he might be,
and whatever his powers, taught her the elements of modern dancing at a
certain interview by moonlight at the top of her father’s garden, as was
proved by her possession of knowledge on the subject that could have been
acquired in no other way.

His was of the first rank of commanding figures, she was one of the most
agile of milkmaids, and to casual view it would have seemed all of a
piece with Nature’s doings that things should go on thus.  But there was
another side to the case; and whether the strange gentleman were a wild
olive tree, or not, it was questionable if the acquaintance would lead to
happiness.  ‘A fleeting romance and a possible calamity;’ thus it might
have been summed up by the practical.

Margery was in Paradise; and yet she was not at this date distinctly in
love with the stranger.  What she felt was something more mysterious,
more of the nature of veneration.  As he looked at her across the stile
she spoke timidly, on a subject which had apparently occupied her long.

‘I ought to have a ball-dress, ought I not, sir?’

‘Certainly.  And you shall have a ball-dress.’

‘Really?’

‘No doubt of it.  I won’t do things by halves for my best friend.  I have
thought of the ball-dress, and of other things also.’

‘And is my dancing good enough?’

‘Quite—quite.’  He paused, lapsed into thought, and looked at her.
‘Margery,’ he said, ‘do you trust yourself unreservedly to me?’

‘O yes, sir,’ she replied brightly; ‘if I am not too much trouble: if I
am good enough to be seen in your society.’

The Baron laughed in a peculiar way.  ‘Really, I think you may assume as
much as that.—However, to business.  The ball is on the twenty-fifth,
that is next Thursday week; and the only difficulty about the dress is
the size.  Suppose you lend me this?’  And he touched her on the shoulder
to signify a tight little jacket she wore.

Margery was all obedience.  She took it off and handed it to him.  The
Baron rolled and compressed it with all his force till it was about as
large as an apple-dumpling, and put it into his pocket.

‘The next thing,’ he said, ‘is about getting the consent of your friends
to your going.  Have you thought of this?’

‘There is only my father.  I can tell him I am invited to a party, and I
don’t think he’ll mind.  Though I would rather not tell him.’

‘But it strikes me that you must inform him something of what you intend.
I would strongly advise you to do so.’  He spoke as if rather perplexed
as to the probable custom of the English peasantry in such matters, and
added, ‘However, it is for you to decide.  I know nothing of the
circumstances.  As to getting to the ball, the plan I have arranged is
this.  The direction to Lord Toneborough’s being the other way from my
house, you must meet me at Three-Walks-End—in Chillington Wood, two miles
or more from here.  You know the place?  Good.  By meeting there we shall
save five or six miles of journey—a consideration, as it is a long way.
Now, for the last time: are you still firm in your wish for this
particular treat and no other?  It is not too late to give it up.  Cannot
you think of something else—something better—some useful household
articles you require?’

Margery’s countenance, which before had been beaming with expectation,
lost its brightness: her lips became close, and her voice broken.  ‘You
have offered to take me, and now—’

‘No, no, no,’ he said, patting her cheek.  ‘We will not think of anything
else.  You shall go.’




CHAPTER IV.


But whether the Baron, in naming such a distant spot for the rendezvous,
was in hope she might fail him, and so relieve him after all of his
undertaking, cannot be said; though it might have been strongly suspected
from his manner that he had no great zest for the responsibility of
escorting her.

But he little knew the firmness of the young woman he had to deal with.
She was one of those soft natures whose power of adhesiveness to an
acquired idea seems to be one of the special attributes of that softness.
To go to a ball with this mysterious personage of romance was her ardent
desire and aim; and none the less in that she trembled with fear and
excitement at her position in so aiming.  She felt the deepest awe,
tenderness, and humility towards the Baron of the strange name; and yet
she was prepared to stick to her point.

Thus it was that the afternoon of the eventful day found Margery trudging
her way up the slopes from the vale to the place of appointment.  She
walked to the music of innumerable birds, which increased as she drew
away from the open meads towards the groves.

She had overcome all difficulties.  After thinking out the question of
telling or not telling her father, she had decided that to tell him was
to be forbidden to go.  Her contrivance therefore was this: to leave home
this evening on a visit to her invalid grandmother, who lived not far
from the Baron’s house; but not to arrive at her grandmother’s till
breakfast-time next morning.  Who would suspect an intercalated
experience of twelve hours with the Baron at a ball?  That this piece of
deception was indefensible she afterwards owned readily enough; but she
did not stop to think of it then.

It was sunset within Chillington Wood by the time she reached
Three-Walks-End—the converging point of radiating trackways, now floored
with a carpet of matted grass, which had never known other scythes than
the teeth of rabbits and hares.  The twitter overhead had ceased, except
from a few braver and larger birds, including the cuckoo, who did not
fear night at this pleasant time of year.  Nobody seemed to be on the
spot when she first drew near, but no sooner did Margery stand at the
intersection of the roads than a slight crashing became audible, and her
patron appeared.  He was so transfigured in dress that she scarcely knew
him.  Under a light great-coat, which was flung open, instead of his
ordinary clothes he wore a suit of thin black cloth, an open waistcoat
with a frill all down his shirt-front, a white tie, shining boots, no
thicker than a glove, a coat that made him look like a bird, and a hat
that seemed as if it would open and shut like an accordion.

‘I am dressed for the ball—nothing worse,’ he said, drily smiling.  ‘So
will you be soon.’

‘Why did you choose this place for our meeting, sir?’ she asked, looking
around and acquiring confidence.

‘Why did I choose it?  Well, because in riding past one day I observed a
large hollow tree close by here, and it occurred to me when I was last
with you that this would be useful for our purpose.  Have you told your
father?’

‘I have not yet told him, sir.’

‘That’s very bad of you, Margery.  How have you arranged it, then?’

She briefly related her plan, on which he made no comment, but, taking
her by the hand as if she were a little child, he led her through the
undergrowth to a spot where the trees were older, and standing at wider
distances.  Among them was the tree he had spoken of—an elm; huge,
hollow, distorted, and headless, with a rift in its side.

‘Now go inside,’ he said, ‘before it gets any darker.  You will find
there everything you want.  At any rate, if you do not you must do
without it.  I’ll keep watch; and don’t be longer than you can help to
be.’

‘What am I to do, sir?’ asked the puzzled maiden.

‘Go inside, and you will see.  When you are ready wave your handkerchief
at that hole.’

She stooped into the opening.  The cavity within the tree formed a lofty
circular apartment, four or five feet in diameter, to which daylight
entered at the top, and also through a round hole about six feet from the
ground, marking the spot at which a limb had been amputated in the tree’s
prime.  The decayed wood of cinnamon-brown, forming the inner surface of
the tree, and the warm evening glow, reflected in at the top, suffused
the cavity with a faint mellow radiance.

But Margery had hardly given herself time to heed these things.  Her eye
had been caught by objects of quite another quality.  A large white
oblong paper box lay against the inside of the tree; over it, on a
splinter, hung a small oval looking-glass.

Margery seized the idea in a moment.  She pressed through the rift into
the tree, lifted the cover of the box, and, behold, there was disclosed
within a lovely white apparition in a somewhat flattened state.  It was
the ball-dress.

This marvel of art was, briefly, a sort of heavenly cobweb.  It was a
gossamer texture of precious manufacture, artistically festooned in a
dozen flounces or more.

Margery lifted it, and could hardly refrain from kissing it.  Had any one
told her before this moment that such a dress could exist, she would have
said, ‘No; it’s impossible!’  She drew back, went forward, flushed,
laughed, raised her hands.  To say that the maker of that dress had been
an individual of talent was simply understatement: he was a genius, and
she sunned herself in the rays of his creation.

She then remembered that her friend without had told her to make haste,
and she spasmodically proceeded to array herself.  In removing the dress
she found satin slippers, gloves, a handkerchief nearly all lace, a fan,
and even flowers for the hair.  ‘O, how could he think of it!’ she said,
clasping her hands and almost crying with agitation.  ‘And the glass—how
good of him!’

Everything was so well prepared, that to clothe herself in these garments
was a matter of ease.  In a quarter of an hour she was ready, even to
shoes and gloves.  But what led her more than anything else into
admiration of the Baron’s foresight was the discovery that there were
half-a-dozen pairs each of shoes and gloves, of varying sizes, out of
which she selected a fit.

Margery glanced at herself in the mirror, or at as much as she could see
of herself: the image presented was superb.  Then she hastily rolled up
her old dress, put it in the box, and thrust the latter on a ledge as
high as she could reach.  Standing on tiptoe, she waved the handkerchief
through the upper aperture, and bent to the rift to go out.

But what a trouble stared her in the face.  The dress was so airy, so
fantastical, and so extensive, that to get out in her new clothes by the
rift which had admitted her in her old ones was an impossibility.  She
heard the Baron’s steps crackling over the dead sticks and leaves.

‘O, sir!’ she began in despair.

‘What—can’t you dress yourself?’ he inquired from the back of the trunk.

‘Yes; but I can’t get out of this dreadful tree!’

He came round to the opening, stooped, and looked in.  ‘It is obvious
that you cannot,’ he said, taking in her compass at a glance; and adding
to himself; ‘Charming! who would have thought that clothes could do so
much!—Wait a minute, my little maid: I have it!’ he said more loudly.

With all his might he kicked at the sides of the rift, and by that means
broke away several pieces of the rotten touchwood.  But, being thinly
armed about the feet, he abandoned that process, and went for a fallen
branch which lay near.  By using the large end as a lever, he tore away
pieces of the wooden shell which enshrouded Margery and all her
loveliness, till the aperture was large enough for her to pass without
tearing her dress.  She breathed her relief: the silly girl had begun to
fear that she would not get to the ball after all.

He carefully wrapped round her a cloak he had brought with him: it was
hooded, and of a length which covered her to the heels.

‘The carriage is waiting down the other path,’ he said, and gave her his
arm.  A short trudge over the soft dry leaves brought them to the place
indicated.

There stood the brougham, the horses, the coachman, all as still as if
they were growing on the spot, like the trees.  Margery’s eyes rose with
some timidity to the coachman’s figure.

‘You need not mind him,’ said the Baron.  ‘He is a foreigner, and heeds
nothing.’

In the space of a short minute she was handed inside; the Baron buttoned
up his overcoat, and surprised her by mounting with the coachman.  The
carriage moved off silently over the long grass of the vista, the shadows
deepening to black as they proceeded.  Darker and darker grew the night
as they rolled on; the neighbourhood familiar to Margery was soon left
behind, and she had not the remotest idea of the direction they were
taking.  The stars blinked out, the coachman lit his lamps, and they
bowled on again.

In the course of an hour and a half they arrived at a small town, where
they pulled up at the chief inn, and changed horses; all being done so
readily that their advent had plainly been expected.  The journey was
resumed immediately.  Her companion never descended to speak to her;
whenever she looked out there he sat upright on his perch, with the mien
of a person who had a difficult duty to perform, and who meant to perform
it properly at all costs.  But Margery could not help feeling a certain
dread at her situation—almost, indeed, a wish that she had not come.
Once or twice she thought, ‘Suppose he is a wicked man, who is taking me
off to a foreign country, and will never bring me home again.’

But her characteristic persistence in an original idea sustained her
against these misgivings except at odd moments.  One incident in
particular had given her confidence in her escort: she had seen a tear in
his eye when she expressed her sorrow for his troubles.  He may have
divined that her thoughts would take an uneasy turn, for when they
stopped for a moment in ascending a hill he came to the window.  ‘Are you
tired, Margery?’ he asked kindly.

‘No, sir.’

‘Are you afraid?’

‘N—no, sir.  But it is a long way.’

‘We are almost there,’ he answered.  ‘And now, Margery,’ he said in a
lower tone, ‘I must tell you a secret.  I have obtained this invitation
in a peculiar way.  I thought it best for your sake not to come in my own
name, and this is how I have managed.  A man in this county, for whom I
have lately done a service, one whom I can trust, and who is personally
as unknown here as you and I, has (privately) transferred his card of
invitation to me.  So that we go under his name.  I explain this that you
may not say anything imprudent by accident.  Keep your ears open and be
cautious.’  Having said this the Baron retreated again to his place.

‘Then he is a wicked man after all!’ she said to herself; ‘for he is
going under a false name.’  But she soon had the temerity not to mind it:
wickedness of that sort was the one ingredient required just now to
finish him off as a hero in her eyes.

They descended a hill, passed a lodge, then up an avenue; and presently
there beamed upon them the light from other carriages, drawn up in a
file, which moved on by degrees; and at last they halted before a large
arched doorway, round which a group of people stood.

‘We are among the latest arrivals, on account of the distance,’ said the
Baron, reappearing.  ‘But never mind; there are three hours at least for
your enjoyment.’

The steps were promptly flung down, and they alighted.  The steam from
the flanks of their swarthy steeds, as they seemed to her, ascended to
the parapet of the porch, and from their nostrils the hot breath jetted
forth like smoke out of volcanoes, attracting the attention of all.




CHAPTER V.


The bewildered Margery was led by the Baron up the steps to the interior
of the house, whence the sounds of music and dancing were already
proceeding.  The tones were strange.  At every fourth beat a deep and
mighty note throbbed through the air, reaching Margery’s soul with all
the force of a blow.

‘What is that powerful tune, sir—I have never heard anything like it?’
she said.

‘The Drum Polka,’ answered the Baron.  ‘The strange dance I spoke of and
that we practised—introduced from my country and other parts of the
continent.’

Her surprise was not lessened when, at the entrance to the ballroom, she
heard the names of her conductor and herself announced as ‘Mr. and Miss
Brown.’

However, nobody seemed to take any notice of the announcement, the room
beyond being in a perfect turmoil of gaiety, and Margery’s consternation
at sailing under false colours subsided.  At the same moment she observed
awaiting them a handsome, dark-haired, rather _petite_ lady in
cream-coloured satin.  ‘Who is she?’ asked Margery of the Baron.

‘She is the lady of the mansion,’ he whispered.  ‘She is the wife of a
peer of the realm, the daughter of a marquis, has five Christian names;
and hardly ever speaks to commoners, except for political purposes.’

‘How divine—what joy to be here!’ murmured Margery, as she contemplated
the diamonds that flashed from the head of her ladyship, who was just
inside the ball-room door, in front of a little gilded chair, upon which
she sat in the intervals between one arrival and another.  She had come
down from London at great inconvenience to herself; openly to promote
this entertainment.

As Mr. and Miss Brown expressed absolutely no meaning to Lady Toneborough
(for there were three Browns already present in this rather mixed
assembly), and as there was possibly a slight awkwardness in poor
Margery’s manner, Lady Toneborough touched their hands lightly with the
tips of her long gloves, said, ‘How d’ye do,’ and turned round for more
comers.

‘Ah, if she only knew we were a rich Baron and his friend, and not Mr.
and Miss Brown at all, she wouldn’t receive us like that, would she?’
whispered Margery confidentially.

‘Indeed, she wouldn’t!’ drily said the Baron.  ‘Now let us drop into the
dance at once; some of the people here, you see, dance much worse than
you.’

Almost before she was aware she had obeyed his mysterious influence, by
giving him one hand, placing the other upon his shoulder, and swinging
with him round the room to the steps she had learnt on the sward.

At the first gaze the apartment had seemed to her to be floored with
black ice; the figures of the dancers appearing upon it upside down.  At
last she realized that it was highly-polished oak, but she was none the
less afraid to move.

‘I am afraid of falling down,’ she said.

‘Lean on me; you will soon get used to it,’ he replied.  ‘You have no
nails in your shoes now, dear.’

His words, like all his words to her, were quite true.  She found it
amazingly easy in a brief space of time.  The floor, far from hindering
her, was a positive assistance to one of her natural agility and
litheness.  Moreover, her marvellous dress of twelve flounces inspired
her as nothing else could have done.  Externally a new creature, she was
prompted to new deeds.  To feel as well-dressed as the other women around
her is to set any woman at her ease, whencesoever she may have come: to
feel much better dressed is to add radiance to that ease.

Her prophet’s statement on the popularity of the polka at this juncture
was amply borne out.  It was among the first seasons of its general
adoption in country houses; the enthusiasm it excited to-night was beyond
description, and scarcely credible to the youth of the present day.  A
new motive power had been introduced into the world of poesy—the polka,
as a counterpoise to the new motive power that had been introduced into
the world of prose—steam.

Twenty finished musicians sat in the music gallery at the end, with
romantic mop-heads of raven hair, under which their faces and eyes shone
like fire under coals.

The nature and object of the ball had led to its being very inclusive.
Every rank was there, from the peer to the smallest yeoman, and Margery
got on exceedingly well, particularly when the recuperative powers of
supper had banished the fatigue of her long drive.

Sometimes she heard people saying, ‘Who are they?—brother and
sister—father and daughter?  And never dancing except with each other—how
odd?’  But of this she took no notice.

When not dancing the watchful Baron took her through the drawing-rooms
and picture-galleries adjoining, which to-night were thrown open like the
rest of the house; and there, ensconcing her in some curtained nook, he
drew her attention to scrap-books, prints, and albums, and left her to
amuse herself with turning them over till the dance in which she was
practised should again be called.  Margery would much have preferred to
roam about during these intervals; but the words of the Baron were law,
and as he commanded so she acted.  In such alternations the evening
winged away; till at last came the gloomy words, ‘Margery, our time is
up.’

‘One more—only one!’ she coaxed, for the longer they stayed the more
freely and gaily moved the dance.  This entreaty he granted; but on her
asking for yet another, he was inexorable.  ‘No,’ he said.  ‘We have a
long way to go.’

Then she bade adieu to the wondrous scene, looking over her shoulder as
they withdrew from the hall; and in a few minutes she was cloaked and in
the carriage.  The Baron mounted to his seat on the box, where she saw
him light a cigar; they plunged under the trees, and she leant back, and
gave herself up to contemplate the images that filled her brain.  The
natural result followed: she fell asleep.

She did not awake till they stopped to change horses; when she saw
against the stars the Baron sitting as erect as ever.  ‘He watches like
the Angel Gabriel, when all the world is asleep!’ she thought.

With the resumption of motion she slept again, and knew no more till he
touched her hand and said, ‘Our journey is done—we are in Chillington
Wood.’

It was almost daylight.  Margery scarcely knew herself to be awake till
she was out of the carriage and standing beside the Baron, who, having
told the coachman to drive on to a certain point indicated, turned to
her.

‘Now,’ he said, smiling, ‘run across to the hollow tree; you know where
it is.  I’ll wait as before, while you perform the reverse operation to
that you did last night.’  She took no heed of the path now, nor regarded
whether her pretty slippers became scratched by the brambles or no.  A
walk of a few steps brought her to the particular tree which she had left
about nine hours earlier.  It was still gloomy at this spot, the morning
not being clear.

She entered the trunk, dislodged the box containing her old clothing,
pulled off the satin shoes, and gloves, dress, and in ten minutes emerged
in the cotton and shawl of shepherd’s plaid.

Baron was not far off.  ‘Now you look the milkmaid again,’ he said,
coming towards her.  ‘Where is the finery?’

‘Packed in the box, sir, as I found it.’  She spoke with more humility
now.  The difference between them was greater than it had been at the
ball.

‘Good,’ he said.  ‘I must just dispose of it; and then away we go.’

He went back to the tree, Margery following at a little distance.
Bringing forth the box, he pulled out the dress as carelessly as if it
had been rags.  But this was not all.  He gathered a few dry sticks,
crushed the lovely garment into a loose billowy heap, threw the gloves,
fan, and shoes on the top, then struck a light and ruthlessly set fire to
the whole.

Margery was agonized.  She ran forward; she implored and entreated.
‘Please, sir—do spare it—do!  My lovely dress—my-dear, dear slippers—my
fan—it is cruel!  Don’t burn them, please!’

‘Nonsense.  We shall have no further use for them if we live a hundred
years.’

‘But spare a bit of it—one little piece, sir—a scrap of the lace—one bow
of the ribbon—the lovely fan—just something!’

But he was as immoveable as Rhadamanthus.  ‘No,’ he said, with a stern
gaze of his aristocratic eye.  ‘It is of no use for you to speak like
that.  The things are my property.  I undertook to gratify you in what
you might desire because you had saved my life.  To go to a ball, you
said.  You might much more wisely have said anything else, but no; you
said, to go to a ball.  Very well—I have taken you to a ball.  I have
brought you back.  The clothes were only the means, and I dispose of them
my own way.  Have I not a right to?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said meekly.

He gave the fire a stir, and lace and ribbons, and the twelve flounces,
and the embroidery, and all the rest crackled and disappeared.  He then
put in her hands the butter basket she had brought to take on to her
grandmother’s, and accompanied her to the edge of the wood, where it
merged in the undulating open country in which her granddame dwelt.

‘Now, Margery,’ he said, ‘here we part.  I have performed my contract—at
some awkwardness, if I was recognized.  But never mind that.  How do you
feel—sleepy?’

‘Not at all, sir,’ she said.

‘That long nap refreshed you, eh?  Now you must make me a promise.  That
if I require your presence at any time, you will come to me . . . I am a
man of more than one mood,’ he went on with sudden solemnity; ‘and I may
have desperate need of you again, to deliver me from that darkness as of
Death which sometimes encompasses me.  Promise it, Margery—promise it;
that, no matter what stands in the way, you will come to me if I require
you.’

‘I would have if you had not burnt my pretty clothes!’ she pouted.

‘Ah—ungrateful!’

‘Indeed, then, I will promise, sir,’ she said from her heart.  ‘Wherever
I am, if I have bodily strength I will come to you.’

He pressed her hand.  ‘It is a solemn promise,’ he replied.  ‘Now I must
go, for you know your way.’

‘I shall hardly believe that it has not been all a dream!’ she said, with
a childish instinct to cry at his withdrawal.  ‘There will be nothing
left of last night—nothing of my dress, nothing of my pleasure, nothing
of the place!’

‘You shall remember it in this way,’ said he.  ‘We’ll cut our initials on
this tree as a memorial, so that whenever you walk this path you will see
them.’

Then with a knife he inscribed on the smooth bark of a beech tree the
letters M.T., and underneath a large X.

‘What, have you no Christian name, sir?’ she said.

‘Yes, but I don’t use it.  Now, good-bye, my little friend.—What will you
do with yourself to-day, when you are gone from me?’ he lingered to ask.

‘Oh—I shall go to my granny’s,’ she replied with some gloom; ‘and have
breakfast, and dinner, and tea with her, I suppose; and in the evening I
shall go home to Silverthorn Dairy, and perhaps Jim will come to meet me,
and all will be the same as usual.’

‘Who is Jim?’

‘O, he’s nobody—only the young man I’ve got to marry some day.’

‘What!—you engaged to be married?—Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘I—I don’t know, sir.’

‘What is the young man’s name?’

‘James Hayward.’

‘What is he?’

‘A master lime-burner.’

‘Engaged to a master lime-burner, and not a word of this to me!  Margery,
Margery! when shall a straightforward one of your sex be found!  Subtle
even in your simplicity!  What mischief have you caused me to do, through
not telling me this?  I wouldn’t have so endangered anybody’s happiness
for a thousand pounds.  Wicked girl that you were; why didn’t you tell
me?’

‘I thought I’d better not!’ said Margery, beginning to be frightened.

‘But don’t you see and understand that if you are already the property of
a young man, and he were to find out this night’s excursion, he may be
angry with you and part from you for ever?  With him already in the field
I had no right to take you at all; he undoubtedly ought to have taken
you; which really might have been arranged, if you had not deceived me by
saying you had nobody.’

Margery’s face wore that aspect of woe which comes from the repentant
consciousness of having been guilty of an enormity.  ‘But he wasn’t good
enough to take me, sir!’ she said, almost crying; ‘and he isn’t
absolutely my master until I have married him, is he?’

‘That’s a subject I cannot go into.  However, we must alter our tactics.
Instead of advising you, as I did at first, to tell of this experience to
your friends, I must now impress on you that it will be best to keep a
silent tongue on the matter—perhaps for ever and ever.  It may come right
some day, and you may be able to say “All’s well that ends well.”  Now,
good morning, my friend.  Think of Jim, and forget me.’

‘Ah, perhaps I can’t do that,’ she said, with a tear in her eye, and a
full throat.

‘Well—do your best.  I can say no more.’

He turned and retreated into the wood, and Margery, sighing, went on her
way.




CHAPTER VI.


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, ‘_Yew_
don’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 woman _could_ want.  And since you wish to know what I
_can_ want 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.’




CHAPTER VII.


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.’




CHAPTER VIII.


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.

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.’




CHAPTER IX.


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 was _gone_!  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!’




CHAPTER X.


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.

                                * * * * *

Margery’s father, having privately ascertained that she was living with
her grandmother, and getting into no harm, refrained from communicating
with her, in the hope of seeing her contrite at his door.  It had, of
course, become known about Silverthorn that at the last moment Margery
refused to wed Hayward, by absenting herself from the house.  Jim was
pitied, yet not pitied much, for it was said that he ought not to have
been so eager for a woman who had shown no anxiety for him.

And where was Jim himself?  It must not be supposed that that tactician
had all this while withdrawn from mortal eye to tear his hair in silent
indignation and despair.  He had, in truth, merely retired up the
lonesome defile between the downs to his smouldering kiln, and the
ancient ramparts above it; and there, after his first hours of natural
discomposure, he quietly waited for overtures from the possibly repentant
Margery.  But no overtures arrived, and then he meditated anew on the
absorbing problem of her skittishness, and how to set about another
campaign for her conquest, notwithstanding his late disastrous failure.
Why had he failed?  To what was her strange conduct owing?  That was the
thing which puzzled him.

He had made no advance in solving the riddle when, one morning, a
stranger appeared on the down above him, looking as if he had lost his
way.  The man had a good deal of black hair below his felt hat, and
carried under his arm a case containing a musical instrument.  Descending
to where Jim stood, he asked if there were not a short cut across that
way to Tivworthy, where a fête was to be held.

‘Well, yes, there is,’ said Jim.  ‘But ’tis an enormous distance for
’ee.’

‘Oh, yes,’ replied the musician.  ‘I wish to intercept the carrier on the
highway.’

The nearest way was precisely in the direction of Rook’s Gate, where
Margery, as Jim knew, was staying.  Having some time to spare, Jim was
strongly impelled to make a kind act to the lost musician a pretext for
taking observations in that neighbourhood, and telling his acquaintance
that he was going the same way, he started without further ado.

They skirted the long length of meads, and in due time arrived at the
back of Rook’s Gate, where the path joined the high road.  A hedge
divided the public way from the cottage garden.  Jim drew up at this
point and said, ‘Your road is straight on: I turn back here.’

But the musician was standing fixed, as if in great perplexity.
Thrusting his hand into his forest of black hair, he murmured, ‘Surely it
is the same—surely!’

Jim, following the direction of his neighbour’s eyes, found them to be
fixed on a figure till that moment hidden from himself—Margery Tucker—who
was crossing the garden to an opposite gate with a little cheese in her
arms, her head thrown back, and her face quite exposed.

‘What of her?’ said Jim.

‘Two months ago I formed one of the band at the Yeomanry Ball given by
Lord Toneborough in the next county.  I saw that young lady dancing the
polka there in robes of gauze and lace.  Now I see her carry a cheese!’

‘Never!’ said Jim incredulously.

‘But I do not mistake.  I say it is so!’

Jim ridiculed the idea; the bandsman protested, and was about to lose his
temper, when Jim gave in with the good-nature of a person who can afford
to despise opinions; and the musician went his way.

As he dwindled out of sight Jim began to think more carefully over what
he had said.  The young man’s thoughts grew quite to an excitement, for
there came into his mind the Baron’s extraordinary kindness in regard to
furniture, hitherto accounted for by the assumption that the nobleman had
taken a fancy to him.  Could it be, among all the amazing things of life,
that the Baron was at the bottom of this mischief; and that he had amused
himself by taking Margery to a ball?

Doubts and suspicions which distract some lovers to imbecility only
served to bring out Jim’s great qualities.  Where he trusted he was the
most trusting fellow in the world; where he doubted he could be guilty of
the slyest strategy.  Once suspicious, he became one of those subtle,
watchful characters who, without integrity, make good thieves; with a
little, good jobbers; with a little more, good diplomatists.  Jim was
honest, and he considered what to do.

Retracing his steps, he peeped again.  She had gone in; but she would
soon reappear, for it could be seen that she was carrying little new
cheeses one by one to a spring-cart and horse tethered outside the
gate—her grandmother, though not a regular dairywoman, still managing a
few cows by means of a man and maid.  With the lightness of a cat Jim
crept round to the gate, took a piece of chalk from his pocket, and wrote
upon the boarding ‘The Baron.’  Then he retreated to the other side of
the garden where he had just watched Margery.

In due time she emerged with another little cheese, came on to the
garden-door, and glanced upon the chalked words which confronted her.
She started; the cheese rolled from her arms to the ground, and broke
into pieces like a pudding.

She looked fearfully round, her face burning like sunset, and, seeing
nobody, stooped to pick up the flaccid lumps.  Jim, with a pale face,
departed as invisibly as he had come.  He had proved the bandsman’s tale
to be true.  On his way back he formed a resolution.  It was to beard the
lion in his den—to call on the Baron.

Meanwhile Margery had recovered her equanimity, and gathered up the
broken cheese.  But she could by no means account for the handwriting.
Jim was just the sort of fellow to play her such a trick at ordinary
times, but she imagined him to be far too incensed against her to do it
now; and she suddenly wondered if it were any sort of signal from the
Baron himself.

Of him she had lately heard nothing.  If ever monotony pervaded a life it
pervaded hers at Rook’s Gate; and she had begun to despair of any happy
change.  But it is precisely when the social atmosphere seems stagnant
that great events are brewing.  Margery’s quiet was broken first, as we
have seen, by a slight start, only sufficient to make her drop a cheese;
and then by a more serious matter.

She was inside the same garden one day when she heard two watermen
talking without.  The conversation was to the effect that the strange
gentleman who had taken Mount Lodge for the season was seriously ill.

‘How ill?’ cried Margery through the hedge, which screened her from
recognition.

‘Bad abed,’ said one of the watermen.

‘Inflammation of the lungs,’ said the other.

‘Got wet, fishing,’ the first chimed in.

Margery could gather no more.  An ideal admiration rather than any
positive passion existed in her breast for the Baron: she had of late
seen too little of him to allow any incipient views of him as a lover to
grow to formidable dimensions.  It was an extremely romantic feeling,
delicate as an aroma, capable of quickening to an active principle, or
dying to ‘a painless sympathy,’ as the case might be.

This news of his illness, coupled with the mysterious chalking on the
gate, troubled her, and revived his image much.  She took to walking up
and down the garden-paths, looking into the hearts of flowers, and not
thinking what they were.  His last request had been that she was not to
go to him if be should send for her; and now she asked herself, was the
name on the gate a hint to enable her to go without infringing the letter
of her promise?  Thus unexpectedly had Jim’s manœuvre operated.

Ten days passed.  All she could hear of the Baron were the same words,
‘Bad abed,’ till one afternoon, after a gallop of the physician to the
Lodge, the tidings spread like lightning that the Baron was dying.

Margery distressed herself with the question whether she might be
permitted to visit him and say her prayers at his bedside; but she feared
to venture; and thus eight-and-forty hours slipped away, and the Baron
still lived.  Despite her shyness and awe of him she had almost made up
her mind to call when, just at dusk on that October evening, somebody
came to the door and asked for her.

She could see the messenger’s head against the low new moon.  He was a
man-servant.  He said he had been all the way to her father’s, and had
been sent thence to her here.  He simply brought a note, and, delivering
it into her hands, went away.

    DEAR MARGERY TUCKER (ran the note)—They say I am not likely to live,
    so I want to see you.  Be here at eight o’clock this evening.  Come
    quite alone to the side-door, and tap four times softly.  My trusty
    man will admit you.  The occasion is an important one.  Prepare
    yourself for a solemn ceremony, which I wish to have performed while
    it lies in my power.

                                                               VON XANTEN.




CHAPTER XI.


Margery’s face flushed up, and her neck and arms glowed in sympathy.  The
quickness of youthful imagination, and the assumptiveness of woman’s
reason, sent her straight as an arrow this thought: ‘He wants to marry
me!’

She had heard of similar strange proceedings, in which the orange-flower
and the sad cypress were intertwined.  People sometimes wished on their
death-beds, from motives of esteem, to form a legal tie which they had
not cared to establish as a domestic one during their active life.

For a few minutes Margery could hardly be called excited; she was
excitement itself.  Between surprise and modesty she blushed and trembled
by turns.  She became grave, sat down in the solitary room, and looked
into the fire.  At seven o’clock she rose resolved, and went quite
tranquilly upstairs, where she speedily began to dress.

In making this hasty toilet nine-tenths of her care were given to her
hands.  The summer had left them slightly brown, and she held them up and
looked at them with some misgiving, the fourth finger of her left hand
more especially.  Hot washings and cold washings, certain products from
bee and flower known only to country girls, everything she could think
of, were used upon those little sunburnt hands, till she persuaded
herself that they were really as white as could be wished by a husband
with a hundred titles.  Her dressing completed, she left word with Edy
that she was going for a long walk, and set out in the direction of Mount
Lodge.

She no longer tripped like a girl, but walked like a woman.  While
crossing the park she murmured ‘Baroness von Xanten’ in a pronunciation
of her own.  The sound of that title caused her such agitation that she
was obliged to pause, with her hand upon her heart.

The house was so closely neighboured by shrubberies on three of its sides
that it was not till she had gone nearly round it that she found the
little door.  The resolution she had been an hour in forming failed her
when she stood at the portal.  While pausing for courage to tap, a
carriage drove up to the front entrance a little way off, and peeping
round the corner she saw alight a clergyman, and a gentleman in whom
Margery fancied that she recognized a well-known solicitor from the
neighbouring town.  She had no longer any doubt of the nature of the
ceremony proposed.  ‘It is sudden but I must obey him!’ she murmured: and
tapped four times.

The door was opened so quickly that the servant must have been standing
immediately inside.  She thought him the man who had driven them to the
ball—the silent man who could be trusted.  Without a word he conducted
her up the back staircase, and through a door at the top, into a wide
corridor.  She was asked to wait in a little dressing-room, where there
was a fire, and an old metal-framed looking-glass over the mantel-piece,
in which she caught sight of herself.  A red spot burnt in each of her
cheeks; the rest of her face was pale; and her eyes were like diamonds of
the first water.

Before she had been seated many minutes the man came back noiselessly,
and she followed him to a door covered by a red and black curtain, which
he lifted, and ushered her into a large chamber.  A screened light stood
on a table before her, and on her left the hangings of a tall dark
four-post bedstead obstructed her view of the centre of the room.
Everything here seemed of such a magnificent type to her eyes that she
felt confused, diminished to half her height, half her strength, half her
prettiness.  The man who had conducted her retired at once, and some one
came softly round the angle of the bed-curtains.  He held out his hand
kindly—rather patronisingly: it was the solicitor whom she knew by sight.
This gentleman led her forward, as if she had been a lamb rather than a
woman, till the occupant of the bed was revealed.

The Baron’s eyes were closed, and her entry had been so noiseless that he
did not open them.  The pallor of his face nearly matched the white
bed-linen, and his dark hair and heavy black moustache were like dashes
of ink on a clean page.  Near him sat the parson and another gentleman,
whom she afterwards learnt to be a London physician; and on the parson
whispering a few words the Baron opened his eyes.  As soon as he saw her
he smiled faintly, and held out his hand.

Margery would have wept for him, if she had not been too overawed and
palpitating to do anything.  She quite forgot what she had come for,
shook hands with him mechanically, and could hardly return an answer to
his weak ‘Dear Margery, you see how I am—how are you?’

In preparing for marriage she had not calculated on such a scene as this.
Her affection for the Baron had too much of the vague in it to afford her
trustfulness now.  She wished she had not come.  On a sign from the Baron
the lawyer brought her a chair, and the oppressive silence was broken by
the Baron’s words.

‘I am pulled down to death’s door, Margery,’ he said; ‘and I suppose I
soon shall pass through . . . My peace has been much disturbed in this
illness, for just before it attacked me I received—that present you
returned, from which, and in other ways, I learnt that you had lost your
chance of marriage . . . Now it was I who did the harm, and you can
imagine how the news has affected me.  It has worried me all the illness
through, and I cannot dismiss my error from my mind . . . I want to right
the wrong I have done you before I die.  Margery, you have always obeyed
me, and, strange as the request may be, will you obey me now?’

She whispered ‘Yes.’

‘Well, then,’ said the Baron, ‘these three gentlemen are here for a
special purpose: one helps the body—he’s called a physician; another
helps the soul—he’s a parson; the other helps the understanding—he’s a
lawyer.  They are here partly on my account, and partly on yours.’

The speaker then made a sign to the lawyer, who went out of the door.  He
came back almost instantly, but not alone.  Behind him, dressed up in his
best clothes, with a flower in his buttonhole and a bridegroom’s air,
walked—Jim.




CHAPTER XII.


Margery could hardly repress a scream.  As for flushing and blushing, she
had turned hot and turned pale so many times already during the evening,
that there was really now nothing of that sort left for her to do; and
she remained in complexion much as before.  O, the mockery of it!  That
secret dream—that sweet word ‘Baroness!’—which had sustained her all the
way along.  Instead of a Baron there stood Jim, white-waistcoated,
demure, every hair in place, and, if she mistook not, even a deedy spark
in his eye.

Jim’s surprising presence on the scene may be briefly accounted for.  His
resolve to seek an explanation with the Baron at all risks had proved
unexpectedly easy: the interview had at once been granted, and then,
seeing the crisis at which matters stood, the Baron had generously
revealed to Jim the whole of his indebtedness to and knowledge of
Margery.  The truth of the Baron’s statement, the innocent nature as yet
of the acquaintanceship, his sorrow for the rupture he had produced, was
so evident that, far from having any further doubts of his patron, Jim
frankly asked his advice on the next step to be pursued.  At this stage
the Baron fell ill, and, desiring much to see the two young people united
before his death, he had sent anew Hayward, and proposed the plan which
they were to now about to attempt—a marriage at the bedside of the sick
man by special licence.  The influence at Lambeth of some friends of the
Baron’s, and the charitable bequests of his late mother to several
deserving Church funds, were generally supposed to be among the reasons
why the application for the licence was not refused.

This, however, is of small consequence.  The Baron probably knew, in
proposing this method of celebrating the marriage, that his enormous
power over her would outweigh any sentimental obstacles which she might
set up—inward objections that, without his presence and firmness, might
prove too much for her acquiescence.  Doubtless he foresaw, too, the
advantage of getting her into the house before making the individuality
of her husband clear to her mind.

Now, the Baron’s conjectures were right as to the event, but wrong as to
the motives.  Margery was a perfect little dissembler on some occasions,
and one of them was when she wished to hide any sudden mortification that
might bring her into ridicule.  She had no sooner recovered from her
first fit of discomfiture than pride bade her suffer anything rather than
reveal her absurd disappointment.  Hence the scene progressed as follows:

‘Come here, Hayward,’ said the invalid.  Hayward came near.  The Baron,
holding her hand in one of his own, and her lover’s in the other,
continued, ‘Will you, in spite of your recent vexation with her, marry
her now if she does not refuse?’

‘I will, sir,’ said Jim promptly.

‘And Margery, what do you say?  It is merely a setting of things right.
You have already promised this young man to be his wife, and should, of
course, perform your promise.  You don’t dislike Jim?’

‘O, no, sir,’ she said, in a low, dry voice.

‘I like him better than I can tell you,’ said the Baron.  ‘He is an
honourable man, and will make you a good husband.  You must remember that
marriage is a life contract, in which general compatibility of temper and
worldly position is of more importance than fleeting passion, which never
long survives.  Now, will you, at my earnest request, and before I go to
the South of Europe to die, agree to make this good man happy?  I have
expressed your views on the subject, haven’t I, Hayward?’

‘To a T, sir,’ said Jim emphatically; with a motion of raising his hat to
his influential ally, till he remembered he had no hat on.  ‘And, though
I could hardly expect Margery to gie in for my asking, I feels she ought
to gie in for yours.’

‘And you accept him, my little friend?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she murmured, ‘if he’ll agree to a thing or two.’

‘Doubtless he will—what are they?’

‘That I shall not be made to live with him till I am in the mind for it;
and that my having him shall be kept unknown for the present.’

‘Well, what do you think of it, Hayward?’

‘Anything that you or she may wish I’ll do, my noble lord,’ said Jim.

‘Well, her request is not unreasonable, seeing that the proceedings are,
on my account, a little hurried.  So we’ll proceed.  You rather expected
this, from my allusion to a ceremony in my note, did you not, Margery?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said she, with an effort.

‘Good; I thought so; you looked so little surprised.’

We now leave the scene in the bedroom for a spot not many yards off.

When the carriage seen by Margery at the door was driving up to Mount
Lodge it arrested the attention, not only of the young girl, but of a man
who had for some time been moving slowly about the opposite lawn, engaged
in some operation while he smoked a short pipe.  A short observation of
his doings would have shown that he was sheltering some delicate plants
from an expected frost, and that he was the gardener.  When the light at
the door fell upon the entering forms of parson and lawyer—the former a
stranger, the latter known to him—the gardener walked thoughtfully round
the house.  Reaching the small side-entrance he was further surprised to
see it noiselessly open to a young woman, in whose momentarily illumined
features he discerned those of Margery Tucker.

Altogether there was something curious in this.  The man returned to the
lawn front, and perfunctorily went on putting shelters over certain
plants, though his thoughts were plainly otherwise engaged.  On the grass
his footsteps were noiseless, and the night moreover being still, he
could presently hear a murmuring from the bedroom window over his head.

The gardener took from a tree a ladder that he had used in nailing that
day, set it under the window, and ascended half-way, hoodwinking his
conscience by seizing a nail or two with his hand and testing their
twig-supporting powers.  He soon heard enough to satisfy him.  The words
of a church-service in the strange parson’s voice were audible in
snatches through the blind: they were words he knew to be part of the
solemnization of matrimony, such as ‘wedded wife,’ ‘richer for poorer,’
and so on; the less familiar parts being a more or less confused sound.

Satisfied that a wedding was in progress there, the gardener did not for
a moment dream that one of the contracting parties could be other than
the sick Baron.  He descended the ladder and again walked round the
house, waiting only till he saw Margery emerge from the same little door;
when, fearing that he might be discovered, he withdrew in the direction
of his own cottage.

This building stood at the lower corner of the garden, and as soon as the
gardener entered he was accosted by a handsome woman in a widow’s cap,
who called him father, and said that supper had been ready for a long
time.  They sat down, but during the meal the gardener was so abstracted
and silent that his daughter put her head winningly to one side and said,
‘What is it, father dear?’

‘Ah—what is it!’ cried the gardener.  ‘Something that makes very little
difference to me, but may be of great account to you, if you play your
cards well.  _There’s been a wedding at the Lodge to-night_!’  He related
to her, with a caution to secrecy, all that he had heard and seen.

‘We are folk that have got to get their living,’ he said, ‘and such ones
mustn’t tell tales about their betters,—Lord forgive the mockery of the
word!—but there’s something to be made of it.  She’s a nice maid; so,
Harriet, do you take the first chance you get for honouring her, before
others know what has happened.  Since this is done so privately it will
be kept private for some time—till after his death, no question;—when I
expect she’ll take this house for herself; and blaze out as a widow-lady
ten thousand pound strong.  You being a widow, she may make you her
company-keeper; and so you’ll have a home by a little contriving.’

While this conversation progressed at the gardener’s Margery was on her
way out of the Baron’s house.  She was, indeed, married.  But, as we
know, she was not married to the Baron.  The ceremony over she seemed but
little discomposed, and expressed a wish to return alone as she had come.
To this, of course, no objection could be offered under the terms of the
agreement, and wishing Jim a frigid good-bye, and the Baron a very quiet
farewell, she went out by the door which had admitted her.  Once safe and
alone in the darkness of the park she burst into tears, which dropped
upon the grass as she passed along.  In the Baron’s room she had seemed
scared and helpless; now her reason and emotions returned.  The further
she got away from the glamour of that room, and the influence of its
occupant, the more she became of opinion that she had acted foolishly.
She had disobediently left her father’s house, to obey him here.  She had
pleased everybody but herself.

However, thinking was now too late.  How she got into her grandmother’s
house she hardly knew; but without a supper, and without confronting
either her relative or Edy, she went to bed.




CHAPTER XIII.


On going out into the garden next morning, with a strange sense of being
another person than herself, she beheld Jim leaning mutely over the gate.

He nodded.  ‘Good morning, Margery,’ he said civilly.

‘Good morning,’ said Margery in the same tone.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he continued.  ‘But which way was you going this
morning?’

‘I am not going anywhere just now, thank you.  But I shall go to my
father’s by-and-by with Edy.’  She went on with a sigh, ‘I have done what
he has all along wished, that is, married you; and there’s no longer
reason for enmity atween him and me.’

‘Trew—trew.  Well, as I am going the same way, I can give you a lift in
the trap, for the distance is long.’

‘No thank you—I am used to walking,’ she said.

They remained in silence, the gate between them, till Jim’s convictions
would apparently allow him to hold his peace no longer.  ‘This is a bad
job!’ he murmured.

‘It is,’ she said, as one whose thoughts have only too readily been
identified.  ‘How I came to agree to it is more than I can tell!’  And
tears began rolling down her cheeks.

‘The blame is more mine than yours, I suppose,’ he returned.  ‘I ought to
have said No, and not backed up the gentleman in carrying out this
scheme.  ’Twas his own notion entirely, as perhaps you know.  I should
never have thought of such a plan; but he said you’d be willing, and that
it would be all right; and I was too ready to believe him.’

‘The thing is, how to remedy it,’ said she bitterly.  ‘I believe, of
course, in your promise to keep this private, and not to trouble me by
calling.’

‘Certainly,’ said Jim.  ‘I don’t want to trouble you.  As for that, why,
my dear Mrs. Hayward—’

‘Don’t Mrs. Hayward me!’ said Margery sharply.  ‘I won’t be Mrs.
Hayward!’

Jim paused.  ‘Well, you are she by law, and that was all I meant,’ he
said mildly.

‘I said I would acknowledge no such thing, and I won’t.  A thing can’t be
legal when it’s against the wishes of the persons the laws are made to
protect.  So I beg you not to call me that anymore.’

‘Very well, Miss Tucker,’ said Jim deferentially.  ‘We can live on
exactly as before.  We can’t marry anybody else, that’s true; but beyond
that there’s no difference, and no harm done.  Your father ought to be
told, I suppose, even if nobody else is?  It will partly reconcile him to
you, and make your life smoother.’

Instead of directly replying, Margery exclaimed in a low voice:

‘O, it is a mistake—I didn’t see it all, owing to not having time to
reflect!  I agreed, thinking that at least I should get reconciled to
father by the step.  But perhaps he would as soon have me not married at
all as married and parted.  I must ha’ been enchanted—bewitched—when I
gave my consent to this!  I only did it to please that dear good dying
nobleman—though why he should have wished it so much I can’t tell!’

‘Nor I neither,’ said Jim.  ‘Yes, we’ve been fooled into it, Margery,’ he
said, with extraordinary gravity.  ‘He’s had his way wi’ us, and now
we’ve got to suffer for it.  Being a gentleman of patronage, and having
bought several loads of lime o’ me, and having given me all that splendid
furniture, I could hardly refuse—’

‘What, did he give you that?’

‘Ay sure—to help me win ye.’

Margery covered her face with her hands; whereupon Jim stood up from the
gate and looked critically at her.  ‘’Tis a footy plot between you two
men to—snare me!’ she exclaimed.  ‘Why should you have done it—why should
he have done it—when I’ve not deserved to be treated so.  He bought the
furniture—did he!  O, I’ve been taken in—I’ve been wronged!’  The grief
and vexation of finding that long ago, when fondly believing the Baron to
have lover-like feelings himself for her, he was still conspiring to
favour Jim’s suit, was more than she could endure.

Jim with distant courtesy waited, nibbling a straw, till her paroxysm was
over.  ‘One word, Miss Tuck—Mrs.—Margery,’ he then recommenced gravely.
‘You’ll find me man enough to respect your wish, and to leave you to
yourself—for ever and ever, if that’s all.  But I’ve just one word of
advice to render ’ee.  That is, that before you go to Silverthorn Dairy
yourself you let me drive ahead and call on your father.  He’s friends
with me, and he’s not friends with you.  I can break the news, a little
at a time, and I think I can gain his good will for you now, even though
the wedding be no natural wedding at all.  At any count, I can hear what
he’s got to say about ’ee, and come back here and tell ’ee.’

She nodded a cool assent to this, and he left her strolling about the
garden in the sunlight while he went on to reconnoitre as agreed.  It
must not be supposed that Jim’s dutiful echoes of Margery’s regret at her
precipitate marriage were all gospel; and there is no doubt that his
private intention, after telling the dairy-farmer what had happened, was
to ask his temporary assent to her caprice, till, in the course of time,
she should be reasoned out of her whims and induced to settle down with
Jim in a natural manner.  He had, it is true, been somewhat nettled by
her firm objection to him, and her keen sorrow for what she had done to
please another; but he hoped for the best.

But, alas for the astute Jim’s calculations!  He drove on to the dairy,
whose white walls now gleamed in the morning sun; made fast the horse to
a ring in the wall, and entered the barton.  Before knocking, he
perceived the dairyman walking across from a gate in the other direction,
as if he had just come in.  Jim went over to him.  Since the unfortunate
incident on the morning of the intended wedding they had merely been on
nodding terms, from a sense of awkwardness in their relations.

‘What—is that thee?’ said Dairyman Tucker, in a voice which unmistakably
startled Jim by its abrupt fierceness.  ‘A pretty fellow thou be’st!’

It was a bad beginning for the young man’s life as a son-in-law, and
augured ill for the delicate consultation he desired.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Jim.

‘Matter!  I wish some folks would burn their lime without burning other
folks’ property along wi’ it.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself.  You
call yourself a man, Jim Hayward, and an honest lime-burner, and a
respectable, market-keeping Christen, and yet at six o’clock this
morning, instead o’ being where you ought to ha’ been—at your work, there
was neither vell or mark o’ thee to be seen!’

‘Faith, I don’t know what you are raving at,’ said Jim.

‘Why—the sparks from thy couch-heap blew over upon my hay-rick, and the
rick’s burnt to ashes; and all to come out o’ my well-squeezed pocket.
I’ll tell thee what it is, young man.  There’s no business in thee.  I’ve
known Silverthorn folk, quick and dead, for the last couple-o’-score
year, and I’ve never knew one so three-cunning for harm as thee, my
gentleman lime-burner; and I reckon it one o’ the luckiest days o’ my
life when I ’scaped having thee in my family.  That maid of mine was
right; I was wrong.  She seed thee to be a drawlacheting rogue, and ’twas
her wisdom to go off that morning and get rid o’ thee.  I commend her
for’t, and I’m going to fetch her home to-morrow.’

‘You needn’t take the trouble.  She’s coming home-along to-night of her
own accord.  I have seen her this morning, and she told me so.’

‘So much the better.  I’ll welcome her warm.  Nation!  I’d sooner see her
married to the parish fool than thee.  Not you—you don’t care for my hay.
Tarrying about where you shouldn’t be, in bed, no doubt; that’s what you
was a-doing.  Now, don’t you darken my doors again, and the sooner you be
off my bit o’ ground the better I shall be pleased.’

Jim looked, as he felt, stultified.  If the rick had been really
destroyed, a little blame certainly attached to him, but he could not
understand how it had happened.  However, blame or none, it was clear he
could not, with any self-respect, declare himself to be this peppery old
gaffer’s son-in-law in the face of such an attack as this.

For months—almost years—the one transaction that had seemed necessary to
compose these two families satisfactorily was Jim’s union with Margery.
No sooner had it been completed than it appeared on all sides as the
gravest mishap for both.  Stating coldly that he would discover how much
of the accident was to be attributed to his negligence, and pay the
damage, he went out of the barton, and returned the way he had come.

Margery had been keeping a look-out for him, particularly wishing him not
to enter the house, lest others should see the seriousness of their
interview; and as soon as she heard wheels she went to the gate, which
was out of view.

‘Surely father has been speaking roughly to you!’ she said, on seeing his
face.

‘Not the least doubt that he have,’ said Jim.

‘But is he still angry with me?’

‘Not in the least.  He’s waiting to welcome ’ee.’

‘Ah! because I’ve married you.’

‘Because he thinks you have not married me!  He’s jawed me up hill and
down.  He hates me; and for your sake I have not explained a word.’

Margery looked towards home with a sad, severe gaze.  ‘Mr. Hayward,’ she
said, ‘we have made a great mistake, and we are in a strange position.’

‘True, but I’ll tell you what, mistress—I won’t stand—’  He stopped
suddenly.  ‘Well, well; I’ve promised!’ he quietly added.

‘We must suffer for our mistake,’ she went on.  ‘The way to suffer least
is to keep our own counsel on what happened last evening, and not to
meet.  I must now return to my father.’

He inclined his head in indifferent assent, and she went indoors, leaving
him there.




CHAPTER XIV.


Margery returned home, as she had decided, and resumed her old life at
Silverthorn.  And seeing her father’s animosity towards Jim, she told him
not a word of the marriage.

Her inner life, however, was not what it once had been.  She had suffered
a mental and emotional displacement—a shock, which had set a shade of
astonishment on her face as a permanent thing.

Her indignation with the Baron for collusion with Jim, at first bitter,
lessened with the lapse of a few weeks, and at length vanished in the
interest of some tidings she received one day.

The Baron was not dead, but he was no longer at the Lodge.  To the
surprise of the physicians, a sufficient improvement had taken place in
his condition to permit of his removal before the cold weather came.  His
desire for removal had been such, indeed, that it was advisable to carry
it out at almost any risk.  The plan adopted had been to have him borne
on men’s shoulders in a sort of palanquin to the shore near Idmouth, a
distance of several miles, where a yacht lay awaiting him.  By this means
the noise and jolting of a carriage, along irregular bye-roads, were
avoided.  The singular procession over the fields took place at night,
and was witnessed by but few people, one being a labouring man, who
described the scene to Margery.  When the seaside was reached a long,
narrow gangway was laid from the deck of the yacht to the shore, which
was so steep as to allow the yacht to lie quite near.  The men, with
their burden, ascended by the light of lanterns, the sick man was laid in
the cabin, and, as soon as his bearers had returned to the shore, the
gangway was removed, a rope was heard skirring over wood in the darkness,
the yacht quivered, spread her woven wings to the air, and moved away.
Soon she was but a small, shapeless phantom upon the wide breast of the
sea.

It was said that the yacht was bound for Algiers.

When the inimical autumn and winter weather came on, Margery wondered if
he were still alive.  The house being shut up, and the servants gone, she
had no means of knowing, till, on a particular Saturday, her father drove
her to Exonbury market.  Here, in attending to his business, he left her
to herself for awhile.  Walking in a quiet street in the professional
quarter of the town, she saw coming towards her the solicitor who had
been present at the wedding, and who had acted for the Baron in various
small local matters during his brief residence at the Lodge.

She reddened to peony hues, averted her eyes, and would have passed him.
But he crossed over and barred the pavement, and when she met his glance
he was looking with friendly severity at her.  The street was quiet, and
he said in a low voice, ‘How’s the husband?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ said she.

‘What—and are your stipulations about secrecy and separate living still
in force?’

‘They will always be,’ she replied decisively.  ‘Mr. Hayward and I agreed
on the point, and we have not the slightest wish to change the
arrangement.’

‘H’m.  Then ’tis Miss Tucker to the world; Mrs. Hayward to me and one or
two others only?’

Margery nodded.  Then she nerved herself by an effort, and, though
blushing painfully, asked, ‘May I put one question, sir?  Is the Baron
dead?’

‘He is dead to you and to all of us.  Why should you ask?’

‘Because, if he’s alive, I am sorry I married James Hayward.  If he is
dead I do not much mind my marriage.’

‘I repeat, he is dead to you,’ said the lawyer emphatically.  ‘I’ll tell
you all I know.  My professional services for him ended with his
departure from this country; but I think I should have heard from him if
he had been alive still.  I have not heard at all: and this, taken in
connection with the nature of his illness, leaves no doubt in my mind
that he is dead.’

Margery sighed, and thanking the lawyer she left him with a tear for the
Baron in her eye.  After this incident she became more restful; and the
time drew on for her periodical visit to her grandmother.

A few days subsequent to her arrival her aged relative asked her to go
with a message to the gardener at Mount Lodge (who still lived on there,
keeping the grounds in order for the landlord).  Margery hated that
direction now, but she went.  The Lodge, which she saw over the trees,
was to her like a skull from which the warm and living flesh had
vanished.  It was twilight by the time she reached the cottage at the
bottom of the Lodge garden, and, the room being illuminated within, she
saw through the window a woman she had never seen before.  She was dark,
and rather handsome, and when Margery knocked she opened the door.  It
was the gardener’s widowed daughter, who had been advised to make friends
with Margery.

She now found her opportunity.  Margery’s errand was soon completed, the
young widow, to her surprise, treating her with preternatural respect,
and afterwards offering to accompany her home.  Margery was not sorry to
have a companion in the gloom, and they walked on together.  The widow,
Mrs. Peach, was demonstrative and confidential; and told Margery all
about herself.  She had come quite recently to live with her
father—during the Baron’s illness, in fact—and her husband had been
captain of a ketch.

‘I saw you one morning, ma’am,’ she said.  ‘But you didn’t see me.  It
was when you were crossing the hill in sight of the Lodge.  You looked at
it, and sighed.  ’Tis the lot of widows to sigh, ma’am, is it not?’

‘Widows—yes, I suppose; but what do you mean?’

Mrs. Peach lowered her voice.  ‘I can’t say more, ma’am, with proper
respect.  But there seems to be no question of the poor Baron’s death;
and though these foreign princes can take (as my poor husband used to
tell me) what they call left-handed wives, and leave them behind when
they go abroad, widowhood is widowhood, left-handed or right.  And
really, to be the left-handed wife of a foreign baron is nobler than to
be married all round to a common man.  You’ll excuse my freedom, ma’am;
but being a widow myself, I have pitied you from my heart; so young as
you are, and having to keep it a secret, and (excusing me) having no
money out of his vast riches because ’tis swallowed up by Baroness Number
One.’

Now Margery did not understand a word more of this than the bare fact
that Mrs. Peach suspected her to be the Baron’s undowered widow, and such
was the milkmaid’s nature that she did not deny the widow’s impeachment.
The latter continued—

‘But ah, ma’am, all your troubles are straight backward in your
memory—while I have troubles before as well as grief behind.’

‘What may they be, Mrs. Peach?’ inquired Margery with an air of the
Baroness.

The other dropped her voice to revelation tones: ‘I have been forgetful
enough of my first man to lose my heart to a second!’

‘You shouldn’t do that—it is wrong.  You should control your feelings.’

‘But how am I to control my feelings?’

‘By going to your dead husband’s grave, and things of that sort.’

‘Do you go to your dead husband’s grave?’

‘How can I go to Algiers?’

‘Ah—too true!  Well, I’ve tried everything to cure myself—read the words
against it, gone to the Table the first Sunday of every month, and all
sorts.  But, avast, my shipmate!—as my poor man used to say—there ’tis
just the same.  In short, I’ve made up my mind to encourage the new one.
’Tis flattering that I, a new-comer, should have been found out by a
young man so soon.’

‘Who is he?’ said Margery listlessly.

‘A master lime-burner.’

‘A master lime-burner?’

‘That’s his profession.  He’s a partner-in-co., doing very well indeed.’

‘But what’s his name?’

‘I don’t like to tell you his name, for, though ’tis night, that covers
all shame-facedness, my face is as hot as a ’Talian iron, I declare!  Do
you just feel it.’

Margery put her hand on Mrs. Peach’s face, and, sure enough, hot it was.
‘Does he come courting?’ she asked quickly.

‘Well only in the way of business.  He never comes unless lime is wanted
in the neighbourhood.  He’s in the Yeomanry, too, and will look very fine
when he comes out in regimentals for drill in May.’

‘Oh—in the Yeomanry,’ Margery said, with a slight relief.  ‘Then it
can’t—is he a young man?’

‘Yes, junior partner-in-co.’

The description had an odd resemblance to Jim, of whom Margery had not
heard a word for months.  He had promised silence and absence, and had
fulfilled his promise literally, with a gratuitous addition that was
rather amazing, if indeed it were Jim whom the widow loved.  One point in
the description puzzled Margery: Jim was not in the Yeomanry, unless, by
a surprising development of enterprise, he had entered it recently.

At parting Margery said, with an interest quite tender, ‘I should like to
see you again, Mrs. Peach, and hear of your attachment.  When can you
call?’

‘Oh—any time, dear Baroness, I’m sure—if you think I am good enough.’

‘Indeed, I do, Mrs. Peach.  Come as soon as you’ve seen the lime-burner
again.’




CHAPTER XV.


Seeing that Jim lived several miles from the widow, Margery was rather
surprised, and even felt a slight sinking of the heart, when her new
acquaintance appeared at her door so soon as the evening of the following
Monday.  She asked Margery to walk out with her, which the young woman
readily did.

‘I am come at once,’ said the widow breathlessly, as soon as they were in
the lane, ‘for it is so exciting that I can’t keep it.  I must tell it to
somebody, if only a bird, or a cat, or a garden snail.’

‘What is it?’ asked her companion.

‘I’ve pulled grass from my husband’s grave to cure it—wove the blades
into true lover’s knots; took off my shoes upon the sod; but, avast, my
shipmate,—’

‘Upon the sod—why?’

‘To feel the damp earth he’s in, and make the sense of it enter my soul.
But no.  It has swelled to a head; he is going to meet me at the Yeomanry
Review.’

‘The master lime-burner?’

The widow nodded.

‘When is it to be?’

‘To-morrow.  He looks so lovely in his accoutrements!  He’s such a
splendid soldier; that was the last straw that kindled my soul to say
yes.  He’s home from Exonbury for a night between the drills,’ continued
Mrs. Peach.  ‘He goes back to-morrow morning for the Review, and when
it’s over he’s going to meet me.  But, guide my heart, there he is!’

Her exclamation had rise in the sudden appearance of a brilliant red
uniform through the trees, and the tramp of a horse carrying the wearer
thereof.  In another half-minute the military gentleman would have turned
the corner, and faced them.

‘He’d better not see me; he’ll think I know too much,’ said Margery
precipitately.  ‘I’ll go up here.’

The widow, whose thoughts had been of the same cast, seemed much relieved
to see Margery disappear in the plantation, in the midst of a spring
chorus of birds.  Once among the trees, Margery turned her head, and,
before she could see the rider’s person she recognized the horse as Tony,
the lightest of three that Jim and his partner owned, for the purpose of
carting out lime to their customers.

Jim, then, had joined the Yeomanry since his estrangement from Margery.
A man who had worn the young Queen Victoria’s uniform for seven days only
could not be expected to look as if it were part of his person, in the
manner of long-trained soldiers; but he was a well-formed young fellow,
and of an age when few positions came amiss to one who has the capacity
to adapt himself to circumstances.

Meeting the blushing Mrs. Peach (to whom Margery in her mind sternly
denied the right to blush at all), Jim alighted and moved on with her,
probably at Mrs. Peach’s own suggestion; so that what they said, how long
they remained together, and how they parted, Margery knew not.  She might
have known some of these things by waiting; but the presence of Jim had
bred in her heart a sudden disgust for the widow, and a general sense of
discomfiture.  She went away in an opposite direction, turning her head
and saying to the unconscious Jim, ‘There’s a fine rod in pickle for you,
my gentleman, if you carry out that pretty scheme!’

Jim’s military _coup_ had decidedly astonished her.   What he might do
next she could not conjecture.  The idea of his doing anything
sufficiently brilliant to arrest her attention would have seemed
ludicrous, had not Jim, by entering the Yeomanry, revealed a capacity for
dazzling exploits which made it unsafe to predict any limitation to his
powers.

Margery was now excited.  The daring of the wretched Jim in bursting into
scarlet amazed her as much as his doubtful acquaintanceship with the
demonstrative Mrs. Peach.  To go to that Review, to watch the pair, to
eclipse Mrs. Peach in brilliancy, to meet and pass them in withering
contempt—if she only could do it!  But, alas! she was a forsaken woman.

‘If the Baron were alive, or in England,’ she said to herself (for
sometimes she thought he might possibly be alive), ‘and he were to take
me to this Review, wouldn’t I show that forward Mrs. Peach what a lady is
like, and keep among the select company, and not mix with the common
people at all!’

It might at first sight be thought that the best course for Margery at
this juncture would have been to go to Jim, and nip the intrigue in the
bud without further scruple.  But her own declaration in after days was
that whoever could say that was far from realizing her situation.  It was
hard to break such ice as divided their two lives now, and to attempt it
at that moment was a too humiliating proclamation of defeat.  The only
plan she could think of—perhaps not a wise one in the circumstances—was
to go to the Review herself; and be the gayest there.

A method of doing this with some propriety soon occurred to her.  She
dared not ask her father, who scorned to waste time in sight-seeing, and
whose animosity towards Jim knew no abatement; but she might call on her
old acquaintance, Mr. Vine, Jim’s partner, who would probably be going
with the rest of the holiday-folk, and ask if she might accompany him in
his spring-trap.  She had no sooner perceived the feasibility of this,
through her being at her grandmother’s, than she decided to meet with the
old man early the next morning.

In the meantime Jim and Mrs. Peach had walked slowly along the road
together, Jim leading the horse, and Mrs. Peach informing him that her
father, the gardener, was at Jim’s village further on, and that she had
come to meet him.  Jim, for reasons of his own, was going to sleep at his
partner’s that night, and thus their route was the same.  The shades of
eve closed in upon them as they walked, and by the time they reached the
lime-kiln, which it was necessary to pass to get to the village, it was
quite dark.  Jim stopped at the kiln, to see if matters had progressed
rightly in his seven days’ absence, and Mrs. Peach, who stuck to him like
a teazle, stopped also, saying she would wait for her father there.

She held the horse while he ascended to the top of the kiln.  Then
rejoining her, and not quite knowing what to do, he stood beside her
looking at the flames, which to-night burnt up brightly, shining a long
way into the dark air, even up to the ramparts of the earthwork above
them, and overhead into the bosoms of the clouds.

It was during this proceeding that a carriage, drawn by a pair of dark
horses, came along the turnpike road.  The light of the kiln caused the
horses to swerve a little, and the occupant of the carriage looked out.
He saw the bluish, lightning-like flames from the limestone, rising from
the top of the furnace, and hard by the figures of Jim Hayward, the
widow, and the horse, standing out with spectral distinctness against the
mass of night behind.  The scene wore the aspect of some unholy
assignation in Pandaemonium, and it was all the more impressive from the
fact that both Jim and the woman were quite unconscious of the striking
spectacle they presented.  The gentleman in the carriage watched them
till he was borne out of sight.

Having seen to the kiln, Jim and the widow walked on again, and soon Mrs.
Peach’s father met them, and relieved Jim of the lady.  When they had
parted, Jim, with an expiration not unlike a breath of relief; went on to
Mr. Vine’s, and, having put the horse into the stable, entered the house.
His partner was seated at the table, solacing himself after the labours
of the day by luxurious alternations between a long clay pipe and a mug
of perry.

‘Well,’ said Jim eagerly, ‘what’s the news—how do she take it?’

‘Sit down—sit down,’ said Vine.  ‘’Tis working well; not but that I
deserve something o’ thee for the trouble I’ve had in watching her.  The
soldiering was a fine move; but the woman is a better!—who invented it?’

‘I myself,’ said Jim modestly.

‘Well; jealousy is making her rise like a thunderstorm, and in a day or
two you’ll have her for the asking, my sonny.  What’s the next step?’

‘The widow is getting rather a weight upon a feller, worse luck,’ said
Jim.  ‘But I must keep it up until to-morrow, at any rate.  I have
promised to see her at the Review, and now the great thing is that
Margery should see we a-smiling together—I in my full-dress uniform and
clinking arms o’ war.  ’Twill be a good strong sting, and will end the
business, I hope.  Couldn’t you manage to put the hoss in and drive her
there?  She’d go if you were to ask her.’

‘With all my heart,’ said Mr. Vine, moistening the end of a new pipe in
his perry.  ‘I can call at her grammer’s for her—’twill be all in my
way.’




CHAPTER XVI.


Margery duly followed up her intention by arraying herself the next
morning in her loveliest guise, and keeping watch for Mr. Vine’s
appearance upon the high road, feeling certain that his would form one in
the procession of carts and carriages which set in towards Exonbury that
day.  Jim had gone by at a very early hour, and she did not see him pass.
Her anticipation was verified by the advent of Mr. Vine about eleven
o’clock, dressed to his highest effort; but Margery was surprised to find
that, instead of her having to stop him, he pulled in towards the gate of
his own accord.  The invitation planned between Jim and the old man on
the previous night was now promptly given, and, as may be supposed, as
promptly accepted.  Such a strange coincidence she had never before
known.  She was quite ready, and they drove onward at once.

The Review was held on some high ground a little way out of the city, and
her conductor suggested that they should put up the horse at the inn, and
walk to the field—a plan which pleased her well, for it was more easy to
take preliminary observations on foot without being seen herself than
when sitting elevated in a vehicle.

They were just in time to secure a good place near the front, and in a
few minutes after their arrival the reviewing officer came on the ground.
Margery’s eye had rapidly run over the troop in which Jim was enrolled,
and she discerned him in one of the ranks, looking remarkably new and
bright, both as to uniform and countenance.  Indeed, if she had not
worked herself into such a desperate state of mind she would have felt
proud of him then and there.  His shapely upright figure was quite
noteworthy in the row of rotund yeomen on his right and left; while his
charger Tony expressed by his bearing, even more than Jim, that he knew
nothing about lime-carts whatever, and everything about trumpets and
glory.  How Jim could have scrubbed Tony to such shining blackness she
could not tell, for the horse in his natural state was ingrained with
lime-dust, that burnt the colour out of his coat as it did out of Jim’s
hair.  Now he pranced martially, and was a war-horse every inch of him.

Having discovered Jim her next search was for Mrs. Peach, and, by dint of
some oblique glancing Margery indignantly discovered the widow in the
most forward place of all, her head and bright face conspicuously
advanced; and, what was more shocking, she had abandoned her mourning for
a violet drawn-bonnet and a gay spencer, together with a parasol
luxuriously fringed in a way Margery had never before seen.  ‘Where did
she get the money?’ said Margery, under her breath.  ‘And to forget that
poor sailor so soon!’

These general reflections were precipitately postponed by her discovering
that Jim and the widow were perfectly alive to each other’s whereabouts,
and in the interchange of telegraphic signs of affection, which on the
latter’s part took the form of a playful fluttering of her handkerchief
or waving of her parasol.  Richard Vine had placed Margery in front of
him, to protect her from the crowd, as he said, he himself surveying the
scene over her bonnet.  Margery would have been even more surprised than
she was if she had known that Jim was not only aware of Mrs. Peach’s
presence, but also of her own, the treacherous Mr. Vine having drawn out
his flame-coloured handkerchief and waved it to Jim over the young
woman’s head as soon as they had taken up their position.

‘My partner makes a tidy soldier, eh—Miss Tucker?’ said the senior
lime-burner.  ‘It is my belief as a Christian that he’s got a party here
that he’s making signs to—that handsome figure o’ fun straight over-right
him.’

‘Perhaps so,’ she said.

‘And it’s growing warm between ’em if I don’t mistake,’ continued the
merciless Vine.

Margery was silent, biting her lip; and the troops being now set in
motion, all signalling ceased for the present between soldier Hayward and
his pretended sweetheart.

‘Have you a piece of paper that I could make a memorandum on, Mr. Vine?’
asked Margery.

Vine took out his pocket-book and tore a leaf from it, which he handed
her with a pencil.

‘Don’t move from here—I’ll return in a minute,’ she continued, with the
innocence of a woman who means mischief.  And, withdrawing herself to the
back, where the grass was clear, she pencilled down the words

                             ‘JIM’S MARRIED.’

Armed with this document she crept into the throng behind the
unsuspecting Mrs. Peach, slipped the paper into her pocket on the top of
her handkerchief; and withdrew unobserved, rejoining Mr. Vine with a
bearing of _nonchalance_.

By-and-by the troops were in different order, Jim taking a left-hand
position almost close to Mrs. Peach.  He bent down and said a few words
to her.  From her manner of nodding assent it was surely some arrangement
about a meeting by-and-by when Jim’s drill was over, and Margery was more
certain of the fact when, the Review having ended, and the people having
strolled off to another part of the field where sports were to take
place, Mrs. Peach tripped away in the direction of the city.

‘I’ll just say a word to my partner afore he goes off the ground, if
you’ll spare me a minute,’ said the old lime-burner.  ‘Please stay here
till I’m back again.’  He edged along the front till he reached Jim.

‘How is she?’ said the latter.

‘In a trimming sweat,’ said Mr. Vine.  ‘And my counsel to ’ee is to carry
this larry no further.  ’Twill do no good.  She’s as ready to make
friends with ’ee as any wife can be; and more showing off can only do
harm.’

‘But I must finish off with a spurt,’ said Jim.  ‘And this is how I am
going to do it.  I have arranged with Mrs. Peach that, as soon as we
soldiers have entered the town and been dismissed, I’ll meet her there.
It is really to say good-bye, but she don’t know that; and I wanted it to
look like a lopement to Margery’s eyes.  When I’m clear of Mrs. Peach
I’ll come back here and make it up with Margery on the spot.  But don’t
say I’m coming, or she may be inclined to throw off again.  Just hint to
her that I may be meaning to be off to London with the widow.’

The old man still insisted that this was going too far.

‘No, no, it isn’t,’ said Jim.  ‘I know how to manage her.  ’Twill just
mellow her heart nicely by the time I come back.  I must bring her down
real tender, or ’twill all fail.’

His senior reluctantly gave in and returned to Margery.  A short time
afterwards the Yeomanry hand struck up, and Jim with the regiment
followed towards Exonbury.

‘Yes, yes; they are going to meet,’ said Margery to herself, perceiving
that Mrs. Peach had so timed her departure as to be in the town at Jim’s
dismounting.

‘Now we will go and see the games,’ said Mr. Vine; ‘they are really worth
seeing.  There’s greasy poles, and jumping in sacks, and other trials of
the intellect, that nobody ought to miss who wants to be abreast of his
generation.’

Margery felt so indignant at the apparent assignation, which seemed about
to take place despite her anonymous writing, that she helplessly assented
to go anywhere, dropping behind Vine, that he might not see her mood.

Jim followed out his programme with literal exactness.  No sooner was the
troop dismissed in the city than he sent Tony to stable and joined Mrs.
Peach, who stood on the edge of the pavement expecting him.  But this
acquaintance was to end: he meant to part from her for ever and in the
quickest time, though civilly; for it was important to be with Margery as
soon as possible.  He had nearly completed the manœuvre to his
satisfaction when, in drawing her handkerchief from her pocket to wipe
the tears from her eyes, Mrs. Peach’s hand grasped the paper, which she
read at once.

‘What! is that true?’ she said, holding it out to Jim.

Jim started and admitted that it was, beginning an elaborate explanation
and apologies.  But Mrs. Peach was thoroughly roused, and then overcome.
‘He’s married, he’s married!’ she said, and swooned, or feigned to swoon,
so that Jim was obliged to support her.

‘He’s married, he’s married!’ said a boy hard by who watched the scene
with interest.

‘He’s married, he’s married!’ said a hilarious group of other boys near,
with smiles several inches broad, and shining teeth; and so the
exclamation echoed down the street.

Jim cursed his ill-luck; the loss of time that this dilemma entailed grew
serious; for Mrs. Peach was now in such a hysterical state that he could
not leave her with any good grace or feeling.  It was necessary to take
her to a refreshment room, lavish restoratives upon her, and altogether
to waste nearly half an hour.  When she had kept him as long as she
chose, she forgave him; and thus at last he got away, his heart swelling
with tenderness towards Margery.  He at once hurried up the street to
effect the reconciliation with her.

‘How shall I do it?’ he said to himself.  ‘Why, I’ll step round to her
side, fish for her hand, draw it through my arm as if I wasn’t aware of
it.  Then she’ll look in my face, I shall look in hers, and we shall
march off the field triumphant, and the thing will be done without
takings or tears.’

He entered the field and went straight as an arrow to the place appointed
for the meeting.  It was at the back of a refreshment tent outside the
mass of spectators, and divided from their view by the tent itself.  He
turned the corner of the canvas, and there beheld Vine at the indicated
spot.  But Margery was not with him.

Vine’s hat was thrust back into his poll.  His face was pale, and his
manner bewildered.  ‘Hullo? what’s the matter?’ said Jim.  ‘Where’s my
Margery?’

‘You’ve carried this footy game too far, my man!’ exclaimed Vine, with
the air of a friend who has ‘always told you so.’  ‘You ought to have
dropped it several days ago, when she would have come to ’ee like a
cooing dove.  Now this is the end o’t!’

‘Hey! what, my Margery?  Has anything happened, for God’s sake?’

‘She’s gone.’

‘Where to?’

‘That’s more than earthly man can tell!  I never see such a thing!  ’Twas
a stroke o’ the black art—as if she were sperrited away.  When we got to
the games I said—mind, you told me to!—I said, “Jim Hayward thinks o’
going off to London with that widow woman”—mind you told me to!  She
showed no wonderment, though a’ seemed very low.  Then she said to me, “I
don’t like standing here in this slummocky crowd.  I shall feel more at
home among the gentlepeople.”  And then she went to where the carriages
were drawn up, and near her there was a grand coach, a-blazing with lions
and unicorns, and hauled by two coal-black horses.  I hardly thought much
of it then, and by degrees lost sight of her behind it.  Presently the
other carriages moved off, and I thought still to see her standing there.
But no, she had vanished; and then I saw the grand coach rolling away,
and glimpsed Margery in it, beside a fine dark gentleman with black
mustachios, and a very pale prince-like face.  As soon as the horses got
into the hard road they rattled on like hell-and-skimmer, and went out of
sight in the dust, and—that’s all.  If you’d come back a little sooner
you’d ha’ caught her.’

Jim had turned whiter than his pipeclay.  ‘O, this is too bad—too bad!’
he cried in anguish, striking his brow.  ‘That paper and that fainting
woman kept me so long.  Who could have done it?  But ’tis my fault.  I’ve
stung her too much.  I shouldn’t have carried it so far.’

‘You shouldn’t—just what I said,’ replied his senior.

‘She thinks I’ve gone off with that cust widow; and to spite me she’s
gone off with the man!  Do you know who that stranger wi’ the lions and
unicorns is?  Why, ’tis that foreigner who calls himself a Baron, and
took Mount Lodge for six months last year to make mischief—a villain!  O,
my Margery—that it should come to this!  She’s lost, she’s ruined!—Which
way did they go?’

Jim turned to follow in the direction indicated, when, behold, there
stood at his back her father, Dairyman Tucker.

‘Now look here, young man,’ said Dairyman Tucker.  ‘I’ve just heard all
that wailing—and straightway will ask ’ee to stop it sharp.  ’Tis like
your brazen impudence to teave and wail when you be another woman’s
husband; yes, faith, I see’d her a-fainting in yer arms when you wanted
to get away from her, and honest folk a-standing round who knew you’d
married her, and said so.  I heard it, though you didn’t see me.  “He’s
married!” says they.  Some sly register-office business, no doubt; but
sly doings will out.  As for Margery—who’s to be called higher titles in
these parts hencefor’ard—I’m her father, and I say it’s all right what
she’s done.  Don’t I know private news, hey?  Haven’t I just learnt that
secret weddings of high people can happen at expected deathbeds by
special licence, as well as low people at registrars’ offices?  And can’t
husbands come back and claim their own when they choose?  Begone, young
man, and leave noblemen’s wives alone; and I thank God I shall be rid of
a numskull!’

Swift words of explanation rose to Jim’s lips, but they paused there and
died.  At that last moment he could not, as Margery’s husband, announce
Margery’s shame and his own, and transform her father’s triumph to
wretchedness at a blow.

‘I—I—must leave here,’ he stammered.  Going from the place in an opposite
course to that of the fugitives, he doubled when out of sight, and in an
incredibly short space had entered the town.  Here he made inquiries for
the emblazoned carriage, and gained from one or two persons a general
idea of its route.  They thought it had taken the highway to London.
Saddling poor Tony before he had half eaten his corn, Jim galloped along
the same road.




CHAPTER XVII.


Now Jim was quite mistaken in supposing that by leaving the field in a
roundabout manner he had deceived Dairyman Tucker as to his object.  That
astute old man immediately divined that Jim was meaning to track the
fugitives, in ignorance (as the dairyman supposed) of their lawful
relation.  He was soon assured of the fact, for, creeping to a remote
angle of the field, he saw Jim hastening into the town.  Vowing vengeance
on the young lime-burner for his mischievous interference between a
nobleman and his secretly-wedded wife, the dairy-farmer determined to
balk him.

Tucker had ridden on to the Review ground, so that there was no necessity
for him, as there had been for poor Jim, to re-enter the town before
starting.  The dairyman hastily untied his mare from the row of other
horses, mounted, and descended to a bridle-path which would take him
obliquely into the London road a mile or so ahead.  The old man’s route
being along one side of an equilateral triangle, while Jim’s was along
two sides of the same, the former was at the point of intersection long
before Hayward.

Arrived here, the dairyman pulled up and looked around.  It was a spot at
which the highway forked; the left arm, the more important, led on
through Sherton Abbas and Melchester to London; the right to Idmouth and
the coast.  Nothing was visible on the white track to London; but on the
other there appeared the back of a carriage, which rapidly ascended a
distant hill and vanished under the trees.  It was the Baron’s who,
according to the sworn information of the gardener at Mount Lodge, had
made Margery his wife.

The carriage having vanished, the dairyman gazed in the opposite
direction, towards Exonbury.  Here he beheld Jim in his regimentals,
laboriously approaching on Tony’s back.

Soon he reached the forking roads, and saw the dairyman by the wayside.
But Jim did not halt.  Then the dairyman practised the greatest duplicity
of his life.

‘Right along the London road, if you want to catch ’em!’ he said.

‘Thank ’ee, dairyman, thank ’ee!’ cried Jim, his pale face lighting up
with gratitude, for he believed that Tucker had learnt his mistake from
Vine, and had come to his assistance.  Without drawing rein he diminished
along the road not taken by the flying pair.  The dairyman rubbed his
hands with delight, and returned to the city as the cathedral clock
struck five.

Jim pursued his way through the dust, up hill and down hill; but never
saw ahead of him the vehicle of his search.  That vehicle was passing
along a diverging way at a distance of many miles from where he rode.
Still he sped onwards, till Tony showed signs of breaking down; and then
Jim gathered from inquiries he made that he had come the wrong way.  It
burst upon his mind that the dairyman, still ignorant of the truth, had
misinformed him.  Heavier in his heart than words can describe he turned
Tony’s drooping head, and resolved to drag his way home.

But the horse was now so jaded that it was impossible to proceed far.
Having gone about half a mile back he came again to a small roadside
hamlet and inn, where he put up Tony for a rest and feed.  As for
himself, there was no quiet in him.  He tried to sit and eat in the inn
kitchen; but he could not stay there.  He went out, and paced up and down
the road.

Standing in sight of the white way by which he had come he beheld
advancing towards him the horses and carriage he sought, now black and
daemonic against the slanting fires of the western sun.

The why and wherefore of this sudden appearance he did not pause to
consider.  His resolve to intercept the carriage was instantaneous.  He
ran forward, and doggedly waiting barred the way to the advancing
equipage.

The Baron’s coachman shouted, but Jim stood firm as a rock, and on the
former attempting to push past him Jim drew his sword, resolving to cut
the horses down rather than be displaced.  The animals were thrown nearly
back upon their haunches, and at this juncture a gentleman looked out of
the window.  It was the Baron himself.

‘Who’s there?’ he inquired.

‘James Hayward!’ replied the young man fiercely, ‘and he demands his
wife.’

The Baron leapt out, and told the coachman to drive back out of sight and
wait for him.

‘I was hastening to find you,’ he said to Jim.  ‘Your wife is where she
ought to be, and where you ought to be also—by your own fireside.
Where’s the other woman?’

Jim, without replying, looked incredulously into the carriage as it
turned.  Margery was certainly not there.  ‘The other woman is nothing to
me,’ he said bitterly.  ‘I used her to warm up Margery: I have now done
with her.  The question I ask, my lord, is, what business had you with
Margery to-day?’

‘My business was to help her to regain the husband she had seemingly
lost.  I saw her; she told me you had eloped by the London road with
another.  I, who have—mostly—had her happiness at heart, told her I would
help her to follow you if she wished.  She gladly agreed; we drove after,
but could hear no tidings of you in front of us.  Then I took her—to your
house—and there she awaits you.  I promised to send you to her if human
effort could do it, and was tracking you for that purpose.’

‘Then you’ve been a-pursuing after me?’

‘You and the widow.’

‘And I’ve been pursuing after you and Margery!  My noble lord, your
actions seem to show that I ought to believe you in this; and when you
say you’ve her happiness at heart, I don’t forget that you’ve formerly
proved it to be so.  Well, Heaven forbid that I should think wrongfully
of you if you don’t deserve it!  A mystery to me you have always been, my
noble lord, and in this business more than in any.’

‘I am glad to hear you say no worse.  In one hour you’ll have proof of my
conduct—good and bad.  Can I do anything more?  Say the word, and I’ll
try.’

Jim reflected.  ‘Baron,’ he said, ‘I am a plain man, and wish only to
lead a quiet life with my wife, as a man should.  You have great power
over her—power to any extent, for good or otherwise.  If you command her
anything on earth, righteous or questionable, that she’ll do.  So that,
since you ask me if you can do more for me, I’ll answer this, you can
promise never to see her again.  I mean no harm, my lord; but your
presence can do no good; you will trouble us.  If I return to her, will
you for ever stay away?’

‘Hayward,’ said the Baron, ‘I swear to you that I will disturb you and
your wife by my presence no more.  And he took Jim’s hand, and pressed it
within his own upon the hilt of Jim’s sword.

In relating this incident to the present narrator Jim used to declare
that, to his fancy, the ruddy light of the setting sun burned with more
than earthly fire on the Baron’s face as the words were spoken; and that
the ruby flash of his eye in the same light was what he never witnessed
before nor since in the eye of mortal man.  After this there was nothing
more to do or say in that place.  Jim accompanied his
never-to-be-forgotten acquaintance to the carriage, closed the door after
him, waved his hat to him, and from that hour he and the Baron met not
again on earth.

A few words will suffice to explain the fortunes of Margery while the
foregoing events were in action elsewhere.  On leaving her companion Vine
she had gone distractedly among the carriages, the rather to escape his
observation than of any set purpose.  Standing here she thought she heard
her name pronounced, and turning, saw her foreign friend, whom she had
supposed to be, if not dead, a thousand miles off.  He beckoned, and she
went close.  ‘You are ill—you are wretched,’ he said, looking keenly in
her face.  ‘Where’s your husband?’

She told him her sad suspicion that Jim had run away from her.  The Baron
reflected, and inquired a few other particulars of her late life.  Then
he said: ‘You and I must find him.  Come with me.’  At this word of
command from the Baron she had entered the carriage as docilely as a
child, and there she sat beside him till he chose to speak, which was not
till they were some way out of the town, at the forking ways, and the
Baron had discovered that Jim was certainly not, as they had supposed,
making off from Margery along that particular branch of the fork that led
to London.

‘To pursue him in this way is useless, I perceive,’ he said.  ‘And the
proper course now is that I should take you to his house.  That done I
will return, and bring him to you if mortal persuasion can do it.’

‘I didn’t want to go to his house without him, sir,’ said she,
tremblingly.

‘Didn’t want to!’ he answered.  ‘Let me remind you, Margery Hayward, that
your place is in your husband’s house.  Till you are there you have no
right to criticize his conduct, however wild it may be.  Why have you not
been there before?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ she murmured, her tears falling silently upon her
hand.

‘Don’t you think you ought to be there?’

She did not answer.

‘Of course you ought.’

Still she did not speak.

The Baron sank into silence, and allowed his eye to rest on her.  What
thoughts were all at once engaging his mind after those moments of
reproof?  Margery had given herself into his hands without a
remonstrance, her husband had apparently deserted her.  She was
absolutely in his power, and they were on the high road.

That his first impulse in inviting her to accompany him had been the
legitimate one denoted by his words cannot reasonably be doubted.  That
his second was otherwise soon became revealed, though not at first to
her, for she was too bewildered to notice where they were going.  Instead
of turning and taking the road to Jim’s, the Baron, as if influenced
suddenly by her reluctance to return thither if Jim was playing truant,
signalled to the coachman to take the branch road to the right, as her
father had discerned.

They soon approached the coast near Idmouth.  The carriage stopped.
Margery awoke from her reverie.

‘Where are we?’ she said, looking out of the window, with a start.
Before her was an inlet of the sea, and in the middle of the inlet rode a
yacht, its masts repeating as if from memory the rocking they had
practised in their native forest.

‘At a little sea-side nook, where my yacht lies at anchor,’ he said
tentatively.  ‘Now, Margery, in five minutes we can be aboard, and in
half an hour we can be sailing away all the world over.  Will you come?’

‘I cannot decide,’ she said, in low tones.

‘Why not?’

‘Because—’

Then on a sudden, Margery seemed to see all contingencies: she became
white as a fleece, and a bewildered look came into her eyes.  With
clasped hands she leant on the Baron.

Baron von Xanten observed her distracted look, averted his face, and
coming to a decision opened the carriage door, quickly mounted outside,
and in a second or two the carriage left the shore behind, and ascended
the road by which it had come.

In about an hour they reached Jim Hayward’s home.  The Baron alighted,
and spoke to her through the window.  ‘Margery, can you forgive a lover’s
bad impulse, which I swear was unpremeditated?’ he asked.  ‘If you can,
shake my hand.’

She did not do it, but eventually allowed him to help her out of the
carriage.  He seemed to feel the awkwardness keenly; and seeing it, she
said, ‘Of course I forgive you, sir, for I felt for a moment as you did.
Will you send my husband to me?’

‘I will, if any man can,’ said he.  ‘Such penance is milder than I
deserve!  God bless you and give you happiness!  I shall never see you
again!’  He turned, entered the carriage, and was gone; and having found
out Jim’s course, came up with him upon the road as described.

In due time the latter reached his lodging at his partner’s.  The woman
who took care of the house in Vine’s absence at once told Jim that a lady
who had come in a carriage was waiting for him in his sitting-room.  Jim
proceeded thither with agitation, and beheld, shrinkingly ensconced in
the large slippery chair, and surrounded by the brilliant articles that
had so long awaited her, his long-estranged wife.

Margery’s eyes were round and fear-stricken.  She essayed to speak, but
Jim, strangely enough, found the readier tongue then.  ‘Why did I do it,
you would ask,’ he said.  ‘I cannot tell.  Do you forgive my deception?
O Margery—you are my Margery still!  But how could you trust yourself in
the Baron’s hands this afternoon, without knowing him better?’

‘He said I was to come, and I went,’ she said, as well as she could for
tearfulness.

‘You obeyed him blindly.’

‘I did.  But perhaps I was not justified in doing it.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jim musingly.  ‘I think he’s a good man.’  Margery
did not explain.  And then a sunnier mood succeeded her tremblings and
tears, till old Mr. Vine came into the house below, and Jim went down to
declare that all was well, and sent off his partner to break the news to
Margery’s father, who as yet remained unenlightened.

The dairyman bore the intelligence of his daughter’s untitled state as
best he could, and punished her by not coming near her for several weeks,
though at last he grumbled his forgiveness, and made up matters with Jim.
The handsome Mrs. Peach vanished to Plymouth, and found another sailor,
not without a reasonable complaint against Jim and Margery both that she
had been unfairly used.

As for the mysterious gentleman who had exercised such an influence over
their lives, he kept his word, and was a stranger to Lower Wessex
thenceforward.  Baron or no Baron, Englishman or foreigner, he had shown
a genuine interest in Jim, and real sorrow for a certain reckless phase
of his acquaintance with Margery.  That he had a more tender feeling
toward the young girl than he wished her or any one else to perceive
there could be no doubt.  That he was strongly tempted at times to adopt
other than conventional courses with regard to her is also clear,
particularly at that critical hour when she rolled along the high road
with him in the carriage, after turning from the fancied pursuit of Jim.
But at other times he schooled impassioned sentiments into fair conduct,
which even erred on the side of harshness.  In after years there was a
report that another attempt on his life with a pistol, during one of
those fits of moodiness to which he seemed constitutionally liable, had
been effectual; but nobody in Silverthorn was in a position to ascertain
the truth.

There he is still regarded as one who had something about him magical and
unearthly.  In his mystery let him remain; for a man, no less than a
landscape, who awakens an interest under uncertain lights and touches of
unfathomable shade, may cut but a poor figure in a garish noontide shine.

When she heard of his mournful death Margery sat in her nursing-chair,
gravely thinking for nearly ten minutes, to the total neglect of her
infant in the cradle.  Jim, from the other side of the fire-place, said:
‘You are sorry enough for him, Margery.  I am sure of that.’

‘Yes, yes,’ she murmured, ‘I am sorry.’  After a moment she added: ‘Now
that he’s dead I’ll make a confession, Jim, that I have never made to a
soul.  If he had pressed me—which he did not—to go with him when I was in
the carriage that night beside his yacht, I would have gone.  And I was
disappointed that he did not press me.’

‘Suppose he were to suddenly appear now, and say in a voice of command,
“Margery, come with me!”’

‘I believe I should have no power to disobey,’ she returned, with a
mischievous look.  ‘He was like a magician to me.  I think he was one.
He could move me as a loadstone moves a speck of steel . . . Yet no,’ she
added, hearing the infant cry, ‘he would not move me now.  It would be so
unfair to baby.’

‘Well,’ said Jim, with no great concern (for ‘_la jalousie
rétrospective_,’ as George Sand calls it, had nearly died out of him),
‘however he might move ’ee, my love, he’ll never come.  He swore it to
me: and he was a man of his word.’

_Midsummer_, 1883.