Book: The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid




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 fete 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
manoeuvre 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.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.