Book: The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid

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




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.

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