by Thomas Hardy
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.
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 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 skirting 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 — 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. Peace 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.’
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 yo
u 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.’
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?’
‘Tomorrow. 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 tomorrow 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 recognised 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 realising 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 tonight 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?’