Thomas Hardy

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”