The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid

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.