第30章

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, Ideclare! 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.'