第38章

In about an hour they reached Jim Hayward's home.The Baron alighted, and spoke to her through the window.'Margery, can you forgive a lover's bad impulse, which I swear was unpremeditated?' he asked.'If you can, shake my hand.'

She did not do it, but eventually allowed him to help her out of the carriage.He seemed to feel the awkwardness keenly; and seeing it, she said, 'Of course I forgive you, sir, for I felt for a moment as you did.Will you send my husband to me?'

'I will, if any man can,' said he.'Such penance is milder than Ideserve! God bless you and give you happiness! I shall never see you again!' He turned, entered the carriage, and was gone; and having found out Jim's course, came up with him upon the road as described.

In due time the latter reached his lodging at his partner's.The woman who took care of the house in Vine's absence at once told Jim that a lady who had come in a carriage was waiting for him in his sitting-room.Jim proceeded thither with agitation, and beheld, shrinkingly ensconced in the large slippery chair, and surrounded by the brilliant articles that had so long awaited her, his long-estranged wife.

Margery's eyes were round and fear-stricken.She essayed to speak, but Jim, strangely enough, found the readier tongue then.'Why did Ido it, you would ask,' he said.'I cannot tell.Do you forgive my deception? O Margery--you are my Margery still! But how could you trust yourself in the Baron's hands this afternoon, without knowing him better?'

'He said I was to come, and I went,' she said, as well as she could for tearfulness.

'You obeyed him blindly.'

'I did.But perhaps I was not justified in doing it.'

'I don't know,' said Jim musingly.'I think he's a good man.'

Margery did not explain.And then a sunnier mood succeeded her tremblings and tears, till old Mr.Vine came into the house below, and Jim went down to declare that all was well, and sent off his partner to break the news to Margery's father, who as yet remained unenlightened.

The dairyman bore the intelligence of his daughter's untitled state as best he could, and punished her by not coming near her for several weeks, though at last he grumbled his forgiveness, and made up matters with Jim.The handsome Mrs.Peach vanished to Plymouth, and found another sailor, not without a reasonable complaint against Jim and Margery both that she had been unfairly used.

As for the mysterious gentleman who had exercised such an influence over their lives, he kept his word, and was a stranger to Lower Wessex thenceforward.Baron or no Baron, Englishman or foreigner, he had shown a genuine interest in Jim, and real sorrow for a certain reckless phase of his acquaintance with Margery.That he had a more tender feeling toward the young girl than he wished her or any one else to perceive there could be no doubt.That he was strongly tempted at times to adopt other than conventional courses with regard to her is also clear, particularly at that critical hour when she rolled along the high road with him in the carriage, after turning from the fancied pursuit of Jim.But at other times he schooled impassioned sentiments into fair conduct, which even erred on the side of harshness.In after years there was a report that another attempt on his life with a pistol, during one of those fits of moodiness to which he seemed constitutionally liable, had been effectual; but nobody in Silverthorn was in a position to ascertain the truth.

There he is still regarded as one who had something about him magical and unearthly.In his mystery let him remain; for a man, no less than a landscape, who awakens an interest under uncertain lights and touches of unfathomable shade, may cut but a poor figure in a garish noontide shine.

When she heard of his mournful death Margery sat in her nursing-chair, gravely thinking for nearly ten minutes, to the total neglect of her infant in the cradle.Jim, from the other side of the fire-place, said: 'You are sorry enough for him, Margery.I am sure of that.'

'Yes, yes,' she murmured, 'I am sorry.' After a moment she added:

'Now that he's dead I'll make a confession, Jim, that I have never made to a soul.If he had pressed me--which he did not--to go with him when I was in the carriage that night beside his yacht, I would have gone.And I was disappointed that he did not press me.'

'Suppose he were to suddenly appear now, and say in a voice of command, "Margery, come with me!"'

'I believe I should have no power to disobey,' she returned, with a mischievous look.'He was like a magician to me.I think he was one.He could move me as a loadstone moves a speck of steel...

Yet no,' she added, hearing the infant cry, 'he would not move me now.It would be so unfair to baby.'

'Well,' said Jim, with no great concern (for 'la jalousie retrospective,' as George Sand calls it, had nearly died out of him), 'however he might move 'ee, my love, he'll never come.He swore it to me: and he was a man of his word.'

Midsummer, 1883.

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