The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid

Chapter 2

A fine-framed dark-mustachioed gentleman, in dressing-gown and

slippers, was sitting there in the damp without a hat on. With one

hand he was tightly grasping his forehead, the other hung over his

knee. 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; but in moving her foot for the

purpose it grated on the gravel. He started up with an air of

bewilderment, and slipped something into the pocket of his dressing-

gown. She was almost certain that it was a pistol. The pair stood

looking blankly at each other.

'My Gott, who are you?' he asked sternly, and with not altogether an

English articulation. 'What do you do here?'

Margery had already begun to be frightened at her boldness in

invading the lawn and pleasure-seat. The house had a master, and she

had not known of it. 'My name is Margaret Tucker, sir,' she said

meekly. 'My father is Dairyman Tucker. We live at Silverthorn

Dairy-house.'

'What were you doing here at this hour of the morning?'

She told him, even to the fact that she had climbed over the fence.

'And what made you peep round at me?'

'I saw your elbow, sir; and I wondered what you were doing?'

'And what was I doing?'

'Nothing. You had one hand on your forehead and the other on your

knee. I do hope you are not ill, sir, or in deep trouble?' Margery

had sufficient tact to say nothing about the pistol.

'What difference would it make to you if I were ill or in trouble?

You don't know me.'

She returned no answer, feeling that she might have taken a liberty

in expressing sympathy. But, looking furtively up at him, she

discerned to her surprise that he seemed affected by her humane wish,

simply as it had been expressed. She had scarcely conceived that

such a tall dark man could know what gentle feelings were.

'Well, I am much obliged to you for caring how I am,' said he with a

faint smile and an affected lightness of manner which, even to her,

only rendered more apparent the gloom beneath. 'I have not slept

this past night. I suffer from sleeplessness. Probably you do not.'

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. To

escape themselves they travel, take picturesque houses, and engage in

country sports. But here it is so dreary, and the fog was horrible

this morning!'

'Why, this is only the pride of the morning!' said Margery. 'By-and-

by it will be a beautiful day.'

She was going on her way forthwith; but he detained her--detained her

with words, talking on every innocent little subject he could think

of. He had an object in keeping her there more serious than his

words would imply. It was as if he feared to be left alone.

While they still stood, the misty figure of the postman, whom Margery

had left a quarter of an hour earlier to follow his sinuous course,

crossed the grounds below them on his way to the house. Signifying

to Margery by a wave of his hand that she was to step back out of

sight, in the hinder angle of the shelter, the gentleman beckoned to

the postman to bring the bag to where he stood. The man did so, and

again resumed his journey.

The stranger unlocked the bag and threw it on the seat, having taken

one letter from within. This he read attentively, and his

countenance changed.

The change was almost phantasmagorial, as if the sun had burst

through the fog upon that face: it became clear, bright, almost

radiant. Yet it was but a change that may take place in the

commonest human being, provided his countenance be not too wooden, or

his artifice have not grown to second nature. He turned to Margery,

who was again edging off, and, seizing her hand, appeared as though

he were about to embrace her. Checking his impulse, he said, 'My

guardian child--my good friend--you have saved me!'

'What from?' she ventured to ask.

'That you may never know.'

She thought of the weapon, and guessed that the letter he had just

received had effected this change in his mood, but made no

observation till he went on to say, 'What did you tell me was your

name, dear girl?'

She repeated her name.

'Margaret Tucker.' He stooped, and pressed her hand. 'Sit down for

a moment--one moment,' he said, pointing to the end of the seat, and

taking the extremest further end for himself, not to discompose her.

She sat down.

'It is to ask a question,' he went on, 'and there must be confidence

between us. You have saved me from an act of madness! What can I do

for you?'

'Nothing, sir.'

'Nothing?'

'Father is very well off, and we don't want anything.'

'But there must be some service I can render, some kindness, some

votive offering which I could make, and so imprint on your memory as

long as you live that I am not an ungrateful man?'

'Why should you be grateful to me, sir?'

He shook his head. 'Some things are best left unspoken. Now think.

What would you like to have best in the world?'

Margery made a pretence of reflecting--then fell to reflecting

seriously; but the negative was ultimately as undisturbed as ever:

she could not decide on anything she would like best in the world; it

was too difficult, too sudden.

'Very well--don't hurry yourself. Think it over all day. I ride

this afternoon. You live--where?'

'Silverthorn Dairy-house.'

'I will ride that way homeward this evening. Do you consider by

eight o'clock what little article, what little treat, you would most

like of any.'

'I will, sir,' said Margery, now warming up to the idea. 'Where

shall I meet you? Or will you call at the house, sir?'

'Ah--no. I should not wish the circumstances known out of which our

acquaintance rose. It would be more proper--but no.'

Margery, too, seemed rather anxious that he should not call. 'I

could come out, sir,' she said. 'My father is odd-tempered, and

perhaps--'

It was agreed that she should look over a stile at the top of her

father's garden, and that he should ride along a bridle-path outside,

to receive her answer. 'Margery,' said the gentleman in conclusion,

'now that you have discovered me under ghastly conditions, are you

going to reveal them, and make me an object for the gossip of the

curious?'

'No, no, sir!' she replied earnestly. 'Why should I do that?'

'You will never tell?'

'Never, never will I tell what has happened here this morning.'

'Neither to your father, nor to your friends, nor to any one?'

'To no one at all,' she said.

'It is sufficient,' he answered. 'You mean what you say, my dear

maiden. Now you want to leave me. Good-bye!'

She descended the hill, walking with some awkwardness; for she felt

the stranger's eyes were upon her till the fog had enveloped her from

his gaze. She took no notice now of the dripping from the trees; she

was lost in thought on other things. Had she saved this handsome,

melancholy, sleepless, foreign gentleman who had had a trouble on his

mind till the letter came? What had he been going to do? 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. But what with zigzags,

devious ways, offsets to country seats, curves to farms, looped

courses, and triangles to outlying hamlets, the ground actually

covered by him was nearer one-and-twenty miles. Hence it was that

Margery, who had come straight, was still abreast of him, despite her

long pause.

The weighty sense that she was mixed up in a tragical secret with an

unknown and handsome stranger prevented her joining very readily in

chat with the postman for some time. But a keen interest in her

adventure caused her to respond at once when the bowed man of mails

said, 'You hit athwart the grounds of Mount Lodge, Miss Margery, or

you wouldn't ha' met me here. Well, somebody hey took the old place

at last.'

In acknowledging her route Margery brought herself to ask who the new

gentleman might be.

'Guide the girl's heart! What! don't she know? And yet how should

ye--he's only just a-come.--Well, nominal, he's a fishing gentleman,

come for the summer only. But, more to the subject, he's a foreign

noble that's lived in England so long as to be without any true

country: some of his letters call him Baron, some Squire, so that 'a

must be born to something that can't be earned by elbow-grease and

Christian conduct. He was out this morning a-watching the fog.

"Postman," 'a said, "good-morning: give me the bag." O, yes, 'a's a

civil genteel nobleman enough.'

'Took the house for fishing, did he?'

'That's what they say, and as it can be for nothing else I suppose

it's true. But, in final, his health's not good, 'a b'lieve; he's

been living too rithe. The London smoke got into his wyndpipe, till

'a couldn't eat. However, I shouldn't mind having the run of his

kitchen.'

'And what is his name?'

'Ah--there you have me! 'Tis a name no man's tongue can tell, or

even woman's, except by pen-and-ink and good scholarship. It begins

with X, and who, without the machinery of a clock in's inside, can

speak that? But here 'tis--from his letters.' The postman with his

walking-stick wrote upon the ground,

'BARON VON XANTEN'