Chapter 11
1100 Words
Margery's face flushed up, and her neck and arms glowed in sympathy.
The quickness of youthful imagination, and the assumptiveness of
woman's reason, sent her straight as an arrow this thought: 'He
wants to marry me!'
She had heard of similar strange proceedings, in which the orange-
flower and the sad cypress were intertwined. 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.
In making this hasty toilet nine-tenths of her care were given to her
hands. The summer had left them slightly brown, and she held them up
and looked at them with some misgiving, the fourth finger of her left
hand more especially. Hot washings and cold washings, certain
products from bee and flower known only to country girls, everything
she could think of, were used upon those little sunburnt hands, till
she persuaded herself that they were really as white as could be
wished by a husband with a hundred titles. Her dressing completed,
she left word with Edy that she was going for a long walk, and set
out in the direction of Mount Lodge.
She no longer tripped like a girl, but walked like a woman. While
crossing the park she murmured 'Baroness von Xanten' in a
pronunciation of her own. The sound of that title caused her such
agitation that she was obliged to pause, with her hand upon her
heart.
The house was so closely neighboured by shrubberies on three of its
sides that it was not till she had gone nearly round it that she
found the little door. The resolution she had been an hour in
forming failed her when she stood at the portal. 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. Without a
word he conducted her up the back staircase, and through a door at
the top, into a wide corridor. She was asked to wait in a little
dressing-room, where there was a fire, and an old metal-framed
looking-glass over the mantel-piece, in which she caught sight of
herself. A red spot burnt in each of her cheeks; the rest of her
face was pale; and her eyes were like diamonds of the first water.
Before she had been seated many minutes the man came back
noiselessly, and she followed him to a door covered by a red and
black curtain, which he lifted, and ushered her into a large chamber.
A screened light stood on a table before her, and on her left the
hangings of a tall dark four-post bedstead obstructed her view of the
centre of the room. Everything here seemed of such a magnificent
type to her eyes that she felt confused, diminished to half her
height, half her strength, half her prettiness. The man who had
conducted her retired at once, and some one came softly round the
angle of the bed-curtains. He held out his hand kindly--rather
patronisingly: it was the solicitor whom she knew by sight. This
gentleman led her forward, as if she had been a lamb rather than a
woman, till the occupant of the bed was revealed.
The Baron's eyes were closed, and her entry had been so noiseless
that he did not open them. The pallor of his face nearly matched the
white bed-linen, and his dark hair and heavy black moustache were
like dashes of ink on a clean page. Near him sat the parson and
another gentleman, whom she afterwards learnt to be a London
physician; and on the parson whispering a few words the Baron opened
his eyes. As soon as he saw her he smiled faintly, and held out his
hand.
Margery would have wept for him, if she had not been too overawed and
palpitating to do anything. She quite forgot what she had come for,
shook hands with him mechanically, and could hardly return an answer
to his weak 'Dear Margery, you see how I am--how are you?'
In preparing for marriage she had not calculated on such a scene as
this. Her affection for the Baron had too much of the vague in it to
afford her trustfulness now. She wished she had not come. On a sign
from the Baron the lawyer brought her a chair, and the oppressive
silence was broken by the Baron's words.
'I am pulled down to death's door, Margery,' he said; 'and I suppose
I soon shall pass through . . . My peace has been much disturbed in
this illness, for just before it attacked me I received--that present
you returned, from which, and in other ways, I learnt that you had
lost your chance of marriage . . . Now it was I who did the harm, and
you can imagine how the news has affected me. It has worried me all
the illness through, and I cannot dismiss my error from my mind . . .
I want to right the wrong I have done you before I die. Margery, you
have always obeyed me, and, strange as the request may be, will you
obey me now?'
She whispered 'Yes.'
'Well, then,' said the Baron, 'these three gentlemen are here for a
special purpose: one helps the body--he's called a physician;
another helps the soul--he's a parson; the other helps the
understanding--he's a lawyer. They are here partly on my account,
and partly on yours.'
The speaker then made a sign to the lawyer, who went out of the door.
He came back almost instantly, but not alone. Behind him, dressed up
in his best clothes, with a flower in his buttonhole and a
bridegroom's air, walked--Jim.
- Writer
