The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid

Chapter 13

On going out into the garden next morning, with a strange sense of

being another person than herself, she beheld Jim leaning mutely over

the gate.

He nodded. 'Good morning, Margery,' he said civilly.

'Good morning,' said Margery in the same tone.

'I beg your pardon,' he continued. 'But which way was you going this

morning?'

'I am not going anywhere just now, thank you. But I shall go to my

father's by-and-by with Edy.' She went on with a sigh, 'I have done

what he has all along wished, that is, married you; and there's no

longer reason for enmity atween him and me.'

'Trew--trew. Well, as I am going the same way, I can give you a lift

in the trap, for the distance is long.'

'No thank you--I am used to walking,' she said.

They remained in silence, the gate between them, till Jim's

convictions would apparently allow him to hold his peace no longer.

'This is a bad job!' he murmured.

'It is,' she said, as one whose thoughts have only too readily been

identified. 'How I came to agree to it is more than I can tell!'

And tears began rolling down her cheeks.

'The blame is more mine than yours, I suppose,' he returned. 'I

ought to have said No, and not backed up the gentleman in carrying

out this scheme. 'Twas his own notion entirely, as perhaps you know.

I should never have thought of such a plan; but he said you'd be

willing, and that it would be all right; and I was too ready to

believe him.'

'The thing is, how to remedy it,' said she bitterly. 'I believe, of

course, in your promise to keep this private, and not to trouble me

by calling.'

'Certainly,' said Jim. 'I don't want to trouble you. As for that,

why, my dear Mrs. Hayward--'

'Don't Mrs. Hayward me!' said Margery sharply. 'I won't be Mrs.

Hayward!'

Jim paused. 'Well, you are she by law, and that was all I meant,' he

said mildly.

'I said I would acknowledge no such thing, and I won't. A thing

can't be legal when it's against the wishes of the persons the laws

are made to protect. So I beg you not to call me that anymore.'

'Very well, Miss Tucker,' said Jim deferentially. 'We can live on

exactly as before. We can't marry anybody else, that's true; but

beyond that there's no difference, and no harm done. Your father

ought to be told, I suppose, even if nobody else is? It will partly

reconcile him to you, and make your life smoother.'

Instead of directly replying, Margery exclaimed in a low voice:

'O, it is a mistake--I didn't see it all, owing to not having time to

reflect! I agreed, thinking that at least I should get reconciled to

father by the step. But perhaps he would as soon have me not married

at all as married and parted. I must ha' been enchanted--bewitched--

when I gave my consent to this! I only did it to please that dear

good dying nobleman--though why he should have wished it so much I

can't tell!'

'Nor I neither,' said Jim. 'Yes, we've been fooled into it,

Margery,' he said, with extraordinary gravity. 'He's had his way wi'

us, and now we've got to suffer for it. Being a gentleman of

patronage, and having bought several loads of lime o' me, and having

given me all that splendid furniture, I could hardly refuse--'

'What, did he give you that?'

'Ay sure--to help me win ye.'

Margery covered her face with her hands; whereupon Jim stood up from

the gate and looked critically at her. ''Tis a footy plot between

you two men to--snare me!' she exclaimed. 'Why should you have done

it--why should he have done it--when I've not deserved to be treated

so. He bought the furniture--did he! O, I've been taken in--I've

been wronged!' The grief and vexation of finding that long ago, when

fondly believing the Baron to have lover-like feelings himself for

her, he was still conspiring to favour Jim's suit, was more than she

could endure.

Jim with distant courtesy waited, nibbling a straw, till her paroxysm

was over. 'One word, Miss Tuck--Mrs.--Margery,' he then recommenced

gravely. 'You'll find me man enough to respect your wish, and to

leave you to yourself--for ever and ever, if that's all. But I've

just one word of advice to render 'ee. That is, that before you go

to Silverthorn Dairy yourself you let me drive ahead and call on your

father. He's friends with me, and he's not friends with you. I can

break the news, a little at a time, and I think I can gain his good

will for you now, even though the wedding be no natural wedding at

all. At any count, I can hear what he's got to say about 'ee, and

come back here and tell 'ee.'

She nodded a cool assent to this, and he left her strolling about the

garden in the sunlight while he went on to reconnoitre as agreed. It

must not be supposed that Jim's dutiful echoes of Margery's regret at

her precipitate marriage were all gospel; and there is no doubt that

his private intention, after telling the dairy-farmer what had

happened, was to ask his temporary assent to her caprice, till, in

the course of time, she should be reasoned out of her whims and

induced to settle down with Jim in a natural manner. He had, it is

true, been somewhat nettled by her firm objection to him, and her

keen sorrow for what she had done to please another; but he hoped for

the best.

But, alas for the astute Jim's calculations! He drove on to the

dairy, whose white walls now gleamed in the morning sun; made fast

the horse to a ring in the wall, and entered the barton. Before

knocking, he perceived the dairyman walking across from a gate in the

other direction, as if he had just come in. Jim went over to him.

Since the unfortunate incident on the morning of the intended wedding

they had merely been on nodding terms, from a sense of awkwardness in

their relations.

'What--is that thee?' said Dairyman Tucker, in a voice which

unmistakably startled Jim by its abrupt fierceness. 'A pretty fellow

thou be'st!'

It was a bad beginning for the young man's life as a son-in-law, and

augured ill for the delicate consultation he desired.

'What's the matter?' said Jim.

'Matter! I wish some folks would burn their lime without burning

other folks' property along wi' it. You ought to be ashamed of

yourself. You call yourself a man, Jim Hayward, and an honest lime-

burner, and a respectable, market-keeping Christen, and yet at six

o'clock this morning, instead o' being where you ought to ha' been--

at your work, there was neither vell or mark o' thee to be seen!'

'Faith, I don't know what you are raving at,' said Jim.

'Why--the sparks from thy couch-heap blew over upon my hay-rick, and

the rick's burnt to ashes; and all to come out o' my well-squeezed

pocket. I'll tell thee what it is, young man. There's no business

in thee. I've known Silverthorn folk, quick and dead, for the last

couple-o'-score year, and I've never knew one so three-cunning for

harm as thee, my gentleman lime-burner; and I reckon it one o' the

luckiest days o' my life when I 'scaped having thee in my family.

That maid of mine was right; I was wrong. She seed thee to be a

drawlacheting rogue, and 'twas her wisdom to go off that morning and

get rid o' thee. I commend her for't, and I'm going to fetch her

home to-morrow.'

'You needn't take the trouble. She's coming home-along to-night of

her own accord. I have seen her this morning, and she told me so.'

'So much the better. I'll welcome her warm. Nation! I'd sooner see

her married to the parish fool than thee. Not you--you don't care

for my hay. Tarrying about where you shouldn't be, in bed, no doubt;

that's what you was a-doing. Now, don't you darken my doors again,

and the sooner you be off my bit o' ground the better I shall be

pleased.'

Jim looked, as he felt, stultified. If the rick had been really

destroyed, a little blame certainly attached to him, but he could not

understand how it had happened. However, blame or none, it was clear

he could not, with any self-respect, declare himself to be this

peppery old gaffer's son-in-law in the face of such an attack as

this.

For months--almost years--the one transaction that had seemed

necessary to compose these two families satisfactorily was Jim's

union with Margery. No sooner had it been completed than it appeared

on all sides as the gravest mishap for both. Stating coldly that he

would discover how much of the accident was to be attributed to his

negligence, and pay the damage, he went out of the barton, and

returned the way he had come.

Margery had been keeping a look-out for him, particularly wishing him

not to enter the house, lest others should see the seriousness of

their interview; and as soon as she heard wheels she went to the

gate, which was out of view.

'Surely father has been speaking roughly to you!' she said, on seeing

his face.

'Not the least doubt that he have,' said Jim.

'But is he still angry with me?'

'Not in the least. He's waiting to welcome 'ee.'

'Ah! because I've married you.'

'Because he thinks you have not married me! He's jawed me up hill

and down. He hates me; and for your sake I have not explained a

word.'

Margery looked towards home with a sad, severe gaze. 'Mr. Hayward,'

she said, 'we have made a great mistake, and we are in a strange

position.'

'True, but I'll tell you what, mistress--I won't stand--' He stopped

suddenly. 'Well, well; I've promised!' he quietly added.

'We must suffer for our mistake,' she went on. 'The way to suffer

least is to keep our own counsel on what happened last evening, and

not to meet. I must now return to my father.'

He inclined his head in indifferent assent, and she went indoors,

leaving him there.