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.