Seeing that Jim lived several miles from the widow, Margery was rather
surprised, and even felt a slight sinking of the heart, when her new
acquaintance appeared at her door so soon as the evening of the following
Monday. She asked Margery to walk out with her, which the young woman
readily did.
‘I am come at once,’ said the widow breathlessly, as soon as they were in
the lane, ‘for it is so exciting that I can’t keep it. I must tell it to
somebody, if only a bird, or a cat, or a garden snail.’
‘What is it?’ asked her companion.
‘I’ve pulled grass from my husband’s grave to cure it—wove the blades
into true lover’s knots; took off my shoes upon the sod; but, avast, my
shipmate,—’
‘Upon the sod—why?’
‘To feel the damp earth he’s in, and make the sense of it enter my soul.
But no. It has swelled to a head; he is going to meet me at the Yeomanry
Review.’
‘The master lime-burner?’
The widow nodded.
‘When is it to be?’
‘To-morrow. He looks so lovely in his accoutrements! He’s such a
splendid soldier; that was the last straw that kindled my soul to say
yes. He’s home from Exonbury for a night between the drills,’ continued
Mrs. Peach. ‘He goes back to-morrow morning for the Review, and when
it’s over he’s going to meet me. But, guide my heart, there he is!’
Her exclamation had rise in the sudden appearance of a brilliant red
uniform through the trees, and the tramp of a horse carrying the wearer
thereof. In another half-minute the military gentleman would have turned
the corner, and faced them.
‘He’d better not see me; he’ll think I know too much,’ said Margery
precipitately. ‘I’ll go up here.’
The widow, whose thoughts had been of the same cast, seemed much relieved
to see Margery disappear in the plantation, in the midst of a spring
chorus of birds. Once among the trees, Margery turned her head, and,
before she could see the rider’s person she recognized the horse as Tony,
the lightest of three that Jim and his partner owned, for the purpose of
carting out lime to their customers.
Jim, then, had joined the Yeomanry since his estrangement from Margery.
A man who had worn the young Queen Victoria’s uniform for seven days only
could not be expected to look as if it were part of his person, in the
manner of long-trained soldiers; but he was a well-formed young fellow,
and of an age when few positions came amiss to one who has the capacity
to adapt himself to circumstances.
Meeting the blushing Mrs. Peach (to whom Margery in her mind sternly
denied the right to blush at all), Jim alighted and moved on with her,
probably at Mrs. Peach’s own suggestion; so that what they said, how long
they remained together, and how they parted, Margery knew not. She might
have known some of these things by waiting; but the presence of Jim had
bred in her heart a sudden disgust for the widow, and a general sense of
discomfiture. She went away in an opposite direction, turning her head
and saying to the unconscious Jim, ‘There’s a fine rod in pickle for you,
my gentleman, if you carry out that pretty scheme!’
Jim’s military _coup_ had decidedly astonished her. What he might do
next she could not conjecture. The idea of his doing anything
sufficiently brilliant to arrest her attention would have seemed
ludicrous, had not Jim, by entering the Yeomanry, revealed a capacity for
dazzling exploits which made it unsafe to predict any limitation to his
powers.
Margery was now excited. The daring of the wretched Jim in bursting into
scarlet amazed her as much as his doubtful acquaintanceship with the
demonstrative Mrs. Peach. To go to that Review, to watch the pair, to
eclipse Mrs. Peach in brilliancy, to meet and pass them in withering
contempt—if she only could do it! But, alas! she was a forsaken woman.
‘If the Baron were alive, or in England,’ she said to herself (for
sometimes she thought he might possibly be alive), ‘and he were to take
me to this Review, wouldn’t I show that forward Mrs. Peach what a lady is
like, and keep among the select company, and not mix with the common
people at all!’
It might at first sight be thought that the best course for Margery at
this juncture would have been to go to Jim, and nip the intrigue in the
bud without further scruple. But her own declaration in after days was
that whoever could say that was far from realizing her situation. It was
hard to break such ice as divided their two lives now, and to attempt it
at that moment was a too humiliating proclamation of defeat. The only
plan she could think of—perhaps not a wise one in the circumstances—was
to go to the Review herself; and be the gayest there.
A method of doing this with some propriety soon occurred to her. She
dared not ask her father, who scorned to waste time in sight-seeing, and
whose animosity towards Jim knew no abatement; but she might call on her
old acquaintance, Mr. Vine, Jim’s partner, who would probably be going
with the rest of the holiday-folk, and ask if she might accompany him in
his spring-trap. She had no sooner perceived the feasibility of this,
through her being at her grandmother’s, than she decided to meet with the
old man early the next morning.
In the meantime Jim and Mrs. Peach had walked slowly along the road
together, Jim leading the horse, and Mrs. Peach informing him that her
father, the gardener, was at Jim’s village further on, and that she had
come to meet him. Jim, for reasons of his own, was going to sleep at his
partner’s that night, and thus their route was the same. The shades of
eve closed in upon them as they walked, and by the time they reached the
lime-kiln, which it was necessary to pass to get to the village, it was
quite dark. Jim stopped at the kiln, to see if matters had progressed
rightly in his seven days’ absence, and Mrs. Peach, who stuck to him like
a teazle, stopped also, saying she would wait for her father there.
She held the horse while he ascended to the top of the kiln. Then
rejoining her, and not quite knowing what to do, he stood beside her
looking at the flames, which to-night burnt up brightly, shining a long
way into the dark air, even up to the ramparts of the earthwork above
them, and overhead into the bosoms of the clouds.
It was during this proceeding that a carriage, drawn by a pair of dark
horses, came along the turnpike road. The light of the kiln caused the
horses to swerve a little, and the occupant of the carriage looked out.
He saw the bluish, lightning-like flames from the limestone, rising from
the top of the furnace, and hard by the figures of Jim Hayward, the
widow, and the horse, standing out with spectral distinctness against the
mass of night behind. The scene wore the aspect of some unholy
assignation in Pandaemonium, and it was all the more impressive from the
fact that both Jim and the woman were quite unconscious of the striking
spectacle they presented. The gentleman in the carriage watched them
till he was borne out of sight.
Having seen to the kiln, Jim and the widow walked on again, and soon Mrs.
Peach’s father met them, and relieved Jim of the lady. When they had
parted, Jim, with an expiration not unlike a breath of relief; went on to
Mr. Vine’s, and, having put the horse into the stable, entered the house.
His partner was seated at the table, solacing himself after the labours
of the day by luxurious alternations between a long clay pipe and a mug
of perry.
‘Well,’ said Jim eagerly, ‘what’s the news—how do she take it?’
‘Sit down—sit down,’ said Vine. ‘’Tis working well; not but that I
deserve something o’ thee for the trouble I’ve had in watching her. The
soldiering was a fine move; but the woman is a better!—who invented it?’
‘I myself,’ said Jim modestly.
‘Well; jealousy is making her rise like a thunderstorm, and in a day or
two you’ll have her for the asking, my sonny. What’s the next step?’
‘The widow is getting rather a weight upon a feller, worse luck,’ said
Jim. ‘But I must keep it up until to-morrow, at any rate. I have
promised to see her at the Review, and now the great thing is that
Margery should see we a-smiling together—I in my full-dress uniform and
clinking arms o’ war. ’Twill be a good strong sting, and will end the
business, I hope. Couldn’t you manage to put the hoss in and drive her
there? She’d go if you were to ask her.’
‘With all my heart,’ said Mr. Vine, moistening the end of a new pipe in
his perry. ‘I can call at her grammer’s for her—’twill be all in my
way.’