A considerable period of inaction followed among all concerned.
Nothing tended to dissipate the obscurity which veiled the life of the Baron.The position he occupied in the minds of the country-folk around was one which combined the mysteriousness of a legendary character with the unobtrusive deeds of a modern gentleman.To this day whoever takes the trouble to go down to Silverthorn in Lower Wessex and make inquiries will find existing there almost a superstitious feeling for the moody melancholy stranger who resided in the Lodge some forty years ago.
Whence he came, whither he was going, were alike unknown.It was said that his mother had been an English lady of noble family who had married a foreigner not unheard of in circles where men pile up 'the cankered heaps of strange-achieved gold'--that he had been born and educated in England, taken abroad, and so on.But the facts of a life in such cases are of little account beside the aspect of a life;and hence, though doubtless the years of his existence contained their share of trite and homely circumstance, the curtain which masked all this was never lifted to gratify such a theatre of spectators as those at Silverthorn.Therein lay his charm.His life was a vignette, of which the central strokes only were drawn with any distinctness, the environment shading away to a blank.
He might have been said to resemble that solitary bird the heron.
The still, lonely stream was his frequent haunt: on its banks he would stand for hours with his rod, looking into the water, beholding the tawny inhabitants with the eye of a philosopher, and seeming to say, 'Bite or don't bite--it's all the same to me.' He was often mistaken for a ghost by children; and for a pollard willow by men, when, on their way home in the dusk, they saw him motionless by some rushy bank, unobservant of the decline of day.
Why did he come to fish near Silverthorn? That was never explained.
As far as was known he had no relatives near; the fishing there was not exceptionally good; the society thereabout was decidedly meagre.
That he had committed some folly or hasty act, that he had been wrongfully accused of some crime, thus rendering his seclusion from the world desirable for a while, squared very well with his frequent melancholy.But such as he was there he lived, well supplied with fishing-tackle, and tenant of a furnished house, just suited to the requirements of such an eccentric being as he.
Margery's father, having privately ascertained that she was living with her grandmother, and getting into no harm, refrained from communicating with her, in the hope of seeing her contrite at his door.It had, of course, become known about Silverthorn that at the last moment Margery refused to wed Hayward, by absenting herself from the house.Jim was pitied, yet not pitied much, for it was said that he ought not to have been so eager for a woman who had shown no anxiety for him.
And where was Jim himself? It must not be supposed that that tactician had all this while withdrawn from mortal eye to tear his hair in silent indignation and despair.He had, in truth, merely retired up the lonesome defile between the downs to his smouldering kiln, and the ancient ramparts above it; and there, after his first hours of natural discomposure, he quietly waited for overtures from the possibly repentant Margery.But no overtures arrived, and then he meditated anew on the absorbing problem of her skittishness, and how to set about another campaign for her conquest, notwithstanding his late disastrous failure.Why had he failed? To what was her strange conduct owing? That was the thing which puzzled him.
He had made no advance in solving the riddle when, one morning, a stranger appeared on the down above him, looking as if he had lost his way.The man had a good deal of black hair below his felt hat, and carried under his arm a case containing a musical instrument.
Descending to where Jim stood, he asked if there were not a short cut across that way to Tivworthy, where a fete was to be held.
'Well, yes, there is,' said Jim.'But 'tis an enormous distance for 'ee.'
'Oh, yes,' replied the musician.'I wish to intercept the carrier on the highway.'
The nearest way was precisely in the direction of Rook's Gate, where Margery, as Jim knew, was staying.Having some time to spare, Jim was strongly impelled to make a kind act to the lost musician a pretext for taking observations in that neighbourhood, and telling his acquaintance that he was going the same way, he started without further ado.
They skirted the long length of meads, and in due time arrived at the back of Rook's Gate, where the path joined the high road.A hedge divided the public way from the cottage garden.Jim drew up at this point and said, 'Your road is straight on: I turn back here.'
But the musician was standing fixed, as if in great perplexity.
Thrusting his hand into his forest of black hair, he murmured, 'Surely it is the same--surely!'
Jim, following the direction of his neighbour's eyes, found them to be fixed on a figure till that moment hidden from himself--Margery Tucker--who was crossing the garden to an opposite gate with a little cheese in her arms, her head thrown back, and her face quite exposed.
'What of her?' said Jim.
'Two months ago I formed one of the band at the Yeomanry Ball given by Lord Toneborough in the next county.I saw that young lady dancing the polka there in robes of gauze and lace.Now I see her carry a cheese!'
