Tucker had ridden on to the Review ground, so that there was no necessity for him, as there had been for poor Jim, to re-enter the town before starting. The dairyman hastily untied9 his mare10 from the row of other horses, mounted, and descended11 to a bridle-path which would take him obliquely12 into the London road a mile or so ahead. The old man’s route being along one side of an equilateral triangle, while Jim’s was along two sides of the same, the former was at the point of intersection13 long before Hayward.
Arrived here, the dairyman pulled up and looked around. It was a spot at which the highway forked; the left arm, the more important, led on through Sherton Abbas and Melchester to London; the right to Idmouth and the coast. Nothing was visible on the white track to London; but on the other there appeared the back of a carriage, which rapidly ascended14 a distant hill and vanished under the trees. It was the Baron15’s who, according to the sworn information of the gardener at Mount Lodge16, had made Margery his wife.
The carriage having vanished, the dairyman gazed in the opposite direction, towards Exonbury. Here he beheld17 Jim in his regimentals, laboriously18 approaching on Tony’s back.
Soon he reached the forking roads, and saw the dairyman by the wayside. But Jim did not halt. Then the dairyman practised the greatest duplicity of his life.
‘Right along the London road, if you want to catch ’em!’ he said.
‘Thank ‘ee, dairyman, thank ‘ee!’ cried Jim, his pale face lighting19 up with gratitude20, for he believed that Tucker had learnt his mistake from Vine, and had come to his assistance. Without drawing rein21 he diminished along the road not taken by the flying pair. The dairyman rubbed his hands with delight, and returned to the city as the cathedral clock struck five.
Jim pursued his way through the dust, up hill and down hill; but never saw ahead of him the vehicle of his search. That vehicle was passing along a diverging22 way at a distance of many miles from where he rode. Still he sped onwards, till Tony showed signs of breaking down; and then Jim gathered from inquiries23 he made that he had come the wrong way. It burst upon his mind that the dairyman, still ignorant of the truth, had misinformed him. Heavier in his heart than words can describe he turned Tony’s drooping24 head, and resolved to drag his way home.
But the horse was now so jaded25 that it was impossible to proceed far. Having gone about half a mile back he came again to a small roadside hamlet and inn, where he put up Tony for a rest and feed. As for himself, there was no quiet in him. He tried to sit and eat in the inn kitchen; but he could not stay there. He went out, and paced up and down the road.
Standing26 in sight of the white way by which he had come he beheld advancing towards him the horses and carriage he sought, now black and daemonic against the slanting27 fires of the western sun.
The why and wherefore of this sudden appearance he did not pause to consider. His resolve to intercept28 the carriage was instantaneous. He ran forward, and doggedly29 waiting barred the way to the advancing equipage.
The Baron’s coachman shouted, but Jim stood firm as a rock, and on the former attempting to push past him Jim drew his sword, resolving to cut the horses down rather than be displaced. The animals were thrown nearly back upon their haunches, and at this juncture30 a gentleman looked out of the window. It was the Baron himself.
‘Who’s there?’ he inquired.
‘James Hayward!’ replied the young man fiercely, ‘and he demands his wife.’
The Baron leapt out, and told the coachman to drive back out of sight and wait for him.
‘I was hastening to find you,’ he said to Jim. ‘Your wife is where she ought to be, and where you ought to be also — by your own fireside. Where’s the other woman?’
Jim, without replying, looked incredulously into the carriage as it turned. Margery was certainly not there. ‘The other woman is nothing to me,’ he said bitterly. ‘I used her to warm up Margery: I have now done with her. The question I ask, my lord, is, what business had you with Margery to-day?’
‘My business was to help her to regain31 the husband she had seemingly lost. I saw her; she told me you had eloped by the London road with another. I, who have — mostly — had her happiness at heart, told her I would help her to follow you if she wished. She gladly agreed; we drove after, but could hear no tidings of you in front of us. Then I took her — to your house — and there she awaits you. I promised to send you to her if human effort could do it, and was tracking you for that purpose.’
‘Then you’ve been a-pursuing after me?’
‘You and the widow.’
‘And I’ve been pursuing after you and Margery! My noble lord, your actions seem to show that I ought to believe you in this; and when you say you’ve her happiness at heart, I don’t forget that you’ve formerly32 proved it to be so. Well, Heaven forbid that I should think wrongfully of you if you don’t deserve it! A mystery to me you have always been, my noble lord, and in this business more than in any.’
‘I am glad to hear you say no worse. In one hour you’ll have proof of my conduct — good and bad. Can I do anything more? Say the word, and I’ll try.’
Jim reflected. ‘Baron,’ he said, ‘I am a plain man, and wish only to lead a quiet life with my wife, as a man should. You have great power over her — power to any extent, for good or otherwise. If you command her anything on earth, righteous or questionable33, that she’ll do. So that, since you ask me if you can do more for me, I’ll answer this, you can promise never to see her again. I mean no harm, my lord; but your presence can do no good; you will trouble us. If I return to her, will you for ever stay away?’
‘Hayward,’ said the Baron, ‘I swear to you that I will disturb you and your wife by my presence no more. And he took Jim’s hand, and pressed it within his own upon the hilt of Jim’s sword.
In relating this incident to the present narrator Jim used to declare that, to his fancy, the ruddy light of the setting sun burned with more than earthly fire on the Baron’s face as the words were spoken; and that the ruby35 flash of his eye in the same light was what he never witnessed before nor since in the eye of mortal man. After this there was nothing more to do or say in that place. Jim accompanied his never-to-be-forgotten acquaintance to the carriage, closed the door after him, waved his hat to him, and from that hour he and the Baron met not again on earth.
A few words will suffice to explain the fortunes of Margery while the foregoing events were in action elsewhere. On leaving her companion Vine she had gone distractedly among the carriages, the rather to escape his observation than of any set purpose. Standing here she thought she heard her name pronounced, and turning, saw her foreign friend, whom she had supposed to be, if not dead, a thousand miles off. He beckoned36, and she went close. ‘You are ill — you are wretched,’ he said, looking keenly in her face. ‘Where’s your husband?’
She told him her sad suspicion that Jim had run away from her. The Baron reflected, and inquired a few other particulars of her late life. Then he said: ‘You and I must find him. Come with me.’ At this word of command from the Baron she had entered the carriage as docilely37 as a child, and there she sat beside him till he chose to speak, which was not till they were some way out of the town, at the forking ways, and the Baron had discovered that Jim was certainly not, as they had supposed, making off from Margery along that particular branch of the fork that led to London.
‘To pursue him in this way is useless, I perceive,’ he said. ‘And the proper course now is that I should take you to his house. That done I will return, and bring him to you if mortal persuasion38 can do it.’
‘I didn’t want to go to his house without him, sir,’ said she, tremblingly.
‘Didn’t want to!’ he answered. ‘Let me remind you, Margery Hayward, that your place is in your husband’s house. Till you are there you have no right to criticize his conduct, however wild it may be. Why have you not been there before?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ she murmured, her tears falling silently upon her hand.
‘Don’t you think you ought to be there?’
She did not answer.
‘Of course you ought.’
Still she did not speak.
The Baron sank into silence, and allowed his eye to rest on her. What thoughts were all at once engaging his mind after those moments of reproof39? Margery had given herself into his hands without a remonstrance40, her husband had apparently41 deserted42 her. She was absolutely in his power, and they were on the high road.
That his first impulse in inviting43 her to accompany him had been the legitimate44 one denoted by his words cannot reasonably be doubted. That his second was otherwise soon became revealed, though not at first to her, for she was too bewildered to notice where they were going. Instead of turning and taking the road to Jim’s, the Baron, as if influenced suddenly by her reluctance45 to return thither46 if Jim was playing truant47, signalled to the coachman to take the branch road to the right, as her father had discerned.
They soon approached the coast near Idmouth. The carriage stopped. Margery awoke from her reverie.
‘Where are we?’ she said, looking out of the window, with a start. Before her was an inlet of the sea, and in the middle of the inlet rode a yacht, its masts repeating as if from memory the rocking they had practised in their native forest.
‘At a little sea-side nook, where my yacht lies at anchor,’ he said tentatively. ‘Now, Margery, in five minutes we can be aboard, and in half an hour we can be sailing away all the world over. Will you come?’
‘I cannot decide,’ she said, in low tones.
‘Why not?’
‘Because —’
Then on a sudden, Margery seemed to see all contingencies48: she became white as a fleece, and a bewildered look came into her eyes. With clasped hands she leant on the Baron.
Baron von Xanten observed her distracted look, averted49 his face, and coming to a decision opened the carriage door, quickly mounted outside, and in a second or two the carriage left the shore behind, and ascended the road by which it had come.
In about an hour they reached Jim Hayward’s home. The Baron alighted, and spoke34 to her through the window. ‘Margery, can you forgive a lover’s bad impulse, which I swear was unpremeditated?’ he asked. ‘If you can, shake my hand.’
She did not do it, but eventually allowed him to help her out of the carriage. He seemed to feel the awkwardness keenly; and seeing it, she said, ‘Of course I forgive you, sir, for I felt for a moment as you did. Will you send my husband to me?’
‘I will, if any man can,’ said he. ‘Such penance50 is milder than I deserve! God bless you and give you happiness! I shall never see you again!’ He turned, entered the carriage, and was gone; and having found out Jim’s course, came up with him upon the road as described.
In due time the latter reached his lodging51 at his partner’s. The woman who took care of the house in Vine’s absence at once told Jim that a lady who had come in a carriage was waiting for him in his sitting-room52. Jim proceeded thither with agitation53, and beheld, shrinkingly ensconced in the large slippery chair, and surrounded by the brilliant articles that had so long awaited her, his long-estranged wife.
Margery’s eyes were round and fear-stricken. She essayed to speak, but Jim, strangely enough, found the readier tongue then. ‘Why did I do it, you would ask,’ he said. ‘I cannot tell. Do you forgive my deception54? O Margery — you are my Margery still! But how could you trust yourself in the Baron’s hands this afternoon, without knowing him better?’
‘He said I was to come, and I went,’ she said, as well as she could for tearfulness.
‘You obeyed him blindly.’
‘I did. But perhaps I was not justified55 in doing it.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jim musingly56. ‘I think he’s a good man.’ Margery did not explain. And then a sunnier mood succeeded her tremblings and tears, till old Mr. Vine came into the house below, and Jim went down to declare that all was well, and sent off his partner to break the news to Margery’s father, who as yet remained unenlightened.
The dairyman bore the intelligence of his daughter’s untitled state as best he could, and punished her by not coming near her for several weeks, though at last he grumbled57 his forgiveness, and made up matters with Jim. The handsome Mrs. Peach vanished to Plymouth, and found another sailor, not without a reasonable complaint against Jim and Margery both that she had been unfairly used.
As for the mysterious gentleman who had exercised such an influence over their lives, he kept his word, and was a stranger to Lower Wessex thenceforward. Baron or no Baron, Englishman or foreigner, he had shown a genuine interest in Jim, and real sorrow for a certain reckless phase of his acquaintance with Margery. That he had a more tender feeling toward the young girl than he wished her or any one else to perceive there could be no doubt. That he was strongly tempted58 at times to adopt other than conventional courses with regard to her is also clear, particularly at that critical hour when she rolled along the high road with him in the carriage, after turning from the fancied pursuit of Jim. But at other times he schooled impassioned sentiments into fair conduct, which even erred59 on the side of harshness. In after years there was a report that another attempt on his life with a pistol, during one of those fits of moodiness60 to which he seemed constitutionally liable, had been effectual; but nobody in Silverthorn was in a position to ascertain61 the truth.
There he is still regarded as one who had something about him magical and unearthly. In his mystery let him remain; for a man, no less than a landscape, who awakens62 an interest under uncertain lights and touches of unfathomable shade, may cut but a poor figure in a garish63 noontide shine.
When she heard of his mournful death Margery sat in her nursing-chair, gravely thinking for nearly ten minutes, to the total neglect of her infant in the cradle. Jim, from the other side of the fire-place, said: ‘You are sorry enough for him, Margery. I am sure of that.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she murmured, ‘I am sorry.’ After a moment she added: ‘Now that he’s dead I’ll make a confession64, Jim, that I have never made to a soul. If he had pressed me — which he did not — to go with him when I was in the carriage that night beside his yacht, I would have gone. And I was disappointed that he did not press me.’
‘Suppose he were to suddenly appear now, and say in a voice of command, “Margery, come with me!”’
‘I believe I should have no power to disobey,’ she returned, with a mischievous look. ‘He was like a magician to me. I think he was one. He could move me as a loadstone moves a speck65 of steel . . . Yet no,’ she added, hearing the infant cry, ‘he would not move me now. It would be so unfair to baby.’
‘Well,’ said Jim, with no great concern (for ‘la jalousie retrospective,’ as George Sand calls it, had nearly died out of him), ‘however he might move ‘ee, my love, he’ll never come. He swore it to me: and he was a man of his word.’
Midsummer, 1883.
The End
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1
astute
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| adj.机敏的，精明的 | |
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fugitives
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| n.亡命者，逃命者( fugitive的名词复数 ) | |
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lawful
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| adj.法律许可的，守法的，合法的 | |
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vowing
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的现在分词形式） | |
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vengeance
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| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
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mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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balk
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| n.大方木料；v.妨碍；不愿前进或从事某事 | |
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untied
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| 松开，解开( untie的过去式和过去分词 )； 解除，使自由； 解决 | |
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mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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obliquely
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| adv.斜； 倾斜； 间接； 不光明正大 | |
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intersection
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| n.交集，十字路口，交叉点；[计算机] 交集 | |
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14
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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baron
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| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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17
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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rein
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| n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治 | |
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22
diverging
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| 分开( diverge的现在分词 )； 偏离； 分歧； 分道扬镳 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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jaded
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| adj.精疲力竭的；厌倦的；（因过饱或过多而）腻烦的；迟钝的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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intercept
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| vt.拦截，截住，截击 | |
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doggedly
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| adv.顽强地，固执地 | |
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juncture
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| n.时刻，关键时刻，紧要关头 | |
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regain
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| vt.重新获得，收复，恢复 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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questionable
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| adj.可疑的，有问题的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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ruby
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| n.红宝石，红宝石色 | |
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beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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docilely
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| adv.容易教地，易驾驶地，驯服地 | |
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persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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reproof
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| n.斥责，责备 | |
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remonstrance
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| n抗议，抱怨 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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inviting
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| adj.诱人的，引人注目的 | |
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legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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truant
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| n.懒惰鬼，旷课者；adj.偷懒的，旷课的，游荡的；v.偷懒，旷课 | |
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48
contingencies
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| n.偶然发生的事故，意外事故( contingency的名词复数 )；以备万一 | |
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averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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penance
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| n.（赎罪的）惩罪 | |
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51
lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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52
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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53
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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54
deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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55
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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56
musingly
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| adv.沉思地，冥想地 | |
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57
grumbled
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| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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58
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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59
erred
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| 犯错误，做错事( err的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60
moodiness
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| n.喜怒无常；喜怒无常，闷闷不乐；情绪 | |
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61
ascertain
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| vt.发现，确定，查明，弄清 | |
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62
awakens
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的第三人称单数 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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63
garish
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| adj.华丽而俗气的，华而不实的 | |
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64
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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