Chapter 4 - A Long Appointed Meeting

Winterfilth, S.R. 1401

It was dark and October the night a cart drove up Bagshot Row.  It stopped before Bag End's gate and Frodo Baggins took the pipe from his mouth, listening.  The creak of old wood, the shake of a harness and the low murmur of questioning voices suggested someone was coming to see him. 

He set down his mulled wine.  The hour was late; it was not likely a social call.  Saradoc had collected Merry that afternoon after his extended visit.  The youngster had proven invaluable in helping to get Bag End back in order after Bilbo's Farewell Birthday Party.  Frodo wondered if he and his father had met with difficulties on the road and had found it necessary to return.  He extracted himself as quickly as he could from the comfortable chair by the fire. 

Whoever had come had paused by the gate.  Though distance and the door muffled them, Frodo could hear two distinct voices.  He took up his small lamp and passed from the sitting room to the entry hall.  One voice was gruff, low, and disapproving and did not sound at all like the even-tempered Saradoc.  The other was soft and even toned and more difficult to discern. 

Through the little window in the hall, Frodo could see the glow of a single lamp.  A driver leaned from the seat of his small farm cart towards a cloaked figure that had apparently just alighted.  The figure shook its head and raised a hand as if to wave goodbye to the driver.  Fine hands, pale and graceful.  A lady?  The driver, his round face flushed in the lamplight, seemed disinclined to leave his passenger.  He began to climb down from his seat. 

Then Frodo heard the lady’s voice clearly.

"It's quite all right.  I will find my way."

Frodo frowned.  The cultured voice sounded vaguely familiar, but he could not imagine who might be stopping by his home at such an indecent hour of the night.  He opened the door and came out onto the step, holding his lamp up.

"Hello?" he said, in a manner he hoped showed he considered it too late to be receiving callers.  "May I ask who is there?"

The cloaked hobbitess turned, seeming startled by his voice, and her hooded gaze fixed upon him.  Frodo came down the path to the other side of the gate. 

The driver took his cap in hand and stepped forward, nodding to Frodo. 

"I'm sorry for disturbing you so late in the evening, Mr. Baggins, sir."  It was Toby Whitehall, a stout fellow who worked a farm below Bywater.  "But as I was coming along home from Waymeet this evening, I chanced upon this here young miss on the East Road.  Looked like she'd walked a far piece too, poor thing.  Says she was coming to see you."  Toby paused, looking curiously at him.  The lady had not moved, Frodo could almost feel her eyes upon him.  "Well, now, I guess I can see you wasn't expecting a visitor.  If you don't mind my saying, I thought it mighty queer that a young lady'd be out on the road by herself, coming to visit a gentlehobbit such as yourself so late in the evening." 

Frodo held up his lamp.  The lady's face remained in shadow, but her pale hand, raised halfway to her mouth, was clenched so tightly the knuckles were white.  "Yes, mighty irregular,” he agreed.  “It was most considerate of you to offer her a ride, Toby, thank you."  Frodo frowned and gave a slight bow of greeting.  “Is there anything I might help you with this evening, ma’am?”

The lady hesitated and her head flicked towards Toby.  After another moment's hesitation, the shapely hands rose to the hood and slowly pushed it back.

Frodo drew in a breath.  No wonder her voice had sounded familiar, although it had been many years since they had spoken more than a few words to one another.

“Pearl.” 

“Hello, Frodo.” 

She was no longer the rough and tumble lass of her youth.  Her hair, bound at the crown and falling in luxuriant ringlets down her back, glittered dark copper in the lamplight, a striking contrast against her ivory skin.  A dress of rich blue over a snow-white chemise displayed a well-developed breast to great advantage and a pair of sapphire earrings sparkled in the lamplight. 

Her neat, sharp little face reminded Frodo of Eglantine, her mother, whose features Pippin had also inherited, but the elegant dress and bearing were undoubtedly products of the girl's tutelage at Great Smials.  Paladin was as well bred a Took as they came, but had never been one to 'take on airs'.  There had once been a time that Pearl hadn't thought much of such behaviour either.

“I had wished to speak with you at Bilbo’s party,” he said.  “I was expecting you all afternoon."

Pearl flushed.  “Yes, I know.  I’m so sorry for that.  I was eager to talk with you, but…" She gave him a quick, apologetic shrug.  "I was called away.  Mistress Lalia is…” She seemed to search for a word that would suit, but in the end shrugged again.  "She doesn't like me to leave her for long." 

“I see."  When Frodo had asked her to meet him in Bag End's parlour to discuss her vow, he had been certain she would want to be released from it.  He was quite disposed to doing so; they having drifted in such seemingly different directions in hobbit society, but looking at her now, with only the puzzled farmer as witness, Frodo could see there was something hungry within her eyes, something haunted, desperate, and yet resolute.  Frodo found her intense gaze strangely unsettling. 

"Your mistress can be quite formidable," he agreed.  "I could understand you not wanting to cross her, but it's been nearly a month.  Couldn't you have sent me an explanation by post?  Why have you come all this way at such an… unusual time?”

Her mouth thinned into a worried line.  “It is difficult for me to correspond from Great Smials.”  She peered up at him as if willing him to understand a wordless entreaty.  "And this was the only time I could get away to discuss…"  She flicked a glance towards Toby.  "What we promised," she finished in a strangled whisper.

There had been a time when he had thought his young cousin fair, when even Bilbo had thought her a possible match for his nephew, but she had changed a great deal over the last seven years.  It was said she was now very important in the hierarchy of the Great Smials, favoured of the Thain and never out without a cluster of Tooks by her side.  By all accounts and evidence, she had long since forgotten him and the promise she had made on that innocent spring day. 

But she was here at his doorstep, and it seemed she had not forgotten it.  Not in the least. 

“I wish you had got a message to me somehow, Pearl.  I'd have met with you wherever you wished, but, if you don't mind my saying, it is quite late for a visit now."

Frodo saw her resolution waiver. 

“I…”  She searched his face as if looking for some sign of his mind or mood.  There was something troubling the girl, troubling her deeply.  Whatever it was she was searching for, she seemed not to be finding it.   Her intense gaze grew more anxious.

Frodo frowned.  His mood, if she'd cared to ask, was tired and he did not relish the prospect of having to drive her back to Great Smials in the dark. 

“Pearl?” he asked again, his patience wearing thin.  "What can I do for you?"

It was as if his words had struck her a physical blow.  She flinched and drew in a little gasp.  Once more she looked up at him, searching, but now seemed to realize that what she was looking for was not in him.  Hope, a fragile mask she had borne so carefully, shredded like a fog in a rising wind.  Desperation lay beneath it.  She lost her tenuous hold on decorum.  Disbelief and then despair washed over her features.  Her lip quivered and silent tears spilled onto her cheeks, but she never took her haunted eyes off him.  Frodo had seen that look on her before; at Greenfields, she had gazed back at her father, Paladin, that way; with the same shattered, hopeless longing, but even then she had not looked so utterly devastated. 

“Easy, girl,” he said more gently. “It can’t be as bad as all that.”

Her expression said differently.  She drew a pained breath and tried to collect herself, but though she managed to keep her feet, it was plain something inside was tearing her apart.

“Oh, no…”  Her voice was soft but choked.  She forced back a sob with sudden and almost violent desperation.  “No, no, no…”

Turmoil was raging within her and the toll on her body was beginning to tell.  She closed her eyes tightly and swayed.  Toby leapt forward and supported her arm.  She looked at him for a moment and something in her expression shocked the farmer so badly he almost let her go, but then her body went limp and he was barely able to keep her from crumpling into a heap on the ground.

“Sir!” he yelped.  Frodo had already opened the gate.

“Bring her inside, quickly!”  He helped Toby gather the girl into his arms.  She was a dead weight, completely overcome, and though she made no sound, tears still flowed from her tightly closed eyes. 

“Take her through the first door to the right after the entrance hall,” Frodo commanded.  Toby complied and laid her out on the bed in the lower guest room. 

“Shall I call for the healer?” the farmer asked breathlessly.  Frodo was in the process of nodding when Pearl reached up and grasped the poor fellow’s coat. 

“No!” she cried.  “No healer, please.  I… I will be all right.”

“But miss!” Toby looked as if the hand she held him with would eat him. 

“No healer,” she repeated, releasing him.  She drew several deep breaths and then opened her eyes.

Her gazed darted past Frodo as if the sight of him pained her and she pleaded with the farmer. 

“I need only rest a moment.  Please do not trouble anyone else over my… foolishness.”  Toby frowned.  Pearl said the word with unusual bitterness.  “If my illustrious cousin will permit me to, I will stay here and be off in the morning.  Please.  I have inconvenienced you enough on my account.  Go home to your family.” 

Toby looked distraught.  “But, miss!  It ain’t,” he looked at Frodo and shrugged as if in apology, “proper.  I mean, for a lady such as yourself to stay the night with an unmarried gentlehobbit.  Meaning no disrespect to Mr. Frodo and all, but it’s not seemly for either of you.”

Frodo nodded.  “You are quite right, Toby.  Which is why, as soon as Miss Took is settled, I will fetch my neighbour, the Widow Rumble, to come tend her.  That should answer the requirements of modesty quite well.”

Toby nodded hesitantly.  “You are a gentlehobbit of quality, sir, I was sure you’d see the right of it.”  He looked down at Pearl and gave her a heartfelt nod.  “And I hope you are soon cured of whatever’s struck you so sudden-like.  You looked… well, I’d not want anyone to feel as bad as you looked, ma’am.  Fare you better.”

Frodo saw Toby to the door with many thanks and a coin for his trouble that the farmer tried to refuse.  He said any would have done the same, but Frodo assured him that the protection of his cousin’s virtue was worth at least what he offered.  With that and a strange look, Toby took the money and climbed back onto his cart.

When Frodo returned to the guest room, Pearl struggled to sit up, but would not meet his eyes.

“I’ll ask you not to disturb your neighbour, Frodo,” she said, in a voice once again steady and controlled.  “I have been most selfish this night.  The fewer people are inconvenienced by my actions, the better I should feel about it.  Just allow me a room for the night and a flannel and I will be on my way before anyone is the wiser.”

Frodo shook his head.  “There is nothing that goes on in Hobbiton that isn’t marked by someone, believe me.”  He spared her a little smile.  “Even if Farmer Whitehall said nothing, word would still spread that you had spent the night here alone.  Please, allow me to call the Widow Rumble.  It would protect your reputation and she would not mind.”

Very slowly, Pearl looked up at him.  For a long time she searched his face again, but this time with little hope of finding what she sought.  Frodo felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as he realized what she was looking for; his answer in the matter he had promised they would discuss.  Until she had appeared at his gate, he had never considered she might still be so taken with him.  Had she kept her promise of chastity these seven years?  Despite the changes that fortune had visited upon her and the strange and distant manner rumour had credited her with, she must have.  And she had now come to discuss a marriage. 

Though she had grown fully into the promise of her youth and was by any measure as lovely a maiden as one could wish for, Frodo felt strangely reserved towards her.  Perhaps he was simply in the habit of resisting the offers of ladies who wished to court him, or that he still saw her as too young to consider, but he felt no desire to commit to Pearl Took, even if she had kept her virtue for him.  He frowned and toyed absently with the fine chain that hung from his belt.  His response to the question she had not asked must have shown in his face, for when he could meet her eyes again there was a deep and overwhelming sorrow shadowed in them.  She had not asked her question, but she now knew what his answer would be.  He flushed, feeling very uncomfortable, and had to look away again.  She had come chasing the ghost of something that had never really been…  And had not received the response she had hoped for. 

“What use have I for reputation?” she asked at last, her voice even more bitter than before.  “Believe me, cousin; I would be much better served by a soiled one.”  She straightened her rumpled dress and gathered the cloak she’d let fall onto the bed.  Then she looked at him and the pain in her eyes had been consumed by a fey, savage coldness that made Frodo step back in shock.  “If you insist on disturbing your neighbour, then I will leave.  I will find my way back to Great Smials this night and trouble you no more.”

“Cousin!”

This elegant Pearl had a ruthlessness to her that Frodo would never have expected from her innocent former self.  She meant what she said.  The fields and forests of the Shire held no dread for her; they had been her playgrounds as a child, and Frodo could see the resolve in her suddenly rigid frame.  She reminded him again of his aunt Eglantine who, when she set her will, was also impossible to sway.

“This is highly irregular,” he complained.  “What would your parents say if they heard of it?”

She laughed, but it was not a joyful sound.  “They would believe it sooner than most,” she said.  “Will you offer me a place to rest or will I be off?”

Frodo fingered the trinkets in his breeches-pocket and when he touched the smooth gold of the ring Bilbo had left him, he felt a strange, rising anger.  How dare the girl put him in such a position?  She was being selfish and childish and mean spirited, and had gone out of her way to make him feel accountable for her foolishness.  He was so put out that, for a moment, he almost considered letting her go.  How was it possible that he had once entertained the notion of someday marrying her?

“I will expect you to assure Paladin and Eglantine that nothing has happened here.  If you care nothing for your own good name, have a care for mine.” 

He’d spoken more sharply than he’d intended and Pearl looked up at him again, but this time without the shield of bitterness hiding her hurt and sorrow.  He suddenly wished he could take back his words.  It was now clear to her that she had come there for nothing if, after her wordless query, she'd had any remaining doubt.  He felt a swift stab of pity for her, but it was not enough to soothe all his discomfiture.  

“You may trust me, cousin,” she said and the stiffness left her back.  “And now, if you would direct me to a room where I may sleep, I will do so and trouble you no more.”

“You may stay here,” said Frodo.  “The windows face east, but you may draw the curtains and sleep in as long as you like.  In the morning, I will call a coach for you.”

Her head was bowed but she nodded.  “Thank you,” she said.

He turned but paused at the door.  “I’ll bring you water for the basin.  There are towels in the wardrobe.”  She looked up dully at the carved cabinet.  Frodo stepped into the hall but hesitated shutting the door.  She truly did look wretched despite the sophisticated clothes and coiffure.  She looked as she had 7 years ago on that spring afternoon, embarrassed, scorned and heartbroken.  He still had that effect on her. 

“Pearl…”

This time, when she met his eyes, she just looked weary. 

“I’m sorry…”

She didn’t reply.

Frodo found it difficult to sleep that night. 

Visions of a mud covered girl looking longingly back over her shoulder haunted him as did his uncharacteristic irritation with her current incarnation.  Part of him argued that, though the break had been painful, Pearl was old enough now to know the difference between a girlhood crush and a real compact.  It was for the best that she learn the truth so that she could salve her heart and move on to find someone who could truly love her. 

But the other part of him wondered why he felt so adamantly opposed to even considering her.  She was lovely.  And she had kept her vow, he was certain of it.  She would not have come to see him if she had not.  It was plain that she was smitten, perhaps even more hopelessly than a crush, but he could not return the feeling.  It was as if some other love had stolen his heart already. 

But there was no one else.  He was alone, of age and the Master of Bag End.  It was high time he considered marriage, if not to Pearl Took, then to someone.  Bilbo would have wished it, though he himself had never married.  The old hobbit had once confided that he’d thought to take a wife several times in his life, but somehow his adventures had quieted the need for such companionship.  It was as if something he discovered in those far-flung lands had fulfilled all his yearnings and enabled him to remain contented as a bachelor.

Frodo had also found life as the Master of Bag End satisfactory.  Though he missed Bilbo, he had already settled into a quite comfortable routine.  That wasn’t a reason not to marry, perhaps, but it did not stir him to seek a wife.  It all seemed such a bother, something he could attend to after he had enjoyed a few quiet years on his own.  Wasn't it strange how all lasses seemed to crave marriage?  Even the independent Pearl.  She'd walked all the way from Great Smials for such a hope only to have it dashed on his doorstep.  Frodo tossed and turned in his bed, his mind refusing to let him rest.  Hadn't she claimed once that wedded bliss was not a fate for her?  He opened his eyes to the restless dark.  She had said that, it was true.  He sat up and fluffed the pillows again, but found he could not dismiss her seeming hypocrisy.  In his heart he knew that it wasn't really marriage that she had sought this night, just as it hadn't been marriage she had wanted in that springtime glade.  It was him. 

His bedroom was on the far side of the smial in the deep recesses of the back of the western side.  He heard nothing from his guest that night, though once, when he rose to retrieve a drink from the kitchen, he thought he caught a faint sound that might have been sobbing.  It ceased the moment he entered the hall and Frodo wasn’t certain then if he’d heard it, or if indeed it had not been part of a half remembered dream.

He woke late, dressed and went to the kitchen for tea and breakfast.  There was a bowl and knife washed on the drain pan and a simple note of thanks on the table.  Pearl had already risen and left. 

“Without so much as a word,” muttered Frodo as he prepared his tea.

“Good morning, sir!”  Sam Gamgee called from the garden.  “Was there something wrong with Mr. Merry this morning?  I’d thought he’d left yesterday.”

“He did, Sam,” said Frodo, coming out onto the step with his mug.  “Yesterday morning.  Saradoc came and collected him and I haven’t heard from them since.”

Sam sat back from the beds he was retiring for the winter.  “Well, that’s mighty queer,” he said.  “Then who was the lad in the guest room?  I saw him when I passed by the window and thought it strange that Mr. Merry would be sleeping in his shirt and trousers.  And then when I came back from filling the woodshed, I saw him, or who I thought was him, headed down the lane with a bundle.  I gave a shout, but I suppose now I see why he didn’t answer.”  Sam shook his head.  “If that wasn’t Mr. Merry, then who was it, sir?”

Frodo was looking back over his shoulder.  “Shirt and trousers?” he said wonderingly.  “Half a minute, Sam.”  He returned to the kitchen and set down his tea.  After wiping off his hands and knees, Sam followed, hesitating at the back door as if to make certain he wouldn't track dirt into the Master's smial.

Frodo opened the guest room door.  The bed was made tight and the basin had been wiped and dried.  If Frodo had not seen his cousin in the room the night before, he might have doubted she had even been there.

“Well, now, that can’t have been Mr. Merry, I see,” said Sam.  “I’ve not once seen him make a bed, never mind one so tight.” 

“No, it wasn’t him.”  Frodo’s brief smile faded.  “It was another cousin, come to me for something I couldn’t give them.  I am afraid they left disappointed.” 

“I’m sorry to hear that, Sir.  But I’m sure you gave them all you could.” 

“Did I?”  Frodo stared thoughtfully into the little room and then looked out the window to the little path that led down to the lane.  “I am not sure.  Not sure at all.”

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TBC