Part 16

Margaret sat and thought again when she was alone; she had thought and thought since Mrs. Lakeman had gone that morning till her head was dazed, but it was no good; the whole thing was a _cul-de-sac_. Then an inspiration seized her. "I'll write to Hannah," she said, "and beg her to let me go home and see my mother for a little while, at any rate. She'll get the letter in the morning, and I'll ask her to telegraph if I may go." She sat down at once and told Hannah, with all the vehemence in her heart, that she had never cared for Mr. Garratt; that perhaps she had even cared for somebody else; that she had given up her engagement at Mr. Farley's theatre; that she was miserable about her mother, and wanted to come and see her; would Hannah telegraph in the morning if she might come at once, even for a few hours. She felt better when she had written it, and determined to go out and post it herself. She was just starting when Dawson Farley appeared. His heart had smote him for his share in the morning's transactions.

"I thought I would come round and tell you how sorry I am at your resignation," he said.

"And it was so unnecessary, after all, for my sudden engagement to Mr. Carringford is broken off."

"I know."

"How do you know?" she asked, astonished.

"Mrs. Lakeman came to see me and told me."

"Oh yes, Mrs. Lakeman," she answered, bitterly. "Is Lena really dangerously ill?" She wondered at her own question, but some other self had asked it--a self that doubted everything.

Mr. Farley, too, was taken by surprise. "I suppose so," he said, with a little smile. "Mrs. Lakeman's facts are sometimes a little elusive; but she can hardly have invented that one. Carringford has always been by way of--I mean he has always been considered Lena Lakeman's property." Quite suddenly Margaret lost her self-control for a moment, and shudderingly put her hands over her face.

"I'm sorry if she's ill, but I do dislike her so," she said.

Mr. Farley, too, was off his guard. "I hate her," he said, quickly. "Tell me, frankly, what you think about it?"

But Margaret shook her head impatiently. "I oughtn't to have said that; and I can't talk about it, Mr. Farley. I'm sure you will understand that the whole thing is painful, and not one that I can discuss."

"At any rate, I may congratulate you on your father's probable return?"

"Oh, he will not be here for a long time."

"But you know that his brother is dead?"

She started to her feet. "When did he die; how did you know?"

"He died yesterday after an operation at Melbourne. I have just seen it in an evening paper," Mr. Farley answered.

"Oh, my dear mother, she will get my father back," burst from Margaret's lips. "She is ill, but this news will make her better. I have been writing to my half-sister"--and she took up the letter--"I will open it and tell her, for she may not know." Without knowing it, she showed her impatience to be alone, and in a few minutes Dawson Farley discreetly took his leave.

"I'm not going on with it," he thought, as he walked back to Victoria Street. "That girl is a sweet woman, dignified and courageous, and I can't be turned into a common scoundrel to please Mrs. Lakeman."

XXX

It was past seven when Margaret came in from posting her letter; she had walked on almost unconsciously for an hour or two--into the city, deserted after the business of the day, and back by the Embankment, to avoid the traffic near the theatres.

The last few hours had been so full of events they had changed the whole current of her life; but as yet she was hardly able to take in all the meanings attached to them. She was like a woman in a dream struggling to awake; it seemed as if everything that had happened concerned some one else rather than herself. Oh, if she could feel more acutely--she even longed for pain, for anything that would make her realize that she was still alive.

Mrs. Gilman let her in, evidently full of pleasant excitement. "Miss Hunstan is coming back," she exclaimed. "I have just had a letter, and knew you would like to be told. She expects to be here in a day or two. She will be pleased about you and Mr. Carringford."

Margaret stopped, dumfounded; but Mrs. Gilman would have to know. She thought it would be better to get it over. "But perhaps we are not going to be married, after all--Mr. Carringford and I," she said, lamely. "We made up our minds too quickly."

"Oh no, miss, I couldn't think that; and, if I know anything about it, he loves the ground you walk on. There was a glow in his face whenever I let him in, or whenever he was with you, that did one good to see."

But Margaret was on her way up-stairs and answered nothing.

Mrs. Gilman called after her: "Oh, Miss Vincent, I forgot to say there's a letter for you--you'll find it on the drawing-room table."

A letter! She went almost headlong into the room, while her heart beat quickly with hope and wonder.

The letter had the Chidhurst postmark; it was directed in an uneducated hand, and inside there was written, almost illegibly:

"I think mother is very ill, but Hannah will not have it. Do not say I wrote. Better come at once. From

"TOWSEY."

A cry escaped from Margaret's lips; pain had come to her now acutely enough.

"Oh, mother, mother, if you should die! How could I think of anything else in the world when you were ill; but I didn't know, darling, I never dreamed it."

In ten minutes she was on her way to Waterloo. The hansom went so slowly she beat the doors with her fists in her impatience. All thought of Tom had vanished or been pushed into the background of her life; the older love asserted itself, and every thought was concentrated on the dear life at Chidhurst. She had just time to catch the train--it went at 7.45. It wanted two minutes to the quarter when she reached the station. She flew out of the cab almost before it had stopped, handed the fare to the man, and hurried to the booking-office. It seemed as if the clerk gave her a ticket with deliberate slowness; she snatched it, and ran to the platform. The doors were being closed; she had just time to enter an empty carriage before the train started. Thank Heaven, she was alone. She could walk up and down and wring her hands or throw herself upon the seat, or lean her head against the side of the carriage and pray--to any power that existed and was merciful. "Let her live--let her live! She mustn't die while father is away; it would be so cruel. Mother--mother, darling, you mustn't die. Father is on his way back, and I am coming to you; don't you feel that I am coming?"

Oh, the misery of it, and the slow, slow plodding of a train that goes towards a house over which death hovers. It seemed to Margaret as if it were hours before she even reached Woking; but it was something to be in the dear Surrey country once again. The door opened when the train stopped and two people got in; they looked like man and wife. Margaret locked her hands and clinched her teeth, as she had done in the morning in order to bear the presence of Mrs. Lakeman, and presently in her dim corner she shut her eyes and pretended to sleep, though every sense was throbbing with impatience. She heard the woman say to the man--and it made her start, for Annie was her mother's name, though they, of course, had nothing to do with her:

"I think Annie's growing taller; don't you?"

"I dare say," the man answered; "she's a girl I never cared for myself." He stopped a moment as if considering. "Do you think Tom means anything by it?"

Tom, too! Margaret thought.

"Well, they seem to think he's looking after Mabel Margetson," the woman answered.

"There'd be some money there," the man said.

"A good bit, no doubt," the woman answered; "but money isn't everything."

No, money isn't everything, Margaret's heart answered them. Money is nothing, after a certain point; nothing is anything except the love of your dearest, the sound of a living voice, the sight of a dear face, the touch of a thin, gaunt cheek against your own. "Oh, she must live," she cried dumbly to herself, though never a sign or movement betrayed it. "I wish I could send my own life into your heart, darling; but live--live till father comes. Oh, dear Christ, if You can see into our hearts, as people say, let my mother live, or, if she must die soon, still let her live till my father comes--or till I get to her," she added, in despair, for in her heart she felt as if the rest must be denied. "We love her, love her best on earth, as she does us."

"Why, it's Guildford already," the woman said. "I declare, this train is in a hurry." She reached down the basket that was in the rack, the man rose, they opened the carriage door, and again Margaret was left alone.

The oil in the lamp burned low and flickered; she opened the window at the other end--they were both open--and the soft darkness of the summer night came in. She knelt by the carriage door, and rested her arms on the window-frame and her face down on them; it gave her a devotional feeling; it made her love the land and trees and the great sky above them; they had always seemed to understand everything; she felt as if they did now. The scent of the pines came to her; she could see the fir-trees black and dim as the train rushed past; but all nature seemed to know the misery in her heart--it soothed her and made her able to bear it calmly. She looked up at the little stars that had been there thousands of years before she was born, and would be there thousands of years to come--at the stars and the black trees that made the shadows, at the woods in which she had never trodden and yet knew so well, at the deep gray sky, the rough fence that bounded the railway line--and everything seemed to know as she passed by that she was going to her mother, only to find that nothing, nothing in this wide world, can alter the inexorable law of nature and the great decree when it has once been given.

There were three little stations to pass before she reached Haslemere. The station-master's gardens were bright with flowers; she could see plainly the patches of color in the darkness, and the scent of late sweet-peas was wafted to her. She could see the cottages of Surrey as the train went on, here and there a light shone from an upper window--lattice windows generally, like her mother's. Behind them people were going to bed; they were not ill, not dying, as perhaps her mother was, in the big bed at Woodside Farm. A brook, some trees, a house built up high on the bank a little way back from the road, the slackening of the train--and Haslemere at last. The train seemed to hurry to the farthest end of the platform on purpose, and she was impatient at every yard she had to tread. She gave up her ticket and passed through the narrow doorway of the station-house and out again on the other side. It was ten o'clock--late hours for the country-side. The inn on the high bank opposite was closed.

"Is it too late for a fly?" she asked the porter.

"Too late to-night, miss, unless it's ordered beforehand," and he turned out an extra gas-light. Almost before the words were said she had darted forward; she was young and strong, and her feet were swift. She hurried up the hill on the right, past the inn at the top--she could see the white post and the little dark patch above that constituted the sign. On and on past the smithy and the wheelwright's, and the little cottages with thatched roofs and white fenced-in gardens. She could have walked a hundred miles--flung them behind her with disdain. It was the time, it was the time! Life hurried away so at the last; it might not stay even for her longing or her praying. She turned off from the main road, over a bridge on the right--a narrow road just wide enough for two carriages to pass--the oaks and plane-trees leaned out above the hedges, she could see the trailing outline, against the sky, of a little clump of larches--a deep blue sky now in which the stars had gathered closer.

Nearly three miles were behind her. She was near the outbuildings of a farm that was half-way to Chidhurst; she smelt the newly garnered grain in them as she passed. Another quarter of a mile and she had come to the edge of the moor. Along the white road beside it--the road she had driven with her father the day she returned from London, and that Mr. Garratt had trotted along so often with his fat, gray pony or on his mare, pleased and jaunty, with his hunting-crop in his right hand. The bell heather was dead, the gorse was turning brown, she knew that there must be patches of ling, but it was too dark to see them.

On she hurried, the white road was stretching behind her instead of in front. Another quarter of a mile and she had come to Chidhurst village; it was still and sleeping. How strange it seemed to skurry through it at this hour! A few minutes more and the square tower of the church stood out before her. The darkness had lifted so well that she could see the clock; it had stopped, of course--at a quarter-past three; a lump came to her throat and her heart stood still, for low on the ground beneath the church tower she saw the whiteness of the tombstones round the church. She turned her head quickly away; on the other side of the road were the gates of Sir George Stringer's house--the sight of them gave her comfort--and on her right, at last, was the little gate that led into the fields that made the short cut to the farm. She gave a cry of thankfulness as she went through it, and stood on her mother's land once more. It was only a month since she had slept on the green ground beneath her feet, and kissed it and wondered when she would walk over it again. She had not thought it would be so soon. Across the field by one of the pathways that made a white line leading to the stile, over the stile and into the second field, and she ran now, for she knew that in a moment she would see the house.

XXXI

Margaret stood in sight of her mother's window and could have cried with joy, for there was a light in it. She lifted up her heart in thankfulness, feeling as if Heaven had heard her. Then another fear presented itself, one that had been haunting her all through the journey, but that in the overwhelming dread of not finding her mother alive she had not stayed to consider--Hannah. What would Hannah do? Would she refuse to let her enter the house while her mother was ill--perhaps dying? The letter which she had written was still in the post; it would not arrive till the morning; there was not yet the chance of that softening her. She had no right to keep Margaret out; but it was no good considering any question of right now; she dreaded high words and Hannah's rasping voice. Her feet flagged as she went down the green path of the Dutch garden; she stood irresolute at the bottom of it, looking up at the dimly lighted window, wondering what to do. The front door was certain to be bolted at this time of night, and probably every one was up-stairs, so that no one would hear her if she tapped, and she was afraid to ring lest she should disturb her mother. She went softly past the house, beside the flower-bed against the wall, and beneath her own bedroom window, round to the back door by which she had left the house a month ago, and cautiously tried the latch, but it was fastened on the inside, as she knew it would be. Then suddenly a light came from the kitchen window; evidently some one had entered with a candle; perhaps Towsey had come down, or Hannah--she was afraid to knock lest it should be Hannah. A thick muslin blind was drawn over the window, which was so high that Margaret was not tall enough to look in. She remembered the four-legged stool painted gray--it generally stood between the wood-house and the back door; the postman used to sit on it sometimes and talk to Towsey while he rested. If she stood on that she might see into the kitchen. She found it, and, still not making a sound, put it down beneath the window, mounted, and looked in. Through the muslin curtain she could see Towsey by the fireplace; she had put a little saucepan on the fire, and was beginning to stir something that was in it, and there was no one else in the kitchen. Margaret tapped gently, and Towsey started as if she divined that it was Margaret; she came to the window and, lifting the curtain, looked out. Margaret put her head close to the glass so that in the darkness there could be no mistake of her identity.

Then Towsey signed to her to go to the back door, and went and softly unbarred it. She only opened it a little way and put out her head as if she were afraid that even a whisper might be heard inside the house.

"Miss Margaret," she said, "I knew you would be here."

"Is she better?" Margaret asked, breathlessly.

Towsey shook her head. "She's never going to be better," she whispered; "but she's always been a healthy woman, and it may take a deal of dying to bring her to the end."

The words smote Margaret, and she held on to the doorway to support herself.

"Is Hannah with her?" she asked.

"Ay, she is with her; you may be sure of that."

"Has she said nothing about me? Didn't she mean to send for me?"

"Not a word. You see it has all been so sudden; she was only took worse last night."

"Did she get a telegram yesterday?"

"Ay, late yesterday afternoon. She said I wasn't to say anything to Hannah about it; she looked as if she were pleased. Hannah had gone over to Petersfield for the afternoon when it came and didn't get back till half an hour after."

"What is the matter with mother?--is it her heart, or what?"

"Yes, it's her heart, I expect; we sent Daddy for the doctor at nine o'clock last night, and he came again this morning. He hadn't been since last week. He said she was better; but he didn't seem to think well of her."

"Has Hannah said nothing about me?"

"I asked her if she'd wrote after he had gone, but she told me to mind my work and leave her to mind other things."

"And then?"

"And then I just got George Canning to write those lines and post them in Haslemere when he went for the physic. I thought if he posted it before twelve you'd likely get it to-night."

"I did--I did!" and Margaret put her hand on Towsey's arm in token of gratitude. Towsey turned her head back for a moment as if she were listening, but all was still above.

"Has mother asked for me?" Margaret whispered.

"Ay, every hour."

"I must come in, I will come in!" she said, desperately.

"You have a right to," Towsey answered; "but after she came from London she said she would turn me from the door if I ever opened it to you."

"I must see my mother!" Margaret said, and a sob came to her throat. "She has no right to keep me from her."

"That's true enough, Miss Margaret. But she's that bitter I believe she'd shut the door on you if your mother was lying dead."

"I would insist," said Margaret, in despair; "but it would be so terrible to have a quarrel now, and it might kill her. She's my mother, Towsey," Margaret added, in a heart-broken whisper.

"And Hannah may say what she pleases, you shall enter," whispered Towsey with determination, and opened the door wide. Margaret went swiftly past her into the kitchen, and Towsey shut the door softly and followed her. "You'll be tired with the journey," she said, tenderly; "let me get you something to eat and drink."

"I don't want anything to eat or drink, Towsey, dear; I want to creep up and be near mother even if I can't see her. Oh, I wonder if Hannah would prevent my seeing her?"

"Ay, that she would," said Towsey, with conviction. "You'd better sit a bit," and she led Margaret to a chair very carefully, so that the sound of their footsteps should not be heard above, and still they spoke in whispers.

"Is there no hope?" Margaret asked, chokingly.

Towsey shook her head. "Hannah won't believe she's going, but I can see it. I have seen plenty go, and know the signs. The pain's gone--it's never been very bad--but it's all gone now. She's just waiting for death, though, somehow, I don't think it will come till she's seen you."

"But doesn't Hannah know she's dying?"

Towsey shook her head. "She doesn't see it, and you can never make Hannah believe anything she doesn't think inside her."

"Is Hannah likely to come down?"

"Likely she'll be down presently for the arrow-root. Look you, Miss Margaret, I'll make an excuse and go up for something. You take off your shoes and walk softly by me, keeping well to the side of the staircase. There's only the little lamp in the room, and there's no light outside; she'll not see, even if she looks out."

"But what shall I do when I get up?" Margaret asked, too dazed to think for herself. She took off her hat as she spoke and put it on the table. Towsey lifted it gently and hid it in the settle where she kept her own things.

"As I go into the room you can slip into the cupboard outside the door--you'll find it open--and hide among the things hanging up. I'll try and get Hannah down and keep her to eat a bit of supper; then, perhaps, you could steal in and look at her for a moment without any one knowing you are there."

"But if it did her harm--if it excited her?"

"It won't," said Towsey, firmly; "it'll make her happy before she goes. It would be terrible if she died without seeing you or her husband, when she's waiting and longing for you both that badly she can scarce breathe."

"Let us go at once," whispered Margaret.

They crept out of the kitchen together, Margaret's hand on Towsey's shoulder. The tears came into the old woman's eyes as they crossed the threshold. "I nursed you a lot of times when you were a baby," she whispered; "and now you are such a beauty--she said it," and she nodded upward, "only yesterday."

They went along the passage and stopped near the foot of the stairs that were between the kitchen door and the door of the best parlor. They could hear Hannah's voice. She was sitting by her mother's bedside reading the Bible. Towsey went up a few steps and stopped and craned her neck, and came back.

"The door's nearly to," she whispered. "Hannah won't see."

Margaret softly followed Towsey up-stairs, keeping close to the wall till she reached the landing, then she slipped into the cupboard that was next her mother's room. She remembered how she had looked into it the day that Tom Carringford came to the farm four months ago; her mother's long cloak and best dress had been hanging there then, and they were there now. Margaret knew the feel of them so well--it gave her a thrill to touch them. It was quite dark within the cupboard; even if the door were open and Hannah passed, she would not be likely to see her. She was afraid to move the door lest it should be noticed, but she hid a little way behind it. Towsey, seeing she was safe, looked in at Hannah, who, perhaps, made some sign to her, for she went softly down to the kitchen again. Then, as Margaret stood hidden and listening, out of her mother's bedroom door there came still the sound of Hannah reading of love and mercy; but her voice told that neither had entered her own heart.

Presently Mrs. Vincent asked feebly, "Has any one come, Hannah?"

"Did she know?" Margaret wondered.

"The doctor said he wouldn't be here again to-day--he thought you better this morning," Hannah answered.

"I feel sure I am dying, Hannah. I shall never see him again."

"She is thinking of my father," Margaret thought, and could hardly keep herself from crying out.

"You don't know how to do with illness," Hannah said; "you've not had any for so long. We are all in God's hands, remember that."

"I want you to send for Margaret--she's so young," Mrs. Vincent pleaded; "I can't bear to think of her away from home."

But Hannah answered firmly: "She has disgraced us, mother."

"She has done nothing wrong," Mrs. Vincent answered; "nothing could make me believe that."

"She has disgraced us with her play actors and her forwardness. Would you have an unbeliever beside your sick-bed?"