Part 17

"But I want her," Mrs. Vincent said. "I want her and her father," she moaned. "I can't die without seeing them again."

"You are making too much of the illness," Hannah answered, anxiously. "People have more of it before they die."

"Tell Towsey to send for Margaret," Mrs. Vincent said, as if her mind were detaching itself from Hannah's argument.

"She shall not cross the doorstep," Hannah said; "and, if you were dying, it would be for your salvation's sake that I would still say it; for one must have fear of God as well as love of God. Let us go on with the reading, mother."

"I can't listen; I want Margaret and her father. There is the sea between him and me, but you can send for Margaret."

"You are tired and had better sleep a little," Hannah said for answer, and, for all her firmness, her voice was kind and even gentle, as though she were striving to save a soul at bitter cost to her own heart. No answer came to her last words, and five minutes went by; they seemed like hours to Margaret; then Hannah spoke again, and her voice was different--there was something like fear in it.

"Mother," she asked, "mother, why do you look round so; do you see anything?"

"I'm looking for Margaret," the faint voice said.

"You'd better try to sleep; you'll be stronger if you sleep a little." But for answer there was only a little moaning whisper that Margaret's heart told her was her own name, and in agony she rocked to and fro and clung to her mother's skirt hung against the wall, and kissed it, and the tears came into her eyes and scalded them.

"I will go and get you a cup of arrow-root," she heard Hannah say; "it is past midnight, and time that you had nourishment." She pushed back the chair on which she had been sitting and came out of the room and, passing the door of the cupboard in which her sister was hiding, went down-stairs. Then Margaret slipped softly into her mother's room and knelt by the bedside.

"Mother!--mother!" she whispered, and put her face down on the thin hands and covered them with kisses. "Mother, darling, I am here--beside you."

A look of fright and joy came into Mrs. Vincent's dulling eyes. "Margaret?" she gasped. "Thank God, I've seen you! Hannah won't believe that I am dying. Did Towsey--"

"Yes, darling, yes," Margaret whispered; "and I love you so--I love you so. Get well, darling; father is coming back--he is coming back immediately; get well for him," she whispered between the kisses she rained on the thin face and the hands that had a strange chill on them.

"I shall never see him," Mrs. Vincent said; "but tell him that I thought of him and of you all the time."

"Oh, mother--mother--"

"Bless you, dear, bless you," Mrs. Vincent said. A happy smile came for a moment over her face, though fear quenched it. "If Hannah finds you she will drive you out. You must go--I couldn't bear it, dear. I entreat you to go."

"I will hide, darling; Towsey will manage everything," Margaret said.

"Hannah is very hard," the dying woman whispered, anxiously; "but she doesn't mean it--and she's been very good to me--it's only because she's strict. Tell your father he will come to me, and I'll be waiting. Go, dear--go--I couldn't have died without seeing you." With a last effort Mrs. Vincent kissed her again, but her lips would hardly move, though a cry of fear came through them, for Hannah had quickly crossed the hall below and begun to ascend the stairs; and Margaret knew that if she left the room she would meet her on the threshold. Mrs. Vincent's eyes turned in terror towards the door and remained fixed; a strange expression came to them, as if she saw many waiting and was satisfied, knowing why they had come.

In a moment Margaret was on the other side of the bed and had hidden behind the screen that was partly round the top and down one side of it. She could not stand for trembling; she crouched down on her knees and held her breath.

"Mother, I thought I heard you cry," Hannah said as she entered, but there came no sound for answer. "Mother," she said again, and waited; but all was still. Then Hannah went to the door and called: "Towsey, Towsey, come here!" and Towsey, startled by her tone, came running in haste, and Margaret knew that they were standing together at the bedside. The moments went by with a strange stillness, dragging and terrible, as though an unseen host held on to them. She heard Towsey whisper, "She is going"; she heard her mother's quick breathing, she heard her try to speak, but the words were only half articulated, and still she did not dare to move.

Hannah said: "Mother, mother, Christ will save you; pray to Him," and her mother whispered once more:

"Tell father and Margaret--and there will be James, too." Then the breathing grew quicker, and the death-rattle came in her throat, and Margaret put her hands to her own throat and covered her mouth, and crouched lower and lower towards the floor, so that she might not cry out in her agony. Then all was still, and she knew that her mother had died.

"She is better off; God be merciful to her, a sinner," Hannah said, and sat down in the arm-chair at the bedside. It seemed to Margaret as if hours went by while she cowered and rocked in her hiding-place, hoping that presently the dead would be left alone for a little, and that then she might creep out and see her mother's face once more.

But this was not to be, for when Hannah rose she called down the staircase: "Towsey, you can come; we must make her ready." Then she came back into the room, and it seemed as if some spirit had whispered to her, for she walked round the bed and moved the screen behind which Margaret was hidden. She started back almost in horror when she saw the crouching figure.

"Margaret! is it you that have dared?"

Margaret stood up and faced her, and even Hannah saw that the young face was drawn with misery, and that her lips trembled.

"It is you that dared not to send for me," she said, in an agonized voice.

Hannah turned to the bed and drew the sheet over their mother's face.

"I wrote to you this afternoon, telling you that she was ill, though you had no right to be here." So the sisters had both written, and neither letter had reached its destination in time.

"But she was my mother, and called for me," Margaret answered. "It was my right as well as yours to be by her."

"You gave up your right," Hannah said, doggedly, "and the place is mine." But she took care not to look at Margaret, and her hands were twitching.

Then Towsey came forward. "For shame, Hannah!" she said; "this is your mother's child you're speaking to, and in the presence of the dead. You can't mean that she's not to stay here."

"Oh, you can't mean that I am not to stay while she is here?" Margaret said, passionately, looking towards the bed. "I think that the agony I have borne this last hour will set me free of hell, if it is true. You can think, if you like, that God has sent it me for punishment, but we needn't speak of these things," she pleaded; "I only want to stay in peace till she has gone forever."

"And it's peace that God gives," said Towsey, "to them that have suffered."

"You can stay," Hannah said. "It's true that she was the mother of us both, and I'd rather you had been beside her when she died than hidden there." She turned her head away quickly. "It's that I can't forgive," she added, with a break in her voice.

"Hannah," said Margaret, and went a step forward, for Hannah's voice even more than her words overcame her--"Hannah, I was afraid you wouldn't let me in; you said I shouldn't enter the door."

"She wasn't dying then," said Hannah, with grim sadness, "and I didn't think it would be yet; besides, one often says things--I even said them to her; but I wouldn't have had this happen for all I could see."

Margaret put her hand on Hannah's arm, but Hannah stood quite rigid and stern, with her face turned towards the still form that was hidden from them.

XXXII

The dawn came soon in those late August days, but it seemed as if the darkness would never be at an end that night. Margaret sat in the living-room in the big chair by the fireplace; it faced the one that had been her mother's, and she looked at the arm on which she had perched herself so often in the happy morning talks of old--the mornings that were all at an end for ever and ever. She had set the door wide open and the sweet air came in, chilly, and with a strange sense of what had happened.

Towsey found her presently. "We wondered where you'd got to," she said.

"I went to the garden, and through the field--I wanted to think for a little while."

"I made the bed in your room ready, but I suppose when you looked in it was still covered up, and you didn't feel like staying there."

"I don't like staying anywhere," Margaret answered, with the restlessness that cannot find expression keen upon her.

"You had better come into the kitchen--there's a cup of hot milk ready; you must want something. Hannah's just gone to lie down; she's been anxious and wondering what had become of you; but she thought you had gone to the wood, and it was no good looking for you."

They sat down in the kitchen opposite each other by the table, the old woman, whose eyes were swollen with weeping, and the girl with the scared, white face, who had just seen death for the first time.

"I am thinking of my father," she said to Towsey; "he doesn't know yet--probably he's grieving for Uncle Cyril, but looking forward to coming back to mother. It is so dreadful to think that he'll never see her more."

"Life's a queer thing," Towsey answered, "and difficult to make the best of, and worse when one's old, for then one knows; but when one's young one hopes."

"There's nothing left to hope for."

"There is for you, Miss Margaret. When any one's first gone one feels adrift, and doesn't see the good of living one's self, but when one's young others come along after a bit. Just you go and lie down, poor lamb; you look worn enough."

"Is Hannah asleep?"

"Maybe--she's in her room. She's been pretty bad, but she doesn't like any one to see."

Margaret put down the milk she could not finish. "I'll go up-stairs," she said. "Rest a bit yourself; you look so tired, Towsey, dear." She crept up again, past her mother's closed door, and towards her own room. Hannah's door was open; she hesitated, then went softly towards it and looked in.

Hannah was lying on the bed in her clothes, asleep, or appearing to be asleep. The dawn shed a blue light into the room. Margaret, standing by the bed, could see that Hannah had been crying; her face was red and blotched with it. Her cheeks were hollow, her poor nose was very pink, her dull, light hair seemed to be more scanty than ever, and she looked so forlorn and sad as she lay there that Margaret could hardly bear it; she realized, as she watched her, how little the world had given Hannah, how little it promised her. Slipping off her shoes, she lay down very softly beside her--a little lower, so that she could nestle her head on Hannah's breast, and put her arm round the square, thin shoulder. Hannah opened her eyes and looked at Margaret and closed them again, and, as if in sleep, drew closer to her with weary satisfaction, and so, for the first time in their lives, they rested an hour together. But neither slept, and, when it was impossible to feign it longer, they looked at each other, and Margaret knew that Hannah was softened.

"I wrote to you yesterday," she began, a little grimly, as if ashamed of being anything else. "I didn't want Towsey to know--I would not even let mother know--for I'd said you shouldn't come back so often. I went out and posted it myself. It will be there this morning. I didn't think the end was coming, or I would have sent before. I'm not as hard as that."

"You wrote to me!" Margaret exclaimed. "Why, Hannah, I wrote to you yesterday--yesterday afternoon; our letters will cross on the way, and both will arrive at the same time."

"It must have been the Lord drawing us to each other."

"If it had only been in time," Margaret whispered.

"I must have seemed harder than I was," Hannah went on; "but I didn't forget that she was the mother of us both, and I didn't think it'd be so soon. I'll never forgive myself while I live."

"I ought to have known you were not so hard as you seemed. And, of course, you didn't know what was going to happen."

"It was the man that came between," said Hannah, bitterly; "it's always a man that comes between women."

Then Margaret pulled herself up on the bed and sat there beside Hannah, looking at her tortured face.

"Mother is lying in the next room," she said, "and can never know, but for her sake let us try and make things better between us. I want you to believe me, Hannah, when I say solemnly that I never liked Mr. Garratt, or wanted him, or could help anything that he did."

"It doesn't matter," Hannah said. "He's a base and sordid man, and I've done with him forever. He's been here lately, and I've told him so. He only came after me because his mother had heard that the farm would be mine. If the truth's to be told, I never thought much of him, and as for taking a man, caring as he does for theatres and races, for I've found out that he goes to both, why, I'd rather die. But we needn't talk him any more; he'll never come here again."

Then Margaret drew a little closer to her, for even through her own sorrow and the horror of the night her heart was aching for Hannah and clung to her.

"What have you done about the play-acting?" Hannah asked, after a minute or two.

"I have given it up," and there was another silence. Then, grim and forlorn-looking, and with the tears welling into her eyes, Hannah spoke in a low voice, as if she had brought herself to it.

"Margaret," she said, "I've been very hard on you, often and often."

Margaret bent her head and kissed her sister's dress and said nothing, for it was true enough, though she forgave it.

"But I'd like you to understand it," Hannah went on, "then you won't think so bad of me. You see, father came when I was old enough to know, and took mother from me. I felt that he took her, and there was the way he thought about religion and the way that you thought."

"Hannah," said Margaret, "let us speak of it--it's better to do so now while death seems to have broken down the barriers between us. I understand what you mean about father's coming, I do, indeed--I should have felt it, too. But about the religion--you think it a crime that he doesn't believe as you do, but can't you see that if God has given him intellect to think and feel, and he has used them quite conscientiously, and so come to the conclusions that are his now, he is an honest man? He proved his honesty by giving up a great deal--all sorts of worldly advantages, and some one he loved very much before he saw our mother, and, if he came to a wrong conclusion, don't you think that God--God whom you say is a God of love and very just--will at least honor him for being courageous and not making a pretence?"

"If one doesn't believe in the Lord--" Hannah began.

"Oh, but let me speak," Margaret went on, passionately; "it's being honest that matters, and doing right--trying to be all that Christ preached--if we are only that we can leave the rest. It is not we who doubt God, but you who doubt Him when you think He could be hard and cruel to us. There are so many forms of religion in the world besides the one that you believe in; are all the people to be condemned who try to do right from different points of view? It's all a mystery and beyond our comprehension."

"I'd like to know what it is you think?" said Hannah.

"I think that one should be thankful to the Unseen Power that has put all the beauty and happiness into the world; that one should try never to think unkindly or judge harshly, and that we should help each other all we can, and leave the rest to the Power one doesn't understand. Some one wrote once, 'I want to accept the facts as they are, however bitter or severe, to be a lover and a student, but never a lawgiver,' which means that we should not judge others, but only love them and help them and do our work as best we can."

"I think you mean well; but I wish you felt more about religion," Hannah said, a little grudgingly. She looked down at her again, for Margaret had crept back into her arms. It was a new sensation to feel any one there, and she felt almost ashamed of the comfort it gave her. "I'm sorry if I seemed hard," she said, gently. "You know the Bartons were always strict. But you won't go away again? I can't bear to think of you in London."

"I don't want to go away again," Margaret answered; "I want to stay here with you and father; I feel as if I could never go anywhere else as long as I live."

"There hasn't been anything wrong?" Hannah asked, with a note of alarm. "You haven't done anything you shouldn't?"

"No, Hannah, nothing; but I wish I had never gone."

"There's always something to be sorry for; we have to bear it as the penalty of our weakness. I'd give all I had in the world to remember that we'd both stood by mother at the last," Hannah answered, with a sigh, and then she said--almost tenderly, "You had better try and sleep a little; you look worn out, and there's father to tell yet. It'll be bad for him; I don't know how he'll take it." She held Margaret closer in her arms and watched her, and gradually, worn out with the long night and weeping and excitement, they fell asleep.

Towsey came in a couple of hours later and looked at them.

"I never thought to see them like that together," she said, and went softly out again. "I wish she had seen it; but there, perhaps she does--she may be standing by looking on for all we know."

Sir George Stringer went to Great College Street early that afternoon; the expression of Margaret's face haunted him, and he could not rest till he had seen her again. Mrs. Gilman had told him of Margaret's sudden departure the night before and the reason of it.

"Poor thing! poor thing!" he said to himself as he walked away. "I think I'll go to Chidhurst for the week-end. I might be of some use to her--that young scoundrel, Tom, is in Scotland, and she has only the grim half-sister to look after her."

He walked across the fields in the evening to the farm, and stopped, hesitating in the porch, afraid to enter or to ring and disturb the silence that death consecrates.

Hannah saw him and came forward, grim as usual, but gaunt and sad.

"Did you want to see any one?" she asked.

"I heard that your mother was dead," he answered, awkwardly; "I came to see if I could be of any use. I have known her husband all my life--where is Margaret?"

"She's lying down; she's made her head bad with fretting."

"What have you done about her father?"

"We haven't told him yet. Margaret says he's coming back. It will be bad for him then."

"But he ought to be told."

"We'll send a telegram to-morrow. It'll be time enough; it's no good hurrying sorrow on him. He'll have had a day longer to think he'll see her again."

Sir George looked at her shrewdly. "A kind woman at heart," he thought, and then he said aloud, "You know that he is Lord Eastleigh now?"

"Yes, I know; but I can't see that it matters. It won't make any difference to the end."

"You are quite right"; and he shook her hand. "Give my love to Margaret," he said, and turned away. "It would be a good thing," he thought, as he went back across the fields to his house, "if we all lived in the country; people get spoiled when they congregate in cities; that woman looked quite indifferent to Vincent's title. Upon my soul, I liked her to-night."

XXXIII

When Tom had travelled all night and driven five miles by the edge of a forest at the foot of a chain of hills, he found himself at the place the Lakemans had taken near Pitlochry. A lovely house, with a wood round it, and through it a view of a glen, and a stream that hurried white and frothing towards the distance. He asked how Miss Lakeman was in a whisper, half expecting to hear that she was dead.

"Miss Lakeman hasn't been very well, sir," the servant answered, and showed him into a charming room where there was a divine view from the open windows. Near the farther window there was a breakfast-table laid daintily for two, with fresh fruit and late roses in a bowl. Lena was lying on a sofa beside it in a muslin gown, just as Mrs. Lakeman had told Dawson Farley she would be. Her face looked thin and pale, her eyes large and restless; she seemed weak and worried, but there was not a sign of dangerous illness about her. She tried to raise herself as he entered, but apparently was not able to do so.

"Tom, dear," she said, "I have been waiting for you--I knew you would come."

"Of course," he answered; "but what is the matter?"

"I have been ill--very ill, but I'm better. I shall be well, now you have come."

"I thought you were dying," he said, a little resentfully, thinking that he had been hurried away from Margaret for nothing.

"I should have died if you hadn't come," she answered. "Sit down--there," and she signed to a chair close to the sofa.

"Where's Mrs. Lakeman?" he asked, looking round uneasily.

"She has one of her bad attacks of neuralgia. You are glad to come to us?" She turned up her great eyes almost imploringly at him.

"Yes; but I don't understand." He looked out at the glen beneath the windows, and followed the course of the stream with his eyes. "That sort of telegram shouldn't be sent without a good deal of reason."

"But I have been very ill, Tom, dear; and I have wanted you so." She held out her hands; he looked at her uneasily, but he did not take them. Somehow her manner was different from the one to which he was accustomed, and a misgiving, he did not know of what, rose in his heart. "I felt that no one else could make me well," she added, in a pathetic voice.

"Good! We'll see what can be done. Now, are you going to give me some breakfast?"

"It will be here directly. Tell me about naughty little Margaret. Is her lover with her?"

"Why, of course not; I have just come away."

He didn't like being called a lover. "She and I are engaged; I telegraphed yesterday--"

"Oh, but it was only a little joke, Tom, dear; you wouldn't be so unkind to Mr. Garratt."

"It's all nonsense about Mr. Garratt--" He stopped, for the breakfast was brought in. "Look here; I'd better pour out the coffee," he said; and when he had done so, and given her some toast and buttered a scone and helped himself to kidneys and bacon, he felt distinctly better. "Now, then," he said; "it's all nonsense about Mr. Garratt, and she and I are going to get married--soon as possible."

"No, no, Tom, dear, it's not nonsense," Lena said, with one of her usual wriggles. "She told me all about him, and I saw them meet in the wood, you know."

But he refused even to discuss it.

"That's all nonsense," he repeated, firmly. "What's the matter with Mrs. Lakeman?"

"It's only neuralgia," Lena said; "you know she has a bad, black day now and then. You don't mind being with me, Tom, dear? We always like being together?" She was beginning to feel that she couldn't hold him; that she had attempted more than she could carry out. She almost wished she had left him to Margaret; her power over him seemed gone, and she was handicapped by her mother's absence.

With a puzzled air he ate his breakfast. "What have you done to yourself?" he asked, when he had finished; "have you caught a cold, or overtired yourself, or just given in and taken to a sofa for no particular reason?"

"I'm not strong," she said, looking up at him; "and I felt as if I couldn't bear the waiting. We expected you every day; why didn't you come?"

"I was with Margaret," he answered, at which Lena turned and buried her face in the cushions and sobbed softly to herself.

"Oh, but I say, what is the matter?" he asked, in dismay; "there's something behind all this; tell me what it means."