Part 18

"It means that I am going to die," she said. "I must die, I can't live." She held out her hands to him again, and almost against his will he felt himself going towards her till he had taken them in his. "I want you, dear," she said, and twined her arms round his neck. "I can't let you go to little Margaret. She has Mr. Garratt, remember, and I shall only live a little while. You must stay with me till I die--you will, won't you?"

"This is all nonsense," he said again; and in a kindly, affectionate manner, as a brother might have done, he gave her a kiss for the simple reason that he didn't know what else to do. "You are ill and played out."

"Yes, I'm ill," she said, and wriggled more completely into his arms.

He sincerely wished she wouldn't, but he held her for a few minutes rather awkwardly and then laid her back on the sofa.

"Look here," he said, "I should like to go and unpack and all that, and you ought to rest for a bit."

Of all the days that Tom had ever lived, that was the strangest--that day alone with Lena, who was ill and not ill; with Mrs. Lakeman invisible, he couldn't tell why; and with something at the back of--he couldn't tell what. He wrote out some telegrams before he went up-stairs. When he came down they had gone, and some instinct told him there was a reason for their disappearance; that the answer that came from Margaret later in the day was somewhat juggled, but how or why he didn't know. Lena wriggled and looked in his face and talked in low tones and called him "dear," but she had always done that. She did it to most people, and, though it made him uncomfortable, he couldn't bring himself to attach importance to it; he didn't even like being puzzled by it. Perhaps Mrs. Lakeman would be down to-morrow, he thought, and then things would explain themselves. Meanwhile he comforted himself by writing a long letter to Margaret, and with hoping that the morning would bring him one from her, but when it came there was not a sign. Then he felt uneasy, and determined that unless there was some good reason to the contrary he would go back to London that night.

XXXIV

Mrs. Lakeman appeared as naturally as possible at the Pitlochry breakfast-table the next morning. She looked haggard and ill with her two nights' travel; and now that the excitement of getting Tom away from London, and of the interview with Margaret was over, she asked herself once or twice whether the game had been worth the candle. After all, she thought Tom had only three or four thousand a year, and she didn't believe he would ever do much in politics. It was the dread of losing him that had roused her, the dramatic situation that had interested her, but now that she had created the situation she didn't know what to do with it; she was even a trifle bored. But everything bored her. She was a woman of humor and enterprise rather than of passion and sentiment, so that nothing kept a lasting hold upon her when once it had lost its novelty. In some sort of fashion she knew herself to be a sham, always experimenting with effects and make-believe feelings, but, try as she would, she could never drive realities home into her heart. In a sense Lena was like her, always wanting the thing beyond her reach, and experiencing a curious sense of satiety as soon as she possessed it. Even the presence of Tom after the long interviews of yesterday had lost some of its fascination.

"I don't think I want him," she told her mother, "but I don't want to let him go."

"It's my opinion that I made a fool of myself in going up to London," Mrs. Lakeman said. Her energy had flagged, and she wondered at her own nerve in going to Margaret; she scoffed at Dawson Farley and his proposal of marriage; she felt Tom to be in the way at Pitlochry. There were some people staying at Kingussie--she had heard of them from an acquaintance she met on the platform at Euston--she wanted to get over to Pitlochry. They were rich people and full of enterprise; a couple of grown-up sons, too; the elder infinitely better off than Tom Carringford. It was quite possible that he would fall in love with Lena. The worst of it was that Tom was here; besides, she had set herself a task and had to go through with it. After all, it might afford her some amusement, and she was always eager for that; better begin and get it over. She took him into the garden after breakfast to a seat in a secluded corner under a pear-tree; the glen and the rushing, gurgling brook were behind it, and made an accompaniment to their interview.

"Well, what about Margaret Vincent?" she asked him.

"I have had no letter from her. I don't understand it."

"I didn't think there would be one," she answered, significantly, and with an insolence in her manner that put him on the defensive.

"Why didn't you?"

Mrs. Lakeman smiled and said nothing.

"You got my telegram," he inquired--"telling you we were engaged?" Lena had spoken of it two or three times yesterday, but he could hardly believe that so important a communication had been received in the cavalier fashion in which it was apparently treated.

"Of course."

"I can't think what your telegram meant," he said. "Lena isn't dangerously ill, or anything like it."

Then Mrs. Lakeman tried to pump up a little dramatic energy. "Tom Carringford," she said, "do you know that I am the best friend you ever had?"

"I know that you have been awfully good to me."

"Shall I tell you why I telegraphed as I did?"

"I wish you would, for I can't make it out."

"Dawson Farley told me about Margaret Vincent--I have heard a great deal about Margaret Vincent lately, from a good many sources. Tom," she went on, in a suddenly tragic voice, "I loved Gerald Vincent; I have never really cared for anybody else, but this girl is different; she has been brought up by a common mother."

"She is not at all common," he answered, indignantly. "I saw her--"

"And a half-sister who, twenty years ago, would have been in respectable service instead of wasting her time at home, for the mother looks after the farm herself. Margaret belongs to her mother's people and not to her father's; you can hear that in her provincial accent"--the accent, of course, was invented on the spur of the moment--"and she was quite content to marry her Guildford grocer, or whatever he is, until she became stage-struck."

"Look here," said Tom; "you are a good soul, and have been very kind to me, but you mustn't talk to me in this way, for I'm engaged to Margaret, and I mean to marry her."

"You'll pay dearly for it if you do." She stopped a minute, then she lowered her voice, but she was becoming excited; after all, there was some interest left in the situation, and she offered up her child's dignity to its dramatic possibility. "There was something more in the telegram than I have told you," she said. "You are killing Lena, and not behaving as an honorable gentleman."

"What do you mean?" he asked, bewildered, but remembering uncomfortably Lena's manner of yesterday.

"I mean," said Mrs. Lakeman, indignantly--for it was a theory of hers that a claim was always stronger than a plea, and gained more consideration--"that you have no right to marry Margaret Vincent, or anybody else. I mean that you have made my child love you, that you are all the world to her, and you made her believe that she was all the world to you."

"We have never been anything but friends!" He was aghast.

"Outwardly. At heart you have been lovers, and you can't deny it. She has given you the one love of her life, dear"--Mrs. Lakeman was becoming sentimental--"and I never dreamed that you had not given her yours. You can go back to Margaret Vincent, if you like, but you have killed my child--my one, only child. You must see how ill she looks, how changed she is."

"But this is ghastly," he said; "I'm not a bit in love with Lena. I never cared for any one in that way but Margaret, and I want to marry her."

"Go and marry her," Mrs. Lakeman answered, in a low voice; "Lena will not be alive to see it. Do you suppose that I would give away my own child's secret, or bring myself to speak to you as I'm doing now, if it were not a case of life and death?" She said the last words with a thrill.

He looked at her in despair.

"What are you going to do?" she asked, after a pause.

He turned away and followed the course of the stream with his eyes as it rushed through the glen. This was very awkward, he thought, but for the life of him he didn't believe in it.

"You have been very kind to me," he said; "but it's no good not telling the truth about a thing of this sort--I couldn't marry Lena. I'm very fond of her, but she isn't the kind of girl that I could fall in love with; she flops about and you never know where you have her, and as for her being desperately in love with me, why, I don't believe it. We should worry each other to death if we were married; besides, I mean to marry Margaret Vincent."

"If the grocer hasn't stolen a march on you."

"Look here," he answered, turning very red, "if you say that sort of thing we shall quarrel."

"I don't care," she answered, defiantly; "if you can't behave like a gentleman, it doesn't matter whether we quarrel or not."

"You know," he said, "I don't believe in this business--I mean in Lena's being in love with me."

"I should have thought you might have seen it yesterday." She stopped for a moment, then almost demanded, "What are you going to do?"

"I am going back to town at once; but it's no good not being straight in a matter of this sort, and first I shall have it out with Lena."

"It will be thoroughly indecent of you."

"Can't help it; I'm going," and he marched towards the house and into the morning-room again.

Lena was lying on the sofa; he went up to her and sat down on the chair beside her, determined to have it over and be done with it.

"Look here, I want to talk to you," he said; "this place has become a sort of nightmare, and I want you to wake me up from it like a sensible girl."

"Tell me about it, Tom, dear," she said, and wriggled towards the edge of the sofa. "You wouldn't say things to me yesterday."

"Too much worried. Now, then," he went on, drawing back a little and looking her well in the face, "I have fallen in love with Margaret Vincent. She has been in London for the last three weeks, and we have seen each other every day--perhaps you didn't know that? It's all nonsense to suppose that she's in love with Mr. Garratt; I have found out the truth of that business. He is merely a bounder who went to look after Hannah, the half-sister, then found out he liked Margaret better--I don't wonder. Hannah bothered her about it, and she went up to town. Louise Hunstan wired me from Bayreuth that Margaret was in Great College Street, and I went and looked after her. If this hadn't happened--your wires, I mean--I dare say I should have got a special license by this time. I want you to be good to Margaret," and he put his hand affectionately on Lena's. "I love her and don't mean to marry anybody else. Now, then, how is it going to be?"

"Poor little Margaret; I shall love her," said Lena, "because you do."

Tom blinked his eyes to make sure he was awake; either Mrs. Lakeman was as mad as a March hare, he thought, or he was dreaming, for there was not a sign of disappointment in Lena's manner.

"Oh," he said, helplessly.

"It will be nice for her to marry you, dear," she went on; "you are so different from Mr. Garratt."

"Mr. Garratt has nothing to do with it. But unless you take kindly to the marriage, of course we shall have to cut each other afterwards. Well, then, is it all right?"

"Of course it is," she said, and wriggled closer to him.

"Good, good! Now I am going," he said, with determination.

"But where are you going?" she asked, anxiously.

"Over to Aviemore; I know some people there. But I shall take the train back to London this evening. It's all right," he said to Mrs. Lakeman, who had sauntered up to the window with a newspaper in her hand; "Lena's a sensible girl; I knew she was."

Mrs. Lakeman looked at him almost vacantly; she had ceased to take the slightest interest in his love affairs. "Have you seen the _Scotsman_?" she asked; "the boy has just come with it."

"No; why?"

"Cyril is dead, and Gerald is Lord Eastleigh."

"Good! he'll be coming back," Tom answered; "I'm off in half an hour," he added.

"Oh!" She was too much preoccupied even to ask him to stay; but when he had gone, as if with a jerk she remembered the excitement of the morning. "We made a nice fiasco over Tom," she said to Lena; "I don't know which is the greater idiot, you or I."

"It was very interesting," Lena answered. "But I should never have energy enough for the life he likes. I can't bear coarse effects or strong lights or exercise, or any of the things he cares for--people should always be restful."

"You had better marry a minor poet," Mrs. Lakeman answered, grimly, "or an inferior painter, and live in a Chelsea studio."

XXXV

Tom Carringford went straight to Great College Street the next morning. Margaret, of course, was not there; but Louise Hunstan had arrived, and from her and Mrs. Gilman together he heard of Mrs. Lakeman's visit; of Margaret's assertion that her engagement was broken off; of how Sir George Stringer and Dawson Farley had been to see her, and of Margaret's hurried departure to Chidhurst.

"Well," said Miss Hunstan when they were alone, and the little twang Tom always liked had come into her voice, "I think this is a matter that requires some investigation; you know it's my opinion that Lena Lakeman is just a little snake, and that her mother doesn't always know what she's about--still, they're amusing people if you don't see too much of them."

"Oh, they're all right, if you don't take them too seriously," he answered, incapable of thinking ill of any one. He was not in the least alarmed at Margaret's statement to Mrs. Gilman. He knew that Margaret loved him, and that, if any mischief had been made, why, it would soon be explained away. The thing that astonished him was Mrs. Lakeman's visit. "I can't think how she could have been shut up in her room with neuralgia and in London at the same time," he said to himself. "She is certainly mad! However, that doesn't matter. I shall go to Chidhurst this afternoon. I might be of some use, and I want to see Margaret." He knew that, if her mother were ill, she would be unhappy and want him, and, like the kind boy he was, he began casting about in his mind for things he could take Mrs. Vincent. There were heaps of flowers in the Dutch garden, of course; but she might like a box of roses, all the same, and Margaret would remember the first one they had bought together--and peaches and grapes; he didn't remember seeing any glass at Woodside Farm; perhaps they hadn't any. "I'm awfully fond of Margey," he said to Louise Hunstan, glad to put it into words, "and we shall have a splendid time together. You'll often see us here, you know."

"Of course I shall," she answered; "I am just looking forward to it."

He stopped at Sir George Stringer's house as he drove through Whitehall, but only to find that he had gone to Chidhurst. "Good," he said, absently, to himself, "I'll telegraph to him, and he'll put me up."

Tom remembered all his life the drive from Haslemere to Chidhurst that evening. He enjoyed every yard of it; up the hill and past the cottages, along the road beyond; beside the moor covered with ling, and through Chidhurst village, till he came in sight of the church, and the gates of Sir George Stringer's house just opposite the little gate that led across the fields to the farm. He looked at the box of roses and the basket of peaches and grapes on the driver's seat. "I hope my mother-in-law is better," he thought, with a happy laugh in his eyes. "I believe I shall be fond of her, and Vincent is a brick."

"You know there's a death at the farm, sir?" the driver said, as he got down. "Mrs. Vincent was took last night after two days' illness--she hadn't been herself for some time."

An hour later a little note was brought to Margaret. It ran:

"DEAREST,--I am at Stringer's house, and have just heard. I know how unhappy you must be, and there isn't anything to say except that I love you, which you know already. I am glad I saw her. Send for me when you can see me; I shall be waiting here. Your devoted

"TOM."

And so that trouble was lifted from Margaret's heart; but her tears fell fast while she read the letter.

"If mother were only here," she thought, "and I can't bear to tell Hannah, for she has nothing in her life--nothing to look forward to. Towsey!" she said, going into the kitchen. Towsey gave a start; she was almost asleep. Margaret sat down on her lap, as she had often done years ago when she was a little girl, and she put her arms round Towsey's neck, and cried for a minute or two softly on her shoulder. "I want you to tell me something," she said, when she looked up; "are you sure that mother smiled when she had the telegram that last day she was alive?"

"Ay, that she did," said Towsey; "it didn't hold much, but she seemed to read a great deal into it, somehow."

"Thank God! She must have known. It was from Mr. Carringford, Towsey."

"Yes, I know," said Towsey, "and she thought how it'd be."

It was almost more than Margaret could bear. "If I had only not gone away," she cried, "mother, dear!--mother, dear!"

Mr. Vincent, to call him by his old name, did not return nearly so soon as he might have done. There were his brother's affairs to wind up, he said, and his brother's wife to settle down in a house at Melbourne. Perhaps he dreaded returning to the farm alone. At any rate, he made excuses, and it was nearly four months before he wrote that in another fortnight he would set sail.

All that time Tom and Margaret were waiting to be married. Tom had argued that it would be better to do it quietly and at once, but Margaret refused.

"Not yet," she pleaded; "let us wait the few months till father returns. We have all our lives to give each other. I don't feel as if I could go into the little church to be married just yet, for it's only--" She stopped, for she did not want him to know that she dreaded lest she should still hear the sound of the heavy, shuffling feet that had carried her mother into it for the last time. She wanted to forget it, to remember only the long, happy years, and the summer mornings she had sat on the arm of the chair in the cool living-place, with her mother leaning against her while they watched the sunshine covering the Dutch garden with glory.

"We might be married at some other church if you liked," he suggested.

"Oh no," she answered, quickly, "I wouldn't for the world. I want to be married near the dear farm--and near her: she would be happy if she knew; she would listen and be so glad. Oh, Tom, you do understand, don't you, darling?" For answer he nodded, took her in his arms and kissed her, which is always the best answer a man can give the woman who loves him.

And so they waited till the winter had gone, a long, silent winter, though it held its whispered happiness. February came cold and clear. The men were busy in the fields, turning the brown earth over, and here and there, under the hedges, a snowdrop hid, lonely and shivering. Then one day Hannah made a really brilliant remark, or Tom, at any rate, thought it one.

"I don't see how you can get married directly father comes, either," she said; "he'll find it hard enough to come back to an empty house; you can't well fling a wedding in his face. For my part, I think it would be a good thing to get it over beforehand, and go and meet him."

Tom looked at her for a moment, then he shook her hand vigorously, as he always did when anything pleased him mightily. "You are quite right," he said, and the next minute he was striding down the Dutch garden on his way to the cathedral where Margaret was waiting for him. "Look here," he said, when he found her, "Hannah has had a brilliant idea. Some one ought to go and meet your father; he can't come back here alone, you know."

"Oh, Tom," she said, "I have often thought how dreadful it will be for him."

"Of course it will, and we have no business to let him do it. Suppose we went out and picked him up at Naples and brought him home ourselves. You see, Hannah could make everything comfortable here while we are gone--alter things a bit, and so on. And we might keep him two or three days in Stratton Street on the way back, and get Hannah up there." All manner of developments crossed his fertile mind while he spoke. "We must get married before we start," he said, in a business-like tone, as if it were only a matter of convenience, "or we should have to get a chaperon, which would be rather a bore."

And so it came about that they were married very quietly one morning six months after Mrs. Vincent's death. Hannah and Margaret walked across the fields together, and Tom and Sir George Stringer met them at the church gate, but there were no others present.

Tom's sister, Lady Arthur Wanstead, sent Margaret a diamond comb and a long letter, and Mrs. Lakeman sent her a fitted travelling-bag, and Lena sent a full-sized green porcelain cat.

It is just two years since that morning at the church. The Carringfords are at Florence now, and Lord Eastleigh, and Sir George Stringer, who has retired from his office, are with them, and they are looking forward to Louise Hunstan, who is coming out on a six weeks' holiday. Lena Lakeman has married an army doctor and gone to India; and Mrs. Lakeman, who was very angry at Lena's marriage, which she thought a bad one, took to speculating in West African mines, and left England lately in order to look after her ventures. It was said last year that she had made a great fortune; but, even if it is true, she will probably lose it again, and console herself with the thought that the sensation of being a beggar is altogether a new one.

Hannah is at Chidhurst alone, and something that would be almost droll seems possible. One afternoon a stranger appeared at the farm, a loutish-looking man of six-and-thirty, but with more intelligence in him than appeared on the surface. He was a student of agriculture, he explained, second son of a land-owner in Somerset, and had a fancy for renting a property in Surrey. He had heard that Woodside Farm might possibly want a tenant. Hannah assured him to the contrary with some asperity; but eventually, being overcome by the stranger's manner, she not only showed him over the farm, but, since he had come from a distance, gave him tea with a dish of chicken fried in batter, and scones that had been hurriedly made by Towsey. She explained to him while the meal progressed that she found the farm somewhat difficult to manage single-handed. The stranger felt the truth of this, and she struck him as being a most sensible and capable woman. A farm, he told her, wanted a man to look after it, to which she agreed and invited him to come again.

"The coming of the stranger," said Margaret to Tom when she had read a prim letter in Hannah's spiky writing.

He looked at her for a moment, then her meaning dawned on him. "Good! good!" he said; "history makes a point of repeating itself, you know. I shouldn't wonder--"

"And I shouldn't," she laughed.

Meanwhile the villagers nod their heads and say that this year spring cleaning was even more thorough than usual at Woodside Farm.

THE END

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