Part 6

"We will fill them," Tom said, triumphantly.

Margaret looked at their handiwork with delight. "I like doing this," she said. "But it seems such an odd thing to be here in a stranger's room among the things that help to make up a life--and the stranger absent."

He looked at her for a moment. "Somehow she isn't a stranger," he answered. "Lots of people are strangers, no matter how long you know 'em, but she isn't, even at the beginning, if she likes you. Let's put these daffodils into this thing. Shall we?"

"They look as if they were growing out of the green earth," she said; "pots should always be green, don't you think so? or else clear glass, like water."

"Good," he said, and went on cramming the flowers in. At last there were only the pale white roses left.

"We'll put them here," Margaret said, and set down the pot by the photograph of a thin, sweet-looking woman on the left of the writing-table.

"That's her mother," Tom said, half tenderly; Margaret pushed the roses nearer to it, and loved him for his tone. Then when all the flowers were placed about the little blue and white room, and the freshness of spring was its own, they laughed again like the light-hearted children they were, and went out to their cab.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Gilman," Tom cried, as he closed the doors. "Tell Miss Hunstan we did it--Miss Vincent and I, and that we left her our blessing."

X

The brown cart was waiting at the station, a successor to the heavy one of former days, lighter and better built, and the cob--a new cob--hurried along with it as though it were a cockle-shell. Hannah was not there, only the boy who went out with the milk in the morning. He sat up behind and took care of the luggage, while Mr. Vincent drove with his daughter beside him, contented and happy. The visit to London had drawn them closer together. To Margaret it had been a strange looking back; for she had hardly realized till now that her father must have had a history before the day when he had entered the farm gates and seen her mother for the first time. She had heard Hannah speak of it--the coming of the stranger, as it had remained in Hannah's mind through all the years afterwards. Margaret thought, too, of her grandfather and uncle, the relations of whom she had known nothing when she started yesterday. She was glad they had been people of position, even though they had spent their money or had done undesirable things, as something in her father's manner seemed to imply; for it made her father's life appear a more important thing, not to her, but in the world, that might otherwise have thought it merely one of the details of the farm at Chidhurst. She looked at the moor as they drove beside it. The clumps of broom and gorse had come out since yesterday full and golden in the sunshine. The fresh green of the whortleberries was showing itself, the bell-heather was struggling into bloom; just so the possibilities of life had broken into her imagination, and if some struck her with wonder, there were others that filled her with joy. An unreasonable, undefinable happiness that could not be put into words rose to her heart when she thought of Tom Carringford. She could hear his laughter still, and his merry talk as they made a bower of Miss Hunstan's room; she wanted to see him again already, and something told her that he wanted to see her.

The farm-yard gates were wide open. It was good to see the corner of the Dutch garden again, and in the porch, just as Margaret had known she would be, her mother stood waiting. Mr. Vincent took his wife's hand without a word, and looked into her face with a little smile.

"We have come home," he said. She gave him her hand for a moment, then turned to Margaret, who saw with surprise that she was smarter than usual. She wore her gray cashmere and the brooch with the topaz in it, and one of her best hemstitched handkerchiefs was pushed into the front of her dress. A smile came to her lips as she answered the question in Margaret's eyes.

"Hannah didn't go to the station," she said, "for Mr. Garratt came over this afternoon. Tea has been ready this hour and more, but we waited for you."

A fresh cloth was on the table in the living-room, there was a vase of flowers in the middle, the best china was put out, and fresh-cooked scones and other good things were visible. Near the fireplace stood Hannah, looking a little defiant and rather shamefaced. Margaret noticed that her hair was brushed back tighter than ever and shone more than usual. At her neck was a bow of muslin and lace, of which she seemed uncomfortably conscious. Beside her, brisk and business-like, with a happy, self-satisfied expression on his face, stood a youthful-looking man of eight-and-twenty. He was fair and had a smart air with him. His hair was carefully parted in the middle and curled a little at the tips. He had a small mustache, which he stroked a great deal and pulled back towards his ears. He wore a cutaway coat and a navy-blue tie with white spots on it, and a gold watch-chain wandered over his waistcoat. Margaret saw in a moment that he was altogether different from the men who were her father's friends--from Mr. Carringford, for instance, or Sir George Stringer, with whom she had felt natural and at home. There was something about this man that made her haughty and on the defensive even before she had spoken to him.

"Your train must have been late. Tea's been waiting this long time," Hannah said. "However, it's to be hoped you've enjoyed yourselves." Her manner was quite amiable, but a little confused, as was only to be expected.

"This is Mr. Garratt," Mrs. Vincent said. "You will like to meet him, father; he has always known James's people at Petersfield."

"How do you do, sir; pleased to make your acquaintance, I'm sure," Mr. Garratt said. "I hope you've had a pleasant visit to London?"

"How do you do?" Mr. Vincent answered, wondering whether this lively young man could really be in love with the sedate Hannah.

"And Miss Vincent, I'm pleased to meet you," Mr. Garratt went on, in a genial tone. "Have often heard of you, and hope you've enjoyed yourself since you've been away."

"Yes, thank you," Margaret answered, distantly.

"I dare say you've come back ready for your tea." This was by way of a little joke. "There's nothing like a railway journey, with the country at the end of it, for starting an appetite," to which she vouchsafed no reply, feeling instinctively that it would be wise to keep Mr. Garratt at a distance.

Then the business of tea was entered upon, reflectively, and almost in silence, as was the custom at Woodside Farm. The silence puzzled Mr. Garratt a little, this being his first visit; then he wondered if it were a compliment to himself, and whether these quiet people were shy before him.

"Is there much doing in London?" he asked Mr. Vincent, thinking perhaps that he was expected to lead the conversation.

"I suppose so," Mr. Vincent answered, a little coldly.

"I always think myself that it does one good to go up. I dare say you find the same? Did you stay at one of the hotels in the Strand?"

"We stayed at the Langham."

"It's rather swagger there, you know." Mr. Garratt thought this would be a pleasing remark.

"It's very quiet," Mr. Vincent said, haughtily.

"Did you go anywhere, father?" Mrs. Vincent asked.

"Yes; we went to Westminster Abbey."

"Magnificent building, Westminster Abbey," Mr. Garratt put in. "What did you think of it, Miss Vincent?"

"I don't think I could say just yet," Margaret answered; "it was only yesterday that I saw it."

"Quite right; it doesn't do to make up one's mind too soon," Mr. Garratt remarked, cheerily, at which Hannah looked up a little sharply.

"For my part," she said, "I like people to know at once what they think, and what they mean."

"Well, you see," he answered, looking back at her, "it isn't difficult sometimes." Whereupon the color came to her face and amiability to her expression. "What else did you see in London, Miss Vincent?" he turned to Margaret again.

Something prompted Mr. Vincent to answer for her, and with extreme gravity: "We went to the theatre."

"I'm sorry to hear it," Hannah said.

"And how did you like it?" Mr. Garratt asked Margaret, as if he had not heard Hannah's remark.

"It was wonderful," she answered. "I long to go again."

"It's a place of iniquity," Hannah said, firmly.

Mr. Vincent looked across at her. A sharp answer rose to his lips, but he remembered that the Petersfield young man was a suitor, and had been long expected. Before he could speak Margaret struck in, quickly:

"It was one of Shakespeare's plays that we saw."

"I have read a good many of them," Hannah remarked, not in the least pacified.

"Then, of course, you are aware, Miss Barton, that they are mostly historical," Mr. Garratt said, in a conciliatory voice, "and it may be said that to read him, or even to see him acted, makes us familiar with historical knowledge;" a sentence at which Mr. Vincent gave a little snort, but said nothing.

Hannah was delighted at the prospect of an argument. "History may teach us some lessons, Mr. Garratt," she said, "but we can read them, just as we can read other lessons. There is no occasion to do more; and as for play-acting teaching us history, once people have taken to their graves they might be left to lie in them and not be brought out and used as puppets that dance to man's imagination." Mr. Vincent looked up; he was becoming interested. "Moreover," continued Hannah, "it's making a mock of God, for only He can bring the dead to life."

"What you say is very true, Miss Barton," Mr. Garratt answered, sending another furtive look at Margaret, "and I never think myself that Shakespeare is as interesting as a good modern piece."

"Do you go to the theatre then, Mr. Garratt?" she asked, quickly putting down the teapot, but still keeping her hand on its handle.

"I don't make a practice of it, Miss Barton, but if one is in London one is tempted to do as London does. Moreover, I believe in seeing the world as it is, rather than in holding off because it is not as one wants it to be," he added, with the air of a moralist, but an obvious capacity for enjoyment lurking behind it.

"The world should be made a wilderness for the evil-doer--" Hannah began, as if she were trying to remember a bit from a sermon.

"There should be a voice crying in the wilderness, Miss Barton--" Mr. Garratt stopped, for it occurred to him that he might be going too far.

"Or what would be the good of the wilderness?" Mr. Vincent asked. "We have finished tea, I think?" He rose and went to the best parlor. The years he had spent out of the world, as he had once known it, made him a little intolerant of many things, of this vulgar and good-tempered young man with an eye to the main chance among them. But Mr. Garratt would do well enough for Hannah--in fact, nothing could be better, for evidently he was not narrow, and this might have a good effect upon her. For himself and his daughter and for his wife there was a different plane, a different point of view. The visit to London had made him see even more clearly than before the manner of woman he had married, and for the first time, after all these years and in the autumn of their days, he was nearly being her lover.

Just as if his thought had brought her to him, she put her head inside the door and asked, as she always did:

"Are you busy, father, or shall I come to you for a little while?"

He got up and went to her. "I wanted you," he said. "Come and sit by the window; there are a good many things to say." She felt as if heaven had flashed its joy into her heart; but only for a moment, then dread took its place.

"Is the news bad from London?" she asked.

"It's not good," he said. "That is one reason why I want to talk to you, dear wife." He stopped a moment before he went on. "I have told you two or three times that you know nothing about me or my people. Now, that I shall probably be going away very soon and that Margaret is grown up, I think you ought to know about them: one can never tell what may happen. There is not much to their credit to say--or to mine, I fear," he added, and then, quite briefly, he gave her the points of the family history, and made known to her the possibilities in the future. She was not elated--he had known that she would not be; but she was surprised, and a little offended.

"I didn't think there was this behind," she said; "I don't know what people will say."

"Is there any occasion to tell them?"

"I don't suppose there is," she answered, absently, and then, with an anxious look in her clear eyes, she said the one thing that hurt him in all the years he knew her. "Father, you didn't hold it back because you didn't think us good enough?"

He turned round quickly. "If it was anything of that sort," he answered, "it was because I did not think myself good enough. My people led useless, extravagant lives, and my own has not been much better. I have felt ashamed that you should know anything concerning us, and it wasn't necessary for our contentment here."

"No," she said, slowly, "it wasn't."

"Nor is it any more necessary to tell people our affairs now than it has been hitherto. If Cyril dies I shall not alter my name--what good would a title be to me? I have no son to come after me, no one at all to inherit anything except Margaret, for whom this doesn't matter."

"I'm glad you've told Margaret," Mrs. Vincent answered. She was silent for a moment, and then went on, thoughtfully: "She is changing in herself; I can feel it. She'll not be content here always. She is stretching her wings already, like a young bird that is waiting to fly."

"Well, at any rate, she had better stay quietly here till my return," he said. "By-the-way, an old friend of mine has taken the vicarage house--Sir George Stringer; he is sure to come over and see you."

"We are getting very grand, father," she said, ruefully, resenting it a little in her heart. She had been so well content with her own station in life, and had never wished to see it either lifted or lowered; the first seemed undignified to her, the last would have meant humiliation.

"It doesn't make any difference, dear," he said. "We were a worthless, ramshackling set, who put such privileges as we had under our feet; and as for me, I haven't even enough grace to take me to church on Sunday. I want to forget everything but the life of the last twenty years--you, and Margaret."

She put her hands up slowly to his shoulders.

"Father," she said, "you will never know what you have been to me, never in this world."

"I do," he answered; "I know--well."

"And I couldn't bear that you should be anything but just what you have been always."

"I never shall be anything else," he answered, and stooped and kissed her. "We won't tell Hannah about this," he went on, "and I don't suppose Margaret will. There's no reason to make a mystery of it; if it comes out, well and good, but if not we can be silent."

"I'd rather she didn't know," Mrs. Vincent answered, "unless she finds it out; she'd only be talking and thinking things I wouldn't bear."

Meanwhile Towsey and Hannah were clearing away the tea things: Margaret went out to the porch and looked at the garden and the beechwood she loved rising high beyond it. Mr. Garratt cast a quick glance towards the kitchen, and in a moment he was by her side.

"Are you inclined for a little stroll, Miss Vincent?"

His eyes said more than his words. She went a step forward and stood by a lilac bush.

"No," she said, "I am going in directly."

The sunset with a parting shaft of gold touched her hair; a whispering breeze carried a message from the roses to her cheek, and she was young--young, the dawn was in her eyes, she seemed to listen to the song of birds, to belong to the flowers that were springing from the earth. She was different altogether from Hannah. A dozen possibilities darted through his mind. His heart beat quicker, his usual ready speech failed him, he stood tugging at his mustache and thinking that he had never seen a girl like this before--but suddenly he was recalled to common-sense.

"Mr. Garratt," Hannah said, her voice was severe and unflinching, "if you want to see the grave of your aunt Amelia, I will take you."

XI

Mr. Vincent started for Australia a week after his visit to London. In the first hours of his sailing Mrs. Vincent and Margaret measured in their hearts every length the ship took onward, while Hannah wondered whether the Lord would let it get safely to its journey's end, and prayed fervently for Jews, Turks, and infidels. For Hannah did not pretend to regret his departure. "It will be good for him to be away," she said to her mother, "and it's as well the place should be left for a bit to those whose hold was on it before he came and will be after he's gone." There was no question of her supremacy after Mr. Vincent departed, and her mother was as wax in her hands.

But it was not only for peace, and because of a vague feeling that she owed Hannah an indefinite reparation for the fact that she had set another man in her father's place, that Mrs. Vincent gave way; it was also because the keen interest she had once taken in the working of the farm had been gradually lulled, even half-forgotten, in her great love for the man she had first seen when middle-age had already overtaken her. There was another reason, too, but it existed unknown to any one, even to herself. Mrs. Vincent had become less active in the last year or two, more silent and thoughtful. Her hair was grayer, the lines on her face were deeper, dull pains beset her sometimes, and a lethargy she could not conquer. She put it down, as those about her did, to the gathering years and the hurrying of time; now and then it struck her that she "wasn't over well, that some day she'd see a doctor," but she dismissed the idea with the conviction that it was nothing, only that she was growing old--the worst disease of all, she thought, since every hour of life was sweet that she spent in the world that held her husband. Oddly enough, she, as well as Hannah, had been almost relieved when he went. It was the right thing for a man to go out and see the world; no women folk should tie him down forever; she even felt a little unselfish pleasure in remembering that it was she who had first proposed it. While he was away she determined to rest well, and sleep away her tiredness and all the uneasiness it brought, so that she might be strong to welcome him back. But after the excitement of getting him ready, and the passionate though undemonstrative farewell, a reaction came. She shut herself up in her room once or twice, so that her tears might not be suspected; or, when she had grown more accustomed to his absence, sat brooding in the living-place or the porch, trying to imagine what he was doing and to picture his surroundings.

"I must be a fool to go on like this at my age," she said to herself; "I wouldn't let the girls know for anything."

For Margaret, her father's going brought all sorts of restrictions and limitations; but her mother was too much wrapped up in her own dreams to perceive it, or to draw closer to her than before, and so to make up for the loss of his companionship. Thus Hannah was free to show the dislike she had always felt and to worry her with petty tyrannies.

"The best parlor will be used by any one who likes till he returns," she promptly announced. "It has been kept apart long enough, as if the whole of the house wasn't fit for those who own it to live in, unless it was sometimes by way of a treat."

"It was kept apart because father wanted to read and write and be quiet," Margaret said.

"Well, there's no one who need read and write now; you can do more useful things, and will be all the better for it; as for being quiet, well, there's others that will want to be quiet sometimes, and it'll do for them. Mr. Garratt is coming over to his dinner on Sundays, and we shall sit there in the afternoon--if we are not taking a walk. Mother is always in the porch, and we don't want you hanging about us."

"I am glad to get away," Margaret said, quickly.

"You do your best to keep his eyes fixed on you, anyway; but you needn't think you'll draw him to yourself; it isn't likely he'd mean anything by an unbeliever."

"I don't want him," Margaret cried, and fled up to the beechwood that stood high behind the farm as though it were the landscape's crown. Here, in some inconsequent manner born of the instinct that only comes to a woman's heart, she waited for Tom Carringford, or for news of him. That happy morning in London had changed the whole current of her thoughts, had put something strange and sweet into her life that she did not attempt to define and hardly knew to be there. But she wanted to see him again--and she waited, dreaming as her mother did, yet differently. He would come, or he would write, and soon; she felt it and knew it. But the days went by, and the weeks, and the first month of her father's absence, and nothing happened. She was a little disappointed, yet thought herself unreasonable, for, of course, he was thinking of his under-secretaryship, building castles concerning his parliamentary career--in Margaret's thoughts he was sure to be prime-minister some day--or going out with his friends; and she thought uneasily of the Lakemans--he had no time to go to Hindhead, or to remember her father's invitation. And why should she expect him to write? He would come, perhaps, when Sir George Stringer was established at the house on the hill.

But of Sir George there was not a sign. Every day, in the early morning, or in the twilight, she hurried through the fields, towards the road on which the church and the garden entrance to his house faced each other on either side; but the gates were always closed, and a chain round them fastened by a padlock showed that as yet he was not expected. Then she came away slowly, and with dull disappointment in her heart, which Hannah's temper and tyranny emphasized till she could hardly bear it. The foundations of life seemed to be giving way--she felt it as she passed the windows of the empty best parlor, or saw her mother, erect still, but older and graver, sitting in the porch. The happiness of home, the dear home of all her life, had waned lately.

"Are you well, mother?" she asked one day, uneasily. "Sometimes I think you are suffering." This was five weeks after Mr. Vincent had started.

"It's nothing," Mrs. Vincent answered. "I'm getting on in years, Margey; at fifty-six aches and pains have a right to take some hold on one. I shall be better when your father returns; perhaps I did a little too much before he went."

"Yes, you did, darling," Margaret answered, kissing the hands--large, capable hands, that not even the rough farm-work had ever made coarse.

"There'll be a good many months to rest in before he comes," Mrs. Vincent went on; "perhaps it's as well that he's away for a bit."

"But, mother dear, you used to be so active only a little while ago."

"You see, Hannah's older, and likes doing things herself," Mrs. Vincent answered; "and that's as well, too; it gives me time to think over all the years back. I was never able to do it before. You mustn't trouble about me, Margey; when people are getting on they like being quiet." It was evident that her mother wanted to be let alone, and Margaret respected her wish, though it made her own life more difficult.