Part 8

"It's probably the gent who's taken the house on the hill; we might go and see what he's like," Mr. Garratt said, quickly, and turned towards the house, elated at the thought of meeting on terms of more or less equality some one whom in the ordinary course he would have had to treat with the respect due to a superior.

But Sir George Stringer had been and gone. He was just going when Margaret returned.

"I drove over for the pleasure of calling on your mother and of seeing you again," he had said. "You were evidently having a most interesting conversation as you came across the field--I hope it has not been interrupted," he looked at her curiously, and saw the color rush to her face.

"It's only Mr. Garratt," Mrs. Vincent explained; "he often comes over from Guildford to see us."

"I've no doubt he does," Sir George answered. Margaret had no courage to contradict the mistake, and Mrs. Vincent did not see it. "You would have seen me before," he went on, "but I have had a sister ill at Folkestone. I fear I can't stay any longer now, but I shall come again in a day or two."

Margaret walked to the gate with him, confused and mortified, but she made an effort to set matters right.

"I didn't know you were here--"

"Don't apologize," he said, good-naturedly. "I'm going to stay a fortnight at least, and you'll see me very often. Are you and your mother here alone?"

"There is Hannah--"

"Oh yes, the sharp-faced woman who let me in, I suppose? She keeps an eye upon you. I saw her in the garden watching your approach with a great deal of anxiety and not much approval." The fly had been waiting in the lane instead of by the porch. He got in before he held out his hand.

"Sir George, I want to tell you--" she began, and stopped, for it was so difficult.

"I know," and he laughed again. "By-the-way, I dare say you'll have Carringford over next week; he's going to Hindhead; he said he should come and see you, and look me up on the way. Good-bye," and in a moment he had started. She stood watching him almost in despair. Suppose he told Tom Carringford about Mr. Garratt! Oh, but when he came again--he said just now that he should come often--she would explain. Only it was such a difficult thing to explain, it wanted so much courage, and why should it matter to Mr. Carringford? Perhaps, too, it would be better to leave it alone, and he would forget about Mr. Garratt; besides, Mr. Walford, the clergyman, would be sure to call on Sir George, and if by any chance he mentioned Woodside Farm he would probably tell him that Mr. Garratt was walking out with Hannah--he was always at church with her on Sunday mornings. She remembered joyfully that Sir George would see them there together, and in a little place like Chidhurst everything was known and talked about.

"Good Heavens! how lovely she is," Sir George thought as he drove away, "and what a pity that she should be left to those two women!" For he and Mrs. Vincent had spent an awkward ten minutes, not knowing in the least what to say to each other, and he had naturally come to the conclusion that she was a handsome but quite ordinary woman of her class. "And then the young tradesman, with the crisp, curling hair showing under the brim of his bowler hat, and the look of a bounder. Vincent ought to be shot for leaving her to him." It was no business of his, of course, but it vexed him so much that he felt as if he could not bring himself to pay another visit to the farm.

XIII

Mr. Garratt hired the mare on which he had made so successful an appearance by the month, and determined to enjoy his long rides across the beautiful Surrey country. He thought matters well over, and came to the conclusion that it would be as well to keep up an appearance of paying attention to Hannah lest he should lose the bird in the hand before he had made sure of catching the one in the bush. But he found it difficult, for her voice set his teeth on edge, and her conversation, which was always harking round to evangelical subjects, and hits at her step-father and Margaret, irritated him till there were times when he could have shaken her. He was fully alive to the charms of the property that would one day be hers, and he saw her thrifty qualities clearly enough; but this was not all a man wanted, he told himself. He wanted besides a woman he could love and look at, and be proud of, and whose possession other men would envy him.

"If Margaret only showed a little common-sense," he thought, "she might be riding beside me two or three times a week. She would look stunning in a habit, and I wouldn't mind standing it--and the nag, too. People would sit up a bit if one day they saw us trotting through Guildford together; as for Hannah, she isn't fit to lick her boots." Even in a worldly sense he had come to the conclusion that Margaret would suit him better. "She'd pull one up," he thought, "for I'm certain she's a swell, though she mayn't know it herself, while t'other would keep one where one is for the rest of one's days." He touched up the mare in his excitement, and went by the church and towards the green lane in a canter.

Sir George Stringer, hidden behind the greenery of his garden, saw him pass. "That young bounder is going after Vincent's girl again," he said to himself. "I'd rather marry her myself than let him have her--not that she'd look at a grizzly old buffer five years her father's senior. I'll tell Hilda Lakeman about it; perhaps she will ask the girl there and get the nonsense out of her." He went up to town the next day, and made a point of lunching at the Embankment, and of sitting an hour in the flower-scented room afterwards; but Mrs. Lakeman was not as ready to help in the matter as he had imagined she would be.

"Gerald's family has come to a pretty pass," she said, with contemptuous amusement. "I'd do anything for him, dear old boy; but if his girl is in love with this young man, what would be the good of bringing her to town? I couldn't undertake the responsibility of it, I couldn't indeed, old friend."

"Did little Margaret seem fond of her tradesman?" Lena asked, sitting down on a low stool near her mother and looking up at Sir George.

"Well, I saw them get closer together as they crossed the field, and loiter out of sight behind the hedge before they came into the garden, and she blushed when she spoke of him."

"Dear little Margaret," purred Lena, "why shouldn't she marry him and be happy? It would be far better than interfering. I must tell Tom about it; he'll be so amused."

"I wish Tom would marry her," Sir George said, fervently.

"He's coming to-day; I'll tell him what you say."

"Then you'll mull it. I shall have to invite him to Chidhurst, I think."

"I think you had better invite us," said Mrs. Lakeman. "I should like to see Mrs. Gerald."

"Of course I will. You must come for a week-end."

"Later, before we go to Scotland in August," Mrs. Lakeman answered. "Tom is going with us," she added, and looked at Lena out of the tail of her eye.

Lena rose and sauntered towards the curtains. "He is coming at four," she said, in a low tone. "I think I will go and wait for him."

Then Mrs. Lakeman put on her most dramatic manner, restrained, but full of feeling. "George Stringer," she said, in a thick, harsh voice, "I loved Gerald Vincent once, and would do anything in the world for him, but I can't give away--even to his girl--my own child's happiness. You won't interfere, will you, old friend? You won't throw Margaret Vincent in his way?"

"I don't understand," he said, slowly. "What do you mean?"

She held out her hands to him.

"May God forgive me for betraying my child's secret"--she managed to put a heartfelt tone into her words, and was quite pleased with it--"but I think, for I can't give her away more explicitly than that--I think she loves Tom."

"He hasn't proposed?"

"Not yet. But he's devoted to her. He sees her every day of his life, does everything we do, goes everywhere we go. He can't live without her," she said, with a little, crooked smile; "it hasn't yet occurred to him that the end must be the only one for two children who love each other--but it will."

Sir George looked at her and hesitated. "Humph! He's very well off?"

"Fairly well off," she answered, with a gleam in her blue eyes. "That doesn't matter in the least," she went on, in an off-hand manner. "But I can't play with my child's happiness, George, and I love the boy and want him for my own."

"All right, my dear, all right," he said, and, seeing it was expected of him, he took both her hands in his. "It's always better not to interfere with young people." And so Mrs. Lakeman was satisfied. But Sir George walked away with an uneasy feeling at the back of his head. "I wonder if Hilda Lakeman was lying," he said to himself. "I never understand her, and for the life of me I can never quite believe in her. She is tricky--tricky."

He saw Mr. Garratt at Haslemere station waiting for the Guildford train. "I should like to punch his head," he thought, but this desire, of course, made no difference in any way.

Meanwhile matters had not improved at Woodside Farm. A fierce jealousy was raging in Hannah's virgin heart; she found it difficult even to keep her hands off Margaret. "I should like to box your ears and lock you up in your room," she remarked, spitefully, when she could no longer control herself.

"Hannah, for shame!" Mrs. Vincent said, but even her efforts to keep the peace seemed somewhat futile.

"It's a pity you didn't go to Australia with your father," Hannah went on. "You are only in the way here."

"Oh, if he had but taken me!" Margaret answered, fervently.

"Perhaps he didn't want you. We've only his word for it there is this brother in Australia--and what is that worth, I should like to know?"

Mrs. Vincent looked up quickly from her seat in the porch. "I'll have you speak with respect of the man who is my husband," she said, gently.

"And shame to you, mother, that he is. He has undermined your faith, and made you forget your first husband's child."

"Hannah, you will be silent," Mrs. Vincent answered, with some of her old dignity. "We have each kept to our own way of thinking, and neither has meddled with the other. And I have never forgotten your father, nor what was due to him; but one has to make the best of life, and I was a young woman when he died."

Something in her voice touched Hannah. "I know that, mother," she said, "and I've tried to be a good daughter to you, and if sometimes I've thought I didn't get my share of what you felt, why it's only natural that I should complain. What's come between us and is trying to come between me and what is due to me, is the artfulness that has got no principle to build upon."

"If I could only get away! If Mrs. Lakeman would ask me to stay with her, or if only I were like Miss Hunstan, and could act and live by myself till father comes back," Margaret said to herself, till the idea took deeper and deeper hold upon her.

Why shouldn't she? All things have a beginning, all journeys a starting-point. Mr. Garratt had told her how Miss Hunstan had begun by holding up the train of a princess, and how step by step she had reached her present position. She wished she could see Miss Hunstan. They had only met once, and for a few minutes, but she had told Margaret that she would like to see her again, and, as Tom had said, some people were never strangers. She longed to go to London and ask her advice, and she didn't think her father would be angry or object if he knew all that was going on at Woodside Farm. He saw no harm in theatres, and she was not sophisticated enough to understand the difficulties in the way of a girl who was not yet twenty, going to London with a vague idea that she could "walk on." But for the unfortunate meeting with Mr. Garratt she might have consulted Sir George Stringer. She had hoped that he would come again, but day after day went by without a sign of him. Half a dozen times she went towards his house, wondering if she dared go up to the door and boldly ask for him, and half a dozen times her courage failed her.

"If he doesn't come to-morrow, I'll make myself go to him," Margaret said, when nearly a fortnight had gone and he had not appeared; but again she hesitated. Tom Carringford might be there, and she was afraid to meet him, lest he should have heard of Mr. Garratt and be different. Then a note arrived from Sir George. He was going back to London, was starting when he wrote, and regretted that he had not been able to get to the farm again; he hoped to do so later. And so all hope in that direction vanished. She talked to her mother one day, but nothing was gained by it.

"You couldn't go to London by yourself, Margey," Mrs. Vincent said. "I was never strict in my heart as James Barton was, or as Hannah is, but I shouldn't like you to take a step of that sort out into the world without your father's approval."

"But, mother dear, every one has a life to live, and what is the use of me here? Hannah does all the farm business, and there's nothing that you want me to do. I just read and think and wait, and I don't know for what, unless it's for father's return."

"It's a feeling that comes to us all," Mrs. Vincent answered. "It's the fluttering of the bird trying to leave its nest. Better wait till your father comes and sets you on your way." Then Mrs. Vincent shut her lips--those beautiful, curved lips of hers--and said no more. All her thoughts were with the man in Australia, the man younger than herself, at whom her heart clutched, and all her hours were passed in a dream beside him till she had no energy left for the actual life about her, but let it slip by unheeded.

XIV

At last, on the afternoon of a day when Hannah was more than usually unbearable, Margaret determined to write to Miss Hunstan, asking if she might really go and see her if she went to London. This was in her own room over the porch--a little room, with a latticed window and a seat to it, and an old-fashioned cupboard let into the wall.

"I will write at once," she cried, "this very minute." It gave her some comfort even to see the address on the envelope, for she wrote that first. When the letter was finished she felt as if she had taken a step towards freedom: she put her elbows on the table, and, resting her face in her hands, tried to imagine what freedom would be like, and all that might come of it. And then, faint in the distance, as in a dream, she heard the sound of a horse's hoofs. They were coming nearer and nearer along the lane. She rose and looked out, but it was not possible to see the rider, for in the summer-time the hedges were thick and green. It was June now, and the honeysuckle and traveller's joy grew high.

"Mr. Garratt again, I suppose," she said to herself in despair. The sound of the hoofs came nearer; they had come in at the gate, past the duck-pond, and the outbuildings and the hayricks, and round the corner of the garden. They stopped at the porch, and she heard the boy call out, "I'm coming, sir," and run to take the horse. "He generally rides round to the stable himself," she thought; but she had made up her mind that it was Mr. Garratt, and determined to keep to her room all the afternoon. There was a knock at the front door, though it was standing wide open, and at that she started, for Mr. Garratt never knocked; he just walked in as if he felt that one day he would be the master. Towsey came out of the kitchen and shuffled through the living-place to the porch.

"Is Mrs. Vincent at home?" Then there was no doubt at all.

"It is Mr. Carringford," Margaret said to herself, and her heart bounded with happiness.

"And is Miss Vincent at home?" she heard him further ask, as Towsey showed him into the best parlor. "Yes! Yes! She was at home," she thought, and danced a fan-fan round her room; but she stopped suddenly--suppose he had heard of Mr. Garratt? Oh, what a good thing Sir George had gone, for now, after all, Tom mightn't know. She stopped before her glass, and in a moment had taken down her hair, and smiled as she saw the glint of gold in it, and twisted it up into quite a neat knot. "And my lace collar," she said, and pinned it round her throat and fastened it with a little heart-shaped brooch that her mother had given her on her birthday; "and my best shoes, for these are shabby at the toes." Then she was ready.

She stopped for a moment at the head of the stairs to look in at her mother's room, of which the door stood open. It had a great, gaunt wardrobe in it, and an old-fashioned bed with a high screen round one side--the farther one from the door. She put her hand to her throat, for something like a sob came to it--and yet she was so happy. Outside her mother's door, still nearer to the stairs, there was a little room used as a box place and hanging cupboard: her mother's best dress and a long cloak that she wore in the winter, and many things not often used, were stowed away there, or hung on hooks. She looked at them as if to mark something in her memory, or because of an unconscious knowledge perhaps of a day that had yet to come. As she went down the old, polished staircase she heard Hannah moving briskly in the kitchen.

"She is getting some scones ready in case he stays to tea," Margaret thought, and demurely walked into the best parlor. Her mother was sitting in the chintz-covered arm-chair by the window, and Tom sat facing her near the writing-table. He looked tall and strong as he jumped up and went forward to greet her.

"How do you do?" he said. "Mr. Vincent told me I might come, you know, and here I am--I heard he had gone." His voice was cordial enough, but in the first moment Margaret knew that he was different--different from the morning when he had said good-bye at the Langham, and talked of coming to Chidhurst, and foretold that they would have another drive round London together. He was a little more distant, she felt, as if he thought less of her, as if he liked her less, as if he had heard of Mr. Garratt and despised her. It chilled her; she had nothing to say after a bare welcome, and Mrs. Vincent, thinking that, now Margaret had come, Mr. Carringford would naturally talk to her, was silent, too. Then Tom jerked out--

"When are you going to get a letter from Mr. Vincent?"

"We expect it every day now," Mrs. Vincent answered, and turned to Margaret. "Mr. Carringford has ridden over from Hindhead," she said, "and I've thanked him for the roses and told him I couldn't remember the day when I'd had any sent me before."

"Miss Vincent and I made an expedition together--"

"Oh yes, we've often talked it over together."

Margaret wished her mother hadn't said that; it made the color come to her face; but luckily Tom was not looking at her, and then Mrs. Vincent added simply, in the half-countrified manner into which, for some strange reason, her speech had relapsed since her husband's departure, "You'll be tired after your ride, Mr. Carringford; you must stay for a cup of tea."

"I should like to, if I may."

"And while it's getting ready Margaret could show you the garden, if you'd care to see it." She said it with the native dignity that was always impressive. It had its effect on Tom.

"I should like to see it very much," he said, and five minutes later he and Margaret were walking down the green pathway of the Dutch garden. Almost without knowing it, she took him through the garden gate towards the wood, and across a green corner, through a tangle of undergrowths, up to the great elms and beeches. They had hardly spoken on the way; they felt constrained and awkward; but when they reached the top things seemed to adjust themselves in their minds, and they looked at each other for a moment, and laughed as if they thought it good to be together again. Then Tom shook off his awkwardness; the boyish happiness was on his face again, and she was almost satisfied. "I say, what a wood!" he exclaimed.

"It's father's and mine; we call it our cathedral."

"Good! good!" he answered. "When are you coming to London again?"

She clasped her hands and looked at him. "I don't know, but I want to go again dreadfully. Do you think I could go by myself?"

"Well, no! But you might come up and stay with the Lakemans. You must make haste about it if you do, for they're going to Scotland at the end of July. Only another month, you know. By-the-way, I rather think you'll see them here first. Stringer can't get away again till the middle of August except for week-ends, and then he has to go to Folkestone; he has a sister there--ill. But the Lakemans told me a day or two ago that they were coming here for a Saturday to Monday; he had offered them the house."

"When?"

"I don't know when, but pretty soon, I expect. Farley is coming, too; he has taken a theatre, and is going to produce a legendary thing this autumn, 'Prince of--something', it is called."

"Will there be a princess in it?"

"I expect so. Why?"

"When Miss Hunstan came out first she walked on the stage holding up a princess's train."

"They generally begin in that way, you know. By-the-way, Stringer said that you were walking about the fields with a friend--was it anybody particular?"

"It was Mr. Garratt."

"Who is Mr. Garratt?"

"He used to be a house agent at Petersfield. He's at Guildford now. He has just taken a house there."

"A married gentleman?"

"No," she laughed; "that's why he comes. He doesn't come for me," she added, hurriedly, but he didn't understand her.

"Any success?" he asked, quickly--"of course not."

"Not yet; Hannah won't encourage him."

He mistook her tone altogether, and walked to the edge of the crown and looked out at the view.

"That's rather hard lines" he said; "but it doesn't matter if you make it up to him, of course. I say, it's magnificent up here," he went on; "do you ever bring Mr.--what is he called?--Garratt up here?"

"No," she answered, quickly.

"Well, you took him across the field?"

"I met him by accident, and Hannah was very angry--" she began, but stopped in sheer confusion.

"You seem to be rather afraid of Hannah," he said, for it simply never occurred to him that there should be any question of love-making between Mr. Garratt and Hannah. Margaret was such a nice girl, he thought; it was a pity she should flirt, for perhaps, after all, it was only a flirtation with a local house-agent; it put her on another level altogether from the girl he had known in London. And so talk was not very easy between them again, since each felt a little indignant with the other. "Are you going to be here all the summer?" he asked, when they returned to the garden.

"I suppose so," she answered, "unless I go to London. I want to do that more than anything in the world."

"A romantic elopement with the gentleman we have been discussing?"

"Oh, how can you! He is nothing to me; he knows that--it is Hannah."

She looked downright beautiful when the color came to her face, he thought, and wished Mr. Garratt at the bottom of the sea.

"When is your father coming back?" he asked, and his tone was constrained.

"We don't know till we get his letter," she said, impatiently; something was wrong with this interview, and it seemed impossible to set it right.

"You must tell the Lakemans when they turn up; then I shall hear."

Tea was ready when they returned--a generous tea, set out as usual in the living-room. Tom took his place next to Mrs. Vincent and talked to her gayly, while his eye wandered over the table with the satisfaction of a school-boy. Margaret remembered how he had talked of going into the House of Commons; but he didn't look a bit like a politician, she thought, he was so splendidly young, and he and she had understood each other so well in London. But now he seemed to be bound hand and foot to the Lakemans, and he thought she cared for that horrid Mr. Garratt.

"I like big tea and jam," he said. "Do you ever come up to London, Mrs. Vincent?"