Part 9

"No," she answered; "but sometimes I have thought that I should like to go with Margaret while her father is away."

"Did you think that, mother dear?" Margaret asked, in surprise.

"Better come and stay with me. I could take you both in."

Hannah was pouring out the tea, grasping the teapot with a firm hand, putting it down with determination on the tray when the cups were filled. "Mother is better where she is," she said, without looking up. "Towsey, there is no slop-basin on the table. I hold with staying at home, Mr. Carringford, though I've sometimes thought I'd like to go up myself for the May meetings."

"May meetings? Of course--I know. I thought you meant races at first--but it is Exeter Hall you are thinking of? I'm afraid Mr. and Miss Vincent didn't go there when they were in town."

"I'm afraid not, Mr. Carringford."

"Good Lord, what an ogress!" he thought. "They had a pretty good time, though," he said, aloud.

"Margaret has told me about it so often," Mrs. Vincent said, and Tom, turning to look at her while she spoke, realized suddenly that this mother of Margaret, who had grown old and gray, was beautiful. He looked round the living-room; his eyes lingered on the black beams and the great fireplace and the red-tiled floor; it made a peaceful picture, he thought, in spite of the ogress.

"Did she tell you about Miss Hunstan?" he asked. "It was rather lucky coming across her."

"She told me all about her," Mrs. Vincent answered, "and how you went to her rooms and put the flowers into the pots. It made me hope--that, and what my husband told me--that some day you would come and see us here."

"Thank you," he said, simply.

"Who is Miss Hunstan?" asked Hannah.

Tom answered, beamingly, "Why, Louise Hunstan, the actress, you know!"

"I didn't know, Mr. Carringford. I don't hold with theatres or any such places, and I was surprised at Mr. Vincent taking Margaret to one. I can't see that people are any the better--" She stopped, for there were footsteps on the pathway outside, and a moment later Mr. Garratt walked in with an air of being quite at home.

"How do you do, everybody?" he said. He wore his best clothes and the spats over his shoes. The handkerchief in his breast-pocket was scented more than usual. He took it out and shook it and put it back again, while a whiff of white rose floated over the table. His hair was tightly curled at the tips; he ran his fingers through it as he took off his bowler hat.

"We didn't expect you, Mr. Garratt," Hannah said with sudden graciousness, and made room for him beside her.

"Didn't know you had company," he answered, jauntily. "I hope I don't intrude? Mrs. Vincent, how do you do? Miss Margaret, your humble servant," and reluctantly he sat down beside Hannah.

"This is Mr. Carringford, a friend of my husband's," Mrs. Vincent told her visitor.

"How d'ye do?" Tom looked up and nodded.

"How d'ye do?" Mr. Garratt nodded back, trying to do it easily. "Thought it was Sir George Stringer at first till I recollected that he was a middle-ager."

"We didn't expect you to-day, Mr. Garratt," Hannah remarked, pouring out his tea.

"I told Miss Vincent I should come." He looked across at Margaret, determined to show off before the stranger.

"I don't remember that you did--" Margaret began.

"Oh, come now, you knew I wanted to bring you that book of poems I told you about. You shall have it if you're good."

"You had better give it to Hannah, Mr. Garratt. She will appreciate it more than I shall. I had no idea that you meant to bring it."

Tom looked up and wondered what it all meant.

"Well, but what did I say the other night?"

"I don't know," Margaret answered, coldly. "I never remember the things you say."

But Mr. Garratt was not to be snubbed. "Oh, come now, don't be showing off again," he laughed, and turned to Tom--"Miss Vincent is a difficult young lady, I assure you," he said, with an air of quite understanding her. "But perhaps you've found that out too."

"How should I have found it out?" Tom asked, stiffly.

"Well, you see, I've heard a few things--no jealousy--that's only a joke," as Margaret started; "you are one of Miss Vincent's London friends, I think? It was you who gave her the roses she brought back. You see I know all about it." He laughed with satisfaction, and gave Hannah a kick under the table from sheer lightness of heart, and by way of keeping everybody in tow, as he called it to himself.

"We certainly bought some roses in Covent Garden," Tom said, and got up to go. He couldn't stand any more of this chap, he thought.

"I didn't tell you about it, Mr. Garratt," Margaret said, indignantly. "Oh, don't go, Mr. Carringford."

"I know you didn't tell me," Mr. Garratt said, with a wink. "It was Miss Barton who gave me that little bit of information--you kept it to yourself." Tom had hesitated, but this decided him. Mr. Garratt was not the sort of person with whom he could bring himself to compete.

"Well, good-bye, Mrs. Vincent," he said, shaking hands with her and then with Margaret and Hannah. He nodded to Mr. Garratt, and strode towards the door.

"But you must wait till your horse is brought round," Mrs. Vincent said. "Hannah, will you tell Sandy or Jim?"

"It is ready," Mr. Garratt volunteered. "I wondered whose it was when I went into the stable just now. I'll take you to it, if you like," he added, graciously, to Tom.

"Pray don't trouble," Tom answered, in an off-hand manner.

"No trouble at all." Mr. Garratt led the way out as if he were the master of the house, while Margaret looked after them and felt as if she were being tortured.

"Fond of a ride?" asked Mr. Garratt as they went along.

"I suppose so," said Tom, distantly.

"I should like to show you the decent little mare I'm riding. I think sometimes I shall get a fellow to it for Margaret. We are both of us fond of the country and getting about." He called her Margaret deliberately, and with an air of custom--for it would be better, he told himself, to choke this Johnnie off as soon as possible.

"Would she like it?"

"Rather! Trust her," with a knowing wink.

"Beast!" thought Tom, as he mounted. "Well, good-evening," he said, aloud, to Mr. Garratt, and went off at a brisk trot, wondering how Margaret could stand him.

"He knows how to give himself airs, too," Mr. Garratt said to himself, looking after him. "I'm rather surprised he didn't offer me a tip while he was about it. I'd like to take down all these chaps and show 'em the way they should go; but we are doing it," he added, thinking not of himself but of his class--"and once we've got the upper hand we'll keep it, and let 'em see that we can be swells as well as any one else." He walked slowly back to the house, thinking of Margaret. He was getting up to her ways, and he knew how to keep his temper--and the man who waited won. He liked her, but his feeling was pique, rather than passion, and he felt that to subdue her would be a gratification to his vanity greater than any other he could imagine. "And she's such a beauty!"--he always came back to that. "While there's a chance of her, I'd rather be shot than kiss that sour old hen, Hannah. I'll have Margaret if I die for it. I wish I'd thought of it and tried to find out if that chap knew anything about Vincent's relations. I expect he's been up to something, but I don't care--the girl isn't any the worse for it."

During his absence the storm had burst in the living-room, but luckily circumstances obliged it to be brief.

"I should like to know what you think of yourself now with your slyness and deceit?" Hannah had asked Margaret.

"I'll not have you speak to your sister in this way," Mrs. Vincent began; but her remonstrances had grown ineffectual lately.

"Mr. Garratt told you he was coming, did he, though nobody else in the house knew it?" Hannah went on. "You took good care that they shouldn't."

"If he did tell me I had forgotten it," Margaret answered, scornfully.

"You can be trusted to forget anything--if it's convenient. What's this poetry he's brought you, I should like to know?"

"I didn't know he meant to bring it. He said something about Eugene Field's poems the other day, and that he had recited one at a chapel festival."

The mention of the chapel somewhat mollified Hannah without subduing her jealousy. "Well, something will have to be done," she said. "I'm not going to put up with your conduct, and that you shall find out." At which point Mr. Garratt entered a little uneasily, as if conscious that things were not going smoothly. Margaret looked up and spoke to him quickly.

"Mr. Garratt, I want to tell you that if you've brought me a book of poems I would rather not have it."

"Why, what's up now?"

"Nothing is up," she said, with what Mr. Garratt called her high and mighty air.

"Well, look here--" but she had turned away.

"Mother, shall we go into the garden?" she asked.

"It's a little chilly this evening," Mrs. Vincent answered.

"You've taken to feel the cold lately," Hannah said, uneasily. To her credit be it said that she was always careful of her mother's health.

"I've taken to feel my years."

"Let us go into the best parlor, darling," Margaret said, tenderly. "I might play to you for a little while. You always like that," and she put her arms round her mother's shoulders.

Mr. Garratt took a quick step forward. "I should like to hear you play, too, Miss Margaret, if there's no objection. I'm a lover of music, as I think I've told you." He stood by the door of the best parlor and waited.

Margaret turned and faced him. "Stay with Hannah. I want to have my mother to myself," she said.

"Well, that's a nice handful!" Mr. Garratt remarked, as she shut the door and turned the handle with a click.

"You should live in the same house with her," said Hannah, "then you'd know."

"She might have left it a little bit open, at any rate; then we should have heard her."

"Are you as anxious as all that?" asked Hannah, in a sarcastic voice.

"Well, you see, it makes it a bit lively."

"When I was at Petersfield the other day your mother asked me if I would see that the grass on your Aunt Amelia's grave was clipped. I brought in the small shears, and thought perhaps you might walk over and do it next time you came."

"Damn my Aunt Amelia's grave!" he said, between his teeth.

"Mr. Garratt, you are forgetting yourself!" she cried, in amazement.

"She's enough to make any one forget anything," he said, nodding towards the best parlor.

"You take far too much notice of her."

"She doesn't return the compliment, anyhow."

"And for my part," said Hannah, indignantly, "I don't understand what it is you come here for."

At which Mr. Garratt faced her squarely. "Now look here, Hannah," he said, "she gives herself tantrums enough; don't you begin, for two of you in one house would be a trifle more than is needed."

She sat down without a word, and closed her lips firmly. The tip of her nose became a deeper pink. Her eyelids fluttered for a minute quickly up and down. She looked forlorn--even a shade tragic. Mr. Garratt, with his heart reaching out to Margaret, obstinate and determined not to be thwarted, yet felt a touch of pity for the woman before him; perhaps unconsciously he recognized the limitations and the impossibilities of her life.

"There, come along," he said, half kindly. "Come along, Hannah." The sound of her Christian name soothed her considerably. "Let's go for a little stroll; but I'm not going to hang about any one's grave. It'll be bad enough when I come to my own."

XV

The letters from Mr. Vincent were not satisfactory. His brother was no better, but the end was not likely to be immediate. A specialist from Melbourne had even said that he might go on for another year. Mrs. Vincent's heart sank as she read it. She was a strange woman, with a wide outlook, and knew perfectly that time, which had dealt heavily with her, had tempered the years to her husband; there were days when he looked almost like a young man still, and in secret she fretted over her age. She knew, too, though no such thought had ever entered his head, that it was a little hard on him that he should be tied to a woman older than himself, incapable of giving him the companionship that insensibly he needed. She had not felt well lately, and found vague consolation in the possibility to which this pointed. But she wanted to see him again, even for a little while, then she could be content. Those about her guessed nothing of all this: to them it only seemed that she had grown more silent and dreamy than before.

Margaret heard of her father's probably protracted absence with despair. Something must happen, she thought; she herself must get out of the way, or Mr. Garratt must become engaged to Hannah. For matters had in no way improved. A sort of struggle was going on. On Margaret's side it was to keep out of his sight, on his to speak to her alone for some uninterrupted minutes; but as yet success had attended neither of them, and his attitude towards Hannah remained what it always had been. Once or twice Margaret had an idea of boldly seeking an interview, and then telling him that his attentions were simply making her miserable, of even throwing herself on his mercy; but something in his manner suggested that Mr. Garratt knew everything already, except the impossibility of his own success. Meanwhile the fifty pounds, that her father had arranged she should receive every quarter, arrived for the second time.

"You are sure that you want me to have it, mother?" she asked.

"Yes, Margey. I told your father that I wished it."

"I feel as if I am rolling in wealth," she said. This was a month after Tom Carringford's visit--a whole month, and there had not been another sign of him--and the last Saturday in July. The mid-day meal was just over, and Hannah was going to and fro between the living-place and the kitchen, while Margaret sat in the porch with Mrs. Vincent. "Mother," she whispered, "I have been thinking lately that I would write to Miss Hunstan again."

"The play-actress?" Mrs. Vincent whispered back, lest Hannah should catch the word.

"Yes, the play-actress," Margaret said, with a laugh in her eyes. "She is good and sweet--Mr. Carringford's mother loved her. She said again in the letter she sent me that I was to go and see her if I was in London. I want to go soon. I'm afraid she will be abroad if I don't; for she was going to Germany in August."

"But you can't go till your father returns."

"I can't stay here unless something to make things better happens. Oh, mother," she said, fervently, after a pause, "I do so hate Mr. Garratt."

Hannah heard the last words and stopped.

"It's a pity you don't tell him so," she said, "instead of always trying to draw him to yourself. You make one ashamed of your boldness."

"He came first because of Hannah, Margey, dear, and is as good as her promised husband," Mrs. Vincent urged.

"But he hasn't spoken--"

"And never will if you can help it," Hannah answered, quickly. "Besides, it's my opinion that he doesn't want to be related to an unbeliever--and perhaps something worse. It's just what he thought would happen about the Australian business."

"What do you mean?" Mrs. Vincent looked up aghast.

"What I mean is that we don't know anything about--father," Hannah answered, hesitating before she said the last word. "We never set eyes on any one belonging to him; we have only his word for it that he has got this brother; for all we know to the contrary he may have married another woman before he came here, and have gone back to her. There is nothing to hold him to what is right, or to help him to choose between right and wrong. For my part, I only hope that I may be out of the place before he comes into it again--if he ever does set foot in it again--for I hate the ground he treads on, and the ground that Margaret treads on, too--so now I've said it. It's my belief that the Lord will provide for them both some day according to their deserts."

Mrs. Vincent rose from her chair and stood with her back to the fireplace. Her face looked drawn and haggard, her lips were almost rigid, but her voice came clear and low. It fell upon Hannah like a lash.

"You are a malicious woman, Hannah," she said, "and I am ashamed of you. I know everything about him, and that is enough. I have held my tongue because you have never treated him as you should, and his affairs are no business of yours. But you ought to be ashamed of your thoughts; and as for religion, it is you that want it, not he. It's the leading of a good life, the telling of the truth, and the thinking well of others that makes religion and will gain heaven--that's my belief. Those that do different are as good as denying God. I said it to your grandparents long ago, and I say it again to you to-day." Mrs. Vincent's diction was not always strictly correct, but her meaning was clear enough.

"And I know everything about father, too," Margaret said, gently--for somehow she was sorry for Hannah--"and I cannot think why you should hate him--or even why you should hate me." She went a step out into the garden, and as she stood with her head raised, looking up at the high woods beyond, Hannah felt insensibly that there was a difference between them against which it was hopeless to contend--not merely a difference in looks, but a difference of class. It was one of the things she resented most.

"I know this," she said, "that it was a bad day for me when he first walked through Chidhurst village to Woodside farm."

"Mother," said Margaret, turning round, "some one has come to the house by the church. I passed it this morning and saw the luggage going in. Mr. Carringford said that Sir George was going to lend it from a Saturday to Monday to some friends of father's. Perhaps they have come."

"More of his fine feathers," said Hannah, contemptuously. "It's a pity he was left plucked so long."

"Hannah, be quiet," Mrs. Vincent said, sternly. "Go to your work, and don't come to me again till you have learned respect for those who are better than yourself." It was almost a command, but Mrs. Vincent had been roused into her old self again--the self of bygone years.

Luckily Towsey appeared on the scene.

"Sandy wants to know whether he's to be here to-morrow to take Mr. Garratt's horse. You said something about his not coming."

Hannah hurried out to speak to the old cowman who usually waited for Mr. Garratt's mare on Sunday morning before going to church.

"Mr. Garratt won't be over early to-morrow," she said. "He's driving a trap from Guildford, and it'll take him all he knows to get here by dinner-time. If you come up after church, Sandy, it'll do." This was an arrangement Mr. Garratt had made, rather to Hannah's surprise, on his last visit. It would be better than the train, he had explained; but it was a long way, and it would be impossible for him to arrive before the middle of the day.

XVI

Margaret had guessed rightly. Mrs. Lakeman and Lena, and Dawson Farley, who, as usual, was with them, were at Sir George Stringer's house from Saturday to Monday, while Sir George himself was at Folkestone with his sister. Dawson Farley rejoiced in the absence of their host, for he had wanted a talk with Mrs. Lakeman, and this visit promised to give him a good opportunity. He was deliberating within himself as they sat together after luncheon how he should begin it. Lena had slipped away, and wriggled among the greenery.

"We'll go over to the farm presently," Mrs. Lakeman said. "I want to see what the woman with the look of distinction is like," she added, with the crooked smile peculiar to her. "Gerald faced it out very well, but I expect he is frightfully bored."

"Why did he marry her?"

Mrs. Lakeman shrugged her shoulders. "Poor chap, he didn't care what became of him; but it wasn't my fault--'pon my word it wasn't, Dawson. My father made an awful row." Mrs. Lakeman was always a trifle slangy.

Dawson Farley looked at her and nodded absently. He quite understood all she meant to imply, but he was busy with his own train of thought. She was a curious woman, he thought, a curious, capable woman who never bored him and knew how to do things admirably. It had often occurred to him that it would be an excellent thing to marry her. The worst of it was that he simply could not stand Lena. She was so like a snake with her twisting and squirming, and the malicious things she said with an air of unconsciousness. The mother, on the other hand, was an excellent critic and companion, and would serve his purpose admirably. He was not in love with her, of course--she was too old for that--and it was just as well, for being in love with one's wife was a state that naturally didn't last long. Luckily she was not a jealous woman, and so would not be likely to resent it if he chose to flirt with his leading lady; on the contrary, if he told her all about it, he felt certain it would amuse her, and she had so excellent an eye for home-made dramatic effects that even the worst domestic crisis would be followed by a reconciliation, if only for the sake of contrast. She was a bit unreal, but what did it matter? the tragedies of life were bound up with realities, but there was comedy to be had from the make-believes.

The worst of it was, for his own peace, that at the back of his life there was always Louise Hunstan. He had been in love with her once; but he was glad that nothing had come of it, for he couldn't have endured a wife in his own profession: if she had been a success he would have hated her; if she had been a failure he would have despised her. He had discovered Louise, that was the hard part of it; she had let go the princess's train to enter his company and gratefully play small parts. They had fallen in love with each other, and happiness and love together inspired her until, almost unawares, she achieved a reputation. If she had only made it on his advising, if he could have considered it his gift to her, he could have forgiven her more easily and even loved her through it. But she had struck out for herself, often contrary to his advice, and made a reputation for herself. In her heart she had laid it at his feet, and rejoiced in it, thinking it would make him proud of her, but it roused a miserable jealousy and drove them apart. He gave her to understand that he did not altogether believe in her success; that it was a fluke, due to the good nature of the critics and the stupidity of the public, and that it would vanish with her youth or her freshness. She believed him at first, but gradually she saw through him. She cared for him all the same for a time, though it was through a haze of bitterness and disappointment. Then their engagement collapsed, and he returned to England alone, while she remained in the States through five hardworking years. At the end of them she came back to England. It was then that Tom's mother met her, and took her by the hand and helped her till she had achieved a permanent position. Over here she and Farley had become friends to a certain extent, but he couldn't stand the irritation of her success; he even found a secret pleasure in her occasional failures; and a meeting between them involved an embarrassment of manner that neither could put aside.

After all, he thought, Mrs. Lakeman would suit him much better. He liked her adaptability of manner, her quick interest in his affairs. They had only known each other a year, but she had become his most intimate friend, his chum and companion; her society stimulated him; he wanted it more and more. Why shouldn't he have it altogether? Only the girl stood in the way; but probably she would marry; she had a curious fascination for some people, and she had money.

"Is Carringford coming?" he asked. "I thought you invited him."