Margaret Vincent: A Novel

by Mrs. W. K. Clifford

"She doesn't approve of it; but my mother will trust me."

"And does any one know that you are in London?" he asked, his thoughts running to Tom Carringford.

"No one; I wrote to Miss Hunstan, but she is at Bayreuth. I don't want any one else to know, Mr. Farley—my life is my own to live," she added, quickly, "and I want to begin at once. Can you let me 'walk on' as Miss Hunstan did once?"

The girl had some stuff in her, he thought. "Certainly you shall walk on if you like, Miss Vincent; we can easily make room for one or two more," he answered. "But, understand, it means hard work; you will have to come to rehearsal and perhaps to wait about for hours, and when we begin to play you will have to come down every night, of course, and nothing must make you late or careless—ill or well you must be here. No excuses allowed; your work must come before everything else, and to begin with you will get a guinea a week. Young ladies are apt to think they have only to run on the stage to become actresses, but you will find that nothing is done without hard work and patient waiting, unless you are a genius; if you are, we shall discover it. We begin rehearsing at 11.30 to-day; you can wait, if you like." And so he dismissed her, realizing that he was a different person altogether in the theatre from the Dawson Farley of Mrs. Lakeman's drawing-room or the garden at Woodside Farm. Nevertheless, he had been interested by her visit. It was very odd, he thought, this girl coming from the atmosphere in which he had seen her last week to lonely lodgings in Westminster. Very odd altogether. Lucky for her that she had got into Mrs. Gilman's, a respectable house, and a nice woman. He had half a mind to telegraph the whole thing to Mrs. Lakeman, and suggest that she should invite Margaret to Scotland; it would be far better for her than staying in London; but, after all, it was no affair of his, and he disliked mixing up business and private matters. Still, when he wrote to Pitlochry, he made up his mind he would tell Mrs. Lakeman about Margaret; she was a clever, practical woman, and would know if anything ought to be done for the girl.

Meanwhile, Margaret had been given over to the stage manager, and waited eagerly for the rehearsal to begin. It was uglier than she had expected. The gaping, empty theatre, covered with holland sheets; the dusty stage, with its whitewashed walls, and lumbering scenery packed together, standing up against them; the every-day clothes of the actors and actresses, made it all so vastly different a matter from seeing a play at night from the stalls with her father; but it was absurd of her, she thought, not to have remembered that it would be so; "it is like being at the back of the world," she thought. The company was a good-sized one, and Margaret, shy and awkward, stood apart, looking at it. Some of its members were ladies and gentlemen; they glanced at her, curiously wondering who she was, but only for a moment; they were intent on their own life battle. Some were not ladies and gentlemen, but tawdry make-believes, or shabby and anxious-looking. One or two of them looked as if they would have spoken to her, but she gave them no chance. When Dawson Farley came on he was busy and full of the responsibility of a great speculation; he had forgotten all about her. Even in that first day she realized that she was a little unit of no account in an important whole. True, when she had to go across the stage at the end of the first act, he turned his head for a moment. She walked well, he thought; if he heard that she was intelligent, he might some day give her a small part. She was beautiful; he realized that. Ten years ago the story of Louise Hunstan might have been repeated (on his part), but now he was wiser. Then it struck him, as he waited in the wings, that her mother had looked ill the other day, like a woman who was not going to live long, and that if she died Mrs. Lakeman might want to marry her old lover, Gerald Vincent. Perhaps it would be wise if he tried to hurry things up a little.

Margaret had discovered that it was only a little way from the theatre to Great College Street, and she walked back from the rehearsal. After the stuffiness and dimness of the theatre she was glad to be in the open air again, and all manner of new experiences suggested themselves. She looked at the people she passed in the narrow streets near the stage door; they seemed to have suffered so much, to have hoped for so much, and each one to have a strange little history of some sort. A first glimmering of the temptations of life dawned upon her, the expression of a woman's face, or a man's casual speech, brought home to her a sense of some things at which Hannah had railed. Hannah had only known of them by instinct, or she had railed at them parrot-like, because she had heard others do so; but under it all lay a foundation, though she had never dug to it. Gradually Margaret realized that of all people and of all things there was a justification, from a given point of view, and that, even if it had made no difference to a condemnation, it should never be forgotten.

The morning, the third day of Margaret's stay in London, brought her a letter from her mother—a simple, trusting letter with not a shadow of reproach in it. "I wish you hadn't left us so, Margey, dear," she said, "for it has made Hannah very angry, and I don't think it would be any good your coming back just yet, but if you want anything write to me. It is a good thing that you are living in a house with such a nice woman. Perhaps you could write to Sir George Stringer, for he knew your father when he was young, and would help you to do what was best. Hannah is packing your trunk to send up, but I am afraid to say anything to her. When she goes to Petersfield at the end of the week I'll send you some eggs and butter and flowers, but I don't like to say anything about it now, for it's no good making her cross. I wrote to Mr. Garratt, and told him you had gone to London, and I sent him back the letter, as you asked me. I'm not very well, but you must not be anxious. I think it's the trial of Hannah's temper when you were here. Perhaps, after all, it's as well that you are away for a bit. She may have got over it a little in a month or two. I think I ought to tell you that she is very angry indeed about your being an actress. She says old Mr. and Mrs. Barton, of Petersfield, will say I am doing very wrong in giving my consent, but I have never believed in the world being as bad as they do, or could see why the theatre should be wicked. Your father said once that everything was just what we made it, and it could always be made good or bad, and I want you to remember that about your life. It is what I have always felt about your father, and that God, who knows him, will be satisfied, no matter what people say."

Margaret kissed it, and gave a long sigh of thankfulness. "She isn't angry," she said to herself, "and she understands. My mother always did, bless her." She rose and walked up and down the little drawing-room. She had not known till now how much she had longed for a letter, for some sign that she had not done a wicked or foolish thing when she fled from home. "Now I feel as if I can go on," she said, "and who knows but that some day I shall be a great actress as Miss Hunstan is—she has my letter this morning, I wonder what she'll say when she writes to me." The little clock on the mantel-piece struck ten. As if in answer to it there came a double knock to the street door, the sound of a voice and some hurried steps, and the next moment Tom Carringford walked in. Margaret started to her feet with a cry of surprise:

"Oh," she said, "how did you know I was here?"

"Miss Hunstan wired—had it ten minutes ago—so got into a hansom and came at once. And now what is the matter?" he asked, just as if he had a right to do so. He sat down in the easy-chair facing her, his face beaming with happiness, even though Mr. Garratt rankled in his memory. "Why are you in London? You said something about coming, in the wood that day, but I didn't think you meant it."