Margaret Vincent: A Novel

by Mrs. W. K. Clifford

"Well, they seem to think he's looking after Mabel Margetson," the woman answered.

"There'd be some money there," the man said.

"A good bit, no doubt," the woman answered; "but money isn't everything."

No, money isn't everything, Margaret's heart answered them. Money is nothing, after a certain point; nothing is anything except the love of your dearest, the sound of a living voice, the sight of a dear face, the touch of a thin, gaunt cheek against your own. "Oh, she must live," she cried dumbly to herself, though never a sign or movement betrayed it. "I wish I could send my own life into your heart, darling; but live—live till father comes. Oh, dear Christ, if You can see into our hearts, as people say, let my mother live, or, if she must die soon, still let her live till my father comes—or till I get to her," she added, in despair, for in her heart she felt as if the rest must be denied. "We love her, love her best on earth, as she does us."

"Why, it's Guildford already," the woman said. "I declare, this train is in a hurry." She reached down the basket that was in the rack, the man rose, they opened the carriage door, and again Margaret was left alone.

The oil in the lamp burned low and flickered; she opened the window at the other end—they were both open—and the soft darkness of the summer night came in. She knelt by the carriage door, and rested her arms on the window-frame and her face down on them; it gave her a devotional feeling; it made her love the land and trees and the great sky above them; they had always seemed to understand everything; she felt as if they did now. The scent of the pines came to her; she could see the fir-trees black and dim as the train rushed past; but all nature seemed to know the misery in her heart—it soothed her and made her able to bear it calmly. She looked up at the little stars that had been there thousands of years before she was born, and would be there thousands of years to come—at the stars and the black trees that made the shadows, at the woods in which she had never trodden and yet knew so well, at the deep gray sky, the rough fence that bounded the railway line—and everything seemed to know as she passed by that she was going to her mother, only to find that nothing, nothing in this wide world, can alter the inexorable law of nature and the great decree when it has once been given.

There were three little stations to pass before she reached Haslemere. The station-master's gardens were bright with flowers; she could see plainly the patches of color in the darkness, and the scent of late sweet-peas was wafted to her. She could see the cottages of Surrey as the train went on, here and there a light shone from an upper window—lattice windows generally, like her mother's. Behind them people were going to bed; they were not ill, not dying, as perhaps her mother was, in the big bed at Woodside Farm. A brook, some trees, a house built up high on the bank a little way back from the road, the slackening of the train—and Haslemere at last. The train seemed to hurry to the farthest end of the platform on purpose, and she was impatient at every yard she had to tread. She gave up her ticket and passed through the narrow doorway of the station-house and out again on the other side. It was ten o'clock—late hours for the country-side. The inn on the high bank opposite was closed.

"Is it too late for a fly?" she asked the porter.

"Too late to-night, miss, unless it's ordered beforehand," and he turned out an extra gas-light. Almost before the words were said she had darted forward; she was young and strong, and her feet were swift. She hurried up the hill on the right, past the inn at the top—she could see the white post and the little dark patch above that constituted the sign. On and on past the smithy and the wheelwright's, and the little cottages with thatched roofs and white fenced-in gardens. She could have walked a hundred miles—flung them behind her with disdain. It was the time, it was the time! Life hurried away so at the last; it might not stay even for her longing or her praying. She turned off from the main road, over a bridge on the right—a narrow road just wide enough for two carriages to pass—the oaks and plane-trees leaned out above the hedges, she could see the trailing outline, against the sky, of a little clump of larches—a deep blue sky now in which the stars had gathered closer.

Nearly three miles were behind her. She was near the outbuildings of a farm that was half-way to Chidhurst; she smelt the newly garnered grain in them as she passed. Another quarter of a mile and she had come to the edge of the moor. Along the white road beside it—the road she had driven with her father the day she returned from London, and that Mr. Garratt had trotted along so often with his fat, gray pony or on his mare, pleased and jaunty, with his hunting-crop in his right hand. The bell heather was dead, the gorse was turning brown, she knew that there must be patches of ling, but it was too dark to see them.