Margaret Vincent: A Novel

by Mrs. W. K. Clifford

All that time Tom and Margaret were waiting to be married. Tom had argued that it would be better to do it quietly and at once, but Margaret refused.

"Not yet," she pleaded; "let us wait the few months till father returns. We have all our lives to give each other. I don't feel as if I could go into the little church to be married just yet, for it's only—" She stopped, for she did not want him to know that she dreaded lest she should still hear the sound of the heavy, shuffling feet that had carried her mother into it for the last time. She wanted to forget it, to remember only the long, happy years, and the summer mornings she had sat on the arm of the chair in the cool living-place, with her mother leaning against her while they watched the sunshine covering the Dutch garden with glory.

"We might be married at some other church if you liked," he suggested.

"Oh no," she answered, quickly, "I wouldn't for the world. I want to be married near the dear farm—and near her: she would be happy if she knew; she would listen and be so glad. Oh, Tom, you do understand, don't you, darling?" For answer he nodded, took her in his arms and kissed her, which is always the best answer a man can give the woman who loves him.

And so they waited till the winter had gone, a long, silent winter, though it held its whispered happiness. February came cold and clear. The men were busy in the fields, turning the brown earth over, and here and there, under the hedges, a snowdrop hid, lonely and shivering. Then one day Hannah made a really brilliant remark, or Tom, at any rate, thought it one.

"I don't see how you can get married directly father comes, either," she said; "he'll find it hard enough to come back to an empty house; you can't well fling a wedding in his face. For my part, I think it would be a good thing to get it over beforehand, and go and meet him."

Tom looked at her for a moment, then he shook her hand vigorously, as he always did when anything pleased him mightily. "You are quite right," he said, and the next minute he was striding down the Dutch garden on his way to the cathedral where Margaret was waiting for him. "Look here," he said, when he found her, "Hannah has had a brilliant idea. Some one ought to go and meet your father; he can't come back here alone, you know."

"Oh, Tom," she said, "I have often thought how dreadful it will be for him."

"Of course it will, and we have no business to let him do it. Suppose we went out and picked him up at Naples and brought him home ourselves. You see, Hannah could make everything comfortable here while we are gone—alter things a bit, and so on. And we might keep him two or three days in Stratton Street on the way back, and get Hannah up there." All manner of developments crossed his fertile mind while he spoke. "We must get married before we start," he said, in a business-like tone, as if it were only a matter of convenience, "or we should have to get a chaperon, which would be rather a bore."

And so it came about that they were married very quietly one morning six months after Mrs. Vincent's death. Hannah and Margaret walked across the fields together, and Tom and Sir George Stringer met them at the church gate, but there were no others present.