Transcriber's Note:
A Table of Contents has been added.

MARGARET
VINCENT
A Novel
By MRS. W. K. CLIFFORD

AUTHOR OF

"LOVE LETTERS OF A WORLDLY WOMAN"
"MRS. KEITH'S CRIME" ETC.

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS 1902

Copyright, 1902, by Harper & Brothers.
——
All rights reserved.
Published April, 1902.

CONTENTS

MARGARET VINCENT

I

Margaret Vincent is the heroine of this story, but there are others who play important parts in it. Her grandfather was old Lord Eastleigh, well known in his day, fascinating and happy-go-lucky, who, when he had spent his patrimony in extravagant living, and disgraced himself as a guinea-pig, discreetly died, leaving his elder son, Cyril Vincent, all his debts and most of his difficulties. Cyril was rather amused by the title, added to the debts to the best of his ability, married a lady from the music-halls, and, finding London impossible, went a-ranching with his wife on the other side of the world. There the life and its isolation absorbed his energies and identification. But that was five-and-twenty years ago—and this, be it said, is a modern story.

Gerald, the younger son and only other survivor of the Eastleigh family, distinguished himself at Oxford, became engaged to the daughter of a bishop, accepted a living from his prospective father-in-law, and within six months changed his opinions, threw up the living, made himself notorious in the days when agnosticism was a crime, by writing some articles that closed the door of every second house in London against him and secured his being promptly jilted by the woman with whom he had been in love. He had just two hundred a year, inherited from his mother. His habits were indolent, his tastes simple. The one desire left him after the crash was to get out of everybody's sight, to think, and to smoke his pipe in peace, and presently perhaps to write a book in which he could freely express the bitterness packed away at the bottom of his heart and soul. He travelled for a few years, and thus lost sight, much to their satisfaction, of all his distant relations (near ones, with the exception of his brother, he had none), dropped his courtesy title of Honorable, and became a fairly contented loafer. He was an excellent walker, which was lucky, seeing that two hundred a year will not go far in travelling expenses, so he trudged over every pass in Switzerland, up Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, down into Italy over the St. Gothard—there was no rail then, of course—and back by the Corniche road to France; up France by Avignon and Dijon to Paris, and at the end of a few years back to England to realize that he was thoroughly well forgotten.

The streets of London irritated him with their noise, and the people with their hurrying. The pavement tired his feet, the manner of life—that is, the manner of life to be had on so small an income as his—he found irritating and almost impossible. One day he packed a knapsack, filled his pouch, walked through Putney and Wandsworth and onward. He breathed more freely when he reached Wimbledon, which had then an almost rustic railway station and not a building near it, drew a long breath at Surbiton, and, blessing the beautiful county of Surrey, trudged on with a light heart. It was thus that he arrived at Chidhurst and discovered Woodside Farm.

Chidhurst is some miles from Farnham, from Liphook and Fernhurst, from Blackdown and Hindhead—from anywhere, in fact, with which the reader may try to identify it. Its nearest station is Haslemere, and that is five or six miles off. The village consists of a few cottages, one of which is a general shop and the other a small beer-house. Against the side wall of the beer-house there is a pillar-box, but stamps have to be bought at Haslemere or of the local postman. There is not even a smithy, man and beast must alike travel three good miles to be reshod—to the blacksmith's near the cobbler's on the common. A little way from the village, standing high among the wooded land on the right, is the church. It is half covered with ivy; there are white tombstones round it, and on its square tower a clock that is seldom right and never to be trusted. From the churchyard there is a divine view: fir woods in the foreground, beech woods to the left, heather moors to the right, and blue in the distance—soft and misty in the memory of those who love them—are the Surrey hills. A beautiful spot to stay and muse in on a drowsy summer day, a blessed one to sleep in when time has met eternity.

A mile from the church, farther into the heart of the country, by the road-side, there is a duck-pond, and just beyond it, on the right again, a green lane with high, close-growing hedges on either side, of sweet-briar and bramble, honeysuckle and travellers'-joy, while low down are clumps of heather and the tender green of the wortleberry. There are deep ruts along the lane, suggesting that heavy carts come and go, and presently, on the right also, are the gates of Woodside Farm. Inside the farm gates there is another duck-pond; and there are haystacks and out-buildings, and all the signs of thriving agricultural life. Just beyond the wide, untidy drive you can catch a glimpse of the Dutch garden, with its green paths and yew hedges, its roses and sweet peas. The house is an old one; moss and ivy and lichen grown; a porch, with a seat in it, to the front door, and latticed panes to the window. The door opens into a square hall or living-place, red tiled and black beamed. On either side of the big fireplace there used to be a heavy wooden chair with carved and substantial arms and a red cushion tied on its back; in the centre of the room a large oak table; against the wall a dresser, an old chest, an eight-day clock, and a portrait of Queen Victoria in her coronation robes. It was here that the Barton family always sat; for the best rooms were let to strangers in the summer and carefully covered and darkened in the winter. Going up from the living-place was a wide staircase, old and worm-eaten, with a dark hand-rail to it, that many a dweller in distant cities would have been glad to buy for an extravagant sum. Beyond the staircase was a door leading to the red-tiled kitchen, where Towsey Pook, the house-servant, who had lived at Woodside Farm for forty years, did such work as was required of her—which meant on an average fourteen hours a day given over to labor or thought of labor; but she was a strong woman, and well content.

Mrs. Barton owned the farm in her own right at the time when Gerald Vincent set out on the walk that ended at Chidhurst. It had descended from father to son, or mother to daughter, for full two hundred years. The tradition was likely to be kept up, since at well-turned five-and-thirty, after eleven years of uneventful matrimony, Mrs. Barton had found herself a widow with one child, a girl called Hannah.

Now, Hannah, even at nine years old, was an uncompromising little person—a singer of hymns and observer of people; and this she owed to her maternal grandparents, thriving farmers and dissenters, living at Petersfield. Her father, one of a large family, had done well for himself by his marriage, since through it he became the master of Woodside Farm, which was the reason, perhaps, that his people had made no objection to the churchgoing of his wife, or even of the child. After all, too, the service at Chidhurst was a strictly evangelical one—the sermon had been known to last near upon fifty minutes, and something has to be conceded to those who hold property in their own right. Unluckily, when she was eight years old, her father being delicate, and she in the way at home, Hannah went to stay at Petersfield. Her grandfather, a stern old Methodist, initiated habits and imbued her with notions that took deep root in her nature, so that, when two years later she returned to Woodside Farm to comfort her lonely mother, the result of his training was already evident. She was a plain child, and a plain woman later, with hard, gray-blue eyes and fair hair drawn back from her forehead, a pink color that could never be counted a bloom, and a somewhat thin face, with a straight mouth and pointed chin; moreover, she had a voice that suggested a strong will and a narrow outlook.

It was a full year after James Barton's death that Gerald Vincent first set eyes on the village of Chidhurst, and was charmed by it. He looked carefully from right to left, hesitated, and stopped at the little shop to ask if there were any rooms to be had for the summer.

"There's a house, sir," said the woman; "it stands back among the trees, just as you come to the church. It was built for a vicarage, but Mr. Walford found it too big, so it's let to strangers."

"I don't want a house," the stranger said, impatiently.

Then a voice from the back called out, "There's Woodside Farm, mother."

"To be sure," said the woman. "The rooms have never been let since James Barton was first took ill; but I dare say she'll be glad to get somebody. You go past the church and along the road till you come to the duck-pond, then turn off to the right and walk on till you see it."

Mrs. Barton was spreading the white linen, which Towsey Pook had just washed, over the bushes in the Dutch garden, when suddenly she beheld not ten yards away a tall man in gray tweed, with dust-covered shoes and a knapsack on his shoulders. He was young—thirty or less, though at a first glance he might have been older; he looked studious, and as if he were a somebody, Mrs. Barton told herself later. His manner was a little awkward for the moment, but in his eye was courteous inquiry. The widow stopped and criticised him with quiet excitement, while he thought how good a picture she made with the sunflowers and sweet peas on either side of her, and the rose-bushes and patches of white linen spread out to dry in the foreground; and the yew hedges and the taller greenery behind added to the effect of her. For she was comely still, though she was nearly seven-and-thirty by this time; not stout, or even inclined that way, since, being an active woman, she took plenty of exercise and worried over much in secret, which prevented the spoiling of her figure.

Mr. Vincent asked if it would be possible to have some bread-and-butter and tea, to which she assented readily; and while he ate and drank in the living-place, he explained that he wanted to find a lodging in the neighborhood, to which he could bring his books and peacefully read and write for a few months. He hardly liked to propose himself as a lodger all at once, for there was an air of something that was almost distinction about the widow; it made him feel that if there were any social difference between them the advantage was on her side. She stood at first beside the oak table, and then was persuaded to sit, and she made a picture, framed in one of the big arm-chairs, that he never forgot, while she explained that there was a spare room that had not been slept in for three years past, and the best parlor that had not been used since Barton's funeral day. She bethought herself of the odor of mustiness which was beginning to pervade them both, since she had grudged a fire by which no one sat and gathered warmth. The farm produce, too, was good and plentiful; it would be easy to feed the stranger, and his stay would put some easily earned pounds into her pocket. Thus the arrangement came about, and each of them was satisfied.

He stayed all through the summer months, and when the autumn came he showed no signs of going. The widow grew more and more interested in him, and they often—he being a lonely man and she a lonely woman, and both unconsciously aware of it—had an hour's talk together; but it was a long time before it was other than rather awkward and even formal talk. Sometimes as he passed through the house to his own rooms he stopped to notice Hannah; but she was always ill at ease with him, and hurried away as fast as possible. He heard her speaking to Towsey sometimes, and occasionally even to her mother, in a way that made him call her "a spiteful little cat" to himself; but it was no concern of his; there was nothing of the cat about the mother, and that was the main thing.

Mrs. Barton was surprised at first that her lodger did not go to church on Sundays, and the neighbors were curious about it, which embarrassed her; but she felt that it was no business of hers, and that, since Mr. Vincent was evidently above them in position and learning, it did not become them to make remarks. Besides, as Towsey was always busy in the kitchen at the back, it was comfortable to remember, while she herself was in church on Sunday mornings, that some one was left in the house who might be called a protection to it; for tramps had been known to come so far, and even such a thing as a fire might happen. So when she departed in her alpaca gown with crape trimmings, her widow's cap inside her bonnet, and her prayer-book and black-edged handkerchief (she had six of a goodly size and serviceable thickness) in her hand, across the fields with Hannah by the short cut to the church, it was with a sense of calm contentment. Mr. Vincent used to stand in the porch and watch them start; then, filling his pipe, he smoked in peace, and revelled in the extra quiet of the Sabbath day. The incumbent of St. Martha's, a man of no particular attainments, who had slipped into orders through the back door of a minor theological college, had thought of calling on the stranger and tackling him about his soul, till he heard incidentally that one of the writers of Essays and Reviews, who had been staying at Guildford, had driven over to Woodside Farm. Then he came to the conclusion that he might possibly get worsted in argument, and it would be the better part of valor to leave his doubtful parishioner in peace, even though it ended in perdition.

II

For two summers and a winter Gerald Vincent lodged at Woodside Farm. He was a singularly silent man, and Mrs. Barton knew no more about him in the last month than she had done in the first. But gradually she grew fond of him. She watched him out of sight when he went for his walks, and felt her heart bound when she heard his returning footsteps. The best roses were cut for his writing-table, the ripest fruit for his dessert and breakfast, and once when she lingered in the best parlor, dusting it before he was down, she lifted a half-written slip and kissed it, knowing that his hand must have rested on it; for youth does not monopolize romance, and even eight-and-thirty can know its agitations. After a time Mr. Vincent became aware of her feeling for him; it embarrassed him a good deal, but he was touched by it. Then he realized almost with surprise the clear outline of her face and the sweet, firm curve of her lips. He told himself of her merits, her domestic virtues, and the manner in which, single-handed and calm-headed, she managed the farm. Gradually it came about that, instead of staying in his own room in the evening, he sat with her—he on one side and she on the other of the great fireplace in the living-room; and the companionship was all the more pleasant because Hannah was away. For Hannah was a good twelve years old by this time, and, for the sake of school advantages, staying with her grandparents at Petersfield, where she learned more and more fervently to despise the particular forms of the devil and all his works in which those who were not of her own way of thinking most delighted.

It was on those evenings, and while Mrs. Barton knitted socks which he knew well enough would be offered to himself, that Mr. Vincent noticed the disappearance, first of crape and then of black in the widow's dress. He saw, too, the little arts, such as an odd bit of finery and the management of her hair by which she strove to add to her attractions, and he never pretended to himself that he misunderstood them. He realized, too, the good points of her figure—the set-back of her shoulders, and that she was tall and had a certain presence, even dignity, born of adherence to simple rules of life. And somehow, in a quiet, unexcited way, he became fascinated. Here was the natural human being, he thought, as God had meant it to be, unadulterated by scholarship or passion or knowledge of the world. He felt that he and she and nature made a trinity framed by the Surrey hills and all the beautiful country round them. He wanted no other home than the farm, no other method of getting about than the brown, wooden cart and the broken-winded cob, no other companion than this sedate woman who knew nothing of his history or inward life, yet who somehow gave all his thoughts a setting, and put him into moods that helped him to write down many things that he hoped some day to give to the world. It is difficult to say how these things come about, or what will lead a man and woman knowing little of each other to marry; but the unaccountable happens too often to need dilating upon, and the great facts of life that stare us in the face occasionally make in themselves a grotesque argument in favor of spontaneous generation. Thus it happened that one night, after a long silence, Gerald Vincent said, quite simply:

"Mrs. Barton, I have been wondering lately whether it is right of me to go on staying at the farm on our present footing?"

"Why, Mr. Vincent!" She looked up at him with her pure, grave eyes, and surprise was in her voice. "I'm sure, if James knew, he'd like to feel that you were here."

"I wonder if he would; I have heard that he was a godly man, and I am not."

"Don't say that," she answered, anxiously. "I've always held with doing what was right rather than with the saying of prayers, though James's people, of course, are different and very strict in their notions."

"You know nothing about me," he said, going on with his own train of thoughts, "of my family, nor my doings before I came here, and yet I have been wondering if you would marry me?" It did not seem necessary to him to tell her that his father had been a peer, or that his brother had made a foolish marriage and gone to the Antipodes, or that he himself had thrown over the church and wrecked his prospects on a metaphysical rock. These things, and knowledge of them, were so far outside her world and thoughts that telling her could serve no good end. It was better to be silent.

She went on with her knitting for half a minute, then put it down and asked, and there was a something in her voice that reached his heart: "Do you mean that you've got to care for me?"

"I think you are the kindest soul in the world," he said, and his own voice was not very steady, "and too young still, and too handsome," he added, with a little smile, "for it to be right that I should go on living here, whether it is as your lodger or your friend. We have been friends for a long time, you know—"

"I have come to think of you as one," she said, simply.

"You wouldn't like me to live anywhere else?"

"I couldn't bear the thought of it," she answered under her breath.

"But I can't go on staying here, except as your husband. I think we could be content enough."

She turned her head away from him; a happy smile struggled to her lips. He saw that she trembled. He rose and pulled her gently from her seat, and they stood together in front of the fireplace.

"Well?" he asked.

"I don't know what folk would say."

"Does it matter? We shall live outside the world, not in it."

"And then you never go to church?"

"I will make an exception to the rule by taking you there for half an hour while the parson prays over us. How is it to be? Perhaps you should think it over before you answer. I have nothing to give you—"

"Oh—" she raised her eyes and looked at him reproachfully.

"I am a poor man, with a couple of hundred a year, and no more to come. I can be no help to you in your home, but I want nothing more from it than I have now. You can keep it all for Hannah by-and-by. Well?" he asked again.

With a little sigh she drew closer to him. "I couldn't say 'No,' Mr. Vincent, for I'm fonder of you than of any one in the world." He tried to look into her eyes, but they were downcast, and a twitch came to her lips. He stooped and kissed her forehead, and waited till she spoke again. "You'll be good to Hannah?" she said, anxiously. "You see she won't be away so much by-and-by, and she'll look to come to her home. You wouldn't interfere with her?"

"My dear soul, I should interfere with nothing. I don't know why I am trying to disturb our present relationship, except that it seems to be the only way of preventing it from coming to an end. Things will go on just the same as they have done. I don't propose to alter anything. We will be married one morning at Haslemere—or Guildford, perhaps; no one will be likely to come upon us there—and Woodside Farm will be Woodside Farm still, though you are Mrs. Vincent. We will settle down for the rest of our lives and let nothing in the distance disturb us."

"I will make you as comfortable as I can," she said in a low voice, at which he smiled a little ruefully and looked round the living-room. Then he put his arms slowly round her and drew her to him with quiet affection and as if he thought their new relationship demanded it. This was their sober betrothal.

III

The folk at Chidhurst village and at the outlying farms talked a good deal when they heard that Mrs. Barton was going to be married to Gerald Vincent—for somehow it soon came to be known. He was a stranger, and nearly eight years her junior; they had discovered this, and one or two other things concerning him, that he had two hundred pounds a year, and did no work save writing—writing books, perhaps, which was not work at all, but the sort of thing that people did when they had nothing else to do. And then he never went to church or chapel. It was a strange and awful thing to them to see in the living flesh, to have as a neighbor, even though they saw but little of him, some one who was certainly going to be damned hereafter. They were sorry for him in a way; for he was good-looking, and when occasion offered gave his money freely; moreover, they felt sure that his people had been above the common. So they tried to make things a little pleasant to him in this world by showing him politeness and extra consideration; but the fact of what was in store for him could not be doubted.

When the Petersfield relations heard the news they thought it their bounden duty to promptly take the train to Haslemere, and then to commit the untold extravagance of hiring a fly to carry them to Woodside Farm. They would have told their daughter-in-law to send the brown cart to meet them; but they hoped by not giving notice of their coming to catch the unbeliever in his iniquity. They had a vague idea that he was horned and carried a pitchfork; and they would not have been surprised at finding a faint odor of brimstone about the place. They looked sharply round on arriving, and were disappointed at not seeing him; then they made the best of the situation by at once sitting down in the living-room and arguing with Mrs. Barton. In ten minutes at most they hoped to make her see the folly of her position, and that it would not only be flying in the face of Providence, which had always made her comfortable in this world, but a disrespect to James Barton, dead and gone to the next, if she married a man not good enough to lie in the family grave if it pleased the Lord to take him also.

"But one of the things I like him for," she said, "is that he is a good deal younger than I am, so most likely it's he that will have the burying to do this time—it'll save me a world of trouble."

This was a point of view they had not considered, and were unprepared to argue, so they tried a fresh one. There was Hannah. Had she remembered that Hannah would have to live in the same house with him, too? Oh yes; and after being used to a man about the place at Petersfield, she thought it would be so good for Hannah to feel there was one over her at Woodside Farm—an indirect compliment that somewhat pacified old Mr. Barton. Moreover he was touched with the respect with which his daughter-in-law listened to all he had to say, and the sincerity in her voice when she regretted that Mr. Vincent had walked over to Lynchmere and would not be back till past tea-time. She was sure he would have liked to meet James's relations; but perhaps they would be able to stay till he returned?

"When he comes," said Mrs. Barton the elder, "I hope you will see that it is your duty to give him up, especially after the trouble that we have taken in coming over. We should like to hear you tell him so before we leave."

But the younger woman was quite calm and collected, and tried to change the subject. "Won't you sit a little nearer to the fire, father?" she asked the old man; "it's a rough road from Haslemere, and you must be tired with your drive. You should have come in time for dinner; you will have to be starting so soon after you have done your tea."

"We didn't come over for meals, Annie, but on more important business," he answered.

Mrs. Barton went to the oak chest and took out a fresh damask tablecloth and put it on the table. Then she stood up beside it, as she had done on the first day that Gerald Vincent came to the farm.

"I don't want to show you any want of respect," she said, firmly; "but it's no good saying anything about Mr. Vincent, for I am going to marry him, and his religion makes no difference. He has given up a great deal because he would not make a pretence; he has thought about things, and read and studied, and if he thinks they are not true he has a right to say it. I think God will respect a man who says out honestly what he feels. There are some who haven't courage to do it, and I know this—I'd rather have his chance in the next world than the chance of many a man who lifts his voice in Petersfield chapel at prayer-meeting on Sunday nights. If he doesn't get to heaven because he has faith, why, he'll get there because he's honest."

"And what do you think James would say?" asked old Mrs. Barton.

"James knew it would be hard for me to manage alone. I'll be proud to stand up and tell him how Mr. Vincent came and took care of me after I was left—he'll be glad enough."

"Not when it's an unbeliever, Annie—"

"A man that's honest and speaks the truth, even though it makes people turn against him, mother."

The old people began to feel uncomfortable. Tears or excitement they could have done with, but this quiet determination was more difficult to fight.

"Have you thought of the example for Hannah?" they asked, harking back to what they felt to be a strong point in their favor.

"I have thought of everything," she said, lifting her calm eyes. "He'll not interfere with Hannah; she'll be allowed to go to Petersfield whenever you want her, and she'll go to church just the same; and so shall I." She turned to old Mrs. Barton and went on: "Hannah is James's child, and she'll be brought up as James's people wish. She is a girl that will have a will of her own—she has got it already, and it will grow. There is no occasion to be anxious about her."

"And what's to become of the farm?"

"The farm will stand where it is. I shall deal fairly by it for Hannah, if that's what you are thinking of."

Then the old man came to the rescue. "God will not have mercy on you hereafter, Annie, if you marry this unbeliever."

"Father, I will trust God to deal fairly by me. He'll not do less than man." She paused a moment and then went on: "You mustn't think I haven't thought it over, for I have. We must all work out our salvation for ourselves, and if we start from different points, and if Mr. Vincent has chosen a different road that we don't go along ourselves, why, I think the end will be the same for us all who try to do our best. It would be shaking one's confidence in God to think different. But you'll be wanting your tea, and it will be better than arguing about a man you don't understand, and one that I am going to marry, say what you will."

"I never thought you'd be so obstinate, Annie," Mrs. Barton said.

But nothing moved the mistress of Woodside Farm, and the old people felt their visit to be a mistake. They had not gained their point by coming; on the contrary, they were going away beaten, and they didn't like the position. They even began to cherish a latent hope that Mr. Vincent would not return before they left, lest they should come off second best in argument with him too. Meanwhile, they made a large and mournful meal with the air of folk at a funeral feast, for they felt that it might be the last time they would sit round the big oak table. Luckily the tea was strong and the cream thick. Towsey's scones were admirable, the strawberries in the jam were whole, and the poached eggs and ham done to a turn. Then the fly was brought to the door, a reproachful farewell taken of Mrs. Barton, and the disconsolate pair drove away towards Haslemere station.

Gerald Vincent and Mrs. Barton were married a month later. Outwardly it made little difference in their relations. The best parlor was still his own retreat, and his books and papers were scattered about with a happy confidence that no hands but his own would touch them. In the evening he generally sat in the living-place with his wife; he liked its gauntness, the big fireplace, the old oak table, the comfortable chairs, and the heavy door that in the summer-time stood wide open and let in, from the Dutch garden beyond the porch, the scent of flowers, the stir of leaves, and the rustling sound from the tall trees behind. In the winter there was the crackle of the beech logs, the flickering of the candles in the double candlesticks with japanned shades, and the long, deep shadows on the walls. It was all old-world-like and peaceful. He wondered that he had ever endured the hurry and noise of towns. In the first year he used to read to his wife—Scott and Kingsley and other authors that he thought might interest her. She was always appreciative, and from her pure-hearted outlook even gave some criticism that was worth hearing, though she never became cultured in any sense. But simple though she remained, Gerald Vincent was never ashamed of her, and she never bored him. He felt that daily life, or such portion of it as he spent with her, was to his soul pretty much what a cool bath was to his body. After a time there was Margaret, a babe with blue eyes and little double fists, and then, seeing that the child took up much of its mother's time and thought, he drew back into the isolation of the best parlor without fear of being thought neglectful.

The Petersfield relations kept Hannah with them till she was sixteen. Then, since she had left school, and her hair, that always looked scanty on the temples, was done up into a knot behind, and one of her eye-teeth had decayed, they thought it well to send her back to the farm. But old Mr. Barton had not talked to her in vain, and she went home with a smothered resentment in her heart that had a touch of horror in it towards the stranger, and a shrinking she could never overcome towards his child. She kept herself well in hand, it is true, and, except that he could never get behind her reserve and somewhat snappy manner, she and Mr. Vincent got on pretty well together, seeing that they inhabited the same house. She developed into a thrifty young woman with a distinct capacity for that state of life in which she found herself, and with dissent so strong within her that, within a month of her going back to Woodside Farm for good, she had begun secretly to store such little sums as she could honestly consider her own in order some day to build a chapel at Chidhurst. Meanwhile, she contented herself with the somewhat dreary service at the little church on the hill.

To Mrs. Vincent the years after her marriage were the happiest of her life. She gave her husband a quiet, self-contained worship that expressed itself in many creature comforts, for which, from sheer blindness, he was never sufficiently grateful. But he knew that he was the whole world to her, and, as time went on, this knowledge was not untouched with dismay at finding that sometimes he wanted more intellectual sympathy than she was able to give him. But she never guessed this, and after her little Margaret was born it seemed sometimes as if only tears would prevent her joy from being more than she could bear.

It was during these years that Hannah saw her opportunity, and little by little managed to govern her mother and every one on the farm with the exception of Mr. Vincent. Even Margaret was made to feel that Hannah was mistress of the situation, and the putting on of a best frock or the arranging of a little holiday could not be done peacefully without asking her consent.

IV

Mr. Vincent and his daughter drew very near together as the time came when each from a different stand-point unconsciously hankered after companionship. She read books with him, and did tasks that she found delightful, since they kept her a prisoner in the window-seat of the best parlor, whence, looking up, she could see him bending over his papers. He even arranged to take her to Guildford twice a week, so that she might have a music-lesson from the doctor's widow, who earned a modest living by teaching. And on her seventeenth birthday he gave her a piano. Its arrival was quite an event at Woodside Farm.

"It will be a rare thing to hear Margaret play," Mrs. Vincent said, as she watched it being put into place.

But Hannah was half contemptuous. "It would have been better to have bought a good harmonium," she snorted; "it might have been useful some day—" She broke off abruptly, for none knew of her secret store towards the chapel; and there was no occasion to speak of it, since it had not yet reached the modest sum of twenty pounds. Money had perplexed Hannah a good deal of late; there was the desire to put it away for the pious dream of her soul, and the womanly impulse to spend it on finery—hard, prim finery. For at Petersfield there dwelt a thriving young house agent, in a good way of business, smart-looking and fair mustached, and possessed of a far-seeing mother, who had suggested that Hannah would have the farm and a bit of money some day, and make a thrifty wife into the bargain. This accounted for what might be called an investigation visit that Mr. Garratt paid her grandparents one Sunday afternoon when Hannah was at Petersfield, and his asking her to take him across the field to see a tree that had been struck by lightning the previous fortnight. Afterwards he had been pressed to stay for tea, and his tone was significant when he remarked on leaving that he had enjoyed himself very much, and hoped to get over to Chidhurst one Sunday for the morning service, and to see the grave of his aunt Amelia, who was buried there. Hannah being too grim—it was counted for shyness—to say anything pleasant for herself, old Mrs. Barton had told him, in a good business-like tone, that when he went he had better look out for Hannah and her mother, and walk back with them for dinner at the farm. This was two months ago, but still Hannah waited patiently, thinking that if he appeared it might be as well to hear what he had to say, since by this time she was well on in her twenties—at the fag end of them, in fact—and marriage was one of the possibilities to be considered in life. Thus every week brought its excitement to her, and as yet its disappointment.

Sunday brought its excitement for Margaret, too; but it was a happy one. For when the country folk were sheltered in the church or busy with those things that kept them out of sight she and her father had their best time together. Then it was that they loitered about the deserted fields and out-buildings, or went up to the great beech woods standing high behind the farm, and watched the still landscape round them, just as in the first years of his coming Gerald Vincent had watched it alone from the porch. They called the beech wood their cathedral—the great elms and beeches and closely knit oak-trees made its roof and the columns of its aisles—and it seemed as if in their hearts they celebrated a silent service there to a mysterious God who had made joy and sorrow and all the beauty of the earth and given it to humanity for good or ill. In a sense, Margaret had no other religion. Her father said that when she was old enough to understand and think for herself she could make her own beliefs or unbeliefs, meanwhile she need only remember to tell the truth, to do nothing that would cause another pain, and to help those nearest to her, never considering their deserts, but only their needs.

Gradually Mr. Vincent grew uneasy concerning life at the farm. For himself he was content enough, a little longer he could be content for Margaret; but afterwards? Besides, a reaction comes to all things, and now and then when he saw the far-off look in her eyes and heard the eager note in her voice—a sweet, eager note like that of a bird at dawn—he felt the ghost of old desires stirring within him, and an uneasy longing to see the world again, so that he might know what manner of place Margaret would some day find it. It came upon him with dismay that she was growing up, that this tall girl of over seventeen would soon be a woman, and that she was going to be beautiful. Pale generally, and almost haughty looking, dreams in her eyes, and gold in the brown of her hair, and a mouth that had her mother's sweet, curved lips. A girl's face and simple, but eager and even thoughtful, the impulses of youth characterized her still, but womanhood was on its way, and now and then, in spite of her happy laugh, her blue eyes looked as if unconsciously they knew that tragedy dwelt somewhere in the world, and feared lest they should meet it. But as yet Hannah's scoldings were the only trouble that had beset her. These were not to be taken lightly, for as she grew older Hannah's tone became harsher, her manner more dominant, and the shrinking from Margaret and her father, that she had always felt, did not grow less. Margaret bore it all fairly well, sometimes resisting or passionately protesting that she would run away from the farm and the scold who had taken its whole direction into her hands, and at others hiding herself in one of the lofts till the storm had passed. When it was over she crept out to her mother—always to her mother at those times—to be soothed and caressed. Even Mr. Vincent felt that Hannah was a hard nut to crack; but he contented himself with the thought that some day Margaret would break away from her present surroundings—a beautiful girl, who had read a good deal and was cultivating the habit of thinking, was not likely to make Woodside Farm her whole share of the world.

The beginning of the end came one October morning in a letter from his brother in Australia. It had been sent under cover to his lawyers; for, though in a general way, the brothers knew each other's whereabouts, in detail they knew nothing. Cyril Vincent (he was now, of course, Lord Eastleigh) was ill of an incurable disease, and though he had no intention of returning, his thoughts were reaching out to England. His early career had been a disgrace, his marriage had proved a ghastly failure, and the least he could do was to cover it up, together with his own life, on the other side of the world. Gradually he had developed a strong sense of social and moral obligation that had made him hate himself when he remembered the advantages to which he had been born. Of what use had he been with his dissipated habits, he thought bitterly, or could he be now that he saw the folly of them, with his health permanently ruined, his wife vulgar and often drunken? If birth or accident had given such people the right to be counted as aristocracy, then, by every law of Heaven, and for the sake of those things that make for the salvation of the race, they ought to be stamped out.

The letter came at breakfast-time. Mr. Vincent was still thinking it over when Hannah pushed back her chair with a grating noise along the tiled floor, and said in a rasping voice:

"I shall be driving to Liphook this afternoon if anything is wanted."

He hesitated on his way to the best parlor. "You might call at the post-office and ask when the Australian mail goes," he said.

Mrs. Vincent and Margaret looked after him; then, as was their custom, they gathered up the breakfast things and carried them to the kitchen. Hannah was there already, searching round the shelves and cupboards as if she expected to come upon a hidden crime.

"I've no time to iron those muslins to-day," she said; "you had better do them, Margaret. I never see why you shouldn't help with things. Mother and I have enough to do."

"But of course I will; and I like ironing, especially in cold weather."

"There isn't a curtain fit to put to a window, and my hands are full enough," Hannah went on, as if she had not heard. "Towsey will put down the irons. Till they are hot, perhaps you had better run out a bit," she added, impatiently; "you always make so much of the air. For my part, I find it better to look after one's work than after one's health; one brings the other is what I think."

Mrs. Vincent had gone slowly towards the best parlor. She opened the door and looked in. "Shall I come to you for a minute, father?" she asked him. Since Margaret's birth she had generally called him "father"; his Christian name had never come very easily to her.

"If you like," he answered, without looking up from his papers.

"I thought you were worried a bit with your letter." She stood behind him and touched his shoulder. Time had accentuated the difference in years between them, and the caress had something maternal in it.

"I meant to talk to you about it presently," he said, and turned reluctantly towards her. "It is from my brother in Australia."

"Is he in any trouble?"

"Yes, he's in trouble, I suppose."

They were silent for a moment, then she spoke, and he loved her for the firmness in her voice. "If it's money, we can help him. There's a good bit saved from the farm these last years. I had no idea milk was going to pay so well."

"It isn't money. He is ill, and not likely to be better." He stopped, and then went on quickly: "He made a foolish marriage before he left England; but I don't know that there is any use in our discussing that." It seemed as if he were closing an open book.

"Has he no children to look after him?"

"No."

She was silent for a moment, as if she were trying to face something that had to be done, and nerving herself to speak. "It isn't for me to know what's best. I never knew any of your people, or saw any one belonging to you—"

"That's true," he answered, awkwardly.

"—Every one has a right to his own history, and I don't hold with giving it out just for the sake of talking. Many lives have been upset by things there was no need to tell—" She stopped again, and then went on bravely. "But what I am coming to is that if your brother is ill and has nobody but his wife, who isn't any good, you might like to go out to him?"

"To go out to him!" The thought made his heart leap. The quiet years had ranged themselves round him lately like the walls of a prison—a friendly prison, in which he was well content—but it seemed as if he had suddenly come in sight of a door-way through which he might go outwards for a little while and come back when he had seen once more the unforgotten tracks.

"It might comfort him," she went on without flinching. "And you wouldn't be more than a year gone, I expect. It must be terribly dull for you here sometimes. I've often thought how good you've been."

He put his hand tenderly on her arm while he answered, "All the goodness has been yours."

She turned her eyes to the window lest he should see the happiness in them, for she had always been half ashamed of loving him as she did—a staid woman of middle age, with homely matters to concern her. "I don't see that I have done anything out of the way," she said.

"Did it never occur to you that you have not seen any one belonging to me, and that really you know nothing about me? I was a stranger when I came, and you took me in."

"One knows a good deal without being told. I've always felt that your family was what it should be; and there's been all your life here to judge you by."

He looked at her and felt like an impostor. He knew that the fact of his father having been a lord, or his brother being one now, would not uplift her as it would a vulgar woman. On the contrary, it would probably be an embarrassment to her, and a reason for being silent regarding them, since she would think it unlikely that people who were her superiors in education and knowledge of the world would desire any kinship with her. On her own side, too, there was a certain pride of race, of the simple life that she and generations of her people before her had lived—that and no other. Strangers might come into it, might be welcomed, served, and cared for, even loved; but she herself did not want to go beyond its boundaries, and though she treated all people with deference, it was deference given to their strangerhood and bearing, and to the quality of their manners, rather than to their social standing. Her husband knew it and respected her for it, and felt ashamed to remember that his father had been a spendthrift and a company promoter, and that his brother had made a hideous marriage. People who did these things were plentiful enough in London, but they were unknown at Chidhurst. All that she definitely knew about him was that he had been at Oxford—at college, as she always put it—and afterwards that he had been in the Church and left it on account of scruples; but concerning the scruples, and what they meant precisely, she was always vague. If she had been asked to describe her husband's character she would probably have said, as if it were a paradox, that he was a good man, though he didn't go to church on Sundays.

They had stood silently together for a minute, busy with their own thoughts, then he spoke. "I fear Hannah doesn't think much of my life," he said.

"She means well, but she's been brought up strict. James's people were always strict, and he was, too, though he reproached himself at the end for not being strict enough. That's why I feel I ought to give in to her a bit, and let her do what she thinks is right, when it doesn't clash with you. I wouldn't be surprised if she married some day; Mr. Garratt's written saying he'll be at Chidhurst soon, and he'd like to pay his respects to me, having known James's people so many years."

Mr. Vincent was amused. "Oh, well, if Hannah's going to have a young man about the place, I'd better get out of the way," he said. "I'll write to Cyril by the next post and tell him of your suggestion."

V

Other letters followed that first one from Australia. Lord Eastleigh had caught at the suggestion of Gerald's visit. But he carefully faced the probable course of his illness. The chances were that he might go on for some time longer, and he thought it would be best for his brother to come out when the end was getting near. Gradually they had learned all there was to know of each other, and in middle life and far apart there had grown up between them an affection of which their youth had shown but little promise. Cyril Vincent had done some work in Australia—it was the only thing for which he respected himself. Lately he had even saved some thousands, and, after providing for his wife, he meant to leave them to Gerald. For scrupulous Churchman as Cyril had remained, even through all his excesses and mistakes, he recognized the courage with which his brother had stood by what he believed to be the truth; and now, when disease had seized him on the lonely Australian station, the only happiness left him was the thought that he might see again the one being who had not disgraced the family.

The months went by without alarms till Margaret was eighteen. It was mid-spring at Woodside Farm; the early flowers were up in the Dutch garden, the first green was on the trees, the sowers were busy in the fields, and all the earth smelled sweet. In the house spring cleaning was rife; it told, together with the non-coming of Mr. Garratt, on Hannah's temper, and Hannah's temper told on the rest of the family.

"I don't think he has behaved well," Mrs. Vincent said to her husband. "A man has no right to send a letter saying he hopes to get over soon and pay his respects to her mother, and then not be as good as his word. It isn't even as if he hadn't sent her a card at Christmas, showing he still thought of her. You see, Hannah's getting on, and she isn't satisfied at holding herself over for a chance." What else Hannah could possibly do she didn't explain.

Mr. Vincent shrewdly suspected that Mr. Garratt's courage had failed him, or perhaps that he regarded matrimony as a sober investment to be made in middle age rather than as an exhilaration for youth, and so was just keeping an eye open without committing himself. But whatever the reason, Mr. Garratt had not yet appeared, and the effects were obvious. Hannah brushed her hair back more tightly than formerly, her movements became jerky, a little pink settled itself at the tip of her nose, and her tongue took a freer range.

The hours were earlier at Woodside Farm as the spring advanced. By nine o'clock Mr. Vincent had gone to his study, and Hannah was busy in the dairy or out among the chickens. Then it was that Mrs. Vincent and Margaret allowed themselves the luxury of a little foolish talk together in the living-place. It was only possible when Hannah was not about, for she had no patience with a great girl, who might be making better use of her time, sitting on the arm of a chair. So Mrs. Vincent and Margaret stole their little interviews together with the happy craftiness of lovers.

The postman came into the porch one morning while they were talking. Mrs. Vincent always listened for him now, knowing well that one day he would bring the message she dreaded. There were two letters for her husband, and her heart stood still when she saw that one was from Australia. But she recovered in a moment; after all, there had been many letters now, and this might be only one added to the number. The strange thing was that she never asked a question. When he had to go he would tell her, she thought; what was the use of worrying him? The other letter was an English one—a woman's handwriting in violet ink on pale-gray paper. She looked at it curiously, and felt that this, too, was connected with his history—that part of his history of which she knew nothing.

"You can take them to him, Margaret," she said, and sat down again.

"Father started when he saw the one directed with violet ink," Margaret told her when she returned.

Mrs. Vincent looked at her daughter wonderingly, and tried to divert her own thoughts. "I can't believe you are growing up," she said; "we sha'n't be able to keep you much longer."

Margaret lifted the hair from her mother's forehead and kissed beneath it—soft hair, with a crinkle in it that had of late grown gray. "What is going to happen to me?" she asked, and thought of the blue distance on the Surrey hills. It was beginning to attract her.

"I'd give the world to know. I can't bear the idea of your going away from the farm."

"But if I go I shall return; a bird always comes back to its nest, and I shall come back to your arms. Shall I tell you a secret?" she whispered. Her mother nodded with a little smile on her lips, and tried to be interested; but all the time she knew that behind the shut door of the best parlor something was going on that might change the whole current of their lives. "Father doesn't want to sit so much in-doors as he has done," Margaret continued; "so he means to buy a tent, a little square one, open in front, with room for a writing-table and two easy-chairs, and a little sofa made of basket-work, you know. It's to be put up at the edge of the field, and when it's fine he will sit there and work, and sometimes we are going to invite you to tea—"

"My word! what will Hannah say?"

"Oh, she'll make a fuss, but it won't matter, for father's father. We shall have a glorious summer," she added, with a sigh of content, "and I am so glad it's coming. I don't believe Hannah's heaven will be half so good as this world is in summer-time, when everything is green and a dear mother loves you."

"It will be your heaven, too, Margey, dear," Mrs. Vincent said. "I don't like you to talk so—"

"Then I won't," Margaret answered, impulsively. "I won't do anything you don't like. Here is father."

"He has come to tell us something," Mrs. Vincent said. She started from her chair and looked at him, and then for a moment at the green world beyond the porch, as if she felt that it would give her strength. But his news was not what she had expected.

"I'm going to London on Monday morning," he said, "and should like to take Margaret with me. Can she go?"

"How long is it to be for?" Mrs. Vincent asked, while Margaret stood breathless, seeing in imagination a panorama of great cities pass before her eyes.

"Only for a day and a night."

"A night, too?" Margaret exclaimed; for on the occasional visits her father had paid to London he had gone and returned on the same day. "It sounds wonderful."

He thought out his words before speaking, as if in his own mind he saw the outcome of things that were going to happen. "All the same," he said, "you will probably be glad to come back."

"Yes, father, yes," she exclaimed, joyfully; "but then I shall know, I shall have seen and remember it all. Dear mother!" and she turned to her again, hungry for her sympathy.

Mrs. Vincent always understood, and she put her arm round Margaret, while she asked her husband, "Where will you stay if you don't come back till the next day, and will Margaret's things be good enough?"

"We shall stay—oh, at the Langham, I suppose. Of course they will be good enough."

He went back to his papers and took up the two letters again. The one from his brother was merely a reiteration of what he had said before. The important part in it was that which concerned his health. Lately there had been disturbing threats; it was possible that symptoms might develop which would hurry the inevitable. It was to take a specialist's opinion, so far as might be gathered from a letter, to see his lawyers, and to arrange for a probable voyage in the near future that Mr. Vincent was going to London. But it was the other letter that he lingered over, the one written on gray paper with violet ink. Long ago that handwriting had greeted him every morning. It had been a symbol of happiness, of all the world to him. He read the letter again:

"You will be surprised to hear from me after all these years; but I heard from Cyril lately; he gave me your address, and I feel that I must write to you. He told me of your marriage, and that you have a daughter. I knew nothing about you before, except what I gathered from your articles in the Fortnightly. Do you never come to London? If you do, come and see me; we will avoid all reference to painful by-gones and meet as old friends. I was near you last summer. I drove over with my girl and Tom Carringford (you remember his father) to look at a house we thought of taking. If I had known—

"Let me hear from you. I want to be told that I am forgiven for all the trouble I caused you, and that you will one day come and shake my hand. Perhaps you will bring your child to see me.

"Yours always,
"Hilda Lakeman."

Gerald Vincent sat and thought of the years ago and of a ball—it seemed a strange thing for him to remember a ball—and a long, maddening waltz; he could hear the crash of the "Soldaten Lieder" now, the long-drawn-out end, and the hurrying to the cool air. The girl on his arm wore a black dress—she was in mourning for her sister, he remembered—and some lilies were at her waist. The scent of them came back to him through all the years. He saw the people passing in the dim light; they had drawn back—he and she—so as not to be seen; he heard the sound of laughter, the buzz of voices, the uneasy beginning of the next dance. He remembered her perfect self-possession, and his own awkwardness, that had made him let the opportunity to speak slip by; but it had seemed to him that words were unnecessary. Looking back, he felt that she had been interested in the hour rather than sharing it, and he wondered, with a little sorry amusement at the remembrance of her manner, how much or how little she had really felt. He thought of the summer that followed, of days on the river in late July, when the London season was in its last rushing days, the sound of oars, the trailing of the willows at the water's edge, the visits to house-boats, the merry little luncheon-party on the point at Cookham. Mrs. Berwick had been the discreetest of chaperons, and when they had drunk their coffee—vile coffee it had been—he and Hilda had wandered off while the others stayed drowsily behind. How strange it was to think of it all! He could feel still her arms clinging round his neck, and hear her low, passionate whisper—"Yes, yes, I love you—I love you—I love you!" Words had never come easily to him, and he had been ashamed of his dumbness when she could find them. Remembering them now, her tones rang false. He thought of his ordination, and the happy winter when gradually he had put aside the foolish dissipations, and work and love made up his life; of the curacy he held for a little while. Hilda had been full of some scheme; he understood it dimly when he went to the bishop's palace and she had whispered—it was the first sign of what was coming—"Who knows but that some day we shall be installed here, you and I?" The bishop gave him a living later, and she cried, triumphantly: "I made father do it. It's the first step. I shall never be satisfied till you are on the top one." The speech worried him, grated on him all through the long first evening by his vicarage fire, though he tried to forget it. He read her letter the next morning almost desperately; luckily it had been a simple, affectionate one, and he thanked God for it, and prayed that all her desire might be, as his was, in the doing of the work before them, in the good they might bring to others, and not in the reward they would personally reap from it. There had been a happy time after that, just as if he had been heard. He remembered his simple faith in her, his peace and security in those days, with wonder. At the end of the summer he had not wanted to leave his parish so soon after going to it, so he stayed on through August and September while Hilda went with her people to the Engadine. A man came down to stay with him—a queer chap, Orliter, of All Souls, professor of philosophy now at a Scotch university. Orliter brought a cartload of books with him; he read them all day and smoked, and Gerald did the same. Then followed talks that grew more and more eager; often enough the night passed and daylight came while they were still arguing—nights that were symbolical of the darkness he walked through, and then the slow dawn of what seemed to him to be the truth.

It wanted courage to do the rest, but he had done it. There had been the difficult interview with the bishop, and the long, miserable one with Hilda, who had treated his new views as though they could be thrown aside as easily as a coat could be taken off. She had implored him to remember that they meant the blighting of his career, social ruin, the desertion of his friends, the breaking of her heart. It would be impossible, she had explained to him, to marry a man her friends would not receive—a man without position or prospects or money, with only talents which he was evidently going to apply in a wrong direction, and opinions that would create a little desert round him. He had looked at her aghast. To him truth was the first condition of life and honor; to her it was of no consequence if it spelled inexpediency. Her attitude resulted in his writing some articles that made his position worse in a worldly sense; but he loved her all the time, his infatuation even became greater as he saw the impossibility of sympathy or agreement between them. But he was too strong a man to let passion master him; besides, it seemed as if all the time, afar off, Truth stood with the clear eyes that in later years had been his wife's attraction to him, and, cool, calm, and unflinching drew him to her—away from the woman who protested overmuch, from the Church that pointed upward to an empty sky, from all the penalties and rewards of religion. Whether his conclusions are right or wrong, a man can but listen to the dictates of his soul and conscience. And so Gerald Vincent turned his back on all that he had believed and loved, but remained an honest man. While he was in Italy, squarely facing the ruin of his life, he heard of Hilda's marriage. There had been a quarter of a column about it in the daily papers. He read it a little grimly. A few years later he heard of her husband's death, but there had been no sign of her in his own life till the letter came that morning. He read it again, then locked it away in a desk.

He heard his wife's footsteps pass the door. He rose and looked out. She was standing in the porch with her back to him and her face towards the garden, for she and Nature were so near akin that on grave and silent days they seemed to need each other's greetings. He stood beside her, and looked silently down at her face with a little sense of thankfulness, of gratitude, for all the peaceful years he owed her, and he saw with a pang the deep lines on her face and the grayness of her hair, as Margaret had done only an hour before.

"Why, father," she said, with a little smile, "what is it?" Then, with sudden dread, she asked, "Is he worse? Does he want you yet?"

"I'm afraid it won't be long," he answered; "but I shall be able to tell you better when we come from town."

Hannah grumbled, of course, when she heard of the journey. Then, grumbling being useless, she busied herself in seeing that Mr. Vincent's portmanteau was dusted out, and that the key, which was tied to one of the handles by a bit of string, turned properly in the lock. And a strange old bag, made of brown canvas and lined with stuff that looked like bed-ticking, was found to carry the few things that Margaret was to take. It was the one that Hannah herself often used when she went to Petersfield, and therefore obviously good enough for any other member of the household. But Mr. Vincent looked at it with surprise; he remembered in his youth seeing the under-gardener's son set off for Liverpool, and the bag he carried was just like this one.

"I think we must buy something else for you in London, Margey," he said.

"Oh, I dare say you'll do a great deal when you get there," Hannah struck in, sharply. "It's to be hoped you'll take her to see Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, to say nothing of the City Temple and the Tabernacle and Exeter Hall. It would be as well for her to see that, in one way or another, people have thought a good deal of religion, though you and others like you put yourselves above it." She waited, but Mr. Vincent showed no sign of having heard her. "I'm afraid that one day you'll find you have made a mistake," she went on. He pulled out a little pouch and rolled up a cigarette.

"Are you going to drive us to the station yourself?" he asked.

"I suppose I'd better," she answered. "I don't know what's come to that boy lately. If I send him over to Haslemere he never knows when to get back."

So the cart came round on Monday morning. Mr. Vincent and Hannah got up in front, and Margaret behind, with the portmanteau and the canvas bag on either side of her. Mrs. Vincent stood waving her handkerchief till they were out of sight, then went with a sigh to the best parlor, thinking it would be as well to take advantage of her husband's absence and give it an extra tidying.

The postman came a little later. He trudged round to the back door, where he sat down on a four-legged stool that the boy had painted gray only last week, and prepared for a little talk with Towsey.

"Have you heard that the house on the hill is let?" he was saying. "Some one from London has taken it for the whole summer."

"What have you brought, postman?" Mrs. Vincent asked. He handed her a letter for Hannah. A smile came to her lips when she saw it. "It's the hand that directed the Christmas card," she said to herself. "And it's my belief that Mr. Garratt's coming at last."

VI

Margaret was in the seventh heaven when they reached London. The drive from Waterloo to the Langham—the bridge, the stream of people, the shops—were all bewildering. She could have sung for joy as they drove along in the hansom.

"It appears to please you," Mr. Vincent said, with a little smile.

"It does! It does!" she exclaimed. "Only I should like to walk along the pavements—"

"You shall presently."

"And look into all the windows—"

"I'm afraid I couldn't stand that."

"I wish we had to buy something, then we should go into a shop."

"We will," he said, and presently put his hand through the little door at the top of the hansom, which was in itself an excitement to her. They stopped at a trunk shop.

"But, father—" She was breathless.

"We must get you a Gladstone bag," he explained.

She tripped into the shop after him. It was like entering the ante-room of an enchanted land, for did not great travellers come here before they started for the North Pole or the South, to fight battles, or to go on strange missions to foreign courts? No one guesses the happy extravagance of a young girl's heart on all the first times in her life—the dreams that beset her, the pictures she sees, the strange songs that ring in her ears.

"That's a great improvement," Mr. Vincent said when they re-entered the cab and a good, serviceable, tan-colored Gladstone had been safely put on the top. "We will throw the other away when you have taken out your things."

"Oh no, father—it's Hannah's."

"True. She can take it away as part of her trousseau." Mr. Vincent laughed at his own little joke. He looked young, he was almost gay, as if he, too, felt that they had come out on a wonderful journey in this simple one to town. But he had suddenly discovered a new pleasure in life; for it had not occurred to him that Margaret was so unsophisticated, or that there could be so much that was new to her.

Everything was a joy, even the little sitting-room at the Langham. This, she thought, was what rooms in London looked like—rooms in hotels, at any rate. But though a new experience came upon her every moment, all the time at the back of her head she saw a white road with clumps of heather and gorse beside it, and a church on a hill; a mile farther there was a duck-pond and a lane that led to Woodside Farm; already, even through her impatience to see more of this wonderful London, she looked forward to the first glimpse of her mother's face watching for them on the morrow.

"I'm afraid I shall have to leave you here for an hour or two. I have come to London on business," Mr. Vincent said. "But I must try and show you some sights presently, though I'm not good at that sort of thing. Perhaps we might go to a theatre to-night—"

"Oh! But what would Hannah say?" At a safe distance it was amusing to think of Hannah's wrath.

"I don't know." It amused him, too. "But it shall be something that won't hurt us very much. I believe "King John" is going on still. I will try and get places for it while I am out."

"Couldn't I go with you now—I mean about your business?"

He considered for a moment. It was one of his characteristics that he always thought out his words before answering even trivial questions. "It would be better not. I want to arrange some family matters."

"But I am family," she pleaded.

"That's true." He hesitated again before he went on. "You know that my brother—he is your uncle Cyril, of course—is ill, and I may possibly go out to him?"

"Yes, father, I know."

"I want to find out how ill he is, if it is possible, from the account he gives of himself. A specialist may know."

"You never told me anything about him. Is he older than you?"

"Of course. That is why he inherited the title."

"Oh!" She looked up rather amused. Chidhurst folk had none of the snobbishness of London, but titles are picturesque and even romantic to a young imagination. "What title?"

"He is Lord Eastleigh," Mr. Vincent answered, reluctantly, "as my father was before him; but a title without property to keep it up is not a very praiseworthy possession. It generally suggests that there has been extravagance or bad management, or something of the sort." He stopped again, and then went on quickly: "After his marriage he went to Australia, and we knew nothing of each other for years till he wrote some months ago."

"Mother told me. Are you rich, father—can you afford to go to him?"

"I have two hundred a year and a legacy of five hundred pounds—it came in some time ago, and will pay the expenses of the journey."

"I see." Gradually she was grasping the family position. "It must be dreadful for his wife, to be all that way off alone with him, and he going to die."

He looked up in surprise. It had not occurred to him to feel any sympathy for his brother's wife. He liked Margaret for thinking of her. "Yes, I suppose it is," he said; "though I believe she wasn't a very desirable person. I don't know whether I'm wise to give you these details. They are not necessary to our life at Chidhurst."

"But I'm growing older," she said, eagerly, and held out her hands to him as if she were groping her way through the world with them. "I want to know things. Don't keep them from me."

He looked at her in dismay. It was the old cry—the cry of his own youth. "I won't," he said, and kissed her forehead.

She was glad to be alone for a little while, to get rid of the first excitement, the first strangeness of the journey, and of being at the hotel. She looked out at the hansoms setting down and driving on, at all the swift traffic along the roadway, at the people on the wide pavement. She had imagined what London would be like from pictures, and from Guildford and Haslemere, and other places where there were shops and streets. It was what she had expected, and yet it was different. She felt herself so near to the heart of things, as if the people going to and fro were the pulse of the world; she could almost hear the throb of their lives. She wanted to be in the whirl of things, too, to know what it was all like, to understand—oh, no, no! the farm was better, the Dutch garden and the best parlor and the mother who was thinking of her. She would sit down and write to her this very minute—it was an excellent chance while she was alone. On the writing-table in the corner there were paper and envelopes, with the name of the hotel stamped on them. Her mother would look at it and understand the strangeness of her surroundings. This was the first time they had been separated at all; and writing to her was like a door creaking on its hinges, suggesting that at some unexpected moment it might open wide to let her through.

When the letter was finished she took up one of the newspapers lying on the table. There was a war going on somewhere along the Gold Coast; she read about it, but she could not grasp the details. She looked at the speeches that had been made in the House the night before, and tried to be interested in them; but they were difficult. She read all the little odds and ends of news, even the advertisements; and these were oddly fascinating. There was one that set her thinking. It was of a dramatic agency in the Strand. Young ladies could be trained for the stage, it said, and engagements were guaranteed. She wondered what the training was like, and what sort of engagements they would be. Now that she was actually going to a theatre she felt that she ought to take an interest in everything; her outlook was widening every moment; and she would never be quite the same simple country girl again who had set out from Chidhurst that morning.

Mr. Vincent came back at a quarter-past one. He looked worried, and she was able to imagine reasons for it since their talk just now.

"Is the news bad?" she asked.

"It might be worse," he answered, with a shrug. "There is nothing definite to say just yet. We must go down and lunch; an old friend of mine is waiting—he wants to see you." Her father had put on the manner that was his armor—the grave manner of few words that made questions impossible. He opened the door with as much courtesy as a stranger would have done, and walked beside her down the wide staircase. "I have secured a table," he said as they entered the dining-room, forgetting that his remark would convey nothing to her.

The table was in an alcove; beside it a middle-aged man was waiting for them. He was tall and dark, and well set-up. A short, well-cut beard and mustache, grizzled like his hair, covered his mouth; his eyes were brown and alert, though time had made them dim and lines had gathered round them; his face was that of a man who lived generously, but with deliberation; his slow movements suggested tiredness or disappointment; his manner had a curious blending of indulgence and refinement.

"This is Sir George Stringer; we were at Oxford together," Mr. Vincent said to Margaret.

"I am delighted to meet you," Sir George said; "and it's very good of your father to put it in that way, for, as a matter of fact, he was five years my junior. I stayed up after taking my degree." Looking at him now, she saw that he was quite elderly, though in the distance she had taken him to be almost young. "I had not seen him for more than twenty years," he went on after they had settled themselves at the table, "till he walked into my office just now. I didn't even know that he was a married man till the other day, much less that he had a daughter."

"But he knew where to find you?"

"Of course he did," Sir George said. "I am a permanent official—a moss-grown thing that is never kicked aside unless it clamors, till the allotted number of years have passed and the younger generation comes knocking at the door."

"What do you think he has done, Margey?" Mr. Vincent asked, noticing with satisfaction that she was quite unembarrassed by her new surroundings. The people at the different tables put a pleasant curiosity into her eyes, or provoked a little smile; now and then she looked up at him when some strange dish or attention of the waiters puzzled her, but she was neither awkward nor over-elated.

"What has he done?" she asked.

"We saw that the house on the hill had been let when we passed this morning—"

"It's the most amazing thing that I should have hit upon it," Sir George said.

"You have taken it!" she exclaimed, and clasped her hands with delight. It would be like a little bit of London going to Chidhurst, she thought, and her mother would like him, she was sure of it, this friend of her father's, who would have been difficult to describe, for, though he was old—to her young eyes—he was so agreeable. And he would be some one else for her father to talk with; they would discuss all manner of things concerning the world that she was discovering to be a wonderful place, though Chidhurst, with its beauty and its silence, held aloof from it—and she would listen to them; it would be like hearing a fairy story told at intervals. If only her father did not have to go to Australia—that threat was beginning to make itself distinct, though she tried to forget it.

"It's very good of you to be pleased at the prospect of a grim old bachelor being near you," Sir George said, and looked at her critically. Her beauty had been taking him by surprise. How lucky Vincent was to have her, he thought. He remembered his own empty rooms in Mount Street, their luxury and loneliness, the precision with which everything kept to its place, their silence and dulness. Vincent had made a mull of his life, but he had a home, and a wife who, though no doubt she was homely enough—mended his socks and cooked his dinner herself, perhaps—was probably a handsome woman, since she was the mother of this beautiful creature. In spite of his opinions, and the manner in which he had kicked aside his prospects, Vincent had not done so badly for himself after all.

"Did father tell you that we lived at Woodside Farm?" Margaret asked.

"Of course he did. I wish I had known it the other day. By-the-way, Vincent," he went on to her father, "it was young Carringford who told me of the house. You remember his father? He was President of the Union just before your time. He died about a year ago worth a quarter of a million, and left two children—this boy, who is only two or three and twenty now, and a girl who married Lord Arthur Wanstead. They have a hundred thousand pounds each."

"It sounds as if it could never be counted," Margaret said.

"Only three thousand a year if they have the luck to get three per cent. for it, and income tax off that. Well, Master Tom has some friends living on Hindhead—in red-brick houses that ought to be blown up with gunpowder, especially when they have weather-cocks on their gables. Hindhead, as you probably know, is celebrated for its red-brick houses, philosophers, pretty young ladies, and afternoon parties at which games are played with astonishing energy."

"We are miles and miles from Hindhead," Margaret said, bewildered. But Sir George enjoyed talking, and took it for granted that others liked to listen.

"Of course you are," he answered, genially; "but one fine day he and the Lakemans were staying in the neighborhood. He rode over to Chidhurst, saw this house, and thought it might do for them, so they all went over to look at it—"

"She told me."

"Oh, you have heard from her? Mrs. Lakeman, as you probably know, is a lady who does not care for quite so much unadulterated nature as there is in your neighborhood, so the house didn't suit her. The other day Tom told me of it, and I took it on the spot. When did you see her last?"

"A good many years ago." Mr. Vincent's manner was a shade curt.

Sir George looked up quickly. "Why, of course, I remember—what an idiot I am!"

"Not at all. We are going there this afternoon. Who was Lakeman? I didn't know him."

"No one in particular; but he was good-looking and fairly well off." Sir George smiled to himself, and took a liqueur with his coffee. "She was a fascinating woman," he added; "and has had my scalp among others."

"I think you might go up-stairs, Margey. We'll follow you presently."

Sir George looked after her as she disappeared. "She is going to be a beautiful woman," he said. "Rather a shame to hide her on a farm at Chidhurst, though, for my part, I always think that the devil lives in town and God in the country."

Margaret felt that her father was embarrassed by his sense of responsibility when he joined her half an hour later. "You ought to be shown some of the things in London," he said again.

"I've seen the hansom cabs," she said, "and lunched at a little table at the hotel, and everything is a sight to me."

"I suppose it is. Still, we might do Westminster Abbey, at any rate. Hannah gave us leave, you know—and then we'll go to Mrs. Lakeman's."

"Who is she?"

"Her father was a bishop," Mr. Vincent said. He spoke as if the fact needed some contemplation, and to Margaret it did, since she had never seen a bishop in her life. She knew that he wore lawn sleeves and a shovel hat, and was a great man; she had a vague idea that he lived in a cathedral and slept in his mitre. "He died a good many years ago," Mr. Vincent continued, with a jerk in his voice. "He gave me a living when I was a young man; but I resigned it after a year or two, and differences of opinion caused quarrels and separations. Perhaps," he added, rather grimly, "Hannah would have called me a Papist then, and think it nearly as bad as being an unbeliever now."

VII

Mr. Vincent looked at Margaret two or three times as they drove down to Chelsea Embankment. A village dressmaker had made her frock, but it set well on her slim young figure, and the lace at her neck was soft and real; it belonged to her mother, who knew nothing of its value; her hat was perfectly simple, a peasant, or a woman of fashion might have worn it, and it seemed to him that Margaret would fall quite naturally into place with either. Then he thought of his wife at the farm; she had lived so simple a life among the growths of the earth and the changes of the sky that she was wholly untainted by the vulgarities of the world, and such as she was herself she had made her daughter.

The hansom stopped before a new-looking red-brick house.

"George Stringer would say it ought to be blown up with gunpowder," Mr. Vincent remarked, and Margaret, turning to give some trivial answer, saw that he was white and nervous.

The door was opened by a man servant. The hall was panelled; there were rugs and pictures and palms and old china about, and her heart beat quicker, for all this was part of the London show. The drawing-room was part of it, too, with its couches and screens, its pictures and Venetian glass and countless things of a sort that had no place at Woodside Farm. It was all still and dim, too, almost mysterious, and scented with early spring flowers put about in masses, or so it seemed to Margaret.

Some curtains separated a further room; they were drawn together, and against them, clutching them with one hand, as if she were waiting and half afraid, a woman stood. She was tall, and about forty-three. Her figure was still slight; her black dress trailed on the floor, and made her look graceful; the white cuffs at her wrist were turned back, and called attention to the small white hands below them. She had a quantity of dark hair, smoothly plaited, and pinned closely to the back of her head. Her eyes were a deep gray, long lashed, and curiously full of expression, that apparently she was not able to control. They seemed to belong to an inward being who looked on independently at things, and frequently thought and felt differently from the one that clothed it and tried to pass itself off as a real personality. She had never been pretty; but her face arrested attention. The lines on it suggested suffering; there was humor about the mouth, and tenderness in the deep tone of her voice. For a time and for some people she had a curious fascination; she knew it, and liked to watch its effect. Her head was small, and she carried it well, and the whiteness of the little ruffle round her throat gave it a setting and made it picturesque. She looked across quickly at Mr. Vincent. Then, as if she had gathered courage, she held out her hands and went forward.

"Gerald!" she exclaimed. Her voice appeared to be thickened by emotion. She stopped before him and let her hands drop.

He took them in his. "How do you do, Hilda?" he said, prosaically enough. "It is a long time since we met."

She raised her eyes; they were grave and pathetic, but somewhere at the back of them there was a glint of curiosity. She knew that he saw it, and tried to convince him that he was mistaken.

"More than twenty years," she answered. "I never expected to see you again."

"And now I have brought this tall girl to see you." He put his hand on his daughter's shoulder.

Mrs. Lakeman looked up curiously, almost ruefully. With something like a sob she whispered, "It's Margaret, isn't it?" and took her in her arms and kissed her. "I knew your father before your mother did, and I have loved him all my life," she said, and looked at the girl's face intently for a moment; then, as if she had had enough of that phase, she asked with a sudden touch of cynicism, "Did he ever talk to you about me—but I don't suppose he did?"

"I was never a very talkative person," Mr. Vincent said, grimly. She turned to him with a happy, humorous smile. She seemed to have swept all emotion from her; she had become animated and even lively.

"No, you never were. You were always as silent and as wise as a dear owl. I have a child, too," she went on. "You must see her—my Lena. She is all I have in the world—a splendid girl and a wonderful companion."

"Where is she?" Mr. Vincent asked.

"She is in there," nodding towards the curtains, "in her own sitting-room. You shall go to her, dear," she said, quickly turning to Margaret. "She knows all about you, and is longing to see you. Tom Carringford is there, too—he is always there," she added, significantly. "You remember old Tom Carringford, Gerald? This is his boy—awfully nice boy; I am never tired of him." She was gay by this time, and it was obvious that good spirits were natural to her. "I'll tell you who is with them," she went on. "Dawson Farley—I dare say Margaret would like to see him. He is a genius in my opinion—the only man on the stage fit to play a romantic part—and Louise Hunstan, the American actress, you know. She is playing just now in 'The School for Scandal' at the Shaftesbury—great fun to hear her do Lady Teazle with a little twang in her voice; it is an awfully pretty twang, though. We are devoted to the theatre, Lena and I." She appeared to be hurrying as much information as possible into her words, as if she wanted to give her listeners an impression of her life.

"We are going to the play to-night," Mr. Vincent said, but Mrs. Lakeman hardly heard him. Other lives only interested her so far as they affected her own. If the Vincents had been going with her she would have taken any trouble, shown any amount of excitement; but as it was, why it was nothing to her.

"You shall go to them," she said decisively to Margaret, evidently carrying on her own train of thought. She went towards the curtains as if to pull them aside. "Tell them we are coming in ten minutes, dear."

"Oh, but I don't know them," Margaret answered, appalled at being told to rush in among strangers.

"Of course you don't," Mrs. Lakeman said, in a sympathetic voice. "I'll take you. No, no, Gerald," as Mr. Vincent made a step to follow them; "we must have a little talk to ourselves after all these years."

She led Margaret into a second drawing-room, and beyond it into a still smaller room. There were pictures, and flowers again—quantities of flowers, the air was heavy with their scent. Silk draperies shaded the light that struggled through the small-paned windows, and bits of color and silver gleamed everywhere. It was like entering a dream, and dim figures seemed to rise from it—an indefinite number of them, it seemed to Margaret, though she soon made out that there were only four. She felt so strange as she stood hesitating just inside the room, like a little wayfarer, who knew only of green fields and a farm-house, straying into an enchanted world, for it was odd how the remembrance of her home never left her through all those first hours in London, and in her thoughts she sent it constant messages.

"Lena, my darling, this is Margaret Vincent. Be kind to her," Mrs. Lakeman said, in a low, thrilling voice. "You must love her, for I used to love her father—I do now." She turned to a young man who had come towards them. "Tom, your father knew this girl's father, too. I am coming back with him in a few minutes to tea. This is Tom Carringford, dear," she said to Margaret. Then, as if she had done enough, she went back with a look of amusement in her eyes and a gay little smile on her lips. "I have got rid of the girl," she thought. "I wonder what that old idiot will have to say for himself now she is out of the way."

Tom Carringford reassured Margaret in a moment. "How do you do?" he said, and shook her hand. "Don't be afraid of us; it's all right. My governor often spoke of yours, and I have always hoped I should see him some day."

Before she could answer, there stole towards her a girl with a thin, almost haggard, face and two sleepy, dark eyes that looked as if they might burn with every sort of passion. "I have been waiting for you," she said. "Mother has told me about your father. It was splendid of him to bring you." She spoke in a low tone, and, drawing Margaret to a seat near the window, looked at her with an anxious expression in her great eyes, as if she had been worn out with watching for her. "Stay, you don't know Mr. Dawson Farley yet, do you?" She turned towards a man who had risen to make room for them.

"Mrs. Lakeman told us about him just now."

"I'm not as famous as Miss Lakeman thinks." The clear pronunciation caught Margaret's ear, and she looked at him. He was clean-shaven, with a determined mouth and short, crisp hair. There was something hard and even cruel in the face, but there was fascination in it, too—there was fascination in all these new people; the magnetism of knowledge of the world perhaps, the world that had only burst upon her to-day.

"Oh, but I know nothing," she said, shyly. "I came from Chidhurst this morning—for the first time." Lena made a little sympathetic sound, and put her arms out as if to protect her.

"Do you mean that you have never been in London before?" Mr. Farley asked.

"No, never."

"What a wonderful thing!" The words came from a corner near the fireplace. Margaret was getting used to the dimness now, and could see through it. A woman moved towards her; she was not very young, but she was fair and graceful.

"It is Louise Hunstan, dear," Lena said. For some reason she did not know, Margaret recoiled from this girl, who had only known her five minutes, yet called her dear and was affectionate in her manner.

"You must let me look at you," Miss Hunstan said. The twang of which Mrs. Lakeman had spoken was faintly evident, but it gave her words a charm that made it impossible not to listen to them. "Now tell me, do you love it or hate it, or are you just bewildered with this great London?" She seemed to understand the stranger-mood better than the others.

"I think I am bewildered," Margaret answered. "Everything is so strange."

"Of course it is," Tom Carringford said, "and we stare at her as if she were a curiosity. What brutes we are! Never mind, Miss Vincent," he laughed, "we mean well, so you might tell us your adventures before Mrs. Lakeman returns."

He gave her courage again, and a sense of safety. She laughed back a little as she answered. "Adventures—do people have adventures in London? It sounds like Dick Whittington."

"Just like Dick Whittington," Lena answered. "You ought to carry a cat under your arm and marry a fairy prince. Isn't she beautiful?" she whispered to Dawson Farley.

The color rushed to Margaret's face. "Oh, please don't," she said. "I'm not a bit beautiful."

"Where have you come from, Miss Vincent?" the actor asked, as if he had not heard.

"From Woodside Farm at Chidhurst."

"I can tell you all about her," Lena said. "My mother was once engaged to her father, Gerald Vincent—" Margaret turned quickly as if to stop her. But she took no notice and went on. "He was a clergyman then, but he changed his opinions, left the Church, and wrote some articles that made a sensation. All his relations were furious, and mother couldn't marry him. A little cry came from Margaret.

"Oh! How could she tell you?" she exclaimed.