Breakfast was always half an hour later on Sundays. Margaret had spent the early hours in writing to her father, telling him of the impossibility of remaining any longer at Woodside Farm unless the relations between Mr. Garratt and Hannah were definitely settled. Something would have to be done, and immediately, but he was not to be distressed about her. She meant to go to Miss Hunstan and to take her advice. Perhaps if she could gather courage she would consult Sir George Stringer, but it was Miss Hunstan on whom she relied, she even asked her father to direct his next letter to her care just on the chance. The morning was sultry, the notes of the birds were languid, there was not a stir among the branches though the scent of flowers came stealing upwards from the bed against the house. She went to the window and leaned forward to catch any passing breeze that might chance to wander by. Suddenly Mrs. Vincent and Hannah came out of the porch and stood just a few yards below her. Hannah was evidently continuing a conversation.
"Well, I've no patience with them, mother, finefolks giving themselves airs and ashamed to say who they are and what they've done; lord, or no lord, he shall see that I don't care for his ways, nor for Margaret's either." All the same there was in Hannah's heart an odd feeling of curiosity. What would happen to her when her step-father was Lord Eastleigh? What would the country people say to her, the people who now and then, most politely, it is true, asked her to accept a present for herself when they paid a quarter's account. And Mr. Garratt, what would he say? He would surely know that Margaret, with her stuck-up ways, would not look at him now. Most likely he would think himself lucky to get Hannah, since she would gain a reflected importance. But she wasn't sure, on the whole, if she wanted him any longer, and yet it would be something to make sure of a man. She couldn't bear going over to Petersfield and seeing women younger than herself, whom she remembered as girls, walking out with their husbands, or nursing their children, while she remained a spinster. "I do wonder what Mr. Garratt will have to say to it all," she said, aloud, without meaning it.
"He'll see it's no good caring for Margaret," Mrs. Vincent said.
"Why should he? Not that he does care," Hannah answered, quickly. "She isn't any better than she was yesterday, nor than I am. Formy part, I think this title business will make us the laughing-stock of the place."
"There is no occasion to speak of it; it's no one's business but our own."
"I never was one for secrets."
"Neither was I," said Mrs. Vincent. "But I have always found that there was more in silence than in talk. I hope you and Mr. Garratt will settle up soon, Hannah, for these quarrels make me miserable."
"It's Margaret's fault, not mine," Hannah answered, doggedly. "After all, mother, whatever's said, you know that I'm fond of you. If there had been no strangers about all these years, and I'd had the taking care of you by myself, I could have been content enough without any thought of marrying."
"Jealousy is such a poor thing, Hannah."
"We ourselves are poor things in the sight of the Lord, mother. If Margaret would once come to see that she might be different."
Margaret, above, could stand it no longer. "It's so mean to be listening here," she said to herself; "and though Hannah was horrid last night she is rather better this morning, and she's fond of mother. Oh, I'm so glad that she loves her." Then she raised her voice and called out, "Good-morning, mother. I can hear all you say. Let us have a happy Sunday, Hannah. I won't lookat Mr. Garratt; I will be thoroughly disagreeable to him if that will please you." At which Hannah answered, not without a trace of amiability and with the flicker of a smile:
"You had better come down to your breakfast; for my part, I never know why we are so late on Sunday mornings." As she spoke, Towsey tinkled a bell to show that the simple meal was ready.
When the breakfast was over and the things were put away as usual, there was the getting ready in best clothes, and the starting of Hannah and Mrs. Vincent across the fields for church. Mr. Garratt was not coming till mid-day, and for the first time Hannah took an interest in Margaret's movements.
"I suppose you are going to the wood as usual?" she asked.
"I'm going there with a book," Margaret answered.
Then, with anxiety in her voice, Hannah said: "I wish you'd take a book that would do you some good."
"It can't do me any harm." Margaret was delighted at finding Hannah a little softer than usual. "I'm going to takeParadise Lost—it's a poem."
"It sounds very appropriate," Hannah said, solemnly.
Margaret blinked her eyes in astonishment,and wondered if Hannah were making a joke, and on the Sabbath, too! Perhaps, as most people are influenced by worldly matters, protest to the contrary as they will, Hannah was somewhat soothed in her secret mind at yesterday's revelations concerning the Vincent family. To be sure, the Australian brother had gone away, according to Mrs. Lakeman, because he made an unlucky marriage. And Gerald Vincent had lived quietly for twenty years at Woodside Farm: perhaps he, too, considered his marriage unlucky, and in his heart looked down on her and her mother; but even that would not undo the fact of the relationship, or prevent the step-daughter of Lord Eastleigh from being counted a more important person than hitherto when she went to Petersfield. There were moments when Hannah had visions of herself as an aristocrat in an open carriage driving through a park, or going to court in a train and feathers; she had often heard that people wore trains and feathers when they went to court. Nonsense and vanity she called it, but the momentary vision of herself trailing along and the white plumes nodding from her head was pleasant all the same.
"Well, we'll see when he comes back," she thought, as she walked across the fields with her mother. "If he isn't going to call himself Lord anything, and is going to live on here all the same, I may as well marry Mr. Garratt and be done withit—that is, if he behaves himself properly. He's getting a good business round him at Guildford, and we'll hardly rank as tradespeople when they know who I am. Mother," she said, aloud, "you'll not be staying on at the farm if what this Mrs. Lakeman said is true, and father comes back with a title?"
"Nothing will ever take me away from it," Mrs. Vincent answered; "and father will be just the same when he comes back, whether his brother be living or dead. I'm sorry you know anything about it, Hannah, for it won't make any difference one way or another."
Lena Lakeman, haunting the green landscape like an uneasy spirit, watched Mrs. Vincent and Hannah go into the church. "I wonder what little Margaret does with her morning when she's left alone?" she thought, as she went through the gate that led across the fields, and played about the field searching for clover, counting the blades in a tuft of grass, or resting beneath the outreaching hedge of honeysuckle like a lizard. From sheer sleepiness, she stayed there almost without moving till presently she heard the country voices in church singing "Oh, be joyful in the Lord all ye lands." She opened her eyes then and looked at the beauty round her. The land did rejoice, she thought—in the summer time. If God would only let it last His people would rejoice all the year round; but how could they, how could they be religious, when the climate was bad? Perhaps one reason why Roman Catholics took their religions so closely into their lives was that it had generated in those places that were filled with sunshine.
The voices had ceased. She tried to rememberthe order of the prayers, so that she might know how much longer the worshippers had to stay, but she could not hear with sufficient distinctness to recognize the words. Suddenly there was the sound of wheels coming towards the church and the road that led to the farm. She sat up and listened, then knelt and looked through the hedge till she saw, going along at a brisk pace, a fat gray pony and a little dog-cart, in which sat a spruce young man with a handkerchief looking out of his pocket, a flower in his button-hole, and a bowler hat stuck jauntily on his head.
"It's Mr. Garratt," she exclaimed, "he's going to see Margaret; they will have a happy time together while the others are at church." She watched the dog-cart vanish in the distance, then stole along the field, keeping close to the hedge lest she should be observed from the farm. And suddenly a thought struck her. "Margaret will take him to her wood," she said to herself; "presently I should find them together, but they mustn't see me coming."
She crossed the field twenty minutes later, keeping close to the hedge so as not to be seen, and made for the high ground. On the side of the hill a young copse grew, reaching up to the great trees that Margaret called her cathedral; the undergrowth of bracken and briar went up with it and formed a green wall round the summit. Betweenthe columns of the cathedral, and over the green wall, the sweet country-side could be seen stretching long miles away to the blue hills, with here and there a patch of white suggesting a homestead, or a speck of red that betrayed a cottage.
Lena went up softly and slowly, so that the stir of the vegetation might not betray her, till suddenly she heard voices. She stopped and listened, then went on still more cautiously till there was only a screen of green between her and the speakers. Then she dropped among the bracken and was completely hidden, though she could hear perfectly. Margaret was speaking, and her voice was indignant—
"This is my wood; it belongs to me."
"Oh, come now!"
"How did you know where to find me?"
"Hannah told me herself; she said you spent your mornings up here instead of going to church, so I thought I'd just look in."
Lena, peeping through the greenery, could see that they stood facing each other—Margaret, with her head thrown back, resting one hand against the trunk of a tree. On the gnarled roots that rose high from the ground, and had evidently formed her seat, lay an open book. Mr. Garratt, with a triumphant expression, stood a few paces off.
"You must go back instantly," Margaret said.
"Not I! Come, let's sit down and have a quiet little talk—we don't often get the chance."
"Mr. Garratt, please—please go away," she said, "why should you try to annoy me as you do. You came here to see Hannah—"
"Well I don't come now to see Hannah—"
"Then you had better stay away—"
"I should like to stay away if I had you with me. Look here, don't cut up rusty or be silly. I'm not a bad sort of chap, you know," and he tugged at his mustache; "lots of girls have rather fancied me, but I've never cared a bit for one of them, though I've chaffed them a little now and then, because I've liked to make them mad."
"I don't care what you like, and I want you to go away."
"But I mean business this time, give you my word I do. I'm awfully fond of you and I'll tell 'em so when we get back if you'll say it's all right—"
"It's not all right!" Margaret cried, passionately.
"Well, you needn't take on so—you're awfully pretty." He went a step nearer. "I say, give me a kiss to go on with."
"I would rather die," and she drew back closer to the trunk of the tree.
"Well, you needn't shudder as if I were snakes or coal-tar; you may not know it, young lady, but you are not everybody's money, in spite of your good looks. I'm not a stickler myself, stillit isn't all plain sailing marrying a girl who won't go into a church, and whose family is a mystery. It would not add to the business, I assure you."
"My family a mystery?" said Margaret. Lena cocked up her head like a snake and looked through the leaves; she could see them quite plainly. "How dare you—"
"Oh, well, we won't say anything more about it if you're going to explode. Still, there may be all sorts of crimes covered up for what we know to the contrary, and I understand that the farm will belong to Hannah by and by—"
"And that's why you thought of marrying her, I suppose?" she asked, indignantly.
"Of course it is," he answered triumphantly, "but I'd rather have you with nothing at all. I'm quite gone on you, Margaret; I am, indeed."
"How dare you call me Margaret?"
"All right, then I'm very fond of you, ducky; will that do? And I'll marry you to-morrow if you like—get a special license, wake up the parson, and off we go. You've only got to say the word. Now, come, give us a kiss and say it's all right. I'm not a bad sort, I tell you, and I'm bound to get on, and we'll do all manner of things when we are married—you bet. Come now?"
"Mr. Garratt," Margaret said in a low voice, "it's very kind of you to want to marry me, but—but I want you to understand," and the hot tearsrushed down her flushed cheeks, "that I simply can't bear you."
"That's a straight one—you do give them out, you know."
"And I wouldn't marry you for the world," she went on; "either you must make it up with Hannah, or you must leave off coming here." She had brushed away her tears, and, flushed and haughty, looked him imploringly in the face.
"Oh, I say, don't go on like this; I wouldn't make you unhappy for the world," and he went a step forward.
"Oh, do keep back!" she said with another shudder. "I hate you—"
"All right, hate me," his wounded vanity getting the better of him, "but I'll have something for my pains at any rate," and in a moment he had darted forward and tried to clasp her in his arms.
Margaret gave a cry of fright that ended in one of astonishment, for suddenly the leaves that formed a low wall half-way round her cathedral parted and Lena appeared.
"You mustn't be so cruel!" she cried. He let go Margaret and stood gaping at Lena, who crossed over to the tree.
"I said you would have to love us, little Margaret; I've come to rescue you," she said, and put her arms round Margaret, to whom it seemed as if her Eden were full of serpents.
"Well, if you don't mind, I should like to know who the deuce you are, miss?" said Mr. Garratt, astonished, but not in the least confused.
"I'm Margaret's friend," Lena answered, in her sugary voice.
"And what business is this of yours?" he inquired, insolently.
"I know her father and I know her. Darling," she said, pulling Margaret towards her, "I told you in London it was always best to tell everything about yourself," and then she turned to Mr. Garratt. "She doesn't go to church; it's very wrong of her, but she would go if she were coaxed. Perhaps she'll go with me some day. And there isn't any mystery about her family. It's a very, very old one, isn't it, dear?" she said, looking at Margaret. "It came over with the Conqueror."
"Well, mine may have scudded about with Noah's for all I know to the contrary. What's that got to do with it?" Mr. Garratt asked.
"He means it for a joke, darling," Lena said to Margaret. "He doesn't mean to be rude—" She stood with her arms round Margaret, looking with soft reproachfulness at Mr. Garrett.
"Look here, I'm off," he said with a sudden inspiration; "good-morning," and in a moment he had disappeared down the direct pathway towards the farm.
Hannah in the porch saw him coming.
"Mr. Garratt," she said, severely, "have you been for a walk? I thought I heard the pony go by when we were in church."
"Yes, I've been for a walk," he answered, huffily, for he was beginning to feel that matters at Woodside Farm were a little too much for him.
"Towsey says you went out directly the pony was put to."
"That's all right. What then?"
"Where's Margaret?"
"Up in the wood there," he said, nodding towards it, "with a young lady who, judging from her conversation, has swallowed a bottle of soothing syrup and let the cork come out inside her."
"And what did you go up to the wood for?" Hannah asked, severely.
"Because I chose. Look here, Miss Barton, I don't want to be cross-examined, if you please."
"Well, what I should like to know is—to speak plainly—what are you coming here for, Mr. Garratt?"
"That's my business," he answered. "If youlike I'll put the pony to at once and be done with it, though, on the whole, I should prefer having some dinner first, seeing that I've come a good way." After all, Mr. Garratt had a fair temper, for he said the last words with a smile that somewhat pacified Hannah, who, seeing that she was likely to get the worst of it, drew in her horns.
"I didn't mean to be disagreeable," she said, "but really it's difficult to understand all the goings on here."
"That's just what I think. Who is that girl with Margaret? She was just like a snake springing up from the green and wriggling about—said she knew Vincent."
Then Hannah, being somewhat further pacified, told him the history of yesterday's visit.
"Well, I'm jiggered," Mr. Garratt answered, after a moment's hesitation. "I told you there was something behind it all. This brother of his, Lord Eastleigh—of course I'm on to him directly. He was an awful rummy lot—married Bella Barrington, who used to sing at the Cosmopolitan in the Hornsey Road. A pretty low lot, I can tell you. Well, I am—"
"Mr. Garratt," said Hannah horrified, "they are a set of people we should have nothing to do with."
"Rubbish. Margaret will be a toff."
"There's no money with it."
"Well, that's a pity," he said, "but it won't take the title away from them. I always knew they were somebodies."
"Hannah," said Towsey, coming from the kitchen, for it was only to Margaret that she gave a respectful prefix, "I'm ready for you to mix the salad."
"You'd better go," said Mr. Garratt, "I've got no end of an appetite—I'll just take a stroll to the end of the garden to improve it." For as Hannah turned her head he had seen Margaret coming towards the gate of the Dutch garden, and Mr. Garratt was a politic young man.
"Miss Margaret," he said, deferentially, "I want to apologize for what I said just now about your family and about your not going to church—it was my feelings that carried me away. I've just heard who you are. I always said you looked like a somebody; you may remember that I told you so that day going across the fields. And as for not going to church, why, I quite agree with what I believe Mrs. Vincent thinks, that it's what one does outside it that matters, not what one does inside."
"It's very kind of you to say all this, Mr. Garratt, but please let me pass." He walked beside her down the green pathway.
"You know what my feelings have always been," he said, "and if true devotion—" he felt as if this were the right line.
"Please don't say anything more." She was almost distressed, for through the porch in the dim background she could see Hannah's wrathful figure.
"If true devotion counts for anything," he went on, "why, you'd get it from me. I understand there isn't any money to come with this title, and it isn't going to make any difference in anything, and you'll want some one to love you just the same. We all want that, Miss Margaret, and—"
"Margaret, you'd better come in and not keep dinner waiting," Hannah called, shrilly. "I should have thought you had had enough of Mr. Garratt, meeting him up in the wood when other people were in church."
Mr. Garratt was very silent at dinner. He had to decide on his own course of action. He came to the conclusion that the safest plan was to propitiate everybody, but it took his breath away to think that he, Jimmy Garratt, house agent of Petersfield and Guildford, grandson on his mother's side of James Morgan, grocer at Midhurst, wanted to marry Miss Margaret Vincent, as he now described her to himself; still, there would be nothing lost by going on with it; besides, he was a good-looking chap, lots of girls liked him, and, after all, Margaret hadn't any money. It would be a good move, he thought, to get her over toGuildford and let her see the house; it had a real drawing-room and a conservatory going out of it, and he could afford to let her spend a little money; she should do anything she liked, and if people got on in these days it didn't matter what they were in the beginning. There were lots of them in Parliament who were nobodies, why shouldn't he get into Parliament, too, some day—he had always been rather good at speaking, and for matter of that he might get a title of his own in the end? He had only to make money and get his name into the papers, and give a lot to some charity that royalty cared about, and there he'd be.
"You are very absent to-day, Mr. Garratt," Hannah said, as she gave him a large helping of raspberry and currant tart.
"It's very warm, Miss Barton; very warm, indeed."
"I always find," said Mrs. Vincent, unlocking her beautiful lips, and looking like a woman in a legend, with her gray hair and high cheek bones, "that the summer is a time for thinking more than talking."
"You are right, Mrs. Vincent; don't you agree, Miss Margaret?"
"I don't know," Margaret answered, carelessly. "The summer is lovely, of course; it always seems as if the world had rolled itself up a little bit nearer to heaven—"
"I thought you didn't believe in any such place," said Hannah, sharply.
Mrs. Vincent looked at her younger daughter with fond eyes. "One's heart sometimes believes one thing and one's head another," she said. But Margaret ate her tart in silence, and Mr. Garratt, still weighing the chances of his future, followed her example.
The Sunday tea was over. Hannah had successfully monopolized Mr. Garratt all the afternoon. He was becoming desperate. "She would drive a fellow mad," he thought; "why, the way she tramps into that kitchen with the tea things is enough to send any one a mile off her track. I should get the staggers if I married her; besides, she wouldn't let one call one's soul one's own by the time she was forty." He looked towards the door of the best parlor. Mrs. Vincent and Margaret were there; he got up and went in boldly. "May I venture to ask for a little music?" he asked.
Margaret had risen quickly as he entered. "Oh, but it's Sunday," she answered.
"I thought perhaps there wouldn't be any objection to something sacred," he said. His manner was respectful, and altogether different from that of the morning; and he had been attentive to Hannah all the afternoon—which was soothing to Margaret.
"We used to sing and play hymns in mother's time," Mrs. Vincent said; "the old piano wasonly given to the school when James died. It was worn out and I thought they'd be glad of it." The sequence was not quite clear, but no one perceived it. "I wish you could play hymns, Margey."
"Oh, but I can play something that is quite beautiful," she answered, and went towards the piano.
"Allow me," Mr. Garratt said, opening it.
He stood behind her in an attitude while Chopin's magnificent chords rolled upward—to Gerald Vincent's books, and down to the gray-haired woman in the chintz-covered chair, before they stole out of the open window into the Dutch garden and the indefinite wood beyond, as if they sought the cathedral.
"Margaret," cried Hannah, hurrying from the kitchen, "close the piano at once. Sunday is no time for playing."
"It's nothing frivolous," said Margaret; "it's a funeral march."
"I'll not have it done," Hannah answered doggedly, always jealous of Margaret's accomplishments. "There's a shake in it, and it's a piece only fit for week-days."
"People used to be buried on Sundays; what harm can there be in a funeral piece?" Mrs. Vincent asked.
"It was played at my request," said Mr. Garratt. "I'll ask for it next time on a week-day, MissMargaret. I shall be here again soon," he added, in a lower tone.
Hannah went up to the piano, locked it and put the key into her pocket. "Mr. Garratt," she said, turning upon him, "I think you had better make up your mind who it is you come to see week-days or Sundays, then we shall know."
"I've known all along," he said, casting prudence to the winds.
"Well, then, you'd better speak and be done with it."
"It isn't you, Miss Barton; so now you know."
Mrs. Vincent stood up and looked at him, grave and distressed.
"And, pray, who is it?" Hannah asked; it seemed a needless question, but nothing else suggested itself and something had to be said.
"Well, since you want to know, it's Miss Vincent. I've been in love with her from the first moment I set eyes on her, and that's the truth. As for you, Miss Barton, your temper is a little more than I can stand, and I wouldn't be hired to live with you."
"Mr. Garratt—" Mrs. Vincent began.
"Mrs. Vincent," he said, turning round on her sharply, "let me speak. I came here to look after Miss Barton, I frankly confess it; but I wasn't in love with her, I only wanted to be, and I've found out that I can't be. It's no good, her temper isaltogether more than I could risk, so now I've said it."
"Hannah, it's not my fault," Margaret said, going towards the door, and feeling that absence would again be the better part of valor.
"Stop, please, Miss Vincent," Mr. Garratt exclaimed. "May I beg you to remain a minute?" He shut the door and stood with his back to it, boldly facing the three women before him: Mrs. Vincent in calm astonishment, Hannah petrified but scarlet with rage and dismay, and Margaret feeling that a crisis had indeed come at last but not able to restrain a little unwilling admiration for Mr. Garratt's courage. "I want you to hear what I have to say," he went on; "Mrs. Vincent, I love Miss Margaret. I think she is the most beautiful girl in the world—the most beautiful young lady she would like me to say, perhaps; but I can't see that what I have heard about her to-day makes any difference, and I told her what I thought of her this morning in the wood before I knew anything about her family—"
"Oh!" came a note of rage from Hannah.
"And I've told her so at every other chance I've had of saying it, which hasn't been very often, for she wouldn't give me any, and Hannah has kept hold of me—as tight as a dog does of a rat. But I love Miss Margaret, I love the ground she walks on, and I'll marry her to-morrow ifshe'll have me." Mr. Garratt had become vehement.
"I wouldn't—I wouldn't—" Margaret said under her breath, but he took no notice.
"And I'll never give up the hope of her. I'm happy to hear that though she's likely to be the daughter of a lord, she's not likely to have any money, so it can't be thought that I'm looking after that. I don't want a penny with her. I understand that the farm is going to be Miss Barton's, and I hope she'll keep it. I want Margaret, and I want her just as she is and without a penny. I don't care what I do for her, nor how hard I work. I can make her comfortable now—and I'll make her rich some day—"
"Mr. Garratt, it's all impossible!" Margaret broke in.
"You say so now, Miss Margaret," he answered; "but when you come to think it over perhaps you'll feel different. And you'll see that in talking to Hannah I've only been trying to do what I came to do, but I can't go on with it, and there's an end of it. It's no good saying I don't love you, for I do, and I don't see why I shouldn't say it either. I'd do anything in the world to get you, and everything in the world when I had got you. I'm going away now," he said, quickly, suddenly opening the door, "but I'll write to you to-morrow, Miss Margaret, and you'd better think over what I sayin the letter. You needn't think you'll be standing in Hannah's way, for I'd rather be roasted on a gridiron than marry her. Good-night, Mrs. Vincent; I hope you'll forgive me. Miss Barton, I wish you a very good-evening. I know the way to the stables, and can put the pony to myself." He stood holding the door to for a moment, then opened it, and with something like real passion in his voice—it swept over his listeners and convinced them—he added: "Miss Margaret, I'm not ashamed of it, I'm proud of it, and I look back to say before every one once more that I love you, more than I ever thought to love anybody in the world, and I'd rather marry you than have ten thousand a year. Good-bye." He shut the door, and a minute later they saw him go slowly past the window on his way to the stable.
As if by common consent they waited and listened for the sound of Mr. Garratt's departing wheels. It seemed to form an accompaniment to Hannah's wrath, which burst forth with his departure.
That night, while Hannah was still testing the bolts below, Margaret went softly into her mother's room.
"Mother, dear," she whispered, "I want to tell you something, and you mustn't be unhappy, you must just trust me, darling; I shall never be in Hannah's way again, for I shall go to London."
"It would break my heart!" Mrs. Vincent said, with almost a sob. "I'm growing old, and am not so strong as I used to be. I couldn't bear to part from you."
"But, mother dear, I cannot stay here any longer." She lifted her mother's hands and kissed her fingers. "I cannot, darling!"
"But where would you go in London?" Mrs. Vincent asked, for she herself felt the impossibility of peace at Woodside Farm while Margaret remained and her husband was absent.
"I shall go to Miss Hunstan first. Sometimes I think I should like to be an actress, too."
"You mustn't, Margaret!" Mrs. Vincent cried in terror. "Hannah would never let you enter the house again, for she says that play-actors come from Satan and go to him again when their day is done."
Hannah came up-stairs and stood in the doorway. Margaret faced her with her arm round her mother's shoulder.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"Leave me alone," Margaret said, gently. "To-morrow I shall go to London."
"And what will you do there? You that never did a day's work in a week, or said a prayer on Sundays, or asked a blessing on a meal, and that belong to those who are ashamed to let people know what they are. Is your head turned becauseMr. Garratt has been carried away by your ways and artfulness."
"I'll leave him to you, Hannah, and go away to-morrow."
"I'll take care that you do nothing of the sort. You will stay here till your father comes back and learn to behave yourself."
Margaret made no answer. She pushed her mother gently down into the big chair by the wardrobe and knelt by her and kissed her gray hairs and the thin face and the muslin round her throat and the fringe of the shawl that was about her shoulders.
"Come, get to your bed," Hannah said; "we don't want to be kept here all night."
"Good-bye," Margaret whispered to her mother, kissing her softly once again. Then she rose and slowly walked away. "Good-night," she said to Hannah over her shoulder as she went to her own room.
"I'll lock her up if I have any nonsense with her," she heard Hannah say, as she shut the door.
Margaret sat for a long time thinking. "It will be better to go and be done with it," she said at last. "Hannah might prevent me in the morning; there would be another scene, and it's enough to kill mother—I can't let her bear it any longer."
Wearily she reached the Gladstone bag that her father had given her, down from the shelf atthe top of the cupboard in the wall. It was not very large, and luckily it was light; she felt that she could carry it quite well to the station. She put together the things she thought she might want immediately, the bag held them quite easily. Then she drew out a trunk and packed the rest of her clothes into it. At the far end of the room there was a little old-fashioned bureau in which she kept the two quarters' money that had come since her father went away. She took it out and looked at it wonderingly. And at last she sat down to write to her mother. As she opened her blotting-book she saw a sheet of note-paper that she had spoiled on the day she first wrote to Miss Hunstan. It set her thinking of Tom Carringford, and that awful tea at which Mr. Garratt had triumphantly put in his remarks; and suddenly she broke down and cried, for, after all, she was only a girl, and very lonely. Perhaps the tears made her feel better, for she took up her pen, but a little incoherent letter was all she could manage; she gave her mother Miss Hunstan's address, and said she would write again as soon as possible and every Sunday morning, and that she would love her every hour, and be her own girl and worthy of her. When it was done she laid it on the little black mahogany table, put on her every-day cape and hat, and took up her bag, hesitated, and looked round incredulously.
It was such a strange thing to leave the house in the middle of the night, she could hardly believe that she was awake. She opened the door very cautiously and listened, but all was dark and still, save for the ticking of the old-fashioned clock in the passage below. She went softly down and waited and listened again, but no one had heard her. Along the passage to the back door, for there were not so many bolts to it as to the front one, and it could be opened more gently. The key was hanging on a hook, she took it down, turned it in the lock, drew back the one long bolt, and stepped out. The summer air came soft and cool upon her face, but the sky was clouded. She drew the door to, locked it outside, and slipped the key under it back into the passage, and stood a fugitive in the darkness. She grasped her bag tightly and went softly over the stones that were just outside the back door, and so round to the garden, down the green pathway and through the gate; it closed with a click, and she wondered if Hannah heard it in her sleep; across the field and over the stile—she thought of Mr. Garratt—into the next field, and then suddenly she realized the folly of this headlong departure. She might at least have waited till the morning, for there was no train till six o'clock. She had five or six hours in which to walk as many miles. She sat down on the step of the stile and strained her eyes to see the treesthat made her cathedral, but they were only a mass of blackness in the night; she left her bag by the stile, and went back across the field to the garden gate, and looked at the house once more, and at her mother's darkened window, then went back again to the stile. Gradually the natural exultation of youth came over her.
"I'm going to London," she said, breathlessly, "to seek my fortune just as Dick Whittington did, and as Lena Lakeman said I ought to have done."
She stooped and felt the grass—it was quite dry; she used her bag as a pillow, and pulled her cloak round her and stretched herself out to rest for an hour or two on the soft green ground. "Oh, if mother could know that I was lying here in the fields, what would she say? But it's lovely with the cool air coming on my face, and I have a sense of being free already."
But sleep would not come; she was restless and excited, and it seemed as if the shadows of all the people she had known crowded about her. She could feel her mother's hand upon her head, hear Hannah scolding, and see her father holding aloof—till she could bear it no longer. She sat up and looked round; the dawn was beginning; in the dim light she could see the green of the grass.
"Dear land," she said, as she put her head down once more, "when shall I walk over you again towards my mother's house?"
Margaret's heart beat fast as the hansom stopped at the house in Great College Street. Mrs. Gilman opened the door.
"Miss Hunstan went away on Saturday night, miss," she said; "she's gone to Germany for three weeks."
"Oh yes—to Bayreuth; she said she might go, but I didn't think it would be so soon." Margaret stood dismayed.
"Is there anything I can do, miss? You are the young lady that came that morning with Mr. Carringford, and put out the flowers?"
"Yes—yes! I thought Miss Hunstan would advise me," Margaret answered, desperately. "I have come to London alone this time, not with my father, and I want to live somewhere." For a moment Mrs. Gilman looked at her doubtfully.
"You are very young to be alone," she said.
"Oh yes, I'm very young; but that has nothing to do with it."
"And you have no friends in London?"
"I'm afraid they're all away," Margaretanswered. "Mrs. and Miss Lakeman are going to Scotland to-day."
"I know them," Mrs. Gilman said, her face brightening, "and you know Mr. Carringford, too?"
"Oh yes. I stayed at the Langham Hotel with my father," she went on, "but I am afraid to go there now—alone."
"I have a bedroom and sitting-room; perhaps you would like them, miss; they are the drawing-rooms. Miss Hunstan preferred the lower floor because it was easier to come in and out. I don't know if they'd be too expensive?"
"Oh no," said Margaret, "I have plenty of money," for it seemed to her that she had an inexhaustible fortune; and as this was a pleasant statement, Mrs. Gilman invited her in with alacrity. And so in an hour she was installed in two wainscoted rooms—as comfortable, if not as dainty, as Miss Hunstan's beneath, and Mrs. Gilman had explained to Margaret that she had known Miss Hunstan ever since she came to England, and had often gone to the theatre with her or fetched her back. And Margaret had told Mrs. Gilman that she wanted to be an actress, too.
"In time, miss, I suppose," Mrs. Gilman answered, with a motherly smile. Then, when a telegram had been despatched to Chidhurst—for Margaret felt that her mother's heart had been aching all the morning—and when she had hadbreakfast alone in her own little sitting-room, she felt that she had indeed set out on her way through the world alone. She determined to make no sign to Mr. Farley till the Lakemans had started for Scotland—they were to start at ten o'clock that morning from Euston. To-morrow it would be safe, and she would write and ask if he would let her "walk on" as Miss Hunstan had done once.
But suppose he refused, what then? Suddenly there flashed upon her the remembrance of the dramatic agency in the Strand, that she had seen advertised when she was at the Langham. If Mr. Farley could do nothing for her, the agency might help her; it had said that engagements were guaranteed. A spirit of adventure made her determine to try and find it that very afternoon. It was in the Strand, where her father had bought her the Gladstone bag, and, in the odd way that trifles sometimes lodge in one's memory, the number of the house had remained with her. But now she was tired out with the long excitement and the night beneath the sky. She put her brown head down on a pillow, and in ten minutes was fast asleep.
She asked Mrs. Gilman for the address, and wrote to Miss Hunstan before she went out—a long letter, telling her all she had done and longed to do, and asking for her advice. Then she went in search of the agency, and found it easily. Itwas on a second floor, up a dirty staircase; she stopped to gather courage, and gave a feeble knock at the door, on which was painted in white letters, "Mr. Baker, Theatrical Agent."
"Come in!" said a voice. She entered and found a large room hung indiscriminately with playbills and advertisements. At a writing-table placed across the window sat a man of forty, with a florid face and a bald head. In an easy-chair by the fireplace was a woman, expensively and rather showily dressed. Her large, gray eyes were bright but expressionless. She had a quantity of fair hair done up elaborately; the color on her cheeks did not vary, she might have been any age between twenty-eight and forty. Leaning against the fireplace was a young man, clean shaven and well-dressed. Margaret heard him say:
"Certainly not, I won't pay a penny; if a manager has no faith in it he can leave it alone."
"You'll never get any one to risk it," the woman said, with a laugh. "Regeneration never pays—" she stopped as Margaret entered, and did not try to disguise the admiration into which she was surprised.
But Margaret felt that it would be impossible to speak before her. "Perhaps I'd better come another time?" she began. The young man by the fireplace looked at her intently, but he took the hint.
"Good-morning, Baker, I'll come round later," he said, and, with another look at Margaret, departed.
The man at the desk turned to her, "Now, madam, what can we do for you? You can speak before Miss Ramsey—in fact, if you've come about an engagement, she might be able to give you some advice." Margaret glanced quickly at the woman and then round the ugly office, and as she did so a little of the glamour of the stage seemed to vanish. Only for a moment; then her courage came back, and hope, which is never fickle long to youth, stood by her. This office was not the stage, not even its threshold, she thought; it was only the little narrow street, dreary and ill-kept, that branched off from the main thoroughfare.
"You look as if you'd come from the country," Miss Ramsey said. Her voice showed a desire to be friendly.
"Yes, I've come from the country," Margaret answered. She turned to Mr. Baker again, "I want to go on the stage," she said, "and understood that you could give help and advice."
"Certainly," he said, in a business-like tone, and opened a book beside him. "We charge one guinea for entering your name."
She looked at him, and a smile came to her lips. "I want to know first what you can do for me," she answered, and Mr. Baker came to theconclusion that she was not such a fool as he had imagined.
"We can do everything for you, my dear young lady, but you must give us a reason for taking an interest in you. We don't give advice gratis—" the door opened and a man entered.
"Can you tell me," he asked, referring to a notebook, "where 'The Ticket of Leave Man' was played last, and whether Miss Josephine de Grey, who came out in the provinces last year, has had any engagements lately?"
Mr. Baker consulted two books from a shelf behind him and answered off-hand, "'Ticket of Leave Man,' Prince of Wales's Theatre, Harrogate, 22d last February, for a week. Miss Josephine de Grey played five nights at the Royalty this March; engagement came to an end in consequence of the non-success of the management."
"Thank you," the man said, put down a fee, and departed. The incident had its effect on Margaret.
"I will pay the guinea," she said. "Would you tell me how I am to begin?"
He took up the book once more—"Margaret Vincent—really your own name, is it?—tall, graceful, good-looking. Shall we say nineteen? Would you like to play boys' parts?"
"Certainly not."
"Burlesque or singing parts?"
"No, I want to act, or learn to act, in real plays. Some day I want to play in Shakespeare's;" she felt that it was sacrilege to mention his name in these surroundings. "Of course I know I must play very small parts at first."
"Any one to back you with money?"
"No."
"Any friends among the aristocracy or the press?"
"No."
"She'll soon have them," said Miss Ramsey, with a laugh, which Mr. Baker echoed in a manner that Margaret found particularly offensive.
"I quite agree," he said. "And you don't know any one in the profession?" he asked her.
"I know Mr. Dawson Farley, and Miss Hunstan a little."
His manner changed altogether. "My dear young lady, what could be better? They are at the top of the profession." He closed the book as if he wanted time for reflection. "Our fee for appearance without salary is two guineas; with salary, ten per cent. I think you said Great College Street, Westminster—secluded and near the Abbey—very nice indeed," writing down the address. "You might call again, Miss Vincent, or you shall hear from us," and he closed the book.
Margaret turned quickly to the door, giving Miss Ramsey and Mr. Baker a little haughty nod between them.
"I don't think much of the young lady's manner," Mr. Baker said, after she had gone, "but her face ought to be a fortune. I wonder if she really knows Farley?"
Miss Ramsey got up and looked at herself in the fly-blown glass and at the dirty cards stuck in its frame. "Wish I were as young as that girl; I'm tired of playing in rubbish," she said.
"Why don't you ask Farley to give you something?"
"No good. I can't stand his patronizing ways."
"Make Murray write you a part."
"Bosh! He read me an act of one of his plays, long-winded talk and nothing to do, too much poetry, and not enough—not enough bigness for me. I want something to move about with in a play. Besides, he won't risk any money even on his own stuff; too platonic for that—platonics are always economical. Ta-ta."
"Have a whiskey and soda?"
"No, thank you," and she, too, disappeared down the dirty staircase that Margaret had taken a few minutes before.
It was five o'clock when Margaret knocked at the street door in Great College Street again.
"There's a lady waiting for you," Mrs. Gilman said, as she let her in.
"A lady!" Margaret exclaimed, and hurried up-stairs. In the drawing-room sat Hannah. She wore her blue alpaca frock and black straw hat with the upstanding bow on one side; she had thrown aside her cape, and the moment she saw Margaret she took off her hat as if to prepare herself for the fray.
"Well," she said, "this is a pretty thing to do, isn't it? You'll just come home with me this very moment."
Margaret stood with her back to the door. "It's very kind of you to come up, Hannah, but I'm going to stay here," she answered.
"You'll do nothing of the sort."
The determination in Hannah's voice put the bit between Margaret's teeth. "I am going to stay here," she repeated.
"Either you come home this minute," replied Hannah, who had made up her mind that a firmpolicy was the right one to use with Margaret, "or you don't come at all."
"Then I don't come at all—till my father returns."
"And that won't be for another year, if then. There was a letter this morning which showed it plain enough."
"Then I'll come back when you are married, to take care of our mother."
Hannah turned pale with rage. "Now look here, Margaret," she said, "and understand that I don't want any taunts from you. You've taken good care to put an end to all that forever. It's my belief that you think Mr. Garratt is going to follow you up to London." At which Margaret raised her head quickly, but she only half convinced Hannah.
"I don't want Mr. Garratt," she said, "and I won't let him know where I am, I promise you that, and if he finds out he shall not enter the house. He lost his temper yesterday, but he didn't mean any of the things he said, and now that I'm away he'll come back to you."
"I'll take good care he never enters the place," said Hannah. "Perhaps you don't know that he's written you a letter? I could tell his handwriting on the envelope, though he has tried to alter it."
"You can open it and read it, or give it back to him, or put it in the fire," Margaret answered."It's such a long way for you to have come; won't you have some tea, Hannah?"
"I don't want any tea. If that's where you sleep," she added, nodding towards the other room, "you had better go and pack up your things at once. We shall have time to catch the 6.50; I don't mind taking a cab to the station."
"It's no use; I'm not coming," Margaret, answered, firmly.
"And what do you think you are going to do in London?" asked Hannah, beginning to lose her temper again. "And what sort of a house is this you're in, I should like to know, with an actress lodging down-stairs? I've found that out already."
"I hope I shall be an actress, too, soon."
"You!" Hannah almost screamed. "You that have no religion now want to be an actress; where do you think it will all end?"
"I am not going to discuss it with you," Margaret answered, loftily, "it was very kind of you to come, but if you won't have any tea you had better go home again. I have written to father, and I know that my mother will trust me. I have not got any of the religion that makes you narrow and hard; you have made me afraid of even thinking about that; and I'm going to be an actress. But I won't do anything wrong—"
"We are all weak—" Hannah began, in consternation.
"I will be as strong as I can," Margaret cried, passionately. "Go back, Hannah, and think things over. If there can be peace at home, and Mr. Garratt is not a bone of contention between us—I don't want him, you understand—presently I will come home again."
"You return with me to-night," Hannah insisted, "or you shall not enter the house again."
"I shall not return with you to-night," Margaret answered, doggedly.
"It's what I always knew would come of it. Understand now, Margaret, once for all, that unless you go back with me I'll have the door closed against you. I'd turn the key and close the bolts myself, though it were the coldest night in winter."
"But remember I have a right to come," Margaret said, blazing a little. "You have no right to lock me out of my mother's house."
"Right or not right, you shall not enter till I'm forced to let you in. I've had unbelievers long enough about the place, but when it comes to actresses, too, it's time I made a stand, and I'll make it. Now, then, are you coming?" she asked, in a threatening voice.
"No, I'm not."
"Very well, then, the rest is on your own head." Hannah opened the door and hesitated. "I'm sure I've had enough of you," she said, as she went down the stairs. Margaret flew after her.
"Oh, tell my mother that I love her," she cried, entreatingly.
"Pretty love!" said Hannah, scornfully, as she stalked along the little hall and out into the street.
"Hannah—"
"Pretty love!" repeated Hannah from the pavement, "I've no patience with it," and, with her head in the air, she marched up the street.
Margaret went back to the drawing-room and threw herself down on her knees beside the sofa. "Oh, what can I do?" she cried. "If I had only some one to help me! This is what it means—this is why they want it so," she went on incoherently to herself. "Human beings are not strong enough to manage their lives alone—it is why all the mistakes are made. I must write to her at once. Oh, my dear, dear mother." She went to the writing-table on one side of the room. There was a worn-out old blotting-book, and in it a sheet of crumpled note-paper. She smoothed it, and with a wretched, spiky pen poured out her heart in a letter, and felt better for it. Her mother would understand, her mother always did, and would trust her and wait. How she wished that she had never left the farm, that she had borne Hannah's scoldings, borne anything rather than deserted the dear home of all her life. She only realized, too, now that she was away from her, that her mother was growing old—how foolish it seemed to miss any time atall with her. But Hannah was not to be borne. Day after day, week after week, since her father went she had tormented Margaret, and save by fits and starts her mother had been too well lost in her own dreams even to notice it, except, of course, when there had been scenes, and these were almost as trying to Mrs. Vincent as to Margaret. After all, she had done a wise thing, especially since Mr. Garratt had written, and her father was not coming home just yet. "It's only the beginning that is so difficult," she said to herself, "presently it will be better." She looked at the clock on the mantel-piece. The Lakemans must be safe in Scotland by this time; Hannah was on her way back to Chidhurst. She wondered whether Tom Carringford was in London, and if he had thought of her at all yesterday when he went to the house on the hill to dine—if he had looked across even once at Woodside Farm.
It was the strangest thing to wake in the morning and to realize that she was alone, living on her own responsibility, in London; the strangest thing to walk into her sitting-room and see breakfast laid for her.
"Oh, I can't live by myself," she cried; "it's such a mad thing to do." But hundreds did it, why not she? Courage! She had started on her way through the world, and it would be better to begin at once arranging the work she meant to do. She knew the name of Mr. Farley's theatre; she wondered if it would be better to go and see him rather than to write. It was so difficult to explain things in a letter, and she had learned already that to get to any place she didn't know in London it was only necessary to take a cab and to pay the man at the end of the journey.
She was too impatient to wait long, and it was only eleven o'clock when she inquired for Mr. Farley at the box-office of the theatre, and was directed to go to the stage door. The stage door was down a court, ugly and narrow; the door-keeper, in a little office on the right, inquired her business. Hername was written on a slip of paper and sent up to Mr. Farley, and after she had waited some minutes in an ill-kept passage a boy came and asked her to follow him—across the stage, that looked like a staring desert, and past the scenery leaning against the walls, lath and canvas and card-board and crude colors that brought home to her uncomfortably the realities of the life she was seeking; up a little staircase and into a comfortable, well-furnished room, hung with signed portraits of celebrities. Mr. Farley came forward to meet her; he shook hands and looked at her approvingly, for he had already divined the object of her visit.
"And what did Miss—Miss Hannah was it—say to this scheme?" he asked, with a smile, when she had stated her ambitions.
"She doesn't approve of it; but my mother will trust me."
"And does any one know that you are in London?" he asked, his thoughts running to Tom Carringford.
"No one; I wrote to Miss Hunstan, but she is at Bayreuth. I don't want any one else to know, Mr. Farley—my life is my own to live," she added, quickly, "and I want to begin at once. Can you let me 'walk on' as Miss Hunstan did once?"
The girl had some stuff in her, he thought. "Certainly you shall walk on if you like, Miss Vincent;we can easily make room for one or two more," he answered. "But, understand, it means hard work; you will have to come to rehearsal and perhaps to wait about for hours, and when we begin to play you will have to come down every night, of course, and nothing must make you late or careless—ill or well you must be here. No excuses allowed; your work must come before everything else, and to begin with you will get a guinea a week. Young ladies are apt to think they have only to run on the stage to become actresses, but you will find that nothing is done without hard work and patient waiting, unless you are a genius; if you are, we shall discover it. We begin rehearsing at 11.30 to-day; you can wait, if you like." And so he dismissed her, realizing that he was a different person altogether in the theatre from the Dawson Farley of Mrs. Lakeman's drawing-room or the garden at Woodside Farm. Nevertheless, he had been interested by her visit. It was very odd, he thought, this girl coming from the atmosphere in which he had seen her last week to lonely lodgings in Westminster. Very odd altogether. Lucky for her that she had got into Mrs. Gilman's, a respectable house, and a nice woman. He had half a mind to telegraph the whole thing to Mrs. Lakeman, and suggest that she should invite Margaret to Scotland; it would be far better for her than staying in London; but, after all, it was no affair ofhis, and he disliked mixing up business and private matters. Still, when he wrote to Pitlochry, he made up his mind he would tell Mrs. Lakeman about Margaret; she was a clever, practical woman, and would know if anything ought to be done for the girl.
Meanwhile, Margaret had been given over to the stage manager, and waited eagerly for the rehearsal to begin. It was uglier than she had expected. The gaping, empty theatre, covered with holland sheets; the dusty stage, with its whitewashed walls, and lumbering scenery packed together, standing up against them; the every-day clothes of the actors and actresses, made it all so vastly different a matter from seeing a play at night from the stalls with her father; but it was absurd of her, she thought, not to have remembered that it would be so; "it is like being at the back of the world," she thought. The company was a good-sized one, and Margaret, shy and awkward, stood apart, looking at it. Some of its members were ladies and gentlemen; they glanced at her, curiously wondering who she was, but only for a moment; they were intent on their own life battle. Some were not ladies and gentlemen, but tawdry make-believes, or shabby and anxious-looking. One or two of them looked as if they would have spoken to her, but she gave them no chance. When Dawson Farley came on he was busy and full of theresponsibility of a great speculation; he had forgotten all about her. Even in that first day she realized that she was a little unit of no account in an important whole. True, when she had to go across the stage at the end of the first act, he turned his head for a moment. She walked well, he thought; if he heard that she was intelligent, he might some day give her a small part. She was beautiful; he realized that. Ten years ago the story of Louise Hunstan might have been repeated (on his part), but now he was wiser. Then it struck him, as he waited in the wings, that her mother had looked ill the other day, like a woman who was not going to live long, and that if she died Mrs. Lakeman might want to marry her old lover, Gerald Vincent. Perhaps it would be wise if he tried to hurry things up a little.
Margaret had discovered that it was only a little way from the theatre to Great College Street, and she walked back from the rehearsal. After the stuffiness and dimness of the theatre she was glad to be in the open air again, and all manner of new experiences suggested themselves. She looked at the people she passed in the narrow streets near the stage door; they seemed to have suffered so much, to have hoped for so much, and each one to have a strange little history of some sort. A first glimmering of the temptations of life dawned upon her, the expression of a woman's face, or a man'scasual speech, brought home to her a sense of some things at which Hannah had railed. Hannah had only known of them by instinct, or she had railed at them parrot-like, because she had heard others do so; but under it all lay a foundation, though she had never dug to it. Gradually Margaret realized that of all people and of all things there was a justification, from a given point of view, and that, even if it had made no difference to a condemnation, it should never be forgotten.
The morning, the third day of Margaret's stay in London, brought her a letter from her mother—a simple, trusting letter with not a shadow of reproach in it. "I wish you hadn't left us so, Margey, dear," she said, "for it has made Hannah very angry, and I don't think it would be any good your coming back just yet, but if you want anything write to me. It is a good thing that you are living in a house with such a nice woman. Perhaps you could write to Sir George Stringer, for he knew your father when he was young, and would help you to do what was best. Hannah is packing your trunk to send up, but I am afraid to say anything to her. When she goes to Petersfield at the end of the week I'll send you some eggs and butter and flowers, but I don't like to say anything about it now, for it's no good making her cross. I wrote to Mr. Garratt, and told him you had gone to London, and I sent him back the letter,as you asked me. I'm not very well, but you must not be anxious. I think it's the trial of Hannah's temper when you were here. Perhaps, after all, it's as well that you are away for a bit. She may have got over it a little in a month or two. I think I ought to tell you that she is very angry indeed about your being an actress. She says old Mr. and Mrs. Barton, of Petersfield, will say I am doing very wrong in giving my consent, but I have never believed in the world being as bad as they do, or could see why the theatre should be wicked. Your father said once that everything was just what we made it, and it could always be made good or bad, and I want you to remember that about your life. It is what I have always felt about your father, and that God, who knows him, will be satisfied, no matter what people say."
Margaret kissed it, and gave a long sigh of thankfulness. "She isn't angry," she said to herself, "and she understands. My mother always did, bless her." She rose and walked up and down the little drawing-room. She had not known till now how much she had longed for a letter, for some sign that she had not done a wicked or foolish thing when she fled from home. "Now I feel as if I can go on," she said, "and who knows but that some day I shall be a great actress as Miss Hunstan is—she has my letter this morning, I wonder what she'll say when she writes to me."The little clock on the mantel-piece struck ten. As if in answer to it there came a double knock to the street door, the sound of a voice and some hurried steps, and the next moment Tom Carringford walked in. Margaret started to her feet with a cry of surprise:
"Oh," she said, "how did you know I was here?"
"Miss Hunstan wired—had it ten minutes ago—so got into a hansom and came at once. And now what is the matter?" he asked, just as if he had a right to do so. He sat down in the easy-chair facing her, his face beaming with happiness, even though Mr. Garratt rankled in his memory. "Why are you in London? You said something about coming, in the wood that day, but I didn't think you meant it."
"I am here just as Miss Hunstan is. I have taken these rooms, and want to be an actress as she was."
"What for?"—his eyes were full of astonishment—"and what does your mother say to it?"
"She understands. She knows that I can't go back till my father returns."
"And what about Mr. Garratt?" his tone was brisk and gay, but he waited eagerly for her answer.
"Oh!" and she grew crimson, "I did so want to tell you about Mr. Garratt, but I didn't feel I could unless you asked me. He came to see Hannah—"
"I don't believe that," he laughed. "I saw Hannah, you know."
"And then he thought—that—he liked me—and he said—well, he said things—you know," she added, rather lamely.
Tom nodded to give her courage. "Well?"
"And he went up to the wood when I was there, and Lena Lakeman came up and found him, and—and, oh, I hated Mr. Garratt," and she burst into tears. "I can't tell you how much I detested him, and yet you know he was very straightforward in a way, and he was not afraid of saying what he thought, and, of course, he couldn't help being vulgar—"
"And what about Hannah?"