"LOVE LETTERS OF A WORLDLY WOMAN"
"MRS. KEITH'S CRIME" ETC.
[Illustration: Logo]
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS 1902
Copyright, 1902, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
Published April, 1902.
_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.