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."