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 you like 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 to
Guildford 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.