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 was only 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, Miss Margaret. 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 is altogether 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
if she'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 say in 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 because Mr. 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 at the 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
trees that 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?"