The dawn came soon in those late August days, but it seemed as if the
darkness would never be at an end that night. Margaret sat in the
living-room in the big chair by the fireplace; it faced the one that had
been her mother's, and she looked at the arm on which she had perched
herself so often in the happy morning talks of old--the mornings that
were all at an end for ever and ever. She had set the door wide open and
the sweet air came in, chilly, and with a strange sense of what had
happened.
Towsey found her presently. "We wondered where you'd got to," she said.
"I went to the garden, and through the field--I wanted to think for a
little while."
"I made the bed in your room ready, but I suppose when you looked in it
was still covered up, and you didn't feel like staying there."
"I don't like staying anywhere," Margaret answered, with the
restlessness that cannot find expression keen upon her.
"You had better come into the kitchen--there's a cup of hot milk ready;
you must want something. Hannah's just gone to lie down; she's been
anxious and wondering what had become of you; but she thought you had
gone to the wood, and it was no good looking for you."
They sat down in the kitchen opposite each other by the table, the old
woman, whose eyes were swollen with weeping, and the girl with the
scared, white face, who had just seen death for the first time.
"I am thinking of my father," she said to Towsey; "he doesn't know
yet--probably he's grieving for Uncle Cyril, but looking forward to
coming back to mother. It is so dreadful to think that he'll never see
her more."
"Life's a queer thing," Towsey answered, "and difficult to make the best
of, and worse when one's old, for then one knows; but when one's young
one hopes."
"There's nothing left to hope for."
"There is for you, Miss Margaret. When any one's first gone one feels
adrift, and doesn't see the good of living one's self, but when one's
young others come along after a bit. Just you go and lie down, poor
lamb; you look worn enough."
"Is Hannah asleep?"
"Maybe--she's in her room. She's been pretty bad, but she doesn't like
any one to see."
Margaret put down the milk she could not finish. "I'll go up-stairs,"
she said. "Rest a bit yourself; you look so tired, Towsey, dear." She
crept up again, past her mother's closed door, and towards her own room.
Hannah's door was open; she hesitated, then went softly towards it and
looked in.
Hannah was lying on the bed in her clothes, asleep, or appearing to be
asleep. The dawn shed a blue light into the room. Margaret, standing by
the bed, could see that Hannah had been crying; her face was red and
blotched with it. Her cheeks were hollow, her poor nose was very pink,
her dull, light hair seemed to be more scanty than ever, and she looked
so forlorn and sad as she lay there that Margaret could hardly bear it;
she realized, as she watched her, how little the world had given Hannah,
how little it promised her. Slipping off her shoes, she lay down very
softly beside her--a little lower, so that she could nestle her head on
Hannah's breast, and put her arm round the square, thin shoulder. Hannah
opened her eyes and looked at Margaret and closed them again, and, as if
in sleep, drew closer to her with weary satisfaction, and so, for the
first time in their lives, they rested an hour together. But neither
slept, and, when it was impossible to feign it longer, they looked at
each other, and Margaret knew that Hannah was softened.
"I wrote to you yesterday," she began, a little grimly, as if ashamed of
being anything else. "I didn't want Towsey to know--I would not even
let mother know--for I'd said you shouldn't come back so often. I went
out and posted it myself. It will be there this morning. I didn't think
the end was coming, or I would have sent before. I'm not as hard as
that."
"You wrote to me!" Margaret exclaimed. "Why, Hannah, I wrote to you
yesterday--yesterday afternoon; our letters will cross on the way, and
both will arrive at the same time."
"It must have been the Lord drawing us to each other."
"If it had only been in time," Margaret whispered.
"I must have seemed harder than I was," Hannah went on; "but I didn't
forget that she was the mother of us both, and I didn't think it'd be so
soon. I'll never forgive myself while I live."
"I ought to have known you were not so hard as you seemed. And, of
course, you didn't know what was going to happen."
"It was the man that came between," said Hannah, bitterly; "it's always
a man that comes between women."
Then Margaret pulled herself up on the bed and sat there beside Hannah,
looking at her tortured face.
"Mother is lying in the next room," she said, "and can never know, but
for her sake let us try and make things better between us. I want you
to believe me, Hannah, when I say solemnly that I never liked Mr.
Garratt, or wanted him, or could help anything that he did."
"It doesn't matter," Hannah said. "He's a base and sordid man, and I've
done with him forever. He's been here lately, and I've told him so. He
only came after me because his mother had heard that the farm would be
mine. If the truth's to be told, I never thought much of him, and as for
taking a man, caring as he does for theatres and races, for I've found
out that he goes to both, why, I'd rather die. But we needn't talk him
any more; he'll never come here again."
Then Margaret drew a little closer to her, for even through her own
sorrow and the horror of the night her heart was aching for Hannah and
clung to her.
"What have you done about the play-acting?" Hannah asked, after a minute
or two.
"I have given it up," and there was another silence. Then, grim and
forlorn-looking, and with the tears welling into her eyes, Hannah spoke
in a low voice, as if she had brought herself to it.
"Margaret," she said, "I've been very hard on you, often and often."
Margaret bent her head and kissed her sister's dress and said nothing,
for it was true enough, though she forgave it.
"But I'd like you to understand it," Hannah went on, "then you won't
think so bad of me. You see, father came when I was old enough to know,
and took mother from me. I felt that he took her, and there was the way
he thought about religion and the way that you thought."
"Hannah," said Margaret, "let us speak of it--it's better to do so now
while death seems to have broken down the barriers between us. I
understand what you mean about father's coming, I do, indeed--I should
have felt it, too. But about the religion--you think it a crime that he
doesn't believe as you do, but can't you see that if God has given him
intellect to think and feel, and he has used them quite conscientiously,
and so come to the conclusions that are his now, he is an honest man? He
proved his honesty by giving up a great deal--all sorts of worldly
advantages, and some one he loved very much before he saw our mother,
and, if he came to a wrong conclusion, don't you think that God--God
whom you say is a God of love and very just--will at least honor him for
being courageous and not making a pretence?"
"If one doesn't believe in the Lord--" Hannah began.
"Oh, but let me speak," Margaret went on, passionately; "it's being
honest that matters, and doing right--trying to be all that Christ
preached--if we are only that we can leave the rest. It is not we who
doubt God, but you who doubt Him when you think He could be hard and
cruel to us. There are so many forms of religion in the world besides
the one that you believe in; are all the people to be condemned who try
to do right from different points of view? It's all a mystery and beyond
our comprehension."
"I'd like to know what it is you think?" said Hannah.
"I think that one should be thankful to the Unseen Power that has put
all the beauty and happiness into the world; that one should try never
to think unkindly or judge harshly, and that we should help each other
all we can, and leave the rest to the Power one doesn't understand. Some
one wrote once, 'I want to accept the facts as they are, however bitter
or severe, to be a lover and a student, but never a lawgiver,' which
means that we should not judge others, but only love them and help them
and do our work as best we can."
"I think you mean well; but I wish you felt more about religion," Hannah
said, a little grudgingly. She looked down at her again, for Margaret
had crept back into her arms. It was a new sensation to feel any one
there, and she felt almost ashamed of the comfort it gave her. "I'm
sorry if I seemed hard," she said, gently. "You know the Bartons were
always strict. But you won't go away again? I can't bear to think of you
in London."
"I don't want to go away again," Margaret answered; "I want to stay here
with you and father; I feel as if I could never go anywhere else as long
as I live."
"There hasn't been anything wrong?" Hannah asked, with a note of alarm.
"You haven't done anything you shouldn't?"
"No, Hannah, nothing; but I wish I had never gone."
"There's always something to be sorry for; we have to bear it as the
penalty of our weakness. I'd give all I had in the world to remember
that we'd both stood by mother at the last," Hannah answered, with a
sigh, and then she said--almost tenderly, "You had better try and sleep
a little; you look worn out, and there's father to tell yet. It'll be
bad for him; I don't know how he'll take it." She held Margaret closer
in her arms and watched her, and gradually, worn out with the long night
and weeping and excitement, they fell asleep.
Towsey came in a couple of hours later and looked at them.
"I never thought to see them like that together," she said, and went
softly out again. "I wish she had seen it; but there, perhaps she
does--she may be standing by looking on for all we know."
Sir George Stringer went to Great College Street early that afternoon;
the expression of Margaret's face haunted him, and he could not rest
till he had seen her again. Mrs. Gilman had told him of Margaret's
sudden departure the night before and the reason of it.
"Poor thing! poor thing!" he said to himself as he walked away. "I think
I'll go to Chidhurst for the week-end. I might be of some use to
her--that young scoundrel, Tom, is in Scotland, and she has only the
grim half-sister to look after her."
He walked across the fields in the evening to the farm, and stopped,
hesitating in the porch, afraid to enter or to ring and disturb the
silence that death consecrates.
Hannah saw him and came forward, grim as usual, but gaunt and sad.
"Did you want to see any one?" she asked.
"I heard that your mother was dead," he answered, awkwardly; "I came to
see if I could be of any use. I have known her husband all my
life--where is Margaret?"
"She's lying down; she's made her head bad with fretting."
"What have you done about her father?"
"We haven't told him yet. Margaret says he's coming back. It will be bad
for him then."
"But he ought to be told."
"We'll send a telegram to-morrow. It'll be time enough; it's no good
hurrying sorrow on him. He'll have had a day longer to think he'll see
her again."
Sir George looked at her shrewdly. "A kind woman at heart," he thought,
and then he said aloud, "You know that he is Lord Eastleigh now?"
"Yes, I know; but I can't see that it matters. It won't make any
difference to the end."
"You are quite right"; and he shook her hand. "Give my love to
Margaret," he said, and turned away. "It would be a good thing," he
thought, as he went back across the fields to his house, "if we all
lived in the country; people get spoiled when they congregate in cities;
that woman looked quite indifferent to Vincent's title. Upon my soul, I
liked her to-night."