Tom Carringford went straight to Great College Street the next morning.
Margaret, of course, was not there; but Louise Hunstan had arrived, and
from her and Mrs. Gilman together he heard of Mrs. Lakeman's visit; of
Margaret's assertion that her engagement was broken off; of how Sir
George Stringer and Dawson Farley had been to see her, and of Margaret's
hurried departure to Chidhurst.
"Well," said Miss Hunstan when they were alone, and the little twang Tom
always liked had come into her voice, "I think this is a matter that
requires some investigation; you know it's my opinion that Lena Lakeman
is just a little snake, and that her mother doesn't always know what
she's about--still, they're amusing people if you don't see too much of
them."
"Oh, they're all right, if you don't take them too seriously," he
answered, incapable of thinking ill of any one. He was not in the least
alarmed at Margaret's statement to Mrs. Gilman. He knew that Margaret
loved him, and that, if any mischief had been made, why, it would soon
be explained away. The thing that astonished him was Mrs. Lakeman's
visit. "I can't think how she could have been shut up in her room with
neuralgia and in London at the same time," he said to himself. "She is
certainly mad! However, that doesn't matter. I shall go to Chidhurst
this afternoon. I might be of some use, and I want to see Margaret." He
knew that, if her mother were ill, she would be unhappy and want him,
and, like the kind boy he was, he began casting about in his mind for
things he could take Mrs. Vincent. There were heaps of flowers in the
Dutch garden, of course; but she might like a box of roses, all the
same, and Margaret would remember the first one they had bought
together--and peaches and grapes; he didn't remember seeing any glass at
Woodside Farm; perhaps they hadn't any. "I'm awfully fond of Margey," he
said to Louise Hunstan, glad to put it into words, "and we shall have a
splendid time together. You'll often see us here, you know."
"Of course I shall," she answered; "I am just looking forward to it."
He stopped at Sir George Stringer's house as he drove through Whitehall,
but only to find that he had gone to Chidhurst. "Good," he said,
absently, to himself, "I'll telegraph to him, and he'll put me up."
Tom remembered all his life the drive from Haslemere to Chidhurst that
evening. He enjoyed every yard of it; up the hill and past the cottages,
along the road beyond; beside the moor covered with ling, and through
Chidhurst village, till he came in sight of the church, and the gates of
Sir George Stringer's house just opposite the little gate that led
across the fields to the farm. He looked at the box of roses and the
basket of peaches and grapes on the driver's seat. "I hope my
mother-in-law is better," he thought, with a happy laugh in his eyes. "I
believe I shall be fond of her, and Vincent is a brick."
"You know there's a death at the farm, sir?" the driver said, as he got
down. "Mrs. Vincent was took last night after two days' illness--she
hadn't been herself for some time."
An hour later a little note was brought to Margaret. It ran:
"DEAREST,--I am at Stringer's house, and have just heard. I know
how unhappy you must be, and there isn't anything to say except
that I love you, which you know already. I am glad I saw her. Send
for me when you can see me; I shall be waiting here. Your devoted
"TOM."
And so that trouble was lifted from Margaret's heart; but her tears fell
fast while she read the letter.
"If mother were only here," she thought, "and I can't bear to tell
Hannah, for she has nothing in her life--nothing to look forward to.
Towsey!" she said, going into the kitchen. Towsey gave a start; she was
almost asleep. Margaret sat down on her lap, as she had often done years
ago when she was a little girl, and she put her arms round Towsey's
neck, and cried for a minute or two softly on her shoulder. "I want you
to tell me something," she said, when she looked up; "are you sure that
mother smiled when she had the telegram that last day she was alive?"
"Ay, that she did," said Towsey; "it didn't hold much, but she seemed to
read a great deal into it, somehow."
"Thank God! She must have known. It was from Mr. Carringford, Towsey."
"Yes, I know," said Towsey, "and she thought how it'd be."
It was almost more than Margaret could bear. "If I had only not gone
away," she cried, "mother, dear!--mother, dear!"
Mr. Vincent, to call him by his old name, did not return nearly so soon
as he might have done. There were his brother's affairs to wind up, he
said, and his brother's wife to settle down in a house at Melbourne.
Perhaps he dreaded returning to the farm alone. At any rate, he made
excuses, and it was nearly four months before he wrote that in another
fortnight he would set sail.
All that time Tom and Margaret were waiting to be married. Tom had
argued that it would be better to do it quietly and at once, but
Margaret refused.
"Not yet," she pleaded; "let us wait the few months till father returns.
We have all our lives to give each other. I don't feel as if I could go
into the little church to be married just yet, for it's only--" She
stopped, for she did not want him to know that she dreaded lest she
should still hear the sound of the heavy, shuffling feet that had
carried her mother into it for the last time. She wanted to forget it,
to remember only the long, happy years, and the summer mornings she had
sat on the arm of the chair in the cool living-place, with her mother
leaning against her while they watched the sunshine covering the Dutch
garden with glory.
"We might be married at some other church if you liked," he suggested.
"Oh no," she answered, quickly, "I wouldn't for the world. I want to be
married near the dear farm--and near her: she would be happy if she
knew; she would listen and be so glad. Oh, Tom, you do understand, don't
you, darling?" For answer he nodded, took her in his arms and kissed
her, which is always the best answer a man can give the woman who loves
him.
And so they waited till the winter had gone, a long, silent winter,
though it held its whispered happiness. February came cold and clear.
The men were busy in the fields, turning the brown earth over, and here
and there, under the hedges, a snowdrop hid, lonely and shivering. Then
one day Hannah made a really brilliant remark, or Tom, at any rate,
thought it one.
"I don't see how you can get married directly father comes, either," she
said; "he'll find it hard enough to come back to an empty house; you
can't well fling a wedding in his face. For my part, I think it would be
a good thing to get it over beforehand, and go and meet him."
Tom looked at her for a moment, then he shook her hand vigorously, as he
always did when anything pleased him mightily. "You are quite right," he
said, and the next minute he was striding down the Dutch garden on his
way to the cathedral where Margaret was waiting for him. "Look here," he
said, when he found her, "Hannah has had a brilliant idea. Some one
ought to go and meet your father; he can't come back here alone, you
know."
"Oh, Tom," she said, "I have often thought how dreadful it will be for
him."
"Of course it will, and we have no business to let him do it. Suppose we
went out and picked him up at Naples and brought him home ourselves. You
see, Hannah could make everything comfortable here while we are
gone--alter things a bit, and so on. And we might keep him two or three
days in Stratton Street on the way back, and get Hannah up there." All
manner of developments crossed his fertile mind while he spoke. "We must
get married before we start," he said, in a business-like tone, as if it
were only a matter of convenience, "or we should have to get a chaperon,
which would be rather a bore."
And so it came about that they were married very quietly one morning six
months after Mrs. Vincent's death. Hannah and Margaret walked across the
fields together, and Tom and Sir George Stringer met them at the church
gate, but there were no others present.
Tom's sister, Lady Arthur Wanstead, sent Margaret a diamond comb and a
long letter, and Mrs. Lakeman sent her a fitted travelling-bag, and Lena
sent a full-sized green porcelain cat.
It is just two years since that morning at the church. The Carringfords
are at Florence now, and Lord Eastleigh, and Sir George Stringer, who
has retired from his office, are with them, and they are looking forward
to Louise Hunstan, who is coming out on a six weeks' holiday. Lena
Lakeman has married an army doctor and gone to India; and Mrs. Lakeman,
who was very angry at Lena's marriage, which she thought a bad one, took
to speculating in West African mines, and left England lately in order
to look after her ventures. It was said last year that she had made a
great fortune; but, even if it is true, she will probably lose it again,
and console herself with the thought that the sensation of being a
beggar is altogether a new one.
Hannah is at Chidhurst alone, and something that would be almost droll
seems possible. One afternoon a stranger appeared at the farm, a
loutish-looking man of six-and-thirty, but with more intelligence in him
than appeared on the surface. He was a student of agriculture, he
explained, second son of a land-owner in Somerset, and had a fancy for
renting a property in Surrey. He had heard that Woodside Farm might
possibly want a tenant. Hannah assured him to the contrary with some
asperity; but eventually, being overcome by the stranger's manner, she
not only showed him over the farm, but, since he had come from a
distance, gave him tea with a dish of chicken fried in batter, and
scones that had been hurriedly made by Towsey. She explained to him
while the meal progressed that she found the farm somewhat difficult to
manage single-handed. The stranger felt the truth of this, and she
struck him as being a most sensible and capable woman. A farm, he told
her, wanted a man to look after it, to which she agreed and invited him
to come again.
"The coming of the stranger," said Margaret to Tom when she had read a
prim letter in Hannah's spiky writing.
He looked at her for a moment, then her meaning dawned on him. "Good!
good!" he said; "history makes a point of repeating itself, you know. I
shouldn't wonder--"
"And I shouldn't," she laughed.
Meanwhile the villagers nod their heads and say that this year spring
cleaning was even more thorough than usual at Woodside Farm.