Mr. Vincent started for Australia a week after his visit to London. In the first hours of his sailing Mrs. Vincent and Margaret measured in their hearts every length the ship took onward, while Hannah wondered whether the Lord would let it get safely to its journey's end, and prayed fervently for Jews, Turks, and infidels. For Hannah did not pretend to regret his departure. "It will be good for him to be away," she said to her mother, "and it's as well the place should be left for a bit to those whose hold was on it before he came and will be after he's gone." There was no question of her supremacy after Mr. Vincent departed, and her mother was as wax in her hands.
But it was not only for peace, and because of a vague feeling that she owed Hannah an indefinite reparation for the fact that she had set another man in her father's place, that Mrs. Vincent gave way; it was also because the keen interest she had once taken in the working of the farm had been gradually lulled, even half-forgotten, in her great love for the man she had first seen when middle-age had already overtaken her. There was another reason, too, but it existed unknown to any one, even to herself. Mrs. Vincent had become less active in the last year or two, more silent and thoughtful. Her hair was grayer, the lines on her face were deeper, dull pains beset her sometimes, and a lethargy she could not conquer. She put it down, as those about her did, to the gathering years and the hurrying of time; now and then it struck her that she "wasn't over well, that some day she'd see a doctor," but she dismissed the idea with the conviction that it was nothing, only that she was growing old—the worst disease of all, she thought, since every hour of life was sweet that she spent in the world that held her husband. Oddly enough, she, as well as Hannah, had been almost relieved when he went. It was the right thing for a man to go out and see the world; no women folk should tie him down forever; she even felt a little unselfish pleasure in remembering that it was she who had first proposed it. While he was away she determined to rest well, and sleep away her tiredness and all the uneasiness it brought, so that she might be strong to welcome him back. But after the excitement of getting him ready, and the passionate though undemonstrative farewell, a reaction came. She shut herself up in her room once or twice, so that her tears might not be suspected; or, when she had grown more accustomed to his absence, sat brooding in the living-place or the porch, trying to imagine what he was doing and to picture his surroundings.
"I must be a fool to go on like this at my age," she said to herself; "I wouldn't let the girls know for anything."
For Margaret, her father's going brought all sorts of restrictions and limitations; but her mother was too much wrapped up in her own dreams to perceive it, or to draw closer to her than before, and so to make up for the loss of his companionship. Thus Hannah was free to show the dislike she had always felt and to worry her with petty tyrannies.
"The best parlor will be used by any one who likes till he returns," she promptly announced. "It has been kept apart long enough, as if the whole of the house wasn't fit for those who own it to live in, unless it was sometimes by way of a treat."
"It was kept apart because father wanted to read and write and be quiet," Margaret said.
"Well, there's no one who need read and write now; you can do more useful things, and will be all the better for it; as for being quiet, well, there's others that will want to be quiet sometimes, and it'll do for them. Mr. Garratt is coming over to his dinner on Sundays, and we shall sit there in the afternoon—if we are not taking a walk. Mother is always in the porch, and we don't want you hanging about us."
"I am glad to get away," Margaret said, quickly.
"You do your best to keep his eyes fixed on you, anyway; but you needn't think you'll draw him to yourself; it isn't likely he'd mean anything by an unbeliever."
"I don't want him," Margaret cried, and fled up to the beechwood that stood high behind the farm as though it were the landscape's crown. Here, in some inconsequent manner born of the instinct that only comes to a woman's heart, she waited for Tom Carringford, or for news of him. That happy morning in London had changed the whole current of her thoughts, had put something strange and sweet into her life that she did not attempt to define and hardly knew to be there. But she wanted to see him again—and she waited, dreaming as her mother did, yet differently. He would come, or he would write, and soon; she felt it and knew it. But the days went by, and the weeks, and the first month of her father's absence, and nothing happened. She was a little disappointed, yet thought herself unreasonable, for, of course, he was thinking of his under-secretaryship, building castles concerning his parliamentary career—in Margaret's thoughts he was sure to be prime-minister some day—or going out with his friends; and she thought uneasily of the Lakemans—he had no time to go to Hindhead, or to remember her father's invitation. And why should she expect him to write? He would come, perhaps, when Sir George Stringer was established at the house on the hill.
But of Sir George there was not a sign. Every day, in the early morning, or in the twilight, she hurried through the fields, towards the road on which the church and the garden entrance to his house faced each other on either side; but the gates were always closed, and a chain round them fastened by a padlock showed that as yet he was not expected. Then she came away slowly, and with dull disappointment in her heart, which Hannah's temper and tyranny emphasized till she could hardly bear it. The foundations of life seemed to be giving way—she felt it as she passed the windows of the empty best parlor, or saw her mother, erect still, but older and graver, sitting in the porch. The happiness of home, the dear home of all her life, had waned lately.
"Are you well, mother?" she asked one day, uneasily. "Sometimes I think you are suffering." This was five weeks after Mr. Vincent had started.
"It's nothing," Mrs. Vincent answered. "I'm getting on in years, Margey; at fifty-six aches and pains have a right to take some hold on one. I shall be better when your father returns; perhaps I did a little too much before he went."
"Yes, you did, darling," Margaret answered, kissing the hands—large, capable hands, that not even the rough farm-work had ever made coarse.
"There'll be a good many months to rest in before he comes," Mrs. Vincent went on; "perhaps it's as well that he's away for a bit."
"But, mother dear, you used to be so active only a little while ago."
"You see, Hannah's older, and likes doing things herself," Mrs. Vincent answered; "and that's as well, too; it gives me time to think over all the years back. I was never able to do it before. You mustn't trouble about me, Margey; when people are getting on they like being quiet." It was evident that her mother wanted to be let alone, and Margaret respected her wish, though it made her own life more difficult.
And then there was Mr. Garratt, brisk and vulgar, with the veneer of shoddy education over him, and the alertness of intelligence that is bent on "getting on" and making the most of chances. His coming and going would have been of little consequence to Margaret if he had but left her alone. But this was precisely what he would not do. She spoke to him as little as possible, and showed unconsciously that she thought him a rather inferior person; but Mr. Garratt faced everything, and was a difficult young man to abash.
Moreover, Mr. Garratt had lately been going through an acute phase of his own, for possibilities had suggested themselves that puzzled and distracted him. He had seized a chance to improve his business by establishing a branch at Guildford, where he proposed to live during the summer months, leaving the Petersfield branch, more or less, to take care of itself. Land had gone up in Surrey; there was a good deal of buying and selling to be done among the people, who were anxious to build the red-brick houses at which Sir George Stringer had scoffed, and it had occurred to Mr. Garratt that the fashion might be used to his profit. Besides, he was tired of Petersfield. Guildford was nearer town; "a better class of people go there," he said, with the knowingness that grated on Margaret. It had lately become a rule that he appeared on Sunday morning and went to church with Mrs. Vincent and Hannah, walking back with them to the mid-day meal, which never varied—cold beef and baked plum-pudding in the winter, cold lamb and fruit tart in the summer, always eaten in silence, as if the Sabbath were a time of penance—and after it he was expected to submit, as he knew quite well, to a tÊte-À-tÊte in the best parlor. But while he was getting his house and office ready at Guildford he often found it possible to take the afternoon train to Haslemere, and at Haslemere he hired a little dog-cart with a fat, gray pony, and drove himself over to Chidhurst, where he stayed to tea, driving himself back again in the early summer twilight. It was concerning the line he should take on these afternoons, that were somehow easier than the Sunday visits, that he was exercised in his mind. He had first considered Hannah from a matrimonial point of view on the advice of his mother, who had been assured by old Mrs. James Barton, of Petersfield, that she would ultimately possess Woodside Farm. It had seemed to Mr. Garratt that, by the time he was prepared to retire, the farm would be an excellent retreat for his old age, and meanwhile Hannah would make him a careful wife. But he was a far-seeing young man, who had a way of considering things in all their bearings, hence he had purposely held aloof for a long time, for the simple reason that there was no occasion to hurry. He knew what Hannah was like, and had come to the conclusion that, on the whole, she would do. But she did not inspire him to any display of sentiment, and there was no reason why he should waste his time with her when he felt that he could be employed quite as agreeably and perhaps more profitably at home. It was simply to make sure that things were going on satisfactorily that he went at last to Woodside Farm, and not from any particular desire to see her.
Then, to his surprise, Margaret had appeared. She took his breath away, and being a young man of intelligence, he saw at once that she and her father were altogether of a different class from that to which he was accustomed. He wondered how she came to be there. How her father came to be there, and what had induced him to marry Mrs. Vincent and settle down at the farm. "There must be a screw loose somewhere," he thought; but what would a dozen screws matter to him if only—for it promptly occurred to him—he could marry Margaret? The thought intoxicated him; she was young and beautiful; she made the blood dance through his veins as it had not done since he was two-and-twenty, when he had fallen in love with the daughter of a dentist who had thrown him over for the purser of an Atlantic-going steamer: and that young lady had not been a patch on this one. With a wife like Margaret, he told himself, there was no knowing what might be done, to what heights he might rise in these democratic days. He looked at Hannah's face; it was faded and somewhat weather-beaten; there were lines of temper on it—they would be deeper by-and-by; the hard gray-blue of her eyes chilled him, her tightly pulled back hair repelled him, her manner suggested that time would make her shrewish. Life with her would mean a clean, well-ordered home of a sort, but hardly a gay and pleasant dove-cot. Luckily, he had not in any way committed himself; he had merely been extremely polite and friendly, and entered upon that stage which, in the class just below the one he considered to be his own, was known as "walking-out"—a sort of prelude to getting engaged. But he had not said a single word of love; he had looked at her, it is true, but a cat may look at a king. The worst of it was that he could never manage to make any impression upon Margaret; at best, she was only civil to him; she spoke as little as possible, and generally vanished soon after his arrival; there were times when he felt her manner to be a little contemptuous; still, he determined not to bind himself in another direction till he made sure that she was impossible. He looked in the glass and came to the conclusion that he was by no means bad-looking; the curl of his hair and the fairness of his mustache he considered to be strong points to the good in his appearance.
"She is a little young," he said to himself, "and doesn't know what's what yet. A girl isn't up to much till she is two-and-twenty. She's had time then to look round at home, and to see that there mayn't always be room for her in it. Moreover, she knows then when a fellow is worth having, and doesn't give herself so many airs as she does at first. I wonder if my dress is quite up to the mark? She's got a quick eye, and she's been to London, and they always think they know a good deal after that." He considered this point very carefully, with the result that the next time he went to Haslemere he wore drab spats over his by no means ill-made shoes; a white handkerchief, fine and slightly scented with white rose, showed itself from his breast-pocket, and in his hand he carried a crop, for he had determined that instead of driving he would ride to the farm. It would look more spirited, he thought, to trot beside the moor, past the church, along the road, and down the green lane, arriving with a clatter at the porch, than to appear in even the neatest of traps. There was a decent mare to be hired at "The Brown Bear" at Haslemere. He wrote to the landlord, and felt quite excited at an imaginary picture of himself and the effect it would have on Margaret.
