"There isn't a curtain fit to put to a window, and my hands are full enough," Hannah went on, as if she had not heard. "Towsey will put down the irons. Till they are hot, perhaps you had better run out a bit," she added, impatiently; "you always make so much of the air. For my part, I find it better to look after one's work than after one's health; one brings the other is what I think."

Mrs. Vincent had gone slowly towards the best parlor. She opened the door and looked in. "Shall I come to you for a minute, father?" she asked him. Since Margaret's birth she had generally called him "father"; his Christian name had never come very easily to her.

"If you like," he answered, without looking up from his papers.

"I thought you were worried a bit with your letter." She stood behind him and touched his shoulder. Time had accentuated the difference in years between them, and the caress had something maternal in it.

"I meant to talk to you about it presently," he said, and turned reluctantly towards her. "It is from my brother in Australia."

"Is he in any trouble?"

"Yes, he's in trouble, I suppose."

They were silent for a moment, then she spoke, and he loved her for the firmness in her voice. "If it's money, we can help him. There's a good bit saved from the farm these last years. I had no idea milk was going to pay so well."

"It isn't money. He is ill, and not likely to be better." He stopped, and then went on quickly: "He made a foolish marriage before he left England; but I don't know that there is any use in our discussing that."

It seemed as if he were closing an open book.

"Has he no children to look after him?"

"No."

She was silent for a moment, as if she were trying to face something that had to be done, and nerving herself to speak. "It isn't for me to know what's best. I never knew any of your people, or saw any one belonging to you--"

"That's true," he answered, awkwardly.

"--Every one has a right to his own history, and I don't hold with giving it out just for the sake of talking. Many lives have been upset by things there was no need to tell--" She stopped again, and then went on bravely. "But what I am coming to is that if your brother is ill and has n.o.body but his wife, who isn't any good, you might like to go out to him?"

"To go out to him!" The thought made his heart leap. The quiet years had ranged themselves round him lately like the walls of a prison--a friendly prison, in which he was well content--but it seemed as if he had suddenly come in sight of a door-way through which he might go outwards for a little while and come back when he had seen once more the unforgotten tracks.

"It might comfort him," she went on without flinching. "And you wouldn't be more than a year gone, I expect. It must be terribly dull for you here sometimes. I've often thought how good you've been."

He put his hand tenderly on her arm while he answered, "All the goodness has been yours."

She turned her eyes to the window lest he should see the happiness in them, for she had always been half ashamed of loving him as she did--a staid woman of middle age, with homely matters to concern her. "I don't see that I have done anything out of the way," she said.

"Did it never occur to you that you have not seen any one belonging to me, and that really you know nothing about me? I was a stranger when I came, and you took me in."

"One knows a good deal without being told. I've always felt that your family was what it should be; and there's been all your life here to judge you by."

He looked at her and felt like an impostor. He knew that the fact of his father having been a lord, or his brother being one now, would not uplift her as it would a vulgar woman. On the contrary, it would probably be an embarra.s.sment to her, and a reason for being silent regarding them, since she would think it unlikely that people who were her superiors in education and knowledge of the world would desire any kinship with her. On her own side, too, there was a certain pride of race, of the simple life that she and generations of her people before her had lived--that and no other. Strangers might come into it, might be welcomed, served, and cared for, even loved; but she herself did not want to go beyond its boundaries, and though she treated all people with deference, it was deference given to their strangerhood and bearing, and to the quality of their manners, rather than to their social standing.

Her husband knew it and respected her for it, and felt ashamed to remember that his father had been a spendthrift and a company promoter, and that his brother had made a hideous marriage. People who did these things were plentiful enough in London, but they were unknown at Chidhurst. All that she definitely knew about him was that he had been at Oxford--at college, as she always put it--and afterwards that he had been in the Church and left it on account of scruples; but concerning the scruples, and what they meant precisely, she was always vague. If she had been asked to describe her husband's character she would probably have said, as if it were a paradox, that he was a good man, though he didn't go to church on Sundays.

They had stood silently together for a minute, busy with their own thoughts, then he spoke. "I fear Hannah doesn't think much of my life,"

he said.

"She means well, but she's been brought up strict. James's people were always strict, and he was, too, though he reproached himself at the end for not being strict enough. That's why I feel I ought to give in to her a bit, and let her do what she thinks is right, when it doesn't clash with you. I wouldn't be surprised if she married some day; Mr. Garratt's written saying he'll be at Chidhurst soon, and he'd like to pay his respects to me, having known James's people so many years."

Mr. Vincent was amused. "Oh, well, if Hannah's going to have a young man about the place, I'd better get out of the way," he said. "I'll write to Cyril by the next post and tell him of your suggestion."

V

Other letters followed that first one from Australia. Lord Eastleigh had caught at the suggestion of Gerald's visit. But he carefully faced the probable course of his illness. The chances were that he might go on for some time longer, and he thought it would be best for his brother to come out when the end was getting near. Gradually they had learned all there was to know of each other, and in middle life and far apart there had grown up between them an affection of which their youth had shown but little promise. Cyril Vincent had done some work in Australia--it was the only thing for which he respected himself. Lately he had even saved some thousands, and, after providing for his wife, he meant to leave them to Gerald. For scrupulous Churchman as Cyril had remained, even through all his excesses and mistakes, he recognized the courage with which his brother had stood by what he believed to be the truth; and now, when disease had seized him on the lonely Australian station, the only happiness left him was the thought that he might see again the one being who had not disgraced the family.

The months went by without alarms till Margaret was eighteen. It was mid-spring at Woodside Farm; the early flowers were up in the Dutch garden, the first green was on the trees, the sowers were busy in the fields, and all the earth smelled sweet. In the house spring cleaning was rife; it told, together with the non-coming of Mr. Garratt, on Hannah's temper, and Hannah's temper told on the rest of the family.

"I don't think he has behaved well," Mrs. Vincent said to her husband.

"A man has no right to send a letter saying he hopes to get over soon and pay his respects to her mother, and then not be as good as his word.

It isn't even as if he hadn't sent her a card at Christmas, showing he still thought of her. You see, Hannah's getting on, and she isn't satisfied at holding herself over for a chance." What else Hannah could possibly do she didn't explain.

Mr. Vincent shrewdly suspected that Mr. Garratt's courage had failed him, or perhaps that he regarded matrimony as a sober investment to be made in middle age rather than as an exhilaration for youth, and so was just keeping an eye open without committing himself. But whatever the reason, Mr. Garratt had not yet appeared, and the effects were obvious.

Hannah brushed her hair back more tightly than formerly, her movements became jerky, a little pink settled itself at the tip of her nose, and her tongue took a freer range.

The hours were earlier at Woodside Farm as the spring advanced. By nine o'clock Mr. Vincent had gone to his study, and Hannah was busy in the dairy or out among the chickens. Then it was that Mrs. Vincent and Margaret allowed themselves the luxury of a little foolish talk together in the living-place. It was only possible when Hannah was not about, for she had no patience with a great girl, who might be making better use of her time, sitting on the arm of a chair. So Mrs. Vincent and Margaret stole their little interviews together with the happy craftiness of lovers.

The postman came into the porch one morning while they were talking.

Mrs. Vincent always listened for him now, knowing well that one day he would bring the message she dreaded. There were two letters for her husband, and her heart stood still when she saw that one was from Australia. But she recovered in a moment; after all, there had been many letters now, and this might be only one added to the number. The strange thing was that she never asked a question. When he had to go he would tell her, she thought; what was the use of worrying him? The other letter was an English one--a woman's handwriting in violet ink on pale-gray paper. She looked at it curiously, and felt that this, too, was connected with his history--that part of his history of which she knew nothing.

"You can take them to him, Margaret," she said, and sat down again.

"Father started when he saw the one directed with violet ink," Margaret told her when she returned.

Mrs. Vincent looked at her daughter wonderingly, and tried to divert her own thoughts. "I can't believe you are growing up," she said; "we sha'n't be able to keep you much longer."

Margaret lifted the hair from her mother's forehead and kissed beneath it--soft hair, with a crinkle in it that had of late grown gray. "What is going to happen to me?" she asked, and thought of the blue distance on the Surrey hills. It was beginning to attract her.

"I'd give the world to know. I can't bear the idea of your going away from the farm."

"But if I go I shall return; a bird always comes back to its nest, and I shall come back to your arms. Shall I tell you a secret?" she whispered.

Her mother nodded with a little smile on her lips, and tried to be interested; but all the time she knew that behind the shut door of the best parlor something was going on that might change the whole current of their lives. "Father doesn't want to sit so much in-doors as he has done," Margaret continued; "so he means to buy a tent, a little square one, open in front, with room for a writing-table and two easy-chairs, and a little sofa made of basket-work, you know. It's to be put up at the edge of the field, and when it's fine he will sit there and work, and sometimes we are going to invite you to tea--"

"My word! what will Hannah say?"

"Oh, she'll make a fuss, but it won't matter, for father's father. We shall have a glorious summer," she added, with a sigh of content, "and I am so glad it's coming. I don't believe Hannah's heaven will be half so good as this world is in summer-time, when everything is green and a dear mother loves you."

"It will be your heaven, too, Margey, dear," Mrs. Vincent said. "I don't like you to talk so--"

"Then I won't," Margaret answered, impulsively. "I won't do anything you don't like. Here is father."

"He has come to tell us something," Mrs. Vincent said. She started from her chair and looked at him, and then for a moment at the green world beyond the porch, as if she felt that it would give her strength. But his news was not what she had expected.

"I'm going to London on Monday morning," he said, "and should like to take Margaret with me. Can she go?"

"How long is it to be for?" Mrs. Vincent asked, while Margaret stood breathless, seeing in imagination a panorama of great cities pa.s.s before her eyes.