Margaret went back to the drawing-room and threw herself down on her knees beside the sofa. "Oh, what can I do?" she cried. "If I had only some one to help me! This is what it means--this is why they want it so," she went on incoherently to herself. "Human beings are not strong enough to manage their lives alone--it is why all the mistakes are made.

I must write to her at once. Oh, my dear, dear mother." She went to the writing-table on one side of the room. There was a worn-out old blotting-book, and in it a sheet of crumpled note-paper. She smoothed it, and with a wretched, spiky pen poured out her heart in a letter, and felt better for it. Her mother would understand, her mother always did, and would trust her and wait. How she wished that she had never left the farm, that she had borne Hannah's scoldings, borne anything rather than deserted the dear home of all her life. She only realized, too, now that she was away from her, that her mother was growing old--how foolish it seemed to miss any time at all with her. But Hannah was not to be borne. Day after day, week after week, since her father went she had tormented Margaret, and save by fits and starts her mother had been too well lost in her own dreams even to notice it, except, of course, when there had been scenes, and these were almost as trying to Mrs. Vincent as to Margaret. After all, she had done a wise thing, especially since Mr. Garratt had written, and her father was not coming home just yet.

"It's only the beginning that is so difficult," she said to herself, "presently it will be better." She looked at the clock on the mantel-piece. The Lakemans must be safe in Scotland by this time; Hannah was on her way back to Chidhurst. She wondered whether Tom Carringford was in London, and if he had thought of her at all yesterday when he went to the house on the hill to dine--if he had looked across even once at Woodside Farm.

XXIV

It was the strangest thing to wake in the morning and to realize that she was alone, living on her own responsibility, in London; the strangest thing to walk into her sitting-room and see breakfast laid for her.

"Oh, I can't live by myself," she cried; "it's such a mad thing to do."

But hundreds did it, why not she? Courage! She had started on her way through the world, and it would be better to begin at once arranging the work she meant to do. She knew the name of Mr. Farley's theatre; she wondered if it would be better to go and see him rather than to write.

It was so difficult to explain things in a letter, and she had learned already that to get to any place she didn't know in London it was only necessary to take a cab and to pay the man at the end of the journey.

She was too impatient to wait long, and it was only eleven o'clock when she inquired for Mr. Farley at the box-office of the theatre, and was directed to go to the stage door. The stage door was down a court, ugly and narrow; the door-keeper, in a little office on the right, inquired her business. Her name was written on a slip of paper and sent up to Mr. Farley, and after she had waited some minutes in an ill-kept pa.s.sage a boy came and asked her to follow him--across the stage, that looked like a staring desert, and past the scenery leaning against the walls, lath and canvas and card-board and crude colors that brought home to her uncomfortably the realities of the life she was seeking; up a little staircase and into a comfortable, well-furnished room, hung with signed portraits of celebrities. Mr. Farley came forward to meet her; he shook hands and looked at her approvingly, for he had already divined the object of her visit.

"And what did Miss--Miss Hannah was it--say to this scheme?" he asked, with a smile, when she had stated her ambitions.

"She doesn't approve of it; but my mother will trust me."

"And does any one know that you are in London?" he asked, his thoughts running to Tom Carringford.

"No one; I wrote to Miss Hunstan, but she is at Bayreuth. I don't want any one else to know, Mr. Farley--my life is my own to live," she added, quickly, "and I want to begin at once. Can you let me 'walk on' as Miss Hunstan did once?"

The girl had some stuff in her, he thought. "Certainly you shall walk on if you like, Miss Vincent; we can easily make room for one or two more," he answered. "But, understand, it means hard work; you will have to come to rehearsal and perhaps to wait about for hours, and when we begin to play you will have to come down every night, of course, and nothing must make you late or careless--ill or well you must be here. No excuses allowed; your work must come before everything else, and to begin with you will get a guinea a week. Young ladies are apt to think they have only to run on the stage to become actresses, but you will find that nothing is done without hard work and patient waiting, unless you are a genius; if you are, we shall discover it. We begin rehearsing at 11.30 to-day; you can wait, if you like." And so he dismissed her, realizing that he was a different person altogether in the theatre from the Dawson Farley of Mrs. Lakeman's drawing-room or the garden at Woodside Farm. Nevertheless, he had been interested by her visit. It was very odd, he thought, this girl coming from the atmosphere in which he had seen her last week to lonely lodgings in Westminster. Very odd altogether. Lucky for her that she had got into Mrs. Gilman's, a respectable house, and a nice woman. He had half a mind to telegraph the whole thing to Mrs. Lakeman, and suggest that she should invite Margaret to Scotland; it would be far better for her than staying in London; but, after all, it was no affair of his, and he disliked mixing up business and private matters. Still, when he wrote to Pitlochry, he made up his mind he would tell Mrs. Lakeman about Margaret; she was a clever, practical woman, and would know if anything ought to be done for the girl.

Meanwhile, Margaret had been given over to the stage manager, and waited eagerly for the rehearsal to begin. It was uglier than she had expected.

The gaping, empty theatre, covered with holland sheets; the dusty stage, with its whitewashed walls, and lumbering scenery packed together, standing up against them; the every-day clothes of the actors and actresses, made it all so vastly different a matter from seeing a play at night from the stalls with her father; but it was absurd of her, she thought, not to have remembered that it would be so; "it is like being at the back of the world," she thought. The company was a good-sized one, and Margaret, shy and awkward, stood apart, looking at it. Some of its members were ladies and gentlemen; they glanced at her, curiously wondering who she was, but only for a moment; they were intent on their own life battle. Some were not ladies and gentlemen, but tawdry make-believes, or shabby and anxious-looking. One or two of them looked as if they would have spoken to her, but she gave them no chance. When Dawson Farley came on he was busy and full of the responsibility of a great speculation; he had forgotten all about her. Even in that first day she realized that she was a little unit of no account in an important whole. True, when she had to go across the stage at the end of the first act, he turned his head for a moment. She walked well, he thought; if he heard that she was intelligent, he might some day give her a small part. She was beautiful; he realized that. Ten years ago the story of Louise Hunstan might have been repeated (on his part), but now he was wiser. Then it struck him, as he waited in the wings, that her mother had looked ill the other day, like a woman who was not going to live long, and that if she died Mrs. Lakeman might want to marry her old lover, Gerald Vincent. Perhaps it would be wise if he tried to hurry things up a little.

Margaret had discovered that it was only a little way from the theatre to Great College Street, and she walked back from the rehearsal. After the stuffiness and dimness of the theatre she was glad to be in the open air again, and all manner of new experiences suggested themselves. She looked at the people she pa.s.sed in the narrow streets near the stage door; they seemed to have suffered so much, to have hoped for so much, and each one to have a strange little history of some sort. A first glimmering of the temptations of life dawned upon her, the expression of a woman's face, or a man's casual speech, brought home to her a sense of some things at which Hannah had railed. Hannah had only known of them by instinct, or she had railed at them parrot-like, because she had heard others do so; but under it all lay a foundation, though she had never dug to it. Gradually Margaret realized that of all people and of all things there was a justification, from a given point of view, and that, even if it had made no difference to a condemnation, it should never be forgotten.

The morning, the third day of Margaret's stay in London, brought her a letter from her mother--a simple, trusting letter with not a shadow of reproach in it. "I wish you hadn't left us so, Margey, dear," she said, "for it has made Hannah very angry, and I don't think it would be any good your coming back just yet, but if you want anything write to me. It is a good thing that you are living in a house with such a nice woman.

Perhaps you could write to Sir George Stringer, for he knew your father when he was young, and would help you to do what was best. Hannah is packing your trunk to send up, but I am afraid to say anything to her.

When she goes to Petersfield at the end of the week I'll send you some eggs and b.u.t.ter and flowers, but I don't like to say anything about it now, for it's no good making her cross. I wrote to Mr. Garratt, and told him you had gone to London, and I sent him back the letter, as you asked me. I'm not very well, but you must not be anxious. I think it's the trial of Hannah's temper when you were here. Perhaps, after all, it's as well that you are away for a bit. She may have got over it a little in a month or two. I think I ought to tell you that she is very angry indeed about your being an actress. She says old Mr. and Mrs.

Barton, of Petersfield, will say I am doing very wrong in giving my consent, but I have never believed in the world being as bad as they do, or could see why the theatre should be wicked. Your father said once that everything was just what we made it, and it could always be made good or bad, and I want you to remember that about your life. It is what I have always felt about your father, and that G.o.d, who knows him, will be satisfied, no matter what people say."

Margaret kissed it, and gave a long sigh of thankfulness. "She isn't angry," she said to herself, "and she understands. My mother always did, bless her." She rose and walked up and down the little drawing-room. She had not known till now how much she had longed for a letter, for some sign that she had not done a wicked or foolish thing when she fled from home. "Now I feel as if I can go on," she said, "and who knows but that some day I shall be a great actress as Miss Hunstan is--she has my letter this morning, I wonder what she'll say when she writes to me."

The little clock on the mantel-piece struck ten. As if in answer to it there came a double knock to the street door, the sound of a voice and some hurried steps, and the next moment Tom Carringford walked in.

Margaret started to her feet with a cry of surprise:

"Oh," she said, "how did you know I was here?"

"Miss Hunstan wired--had it ten minutes ago--so got into a hansom and came at once. And now what is the matter?" he asked, just as if he had a right to do so. He sat down in the easy-chair facing her, his face beaming with happiness, even though Mr. Garratt rankled in his memory.

"Why are you in London? You said something about coming, in the wood that day, but I didn't think you meant it."

"I am here just as Miss Hunstan is. I have taken these rooms, and want to be an actress as she was."

"What for?"--his eyes were full of astonishment--"and what does your mother say to it?"

"She understands. She knows that I can't go back till my father returns."

"And what about Mr. Garratt?" his tone was brisk and gay, but he waited eagerly for her answer.

"Oh!" and she grew crimson, "I did so want to tell you about Mr.

Garratt, but I didn't feel I could unless you asked me. He came to see Hannah--"

"I don't believe that," he laughed. "I saw Hannah, you know."

"And then he thought--that--he liked me--and he said--well, he said things--you know," she added, rather lamely.

Tom nodded to give her courage. "Well?"

"And he went up to the wood when I was there, and Lena Lakeman came up and found him, and--and, oh, I hated Mr. Garratt," and she burst into tears. "I can't tell you how much I detested him, and yet you know he was very straightforward in a way, and he was not afraid of saying what he thought, and, of course, he couldn't help being vulgar--"

"And what about Hannah?"

"It was impossible to stay there with Hannah--and Mr. Garratt--and--all the scenes." She was confused and incoherent, but Tom made out the story in his own mind.

"And then?" he said.

"And then I slipped out in the darkness on Sunday night and came up here. I thought, perhaps, Miss Hunstan would help me."

His face beamed with happiness. "Of course, I knew there couldn't really be anything between you and Mr. Garratt; only it looked very odd, didn't it? And then Lena told me about Sunday--about his being up there, you know, and how she found you--"

"Oh, don't," Margaret cried, pa.s.sionately. "It was mean of her to tell you, for she heard everything I said to him--"

"Well, never mind," he answered, in a consoling voice, "we've done with him, haven't we? But you know, Margaret," he added, falling into the familiar address without being aware of it, "you can't go on staying in rooms in London by yourself; and as for going on the stage, why it's all nonsense. I am very impertinent to say it, of course; but you see our fathers knew each other all their lives, so you must look upon me as an old friend. It's a great bore the Lakemans being in Scotland; you might have stayed with them--"

"No, I couldn't."

"Why not? Mrs. Lakeman is a good sort. Lena is a bit of a bore, of course"--a remark which, for some unknown reason, brought exultation to Margaret's heart. "As for being an actress, why you know it's all nonsense--don't look so offended." His voice would have been tender if he had not checked it. "People often come to grief in London--things are too much for them."

"I am not offended," she answered; "but if things are too much for me I suppose I must bear it as others have done; after all, the soldier who falls on the battle-field is more to be envied than if he dies in his native village."

"I should think you have done a good deal of reading; that sounds like it, you know," at which they laughed, like the boy and girl they were.

"I wish you'd go back," he half entreated.

"But I won't," she said, obstinately.

"Then let me wire to the Lakemans and ask if they can have you?"

"I wouldn't for the world."

"You are very positive. And you mean to say that you are bent on this stage business?"

"Yes; I'm bent on it," and she told him of her visit to Mr. Farley in the morning and of the two rehearsals. He got up and walked about. He was worried, of course--he felt that he ought to be worried--but he was so happy at hearing that there was nothing between her and Mr. Garratt that he found it difficult to be serious. "I wish I could make you see,"

he said, "that you are only taking the bread out of other people's mouths. When I get into the House I shall make bread-s.n.a.t.c.hing a penal offence, and send you to prison."