Читать книгу Margaret Vincent - Mrs. W. K. Clifford - Страница 7

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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 pass before her eyes.

"Only for a day and a night."

"A night, too?" Margaret exclaimed; for on the occasional visits her father had paid to London he had gone and returned on the same day. "It sounds wonderful."

He thought out his words before speaking, as if in his own mind he saw the outcome of things that were going to happen. "All the same," he said, "you will probably be glad to come back."

"Yes, father, yes," she exclaimed, joyfully; "but then I shall know, I shall have seen and remember it all. Dear mother!" and she turned to her again, hungry for her sympathy.

Mrs. Vincent always understood, and she put her arm round Margaret, while she asked her husband, "Where will you stay if you don't come back till the next day, and will Margaret's things be good enough?"

"We shall stay—oh, at the Langham, I suppose. Of course they will be good enough."

He went back to his papers and took up the two letters again. The one from his brother was merely a reiteration of what he had said before. The important part in it was that which concerned his health. Lately there had been disturbing threats; it was possible that symptoms might develop which would hurry the inevitable. It was to take a specialist's opinion, so far as might be gathered from a letter, to see his lawyers, and to arrange for a probable voyage in the near future that Mr. Vincent was going to London. But it was the other letter that he lingered over, the one written on gray paper with violet ink. Long ago that handwriting had greeted him every morning. It had been a symbol of happiness, of all the world to him. He read the letter again:

"You will be surprised to hear from me after all these years; but I heard from Cyril lately; he gave me your address, and I feel that I must write to you. He told me of your marriage, and that you have a daughter. I knew nothing about you before, except what I gathered from your articles in the Fortnightly. Do you never come to London? If you do, come and see me; we will avoid all reference to painful by-gones and meet as old friends. I was near you last summer. I drove over with my girl and Tom Carringford (you remember his father) to look at a house we thought of taking. If I had known—

"Let me hear from you. I want to be told that I am forgiven for all the trouble I caused you, and that you will one day come and shake my hand. Perhaps you will bring your child to see me.

"Yours always,

"Hilda Lakeman."

Gerald Vincent sat and thought of the years ago and of a ball—it seemed a strange thing for him to remember a ball—and a long, maddening waltz; he could hear the crash of the "Soldaten Lieder" now, the long-drawn-out end, and the hurrying to the cool air. The girl on his arm wore a black dress—she was in mourning for her sister, he remembered—and some lilies were at her waist. The scent of them came back to him through all the years. He saw the people passing in the dim light; they had drawn back—he and she—so as not to be seen; he heard the sound of laughter, the buzz of voices, the uneasy beginning of the next dance. He remembered her perfect self-possession, and his own awkwardness, that had made him let the opportunity to speak slip by; but it had seemed to him that words were unnecessary. Looking back, he felt that she had been interested in the hour rather than sharing it, and he wondered, with a little sorry amusement at the remembrance of her manner, how much or how little she had really felt. He thought of the summer that followed, of days on the river in late July, when the London season was in its last rushing days, the sound of oars, the trailing of the willows at the water's edge, the visits to house-boats, the merry little luncheon-party on the point at Cookham. Mrs. Berwick had been the discreetest of chaperons, and when they had drunk their coffee—vile coffee it had been—he and Hilda had wandered off while the others stayed drowsily behind. How strange it was to think of it all! He could feel still her arms clinging round his neck, and hear her low, passionate whisper—"Yes, yes, I love you—I love you—I love you!" Words had never come easily to him, and he had been ashamed of his dumbness when she could find them. Remembering them now, her tones rang false. He thought of his ordination, and the happy winter when gradually he had put aside the foolish dissipations, and work and love made up his life; of the curacy he held for a little while. Hilda had been full of some scheme; he understood it dimly when he went to the bishop's palace and she had whispered—it was the first sign of what was coming—"Who knows but that some day we shall be installed here, you and I?" The bishop gave him a living later, and she cried, triumphantly: "I made father do it. It's the first step. I shall never be satisfied till you are on the top one." The speech worried him, grated on him all through the long first evening by his vicarage fire, though he tried to forget it. He read her letter the next morning almost desperately; luckily it had been a simple, affectionate one, and he thanked God for it, and prayed that all her desire might be, as his was, in the doing of the work before them, in the good they might bring to others, and not in the reward they would personally reap from it. There had been a happy time after that, just as if he had been heard. He remembered his simple faith in her, his peace and security in those days, with wonder. At the end of the summer he had not wanted to leave his parish so soon after going to it, so he stayed on through August and September while Hilda went with her people to the Engadine. A man came down to stay with him—a queer chap, Orliter, of All Souls, professor of philosophy now at a Scotch university. Orliter brought a cartload of books with him; he read them all day and smoked, and Gerald did the same. Then followed talks that grew more and more eager; often enough the night passed and daylight came while they were still arguing—nights that were symbolical of the darkness he walked through, and then the slow dawn of what seemed to him to be the truth.

It wanted courage to do the rest, but he had done it. There had been the difficult interview with the bishop, and the long, miserable one with Hilda, who had treated his new views as though they could be thrown aside as easily as a coat could be taken off. She had implored him to remember that they meant the blighting of his career, social ruin, the desertion of his friends, the breaking of her heart. It would be impossible, she had explained to him, to marry a man her friends would not receive—a man without position or prospects or money, with only talents which he was evidently going to apply in a wrong direction, and opinions that would create a little desert round him. He had looked at her aghast. To him truth was the first condition of life and honor; to her it was of no consequence if it spelled inexpediency. Her attitude resulted in his writing some articles that made his position worse in a worldly sense; but he loved her all the time, his infatuation even became greater as he saw the impossibility of sympathy or agreement between them. But he was too strong a man to let passion master him; besides, it seemed as if all the time, afar off, Truth stood with the clear eyes that in later years had been his wife's attraction to him, and, cool, calm, and unflinching drew him to her—away from the woman who protested overmuch, from the Church that pointed upward to an empty sky, from all the penalties and rewards of religion. Whether his conclusions are right or wrong, a man can but listen to the dictates of his soul and conscience. And so Gerald Vincent turned his back on all that he had believed and loved, but remained an honest man. While he was in Italy, squarely facing the ruin of his life, he heard of Hilda's marriage. There had been a quarter of a column about it in the daily papers. He read it a little grimly. A few years later he heard of her husband's death, but there had been no sign of her in his own life till the letter came that morning. He read it again, then locked it away in a desk.