"I don"t think I could say just yet," Margaret answered; "it was only yesterday that I saw it."
"Quite right; it doesn"t do to make up one"s mind too soon," Mr. Garratt remarked, cheerily, at which Hannah looked up a little sharply.
"For my part," she said, "I like people to know at once what they think, and what they mean."
"Well, you see," he answered, looking back at her, "it isn"t difficult sometimes." Whereupon the color came to her face and amiability to her expression. "What else did you see in London, Miss Vincent?" he turned to Margaret again.
Something prompted Mr. Vincent to answer for her, and with extreme gravity: "We went to the theatre."
"I"m sorry to hear it," Hannah said.
"And how did you like it?" Mr. Garratt asked Margaret, as if he had not heard Hannah"s remark.
"It was wonderful," she answered. "I long to go again."
"It"s a place of iniquity," Hannah said, firmly.
Mr. Vincent looked across at her. A sharp answer rose to his lips, but he remembered that the Petersfield young man was a suitor, and had been long expected. Before he could speak Margaret struck in, quickly:
"It was one of Shakespeare"s plays that we saw."
"I have read a good many of them," Hannah remarked, not in the least pacified.
"Then, of course, you are aware, Miss Barton, that they are mostly historical," Mr. Garratt said, in a conciliatory voice, "and it may be said that to read him, or even to see him acted, makes us familiar with historical knowledge;" a sentence at which Mr. Vincent gave a little snort, but said nothing.
Hannah was delighted at the prospect of an argument. "History may teach us some lessons, Mr. Garratt," she said, "but we can read them, just as we can read other lessons. There is no occasion to do more; and as for play-acting teaching us history, once people have taken to their graves they might be left to lie in them and not be brought out and used as puppets that dance to man"s imagination." Mr. Vincent looked up; he was becoming interested. "Moreover," continued Hannah, "it"s making a mock of G.o.d, for only He can bring the dead to life."
"What you say is very true, Miss Barton," Mr. Garratt answered, sending another furtive look at Margaret, "and I never think myself that Shakespeare is as interesting as a good modern piece."
"Do you go to the theatre then, Mr. Garratt?" she asked, quickly putting down the teapot, but still keeping her hand on its handle.
"I don"t make a practice of it, Miss Barton, but if one is in London one is tempted to do as London does. Moreover, I believe in seeing the world as it is, rather than in holding off because it is not as one wants it to be," he added, with the air of a moralist, but an obvious capacity for enjoyment lurking behind it.
"The world should be made a wilderness for the evil-doer--" Hannah began, as if she were trying to remember a bit from a sermon.
"There should be a voice crying in the wilderness, Miss Barton--" Mr.
Garratt stopped, for it occurred to him that he might be going too far.
"Or what would be the good of the wilderness?" Mr. Vincent asked. "We have finished tea, I think?" He rose and went to the best parlor. The years he had spent out of the world, as he had once known it, made him a little intolerant of many things, of this vulgar and good-tempered young man with an eye to the main chance among them. But Mr. Garratt would do well enough for Hannah--in fact, nothing could be better, for evidently he was not narrow, and this might have a good effect upon her. For himself and his daughter and for his wife there was a different plane, a different point of view. The visit to London had made him see even more clearly than before the manner of woman he had married, and for the first time, after all these years and in the autumn of their days, he was nearly being her lover.
Just as if his thought had brought her to him, she put her head inside the door and asked, as she always did:
"Are you busy, father, or shall I come to you for a little while?"
He got up and went to her. "I wanted you," he said. "Come and sit by the window; there are a good many things to say." She felt as if heaven had flashed its joy into her heart; but only for a moment, then dread took its place.
"Is the news bad from London?" she asked.
"It"s not good," he said. "That is one reason why I want to talk to you, dear wife." He stopped a moment before he went on. "I have told you two or three times that you know nothing about me or my people. Now, that I shall probably be going away very soon and that Margaret is grown up, I think you ought to know about them: one can never tell what may happen.
There is not much to their credit to say--or to mine, I fear," he added, and then, quite briefly, he gave her the points of the family history, and made known to her the possibilities in the future. She was not elated--he had known that she would not be; but she was surprised, and a little offended.
"I didn"t think there was this behind," she said; "I don"t know what people will say."
"Is there any occasion to tell them?"
"I don"t suppose there is," she answered, absently, and then, with an anxious look in her clear eyes, she said the one thing that hurt him in all the years he knew her. "Father, you didn"t hold it back because you didn"t think us good enough?"
He turned round quickly. "If it was anything of that sort," he answered, "it was because I did not think myself good enough. My people led useless, extravagant lives, and my own has not been much better. I have felt ashamed that you should know anything concerning us, and it wasn"t necessary for our contentment here."
"No," she said, slowly, "it wasn"t."
"Nor is it any more necessary to tell people our affairs now than it has been hitherto. If Cyril dies I shall not alter my name--what good would a t.i.tle be to me? I have no son to come after me, no one at all to inherit anything except Margaret, for whom this doesn"t matter."
"I"m glad you"ve told Margaret," Mrs. Vincent answered. She was silent for a moment, and then went on, thoughtfully: "She is changing in herself; I can feel it. She"ll not be content here always. She is stretching her wings already, like a young bird that is waiting to fly."
"Well, at any rate, she had better stay quietly here till my return," he said. "By-the-way, an old friend of mine has taken the vicarage house--Sir George Stringer; he is sure to come over and see you."
"We are getting very grand, father," she said, ruefully, resenting it a little in her heart. She had been so well content with her own station in life, and had never wished to see it either lifted or lowered; the first seemed undignified to her, the last would have meant humiliation.
"It doesn"t make any difference, dear," he said. "We were a worthless, ramshackling set, who put such privileges as we had under our feet; and as for me, I haven"t even enough grace to take me to church on Sunday. I want to forget everything but the life of the last twenty years--you, and Margaret."
She put her hands up slowly to his shoulders.
"Father," she said, "you will never know what you have been to me, never in this world."
"I do," he answered; "I know--well."
"And I couldn"t bear that you should be anything but just what you have been always."
"I never shall be anything else," he answered, and stooped and kissed her. "We won"t tell Hannah about this," he went on, "and I don"t suppose Margaret will. There"s no reason to make a mystery of it; if it comes out, well and good, but if not we can be silent."
"I"d rather she didn"t know," Mrs. Vincent answered, "unless she finds it out; she"d only be talking and thinking things I wouldn"t bear."
Meanwhile Towsey and Hannah were clearing away the tea things: Margaret went out to the porch and looked at the garden and the beechwood she loved rising high beyond it. Mr. Garratt cast a quick glance towards the kitchen, and in a moment he was by her side.
"Are you inclined for a little stroll, Miss Vincent?"
His eyes said more than his words. She went a step forward and stood by a lilac bush.
"No," she said, "I am going in directly."
The sunset with a parting shaft of gold touched her hair; a whispering breeze carried a message from the roses to her cheek, and she was young--young, the dawn was in her eyes, she seemed to listen to the song of birds, to belong to the flowers that were springing from the earth.
She was different altogether from Hannah. A dozen possibilities darted through his mind. His heart beat quicker, his usual ready speech failed him, he stood tugging at his mustache and thinking that he had never seen a girl like this before--but suddenly he was recalled to common-sense.
"Mr. Garratt," Hannah said, her voice was severe and unflinching, "if you want to see the grave of your aunt Amelia, I will take you."