Mrs. W. K. Clifford

“ I wonder if you like me, if you care for me—it would make everything so easy. I love you—more than anything in the world, and you always seem happy enough with me. Do you think you could stand it always. Cut the theatre, you know, and all that at once, and marry me?"
"Oh, Tom!" she said, and without any rhyme or reason she burst into tears and sat down on the little sofa, for it seemed as if the floodgates of heaven had opened and poured its happiness into her heart—just as it had seemed to her mother once in the best parlor at Woodside Farm. ”

“ Behind them was the blue sky; in front of them the clear, still lake that wandered and wound about the garden; above their heads the leaves of a tree whispered and told strange stories to the breeze.
"Poor tree! it is sighing for the blossoms the wind has carried away," they said to each other, and they looked back at the garden. "And, poor flowers, too," they said, "all your bright colours are gone, and your petals lie scattered on the ground; to-morrow they will be dead." "Ah, no," the flowers sighed, "the rainbow-maker will gather them up, and once more they will see the sun." ”

“ Margaret began.
"Darling, you must call me Lena."
"That Mr. Garratt comes here to see Hannah, my half-sister, and not to see me."
"Oh, but Tom said that you and he talked to each other all the time," Lena went on in her sugary voice.
"This is just what I expected, considering the goings on," Hannah cried, almost losing control over herself. "But it's not Margaret that he comes to see."
"No one could come and see any one else when she is here," Lena whispered to herself; but Hannah heard, and answered quickly:
"It's she that puts herself forward and forces herself upon him." ”

“ And they will answer back—
"Yes, it is us, we have come, we have come!" and before her will stand Willie and Apple-blossom. For the big doll will have run down, and the wire spring and the sawdust will have vanished, and Apple-blossom will be the doll's little girl no more. Then the tall aunt will look at them both and kiss them; and she will kiss the poor little goat too, wondering if it is possible to buy him a new tail. But though she will say little, her heart will sing for joy. ”

“ At heart you have been lovers, and you can't deny it. She has given you the one love of her life, dear"—Mrs. Lakeman was becoming sentimental—"and I never dreamed that you had not given her yours. You can go back to Margaret Vincent, if you like, but you have killed my child—my one, only child. You must see how ill she looks, how changed she is."
"But this is ghastly," he said; "I'm not a bit in love with Lena. I never cared for any one in that way but Margaret, and I want to marry her."
"Go and marry her," Mrs. Lakeman answered, in a low voice; "Lena will not be alive to see it. ”

“ Tom, too! Margaret thought.
"Well, they seem to think he's looking after Mabel Margetson," the woman answered.
"There'd be some money there," the man said.
"A good bit, no doubt," the woman answered; "but money isn't everything."
No, money isn't everything, Margaret's heart answered them. Money is nothing, after a certain point; nothing is anything except the love of your dearest, the sound of a living voice, the sight [Pg 303] of a dear face, the touch of a thin, gaunt cheek against your own. "Oh, she must live," she cried dumbly to herself, though never a sign or movement betrayed it. ”

“ THE VIOLETS.
The sun came out and shone down on the leafless trees that cast hardly any shadows on the pathway through the woods.
"Surely the Spring is coming," the birds said; "it must be time to wake the flowers."
The thrush, and the lark, and the linnet sang sweetly. A robin flew up from the snow, and perched upon a branch; a little ragged boy at the end of the wood stopped and listened.
"Surely the Spring is coming," he too said; "and mother will get well." ”

“ An unreasonable, undefinable happiness that could not be put into words rose to her heart when she thought of Tom Carringford. She could hear his laughter still, and his merry talk as they made a bower of Miss Hunstan's room; she wanted to see him again already, and something told her that he wanted to see her.
The farm-yard gates were wide open. It was good to see the corner of the Dutch garden again, and in the porch, just as Margaret had known she would be, her mother stood waiting. Mr. Vincent took his wife's hand without a word, and looked into her face with a little smile. ”

“ She had imagined what London would be like from pictures, and from Guildford and Haslemere, and other places where there were shops and streets. It was what she had expected, and yet it was different. She felt herself so near to the heart of things, as if the people going to and fro were the pulse of the world; she could almost hear the throb of their [Pg 57] lives. She wanted to be in the whirl of things, too, to know what it was all like, to understand—oh, no, no! the farm was better, the Dutch garden and the best parlor and the mother who was thinking of her. ”

“ But in the toy-land Apple-blossom waits with the wire spring in her breast and the sawdust in her limbs; and at home, in the big house at the end of the village, the tall aunt weeps and wails and wonders if she will ever see again the children she loves so well. ”

“ Tom has been ours—all his life," Mrs. Lakeman went on, vehemently; "he and she have grown up together; he has always loved her; he has done everything for us; they have never been three days apart till we went to Scotland the other day. She worships him, and it has been the one hope of my life to see them married. She has never dreamed of anything else; he is the air she breathes and the world she lives in. When that telegram came yesterday it struck her like a death-blow."
[Pg 284]
"Oh, but Tom and I love each other," Margaret cried, in despair. ”

“ Then all was still, and she knew that her mother had died.
"She is better off; God be merciful to her, a sinner," Hannah said, and sat down in the arm-chair at the bedside. It seemed to Margaret as if hours went by while she cowered and rocked in her hiding-place, hoping that presently the dead would be left alone for a little, and that then she might creep out and see her mother's face once more.
But this was not to be, for when Hannah rose she called down the staircase: "Towsey, you can come; we must make her ready." ”

“ There are deep ruts along the lane, suggesting that heavy carts come and go, and presently, on the right also, are the gates of Woodside Farm. Inside the farm gates there is another duck-pond; and there are haystacks and out-buildings, and all the signs of thriving agricultural life. Just beyond the wide, untidy drive you can catch a glimpse of the Dutch garden, with its green paths and yew hedges, its roses and sweet peas. The house is an old one; moss and ivy and lichen grown; a porch, with a seat in it, to the front door, and latticed panes to the window. ”

“ They called the beech wood their cathedral—the great elms and beeches and closely knit oak-trees made its roof and the columns of its aisles—and it seemed as if in their hearts they celebrated a silent service there to a mysterious God who had made joy and sorrow and all the beauty of the earth and given it to humanity for good or ill. In a sense, Margaret had no other religion. ”

“ Vincent answered, "and I hope he won't call himself by any other name than the one he has been known by. For my part, I never could see why people set so much store on titles. The biggest lord that lives only lies in one grave at last, and it isn't as if Gerald had a son to come after him, or was coming to big estates that had to be thought of. He'll live here again, and be just the same as he always was." She looked bravely at Mrs. Lakeman though her heart was sinking, for she knew that the old life at Woodside Farm was forever at an end. ”

“ He enjoyed every yard of it; up the hill and past the cottages, along the road beyond; beside the moor covered with ling, and through Chidhurst village, till he came in sight of the church, and the gates of Sir George Stringer's house just opposite the little gate that led across the fields to the farm. He looked at the box of roses and the basket of peaches and grapes on the driver's seat. "I hope my mother-in-law is better," he thought, with a happy laugh in his eyes. "I believe I shall be fond of her, and Vincent is a brick."
"You know there's a death at the farm, sir?" ”

“ 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." ”

“ He stood behind her in an attitude while Chopin's magnificent chords rolled upward—to Gerald Vincent's books, and down to the gray-haired woman in the chintz-covered chair, before they stole out of the open window into the Dutch garden and the indefinite wood beyond, as if they sought the cathedral.
"Margaret," cried Hannah, hurrying from the kitchen, "close the piano at once. Sunday is no time for playing." ”

“ Hannah began.
"Oh, but let me speak," Margaret went on, passionately; "it's being honest that matters, and doing right—trying to be all that Christ preached [Pg 329] —if we are only that we can leave the rest. It is not we who doubt God, but you who doubt Him when you think He could be hard and cruel to us. There are so many forms of religion in the world besides the one that you believe in; are all the people to be condemned who try to do right from different points of view? It's all a mystery and beyond our comprehension." ”

“ Margaret felt, as they drove on again, as if she had found a playfellow, a comrade, some one who made life a wholly different thing. She had never been on equal terms with any one young before—with any one at all who laughed and chattered and looked at the world from the same stand-point as she felt that she and Tom did, though till yesterday she had not set eyes on him. ”