Margaret Vincent: A Novel

Margaret Vincent is the heroine of this story, but there are others who play important parts in it. Her grandfather was old Lord Eastleigh, well known in his day, fascinating and happy-go-lucky, who, when he had spent his patrimony in extravagant living, and disgraced himself as a guinea-pig, discreetly died, leaving his elder son, Cyril Vincent, all his debts and most of his difficulties. Cyril was rather amused by the title, added to the debts to the best of his ability, married a lady from the music-halls, and, finding London impossible, went a-ranching with his wife on the other side of the world. There the life and its isolation absorbed his energies and identification. But that was five-and-twenty years ago--and this, be it said, is a modern story.

Gerald, the younger son and only other survivor of the Eastleigh family, distinguished himself at Oxford, became engaged to the daughter of a bishop, accepted a living from his prospective father-in-law, and within six months changed his opinions, threw up the living, made himself notorious in the days when agnosticism was a crime, by writing some articles that closed the door of every second house in London against him and secured his being promptly jilted by the woman with whom he had been in love. He had just two hundred a year, inherited from his mother. His habits were indolent, his tastes simple. The one desire left him after the crash was to get out of everybody's sight, to think, and to smoke his pipe in peace, and presently perhaps to write a book in which he could freely express the bitterness packed away at the bottom of his heart and soul. He travelled for a few years, and thus lost sight, much to their satisfaction, of all his distant relations (near ones, with the exception of his brother, he had none), dropped his courtesy title of Honorable, and became a fairly contented loafer. He was an excellent walker, which was lucky, seeing that two hundred a year will not go far in travelling expenses, so he trudged over every pass in Switzerland, up Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, down into Italy over the St. Gothard--there was no rail then, of course--and back by the Corniche road to France; up France by Avignon and Dijon to Paris, and at the end of a few years back to England to realize that he was thoroughly well forgotten.

The streets of London irritated him with their noise, and the people with their hurrying. The pavement tired his feet, the manner of life--that is, the manner of life to be had on so small an income as his--he found irritating and almost impossible. One day he packed a knapsack, filled his pouch, walked through Putney and Wandsworth and onward. He breathed more freely when he reached Wimbledon, which had then an almost rustic railway station and not a building near it, drew a long breath at Surbiton, and, blessing the beautiful county of Surrey, trudged on with a light heart. It was thus that he arrived at Chidhurst and discovered Woodside Farm.

Chidhurst is some miles from Farnham, from Liphook and Fernhurst, from Blackdown and Hindhead--from anywhere, in fact, with which the reader may try to identify it. Its nearest station is Haslemere, and that is five or six miles off. The village consists of a few cottages, one of which is a general shop and the other a small beer-house. Against the side wall of the beer-house there is a pillar-box, but stamps have to be bought at Haslemere or of the local postman. There is not even a smithy, man and beast must alike travel three good miles to be reshod--to the blacksmith's near the cobbler's on the common. A little way from the village, standing high among the wooded land on the right, is the church. It is half covered with ivy; there are white tombstones round it, and on its square tower a clock that is seldom right and never to be trusted. From the churchyard there is a divine view: fir woods in the foreground, beech woods to the left, heather moors to the right, and blue in the distance--soft and misty in the memory of those who love them--are the Surrey hills. A beautiful spot to stay and muse in on a drowsy summer day, a blessed one to sleep in when time has met eternity.

A mile from the church, farther into the heart of the country, by the road-side, there is a duck-pond, and just beyond it, on the right again, a green lane with high, close-growing hedges on either side, of sweet-briar and bramble, honeysuckle and travellers'-joy, while low down are clumps of heather and the tender green of the wortleberry. 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. The door opens into a square hall or living-place, red tiled and black beamed. On either side of the big fireplace there used to be a heavy wooden chair with carved and substantial arms and a red cushion tied on its back; in the centre of the room a large oak table; against the wall a dresser, an old chest, an eight-day clock, and a portrait of Queen Victoria in her coronation robes. It was here that the Barton family always sat; for the best rooms were let to strangers in the summer and carefully covered and darkened in the winter. Going up from the living-place was a wide staircase, old and worm-eaten, with a dark hand-rail to it, that many a dweller in distant cities would have been glad to buy for an extravagant sum. Beyond the staircase was a door leading to the red-tiled kitchen, where Towsey Pook, the house-servant, who had lived at Woodside Farm for forty years, did such work as was required of her--which meant on an average fourteen hours a day given over to labor or thought of labor; but she was a strong woman, and well content.

Mrs. Barton owned the farm in her own right at the time when Gerald Vincent set out on the walk that ended at Chidhurst. It had descended from father to son, or mother to daughter, for full two hundred years. The tradition was likely to be kept up, since at well-turned five-and-thirty, after eleven years of uneventful matrimony, Mrs. Barton had found herself a widow with one child, a girl called Hannah.

Now, Hannah, even at nine years old, was an uncompromising little person--a singer of hymns and observer of people; and this she owed to her maternal grandparents, thriving farmers and dissenters, living at Petersfield. Her father, one of a large family, had done well for himself by his marriage, since through it he became the master of Woodside Farm, which was the reason, perhaps, that his people had made no objection to the churchgoing of his wife, or even of the child. After all, too, the service at Chidhurst was a strictly evangelical one--the sermon had been known to last near upon fifty minutes, and something has to be conceded to those who hold property in their own right. Unluckily, when she was eight years old, her father being delicate, and she in the way at home, Hannah went to stay at Petersfield. Her grandfather, a stern old Methodist, initiated habits and imbued her with notions that took deep root in her nature, so that, when two years later she returned to Woodside Farm to comfort her lonely mother, the result of his training was already evident. She was a plain child, and a plain woman later, with hard, gray-blue eyes and fair hair drawn back from her forehead, a pink color that could never be counted a bloom, and a somewhat thin face, with a straight mouth and pointed chin; moreover, she had a voice that suggested a strong will and a narrow outlook.

It was a full year after James Barton's death that Gerald Vincent first set eyes on the village of Chidhurst, and was charmed by it. He looked carefully from right to left, hesitated, and stopped at the little shop to ask if there were any rooms to be had for the summer.

"There's a house, sir," said the woman; "it stands back among the trees, just as you come to the church. It was built for a vicarage, but Mr. Walford found it too big, so it's let to strangers."

"I don't want a house," the stranger said, impatiently.

Then a voice from the back called out, "There's Woodside Farm, mother."

"To be sure," said the woman. "The rooms have never been let since James Barton was first took ill; but I dare say she'll be glad to get somebody. You go past the church and along the road till you come to the duck-pond, then turn off to the right and walk on till you see it."

Mrs. Barton was spreading the white linen, which Towsey Pook had just washed, over the bushes in the Dutch garden, when suddenly she beheld not ten yards away a tall man in gray tweed, with dust-covered shoes and a knapsack on his shoulders. He was young--thirty or less, though at a first glance he might have been older; he looked studious, and as if he were a somebody, Mrs. Barton told herself later. His manner was a little awkward for the moment, but in his eye was courteous inquiry. The widow stopped and criticised him with quiet excitement, while he thought how good a picture she made with the sunflowers and sweet peas on either side of her, and the rose-bushes and patches of white linen spread out to dry in the foreground; and the yew hedges and the taller greenery behind added to the effect of her. For she was comely still, though she was nearly seven-and-thirty by this time; not stout, or even inclined that way, since, being an active woman, she took plenty of exercise and worried over much in secret, which prevented the spoiling of her figure.

Mr. Vincent asked if it would be possible to have some bread-and-butter and tea, to which she assented readily; and while he ate and drank in the living-place, he explained that he wanted to find a lodging in the neighborhood, to which he could bring his books and peacefully read and write for a few months. He hardly liked to propose himself as a lodger all at once, for there was an air of something that was almost distinction about the widow; it made him feel that if there were any social difference between them the advantage was on her side. She stood at first beside the oak table, and then was persuaded to sit, and she made a picture, framed in one of the big arm-chairs, that he never forgot, while she explained that there was a spare room that had not been slept in for three years past, and the best parlor that had not been used since Barton's funeral day. She bethought herself of the odor of mustiness which was beginning to pervade them both, since she had grudged a fire by which no one sat and gathered warmth. The farm produce, too, was good and plentiful; it would be easy to feed the stranger, and his stay would put some easily earned pounds into her pocket. Thus the arrangement came about, and each of them was satisfied.