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Title: The Rebellion of Margaret
Author: Geraldine Mockler
Illustrator: Arthur Twidle
Release Date: July 16, 2006 [EBook #18844]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REBELLION OF MARGARET ***
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THE REBELLION OF MARGARET
BY GERALDINE MOCKLER
AUTHOR OF "THE GIRLS OF ST. BEDE'S," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY ARTHUR TWIDLE
LONDON
JARROLD & SONS, 10 & 11, Warwick Lane, E.C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. Margaret's Dream Friend
II. Margaret overhears a Conversation
III. Margaret starts on a Journey
IV. Margaret makes a Friend
V. Eleanor Carson
VI. Margaret and Eleanor change Names
VII. Mrs. Murray meets the Train
VIII. Maud Danvers
IX. The Danvers Family
X. Eleanor at Windy Gap
XI. A Practical Joke
XII. Eleanor meets Margaret's Aunt
XIII. Hilary turns Detective
XIV. The Hour of Reckoning
XV. An Unexpected Visitor
XVI. Conclusion
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Margaret!" said the Old Man, breaking into speech at
last, and in a very harsh voice: "What Folly is this?"
"I am going for a Walk into the Town," she said, shyly
Maud swung round and saw Margaret standing with a
Pile of Letters by her Mother's Chair
Eleanor turned to the Piano, and ran her Fingers
Lightly over the Keys
"That Girl," pointing a lean, accusing Finger at Eleanor,
"is not my Granddaughter Margaret"
CHAPTER I
MARGARET'S DREAM FRIEND
"Margaret Anstruther! Margaret Anstruther! Margaret Anstruther!"
It was a sultry afternoon in early July. The sun was shining out of a
cloudless blue sky, the air was so still and so overpoweringly hot that
it seemed to have sent every living creature, save the owner of the voice
that was calling upon Margaret Anstruther, to sleep, for no answer was
returned to the thrice repeated call, and the silence which the summons
had broken settled once more over the garden. Not a leaf on even one of
the topmost twigs of the huge old elms from underneath which that
insistent voice had come was stirring, not an insect chirped, and the
birds who held morning and evening concerts among the branches were
silent now.
"Margaret Anstruther, will you come and play tennis? My brothers Reginald
and Lionel want a game, and if you will play we shall be four, and
because you have not had much practice lately you shall play with
Reginald, for he plays better than Lionel."
Greystones was noted for its elm-trees. The grounds, indeed, contained
little else in the shape of flowers or trees but elms. For a few brief
weeks in spring when they were dressed in the tenderest of greens they
were lovely, and in the autumn, if the leaves were not stripped off by
gales before they had a chance to turn golden, their hues could vie with
those flaunted by any other trees, but in the summer their dull, uniform
green was apt to become monotonous, and Margaret Anstruther was then wont
to declare that she could cheerfully have rooted up every one of them.
But as the remark never reached any one else's ears but her own, no one's
feelings were hurt. A chance visitor to Greystones, regular visitors were
not encouraged, had once observed that the entire grounds, some thirty or
forty acres in extent, which comprised the domain must have been an elm
wood originally, and that a space just sufficient on which to erect a
house of moderate dimensions had been cleared in the heart of it,
Greystones had been built, a way cut through the trees to form a drive to
the road a quarter of a mile distant from the house, and the rest of the
wood left undisturbed to be called a garden or not as the owner pleased.
Certainly the present owner had made no attempt to form a garden, but had
allowed the elms to grow right up to the walls of the house and to darken
the windows of the gloomily situated dwelling as much as they pleased.
"Margaret Anstruther, if you will not come and play tennis, will you come
for a ride upon your bicycle--that nice new one that you received as a
present from--from your grandfather." Here the speaker paused and laughed
as if the idea of Margaret Anstruther getting a bicycle from her
grandfather was a distinctly amusing idea. "We will go far, far along to
the blue distance--much farther than you ever went with Miss Bidwell--and
we will have tea at the inn down by the river and come home by moonlight.
We shall be quite safe, for Reginald and Lionel will be with us, and they
will take care of us."
The part of the grounds in which this so far one-sided conversation was
taking place was at some considerable distance from the house, in fact it
was right on the confines of the wood and as far from the house as
possible. Beyond the wood flat, green fields stretched on all sides
undiversified by as much as a copse or a hill. Even a bare, ploughed
field would have been a welcome relief to the landscape, while a yellow
cornfield would have imparted a positively gay appearance to it; but year
in year out those green fields wore always the same aspect.
But dull though the view might be, it was at least a wide one, and there
were the sheep and the cows that grazed in them to look at. Occasionally,
too, a stray passer-by, under the erroneous impression that in crossing
them he was taking a short cut, would venture into them, only to turn
back discomfited when confronted with padlocked gates and hedges threaded
with barbed wire, to say nothing of notice boards warning trespassers to
beware.
For the man who owned Greystones and those densely wooded grounds also
owned the fields that surrounded them, and his hatred of intruders was
well known in the immediate neighbourhood. It was a brave child who crept
through his hedges or climbed over his gates to pick primroses or
blackberries, and the urchin that was unlucky enough to encounter old Mr.
Anstruther while so engaged never ventured to trespass on his property
again.
"Margaret Anstruther! Margaret Anstruther! are you going to sit under
that tree all the afternoon? If you are too lazy to play tennis or to
come for a ride, will you come with me to Lady Barchester's garden party?
She has invited two hundred guests, and you must wear that lovely white
muslin dress with the little frills all up the skirt, and the big white
hat with the pink roses, and do not forget to take the pink chiffon
parasol that was sent you from Paris last week. We have been asked to
remain to dinner there, you may remember, for there will be a dance
afterwards. And the moon will be shining, and will it not be very
pleasant to sit out in the garden between the dances! Will you come,
Margaret Anstruther?"
That proposal was surely one that ought to have been tempting enough to
have called forth an answer of some sort from the girl to whom it was
addressed, but it was met by the same dead silence that had followed the
other suggestions.
Then somewhere near at hand a gate creaked loudly, there was the sound of
a key being turned in a padlock, and with his back towards the sunlit
fields from which he had come some ten minutes previously, the tall, thin
figure of an old man with a flowing white beard and with an Inverness
cloak hanging from his spare shoulders strode over the grass in the
direction of the thick clump of trees from which the unseen voice had
proceeded.
Though he took no pains to render them inaudible, his footsteps made no
sound on the grass, and as he approached the same voice spoke again,
unconscious of his near presence.
"Margaret Anstruther," it went on, "do you not then wish to do any of the
nice things I have told you about? Do you like sitting here by yourself,
when outside in the world real things are happening, and there are real
people to whom you might be talking, and whom you might know? Are you
happy? Tell me that."
The old man came to a pause, as abrupt as it was involuntary. Had any one
been there to see his face at that moment they would have perceived that
he was finding it difficult to believe the evidence of his ears. Almost
against his will it seemed he waited to hear the answer to that question,
for his obvious impulse had been to stride on and confront the speaker,
on whom his cold blue eyes, lightened now with a gleam of anger, rested.
She was sitting at the foot of a big elm-tree, with her back resting
against its trunk and her hands loosely clasped round her knees. She was
very young, and the forlorn droop of her figure and the pathetic
expression that was at that moment depicted upon her face made her look
even younger than her years, which numbered barely eighteen.
"Oh, Eleanor Humphreys!" she said, and her clear hazel eyes brimmed over
with tears as she spoke. "I am very, very miserable. Nobody loves me, and
I have nobody to love except you, of course, Eleanor Humphreys, and
sometimes I cannot make believe that you are real at all."
"Margaret!" said the old man, breaking into speech at last, and in a very
harsh voice. "What folly is this? To whom are you talking? Who is this
Eleanor Humphreys? Where is she?"
[Illustration: "MARGARET," SAID THE OLD MAN, BREAKING INTO SPEECH AT
LAST, AND IN A VERY HARSH VOICE, "WHAT FOLLY IS THIS?"]
And with both hands resting on his stick, which was planted firmly on the
ground in front of him, he darted suspicious searching glances among the
surrounding trees.
At the sound of her name uttered in those hard tones Margaret had sprung
to her feet; her face, pale before, had turned yet paler, and her big
hazel eyes fastened themselves with a terror-stricken expression on her
grandfather's face.
"How dare you encourage people to come into my grounds and talk to you
without my permission? Have I not expressly forbidden you to make
acquaintances without my knowledge. Who is this Eleanor Humphreys? Where
is she hiding? What does she mean by coming here and asking you to
accompany her to tennis parties and dances? Answer me. Tell me who she
is, and how she comes to be here without my knowledge."
"She is nobody; she--she is nowhere," stammered Margaret, whose trembling
lips could scarcely frame the words.
"Nobody, nowhere," thundered the old man. "Don't dare to trifle with me,
Margaret. Show her to me immediately, and I will tell her, whoever she
may be, what I think of her for presuming to come here without my leave."
Margaret's lips gave a sudden little twitch, which showed that, badly
frightened as she was, a hint of the humour of the situation had dawned
upon her mind.
"You--you can't scold her, grandfather. She--she isn't real. She is my
dream friend."
There was a momentary silence, during which Margaret, glancing timidly at
her grandfather's stern and angry face and reading there the contemptuous
scorn which he felt for her unworthy self, wished that the earth might
open and swallow her up. But as it remained unyieldingly firm she had
perforce to remain above ground and endure to the full his prolonged
scrutiny.
"So," he said at length, and if anything had been wanting to complete her
discomfiture and to drive away any lingering feeling of mirth, his tone
would have been more than sufficient for that purpose, "so this is the
manner in which you pass your time. In dreaming about imaginary people,
and in holding conversations remarkable for their utter inanity with
them, about tennis parties and dances and pink chiffon parasols."
Failing a yawning chasm at her feet, Margaret would have been thankful
if that same pink parasol had been a reality at that moment, and in her
hand, so that she could have held it as a screen between her crimsoning
face and his pitiless old eyes. She writhed inwardly to think that all
the idle fancies in which she had been indulging during the afternoon
had been poured into her grandfather's angry ears. And it was positive
agony to her shy nature to know that her shadowy friend was no longer her
own secret.
"Kindly have the goodness to answer my question. Seeing that but a
few minutes have elapsed since you were proving yourself capable of
sustaining both sides of a conversation, I think that it cannot be too
great a strain upon you to reply to my question now. Do you hear me?"
All trace of anger had vanished now both from Mr. Anstruther's face and
from his manner, and he spoke in the cold, precise tones, and framed his
sentences in the rather stilted manner habitual to him.
"Yes, grandfather," Margaret gasped in a very small voice. She was rarely
at ease with her grandfather--he had never taken any pains to render her
so--and when he addressed her in tones of semi-sarcasm she grew so
disconcerted that she could not answer him coherently. And, as the more
confused she became the more caustic his tongue waxed; their interviews,
brief though they were, often concluded with anger on his part and with
tears on hers.
"Then I should be obliged if you would have the kindness to answer me."
"I--I forget what it was that you asked me," stammered Margaret.
"Oh, I do not flatter myself that my questions can vie in interest with
those addressed to you by your imaginary friend. Nevertheless, I should
be glad if you will kindly pay attention to them. I asked you if it was
in this profitable manner that you usually passed your afternoons now."
"Sometimes, grandfather."
"Then I will find you something else to do. What is it that you ought to
be doing at this hour?"
"Three to four. Take exercise," said Margaret in the tone of a child
repeating a lesson.
"And this is the way in which you take it? By sitting and dreaming
away your time in nonsense and folly and in making up silly, idle
conversations with idiotic creatures of your own imagination. I gave even
you, Margaret, credit for more sense. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
Now, if Margaret had murmured the meek affirmative reply that was
obviously expected of her, the whole course of her life might have been
different. Her grandfather would probably have delivered himself of a few
more harsh strictures, and then Margaret would have been dismissed to the
house, with orders to double her morrow's lessons.
But though she winced at the scorn with which he spoke to her, it did not
cut so deep as the ridicule he poured on what he contemptuously termed
the idiotic creatures of her own imagination, and oddly enough, though
she would never have summoned up enough courage to justify her own
actions to him, she could not remain silent when the intelligence of her
shadowy friend was derided.
"No;" she said slowly, thoughtfully, and quite as much amazed at her own
temerity as Mr. Anstruther was; "I don't think I am ashamed, grandfather.
You see, I am very fond of Eleanor Humphreys. She has been a very great
comfort to me."
Sheer amazement held Mr. Anstruther silent. He would probably have been
less surprised if the kitchen cat had entered into conversation with him.
"When I am lonely she comes and talks to me. She is not always alone,
like me, but is one of a large family of brothers and sisters. They have
such good times together. They play tennis, and go to parties and dances,
and sometimes I go with them; but when I cannot go Eleanor comes here
afterwards and tells me all she has been doing, and then it is just as
though I had been to the parties also."
But at that point Margaret pulled herself up in a sudden breathless
manner. It was always like that she thought confusedly. Either she had
not courage to open her lips to her grandfather, or else she was led into
saying all manner of things which a moment's calm reflection would have
told her must on no account pass her lips.
But at any rate, as she realised with a queer little thrill of
excitement, she had not been disloyal enough to say that she was ashamed
of her affection for Eleanor. And she had had to derive as much comfort
from that thought as possible, for it required no great discernment to
see that her grandfather was terribly angry with her. Yet, when he spoke,
his voice was as cold and as even, his diction as precise, as usual.
"I wonder, Margaret," he said, "if you are mad, or merely pretending to
be mad. In either case, I have listened to you long enough. Kindly go
into the house, seat yourself at the piano, and practise scales for two
hours. The sound at this hour of the day will not be a pleasing one; but
hearing it I shall trust that the manual exercise is keeping your mind
from dwelling further on this folly."
Margaret required no second bidding to leave him, but retreated from the
spot at the fastest walk she could manage. To have run from his presence
would have been considered both disrespectful and unlady-like, and would
not have been permitted for a moment.
When the trees had swallowed her up from his sight, Mr. Anstruther turned
and walked in the other direction. And there was a perturbed look on his
face.
CHAPTER II
MARGARET OVERHEARS A CONVERSATION
Margaret's parents had died when she was in her infancy, and she had been
brought up entirely by her grandfather. As far as she knew, she had no
other relatives. Certainly he had never spoken to her of any. When she
grew old enough to begin lessons, Mr. Anstruther had engaged an excellent
governess to reside at Greystones, and at her hands Margaret had received
a careful, sound education. No nun in a convent ever led a more regular
existence than Margaret had led from the time she was five years old
until a few weeks before this story opens. Certainly no girl was ever
expected to lead so quiet and monotonous an existence.
Every morning, winter and summer alike, she entered the schoolroom
punctually at seven and practised on the piano for an hour and a half. At
half-past eight she and Miss Bidwell breakfasted together. Nine to eleven
were lesson hours. Eleven to one were exercise hours. At 1.30 they dined.
The afternoon programme varied according to the seasons and the weather.
In summer they worked from three to five and went out afterwards, while
in winter the order of things was reversed and they went out first and
worked afterwards. After tea Margaret practised again, prepared her
lessons for the next day, and went to bed at nine.
And that had been her daily life year in year out until a few months
before the day on which this story opens. And then, greatly to Mr.
Anstruther's annoyance, an event had occurred which upset all his
carefully laid plans. Miss Bidwell, whose sight had never been very
strong, was threatened with cataract in both eyes, and acting on the
advice of a clever little doctor who had lately come to the
neighbourhood, she had decided to go to her mother's relatives in France
and to take a complete rest until her eyes should be ready for operation.
The news that Miss Bidwell's sight had been failing for some time came as
no surprise to her pupil, who had perceived for some time past that her
governess could scarcely see to read even with the aid of her strongest
glasses, and Margaret, without allowing her to know that she knew--for
she divined that Miss Bidwell had striven desperately to conceal the
truth not only from those around her, but from herself too--had done the
little that lay in her power to save her governess's eyes as much as
possible.
But to Mr. Anstruther the news came as a very disagreeable shock. He had
not intended to part with Miss Bidwell for at least three or four years
to come. Other people might perhaps have considered that Margaret was
already growing too old to be subject to the control of a governess, and
that if her character were to be properly developed she must now be
allowed to think and act independently. But if any one had ventured to
express these sentiments to Mr. Anstruther, they would have been
requested, not over politely, to mind their own business. He had grown
used to Miss Bidwell, and he disliked the idea either of replacing her by
a stranger, or of letting Margaret do without another governess.
Margaret parted with her governess with very real regret. Although
through all the years they had been together their relations had always
been those of mistress and pupil only, never that of friends and
companions, still in losing her Margaret at least lost the company of
another fellow-being. For Mr. Anstruther had decided not to engage
another governess, at any rate not until he saw if he could possibly do
without one. His dislike for his fellow creatures became intensified
every year, and had it not been that his occupation of farming took him
out of doors all day long and brought him into contact with all sorts and
conditions of people, he would long ago have turned into the recluse that
he wished his granddaughter to be.
For the existence that he planned for her now was one of the most
extraordinary that a girl of her age was ever called upon to live. She
was, he decreed, to go on exactly as if her governess was still with her,
to read for so many hours a day, to practise for so many more, and to
take regular exercise in the garden. For out of the confines of the
grounds she was now strictly forbidden to go. But as Margaret listened to
the rules that were being laid down for her she never dreamed of
questioning them, but in the shy voice that was habitual to her in her
grandfather's presence promised obedience to them. And as she left the
room her grandfather looked after her with an expression of great
satisfaction on his face. But the satisfaction was for himself, and not
for her. How well he had brought her up! How wise his treatment of her
had been! What a commendable difference between her manner to him, and
her mother's! He had vowed that he would bring up Margaret's daughter to
respect and obey him in the smallest particular, and he had accomplished
the task he had set himself.
It had, after all, been quite an easy one. The great secret was, he
reflected to maintain an attitude of judicious firmness, and never to
relax it. Not once had Margaret ever ventured to argue with him or to
question his right to order her every action. And so very well pleased
with himself Mr. Anstruther dismissed her from his mind and went about
his own affairs. It had been a matter of some surprise to Margaret to
find how soon she not only got accustomed to Miss Bidwell's absence, but
ceased to miss her. Naturally she felt a little lonely at first, and it
was rather strange to look up from her work and not see the thin, angular
form of her governess seated at the head of the table with a book, at the
pages of which she had latterly, at least, not looked much, open before
her, nor to hear the ceaseless click click of her steel knitting needles.
But as soon as the feeling of loneliness and the sense of almost
oppressive silence that now surrounded her wore off Margaret grew to like
her hours of solitary study. The hours that she found most irksome were
those that she was compelled to spend taking exercise in the grounds. For
though she liked being out in the open air, she soon grew heartily tired
of walking about under the shade of the densely growing elms, and she
missed the long country walks with Miss Bidwell to which she had been
accustomed.
Gradually the monotony and exceeding loneliness of her life began to tell
upon her spirits, her appetite failed, she grew paler and thinner, and
her step as she roamed aimlessly about the grounds grew daily more
languid.
But still no thought of rebelling against the queer existence she was
leading entered her mind, for as yet she had scarcely realised how
unhappy she was. It was an intensely hot summer, and she thought that the
unusual heat was responsible for the lack of interest she felt in all her
usual occupations, and for the tired feeling which made her now, instead
of obeying her grandfather's orders to take exercise, deliberately seek
out the shadiest spot among the trees and sit quietly there the whole
afternoon. It was probably the very first deliberate act of disobedience
of which she had ever of set purpose been guilty in her life, and it was
to have consequences of which she little dreamed.
One afternoon, some two or three weeks before the day on which her
grandfather was to come so unexpectedly upon her, she was sitting there
half asleep when the unusual sound of footsteps and voices in the field
below her startled her into complete wakefulness.
Though she was close to the hedge that divided the fields from the woods,
she was so well screened from observation, not only by the hedge but by a
clump of intervening young trees, that she was able to rise to her feet
and look at the speakers as they passed without fear of detection.
For strangers to be trespassing in her grandfather's fields was an event
rare enough to excite her curiosity, and she was eager to know who the
intrepid people might be.
Somewhat to her surprise, she recognised in one of them the clergyman of
the church five miles distant, to which they always drove every Sunday
morning. It was not their own parish church, for with the rector of that
Mr. Anstruther had quarrelled many years ago, not for any particular
reason except that he was the clergyman of the parish and therefore to be
kept at a distance.
He was walking with a middle-aged little man of kindly aspect in whom
Margaret recognised Dr. Knowles, the doctor who had lately bought old Dr.
Carter's practice, and who had advised Miss Bidwell to go abroad for her
eyesight.
Though nothing was further from Margaret's mind than any intention of
eaves-dropping, she could not help overhearing every word that was spoken
as they passed the spot where she was standing. Mr. Summers, the
clergyman, was speaking.
"Yes, poor girl. It is a great shame. Her grandfather keeps her cooped up
in that gloomy old place and never lets her see a soul. She has passed a
lonely, unloved youth, for I am sure her grandfather has never shown her
any affection, and I am equally sure that her dry stick of a governess
did not, and, poor child, she has never been allowed to associate with
any one else. She has never been allowed to have a friend or to go to a
party or a dance in her life. And she must be nearly eighteen now. It
really is a shame, for youth only comes once."
"What a queer life! What a queer life for a girl to lead!" said the
little doctor in jerky tones. "And is she contented with it?"
"Yes, I think so; but, then, she has no idea what she is missing."
With that reply the two voices passed out of hearing, leaving Margaret
standing motionless under the tree. Of course it was she of whom they
were talking. Was she, then, so greatly to be pitied? The idea was such
a novel one that she could not take it in all at once, but gradually the
truth of what they had said dawned with overwhelming force upon her mind.
"A lonely, unloved youth." Yes, such a youth had certainly been hers. Of
course her grandfather had never loved her. In the bewildered state of
her mind she hardly knew whether she had always realised that fact, or
whether she had taken his affection for her for granted. And he had
allowed her no friends, no parties, no dances. Why had she thus been
brought up aloof from every one? Certainly, as Mr. Summers had said in
reply to Dr. Knowles' question as to whether she was content with her
existence, she was content simply because she knew no better one. She
had not realised before in what a very different fashion other girls were
brought up. But now her eyes were open. That simple phrase, "She does not
know, poor child, what she is missing," had told her more than many
lengthy explanations could have done.
Looking back afterwards on those moments during which she had stood
gazing with unseeing eyes after the departing figures of the two men,
they seemed to her to make a dividing line between all her previous
and her after life. She had thought that the departure of Miss Bidwell
had been an epoch in it; now that sank into comparative insignificance,
for after all her departure had left her, Margaret, unchanged.
But the same could not be said of this event. Hitherto she had blindly,
unquestioningly accepted her grandfather's right to order every detail
of her life, and if she had thought about the matter at all she had
doubtless supposed that his authority over her would always be as
absolute as it was now.
However, it was one thing to discover that her childhood had missed, and
her girlhood was losing, many of the pleasures that should rightly belong
to them, but to remedy this state of affairs was quite another. Although
the idea that her grandfather had been unduly strict with her had been
thus suddenly brought home to her, it did not in the least lesson the
habitual awe in which she stood of him, and as she was obliged to
continue to adhere to the rules he had laid down for her, she began to
wonder whether she had not been happier when she had not dreamed of
questioning his right to exact such unquestioning obedience from her.
"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise," she quoted to herself,
and what was the good of knowing that her life was so dull if she dared
not do anything to make it less so. Since Miss Bidwell's departure she
had fallen into the habit of talking aloud to herself, for she found that
during her many long, lonely hours the sound even of her own voice made
some companionship for her, and her conversations with Eleanor Humphreys
were now no longer carried on in the recesses of her mind but out loud.
It was a dangerous habit, as she was to discover ere long, especially as
Eleanor had of late, since in fact the seeds of discontent had been sown
in Margaret's mind, not stopped at describing her gaieties to her friend,
but tried to persuade her to break bounds and to come and join in the
revels.
And that was what had brought Margaret into such serious trouble with her
grandfather.
CHAPTER III
MARGARET STARTS ON A JOURNEY
The immediate result of the conversation that Mr. Anstruther had
overheard between his granddaughter and her imaginary friend was a visit
from the doctor to Margaret. Mr. Anstruther was sure that Margaret would
never have dreamed of rebelling against him even in her thoughts had she
not been ill, and within an hour from the time he had dispatched his
granddaughter in disgrace to the house, Mr. Anstruther followed her there
accompanied by Dr. Knowles. Dr. Knowles it was whose conversation with
the clergyman Margaret had in her turn overheard from behind the hedge,
and if he had pitied Margaret before, his pity increased tenfold, when by
a series of skilfully put questions he had drawn from her a description
of her daily life. But he smiled reassuringly at her as he bade her
good-bye, and promised to send her a prescription that he knew she would
like.
But though, when she came to hear of it, Margaret approved this
prescription, her grandfather strongly objected to it when it was
first mooted to him. For it was change of air that the doctor
prescribed--change of air immediate and complete.
"If you could fill this house with young people, and let her lead a gay,
lively life here, I don't say that it might not do her as much good as a
change of climate, but," perceiving that Mr. Anstruther's face was set
like a flint at a mere suggestion of such a thing, "a change would be
better still. She has been too long in this flat, low-lying district;
Brighton or Eastbourne, or any part of the Sussex Downs, would be of
immense benefit to her."
"And if I follow neither of these alternatives," said Mr. Anstruther
harshly, "if I let her go on as she is doing now, what then?"
"Then I think you will run a great risk of having a morbid, melancholy
young lady on your hands--a delicate one too--for she is in danger of
becoming anemic, unless her health improves."
Dr. Knowles spoke so emphatically that, averse though he was to the idea
of letting his granddaughter go away, Mr. Anstruther dared not disregard
his warning. Nothing, he told himself obstinately, would have induced him
to accept the alternative proposal and fill his house with young people
for her sake. That would have been denying the very principles on which
she had been brought up. But the change was another matter altogether.
The next point to be considered was where he should send her; the doctor
had specified the Sussex downs, and that brought to Mr. Anstruther's mind
the fact that he had a friend who lived in a village high up on those
same downs. Many years ago he had visited her in the breezy place in
which she had chosen to make her home, and if his memory served him
rightly, and he had no doubt on that point, Windy Gap, as the village was
called, would be bracing enough to please the doctor, and quiet enough to
satisfy him. To the best of his belief there was scarcely another house
within three or four miles, and even if she had possessed near neighbours
Mrs. Murray would not have been likely to hold much intercourse with
them, for she was very deaf, and, as when he had known her, at least, she
had objected strongly to using an ear-trumpet, and few people had
sufficient lung power to make her hear without it, she had been quite
content not to hear them at all. Mr. Anstruther smiled rather grimly as
he reflected that Margaret's stay at Windy Gap was not likely to make her
own home seem dull by contrast when she returned to it.
Although he had held no correspondence with Mrs. Murray for many years,
they had in the days of their youth been such very good friends that Mr.
Anstruther had no scruples at all in writing to ask her if she would be
willing to consent to receive his granddaughter on a long visit. An
answer came by return of post to say that Mrs. Murray would be delighted
to have her, but that as she was totally unused to young people and
would be at a loss to know how to entertain a young girl, George must
give her some idea of what amusements she would need.
"My dear Julia," wrote Mr. Anstruther by the very next post, "Margaret
requires no amusement of any sort whatever. I particularly wish her to
make no friends and to pay no visits. You will find her obedient and
quiet, respectful towards her elders, to whose opinion she has been
taught to defer implicitly on every point. You, I think, were among those
who remonstrated with me when fourteen years ago I sketched to you the
lines on which I intended to bring up my granddaughter. When you see the
result of my training, however, you will admit that your remonstrances
were misplaced. I will not, however, disguise from you that during the
last few days her conduct has not been altogether satisfactory, but
suspecting that a grave act of disobedience of which she had been guilty
arose from the fact that she was not quite in her usual health, I called
in a doctor, and he confirmed me in this opinion and recommended change
of air. Of course, you are aware that when Margaret comes of age or when
she marries, if she marries before she is twenty-one, she inherits a
fortune of about £2,000 a year. Her mother inherited nearly double this
sum, but she and her husband--she married her second cousin and did not
change her name--between them reduced the capital by considerably more
than half. But I have brought Margaret up in utter ignorance of the fact
that she is an heiress, and have always taken pains to prevent her from
coming into contact with any one who might inform her of it. And this I
have done to guard her from being married merely for the sake of her
money. Let her lead while with you the same simple life that she has led
hitherto. Make her study for five or six hours daily and spend the rest
of the time in your lovely garden. If she goes out for walks, which seems
to me unnecessary, for she can surely take all the exercise needful to
her health in your garden, pray see that she is attended by a maid whom
you can trust. I also particularly wish her to take up the study of a new
language. It will give her something definite to work at, and will drive
from her thoughts sundry silly fancies and whims to which of late she has
given way. She already talks French and German very well indeed, thanks
to a most painstaking governess who has helped me to bring her up, and
now she might with advantage take up Italian. You are so close to
Seabourne, which place is, I know, a great educational centre, that you
will have no difficulty in getting teachers. Pray spare no expense and
get the very best. Perhaps you might also arrange for a competent singing
mistress to come out to Windy Gap two or three times during the week, for
Margaret has a nice little voice--not strong, but sweet and true--and
singing, when not displayed in public, is a becoming accomplishment for a
woman to have."
Could Mr. Anstruther have heard the running fire of exclamations
expressive of amazement, amusement, and pity with which Mrs. Murray
punctuated the reading of this letter, Margaret would never have been
permitted to go to Windy Gap.
But Mrs. Murray's reply gave no hint of the feelings with which she had
read his long letter of instructions; she merely promised to take every
care of his granddaughter and to keep her well occupied.
"I am delighted to hear," she wrote, "that you particularly wish her to
take Italian and singing lessons, for as it happens she will enjoy an
unique opportunity of studying both those things. For living in this
village is an Italian lady, a certain Madame Margherita Martelli, who was
once a famous operatic singer, but who lost her voice after a very short
career. She lives here so as to be near her only daughter, who married a
clergyman in Chailfield. She is by no means well off, and will be very
glad to make a little money by teaching Margaret singing and Italian. I
have heard she is a splendid teacher. As for Margaret forming any
intimate friendships while with me, you can set your mind at rest on that
point, for my deafness has increased so much since I last saw you that I
do no visiting in the ordinary sense of the word, but am quite happy with
my books and my garden. Then, too, I have a large acquaintance with my
poorer neighbours in the surrounding villages, and though my lameness
prevents me from walking to see them, I have a sturdy little pair of
ponies who take me everywhere, and I am looking forward to having
Margaret as a companion on my daily drives."
When Margaret heard, as she did four or five days after the doctor's
visit, that she was to go away from Greystones for a prolonged period,
her amazement was only equalled by her delight. She had known that some
change was impending for her, for the day after his visit she had been
ordered to spend all her time out of doors, and, as long, of course, as
she did not go out of the wood, to do exactly as she pleased. So she had
taken out the lightest books the schoolroom shelves contained and had
spent the long, hot days lying under the shade of the trees. The state of
suspense in which she had lived during those days gave ample support to
the doctor's verdict that a change of some sort had become necessary to
her. She grew even paler than was her wont, and a succession of two or
three wakeful nights brought dark circles under her eyes, making them
look almost unnaturally large and bright.
"So," said her grandfather, who had called her into his study to acquaint
her with the plans he had made for her, and who had had no difficulty in
reading on her tell-tale face the delight the news had given her, "you
are pleased to be going away even before I have informed you what your
destination is?"
"Yes, grandfather."
"And you feel no regret in leaving Greystones?"
"No, grandfather."
Mr. Anstruther suppressed with some difficulty the strong feeling of
irritation that seized him at these monosyllabic answers. He knew that it
would have been highly unreasonable on his part to have displayed
annoyance, for had he not himself taught her to give a simple "Yes" and
"No" when possible to his questions?
"Or in leaving me?"
For a brief instant Margaret hesitated the while her clear, candid eyes
were fixed thoughtfully on his face. Her natural politeness forbade her
to give the negative reply which her innate truthfulness also demanded.
He saved her from the necessity of making a reply at all.
"I am answered," he said in the sarcastic tones which never failed to
bring the colour to her face. "Pray did you think my feelings would be
wounded if you had told me that you felt no regret at leaving me?"
"I--I do not know," stammered Margaret uneasily.
"Well, as it is my desire that you go it would not be of much use
discussing your feelings or wishes on the matter. This is Thursday; you
will go next Tuesday."
"Yes, grandfather."
This time Mr. Anstruther could not restrain the impatient glance he threw
at her pale face and downcast eyes.
"Yes, grandfather! no, grandfather! I do not know, grandfather!" Was that
really all she felt capable of saying in his presence? A few days ago he
could have believed that to be the case, but now he was conscious for the
first time of a baffled sense that he really knew nothing whatever of the
real character of this granddaughter of his. She was obedient, yes, but
that was after all a matter of conduct rather than of character, and he
found himself wondering what traits might be hidden away under the quiet
reserve of her manner. But again with an effort he suppressed his
irritation and proceeded to describe to her the place to which she was
going and the life she would lead there. "For if you imagine that the
senseless delights I overheard you picturing to yourself the other day
are to be yours you may as well disabuse yourself of the notion at once.
Nor will you have the opportunity of making the acquaintance of a number
of giddy young people. You will lead a life of as strict retirement there
as here. My friend, Mrs. Murray, who has so kindly consented to take you
for a time, is about my age; she will have the additional drawback in
your eyes of being very deaf. She lives quite alone in a little village
on the Sussex Downs and sees no one. But you will have plenty to do. I
have made arrangements for you to begin the study of Italian. It is time
you learned another language, and fortunately there is an Italian lady,
a Madame Margherita Martelli, once a famous singer, resident in the
village, who will instruct you in her language and also give you singing
lessons. She will also, perhaps, accompany you on your daily walk."
A curious light flashed suddenly into Margaret's down-drooped hazel eyes.
Her daily lessons! Her daily walk! And one deaf old lady for company! For
one wild minute she felt inclined to rebel, to tell her grandfather that
she was tired of being treated as a child, and that she had a right, at
eighteen, to have some voice in the disposition of her own time.
If she had raised her eyes then, he must have seen the mutinous look in
them, and then, whatever else had happened, or whatever the doctor had
said at his advice being set at nought, it would have been quite certain
that Margaret would not have been permitted to leave Greystones that
summer.
But that desire to rebel vanished as suddenly as it had come, leaving
Mr. Anstruther as unaware as he had been before of all that his
granddaughter's quiet, almost indifferent manner concealed.
"After all," she told herself afterwards, "there will be the downs and
the sea to look at. And it will be a change from this."
So she held fast to those two thoughts, and did not permit herself to
be dismayed by the picture her grandfather had drawn of the life that
awaited her at Windy Gap.
Of course, it was out of the question that Margaret should travel alone,
and Mr. Anstruther made arrangements for his housekeeper and cook to
escort her to her journey's end. The almost childish delight that
Margaret felt at the thought of the actual journey itself was somewhat
damped by the news that Mrs. Parkes was to accompany her. For her
grandfather's estimable cook and housekeeper was a grim old woman who
ruled the maids with a rod of iron, and who, even in the days of her
childhood, had never had a kind look or a smile for Margaret. That,
however, in Mr. Anstruther's opinion, had added to her recommendations,
for it had been one of his rules that his granddaughter should have
nothing whatever to say to any of his servants. But though the news
that Mrs. Parkes was to be her escort lessened the pleasure that she was
feeling at the thought of the long railway journey that lay before her,
it could not by any means wholly destroy it. After all, they could sit at
opposite ends of the carriage, and Margaret knew that, except when they
changed trains, which they had to do once, she would be tolerably certain
to forget Mrs. Parkes' presence altogether.
As soon as she had heard where she was to go, Margaret looked her
destination up on the map. But Windy Gap was too small a place to be
marked. Chailfield, however, was the nearest station, and that was on the
map, as was also Seabourne. The latter place was a large and fashionable
watering town renowned for its schools, in one of which Miss Bidwell had
been a governess for some years. Many were the dictations in English,
French, and German, descriptive of the town and the surrounding downs
which Margaret had written, and it was strange to think that she was now
about to see these places for herself.
The few days that intervened between the Thursday on which she had heard
that she was to go away and the following Tuesday could not pass too
quickly for Margaret, and when Monday dawned and the actual packing of
her trunk could begin, she was in a high, though carefully repressed
state of excitement. Lizzie, the housemaid, who had been getting her
clothes ready during the last few days, fully sympathised with the eager
impatience which Margaret showed that everything should be ready in time.
"For if I had had the dull time that Miss Margaret has had ever since
Miss Bidwell went away, not that she was very gay company, I should be
off my head with joy too."
"Is Miss Margaret off her head with joy, then?" said the kitchen-maid, to
whom the remark had been addressed.
"Well, in a quiet way of her own she is," said Lizzie. "She don't sing
nor dance like other young ladies would, but her eyes shine like stars,
and now and again she smiles quiet to herself."
But, after all, Margaret did not have Mrs. Parkes as a travelling
companion. The day before they were to start for Chailfield two things
happened. Scarlet fever broke out in Clayton, and Mrs. Parkes fell down
the cellar stairs and broke her leg.
"The departure of my granddaughter, who was to have left to-morrow
morning by the nine-thirty train, must therefore be delayed," said Mr.
Anstruther, "until I can procure for her a suitable escort."
This was said to Dr. Knowles, who had been summoned to set the broken
leg.
"Departure delayed! Escort! Fiddlesticks!" said Dr. Knowles in his most
staccato manner. "Don't keep her an hour longer here than necessary. In
her run-down state she would be just the sort of person to go down with
fever. The sooner she is away from here the better."
"But I hardly like the idea of her travelling alone," said Mr.
Anstruther, who saw the reason of what the doctor said far too clearly
to resent his manner. "I would have taken her myself, but it is quite
impossible for me to leave home for several days----"
"Then send her alone. What on earth can happen to her? Put her in charge
of the guard, engine-driver, inspector, every official on the line, but
don't keep her here another day. It would be wicked to let her run
unnecessary risks."
As it was then ten o'clock at night, and Margaret was to start so early
the next morning, it was impossible to find any one to go with her,
especially as Dr. Knowles had warned her grandfather against bringing her
in contact with any one in the infected village. After all, he thought,
Dr. Knowles was right, and no harm could come to her through travelling
alone. It was not even as though she were going through London. The
journey was a perfectly simple one, and involved only one change at a
place called Carden Junction. If he spoke to the guard at Clayton, and
told him to put the young lady into the Southern Express at the junction,
she would be well looked after the whole way.
CHAPTER IV
MARGARET MAKES A FRIEND
But in making this arrangement the next morning, Mr. Anstruther, as did
the guard also, reckoned without the train being delayed for over an hour
when some fifteen miles from Carden Junction, and consequently missing
the connection with the Southern Express at the latter station.
"I am sorry to say, Miss, you will have to wait here for two hours
and a half," said the guard, as he helped the young lady who had been
given into his charge to alight. "I will carry your bag for you to the
waiting-room. It's a slow one, too, the next train, and don't get into
Seabourne until 7.10, whereas the express you have just missed would have
got you there at 3.45."
"I do not mind at all, thank you," said Margaret blithely, as she walked
down the platform beside him with light steps. "I really think it's great
fun missing a train, and having to wait for the next."
"Then, Miss, you're the first passenger I ever met who looked at it in
that way," said the guard in some astonishment. "Well, I must be going
on, for, as we're late already, we don't stop any time here. Good
morning, Miss, sorry I couldn't have done more for you, and put you in
charge of the next guard, as the gentleman asked. But you will be all
right in the waiting-room. Your train leaves at 2.17."
"Thank you," said Margaret. "I will not forget. Good morning."
She was delighted to see him go, and when the train steamed out of the
station, which it did a few minutes later, a sense of freedom, as novel
as it was delightful, took possession of her. For a few hours, at least,
she was absolutely her own mistress. There was no one to tell her to do
this, when she would rather have done the other, no one even to tell her
to remain where she was if she wished to go for a walk. And to go for a
walk was just what she intended to do. She certainly did not intend to
spend the next two hours in this stuffy little waiting-room, whose one
window commanded a view of nothing more exciting than the station yard.
She would go into the town and look at the shops.
It was true that the sky seemed rather overcast, but the clouds were
probably only passing ones, and the sun would shine out again in a few
minutes. Turning abruptly from the window she was hurrying towards the
door, when a voice close beside her remarked that she was leaving her bag
behind. Swinging round in amazement, for she had thought that she was
alone, she perceived that the room now contained another occupant who
must have entered it while she was staring out of the window. A girl of
about her own age was seated at the table with a couple of books and an
exercise book spread out before her, and as Margaret looked at her she
just pointed with her pencil at the dressing bag which the guard had
placed on a chair, and went on writing again immediately.
Margaret thought her one of the prettiest girls she ever seen, and though
that would have been saying a great deal less for her than Margaret
realised, for after all she had not seen many girls pretty or otherwise,
this girl was undoubtedly exceedingly good-looking. She had masses of
wavy chestnut hair, red-brown eyes, and a clear, pale skin.
Arrested thus suddenly on her way to the door by this unexpected remark,
Margaret halted rather awkwardly in the middle of the room uncertain what
to do about her bag.
"I am going for a walk into the town," she said shyly, "and my bag is too
heavy for me to carry with me. May I not leave it here?"
[Illustration: "I AM GOING FOR A WALK INTO THE TOWN," SHE SAID SHYLY.]
The girl raised her eyes again with some impatience. She had obviously
thought the incident closed, and she made reply as shortly as she
could that it was not usually considered safe to leave luggage in
waiting-rooms.
"Then what ought I to do with it, please?" said Margaret.
"Why, put it in the cloakroom of course," returned the other, and this
time her irritation at this continued interruption was so unmistakable
that Margaret, blushing crimson, grasped the unlucky bag and fairly fled
out of the waiting-room, without, as she contritely remarked afterwards,
a word of thanks or apology.
Having safely deposited the bag in the cloakroom, she set out for her
walk. As she passed the window of the waiting-room she could see the girl
she had left there sitting at the table turning the leaves of a book with
one hand and scribbling hurriedly with the other.
"She's looking up words in a dictionary," Margaret said to herself, who
knew the signs of the occupation only too well. "And that is what I shall
be doing to-morrow. But I am not going to think of that now."
The walk on the whole was not fraught with much enjoyment. Carden, though
a junction of some importance, was nothing much in the way of a town, the
streets near the station were narrow and crowded, the shops poor, and
Margaret was not sorry when her stroll was cut short by a few heavy drops
of rain. It would be much more interesting, she thought, to go back to
the waiting-room and look at the girl who was doing exercises there.
Perhaps, though on that point Margaret was not very hopeful, she might
even talk to her presently. So she hurried back and reached the shelter
of the station only just in time to escape a heavy shower.
The girl was still seated at the table, and she did not even raise her
head as Margaret entered. With a fresh access of shyness Margaret avoided
looking at her, but walking to the window stared out at the rain. But as
a shower was a phenomenon with which she was familiar, and the near
presence of another girl was not, Margaret very soon shifted her position
so that she could without turning her head, and unobserved as she
thought, study the girl at her leisure.
She was wearing a skirt of some rough frieze, and the colour, a sort of
dull turquoise, suited her admirably. A white cotton shirt with a collar
and tie completed her attire, while a short coat of the same material as
her skirt was flung carelessly over the back of her chair. As Margaret
looked at her she became absorbed in speculation as to who the girl might
be, and where she was going. Was she on her way home, or was she going to
stay with friends? Then Margaret fell to admiring the vivid colour of her
hair, which was full of lights and shades. Just above her ears and her
temples it shone like vivid gold, but the coils behind were of a deep,
rich chestnut colour, with an inclination to merge into gold at their
tips. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were just a couple of tones deeper than
the darkest shade of her hair, and Margaret felt glad of that as their
owner doubtless was also. She liked her nose, too--it was short and
straight.
"Do you think you will know me again?"
The girl had not raised her head or even lifted her eyes from the pages
of the dictionary she was fluttering with her left hand, while the other,
poised over the book, was held in readiness to pounce down on the right
page directly it came uppermost.
Margaret gave a great start as the nonchalantly uttered question broke
the silence of the room, and she looked round to see if there was any one
else present, for the question seemed to be addressed to no one in
particular, certainly not to her. And yet as there was no one else in the
room, of course the question must have been meant for her.
"Oh, yes, I am sure I shall," she answered in a tone of such pleased
conviction that the girl looked up and gave her a quick, puzzled glance.
But no one could meet Margaret's candid eyes and suspect her of wishing
to be rude, and after a moment's scrutiny the girl's frowning brows
relaxed and she smiled--such a merry, amused smile, that the last vestige
of Margaret's shyness disappeared on the spot.
"You see," she said, "you are the first girl I have ever spoken to in all
my life, and so, of course, I should always remember you."
"The first girl you have ever spoken to!" ejaculated the other, her eyes
opening to their fullest width. "Oh, come, I can't believe that."
"But you are, that is to say, the very, very first _real_ girl."
The emphasis Margaret laid on the word "real" did not at the moment
strike the other, who was now quite as interested in Margaret as the
latter was in her.
"Look here," she said, "I don't think I can do any more exercises at
present, though it seems wicked waste of time to be talking when I might
be learning something. But my poor brain has taken in all it can at
present, and I am willing to rest it awhile by talking to you. Come here
and sit down, and we'll talk."
"I have been desirous of talking to you some moments past," said
Margaret, flushing with pleasure at the suggestion. "But you looked so
busy that I did not venture to interrupt you."
An involuntary smile crossed the other girl's face as she listened to
Margaret's prim little way of speaking.
"I know, and I was rather cross about the bag, wasn't I? but I had just
got hold of the tail of a rather difficult sentence and it gave a wriggle
and vanished when you spoke. However, please don't look so dreadfully
sorry. I made a successful grab at it a few minutes afterwards. Now shall
we tell each other our names. Mine is Eleanor----"
She stopped short in amazement, for Margaret had sprung to her feet and
was gazing at her with eyes that fairly shone with excitement.
"Eleanor!" she cried, "Eleanor! Oh, no, not really and truly!"
"Why not? Don't you like the name?"
"Like it! Why, of course I am very, very fond of it. It is the name of
some one I love very much. I suppose your other name is not Humphreys, is
it? But it would be really too much if it were."
"It's not. Eleanor Kathleen Carson is my full name."
"Eleanor Kathleen Carson," repeated Margaret when her excitement had
calmed somewhat.
"It's a lovely name, though, of course, it ought by rights to have been
Eleanor Humphreys. I know now the reason why I liked you so much the
moment I saw you."
"Not the first moment," said Eleanor, with twinkling eyes. "You thought
me horrid the first moment you saw me, and scuttled from the room as hard
as you could."
"No, I liked you from the first," Margaret repeated firmly. "Only I was
shy. It was very stupid of me," she added, partly to herself, "to be shy
of you when your name was Eleanor all the time."
"And who is this Eleanor of whom you appear so fond?" demanded Miss
Carson. "To begin with, you tell me that I am the very first girl you
have ever spoken to, and then that you have a friend called Eleanor. Pray
explain the discrepancy in these statements."
But Margaret, looking at the laughing light in the curious red-brown eyes
bent upon her, shook her head.
"I believe you would laugh at the other Eleanor," she said, "so I don't
think I shall tell you. But I will tell you my name. It is Margaret
Anstruther."
"And where do you live, Margaret Anstruther?"
"At Clayton, in Flatshire, with my grandfather."
"And have you any brothers and sisters, Margaret Anstruther?"
"No."
"And no friends, you said?"
"No."
"Where were you educated, Margaret Anstruther?"
"At home, with a governess. Her name was Miss Bidwell. She went away
to Germany three months ago, because her eyes were causing her grave
trouble, and it may be necessary for her to have an operation."
"Since when you have been alone with your grandfather?"
"Yes."
"You seem to have led a very quiet life. Was your governess clever, and
were you an industrious child, and loved your lessons?"
"She was very clever, and I was very industrious," smiled Margaret, who
was thoroughly enjoying this string of half banteringly put questions.
"But I did not love my lessons."
"Lazy, Margaret Anstruther? Why not?"
"I do not know; I do not think I was lazy. Miss Bidwell would not have
permitted me to be so, but she made everything seem rather dull."
"What did that matter? You had a chance of learning things," said
Eleanor. The mocking note had gone from her voice, which had become very
earnest. "Apparently you had nothing to do all day long but learn, learn,
learn. Lucky, lucky girl, and yet you say everything seemed dull. Would
that I could have changed places with you sometimes."
"I am sure the arrangement would have pleased me also," said Margaret.
"But I do not think you would have liked it. As soon as Miss Bidwell
saw that I was growing too fond of one subject it was her habit to
discontinue my study of it, until she saw that my interest in it was less
strong."
"But what an extraordinary governess!" exclaimed Eleanor. "What on earth
made her behave like that?"
"My grandfather had given strict orders that I was not to be allowed to
become too absorbed in any particular study. He did not want me to
neglect one thing in favour of another."
"But just to take a nice, lukewarm, lady-like interest in all of them,"
said Eleanor. "I see. But please go on, and tell me some more about
yourself. Where are you off to now, and why?"
"I am going to a place called Windy Gap, near Chailfield. At least
Chailfield is the name of the station. Windy Gap is a little village four
or five miles off, and right on the top of the downs."
"And I am going to Seabourne, which is about three or four miles away
from Windy Gap, on the other side," said Eleanor. "How very funny!"
"I think it is very pleasant to hear that you are going to be so close
to me," said Margaret rather shyly. "Perhaps we shall see each other
sometimes."
Eleanor shook her head. "I, for one, shall have no time for visiting,"
she said, "as you will understand when it comes to my turn to tell you
about myself. But we will finish with you first. Why are you going to
Windy Gap?"
"My grandfather thought I was not very well, for one day he found me
talking in the wood to myself and wishing for all sorts of parties, and
so he sent for a doctor, who said I must go away for a long change; and
so grandfather wrote to Mrs. Murray, an old friend of his who lives at
Windy Gap, and asked her if she would have me on a visit."
"And didn't you nearly go off your head with delight when she said she
would?"
"No," said Margaret, with a little sigh, "for my mode of life there will
be very much the same as it has always been at home. Lessons all day
long, and no one to speak to."
"But there will be your hostess at least," said Eleanor encouragingly.
"Come, Margaret, do not despair."
"But she is deaf," said Margaret, in the same melancholy tone. "And I
believe she is also very severe. But," brightening, "I am not going to
think about her now, for I have got you to talk to for another hour.
It's just one o'clock, and my train does not go until seventeen minutes
past two."
"The 2.17 is my train too," said Eleanor. "But what do you say to having
lunch now. I am getting hungry."
She produced a little paper bag from the basket in which she carried her
books, and offered one of the two buns the bag contained to Margaret. But
the latter suddenly remembered that the housemaid Lizzie, in spite of the
confusion that had reigned in the kitchen regions since Mrs. Parkes had
been laid low, had found time to pack up an excellent little lunch for
her.
"It is in the bag you told me to put in the cloakroom," she said. "If you
do not mind very much, would you be so kind as to come and help me to get
it out. I do not like going there alone."
"What! are you shy?" said Eleanor, with considerable amusement, and
to herself she wondered why her grandfather had let such a very
inexperienced girl as this travel alone. But in spite of Margaret's
shyness Miss Carson felt quite interested in her new acquaintance. There
was a serious, old-fashioned air about her that made her unlike any other
girl that Miss Carson had ever met, and, as it was shortly to transpire,
she had known a great many, and was therefore competent to give an
opinion on that point. Margaret's very speech was different to that of
other girls. It was so slow and careful, and she appeared to phrase her
sentence with a deliberation that Miss Carson found both quaint and
pleasing. Decidedly, she thought, this chance acquaintance was worth
passing the next hour or so with, if only for the sake of the secret
amusement she was affording her, and so, at Margaret's timid request, she
rose willingly enough and accompanied her to the cloakroom. Then, having
recovered the bag, they returned to the waiting-room, which they were
glad to find was still unoccupied by any one else.
Inside the bag there was a tin biscuit-box, the contents of which, when
spread out on the table, made quite a tempting-looking lunch. There were
chicken and tongue sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, covered jam puffs,
grapes, raisins, and almonds, and a bottle of delicious home-made
lemonade.
In her determination that Miss Margaret's holiday should begin pleasantly
with a good luncheon on the journey, Lizzie had put up enough for two
persons at least.
"Perhaps," said Margaret gleefully, when she had persuaded Eleanor to
abandon her buns and to share this sumptuous meal, "she knew that I
should meet a friend. Do you know," she added, "that this is the very
first picnic I have ever attended in my life, though I have read of them,
of course, in books."
CHAPTER V
ELEANOR CARSON
A picnic! Eleanor was conscious of a sudden feeling of pity for her newly
made acquaintance. She called this meal, partaken of in the dusty, dingy
little waiting-room of a noisy junction in company with a girl whom an
hour ago she had never met, a picnic.
Memories of gay, delightful river picnics, of mountain picnics, of
picnics in ruined castles shared with numerous boy and girl friends
flashed through Eleanor's mind. And this girl whose lot she had found it
in her heart to envy a short time back had known none of these things.
"And had I not met you," Margaret was saying confidingly when Eleanor
came out of the sombre mood into which she had suddenly fallen, "I should
never have had the courage even to open my lunch, at least I could not
have eaten it in a railway carriage with every one staring at me. Could
you have eaten your lunch under such circumstances?"
"Oh, yes, I think I could," Eleanor returned with some amusement.
Probably their ages were very much the same, but what a child Margaret
was compared to her! To make up for that, however, she certainly used
much longer words.
"How did your grandfather come to allow you to travel alone?" she asked
suddenly. "From what you have told me about him I should have thought it
was the very last thing he should have allowed you to do."
"He was very reluctant to give me permission to travel without an
escort," Margaret answered, "but he was unable to avoid doing so." And
then she related how the housekeeper who was to have brought her had
broken her leg, and how a sudden epidemic of scarlet fever in the village
had made it advisable for her departure not to be delayed.
"Of course," she added, "my grandfather was not aware that I should miss
the train and be obliged to wait here, or else I am quite sure he would
not have allowed me to come by myself. But please, please do not let us
talk about me any longer. I want to hear about you now and, except that
your name is Eleanor Kathleen Carson, I do not know anything at all about
you."
"There is not much to tell," returned Eleanor; "and what there is is not
particularly interesting; but fair is fair, as the children say. Know,
then, to begin with, that I have even fewer relations in the world than
you, for I have none at all."
"None!" Margaret exclaimed incredulously. "Then with whom do you live?
Where is your home?"
"I have no home. I have been earning my living for the last three years,"
Eleanor answered.
"Earning your own living. But are you not too young to do that? In what
manner do you earn it?"
"As a governess. I have been an instructor of the young for the last four
years," Eleanor said, laughing a little at the expression of boundless
amazement which this statement brought to Margaret's face. Indeed, for a
moment the latter suspected her new acquaintance of joking. She found it
hard to believe that a girl of her own age should actually be a
governess. She had thought that all governesses were of Miss Bidwell's
age, and like her, too, in appearance.
"I wish you had been my governess, then," she said earnestly.
"It would have been rather a farce if I had been," Eleanor retorted, "for
I have an idea that you know very much more than I do; not that that
would be difficult, for I know nothing. Listen, now, and I will tell you
all about myself. I am Irish. My father died when I was four, and two
years later my mother married again."
"Oh!" said Margaret, with intense interest and sympathy in her voice;
"and then they cast you adrift to earn your own living?"
"No," said Eleanor, with some amusement in her voice, "they did nothing of
the sort. Besides, you can't very well cast a small person of six adrift,
as you call it, to earn her own living. On the contrary, my stepfather
was as kind to me as if I had been his own child, and I could not have
loved him more if he had been my own father whom I scarcely remember. We
were so happy together, we three. My stepfather just adored my mother,
she worshipped him, and they both spoiled and petted me. My stepfather
was a very rich man. He was English, I must tell you, but he had come to
Ireland on a visit, and there it was he met my mother; and to please her
when they were married he bought a lovely estate in Kerry, which was her
county, and became an Irishman, as he used to say. Until I was fifteen I
did exactly as I liked all day. I rode, of course, and hunted, and lived
an outdoor life, and though I had a governess and was supposed to do
lessons occasionally, it was only very occasionally that I showed my nose
in the schoolroom. And then, when I was fifteen, our happy life came to
an end. One morning my stepfather got a letter at breakfast to say that
the solicitor who had charge of all his money had committed suicide two
or three days before, and that it had been found that he had made away
with huge sums belonging to his clients. We were absolutely ruined.
"The news was such an awful shock to my stepfather that it brought on an
attack of the heart, to which he was subject, and he died that night; and
my mother died a few weeks later. She could not, she told me, face life
without him, and she pined away and died simply of a broken heart."
Eleanor's voice had become rather husky as she spoke the last few
sentences, but she did not cry, she only sat and stared rather fixedly
at the various timetables with which the table was strewn.
Margaret put out her hand and touched her timidly on the arm, and the
silent token of sympathy pleased Eleanor who could not have borne her to
have spoken just then.
There was a moment or two of silence, during which the rain splashed
steadily, drearily against the dusty window panes. It had settled now
into a thoroughly wet afternoon, and there seemed very little prospect of
its clearing before nightfall.
"I have often wondered since what would have become of me then," Eleanor
resumed after those few moments of silence, "had it not been for Miss
McDonald. She was an old governess of my mother's and had a girls' school
in Hampstead, and when she heard how I was left she wrote and offered me
a home with her until I was old enough to earn my own living. I was to be
a sort of pupil teacher, if you know what that means--to do lessons with
the elder girls and to teach the younger ones--and in that way my
services were supposed to pay for my board and teaching. But I am quite
sure that at first, at any rate, Miss McDonald was a loser by the
transaction. I was woefully ignorant to begin with, and knew scarcely
more than a child of nine, and I was so miserable that I did not care
what became of me or what I did. Looking back now on that time I see that
Miss McDonald was wonderfully kind and patient, and that it was for my
own good that she insisted upon my working. But for a long time I don't
suppose there was a more unhappy girl in the whole of England than
myself. I hated England and the school and everything, and, of course, it
was a tremendous contrast to my former life, for it wasn't even as though
the school were a good school; it was quite second class, and the girls
were hopelessly common. And then all of a sudden consolation came to me,
and poor little drudge of a pupil teacher that I was, snubbed by the
elder girls and bored to death by the younger ones, I became happy again,
though in quite a different way to any happiness I had ever known
before."
"How?" said Margaret, who had been listening to this narrative with
parted lips and eager eyes.
After this, Eleanor Humphreys' conversation would seem tame indeed, for
at the bottom of her heart Margaret knew that, pretend to the contrary as
much as she liked, nothing that Eleanor Humphreys said ever came as a
surprise to her! But conversation with this Eleanor was quite another
matter. It was impossible to have the least idea beforehand of what she
was going to say.
"How?" she asked again, quivering with impatience, for Eleanor, instead
of answering her immediately, was looking at her with a teasing smile on
her lips evidently enjoying the prospect of keeping her for a moment or
two longer on the tip-toe of expectation.
"Well, before I tell you," she said, "I will give you three guesses. Now,
put yourself in my place and think what you would have liked to have had
happen to you if you had been me."
"I should have liked some kind, lovely lady to have come and adopted me,
and taken me away to a beautiful home in the country, where I should have
had lots and lots of brothers and sisters," said Margaret, faithful to
the idea that the companionship of other young people was the greatest
delight a girl of her age could enjoy.
But Eleanor shook her head. "I shouldn't have liked that a bit," she
said. "I should have been sure to have quarrelled with a whole ready-made
family of brothers and sisters, and they would not have loved me at all,
and the kind, lovely lady would have been jolly sorry she ever adopted
me, and would have turned me out of her lovely home pretty smartly. Guess
again. I can tell you that the good fortune that came to me was ever so
much more worth having than being adopted."
"I cannot imagine any occurrence that would have caused me more
pleasure," said Margaret in a hesitating fashion. "Was it, perhaps,
discovered that the solicitor who lost your stepfather's money had
not lost it quite all, and that there was some left for you?
"Better than that," said Eleanor; "much better. Guess again. I forgot
to mention that I do get a little money from the wreck of our fortunes,
about twenty pounds a year, but I shall never get more than that, and I
know it."
"Did some one fall in love with you, then?" said Margaret rather shyly.
"Gracious, no!" said Eleanor. "No men except one or two old professors
were ever allowed inside Waterloo House. And if a prince on a coal-black
horse, as handsome and as rich as a prince in a fairy tale, had come
riding up to the front door, and begged for my hand on bended knee, I
would have said 'No, thank you' if by saying 'Yes, please,' I must have
lost this wonderful thing that is mine. Have you ever heard of Melba or
Patti?"
"Certainly," answered Margaret, rather wondering at the apparently
irrelevant turn the conversation had suddenly taken.
"Well, then, in me you behold a future Melba and a Patti rolled into
one."
"Do you mean that you are a singer?" asked Margaret.
"A future Melba--Patti--Tetrazzini, I should have said," Eleanor returned
gravely. "But I see from your bewildered expression that you haven't
very much idea what I am talking about, so I will explain. As a child at
home I did not care much about music, chiefly, I think, because I did not
want to be made to practice too much, and when I first went to Waterloo
House I felt I liked it still less. The pianos there were mostly cracked
and old, the girls, very few of whom had a note of music in their
composition, thumped them all day long until I grew fairly sick of the
sound, and as I had to superintend the practising of the younger ones,
you may guess how much I enjoyed myself. But last Christmas holidays,
during which I was left by myself as usual, for Miss McDonald always went
away for a change, and she was so delicate, poor thing, that unless she
had gone away to the country or to the seaside two or three times a year
she could never have got through the terms, I took to practising a good
deal. It may sound horribly conceited, but I fell in love with my own
voice on the spot, and there, in the cold drawing-room, I used to sit and
sing all sorts of rubbishy, sentimental songs until my voice was husky
with mingled emotion and fatigue. Then I thought I would go to a few
concerts and find out if any of the great singers had such a lovely voice
as mine."
"And had they?" queried Margaret, as Eleanor, who had been talking at a
great rate, paused for breath.
"Had they?" repeated Eleanor with a little laugh. "They had. I came home
that evening quite out of love with my own voice, and before those
holidays were over I spent my half-yearly allowance, which I had only
just got, as well as my last quarter's salary, in tickets for concerts
and operas. It was the best time I had had since I left Ireland. In the
afternoons and evenings I used to go to concerts, and the mornings I
spent practising. But I gave up the songs and went in for scales only,
and I could hear my voice improving every day. I longed for some one who
really knew to tell me if my voice was any good, but I didn't know who to
ask. Miss Marvel, the school singing mistress, had no more voice than a
mouse, and what was worse, no ear. She would let a whole class sing out
of tune and never turn a hair. She did not like me because I had once
pointed this out to her, and I knew that if I asked for her opinion of my
voice she would only run it down. Then a daring idea came to me. Can you
guess what it was?"
"No, I cannot," said Margaret quickly, warned by her last experiment, "I
have never been taught to guess. Please continue."
"Very well," said Eleanor, smiling a well-pleased smile, for Margaret's
impatience was a tribute to the interest she was imparting to her tale.
"Have you ever heard of Signor Vanucci? No," as Margaret shook her head.
"He was one of the greatest singing masters in London, and a professor of
I don't know how many academies and schools of music in London. My great
idea was to go straight to him and to ask him if he would hear my voice,
and tell me if it was worth training. And on the very last day of the
holidays, when I had only about enough money left to pay my fare into
town and back, I went to his house. The servant didn't want to admit me
when she heard I had no appointment, but I told her what I wanted, and
begged so hard that she hadn't the heart to refuse, although she told me
that she would be pretty sure to get into trouble afterwards with her
master. But I don't believe he was cross with her, for he was a dear old
man, and didn't look as though he could be angry with any one. Of course,
I began by apologising for having ventured to come, and said I was afraid
he must be very much astonished at my having dared to do such a thing as
to force my way into his house. He looked at me quite gravely, and said,
did I think, then, that I was the first young lady who had conceived the
idea of coming to him to be told whether her voice was most like Patti's
or Melba's. I said I had thought so; and then he said that I was the
nine-hundredth-and-thirty-seventh that week. 'And Martha lets them all
in, every one,' he said, with such a comical look of despair that I could
not help laughing outright. 'And she thinks that I have only to hear them
sing, and they straightway become famous on the spot. Well, well,' he
went on, 'you did not come here to hear me talk, but to listen to
yourself singing, is it not so? There is the piano. Take your seat.
Where are your songs?'"
"And then he yawned, and walked away to the window, and stood there
humming a little tune. I could see that he was already getting tired of
me, and sorry that he had let me in, and though the thought that he was
looking upon me as an awful nuisance would have made me awfully nervous
if I had let it, I just said to myself, 'here is your opportunity, seize
it. What does it matter about any one else?' And I sat down and sang a
scale, beginning with the lowest note I could manage, and going up, up,
up, and ending with a long shake on the two top notes."
"Bravo! bravo!" he said when I had finished, and he was no longer
standing at the window humming a tune, but he was at my side clapping his
hands and patting my shoulder. "Do you know," Eleanor said, her eyes
aglow with triumph at the recollection of that moment, "I had come in
hoping that he would give me five minutes of his time, and he kept me for
an hour, although two pupils were waiting for him in the ante-room."
"And what did he say?" queried Margaret, with an interest that was
positively breathless.
Eleanor suddenly sprang to her feet and began restlessly to pace the
room. The glow of triumph had faded from her face, and had been replaced
by a look of impatient despair that was almost fierce in its intensity.
"Oh, I can't bear to think of what he said!" she burst out. "I feel as
though I should go wild sometimes when I remember, when I know that I
have a gift which is given to few, and that it is wasted on me, locked
away, unless--for do you know what Signor Vanucini said to me?" she asked,
coming to an abrupt pause by the table. "He told me that I ought to be
the greatest singer of my generation, that he foresaw a splendid future
before me, that my voice had infinite possibilities, but that, of course,
it was utterly untrained, and that years of hard work and study lay in
front of me. That I must work, and work, and learn, and learn, and above
all have the best training from the first. And then he said that I had
better enter my name as a student at one of the colleges where he was a
professor, and that he himself would give me lessons. And, oh! the
bitterness of the moment when I had to say that I had no money, no
friends to pay for my education, and that I was earning my living as a
pupil teacher in a third-rate school in the suburbs. Do you know he
seemed almost as much upset as I was. He said it was a great pity, that a
voice like mine ought not to be thrown away, and he asked me a lot of
questions about Miss McDonald and the school. Did I think she would
continue to let me live with her, and come up to town three or four times
a week, and he would give me lessons for nothing. I said I was afraid
not, for I knew the school was in rather low water, and that Miss
McDonald, so far from being able to keep me for nothing, had dismissed
the junior governess, and that I was to fill the vacant post.
"'Nevare mind,' he said, 'we vill find ze way. I, Giorgi Vanucci, to you
make ze assurance.'
"Then he took down my name and address very carefully in a note-book and
sent me away. I was so excited that I walked the whole way from Berners
Street to Hampstead, and felt all the time not as though I were walking
on hard pavement, but as though I were treading on air. I knew from his
manner that Signor Vanucci meant to help me, and that it would be all
right for me to accept his kindness, for I could pay him back afterwards
when I became a famous singer. The next day Miss McDonald came back, and
the day after the girls returned, and the old, dull, insufferably stupid
round began again. But all the time I was thinking, 'This won't last long
for me; in a few days Signor Vanucci will write and tell her the
wonderful news about me.' Miss McDonald noticed how happy I was, and told
me that she was glad that I was at last showing more interest in my work
as a teacher. 'For, my dear,' she said, rather sadly, 'it is no use your
quarrelling with your bread-and-butter. You may not like teaching, but it
appears to me the only opening possible to you.' I only laughed and
danced about the room and hugged her. Wait, I thought, until that letter
comes from Signor Vanucci, and you will see that you will be nothing to
the man who cut bread-and-butter with a razor, for you will have been
guilty of the enormity of setting a Melba and a Patti down to teach
children their Sol-re-fa.
"But that letter never came; and about ten days later I knew why, for I
saw in the papers that the famous musician, Signor Vanucci, had been
knocked down by a motor-car when crossing a street near his house, and
though not much injured, had died a few hours after from the shock."
"And what did you do?" asked Margaret, feeling very much inclined to cry
when she heard how Eleanor's high hopes had thus been laid low.
"Do?" said Eleanor sadly; "there was nothing to be done. I grieved for
the dreadfully sudden death of the old man, and I shall never forget his
kindness, and I shall always feel as grateful to him as though he had
lived to carry out his generous intentions towards me. But, of course,
his death was an awful disappointment.
"All my hopes of getting my voice trained vanished, and it seems as if
what Miss McDonald said were true, and that I have no chance of being
anything but a teacher all my life. To have had so much almost in my
grasp, and then to have had it snatched away, was rather hard luck," she
ended gloomily. "However, I simply would not let myself despond. For one
thing, I hadn't time; I was being worked to death. One or two of the
governesses were down with influenza, including the music mistress, and I
took her singing class, and, I promise you, I made them sit up. I told
them I had never yet heard them sing five consecutive bars in tune, and
then I imitated them in rather an exaggerated way, and even the big ones
who adored Miss Marvel and detested me could not help laughing. But on
the whole I was glad when Miss Marvel was well again and could take over
her own class, and within two days they were singing as flat as ever.
Then I filled up any spare moments I had during the day by studying on my
own account. One of the things Signor Vanucci had impressed on me was
that if I wanted to be a great artist instead of merely being a great
singer, I must not be content with training my voice only, but must
educate my mind, and that nothing in the way of learning would ever come
amiss, for I could put it all in my music. So though I could not get the
singing lessons I pined for, I remembered his advice and set to work to
learn all I could. Among other things, he had asked me if I knew Italian,
and had seemed sorry when I said 'No, and very little French or German
either.' So as a beginning I bought an Italian grammar and a dictionary,
and started to study the language. There they are now," she said, nodding
towards the two books with which she had been so busy a short time
before. "It is wonderful what a lot one can get done in odd moments, if,"
she added with a smile, "one is not led away to waste one's time, and
other people's too, by detailing to them at great length one's life's
history."
"You know you are not wasting my time," Margaret replied with great
earnestness, "and I am most grateful to you for telling me about
yourself. I shall never, never forget it or you," she added wistfully;
"but I shall remember every word you have said, long after you have
forgotten you ever met me."
"But I am not going to forget you either," Eleanor said, and was touched
to see the quick look of almost pathetic gratitude that sprang to
Margaret's face at this answer. "You mustn't go away with the idea that I
tell everybody I meet about myself. You may not believe it after the way
I have taken you into my confidence, but you are the very first person to
whom I have ever mentioned my home or my parents since I said good-bye to
Ireland six years ago, and that you are the only person in the whole wide
world who knows of my visit to Signor Vanucci and what he told me, for I
have kept that a secret from every one. I could not even bring myself to
tell Miss McDonald about it--not that she would have been unsympathetic,
but simply because it was such a bitter disappointment that I could not
have borne to hear it discussed. Besides, she could not, however willing
to do so, have helped me in any way. I told you the school was in low
water. It had not been paying properly for some time, and that term Miss
McDonald decided that unless she got a great many more pupils at Easter
she would give it up altogether at the end of the summer term.
"Well, at Easter no fresh pupils applied to come, and so many left that
scarcely any remained in the school. I don't know what poor Miss McDonald
would have done, for I don't think she had saved much money, if a brother
that she had not seen for years had not written from Australia to say
that after many years of struggling he was now a rich man, and that he
hoped she would go out there and make her home with him. And she sailed
for Melbourne last week."
CHAPTER VI
MARGARET AND ELEANOR CHANGE PLACES
"Miss McDonald sailed for Australia last week!" ejaculated Margaret in
the utmost astonishment. "But what is to become of you, then? Are you
quite alone?"
"Quite," responded Eleanor, for whom her solitary state evidently
possessed no terrors, for she smiled at Margaret's horrified tone. "Dear
old Miss McDonald! If I would have consented, she would have taken me
with her, I think, and chanced her brother's dismay when we got there.
She was dreadfully distressed at the idea of leaving me behind; but what
could she have done for me if she had remained? As I told her, she had
done more for me than any one could possibly have expected of her, in
keeping me, and giving me what education I possess, during the last six
years. And it is not as if I had lost my situation through her going away
either, for I have been left as a legacy to Miss Marvel. Miss Marvel
bought the goodwill of the school," she added, seeing that Margaret had
not quite understood her last remark, "and she has promised to keep me on
as junior governess, as long as I do my work well, of course, and wish
to stay."
"And do you wish to stay there?" Margaret asked.
"Did you ever hear that beggars can't be choosers?" Eleanor said, with
rather a wry little smile. "I should not wish to stay in any school as a
teacher if I could avoid such a fate, but I can't; and I am at least
sensible enough to be thankful that my bread-and-butter, and a roof over
my head, and a bed, and a few other little trifles of that sort are
provided for me. And before she went, Miss McDonald did me another kind
turn. Up to the present I have always spent my holidays in Hampstead, but
this year she wrote to a cousin of hers who lives in Seabourne and asked
her if she would have me down on a visit, and the cousin wrote back such
a nice letter, saying she had just been on the point of advertising for
some one who would come to her for the whole of the summer holidays, and
make herself useful and help look after the children, and have a good
time with the elder ones. The letter was a little vague, and so Miss
McDonald thought as she read it out to me, for it did not give me much
idea of what I was to do. But probably she wants some one to arrange the
flowers, and write notes, and so on, and take the children down on the
beach and that sort of thing."
"Oh, but how lovely for you!" Margaret said, with a touch of envy in her
voice. "I wonder how many children there will be, and if there will be
any nice girls of your own age among them. And what delightful picnics,
and tennis parties, and excursions you will enjoy!"
"Yes, I suppose so," said Eleanor, without the slightest enthusiasm in
her voice. "But Mrs. Danvers, for that is the name of the lady, said I
must be prepared to find my days fairly well occupied, and must not mind
having scarcely any time to myself."
"Why, it is just the kind of life that I should have enjoyed so much,"
Margaret said, with a tremendous sigh. "People to talk to and to play
with all day long. It does seem odd that you are not anticipating it with
any pleasure, Eleanor."
"It is not only funny, it is, I know, very ungrateful," Eleanor said,
with sudden energy. "But, oh!" she added, "I don't want to play or to
talk. I want to work, work, work, and become great and famous. But at
least I can get up early. The morning hours, the ones before breakfast,
will at least be my own, and I can study for three or four hours every
morning before I go down to breakfast."
"Yes, and you could practice your singing then," said Margaret.
"What! and wake the whole family up. I expect that would be as much as my
place was worth," laughed Eleanor. She paused and sighed, while a shadow
chased the brightness from her face. "I try and cheat myself into the
belief that I am going to enjoy myself at Seabourne," she broke out as
she resumed her restless march up and down the room; "and that I shall
love being near the sea and near real country again. And so I shall enjoy
that part. But all the time deep down inside me I am just miserable at
the thought that I am wasting time that can never, never come back to me.
It does seem hard to think that there are hundreds and hundreds of girls
all over England who are getting splendid musical educations that will
never be the least little bit of use to them, while my voice is being
thrown away for want of training. I tell you, Margaret, I feel sometimes
as if it simply did not bear thinking about. A splendid, interesting
career, bringing fame and fortune with it, lies waiting for me on the
other side, as it were, of a deep gulf. The gulf can only be crossed by
the bridge of training, and I haven't the money to pay the toll."
She flung herself with an air of gloomy impatience on the nearest chair,
and, putting her elbows on the table, propped her chin on her palms and
stared with a frown at the empty fireplace opposite to her.
For a moment or two Margaret did not speak, but stole anxious glances at
the sad face of her new acquaintance, whose rapid changes of mood she
found it exceedingly difficult to keep pace with. For Eleanor certainly
passed with startling quickness from grave to gay, and now, after having
dwelt only a few seconds back with obvious delight on the thought of her
sojourn by the sea, she was plunged in the blackest depths of despair
again. But the truth was that the thought of the glorious gift she so
confidently believed was hers, and of which she could make no use, was
never absent from Eleanor's mind, and though her natural gaiety and pluck
combined enabled her to laugh and talk as though she had not a care in
the world, a chance word could always bring the sadness and longing that
underlay her laughter to the surface.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" sighed Margaret at last, when the silence had
lasted so long that she began to fear that Eleanor had forgotten her
presence altogether, and would not rouse herself from her reverie until
it was time for their train to go. "Oh, dear! what a pity it is that we
cannot change our identities! To stay in a big house with people is just
what I should like to do, and I believe you would really like staying at
Windy Gap and having Italian and singing lessons all day long with an
Italian lady."
"Really like," said Eleanor; "that is a mild way of putting it. Why,
there is nothing that I should like better, provided, of course, that the
Italian lady is a good teacher."
"Oh, yes, I believe she is a good enough teacher. If I recollect aright
what my grandfather said to me on the subject, she used to be an opera
singer herself once some years ago, but her health broke down and she
had to leave the stage. Her name is Madame Martelli."
Scarcely had the last word left her lips than Eleanor, straightening
herself with a sudden jerk, gazed with eyes that fairly blazed with
excitement at Margaret.
"Martelli!" she exclaimed incredulously. "Not Margherita Martelli!"
"Yes, I am quite sure that was the name, because I thought at the time
how very much prettier the Italian way of saying Margaret was than the
English. Do you not think so also?"
But Eleanor brushed the inquiry aside as though she had not heard it.
"And to think," she muttered, more to herself than to Margaret, "that she
is going to have lessons from Martelli."
"But why not?" said Margaret in a puzzled tone. "Is she not nice? Is she
not a good teacher?"
"Nice! A good teacher! Have you never heard of Margherita Martelli?"
Eleanor ejaculated in a tone of such unbounded amazement that Margaret
began to blush for her own ignorance, and it was in a shame-faced voice
that she owned that until the other day when her grandfather had told her
that she was to have lessons from a Madame Martelli she had never heard
the name.
"Oh, well," said Eleanor, calming down and laughing at her own
impetuosity, "now I come to think of it, I was just as ignorant a few
months ago, but I was reading the autobiography of a great concert
director the other day and in it he speaks of Margherita Martelli and the
brief but wonderful career she had. She only sang for two or three years,
and had scored triumph after triumph when a sudden illness deprived her
of her voice, and she vanished from the stage as suddenly as she had come
on to it. I had no idea that she lived in England now or that she gave
lessons. Oh, you lucky, lucky girl!" she added, a note of deep,
uncontrolled envy in her voice. "Just imagine. You are going to have
lessons from Martelli. And you are not out of your mind with joy. What
a wicked, wicked waste it is!"
"Is it not?" Margaret agreed, not a whit offended at the frankness of
this remark. "I do not wish to learn singing. I know my voice possesses
no merit whatever, and, moreover, I am not always sure whether I am
singing in tune or not."
"Well, it is something to know you don't know," said Eleanor. "Not every
one who sings out of tune could or would own as much. Oh, what a
horrible, topsy-turvy world it is, to be sure! Here are you going to
have the thing that I covet more than anything else in the whole wide
world--singing lessons from a first-rate teacher, which you don't
appreciate in the least--and here am I, compelled to waste the whole
summer holidays doing nothing. And if you would like to be me, as you say
you would, how much more wouldn't I give to be you, if only for a month!"
"Yes," said Margaret, with a long-drawn sigh; "it does seem a matter for
considerable regret that we cannot change places, and you be me and I be
you. If only a fairy would pass this way and transform us with a waive of
her magic wand into each other how much happier we both should be, and
how delighted Madame Martelli would be to get you for a pupil instead of
me!"
"Don't," said Eleanor, with a little muffled groan. She could not play
with the idea as Margaret was doing, her feelings were far too deeply
engaged for that.
Margaret sighed again. It distressed her to see any one so unhappy as
Eleanor looked at that moment, and she began to realise that her longing
for a freer, different life to the one she had hitherto led was but a
puny thing when compared to the fierce desire that consumed Eleanor to be
given an opportunity to cultivate her voice. If only she could help her
in some way. But what could she do? She might ask Mrs. Murray to allow
Eleanor to share her lessons, but she was afraid that the request would
not be granted. She knew that her grandfather would not allow her to
associate with any girl of her own age, certainly not with one whose
acquaintance she had made in so casual a manner. And besides, even if her
grandfather had done such an unlikely thing as to give his consent to the
arrangement, how could Eleanor find the time to come out to Windy Gap for
her lessons?
So back again came Margaret to the regret that had been running in her
head so long, the regret that she and Eleanor, who were so obviously
fitted to lead each other's lives rather than their own, could not change
places. Oddly enough, too, if they did change places, no one would be any
the wiser. Mrs. Murray had never seen her, and Mrs. Danvers had never
seen Eleanor. So if Eleanor went to Windy Gap, and she, Margaret, to
Seabourne, their respective hostesses would never suspect the exchange
that their guests had effected between themselves.
"Eleanor!" she exclaimed, leaning across the table and speaking in a
voice that shook with excitement, "let us do it. Change places, I mean.
If you'll be me, I shall be only too pleased to be you. No, don't
interrupt," as Eleanor seemed about to speak, "I have thought it all out,
and it will be quite easy. Mrs. Murray has never seen me, and Mrs.
Danvers has never seen you, so how are they to know that we have changed
places?"
"You can't be serious, Margaret, surely," Eleanor said. "It's the most
hare-brained suggestion I ever heard."
"Why?" said Margaret.
"Why? Because it is. We should be found out in a day, or a week."
"But who is to find us out?" persisted Margaret. "Mrs. Murray has never
seen me, and Mrs. Danvers has never seen you. Why, if they were here now
they could not tell which was which. Oh, Eleanor, do go to Windy Gap
instead of me, and let me go to your house. Think of the Italian lessons,
and the singing lessons. Why, Eleanor, it is the opportunity of your
lifetime, it is really. This is probably the turning-point of your whole
life? I am surprised that you cannot realise that."
"I do realise it," Eleanor said almost fiercely. "Do you suppose for an
instant that I can't see what an opportunity is being offered to me? But
what I also see is how very wrong it would be."
"Yes, I suppose it would be rather wrong," Margaret said calmly; "but,
after all, we would not be doing any one any harm, and I am so tired of
being treated just like a little girl and as though I had no opinions or
will of my own."
"Well, I think when your grandfather hears of this escapade he won't be
under that delusion concerning you any longer," Eleanor said rather
drily.
"Then you will do it?" Margaret cried eagerly. It was her turn now to
jump up and pace the room restlessly. "Oh, say quickly you will do it,
for I find this suspense very trying. Please, please, Eleanor, do not say
No. Just think how dull and dreary my life has always been, and do not
deprive me of the chance of having just a little enjoyment like other
girls of my age."
The implication that sheer selfishness only made her hold out against
this scheme struck Eleanor as being distinctly funny.
"But I don't suppose for a minute there is going to be much enjoyment
for me at Seabourne," Eleanor protested. "Mrs. Danvers said I must be
prepared to work pretty hard."
"Well, I shall like that as long as it is not lessons," Margaret said
quickly. "Why, even to see other people and to watch them, and to listen
to them talking will be enjoyment for me. And think of Madame Martelli
and the singing lessons."
"I am thinking of them," Eleanor returned desperately, "and I am trying
hard not to." Then all of a sudden her resolution gave way. It had been
too unequal a fight to last very long, for there were too many forces
arrayed against her conscience to give it a fair chance of gaining the
day. Margaret's persuasions counted for little really, but the thought
of the lessons was, of course, all-powerful with her, and there was, too,
a spice of adventure about the scheme that appealed strongly to her
high-spirited, mischief-loving nature. "But it's on you that the trouble
will fall in the end, Margaret," she warned her. "When we are found out I
shall be turned out of the house as an imposter, of course, but that will
be all that can happen to me. It's you who will have to bear the brunt of
both Mrs. Murray's anger and of your grandfather's."
But be the consequences what they might, Margaret refused to look so far
ahead or to consider for a moment the time when the trick they were about
to play must inevitably be discovered.
That belonged entirely to the future; it was the present that occupied
her mind now, and the keen zest and animation with which she entered into
every detail of the scheme, foreseeing and guarding against every
obstacle that might wreck it, came as a positive revelation to Eleanor.
She could not have believed that Margaret had it in her to plot and plan
in such a shrewd, capable manner, and she could only nod her head in
acquiescence to most of the suggestions that were made. She was simply
swept off her feet by Margaret's impetuosity. And so, carried along
by the flood of her eager eloquence and nearly off her head with joy at
the intoxicating thought that she was attaining her heart's desire, and
that splendid singing lessons were now within measurable distance of her,
it was small wonder that her conscience gave up the unequal fight and
retired from the field in despair.
"We must change tickets," Margaret announced presently, with the
business-like air of one who is determined to overlook no detail, however
apparently unimportant, "for you will have to get out at Chailfield,
Eleanor, which is three or four stations before we come to Seabourne."
"Very well, yes, I suppose so," Eleanor said somewhat absently. She was
deep in consideration as to which opera she should study first with
Madame Martelli. The latter would probably wish to take one in which she
had scored a success herself, and Eleanor was racking her brain to
remember the particular one in which she had read that the gifted singer
of past days had made her most signal triumph.
"And oh, Eleanor! what about our clothes? I have never, never thought of
them."
There was such a depth of tragic despair in Margaret's voice that it
could not but arrest Eleanor's wandering attention.
"Clothes," she said vaguely; "what clothes?"
"Why, our clothes," Margaret said impatiently. "We ought to change them,
you know, and you put on mine, and I put on yours."
Eleanor looked at her for a moment with the deep, earnest gaze one
unconsciously accords to people whose last remark one ought to have heard
but has not. But then, as the meaning of Margaret's speech slowly
penetrated to her brain, she smiled, and the smile broadened to a laugh.
"If changing clothes is part of the programme," she said, still laughing,
"I'm off. Why, Margaret, how do you suppose I'm going to get into your
clothes, and what do you suppose you would look like in mine? Why, I am
an inch taller than you are, and broader in proportion. No, we must take
our own things and cut the marking out of our linen. None of my
underlinen happens to be marked, so that simplifies matters for me."
"But mine all is," Margaret said ruefully; "Mrs. Parkes did it all last
week, and would it not look strange if I cut my name out of all my
things?"
"Yes, perhaps it would rather," Eleanor said thoughtfully. "I tell you
how you must manage. To begin with, don't let a maid do your unpacking
for you, and keep everything locked up until you have had time to go out
and buy a bottle of marking ink and some block tape. Then mark the tape
with your name and sew it over the name on your linen."
"And then," Eleanor pursued, "we must always remember to keep most of our
private possessions under lock and key, so that no one reads our real
names on any of our books."
"Why, that is just what I have been telling you," said Margaret, "and as
a beginning I wrote Margaret Anstruther over the Eleanor Carson on the
fly-leaves of your grammar and your dictionary."
"Why, of course, so you did," said Eleanor. "Excuse my apparent
inattention. At that moment I was choosing the opera in which I was to
make my _début_, and was trying to decide whether the said _début_ shall
take place in London or Paris, or in New York. They do give one such
splendid receptions in New York. One thing you may rely on, Margaret,
I shall send you tickets. Stall, second row, or would you like a box?"
"Speaking of boxes," said Margaret seriously, "are your name or your
initials painted on yours; neither are on mine."
"Nor on mine. My trunk, too, is innocent of any old labels that might
betray us."
At that moment a porter opened the door and looked in.
"The 2.17 has just been signalled," he said; "are either of you ladies
going by it?"
"We both are," said Eleanor, jumping up briskly and going towards the
door. "Porter, our trunks are wrongly labelled. Would you kindly see to
it for us. The one that should be labelled to Seabourne is labelled to
Chailfield, and _vice versâ_. I will come and show you. Come along,
Margaret, the porter will take your bag."
"I had omitted to take the matter of labels into my consideration,"
Margaret said, in an undertone, as they followed the man up the platform.
"Well, you needn't reproach yourself over much for that," Eleanor said.
"Considering that this is your first attempt at a conspiracy, you make an
A1 plotter."
Margaret's answering smile was rather a perfunctory one. She found
Eleanor's way of treating the matter as a most excellent jest rather
a trying one, and yet she could not but acknowledge that Eleanor's
foresight, when she chose to exercise it, was at least equal to her own.
For when Eleanor had made sure that the new railway labels were properly
affixed she changed their private labels, thus making the transfer of
their names complete.
CHAPTER VII
MRS. MURRAY MEETS THE TRAIN
"There," said Eleanor, "the first step is successfully accomplished, and
we have taken formal possession of each other's names. Here comes the
train. You were travelling first, weren't you? I was third. We had better
both go third as far as the station just before Chailfield, and then I
will take your ticket and get into a first and make my arrival in state.
By the way, did you send a telegram to Mrs. Murray telling her you had
missed an earlier train?"
"No," owned Margaret, conscience stricken, "I am afraid the idea that I
should do so never occurred to me."
"Very careless of you," commented Eleanor. "Nobody may be at the station
to meet me. I treated you much better, for I sent one to Mrs. Danvers.
However, the porter will send one for me," and after asking Margaret for
Mrs. Murray's address, and the porter for the time at which the train was
due at Chailfield, she wrote out the following telegram: "Missed
connection at Carden. Arriving Chailfield 7.56. Margaret." This she
handed to the porter, asking him to send it off as soon as he had seen
them into the train.
"I wonder," she added, as they stood waiting for the train to come in,
"how soon we shall get accustomed to our new names. You will probably
find that part easier than I shall, for the name of Margaret is quite
strange to me, whereas you told me that you had had a great friend called
Eleanor, so that the name will have a familiar ring to you at any rate.
By the way, you never explained to me how you reconcile the two
conflicting statements you made me, for after telling me that you had
scarcely ever spoken to a girl in your life, you went on to say that your
dearest friend was a namesake of mine."
The two girls had been fortunate enough to secure a carriage to
themselves, for very few people were travelling by that slow train, and
as soon as the door was shut upon them they settled themselves opposite
one another, and Margaret proceeded to give the desired explanation. For,
as Eleanor, who to Margaret's relief had now quite emerged from the
dreamy mood into which the thought of her future fame had led her,
remarked, that if their plans were not to topple ignominously about their
ears at the very outset, it was absolutely essential that each should
know as much about the other as possible.
And so, though rather reluctantly, Margaret spoke of her dream friend,
and of how, since the days of her childhood, she had managed to keep her
existence a secret even from her grandfather and her governess until ten
days ago, when the former, overhearing her talking to herself in the
wood, had suspected the presence of a stranger, and though that had been
contrary to his most stringent rules, had not been a whit appeased when
he learned that the person to whom his granddaughter was talking was an
imaginary one.
Margaret need not have been afraid that Eleanor would pour ridicule on
her shadowy friend; on the contrary, the latter was too touched by the
picture of the lonely life the other must have led even to smile.
"It really is quite a coincidence that my name is Eleanor, too," she
remarked thoughtfully, "and I am not altogether sure that the name is a
fortunate one for you. You see, the first Eleanor ended by getting you
into fairly hot water, and the second Eleanor, which is me, is in a fair
way to do likewise. But I am glad you told me about the first Eleanor. As
she played such an important part in your life it would never have done
for me to have been in complete ignorance of her existence. Now this is
how I propose we should employ the next half-hour or so. Have you got a
sheet of paper and a pencil? No," as Margaret shook her head. "Well, I
can supply you with both articles. Little did I think," she added, as she
tore a couple of sheets out of her exercise book, and giving one to
Margaret, kept the other for herself, "even in my wildest dreams that the
innocent pages of my copy-book would ever be put to such a purpose as
this. I am going to write down a list of the things about myself that you
ought to know, and I want you to do the same about yourself. Little
things which we would probably forget if we told them to one another, but
which it may prove very useful to have jotted down so that we can refer
to it in case of need. You might write down the date of your birthday,
for instance, your grandfather's, if you know it, and give me a short
description of your house, how many bedrooms it has, and so on, and how
many servants, their names, the name of your clergyman, and the church,
the doctor, any people you know by sight or by name; your governess's
name, how long she was with you, why she left, and how you spent your
days, and any little things of that sort. Do you understand?"
"Yes, I think I do," Margaret said, "for I can see how awkward it would
be if Mrs. Murray asked you any of these things and you could not
answer."
"And on my side," said Eleanor, "I shall write you a short description of
the school, and the names and numbers of the girls, what classes I took,
the names of the governesses, and a short description of Miss McDonald's
appearance, what she usually wore, where she went for her holidays, and
any little details of that sort."
For over half an hour the two girls scribbled away busily, and a good
deal more paper had to be torn from the exercise-book before their
literary labours were at an end.
Margaret, in addition to her own written hints for Eleanor's guidance,
was able to give the latter a folded sheet of notepaper which her
grandfather had ordered her to convey to Mrs. Murray. On one side of it
was carefully written out a table of the hours of study which Margaret
had been accustomed to observe hitherto, and on the other he had sketched
a plan of the way in which he wished her days to be filled while she was
with Mrs. Murray. Eleanor was pleased to observe that by far the greater
part of the day was to be spent with Madame Martelli, and though the
study of Italian occupied more time than singing, Eleanor was confident
that she could soon alter that.
"But I am not at all sure," she said, with a slight grimace, as she read
through the list of what Margaret had been used to do, "if I shall be
able to maintain your character as easily as I thought. For you are a
very learned person, Margaret, and if I am put through an examination as
soon as I arrive, I don't know where I shall be. No," as Margaret opened
her lips to protest, "I am not fishing. It is a fact that my education is
miles behind yours, and I shouldn't be a bit surprised if Mrs. Murray
found that out straightaway."
"She will only think that I--that you, I mean--have a very bad memory,"
Margaret said encouragingly. "Besides, she is deaf, and, from what
grandfather said, not very fond of conversation. She will only expect
you to say Yes and No to her, for she will know that that was all
grandfather expected me to say to him."
"Is that all you were supposed to say to him," Eleanor asked in blank
astonishment.
"That is all. Until about a year ago I thought grandchildren and sons and
daughters never did say more than that to their parents; but, of course,
I know now that they do."
"Well, I should imagine so," Eleanor remarked. "You have been brought up
in the style of one hundred years ago, and yet, except for a certain
quaintness in your speech, one would not think you very different from
any girl brought up in the ordinary way."
"Is my speech quaint?" Margaret asked in dismay.
"It's nothing to worry about," Eleanor said consolingly. "Perhaps it is
only because you don't talk a word of slang that your speech sounds a
little odd."
"Slang!" said Margaret, only partly relieved. "Is that not what
schoolboys talk?"
"Schoolboys and others," said Eleanor, with a laugh. "But don't worry,"
she added. "It is quite in keeping with your new character as a governess
that you should not be slangy, so do not put yourself to the trouble of
learning any."
"You have said several things that I did not understand," said Margaret
thoughtfully, "were they slang?"
"Very probably; what were they?"
"Oh! I do not know that I can remember them quite all, but you said a
minute ago that my education was miles behind yours; what did that mean?"
"Inferior to yours," Eleanor said promptly. "That's hardly slang. It
explains itself really, and so you will find with most of the things I
have said. But, perhaps, if you hear any expressions of that sort from
the young Danvers and don't understand them, it will be better not to ask
their meaning. You see, you are supposed to have lived in a girl's school
for the last three years and to have all the slang vocabulary at your
fingers' ends, so that if you go asking what every common or garden slang
expression means you will give us both away with a pound of tea."
"I understand," said Margaret meekly, "and I will not ask." And she made
good her promise by forbearing to inquire what "common" or "garden"
meant when used in that connection, and what bearing a pound of tea had
on the question.
"By the way," said Eleanor, "it has just occurred to me that we ought
to keep any photographs we have of our parents safely locked away. I
must be especially careful, for Mrs. Murray, as an old friend of your
grandfather's, might, if she saw the photographs of my father and mother,
recognise the fact that they were not yours."
"The only portraits I have of my father and my mother are contained in
this locket," said Margaret, as she drew an old leather case from her bag
and pressed the spring. Within lay a dull gold locket richly chased on
one side, and having the monogram "M" beautifully worked in seed pearls
on the other. Inside were two portraits painted on ivory, one of
Margaret's father and one of her mother.
"My mother had these especially painted for me," Margaret said, "but I
have never worn the locket. It is too big."
"Yes, it is too big to wear," Eleanor said; "but oh!" as she took the
case from Margaret's hand, "what a beautiful string of pearls!"
The locket fitted into a bed on the velvet-lined case, and round it was a
circular depression in which a row of pearls lay coiled.
"Yes, that is the chain to wear with the locket," Margaret said. "It is
attached to it."
"If it wasn't I should wear the pearls by themselves," Eleanor said,
examining them intently. "They are a perfectly lovely row, and must be
worth a lot of money. You had better keep this very carefully locked up,
Margaret," she said, snapping to the case and handing it back to its
owner. "They are hardly the sort of things that a governess would be
likely to possess."
"My bag has a very good key," Margaret answered, "so I should always keep
it locked and wear the key on my watch-chain."
When Eleanor heard that Margaret had never been to London, and had only
the very vaguest idea of what Hampstead, where she was supposed to have
lived for the last six years, was like, she had given vent to a low
whistle expressive of despair. And as their time together was now drawing
short she felt that it would be better to give Margaret a verbal
description of that suburb rather than attempt to write one out for her.
So as hurriedly as she could she told Margaret as much about Hampstead as
she could think of on the spur of the moment. Margaret listened
attentively, and as she had naturally an excellent memory, which had been
trained to a marvellous pitch of perfection by Miss Bidwell, she found no
difficulty at all in committing to heart almost every word that Eleanor
uttered on the subject.
The train was running now through exceedingly pretty scenery, but neither
of the two girls had any attention to spare for it; every minute of their
time was occupied in endeavouring to make themselves as perfect as
possible in their new characters. But at last when a long, undulating
range of distant blue hills turned themselves slowly into green downs,
and instead of occupying the horizon only, filled the middle distance
entirely, leaving a foreground of flat green fields between themselves
and the train, Eleanor, glancing out of the window, gave it as her
opinion that they must be fairly close to Chailfield now, and that at the
next station she would change into a first-class carriage.
The rain had long since ceased, and the sun, as it sank towards the range
of hills that rose against the western sky, was shining brilliantly out
of a mass of gorgeously hued clouds. As it turned out, however, Eleanor
had no chance to change into a first-class carriage, for as the train
slowed down and ran into the little country station they were
approaching, she saw that they had actually arrived at Chailfield.
Both girls gave a little gasp of dismay. Neither had realised that the
moment for parting was so near, and now that it was actually upon them,
both of them were conscious of a distinct feeling of nervousness which
perceptibly increased, especially on Eleanor's part, when she saw that a
lady who could be none other than Mrs. Murray had come down to meet the
train, for outside the paling that separated the road from the platform
a low pony-carriage drawn by two fat black ponies was waiting, and in it
was seated a somewhat stout elderly lady wearing a very broad-brimmed
mushroom hat. She was scanning the carriage windows as the train went
slowly past her, but did not appear to see the two girls who, being in
the front part, were carried some distance beyond her before the train
came to a standstill.
Eleanor gathered up her umbrella and the basket containing the books, and
stood up. A porter came to open the door.
"Any luggage, Miss?"
"Yes, one trunk labelled Anstruther," Eleanor said very distinctly.
"Very good, Miss; for Windy Gap, aren't you? The omnibus is waiting
outside for your luggage, and Mrs. Murray has drove down to meet you."
Eleanor stepped out on to the platform feeling that the Rubicon was now
crossed and that there was no drawing back for either of them. She
lingered for a moment beside the door, which Margaret had very promptly
shut upon her the moment she was out of the carriage.
"Don't be nervous," Margaret whispered encouragingly from the safe
seclusion of her corner. "I am not."
"Of course you're not!" Eleanor retorted. "You haven't begun to play the
impostor yet. I have, and I am not sure that I like it. Your turn to be
nervous will come when you get to Seabourne. Well," pulling herself
together as the porter came within earshot, "good-bye to you, Miss
Carson, so glad to have met you. I hope your holidays will be very
pleasant ones."
"I hope so too," said Margaret, with a little happy laugh of pure
excitement. "Goodbye, Miss Anstruther, I hope you will get on nicely with
all your lessons."
For some reason the train was late in starting on again, and Margaret
was therefore able to see the meeting between Mrs. Murray and Eleanor,
although she was not near enough to overhear what was said on either
side. When Eleanor had given up her ticket and passed through the gate,
she saw Mrs. Murray, who had not got out of the pony-carriage, lean
forward and, taking hold of Eleanor's two hands, draw her under the shade
of the enormous mushroom hat and kiss her affectionately. The hat got
somewhat disarranged in the process, and Mrs. Murray righted it with a
pleasant low laugh that came distinctly to Margaret's ears as she sat
watching the little scene from the corner of the third-class carriage.
Then she seemed to be asking Eleanor some questions, which the latter
answered readily through the ear-trumpet which Mrs. Murray held out to
her. Once they looked in her direction, and a spasm of alarm shot through
Margaret's mind. Surely, surely Eleanor was not abandoning their
conspiracy at the very outset of its career. The trunk had already been
hoisted on to the top of the somewhat dilapidated looking old bus that
evidently plied between the distant village of Windy Gap and the station.
Why, then, did the pony-carriage not drive on, or why did the train not
start? Eleanor looked again towards the carriage in which Margaret sat in
a perfect fever of impatience to be off, and then, after saying something
to Mrs. Murray, to which the latter gave an affirmative nod, she left the
carriage and came running up the platform. Margaret could have cried with
disappointment. She had no doubt at all that Eleanor had already repented
of her scheme, and was coming to say that it must be given up. Eleanor
reached the door in a somewhat breathless condition, and Margaret
resisting her first impulse to shut the window and to draw down the
blind, and refuse to listen to a word she was going to say, put her head
reluctantly out.
"I couldn't help coming to tell you that she is a perfectly sweet old
lady," Eleanor panted. "And she gave me such a warm welcome that I feel
an awful fraud, and----"
Margaret interrupted her with an exclamation that sounded almost like a
wail of despair.
"And you have come to tell me that you want to change back into your own
self?" she said.
"No, not much," Eleanor said hurriedly; "but the point is, do you? She
seems to be perfectly charming, and I don't believe she would be very
angry. And oh, Margaret! I feel as though I ought not to oust you from
house and home in this way."
Margaret's brow cleared as though by magic. It was all right then.
Strange though it undoubtedly appeared to her, Eleanor was not only
willing but actually eager to go to Windy Gap, and it was only out of
motives of unselfishness that she had offered to change into their proper
selves.
Briefly, but with all the emphasis of which she was capable, Margaret
assured her that such an act of unselfishness would not be appreciated in
the least.
"Oh, very well," Eleanor said, much relieved, "and to tell you the truth
I think Mrs. Murray would be rather surprised if I were suddenly to
return to her and say that I was not Margaret Anstruther but that you
were. She would probably end by thinking us both impostors. Well, I must
go now; I only came back just to give you the chance of becoming yourself
again if you had already repented. Look here, you must let me know how
you get on. I shall be quite anxious to know. Will you write? Quick, tell
me Mrs. Murray is beckoning."
"I could write, of course," Margaret said cautiously "but you must
remember that Margaret Anstruther has never received a letter in her life
and that Mrs. Murray might want to see it."
"I shall come in and see you then," Eleanor said.
"Oh, will you?" Margaret said with a smile. "Kindly remember, Miss
Margaret Anstruther, that you never took a walk unaccompanied in your
life. No, leave it to me, and I will try and come out to Windy Gap one
day to see you, for I am free, free, free, and quite grown up, while you
are a mere child in the nursery!"
And so, though rather against her will, Eleanor was obliged to leave the
matter like that, and saying good-bye to Margaret for the second time she
scurried away down the platform.
Margaret watched her step into the pony-carriage, tuck the dust wrap over
her knees and over Mrs. Murray's, and then settle herself with an air of
obvious enjoyment for her drive. From the window Margaret could see the
long, white chalky road that they would traverse to reach Windy Gap,
which place doubtless lay to the left beyond the high ridge which shut
out all further view of the downs. The road wound its leisurely way
between high hedges and green fields, was lost for awhile as it passed
behind an outlying spur of the downs, and became visible again as,
apparently repenting its former meanderings below, it sternly took the
shortest and steepest way possible up the side of the hill, and finally
disappeared over the brow. And it might have fallen to her lot to be
sitting beside Mrs. Murray and in that little low pony-carriage, and to
be driving along that monotonous road to the remote village on the downs
instead of to be whirling past them as she did in a train on her way to
a houseful of young people. Margaret could have hugged herself with
pleasure as she thought of the exchange she had made.
CHAPTER VIII
MAUD DANVERS
There were only three or four stations between Chailfield and Seabourne,
and they followed so closely on one another that in rather less than half
an hour the train ran into the big station of Seabourne.
"Any luggage, Miss, cab, or outside porter, please," said a porter,
opening the door of the carriage.
"One trunk and a hat-box, and I will have a cab, please," Margaret
answered.
She was rather surprised and pleased at her own self-possession, as led
by the porter she threaded her way up the crowded platform. And when he
paused to ask her what name he should look for on the trunk she gave
Eleanor's as calmly as though she had been known by it all her life. It
had not occurred to Margaret that any one might come to the station to
meet her, or, rather, to meet the girl whose identity she had taken on
herself, consequently she gave a startled jump, when, as she stood on the
edge of the press of people round the luggage van, a tap fell smartly on
her shoulder, and turning, she found herself confronted by a merry,
sunburnt girl of about her own age.
"Miss Carson, isn't it?" the latter sang out in a clear, rather pleasant
voice, that could be distinctly heard above the noise and confusion
surrounding them. "Oh, don't look so astonished! I heard you tell the
porter the name on your luggage, and I tracked you up the platform. Let
me introduce myself. I am Maud Danvers, and I hope you've had a nice
journey and all that. I say, you're taking a cab, aren't you? That's all
right. Get in to one when you've collected all your belongings, will you,
and wait for me, and I'll drive up with you. I shan't be long, but I have
just got to go and finish a conversation that I am in the middle of."
And with a careless little nod Miss Maud Danvers turned and went off up
the platform. But casual though her greeting had been, it had served to
dispel the slight feeling of loneliness that had been creeping over
Margaret. How exceedingly kind of that nice girl to have come and met
her! And in what a delightfully frank and friendly manner she had
accosted her! Margaret felt instantly sure that she was going to like
Maud Danvers very much indeed, and it was with a little glow of pleasure
that she reflected that she was going to live in the same house with her
for many weeks to come. For a moment she forgot to aid the porter to look
for her box, but turning her back upon the busy crowd she followed Maud
with her eyes. Without being exactly pretty, Maud Danvers was an
exceedingly nice-looking girl, and her fresh, clear skin no less than her
brisk step and the way she held herself, showed that she was an outdoor
girl.
She was wearing a short tweed skirt that barely reached to her ankles,
and displayed a neat pair of golfing shoes, but the skirt was so
exceedingly well hung and the fit of the Norfolk coat that matched it
so good that Margaret, unversed though she was in such matters,
instinctively recognised that Maud's clothes not only became her very
well, but had been made by a first-class tailor. Her own simply made
coat and skirt of blue serge felt suddenly very dowdy.
Meanwhile Maud had made her way along the crowded platform to a point
where two girls in Panama hats and long white blanket coats, and carrying
tennis racquets under their arms, were standing together, and as soon as
she reached their side, they all three plunged into an eager conversation
in the interest of which it was soon evident that Margaret was forgotten.
Just, however, as Margaret's cabman was beginning to show signs of
impatience, the bicycles for which the two girls had been waiting were
extricated from the van, and with a hasty nod to Maud, they pushed their
way out of the crowd.
"The Cedars, Pelham Road, please," Maud said as she got into the cab.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss Carson. But I wanted to speak to
the Finches. They had just got back from the Surbiton Tournament. They
had done awfully well both of them. The tall one, Anna's the best. Fancy,
wasn't it stupendous luck for her! She got into the third round of the
open singles and met Mrs. Lambert Chambers. Of course, she was beaten
hollow. Didn't even get a game. But wasn't it luck meeting her?"
Now, as Margaret had not the very vaguest notion who Mrs. Lambert
Chambers was, or why it should be considered such extraordinary good
fortune to meet her, she gave such a vague assent to the question that
Maud turned to stare at her with undisguised amazement in her eyes.
"You don't mean to say," she exclaimed, "that you have never even heard
of Mrs. Lambert Chambers!"
"I don't seem to remember her name," confessed Margaret, blushing
crimson.
"Why, I mean the famous Mrs. Lambert Chambers. The tennis player. Miss
Douglas that was, you know."
"Oh!" said poor Margaret again. Then she added lamely, "I--I suppose she
must play very nicely."
"Play nicely!" ejaculated Maud, still surveying her companion with a
direct glance that the latter found very embarrassing. "Great Scott, what
a funny way of putting it! Where on earth were you brought up! And never
even to have heard of her! Why, you will be saying next that you never
heard of C. B. Fry or Braid, or Grace, or the Dohertys."
But Margaret, in the face of the scorn she already provoked, was not
disposed to confess to such depths of ignorance, and she murmured a vague
reply that might have meant anything. However, the few unintelligible
sounds that passed her lips might not have been sufficient to save her
from further cross examination on the subject of her knowledge of tennis
had not Maud's attention been attracted by the same two girls who,
speeding past on their bicycles, called out to her not to forget
to-morrow.
"Right oh!" sang out Maud in reply. "I shall expect you 11.30 sharp."
"How beautifully they bicycle!" Margaret said in admiring accents,
following the two girls with eyes as they threaded their way through the
traffic.
"Oh, well, any one can do that, can't they?" Maud replied. "Did you bring
yours? You'd find it useful. I say, what was your hockey eleven like?"
"What was our hockey eleven like?" faltered Margaret. "I--I forget."
"Forget!" Maud exclaimed, in fresh amazement. "How could you forget an
important thing like that? Why, nowadays if a school can't put a decent
hockey eleven in the field it does not count for much."
"I mean," said Margaret, as a timely recollection of what Eleanor had
told her about the games at Waterloo House came to her mind, "Miss
McDonald was very old-fashioned, and she did not at all approve of the
modern fashion of girls playing boys games."
"Great Scott!" said Maud in tones of intense commiseration. "Fancy being
a governess in a rotten school of that sort! I wonder you stayed. Then
you didn't play cricket?"
"No."
"Tennis?"
"No. But," added Margaret rather timidly, for it distressed her to see to
what depths she was sinking in Maud's estimation, "I have always thought
I should like to learn lawn tennis very much. Perhaps you could teach
me."
"Me?" said Maud, raising her eyebrows in a quizzical fashion and gazing
at Margaret with the point blank stare, which the latter found so trying
to encounter with equanimity. "Sorry, but I haven't the time. I daresay
one of the kids would give you a game, though, some time."
"As if," she said afterwards, detailing this conversation with much
laughter to one of her brothers, "tennis could be taught in a day, or as
though I were going to bother to teach her either. And I fancied I saw
myself playing with a girl who had never held a racquet in her hand
before."
"By the way," Maud went on, "I don't suppose you have much idea at
present what our family consists of, have you?"
"No, I have not," said Margaret, feeling that she was quite safe in
making that admission, for Eleanor had not known either.
"Well, there's mother, of course, to start with, and then, of the ones
who are at home, there's Geoffrey; he's a year older than me, and he's at
Sandhurst. Like me, he's fearfully keen on games, and like me too, he's
pretty good," added Maud, who, as Margaret had discovered by that time,
was not lacking in a good opinion of herself. "Then I come, then
Hilary--she's a year younger than me. Then come Jack and Noel--they're
fifteen and sixteen respectively, and one's at Osborne and one's at
Dartmouth; all they seem to care about at present is sailing and
fishing, and so we don't see much of them. Then there's Edward, he's
about fourteen, I think; he's mad keen on cricket--besides, he's got all
the brains of the family. Then two cousins of ours, Nancy and Joan Green,
are staying with us. They're not half bad girls, and Nancy would play
quite a decent game of tennis if she wasn't so lazy. She can hit jolly
hard, but she won't run, and she will talk, so I won't play with her.
Then there are the kids--your little lot, you know--and I wish you joy of
them; they're a jolly handful, and no mistake."
Margaret, who had been listening eagerly to this account of the family in
the midst of which she was to live for the next few weeks, puckered her
forehead over the last sentences.
"The--the kids," she queried in a puzzled tone.
"Yes, the infants; my eldest sister Joanna's children. You are going
to take them over and teach them, aren't you? At least, that is what
I believe mother gave me to understand."
"Oh yes, of course," Margaret said, so quickly that Maud had no suspicion
that she had never in all her life before heard children called kids.
"Yes, mother hopes great things from you," Maud chattered on. "She says
as you have been in a school you will understand discipline and all that.
But I believe Joanna won't have her darlings smacked, and they are such
troublesome little monkeys that a sound smacking would do them all the
good in the world," wound up their young aunt with a vigour that showed
the subject was one on which she felt strongly. "Not that you," with a
careless glance at Margaret's pale, thoughtful face, "look strong enough
to give them much of a whacking."
Margaret made no reply, simply because at the moment she felt absolutely
incapable of speech. Dismay at the thought that she was to be a governess
held her spellbound. She certainly had not gathered from anything that
Eleanor had said that she was expected to teach, and two naughty unruly
children into the bargain. No wonder that she grew paler even than her
wont at the appalling thought. Luckily for her, however, Maud was far
from guessing the dismay her casually given information was causing her
silent companion, and under cover of her chatter, Margaret had time to
recover a little from the shock she had received and to resolve to try
and make the best of it. Of one thing she was sure, Eleanor herself had
no idea of the services she had been expected to give in exchange for
being asked to spend her holidays at The Cedars. Neither had Mrs. Danvers
wished to get her there under false pretences. After all, had not her
letter said that she was both to enjoy herself and to make herself
useful. So she had no right to complain at the discovery that the latter
half of the sentence meant so much more than either she or Eleanor had
suspected. "To make yourself useful," Eleanor had said airily; "oh, that
means that you will be expected to arrange flowers for the dinner table,
and to write notes, and so on. Little things of that sort, you know."
So, naturally, it had been a great shock to discover that "little things
of that sort" included the entire control of two unruly children. It was
not the prospect of having to work that perturbed Margaret, it was the
knowledge of how incapable she felt to deal with children. Why, she had
scarcely ever spoken to a child in her life, and now she was to have the
entire charge of two thrust upon her. She could not help wondering what
Eleanor would have said or done in her place, but was unable to answer
the question satisfactorily. The situation, however, could hardly have
dismayed her as much as it was dismaying her substitute. To fill the post
of holiday governess to two small children would seem to her an easy task
after having taught for three years in a big school. Of one thing,
however, Margaret felt quite convinced. If Eleanor had known of the
predicament in which Margaret was placed, she would, after a moment or
two of consternation, have gone off into fits of laughter. And no doubt
the situation had its comic side; even Margaret, full of alarm as she
was, could not restrain a smile as she thought of the very queer
governess that she would make.
"You look pretty young to be a governess, don't you?" said Maud. "Did you
ever have any difficulty in keeping order?"
"No, never," said Margaret, truthfully enough.
"How many girls were there?"
"Twenty boarders, forty day girls, and five governesses when I--when
I----" this came out with a gulp, for Margaret found the first falsehood
she had been obliged to tell most distasteful to her--"went there. But
the school has been going down the last few years, and last term there
were only seven boarders and ten day girls."
"Sounds rather a poor sort of show, doesn't it?" said Maud with a yawn.
"I say, what a slow horse we have got, haven't we? We shall be all night
getting home at this rate. What sort of place was Putney or Hampstead, or
wherever the school was to live in?"
"Miss McDonald's school was at Hampstead, which is a suburb of London and
is situated high up. It is celebrated for its Heath, which is a great
holiday resort for the lower orders--the 'Arrys and 'Arriets, you
know--on Bank Holidays, at which time it is advisable for quieter members
of society to keep off it. But at other times it affords an excellent
exercise ground for all the young ladies' schools in the neighbourhood.
The air is fine and invigorating, and there is no reason why, with the
help of a little imagination, one should not fancy oneself in the heart
of the country, and many miles away from the greatest metropolis in the
world. The sunsets can, by those who appreciate the beauties of Nature,
be viewed from that portion of the Heath which commands a view of the
western sky, and----"
"Very interesting indeed," broke in Maud, who had been listening with
astonishment to this flow of instructive discourse.
At first she had thought that Margaret was, to use her own phrase,
"rotting her," but a glance at the serious face beside her was sufficient
to dispel that theory, and she came to the conclusion that young though
she was, Margaret was a typical governess, who rejoiced in framing
stilted sentences and in letting them flow from her lips in an even,
monotonous voice.
"You speak like a well-informed guide-book," she added, with another
yawn.
Margaret took the semi-impertinent remark as a compliment.
"I can tell you a great deal more than that about Hampstead if you would
like to listen," she said, for her wonderfully accurate memory had
enabled her to retain every word of the banteringly given description
of Hampstead with which Eleanor had furnished her. Needless to say,
Eleanor had had no idea that Margaret would think it necessary to repeat
it word for word, but had thought that Margaret would only pick out facts
here and there to help her in any emergency that might arise.
"Not on any account, thanks," said Maud hastily; "let's talk about
something more interesting."
"Something more interesting" proved to be her own self, and from that
point onwards until they reached their destination Maud talked
exclusively of her own doings. And as she appeared to do little else but
play games, and as Margaret's knowledge of all games was "nil," it
followed that very much of what Maud said was as unintelligible as though
she had talked Chinese. But though she never knew when Maud was talking
of golf, or when of tennis, or again, when hockey was under discussion,
so that handicaps, and sliced balls, and American services, and good
forearm drives, and double faults, and poor passing, and good shooting,
and half-volleys, were terms that were all jumbled up in absolutely
inextricable confusion, her expression of rapt attention as she jotted
them down on the tablets of her mind, resolving to acquaint herself with
the meaning of each when occasion served, convinced Maud that she had a
properly appreciative listener. A person even more ignorant of games than
Margaret would have gathered from all she said about them that Maud
excelled in each and all.
And that was no vain boast either. Her golf handicap was four; she played
an exceedingly good, hard game at tennis, and had twice played hockey in
International matches. But it was of billiards she was talking during the
last few minutes of their drive. It appeared from what she said that she
had promised to play a game with Geoffrey immediately after dinner, but
that she had not only broken that promise but had been obliged to come
away in the middle of dinner to meet the train.
"Oh, I am so sorry to have caused you this inconvenience," said Margaret.
"But it was most kind of you to come and meet me."
"Oh, I didn't come down to meet you," said Maud, with perfect frankness.
"I wanted to hear how Anna had got on at Surbiton. Then I luckily
remembered that you were coming by this train, and so got a lift home
in your cab, and killed two birds with one stone."
The little laugh with which Maud accompanied this candid explanation of
her presence at the station robbed her words of much of their sting, yet
Margaret was conscious of a feeling of mortification that Maud's errand
had not been undertaken solely on her behalf. Indeed, she had been given
to understand that she was by far the smaller and the least important of
the two bird's that Maud's stone had brought down; and the knowledge made
her feel very forlorn indeed. Up to that moment she had been under the
impression that Maud had been anxious to meet her and make her
acquaintance. Well, if not hers, that of the girl she represented, and
the casually given information that it was only because she happened to
travel by the same train as the Finches that she had been at the station
to greet her quite took away the pleasant feeling she had had that there
was at least one person in the big, strange household she was entering
who was eager to show herself kindly disposed towards the new holiday
governess.
They had long ago left the neighbourhood of the town behind them, and
had been driving through the deepening dusk towards the downs, which,
looking in that dim light like a high green wall, run inland from the
sea. Most of the roads hereabouts were wide and bordered by trees, and
on either side houses which had for the most part large gardens
surrounding them lay back from the road. Even Margaret, unversed as she
was in the knowledge of what made the difference between a good and bad
neighbourhood in the town, could perceive that the further they went the
more prosperous and consequential looking the houses became.
At last, when they were almost underneath the downs, the long, straight
road they had been following for some time turned abruptly to the right,
and going through a white gate they entered a long drive lined on either
side with a hedge of evergreens close clipped and of great thickness.
Here and there openings like doorways had been cut in the hedge, but it
was now too dark to see what lay beyond them.
Almost before the cab had time to draw up before the lighted doorway,
Maud had jumped out.
"Here we are at last," she said, with a big sigh of relief, "and here you
are, Martin," as a portly looking butler came forward. "That's all right.
Thanks ever so for the lift, Miss Carson. You'll excuse me now, won't
you, though. I expect Geoffrey is tearing his hair in the billiard-room."
And with that Maud vanished at top speed, and Margaret was left to
Martin's guidance. Though Maud's sudden desertion came as an unwelcome
surprise to her, Margaret was too tired by this time even to feel shy,
and she followed Martin through the hall without any inward tremors of
nervousness.
"Miss Carson, Madam," he said, throwing open a door at the far end of the
big, square hall they had traversed, and ushering her into a drawing-room
whose open French windows gave on to the lawn. The only light in the
room, and that was not very much, came from outside, and in the
semi-darkness Margaret could just make out a figure seated in a low
easy chair partly in and partly out of the window.
A gentle snore was the only reply to the butler's announcement, and
Margaret was conscious of a quick fear lest he might retire and leave her
with her sleeping hostess.
But Martin was evidently acquainted with his mistress's habits, and he
advanced slowly up the long room repeating "Miss Carson, Madam," and
coughing gently behind his hand at intervals until he had reached her
side.
Then she awoke.
And once awake she gave Margaret a very cordial greeting.
"My dear," she said, extending her hand but not offering to rise from her
chair, "I am very pleased to see you. Turn up the lights, Martin; I was
asleep when you came. But I was not snoring, was I? The boys and Maud
accuse me of that, I know. The nap every evening after dinner I do not
deny, but the snoring I do deny most emphatically. Just reassure me my
dear, by telling me that I was not snoring."
"It was a very gentle, quiet snore," said Margaret politely.
Mrs. Danvers broke into a soft, chuckling laugh which was as pleasant and
amiable as her voice, and Martin having now turned on the light Margaret
saw that her hostess's face and appearance matched her voice and laugh.
She was a stout, not to say exceedingly stout, middle-aged woman, with a
round, rosy face, on every line of which good-temper, combined with an
easy, indolent disposition, were expressed.
"Excuse my getting up, my dear," she said, "but truth to say, I do not
get up as easily as I could wish. 'J'y suis, j'y reste,' ought to be,
though it is not, my family motto. And so you missed your train. Very
trying to miss trains, is it not? And you must be tired, my dear. I hope
Maud saw that you had enough to eat, and that you like your room."
"Miss Carson has only this minute arrived, Madam," interposed Martin from
the door. "And Miss Maud directed me to take her straight to you."
"And you have had nothing to eat since you arrived!" Mrs. Danvers
exclaimed in a horrified tone. "Why, my dear, you must be starving! Come
with me to the dining-room at once."
She got slowly up out of her capacious chair as she spoke, and as she did
so a piece of knitting slid from her lap to the floor, while a big ball
of worsted rolled away under the nearest sofa. Margaret first picked up
the knitting and then pursued the ball and restored both to their owner,
an action which, although she did not know it at the time, she was
destined to perform very often for Mrs. Danvers, for that lady was very
rarely unaccompanied by a piece of knitting, which she invariably dropped
when she rose; to knit, she said, soothed the nerves, and gave an added
pleasure to conversation. Reading she was not fond of, and scarcely ever
opened a book or a newspaper, but she would knit and talk, chiefly about
her children, for hours at a stretch. When her knitting had been restored
to her now, and half a row of stitches dropped in the fall picked up, she
led the way into the dining-room. She was kindness and hospitality
itself, but though her incessant flow of talk obviated all necessity
for Margaret to contribute more than the merest monosyllables, the strain
of listening and being ready to say Yes or No in the right places
fatigued Margaret so greatly that by the end of the meal her brain was in
a whirl, and if Mrs. Danvers had put to her one-tenth of the questions to
which Eleanor had supplied ready-made answers, her replies would have
been so extraordinarily muddled up that the deception the two girls were
practising would have been found out at once.
But Mrs. Danvers, like her daughter Maud, was far more interested in her
own concerns than in those of any one with whom she might come in
contact.
But her conversation did differ from Maud's in that it was not of herself
she mainly spoke. It was evident, even to Margaret's tired brain, that
Mrs. Danver's whole being was wrapped up in her children. She would talk
about them and praise them literally by the hour together, and Margaret
was given to understand that there never were such manly, clever boys as
her sons, or such charming girls as her daughters. If Geoffrey did not
eventually rise to be Commander-in-Chief, and if Noel and Jack did not
become Admirals of the Fleet, it would not be their fault. On the other
hand, Edward's brains would get him into Parliament, and there was no
reason at all why he should not be Prime Minister one day. As for Maud,
there was simply nothing she could not do in the way of games Daisy and
David were dear children, too, if taken in the right way, and not unduly
thwarted. Daisy and David Margaret concluded, were the two grandchildren
to whom she was to fill the position of holiday governess and she
thought to herself ruefully enough, as Mrs. Danvers went on to say what
high-spirited children they were, that she was quite sure she would never
have the courage to thwart them however naughty they were.
When Margaret could eat no more, and indeed she had finished her supper
long before Mrs. Danvers became aware of the fact, the latter suggested
that if Miss Carson had really had enough they should go into the
billiard-room and watch the game that was in progress there. She had
already been told that Maud was playing a level game with Geoffrey. They
had started the game before dinner, and Maud had been 120 to his 80 odd
when the gong brought play to a standstill. She had made four breaks of
10, two of 12, and one of 15, and though every word of this was Greek to
Margaret, she gathered from the air of pride with which Mrs. Danvers
spoke that it was all greatly to Maud's credit.
So when Mrs. Danvers' knitting had been picked up from the floor, and the
ball, which had rolled under the dining-room table this time, retrieved,
Margaret followed her hostess out of the room.
A tremendous clapping and cheering, and the noisy stamping of cues on the
ground, fell on Margaret's ears as Mrs. Danvers threw open the door of
the billiard-room, and it did not cease until they had both been some
minutes in the room.
To Margaret's dazed, shy eyes the room seemed full of young people,
although as a matter of fact there were only one or two friends of the
Danvers present, the rest of the group of young people being the Danvers
themselves. Maud, of course, was still in the tweed skirt in which she
had gone to the station, but the other girls were in pretty white evening
frocks, and the bigger boys were in dinner jackets, and the smaller ones
in Etons. Maud was perched on the edge of the billiard-table with one
foot on the ground and the other swinging to and fro, and it was evident
both from her pleased, self-conscious air and the fact that she was the
only person in the room who was not clapping, that all the applause was
meant for her.
"Yes, I have beaten him handsomely, Mumsy," she said, when at length Mrs.
Danvers could make her voice heard. "It was a close thing though. Fancy
Geoffrey was 193, and he must needs go and miss one of the easiest shots
you ever saw, and then I ran out with a break of 22."
"Fancy that!" Mrs. Danvers said, turning to Margaret with a proud,
beaming face. "Maud ran out with a break of 22."
Then a momentary silence fell in the room, and everybody present
seemingly became aware for the first time that there was a stranger among
them. She coloured up nervously, and then feeling it incumbent upon her
to say something, for, or so at least it seemed to her, every one seemed
waiting for her to speak, she stammered out nervously, addressing Maud:--
"I hope you did not hurt yourself."
"Hurt myself--how?" said Maud, in wide-eyed surprise.
"By running out and breaking yourself; or," becoming miserably aware,
from the expressions on everybody's faces that she had said something
incredibly foolish, "was it your stick that you broke?"
An audible titter ran round the room, and as Margaret stood there, the
focus of all eyes, the titter changed to literal shouts and shrieks of
laughter. The boys doubled themselves up into knots, the girls staggered
helplessly about, and Mrs. Danvers just sank into the nearest chair and
laughed until the tears ran down her face. The room fairly rang with
their laughter, and in the middle of them all Margaret stood alone with
crimson cheeks, and eyes to which the tears had begun to start.
But no one had the slightest pity for her cruel mortification; only now
and then one or other of them would glance from her to Maud and go off
into fresh shrieks.
At last Margaret could stand her position no longer, but crying out in
a high, choking voice, that was plainly heard even above the din that
prevailed: "Oh I hate you all! I hate you all!" she dashed from the room,
and ran, still with the sound of their laughter behind her, down the
passage which led to the billiard-room into the hall. Even at that
distance she could hear the shouts and yells of laughter, which seemed to
be increasing rather than diminishing, for if there was an unusual lull
in the noise, some one would ask Maud if her run had broken her or her
stick, and that would be sufficient to start them all off again.
The noise they all made even at that distance was tremendous, but The
Cedars was evidently a house to which uproarious mirth was no novelty,
for Martin, by whom Margaret had brushed in her hasty flight from the
billiard-room, exhibited no signs of surprise at the sound of it.
In the hall, simply because she did not know where to go next, Margaret
came to a pause in her headlong flight, and, sinking on to a chair,
covered her face with her hands. Even though the length of the whole
house separated her now from the billiard-room, she had not escaped from
the sound of the shouts and squeals to which her remarks had given rise,
for fresh peals were still ringing out with unabated force.
"Oh, will they ever stop laughing at me!" Margaret said half-aloud, in
a tone that was fraught with extreme misery. "Oh, how I wish I had never
come here! And I had been so looking forward to being friends with girls
and boys of my own age. Oh, how shall I bear it if they go on laughing at
me for days and days!"
"Oh, but they won't go on for as long as that, no matter how good the
joke. They'll have a dozen fresh jokes by this time to-morrow, and this
one will be forgotten. Unless, of course, it was an extra good one. By
the way, what was the joke? You are Miss Carson, aren't you? I am Nancy
Green. Take a chocolate and tell me all about it."
Margaret, who had believed herself to be alone, turned in surprise as
this unexpected voice fell on her ears, and glanced about her in a
startled fashion until, in a cosy nook close to her and half hidden by a
tall palm and a screen, she saw a big Chesterfield couch on which a girl
was stretched full length, with a book in one hand and a box of
chocolates in the other.
"I do not exactly know what is making them laugh," Margaret said,
declining the chocolates with an unhappy shake of her head. "They were
playing billiards, and Miss Danvers said she had run away and broken
something, and I hoped she was not hurt, and then they all began to
laugh, and have not stopped yet," she added resentfully, as a fresh peal
of laughter reached her ears. "And you are laughing, too," she said,
glancing at Nancy's twitching lips.
"Only a very little," Nancy said hastily, "and it was rather a funny
mistake you made, you know. I will try and explain. You see, a break in
billiards does not mean a fall; it means that you go on scoring."
"Oh!" said Margaret, in the same dejected accents, and not feeling at all
enlightened, "and what does going on scoring mean?"
"Why, that it is still your turn to play, of course," said Nancy, and her
tone was so surprised that Margaret thought it wiser to ask no more
questions in case she displayed an ignorance so great as to rouse
suspicion as to where she could have been brought up.
"I wish they would stop laughing at me," she said miserably.
"Why! Do you mind being laughed at so much as all that," Nancy said. "I
should have thought that as a governess in a school you would have got
used to it. For schoolgirls are awful quizzes. Perhaps, though, as you
were a governess they did it behind your back."
"They certainly did not do it to my face," Margaret said.
"Oh, well, they will here," said Nancy. "Everybody chaffs everybody else
in this house pretty freely. What you must do is to chaff back; but if
you don't feel equal to that just at first, just grin, and let them think
you don't care a rap."
At that moment heavy footsteps were heard in the passage and Mrs. Danvers
came into the hall.
"Ah, here you are, Miss Carson. I could not think where you had got to.
I just stopped to tell my shameless young folk what I thought of them for
laughing like that at a stranger. Nancy, you lazy girl, you ought to have
been watching the match instead of lying here. It was a close thing. Maud
won. Really she has a wonderful eye. There is simply no game she cannot
excel in if she chose. She----" But then Mrs. Danvers catching sight of
Margaret's miserable expression pulled herself up short just as she had
been about to launch forth into a glowing account of her daughter's
skill. "But all the same, it was shameful of them to laugh at you like
that, Miss Carson. Your first night too, when you are not used to them."
"Just what I said, Aunt Mary," chimed in Nancy, who had seen that Mrs.
Danvers casual treatment of the incident which had brought such
mortification to the new governess was making the latter feel still
more lost and ill at ease. "She'll soon get used to it though, and will
care just as little as anybody when her turn comes to be rotted."
"And above all things keep your temper, my dear," said Mrs. Danvers.
"But that remark," she added hastily, seeing that Margaret looked more
miserable even than before, "is not intended as a reproof, for the way
they went on was enough to make any one lose their temper, but as a
friendly warning. They'll tease you unmercifully if they find you lose
your temper, and I shan't be able to stop it. And now, my dear, unless
you like to come back to the billiard-room and show them that you don't
care a rap for their laughter, I'll take you to your room. Which would
you like to do?"
"Oh, go to my room, please," said Margaret hastily, who felt that on no
account would she face any one of the Danvers' family again that night.
"Did you lose your temper?" inquired Nancy. "Then I'm jolly glad to hear
it. Listen to the wretches laughing still. So many to one wasn't fair.
I hope you gave it to them hot. They deserved it."
"So they did," said Mrs. Danvers heartily, and Margaret, who had yet to
learn Mrs. Danvers always sided with the last speaker, took courage from
that remark. It showed at all events, she thought, that her sudden
passionate outburst had not caused Mrs. Danvers to take a dislike to her.
"I have put you in the big spare room," Mrs. Danvers said, as with
Margaret following in her wake she led the way slowly upstairs. "Nancy
and Joan have the other spare rooms, and I was really keeping this for an
old aunt of mine, who may come later. If she does come while you are
here, you won't mind turning out for her, will you, and going into the
dressing-room opening out of this? There is a bed in it, and really it is
quite a fair-sized little room; but I thought as this was empty I should
like you to have it for the time being anyway. A nice room, isn't it?"
Mrs. Danvers was so evidently well pleased with herself for having given
a mere holiday governess the best bedroom in her house that Margaret
hastened to admire it.
It was indeed a luxuriously furnished room, perfect in all its
appointments, and its handsome solid old mahogany furniture looked well
against the dull blue Axminster carpet and the blue silk hangings of
the big double bed. The walls were blue also.
"Yes, I think you will be comfortable," Mrs. Danvers said, glancing
round. "You see there is a sofa and an armchair and a writing-table, so
that if at any time you want to get away from the noisy young folk
downstairs you have got a nice retreat to come to. They have unstrapped
your trunk I see; but as Collins, the head housemaid, is out to-night,
your unpacking has not been done for you."
"Oh, but thank you very much, I can do that myself," said Margaret
hastily, wondering within herself as she spoke what would have happened
supposing Collins had not been out, and had insisted upon unpacking her
things, and had seen that all her linen was marked with a name quite
different to the one she had come in. The thought of the danger she had
escaped made her turn quite pale. This sudden pallor was not lost upon
Mrs. Danvers who, attributed it, not unnaturally, to extreme fatigue,
and who thereupon hastened her own departure from the room, with a kindly
expressed wish as she left, that Margaret would sleep well.
But tired though Margaret was, she felt that she could not go to bed
until she had removed her own name from every article of her underlinen,
and so having unpacked her trunk she took a pair of scissors and set to
work. Fortunately for her purpose, her things had not been marked in ink
but with tapes bearing her name in woven letters, and these she carefully
ripped off one by one, and making a little pile of them burned them all
in the grate. Then, if any maid saw them before Margaret had time to
remark them with the ink and tapes that she meant to buy, the most she
would feel would be a mild wonder that any young lady having such nice
undergarments as Miss Carson had, should risk losing them at the wash by
having no name upon them.
CHAPTER IX
THE DANVERS FAMILY
In spite of her settled conviction that, weary though she was, she was
far too miserable to close an eye that night. Margaret's slumbers were
sound. A vigorous banging on a door in the near neighbourhood of her
own, a banging which was answered by a sleepy and irritable yell, roused
her about six o'clock the next morning. Otherwise she could have slept on
for another hour or more. But once awake further sleep was impossible.
Not only were her neighbours exceedingly noisy--from snatches of
conversation shouted across the passage as they dressed, Margaret
gathered that most of the junior members of the house were going down to
the sea to bathe--but her own thoughts were of themselves sufficient to
keep her awake. She had fallen asleep the night before with the dismal
thought in her mind that though her long desired wish to stay in a house
full of young people had been most unexpectedly realised, the very first
thing she had done was to declare enmity with all of them, and the
depressing fact came vividly before her mind the instant she awoke. She
found herself wishing most fervently that she had been content to remain
Margaret Anstruther, and had never met Eleanor Carson, or conceived the
mad idea of changing places with her. However, as it was obviously too
late to entertain reflections of that sort now, she made an effort to
dismiss that unprofitable wish from her mind, and in order to divert her
thoughts the more effectually, resolved, early though it was, to get up.
As soon as the sound of many feet clattering noisily downstairs told her
that the coast was clear, she found her way to the bathroom, and having
bathed and dressed felt more courage to face the trials of the day that
lay before her.
There was no one about as she went downstairs, and she passed out through
the open front door and went into the garden.
The Cedars--described by the local house agents as one of the finest
residential mansions in Seabourne--stood in about three acres of ground,
which, though to Margaret accustomed to the big gardens of the country,
seemed a small enough piece of land to belong to such an imposing looking
house as The Cedars, was in reality unusually large for a town where
property was so valuable and ground rents as enormous as they were in
Seabourne. The grounds had been laid out to the utmost advantage. A wide
lawn, planted here and there with clumps of flowering shrubs, sloped
slightly away from the front of the house, and at the bottom of it lay
two sunk tennis courts surrounded by high wire-netting. On the other side
of the drive were kitchen and fruit gardens.
Her tour of the grounds finished, Margaret conceived the idea of going on
to the downs, the foot of which were scarcely a stone's throw away from
the gate, and seeing if she could discover in which direction Windy Gap
lay. It was still quite early and she had plenty of time at her disposal
before breakfast. It was a stiff climb to the top of the downs and took
longer than she had thought, even though she left the white road that
went zigzagging to the summit and took a short cut up an exceedingly
steep footpath. But the view that she got when she reached the top
brought a little cry of amazed wonder to her lips, and she felt amply
repaid for her long, toilsome climb. Accustomed as she had been all her
life to the flat, tame scenery that surrounded her native village, she
had had no idea that anything as lovely as this could exist. Never had
she seen anything like it. The wide downs appeared to stretch away for
miles and miles in front of her forming undulating hills and valleys.
Below, at the foot of the high white cliffs that now rose to a dizzy
height sheer above the water, and now dipped almost to its level, lay the
sea glittering and sparkling in the sunlight. For the most part the downs
were bare and wind-swept, but in the hollows small villages nestled with
here and there a square grey tower rising through the trees that
surrounded the tiny hamlets. One of these she felt sure must be Windy
Gap, because looking eastwards she could see the flat, marshy ground
through which the train had taken them the day before, and though of this
she could not be certain, for a light mist veiled the distant view, she
even thought she could descry the long white road leading upwards to the
downs from the plain beneath them.
Somewhere over there, then, Eleanor was at that moment, and whatever else
she might be doing she was not roaming at her own sweet will on the
hillside as she, Margaret, was at that moment doing. And her intense
satisfaction at the thought of her own freedom swept away the few
uncomfortable doubts and fears that had been harassing her ever since she
awoke that morning. Come what might, she would enjoy herself she thought
determinedly.
But as a matter of fact the invigorating, bracing air, the brilliant
sunshine pouring down on land and sea, had already acted like a tonic
upon Margaret's spirits, her troubles seemed to roll away of their own
accord and she felt that it would be impossible not to be happy at The
Cedars.
So, much the better for her walk, she presently climbed down the hill
again, and turned into the road that led homewards. The windows of the
dining-room looked on to the drive, and as she passed them she saw that
every one was seated at breakfast, and it was with an inward and very
rapid sinking of the heart that she realised that she would have to go in
late and face the entire assembled party.
An access of terrible shyness rushed over her at the thought, and to
delay the evil moment as much as possible she went up to her room and
took off her hat and smoothed her hair. But she could not linger over
that operation indefinitely, especially as a housemaid who had already
arrived to do her room volunteered the information that the breakfast
gong had sounded nearly a quarter of an hour ago. With slow, reluctant
feet that halted at every step Margaret went down the wide, shallow
stairs. If any one had told her three days ago that she would go thus
laggingly to resume acquaintance with a room full of young people she
would have found difficulty in believing them. A buzz of talk and
laughter struck loudly on her ear as she pushed the door open and went
in.
Every member of the family, except Mrs. Danvers who never came down to
breakfast, were assembled in the room, and, or so at least it seemed to
Margaret as she hung for a moment unperceived in a hesitating manner on
the threshold, they were all talking together.
In addition, Maud, who presumably occupied her mother's place at the head
of the table, but who had vacated it for the time being, was balancing
herself on the fender reading out scraps of news from a letter she held
in her hand.
One of the two cadets had evidently only just made his appearance at
breakfast, for he was standing at the sideboard, complaining, as he
lifted the covers and inspected the contents of the hot dishes, that not
a single thing worth eating had been left for him.
"You shouldn't be such a lazy person then," called a girl who was seated
near Geoffrey. "Of course, the early birds get all the worms."
"I am sorry, Miss Joan, that you liken our good food to worms," said the
boy, as, having passed the contents of all the dishes in review, he slid
a couple of poached eggs and a few rashers of bacon on to his plate, and
took his seat beside the girl who had called out the remark.
"I was speaking comparatively," she said in a condescending tone, as she
tilted her nose in the air. "I have heard before that one should not
speak comparatively to boys of your age, and now I know."
At that there arose a delighted shout of laughter, and Maud called across
from the fireplace that little girls should not use words they could not
understand. "You meant figuratively, my dear Joan," she said.
Joan, who looked about sixteen, tossed the long, fair pigtail in which
she wore her hair over her shoulder and began readily enough to join in
the laughter to which her mistake had just given rise. But all of a
sudden her countenance changed, and appearing to fly into a violent
passion she started up from her chair, and stamped her foot and cried
out:--
"I won't be laughed at, I won't, I won't! I hate you all!"
And burying her face in her handkerchief, she raced across the room, and
dashed full tilt into Margaret who was still hesitating unperceived in
the doorway.
At that a sound like a little gasp went up from the others, and though
the gasp was in some cases followed by a little giggle, to their credit
be it said most of the young faces wore a look of concern that Margaret
should have made her appearance just in time to hear her outburst of the
night before mimicked for the general amusement. Would she get angry
again, or would she burst out crying? From what they had seen of her the
night before, she was quite as likely to do one as the other. But to the
general surprise she did neither, and for the simple reason that she had
failed to grasp the fact that Joan's grief was all a sham, and that it
was she herself who was being made game of. Joan, after one swift glimpse
to see against whom it was she had so violently cannoned, turned away,
and dropping her face in her handkerchief, again appeared to cry
violently. Margaret felt quite sorry for her, and forgetting all her
shyness tried to comfort her.
"I know how unpleasant it is to be laughed at," she whispered in her ear;
"but if you pretend not to mind and laugh back you will not mind it so
much."
But Margaret's sympathy, far from making Joan ashamed of herself, amused
her immensely, and keeping her face turned away from Margaret, she looked
up out of her handkerchief and winked at the others and giggled. But when
she found that no one else was laughing, her own giggles died away, and
she began to sidle uncomfortably towards her chair.
Though none of the others had heard what Margaret had whispered to her,
they had guessed, from the sympathetic expression of her face, that she
had taken Joan's pretence of rage for a real outburst, and was comforting
her; and that in spite of that, Joan should still wish to make game of
her seemed to them horribly unfair. Geoffrey was the first to show his
disapproval of Joan's conduct. A joke was a joke, he thought, but his
young cousin must be taught that she could not make game of a fellow
guest--not without their sanction, at any rate. So getting up and coming
round the table, he shook hands with Margaret, wished her good morning,
and found a place for her next him.
"Come back to the table and do your duty, Maud," he said, as his sister
showed no signs of moving from the fireplace; "or if you want to go off,
let Hilary take your place. There are several of us wanting more tea.
Will you have tea or coffee, Miss Carson?"
"I'll pour out for you, Maud," Hilary said, starting up.
"No, you won't, my dear," Maud said, coming back to her place. "I haven't
half finished my brekker. But I thought you had had breakfast ages ago,
Miss Carson, with the kids in the nursery."
"Oh, ought I to have had my breakfast there?" Margaret said
uncomfortably, letting the fork she had just taken up fall with a clatter
on to her plate.
Maud shrugged her shoulders. "There is no ought about it," she said
carelessly. "But the kids do have their breakfast in the nursery, and
I believe the idea was that you should have yours there with them."
"Well, any way, Miss Carson," put in Geoffrey pleasantly, "you show your
good taste in preferring our society to theirs. Our manners may leave a
good deal to be desired"--though he did not glance at Joan, that young
person knew well that her recent behaviour was in his mind, and got very
red--"but theirs are worse. Their sense of humour is distinctly inferior,
and they think it awfully funny to put salt in your tea, and to mix
mustard with your pudding when you aren't looking, and things of that
sort, you know."
No one knew better than her brother that Maud's remark had not been
intended to convey a hint that Miss Carson's place as governess was with
her young charges. The disagreeable habit of implying things was not one
of Maud's faults. Innuendos were beneath her--what she wanted to say she
said outright. But sometimes, as in this case, her brother wished she was
not so utterly indifferent to the effect her bluntness produced. It was
because he had seen Margaret wince under it that he had exerted himself
to remove any unpleasant impression that her words might have left on the
holiday governess's mind.
"I--I do like your company best, of course," Margaret said. Then, with a
heightening colour, and in a stammering, choked voice which showed what
an effort it was to overcome her shyness and speak so that every one
could hear, she said, "I beg your pardon for saying last night that I
hated you all. Of course, it was not true."
"That is a great weight off our minds," said Maud in a tone of
raillery. "Now we can breathe again. We were so afraid that you
hadn't--well--exactly taken to us last night."
The light-hearted way in which she spoke quite robbed the words of any
sting they might otherwise have conveyed, and Margaret was able to join
in the laughter which this very mild way of describing the feeling she
had shown the previous night evoked.
She was finding out that very little made the Danvers laugh, and when she
came to think it over, she arrived at the right conclusion that she found
this surprising, not because they laughed more than other young people,
but because she had been used to the society of people who laughed so
very much less. But anything seemed to serve with them as a cause for
laughter. If the joke were a good one it evoked hearty laughter, if it
were a bad one the perpetrator was laughed at; and if fresh jokes, good
or bad, ran short, there was seemingly an endless store of old ones to be
drawn upon, supplemented by catchwords and phrases from the latest
musical comedy. These, of course, were even more unintelligible to
Margaret than the rest of the queer, scrappy talk that made up the bulk
of their conversation; but as she made no attempt to share in it, the
fact that even their most everyday slang expressions were strange to her,
passed unnoticed. For the most part, however, they were too much occupied
with their own affairs to have much attention to spare for her; and it
dawned upon Margaret, before even that first meal in their society was
ended, that she need not have been afraid that they would bear malice
against her for her outburst of the night before. They were really
scarcely interested enough in her to do that. Under cover of the brisk
chatter that went on round her, she took the opportunity of glancing
round the table and studying the various members of the household.
With the exception of herself they numbered eight, and though there
had been considerably more young people than that present in the
billiard-room last night, she gathered from the conversation that was
going on round her that, during the holidays at least, Mrs. Danvers kept
a sort of open house for all the friends of her own children.
Opposite Margaret, on Geoffrey's other hand, sat Joan Green. Though she
was only fifteen, she looked at least a year older, in spite of the fact
that she wore her hair in a long, thick plait down her back. Margaret,
who was still under the impression that Joan had been flying from the
room in a rage as she came in, and that she had been the means of
soothing her back to a better temper, was a little hurt and puzzled at
the studious way in which Joan's eyes avoided hers. Once when she had
caught their glance for a moment, and had smiled a friendly recognition
into them, she had been rewarded by a cold glare that had quite startled
her. Next to Joan sat Hilary, and the two girls had seemingly a great
deal to say to each other, for though now and again they joined in the
general conversation, for the most part they talked together in
undertones audible to themselves alone. Hilary's face was a pale likeness
of Maud's. Her eyes were not so blue, nor was her complexion so tanned as
her sister's, and though her features resembled Maud's sufficiently
closely to cause them to be easily recognised as sisters, Hilary's face
lacked the look of sparkling vivacity which made Maud's face so
attractive. On the other side of Hilary and next to Maud sat Jack, with
his brother Noel, the other naval cadet, facing him. Then came Nancy, the
girl who had offered Margaret chocolates and advice the previous evening,
and when she caught Margaret's eyes now she smiled and nodded as much as
to say she quite understood the latter's desire to find out what they
were all like.
Nancy was not the only person who had noted the way in which Margaret's
eyes had been travelling round the table, for when the turn of the boy
next to her came to be inspected, she was startled to hear Geoffrey on
the other side of her say:--
"Don't waste time on him, Miss Carson. He's not worth it, I assure you;
that's only Edward--Silly Ned as we call him. You must call him that too;
he never answers to any other name."
"Oh!" said Margaret, glancing with some apprehension at the small boy on
her left as though she feared that he might think she was really going to
call him anything of the sort.
Though he, too, was unmistakably a Danvers, he was more like Hilary than
any of the others. He was a small, thin, delicate-looking boy, and he
wore spectacles.
"Yes, we call him Silly Ned because he has all the brains of the family.
He looks a mere child, doesn't he? But he's a sixth form boy at his
college, and he got a Mathematical Exhibition last term. He's also a
brilliant member of the cricket eleven. We try to take him down a peg or
two in the holidays, but it isn't much good. His prizes and his cricket
combined have made him too big for his boots. A nice little boy ruined,
that's what he is."
"Oh, shut up, Geoffrey," Edward said; "sarcasm isn't really your line,
you know."
"Meaning that it is his, or one of his," commented Geoffrey; "you see for
yourself what a bumptious babe it is, Miss Carson. Well, and now that you
have taken silent stock of us all, won't you tell us what you think of
us? But answer me one thing to start with. Which, in your opinion, makes
the most noise at breakfast, a girl's school, or the Danvers family?"
"Oh, I do not know, because I have never----" began Margaret, and then
stopped in great confusion, realising that she had been about to say that
she had never seen a girl's school at breakfast, and conscious that Joan,
who had overheard Geoffrey's question and her answer, was staring across
at her in obvious astonishment.
"Why, I thought you had come fresh from a school, Miss Carson," she said.
Before Margaret had time to answer a shout of laughter from Maud and the
two boys on either side of her drowned all chance of any one making their
voice heard at the other end of the table, and by the time comparative
quiet was restored Margaret had collected her wits, and had remembered
the part she was playing. She did not even look disconcerted when
Geoffrey, whose attention had been momentarily diverted from her by the
noise at the other end of the table, said thoughtfully:--
"You know, if the remark isn't rather a personal one--which it is by the
way--you aren't my idea of a governess a bit."
For it was so evident that he entertained no suspicion at all of the real
facts of the case that she saw there was no occasion for alarm. She even
smiled as she asked him in her prim, old-fashioned way in what respect
she then differed from the picture of a governess he had in his mind's
eye.
"Well, it isn't exactly that you look too young, for I know governesses
at girl's schools are young nowadays, and that they play games, and all
that. But you don't look to me quite self-confident or self-opinionated
enough. Eh! What do you think, Joan? Is Miss Carson your idea of a school
governess either?"
"No," said Joan promptly; and then Margaret, who could not know that Joan
had answered in the negative with the idea of giving the reply that she
fancied Margaret would like least, did change countenance a little. For
Joan's "No" was so very decisive. And it did not make her feel any the
more comfortable to know that Joan's eyes were fixed unblinkingly, and
pitilessly, on her blushes. For a moment Joan stared and Margaret
blushed, the latter miserably conscious meanwhile that if she wanted to
draw down suspicion upon herself she had only to continue to sit there
and look the picture of guilt, and the thing was done.
"Not a bit," Joan added with much emphasis, and in the amiable hope of
seeing Margaret look still more out of countenance.
But then Margaret pulled herself together. There had suddenly flashed
into her mind the recollection of the words Eleanor had used when she,
Margaret, had found it hard to believe that Eleanor had been a pupil
teacher and a governess for the last six years. And her excellent memory
coming to her aid, she quoted them now, exactly reproducing even the
light, bantering tone Eleanor had used.
"You write to Miss McDonald," she said, "and ask her what sort of a
governess Miss Carson was. I think she would bristle with indignation if
she were to hear any one doubt that she would have a governess in her
school who was incapable of keeping order. So please throw no cold doubts
on my abilities. The profession of a governess is the only one I am
fitted to follow, and if I was no good at that I should be hard put to it
to earn a living."
"Upon my word," murmured Maud to one of the boys, "the silent Miss Carson
is making quite a speech down at the other end of the table."
"I promise never to doubt your capabilities again," said Geoffrey with
mock solemnity. "We are satisfied that Miss Carson really is a governess,
aren't we, Joan?" he added, turning to his cousin.
"Oh, quite," said Joan slowly. Though she had not yet put the thought
into words Joan thought dimly that it was rather curious of Miss Carson
to insist so strongly on the fact that she had been a governess. Of
course, they all knew that beforehand, so why make such a point of it.
Hilary and Joan were the first to get up from table, and with linked arms
they sauntered out on to the terrace, their heads close together.
Margaret felt certain from a backward glance they threw in her direction
as they went out that they were whispering about her, and the knowledge
made her vaguely uncomfortable.
"Well, I suppose you two are off sailing again," said Maud to the two
cadets. "I should have thought you would have had enough of the sea in
term-time, and be glad enough to stay on shore when you got a chance."
"And that from a girl who thinks she knows everything," said one of the
boys in disgusted accents. "Did she think, then, that Osborne is a
sailing ship, or what?"
"Oh, well, you know what I mean," said Maud equably.
"I'll stay on shore, as you call it, like a shot, Maud," said Jack, "if
you'll give us a game of tennis. Come on now, you and I against Noel and
Nancy."
"Not taking any, thanks," was Maud's retort. "Get Hilary instead of me,
and the set would be all right."
"Oh, Hilary plays a rotten game!" said Jack, with true brotherly
frankness. "She can't play for nuts, and she talks all the time, and
won't run, and loses her temper."
"Hilary would be pleased if she heard you," remarked Maud lazily, as she
rose and strolled across to the fireplace.
"Oh, I hear, and I don't care two straws," called her sister from the
terrace. But her face, which was as black as thunder, looked as if she
did care nevertheless.
"Catch me wasting a whole day playing tennis," said Geoffrey. "I'm as
keen on a game as any one in the afternoon, but I am not going to be
glued to one little patch of grass all day."
"Of course not," put in Edward; "your favourite form of amusement we all
know nowadays, is to lie flat on your back on a dusty road tinkering at
your old motor-bike."
"And yours, apparently, to try and be funny at the expense of your elders
and betters," retorted Geoffrey. "Say much more, young man, and I'll take
you out in the trailer."
"Oh, but I wish you would, Geoffrey."
"Not much. The mater says she can't spare any of us yet, and certainly
not the "Hope of His Side." So trot away to your Latin essays, my son,
and don't waste time in idling like the rest of us."
"As a matter of fact, I'm going down to the cricket-ground with Tommy to
practice at the nets a bit with the professional," said Edward, nettled
at the imputation that he was going to spend the morning indoors. He was
not vain of his brains, but he was of his cricket, and though wild horses
would not have dragged from him the confession that he read Greek for
pleasure long after he ought to have been asleep, he would brag of his
batting averages to any one who would listen.
At that moment a maid entered the room and approached Margaret.
"If you please, Miss," she said, "the mistress says, will you wait for
her in the morning-room. She will be down in a moment, and wishes to
speak to you before you go out."
Margaret jumped up at once, glad of an excuse to leave the room, for
though she had finished her breakfast long before any of the others, she
had been too shy to rise and go away. Besides, she had not the least idea
where she ought to go, or what she ought to do.
"No need for you to hurry, Miss Carson," Maud called after her. "Mother's
minutes generally mean hours."
And in that Maud proved to have been right, for an hour and a quarter
passed before Mrs. Danvers made her belated appearance in the
morning-room. But as there was a goodly supply of magazines and
illustrated papers, Margaret did not find the time hang heavily on her
hands.
Truth to say, she was glad to be alone, and the knowledge that such was
the case depressed her very much. She had looked forward to the society
of other young people as the greatest happiness earth could give her, and
it was discouraging to find that the realisation of her wish was as yet
bringing her very little pleasure. She felt awkward and terribly shy in
their company, and she had an uneasy consciousness that they looked upon
her as a poor sort of creature, and very uninteresting--what, in short,
she said sadly to herself, for she was already picking up some of their
expressions--they would have called a bore.
When at last Mrs. Danvers did make her appearance she was full of
apologies for having kept Margaret waiting so long.
"You must blame the cook, my dear," she said cheerily, "not me. Oh, dear,
I am glad to sit down!"
She sank into a low easy chair with an air of fatigue, and Margaret
seeing her look round for a footstool, brought her one and placed it
under her feet.
"Thank you, my dear," she said, "and now if you will get me my knitting
from that table in the corner we will have a nice, cosy chat. Thank
goodness my work for the day is all done!" Ten minutes spent in the
kitchen assenting to all that a very excellent cook-housekeeper suggested
constituted Mrs. Danvers "work for the day." "There are many things I
wanted to ask you about my old friend and cousin, Miss McDonald. By the
way, what do you think of the children?"
When Margaret answered that she had not yet seen them, Mrs. Danvers,
after a short pause of astonishment, gave a vexed laugh. At least, to
start with, the laugh was tinged with vexation; but as she continued to
laugh the feeling of annoyance was merged into one of hearty amusement.
"That's Hannah all over," she said. "Hannah is jealous of you. She is
their nurse, you know, and has been with them since they have been born.
She's the only person who can manage them. I can't, and their mother
can't, though Joanna would be very angry if she heard I had said that.
But I told Hannah to bring the children down to see you here after
breakfast. However, as she did not choose to do so, it is no good
annoying her by saying anything about it. I will take you up to the
nurseries presently, when we have had that nice little chat about my dear
cousin. But Joanna," she said, reverting to her daughter and her
children, "is always going in for new systems with them. At one time her
theory was that they must not be spoiled by having any notice taken of
them. During that period they lived entirely in the nursery. I remember I
was staying there at the time, and I thought I had never enjoyed a visit
to my daughter so much. Next time I went the children were being brought
up in the fashion of their great-grandmothers. They were taught to say
'Ma'am' to their mother, and 'Sir' to their father, and were not allowed
to sit down in their presence, and never, never to speak unless they were
spoken to. I enjoyed that visit too. But the latest and the reigning idea
is that they are not to be thwarted or crossed in any way, and as for
being punished such barbarity is not to be thought of. If detected in
naughtiness they are to be reasoned with only, and if the naughtiness
is persisted in it is to be taken for granted that the small sinners are
ill, and must be gently nursed into good health and goodness again."
As she listened to this Margaret came to the conclusion that their mother
must be an extraordinarily silly woman, but when Mrs. Danvers went on to
add that Joanna, after expounding her new theory in detail, had gone away
to Norway to fish with her husband, and left her mother to find out how
it worked, Margaret smiled outright.
Mrs. Danvers laughed too. "It is rather funny," she said in her
good-natured way, "and the worst of it is that Joanna made me promise to
give her system a fair trial, and as I never broke my word to any of my
children yet, I am giving it a fair trial. And that is why, my dear, I am
so glad of your help. When Miss McDonald wrote to me and asked me if I
could find a holiday engagement for one of her governesses, I jumped at
the chance of having you. For, I said to myself that a governess of
Gertrude McDonald's would, of course, have discipline and all that sort
of thing at her fingers ends."
"Of course," said poor Margaret rather feebly, as Mrs. Danvers paused not
so much for a reply as to gain breath.
"Unyielding firmness without harshness on your side, implicit obedience
without fear on theirs is what Joanna aims at I believe," said Mrs.
Danvers cheerfully, "and it certainly sounds a delightful method. By the
way, if you get on with the children, Joanna has an idea of asking you to
stay with her permanently. She is going out to California next spring,
and will have to look out for a governess to go with her, as, of course,
she is taking the children. Would you like to go, or do you prefer
school-work?"
"I--I don't know," stammered Margaret, who totally unprepared for such
a proposition, did not know what answer to make. "I should have to ask
El----(my friend, I mean) what she thought of it. Ask her advice, I
mean."
"Quite so, quite so," Mrs. Danvers said. "But that's all in the future,
of course. The first thing you have to do is to make the acquaintance of
the children, and, as I said, Hannah has evidently carefully kept them up
in the nursery this morning. She is devoted to them, and can't bear the
idea of having to share her charge of them with a governess. So I am
afraid you may have a little unpleasantness to put up with at first. But
she is a good creature, and if you exercise a little tact you will soon
be able to smooth her down."
"Yes," said Margaret even more feebly than before. But Mrs. Danvers was
not an observant woman, and she was so far from suspecting the hidden
dismay with which her new holiday governess listened to her, that later
in the day she gave it as her opinion that underneath her exceedingly
quiet manner Miss Carson concealed an iron will, and that the reign of
stern discipline she was about to inaugurate would have an excellent
effect on her grandchildren. And she was genuinely astonished at the
derision with which her own children received this prophecy.
CHAPTER X
ELEANOR AT WINDY GAP
To her mingled relief and surprise, Margaret found her small pupils far
less troublesome to manage than the tales she had heard about them would
have led her to suppose. Daisy and David were a quaint, small couple; but
though self-willed and alarmingly high spirited they were affectionate,
warm-hearted children and easily ruled by love. They took an instant
fancy to Margaret. Perhaps her quiet manner and prim way of speaking
appealed to them after the noisy ways of their young aunts, who
alternately petted and bullied them; at any rate they showed themselves
gratifyingly ready to obey her lightest word.
"We think you a perfect dear," Daisy said at the end of the first
morning, winding two fat little arms tightly round Margaret's neck, "and
we like you, and we will be good to you, won't we, David?"
"Sure," said David, who had picked up a few Americanisms from his
father's New York chauffeur, and delighted in airing them. "You can
calculate on that all the time."
Hannah, too, who was a quiet, elderly, and very superior woman, liked the
children's governess, and that was no small matter. She approved of
Margaret's quiet manner and sedate speech, and never guessing with what
a quaking heart Margaret had entered the schoolroom, set her down in her
own mind as an ideal governess.
"A far better example to my lambs than Miss Maud with her noisy ways, or
Miss Hilary with her sharp, sarcastic speeches, a well-brought-up young
lady Miss Carson is, and no mistake either, and will teach Miss Daisy how
to behave."
Though Margaret had quite enjoyed her morning with the children, she was
not sorry when twelve o'clock struck and the lesson-books were put away.
At that hour the children always went for a walk with Hannah, and
Margaret was free not only for the rest of the morning, but for the
remainder of the day as well. Certainly the post of holiday governess at
The Cedars could not be called an arduous one, but such as it was it was
pleasant to think that she filled it satisfactorily, and that she was
quite an efficient substitute for the real Eleanor. So having seen the
children put their lesson-books tidily away, Margaret ran lightly
downstairs to look for some of the others. It would be nice, she thought
innocently, to have a game of tennis with Maud or to take a walk with
Hilary or with one of the Greens. No doubt they all knew she would be
free at twelve and would be on the look-out for her. The hall and the
morning-room were empty, so she went into the garden and, guided by the
sound of voices, made her way down to the tennis court. Here Maud and one
of the girls she had come to meet the previous evening were playing
singles, while Hilary and her two cousins occupied a bench on the bank
overlooking the court on the far side.
Unaware of the fact that she was interrupting the game, Margaret began to
cross the court by the net, and when interrupted in her progress by a
shout from Maud turned and walked up to her.
"I say, whatever do you want?" Maud said impatiently, "Don't you see we
are playing?"
"Yes, and I thought I would like to play too, please," said Margaret,
in shy but friendly tones. "I have finished with the children for the
morning. Perhaps Hilary or one of your cousins will lend me a racquet and
I will come and play on your side."
"What, in high-heeled house-shoes, and when we are in the middle of a
single!" Maud exclaimed in amazement. "Here, clear out please. Take her
away somebody, and let us get on with our game."
Thus summarily dismissed, and blushing crimson at the annoyance in Maud's
tone, Margaret backed hurriedly off the court, and though the giggles
that came from the bench whereon Hilary and the Greens sat were clearly
at her expense, Margaret walked awkwardly towards them.
Neither Hilary nor Joan made any attempt to make room for her to sit
down, nor to conceal their amusement at her discomfiture, but Nancy, who
sat in the middle, edged closer to her sister and patted the bench
invitingly.
"You evidently don't know much more about tennis than you do about
billiards, do you?" said Hilary scornfully; "or you would not have
strolled across the court in that fashion and interrupted the game."
"I am sorry," said Margaret miserably. Already the feeling of eager
anticipation with which she had left the schoolroom to seek their society
had fled, and she was heartily wishing herself back there again; "and I
am afraid I have made Maud cross."
"Far too cross," said Nancy. "After all, it's nothing so terrible that
you did. It wasn't as if it was a match that Maud was playing. She is
only having a game with Anna."
"Fancy thinking you could play in house-shoes though," said Hilary.
"Didn't the girls at Hampstead have tennis-shoes, poor things?"
"I don't know. Yes, I suppose so. I mean, Mrs. McDonald did not--there
were no tennis courts," stammered Margaret, her wretchedness increasing
as she met Hilary's scrutinising gaze. Surely she was not mistaken, and
this time there was marked suspicion of her in Hilary's face.
"Come for a turn with me," said Nancy, who, though quite unconscious of
the significance of Hilary's look and manner, was at least acute enough
to perceive that her cousin was bent upon making Margaret more
uncomfortable than she was already. "I haven't stirred from this seat
since eleven, and unless I take some exercise I shan't be able to eat any
lunch. We'll go into the kitchen garden and look for some raspberries."
"They'll improve your appetite," jeered her sister.
She waited until the two were out of hearing, and then turned eagerly to
Hilary.
"Hilary," she said, "what is it? I can see you are suspicious of Miss
Carson. Do tell me. Oh, how quick and clever you are! I am sure you do
not like her. I believe you can read people's characters at a glance."
Hilary sniffed, a would-be modest, yet well-pleased sniff, which seemed
to say that though it would not become her to endorse Joan's opinion of
her talents, truth would not permit her to deny it.
"I know nothing for certain yet," she said darkly, "but I am on the
watch. Miss Carson is not all she seems, mark my words."
The early dinner was rather an ordeal for Margaret. All the members of
the family, including her two small pupils, who sat one on each side of
her and behaved beautifully, were present, besides Anna Finch and a
couple of Geoffrey's friends, motor-bicycle enthusiasts like himself, who
had come over from Brighton that morning on their machines.
Had Margaret only been allowed to eat her dinner in silence she would not
have found the meal as terrifying as she did. Hilary, it was, who would
not permit that, for the second Miss Danvers sat opposite to her, and
whenever there was a lull in the conversation she would lean across the
table and ask Margaret questions about Hampstead. The questions were
asked in such apparent innocence that none of the others guessed that she
was trying to catch her out in her answers. But Margaret was only too
miserably aware of that fact, and she wondered what it was that she could
have said or done to raise suspicions about herself before she had even
been twenty-four hours in the house. Hilary's sidelong glances and
meaningly put questions worked upon her to such a pitch that she expected
to hear her say any moment that an imposter sat at their table in the
guise of Eleanor Carson. But she need not have feared such an immediate
denouncement. Hilary's suspicions had by no means reached that point yet;
even if they had she would not have given voice to them. She was enjoying
her cat-and-mouse game far too much to wish to bring it to an end as yet,
and several days went by without her doing more than making Margaret as
uncomfortable as she could by sly questions and glances. Sometimes a
whole meal would pass without her addressing a single word to Margaret,
then, as the latter would begin to feel that her vague alarms were
groundless, and that Hilary suspected nothing, sudden allusion to
Hampstead, or the school where she was supposed to have taught so long,
would set her trembling again.
In short, Hilary contrived to make Margaret's life a burden to her, and
one night, the fourth since she had come to The Cedars, Margaret resolved
that she could stand it no longer. She would make a clean breast of
everything, own that she was at The Cedars under a false name, and that
she had no right there at all, and go to Mrs. Murray.
The moment in which she took that resolve was the happiest she had known
since she had come to The Cedars. For though she had been slow in
confessing it even to herself, it was a fact that, quite apart from
Hilary's quiet persecution of her, Margaret was not enjoying herself. It
was quite evident to her by that time that none of the family, excepting
her two pupils, and even they were to go away on the morrow to stay for
a fortnight with an aunt of their father's, cared in the least for her.
None of them included her in their plans or sought her society. Maud was
out playing golf or tennis all day long; Hilary and Joan were
inseparable, and though Nancy was kind it was only in a lazy,
good-natured way that in the end counted for very little. The boys,
though they were all, especially Geoffrey and Edward, quite nice to her
rarely met her, except at meals, so that she could not depend upon them
for companionship. And against all that Margaret had to set the constant
necessity of weighing all her actions and words. It was even a strain
always to have to remember that her name was Eleanor Carson.
What an immense relief it would be to be herself again, even though it
meant going up to that solitary house on the downs where she would have
only an old deaf lady for company!
Poor Margaret, she was terribly disillusioned, and bitterly now did she
regret the hasty act that had landed her in her present predicament. She
must have been mad, she thought gloomily, to have planned and carried out
such a brazen piece of imposition; and how could she ever have imagined
that she would have had the temerity to have carried it on for weeks and
weeks. She knew now that she was incapable of carrying it on for another
day, and suddenly the impulse arose in her to go straight to Mrs. Danvers
and tell her her real name and confess her shameful behaviour. With that
idea in her mind she even started to her feet, but paused before she had
taken one step in the direction of the morning-room where Mrs. Danvers,
unconscious of the bombshell that her holiday governess had been
momentarily minded to throw at her feet, was enjoying her usual
after-dinner nap.
It was not that Margaret's courage failed her at the thought of the
astounding revelation she had to make. In her present mood confession
would have been far easier to her than to continue the deception; it was
the thought that she would not be acting fairly to her accomplice that
stayed her steps. Eleanor must be told first that she could not go on
with it, and their confession must be simultaneous. And, no doubt,
Eleanor would be as glad and as thankful as she would be to change back
into her proper self. Probably she, too, was finding the deception more
than she could bear, and would hail the news that they were to resume
their own identities with untold relief. But for one day more Margaret
must continue to be Eleanor, much as she disliked the thought. But it
would be only for one day more, she thought to herself encouragingly, and
then she would be able to hold up her head again and not fear that every
chance question was going to unmask her as a cheat and a fraud.
Although Margaret had originally planned to go and see Eleanor the day
after she had come to The Cedars, the days had so far slipped past
without her being able to do so. But now, as the children were going away
early on the morrow, there was nothing to prevent her from going to Windy
Gap as soon as she chose in the morning. And Margaret fell asleep that
night resolving to ask Mrs. Danvers' permission to go for a walk on the
downs directly after breakfast.
Not that Margaret need have feared that any obstacle would be placed in
the way of her following her own devices. The younger members of the
family seemed only too ready to let her do exactly as she chose, as long
as she did not expect them to entertain her. When she came down to
breakfast the next morning it was to find the big room empty save for
herself. All the young ladies and all the young gentlemen had, Martin
informed her, taken their breakfast to the foot of the cliffs that
morning.
"My dear," said Mrs. Danvers, when a little later Margaret went up to her
room to ask her permission to absent herself for the morning, "do
whatever you like. It is so nice of you not to be offended with my young
people for not taking you with them, but when I suggested it to Maud just
as they were ready to start at five o'clock this morning, she said it was
too late to wake you up then as they were just off. I said it was very
naughty of them not to have thought of you in time; but there it is, my
dear, they just forgot you."
"They just forgot me," Margaret repeated to herself as she went down the
drive, and she sighed rather sadly. But her spirits revived when she
found herself clear of the houses and on the downs.
Far down on the left the sea glittered and sparkled in the brilliant
sunshine, the cliffs were of a dazzling whiteness against the bright blue
sky, and in front of her and on her right stretched an apparently
limitless extent of down lands. In the hollows nestled farms and small
hamlets surrounded by trees, which in that wind-swept region only grew in
those more sheltered situations. The air was most invigorating for, in
spite of the sunshine, a fresh breeze was blowing off the sea, and this
cooled the air, which otherwise might have been too hot to make the quick
rate at which Margaret was walking agreeable. Mrs. Danvers' directions
were easy to follow, for not only were there signposts to aid her, but
when she was only half-way down the long white road which, with many
curves, wound down to the shore, she could see the dip in the cliffs that
gave the name of Windy Gap to the little cove at their base, and also
trace the road that ran inland from it along the bottom of the valley to
the little village of the same name that, well sheltered by trees, lay in
the middle of it, a mile or more away from the cliff-line.
Recognising that there was then no need for her to follow the road as
far as The Cove, Margaret struck across the downs to her right in the
direction of the village, thus saving herself two sides of a triangle. A
little grey church with a squat tower, a little grey house that was
obviously the parsonage, a row of small cottages, a few isolated ones,
and a farm or two made up the village, and Margaret, after wandering up
and down the little main street wondering where Mrs. Murray's house was,
went into the one small general shop, which was also the post-office,
that the village boasted, to inquire. She was told to follow the road
for another few hundred yards, and then to take the first turning to the
left, which would lead her directly to Rose Cottage, which was the name
of Mrs. Murray's house, and to nowhere else.
Following these instructions, Margaret presently found herself climbing
a very steep, rough lane, that ended abruptly at a pair of wide gates.
These opened on to a short, winding drive, and without any hesitation
Margaret approached the house, intending to ring and ask boldly for Miss
Anstruther. And that would be the last time, she earnestly hoped and
believed, that she would be obliged to give her name as Miss Carson. The
deception they had played was to end very soon now.
It was a charming house and garden that came into view as Margaret turned
the last bend of the little winding drive. The house was little and the
garden big, and the latter was literally ablaze with flowers. So was the
house, too, but on the present occasion Margaret did not discover that.
The situation on the slope of a hill was well chosen, for though fully
open to the south, the house and garden were well protected, both by
trees and by the rising ground, from the cold north and the boisterous
west wind. To-day, with the sun blazing overhead, it was like a veritable
sun-trap, and Margaret, who was beginning to feel the effects of her long
walk, looked longingly at a deck-chair that stood invitingly under the
shade of a weeping ash at the further end of the lawn.
As Margaret's footsteps sounded noisily on the gravel, the chair, which
was placed with its back to the house, creaked suddenly, and Eleanor's
head appeared round the side of it.
When her eyes fell upon Margaret, whose hand was at that minute
outstretched to lay hold of the bell, an expression of the most vivid
surprise, not unmixed with consternation, crossed her face, and, making
a warning sign to Margaret, she came running across the grass.
"Don't ring," she said, in a voice that was cautiously lowered. "Mrs.
Murray is out, and it's no use disturbing the servants. I say, what on
earth made you come up here on such a grilling day? You must be too hot
for anything!"
"I thought you would have been wondering why I had not been up here
before," said Margaret, feeling rather forlorn at the reception she was
getting.
"Not a bit of it," returned Eleanor. "I have scarcely thought of you the
last few days. I feel as if I had been Margaret Anstruther all my life!"
"And do you like it?" Margaret asked. The question slipped almost
unawares from her lips, but she could not recall it, and she waited with
a good deal of anxiety for the answer. She hoped it would not be in the
affirmative, for if it were it would make what she had to say so very
much harder for Eleanor to hear.
"Like it?" said Eleanor ecstatically. "Liking is not the word! And, oh!
I have such news, such glorious, glorious news to give you! So, on the
whole, I am glad you have come, although at first I was rather dismayed
at the riskiness of it. But come away from here. I can take you to a
quiet spot where we can have a long, long talk unheard, and unseen from
the windows."
While she spoke she was piloting Margaret across the lawn, past the shady
tree, in full view of the windows where she had been sitting, towards a
little grass path that cut in two the wide border of gay herbaceous
flowers that backed the far end of the garden, and led suddenly to a
flight of brick steps which descended to a walled-in kitchen garden
below. This being on a much lower level than the lawn was quite invisible
from the windows. A wide path ran along beside the rock-work that banked
up the lawn, and at the end of the path there was a comfortable little
summer-house furnished with a table and chairs.
"I have made this snug little retreat my own," said Eleanor, as she led
the way into it and invited Margaret to be seated. "I come here in the
afternoons and do my lessons, and it is already quite understood by Mrs.
Murray and the servants that when I am working here I do not like to be
disturbed. She is very good and leaves me to myself now a lot. At first
she was rather inclined to come and talk to me a good deal, but I think
she sees now that I hate wasting time talking, and so lets me alone.
Well, now I am sure you are longing to hear all about my arrival and my
first meeting with Mrs. Murray. So I will tell you about that first, and
keep my best news to the last."
If Margaret had said what was in her mind at that moment, she would have
said that what she longed most to hear was herself telling Eleanor that
she wanted to change back into her proper self again; but somehow, though
the words were on the tip of her tongue, she could not bring herself to
utter them. With a sinking heart she was beginning to realise that
Eleanor, far from wanting to be herself again, would much rather remain
Margaret Anstruther. And it was dreadful to think of the disappointment
that she must cause her when she said what she had come to say.
"Well, now to begin at the beginning," Eleanor said, leaning comfortably
back on her chair with her hands lying loosely on her lap. Margaret
noticed that three fingers of her right hand were in bandages. "I can
confess now what I am sure you never guessed at the time, and that is
that I was in a horrid fright when I said good-bye to you at the station,
and I believe at the very last minute if I could have jumped back into
the train I would have done so, but Mrs. Murray was so kind that I soon
got over my nervousness. Not that it would have mattered, though, if I
hadn't," she added with a little laugh, "for Margaret, I found, was
expected to be shy. I suppose, as poor Mrs. Murray is so dreadfully deaf,
it is easier to pass myself off as you than it might otherwise have been,
but certainly if I have made any glaring mistakes she has never noticed
them, and if I really had been you my task could not have been simpler.
Of course, the first evening she asked me a great many questions about
Mr. Anstruther and your home, and your lessons, and your governess, and
why the doctor had said you were to go away, and so on, and I answered
them all in first-class style, for I have everything you had told me
fresh in my mind. Oh, but what do you think! Our plans might have been
wrecked at the outset by something neither of us had foreseen. That
evening, just as we were going to bed, Mrs. Murray said to me in the
quiet, low tone in which she always speaks, and which it makes it
dreadfully difficult to hear what she says, that the first thing next
morning I must write to my grandfather, and tell him of my safe arrival.
I was dismayed, if you like, for I had no notion what your handwriting
was like, or any hope of copying it if I knew, but I kept my countenance,
and gave no sign of dismay. And the next morning at breakfast, while
cutting a piece of bread in half, the knife slipped and I cut the three
middle fingers of my right hand so badly that each of them had to be
wrapped up in bandages. So you see that to hold a pen was impossible, and
Mrs. Murray wrote instead of me to announce my safe arrival here."
"Oh, Eleanor!" Margaret exclaimed, "and you cut yourself on purpose."
"Of course, it was the only thing to be done; and I say I did it so well
that I haven't been able to write yet. It was rather nice and clever of
me wasn't it?"
"It was very clever," Margaret said, in a grave voice.
Three days ago, when they had laid this plot together, she might have
been able to add that this final little touch of Eleanor's was nice, too;
but somehow she could not now bring herself to utter the word. Eleanor,
however, never noticed the omission, but in the vivacious tone in which
she had spoken throughout, went on to give a further account of all that
had happened to her since she had left Margaret at the station three days
since. That she was completely happy could not be doubted. Every word she
uttered showed that she was radiantly content with her new existence, and
was not troubled by as much as one small single scruple as to the
deception on Mrs. Murray that she was so successfully carrying out.
Indeed, it was evident that she had not given that side of the matter
a thought.
"But I am keeping the best part of all until the last to tell you," she
said; "and that is, of course, about my voice."
"Your voice," echoed Margaret. "Oh, of course, about your singing, you
mean."
She had completely forgotten Eleanor's great ambition to be a famous
singer.
"You remember what I told you that Signor Vanucci said to me, that I
ought to be the greatest singer of my generation, that he foresaw a
splendid future before me, that my voice had infinite possibilities.
But that it was, of course, quite untrained."
Margaret nodded. She remembered now.
"I can never forget those three phrases," Eleanor said in a slow,
thoughtful tone, as she gazed dreamily past Margaret at the wooden wall
of the summer-house over behind her. "Never. How often during the last
dreary six months have I not repeated them to myself. They had been
alternately my joy and my misery according as my hopes of getting proper
training some day, and my fear that I never would were in the ascendant.
But all that is over now, and I am a pupil of Martelli's. Do you know,
Margaret, I have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure that I am awake
and not dreaming. Even as I sit here telling it all to you the whole
situation--you, me, Madame Martelli, and everybody seem as though they
were a part of a dream, a lovely dream, but still a dream. Does it seem
like a dream to you?"
"N--no, not exactly," said Margaret, with a slow shake of her head. "It
all seems quite real to me. But tell me what Madame Martelli said about
your voice."
"Yes, I am not telling my story properly," said Eleanor, "but the truth
is that though I sit here so calmly, and talk so quietly, I am just
devoured by excitement whenever I think of my good luck. Well, I can tell
you what Madame Martelli said in a very few words. She was even more
enthusiastic than Signor Vanucci about my voice. Far, far more. I went
down to her the very first morning after I got here, you know. Mrs.
Murray was rather surprised at my eagerness to start off to my lessons,
she wanted instead to take me for a drive and show me the country, she
said; but I told her that I would much rather go down and see the Signora
at once, and so, although I believe she was a little disappointed that I
would not come driving with her, she took me down to the little house
where the Signora lives and left me to my fate after she had introduced
us. Picture to yourself, Margaret, a little woman with hair and eyes of
almost coal-like blackness, and a little sallow, eager face, and you have
the once great Madame Martelli to the life. Though she has lived in
England for a great many years she does not talk English very well, and
her foreign accent is very strong. She thought, of course, that singing
and music were only to be my secondary subjects, and that I had come to
her principally to study Italian, and at first I did not undeceive her,
but got out my grammar and exercise-books, and did dictations and
translations as if I aspired to learn nothing more from her. For two
hours we kept at it, and then she looked at her watch.
"Your grandfather wishes, too, that we do a little singing and playing,"
she said, and a distinct sigh of resignation came from her. "Which do you
like best, the playing or the singing?"
"Singing," I answered. "I love singing, Madame Martelli, more than I love
anything else in the whole wide world."
"Indeed," she said politely and kindly. "Zat is vary nice. Your
grandfather, he say through Mrs. Murray to me that you have ze pretty
little drawing-room voice, and would I kindly teach it. And so," again
that sigh of resignation, "will you please sit down to ze piano, and sing
me ze leetle song? Hey, is it not so that you have ye nice leetle voice?"
At that, Margaret, I really don't know what came over me, for supposing
Signor Vanucci had been wrong, and I had no voice, she would have thought
me mad, but truth to say, I simply did not feel I was risking anything
when I turned, and looking at her across the big grand piano that fills
up her little drawing-room, and said, "No, it is not true, I have not a
nice little drawing-room voice."
"Of course she thought I was shy and modest, and was nervous at the
thought of singing before her, and her face, when I went on in a calm,
matter-of-fact voice, 'No, I have not a little drawing-room voice, but
I have a voice which, with your training, is going to be one of the
greatest and best voices that has been heard in Europe this century,' was
a study."
Margaret gasped, "Oh, Eleanor, how could you! for supposing--supposing it
had all been a mistake. What did she think of you?"
"I gave her no time to think of me," said Eleanor. "I simply sat down and
sang, and then all she thought of was my voice. And as I had sung a scale
to Signor Vanucci, I did the same for her. And as I sang I kept my eyes
on her face, for somehow I was full of a glorious, careless confidence as
to what her verdict was going to be. Surprise and wonder, and then a sort
of rapt delight, were depicted in turn on her face, and as I sang the
last note she dropped quietly on to the nearest chair and just stared at
me for a moment. Then she began to talk rapidly to herself in Italian,
and for a moment a horrid nervousness did seize me as to what she
thought; but then she came over and kissed me, and I knew it was all
right. Then with her hands on my shoulders, she drew back and looked at
me. 'Wonderful! wonderful! wonderful!' she said in a sort of awed tone.
And then suddenly she asked me how old I was. It was really the first
coherent thing she had said. I said I was nineteen and would soon be
twenty. At that she clenched her hands and flung her arms wide in a sort
of despairing gesture. 'Oh, but we must work, work, work!' she said. Her
pronunciation is not like that, but I can't quite get it.
"At that moment Mrs. Murray's pony-carriage drew up outside the house,
and seeing us through the window she gave the reins to the man and came
in. Madame Martelli fairly turned upon her in a perfect frenzy of
excitement, and wanted to know why--why--why I had not been properly
taught, that I had a marvellous voice, and that if I had not come to
her when I did no one might ever have discovered it. Well, of course,
Madame Martelli talks so fast and in such very broken English, and Mrs.
Murray is so deaf, that she did not understand one-half or one-quarter
of what was said to her. But though Madame Martelli must have seen that
from her bewildered expression she did not mind a bit, she just talked
on and on of all that I must do, and all that she would do for me. And
Mrs. Murray just sat there and listened as well as she could. When Madame
Martelli was quite out of breath with her excitement and the rapidity
with which she had talked, Mrs. Murray said in the quiet, low tones in
which she always speaks, and which sounded then like cold-water drops on
a raging volcano, if there is any sense in that metaphor, which I don't
believe there is, by the way:--
"'I am glad you think, then, that her voice is worth training, and that
you consent to give her lessons.'"
"The very calmness of the reply nearly set off Madame Martelli again. If
I hadn't been feeling pretty strung up myself, Margaret, I could have
laughed at the amazement and despair depicted on her face when she found
that the announcement that I had such a marvellous voice was received so
calmly.
"'Worth training. I consent!' The sheer despair of getting Mrs. Murray to
understand seized her, and she could only sit and gasp.
"I think Mrs. Murray grasped then that Madame was disappointed that what
she said had not produced more sensation, for she said kindly:--
"'I am not really at all surprised that you are pleased with her voice,
for her grandfather said she had a nice little voice, very true and
sweet, and he wished her to have regular lessons. It is very kind of you
to take so much interest in it.'"
"'It is a preevilege,' Madame Martelli said. 'It will give me a new
interest in life.' And then she turned to me and wrung my hand again and
again, and though she hurt my three cuts dreadfully, I never even winced.
"'What queer, excitable people foreigners are!' Mrs. Murray said to me
placidly as we drove away; 'but I am glad, my dear Margaret, that you
have a voice worth training. It is a great thing to be able to amuse
oneself with music and give pleasure to one's friends at the same time.'"
Eleanor had recounted this scene with so much vivacity, accompanying her
recital with various gesticulations, and imitating with what Margaret
felt sure was considerable accuracy the different voices of Madame
Martelli and Mrs. Murray, that in spite of her own pre-occupation she had
listened to it with great interest. But when it was over, and Eleanor,
still talking at a tremendous pace as if she wanted to get all she had to
say told in the shortest possible space of time, had gone on to tell her
various other items connected with her two days' stay in Rose Cottage,
Margaret relapsed into the rather moody frame of mind that the first
glimpse she had caught of Eleanor's radiantly happy face had brought upon
her.
"Every morning after breakfast, and every afternoon after tea, I am to go
down to Madame Martelli's house. She lives in a tiny cottage perched on
the opposite side of the valley just above the church, and all my
practising is done at her house. She has forbidden me to sing a note by
myself at present. I read Italian and French with her too, but, as you
can guess, most of the time I spend in practising. Then for the rest of
the day my time is my own. Of course I am a good deal by myself, but I
like that; it gives me more time to study. Oh, I can tell you I find the
silence that reigns up here delightful. If you had lived in the middle of
a crowd of chattering girls for the last five years you could understand
that too. Oh, but it is a lovely, wonderful time that I am having now,
and I shan't forget that I owe it to you."
She fell suddenly silent, and a dreamy look came into her eyes, and a
smile lingered round her mouth. Margaret, noting it, knew that the smile
had nothing whatever to do with her in spite of the expression of
gratitude towards her to which she had just given utterance. It was in
thoughts of herself alone that Eleanor was wrapped; dreams of her own
rosy future were floating before the vision of her mind, and she saw
herself successful, famous, her name on every one's lips, one of the
world-renowned singers of the century. No wonder that in those
entrancing, soaring dreams there was no room for thought of the pale,
grave, silent girl beside her. But presently, the smile still lingering
round the corners of her mouth, Eleanor came out of her dreams, and
turning to Margaret with one of the rapid transitions of mood that
Margaret found so bewildering, she began to laugh at herself.
"Do you know, Margaret," she said, "I believe I am the most egotistical
person that ever existed. Here have I been raving about myself and about
my future greatness, and I have not even asked you one single, solitary
question about yourself. And now, having told you how very, very much I
like being you, tell me how much you like being me."
But now that her opportunity to speak had arrived, Margaret could not
for the moment make use of it. An odd, choking sensation came into her
throat, tears gathered in her eyes, and before she could prevent it, a
big drop rolled silently down her face.
"Good gracious!" Eleanor exclaimed, leaning across the little round table
so as to get a better view of Margaret's face. "Is it as bad as all
that?"
Still Margaret was unable to answer, unless a second tear rolling down
from her other eye could be taken as an answer.
"Oh dear! oh dear!" said Eleanor, fairly aghast at Margaret's unexpected
behaviour. "Whatever can be done!"
All the radiant happiness was gone from her face, and she looked utterly
disconcerted and taken aback.
Then Margaret found her voice.
"Oh, I want to change!" she said, in a voice broken with sobs. "I want to
be myself again."
"But you can't!" Eleanor exclaimed sharply. "That is out of the question.
How can we change now?"
"By telling everybody everything," Margaret said. "They cannot do
anything very dreadful to us, can they?"
Eleanor gave a short and very mirthless laugh.
"They can't do anything very dreadful to you--no," she said. Then in a
perfectly expressionless voice, "You have quite made up your mind, then?"
"Oh, quite," Margaret said, eagerly relieved beyond measure to find that
Eleanor had received her announcement so quietly.
"And how do you mean to set about it?" Eleanor said in the same stony
sort of voice. "Am I to tell Mrs. Murray first, or are you to tell Mrs.
Danvers?"
"As I am up here I could tell Mrs. Murray," Margaret answered timidly,
"and then we could go down together and tell Mrs. Danvers. Oh, Eleanor,
you do not know how distressing it is to me to be deceiving everybody as
I am doing at present. I am sure one girl, Hilary, the second daughter,
knows that I am hiding something, and she is always trying to find out
what it is. She makes my life a burden to me," added Margaret
pathetically. "And it does make me so unhappy to feel that I cannot look
everybody honestly in the face and tell nothing but the truth. And they
all laugh at me, and make fun of me, and think me so silly and shy, and
Mrs. Danvers asked me last night if I would like to go to California with
her as a governess because I get on so well with her children."
"Are you doing any teaching, then?" Eleanor asked.
"Yes, I am a holiday governess to a little boy and a girl. Oh, I do not
mind that at all--they are very good children. It is Hilary, the second
daughter, that I do not like, and though some of the boys are nice, they
do not take much notice of me, and I can see they do not care for me at
all. And I used to think," added poor Margaret mournfully, "that all
young people of my own age would like me, and that I should enjoy myself
so much in their society. But that is not the worst part of it, it is the
feeling that I am in the house on false pretences, and that every time
they call me Miss Carson, and I answer to the name, I am telling a lie.
It is so--so horrible and dishonest."
"I see," said Eleanor slowly; "but I suppose it wasn't until you found
out that you didn't like being me that you began to worry about the
dishonesty of the plan."
"No, I suppose not," said Margaret rather uneasily. "But now that I have
found it out, I should not care to stay there even if I were enjoying it
ever so much--which," she added, "I am not."
"You have at least made that quite clear," Eleanor said drily.
"Then you do not mind our changing?" Margaret said. She found Eleanor's
manner quite inscrutable. After her first passionate exclamation that it
was impossible she seemed to accept Margaret's decision without any
argument whatever, and yet the latter felt that the matter was by no
means settled yet.
"Does it matter if I do mind?" said Eleanor. Her face was very white and
her eyes gazed unflinchingly into Margaret's. The latter was frightened
at the tragic despair they expressed, but she answered firmly enough.
"Yes, of course, I am sorry if you do mind very much, but I mean to
confess all the same."
"Then there is nothing more to be said, is there?" Eleanor answered, and
as she spoke she rose to her feet. "Come, I hear the carriage wheels on
the gravel. Mrs. Murray has returned from her drive. Let us go to her at
once."
She walked rapidly out of the summer-house in the direction of the flight
of steps that led to the upper garden, and after a momentary hesitation
Margaret rose and followed her. The path was wide enough for two to walk
abreast if one of the two did not occupy the middle of it, but as that
was just what Eleanor was doing, Margaret was obliged to follow behind.
Eleanor walked on in silence, apparently of the opinion that the last
word had been said; but Margaret, who was looking doubtfully at the back
of Eleanor's erectly held head, could not bear to think that they were to
part in that constrained way.
"Eleanor!" she exclaimed impulsively, taking a quick step or two forward
and laying one hand timidly on the other's arm as if she would have
detained her for a moment, "I wish you would say that you were not angry
with me."
"What right have I to be angry?" Eleanor said very coldly, as with a
slight but decisive movement she freed her arm from Margaret's touch.
"Only it would have been better for me if we had never met."
"But it is no worse for you than it is for me," Margaret said eagerly,
trying again, but quite unsuccessfully, to walk beside Eleanor. "I
suppose we shall both get terrible scoldings. I from grandfather and
Mrs. Murray, and you from Mrs. Danvers, but they cannot go on being angry
with us for always, can they? And Eleanor, if it is your singing lessons
that you are minding about so much, could you not walk up here from
Seabourne every day and go on with them? It is not so very far, and you
have only to teach David and Daisy in the morning. All the rest of the
day you are quite free."
"I should imagine that as far as Mrs. Danvers is concerned I am quite
free all day long," Eleanor replied, with a little, short laugh.
"What do you mean?" Margaret exclaimed in a puzzled tone. "I do not
understand."
"You didn't suppose, did you," Eleanor replied, without as much as
turning her head as she still walked on, "that I was going back to The
Cedars in your place?"
"Why, of course, I did. Where else would you go?"
"That I must decide presently. After lunch, probably, if I am allowed to
stay here so long."
"But why won't you go to Mrs. Danvers? You were on your way there when
first I met you, before all this happened?"
"Before all this happened, yes," Eleanor returned; "but do you suppose
that she would be willing to have me as her holiday governess now? That
I have only to go down to her house and say, 'Here I am, the real Eleanor
Carson, arrived at last; I am a little late I know, but I played a trick
off on you, and sent another girl in my place. Now, however, we have
decided to change back into our own selves, and she has gone to her
friends, and I have come to you.' It is likely, isn't it, that she would
be willing to have me in her house as a governess to her grandchildren?"
"But why shouldn't she be as willing to have you as Mrs. Murray will be
to have me?" Margaret said in a bewildered tone.
Eleanor shrugged her shoulder. "Because our positions are a little
different, that is all. Your grandfather is Mrs. Murray's friend; this
was to have been your home, and if you ran away from it for a few days
you will, of course, get into disgrace on your return; but no one will
dream of saying that you had not a perfect right to return, in fact they
will make it their business to see that you do not run away again. But,
on the other hand, The Cedars is not my home. Mrs. Danvers is not my
friend, and though I should, no doubt, have got on well enough there
under ordinary circumstances, it isn't likely that she will consent to
take me in now. Naturally enough she will be dreadfully angry at the
liberty we have taken with her."
"But just as angry with me as with you," said Margaret, who felt that in
claiming her share of the blame she lessened Eleanor's.
"Oh, yes," Eleanor agreed indifferently, "that is quite likely. But then,
you see, her anger will not matter to you as much as it will to me. It
does not take away your bread-and-butter and your bed to sleep in, does
it?"
By that time Eleanor had reached the flight of steps and she began to
mount them. But Margaret had come to a pause at their foot, her progress
arrested by Eleanor's last words.
For the first time she had grasped what the full result of confession
would be to Eleanor, and her dismay deprived her for the moment of all
power of speech.
"Wait!" she cried then in a stifled voice. "Oh Eleanor, wait!"
"What for?" Eleanor returned impatiently. But glancing downwards and
seeing that Margaret had sunk on to the lowest step and had covered her
face with her hands, the hard, contemptuous expression her face had worn
relaxed somewhat.
"Don't bother about me, Margaret," she said, "I really don't care two
straws about going to The Cedars. From what you have told me the Danvers
do not appear to be a very attractive family, and I painted my own plight
blacker than I need have done. I have got somewhere to go. The empty
school at Hampstead is open to me for the rest of the summer holidays.
Miss Marvel gave me leave to spend them there if I had nowhere to go, so
I shall be all right. So, for goodness sake," she added, unable to keep
the impatience she felt at the weakness Margaret was displaying out of
her voice, "don't cry about me."
"I'm not crying," Margaret said in a muffled tone, due to the fact that
her face was still buried in her hands. "I'm thinking. Please do not
speak to me for a minute."
With a little shrug of her shoulders Eleanor fell silent, and she
surveyed Margaret's bowed shoulders as she sat huddled up on the step
beneath her with a touch of scorn in her glance. So Margaret had
difficulty even in summoning up enough courage to go in and face Mrs.
Murray. What a poor thing it was! she thought. But Eleanor was conscious
of no anger against her weak-kneed confederate who was leaving her so
badly in the lurch. She was not to blame for her feeble vacillating
nature, that could not even adhere for three days to the plot she had
entered upon so joyously. Eleanor was only angry with herself for having
put faith in her. And what would Madame Martelli say when she heard that
her pupil was not her real pupil at all? But of her, and of all she would
lose by going away, Eleanor could not trust herself to think. With an
effort she made her mind a blank and stood drearily silent waiting for
Margaret to get up and follow her to the house. Of what Mrs. Murray would
do or say when she was told that the girl she had received into her
house, and to whom she had shown every kindness in her power, was not her
old friend's granddaughter but a sheer impostor, Eleanor never even
thought. If she had taken Mrs. Murray's probable feelings into
consideration in any way, she would merely have supposed that indignation
at the liberty that had been taken with her would swallow up any kindly
liking that she might have been beginning to feel for her.
The silence that had fallen between the two girls had lasted fully three
minutes before Margaret lifted her face from her hands and rising to her
feet, faced Eleanor.
"I have thought over everything you have said, and I find I cannot do it
after all."
"But you have told me that already," Eleanor said, restraining her
impatience with difficulty. "Come along and let us get it over."
"No, no; you do not understand. I mean I cannot turn you out from here.
I will go on with it. I had not thought about Mrs. Danvers not taking you
in my place; but I believe you are right, and that she would not. So I
shall go on being Eleanor Carson until--until--well, I suppose until we
are found out."
Eleanor shook her head. "You will change your mind again to-morrow," she
said curtly.
Margaret flushed. "No," she replied steadily, "I will not. You may
believe me when I say I shall not. You see, Eleanor, when I first wanted
so much to be in your place and go to The Cedars I had no idea what was
before me. I was disappointed when I found out, and so, of course, my
wish was to change back into myself again; and I never thought of the
effect my change of purpose would have upon you. But this time I am doing
it with my eyes open."
There was a new ring in Margaret's voice, a look of resolution on her
face that was strange to it, and Eleanor, glancing at her in amazement,
realised that she was showing a latent strength of purpose that had
perhaps for the first time in her sheltered, uneventful life been called
out in her. Nevertheless she refused to believe that Margaret really
meant what she said.
"But the dishonesty you spoke of just now," she said. "What about that;
and your dislike to the deception we are both practising? That remains
the same."
"I know," said Margaret in a low tone, a shadow crossing her face and
dimming the look of courageous resolve it wore. "But that is unavoidable.
It seems to me now that it would be quite as bad, if not worse, to break
faith with you."
Still Eleanor did not give way. Her conscience did not need to speak very
loudly for her to hear it telling her that in accepting Margaret's offer
she was doing a very wrong thing. In her heart of hearts she had known
all along that their plot was inexcusable from every point of view, and
that when it came to be known most of the blame would be laid at her
door, not only because she was the elder and the more worldly wise of the
two, but because most people would consider that she had been the one to
profit most by the exchange. But she had been carried away by Margaret's
urgent pleadings and persuasions and had finally suppressed her
misgivings and consented to the plot. Now, however, the case was altered.
It was only out of a spirit of pure self-sacrifice that Margaret was
urging her to continue to bear her name, and she knew that in yielding
she would be guilty of great selfishness.
"Think of your singing lessons with Madame Martelli," said Margaret,
who was quietly watching the struggle with herself to which Eleanor's
changing face bore eloquent witness.
That clenched the matter. Eleanor gave in; but this time it was she who
found it difficult to meet Margaret's eyes.
"Oh, Margaret," she said, "if you appeal to my ambition my better self
goes under. I accept, then; but you're a brick, a perfect brick, and I
feel too mean for words."
CHAPTER XI
A PRACTICAL JOKE
Three weeks had passed since Margaret had paid her first visit to Eleanor
at Windy Gap, and during those three weeks she had kept steadily to her
word and was impersonating Eleanor as well as she could at The Cedars.
And as the days went by her task grew easier. She seemed to have slipped
into her place as a member of the household, and though it was a very
insignificant niche indeed that she filled, she did not mind that at all,
for she was aware that the more she kept in the background the less
chance there was of her secret being discovered. Perhaps on the whole,
too, she was happier than she had been during the first three or four
days. Of course, as she told herself seriously, she ought not, when once
her eyes had been opened to the wrongfulness of the deceit she was
practising, to have known a single happy moment, but somehow she found it
difficult always to feel ashamed and contrite, especially when she was
playing croquet with Edward. For in return for some lessons in French
conversation she was giving him he had offered to teach her croquet, and
though Margaret had been afraid that she was far too stupid to learn any
game, she was making astonishing progress under his tuition, and Edward
was already beginning to boast of the prowess of his pupil. And so, for
the first time in her life, Margaret fell under the fascination of a
game, and when she had a mallet in her hand it is to be feared that the
delinquency of her conduct ceased to trouble her.
Fat, chuckling Nancy, too, who seemed to be always brimming over with
good nature and good spirits, frequently sought her society, and Margaret
found it even more impossible to brood secretly over her misdeeds in
Nancy's society as when she was playing croquet. Of Maud she saw very
little. Sometimes for days together the eldest daughter of the house
scarcely spoke to her, vouchsafing her only the most careless and hasty
of nods as morning and evening greetings. Maud intended to be neither
rude nor unkind. The children's holiday governess simply did not interest
her, that was all, and as for going out of her way to amuse or entertain
her, Maud's blue eyes stared amazedly at her mother when one day Mrs.
Danvers ventured to suggest that perhaps Maud might take more notice of
Miss Carson.
"For I really am afraid she is having a very dull time here," said Mrs.
Danvers, her tone taking on a rather apologetic note as she encountered
the impatient expression on Maud's face. "I am sure I don't know what she
would do if it wasn't for Nancy and Edward."
"Well, with them to knock around with, and the kids to teach when they
come back, she ought not to find time hang heavy," Maud said carelessly.
"But as for asking me to take her about, why, mother, I simply couldn't.
The day isn't half long enough as it is for me to do all I want to do.
And after all, she wouldn't find it a bit amusing to come about with me.
Fancy her sticking down for hours at the club watching me playing tennis,
for that is what I am doing this afternoon, for instance. Besides, she is
so dreadfully slow. She bores me awfully."
"My dear," said her mother, "though you all find Miss Carson so slow just
because she knows nothing about tennis, or tennis people, or cricket
averages, or the difference between Rugby and Association football, I
think she is a very nice girl indeed, so gentle and so unselfish. David
and Daisy just love her, and I know if I want any little thing done for
me, a note written, or flowers put in water, or any little things of that
sort, I'd sooner ask her to do it for me than either you or Hilary."
"Well, and so she ought to make herself useful," said Maud, turning
restive at the merest hint of criticism from the mother who usually had
nothing but praise for her daughters. "After all, that is what she is
here for. She is paid for that, isn't she?"
"I am paying her nothing," Mrs. Danvers said.
"Well, she gets her board and lodging, anyhow, and a better time into the
bargain than she would be getting grilling away in an empty house at
Hampstead," Maud retorted. "And I think she ought to be jolly thankful to
be here."
This conversation was taking place in the morning-room by the open French
window of which Maud had stood while carrying on her share of it, and her
last speech had been uttered with so much vigour that as her back was
partly turned to the room she had not heard the door open. And though her
mother coughed once or twice in an agonised way, it was not until she had
quite finished all she had to say that Maud swung round and saw Margaret
standing with a pile of letters in her hand by her mother's chair.
[Illustration: MAUD SWUNG ROUND AND SAW MARGARET STANDING WITH A PILE
OF LETTERS BY HER MOTHER'S CHAIR.]
"I have finished these, Mrs. Danvers," she said quietly; "is there
anything else you would like me to do?"
Margaret had certainly gained in self-possession since she had come to
The Cedars. A fortnight ago if she had heard a remark of that sort about
herself she would have rushed in tears from the room, but now she seemed
to guess intuitively that the right thing and the kindest thing to do was
to pretend not to have heard it. Certainly from her manner Maud would
never have guessed that her speech had been overheard. Nevertheless, she
knew that Miss Carson could not have failed to hear every word, and
flushing darkly even through the sunburn of her cheeks, she fled out of
the room by the window, literally without a word to say for herself. And
when Mrs. Danvers attempted an apology on her daughter's behalf it was
Margaret's turn to show embarrassment.
"Please, please," she said earnestly, "do not think that I mind what Maud
said. You are all very kind to me, and Maud is quite right. It is much
nicer here than it would be in an empty house in Hampstead."
"That reminds me, my dear," Mrs. Danvers said. "Sit down here beside me,
and let us have a nice cosy chat about your future. What are you going to
do when you leave me at the end of the holidays? Are you going back to
the school?"
"Yes--yes; I--think so," said Margaret, beginning to stammer and get red
as she invariably did when Hampstead was mentioned. "At least, I--I don't
know."
"Well, I may be mistaken of course--thank you, my dear, if you will just
reach me my knitting, I can always talk so much better when I am
knitting. Well, as I was going to say, I have an idea that you would be
much happier teaching in a family than in a school. And I do wonder why I
cannot persuade you to let me write to my daughter, Mrs. Lascelles, about
you. I believe when she hears how much the children like you she would be
only too pleased to take you out to Los Angelos for a few years. She
would give you £50 a year--and your travelling expenses, of course. It is
a chance, I assure you, that many girls in your place would jump at, for
it is not, my dear, as if you were very highly certificated, you know.
She will have a lovely house out there, for her husband is a very rich
man, and they will treat you with every kindness and consideration. Now
may I write to her and say that you would like to go?"
Several times already in the course of the past few weeks had Mrs.
Danvers broached this subject to Margaret, but the latter had always
hitherto been able to avoid giving her a direct answer as to why she was
not willing to take the post. But what a thousand pities it was, Margaret
thought, that Eleanor could not accept it. Once the wild idea had
occurred to Margaret that she ought to accept it in Eleanor's name, and
manage somehow to change places with her at the very last moment--on
board the ship, even, perhaps; but fortunately she had seen the utter
folly of that notion before it had taken firm route in her mind. She did
not even know if Eleanor would have cared to go to Los Angelos had the
chance been offered to her, for though she had seen Eleanor twice since
the day on which she had first gone to Windy Gap, she had not been able
to broach the subject to her. For on both occasions Eleanor had been so
full of her own news, and their meetings had been of necessity so brief,
that by the time Eleanor had poured out all she wanted to say the moment
had come for them to part.
Margaret felt very much older than the girl who had left her
grandfather's house three weeks ago. A great deal of experience had been
pressed into those three weeks, and she had learned many things. Among
them she had learned what perhaps at the time she had scarcely believed
that there was, as Eleanor had said bitterly, a good deal of difference
in their respective positions, and that an escapade which could not be
visited very seriously on one might affect the other rather disastrously.
Margaret knew now that Mrs. Danvers, good-natured as she was, would
certainly have refused to take Eleanor in her place if she, Margaret, had
carried out her intention of confessing everything. But in spite of that
knowledge she still clung to the hope that the post at Los Angelos, which
was being so warmly pressed upon the false Eleanor Carson, might
eventually be offered to the real one! And so, if only for the sake of
keeping the place open to Eleanor, she felt that she could not refuse it
outright. What Eleanor meant to do when the holidays were over and they
had to take their own names again, Margaret did not know. As far as she
could judge from their brief, stolen interviews at Windy Gap, Eleanor
continued to be radiantly happy there and to be earning golden opinions
from Madame Martelli, and to be absolutely untroubled by any thoughts
beyond the immediate present. The fact that she could not be Margaret
Anstruther for ever never seemed as much as to enter her head. She gave
no thought to the future at all. And of course, Margaret reflected, if
she expected to be a celebrated Prima Donna by the end of the summer
holidays, that was all right, but if not, did she intend to stay on at
Windy Gap indefinitely and send her, the real Margaret, back to the
school in her place? If such a thing were possible, Margaret felt sure
that Eleanor would despatch her there with the utmost cheerfulness, and
consequently Margaret was deeply thankful that such a course was not
feasible, for Eleanor could hardly hope to pass another girl off as
herself in a school where she had lived for the last seven or eight
years. What, then, did Eleanor mean to do?
"My dear," said Mrs. Danvers reproachfully, breaking in upon Margaret's
perplexed musings, "you are not listening to a word that I am saying,
and what I want to have from you is a plain answer to the question why
you refuse to go to Los Angelos."
"I--I could not leave England," Margaret answered. "I--I should not be
allowed to."
"But, my dear, I understood from Miss McDonald that both your parents
were dead and that you are absolutely alone in the world. Who, then, has
authority over you? Unless," she added, a sudden look of enlightenment
coming to her face, "you are engaged to be married. Is that it?"
"Oh, no," said Margaret, "I am not engaged to any one. It is no one of
that sort at all."
"Then there is some one whom you wish to consult first. Now, who is it?"
By that time Margaret's confusion would have attracted the attention of
any one a degree more observant than Mrs. Danvers, but she saw nothing
suspicious in it; she was only bent on persuading Margaret to change her
mind. As she said, it seemed such a pity for Miss Carson to stand so
obstinately in her own light, for on the face of it a pleasant post
and £50 a year was better than £20 in a second-rate school.
"There is no one who I would have to consult exactly," said Margaret,
seeking vainly for a way of escape out of the tight corner into which she
had blundered, "only--only I could not go."
"But, my dear," repeated Mrs. Danvers, "I have it in your own words; you
said just now that you would not be allowed to leave England."
"No; yes, I mean," said Margaret, whose confusion was increasing so
rapidly that by that time she had very little idea what she was saying.
"I--I am sure I should be prevented. By the end of the holidays you--you
may not like me any longer, and not wish me to go."
"Now what a very strange idea for you to take into your head," said Mrs.
Danvers placidly. "Isn't that a strange idea Miss Carson has taken into
her head, Hilary--that by the end of the summer holidays we may not like
her any more?"
For just as Margaret had entered the room unperceived by Maud a few
minutes back, so Hilary had now come in unheard by Margaret, and had been
standing where Maud had stood--half in and half out of the window.
"Very strange," said Hilary, sending a swift glance at Margaret's averted
face; "was it meant as a prophecy?"
Margaret was saved the necessity of an answer, for at that moment Edward,
who was knocking the balls about on the croquet lawn, shouted to her to
come and have a game; and thankfully enough Margaret fled through the
open window.
"Her manners are rather casual to you, aren't they, mother?" said Hilary,
flinging herself down in the easiest chair in the room, and taking up the
local paper, which had been brought in by Martin a few minutes before.
"Oh, my dear, I don't mind," said Mrs. Danvers; "I am really getting
quite fond of her. She left in a hurry that way just now, I expect,
because she didn't like your little sneering speech at her. You know you
have rather a sharp, unkind way with you sometimes, Hilary. Why don't you
get on better with her?"
"Because I don't like her," Hilary said curtly.
"But, my dear, why not?"
"Because I don't. I heard you persuading her to go to Los Angelos just
now," she added. "Did she say she would go?"
"No; I can't get her to say she would like to go, nor yet to say she
won't go," said Mrs. Danvers. "Now I should have thought it was a chance
she would have jumped at. But no; girls are so queer and independent
nowadays, there is no accounting for them."
"It is very ungrateful of her when you have been good enough to bother
about it," said Hilary, who, though she was delighted to hear that so far
the post in her sister's household was unfilled, for she cherished dreams
of going out to California with Mrs. Lascelles herself, would not let
slip the opportunity of running Margaret down to any one who would
listen. "Did she say why she wouldn't go?"
"Well, she did and she didn't," returned Mrs. Danvers, actually laying
down her knitting for a moment as a recollection of the embarrassment
Margaret had shown returned to her. "As far as I can gather, it is
because she would not be allowed to do so by somebody or other, but who
that somebody was she did not clearly explain to me."
By a few dexterous questions Hilary got her mother to repeat the gist of
the conversation that had just taken place between herself and the
holiday governess, and when she had finished there was a queer little
gleam in Hilary's eyes that Margaret would not have liked to have seen.
"She would not be allowed to go, and when asked why not, had said that
she would be prevented." Hilary turned these phrases over in her mind,
and as soon as she could do so unperceived, wrote them down in a little
note-book that she carried in her pocket.
For though she had now given up the practice she had originally started
of plying Margaret with embarrassing questions, and letting it be plainly
seen that none of the embarrassment Margaret showed at them was lost upon
her, the watch she kept on her every look and action, though secret, was
none the less vigilant. Perhaps even more so than it had been at the
beginning of Margaret's stay, for Hilary was so fascinated by her new
occupation of amateur detective that almost every word Margaret uttered,
even down to a request that the salt might be passed to her at table, was
entered in that little note-book. She blamed herself bitterly, she told
Joan, for having undoubtedly put Margaret on her guard to start with; it
was a false step, she said with a frown, that it might take her weeks and
months to retrieve. "But she will be gone by that time," said Joan, "so
it won't be much use retrieving it then."
Hilary retorted that she had been speaking in a general sense, and then
changed the subject quickly lest Joan should discover how little sense of
any sort the answer contained.
Undoubtedly the relief that Margaret experienced when Hilary ceased to
cross-examine her at meal-times had much to do with her ceasing to
dislike her life at The Cedars as vehemently as she had done at first,
and so cautious was Hilary not to let Margaret suspect the close
observation under which she still kept her, that Margaret had almost come
to believe that she must have been mistaken in ever supposing that Hilary
knew she had something to hide.
Could Margaret have had a glimpse at the pages of that note-book,
however, she would have been quickly undeceived on that point. One entry
alone, which had been made only a few days before, would have filled her
with dismay. It occupied several pages and was headed, "The Clue of the
Handkerchief."
The incident to which this sensational headline referred had taken place
the previous Sunday afternoon, when most of the members of the family had
been sitting in deck-chairs, or lying on rugs, under the shade of the big
cedars on the lawn which gave the house its name. Some of the party were
reading, others were frankly sleeping, when the quiet that reigned had
been disturbed by Nancy, who came running over the grass waving a
handkerchief over her head. "Who's the owner of this pretty thing, this
pretty thing, this pretty thing?" she sang, to the tune of "Here we go
round the mulberry bush." Geoffrey, who had been sound asleep, woke, and
groaned aloud.
"Oh, go away, Nancy," he said; "can't you see that we are all reading?"
"I can't say I can," she retorted, glancing laughingly at his book, which
lay face downwards on the grass beside him. "And I want to discover the
owner of this handkerchief with the initials 'M. A.' on it."
"I am," said Margaret, as, without pausing to reflect, she stretched out
her hand for it.
"Oh, Miss Carson, Miss Carson," said Nancy, dangling her prize in the air
before dropping it on to Margaret's lap; "whose handkerchief have you
been stealing? 'M. A.' are not your initials."
Too late Margaret realised her mistake, and as she had done on the day
when she had failed to answer to her assumed name, she sent a quick,
apprehensive glance round the circle of faces to see if any one had
noticed her error. It appeared no one had, not even Hilary, on whose face
Margaret's uneasy glance rested last and longest. But Hilary's eyes were
fixed steadily on the pages of her book, and with a sigh of relief
Margaret slipped the handkerchief into her pocket. Little did she think
that when a quarter of an hour later Hilary rose and strolled slowly
away, it was to seek a retired corner, and under that startling headline
to make an extensive entry in the note-book.
But though it gave Hilary sincere satisfaction to be able to note that
Miss Carson laid claim to a handkerchief that was obviously not hers, she
was not able to deduce much from the discovery. However, she felt
convinced that she was laying the train to find out a great deal later
on, and as soon as she had collected a sufficient number of suspicious
facts, they would surely explain themselves.
When, as it often did, Margaret's conscience grappled very strenuously
with her, and told her that however much she might try to gloss over the
truth, she was behaving very badly to three people--to her grandfather,
to Mrs. Murray, and to Mrs. Danvers--poor Margaret would urge in her own
extenuation that though she had entered into the scheme entirely for her
own amusement she was now carrying it on solely to please Eleanor, and
that, wrong as it was, no doubt, to go on with it, it would have been
both cowardly and unkind of her to have thrown it up and by so doing
deprive Eleanor not only of the singing lessons by which she set such
store, and for which alone she had consented to the exchange, but a home
for the summer holidays.
"Her honour rooted in dishonour stood.
And faith unfaithful kept her falsely true."
Those lines sprang unawares to Margaret's mind one day when she was
rather sadly reviewing the position in which she had placed herself, and
they appeared to her to fit the situation so exactly that they were
frequently in her thoughts, and Hilary, to her intense gratification,
heard her murmur them to herself one day when she thought herself alone.
The quotation was one copied into the note book under the heading, "A
Guilty Conscience Speaks."
"Is there anything interesting in the _Gazette_?" asked Mrs. Danvers, as
Hilary idly opened the sheets of the local paper and spread them out on
her knee.
Hilary happened to be in one of her most irritable humours that morning;
even the faithful Joan found no pleasure in her society and had gone off
to bathe with Nancy and Maud. She said it was the heat that made her feel
slack and tired, and her mother said anxiously that she was afraid she
did too much, whereat Hilary laughed sardonically, for no one knew better
than she that she did nothing at all from morning to night. Why, even
Nancy, who at least ate chocolates whenever she could get them, and read
novels assiduously all day long and in bed too, might with justice be
said to lead a busier life than she did. But, though Hilary often felt
vaguely dissatisfied at the way in which she dawdled through the days,
she had not strength of mind to bestir herself to pass them otherwise.
After all, what was there for her to do? she asked herself irritably.
She was supposed to have finished her education, and though she was dimly
aware that she was shamefully ignorant, there seemed no especial object
in her getting out her lesson-books and poring over them by herself.
But it was not the thought of her neglected opportunities that was making
her so peevish this morning. She was cross because she could make nothing
out of the number of suspicious facts that she had collected about
Margaret. Of what use was it to have a note-book crammed full of
well-grounded evidence that Miss Carson was an impostor of some sort if
she could not gather from all the mass of material she had collected in
what way she was imposing on them. It was enough, she thought, to make
any one cross. And unless she could discover something definite against
Miss Carson, Joanna would take her out to Los Angelos with her. But that,
Hilary told herself with a little spasm of inward anger, should never
come to pass.
"Hullo, Hilary! got the _Gazette_?" said Jack who, followed by Noel, and
indeed the two boys were never very far apart, strolled through the
window at that moment. "After you with it, I say."
"I have only just begun it myself," said Hilary, coolly tightening her
hold upon it, "so I am afraid you will have to wait."
"Well, it didn't look to us from the garden as though you were reading
it at all," grumbled Jack, "so you might just as well hand it over to us.
We want to take it into the garden and see if there is anything in it
about----"
"About the cricket at the Park," put in Noel quickly.
"Well, you needn't have snapped me up so quickly," grumbled Jack to his
brother, but in so low a tone that neither Mrs. Danvers nor Hilary heard
what he said.
"Well, if there is anything about the cricket I haven't come to it yet,"
said Hilary, beginning to enjoy the possession of the paper now that it
was desired by some one else. "There is a lot about a big fancy fair that
Sir Richard and Lady Strangways are going to have at Wrexley, and about
the Regatta, and the dividends that the pier expects to get this
half-year from the roller skating, and the new play at the theatre, and
the usual lists of people staying at the hotels and boarding-houses. Who
on earth ever reads them through, I wonder? But oh, I say!" she exclaimed
suddenly, as turning over a page her eyes lighted on a column, half of
which was taken up with big headlines that occupied the middle of the
sheet. "I say, what do you think! There has been another burglary. That
makes the third within the last three weeks. Colonel Baker's house was
broken into last night, and all his silver plate was stolen, beside a
most valuable old bronze Etruscan vase, two cases of family miniatures,
and a collection of gold and silver coins. It----"
She was interrupted by a startled exclamation from Jack. "You don't mean
to say that that is in the paper already!" he ejaculated.
"Why, did you know about it before, then?" said Hilary, eyeing her two
brothers in surprise. "When did you hear about it? Have you seen Tommy
this morning?"
"No, we have not seen Tommy to-day, and how could we have heard about
it?" said Noel promptly. "What Jack meant to say was, has there really
been another burglary already?"
Seabourne had certainly been unfortunate in the matter of burglaries of
late. There had been three within as many weeks. One had taken place at
Walker's, the principal jewellers in the High Street; another at the
Grand Hotel, where a popular London dancer, Cora Anatolia by name, had
been robbed of all her jewellery; and now this one of which Hilary had
just read, when Colonel Baker's house, Chesham Lodge, had been broken
into. And in each case the thieves had got clear away.
Naturally enough the police considered that all these burglaries had been
perpetrated by the same gang; but in that they were wrong, for Master
Tommy Baker, aided by his two chums, Noel and Jack Danvers, had committed
the burglary at Colonel Baker's house the preceding evening as a
practical joke.
It was perhaps one of the most unpremeditated burglaries that had ever
taken place. He and the two young Danvers had spent the previous evening
at the theatre, and as their road home lay in the same direction the two
latter had accompanied Tommy as far as his gate. There Jack had
remembered that Tommy had promised to lend him a book, and the two boys
walked up the short drive with him intending to wait at the door while
Tommy went in to get the book. As they turned the corner of the drive the
light from the open study window streamed out on to the gravel, and they
caught sight of Colonel Baker reclining sound asleep in an armchair. The
hall door was likewise wide open.
"I say," Jack had exclaimed, "your house would be an easy one to burgle,
wouldn't it? Half a dozen burglars could sneak right in under your
father's very nose and go off with anything they fancied."
"Well, let's burgle it!" Tommy exclaimed light-heartedly. "It would be
a ripping good joke. Fancy father's face in the morning." And thereupon
Jack and Noel entering gleefully into the scheme, the three boys had
crept silently into the house, gone as silently under Tommy's guidance
from room to room, snatching up as they went the most valuable things on
which they could lay hands.
It really was all done literally on the spur of the moment, and scarcely
five minutes after the mad idea had entered Tommy's head the three boys
stood in a dark corner of the drive with their booty, consisting of table
silver, some valuable miniatures, and a collection of gold coins,
securely tied up in a gaudy gold-embroidered Indian tablecloth that Tommy
had taken from the drawing-room. The Colonel still slept peacefully.
"Now to hide it," said Tommy, "we'll bury it in a corner of your garden."
Shaking with laughter, and wildly elated at the success of their mad
prank, they very nearly ran, as they were leaving Chesham Lodge, straight
into the arms of a policeman, who, with slow and solemn tread, was pacing
down the road. That narrow shave calmed them somewhat, and probably there
was not one of them who did not feel at that moment that they were actual
burglars. At any rate, their progress from Chesham Lodge was attended
with the utmost caution and with a show of mystery that must infallibly
have aroused deep suspicion had they met any one.
"Why go to the fag of burying the swag?" said Tommy once they were safe
within the shelter of The Cedars gates. "Let's take it to one of your
bedrooms. Besides," he added; as if this were quite an afterthought, as
indeed it was, "I don't want to spoil the things, and burying them might
damage the miniatures. Let's shove them into a drawer in your room.
Better go on first, Jack, and see if the coast is clear."
It was then about a quarter past ten, and most of the Danvers family were
still in the billiard-room. Mrs. Danvers and Margaret, however, were in
the drawing-room, and Edward had just gone up to bed.
When Jack came back with his report another short consultation was held.
Edward's having gone up to bed made it impossible to hide their booty in
any of the boys' bedrooms.
"What about your spare bedroom?" said Tommy; "you've got a biggish one,
I know."
"Miss Carson is sleeping there," said Jack. "But I tell you what, she's
not using the dressing-room. I know, because the girls keep some of their
swaggerest dresses and things there. And there are heaps of empty
drawers. So let's shove this thing into one of them."
Having reached the dressing-room unobserved, and closed the door and
turned on the light, they looked round for a safe hiding-place. And that
was not easily found. The drawers, far from being empty, were full either
of blouses laid away in tissue paper, or of furs smothered in camphor.
The hanging wardrobe, too, was full of dresses, and the drawer beneath of
hats.
"Oh, bother!" said Tommy crossly, "what an endless amount of room girls
seem to want for their things!" Then suddenly his expression changed and
he dived under the bed and dragged out a small trunk.
"The very thing. What luck! It's quite empty, and evidently hasn't been
used for ages, the lid is all covered with dust. Probably no one even
knows it is here. Shove in the bundle. Shall I lock it? Yes, I think
I will. Then if any prying housemaid comes along and wants to look inside
she won't be able to."
He slipped the key into his pocket, and the three boys left the room.
But mad as this practical joke was, the idea to which it had given rise
in Hilary's mind was even more outrageous. For she had taken it into her
head that Margaret was connected with the burglaries; and that when she
was still far from guessing that the proceeds of one of them were
actually locked up in her trunk. Hilary's suspicions were founded upon
nothing more tangible than the fact that Margaret's cheeks were unusually
pink that morning when the burglaries were being discussed. And she
forgot that Margaret had just come in from playing croquet in the sun
without a hat.
For some days Tommy, and in a lesser degree Noel and Jack, enjoyed
themselves hugely. Colonel Baker was not the man to sit down tamely under
his loss, and he stormed at the police for not restoring his property,
interviewed the editors of the local papers, offered rewards for the
apprehension of the thieves, and generally made a great stir in the
matter. Presently Noel and Jack began to fear the consequences of their
rash act, and they urged Tommy to smuggle his father's property out of
their house and into his own. But Tommy turned a deaf ear to them, would
not give up the key, and said they must keep up the joke a little longer.
Then, just as Noel and Jack were about to declare that they had had
enough of it, Tommy received an unexpected invitation to Scotland, and in
the hurry of his departure went off with the key in his possession. So,
greatly to their annoyance, the Danvers boys found themselves compelled
to leave the things where they were.
CHAPTER XII
ELEANOR MEETS MARGARET'S AUNT
In spite of the liking that both Edward and Nancy had come to show for
her society, Margaret often felt very lonely at The Cedars, far more
lonely than she would have believed it would be possible for her to be
in a big household of lively boys and girls. Edward was a boy of many
occupations and had much to do besides playing croquet with her, and
Hilary often claimed Nancy's companionship even when she did not
particularly wish for it just for the spiteful pleasure of depriving
Margaret of it. So that Margaret was thrown very much on her own
resources--so much so, indeed, that she sometimes wondered with a touch
of wistfulness if she was any gayer in the midst of this merry,
chattering crowd of young people than she had been in the silent old
house that she had left so gladly one short month ago.
But, at any rate, her health had improved in a marked degree since she
had come to Seabourne. That was, no doubt, due to the fact that,
encouraged to do so by Mrs. Danvers, Margaret spent much of her time out
of doors. And as she had discovered that the afternoon was the best time
to visit Eleanor, Margaret generally started for Windy Gap directly after
lunch, and the pure, breezy air of the downs acted as an excellent tonic.
And Eleanor, now that she knew that Margaret had no intention of ousting
her from her quarters at Rose Cottage, always welcomed her warmly, and
many were the long conversations that the two girls enjoyed in the little
arbour in the corner of the kitchen garden that had witnessed their first
momentous interview.
Margaret could reach Windy Gap now in a little under an hour, for she had
found out many short cuts across the grass, by means of which she avoided
the long, twisting high-road that ran by the edge of the cliffs
altogether. And by leaving the steep lane that led from the little
village in the hollow up to Rose Cottage before it brought her to the
front gate she could skirt below the wall that enclosed the domain and
enter the kitchen garden by a side gate without coming in sight of the
windows at all. It was Eleanor who had shown her this mode of entry and
who had also told her that the early hours of the afternoon between two
and four were the ones on which Margaret could most surely count on
finding her alone, for Mrs. Murray always took a nap after lunch and was
not visible again until tea-time. If Margaret found her days at The
Cedars empty and somewhat long, Eleanor up at Rose Cottage had nothing at
all to complain of in that respect.
"My dear Margaret," she said one day, "you must have led a strenuous life
from your youth up if, even when you are supposed to be taking things
easy, you have had such a course of study, as I am compelled to pursue in
your place, mapped out for you. If your grandfather had wished you to
become a naturalised Italian he couldn't have been keener on your
acquiring a thorough knowledge of the language. He never writes to me,
but I know he wrote a long letter to Mrs. Murray the other day hoping
that I was getting on with my studies and that neither she nor Madame
Martelli permitted me to mope and dream my time away in the profitless,
silly way that had of late become habitual to me, and which was admirably
adapted, if the habit were encouraged, to weaken my brain permanently."
Margaret coloured faintly as Eleanor quoted that passage from Mr.
Anstruther's letter. For a moment she almost imagined that she could hear
her grandfather's caustic voice speaking to her, and though what he had
said was not particularly flattering, she knew that it contained a
certain amount of truth.
"Mrs. Murray wrote back and told him," Eleanor went on, "that I was
making capital progress both with my singing and with the language, and
that Madame Martelli was exceedingly pleased with me. She also said that
I showed no disposition at all to mope, but was as busy and as brisk as a
bee from morning to night. And so I am," said Eleanor with a laugh.
"Madame Martelli sees to that. We have breakfast here every morning at
eight, and by a quarter to nine I am down at Milan Cottage, which is the
name of Madame's house, and I study and sing with her until half-past
twelve, when I come home. We lunch at one, have tea at four, and directly
after tea I go down to Milan Cottage again and am taken for a little walk
by Madame. At half-past seven Mrs. Murray and I dine, and at half-past
nine we go to bed. And that has been my daily life for the last three
weeks."
But there was no need to ask Eleanor if she was satisfied with it. Every
line of her face expressed radiant happiness, and though she spoke
jestingly of the way in which her nose was kept to the grindstone,
Margaret knew that she was really revelling in this chance of getting the
instruction in Italian that she wanted. And as for the singing lessons,
their value, she declared vehemently, was beyond price to her. Any time
during the last two years she would, she said, have gladly lived in a
hovel, fared on bread and water, and gone barefoot and in rags for the
sake of them.
"Sometimes I wake up in the night and think I am only dreaming a
beautiful dream," she said, "and that when I really am awake I shall find
myself back in Hampstead in the ugly little dingy room that I shared with
two little girls. And then I have to light my candle and look round me
and assure myself that I really am in the pretty white bedroom that Mrs.
Murray has given to me here, and that my good fortune is a reality and
not a dream."
"Has your life been a very unhappy one?" Margaret asked her gravely one
day.
"I have often been very unhappy," Eleanor answered thoughtfully; "but
that, of course, is different to having had an unhappy life. Of course,
my mother's and my father's death was a great grief to me, and when the
sense of the awful loss their death was to me grew less the resentment I
felt at my changed circumstances made me awfully bitter and unhappy for a
time. For I can tell you it was a violent change. Up to the age of
thirteen I lived as if I were going to be rich all my life and was the
spoilt darling of my parents and of every one round me. After that I was
a pupil teacher, taken in literally out of charity, in a second-rate
suburban school. I am sure for a time I must have behaved too hatefully
for words, and if Miss McDonald had sent me to the workhouse it would
have served me right. But she knew that she was the only friend I had,
and was awfully good to me. If I had only been older when the crash came
I daresay I should have been better provided with friends; but at that
age I wanted no friends except my own horses and dogs, and my father and
mother were always too wrapped up in each other to care to make friends.
So that was really why at their death I was left so utterly stranded, and
had Miss McDonald not come forward to my rescue I would have gone, I
suppose, to a charity school. She was, as I say, awfully good to me. You
see, she understood, and that made all the difference. She had gone
through much the same sudden change of fortune herself, for she had never
been brought up to work for her living either. Somehow she did not say
much, but she made me see the utter uselessness of repining and taught me
how much braver it was to accept things as they are and to make the best
of them. And so I set my teeth and made the best of them, or rather tried
to make the best of them, which isn't quite the same thing, but still the
best I could do. And I was getting sort of resigned to my lot when the
idea came to me that I had a voice, and I went to see Signor Vanucci. An
unknown girl and a famous man like that! The utter cheek of it, Margaret!
But I have told you all about it and the hopes he raised, which were only
to be dashed to the ground by his unexpected death. It took me months and
months to get over it; in fact, in the sense of the word I never did get
over it; even the gradual down-fall of the school and the awful struggle
that Miss McDonald was going through never seemed to me as real as my own
disappointment. I sometimes think, Margaret, that I must be horribly
selfish and heartless. And then through you, Margaret, this second chance
came, and though I held back at first, I seized it gladly and mean to
hold it as long as I can, although I know," she added, "how very
atrociously I am behaving to you and Mrs. Murray."
"Oh!" said Margaret in surprise, for this was the very first time Eleanor
had admitted as much.
"Of course, I always knew I was doing wrong," Eleanor said, "but I tried
to hush my conscience up. I can't hush it up any longer, but," she added
with much vigour, "it needn't think that I am going to pay any attention
to what it says, for I am not."
Margaret could scarcely help smiling at the defiant note in Eleanor's
voice. The latter turned suddenly and laid her hand on Margaret's knee.
"Don't judge me too hardly, Margaret," she said. "I know you think me
selfish and callous, and utterly without any decent feelings at all to be
deliberately keeping you out of your own name, and to be taking
everything that ought by rights to belong to you. But you don't know what
this chance means to me. You can't even dimly conceive it. It is just the
turning-point of my life.
"'There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune,
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.'
"There, Margaret, doesn't that fit our case exactly? Shallows and
miseries are Hampstead and the school, and the full sea is the chance you
are giving me."
"You see, Margaret," she went on earnestly, "a voice is not quite like
any other gift. If you don't train it when you are young you might as
well not train it at all. It is too late when you are old, and then your
gift is thrown away--wasted. Even as it is Madame Martelli says that I
have no time to lose. She wants me to go to Milan next spring."
"To Milan!" Margaret exclaimed.
"Or to Paris," Eleanor went on half absently.
"To Paris!" Margaret echoed again.
"Don't remind me that I can't go!" Eleanor exclaimed fiercely, springing
to her feet and beginning to pace up and down the path in front of the
arbour, "for, of course, I know it without being told. I won't look
forward, I won't, I won't! I will go on living in the present which is
giving me all I want. The future is too gloomy and uncertain to be
thought of yet, and so, _hey presto_!" and her brow cleared as if by
magic, "I refuse to think of it."
The end of one of Eleanor's rapid speeches, in the course of which she
could pass with astounding swiftness from one mood to another, always
left Margaret with a slight feeling of bewilderment. In the present
instance she had been greatly moved by Eleanor's impulsive appeal to her
not to think badly of her, and had just been about to assure her that
indeed she had never judged her conduct hardly when Eleanor had gone on
to justify herself, to speak of her future plans, and had wound up as
suddenly by refusing to consider the future at all.
No wonder, then, that Margaret, with whom speech was never very ready,
felt at a loss what to answer when Eleanor, pausing in her restless march
to and fro, asked her abruptly what she was thinking of.
"You listen, listen, listen always so silently, my little pale Margaret,"
she said, "and you look so grave and so wise, but never a word do you
say."
"It is because you talk so fast and tell me so much that I have not time
to answer one thing before you go on to another," said Margaret.
"Well, you never answered my question just now. Tell me, do you despise
me for my selfishness?"
"No," said Margaret, with sudden earnestness, "I like you too much."
"Really and truly, Margaret?"
"Really and truly," Margaret made reply. "You know I liked you from the
first moment I saw you in the waiting-room. You were the first girl of my
own age that I had ever spoken to, and I shall never forget how I stood
by the window watching you as you did your exercise, and wished you were
my friend."
"And a pretty friend I have been to you," interrupted Eleanor. "I stole
your name and everything that belongs to you, and, by the way, that
reminds me----"
"It was my own wish," said Margaret, interrupting in her turn. "Never
forget that, Eleanor. It was to please myself that I began it."
"But to please me that you went on with it," said Eleanor. "'Although he
promise to his cost he makes his promise good,'" she quoted.
"Yes, perhaps," Margaret admitted; "but now, Eleanor, I am glad to do it
for you, I am indeed. It gives me great pleasure to have a friend, and to
be able to serve her."
An odd, shamed look came for a moment into Eleanor's eyes. "I wish you
had found a better friend for your first one than me," she said; "or
rather," she added ruefully, "I wish that I did wish it, but I don't. So
it's no good pretending. You shall hear me sing one day, Margaret, and
then you will know why it is that my conscience never gets a fair chance
with me. If it talks too loud I just sing it down. But look here,
Margaret, to talk of something else besides my voice for a minute, to
which fascinating subject we always seem to go back, when I said just
now that I had stolen your name and everything that belonged to you it
reminded me that I had also come in for something for which I never
bargained, and that was for an aunt. Did you know that you had an aunt
living not four miles from here."
Margaret, much startled, answered that she did not know that she
possessed an aunt at all.
"You do indeed, then," Eleanor said. "Wrexley Park is the name of her
house; she was your father's sister, and she is now Lady Strangways."
Margaret's grave hazel eyes were opened to their fullest width.
"Are you sure that you are not making a mistake, Eleanor," she said, "or
that you are not joking? I never heard before that I had an aunt or any
relations at all except a grandfather."
"No, I am not making a mistake, nor am I joking," returned Eleanor.
"Truth to say, it is no joking matter, for Lady Strangways has expressed
a wish to see her niece, and is coming here this very afternoon for that
purpose. Can you not tell me something about her?"
"How can I tell you anything when I never heard that she was my aunt
until this very minute?"
"She was your father's youngest sister, however," continued Eleanor; "but
she married very young, and has been out of England for years and years.
Her husband was in the Indian Civil, and they were out in India most of
their time, and when he was on leave he preferred to travel in other
countries instead of coming home, or when he did come he paid such flying
visits, that it gave Lady Strangways no time to look up unknown nieces,
at any rate. But Sir Richard retired a couple of years ago, and bought
Wrexley Park."
"Yes, but surely if she was really my aunt, my grandfather would have
told me about her," said Margaret, "and wished me to know her."
"Not he," said Eleanor. "Mrs. Murray was talking about your grandfather
last night. Oh, of course she did not say anything that was not fitting
for a dutiful granddaughter to hear, but she did give me to understand
that your grandfather was a very prejudiced man, and that he had
purposely kept you away from all your father's relations. On your
mother's side I understand you have none. And for the matter of that all
your father's relations except this sister are dead. His two brothers
died unmarried, and his elder sister, who is dead too, left no children.
And there is only this Lady Strangways left. And she has been out of
England so long, that she knew nothing of your grandfather's desire to
keep you apart from your father's family."
"But how did she learn that you, that I, well, that her niece was staying
with Mrs. Murray?"
"Through Mrs. Murray herself, of course, goosey gander. Mrs. Murray
always knew she was your aunt, and welcomes this chance of bringing you
together. For my part I wish she didn't. I have caught a glimpse of Lady
Strangways in church, and she is rather an awe-inspiring person, and I do
not at all relish the idea of being brought face to face with her some
day, and keeping up our little deception."
"Miss Margaret! Miss Margaret!" called a voice at that moment. "Where are
you, if you please, Miss?"
Eleanor started to her feet, and putting her finger to her lips as a sign
to Margaret to keep silence, ran hastily out of the arbour, and along the
path to the foot of the steps.
"Here I am, Mary," she said. "What is it?"
"If you please, Miss," said the voice, as the person to whom it belonged
halted on the lawn at the top of the steps, "Lady Strangways has called,
and the mistress says she will be down in a minute, and will you go into
the drawing-room at once?"
"Very well, Mary, I will come in a moment."
The maid retraced her steps across the lawn, and Eleanor hastened back to
the arbour.
"Do you hear that?" she whispered, with a whimsical smile. "Lady
Strangways has come. Oh, how I wish I could send you in to see her
instead of me! However, I am afraid that that is not possible, though
I think it isn't fair that I should have to face this formidable aunt
instead of you. I have an idea, too, that she won't like me. She looks
too great and stately a lady, if you understand, to take a fancy to a
flippant person like me, and she would have liked you. But, there, it's
no good grumbling at my ill-luck; I must go and face her, I suppose, and
make the best of an awkward situation."
"I should have thought that you would have enjoyed it," Margaret said,
rather wondering at Eleanor's mood.
"I dislike taking any risks that put my singing lessons in jeopardy,"
said Eleanor vehemently; "besides, candidly, I feel that I shall not show
to advantage in the forthcoming interview. It is not often that I feel
shy, but I do feel shy of this aunt of yours. Well, good-bye! Sit quietly
here; you will be quite safe, and I will come back as soon as I can and
tell you all about your aunt."
With a hasty nod of farewell, Eleanor sped along the path and mounted the
steps leading to the lawn. And hardly had she reached it than Margaret
was startled to hear her being addressed, and the first words she
overheard told Margaret that Lady Strangways, instead of waiting for her
niece to come to her in the drawing-room, had followed the maid out to
the garden. Had Eleanor delayed only a moment or two longer, Lady
Strangways would probably have come upon them both in the arbour.
"You were so long in coming to me, my dear Margaret," said the unseen
voice, in clear, well-bred tones that struck pleasantly on the real
Margaret's ear, "that I decided to come into the garden and look for you.
Let me introduce myself. I am your Aunt Helen, your father's sister. I am
sorry to have been a stranger to you until now, but that is not my fault.
I have only just returned to England after an absence of many years, and
strange though it may appear to you, I really did not know of your
existence until the other day. My brother was many years older than I,
and I never saw him after I was a child. In fact I was to all intents and
purposes a stranger to all my brothers and sisters. They were all grown
up while I was in the schoolroom still, and were very little at home. But
I knew that my brother John had married a distant cousin of the same
surname as our own, whose Christian name was Margaret, and that was all
I ever heard of him; and when I heard that a girl, called Margaret
Anstruther, was staying here, I felt sure that you must be my niece. And,
you see, I was right. I am very pleased to see you, my dear, and to have
an opportunity of coming to know you at last."
The pleasant, clear voice, the graciously uttered words, held
Margaret--the real Margaret, that is--spellbound; then, jumping to her
feet, she climbed on to the rockery that supported the bank above her and
peeped through the tall-growing herbaceous plants that grew thickly on
the border at the edge of the lawn. It never occurred to her that she was
eaves-dropping, and even if it had, she would not have felt greatly
ashamed. After all, this was her aunt, and she believed she was speaking
to her niece. Surely, therefore, her niece had every right to listen to
what she was saying.
Lady Strangways stood on the grass just at the top of the flight of
steps, up which Eleanor had had barely time to scramble before she got
there, and Margaret, parting the leaves and stems of the intervening
plants, was able to take a good long look at her unknown aunt.
Lady Strangways was tall, and carried her head and shoulders in a stately
way that gave her grace and distinction. She had a broad, low brow, and a
mouth and chin which showed decision of character as well as sweetness of
disposition. But it was her eyes that were her chief charm. They were
beautiful hazel eyes, and as Margaret looked at them a feeling came over
her that they were oddly familiar to her, and yet she had never seen Lady
Strangways before. Altogether, it was a face that attracted attention,
and charmed by its sunny-tempered grace and kindness.
Margaret continued to gaze at this aunt in a fascinated way, and a
curious little feeling of pride thrilled in her as she reflected that she
was the niece of any one who not only looked so sweet and so gracious as
Lady Strangways, but who was so evidently a woman of fashion and of the
great world.
Margaret remembered the flutter of excitement which Mrs. Danvers had
shown when, on returning from a tea-party one day, she had found Lady
Strangways' card on the table, and the regret she had expressed that she
had been out. What, then, would the Danvers say, Margaret wondered, when
they heard that she was a niece of Lady Strangways?
For a moment Margaret quite enjoyed the thought of their prospective
astonishment, until with a little pang she remembered that it was Eleanor
who was being acknowledged at this moment by this charming-looking aunt,
not she, and a slow, painful jealousy stirred in Margaret at the thought.
Not that Eleanor was usurping the relationship at all willingly. Margaret
could see that her unfortunate accomplice, who was generally so ready of
tongue, and so self-confident, was very far from feeling at her ease in
the presence of Lady Strangways, and was comporting herself like an
awkward, embarrassed schoolgirl. For a time she seemed absolutely
incapable of answering anything that was said to her, except in
monosyllables, and though Lady Strangways did her best to set her at her
ease, her efforts met with poor success.
"My dear child," she said at last, as she drew Eleanor's reluctant hand
within her arm, and tried to look into the girl's averted face, "you must
not be so shy with me! Remember that I am your aunt, and that as you have
no mother, and I no daughter, we might be very much to one another in the
future."
These graciously uttered words, accompanied as they were by a charming
smile, and a gentle drawing of the girl to her side, as if she would have
kissed her, caused Margaret's jealousy to increase.
But the proffered caress, far from waking in Eleanor a responsive
feeling, caused her to shrink further away from Lady Strangways' side.
"You are very kind, Lady Strangways," she said uneasily, "but--but we are
only strangers as yet, aren't we?"
Had Eleanor not been at her wits' end to know what to say, she would
scarcely have uttered such an extremely _gauche_ remark as that, but as
a matter of fact she had not the very remotest idea what she was saying.
Lady Strangways drew back and looked gravely for a moment at Eleanor's
averted face. She was obviously unused to have her overtures rejected,
and she was wondering if Eleanor's ungracious answer and constrained
manner was dictated by shyness only.
"Yes, at present we are strangers," she made reply, rather coldly; "but I
wish to know my niece, and you mustn't call me Lady Strangways, you must
call me Aunt Helen."
"Oh, I would really rather not," Eleanor said, and this time her distress
and embarrassment were so marked that Lady Strangways, though she still
looked exceedingly puzzled, allowed her manner to soften.
"Never mind, then," she said, "I won't ask you to do anything you would
rather not. I hear you are having singing lessons from Madame Martelli.
Will you sing to me?"
"Oh, yes," Eleanor responded with alacrity. She started across the lawn
towards the house at a great rate, her relief at being released from the
immediate necessity of further conversation with her new-found relative
so plainly expressed in the way in which she was careful to keep a couple
of yards ahead of her, that Lady Strangways raised her eyebrows in mute
protest at her niece's extraordinarily _farouche_ behaviour.
When they reached the little drawing-room, gay with flowers, she sank
gracefully into a chair, and resigned herself to a rather trying five
minutes. Eleanor searched among her music, opened the piano, and sat
down.
"What are you going to sing to me, dear," Lady Strangways asked in a tone
of polite interest.
"_Ah fors è lui._"
Lady Strangways did her very best to repress a shudder. Not a month had
elapsed since she had seen Tetrazzini in "La Traviata," and it was rather
terrible to think of hearing her poor niece attempt any song out of that
opera.
"Or, if you would prefer it," said Eleanor, with a demureness that was
contradicted by the mischievous gleam in her red-brown eyes, "I will sing
you the Jewel Song out of 'Faust.'"
"That would be worse," Lady Strangways said hastily; "I mean, my dear,
that would be more difficult perhaps for you to grapple with. Really, I
have no choice in the matter; sing me what you like."
Eleanor twisted round on her stool and surveyed her aunt, or rather, the
lady who thought she was her aunt, with an amused smile. All of a sudden
a complete change had come over her demeanour. The neighbourhood of a
piano always seemed to give Eleanor confidence, and now her shyness and
awkwardness fell away from her, and she twisted round on the music stool
and surveyed her quondam aunt with an amused smile. It pleased her to
delay her inevitable triumph for a moment or two, even to pose as a vain,
silly schoolgirl.
"I really sing very well," she said; "though I can see that you do not
believe it."
"Let me hear you," said Lady Strangways encouragingly, "and then I can
tell you what I think. Do not be too shy to sing your best."
"I am never shy when I am singing," said Eleanor. "Why should I be? I am
proud of my beautiful voice. No young, coming-on singer has a voice like
it; in a few years, with proper training and hard work, I shall rank with
Melba and Tetrazzini."
Lady Strangways gave a little gasp.
"You have not a very modest opinion of yourself, my dear," she could not
refrain from saying, as she eyed her niece rather curiously.
"Of myself I have a very modest opinion," returned Eleanor. "I know my
own faults, and some of them are pretty bad, as you will say one day,
perhaps, but there is no fault to be found with my voice--none--except
that, of course, it is not trained yet; but it would be too absurd for me
to be mock modest about it as though its beauty were something that I
could plume myself on. It is a gift--a glorious gift--and I love it and
worship it."
Eleanor made a striking picture as she sat there with her hands folded in
her lap, while the sun, pouring in from a small west window set high in
the wall, turned her red-brown hair to gold. Lady Strangways surveyed
her with an ever deepening amazement. This niece, with her brilliant
colouring and her excited, vivacious manner, was very unlike the girl she
had imagined her niece would be; very different, also, to the shy,
awkward girl she had been a few minutes back.
As Eleanor gave utterance to her impassioned speech, the slightly mocking
smile with which she had been eyeing Lady Strangways died away, and was
replaced by an earnest, rapt look, which showed to her listener how
seriously she herself took every word she was saying.
Then Eleanor turned to the piano and ran her fingers lightly over the
keys. Lady Strangways nodded approvingly, as she listened to the firm,
good touch. The girl was really quite musical. She perceived that
already, and if her choice of a song had been less wildly ambitious, or
better still, if she would go on playing and not sing at all, why----
[Illustration: "ELEANOR TURNED TO THE PIANO AND RAN HER FINGERS
LIGHTLY OVER THE KEYS."]
But at that moment Eleanor began to sing, and the look of kindly approval
which Lady Strangways' face had worn was swept away as by some magic
touch, for Signor Vanucci and Madame Martelli had made no mistake.
Eleanor had a great, a glorious voice; clear and sweet as a golden bell;
full, and deep, and rich; it was a voice which would one day add the
name of its owner to the list of the world's great singers.
Lady Strangways recognised the fact instantly. Though she neither played
nor sang, she was a capable judge of music, and she knew that this girl's
voice would carry her to the front rank. Of course, her rendering of the
song was far from perfect, her phrasing was often inaccurate, her voice
not under control, and its training unfinished; but what mattered those
details? Lady Strangways knew she was listening to a magnificent voice,
and sheer delight and amazement held her spellbound for some moments
after the last full, throbbing notes had died away into silence. Then she
rose impulsively and crossed to the piano.
"My dear," she said simply, "God has given you a great gift."
Eleanor nodded in a grave, almost abstracted manner.
"Yes," she said, in low, dreamy tones, "He has." Then suddenly her
tranquil mood changed, and she appeared to be swept by a sudden gust of
passion. "And sometimes," she added bitterly, "I wonder why, if it is
only by resorting to trickery and roguery that I can make use of it."
"My dear child, what do you mean?" Lady Strangways said in astonishment,
not unmixed with displeasure. "Those are strange words for a niece of
mine to apply to her own conduct."
"Are they?" said Eleanor; "but tell me, wouldn't you stoop to any
trickery--any meanness, if you had a voice like mine, and saw no chance
of getting it trained?"
Her face had grown very pale, but her eyes blazed into Lady Strangways as
she stood confronting her. The latter, seeing that the girl was literally
shaking with emotion, and not having the clue to her thoughts, supposed
that she was merely overwrought by her singing.
"But why should it be necessary to resort to meanness of any sort to
have your voice trained?" she said, speaking purposely in a calm,
matter-of-fact voice. "Your grandfather appears perfectly willing to have
you taught, otherwise he would scarcely have put you under such a teacher
as Madame Martelli."
"You don't understand," Eleanor muttered, turning away her head, unable
to meet Lady Strangways' serene, beautiful eyes. Somehow they made her
feel terribly ashamed of the part she was playing.
"No; but I am trying to," said Lady Strangways in a perplexed tone, "and
I cannot imagine why you should be under any apprehension that your
grandfather will try and put obstacles in the way of your getting all the
training your beautiful voice deserves. Is he not proud of it?"
Eleanor shook her head. "He doesn't know anything about it," she said;
"he just thinks his niece has a nice little drawing-room voice."
Lady Strangways drew a deep breath. "Oh, I understand now," she said.
"You are afraid that he will not let you train for the stage, that he
will be prejudiced against it. But, my dear Margaret, that would be an
unheard-of pity; such a voice as yours must not be wasted--it would be a
sin. I shall use my influence with your grandfather, if he is really
against your being properly trained, and get him to consent to your
having the very best teaching that can be given to you. And if it is a
question of money----"
But there Lady Strangways paused and looked a little doubtful. Truth to
say, she did not think that money had anything to do with the question;
she remembered vaguely to have heard that her brother had married an
heiress; if so, his only daughter would surely not lack means to train
for any career she fancied.
"No, no!" Eleanor exclaimed almost violently, "I could not take money
from you--I could not. It will be far better if we never see each other
again." And brushing suddenly past the astounded Lady Strangways, Eleanor
dashed out of the window and disappeared in a flash round the corner of
the house.
"Well, of all the most astonishing girls I ever met, my niece, Margaret
Anstruther, is certainly the most astonishing," was Lady Strangways'
inward comment as she gazed after Eleanor's flying figure. "She seems
to pass through a greater variety of moods in a shorter space of time
than any one I ever met. She must be a very uncomfortable person to live
with. But what a magnificent voice! What a tremendous gift she has been
endowed with!"
But at that point Lady Strangways' musings were interrupted by the
belated appearance of her hostess, who came limping with the aid of a
stick, and with a slow and painful step into the room.
For, as she had said in her letter to Mr. Anstruther, Mrs. Murray was a
martyr to an acute form of rheumatism, and though few people beyond her
old and attached servants knew it, she was seldom long out of pain. And,
partly on account of her rheumatism, and partly because she was so very
deaf, she shunned society, and was rarely to be met with in any one
else's house, although she gladly welcomed any one who, as she put it,
was kind enough to come and see her. But, on the other hand, she visited
a great deal among the poor, not only in her own village, but in the
villages for many miles around Windy Gap, and the sight of her fat,
sturdy, grey ponies drawing up outside the doors of their cottages was
one that never failed to give pleasure to their inmates. She and Lady
Strangways had met over a year ago at the bedside of a poor girl who was
suffering from an incurable malady, and whose parents rented a cottage on
the Wrexley estate. Lady Strangways, who was conscientiously trying, in
the intervals of a very full and busy life, to know all her husband's
tenants, and who, wherever she went, heard Mrs. Murray's praises sounded,
asked at once to be allowed to call on her. Mrs. Murray answered
courteously that it would give her great pleasure to know Lady
Strangways, but pleaded her infirmities as an excuse for paying any
visits herself. In spite of her deafness and her lameness, Mrs. Murray
was the soul of cheerfulness. Though she was cut off from much
intercourse with her fellow-creatures, she was never at a loss for
occupation, and had so many resources within herself that she rarely had
a dull moment. For one thing she was an omnivorous reader, and just as
Mrs. Danvers never sat down without a piece of knitting in her hand, so
Mrs. Murray never sat down without a book.
"Needlework," she had said once when a friend had tried to induce her to
ply a needle of some sort, "is all very well for those who can hear. They
can work and listen at the same time, but if I took to knitting, or
crochet, or embroidery, I should be shut up with my own thoughts instead
of getting out of myself and away into some of the best company in the
world. My thinking," she added with a wry little smile, "is done at
night, when my rheumatism will not permit me to sleep."
"So you have seen Margaret," she said, in the curious low voice habitual
to her, which made it almost as difficult for other people to hear what
she said as she found it to hear what they said. "I left you with her so
long on purpose that you might make her acquaintance. Is she not a
charming girl?"
Now as "charming" was certainly not the word which her short experience
of Eleanor's behaviour that afternoon would have led her to apply to her
niece, Lady Strangways hesitated.
"Ah!" said Mrs. Murray, quick to notice and to interpret aright her
hesitation. "But you have only seen her for the first time to-day. Now I
have known her for some weeks, and I have grown to love her. You do not
wish," and a pathetically anxious look came into her face, "to take her
away from me, do you?"
Lady Strangways' shake of her head reassured Mrs. Murray on that point.
"I hope her grandfather will leave her with me for many months to come
yet," she continued. "She is very happy with me; far happier than I think
any young girl ought to be with only one old deaf woman for company. But
she is so occupied with her studies and her music that I think I count
little one way or another with her."
"Oh, no, I cannot believe that," Lady Strangways said in a tone of
remonstrance. "You are so good to her that she must be very fond of you,
and appreciate all your kindness to her."
"It is not much that I can do," said Mrs. Murray. "She is so absorbed in
her work that she makes her own happiness. I wish," she added, a little
wistfully, "that she did desire my company a little more, but then I must
not be selfish. She did not come here to make a companion of me, but to
pursue her own studies. And she certainly does pursue them with an ardour
that, from what her grandfather told me of her dreamy, indolent ways, I
had not expected from her."
"But surely she does not want to study all day long," said Lady
Strangways, with more than a hint of disapprobation in her voice. She
read more into Mrs. Murray's wistful remark than the latter had intended
to convey, and she began to fear that her new-found niece, in addition to
being odd mannered and hasty tempered, was a thoroughly selfish young
person into the bargain.
Mrs. Murray seemed to guess her thoughts.
"Now," she exclaimed in genuine distress, "I have given you a wrong
impression of the dear girl. I like her to be enthusiastic about her
work. It is only right that she should be. And, as I say, she did not
come here to amuse and entertain a deaf old woman like myself. But all
the same, I am the better for having her. Her vivacious personality
cheers and brightens the house without any effort on her part. And does
she not sing nicely?"
"Nicely!" echoed Lady Strangways in sheer amazement, every other thought
of her niece being instantly put on one side directly her marvellous
voice came under discussion. "Nicely! Is it possible that you do not know
that she has a wonderful voice?"
"Yes, very nice and strong, isn't it," said Mrs. Murray, who had really
only caught enough of her visitor's last remark to know that she was
praising her young guest. "But I have only heard her once or twice as
yet. Madame Martelli will not allow her to sing much to me, or to any
one, at present. She likes to hear every note she utters. I think her
grandfather will be pleased with her progress when she goes home. He told
me she had a nice voice, well worth some good finishing lessons, and
Madame Martelli seems to be taking great pains with her."
Lady Strangways smiled as she thought of the immense difference that lay
between Mr. Anstruther's conception of the quality of his granddaughter's
voice, and that voice as it actually was. But she had no time to stay and
enlighten Mrs. Murray as to the truth. She was due at a house some miles
away for tea, and could not stay at Rose Cottage any longer.
If the afternoon had been an exciting one for Eleanor, it had been
scarcely less so for Margaret. Lady Strangways' gracious personality had
made a deep and instant impression on her, and to have been obliged to
look on while such a charming person as her aunt, who had come specially
to make her acquaintance, was being coldly and rudely rebuffed by Eleanor
acting in her place, had been really a trying ordeal for her. Her own
aunt! How strange and wonderful it seemed that she, who had not known
that she possessed any relatives in the world but her grandfather, had
really owned an aunt all the time. An aunt, too, who was fully as anxious
to know and love her as Margaret was to respond to that affection. There
was in Margaret a fine large store of affection ready to be lavished upon
somebody. Hitherto that affection had not been wanted by any one; but now
she had her aunt's words for it that she was prepared to look upon her as
a daughter. And Eleanor had answered coldly and ungraciously, while she,
Margaret, would have made, oh! such a different answer if circumstances
of her own contriving--therein lay the sting--had not prevented from
answering on her own account at all. And, instead of talking to that nice
new aunt of hers, she had been compelled to hide behind a big clump of
perennial sunflowers--all her life Margaret felt she would hate those
flowers--and listen to Eleanor offending and estranging her aunt with
every word she uttered.
And then Eleanor had taken her aunt away to sing to her. And the
exceeding beauty of Eleanor's voice as it floated out across the lawn had
sent another pang through Margaret's jealous heart. Oh, she knew how it
would be, she told herself miserably, as, seeking refuge in the shady
little arbour where she and Eleanor held their stolen meetings, she sat
down on the bench, and, resting her elbows on the little rustic table,
gave herself up to her moody reflections. Eleanor would win Lady
Strangways' heart so completely that, even when the truth about them
came out, her aunt would have no affection left for her.
Margaret was so occupied with these dismal thoughts that she did not hear
Eleanor's step on the gravel, and was considerably startled when a touch
on her shoulder made her look up to see the other standing beside her.
She had expected to see Eleanor wearing a triumphant, elated air, and was
consequently very much surprised to find that, to judge from the
expression on her face at least, Eleanor's mood was not more happy than
her own.
"Has my aunt gone?" she said.
Eleanor gave a short, mocking little laugh.
"I am afraid, for the time being at any rate," she said, "I must
claim half of her. So I may tell you that our aunt is still in the
drawing-room. But really I couldn't stand her any longer. So I fled and
left her there."
"But--but, I thought she was being so nice to you," faltered Margaret, at
a loss for a moment to know what Eleanor meant, "and that you had taken a
great fancy to one another."
"Oh, she was all right," said Eleanor. "I should think she was what
Americans would call just a lovely person. But somehow she made me feel
such a sham and a fraud that I never want to see her again, and so I
would have none of her kindness. Knowing that it was not meant for me,
and that I was getting it under false pretences, I was--well--so rude
that I don't expect she will ever want to see me again."
"Oh!" said Margaret, and she could not help feeling just a little bit
pleased to hear that Eleanor had not found favour in Lady Strangways'
eyes. Certainly she did not deserve to after the way in which she had
repelled all her overtures. Then, of a sudden, a disquieting thought came
to her. "But oh, Eleanor," she said aghast, "can't you see that she will
think that it is I, her real niece, who has been so rude to her? Oh,
Eleanor, that is just as bad as, as----"
"As if she had fallen in love with me," said Eleanor, bursting out
laughing. "Oh, Margaret, how transparent you are! I wonder you have been
able to deceive all the Danvers family so long. But I must confess that I
never thought how very unfavourably I was impressing your aunt with you.
Well, well, it can't be helped now. You will put matters straight some
day."
"She reminded me so much of some one," said Margaret, pursuing her own
train of thought; "but I cannot think of whom. And that is curious
because I have seen so few people in my life, that I ought to remember
whom it is that she resembles without any difficulty. It was her eyes
that puzzled me most. Such beautiful eyes they are. And I am sure I know
some one else who has eyes like them."
Eleanor glanced at Margaret and then began to laugh.
"Of course you do," she said, "and so do I. You see that person every
time you look in the glass. It is you yourself who have Lady Strangways'
eyes, my dear Margaret."
CHAPTER XIII
HILARY TURNS DETECTIVE
"Eleanor," said Hilary, coming into the hall one afternoon with a couple
of books in her hand, "if you are going out I want you to go to Smith's,
please, and change these two library books for me."
It had been raining all day, and though the rain had now changed to a
slight drizzle a thick mist creeping on from the sea had already blotted
out the downs, and was hanging like a low cloud over the town. It was as
cheerless an afternoon as could well be imagined, and Margaret who,
suffering from a bad cold in her head, had not been out for a couple
of days, hesitated a moment before replying. But the request was couched
in such a peremptory tone that she did not quite like to refuse it. After
all, since the children had gone away she was doing absolutely nothing in
return for her board and lodging, and, since Hilary had forgotten that
she was nursing a cold, it would have seemed ungracious to remind her of
the fact.
But Hilary had not forgotten Margaret's cold. Had it been ten times as
bad, however, she would still have despatched her on this errand. For the
long-awaited, carefully planned-for moment when she could bring home
Margaret's guilt to her had, in Hilary's confident estimation, at length
arrived. A few minutes since, rummaging in the dressing-room next
Margaret's room in search of some gloves that needed cleaning, she had
chanced to espy under the bed the trunk in which the boys had hidden the
Colonel's property. They had supposed it to belong to their mother, but
Hilary knew that it was Eleanor's.
Rendered thoroughly uneasy by the continued stir that Colonel Baker was
making about his loss, Jack and Noel had determined to smuggle his things
out of their house and to deposit them somewhere in his garden, where he
could easily find them, and to that end they had been trying, but without
success so far, to open the trunk with various keys belonging to their
mother. And it was the sight of these keys scattered about beside the
trunk that had fired Hilary's detective ardour. What was Eleanor doing
with her mother's keys? It could be for no good purpose that she had
secreted them under the bed.
Without more ado, Hilary made up her mind to search that trunk. And the
first thing to be done was to secure herself against interruption. So she
invented an errand to take Eleanor out of the house for an hour or two.
The others were all down at the rink, and having seen Margaret start,
Hilary sped up to the box-room, secured a few keys, and set to work.
Two or three keys were tried in vain, but the fourth turned easily in the
lock, and with hands that fairly trembled with excitement, she threw back
the lid. The tray was empty. She lifted it out, and as she did so gave
vent to a little cry of triumph. For there, at the bottom, reposed a
bundle tied up in a gold embroidered scarlet Indian tablecloth which any
one in Seabourne who had read any recent numbers of the local papers
would have recognised immediately as Colonel Baker's missing property.
Literally pouncing upon it, Hilary dragged it out of the trunk and untied
the four knotted corners, when out fell the tumbled contents of the
Colonel's plate-basket--the big morocco case which contained his
family miniatures, his Etruscan bronze vase, and his collection of gold
coins.
All things considered, Hilary took her astonishing discovery very calmly.
After all, it was only what she had been expecting. Her chief sensation
at that moment was one of surprise that the trunk did not also contain
the proceeds of the two other robberies. Probably, however, they would be
found in Miss Carson's bedroom. Had she not been so obsessed by the idea
that Miss Carson was the burglar with whose exploits the town had been
ringing of late, Hilary might have hesitated before taking the step of
searching the room of a girl who was, to all intents and purposes, a
guest in their house. But the idea that she was doing anything
disgraceful never occurred to her. The zeal of the amateur detective was
far too strong upon her to leave room for reflections of that sort. She
opened the door of Margaret's bedroom and went in. The room was
exquisitely neat, for not only had habits of tidiness been inculcated in
Margaret since she was old enough to fold a garment, but the spacious
bedroom allotted to her at The Cedars, with its big mahogany hanging
wardrobes and its deep chest of drawers, contained so much more room than
she needed that there would have been no excuse for any one to have been
untidy.
At first it seemed to Hilary that her search here was going to be
unrewarded; the cupboards and drawers in which Margaret kept her dresses
were soon searched through and revealed nothing at all of a suspicious
nature. The two top drawers then underwent an examination, and the
orderly little piles of veils and handkerchiefs were ruthlessly tumbled
about by Hilary's eager hands. But all in vain. There was no vestige
of a proof here that Miss Carson had had a hand in the two first
burglaries as well as in the last. Feeling baffled and quite unreasonably
indignant, Hilary turned her attention next to the dressing-table. The
toilet articles on it were few and simple, and Hilary was about to turn
away, when her eyes were caught by Margaret's gold watch and chain, which
were hanging on a small velvet stand. The watch was an old-fashioned one,
with an open gold face, and the long slender chain was also of gold.
Attached to it were a watch-key and a very small steel key.
Hilary remembered that Miss Carson invariably wore the watch and chain,
so that this small key evidently fitted something that she was careful
always to keep locked up. As Hilary picked up this key the chain slid
away from it, and she saw that the spring of the swivel was broken. That
accounted, then, for the fact that Miss Carson was not wearing her watch,
as she usually did. And when she left it on the dressing-table she had
evidently forgotten that she was leaving the little key, which as a rule
she was so careful to wear, lying about too.
Criminals, Hilary reflected with immense satisfaction as she picked up
the key, always did forget important things of that sort. Now what did
that little key fit? Evidently some bag or some small box which contained
something that it behoved her to keep carefully concealed from every eye
but her own. Now, where could that bag or box be, Hilary wondered, as she
glanced round the room. Were there any drawers or cupboards that she had
not yet thoroughly searched? Yes, there was the big bottom drawer in the
wardrobe, in which Miss Carson kept her hats. She had looked into it
once, but seeing that it apparently contained nothing but the few simple
hats that the holiday governess owned, had pushed it to again. But now,
feeling that that cursory glance had not been sufficient, Hilary knelt
down before the wardrobe, and putting her hand to the back of the drawer,
pulled out Margaret's morocco dressing-bag. It was the work of a moment
only to fit the key in the lock, and then its contents were at the mercy
of her prying eyes. But beyond the leather-covered case that Margaret had
shown to Eleanor in the train the bag was empty, and Hilary, who had
expected to find it crammed full of jewellery, experienced a sharp pang
of disappointment. But when she opened the case and saw the pearl-studded
locket and the beautiful row of pearls that formed its chain, her face
brightened. The initials "M. A." on the back of the locket, to say
nothing of the fine, copper-plate inscription, "For my daughter
Margaret," that ran round the narrow gold setting of the miniature, were,
of course, conclusive proof that it did not belong to Miss Carson. Hilary
remembered, too, the handkerchief embroidered with those same
incriminating initials which Miss Carson had one day dropped in the
garden. Though it seemed to Hilary an unimportant matter now, she yet
looked upon it as a link in the long chain of circumstantial evidence
which she alone and unaided had forged against Miss Carson. Really, she
thought, she had a right to be proud of herself, for had she not shown
more intelligence and acumen in the detection of the Seabourne burglaries
than every police official in the town. How every one would admire her
skill! Her portraits might possibly appear in the illustrated papers, and
as for the local papers, they would, of course, print long accounts of
the marvellous way in which, working quite alone, she had succeeded in
unravelling the mystery that had baffled the whole of the Seabourne
police.
And as Hilary sat there pluming herself on her cleverness and lost in the
pleasant dreams of the fame that would be shortly hers, the door opened,
and Margaret, who had only just come back and was still in her outdoor
things, walked into her bedroom.
It was not until she had advanced some way into the room that she saw
Hilary, and then Margaret came to a sudden halt in sheer amazement at the
scene that greeted her. Her astonished gaze travelled from Hilary round
her room, with its disordered aspect, its open cupboards and ransacked
drawers, and then she looked again at Hilary, who, with the open morocco
case in her hand, met her eyes defiantly.
"Will you tell me, please, what you mean by this conduct, Hilary?" she
said, feeling almost too amazed to be angry.
"Oh yes, I will tell you fast enough," Hilary said, who had been as taken
aback by Margaret's sudden entry as the latter had been to find her
there, and who, considerably to her own surprise and annoyance, was
conscious of a distinct feeling of shame at the position in which she had
been caught. But as she scrambled to her feet and faced Margaret she
shook off that feeling. After all, it was for the latter to feel ashamed,
not for her.
"You are found out," she said slowly and emphatically. "I have found you
out."
"So," Margaret thought then, "it had come at last. Hilary, poking among
her possessions, had somehow discovered her real name. Oh, poor Eleanor!
What would happen to her now?"
"You ask me what I mean by coming into your room; but that's nothing. It
is for you to explain how you dared to come into our house, a thief and
a burglar like you. But I," throwing out her arm dramatically, "have
unmasked you."
If Hilary had not been too excited by the vigour of her own denunciation
to notice Margaret's expression, she might have been bewildered by the
look of very decided relief which succeeded to the one of startled dismay
with which Margaret had listened to the beginning of her speech. What
Hilary had discovered, or fancied she had discovered, really did not
matter as long as her secret and Eleanor's was safe.
"Please give me that case at once," she said; "I am afraid, if you wave
it about like that, you will drop it, and I value it very much. You had
no right to come into my room and meddle with my things, and poke and pry
in all my drawers."
"Meddle, and poke, and pry! How dare you use such words to me?" cried
Hilary, all the more furiously because the objectionable words contained
a sting of truth. "And your things, indeed! I suppose you will say next
that this is your necklace and your miniature?"
"Certainly I will," said Margaret with spirit, and without seeing at
first whither this admission would lead her. "That is a miniature of my
mother; and if you will read the inscription you will see that she gave
it to me."
"A fine story," said Hilary contemptuously; "only your name doesn't
happen to be Margaret, nor does your surname begin with an 'A.' Ah! you
forget that, I think, when you said that your mother gave it to you."
Truly, Margaret had forgotten that, and she met Hilary's triumphant gaze
with an expression akin to dismay. She had got herself suddenly into an
awkward corner. If she persisted in saying that the miniature and pearls
were hers, Hilary would find out that she was passing under an assumed
name; whereas, on the other hand, if she did not assert her ownership of
them, she would lay herself open to the charge that she had stolen them.
It was a perplexing situation, and she hardly knew whether to be relieved
or not, when she found, as she speedily did, that Hilary had quite made
up her mind that she was a thief.
"You are discovered, I tell you," said Hilary. "I know you belong to the
gang of burglars that have been robbing people's houses here during the
last six weeks. Come into the dressing-room, and you will see how useless
it is to brazen matters out like this."
The fact that Margaret was totally unprepared to see her trunk, that she
believed to be empty and pushed away beneath the bed, standing out in the
middle of the room, half full of silver, had of course been anticipated
by Hilary, who enjoyed her surprise to the full. But the anger that was
mingled with Miss Carson's astonishment was, of course, a sham, and
Hilary treated it with the contempt she was so convinced that it
deserved.
"Did you put all those things in my trunk?" Margaret said indignantly.
"What does it mean? Those are the things that were stolen from Colonel
Baker's house. I recognise the description of the Indian tablecloth."
"Of course you do," said Hilary with a sneer, "seeing that you stole it
to wrap the things in, thief and burglar that you are!"
"Do you really mean that you seriously believe I am a burglar?" Margaret
said, and, to Hilary's intense disgust, who felt that this flippant
conduct robbed her in some way of her triumph, she went off into a
perfect peal of laughter.
"Oh, you are too funny! And do you think that I broke into Walker's shop,
too, and also carried off the actress's jewels?"
"Oh, you may laugh if you like," said Hilary furiously. She would have
liked to have seen Margaret tremble before her as a criminal should
tremble, but she supposed she was too hardened. "But it is a joke that
will land you in prison to-night. I am now going down to tell mother all
about the sort of person we have in the house, and so that you shan't
escape before the police come to take you, I am going to lock you in
here."
And almost before the last words had left her lips Hilary whisked herself
dexterously out of the room, and slammed the door after her. Margaret
heard her locking the door of the bedroom as she passed it on her way
downstairs. Margaret's mixture of feelings at this treatment was so
curious that at first she could neither laugh nor be angry. She was too
angry to laugh, and too amused to be angry. When, however, she walked
into her bedroom and saw how thoroughly Hilary had turned over every one
of her possessions, leaving them either in a rumpled state in the
drawers, or scattered on the floor, indignation triumphed over amusement.
Hilary's charges, too, absurd though, of course, they were, had been
brought against her in all seriousness, and Margaret's rising anger made
her feel that she must be made to retract them immediately. She found, on
going first to one door and then to the other, that though the door of
her bedroom was locked, that of the dressing-room was not; for Hilary,
finding after she had slammed the door that the key was on the inside,
had been obliged to leave it unlocked rather than risk a struggle, for
she had been doubtful whether Miss Carson would have permitted herself to
be locked in had the swiftness of the action not taken her by surprise.
As Margaret went downstairs she heard Hilary's voice talking fast and
eagerly in the drawing-room. She had had five or six minutes start to
tell her tale in, and a good deal can be said in five or six minutes,
provided that the listener does not hinder the narrator by interruptions.
And Mrs. Danvers had not once interrupted, and Hilary had therefore been
able to make such good use of her time that she had given her mother a
full and complete account of the way in which her first suspicions that
there was something mysterious about Miss Carson had gradually grown into
a certainty, as clue after clue came into her hands, until this
afternoon, by finding all Colonel Baker's stolen property locked away in
a box under her bed, she had actually proved her to be a member of the
notorious gang of burglars.
Mrs. Danvers' knitting had long ago dropped on to her lap, her ball
of wool had rolled unheeded under a chair, and her eyes, round with
incredulity and dismay, had been fixed unblinkingly upon her daughter.
"In a box under her bed! All Colonel Baker's things!" she gasped. "Oh,
Hilary! and you mean to say that you actually found them there?"
"Yes, every one of them, not half an hour ago," returned Hilary
complacently. "And what is more, hidden away in her drawer, I found
this." And she opened the case and displayed the necklace and miniature
to her mother. "She doesn't attempt to claim Colonel Baker's things as
her own, but she persists in saying that this is hers. And considering
the inscription, 'To my daughter Margaret,' that is written on it, it is
rather silly of her. Without doubt," Hilary added, "it belongs to Miss
Cora Anatolia, the Bulgarian dancer."
"But her name doesn't begin with an 'M,' either," said Mrs. Danvers.
"Oh, actresses have lots of names," Hilary said impatiently. "That's not
a point we need consider. The point is that whoever it belongs to, it is
not Miss Carson's."
And it was at that moment that Margaret, still wearing the hat and the
rainproof coat that she had donned to go into the town, entered the
drawing-room. She carried her head high, and walked straight down the
long drawing-room to Mrs. Danvers' side.
"Your daughter Hilary has been telling you that I am a thief and a
burglar, hasn't she?" she said, "and I have come to ask you if you
believe her."
Mrs. Danvers shifted uneasily in her chair. There was nothing she
disliked more than anything approaching a dispute, and really, when she
looked up at the slim, pale girl standing before her it seemed quite too
ridiculous to believe, as she had been inclined a moment before to do,
that she was a member of a desperate gang of burglars. Hilary was quick
to notice her mother's wavering manner, and intervened quickly.
"Then how do you account for all Colonel Baker's things being found
locked up in your box?" she exclaimed quickly. "Tell me that."
"I have already told you that I know nothing at all about them. I
unpacked my box when I came, and Collins put it away under my bed, and I
have never opened it or looked at it since."
There was such an air of sincerity in her voice, that Mrs. Danvers veered
round to her side once more.
"There, my dear," she said to Hilary, "you hear what Miss Carson said.
She knows nothing whatever about Colonel Baker's things."
"Oh, of course, she would say anything to clear herself," said Hilary
angrily. "Don't be so weak as to listen to her, mother. Let her explain
how they were found in her box, then. And let her, while she is about it,
too, explain how she claims this necklace as her own. Is it the sort of
necklace that a holiday governess would own? It must be worth several
hundreds of pounds at least. I found it locked up in her dressing bag,
and hadn't she happened to leave the key which, as a rule, she is always
careful to carry about with her, lying on her dressing table, I could not
have got at it."
"Oh, Hilary!" said Mrs. Danvers feebly, "I don't think it was nice of you
to poke and pry about in her room, I really don't."
"That is what I told her," said Margaret coldly and contemptuously. "She
first of all invented an errand that took me out of the house, and then
used the opportunity to search my room."
"Detectives have to do things of that sort," said Hilary, reddening in
spite of herself; "but that's not the point. The point is that she says
this necklace belongs to her, that the miniature inside the locket is one
of her mother who gave it to her. Now, seeing that her name is Eleanor
Carson, and not Margaret or a surname beginning with an 'A.,' it is plain
enough to any one that she is telling a lie."
"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Danvers feebly, feeling quite unequal to cope with
the gravity of the situation, "I wish you both would not quarrel like
this, Hilary; you talk so fast that you bewilder me. Now, Miss Carson,
it is your turn to speak. I am quite sure that you can explain everything
if you will. You are too young, and--and far too nice a girl to be a
burglar, and if you will only tell us how Colonel Baker's things got
under your bed, I am sure Hilary will gladly apologise for anything she
may have said to hurt your feelings. And--and I am sure, as you are so
young, and this must be your first offence, that Colonel Baker will not
be too hard on you."
"Then you do believe I am a thief!" Margaret exclaimed, staring almost
incredulously at Mrs. Danvers. Then without another word she turned
abruptly on her heel, and walked towards the door. As she went her foot
caught in Mrs. Danver's ball of pink wool; she picked it up, replaced it
on Mrs. Danvers' lap, and in another minute was gone from the room. The
little action, which was one that she had performed a dozen times a day
for Mrs. Danvers since she had been in the house, was sufficient to cause
that hapless lady to change her mind again about the character of her
holiday governess.
"Oh, no, my dear!" she called out, "I don't, indeed, I don't!"
There was no answer, for Margaret had already shut the door behind her.
Mrs. Danvers turned to Hilary:--
"It is all a pack of rubbish that you have been telling me," she said
angrily, scarcely knowing what she was saying. "I don't believe a word of
it!"
"Just because she picked up your ball of wool!" Hilary exclaimed, with a
disdain which, though neither dutiful nor polite, was perhaps not
altogether unmerited. "Really, mother!"
Meanwhile Margaret, with anger burning hot within her, had walked
straight out of the house. Nothing, she told herself passionately, should
induce her to stay a moment longer within it, or ever to enter it again.
Where she was going, or what she was going to do she did not stop to
think. The sole idea that possessed her was to get as far away from
The Cedars as quickly as she could. Never again, she told herself
passionately, would she see or speak to one of the Danvers again. And
just as she had come to that resolution she ran full tilt into all of
them.
By that time dusk had fallen, and the fog which was coming on thicker
than ever, made it almost impossible for any one to see where they were
going, so that as she turned a corner of the road which they were
approaching from the other direction, she was in the middle of them
before she was aware of it. The three girls had met the boys on the
parade, and had walked up with them.
"Whither away in such a hurry, Miss Carson?" said Geoffrey, who was the
first to recognise her by the light of the street lamp, close to which
the encounter took place.
"Ask your mother--ask Hilary," Margaret cried bitterly, and breaking away
from him, as he would have detained her, darted across the road, and was
immediately swallowed up by the fog.
"Something has happened; she mustn't go like that!" cried Geoffrey,
starting after her. But Margaret's movement away from them all had been
so sudden and so quick that he could find no trace of her in the dense
fog, and realising the hopelessness of pursuit he returned in rather a
perturbed frame of mind to the others who were waiting for him by the
lamp.
"She was in a right, royal rage," said Maud. "I have never seen Miss
Carson angry before. I really didn't know she had it in her."
"Perhaps Hilary has sent her on another message," suggested Nancy.
"Hardly at this hour of the evening," said Edward. "It must be nearly
half-past six."
So wondering and speculating as to what could have happened during their
absence, but never coming near the truth, they all hurried home as fast
as they could, and made their way at once to the drawing-room, where
their mother was sitting, looking very helpless and unhappy, while
Hilary, with a complacent expression on her face, was telling her all
over again of the many and varied clues which had caused her to discover
in the person of Miss Carson one of the gang of the Seabourne burglars.
"Why, mother, what is up with Miss Carson?" said Geoffrey at once. "We
met her a minute ago running down the road as hard as she could go."
"Running down the road!" echoed Mrs. Danvers. "There, Hilary!" she added,
turning to her. "I told you I heard her going out of the hall door, and
you said you heard her going upstairs."
"What!" exclaimed Hilary, disregarding her mother altogether. "Miss
Carson has escaped! She ought to be brought back. Oh, Geoffrey, why
didn't you catch her!"
"I tried to stop her, but she had gone like a flash. But why do you talk
about her escaping and of catching her. She isn't a criminal fleeing from
justice, is she?"
"But that is just what she is?" cried Hilary triumphantly. "Oh, you have
all been finely taken in by her; but I suspected her from the first, and
to-night, I have proved her to be a thief and a burglar. I, alone and
unaided, have brought her to justice."
"Miss Carson a thief and a burglar!" cried Geoffrey when his astonishment
would allow him to speak. "What mad idea have you got into your head now,
Hilary?"
Hilary would dearly have liked to have told the long history of the
growth of her suspicions about Miss Carson from the very beginning, but
knowing that she could not expect the same patient attention from her
brothers and sister as her mother had given her, she came straight to the
point at once. After all, she was not sure that it was not the most
dramatic way of telling her tale.
"I have got no mad idea as you call it, Geoffrey, in my head at all," she
said with dignity. "I have merely found out who the Seabourne burglars
are, that's all. At least, I have put my hand on one of them, and that
one is Miss Carson. This afternoon, locked up in her trunk in the
dressing-room upstairs, I found all Colonel Baker's plate and other
valuable things."
"Rot!" exclaimed Geoffrey incredulously.
"It isn't rot at all," said Hilary nonchalantly; "it's the truth. But
when I taxed her with the crime she denied it."
"Well, of course she did," said Geoffrey. "Of all the nonsense I ever
heard this is about the greatest."
Hilary shrugged her shoulders. "Call it nonsense if you like," she said,
"but there are the things themselves, every one of them, even to the
Indian tablecloth she carried them off in, upstairs in her box at this
moment. Go and see them for yourselves if you don't believe me. And if
she didn't put them there, who did? Pray tell me that."
Noel looked at Jack, and Jack looked back at Noel. Then they sighed. The
moment for confession had undoubtedly arrived, and they both took a step
forward.
"We put them there," they said together.
"You!" exclaimed simultaneously every voice in the room except Hilary's,
and she was too utterly dumbfounded even to utter that monosyllable.
"It was a joke," said Noel. "Tommy started it really. It was his idea,
and he got us to hide the whole of the beastly things here. I am sure we
wish we had never seen them. Of course we didn't know the trunk belonged
to Miss Carson, or we wouldn't have hidden them in it. We thought it was
an old one of mother's that was never used. We would have taken them back
to Colonel Baker ages ago, only Tommy, the young idiot! chose to go off
to Scotland and took the key with him. We couldn't open the trunk anyhow,
though we tried ever so many keys."
"Oh boys, boys!" moaned Mrs. Danvers, "a nice mess you have got
yourselves into. The Colonel will be furious. You have made him the
laughing stock of the town. He will certainly summons you, and it will
get into the papers, and you will certainly be expelled from Osborne and
Dartmouth."
"And serve them right too, for a couple of silly young asses!" growled
Geoffrey.
"That is all very well," said Hilary, swallowing her intense
mortification as well as she could; "but what about this case?" opening
it and displaying as she spoke the locket encircled by the string of
pearls. "I found it locked up in her dressing bag, and she declares it is
hers, although 'To my daughter Margaret' is inscribed inside the locket."
But Geoffrey would not as much as glance at it.
"I think you have behaved disgracefully," he said, turning upon his
sister, "and ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. The idea of
going prying about in her room."
"I did it in a good cause," said Hilary, who, fully conscious now of the
sorry figure she cut, had much ado to keep tears of mortification and
rage from coming into her eyes. "How was I to know that the boys had put
them into her box and not she herself? It's as much their fault as mine
that Miss Carson got accused of taking them."
"Oh, oh, Miss Hilary!" said Edward, "that's rather good from one who not
five minutes ago was boasting of having alone and unaided--those were
your exact words, I think--brought the criminal to justice."
Hilary winced. She knew that for weeks, perhaps months to come, her brief
and inglorious career as a detective would be one of the stock jokes of
the family, and the thought of all the chaff she would have to endure was
anything but pleasing to her.
"Never mind whose fault it is," said Geoffrey with a touch of impatience
in his voice, "what does that matter now? The point is that a girl
staying in our house has been terribly insulted and practically driven
out of it, and she ought to be found and persuaded to come back, when the
first thing you will do, Miss," turning to Hilary, "will be to make her
the most abject apology you ever made to any one in all your born days."
"She'll come back of her own accord, surely, by dinner-time," said Mrs.
Danvers uneasily.
"Don't you believe it, mother," Geoffrey said emphatically. "When we met
Miss Carson just now the very last thought she had in her mind was the
intention of ever darkening our doors again."
At that moment Martin opened the drawing-room door. They had all been so
intent upon the conversation that was taking place that none of them had
heard the sound of wheels upon the gravel a few minutes previously,
consequently they were all taken by surprise to see two strangers behind
Martin.
"Mr. Anstruther and Miss Eleanor Carson," Martin said, and a tall and
thin old man with a long white beard, and a girl who none of them had
ever seen before, advanced into the room.
CHAPTER XIV
THE HOUR OF RECKONING
The cheerless weather that had prevailed during the last few days had, as
Margaret had foreseen it would, prevented Eleanor from spending her
afternoons in the little summer-house, as had been her custom since she
had come to Rose Cottage. For bad though the mist was in the town, it was
worse on the downs, and the excessive rawness and chilliness of the
atmosphere had laid poor Mrs. Murray low with a very bad attack of
rheumatism.
As a rule, Eleanor slept soundly from the moment she laid her head on the
pillow until she was roused in the morning, but a few nights ago she had
been wakened by hearing Mrs. Murray moving about her room. Her first
inclination had been to turn round and fall asleep again, but fearing
that Mrs. Murray was ill, she had got rather reluctantly out of bed, put
on her dressing-gown, and after tapping at Mrs. Murray's door, a useless
proceeding, as the poor lady was far too deaf to hear her, had opened it
and gone in. She had found Mrs. Murray sitting in her armchair, with her
face twisted with pain, rubbing lotion into her rheumatic knee. The
candles, which were burning low, showed that she had been awake for some
hours.
When she perceived that she had wakened Eleanor, her distress was great,
and she begged of her to go back to bed at once.
"My dear," she said, as she poured a fresh supply of embrocation into the
hollow of her hand and set to work again, "I never disturb any one in the
night if I can help it. Oh dear, how selfish it is of me to keep you out
of your bed like this!" This last protest was uttered when Eleanor,
taking the bottle from her hand, knelt down on the floor and began to
rub the swollen knee.
For the sight of the deaf old lady sitting up in pain and alone, during
the night had roused a sudden wave of pity in Eleanor's rather hard
heart. A swift feeling of compunction smote her as she reflected how
little thought she had taken of Mrs. Murray since she had come to live in
her house. All her kindness had been accepted as a matter of course, and
when Eleanor found that in return for that kindness no claim of any sort
was made upon her, she had been conscious of a feeling of relief. She
remembered how she had thought that her time would be far too fully
occupied in taking advantage of all the lessons she was going to get to
have any over to spend in providing companionship for Mrs. Murray.
For over half an hour Eleanor knelt and rubbed gently and steadily, first
with one hand and then with the other, and though Mrs. Murray entreated
her over and over again to go back to bed, Eleanor paid no heed to her.
"Think of your studies, my dear," Mrs. Murray said at last; "you won't
feel fresh for them, and that will distress you so much to-morrow."
Eleanor winced. In what a selfish light must she have appeared to Mrs.
Murray all these weeks if the latter could suppose that the fear of being
too sleepy to do her lessons to-morrow would send her post-haste back to
bed now!
"Bother my studies!" she said energetically, and Mrs. Murray seeing the
uselessness of further protest said no more. But at last she declared
that the pain was gone for the moment, and that if she got into bed
quickly she might fall asleep before it returned. So Eleanor helped her
into bed, and had the satisfaction of seeing her doze off before she left
the room. It would be rather too much to say that Eleanor returned to her
bed an hour and a half after she had left it with a totally changed
character, but she did go back with a clearer recognition of her
besetting sin of selfishness than she had ever had before.
"It's always been Eleanor Carson first, Eleanor Carson second, and
Eleanor Carson third with me," she thought, "and the rest of the field
nowhere. I take all and I give nothing. I am selfish and hard and narrow.
Miss McDonald knew it. That was what she meant when she said one day that
selfish people didn't know what they missed, and that I should be a
happier girl if I thought more of others. Oh dear! there I go again; I
don't seem able to leave myself out of consideration for a moment. And
if I am only going to be unselfish for the sake of becoming a nicer
character myself, I don't see where the true nobility of unselfishness
comes in."
Eleanor fell asleep before she had worked that question out to her
satisfaction, and all the next day she was too busy practising the
quality to have much time to think about it. Madame Martelli had sent up
in the morning to say that the sudden change in the weather had given her
such a bad cold that she would be unable to receive her pupil until
further notice, and as Mrs. Murray had wisely resolved to stay in bed for
a few days, Eleanor, with a total disregard for her studies of which a
few days ago she really would not have believed herself capable, devoted
all her energies to nursing her. She carried all her meals up to her, sat
with her, rubbed her knee, gave her her medicine, brought her hot
bottles, and generally made a great fuss over her. And Mrs. Murray was so
appreciative of all she did that Eleanor told her ruefully she was
spoiling it all by being too grateful.
"For, you see," she explained as Mrs. Murray not unnaturally looked much
perplexed at this remark, "I wanted to be unselfish and improve my
character; but you make it such a pleasure to do anything for you, that
if I was really to practise self-denial I would go away and leave you to
Hannah."
"All the time I have been with you," she went on suddenly dropping her
tone of half-whimsical complaint, and speaking very earnestly, "I have
taken all and given nothing. And people who do that must have such hard,
selfish natures that I feel dreadfully ashamed of myself."
"My dear, it has been an infinite pleasure to have you with me," said
Mrs. Murray, when she had gathered the drift of Eleanor's remark.
"Though, owing to my being so deaf, and you being always so busy, we have
not perhaps been much together; still, I have enjoyed having you in the
house more than I can say. You have been a fresh interest in my rather
restricted life, and I shall feel parting with you dreadfully. Ah, how
I wish your grandfather would let me keep you altogether! But that, of
course, I cannot expect. Did he give you any idea how long he meant you
to stay?"
"I--I don't remember," Eleanor said, flushing scarlet. And to herself she
thought sadly how completely Mrs. Murray's good opinion of her would
change when she knew how she had deceived her. That reflection was really
her first step towards repentance, and she was astonished and not a
little dismayed to find how rapidly her newly awakened conscience was
driving her along to a point where confession would become essential to
her own peace of mind. But she had some distance yet to travel before she
reached it, and as it happened she missed for ever the opportunity of
making a voluntary confession of her misdeeds, for on the afternoon of
the day on which Margaret left The Cedars, Mr. Anstruther made a totally
unexpected appearance at Rose Cottage.
Mrs. Murray had come downstairs for the first time, and she and Eleanor
were sitting over the fire about half-past four enjoying a cosy tea, when
the sound of wheels grating on the gravel was heard, and Eleanor saw a
cab draw up at the front door. Visitors on such a day when the mist was
so thick that even the other end of the lawn was shrouded from view, were
totally unexpected, and Eleanor glancing out of the window wondered who
the brave people might be who would venture up on to the downs in such
weather. But when she saw that the cab was a station cab, and that its
passenger was a tall, thin, elderly man, her heart gave a great jump, and
then suddenly seemed to sink away into her shoes. She felt sure that this
visitor was Mr. Anstruther. She looked at Mrs. Murray, who was just
unfolding the _Times_ and preparing herself for an hour or so of peaceful
enjoyment. She had heard neither the wheels of the cab on the gravel, nor
the ring at the bell, nor did she even look up until Hannah, who had
ushered Mr. Anstruther into the room, crossed it herself, and bending
over her mistress pronounced his name clearly in her ear.
Eleanor meanwhile stood immovable on the hearth-rug, bracing herself to
meet the hour of reckoning that had come so swiftly and in such a totally
unannounced manner upon her. She watched Mrs. Murray greet her old friend
with mingled surprise and pleasure, and then saw her look with perplexity
from him to herself as she stood motionless before the fire. Why, her
face mutely asked, did they not greet one another? Why did he merely
glance at his granddaughter and bow slightly in his stiff, old-fashioned
way as if to a stranger? and why did she give no greeting at all to her
grandfather?
"Margaret," she said at last, when the pause had lasted a full thirty
seconds, "do you not see your grandfather, dear?"
Mr. Anstruther fairly jumped at that, and shot a keen glance at Eleanor,
who still stood rigidly silent with the curious feeling strong on her
that the direction of affairs did not lie with her at all. This stern old
man who was eyeing her so severely would bring them to a crisis far more
swiftly than she was capable of doing. From her expressionless face he
looked straight into Mrs. Murray's puzzled, perturbed one. Obviously his
first thought was that her mind was as deficient as her hearing. What he
saw seemed to convince him that such was not the case, and very
deliberately he bent down and spoke loudly and clearly in her ear.
"That girl," pointing a lean accusing finger at Eleanor, "is not my
granddaughter Margaret. I never saw her before. Where is Margaret?"
[Illustration: "THAT GIRL," POINTING WITH A LEAN ACCUSING FINGER AT
ELEANOR, "IS NOT MY DAUGHTER MARGARET."]
"My dear, is it true?" said Mrs. Murray in a bewildered tone. "I don't
understand. If you are not Margaret Anstruther, who are you, and where is
she?"
"That is precisely what I wish to know," broke in Mr. Anstruther sternly.
"What is this girl doing here, and where is my granddaughter? Do you
really mean to say," he added, "that Margaret has not been here at all?
What is your name, and what are you doing masquerading here in hers?"
Though Mr. Anstruther in his anger had spoken loudly, he had not used the
tone of voice suited to a deaf person, and it was pitiful to see the
anxious way in which Mrs. Murray looked from one to the other, striving
to hear what was said. So realising that the kindest thing she could do
for her now was to tell her story quickly and not allow Mr. Anstruther to
drag it from her by means of questions which Mrs. Murray could not hear,
Eleanor knelt down by her chair and put her lips close to her ear.
"Shall I tell you everything from the beginning?" she said. "I can do it
quickly. My name is Eleanor Carson, and on the 28th of July I was on my
way from London to Seabourne to take up a position as holiday governess
there, which had been offered to me for the summer holidays. I had to
wait at Carden Junction for over an hour and a half, and as I was sitting
in the waiting-room a girl came in. We began to talk presently, and she
told me her name was Margaret Anstruther and that she was on her way to
Windy Gap to stay with a Mrs. Murray, an old friend of her grandfather's,
and she was to spend the summer learning Italian and having singing
lessons with Madame Martelli. I envied her from the bottom of my heart,
and said I wished I was in her shoes, and she said she wished she were in
mine. And so in the end we decided to change. She became Eleanor Carson
and went on to The Cedars, and I became Margaret Anstruther, and came
here."
"The audacity, the unparalleled insolence, the unheard-of irregularity of
the whole proceeding astounds me!" said Mr. Anstruther. "And where is my
granddaughter now?"
"She is still with Mrs. Danvers at a house called The Cedars, Durham
Road, Seabourne," said Eleanor.
"And you mean to say, Charlotte," Mr. Anstruther said loudly, "that you
had no idea of the deception that had been practiced on you?"
"No, indeed, how could I have?" said Mrs. Murray, who still seemed almost
overpowered by the astonishing revelation that had been made to her. "You
must remember that I had never seen your granddaughter, so how could I
know?"
"Of your share in this disgraceful business it is not necessary to
speak," said Mr. Anstruther, giving Eleanor a glance of the very
strongest disapproval and dislike, "but Margaret's share in it concerns
me deeply, and first of all I must apologise to you," he added, turning
to Mrs. Murray, "in her name for the liberty she has dared to take with
your most kind and hospitable house. To send a stranger into it in her
place, under her name, and to go off under an assumed one to total
strangers seems to be incredible. I can really hardly grasp the amazing
fact now, that Margaret, whom I have brought up so carefully, and who has
had her every action regulated by me since her infancy, should at the
very first opportunity break loose in this manner." He gazed with renewed
disapproval at Eleanor. "You must have gained an enormous influence over
her in a very short space of time to have been able to persuade her to
act in such an outrageous manner."
"It was her idea; she persuaded me into it," said Eleanor, the words
slipping out of her mouth unawares. Then fearing that they might sound as
though she wished to lay all the blame upon Margaret, she added
impulsively, "But it was I who kept her to it so long. She wanted to give
up the idea weeks ago, and confess everything, after she had only tried
it for two or three days, but I would not let her go back from her word.
And so though she has not been nearly so happy with young people as she
thought somehow she must be, she has bravely stayed on there for my
sake."
Was it merely her imagination or did the severity of Mr. Anstruther's
face relax somewhat as he heard that his granddaughter had not been as
happy as she had hoped to be? His tone, however, when he spoke again
had lost none of its former anger. "Your shameful audacity in
impersonating my granddaughter and thrusting yourself, uninvited, into a
house in which you have no right, deserves to be severely punished. I am
not at all sure that such an offence is not punishable by law. How would
you like to find yourself in prison? Mrs. Murray could prosecute you if
she liked, and if she takes my advice she will."
"And would you advise Mrs. Danvers to prosecute Margaret?" Mrs. Murray
asked.
"Eh--er--that is a different matter altogether," Mr. Anstruther answered,
thoroughly taken aback by the unexpected remark.
"Yes, but she, too, impersonated somebody else and thrust herself into
a house to which she was not invited," said Mrs. Murray, "so we could
hardly put one in prison and leave the other out, could we?"
"Of course, Charlotte, if you are disposed to look upon the matter
leniently, nothing more remains for me to say," Mr. Anstruther said in a
displeased tone. "I gather, then, that you are not even angry with Miss
Carson for her treatment of you. Certainly I have not yet heard you utter
one word of blame to her, and when you consider how callously she has
deceived you all these weeks no condemnation could be too strong for
her."
"I don't believe you are callous, my dear," said Mrs. Murray, looking
gently into Eleanor's downcast face.
"Oh, I am ashamed, so dreadfully ashamed!" Eleanor said, "when I think of
all your kindness to me, and of how little right I had to any of it."
"And so you ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Mr. Anstruther. "But,
however, as I said before, your share in the matter has not so much to do
with me as my granddaughter's has. I am going now to see her, and you
must come with me. I do not intend to lose sight of you until I have
found her. How do I know that you are telling me the truth, and that she
is at this particular house you mention?"
Though Eleanor's eyes flashed at this remark, she recognised the justice
of it and received it in silence. After all, why should Mr. Anstruther
believe anything she said?
"Yes, go, my dear," said Mrs. Murray, and Eleanor rose obediently.
"And if you will take my advice Charlotte, you will get your housemaid to
pack her boxes, so that she can leave for good and all the first thing
to-morrow," Mr. Anstruther said before she was well out of the room.
He was standing in the hall when she came down with her hat and coat on,
and he motioned her to precede him into the cab, but giving her head a
little shake, Eleanor opened the drawing-room door and, after hesitating
for a moment on the threshold, went in. Mrs. Murray was sitting before
the fire crying silently. At the sight of her tears Eleanor's hesitation
vanished and she ran across the room and flung herself on her knees and
put both her arms in a protecting fashion round the old lady's neck.
"Don't cry about me," she said. "Oh, I am so sorry, so ashamed! I ought
never to have done it."
"And I thought you were such a dear girl," said Mrs. Murray, "so good,
so straightforward, so merry, and charming. And to think that you were
deceiving me all the time. Oh, it is bitter to be disappointed in any one
like this! Tell me what tempted you to do it. Mr. Anstruther says it was
the thought of living in comparative ease and comfort for a time, and so
you sent Margaret to the drudgery of a governess's life in your place."
"No, no," said Eleanor vehemently; "I may be selfish and deceitful, but I
am not so calculating as all that. Besides, Margaret has been made no
drudge of. As far as mere comfort, food, and good rooms, and so on goes,
she has been treated quite as well there as I have here. It was the
singing lessons that tempted me. I did want to have my voice trained so
much, and when I heard Madame Martelli was going to teach Margaret I just
could not help coming in her place."
Though Eleanor was scarcely aware of it herself, her voice and manner had
altered when she began to speak of her singing. Neither were any longer
repentant or humbled. She spoke as if she were trying to excuse even to
justify, her conduct.
"You are neither ashamed nor sorry," said Mr. Anstruther's stern voice
from the doorway, "so do not seek to deceive Mrs. Murray on that point.
Will you kindly come now. I am waiting."
But when Mr. Anstruther told the driver that he wished to go into
Seabourne, the man refused, rather sulkily, to take him across the downs
in that mist, "to say nothing of my being stranded miles away from home,
then," he said; "but I'll take you back to the station, and from there
you can train into Seabourne almost as quick."
So they drove down to Chailfield Station where they were fortunate enough
just to catch a train, and on arriving at Seabourne station they took
another cab up to The Cedars. During the whole way Mr. Anstruther spoke
no single word to his companion, and Eleanor, glancing from time to time
at his grim face, fairly shivered as she thought of how Margaret was
going to catch it.
CHAPTER XV
AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
It was in the midst of an astonished silence that Mr. Anstruther,
followed by Eleanor, walked up the length of the long drawing-room
towards Mrs. Danvers, the young people making way for them as they
advanced. When he had arrived opposite her he gave her a stiff bow, which
she returned with her eyes fixed on the girl, who had the same name, and
yet was not the Eleanor Carson they knew. It was very puzzling, she
thought.
"When I have explained the reasons for my presence here this evening, you
will agree with me, I trust, that no apology is required for what, so
far, must seem to you an unwarrantable intrusion," he began in his most
deliberate manner.
"Certainly," murmured Mrs. Danvers, rather vaguely, though she meant, of
course, that no apology was needed.
One of the boys--it was Noel--gave a little snigger, but when Mr.
Anstruther turned with raised eyebrows in his direction, Noel tried, but
without success, to look as if he had made no sound.
"I have come here," Mr. Anstruther resumed then, addressing himself once
more to Mrs. Danvers, "in search of my granddaughter Margaret, who, I
understand, has been living in your house in the capacity of holiday
governess since the 28th of July."
"Margaret Anstruther!" said Mrs. Danvers. "I am very sorry, but I have
never heard the name before."
"So I understand, madam," was the grim reply. "My granddaughter has been
known to you under the name of Eleanor Carson."
At that the excitement with which the entire family had been listening to
him could no longer be restrained, and they broke into a perfect chorus
of exclamations and questions. And high above them all Hilary's voice
could be heard saying over and over again, "I knew it; I knew it. Perhaps
you will believe me now. I always suspected that she was an imposter.
Now, perhaps, none of you will contradict me again about her being a
thief and a burglar."
Her persistent, exultant tone so dominated all her brothers' and sisters'
disjointed exclamations that she eventually silenced them, and her shrill
voice finished alone. And when at length she had done, it was to find Mr.
Anstruther's piercing eyes gazing attentively at her.
"Young lady," he said, and Eleanor, who had easily identified Hilary as
the member of the family whom Margaret liked least, exulted at the
thought that she was now going to get a taste of Mr. Anstruther's wrath,
"young lady, will you oblige me by repeating quietly and without any
display of excitement the extraordinary statement you have just made
relative to my granddaughter being a burglar."
But Hilary was not in the least daunted by his icy tones. Hot with
indignation at the recollection of the scorn with which her family had
received proof of her detective skill, she burst into an eager account of
all the suspicions she had entertained about Margaret, and though,
fortunately for herself, she did not again say anything about Colonel
Baker's silver, she wound up by thrusting the case containing the
necklace and the miniature into his hand.
"There," she said triumphantly, "I found that in her dressing bag this
afternoon, and when I taxed her with having stolen them, she said----"
"Yes, what did she say?"
"That they were hers."
Mr. Anstruther looked her up and down; then he took the open case from
her hand, snapped it to, and slipped it into his pocket.
"And so they are hers," he said. "Does your assertion that my
granddaughter is a burglar and a thief rest on any other evidence but
this?"
"N--no," faltered Hilary, feeling smaller and of less account than she
had ever felt in her life before.
"Then do me the favour of not addressing me again while I remain in this
house," said Mr. Anstruther; and turning his back upon the now thoroughly
discomfited girl, he resumed his conversation with Mrs. Danvers at the
point at which it had been broken off. And Hilary shrank back behind the
others, and received scant comfort for the snubbing she had got from any
of them.
"I did my best to stop you making such an awful goat of yourself,"
whispered Edward. "Couldn't you see that that precious bit of proof of
yours was just so much evidence for the other side? He had just told us
that Miss Carson's name was Margaret Anstruther, and Margaret was written
inside the locket, wasn't it, and the initial outside was 'A'?"
Hilary nodded, too mortified even to speak. Now that it was too late she
did see the silly, stupid blunder she had made, and she could have bitten
out her tongue with annoyance.
"As I was saying, madam," Mr. Anstruther had gone on directly he had
finished with Hilary, "my granddaughter has been known to you by the name
of Eleanor Carson. This," and he waved his hand in the direction of
Eleanor, "is the--the young lady whom you engaged to be your holiday
governess. She met my granddaughter at a railway station some way up
the line, and decided to change names and addresses. My granddaughter
came here, and Miss Carson went up to the house of a friend where I had
arranged for my granddaughter to stay; and she deceived this lady as
completely as my granddaughter has deceived you."
"Miss Carson not Miss Carson at all!" murmured Mrs. Danvers. "Well, of
all the extraordinary things I ever heard! And so it is you," glancing
at Eleanor, "that my old friend Miss McDonald sent down to me. Dear me,
who would have believed such a thing! I used to wonder sometimes why
Miss Carson--Miss Anstruther, I should say--was always so reluctant to
speak about Hampstead. Now I suppose it was because she had never been
there. Yes, that must have been it. And that accounts, too, for Miss
Carson--Miss Anstruther, I mean--speaking in such a queer, stiff way. I
think you said she had been brought up entirely at home. It used to seem
odd to me that Miss Carson--Miss Anstruther, I mean--should have been a
governess in a girls' school for years and years. I forget how long she
said she had been at Hampstead, but I know it was a long time, and yet
she did not understand a word of slang. That was when she first came
here. She has learned to speak rather differently now."
"I regret to hear it, madam," said Mr. Anstruther, who had, with
difficulty, restrained himself from interrupting Mrs. Danvers' rambling
speech. "I abhor slang in men, women, and boys. In girls I would not
tolerate it for one instant. But all this is beside the point. And now,
if you please, will you be so kind as to summon my granddaughter. I wish
to have an interview with her immediately."
His look was so exceedingly stern, his tone so fraught with ominous
meaning as to the reception his erring granddaughter would get when she
entered his presence, that scarcely one of the young Danvers but felt
glad that the terrific scolding he so evidently had in store for her must
inevitably be postponed for the present. And perhaps by the time he did
see her his wrath would have had time to cool.
"Where is my granddaughter?" he demanded.
"That is what we should all like to know, sir," said Geoffrey, "but what
none of us do know. We were talking of that when you came in. I am sorry
to say she has left our house. She has run away. The rest of us were out,
and she had a sort of quarrel--a misunderstanding--with one of my
sisters----"
"With the one, no doubt, who ransacked her boxes and called her a thief
and a burglar," interpolated Mr. Anstruther.
"And she ran straight out of the house. We are hoping she means to come
back, but we are very much afraid she will not."
"I am dreadfully upset about it," said Mrs. Danvers helplessly. "If you
had only come an hour--even half an hour--ago, you would have found her
here safe and sound. If anything happens to her--such a dreadful foggy
night as it is, too--I shall never forgive myself for not having known
she was going to run away, and stopped her."
"I fail to see any reason for anticipating that harm will come to her,"
said Mr. Anstruther harshly. He turned to Eleanor, "Perhaps you, Miss
Carson, as her accomplice in this disgraceful business, can inform us
where she would be likely to go?"
"She would come up to me," Eleanor answered; "that was the agreement we
had both made, that if either of us were suddenly found out, or couldn't
for any reason continue any longer to be the other, we would come and say
so at once. She knows the way quite well; she often came up in the
afternoon to see me."
"Yes, but it is one thing to find your way there on a summer's
afternoon," said Mrs. Danvers nervously, "but quite another on a night
like this. Why, the fog is now so thick that you can't see a yard in
front of you down here even; and if it is like that here, it will be ten
times worse up on the downs, and instead of finding her way to Windy Gap,
she would be far more likely to walk in the opposite direction."
"Oh, don't say that, mother, for the opposite direction would lead her
straight over the cliffs," said Geoffrey, and was immediately sorry for
his thoughtless remark when he saw how alarmed Mrs. Danvers became; "but
I agree with you that she is not very likely to arrive at Windy Gap in
such a fog as this, so I suggest that we turn ourselves into a search
party without loss of time, and go and look for her."
"One minute, if you please," said Mr. Anstruther; "when you say 'we,' to
whom do you refer?"
"Why, to my brothers and myself," Geoffrey answered; "you Noel, and Jack,
and Edward. Of course, you will all turn out and search?"
"Rather!" they answered in chorus, and from their eager voices it was
easy to see that they looked upon the expedition as a novel and
delightful adventure.
"I intend also to accompany you," said Mr. Anstruther.
"Just as you like, of course, sir," said Geoffrey, in rather a doubtful
tone, "but if you will excuse my saying so, we would get on quicker
without you. You see we know every yard of the way, and my idea was for
us all to scatter when we get to the top of the downs, and search
separately. We shall cover more ground in less time that way; for I feel
perfectly certain that though Miss Anstruther may have started from here
with every intention of getting to Windy Gap, she will never find it. The
mist will be almost as thick as a London fog, and she will get hopelessly
lost. But just on the chance that she may have got as far, I will go up
to Windy Gap on my motor bicycle and find out, for it is no good our
spending hours searching about on the downs if she is safe and sound
there all the time."
He left the room as he spoke, and the three younger boys slipped out
quickly after him, each fearing to be the last, lest Mr. Anstruther
should persist in accompanying them. The latter, however, recognising
that Geoffrey was right, and that his presence would be a hindrance
rather than a help, had already given up the idea of joining them.
For once, as Edward remarked, Geoffrey's motor bicycle happened to be in
full working order, and in less than five minutes he had his acetylene
lamp lighted, and had gone vigorously hooting down the drive. It was then
half-past seven; he expected, he said, to be easily back by a quarter
past eight with the news whether the fugitive had reached Windy Gap or
not. Edward, however, had shaken his head at that, and replied that, what
with the bad roads and the fog, he could not be back in anything like
that time.
Hardly had Geoffrey gone than the boys were joined by Maud.
"I am coming with you three," she said. "Mother has just asked Mr.
Anstruther to dinner, and though I'm pretty hungry, I don't fancy the
meal in his society. What a waxy old gentleman it is! and how mother will
catch it if she airs any of the slang she has picked up from us!"
The three boys laughed, and when presently, armed with lanterns and
bicycle lamps, they set off down the drive, they all amused themselves by
repeating and jesting over as many of Mr. Anstruther's caustic remarks as
they could remember. They agreed among themselves that poor Margaret must
indeed have an awful time of it with him, and that she was highly to be
commended for the pluck she had shown in calmly escaping from his
authority directly she got the chance.
"But who would have thought she had it in her to go in for a thing of
this sort?" said Noel. "The cool cheek of it beats anything I ever heard.
I say, I wonder what the other girl--the real Eleanor Carson--is like?
She looked frightfully subdued, didn't she? I expect she has been
catching it from him pretty well."
The plan that the little band of searchers had formed was to follow the
road taken by Geoffrey until they got to the top of the steep brow of the
hill, and then, leaving the road, to strike across the grass, for it was
probable that Margaret had essayed the short cut to Windy Gap, and that
she might be wandering about hopelessly lost not very far from the point
where she had left the road. In any case, they resolved not to stay out
for more than an hour or so, but to return home at the end of that time
and find out what news Geoffrey had of her.
But it was not until the town hall clock was solemnly striking midnight
that the four searchers, who had set out so gaily and valiantly at
half-past seven, turned wearily in at their own gate. The thing they
did not believe possible had happened, and long before the hour they had
planned to stay out was over, they were hopelessly lost themselves, and
must, as Maud said with a groan, have walked miles and miles before they
found themselves quite by chance not far from the point where they had
first left the road.
They were tired and hungry, damp, and very cold; and the last time Edward
had tripped and tumbled headlong into a furze bush--they had each had so
many stumbles and falls that they had lost count of the number they had
had--he dropped his new bicycle lamp, and had been unable to find it
again. Their expedition could not therefore be termed a success, and Maud
said that the last straw would be if they heard directly they got in that
Margaret had been found hours ago.
"As, of course, she has been," said Edward, when turning the corner of
the drive they saw Geoffrey's bicycle leaning against the porch. "I
expect she's in the drawing-room with her grandfather. There seem to be
lights everywhere. Well, I'm going to make a bee-line for the dining-room
for grub. We had a very sketchy lunch, no tea, and no dinner, so I think
we've earned something."
So as soon as they got into the house, the three boys went off in the
direction of the dining-room, but Maud, although she was hungry enough
too, felt that she must first hear if Miss Anstruther had been found.
Considering that lights were burning everywhere, the house seemed
strangely silent, and Maud was beginning to wonder if every one had gone
to bed, when the door leading from the pantry opened, and Martin, without
seeing her, followed the three boys into the dining-room, closing the
door after him. Yes, that must be it, Maud thought--every one must have
gone to bed, and he had shut the door lest their voices might disturb the
household. She was just about to go to the dining-room too, when the
sound of some one crying violently in the drawing-room came to her ears,
and rather hesitatingly she opened the door and went in.
Hilary and Eleanor Carson were alone there together. The latter, with
her elbows on her knees and her head buried in her hands, was sitting
motionless in a chair near the fire, and Hilary was crouched in a
huddled-up position on the ground by a sofa into the cushions of which
she was sobbing.
As Maud came in Eleanor lifted her head and stared at her for a moment.
Then she dropped her face again into her hands without a word. Brief as
was the glimpse that Maud had got of her face, she was startled beyond
measure at the expression it wore. It was as white as a sheet of paper,
and her eyes, though dry and tearless, were full of grief and misery.
"Hilary!" Maud said in an awed tone. She did not venture to address
Eleanor. "What is it? Where is Miss Anstruther?"
But she had to cross the room and repeat the question with her hand on
her sister's shoulder before the latter heard her.
Then Hilary lifted her face in turn and stared vacantly at her sister.
It was so blurred and swollen with incessant crying that if Maud had not
known it was her sister who lay crouched there before her, she could
scarcely have recognised her.
"Miss Anstruther is dead!" she wailed. "She fell over the cliffs and was
killed. And it is all my fault. If I hadn't----" But at that point her
tears, which never ceased for an instant, choked her further utterance,
and letting her head drop back on the cushions, she went on crying.
Seeing that it would be as useless as it was cruel to question Hilary
further, and still not daring to disturb the rigid, stony silence in
which Eleanor sat, Maud hurried, horror-struck at what she had heard,
from the room, and crossing the hall, went into the dining-room. The
three boys were seated at the table eagerly devouring some hot soup,
which Martin, whose face was very grave, had had in readiness for them.
Evidently he had not told them the dreadful news, and checking the
questions which had been on the point of rising to her lips, Maud
beckoned him from the room. He came out, carefully closing the door
behind him.
"It's no use upsetting the young gentlemen by letting them know about it
to-night," he said in a low tone. "They had better be got off to bed as
soon as possible."
"It is really true, then?" Maud said, feeling sick at heart.
"I am afraid there is no doubt about it, Miss. It was a coastguardsman
that told Master Geoffrey about it. He had been up to Windy Gap and heard
that Miss Anstruther had not been seen there. And then coming back, he
lost his way--went clean off the road in the dark, and then couldn't find
it again for ever so long. He might have gone over the cliffs himself,
Miss Maud. Then he met a coastguardsman and told him he was out looking
for a young lady and asked him if he had seen her, and then the man said
that about eight o'clock a young lady had fallen over the cliffs, just
beyond the lighthouse, and had been picked up in a dying condition on the
rocks below. They had taken her along the beach until they got to the end
of the sea-wall, and then they had telephoned for an ambulance, and she
was taken to the hospital, for, of course, they didn't know her name or
where she lived then."
At that moment the three boys stumbled wearily into the hall rubbing
their eyes. "I say, we're off to bed," said Noel. "Martin says that Miss
Anstruther hasn't come back yet, but we can't do anything more, he
thinks, so as we can scarcely keep our eyes open, we are going to turn
in. Go and have some grub, Maud, and do likewise." And yawning their
heads off as they went, the three boys trailed up to bed, far too
sleepy to notice Maud's silence and horror-struck face.
"And Mr. Geoffrey has gone down to the hospital with Mr. Anstruther,"
continued Martin, as soon as the boys were out of earshot. "They were
obliged to walk, for there wasn't a cab about when Mr. Geoffrey came
back, for it was then close on eleven, and they wouldn't wait until I
went to get one from the livery stables up the road. And now, Miss Maud,
you must come and have something to eat. You had no dinner."
But Maud turned away with a little shake of the head. The mere idea of
food was distasteful to her. She asked where her mother was. Martin was
about to answer that his mistress was upstairs with Miss Joan and Miss
Nancy, when the sound of footsteps coming at racing speed up the drive
was heard, and the next moment Geoffrey dashed breathless and hatless
into the house. "I say," he panted out as soon as he could speak, "it's
all right. It wasn't Miss Anstruther who fell over the cliffs. It was
somebody else altogether. A visitor at one of the hotels, they say. Poor
thing, she has been terribly injured, and won't live till the morning, I
believe. But the point is that it wasn't Miss Anstruther. Where are
Hilary and poor Miss Carson? I must tell them at once."
He broke away from Maud, who would have detained him with a dozen eager
questions, and burst into the drawing-room, shouting out his good news as
he went.
Hilary, who was still crying--she had cried steadily for over two
hours--received his news with a scream of joy, but though Eleanor heard
it much more quietly, no one looking at her could fail to see how deeply
she was moved to thankfulness.
The Danvers could only dimly realise how great her suffering had been
during the last two hours, ever since Geoffrey had returned from the
downs and in an awestruck tone, and with halting, stammering speech had
broken to them all the news of the catastrophe which had, so he then
thought, overtaken Margaret. Hilary had at once broken out into the noisy
grief and passionate self-reproaches which she had kept up without
intermission ever since, but Eleanor's agony of mind had lain too deep
for outward expression. She knew that if Margaret had really been killed,
she would never have been able to forgive herself. The awful thought that
it was she who was responsible for her death would never have left her,
and now that the strain of those terrible hours was over, Eleanor could
only look back upon the utter blackness of despair that had been hers
through every minute of them with a shudder.
Then Mrs. Danvers who had been upstairs with her two nieces, for Joan had
had an attack of crying only second in intensity to that to which Hilary
had given way, informed by Martin of the good news which Geoffrey had
brought, came down, followed by Nancy and Joan in their dressing-gowns,
to share in the general rejoicing, and presently Mr. Anstruther returned,
having been driven up in a motor by one of the doctors who had been at
the hospital.
And Mr. Anstruther's harshness and anger against his erring granddaughter
was now a thing of the past. Though he had given scarcely more outward
sign of his inward feelings than Eleanor, the tragic fate that he had
believed to have overtaken Margaret had so appalled and shaken him that
the escapade of which she had been guilty had sunk to but insignificant
proportions in his eyes, and had she only returned now he would have
uttered no word of blame to her.
But meanwhile she had not come back, and they were as far off as ever
from knowing what had become of her, although in the general relief and
gladness that for anything they knew to the contrary at least she was
still alive, they had temporarily lost sight of that fact.
It was Mr. Anstruther who reminded them of it by mentioning that the
doctor who had so kindly driven him up to The Cedars had taken him round
to the police station on the way, where he, Mr. Anstruther, had given the
sergeant on duty a brief description of his granddaughter. This was to be
immediately telephoned to all the policemen on their night beats. The
sergeant had also telephoned up to the coastguard station, telling them
that the poor girl at the hospital was not the missing young lady, and to
ask them to keep a sharp look-out for her on the cliffs all night, and to
ring up the police station at once if anything was seen or heard of her.
Though Geoffrey's first search had proved so barren of result, he
announced his intention of going up on to the downs again, this time on
foot, and Maud volunteered to go with him. Her mother would have
preferred her to go to bed, but she scouted that notion. Hilary, however,
and the two Green girls, were glad enough to go docilely off to bed, and
when Maud and Geoffrey, fortified with sandwiches and soup, had departed
with freshly filled lanterns on a second expedition, Eleanor and Mr.
Anstruther and Mrs. Danvers were left alone in the drawing-room together
to get through the intervening hours of waiting as best they could.
Mr. Anstruther had deprecated the idea of Mrs. Danvers sitting up, but
she had averred that she had no desire either to go to bed or to sleep.
The former statement might have been true, but the latter was soon
contradicted by the gentle snores which emanated from the direction of
her chair. Mr. Anstruther sat so still that he, too, might have been
asleep, but Eleanor, glancing at him once or twice, saw that his eyes
were wide open and gazing fixedly before him. After awhile, his utter
immobility no less than Mrs. Danvers' regular snoring, got on Eleanor's
nerves, and rising quietly she slipped from the room, closing the door
softly behind her.
The lights were burning in the hall, and there she kept her lonely vigil,
pacing up and down. The slow hours wore away, two o'clock, three o'clock
struck, and still Geoffrey and Maud did not return. The huge relief and
joy she had felt when Geoffrey had come back from the hospital with the
news that the girl who had fallen over the cliffs was not Margaret had
long since ebbed away, and the anxiety to know what had become of her was
almost torturing in its intensity. She wondered how any one in the house
could sleep, or how Mr. Anstruther could sit patiently hour after hour by
the fire waiting for news. Then she remembered that at least his
conscience was at ease, for it was through no fault of his that his
granddaughter was wandering about on the downs on such a dreadful night,
and she envied him, envied any one who was not, like herself, burdened
with remorse, and that awful sense that had grown up with her anxiety
that, for whatever might befall Margaret that night, she alone was
directly responsible.
Eleanor was seeing things very clearly that night, and quite
dispassionately she told herself that she hated her own character. It was
selfish through and through. The specious plea with which she had salved
her conscience heretofore, that Margaret had been far the more eager of
the two for the mutual exchange of their names, she brushed aside as
worthless. Though there was little difference in their ages, Margaret
was, as regarded experience of the world, a mere child compared to her,
and she felt that in acceding to the deception she had been like a
grown-up person cheating a child. Of course, Margaret had been old enough
to know the difference between right and wrong, but that was no excuse
for her; she ought not to have taken advantage of her.
The sting of shame she had felt before. Mrs. Murray's unvarying kindness
and the gratitude she showed for any little mark of attention or service
rendered to her while she had been ill, had made Eleanor both remorseful
and ashamed, but her repentance then had not led to amendment. Even while
she had been deeply ashamed of herself, she had known that, for the sake
of her voice, she would have done it all over again, deceived Mrs.
Murray, taken advantage of Margaret, held her, in spite of her tears, to
her word, sacrificed her own truth and honesty to her ambition.
And this was the pass to which her ambition had brought her. Even though
Margaret's death was not mercifully to be laid at her door, as for two
long, never-to-be-forgotten hours that night she had feared, who could
tell what the effects of a night of exposure and fright on the downs
might not have upon her constitution?
No wonder, then, that with those miserable thoughts for company, Eleanor
could not rest. But her repentance if tardy was at least sincere. Could
the clock of time have been put back seven weeks, and were she and
Margaret to be meeting now for the first time in the dingy little
waiting-room at Carden Station, ah, how differently would she act! Not
for the sake of being the greatest singer in the whole round world would
she have consented to the deception. Rather would she have drudged as a
poorly paid teacher in second-rate schools all the days of her life.
"Oh--if I could only have the time over again!" groaned Eleanor. It
seemed such a small thing to wish for she thought despairingly. Just
seven short weeks over again.
At five o'clock Mr. Anstruther opened the drawing-room door and came out
into the hall. He did not see Eleanor who, wearied out at length with her
ceaseless pacing to and fro, had flung herself down a few-minutes
previously on Nancy's favourite couch behind the screen, but the ever
watchful Martin came forward immediately, and though his offer of coffee
was declined, he was permitted to help Mr. Anstruther into his overcoat.
From the brief colloquy that ensued between them Eleanor gathered that he
was going down to the police station. As soon as he had left she sprang
up and went out into the garden. The long and seemingly endless night was
at least over, and surely with daylight they might hope for news of
Margaret. The morning had broken cold and chilly, but the mist was
sweeping away in great rolling clouds before a light easterly breeze that
had sprung up at dawn.
At six o'clock Geoffrey and Maud came home. Eleanor, who then was pacing
up and down the drive, was the first to greet them, and her heart sank
when, in answer to her eager look, they shook their heads. They had
neither seen nor heard anything of Margaret.
"But no news is at least good news," said Geoffrey, quickly seeing how
sick at heart she looked, and remembering the news with which he had
returned the time before, she could not but agree with him there. "We
have scoured the downs between here and Windy Gap thoroughly, and I am
beginning to believe that she never tried to get there at all. We have
just come straight back from there now. Mrs. Murray has been up all night
with a hot bed, and hot blankets, and a hot bath, and all sorts of other
hot things, waiting for Miss Anstruther directly she turns up. And her
coachman and a couple of men from the village have been beating about on
the downs most of the night. I really believe she has crept into a rabbit
hole and means to lie low until all this fuss has blown over."
Though this remark did not succeed in bringing a smile to Eleanor's pale
lips, his cheery manner insensibly comforted her, and she turned and
walked back to the house with him and Maud, feeling that the load of her
trouble was somewhat lightened by their society.
"Hot soup again, Martin!" Geoffrey exclaimed, as the servant made his
appearance with a tray bearing some steaming cups directly they entered
the house, "we really can't do it. What with you at this end of the
journey, and Mrs. Murray at the other, this night has been a perfect
picnic of hot soup."
"It's not soup, Master Geoffrey, it's coffee," said Martin imperturbably.
"Oh, if it's coffee I am on for some. You must have some, too, Miss
Carson. You look a perfect wreck. I expect you have had a harder time of
it than we have."
Eleanor shook her head. His sympathetic tone made her lower lip tremble.
"I have done nothing all night--" she said, "but wait," she added.
"And awfully hard work that must have been by the look of you," he said;
"and where is everybody, Martin?"
"The mistress is in the drawing-room, Mr. Anstruther has gone down to the
police station, and the rest of the young ladies and gentlemen are in
bed. And I think, Mr. Geoffrey, if you and Miss Maud went to bed now,
too, it would be a good thing."
"Go to bed at half-past six in the morning! What an idea! Do you want to
go to bed, Maud?"
"No," she answered promptly; "but what I do want is a stinging hot bath.
That would freshen me up wonderfully. Come and have one, too, Miss
Carson. It would do you a world of good."
Eleanor did not feel as if she particularly wanted a hot bath at that
moment, but both Maud and Geoffrey so strongly advocated her taking one
that out of gratitude to them for the sympathy they evidently desired to
show her, she followed them upstairs. After all, she might as well have a
bath as do anything else; it would at least help to pass the time. And
when she had had her bath and done her hair, and was dressed and
downstairs again, she certainly felt wonderfully better for it. The
horrid sort of up-all-night feeling that she had experienced had quite
left her.
Presently the whole household was astir. Mrs. Danvers, firmly convinced
that she had been awake all night, left the drawing-room when the
housemaid entered it and went upstairs, intending to have a bath and
dress, but she went to bed instead.
To escape the curious eyes of the servants, who now seemed to be in every
room and to be regarding her with not unnatural curiosity, Eleanor
wandered out into the hall again and resumed the restless pacing to and
fro which she had kept up the greater part of the night. By eight o'clock
she seemed to have the principal sitting-rooms to herself. Geoffrey and
Maud had not yet come downstairs, and the servants, having finished their
dusting and sweeping, had gone to their breakfast.
Consequently when the telephone bell in the morning-room rang sharply she
was the first person to hear it. Hurrying toward it with the wild hope
that at last she was to hear news of Margaret, she caught up the
receiver.
"Hullo!" she heard, "are you there? Is that The Cedars? Mrs. Danvers? Who
then? I can't hear--Carson?--Eleanor Carson, you say? What! the young
lady who has been impersonating my wife's niece? Yes, I know all about
it. Yes--yes, I am telling you. Margaret Anstruther is here. I found her
myself, not half an hour ago, in a wood shed in the wood at the back of
our house here. She lost her way on the downs last night trying to get to
Mrs. Murray's. Yes--yes, well and safe. My wife has sent her to bed. She
has a temperature and a bad cold in the head. We have sent for a doctor.
No--no not ill, but it is best to be on the safe side. And I sent a motor
off ten minutes ago to let Mrs. Danvers know she is safe----" But the
rest was a buzzing noise only. Either they had been cut off or Sir
Richard had abruptly stopped speaking.
But Eleanor had heard enough. Margaret was safe. In her intense relief
and joy at the news Eleanor let the receiver fall with a clang, and when
Geoffrey and Maud, having heard her voice at the telephone, came flying
downstairs, they found her shedding tears of joy.
"Margaret is found!" she said in glad accents. "Sir Richard Strangways
has just telephoned." And she repeated to them the substance of what she
had heard.
"I wonder why they did not send her back here," said Maud presently, when
their first excitement was over.
"Because Margaret has evidently told them everything," replied Eleanor.
"For Sir Richard spoke of her as Margaret, and, of course, they know now
that she, not I, is Lady Strangways' niece."
"Is she really Lady Strangways' niece?" said Maud, in the wildest
astonishment, "but they did not seem to know each other."
"They didn't," said Eleanor, "or, of course, our plot would have been
found out at once. It's rather a long story to tell you now, but the gist
of it is that as Lady Strangways has been out of England for years she
and Margaret had never met. And so when Mrs. Murray told her that she had
a niece of Mr. Anstruther's staying with her--meaning me then, of
course--I had to pretend to be her niece. But she didn't take to me,"
added Eleanor ruefully.
CHAPTER XVI
CONCLUSION
After that events moved very quickly. When a few minutes later Mr.
Anstruther returned in a cab, he was met on the doorstep by most of the
members of the family, who crowded round him and shouted out the good
news that his granddaughter was found.
"Margaret at Wrexley Park!" he said, when he had alighted from the cab
and could make his voice heard. "How exceedingly strange that she should
have found her way there!"
"Well, I don't know," said Geoffrey. "If one shot by Windy Gap, which is
what she must have done in the darkness, she had only to keep on and on
and she would be bound to strike Wrexley next. You see, sir, it lies
right under the lee of the downs."
"Quite so, quite so," said Mr. Anstruther patiently. "But when I
commented on the singularity of the circumstance which had directed the
steps of my granddaughter towards Wrexley, I was not referring so much to
the relative geographical positions of Windy Gap and Wrexley, with which
indeed I am unacquainted, but----"
"You were thinking how funny it was that she should have fetched up at
her own aunt's house in the end," broke in Maud, for which unceremonious
interruption she received a glance of reproof from Mr. Anstruther, and
scant thanks afterwards from the other members of the family who had been
hanging delightedly on Mr. Anstruther's careful phraseology, and who had
all wanted to hear him finish his remark for himself.
Then Mr. Anstruther went up to Eleanor, who was standing a little apart
from all the others, and after subjecting her to a moment's severe
scrutiny, spoke abruptly:--
"I am glad your anxiety is at an end. I think you have been sufficiently
punished."
Eleanor smiled a little tremulously. The punishment had indeed been
sharp, although it had been nothing but the voice of her own conscience.
"Can you forgive me?" she said.
"Yes," he answered, in his cold, precise accents, "I can now. Though I
make no secret of the fact that, had my just resentment against you not
been softened by the anxiety we have shared in common, my reply to that
question would have been in the negative."
Then the motor from Wrexley having arrived, Mr. Anstruther made his
formal farewells and drove away, followed, it must be confessed, by a
sigh of universal relief at his departure.
When he had gone Eleanor became conscious that her position in the house
was rather a peculiar one. She had been dumped there, she reflected, just
as if she had been a bale of goods, and the person who had brought her
had neglected to remove her again. But, at any rate, she could remove
herself, and that she would do as speedily as possible, and she was on
the point of saying good-bye to Mrs. Danvers when the sound of wheels was
heard on the gravel, and up drove Mrs. Murray in her pony carriage.
She had arrived to fetch Miss Carson, she said, when Geoffrey, who had
become very friendly with her during his nightly visits, went out to her.
No, she would not alight. Yes, she had heard the good news about Miss
Anstruther. Could Miss Carson come at once, as Punch and Judy were
already very cross at having been taken out at that hour in the morning,
and would not stand.
The ponies' bad behaviour spared Eleanor the embarrassment of prolonged
farewells, nor had she even the chance of making the apology to Mrs.
Danvers, which she knew she owed her, but hastily flinging on her hat and
coat, she ran out at once and took her seat beside Mrs. Murray, and the
next minute they were bowling at a smart trot down the drive. Eleanor was
touched to the quick by this act of kindness on Mrs. Murray's part.
"But you should not have come out so early in the morning after you have
been in the house for so many days," she said.
"My dear," said Mrs. Murray, "it will have done me no harm. I wanted to
come and fetch you back myself."
Except for those two remarks the drive was accomplished almost in
silence. And Eleanor was only too glad not to have to speak. The reaction
after the long strain of the night was beginning to tell at length on her
and she was almost too tired to keep her eyes open.
She wondered if Mrs. Murray would let her go to bed when they got to Rose
Cottage, or if she must pack her box and take her departure then and
there. But Mrs. Murray set her doubts on that point at rest directly they
reached home by telling her to go straight to bed. "And sleep as long as
you can," she added.
"But," said Eleanor, hanging back as Mrs. Murray gave her a gentle little
push towards the staircase, "if I sleep too late I shan't be able to
leave to-night."
"I will wake you in time to catch the train I wish you to catch," Mrs.
Murray said. And Eleanor said no more, but stumbled wearily upstairs,
thinking as she went that, of course, she had not expected that Mrs.
Murray would let her stay even to the end of the holidays, now some eight
or ten days distant, but she had not guessed that she would be turned out
of the house quite so summarily and even have her train chosen for her.
However, the thought just passed through her mind; she was far too weary
to dwell upon it, and in less than five minutes she was in bed and fast
asleep.
And she slept the whole day without waking, and while she was thus
occupied Mrs. Murray went down to Wrexley Park and saw the real Margaret,
the girl who should have come to her, but who had elected to do
otherwise.
Fresh from an interview she had just had with her grandfather, in which,
though true to the resolution he had formed not to blame her very
severely, he had been unable to refrain from letting her know how heinous
he considered her conduct, Margaret was too nervous and upset to be at
ease in Mrs. Murray's presence, and that lady, though making every
allowance for her perturbed, conscience-stricken state of mind, could not
help contrasting her constrained, embarrassed manner unfavourably with
Eleanor's frank, bright demeanour. And Mrs. Murray felt convinced that
the real Margaret would never have been as happy with her as her
substitute had been.
In more ways than one that day, the first she had passed for many weeks
under her own name, was a very trying one for Margaret. She would gladly
have spent it in bed, as Eleanor had done, but as the doctor who had come
to see her had pronounced her little the worse for her night in the wood
shed, there had been no excuse for her to stay in bed, and she had been
obliged, about eleven o'clock, to get up to see her grandfather first,
then Mrs. Murray, and later in the morning Mrs. Danvers, and Hilary, who
had been brought out to Wrexley to apologise for her outrageous behaviour
of the day before. Mrs. Danvers had been naturally anxious to know where
Margaret had passed the night while search had been so vainly made for
her, and she could scarcely believe that mere chance had indeed led
Margaret across the downs to Wrexley woods in the darkness. And yet such,
as Geoffrey had surmised, had been the case. Trying to reach Windy Gap
Margaret had passed close by it in the fog and had wandered on and on
until, somewhere about midnight, she had found herself at the entrance to
a small hut in the wood, and, thankful beyond words to be in shelter of
some sort, she had crept into it and, making herself as comfortable as
she could on some dry faggots of sticks, had fallen sound asleep. And she
had been still sleeping when Sir Richard, who usually took a stroll
before breakfast every morning, had come suddenly upon her. But when
Margaret, who said that she freely forgave Hilary--as, indeed, she
did--for all her unkindness and foolish suspicions about her, would have
apologised in her turn for the deception she had practised upon her, that
good-natured lady checked her at once.
"My dear," she said, "I can't see that you did me any harm. You made the
children an excellent holiday governess, and you were always so kind
about winding my wool and picking up my stitches that I shall miss you
dreadfully. So say no more about the wrong you did me. I am quite sure
that I liked you a great deal better than I should have liked the real
Miss Carson, though I dare say she might have got on better with my young
people. You have heard, of course, that it was my two boys, Noel and
Jack, who put all those things in your box. Oh, not with a view to
getting you into trouble, but it was a prank they had played off upon
Colonel Baker. I made them go down and confess to him this morning and
take his property back with them, and, judging from their crestfallen
looks ever since, I fancy they have had a talking-to that they won't
forget in a hurry. So they have been well punished, and Tommy has been
wired to to come home at once, so he has been punished. And Hilary's
punishment here is to come. It will take the form of such endless banter
and chaff from her brothers and sisters that it will be a long time
before she thinks of playing private detective to any one in my house
again."
That Margaret, too, had been punished for her conduct no one knew better
than herself. Not only had she suffered from a troubled conscience for
the last seven weeks, but she had been distinctly unhappy in the
uncongenial surroundings into which she had forced herself, and for that
she had no one but herself to thank. Nevertheless, although she fully
recognised how much she had been to blame in breaking loose as she had
done, she had learned, from seeing the lives of other girls, that her
grandfather's rigorous rule over her was as absurd as it was unjust. She
was eighteen and she was treated as though she were eight. Why, even
Daisy and David had far more liberty of action than she was allowed. She
looked forward with positive dread to the thought of going back to
Greystones and resuming the queer, solitary life she had led there since
Miss Bidwell had left.
But her surprise was unbounded when she learned, as she did later in the
afternoon of the same day, that Greystones was never again to be her
home. "Though, of course, my dear Margaret, Miss Bidwell and I--that is
to say, my future wife and I, for Miss Bidwell is doing me the honour of
becoming my wife on the 9th of next month--will always be pleased to see
you there on very long visits whenever and as often as you like to come."
For it was in that manner that Mr. Anstruther broke the news to Margaret
of his intended marriage to her late governess. As it had already
transpired in conversation with Mrs. Murray, he had spent the last
fortnight in the little German town where Miss Bidwell was staying with
friends and undergoing treatment for her eyes, and it was because he had
given no directions for his letters to be forwarded that Mrs. Murray had
had no answer to the last two she had written him. It was for the purpose
of telling her and Mrs. Murray that he was shortly to be married to Miss
Bidwell that he had come to Windy Gap the previous day and also to learn
if Mrs. Murray would consent to keep his granddaughter with her for some
months longer. However, as he was at some pains to explain to Mrs. Murray
at the sort of family conclave that was being held that morning at
Wrexley Park, "As she has not been with you at all and seeing in what an
ungrateful spirit she treated your kind invitation to her, I cannot
expect you to be willing to receive her into your house. I must therefore
endeavour to make other arrangements for her. I should like to add that
it is in no spirit of vindictiveness towards her that I wish her now to
make her home elsewhere, but because I am convinced that it would not be
for her happiness to reside permanently at Greystones now that her late
governess will be installed there as mistress. Miss Bidwell is a lady of
very strong character and might continue to look upon Margaret as a child
and to treat her as such." He paused for a moment and then added, "I
realise now that a girl of eighteen requires more liberty of thought and
action than I permitted to Margaret."
That was the only admission Mr. Anstruther was ever heard to make that
perhaps his system of education was not as perfect as he had deemed it,
but coming from him it meant a good deal.
But it was then that Lady Strangways had intervened with a suggestion of
her own.
"Let me have her, Mr. Anstruther," she said, "After all, I am her aunt,
and I should like nothing better than to adopt her as my daughter. I have
taken a great fancy to Margaret and she to me. I fancy I could make her
very happy if she would consent to come to me."
"I think her consent may be taken for granted," said Mr. Anstruther in
his old arbitrary manner and quite forgetting his admission of a few
moments back; "she is still considerably under age and is therefore
subject to my orders until she attains her majority."
"But I should not care in the least for a daughter who was ordered to
love me," said Lady Strangways, smiling.
However, when Margaret was summoned to the library and her aunt's
suggestion made known to her, the radiant look of happiness with which
she received it left no one, least of all Lady Strangways, in doubt of
her willingness to obey this last command of her grandfather's.
And so Margaret's immediate future being satisfactorily settled, Mrs.
Murray went back to Windy Gap. She found Eleanor in her room on her knees
before her open trunk which she was busily engaged in packing.
Very deliberately Mrs. Murray closed the trunk, and, perhaps because all
the available chairs were strewn with Eleanor's clothes, sat down on the
lid.
"Lady Strangways has adopted Margaret," she said.
"Oh," exclaimed Eleanor eagerly, "I am glad! Margaret will like that. She
had already fallen in love with her aunt, and will like nothing better
than to be with her. How is she after last night?"
"Quite well, except for a very bad cold in her head. But I will tell you
all about her adventures presently. It is of you I want to speak now."
Suddenly she bent forward and put her hands on Eleanor's shoulders.
"Eleanor, dear," she said, "will you let me adopt you as Lady Strangways
has adopted Margaret? I would not make the offer, dear, if you had any
relations of your own to go to. A lonely, deaf old woman has not much to
offer to a young girl like you with all her life before her, but it would
be such a pleasure to feel that I had you to live for. Hush, don't answer
yet. Lady Strangways has told me all about you--as much, at least, as she
had learned from Margaret. And I know all about your wonderful voice and
the possibilities that lie in front of you, if you can have proper
training. I am not a wealthy woman, but I have more than enough for both
of us, and if you will stay with me we will go to Paris, Milan, or any
other place that Madame Martelli says you ought to go to. And you shall
have the best teaching in Europe."
What answer Eleanor made to this astoundingly splendid offer neither she
nor Mrs. Murray could ever remember. It is doubtful, indeed, if she made
any in words, for after trying once or twice to speak she gave up the
attempt and cried out of pure joy.
But apparently Mrs. Murray was quite satisfied with this answer, for her
kind old face, which had worn an anxious look while waiting for Eleanor's
reply, took on a most contented expression.
"But your dear little home," Eleanor said presently when her tears were
dry, and being such happy ones they had dried very quickly. "How will you
like to leave that?"
"I am tired of my dear little home," said Mrs. Murray briskly. "I want to
travel. Besides, the doctor has told me that in any case I mustn't spend
another winter here until I get my rheumatism out of my system. And so,
my dear, we will be off as soon as you like."
* * * * *
Eleanor and Margaret only met once before the former started for Italy
with Mrs. Murray. Madame Martelli had recommended a course of study at
Milan, and armed with many introductions to musical people of note, they
were to leave almost immediately for that town.
Margaret had motored up to Rose Cottage with her aunt to say good-bye, and
the two girls had gone out into the garden together. By common consent
their steps led them towards the little summer-house where they had held
so many stolen interviews.
"Strictly speaking," said Eleanor, "neither of us deserve to be as
happy as we are. At least," she added, "I know I don't. We behaved
disgracefully--at least I know I did. And yet, in the end, we have got
everything we wanted."
"Would you do it again?" Margaret asked.
Eleanor shook her head most emphatically. "No," she said, "if I live to
be ninety I shall never forget that long night. I would not go through it
again on any account whatever--at least, I mean, you know that I would
not again risk anything happening to you through me."
"Not even for the sake of your voice?" said Margaret rather wonderingly.
"No," said Eleanor firmly, "not even for the sake of my voice. If you had
been killed that night I should never, never have forgiven myself. I feel
now that it would have served me perfectly right if you had tumbled over
the cliff and been killed. It would have been only what I deserved, for
then I should have been obliged to suffer from a life-long remorse."
"Oh!" said Margaret rather doubtfully. Then she laughed. "Don't you
think," she asked, "that it would have been rather hard on me if you had
been punished like that?"
Eleanor laughed too. "I must say that I wasn't thinking of you at the
moment," she said; "to forget other people's feelings was always a trick
of mine, as you know; however, I really am reforming fast. By the way,
have you seen anything of the Danvers since you left them?"
"I saw Hilary in the town, and she stopped to speak to me. She is
reforming, too," Margaret added, with another smile. "I seem to be having
quite an improving effect upon other people's characters. She told me
that one reason why she took such a dislike to me was because she was
afraid that I would accept her sister's offer to go out to Los Angelos
with her in the spring as her governess, and that she had been jealous of
me because she wanted to go herself. But the funny part is," continued
Margaret, "that now she no longer wants to go either; her latest idea is
to go to Girton, and she is going to read hard with a tutor at home all
this winter so that she can pass the necessary examinations in the
spring."
"And a very good thing for her too," said Eleanor; "if she had had more
to occupy herself with this summer, she wouldn't have busied herself so
disastrously with our affairs. I am afraid she made you very unhappy
while you were there, and I, like a selfish oyster, sat tight here and
kept you out of your rightful place."
"I am very glad you did," said Margaret earnestly, "or perhaps I might
never have gone to live with Aunt Helen."
"You mean, you think that Mrs. Murray would never have given you up
to her," said Eleanor with twinkling eyes. "You need not be afraid,
Margaret, Mrs. Murray likes me much better than she would have ever liked
you; she as good as told me so."
"And Aunt Helen likes me best," retorted Margaret.
"All's well that end's well, then," said Eleanor laughing; "though, mind
you, I must candidly confess that I don't believe that that is a very
moral reflection to apply to the end of our conspiracy. However, as we
have been forgiven all round, and as we really did no one any harm, we
need not be very severe on ourselves.
"But don't forget, Margaret, that I was your first friend; the first
girl, with the exception of your dream-friend Eleanor, that you ever
spoke to. And you will write to me regularly, won't you, dear?"
"Oh yes, I will write," Margaret answered, smiling a little wistfully;
"but I do not believe you will answer many of my letters. You will be so
full of your own interests, and so busy getting famous, that I shall soon
drop out of your remembrance."
"Never!" said Eleanor with a passionate vehemence that fairly startled
Margaret. "Please, please, Margaret, get it out of your head that I am
the selfish, hard sort of person you first knew. I shall never forget the
girl who helped me out of my shallows and miseries and set me afloat on
my full sea. You will only come second in my affections to Mrs. Murray,
to whom I shall simply never be able to repay all her kindness and
goodness, so if you want to hurt me, Margaret, accuse me again of
fickleness and ingratitude."
"But I don't wish to hurt you," Margaret protested. "You know, Eleanor,
I am only too pleased to have you for a friend. Let us always be friends,
Eleanor dear."
"We always will," Eleanor declared. "It is the fashion to laugh at girls'
vows of eternal friendship. I laughed at them myself, you know, for have
I not lived four years in a girls' school! But no one need trouble to
laugh at our vows, Margaret, for I know you to be a faithful little soul,
and I owe you far too much ever to cease to love you."
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Rebellion of Margaret, by Geraldine Mockler
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