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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.