The Rebellion of Margaret Part 10

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 rea.s.sure 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 st.i.tches 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 inc.u.mbent 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 t.i.tter ran round the room, and as Margaret stood there, the focus of all eyes, the t.i.tter 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 pa.s.sage 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 diminis.h.i.+ng, 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sionate 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?"