The Rebellion of Margaret Part 14

"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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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 s.p.a.ce 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 grat.i.tude 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.