Margaret Montfort Part 20

"Good-bye!" cried Miss Sophronia, out of the window. "Bless you, dearest John! Margaret, my love, I shall always think of you most tenderly, believe me, in spite of everything. It is impossible for me to harbour resentment. No, my child, I shall always love you as a sister. I have taken the old vinaigrette with me, as a little souvenir of you; I knew it would give you pleasure to have me use it. Bless you! And, John, if you want me to look up some good servants for you, I know of an excellent woman who would be the very thing--"

"Willis!" said Mr. Montfort again. "You'll miss that train, Sophronia, if you don't,--_bon voyage!_"

Mr. Montfort stood for some seconds looking after the carriage as it drove off; then he drew a long breath, and threw out his arms, opening his broad chest.

"Ha!" said he. "So that is over. Here endeth the-- What, crying, May Margaret? Come and sit here beside me, child; or shall we come out and see the roses? Really astonishing to have this number of roses in August; but some of these late kinds are very fine, I think."

Chatting quietly and cheerfully, he moved from one shrub to another, while Margaret wiped her eyes, and gradually quieted her troubled spirit.

"Thank you, Uncle John!" she said, presently. "You know, don't you? You always know, just as papa did. But--but I never heard of any one's doing such a thing, did you?"

"Didn't you, my dear? Well, you see, you didn't know your Cousin Sophronia when she was a girl. And--let us be just," he added. "You, belonging to the new order, have no idea of what many people thought and did forty years ago. I have no doubt, from my recollection of my Aunt Melissa, Sophronia's mother, that she read all her children's letters. I know she searched my pockets once, thinking I had stolen sugar; I hadn't, that time, and my white rat was in my pocket, and bit her, and I was glad."

Seeing Margaret laugh again, Mr. Montfort added, in a different tone, "And now, I must see those boys."

The children were sent for to the study, where they remained for some time. Basil and Susan D. came out looking very grave; they went up to the nursery in silence, and sat on the sofa, rubbing their heads together, and now and then exchanging a murmur of sympathy and understanding. Merton remained after the others, and when he emerged from the fatal door, he was weeping profusely, and refused to be comforted by Elizabeth; and was found an hour after, pinching Chico's tail, and getting bitten in return. Telling Margaret about it afterward, Mr. Montfort said:

"Basil and the little girl tell a perfectly straight story. It is just as I supposed; they were trying the old ghost trick that we other boys, your father and Richard and I, Margaret, played on Sophronia years ago.

If the thunder-storm had not brought you all up-stairs, there would have been some very pretty ghost-gliding, and the poor soul would very likely have been frightened into a real fit instead of an imaginary one.

Children don't realise that sort of thing; I certainly did not, nor my brothers; but I think these two realise it now, and they are not likely to try anything of the kind again. As for the noise,--"

"Yes, Uncle John, I am really much more puzzled about that noise, for, of course, I saw the other foolishness with my eyes."

"Well!" said Mr. Montfort, comfortably, "we used to make that noise with a thing we called a roarer; I don't know whether they have such things now. You take a tomato-can, and put a string through it, and then you-- It really does make a fine noise, very much what you describe. Yes, I have that on my conscience, too, Margaret. You see, I told you I knew this kind of child, and so I do, and for good reason. But Basil won't say anything at all about the matter. He says it was not his hunt, and he will tell all that he did, but cannot tell on others; which is entirely proper. But when I turned to that other little scamp, Merton, I could get nothing but floods of tears, and entreaties that I would ask Frances. 'Frances knows all about it!' he said, over and over."

"And have you seen Frances?"

"N--no," replied Mr. Montfort, rather slowly. "I am going to see Frances now."

Accordingly, a few minutes later, Frances, bustling about her kitchen, became aware of her master standing in the doorway. She became aware of him, I say, but it was with "the tail of her eye" only; she took no notice of him, and went on rattling dish-pans at an alarming rate. She appeared to be house-cleaning; at all events, the usually neat kitchen was in a state of upheaval, and the chairs and tables, tubs and clothes-horses, were so disposed that it was next to impossible for any one to enter. Moreover, Frances apparently had a toothache, for her face was tied up in a fiery red handkerchief; and when Mr. Montfort saw that handkerchief, he looked grave, and hung about the door more like a schoolboy than a dignified gentleman and the proprietor of Fernley House.

"Good morning, Frances," he said at length, in a conciliatory tone.

"Good morning, sir," said Frances; and plunged her mop into a pail of hot water.

"You have a toothache, Frances? I am very sorry."

"Yes, sir, I have; thank you, sir."

"A--Frances--I came to ask if you can tell me anything about the strange noise that frightened the ladies so, last night and the night before."

"No, sir," said Frances. "I can't tell you nothing about it. There do be rats enough in this house, Mr. Montfort, to make any kind of a noise; and I do wish, sir, as the next time you are in town, you would get me a rat-trap as is good for something. There's nothing but trash, as the rats won't look at, and small blame to them. I can't be expected to do without things to do with, Mr. Montfort, and I was saying so to Elizabeth only this morning."

"I will see to the traps, Frances. But this noise that I am speaking of; Master Merton says--"

"And I was wishful to ask you, sir, if you would please tell Master Merton to keep out of my kitchen, and not come bothering here every hour in the day. The child is that greedy, he do eat himself mostly ill every day, sir, as his father would be uneasy if he knew it, sir. And to have folks hanging round my kitchen when I am busy is a thing I never could abide, Mr. John, as you know very well, sir, and I hope you'll excuse me for speaking out; and if you'd go along, sir, and be so kind, maybe I could get through my cleaning so as to have dinner not above half an hour or so late, though I'm doubtful myself, harried as I have been."

"I really don't see what I am to do with Frances," said Mr. Montfort, as he went back to his study; "she grows more and more impracticable. She will be giving me notice to quit one of these days, if I don't mind. I am very sure the house belongs to her, and not to me. But, until Master Gerald Merryweather comes back, I really don't see how I am to find out who worked that roarer."

CHAPTER XVI.

PEACE.

Peace reigned once more at Fernley House; peace and cheerfulness, and much joy. It was not the same peace as of old, when Margaret and her uncle lived their quiet tete-a-tete life, and nothing came to break the even calm of the days. Very different was the life of to-day. The peace was spiritual purely, for the lively and varied round of daily life gave little time for repose and meditation, at least for Margaret. She had begun to give the children short but regular lessons in the morning, finding that the day was not only more profitable but pleasanter for them and for all, if it began with a little study. And the lessons were a delight to her. Remembering her struggles with Peggy,--dear Peggy,--it was a joy to teach these young creatures the beginnings of her beloved English history, and to see how they leaped at it, even as she herself had leaped so few years ago. They carried it about with them all day.

Margaret never knew whom to expect to dinner in these days. Now a scowling potentate would stalk in with folded arms and announce that he was William the Conqueror, and demand the whereabouts of Hereward the Wake (who was pretty sure to emerge from under the table, and engage in sanguinary combat, just after he had brushed his hair, and have to be sent up to the nursery to brush it over again); now a breathless pair would rush in, crying that they were the Princes in the Tower, and would she please save them, for that horrid old beast of a Gloster was coming after them just as fast as he could come. Indeed, Margaret had to make a rule that they should be their own selves, and no one else, in the evening when Uncle John came home, for fear of more confusion than he would like.

"But I get so _used_ to being Richard," cried Basil, after a day of crusader-life. "You can't do a king well if you have to keep stopping and being a boy half the time. Don't you see that yourself, Cousin Margaret?"

Yes, Margaret saw that, but she submitted that she liked boys, and that it was trying for a person in private life, like herself, to live all day in royal society, especially when royalty was so excited as the Majesty of England was at this juncture.

"Oh, but why can't you be some one too, Cousin Margaret? I suppose Susan D. would hate to give up being Berengaria, after you gave her that lovely gold veil--I say, doesn't she look bul--doesn't she look pretty in it? I never thought Susan D. would come out pretty, but it's mostly the way you do her hair--what was I saying, Cousin Margaret? Oh, yes, but there are other people you could be, lots and lots of them.

And--Merton doesn't half do Saladin. He keeps getting mad when I run him through the body, and I _can't_ make him understand that I don't mean those nasty, fat, black things in ponds, when I call him 'learned leech,' and you know he _has_ to be the leech, it says so in the 'Talisman.' And so perhaps you would be Saladin, and he can be Sir Kenneth, though he's too sneaky for him, too. Or else you could be the hermit, Cousin Margaret. Oh, do be the hermit! Theodoric of Engedi, you know, the Flail of the Desert, that's a splendid one to do. All you have to do is keep jumping about and waving something, and crying out, 'I am Theodoric of Engedi! I am the Flail of the Desert!' Come on, Cousin Margaret, oh, I say, do!" And Susan D., tugging at her cousin's gown, shouted in unison, "Oh, I say, do, Cousin Margaret!"

If any one had told Margaret Montfort, three months before this, that she would, before the end of the summer, be capering about the garden, waving her staff, and proclaiming herself aloud to be the highly theatrical personage described above, she would have opened her eyes in gentle and rather scornful amazement. But Margaret was learning many things in these days, and among them the art of being a child. Her life had been mostly spent with older people; she had never known till now the rapture of being a little girl, a little boy. Now, seeing it in these bright faces, that never failed to grow brighter at sight of her, she felt the joy reflected in her own face, in her own heart; and it was good to let all the quiet, contained maiden ways go, once in a while, and just be a child with the children, or a Flail of the Desert, as in the present instance.

John Montfort, leaning on the gate, watched the pretty play, well pleased. "They have done her all the good in the world," he said to himself. "It isn't only what she has done for them, bless her, but for her, too, it has been a great thing. I was selfish and stupid to think that a young creature could go on growing to fulness, without other young creatures about it. How will she feel, I wonder, about their going? How would she like--"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE 'FLAIL OF THE DESERT.'"]

At this moment he was discovered by Basil, who charged him with a joyous shout. "Oh, here is Uncle John! Oh, Uncle John, don't you want to be Saladin, please? Here's Merton has hurt his leg and gone off in a sulk, and I'll get you a scimitar in a minute--it's the old sickle, and Willis says it's so rusty you can't really do much mischief with it; and here's the Hermit of Engedi, you know, and he can shout--"

But, alas, for the Lion-hearted! When he turned to summon his hermit, he saw no flying figure, brandishing a walking-stick and crying aloud, but a demure young lady, smoothing her hair hurriedly and shaking out the folds of her dress, as she hastened to meet her uncle.

"Bravo!" said Uncle John. "But why did you stop, Meg? It wouldn't have been the first time I had played Saladin, I a.s.sure you!"

"Oh, uncle! I am really too much out of breath to play any more. And besides, it is near tea-time, and the children must go and get ready. I will come in a moment, Susan dear, and do your hair. Are there any letters, Uncle John? Oh, two, from the girls; how perfectly delightful!

Oh, I must run up, but we'll read them after tea, shall we, Uncle John?"

"With all my heart, my dear; and I have a letter, too, about which I shall want to consult you. Go now, or Susan D. will be trying to braid her own hair, a thing to be avoided, I have observed."

Tea over, and Mr. Montfort seated at ease with his cigar, the children engaged in an enchanting game of Bat (played with worn-out umbrellas, from which the sticks had been taken: this game is to be highly recommended where there is s.p.a.ce for flapping and swooping), Margaret opened her letters; reopened them, rather, for it must be confessed that she had peeped into both while she was braiding her own hair and changing her dress for the pretty evening gown her uncle always liked to see.

"Peggy is actually off for school, Uncle John. It does not seem possible that we are in September, and the summer really gone. She seems in high spirits over it, dear child. Listen!

"DARLING DEAREST MARGARET:

"I am going to-morrow; I waited till the last minute, so that I could tell you the last of me. My trunk is almost all packed, and I really think I have done it pretty well. Thank you, ever and ever and ever so much, for the nice things to tie up my shoes in. They are just lovely, and so is the shoe-bag to hang against the wall. I mean to put away every shoe just the very minute I take it off, and not have them kicking about the closet floor at all, ever. And the combing-sack! Oh, Margaret, it is a perfect beauty! Ever so much too pretty to do my hair in, and mother says so, too, but I shall, because you made it for me to, and think of you all the time I am, and--

"I got a little mixed there, but you will know what I mean, dearest Margaret. Tell Uncle John I am so perfectly delighted with the lovely ring, I don't know _what_ to _do_. Oh, Margaret, you know how I always wanted a ring, and how I used to admire that sapphire of Rita's; and to think of having a sapphire ring myself--why, I can hardly believe it even now!

I couldn't go to sleep for ever so long last night, just watching it in the moonlight. Of course I shall write to Uncle John and thank him myself, but I couldn't wait just to let him know how happy I was. (Margaret, if you think he would like it, or at least wouldn't mind it, you might give him a hug just now and say I sent it, but don't unless you are _perfectly sure_ he wouldn't mind, because you know how I _love_ Uncle John, even if I am just the least bit afraid of him, and I'm sure that is natural when you think what a goose I am.)"

Margaret paused, laughing, to throw her arms around her uncle, and tell him that this was "Peggy's hug;" then she went on:

"I was so glad to get your last letter, and to hear all about dear, darling Fernley, and Uncle John, and Elizabeth and Frances, and all the funny things those funny children have been doing. Margaret, they are almost exactly like us children when we were their age. I never began to think about growing up till I read about how they carry on, and then saw that we didn't act so any more, Jean, and Flora, and I.

Jean is younger than me, of course, but she's more grown up, I really think. I think you must have a lovely time, now that--well, you said I mustn't call names, and so I won't, but I know just exactly what kind of a person she was, Margaret, and _so do you_, and you can't deny it, so now!