The Rebellion of Margaret Part 20

"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 impa.s.sioned 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----

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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, "G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion. "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 pa.s.s through a greater variety of moods in a shorter s.p.a.ce 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, st.u.r.dy, 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 rea.s.sured 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 circ.u.mstances 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.