Chapter Six.
A Managing Woman.
Meanwhile Ronald and Margot were holding a conclave on the third floor. “I must get away from home at once!” cried the lad feverishly. “I can’t write in this atmosphere of antagonism. I breathe it in the air. It poisons everything I do. If I am to have only three more months of liberty, I must spend them in my own way, in the country with you, Margot, away from all this fret and turmoil. It’s my last chance. I might as well throw up the sponge at once, if we are to stay here.”
“Yes, we must go away; for father’s sake as well as our own,” replied Margot slowly. She leant her head against the back of her chair, and pushed the hair from her brow. Without the smile and the sparkle she was astonishingly like her brother,—both had oval faces, well-marked eyebrows, flexible scarlet lips, and hazel eyes, but the girl’s chin was made in a firmer mould, and the expression of dreamy abstraction which characterised the boy’s face was on hers replaced by animation and alertness.
“Father will be miserable to-night because he flared out at supper; but he’ll flare again unless we put him out of temptation. He likes his own way as much as we like ours, and it’s so difficult for parents to realise that their children are grown-up. We seem silly babies in his eyes, and he longs to be able to shut us up in the nursery until we are sorry, as he used to do in the old days. As for our own plans, Ron, they are all settled. I was just waiting for a quiet opportunity to tell you. I have been busy planning and scheming for some time back, but it was only to-night that my clue arrived. Jack, my emissary, slipped it into my hand after supper. Read that!”
She held out a half sheet of paper with an air of triumph, on which were scribbled the following lines:—
“Name, Elgood. Great walker, climber, etcetera. Goes every June with brother to small lonely inn (Nag’s Head)—Glenaire—six miles’ drive from S—, Perthshire. Scenery fine, but wild; accommodation limited; landlady refuses lady visitors, which fact is supposed to be one of the chief attractions; Elgood reported to be tough nut to crack; chief object of holiday, quiet and seclusion; probably dates two or three weeks from June 15.”
Ronald read, and lifted a bewildered face.
“What does it all mean? How do this man’s plans affect ours? I don’t understand what you are driving at, Margot, but I should love to go to Scotland! The mountains in the dawning, and the shadows at night, and the dark green of the firs against the blue of the heather—oh, wouldn’t it be life to see it all again, after this terrible brick city! How clever of you to think of Scotland!”
“My dear boy, if it had been Southend it would have been all the same. We are going where Mr Elgood goes, for Mr Elgood, you must know, is the editor of The Loadstar—the man of all others who could give you a helping hand. Now, Ron, I am quite prepared for you to be shocked, but I know that you will agree in the end, so please give in as quickly as possible, and don’t make a fuss. You have been sending unknown poems to unknown editors for the last two years, with practically no result. It’s not the fault of your poems—of that I am convinced. In ten years’ time every one will rave about them, but you can’t afford to wait ten years, or even ten months. Our only hope is to interest some big literary light, whose verdict can’t be ignored, and persuade him to plead your cause, or at least to give you such encouragement as will satisfy father that you are not deluded by your own conceit. I’ve thought and thought, and lain awake thinking, till I feel quite tired out, and then at last I hit on this plan,—to find out where Mr Elgood is going for his holidays, and go to the same place, so that he can’t help getting to know us, whatever he may wish. Ordinary methods are useless at this stage of affairs. We must try a desperate remedy for a desperate situation!”
“I’m sure I am willing. I would try any crazy plan that had a possibility of success for the next three months. But yours isn’t possible. The landlady won’t take ladies. That’s an unsurmountable objection at the start.”
But Margot only preened her head with a smile of undaunted self-confidence.
“She’ll take me!” she declared complacently. “She can’t refuse me shelter for a night at least, after such a long, tiring journey, and I’ll be such a perfect dear, that after twenty-four hours she wouldn’t be bribed to do without me! You can leave Mrs McNab to me, Ron. I’ll manage her. Very well then, there we shall be, away from the madding crowd, shut up in that lonely Highland glen, in the quaint little inn; two nice, amiable, attractive young people with nothing to do but make ourselves amiable and useful to our companions. Mr Elgood can’t be young; he is certainly middle-aged, perhaps quite old; he will be very tired after his year’s work, and perhaps even ill. Very well then, we will wait upon him and save him trouble! You shall bicycle to the village for his tobacco and papers, and I’ll read aloud and bring him cups of tea. We won’t worry him, but we’ll be there all the time, waiting and watching for an opportunity. One never knows what may happen in the country. He might slip into the river some day, and you could drag him out. Ronald, wouldn’t it be perfectly lovely if you could save his life!”
The two youthful faces confronted each other breathlessly for a moment, and then simultaneously boy and girl burst into a peal of laughter. They laughed and laughed again, till the tear-drops shone on Margot’s lashes, and Ronald’s pale face was flushed with colour.
“You silly girl! What nonsense you talk! I’m afraid Mr Elgood won’t give me a chance of rescuing him. He won’t want to be bothered with literary aspirants on his summer holiday, and he will guess that I want his help—”
“He mustn’t guess anything of the kind until the end of the time. You must even never mention the word poetry. It would neither be fair to him, nor wise for ourselves. What we have to do is to make ourselves so charming and interesting that at the end of the three weeks he will want to help us as much as we want to be helped. I understand how to manage old gentlemen I’ve had experience, you see, in rather a difficult school. Poor father! I must run down to comfort him before I go to bed. I feel sure he is sitting in the library, puffing away at his pipe, and feeling absolutely retched. He always does after he has been cross.”
Ronald’s face hardened with youthful disapproval. “Why should you pity him? It’s his own fault.”
“That makes it all the harder, for he has remorse to trouble him, as well as disappointment. You must not be hard on the pater, Ron. Remember he has looked forward to having you with him in business ever since you were born, and it is awfully hard on him to be disappointed just when he is beginning to feel old and tired, and would be glad of a son’s help. It is not easy to give up the dream of twenty years!”
Ronald felt conscience-stricken. He knew in his own heart that he would find it next to impossible to relinquish his own dawning ambitions, and the thought silenced his complaints. He looked at his sister and smiled his peculiarly sweet smile.
“You have a wide heart, Margot. It can sympathise with both plaintiff and defendant at the same time.”
“Why, of course!” asserted Margot easily. “I love them both, you see, and that makes things easy. Go to bed, dear boy, and dream of Glenaire! Your chance is coming at the eleventh hour.”
The light flashed in the lad’s eyes as he bent his head for the good-night kiss—a light of hope and expectation, which was his sister’s best reward.
Ron had worked, fretted, and worried of late, and his health itself might break down under the strain, for his constitution was not strong. During one long, anxious year there had been fear of lung trouble, and mental agitation of any kind told quickly upon him. Margot’s thoughts flew longingly to the northern glen where the wind blew fresh and cool over the heather, with never a taint of smoke and grime to mar its God-given purity. All that would be medicine indeed, after the year’s confinement in the murky city! Ron would lift up his head again, like a plant refreshed with dew; body and mind alike would then expand in jubilant freedom.
Margot crept down the darkened staircase, treading with precaution as she passed her sister’s room. The hall beneath was in utter darkness, for it was against Agnes’s economical instincts to leave a light burning after eleven o’clock, even for the convenience of the master of the house. When Mr Vane demurred, she pointed out that it was the easiest thing in the world for him to put a match to the candle which was left waiting for his use, and that each electric light cost—she had worked it all out, and mentioned a definite and substantial sum which would be wasted by the end of the year if the light were allowed to burn in hall or staircase while he enjoyed his nightly read and smoke.
“Would you wish this money to be wasted?” she asked calmly; and thus questioned, there was no alternative but to reply in the negative. It would never do for the head of the house to pose as an advocate of extravagance; but all the same he was irritated by the necessity, and with Agnes for enforcing it.
Margot turned the handle of the door and stood upon the threshold looking across the room.
It was as she had imagined. On the big leather chair beside the tireless grate sat Mr Vane, one hand supporting the pipe at which he was drearily puffing from time to time, the other hanging limp and idle by his side. Close at hand stood his writing-table, the nearer corner piled high with books, papers, and reviews, but to-night they had remained undisturbed. The inner tragedy of the man’s own life had precluded interest in outside happenings. He wanted his wife! That was the incessant cry of his heart, which, diminished somewhat by the passage of the years, awoke to fresh intensity at each new crisis of life! The one love of his youth and his manhood; the dearest, wisest, truest friend that was ever sent by God to be the helpmeet of man—why had she been taken from him just when he needed her most, when the children were growing up, and her son, the longed-for Benjamin, was at his most susceptible age? It was a mystery which could never be solved this side of the grave. As a Christian Mr Vane hung fast to the belief that love and wisdom were behind the cloud; but, though his friends commented on his bravery and composure, no one but himself knew at what a cost his courage was sustained. Every now and then, when the longing was like an ache in his soul, and when he felt weary and dispirited, and irritated by the self-will of the children who were children no longer, then, alas! he was apt to forget himself, and to utter bitter, hasty words which would have grieved her ears, if she had been near to listen. After each of these outbreaks he suffered tortures of remorse and loneliness, realising that by his own deed he had alienated his children; grieving because they did not, could not understand!
Except, perhaps, Margot! Margot, the third little daughter, whose coming in the place of the much-desired boy had been a keen disappointment to both parents. The mother had been doubly tender to the child, as if to compensate for that passing pang; but Mr Vane recalled with contrition that he himself had remained indifferent and neglectful until two or three years later, when at last Ronald had made his tardy appearance. Then ensued constant visits to the nursery, to examine the progress of the son and heir; and after the daily questioning and inspection it was impossible to resist bestowing some little attention on the bewitching curly-headed, chubby-cheeked little damsel who clung to his trouser leg, and raised entreating eyes from the altitude of his knee. Mr Vane felt guiltily conscious of having neglected this child, and now in the content of gratified ambition he proceeded to make good that neglect by petting her to her heart’s desire, until as time went on it became an open question whether his daily visits were not paid even more to the girl than to the boy. Ronald remained his father’s pride, but Margot was his joy, his pet,—in years to come his comfort and companion.
There was more of the dead mother in this last daughter than in either of the elder sisters; she had her mother’s gift of insight and understanding.
This was not the first time of many that she had crept downstairs after the household was in bed, to play David to his Saul, and to-night, as he turned his eyes to the doorway and recognised her slight figure, it was not surprise which he felt, but rather a shamed and uneasy embarrassment. “Margot! It’s very late! Why are you not in bed?”
She shut the door and crossed the room to his side.
“I wanted to talk to you!”
“To remonstrate, I suppose, for what I said at supper! You and Ron are angry, no doubt, and feel yourselves badly used. You have come to fight his battles, as usual.”
“No. I don’t want to fight at all. Just to talk to you a little while, and say I’m sorry.”
She seated herself on the arm of his chair as she spoke, and leant her shoulder carelessly against his; but he edged away, still sore and suspicious.
“Sorry for what?”
“For you! Because you’re sorry. Because I knew you’d be sitting alone, doing nothing else but being sorry. So I came down to put my arms round your dear old neck, and kiss your dear old head, and tell you that I love you. Badly!”
Yes! Margot understood. In just such pretty simple words would his own Margaret have chased away the black spirit years ago. Mr Vane puffed at his pipe, staring fixedly across the room, to conceal the sudden moistening of his eyes, but his figure sank back into its old place, no longer repulsing the caress.
“It’s a hard task for a lonely man to manage a family of children. He gets all the kicks, and none of the thanks!”
“That’s exaggeration, dear—which you are always protesting against in others. We are tiresome and self-willed, but we know very well how much we owe to you, and your care for us. It hurts us as much as it hurts you when we disagree; but we’ve got to live our own lives, father!”
“And you imagine that you know better how to set about it than a man who has lived more than twice as long, and has had ten times the experience?”
Margot hesitated.
“In a way—no; in a way—yes! We know ourselves, daddy, as even you cannot do, and it is impossible for one person, however kind and wise he may be, to lay down the law as to what is to be the object of other lives. We all have our own ambitions; what could satisfy one, would leave another empty and aching. Agnes, for instance, and me! How different we are! Her idea of happiness would be a house worked by machinery, where every hour the same things happened at precisely the same moment, and there were never any cataracts and breaks, and nobody ever came down late to breakfast. I should like to have breakfast in bed, and a new excitement every single day! We are not all cut out of one pattern, and we are not children any longer, dear. Sometimes you forget that. When you were twenty-three, you were married, and had a home of your own.”
“Ron is not twenty-one.”
“When you were twenty-one, did you want your own way, or were you willing for other people to decide for you?”
Mr Vane sighed, and moved his head impatiently.
“Here we are back again at the same old argument! It’s waste of time, Margot. I can’t alter my ideas, but I’ll try to keep a tighter rein over myself for the next few months. We mustn’t have any more scenes like to-night.”
“No.” Margot spoke as gravely as himself. “We mustn’t, daddy, for your sake as well as ours, and therefore I think it wise to remove the cause of your irritation. You said we might go away to the country together, Ron and I, and we have decided on Scotland—on a glen in Perthshire, six miles from the nearest station, where the landlady of a quaint little inn takes in a few boarders. It will be very primitive, I expect, and we shall live on cream and porridge and mountain air, and grow brown and bonnie, and study Nature as we have never had a chance of doing before. Six miles from a station, daddy! There’s seclusion, if you like!”
Mr Vane knitted his brow, uncertain whether to approve or object.
“How did you come to hear of this place, if it is so out of the world?”
“Jack heard of some people who like it so much that they have gone back again and again.” Margot paused for a moment, and then added resolutely, “They go to fish. Probably they will be there again this summer. They are two brothers—one of them is quite old. I don’t know anything about the other. Of course, wherever we stay we shall meet other people—but you don’t mind that, do you, dear? You can trust us not to associate with any one who is not what you would approve?”
“Oh yes. I am not afraid of you in that way, and Ron is sensible enough where you are concerned. He’ll take care of you. I wouldn’t allow you to stay at a big hotel without Agnes or some older woman, but you are welcome to your little inn, if it takes your fancy. If it rains all day, in Highland fashion, Ronald may discover that there are compensations even in Regent’s Park. How soon are you off?”
“The middle of June, if all’s well, and we’ll stay on as long as we are happy and enjoying ourselves. Then there will be your holiday to consider, dear. I thought it would be such a good idea if you took Jack with you, while I went to the seaside with Edith and the boys. Jack and you agree so well, and have so many tastes in common. You would make splendid compagnons de voyage!”
Mr Vane drew back in his chair to stare at her beneath frowning brows.
“If there is one thing in this world more objectionable than another, it’s a managing woman!” he cried emphatically. “Don’t you develop into one, Margot, if you wish to keep any influence over me. I’ve seen danger signals once or twice lately, and I tell you plainly—I won’t stand it! Be satisfied with what you have gained, and carry Ron away to your Highland glen, but leave my holiday alone, if you please. I’m quite capable of choosing a companion for myself if I need one.”
“Yes, dear,” said Margot meekly; but her smile showed no sign of contrition. She had heard this terrible indictment times without number, but as yet there had come no waning of her influence. As she felt her way carefully up the dark staircase a few minutes later, she smiled to herself with complacent satisfaction; for not only had the Scotch trip received the parental sanction, but the first step was taken towards securing a holiday for poor tired Jack. Mr Vane might protest, but the idea once suggested would take root in his mind, and by the time that it developed into action he would imagine that it was entirely his own inspiration. What did it matter? For Jack’s sake even more than his own it was better that he should be so deluded; and Margot was happily above the littleness of desiring to monopolise the credit for her ideas. So long as a point was gained, she was more than content to remain inconspicuously in the background.