The Rebellion of Margaret

by Geraldine Mockler

Poor Margaret, she was terribly disillusioned, and bitterly now did she regret the hasty act that had landed her in her present predicament. She must have been mad, she thought gloomily, to have planned and carried out such a brazen piece of imposition; and how could she ever have imagined that she would have had the temerity to have carried it on for weeks and weeks. She knew now that she was incapable of carrying it on for another day, and suddenly the impulse arose in her to go straight to Mrs. Danvers and tell her her real name and confess her shameful behaviour. With that idea in her mind she even started to her feet, but paused before she had taken one step in the direction of the morning-room where Mrs. Danvers, unconscious of the bombshell that her holiday governess had been momentarily minded to throw at her feet, was enjoying her usual after-dinner nap.

It was not that Margaret's courage failed her at the thought of the astounding revelation she had to make. In her present mood confession would have been far easier to her than to continue the deception; it was the thought that she would not be acting fairly to her accomplice that stayed her steps. Eleanor must be told first that she could not go on with it, and their confession must be simultaneous. And, no doubt, Eleanor would be as glad and as thankful as she would be to change back into her proper self. Probably she, too, was finding the deception more than she could bear, and would hail the news that they were to resume their own identities with untold relief. But for one day more Margaret must continue to be Eleanor, much as she disliked the thought. But it would be only for one day more, she thought to herself encouragingly, and then she would be able to hold up her head again and not fear that every chance question was going to unmask her as a cheat and a fraud.

Although Margaret had originally planned to go and see Eleanor the day after she had come to The Cedars, the days had so far slipped past without her being able to do so. But now, as the children were going away early on the morrow, there was nothing to prevent her from going to Windy Gap as soon as she chose in the morning. And Margaret fell asleep that night resolving to ask Mrs. Danvers' permission to go for a walk on the downs directly after breakfast.

Not that Margaret need have feared that any obstacle would be placed in the way of her following her own devices. The younger members of the family seemed only too ready to let her do exactly as she chose, as long as she did not expect them to entertain her. When she came down to breakfast the next morning it was to find the big room empty save for herself. All the young ladies and all the young gentlemen had, Martin informed her, taken their breakfast to the foot of the cliffs that morning.

"My dear," said Mrs. Danvers, when a little later Margaret went up to her room to ask her permission to absent herself for the morning, "do whatever you like. It is so nice of you not to be offended with my young people for not taking you with them, but when I suggested it to Maud just as they were ready to start at five o'clock this morning, she said it was too late to wake you up then as they were just off. I said it was very naughty of them not to have thought of you in time; but there it is, my dear, they just forgot you."

"They just forgot me," Margaret repeated to herself as she went down the drive, and she sighed rather sadly. But her spirits revived when she found herself clear of the houses and on the downs.

Far down on the left the sea glittered and sparkled in the brilliant sunshine, the cliffs were of a dazzling whiteness against the bright blue sky, and in front of her and on her right stretched an apparently limitless extent of down lands. In the hollows nestled farms and small hamlets surrounded by trees, which in that wind-swept region only grew in those more sheltered situations. The air was most invigorating for, in spite of the sunshine, a fresh breeze was blowing off the sea, and this cooled the air, which otherwise might have been too hot to make the quick rate at which Margaret was walking agreeable. Mrs. Danvers' directions were easy to follow, for not only were there signposts to aid her, but when she was only half-way down the long white road which, with many curves, wound down to the shore, she could see the dip in the cliffs that gave the name of Windy Gap to the little cove at their base, and also trace the road that ran inland from it along the bottom of the valley to the little village of the same name that, well sheltered by trees, lay in the middle of it, a mile or more away from the cliff-line.

Recognising that there was then no need for her to follow the road as far as The Cove, Margaret struck across the downs to her right in the direction of the village, thus saving herself two sides of a triangle. A little grey church with a squat tower, a little grey house that was obviously the parsonage, a row of small cottages, a few isolated ones, and a farm or two made up the village, and Margaret, after wandering up and down the little main street wondering where Mrs. Murray's house was, went into the one small general shop, which was also the post-office, that the village boasted, to inquire. She was told to follow the road for another few hundred yards, and then to take the first turning to the left, which would lead her directly to Rose Cottage, which was the name of Mrs. Murray's house, and to nowhere else.

Following these instructions, Margaret presently found herself climbing a very steep, rough lane, that ended abruptly at a pair of wide gates. These opened on to a short, winding drive, and without any hesitation Margaret approached the house, intending to ring and ask boldly for Miss Anstruther. And that would be the last time, she earnestly hoped and believed, that she would be obliged to give her name as Miss Carson. The deception they had played was to end very soon now.

It was a charming house and garden that came into view as Margaret turned the last bend of the little winding drive. The house was little and the garden big, and the latter was literally ablaze with flowers. So was the house, too, but on the present occasion Margaret did not discover that.