Three Margarets Part 10

"Say what you will, _tres chere_!" said Rita, finally; "glorify your gardener, give him the family wardrobe, the family papers; I keep watch on him, that is all! Let Master Strong beware! Not for nothing was I brought up on a plantation. Have I not known overseers, to say nothing of hosts of servants, white, black, yellow? Your books, _chere Marguerite_, do they teach you the knowledge of persons? Let him beware!

he knows not a Cuban!" and she nodded, and bent her brows so tragically that Margaret could hardly keep her countenance.

"Have you ever acted, Rita?" she asked, following the train of her thoughts. "I am sure you must do it so well."

"_Mi alma!_" cried Rita, "it was my joy! Conchita and I--_ahi_! what plays we have acted in the myrtle-bower in the garden! Will you see me act? You shall."

John Strong and his iniquities were forgotten in a moment. Bidding Margaret call Peggy, and make themselves into an audience in the lower hall, Rita whirled away to her own room, where they could hear her singing to herself, and pulling open drawers with reckless ardour. The two other girls ensconced themselves in a window-seat of the hall and waited.

"Do you know what she is going to do?" asked Peggy.

Margaret shook her head. "Something pretty and graceful, no doubt. She is a born actress, you know."

"I never saw an actress," said Peggy. "She--she is awfully fascinating, Margaret, isn't she?"

Margaret a.s.sented warmly. There was no tinge of jealousy in her composition, or she might have felt a slight pang at the tone of admiring awe in which Peggy now spoke of her Cuban cousin. Things were changed indeed since the night of their arrival.

"It isn't only that she is so awfully pretty," Peggy went on, "but she moves so--and her voice is so soft, and--oh, Margaret, do you suppose I can ever be the least like her, just the least bit in the world?"

She looked anxiously at Margaret, who gazed back affectionately at her, at the round, rosy childish face, the little tilted nose, the fluffy, fair hair. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to stroke and pat Peggy as if she were a kitten, but no one would think of patting Rita.

"Dear," said Margaret softly, "dear Peggy! I like you better as you are.

Of course Rita is very beautiful, and neither you nor I could ever look in the least like her, Peggy. But--it is a great deal better to look like our own selves, isn't it, and learn to appear at our best in a way that suits us? That is what I think. Now that you have learned to do your hair so nicely, and to keep your dress neat--"

"You taught me that," said honest Peggy; "you taught me all that, Margaret. I was a perfect pig when I came here; you know I was."

"Don't call my cousin names, miss! I cannot permit it. But if I have taught you anything, Peggy, it is Rita who has given you the little graces that you have been picking up. I never could have taught you to bow,--and really, you are quite superb since the last lesson. Then, these pretty dresses--"

"Oh, _do_ you think I ought to take them?" broke in Peggy. "Margaret, do you think so? She brought them into my room, you know, and flung them down in a heap, and said they were only fit for dust-cloths--you know the way she talks, dear thing. The lovely brown crepon, she said it was the most hideous thing she had ever seen, and that it was the deed of an a.s.sa.s.sin to offer it to me. And when I said I couldn't take so many, she s.n.a.t.c.hed up the scissors, and was going to cut them all up--she really was, Margaret. What could I do?"

"Nothing, dear child, except take them, I really think. It was a real pleasure to Rita to give them to you, I am sure, and she could not possibly wear a quarter of all the gowns she brought here. But see, here comes our bird of paradise herself. Now we shall see something lovely!"

Rita came down the stairs, singing a little Spanish song. Her dress of black gauze fluttered in wide breezy folds, a gauze scarf floated from her shoulders; she was indeed a vision of beauty, and the two cousins gazed at her with delight. Advancing into the middle of the hall, she swept a splendid courtesy, and suddenly unfurled a huge scarlet fan.

With this, she proceeded to go through a series of astonis.h.i.+ng performances. She danced with it, she sang with it. She closed it, and it was a dagger, and she swooped upon an invisible enemy, and stabbed him to the heart; she flung it open, and it became the messenger of love, over which her black eyes gleamed and glowed in irresistible coquetry. All the time she kept up a dramatic chant, sometimes sinking almost to a whisper, again rising to a shriek of joy or pa.s.sion.

Suddenly she stopped.

"All this is play!" she said, turning to her rapt audience.

"Now you shall see the real thing: you shall see _Cuba libre_. But for this I must have another person; it is impossible to do it alone.

Margaret,--no! Peggy can better do this! Peggy, come, and you shall be Spain, the tyrant."

Peggy looked as if she would much rather be aspiring Cuba, but she came forward obediently, and was bidden to put herself in an att.i.tude of insolent defiance. Peggy scowled and doubled up her fists, thinking of a picture of a prizefighter that she had once seen.

"_Ahi!_" cried Rita, springing upon her. "Not thus! you have the air of a cross child. Thus, do you see? Fold the arms upon the chest, abase the head, bring the eyebrows down till you have to look through them! So!

that is better! Now gnaw your under lip, and draw in your breath with a hiss, thus!" and Rita herself uttered a hiss so malignant that poor Peggy started back in affright. "But be still!" cried Rita, "you are now perfect. You are an object--is she not, Marguerite?--to turn cold the blood." Margaret did not commit herself, being wholly occupied in keeping back the smiles that Peggy's aspect called forth. She certainly was an object, poor dear child, but Rita was so absorbed in her play that she saw nothing absurd even in a tyrant scowling through flaxen eyebrows with a pair of helpless, frightened blue eyes. She now drew back, knelt, flung up her arms, and raised her eyes to heaven. Her lips moved; she was praying for the success of her cause. Rising, she came forward, and with n.o.ble earnestness demanded her freedom. The tyrant was bidden to look about on the ruin and desolation that he had wrought; he was implored by all that was holy, all that was just and n.o.ble, to withdraw from the land where he had long ceased to have any real right of owners.h.i.+p. Peggy, in obedience to whispered orders, shook her head with stubborn violence, and stamped her foot. Cuba then, drawing herself to her full height, threw down her gage of defiance (a tiny pearl-covered glove) and declared war to extermination. The banner of freedom (the fan) was unfurled and waved on high, the national song was chanted, and the war began. Spain, the tyrant, now had a hard time of it. She was pounced upon from one side, then from another; she was surrounded, hustled this way and that; the fan was fluttered wide in her face, poked sharply between her ribs. A single straightforward blow from her strong young arm would have laid the slender Cuba at her feet, but she could strike no blow. She was only to hiss, and clutch the air in impotent fury, and when she did this, Margaret had such an uncontrollable fit of coughing that it almost produced an armistice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "CUBA LIBRE."]

Now Spain was told that she was growing weak, a decrepit, bleeding old woman. Her fate was upon her; let her die!

Obeying the imperious gesture, Peggy sank on her knees, and had the satisfaction of hearing that "the old serpent died bravely." The fan did more and more dreadful execution, and now she lay gasping, dying, on the floor. Standing above her was a triumphant young G.o.ddess, waving the flag of _Cuba libre_, and declaring, with her foot on the neck of the prostrate tyrant, that despotism was dead, and that Freedom was descending from heaven, robed in the Cuban colours, and surrounded by a choir of angels, all singing the national anthem. And here Rita actually pulled from her bosom a small flag showing the Cuban colours, and waved it, crying that the blood-red banner of war (the fan) was now furled forever, and that Cuba and the United States, now twin sisters, would proceed to rule the world after the most approved methods. This ended the scene, and the two actors stood before Margaret, one very red and sheepish, the other glowing like flame with pride and enthusiasm, awaiting her plaudits. Margaret clapped and shouted as loud as she could, and expressed her admiration warmly enough; but Rita shook her head and sighed.

"Ah, for an audience!" she cried. "To pour out one's heart, to live the life of one's country, and have but one to see it,--it is sad, it is tragic. Do I exaggerate, Marguerite?--it is death-dealing!" Then she praised Peggy, and told her that she had made a magnificent tyrant, and had died as game as possible. "Ah!" she said. "What it would be if you could only do something real for Cuba! I would shed my blood, would pour out its ultimate drops (Rita's idioms were apt to become foreign when she was excited), but if you also could do something, my cousins, what glory, what joy for you; and it may be possible. No, hus.h.!.+ not a word!

At present, I breathe not a whisper, I am the grave. But there may come a day, an hour, when I shall call to you with the voice of a trumpet; and you,--you will awaken, halves of my heart; you will spring to my side, you will--Marguerite, you are laughing! At what, I ask you?"

"I beg your pardon, dear," said Margaret. "I was only thinking that a trumpet might really be needed, since a bell is not loud enough. The dinner-bell rang five minutes ago, and Elizabeth has come to see what we are about."

But at sight of Elizabeth, standing demurely in the doorway, _Cuba libre_ vanished, and there remained only a very pretty young lady in the sulks, who had to be coaxed for five minutes more before she would come to her dinner.

"Am I seventeen, or thirty-seven?" thought Margaret, as she finally led the way to the dining-room.

CHAPTER IX.

DAY BY DAY.

"Oh! what a mystery The study is of history!"

For some time things continued to go smoothly and pleasantly at Fernley.

The days slipped away, with nothing special to mark any one, but all bright with flowers and gay with laughter. The three girls were excellent friends, and grew to understand each other better and better.

The morning belonged rather to Margaret and Peggy; Rita was always late, and often preferred to have her breakfast brought to her room, a practice of which the other girls disapproved highly. They were always out in the garden by half past eight, with breakfast a thing of the past, and the day before them. The stocking-basket generally came with them, and waited patiently in a corner of the green summer-house while they took their "const.i.tutional," which often consisted of a run through the waving fields, or a walk along the top of the broad stone wall that ran around the garden; or again, a tree-top excursion, as they called it, in the great swing under the chestnut-trees. Then, while they mended their stockings, Margaret would give Peggy a "talk-lesson," the only kind that she was willing to receive, on English history, with an occasional digression to the Trojan war, or the Norse mythology, as the case might be. Peggy detested history, and knew next to nothing of it, and this was a grievous thing to Margaret.

"First William the Norman, Then William his son; Henry, Stephen and Henry, Then Richard and John,"

had been one of her own nursery rhymes, and she could not understand any one's not thrilling responsive when the great names were spoken that filled her with awe and joy, or with burning resentment.

"But, my dear," she would cry, when Peggy yawned at Canute, and said he was an old stupid, "my dear, think of the place he holds! think of the things he did!"

"Well, he's dead!" Peggy would reply; "I don't see what good it does to bother about him now. Who cares what he did, all that time ago?"

"But," Margaret explained patiently, "if he had not done the things, Peggy, don't you see, everything would have been different. We must know, mustn't we, how it all came about that our life is what it is now?

We must see what we came from, and who the men were that made the changes, and brought us on and up."

"I don't see why!" said Peggy; "I don't see what difference it makes to me that Alfred played the harp. I don't want to play the harp, and I never saw any one who did. It is rather fun about the cakes, but he was awfully stupid to let them burn, seems to me."

Not a thrill could Margaret awaken by any recital of the sorrows and sufferings of the Boy Kings, or even of her favourite Prince Arthur.

When her voice broke in the recital of his piteous tale, Peggy would look up at her coolly and say, "How horrid of them! But he would have been dead by this time anyway, Margaret; why do you care so much?"

Still Margaret persevered, never losing hope, simply because she could not believe that the subject itself could fail to interest any one in his senses. It was her own fault a good deal, she tried to think; she did not tell the story right, or her voice was too monotonous,--Papa was always telling her to put more colour into her reading,--or something.

The history itself could not be at fault.

"And, Peggy dear; don't think I want to be lecturing you all the time, but--these are things that one _has_ to know something about, or one will appear uneducated, and you don't want to do that."

"I don't care. I don't see the use of this kind of education, Margaret, and that is just the truth. Ma never had any of what you call education,--she was a farmer's daughter, you know, and had always lived on the prairie,--and she has always got on well enough. Hugh talks just like you do--"

"Please, dear, _as_ you do, not _like_."