Part 25 (1/2)
”As I was saying, madam,” Mr. Anstruther had gone on directly he had finished with Hilary, ”my granddaughter has been known to you by the name of Eleanor Carson. This,” and he waved his hand in the direction of Eleanor, ”is the--the young lady whom you engaged to be your holiday governess. She met my granddaughter at a railway station some way up the line, and decided to change names and addresses. My granddaughter came here, and Miss Carson went up to the house of a friend where I had arranged for my granddaughter to stay; and she deceived this lady as completely as my granddaughter has deceived you.”
”Miss Carson not Miss Carson at all!” murmured Mrs. Danvers. ”Well, of all the extraordinary things I ever heard! And so it is you,” glancing at Eleanor, ”that my old friend Miss McDonald sent down to me. Dear me, who would have believed such a thing! I used to wonder sometimes why Miss Carson--Miss Anstruther, I should say--was always so reluctant to speak about Hampstead. Now I suppose it was because she had never been there. Yes, that must have been it. And that accounts, too, for Miss Carson--Miss Anstruther, I mean--speaking in such a queer, stiff way. I think you said she had been brought up entirely at home. It used to seem odd to me that Miss Carson--Miss Anstruther, I mean--should have been a governess in a girls' school for years and years. I forget how long she said she had been at Hampstead, but I know it was a long time, and yet she did not understand a word of slang. That was when she first came here. She has learned to speak rather differently now.”
”I regret to hear it, madam,” said Mr. Anstruther, who had, with difficulty, restrained himself from interrupting Mrs. Danvers' rambling speech. ”I abhor slang in men, women, and boys. In girls I would not tolerate it for one instant. But all this is beside the point. And now, if you please, will you be so kind as to summon my granddaughter. I wish to have an interview with her immediately.”
His look was so exceedingly stern, his tone so fraught with ominous meaning as to the reception his erring granddaughter would get when she entered his presence, that scarcely one of the young Danvers but felt glad that the terrific scolding he so evidently had in store for her must inevitably be postponed for the present. And perhaps by the time he did see her his wrath would have had time to cool.
”Where is my granddaughter?” he demanded.
”That is what we should all like to know, sir,” said Geoffrey, ”but what none of us do know. We were talking of that when you came in. I am sorry to say she has left our house. She has run away. The rest of us were out, and she had a sort of quarrel--a misunderstanding--with one of my sisters----”
”With the one, no doubt, who ransacked her boxes and called her a thief and a burglar,” interpolated Mr. Anstruther.
”And she ran straight out of the house. We are hoping she means to come back, but we are very much afraid she will not.”
”I am dreadfully upset about it,” said Mrs. Danvers helplessly. ”If you had only come an hour--even half an hour--ago, you would have found her here safe and sound. If anything happens to her--such a dreadful foggy night as it is, too--I shall never forgive myself for not having known she was going to run away, and stopped her.”
”I fail to see any reason for antic.i.p.ating that harm will come to her,”
said Mr. Anstruther harshly. He turned to Eleanor, ”Perhaps you, Miss Carson, as her accomplice in this disgraceful business, can inform us where she would be likely to go?”
”She would come up to me,” Eleanor answered; ”that was the agreement we had both made, that if either of us were suddenly found out, or couldn't for any reason continue any longer to be the other, we would come and say so at once. She knows the way quite well; she often came up in the afternoon to see me.”
”Yes, but it is one thing to find your way there on a summer's afternoon,” said Mrs. Danvers nervously, ”but quite another on a night like this. Why, the fog is now so thick that you can't see a yard in front of you down here even; and if it is like that here, it will be ten times worse up on the downs, and instead of finding her way to Windy Gap, she would be far more likely to walk in the opposite direction.”
”Oh, don't say that, mother, for the opposite direction would lead her straight over the cliffs,” said Geoffrey, and was immediately sorry for his thoughtless remark when he saw how alarmed Mrs. Danvers became; ”but I agree with you that she is not very likely to arrive at Windy Gap in such a fog as this, so I suggest that we turn ourselves into a search party without loss of time, and go and look for her.”
”One minute, if you please,” said Mr. Anstruther; ”when you say 'we,' to whom do you refer?”
”Why, to my brothers and myself,” Geoffrey answered; ”you Noel, and Jack, and Edward. Of course, you will all turn out and search?”
”Rather!” they answered in chorus, and from their eager voices it was easy to see that they looked upon the expedition as a novel and delightful adventure.
”I intend also to accompany you,” said Mr. Anstruther.
”Just as you like, of course, sir,” said Geoffrey, in rather a doubtful tone, ”but if you will excuse my saying so, we would get on quicker without you. You see we know every yard of the way, and my idea was for us all to scatter when we get to the top of the downs, and search separately. We shall cover more ground in less time that way; for I feel perfectly certain that though Miss Anstruther may have started from here with every intention of getting to Windy Gap, she will never find it. The mist will be almost as thick as a London fog, and she will get hopelessly lost. But just on the chance that she may have got as far, I will go up to Windy Gap on my motor bicycle and find out, for it is no good our spending hours searching about on the downs if she is safe and sound there all the time.”
He left the room as he spoke, and the three younger boys slipped out quickly after him, each fearing to be the last, lest Mr. Anstruther should persist in accompanying them. The latter, however, recognising that Geoffrey was right, and that his presence would be a hindrance rather than a help, had already given up the idea of joining them.
For once, as Edward remarked, Geoffrey's motor bicycle happened to be in full working order, and in less than five minutes he had his acetylene lamp lighted, and had gone vigorously hooting down the drive. It was then half-past seven; he expected, he said, to be easily back by a quarter past eight with the news whether the fugitive had reached Windy Gap or not. Edward, however, had shaken his head at that, and replied that, what with the bad roads and the fog, he could not be back in anything like that time.
Hardly had Geoffrey gone than the boys were joined by Maud.
”I am coming with you three,” she said. ”Mother has just asked Mr.
Anstruther to dinner, and though I'm pretty hungry, I don't fancy the meal in his society. What a waxy old gentleman it is! and how mother will catch it if she airs any of the slang she has picked up from us!”
The three boys laughed, and when presently, armed with lanterns and bicycle lamps, they set off down the drive, they all amused themselves by repeating and jesting over as many of Mr. Anstruther's caustic remarks as they could remember. They agreed among themselves that poor Margaret must indeed have an awful time of it with him, and that she was highly to be commended for the pluck she had shown in calmly escaping from his authority directly she got the chance.
”But who would have thought she had it in her to go in for a thing of this sort?” said Noel. ”The cool cheek of it beats anything I ever heard.
I say, I wonder what the other girl--the real Eleanor Carson--is like?
She looked frightfully subdued, didn't she? I expect she has been catching it from him pretty well.”