MARGIE'S VENTURE

OR

WHEN THE SHIP COMES HOME

BY

MARY E. ROPES

AUTHOR OF

"THE MYSTERY OF HOYLE'S MOUTH," "VASSIA," ETC. ETC.

PUBLISHED AT 57 AND 59 LUDGATE HILL, E.C.

BY THE SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION, LONDON

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. HARRY'S FAREWELLS

II. AT GARDEN LODGE

III. HALF-SISTERS

IV. PLOTTING AGAINST THE INNOCENT

V. THE ACCUSATION

VI. THE PLOT FAILS

VII. PENITENCE AND PEACE

MARGIE'S VENTURE

CHAPTER I.

HARRY'S FAREWELLS.

THEY were a great contrast—these two—as they stood under the trees, in the deepening twilight of the shady garden.

She—Fay Grayling—very youthful-looking, even for her eighteen years, with her pretty, fair, flower-like face, her bright if somewhat shallow blue eyes, her light curly hair, and pouting red lips, which seemed like the unspent inheritance of childhood itself.

He—Harry Mayne—full ten years older—with his sturdy, well-developed manliness of form, his grave, earnest face, and quiet manner. The well-opened, steady eyes, and firm mouth and chin, spoke to force of character and tenacity of purpose; but there was gentleness too, and an infinite capacity for tenderness, in that dark, strong face.

Fay and Harry had plighted their mutual troth some few weeks before, and were now parting; for he was about to rejoin, as first officer, the big steamship which would carry him far away on a long year's cruise.

There were tears on Fay's round baby-cheeks as Harry at last unclasped from his arm the little hands that clung there.

"Time is going, dear; I must be off," he said firmly, though his lip quivered. "No, Fay, don't try to keep me. It is not true kindness, believe me, child. Where are your mother and sisters? I should like just to say good-bye to them. They have been so very good to me."

"They are all in the drawing-room," replied Fay, wiping her eyes; and, leading the way into the house, she opened a door, and ushered Harry in.

Mrs. Grayling and three girls were sitting round the table sewing by the light of a shaded lamp.

"Here's Harry come to say good-bye," said Fay. "He sails early to-morrow from Southampton, and he must catch the boat-train to-night."

"So you are really going, Harry?" said Mrs. Grayling. "We shall miss you very much, and our poor little Fay here will be quite inconsolable. You are one of us now, you know."

"How long shall you be away, Harry?" inquired Mattie, the eldest daughter.

"Over a year, I believe," replied the young man.

"That is a long time for you and Fay to be separated," remarked Lettie, the second girl.

All this time, Margie, the third, said nothing. Her head was bent low over her work, and she did not even look up.

"Well, I must not stay," said Harry; "to lose that train would be to lose my berth, and I can't afford that. Good-bye, Mrs. Grayling; good-bye, dear girls." And he kissed them all affectionately, as though already they were his mother and sisters.

Margie was the last. As he put his hand on her shoulder, she raised her flushed face from her work, and he saw those great grey eyes of hers brimming over with tears, and the lips were quivering as he pressed his own upon them. Somehow or other, the sight of her grief surprised and touched him, and as he lingered a moment longer with her hand in his, he heard her whisper, "God bless you, dear, dear Harry!"

Fay went with him to the door; she was crying again, and she clung to him as he bade her a fond farewell. But even lovers' farewells must end at last, for trains and tides do not wait for them. And in another minute, the door had closed and Harry was gone, while in Fay's ears were ringing his last words, "Be true to me, Fay, be true!"

* * * * * *

"Oh dear me! Was ever a poor mother in such a dilemma? Just look here, girls! Another letter from the lawyer, and again bad news!" And Mrs. Grayling heaved a gusty sigh, and, sinking into the nearest arm-chair, stretched out a big, bony hand, in which was displayed the unwelcome letter, open to any one who wished to read it.

It was snatched from her, half playfully, half impatiently, by Mattie, a tall young woman of about five-and twenty, rather bony and angular, like the mother, but with a clever, sensible face, that atoned for her rather masculine figure, and bore no trace of the fretful anxieties that had made lines in Mrs. Grayling's worn countenance.

"Let me see too," said Lettie, who was a round, good-tempered-looking, sleepy-eyed, tow-haired girl of twenty-three or thereabouts; and she rose from her seat and came round behind Mattie, in order to read the letter over her shoulder. Margie, who was twenty-one years old; Fay, who was eighteen; and Nat, who was between nineteen and twenty, completed the family party; and all were eagerly waiting for the news in the lawyer's letter.

"Yes, mother, it is hard on you!" said Mattie, as she ran her eye through the one closely written page. "Only three months ago you heard that your income was to be reduced a hundred pounds a year, and now the value of the investments seems to have again fallen, and you are to lose another hundred, and probably more."

"I hardly know what I shall do," said Mrs. Grayling. "When your dear father was alive, he always attended to business matters, and even the household accounts; but now I am burdened with so many things, and what with this reduction of income and the increasing expenses of Fan's and Eva's schooling, I really do not know how I shall make both ends meet, unless—unless—"

"I know what you are going to say, mother," interrupted Margie. "Unless some of us marry, and take ourselves off your hands."

"Yes, my dear, that is just what I was going to say, and I think you will see that for one or two of you to have homes of your own would save my pocket and lift a load of care from my heart."

"Poor mother!" said Margie, coming nearer, and putting an arm round her mother's gaunt shoulders. "I daresay it would be a good thing, as you say; but it takes two to make a marriage, as it does a quarrel, and you see we have no gay cavaliers to serenade and carry us off; and even Fay's sailor boy," added Margie, with a sudden flush on her clear cheek, "is of no practical use at present."

Margie and her young sister Fay were the only really good-looking members of the Grayling family. Margie was tall, like Mattie, but not angular and bony. On the contrary, she had one of those natural, pliant figures upon which almost any sort of dress looks comfortable and becoming, and whose ease and grace of movement seem absolutely spontaneous and unstudied. Fay was more like Lettie, both in face and figure. But her complexion was clear and bright, her hair a pretty blonde shade, instead of dead tow-colour; her eyes had none of the sleepy languor, and her figure, though plump, none of the lumpiness which spoiled Lettie's looks.

"My dear," remonstrated Mrs. Grayling, with a dark solemnity which was in marked contrast to Margie's cheerful manner, "you should be the last to say there are no gentlemen whom you could marry. I know of two who would be thankful to have you, only that you are so dreadfully fastidious."

Margie's face became grave all of a sudden; her laughing grey eyes grew thoughtful, and her pleasant mouth assumed an expression almost grim in its determination.

"If you mean Sir Peter Brooks and Mr. Elmes," said the girl, "I—"

"Why, of course I mean them," replied the mother quickly. "And only think what a marriage with one of them would mean! A comfortable, nay, a luxurious home, an indulgent husband, and all the pleasures that money and position can give."

"Sir Peter is an old dear!" responded the girl warmly. "There's nothing I would not do for Sir Peter except marry him. As for Mr. Elmes, he is a vulgar, purse-proud snob, with a large family of horrid grown-up children. No, thank you, mother; I'd rather be an old maid."

"You children think only of yourselves," sighed Mrs. Grayling, putting on her most fretful and disconsolate face. "You never consider me and all my troubles and worries, or how you can help me in these straits I am come to."

"I do not think we quite deserve your reproaches, mother," said Mattie, folding the letter; "there is not one of us who is not willing to do our utmost to lessen the burden upon you. I am the eldest, and I will make the first proposal. Let Fan and Eva come home, and I will teach them myself; that will save a hundred a year, will it not?"

"There's not much I can do, for I only understand one thing," said Lettie; "but I am willing to do that. Send our cook away, mother, and I will cook for the family. That will save twenty-five pounds at least."

"And I'll give up all thought of going to college," said Nat, the youth, who had not yet spoken. "I will try for a situation somewhere. Perhaps a clerk's in an office."

"And I will help with the parlour-work," said Fay, "and you can dismiss one of the maids. If we all take our share of the duties, we can get along quite well with one servant."

All this time Margie had not spoken. At last she said, "I do not know enough to teach, and if I take up other work I would rather it were not at home. I must think what I can do."

Then the conference broke up, and each member of the family went to his or her own duties.

For a few days Margie was wonderfully silent and preoccupied; but she gave no explanation of the change in her manner, and her sisters rallied her on it in vain, and teased her because during these days she was always studying the newspapers.

But Margie had a very definite object in view, and when she eventually came across the following advertisement, it struck her that she had found what she had been in search of:

WANTED, by an invalid widow lady, a respectable young person of intelligence and refinement, as attendant. She must have perfect health, pleasant looks, and a good temper. Liberal salary and a comfortable home to a suitable person. Personal interview indispensable.—Apply, Mrs. BEACH, Garden Lodge, River Park, Surrey.

"I may not get the post, but I'll try for it," said Margie to herself.

CHAPTER II.

AT GARDEN LODGE.

THE personal interview to which Margie readily consented did more for her than the written character which she had forwarded.

When Margie appeared, clad in a neat, close-fitting black dress, immaculate collar and blameless cuffs, and a sweet little black bonnet—half Quakerish, half coquettish—beneath which her wavy brown hair was smoothly brushed back from the temples, Mrs. Beach felt that here at last was an ideal attendant.

No fringe,—not even a love-lock,—no earrings or ornaments; only a jet brooch to fasten the linen collar. Yes, and here were the fine health (bright eyes and complexion showed this), the very pleasant looks, and, no doubt, the good temper—the three things the invalid especially desired.

Mrs. Beach was charmed with Margie's frank, natural manners; even her straightforward confession of inexperience showed the girl's truthfulness, and was a sort of pledge for the future. The interview did not last long, and when she left the cosy, roomy house, standing in its old-fashioned garden and half hidden among trees, it was with the understanding that she should come and take up her abode there that day week.

Margie had a couple of hours to travel by rail before reaching home, so she had plenty of time in which to consider how she should break the news to her mother and sisters. For she had come to her resolution and had made her own plans without consulting any one.

When at last she found an opportunity to make her announcement, it created a very considerable sensation. No real opposition was threatened to her "venture," but her mother's remark summed up what perhaps was in the minds of all the others.

"Good gracious, child! What have you done? Why, my dear, I do believe you have taken a situation little better than that of a servant."

* * * * * *

If Margie had expected a pathway strewn with roses, and with no thorns among them, she would have been sorely disappointed. Happily, she was too sensible to have any such expectations. She had seen enough of life to know by this time that we must take it as we find it, accepting good and evil, joy and sorrow, fulfilled hopes and baffled purposes, as they come. And by the time a month had gone by, the girl had become familiar with her surroundings, and had also come to know very fairly well the people in the house.

It was rather a curious household, for it held a somewhat mixed community, and, consequently, there was friction now and again, or worse.

Mrs. Beach, however, had turned out to be just what Margie, during their brief interview, had thought her. She was a kind, motherly, unselfish woman, whose invalidism had not soured her temper, or made her suspicious or morbid. She treated Margie from the first with kindness and consideration, and the girl would have been quite content if she could have been alone with her employer, and had nothing to think of but her duties, which were not too hard for her strength at all, or distasteful to her in any way.

But there were other people in the house not so easy to deal with. In the first place, there was Mr. Nicholas Beach, the only son of the widow. He was a young gentleman of no occupation, but of self-indulgent, not to say vicious habits. As he had nothing to do but to amuse himself, he was always dawdling about the house, and Margie was continually meeting him, much to her annoyance; for she had taken a dislike to his handsome, dissipated face, and strongly resented his bold, free manner with the maids, and his ungentlemanly personal remarks.

Another member of the family who was even a greater trial to Margie was Mrs. Beach's niece, Mabel Raye, whom the aunt had brought up from a child.

She was a very handsome girl, one of those dark beauties who light up into positive brilliance under strong excitement, and who reward a tasteful and painstaking maid by looking their very best when they emerge from her beautifying hands into the bright light of a ballroom. But Mabel's mother had been a Creole, and with the glorious dark eyes and beautiful features, the girl had inherited the hot blood, the passionate, vindictive temper, the unreasoning jealousy, of the darker race. Not that she was devoid of generous feelings, of gracious impulses; but she had no principle; her conduct was governed solely by the whim of the moment. No wonder, then, that she was, an influence that had to be reckoned with in the house, and that by her sudden freaks, her stormy temper, and strange, mad jealousies, she was almost equally dangerous whether as friend or enemy.

It did not take long for Margie to realise that she must do her best not to come into collision with this girl. And as her duties kept her very much in Mrs. Beach's room, and she neither belonged to the dining-room nor the kitchen, she was usually able to keep out of the way, and flattered herself that she need never have any trouble.

The girl had not vanity enough to realise that she was quite attractive enough to rouse the jealousy of such an undisciplined character as Mabel Raye. Indeed, when Margie looked in the glass at all, it was just to be sure that her collar was straight, her hair neatly done, and that her whole dress was spotlessly fresh and tidy. It never occurred to her that she had a graceful figure, lovely brown hair, and clear, sweet eyes with an unusual wealth of lashes. She knew she was pleasant-looking, and of that she was frankly glad, but she did not guess (and here lay Margie's chief charm) how much more than pretty she appeared to others.

But Margie had reckoned without her host, as she found to her cost when a few weeks had passed. It happened on this wise. Nicholas Beach had been at home even more than usual of late, and Margie was constantly seeing him. If she took a message from Mrs. Beach, she was sure to find him dawdling about on the stairs, or sitting in the smoking-room with the door wide open, so as to watch every one who went by. Of course the girl took no notice of him, but she could not help seeing that he was beginning to dog her steps and watch for chances to see and speak to her. In short, he was evidently going to try and treat her with the contemptuous familiarity that he had doubtless found successful enough with the servants in his mother's house, when they chanced to be young and good-looking.

One day Margie was sewing in the little workroom which belonged exclusively to her. The door was shut, and she was stitching away, in order to complete the bit of sewing that night, when, without any warning, the door opened, and in walked Nicholas Beach, and with him entered the fumes of whisky and tobacco. The young man's face was flushed, his manner very abrupt, strange, and disagreeable.

"Ah," said he, with an impudent leer, "so here you are! Caught at last. Here I've been trying for ever so long to get a talk with you, but you always managed to keep out of my way." So saying, the young man flopped down into the one easy-chair the room contained, and stretched his long limbs out upon a smaller seat. Apparently he was come to stay, and as Margie was quite determined that he should quit, she braced herself up for what she felt sure would be an unpleasant interview.

"Well, aren't you going to say anything to a fellow?" said he at last, fixing his bold eyes upon the girl, who had now put down her work, and had risen from her seat by the table.

"Yes, sir, I am," rejoined Margie; "will you be kind enough to get up and leave this room at once?"

"'Pon my word, but she's a cool one!" said Nicholas Beach to himself; then to her, he added in a louder tone, "You look awfully pretty when you're angry, Margery; do it again, will you?"

"Sir," said the girl, "if you have any respect for yourself or for me, you will leave this room. If you do not go at once, I shall leave you here, and go straight to Mrs. Beach."

"You pretty little vixen, I'm sure you'll do nothing of the sort," rejoined Nicholas, with an impertinent leer. "You'd never have the heart, you know; it would be too cruel, when I admire you so."

For answer, Margie walked to the door, her head held very high, her big eyes flashing indignantly. Nicholas stared at her stupidly.

"What a little spitfire it is!" he said thickly. "I didn't want to rile you, my beauty. Come here, and make it up." And he seconded his invitation with a smile so odious in its drunken impudence, that Margie said not one word more, but opened the door and went straight upstairs to Mrs. Beach's boudoir.

Mabel Raye was sitting there with her aunt, and as Margie entered, with flushed cheeks and haughty bearing, the young lady said, "Good gracious, Margery, what's the matter with you? You look like a tragedy queen."

But Margie did not answer her. She turned to Mrs. Beach and said, "If you please, ma'am, will you allow me to bring my sewing into your dressing-room, or to take it to my bedroom? Mr. Beach has taken possession of my workroom, and declines to move."

Mrs. Beach looked troubled and annoyed. For a moment or two, she seemed as if she did not know what to say, but Miss Raye broke out passionately, "Don't believe her, auntie. It's all a lie! Nick wouldn't do such a thing. If he went into the workroom at all, it was because he was invited in. The girl's conceited, that's all, and wants to make us think he admires her. The idea! A servant, too!"

Margie turned very white, and her face was set and rigid, as she replied, ignoring Mabel entirely, and turning only towards Mrs. Beach, "I have told you the exact truth, ma'am, and I beg you to believe me. I never told a lie in my life."

Mabel started up. "I'll go and ask Nick himself," she said. "I'll soon prove to you, auntie, that this girl has made a false statement." And with a vindictive glance, Mabel Raye departed.

Margie now came nearer to where Mrs. Beach sat. The old lady was apparently in real distress, and the girl felt very sorry for her. "I am grieved, ma'am, to say or do anything to trouble you," said she very gently and tenderly; for she loved Mrs. Beach, who had always treated her well, and with perfect fairness.