‘Does it matter frightfully?’ repeated Julia. ‘You see, if I could make it up to a hundred pounds it would be a round sum; besides, I shall get more when I sell them.’
This naïve statement tipped the balance; Mr. Silver was converted.
‘It doesn’t matter in the least,’ he assured her. ‘It’s only seven or eight pounds, so——’
‘You’ll get it all back, of course,’ said Julia earnestly.
Mr. Silver smiled; she really was an absolute innocent. ‘I haven’t a doubt of it, Miss Harburn,’ he declared.
‘And you’ll do it now?’
‘Yes, immediately.’
*
2
Julia had obtained permission to absent herself from Madame Claire’s establishment on the plea of important business; and the business having been carried out successfully, she hurried back and proceeded to sell hats.
At first it had been a little difficult, but now it had become easy and interesting. Truth to tell, Julia enjoyed her job. The ‘lesson’ which Miss Martineau had given her helped quite a lot, for although it had been highly exaggerated and exceedingly funny there was a certain amount of sense at the bottom of the nonsense. Julia often thought of it with an inward quiver of laughter when she put on a chapeau and turned her head to display its beauties to one of Madame’s clients.
The following morning Julia rang up Mr. Silver to see what had happened.
‘I have written to you,’ he said. ‘In matters such as this it is wiser to write than to telephone.’
When Julia returned from work the letter had arrived.
‘A letter for you,’ said Miss Martineau, handing it to her. ‘It’s from the bank, dulling. I wonder what it can be about.’
Julia had discovered that Miss Martineau was interested in everything that went on in her house and especially interested in letters that came to her boarders; if any of her boarders received a postcard or left a letter lying about Miss Martineau had no qualms about reading it . . . no qualms at all. Julia had received a highly-coloured postcard of the Colosseum at Rome from Retta, and Miss Martineau had handed it to Julia saying, ‘They’ve had a good trip and the hotel is very comfortable, isn’t that nice?’
At first Julia had been slightly taken aback; but, on reflection, she realised that it was just because Miss Martineau was interested in her affairs. It was nice of her to be interested, and as Julia had no secrets it did not matter. Now, however, Julia had a secret which she was sworn to keep, so she took Mr. Silver’s letter and ran upstairs to her room where she could read it in private. She saw with astonishment that her hundred pounds had been sufficient to buy eight hundred shares in the Coribunda Sapphire Company. It seemed incredible.
Mr. Silver’s letter was rather curt. He merely said that the one pound shares were standing at two and sixpence.
The fact was, Mr. Silver was annoyed with Miss Harburn and extremely worried about his own five hundred pounds which, in a moment of madness, he had invested in Coribundas and which he could ill-afford to lose.
Julia was not in the least worried, she was excited. It was thrilling, a sort of gamble—like putting money on a horse, but much safer, of course.
‘You’re in good form this morning, dulling,’ said Miss Martineau as they breakfasted together. ‘Anything nice happened?’
‘Yes, but I can’t tell you, Miss Martineau. It’s a secret.’
‘You can call me May,’ said Miss Martineau. ‘Much cosier, and I’ll call you Julia, dulling. It’s a pretty name and it suits you. How are you getting on with Jeanne?’
‘Jeanne?’
‘Jeanne Kessell—that’s her real name. When I want to make her mad I call her Mrs. Kettle. She doesn’t overwork you, I hope.’
Julia had got it now. ‘Oh no, we get on swimmingly. I’m really quite good at selling hats, thanks to your lesson, and we speak French together, so——’
‘French!’ cried Miss Martineau. ‘You can talk French? Real French, I mean?’
‘Yes, Mother taught me. She was at school in Paris; she spoke French beautifully, and we used to go abroad quite often in the winter.’
‘Dulling!’ exclaimed Miss Martineau in dismay. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before that you could talk real French? I’d have stood out for six pounds; she’d have given it like a shot! Oh dear, what can we do about it?’
‘We can’t do anything,’ said Julia giggling. ‘Never mind, Miss M-May, I’m going to make lots of money soon.’
‘How?’ asked May with eager interest.
‘Well, that’s the secret,’ explained Julia. ‘I’d tell you if I could.’
*
3
As usual Julia arrived early at Madame Claire’s. She made a point of going early, for, being the newest assistant, it was her job to take the hats out of the cupboards and arrange the stands. Madame herself was always early, but it was easy for her: she had an extremely comfortable little flat above the shop, so all she had to do was to walk downstairs and there she was. It was very different for Ivonne and Fifi, who were obliged to come by bus; at this hour of the morning the buses were always overcrowded.
When Julia arrived Madame Claire was there as usual, sitting and reading the morning paper, obviously deeply interested in the news, so Julia proceeded to arrange the hats without speaking to her.
Presently she looked up and said, ‘Do you ever make investment of your money, Julie? I find it very interesting. It is good to see one’s shares go up, but very bad when they go down. I am a business woman, you see.’
‘Where do you see the shares go up and down, Madame?’
‘In the financial news, of course. To-day some of my shares go up, which is very nice. It is a good day for me,’ she added gaily.
‘I wonder if I might look at the financial news for a moment?’
‘You have made a small investment?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am glad,’ declared Madame, handing her the paper. ‘It is good to be a business woman. In France we are very practical; we learn when we are young so when we are older we know how to take care of our money. It is not so in England.’
‘I am trying to learn, but I’m afraid I don’t know very much about business,’ said Julia.
‘Incroyable!’ cried Madame. ‘Come, Julie, I will give you a little lesson.’
Julia leant upon the back of Madame’s chair and received her lesson with suitable gratitude. It was not as difficult to understand as she had expected, the list of companies and the prices at which the shares had changed hands. She was obliged to reveal the name of her ‘small investment’; there was no getting out of it.
‘Coribunda!’ exclaimed Madame scornfully. ‘Foolish child! Those shares are rubbish! There it is—three and twopence!’
‘It isn’t very much,’ agreed Julia trying to keep the excitement out of her voice. Of course she was excited. She had paid two and sixpence for her shares, so already, in one day, she had made eightpence—and she had eight hundred shares! How much was that? But she could not do it in her head, and anyhow there was no time—the other two girls came in, and Madame, throwing down her paper, began to rage and storm at them.
‘Again late!’ she cried. ‘Is it for this that I pay good money? Day after day you are late for your work. Nine o’clock is the hour—not ten minutes past nine—and always the same excuse. I am tired of hearing the bus was crowded. Look at Julie! She is nevaire late. . . .’
‘She doesn’t have to catch a bus,’ muttered Fifi.
‘Is it my wish that you should live in some out-of-the-way suburb?’ inquired Madame. ‘It matters nothing to me where you live. It matters a great deal that you should be here at the right hour. When I engaged you it was agreed that you should be here at nine o’clock. The same arrangement was made with Julie and Julie is always punctual. Julie is a business woman like me. We know the right thing, we business women; we are punctual; we make a small investment; we do not spend all our money on trashy clothes.’ She looked the
m up and down and snorted contemptuously. ‘Trashy clothes,’ she repeated. ‘It angers me to see good money thrown away on trashy clothes. That little frock which you buy in a chain-store—you are pleased with it, Fifi? You get it cheap because it is shoddy material and in a week it will become shabby and out of shape. And Ivonne’s shoes with the stiletto heels and the pointed toes which she gets in another department—they will fall to pieces when it rains! Is that good business? Do you think Julie would wear a shoddy frock or shoes which are made of brown paper? No, she is much too sensible. Quick, put on the overalls and hide the miserable little frocks!’
They slunk away, sullen and dejected. If it had not been for the fact that they were getting ‘good money’ in Madame’s establishment they would not have stood it for a moment.
This was not the first time the new assistant had been held up as a pattern. It was embarrassing and made her position difficult; Julia wished Madame were not so foolish. Already the two girls had teamed up against her and were causing trouble in various ways. They were jealous because she was Madame’s ‘pet’; they were jealous because Madame spoke French to her in a rapid torrent which they could not understand. They were annoyed because Julia made a point of coming early to arrange the hats for Madame and because she often stayed late to tidy up and leave everything in good order. Before Julia’s advent Madame had been obliged to do this herself, so naturally she was delighted when she found that her new assistant was willing to come early and stay late and take the tiresome duties off her shoulders.
‘Sucking up,’ said Fifi scornfully.
‘It won’t last,’ declared Ivonne. ‘You mark my words, she’ll do something silly and get the sack.’
They were speaking to each other, but Julia knew she was intended to hear. She would have liked to explain that she was just trying to learn her job and earn her living; she would have liked to ask them to be friends with her . . . but of course it would be useless.
*
4
It was ten days since Julia had left home and she had not yet found time to visit Ellen. She was busy all day and was too tired after her work to make the necessary effort . . . and it would be an effort to return to her old home. Julia did not want to go; she had left her old life behind her and it would awaken unhappy memories to return. However, she had promised Ellen and the matter was on her conscience, so one fine evening after supper she set forth to perform her duty.
The house in Manor Gardens was in process of being painted: some of the window-frames had been finished and were glistening with new green paint, others had been scraped and looked extremely shabby. The interior of the house was even worse, for the old paper had been torn off the walls and was lying in heaps on the floors.
To Julia’s surprise Ellen seemed quite cheerful, and although she complained bitterly about the mess, and the bother of having to make tea for the painters, Julia knew her well enough to see that in reality she was enjoying their company and would be sorry when they had finished their job and gone away.
The kitchen seemed to be the only room which was clean and comfortable, so they sat there together and talked. Julia had been thinking about Ellen’s reference to some trouble which had preyed upon her father’s mind and had decided to find out more about it. This would not be easy, of course, for Ellen liked to be mysterious and was given to exaggeration, so you could not believe all she said; but there might be something at the bottom of it. If only she could get to the root of the trouble Julia felt that she might be able to make contact with her father and help him. There was something preying on his mind—that was what Ellen had said. The phrase had haunted Julia. What could it be?
For some time Julia was obliged to listen to long stories about the delinquent painters (what they had done and what they had left undone and what Ellen had said to them when they came into her nice clean kitchen with their dirty boots), but at last she managed to guide the conversation into the right channel. Even then she had to be very careful, for if Ellen thought she was being pumped she was liable to dry up at a moment’s notice.
‘You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you, Ellen?’ said Julia.
‘That’s right. I came before you were born and I’ve been ’ere ever since.’
‘I’ve been wondering about Father’s old home in Scotland.’
‘What were you wondering?’
‘Oh, nothing much . . . only it seems queer that he never talks about it. You often tell me about your home, Ellen, and about your relations. You often go and see your sisters, don’t you? Hasn’t Father got any relations in Scotland?’
‘None that I ever ’eard tell of.’
‘It seems funny.’
‘I don’t know nothing, Miss Julia,’ declared Ellen. ‘All I know about is that picture I found in the attic.’
Julia had never heard of the picture before. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘It was a very valuable picture, wasn’t it?’
‘Well, I don’t know about valuable,’ replied Ellen doubtfully. ‘If it was valuable why was it stuffed away in the attic with a whole lot of old junk? I found it when I was spring-cleaning—years ago, it was.’
‘It was a portrait, wasn’t it?’ asked Julia.
‘A portrait? Whatever made you think that? It was a picture of a great big lovely ’ouse. It seemed funny being left up there in the attic so I brought it down and showed it to your mother . . . but I wished I’d left it alone.’
Julia was silent. It was no use asking questions.
‘She was upset when she saw it,’ continued Ellen thoughtfully. ‘She said it was a picture of ’Arburn ’Ouse, where your father used to live when ’e was a boy. I thought it was such a nice picture that ’e might of liked to ’ang it up in ’is study, but she said I was to take it away and put it back where I found it and never talk about it again—quite vexed with me she was—so that’s what I did.’
‘A picture of Harburn House!’ exclaimed Julia. ‘Oh, Ellen, how interesting!’
‘A lovely picture,’ said Ellen, nodding. ‘A great big beautiful ’ouse it was, with trees and gardings round it.’
‘I should like to see the picture.’
‘Well, you can’t,’ replied Ellen, smiling grimly. ‘It’s been tore up in little bits.’
‘Torn up!’
Ellen nodded. ‘I told you I put it back in the attic. Well, the next day I went up to the attic again, just to ’ave another look at it, and the nice frame was empty. There was one or two little bits of the picture on the floor and the rest of it was in the wastepaper basket.’
‘In Father’s study?’
‘Yes, ’e’d gone and tore it up ’imself with ’is own ’ands.’
‘But why?’ cried Julia in astonishment.
‘Ask me another. I’d been told I wasn’t to talk about it ever again so I didn’t. It wasn’t no business of mine.’
Julia sighed. There were all sorts of questions she would have liked to ask but she was aware that the subject was closed.
‘You ’aven’t told me nothing about the ’at-shop,’ said Ellen. ‘It seems funny you working in a ’at-shop. Does Mr. Beverley know about it?’
Obviously there was nothing more to be got out of Ellen to-night, so Julia made the best of it and entertained her with stories about some of the amusing things that had happened in Madame Claire’s establishment until it was time to go, and as it was dark by this time, Ellen walked to the corner with her and saw her safely into the bus.
It was only afterwards, when she had time to think about it properly, that Julia realised what an extraordinary tale she had heard from Ellen about the picture of Harburn House. She had hoped to clear up the mystery but the mystery had deepened. Of course she had known before that her father had been born and brought up in Scotland, but he had never spoken to her of his boyhood nor mentioned his home. Somehow Julia had received the impression that he was ashamed of his home . . . but now she realised that this was wrong. He could not be ashamed of ‘a great big beautiful
house with trees and gardens round it.’ Why had he torn up the picture of Harburn House? Did he hate the place so much . . . or did he love it so much that he could not bear to be reminded of it?
Julia had always been frightened of her father—too frightened to speak to him about anything except everyday affairs—but now that she had escaped from the uncomfortable atmosphere of Manor Gardens she felt quite different. She decided that she had been foolish and she made up her mind that when he came home she would go and see him and ask him about Harburn House. It was natural, wasn’t it, that she should want to know about his life when he was a boy? Yes, she would go and speak to him bravely; she would try to make contact with the man inside the big brown blanket. She would try to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Chapter Eleven
One morning the break at eleven for coffee was interrupted by the arrival of the Honourable Mrs. de Courcy, who was said to be ‘the fourth best-dressed woman in London.’ Madame Claire always attended to this client herself, but that did not mean her assistants could relax: far from it—they were kept on their toes running hither and thither to fetch what was wanted. To-day it was ‘Julie’ who was chosen to be chief assistant and to act as model. Madame produced her most cherished creations, which were displayed only to her most favoured clients, and arranged them upon ‘Julie’s’ head. ‘Julie’ was ordered to turn round slowly whilst the Honourable Mrs. de Courcy surveyed them critically through her lorgnette.
‘No,’ said the Honourable Mrs. de Courcy. ‘No, that won’t do. . . . No, I don’t like that either. . . . No, that isn’t what I want at all. Haven’t you got anything else to show me?’
‘Julie, faîtes vite!’ whispered Madame. ‘Cherchez le petit chapeau en paille noire—il est dans l’atelier. Il n’est pas encore fini, mais n’importe.’
Julia dashed upstairs to the workroom, found the little black straw, seized a spray of gardenias which happened to be lying on the table, and was back in record time.
‘Good,’ said Madame, taking it from her. ‘And the flowers—yes.’ She placed the little hat upon Julia’s head and pinned on the spray of gardenias.
The Blue Sapphire Page 8