by Berta Ruck
CHAPTER XXVII
AN UNUSUAL SORT OF BEGGAR
"I GUESS it's not any different 'business' from what I have told you,coming along in the car, Miss Smith," said the young American simply."Don't quit on my account."
"No, nor on mine neither," said Miss Million, turning quite anxiously tome. "You stop on and hear the end of this, so that me and you can talkit over like, later.
"Now, then," turning to her cousin again, "what's it all about?"
"To cut a long story short," said the young American, in that earnestway of his that is really rather lovable. "You see before you, CousinNellie, a man who is"--he paused impressively before he brought out halfa dozen pregnant words--"very badly in want of money!"
"Gracious! I must say I should not have thought it," ejaculated Million,with a note of the native shrewdness which I had suspected her of havingleft behind in our Putney kitchen. "If you are poor"--here her brightgrey eyes travelled up her cousin's appearance from his quitenew-looking American shoes to his well-kept thick and glossy hair--"ifyou are poor, all I can say is your looks don't pity you!"
"I need not point out to you that looks are a very poor proposition togo by when you are starting in on summing up a person's status," saidthe young American easily. "I may not look it, but money is a thing thatI am desperate for."
A sequence of emotions passed each other over Million's little face. AsI watched there were disbelief, impatience, helplessness, and the firstsymptoms of yielding. She said: "Well, I don't know how it is that sinceI have come into uncle's money I have been meeting people one after theother who keep offering to show me what to do with it. You know, Smith,"turning to me. "Haven't I had a fair bushel of begging letters from oneperson and another who is in need of cash? Some of them was real enoughto draw tears from the eyes of a stone! Do you remember that one, Smith,about the poor woman with the two babies, and the operation, and I don'tknow what all? Well! She dried up quick since I suggested calling roundto see the babies! A fine take-in that was, I expect"--this to me, withher eye on the well-set-up young man sitting before her. "Still"--thiswas where the yielding began to come in--"you are my cousin, when all issaid. And so, I suppose, I have got to remember that blood is thickerthan water, and----"
She turned to me.
"Did you bring my cheque-book down, Smith, in my dressing-bag?"
"Yes, Miss, I did," I said gravely enough, though I was laughingruefully within myself.
"Well, just pop upstairs and get it for me," said Miss Million. Then,again turning to her cousin, she said: "I can't say that I myself wouldhave cared particularly to start borrowing money off some one the firsttime I set eyes on them, cousin or no cousin! Unusual sort of begging Icall it! Still, I daresay I could spare you" (here I saw her making arapid mental calculation) "five pounds, if that is of any good to you."
Here, at the very door, I stopped. I had been checked by the heartylaugh of real boyish amusement that broke from Mr. Hiram P. Jessop ather last words.
"Five pounds!" he echoed in his crisp, un-English accent. "Five? Anygood to me? My dear cousin Nellie, that's no more good to me than atissue-paper sunshade would be under a waterspout. No, five pounds wouldbe most emphatically not any good to me. Nor ten pounds. Nor twentypounds. I am not asking for a day's carfare and luncheon ticket. I tellyou, my dear little girl, it is _money_ I want!"
Miss Million stared at him rather indignantly this time. I didn't dreamof leaving her at this juncture.
I waited and I watched, without troubling to conceal my interest fromthese two young people. I felt I had to listen to what would happennext.
"Money?" repeated Miss Million, the heiress. "However much do you want,then?"
"Thousands of dollars," announced the young American in his grave, sobervoice.
There came into the bright grey eyes of Miss Nellie Million an angrylook that I had once seen there when an unwise milk-boy had tried toconvince our thrifty little maid-of-all-work that he had given hersixpennyworth instead of the bare threepennyworth that filled thelittle cardboard vessel which she held in her hand! For I believe thatat the bottom of her heart "little Million" is still as thrifty, stillas careful, still as determined that she won't be "done"!
In the matter of clothes she has, of course, allowed herself for once toloose her firmly screwed-on little dark head.
But now that the trousseau of new clothes is bought the brief madnesshad left her. She is again the same Million who once said to me at home:"Extravagant! That is a thing I could never be!"
In a voice of the old Million she demanded sharply of the quiteprosperous-looking, well-dressed and well-fed young man in front of her:"Whatever in the wide world would you do with all that money, supposingyou had it?"
"Well, I should not waste it, I guess," retorted the young man. "Infact, it would be put to a considerably bigger purpose than what itwould if you had kept it, to buy yourself candies and hair-ribbon andwhatever you girls do with money when it gets into your little hands. Iwant that money," here his voice grew more serious than before, "for anObject!"
"I want that money for an object," repeated Miss Million's Americancousin. And then he went on, at last, to tell us what "the object" was.
It took a long time. It was very complicated. It was full of technicalterms that were absolute Greek to me, as well as to Million. There shesat in the big basket-chair, with the coloured cushions behind her darkhead; her grey eyes wide open, and fixed, defensively, upon the face ofthis young man with a story to tell.
To cut it short, it was this. About a year ago Mr. Hiram P. Jessop hadleft off being manager of the pork factory belonging to the late SamuelMillion because of his other work. He was, he said, "no factory boss bynature." He was an inventor. He had invented a machine--yes! This waswhere the technical terms began raining thick and fast upon ourbewildered ears--a machine for dropping bombs from aeroplanes----
"Bombs? Good heavens alive!" interrupted Miss Million, with a look ofreal horror on her little face. "D'you mean them things that go off?"
"Why, I guess I hope they'd go off," returned the young man with theshrewd and courteous smile. "Certainly that would be the idea ofthem--to go off! Why, yes!"
"Then--are you," said Million, gazing reproachfully upon him, "one ofthese here anarchists?"
He shook his mouse-coloured head.
"Do I look like one, Cousin Nellie? Nothing further from my thoughtsthan anarchy. The last thing I'd stand for."
"Then whatever in the wide world d'you want to go dropping bombs for?"retorted my young mistress. "Dropping 'em on who, I should like toknow?"
"On the enemy, I guess."
"Enemy?"
"Sure thing. I wouldn't want to be dropping them on our own folks now,would I?" said the young American in his pleasant, reasonable voice;while I, too, gazed at him in wonder at the unexpected things that camefrom his firm, clean-shaven lips.
He began again to explain.
"Now you see, Cousin Nellie and Miss Smith, I am taking the aeroplane asit will be. Absolutely one of the most important factors in modernwarfare----"
"But who's talking about war?" asked the bewildered Million.
"I am," said the young American.
"War?" repeated his cousin. "But gracious alive! Where is there any,nowadays?"
The glimpse of English landscape outside the window seemed to echo herquestion.
There seemed to be no memory of such a terrible and strenuous thing aswar among those gently sloping Sussex Downs, where the white chalkshowed in patches through the close turf, and where the summer haze,dancing above that chalk, made all the distances deceptive.
From the top of those downs the country, I knew, must look flat ascoloured maps. They lay spread out, those squares and oblongs ofpearl-grey chalk, of green corn, of golden hay, with "the King's peaceover all, dear boys, the King's peace over all," as Kipling said.
The whole country seemed as if the events that had come and
gone sincethe reign, say, of King John had left no more impression upon it thanthe cloud shadows that had rolled and passed, rolled and passed. As itwas in the beginning, so it was in the late June of Nineteen Fourteen.And so it looked as if it must ever remain.
Yet----Here was an extraordinarily unexpected young man bringing intothe midst of all this sun-lit peace the talk of war! War as it had neveryet been waged; war not only on the land and under the waves, but warthat dropped death from the very clouds themselves!
"I think you're talking silly," said Miss Million severely. "No doubtthere's always a certain amount of warring and fighting going on inIndia, where poor dad was. Out-of-the-way places like that, where therearen't any only black people to fight with, anyhow.... But any othersort of fighting came to an end with the Bo'r War, where dad was outed.
"And I don't see what it's got to do with you, or why you should thinkit so fearfully important to go inventing your bomb-droppers andwhat-nots for things what--what aren't going to happen!"
The young American smiled in a distant sort of way.
"So you're one of the people that think war isn't going to happen again?Well! I guess you aren't lonely. Plenty think as you do," he told hiscousin. "Others think as I do. They calculate that sooner or later it'sbound to come. And that if it comes fortune will favour those that haveprepared for the idea of it. Aren't you a soldier's daughter, CousinNellie?"
The little dark head of Sergeant Million's orphan went up proudly.
"Rather!"
"Well, then, you'll take a real live interest," said her cousin, "insomething that might make all the difference in the world to yourcountry, supposing she did come to grips with another country. That'sthe difference that would be made by machines like mine. Not that thereis another machine just like my own, I guess. Let me tell you abouther----"
Again he went on talking about his new bomb-dropper in words that Idon't pretend to understand.
I understood the tone, though.
That was unmistakable. It was the rapt and utterly serious tone which aperson speaks in of something that fills his whole heart. I suppose apainter would speak thus of his beloved art, or a violinist of hismusic, or a mother of her adored and only baby boy. I saw the youngAmerican's face light up until it was even as something inspired.
This machine of his, for dropping bombs from the clouds upon the headsof some enemy that existed if only in his imagination was "his subject."This was his all. This he lived for. Yes, that was plain to both of us.I saw Miss Million give an understanding nod of her little dark head asshe said: "Yes, you haven't half set your mind on this thing, have you?"
"I guess you've hit it," said the American. Then Miss Million asked:"And where does the money part of it come in?"
Then he explained to us that, having invented the thing (it was all apure joy apparently), now began the hard work. He had to sell themachine! He had to get it "taken up," to have it experimented with. Allthis would run him into more money than he had got.
He concluded simply: "That's where the Million dollars would come in souseful! And, Cousin Nellie, I am simply bound to try and get them!"
I watched my mistress's face as he made this announcement. Miss Million,I saw, was so interested that for the moment she had forgotten her ownobsession, her infatuation for the Honourable Jim Burke. As well as theinterest, though, there was "fight" in the grey eyes of the soldier'sorphan who used to wear a blue-print uniform frock and a black straw hatwith a scarlet ribbon about it.
She said: "I see what you mean. Me give you my money to play with! Andwhat if I don't hold with investing any of uncle's money in thisharum-scarum idea of yours? I am none so sure that I do hold----"
"Maybe I might have to do a little of the holding myself, CousinNellie," broke in the quiet, firm voice of her American cousin. "Seehere! What if I were to put up a tussle to get all that money away fromyou, whether you wanted to give it up to me to play with it or not?"
And then he began quickly to explain to her what he had explained to mecoming down in the car. He went over the possibilities of his contestingMr. Samuel Million's will.
I don't think I shall ever forget that funny little scene in thebungalow-furnished room with all those theatrical photographs paperingthe walls, and with the windows opening on to the Sussex garden wherethe bees boomed in the roses, and the lazy sound mingled with thechirping of the starlings, and with the shriller chatter of two of the"Refuge" girls lying in deck-chairs in the shadow of the lilacs.
Inside, these two cousins, young American and young Englishwoman, whomight be going to fight for a fortune, stared at each other with ameasuring glance that was not at all unfriendly. In the eyes of both Iread the same question.
"Now, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do aboutit?"
After a pause Miss Million said: "Well, this'll mean a lot of worry andnoosance, I suppose. Going to Lawr! Never thought I should come to thatsort of thing. Courts, and lawyers, an' all that----"
She looked straight at the young American, who nodded.
"Yes, I guess that's what fighting this thing out will mean," he agreed.
Miss Million knit her brows.
"Lawr," she said reflectively, voicing the sentiment of our whole sex onthis vexed subject. "Lawr always seems to be ser _silly_! It lets awhole lot o' things go on that you'd think ought to 'a' been stoppedhundreds of years ago by Ack of Parliament. Then again, it drops on youlike one o' them bombs of yours for something that doesn't maketwopennyworth of difference to anybody, and there you are with fortyshillings fine, at least. An' as for getting anything done with going toLawr about it, well, it's like I used to say to the butcher's boy atPutney when he used to ask me to give him time to get that jointbrought round: 'Time! It isn't time you want, it's Eternity!'
"Going to Lawr! What does it mean? Paying away pots o' money to a lot o'good-for-nothing people for talking to you till you're silly, andwriting letters to you that you can't make head nor tail of, and thennothing settled until you're old and grey. If then!"
"That's quite an accurate description of my own feelings towards thebusiness," said the other candidate for Miss Million's fortune. "I'm notbreaking my neck or straining myself any to hand over to the lawyers anyof the precious dollars that I want for the wedding-portion of mymachine."
"Go to law----No, that's not a thing I want to do," repeated the presentowner of the precious dollars. "Same time, I'm not going to lose any ofthe money that's mine by right if I can possibly keep hold on it--that'sonly sense, that is!"
And she turned to me, while again I felt as if I were a referee. "Whatdo you say, Smith?"
I was deadly puzzled.
I ventured: "But if you've both made up your minds you must have themoney, there doesn't seem anything for it but to go to law, does there?"
"Wait awhile," said the young American slowly. "There does appear to meto be an alternative. Now, see here----"
He leant towards Miss Million. He held out his hand, as if to point outthe alternative. He said: "There is another way of fixing it, I guess.We needn't fight. I'd feel real mean, fighting a dear little girl likeyou----"
"You won't get round me," said Miss Million, quite as defensively as ifshe were addressing a tradesman's boy on a doorstep. "No getting roundme with soft soap, young man!"
"I wasn't meaning it that way," he said, "The way I meant would let usshare the money and yet let's both have the dollars and the glory of theinvention and everything else!"
"I don't know how you mean," declared Miss Million.
I, sitting there in my corner, had seen what was coming.
But I really believe Miss Million herself received the surprise of herlife when her cousin gave his quiet reply.
"Supposing," he said, "supposing we two were to get married?"
"Marry?" cried Miss Million in her shrillest Putney-kitchen voice. "Me?You?"
She flung up her little, dark head and let loose a shriek oflaughter--half-indignant laughter at that.
Then, recovering herself, she turned upon the young man who had proposedto her in this quite unconventional fashion and began to--well! there'sno expression for it but one of her own. She began to "go for him."
"I don't call it very funny," she declared sharply, "to go making a jokeof a subject like that to a young lady you haven't known above a half anhour hardly."
"I wasn't thinking about the humourousness of the proposition, CousinNellie!" protested Mr. Hiram P. Jessop steadily. "I meant it perfectlyseriously."
Miss Million gazed at him from the chair opposite.
Her cousin met that challenging, distrustful gaze unflinchingly. And inhis own grey eyes I noticed a mixture of obstinacy and of quiterespectful admiration. Certainly the little thing was looking verypretty and spirited.
Every woman has her "day." It's too bad that this generally happens at atime when nobody calls and there's not a soul about to admire her at herbest. The next evening, when she's got to wear a low-cut frock and goout somewhere, the chances are a hundred to one that it will be her "dayoff," and that she will appear a perfect fright, all "salt-cellars" andrebellious wisps of hair.
But to proceed with Miss Million, who was walking off with one man'sadmiration by means of the added good looks she had acquired by being inlove with another man. Such is life.
"You mean it seriously?" she repeated.
"I do," he said, nodding emphatically. "I certainly do."
Miss Million said: "You must be barmy!"
"Barmy?" echoed her American cousin. "You mean----"
"Off your onion. Up the pole. Wrong in your 'ead--head," explained MissMillion. "That's what you must be. Why, good gracious alive! The idea!Proposing to marry a girl the first time you ever set eyes on her.Smith, did you ever----"
"I never had to sit in the room before while another girl was beingproposed to," I put in uncomfortably. "If you don't mind, Miss, I thinkI had better go now, and allow you and Mr. Jessop to talk this overbetween yourselves."
"Nothing of the kind, Miss Smith, nothing of the kind," put in thesuitor, turning to me as I stood ready to flee to scenes lessembarrassing. "You're a nice, well-balanced, intell'gent sort of a younglady yourself. I'd just like to have your point of view about thisaffair of my cousin arranging to marry me----"
"I'm not arranging no such thing," cried Miss Million, "and don't meanto!"
"See here; you'd far better," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, in his kindly,reasonable, shrewd, young voice. "Look at the worry and discomfort andargument and inconvenience about the money that she'd avoid"--againturning to Miss Million's maid--"if she agreed to do so."
"Then, again," he went on, "what a much more comfortable situation for ayoung lady of her age and appearance if she could go travelling aroundwith a husky-looking sort of husband, with a head on his shoulders,rather than be trapesing about alone, with nothing but a young lady of alady's-maid no older or fitter to cope with the battles of life than sheis herself. A husband to keep away the sordid and disagreeable aspectsof life----"
Here I remembered suddenly the visit of that detective who wanted tosearch Miss Million's boxes at the Cecil. I thought to myself: "Yes! ifwe only had a husband. I mean if she had! It would be a handy sort ofthing to be able to call in next time we were suspected of having takenanybody's rubies!"
And then I remembered with a shock that I hadn't yet had time to breakit to my mistress that we had been suspected--were probably stillsuspected--by that awful Rattenheimer person!
Meanwhile Miss Million's cousin and would-be husband was going onexpatiating on the many advantages, to a young lady in her position, ofhaving a real man to look after her interests----
"All very true. But I don't know as I'm exactly hard up for a husband,"retorted Miss Million, with a little simper and a blush that I knew wascalled up by the memory of the blue, black-lashed eyes of a certainIrish scamp and scaramouch who ought to be put in the stocks at CharingCross as an example to all nice girls of the kind of young man whom itis desirable to avoid and to snub. Miss Million added: "I don't knowthat I couldn't get married any time I wanted to."
"Sure thing," agreed her cousin gravely. "But the question is, how areyou going to know which man's just hunting you for the sake of UncleSam's dollars? Making love to the girl, with his eyes on the porkfactory?"
"Well, I must say I think that comes well from you!" exclaimed MissMillion. "You to talk about people wanting to marry me for my money,when you've just said yourself that you've set your heart on thosedollars of Uncle Sam's for your old aeroplane machine! You're a niceone!"
"I'm sincere," said the young American, in a voice that no one coulddoubt. "I want the dollars. But I wouldn't have suggested marryingthem--if I hadn't liked the little girl that went with them. I told youright away when I came into this room, Cousin Nellie, that I thinkyou're a little peach. As I said, I like your pretty little frank faceand the cunning way you fix yourself up. I like your honesty. No beatingabout the bush."
He paused a second or so, and then went on.
"'You must be barmy,' says you. It appeared that way to you, and yousaid it. That's my own point of view. If you mean a thing, say it out.You do. I like that. I revere that. And in a charming little girl it'srare," said the American simply. "I like your voice----"
Here I suppressed a gasp, just in time. He liked Million's voice! Heliked that appalling Cockney accent that has sounded so much moreear-piercing and nerve-rasping since it has been associated with theclothes that--well, ought to have such a very much prettier sort of tonecoming out of them!
He liked it. Oh, he must be in love at first sight--at first sound!
"Plenty of these young English girls talk as if it sprained them overeach syllable. You're brisk and peart and alive," he told her earnestly."I think you've a lovely way of talking."
Miss Million was taking it all in, as a girl does take in compliments,whether they are from the right man or from the wrong one. That is, shelooked as if every word were cream to her. Only another woman could haveseen which remark she tossed aside in her own mind as "just what hesaid," and which tribute she treasured.
I saw that what appealed to Miss Million was "the lovely way of talking"and "the cunning way she'd fixed herself up." In fact, the twocompliments she deserved least.
Oh, how I wished she'd say "Yes, thank you," at once to a young man whowould certainly be the solution of all my doubts and difficulties as faras my young mistress was concerned! He'd look after her. He'd spoil her,as these Americans do spoil their adored womenkind!
All her little ways would be so "noo," as he calls it, to him, that hewouldn't realise which of them were--were--were the kind of thing thatwould set the teeth on edge of, say, the Honourable Jim Burke.
He--Mr. Hiram P. Jessop--would make an idol and a possession of hislittle English wife. That conscienceless Celt would make abanking-account of her--nothing else.
Oh, yes! How I wished she'd take her cousin and be thankful----
But here was Miss Million shaking her little dusky head against thegay-coloured cushions.
"I'm sure it's very kind of you to say all this," she told him in arather mollified tone of voice, "but I'm afraid we can't arrange thingsthe way you'd like. A girl can't sort of make herself like people betterthan other people, just because it might 'appen to be convenient."
"Other people," repeated the young American quickly. "Am I to take itthat there is some one else that you prefer, Cousin Nellie?"
His cousin Nellie's very vivid blush seemed to be enough answer for him.
He rose, saying slowly: "Why, that's a pity. That makes me feel real outof it. Still----" He shrugged the broad shoulders under the light-greypadded coat. "As you say, it can't be helped. I congratulate whoever itis that----"
"Ow, stop! Gracious alive, there isn't any one to be congratulated yet,"broke in Miss Million. "Me and--the gentleman haven't gone anddefinitely made up our minds about anything, up to now; but--well. Asyou say, it's better to have anything 'out.'"
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"If you haven't definitely made up your mind," said the young American,just as he took his leave, "I shan't definitely take 'No' for my ownanswer."
And he's gone off now to put up at an hotel in Lewes, so that he cancome over to call at the "Refuge" each day of the week that Miss Millionsays we are going to stay here. He thinks, I know, that after all hewill "get round her" to like him.
As if, poor fellow! he had any chance at all against a man like theHonourable Jim!
Well! He'll soon see, that's all!