by Berta Ruck
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE CROWDED HOLIDAY
WE have now been staying for two crowded days at the "Refuge." It hascertainly been the most extraordinary holiday of my life. A quiteindescribable one, too!
For when I try to put down in words my impression of what has beenhappening, I find in my mind nothing but the wildest jumble of things.There's a background of sun-lit, open country, wide blue sky patrolledby rolling white clouds, green downs strewn with loose flint, chalkwastes on which a patch of scarlet poppies stands out like a made-upmouth on a dead white face of a pierrot, glimpses of pale cliff beyondthe downs, and of silver-grey Channel further still.
These things are blurred in a merry chaos with so many new faces!There's the drowsy, good-natured, voluptuous face of "Marmora, thebreathing statue-girl," as she lounged in the deck-chair in the shadowof the lilacs, crunching Mackintosh's toffee-de-luxe and reading "TheRosary." The tiny, vivacious face of the Boy-Impersonator. The shrewdface of Vi Vassity, the mistress of the "Refuge," melting intounexpected tenderness as she bends over the new baby that belongs to theventriloquist's wife, the little bundle with the creasy pink face andthe hands that are just clusters of honeysuckle buds....
So many sounds, too, are mixed up with this jumble of fresh impressions!
Rustling of sea winds in the immemorial elm trees. Buzzing of bees inthe tall limes all hung with light-green fragrant tassels! Twittering ofbirds! Comfortable, crooning noises of plump poultry in the back yard ofthe "Refuge."
Through all these sound the chatter and loud laughter of the "resting"theatrical girls with their eternal confidences that begin, "I said tohim just like this," and their "Excuse me, dears," and their suddenbursts of song. How the general rush, and whirl, and glitter, andclatter of them would make my Aunt Anastasia feel perfectly faint!
Eight or ten aspirins, I should think, would not be enough to restoreher, could she but have a glimpse of the society into which LadyAnastasia's great-granddaughter is now plunged.
And in such an "infra dig." position, too!
For I am not "an artist," as they all are! I am distinctly quite belowthem! I am in domestic service. A "dresser" of the girl whom all of themcall "Nellie" when they are not using the generic "dears" and "darlings"to her. And yesterday I heard the Serio-singer with the autumn-foliagehair telling the stout lady (whose place in life seems to be swinging ona trapeze in emerald-green tights and with a parrakeet perched on eachwrist) "That that little Smith was quite a nice, refined sort of littlething, very different from the usual run of girls of that class. They'reso common, as a rule. But this one--well! She's the sort of girl youdidn't mind sitting down with, or saying anything in front of.
"Her and Nellie Million seemed to be more like two sisters than mistressand maid, what I can see of it," said the washed-out-looking Serio, who"makes up," Million says, with dark brows and well-defined scarlet lipsuntil she must be quite effective, "on."
"There's something very queer about those two girls, and the way theyare together," added the Serio. (One really can't help overhearing thesetheatrical voices, and all the windows were wide open.) "There's thatgentleman cousin of Nellie's, who always calls the other girl 'Miss'Smith. D'you notice, Emmie? He treats her for all the world as if shewere a duchess in disguise! It might be her he was after, instead of theother one?"
"With Americans," said the green-tights-and-parrakeets ladyimpressively, "it's a fair puzzle to know what they are 'after'!"
She, I know, has toured a good deal in the States. So she ought to knowwhat she is talking about. But Mr. Hiram P. Jessop is the only Americanof whom I can say that I have seen very much.
Each day he has driven over from Lewes, that drowsy old town with onepricked-up ear of a castle on a hill; and he spends hours and hourstalking to the little cousin whom I really think he sincerely likes.
"And, mind you! I am not saying that I don't like him," Miss Millionconfided to me last night as I was brushing her hair. "Maybe I mighthave managed to get myself quite fond of him, if--if," she sighed--"Ihadn't happened to meet somebody else first. I don't see any manner ofuse in getting engaged to one young man when it is another that youfancy. Simply asking for trouble, that is. Haven't I read tales andtales about that sort of thing?"
I sighed as I tied a bit of pink ribbon round the ends of Miss Million'sdark plaits. If only she hadn't happened ever to meet that incorrigibleJim Burke!
"You haven't heard from him, Miss Million?" I suggested. "You haven'tseen anything of him since he went off after lunch the day I came overwith your cousin?"
"I tell you what it is, Smith. You have got a down on him! Always had,for some reason," said Miss Million quite fretfully. She got up from thechair in front of the looking-glass and stood, a defiant little sturdyfigure in the new crepe-de-chine nightie with the big silken "M" that Ihad embroidered just over her honest heart. "You are always trying tomake out that the Hon. Mr. Burke is not to be trusted, or somethink. Iam sure you are wrong."
"What makes you so sure of that?" I asked rather ruefully.
"Well, it isn't likely I should take a fancy to any one I didn't think Icould trust," said Miss Million firmly. "And as for his not having beenhere this last day or two, well! I don't think anything of that. Agentleman has got his business to attend to, whatever it may be. Hasn'the?"
I said nothing.
"I am not fretting one bit just because he has not been to see me,"maintained Miss Million stoutly, in a way that convinced me only toowell how her whole heart was set upon the next time she should see theHon. Jim. "It would not surprise me at all if he just turned up for thatpicnic on the cliffs that we are all going to to-morrow. I know Vi toldhim he could come to that. I bet he will come. And in those tales,"added Miss Million, "it is very often at a picnic that the hero choosesto go and ask the young lady to marry him!" She concluded with aninflection of hope in the voice that Mr. Hiram P. Jessop had said was sopretty.
Poor Mr. Jessop! He may win Million's fortune for his aeroplaneinvention. But good-bye to his chances of the heiress herself if theHon. Jim does turn up to-morrow.
The Hon. Jim Burke did turn up. But not at the picnic, exactly.... Letme tell you about it from the beginning. The picnic was to take place onthe cliffs near Rottingdean. Some of the "Refugettes" walked, lookinglike a band of brightly dressed, buoyant-spirited schoolgirls on aholiday. Two of the party, namely, Mr. Jessop and his cousin, mymistress, motored in the little two-seater car that he had kept on tostay with him in Lewes. Others had hired donkeys, "for the fun of thething." Marmora, the Twentieth-Century Hebe, and her friend, theBoy-Impersonator, had been very sweet and friendly in their offers to meto join the donkey-riding party. But for some reason I felt I wanted tobe quiet. I had one of those "aloof" moods which I suppose everybodyknows. One feels not "out of tune" with one's surroundings, anddisinclined for conversation. The girls and Miss Vi Vassity and mymistress and the one man at the picnic, namely, Mr. Jessop, all seemedto me like gaily coloured pictures out of some vivacious book. Somethingto look at! After the noisy, laughing lunch, when the party had brokenup into chattering groups of twos and threes, and were walking fartherdown the cliffs, I felt as if I were glad that for a few minutes thisgay and amusing book could be closed. I didn't go with any of them. Ipleaded tiredness. I said I would stay behind and have a little rest onthe turf, in the shadow of Miss Vi Vassity's bigger car that had broughtover the luncheon things.
The party melted away. I watched them disappear in a sort of movingfrieze between the thymy turf and the hot, blue sky. Then I made a couchfor myself of one of the motor-rugs and a gay-coloured cushion or two. Ihad taken off my black hat and I curled myself up comfortably in a longreverie. My thoughts drifted at last towards that subject which theyaccuse girls' thoughts (quite unjustly!) of never leaving.
The subject of getting married! Was I or was I not going to get married?Should I say "Yes" or "No" to Mr. Brace when that steady and reliableand desira
ble young Englishman returned from Paris, and came to me forhis answer? Probably "Yes." There seemed no particular reason why itshould not be "Yes." I quite like him, I had always rather liked him. Asfor him, he adored me in his honest way. I could hear again theunmistakable earnestness in his voice as he repeated the time-honouredsentiment, "You are the one girl in the world for me!"
Why should I even laugh a little to myself because he used a rather"obvious" expression?--an expression that "everybody" uses. If youcome to that, nobody else has ever used it to me! And I don't believethat he, Mr. Reginald Brace, has ever used it before. It would notsurprise me at all if he had never made love, real, respectful,with-a-view-to-matrimony love, to any other girl but me.
Very likely he's scarcely even flirted with anybody else.
Something tells me that I should be the very first woman in this man'slife.
Now isn't that a beautiful idea?
No other woman in the world will have taught him how to make love.
Any girl ought to be pleased with a husband like that! She would nothave to worry her head about "where" he learnt to be so attractive, andsympathetic, and tactful, and companionable, and to give all the rightsort of little presents and to say all the right kind of pretty things.She would not have to feel that he must have been "trained" through loveaffairs of every kind, class and age. She would not have to catch, inhis speech, little "tags" of pointed, descriptive, feminine expressionshe wouldn't have to wonder: What girl used he to hear saying that? Ah,no! The wife of a man like Mr. Reginald Brace wouldn't be made to feellike purring with pleasure over the deft way he tied the belt of hersports coat and pinned in her collar at the back or put her wrap abouther shoulders at the end of the second act--she wouldn't have toremember: "Some woman must have taught him to be so nice in these'little ways' that make all the difference to us women...."
There'd be none of all this about Mr. Brace. I should be the first--theone--the only Love! Oughtn't that thought to be enough to please andgratify any girl?
And I am gratified....
I must be gratified.
If I haven't been feeling gratified all this time, it's simply becauseI've been so "rushed" with the worry of Miss Million's disappearance,and of all that business about the detective, and the missing ruby. (Iwonder, by the way, if we have heard the last of all that business?)
Anybody would like a young man like Mr. Brace! Even Aunt Anastasia, whenshe came to know him. Even she would rather I were a bank manager's wifethan that I went on being a lady's-maid for the rest of my life....
"And, besides, I'm not like poor Million, who's allowed her affectionsto get all tangled up in the direction of the sort of young man who'dmake the worst husband in the world," I thought, idly, as I turned myhead more comfortably on the cushion. "Poor dear! If she married Mr.Jessop, it would be better for her. But still, she would be giving herhand to one man, while her heart had been--well, 'wangled,' we'll say,by another. How dreadful to have to be in love with a man like thatmercenary scapegrace of a Jim Burke! How any girl could be so foolish asto give him one serious thought----"
Here I gave up thinking at all. With my eyes shut I just basked, to thetune of the bees booming in the scented thyme about me and the waveswashing rhythmically at the foot of the tall white cliff on the top ofwhich our noisy party had been feasting.
It was nice to be alone here now, quite alone.... The washing of thewaves seemed presently to die away in my ears. The booming of the beesin those pink cushions of thyme seemed to grow fainter and fainter....Then these sounds began to increase again in a sweet, and deep, andmusical crescendo. Very pretty, that chorus of the bees!
I kept my eyes shut and I listened.
The refrain seemed actually to grow into a little rhythmic tune.Then--surely those were words that were fitted to the tune? Yes! Icaught the words of that tender old Elizabethan cradle song:
"Gol-den slum-bers kiss your eyes!"
For a second I imagined that the Serio-girl had stolen up, and, thinkingI was asleep, had begun to sing me awake.
Then I realised that it was a man's voice that crooned so close behindmy ear.
Quickly I opened my eyes and turned.
I found myself looking straight into those absurdly brilliant, dark-blueeyes, fringed by those ridiculously long black lashes of Miss Million'sadored, the Hon. Jim. So he'd come!
Hastily I sat up, with my hands to my hair.
"It looks very nice as it is, Miss Lovelace," said the Hon. Jim gravely,with a curious twitch at the corners of his firmly cut mouth. "Tell me,now. Do you consider it a fair dispensation of Providence that all thedomestic virtues should be of less avail to a girl in a sea-breeze thanthe natural kink in the chestnut hair of her?"
It is ridiculous, the way this young man always starts a conversationwith some silly question to which there is absolutely no answer!
The only thing to be done was to ignore it! So I rose to my feet asprimly as I could, and said: "Good afternoon! They will all be sorrythat you came too late for the picnic. I believe Miss Vi Vassity hasgone down there, to the left"--here I pointed towards the grey-bluesweep of distance cut by the mast of a wireless station somewhere near."And Miss Million is with her."
The Hon. Jim said gently: "I was not really asking which way they hadgone. What I really wanted to know is----"
Here he looked hard at me----"What has happened to--" here his voicechanged again--"to the gentleman from the new, young, and magnificentcountry, where the girls are all peaches, and their lovers are real,virile, red-blooded, clean-limbed, splendid specimens of what theAlmighty intended the young man to be, I guess?"
Try as I would, I could not keep my lips from quivering with laughter atthe perfect imitation which Mr. Burke gave of the young man who wascertainly worth ten of him in every way, even if he does not speak withthe accent of those who have "come down" (and a good long way, too) fromthe Kings of Ireland.
"If you mean Mr. Jessop," I said distantly, "I think he went off withMiss Vassity and his cousin."
"Ah!" said the Hon. Jim, on a long-drawn note. "Oh! the cousin of thelittle Million, is he? Is that it? Does that account for it?"
"Account for what?" I said rather snappishly; and then, feeling ratherafraid that he might answer with something that had nothing to do withthe matter in hand, I went on hastily: "I don't think they can have gonemore than about ten minutes. They will be so glad to see you! You willeasily catch them up if you hurry, Mr. Burke----"
Mr. Burke allowed all the noble reproach of a hunger-striking suffragistto appear in those blue eyes of his as he looked down at me.
"Child, have you the heart of a stone?" he asked seriously. "'Hurry,'says she! Hurry! To a starving man who has walked from the Refuge hereon his flat feet, without so much as a crumb of lunch or the memory of adrink to fortify him! Hurry? Is that all you can think of?"
Well, then, of course----
One can't let a man starve, can one? So----
I was simply forced to do what I could for this undeserving late-comerin the way of feeding him after his tramp across the downs.
I gave him a seat on the rug. I foraged in the re-packed luncheonbaskets, and got him a clean plate, knives, forks, glass.... I broughtout all that was left by the "Refuge" party of the hunter's beef, thecold chicken, the ham, the steak-and-kidney pie, and the jam pasty thathad been made by the Serio-girl, who is in her "off" moments aparticularly good cook.
The Honourable Jim did appreciate the meal!
Also he seems to enjoy having a woman to wait hand and foot upon him.
In fact he "made errands" for me among the devastated luncheon basketsin the shadow of the car.
He demanded pepper (which had been forgotten).
He wanted more claret (when all had been finished).
Finally he demanded whole-meal bread instead of the ordinary kind.
"There isn't any," I said.
"Why not?" he demanded, aggrieved.
I laughed at
him across the big table-napkin that I had spread as acloth, pinning it down with four of the irregular, sun-heated flintsthat lay loose on the turf all about us. I said: "I suppose you'reaccustomed to have everything 'there' that you happen to want?"
"I am not," said the Honourable Jim. "But I'm accustomed to getting it'there' one way or another."
"I see. Is there anything else that I ought to do for you that I'veforgotten?"
"There is. You haven't called me 'Sir,'" said the Honourable Jim. "Ilike you to call me 'Sir.'"
Immediately I made up my mind that the word should never pass my lips tohim again.
But he went on eating heartily, chattering away between themouthfuls.... I scarcely know what the man said! But I suppose all kindsof worthless people have that gift of making themselves "at home" in anycompany they like, and of carrying on that flow of talk that theycontrive to make sound amusing, although it looks perfectly sillywritten down....
One can't imagine anybody really sterling (like my Mr. Brace, forexample) exploiting a characteristic of this sort. The Honourable Jim is"at" it the whole time. Just to keep his hand in, of course!
(I never cease to see through him.)
At last he finished lunching. He pulled out a very pretty platinumcigarette-case.
(I wondered who he had "wangled" that out of.)
"Miss Lovelace, you don't smoke?"
"No, thank you. I don't."
"Ah! That's another pleasing thing about you, is it?"
This made me sorry I hadn't taken one of his horrid fat cigarettes.
I said: "I suppose you would think it unwomanly of me if I smoked?"
He laughed. "Child," he said, "you have the prettiest obsoletevocabulary to be got anywhere outside Fielding. 'Unwomanly,' is it, tosmoke? I don't know; I only know that nine out of ten women do it sobadly I want to take the cigarette out of their fingers and pitch itinto the grate for them! Clouds of smoke they puff out straight intoyour face till you'd think 'twas a fiery-breathing dragon in the room!And staining their fingers to the knuckle as if they'd dipped them inegg. And smothering themselves with the smell of it in a way no manmanages to do--why, by the scent you'd scarcely tell if it was hairthey'd got on their heads or the stuffing out of the smoking-roomcushions! I can't ever understand how they get any man to want to----"
Here he went off at a tangent.
"Don't let your young mistress learn the cigarette habit, will you? Bythe way, you've contrived to improve the little Million in several wayssince last I saw you."
Oh!
So possibly he really had been paying serious court to the heiress. Yes;again I had the foreboding shudder. Complications ahead; what with theHonourable Jim and the Determined Jessop, and the Enamoured Million--tosay nothing of the bomb-dropping machine and the fortune that may belost!
"You look thoughtful, Miss Lovelace," said the fortune-hunter whodoesn't know there may be no fortune in it. "Mayn't I congratulateyou----"
"What?" I said, quickly looking up from the luncheon basket that I wasrepacking. I wondered where he might have heard anything about my Mr.Brace. "Congratulate me?"
"Why, on your achievements as a lady's-maid."
"Oh! Oh, yes. Very kind of you to say I had effected 'improvements,'" Isaid as bitingly as I could. "I suppose you mean Miss Million's handsthat you were so severe about?"
Here my glance fell upon Mr. Burke's own hands, generally gloved.
They gave me a shock.
They were so surprisingly out of keeping with the rest of his otherwisewell-groomed and expensive appearance, for the nails were rough andworn; the fingers stumpy and battered and hard, the palms horny as thoseof a navvy.
The Honourable Jim saw my look.
"Yes! You think my own hands are no such beauties. Faith, you're right,child," he said, carelessly flicking the ash from his cigarette offagainst a flint. "I never could get my hands fit to be seen again afterthat time I came across as a stoker."
"A stoker?" I repeated, staring at the young man. "What on earth wereyou doing as a stoker?"
"Working my passage across home from Canada one time," he told me. "Youknow I was sent out to Canada by the old man with about five bob a weekto keep up the old family traditions and found a new family fortune. Oh,quite so."
"What did you do?" I asked. One couldn't help being a little interestedin the gyrations of this rolling stone that has acquired polish andnothing else.
"Do? Nothing. A bit of everything. Labourer, farm hand. On a ranch,finally," he said, "where they wouldn't give me anything to eat untilI'd 'made good.' Yes, they were harder than you are, little blackpigeon-girl that I thought had the heart of a stone under the softblack plumage of her. And by 'making good' they meant taking a horse--achestnut, same coloured coat as your hair, child--that nobody else couldride. I had to stick on her for three hours, and I stuck on. I toldmyself I'd rather die than come off. And I didn't come off, nor yet didI die, as you may perceive," laughed the Honourable Jim, tossing the endof the cigarette over the cliff, above which the gulls were wheeling andcalling in voices as shrill as those of the "Refuge" girls. "But theyhad to carry us both home--the horse and myself."
"Why carry you?"
"The pair of us were done," he said. "But it was a grand afternoon wehad, Miss Lovelace, I can tell you. I wish you'd been there, child,looking on."
It was very odd that he should say this.
For at that very instant I had found myself wishing that I could haveseen him mastering the vicious chestnut.
I should have loved to have watched that elemental struggle between manand brute with the setting of the prairie and the wide sky. However muchof "a bad hat" and a "waster" he is, he has at least lived a man's life,doing the things a man should do before he drifted to that attic inJermyn Street and those more expensive town haunts where anybody elsepays. Impulsively I looked up at the big, expensively dressed youngloiterer with the hands that bear those ineradicable marks of strenuoustoil. And, impulsively, I said:
"Why didn't you stay where you were? Oh, what a pity you ever cameback!"
There was a pause before he laughed. And then we had what was very likea squabble! He said, in a not-very-pleased voice: "You'd scorn to sayflattering things, perhaps?"
"Well," I said, "I'm not a Celt----"
"You mean that," he said sharply, "to stand for everything that's rathercontemptible. I know! You think I'm utterly mercenary----"
"Well! You practically told me that you were that!"
"And you believe some of the things I tell you, and not others. You pickout as gospel the ones that are least to my credit," the Honourable Jimaccused me. "How like your sex!"
How is it that these four words never fail to annoy our sex?
I said coldly: "I don't see any sense or use in our standing herequarrelling like this, all about nothing, on such a lovely afternoon,and all. Hadn't you better find your hostess?"
"Perhaps I had," said Mr. Burke, without moving.
I was determined he should move!
I said: "I will come a little of the way with you."
"And what about the rugs and things here?"
"I shan't lose sight of them."
"Oh."
In silence we moved off over the turf. And, ridiculous as it was, eachof us kept up that resentful silence until, far off on the green downs,we saw moving towards us three specks of colour: a light grey speckbetween a pink and a blue speck.
"There they are," I told him. "Miss Vassity and my mistress and hercousin."
"Give me your moral support, then; don't run away till I've said goodafternoon to them," Mr. Burke said, as if in an agony of shyness. Andthen the blue imps came back to sweep the resentment out of his eyes. Helooked down at me and said: "Child! Think me all that's bad, if you wantto. Enlarge upon the affecting 'pity' of it that I didn't stay outday-labouring in Canada, instead of wangling my keep out of fools athome, to whom I'm well worth all the cash I cost 'em! Go on despisingme. But listen. Give me credit for o
ne really high-principled action,Miss Lovelace!"
"What is it?" I demanded rather scornfully. "When have you shown me anykind of high principledness?"
"This afternoon," he retorted. "Just now. Just when I came upon theSleeping Beauty on the cliffs!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that it's not every man who would have woke her up with just asnatch of song. And I that am so--so hard up for a pair of decent newgloves!" he concluded, laughing.
And then he caught my eyes with his own, his insolent, devil-may-careblue ones. He looked down, straight down into them for a long moment.
I felt myself crimsoning under his regard. I felt--yes, I don't know howit happened, but I did feel exactly as if he had done what he had,after all, had the decency to leave undone.
There's very little difference, apparently, between a look likethat--and a tangible caress....
And yet I couldn't say a word!
I couldn't accuse him--of anything!
Maddening young scamp!
I stood as straight as the wireless mast on the downs. I glared outtowards the steely glitter of the English Channel.
"Ah, now, why should you be angry?" protested that ineffably gentleIrish voice beside me. "Sure I'm only just pointing out how differentlyan unscrupulous fellow might have behaved. I never kissed you, child."
I couldn't think of a crushing retort. All I could find to say was, ofcourse, the very last thing I really meant.
"I shall never forgive you!"
"What?" took up the Honourable Jim swiftly and merrily. "Never forgiveme for what?" To this I didn't have to reply, for the other three peoplehad come quickly up to us.
Miss Million came up first, holding out both hands to the HonourableJim.
"At last! Well, you are a stranger, and no mistake!" she declared,panting a little with the haste she had made. "I have been looking outfor you all the morning----"
Surely this is an attitude that Mr. Burke ought to approve of in "oursex"!
"And I did hope," said Miss Million quite touchingly, "I did hope youwas going to come over to see me!"
I'm not quite sure whether I'm glad or sorry that I happened to bepresent at that meeting on the sun-lit, wind-swept downs between mymistress and the young Irishman, to whom she presently introduced hercousin, Mr. Hiram P. Jessop.
Really it was a most embarrassing moment. I think nine out of ten womenwould have found it so! For none of us really enjoy seeing a man "caughtout" before our eyes. And this was practically what happened to theHonourable James Burke.
It served him right! It certainly was no more than he deserved! Andyet--and yet I couldn't help feeling, as I say, sorry for him!
It happened thus.
Miss Million, flushed and sparkling with the delight of seeing her hero,Mr. Jim Burke, again after three days of separation, put on a prettylittle air of hostess-ship and began: "Oh, here's some one I want you toknow, Mr. Burke. A relative of mine. My cousin, Mr. Jessop----"
"I have already had the pleasure of making Mr. Burke's acquaintance,"said the young American, with that bow of his, to which Miss Million,standing there between the two young men, exclaimed: "There now! Tothink of that! I thought you hadn't had a word together, that day atlunch----"
"It was before then, I think," began the Honourable Jim, with his mostcharming smile. Whereupon Miss Million interrupted once more.
"Oh, I see! Yes, of course. That must have been in America, mustn't it?How small the world is, as my poor Dad used to say. I s'pose you two metwhile you was both attending to poor uncle, did you?"
Miss Million's cousin gave one of those quick, shrewd glances of his atthe other young man.
"Why, no, Cousin Nellie," he said slowly. "I hadn't the pleasure ofseeing Mr. Burke in the States. And I wasn't aware that he wasacquainted with our uncle."
This was where Miss Million rushed in where any other woman might haveguessed it was better not to tread.
"Oh, Lor', yes!" she exclaimed gleefully. "Mr. Burke was a great friendof our Uncle Sam's. He told me so the first time we met; in fac', that'show I come to know him, wasn't it, Mr. Burke?"
She ran on, without waiting for any answer: "Uncle used to call him'Jim,' and to say he looked forward to his coming every day that timewhen he had to lay up for two months with that sprained ankle ofhis----"
"When was that, Cousin Nellie, if I may ask?" put in the young Americanquietly.
"Why, that was just a twelvemonth ago, Mr. Burke told me; didn't you,Mr. Burke?" ran on the unsuspecting Miss Million, while I, standingstill in the background as a well-trained lady's-maid should do,permitted myself one glance at the face of that young pretender.
It was blank as a stone mask. I looked at Mr. Jessop. His grave,penetrating eyes were fixed upon that mask.
As for Miss Vi Vassity, to whom I also turned, I saw her common, clever,vivacious face lighted up with a variety of expressions: amusement,curiosity, irony. She knew, as well as I did, what was happening. Shewas keener than I to see what would happen next.
In far less time than it takes to tell all this Miss Million had rattledon: "Oh, yes; Mr. Burke was with uncle in Chicago pretty near every dayall the last year of his life, wasn't you, Mr. Burke? Shows how well heused to know him, doesn't it? And then when he heard my name at theHotel Sizzle!
"Soon as he heard that I was related to Mr. Samuel Million, his oldfriend, he came round and chummed up at once. It is funny, isn't it,"concluded Miss Million, "the queer way you get to know people thatyou've never dreamt about?"
"Yes, it's real funny, I guess, that I haven't happened to have gottento know Mr. Burke while he was on the other side," broke in the voice ofthe American, speaking quietly but very distinctly as it "gave away" thepretensions of the Honourable Jim in two simple sentences.
"I guess there wasn't a day in the last two years that I wasn't visitingthe old man. And I never heard anything about a sprained ankle, nor yetabout his having had any Mr. Burke to come around and see him."
After this revelation there was a pause that seemed to last for ever.But I suppose it couldn't have been as long as that. For I, turning myeyes from the quartette on the turf, was watching a big white seagullwheeling and swooping above the cliff.
Its long wings had only flapped, slowly, twice, before the hearty voiceof Miss Vi Vassity broke the silence that I felt to be quitenerve-racking.
"Well! Are these biographical notes going to keep us busy for the wholeafternoon, or are we going to get on to the spirit-kettle and the cakes?
"I'm fair dying for a drop to drink, I can tell you. Talkin' does it.And I never can bear those flasks. Don't trust 'em. Some careless hussyforgets to give 'em a proper clean-out once in a way, and the next timeyou take your cup o' tea out of the thing where are you? Poisoned and aweek in a nursing-home. Miss Vi Vassity, 'London's Love,' has beensufferin' from a severe attack of insideitis, with cruel remarks from_Snappy Bits_ on the subject. Give me hot water out of the kettle.
"Come on, Jim, you shall get it going; you're a handy man with yourfeet--fingers, I mean; come on, Miss Smith. The other girls seem to havelost themselves somewhere; always do when there's a bit of housework andwomen's sphere going on, I notice. We'll spread the festive board.Nellie'll bring on the cousin--I can see they've got secrets to talk.S'long!"
She kept up this babble during the whole of tea in the lee of that motoron the downs where Mr. Burke had come upon me as I drowsed after lunch.
The tea was even noisier and gayer than the lunch had been. We had thisflow of comment-on-nothing from London's Love, and a couple of songsfrom our Serio, and American tour reminiscences from our Lady Acrobat.Also a loud and giggling squabble between that lady and theBoy-Impersonator about which of them looked her real age.
Also an exhibition of the blandishments of our Twentieth-Century Hebe,who sat on the turf next to the Honourable Jim. She was doing her utmostto flirt with him; putting her lazy blonde head on one side to castlanguishing glances at him, invoking his pity f
or a midge-bite that shesaid she had discovered on her upper arm.
"Look," she murmured, holding out the sculptured limb. "Does it show?"
That softly curved, white-skinned, blue-veined and bare arm could havebeen his to hold for a nearer inspection of that imperceptible wound ifhe had chosen. I made sure he'd catch hold of it ... it would have beenjust like him to laugh and suggest kissing it to make it well. I'm surethat's what the "Breathing Statue Girl" meant him to do. They're just apair of silly flirtatious Bohemians----
Rather to my surprise the Irishman merely gave a matter-of-fact littlenod and returned in a practical tone of voice: "Yes; you've certainlygot glorious arms of your own, Miss Marmora; pity to let 'em getsunburnt and midge-bitten. It'll show on the stage if you aren'tcareful. I'd keep my sleeves down if I were you----"
"'And that's _that_!'" the Boy-Impersonator wound up with George Robey'stag. And in the midst of all the laughter and chatter no one seemed tonotice that two of the party were absolutely silent and almost tooabsent-minded to drink their tea--namely, the American cousin and MissNellie Million, the heiress.
I hardly dared to look at her. I thought I was in for a terrible floodof tears and misery as soon as we got home to the "Refuge."
For evidently Mr. Hiram P. Jessop had been getting in quite a long talkwith his cousin before tea, and I am sure he had explained to her justthe sort of gay deceiver that her admired and Honourable Jim was!
Oh, the disillusionment of that!
To find out that he had made that dead set at knowing her from thebeginning only because of her uncle's money! And that, so far from therehaving been any of that family friendship of which she was so proud, hehad never set eyes on old Mr. Million!
I was afraid she would be utterly heart-broken, shaken with sobs overthe perfidy of that handsome impostor whom she must always love....
How little I knew her kind!
I was undeceived on the way home to the "Refuge." Miss Million clutchedme by the arm, holding me back until every other member of the party,those who walked, those who rode on donkeys, and those who motored, hadgot well ahead.
"I'm walking back alone with you, Smith," she announced firmly. "Let allof them get on, Hiram and Vi and all. I want to speak to you. I'm fairbursting to have a talk about all this."
I pressed the sturdy short arm in my own with as much sympathy as Icould show.
"My dear! My dear Miss Million," I murmured, "I am so dreadfully sorryabout it all----"
"Sorry? How d'you mean sorry, Smith?" My unexpected little mistressturned sharply upon me. "Y'orter to be glad, I should think!"
"Glad?"
"Yes! About me being 'put wise,' as Hiram calls it, to something that Imight have been going on and on getting taken in about," went on MissMillion as we started off to find the road over the downs.
"If it hadn't ha' bin for my cousin and him meeting face to face, andhim not able to deny what he'd said, I might ha' been to the end of thechapter believing every word I was told by that Mr. Burke. Did you everknow anything like him and the lies he's been stuffing me up with?"
I stared at the real and righteous and dry-eyed anger that was incarnatein Million's little face as we walked along.
I positively gasped over the--well, there's nothing for it but to callit the distaste and dislike of the one in which she pronounced thosethree words: "That Mr. Burke."
"Whatcher looking so surprised at?" she asked.
"You," I said. "Why--only yesterday you told me that you were somuch--that you liked Mr. Burke so much!"
"Yesterday. O' course," said Million. "Yesterday I hadn't been put wiseto the sort of games he was up to!"
"But----You liked him enough to say you--you were ready to marry him!"
"Yes! And there'd have been a nice thing," retorted the indignantMillion. "Fancy if I had a married him. A man like that, who stuffed meup with all those fairy tales! A nice sort of husband for anybody! Ican't be grateful enough to Hiram for telling me."
I was too puzzled to say anything. I could only give little gasps atintervals.
"Isn't it a mercy," said Miss Million with real fervour, "that I foundhim out in time? Why ever d'you look at me like that? It is a mercy,isn't it?"
"Yes. Yes, of course. Only I'm so surprised at your thinking so," Ihesitated. "You see, as you really liked Mr. Burke----"
"Well, but I couldn't go on likin' him after I found him out. How couldI?" demanded Million briskly. "Would any girl?"
I said: "I should have thought so. I can imagine a girl who, if shereally cared for a man, would go on caring----"
"After she found out the sort he was?"
"Yes. She might be very unhappy to find out. But it wouldn't make anyother difference----"
"What?" cried Million, looking almost scandalised. "I don't believe youcan mean what you say!"
"I do mean what I say," I persisted, as we walked along. "I think thatif one really cared for a man, the 'caring' would go on, whatever onefound him out in. He might be a murderer. Or a forger. Or he might be inthe habit of making love to every pretty woman he saw. Or--or anythingbad that one can think of. And one might want to give up being fond ofhim. But one wouldn't be able to. I shouldn't."
"Ah, well, there's just the difference between you and I," said MissMillion, in such a brisk, practical, matter-of-fact voice that one couldhardly realise that it belonged to the girl whose eyes had grown sodreamy as she had spoken, only yesterday, of the Honourable Jim.
"Now, I'm like this. If I like a person, I like 'em. I'd stick toanybody through thick and thin. Do anything for 'em; work my fingers tothe bone! But there's one thing they've got to do," said Miss Millionimpressively. "They've got to be straight with me. I've got to feel Ican trust 'em, Smith. Once they've deceived me--it's all over. See?"
"Yes, I see," I said, feeling more puzzled than ever over the differencebetween one person's outlook and another's. As far as I was concerned, Ifelt that "trusting" and "liking" could be miles apart from each other.
I shouldn't change my whole opinion of a man because he had deceived meabout knowing my uncle, and because he had spun me a lot of "yarns"about that friendship. Men were deceivers ever.
I, in Miss Million's place, should have shrugged my shoulders over theunmasking of this particular deceiver, and I should have said: "What canone expect of a man with that voice and those eyes?"
Evidently in this thing Million, whom I've tried to train in so many ofthe little ways that they consider "the mark of a lady," is morenaturally fastidious than I am myself.
She said: "I don't mind telling you I thought a lot o' that Mr. Burke. Ithought the world of him. But that's----"
She gave a sort of little scattering gesture with her hands.
"Why, I can't begin to tell you the yards of stuff he's been telling meabout uncle and the friends they was! And now here it's all a make-upfrom the beginning. He hadn't a word to say for himself. 'Jer noticethat, Smith?" said Miss Million.
"I expect he was ashamed to look any one in the face, after the way he'dbin going on. Pretty silly I expect he felt, having us know at last thatit was all a put-up job." I had to bite my lips to keep back a smile.
For as Miss Million and I swung along the road that, widening, led awayfrom the downs and between hedges and sloping fields, I rememberedsomething. I remembered that tea at Charbonnels with the Honourable Jim.
It was there that he admitted to me, quite shamelessly, that he hadnever, in the whole of his chequered career, set eyes upon the lateSamuel Million. It was then that he calmly remarked to me: "You'll nevertell tales." So that it's quite a time that I've known the wholediscreditable story....
Yes; I confess that in some ways Miss Million must have been bornmuch more scrupulous and fastidious than Lady Anastasia'sgreat-granddaughter!
"No self-respecting girl would want to look at him again, I shouldn'tthink," concluded my young mistress firmly, as we passed the firstthatched cottages of a village.
I ought to feel inexpressi
bly relieved. For now all my fears regardingthe Honourable Jim are at rest for evermore. He won't marry her for herfortune, for the simple reason that she won't have him! And she won'tbreak her heart and make herself wretched over this perfidy of his,because a perfidious man ceases to have any attraction for her honestheart. That sort of girl doesn't, "while she hates the sin, love thepoor sinner."
What a merciful dispensation!
It's too utterly ridiculous to feel annoyed with Million for turning hercoat like this. It's inconsistent. I mustn't be inconsistent. I musttrample down this feeling of being a little sorry for the blue-eyedpirate who has been forced to strike his flag and to flee before thegale of Miss Nellie Million's wrath.
I ought, if anything, to be still feeling angry with Mr. James Burke onmy own account: teasing me about ... pairs of gloves and all thatnonsense!
Anyhow, there's one danger removed from the path. And now I think I seeclearly enough what must come. Miss Million, having found that she'sbeen deceived in smooth talk and charming flattery and Celticlove-making, will turn to the sincerity of that bomb-dropping Americancousin of hers.
They'll marry--oh, yes; they'll marry without another hitch in thecourse of the affair. And I----Yes, of course, I shall marry, too. Ishall marry that other honest and sincere young man--the Englishone--Mr. Reginald Brace.
But I must see Million--Miss Million--married first. I must dress herfor her wedding. I must arrange the veil over her glossy little darkhead; I must order her bouquet of white heather and lilies; I must beher bridesmaid, or one of them, even if she does have a dozen othergirls from the "Refuge" as well!
And who'll give her away? Mr. Chesterton, the old lawyer, will, Isuppose, take the part of the bride's father.
Miss Vi Vassity is sure to make some joke about being thebride's mother. She is sure to be the life and soul of thatwedding-party--wherever it is. It's sure to be a delightfullygay affair, the wedding of Nellie Million to her cousin, HiramP. Jessop! I'm looking forward to it most awfully----
These were the thoughts with which I was harmlessly and unsuspectinglyamusing myself as Miss Million and I walked along down the white Sussexhighroad in the golden evening light.
And in the middle of this maiden meditation, in the middle of thepeaceful evening and the drowsy landscape of rose-wreathed cottages anddistant downs, there dropped, as if from one of Mr. Jessop's machines, apositive bomb!
The unexpected happened once more. The unexpected took the form, thistime, of an unobtrusive-looking man on a bicycle.
When we met him, slipping along on the road coming from the directionof Miss Vi Vassity's "Refuge," I really hardly noticed that we hadpassed a cyclist.
Miss Million, apparently, had noticed; she straightened her back with afunny little jerky gesture that she has when she means to be verydignified. She turned to me and said: "Well! He'll know us next time hesees us, that's one thing! He didn't half give us a look!"
"Did he?" I said absently.
Then we turned up the road to the "Refuge." Neither of us realised thatthe man on the bicycle had turned his machine, and had noiselesslyfollowed us down the road again.
We reached the white gate of the "Refuge," under its dark green cliffsof elm. I had my hand on the latch when I heard the quiet voice of thecyclist almost in my ear.
"Miss Smith----"
I turned with a little jump. I gave a quick look up at the man's face.It was the sort of quiet, neutral-tinted, clean-shaven, self-containedordinary face that one would not easily remember, as a rule.
Yet I remembered it. I'd seen quite enough of it already. It was burntin on my memory with too unpleasant an association for me to haveforgotten it.
I heard myself give a little gasp of dismay as, through the gatheringdusk, I recognised the face of the man who had wanted to search mytrunks at the Hotel Cecil; the man who had afterwards shadowed me downthe Strand and into the Embankment Garden; the man from Scotland Yard.
Mercy! What could he want?
"Miss Million----" he said.
And Miss Million, too, stared at him, and said: "Whatever on earth isthe meaning of this?"
There was a horrified little quaver in her voice as she said it, forshe'd guessed what was afoot.
I had already told her of the manager's visit to her rooms the daybefore I came down from London, and she had been really appalled at theevent until Miss Vi Vassity had come in to cheer her with theannouncement that she was sure this was the last that would ever beheard by us of anything to do with having our belongings looked at.
And now, after three or four days only, this!...
Here we stood on the dusty road under the elms, with the man's bicycleleaning up against the white palings. We were a curious trio! The youngmistress in a pink linen frock, the young lady's-maid in black, and the"plain-clothes man" giving a quick glance from one to the other as heannounced in his clear but quiet and expressionless voice: "I have toarrest you ladies----"
"Arrest!" gasped Miss Million, turning white. I grasped her hand.
"Don't be silly, my dear," I said as reassuringly as I could, though myvoice sounded very odd in my own ears. Million looked the picture ofguilt found out, and I felt that there was a fatal quiver in my owntone. I said: "It's quite all right!"
"I have to arrest you ladies," repeated the man with the bicycle, in hiswooden tone, "on the charge of stealing Mr. Julius Rattenheimer's rubypendant from the Hotel Cecil----"
"Oh, I never! I never done it!" from Million, in anguished protest. "Youcan ask anybody at the Orphanage what sort of a----"
"I have to warn you that anything you say now will be used in evidenceagainst you," concluded the man from Scotland Yard, "and my orders areto take you back with me to London at once."