Mally was certainly a little taken aback. The dress which Miss Long proposed to wear under her domino was calculated to cause a sensation at Curston. Mally pictured Lady Mooring’s face, and very nearly burst into disrespectful laughter.
“It’s a silver-fish,” said Candida, picking up the glittering tights. “Isn’t the tail dinky? It was Paul’s idea. We agreed that I hadn’t quite enough money to be a goldfish—it would run to five figures, and I’ve only four. Oh, I say! It is rather nice—isn’t it?”
Silver shoes; silver stockings; silver tights with the fish scales picked out in glittering diamond points; and the little three-cornered diamond tail, which Candida had described as dinky—it was all as revealing as a bathing-dress, if rather more becoming.
Candida’s silver-flaxen hair stood out like a halo. She rose on the tips of her silver shoes and twirled in front of the glass.
“Oh, I do hate to take it off! But I can’t go down to dinner in it. I’d love to see Elizabeth’s face if I did. She told me once quite seriously that it took her years to get used to ankles. ‘And now, my dear,’ she said, ‘nobody minds what they show.’ I say, I do look nice—don’t I? Here, give me that black thing to go down to dinner in—and hide this with my domino—and don’t breathe a word to a soul, or I’ll kill you and dump the corpse in the loneliest wood between here and Curston.”
Downstairs Miss Long was greeted with cries of “Not dressed?”; “I say, Candida, you’re not going like that?”; and “My dear, what about your fancy dress? Hasn’t it come?”
Candida kissed her fingers to them all.
“It’s come—it’s upstairs. No, Elizabeth darling, I shan’t make any one late, because I’m going to drive myself by myself, and I’m absolutely the deadliest secret that ever was, and nobody’s going to see me till I take off my domino at supper. No, no one’s going to know my domino either. I’ve just told my maid I’ll kill her if she tells. You wouldn’t like a murder in the house, would you, Elizabeth?”
“My dear!” Mrs. Holmes was rather shocked. She was a large lady, squarely built to take plain tweeds, and looking frankly out of her element in a frightful magenta satin, which she had bought because her dressmaker urged her to. She had bright hair of a shade between red and gold, and a skin like brick-dust. She said “My dear!” and Candida laughed.
“Yes, darling, I said you wouldn’t like it. Who do I go in with? Ambrose? All right——Come along, old dear.”
She linked arms with a handsome, dark-eyed boy and whispered to him as they went through the hall:
“I’m not telling every one, but I don’t mind giving you the tip. Look out for a violet domino—p’raps she’ll give you three and five. Mind, I don’t promise.”
She had Paul Craddock on her left at dinner, and as soon as the fish came round, she told Ambrose to play with Janet Elliot on his other side, and turned to Paul.
“Well,” she said. “I don’t suppose I’ve any dances left for you.”
“How are you going to be an absolutely dead secret if you book dances ahead?”
“Perhaps I’m not an absolutely dead secret to every one.”
“Must you be one to me? After all, I gave you the idea for your dress, and I haven’t told a soul, so I deserve something.”
“We don’t always get what we deserve. Think of all the lovely things I should have if we did.”
He looked at her with an expression which she could not interpret.
“Have you really anything left to wish for?”
“My dear Paul! What a question! Why, only yesterday I’d the most fiendish bit of luck. You know I’m off to Florence, to the Hallidays, to-morrow. And yesterday, after you rang up, if that miserable, abominable fiend of a Deane didn’t go off at a moment’s notice, just because her sister had had twins—twins!”
“Poor Candida! So you’re maidless?”
She dropped her voice.
“No, I’m not—that’s the extraordinary thing. I suppose I am rather lucky after all. I don’t mind telling you, but for goodness gracious mercy’s sake don’t let on about it here. It’s the sort of thing Elizabeth would have a fit over.”
“What have you done?” said Paul, smiling at her. “Go on—confess! I won’t give you away. What have you done?”
Candida opened her pale eyes in a look of injured innocence.
“I? Nothing. She was absolutely dropped in my path.”
“She?” His tone sharpened just a little.
Candida bent nearer him, nodding.
“Ssh! Not a word! Elizabeth would have ten thousand fits.”
She sat up and helped herself to an entrée. Paul let it pass him, and she shook her head reproachfully.
“It’s frightfully good. You ought to have some. I don’t know what it is—it’s a mystery like me!”
“Or your maid. How did you say you got her?”
Candida hesitated.
“Swear you won’t tell—absolutely? All right. I picked her up on the road, just out of Peddling Corner.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. And she’s pounds better at doing hair than Deane ever was. So I really am lucky.”
Paul appeared to feel no further interest in the picked-up maid. He gazed tenderly at Candida and said in a low voice:
“And am I to be lucky, too? Are you going to promise me some dances?”
“How can I? I’m a secret.”
“Must you be a secret from me?”
She dropped her eyelashes.
“Do you want to know frightfully?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well—then—you won’t tell any one? Swear?”
Mr. Paul Craddock swore.
Candida looked over her shoulder. Ambrose was telling Janet Elliot in full detail why he had taken nine to the fourteenth hole that morning. It was quite safe. She turned back to Paul and whispered.
“What did you say your favorite color was?”
Paul was not sure that he had a favorite color, but he knew, or thought he knew, where Miss Long’s own preference lay.
He said, “Pale blue,” and looked suitably eager and devoted.
“How clever of you!”
“Is it pale blue?”
She laughed.
“A pale-blue domino might be there and give you seven and ten.”
Candida came upstairs in a state of reprehensible mirth.
“Lightning quick, Brown! I want to get away before the others. It is going to be fun. You haven’t said a word to a soul, have you? No, there’s no fastening—it’s elastic. Pull! Pull like the dickens! Yes, that’s got it. Tophole, isn’t it? My good Brown, I’ve told Ambrose Medhurst that my domino is violet in strict confidence. And I’ve told Paul that it’s pale blue—absolutely exclusive information. And Willie Elliot thinks it’s white and gold. And Colonel Moulton caught me in the hall, and I just breathed in his ear that I was going to be a she devil in scarlet. Now, let’s have the real article!”
Mally held up a black and silver domino. It was more silver than black really.
Candida pulled the hood close down over her hair and put on the mask with its deep lace fall.
“Now my fur coat to hide the domino—and that scarlet chiffon to put over my head! Are you ready? Come along then!”
Just at the head of the stairs they met Mr. Craddock standing on guard. Mally had on her dark-blue coat, and she had turned down the brim of her black felt hat, the better to hide her face. She went by, following Candida, and felt Paul Craddock’s eyes.
CHAPTER XXII
The car slid through the dark lanes. Mally loved driving at night; there was something magical about the enclosing dark and the white beam that cut through it and made a road for them. To-night there was a touch of strangeness on everything. It had snowed a little, and tree, bush and hedgerow were like silver ghosts watching the black lanes.
Candida Long drove very well. She talked nearly all the time. But Mally had only a surface attention to give her. She
was finding the situation quite extraordinarily exciting; with the excitement there was a touch of terror, a touch of amusement. The ball at Curston had been planned in her honor, it was her ball; and she was going to it in the double character of a fugitive from justice and Candida Long’s maid.
Upstairs in the box-room at Curston was the trunk that she had left behind, her old school-box; and in the box was the domino that she had made to wear to-night. Roger had quarrelled with her because she would not tell him what the domino was like. Like Candida, she had meant it to be an absolutely dead secret, and she had bought the stuff in London one day when Roger had driven her up, and had sewed at it in her own room with the door locked.
It was at this point that the great idea came to her. It came just as Candida said in a commiserating tone:
“It’ll be most awfully dull for you all those hours. But I suppose you know some of the people in the house, and they’ll look after you—the housekeeper or some one.”
“Oh, I shan’t be dull.” Mally suppressed a funny little laugh. “I—I shall be perfectly all right.”
“Well, mind you have some supper,” said Miss Long. “And meet me in the cloak-room when people begin to go. I say, we got away rather neatly—didn’t we? I don’t see how any one can have the least idea of who I am. I mean to have simply the most priceless time.”
Mally said, “’M,” which was all that was required of her. It was her ball, and she was going to it as Candida Long’s maid. She could just see the stiff pride that had made the Moorings go on with it in the face of the broken engagement. She wondered whether every one knew. It seemed about a thousand years since she had flung her ring at Roger and cut his cheek, but really and truly it was only forty-eight hours ago.
Something inside Mally’s mind said “Nonsense!” with such insistent loudness that she had to count up on her fingers to convince herself. It was between eight and nine o’clock in the evening that she had banged the door on Roger and her engagement. Then there had been a night divided between a garage, a car, and a hay-loft—a night that had felt about three weeks long; and a second night on a hard little bed in an attic room at Menden, where she had slept without moving. It was now just a quarter past nine, so that it was really only forty-eight hours and three-quarters of an hour since she had smashed Lady Catherine Cray’s collection and run away from Roger, who deserved everything, every single thing she had done, and more. Of course he might have sat down straight away to write one of those devastatingly discreet announcements which one sees in the papers:
“The marriage arranged between Mr. Dash and Miss Asterisk will not take place.”
Mally was sure that he wouldn’t lose any time in letting everybody know that he wasn’t engaged to a girl who might be arrested at any moment.
“So you see,” said Candida, finishing a long speech of which Mally had not heard a single word. “So you see, I shall know, shan’t I? Of course I don’t care twopence for him, and I don’t intend to until I’m sure—Hallo! Here we are! Last time I came here I’d only just learned to drive, and I went slap into the middle of Lady Mooring’s pet rose-bed. And that stiff Roger was polite about it—polite! I’ve hated him ever since, because he had ‘damns’ simply sticking out all over him the whole time, and it would have been so much more comfortable to have a good old row. If he’d said, ‘My good girl, you can’t drive for nuts! Why on earth do they let you out without a nursemaid?’ and I’d said, ‘You’re simply the most odious, cross pig I’ve ever met!’ we might have got it off our chests and been friends, whereas now we loathe each other.”
The worst moment was coming out of the dark into the lighted hall. Mally kept her head down and made for the back stairs. They were early, but a fairly big party had arrived just before them, so that the hall was not empty.
Once through the swing door, Mally took a very long breath of relief. The worst was over. She ran up the stairs, just missed one of the housemaids on the first landing, and then found the rest of the way quite clear.
She shut the box-room door behind her, switched on the light, and looked about her for her box. It stood on the top of another one about a yard away, a dreadful, shabby old thing with the canvas coming through one of the broken leather corners. It was simply years since the lock had functioned, and for this she had cause to be devoutly thankful. She tugged at the straps and threw back the lid. The domino was tied up in a paper parcel down in the left-hand corner. She pulled it out, opened the paper, and took stock of its contents. First the domino, rose-red with a little gold pattern on it and a dull-gold fringe; then the black velvet mask—a really wide one with a deep lace fall—the gold and silver shoes, and the light stockings, which she had been saving for this ball——“Only I never, never, never thought I’d have to dress in the box-room.”
She was out of her coat and slipping off skirt and jumper. She must have something to wear under the domino. She rummaged for a very old gold tissue slip which she had worn for some school theatricals. It went on, and the domino over it. As she slid the elastic of the mask over her hair and pulled up the rose-red hood, a most beautiful feeling of safety came over her. She was here, at her very own ball. She was safe. She was going to enjoy herself.
When she had put on the silver stockings and the gold and silver shoes, she rolled up a change of linen, and all the things she had taken off, inside her out-door coat, and fastened the bundle with a couple of safety pins. Then she ran downstairs.
The hall was now quite full. She slipped through the crowd, out at the front door, and round to the right to where Candida had parked her car. It was turning frightfully cold. She pushed her bundle into the car and ran back to the house. She edged her way to the big open fire-place, where a huge fire of logs was blazing, and whilst she warmed herself, the rest of the party from Menden arrived.
Mally knew from the other maids that Mrs. Holmes was going to wear a purple velvet domino, and Janet Elliot emerald-green. Of the men, Paul Craddock was easy to recognize on account of his height. He wore a bright-red domino lined with black. Colonel Moulton and Ambrose Medhurst were about the same height; but Colonel Moulton had a forward tilt of the head, and she decided without difficulty that he was the brown, and Ambrose the yellow domino.
She was rather pleased with herself as she passed down the corridor with a crowd of other people and came out into the ballroom, where Lady Mooring in black velvet and pearls stood, saying alternately: “How d’you do,” and “I haven’t an idea who you are.” She said “I haven’t an idea” to Mally, and Mally passed on with just one backward look at the three rows of milky, iridescent pearls that were to have been her own on the day that she married Roger.
She put up one hand and touched her smooth bare throat. Roger had shown her the pearls and made her put them on. She remembered the feel of them, and once more she looked back and saw them on Lady Mooring, one row tight up under the double chin, one just reaching the Honiton lace tucker, and the third falling down over the black velvet to the ample waist.
“They must be worth hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds. How comic—how frightfully comic! And I’ve only three and ninepence farthing in the world!”
It pleased her a good deal to think that it was she who had whistled Roger, and Curston, and three rows of pearls down the wind.
The first dance had just begun, when the yellow domino from Menden stopped in front of her and said, in the high, squeaky voice affected by masks:
“Er—may I have the pleasure?”
Mally had decided on a husky whisper as a better disguise than a squeak. Not that Ambrose Medhurst would know her voice, but the room was certainly full of people who had come here to see her act only three weeks ago, and some of them might have good memories. She swung into the dance with Ambrose and said:
“You’re very formal. Perhaps we know each other very well—or perhaps we don’t know each other at all. So we needn’t bother about being polite.”
“You dance like a dream,” sque
aked the yellow domino.
“Yes, I know I do. It’s my one consuming passion. Let’s dance, and talk afterwards. I’m sure you can’t go on squeaking like that—it sounds frightfully uncomfortable.”
When the music stopped, they found a couple of chairs in an alcove, and Mally gave indiscretion the rein:
“Shall I tell you who you are, and all the horrid secrets of your past? I will if you like.”
“Who are you?”
“Some one who knows all.”
“What on earth——”
“Did you ever play, ‘I love my love’?” said Mally on a thrilling note of mystery. “It goes like this, you know: ‘I love my love with a C because she is Charming. I hate her with a C because——’ Why do you hate her, yellow domino?”
“Who on earth—who are you—what are you driving at?” Mr. Medhurst rather forgot his squeak.
“You won’t say why you hate her. All right, we’ll pass that. Perhaps you don’t hate her at all. And it goes on like this: ‘I took her to Curston and gave her Compliments and Chaff. Her name is Candida and she’s going on the Continent.’”
There was a little pause. Mally had seen Ambrose Medhurst look at Candida when Candida was looking away. It had also occurred to her that Miss Long, who would talk by the hour about Paul Craddock, not only changed the subject when Mr. Medhurst was mentioned, but actually changed color too. The maid hears a good deal of talk between women as she lays out clothes or puts them away.
After that little pause, the yellow domino said:
“Who are you? Candida?”
“Supposing I said ‘No’?”
“I should say you were not playing the game.”
Mally laughed, a little whispering laugh.
“Supposing I said ‘Yes’?”
“I shouldn’t believe you,” said Ambrose Medhurst in his natural voice.
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