"You might----" I shut the door.
I went into my room across the corridor and prepared to spend a quiet, useful, self-effacing afternoon with my work-basket and my employer"s new "pretties."
LATER.
What a different afternoon it has turned out to be!
I suppose it was about twenty minutes later, but scarcely had I embroidered the first white silken "M" on Million"s new crepe-de-chine "nightie" than there was a light tap at my door. I thought it was my own tea.
"Come in," I called.
Enter the sandy-haired, middle-aged chamber-maid. She stood, looking mightily perplexed.
Well, I suppose we are rather a perplexing proposition! Two girls of twenty-three, turning up at the Hotel Cecil with highly luxurious-looking but empty baggage, and clad as it were off a stall at some country rectory jumble sale! Blossoming forth the next day into attire of the most chic and costly! One girl, with a voice and accent of what Aunt Anastasia still calls "the governing cla.s.s," acting as maid to the other, whose accent is--well, different. I wonder what the chamber-maid thinks?
She said: "Oh, if you please--"
(No "madam" this time, though she was obviously on the verge of putting it in!)
"--if you please, Miss Million sent me to tell you that she wished her maid to come to her at once."
Good gracious! This was an unexpected move.
An "S O S" signal, I supposed, from Million in distress! My employer, utterly unable to cope with the situation and the "strange young gentlemen alone," had ordered up reinforcements! An order! Yes, it was an order from mistress to maid!
My first impulse was frankly to refuse. I wonder how many maids have felt it in their time over an unbargained-for order?
"Tell her I"m not coming." This was what I nearly said to the chamber-maid.
Then I remembered that one couldn"t possibly say things like that.
I sat for another second in disconcerted silence, my needle, threaded with white silk, poised above the nightie.
Then I said: "Tell Miss Million, please, that I will be with her in a moment."
At the time I didn"t mean to go. I meant to sit on, quietly sewing, where I was until the visitors had gone. Then I could "have it out" with Million herself afterwards....
But before I put in three more st.i.tches my heart misgave me again.
Poor little Million! In agonies of nervousness! What a shame to let her down! And supposing that she, in her desperation, came out to fetch me in!
I put aside my work and hastened across the corridor to my employer"s sitting-room. As I opened the door I heard an unexpected sound. That sound seemed to take me right back to our tiny kitchen in Putney, when Aunt Anastasia was out, and Million and I were gossiping together.
Million"s laugh!
Surely she couldn"t be laughing now, in the middle of her nervousness!
I went in.
A charming picture met me; a picture that might have hung at the Academy under the t.i.tle of "Two Strings to Her Bow" or "The Eternal Trio," or something else appropriate to the grouping of two young men and a pretty girl.
The girl (Million), black-haired, white-frocked, and smiling, was sitting on a pink-covered couch, close to one of the young men--the bigger, more gorgeously dressed one. This was, of course, Mr. James Burke. He looked quite as effective as he had done in his coaching get-up. For now he wore a faultless morning-coat and the most George-Alexandrian of perfectly creased trousers. His head was as smoothily and glossily black as his own patent-leather boots. "Seen close to," as Million puts it, he was showily good-looking, especially about the eyes, with which he was gazing into the little heiress"s flushed face. They were of that death-dealing compound, deep blue, with thick, black lashes. What a pity that those eyes shouldn"t have been bestowed by Providence upon some deserving woman, like myself, instead of being wasted upon a mere man. But possibly the Honourable James didn"t consider them waste. He"d made good use of them and of his persuasive voice, and of his time generally, with Miss Million, the Sausage King"s niece!
They were sitting there, leaving the other poor young man looking quite out of it, talking as if they were the greatest friends. As to Million"s nervous terror, I can only say, in her own phrase, that "nervousness and she were strangers!" That Irishman had worked a miracle; he"d put Million at ease in his presence! I came right in and stood looking as indescribably meek as I knew how.
My employer looked up at me with an odd expression on her small face.
For the first time there was in it a dash of "I-don"t-care-what-you-think-I-shall-do-what-I-like!" And for the first time she addressed me without any hesitation by the name that I, Beatrice Lovelace, have taken as my _nom de guerre_.
"Oh, Smith," said Million--Miss Million, "I sent for you because I want you to pour out the tea for us. Pourin" out is a thing I always did "ate--hate."
"Yes, Miss," I said.
And I turned to obey orders at the tea-table.
As meekly as if I"d been put into the world for that purpose alone, I began to pour out tea for Miss Million and her guests.
The tea-table was set in the alcove of the big window, so that I had to turn my back upon the trio. But I could feel eyes upon my back. Well! I didn"t mind. It was a gracefully fitted back at last, in that perfectly cut, thin black gown, with white muslin ap.r.o.n-strings tied in an impertinent little bow.
There was a silence in the room where the hostess had been laughing and the princ.i.p.al guest--I suppose she looked upon this Mr. Burke as the princ.i.p.al guest--had been purring away to her in that soft Irish voice of his.
I filled the cups and turned--to meet the honest sunburnt face of the other visitor, Mr. Reginald Brace. He"d got up and taken a quick step towards me. I never saw anything quite so blankly bewildered as his expression as he tried hard not to stare at that little white muslin b.u.t.terfly cap in my hair.
Of course! This was his first intimation that I, who had been Million"s mistress, was now Miss Million"s maid!
In a dazed voice he spoke to me: "Can"t I----Do let me help you----"
"Oh, thank you," I said quietly and businesslikely. "Will you take this to Miss Million, please?"
He handed the cups to the others, and I followed and handed the cream, milk, and sugar. It felt like acting in a scene out of some musical comedy, at the Gaiety, say. And I daresay it looked like it, what with the pretty, flower-filled sitting-room, and Million"s French white muslin with the grey-blue sash, and my stage-soubrette livery, and the glossily groomed Mr. Burke as the young hero! I surprised a very summing-up glance from those black-lashed blue eyes of his as I waited on him. How is it that every syllable spoken in a certain kind of Irish voice seems to mean a compliment, even if it"s only "thank you" for the sugar? I went back and stood as silent and self-effacing as a statue, or a really well-trained servant, by the tea-things, while the Honourable James Burke went on improving the shining hour with his millionaire hostess.
This was the sort of conversation that had been going on, evidently, from the start:
"Isn"t it an extraordinary thing, now, that I should be sitting here, cosily talking to you like this, when just at this same time last year, my dear Miss Million, I was sitting and talking to that dear old uncle of yours in Chicago?" he said. "Every afternoon I used to go and sit by his bedside----"
"A year ago, was it?" put in Million. "Why, Mr. Burke, I never knew uncle had been poorly so long as that; I thought he was taken ill quite sudden."
"Oh, yes, of course. So he was," Mr. Burke put in quickly. "But you know he had an awful bad doing a good time before that. Sprained his ankle, poor old boy, and had to lie up for weeks. Awfully tedious for him; he used to get so ratty, if you don"t mind my saying so, Miss Million. He used to flare up in his tempers like a match, dear old fellow!"
"Well, I never. I"m rather that way myself," from the delighted Million, who was obviously hanging on every word that fell from the young fortune-hunter"s improvising lips. "Must be in the family!"
"Ah, yes; it always goes with that generous, frank, natural disposition.
Always hasty as well! So much better than sulking, I always think," from the Irishman. "When it"s over, it"s over. Why, as your dear old uncle used to say to me, "Jim," he"d say--he always called me Jim----"
"Did he really, now?" from Million. "Fancy!"
Yes, it was all "fancy," I thought.
As I stood there listening to that glib West of Ireland accent piling detail on detail to the account of the Honourable Jim"s friendship with the old Chicago millionaire a queer conviction strengthened in my mind.