"I don"t know that having interest taken in me by young gentlemen is any such a rarity, just now!"
Here she reddened rather prettily.
I fastened the other cuff. Million went on, in a gush of artless confidence: "To tell you the truth, Smith, I haven"t half been getting off lately. The other night, at the Thousand and One Club, who d"you suppose was making a fuss of me? A lord, my girl!"
This she said, little dreaming that her maid had watched the whole of this scene.
"And then, there"s something else that"s getting a bit more serious,"
said Million, bridling. "Turning up to-day, just because he"d guessed where I"d got to, and all!"
"He? Which he?" I asked, with a quick feeling of dismay.
"It"s what I call pointed," said Million, "the way he"s been going on ever since he"s met me. Even if he is uncle"s old friend, it"s not all on account of uncle that he makes hisself so agreeable. Oh, no! Marked, that"s what I call it. You know who I mean."
She nodded her dark head. She smiled as she spoke the name with a shyness that suited her rather well.
"The Honourable Mr. Burke!"
"Million!" I said anxiously, as I folded the borrowed blouse I"d taken off her, "Miss Million, do you like him?"
Miss Million"s grey eyes sparkled. She said: "Who wouldn"t like him?"
A pang seized me. A pang of the old apprehension that my little heiress of a mistress might lose her heart to a graceless fortune-hunter!
I said, with real anxiety in my tone: "Oh, my dear, you don"t think you are going to fall in love with this Mr. Burke, do you?"
CHAPTER XXVI
MISS MILLION IN LOVE
AT last I have been allowed to get to the bottom of what this extraordinary place, the "Refuge," really is!
It is no more a lunatic asylum, of course, than it is a nunnery.
It started life by being a big Suss.e.x farmhouse.
Then some truly enterprising person took it on as a lodging-house for summer visitors, also for a tea-garden for motorists.
Then it happened that England"s premier comedienne, Miss Vi Va.s.sity, who was motoring through on her way from a week-end at Brighton, saw the place. She fell in love with it as the fulfilment of one of her dreams.
It appeared that she has always wanted to set up a lodging-house for hard-up theatrical girls who are what they call "resting," that is, out of a job for the moment.
I have picked up from Million and from the others that London"s Love has the kindest heart in all London for those members of her profession who have been less successful than she has. She has a hundred pensioners; she is simply besieged with begging-letters. It is a wonder that there is any of her own salary left for this bright-haired, sharp-tongued artiste to live on!
Well, to cut a long story short, she bought the place. Here it is, crammed full of stage girls and women of one sort and another, mostly from the music-halls. The woman with the hair is Miss Alethea Ashton, the "serio." The honey-blonde in the dressing-jacket, who sat at one side of me at dinner, is "Marmora, the Twentieth Century Hebe," who renders cla.s.sic poses or "breathing marbles."
The tiny, gipsy-looking one on my other side is Miss Verry Verry, the boy impersonator, who appears in man-o"-war suits and sailor hats. There is a snake-charmer lady and a ventriloquist"s a.s.sistant, and I have not yet been able to discover who all the others were.
Miss Vi Va.s.sity lets those pay her who can. The others owe "until their ship comes in"; but the mistress of the place keeps a shrewd though kindly eye on all their doings, and she comes down at least once a week herself to make sure that all is well with "Refuge" and "Refugettes."
The secret of her sudden pilgrimage into Suss.e.x the other night was that she had received a telephone message at the club of The Thousand and One Nights to inform her of still another arrival at the "Refuge." This was the infant daughter of the ventriloquist"s a.s.sistant, who is also the ventriloquist"s wife. This event seems to have come off some weeks before it was expected. And at the time the "Refuge" was short of domestic service; there was no one to wait on the nurse who had been hastily summoned. The house was at sixes and sevens....
In a fever of hurry Miss Vi Va.s.sity went down, taking with her a volunteer who said she loved little babies and would do anything to "be a bit of a help" in the house.
This volunteer was the little heiress, who still kept, under all her new and silken splendour, the heart of the good-natured, helpful "little Million" from the Soldiers" Orphanage and the Putney kitchen.
I might have spared myself all my nervous anxiety about Lord Fourcastles! It seems a bad dream now.
She had motored off then and there with the head of the "Refuge,"
without even waiting to wire from town. Only when they neared their destination had she thought of sending off a message to me, with the address where I was to follow her. That message had probably been tossed into the hedgerow by the tramp to whom it had been hastily entrusted.
Hence my anxiety and suspense, which Miss Million declared had been nothing compared to her own!
Of course, people who have given terrible frights to their friends always insist upon it that it is they who have been the frightened ones!
But all this, of course, was what I picked up by degrees, and in incoherent patches, later on.
Many things had happened before I really got to the rights of the story.
One scene after another has been flicked on to the screen of my experiences ... but to take things in order.
Perhaps I had better go back to where I was unpacking Million"s things in the transformed farmhouse bedroom, and where I was confronted with a fresh anxiety.
Namely, that the wealthy and ingenuous and inexperienced Million really had fallen in love with that handsome ne"er-do-weel, Mr. James Burke.
"Have you?" I persisted. "Have you?"
Million gave a little admitting sigh. She sat there on the edge of the dimity bed, and watched me shake out that detested evening frock in which she had motored down.
She has got it so crumpled that I shall make it the excuse never to let her wear it again.
"The Honourable Mr. Burke," said Million, with a far-away look in her eyes, "is about the handsomest gentleman that I have ever seen."
"I daresay," I said quite severely. "Certainly there is no denying the Honourable Jim"s good looks. Part of his stock-in-trade! But you know, Miss Million"--here I brought out the eternal copy-book maxim--"Handsome is as handsome does!"
Hereupon Million voiced the sentiment that I had always cherished myself concerning that old proverb.
"It may be true. But then, it always seems to me, somehow, as if it was neither here nor there!"
I didn"t know what to say. It seemed so very evident that Million had set her innocent and affectionate heart on a young man who was good-looking enough in his Celtic, sooty-haired, corn-c.o.c.kle, blue-eyed way, but who really had nothing else to recommend him. Everything to be said against him, in fact. Insincere, unscrupulous, cynical, unreliable; everything that"s bad, bad, BAD!
"You can"t say he isn"t a gentleman, now," put in Million again, with a defiant shake of her little dark head. "That you can"t say."
"Well, I don"t know. It depends," I said, in a very sermonising voice.
"It all depends upon what you call "a gentleman.""