And staining their fingers to the knuckle as if they"d dipped them in egg. And smothering themselves with the smell of it in a way no man manages to do--why, by the scent you"d scarcely tell if it was hair they"d got on their heads or the stuffing out of the smoking-room cushions! 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? By the way, you"ve contrived to improve the little Million in several ways since 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 the Honourable Jim and the Determined Jessop, and the Enamoured Million--to say nothing of the bomb-dropping machine and the fortune that may be lost!
"You look thoughtful, Miss Lovelace," said the fortune-hunter who doesn"t know there may be no fortune in it. "Mayn"t I congratulate you----"
"What?" I said, quickly looking up from the luncheon basket that I was repacking. 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,"" I said as bitingly as I could. "I suppose you mean Miss Million"s hands that 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 otherwise well-groomed and expensive appearance, for the nails were rough and worn; the fingers stumpy and battered and hard, the palms h.o.r.n.y as those of 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 off against a flint. "I never could get my hands fit to be seen again after that time I came across as a stoker."
"A stoker?" I repeated, staring at the young man. "What on earth were you doing as a stoker?"
"Working my pa.s.sage across home from Canada one time," he told me. "You know I was sent out to Canada by the old man with about five bob a week to 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 interested in the gyrations of this rolling stone that has acquired polish and nothing 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 until I"d "made good." Yes, they were harder than you are, little black pigeon-girl that I thought had the heart of a stone under the soft black plumage of her. And by "making good" they meant taking a horse--a chestnut, same coloured coat as your hair, child--that n.o.body else could ride. I had to stick on her for three hours, and I stuck on. I told myself I"d rather die than come off. And I didn"t come off, nor yet did I die, as you may perceive," laughed the Honourable Jim, tossing the end of the cigarette over the cliff, above which the gulls were wheeling and calling in voices as shrill as those of the "Refuge" girls. "But they had 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 we had, 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 have seen him mastering the vicious chestnut.
I should have loved to have watched that elemental struggle between man and brute with the setting of the prairie and the wide sky. However much of "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 in Jermyn Street and those more expensive town haunts where anybody else pays. Impulsively I looked up at the big, expensively dressed young loiterer with the hands that bear those ineradicable marks of strenuous toil. And, impulsively, I said:
"Why didn"t you stay where you were? Oh, what a pity you ever came back!"
There was a pause before he laughed. And then we had what was very like a squabble! He said, in a not-very-pleased voice: "You"d scorn to say flattering things, perhaps?"
"Well," I said, "I"m not a Celt----"
"You mean that," he said sharply, "to stand for everything that"s rather contemptible. 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 pick out as gospel the ones that are least to my credit," the Honourable Jim accused me. "How like your s.e.x!"
How is it that these four words never fail to annoy our s.e.x?
I said coldly: "I don"t see any sense or use in our standing here quarrelling 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, each of 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 speck between a pink and a blue speck.
"There they are," I told him. "Miss Va.s.sity and my mistress and her cousin."
"Give me your moral support, then; don"t run away till I"ve said good afternoon to them," Mr. Burke said, as if in an agony of shyness. And then the blue imps came back to sweep the resentment out of his eyes. He looked down at me and said: "Child! Think me all that"s bad, if you want to. Enlarge upon the affecting "pity" of it that I didn"t stay out day-labouring in Canada, instead of w.a.n.gling my keep out of fools at home, to whom I"m well worth all the cash I cost "em! Go on despising me. But listen. Give me credit for one really high-principled action, Miss Lovelace!"
"What is it?" I demanded rather scornfully. "When have you shown me any kind of high principledness?"
"This afternoon," he retorted. "Just now. Just when I came upon the Sleeping Beauty on the cliffs!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that it"s not every man who would have woke her up with just a s.n.a.t.c.h of song. And I that am so--so hard up for a pair of decent new gloves!" he concluded, laughing.
And then he caught my eyes with his own, his insolent, devil-may-care blue 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 how it 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 like that--and a tangible caress....
And yet I couldn"t say a word!
I couldn"t accuse him--of anything!
Maddening young scamp!