I stood as straight as the wireless mast on the downs. I glared out towards the steely glitter of the English Channel.
"Ah, now, why should you be angry?" protested that ineffably gentle Irish voice beside me. "Sure I"m only just pointing out how differently an 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, of course, the very last thing I really meant.
"I shall never forgive you!"
"What?" took up the Honourable Jim swiftly and merrily. "Never forgive me for what?" To this I didn"t have to reply, for the other three people had come quickly up to us.
Miss Million came up first, holding out both hands to the Honourable Jim.
"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 out for you all the morning----"
Surely this is an att.i.tude that Mr. Burke ought to approve of in "our s.e.x"!
"And I did hope," said Miss Million quite touchingly, "I did hope you was going to come over to see me!"
I"m not quite sure whether I"m glad or sorry that I happened to be present at that meeting on the sun-lit, wind-swept downs between my mistress and the young Irishman, to whom she presently introduced her cousin, Mr. Hiram P. Jessop.
Really it was a most embarra.s.sing moment. I think nine out of ten women would have found it so! For none of us really enjoy seeing a man "caught out" before our eyes. And this was practically what happened to the Honourable James Burke.
It served him right! It certainly was no more than he deserved! And yet--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 pretty little air of hostess-ship and began: "Oh, here"s some one I want you to know, 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! To think of that! I thought you hadn"t had a word together, that day at lunch----"
"It was before then, I think," began the Honourable Jim, with his most charming 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 met while you was both attending to poor uncle, did you?"
Miss Million"s cousin gave one of those quick, shrewd glances of his at the other young man.
"Why, no, Cousin Nellie," he said slowly. "I hadn"t the pleasure of seeing Mr. Burke in the States. And I wasn"t aware that he was acquainted with our uncle."
This was where Miss Million rushed in where any other woman might have guessed it was better not to tread.
"Oh, Lor", yes!" she exclaimed gleefully. "Mr. Burke was a great friend of our Uncle Sam"s. He told me so the first time we met; in fac", that"s how 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 time when he had to lay up for two months with that sprained ankle of his----"
"When was that, Cousin Nellie, if I may ask?" put in the young American quietly.
"Why, that was just a twelvemonth ago, Mr. Burke told me; didn"t you, Mr. Burke?" ran on the unsuspecting Miss Million, while I, standing still 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 Va.s.sity, to whom I also turned, I saw her common, clever, vivacious face lighted up with a variety of expressions: amus.e.m.e.nt, curiosity, irony. She knew, as well as I did, what was happening. She was keener than I to see what would happen next.
In far less time than it takes to tell all this Miss Million had rattled on: "Oh, yes; Mr. Burke was with uncle in Chicago pretty near every day all the last year of his life, wasn"t you, Mr. Burke? Shows how well he used to know him, doesn"t it? And then when he heard my name at the Hotel Sizzle!
"Soon as he heard that I was related to Mr. Samuel Million, his old friend, 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 that you"ve never dreamt about?"
"Yes, it"s real funny, I guess, that I haven"t happened to have gotten to know Mr. Burke while he was on the other side," broke in the voice of the American, speaking quietly but very distinctly as it "gave away" the pretensions of the Honourable Jim in two simple sentences.
"I guess there wasn"t a day in the last two years that I wasn"t visiting the old man. And I never heard anything about a sprained ankle, nor yet about 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 my eyes from the quartette on the turf, was watching a big white seagull wheeling and swooping above the cliff.
Its long wings had only flapped, slowly, twice, before the hearty voice of Miss Vi Va.s.sity broke the silence that I felt to be quite nerve-racking.
"Well! Are these biographical notes going to keep us busy for the whole afternoon, 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 hussy forgets to give "em a proper clean-out once in a way, and the next time you take your cup o" tea out of the thing where are you? Poisoned and a week in a nursing-home. Miss Vi Va.s.sity, "London"s Love," has been sufferin" 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 your feet--fingers, I mean; come on, Miss Smith. The other girls seem to have lost themselves somewhere; always do when there"s a bit of housework and women"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 motor on 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 this flow of comment-on-nothing from London"s Love, and a couple of songs from our Serio, and American tour reminiscences from our Lady Acrobat.
Also a loud and giggling squabble between that lady and the Boy-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 utmost to flirt with him; putting her lazy blonde head on one side to cast languishing glances at him, invoking his pity for a midge-bite that she said 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 have been his to hold for a nearer inspection of that imperceptible wound if he had chosen. I made sure he"d catch hold of it ... it would have been just like him to laugh and suggest kissing it to make it well. I"m sure that"s what the "Breathing Statue Girl" meant him to do. They"re just a pair of silly flirtatious Bohemians----
Rather to my surprise the Irishman merely gave a matter-of-fact little nod and returned in a practical tone of voice: "Yes; you"ve certainly got glorious arms of your own, Miss Marmora; pity to let "em get sunburnt and midge-bitten. It"ll show on the stage if you aren"t careful. I"d keep my sleeves down if I were you----"
""And that"s _that_!"" the Boy-Impersonator wound up with George Robey"s tag. And in the midst of all the laughter and chatter no one seemed to notice that two of the party were absolutely silent and almost too absent-minded to drink their tea--namely, the American cousin and Miss Nellie Million, the heiress.
I hardly dared to look at her. I thought I was in for a terrible flood of 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 talk with his cousin before tea, and I am sure he had explained to her just the 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 the beginning only because of her uncle"s money! And that, so far from there having been any of that family friendship of which she was so proud, he had never set eyes on old Mr. Million!