This little lonely, thrifty creature--brought up to such a different idea of life--what is to be done about her now?
CHAPTER V
MILLION LEAVES HER PLACE
MILLION has gone!
She has left us, our little cheerful, and bonnie, and capable maid-of-all-work who has become a millionaire pork-butcher"s heiress!
Never again will her trim, ap.r.o.ned figure busy itself about our small and shockingly inconvenient kitchen at No. 45. Never again will she have to struggle with the vagaries of its range. Never again will she "do out" our drawing-room with its disgraceful old carpet and its graceful old cabinet. Never again will she quail under the withering rebuke with which my Aunt Anastasia was wont to greet her if she returned half a minute late from her evening out. Never again will she entertain me with her stream of artless comments on life and love and her own ambition--"Oh, Miss, dear, I should like to marry a gentleman!"
Well, I suppose there"s every probability now that this ambition may be gratified. Plenty of hard-up young men about, even of the Lovelace cla.s.s, "our" cla.s.s, who would be only too pleased to provide for themselves by marrying a Million, in both senses of the word.
Laburnum Grove, Putney, S.W., will know her no more. And I, Beatrice Lovelace, who was born in the same month of the same year as this other more-favoured girl--I feel as if I"d lost my only friend.
I also feel as if it were at least a couple of years since it all happened. Yet it is only three days since Million and I went down to Chancery Lane together to interview the old lawyer person on the subject of her new riches. I shall never forget that interview. I shall never be able to forget the radiant little face of Million at the end of it all, when the kind old gentleman offered to advance her some of her own money "down on the nail," and did advance her five pounds in cash--five golden, gleaming, solid sovereigns!
"My G.o.dfathers!" breathed Million, as she tucked the coins into the palm of her brown-thread glove.
She"d never had so much money at once before in the whole course of her twenty-three years of life. (I"ve _never_ had it, of course!) And the tangible presence of those heavy coins in her hand seemed to bring it home to Million that she was rich, more than all the explanations of her old lawyer about investments and capital.
I saw him look, half-amusedly, half-anxiously, at the little heiress"s flushed face and the gesture with which she clenched that fist full of gold. And it was then that he began to urge upon us that "Miss Million"
must find some responsible older person or persons, some ladies with whom she might live while she made her plans respecting the rearrangement of her existence.
To cut a long story short, it was he, the old lawyer, who suggested and arranged for "Miss Million"s" next step. It appears that he has sisters "of a reasonable age" (I suppose that means about a hundred and thirty-eight) who are on the committee of a hostelry for gentlewomen of independent means, somewhere in Kensington.
Sure to be a "p.u.s.s.ery" of some sort! "Gentlewomen" living together generally relapse into spitefulness and feuds, and "means" can often be p.r.o.nounced "mean"!
Still, as Million"s old lawyer said, the place would provide a haven _pro tem_.
Our millionairess went off there this morning. She wouldn"t take a taxi.
"What"s the use o" wasting all that fare from here to Kensington, good gracious?" said Million. "There"s no hurry about me getting there long before lunch, after all, Miss Beatrice. And as for me things, they can come by Carter Paterson a bit later. I"ll put the card up now, if Miss Lovelace don"t mind. There"s only that tin trunk that I"ve had ever since the Orphanage, and me straw basket with the strap round----"
Such luggage for an heiress! I couldn"t help smiling at it as it waited in the kitchen entrance. And then the smile turned to a lump in my throat as Million, in her hat and jacket, stumped down the wooden back stairs to say good-bye to me.
"I said good-bye to your Aunt Nastur--to Miss Lovelace, before she went out, Miss." (My aunt is lunching at the hotel of one of her few remaining old friends who is pa.s.sing through London.)
"Can"t say I shall breck my heart missin" her, Miss Beatrice," announced the candid Million. "Why, at the last she shook "ands--hands as if I was all over black-lead and she was afraid of it coming off on her! But you--you"ve always been so different, as I say. You always seemed to go on as if"--Million"s funny little voice quivered--"as if Gord had made us both----"
"Don"t, Million," I said chokily. "I shall cry if you go on like this.
And tears are so unlucky to christen a new venture with."
"Is that what they say, Miss?" rejoined the superst.i.tious Million, winking back the fat, shiny drops that were gathering in her own grey eyes. "Aw right, then, I won"t. "Keep smiling," eh? Always merry and bright, and cetrer. Good-bye, Miss. Oh, lor"! I wish you was coming along with me to this place, instead of me going off alone to face all these strange females----"
"I wish I were; only I shall have to stay and keep the house until my aunt comes back----"
"Drat "er! I mean----Excuse me, Miss Beatrice. I wish you hadn"t a-got to live with her. Thrown away on her, you are. It"s you that ought to be clearing out of this place, not just me. You ought to have some sort of a big bust-up and then bunk!"
"Where to, Million?"
"Anywheres! Couldn"t you come where I was? Anyways, Miss, will you drop me a line sometimes to say how you"re keeping? And, Miss, would you be offended if I said good-bye sort of properly. I know it"s like my sorce, but----"
"Oh, Million, dear!" I cried.
I threw both my arms round her st.u.r.dy little jacketed figure. We kissed as heartily as if we had been twin sisters instead of ex-mistress and ex-maid.
Then Million--Miss Million, the heiress--trotted off down Laburnum Grove towards the stopping-place of the electric trams. And I, Beatrice Lovelace, the pauper, the come-down-in-the-world, turned back into No.
45, feeling as if what laughter there had been in my life had gone out of it for ever!
I suppose I"d better have lunch--Million"s laid it ready for me for the last time!--then sit in the drawing-room, finishing my darning, and waiting for my aunt"s return. If Million had been here I could have spent the afternoon with her in the kitchen. Million gone! I feel lost without her.
Nothing else will happen to-day.
There"s a ring at the bell. How unlike Aunt Anastasia to forget her key!
I must go....
(Later.)
I went. But it was not Aunt Anastatia"s herring-slim figure that stood on the doorstep which Million insisted on whitening for the last time this morning. It was the tall, broad-shouldered, active and manly-looking figure of the young man from next door.
CHAPTER VI
ANOTHER RUMPUS!
"OH!" I said--and felt myself blushing scarlet at the memory of all the absurd little incidents that were between me and this stranger. The incident of the garden-hose, and of my giving him a shower-bath with it the other evening; and how Aunt Anastasia had poured added cold water over him in a metaphorical manner of speaking. Then came the memory of how we had met the next morning on the top of the "bus when I was chaperoning Million to her lawyer"s. And of how the young man, chastened by my aunt"s best iced manner the night before, wouldn"t even have said "Good morning" unless I had addressed him. It was all very absurd, but confusing.
He said, in that pleasant voice of his: "Good afternoon! I wish to return some property of yours."
"Of mine?" I said, puzzled. I wondered whether a bit of lace of ours or something of that sort had blown out of the window of No. 45 into the garden of No. 44.
But the young man, putting his hand into his jacket pocket, took out and held in the palm of his hand the "property." It was an oval silver brooch, bearing in raised letters the name "Nellie." The young man said, "I noticed it on the top of the "bus just after you got off the other morning; you must have dropped it----"
"Oh! Thank you so much," I began, taking the brooch. "It isn"t mine, as a matter of fact, but----"
"Oh," he said pleasantly, "you are not "Nellie"?"
Then he hadn"t heard Aunt Anastasia calling me in that very rasping voice the other evening.
"No," I said, ""Nellie" is our maid; at least she was our maid."