When could she ever have put her hands upon thirty pounds of English money?
Borrowed--pooh! Who has she to borrow from?
Beg--so like her!
Steal--I"m the only member of her family who"s ever been accused of that!
Surely--oh, surely, she can"t have got the money from the Honourable Jim?
I can"t think how else she can have got it, though.
There"s only one thing I know.
I"m not going back to be Aunt Anastasia"s niece any more!
I"m going on being Miss Million"s maid; I shall go to this new place in Wales with her!
CHAPTER x.x.xII
WALES FOREVER!
WELL, here we are again, as the clown says in the harlequinade.
Once more the lives of Miss Million and her maid have been set amidst scenes until now quite unfamiliar to us.
After the noise and bustle of the Strand about the hotel in July, the quiet, leafy depths of a remote Welsh valley. After the glaring London sunshine on the baked pavements, the soft Welsh rain that has been weeping ever since our arrival over the wooded hills and the tiny, stone-fenced fields, and the river that prattles over its slaty bed and swirls into deep, clear pools a stone"s-throw below this furnished country house that Miss Million has taken for three months.
At present the house party consists of Miss Million, Miss Vi Va.s.sity, Mrs. Flukes, the ventriloquist"s wife, her baby and her monthly nurse.
Mr. Jessop, who wrote all the business letters with regard to the taking of the house, is to come down later, I believe.
So is Mr. Reginald Brace.
In the meantime we have the place to ourselves, also the staff left behind by the people of the house, consisting of one fat cook, two housemaids who speak soft Welsh-English, and a knives and boots boy who appears to say nothing at all but "Ur?" meaning "I beg your pardon?"
I, the lady"s-maid, have meals with the staff in the big, slate-floored kitchen.
This I insisted upon, just as I insisted upon travelling third-cla.s.s down from Euston, while my young mistress "went first."
"We"ve simply got to behave more like real mistress and maid, now that you"ve taken a country house for the summer," I told her. "This isn"t the "Refuge"----"
"It"s nowhere so lively, if you ask me," said Miss Million, looking disconsolately out of the dining-room window. "Look at that view!"
The "view" shows a rain-soaked lawn, stretching down to a tall rhododendron hedge, also dripping with rain. Beneath the hedge is spread a dank carpet of fallen pink blooms. Beyond the hedge is a brook that was once a lane, leading down to a river that was once a brook.
Beyond this come a flooded field and the highroad that is a network of puddles. In the distance there rises like a screen against the sky a tall hill, wooded almost to the top, and set half-way up this hill we can descry, faintly through the driving rain, a long white house, with gables and a veranda overgrown with red roses. And above all is a strip of grey sky, from which the white rain falls noiselessly, ceaselessly.
"Here"s a place!" says Miss Million disgustedly. "Unless something happens to make it a bit different, I shan"t stay no three months, nor three weeks. It fair gives me the pip, and I wish I was back in good old London!"
"Cheer up. The rain may leave off one of these days," I say, "or some of the people of the neighbourhood may come to call."
This afternoon both my prognostications were fulfilled.
The rain did leave off, and the valley in which this house is set became a green and smiling paradise, scented with the fragrance of wet pine trees, and of sweet peas and honeysuckle, and suddenly pregnant with that other flavour which is new to me--part scent, part sight, part sound. "The flavour of Wales"--some quality quite indescribable; some wild native atmosphere richer, sadder, sweeter, more "original" than any that I had breathed in those flat, smiling garden plots that are described as "rural England."
No wonder I"ve always heard that Welsh people who have left their country suffer at times from such poignant longings, such "hiraeth" or home-sickness as is unknown to the colonising, conquering Saxon!
Even Miss Million and Miss Vi Va.s.sity are more inclined to approve of the scenery now! And this afternoon "the neighbourhood" called on the new tenant of this place.
"The neighbourhood" seems to comprise any other house within an afternoon"s walk, or even motor-drive.
I heard the car drive up, from my attic bedroom, and I flew down to the front door. For cook was baking, and both of what she calls "them girls"
had taken their departure. It was the legitimate afternoon out of Maggie-Mary, the first housemaid. And Blodwen, the other, had asked special permission to attend a funeral in the next valley.
I had said I would be housemaid in her place, so she had sallied forth, all new black and gratified grins.
I found myself opening the door to three heterogeneous parties of people at once, and ushering them into the faded, pretty, pot-pourri-scented drawing-room. It was empty. My mistress and her guests had suddenly fled!
They--Miss Million, Vi Va.s.sity, and Mrs. Flukes--had betaken themselves into the bedroom that has been given over to the baby"s nursery, and were sitting over the fire there gossiping with the young, mauve-clad monthly nurse.
"Must I go down? Oh, what a nuisance; now I"ll have to change," began my mistress, but I was firm.
"You"ll go down in your garden tweeds and your brown boots as you are,"
I said, "so as not to keep the people waiting."
"What style of people are they? What do they look like, dear?" put in Vi Va.s.sity eagerly. She has been strangling yawns all the morning, and I am sure she was only too delighted at the idea of seeing a fresh face. "Any nice boys with them?"
"No. No men at all----"
"Never are, in the country. Yet people wonder n.o.body takes any notice of being told to get back to the land!" said London"s Love, rising to her tiny kid-shod feet, and refastening a suspender through the slit in her skirt. "What are the women like? Country rectory?"
"Yes, one lot were," I reported. "The others that came in the motor wore sort of very French hats and feather boas, and look as if they never walked."
"Charity matinee," commented England"s Premier Comedienne, bustling to the door. "It"s a shame not to dress for "em. I shan"t be long, Nellie.
You and Ag go down first."
"How can I go down to the company until I"ve given my little Basil his four o"clock feed?" protested the ventriloquist"s wife. She held out her arms for the long white bundle of shawls that Olive, the young nurse, lifted from the cradle set on two chairs in the corner of the room.
"Nellie"ll have to make her entrance alone."
And she did.
The confidence in herself that was first inspired by the Honourable Jim has been greatly fostered by Mr. Hiram P. Jessop. So I was not afraid that Miss Million would be really overpoweringly shy, even on entering a drawing-room full of strange callers.
I left her at the drawing-room door, and was hastening kitchenwards again to bring out the tea when the front-door bell rang once more. I opened it to two very tall girls in Burberry mackintoshes.