They were both young; one had a long black plait down her back. Both of them wore the same expression of suppressed and gleeful, giggling excitement as I told them that Miss Million was at home.
"Then, now for it!" breathed the flapper with the plait, in a gale of a whisper, as I took her mackintosh. Both girls were in blue serge underneath, of a cut more chastened than their arrogantly young voices.
"I wonder what on earth she"s going to be like!"
"Alice! Do shut up!" muttered the elder girl angrily. Then, turning to me: "Are there crowds of other people here already?"
"Yes, Miss," I answered demurely. But I felt a sudden warm sympathy with the two young things in the hall. We had, I suspected, the same kind of voice, the same carriage of the head, we had had the same sort of clothes.
We"d been "raised," as Mr. Jessop puts it, with much the same outlook.
We had a cla.s.s in common, the cla.s.s of the nouveaux-pauvres! Our eyes flashed understanding as they met.
Then the younger girl exclaimed: "Wait a minute. I _must_ finish laughing before we go in!"
And she stood for a full minute, quivering and swaying and rocking with perfectly silent mirth. Then she pulled herself together and said gravely:
"Right. I"ve finished now. Say the Miss Owens, please."
I rather wanted to have a good silent laugh to myself as I solemnly announced the two girls.
They came, I afterwards gleaned, from the long white house that faces us across the valley. Who the other people were who were filling the chintz-covered couch and easy-chairs in the drawing-room I didn"t gather.
I haven"t "disentangled" the different hats and faces and voices and costumes; I suppose I shall do so in due course, and shall be able to give a clear description of each one of these callers "from the neighbourhood" upon Miss Million. I knew she would be an object of curiosity to any neighbourhood to which she came!
And I wonder how many of these people know that she is one of the heroines of the Rattenheimer ruby case, that hangs over our heads like a veritable sword of Damocles the whole time!
But to get on to the princ.i.p.al excitement of the afternoon--the utterly unlooked-for surprise that awaited me in the kitchen!
The typically Welsh kitchen in this newly acquired place of Miss Million"s is to me the nicest room in the house.
I love its s.p.a.ciousness and its slate floor, and the ponderous oak beams that bisect its smoke-blackened ceiling and are hung with bunches of dried herbs and with hams.
I love its dresser, full of willow-pattern china, and its two big china dogs that face each other on the high mantelpiece.
The row of bright bra.s.s candlesticks appeals to me, and the grandfather"s clock, with the sun, moon, and stars on its face, and the smooth-scrubbed white deal kitchen-table pitted with tiny worm-holes, and the plants in the window, and everything about it.
Miss Million declares she never saw such a kitchen "in all her puff."
Putney was inconvenient enough, the dear knows, but the Putney kitchen was a joke to this one, where the kitchen range you can only describe "as a fair scandal," and nothing else!
If she means to take the landlord"s offer, later on, and to take this place as it stands, she"s going to have everything pretty different.
I should be sorry if she did; I like the place to be an utter anachronism in our utilitarian twentieth century, just as it is. I don"t mind the honeycomb of draughts. I can put up with the soft, cave-like gloom of it----
It was this gloom that prevented me from seeing, at first, that there was anybody in the kitchen but cook, who was busily beating up batter for light cakes in a big, yellow, white-lined bowl.
"Is the tea made?" I said.
It was not; the silver teapot, with the tea in it, was being heated on the hob.
I moved to take up the singing kettle. It was then that a tall man"s form that had been sitting on a settle on the other side of the fire rose and came towards me.
The red glow of the fire through the bars shone on the silver b.u.t.tons and on the laurel-green cloth and on the high boots of a chauffeur"s livery. Of course! This was the man who had driven over the people who had come in the car.
But above the livery a voice spoke, a voice that I knew, a voice that I could hardly believe was speaking to me here.
"Allow me," said this softly inflected Irish voice. And the kettle was gently but firmly taken out of my hand by the hand of--the Honourable James Burke.
I gave such a start of surprise that it is a mercy I did not jolt against that kettle and send a stream of scalding hot water over the laurel-green-cloth-clad knees of the man before me.
And I said exactly what people always say in meloramas when they are surprised at meeting anybody--thus showing that melodrama is not always so utterly unlike real life.
I cried "You!"
"Myself," announced the Honourable Jim, smiling down at me as he deftly took the silver teapot from me and filled first that and then the hot-water jug on the tray that was already laid on the big table. "And what is all this emotion at the sight of me? Is it too much to hope that it"s pleasure? Or is it just amazement?"
"I--I certainly never expected to s-see you," I spoke falteringly in my great surprise, "or--or like this!" I glanced at the gleam of the livery b.u.t.tons. "May I ask what in the world you are doing in those clothes?"
"Is it my livery you mean? Don"t you think it"s rather neat?" suggested the Honourable Jim ingratiatingly. "Don"t you consider that it suits me almost as well as the black gown and the ap.r.o.n and the doaty little cap suit Miss Million"s maid?"
"But----" I gasped in amazement. "But why are you wearing a chauffeur"s livery?"
"Isn"t the reason obvious? Because I"ve taken a chauffeur"s job."
"You, Mr. Burke?"
"Yes, I, Miss Lovelace!" he laughed. "Is there any reason you have to give against that, as you have against every other mortal thing that the unfortunate Jim Burke does?"
"I----Look here, I can"t wait here talking," I told him, for just at this minute I caught the surprised glance of cook upon us both.
The spoon with which she beat up the batter was poised in mid-air as she listened to everything that this superior-looking lady"s-maid and still more superior-looking chauffeur had to say to each other. "I must take the tea into the drawing-room."
He opened the kitchen door for me as I hastened away with the tray.
Gentleman-adventurer, bronco-buster, stoker, young gentleman of leisure, chauffeur! What next will be the role that the Honourable and Extraordinary Jim will take it into his head to play?
Chauffeur, of all things! Why chauffeur?
My head was still buzzing with the surprise of it all, when I heard the other buzz--the shrill, insistent, worrying buzz that is made by women"s voices when a lot of them are gathered together in a strange house, and are all talking at once; "made" talk, small talk, weather talk, the talk that is--as Miss Va.s.sity, for instance, would put it--"enough to drive any one to drink."
In the drawing-room where these callers were grouped I just caught a sc.r.a.p here and a sc.r.a.p there as I moved about with the tea-things. This sort of thing:
"And what do you think of this part of the country, Miss Million? Are you intending to make a long stay----"
"She seemed such a nice girl! Came to me with such a good character from her----"
"Never touch it. It doesn"t suit me. In coffee I like just a very little, and my daughter"s the same. But my husband"--(impressively)--"my husband is just the reverse. He won"t touch it in coff----"
--"hope you intend to patronise our little Sale of Work, Miss Million, on the twenty-sixth? Oh, you must all come. And I"m still asking everybody for contributions to my----"
"Do shut up, Alice!" (fierce whisper from the young girl in navy-blue).