"You haven"t?" I said.
"Child, I"m a pauper," he replied. "The descendant of Irish kings; need I say more? There"s not a page-boy at the Cecil who hasn"t more ordinary comforts in his home than I have. My father"s the poorest peer in Ireland. My brother"s the poorest eldest son; and I--I tell you I can"t afford to spend a week at Ballyneck; the damp in the rooms would ruin my clothes; the sound of the rats rompin" up and down the tapestry would destroy my high spirits; and then where"d I be?"
I looked at him. He, too, then, was of the nouveaux-pauvres, the cla.s.s that is sinking down, down under the scrambling, upward-climbing feet of the successful. But he took the situation in a different spirit from the way in which my Aunt Anastasia took it. He frankly made what he could out of it. He hoisted the Jolly Roger and became a pirate on the very seas that had engulfed the old order.
Disgraceful of him.... One ought not to wish to listen to what he had to say.
"Champagne tastes on a beer income; that"s bad. But here"s this little--this little Million girl with a champagne income and no tastes at all yet. I shall be worth half her income to her in consequence," he announced. "I shall be able to give her priceless tips. Advice, you know, about--oh, where to buy all the things she"ll want. The cars. The wines and cigars. (Even a grown-up woman isn"t often to be trusted about those.) The country house she"ll have to take. What about Lovelace Court, Miss Lovelace? Care to have her there, in case the people who have got it want to turn out? I"ve no doubt I could w.a.n.gle that for you, if you liked."
I said, feeling bewildered, and flurried, and amused all at once: "What is "w.a.n.gle"?"
The Honourable Jim Burke laughed aloud as he devoured his lemon water ice.
"You"ll know the meaning of that mystic verb before you have known me very long," he said. "It"s the way I make my living."
I looked at him, sitting there so debonair and showy in his expensive raiment, talking so cynically in that golden voice. So typically one of "our" world, as Aunt Anastasia prophetically calls it; yet so ready to rub shoulders with every other kind of world that there may be--Jews, theatrical people, hotel porters, pork-butchers, heiresses!
I asked, rather inquisitively: "Make your living how? What do you do?"
"People, mostly," said the Honourable Jim with a cheery grin.
No; there"s no getting any truth or any sense out of a man like that.
Just before we rose from the tea-table I said to him: "And the end of it all? I suppose you"ll marry--I suppose you"ll get Miss Million to marry you!"
"Marry?" said Mr. Burke with a little quick movement of his broad chest and shoulders. An odd movement! It seemed mixed up of a start, a shudder, and a shaking aside of something. "Marry? A woman with a voice like that? And hands like that?"
This touched my professional pride as manicurist and lady"s-maid. I told him: "Her hands are much better since I"ve been looking after them!"
"They must have been pretty rough-hewn," said Mr. Burke, candidly, "before!"
"Of course, they were in a horrid state," I said unguardedly. "But yours would be red and rough if you"d had to scrub and to wash up and to black-lead fireplaces----"
"What? Had the little Million been doing all that before she came into Uncle"s money?" cried the Honourable Jim, with delighted interest beaming all over his face. "Truth is stranger than cinema films! Tell me on, now; where was this Dollar Princess in service?"
"With m----" I began. Then I shut my lips with a snap. What was happening? This young man that I had meant to cross-examine was simply "pumping" me! Not only that, but I was very nearly getting to the point of being ready to tell him anything he asked. How had this come about?
Anyhow, it must not be. I put on a very forbidding look and said: "I shall not tell you where Miss Million was."
"Haven"t ye told me? She was with you or your relatives. If that isn"t the grandest joke!" chuckled this unsuppressable young man. "Don"t attempt to deny it, for I see it all now. Isn"t it the finest bit of light opera? Isn"t it better than me wildest dreams? And how did she shape, the heiress? What sort of a character would you give her? Was she an early riser--honest, obliging? Could she wait at table? And is it a bit of her own she"s getting back now, setting you to hand round the cups?" He laughed aloud. "Can"t I see it all now--the pride of her? She that was waiting on you, she"s got you to skivvy for her now! Oh, I wouldn"t have missed this Drama of the Domestic Servant Problem! Don"t hope to keep me out of the stalls, Miss Lovelace, after this! It"s in the front row I shall be in future for every performance!"
With this alarming threat he finished his ice and laughed once more, joyously. While I was debating what to say, he took up the conversation again.
"Tell me, are you going to get Miss Million"s hands to look exactly like yours?" he asked, fastening his eyes on my fingers. I clenched my fists and hid them away under the table. "Ah, but I noticed them at once. And your voice? Are you going to teach her to speak exactly as you do?
Because, when that happens----" He paused (at last).
"Well?" I said, beginning to put on my new gloves. "When that happens, what?"
"Why, then I shall certainly beg her to marry me," declared the Irishman. "Faith, I"ll go down on my knees to the girl then."
"Not until then?" I suggested. I was really anxious to get through this baffling young man"s nonsense. I wanted to find out what he really meant to do about all this.
But he only shook his head with that mock-solemn air. He only said: "Child, who knows what"s going to happen to any of us, and when?"
Half the way back to the Cecil (Mr. Burke had hailed a taxi for me and had then got into it with me) I was wondering what I am to say to my mistress, Miss Million, about the happenings of my afternoon out. How am I to break it to her that I spent nearly the whole of it in the society of a young man against whom I have been warning her--Million--ever since he first sent in his card?
"Does your Miss Million allow flowers?" Mr. Burke said cheerfully as we whizzed down the Haymarket. "To you, I mean?"
It was an outrageous thing to say. But in that voice it somehow didn"t sound outrageous, or even disrespectful. The voice of the Celt, whether Irish, Highland-Scottish, or Welsh, does always seem to have the soft pedal down on it. And it"s a most unfair advantage, that voice, for any man to possess.
I said hastily: "Really, I don"t think you need speak to me as if I were a maid on her afternoon----"
Here I remembered that this was exactly what I was. And again I was forced into reluctant laughter.
"You"ve no business to be taking the job on at all," said the young man at my side in the taxi, quite gravely this time. "Was there nothing else you could do, Miss Lovelace?"
"No; nothing."
"What about woman"s true sphere? You ought to get married."
"Very easy to say that, for a man," I said. "How could I get married?"
Really earnestly he replied: "Have you tried?"
"No! Of course not!"
"You should," he said. He looked down at me in a curious, kindly way. He said: "I"ve w.a.n.gled things harder than that both for myself and my friends. Men like a wife that can wear diamonds as if they belonged to her; a wife that can talk the same language as some of their best clients. Well! Here"s a charming young girl, with looks, breeding, and a fine old name. Can do!" he brought his flat hand down on the top of his ebony cane, and added, "Have you a hatred of foreigners?"
"Foreigners?" I repeated, rather breathless again over the sudden conversational antics of a young man who can"t be serious for two seconds together. "Foreigners? What for?"
"Why, for a husband! Supposing now that I were to introduce to you a fellow I knew, a fellow with "a heart of gold" and pretty well everything else in metal to match it, like all these German Jews----"
I gasped: "You think I ought to marry a German Jew?"
"That"s just the merest idea of mine. Startled you, did it? We"ll discuss it later, you and I. But it"ll take time. Lots of time--and, by Jove! There isn"t any too much of that now," he exclaimed, glancing at his wrist-watch as we pa.s.sed the lions of Trafalgar Square, "if I"m to get back to your--to our Miss Million----"
"Is she expecting you," I asked rather sharply, "again?"
"She is not. But here are these two friends of mine calling on her; and I"m bound to put in an appearance before they leave. Rather so! I"m not turning them loose on any new heiresses, without keeping my eye on what they"re up to," explained the Honourable James Burke with his usual bland frankness. "So here I stop the taxi."
He got out. I saw him feel in all his pockets, and at last he took out half a sovereign. (The last, I daresay.)
Then he turned to me. "I"ll give you three minutes" start, child, to get back to the hotel and into that cap and ap.r.o.n of yours. One more word.... Go through the lounge, and you"ll see the animals feeding. Go on, man"--to the taxi driver: "The Hotel Cecil; fly!"
CHAPTER XV
A DIFFERENT KIND OF PARTY