"Oh, really?" he said, very interested.
He has a delightful face. I don"t wonder Million said he was just what she meant by "the sort of young gentleman" that she would like to marry.
Then a thought struck me.
Why not?
Men have married their pretty cooks before now. Why shouldn"t this nice young man be Million"s fate? He certainly did seem interested in her. It would be a regular King-Cophetua-and-the-Beggar-Maid romance. Only, owing to her riches, it would be Million"s role to play Queen Cophetua to this young man, who was too poor to go into the Army. So, feeling quite thrilled by the prospect of looking on at this love story, I said: "Would you like to send the brooch on to--to--er--to Miss Nellie Million yourself?" You see, I thought if he knew where to take it, he would probably go at once to the Hostelry for Cats of Independent Means and see Million, and find out about her being now a young lady of leisure--and--well, that might be the beginning of things!
So I smiled at him and added in my most friendly voice, "Would you like me to give you the address?"
It was at this moment--this precise moment before he"d even had time to answer--that Aunt Anastasia, back from her visit to her friend, came up the tiny garden path behind him.
Yes, and this was the scene that met her gaze: her niece, her poor brother"s child, Lady Anastasia"s great-granddaughter (who had already been reproved for forgetting that she belonged to "OUR FAMILY"), standing at the front door of her abode to repeat the offence for which she had been taken to task--namely, "talking to one of the impossible people who live about here!" The way in which Aunt Anastasia stalked past the young man was more withering than the most annihilating glance she could have given him.
To me she said, in a voice that matched her look: "Beatrice, come into the house."
I went into the drawing-room.
She followed me.
Then the storm broke!
Of all the many "rows" I"ve had since I came to live with Aunt Anastasia, this did, as Million would have said, "take the bun."
"Beatrice!" She threw my name at me as if it had been a glove thrown in my face. "Beatrice! Little cause as I have to think well of you, I did at least trust you!"
"You"ve no reason, Auntie," said I, holding myself as stiff as she did (which was pretty ramroddy). "You"ve no reason not to trust me."
"What?" A bitter little laugh. "No sooner is my back turned, no sooner have I left you alone in the house, than you betray my confidence. How do I find you, after all that I said to you only the other evening on this same subject? Standing there on the doorstep, just as if you"d been poor Million, poor little gutter-bred upstart, preparing to receive----"
"I wasn"t "preparing to receive" anybody!" hotly from me.
"No?" with icy satire from Aunt Anastasia. "You were not even going to ask the young man in? You stood there, like a scullery-maid indulging in a vulgar flirtation with a policeman."
"I wasn"t, I wasn"t."
"I heard you giving him an address where he could write to you, doubtless?"
"Write to me? It was nothing of the kind," I took up, ready to stamp with rage. "It was--it was Million"s address I was going to give to that young man."
"A likely story! Million, indeed!"
"You don"t believe me? How dare you not, Aunt Anastasia? Look! Here"s the proof!" And I held out to her the oval silver brooch with the raised "Nellie" upon it.
"Look! This is Million"s brooch. She dropped it on the "bus the other morning. And the young man from next door found it. And he came round to return it----"
"Yes. As soon as he had made certain, or had been a.s.sured, that you would be alone," declared my Aunt Anastasia, with unyielding accusation in every angle of her. "To return Million"s brooch! Oh, Beatrice, you must think me very unsophisticated!" The thin lips curled. "This is an excuse even thinner than that about the garden-hose the other evening.
No doubt there have been others. How long have you been carrying on this underhand and odious flirtation with that unspeakable young cad?"
"Auntie!" I felt myself shaking all over with justifiable indignation. A flirtation? I? With that young man! Why, why--when I"d such honourable intentions of securing him, as her "gentleman" lover, for our newly made heiress, Million! I simply boiled over with righteous rage. I said, "You"ve no right to make such a suggestion."
"Beatrice! You forget to whom you are speaking."
"I don"t. But I"m twenty-three, and I don"t think you need go on treating me as if I were a schoolgirl, refusing to listen to what I have to say. Allowing me no liberty, no friends----"
"Friends! Is that why you make your own in this hole-and-corner fashion?"
"I shouldn"t be to blame if I did!" I declared hotly. "You don"t realise what my life is here with you. It"s all very well for you to live in the past, pondering over the dear departed glories of our family. But at my age one doesn"t care twopence for an ill.u.s.trious past. What one wants is something to do, and to be--and to enjoy--in the present! I don"t see why it should be enough for me to remember that, even if I am poor, I am still Lady Anastasia"s great-granddaughter. It isn"t enough! It"s the most futile sort of existence in the whole world--living up to an old pedigree when you haven"t even got money enough to buy yourself the right kind of shoes. You sneer at Million for being what you call nouveau-riche. It isn"t half as humiliating and ridiculous as being what we are--nouveau-pauvre!"
"Beatrice, I think you have gone mad, to say such things."
"Do you? I haven"t. I"ve been thinking them inside me for months--years," I told her violently. The oval mirror on the opposite side of the wall from that Gainsborough portrait of Lady Anastasia showed a queer picture; the picture of a tall, angular, grey-haired and aristocratic-looking spinster in steel-grey alpaca, coldly facing a small, rumpled-looking girl (myself) with the tense pose, the bright flush, and the clenched hands of anger. "And now I can"t--I can"t stand this sort of thing any longer----"
"May I ask what you intend to do?"
"To go!" I had only that instant thought of it. But once the words were out of my mouth I realised that it was the only thing in the world to do. Hadn"t Million said so only this morning when she bade me good-bye?
"You ought to clear out of this house.... You ought to have a fair old bust-up, Miss Beatrice. And then you ought to bunk!"
Well! "The fair old bust-up" I"d had, or was having. The next thing was "to bunk"!
Aunt Anastasia regarded me with cold eyes and a still more contemptuous curl of the lip.
"You will go, Beatrice? But how? To what?"
"To earn my own living----"
"What? There is nothing that you can do."
"I know," I admitted resentfully. "That"s another grudge I have against our family. They never have had to "come down into the market-place."
Consequently they wouldn"t adapt themselves to the new conditions and fit themselves for the market now. They"d rather stand aside and vegetate in a mental backwater on twopence a year, thinking, "We are still Lovelaces," and learning nothing, nothing. Talk about "The Idle Rich"! They are not such cuc.u.mbers of the ground as "The Idle Poor"!
I"ve been trained to nothing. Lots of the girls who live along this road have taken up typewriting, or County Council cookery, or teaching--things that will give them independence. I have nothing of the sort to fall back upon. I might take care of little children, perhaps, but people like Norland nurses at a hundred a year nowadays. Or I might find a post as a lady"s maid----"
"What?"
"Well, you taught me to pack and to mend lace, Auntie! And I can do hair--it"s the only natural gift I"ve got," I said. "Perhaps I might get them to give me a chance in some small hairdresser"s to begin with."
"You are talking nonsense, and you do not even mean what you say, child."
"I mean every word of it, and I don"t see why it should be nonsense," I persisted. "It isn"t, when these other girls talk of making a career for themselves somehow. They can get on----"
"They are not ladies."
"It"s a deadly handicap being what our family calls a lady," said I.
"I"m going to stop being one and to have something like a life of my own at last."
"I forbid you," said Aunt Anastasia, in her stoniest voice, "I forbid you to do anything that is unbefitting my niece, my brother"s child, and Lady Anastasia"s great-granddaughter!"
"Auntie, I am past twenty-one," I said quite quietly. "No one can "forbid" my doing anything that is within the law! And I"m going to take the rest of my life into my own hands."