"It"s quite right, thank you," she said, testing the temperature with the tip of her finger. Next there was a sound of water being poured into a tub in the dressing-room and she was aware that the bath was prepared.
Leaning back on the pillows she sipped her milk comfortably.
"My, but this is luxury," she thought. "_Vanitas vanitatum_ for a fact."
"Your bath is ready, Miss," announced the girl, pausing irresolutely.
"Did you want to say anything, Bridget?" asked Billie, noticing that the maid lingered in the doorway.
"Bad luck has come to us this day, Miss, and may the Saints preserve us all."
"Why, what is it?"
"The owld i-ron bell rang in the night, Miss, and then toombled down to the ground and broke itself in half, and shure the owld sayin"s come thrue already-
""The hour the i-ron bell doth fall Brings throuble to Kilkenty Hall."
"His Grace, the Duke, Miss, toombled downstairs in the night and they found him this morning stiff and stark as a corpse--"
"Dead?" asked Billie in a shocked voice.
"No, "twas not dead he was, Miss, but unconscious-like. He must have hit his head when he fell and lay there most of the night. Wurra! Wurra! and it"s bad luck that"s come to him, surely, and he with no toime to ask for forgiveness of the Blessed Lord. "Tis mony a ma.s.s will be said for the sowl of His Grace, and he a-callin" for his youngest, and a-givin"
to the poor and needy for his safe return. He"s a changed man, Miss, the servants at the Hall do be a-tellin" me. "Twas only yesterday mornin" he asked Patrick, the head gardener, how his wife did as was mother to twins last week."
Billie could scarcely keep from smiling. Was it so wonderful for His Grace to make a kind inquiry?
"He was nivver known to ask the loike before, Miss, but it may be he felt the bad luck a-comin" on like a disease, and his little boy, as he once was cold to, kept a-hauntin" him day and night. The little Lord Arthur is dead, Miss. I"m as sure of that as I"m standin" on my two feet here. "Twas only yestiddy a black cat crossed my path twice. "Tis a sign of death, surely, and his father will follow him to the grave as certain as the owld bell fell last night and broke into pieces."
Nothing can yield more readily to superst.i.tious influence than the Irish temperament. While the educated cla.s.ses attempt to resist it, the ignorant are an easy prey to signs and indications. Billie felt that she herself might easily absorb some of it, if she lingered in the land for any length of time. It was a strange coincidence, however, the Duke"s tumbling downstairs the very night the old bell had broken from its fastenings and fallen to the ground! But of course the corrosion of time,-goodness only knows how many centuries,-had loosened the stones in the tower, and the great storm had finished the work of destruction. You couldn"t expect an old ruin to stand forever, and Billie was later to find that half the tower had blown down with the bell. As for the Duke, perhaps he wasn"t as badly injured as Bridget had said. She was glad he wanted little Arthur at last. Here Billie"s thoughts gave a flying leap across a broad gulf of conjecture and landed safely on the other side.
In fact, her methods of reasoning and arriving at conclusions were very much like a rider on a fast horse leaping hurdles. While she dressed, suspicions that for weeks had lurked in the dark corners of her mind became convictions, and by the time she was ready to join her friends at breakfast, she had arrived at a determination.
Lord Glenarm was nowhere about at breakfast, which in an English house is an informal meal. The guests serve themselves from "hot water dishes"
or from platters of cold meat, if they want any; and most a.s.suredly these young Americans did not yearn for cold meat at breakfast.
Beatrice, somewhat pale and frightened, was telling the others what had occurred when Billie joined them.
"How he escaped concussion of the brain is a miracle," she said, "but he"s resting comfortably now, only he keeps asking for little Arthur.
Uncle has ridden over to the Hall."
It had been a long time since uncle had ridden over to the Hall or had anything whatever to do with his half-brother; but stranger things than this were to happen at Kilkenty Hall.
Miss Campbell immediately suggested departing with her four charges, but Maria, who had seen their host before he left, told them that Lord Glenarm particularly requested them to remain.
The two older women, therefore, went out for a morning drive, and the younger ones took a spin in the "Comet." This was what Billie especially wished, and when they stopped in a pretty village some miles distant to shop, she inquired the way to the telegraph office, and slipping away from the others, sent a mysterious telegram to Telemac Kalisch. She remembered the address perfectly even to the number of the room in "the seventh heaven," and she breathed a sigh of relief now the thing was off her mind.
"It may lead to nothing at all and it may lead to a great deal. Who knows?" she thought.
All the afternoon she waited anxiously for an answer. Telegrams to the Abbey were telephoned over from the village, she had been informed, and she made an excuse not to walk with the others before tea, and sat in the great refectory reading a book. Her chair was drawn near an open window through which floated the perfume of the flowers on the terraced lawn and the soft stir made by the breeze in the tree tops. Billie closed her eyes and rested her cheek against the high tapestry back of the chair. For the hundredth time that afternoon she was endeavoring to persuade herself that she had done right. If she were entirely on the wrong track, how could she ever explain to Mr. Kalisch? So she was thinking when something fluttered onto her lap. She opened her eyes languidly, thinking perhaps a stray leaf had floated in on the breeze, and lo and behold, there was the message! Not to this day does she know how it reached her. Probably through the window, but just as probably in some other way. It was merely a sc.r.a.p of paper and scrawled across it in an uneducated handwriting was: "Your message received. Be in the garden to-morrow at five."
She sat a long time staring at the paper until the voices of the others broke in on her reverie. Then she rolled it into a little ball and tossed it out of the window.
"I can"t understand," she said. "It"s too deep for me."
"Well, you did miss it by not coming," cried Nancy, dashing into the room excitedly, her arms filled with roses. "We have been over to Kilkenty Hall-think of that! The housekeeper showed us all over the house. There"s a picture gallery and a grand ballroom and a beautiful boudoir all hung in pink brocade. Beatrice saw her uncle and he kissed her, the first time since she was a child, she said; and he didn"t fall in the hall at all, but down a flight of steps leading to the chapel, where he had gone to pray."
"Dear me," exclaimed Billie, "I never heard such an interesting mixture of news in all my life. You"ll be telling me His Grace kissed you next."
"He didn"t, but he ordered the head gardener to take us through the hot houses--"
"Conservatories, child," corrected Billie.
"And we came away simply laden with flowers. These are Killarney roses.
Mary chose white roses and Elinor took pink carnations."
Undoubtedly a wonderful change had come over the Duke of Kilkenty and his whole nature appeared to be transformed.
It was not easy for Billie to conceal from the watchful eye of Miss Campbell and the girls the tremendous secret that she must keep to herself until five o"clock the next afternoon. It was an anxious and uneasy time for her. Suppose Beatrice should arrange to take them off somewhere at that hour, she thought. Suppose there should be visitors to tea in the garden; suppose it should be raining; suppose a hundred things. The weary minutes stretched themselves into hours and the hours became interminably long, it seemed to her, before the time even approached five o"clock the next day. The strain of waiting was almost more than she could endure alone. At last, after an endless time of playing tennis and walking and visiting the kennels and doing fifty other things, the five girls repaired to the Abbey garden, where Miss Campbell and Maria sat talking with Lord Glenarm and-was it possible?-the Duke of Kilkenty, himself. He was pale and his head was bandaged, but he insisted on rising and being duly presented to the four agitated young Americans. Did he recall the five pounds and the angry beast Feargus had killed? They could not tell. He was extremely courteous and there was a kindly light in his eyes that rea.s.sured them.
Billie sat down limply in a chair and waited. Some one gave her a cup of tea which she forgot to drink. Her eyes were fastened on the ivy-grown arch in the wall of the ruins, and all the time a little figure was approaching slowly along the garden walk from the other end.
It was Beatrice who first called out with much excitement:
"Why, who is that?"
Everybody looked up and the Duke of Kilkenty cried:
"Arthur! Arthur!"
"Papa, have you cut your head?" demanded the little boy, who was strangely familiar and yet unfamiliar, and the next minute he was in their midst and they were all laughing and embracing him at once.
It was some time before they could realize that the pale, delicate Arthur was a st.u.r.dy, beautiful boy. His face was tanned to a healthy brown and his eyes were clear and merry.
"Where have you been all this time, Arthur?" demanded his father, lifting him onto a bench and gazing at him with the expression of one who has made a wonderful and happy discovery.
"I"ve been with grandpapa," answered Arthur. The half-brothers exchanged a long look. "Grandpapa and Marie-Jeanne. We have had such ripping times. We played out of doors every day and I never had to study at all.
Marie-Jeanne knows more games than Grandpapa, even. And she can make little cakes. I have been very happy, but Grandpapa said you wanted me and you loved me now--"
The Duke stroked the little boy"s head and looked down.
"I should think he might feel a trifle uncomfortable," thought Miss Campbell, still a bit skeptical over the Duke"s complete reformation.
"And Grandpapa said that Billie sent word I was to come home and it was all right."
"Who"s Billie?"
"My best girl," answered Arthur, running over and leaning against the blushing Billie"s shoulder with entire confidence.
Then she was obliged to explain what she had done. His Grace was much moved. He pressed her hand and said she was a remarkable young woman, and that she had done what the highest paid detectives in the kingdom had been unable to accomplish, and he wished to thank her with all his heart.
Thus five o"clock merged into six, and six into half past, and at last His Grace took his little son away, leaving the others still in the garden feeling quite as if they had been taking part in a play.