Miss Million's Maid Part 41

"No, it doesn't," contradicted Miss Million unexpectedly. "You know yourself it doesn't depend upon 'what you call' anything. Either he is, or he isn't. That Auntie of yours would ha' told you that. And stuck-up and stand-offish and a perfect terror as she was, she'd have been the first to admit that the Honourable Mr. Burke was one of her own sort!"

I couldn't help smiling a little. Million had hit it. This would have been exactly Aunt Anastasia's att.i.tude!

"And don't you remember what my great wish always was? Whenever there was a new moon, or anything," Million reminded me, "you used to want money and nice clothes. But there was something I wanted--quite different. I wanted to marry a gentleman. I--I still want it!"

Her underlip quivered as she gazed out of the lattice-window at the peaceful bare Suss.e.x landscape. Her grey eyes were full of tears and of dreams. As for me, I felt half-sorrowful for her, half-furious with the Hon. Jim; the person whom n.o.body but a perfect innocent, like Million, would dream of liking or taking seriously!... Reprobate! He ought to be horsewhipped!

I remembered his whimsical horror in that tea-shop when he had exclaimed to me: "Marry her? Marry a girl with hands like that, or a voice like that?" Yet he had made "a girl with a voice like that" dreamily in love with him. Really my heart swelled quite pa.s.sionately with resentment against him.

I wondered how far he had been trifling with her honest heart, both yesterday night at the Thousand and One Club, and this morning at lunch at the "Refuge." He was quite capable of doing one of two despicable things. Either of flirting desperately and then riding away; or, of marrying her in spite of what he had said, and then neglecting everything about her but her income! Which was he going to do, I wondered.

"Million! Miss Million," I said hastily. "Do you mind telling me if Mr.

Burke has proposed to you?"

Million looked down, showing the dark half-moons of her eyelashes on her cheeks in a way that I knew she had copied from one of the "Cellandine Novelettes" which used to be her favourite reading in Putney. She heaved a deep sigh. And then she said: "Well! Between you and I, he hasn't spoken yet."

"Yet? Do you mean--do you think he is going to?" I said sharply.

A smile grew over Million's small and bonny face. I must say I think she grows better-looking every day. Why should the Honourable Jim have made that unkind remark about her hands? Her face is prettier, probably, than those of half the wealthy girls he meets. Especially when she dimples like that.

She said demurely: "Do you know, I don't think any one can expect any one not to notice when any one is getting really fond of any one!"

This involved sentence meant, I knew, the worst.

It meant that she thought the Honourable Jim was going to ask her to marry him! And she must have some good reason for thinking so! Or he's an incorrigible flirt, one of the two!

"If he does ask you to marry him," I pursued, feeling as if I were a mixture of a schoolmistress and Million's own mother combined, "do you think you are going to say yes you will?"

"Do I think?" echoed Million ardently. "I don't 'think' anything about it. I just know I will!"

Oh, dear! Ever since I have been Miss Million's maid I have seemed to get from one difficulty into another. It is worse than ever now that I know for certain that the poor little thing imagines she is going to marry Mr. Burke. She won't ever be happy, even if he does marry her for her money.

But, stop! There is another thing. Her money?

Supposing her money does go? Well, then, the handsome Irishman will jilt her quite mercilessly. I know enough about him to know that! And I have a horrible presentiment that this is exactly what is going to happen.

That shrewd-eyed young American downstairs, Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, will bring an action to recover for himself all Miss Million's dollars. He will walk off with the fortune. And my mistress, poor little creature, will be left without either money or love!

As for me, I shall lose my place. I, too, shan't know what to do--unless----

Oh, yes. There is always one thing I can do. I shall marry. There is the proposal of Mr. Reginald Brace, who begged me to say yes to him when he gets back from Paris.

Thinking over it, I am pretty sure that that is what I shall say.

Really it will be a rest to turn to something as simple and straightforward as Mr. Reginald Brace after all the complications with which my life has been beset up till now. So that disposes of me, Beatrice Lovelace. But what about Nellie Million?

All these reflections pa.s.sed through my mind in Million's bedroom at the "Refuge," all the time I was putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to her before she went down to meet her cousin (and incidentally the man who was going to rob her of her fortune), Mr. Hiram P. Jessop.

Well, she looked bonny enough to make him feel some compunction about it, that I would say! The brown taffeta skirt and the new blouse, the leaf-brown suede shoes and the silk stockings that I had brought down with me, all suited her admirably.

And besides being becomingly dressed, there was something still more potently attractive about Million's appearance.

It was that flush and glow and sparkle, that aura that seems to cling about a woman in love. I had heard before that there is no beauty culture in the world that can give a woman just that look and that it is absolutely the most unfailing beautifier. Now I saw with my own dismayed eyes that it was but too true.

Nellie Million, ex-maid-of-all-work, had fallen in love with Lord Ballyneck's graceless younger son. The result, so far, was to improve her looks as much as my hairdressing and the Bond Street shopping for her had done already.

She was impatient to go down. This, I knew, was not on the new cousin's account. Poor child, she wanted to rejoin the Honourable Jim!

"But you've got to come with me, Smith, you know," she said, as she reached the door. "Yes, you have. You have got to introduce me, and be bothered to your only being my lady's-maid! There isn't much of that sort of thing at the 'Refuge,' as I can tell you. See how nice and homely Vi Va.s.sity was about having you sit down with all of us at dinner?"

I suppressed a smile at the idea of this condescension.

"Besides, he seems to know you pretty well, does my cousin," said little Miss Million. "And I tell you, Smith, you may be very useful. Talking to him and keeping him out of the way when Mr. Burke might want to be having a few words with me, do you see?"

I saw, and my heart sank with dismay. There were fearful complications ahead. I saw myself later on with Miss Million sobbing over a world that had crashed into disillusionment just as one of my Aunt Anastasia's priceless Nankin bowls had once come to pieces in her hand!

Still, I thought, I had better go down and see with my own eyes as much of the tragedy as it was possible. I thought that the first act of it might be even rather humorous. Both these young men trying to talk to Million at once, and Million herself giving all her attention to the young man who was the least good to her!

We came down into the sitting-room of the "Refuge." It seemed furnished chiefly with wicker chairs, and brilliant houseboat cus.h.i.+ons and very stagey-looking photographs with huge autographs, put at right angles to everything else. When we came down to this retreat we found that it was occupied only by Miss Vi Va.s.sity, leaning back very comfortably in a deck-chair, and blowing smoke rings from the cigarette that was fastened into a tiny silver holder, while opposite to her there was seated, looking very conscientious and gravely interested, my mistress's American cousin, Mr. Hiram P. Jessop himself.

"Why, where is Mr. Burke got to?" said Million, with a note of unmistakable disappointment in her voice.

I knew that the poor little thing had been overwhelmingly anxious to show herself off once more befittingly dressed before the blue, black-lashed eyes that had last beheld her in somebody else's far too voluminous garments. "I thought he was still with you, Vi?"

Miss Vi Va.s.sity gave a shrewd, amused laugh.

"Not here, not here, my child!" she quoted lazily. "Our friend Jim said he had got to push on up to London. He left plenty of messages and kind loves and so forth for you. And you needn't go bursting yourself with anxiety that he won't be turning up here again before we are any of us much older or younger (seeing the jobs some of us have got to keep off the enemy). He'll be down again presently all right. However, one off, another on. Here is a new boy for you to play with, Nellie. Says he's a cousin of yours," with a wave of her cigarette towards Mr. Jessop, who had now risen to his very Americanly booted feet. "I believe it's true, too," rattled on Miss Va.s.sity. "He looks to me altogether too wide awake to work off an old wheeze like 'cousins' if it were not a true one.

Well, cheery-oh, children. I am just off to see if poor Maudie upstairs has had her gruel. I will leave you to fall into each other's arms. Come along, Miss Smith. I daresay I can get that nurse to let you have a look at the new little nipper if you are keen."

I had been standing all this time, of course, examining the photographs inscribed "Yours to a cinder, Archie," and "To darling Vi, from her faithful old pal, Gertie."

Now I moved quickly towards the door which Miss Vi Va.s.sity had swung open.

But my mistress, with a quick little movement, stopped me. "Smith, don't you go. Vi, I don't want her to go," she protested. "She can pop up and see that baby afterwards, when it is being bathed. I want her now to stop and talk to this Mr. Jessop with me. I shan't feel so nervous then," she added, with her little giggle.

"Please yourselves," said "London's Love," with a laugh and a little nod for her exit. We three were left alone in the sitting-room.

I really think it is wonderful the way Americans will burst at once into a flood of friendliness that it will take the average young Englishman at least three or four years of intimate acquaintance to achieve.

And even then I doubt whether the average young Englishman (take, for example, my prospective fiance, Mr. Reginald Brace) would ever be able to "let himself go" like they do! Never had I heard such a stream of earnestly spoken compliments, accompanied by glances of such unmistakable admiration, as young Mr. Jessop immediately proceeded to lavish on Miss Million.

He told her, if I can remember correctly the sequence of his remarks: "That he was real delighted to make her acquaintance; that he had somehow fixed it up in his mind already that she would be a real, sweet little girl when he got to know her, and that even he hadn't calculated what a little Beaut she was going to turn out----"

"Oh, listen to him! If it isn't another of them!" exclaimed the artless Million, all blushes and smiles as she turned to me; I felt as if I were a referee in some game of which I wasn't quite certain about the rules.

Mr. Jessop went on to inform his cousin that she had the real, English, peach-bloom complexion that was so much admired in the States; only that she did her hair so much better than the way most English girls seemed to fix theirs.

Here I nearly dropped a little curtsey. The arrangement of Million's dark, glossy hair stands to my credit!

"There's a style about your dressing that I like, too. So real simple and girlish," approved Mr. Jessop, with his eyes on the faultlessly cut, tobacco-brown taffeta that had cost at least four times as much as the elaborately thought-out crime in cerise which should have been on Million's conscience. "I must say you take my breath away with your pretty looks, Cousin Nellie; you do, indeed. If I may say so, you appear to be the sort of little girl that any one might be thankful to have to cherish as the regular little queen of the home."