Miss Million's Maid Part 62

"Oh! But I do! So much!" I protested. "I think Mr. Brace is everything nice ... I think he would make such a splendid husband! He's so steady, and honourable, and sterling, and straight, and kind, and simple-minded, and reliable, and----"

"Ah! Poppyc.o.c.k!" cried the comedienne, with her loud, indulgent laugh.

"You're just stringing off a list of aggravating things that a girl might put up with in a man if--if, mind you!--she was head over ears in love with him as well. But, great Pip! Fancy marrying a man for those things!

"Why, what d'you suppose it would be like? I ought to know," she answered herself before I, rather surprised, could say anything. "One of those 'sterling' young men that never gave his mother an hour's anxiety; one of those reliable, simple-minded fellers that you always knew what he was goin' to say an' do next; always came home to tea on the dot, and 'never cared to wander from his own fireside'--that's what I was talked into marryin' by my aunts when I was a kid of eighteen,"

said Miss Vi Va.s.sity quite bitterly.

"Oh, were you?" I cried, astonished. "I never knew----"

"Yes, that was my first husband. Answered to the name of Bert--Albert.

Very good position in the waterworks in our town at home," said London's Love.

"A real good husband he was. Lor', how he did used to aggravate me! It's a good many years ago, Smithie, and I've almost forgotten what he looked like. I can just call to mind the way he used to snuffle when he had a cold in the head; shocking colds he used to catch, but he would always get up and light the kitchen fire to get me an early cup o' tea, no matter what the weather was. That I will say for him. The man I remember, though--he was pretty different!"

There was a silence in the countrified-looking bedroom that the music-hall artiste had filled with the atmosphere of a theatrical dressing-room. Then England's Premier Comedienne went on in a softer, more diffident voice than I had ever heard from her.

"He was the young man that jilted Vi Va.s.sity a good deal later on. A trick cyclist he was.... Small, but beautifully built fellow, supple as a cat. Bad-tempered as a cat, too! And s.h.i.+fty, and mean in little ways!

A cruel little devil, too, but----"

She sighed.

"I fair doted on him!" concluded the Star simply. "Much I cared what sort of a rotter he was! It's the way a woman's got to feel about a man once in a lifetime. If she doesn't, she's been done out of the best that's going."

"But," I suggested, "she misses a good deal of pain?"

"Yes, and of everything else. Nothing else is worth it, Smithie. You can't understand what it was to me just the way his hair grew," said the comedienne who'd loved the trick cyclist. "Cropped close, of course, and black. Looked as if a handful of soot had been rubbed over his head. But soft as velvet to your lips. I used to tell him that. Never a one for talking much himself. He'd a trick of speaking almost as if he grudged you the words; curious, and shy, and my word! wasn't it fascinatin'?

Then he'd give a little laugh in the middle of a sentence sometimes.

That used to go to my heart, straight as a pebble into a pool. Yes, and it'd stay there, with the ripple stirring above it. Anybody would have loved his voice....

"But! Bless my soul alive!" she broke off into her loud, jovial, everyday tone again. "About time I left off maunderin' about when--other--lips, and threw some glad-rags on to me natural history!

I'll wear the marmalade-coloured affair with the dangles.... Well!

'Marry the man you fancy,' as it says in the song, and don't let me go puttin' you off any of 'em, Miss Smith----"

But whether the Star did "put me off" by her reminiscences of her trick cyclist with the charming, reluctant voice, or whether it is that I've slowly been coming round to the conclusion subconsciously in my own mind, I find that, however estimable he may be, I shall never be able to marry Mr. Reginald Brace.

No! Not if I have to go on being Miss Million's or somebody else's lady's-maid until I'm old and grey.

I somehow realised that with the first moment that I opened the door to the tall, mackintoshed figure--it was raining again, of course, outside--Miss Million, very pretty and flushed and eager in her rose-pink tea-gown, followed close upon my heels as I let Mr. Brace in, and behind her came Miss Vi Va.s.sity, sumptuous in the orange satin that she calls "the marmalade-coloured affair."

And all three of us, without even bidding the young bank manager "Good evening," chorused together: "Tell us, for goodness' sake, tell us at once! Who did steal the Rattenheimer ruby?"

"n.o.body!" replied Mr. Reginald Brace, in his pleasant but rather precise voice, and with his steady grey eyes fixed on me as I, in my inevitable cap and ap.r.o.n, waited to take his coat.

We all gasped "n.o.body? What----Why----"

"The Rattenheimer ruby has not been stolen at all," replied Mr. Reginald Brace, smiling encouragingly upon us.

And then, while we all gaped and gazed upon him, and kept the poor wretched man waiting for his dinner, he went on to tell us the full history of the celebrated ruby.

It appears that an exquisite paste copy has been made of the priceless pendant, which the German-Jewish owners have kept by them to delude possible jewel thieves.

And now it is they themselves who have been deluded by the same wonderful replica of the celebrated gem!

For Mrs. Rattenheimer, it appears, imagined that it was the replica that reposed in her jewel-case, from which the original was missing after that fatal ten minutes of carelessness during which she left that jewel-case and her bedroom door at the Cecil unlocked.

But upon sending that replica to the experts to supplement the description of the missing ruby, she was told that an absurd mistake had been made. This, the supposed "copy," was none other than the celebrated ruby itself!

"And she didn't know her own property?" Vi Va.s.sity's loud, cheerful voice resounded through the hall. "Why, the old girl will be the laughing-stock of London!"

"Yes. I think Mrs. Rattenheimer realises that herself," said Mr.

Reginald Brace. "That is why she and her husband now intend to hush the matter up as much as possible; they do not mean to prosecute inquiries as to who took the replica."

"Don't they think we done that, then?" asked Miss Million loudly.

"They are dropping all inquiries," said Mr. Brace.

"Then I've a good mind to sue 'em for libel for the inquiries they made already," said Million heatedly. "I shall consult my----"

Here there was another ring at the bell.

"Talk of angels!" exclaimed my young mistress, as I opened the door to a second masculine figure in a dripping rain-coat, "why here he is, just the very person I was going to pa.s.s the remark about! It's my cousin Hiram!" And it was that young American who strode into the feeble light of the oil-lamps in the hall.

"I guess I must have been just a few yards behind you before I took the wrong turning to these antediluvian river-courses that they call roads,"

said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop to Mr. Brace, while he held Million's little hand with great tenderness. "Good evening, Cousin Nellie and everybody.

If I may shed this damp macintaw, I've a few pieces of startling news----"

"For the sake of Lloyd George himself, come into the dinin'-room and let's have 'em while we're feeding," suggested Miss Va.s.sity.

She grabbed an arm of each young man, and ran them into the room to the right that always smells of country churches.

"Part of the news concerns Miss Smith," added Mr. Jessop, over the upholstery of his shoulder.

"Then in the name of the Insurance Act let's all sit down together and hear it. Not so much nonsense about 'the maid.' We'll pretend we're at the 'Refuge,' and stretch for ourselves," decreed Vi Va.s.sity, positively pus.h.i.+ng me, in my cap and ap.r.o.n, down into the dining-room chair next to Mr. Reginald Brace in his correct tweeds.

"Now! One mouthful of tomato soup, and out with it--the news, I mean."

"To begin with, I guess they've found the jewel thief," announced Mr.

Hiram P. Jessop. "That is, she's owned up. So real disgusted, I guess, to find she hadn't secured the genu-ine ruby.

"I've come straight on from Rats himself, who gave me the whole story.

She brought round the other one with her own hands, and said she'd taken it for a bet. She always was eccentric.

"Well, I calculate you've got to believe a lady of t.i.tle," concluded the young American between two spoonfuls of soup. "If you can't rely upon your old aristocracy to tell the truth in this country, who can you rely on?"

"Better ask the Honourable Jim!" laughed Miss Vi Va.s.sity. "And now tell us who's the lady."

"Another acquaintance of yours, Miss Va.s.sity," announced Mr. Jessop, giving the t.i.tle with an air. "Lady Haye-Golightly!"