The Motor Maids by Rose, Shamrock and Thistle Part 16

You know when royal persons died their bodies used to be carried through the streets for the people to see. But later they stopped that practice and effigies of wax were borne instead. And these are some of the effigies. Queen Elizabeth is there--"

"Oh, do let's go," cried Nancy.

It ended, therefore, by their accepting the invitation with much pleasure, and presently they found themselves with the English girl and the older woman, who was called "Fraulein Bloch," and a verger, in a room over an ancient chapel. Here were laid out in state the waxen effigies of Queen Elizabeth, Charles II., William III. and Queen Mary, his wife, and Queen Anne. Certainly there was something very weird and ghastly about these wax images of kings and queens dead and gone, in all their royal regalia, crowded into gla.s.s cases around the wall. There was a battered old wax-doll likeness of the great Queen Elizabeth arrayed in faded finery, and an apathetic Charles in blue and red velvet robes trimmed with real point lace.

William and Mary were leaning up against each other sociably and lovingly in a case all by themselves; and close by was a large, heavy Queen Anne, an elaborate curly wig on her head and on her face a haughty fixed stare.

Whether it was the sight of all this past glory now so crumpled and faded, or whether it was that our tourists had eaten nothing since breakfast, it is hard to say. The Motor Maids always blamed what happened on the d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond. At any rate, Mary Price was standing just in front of that grotesque effigy, which was dressed in the very robes she had worn in life at the coronation of Queen Anne,-and by her side perched a stuffed parrot, said to have lived with her forty years,-when the young girl suddenly turned very pale and slipped down to the floor. So quietly did she fall that the others, who were viewing a jaunty effigy of Admiral Nelson, did not notice the little gray figure lying in a heap on the chapel floor.

It was growing late and the verger reminded them that they must be leaving before closing time. Laughing and talking softly together, they filed slowly out of the gloomy old place and the door was locked. And there all the time lay little Mary, as pale and stark as any of the wax kings and queens in the gla.s.s cases above her.

It all came back to them afterward like a curious dream, how they happened not to miss their friend even when they had returned to the church. In a remote corner somewhere a service was evidently being held.

The sound of the organ and of boys chanting floated to them. Following their new friend and Fraulein Bloch, they presently entered the chapel and joined a few scattered wors.h.i.+ppers kneeling at their devotions.

It was Billie who first noticed Mary's absence, and she was rather surprised, because Mary was more religious than the others and loved these ceremonious services.

"Perhaps she is snooping about in some of the tombs," she thought, and, whispering a word to Miss Campbell, she slipped out of the chapel and began a search for her friend. But Mary was nowhere in sight in the vast, dim place, and, with a somewhat anxious feeling, Billie hastened to join the others, who had now left the chapel and were waiting for her.

"Where is Mary?" she demanded.

But no one had seen Mary. No one could remember to have seen her for a long time. Miss Campbell was not as uneasy as Billie. She was sure that Mary could take care of herself. She was a reliable little thing and knew the address. If she had lost them, the child knew just what to do,-take a hansom and drive straight to their lodgings.

"I dislig to alarb de ladies," here put in Fraulein Bloch, "bud de young lady might be by dat room loged."

"What!" cried Miss Helen; "locked in the room with all those horrible wax figures that look like corpses! Oh, heavens, where is a guide?

Suppose the child has been left in that dreadful place? It's enough to make her go mad."

Filled with alarm, they hastened to find a verger, but there was no one about. Finally they discovered a very old man with a big bunch of keys.

"Come with us at once to the room with the wax effigies," cried Miss Campbell. "A young girl has been locked in there by mistake."

"Have you a permit, Madam?"

"Permit! Permit!" cried the distracted woman. "Do you think I care for permits when one of my children is locked up in a roomful of dead kings and queens and parrots? Go instantly and get the key."

"It is against the rules, Madam."

Their new friend, whose name they still did not know, now drew the old man aside and spoke to him in a low voice. Then a most remarkable change came over his aged face.

"The ladies will please follow," he said with cringing politeness, as he selected a key on the bunch and led the way to the distant chapel where the wax figures were kept.

It was all over very quickly now, but the girls never forgot the picture their friend made when the door was opened. She was kneeling on the floor in a pale shaft of light, the only one in all that gloomy place.

"Mary, my darling," cried poor Miss Campbell, hastening to her, "were you terribly frightened?"

Mary did not reply at first. She seemed startled by the sudden entrance of her rescuers. She told them afterward that the silence of the chapel was so deep it seemed to have entered into her very soul, and after the first few dreadful moments of her return to consciousness, when she found she had been left behind, she had not been frightened, only overwhelmed and pressed down by the weight of the vast quietude. And Mary was silent now, as her friends gathered around her and helped her to rise.

"I am quite well," she kept repeating with a faint little smile.

"I am quite to blame," said the English girl, taking Mary's hand. "It was I who enticed you into this dismal place."

"No, no," protested Mary. "The real reason of it was because we forgot to eat lunch."

Lunch? They had never thought of it, and immediately five American ladies became desperately weak in the knees and shaky. At least two of them turned pale at the mere suggestion that they had had no nourishment since nine that morning, and one of them, the smallest, most fragile and oldest, cried:

"What a poor excuse for a chaperone I am, that I should let my girls come to the point of starvation and never even notice it!"

"You must be very, very hungry," said the English girl in her beautiful, cultivated voice, which made the other girls thrill every time she spoke. "It is quite tea time, now, is it not, Fraulein? I have a delightful idea," she exclaimed impulsively. "You must have tea with me.

You must all go in the car. It is just outside, and this poor dear shall not say she is starved when she visits England."

"But--" protested Miss Campbell.

"No, no. I really wish it very much. You will come, will you not?"

exclaimed this impulsive and charming person, seizing Miss Campbell's hand.

Thus it happened that Mary's imprisonment with the wax effigies resulted in the most wonderful tea party that the Motor Maids or Miss Campbell either, for that matter, had ever been to in all their lives.

CHAPTER XI.-TEA IN A PALACE.

The motor car bore them smoothly and swiftly along through several broad shady streets. They had glimpses of splendid big houses, the front windows of which were gay with boxes of pansies and red geraniums. Then they slowed down, turned under a stone arch and paused at the door of an immense gray house half covered with English ivy.

"Here we are," said their new friend, "and I think I had better introduce myself. I am Beatrice Colchester, and this is my governess, Fraulein Bloch. May I ask your names, so that I may introduce you to my grandmother?"

Miss Campbell immediately went through the introductions.

"You will have a hard time remembering so many of us," said Billie.

"Perhaps you had better call us by our first names. They are much easier. You can remember to say Elinor and Mary and Nancy and Billie without much trouble."

"And you must not forget to say 'Beatrice,'" exclaimed the other girl who seemed to the Motor Maids to be the most enchanting and unaffected girl they had ever met.

Perhaps you would like to know what Beatrice Colchester looked like? She was tall, taller even than Billie, and very slender. Her eyes were large and deep blue in color; her hair was reddish gold and wavy, and her skin as pink and white as milk and roses. Her features were not regular, but because of the charm of her expression and her lovely coloring, her rather large mouth and unduly small nose were not even perceived at first by the people who met her. In a photograph the deficiencies of her face were very evident.

The doors of the mansion were opened before they had alighted from the motor car, by two footmen in blue and buff livery, who stood on each side of the entrance as stiff and rigid as statues. But the girls had no eyes for them. They were looking at the hall of the palace. For whoever Beatrice Colchester really was, she certainly lived in the finest house that they had ever seen. The great hall was paneled in oak quite black with age; portraits of ladies and gentlemen of the court in velvets and satins with wigs and high head dresses hung on either side; and ranged along the walls were old suits of armor. At one end was an immense stained gla.s.s window exactly like the window of a church, through which the afternoon sun cast a ruby light. It was a very lofty hall and the staircase which went up at one side seemed to be lost in the gloom above.

"Is Grandmamma in the drawing room, James?" demanded Beatrice Colchester of one of those superb individuals in blue and buff.

"She is, my lady," he managed to reply, without so much as moving a muscle of his imperturbable countenance.

"Will you come up, please?" she continued, turning to Miss Campbell. "We shall have tea at once. I know you must be starving."

Up they went in a silent procession, awed and subdued by the splendor of the wonderful old house. Suites of drawing rooms, they found later, were below on each side of the hall. The room they now entered was a big, beautiful apartment, which seemed to be furnished with numberless comfortable chairs and enormous sofas piled with cus.h.i.+ons that were covered with old brocades. There were low tables about, filled with books and vases of flowers and photographs in silver frames. A grand piano was at one end and on the walls were fine old pictures, which no doubt were even more valuable than the portraits below. It was indeed a vast and beautiful room, but it was not so imposing as the great hall and it was light and bright and cheerful. Toasting her toes in a big arm chair by the fire sat a little old lady, and standing on a perch at her right hand was a poll-parrot which called out as they entered:

"Late to tea again! Naughty Bee. Come, come. Hurry, hurry, hurry!"

It was so funny that Nancy laughed out loud, a merry, musical laugh which made the parrot turn and stare and put his head on one side in a most human manner.