Читать книгу Miss Million's Maid - Berta Ruck - Страница 18

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The impossible has happened.

I am "Miss Million's maid."

I was taken on—or engaged, or whatever the right term is—a week ago yesterday.

I've surmounted all objections; the chief being Million—I mean "Miss Million"—herself. Her I have practically bullied into letting her ex-mistress come and work for her. After much talk and many protests, I said, finally, "Million, you've got to."

And Million finally said: "Very well, Miss Beatrice, if you will 'ave it so, 'ave it so you will. It don't seem right to me, but——"

Then there was my Aunt Anastasia, the controller of my destiny up to now. Her I wrote to from that hostelry in Kensington, which was Million's first "move" from No. 45, the Putney villa. And from Aunt Anastasia I received a letter of many sheets in length.

Here are a few of the more plum-like extracts:

"When I received the communication of your insane plan, Beatrice, I was forced to retire to the privacy of my own apartment"—

(Not so very "private," when the walls are so thin that she can hear the girls in the adjoining room at No. 46 rustling the tissue-paper of the box under the bed that they keep their nicest hats in!)

"and to take no fewer than five aspirins before I was able to review the situation with any measure of calm."

Then—

"It is well that my poor brother, your father, is not here to see to what depths his only child has descended, and to what a milieu!"

(The "descent" being from that potty little row of packing-cases in Putney to the Hotel Cecil, where I am engaging a suite of rooms for Miss Million and her maid to-morrow!)

"Your dear great-grandmother, Lady Anastasia, would turn in her grave, did she ever dream that a Miss Lovelace, a descendant of the Lovelaces of Lovelace Court," etc., etc.

(But I am not a Lovelace now. I have told Million—I mean, I have requested my new employer—to call me "Smith." Nice, good, old, useful-sounding sort of name. And more appropriate to my present station!)

Then my aunt writes:

"Your fondness for associating with young men of the bounder class over garden walls and on doorsteps was already a sufficiently severe shock to me. As that particular young man appears to be still about here, poisoning the air of the garden with his tobacco smoke and obviously gazing through the trellis in search of you each evening, I suppose I must acquit him of any complicity in your actions."

(I suppose that nice-looking young man at No. 44 has been wondering when I was going to finish giving him Million's address to return that brooch.)

There's miles more of Auntie's letter. It ends up with a majestically tearful supplication to me to return to my own kith and kin (meaning herself and the Gainsborough portrait!) and to remember who I am.

Nothing will induce me to do so! I've felt another creature since I left No. 45, with the bamboo furniture and the heirlooms. And, oh, what fun I'm going to have over forgetting who I was. Hurray for the new life of liberty and fresh experiences as Miss Million's maid!

The first thing to do, of course, is to provide ourselves with means to go about, to shop, to arrange the preliminaries of our adventure! That five pounds which Mr. Chesterton advanced to his new client (smiling as he did so) will not do more than pay our bill at the Home for Independent Cats, as Million calls this Kensington place.

Mr. Chesterton not only smiled, he laughed outright when we presented ourselves at the Chancery Lane office together once more. I was again spokeswoman and I came to the point at once.

"We want some more money, please."

"Not an uncommon complaint," said the old lawyer. "But, pardon me, I have no money of yours! You mean Miss Million wants some more money?"

I hope he doesn't think I'm a parasite of a girl who clings on to little Million because she's happened to inherit a fortune. Rather angrily I said: "We both want it; because until Miss Million has some more she cannot pay me my salary!"

He looked a little amazed at this, but he did not say anything about his surprise that I was in a salaried capacity to my little friend. He only said: "Well! How much do you—and Miss Million—want? Five pounds again? Five hundred——"

"Oh, not five hundred all at once," gasped the awe-struck Million; "I'd never feel I could go to sleep with it——"

While I cut in abruptly: "Yes, five hundred will do for us to arrange ourselves on."

Thereupon the old lawyer made the suggestion that was to be fraught with such odd consequences.

"Wouldn't it be more convenient," he said, "if an account could be opened in Miss Million's name at a bank?"

"That will do," said Miss Million's maid (myself), while Miss Million gazed round upon the black dispatch-boxes of the office.

Ten minutes later, with a cheque for £500 clutched tightly in Miss Million's hand, also a letter from Mr. Chesterton to Mr. Reginald Brace, the manager, we found ourselves at the bank near Ludgate Circus that Mr. Chesterton had recommended.

Million was once more doddering with nervousness. Once more Miss Million's new maid had to take it all upon herself.

"Mr. Brace," I demanded boldly over the shoulder of an errand-lad who was handing in slips of paper with small red stamps upon them.

One moment later and we were ushered into the manager's private room.

Yet another second, and that room seemed echoing with Million's gleeful shriek of "Why! Miss Beatrice! See who it is? If it isn't the gent from next door!"

She meant the manager.

I looked up and faced the astonished blue eyes in his nice sunburnt face.

Yes! It was the young man from No. 44 Laburnum Grove; "the insufferable young bounder" on whose account I had got into those "rows" with Aunt Anastasia. So this was Mr. Reginald Brace, the bank manager! This was where he took the silk hat I'd seen disappearing down the grove each morning at 9.30.

He recognised us. All three of us laughed! He was the first to be grave. Indeed, he was suddenly alarmingly formal and ceremonious as he asked us to sit down and opened Mr. Chesterton's letter.

I couldn't help watching his face as he read it, to enjoy the look of blank amazement that I thought would appear there when he found that the little maid-servant he had noticed at the kitchen window of the next-door villa to his own should be the young lady about whom he had received this lawyer's letter.

No look of amazement appeared. You might just as well have expected a marble mantelpiece to look surprised that the chimney was smoking.

He said presently: "I shall be delighted to do as Mr. Chesterton asks."

Then came a lot of business with the introduction of the chief cashier, with a pass-book, a paying-in-book, a cheque-book, and a big book for Million's name and address (which she gave care of Josiah Chesterton, Esq.). Then, when the cashier man had gone out again, Mr. Brace's marble-mantelpiece manner vanished also. He smiled in a way that seemed to admit that he did remember there were such things as garden-hoses and infuriated aunts in the world. But he didn't seem to remember that it was not my business, but Million's, that had brought us there. For it was to me that he turned as he said in that pleasant voice of his: "Well! This does seem rather a long way round to a short way home, doesn't it?"

At that there came into my mind again the plan I had for Million's benefit. Million should have her wish. She should marry "the sort of young gentleman she'd always thought of." I would bring these two together—the good-looking, young, pleasant-voiced bank manager and the little shy heiress, who would be extremely pretty and attractive by the time I'd been her maid for a month.

So I said: "You know, Miss Million's 'home' is no longer at No. 45 in your road."

He said: "She seems to have some very good friends there, though."

Here the artless Million broke in: "Not me, sir! I never could bear that aunt of hers," with a nod at me, "and no more couldn't Miss Beatrice, after I left!"

I tried to nudge Million, but could scarcely do so just under that young man's interested blue eye. He looked up quickly to me. "Then you have left?"

I smiled and nodded vaguely, and we sat for a moment in silence, the tall, morning-coated young manager, and the two girls still so shabbily dressed, that you wouldn't have dreamt of connecting either of us with millions. I wasn't going to let him into the situation of mistress and maid just then. But I condescended to inform him: "Miss Million will be at the Hotel Cecil after to-morrow."

He flashed me one brief, blue glance. I wondered if he guessed I'd a plan in my mind. Anyhow, he fell in with it. For, as he shook hands for good-bye with both of us, he said to Million: "Will you allow me to call on you there?"

Million, looking overjoyed but flustered, turned to me. Evidently I was to answer again.

I said sedately: "I am sure Miss Million will be glad to let you call."

"When?" said the young bank manager rather peremptorily.

I made a rapid mental calculation. I ought to be able to get Million suitably clad for receiving admirers-to-be in about—yes, four days.

I said: "On Thursday afternoon, at about five, if that suits you."

"Admirably," said the young man whom I have selected to marry Million. "Au revoir!"