Part 4
“We feel quite honored, you know, at having you here. Sir Toby says you are to be advertised as our principal star on the play bills. So awfully clever of you to act in the way you do. I am sure you will be a great draw. And such a good cause. Do have some more tea, won’t you?”
The curiously shy and timid Lady Elfreda was not averse from even a third cup of tea.
“One hears that you are simply wonderful as Lady Henrietta in the Duke of Killiecrankie. The _Society Pictorial_ says you have genius, although”--Girlie suddenly felt the eyes of the hostess fixed intently upon her--“you don’t look much like your photograph. Do have another piece of tea-cake.”
Girlie had never heard prattle sound quite so agreeable. She began to take very kindly to her surroundings. At the back of her mind, it was true, the sense of the unreal was almost grisly. But the immediate present in which she was living was strangely like a dream, although touched with sinister edges that might develop into a nightmare at any moment. Still, a low cushioned chair, three cups of tea and the eager, the almost too eager kindness of the hostess were for the time being an anodyne for the fear that hovered like doom in the background.
“Dinner is not until a quarter past eight, so that if you would like a little rest you shall go to your room.” The yellow chrysanthemum lady glanced half-maternally at the small peaked face. “If you like, I will show you the way.”
Girlie was most comfortable as she was, but instinct told her that it would be wise to end the present phase of the dream, which was so seductive, and prepare to envisage some of the stern realities that were undoubtedly lurking near at hand.
“I think I will please--if you don’t mind.” Those were the first words Girlie found the courage to speak in her capacity of a marquis’ daughter. For an instant the sound of her own voice, pitched rather higher than was quite natural, seemed to leave her half paralyzed with her own audacity.
Happily the hostess, whose name she didn’t know, was very much a get-things-done sort of lady. “Very well, you shall.” She rose from her chair with genial authority. “You will be all the better for an hour’s rest after such a trying journey.”
Girlie got up, too. A considerable effort was needed, but she was able to make it. The mistress of the house piloted the distinguished guest past tables and chairs, through the press of people, of whose glances of covert curiosity she was keenly aware, as far as the staircase paneled in black oak at the end of the hall. They went up together side by side, but Girlie was terribly conscious now at every step she took that she was moving out of fairyland into a country of extreme peril whose nature she simply dare not define.
“I hope you will like your room.” The delightfully kind yellow chrysanthemum lady prattled on all the way up the stairs. “South aspect, overlooking the park. We call it the chamber of honor. King Edward used to sleep in it when he came down here for the races, although, of course, _we_ hadn’t the place then.”
“Oh, I am sure I shall like it,” Girlie managed to say, but again in that odd high-pitched voice which sounded so strange to her own ears.
They turned into a corridor carpeted in blue velvet and the hostess opened a door at the end of it. She led the way into the most spaciously beautiful bedroom Girlie had ever seen. Its size seemed to her quite extraordinary. It was hung in deep crimson and its furniture was Louis Seize. A bright wood fire was crackling on the wide hearth. But, perhaps, what most immediately impressed Miss Cass was the fact that Pikey was busily unpacking the boxes of her mistress, several of whose dresses had already been laid out on the bed.
“Here you are, Lady Elfreda.” The voice of the yellow chrysanthemum lady sounded disconcertingly loud as they entered the room. “I do hope you will be comfortable. Your bathroom is through that door. I see your maid is unpacking your things.” And then to the kneeling and assiduous Pikey, “Have you all that you want?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Pikey, looking up for one brief instant only.
“If there is anything else you’d like you _will_ ask for it, won’t you?” The hostess bestowed a final benediction on the most important of her guests. “You will be able to have a nice rest before dinner. Not until a quarter past eight ... I think I told you.” With a last gush of kindliness the yellow chrysanthemum lady departed, leaving Girlie Cass to deal with a reality that was rapidly growing stupendous.
For two minutes at least after the hostess had gone silence reigned in the room. Pikey continued her unpacking, still wholly absorbed by her task, while Girlie began to make frantic efforts to emerge completely from her dream and grapple with a situation that had suddenly grown altogether beyond her.
There was the authority of the mistress of Clavering Park that she was Lady Elfreda Catkin, that the bedroom of the late King Edward had been placed at her disposal, and that before her eyes her own maid was unpacking her boxes. So far, so good. Everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, no doubt ... but!...!
VIII
PIKEY was still in a rather dazed condition. She had been traveling all day and most of the previous night and she was not so young as she once was; besides, she had not quite shaken off the thrall of a potent vintage wine. As a matter of fact, she had not been really awake since Newbury. And it would seem that the mind can play some decidedly weird tricks when one is past sixty and one has missed a whole night’s rest!
For example, Pikey could almost have taken a Bible oath, so vivid was the impression, that her mistress....
However, that was clearly impossible! A cup of tea in the severely correct surroundings of the housekeeper’s room, in which, as the representative of an old marquisate, she had been at once accorded considerable prestige, had proved to her quite definitely that this disorder of mind reflected no sort of credit upon her.
Her young ladyship had always been a little wild. And as her guardian knew to her cost, she had given more trouble, one way and another, than all the rest of the family together. She might be capable of anything. At the same time there was surely a limit beyond which even Elfreda would not go! Strengthened by this pious thought, the still rather bewildered Pikey had proceeded to unpack.
Not feeling either too proud or too sure of herself, the ancient handmaid went on with her task some little time longer before she ventured to look up to confront her young mistress. At last she rose from her knees and said with a formal air which was a concession to her sense of responsibility, “I think the blue one, my lady, for this evening.”
As Pikey spoke she came forward to assist in the removal of the fur coat. She was a Dragon, but she was also a first-class servant who knew her place to a hair’s breadth.
The shock she met with half stunned her. From between the hat and the skunk collar of her mistress, a small white face was gazing at her piteously.
There was a silence grim and tense, in which the hearts of both the parties to it seemed to stop beating.
“Why! ... w-what ... are _you_ ... doing ... here!” gasped the luckless Pikey at last.
The gray eyes of Girlie filmed ever so lightly with tears. “I ... I ... Lady Elfreda!” The strangled whisper was half a sob.
Pikey recoiled with her horrified gaze still on the hat and coat of her mistress. And then, being by no means a fool, in one blinding, hideous flash of insight she saw it all....
The little wretch had surpassed herself! Poor Pikey grew faint and rather chill. Her charge had played more than one mad prank in her life of twenty years, but in its daring and its wickedness this exploit was surely incredible. All the same there was the hard, cold fact and it had to be faced.
“Why did you let her!” The voice and the look of the Dragon threatened actual bodily violence to Miss Cass.
“I--I didn’t seem able to prevent her.”
Reading the gentle, rather scared eyes, the truculent Pikey felt these feeble words to be literally true. At the beck of a rather grim sense of humor the old retainer bared her yellow teeth. It was almost in her heart to admire the Little Beast; yet at the same moment she was consumed with a passion to shake the life out of poor Miss No-Class.
“Where has she gone--tell me that!” So fierce was the Werewolf that a look akin to terror entered Girlie’s eyes. The Lady of Laxton, however, did her best to give a coherent account of all that had happened.
“You say she has gone to The Laurels,” said Pikey, blankly. “And she has taken your luggage with her.” Darkness and eclipse stared the luckless duenna in the face. “I don’t know where The Laurels is. And, anyway, I doubt if there would be time to fetch her before dinner.”
Miss Cass not only doubted if there would be time to fetch her before dinner; privately she doubted also if in her present mood the wicked Elfreda would come if she were fetched.
“Well, I don’t know what to do,” groaned Pikey, “and that’s the truth.” The Deputy looked blankly at the duenna. Her white face grew piteous.
“Whatever do you suppose is going to happen!” The cold ferocity again struck terror into the heart of Girlie Cass.
“L-Lady Elfreda said it would be quite all right,” she was just able to gasp. “She said there was no one here who knew her. She said that if”--gathering herself for a supreme effort--“I--I--p-played up and didn’t give myself away it wouldn’t be found out.” And Miss Cass collapsed against the side of the bed.
“Wouldn’t be found out!” It was as much as Pikey could do to keep her hands off the little idiot.
Pikey, however, was not a fool. Already her mind had shaped the question of questions, What must she do? She did not forget that she had been sent specially from Ireland to take charge of one who had always insisted on going her own way, and if she now confessed that she had let herself be tricked in such a preposterous manner she would be severely hauled over the coals and might even lose the place which she valued beyond all things in this life. Again, immediately below the surface of the Dragon’s nature was the foolish, fond old nurse. Entering the Carabbas household in early life she had mothered a large family, first in a subordinate capacity, and then when it came to Elfreda’s turn, as absolute head of the nursery. Elfreda in consequence held quite a special place in her affections. The family of Carabbas was the whole world and its wife as far as Pikey was concerned; the rest of the universe didn’t count at all; but the one who had given her more trouble than all the others together had been her particular charge. Had it ever been really necessary, the Werewolf would have gone to the stake for Elfreda.
If Pikey’s first thought was that she must not give herself away, the one that pressed it hard was that she must not give away her favorite. But she was faced with a situation of fantastic difficulty. It was frankly beyond her. She didn’t in the least know what to do.
Miss Cass was in similar case, except that somewhere in her confused mind was a pathetic but sublime faith in Lady Elfreda. The daughter of the marquis had solemnly promised with her air of uncanny competence that everything would turn out right if only her deputy “played up,” and somehow the bewildered but secretly flattered Girlie felt bound to believe her. Such a one as Lady Elfreda must know the ropes perfectly. And up to this point her mentor had been amazingly right. Everything had gone almost as merrily as a marriage bell.
“Well, I don’t know what to do, and that’s a fact,” said Pikey again.
In the end it was the lady of Laxton who really took the epic decision. There were several factors in the case which helped her to do so. Her faith was sublime, she had succeeded already, she was enormously ambitious, such an amazing chance for first-hand experience could never recur, and when the worst had been said of her, with all her timidity she was a decidedly shrewd daughter of a long line of commercial sires. Besides at the very moment that the issue hung in the balance her tranced eyes beheld what no pen could describe: An enchanting shimmer of misty blue, silver and tulle laid out on the bed. It was such a dress as one day she might have dreamt of wearing, yet knowing well that she was never likely to do so.
That glorious confection decided Girlie Cass. She must play up, she must play up to the very height of her opportunity. “_There is a tide_,” etc. Inscrutable fate had ordained that she was to be the daughter of a marquis. Come what may she would be the daughter of a marquis and so prove herself worthy of her destiny.
The little lady, with a courage she knew and felt was superhuman, took off her coat and hat and then she said with a steadiness of tone she could not help admiring in herself, “I think you said the blue one.”
It was quite true that Pikey had said the blue one, but this audacity rendered her speechless. Certainly it solved the most pressing of their problems--for the time being at least--but the grim custodian of Family dignity would dearly have liked to slay Miss No-Class for her impudence.
How dare that sort of person take so much upon herself!
The soul of the lady of Laxton, however, had been fired by the ravishing garment on the bed. And as the whole situation was poised so delicately that it seemed to hang upon a thread, the mere fact that she could muster courage enough for a definite lead sufficed to determine the course of events. Pikey continued to gaze at Miss Impudence with sour disfavor, but she was not slow to realize how small was the option left to her now. Moreover, it was the will of her mistress. And at that moment and in those circumstances, with her own sin of omission so heavy upon her, it would surely be wise to ensure it.
Nevertheless, the Werewolf eyed Miss No-Class with a ferocity that was positively frightening. “Sit down in that chair next the fire so that I can take off your shoes.” The tone went with the truculent eyes.
Quivering with a secret excitement that was more than half fear, the deputy daughter of the Marquis of Carabbas obeyed. Pikey knelt and came savagely to grips with a tarnished right foot. It seemed to minister to her inward rage that the shoes of the Deputy were obviously--too obviously!--cheap and that their heels were shod clumsily with rubber. And as if this were not enough for the aristocratic soul of Pikey, she discovered that certain concealed parts of the Deputy’s stockings had been freely darned. With a sniff of frank disgust she took up an elegant pair of bedroom slippers which had been set to warm in front of the fire and very reluctantly put them on the plebeian feet of Miss No-Class.
She did put them on, however. Then she rose like a sibyl, slowly and grimly from her knees, looked Miss No-Class straight in the eyes and said, “The first thing for you, my lady, is a bath.”
If a studied and ferocious irony had the power to slay, the Deputy-daughter of the Marquis of Carabbas could hardly have survived this first application of her title. The earnestly intelligent student of _The Patrician_ flushed to the roots of her hair. Did this Ogress of a creature mean it for an insult? Did the woman wish to suggest that one who had been educated at the Laxton High School for Young Ladies, who had passed the Oxford Preliminary, who was the daughter of a solicitor, whose insight into human nature had been commended by the _Saturday Sentinel_, had the woman the effrontery to mean as much as her disgusted tone implied!
Girlie Cass mustered all her reserves. “I don’t really think I need a bath.” It was a colorable imitation of the tone of Miss Pond, the admired head-mistress of the Laxton High School.
Part of the answer of the Ogress was a snort; the other part was, “You won’t wear that dress unless you do have one.”
Miss Cass wisely concluded that it would be unworthy of human dignity to sustain the argument. Besides, the Ogress had already produced an entrancing dressing gown of pink silk. “Put on this,” she said, ruthlessly, “while I go and get your bath ready.”
Pikey thereupon collected a prince among sponges, a superb loofah, a _recherché_ cake of scented soap, and grimly retired to the next apartment, leaving the Deputy, tingling with excitement yet raging with mortification, to shed her plebeian garments one by one.
IX
GLOWING from quite the most luxurious bath it had ever been the lot of Girlie Cass to enjoy, that little lady presently returned to submit her sensitiveness to hands of ruthless indelicacy. It had been Pikey’s pleasing task “to mother” the six small Catkin ladies. Perhaps the fact may have accounted for much in her present mode of handling the Deputy. Even after her charges had emerged from the nursery, within her own sphere, which was now that of lady’s maid, she had always been a tremendous autocrat. Her methods might lack subtlety, but of their effectiveness there could be no doubt. In the case of the Family, however, they were mitigated by the knowledge that they were but the outward expression of her inordinate pride in and absolute devotion to them all. No matter what the Catkin ladies suffered at her hands, they knew in their hearts that Pikey would yield her life cheerfully for any one of them at a moment’s notice. The luckless Girlie, however, had not this thought to sustain her. There was no sense of handmaidenly altruism to soften the present pain and ignominy of the lot of Miss No-Class.
One thing there was, however, in this hour of trial to nerve Lady Elfreda’s deputy; it was the exquisite garment of misty blue with a shimmer of silver and tulle. Would it fit? For a moment her feelings were harrowed by the fear that it might not. That would be tragedy, indeed. But the fear was groundless. Nature had molded her so daintily that even with the thick woolly combinations she had decided to retain there was room for her small person in that glorious gown.
She looked in the large glass to satisfy herself that such was the case, carefully tucked in the edges of the obtrusive undergarment which so tactlessly showed themselves above the proud corsage, and then turned to confront Pikey with a little air of triumph.
“It fits wonderfully, I think.”
Pikey looked Miss No-Class truculently up and down. Then with a scorn that in a moment less exalted would have been annihilating, she deliberately plucked out the concealed edges of the woolly combinations, sniffed loudly and palpably, plucked at the sleeves of the gown, pulled them and patted them, and finally lifted up the skirt. Disdaining comment in mere words, the maid at once produced a wonderful array of gossamer-like undergarments, stockings ravishing in blue silk, and slippers that were a glory of silver buckles and blue satin.
“Take off that dress.” The Werewolf look came upon Pikey. “Put on that dressing gown.” The fierce eyes seemed to threaten murder. “And then I’ll do your hair.”
Trembling in spirit, Miss Cass brought herself reluctantly to submit to this grim ordeal. The Ogress took an unholy joy in twisting and pulling and punching, with alternations of savage brushings and combings, yet through it all was poor Girlie upheld by the knowledge that not only was her hair abundant, of a fine color and texture, but it also had a trick of curling naturally. If it came to a “showdown” she was not afraid of anybody in the matter of hair. Without wishing to rate it too highly she had serious doubts whether the head of Lady Elfreda was so well equipped by nature, no matter what art may have done for it. And as a final satisfaction, which present circumstances seemed much to enhance, it was only the previous evening that she had shampooed it thoroughly.
Pikey was pitiless, yet she was no mean coiffeuse. The happy abundance and the charming natural waves of Miss Cass’s hair offered scope for her skill. And when she had worked her final will with cruel fingers and unsparing brush, and had gathered the silken mass and bound it artfully with a ribbon of blue and silver threads, the result was a triumph for her and also for her victim, who had been reduced to the verge of involuntary tears. As the maid ungraciously surveyed the fruits of her labors, she had secretly to admit that, owing to some odd freak on the part of nature, no head of her lawful charges had ever done her quite so much credit.
Girlie was then at liberty to devote herself to the rest of her toilet. But she was not permitted to don the gauze-like blue silk stockings until the Ogress had inspected her feet with ominous care.
“I’ll cut those,” was the curt announcement at the sight of the toenails of Miss Cass.
The proud spirit of a solicitor’s daughter was inclined to contest the point. She really did not think her toes were in need of such attention.
“Very well--you don’t put on _them_.” The Werewolf pointed to the blue silk stockings. “And you don’t put on those neither.” And she pointed to the enchanting slippers.
Poor Miss Cass had to suffer one more indignity. Pikey assumed a pair of spectacles, took a pair of scissors, made Girlie sit on a chair and dealt with her toes with scrupulous efficiency. The operation duly performed, Pikey turned her attention to the lovely gown. A cunning needle took in a bit here, let out a bit there, emphasized this, diminished that, until at last she reluctantly muttered, “You ought to do now.”
Girlie, ready to weep for relief, turned again to the glass. The picture she saw was beyond her most extravagant hopes. She was--yes--she was beautiful! At the sight of a ravishing self her courage rose. She had not known that mere clothes and that particular way of doing the hair and that particular ribbon in it could mean so much. Somehow the picture in the glass was going to help her enormously in the part she had to play.
Even Pikey, sunk in savage gloom at the prospect before her, could not stifle a feeling of half admiration, which to be sure she did not reveal. It was too much to hope that the preposterous trick would not be found out, but at least in the matter of looks, the Family might have been far less worthily represented. In fact so clear was Pikey on this point that she opened an ancient jewel case and took forth an article that lifted Girlie to the _n_th degree. It was a necklace of pearls. This lovely thing had only to clasp a white and slender throat, of which Girlie had always been secretly vain, for its owner to be made free of the seventh heaven of delight.
“That belongs to Lady Carabbas.” Such was Pikey’s proud concession to the light of rapture in the ignorant eyes of Miss No-Class. But she did not tell the Deputy, whose eyes were sparkling with enchantment, that the necklace was but a copy of a famous original that was strictly reserved for state occasions. Beauty, however, is in the eye of the beholder. Girlie was quite sure that these were the most authentic pearls of the Orient. When she looked again in the glass she literally felt their glamour.
Half an hour must pass before Girlie, now slightly delirious, would have to show herself in the drawing room. Blood was drumming in her temples already, an odd kind of singing was in her ears, yet in spite of the sure and clear knowledge that she was poised on the very edge of a measureless chasm, in that half hour the dominant emotion was not fear. Girlie’s line of commercial sires were standing by her now; a certain dour practicality rallied to their daughter’s call.