A BOLT FROM THE BLUE
OH! to think that fortune should have given its knock at the door of No.
45 after all! To think that this is how it should have happened! Of all
the unexpected thunderbolts! And after that irresponsible talk about
money and legacies and wishes this evening in the kitchen, and to think
that Destiny had even then shuffled the cards that she has just dealt!
It was ten minutes after the postman had been that we heard a flurried
tap on the drawing-room door, and Million positively burst into the
room. She was wide-eyed, scarlet with excitement. She held a letter out
towards us with a gesture as if she were afraid it might explode in her
hand.
"What is this, Million?" demanded my aunt, severely, over the top of her
"Rambles."
"Oh, Miss Lovelace!" gasped our little maid. "Oh, Miss Beatrice! I don't
rightly know if I'm standing on my head or my heels. I don't know if
I've got the right hang of this at all. Will you--will you please read
it for me?"
I took the letter.
I read it through without taking any of it in, as so often happens when
something startling meets one's eyes.
Million's little fluttered voice queried, "What do you make of that,
Miss?"
"I don't know. Wait a minute. I must read it over again," I gasped in
turn. "May I read it aloud?"
Million, clutching her starched white apron, nodded.
I read it aloud, this letter of Destiny.
It bore the address of a lawyer's office in Chancery Lane, and it began:
"_To_ MISS NELLIE MILLION.
"Dear Madam:--I am instructed to inform you that under the will
of your late uncle, Mr. Samuel Million, of Chicago, U.S.A., you
have been appointed heiress to his fortune of one million
dollars.
"I shall be pleased to call upon you and to await your
instructions, if you will kindly acquaint me with your present
address----"
"That was sent to the Orphanage," whispered Million.
"or I should be very pleased to meet you if you would make it
convenient to come and call upon me here at my offices at any
time which may suit you. I am, Madam,
"Yours obediently,
"JOSIAH CHESTERTON."
There was silence in our drawing-room. Million's little face turned,
with a positively scared expression, from Aunt Anastasia to me.
"D'you think it's true, Miss?"
"Have you ever heard of this Mr. Samuel Million before?"
"Only that he was poor dad's brother that quarrelled with him for
enlisting. I heard he was in America, gettin' on well----"
"That class," murmured my Aunt Anastasia with concentrated resentment,
"always gets on!"
That was horrid of her!
I didn't know how to make it up to Million. I put out both hands and
took her little roughened hands.
"Million, I do congratulate you. I believe it's true," I said heartily,
finding my voice at last. "You'll have heaps of money now. Everything
you want. A millionaire's heiress, that's what you are!"
"Me, miss?" gasped the bewildered-looking Million. "Me, and not you,
that wanted money? Me an heiress? Oh, lor'! whatever next?"
The next morning--the morning after that startling avalanche of news had
been precipitated into the monotonous landscape of our daily lives--I
accompanied Million to the lawyer's office, where she was to hear
further particulars of her unexpected, her breath-taking, her epic
legacy.
A million dollars! Two hundred thousand pounds! And all for the little
grey-eyed, black-haired daughter of a sergeant in a line regiment,
brought up in a soldiers' orphanage to domestic service at £20 a year!
To think of it!
I could see my Aunt Anastasia thinking of it--with bitterness, with
envy.
It was she who ought to have taken Million to that office in Chancery
Lane.
But she--the mistress of the house--excused herself by saying it was her
morning for doing the silver.
We left her in the kitchen surrounded by what I am irreverent enough to
call the relics of our family's grandeur--the Queen Anne tea service,
the Early Georgian forks and spoons that have been worn and polished
fragile and thin. Indeed, one teaspoon is broken. Aunt Anastasia took to
her bed on the day of that accident. And the maid we had before Million
scoured my grandfather's Crimean medal so heartily that soon there would
have been nothing left to see on it. Since then my aunt has tended the
relics with her own hands.
We left her brooding darkly over the injustice that had brought fortune
to a wretched little maid-of-all-work and poverty to our family; we
hailed the big white motor-'bus at the top of the road by the
subscription library, and dashed up the steps to the front seat.
"There! Bit of all right, this, ain't it, Miss Beatrice!" gasped Million
ecstatically.
Stars of delight shone in each grey eye as she settled herself down on
the tilted seat. I thought that this change of expression was because
she had thought over her marvellous good fortune during the night, and
because she had begun to realise a little what it would all mean to her.
But I was quite wrong. Million, peering down over the side of the 'bus,
exclaimed gleefully, "Look at 'em! Look at 'em!"
"Look at what?"
"At all the girls down our road, there," explained Million, with a wave
of her tightly gloved hand.
At almost every house in Laburnum Grove a maid, in pink or lilac print,
with pail and floor-cloth, was giving the steps their matutinal wash.
One was polishing the knocker, the bell-handles, and the brass plate of
the doctor's abode.
"And here am I, as large as life, a-ridin' on a 'bus the first thing in
the morning!" enlarged Million, clenching her fists and sitting bolt
upright. "At half-past nine o'clock, if you please--first time I've ever
done such a thing! I've often wondered what it was like, top of a 'bus
on a fine summer's morning! I'll know now!"
"You won't ever have to know again," I laughed as I sat there beside
her. "You won't be going in any more 'buses or trams or tubes."
"Why ever not, miss?" asked Million, startled.
"Why! Because you'll have your own car to go about in directly, of
course," I explained. "Probably two or three cars----"
"Cars?" echoed Million, staring at me.
"Why, of course. Don't you see there's a new life beginning for you now?
A Rolls-Royce instead of a motor-'bus, and everything on the same scale.
You'll have to think in sovereigns now, Million, where you've always
thought in pennies----"
"What? Three pounds for a thrupenny ride to the Bank, d'you mean, miss?"
cried Million, with a little shriek. "Oh, my godfathers!"
At that excited little squeal of hers another passenger on the 'bus had
turned to glance at her across the gangway.
I met his eyes; the clear, blue, boyish eyes of the young man from next
door.
He looked away again immediately. There was an expression on his face
that seemed meant to emphasise, to underline, the announcement that he
had never seen me before. No. Apparently he had never set eyes on the
small, chestnut-haired girl (myself) in the shabby blue serge coat and
skirt and the straw hat that had been white last summer, and that was
now home-dyed--rather unsuccessfully--to something that called itself
black. So evidently Aunt Anastasia had been rude to him about yesterday
evening. Possibly she had forbidden him to speak to her niece and her
dear brother's child, and Lady Anastasia's great-granddaughter ever
again. This made my blood boil. Why must she make us look so ridiculous?
Such--such futile snobs? Without any apparent excuse for keeping
ourselves so aloof, either! To put on "select" airs without any
circumstances to carry them off with is like walking about in a
motor-coat and goggles when you haven't got any motor, when you never
will have any motor! It's Million who will have those.
Anyhow, I felt I didn't want him to think I was as absurd as my aunt. I
cleared my throat. I turned towards him. In quite a determined sort of
voice I said "Good morning!"
Hereupon the young man from next door raised his straw hat, and said
"Good morning" in a polite but distant tone.
He glanced at Million, then away again. In the blue eye nearest to me I
think I surprised a far-away twinkle. How awful! Possibly he was
thinking, "H'm! So the dragon of an aunt doesn't let the girl out now
without a maid as a chaperon to protect her! Is she afraid that somebody
may elope with her at half-past nine in the morning?"
I was sorry I'd spoken.
I looked hard away from the young man all the rest of the ride to
Chancery Lane.
Here we got off.
We walked half-way up the little busy, narrow thoroughfare, and in at a
big, cool, cave-like entrance to some offices.
"Chesterton, Brown, Jones, and Robinson. Third Floor," I read from the
notice-board. "No lift. Come along, Million."
The stars had faded out of Million's eyes again. She looked scared. She
clutched me by the arm.
"Oh, Miss Beatrice! I do hate goin' up!"
"Why, you little silly! This isn't the dentist's."
"I know. But, oh, miss! If there is one thing I can't bear it's being
made game of," said Million, pitifully, half-way up the stairs. "This
Mr. Chesterton--he won't half laugh!"
"Why should he laugh?"
"At me, bein' supposed to have come in for all those dollars of me
uncle's. Do I look like an heiress?"
She didn't, bless her honest, self-conscious little heart. From her
brown hat, wreathed with forget-me-nots, past the pin-on blue velvet
tie, past the brown cloth costume, down to the quite new shoes that
creaked a little, our Million looked the very type of what she was--a
nice little servant-girl taking a day off.
But I laughed at her, encouraging her for all I was worth, until we
reached the third floor and the clerk's outer office of Messrs.
Chesterton, Brown, Jones, and Robinson.
I knocked. Million drew a breath that made the pin-on tie surge up and
down upon the breast of her Jap silk blouse. She was pulling herself
together, I knew, taking her courage in both hands.
The door was opened by a weedy-looking youth of about eighteen.
"Good morning, Mr. Chesterton. Hope I'm not late," Million greeted him
in a sudden, loud, aggressive voice that I had never heard from her
before; the voice of nervousness risen to panic. "I've come about that
money of mine from my uncle in----"
"Name, Miss, please?" said the weedy youth.
"Nellie Mary Million----"
"Miss Million," I amended. "We have an appointment with Mr. Chesterton."
"Mr. Chesterton hasn't come yet," said the weedy youth. "Kindly take a
seat in here."
He went into the inner office. I sat down. Million, far too nervous to
sit down, wandered about the waiting-room.
"My, it doesn't half want cleaning in here," she remarked in a flurried
whisper, looking about her. "Why, the boy hasn't even taken down
yesterday's teacups. I wonder how often they get a woman in. Look at
those cobwebs! A shaving-mirror--well, I never!" She breathed on it,
polishing it with her black moirette reticule. "Some notice here about
'Courts,' Miss Beatrice. Don't it make you feel as if you was in the
dock? I wonder what they keep in this little corner-cupboard."
"The handcuffs, I expect. No, no, Million, you mustn't look at them."
Here the weedy youth put in his head again.