MILLION LEAVES HER PLACE
MILLION has gone!
She has left us, our little cheerful, and bonnie, and capable
maid-of-all-work who has become a millionaire pork-butcher's heiress!
Never again will her trim, aproned figure busy itself about our small
and shockingly inconvenient kitchen at No. 45. Never again will she have
to struggle with the vagaries of its range. Never again will she "do
out" our drawing-room with its disgraceful old carpet and its graceful
old cabinet. Never again will she quail under the withering rebuke with
which my Aunt Anastasia was wont to greet her if she returned half a
minute late from her evening out. Never again will she entertain me
with her stream of artless comments on life and love and her own
ambition--"Oh, Miss, dear, I should like to marry a gentleman!"
Well, I suppose there's every probability now that this ambition may be
gratified. Plenty of hard-up young men about, even of the Lovelace
class, "our" class, who would be only too pleased to provide for
themselves by marrying a Million, in both senses of the word.
Laburnum Grove, Putney, S.W., will know her no more. And I, Beatrice
Lovelace, who was born in the same month of the same year as this other
more-favoured girl--I feel as if I'd lost my only friend.
I also feel as if it were at least a couple of years since it all
happened. Yet it is only three days since Million and I went down to
Chancery Lane together to interview the old lawyer person on the subject
of her new riches. I shall never forget that interview. I shall never be
able to forget the radiant little face of Million at the end of it all,
when the kind old gentleman offered to advance her some of her own money
"down on the nail," and did advance her five pounds in cash--five
golden, gleaming, solid sovereigns!
"My godfathers!" breathed Million, as she tucked the coins into the palm
of her brown-thread glove.
She'd never had so much money at once before in the whole course of her
twenty-three years of life. (I've _never_ had it, of course!) And the
tangible presence of those heavy coins in her hand seemed to bring it
home to Million that she was rich, more than all the explanations of her
old lawyer about investments and capital.
I saw him look, half-amusedly, half-anxiously, at the little heiress's
flushed face and the gesture with which she clenched that fist full of
gold. And it was then that he began to urge upon us that "Miss Million"
must find some responsible older person or persons, some ladies with
whom she might live while she made her plans respecting the
rearrangement of her existence.
To cut a long story short, it was he, the old lawyer, who suggested and
arranged for "Miss Million's" next step. It appears that he has sisters
"of a reasonable age" (I suppose that means about a hundred and
thirty-eight) who are on the committee of a hostelry for gentlewomen of
independent means, somewhere in Kensington.
Sure to be a "pussery" of some sort! "Gentlewomen" living together
generally relapse into spitefulness and feuds, and "means" can often be
pronounced "mean"!
Still, as Million's old lawyer said, the place would provide a haven
_pro tem_.
Our millionairess went off there this morning. She wouldn't take a taxi.
"What's the use o' wasting all that fare from here to Kensington, good
gracious?" said Million. "There's no hurry about me getting there long
before lunch, after all, Miss Beatrice. And as for me things, they can
come by Carter Paterson a bit later. I'll put the card up now, if Miss
Lovelace don't mind. There's only that tin trunk that I've had ever
since the Orphanage, and me straw basket with the strap round----"
Such luggage for an heiress! I couldn't help smiling at it as it waited
in the kitchen entrance. And then the smile turned to a lump in my
throat as Million, in her hat and jacket, stumped down the wooden back
stairs to say good-bye to me.
"I said good-bye to your Aunt Nastur--to Miss Lovelace, before she went
out, Miss." (My aunt is lunching at the hotel of one of her few
remaining old friends who is passing through London.)
"Can't say I shall breck my heart missin' her, Miss Beatrice," announced
the candid Million. "Why, at the last she shook 'ands--hands as if I
was all over black-lead and she was afraid of it coming off on her! But
you--you've always been so different, as I say. You always seemed to go
on as if"--Million's funny little voice quivered--"as if Gord had made
us both----"
"Don't, Million," I said chokily. "I shall cry if you go on like this.
And tears are so unlucky to christen a new venture with."
"Is that what they say, Miss?" rejoined the superstitious Million,
winking back the fat, shiny drops that were gathering in her own grey
eyes. "Aw right, then, I won't. 'Keep smiling,' eh? Always merry and
bright, and cetrer. Good-bye, Miss. Oh, lor'! I wish you was coming
along with me to this place, instead of me going off alone to face all
these strange females----"
"I wish I were; only I shall have to stay and keep the house until my
aunt comes back----"
"Drat 'er! I mean----Excuse me, Miss Beatrice. I wish you hadn't a-got
to live with her. Thrown away on her, you are. It's you that ought to be
clearing out of this place, not just me. You ought to have some sort of
a big bust-up and then bunk!"
"Where to, Million?"
"Anywheres! Couldn't you come where I was? Anyways, Miss, will you drop
me a line sometimes to say how you're keeping? And, Miss, would you be
offended if I said good-bye sort of properly. I know it's like my sorce,
but----"
"Oh, Million, dear!" I cried.
I threw both my arms round her sturdy little jacketed figure. We kissed
as heartily as if we had been twin sisters instead of ex-mistress and
ex-maid.
Then Million--Miss Million, the heiress--trotted off down Laburnum Grove
towards the stopping-place of the electric trams. And I, Beatrice
Lovelace, the pauper, the come-down-in-the-world, turned back into No.
45, feeling as if what laughter there had been in my life had gone out
of it for ever!
I suppose I'd better have lunch--Million's laid it ready for me for the
last time!--then sit in the drawing-room, finishing my darning, and
waiting for my aunt's return. If Million had been here I could have
spent the afternoon with her in the kitchen. Million gone! I feel lost
without her.
Nothing else will happen to-day.
There's a ring at the bell. How unlike Aunt Anastasia to forget her key!
I must go....
(Later.)
I went. But it was not Aunt Anastatia's herring-slim figure that stood
on the doorstep which Million insisted on whitening for the last time
this morning. It was the tall, broad-shouldered, active and
manly-looking figure of the young man from next door.