MY FIRST "AFTERNOON OUT"
"DON'T you think it's about time you went and had an afternoon out,
Smith?"
This was the remark addressed to me by my employer the morning after the
afternoon of her first tea-party.
For a moment I didn't answer. The fact is I was too angry! This is
absurd, of course. For days I've scolded Million for forgetting our
quick change of positions, and for calling me "Miss" or "Miss Beatrice."
And yet, now that the new heiress is beginning to realise our respective
rôles and to call me, quite naturally, by the name which I chose for
myself, I'm foolishly annoyed. I feel the stirring of a rebellious
little thought. "What cheek!"
This must be suppressed.
"You know you did ought to have one afternoon a week," our once
maid-of-all-work reminded me as she sat in a pale-blue glorified
dressing-gown in front of the dressing-table mirror. I had drawn up a
lower chair beside her, and was doing my best with the nails of one of
her still coarse and roughened little hands, gently pushing the
ill-treated skin away from the "half-moons." Million's other hand was
dipped into a clouded marble bowl full of warm, lemon-scented emollient
stuff.
"Here you've been doin' for me for well over the week now, and haven't
taken a minute off for yourself."
"Oh, I haven't wanted one, thanks," I replied rather absently.
I wasn't thinking of what Million was saying. I was pondering rather
helplessly over the whole situation; thinking of Million, of her
childish ignorance and her money, of myself, of that flattering-tongued,
fortune-hunting Irishman who had asked me in the corridor what "our
game" was, of that coach-drive that he intended to take Million
to-morrow, of what all this was going to lead to.
"Friday, this afternoon. I always had Fridays off. You'd better take
it," the new heiress said, with quite a new note of authority. "You can
pop out dreckly after lunch, and I shan't want you back again until it's
time for you to come and do me up for late dinner."
Miss Million dines in her room; but she is, as she puts it, "breakin' in
all her low-cut gowns while she's alone, so as to get accustomed to the
feel of it."
I looked at her.
I thought, "Why does she want me out of the way?"
For I couldn't help guessing that this was at the bottom of Miss
Million's offering her maid that afternoon out!
I said: "Oh, I don't think there's anywhere I want to go to, just yet."
"Better go, and have it settled, like. Makes it more convenient to you,
and more convenient to me, later on, if we know exactly how we stand
about your times off," said Million quite obstinately. "I shan't want
you after two this afternoon."
This she evidently meant quite literally.
I shall have to go, and to leave her to her own devices. I wonder what
they will be? Perhaps an orgy of more shopping, without me, buying all
the cerise atrocities that I wouldn't allow her to look at. Garments and
trimmings of cerise would be a pitfall to Miss Million but for her maid.
So would what she calls "a very sweet shade of healiotrope." Perhaps
it's worse than that, though. Perhaps she's having Mr. Burke to tea
again, and wishes to keep it from the maid who said such disapproving
things about him. I shall have to leave that, for the present.... I
shall just have to take this afternoon out.
I went out, wondering where I should go. My feet seemed of their own
accord to take me westwards, through Trafalgar Square and Pall Mall. I
walked along, seeing little of the sauntering summer crowds. My mind was
full of my own thoughts, my own frettings. I'd cut myself off from my
own people, and what was going to come of it? Not the glorious
independence I'd hoped for. No; a whole heap of new difficulties, and
anything but a free hand wherewith to cope with them!
I came out of this rather gloomy reflection to find myself in Bond
Street. That narrow, Aristocrat-of-all-the-Thoroughfares has seen a good
deal of Miss Million and her maid during the last couple of days. Not
much of a change for my afternoon off! I didn't want to do any more
shopping; in fact, I shan't be able to do any more shopping for myself
for the next six months, seeing that of the two quarters' salary that I
asked Miss Million to advance me there remains about five shillings and
sixpence.
But I might give myself a little treat; say, tea in a nice place with a
good band and a picture-gallery first. That might help me to forget, for
an hour or so, the troubles and trials of being the lady's-maid to a
millionairess.
This was why I paid away one of my few remaining shillings at the
turnstile of the Fine Art Society, and sauntered into the small, cool
gallery.
There was rather an amusing picture-show on. Drawings of things that I
myself had been up to my eyes in for the last day or so; the latest
fashions for nineteen-fourteen! Drawings by French artists that made
clothes, fashion-plates, look as fascinating and as bizarre as the most
wonderful orchids. Such curious titles, too, were given to these clever
little pictures of feminine attire: "It is dark in the park"; "A rose
amid the roses."
There was one picture of a simple frock made not unlike Miss Million's
white muslin with the blue sash, but how different frocks painted are
from frocks worn! Or was it that the French manikin in the design knew
how to wear the----
My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a voice speaking above my
shoulder, speaking to me:
"Ah! And is this where Miss Million's maid gathers her inspirations for
dressing Miss Million?"
I knew who this was, even before I turned from the pictures to face
what looked like another very modern fashion-plate. A fashion-design for
the attire of a young man about town, the Honourable Jim Burke! So he
wasn't calling on Miss Million again this afternoon, after all! That
ought to be one weight off my mind; and yet it wasn't. I felt curiously
nervous of this man. I don't know why. He raised his glossy hat and
smiled down at me. He spoke in the courteous tone of one enchanted to
meet some old acquaintance. "Good afternoon, Miss Lovelace!"
A maid may not cut her mistress's chosen friends, even on her afternoon
out. I was obliged to say "Good afternoon," which I did in a small and
icy voice. Then, in spite of myself, I heard myself saying: "My name is
Smith."
The Honourable Jim said coolly: "Oh, I think not?"
I said, standing there, all in black, against the gay background of
coloured French drawings: "Smith is the name that I am known by as Miss
Million's maid."
"Exactly," said the big young Irishman gently, looking down at me and
leaning on his ebony, gold-headed stick.
He added, almost in a friendly manner: "You know, that's just what I've
been wanting to have a little talk to you about."
"A talk to me?" I said.
"Yes, to you, Miss Smith-Lovelace," he nodded. "You do belong to the old
Lovelace Court Lovelaces, I suppose. The Lady Anastasia lot, that had to
let the place. Great pity! Yes! I know all about you," said this
alarming young man with those blue eyes that seemed to look through my
face into the wall and out again into Bond Street. "Let's see, in your
branch there'll be only you and the one brother left, I believe?
Lovelace, Reginald M., Lieutenant Alexandra's Own, I.A. What does he
think of this?"
"Of which?" I fenced, not knowing what else to say to this surprising
and disconcerting person. "You seem to know a good deal about people's
families, Mr. Burke." This I thought was a good way of carrying the war
into the enemy's own country, "or to say you do."
I added this with great emphasis. I meant him to realise that I saw
through him. That I'd guessed it was all pure romancing what he had been
murmuring yesterday to my unsuspecting little mistress about his
friendship with her uncle.
That would astonish this young fortune-hunter, thought I. That would
leave him without a word to say for himself. And then he'd leave me.
He'd turn and go, foiled. And even if he persisted in his attentions to
the dazzled Miss Million, he would remain in a very wholesome state of
terror of Miss Million's maid. This was what I foresaw happening in a
flash. Picture my astonishment, therefore, at what did happen.
The young man took me up without a quiver.
"Ah, you mean that affecting little yarn about old man Million, in
Chicago, don't you?" he said pleasantly. "Very touching, you'll agree,
the way I'd cling to his bedside and put up with his flares of temper,
the dear old (Nature's) gentleman----"
I would have given yet another quarter's salary not to have done what I
did at this moment. I laughed.
That laugh escaped me--I don't know how. How awful! There I stood in the
gallery, with only a sort of custodian and a couple of art-students
about, laughing up at this well-dressed, showy, unprincipled Irishman as
if we were quite friends! I who disapproved of him so utterly! I who
mean to do all in my power to keep him and Million's money apart!
He said: "Didn't I know you had a sense of humour? Let us continue this
very interesting conversation among the Polar landscapes downstairs.
That's what I came in here to see. We'll sit and admire the groups of
penguins among the icebergs while we talk."
"No; I don't think we will," said I. I didn't mean to do anything this
young man meant me to. I wasn't Million, to be hypnotised by his looks
and his clothes and his honeyed Irish voice, forsooth. "I don't care to
see those photographs. Not a bit like the Pole, probably. I am not
coming down, Mr. Burke."
"Ah, come along," he persisted, smiling at me as he stood at the top of
the stairs that led to the other exhibition. "Be a good little girl and
come, now!"
"Certainly not," I said, with considerable emphasis on the "not."
I repeated steadily: "I am not coming. I have nothing to talk to you
about. And, really, I think I have seen quite enough----"
"Of you!" was my unspoken ending to this sentence. These "asides" seem
to sprinkle one's conversations with words written, as it were, in
invisible ink. How seldom can one publish them abroad, these mental
conclusions of one's remarks! No, no; life is quite complicated enough
without that.... So I concluded, rather lamely, looking round the
gallery with the drawings of Orientalised Europeans: "I have seen quite
enough of this exhibition. So I am going----"
"To have tea, of course. That is a very sound scheme of yours, Miss
Lovelace," said Mr. Burke briskly but courteously. "You'll let me have
the pleasure of taking you somewhere, won't you?"
"Certainly not," I said again. This time the emphasis was on the
"certainly." Then, as I was turning to leave the gallery, I looked again
at this Mr. Burke. He may be what my far-away brother Reggie would call
"a wrong 'un." And I believe that he is. But he is certainly a very
presentable-looking wrong 'un--far more presentable than I, Beatrice
Lovelace, am--was, I mean. Thank goodness, and my mistress's salary,
there is absolutely no fault to be found with my entirely plain black
outdoor things. And, proportionately, I have spent more of the money on
my boots, gloves, and neckwear than on the other part of my turn-out.
There's some tradition in our family of Lady Anastasia's having laid
down this law. It is quite "sound," as Mr. Burke called it.
Now this presentable-looking but otherwise very discreditable Mr. Burke
was quite capable of following me wherever I went. And if there is one
thing I should loathe it is any kind of "fuss" in a public place. So, I
thought swiftly, perhaps the best way of avoiding this fuss is to go
quietly--but forbiddingly--to have tea. I needn't let him pay for it.
So I said coldly to the big young man at my heels in the entrance: "I am
going to Blank's."
"Oh, no," said Mr. Burke pleasantly, "we are going to White's. Don't you
like White's?"
I had never been there in my life, of course, but I did not tell him
so.