A DIFFERENT KIND OF PARTY
MISS MILLION and her callers were having tea in the bigger "lounge," or
whatever they call the gilded hall behind the great glass doors which
shut it off from the main entrance.
Now, this was the first time that my mistress had plucked up courage to
take a meal downstairs since we had come to the Cecil.
I wondered how she'd been getting on. I must see!
So, still in my outdoor things, I passed the glass doors. I walked into
the big tea-room. There were palms, and much gilding, and sofas, and
dark-eyed, weary-looking waiters wheeling round little carts spread with
dainties, and offering the array of éclairs and flat apple-cakes to the
different groups--largely made up of American visitors--who were sitting
at the plate-glass-topped tables.
I couldn't see Million--Miss Million's party--anywhere at first!
I looked about....
At the further end of the place a string band, half-hidden behind
greenery, was playing "I Shall Dream of You the Whole Night." Peals of
light laughter and ripples of talk came from a gay-looking group of
frocks--with just one man's coat amongst them--gathered around a table
near the band.
I noticed that the eyes of everybody within earshot were turning
constantly towards this table. So I looked, too.
At whom were they all staring? At a plump, bright-haired woman in
all-white, who was obviously entertaining the party--to say nothing of
the rest of the room.
She had a figure that demanded a good deal of French lingerie blouse,
but not much skirt. The upright feather in her hat was yellow; jewelled
slides glittered in her brass-bright hair; her eyes were round and very
black.
She reminded me of a sulphur-crested, white cockatoo I had seen at the
Zoo.
But where had I seen her before? She puzzled and fascinated me. I stood
a little way off, forgetting my errand, watching this vivacious lady,
the centre of the group. She was waving her cigarette to punctuate her
remarks----
"Oh, young Jim's one of the best--the very best, my dears. Tiptop family
and all. Who says blood doesn't tell, Leo? Ah! he's a good old pal o'
mine, is the Hon. Jim Burke, specially on Fridays (treasury day, my
dear); but it's the Army I'm potty about myself. The Captain (and dash
the whiskers), that's the tiger that puts Leo and his lot in the
shade----"
Here followed a wave of the cigarette towards the only man of the party.
He was stout and astrachan-haired; a Jew even from the back view.
"Give me the military man, what, what," prattled on the cockatoo lady,
whose cigarette seemed to spin a web about her of blue floating smoke
wisps. "That's the boy that makes a hole in Vi's virgin heart!"
A fan-like gesture of her left hand, jewelled to the knuckles, upon the
spread of the lady's embroidered blouse emphasised this declaration.
"Them's the fellers! Sons of the Empire--or of the Alhambra!" wound up
the cockatoo lady with a rollicking laugh.
And as she laughed I caught her full face and the flash of a line of
prominent, fascinatingly white teeth that lighted up her whole
expression as a white wave lights up the whole shore.
Then I knew where I'd seen her before--in a hundred theatrical posters
between the Hotel Cecil and the Bond Street tea-shop that I had just
left. Yes, I'd seen this lady's highly coloured portrait above the
announcement:
MISS VI VASSITY,
LONDON'S LOVE.
ENGLAND'S PREMIER COMEDIENNE!
So that was who she was!
Beside her on the couch a couple of younger girls, also rather "stagily"
dressed, were hanging on every word that fell from the music-hall
favourite's vermilioned lips.
With her back to me, and with her chair drawn a little aside from the
others, there sat yet another woman. She was enormously tall and slim,
and eccentrically clad in Oriental draperies of some sombre, richly
patterned stuff. This gave her the air of some graceful snake.
She turned and twisted the whole of her long, lissom person, now putting
up a hand to smooth her slim throat, now stretching out a slender ankle;
but all the time posing, and admiring the poses in the nearest mirror.
She was scarcely listening to Miss Vi Vassity's chatter.
"Tea? Any more, anybody?" Miss Vassity's black eyes glanced about her.
"Baby? Sybil? Lady G.?" (the latter to the cobra-woman).
"You, my dear?" turning to some one who was hidden behind her. "Half a
cup--oh, come on now. It'll have to be a whole cup; we don't break our
china here, as my dear old mother used to say at Baa-lamb.
"You know I sprang from the suburbs, girls, don't you? Better to spring
than to sink, eh, Miss Millions--and trillions? Here you are; I'll pour
it out."
The music-hall idol leant forward to the tea-tray. Beyond her sumptuous
shoulder I caught a glimpse at last of the woman who'd been hidden.
I gasped with surprise. She was my Miss Million!
Yes! So these were the friends whom Mr. Burke had sent to call on her!
And there she sat--or shrank--she who was supposed to be the hostess of
the party!
Beneath her expensive new hat--quite the wrong one to wear with that
particular frock, which she changed when I went out--her face was
wide-eyed and dazed. She who had shown so much self-confidence at her
last tea-party with just those two young men had lost it all in the
midst of these other people.
There she sat, silent, lips apart, bewildered eyes moving from one to
the other. Between the languid, posing cobra-woman and the gay,
chattering, sulphur-crested cockatoo, she looked like a small hypnotised
rabbit.
I slipped up to her with my best professional manner on.
"Did you want me for anything, Miss?" I asked in my lowest and most
respectful tone.
Poor little Million's face lighted up into a look of the most pathetic
relief as she turned and beheld her one friend in that tea-room.
"Ow! S-Smith! Come in, have you?" she exclaimed, giggling nervously.
Then, turning to the music-hall artiste, she explained: "This is my
lady's-maid!"
"And very nice, too!" said Miss Vi Vassity promptly, with one of those
black-eyed glances that seemed to swing round from me to Million, thence
to the cobra-woman, the other girls, the stout young Jew, all of whom
were staring hard at me.
She ended up in a lightning-quick wink and a quick turn to the long
glass that stood beside her teacup which, I suppose, had contained what
those people the other day called a rattlesnake cocktail.
"I didn't send for you, Smith, but never mind since you're here," my
young mistress said, almost clinging to me in her nervousness. "You can
pop upstairs and begin to put out my evening things, as usual----"
"Extra smart to-night, Smith, extra smart; she's comin' on to a box at
the Palace to see little Me in my great Dazzling act," put in the
actress. "Got to be very dressy for that, old dear. Gala night at the
Opera isn't in it.
"The black pearl rope you'll wear, of course. And your diamond fender to
wave your hand to me in, please!"
"Ow!" breathed the dismayed heiress. "Well, I--I don't know as how I'd
expected----"
She hasn't acquired any ornaments at all as yet. And, somehow, I knew
that this black-eyed, bright-haired actress knew that perfectly well.
For some reason she was pulling poor Million's leg just as mercilessly
as her precious friend the Honourable Jim----
Even as I was thinking this there strolled up the room to our group the
cool, detached, and prosperous-looking figure of the Honourable Jim
himself--the man who had just got out of my taxi at Charing Cross.
Miss Vi jingled her gold mesh vanity-bag at him with its hanging cluster
of gold charms, gold pencil, gold cigarette-case.
"Hi, Sunny Jim! You that know everything about 'what's worn, and
where,'" she cried. "I'm just telling your friend Miss Million that
nobody'd call on her again unless she puts on all the family diamonds
for our little supper after the show to-night!"
Miss Million looked anguished. She really believed that she was going to
be "let down" before her much-admired Mr. Burke (scamp!) before the
cobra-lady and the other theatrical lights.
I knew how she felt!
She would be covered with disgrace, she would be "laughed at behind her
back" because she was a millionairess--without any diamonds.... They'd
think she wasn't a real millionairess....
I had to come to the rescue.
So I looked Million steadily and reassuringly in the eye as I announced
quite distinctly, but in my "quiet, respectful" voice: "I am afraid,
Miss, that there is scarcely time to get the diamonds for to-night. You
remember that all the jewellery is at the bank."
Indescribable relief spread itself over Million's small face. She felt
saved. She didn't mind anything now, not even the loudness with which
the bright-haired comedienne burst out laughing again.
I wonder why that shrewd, vivacious woman comes to call on Million? It's
not the money this time, surely?
Miss Vi Vassity must draw the largest salary of any one on the halls?
Why does she sit beaming at my young mistress, drawing her out, watching
her? And the other, the cobra-woman; what's she doing there in a world
to which she doesn't seem to belong at all?
And the Jew they call Leo? Will they all be at the party they're taking
Miss Million to to-night?
They all burst into fresh chatter about it. Under cover of the noise the
Honourable Jim edged closer to me and murmured, without looking at me:
"All her jewels at the bank, is it? That's not true, child, while she
has a Kohinoor--for a maid!"
Fearful impertinence again. But, thank goodness, none of the others
heard it.
And he, who's been drinking tea and chattering with me the whole
afternoon, had the grace not to glance at me as I slipped away out of
the tea-room and to the hall.
Here another surprise awaited me.
Miss Million began to enjoy her tea-party tremendously--as soon as it
was all over and she herself was safely back in her own bedroom with her
maid.
She didn't seem to realise that she had only then emerged from a state
of shrinking and speechless panic!
"Jer see all those people, Smith, that I was having such a fine old time
with?" she exulted, as I began to unfasten her afternoon frock.
"Miss Vi Vassity, if you please! Jer recanise her from the pictures?
Lor'! When I did use to get to a music-hall to hear her, once in a blue
moon, little did I ever think I'd one day be sitting there as close to
her as I am to you, talkin' away nineteen to the dozen to her, as if she
was nobody!
"Wasn't that a sweet blouse she'd got on? I wonder what she's goin' to
put on to-night after the theatre; you know we're having supper all
together, her and me and the Honourable Mr. Burke and Lady
Golightly-Long, that tall lady, and some other gentlemen and ladies
that's coming on from somewhere.
"And, Smith! I don't think I'm going to wear that white frock you're
putting out there," concluded my young mistress, rather breathlessly;
"there don't seem to me to be enough style about it for the occasion;
I'll wear me cerise evening one with the spangles."
"Cerise? But you haven't got a cerise evening frock," I began. "I didn't
let you order that----"
Then I caught Million's half-rueful, half-triumphant glance at a new
white carton box on the wicker chair beside her bed. And I saw what had
happened.
No sooner was her maid's back turned than Miss Million had wired, or
telephoned, or perhaps called at that shop, and secured that
cherry-coloured creation. It would have looked daringly effective
on--say, Miss Lee White in an Alhambra burlesque. On little Million it
would have a vulgarity not to be described in words. I'd thought I'd
guided her safely away from it! And now this!
"Yes, you see I thought better of buying that gown," said the heiress,
flushed but defiant. "You see, you were wrong about those very bright
shades not being the c'rect thing; why, look at what that Lady
Golightly-Long had got on her back! Red and green and blue trimmings,
and I don't know what all, all stuck on at once. And she ought to know
what's what, if anybody did," Million persisted, "c'nsidering she's a
Earl's cousin and one of the Highest in the Land!"
"Certainly one of the longest," I said, thinking of those unending
lissom limbs swathed in the Futurist draperies of that cobra-woman.
Million went on to inform me, impressively, that this lady, too, was "a
Perfeshional." Does classic dancing, they call it. Needn't do it for her
living, of course. But she says she's 'wrapped up in the Art of it.'
Likes to do what she likes, I s'pose she means.
"She's got a lovely home of her own, Miss Vi Vassity told me, in
Aberdeenshire.
"Not only that, but a big bungalow she has near the river. Sometimes she
has down parties of her own particular friends to watch her dancing on
the lawn there, in the moonlight. And, Smith!" Here Million gave a
little skip out of her skirt, "What jer think?"
"What?" I asked, as I drew the cerise frock from its wrappings. (Worse,
far worse than in the shop. Still, I'd got to let her wear it, I
suppose. And it may be drowned by Miss Vi Vassity's voice at the
supper-table.)
"Why, she's going to ask me down there, too, to one of her week-end
parties! Think o' that! An invitation to visit! Some time when Mr.
Burke's going. He often goes to the house. All most artistic, he told
me; and a man-cook from Vienna. Fancy!" breathed Miss Million. "Fancy me
stayin' in a house like that!"
I took up her ivory brushes and began to do her hair.
"You're very quiet to-night," said Million. "Didn't you enjoy your
afternoon out?"
"Oh, yes. Quite, thank you," I said rather absently.
I was longing to have the room to myself, with peace and quiet to put
away Miss Million's things--and to think in. To think over "my afternoon
out," with its unexpected encounter, its unexpected conversation! And to
meditate over that other surprise that I'd found waiting for me at the
end of it.
At last Miss Million was dressed. I put the beautiful mother-o'-pearl,
satin-lined wrap upon her shoulders, sturdily made against the flaring,
flimsy, cerise-coloured ninon.
"Needn't wait up for me," said my mistress, bright-eyed as a child with
tremulous excitement over this new expedition. "I'll wake you if I can't
manage to undo myself. Don't suppose I shall get back until 'the divil's
dancin' hour,' as that Mr. Burke calls it. He'll be waitin' for me now,
downstairs."
Really that young man lives a life of contrasts!
Tea with Miss Million's maid! Dinner and supper with Miss Million
herself!
I wonder which he considers the more amusing bit of light opera?
"Pity I can't take you with me to-night, really ... seems so lonely-like
for you, left in this great place and all," said the kind-hearted little
Million at the door. "Got something to read, have you?"
"Oh, yes, thanks!" I laughed and nodded. "I have got something to
read."