WHERE IS SHE?
AT mid-day! Where is she? What have they done with her? And who are
"they"?
Is it an idiotic joke on the part of that noisy, irrepressible Lord
Fourcastles? Is it for some bet that he has spirited the little heiress
away? Is it perhaps some bit of absurd skylarking got up between himself
and the Honourable Jim?
If there's a chance of this it mustn't go further. I shall have to keep
my mouth shut.
I can't go applying to the police--and then having Miss Million turning
up and looking more than foolish! Then scolding her maid for being such
a fool!
That stops my telling anybody else about my fearful anxiety--the mess
I'm in!
Oh! Won't I tell Million what I think of her and her friends--all of
them, Fourcastles, the cobra-woman, "London's Love," the giggling
theatrical girls, and that unscrupulous nouveau-pauvre pirate, the
Honourable Jim--as soon as she does condescend to reappear!...
A tap at the door. I fly to open it....
Only one of those little chocolate-liveried London sparrows, the Cecil
page-boys.
He has a large parcel for Miss Million. From Madame Ellen's. (Oh, yes,
of course. The blush-rose pink that had to be let out.) Carriage
forward.
"Please have it paid and charge it to Miss Million's account," says Miss
Million's maid, with great outward composure and an inward tremor.
I've no money. Three-and-six, to be exact. Everything she has is locked
up. What--what am I to do about the bills if she stays away like this?
She seems to have been away a century. Yet it's only half-past twelve
now. In half an hour Mr. Brace will be calling on me for an answer to
his proposal of marriage....
There's another complication!
Oh! Why is life like this? Long dull stretches of nothing at all
happening for years and years. Then, quite suddenly, "a crowded hour"
of--No! Not "glorious life" exactly. But one disturbing thing happening
on the top of another, until----
"Ppppring!"
Ah, the telephone again. Perhaps this is some news. The cobra-lady may
have heard where Miss Million went.... "Yes?"
It wasn't the cobra-lady.
It was the rich, untrustworthy accent of the Honourable James Burke.
Ah! At last! At last! Now, I thought, I should hear something; some hint
of Miss Million's whereabouts.
"Yes?" I called eagerly.
"Yes! I know who that is," called the voice--how different, now that I
heard it again, from that of the Mr. J. Burke I rang up earlier, by
mistake. "That's the pearl of all ladies'-maids, isn't it? Good
morning, Miss Lovelace-Smith!"
"Good morning, Mr. Burke," I called back grudgingly. Aggravating young
man! How was I to find out what I wanted to know without possibly giving
my mistress away?
Perhaps he had been sent to ring me up to bring Miss Million's things
to--wherever the party of them were. I began: "Can I do anything for
you--sir?"
"Certainly. Call me that again!"
"What?" snappishly.
"Call me 'sir' again, just like that," pleaded the Honourable and
Exasperating Jim. "I never heard any pet name sound so pretty!"
I shook my head furiously at the receiver.
Teasing me like this, when I was deadly serious, and so anxious to get
sense out of him for once! Tormenting me from "under cover" of a
telephone that didn't allow me to see his face or to know where he was.
I said angrily: "Where are you speaking from?"
"I've paid--I mean I've had to get a trunk-call for these few minutes,
so don't let them be spent in squabbling, child," said Mr. Burke
sweetly. "I'm in Brighton."
"Brighton----"
Ah! They were all down there probably. That was it! He'd whisked them
away on his coach--on Leo Rosencranz's coach--just as he'd said he
would! At last I'd know----
"Brighton's looking fine this morning," took up the easy, teasing voice.
"Let me take you down here for a glimpse of the waves and the downs on
your next afternoon out, Miss Maid. Say you will? You've no engagement?"
I began, quite savagely: "Yes, I've----"
"Mr. Brace!" announced one of the chocolate-liveried page-boys at the
door.
Quickly I turned. And in my silly flurry I was idiotic enough to hang up
the receiver again!
Horrors!
That's done it! I've rung off before I've been able to ask that villain,
the Honourable Jim, where I am to ring him up, or ring any of them up,
in Brighton!
They may be anywhere there! I've missed my chance of getting them!
Yes; that's done it....
Meanwhile here's this young man who proposed to me on the top of the
'bus last night coming in for his answer!
In he came, looking rather tense and nervous.
But after all my adventures of this morning what a relief it was to me
to see a friend; a man who wasn't a suspicious waiter or an attendant
who stared, or a teasing incorrigible who exasperated me from the other
side of a telephone!
I don't think I've ever been so glad to see anybody as I was to see Mr.
Brace again!
I said "Good morning" most welcomingly. And then I was sorry.
For he caught me by both hands and looked down into my face, while his
own lighted up into the most indescribable joy.
"Beatrice!" he exclaimed. "It's 'Yes,' then? Oh, my dar----"
"Oh, please don't, please don't!" I besought him, snatching my hands
away in sudden horror. "I didn't mean that. It isn't 'Yes'----" He took
a step back, and all the light went out of his face.
Very quietly he said: "It's 'No'?"
I hate being "rushed." It seems to me everybody tries to rush me. I hate
having to give answers on the spur of the moment!
I said: "I don't know what it is! I haven't been thinking about what you
said!"
That seemed rather an ungracious thing to say to a man who had just
offered one the devotion of his whole life. So I added what was the
honest truth: "I haven't had time to think about it!"
A scowl came over Mr. Brace's fair face. He said in tones of real
indignation: "You're as pale as a little ghost this morning. You've been
working too hard. You've been running yourself off your feet for that
wretched little--for that mistress of yours!"
So true, in one way!
"It's got to stop," said Mr. Reginald Brace firmly. "I won't have you
slaving like this. I'm going to take you away out of it all. I'm going
to tell Miss Million so now."
"You can't," I said hastily.
"Why? Isn't she up?" (disgustedly).
"Y--yes, I think so. I mean yes, of course. Only just now she's out."
"When will she be in, Miss Lovelace?"
"I don't know in the very least," I said with perfect truth. "I haven't
the slightest idea." But I realised that I had better keep any further
details of my mistress's absence to myself.
"There you are, you see. She treats you abominably. A girl like you!"
declared the young bank manager wrathfully. "Works you to death, and
then goes off to enjoy herself, without even letting you know how long
you may expect to have to yourself! Shameful! But, look here, Miss
Lovelace, you must leave her. You must marry me. I tell you----"
And what he told me was just what he'd told me the night before, over
and over again, about his adoration, his presumption, his leaving
nothing in the world undone that could make me happy.... And so on, and
so forth. All the things a girl loves to hear. Or would love--provided
she weren't distracted, as I was, by having something else on her mind
the whole time!
I am afraid my answers were fearfully "absent."
Thus:
"No! Of course, I don't find you 'distasteful.' Why should I?" Then to
myself: "I wonder if Mr. Burke may ring me up again presently?"
And:
"No! Of course there isn't anybody else that I care for. I've never seen
anybody else!" And again, aside: "How would it be if I rang up every
hotel in Brighton, one after the other, until I came to one that knew
something about Mr. Burke's party?"
I decided to do this.
Then I began to fume impatiently. If only this nice, kind, delightful
young man would go and let me get to the telephone!
But there he stood, urging his suit, telling me that he was obliged to
go off on business to Paris early that afternoon; begging me to let him
have his answer before he had to leave me.
"How long shall you be in Paris?" I asked him.
"A week. Possibly longer. It's such a long, long time----"
"It isn't a long time to give any woman to make up her mind in," I told
him desperately. I thought all the time: "Supposing Million took it into
her head to stay wherever she is for a week without letting me know?
Horrors!"
I went on: "I can't tell you now whether I want to marry you or not.
Just at this moment I don't feel I shall ever want to marry anybody! If
you take your answer now it'll have to be 'No'!"
So then, of course, he said that he would wait. He would wait until he
came back from Paris, hard as it would be to bear. And then there were a
lot more kind and flattering things said about "a girl like me" and "the
one girl in the world," and all that kind of thing. And then, at
last--at last he went, kissing my hand and saying that he would write
and tell me directly he knew when he was coming to see me again.
He went, and I turned to the telephone. But before I had so much as
unhooked the receiver the door of Miss Million's sitting-room opened
after a brief tap, and there stood----
Who but that Power in a frock-coat, the manager of the hotel himself.
"Good morning, Miss," he said to me, with quite an affable nod.
But his eyes, I noticed, were glancing at every detail in the room, at
the telephone book on the floor, at the new novels and magazines on the
table, at the flowers and cushions, at the big carton from Madame
Ellen's that I had not yet taken into the bedroom, at me and my tired
face. "Your young lady, Miss Million, hasn't returned yet, I
understand?"
"No," I said, as lightly as I could. "Miss Million is not yet back."
"Ah! Time off for you, then," said the manager still very pleasantly.
But I could not help thinking that there was a look in his eye that
reminded me of that suspicious waiter at the club.
"Easy life, you young ladies have, it seems to me," said the manager.
"Comfortable quarters here, have you? That's right. How soon do you
think that you may be expecting your young lady back, Miss?"
"Oh, I'm not sure," said I very lightly, but with a curious sinking at
my heart. What was the meaning of the manager's visit? Was he only just
looking in to pass the time of day with the maid of one of his patrons?
Or--horrible thought!--did he imagine that there was something not quite
usual about Miss Million?
Had he, too, wondered over our arriving at the hotel with those old
clothes and those new trunks? And now was he keeping an eye on whatever
Miss Million meant to do? For all his pleasant manner, he did look as
if he thought something about her were distinctly "fishy"!
I said brightly: "She may stay away for a few days."
"A little change into the country, I expect? Do anybody good this stuffy
weather," said the affable manager. "Going down to join her, I expect,
aren't you?"
This was a poser, but I answered, I think, naturally enough. I said:
"Well, I'm waiting to hear from her first if she wants me!"
And I nodded quite cheerily at the manager as he passed again down the
corridor.
I trust he hadn't even a suspicion of the uneasy anxiety that he had
left behind him in the heart of Miss Million's maid!
What a perfectly awful day this has been! Quite the most awful that I've
ever lived through in all my twenty-three years of life!
I thought it was quite bad enough when all I had to bear was the gnawing
anxiety over Million's disappearance, and the suspense of waiting,
waiting, waiting for news of her! Living for the sound of the telephone
bell ... sitting up here in her room, feeling as if three years had
elapsed between each of my lonely hotel meals ... wondering, wondering
over and over again what in the world became of her since I saw my young
mistress at the Supper Club last night....
But now I've something worse to bear. Something far more appalling has
happened!
I felt a presentiment that something horrible and unforeseen might
occur, even before the first visit of the manager, with his suspicious
glance, to Miss Million's room.
For I'd wandered downstairs, in my loneliness, to talk to the girl in
the telephone exchange.
She's a bright-eyed, chatty creature who sits there all day under the
big board with the lights that appear and disappear like glowworms
twinkling on a lawn. She always seems to have a cup of tea and a plate
of toast at her elbow.
She also seems always to have five minutes for a chat. And she's taken a
sort of fancy to me; already she's confided to me countless bits of
information about the staff and the people who are staying or who have
stayed in the hotel.
"The things I've seen since I've been working here would fill a book,"
she told me blithely, when I drifted in to find companionship in her
little room.
"Really, I think that if I'd only got time to sit down and write
everything I'd come across in the way of the strange stories, and the
experiences, and the different types of queer customers that one has
come in one's way, well! I'd make my fortune. Hall Caine couldn't be in
it. Excuse me a minute." (This was a telephone interlude.)
"The people you'd never think had anything odd about them," pursued the
telephone girl, "and that turn out to be the Absolute Limit!" (I
wondered, uneasily, if she thought that my absent mistress, Miss
Million, belonged to this particular type.)
So I went back to the subject next time I passed the telephone office.
(This was after the manager had looked into my room with his kind
inquiries after Miss Million.)
"And, really," I said. I can't think what made me, Beatrice Lovelace,
feel as guilty as if I were a pickpocket myself. Perhaps it was because
I had something to hide. Namely, the fact that I was a maid whose
mistress had left the hotel without a hint as to her destination or the
date of her return!
"That's a Scotland Yard man that's passing in the hall now," she added,
dropping her voice. "No; not the one you're looking at," as I turned to
glance at a very broad, light-grey back. "That's another of our American
cousins. Just come. A friend of Mr. Isaac Rattenheimer; have you seen
Mrs. Rattenheimer when she's going out in the evening? My dear! The
woman blazes with jewels like a Strand shooting-gallery with lights. You
really ought to have a look at her.
"Come down into the lounge to-night; pretend you've got some note or
something for your Miss Million. She'll be coming back to-night, I
suppose?" she said.
"Oh, she may not. It all depends," I said vaguely, but with a desperate
cheerfulness.
I left the telephone girl to decide for herself what this mysterious
thing might be that I had said "depended," and I drifted out again into
the vestibule.
Here I passed the young man my friend had called an American cousin. He
looked very American. His shoulders, which were broad enough in all
conscience, seemed padded at least two inches broader. And the cut of
his light-grey tweeds, and the shape of his shoes, and the way he'd
parted his sleek, thick, mouse-coloured hair, were all unmistakably
un-English.
As I passed he stared; not rudely, but with a kind of boyish, naïve
interest. I wondered what Miss Million would have thought of him.
She's accustomed to giving me her impressions of every fresh person she
sees; talking over each detail of their appearance while I'm doing her
hair.... I mean that's what she used to be accustomed to! If only I knew
when I should do her hair again!
Well, I walked upstairs, and the first hint of coming discomfort met me
on our landing. It took the shape of our sandy-haired chamber-maid. She
was whisking down the corridor, looking flushed and highly indignant
over something or other. As I passed her she pulled up for a moment and
addressed me.
"Your turn next, Miss Smith, I suppose!" she sniffed, with the air of
one who feels that (like Job) she does well to be angry. "You'd better
be getting ready for it!"
"Getting ready for what?" I asked bewilderedly.
But the sandy-haired one, with another little snort, had passed on.
I think I heard her muttering something about "Never had such a thing
happen before! The ideear!" as she disappeared down the corridor. I was
puzzled as I went back into Miss Million's room, that seems to have been
empty for so long. What did the chamber-maid mean? What "thing" had
happened? What was I to prepare for? And it was my "turn" for what?
I was soon to know.