WALES FOREVER!
WELL, here we are again, as the clown says in the harlequinade.
Once more the lives of Miss Million and her maid have been set amidst
scenes until now quite unfamiliar to us.
After the noise and bustle of the Strand about the hotel in July, the
quiet, leafy depths of a remote Welsh valley. After the glaring London
sunshine on the baked pavements, the soft Welsh rain that has been
weeping ever since our arrival over the wooded hills and the tiny,
stone-fenced fields, and the river that prattles over its slaty bed and
swirls into deep, clear pools a stone's-throw below this furnished
country house that Miss Million has taken for three months.
At present the house party consists of Miss Million, Miss Vi Vassity,
Mrs. Flukes, the ventriloquist's wife, her baby and her monthly nurse.
Mr. Jessop, who wrote all the business letters with regard to the taking
of the house, is to come down later, I believe.
So is Mr. Reginald Brace.
In the meantime we have the place to ourselves, also the staff left
behind by the people of the house, consisting of one fat cook, two
housemaids who speak soft Welsh-English, and a knives and boots boy who
appears to say nothing at all but "Ur?" meaning "I beg your pardon?"
I, the lady's-maid, have meals with the staff in the big, slate-floored
kitchen.
This I insisted upon, just as I insisted upon travelling third-class
down from Euston, while my young mistress "went first."
"We've simply got to behave more like real mistress and maid, now that
you've taken a country house for the summer," I told her. "This isn't
the 'Refuge'----"
"It's nowhere so lively, if you ask me," said Miss Million, looking
disconsolately out of the dining-room window. "Look at that view!"
The "view" shows a rain-soaked lawn, stretching down to a tall
rhododendron hedge, also dripping with rain. Beneath the hedge is spread
a dank carpet of fallen pink blooms. Beyond the hedge is a brook that
was once a lane, leading down to a river that was once a brook.
Beyond this come a flooded field and the highroad that is a network of
puddles. In the distance there rises like a screen against the sky a
tall hill, wooded almost to the top, and set half-way up this hill we
can descry, faintly through the driving rain, a long white house, with
gables and a veranda overgrown with red roses. And above all is a strip
of grey sky, from which the white rain falls noiselessly, ceaselessly.
"Here's a place!" says Miss Million disgustedly. "Unless something
happens to make it a bit different, I shan't stay no three months, nor
three weeks. It fair gives me the pip, and I wish I was back in good
old London!"
"Cheer up. The rain may leave off one of these days," I say, "or some of
the people of the neighbourhood may come to call."
This afternoon both my prognostications were fulfilled.
The rain did leave off, and the valley in which this house is set became
a green and smiling paradise, scented with the fragrance of wet pine
trees, and of sweet peas and honeysuckle, and suddenly pregnant with
that other flavour which is new to me--part scent, part sight, part
sound. "The flavour of Wales"--some quality quite indescribable; some
wild native atmosphere richer, sadder, sweeter, more "original" than any
that I had breathed in those flat, smiling garden plots that are
described as "rural England."
No wonder I've always heard that Welsh people who have left their
country suffer at times from such poignant longings, such "hiræth" or
home-sickness as is unknown to the colonising, conquering Saxon!
Even Miss Million and Miss Vi Vassity are more inclined to approve of
the scenery now! And this afternoon "the neighbourhood" called on the
new tenant of this place.
"The neighbourhood" seems to comprise any other house within an
afternoon's walk, or even motor-drive.
I heard the car drive up, from my attic bedroom, and I flew down to the
front door. For cook was baking, and both of what she calls "them girls"
had taken their departure. It was the legitimate afternoon out of
Maggie-Mary, the first housemaid. And Blodwen, the other, had asked
special permission to attend a funeral in the next valley.
I had said I would be housemaid in her place, so she had sallied forth,
all new black and gratified grins.
I found myself opening the door to three heterogeneous parties of people
at once, and ushering them into the faded, pretty, pot-pourri-scented
drawing-room. It was empty. My mistress and her guests had suddenly
fled!
They--Miss Million, Vi Vassity, and Mrs. Flukes--had betaken themselves
into the bedroom that has been given over to the baby's nursery, and
were sitting over the fire there gossiping with the young, mauve-clad
monthly nurse.
"Must I go down? Oh, what a nuisance; now I'll have to change," began my
mistress, but I was firm.
"You'll go down in your garden tweeds and your brown boots as you are,"
I said, "so as not to keep the people waiting."
"What style of people are they? What do they look like, dear?" put in Vi
Vassity eagerly. She has been strangling yawns all the morning, and I am
sure she was only too delighted at the idea of seeing a fresh face. "Any
nice boys with them?"
"No. No men at all----"
"Never are, in the country. Yet people wonder nobody takes any notice of
being told to get back to the land!" said London's Love, rising to her
tiny kid-shod feet, and refastening a suspender through the slit in her
skirt. "What are the women like? Country rectory?"
"Yes, one lot were," I reported. "The others that came in the motor wore
sort of very French hats and feather boas, and look as if they never
walked."
"Charity matinée," commented England's Premier Comedienne, bustling to
the door. "It's a shame not to dress for 'em. I shan't be long, Nellie.
You and Ag go down first."
"How can I go down to the company until I've given my little Basil his
four o'clock feed?" protested the ventriloquist's wife. She held out her
arms for the long white bundle of shawls that Olive, the young nurse,
lifted from the cradle set on two chairs in the corner of the room.
"Nellie'll have to make her entrance alone."
And she did.
The confidence in herself that was first inspired by the Honourable Jim
has been greatly fostered by Mr. Hiram P. Jessop. So I was not afraid
that Miss Million would be really overpoweringly shy, even on entering a
drawing-room full of strange callers.
I left her at the drawing-room door, and was hastening kitchenwards
again to bring out the tea when the front-door bell rang once more. I
opened it to two very tall girls in Burberry mackintoshes.
They were both young; one had a long black plait down her back. Both of
them wore the same expression of suppressed and gleeful, giggling
excitement as I told them that Miss Million was at home.
"Then, now for it!" breathed the flapper with the plait, in a gale of a
whisper, as I took her mackintosh. Both girls were in blue serge
underneath, of a cut more chastened than their arrogantly young voices.
"I wonder what on earth she's going to be like!"
"Alice! Do shut up!" muttered the elder girl angrily. Then, turning to
me: "Are there crowds of other people here already?"
"Yes, Miss," I answered demurely. But I felt a sudden warm sympathy with
the two young things in the hall. We had, I suspected, the same kind of
voice, the same carriage of the head, we had had the same sort of
clothes.
We'd been "raised," as Mr. Jessop puts it, with much the same outlook.
We had a class in common, the class of the nouveaux-pauvres! Our eyes
flashed understanding as they met.
Then the younger girl exclaimed: "Wait a minute. I _must_ finish
laughing before we go in!"
And she stood for a full minute, quivering and swaying and rocking with
perfectly silent mirth. Then she pulled herself together and said
gravely:
"Right. I've finished now. Say the Miss Owens, please."
I rather wanted to have a good silent laugh to myself as I solemnly
announced the two girls.
They came, I afterwards gleaned, from the long white house that faces us
across the valley. Who the other people were who were filling the
chintz-covered couch and easy-chairs in the drawing-room I didn't
gather.
I haven't "disentangled" the different hats and faces and voices and
costumes; I suppose I shall do so in due course, and shall be able to
give a clear description of each one of these callers "from the
neighbourhood" upon Miss Million. I knew she would be an object of
curiosity to any neighbourhood to which she came!
And I wonder how many of these people know that she is one of the
heroines of the Rattenheimer ruby case, that hangs over our heads like a
veritable sword of Damocles the whole time!
But to get on to the principal excitement of the afternoon--the utterly
unlooked-for surprise that awaited me in the kitchen!
The typically Welsh kitchen in this newly acquired place of Miss
Million's is to me the nicest room in the house.
I love its spaciousness and its slate floor, and the ponderous oak beams
that bisect its smoke-blackened ceiling and are hung with bunches of
dried herbs and with hams.
I love its dresser, full of willow-pattern china, and its two big china
dogs that face each other on the high mantelpiece.
The row of bright brass candlesticks appeals to me, and the
grandfather's clock, with the sun, moon, and stars on its face, and the
smooth-scrubbed white deal kitchen-table pitted with tiny worm-holes,
and the plants in the window, and everything about it.
Miss Million declares she never saw such a kitchen "in all her puff."
Putney was inconvenient enough, the dear knows, but the Putney kitchen
was a joke to this one, where the kitchen range you can only describe
"as a fair scandal," and nothing else!
If she means to take the landlord's offer, later on, and to take this
place as it stands, she's going to have everything pretty different.
I should be sorry if she did; I like the place to be an utter
anachronism in our utilitarian twentieth century, just as it is. I don't
mind the honeycomb of draughts. I can put up with the soft, cave-like
gloom of it----
It was this gloom that prevented me from seeing, at first, that there
was anybody in the kitchen but cook, who was busily beating up batter
for light cakes in a big, yellow, white-lined bowl.
"Is the tea made?" I said.
It was not; the silver teapot, with the tea in it, was being heated on
the hob.
I moved to take up the singing kettle. It was then that a tall man's
form that had been sitting on a settle on the other side of the fire
rose and came towards me.
The red glow of the fire through the bars shone on the silver buttons
and on the laurel-green cloth and on the high boots of a chauffeur's
livery. Of course! This was the man who had driven over the people who
had come in the car.
But above the livery a voice spoke, a voice that I knew, a voice that I
could hardly believe was speaking to me here.
"Allow me," said this softly inflected Irish voice. And the kettle was
gently but firmly taken out of my hand by the hand of--the Honourable
James Burke.
I gave such a start of surprise that it is a mercy I did not jolt
against that kettle and send a stream of scalding hot water over the
laurel-green-cloth-clad knees of the man before me.
And I said exactly what people always say in meloramas when they are
surprised at meeting anybody--thus showing that melodrama is not always
so utterly unlike real life.
I cried "You!"
"Myself," announced the Honourable Jim, smiling down at me as he deftly
took the silver teapot from me and filled first that and then the
hot-water jug on the tray that was already laid on the big table. "And
what is all this emotion at the sight of me? Is it too much to hope that
it's pleasure? Or is it just amazement?"
"I--I certainly never expected to s-see you," I spoke falteringly in my
great surprise, "or--or like this!" I glanced at the gleam of the livery
buttons. "May I ask what in the world you are doing in those clothes?"
"Is it my livery you mean? Don't you think it's rather neat?" suggested
the Honourable Jim ingratiatingly. "Don't you consider that it suits me
almost as well as the black gown and the apron and the doaty little cap
suit Miss Million's maid?"
"But----" I gasped in amazement. "But why are you wearing a chauffeur's
livery?"
"Isn't the reason obvious? Because I've taken a chauffeur's job."
"You, Mr. Burke?"
"Yes, I, Miss Lovelace!" he laughed. "Is there any reason you have to
give against that, as you have against every other mortal thing that the
unfortunate Jim Burke does?"
"I----Look here, I can't wait here talking," I told him, for just at
this minute I caught the surprised glance of cook upon us both.
The spoon with which she beat up the batter was poised in mid-air as she
listened to everything that this superior-looking lady's-maid and still
more superior-looking chauffeur had to say to each other. "I must take
the tea into the drawing-room."
He opened the kitchen door for me as I hastened away with the tray.
Gentleman-adventurer, bronco-buster, stoker, young gentleman of leisure,
chauffeur! What next will be the rôle that the Honourable and
Extraordinary Jim will take it into his head to play?
Chauffeur, of all things! Why chauffeur?
My head was still buzzing with the surprise of it all, when I heard the
other buzz--the shrill, insistent, worrying buzz that is made by women's
voices when a lot of them are gathered together in a strange house, and
are all talking at once; "made" talk, small talk, weather talk, the talk
that is--as Miss Vassity, for instance, would put it--"enough to drive
any one to drink."
In the drawing-room where these callers were grouped I just caught a
scrap here and a scrap there as I moved about with the tea-things. This
sort of thing:
"And what do you think of this part of the country, Miss Million? Are
you intending to make a long stay----"
"She seemed such a nice girl! Came to me with such a good character from
her----"
"Never touch it. It doesn't suit me. In coffee I like just a very
little, and my daughter's the same. But my husband"--(impressively)--"my
husband is just the reverse. He won't touch it in coff----"
--"hope you intend to patronise our little Sale of Work, Miss Million,
on the twenty-sixth? Oh, you must all come. And I'm still asking
everybody for contributions to my----"
"Do shut up, Alice!" (fierce whisper from the young girl in navy-blue).
"Now we've got this new chauffeur we may hope for a little peace!" This
languidly, from the lady in the uncountrified-looking hat. She, I
suppose, is the Honourable Jim's employer. "Quite an efficient man, as
far as one can judge, but----"
"Quite right, quite right. Far too many trees about the place. I like a
good view. Plenty of space around a house.... Of course, you've only ten
bedrooms here, Miss Million; ah, eleven? quite right. But at home.... Of
course, I had a most lovely home in the----"
Wearisome gabble! I thought.
I caught an ineffable grimace on Miss Million's small, shrewd face
behind the silver teapot. I bent down to add hot water to it. Under
cover of my ministrations she murmured: "You see, I don't have to bust
myself talkin' polite to this lot; nothing'll stop 'em. I say! Does
that cook know enough to give a nice cup o' tea to the shaveer of her
that came in the car, Smith?"
"I think the chauffeur knows enough to get one!" I murmured dryly. "Or
anything else he----" Here I found I was the only person in the room who
was talking.
A suddenly deathly silence had fallen upon the roomful of talking women,
who all knew each other, even if they had never met their little hostess
before. Something had "stopped 'em." The chatter and buzz of small talk
left off with a click.
And that quite definite "click" was the opening of the drawing-room door
upon an apparition such as none of them, I am certain, had ever seen in
a drawing-room before.
Its brightly fair hair seemed to have "sprouted" not so much a hat as a
grotesque halo of black, long, feathery wisps that surrounded a face
with black eyes and a complexion "made-up" to be dazzlingly pink.
Its transparent corsage gave glimpses of fair and sumptuous shoulders
and of much lingerie ribbon.
The frock was layer upon layer of folded ninon in different yellows,
shading down from bright lemon yellows through chrome yellow and mustard
colour to a kind of marigold tint at the hem, under which appeared
scarlet silk stockings and tall, gilt boots with heels so high that the
wearer was practically walking on her toes, à la Genée, as she made her
startling entrance.
It was, of course, Miss Vi Vassity, in one of her most successful stage
get-ups; the frock in which she sings her topical song--
"They've been there a long time now!"
with the usual verses about courting couples, and the Gorgonzola, and
the present Government.
And she beamed round upon this gathering of natives of a quiet country
neighbourhood with the same dazzling, prominent-toothed smile as she
flashes from her friends in the front row of the stalls to her equally
devoted gallery boys.
"No need for introductions, eh?" uttered London's Love, lightly, to the
petrified-looking assembly.
I felt that I would have sacrificed another quarter's salary rather than
have missed the look on the face of the acidulated lady who came in the
car as Miss Vi Vassity perched herself lightly on the arm of the couch
where she was sitting, and called to Nellie for the love of anything to
give her a nice cup of tea.
"Does one good to see a few faces around me once again!" prattled on the
artiste, while the two girls from the other side of the valley leant
forward and devoured every detail of her appearance with gluttonous
brown eyes.
Pure ecstasy was painted all over the plain ironic face of the tall girl
with the thick black plait. I saw from the look of the hussy that she
was "taking in" everything to reproduce it at home, in that white house
on the hill. And presently there was plenty to reproduce.
For one of the rectoryish-looking party plucked up courage to ask Miss
Vassity "what she thought of this place."
That opened the floodgates!
Perched on the arm of the couch, England's Premier Comedienne proceeded
to "hold the house" with her views on this mansion and its furniture.
"Not what I'd call a lively spot; still, there's always the pheasant and
her little 'uns walking about on the lawn at three G.M., if you're fond
of geology, and the rabbit on the tennis-court at eight o'clock sharp.
That's about all the outdoor entertainment in this place," she rattled
on.
"Indoors, of course, is a fair museum of curiosities. Continuous
performance, eh, Nellie? The oil-lamps everywhere, with the collection
of midges on all the bowls; those are very fine.
"Couldn't beat those at the Tower of London! And the back kitchen, with
the water from the stand-pipe outside overflowing into the middle of the
floor. Talk about Glimpses into the Middle Ages!
"What takes my fancy is the girls clinkin' to and from the scullery in
those pattens they wear. Makes the floor look like nothing on earth but
a bar-counter where glasses have been set down, doesn't it?"--this to
the rector's wife.
"And the paint, too. And the wall-papers. Oo-er! And all the
window-cords broken," enlarged the beaming apparition in all-yellow,
whose personality invaded the room like a burst of brilliant sunshine
through a thunder-cloud.
"Not to mention all the doors having to be propped open! No complete
set of china anywhere. Wedges bitten out of every--er--blessed egg-cup!
Pick up a bit of real Dresden, and the seccotined piece comes off in
your hand.
"As for the furniture, well, half of it looks as if it had bin used for
Harry Tate to play about with in a screaming new absurdity, entitled
'Moving,' or 'Spring-cleaning,' or something like----"
Here the acidulated voice of the lady who'd come in the motor broke in
with some very rebukeful remark. Something to the effect that she had
always considered everything so delightful that the dear Price-Vaughans
had in the house----
"Pr'aps the dear What-Price-Vaughans," retorted the comedienne, "can get
along with their delightful style of bathroom?"
"Oh, do tell us," implored the girl with the black plait, "what's the
matter with that?"
"The bath, Kiddy? Absolutely imposs!" decreed London's Love. "Water
comes in at the rate of a South-Eastern Dead-Stop. Turn one tap on and
you turn the other off. Not to speak of there only being one bath, and
that five sizes too small, dear. The Not-at-Any-Price-Vaughans must be
greyhound built for slimness, if you ask me. It don't seem to fit our
shrinking Violet, as you can imagine. Why, look at her!"
Quite an unnecessary request, as the fascinated, horrified eyes of the
whole party had not yet left her sumptuous and bedizened person.
"Call it a bath?" she concluded, with her largest and most unabashedly
vulgar wink. "I'd call it a----"
We weren't privileged to hear what she could call it, for at this moment
the lady with the very towny hat rose with remarkable suddenness, and
asked in a concise and carrying voice that her man might be told to
bring round Miss Davis's car.
I slipped out to the kitchen and to Miss Davis's man, who, as I
expected, had finished an excellent tea and the subjugation of cook at
the same time.
"Your mistress would like the car round at once, please," I said, with a
frantic effort not to smile as I caught the mischievous, black-framed,
blue eyes of the Honourable Jim Burke.
He rose. "Good afternoon, ma'am, and thank you for one of the most
splendid teas I've ever had in my life," he said in that flattering
voice of his to cook, as she bustled out, beaming upon him as she went
into the scullery.
"Good afternoon, Miss Smith"--to me. "You've never shaken hands with me
yet. But I suppose this is scarcely the moment to remind you, when I've
taken on a job several pegs below what I was when I saw you last----"
Of course, at that I had to give him my hand. I said: "But why are you
Miss Davis's chauffeur?"
"Because I couldn't get a job with Miss Million," he told me simply.
"She hasn't got a car of her own yet. Not that she'd have me, in any
case--a man she'd found out deceiving her about her own relatives!"
"But why 'the job,' anyhow?"
"I must earn my living--honestly if possible," said the Honourable Jim
with his wickedest twinkle.
"Also I'd made up my mind a little change of air in Wales would do me
good just now, and I'd no friends who happened to be coming to these
parts. It was these parts I'd set my heart on.
"The mountain scenery! Can you beat it? And when I saw the advertisement
of that old trout upstairs there--I mean that elegant maiden lady with
private means and a nice house and a car of her own--I jumped at
answering it. The country round about is so romantic. That drew me, Miss
Lovelace.... Well, I suppose I must be tooting her home."
He turned to the back entrance.
Then he turned to me once more and launched his most audacious bit of
nonsense yet.
He said, softly laughing: "Ah! You know well enough why I'm here. It's
to be near you, child."
What a good thing it is that I know exactly how to take this laughing,
blarneying, incorrigible Irishman! What a blessing that I am not as poor
little Miss Million was, who was utterly taken in by any blatantly
insincere compliment that this young--well, I can say no worse than
"this young Celt" chose to toss off!
So I just said lightly, "Too flattered!" and hurried away to hand the
callers their wraps and umbrellas in the hall.
I'm glad I was in time to witness another rather priceless scene.
Namely, the entrance of Miss Vi Vassity into the hall with the other
ladies, and her recognition of the big young man in the laurel-green
livery, with the handsome face so stolidly set under the peaked
chauffeur's cap.
"Jim!" exclaimed the comedienne, in a piercing treble. "Well, whatever
next? If it isn't my pal Jim Burke!"
"Just the sort of person one would expect her to have for a 'pal,' as
she calls it," came in a not-too-soft aside from the owner of the car,
then, haughtily, "Home, Burke."
"Yes, Miss," said the new chauffeur, as respectfully as I could have
said it myself, and he touched his peaked cap to his mistress with a
kind of side-effect of "Cheery O, Vi," to the brilliant figure standing
gasping with astonishment upon the top step.