THE RELUCTANT DUKE
Tears were not at all to Pollyooly's liking. She considered them the
sign of a feeble heart and softening brain. The Honourable John Ruffin
had thrown quite a new light on them in suggesting that they could be
used as a weapon; and she considered this use of them most of the way
to Ricksborough House.
She reached it soon after half-past two. She found its gloomy
nineteenth-century facade, black with the smuts of ninety years, a
little daunting, and mounted its broad steps in some trepidation. But
she rang the bell hard and knocked firmly.
Lucas, the butler of the duke, himself opened the door. At the sight
of Pollyooly he started back; for the moment he thought that his lost
young mistress stood before him.
Pollyooly stepped across the threshold, and said firmly:
"I want to see the Duke of Osterley, please."
The words showed Lucas his mistake; he perceived that before him stood
not his mistress, but that young red Deeping who had once made a
manifestly genuine offer to bite him; and he hesitated.
"It's very important. Please tell him that Miss Bride wants to see
him," said Pollyooly.
"Um--er--come this way, miss. I'll see if his grace will see you,"
said Lucas in a doubtful voice.
He would have liked to refuse to let her into the house; but he was
doubtful about her social standing. Therefore he took her to the
nearest drawing-room, said that he would inform his grace, and betook
himself to his master in the smoking-room, wearing a perturbed air, for
the duke had as complete a vocabulary as any nobleman in England, and
he might easily take it ill that this formidable red Deeping had not
been refused admission to his house.
"If you please, your Grace, there's a young lady--leastways a little
girl of the name of Bride--wants to see your Grace," said Lucas. "It's
the little girl you brought home as turned out not to be Lady Marion."
"What the deuce did you let her in for?" said the duke on the instant;
and he frowned at him.
"She said it was very important, your Grace," said Lucas in an unhappy
tone.
The duke continued to frown, considering: Pollyooly might have brought
word of his missing daughter; and he would by no means let slip an
opportunity of getting information about her. On the other hand he
might be about to be called upon to pay more for his kidnapping
exploit. He had, however, just lunched ducally; and he was in a
vainglorious mood, ready to face anything female.
At last he said bitterly:
"I seem to have every jackass in London in my service. Bring her here."
Lucas gloomily announced the readiness of the duke to receive her to
Pollyooly. She followed him eagerly and came into the smoking-room
with a brave air, though she was not feeling as brave as she looked.
The duke stood on the hearthrug and glowered at her.
She did not hesitate; she gazed at his unamiable face with limpid eyes
and said tranquilly:
"How do you do, your Grace?"
The duke grunted; then grew articulate, and said:
"What do you want?"
Pollyooly sat down deliberately in one of the big easy chairs facing
him, and answered:
"If you please, your Grace, I came to see you about an orphan."
"An orphan?" said the duke a little less grumpily. He was somewhat
impressed by the angel face of his visitor. During her last,
compulsory visit it had been so much more red Deeping than angel. Also
her costume so amber and so expensive impressed him.
"Yes: her name is Millicent Saunders; and they wanted to send her to
the workhouse because her mother died who used to dance at the Varolium
in the second row, but of course I couldn't let them do that, could I?"
said Pollyooly in an explanatory tone.
"I don't know. What's it got to do with me?" said the duke quickly.
"Millicent is one of those orphans who wouldn't be much good working
for herself, though of course she'd work hard and be very willing,"
said Pollyooly speaking very clearly in the explanatory tone, and
looking at him with very earnest eyes.
"Then she'd better go to the workhouse. She'll have an idle enough
time there," said the duke who was staunchly conservative in feeling.
"But she can't go to the workhouse," said Pollyooly in a deeply shocked
tone.
"Why not?" said the duke.
Pollyooly looked at him very sternly, and said in a very stern voice:
"Her mother was a very respectable woman; she was in the second row of
the Varolium ballet for years and years; and she always kept Millie
very respectable. Besides, you can't let people go to the workhouse."
"Why can't you, if it's the proper place for them?" said the duke
stubbornly, for he hated to hear the workhouse in any way disparaged,
since he regarded it as a bulwark of society.
"How would you like your little girl to go to the workhouse?" said
Pollyooly in a deeply reproachful tone.
"It's a prospect we needn't consider," said the duke haughtily.
"We never know what we may come to," said Pollyooly with a happy
remembrance of the pious wisdom of her Aunt Hannah. "But Millie isn't
going into the workhouse anyhow. I'm not going to let her. But she
ought to go to a home and be trained to marry an empire-builder. She's
that kind of orphan: Mr. Ruf--a gentleman says that she is. And I came
to ask you if you'd give her a nomination so that she could go into the
Bellingham Home. They'll do anything you tell them there; and if you
said so, they'd take her in at once. And she'd be ever so much obliged
to you. She'd never forget it--never. And so should I."
She was leaning forward with clasped hands and shining, imploring eyes.
The duke was not insensible to the charm of her beauty, or to the
appeal of her pleading voice. He was even more sensible to the tribute
she had paid to his power in the matter of the Bellingham Home. But he
was in a captious mood; and he did not wish to oblige her. His mind
was chiefly full of the fact that he had made himself look foolish by
kidnapping her and had had to pay her six pounds compensation. He was
still sore about the foolishness and also about the money, for his was
a thrifty soul.
But Pollyooly's angel face made a direct refusal difficult. He coughed
and said:
"I--er--don't--er--do things in this--er--irregular way.
My--er--nominations are--er--only given after I have been approached in
the proper way and received testimonials and--er--sifted them out so as
to nominate the most deserving orphan among the many applicants for
admission."
"There couldn't be a more deserving orphan than Millie," said Pollyooly
quickly.
"That remains to be proved. There are often fifty or sixty applicants.
And besides, this isn't the time of year when vacancies in the home are
filled up," said the duke, hardening himself in his resistance, now
that he could throw the odium of it on to the machinery of the home.
Pollyooly's face had fallen, for her instinct told her that he did not
intend to grant her petition, and was only making excuses. She said
slowly:
"But that wouldn't matter, because if you told them to take in Millie
at any time of the year they'd do it."
"But the applications have to be written, setting forth the applicant's
claims in the proper way," said the duke, falling yet more firmly back
behind the safe barrier of red tape. "The matter has to receive
careful consideration."
Pollyooly frowned thoughtfully: "Well, I could write. There are people
who would tell me what to write," she said in the sad tone of one
confronted with an uncongenial task. "Then you could consider Millie
carefully. I'm sure you couldn't find an orphan who's more--more of an
orphan than Millie."
"I'm afraid it wouldn't be any use--not at this time of year," said the
duke almost cheerfully, as he saw that in an irreproachable fashion he
was getting his own disobliging way.
Pollyooly filled with the bitter sense of defeat. She heaved a deep
sigh and was on the point of rising to go, when the last adjuration of
the Honourable John Ruffin flashed into her mind, and on the instant
she grew eager to try the new weapon he had suggested. She looked at
the duke with a calculating eye. Nature, thinking probably that if was
enough for a man to be a duke, had not been lavish of beauty to him:
his somewhat small features were often set in an unamiable expression,
and with the faint light of evil satisfaction at baulking Pollyooly now
on them, they looked more unamiable than usual. He did not indeed seem
to be a man to be easily softened. But the matter was far too
important for her to lose the only chance left.
Very deliberately she drew her handkerchief from her pocket, blinked
her eyes hard to make them water, hid them under the handkerchief,
sniffed once but loudly, and then sobbed.
"It's very--hard--on Millie--she'll be--dreadfully--disappointed!"
A sudden consternation smote the duke. He had looked to make himself
completely disagreeable at his ease, certainly without any such assault
on his feelings as this. He shuffled his feet and said hurriedly:
"It's no good crying about it. It can't be helped, you know."
Pollyooly's quick ear caught the change in his tone. She sobbed more
loudly:
"Oh, yes--it can--you could do it--if you wanted to!"
"These things have to be done in the proper way," protested the duke.
"It isn't that. You--you--don't like Millie!" sobbed Pollyooly,
watching the weakening face of the perturbed nobleman with an intent
eye over the top of her handkerchief. "You--you--hate her!"
"Why, I've never set eyes on her!" cried the duke.
"Oh, yes: you do--and it's--it's beastly," sobbed Pollyooly.
No duke likes to hear his conduct described as beastly by an angel
child--especially when the description happens to be accurate--and the
duke ground his teeth.
Pollyooly, watching him, sobbed on--louder.
The duke gazed at her in a dismal discomfort. He shuffled his feet
till the shuffle was almost a dance. Then he said in a feebly soothing
tone:
"There--there--that'll do."
[Illustration: The Duke gazed at her in dismal discomfort]
Pollyooly's sobs grew yet louder--heartrending.
The duke took a hurried turn up and down the room.
Pollyooly, a huddled figure of desperate woe, sobbed on.
The duke grabbed at his scrubby little moustache and held on to it
firmly. It was no real help.
He ground his teeth; he tugged at his moustache; and then in a tone of
the last exasperation, he cried:
"Oh, hang it all! Stop that infernal howling; and I'll give you the
nomination!"
Pollyooly softened her sobs a little; the duke flung himself down into
the chair before the writing-table, at the other end of the room, and
seized pen and paper.
"What's the brat's name?" he growled.
"Millicent--Saunders," sobbed Pollyooly.
The duke wrote the nomination, put it in an envelope, addressed it to
the secretary of the Bellingham Home, licked the flap of the envelope
with wolfish ferocity, and banged it fast.
He came hastily across the room with it to Pollyooly, held it out, and
said with even greater ferocity:
"Here you are--and--and--much good may it do her!"
Pollyooly rose quickly and took it. She could hardly believe her
shining eyes.
"Oh, thank you, your Grace! Millicent will be so glad!" she cried
joyfully.
The duke growled in his throat; but in some way Pollyooly's radiant
angel face blunted his ferocity. Also it robbed his surrender of its
sting. He rang the bell; then opened the smoking-room door for her and
bade her good day quite in the manner and tone of an English gentleman.
On the threshold, like the well-mannered child she was, she paused to
thank him again. When she went out he shut the door quite gently; and
by the time he had settled down again in his easy chair, he was feeling
truly magnanimous.