The motor car bore them smoothly and swiftly along through several broad
shady streets. They had glimpses of splendid big houses, the front
windows of which were gay with boxes of pansies and red geraniums. Then
they slowed down, turned under a stone arch and paused at the door of an
immense gray house half covered with English ivy.
"Here we are," said their new friend, "and I think I had better
introduce myself. I am Beatrice Colchester, and this is my governess,
Fraeulein Bloch. May I ask your names, so that I may introduce you to my
grandmother?"
Miss Campbell immediately went through the introductions.
"You will have a hard time remembering so many of us," said Billie.
"Perhaps you had better call us by our first names. They are much
easier. You can remember to say Elinor and Mary and Nancy and Billie
without much trouble."
"And you must not forget to say 'Beatrice,'" exclaimed the other girl
who seemed to the Motor Maids to be the most enchanting and unaffected
girl they had ever met.
Perhaps you would like to know what Beatrice Colchester looked like? She
was tall, taller even than Billie, and very slender. Her eyes were large
and deep blue in color; her hair was reddish gold and wavy, and her skin
as pink and white as milk and roses. Her features were not regular, but
because of the charm of her expression and her lovely coloring, her
rather large mouth and unduly small nose were not even perceived at
first by the people who met her. In a photograph the deficiencies of her
face were very evident.
The doors of the mansion were opened before they had alighted from the
motor car, by two footmen in blue and buff livery, who stood on each
side of the entrance as stiff and rigid as statues. But the girls had no
eyes for them. They were looking at the hall of the palace. For whoever
Beatrice Colchester really was, she certainly lived in the finest house
that they had ever seen. The great hall was paneled in oak quite black
with age; portraits of ladies and gentlemen of the court in velvets and
satins with wigs and high head dresses hung on either side; and ranged
along the walls were old suits of armor. At one end was an immense
stained glass window exactly like the window of a church, through which
the afternoon sun cast a ruby light. It was a very lofty hall and the
staircase which went up at one side seemed to be lost in the gloom
above.
"Is Grandmamma in the drawing room, James?" demanded Beatrice Colchester
of one of those superb individuals in blue and buff.
"She is, my lady," he managed to reply, without so much as moving a
muscle of his imperturbable countenance.
"Will you come up, please?" she continued, turning to Miss Campbell. "We
shall have tea at once. I know you must be starving."
Up they went in a silent procession, awed and subdued by the splendor of
the wonderful old house. Suites of drawing rooms, they found later, were
below on each side of the hall. The room they now entered was a big,
beautiful apartment, which seemed to be furnished with numberless
comfortable chairs and enormous sofas piled with cushions that were
covered with old brocades. There were low tables about, filled with
books and vases of flowers and photographs in silver frames. A grand
piano was at one end and on the walls were fine old pictures, which no
doubt were even more valuable than the portraits below. It was indeed a
vast and beautiful room, but it was not so imposing as the great hall
and it was light and bright and cheerful. Toasting her toes in a big arm
chair by the fire sat a little old lady, and standing on a perch at her
right hand was a poll-parrot which called out as they entered:
"Late to tea again! Naughty Bee. Come, come. Hurry, hurry, hurry!"
It was so funny that Nancy laughed out loud, a merry, musical laugh
which made the parrot turn and stare and put his head on one side in a
most human manner.
"Hoity-toity-toity-toity," he said in a deep bass voice.
The old lady turned, too, and looked at the newcomers without
surprise,--because English people are never surprised. The girls could
see that in her prime she must have been quite like her granddaughter;
her tall figure was shrunken small with age, but her nose looked larger
because her face had shrunken, too. The eyes were the same deep blue,
with a kindly, warm glow. She was dressed in a gray silk poplin with
lace bertha and cuffs, and on her white hair she wore a little lace cap.
"Grannie, dear," cried Beatrice, running up and kneeling beside her
grandmother, "we've had, oh, such an exciting morning,--such adventures!
I've brought some new American friends home to tea. We will tell you all
about what happened when we have had food. Is tea coming?"
"Pray introduce your friends, child," replied the old lady, endeavoring
to rise from her chair with the aid of a mahogany stick.
"Miss Campbell," said Beatrice gayly, "and these are Billie, Elinor,
Mary and Nancy. This is my grandmother, the Duchess of Kilkenty."
Miss Campbell turned quite pale for a moment. A duchess? Great heavens!
She would never have consented to come if she had known she was to have
tea with a duchess! She was quite ignorant about titled people. How was
one to address a duchess? In the dim recesses of her mind it came to her
that it was necessary to say "your grace." But how absurd, to this
simple little old lady with mild blue eyes! Therefore Miss Campbell
merely said:
"It is very kind of you to take us in and treat us with so much
hospitality. Your granddaughter insisted on bringing us back to tea. You
see, one of my girls fainted in the Abbey and we lost her for a
while----"
"Think of it, Grannie, locked all alone in the room with the wax
effigies! Wasn't she brave not to have been frightened?"
"Dear, dear," exclaimed the Duchess of Kilkenty, "and which one of you
had that experience?"
They indicated little Mary, who hung back, flushing crimson at this
unusual notice.
"My child," exclaimed the little old lady, sitting down in her chair
again, "won't you come and sit beside me? I should like very much to
hear you tell the story yourself. You say you fainted and were locked
in? Then, what did you do when you came back to consciousness?"
"I think I must have felt as Juliet did," said Mary, "when she waked up
in her tomb. For a moment I almost believed I had been laid away
somewhere, and then I remembered."
"And then what did you do?"
Mary blushed and hung her head.
"Then I--I prayed," she whispered.
The Duchess of Kilkenty took her hand and pressed it gently.
"May your prayers always be answered so quickly, my child," she said,
and sighed.
The others had not heard the conversation between Mary and the Duchess.
Their attention had been attracted by two footmen, whether the same or
others, they could not say; they all looked exactly alike. These
important personages, however, bore each a silver tray loaded with the
tea things. A third footman followed and drew up two mahogany tables on
which the trays were placed. And in the midst of this most welcome
interruption, for they were almost faint with hunger, the parrot began
to scream:
"Tea, tea, tea. I must have my tea. Polly wants her tea."
"Will you be quiet, Polly?" exclaimed Beatrice. "I shall give you your
tea in a moment."
"Indeed," said the wise old bird. "Dear me, I'm sorry I _spake_."
There was a general laugh at this and suddenly the company began to feel
very much at home. The Duchess, after all, was not a grand, forbidding
person, as they had always imagined duchesses were. She was a sweet,
simple little old lady not half so fine as her servants, and she seemed
most interested in these American visitors. She insisted on hearing all
about their motor trips and asked the girls a hundred questions, while
they sipped tea and consumed sandwiches and strawberries with clotted
cream and cookies, very different from American cookies because they
were not sweet.
"Does one carry firearms in America?" she asked Miss Campbell.
"Oh, no," replied Miss Campbell suppressing a smile, "we are not such a
wild country as you think. It is unlawful to carry concealed weapons,
and of course one would never think of carrying a pistol in one's belt."
In the meantime, Billie was saying to Beatrice:
"Aren't you afraid to invite strangers into your house like this? How do
you know we are not--well, say a band of thieves? Cousin Helen chief
pirate and all of us assistant pirates?"
Beatrice laughed.
"What a droll idea," she exclaimed. "Of course you are not in the least
like adventuresses; but then I had another very good reason, because,
you see, I had heard all about you."
"Heard about us?" they cried, astounded.
"Oh, yes, and I recognized you at once, because Uncle Dodo had only
described you to me this morning and I knew quite well I could not be
mistaken,--a small blue-eyed lady with white hair and four young
girls,--and you are to visit Uncle's place in Ireland with Madame
Cortinas, the singer, and maybe I shall be there, too. Isn't it
beautiful?"
"Is Lord Glenarm really your uncle?" they asked.
"Yes, he is Granny's second son. We think he's wonderful. He does lots
of good. Granny says he has made a stir even if he is so poor."
"Poor" seemed hardly the word to use in connection with the handsome
nobleman they had met at the opera, and the young girls exchanged a
covert smile.
Mary had drawn her chair into the circle and was listening silently to
the conversation. It was all very interesting, very remarkable, like a
scene in a play: tea in a beautiful drawing-room with a real duchess!
But Mary's mind was an inquiring one and she liked to get at the bottom
of all puzzling things. Why was it that Beatrice Colchester talked so
much about one uncle and never mentioned his brother?
In a pause in the conversation she asked:
"But where is the Duke of Kilkenty?"
Beatrice looked hastily across at her grandmother, who was talking with
Miss Campbell. Then she pressed her finger to her lips and shook her
head.
"Never ask that question here," she said in a low voice.
Mary hung her head in great embarrassment. It was quite natural to have
inquired about the Duke of Kilkenty. But she had always heard that some
English families had mysterious secrets hidden away! It was a relief
presently when Miss Campbell rose and gave the signal to depart. It was
growing late and somehow a gloom seemed to have settled over the place.
The bright room was filled with shadows and the girls had grown
remarkably quiet.
How glad they would be to return to their own home-like, pretty lodgings
again, where they could slip into dressing-gowns and the neat little
maid would bring their dinner up to their sitting-room!
Having paid their respects to the old noblewoman and invited Beatrice to
come to see them, they presently left the gray house and turned their
faces toward Westminster Chambers and their own cheerful rooms.