Berta Ruck

“ Her underlip quivered as she gazed out of the lattice-window at the peaceful bare Sussex landscape. Her grey eyes were full of tears and of dreams. As for me, I felt half-sorrowful for her, half-furious with the Hon. Jim; the person whom nobody but a perfect innocent, like Million, would dream of liking or taking seriously!... Reprobate! He ought to be horsewhipped!
I remembered his whimsical horror in that tea-shop when he had exclaimed to me: "Marry her? Marry a girl with hands like that, or a voice like that?" ”

“ People who put their wishes in that way are not accustomed to be disobeyed.
My Aunt Anastasia didn't think for one moment that I should disobey her. She imagined that I should at once leave this crowd of extraordinary people, for I saw her glance of utter disapproval sweeping them all! She imagined that I should return with her to the little nouveau-pauvre villa at Putney and listen like a lamb to all she had to say. ”

“ There it was; and there were Million's sturdily built, rather square little shoulders, and her glossy black hair that I've learnt to do rather well. She was gazing about her with jewel-bright eyes and a flush on her cheeks that almost echoed the cherry-colour of her odious frock, and listening to the chatter of the golden-haired, sulphur-crested cockatoo, Vi Vassity; there she was; and there was the Jew they called Leo, and Lady Golightly-Long in a fantastic Oriental robe of sorts, and a cluster of others. ”

“ It's always, always that some millionaire may leave me a fortune one day, and that I shall be very rich, rolling in money."
"D'you think so much of money, then, Miss Beatrice?" said Million, bustling over the black-and-white chequered linoleum to the range, and setting the lid on to her saucepan full of potatoes. "Rich people aren't always happy——"
"That's their own fault for not knowing how to spend the money!" ”

“ I asked, beginning to tear up the crisp leaves of the lettuce into the glass salad-bowl. "I've told you mine, Million. Tell me yours."
"Sure, you won't let on to any one if I do?" returned our little maid, putting her black, white-capped head on one side like a little bird. "Sure you won't go and make game of me afterwards to your Aunt Nasturtium—oh, lor'. Hark at me, now!—to Miss Lovelace, I mean? If there's one thing that does make me feel queer it's thinking folks are making game of me."
"I promise I won't. Tell me the wish!"
Million laughed again, coloured, twiddled her apron. ”

“ This time, to my amazement, it was quite a group of men who asked for admittance to Miss Million's room!
There was first the frock-coated manager; then a very stout and black-eyed and fleshy-nosed Hebrew gentleman whom I hadn't seen before; then a quiet-looking man with a black tie whom I recognised as the one who had been pointed out to me by the telephone girl as a Scotland Yard plain-clothes detective; then the young American in the light-grey tweeds. ”

“ Just one perfect gown on a stand, perhaps, one filmy dream of a lingerie blouse, a pair of silk stockings that looked as if they'd been fashioned by the fairies out of spun sunset, and a French girl's name splashed in bold white letters across the pane—that was the sort of decoration of the establishments patronised by Miss Million and her maid. ”

“ Aunt Anastasia was rigidly firm about our having absolutely nothing to do with the people of the neighbourhood.
"They are not our kind," she said with her stately, rather thin grey-haired head in the air. "And though we may have come down in the world, we are still Lovelaces, as we were in the old days when your dear grandfather had Lovelace Court. Even if we do seem to have dropped out of our world, we need not associate with any other. Better no society than the wrong society." ”

“ 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 laughed. "You'll enjoy it."
"'Enjoy!' Oh, Miss—Smith! Enjoyment and me looks as if we was going to be strangers," declared Million bitterly. "I don't see why you couldn't oblige a friend, and come in to keep the ball a-rollin', you that know the go of Society, and that!"
"I'm sure it's not the go of Society to have in the lady's-maid to help amuse the visitors. Not in the drawing-room, at all events." ”

“ It was the back garden of our red-roofed villa in that suburban street, Laburnum Grove, Putney, S.W.
Now all those eighty-five neat gardens up and down the leafy road are one exactly like the other, with the same green strip of lawn just not big enough for tennis, the same side borders gay with golden calceolaria, scarlet geranium, blue lobelia, and all the bright easy-to-grow London flowers. All the villas belonging to the gardens seem alike, too, with their green front doors, their white steps, their brightly polished door-knockers and their well-kept curtains. ”

“ I shouldn't change my whole opinion of a man because he had deceived me about knowing my uncle, and because he had spun me a lot of "yarns" about that friendship. Men were deceivers ever.
I, in Miss Million's place, should have shrugged my shoulders over the unmasking of this particular deceiver, and I should have said: "What can one expect of a man with that voice and those eyes?" ”

“ She has left us, our little cheerful, and bonnie, and capable maid-of-all-work who has become a millionaire pork-butcher's heiress!
Never again will her trim, aproned figure busy itself about our small and shockingly inconvenient kitchen at No. 45. Never again will she have to struggle with the vagaries of its range. Never again will she "do out" our drawing-room with its disgraceful old carpet and its graceful old cabinet. Never again will she quail under the withering rebuke with which my Aunt Anastasia was wont to greet her if she returned half a minute late from her evening out. ”

“ I shouldn't."
"Ah, well, there's just the difference between you and I," said Miss Million, in such a brisk, practical, matter-of-fact voice that one could hardly realise that it belonged to the girl whose eyes had grown so dreamy as she had spoken, only yesterday, of the Honourable Jim.
"Now, I'm like this. If I like a person, I like 'em. I'd stick to anybody through thick and thin. Do anything for 'em; work my fingers to the bone! But there's one thing they've got to do," said Miss Million impressively. "They've got to be straight with me. I've got to feel I can trust 'em, Smith. ”

“ My dear Miss Million, I feel in all my bones one sad presentiment. That young man is a fortune-hunter. I saw it in his bold and sea-blue eye. As it says in the advertisement, 'It's your money he wants.' I believe he's the sort of person who makes up to any one with money. (I expect all those other men he was with were rich enough.) And I don't think you ought to make friends with this Mr. Burke until we've heard a little more about him. Certainly I don't think you ought to let him come and see you here without further preliminaries to-morrow afternoon! ”

“ I'm going to choose a really 'finished' kit for a superior lady's-maid, so that everybody shall recognise my 'walk in life' at the first glance!"
"Miss! Oh, Miss Beatrice, you can't," protested Million, in shocked tones. "You're never going to wear—livery, like?"
"I am," I declared. "A plain black gown, very perfectly cut, an exquisite muslin apron with a little bib, and a cap like——"
"Miss! You can't wear a cap," declared little Million, standing stock still at the top of Bond Street and gazing at me as if I had planned the subversion of all law and order and fitness. ”

“ There was an expression of the most ungrateful disgust on his fair, Puritan sort of face as he turned it for a moment from me to that of the bubbling-over music-hall artiste who was his hostess.
"None of these people are fit," he declared resentfully, "to associate with you."
"You forget that plenty of people might not think I was fit to associate with! A girl who is arrested for jewel robbery!"
"Your own fault, Miss Lovelace, if I may say so! If you hadn't been here with Miss Million"—another ungrateful glance—"this suspicion wouldn't have touched you." ”

“ 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. ”

“ I'm not leaving."
"But, you absurd Million, of course you are," I said. "You can't go on living in Laburnum Grove now. You're a rich man's heiress——"
"Will that stop me living where I want? I'm all alone in the world," faltered Million, suddenly looking small and forlorn as she sat there by the big desk. "You're the only real friend I got in the world, Miss Beatrice. I always liked you. You always talked to me as if you was no more a young lady than what I was. D'you think——" Her voice shook. She seemed to have forgotten the presence of old Mr. Chesterton. ”

“ And I, Beatrice Lovelace, the pauper, the come-down-in-the-world, turned back into No. 45, feeling as if what laughter there had been in my life had gone out of it for ever!
I suppose I'd better have lunch—Million's laid it ready for me for the last time!—then sit in the drawing-room, finishing my darning, and waiting for my aunt's return. If Million had been here I could have spent the afternoon with her in the kitchen. Million gone! I feel lost without her.
Nothing else will happen to-day.
There's a ring at the bell. How unlike Aunt Anastasia to forget her key! I must go.... ”

“ Meanwhile Miss Million's cousin and would-be husband was going on expatiating on the many advantages, to a young lady in her position, of having a real man to look after her interests——
"All very true. But I don't know as I'm exactly hard up for a husband," retorted Miss Million, with a little simper and a blush that I knew was called up by the memory of the blue, black-lashed eyes of a certain Irish scamp and scaramouch who ought to be put in the stocks at Charing Cross as an example to all nice girls of the kind of young man whom it is desirable to avoid and to snub. ”

“ Ask her. The first time in her life she's ever had a good time is now, since she's been working for some one that does realise that a girl's got to have her bit of fun and liberty same as everybody else, be she duchess or be she lady's-maid!"
"She is a lady's-maid no longer," said my Aunt Anastasia, in a voice that shook. The others looked fearfully uncomfortable, all except Miss Vi Vassity, who seemed to be hanging with the keenest enjoyment upon every syllable that fell from the lips of the two "opposing parties."
"My niece is no longer a lady's-maid," repeated Aunt Anastasia. ”

“ I had hoped that she might appeal to the chivalrous side of the young American's nature; appeal to it so that he might give up his idea of fighting for his rights—if they are his rights! But if Million is going to put her back up and become independent—well, they'll fight. And there'll be a catastrophe, and the downfall of Million's prosperity, and general wretchedness for Miss Million and her maid—oh, dear, what a prospect! ”

“ Then she added to the young American, whose boyish eyes were fixed unflinchingly upon her: "Do you know, I am afraid you are an awful flatterer and deceiver. You are just trying to see how much I am going to take in about you thinking me nice-looking and all that!"
If she could only have had these misgivings about Mr. Burke himself, instead of their being about the cousin who, I think, says very little that he does not really mean! Always the wrong people get credit for insincerity! "I am not a flatterer, believe me," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop. ”