CHAPTER VI
ANOTHER RUMPUS!
"OH!" I said--and felt myself blushing scarlet at the memory of all theabsurd little incidents that were between me and this stranger. Theincident of the garden-hose, and of my giving him a shower-bath with itthe other evening; and how Aunt Anastasia had poured added cold waterover him in a metaphorical manner of speaking. Then came the memory ofhow we had met the next morning on the top of the 'bus when I waschaperoning Million to her lawyer's. And of how the young man, chastenedby my aunt's best iced manner the night before, wouldn't even have said"Good morning" unless I had addressed him. It was all very absurd, butconfusing.
He said, in that pleasant voice of his: "Good afternoon! I wish toreturn some property of yours."
"Of mine?" I said, puzzled. I wondered whether a bit of lace of ours orsomething of that sort had blown out of the window of No. 45 into thegarden of No. 44.
But the young man, putting his hand into his jacket pocket, took out andheld in the palm of his hand the "property." It was an oval silverbrooch, bearing in raised letters the name "Nellie." The young man said,"I noticed it on the top of the 'bus just after you got off the othermorning; you must have dropped it----"
"Oh! Thank you so much," I began, taking the brooch. "It isn't mine, asa matter of fact, but----"
"Oh," he said pleasantly, "you are not 'Nellie'?"
Then he hadn't heard Aunt Anastasia calling me in that very raspingvoice the other evening.
"No," I said, "'Nellie' is our maid; at least she was our maid."
"Oh, really?" he said, very interested.
He has a delightful face. I don't wonder Million said he was just whatshe meant by "the sort of young gentleman" that she would like to marry.
Then a thought struck me.
Why not?
Men have married their pretty cooks before now. Why shouldn't this niceyoung man be Million's fate? He certainly did seem interested in her. Itwould be a regular King-Cophetua-and-the-Beggar-Maid romance. Only,owing to her riches, it would be Million's role to play Queen Cophetuato this young man, who was too poor to go into the Army. So, feelingquite thrilled by the prospect of looking on at this love story, I said:"Would you like to send the brooch on to--to--er--to Miss Nellie Millionyourself?" You see, I thought if he knew where to take it, he wouldprobably go at once to the Hostelry for Cats of Independent Means andsee Million, and find out about her being now a young lady ofleisure--and--well, that might be the beginning of things!
So I smiled at him and added in my most friendly voice, "Would you likeme to give you the address?"
It was at this moment--this precise moment before he'd even had timeto answer--that Aunt Anastasia, back from her visit to her friend, cameup the tiny garden path behind him.
Yes, and this was the scene that met her gaze: her niece, her poorbrother's child, Lady Anastasia's great-granddaughter (who had alreadybeen reproved for forgetting that she belonged to "OUR FAMILY"),standing at the front door of her abode to repeat the offence for whichshe had been taken to task--namely, "talking to one of the impossiblepeople who live about here!" The way in which Aunt Anastasia stalkedpast the young man was more withering than the most annihilating glanceshe could have given him.
To me she said, in a voice that matched her look: "Beatrice, come intothe house."
I went into the drawing-room.
She followed me.
Then the storm broke!
Of all the many "rows" I've had since I came to live with AuntAnastasia, this did, as Million would have said, "take the bun."
"Beatrice!" She threw my name at me as if it had been a glove thrown inmy face. "Beatrice! Little cause as I have to think well of you, I didat least trust you!"
"You've no reason, Auntie," said I, holding myself as stiff as she did(which was pretty ramroddy). "You've no reason not to trust me."
"What?" A bitter little laugh. "No sooner is my back turned, no soonerhave I left you alone in the house, than you betray my confidence. Howdo I find you, after all that I said to you only the other evening onthis same subject? Standing there on the doorstep, just as if you'd beenpoor Million, poor little gutter-bred upstart, preparing to receive----"
"I wasn't 'preparing to receive' anybody!" hotly from me.
"No?" with icy satire from Aunt Anastasia. "You were not even going toask the young man in? You stood there, like a scullery-maid indulging ina vulgar flirtation with a policeman."
"I wasn't, I wasn't."
"I heard you giving him an address where he could write to you,doubtless?"
"Write to me? It was nothing of the kind," I took up, ready to stampwith rage. "It was--it was Million's address I was going to give to thatyoung man."
"A likely story! Million, indeed!"
"You don't believe me? How dare you not, Aunt Anastasia? Look! Here'sthe proof!" And I held out to her the oval silver brooch with the raised"Nellie" upon it.
"Look! This is Million's brooch. She dropped it on the 'bus the othermorning. And the young man from next door found it. And he came round toreturn it----"
"Yes. As soon as he had made certain, or had been assured, that youwould be alone," declared my Aunt Anastasia, with unyielding accusationin every angle of her. "To return Million's brooch! Oh, Beatrice, youmust think me very unsophisticated!" The thin lips curled. "This is anexcuse even thinner than that about the garden-hose the other evening.No doubt there have been others. How long have you been carrying on thisunderhand and odious flirtation with that unspeakable young cad?"
"Auntie!" I felt myself shaking all over with justifiable indignation. Aflirtation? I? With that young man! Why, why--when I'd such honourableintentions of securing him, as her "gentleman" lover, for our newly madeheiress, Million! I simply boiled over with righteous rage. I said,"You've no right to make such a suggestion."
"Beatrice! You forget to whom you are speaking."
"I don't. But I'm twenty-three, and I don't think you need go ontreating me as if I were a schoolgirl, refusing to listen to what I haveto say. Allowing me no liberty, no friends----"
"Friends! Is that why you make your own in this hole-and-cornerfashion?"
"I shouldn't be to blame if I did!" I declared hotly. "You don't realisewhat my life is here with you. It's all very well for you to live in thepast, pondering over the dear departed glories of our family. But at myage one doesn't care twopence for an illustrious past. What one wants issomething to do, and to be--and to enjoy--in the present! I don't seewhy it should be enough for me to remember that, even if I am poor, I amstill Lady Anastasia's great-granddaughter. It isn't enough! It's themost futile sort of existence in the whole world--living up to an oldpedigree when you haven't even got money enough to buy yourself theright kind of shoes. You sneer at Million for being what you callnouveau-riche. It isn't half as humiliating and ridiculous as being whatwe are--nouveau-pauvre!"
"Beatrice, I think you have gone mad, to say such things."
"Do you? I haven't. I've been thinking them inside me formonths--years," I told her violently. The oval mirror on the oppositeside of the wall from that Gainsborough portrait of Lady Anastasiashowed a queer picture; the picture of a tall, angular, grey-haired andaristocratic-looking spinster in steel-grey alpaca, coldly facing asmall, rumpled-looking girl (myself) with the tense pose, the brightflush, and the clenched hands of anger. "And now I can't--I can't standthis sort of thing any longer----"
"May I ask what you intend to do?"
"To go!" I had only that instant thought of it. But once the words wereout of my mouth I realised that it was the only thing in the world todo. Hadn't Million said so only this morning when she bade me good-bye?"You ought to clear out of this house.... You ought to have a fair oldbust-up, Miss Beatrice. And then you ought to bunk!"
Well! "The fair old bust-up" I'd had, or was having. The next thing was"to bunk"!
Aunt Anastasia regarded me with cold eyes and a still more contemptuouscurl
of the lip.
"You will go, Beatrice? But how? To what?"
"To earn my own living----"
"What? There is nothing that you can do."
"I know," I admitted resentfully. "That's another grudge I have againstour family. They never have had to 'come down into the market-place.'Consequently they wouldn't adapt themselves to the new conditions andfit themselves for the market now. They'd rather stand aside andvegetate in a mental backwater on twopence a year, thinking, 'We arestill Lovelaces,' and learning nothing, nothing. Talk about 'The IdleRich'! They are not such cucumbers of the ground as 'The Idle Poor'!I've been trained to nothing. Lots of the girls who live along this roadhave taken up typewriting, or County Council cookery, orteaching--things that will give them independence. I have nothing of thesort to fall back upon. I might take care of little children, perhaps,but people like Norland nurses at a hundred a year nowadays. Or I mightfind a post as a lady's maid----"
"What?"
"Well, you taught me to pack and to mend lace, Auntie! And I can dohair--it's the only natural gift I've got," I said. "Perhaps I might getthem to give me a chance in some small hairdresser's to begin with."
"You are talking nonsense, and you do not even mean what you say,child."
"I mean every word of it, and I don't see why it should be nonsense," Ipersisted. "It isn't, when these other girls talk of making a career forthemselves somehow. They can get on----"
"They are not ladies."
"It's a deadly handicap being what our family calls a lady," said I."I'm going to stop being one and to have something like a life of my ownat last."
"I forbid you," said Aunt Anastasia, in her stoniest voice, "I forbidyou to do anything that is unbefitting my niece, my brother's child, andLady Anastasia's great-granddaughter!"
"Auntie, I am past twenty-one," I said quite quietly. "No one can'forbid' my doing anything that is within the law! And I'm going to takethe rest of my life into my own hands."