V
Lady Elfredagave Pikey a shrewd glance to make sure that the snores werebona fide. Then she got up and with perfectly amazingsang froidtook off her fur coat.
“Give me your ulster, please.” Napoleon—Bismarck—Caesar—Hannibal were in that pregnant whisper.
The pencil dropped from the trembling fingers of Miss Cass. Her heart took a great leap. Was this a serious demand? Could this amazing girl mean what her words implied?
“Your hat as well, please.”
In the growing dusk, now as ever a true friend of conspiracy, she saw the girl opposite withdraw a couple of pins and remove her hat. Was it conceivable that she was in earnest!
The urgency of the whisper laid that doubt at rest. A thrill quickened the soul of Girlie Cass. Her bewildered mind began to spin with a new and strange idea. It was madness ... it was lunacy ... and yet ... if only ... one could screw up one’s courage....
“You will have Mrs. Pike to look after you. She is very experienced. If you hold your tongue you can’t go wrong.” Incredible words, incredible girl, incredibleproposition! “You will have all my clothes, of course. I will see that my trunks are put in the luggage cart. And”—the whisper was dæmonic—“Mrs. Pike has some money.”
Girlie Cass could hardly breathe for excitement.The Patricianfollowed the pencil on to the floor. “There is a tide, etc.” Her heart began to hit her ribs violently.
“Give me your ulster, please.”
If only one’s head would not spin so!
“You’ll find this coat warmer and it’s very comfortable. It’ll be quite an amusing fortnight. Nobody will know—except Mrs. Pike, of course, who can be trusted implicitly. I quite think you’ll like it.”
The brain of Miss Cass was whirling helplessly. And yet there was a demon in hers also. What an opportunity, what a golden opportunity for first-hand experience! What a chance to see the great world from the inside. To be, for one whole fortnight, a real authentic daughter of a marquis ... if only one had courage!
Miss Cass never really knew how it happened, but a mile or so farther on she awoke to the momentous fact that she was wearing a sealskin coat with a skunk collar and a velour hat with a twist of skunk round it, while immediately opposite was a girl in a green ulster with a hat also trimmed with green.
“Please give me your ticket. This is mine.”
By the aid of some power not herself Miss Cass exchangedtickets with the Force that was luring her to glory and destruction.
Finally, as an afterthought, a typewritten abstract of “The Lady of Laxton” was handed to Miss Cass.
“You mustn’t forget your part in the play. For any one with a good memory it will be quite easy to learn. And you’ll find the acting rather fun, I think.”
Miss Cass was living in a dream which could not envisage details, but she submitted to the play being pressed into her hand. Without so much as a glance at the brown paper cover she placed it mechanically in the pocket of the fur coat.
The next thing to happen in the bewildered consciousness of Miss Cass was the stopping of the train. Lady Elfreda let down the window to disclose a lighted station lamp with the name “Clavering St. Mary’s” painted thereon. Somehow at the moment this legend meant nothing to Miss Cass; the land she was living in now was east of the sun, west of the moon. But a voice amazingly dominant said: “Here we are. Pikey, wake up.” And then the owner of the voice put her head out of the window and summoned a porter.
A leisurely functionary came up to the carriage door and opened it. As he did so the lady of the green ulster said with an air of quiet competence which in the circumstances was almost uncanny, “There are two trunks in the luggage van. Or is it three, Pikey? Do wake up.”
Pikey somnolently grunted the word “three” and then with a supreme effort stepped, or rather lurched, out onto the platform, while the porter collected the flotsam of the compartment and bore them to an adjacent trolley.
“Three trunks in the luggage van, porter.”
“Very good, miss.
“They are labeled ‘Clavering Park’—aren’t they, Pikey?”
The reply was a drowsy affirmative.
“You have one, too, haven’t you?” said Elfreda in a bold aside, with one eye upon her maid.
Girlie confessed a small tin one labeled “Cass.”
“Very good, miss,” said the porter again.
The Lady of the Green Ulster stepped with calm audacity onto the platform. In a kind of trance Miss Fur Coat followed her.
The porter had no difficulty in retrieving three important looking trunks from the luggage van. Nor did the small tin one present any obstacle. When all the luggage had been duly collected, Elfreda marshaled Pikey and Miss Cass through the booking office and past the ticket collector into the station yard.
Several vehicles were waiting. Foremost of these was a stylish motor omnibus. Elfreda instinctively made a bee-line for it.
“Are you from Clavering Park?” she said to the smart footman with a wound stripe on his sleeve who stood by the open door.
The man said that he was from Clavering Park, whereon Miss Green Ulster pointed to the Fur Coat and informed him that its occupant was Lady Elfreda Catkin; whereon she was informed that there was a cart for the luggage, but owing to the shortage of petrol there was only the omnibus for everybody.
Miss Fur Coat, standing helpless and mazed in her borrowed plumes beside the omnibus door was hustled, literally hustled, into the interior of the vehicle, and Pikey, still far too drowsy even to begin to grapple with the situation in its strange complexity, was hustled in after her. While the porter put in rugs and umbrellas and a couple of the smaller cases under the competent direction of the lady who stood by the door of the omnibus, Pikey at the same time was adjured by her mistress in a stern whisper to play the game, to hold her tongue, and not to give anything away.
These instructions were Greek to the unfortunate Pikey in her present extremely somnolent condition. She made one feeble, rather despairing effort to come to grips with a matter that was frankly beyond her, but before she could rouse her will to any real activity the footman had been ordered to start.
“I am to wait, ma’am, for another guest.”
Elfreda bit her lip sharply. For the moment she had forgotten the existence of the little baronet. Almost immediately, however, she received a forcible reminder of it. Sir Toby, who had traveled lowerdown the long train, was to be seen emerging from the booking office.
For the last time Elfreda thrust her head into the omnibus interior. “Mind you play up, Pikey. I will write to you in a day or two.”
Poor bewildered Pikey was only able to emit a grunt of hopeless defeat before Sir Toby Philpot, in the company of his faithful body servant, Mr. O’Toole, converged upon the omnibus door. After a brief exchange of remarks with the tall footman who stood thereby, the small baronet took his seat gracefully beside the lady of the fur coat, and Mr. O’Toole hoisted his respectful bulk alongside Pikey, who was already verging once more upon the comatose.
At the same moment Elfreda felt in the very marrow of her wicked bones that the tremendous risk she was taking must end all too soon in disaster. But she was still in the thrall of the demon. The fun would be gorgeous while it lasted; it would enable certain people to realize that the times had changed; moreover, having definitely burnt her boats, this was not a moment for human weakness. Therefore she said in the private ear of the tall footman, “Don’t wait for me. I am not coming with you.” And then she turned discreetly away from the door of the omnibus, saw the right trunks put into the luggage cart and accompanied the porter with the modest residue to a dogcart twenty yards away.
Brief colloquy with a bewhiskered Jehu in a fadedsnuff-colored livery and a battered furry topper proved this vehicle to be from The Laurels and that it was awaiting the arrival of the London train.
“Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson?”
Jehu, who combined the functions of groom, gardener and general factotum, said gruffly that he was Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson and that Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson hoped they would be able to squeeze the box of the new governess into the back of the cart without chipping the fresh paint. It took but a minute or two for the porter to dispose of the very modest luggage labeled “Cass” and to accept for his general services a fee considerably in excess of what he had reason to expect; and then the groom-gardener, one John Small by name, said curtly, “Jump in, miss. We can’t keep this ’orse standin’ here all night.”
Without showing the slightest intention to obey the order, the new governess looked at the horse in critical fashion. “I hope,” she said impersonally, “he won’t take it into his head to sit down.”
The reply, although sweetly given, did not make at all a favorable impression on Mr. Small, who was a great autocrat within his sphere; the porter, however, his heart warmed by half a crown, smiled broadly. The horse pawed impatiently and Mr. Small coughed in a hostile manner, but nothing would induce the new governess to ascend to the vacant seat by his side until the Clavering Park omnibus had actually quitted the station yard.