VIII
Pikeywas still in a rather dazed condition. She had been traveling all day and most of the previous night and she was not so young as she once was; besides, she had not quite shaken off the thrall of a potent vintage wine. As a matter of fact, she had not been really awake since Newbury. And it would seem that the mind can play some decidedly weird tricks when one is past sixty and one has missed a whole night’s rest!
For example, Pikey could almost have taken a Bible oath, so vivid was the impression, that her mistress....
However, that was clearly impossible! A cup of tea in the severely correct surroundings of the housekeeper’s room, in which, as the representative of an old marquisate, she had been at once accorded considerable prestige, had proved to her quite definitely that this disorder of mind reflected no sort of credit upon her.
Her young ladyship had always been a little wild. And as her guardian knew to her cost, she had given more trouble, one way and another, than all the rest of the family together. She might be capable of anything. At the same time there was surely a limit beyond which even Elfreda would not go! Strengthenedby this pious thought, the still rather bewildered Pikey had proceeded to unpack.
Not feeling either too proud or too sure of herself, the ancient handmaid went on with her task some little time longer before she ventured to look up to confront her young mistress. At last she rose from her knees and said with a formal air which was a concession to her sense of responsibility, “I think the blue one, my lady, for this evening.”
As Pikey spoke she came forward to assist in the removal of the fur coat. She was a Dragon, but she was also a first-class servant who knew her place to a hair’s breadth.
The shock she met with half stunned her. From between the hat and the skunk collar of her mistress, a small white face was gazing at her piteously.
There was a silence grim and tense, in which the hearts of both the parties to it seemed to stop beating.
“Why! ... w-what ... areyou... doing ... here!” gasped the luckless Pikey at last.
The gray eyes of Girlie filmed ever so lightly with tears. “I ... I ... Lady Elfreda!” The strangled whisper was half a sob.
Pikey recoiled with her horrified gaze still on the hat and coat of her mistress. And then, being by no means a fool, in one blinding, hideous flash of insight she saw it all....
The little wretch had surpassed herself! Poor Pikey grew faint and rather chill. Her charge had playedmore than one mad prank in her life of twenty years, but in its daring and its wickedness this exploit was surely incredible. All the same there was the hard, cold fact and it had to be faced.
“Why did you let her!” The voice and the look of the Dragon threatened actual bodily violence to Miss Cass.
“I—I didn’t seem able to prevent her.”
Reading the gentle, rather scared eyes, the truculent Pikey felt these feeble words to be literally true. At the beck of a rather grim sense of humor the old retainer bared her yellow teeth. It was almost in her heart to admire the Little Beast; yet at the same moment she was consumed with a passion to shake the life out of poor Miss No-Class.
“Where has she gone—tell me that!” So fierce was the Werewolf that a look akin to terror entered Girlie’s eyes. The Lady of Laxton, however, did her best to give a coherent account of all that had happened.
“You say she has gone to The Laurels,” said Pikey, blankly. “And she has taken your luggage with her.” Darkness and eclipse stared the luckless duenna in the face. “I don’t know where The Laurels is. And, anyway, I doubt if there would be time to fetch her before dinner.”
Miss Cass not only doubted if there would be time to fetch her before dinner; privately she doubted also if in her present mood the wicked Elfreda would come if she were fetched.
“Well, I don’t know what to do,” groaned Pikey, “and that’s the truth.” The Deputy looked blankly at the duenna. Her white face grew piteous.
“Whatever do you suppose is going to happen!” The cold ferocity again struck terror into the heart of Girlie Cass.
“L-Lady Elfreda said it would be quite all right,” she was just able to gasp. “She said there was no one here who knew her. She said that if”—gathering herself for a supreme effort—“I—I—p-played up and didn’t give myself away it wouldn’t be found out.” And Miss Cass collapsed against the side of the bed.
“Wouldn’t be found out!” It was as much as Pikey could do to keep her hands off the little idiot.
Pikey, however, was not a fool. Already her mind had shaped the question of questions, What must she do? She did not forget that she had been sent specially from Ireland to take charge of one who had always insisted on going her own way, and if she now confessed that she had let herself be tricked in such a preposterous manner she would be severely hauled over the coals and might even lose the place which she valued beyond all things in this life. Again, immediately below the surface of the Dragon’s nature was the foolish, fond old nurse. Entering the Carabbas household in early life she had mothered a large family, first in a subordinate capacity, and then when it came to Elfreda’s turn, as absolute head of the nursery. Elfreda in consequence held quite a special place in heraffections. The family of Carabbas was the whole world and its wife as far as Pikey was concerned; the rest of the universe didn’t count at all; but the one who had given her more trouble than all the others together had been her particular charge. Had it ever been really necessary, the Werewolf would have gone to the stake for Elfreda.
If Pikey’s first thought was that she must not give herself away, the one that pressed it hard was that she must not give away her favorite. But she was faced with a situation of fantastic difficulty. It was frankly beyond her. She didn’t in the least know what to do.
Miss Cass was in similar case, except that somewhere in her confused mind was a pathetic but sublime faith in Lady Elfreda. The daughter of the marquis had solemnly promised with her air of uncanny competence that everything would turn out right if only her deputy “played up,” and somehow the bewildered but secretly flattered Girlie felt bound to believe her. Such a one as Lady Elfreda must know the ropes perfectly. And up to this point her mentor had been amazingly right. Everything had gone almost as merrily as a marriage bell.
“Well, I don’t know what to do, and that’s a fact,” said Pikey again.
In the end it was the lady of Laxton who really took the epic decision. There were several factors in the case which helped her to do so. Her faith was sublime, she had succeeded already, she was enormouslyambitious, such an amazing chance for first-hand experience could never recur, and when the worst had been said of her, with all her timidity she was a decidedly shrewd daughter of a long line of commercial sires. Besides at the very moment that the issue hung in the balance her tranced eyes beheld what no pen could describe: An enchanting shimmer of misty blue, silver and tulle laid out on the bed. It was such a dress as one day she might have dreamt of wearing, yet knowing well that she was never likely to do so.
That glorious confection decided Girlie Cass. She must play up, she must play up to the very height of her opportunity. “There is a tide,” etc. Inscrutable fate had ordained that she was to be the daughter of a marquis. Come what may she would be the daughter of a marquis and so prove herself worthy of her destiny.
The little lady, with a courage she knew and felt was superhuman, took off her coat and hat and then she said with a steadiness of tone she could not help admiring in herself, “I think you said the blue one.”
It was quite true that Pikey had said the blue one, but this audacity rendered her speechless. Certainly it solved the most pressing of their problems—for the time being at least—but the grim custodian of Family dignity would dearly have liked to slay Miss No-Class for her impudence.
How dare that sort of person take so much upon herself!
The soul of the lady of Laxton, however, had beenfired by the ravishing garment on the bed. And as the whole situation was poised so delicately that it seemed to hang upon a thread, the mere fact that she could muster courage enough for a definite lead sufficed to determine the course of events. Pikey continued to gaze at Miss Impudence with sour disfavor, but she was not slow to realize how small was the option left to her now. Moreover, it was the will of her mistress. And at that moment and in those circumstances, with her own sin of omission so heavy upon her, it would surely be wise to ensure it.
Nevertheless, the Werewolf eyed Miss No-Class with a ferocity that was positively frightening. “Sit down in that chair next the fire so that I can take off your shoes.” The tone went with the truculent eyes.
Quivering with a secret excitement that was more than half fear, the deputy daughter of the Marquis of Carabbas obeyed. Pikey knelt and came savagely to grips with a tarnished right foot. It seemed to minister to her inward rage that the shoes of the Deputy were obviously—too obviously!—cheap and that their heels were shod clumsily with rubber. And as if this were not enough for the aristocratic soul of Pikey, she discovered that certain concealed parts of the Deputy’s stockings had been freely darned. With a sniff of frank disgust she took up an elegant pair of bedroom slippers which had been set to warm in front of the fire and very reluctantly put them on the plebeian feet of Miss No-Class.
She did put them on, however. Then she rose like a sibyl, slowly and grimly from her knees, looked Miss No-Class straight in the eyes and said, “The first thing for you, my lady, is a bath.”
If a studied and ferocious irony had the power to slay, the Deputy-daughter of the Marquis of Carabbas could hardly have survived this first application of her title. The earnestly intelligent student ofThe Patricianflushed to the roots of her hair. Did this Ogress of a creature mean it for an insult? Did the woman wish to suggest that one who had been educated at the Laxton High School for Young Ladies, who had passed the Oxford Preliminary, who was the daughter of a solicitor, whose insight into human nature had been commended by theSaturday Sentinel, had the woman the effrontery to mean as much as her disgusted tone implied!
Girlie Cass mustered all her reserves. “I don’t really think I need a bath.” It was a colorable imitation of the tone of Miss Pond, the admired head-mistress of the Laxton High School.
Part of the answer of the Ogress was a snort; the other part was, “You won’t wear that dress unless you do have one.”
Miss Cass wisely concluded that it would be unworthy of human dignity to sustain the argument. Besides, the Ogress had already produced an entrancing dressing gown of pink silk. “Put on this,” she said, ruthlessly, “while I go and get your bath ready.”
Pikey thereupon collected a prince among sponges, a superb loofah, arecherchécake of scented soap, and grimly retired to the next apartment, leaving the Deputy, tingling with excitement yet raging with mortification, to shed her plebeian garments one by one.