Miss Million's Maid: A Romance of Love and Fortune

by Berta Ruck

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  THE FORTUNES OF WAR

  WAR--European war was at our very doors, and it seemed more than likelythat England was going to join in, Mr. Jessop said.

  He went on, quite quietly, to inform us that it would find him ready, heguessed. He'd sent in his application early to the Royal Flying Corps,and he guessed that next time we saw him he'd be an Army aviator allright, in training for using his own bomb-dropper----

  Here his young cousin dropped her soup-spoon with a clatter.

  "What?" cried Miss Million sharply. "You? If there is any war, shall youstart fighting the Germans?"

  "I should say so!" smiled Mr. Hiram P. Jessop. "Why, yes!"

  "But you're American! Why ever on earth should you fight?" demanded MissMillion rather shrilly. "Nothing to do with you! You aren't English; youaren't Belgium! You belong to a--what's it?--a neutral nation!"

  "I guess I'm not going to let that stand in my way any," said Mr. HiramP. Jessop, "if there's a chance of getting in at those hounds!"

  And I saw a curious change come over my mistress's small, bonny face asshe regarded this man who--under no obligation to fight--felt he couldnot merely look on at a struggle between Right and Might.

  It was not the sentimental, girlish adoration that she had turned uponher first fancy, the Honourable Jim.

  It was the look of a real woman upon the man who pleases her.

  This was not the only quick change which the war made.

  For instance, who would have thought that those German Jews, theRattenheimers, would ever have had to be interned in a camp in themiddle of England, away from all their friends and all theirjewel-collecting pursuits?

  And who would have thought that Mr. Hiram P. Jessop--I beg his pardon! Imean Flight-Lieutenant H. P. Jessop, of the Royal Flying Corps, wasresponsible for the prompt and uncompromising manner in which that aliencouple were "dropped upon" by the authorities. Well! I should like tohope that their imprisonment was at least half as uncomfortable as thatnight which my mistress and I passed--thanks to them--at Vine Streetpolice-station! But no, I suppose that's too much to expect.

  Then there's the change that has been brought about by the war in myyoung mistress herself.

  At a time when all uniform is glorious, she herself has gone back touniform, to her old, cast-aside livery of the print frock, the smallwhite cap, the apron of domestic service!

  I gasped when I first heard what she intended to take up, namely, theposition of "ward-maid" in a big London house that has been turned intoa hospital for wounded officers.

  "I must do something for them," she told me. "I feel I must!"

  "Well, but why this particular thing?" I demurred. "If you wanted to youcould take up nursing----"

  "Nursin', nothing!" she retorted, in an idiom which she had borrowedfrom the Flight-Lieutenant. "To begin with, I've no gift that way. Iknow I haven't; a girl can feel that in her bones. Secondly, I ain't notraining for it. I'm not one of these that imagine because it goes totheir heart to see a pore fellow with a bandage round his head, well,they're a born nurse!"

  "With your money," I told her, "you could provide that hospital with anynumber of indoor maids to do the work!"

  "Yes. And how'd they do it? Not as I should," maintained theSoldier's-Orphanage-trained girl very proudly. "I know the ways o' someo' these townified maids; haven't I watched 'em all down Laburnum Grove?I'm going to make my 'bit' another way!"

  From morn until dewy eve the girl who was once Miss Million, theheiress, works harder than ever she worked when she was my AuntAnastasia's maid-of-all-work. Thursday is her afternoon off; Thursdaysees her motoring in the Park, exquisitely got up in a frock and fursthat were bought during the "shopping orgy" of the first week of herwealth. And----

  She has thought it over once again, and she has promised to marry heraviator on his very first leave.

  "Seemed to make all the difference, him being a soldier; seems to makeanybody just twice the man they was before. And him just three times,seeing he'd no real call to go and fight, only he wanted to!" sheadmitted to me, when we were all packing up to come away from the housein Wales, where we had left the ventriloquist's wife in charge.

  So that, if all's well, I shall yet have the task of attiring MissNellie Million in her shimmering bridal-gown and her filmy veil for thatwedding of hers on which I had set my heart from the beginning.

  Only--her bridesmaids will have to be Marmora, the Breathing StatueGirl, and the lively little Boy-Impersonator.

  Vi Vassity and I will be debarred from that function, because we're bothmarried women.

  Yes! I am married, too!

  But not to Mr. Reginald Brace.

  For when he persisted, "Why are you so sure you could never care?"

  I said frankly, "I hate to hurt you. But--Reginald, I don't like the wayyour hair grows."

  He looked at me in utter bewilderment through the darkness-made-visibleof those Welsh lamps.

  He said: "But a man can't help the way his hair grows!"

  "No. And a woman can't help the way she feels about it," I told himsadly but resolutely.

  He saw at last that I meant I wasn't going to take him. He went--aftersaying all those things about remembering me as the sweetest girl he'dever met, and if ever I wanted a friend, et cetera--all the pathetic,well-meant, useless things that I suppose a rejected man finds somecomfort in.

  He went back to a whirl of business at his bank, and he has stayed thereever since, "carrying on" his usual everyday job (the only sort of"carrying on" he knows, as Vi Vassity would say). In his way he is "onactive service" too; doing his duty by his country. There is somethingthe matter with his heart--besides his crossed-in-love affair, Imean--something that prevents him from enlisting. Very hard lines onhim, to be quite young and otherwise fit, but doomed to remain acivilian. Of course there have to be some people as civilians still. Wecouldn't get on without any civilians at all, could we?

  My lover joined as a trooper the day before war was officially declared.

  And he came over to Miss Million's house in Wales to tell us of hisplans the morning after Mr. Brace had gone off to town. He--the otherman--was still in the laurel-green chauffeur's kit that he was so soongoing to change for his Majesty's drab-coloured but glorious livery. AndI was in my maid's black, with cap and apron, when I opened the door tohim.

  "Where's your mistress? In the drawing-room? Then come into the library,child," said the Honourable Jim Burke, "for it's you I've come to callupon."

  "I've only a minute to spare you," I said forbiddingly, as I showed himinto the square, rather mouldy-smelling library, with its wall of unreadbooks and its family-portraits of dead and gone Price-Vaughans. "Andbesides, I don't think a chauffeur ought to come to the front doorand----"

  "I shall not be a chauffeur a minute longer than it takes me to get outof this dashed kit," said the Honourable Jim. Then he told me about hisenlisting for active service.

  "It won't be much time I shall have before that regiment gets itsorders," he said. "Time enough, though----"

  He paused and looked hard at me. So hard that I felt myself colouring,and turned away.

  He took a step after me. I felt him give a little pull at myapron-strings to make me look round.

  "Time enough to get married, darling of my heart," said Jim Burke,laughing softly.

  And he took me into his arms and kissed me; at first very gently, theneagerly, fiercely, as if to make up for time already lost and for allthat time yet to come when we must be apart from each other.

  This, if you please, was all the proposal that ever I had from the youngman.

  I know all his faults.

  Unscrupulous; he doesn't care how many duller and stodgier people heuses to his own advantage. Insincere; except to his wife. To me he showshis heart!

  Vain--well, with his attractions, hasn't he cause for it? Unstable aswater, he shall not excel; except in the moment of stress an
d the tightcorner where a hundred more trusted men might fail, as they did the dayhe won the Military Cross, when he took that German trenchsingle-handed, and was found with the enemy, aghast, surrendering inheaps around him!

  His dare-devil gaiety and recklessness are given value now by theconditions of this war. And I feel that he will come back to meunscratched at the end of the struggle, his career assured. It will beluck, his unfailing luck as usual--no merit of his!

  Meanwhile I wait hopefully.

  I feed my heart's hunger, as do so many other women, on pencilled scrapsof letters scrawled across the envelope "on active service."

  As for my living, I haven't gone back to Aunt Anastasia, nor have I yetsolved the weighty problem of how a woman of my class and requirementsis to live on the separation allowance. Now that Miss Million has goneback to her old work Mrs. James Burke has taken another job; well paid,and to a kindly mistress.

  Miss Vi Vassity's "dresser" gave notice because she had been offeredhigher wages by a French dancer. And London's Love, who, she says, hates"to see any strange face putting the liquid white on her shoulders,"offered the post to "little Smithie."

  I accepted.

  I live the queer, garish, artificially lighted life of the theatres now.I dress the hair and change the Paris frocks, and lace the corsets, andmend the pink silk fleshings of England's Premier Comedienne.

  I am in her dressing-room now, busily folding and putting away herscattered, scented garments. Even from here I can catch the roar ofapplause that goes up from every part of the theatre as she comes on inthat dainty, impertinent travesty of a Highlander's uniform to sing herlatest recruiting song, "The London Skittish."

  To the right of her making-up mirror there stands a massively framed,full-length photograph of a slim lad's figure in black tights. It's thepicture of that worthless trick cyclist, who was the love of ViVassity's life.

  Ah, Vi! Do you think he is the only man whose cropped dark hair has feltlike velvet beneath a woman's lips? The only man whose laugh has pierceda woman's heart "straight as a pebble drops into a pool"?

  The woman knows better. I know some one who----

  * * * * *

  Suddenly I saw his dark head, his laughing face in the mirror before me.

  Jim!

  I thought I must be dreaming.

  I turned; I met his black-lashed blue gaze.

  His broad-shouldered, khaki-clad form filled up the narrow doorway of ViVassity's dressing-room.

  "Child," he called in the inexpressibly soft Irish voice.

  He held out his arms.

  It was he--my husband.

  I ran to him....

  "Gently," he said, wincing ever so little. "Mind my shoulder, now. It'ssmashed--more or less completely."

  I cried out, seeing now that the jacket hung like a dolman upon hisshoulder. I faltered the thought that would come to any woman. Yes!However brave she was, however glad to let her man go out to do "hisbit," there is a limit to what she is willing to lose ... and there arestill young and strong and able-bodied civilians in England, untouchedeven by a Zeppelin bomb!

  I said: "You can't--you can't be sent out again?"

  "Bad cess to it, no," frowned my husband. "Don't look so relieved now,or I'll have to feel ashamed of you, Lady Ballyneck----"

  "What d'you call me?" I asked, not comprehending. It was some minutesbefore I did understand what he said about his dad and his brotherTerence, both "outed" the same day at Neuve Chapelle.

  "And ourselves saddled with the God-forsaken castle and the estate, savethe mark," said my husband, Lord Ballyneck, ruefully. "What we'll dowith it until we let it to Miss Million at a princely rental (as I meanto) the dear only knows! It's a fine match you've made for yourself,child, though, when all's said. A title, at all events. Sure I mighthave done better for myself," he concluded, with his blue eyes, alivewith mirth and tenderness, feasting on my face. "I might have donebetter for myself than Miss Million's maid!"

  THE END

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a Thompson Daviess. =Robinetta.= By Kate Douglas Wiggin. =Rocks of Valpre, The.= By Ethel M. Dell. =Rogue by Compulsion, A.= By Victor Bridges. =Rose in the Ring, The.= By George Barr McCutcheon. =Rose of the World.= By Agnes and Egerton Castle. =Rose of Old Harpeth, The.= By Maria Thompson Daviess. =Round the Corner in Gay Street.= By Grace S. Richmond. =Routledge Rides Alone.= By Will L. Comfort.

  =St. Elmo.= (Ill. Ed.) By Augusta J. Evans. =Salamander, The.= By Owen Johnson. =Scientific Sprague.= By Francis Lynde. =Second Violin, The.= By Grace S. Richmond. =Secret of the Reef, The.= By Harold Bindloss. =Secret History.= By C. N. & A. M. Williamson. =Self-Raised.= (Ill.) By Mrs. Southworth. =Septimus.= By William J. Locke. =Set in Silver.= By C. N. and A. M. Williamson. =Seven Darlings, The.= By Gouverneur Morris. =Shea of the Irish Brigade.= By Randall Parrish. =Shepherd of the Hills, The.= By Harold Bell Wright. =Sheriff of Dyke Hole, The.= By Ridgwell Cullum. =Sign at Six, The.= By Stewart Edw. White. =Silver Horde, The.= By Rex Beach. =Simon the Jester.= By William J. Locke. =Siren of the Snows, A.= By Stanley Shaw. =Sir Richard Calmady.= By Lucas Malet. =Sixty-First Second, The.= By Owen Johnson. =Slim Princess, The.= By George Ade. =Soldier of the Legion, A.= By C. N. and A. M. Williamson. =Somewhere in France.= By Richard Harding Davis. =Speckled Bird, A.= By Augusta Evans Wilson. =Spirit in Prison, A.= By Robert Hichens. =Spirit of the Border, The.= By Zane Grey. =Splendid Chance, The.= By Mary Hastings Bradley. =Spoilers, The.= By Rex Beach. =Spragge's Canyon.= By Horace Annesley Vachell. =Still Jim.= By Honore Willsie. =Story of Foss River Ranch, The.= By Ridgwell Cullum. =Story of Marco, The.= By Eleanor H. Porter. =Strange Disappearance, A.= By Anna Katherine Green. =Strawberry Acres.= By Grace S. Richmond. =Streets of Ascalon, The.= By Robert W. Chambers. =Sunshine Jane.= By Anne Warner. =Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop.= By Anne Warner. =Sword of the Old Frontier, A.= By Randall Parrish.

  =Tales of Sherlock Holmes.= By A. Conan Doyle. =Taming of Zenas Henry, The.= By Sara Ware Bassett. =Tarzan of the Apes.= By Edgar R. Burroughs. =Taste of Apples, The.= By Jennette Lee. =Tempting of Tavernake, The.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. =Tess of the D'Urbervilles.= By Thomas Hardy. =Thankful Inheritance.= By Joseph C. Lincoln. =That Affair Next Door.= By Anna Katharine Green. =That Printer of Udell's.= By Harold Bell Wright. =Their Yesterdays.= By Harold Bell Wright. =The Side of the Angels.= By Basil King. =Throwback, The.= By Alfred Henry Lewis. =Thurston of Orchard Valley.= By Harold Bindloss. =To M. L. G.; or, He Who Passed.= By Anon. =Trail of the Axe, The.= By Ridgwell Cullum. =Trail of Yesterday, The.= By Chas. A. Seltzer. =Treasure of Heaven, The.= By Marie Corelli. =Truth Dexter.= By Sidney McCall. =T. Tembarom.= By Frances Hodgson Burnett. =Turbulent Duchess, The.= By Percy J. Brebner. =Twenty-fourth of June, The.= By Grace S. Richmond. =Twins of Suffering Creek, The.= By Ridgwell Cullum. =Two-Gun Man, The.= By Charles A. Seltzer.

  =Uncle William.= By Jeannette Lee. =Under the Country Sky.= By Grace S. Richmond. =Unknown Mr. Kent, The.= By Roy Norton. ="Unto Caesar."= By Baronett Orczy. =Up From Slavery.= By Booker T. Washington.

  =Valiants of Virginia, The.= By Hallie Erminie Rives. =Valley of Fear, The.= By Sir A. Conan Doyle. =Vane of the Timberlands.= By Harold Bindloss. =Vanished Messenger, The.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. =Vashti.= By Augusta Evans Wilson. =Village of Vagabonds, A.= By F. Berkley Smith. =Visioning, The.= By Susan Glaspell.

  =Wall of Men, A.= By Margaret H. McCarter. =Wallingford in His Prime.= By George Randolph Chester. =Wanted--A Chaperon.= By Paul Leicester Ford. =Wanted--A Matchmaker.= By Paul Leicester Ford. =Watchers of the Plains, The.= By Ridgwell Cullum. =Way Home, The.= By Basil King. =Way of an Eagle, The.= By E. M. Dell. =Way of a Man, The.= By Emerson Hough. =Way of the Strong, The.= By Ridgwell Cullum. =Way of These Women, The.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. =Weavers, The.= By Gilbert Parker. =West Wind, The.= By Cyrus T. Brady. =When Wilderness Was King.= By Randolph Parrish. =Where the Trail Divides.= By Will Lillibridge. =Where There's a Will.= By Mary R. Rinehart. =White Sister, The.= By Marion Crawford. =White Waterfall, The.= By James Francis Dwyer. =Who Goes There?= By Robert W. Chambers. =Window at the White Cat, The.= By Mary Roberts Rinehart. =Winning of Barbara Worth, The.= By Harold Bell Wright. =Winning the Wilderness.= By Margaret Hill McCarter. =With Juliet in England.= By Grace S. Richmond. =Witness for the Defense, The.= By A. E. W. Mason. =Woman in Question, The.= By John Reed Scott. =Woman Haters, The.= By Joseph C. Lincoln. =Woman Thou Gavest Me, The.= By Hall Caine. =Woodcarver of 'Lympus, The.= By Mary E. Waller. =Woodfire in No. 3, The.= By F. Hopkinson Smith. =Wooing of Rosamond Fayre, The.= By Berta Ruck.

  =You Never Know Your Luck.= By Gilbert Parker. =Younger Set, The.= By Robert W. Chambers.

  Transcriber's Notes

  Passages in bold are indicated by =equal signs=.

  Passages in italics are indicated by _underscores_.

  Small caps have been replaced with ALL CAPS.

  Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of thespeakers. Those words were retained as-is.

  Errors in punctuations were not corrected unless otherwise noted below:

  On the title page, "In Another Girls Shoes" was replaced with "InAnother Girl's Shoes".

  On page 52, "to topsy-turvy" was replaced with "too topsy-turvy."

  On page 54, "is not her" was replaced with "is not here".

  On page 73, a quotation mark was placed before "Look at the card!".

  On page 95, a period was added after "I will take it".

  On page 100, the quotation mark was removed from before "Then, in spiteof myself".

  On page 126, a quotation mark was placed after "a Perfeshional.".

  On page 136, a quotation mark was placed after "but----".

  On page 162, the quotation mark was removed after "what is thenext----".

  On page 193, the double quotation mark before "Yours cordially" wasreplaced with a single quotation mark.

  On page 208, "reasssuring" was replaced with "reassuring".

  On page 216, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "oe".

  On page 227, "what he stood up in" was replaced with "what she stood upin".

  On page 244, a quotation mark was placed before "Certainly there".

  On page 252, the quotation mark was removed after "certain about therules."

  On page 258, a quotation mark was placed after "for an Object!".

  On page 268, a quotation mark was placed after "she agreed to do so".

  On page 284, "who who" was replaced with "who".

  On page 310, a quotation mark was placed before "Heavens!".

  On page 340, a quotation mark was placed after "whoever it is does."

  On page 350, the double quotation marks around "Refuge." was replacedwith single quotation marks.

  On page 351, the double quotation marks around "Refuge." was replacedwith single quotation marks.

  In the ads at the end of the book, a period was added at the end of thetitles and authors, where they were missing. Also, the repeated headerswere removed in the ads.