“With pleasure,” said the young man, flushing slightly. “If you think your mother will be well enough to receive me?”
“The news I have to give will almost cure her. If you would dine with us? They will give us a dinner, now”—and she laughed childishly—“when I have paid the bill. It will be very stupid for you at a place like this, but you will have a welcome, and it is the best we can do.”
“It is the welcome I want,” said Hugh. “But if you and your mother could dine with me somewhere—”
“Another time we will.”
There were to be other times, of course!
“And this evening,” she went on, “we can talk of my beginning work, as your secretary. It shall be directly after Christmas?”
“Whenever you are ready.”
“I suppose you have friends to whom you will go for Christmas?”
“Not a friend.”
“Oh, perhaps we might be together—all three?”
“I’ll think of something pleasant for us to do, if you’ll let me.”
“How good you are! Then, till this evening. It will seem long till then.”
They shook hands once more. She had taken off her glove now, and her palm left on his a reminiscence of Peau d’Espagne. He did not know what the scent was, but it smelled rich and artificial, and he disliked to associate it with his new friend. “But probably it’s her mother’s, and she didn’t choose it herself,” he thought. “Well—I have a new interest in life now. I expect this is the best thing that’s happened to me for a long time.”
As he walked back to his hotel, his head was full of plans for the girl’s transient pleasure and lasting benefit. “Poor lonely child,” he thought. “And what a mother! She ought not to be left with a person like that. She ought to marry. It would be a good deed to take her away from such an influence. So young, and so ingenuous as she is still, in spite of the surroundings she must have known, she is capable of becoming a noble woman. Perhaps, if she turns out to be really as sweet and gentle as she seems—”
The sentence broke off unfinished, in his mind, and ended with a great sigh.
There could be only second best, and third best things in life for him now, since love was over, and it would be impossible for him to care for an angel from heaven, who had not the face and the dear ways of the girl he had lost. But second best things might be better than no good things at all, if only one made up one’s mind to accept them thankfully. And it was a shame to waste so much money on himself, when there were soft-eyed, innocent girls in the world who ought to be sheltered and protected from harm.
CHAPTER THREE: WHEN THE CURTAIN WAS DOWN
The soft-eyed, innocent girl who had inspired the thought went into the hotel, and was rather cross to the youthful concierge, because the ascenseur was not working. There were three flights of stairs to mount before she reached her room, and she was so anxious to open her bag to see what was inside, that she ran up very fast, so fast that she stepped on her dress and ripped out a long line of gathers. Her eyes were not nearly as soft as they had been, while she picked up the hanging folds of pink cloth, and went on.
The narrow corridor at the top of the staircase was somewhat dark, and, her eyes accustomed to the brilliant light out of doors, the girl stumbled against a child who was coming towards her. “Petit bête!” she snapped. “You have all but made me fall. Awkward little thing, why don’t you keep out of people’s way?”
The child flushed. She would have liked to answer that it was Mademoiselle who had got in her way; but Mother wished her to be always polite. “I am sorry,” she replied instead, not saying a word about the poor little toes which the pretty pink lady had crushed.
“Well, then, if you are sorry, why don’t you let me pass?” asked the girl of the soft eyes.
“If you please, I want to give you a note,” said the child, anxiously searching a small pocket. “It’s from Mother, for Madame. She told me to take it to your door; so I did, several times, but nobody answered. Here ’tis, please, Mademoiselle.”
Mademoiselle snatched it from the hand, which was very tiny, and pink, with dimples where grown up folk have knuckles. She then pushed past the child, and went on to a door at the end of the passage, which she threw open, without knocking.
“Eh bien, Julie! You have been gone long enough to break the bank twice over. What luck have you had?” exclaimed the husky voice of a woman who sat in an easy chair beside a wood fire, telling her own fortune with an old pack of cards, spread upon a sewing board, on her capacious lap.
She was in a soiled dressing gown of purple flannel, with several of the buttons off. In the clear light of a window at the woman’s back, her hair, with a groundwork of crimson, was overshot with iridescent lights. On a small table at her side a tray had been left, with the remains of déjeuner; a jug stained brown with streaks of coffee; a crumbled crescent roll; some balls of silver paper which had contained cream chocolates; ends of cigarettes, and a scattered gray film of ashes. At her feet a toy black Pomeranian lay coiled on the torn bodice of a red dress; and all the room was in disorder, with an indiscriminate litter of hats, gloves, French novels, feather boas, slippers, and fallen blouses or skirts.
The lady of the roses went to the mirror over the untidy mantel piece, and looked at herself, as she answered. “No luck at roulette or trente. But the best of luck outside.”
“What, then?”
The girl began to hum, as she powdered her nose with a white glove, lying in a powder box.
“You remember le beau brun?”
“The young man in Paris you made so many enquiries about at Ritz’s? Is he here?”
“He is. I’ve just had lunch with him. Oh, there are lots of things to tell. He is a good boy.”
“How, good? You told him we had had losses?”
“I painted a sad picture. He was most sympathetic.”
“To what extent?”
“Chère maman! One would think we were vulgar adventuresses. We are not. He respects me, this dear young man, and it is right that he should. I deserve to be respected. You know the fable about the dog who dropped his meat in the water, trying to snap at its reflection? Well, I don’t ask strangers for loans. I make my impression. Monsieur Hugh Egerton is my friend—at present. Later, he will be what I choose. And most certainly I shall choose him for a husband. What luck, meeting him again! It is time I settled down.”
“They said at Ritz’s that he was one of the young millionaires, well known already in America,” the fat woman reflected aloud. “It is a good thing that I have brought you up well, Julie, and that you are pretty.”
“Yes, it is a good thing that I am pretty,” repeated the girl. “We have had many hopes often before, but this seems to be the most promising. I think it is very promising indeed, and I don’t mean to let it slip.”
She turned her back to the easy chair, and opened the pink bag. As the woman talked on, she secretly counted out the money. There were more than ten thousand francs in mille notes and others of smaller denominations. Quietly she put them away in the top of a travelling box, which she locked. Then she noticed the letter which the child had given her, still lying on the dressing table, with her gloves.
“Here’s something from la belle Américaine, upstairs,” said she. “A billet doux.”
“A dun,” exclaimed the woman.
“No doubt. It can be nothing else.”
“Well, we can’t pay.”
“No, we can’t pay,” said the girl, looking at the locked box.
“Let me see, how much was it she lent?”
“Two hundred francs, I think. We told her we’d give it back in a week. That’s nearly a month ago.”
“Serve her right for trusting strangers. The saints alone know when she’ll see her money again. She shouldn’t be so soft hearted. It doesn’t pay in these days.”
“Neither do we—when we can help it.”
They both laughed.
“But when you are M
adame—let me see, what was the name of the young monsieur, they told you at the Ritz?”
“Egerton.”
“Ah yes. When you are Madame Egerton—”
“Everything will be very different then.”
And the girl slipped the key of the box into the little pink bag.
CHAPTER FOUR: DOGS AND FATHERS
After delivering her letter, the child went slowly on downstairs, to the room she had been on the way to visit. It was on the second floor, just under the room of the Comtesse de Lavalette.
“Come in,” said a Cockney voice shrill with youth, in answer to her tap; and the child obeyed.
Though this room was of the same size and shape, it was very different from that of the Comtesse. The plain furniture was stiffly arranged, and there was no litter of clothing or small feminine belongings. By the window, which gave a glimpse of the sea, and of Monaco rock with the old part of the Palace, a plump young girl sat, with a baby a year or two old in her arms, and a nurse’s cap on her smooth head.
“You invited me to come down after I’d had my déjeuner, so I came,” said the child.
“Right you are, Miss Rosemary,” returned the plump girl. “You’re such a quaint little body, you’re a regular treat. I declare I ain’t ’alf sure I wouldn’t rather talk to you, than read the Princess Novelettes. Besides, I do get that tired of ’earin’ nothin’ but French, I’m most sorry I undertook the job; and the Biby don’t pick up English much yet.”
“Don’t you think he’s a bright baby?” asked the child, sitting down on a footstool, which was a favorite seat of hers.
“For a French biby, ’e’s as bright as you could expect,” replied her hostess, judicially.
“Are they different?”
“Well, they ain’t Hinglish.”
“I’m half American,” said the little girl.
“You don’t talk through your nose. Far as I can see, you’ve got as good a haccent as me.”
“I suppose yours is good?” asked Rosemary, as if she longed to have a doubt set forever at rest.
“Rather! Ain’t I been brought out from London on purpose so as this biby can learn to speak Hinglish, instead of French? It’s pretty near the sime thing as bein’ nursery governess. Madame wouldn’t trust her own wye of pronouncing the languidge. She must ’ave a Hinglish girl.”
“And she sent for you on purpose?” the child enquired, with increasing respect.
“Well, I was the only one as would come at the price. ’Tain’t big wages; but I’m seein’ loife. Lor’, I come down here with Madame and Mounseer a fortnight ago, and Monte Carlo ain’t got many secrets from me. I was a duffer, though, at first. When I ’eerd all them shots poppin’ off every few minutes, up by the Casino, I used to think ’twas the suicides a shooting theirselves all over the place, for before I left ’ome, I ’ad a warnin’ from my young man that was the kind of goin’s on they ’ad here. But now I know it’s only the pigeon shooters, tryin’ for prizes, and I wouldn’t eat a pigeon pie in this ’otel, not if ’twas ever so!”
“Do they ever have them?” asked the little girl, awed.
“Not as I knows of, but they may for Christmas. I sye, are you lookin’ forward to your Christmas, kiddy?”
“Angel—that’s Mother, I mean—says I’m not going to have much of a Christmas this year. I’m trying not to mind. I suppose it’s because Santa Claus can’t get to the Riviera, with his sleigh and reindeer. How could he, Miss Jane, when there’s no snow, and not even a scrap of ice?”
“Pshaw!” said Miss Jane. “It ain’t Santa Claus brings you things, snow or no snow. Only babies believe that. You’re old enough to know better. It’s your father and mother does it all.”
“Are you sure?” asked Rosemary.
“Dead sure. Don’t be a silly and cry, now, just because there ain’t any Santa Claus, nor any fairies.”
“It isn’t that,” said the little girl. “It’s because I can never have any more Christmases, if it depends on a father. You know, I haven’t a father.”
“I supposed you ’adn’t, as ’e ain’t ’ere, with yer ma,” replied the young person. “She’s mighty pretty.”
“I think she’s the prettiest mother in the world,” said Rosemary, proudly.
“She don’t look much like a mother.”
The child opened her eyes very wide at this new point of view. “I couldn’t have a mother who looked any other way,” she said. “What do you think she does look like?”
“Silly puss! I only mean she isn’t much more’n a kid, ’erself.”
“She’s twenty-five, twenty whole years more than me. Isn’t that old?”
“Lawkes, no. I’m goin’ on seventeen myself. I ’avent got any father, no more’n you ’ave, so I can feel fur you. Your ma ’as to do typewritin’. Mine does charrin’. It’s much the sime thing.”
“Is it?” asked Rosemary. “Angel doesn’t like typewriting so very well. It makes her shoulder ache, but it isn’t that she minds. It’s not having enough work to do.”
“Bless your hinnercent ’eart, charrin’ mikes you ache all over! Betcherlife my ma’d chinge with yours if she could.”
“Would she? But Angel doesn’t get on at all well here. I’ve heard her telling a lady she lent some money to, and wanted to have it back, after awhile. You see, when we were left poor, people said that she could make lots of money in Paris, because they pay a good deal there for the things Angel does; but others seemed to have got all the work for themselves, before we went over to Paris to live, so some friends she had told her it would be better to try here where there was no—no com—com—”
“No compertishun,” suggested the would-be nursery governess.
“Yes, that’s the right word, I think. But there was some, after all. Poor Angel’s so sad. She doesn’t quite know what we’ll do next, for we haven’t much money left.”
“She’s got a job of char—I mean, typin’ today anyhow,” said Jane.
“Yes, she’s gone to a hotel, where a gentleman talks a story out loud, and she puts it down on paper. She’s been three times; but it’s so sad; the story is a beautiful one, only she doesn’t think he’ll live to finish it. He came here to get well, because there’s sunshine, and flowers; but his wife cried on Angel’s shoulder, in the next room to his, and said he would never, never get well any more. Angel didn’t tell me, for I don’t think she likes me to know sad things; but I heard her saying it all to a lady she works for sometimes, a lady who knows the poor man. I don’t remember his name, but he’s what they call a Genius.”
“It’s like that out here on the Riviera,” said Jane, shaking her head so gloomily that the ruffled cap wobbled. “Lots of ill people come, as well as those who wants fun, and throwin’ thur money about. In the midst of loife we are in death. Drat the Biby, I believe ’e’s swallowed ’is tin soldier! No, ’ere it is, on the floor. But, as I was sayin’, your ma and mine might be sisters, in some wyes. Both of ’em lost their ’usbins, young—”
“How did your father get lost?” Rosemary broke in, deeply interested.
“’E went to the dogs,” replied Jane, mysteriously.
“Oh!” breathed the child, thrilled with a vague horror. She longed intensely to know what had happened to her friend’s parent after joining his lot with that of the dogs, but was too delicate-minded to continue her questioning, after such a tragic beginning. She wondered if there were a kind of dreadful dog which made a specialty of eating fathers. “And did he never come back again?” she ventured to enquire, at last.
“Not ’e. You never do, you know, if once you goes to the dogs. There ain’t no wye back. I was wonderin’, since we’ve been acquainted, kiddy, if your pa didn’t go the sime road? It ’appens in all clarses.”
“Oh no, my father was lost at sea, not on the road; and there aren’t any dogs there, at least I don’t think so,” said Rosemary.
“If it’s only the sea ’as swallered ’im, ’e may be cast up again, any day, al
ive an’ bloomin’,” replied Jane cheerfully. “My ma ’ad a grite friend, sold winkles; ’er ’usbin was lost at sea for years and years, till just wen she was comfortably settled with ’er second, along ’e comes, as large as loife. Besides, I’ve read of such things in the Princess Novelettes; only there it’s most generally lovers, not ’usbins, nor yet fathers. Would you know yours again, if you seen ’im?”
Rosemary shook her head doubtfully, and her falling hair of pale, shimmering gold waved like a wheat-field shaken by a breeze. “Angel lost him when I was only two,” the child explained. “She’s never talked much to me about him; but we used to live in a big house in London—because my father was English, you know, though Angel’s American—and I had a nurse who held me in her lap and told me things. I heard her say to one of the servants once that my father had been lost on a yacht, and that he was oh, ever such a handsome man. But—but she said—” Rosemary faltered, her gray-blue eyes suddenly large and troubled.
“What was it she said?” prompted Jane, with so much sympathetic interest that the little girl could not refuse to answer. Nevertheless, she felt that it would not be right to finish her sentence.
“If you please, I’d rather not tell you what Nurse said,” she pleaded. “But anyway, I’d give everything I’ve got if my father would get found again. You see, it isn’t only not having proper Christmases any more, that makes me feel sad, it’s because Angel has to work so hard for me; and if I had a father, I s’pose he’d do that.”
“If ’e didn’t he’d deserve to get What For,” said Jane, decidedly. “If you was a child in a story book, your pa’d come back and be lookin’ for you everywhere, on Christmas Eve; this Christmas Eve as ever was.”
“Oh, would he?” cried Rosemary, a bright color flaming on her little soft cheeks.
“Yes; and what’s more,” went on her hostess, warming to the subject, “you’d know ’im, the hinstant you clapped heyes on his fice, by ’eaven-sent hinstinct.”
“What’s ’eaven-sent hinstinct?” demanded Rosemary.
“The feelin’ you ’ave in your ’eart for a father, wot’s planted there by Providence,” explained Jane. “Now do you hunderstand? Because if you do, I don’t know but you’d better be trottin’. Biby’s gorn to sleep, and seems to be sleepin’ light.”
The Second Christmas Megapack Page 25
