Charles Norris Williamson - British Murder Mysteries – 10 Novels in One Volume

I resolved, as I saw myself lying shattered at my own feet, to pick up the bits and say nothing to Jack, lest he should blame his own inadvertent dropping of my name for all present and future mischief. Being a man, he can see things only with his eyes; and as he happened to be looking at me, he missed the pantomime at the other end of the room. I was looking at him too, but of course that didn't prevent me from seeing other things; and while I was chatting with him, and wondering how long it might be before the thunderbolt (Monsieur Charretier) should fall, I received another invitation to dance. This time it was from a delightful old boy who looked sixty and felt twenty-one.

He was ruddy-brown, with tight gray curls on his head, and deep dimples in his cheeks. If anyone had told me that he was not an English admiral I should have known it was a fib.

"I hope you aren't engaged for this next waltz?" said he. "I should like very much to have it with you." And he spoke as nicely as he would to a young girl of his own world, although he must have heard from someone that I was a lady's maid.

I glanced at Jack, but evidently he approved of admirals as partners for his sister. He kept himself in the background, smiling benevolently, and I skipped away with my brown old sailor, as the music for the dance began.

"Heard you spoke English," said he, encircling my Directoire waist with the arm of a sea-going Hercules, "otherwise I shouldn't have had the courage to come up and speak to you."

I laughed. "A Dreadnought afraid of a fishing-smack!"

"My word, if you were a fishin'-smack, my little friend, you wouldn't lack for fish to catch," chuckled the old gentleman, who was waltzing like an elderly angel—as all sailors do. Now, if Bertie had said what he said, I should have been offended, but coming from the admiral it cheered me up.

"You are an admiral, aren't you?" I was bold enough to ask.

"Who told you that?" he wanted to know.

"My eyes," said I.

"They're bright ones," he retorted. "But I suppose I do look an old sea-dog—what? A regular old salt-water dog. But by George, it's hot water I've got into to-night. D'ye see that stout lady we're just passin'?—the one in the red wig and yellow frock covered with paste or diamonds?"

(If she could have heard the description! It was Lady Turnour, in her gold tissue, her Bond Street jewellery shop, and, my charge, her beautifully undulated, copper-tinted transformation.)

"Yes, I see her," I said faintly, as we waltzed past; and I wondered why she was glaring.

"I suppose you didn't notice me doin' the first dance with her? Well, I asked her because they said we'd all got to invite servants to begin with, and as the best were snapped up before I got a chance, I walked over to her like a man. Give you my word, where all are dressed like duchesses, I took her for a cook."

I laughed so much that I shook my feet out of time with the music.

"Did you treat her like a cook, too?" I gurgled. "Ask her to give you her favourite recipe for soup?"

"Heaven forbid, no. I treated her like a countess. One would a cook, you know. It was afterward I got into the hot water. I popped her down in a seat when we'd scrambled through a turn or two of the dance, and that was all right; but instead of stoppin' where she was put, she must have stood up with some other poor chap when my back was turned, and been plamped down somewhere else. Anyhow, I danced the end of the waltz with the Marquise de Roquemartine, when she'd finished doin' the polite to the butler, and when we sat down to breathe at last, for the sake of somethin' to say I asked if the fat lady in yellow was her own cook, or a visitor's cook. Anyhow, I was certain of the cook : fancied myself on spottin' a cook anywhere. Well, the marquise giggled 'Take care!' and nearly had a fit. And if there wasn't my late partner close to my shoulder. 'That's Lady Turnour, one of my guests,' said the marquise. Little witch, she looked more pleased than shocked; but 'pon my honour, you could have knocked me down with a feather. I hope the good lady didn't hear, but my friends tell me I talk as if I were yellin' through a megaphone, so I'm afraid she got the news."

"What did you do?" I gasped.

"Do? I jumped up as if I'd been shot, and trotted over to ask you to dance. But I expect it will get about."

Now I knew why Lady Turnour had glared. Poor woman! I was really sorry for her—on this, her happy night!

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"It never rains, but it pours, after dry weather," says Pamela de Nesle. And so it was for the Turnour family. They had had their run of luck, and everything determinedly went wrong for them that night.

For her ladyship, there was the dreadful douche of the admiral's mistake, and the Marquise de Roquemartine's coming to hear of it. (Wicked little witch, I'm sure she couldn't resist telling the story to everyone!) For Bertie, the blow of an announcement, before the ball was over, that Miss Nelson was going to marry the Duc de Divonne (she went out of the room to get engaged to him). For Sir Samuel, a telegram from his London solicitors advising him to hurry home and straighten out some annoying business tangle.

After all, however, I doubt that the telegram ought to be classed among disasters, as it gave the family a good excuse to escape without delay from the château which they had so much wished to enter.

Lady Turnour had hysterics in her bedroom, having retired early on account of a "headache." She pretended that her rage was caused by a rent in her golden train, made by "that clumsy Admiral Gray who came over with the Frasers, and had the impudence to almost force me to dance with him—gouty old horror!" But I know it was the rent in her vanity, not her dress, which made her gurgle, and wail, and choke, until frightened Sir Samuel patted her on the back, and she stopped short, to scold him.

Bertie came in, ostensibly to learn his father's plans, but really, I surmised, to suggest some of his own; and Lady Turnour relieved her feelings by stirring up evil ones in him. "So sure you were going to get the girl! Why, you wrote your stepfather the other day, you were practically engaged," she sneered, delighted that she was not the only one who had suffered humiliations at the castle.

"If she hadn't seen you, I believe it would have been all right," growled Bertie, vicious as a chained dog who has lost his bone. And then Lady Turnour had hysterics all over again, and Sir Samuel told Bertie that he was an ungrateful young brute. The three raged together, and I could not go, because I had to hold sal-volatile under her ladyship's nose. Lady Turnour said that the marquise was no lidy, and for her part she was glad she wasn't going to have that cat of a sister in her family. She'd leave the beastly chattoe that night, if she could; but anyhow, she'd go the first thing in the morning as ever was, so there! People that let their visitors be insulted, and did nothing but laugh!— She'd show them, if they ever came to London, that she would, though she mightn't be a marquise herself, exactly. Not one of the lot should ever be invited to her house, not if they were all married to Bertie. And who was Bertie, anyhow?

Sir Samuel said 'darling' to her, and quite different words that began with "d" to his stepson; and Bertie, seeing the error of his ways, apologized humbly. His apologies were eventually accepted; and when he had intimated to her ladyship that she should be introduced to all his "swell friends" in England, it was settled that he should make one of the party in the car, his valet travelling by train. As this arrangement completed itself, Mr. Bertie suddenly remembered my presence, and flashed me a look of triumph.