Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood (3 page)

Well—it didn't matter. She had other things to think about. She must
ring for Lizzie—get up and dress. The bright morning sun, streaming
in through the long window, made lying in bed an old woman's luxury and
she refused to be an old woman.

"Though the worst old woman I ever knew was a man!" she thought with a
satiric twinkle. She was glad Sally's daughter—young Dale Ogden—was
here in the house with her. The companionship of Dale's bright youth
would keep her from getting old-womanish if anything could.

She smiled, thinking of Dale. Dale was a nice child—her favorite
niece. Sally didn't understand her, of course—but Sally wouldn't.
Sally read magazine articles on the younger generation and its wild
ways. "Sally doesn't remember when she was a younger generation
herself," thought Miss Cornelia. "But I do—and if we didn't have
automobiles, we had buggies—and youth doesn't change its ways just
because it has cut its hair. Before Mr. and Mrs. Ogden left for
Europe, Sally had talked to her sister Cornelia ... long and weightily,
on the problem of Dale." "Problem of Dale, indeed!" thought Miss
Cornelia scornfully. "Dale's the nicest thing I've seen in some time.
She'd be ten times happier if Sally wasn't always trying to marry her
off to some young snip with more of what fools call 'eligibility' than
brains! But there, Cornelia Van Gorder—Sally's given you your innings
by rampaging off to Europe and leaving Dale with you all summer and
you've a lot less sense than I flatter myself you have, if you can't
give your favorite niece a happy vacation from all her immediate
family—and maybe find her someone who'll make her happy for good and
all in the bargain." Miss Cornelia was an incorrigible matchmaker.

Nevertheless, she was more concerned with "the problem of Dale" than
she would have admitted. Dale, at her age, with her charm and
beauty—why, she ought to behave as if she were walking on air, thought
her aunt worriedly. "And instead she acts more as if she were walking
on pins and needles. She seems to like being here—I know she likes
me—I'm pretty sure she's just as pleased to get a little holiday from
Sally and Harry—she amuses herself—she falls in with any plan I want
to make, and yet—" And yet Dale was not happy—Miss Cornelia felt
sure of it. "It isn't natural for a girl to seem so lackluster
and—and quiet—at her age and she's nervous, too—as if something were
preying on her mind—particularly these last few days. If she were in
love with somebody—somebody Sally didn't approve of
particularly—well, that would account for it, of course—but Sally
didn't say anything that would make me think that—or Dale
either—though I don't suppose Dale would, yet, even to me. I haven't
seen so much of her in these last two years—"

Then Miss Cornelia's mind seized upon a sentence in a hurried flow of
her sister's last instructions—a sentence that had passed almost
unnoticed at the time—something about Dale and "an unfortunate
attachment—but of course, Cornelia, dear, she's so young—and I'm sure
it will come to nothing now her father and I have made our attitude
plain!"

"Pshaw—I bet that's it," thought Miss Cornelia shrewdly. "Dale's
fallen in love, or thinks she has, with some decent young man without a
penny or an 'eligibility' to his name—and now she's unhappy because
her parents don't approve—or because she's trying to give him up and
finds she can't. Well—" and Miss Cornelia's tight little gray curls
trembled with the vehemence of her decision, "if the young thing ever
comes to me for advice I'll give her a piece of my mind that will
surprise her and scandalize Sally Van Gorder Ogden out of her seven
senses. Sally thinks nobody's worth looking at if they didn't come
over to America when our family did—she hasn't gumption enough to
realize that if some people hadn't come over later, we'd all still be
living on crullers and Dutch punch!"

She was just stretching out her hand to ring for Lizzie when a knock
came at the door. She gathered her Paisley shawl more tightly about
her shoulders. "Who is it—oh, it's only you, Lizzie," as a pleasant
Irish face, crowned by an old-fashioned pompadour of graying hair,
peeped in at the door. "Good morning, Lizzie—I was just going to ring
for you. Has Miss Dale had breakfast—I know it's shamefully late."

"Good morning, Miss Neily," said Lizzie, "and a lovely morning it is,
too—if that was all of it," she added somewhat tartly as she came into
the room with a little silver tray whereupon the morning mail reposed.

We have not yet described Lizzie Allen—and she deserves description.
A fixture in the Van Gorder household since her sixteenth year, she had
long ere now attained the dignity of a Tradition. The slip of a
colleen fresh from Kerry had grown old with her mistress, until the
casual bond between mistress and servant had changed into something
deeper; more in keeping with a better-mannered age than ours. One
could not imagine Miss Cornelia without a Lizzie to grumble at and
cherish—or Lizzie without a Miss Cornelia to baby and scold with the
privileged frankness of such old family servitors. The two were at
once a contrast and a complement. Fifty years of American ways had not
shaken Lizzie's firm belief in banshees and leprechauns or tamed her
wild Irish tongue; fifty years of Lizzie had not altered Miss
Cornelia's attitude of fond exasperation with some of Lizzie's more
startling eccentricities. Together they may have been, as one of the
younger Van Gorder cousins had, irreverently put it, "a scream," but
apart each would have felt lost without the other.

"Now what do you mean—if that were all of it, Lizzie?" queried Miss
Cornelia sharply as she took her letters from the tray.

Lizzie's face assumed an expression of doleful reticence.

"It's not my place to speak," she said with a grim shake of her head,
"but I saw my grandmother last night, God rest her—plain as life she
was, the way she looked when they waked her—and if it was my doing
we'd be leaving this house this hour!"

"Cheese-pudding for supper—of course you saw your grandmother!" said
Miss Cornelia crisply, slitting open the first of her letters with a
paper knife. "Nonsense, Lizzie, I'm not going to be scared away from
an ideal country place because you happen to have a bad dream!"

"Was it a bad dream I saw on the stairs last night when the lights went
out and I was looking for the candles?" said Lizzie heatedly. "Was it a
bad dream that ran away from me and out the back door, as fast as
Paddy's pig? No, Miss Neily, it was a man—Seven feet tall he was, and
eyes that shone in the dark and—"

"Lizzie Allen!"

"Well, it's true for all that," insisted Lizzie stubbornly. "And why
did the lights go out—tell me that, Miss Neily? They never go out in
the city."

"Well, this isn't the city," said Miss Cornelia decisively. "It's the
country, and very nice it is, and we're staying here all summer. I
suppose I may be thankful," she went on ironically, "that it was only
your grandmother you saw last night. It might have been the Bat—and
then where would you be this morning?"

"I'd be stiff and stark with candles at me head and feet," said Lizzie
gloomily. "Oh, Miss Neily, don't talk of that terrible creature, the
Bat!" She came nearer to her mistress. "There's bats in this house,
too—real bats," she whispered impressively. "I saw one yesterday in
the trunk room—the creature! It flew in the window and nearly had the
switch off me before I could get away!"

Miss Cornelia chuckled. "Of course there are bats," she said. "There
are always bats in the country. They're perfectly harmless,—except to
switches."

"And the Bat ye were talking of just then—he's harmless too, I
suppose?" said Lizzie with mournful satire. "Oh, Miss Neily, Miss
Neily—do let's go back to the city before he flies away with us all!"

"Nonsense, Lizzie," said Miss Cornelia again, but this time less
firmly. Her face grew serious. "If I thought for an instant that
there was any real possibility of our being in danger here—" she said
slowly. "But—oh, look at the map, Lizzie! The Bat has been flying in
this district—that's true enough—but he hasn't come within ten miles
of us yet!"

"What's ten miles to the Bat?" the obdurate Lizzie sighed. "And what
of the letter ye had when ye first moved in here? 'The Fleming house
is unhealthy for strangers,' it said. Leave it while ye can."

"Some silly boy or some crank." Miss Cornelia's voice was firm. "I
never pay any attention to anonymous letters."

"And there's a funny-lookin' letter this mornin', down at the bottom of
the pile—" persisted Lizzie. "It looked like the other one. I'd half
a mind to throw it away before you saw it!"

"Now, Lizzie, that's quite enough!" Miss Cornelia had the Van Gorder
manner on now. "I don't care to discuss your ridiculous fears any
further. Where is Miss Dale?"

Lizzie assumed an attitude of prim rebuff, "Miss Dale's gone into the
city, ma'am."

"Gone into the city?"

"Yes, ma'am. She got a telephone call this morning, early—long
distance it was. I don't know who it was called her."

"Lizzie! You didn't listen?"

"Of course not, Miss Neily." Lizzie's face was a study in injured
virtue. "Miss Dale took the call in her own room and shut the door."

"And you were outside the door?"

"Where else would I be dustin' that time in the mornin'?" said Lizzie
fiercely. "But it's yourself knows well enough the doors in this house
is thick and not a sound goes past them."

"I should hope not," said Miss Cornelia rebukingly. "But—tell me,
Lizzie, did Miss Dale seem—well—this morning?"

"That she did not," said Lizzie promptly. "When she came down to
breakfast, after the call, she looked like a ghost. I made her the
eggs she likes, too—but she wouldn't eat 'em."

"H'm," Miss Cornelia pondered. "I'm sorry if—well, Lizzie, we mustn't
meddle in Miss Dale's affairs."

"No, ma'am."

"But—did she say when she would be back?"

"Yes, Miss Neily. On the two o'clock train. Oh, and I was almost
forgettin'—she told me to tell you, particular—she said while he was
in the city she'd be after engagin' the gardener you spoke of."

"The gardener? Oh, yes—I spoke to her about that the other night. The
place is beginning to look run down—so many flowers to attend to.
Well—that's very kind of Miss Dale."

"Yes, Miss Neily." Lizzie hesitated, obviously with some weighty news
on her mind which she wished to impart. Finally she took the plunge.
"I might have told Miss Dale she could have been lookin' for a cook as
well—and a housemaid—" she muttered at last, "but they hadn't spoken
to me then."

Miss Cornelia sat bolt upright in bed. "A cook—and a housemaid? But
we have a cook and a housemaid, Lizzie! You don't mean to tell me—"

Lizzie nodded her head. "Yes'm. They're leaving. Both of 'em. Today."

"But good heav— Lizzie, why on earth didn't you tell me before?"

Lizzie spoke soothingly, all the blarney of Kerry in her voice. "Now,
Miss Neily, as if I'd wake you first thing in the morning with bad news
like that! And thinks I, well, maybe 'tis all for the best after
all—for when Miss Neily hears they're leavin'—and her so
particular—maybe she'll go back to the city for just a little and
leave this house to its haunts and its bats and—"

"Go back to the city? I shall do nothing of the sort. I rented this
house to live in and live in it I will, with servants or without them.
You should have told me at once, Lizzie. I'm really very much annoyed
with you because you didn't. I shall get up immediately—I want to
give those two a piece of my mind. Is Billy leaving too?"

"Not that I know of—the heathern Japanese!" said Lizzie sorrowfully.
"And yet he'd be better riddance than cook or housemaid."

"Now, Lizzie, how many times have I told you that you must conquer your
prejudices? Billy is an excellent butler—he'd been with Mr. Fleming
ten years and has the very highest recommendations. I am very glad
that he is staying, if he is. With you to help him, we shall do very
well until I can get other servants." Miss Cornelia had risen now and
Lizzie was helping her with the intricacies of her toilet. "But it's
too annoying," she went on, in the pauses of Lizzie's deft
ministrations. "What did they say to you, Lizzie—did they give any
reason? It isn't as if they were new to the country like you. They'd
been with Mr. Fleming for some time, though not as long as Billy."

"Oh, yes, Miss Neily—they had reasons you could choke a goat with,"
said Lizzie viciously as she arranged Miss Cornelia's transformation.
"Cook was the first of them—she was up late—I think they'd been
talking it over together. She comes into the kitchen with her hat on
and her bag in her hand. 'Good morning,' says I, pleasant enough,
'you've got your hat on,' says I. 'I'm leaving,' says she. 'Leaving,
are you?' says I. 'Leaving,' says she. 'My sister has twins,' says
she. 'I just got word—I must go to her right away.' 'What?' says I,
all struck in a heap. 'Twins,' says she, 'you've heard of such things
as twins.' 'That I have,' says I, 'and I know a lie on a face when I
see it, too.'"

"Lizzie!"

"Well, it made me sick at heart, Miss Neily. Her with her hat and her
bag and her talk about twins—and no consideration for you. Well, I'll
go on. 'You're a clever woman, aren't you?' says she—the impudence!
'I can see through a millstone as far as most,' says I—I wouldn't put
up with her sauce. 'Well!' says she, 'you can see that Annie the
housemaid's leaving, too.' 'Has her sister got twins as well?' says I
and looked at her. 'No,' says she as bold as brass, 'but Annie's got a
pain in her side and she's feared it's appendycitis—so she's leaving
to go back to her family.' 'Oh,' says I, 'and what about Miss Van
Gorder?' 'I'm sorry for Miss Van Gorder,' says she—the falseness of
her!—'But she'll have to do the best she can for twins and
appendycitis is acts of God and not to be put aside for even the best
of wages.' 'Is that so?' says I and with that I left her, for I knew if
I listened to her a minute longer I'd be giving her bonnet a shake and
that wouldn't be respectable. So there you are, Miss Neily, and that's
the gist of the matter."