Hue and Cry (19 page)

Mally was sure that he wouldn't lose any time in letting everybody know that he wasn't engaged to a girl who might be arrested at any moment.

“So you see,” said Candida, finishing a long speech of which Mally had not heard a single word. “So you see, I shall
know,
shan't I? Of course I don't care twopence for him, and I don't intend to until I'm
sure
—Hallo! Here we are! Last time I came here I'd only just learned to drive, and I went slap into the middle of Lady Mooring's pet rose-bed. And that stiff Roger was polite about it—
polite!
I've hated him ever since, because he had ‘damns' simply sticking out all over him the whole time, and it would have been so
much
more comfortable to have a good old row. If he'd said, ‘My good girl, you can't drive for nuts! Why on earth do they let you out without a nursemaid?' and I'd said, ‘You're simply the most odious, cross pig I've ever met!' we might have got it off our chests and been friends, whereas now we loathe each other.”

The worst moment was coming out of the dark into the lighted hall. Mally kept her head down and made for the back stairs. They were early, but a fairly big party had arrived just before them, so that the hall was not empty.

Once through the swing door, Mally took a very long breath of relief. The worst was over. She ran up the stairs, just missed one of the housemaids on the first landing, and then found the rest of the way quite clear.

She shut the box-room door behind her, switched on the light, and looked about her for her box. It stood on the top of another one about a yard away, a dreadful, shabby old thing with the canvas coming through one of the broken leather corners. It was simply years since the lock had functioned, and for this she had cause to be devoutly thankful. She tugged at the straps and threw back the lid. The domino was tied up in a paper parcel down in the left-hand corner. She pulled it out, opened the paper, and took stock of its contents. First the domino, rose-red with a little gold pattern on it and a dull-gold fringe; then the black velvet mask—a really wide one with a deep lace fall—the gold and silver shoes, and the light stockings, which she had been saving for this ball——“Only I never, never, never thought I'd have to dress in the box-room.”

She was out of her coat and slipping off skirt and jumper. She must have something to wear under the domino. She rummaged for a very old gold tissue slip which she had worn for some school theatricals. It went on, and the domino over it. As she slid the elastic of the mask over her hair and pulled up the rose-red hood, a most beautiful feeling of safety came over her. She was here, at her very own ball. She was safe. She was going to enjoy herself.

When she had put on the silver stockings and the gold and silver shoes, she rolled up a change of linen, and all the things she had taken off, inside her out-door coat, and fastened the bundle with a couple of safety pins. Then she ran downstairs.

The hall was now quite full. She slipped through the crowd, out at the front door, and round to the right to where Candida had parked her car. It was turning frightfully cold. She pushed her bundle into the car and ran back to the house. She edged her way to the big open fire-place, where a huge fire of logs was blazing, and whilst she warmed herself, the rest of the party from Menden arrived.

Mally knew from the other maids that Mrs. Holmes was going to wear a purple velvet domino, and Janet Elliot emerald-green. Of the men, Paul Craddock was easy to recognize on account of his height. He wore a bright-red domino lined with black. Colonel Moulton and Ambrose Medhurst were about the same height; but Colonel Moulton had a forward tilt of the head, and she decided without difficulty that he was the brown, and Ambrose the yellow domino.

She was rather pleased with herself as she passed down the corridor with a crowd of other people and came out into the ballroom, where Lady Mooring in black velvet and pearls stood, saying alternately: “How d'you do,” and “I haven't an
idea
who you are.” She said “I haven't an idea” to Mally, and Mally passed on with just one backward look at the three rows of milky, iridescent pearls that were to have been her own on the day that she married Roger.

She put up one hand and touched her smooth bare throat. Roger had shown her the pearls and made her put them on. She remembered the feel of them, and once more she looked back and saw them on Lady Mooring, one row tight up under the double chin, one just reaching the Honiton lace tucker, and the third falling down over the black velvet to the ample waist.

“They must be worth hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds. How comic—how
frightfully
comic! And I've only three and ninepence farthing in the world!”

It pleased her a good deal to think that it was she who had whistled Roger, and Curston, and three rows of pearls down the wind.

The first dance had just begun, when the yellow domino from Menden stopped in front of her and said, in the high, squeaky voice affected by masks:

“Er—may I have the pleasure?”

Mally had decided on a husky whisper as a better disguise than a squeak. Not that Ambrose Medhurst would know her voice, but the room was certainly full of people who had come here to see her act only three weeks ago, and some of them might have good memories. She swung into the dance with Ambrose and said:

“You're very formal. Perhaps we know each other very well—or perhaps we don't know each other at all. So we needn't bother about being polite.”

“You dance like a dream,” squeaked the yellow domino.

“Yes, I know I do. It's my one consuming passion. Let's dance, and talk afterwards. I'm sure you can't go on squeaking like that—it sounds frightfully uncomfortable.”

When the music stopped, they found a couple of chairs in an alcove, and Mally gave indiscretion the rein:

“Shall I tell you who you are, and all the horrid secrets of your past? I will if you like.”

“Who are you?”

“Some one who knows
all.”

“What on earth——”

“Did you ever play, ‘
I love my love'
?” said Mally on a thrilling note of mystery. “It goes like this, you know: ‘I love my love with a C because she is Charming. I hate her with a C because——' Why do you hate her, yellow domino?”

“Who on earth—who are you—what are you driving at?” Mr. Medhurst rather forgot his squeak.

“You won't say why you hate her. All right, we'll pass that. Perhaps you don't hate her at all. And it goes on like this: ‘I took her to Curston and gave her Compliments and Chaff. Her name is Candida and she's going on the Continent.'”

There was a little pause. Mally had seen Ambrose Medhurst look at Candida when Candida was looking away. It had also occurred to her that Miss Long, who would talk by the hour about Paul Craddock, not only changed the subject when Mr. Medhurst was mentioned, but actually changed color too. The maid hears a good deal of talk between women as she lays out clothes or puts them away.

After that little pause, the yellow domino said:

“Who are you? Candida?”

“Supposing I said ‘No'?”

“I should say you were not playing the game.”

Mally laughed, a little whispering laugh.

“Supposing I said ‘Yes'?”

“I shouldn't believe you,” said Ambrose Medhurst in his natural voice.

The music struck up, and they went back to the ballroom. He had turned away, when he felt himself pushed a little and heard a faint, laughing thread of sound:

“I wouldn't be frightened of her
money.
She's just a girl.”

Mally slipped away before he could turn round. She was looking on at the dancing, her foot tapping a little, when an arm went round her waist and she felt herself swung into the stream without so much as a “With your leave” or “By your leave.”

The new partner was several sizes larger than Ambrose. He wore a black domino lined with red, and for a dreadful moment she wondered if Mr. Craddock had turned his coat. It was only for a moment, for the wildest imagination would have failed to picture Paul Craddock in a rollicking mood.

The black domino was a very rollicking partner, who swung Mally right off her feet in the best Russian Ballet style, and announced in a horrible growling voice that he was Foxtrotski, the Bounding Bolshevist from Brixton, adding that his friend Bombemoff was proposing to wind up the proceedings with a grand gala display of exploded guests.

Mally enjoyed her dance with him very much. It was about half-way through it that she found something astonishingly familiar about the big hand that was holding hers, and recognized Ethan Messenger. It was strange what a feeling of reassurance came over her; and before she could bridle her tongue, she gave a warm little excited laugh and said:

“How is Dinks?”

The Bounding Bolshevist had answered “Top-hole!” before he realized the revealing nature of this question. He broke off and said, “Hallo—'allo—'allo! Good Lord! Who are you?”

“Cinderella,” said Mally—“or the Beggar Maid—I'm not quite sure which, but I think it's Cinderella. You don't really belong to either of the stories, so it's simply a frightful ana—what's-his name for us to be dancing together.”

“Do you mean anachronism?”

“I expect so. Anyhow it's frightfully improper. But you haven't told me about Dinks. Did he bite you?”

For one surprising moment the impossibility of reconciling a queerly vivid memory of Mally Lee, with straws sticking all over her and a smudge on one cheek, with the rose-red elegance in his arms struck Ethan dumb.

Mally rattled on:

“I took good care he didn't bite
me.
I never thought rabbits were ferocious before. Bunty wanted me to put him in his hutch, and I told her you'd do it ever so much better. I
do
like Bunty—don't you?”

Ethan took no notice of this question.

“So it's you!” he said.

Mally shook her head vigorously.

“I'm not me, and you're not you. I'm a rose-colored domino, and you're a black one. And we haven't got any faces—we've only got masks. Nothing's ever happened to us till to-night, and nothing's ever going to happen to us again. We're just going to dance and have a frightfully good time until your friend Bombemoff blows us all right out of our fairy tale.”

Ethan swung her round with a laugh.

“I mustn't ask how you got here, then?”

“Certainly
not!”

“Or anything?”

She shook her head again. A moment later, she caught sight of Candida's black and silver, just clear of the dancers at the edge of the room. Without any warning she twisted away from Ethan and came up to Candida, laughing.

“Shall I tell you a secret?” she whispered.

Miss Long's partner, a white domino, did not seem pleased, but Mally went on whispering:

“I can tell you something worth knowing.”

The silver hood and black mask turned towards her.

“What can you tell me?”

Mally decided that Candida really had no notion of how to disguise her voice. If she couldn't do better than this, she might just as well not wear a mask at all.

“I can tell you that the red domino lined with black would like a rich wife. And the yellow domino is so afraid of money that he'll let the girl he cares for go to a man who doesn't care for her.”

Candida stamped a silver foot.

“How dare you! Who are you?” And then, rather breathlessly: “How do you know, and who do you mean?”

“Won't you dance?” The white domino was getting impatient; but Candida just flung him a “No” and came closer to Mally.

“What
did you mean?
Who
did you mean?”

Mally put a finger on the lace fall that hid her lips.

“S'sh,” she said. Then she pointed. “There's the yellow domino. He's too proud to tell you that he cares—I don't think he'll ever tell you unless you make him.”

“Who is he? What nonsense you talk! You can't know who he is.”

“Perhaps I can't—perhaps I can,

For he's a most particularly proud young man.”

Mally hummed the doggerel on the lowest note she could reach. Then she went on inconsequently: “His name reminds me of amber in the middle of a wood.”

“What
nonsense!
” Candida gasped a little.

“Yes, isn't it? And the
very
tall red and black domino coming down the room now has the same initials as police courts and privy councillors. And
he
isn't proud at all—he can swallow a fortune as well as most men.”

Mally gave Candida a little twirl and went chasseing down the room by herself. She really was enjoying herself very much indeed.

She went on dancing with Ethan Messenger, who had apparently been waiting for her. Presently she saw Candida and the yellow domino go by together.

“I know what I am,” she said.

“A witch?”

“
Certainly
not! Witches are all perfectly hideous, and at least a hundred. No, it burst on me just now—I'm not Cinderella, and I'm not the Beggar Maid; I'm an absolutely up-to-date fairy godmother.”

She went on enjoying herself.

CHAPTER XXIII

“How did you know me?” said Ethan suddenly.

They were sitting out together in a little alcove bounded by screens, and palms in pots.

Mally took up his left hand, which was nearest to her, straightened the fingers in a brisk, matter-of-fact way, and pointed at the top joint of the forefinger.

“That's where you'd just hammered yourself when I opened the door.”

“What a romantic memory!”

“Yes, isn't it? You said ‘Damn!' and I opened the door, and there we were.”

“You had straws in your hair.”

“So would you if you had slept in a hay-loft. It's warm, but it
does
prick. O-o-o-oh!”