“What do you say, George,” asked Billie in an undertone, “if we side-step the Amber Drawing-Room? I’m wild to get into that garden. There’s a man working among those roses. Maybe he would show us round.”
George followed her pointing finger. Just below them a sturdy, brown-faced man in corduroys was pausing to light a stubby pipe.
“Just as you like.”
They made their way down the great staircase. The voice of Keggs, saying complimentary things about the Gobelin Tapestry, came to their ears like the roll of distant drums. They wandered out towards the rose-garden. The man in corduroys had lit his pipe and was bending once more to his task.
“Well, dadda,” said Billie amiably, “how are the crops?”
The man straightened himself. He was a nice-looking man of middle age, with the kind eyes of a friendly dog. He smiled genially, and started to put his pipe away.
Billie stopped him.
“Don’t stop smoking on my account,” she said. “I like it. Well, you’ve got the right sort of a job, haven’t you! If I was a man, there’s nothing I’d like better than to put in my eight hours in a rose-garden.” She looked about her. “And this,” she said with approval, “is just what a rose-garden ought to be.”
“Are you fond of roses—missy?”
“You bet I am! You must have every kind here that was ever invented. All the fifty-seven varieties.”
“There are nearly three thousand varieties,” said the man in corduroys tolerantly.
“I was speaking colloquially, dadda. You can’t teach me anything about roses. I’m the guy that invented them. Got any Ayrshires?”
The man in corduroys seemed to have come to the conclusion that Billie was the only thing on earth that mattered. This revelation of a kindred spirit had captured him completely. George was merely among those present.
“Those—them—over there are Ayrshires, missy.”
“We don’t get Ayrshires in America. At least, I never ran across them. I suppose they do have them.”
“You want the right soil.”
“Clay and lots of rain.”
“You’re right.”
There was an earnest expression on Billie Dore’s face that George had never seen there before.
“Say, listen, dadda, in this matter of rose-beetles, what would you do if—”
George moved away. The conversation was becoming too technical for him, and he had an idea that he would not be missed. There had come to him, moreover, in a flash one of those sudden inspirations which great generals get. He had visited the castle this afternoon without any settled plan other than a vague hope that he might somehow see Maud. He now perceived that there was no chance of doing this. Evidently, on Thursdays, the family went to earth and remained hidden until the sightseers had gone. But there was another avenue of communication open to him. This gardener seemed an exceptionally intelligent man. He could be trusted to deliver a note to Maud.
In his late rambles about Belpher Castle in the company of Keggs and his followers, George had been privileged to inspect the library. It was an easily accessible room, opening off the main hail. He left Billie and her new friend deep in a discussion of slugs and plant-lice, and walked quickly back to the house. The library was unoccupied.
George was a thorough young man. He believed in leaving nothing to chance. The gardener had seemed a trustworthy soul, but you never knew. It was possible that he drank. He might forget or lose the precious note. So, with a wary eye on the door, George hastily scribbled it in duplicate. This took him but a few minutes. He went out into the garden again to find Billie Dore on the point of stepping into a blue automobile.
“Oh, there you are, George. I wondered where you had got to. Say, I made quite a hit with dadda. I’ve given him my address, and he’s promised to send me a whole lot of roses. By the way, shake hands with Mr. Forsyth. This is George Bevan, Freddie, who wrote the music of our show.”
The solemn youth at the wheel extended a hand.
“Topping show. Topping music. Topping all round.”
“Well, good-bye, George. See you soon, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes. Give my love to everybody.”
“All right. Let her rip, Freddie. Good-bye.” “Good-bye.”
The blue car gathered speed and vanished down the drive. George returned to the man in corduroys, who had bent himself double in pursuit of a slug.
“Just a minute,” said George hurriedly. He pulled out the first of the notes. “Give this to Lady Maud the first chance you get. It’s important. Here’s a sovereign for your trouble.”
He hastened away. He noticed that gratification had turned the other nearly purple in the face, and was anxious to leave him. He was a modest young man, and effusive thanks always embarrassed him.
There now remained the disposal of the duplicate note. It was hardly worth while, perhaps, taking such a precaution, but George knew that victories are won by those who take no chances. He had wandered perhaps a hundred yards from the rose-garden when he encountered a small boy in the many-buttoned uniform of a page. The boy had appeared from behind a big cedar, where, as a matter of fact, he had been smoking a stolen cigarette.
“Do you want to earn half a crown?” asked George.
The market value of messengers had slumped.
The stripling held his hand out.
“Give this note to Lady Maud.”
“Right ho!”
“See that it reaches her at once.”
George walked off with the consciousness of a good day’s work done. Albert the page, having bitten his half-crown, placed it in his pocket. Then he hurried away, a look of excitement and gratification in his deep blue eyes.
Chapter 9
While George and Billie Dore wandered to the rose garden to interview the man in corduroys, Maud had been seated not a hundred yards away—in a very special haunt of her own, a cracked stucco temple set up in the days of the Regency on the shores of a little lily-covered pond. She was reading poetry to Albert the page.
Albert the page was a recent addition to Maud’s inner circle. She had interested herself in him some two months back in much the same spirit as the prisoner in his dungeon cell tames and pets the conventional mouse. To educate Albert, to raise him above his groove in life and develop his soul, appealed to her romantic nature as a worthy task, and as a good way of filling in the time. It is an exceedingly moot point—and one which his associates of the servants’ hall would have combated hotly—whether Albert possessed a soul. The most one could say for certain is that he looked as if he possessed one. To one who saw his deep blue eyes and their sweet, pensive expression as they searched the middle distance he seemed like a young angel. How was the watcher to know that the thought behind that far-off gaze was simply a speculation as to whether the bird on the cedar tree was or was not within range of his catapult? Certainly Maud had no such suspicion. She worked hopefully day by day to rouse Albert to an appreciation of the nobler things of life.
Not but what it was tough going. Even she admitted that. Albert’s soul did not soar readily. It refused to leap from the earth. His reception of the poem she was reading could scarcely have been called encouraging. Maud finished it in a hushed voice, and looked pensively across the dappled water of the pool. A gentle breeze stirred the water-lilies, so that they seemed to sigh.
“Isn’t that beautiful, Albert?” she said.
Albert’s blue eyes lit up. His lips parted eagerly,
“That’s the first hornet I seen this year,” he said pointing.
Maud felt a little damped.
“Haven’t you been listening, Albert?”
“Oh, yes, m’lady! Ain’t he a wopper, too?”
“Never mind the hornet, Albert.”
“Very good, m’lady.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say ‘Very good, m’lady’. It’s like—like—” She paused. She had been about to say that it was like a butler, but, she reflected regretfully, it was probably Albert’s dearest ambition to be like a butler. “It doesn’t sound right. Just say ‘Yes’.”