CHAPTER XXIV
WE SEEK "THE REFUGE"
WE (Mr. Jessop and I) drove slowly to the first post-office.
There we both alighted. And I in my impatience fairly flung myselfagainst the long counter with its wirework screen that fenced off thepost-office girls.
They stared curiously at the anxious-looking young woman in black andthe grey-clad, unmistakably American young man, who both at once beganto make inquiries about a certain telegram which had been handed inthere at half-past seven o'clock the evening before.
"Are you the person to whom the telegram was addressed?" one of thegirls asked almost suspiciously.
"Yes. I am Miss Smith. You see! Here is an envelope addressed to me atthe Hotel Cecil," I said, feverishly producing that envelope (itbelonged to Mr. Brace's last note to me). "Can you tell me who handed inthis message?"
"I couldn't, I'm sure," said the girl who had spoken suspiciously. "Iwas off last evening before six."
"Can you tell me who was here?" I demanded, fuming at the delay.
The girls seemed blissfully unaware that this was a matter of life anddeath to me.
"Miss Carfax was here, I believe," volunteered one of the other girls,in the "parcels" division of the long counter.
I asked eagerly: "Which is Miss Carfax, please?"
"Just gone to her lunch," the two girls replied at once. "Won't be backuntil two o'clock."
"Oh, dear!" I fretted. Then a third girl spoke up.
"Let's have a look at that wire, dear, will you?" she said to theparcels girl. "I think I remember Miss Carfax taking this in. Yes.That's right. 'Why ever don't you send my clothes, Miss Million?' Iremember us passing the remark afterwards what an uncommon name'Million' was."
"Oh, do you! How splendid!" I said, all eagerness at once. "Then youremember the young lady who telegraphed?"
"Yes----"
"A small, rather stumpy young lady," I pursued. "Nice-looking, withbright grey eyes and black hair? She was dressed in a cerise eveningfrock with a----"
The post-office girl shook her head behind the wire screen.
"No; that wasn't the one."
"How stupid of me; no, of course, she wouldn't be still wearing theevening frock," I amended hastily. "But she was dark-haired, andshort----"
Again the post-office girl shook her head.
"Shouldn't call her short," she said. "Taller than me."
"Dark, though," I insisted. "Black hair."
"Oh, no," said the post-office girl decidedly. "That wasn't her. Redhair. Distinctly red."
"Are you sure," I said, in dismay, "that you haven't made a mistake?"
"Oh, no," said the post-office girl, still more decidedly. "I've seenher about, often. I know the colour of her hair. You know, Daisy,"turning to another of the girls, "that one from the 'Refuge.'"
"There's so many from the 'Refuge' come in here," said the maddeninggirl she had called Daisy.
"Yes, but you know the one. Rather strikingly dressed always. Lots ofscent, makes herself up. Her with the hair. The one we call 'AutumnTints.'"
"'Autumn Tints'--oh, yes, I know her----"
"Yes, we know her," chorused the other girls, while I fidgeted,crumpling Million's baffling wire in my hand. "That's the lady who sentoff the telegram. I couldn't be mistaken."
Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, at my side, interposed.
"Well, now, will you young ladies be so kind as to tell us where sheresides? The 'Refuge'--what'll that be?"
We had, it seemed, still some distance to go. We must take the road thatwent so, then turn to the right, then to the left again. Then about amile further down we'd see a red brick house in a clump of trees, with abig garden and green palings on to the road. It had "The Refuge" paintedup on a board nailed to a big oak tree in the garden. We shouldn't beable to mistake it, said the girls.
"Certainly you won't mistake it if you see any of the 'Refugees' in thegarden when you come up," hazarded the most talkative of the post-officegirls.
"It's a case of 'Once seen, never to be forgotten,' there!"
As we went out of the office I found myself wondering more and moreanxiously what all this might mean. What sort of a place had Million gotherself into the middle of?
"What do you think it all means?" I turned again appealingly to theyoung man who was driving me.
He shook his grey-hatted head. His face was rather graver than before.
Mercy! What were we going to find? What did he think? Evidently hewasn't going to tell me.
Only when we got clear of the straggling outskirts of Lewes he crammedon speed. Up the gradual hills we flew between the bare shoulders of thedowns where the men and horses working in the fields afar off looked assmall as mechanical toys. The whole country was gaunt and gigantic, anda little frightening, to me. Perhaps this was because my nerves werealready utterly overstrained and anxious. I could see no beauty in thewideswept Sussex landscape, with the little obsolete-looking villagesset down here and there, like a child's building of bricks, in the midstof a huge carpet.
There seemed to me something uncanny and ominous in the tinkling of thesheep-bells that the fresh breeze allowed to drift to our ears.
On we whizzed, and by what miracle we escaped police-traps I do notknow.... We took the turns of our directions, and at last I heard ashort, relieved sort of exclamation from Mr. Hiram P. Jessop.
"Here we are. This'll be it, I guess." For here were the dark-greentowers of elms set back from the road. A red roof and old-fashionedchimney-stacks showed among them. There was a garden in front, with tallMary-lilies and pink-and-white phlox and roses and carnations and thriftthat grew down to the palings.
And close up beside those palings there was drawn a pale-blue car that Iknew well--too well!
It was the car with the silver-winged Victory as mascot! The car inwhich we'd been followed and shadowed for so much of our journey by theHonourable Jim Burke.
He was here, then! He was before us!
What had he to do with the "Refuge"?
Sounds of singing greeted us as we left the car, pushed open thegreen-palinged gate, and walked up the pebbled path between theflower-beds of the garden. Some one behind the lilac bushes was singing,in a very clear, touching voice, a snatch of the ballad: "Oh, ye'll tak'the high road and I'll tak' the low road, and I'll be in Scotland beforeye...."
A turn in the garden path brought us full upon the singer. A wonderfulapparition indeed she was! As tall as any woman I had seen (exceptingthe long-limbed cobra-lady), and the June sun shone on a head of hairthat was as bright as a bed of marigolds--red hair, but not all the samekind of red. It was long and loose in the breeze, and it fell to thesinger's waist in a shower of red-gold, covering her face and hidingmost of her bodice, which appeared to be a sort of flimsy muslindressing-jacket. Her skirt was very makeshift and of brown holland. Thestockings she wore were white thread, and her shoes were just navy-bluefelt bedroom slippers, with jaeger turn-overs to them. In fact, herwhole appearance was negligee in the extreme. Who--what could she be?She looked a cross between a mermaid and a scarecrow. She was holdingone hank of red-gold out against her arm, as a shop assistant measuressilk, and she crunched along the garden path, still singing in thatdelicious voice: "But I and my true love will never meet again, on thebonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond!" Blinded by her hair and the streamof sunlight, she nearly walked straight into us before she discoveredthat there was any one there on the path at all.
"I beg your pardon," began Mr. Hiram P. Jessop with his usualpoliteness. "Could you inform us----"
The singing mermaid gave a little "ow" of consternation, and tossed backsome of the hair from her face.
It was a disappointing sight, rather, for what we saw was a round,full-mooney, rather foolish face, with a large pink mouth, but no otherdefinite features. The eyes were pale blue, the cheeks were paler pink,and the eyebrows and eyelashes looked as if they had been washed away ina shower of rain.
/> Altogether, a thoroughly weird apparition it was who stared at us, andgiggled, and said, in a very Cockney accent: "Oh, good Gollywog! anotherman! There's no getting away from them in this place this morning. Andthere was I thinking I had found a quiet spot to dry my hair in!"
"I am very sorry to intrude," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop in his mostcourteous voice. "Could you inform me, Madam, if this is the house theycall The Refuge?"
"That's right," said the woman with the hair. And I found myselfsuddenly wondering if she were the lady that those post-office girls hadnicknamed "Autumn Tints."
It was most appropriate, with those reds and golds and bronzes of thehair that must have been sufficiently striking had it not been "treated"with henna, as it had.
So I said eagerly, and without further preamble: "Oh, then, could youtell me if Miss Million is here?"
"I couldn't, dear, really," said the woman, who looked all washed-outexcepting her hair. "There is such a lot of them that keep coming andgoing here! Like a blessed beehive, isn't it? Bothered if I can keeptrack of all their names!"
She paused a moment before she went on.
"Miss Million--now which would she be?"
I felt a chill of despair creeping over my heart.
What did she mean by saying that "so many of them" kept coming and goingin this place?
This, combined with the comments of those post-office girls at Lewes,awoke in my mind one terrifying conclusion. This place with the peacefulgarden and the pretty name----! There was something uncanny about it....This place was a lunatic asylum!
Yes, I did not see what else on earth it could possibly be! And thenthis woman with the vacuous face and the wild hair, and still wilderkind of attire, she, without doubt, was one of the patients!
What in the world was my poor little Million doing in this galley,provided she was here at all?
And who brought her here? And what was the Honourable Jim's car doingout there? Could he have been so disgraceful as to have got her broughthere for the purpose of rescuing her himself, and of earning her undyinggratitude as well as the riches of her uncle? Oh, what a horribletrick....
Rather than that I felt that I would gladly see the money all go over toMiss Million's cousin! That big young man stood there looking as puzzledas I did, glancing doubtfully, almost apprehensively, at the woman withthe wild attire.
I attacked her again, with more firmness this time.
"I think Miss Million must be here," I said. "She sent me a telegram,and they told me at the post-office place that it was----"
"Oh! her that sent the telegram, was it? That's the young lady you want?I know, I took the telegram myself," said the woman with theautumn-foliage hair. "It was a girl who turned up here with nothing butan evening gown and a light coat the day before yesterday; a dark girl,short."
"That would be the one," I cried with the utmost eagerness. "Isshe----Oh, is she still here?"
"She's here, all right," said the woman with the hair. "My word! Shewasn't half in a paddy, I can tell you, because she could not get hermaid or whoever it was to send down her things from London. Nothing butwhat she stood up in, and having to borrow, and no one with a thing tofit her! She is here, all right!" Relieved, but not completely relieveduntil I should have heard more of Million's adventures, I said: "I amher maid. I have brought down her things. Would you be so kind as totell me where I should find Miss Million?"
"She will be in the house, having her dinner now," said the poorred-haired lunatic quite kindly. "You will excuse me coming in with youmyself, dear, won't you? There is a strange gentleman in there come inthat other car, and I have not had time to go and get myself dressedyet. I made sure I should have all the morning to myself to get my hairdone. Such a time it does take me," she added, shaking it out with anair of vanity, and, indeed, she had something to be vain of. "It isn'teverybody I like to see me like this. I am never one to be carelessabout my appearance when there are gentlemen about. They never think anymore of a girl" (poor creature, she was at least forty) "for things ofthat kind. I am sure I had no more idea that there was another gentlemancoming in, and me with my hair like this! Of course, as I always say,well! it's my own hair! Not like some girls that have to have a haystackon their heads before they're fit to look at, as well as a switch allround...."
It really seemed as if she was going on with this "mildly mental"chatter for as long as we chose to listen.
So I gave one glance at Miss Million's cousin, meaning, "Shall we go?"He nodded gravely back at me. Then, leaving the red-haired lunatic onthe path, shaking her tresses in the sun, we went on between the lilacbushes with their undergrowth of lilies and stocks and pinks until wecame to the house.
The house was a regular Sussex farm sort of looking place that hadevidently been turned into a more modern dwelling-house place. Therewere bright red curtains at all the white-sashed windows, which werewide open. There were window-boxes with lobelia and canary-creeper andgeraniums. As I say, all the windows were flung wide open, and from outof them I heard issuing such a babble of mixed noises as I don't think Ihad ever heard since I was last in the parrot-house at the Zoo. Therewere shrill voices talking; there was clattering of knives and forksagainst crockery. These sounds alternated with such bursts ofunrestrained laughter that now I was perfectly certain that my suspicionoutside in the garden had been a correct one. Yes! This place could benothing but some institution for the mentally afflicted.
And this--and this was where Million had been spirited off to!
Setting my teeth, and without another glance at the increasingly graveface of my companion, I ran up the two shallow stone steps to the bigopen front door, and rang the bell. The tinkling of it was quite drownedby the bursts of hysterical merriment that was issuing from the door onthe left of us.
"They can't hear us through that Bedlam," was Mr. Jessop's veryappropriate comment. "See here, Miss Smith, as it appears to be mostlyladies I shan't be wanted, I guess. Supposing you go easy into theporch and knock on that door while I wait out here on the steps?"
This I did.
I knocked hard in my desperation. No answer but fresh bursts oflaughter, fresh volumes of high-pitched talk. Suddenly I seemed to catchthrough it a deep-voiced masculine murmur with an intonation that Iknew--the caressing Irish inflection of Mr. James Burke.
"What divilment is he up to now, I wonder?" I thought exasperatedly, andmy annoyance at the very thought of that man nerved me to knock reallyperemptorily on the sturdy panels of the door.
Then at last I got an answer.
"Don't stand knocking there like an idiot, come in," shrieked thehighest-pitched of all the parrot voices. Giving myself a mental shake,in I went.
I found myself in a big brown distempered room, with a long white tablerunning down the centre of it. The place seemed full to overflowing withtwo elements--one, the overpowering smell of dinner, i. e., pork andgreens and boiled potatoes, and stout; two, a crowd of girls and womenwho looked to me absolutely numberless. They were all more or lesspretty, these girlish faces. And they were all turned to me withwide-open eyes and parted lips. Out of this sea of faces there appearedto be just two that I recognised as I gazed round. One was the laughing,devil-may-care face of the Honourable Jim, who sat with a long peg glassin front of him, at the bottom of the table.