“If madam really tumbled, or was led by the ’and of Providence.”
She laughed, ruefully. “If that was it the hand of Providence ’d have to have some pretty funny ways.”
“I’ve often ’eard as the wyes of Providence was strynge; but I ain’t so often ’eard as Providence ’ad got to myke ’em strynge to keep pyce with the wyes of men. Now if the ’and of Providence ’ad picked out madam for Mr. Rash, it’d ’ave to do somethink out of the common, as you might sye, to bring together them as man had put so far apart.” He looked round the room with the eye of a head-waiter inspecting a table in a restaurant. “Madam ’as everythink? Well, if there’s anythink else she’s only got to ring.”
Bowing himself out he went down the stairs to attend to those duties of the evening which followed the return of the master of the house. In the library and dining-room he saw to the window fastenings, and put out the one light left burning in each room. In the hall he locked the door with the complicated locks which had helped to guarantee the late Mrs. Allerton against burglars. There was not only a bolt, a chain, and an ordinary lock, but there was an ingenious double lock which turned the wrong way when you thought you were turning it the right, and could otherwise baffle the unskilful. Occupied with this task he could peep over his shoulder, through the unlighted 150 front drawing-room, and see his adored one standing on the hearthrug, his hands clasped behind him, and his head bent, in an attitude of meditation.
Steptoe, having much to say to him, felt the nervousness of a prime minister going into the presence of a sovereign who might or might not approve his acts. It was at once the weakness and the strength of his position that his rule was based on an unwritten constitution. Being unwritten it allowed of a borderland where powers were undefined. Powers being undefined his scope was the more easily enlarged, though now and then he found that the sovereign rebelled against the mayor of the palace and had to be allowed his way.
But the sovereign was nursing no seeds of the kind of discontent which Steptoe was afraid of. As a matter of fact he was thinking of the way in which Letty had left the room. The perspective, the tea-gown, the effectively dressed hair, enabled him to perceive the combination of results which Madame Simone had called de l’élégance naturelle. She had that; he could see it as he hadn’t seen it hitherto. It must have given what value there was to her poor little rôles in motion pictures. Now that his eye had caught it, it surprised, and to some degree disturbed, him. It was more than the show-girl’s inane prettiness, or the comely wax-work face of the girl on the cover of a magazine. With due allowance for her Anglo-Saxonism and honesty, she was the type of woman to whom “things happen.” Things would happen to her, Allerton surmised, beyond anything she could experience in his cumbrous and antiquated house. 151 This queer episode would drop behind her as an episode and no more, and in the multitude of future incidents she would almost forget that she had known him. He hoped to God that it would be so, and yet....
He was noting too that she hadn’t taxed him, in the way of calling on his small supply of nervous energy. Rather she had spared it, and he felt himself rested. After a talk with Barbara he was always spent. Her emotional furies demanded so much of him that they used him up. This girl, on the contrary, was soothing. He didn’t know how she was soothing; but she was. He couldn’t remember when he had talked to a woman with so little thought of what he was to say and how he was to say it, and heaven only knew that the things to be said between them were nerve-racking enough. But they had come out of their own accord, those nerve-racking things, probably, he reasoned, because she was a girl of inferior class with whom he didn’t have to be particular.
She was quick, too, to catch the difference between his speech and her own. She was quick—and pathetic. Her self-correction amused him, with a strain of pity in his amusement. If a girl like that had only had a chance.... And just then Steptoe broke in on his musing by entering the room.
The first subject to be aired was that of the changes in the household staff, and Steptoe raised it diplomatically. Mrs. Courage and Jane had taken offense at the young lydy’s presence, and packed themselves off in dishonorable haste. Had it not been that two men friends of his own were ready to come at an hour’s notice the house would have been servantless 152 till he had procured strangers. No condemnation could be too severe for Mrs. Courage and Jane, for not content with leaving the house in dudgeon they had insulted the young lydy before they went.
“Sooner or lyter they would ’a’ went any’ow. For this long time back they’ve been too big for their boots, as you might sye. If Mr. Rash ’ad married the other young lydy she wouldn’t ’a’ stood ’em a week. It don’t do to keep servants too long, not when they’ve got no more than a menial mind, which Jynie and Mrs. Courage ’aven’t. The minute they ’eard that this young lydy was in the ’ouse.... And beautiful the wye she took it, Mr. Rash. I never see nothink finer on the styge nor in the movin’ pictures. Like a young queen she was, a-tellin’ ’em that she ’adn’t come to this ’ouse to turn out of it them as ’ad ’ad it as their ’ome, like, and that she’d put it up to them. If they went she’d stye; but if they styed she’d go––”