Royal Purple

CHAPTER I

AUGUSTINE was in the kitchen, peering gloomily into the larder, when Lu
c
y went in to see about the dogs’ midday meal.

“Scraps for the dogs?” she echoed, tightening her lips and sounding very grim. “It would be good if there were scraps for us,
mademoiselle,
and never mind about dogs! You can tell Her Excellency that the butcher refuses to deliver any more meat until his last bill is paid, and the milkman also is very nasty. I do not care to have to deal with these tradesmen and be expected to provide for a lot of dogs at the same time!”

Lucy sat down on the edge of the scrubbed kitchen table and did her best to soothe her. It was quite plain that she had had a bad morning, for there were lines in her wrinkled brown forehead like wavy tramlines, and she had general air of being flushed and heated after a recent exchange of invective with the milkman.

Lucy asked to see the butcher’s bill, and was shocked by the amount charged for a simple thing like a leg of lamb and a couple of ox kidneys.

“But this is enormous,” she protested. “Surely we don’t eat that amount of meat in a month
...
? Fifteen pounds six shillings and fourpence! It’s colossal! And as a matter of fact we haven’t got it,” she added, with the flatness that supervenes when an unpleasant side issue is recollected suddenly.

Augustine tightened her lips until they disappeared
into her head and reached for the flour bin
...
one of her substantial puddings as a supplement to the lun
c
h menu being the only practical move she could make at the moment.

Lucy groaned feebly.

“Oh, not treacle
again,
Augustine!”

This time Augustine tossed her head.

“Treacle is wholesome—we used to mix it into a purgative when I was young—and at least I was wise enough to buy a fourteen-pound tin of it while I had the chance. And it is no use criticising me because the butcher’s bill is large. The best gravy-beef
only
is for the dogs, and Her Highness insists that they are stuffed to capacity. They are gross, those dogs, and it is small wonder that they snap at the ankles
...”
She banged the floury duff on to the board in front of her. “The milkman protested only this morning, and that was one reason why his temper was so high. It is lucky for us he didn’t fetch a policeman!”

“Oh dear,” Lucy said, appalled. “Was it Mitzi again
?
”

“It was.”

“She doesn’t like ankles
...
not the ankles of the proletariat, anyway.”

“Her Highness must realise that the old days are past,” Augustine declared violently, kneading the duff. Then she permitted herself a disdainful sniff. “In the old days a vulgar creature like a tradesman would have been ordered never to darken the door again if he complained of a bite from one of the dogs. We kept no fewer than twenty-six, mostly ill- tempered hounds
...
And in the old days the butcher was lucky if he was not required to wait for as long as a year for his money.” She sat down heavily in a chair, and suddenly a tear trickled down her withered cheek—a tear conjured up out of pure nostalgia. “And in the old days there were always several sides of venison hanging up in the larder, to say nothing of dozens of chickens already plucked for the oven, and an array of sucking-pigs like newly-born infants waiting to be cooked at any hour of the day or night. Cooked in wine
...
”

Her voice cracked with wistfulness, and a second tear joined the first in the mixing-bowl.

“The very best claret, that glowed like blood against the light when you held it up in a goblet so fine it could shiver at a touch.”

“Then, unless your domestic
helpers were a little less clumsy than they are nowadays, you must have had an awful lot of smashed glass,” Lucy observed, her sense of humour coming to her rescue.

Augustine’s eyes flashed angrily as she recollected the daily woman who did the various tasks her rheumaticky limbs would not permit her to undertake nowadays, like scrubbing the kitchen floor, once or twice a week, and she made a sound of utter contempt between her teeth.

“Domestic helpers! Is that what you call them? Ah, bah, if I had a stick I would flay them all alive!”

“You’d better let me have the latest batch of bills,” Lucy suggested, realising that something would have to be done about the housekeeping problem. But she couldn’t think what. “Her Highness is already overdrawn at the bank, and her allowance isn’t due for another month, so I don’t know how we’re going to settle them.”

“Tell her to sell some of her jewellery,” Augustine snapped. “What use are diamond bracelets and earrings when we starve
?
And the next thing will be the arrival of the landlord himself upon the doorstep to collect his rent
!”

But Lucy couldn’t see that happening, for Her Excellency’s solicitors despatched a regular quarterly rent cheque for the ugly maisonette in one of London’s tallest houses; and in any case the landlord was a
dapper gentleman who owned vast blocks of flats and other property, and would certainly not demean himself by stepping from his Rolls-Royce outside their door to collect the rent.

But she had every sympathy with Augustine and her dislike of constant hostilities at the basement entrances, and with many of the sentiments she expressed, and she told her to cheer up and substitute currants for the noisome black treacle that came out of the fourteen-pound tin when she put the pudding on to boil, and then climbed the narrow stairs to Her Highness’s bedroom with a sheaf of bills in her hand.

‘Her Highness’ was a title that was nowadays purely complimentary, for the daughter of a reigning monarch of a European principality—defunct since 1906—had married a commoner, and although he had been granted a title, and she called herself the Countess von Ardrath, the little money they possessed had dwindled so rapidly that even twenty years before people looked when she insisted on being referred to as ‘Excellency’, or the even more unbelievable ‘Highness’.

But to Lucy she was what she insisted she was, and the incongruity of an unfashionable
corner
of London in which to live, faded trappings and an occasional summons for failing to oblige with a necessary payment meant nothing at all. She knocked on the Countess’s door, received permission to enter, and found her employer lying comfortably propped up against pillows in an enormous bed that was more like a catafalque. She was still supporting a breakfast tray on her knees, and the first thing she did was complain because the China tea was too weak.

“Why doesn’t Augustine get in a proper supply?” she demanded. “She knows I like my tea strong, and if she is short then she should go to the nearest shop and buy some more.”

“And what would she use for money,
madame
?”
Lucy enquired gently.

The old lady appeared surprised for a moment, and then made a slightly pettish gesture with her thin shoulders swathed in a number of shawls.

“Money? What a horrid subject that is for such an early hour of the day.” She smiled at Lucy, a sweet, beguiling smile, but there was also a touch of appeal in it, and something so evasive that Lucy’s heart sank, for when the Co
un
tess was deliber
a
tely evasive it was not easy to pin her down to anything. “Put anoth
e
r lump of coal on the fire, Lucy love, and give it a good poke so that I can see a blaze.”

The room was already so warm that Lucy wanted to rush to the window and draw back the curtains—which at that hour were still rigidly closed—and throw it wide, so that a little of the exhilarating spring sunshine and freshness outside could find their way into the room and break up the overpowering odour of fustiness compounded of various liniments, soot from an unswept chimney, and the dust collected by rotting tapestries throughout several generations. But she knew that it was more than she dared do (and her unpaid position was worth) to submit the Countess to the dangers of a sudden draught when she was unprepared for it, and would hate it in any case.

So she made up the fire and put the coal scuttle aside for refilling (she would do it herself when she went downstairs, to save Augustine’s legs), and then went and sat on the edge of the bed and waved her sheaf of bills under the Countess’s nose.

The Countess continued to smile—and she was one of the most amiable-looking old women Lucy had ever seen—although she also blinked her eyes a trifle.

“What are those, Lucy
mia
?”
Her endearments covered most of those in use on the Continent, as well as England, and occasionally even Ireland. “Not the newspapers, I can see! And from your expression they are not as pleasant as newspapers, which have the most delightfully horrid headlines sometimes.”

Lucy explained that they were demands from various tradesmen for settlement of their accounts, and her employer asked for her spectacles so that she could examine each one carefully. She did so as if they were pieces of transcript which demanded the maximum of attention and intrigued her quite considerably, and then she made the remark that Augustine
was a
bad housekeeper, and it was all the fault of her having been trained to be a lady’s maid, and not for the more useful task of running a household.

“She can mend lace better than any woman of her class I ever met,” she observed. “And years ago she used to dress my hair to my complete satisfaction. But nowadays I haven’t any hair”—her wig of slightly hideous red curls was definitely askew as she rested against her pillows—“and what I require is someone to perform miracles in the kitchen, and practise a really careful economy, and not an old dunderhead like Augustine, who hasn’t the wit to cope with tradespeople and see that their backs are merely
a
rched a little, and not put up so badly that they demand their money.”

But at that Lucy felt forced to protest, and take up the cudgels quite vigorously on behalf of Augustine. She insisted that the poor old servant was badly overworked in any case, and that she was crippled wit
h
rheumatism. She adopted the attitude that Augustine had worked miracles for several years, and only a very faithful retainer would pinch and scrape as she did, making a little go a long way. No other housekeeper would take on the job of looking after the Countess and providing for her wants with such a little money
—and no wages whatsoever
—and feed three dogs as she did, day after day, week after week, year after year. For nothing but love of the Countess!

The dogs—Mitzi, Carl and Heinrich—who were all three on the bed, concealed by various portions of the coverlet, acknowledged the mention of them with rather a vigorous motion of the bed which shook the tassels on the faded curtains, and three long sleek tails beat time like metronomes.

The Countess lay back and regarded Lucy with interest. She decided that her companion was very pretty and that a flush of indignation suited her, but she would be much prettier if her hair was shorn into some sort of recognised shape, and she had a dress to wear that was a more attractive colour than the one she had on at the moment.

What was it? A sort of slate-grey, with a collar and cuffs that had once been white but were yellowed now as a result of much hasty washing and ironing. And in any
c
ase, it looked more like a uniform than a dress, and a girl with fair hair like a cloud of silk and an English apple-blossom complexion ought not to be encased in a uniform. Particularly one that was too tight under the arms, and dipped in the middle of the back where the hemline was dropping.

“Tell me, my dear,” the Countess enquired sweetly. “What sort of salary do I pay you, and when did you receive your last—er—instalment?”

Lucy flushed still more brilliantly, for she was not at that moment concerned about her own salary, and the last thing she wished to do just then was grind an axe on her own behalf. Nevertheless, she had been brought up to be truthful, and the Countess’s eyes were very bright and very compelling as she watched her. Lucy’s grey eyes looked abashed.

“As a matter of fact, since you engaged me to work for you six months ago, you haven’t paid me anything that could be called salary, your Excellency,” she admitted. “You—you occasionally give me small sums of money when I go shopping for you.”