The waiter roared it through the hall:"We don't give bread withonefish-ball!We-don't-give-bread with one fish-ba-a-ll!"
The waiter roared it through the hall:"We don't give bread withonefish-ball!We-don't-give-bread with one fish-ba-a-ll!"
The waiter roared it through the hall:
"We don't give bread withonefish-ball!
We-don't-give-bread with one fish-ba-a-ll!"
I half expected some such crushing protest, and it was only when the weary duke had turned his back, presumably to execute my order, that I sank into my chair with a sigh of relief after strain.
Just at that moment I met the eye of the lady of the lift, and when the waiter reappeared with a small cup, on a charger large enough to have upheld the head of John the Baptist, she looked again. In five minutes I had finished theconsommé, and it became painful to linger. Rising, I made for the door, which seemed a mile away, and I did not lift my head in passing the table where the lady sat behind her roses. I heard a rustling as I went by, however, a crisp rustling like flower-leaves whispering in a breeze, or a woman's silk ruffles stroking each other, which followed me out into the hall.
Then the pleasant voice I had heard near the lift spoke behind me:
"Won't you have your coffee with me in the garden?"
I could hardly believe at first that it was for me the invitation was intended, but turning with a little start, I saw it repeated in a pair of gentle gray eyes set rather wide apart in a delicate, colourless face.
"Oh! thank you!" I hesitated. "I—"
"Do forgive me," went on the lady, "but your face interested me this morning, and as we're all rather curious about strangers—we idle ones here—I took the liberty of asking the manager who you were. He told me—"
"About the Princess?" I asked, when she paused as if slightly embarrassed.
"He told me that you said you had come to Cannes to be her companion. He didn't tell me she was dead, poorwoman, but—there are some things one knows by instinct, by intuition, aren't there? And then—I couldn't help seeing, or perhaps only imagining, that you looked sad and worried. You are very young, and are here all alone, and so—I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind my speaking to you?"
"I'm very grateful," I said, "for your interest. And it's so good of you to ask me to have coffee with you." (I was almost sure, too, that she had hurried away in the midst of her luncheon to do this deed of kindness.)
"Perhaps, after all, you'll come with me to my own sitting-room," she suggested. "We can talk more quietly there; and though the garden's quite lovely, it's rather too glaring at this time of day."
We went up in the lift together, and the moment she opened the door of her sitting-room I saw that she had contrived to make it look like herself. She talked only about her books and photographs and flowers until the coffee had come, and we seemed better acquainted. Then she told me that she was Lady Kilmarny—"Irish in every drop in her veins"; and presently set herself to draw me out.
I began by making up my mind not to pour forth all my troubles, lest she should think that I wanted to take advantage of her kindness and sponge upon her for help; but she was irresistible, as only a true Irishwoman can be, and the first thing I knew, I had emptied my heart of its worries.
"You will have to go back to the cousins you've been living with in Paris," pronounced Lady Kilmarny. "You're much too young and pretty to beanywherealone."
"I can't go on living with them unless I promise to marry Monsieur Charretier," I explained. "I'd rather scrub floors than marry Monsieur Charretier."
"You'd never finish one floor. The second would finish you. I thought French girls—well, then,halfFrench girls—usually let their people arrange their marriages."
"Perhaps I'm not usual. IhopeMonsieur Charretier isn't."
"Is he such a monster?"
"He is fat, especially in all the places he oughtn't to be fat. And old. But worse than hisembonpointand his nose, he made his money in—you could never guess."
"I see by your face, my poor child: it was Liver Pills."
"Something far more dreadful."
"Are there lower depths?"
"There are—Corn Plasters."
"Oh, my dear, you arequiteright! You couldn't marry him."
"Thank you so much! Then, I can't go back to my cousins. They—they take Monsieur Charretier seriously. I think they even take his plasters—gratuitously."
"Is he so very rich?"
"But disgustingly rich. He has an awful, bulbous new château in the country, with dozens of incredibly high-powered motor-cars; and in the most expensive part of Paris a huge apartment wriggling from floor to ceiling withNouveau Art. The girl who marries him will have to be smeared with diamonds, and know the most appalling people. In fact, she'll have to be a kind of walking, pictorial advertisement for the success of Charretier's Corn Plasters."
"He must know some nice people, since he knows relations of yours."
"Thank you for the compliment, which I hope you pay me on circumstantial evidence. But it's deceiving. My mother, I believe, was the only nice person in her family. These cousins, husband and wife, brought mamma to Europe to live with them when she was a young girl, quite rich and an orphan. They were furious when she fell in love with papa, who was only a lieutenant with nothing but a very old name, the ruins of a castle that tourists paid francs to see, and a ramshackle house in Paris almost too dilapidated to let. It was a mere detail to them that he happened to be one of the best-looking and most agreeable young men in the world. They did nothing but say, 'I told you so!' for years, whenever anything disastrous happened—as it constantly did, for poor papa and mamma loved each other so much, and had somuch fun, that they couldn't have time to be business-like. My cousins thought everything mamma did was a madness—such as sending me to the most fashionable convent school in France. As if I hadn't to be educated! And then, when the castle fell so to bits that tourists wouldn't bother with it any more, and nobody but rats would live in the Paris house unless it was repaired—and poor papa was killed in a horrid little Saturday-to-Monday war of no importance (except to people whose hearts it broke)—oh! I believe the cousins were glad! They thought it was a judgment. That happened years ago, when I was only fifteen, and though they've plenty of money (more than most people in the American colony) they didn't offer to help; and mamma would have died sooner than ask. I had to be snatched out of school, to find that all the beautiful dreams of being a happydébutantemust go by contraries. We lived in the tumble-down house ourselves, mamma and I, and her friends rallied round her—she was so popular and pretty. They got her chances to give singing lessons, and me to do translating, and paintingmenus. We were happy again, after a while, in spite of all, and people were so good to us! Mamma used to hold a kind ofsalon, with all the brightest and best crowding to it, though they got nothing but sweet biscuits,vin ordinaire, and conversation—and besides, the house might have taken a fancy to fall down on their heads any minute. It was sporting of them to come at all!"
"And the cousins. Did they come?"
"Not they! They're of the society of the little Brothers and Sisters of the Rich. Their set was quite differentfrom ours. But when mamma died nearly two years ago, and I was alone, they did call, and Cousin Emily offered me a home. I was to give up all my work, of course, which she considered degrading, and was simply to make myself useful to her as a daughter of the house might do. That was what shesaid."
"You accepted?"
"Yes. I didn't know her and her husband as well as I do now; and before she died mamma begged me to go to them, if they asked me. That was when Monsieur Charretier came on the scene—at least, he came a few months later, and I've had no peace since. Lately, things were growing more and more impossible, when my best friend, Comtesse de Nesle, came to my rescue and found (or thought she'd found) me this engagement with the Princess. As I told you, I simply ran away—sneakedaway—and came here without any one but Pamela knowing. And now she—the Comtesse—is just sailing for New York with her husband."
"The Comtesse de Nesle—that pretty little American! I've met her in Paris—and at the Dublin Horse Show," exclaimed Lady Kilmarny. "Well, I wish I could take up the rescue work where she has laid it down. I think you are a most romantic little figure, and I'd love to engage you as my companion, only my husband and I are as poor as church mice. Like your father, we've nothing but our name and a few ruins. When I come South for my health I can't afford such luxuries as a husband and a maid. I have to choose between them and a private sitting-room. So you see, I can't possibly indulge in a companion."
People seemed to be always wanting me as one, and then reluctantly abandoning me!
"Your kindness and sympathy have helped me a lot," said I.
"They won't pay your way."
"I have no way. So far as I can see, I shall have to stop in Cannes, anonymously so to speak, for the rest of my life."
"Where would you like to go, if you could choose—since you can't go to your relations?"
Again my thoughts travelled after Miss Paget, as if she had been a fat, red will-o'-the-wisp.
"To England, perhaps," I answered. "In a few weeks from now I might be able to find a position there." And I went on to tell, in as few words as possible, my adventure in the railway train.
"H'm!" said Lady Kilmarny. "We'll look her up inWho's Who, and see if she exists. If she's anybody, she'll be there. AndWho's WhoI always have with me, abroad. One meets so many pretenders, it's quite dangerous."
"How can you tell I'm not one?" I asked. "Yet you spoke to me."
"Why, you're down in a kind of invisible book, called 'You're You.' It's sufficient reference for me. Besides, if your two eyes couldn't be trusted, it would be easy to shed you."
Lady Kilmarny said this smilingly, as she found the red book, and passed her finger down the columns of P's.
"Yes, here's the name, and the two addresses on the visiting-card. She's the Honourable Maria Paget, onlydaughter of the late Baron Northfield. Yes, an engagement with her would be safe, if not agreeable. But how to get you to England?"
"Perhaps I could go as somebody's maid," I reflected aloud.
She looked at me sharply."Wouldyou do that?"
"It would be better than being an advertisement for Corn Plasters," I smiled.
"Then," said Lady Kilmarny, "perhaps, after all, I can help you. But no—I should never dare to suggest it! The thought of a girl like you—it would be too dreadful."
When my father had been extravagant, he used to say gaily in self-defence that "one owed something to one's ancestors." Certainly, if it had not been for several of his ancestors, he would not have owed so much to his contemporaries. But in spite of their agreeable vices, or because of them, I was brought up in the cult of ancestor worship, as religiously as if I had been Chinese.
To be a d'Angely was a privilege, in our eyes, which not only supplied gilding for the gingerbread, but for the most economical substitutes.
"Ne roi je suis,Ne prince aussi,Je suis le Sire d'Angely,"
"Ne roi je suis,Ne prince aussi,Je suis le Sire d'Angely,"
"Ne roi je suis,
Ne prince aussi,
Je suis le Sire d'Angely,"
calmly remarked the gentleman of Louis XI.'s time, who became famous for hanging as many retainers as he liked, and defending his action by originating the family motto.
Mother also had ancestors who began to take themselves seriously somewhere about the time of theMayflower, though for all we know they may have secured their passage in the steerage.
"A Courtenay can do anything," was their rather ambiguous motto, which suggested that it might have been started in self-defence, if not as a boast; and it (the name,not the motto) had been thoughtfully sandwiched in between my Lys and my d'Angely by my sponsors in baptism, that if necessary I might ever have an excuse at hand for any dark deed or infra dig-ness.
I used often to murmur the consoling mottoes to myself when pattering through muddy streets, too poor to take an omnibus, on the way to sell—or try to sell—my translations or mymenus. But now, after all that's happened, if it is to strike conviction to my soul, I shall be obliged to yell it at the top of my mental lungs.
(That expression may sound ridiculous, but it isn't. We could not talk to ourselves as we do, in all kinds of voices, high or low, if we hadn't mental lungs, or at the least, sub-conscious-self lungs.)
Je suisthe daughter of the last Sire d'Angely; and a Courtenay can do anything; so of course it's all right; and it's no good my ancestors turning in their graves, for they'll only make themselves uncomfortable without changing my mind.
I, Lys d'Angely, am going to be a lady's-maid; or rather, I am going to be the maid of an extremely rich person who calls herself a lidy.
It's perfectly awful, or awfully comic, according to the point of view, and I swing from one to the other, pushed by my fastidiousness to my sense of humour, and back again, in a way to make me giddy. But it's settled. I'm going to do it. I had almost to drag the suggestion out of Lady Kilmarny, who turned red and stammered as if I were the great lady, she the poor young girl in want of a situation.
There was, said she, a quaint creature in the hotel(one met these things abroad, and was obliged to be more or less civil to them) who resembled Monsieur Charretier in that she was disgustingly rich. It was not Corn Plasters. It was Liver Pills, the very same liver pills which had dropped into the mind of Lady Kilmarny when I hesitated to put into words the foundation of mypretendant'sfuture. It was the Liver Pills which had eventually introduced into her brain the idea she falteringly embodied for me.
The husband of the quaint creature had invented the pills, even as Monsieur Charretier had invented his abomination. Because of the pills he had been made a Knight; at least, Lady Kilmarny didn't know any other reason. He was Sir Samuel Turnour (evolved from Turner), just married for the second time to a widow in whose head it was like the continual frothing of new wine to be "her ladyship."
Lady Turnour had lately quarrelled with a maid and dismissed her, Lady Kilmarny told me. Now, she was in immediate need of another, French (because French maids are fashionable) able to speak English, because the Turnour family had as yet mastered no other language. Lady Kilmarny believed that this was the honeymoon of the newly married pair, and that, after having paused on the wing at Cannes, for a little billing and cooing, they intended to pursue their travels in France for some weeks, before returning to settle down in England. "Her Ladyship" was asking everybody with whom she had contrived to scrape acquaintance (especially if they had titles) to recommend her a maid. Lady Kilmarny, as a member of the League againstCruelty to Animals, had determined that nothing would induce her to throw any poor mouse to this cat, even if she heard of a mouse plying for hire; but here was I in a dreadful scrape, professing myself ready to snap at anything except Corn Plasters; and she felt bound to mention that the mousetrap was open, the cheese waiting to be nibbled.
"Do you think she'd have me?" I asked—"the quaint creature, her ladyship?"
"Only too likely that she would," said Lady Kilmarny. "But remember, the worst is, she doesn'tknowshe's a quaint creature. She is quite happy about herself, offensively happy, and would consider you the 'creature.' A truly awful person, my dear. A man in this hotel—the little thing you saw me talking to this morning, knows all about them both. I think they began in Peckham or somewhere. Theywould, you know, and call it 'S.W.' She was a chemist's daughter, and he was the humble assistant, long before the Pill materialized, so she refused him, and married a dashing doctor. But unfortunately he dashed into the bankruptcy court, and afterward she probably nagged him to death. Anyway he died—but not till long after Sam Turner had taken pity on some irrelevant widow, as his early love was denied him. The widow had a boy, to whom the stepfather was good—(really a very decent person according to his lights!) and kept on making pills and millions, until last year he lost his first wife and got a knighthood. The old love was a widow by this time, taking in lodgers in some neighbourhood where youdotake lodgers, and Sir Samuel found and gathered her like a late rose. Naturally she putson all the airs in the world, and diamonds in the morning. She'll treat you like the dirt under her feet, because that's her conception of her part—and yours. But I'll introduce you to her if you like."
After a little reflection, I did like; but as it seemed to me that there'd better not be two airs in the family, I said that I'd put on none at all, and make no pretensions.
"She's the kind that doesn't know a lady or gentleman without a label," my kind friend warned me. "You must be prepared for that."
"I'll be prepared for anything," I assured her. But when it came to the test, I wasn't quite.
Lady Kilmarny wrote a line to Lady Turnour, and asked if she might bring a maid to be interviewed—a young woman whom she could recommend. The note was sent down to the bride (who of course had the best suite in the hotel, on the first floor) and presently an answer came—saying that Her Ladyship would be pleased to receive Lady Kilmarny and the person in question.
Suddenly I felt that I must go alone. "Please leave me to my fate," I said. "I should be too self-conscious if you were with me. Probably I should laugh in her face, or do something dreadful."
"Very well," Lady Kilmarny agreed. "Perhaps you're right. Say that I sent you, and that, though you've never been with me, friends of mine know all about you. You might tell her that you were to have travelled with the Princess Boriskoff. That will impress her. She would kiss the boot of a Princess. Afterward, come up and tell me how you got on with 'Her Ladyship.'"
I was stupid to be nervous, and told myself so; but as I knocked at the door of the suite reserved for Millionaires and other Royalties, my heart was giving little ineffective jumps in my breast, like—as my old nurse used to say—"a frog with three legs."
"Come in!" called a voice with sharp, jagged edges.
I opened the door. In a private drawing-room as different as the personality of one woman from another, sat Lady Turnour. She faced me as I entered, so I had a good look at her, before casting down my eyes and composing my countenance to the self-abnegating meekness which I conceived fitting to afemme de chambre comme il faut.
She was enthroned on a sofa. One could hardly say less, there was so much of her, and it was all arranged as perfectly as if she were about to be photographed. No normal woman, merely sitting down, with no other object than to be comfortable, would curve the tail of her gown round in front of her like a sickle; or have just the point of one shoe daintily poised on a footstool; or the sofa-cushions at exactly the right angle behind her head to make a background; or the finger with all her best rings on it, keeping the place in an English illustrated journal.
I dared not believe that she had posed for me. It must have been for Lady Kilmarny; and that I alone should see the picture was a bad beginning.
She is of the age when a woman can still tell people that she is forty, hoping they will exclaim politely, "Impossible!"
It is not enough for her to be a Ladyship and a millionairess. She will be a beauty as well, or at all costs shewill be looked at. To that end are her eyebrows and lashes black as jet, her undulated hair crimson, her lips a brighter shade of the same colour, and her skin of magnolia pallor, like the heroines of the novels which are sure to be her favourites. Once, she must have been handsome, a hollyhock queen of a kitchen-garden kingdom; but she would be far more attractive now if only she had "abdicated," as nice middle-aged women say in France.
Her dress was the very latest dream of a neurotic Parisian modiste, and would have been seductive on a slender girl. On her—well, at least she would have her wish in it—she would not pass unnoticed!
She looked surprised at sight of me, and I saw she didn't realize that I was the expected candidate.
"Lady Kilmarny couldn't come," I began to explain, "and—"
"Oh!" she cut me short. "So you are the young person she is recommending as a maid."
I corrected Miss Paget when she called me a "young woman," but times have changed since then, and in future I must humbly consent to be a young person, or even a creature.
For a minute I forgot, and almost sat down. It would have been the end of me if I had! Luckily I remembered What I was, and stood before my mistress, trying to look like Patience on a monument with butter in her mouth which mustn't be allowed to melt.
"What is your name?" began the catechism (and the word was "nime," according to Lady Turnour).
"N or M," nearly slipped out of my mouth, but Iput Satan with all his mischief behind me, and answered that I was Lys d'Angely.
"Oh, the surname doesn't matter. As you're a French girl, I shall call you by your first name. It's always done."
(The first time in history, I'd swear, that a d'Angely was ever told his name didn't matter!)
"You seem to speak English very well for a French woman?" (This almost with suspicion.)
"My mother was American."
"How extraordinary!"
(This was apparently atache. Evidently lady's-maids are expectednotto have American mothers!)
"Let me hear your French accent."
I let her hear it.
"H'm! It seems well enough. Paris?"
"Paris, madame."
"Don't call me 'madame.' Any common person is madame. You should say 'your ladyship'."
I said it.
"And I want you should speak to me in the third person, like the French servants are supposed to do in good houses."
"If mad—if your ladyship wishes."
(Thank heaven for a sense of humour! My one wild desire was to laugh. Without that blessing, I should have yearned to slap her.)
"What references have you got from your last situation?"
"I have never been in service before—my lady."
"My word! That's bad. However, you're on thespot, and Lady Kilmarny recommends you. The poor Princess was going to try you, it seems. I should think she wouldn't have given much for a maid without any experience."
"I was to have had two thousand francs a year as the Princess's com—if the Princess was satisfied."
"Preposterous! I don't believe a word of it. Why, what can youdo? Can you dress hair? Can you make a blouse?"
"I did my mother's hair, and sometimes my cousin's."
"Yourmother!Yourcousin! I'm talking of a lidy."
My sense of humourdidalmost fail me just then. But I caught hold of it by the tail just as it was darting out of the window, spitting and scratching like a cross cat.
It was remembering Monsieur Charretier that brought me to my bearings. "I think your ladyship would be satisfied," I said. "And I make all my own dresses."
"That one you've got on?—which ismostunsuitable for a maid, I may tell you, and I should never permit it."
"This one I have on, also."
"I thought maybe it had been a present. Well, it'ssomethingthat you speak both English and French passably well. I'll try you on Lady Kilmarny's recommendation, if you want to come to me for fifty francs a month. I won't give more to anamateur."
I thought hard for a minute. Lady Kilmarny had said it would not be many weeks before the Turnours went to England. There, if Miss Paget (who seemed extremely nice by contrast and in retrospect) were stillof the same mind, I might find a good home. If not, she was as kind as she was queer, and would help me look further. So I replied that I would accept the fifty francs, and would do my best to please her ladyship.
She did not express herself as gratified. "You can begin work this evening," she said. "I was obliged to send away my last maid yesterday, and I'mlostwithout one." (This was delightful from a "lidy" who had kept lodgers for years, with the aid perhaps of one smudgy-nosed "general"!) "But have you no more suitable clothes? I can't let a maid of mine go flaunting about, like a Mary-Jane-on-Sunday."
I mentioned a couple of plain black dresses in my wardrobe, which might be made to answer if I were allowed a few hours' time to work upon them, and didn't add that they remained from my mourning for one dearly loved.
"You can have till six o'clock free," said Lady Turnour. "Then you must come back to lay out my things for dinner, and dress me. What about your room? Had the Princess taken something for you in the hotel?"
I evaded a direct answer by saying that I had a room; and was inwardly thankful that, evidently, the Turnours had not noticed me in the restaurant at luncheon, otherwise things might have been awkward.
"Very well, you can keep the same one, then," went on her ladyship, "and let the hotel people know it's Sir Samuel who pays for it. To-morrow morning we leave, in our sixty-horse-power motor car. We are making a tour before going back to England. Sir Samuel's stepson joins us in Paris or perhaps before and travelson with us. He is staying now with some French people of very high title, who live in a château. You will sit on the front seat with the chauffeur."
This was a blow! I hadn't thought of the chauffeur. "But," thought I, "chauffeur or no chauffeur, it's too late now for retreat."
Talk of Prometheus with his vulture, the Spartan boy with his decently concealed wolf! What of Lys d'Angely with an English chauffeur in her pocket?
When I was dismissed from the Presence, I ran to Lady Kilmarny with my story, and she agreed with me that the thing to dread most in the whole situation was the chauffeur.
"Of course he'll naturally consider himself on an equality with you," she said, "and you'll have to eat with him at hotels, and all that. Once, when my husband and I were touring in France, and used to break down near little inns, we were obliged to have a chauffeur at the same table with us, because there was only one long one (table, I mean, not chauffeur) and we couldn't spare time to let him wait till we'd finished. My dear, it was ghastly! You would never believe if you hadn't seen it, how the creature swallowed his knife when he ate, and did conjuring tricks with his fork and spoon. I simplydarednot look at him gnawing his bread, but used to shut my eyes. I hate to distress you, poor child, but I tell you these things as a warning.Areyou able to bear it?"
I said that I, too, could shut my eyes.
"You can't make a habit of doing so. And he may want to put his arm round your waist, or chuck you under the chin. I used to have complaints from my maid, who was comparatively plain, while you—but I don't want to frighten you. Hemaybe different from ourman. Some, they say, are most respectable. I love common people when they're nice, and give up quite pleasantly to being common; and of course Irish ones are too delightful. But you can't hope for an Irish chauffeur. I hear they don't exist. They're all French or German or English. Let us hope this one may be the father of a family."
It was well enough to be told to hope; and Lady Kilmarny meant to be kind, but what she said made me "creep" whenever I thought of the chauffeur.
She advised me not to take my meals with the maids and valets at the Majestic Palace, because a change, so sudden and Cinderella-like, after lunching in the restaurant, would cause disagreeable talk in the hotel. As my living in future would be at the charge of the Turnours, I might afford myself a few indulgences to begin with, she argued; and deciding that she was right, I made up my mind to have my remaining meals served in my own room.
I hastily stripped a black frock of its trimming, dressed my hair more simply even than usual, parted down the middle, and altogether strove to achieve the air of afemme de chambreborn, not made. But I'm bound to chronicle the fact for my own future reference (when some day I shall laugh at this adventure) that the effect, though restful to the eye, suggested the stagefemme de chambrerather than the sober reality one sees in every-day life. However, I was conscious of having done my best, a state of mind which always produces a cool, strawberries-and-cream feeling in the soul; and thus supported I tripped (yes, Ididtrip!) downstairs to adorn Lady Turnour for dinner.
The door was open between her bedroom and the sitting-room. Waiting in the former I could hear voices in the latter. Lady Turnour and her husband were talking about the arrival of the stepson whose name, I soon gleaned from their conversation, is Herbert. Naturally, itwouldbe. People like that are always named Herbert, and are familiarly known to those whom they may concern as "Bertie."
Presently, her ladyship came into the bedroom, and said, as a queen might say to her tirewoman, "Put me into my dressing-gown." If there were a feminine word for "sirrah," I think she would have liked to call me it.
My eye, roving distractedly, pounced upon a gold-embroidered, purple silk kimono, perhaps more appropriate to Pooh-Bah than to a stout English lady of the lower middle class. I released it from its hook on the door, and would that her ladyship had been as easy to release from her bodice!
She had not one hook, but many; and they were all so incredibly tight that, to put her into the dressing-gown as ordered, I feared it would be necessary to melt and pour her out of the gown she had on.
While I wrestled, silent and red faced, with a bodice as snug as the head of a drum, the lord of all it contained appeared in the doorway, and stopped, looking at me in surprise.
He is common, too, this Sir Samuel, millionaire maker of pills; but he is common in a good, almost pathetic way, quite different from his wife's way—or Monsieur Charretier's. He has stick-up gray hair curling all over his round head, blue eyes, twinkling with a mild, yetshrewd expression (which might be merry if encouraged by her ladyship), and a large, slouching body with stooped shoulders.
"What young lady have we here?" he inquired.
"Not a young lady at all," explained his wife sharply. "My new French maid."
"I beg your pardon, I'm sure," said Sir Samuel, though it wasn't quite clear whether it was my forgiveness or that of his spouse he craved, for his mistake in supposing me to be a "young lady."
"What's her name?" he wanted to know, evidently approving of me, if not as a maid, at least as a human being.
"Something ridiculous in French that sounds like 'Liz,'" sniffed her ladyship. "But I shall call her Elise. Also I shall expect her to stop dyeing her hair."
"But, madame, I do not dye it!" I exclaimed.
"Don't tell me. I know dyed hair when I see it."
(She ought to, having experience enough with her own!)
"Nature is the dyer, then," I ventured to persist, piqued to self-defence by the certainty that her object was to strip me of my wicked mask before her husband.
"I'm not used to being contradicted by my servants," her ladyship reminded me.
"My dear, do let the poor girl know whether she dyes her hair or not." Sir Samuel pleaded for me with more kindness than discretion. "I'm sure she speaks beautiful English."
While I wrestled with a bodice as snug as the head of a drum...“While I wrestled ... with a bodice as snug as the head of a drum, the lord of all it contained appeared in the doorway.”
“While I wrestled ... with a bodice as snug as the head of a drum, the lord of all it contained appeared in the doorway.”
"As if that had anything to do with it! She may as well understand, to begin with, that I won't put up withimpudence and answering back. Hair that colour doesn't go with dark eyes. And eyelashes like that aren't suitable to lady's-maids."
"If your ladyship pleases, what am I to do with mine?" I asked in the sweetest little voice; and I would have given anything for someone to whom I might have telegraphed a laugh.
"Wash the dark stuff off of them and let them be light," were the simple instructions promptly returned to me.
There was no more to be said, so I cast down the offending features (are one's lashes one's features?) and swallowed my feelings just as Lady Turnour will have to swallow my hair and eyelashes if I'm to stop in her service. If they stick in her throat, I suppose she will discharge me. For a leopard cannot change his spots, and a girl will not the colour of her locks and lashes—when she happens to be fairly well satisfied with Nature's work.
Pamela's mother-in-law,la Comtesse douairière, wears a lovely, fluffy white thing over her own diminishing front hair, which I once heard her describe, when struggling to speak English, as her "combination." Pam and I laughed nearly to extinction, but I didn't laugh this morning when I was obliged to help Lady Turnour put on hers.
They say an emperor is no hero to his valet, and neither can an empress be a heroine to her maid when she bursts for the first time upon that humble creature's sight, without her transformation.
Itdidmake an unbelievable difference with her ladyship; and it must have been a blow to poor Sir Samuel, after all his years of hopeless love for a fond gazelle, when at last he made that gazelle his own, and saw it running about its bedroom with all its copper-coloured "ondulations" naively lying on its dressing-table.
Poor Miss Paget's false front was one of those frank, self-respecting old things one might have allowed one's grandmother to wear, just as she would wear a cap; but a transformation—well, one has perhaps believed in it, if one has not the eye of a lynx, and the disillusion is awful.
Of course, a lady's-maid is not a human being, and what it is thinking matters no more than what thinksa chair when sat upon; so I don't suppose "her ladyship" cared ten centimes for the impression I was receiving and trying to digest in the first ten minutes after my morning entrance.
As my hair waves naturally, I've scarcely more than a bowing acquaintance with a curling-iron; but luckily for me I always did Cousin Catherine's when she wanted to look as beautiful as she felt; and though my hands trembled with nervousness, I not only "ondulated" Lady Turnour's transformation without burning it up, but I added it to her own locks in a manner so deft as to make me want to applaud myself.
Even she could find no fault. The effect was twice aschicand becoming as that of yesterday. She looked younger, and nearer to being thegrande damethat she burns to be. I saw various emotions working in her mind, and attributed her silence on the subject of my personal defects (unchanged despite her orders) to the success I was making with her toilet. In her eyes, I began to take on lustre as a Treasure not to be lightly thrown away on the turn of a dye.
When she was dressed and painted to represent a "lady motorist," it was my business to pack not only for her but for Sir Samuel, who is the sort of man to be miserable under the domination of a valet. There were a round dozen of trunks, which had to be sent on by rail, and there was also luggage for the automobile; such ingenious and pretty luggage (bran new, like everything of her ladyship's, not excepting her complexion) that it was really a pleasure to pack it. As for the poor motor maid, it was broken to her that she must, figurativelyspeaking, live in a bag during the tour, and that bag must have a place under her feet as she sat beside the driver. It might make her as uncomfortable as it liked, but whatever it did, it must on no account interfere with the chauffeur.
We were supposed to start at ten, but a woman of Lady Turnour's type doesn't think she's making herself of enough importance unless she keeps people waiting. She changed her mind three times about her veil, and had her dressing-bag (a gorgeous affair, beside which mine is a mere nutshell) reopened at the last minute to get out different hatpins.
It was half-past ten when the luggage for the automobile was ready to be taken away, and having helped my mistress into her motoring coat, I left her saying farewell to some hotel acquaintances she had scraped up, and went out to put her ladyship's rugs into the car.
I had not seen it yet, nor the dreaded chauffeur, my galley-companion; but as the front door opened,voilàboth; the car drawn up at the hotel entrance, the chauffeur dangling from its roof.
Never did I see anything in the way of an automobile so large, so azure, so magnificent, so shiny as to varnish, so dazzling as to brass and crystal.
Perhaps the windows aren't really crystal, but they were all bevelly and glittering in the sunshine, and seemed to run round the car from back to front, giving the effect of a Cinderella Coach fitted on to a motor. Never was paint so blue, never was crest on carriage panel so large and so like a vague, over-ripe tomato. Never was a chauffeur so long, so slim, so smart, so leathery.
He was dangling not because he fancied himself as a tassel, but because he was teaching some last piece of luggage to know its place on the roof it was shaped to fit.
"Thank goodness, at least he's not fat, and won't take up much room," I thought, as I stood looking at the back of his black head.
Then he jumped down, and turned round. We gave each other a glance, and he could not help knowing that I must be her ladyship's maid, by the way I was loaded with rugs, like a beast of burden. Of my face he could see little, as I had on a thick motor-veil with a small triangular talc window, which Lady Kilmarny had given me as a present when I bade her good-bye. I had the advantage of him, therefore, in the staring contest, because his goggles were pushed up on the top of his cap with an elastic, somewhat as Miss Paget's spectacles had been caught in her false front.
His glance said: "Female thing, I've got to be bothered by having you squashed into the seat beside me. You'd better not be chatty with the man at the wheel, for if you are, I shall have to teach you motor manners."
My glance, I sincerely hoped, said nothing, for I hurriedly shut it off lest it should say too much, the astonished thought in my mind being: "Why, Leather Person, you look exactly like a gentleman! You have the air of being the master, and Sir Samuel your servant."
He really was a surprise, especially after Lady Kilmarny's warning. Still, I at once began to tell myself that chauffeursmusthave intelligent faces. Asfor this one's clear features, good gray eyes, brown skin, and well-made figure, they were nothing miraculous, since it is admitted that even a lower grade of beings, grooms and footmen, are generally chosen as ornaments to the establishments they adorn. Why shouldn't a chauffeur be picked out from among his fellows to do credit to a fine, sixty-horse-power blue motor-car? Besides, a young man who can't look rather handsome in a chauffeur's cap and neat leather coat and leggings might as well go and hang himself.
The Leather Person opened the door of the car for me, that I might put in the rugs. I murmured "thank you" and he bowed. No sooner had I arranged my affairs, and slipped the scent-bottle and bottle of salts, newly filled, into a dainty little case under the window, when Lady Turnour and Sir Samuel appeared.
I have met few, if any, queens in daily life, but I'm almost sure that the Queen of England, for instance, wouldn't consider it beneath her dignity to take some notice of her chauffeur's existence if she were starting on a motor tour. Lady Turnour was miles above it, however. So far as she was concerned, one would have thought that the car ran itself; that at sight of her and Sir Samuel, the arbiters of its destiny, its heart began to beat, its body to tremble with delight at the honour in store for it.
"Tell him to shut the windows," said her ladyship, when she was settled in her place. "Does he think I'm going to travel on a day like this with all the wind on the Riviera blowing my head off?"
The imperial order was passed on to "him," who wasaddressed as Bane, or Dane, or something of that ilk; and I was sorry for poor Sir Samuel, whose face showed how little he enjoyed the prospect of being cooped up in a glass box.
"A day like this" meant that there was a wind which no one under fifty had any business to know came out of the east, for it arrived from a sky blue as a vast, inverted cup of turquoise. The sea was a cup, too; a cup of gold glittering where the Esterel mountains rimmed it, and full to the frothing brim of blue spilt by the sky.
Perhaps there was a hint of keenness in the breeze, and the palms in the hotel garden were whispering to each other about it, while they rocked the roses tangled among their fans; yet it seemed to me that the whispers were not of complaint, but of joy—joy of life, joy of beauty, and joy of the spring. The air smelled of a thousand flowers, this air that Lady Turnour shunned as if it were poison, and brought me a sense of happiness and adventure fresh as the morning. I knew I had no right to the feeling, because this wasn't my adventure. I was only in it on sufferance, to oil the wheels of it, so to speak, for my betters; yet golden joy ran through all my veins as gaily, as generously, as if I were a princess instead of a lady's-maid.
Why on earth I was happy, I didn't know, for it was perfectly clear that I was going to have a horrid time; but I pitied everybody who wasn't young, and starting off on a motor tour, even if on fifty francs a month "all found."
I pitied Lady Turnour because she was herself; I pitied Sir Samuel because he was married to her; Ipitied the people in the big hotel, who spent their afternoons and evenings playing bridge with all the windows hermetically sealed, while there was a world like this out of doors; and I wasn't sure yet whether I pitied the chauffeur or not.
He didn't look particularly sorry for himself, as he took his seat on my right. I was well out of his way, and he had the air of having forgotten all about me, as he steered away from the hotel down the flower-bordered avenue which led to the street.
"Anyhow," said I to myself, behind my little three-cornered talc window, "whatever his faults may be, appearances areverydeceptive if he ever tries to chuck me under the chin."
There we sat, side by side, shut away from our pastors and masters by a barrier of glass, in that state of life and on that seat to which it had pleased Providence to call us, together.
"We're far enough apart in mind, though," I told myself. Yet I found my thoughts coming back to the man, every now and then, wondering if his nice brown profile were a mere lucky accident, or if he were really intelligent and well educated beyond his station. It was deliciously restful at first to sit there, seeing beautiful things as we flashed by, able to enjoy them in peace without having to make conversation, as the ordinaryjeune fillemust with the ordinaryjeune monsieur.
"And is it that you love the automobilism, mademoiselle?"
"But yes, I love the automobilism. And you?"
"I also." (Hang it, what shall I say to her next?)
"And the dust. It does not too much annoy you?"
(Oh, bother, I do wish he'd let me alone!)
"No, monsieur. Because there are compensations. The scenery, is it not?"
"And for me your society." (What a little idiot she is!)
And so on. And so on. Oh yes, there were consolations in being a motor maid, sitting as far away as possible from a cross-looking if rather handsome chauffeur, who would want to bite her if she tried to do the "society act."
But after a while, when we'd spun past the charming villas and attractive shops of Cannes (which looks so deceitfully sylvan, and is one of the gayest watering-places in the world) silence began to be a burden.
It is such a nice motor car, and I did want to ask intelligent questions about it!
I was almost sure they would be intelligent, because already I know several things about automobiles. The Milvaines haven't got one, but most of their friends in Paris have, and though I've never been on a long tour before, I've done some running about. When one knows things, especially when one's a girl—a really well-regulated, normal girl—one does like to let other people know that one knows them. It's all well enough to cram yourself full to bursting with interesting facts which it gives you a vast amount of trouble to learn, just out of respect for your own soul; and there's a great deal in that point of view, in one's noblest moments; but one's noblest moments are like bubbles, radiant while they last, then going pop! quite to one's own surprise,leaving one all flat, and nothing to show for the late bubble except a little commonplace soap.
Well, I am like that, and when I'm not nobly bubbling I love to say what I'm thinking to somebody who will understand, instead of feeding on myself.
It really was a waste of good material to see all that lovely scenery slipping by like a panorama, and to be having quite heavenly thoughts about it, which must slip away too, and be lost for ever. I got to the pass when it would have been a relief to be asked if "this were my first visit to the Riviera;" because I could hastily have said "Yes," and then broken out with a volley of impressions.
Seeing beautiful things when you travel by rail consists mostly on getting half a glimpse, beginning to exclaim, "Oh, lookthere!" then plunging into the black gulf of a tunnel, and not coming out again until after the best bit has carefully disappeared behind an uninteresting, fat-bodied mountain. But travelling by motor-car! Oh, the difference! One sees, one feels; one is never, never bored, or impatient to arrive anywhere. One would enjoy being like the famous brook, and "go on forever."
Other automobiles were ahead of us, other cars were behind us, in the procession of Nomads leaving the South for the North, but there had been rain in the night, so that the wind carried little dust. My spirit sang when we had left the long, cool avenue lined with the great silver-trunked plane trees (which seemed always, even in sunshine, to be dappled with moonlight) and dashed toward the barrier of the Esterels that flung itself across ourpath. The big blue car bounded up the steep road, laughing and purring, like some huge creature of the desert escaped from a cage, regaining its freedom. But every time we neared a curve it was considerate enough to slow down, just enough to swing round with measured rhythm, smooth as the rocking of a child's cradle.
Perhaps, thought I, the chauffeur wasn't cross, but only concentrated. If I had to drive a powerful, untamed car like this, up and down roads like that, I should certainly get motor-car face, a kind of inscrutable, frozen mask that not all the cold cream in the world could ever melt.
I wondered if he resorted to cold cream, and before I knew what I was doing, I found myself staring at the statuesque brown profile through my talc triangle.
Evidently animal magnetism can leak through talc, for suddenly the chauffeur glanced sharply round at me, as if I had called him. "Did you speak?" he asked.
"Dear me, no, I shouldn't have dared," I hurried to assure him. Again he transferred his attention from the road to me, though only a fraction, and for only the fraction of a second. I felt that he saw me as an eagle on the wing might see a fly on a boulder toward which he was steering between intervening clouds.
"Why shouldn't you dare?" he wanted to know.
"One doesn't usually speak to lion-tamers while they're engaged in taming," I murmured, quite surprised at my audacity and the sound of my own voice.
The chauffeur laughed. "Oh!" he said.
"Or to captains of ocean liners on the bridge in thick fogs," I went on with my illustrations.
"What do you know about lion-tamers and captains on ocean liners?" he inquired.
"Nothing. But I imagine. I'm always doing a lot of imagining."
"Do you think you will while you're with Lady Turnour?"
"She hasn't engaged my brain, only my hands and feet."
"And your time."
"Oh, thank goodness it doesn't take time to imagine. I can imagine all the most glorious things in heaven and earth in the time it takes you to put your car at the next corner."
He looked at me longer, though the corner seemed dangerously near—to an amateur. "I see you've learned the true secret of living," said he.
"Have I? I didn't know."
"Well, you have. You may take it from me. I'm a good deal older than you are."
"Oh, of course, all really polite men are older than the women they're with."
"Even chauffeurs?"
It was my turn to laugh now. "A chauffeur with a lady's-maid."
"You seem an odd sort of lady's-maid."
"I begin to think you're an odd sort of chauffeur."
"Why?"
"Well—" I hesitated, though I knew why, perfectly. "Aren't you rather abrupt in your questions? Suppose we change the subject. You seem to have tamed this tiger until it obeys you like a kitten."
"That's what I get my wages for. But why do you think I'm an odd sort of chauffeur?"
"For that matter, then, why do you think I'm an odd lady's-maid?"
"As to that, probably I'm no judge. I never talked to one except my mother's, and she—wasn't at all like you."
"Well, that proves my point. The very fact that your motherhada maid, shows you're an odd sort of chauffeur."
"Oh! You mean because I wasn't always 'what I seem,' and that kind ofFamily Heraldthing? Do you think it odd that a chauffeur should be by way of being a gentleman? Why, nowadays the woods and the story-books are full of us. But things are made pleasanter for us in books than in real life. Out of books people fight shy of us. A 'shuvvie' with the disadvantage of having been to a public school, or handicapped by not dropping his H's, must knock something off his screw."
"Are you really in earnest, or are you joking?" I asked.
"Half and half, perhaps. Anyway, it isn't a particularly agreeable position—if that's not too big a word for it. I envy you your imagination, in which you can shut yourself up in a kind of armour against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."
"You wouldn't envy me if you had to do Lady Turnour's hair," I sighed.
The chauffeur laughed out aloud. "Heaven forbid!" he exclaimed.
"I'm sure Sir Samuel would forbid, anyhow," said I.
"Do you know, I don't think this trip's going to be so bad?" said he.
"Neither do I," I murmured in my veil.
We both laughed a good deal then. But luckily the glass was expensively thick, and the car was singing.
"What are you laughing at?" I asked.
"Something that it takes a little sense of humour to see, when you've been down on your luck," said he.
"A sense of humour was the only thing my ancestors left me," said I. "I don't wonder you laugh. It really is quaintly funny."
"Do you think we're laughing at the same thing?"
"I'm almost sure of it."
"Do tell me your part, and let's compare notes."
"Well, it's something that nobody but us in this car—unless it's the car itself—knows."
"Then it is the same thing. They haven't an idea of it, and wouldn't believe it if anyone told them. Yes, it is funny."
"About their not being—"
"While you—"
"And you—"
"Thanks. A lady—"
"A gentleman—"
"And the only ones on board—"
"Are the two servants!"
"As long astheydon't notice—"
"And we do!"
"Perhaps we may get some fun out of it?"
"Extra—outside our wages. Would it be called a 'perquisite'?"
"If so, I'm sure we deserve it."
I sighed, thinking of her ladyship's transformation, and lacing up her boots. "Well, there's a lot to make up for."
And he gave me another look—a very nice look, although he could see nothing of me but eyes and one third of a nose. "If I can ever at all help to make up, in the smallest way, you must let me try," he said.
I ceased to think that his profile was cross, or even stern.
I was glad that the chauffeur and I were in the same box—I mean, the same car.
All the same, I wondered a great deal how he came there, and I hoped that he was wondering the same sort of thing about me. In fact, I laid myself out to produce such a result. That is to say, I took some pains to show myself as little like the common or parlour lady's-maid as possible. I never took so much pains to impress any human being, male or (far less) female, as I took to impress that mere chauffeur—the very chauffeur I'd been lying awake at night dreading as the most objectionable feature in my new life.
All the nice things I'd thought of by the way, before we introduced ourselves to each other, I trotted out (at least, as many as I had presence of mind to remember); and though I'm afraid he didn't pay me the compliment of trying to "brill" in return, I told myself that it was not because he didn't think me worth brilling for, but because he's English. It never seems to occur to an Englishman to "show off." I believe if Sir Samuel Turnour's chauffeur, Mr. What's-his-name, knew twenty-seven languages, he could be silent in all of them.
He did let me play the car's musical siren, though; a fascinating bugbear, supposed to warn children, chickens, and other light-minded animals that something important is coming, and they'd better look alive. Ithas two tunes, one grave, one gay. I suppose we would use the grave one if the creature hadn't looked alive?
Although he didn't say much, the chauffeur (or "shuvvie" as he scornfully names himself) knew all about Robert Macaire and Caspard De Besse—knew more about them than I, also their escapades on this road over the Esterels, and in the mountain fastnesses, when highwaymen were as fashionable as motor-cars are now. I'd forgotten that it was this part of the world where they earned their bread and fame; and was quite thrilled to hear that the ghost of De Besse is supposed to keep on, as a permanent residence, his old shelter cave near the summit of strangely shaped Mont Vinaigre. I'm sure, though, even if we'd passed his pitch at midnight instead of midday, he wouldn't have dared pop out and cry "Stand and deliver!" to a sixty-horsepower Aigle.
I almost wished it were night, as we swooped over mountain tops, our eyes plunging down the deep gorges, and dropping with fearful joy over precipices, for the effect would have been more solemn, more mysterious. I could imagine that the fantastically formed rocks which loomed above us or stood ranged far below would have looked by moonlight like statues and busts of Titans, carved to show poor little humanity such creatures as a dead world had known. But it is hard for one's imagination to do the best of which it feels capable when one is dying for lunch.
Even the old "Murder Inn," which my companion obligingly pointed out, didn't give me the thrill it ought, because time was getting on when we flew past it, andI would have been capable of eating vulgar bread and cheese under its wickedly historic roof if I had been invited.
"Do you suppose they know anything about the road and its history?" I asked the chauffeur, with a slight gesture of my swathed head toward the solid wall of glass which was our background.
"They? Certainly not, and don't want to know," he answered with an air of assurance.
"Why do they go about in motors then," I wondered, "if they don't take interest in things they pass?"
"You must understand as well as I do why this sort of person goes about in motors," said he. "They go because other people go—because it's the thing. The 'other people' whom they slavishly imitate may really like the exhilaration, the ozone, the sight-seeing, or all three; but to this type the only part that matters is letting it be seen that they've got a handsome car, and being able to say 'We've just come from the Riviera in our sixty-horse-power motor-car.' They'd always mention the power."
"Lady Turnour did, even to me," I remembered. "But is Sir Samuel like that?"
"No, to do him justice, he isn't, poor man. But his wife is his Juggernaut. I believe he enjoys lying under her wheels, or thinks he does—which is the same thing."
"Have you been with them long?" I dared to inquire.
"Only a few days. I brought the car down for them from Paris, though not this way—a shorter one. We're new brooms, the car and I."
"All their brooms seem to be new," I reflected. "I wonder what the stepson is like?"
"Luckily it doesn't matter much to me," said the chauffeur indifferently.
"Nor to me. But his name's Herbert."
"His surname?"
"I don't know. There's a Herbert lurking somewhere. It always suggests to me oily hair parted in the middle and smeared down on each side of a low, narrow forehead. Could you know a 'Bertie'?"
"I did once, and never want to again. He was a swine and a snob. Hope you never came across the combination?"
I forgot to answer, because, having left the mountain world behind, a formidable line of nobly planned arches began striding along beside us, through the sun-bright fields, and I was sure it must be the giant Roman aqueduct of Fréjus.
Instead of discussing such little things as the Turnours and their Bertie, we began to talk of Phoenicians, Ligurians, and of Romans; of Pliny, who had a beloved friend at Fréjus; and all the while to breathe in the perfume of a land over which a vast tidal wave of balsamic pines had swept.
Fréjus we were not to see now: that was for the dim future, after lunch; but we turned to the left off the main road, and ran on until we saw, bathed in pines, deliciously deluged and drowned in pines, the white glimmer of classic-looking villas. These meant Valescure, said the chauffeur; and the Grand Hotel—not classic looking, but pretty in its terraced garden—meant luncheon.
The car drew up before the door, according to order, or rather, according to hypnotic suggestion; for it seems that it is the chauffeur who alone knows anything of the way, and who, while appearing to be non-committal, is virtually planning the tour. "Valescure might be a good stopping-place for lunch," he had murmured, an eye on the road map over which his head bent with Sir Samuel's. "Very beautiful—rather exclusive. You may remember Mr. Chamberlain stopped there."
The exclusiveness and the Chamberlain-ness decided Lady Turnour, behind Sir Samuel's shoulder (so the chauffeur told me); consequently, here we were—and not at St. Raphael, which would have seemed the more obvious place to stop.
I say "we," but Lady Turnour would have been surprised to hear that her maid dared count herself and a chauffeur in the programme. Creatures like us must be fed, just as you pour petrol into the tanks of a motor, or stoke a furnace with coals, because otherwise our mechanism wouldn't go, and that would be awkward when we were wanted.
The chauffeur opened the door of the car as if he had been born to open motor-car doors, and Lady Turnour allowed herself to be helped out by her husband. Her jewel-bag clutched in her hand (she doesn't know me well enough yet to trust me with it, and hasn't had bagsful of jewels for long), she passed her two servants without expending a look on them. Sir Samuel followed, telling his chauffeur to have the automobile ready at the door again in an hour and a quarter; and we two Worms were left to our own resources.
"I shan't garage her," said my fellow Worm of the car. "I'll just drive her out of the way, where I can look over her a bit when I've snatched something to eat. I'll take the fur rugs inside—you're not to bother, they're big enough to swamp you entirely. And then you—"
"Yes, then I—" I repeated desolately. "What is to become of me?"
"Why, you're to have your lunch, of course," he replied. "I thought you said you were hungry."
"So I am, starving. But—"
"Well?"
"Aren't you going to have a proper lunch?"
"A sandwich and a piece of cheese will do for me, because there are one or two little things to tinker up on the car, and an hour and a quarter isn't long. I think I shall bring my grub out of doors, and—But is anything the matter?"
"I can't go in and have lunch alone. I simply can't," I confessed to the young man whose society I had intended to avoid like a pestilence. "You see, I—I never—this is the first time."
A look of comprehension flashed over his face.
"Yes, I see," he said. "Of course, the moment I heard your voice I realized that this wasn't your sort of work, but I didn't know you were quite so new to it as all that. You've never taken a meal in the couriers' room of an hotel?"
"No," I confessed. "At the Majestic Palace Lady Kil—that is, I decided to have everything brought up to my room, there."
"By Jove, we are a strange pair! This is my first job, too, and so far I've been able to feed where I chose; but that's too good to last on tour. One must accommodate oneself to circumstances, and a man easily can. But you—I know how you feel. However, it's the first step that costs. Do you mind much?"
"It's the stepping in alone that costs the most," I said.
"Well, I'm only too delighted if I can be of the least use. Let the car rip! I'll see to her afterward. Now I'm going to take care of you. You need it more than she does."
What would Lady Kilmarny have said if she had heard my deliberate encouragement of the chauffeur, and his reckless response? What would she have thought if she could have seen us walking into the couriers' dining-room, side by side, as if we had been friends for as many years as we'd really been acquaintances for minutes, leaving the car he was paid to cherish in his bosom sulking alone!
That sweet lady's face, surprised and reproachful, rose before my eyes, but I had no regrets. And instead of trembling with apprehension when I saw that the couriers' room was empty, I rejoiced in the prospect of lunching alone with the redoubtable chauffeur.
It was too early for the regular feeding hour of thepensionnaires, maids, and valets, and we sat down opposite each other at the end of a long table. A bored young waiter, with little to hope for in the way ofpourboires, ambled off in quest of our food. I began to unfasten my head covering, and after a search for various fugitivepins I emerged from obscurity, like the moon from behind a cloud.