"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."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 with impudence 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.
CHAPTER VI
Pamela"s mother-in-law, _la Comtesse douairiere_, 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.
It _did_ make 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 thinks a 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 as _chic_ and becoming as that of yesterday. She looked younger, and nearer to being the _grande dame_ that 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 l.u.s.tre 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, figuratively speaking, 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 nutsh.e.l.l) 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 sc.r.a.ped 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, _voila_ both; 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 bra.s.s 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 ta.s.sel, 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 chauffeurs _must_ have intelligent faces. As for 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 pa.s.sed on to "him," who was addressed 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 gla.s.s 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; I pitied 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 are _very_ deceptive 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 gla.s.s, 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 ordinary _jeune fille_ must with the ordinary _jeune 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!)