At half-past ten this morning we parted, the best of friends, and I
dropped a good-bye kiss into the deep black gorge between the
promontories of Beau's velvet forehead and plush nose.
We'd had breakfast together, Miss Paget and I, to say nothing of the
dog, and I felt rather cheerful. Of course I dreaded the Princess; but I
always did like adventures, and it appeared to me distinctly an
adventure to be a companion, even in misery. Besides, it was nice to
have come away from Monsieur Charretier, and to feel that not only did
he not know where I was, but that he wasn't likely to find out. Poor me!
I little guessed what an adventure on a grand scale I was in for.
Already this morning seems a long time ago; a year at the Convent used
to seem shorter.
I drove up to the hotel in the omnibus which was at the station, and
asked at the office for the Princess Boriskoff. I said that I was
Mademoiselle d'Angely, and would they please send word to the Princess,
because she was expecting me.
It was a young assistant manager who received me, and he gave me a very
queer, startled sort of look when I said this, as if I were a suspicious
person, and he didn't quite know whether it would be better to answer me
or call for help.
"I haven't made a mistake, have I?" I asked, beginning to be anxious.
"This _is_ the hotel where the Princess is staying, isn't it?"
"She was staying here," the youth admitted. "But--"
"Has she _gone_?"
"Not exactly."
"She must be either here or gone."
Again he regarded me with suspicion, as if he did not agree with my
statement.
"Are you a relative of the Princess?" he inquired.
"No, I'm engaged to be her companion."
"Oh! If that is all! But perhaps, in any case, it will be better to wait
for the manager. He will be here presently. I do not like to take the
responsibility."
"The responsibility of what?" I persisted, my heart beginning to feel
like a patter of rain on a tin roof.
"Of telling you what has happened."
"If something has happened, I can't wait to hear it. I must know at
once," I said, with visions of all sorts of horrid things: that the
Princess had decided not to have a companion, and was going to disown
me; that my cousin Madame Milvaine had somehow found out everything;
that Monsieur Charretier had got on my track, and was here in advance
waiting to pounce upon me.
"It is a thing which we do not want to have talked about in the hotel,"
the young man hesitated.
"I assure you I won't talk to any one. I don't know any one to talk to."
"It is very distressing, but the Princess Boriskoff died about four
o'clock this morning, of heart failure."
"Oh!" ... I could not get out another word.
"These things are not liked in hotels, even when not contagious."
The assistant manager looked gloomily at me, as if I might be held
responsible for the inconvenient event; but still I could not speak.
"Especially in the high season. It is being kept secret. That is the
custom. In some days, or less, it will leak out, but not till the
Princess has--been removed. You will kindly not mention it,
mademoiselle. This is very bad for us."
No, I would kindly not mention it, but it was worse for me than for
them. The Hotel Majestic Palace looked rich; very, very rich. It had
heaps of splendid mirrors and curtains, and imitation Louis XVI. sofas,
and everything that a hotel needs to make it happy and successful, while
I had nothing in the world except what I stood up in, one fitted bag,
one small box, and thirty-two francs. I didn't quite see, at first
sight, what I was to do; but neither did the assistant manager see what
that had to do with him.
Once I knew a girl who was an actress, and on tour in the country she
nearly drowned herself one day. When the star heard of it, he said: "How
_should_ we have played to-night if you'd been dead--without an
understudy, too?"
At this moment I knew just how the girl must have felt when the star
said that.
"I--I think I must stay here a day or two, until I can--arrange things,"
I managed to stammer. "Have you a small single room disengaged?"
"We have one or two small north rooms which are usually occupied by
valets and maids," the young man informed me. "They are twelve francs a
day."
"I'll take one," I replied. And then I added anxiously: "Have any
relatives of the Princess come?"
"None have come; and certainly none will come, as it would now be too
late. Her death was very sudden. The Princess's maid knows what to do.
She is an elderly woman, experienced. The suite occupied by Her Highness
will be free to-morrow."
"Oh! And had she no friends here?"
"I do not think the Princess was a lady who made friends. She was very
proud and considered herself above other people. Would you like to see
your room, mademoiselle? I will send some one to take you up to it. It
will be on the top floor."
I was in a mood not to care if it had been on the roof, or in the
cellar. I hardly knew where I was going, as a few minutes later a still
younger youth piloted me across a large square hall toward a lift; but I
was vaguely conscious that a good many smart-looking people were sitting
or standing about, and that they glanced at me as I went by. I hoped
dimly that I didn't appear conspicuously pale and stricken.
Just in front of the lift door a tall woman was talking to a little man.
There was an instant of delay while my guide and I waited for them to
move, and before they realized that we were waiting.
"They say the poor thing is no worse than yesterday, however, my maid
tells me--" The lady had begun in a low, mysterious tone, but broke off
suddenly when it dawned upon her that she was obstructing the way.
I knew instinctively _who_ was the subject of the whispered
conversation, and I couldn't help fixing my eyes almost appealingly on
the tall woman; for though she was middle-aged and not pretty, her voice
was so nice and she looked so kind that I felt a longing to have her for
a friend. She had probably been acquainted with Princess Boriskoff, I
said to myself, or she would not be talking of her now, with bated
breath, as a "poor thing."
Evidently the lady had been waiting for the lift to come down, for when
my guide rang and it descended she took a step forward, giving a
friendly little nod to her companion, and saying, "Well, I must go. I
feel sure it's _true_ about her."
Then, instead of sailing ahead of me into the lift, as she had a perfect
right to do, being much older and far more important than I, and the
first comer as well, she hesitated with a pleasant half smile, as much
as to say, "You're a stranger. I give up my right to you."
"Oh, please!" I said, stepping aside to let her pass, which she did,
making room for me to sit down beside her on the narrow plush-covered
seat. But I didn't care to sit. I was so crushed, it seemed that, if
once I sat down I shouldn't have courage to rise up again and wrestle
with the difficulties of life.
The lady got out on the second floor, throwing back a kindly glance, as
if she took a little interest in me, and wanted me to know it. I suppose
it must have been because I was tired and nervous after a whole night
without sleep that the shock I'd just received was too much for me.
Anyway, that kind glance made a lump rise in my throat, and the lump
forced tears into my eyes. I looked down instantly, so that she
shouldn't see them and think me an idiot, but I was afraid she did.
The young man who was taking me up to the top floor, and treating me
rather nonchalantly because I was a North Roomer and a Twelve Francer,
waved the lift boy aside to open the door himself for the lady; so that
I knew she must be considered a person worth conciliating.
Shut up in my ten-by-six-foot room, I tried to compose myself and make
plans; but to make plans on thirty-two francs, when you've no home, and
would be far from it even if you had one; when you've nobody to help
you, and wouldn't want to ask them if you had--is about as hard as to
play the piano brilliantly without ever having taken a lesson. With
Princess Boriskoff dead, with Pamela de Nesle sailing for New York
to-morrow morning, and no other intimate friends rich enough to do
anything for me, even if they were willing to help me fly in the face of
Providence and Madame Milvaine, it did seem (as Pamela herself would
say) as though I were rather "up against it."
The thought of Miss Paget suddenly jumped into my head, and the wish
that, somehow, I had kept her up my sleeve as a last resort, in case she
really were in earnest about her offer. But she hadn't told me where she
was going in Italy, and it would be of no use writing to one of her
English addresses, as I couldn't stop on where I was, waiting for an
answer.
Altogether things were very bad with me.
After I had sat down and thought for a while, I rang, and asked for the
housekeeper. A hint or two revealed that she was aware of what had
happened, and, explaining that I was to have been Princess Boriskoff's
companion, I said that I must see the Princess's maid. She must come to
my room. I must have a talk with her.
Presently, after an interval which may have been meant to emphasize her
dignity, appeared a pale, small Russian woman whose withered face was as
tragic and remote from the warmth of daily life as that of the eldest
Fate.
She could speak French, and we talked together. Yes, her mistress had
died very suddenly, but she and the doctors had always known that it
might happen so, at any moment. It was hard for me, but--what would you?
Life was hard. It might have been that I would have found life hard with
Her Highness. What was to be, would be. I must write to my friends. It
was not in her power to do anything for me. Her Highness had left no
instructions. These things happened. Well! one made the best of them.
There was nothing more to say.
So we said nothing more, and the woman moved away silently, as if to
funeral music, to prepare for her journey to Russia. I--went down to
luncheon.
One always does go down to luncheon while one is still inclined to keep
up appearances before oneself; but the restaurant was large and terribly
magnificent, with a violent rose-coloured carpet, and curtains which
made me, in my frightened pallor, with my pale yellow hair and my gray
travelling dress, feel like a poor little underground celery-stalk flung
into a sunlit strawberry-bed, amid a great humming of bees.
The vast rosy sea was thickly dotted with many small table-islands that
glittered appetizingly with silver and glass; but I could not have
afforded to acknowledge an appetite even if I'd had one.
My conversation with the Russian woman had made me rather late. Most of
the islands were inhabited, and as I was piloted past them by a haughty
head waiter I heard people talking about golf, tennis, croquet, bridge,
reminding me that I was in a place devoted to the pursuit of pleasure.
The most desirable islands were next the windows, therefore the one at
which I dropped anchor (for I'd changed from a celery-stalk into a
little boat now) was exactly in the middle of the room, with no view
save of faces and backs of heads.
One of the faces was that of the lady who had gone up with me in the
lift; and now and then, from across the distance that separated us, I
saw her glance at me. She sat alone at a table that had beautiful roses
on it, and she read a book as she ate.
One ordered here _à la carte_: there was no _déjeuner à prix fixe_; and
it took courage to tell a waiter who looked like a weary young duke that
I would have _consommé_ and bread, with nothing, no, _nothing_ to
follow.
Oh! the look he gave me, as if I had annexed the table under false
pretences!
Suddenly the chorus of an American song ran with mocking echoes through
my brain. I had heard Pamela sing it at the Convent:
The waiter roared it through the hall:
"We don't give bread with _one_ fish-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 the _consommé_, 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, poor woman, 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.