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 simply _dared_ not 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. _Are_ you 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. He _may_ be different from our man. 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 a _femme de chambre_ born, 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 stage _femme de chambre_ rather 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, I _did_ trip!)
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, it _would_ be.
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, yet shrewd
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."
[Illustration: "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.