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.
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 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, 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
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, _voilà_ 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 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 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 passed 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 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; 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 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
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!)
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, look _there_!" 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 our path. 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 mother _had_ a
maid, shows you're an odd sort of chauffeur."
"Oh! You mean because I wasn't always 'what I seem,' and that kind of
_Family Herald_ thing? 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 as _they_ don'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.