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 my pretendant's future. 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 against Cruelty 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't know she'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. They would, 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 you do take lodgers, and Sir Samuel found and gathered her like a late rose. Naturally she puts on 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 a femme 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 she will 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!
