CHAPTER XXXI
UNFORTUNATELY I forgot to ask for instructions as to how I should behave when I came to the hotel. And I had the bursting sun still in my hand.
I thought things over, as well as I could with a pounding pulse for every square inch in my body.
If I were a rabbit, I could scurry into my hole and "lay low" while other people fought out their destiny and arranged mine; but being a girl, tingling with my share of American pluck, and blazing with French fire, rabbits seemed to me at the instant only worthy of being made into pie.
Bertie, at this moment, was being made into pie—humble pie; and I don't doubt that the chauffeur, whom he had consistently tortured (because of me) would make him eat a large slice of himself when the humble pie was finished—also because of me. And because it was because of me, I knocked at the Turnours' sitting-room door with a bold, brave knock, as if I thought myself their social equal.
They had had tea, and were sitting about, looking graceful in the expectation of seeing Bertie and his French friend.
It was a disappointment to her ladyship to see only me, and she showed it with a frown, but Sir Samuel looked up kindly, as usual.
I laid the bursting sun on the table, and told them everything, very fast, without pausing to take breath, so that they would n't have time to stop me. But I did n't begin with the bursting sun, or even with the beating that Bertie was enjoying in the woods; I began with the Princess Boriskoff, and Lady Kilmarny; and I addressed Sir Samuel, from beginning to end. Somehow, I felt I had his sympathy, even when I rushed at the most embarrassing part, which concerned his stepson and the necktie.
Just as I 'd told about the brooch, and Bertie's threat, and was coming to his punishment, another knock at the door produced the two young men, both pale, but Jack with a noble pallor, while Bertie's was the sick paleness of pain and shame.
"I 've brought him to apologize to Miss d'Angely, in your presence, Sir Samuel, and Lady Turnour's," said the chauffeur. "I see you know something of the story."
"They know all now," said I. For Bertie's face proved the truth of my words, if they had needed proof. His eyes were swimming in tears, and he looked like a whipped school-boy.
But suddenly a whim roused her ladyship to speak up in his defence—or at least to criticize the chauffeur for presuming to take her stepson's chastisement into his hands.
"What right have you to set yourself up as Elise's champion, anyway?" she demanded, shrilly. "Have you and she been getting engaged to each other behind our backs?"
"It would be my highest happiness to be engaged to Miss d'Angely if she would marry me," said Jack, with such a splendidly sincere ring in his voice that I could almost have believed him if I had n't known he was in love with another woman. "But I am no match for her. It 's only as her friend that I have acted in her defence, as any decent man has a right to act when a lady is insulted."
Then Bertie apologized, in a dull voice, with his eyes on the ground, and mumbled a kind of confession, mixed with self-justification. He had pocketed the brooch, yes, meaning to play a trick, but had intended how the redoubtable Simpkins refused to trust herself upon did n't usually mind a bit of a flirtation and a present or two; how was he to know this one was different? Sorry if he had caused annoyance; could say no more—and so on, and so on, until I stopped him, having heard enough.
Poor Sir Samuel was crestfallen, but not too utterly crushed to reproach his bride with unwonted sharpness, when she would have scolded me for carelessness in not putting the brooch away. "Let the girl alone!" he grumbled, "she 's a very good girl, and has behaved well. I wish I could say the same of others nearer to me."
"Of course, Sir Samuel, after what's happened, you would n't want me to stay in your employ, any more than I would want to stay," said Jack. "Unfortunately the Aigle will be hung up two or three days, till new pinions can be fitted in, at the garage. I can send them out from Paris, if you like; but no doubt you 'll prefer to have my engagement with you to come to an end to-day. Mr. Stokes has driven the car, and can again."
"Not if I have anything to say about it," murmured her ladyship. "Scattering the poor thing's teeth all over the place!"
"There are plenty of good chauffeurs to be got at short notice in Paris," Jack suggested, "and you are certain to find one by the time you 're ready to start."
"You 're right, Dane. We 'll have to part company," said Sir Samuel. "As for Elise here ⸺"
"She 'll have to go too," broke in her ladyship. "It 's most inconvenient, and all your stepson's fault—though she 's far from blameless, in my humble opinion, whatever yours may be. Don't tell me that a young man will go about flirting with lady's maids unless they encourage him!"
"I shall leave of course, immediately," said I, my ears tingling.
"Who wants you to do anything else? Though nobody cares for my convenience. I can always go to the wall. But thank heaven there are maids in Paris as well as chauffeurs. And talking of that combination, my advice to you is, if Dane 's willing to have you, don't turn up your nose at him, but marry him as quickly as you can. I suppose even in your class of life there 's such a thing as gossip."
I was scarlet. Somehow I got out of the room, and while I was scurrying my few belongings into my dressing bag, and spreading out the red satin frock to leave as a legacy to Lady Turnour (in any case, nothing could have induced me to wear it again), Sir Samuel sent me up an envelope containing a month's wages, and something over. I enclosed the "something over" in another envelope, with a grateful line of refusal, and sent it back.
Thus ends my experience as a motor maid!
What was going to become of me I did n't know, but while I was jamming in hatpins and praying for ideas, there came a knock at the door. A pencilled note from the late chauffeur, signed hastily, "Yours ever, J. D.," and inviting me down to the couriers' dining-room for a conference. There would be no one there but ourselves at this hour, he said, and we should be able to talk over our plans in peace.
What a place to say farewell forever to the only man I ever had, could or would love—a couriers' dining room, with grease spots on the tablecloth! However, there was no help for it, since I was facing the world with fifty francs, and could not afford to pay for a romantic background. After all that had happened, and especially after certain impertinent references made to our private affairs, I felt a new and very embarrassing shyness in meeting the man with whom I 'd been playing that pleasant little game called "brother and sister." He was waiting for me in the couriers' room, which was even dingier and had more grease spots than I had fancied, and I hurried into speech to cover my nervousness.
"I don't know how I 'm going to thank you for all you 've done for me," I stammered. "That horrible Bertie ⸺"
"Let's not talk of him," said Jack. "Put him out of your mind for ever. He has no place there, or in your life—and no more have any of the incidents that led up to him. You 've had a very bad time of it, poor little girl, and now ⸺"
"Oh, I haven't," I exclaimed. "I 've been happier than ever before in my life. That is—I—it was all so novel, and like a play ⸺"
"Well, now the play 's over," Jack broke in, pitying my evident embarrassment. "I wanted to ask you if you 'd let me advise and perhaps help you. We have been brother and sister, you know. Nothing can take that away from us."
"No," said I, in a queer little voice. "Nothing can."
"You want to go to England, I know," he went on. "And—if you 'll forgive my taking liberties, you have n't much money in hand, you 've almost told me. I suppose you have n't changed your mind about your relations in Paris? You would n't like to go back to them, or write, and tell them firmly that you won't marry the person they seem to have set their hearts on for you? That you 've made your own choice, and intend to abide by it; but that if they 'll be sensible and receive you, you 're willing to stop with them until—until the man in England ⸺"
"What man in England?" I cut him short, in utter bewilderment.
"Why, the—er—you didn't tell me his name, of course, but that rich chap you expected to meet when you got over to England. Don't you think it would be better if he came to you at your cousins', if they ⸺"
"There is n't any 'rich chap'," I exclaimed. "I don't know what you mean—oh, yes, I do, too. I did speak about someone who was very rich, and would be kind to me. I rather think—I remember now—I guessed you imagined it was a man; but that seemed the greatest joke, so I did n't try to undeceive you. Fancy your believing that, all this time, though, and thinking about it!"
"I 've thought of it on an average once every three minutes," said Jack.
"You 're chaffing now, of course. Why, the person I hoped might be kind to me in England is an old lady—oh, but such a funny old lady!—who wanted me to be her companion, and said, no matter when I came, if it were years from now, I must let her know, for she would like to have me with her to help chase away a dragon of a maid she 's afraid of. I met her only once, in the train the night before I arrived at Cannes; but she and I got to be the greatest friends, and her bulldog, Beau ⸺"
"Her bulldog, Beau!"
"A perfect lamb, though he looks like a cross between a crocodile and a gnome. The old lady's name is Miss Paget ⸺"
"My aunt!"
I stared at Jack, not knowing how to take this exclamation. The few Englishmen I met when mamma and I were together, or when I lived with the Milvaines, were rather fond of using that ejaculation when it was apparently quite irrelevant. If you told a youthful Englishman that you were not allowed to walk or bicycle alone in the Bois, he was as likely as not to say "My aunt!" In fact, whatever surprised him was apt to elicit this cry. I have known several young men who gave vent to it at intervals of from half to three-quarters of an hour; but I had never before heard Jack make the exclamation, so when I had looked at him and he had looked at me in an emotional kind of silence for a few seconds, I asked him, "Why 'My aunt'?"
"Because she is my aunt."
"Surely not my Miss Paget?"
"I should think it highly improbable that your Miss Paget and my Miss Paget could be the same, if you had n't mentioned her bulldog, Beau. There can 't be a quantity of Miss Pagets going about the world with bulldogs named Beau. Only my Miss Paget never does go about the world. She hates travelling."
"So does mine. She said that being in a train was no pursuit for a gentlewoman."
"That sounds like her. She 's quite mad."
"She seemed very kind."
"I 'm glad she did—to you. She has seemed rather the contrary to me."
"Oh, what did she do to you?"
"Did her best to spoil my life, that's all—with the best intentions, no doubt. Still, by Jove, I thank her! If it had n't been for my aunt I should never have seen—my sister."
"Thank you. You 're always kind—and polite. Do you mean it was because of her you took to what you call 'shuvving'?"
"Exactly."
"But I thought—I thought ⸺"
"What?"
"I—don't dare tell you."
"I should think you might know by this time that you can tell me anything. You must tell me!"
"I thought it was the beautiful lady who was with you the first time you saw the battlement garden at Beaucaire, who ruined your life?"
"Beautiful lady—battlement garden? Good heavens, what extraordinary things we seem to have been thinking about each other: I with my man in England; you with your beautiful lady ⸺"
"She 's a different thing. You talked to me about her," I insisted. "Surely you must remember?"
"I remember the conversation perfectly. I didn't explain my meaning as a professor demonstrates a rule in higher mathematics, but I thought you could n't help understanding well enough, especially a vain little thing like you."
"I, vain? Oh!"
"You are, are n't you?"
"I—well, I 'm afraid I am, a little."
"You could never have looked in the glass if you were n't. Did n't you see, or guess, that I was talking about an Ideal whom I had conjured into being, as a desirable companion in that garden? I can 't understand from the way the conversation ran, how you could have helped it. When I first went to the battlement garden I was several years younger, steeped with the spirit of Provence and full of thoughts of Nicolete. I was just sentimental enough to imagine that such a girl as Nicolete was with me there, and always afterward I associated the vision of the Ideal with that garden. I said to myself, that I should like to come there again with that Ideal in the flesh. And then—then I did come again—with you."
"But you said—you thought of her always—that because you could n't have her—or something of the sort ⸺"
"Well, all that was no surprise to you, was it? You must have known perfectly well—ever since that night at Avignon when you let your hair down, anyhow, if not before, that I was trying desperately hard not to be an idiot about you—and not exactly radiant with joy in the thought that whoever the man was who would get you, it could n't be I?"
"O-oh!" I breathed a long, heavenly breath, that seemed to let all the sorrows and worries pour out of my heart, as the air rushed out of my lungs. "O-oh, you can't mean, truly and really, that you 're in love with Me, can you?"
"Surely it is n't news to you."
"I should think it was!" I exclaimed, rapturously. "Oh, I'm so happy!"
"Another scalp—though a humble one?"
"Don't be a beast. I 'm so horribly in love with you, you know. It 's been hurting so dreadfully."
Then I rather think he said "My darling!" but I 'm not quite sure, for I was so busy falling into his arms, and he was holding me so very, very tightly. We stayed like that for a long time, not saying anything, and not even thinking, but feeling—feeling. And the couriers' dining-room was a princess's boudoir in an enchanted palace. The grease spots were stars and moons that had rolled out of heaven to see how two poor mortals looked when they were perfectly happy. Just a poor chauffeur and a motor maid: but the world was theirs.