CHAPTER III
YOU will have to go back to the cousins you 've been living with in Paris," pronounced Lady Kilmarny. "You're much too young and pretty to be anywhere alone."
"I can't go on living with them unless I promise to marry Monsieur Charretier," I explained. "I 'd rather scrub floors than marry Monsieur Charretier."
"You 'd never finish one floor. The second would finish you. I thought French girls—well, then, half French girls—usually let their people arrange their marriages."
"Perhaps I 'm not usual. I hope Monsieur Charretier is n't."
"Is he such a monster?"
"He is fat, especially in all the places he ought n't to be fat. And old. But worse than his embonpoint and his nose, he made his money in—you could never guess."
"I see by your face, my poor child: it was Liver Pills."
"Something far more dreadful."
"Are there lower depths?"
"There are—Corn Plasters."
"Oh, my dear, you are quite right! You couldn't marry him."
"Thank you so much! Then, I can't go back to my cousins. They—they take Monsieur Charretier seriously. I think they even take his plasters—gratuitously."
"Is he so very rich?"
"But disgustingly rich. He has an awful, bulbous new château in the country, with dozens of incredibly high-powered motor-cars; and in the most expensive part of Paris a huge apartment wriggling from floor to ceiling with Nouveau Art. The girl who marries him will have to be smeared with diamonds, and know the most appalling people. In fact, she 'll have to be a kind of walking, pictorial advertisement for the success of Charretier's Corn Plasters."
"He must know some nice people, since he knows relations of yours."
"Thank you for the compliment, which I hope you pay me on circumstantial evidence. But it 's deceiving. My mother, I believe, was the only nice person in her family. These cousins, husband and wife, brought mamma to Europe to live with them when she was a young girl, quite rich and an orphan. They were furious when she fell in love with papa, who was only a lieutenant with nothing but a very old name, the ruins of a castle that tourists paid francs to see, and a ramshackle house in Paris almost too dilapidated to let. It was a mere detail to them that he happened to be one of the best-looking and most agreeable young men in the world. They did nothing but say, 'I told you so!' for years, whenever anything disastrous happened—as it constantly did, for poor papa and mamma loved each other so much, and had so much fun, that they could n't have time to be business-like. My cousins thought everything mamma did was a madness—such as sending me to the most fashionable convent school in France. As if I had n't to be educated! And then, when the castle fell so to bits that tourists would n't bother with it any more, and nobody but rats would live in the Paris house unless it was repaired—and poor papa was killed in a horrid little Saturday-to-Monday war of no importance (except to people whose hearts it broke)—oh! I believe the cousins were glad! They thought it was a judgment. That happened years ago, when I was only fifteen, and though they 've plenty of money (more than most people in the American colony) they didn't offer to help; and mamma would have died sooner than ask. I had to be snatched out of school, to find that all the beautiful dreams of being a happy débutante must go by contraries. We lived in the tumble-down house ourselves, mamma and I, and her friends rallied round her—she was so popular and pretty. They got her chances to give singing lessons, and me to do translating, and painting menus. We were happy again, after a while, in spite of all, and people were so good to us! Mamma used to hold a kind of salon, with all the brightest and best crowding to it, though they got nothing but sweet biscuits, vin ordinaire, and conversation—and besides, the house might have taken a fancy to fall down on their heads any minute. It was sporting of them to come at all!"
"And the cousins. Did they come?"
"Not they! They 're of the society of the little Brothers and Sisters of the Rich. Their set was quite different from ours. But when mamma died nearly two years ago, and I was alone, they did call, and Cousin Emily offered me a home. I was to give up all my work, of course, which she considered degrading, and was simply to make myself useful to her as a daughter of the house might do. That was what she said."
"You accepted?"
"Yes. I did n't know her and her husband as well as I do now; and before she died mamma begged me to go to them, if they asked me. That was when Monsieur Charretier came on the scene—at least, he came a few months later, and I 've had no peace since. Lately, things were growing more and more impossible, when my best friend, Comtesse de Nesle, came to my rescue and found (or thought she 'd found) me this engagement with the Princess. As I told you, I simply ran away—sneaked away—and came here without any one but Pamela knowing. And now she—the Comtesse—is just sailing for New York with her husband."
"The Comtesse de Nesle—that pretty little American! I 've met her in Paris—and at the Dublin Horse Show," exclaimed Lady Kilmarny. "Well, I wish I could take up the rescue work where she has laid it down. I think you are a most romantic little figure, and I 'd love to engage you as my companion, only my husband and I are as poor as church mice. Like your father, we 've nothing but our name and a few ruins. When I come South for my health I can't afford such luxuries as a husband and a maid. I have to choose between them and a private sitting-room. So you see, I can't possibly indulge in a companion." People seemed to be always wanting me as one, and then reluctantly abandoning me!
"Your kindness and sympathy have helped me a lot," said I.
"They won't pay your way."
"I have no way. So far as I can see, I shall have to stop in Cannes, anonymously so to speak, for the rest of my life."
"Where would you like to go, if you could choose—since you can't go to your relations?"
Again my thoughts travelled after Miss Paget, as if she had been a fat, red will-o'-the-wisp.
"To England, perhaps," I answered. "In a few weeks from now I might be able to find a position there." And I went on to tell, in as few words as possible, my adventure in the railway train.
"H'm!" said Lady Kilmarny. "We 'll look her up in Who's Who, and see if she exists. If she 's anybody, she 'll be there. And Who's Who I always have with me, abroad. One meets so many pretenders, it 's quite dangerous."
"How can you tell I'm not one?" I asked. "Yet you spoke to me."
"Why, you 're down in a kind of invisible book, called 'You 're You.' It 's sufficient reference for me. Besides, if your two eyes could n't be trusted, it would be easy to shed you."
Lady Kilmarny said this smilingly, as she found the red book, and passed her finger down the columns of P's.
"Yes, here 's the name, and the two addresses on the visiting-card. She 's the Honourable Maria Paget, only daughter of the late Baron Northfield. Yes, an engagement with her would be safe, if not agreeable. But how to get you to England?"
"Perhaps I could go as somebody's maid," I reflected aloud.
She looked at me sharply. "Would you do that?"
"It would be better than being an advertisement for Corn Plasters," I smiled.
"Then," said Lady Kilmarny, "perhaps, after all, I can help you. But no—I should never dare to suggest it! The thought of a girl like you—it would be too dreadful."