The Motor Maid Part 17

"I wanted your ladyship's maid, when she had nothing else to do, to put on her out-of-door things and let me make a sketch of her for an ill.u.s.trated newspaper I sometimes draw for. Naturally she didn't care for her face to go into the paper, so she insisted upon a veil. My sketch is to be called, 'The Motor Maid,' and I shall get half a guinea for it, I hope, of which it's my intention to hand ma'mselle five shillings for obliging me. I hope your ladyship doesn't object to my earning something extra now and then, so long as it doesn't interfere with work?"

"Well," remarked Lady Turnour, taken aback by this extraordinary plea, as well she might have been, "I don't like to tell a person out and out that I don't believe a word he says, but I do go as far as this: I'll believe you when I see you making the sketch. And as for earning extra money, I should have thought Sir Samuel paid good enough wages for you to be willing to smoke a pipe and rest when your day's work was done, instead of gadding about corridors gossiping with lady's-maids who've no business to be outside their own room. But if you're so greedy after money--and if you want me to take Elise's word--"

"I'll just begin the sketch in your ladyship's presence, if I may be excused," said Mr. Dane, briskly. And to my real surprise, as well as relief, he whipped a small canvas-covered sketch-book out of his pocket.

It was almost like sleight of hand, and if he'd continued the exhibition with a few live rabbits and an anaconda or two I couldn't have been much more amazed.

"I'd like to have a look at that thing," observed Lady Turnour, suspiciously, as in a business-like manner he proceeded to release a neatly sharpened pencil from an elastic strap.

Without a word or a guilty twitch of an eyelid he handed her the book, and we both stood watching while the fat, heavily ringed and rosily manicured fingers turned over the pages.

He could sketch, I soon saw, better than I can, though I've (more or less) made my living at it. There were types of French peasants done in a few strokes, here and there a suggestion of a striking bit of mountain scenery, a quaint cottage, or a ruined castle. Last of all there was a very good representation of the Aigle, loaded up with the Turnours'

smart luggage, and ready to start. My lips twitched a little, despite the strain of the situation, as I noted the exaggerated size of the crest on the door panel. It turned the whole thing into a caricature; but luckily her ladyship missed the point. She even allowed her face to relax into a faint smile of pleasure.

"This isn't bad," she condescended to remark.

"I thought of asking your ladyship and Sir Samuel if there would be any objection to my sending that to a Society motoring paper, and labelling it 'Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour's new sixty-horse-power Aigle on tour in Provence.' Or, if you would prefer my not using your name, I--"

"I see no reason why you should _not_ use it," her ladyship cut in hastily, "and I'm sure Sir Samuel won't mind. Make a little extra money in that way if you like, while we're on the road, as you have this talent."

She gave him back the book, quite graciously, and the chauffeur began sketching me. In three minutes there I was--the "abominable little flirt!" in hat and veil, with Lady Turnour's bag in my hand, quite a neat figure of a motor maid.

"You may put, if you like, 'Lady Turnour's maid,'" said that young person's mistress, "if you think it would give some personal interest to your sketch for the paper."

"Oh, this is for quite a different sort of thing," he explained. "Not devoted to society news at all: more for caricatures and _funny_ bits."

"Oh, then I should certainly not wish my name to appear in _that_,"

returned her ladyship, her tone adding that, on the other hand, such a publication was as suitable as it was welcome to a portrait of _me_.

"Now, Elise, I wish you to take those things off at _once_, and come to my room," she finished. "Mind, I don't want you should keep me waiting!

And you can hand over that bag."

No hope of another word between us! Mr. Jack Dane saw this, and that it would be unwise to try for it. Pocketing the sketch-book, he saluted Lady Turnour with a finger to the height of his eyebrows, which gesture visibly added to her sense of importance. Then, without glancing at me, he turned and walked off.

It was not until he had disappeared round the bend of the corridor that her ladyship thought it right to leave me.

I knew that she had made this little expedition in search of her maid with the sole object of seeing what the mouse did while the cat was away--a trick worthy of her lodging-house past! And I knew equally well that before I tapped at her door a little later she had examined the contents of the blue bag to make sure that I had extracted nothing. How I pity the long procession of "slaveys" who must have followed each other drearily in that lodging-house under the landlady's jurisdiction.

They, poor dears, could have had no chauffeur friends to save them from daily perils, and it isn't likely that their mistress allowed such luxuries as postmen or policemen.

CHAPTER XI

I decided to have my breakfast very early next morning, and would have thought it a coincidence that Mr. Dane should walk into the couriers'

room at the same time if he hadn't coolly told me that he had been lying in wait for me to appear.

"I thought, for several reasons, you would be early," he said. "So, for all the same reasons and several more, I thought I'd be early too. I had to know what the situation was to be."

"The situation?" I repeated blankly.

"Between us. Am I to understand that we've quarrelled?"

"We had," I said. "But even on good grounds, it's difficult to keep on quarrelling with a person who has not only brought up your dinner and sauced it with good advice, but saved you from--from the _d.i.c.kens_ of a sc.r.a.pe."

"I hope she didn't row you any more afterward?"

"No. She was too much interested, all the time I was undressing her, in speculating about Monsieur Charretier to Sir Samuel. It seems that they struck up an acquaintance over their coffee on the strength of a little episode in the hall.

"Inadvertently I introduced them--threw them at each others' heads.

Monsieur Charretier--Alphonse, as he once asked me to call him!--told her he was on his way to Cannes, where he heard that a friend of his, whom it was very necessary for him to see, was visiting a Russian Princess. He had stopped in Avignon, he said, because he was expecting the latest news of the friend, a change of address, perhaps; and--I don't know who proposed it, but anyway he arranged to go with Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour to the Palace of the Popes at ten o'clock. Her ladyship was quite taken with him, and remarked to Sir Samuel that there was nothing so fascinating as a French gentleman of the _haut monde_. Also she p.r.o.nounced his broken English '_sweet_.' She wondered if he was married, and whether the friend in Cannes was a woman or a man. Little did she know that her maid could have enlightened her! Their joining forces here is, as my American friend Pamela would say, 'the _limit_.'"

"Don't worry. The Palace of the Popes won't see him to-day," said the chauffeur. "He's gone. Got a telegram. Didn't even wait for letters, but told the manager to forward anything that came for him, Poste Restante, Genoa."

"Oh, then you--"

"Acted for you on my own responsibility. There was nothing else to do, if _anything_ were to be done; and you'd seemed to fall in with my suggestion. It would have been a pity, I thought, if your visit to Avignon were to be spoiled by a thing like that."

"Meaning Monsieur Charretier? I hardly slept last night for dwelling on the pity of it."

"It's all right, then? I haven't put my foot into it?"

"Your foot! You've put your _brains_ into it. You said the other night that I had presence of mind. It was nothing to yours."

"All's forgotten and forgiven, then?"

"It's forgotten that there was anything to forgive."

"And the 'motor maid' business? You didn't think it too clumsy?"

"I thought it most ingenious."

"It wasn't a lie, you know. I haven't a happy talent for lying. I do, or rather did when I had nothing else on hand, send occasional sketches to a paper. But the more I look at my 'motor maid,' the more I feel I should like to keep her--in my sketch-book--if you're willing I should have her?"

"Then I don't get my promised five shillings?" I laughed.

"I'll try and make up the loss to you in some other way."

"I have you to thank that I didn't lose my situation. So the debt is on my side."

"You owe me the scolding you got. I oughtn't to have lured you into the corridor."

"It was on my business. And there was no other way."

"It was my business to have thought of some other way."

"Are you your sister's keeper?"