The Motor Maid Part 30

"I wonder if she is thinking about you to-night?" I asked, knowing he meant that the mysterious lady was carried along on this journey in his spirit, as I was in the car.

"Not seriously, if at all," he answered, with what seemed to me a forced lightness. "But I am thinking of her--thoughts which she will probably never know."

Then I did wish that I, too, had a hidden sorrow in my life, a man in the background, but as unlike Monsieur Charretier as possible, for whose love I could call upon my brother's sympathy. And I suppose it was because he had some one, while I had no one, in this strange, hidden fairyland like a secret orchard of jewelled fruits, that I felt suddenly very sad.

He pointed out Castlebouc, a spellbound chateau on a towering crag that held it up as if on a tall black finger, above a village which might have fallen off a canvas by Gustave Dore. Farther on lay a strange place called Prades, memorable for a huge b.u.t.tress of rock exactly like the carca.s.s of a mammoth petrified and hanging on a wall. Then, farther on still, over the black face of the rocks flashed a whiteness of waving waters, pouring cascades like bridal veils whose lace was made of mountain snows.

"Here we are at Ste. Enemie," said Mr. Dane. "Don't you remember about her--'King Dagobert's daughter, ill-fated and fair to look upon?' Well, at this village of hers we must either light our lamps or rest for the night, which ever Sir Samuel--I mean her ladyship--decides."

So he stopped, in a little town which looked a place of fairy enchantment under the moon. And as the song of the motor changed into jogging prose with the putting on of the brakes, open flew the door of an inn. Nothing could ever have looked half so attractive as the rosy glow of the picture suddenly revealed. There was a miniature hall and a quaint stairway--just an impressionist glimpse of both in play of firelight and shadow. With all my might I willed Lady Turnour to want to stay the night. The whole force of my mind pressed upon that part of her "transformation" directly over the deciding-cells of her brain.

The chauffeur jumped down, and respectfully inquired the wishes of his pa.s.sengers. Would they remain here, if there were rooms to be had, and take a boat in the morning to make the famous descent of the Tarn, while the car went on to meet them at Le Rosier, at the end of the Gorge? Or would they, in spite of the darkness, risk--

"We'll risk nothing," Lady Turnour promptly cut him short. "We've run risks to-day till I feel as if I'd been in my grave and pulled out again. No more for me, by dark, _thank_ you, if I have to sleep in the car!"

"I hope your ladyship won't have to do that," returned my Fellow Worm, alive though trodden under foot. "I have never spent a night in Ste.

Enemie, but I've lunched here, and the food is pa.s.sable. I should think the rooms would be clean, though rough--"

"I don't find this country attractive enough to pay us for any hardships," said the mistress of our fate. "I never was in such a dreary, G.o.d-forsaken waste! Are there no decent hotels to get at?"

Patiently he explained to her, as he had to me, how the better hotels which the Gorge of the Tarn could boast were not yet open for the summer. "If we had not had such a chapter of accidents we should have run through as far as this early in the day, and could then have followed the good motoring road down the gorge, seeing its best sights almost as well as from the river; but--"

"Whose fault were the accidents, I should like to know?" demanded the lady. But obviously there was no answer to that question from a servant to a mistress.

"Shall I inquire about rooms?" the chauffeur asked, calmly.

And it ended in Sir Samuel going in with him, conducted by a smiling and somewhat excited young person who had been holding open the door.

They must have been absent for ten minutes, which seemed half an hour.

Then, when Lady Turnour had begun muttering to herself that she was freezing, Sir Samuel bustled back, in a cheerfulness put on awkwardly, like an ill-fitting suit of armour in a pageant.

"My dear, they're very full, but two French gentlemen were kind enough to give up their room to us, and the landlady'll put them out somewhere--"

"What, you and I both squashed into one room!" exclaimed her ladyship, forgetful, in haughty horror, of her lodging-house background.

"But it's all they have. It's that or the motor, since you won't risk--"

"Oh, very well, then, I suppose it can't _kill_ me!" groaned the bride, stepping out of the car as if from tumbril to scaffold.

What a way to take an adorable adventure! I was sorry for Sir Samuel, but dimly I felt that I ought to be still sorrier for a woman temperamentally unable to enjoy anything as it ought to be enjoyed. Next year, maybe, she will look back on the experience and tell her friends that it was "fun"; but oh, the pity of it, not to gather the flowers of the Present, to let them wither, and never pluck them till they are dried wrecks of the Past!

I was ready to dance for joy as I followed her ladyship into the miniature hall which, if not quite so alluring when viewed from the inside, had a friendly, welcoming air after the dark mountains and cold white moonlight. I didn't know yet what arrangements had been made for my stable accommodation, if any, but I felt that I shouldn't weep if I had to sit up all night in a warm kitchen with a purry cat and a snory dog.

The stairs were bare, and our feet clattered crudely as we went up, lighted by a stout young girl with bared arms, who carried a candle.

"What a hole!" snapped Lady Turnour; but when the door of a bedroom was opened for her by the red-elbowed one, she cried out in despair. "Is _this_ where you expect me to sleep, Samuel? I'm surprised at you! I'm not sure it isn't an insult!"

"My darling, what can _I_ do?" implored the unfortunate bridegroom.

The red-elbowed maiden, beginning to take offence, set the candlestick down on a narrow mantelpiece, with a slap, and removed herself from the room with the dignity of a budding Jeanne d'Arc. We all three filed in, I in the rear; and for one who won't accept the cup of life as the best champagne the prospect certainly was depressing.

The belongings of the "two gentlemen" who were giving up their rights in a lady's favour, had not yet been transferred to the "somewhere outside." Those slippers under the bed could have belonged to no species of human being but a commercial traveller; and on the table and one chair were scattered various vague collars, neckties, and celluloid cuffs. There was no fire in the fireplace, nor, by the prim look of it, had there ever been one in the half century or so since necessity called for an inn to be built.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed from the chair a waistcoat tangled up in some suspenders, and Lady Turnour, flinging herself down in her furs, burst out crying like a cross child.

"If this is what you call adventure, Samuel, I hate it," she whimpered.

"You _would_ bring me motoring! I want a fire. I want hot water. I want them now. And I want the room cleared and all these awful things taken away this instant. I don't consider them _decent_. Whatever happens, I shan't dream of getting into that bed to-night, and I don't feel now as if I should eat any dinner."

Distracted, Sir Samuel looked piteously at me, and I sprang to the rescue. I a.s.sured her ladyship that everything should be made nice for her before she quite knew what had happened. If she would have patience for _five_ minutes, _only_ five, she should have everything she wanted.

I would see to it myself. With that I ran away, followed by Sir Samuel's grateful eyes. But, once downstairs, I realized what a task I had set myself.

The whole establishment had gone mad over us. There had been enough to do before, with the house full of _ces messieurs_, _les commis voyageurs_, but it was comparatively simple to do for them. For _la n.o.blesse Anglaise_ it was different.

There were no men to be seen, and the three or four women of the household were scuttling about crazily in the kitchen, like hens with their heads cut off. The patronage was so ill.u.s.trious and so large; there was so much to do and all at once, therefore n.o.body tried to do anything but cackle and plump against one another.

Enter Me, a whirlwind, demanding an immediate fire and hot water for washing. Landlady and a.s.sistants were aghast. There had never been anything in any bedroom fireplace of the inn less innocent than paper flowers; bedroom fireplaces were for paper flowers; while as for washing it was a _betise_ to want to do so in the evening, especially with hot water, which was a madness at any time, unless by doctor's orders.

Besides, did not mademoiselle see that everybody had more than they could do already, in preparing dinner for the great people! There was plenty of time to put the bedroom in order when it should be bedtime. If the n.o.ble lady were so fatigued that she must lie down, why, the bed had only been slept in for one night by two particularly sympathetic messieurs. It would be _presque un crime_ to change linen after so brief an episode, nevertheless for a client of such importance it should eventually be done.

For a moment I was dashed by this volume of eloquence, but not for long, for I was pledged. A wild glance round the kitchen showed me a kettle standing empty in a corner. I seized it, and though it was heavy, swung it to an open door near which I could see a ghostly pump. I flew out, and seized that ghost by its long and rigid arm.

"Let me," said a voice.

It was the voice of Mr. Jack Dane.

CHAPTER XXII

"You dear!" I thought. But I only said, "How sweet of you!" in a nice, ladylike tone. And while he pumped the wettest and coldest water I ever felt, he drily advised me to call him "Adversity" if I found his "uses sweet," since he wasn't to be Jack for me. What if he had known that I always call him "Jack" to myself?

He not only pumped the kettle full, but carried it into the kitchen, and bullied or flattered the G.o.ddesses there until they gave him the hottest place for it on the red-hot stove. Meanwhile, as my eyes accustomed themselves to darkness after light, I spied in the courtyard of the pump a shed piled with wood; and my uncomfortably prophetic soul said that if Lady Turnour were to have a fire, the woodpile and I must do the trick together. Souls can be mistaken though, sometimes, if consciences never can; and Brother Adversity contradicted mine by darting out again to see what I was doing, ordering me to stop, and doing it all himself.

I ran to beg for immediate bed-linen while he annexed a portion of the family woodpile, and we met outside my mistress's door. On the threshold I confidently expected her grateful ladyship to say: "What _are_ you doing with that wood, Dane?" But she was too much crushed under her own load of cold and discomfort to object to his and wish it transferred to me. I'd knelt down to make a funeral pyre of paper roses, when in a voice low yet firm my brother ordered me to my feet. This wasn't work for girls when men were about, he grumbled; and perhaps it was as well, for I never made a wood fire in my life. As for him, he might have been a fire-tamer, so quickly did the flames leap up and try to lick his hands. When it was certain that they couldn't go stealthily crawling away again, he shot from the room, and in two minutes was back with the big kettle of hot water under whose weight I should have staggered and fallen, perhaps.

By this time I had made the bed, and tumbled all reminders of the two "sympathetic messieurs" ruthlessly into no-man's land outside the door.

Things began to look more cheerful. Lady Turnour brightened visibly; and when appetizing smells of cooking stole through the wide cracks all round the door she decided that, after all, she would dine.

It was not until after I had seen her descend with her husband, and had finished unpacking, that I had a chance to think of my own affairs. Then I did wonder on what shelf I was to lie, or on what hook hang, for the night. I had no information yet as regarded my own sleeping or eating, but both began to a.s.sume importance in my eyes, and I went down to learn my fate. Where was I to dine? Why, in the kitchen, to be sure, since the _salle a manger_ was in use as a sitting-room until bedtime. As for sleeping--why, that was a difficult matter. It was true that the English milord had spoken of a room for me, but in the press of business it had been forgotten. What a pity that the chauffeur and I were not a married couple, _n'est pas?_ That would make everything quite simple. But--as it was, no doubt there was a box-room, and matters would arrange themselves when there was time to attend to them.

"Matters have already arranged themselves," announced Mr. Jack Dane, from the door of the pump-court. "I heard Sir Samuel speak about your accommodation, and I saw that nothing was being done, so I discovered the box-room, and it is now ready, all but bed-covering. And for fear there might be trouble about that, I've put Lady Turnour's cushions and rugs on the alleged bed. Would you like to have a look at your quarters now, or are you too hungry to care?"

"I'm not too hungry to thank you," I exclaimed. "You are a kind of genie, who takes care of the poor who have neither lamps nor rings to rub."

"Better not thank me till you've seen the place," said he. "It's a villainous den; but I didn't think any one here would be likely to do better with it than I would. Anyhow, you'll find hot water. I unearthed--literally--another kettle. And it's the first door at the top of the back stairs."

I flew, or rather stumbled, up the ladder-like stairway, with a candle which I s.n.a.t.c.hed from the high kitchen mantelpiece, and at the top I laughed out, gaily. In the narrow pa.s.sage was a barricade of horrors which my knight had dragged from the box-room. On strange old hairy trunks of cowhide he had piled broken chairs, bandboxes covered with flowered wall-paper, battered clocks, chipped crockery, fire-irons, bundles done up in blankets, and a motley collection of unspeakable odds and ends that would have made a sensational jumble sale. I opened the low door, and peeped into the room with which such liberties had been taken for my sake. Although it was no more than a store cupboard, my wonderful brother had contrived to give it quite an air of coziness. The tiny window was open, and was doing its best to drive out mustiness. A narrow hospital cot stood against the wall, spread with a mattress quite an inch thick, and piled with the luxurious rugs and cushions from the motor car. I was sure Lady Turnour would have preferred my sitting up all night or freezing coverless rather than I should degrade her possessions by making use of them; but Mr. Dane evidently hadn't thought her opinion of importance compared with her maid's comfort. Two wooden boxes, placed one upon another, formed a wash-hand stand, which not only boasted a beautiful blue tin basin, but a tumbler, a caraffe full of water, and a not-much-cracked saucer ready for duty as a soap-dish. The top box was covered with a rough, clean towel, evidently filched from the kitchen, and this piece of extra refinement struck me as actually touching. A third box standing on end and spread with another towel, proclaimed itself a dressing-table by virtue of at least half a looking gla.s.s, lurking in one corner of a battered frame, like a sinister, partially extinguished eye. Other furnishings were a kitchen chair and a small clothes-horse, to compensate for the absence of wall-hooks or wardrobe. On the bare floor--oh, height of luxury!--lay the fleecy white rug whose high mission it was to warm the toes of Lady Turnour when motoring. On the floor beside the box wash-hand stand, a small kettle was pleasantly puffing, doing its best to heat the room with its gusty breath; and the clothes-horse had a saddle of towels which I shrewdly suspected had been intended for her ladyship or some other guest of importance in the house.