The Motor Maid Part 42

"Of course, Sir Samuel, after what's happened, you wouldn'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 n.o.body 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 cla.s.s 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 didn'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 embarra.s.sing 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 embarra.s.sment. "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 haven't much money in hand, you've almost told me. I suppose you haven't changed your mind about your relations in Paris? You wouldn'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 _isn'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 didn'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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n 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 hadn't mentioned her bulldog, Beau.

There can't be a quant.i.ty 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 hadn'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 couldn't help understanding well enough, especially a vain little thing like you."