Читать книгу The Motor Maid - C. N. Williamson - Страница 10

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All the same, I wondered a great deal how he came there, and I hoped that he was wondering the same sort of thing about me. In fact, I laid myself out to produce such a result. That is to say, I took some pains to show myself as little like the common or parlour lady's-maid as possible. I never took so much pains to impress any human being, male or (far less) female, as I took to impress that mere chauffeur—the very chauffeur I'd been lying awake at night dreading as the most objectionable feature in my new life.

All the nice things I'd thought of by the way, before we introduced ourselves to each other, I trotted out (at least, as many as I had presence of mind to remember); and though I'm afraid he didn't pay me the compliment of trying to "brill" in return, I told myself that it was not because he didn't think me worth brilling for, but because he's English. It never seems to occur to an Englishman to "show off." I believe if Sir Samuel Turnour's chauffeur, Mr. What's-his-name, knew twenty-seven languages, he could be silent in all of them.

He did let me play the car's musical siren, though; a fascinating bugbear, supposed to warn children, chickens, and other light-minded animals that something important is coming, and they'd better look alive. It has two tunes, one grave, one gay. I suppose we would use the grave one if the creature hadn't looked alive?

Although he didn't say much, the chauffeur (or "shuvvie" as he scornfully names himself) knew all about Robert Macaire and Caspard De Besse—knew more about them than I, also their escapades on this road over the Esterels, and in the mountain fastnesses, when highwaymen were as fashionable as motor-cars are now. I'd forgotten that it was this part of the world where they earned their bread and fame; and was quite thrilled to hear that the ghost of De Besse is supposed to keep on, as a permanent residence, his old shelter cave near the summit of strangely shaped Mont Vinaigre. I'm sure, though, even if we'd passed his pitch at midnight instead of midday, he wouldn't have dared pop out and cry "Stand and deliver!" to a sixty-horsepower Aigle.

I almost wished it were night, as we swooped over mountain tops, our eyes plunging down the deep gorges, and dropping with fearful joy over precipices, for the effect would have been more solemn, more mysterious. I could imagine that the fantastically formed rocks which loomed above us or stood ranged far below would have looked by moonlight like statues and busts of Titans, carved to show poor little humanity such creatures as a dead world had known. But it is hard for one's imagination to do the best of which it feels capable when one is dying for lunch.

Even the old "Murder Inn," which my companion obligingly pointed out, didn't give me the thrill it ought, because time was getting on when we flew past it, and I would have been capable of eating vulgar bread and cheese under its wickedly historic roof if I had been invited.

"Do you suppose they know anything about the road and its history?" I asked the chauffeur, with a slight gesture of my swathed head toward the solid wall of glass which was our background.

"They? Certainly not, and don't want to know," he answered with an air of assurance.

"Why do they go about in motors then," I wondered, "if they don't take interest in things they pass?"

"You must understand as well as I do why this sort of person goes about in motors," said he. "They go because other people go—because it's the thing. The 'other people' whom they slavishly imitate may really like the exhilaration, the ozone, the sight-seeing, or all three; but to this type the only part that matters is letting it be seen that they've got a handsome car, and being able to say 'We've just come from the Riviera in our sixty-horse-power motor-car.' They'd always mention the power."

"Lady Turnour did, even to me," I remembered. "But is Sir Samuel like that?"

"No, to do him justice, he isn't, poor man. But his wife is his Juggernaut. I believe he enjoys lying under her wheels, or thinks he does—which is the same thing."

"Have you been with them long?" I dared to inquire.

"Only a few days. I brought the car down for them from Paris, though not this way—a shorter one. We're new brooms, the car and I."

"All their brooms seem to be new," I reflected. "I wonder what the stepson is like?"

"Luckily it doesn't matter much to me," said the chauffeur indifferently.

"Nor to me. But his name's Herbert."

"His surname?"

"I don't know. There's a Herbert lurking somewhere. It always suggests to me oily hair parted in the middle and smeared down on each side of a low, narrow forehead. Could you know a 'Bertie'?"

"I did once, and never want to again. He was a swine and a snob. Hope you never came across the combination?"

I forgot to answer, because, having left the mountain world behind, a formidable line of nobly planned arches began striding along beside us, through the sun-bright fields, and I was sure it must be the giant Roman aqueduct of Fréjus.

Instead of discussing such little things as the Turnours and their Bertie, we began to talk of Phoenicians, Ligurians, and of Romans; of Pliny, who had a beloved friend at Fréjus; and all the while to breathe in the perfume of a land over which a vast tidal wave of balsamic pines had swept.

Fréjus we were not to see now: that was for the dim future, after lunch; but we turned to the left off the main road, and ran on until we saw, bathed in pines, deliciously deluged and drowned in pines, the white glimmer of classic-looking villas. These meant Valescure, said the chauffeur; and the Grand Hotel—not classic looking, but pretty in its terraced garden—meant luncheon.

The car drew up before the door, according to order, or rather, according to hypnotic suggestion; for it seems that it is the chauffeur who alone knows anything of the way, and who, while appearing to be non-committal, is virtually planning the tour. "Valescure might be a good stopping-place for lunch," he had murmured, an eye on the road map over which his head bent with Sir Samuel's. "Very beautiful—rather exclusive. You may remember Mr. Chamberlain stopped there."

The exclusiveness and the Chamberlain-ness decided Lady Turnour, behind Sir Samuel's shoulder (so the chauffeur told me); consequently, here we were—and not at St. Raphael, which would have seemed the more obvious place to stop.

I say "we," but Lady Turnour would have been surprised to hear that her maid dared count herself and a chauffeur in the programme. Creatures like us must be fed, just as you pour petrol into the tanks of a motor, or stoke a furnace with coals, because otherwise our mechanism wouldn't go, and that would be awkward when we were wanted.

The chauffeur opened the door of the car as if he had been born to open motor-car doors, and Lady Turnour allowed herself to be helped out by her husband. Her jewel-bag clutched in her hand (she doesn't know me well enough yet to trust me with it, and hasn't had bagsful of jewels for long), she passed her two servants without expending a look on them. Sir Samuel followed, telling his chauffeur to have the automobile ready at the door again in an hour and a quarter; and we two Worms were left to our own resources.

"I shan't garage her," said my fellow Worm of the car. "I'll just drive her out of the way, where I can look over her a bit when I've snatched something to eat. I'll take the fur rugs inside—you're not to bother, they're big enough to swamp you entirely. And then you—"

"Yes, then I—" I repeated desolately. "What is to become of me?"

"Why, you're to have your lunch, of course," he replied. "I thought you said you were hungry."

"So I am, starving. But—"

"Well?"

"Aren't you going to have a proper lunch?"

"A sandwich and a piece of cheese will do for me, because there are one or two little things to tinker up on the car, and an hour and a quarter isn't long. I think I shall bring my grub out of doors, and—But is anything the matter?"

"I can't go in and have lunch alone. I simply can't," I confessed to the young man whose society I had intended to avoid like a pestilence. "You see, I—I never—this is the first time."

A look of comprehension flashed over his face.

"Yes, I see," he said. "Of course, the moment I heard your voice I realized that this wasn't your sort of work, but I didn't know you were quite so new to it as all that. You've never taken a meal in the couriers' room of an hotel?"

"No," I confessed. "At the Majestic Palace Lady Kil—that is, I decided to have everything brought up to my room, there."

"By Jove, we are a strange pair! This is my first job, too, and so far I've been able to feed where I chose; but that's too good to last on tour. One must accommodate oneself to circumstances, and a man easily can. But you—I know how you feel. However, it's the first step that costs. Do you mind much?"

"It's the stepping in alone that costs the most," I said.

"Well, I'm only too delighted if I can be of the least use. Let the car rip! I'll see to her afterward. Now I'm going to take care of you. You need it more than she does."

What would Lady Kilmarny have said if she had heard my deliberate encouragement of the chauffeur, and his reckless response? What would she have thought if she could have seen us walking into the couriers' dining-room, side by side, as if we had been friends for as many years as we'd really been acquaintances for minutes, leaving the car he was paid to cherish in his bosom sulking alone!

That sweet lady's face, surprised and reproachful, rose before my eyes, but I had no regrets. And instead of trembling with apprehension when I saw that the couriers' room was empty, I rejoiced in the prospect of lunching alone with the redoubtable chauffeur.

It was too early for the regular feeding hour of the pensionnaires, maids, and valets, and we sat down opposite each other at the end of a long table. A bored young waiter, with little to hope for in the way of pourboires, ambled off in quest of our food. I began to unfasten my head covering, and after a search for various fugitive pins I emerged from obscurity, like the moon from behind a cloud.

With a sigh of relief, I smiled at my companion; and it was only his expression of surprise which reminded me that he had been seeing me "as through a glass darkly."

I suppose, unless you are a sort of Sherlock Holmes of physiognomy, you can't map out a woman's face by a mere glimpse of eyes through a triangular bit of talc, already somewhat damaged by exposure to sun and wind.

It mayn't be good manners to look a gift motor-veil in the talc, but I must admit that, glad as I was of its protection, mine was somewhat the worse for certain bubbles, cracks, and speckles; so whether or no Mr. Bane or Dane may combine the science of chauffeuring with that of physiognomy, it's certain that he had the air of being taken aback.