Part 7 (1/2)
”I'm not used to being contradicted by my servants,” her ladys.h.i.+p reminded me.
”My dear, do let the poor girl know whether she dyes her hair or not.”
Sir Samuel pleaded for me with more kindness than discretion. ”I'm sure she speaks beautiful English.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”While I wrestled ... with a bodice as snug as the head of a drum, the lord of all it contained appeared in the doorway”]
”As if that had anything to do with it! She may as well understand, to begin with, that I won't put up with impudence and answering back.
Hair that colour doesn't go with dark eyes. And eyelashes like that aren't suitable to lady's-maids.”
”If your ladys.h.i.+p pleases, what am I to do with mine?” I asked in the sweetest little voice; and I would have given anything for someone to whom I might have telegraphed a laugh.
”Wash the dark stuff off of them and let them be light,” were the simple instructions promptly returned to me.
There was no more to be said, so I cast down the offending features (are one's lashes one's features?) and swallowed my feelings just as Lady Turnour will have to swallow my hair and eyelashes if I'm to stop in her service. If they stick in her throat, I suppose she will discharge me.
For a leopard cannot change his spots, and a girl will not the colour of her locks and lashes--when she happens to be fairly well satisfied with Nature's work.
CHAPTER VI
Pamela's mother-in-law, _la Comtesse douairiere_, wears a lovely, fluffy white thing over her own diminis.h.i.+ng front hair, which I once heard her describe, when struggling to speak English, as her ”combination.” Pam and I laughed nearly to extinction, but I didn't laugh this morning when I was obliged to help Lady Turnour put on hers.
They say an emperor is no hero to his valet, and neither can an empress be a heroine to her maid when she bursts for the first time upon that humble creature's sight, without her transformation.
It _did_ make an unbelievable difference with her ladys.h.i.+p; and it must have been a blow to poor Sir Samuel, after all his years of hopeless love for a fond gazelle, when at last he made that gazelle his own, and saw it running about its bedroom with all its copper-coloured ”ondulations” naively lying on its dressing-table.
Poor Miss Paget's false front was one of those frank, self-respecting old things one might have allowed one's grandmother to wear, just as she would wear a cap; but a transformation--well, one has perhaps believed in it, if one has not the eye of a lynx, and the disillusion is awful.
Of course, a lady's-maid is not a human being, and what it is thinking matters no more than what thinks a chair when sat upon; so I don't suppose ”her ladys.h.i.+p” cared ten centimes for the impression I was receiving and trying to digest in the first ten minutes after my morning entrance.
As my hair waves naturally, I've scarcely more than a bowing acquaintance with a curling-iron; but luckily for me I always did Cousin Catherine's when she wanted to look as beautiful as she felt; and though my hands trembled with nervousness, I not only ”ondulated” Lady Turnour's transformation without burning it up, but I added it to her own locks in a manner so deft as to make me want to applaud myself.
Even she could find no fault. The effect was twice as _chic_ and becoming as that of yesterday. She looked younger, and nearer to being the _grande dame_ that she burns to be. I saw various emotions working in her mind, and attributed her silence on the subject of my personal defects (unchanged despite her orders) to the success I was making with her toilet. In her eyes, I began to take on l.u.s.tre as a Treasure not to be lightly thrown away on the turn of a dye.
When she was dressed and painted to represent a ”lady motorist,” it was my business to pack not only for her but for Sir Samuel, who is the sort of man to be miserable under the domination of a valet. There were a round dozen of trunks, which had to be sent on by rail, and there was also luggage for the automobile; such ingenious and pretty luggage (bran new, like everything of her ladys.h.i.+p's, not excepting her complexion) that it was really a pleasure to pack it. As for the poor motor maid, it was broken to her that she must, figuratively speaking, live in a bag during the tour, and that bag must have a place under her feet as she sat beside the driver. It might make her as uncomfortable as it liked, but whatever it did, it must on no account interfere with the chauffeur.
We were supposed to start at ten, but a woman of Lady Turnour's type doesn't think she's making herself of enough importance unless she keeps people waiting. She changed her mind three times about her veil, and had her dressing-bag (a gorgeous affair, beside which mine is a mere nutsh.e.l.l) reopened at the last minute to get out different hatpins.
It was half-past ten when the luggage for the automobile was ready to be taken away, and having helped my mistress into her motoring coat, I left her saying farewell to some hotel acquaintances she had sc.r.a.ped up, and went out to put her ladys.h.i.+p's rugs into the car.
I had not seen it yet, nor the dreaded chauffeur, my galley-companion; but as the front door opened, _voila_ both; the car drawn up at the hotel entrance, the chauffeur dangling from its roof.
Never did I see anything in the way of an automobile so large, so azure, so magnificent, so s.h.i.+ny as to varnish, so dazzling as to bra.s.s and crystal.
Perhaps the windows aren't really crystal, but they were all bevelly and glittering in the suns.h.i.+ne, and seemed to run round the car from back to front, giving the effect of a Cinderella Coach fitted on to a motor.
Never was paint so blue, never was crest on carriage panel so large and so like a vague, over-ripe tomato. Never was a chauffeur so long, so slim, so smart, so leathery.
He was dangling not because he fancied himself as a ta.s.sel, but because he was teaching some last piece of luggage to know its place on the roof it was shaped to fit.