Part 17 (1/2)
”I wanted your ladys.h.i.+p'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 s.h.i.+llings for obliging me. I hope your ladys.h.i.+p 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 ladys.h.i.+p'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 ladys.h.i.+p 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 ladys.h.i.+p 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 ladys.h.i.+p 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 ladys.h.i.+p, 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 ladys.h.i.+p 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.”