The Motor Maid | Page 8

the narrow
plush-covered seat. But I didn't care to sit. I was so crushed, it seemed
that, if once I sat down I shouldn't have courage to rise up again and
wrestle with the difficulties of life.
The lady got out on the second floor, throwing back a kindly glance, as
if she took a little interest in me, and wanted me to know it. I suppose it
must have been because I was tired and nervous after a whole night
without sleep that the shock I'd just received was too much for me.

Anyway, that kind glance made a lump rise in my throat, and the lump
forced tears into my eyes. I looked down instantly, so that she shouldn't
see them and think me an idiot, but I was afraid she did.
The young man who was taking me up to the top floor, and treating me
rather nonchalantly because I was a North Roomer and a Twelve
Francer, waved the lift boy aside to open the door himself for the lady;
so that I knew she must be considered a person worth conciliating.
Shut up in my ten-by-six-foot room, I tried to compose myself and
make plans; but to make plans on thirty-two francs, when you've no
home, and would be far from it even if you had one; when you've
nobody to help you, and wouldn't want to ask them if you had--is about
as hard as to play the piano brilliantly without ever having taken a
lesson. With Princess Boriskoff dead, with Pamela de Nesle sailing for
New York to-morrow morning, and no other intimate friends rich
enough to do anything for me, even if they were willing to help me fly
in the face of Providence and Madame Milvaine, it did seem (as Pamela
herself would say) as though I were rather "up against it."
The thought of Miss Paget suddenly jumped into my head, and the wish
that, somehow, I had kept her up my sleeve as a last resort, in case she
really were in earnest about her offer. But she hadn't told me where she
was going in Italy, and it would be of no use writing to one of her
English addresses, as I couldn't stop on where I was, waiting for an
answer.
Altogether things were very bad with me.
After I had sat down and thought for a while, I rang, and asked for the
housekeeper. A hint or two revealed that she was aware of what had
happened, and, explaining that I was to have been Princess Boriskoff's
companion, I said that I must see the Princess's maid. She must come to
my room. I must have a talk with her.
Presently, after an interval which may have been meant to emphasize
her dignity, appeared a pale, small Russian woman whose withered
face was as tragic and remote from the warmth of daily life as that of

the eldest Fate.
She could speak French, and we talked together. Yes, her mistress had
died very suddenly, but she and the doctors had always known that it
might happen so, at any moment. It was hard for me, but--what would
you? Life was hard. It might have been that I would have found life
hard with Her Highness. What was to be, would be. I must write to my
friends. It was not in her power to do anything for me. Her Highness
had left no instructions. These things happened. Well! one made the
best of them. There was nothing more to say.
So we said nothing more, and the woman moved away silently, as if to
funeral music, to prepare for her journey to Russia. I--went down to
luncheon.
One always does go down to luncheon while one is still inclined to
keep up appearances before oneself; but the restaurant was large and
terribly magnificent, with a violent rose-coloured carpet, and curtains
which made me, in my frightened pallor, with my pale yellow hair and
my gray travelling dress, feel like a poor little underground celery-stalk
flung into a sunlit strawberry-bed, amid a great humming of bees.
The vast rosy sea was thickly dotted with many small table-islands that
glittered appetizingly with silver and glass; but I could not have
afforded to acknowledge an appetite even if I'd had one.
My conversation with the Russian woman had made me rather late.
Most of the islands were inhabited, and as I was piloted past them by a
haughty head waiter I heard people talking about golf, tennis, croquet,
bridge, reminding me that I was in a place devoted to the pursuit of
pleasure.
The most desirable islands were next the windows, therefore the one at
which I dropped anchor (for I'd changed from a celery-stalk into a little
boat now) was