British Murder Mysteries – 10 Novels in One Volume. Charles Norris Williamson
they! They're of the society of the little Brothers and Sisters of the Rich. Their set was quite different from ours. But when mamma died nearly two years ago, and I was alone, they did call, and Cousin Emily offered me a home. I was to give up all my work, of course, which she considered degrading, and was simply to make myself useful to her as a daughter of the house might do. That was what she said."
"You accepted?"
"Yes. I didn't know her and her husband as well as I do now; and before she died mamma begged me to go to them, if they asked me. That was when Monsieur Charretier came on the scene—at least, he came a few months later, and I've had no peace since. Lately, things were growing more and more impossible, when my best friend, Comtesse de Nesle, came to my rescue and found (or thought she'd found) me this engagement with the Princess. As I told you, I simply ran away—sneaked away—and came here without any one but Pamela knowing. And now she—the Comtesse—is just sailing for New York with her husband."
"The Comtesse de Nesle—that pretty little American! I've met her in Paris—and at the Dublin Horse Show," exclaimed Lady Kilmarny. "Well, I wish I could take up the rescue work where she has laid it down. I think you are a most romantic little figure, and I'd love to engage you as my companion, only my husband and I are as poor as church mice. Like your father, we've nothing but our name and a few ruins. When I come South for my health I can't afford such luxuries as a husband and a maid. I have to choose between them and a private sitting-room. So you see, I can't possibly indulge in a companion."
People seemed to be always wanting me as one, and then reluctantly abandoning me!
"Your kindness and sympathy have helped me a lot," said I.
"They won't pay your way."
"I have no way. So far as I can see, I shall have to stop in Cannes, anonymously so to speak, for the rest of my life."
"Where would you like to go, if you could choose—since you can't go to your relations?"
Again my thoughts travelled after Miss Paget, as if she had been a fat, red will-o'-the-wisp.
"To England, perhaps," I answered. "In a few weeks from now I might be able to find a position there." And I went on to tell, in as few words as possible, my adventure in the railway train.
"H'm!" said Lady Kilmarny. "We'll look her up in Who's Who, and see if she exists. If she's anybody, she'll be there. And Who's Who I always have with me, abroad. One meets so many pretenders, it's quite dangerous."
"How can you tell I'm not one?" I asked. "Yet you spoke to me."
"Why, you're down in a kind of invisible book, called 'You're You.' It's sufficient reference for me. Besides, if your two eyes couldn't be trusted, it would be easy to shed you."
Lady Kilmarny said this smilingly, as she found the red book, and passed her finger down the columns of P's.
"Yes, here's the name, and the two addresses on the visiting-card. She's the Honourable Maria Paget, only daughter of the late Baron Northfield. Yes, an engagement with her would be safe, if not agreeable. But how to get you to England?"
"Perhaps I could go as somebody's maid," I reflected aloud.
She looked at me sharply. "Would you do that?"
"It would be better than being an advertisement for Corn Plasters," I smiled.
"Then," said Lady Kilmarny, "perhaps, after all, I can help you. But no—I should never dare to suggest it! The thought of a girl like you—it would be too dreadful."
Chapter IV
When my father had been extravagant, he used to say gaily in self-defence that "one owed something to one's ancestors." Certainly, if it had not been for several of his ancestors, he would not have owed so much to his contemporaries. But in spite of their agreeable vices, or because of them, I was brought up in the cult of ancestor worship, as religiously as if I had been Chinese.
To be a d'Angely was a privilege, in our eyes, which not only supplied gilding for the gingerbread, but for the most economical substitutes.
"Ne roi je suis,
Ne prince aussi,
Je suis le Sire d'Angely,"
calmly remarked the gentleman of Louis XI.'s time, who became famous for hanging as many retainers as he liked, and defending his action by originating the family motto.
Mother also had ancestors who began to take themselves seriously somewhere about the time of the Mayflower, though for all we know they may have secured their passage in the steerage.
"A Courtenay can do anything," was their rather ambiguous motto, which suggested that it might have been started in self-defence, if not as a boast; and it (the name, not the motto) had been thoughtfully sandwiched in between my Lys and my d'Angely by my sponsors in baptism, that if necessary I might ever have an excuse at hand for any dark deed or infra dig-ness.
I used often to murmur the consoling mottoes to myself when pattering through muddy streets, too poor to take an omnibus, on the way to sell—or try to sell—my translations or my menus. But now, after all that's happened, if it is to strike conviction to my soul, I shall be obliged to yell it at the top of my mental lungs.
(That expression may sound ridiculous, but it isn't. We could not talk to ourselves as we do, in all kinds of voices, high or low, if we hadn't mental lungs, or at the least, sub-conscious-self lungs.)
Je suis the daughter of the last Sire d'Angely; and a Courtenay can do anything; so of course it's all right; and it's no good my ancestors turning in their graves, for they'll only make themselves uncomfortable without changing my mind.
I, Lys d'Angely, am going to be a lady's-maid; or rather, I am going to be the maid of an extremely rich person who calls herself a lidy.
It's perfectly awful, or awfully comic, according to the point of view, and I swing from one to the other, pushed by my fastidiousness to my sense of humour, and back again, in a way to make me giddy. But it's settled. I'm going to do it. I had almost to drag the suggestion out of Lady Kilmarny, who turned red and stammered as if I were the great lady, she the poor young girl in want of a situation.
There was, said she, a quaint creature in the hotel (one met these things abroad, and was obliged to be more or less civil to them) who resembled Monsieur Charretier in that she was disgustingly rich. It was not Corn Plasters. It was Liver Pills, the very same liver pills which had dropped into the mind of Lady Kilmarny when I hesitated to put into words the foundation of my pretendant's future. It was the Liver Pills which had eventually introduced into her brain the idea she falteringly embodied for me.
The husband of the quaint creature had invented the pills, even as Monsieur Charretier had invented his abomination. Because of the pills he had been made a Knight; at least, Lady Kilmarny didn't know any other reason. He was Sir Samuel Turnour (evolved from Turner), just married for the second time to a widow in whose head it was like the continual frothing of new wine to be "her ladyship."
Lady Turnour had lately quarrelled with a maid and dismissed her, Lady Kilmarny told me. Now, she was in immediate need of another, French (because French maids are fashionable) able to speak English, because the Turnour family had as yet mastered no other language. Lady Kilmarny believed that this was the honeymoon of the newly married pair, and that, after having paused on the wing at Cannes, for a little billing and cooing, they intended to pursue their travels in France for some weeks, before returning to settle down in England. "Her Ladyship" was asking everybody with whom she had contrived to scrape acquaintance (especially if they had titles) to recommend her a maid. Lady Kilmarny, as a member of the League against Cruelty to Animals, had determined that nothing would induce her to throw any poor mouse to this cat, even if she heard of a mouse plying for hire; but here was I in a dreadful scrape, professing