“Bravo, Miss Leighton! I did not suppose there was so much spirit in you, when I saw you darning madam’s stockings and buttoning her boots. You are a brick and positively I admire you. Neither mamma nor Mrs Hallam needs any one to go with them, any more than the sea needs water. But it is English, you know, to have an attendant, and such an attendant, too, as you. Yes, I admire you! I respect you! Our door was open, and I heard what you said; so did mamma, and she is furious; but I am glad to see one woman assert her rights.”
It was Grace Haynes, who, coming from her bedroom, joined Bertha, as she was walking rapidly down the hall and said all this to her. Bertha had been nearly two weeks at Aix, and, although she had scarcely exchanged a word with Grace, she had often seen her, and remembering what Mrs. Hallam had said of her and Reginald, had looked at her rather critically. She was very thin and wiry, with a pale face, yellow hair worn short, large blue eyes, and a nose inclined to an upward curve. She was a kind-hearted, good-natured girl, of a pronounced type both in dress and manner and speech. She believed in a little slang, she said, because it gave a point to conversation, and she adored baccarat and rouge-et-noir, and a lot more things which her mother thought highly improper. She had heard all that her mother said of Bertha, and, quick to discriminate, she had seen how infinitely superior she was to Mrs. Hallam and had felt drawn to her, but was too much absorbed in her own matters to have any time for a stranger. She was a natural flirt, and, although so plain, always managed to have, as she said, two or three idiots dangling on her string. Just now it was a young Englishman, the grandson of old Lady Gresham, whom she had upon her string, greatly to the disgust of her mother, with whom she was not often in perfect accord.
Linking her arm in Bertha’s as they went down the stairs, she continued, “Are you going to walk? I am, up the hill. Come with me. I’ve been dying to talk to you ever since you came, but have been so engaged, and you are always so busy with madam since Celine went away. Good pious work you must find it waiting on madam and mamma both! I don’t see how you do it so sweetly. You must have a great deal of what they call inward and spiritual grace. I wish you’d give me some.”
Grace was the first girl of her own age and nation who had spoken to Bertha since she left America, and she responded readily to the friendly advance.
“I don’t believe I have any inward and spiritual grace to spare,” she said. “I only do what I hired out to do. You know I must earn my wages.”
“Yes,” Grace answered, “I know, and I wish I could earn wages, too. It would be infinitely more respectable than the way we get our money.”
“How do you get it?” Bertha asked, and Grace replied, “Don’t you know? You have certainly heard of high-born English dames who, for a consideration, undertake to hoist ambitious Americans into society?”
Bertha had heard of such things, and Grace continued, “Well, that is what mamma does at home on a smaller scale; and she succeeds, too. Everybody knows Mrs. Walker Haynes, with blood so blue that indigo is pale beside it, and if she pulls a string for a puppet to dance, all the other puppets dance in unison. Sometimes she chaperons a party of young ladies, but as these give her a good deal of trouble, she prefers people like Mrs. Hallam, who without her would never get into society. Society! I hate the word, with all it involves. Do you see that colt over there?” and she pointed to a young horse in an adjoining field. “Well, I am like that colt, kicking up its heels in a perfect abandon of freedom. But harness it to a cart, with thills and lines and straps and reins, and then apply the whip, won’t it rebel with all its might? And if it gets its feet over the traces and breaks in the dash-board who can blame it? I’m just like that colt. I hate that old go-giggle called society, which says you mustn’t do this and you must do that because it is or is not proper and Mrs. Grundy would be shocked. I like to shock her, and I’d rather take boarders than live as we do now. I’d do anything to earn money. That’s why I play at baccarat.”
“Baccarat!” Bertha repeated, with a little start.
“Yes, baccarat. Don’t try to pull away from me. I felt you,” Grace said, holding Bertha closer by the arm. “You are Massachusetts born and have a lot of Massachusetts notions, of course, and I respect you for it, but I am Bohemian through and through. Wasn’t born anywhere in particular, and have been in your so-called first society all my life and detest it. We have a little income, and could live in the country with one servant comfortably, as so many people do; but that would not suit mamma, and so we go from pillar to post and live on other people, until I am ashamed. I am successful at baccarat. They say the old gent who tempted Eve helps new beginners at cards, and I believe he helps me, I win so often. I know it isn’t good form, but what can I do? If I don’t play baccarat there’s nothing left for me but to marry, and that I never shall.”