Margaret Massarene was very lonely indeed, as she sat under the big tree watching the gay, many-colored, animated crowd amongst which there was not a creature with whom she had even a bowing acquaintance. Her lord and master, of whom she stood in much awe, was away on business in Frankfort; her daughter, her only living child, was in India; she was here because it was the proper place for an aspirant to society to be in at that season; but of all this multitude of royal people, titled people, pretty people, idle people, who thronged the alleys and crowded the hotels, she did not know a single creature. She envied her own maid who had many acquaintances with other maids and couriers and smart German sergeants and corporals of cavalry.
On the previous day she had made also a fatal mistake. As she had crossed the hall of her own hotel, she had seen a fair small woman, insignificantly dressed, in a deer-stalker’s hat and a gray ulster, who was arguing with the cashier about an item in her bill which she refused to pay: so many kreutzer for ice; ice was always given gratis, she averred; and she occupied the whole window of the cashier’s bureau as she spoke, having laid down an umbrella, a packet of newspapers, and a mackintosh on the shelf. Indignant at being made to wait by such a shabby little person, Mrs. Massarene pushed her aside. “Folks as has to count pence shouldn’t come to grand hotels,” she muttered, with more reason than politeness, elbowing away the shabby fair woman.
The shabby fair woman turned round and stared, then laughed: the cashier and the clerk were confounded, and lost their presence of mind. To the shabby fair woman a man in plain clothes, obviously her servant, approached, and bowing low said, “If you please, madam, his Imperial Majesty is at the door.” And the lady who quarreled with a clerk for half a kreutzer went out of the hall, and mounted besides a gentleman who was driving himself; one of those gentlemen to whom all the world doff their hats, yet who, by a singular contradiction, are always guarded by policemen.
The Massarene courier, who was always hovering near his mistress in the vain effort to preserve her from wrongdoing, took her aside.
“It’s Mrs. Cecil Courcy, madam,” he murmured. “There’s nobody so chic as Mrs. Cecil Courcy. She’s hand and glove with all them royalties. Pinching and screwing—oh yes, that she do—but then you see, madam, she can do it.”
“You won’t tell your master, Gregson?” said Mrs. Massarene in an agony of penitence.
Gregson winced at the word “master,” but he answered sincerely, “No, madam; I won’t tell Mr. Massarene. But if you think that because they’re high they’re large, you’re very much mistaken. Lord, ma’am, they’ll pocket the marrons glacés at the table d’hôte and take the matches away from their bedrooms, but then, you see, ma’am, them as are swagger can do them things. Mrs. Cecil Courcy might steal the spoons if she’d a mind to do it!”
Mrs. Massarene gasped. A great name covering a multitude of small thefts appalled her simple mind.
“You can’t mean it, Gregson?” she said with breathless amaze.
“Indeed, madam, I do,” said the courier, “and that’s why, madam, I won’t ever go into service with gentlefolks. They’ve got such a lot to keep up, and so precious little to do it with, that they’re obliged to pinch and to screw and get three sixpences out of a shilling, as I tell you, madam.”