III
GLADYS-MARIE—MERELY A MAID
“So, ’s I was tellin’ you this mornin’, Marmaduke,” Gladys-Marie flipped her dish-towel at the yellow kitchen cat, “I ain’t so thrilled over the i-dea. As Adalbert said to Evelyn Hortense, in The Madness of a Handsome Hero, when the grewsomeness o’ this black scheme was sprung upon me, I—well, Marmaduke, though ’twas me own missus, Lady Elinore, put it up to me, I says, ‘Oh, pshaw!’ I did, fer a fact. Course I knew all along Lady Elinore and Mr. Michael was goin’ away, ’n’ leave me here to head off th’ burglars, but w’en she—bless her heart!—come in here yesterday mornin’ ’n’ broke it to me that that Mrs. Verplanck was goin’ to be here while they was away——! Marmaduke, me boy, y’ could ’a’ had me fer this dish-rag, I was that limp ’n’ speechless. ‘Mrs. Verplanck ’n’ her husband need a change,’ says Lady Elinore, in that kind o’ pitiful sweet way o’ hers. ’Y’ see, they live in a hotel, ’n’ they don’t know nothin’ about a home, or the country,’ she says. ‘I’m dependin’ on you, Gladys-Marie, to mak’ ’em see how nice it is. Yes,’ she says, drawin’ on her sixteen-button gloves thoughtful—like the heroine when she’s plannin’ the day-nooment—‘you c’n teach Ellen ’n’ Knollys a lot,’ she says.
“Oh, I know it’s funny, Marmaduke! Y’ needn’t squint yer old wall-eye at me! I know just ’s well ’s you that fer me, Lady Elinore’s gen’ral housemaid, to teach Mrs. Knollys Verplanck ’n’ husband anything is such a Hippodrome-size joke, y’ couldn’t get anybody t’ laugh at it. ’N’ my eye! W’en the station-master drove ’em over last night, I says t’ meself, it’s you that has the nerve, I says, t’ imagine Lady Elinore was drivin’ at anything but a joke, herself. Anyway,” Gladys-Marie patted her pompadour reassuringly, “she don’t even wear a transformation, ’n’ she’d be real plain, Mrs. Verplanck, if ’twasn’t fer her eyes. My, but she has the lamps, Marmaduke—all big ’n’ black ’n’ soft—’n’ the clothes! Gee! makes a Bon Ton colored plate look like a suffragette! Now git out o’ my way, yer Grace, ’n’ pertly too—I gotta get a hike on an’ lift in the dinner. Livin’ ’n hotels don’t give ye no correspondence course in th’ gentle art o’ waitin’.” And Gladys-Marie shoved Marmaduke affectionately under the table as she pinned on her scrap of a cap and took up her tray.
“Really quite a quaint place, don’t you think, Knollys?” Mrs. Verplanck was saying, as Gladys-Marie came in with the soup. She sat languidly back in her chair, so that the gracious candle-light touched her shimmery gown to even more wonderful glory than a Bon Ton colored plate. “It was most awfully sweet of Anne and Michael to turn it over to us for this week, though I dare say they grow bored enough with the quiet. I can’t think why they don’t come in to town for at least the winter.”
“Lady Elinore says th’ country in winter’s the most gorgeous place in the world,” plumped Gladys-Marie, twirling her tray resentfully. “’nN’ last winter we had taffy-pulls ’n’ sleigh-rides, ’n’ corn-roasts, ’n’ toboggans, ’n’ Miss Dorry ’n’ Mister Timothy says people was just fightin’ over bids t’ come out here. I used t’ think th’ city was th’ lobby o’ heaven meself, but my word! ’tain’t nothin’ to the country—Lady Elinore’s country!” She looked at Mrs. Verplanck earnestly.
Mrs. Verplanck looked at her—as though Gladys-Marie had never been heard to say a word.
“Er—rather an interesting person, my dear.” Knollys Verplanck put up his eye-glasses after the little maid’s retreating figure. “A bit—er—chatty, certainly, but—er——”
“Anne has spoiled her scandalously,” returned Mrs. Verplanck. “Fancy her putting in like that, in the midst of serving! No waiter at the hotel would dare think of such a thing. And then calling Anne ‘Lady Elinore,’ as though she were a personage—it’s absurd. Yet Anne seems entirely satisfied with her.”
“Um-m!” Mr. Verplanck looked about the charming, well-ordered dining-room. “She does seem a good servant, doesn’t she? This soup is excellent.” And, behind the big bowl of daffodils, he tipped his plate for the last spoonful—a thing he would never have dared to do in the hotel, before a waiter.
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Verplanck admitted, indifferently, “I suppose she can cook and sweep and things, this—er—Marie (I can’t really be expected to call her whole name), but she gives no tone, no prestige to the place, does she? And that’s so important nowadays, when one’s friends—really, Knollys, I think we should move to the St. Midas this spring. Where we are now, it hasn’t the name it used to have, you know.”