The Motor Maid | Page 2

was sure couldn't be heard
beyond my own berth. (And though I try always even to think in
English, I find sometimes that the words group themselves in my head
in the old patterns--according to French idioms.) "Dear Past, how thou
wert kind and sweet! How it is brutalizing to turn my back upon thee
and thy charms forever!"
"Oh, my goodness, I shall certainly die!" squeaked a voice in the berth
underneath; and then there was a sound of wallowing.
She (my stable-companion, shall I call her?) had been giving vent to all
sorts of strange noises at intervals, for a long time, so that it would have

been hopeless to try and drown my sorrows in sleep.
Away went the Gentle Past with a bump, as if it had knocked against a
snag in the current of my thoughts.
Paris or Pamela instead, then! or both together, since they seem
inseparable, even when Pamela is at her most American, and tells me to
"talk United States."
It was all natural to think of Pamela, because it was she who gave me
the ticket for the train de luxe, and my berth in the _wagon-lit_. If it
hadn't been for Pamela I should at this moment have been crawling
slowly, cheaply, down Riviera-ward in a second-class train, sitting bolt
upright in a second-class carriage with smudges on my nose, while
perhaps some second-class child shed jammy crumbs on my frock, and
its second-class baby sister howled.
"Oh, why did I leave my peaceful home?" wailed the lady in the lower
berth.
Heaven alone (unless it were the dog) knew why she had, and knew
how heartily I wished she hadn't. A good thing Cerberus was on guard,
or I might have dropped a pillow accidentally on her head!
Just then I wasn't thanking Pamela for her generosity. The second-class
baby's mamma would have given it a bottle to keep it still; but there
was nothing I could give the fat old lady; and she had already resorted
to the bottle (something in the way of patent medicine) without any
good result. Yet, was there nothing I could give her?
"Oh, I'm dying, I know I'm dying, and nobody cares! I shall choke to
death!" she gurgled.
It was too much. I could stand it and the terrible atmosphere no longer.
I suppose, if I had been an early Christian martyr, waiting for my turn
to be devoured might have so got on my nerves eventually that I would
have thrown myself into the arena out of sheer spite at the lions, and
then tried my best to disagree with them.

Anyway, Bull Dog or no Bull Dog, having made a light, I slid down
from my berth--no thanks to the step-ladder--dangled a few wild
seconds in the air, and then offering--yes, offering my stockinged feet
to the Minotaur, I poked my head into the lower berth.
"What are you going to do?" gasped its occupant, la grosse femme
whose fault it would be if my hair did change from the gold of a louis
to the silver of a mere franc.
"You say you're stifling," I reminded her, politely but firmly, and my
tone was like the lull before a storm.
"Yes, but----" We were staring into each other's eyes, and--could I
believe my sense of touch, or was it mercifully blunted? It seemed that
the monster on the floor was gently licking my toes with a tongue like a
huge slice of pink ham, instead of chewing them to the bone. But there
are creatures which do that to their victims, I've heard, by way of
making it easier to swallow them, later.
"You also said no one cared," I went on, courageously. "I care--for
myself as well as for you. As for what I'm going to do--I'm going to do
several things. First, open the window, and then--_then I'm going to
undress you_."
"You must be mad!" gasped the lady, who was English. Oh, but more
English than any one else I ever saw in my life.
"Not yet," said I, as I darted at the thick blind she had drawn down over
the window, and let it fly up with a snap. I then opened the window
itself, a few inches, and in floated a perfumed breath of the soft April
air for which our bereaved lungs had been longing. The breeze fluttered
round my head like a benediction until I felt that the ebbing tide of gold
had turned, and was flowing into my back hair again.
"No wonder you're dying, madam," I exclaimed, switching the
heat-lever to "Froid." "So was I, but being merely an Upper Berth, with
no rights, I was suffering in silence. I watched you turn the heat full on,
and shut the