Rogues & Company/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
Susan, scullery-maid-in-chief to the Bunmouth Spa Hotel, stood by the scullery window and peeled multitudinous potatoes. At intervals a white-capped head appeared round the door and a masculine voice, softened by the dulcet influence of the French language, enquired patiently if Mademoiselle Suzanne was not yet finished with "ces maudites pommes de terre." Twice Mademoiselle Suzanne, with her eye on the window which looked out on to the stable-yard, replied by a sniff, the third time she waxed indignant.
"If you mean the taters, why don't you call them by their proper name?" she demanded. "Taters is taters, and they won't be done for another half hour. So now you know!"
Thereupon she began to sing in the peculiarly high-pitched tuneless way for which scullery-maids are noted, and Monsieur Bonnet shook his head ruefully.
"Thou art not gentille, Mademoiselle Suzanne," he said. "Thou 'ast not been gentille for many days past."
"What's 'gentille'?" she enquired freezingly. "And why will you say 'thee'? 'Tain't English?"
Monsieur waved his arms with a movement of despair.
"English is a language without tenderness," he began. "I try to soften her—I try to fill her with ze tendresse of ze French—but it avails me not. She remains ze language of ze barbares—"
"Barbers, indeed!" Susan interrupted with energy. "I don't see wot you need to be so haughty about. You're only a cook yourself."
"Hélas, Suzanne, you 'ave not understood—"
"Go along with you!" Susan retorted crisply.
Monsieur Bonnet found no answer to this. He stood with folded arms and knitted brows and eyed her with the gloomy despair of a defeated Napoleon. No one, not even the hotel manager, dared to speak to him, Monsieur Bonnet, world-famous gastronomer, as did this little fair-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked bundle of impertinence. Why did he bear it? Why did he not send her to the right-about as he had done dozens of other clumsy but willing spirits? Monsieur Bonnet shook his head over himself. Therein lay the curse of the artistic temperament; against tears and entreaties he had a heart of adamant, but fair hair, rosy cheeks and blue eyes could blind him to anything and everything and melt him to a softness unequalled by his own butter. So he sighed and scratched his little black Imperial and sighed again.
"Ever since that fellow 'as been 'ere thou art not more the same to me," he said pathetically. "It is 'Monsieur Bonnet this' and 'Monsieur Bonnet that' and not once 'ast thou called me 'François' as in the old days. Suzanne—"
"My name's 'Susan'," interrupted his tormentor with energy. "I'm English, I am, and I don't hold with these nasty foreign words."
"Ah!" Monsieur Bonnet brought his clenched fist down on the table with a gust of violence which sent a couple of potatoes rolling under the sink. "Ah, I 'ave understood! It is zat Georges, zat sneak, zat poltroon, zat rogue of a gentleman's gentleman! Shall I tell him—I believe not in ze Count de Beaulieu. 'E call 'imself a Frenchman and when Jean speak to 'im 'e answer as no Frenchman ever speaked. And this George, this calf who makes 'is eyes at thee—"
"Please remember that you are speaking of a friend of mine," Susan broke in with dignity.
"Friend! I say 'e is a rogue—a—"
"Now then, who's calling me names?" came through the window. Both combatants started—Monsieur Bonnet with fury, Susan with a slightly exaggerated delight. George, very spruce, with oiled hair and neatly waxed moustache, was leaning against the window-sill, an expression of patronising benevolence on his smooth face.
"You get along, Cooky," he added with a wave of the hand. "Your omelettes are burning. I can smell 'em from here."
"Bah!" said Monsieur Bonnet scornfully. Nevertheless the professional instinct was roused. He sniffed the air suspiciously, he hesitated, glaring furiously from Susan to the new-comer and then, with a snort of fury, stamped back into the kitchen. Susan's silver giggle pursued him with malicious triumph and George joined in, in a peculiar noiseless way which Susan felt was highly superior.
"You're a nice one!" she gurgled with mock reproof. "That will make him wild for a week."
"Serves him right!" George asserted. "Hasn't got the manners of a cheesemonger. 'Pon my word, I can't think how you can stand him, Susan."
"Oh, I've known worse," said Susan with a half regretful glance at the kitchen.
"I mean," insinuated George, "you're a long way too good for this sort of job. From the first moment I saw you I felt you was different from the rest. There was something about you that told me that you was meant for a higher destiny."
"Now you're talking," said Susan. "You're only a sort of waiter yourself. Monsieur Bonnet is just as good as your boss any day."
"If you mean the Count de Beaulieu, you're off the track," George observed mysteriously. "To the world we may seem as master and man but trust me, there is more between us than meets the eye."
"I saw you brushing his trousers," retorted Susan doubtfully.
"Circumstances, my dear, circumstances over which the strongest have no control."
Susan sniffed.
"Monsieur Bonnet doesn't believe he is a Count," she said. "He says he can't even speak French."
George lifted a supercilious eyebrow.
"You don't really suppose the Count de Beaulieu talks the same French as a common cook, do you?" he asked.
Susan ruminated.
"I s'pose not," she admitted doubtfully.
"Of course not. Monsieur Bonnet doesn't know anything about Counts."
"What do you know about 'em anyhow?" in a rather ruffled tone. "You aren't such a toff yourself and Monsieur Bonnet doesn't believe you're even honest."
"Me—honest? I should think—" George stopped short, coughed, and waved a scented handkerchief as though to purify a tainted atmosphere. Then a slow smile such as heralds the birth of a great idea dawned over his face. "Susan, can you keep a secret?"
"You try!" she encouraged non-committally.
"Look here, if you found a man sitting on a doorstep in a dirty old suit and not so much as a pocket handkerchief to call his own, wouldn't you be surprised if you heard he was a Count?"
"Oh, only a little!" with sarcasm and an impatient jab at a harmless potato.
"Well, that shows what you know about Counts! That's what happened to my friend de Beaulieu. He didn't know who he was himself until his girl who had run away to marry him claimed him. Seems a queer story, doesn't it?"
At this the luckless potato received such a mutilating slash that Susan thought it better to let it roll discreetly after its companions under the sink. Her whole face shaped itself into an "Oh" of awed interest.
"I calls it romantic," she declared solemnly.
"Well, I know queerer things than that," George asserted.
From that moment five brown-coated potatoes lay sorrowful and neglected at the bottom of the pan whilst Susan soared through realms where dukes and lords, not to mention counts, are supposed to flourish in delightful superabundance. She planted her elbows on the window-sill and gazed up into her companion's face.
"You go on!" she pleaded. "I won't tell!"
Thereupon George folded his arms, and his expression grew sombrely mysterious.
"Aristocrats have to play strange parts in the world's history," he began. "There was once a young man—Count de Beautemps he was called—who had to take the position of a servant. He was of the noblest French blood and yet he had to brush his master's trousers just as you have seen me do."
"Why?" queried Susan, not unnaturally.
"Political reasons," was the dark answer. "In France they cut off heads like you peel a potato."
"Wot happened to 'im?" Susan persisted.
"He fell in love," said George solemnly.
Susan indicated by a jerk of the head that she had guessed that much.
"Who with?" she demanded.
"Ah, that's where the romance comes in, as you might say." George's voice deepened. His eyes filled with a tender significance. "She was beneath him, Susan, but she had a heart of gold. She knew him for what he was when the whole world despised him. She helped him against his enemies and he loved her for it, Susan. As Shakespeare says, 'What is a coronet to a noble heart'?" His hand glided towards hers and held it in a tender pressure. "Susan, can't you guess—?"
"Lawks—'tain't true—"
"I swear it by my honour as a gentleman. Take this as a proof of my devotion! One day I will reclaim it and you."
Susan gazed open-mouthed at the crested signet ring which he had thrust into her hand. More than the gift his change of manner from the airy ease of the cockney valet to the grandiloquent gesture of romance filled her with a delicious confidence. George passed his hand over his eyes. "The last of a once princely fortune," he murmured with emotion.
"Oh, sir—!" Susan gasped.
"I am not 'sir' to you!" he interrupted softly.
At that moment Monsieur Bonnet, having readjusted the matter of the omelettes and having violently scolded his subordinates, made his appearance to discover why the potatoes had not made theirs. Susan's attitude with her head against George's shoulder offered sufficient explanation. Monsieur Bonnet shot forward ejaculating "ha" in a crescendo of fury, and thrust the chief offender from his perch on the window-sill.
"Thus my potatoes are they treated!" he shrieked. "Thus are the precious hours wasted! Away with you—you—you—" He found no English epithet to fit the situation, and George gathered himself up slowly from the cobbles.
"You do not know to whom you speak," he said with dignity.
"Scélérat—rogue—vagabond!" Monsieur Bonnet retorted.
"You shall apologise for this," George prophesied, dusting the knees of his trousers.
"Bah!"
"I say you shall apologise," George persisted, and then with a solemn gesture directed at Susan—"Remember!"
Susan kissed her hand by way of response, and the next minute the contents of the potato tub swept down upon the intruder. Susan screamed, then as George, shaking himself free of the deluge, retired out of range, burst into a stream of tears.
"You don't know what you've done!" she sobbed. "He's a gentleman—a real count in disguise."
"Bah!" Monsieur Bonnet snapped his fingers after the retreating George. "'E is a liar in no disguise at all. Foolish misguided woman!"
"I'm not!" protested Susan, goaded to self-defence.
Monsieur Bonnet, still hot with victory, gazed upon her with righteous indignation. But then the blue eyes, tear-filled, came into play, and the usual melting process in Monsieur Bonnet's heart began.
"Suzanne!" His voice grew soft and persuasive, "Suzanne—weep not. I am a much tried man—if I am a little angry who shall wonder? Voyons, for the hundredth time—let there be peace between us—wilt thou marry me, ma petite?"
But Susan, still on aristocratic heights, merely emitted a sniff of inexpressible hauteur.
"Do you think," she said eyeing him from head to foot, "do you really think I'd marry a cook!"
And with this Parthian shot she flounced out into the kitchen.