by Susan Barrie
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” Toni said, making for the door.
“And when you come back I want to know your surname, and what part of England you come from,” he called after her. “I’m English myself, so we ought to get together...”
Toni fled along the corridor as if she were being pursued, and at a junction with another corridor she all but collided with Pierre, one of the white-coated waiters she had first seen coping with a sudden rush of custom the day before. He looked at her in a certain amount of amazement when she grabbed at his sleeve, and as he was bearing a tray supporting a syphon and a large whisky only narrowly averted a nasty accident in the corridor.
“Oh, Pierre,” Toni appealed to him, breathlessly, “will you do something for me?”
As Pierre had thought her unusually dumb the night before, and had had no opportunity yet to revise his opinion, he merely stared.
“Will you take some coffee to number twenty-six? The room at the end of the corridor.” She glanced over her shoulder as if it held for her an almost certain menace. “There’s a man in there who...”
Pierre understood at once, and grinned appreciatively. He also thought Toni, with her face full of colour and her dark blue eyes lifted slightly imploringly to his, was unusually attractive; and he agreed without any further appeals.
“Okay,” he said, making use of the only expression in the English language with which he was familiar. “If it’s like that I will. But you’d better not let Mademoiselle Raveaux know.”
“Why? Wouldn’t she approve?”
“In this business the customer is always right,” he told her, patting her shoulder. “Now, disappear, before number twenty-six starts ringing again!”
For the rest of that day Toni saw, and heard, nothing of the occupants of room twenty-six, and she was so grateful to Pierre that she agreed to teach him English when they were both off duty. He sat next to her in the staff dining-room at lunch, and he decided, quite definitely, that she was attractive—a nice little thing who was rather like a fish out of water, but with a soft, feminine appeal about her that he liked. He told her if she was in any difficulties to come to him.
With the feeling that she had now one friend at court, Toni returned to her bed-making and her floor-polishing. The floor-polishing was an extra job that was handed out to her when the girl who normally did the bathrooms and corridor on that floor fell down the short flight of stairs from the linen room, and sustained a fractured ankle. She was whisked off to hospital in Innsbruck, and the assistant housekeeper made it clear that until she was replaced everyone would have to undertake extra duties.
Toni was taken off answering bells, and divided her time between sorting dirty linen, cleaning wash-basins and baths, keeping the corridor immaculate, and being at the beck and call of anyone who wanted her at the moment. For instance, just as she was about to go off duty the linen-keeper wanted her to hem-stitch some sheets, and as she was quite unfamiliar with the machine that performed this useful function it took her some little while to get used to its eccentricities; and then when she thought she was finally finished, some new arrivals required a couple of children’s cots erected in their room, and this meant a large-scale rearrangement of furniture, and Toni was called in to provide the extra pair of hands.
That night she was so tired that she could hardly keep awake and consume her supper, and the longing she had for a walk in the open air had to be suppressed before the urgent desire to go to bed. She fell asleep the instant her head touched the pillow, and the sound of her alarm bell shrilling at six o’clock was more like an early Spanish torture.
Nevertheless, she dragged herself out of bed, found that she had no time for more than a quick wash in her hand-basin—which, incidentally, had to be filled with a ewer from the nearest bedroom—and then began the same routine as the day before. The only exception being that she was no longer called upon to penetrate the privacy of guests’ bedrooms, and witness them shaving in their pyjamas; and for this exception she was so grateful that she would willingly have scrubbed floors all day rather than have the unpleasant duty thrust on her again.
That second day was even more hectic than the first, and when it ended she wondered whether this sort of thing went on interminably, and whether the hard-pressed staff ever complained. The waiting staff were worked, perhaps, harder than anyone else, for they had little opportunity to sit down, even if it was only for a few, minutes, and they were constantly in the public eye, and had to appear trim and alert and absolutely fresh, even if the heat was intolerable and their feet were killing them.
This last fortnight in September the weather was fiercely warm, and not even at night was there very much air. In Toni’s attic room the atmosphere was stifling, and although her window was open to its fullest extent, no cooling breeze ever reached her. She had a magnificent view of the stars at night, and when the moon rose the surrounding peaks were wonderful. But when that happened, and the hotel orchestra got into its stride and couples started dancing far below her, she was usually completely insensible on her bed, and nothing could possibly have aroused her save her alarm clock at six o’clock in the morning.
The one person who was always completely unruffled, cool and fantastically beautiful was Marianne Raveaux. And whenever Toni caught sight of her she appeared to be smiling slightly.
She was, officially, the manageress, but Toni sensed that she had far more power than an ordinary employee. Her almost affectionate greeting to Antoine had proved that she knew him well, and the way his eyes had lighted up at sight of her had proved another thing to Toni ... that he was a great admirer of hers. Possibly a very great admirer. Toni saw nothing of him in the first week of her servitude at the Hotel Rosenhorn. But she was frequently running into Mademoiselle Raveaux in the corridors. The elegant Frenchwoman passed her with a bare nod of recognition, and never once stopped to ask her how she was getting on, or offer a word of encouragement.
This didn’t surprise Toni particularly, for she felt fairly certain that Mademoiselle Raveaux would not have engaged her but for the insistence of Kurt Antoine.
At the end of her first week of duty Toni found that she was granted an evening off. This was at the close of a day that had been marked by one of the younger chambermaids, a girl called Anneliese, bursting into tears when she dropped a breakfast tray right outside the door of a private suite, and was ordered to pick up every fragment of smashed crockery while the tears poured down her cheeks. She was a girl from a remote village, and her clumsiness was apparently incurable, and some of the housekeeper’s acute annoyance was no doubt perfectly justified; but Toni thought it was too much to expect her, having removed the debris and cut her hand on a jagged piece of china, to clean and vacuum the carpet, and then fetch another breakfast-tray for the occupant of the suite.
She would willingly have taken over the duty herself, and given Anneliese a chance to clean up and recover her poise, but the housekeeper would not allow that.
Then, in the middle of the morning, the linen-keeper indulged in a fit of frenzy because, instead of clean sheets and pillow-cases being returned to her, she had received baskets of dirty linen ... an extraordinary happening which no one seemed able to account for.
The atmosphere of strain and frustration continued throughout the day, and Toni was surprised when she was allowed to consider herself free at six o’clock. She hurried up to her room and changed into one of her own cotton dresses, and decided to miss supper—for the guests it was, naturally, dinner—and spend the evening out of doors.
In seven days she had lost a lot of her outdoor tan, and even her cheeks looked thinner. Her hands were calloused and definitely raw-looking, but it was too hot to conceal them inside gloves. When she went downstairs she thrust them into the pockets of her gingham skirt, and was glad there was a side entrance for the staff, which meant she need not encounter anyone of more importance them one of her own fellow workers.
She decided to walk in the pine wood that bou
nded one corner of the hotel grounds. It would be deliciously cool there, and she could lie stretched out on the pine needles and gaze straight up at the sky.
She was so excited by being out of doors that she felt like someone who had inherited the earth. It no longer mattered to her that she had descended to the level of scrubbing and polishing her way through life, and it didn’t even matter that she had not so far been given any intimation of the size of the salary she would receive as a reward for performing so many menial tasks.
All that mattered was that she was away from the hotel, and there was no one at all to disturb her. At least, not for the first half-hour ... Then a man coughed near her, spoke in an amused voice, and she sat up as if she were a rabbit that had been shot.
“Why, it’s Toinette! It really is Toinette! And she’s pretending to be a dryad in the woodland!”
Toni scrambled frantically to her feet. The occupant of room twenty-six was standing so near to her that she could see how his blue eyes smiled, and the slight twist of his lips as they parted over his even teeth. He was already formally attired for the evening, and his dinner-jacket was beautifully cut, and his linen immaculate. He stood leaning against a tree-trunk, and at Toni’s unguarded movement he put out a hand to prevent her from running away.
“No, don’t try the same trick you tried before, Toinette! When you promised to bring my coffee, and then sent a waiter with it instead!” At the uneasy look in Toni’s face and her obvious urgent desire to escape, he spoke more soothingly. “Now, don’t get any wrong ideas! Perhaps I was a little impulsive the other day when I grabbed you as I did, but it never occurred to me you would panic and refuse to come near me again. By the way,” a shrewd look creeping into his eyes, “is that waiter Pierre your boy friend?”
“No, of course not,” she answered, amazed that he should ask.
“Well, he gave me a distinctly dirty look when he brought my coffee, and I’ve an idea that, but for his subservient position, he’d have punched my head for me there and then. You must have quite a shattering effect on the male population round here.”
“Please don’t be absurd,” she said. “I have no effect whatsoever.” She attempted to move past him. “Please, Mr.—?”
“The name is Philip Gresham,” he supplied. “And you are Toinette—?”
“Darcy,” she supplied.
He looked intrigued.
“I once knew a General Darcy ... or rather, my father knew him well. But I don’t suppose a chambermaid in an Austrian hotel would have any connection with him, would she?”
Toni looked slightly startled.
“Would she?” he asked softly, moving a little nearer to her. “Tell me, Toinette, what are you doing here? And don’t you think it’s an impossible position for a young woman like yourself? That fellow Antoine, who owns the place, engaged you, I suppose ... But I’m amazed that he did so! Or was it left to the fair Marianne to add you to the staff register? She’s the type of woman who would enjoy seeing a girl like you performing menial duties.”
Toni looked away from him rather desperately, wondering what she could say to induce him to let her escape; but as she made no reply about how, and by what means, she came to be employed at the hotel, he looked even more intrigued, and very successfully blocked her outlet from the wood.
“Hm,” he murmured, “there’s a mystery here, and I’d like to be in on the ground floor. Won’t you take me into your confidence, Toinette, and then perhaps I can give you some advice?” Before she could anticipate his move, he had picked up one of her hands and examined it. “I don’t like to see a girl like you with hands like these! What do they keep you at for ten hours out of twelve?” He frowned. “Scrubbing floors, or holystoning the kitchen premises?”
She snatched away her hand, and hid it behind her back.
“There’s no disgrace in scrubbing floors,” she said with noticeable stiffness.
“I quite agree,” he answered, “if you’re the type to scrub floors.” He glanced at his watch. “Come and have a drink with me on the terrace. You look as if you could do with one, and I’ve got to hear more about you. Please, Toinette,” he said, with sudden softness.
But she shook her head firmly.
“If I were seen having a drink with you on the terrace I’d probably get the sack.”
“Why? Aren’t the staff allowed to fraternise? But that’s absurd!” He frowned again. “Anyone can see you’re not just ordinary staff!”
“But at the moment I am just ordinary staff,” she reminded him. And she thought with acute regret: He’s spoiling my evening! My first free evening. I wanted to go for a walk, and it will be dark in another few minutes!
He laid a hand coaxingly on her arm.
“Come and sit in a sheltered corner of the garden, then, if you won’t risk the terrace.”
“No.” She realised that she could pass him if she moved swiftly, and suddenly she moved very swiftly indeed. “Goodnight, Mr. Gresham,” she called, as she flew past him, and before he could recover from his surprise she was at the far end of the wood, and her voice came echoing back to him, “I really must go!” Unfortunately for her, on emerging from the wood she was not as cautious as she might have been, and she ran full tilt into her employer, standing at the edge of an emerald sweep of lawn, and admiring a bed of scarlet geraniums.
He put out a hand to steady her, and at the same time he looked his surprise.
“Are you taking your daily exercise, Miss Darcy?” he enquired politely.
She flushed brilliantly. She was so taken aback that she couldn’t even apologise, and he surveyed her with a somewhat ironic gleam in his eye.
“You look thinner, Toinette. Is that due to this obvious passion of yours for exercise, or have you been toiling very hard in my service?”
She swallowed. Somewhere along the woodland path a man’s voice was calling her.
“Toinette! Come back, Toinette!...”
Antoine’s eyebrow’s arched.
“I’ve an idea that you’re being pursued! Have you been keeping an assignation? And is the gentleman to be disappointed?”
Toni blurted out the truth.
“It’s one of the guests! I don’t know anything about him, but he asked me to have a drink with him on the terrace. I knew you wouldn’t approve, and I—”
“Ran away?”
She couldn’t tell by his face whether he was pleased or displeased, but she felt him grasp her arm and lead her forward along the path.
“You are perfectly right ... I wouldn’t have approved. My staff never mix with the guests, and if they do they receive notice immediately. In your case I might not have given you notice, but I would have warned you never to do it again.” Glancing sideways at him, she thought his lips were a little thin, and he was also frowning. Apart from that he was as beautifully turned out as Philip Gresham had been, and it made her heart ache in a queer sort of way for one single moment while she looked at him. “Tell me, Toinette, what have you been doing in the past week?”
“Working,” she answered, rather feebly.
He smiled grimly.
“If you didn’t work you wouldn’t be here, my dear. I allow no drones in my hive of industry. But what I want to know precisely is ... what kind of work have you been doing? I know it was agreed that you should do bedroom work for a time, but I didn’t think that was a particularly good idea. Do you find making beds exhausting?”
“I haven’t made any for the last five days,” she admitted. “One of the girls had an accident, and I took over her duties.”
“And what are those duties?”
She flushed a little. It seemed so poor-spirited to admit that she was willing to be more or less pushed around.
“I’m a kind of odd-job girl in the upper corridors. look after the floors, polish them, and so on, and keep so many bathrooms clean. Then, when I haven’t anything better to do, I sort dirty linen, and fill the baskets for the laundry. Sometimes I do darning—sheets, you know
—and check stores. I’m a kind of assistant to the linen-keeper, amongst other things...”
His frown was extremely noticeable.
“It seems to me that the ‘other things’ should be quite enough to fill your day! How much free time do you have?”
“This is my first free evening. I stopped work at six o’clock.”
“And normally you work from...?”
“Half-past six until half-past eight. Sometimes a little later, if we’re rushed ... But of course I get time off for meals—and one hour in the afternoon to do my own room. It’s really meant for a rest period.”
“And when are you to be permitted a whole day off?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “No one has mentioned that.”
“But this is ridiculous,” he exclaimed, “and quite exceptional! Hours of working are clearly laid down, and rest periods, and so on. When do you get time for exercise, anyway?”
She smiled a little grimly—a thing she had never been able to manage before.
“Oh, I get enough of that in the upstairs corridors!”
“No wonder you look pale!” he exclaimed shortly. Suddenly, like Philip Gresham, he pounced, and one of her hands was carried up to the light and examined. His face grew grimmer than hers as he allowed it to fall back to her side again. “Hasn’t Marianne told you that there will be a vacancy in the office before very long?”
She shook her head.
“I’ve had no conversation with Mademoiselle Raveaux since the first day I came here.”
He made no comment, but she knew he was not pleased.
“Well, don’t try and be too conscientious, will you?” with a certain dryness. “Exercise a little common sense, as well as enthusiasm for doing your duty!”
Which she considered was somewhat perverse, considering his attitude towards people who failed to do their duty.
The next day the housekeeper sought her out, and informed her that she had an entire free day due to her, and that she could take it the following day, if she wished. She also told Toni that if she made application at the office, she would receive an advance of salary.