My Friend the Chauffeur Part 8

On one step the "Innovation" cabin-box reared itself on end like a dwarfish obelisk; a fat hold-all adorned each mud-guard, where it lay like an underdone suet pudding; the two huge dressing-bags had been pushed under the corner seats of the tonneau, which fortunately was of generous dimensions, while the third and smallest one (no doubt Miss Destrey's) was so placed that it could be used as a footstool, or pushed to the front out of the way. Umbrellas and parasols stood upright in a hanging-basket especially designed for them; books and maps had disappeared into a box, which was also a shelf on the back of the driver's seat, and the tea-basket had been lashed on top of this.

The Prince's voice responded to Terry's question with ribald mirth before it could be answered by the ladies.

"Ha, ha, ha!" cried he, shouting with laughter at the appearance of the car; and even my lips twitched, though I would have vowed it was St.

Vitus's dance if anyone had accused me of a smile. "Ha, ha, the automobile looks like nothing so much as a market-woman going home with the family provisions for a month. But will she ever _get_ home?" Here he became spasmodic, and as he had made a present of his picturesque smile to all the lookers-on as well as to those whom it most concerned, a grin rippled over the faces of the various groups as a breeze ruffles the surface of a pond.

If I could have done His Highness Prince Dalmar-Kalm a mischief at this moment, without imperilling my whole future, I would have stuck at nothing; but there is capital punishment in France, and, besides, there were no weapons handy except the ladies' hatpins. Still, it was useless denying it, the car looked, if not like a market-woman, at least like a disreputable old tramp of the motor world, with its wreaths of luggage looped on anyhow, as if it were a string of giant sausages; and I hated the Prince not only for his impertinent pleasure in our plight, but for the proud magnificence of his car, which gained new l.u.s.tre in the disgrace of ours.

"You have more, what do you call it in English--cheek, is it not?--than most of your countrymen, to ask the ladies whether they can be satisfied with _that_," he went on, between his mirthful explosions. "_Chere_ Countess, do not let your kind heart run away with you. Let me tell Sir Ralph Moray that it is impossible for you to tour with him under such conditions, which are surely not what you had a right to expect. If you will go with me, _that_"--pointing a derisive finger at the Panhard--"can follow with the luggage."

Mrs. Kidder shook her auburn head, though her dimples were obscured, and a pinkness of complexion for which she had not paid betrayed the fact that her _amour propre_ was writhing under this ordeal. Poor little woman, I really pitied her, for even with my slight knowledge of her character, I guessed that she had dreamed of the sensation the departure _en automobile_ of a party so distinguished would create at the hotel.

She had confidingly judged the charms of the advertised car from those of the advertisers, and this was her reward. Could we blame her if, in the bitterness of mortification, she yielded to the allurement of that glittering car which was our detractor's best argument? But she was loyal on the rack.

"No," she said, "I never backed out of anything yet, and I'm not going to now. Besides, we don't want to, do we, girls? Sir Ralph's automobile is just as nice as it can be, and it's our fault, not his, or Mr.

Barrymore's, if we've got a little more luggage than we were told we ought to take. I guess we'll get along all right as soon as we're used to it, and we shall have _the_ time of our lives."

"Mamma, you're a brick, and I'm glad Papa married you," was Beechy's paean of praise.

"And I think the way our things are arranged looks really _graceful_,"

said Miss Destrey. "Mr. Barrymore has won that bet easily, hasn't he, Kitty and Beechy?"

"Yes," came faintly from the Countess and cordially from the child. And I whistled "Hail, the Conquering Hero" _sotto voce_, as Dalmar-Kalm, with a smile like a dose of asafoetida, counted out the amount of his lost wager.

"Well," he said, squaring his shoulders to make the best of a bad bargain, "you are three brave ladies to trust yourselves in a machine without room, speed, or power to cross the Alps."

"You can go to the Cathedral at Monaco and pray for us to Saint Joseph, who, Agnes told me, looks after travellers," said Beechy. "But I do think a more modern saint ought to be invented for motorists."

"I shall do better than that. I shall be your protecting saint. I shall go with you as a surgeon attends a company of soldiers," returned the Prince, with his air of _grand seigneur_. "That is, I shall keep as near you as a twenty-horse-power car with a light load can possibly keep to a twelve, with three times the load it's fitted to carry."

"You're not very complimentary to Mamma," glibly remarked the Irrepressible.

"I fancy, in spite of our load," said Terry with undaunted cheerfulness, "we shall find room to stow away a coil of rope which may prove useful for towing the Prince's car over some of those Alps he seems to think so formidable, in case he decides to--er--follow us. If I'm not mistaken, Prince, your motor is a Festa, made in Vienna, isn't it?"

"Certainly; the most successful in Austria. And mine is the handsomest car the company has yet turned out. It was a special order."

"There's an old proverb which says, 'all isn't gold that glitters.' I don't know whether it's apropos to anything that concerns us or not, but we shall perhaps remember it sooner or later. Now, ladies, I think everything is s.h.i.+pshape, and there's nothing to keep us any longer. How would you like to sit? Some people think the best place beside the driver, but--"

"Oh, _I_ wouldn't sit there for worlds with no horse in front to fall out on in case anything happened!" exclaimed Mrs. Kidder; "and I couldn't let Beechy either. Maida is her own mistress, and can do as she likes."

"If that girl is going to get in the habit of sitting by Terry day after day," I hurriedly told myself, "I might far better have let him sell his car and grow ostriches or something in South Africa. _That_ idea shall be nipped before it is a bud."

"I fear I should take up too much room in the tonneau," I suggested with feigned meekness. "You ladies had better have it all to yourselves, and then you can be comfortable. Terry and I, on the driver's seat, will act as a kind of screen for you against the wind."

"But you really don't take up nearly as much room as Maida does in her thick motor-coat," said Mrs. Kidder. "If she's not _afraid_--"

"Of course I'm not afraid!" cut in Maida.

"Well, then, I think it would be nicer if Sir Ralph sat with us, Beechy," went on Mrs. Kidder, "unless it would bore him."

Naturally I had to protest that, on the contrary, such an arrangement would be what I most desired, had I dared to consult my own selfish wishes. And I had to see the Vestal Virgin (looking incredibly interesting with her pure face and dark eyes framed with the motor-hood) helped to seat herself in fatal proximity to my unfortunate friend. Talk of a powder magazine and a lighted match!--well, there you have the situation as I felt it, though I was powerless for the moment to avert a catastrophe.

V

A CHAPTER OF ADVENTURES

The Prince let us take the lead. He could start twenty minutes later and still easily pa.s.s us before the frontier, he said. He had two or three telegrams to send, and one or two little affairs to settle; but he would not be long in catching us up, and after that the ladies might count upon his services in any--er--any emergency.

"He might better have gone on ahead and polished up that old castle of his a bit before Mrs. Kidder sees it," Terry murmured to me; but we had no right to object to the Prince's companions.h.i.+p, if it were agreeable to our employers, and we uttered no audible word of dissent to his plan.

Beechy and her mother had the two corner seats in the roomy tonneau, and I settled myself on the flap which lets down when the door is closed. In doing this, I was not unconscious of the fact that if the fastening of the door gave way owing to vibration or any other cause, I should indubitably go swinging out into s.p.a.ce; also, that if this disagreeable accident did occur, it would be my luck to have it happen when the back of the car was hanging over a precipice. Nevertheless I kept a calm face. These things usually befall some one else rather than one's self; the kind of some one else you read of over your morning coffee, murmuring, "Dear me, how horrid!" before you take another sip.

Terry started the car, and though it carried five persons and enough luggage for ten (I speak of men, not women), we shot away along the perfect road, like an arrow from the bow.

At our first fine panther bound, Mrs. Kidder half rose in her seat and seized my right arm, while Beechy's little hand clutched anxiously at my left knee.

"Oh, mercy!" the Countess exclaimed. "Tell him not to go so fast--oh, quick! we'll be killed."

"No, we won't, Don't be frightened; it's all right," I answered soothingly, primed by my late experience in leaving the Chalet des Pins.

"Why, we're going slowly--_crawling_ at the rate of twenty--"

"Fifteen!" laughed our chauffeur over his shoulder.

"Fifteen miles an hour," I amended my sentence wondering in what way the shock of surprise had affected the Vestal Virgin. Somehow I couldn't fancy her clawing weakly at any part of Terry's person. "You wouldn't have us go slower, would you? The Prince is sure to be watching."

"Oh, I don't _know_," wailed Mrs. Kidder. "I didn't think it would be like this. Isn't it awful?"

"I believe I--I'm going to like it by-and-by," gasped Beechy, her eyes as round as half-crowns, and as big. "Maida, have you _fainted_?"

Miss Destrey looked back into the tonneau, her face pale, but radiant.

"I wouldn't waste time fainting," said she. "I'm buckling on my wings."

"Wish she were a coward!" I thought. "Terry hates 'em like poison, and would never forgive her if she didn't wors.h.i.+p motoring at the first go-off." As for me, I have always found a certain piquant charm in a timid woman. There is a subtle flattery in her almost unconscious appeal to superior courage in man which is perhaps especially sweet to an undersized chap like me; and I had never felt more kindly to the Countess and her daughter than I did at this moment.

As Lothair with his Corisande, I "soothed and sustained their agitated frames" so successfully, that the appealing hands stole back to their respective laps, but not to rest in peace for long. The car breasted the small hill at the top of the Cap, st.u.r.dily, and we sped on towards Mentone, which, with its twin, sickle bays, was suddenly disclosed like a scene on the stage when the curtains have been noiselessly drawn aside. The picture of the beautiful little town, with its background of clear-cut mountains, called forth quavering exclamations from our reviving pa.s.sengers; but a few minutes later when we were in the long, straight street of Mentone, weaving our swift way between coming and going electric trams, all the good work I had accomplished had to be done over again.

"I can't stand it," moaned Mrs. Kidder, looking, in her misery, like a frost-bitten apple. "Oh, can't the man _see_ that street car's going to run us down? And now there's another, coming from behind. They'll crush us between them. Mr. Terrymore, stop--stop! I'll give you a thousand dollars to take me back to Cap Martin. Oh, he doesn't hear! Sir Ralph--why you're _laughing_!"

"Mamma, you'd send a mummied cat into hysterics," giggled Beechy. "I guess together we'd make the fortune of a dime museum, if they could show us now. But the cars _didn't_ run over us, did they?"

"No, but the next ones will--and oh, this cart! Mr. Terrymore's the queerest man, he's steering right for it. No, we've missed it _this_ time."

"We'll miss it every time, you'll see," I rea.s.sured her. "Barrymore is a magnificent driver; and look, Miss Destrey isn't nervous at all."

"She hasn't got as much to live for as Mamma and I have," said Beechy, trying to hide the fact that she was holding on to the side of the car.

"You might almost as well be smashed in an automobile as end your days in a convent."