My Friend the Chauffeur
"Whatever Joseph's faults, he is an excellent mechanician," said His
Highness. "I did not intend to ask that you would wait, but if my car
can be ready so soon, perhaps you will have pity upon me, Countess, and
let me escort you to the castle while Joseph is working."
"Castle? I don't see any castle," returned Mamma, gazing around.
"What's left of it looks more like a walking-stick than a castle," said
I, pointing up to the tall, tapering finger of broken stone that almost
touched the clouds.
"Is Mamma's new property in Dalmatia as well perserved as that,
Prince?"
"You have always a joke ready, little Miss Beechy." His lips
smiled; but his eyes boxed my ears. Almost I felt them tingle; and
suddenly I said to myself, "Good gracious, Beechy Kidder, what if your
dolls should take to playing the game their own way, in spite of you,
now you've set them going! Where would you be _then_, I'd like to know?"
And a horrid creep ran down my spine, at the thought of Prince
Dalmar-Kalm as a step-father. Maybe he would shut _me_ up in a tower and
starve me to death, as the wicked duke did with the other Beatrice; and
it wouldn't comfort me a bit if some one wrote an opera about my
sufferings. But if he thinks he'll really get Mamma, he little knows Me,
that's all. We shall see what we shall see.
X
A CHAPTER OF THRILLS
The hotel at Tenda is apparently the one new thing in the town, and it
is new enough to more than make up for the oldness of everything else.
We went there to grumble because, after we had done the ruined castle
(and it had done Mamma), Joseph's "all little" hour threatened to
lengthen itself into at lest two of ordinary size.
Mr. Barrymore's eyebrows said, "I told you so," but his tongue said
nothing, which was nice of it; and the Prince did all the complaining as
we sat on perfectly new chairs, in a perfectly new parlour, with a smell
of perfectly new plaster in the air, and plu-perfectly old newspapers on
the table. According to him, Joseph was an absolutely unique villain,
with a combination of deceit, treachery, procrastination, laziness, and
stupidity mixed with low cunning, such as could not be paralleled in the
history of motor-men; and it was finally Mr. Barrymore who defended the
poor absent wretch.
"Really, you know," said he, "I don't think he's worse than other
chauffeurs. Curiously enough, the whole tribe seems to be alike in
several characteristics, and it would be an interesting study in motor
lore to discover whether they've all--by a singular coincidence--been
born with those peculiarities, whether they've been thrust upon them, or
whether they've achieved them!"
"Joseph never achieved anything," broke in the Prince.
"That disposes of one point of view, then," went on Mr. Barrymore.
"Anyhow, he's cut on an approved pattern. All the professional
chauffeurs I ever met have been utterly unable to calculate time or
provide for future emergencies. They're pessimists at the moment of an
accident, and optimists afterwards--until they find out their mistakes
by gloomy experience, which, however, seldom teaches them anything."
The Prince shrugged his shoulders in a superior way he has, and drawled,
"Well, you are better qualified to judge the brotherhood, than the rest
of us, at all events, my dear sir."
Mr. Barrymore got rather red, but he only laughed and answered, "Yes,
that's why I spoke in Joseph's defence. A fellow-feeling makes us
wondrous kind," while Maida looked as if she would like to set the new
dog at His Highness.
The fact is she has got into her head that our handsome chauffeur is
very unfortunate; and when Maida is sorry for anybody or anything she'll
stick by that creature--man, woman, or dog--through thick and thin. And
funnier still, _he_ is sorry for _her_. Well, it all comes into my game
of dolls. But I'm not sure that I shan't fall in love with him myself,
and want to keep him up my sleeve against the time when I'm seventeen
again.
The hotel clock was so new that it hadn't learned to go yet; and I never
saw people glance at their watches so much, even in the midst of a long
sermon, as we did, sitting on those new chairs in that new parlour. At
last Sir Ralph Moray proposed that we should have lunch; and we had it,
with delicious trout as new as the dish on which they came frizzling to
the table. While we were eating them Joseph was announced, and was
ordered to report himself in the dining-room. He seemed quite
cheerful--for him.
"I came to tell Your Highness that I shall be able to finish in time to
start by four o'clock this afternoon," said he complacently.
Up sprang the Prince in a rage and began to shout French things which
must have been shocking, for Sir Ralph and Mr. Barrymore both scowled at
him till he superficially calmed down.
Joseph had either forgotten that he'd promised to be ready hours ago,
or else he didn't see why we should attach the least importance to a
tiny discrepancy like that.
In the midst of the argument, while the Prince's language got hot and
his fish cold, Mr. Barrymore turned to Mamma and proposed that we should
start directly after lunch, as most probably the Prince wouldn't get off
till next morning.
The prospect of staying all night at Tenda, with nothing to do but sit
on the new chairs till bed time, was too much even for Mamma's wish to
please Titled Opportunity Number One. She nervously elected to go on
with Titled Opportunity Number Two and his friend.
I thought that the Prince would be plunged in gloom by this decision,
even if he didn't try to break it. To my surprise, however, he not only
made no objection, but encouraged the idea. He wouldn't wish to
sacrifice us on the altar of his misfortune, he said. We must go on,
dine at Cuneo, and he would meet us at the hotel there, which he could
easily do, as, when once his automobile was itself again, it would
travel at more than twice the speed of ours. "Especially up hill," he
added. "The landlord has told Joseph that beyond Tenda the ascent is
stupendous, nothing less than Alpine. You will be obliged to travel at a
snail's pace, even if you reach the top without every passenger walking
up the hill, which mounts, curve after curve, for miles."
Poor Mamma's face fell several inches. She had had enough walking up
hill for one day, as the Prince knew well, and no doubt he enjoyed the
chance of disgusting her with motoring in other people's automobiles.
But Mr. Barrymore's expression would have put spirit into a mock turtle.
"I know what the gradients are," he said, "and what we can do. To show
that I'm an exception which proves the rule I laid down for chauffeurs,
I'm not making any experiments without counting the cost. I hope we
shall get to Cuneo by tea-time, not dinner-time, and push on to
Alessandria as a better stopping-place for the night."
"Very well. In any case I shall expect to catch you up at Cuneo," said
the Prince, "and so, if you please, we will make a rendezvous at a
certain hotel."
Baedeker was produced, a hotel was selected, and half an hour later His
Highness was bidding us _au revoir_, as we settled ourselves in our
luggage-wreathed car, to leave the town of Beatrice and the dominating,
file-on-end shaped ruin.
We had all been up so early that it seemed as if the day were growing
old, but really it was only one o'clock, for we'd lunched at twelve, and
all the afternoon was before us in which to do, or not to do, our great
climbing act.
Just to see how our gorgeous chauffeur would look, I asked if I mightn't
sit on the front seat for a change, because my feet had gone to sleep in
the tonneau yesterday. I half-expected that he would shuffle round for
an excuse to keep Maida; but with an immovable face he said that was for
the three ladies to arrange. Of course, Maida must have wanted to be in
front, but she is so horribly unselfish that she glories in sacrificing
herself, so she gave up as meekly as if she had been a lady's-maid, or a
dormouse, and naturally I felt a little brute; but I usually do feel a
brute with Maida; she's so much better than any one I ever saw that I
can't help imposing on her, and neither can Mamma. It's a waste of good
material being so awfully pretty as Maida, if you're never going to do
anything for people to forgive.
Yesterday we had been too hot in our motor-coats till night came on.
To-day, when we had left Tenda a little way below, we opened our
shawl-straps and got out our fur stoles.
At first I thought that the Prince had only been trying to frighten us,
and make us wish we were in a big car like his, for the road went
curving up as gracefully and easily as a swan makes tracks in the water,
and our automobile hummed cheerfully to itself, forging steadily up. It
was so nice having nothing to drag that, by comparison with yesterday
afternoon, we moved like a ship under full sail; but suddenly the road
reared up on its hind feet and stood almost erect, as though it had been
frightened by the huge snow-capped mountains that all at once crowded
round us. An icy wind rushed down from the tops of the great white
towers, as if with the swooping wings of a giant bird, and it took our
car's breath away.
Instead of humming it began to pant, and I noticed the difference at
once. If I'd been Maida, I should probably have been too polite to put
questions about the thing's behaviour, for fear Mr. Barrymore might
think I hadn't proper confidence in him; but being Beechy, with no
convictions to live up to, I promptly asked if anything was the matter.
"The car's only trying to tell me that she can't manage to spurt up on
third speed any more," said he. "I shall put on the second, and you'll
hear what a relief it gives to the motor."
It certainly was as if the automobile had gulped down a stimulant, and
revived in a second. But as we turned a shoulder of the mountain, coming
in sight of a railroad depot, a high embankment, and a monstrous wall of
mountain with the sky for a ceiling, I couldn't help giving a little
squeak.
"Is that a _road_?" I asked, pointing up to a network like a skein of
silk twisted in a hundred zigzags across the face of the mountain from
bottom to top. "Why, it's like the way up Jack's beanstalk. No sane
automobile could do it."
"Some could," said Mr. Barrymore, "but I dare say it's lucky for us that
ours hasn't got to. It's the old road, only used now to communicate with
that desolate fortress you see on the top shelf of the mountain,
standing up there on the sky-line like the ark on Ararat. All this
country is tremendously fortified by both the French and Italians, in
case they should ever come to loggerheads. Above us somewhere is a long
tunnel burrowing into the _col_, and the new road runs through that
instead of over the summit."
"Bump!" went the car, as he finished his explanation, and then we began
to wade jerkily through a thick layer of loose stones that had been
spread over the road like hard butter over stale bread.
"_Le corse_" (that is what our landlord had called the cruel wind
sweeping down from the snow mountains) was hurling itself into our
faces; our fat rubber tyres were bouncing over the stones like
baseballs, and I'd never been so uncomfortable nor so perfectly happy in
my life. I wished I were a cat, so that I could purr, for purring has
always struck me as the most thorough way of expressing satisfaction.
When other people are in automobiles, and you are walking or jogging
past with a pony, you glare and think what insufferable vehicles they
are; but when you're spinning, or even jolting, along in one of them
yourself, then you know that there's nothing else in the world as well
worth doing. I made a remark like that to Mr. Barrymore, and he gave me
such a friendly, appreciative look as he said, "Have you discovered all