My Friend the Chauffeur
answer a question or two of Terry's, whom she apparently chose to
consider in the Martyr's Boat, with herself. "We've been here for
_hours_, and it's getting dark."
"Why, so it is!" exclaimed Mrs. Kidder, rising hurriedly. "I'm quite
ashamed of myself for staying so long. What will you think of us? But we
had such a lot of things to arrange, hadn't we?"
We had had; and we had them still. But that was a detail.
"We _must_ go," she went on. "Well, we've decided nearly everything"
(this was news to me). "But there are one or two things yet we'll have
to talk over, I suppose."
"Quite so," said I.
"Could you and Mr. Terrymore come and dine with us to-night? Then we can
fix _everything_ up."
"Speaking for myself, I'm afraid I can't, thanks very much," Terry said,
hastily.
"What about you, Sir Ralph? I may call you Sir Ralph, may I not?"
"Please. It's my name."
"Yes, I know it. But it sounds so familiar, from a stranger. I was
wondering if one ought to say 'Sir Ralph Moray,' till one had been
acquainted a little longer. Well, anyway, if you could dine with us,
without your friend--"
I also thanked her and said that matters would arrange themselves more
easily if Barrymore and I were together.
"Then can you both lunch with us to-morrow at one o'clock?"
Quickly, before Terry could find time to object if he meditated doing
so, I accepted with enthusiasm.
Farewells were exchanged, and we had walked to the gate with the
ladies--I heading the procession with Mrs. Kidder, Terry bringing up the
rear with the two girls--when my companion stopped suddenly. "Oh,
there's just one thing I ought to mention before you come to see us at
the hotel," she said, with a little catch of the breath. Evidently she
was embarrassed. "I introduced myself to you as Mrs. Kidder, because I'm
used to that name, and it comes more natural. I keep forgetting always,
but--but perhaps you'd better ask at the hotel for the Countess Dalmar.
I guess you're rather surprised, though you're too polite to say so, my
being an American and having that title."
"Not at all," I assured her. "So many charming Americans marry titled
foreigners, that one is almost more surprised--"
"But I haven't married a foreigner. Didn't I tell you that I'm a widow?
No, the only husband I ever had was Simon P. Kidder. But--but I've
bought an estate, and the title goes with it, so it would seem like a
kind of waste of money not to use it, you see."
"It's the estate that goes with the title, for you, Mamma," said Beechy
(she invariably pronounces her parent "Momma"). "You know you just love
being a Countess. You're happier than I ever was with a new doll that
opened and shut its eyes."
"Don't be silly, Beechy. Little girls should be seen and not heard. As I
was saying, I thought it better to use the title. That was the advice of
Prince Dalmar-Kalm, of whom I've bought this estate in some part of
Austria, or I think, Dalmatia--I'm not quite sure about the exact
situation yet, as it's all so recent. But to get used to bearing the
title, it seemed best to begin right away, so I registered as the
Countess Dalmar when we came to the Cap Martin Hotel a week ago."
"Quite sensible, Countess," I said without looking at
Beechy-of-the-Attendant-Imps. "I know Prince Dalmar-Kalm well by
reputation, though I've never happened to meet him. He's a very familiar
figure on the Riviera." (I might have added, "especially in the Casino
at Monte Carlo," but I refrained, as I had not yet learned the
Countess's opinion of gambling as an occupation.) "Did you meet him here
for the first time?"
"No; I met him in Paris, where we stopped for a while after we crossed,
before we came here. I was so surprised when I saw him at our hotel the
very day after we arrived! It seemed such a coincidence, that our only
acquaintance over on this side should arrive at the same place when we
did."
"When is a coincidence not a coincidence?" pertly inquired Miss Beechy.
"Can you guess that conundrum, Cousin Maida?"
"You naughty girl!" exclaimed her mother.
"Well, you like me to be childish, don't you? And it's childish to be
naughty."
"Come, we'll go home at once," said the Countess, uneasily; and followed
by the tall girl and the little one, she tottered away, sweeping yards
of chiffon.
"I do hope she won't wear things like that when she's in--ahem!--_our_
motor-car," I remarked _sotto voce_, as Terry and I stood at the gate,
watching, if not speeding, our parting guests.
"I doubt very much if she'll ever be there," prophesied Terry, looking
handsome and thoroughly Celtic, wrapped in his panoply of gloom.
"Come away in, while I see if I can find you 'The harp that once through
Tara's halls,' to play your own funeral dirge on," said I. "You look as
if it would be the only thing to do you any good."
"It would certainly relieve my feelings," replied Terry, "but I could do
that just as well by punching your head, which would be simpler. Of all
the infernal--"
"Now don't be brutal!" I implored. "You were quite pleasant before the
ladies. Don't be a whited sepulchre the minute their backs are turned.
Think what I've gone through since I was alone with you last, you great
hulking animal."
"Animal yourself!" Terry had the ingratitude to retort. "What have _I_
gone through, I should like to ask?"
"I don't know what you've gone through, but I know how you behaved," I
returned, as we walked back to the magnolia tree. "Like a sulky barber's
block--I mean a barber's sulky block. No, I--but it doesn't signify.
Hullo, there's the universal provider, carrying off the tray. Felicite,
_mon ange_, say how you summoned that tea and those cakes and cream from
the vasty deep?"
"What Monsieur is pleased to mean, I know not," my fourteen-stone angel
replied. "I visited with haste a friend of mine at the hotel, and I came
back with the things--that is all. It was an inspiration," and she
sailed away, her head in the air.
Terry and I went into the house, for the sun had left the high-walled
garden, and besides, the talk we were going to have was more suitable to
that practical region, my smoking-room-study-den, than to the romantic
shade of a magnolia tree.
We unpocketed our pipes, and smoked for several minutes before we spoke.
I vowed that Terry should begin; but as he went on puffing until I had
counted sixty-nine slowly, I thought it simpler to unvow the vow before
it had had time to harden.
"A penny for your thoughts, Paddy," was the sum I offered with engaging
lightness. "Which is generous of me, as I know them already. You are
thinking of Her."
Teddy forgot to misunderstand, which was a bad sign.
"If it weren't for Her, I'd have got out of the scrape at any price,"
said he, bold as brass. "But I'm sorry for that beautiful creature. She
must lead a beastly life, between a silly, overdressed woman and a pert
minx. Poor child, she's evidently as hard up as I am, or she wouldn't
stand it. She's miserable with them, I could see."
"So you consented to fall into my web, rather than leave her to their
mercy."
"Not exactly that, but--well, I can't explain it. The die's
cast, anyhow. I'm pledged to join the menagerie. But look here, Ralph,
do you understand what you've let me in for?"
"For the society of three charming Americans, two of whom are no doubt
worth their weight in gold."
"It's precisely their weight that's on my mind at this moment. You may
know one or two little things, my dear boy, but among them motoring is
not, otherwise when you were putting that mad advertisement into your
pink rag, you would have stopped to reflect that a twelve-horse power
car is not expected to carry five grown persons up airy mountains and
down rushy glens. Europe isn't perfectly flat, remember."
"Only four of us are grown up. Beechy's an Infant Phenomenon."
"Infant be hanged. She's sixteen if she's a day."
"Her mother ought to know."
"She doesn't want any one else to know. Anyway, I'm big enough to make
up the difference. And besides, my car's not a new one. I paid a
thumping price for her, but that was two years ago. There have been
improvements in the make since."
"Do you mean to tell me that car of yours can't carry five people half
across the world if necessary?"
"She can, but not at an exciting speed; and Americans want excitement.
Not only that, but you saw for yourself that they expect a handsome car
of the latest make, shining with brass and varnish. Amateurs always do.
What will they say when my world-worn old veteran bursts, or rather
bumbles, into view?"
I felt slightly crestfallen, for the first time. When one is an editor,
one doesn't like to think one has been caught napping. "You said you
ought to get two hundred pounds for your Panhard, if you sold it," I
reminded him. "That's a good deal of money. Naturally I thought the
motor must be a fairly decent one, to command that price after several
seasons' wear and tear."
Terry fired up instantly, as I had hoped he would; for his car is the
immediate jewel of his soul. "Decent!" he echoed. "I should rather
think she is. But just as there's a limit to your intelligence, so is
there a limit to her power, and I don't want it to come to that.
However, the thing's gone too far for me to draw back. It must depend
upon the ladies. If they don't back out when they see my car, I won't."
"To all intents and purposes it's my car now," said I. "You made her
over to me before witnesses, and I think I shall have her smartened up
with a bit of red paint and a crest."
"If you try on anything like that, you can drive her yourself, for I
won't. I like her old grey dress. I wouldn't feel at home with her in
any other. And she sha'n't be trimmed with crests to make an American
holiday. She goes as she is, or not at all, my boy."
"You are the hardest chap to do anything for I ever saw," I groaned,
with the justifiable annoyance of a martyr who has failed to convert a
pagan hero. "As if you hadn't made things difficult enough already by
'Mistering' yourself. At any moment you may be found out--though, on
second thoughts, it won't matter a rap if you are. If you're a mere
Mister, you are often obliged to appear before an unsympathetic police
magistrate for pretending to be a Lord. But I never heard of a Lord's
falling foul of the law for pretending to be a Mister."
"If you behave yourself, there isn't much danger of my being found out
by any of the people most concerned, during a few weeks' motoring on the
Continent; but it's to be hoped they won't select England, Scotland, or
Ireland for their tour."
"We can tell them that conditions are less favourable for motoring at
home--which is quite true, judging from the complaints I hear from
motor-men."
"But look here; you let me in for this. What I did was on the spur of
the moment, and in self-defence. I didn't dream then that I should be,
first cornered by you, then led on by circumstances into engaging as
chauffeur, to drive my own car on such a wild-goose chase."
"It's a wild goose that will lay golden eggs. Fifteen guineas a day, my
son; that's the size of the egg which that beneficent bird will drop
into your palm every twenty-four hours. Deduct the ladies' hotel
expenses--say three guineas a day; expenses for yourself and car we'll
call two guineas more (of course I pay my own way), that leaves you as
profit ten guineas daily; seventy guineas a week, or at the rate of
three thousand five hundred guineas per annum. Before you'd spent your
little patrimony, and been refused an--er--fratrimony, you weren't half
as well off as that. You might do worse than pass your whole life as a
Personal Conductor on those terms. And instead of thanking the wise
friend who has caught this goose for you, and is willing to leave his