My Friend the Chauffeur
all, although everybody turned to look after you in the streets."
"Well, now that I have come, I should enjoy seeing the places I've cared
most to read about in history or poetry," said Miss Destrey quickly,
"and Venice is one of them."
"Maida has lived more in books than she has in real life," remarked Miss
Beechy with scorn. "I know a lot more about the world than she does,
although I am only--only--"
"Thirteen," finished the Countess. "Beechy darling, would you like to
have some more of those _marrons glaces_? They aren't good for you, but
just this once you may, if you want to. And oh, Sir Ralph, I should love
to see my new estate. It's a very old estate really, you know, though
new to me; so old that the castle is almost a ruin; but if I saw it and
took a great fancy to the place, I might have it restored and made
perfectly elegant, to live in sometimes, mightn't I? Just where _is_
Schloss (she pronounced it 'Slosh') what-you-may-call-it? I never _can_
say it properly?"
"Schloss Hrvoya is very far down in Dalmatia--almost as far east as
Montenegro," replied the Prince. "The roads are extremely bad, too. I do
not think they would be feasible for an automobile, especially for Sir
Ralph Moray's little twelve-horse-power car carrying five persons."
"I differ from you there, Prince." Terry argued, looking obstinate. "I
have never driven in Dalmatia, although I've been to Fiume and Abbazzia;
but I have a friend who went with his car, and he had no adventures
which ladies would not have enjoyed. Our principal difficulty would be
about petrol; but we could carry a lot, and have supplies sent to us
along the route. I'll engage to manage that--and the car."
"Then it's settled that we go," exclaimed Mrs. Kidder, clapping two
dimpled hands covered with rings. "What a wonderful trip it will be."
I could see that the Prince would have liked to call Terry out, but he
was too wise to dispute the question further; and a dawning plan of some
kind was slowly lightening his clouded eye.
My wish was granted at last; something was settled. And later, strolling
on the terrace, I contrived to put all that was left upon a business
basis.
Never had man a better friend than Terence Barrymore has in me; and my
whole attention on the way home was given to making him acknowledge it.
IV
A CHAPTER OF HUMILIATIONS
After all, we did not start on the day after to-morrow. Our luncheon had
been on Tuesday. On Wednesday a note came, sent by hand from Mrs.
Kidder, to say that she could not possibly be ready until Friday, and
that as Friday was an unlucky day to begin any enterprise, we had better
put off starting until Saturday. But I must not "think her changeable,
as she really had a very good reason"; and she was mine "Cordially,
Kathryn Stanley Kidder-Dalmar."
Having first stated that she could not be ready, and then added her
reason was good, I naturally imagined there was more in the delay than
met the eye. My fancy showed me the hand of Prince Dalmar-Kalm, and I
firmly believed that each finger of that hand to say nothing of the
thumb, was busily working against us.
All Thursday and Friday I expected at any moment to receive an
intimation that, owing to unforseen circumstances (which might not be
explained) the Countess and her party were unable to carry out the
arrangement they had entered into with us. But Thursday passed, and
nothing happened. Friday wore on towards evening, and the constant
strain upon my nerves had made me irritable. Terry, who was calmly
getting ready for the start as if there were no cause for uncertainty,
chaffed me on my state of mind, and I rounded upon him viciously, for
was not all my scheming for his sake?
I was in the act of pointing out several of his most prominent defects,
and shedding cigarette ashes into his suit-case as he packed, when
Felicite appeared with a letter.
"It's from her!" I gasped. "And--she's got her coronet. It's on the
envelope, as large as life."
"Which means that she's ready," said the future chauffeur, examining a
suit of overalls.
"Don't be so cocksure," said I, opening the letter. "Hum--ha--well, yes,
it does seem to be all right, if you can ever judge a woman's intentions
by what she says. She wants to know whether the arrangement stands, that
we're to call for them at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and whether
we're to go rain or shine. I'll scratch off a line in answer, and say
yes--yes--yes, to everything."
I did so with a trembling hand, and then gave myself up to the weakness
of reaction. Upon Felicite fell the task of doing my packing, which
consisted in cramming a suit of flannels, my evening things, and all the
linen it would hold without bursting asunder, into a large, fitted
suit-case. Terry had a suit-case too, five times better than mine
(Irishmen in debt always do have things superior to those of every one
else); we had motor-coats, and enough guide-books and road-maps to stock
a small library; and when these were collected we were ready for the
Great Adventure.
When Terry visits me at the Chalet des Pins, he keeps his car at a
garage in Mentone. His habit has been to put up his chauffeur close by
this garage, and telephone when he wants to use the car; but the
chauffeur was paid off and sent away ten days ago, at about the time
when Terry decided that the automobile must be sold. He had not been in
spirits for a drive since, until the fateful day of the advertisement,
but immediately after our luncheon with the Countess he had walked down
to the garage and stayed until dinner-time. What he had been doing there
he did not deign to state; but I had a dim idea that when you went to
call on a motor-car in its den, you spent hours on your back bolting
nuts, or accelerating silencers, or putting the crank head (and
incidentally your own) into an oil bath; and I supposed that Terry had
been doing these things. When he returned on Wednesday, Thursday, and
Friday, spending several hours on each occasion, I went on supposing the
same; but when at nine o'clock on Saturday morning he drove up to the
garden gate after another trip to Mentone, I had a surprise.
Terry had almost bitten off my head when I had innocently proposed to
have his car smartened up to suit the taste of the Countess; but,
without saying a word to me, he had been at work improving its
appearance.
"She" (as he invariably calls his beloved vehicle) was dressed in grey
as before, but it was fresh, glossy grey, still smelling of turpentine.
The tyres were new, and white, and a pair of spare ones were tied onto
the motor's bonnet, which looked quite jaunty now in its clean
lead-coloured paint.
The shabby cushions of the driver's seat and tonneau had been re-covered
also with grey, and wherever a bit of brass was visible it glittered
like pure gold.
At the sound of the Panhard's sob at the gate, Felicite and I hurried
down the path, armed with the two coats and suit-cases, there to be
surprised by the rejuvenated car, and dumbfounded by a transformed
Terry.
"Mon Dieu, comme il est beau, comme ca," cried my domestic miracle
worker, lost in admiration of a tall, slim, yet athletic figure, clad
from head to foot in black leather. "Mais--mais ce n'est pas comme il
faut pour un Milord."
"Why, Terry," exclaimed I, "I never thought--I never expected--I'm
hanged if you're not a real professional. It's awfully smart, and very
becoming--never saw you look better in your life. But it's--er--a kind
of masquerade, you know. I'm not sure you ought to do it. If Innisfallen
saw you like that, he'd cross you out of his will."
"He's dead certain to have done that already. When I engaged as your
chauffeur I engaged as your chauffeur and I intend to look the part as
well as act it. I want this car to be as smart as it can, which
unfortunately isn't saying much, and towards that end I've been doing my
best these last three or four days. She isn't bad, is she?"
"From being positively plain, if not ugly, she has become almost a
beauty," I replied. "But I thought you were determined to preserve her
from the sin of vanity? Why this change of mind?"
"Well, I couldn't stand Dalmar-Kalm running her down," Terry confessed
rather sheepishly. "There was so little time, that half the work on her
I've done myself."
"That accounts, then, for your long and mysterious absences."
"Only partly. I've been working like a navvy, at a mechanic's shop,
fagging up a lot of things I knew how to do on principle, but had seldom
or never done with my own hands. I was always a lazy beggar, I'm afraid,
and it was better fun to smoke and watch my man Collet making or fitting
in a new part than to bother with it myself. This will be my first long
trip 'on my own,' you see, and I don't want to be a duffer, especially
as I myself proposed going down into Dalmatia, where we may get into no
end of scrapes."
"By Jove!" I exclaimed, gazing with a new respect at my leather-clad
friend and his car. "You've got some good stuff in you, Terry. I didn't
quite realize what a responsibility I was throwing on you, old chap,
when I named you as my chauffeur. Except for my drives with you, I
suppose I haven't been in a motor half a dozen times in my life, now I
come to think of it and it always seemed to me that, if a man knew how
to drive his own car, he must know how to do everything else that was
necessary."
"Very few do, even expert drivers, among amateurs. A man ought to be
able not only to take his car entirely to pieces and put it together
again, but to go into a mechanic's shop and make a new one. I don't say
that I can do that, but I can come a bit nearer to it than I could five
days ago. I don't think that the poor old car will be such a shock to
the ladies now, even after some of the fine ones they must have seen, do
you?"
He was so ingenuously proud of his achievements, had toiled so
hard, and sacrificed so much of his personal vanity in providing his
employers with a suitable chauffeur, that I did not stint my
commendation of him and his car. Felicite, too, was prolific in
compliments. The duck, who had waddled out to the gate to see what was
doing, quacked flattery; the yellow cat mewed praise; and Terry, pleased
as Punch with everything and everybody, whistled as he stowed away our
suit-cases.
The moment of departure had come. With some emotion I bade farewell to
my family, which I should not see again until I returned to the Riviera
to open the autumn season with the first number of the _Sun_. Then one
last look at the little place which had become dear to me, and we were
off with a bound for the Cap Martin Hotel.
Terry, when in a frank and modest mood, had sometimes said to me that,
with all the virtues of strength, faithfulness, and getting-thereness,
his car was not to be called a fast car. Thirty miles an hour was its
speed at best, and this pace it seemed had been far surpassed by newer
cars of the same make, though of no higher power, since Terry's had been
built. This fact I took for granted, as I had heard it from Terry's own
lips more than once; but as we flew over the wooded road which divided
the Chalet des Pins from the Cap Martin Hotel, I would have sworn that
we were going at the rate of sixty miles per hour.
"Good Heavens!" I gasped. "Have you been doing anything to this car, to
make her faster than she was? Help! I can't breathe."
"Nonsense," said Terry, with soothing calm. "It's only because you
haven't motored for a long time that you imagine we're going fast. The
motor's working well, that's all. We're crawling along at a miserable
twenty miles an hour."
"Well, I'm glad that worms and other reptiles can't crawl at this pace,
anyhow, or life wouldn't be worth living for the rest of creation," I