My Friend the Chauffeur
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 lustre 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 shipshape, 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 pass 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 companionship, 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 space; 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 worship 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, sturdily, 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 passengers; 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 reassured her. "Barrymore is a