My Friend the Chauffeur
by C. N. Williamson · English · Gutenberg #19441 · 641,476 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: My Friend the Chauffeur
Author: C. N. Williamson
A. M. Williamson
Illustrator: Frederic Lowenheim
Release date: October 2, 2006 [eBook #19441]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19441
Credits: Produced by Ross Wilburn, Suzanne Shell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY FRIEND THE CHAUFFEUR ***
Produced by Ross Wilburn, Suzanne Shell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: _She was only a tall white girl simply dressed_]
My friend the Chauffeur
_By_ C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON
Authors of "Lady Betty Across the Water," "The Princess
Virginia," "The Lightning Conductor," etc., etc.
With Illustrations
BY FREDERIC LOWENHEIM
A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1905, by_
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
_Published September, 1905_
TO
THE OTHER BEECHY
CONTENTS
PART I--TOLD BY RALPH MORAY
CHAPTER PAGE
I A CHAPTER OF SURPRISES 3
II A CHAPTER OF PLANS 17
III A CHAPTER OF REVENGES 28
IV A CHAPTER OF HUMILIATIONS 40
V A CHAPTER OF ADVENTURES 55
VI A CHAPTER OF PREDICAMENTS 78
PART II--TOLD BY BEECHY KIDDER
VII A CHAPTER OF CHILDISHNESS 89
VIII A CHAPTER OF PLAYING DOLLS 97
IX A CHAPTER OF REVELATIONS 107
X A CHAPTER OF THRILLS 115
XI A CHAPTER OF BRAKES AND WORMS 129
XII A CHAPTER OF HORRORS 138
XIII A CHAPTER OF WILD BEASTS 152
XIV A CHAPTER OF SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 163
PART III--TOLD BY THE COUNTESS
XV A CHAPTER OF PITFALLS 175
XVI A CHAPTER OF ENCHANTMENT 191
PART IV--TOLD BY MAIDA DESTREY
XVII A CHAPTER OF MOTOR MANIA 205
XVIII A CHAPTER ACCORDING TO SHAKSPERE 225
XIX A CHAPTER OF PALACES AND PRINCES 235
XX A CHAPTER IN FAIRYLAND 244
XXI A CHAPTER OF STRANGE SPELLS 256
XXII A CHAPTER BEYOND THE MOTOR ZONE 267
XXIII A CHAPTER OF KIDNAPPING 283
XXIV A CHAPTER ON PUTTING TRUST IN PRINCES 292
PART V--TOLD BY TERENCE BARRYMORE
XXV A CHAPTER OF CHASING 303
XXVI A CHAPTER OF HIGH DIPLOMACY 316
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
She was only a tall white girl simply dressed _Frontispiece_
As he spoke a douanier lounged out of his little (After) 62
whitewashed lair
Two or three men were moving about the place (After) 148
A great white light pounced upon us like a hawk on a
chicken (After) 200
MY FRIEND THE CHAUFFEUR
PART I
TOLD BY RALPH MORAY
I
A CHAPTER OF SURPRISES
"WANTED, LADIES, TO CONDUCT. An amateur
automobilist (English, titled) who drives his
own motor-car accommodating five persons,
offers to conduct two or three ladies, Americans
preferred, to any picturesque centres in Europe which they
may desire to visit. Car has capacity for carrying small luggage,
and is of best type. Journeys of about 100 miles a day. Novel
and delightful way of travelling; owner of car well up in history,
art, and architecture of different countries. Inclusive terms five
guineas a day each, or slight reduction made for extensive
trip. Address--"
When Terry had read aloud thus far, I hastily interrupted him. I wasn't
quite ready yet for him to see that address. The thing needed a little
leading up to; and by way of getting him quickly and safely on to a side
rack I burst into a shout of laughter, so loud and so sudden that he
looked up from the little pink Riviera newspaper of which I was the
proud proprietor, to stare at me.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
I subsided. "The idea struck me so forcibly," said I. "Jolly clever,
isn't it?"
"It's a fake, of course," said Terry. "No fellow would be ass enough to
advertise himself like that in earnest. Probably the thing's been put in
for a bet, or else it's a practical joke."
I had been aware that this, or something like it, would come, but now
that the crisis was at hand I felt qualmish. Terry--known to strangers
as Lord Terence Barrymore--is the best and most delightful chap in the
world, as well as one of the best looking, but like several other
Irishmen he is, to put it mildly, rather hard to manage, especially when
you want to do him a good turn. I had been trying to do him one without
his knowing it, and in such a way that he couldn't escape when he did
know. But the success of my scheme was now being dandled on the knees of
the gods, and at any instant it might fall off to break like an egg.
"I believe it's genuine," I began gingerly, almost wishing that I hadn't
purposely put the pink paper where Terry would be sure to pick it up.
"And I don't see why you should call the advertiser in my paper an ass.
If you were hard up, and had a motor-car--"
"I am hard up, and I have a motor-car."
"What I was going to say is this: wouldn't it be much better to turn
your car into the means of making an honest living, and at the same time
having some rattling good fun, rather than sell the thing for less than
half cost, and not only get no fun at all, but not know how to get out
of the scrape in which you've landed yourself?"
It was Terry's turn to laugh now, which he did, though not uproariously,
as I had. "One would think the ass was a friend of yours, by your
enthusiasm in defending him," said he.
"I'm only putting the case to you in the way I thought you'd see it most
clearly," I persisted mildly. "But, as a matter of fact, the 'ass' as
you call him, _is_ my friend, a very intimate friend indeed."
"Didn't know you had any intimate friends but me, anyhow owners of
motor-cars, you old owl," remarked Terry. "I must say in your defence,
though, it isn't like you to have friends who advertise themselves as
titled couriers."
"If you're obliged to start a shop I suppose it's legitimate to put your
best goods in the windows, and arrange them as attractively as you can
to appeal to the public," I argued. "This is the same thing. Besides,
my friend isn't advertising himself. Somebody is 'running him'--doing it
for him; wants him to get on, you know--just as I do you."
Terry gave me a quick glance; but my face (which is blond and said to be
singularly youthful for a man of twenty-nine) was, I flatter myself, as
innocent as that of a choir-boy who has just delivered himself of a high
soprano note. Nevertheless, the end was coming. I felt it in the
electric tingle of the air.
"Do you mind telling me your friend's name, or is he a secret?"
"Perhaps the address at the end of the advertisement will be
enlightening."
Terry had dropped the paper on the grass by the side of his _chaise
longue_, but now he picked it up again, and began searching for the
place which he had lost. I, in my _chaise longue_ under the same
magnolia tree, gazed at him from under my tilted Panama. Terry is tall
and dark. Stretched out in the basket chair, he looked very big and
rather formidable. Beside him, I felt a small and reedy person. I really
hoped he would not give me much trouble. The day was too hot to cope
with troublesome people, especially if you were fond of them, for then
you were the more likely to lose your head.
But the beginning was not encouraging. Terry proceeded to read the end
of the advertisement aloud. "Address X. Y. Z., Châlet des Pins, Cap
Martin." Then he said something which did not go at all with the
weather. Why is it that so many bad words begin with D or H? One almost
gets to think that they are letters for respectable people to avoid.
"Hang it all, Ralph," he went on, after the explosion, "I must say I
don't like your taste in jokes. This is a bit too steep."
I sat up straight, with a leg on each side of the chair, and looked
reproaches. "I thought," I said slowly, "that when your brother behaved
like such a--well, we won't specify what--you asked, I might even say
begged, for my advice, and promised in a midnight conversation under
this very tree to take it, no matter how disagreeable it might prove."
"I did; but--"
"There's no such word as 'but.' Last year I advised you not to put your
money into West Africans. You put it in. What was the consequence? You
regretted it, and as your brother showed no very keen interest in your
career, you decided that you couldn't afford to stop in the Guards, so
you cut the Army. This year I advised you not to play that system of
yours and Raleigh's at Monte Carlo, or if you must have a go at it, to
stick to roulette and five franc stakes. Instead of listening to me, you
listened to him. What were the consequences?"
"For goodness sake don't moralize. I know well enough what they were.
Ruin. And it doesn't gild the pill to remember that I deserved to
swallow it."
"If only you'd swallowed the advice instead! It would have slipped down
more easily, poor old boy. But you swore to bolt the next dose without a
groan. I said I'd try and think of a better plan than selling your
Panhard, and going out to help work an African farm on the proceeds.
Well, I _have_ thought of a plan, and there you have the proof of my
combined solicitude and ingenuity, in my own paper."
"Don't shoot off big words at me."
"I'm a journalist; my father before me was a journalist, and got his
silly old baronetcy by being a journalist. _I'm_ one still, and have
saved up quite a little competency on big words and potted phrases. I've
collected a great many practical ideas in my experience. I want to make
you a present of some of them, if only you'll have them."
"Do you call this advertisement a practical idea? You can't for a minute
suppose that I'd be found dead carting a lot of American or other women
whom I don't know about Europe in my car, and taking their beastly
money?"
"If you drove properly, you wouldn't be found dead; and you would know
them," I had begun, when there was a ring at the gate bell, and the
high wall of the garden abruptly opened to admit a tidal wave of chiffon
and muslin.
Terry and I were both so taken aback at this unexpected inundation that
for a moment we lay still in our chairs and stared, with our hats tipped
over our eyes and our pipes in our mouths. We were not accustomed to
afternoon calls or any other time-of-day calls from chiffon and muslin
at the Châlet des Pins, therefore our first impression was that the
tidal wave had overflowed through my gate by mistake, and would promptly
retire in disorder at sight of us. But not at all. It swept up the path,
in pink, pale green, and white billows, frothing at the edges with lace.
There was a lot of it--a bewildering lot. It was all train, and big,
flowery hats, and wonderful transparent parasols, which you felt you
ought to see through, and couldn't. Before it was upon us, Terry and I
had sprung up in self-defence, our pipes burning holes in our pockets,
our Panamas in our hands.
Now the inundation divided itself into separate wavelets, the last
lagging behind, crested by a foaming parasol, which hid all details,
except a general white muslin filminess. But Terry and I had not much
chance to observe the third billow. Our attention was caught by the
first glittering rush of pink and emerald spray.
Out of it a voice spoke--an American voice; and then, with a lacy whirl,
a parasol rose like a stage curtain. The green wave was a lady; a
marvellous lady. The pink wave was a child with a brown face, two long
brown plaits, and pink silk legs, also pink shoes.
"We've come in answer to X. Y. Z.'s advertisement in this morning's
_Riviera Sun_. Now which of you two gentlemen put it in?" began the
lady, with gay coquetry which played over each of us in turn. Oh yes,
she was wonderful. She had hair of the brightest auburn that ever
crowned a human head. It was done in undulations, with a fat ring in the
middle of her forehead, between two beautifully arched black eyebrows.
Her skin was very white, her cheeks were very pink, and her lips were
very coralline. Everything about her was "very." Out of a plump face,
with a small nose that turned up and a chin which was over-round, looked
a pair of big, good-natured, nondescript-coloured eyes, and flashed a
pair of pleasant dimples. At first glance you said "a stout girl of
twenty-five." At the second, you were not sure that the lady wasn't ten
years older. But her waist was so slender that she panted a little in
coming up the path, though the path was by no means steep, and her heels
were so high that there was a suspicion of limp in her walk.
Even to me the lady and her announcement gave a shock, which must have
doubled its effect upon Terry. I was collecting my forces for a reply
when the little brown girl giggled, and I lost myself again. It was only
for an instant, but Terry basely took advantage of that instant in a way
of which I would not have believed him capable.
"You must address yourself to my friend, Sir Ralph Moray," said the
wretched fellow glibly. "His are the car and the title mentioned in the
advertisement of _The Riviera Sun_, which he owns."
My title indeed! A baronetical crumb flung to my father because of a
service to his political party. It had never done anything for me,
except to add ten per cent to my bills at hotels. Now, before I could
speak a word of contradiction, Terry went on. "I am only Mr. Barrymore,"
said he, and he grinned a malicious grin, which said as plainly as
words, "Aha, my boy, I think _that_ rips your little scheme to
smithereens, eh?"
But my presence of mind doesn't often fail for long. "It's Mr. Barrymore
who drives my car for me," I explained. "He's cleverer at it than I, and
he comes cheaper than a professional."
The wonderful white and pink and auburn lady had been looking at Terry
with open admiration; but now the light of interest faded from the
good-natured face under the girlish hat. "O-oh," she commented in a tone
of ingenuous disappointment, "you're only the--the chawffur, then."
I didn't want Terry to sink too low in these possible clients'
estimation, for my canny Scotch mind was working round the fact that
they were probably American heiresses, and an heiress of some sort was a
necessity for the younger brother of that meanest of bachelor peers, the
Marquis of Innisfallen. "He's an amateur chauffeur," I hastened to
explain. "He only does it for me because we're friends, you know; but,"
I added, with a stern and meaning glance at Terry, "I'm unable to
undertake any tours without his assistance. So if we--er--arrange
anything, _Mr. Barrymore_ will be of our party."
"Unfortunately I have an engagement in South Af--" began Terry, when the
parasol of the third member of the party (the one who had lagged behind,
stopping to examine, or seeming to examine a rose-bush) was laid back
upon her white muslin shoulders.
Somehow Terry forgot to finish his sentence, and I forgot to wonder what
the end was to be.
She was only a tall, white girl, simply dressed; yet suddenly the little
garden of the Châlet des Pins, with its high wall draped with crimson
bougainvilla, became a setting for a picture.
The new vision was built on too grand a scale for me, because I stand
only five foot eight in my boots, while she was five foot seven if she
was an inch, but she might have been made expressly for Terry, and he
for her. There was something of the sweet, youthful dignity of Giovanni
Bellini's Madonnas of the Trees about the girl's bearing and the pose of
the white throat; but the face was almost childlike in the candour and
virginal innocence of its large brown eyes. The pure forehead had a halo
of yellow-brown hair, burnished gold where the sun touched it; the lips
were red, with an adorable droop in the corners, and the skin had that
flower-fairness of youth which makes older women's faces look either
sallow or artificial. If we--Terry and I--had not already divined that
the auburn lady got her complexion out of bottles and boxes, we would
have known it with the lifting of that white girl's parasol.
Can a saintly virgin on a golden panel look sulky? I'm not sure, but
this virgin gave the effect of having been reluctantly torn from such a
background, and she looked distinctly sulky, even angelically cross. She
had not wanted to come into my garden, that was plain; and she lagged
behind the others to gaze at a rose-bush, by way of a protest against
the whole expedition. What she saw to disapprove of in me I was at a
loss to guess, but that she did disapprove was evident. The dazzling
brown eyes, with the afternoon sun glinting between their thick dark
fringes, hated me for something;--was it my existence, or my
advertisement? Then they wandered to Terry, and pitied, rather than
spurned. "You poor, handsome, big fellow," they seemed so say, "so you
are that miserable little man's chauffeur! You must be very unfortunate,
or you would have found a better career. I'm so sorry for you."
"Do sit down, please," I said, lest after all it should occur to Terry
to finish that broken sentence of his. "These chairs will be more
comfortable if I straighten their backs up a little. And this seat round
the tree isn't bad. I--I'll tell my servant to send out tea--we were
going to have it soon--and we can talk things over. It will be
pleasanter."
"What a _lovely_ idea!" exclaimed the auburn lady. "Why, of course we
will. Beechy, you take one of those steamer-chairs. I like a high seat
myself. Come, Maida; the gentlemen have asked us to stay to tea, and
we're going to."
Beechy--the little brown girl--subsided with a babyish meekness that
contradicted a wicked laughing imp in her eyes, into one of the _chaises
longues_ which I had brought up from its knees to a sort of "stand and
deliver" attitude. But the tall white girl (the name of "Maida" suited
her singularly well) did not stir an inch. "I think I'll go on if you
don't mind, Aunt Ka--I mean, Kittie," she said in a soft voice that was
as American in its way as the auburn lady's, but a hundred and fifty
times sweeter. I rather fancied that it must have been grown somewhere
in the South, where the sun was warm, and the flowers as luxuriant as
our Riviera blossoms.
"You will do nothing of the kind," retorted her relative peremptorily.
"You'll just stay here with Beechy and me, till we've done our
business."
"But I haven't anything to do with--"
"You're going with us on the trip, anyhow, if we go. Now, come along and
don't make a fuss."
For a moment "Maida" hesitated, then she did come along, and as
obediently as the brown child, though not so willingly, sat down in the
_chaise longue_, carefully arranged for her reception by Terry.
"Evidently a poor relation, or she wouldn't submit to being ordered
about like that," I thought. "Of course, any one might see that she's
too pretty to be an heiress. They don't make them like that. Such
beauties never have a penny to bless themselves with. Just Terry's luck
if he falls in love with her, after all I've done for him, too! But if
this tour does come off, I must try to block _that_ game."
"I expect I'd better introduce myself and my little thirteen-year-old
daughter, and my niece," said the auburn lady, putting down her parasol,
and opening a microscopic fan. "I'm Mrs. Kathryn Stanley Kidder, of
Denver, Colorado. My little girl, here--she's all I've got in the world
since Mr. Kidder died--is Beatrice, but we call her Beechy for short. We
used to spell it B-i-c-e, which Mr. Kidder said was Italian; but people
_would_ pronounce it to rhyme with mice, so now we make it just like the
tree, and then there can't be any mistake. Miss Madeleine Destrey is the
daughter of my dead sister, who was _ever_ so much older than I am of
course; and the way she happened to come over with Beechy and me is
quite a romance; but I guess you'll think I've told you enough about
ourselves."
"It's like the people in old comic pictures who have kind of balloon
things coming out of their mouths, with a verse thoroughly explaining
who they are, isn't it?" remarked Miss Beechy in a little soft, childish
voice, and at least a dozen imps looking out of her eyes all at once.
"Mamma's balloon never collapses."
To break the awkward silence following upon this frank comparison, I
bustled away with hospitable murmurs concerning tea. But, my back once
turned upon the visitors, the pink, white, and green glamour of their
presence floated away from before my eyes like a radiant mist, and I saw
plain fact instead.
By plain fact I mean to denote Félicité, my French cook-housekeeper, my
all of domesticity in the Châlet des Pins.
Félicité might be considered plain by strangers, and thank heaven she is
a fact, or life at my little villa on the Riviera would be a hundred
times less pleasant than it is; but she is nevertheless as near to being
an angel as a fat, elderly, golden-hearted, sweet-natured,
profane-speaking, hot-tempered peasant woman of Provence can possibly
be. Whatever the greatest geniuses of the kitchen can do, Félicité can
and will do, and she has a loyal affection for her undeserving master,
which leads her to attempt miracles and almost invariably to accomplish
them.
There are, however, things which even Félicité cannot do; and it had
suddenly struck me coldly in the sunshine that to produce proper cakes
and rich cream at ten minutes' notice in a creamless and cakeless
bachelor villa, miles from anywhere in particular, might be beyond even
her genius.
I found her in the back garden, forcibly separating the family pet, a
somewhat moth-eaten duck, from the yellow cat whose mouse he had just
annexed by violence.
With language which told me that a considerable quantity of pepper had
got into her disposition (as it does with most cooks, according to my
theory) she was admonishing the delinquent, whom she mercilessly
threatened to behead and cook for dinner that evening. "You have been
spared too long; the best place for you is on the table," I heard her
lecturing the evil cannibal, "though the saints know that you are as
tough as you are wicked, and all the sauce in the Alpes Maritimes would
not make of you a pleasant morsel, especially since you have taken to
eating the cat's mice."
"Félicité," I broke in upon her flood of eloquence, in my most winning
tones. "Something has happened. Three ladies have come unexpectedly to
tea."
The round body straightened itself and stood erect. "Monsieur well knows
that there is no tea; neither he nor the other milord ever take anything
but coffee and whisk--"
"Never mind," said I hastily. "There must be tea, because I asked the
ladies to have some, and they have said yes. There must also be lettuce
sandwiches, and cakes, and cream--plenty, lots, heaps, for five people."
"As well ask that serpent of wickedness, your duck, to lay you five eggs
in as many minutes."
"He isn't my duck; he's yours. You won him in a raffle and adopted him.
I suspect it's a physical impossibility for him to lay eggs; but look
here, Félicité, dear, kind, good Félicité, don't go back on me. Man and
boy I've known you these eighteen months, and you've never failed me
yet. Don't fail me now. I depend on you, you know, and you _must_ do
something--anything--for the honour of the house."
"Does Monsieur think I can command tea, cakes, and cream from the tiles
of the kitchen floor?"
"No; but I firmly believe you can evolve them out of your inner
consciousness. You wouldn't have me lose faith in you?"
"No," said Félicité, whose eyes suddenly brightened with the rapt look
of one inspired. "No; I would not have Monsieur lose faith. I will do
what I can, as Monsieur says, for the honour of the house. Let him go
now to his friends, and make his mind easy. In a quarter of an hour, or
twenty minutes at most, he shall have a feef o'clocky for which he need
not blush."
"Angel!" I ejaculated fervently, patting the substantial shoulder, so
much to be depended upon. Then with a buoyant step I hastened round the
house to rejoin the party in the front garden, where, I anxiously
realized, the tables might have been completely turned during my
absence.
Ready to hurl myself into the breach, if there were one, I came round
the corner of the villa, to meet the unexpected. I had left Terry with
three ladies; I found him with seven.
Evidently he had gone into the drawing-room and fetched chairs, for they
were all sitting down, but they were not being sociable. Mrs. Kidder's
round chin was in the air, and she wore an "I'm as good as you are, if
not better" expression. The imps in Beechy's eyes were critically
cataloguing each detail of the strangers' costumes, and Miss Destrey was
interested in the yellow cat, who had come to tell her the tragic tale
of the stolen mouse.
The new arrivals were English. I can't explain exactly how I knew that,
the moment I clapped eyes on them, but I did; and I felt sure their
nearest male relative must have made money in beer, pickles, or it might
have been corsets or soap. They were that kind; and they had a great
many teeth, especially the daughters, who all three looked exactly
thirty, no more and no less, and were apparently pleasantly conscious of
superlative virtue.
I could see the house they lived in, in England. It would be in
Surbiton, of course, with "extensive grounds." There would be a
Debrett's "Peerage," and a Burke's "Landed Gentry," and a volume of
"Etiquette of Smart Society" on the library shelves, if there was
nothing else; and in the basket on the hall table the visiting cards of
any titled beings of the family's acquaintance would invariably rise to
the top like cream.
"I understand from your friend that it is your advertisement which
appears in _The Riviera Sun_ to-day," began the Mother, whose aspect
demanded a capital M. "You are Sir Ralph Moray, I believe?"
I acknowledged my identity, and the lady continued: "I am Mrs.
Fox-Porston. You will have heard of my husband, no doubt, and I daresay
we know a great many of the same People at Home." (This with a
dust-brush glance which swept the Americans out of the field.) "I think
it is a very excellent idea of yours, Sir Ralph, to travel about the
Continent on your motor-car with a few congenial companions, and I have
brought my daughters with me to-day in the hope that we may arrange a
delightful little tour which--"
"Ting-a-ling" at the gate bell robbed us of Mrs. Fox-Porston's remaining
hope, and gave us two more visitors.
Little had I known what the consequences of one small, pink
advertisement would be! Apparently it bade fair to let loose upon us,
not the dogs of war, but the whole floating feminine population of the
French Riviera. Something must be done, and done promptly, to stem the
rising tide of ladies, or the Châlet des Pins and Terry and I with it,
would be swamped.
I looked at Terry, he looked at me, as we rose like mechanical figures
to indicate our hosthood to the new arrivals.
They were Americans; I could tell by their chins. They had no
complexions and no particular age; they wore blue tissue veils, and
little jingling bags on their belts, which showed that they were not
married, because if they had been, their husbands would have ordered the
little jingling bags into limbo, wherever that may be.
"Good-afternoon," said the leading Blue Veil. "I am Miss Carrie Hood
Woodall, the lady lawyer from Hoboken, who had such a nice little
paragraph in _The Riviera Sun_, close to your advertisement; and this is
my chaperone, Mrs. Elizabeth Boat Cully. We're touring Europe, and we
want to take a trip with you in your automobile, if--"
"Unfortunately, ladies," said I, "the services of--er--my car are
already engaged to Mrs. Kidder, of Colorado, and her party. Isn't it so,
Barrymore?"
"Yes," replied Terry stoutly. And that "yes" even if inadvertent, was
equivalent I considered, to sign and seal.
Mrs. Kidder beamed like an understudy for _The Riviera Sun_. Beechy
twinkled demurely, and tossed her plaits over her shoulder. Even Miss
Destrey, the white goddess, deigned to smile, straight at Terry and no
other.
At this moment Félicité appeared with a tray. Whipped cream frothed over
the brow of a brown jug like a white wig on the forehead of a judge;
lettuce showed pale green through filmy sandwiches; small round cakes
were piled, crisp and appetizing, on a cracked Sèvres dish; early
strawberries glowed red among their own leaves. Talk of the marengo
trick! It was nothing to this. The miracle had been duly performed;
but--there were only five cups.
Mrs. Fox-Porston and her daughters, Miss Carrie Hood Woodall and her
chaperone, took the hint and their leave; and the companions of the
future were left alone together to talk over their plans.
"Lock the gate, Félicité," said I. "Do make haste!" And she did. Dear
Félicité!
II
A CHAPTER OF PLANS
So it is that Fate calmly arranges our lives in spite of us. Although no
details of the coming trip were settled during what remained of our new
employers' visit, that was their fault and the fault of a singularly
premature sunset, rather than mine, or even Terry's; and we both felt
that it came to the same thing. We were in honour bound to "personally
conduct" Mrs. Kidder, Miss Beechy Kidder, and Miss Destrey towards
whatever point of the compass a guiding finger of theirs should signify.
It has always been my motto to take Father Time by the fore-lock, for
fear he should cut it off, or get away, or play some other trick upon
me, which the cantankerous old chap (no parent of mine!) is fond
of doing. Therefore, if I could, I would have had terms, destination,
day and hour of starting definitely arranged before that
miraculously-produced tea of Félicité's had turned to tannin. But man
may not walk through a solid wall, or strive against such conversational
gifts as those of Mrs. Kidder.
She could and would keep to anything except the point. That, whatever
its nature, she avoided as she would an indelicacy.
"Well, now, Mrs. Kidder," I began, "if you really want us to organize
this tour, don't you think we'd better discuss--"
"Of _course_ we want you to!" she broke in. "We all think it's just
awfully good of you to bother with us when you must have so many friends
who want you to take them--English people in your own set. By the way,
do you know the Duchess of Carborough?"
"I know very few duchesses or other Americans," I replied. Whereupon
Miss Kidder's imp laughed, though her mother remained grave, and even
looked mildly disappointed.
"That's a funny way of putting it," said Beechy. "One would think it was
quite an American habit, being a Duchess."
"So it is, isn't it?" I asked. "The only reason we needn't fear its
growing like the Yellow Peril is because there aren't enough dukes. I've
always thought the American nation the most favoured in the world.
Aren't all your girls brought up to expect to be duchesses, and your men
presidents?"
"_I_ wasn't," snapped Beechy. "If there was a duke anywhere around,
Mamma would take him, if she had to snatch him out of my mouth. What are
English girls brought up to expect?"
"Hope for, not expect," I corrected her. "Any leavings there are in the
way of marquesses or earls; or if none, a mere bishop or a C. B."
"What's a C. B.?" asked Mrs. Kidder anxiously.
"A Companion of the Bath."
"My goodness! Whose bath?"
"The Bath of Royalty. We say it with a capital B."
"My! How awkward for your King. And what was done about it when you had
only a Queen on the throne?"
"You must inquire of the chamberlains," I replied. "But about that trip
of ours. The--er--my car is in a garage not far away, and it can be
ready when--"
"Oh, I hope it's a _red_ car, with your coat of arms on it. I do so
admire red for an automobile. We could all fix ourselves up in red
cloaks and hats to match, and make ourselves look awfully swell--"
"Everybody'd call us 'The Crimson Ramblers,' or 'The Scarlet Runners,'
or something else horrid," tittered that precocious child Beechy.
"It isn't red, it's grey," Terry managed hastily to interpolate; which
settled one burning question, the first which had been settled or seemed
likely to be settled at our present rate of progress.
"If you are keen on starting--" I essayed again, hope triumphing over
experience.
"Yes, I'm just looking forward to that start," Mrs. Kidder caught me up.
"We _shall_ make a sensation. We're neighbours of yours, you know. We're
at the Cap Martin Hotel. Isn't it perfectly lovely there, with that big
garden, the woods and all? When we were coming to the Riviera, I told
the man at Cook's that we wanted to go to the grandest hotel there was,
where we could feel we were getting our money's worth; and he said all
the kings and princes, and queens and princesses went to the Cap Martin,
so--"
"We thought it might be good enough for us," capped Beechy.
"It's as full of royalties, as--as--"
"As a pack of cards," I suggested.
"And some of them have splendid automobiles. I've been envying them; and
only this morning I was saying to my little girl, what a lot of nice
things there are that women and children can't do, travelling
alone--automobiling for one. Then, when I came on that advertisement of
yours, I just _screamed_. It did seem as if the Hand of Providence must
have been pointing it out. And it was so funny your home being on the
Cap, too, within ten minutes' walk of our hotel. I'm sure it was
_meant_, aren't you?"
"Absolutely certain," I responded, with a glance at Terry, who was not
showing himself off to any advantage in this scene although he ought to
have been the leading actor. He did nothing but raise his eyebrows when
he thought that no one was looking, or tug at his moustache most
imprudently when somebody was. Or else he handed the cakes to Miss
Destrey, and forgot to offer them to her far more important relatives.
"I'm so sure of it," I went on, "that I think we had better arrange--"
"Yes, indeed. Of course your ch--Mr. Barrymore (or did I hear you say
Terrymore?) is a very experienced driver? We've never been in an
automobile yet, any of us, and I'm afraid, though it will be perfectly
lovely as soon as we're used to it, that we may be a little scary at
first. So it would be nice to know for sure that the driver understood
how to act in any emergency. I should _hate_ to be killed in an
automobile. It would be such--such an _untidy_ death to die, judging
from what you read in the papers sometimes."
"I should prefer it, myself," I said, "but that's a matter of taste, and
you may trust Terry--Mr. Barrymore. What he doesn't know about a
motor-car and its inner and outer workings isn't worth knowing. So when
we go--"
"Aunt K--I mean Kittie, don't you think we ought to go home to the
hotel?" asked Miss Destrey, who had scarcely spoken until now, except to
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. Félicité,
_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
own peaceful duck for your sake, with no remuneration, you abuse him."
"My dear fellow, I'm not exactly abusing you, for I know you meant well.
But you've swept me off my feet, and I'm not at home yet in mid air."
"You can lie on your back and roll in gold in the intervals of driving
the car. I promise not to give you away. Still, it's a pity you wouldn't
consent to trading a little on your title, which Heaven must have given
you for some good purpose. As it is, you've made my tuppenny-ha'penny
baronetcy the only bait, and that's no catch at all for an American
millionairess, fishing for something big in Aristocracy Pond. Why, when
that Prince of hers discovers what is doing, he will persuade the fair
Countess Dalmar that she's paying a high price for a Nobody--a
Nobody-at-All."
"What makes you think he doesn't know already, as he evidently followed
the party here, and must be constantly dangling about?"
"My detective instinct, which two seasons of pink journalism has
developed. Mrs. Kidder saw the advertisement this morning, and was
caught by it. May Sherlock Holmes cut me in the street if Prince
Dalmar-Kalm hasn't been away for the day, doubtless at Monte Carlo where
he has lost most of his own money, and will send the Countess's to find
it, if she gives him the chance."
"I never saw the fellow, or heard of him, so far as I can remember,"
said Terry thoughtfully. "What's he like? Middle-aged, stout?"
"He looks thirty, so he is probably forty; for if you look your age, you
are probably ten years past it--though that sounds a bit more Irish than
Scotch, eh? And he's far from being stout. From a woman's point of view,
I should say he might be very attractive. Tall; thin; melancholy;
enormous eyes; moustache waxed; scar on forehead; successful effect of
dashing soldier, but not much under the effect, I should say, except
inordinate self-esteem, and a masterly selfishness which would take what
it wanted at almost any cost to others. There's a portrait of Prince
Dalmar-Kalm for you."
"Evidently not the sort of man who ought to be allowed to hang about
young girls."
"Young girls with money. Don't worry about the vestal virgin. He won't
have time in this game to bother with poor relations, no matter how
pretty they may happen to be."
Terry still looked thoughtful. "Well, if we are going in for this queer
business, we'd better get off as soon as possible," said he.
I smiled in my sleeve. "St. George in a stew to get the Princess out of
the dragon's claws," I thought; but I refrained from speaking the
thought aloud. Whatever the motive, the wish was to be encouraged. The
sooner the wild goose laid the first golden egg the better. Fortunately
for my private interests, the season was waning and the coming week
would see the setting of my _Riviera Sun_ until next November. I could
therefore get away, leaving what remained of the work to be done by my
"sub"; and I determined that, Prince or no Prince, luncheon to-morrow
should not pass without a business arrangement being completed between
the parties.
III
A CHAPTER OF REVENGES
Mrs. Kidder, alias the Countess Dalmar, either had a fondness for lavish
hospitality or else she considered us exceptionally distinguished
guests. Our feast was not laid in a private dining-room (what is the
good of having distinguished guests if nobody is to know you've got
them?); nevertheless, it was a feast. The small round table, close to
one of the huge windows of the restaurant, was a condensed flower-show.
Our plates and glasses (there were many of the latter) peeped at us from
a bower of roses, and bosky dells of greenery. The Countess and the
Infant were dressed as for a royal garden party, and Terry and I would
have felt like moulting sparrows had not Miss Destrey's plain white
cotton kept us in countenance.
Mrs. Kidder had evidently not been comfortably certain whether we ought
not to march into the restaurant arm in arm, but the penniless goddess
(who had perhaps been brought to Europe as a subtle combination of
etiquette-mistress and ladies'-maid) cut the Gordian knot with a quick
glance, to our intense relief; and we filed in anyhow, places being
indicated to Terry and me on either hand of our hostess.
A painted satin menu, with a list of dishes as long as Terry's tailor's
bills, lay beside each plate. We were to be provided with all the
luxuries which were not in season; those which were would have been far
too common for an American millionairess, such as I began to be more and
more convinced that our hostess was. It was the kind of luncheon which
calls for rare and varied wines, just as certain poetical recitations
call for a musical accompaniment; therefore the Countess's first words
on sitting down at the table came as a shock.
"Now, Sir Ralph," said she, "you must just order any kind of wine you
and Mr. Ter--Barrymore like. Mr. Kidder never would have alcohol in the
house, except for sickness, and we three drink only water, so I don't
know anything about it; but I want that you gentlemen should suit your
own taste. Do make the waiter bring you something _real_ nice."
My sparkling visions of Steinberger Cabinet, Cos d'Estournel, or an
"Extra Sec" of '92, burst like a rainbow bubble. Here was one of life's
little tragedies.
Neither Terry nor I are addicted to looking too lovingly on wine when it
is red, or even pale golden; still, at this moment I had a sharp pang of
sympathy for Tantalus. To be sure, that hint as to "something real nice"
grudged no expense; but I must have been blest with more cool,
unadulterated "cheek" than two seasons of journalism had given me, to
order anything appropriate while our hostess drowned her generous
impulses in iced water.
With a wooden expression of countenance, I asked Terry what he would
have.
"Water, thanks," he replied airily, and if, instead of gazing at the
ceiling with elaborate interest, he had allowed his eye to meet mine at
that instant, a giggle might have burst over that luncheon-table, out of
a clear sky. Perforce, I felt obliged to follow his lead, for only a
guzzling brute could have bibbed alone, surrounded by four teetotallers;
but, deprived of even an innocent glass of Riviera beer, my soul
thirsted for a revenge which could not be quenched with iced water; and
I took it without waiting for repentance to set in.
"You see, Barrymore is a chauffeur," I carefully explained "and it's _en
regle_ for him, even though an amateur, to drink nothing stronger than
cold water. You will notice during our trip, Countess, how conscientious
he is in sticking to this pledge."
I felt that Terry's eye launched a dagger; but it was now my turn to be
interested in the ceiling.
"Oh, how _good_ of him!" exclaimed our hostess. "I do _admire_ that in
you, Mr. Tarrymore." (I couldn't help wondering incidentally whether the
Countess would have had such frequent lapses of memory regarding Terry's
name, if she knew that he was the brother of a marquis; but it may be
that I wronged her.) "We shall feel as safe as if we were in a house
when you are driving, now we know what kind of a man you are, shan't we,
girls?"
Poor Terry, irrevocably pledged to blue ribbonism for the term of his
natural chauffeurdom! I could have found it in my heart to pity him, had
not the iced water come jingling ironically round at that moment. Let it
then be upon his own head, with ice or without.
And this came of lunching with the widow of a Simon Pure Kidder! for I
had no longer the slightest doubt as to the middle name of the deceased.
With a brain almost cruelly clear and cold, I entered the lists with the
lady's conversational gifts, and after a spirited but brief tourney,
conquered with flying colours. My aim was to pin her down to something
definite ... like an impaled butterfly: hers was to flutter over a vast
garden of irrelevances; but she did not long evade the spike. I tipped
its point with the subtly poisonous suggestion that all arrangements
must be made in the hour, otherwise complications might arise. There
seemed to be so many people who had been attracted by that simple little
advertisement of mine, and really, I must be able to say that I and my
car were engaged for such and such a date--preferably a near one--or I
should have difficulty in evading requests for an intermediate trip with
others.
The butterfly wriggled no more. Indeed, it hastened to assure the
executioner that it was only too anxious to be comfortably pinned into
place.
"When could _you_ go, Sir Ralph?" the Countess asked.
"Day after to-morrow," I answered boldly. "Could you?"
She looked rather taken aback. "We--er--haven't motor things yet," she
demurred.
"You can get 'every requisite' (isn't that the word?) in the Nice or
Monte Carlo shops, if that's your only reason for delay."
Still the lady hesitated.
"Mamma's new crown isn't painted on all her baggage yet," said Beechy,
living up, with a wicked delight, to her _rôle_ of _enfante terrible_.
"It's being done, but it wasn't promised till the end of the week. Say,
Sir Ralph, don't you think she's mean not to give me even so much as
_half_ a crown?"
What I really thought was, that she deserved a slap; but Terry spared
the Countess a blush and me the brain fag of a repartee conciliatory
alike to parent and child.
"I think we ought to warn you," he said, "that the car hasn't precisely
the carrying capacity of a luggage van. Perhaps when you find that
there's no room for Paris frocks and hats, you'll repent your bargain."
"Can't we take a small trunk and a satchel apiece?" asked the Countess.
"I don't see how we could do with less."
"I'm afraid you'll have to, if you go in--er--my friend's car," Terry
went on ruthlessly. "A small box between the three of you, and a
good-sized dressing-bag each, is all that the car can possibly manage,
though, of course Moray and I will reduce our luggage to the minimum
amount."
Mrs. Kidder looked grave, and at this instant, just as I felt that
Terry's future was wavering in the balance, outweighed probably by a
bonnet-box, there was a slight stir in the restaurant, behind our backs.
Involuntarily I turned my head, and saw Prince Dalmar-Kalm hurrying
towards us, his very moustache a thundercloud. He could not have
appeared at a less convenient time for us.
I was sure that he had not been consulted in regard to the automobile
trip; that perhaps even now he was in ignorance of the plan; and that,
when he came to hear of it as he must within the next five minutes, he
would certainly try (as Beechy would have put it) to snatch the American
ladies out of our mouths. It was like Terry's luck, I said to myself,
that this evil genius should arrive at the moment when Mrs. Kidder had
been mercilessly deprived of her wardrobe by a mere chauffeur. Terry had
stupidly given her an opening if she chose to take it, by suggesting
that she might "repent her bargain," and I was sure it wouldn't be
Dalmar-Kalm's fault if she didn't take it.
A second later he had reached our table, was bending low over Mrs.
Kidder's hand, smiling with engaging wickedness at Beechy, and sending a
dark look of melancholy yearning to catch Miss Destrey's sympathies.
"Why, Prince," the Countess exclaimed in a loud tone, calculated to
reach the ears of any neighbouring royalties, and let them see that she
was as good as they were. "Why, Prince, if you're not always surprising
people! I thought you were staying another day with the Duke of Messina,
in Monte Carlo."
"Told you so!" my eyebrows--such as they are--telegraphed to Terry. "He
_has_ been away; only just back; pantomime demon act."
"I found myself homesick for Cap Martin," returned the Prince, with an
emphasis and a sweeping glance which made a present of the compliment to
the woman, the girl, and the child.
"Humph," I sneered into the iced water; "lost all he'd got with him, and
the money-lenders turned crusty; that's when the homesickness came on."
"Well, now you're here, do sit down and have lunch with us," said Mrs.
Kidder, "unless"--archly--"your homesickness has destroyed your
appetite."
"If it had, the pleasure of seeing you again would restore it;" and once
more the Austrian's gaze assured each one of the three that she alone
was the "you" referred to.
A nod and a gesture whisked a couple of attentive waiters to the table,
and in the twinkling of an eye--even an American eye--a place was laid
for the Prince, with duplicates of all our abortive wine glasses.
"Aha, my fine fellow, _you_ are no friend of cold water," I said to
myself in savage glee, as I acknowledged with a bow Mrs. Kidder's
elaborate introduction. "You will suffer even more than we have
suffered." But I reckoned without a full knowledge of the princely
character.
History repeated itself with an invitation to the new guest to choose
what he liked from the wine card. I looked for a courteous refusal,
accompanied by some such gallant speech as, that he would drink to the
ladies only with his eyes; but nothing of the kind happened. He searched
the list for a moment with the absorption of a connoisseur, then
unblushingly ordered a bottle of Romanée Conti, which wine, he
carelessly announced, he preferred to champagne, as being "less
obvious." The price, however, would be pretty obvious on Mrs. Kidder's
bill, I reflected; seventy francs a bottle, if it were a penny. But did
this coming event cast a shadow on the Prince's contentment? On the
contrary, it probably spangled its fabric with sequins. He sniffed the
wine as if it had been an American Beauty rose, and quaffed it
ecstatically, while Terry and I gulped down our iced water and our
indignation.
"You are just in time, Prince," said Mrs. Kidder, "to advise us about
our journey. Oh, I forgot, you don't know anything about it yet. But we
are going a tour in Sir Ralph Moray's automobile. Won't it be fun?"
"Indeed?" the Prince ejaculated hastily; and I had the satisfaction of
knowing that one swallow of the Romanée Conti was spoiled for him. "No;
I had not heard. I did not know that Sir Ralph Moray was one of your
friends. Has not this been suddenly arranged?"
"It was only _decided_ yesterday," replied the Countess; and it was
revealed to me that the plump lady was not without feminine guile.
"What is your car?" inquired the Prince, turning abruptly to me.
"A Panhard," I answered, with a gaze as mild as milk. I knew that my
answer would disappoint him, as he could pick no flaws in the make of
the machine.
"What horse-power?" he continued his catechism.
"Something under twenty," I conservatively replied.
"Twelve," corrected Terry, with a brutal bluntness unworthy of a Celt.
He can be very irritating sometimes; but at this moment he was looking
so extremely handsome and devil-may-care, that my desire to punch his
head dissolved as I glared at him. Could any woman in her senses throw
over even a titleless Terry and twelve horses worth of motor for a hat
box or two and an Austrian Prince?
"A twelve-horse-power car, and you propose to take with you on tour
three ladies, their maid, and all their luggage?" demanded Dalmar-Kalm
in his too excellent English. "But it is not possible."
I felt suddenly as if Terry and I were little snub-nosed boys,
trafficking with a go-cart.
"They won't need their maid, Prince," said Miss Destrey. "I know how to
do Aunt Kathryn's hair; and the dear Sisters have taught me how to mend
beautifully."
This was the first time she had opened her lips during luncheon, except
to eat with an almost nun-like abstemiousness; and now she broke silence
to rescue a scheme which yesterday had excited her active disapproval.
The girl, always interesting because of her unusual type of beauty,
gained a new value in my eyes. She excited my curiosity, although her
words were a practical revelation of her place in the trio. Why did she
break a lance in our defence? and had she been torn from a convent to
serve her rich relatives, that she should mention the "Sisters" in that
familiar and tender tone? Had her beautiful white sails veered with a
new wind, and did she _want_ to go with us, after all? Did she wish to
tell the Prince in a sentence, how poor she really was? These were a few
of the hundred and one questions which the Fair Maid of Destrey's
charming and somewhat baffling personality set going in my mind by a
word or two.
I thought that the Prince's face fell, but Mrs. Kidder's contribution to
the defence distracted my attention.
"We don't expect to take _all_ our luggage," she said. "I suppose some
things could be sent by rail from place to place to meet us, couldn't
they?"
"Of course," I assured her, before Dalmar-Kalm could enlarge upon the
uncertainties of such an arrangement. "That's what is always done. And
your maid could travel by rail too."
"She is a Parisienne," exclaimed Mrs. Kidder, "and she's always saying
she wouldn't leave France for twice the wages I pay."
"Try her with three times," suggested Beechy. But Miss Destrey was
speaking again. "As I said, it doesn't matter about Agnes. Aunt Kathryn
and Beechy shan't miss her; and she never does anything for me."
"What a pity," complained the Prince, "that my automobile is at the
moment laid up for repairs. Otherwise I should have been only too
delighted to take you three ladies to the world's end, if you had the
wish. _It_ is not 'something less than twenty,' as Sir Ralph Moray
describes his twelve-horse-power car, but is something _more_ than
twenty, with a magnificently roomy Roi de Belge tonneau and
accommodation for any amount of luggage on the roof. By the way, yours
has at least a cover, I make no doubt, Sir Ralph?"
"No," I was obliged to admit, my mouth somewhat dry--owing perhaps to
the iced water.
"No cover? How, then, do you propose to protect these ladies from the
rain?" This with virtuous indignation flashing from his fierce eyes, and
a gesture which defended three helpless feminine things from the
unscrupulous machinations of a pair of villains.
My ignorance of motor lore bereft me of a weapon with which to parry the
attack, but Terry whipped out his sword at last.
"The ladies will be protected by their motor coats and our rugs. I'm
sure they're too plucky to sacrifice the best pleasures of motoring to a
little personal comfort when it may happen to rain," said he. "A roof
gives no protection against rain except with curtains, and even when
without them it curtails the view."
"Ah, it is cruel that I cannot get my car for you from Paris," sighed
the Prince. "Perhaps, Countess, if you would wait a little time--a week
or ten days, I might--"
"But we're going day after to-morrow, aren't we, Kittie?" quickly broke
in Miss Destrey.
"I suppose so," replied Mrs. Kidder, who invariably frowned when
addressed as "Cousin Kathryn," and brightened faintly if spontaneously
Kittied. "We've been here more than a week, and seen all the Nice and
Monte Carlo sights, thanks to the Prince. There's nothing to keep us,
although it will be about all we can do to get off so soon."
"Why be hurried, Countess?" with a shrug of the shoulder half-turned
from me.
"Well, I don't know." Her eyes wandered to mine. "But it suits Sir Ralph
to leave then. I guess we can manage it."
"Where will you go?" inquired Dalmar-Kalm. "I might be able to join you
somewhere _en route_."
"Well, that's one of the things we haven't quite settled yet," replied
Mrs. Kidder. "Almost anywhere will suit me. We can just potter around.
It's the automobiling we want. You know, this is our first time in
Europe, and so long as we're in pretty places, it's much the same to
us."
"Speak for yourself, Mamma," said Beechy. "Maida and I want to see the
Lake of Como, where Claude Melnotte had his palace."
"Oh, my, yes! In 'the Lady of Lyons.' I do think that's a perfectly
sweet play. Could we go there, Sir Ralph?"
"I must consult my chauffeur," said I, cautiously. "He knows more about
geography than I do. He ought to; he spends enough money on road-maps to
keep a wife. Eh, Terry?"
"There are two ways of driving to the lakes from here," he said, with a
confidence which pleased me. "One can go coasting along the Italian
Riviera to Genoa, and so direct to Milan; or one can go through the
Roya Valley, either by Turin, or a short cut which brings one eventually
to Milan."
"Milan!" exclaimed Miss Destrey, with a rapt look. "Why, that's not very
far from Verona, is it? And if it's not far from Verona, it can't be so
far from Venice. Oh, Beechy, think of seeing Venice!"
"It would be easy to go there," Terry said, showing too much eagerness
to fall in with a whim of the poor relation's; at least such was my
opinion until, with a glint of mischief in his eyes, he added, "If we
went to Venice, Countess, it would be very easy to run on if you liked,
into Dalmatia and see the new estate which you told us you thought of
buying, before you actually made up your mind to have it."
It was all I could do to strangle a chuckle at birth. Good old Terry!
Even he was not above taking a neat revenge; and the Prince's face
showed _how_ neat it was. Could it be possible that the estate in
Dalmatia which carried with it a title, had any resemblance to Claude
Melnotte's in that "sweet" play, "The Lady of Lyons?" I could scarcely
believe that, much as I would have liked to; but it was clear he would
have preferred to have the American millionairess take the beauties of
her new possessions for granted.
"Oh, I have made up my mind already. I made it up before we arrived
here," said the Countess.
"She made it up in the train coming from Paris," corrected Beechy,
"because she had to decide what name to register, and whether she'd have
the crown put on her handkerchiefs and her baggage. But she had to cable
to our lawyer in Denver before she could get money enough to pay what
the Prince wanted in advance, and the answer only came back this
morning."
"And what does the lawyer say?" asked the Prince, flushing, and with a
strained playfulness contradicted by the eager light in his eyes.
"Just guess," said Beechy, all her imps in high glee.
"Lawyers are such dry-as-dust persons," remarked His Highness, hastily
lifting his glass to toss off the last of the Romanée Conti. "If he is a
wise man who studies his client's interests, he could not advise Madame
against taking a step by which she ascends to a height so advantageous,
but--"
"Oh, he said yes," cried Mrs. Kidder, clinging to her Countesshood.
"And he put after it, 'If you will be a fool,'" added Beechy. "But he'll
have to pay for that part of the cable himself."
"He is my late husband's cousin," explained Mrs. Kidder, "and he takes
liberties sometimes, as he thinks Simon would not have approved of
everything I do. But you needn't tell _everything_, Beechy."
"Let's talk about Venice," said Miss Destrey with a lovely smile, which
seemed all the more admirable as she had given us so few. "I have always
longed to see Venice."
"But you didn't want to come abroad, you can't say you did," remarked
Beechy the irrepressible, resenting her cousin's interference, as a
naughty boy resents being torn from the cat to whose tail he has been
tying a tin can. "And I know _why_ you didn't!" She too had a taste for
revenge!
Miss Destrey blushed--I wondered why; and so, no doubt, did Terry
wonder. (Had she by chance been sent abroad to forget an unfortunate
attachment?)
"You wanted to stay with the Sisters," Beechy took advantage of the
other's embarrassed silence to go on. "And you hardly enjoyed Paris at
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 glacés_? 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
Félicité 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 Félicité 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 Châlet 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, Félicité 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 ça," 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. Félicité, 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 Châlet 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
retorted, cramming on my cap and wishing I had covered my tearful eyes
with the motor-goggles which lay in my pocket. "If our millionairesses
don't respect this pace, I'll eat my hat when I have time, or--"
But Terry was not destined to hear the end of that boast--which perhaps
was just as well for me in the end, as things were to turn out. We spun
down the avenue of pines, and in less than a lazy man's breathing space
were at the door of the Cap Martin Hotel.
Quite a crowd of smart-looking people was assembled there, and for one
fond second I dreamed that they were waiting to witness our arrival. But
that pleasant delusion died almost as soon as born. As the group divided
at our approach we saw that they had been collected round a large
motor-car--a motor-car so resplendent that beside it our poor
rejuvenated thing looked like a little, made-up, old Quaker lady.
In colour this hated rival was a rich, ripe scarlet, with cushions to
match in her luxurious tonneau. Her bonnet was like a helmet of gold for
the goddess Minerva, and wherever there was space, or chance, for
something to sparkle with jewelled effect, that something availed
itself, with brilliance, of the opportunity.
The long scarlet body of the creature was shaded with a canopy of
canvas, white as the breast of a gull, and finished daintily all round
with a curly fringe. The poles which held it were apparently of
glittering gold, and the railing designed to hold luggage on the top, if
not of the same precious metal, was as polished as the letters of Lord
Chesterfield to his long-suffering son.
One jealous glance was enough to paint this glowing picture upon our
retinas, and there it remained, like a sun-spot, even when a later one
was stamped upon it. Three figures in long, grey motor-coats, exactly
alike, and motor-caps, held on with shirred chiffon veils came forward,
two advancing more quickly than the third.
"How _do_ you do, Sir Ralph? Good morning, Mr. Barrymore," Mrs. Kidder
and Beechy were saying. "We're all ready," went on the former,
excitedly. "We've been admiring the Prince's car, which came last night.
Isn't it a perfect beauty? Just _look_ at the sweet poppy-colour, and
his crest in black and gold. I never saw anything so pretty, did you?"
"I like Sir Ralph's car," said Miss Destrey. "It's such a cool grey, and
even in wind or dust it will always look neat. We shall match it very
well with our grey coats and veils."
I could have kissed her; while as for Terry, standing cap in hand, he
looked grateful enough to have grovelled at our fair champion's feet.
Nevertheless, we could not help knowing in our hearts that no normal
girl could help preferring that celestial peacock to our grey hen, and
that Miss Destrey's wish to be kind must have outstripped her obligation
to be truthful. This knowledge was turning a screw round in our vitals,
when His Highness himself appeared to give it a still sharper twist.
He had been standing at a short distance, talking with a small chauffeur
of a peculiarly solemn cast of countenance. Now he turned and joined the
ladies with a brisk step and an air of proprietorship.
The fact that he was wearing a long motor-coat, of a smart cut, and a
peaked cap which became him excellently, struck me as ominous. Had he
caught the birds--our birds--after all, at the last moment, and had they
been too cowardly to let us know?
"Oh, good morning, Sir Ralph," said he. "So that is the famous car. Mine
is a giant beside it, is it not? No doubt you and your friend are clever
men, but you will need all your cleverness to provide comfortable
accommodation for these ladies' luggage as well as themselves. I would
not mind betting you ten to one that you will fail to do it to their
satisfaction."
"I'll take the bet if the ladies don't mind," responded Terry promptly,
those lazy Irish eyes of his very bright and dark.
"What--a bet? Why, that will be real fun," laughed the Countess, showing
her dimples. "What is it to be?"
A slightly anxious expression hardened the lines of the Prince's face
when he found himself taken in earnest. "A thousand francs against a
hundred of yours shall it be, Monsieur? I don't wish to plunge my hand
into your pockets," said he, shrewdly making a virtue of his caution.
"As you like," Terry assented. "Now for the test. Your luggage has come
down, Countess?"
"Yes; here it all is," said Mrs. Kidder, guiltily indicating three stout
hotel porters who stood in the background heavily laden. "Dear me, it
_does_ look as if it was going to be a mighty tight squeeze, doesn't
it?"
In response to a gesture, the porters advanced in line, like the Three
Graces; and counting rapidly, I made out that their load consisted of
one good-sized "Innovation" cabin box, two enormous alligator-skin
dressing bags, one small bag, and two capacious hold-alls, umbrellas,
parasols, and a tea-basket.
I began to tremble for more than Terry's five pounds. I now saw all the
Prince's guile. He had somehow managed to produce his car, and had, no
doubt, used all his eloquence to persuade Mrs. Kidder that she would be
justified in changing her mind at the last moment. That he had failed
was owing either to her sense of honour or her liking for the
English-speaking races over foreigners, even princely ones. But refusing
to abandon hope, His Highness had pinned his last fluttering rag of
faith upon the chance that our car would fail to fulfil its contract.
With this chance, and this alone still to depend upon, he had probably
kept his melancholy chauffeur up all night, sponging and polishing. If
the Panhard refused to absorb the ladies' luggage, there would be his
radiant chariot waiting to console them in the bitter hour of their
disappointment.
As Terry stood measuring each piece of luggage with his eye, silently
apportioning it a place in the car, I felt as I had felt at "Monte"
when, at roulette, as many as three of my hard-won five franc pieces
might easily go "bang," like the sixpence of another canny Scot. Will it
be _rouge_; will it be _noir_?... I could never look; and I could not
look now.
Turning to Beechy, who stood at my shoulder eagerly watching, I flung
myself into conversation. "What are you laughing at?" I asked.
"At all of you," said the Infant. "But especially the Prince."
"Why especially the Prince?" I was growing interested.
"I should think you'd know."
"How could I know?"
"Because I guess you're pretty bright. Sometimes I look at you, and you
seem to be thinking the same things I am. I don't know whether that
makes me like you or hate you, but anyway it makes me give you credit
for good wit. I'm not exactly _stupid_."
"I've noticed that. But about the Prince?"
"Can't you guess how he got his automobile just in the nick of time?"
"Yes, I can guess; but maybe it wouldn't be right."
"And maybe it would. Let's see."
"Well, the Countess heard favourably from her lawyer in Denver on
Tuesday, and paid down something in advance for the Dalmatian estate."
"_And_ the title. Right first time. The 'something' was eight thousand
dollars."
"Phew!"
"That's just the word for it. When she's seen the place, she'll pay the
rest--eight thousand more. Quite a lot for those gold crowns on the
luggage; but we all have our dolls with eyes to open or shut, and poor
Mamma hasn't had any chance to play dolls till just lately. She's busy
now having heaps of fun, and I'm having a little, too, in my simple
childish way. Well, so long as we don't interfere with each other!...
The Prince sees that Mamma can afford to buy dolls, so he would like to
play with her, and me, and--"
"And he doesn't want Barrymore and me in the playroom."
"I _thought_ you were bright! It made him just sick to think of you two
walking off with us from under his nose. _There_ was his automobile in
Paris, and there was he _here_, perfectly useless, because I'm sure he'd
lent the auto to his uncle."
"To his uncle?" I echoed.
"Don't you say that in England, or Scotland, or wherever you come from?
'Put it up the Spout'--pawned it; and he couldn't move one way or the
other till he'd got Mamma's money. The minute that was in his pocket he
began to plan. The first thing he did was to tell Mamma that he had a
surprise for her, which he'd been getting ready for several days, and it
would be spoiled if we all went off with you and that awfully
good-looking chauffeur of yours on Thursday. He said he _must_ have till
Saturday morning, and Mamma was so curious to know what the mystery was,
and so afraid of hurting a real live Prince's feelings, that she was
finally persuaded to wait."
"Oh, that is the explanation of her letter to me."
"Yes. I suspected what was going on, but she didn't; having dimples
makes people so soft and good-natured. I don't _know_ what the Prince
did after she'd given her word to stay, but I guessed."
"He wired money to his chauffeur in Paris or somewhere, had the car got
out of the clutches of that relative you referred to, and brought on
here at top speed."
"But not its own speed. When it arrived here last night, it was just as
spick and span as it is now."
"Then it must have come by train."
"That's what I think. I bet the Prince was too much afraid some accident
might happen to it on the way, and upset all his plans, to trust to
having the thing driven down here by road."
"You must be careful not to let your brain develop too fast," I pleaded,
"or when you grow up, you--"
"That's such a long time off, I don't need to worry yet," Miss Kidder
remarked demurely. "Do you think I look more than my age?"
"No, but you _talk_ more," said I.
"How can you judge? What do you know about little girls like me?"
"I don't know anything about little girls like you, because all the
rest got broken; but if you'll teach me, I'll do my best to learn."
"The Prince is doing his best too, I guess. I wonder which will learn
faster?"
"That depends partly on you. But I should have thought all his time was
taken up with your mother."
"Oh my! no. He wants _her_ to think that. But you see, he's got more
time than anything else, so he has plenty to spare for me, and Maida
too. Do you know what he called us to a friend of his in this hotel? The
friend's wife told her maid, and she passed it on to our Agnes, who
repeated it to me because we were sending her away. 'Kid, Kidder,
Kiddest.' I'm Kiddest, of course; that's easy enough; but it would save
the Prince lots of trouble and brain-fag if he only knew which was
'Rich,' which 'Richer,' and which 'Richest.'"
"Heavens!" I ejaculated. "If you have got together all this mass of
worldly wisdom at thirteen, what will you have accumulated at twenty?"
"It all depends on when Mamma allows me to be twenty," retorted the
little wretch. And what lengths this indecently frank conversation might
have reached between us I dare not think, had not an exclamation from
Terry cut it short.
"What do you say to that, Countess, and Miss Destrey? Have I won the
bet?" he was demanding, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket,
as he stood to survey his work.
If I had not infinite belief in Terry's true Irish ingenuity, I would
have considered the day and the bet both lost before the test had been
essayed. But he had justified my faith, and there on the almost
obliterated lines of the motor-car, behold a place for everything, and
everything in its place.
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 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. "_Chère_
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
pæan 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 Châlet 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
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."
Here was a revelation, but before I had time to question the speaker
further, she and her mother were clinging to me again as if I were a
Last Straw or a Forlorn Hope.
This sort of thing lasted for four or five minutes, which doubtless
appeared long to them, but they were not in the least tedious for me. I
was quite enjoying myself as a Refuge for Shipwrecked Mariners, and I
was rather sorry than otherwise when the mariners began to find their
own bearings. They saw that, though their escapes seemed to be by the
breadth of a hair, they always were escapes, and that no one was anxious
except themselves. They probably remembered, also, that we were not
pioneers in the sport of motoring; that some thousands of other people
had done what we were doing now, if not worse, and still lived to tell
the tale--with exaggerations.
Presently the strained look left their faces; their bodies became less
rigid; and when they began to take an interest in the shops and villas I
knew that the worst was over. My arm and knee felt lonely and deserted,
as if their mission in life had been accomplished, and they were now
mere obstacles, occupying unnecessary space in the tonneau.
As for Terry, I could see by the set of his shoulders and the way he
held his head that he was pleased with life, for he is one of those
persons who shows his feelings in his back. He had fought against the
idea of this trip, but now that the idea was crystallizing into fact he
was happy in spite of himself. After all, what could he ask for that he
had not at this moment? The steering wheel of his beloved motor
(preserved for him by my cunning) under his hand; beside him a plucky
and beautiful girl; behind him a devoted friend; in front, the fairest
country in the world, and a road which would lead him to the Alps and to
Piedmont; to stately Milan and to the blue, rapturous reaches of Como; a
road that would beckon him on and on, past villages sleeping under
cypresses on sunny hillsides to Verona, the city of the "star-crossed
lovers;" to Giotto's Padua, and by peerless Venice to strange Dalmatia,
where Christian and Moslem look distrustfully into one anothers' eyes.
What all this would be to Terry I knew, even though he was playing a
part distasteful to him; for if he had missed being born an Irishman,
and had reconciled it to his sense of humour to be born at all, he would
certainly have been born an Italian. He loves Italy; he breathes the air
as the air of home, drawn gratefully into the lungs after a long
absence. He learned to speak Italian as easily as he learned to walk,
and he could pour out liquid line after line of old Italian poetry, if
he had not all a British male's self-conscious fear of making an ass of
himself. History was the only thing except cricket and rowing, in which
he distinguished himself at Oxford, and Italian history was to him what
novels are to most boys, though had it occurred to him at the time that
he was "improving his mind" by reading it, he would probably have shut
up the book in disgust.
He was not a stranger in the country to which we were going, though he
had never entered it by this gate, and most of his motoring had been
done in France; but I knew that he would revel in visiting once more the
places he loved, in his own car.
"Have you ever been in Italy?" I asked the Countess, but she was evilly
fascinated by a dog which seemed bent on committing suicide under our
car, and it was Beechy who answered.
"We've never been _anywhere_ before, any of us," she said. "Mamma and I
only had our machinery set running a few months ago, but now we _are_
wound up, goodness knows how far we'll get. As for Maida--she's no
mechanical doll like us. But do you know the play about the statue that
came to life?"
"Galatea?" I suggested.
"Yes, that's the name. Maida's like that; and I suppose she'll go back
as soon as she can, and ask to be turned into a statue again."
"What do you mean?" I ventured to inquire; for these hints of the
child's about her cousin were gradually consuming me to a grey ash with
curiosity.
"I can't tell you what _I_ mean, because I promised I wouldn't. But
that's what _Maida_ means."
"What she means?"
"Yes, to go back and be turned into a statue, forever and ever."
I ought to have been glad that the girl destined herself for a colder
fate than a union with a happy-go-lucky Irishman as poor as herself,
but somehow I was not glad. Watching the light glint on a tendril of
spun gold which had blown out from the motor-hood, I could not wish her
young heart to be turned to marble in that mysterious future to which
Beechy Kidder hinted she was self-destined.
"Perhaps I'd better make love to her myself," was the suggestion that
flashed into my mind; but innate canniness sturdily pushed it out again.
With my seven hundred a year, and _The Riviera Sun_ only just beginning
to shed a few golden beams, I could not afford to take a penniless
beauty off Terry's hands, even to save him from a disastrous marriage or
her from the fate of Galatea.
Yet what a day it was in which to live and love, and motor over perfect
roads through that radiant summer-land which the Ligurians loved, the
Romans conquered, and the modern world comes from afar to see.
Though it was early in April, with Easter but a few days behind us, the
sky, the air, the flowers, belonged to June--a rare, rich June to praise
in poetry or song. Billows of roses surged over old pink and yellow
stucco walls, or a soaring flame of scarlet geranium ran along their
tops devouring trails of ivy with a hundred fiery tongues. White villas
were draped with gorgeous panoply of purple-red bougainvillea; the
breeze in our faces was sweet with the scent of lemon blossoms and a
heavier under-tone of white-belled datura. Far away, over that polished
floor of lapis-lazuli which was the sea, summer rain-clouds boiled up
above the horizon, blue with the soft grey-blue of violets; and in the
valleys, between horned or pointed mountains, we saw spurts of golden
rain glittering in the morning sun.
What a world! How good to be in it, to be "in the picture" because one
had youth, and was not hideous to look upon. How good to be in a
motor-car. This last thought made the chorus at the end of each verse
for me. I was very glad I had put that advertisement in _The Riviera
Sun_, and that "Kid, Kidder, and Kiddest" had been before any one else
in answering it.
I could hear Terry telling Miss Destrey things, and I knew that if they
listened the others could hear him too. This was well, because an
unfailing flow of information was included in the five guineas a day,
and I should have been embarrassed had I, as the supposed owner of the
car, been called upon to supply it.
I listened with a lazy sense of proprietorship in the man, as my
chauffeur related the pretty legend of St. Agnes's ruined castle and the
handsome Pagan who had loved the Christian maiden; while he described
the exquisite walks to be found up hidden valleys among the serrated
mountains behind Mentone; and enlarged upon the charms of picnics with
donkeys and lunch-baskets under canopies of olives or pines, with a
carpet of violets and primroses.
He seemed well up in the history of the Grimaldis and that exciting
period when Mentone and legend-crusted Roquebrune had been under the
rule of tyrannical princes of that name, as well as Hercules's rock,
Monaco, still their own. He knew, or pretended to know, the precise date
when Napoleon III. filched Nice and Savoy from reluctant Italy as the
price of help against the hated Austrians. Altogether, I was so pleased
with the way in which he was beginning, that I should have been tempted
to raise his wages had he been my paid chauffeur.
We skimmed past Englishmen and English or American girls in Panama hats,
on their way to bathe or play tennis; on all hands we heard the English
tongue. Skirting the Old Town, piled high upon its narrow nose of land,
we entered the East Bay, and so climbed up to the French side of the
Pont St. Louis.
"Now for some red tape," explained Terry. "When I came to the Riviera
this season I had no idea of going further, and I'm sorry to say I left
my papers in London, where apparently they've disappeared. But as the
Countess doesn't care to come back into France, I hope it won't matter
much."
As he spoke, a _douanier_ lounged out of his little whitewashed lair,
and asked for that which Terry had just said he had not.
"I have no papers," Terry informed him, with a smile so agreeable that
one hoped it might take away the sting.
"But you intend to return to France?" persisted the official, who
evidently gave even a foreigner credit for wishing to rush back to the
best country on earth with as little delay as possible.
"No," said Terry apologetically. "We are on our way to Italy and
Austria, and may go eventually to England by the Hook of Holland."
The _douanier_ gave us up as hopeless, with a resigned shrug of his
shoulders. He vanished into his lair, consulted a superior officer, and
after a long delay returned with the news that we must pay ten centimes,
probably as a penance for our mulish stupidity in leaving France.
I dropped a penny into his palm.
"Will you have a receipt for this sum?" he asked.
"No, thanks," I smiled. "I have infinite trust in your integrity."
"Perhaps we'd better get the receipt all the same," said Terry. "I've
never been paperless before, and there may be some fuss or other."
"It took them twenty minutes to decide about their silly ten centimes,"
said the Countess "and it will take them twenty more at least to make
out a receipt for it. Do let's go on, if he'll let us. I'm dying to see
what's on the other side of this bridge. We haven't been over into Italy
before; there was so much to do in Nice and Monte Carlo."
"All right, we'll risk it, then, as you wish it," Terry agreed; and our
prophetic souls did not even turn over in their sleep.
On we went, up the steep hill which, with our load, we were obliged to
climb so slowly that Terry and I were ashamed for the car, and tried
diplomatically to make it appear that, had we liked, we could have flown
up with undiminished speed.
[Illustration: _As he spoke a douanier lounged out of his little
whitewashed lair_]
Terry pointed out objects of interest here and there. I questioned him
rapidly and he, playing into my hand, answered as quickly, so that,
if our wheels lagged, our tongues gave the effect of keeping up a
rattling pace.
"Don't you think there's something particularly interesting and romantic
about frontiers?" asked Terry of the company in general. "Only a
fictitious and arbitrary dividing line, one would say, and yet what a
difference on either side, one from the other! Different languages,
different customs, prejudices so different that people living within ten
yards of each other are ready to go to war over them. Here, for
instance, though the first thing one thinks of in crossing the bridge is
the splendid view, the second thought that comes must be, how bare the
Italian country looks compared to the luxuriant cultivation we're
leaving behind. We're turning our backs now on cosy comfort, well-kept
roads, tidy houses, tidy people; and we're on our way to meet beggars,
shabbiness, and rags, poverty everywhere staring us in the face. Yet
much as I admire France, it's to Italy I give my love."
"Talking of frontiers," I flung back the ball to him, "I've often asked
myself why it is that a whole people should with one accord worship
coffin-beds, six inches too short for a normal human being, hard wedges
instead of bolsters, and down coverings three feet thick; while another
whole people just round a geographical corner fiercely demand brass
beds, springy mattresses, and blankets light as--as love. But nobody has
ever satisfactorily answered that question, which may be far more
important in solving the profound mystery of racial differences than it
would seem."
"Why are _you_ prudent and economical, and I reckless and extravagant?"
inquired Terry.
"Because I come from the country that took over England, and you from
the country that England took over," I explained. But Terry only
laughed, being too busy to pick up the cudgels for his native land.
"Probably that's also why I'm a chauffeur while you're an editor," he
added, and Miss Destrey's little nose and long curve of dark eyelash,
seen by me in profile, expressed the sympathy which one young soul in
misfortune must feel for another.
"Now we're in Italy," he went on. "What I said is coming true already.
Look at these carts crawling to meet us down the hill. The harness seems
to be a mere collection of 'unconsidered trifles,' picked up accidently
by the drivers; bits of leather, string and rope. And the road you see
is strewn with loose stones, though a few metres further back it was so
smooth one might dance on it. In dear, lazy Italy, steam-rollers are
almost as unknown as dragons. In most districts, if one wants to mend a
road, one dumps some stones on it, and trusts to luck and traffic to
have them eventually ground in. But luckily our tyres are almost as
trustworthy as the Bank of England, and we don't need to worry about the
roads."
At the pink Italian custom house Terry got down and vanished within, to
pay the deposit and receive certain documents without which we could not
"circulate" on Italian soil. Far above our heads looked down the old,
brown keep of the Grimaldis, once lords of all the azure coast; below us
glittered Mentone, pink and blue and golden in the sun; beyond Monte
Carlo sat throned, siren-like, upon her rock.
Terry had scarcely engaged the attention of the officials when the buzz
of a motor, livelier and more nervous than our faithful "thrum, thrum,"
called to us to turn our heads; and there was Prince Dalmar-Kalm's
brilliant car flying up the hill, even as we had wished to fly.
The Prince stopped his motor close to ours, to speak with the Countess
sitting alone in it, and announced that he would have overtaken us long
ago, had he not found himself obliged to pause for a talk with the
ex-Empress Eugenie.
This announcement much impressed Mrs. Kidder, who doubtless realized
more fully than before her good fortune in having such a distinguished
personage for a travelling companion.
He stood leaning on the side of our luggage-wreathed vehicle, with an
air of charming condescension. There was no need for him to hurry over
the formalities of the _douane_, he said, for even if he were
considerably behind us in starting, he would catch us up soon after we
had reached La Mortola.
Thus beguiled, the half-hour occupied by the leisurely officials in
providing us with papers and sealing the car with an important looking
leaden seal, passed not too tediously for the ladies. Finally, the
Prince saw us off, smiling a "turned-down smile" at our jog trot as we
proceeded up that everlasting hill, which runs like a shelf along the
face of the great grey cliff of rock.
Far below, azure waves draped the golden beach with blue and silver
gauze and fringed it daintily with a foam of lace.
Then, at last, the steep ascent came to an end, with a curve of the road
which plunged us down into a region of coolness and green shadow.
"Why, I don't think Italy's so shabby after all," exclaimed the
Countess. "Just see that pretty little Maltese cross above the road, and
that fine school-house--"
"Ah, but we're in Hanbury-land now," I said.
"Hanbury-land? I never heard of it. Is it a little independent
principality like Monacoa? But how funny it should have an
English-sounding name sandwiched in right here between Italy and
France."
"The lord of the land is an Englishman, and a benevolent one, a sort of
fairy god-father to the poor in all the country round," I explained.
"You won't find Hanbury-land mentioned on the map; nevertheless it's
very real, fortunately for its inhabitants; and here's the gate of the
garden which leads to the royal palace. La Mortola is a great show
place, for the public are allowed to go in on certain days. I forget if
this is one of them, but perhaps they will let us see the garden,
nevertheless. Shall I ask?"
It was in my mind that, if we stopped, we might miss the Prince as well
as see the garden, so that we should be killing two birds with one
stone, and I was glad when the Countess caught eagerly at the suggestion
that we should beg for a glimpse of La Mortola, a place famed throughout
Europe.
Permission was given; the big iron gates swung open to admit us. We
entered, and a moment later were descending a long flight of stone steps
to terraces far below the level of the road where the car stood waiting
our return.
Had Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the days before his unfortunate
misunderstanding with the Geni and demanded the most beautiful of
gardens, the fulfilment of his wish could have taken no fairer form than
this. Strange, tropical flowers, vivid as flame, burned in green
recesses; water-sprites upset their caskets of pearls over rock-shelves
into translucent pools where lilies lay asleep, dreaming of their own
pale beauty. Long, green pergolas, starred with flowers, framed
blue-veiled pictures of distant coast-line, and mediæval strongholds,
coloured with the same burnt umber as the hills on which they stood,
gloomed and glowed across a cobalt sea.
There is nothing that pleases the normal male more than to be able to
point out objects worthy of interest or admiration to the female of his
kind. Since time immemorial, have not landscape-pictures in books of
travel been filled in, in the foreground, with the figures of men
showing the scenery to women? Did any one ever see such a work of art
representing a woman as indicating any point of view to a man? No doubt
many could have done so; and the ladies in the pictures had probably
noticed the objects in question before their male escorts pointed to
them; but knowing the amiable weakness of the other sex, they politely
refrained from saying, "Oh, we saw that _long_ ago."
Thus did Terry and I, after the conventional traditions of our species,
lead our little party through avenues of cypresses, to open rock-spaces,
or among a waving sea of roses to battle-grounds of rare cacti, with
writhing arms like octopi transformed into plants.
Here, peering down into a kind of dyke, paved with rough tesselation, we
vied with each other in telling our charges that this was the old Roman
road to Gaul, the Aurelian Way, over which Julius Cæsar, St. Catherine
of Siena, Dante, and other great ones passed. Then we showed them one of
Napoleon's old guns, covered with shells, as when it was fished out of
the sea. We enlarged upon the fact that there was no tree, shrub, or
blossom on the known face of the earth of which a specimen did not grow
at La Mortola; and when we had wandered for an hour in the garden
without seeing half there was to see, we climbed the long flight of
steps again, congratulating ourselves--Terry and I--that we had played
Dalmar-Kalm rather a neat trick. The crowd of villagers who had
clustered round our car outside the entrance gates would screen it from
the Prince as he flashed by, and he would go on and on, wondering how we
had contrived to get so far ahead.
Our way would take us, after passing through Ventimiglia, up the Roya
Valley which Terry had decided upon as a route because of its wild and
unspoiled beauty, different from anything that our passengers could have
seen in their brief experience of the Riviera. But as there were no inns
which offered decent entertainment for man or automobile within
reasonable distance, we were to lunch at Ventimiglia, and no arrangement
had been made with Dalmar-Kalm concerning this halt. His
confidence--perhaps well founded--in the superiority of his speed over
ours had led him to believe that he could pause at our side for
consultation whenever he wished. Therefore, we had left Cap Martin
without much discussion of plans. Mrs. Kidder was of opinion that we
would find him waiting in front of the "best hotel in Ventimiglia," with
an excellent luncheon ordered.
"The best hotel in Ventimiglia!" poor lady, she had an awakening before
her. Not only was there no Prince, but there was no best hotel. Old
Ventimiglia, in its huddled picturesqueness, must delight any man with
eyes in his head; new Ventimiglia must disgust any man with a vacancy
under his belt. As we sat in the shabby dining-room of a seventh-rate
inn (where the flies set an example of attentiveness the waiters did not
follow), pretending to eat macaroni hard as walking-sticks and veal
reduced to _chiffons_, I feared the courage of our employers would fail.
They could never, in all their well-ordered American lives, have known
anything so abominable as this experience into which we had lured them,
promising a pilgrimage of pleasure. But the charmingly dressed beings,
who looked like birds of paradise alighted by mistake in a pigsty, made
sport of the squalor which we had expected to evoke their rage.
"Dear me, I wish we'd brought some chewing gum," was Beechy's one
sarcasm at the expense of the meal, and Maida and the Countess laughed
merrily at everything, even the flies, which they thought did not know
their own power as well as American flies.
"We've some _lovely_ cakes and candy packed in that sweet tea-basket we
bought at an English shop in Paris," said Mrs. Kidder; "but I suppose
we'd better not get anything out to eat now, for fear of hurting the
waiters' feelings. What do you think, Sir Ralph?"
"Personally, I should like nothing better than to hurt them," I replied
severely, "but I'm thinking of myself. Cakes and candy on top of those
walking-sticks! 'T were more difficult to build on such a foundation
than to rear Venice on its piles and wattles.
"We'd better save what we have till later on," said Maida. "About four
o'clock, perhaps we shall be glad to stop somewhere, and I can make tea.
It will be fun having it in the automobile."
"There she goes now, revealing domestic virtues!" I thought ruefully.
"It will be too much for Teddy to find her an all-round out-of-doors and
indoors girl in one. He always said the combination didn't exist; that
you had to put up with one or the other in a nice girl, and be jolly
thankful for what you'd got."
But Terry did not seem to be meditating upon the pleasing trait just
brought to light by his travelling companion. He remarked calmly that by
tea-time we should doubtless have reached San Dalmazzo, a charming
little mountain village with an old monastery turned into an inn; and
then he audibly wondered what had become of the Prince.
"My! What a shame, I'd almost forgotten him!" exclaimed Mrs. Kidder.
"He must have given us up in despair and gone on."
"Perhaps he's had a break-down," I suggested.
"What! with that wonderful car? He told me last night that nothing had
ever happened to it yet. He must be miles ahead of us by now."
"Then this is his astral body," said Terry. "Clever of him to 'project'
one for his car too. Never heard of its being done before."
Nor had I ever heard of an astral body who swore roundly at its
chauffeur, which this apparition now stopping in front of the restaurant
windows did. It called the unfortunate shape in leather by several
strange and creditably, or perhaps discreditably, original names, but as
this flow of eloquence was in German, it could not be appreciated by the
ladies. Mrs. Kidder knew the languages not at all, and Miss Destrey and
Beechy had remarked, when Dalmatia was proposed, that their knowledge
was of the copy-book order.
So completely upset was the Prince, that on joining us he forgot to be
sarcastic. Not a question, not a sneer as to our progress, not an
apology for being late. He flung himself into a chair at the table,
ordered the waiters about with truculence, and, having thus relieved his
mind, began complaining of his bad luck.
An Austrian Prince, when cross and hungry, can be as undesirable a
social companion as a Cockney cad, and the Countess's distinguished
friend did not show to advantage in the scene which followed. Yes, there
had been an accident. It was unheard of--abominable; entirely the fault
of the chauffeur. Chauffeurs (and he looked bleakly at Terry) were
without exception brutes--detestable brutes. You put up with them
because you had to; that was all. The automobile had merely stopped. It
must have been the simplest thing in the world for a professional to
discover what was wrong; yet this animal, Joseph, could do nothing but
poke his nose into the machinery and then shrug his hideous shoulders.
Why yes, he had taken out the valves, of course, examined the sparkling
plugs, and tested the coil. Any amateur could have done so much. It gave
a good spark; there was no short circuit; yet the motor would not start,
and the chauffeur was unable to give an explanation. Twice he had taken
the car to pieces without result--absolutely to pieces. Then, and not
till then, had the creature found wit enough to think of the
carburetter. There was the trouble, and nowhere else. All that delay and
misery had been caused by some grit which had penetrated into the
carburetter and prevented the needle working. This it was to have a
donkey instead of a chauffeur.
"But it didn't occur to you that it might be the carburetter," said
Terry, taking advantage of a pause made by the arrival of the Prince's
luncheon, which that gentleman attacked with ardour.
"Why should it?" haughtily inquired Dalmar-Kalm. "I am not engaged in
that business. I pay other people to think for me. Besides, it is not
with me as with you and your friend, who must be accustomed to accidents
of all sorts on a low-powered car, somewhat out of date. But I am not
used to having mine _en panne_. Never mind, it will not happen again.
_Mon Dieu_, what a meal to set before ladies. I do not care for myself,
but surely, Sir Ralph, it would have been easy to find a better place
than this to give the ladies luncheon?"
"Sir Ralph and Mr. Barrymore wanted us to go to the railway-station,"
Miss Destrey defended us, "but we thought it would be dull, and
preferred this, so our blood is on our own heads."
We finished gloomily with lukewarm coffee, which was so long on the way
that the Countess thought we might as well wait for the "poor Prince."
Then, when we were ready, came a violent shower, which meant more
waiting, as the Countess did not agree cordially with her daughter's
remark that to "drive in the rain would be good for the complexion."
When at last we were able to start it was after three, and we should
have to make good speed if we were to arrive at San Dalmazzo even by
late tea-time. Terry was on his mettle, however, and I guessed that he
was anxious our first day should not end in failure.
Tooling out of Ventimiglia, that grim frontier town whose name has
become synonymous to travellers with waiting and desperate resignation,
we turned up by the side of the Roya, where the stream gushes seaward,
through many channels, in a wide and pebbly bed. The shower just past,
though brief, had been heavy enough to turn a thick layer of white dust
into a greasy, grey paste of mud. On our left was a sudden drop into the
rushing river, on the right a deep ditch, and the road between was as
round-shouldered as a hunchback. Seeing this natural phenomenon, and
feeling the slightly uncertain step of our fat tyres as they waddled
through the pasty mud, the pleasant smile of the proud motor-proprietor
which I had been wearing hardened upon my face. I didn't know as much
about motors as our passengers supposed, but I did know what side-slip
was, and I did not think that this was a nice place for the ladies to be
initiated. There might easily be an accident, even with the best of
drivers such as we had in Terry, and I was sure that he was having all
he could do to keep on the crown of the road. At any moment, slowly as
we were going, the heavily laden car might become skittish and begin to
waltz, a feat which would certainly first surprise and then alarm the
ladies, even if it had no more serious consequences.
It was while we were in this critical situation, which had not yet begun
to dawn upon our passengers, that Dalmar-Kalm seized the opportunity of
racing past us from behind, blowing a fanfarronade on his horn, to prove
how much faster his car could go than ours. In the instant that he was
abreast of us, our tonneau, which overhung the back axle further than is
considered wise in the latest types of cars, swung outwards, with a slip
of the tyre in the grey grease, and only by an inch which seemed a mere
hair's breadth was Terry able to save us from a collision.
The Countess screamed, Beechy clung once more to my knee, and we all
glared at the red car with the white canopy as it shot ruthlessly ahead.
The Prince's tyres were strapped with spiked leather covers, which we
could not carry as they would lose us too much speed; therefore the
danger of side-slip was lessened for him, and he flew by without even
knowing how near we had been to an accident. The anger painted on our
ungoggled faces he doubtless attributed to jealousy, as he glanced back
to wave a triumphant _au revoir_ before flashing out of sight, round a
bend of the road.
There is something very human, and particularly womanish, about a
motor-car. The shock of the narrow escape we had just had seemed to have
unsteadied the nerve of our brave Panhard for the moment. We were
nearing a skew bridge, with an almost right-angled approach; and the
strange resultant of the nicely balanced forces that control an
automobile skating on "pneus" over slippery mud twisted us round,
suddenly and without warning. Instantly, oilily, the car gyrated as on a
pivot, and behold, we were facing down the valley instead of up. Terry
could not had done it had he tried.
"Oh, my goodness!" quavered the Countess, in a collapse. "Am I dreaming,
or has this happened? It seems as if I must be out of my wits!"
"It _has_ happened," answered Terry, laughing reassuringly, but far from
joyous within, I knew. "But it's nothing alarming. A little side-slip,
that's all."
"A _little_ side-slip!" she echoed. "Then may I be preserved from a big
one. This automobile has turned its nose towards home again, of its own
accord. Oh, Sir Ralph, I'm not sure I like motoring as much as I thought
I would. I'm not sure the Hand of Providence didn't turn the car back."
"Nonsense, Mamma!" cried Beechy. "The other day the Hand of Providence
was pointing out Sir Ralph's advertisement in the newspaper. It can't be
always changing its mind, and you can't, either. We're all _alive_,
anyhow, and that's something."
"Ah, but how long shall we be?" moaned her mother. "I don't want to be
silly, but I didn't know that an automobile had the habits of a
kangaroo and a crab, and a base-ball, and I'm afraid I shall never get
used to them."
Terry explained that his car was not addicted to producing these
sensational effects, and compared the difficulties it was now combatting
with those which a skater might experience if the hard ice were covered
an inch deep with soft soap. "We shall soon be out of this," he said,
"for the road will be better higher up where the hill begins, and the
rain has had a chance to drain away."
Cheered by these promises, the poor Countess behaved herself very well,
though she looked as if she might burst an important blood-vessel, as
Terry carefully turned his car on the slippery surface of the road's
tortoise-back. I was not happy myself, for it would have been as "easy
as falling off a log" for the automobile to leap gracefully into the
Roya; but the brakes held nobly, and as Terry had said, there was better
going round the next corner.
Here the mountains began to draw together, so that we were no longer
travelling in a valley, but in a gorge. Deep shadow shut us in, as if we
had left the warm, outer air and entered a dim castle, perpetually
shuttered and austerely cold. Dark crags shaped themselves
magnificently, and the scene was of such wild grandeur that even Beechy
ceased to be flippant. We drove on in silence, listening to the battle
song of the river as it fought its way on through the rocky chasm its
own strength had hewn.
The road mounted continuously, with a gentle incline, weaving its grey
thread round the blind face of the mountain, and suddenly, turning a
shoulder of rock we came upon the Prince's car which we had fancied many
kilometres in advance. The big red chariot was stationary, one wheel
tilted into the ditch at the roadside, while Dalmar-Kalm and his
melancholy chauffeur were straining to rescue it from its ignominious
position.
Our Panhard had been going particularly well, as if to justify itself in
its employers' eyes after its late slip from rectitude. "She" was taking
the hill gaily, pretending not to know it from the level, and it did
seem hard to play the part of good Samaritan to one marked by nature as
a Levite. But--_noblesse oblige_, and--honour among chauffeurs.
Terry is as far from sainthood as I am, and I knew well that his bosom
yearned to let Dalmar-Kalm stew in his own petrol. Nevertheless, he
brought the car to anchor without a second's hesitation, drawing up
alongside the humiliated red giant. Amid the exclamations of Mrs.
Kidder, and the suppressed chuckles of the _enfante terrible_, we two
men got out, with beautiful expressions on our faces and dawning haloes
round our heads, to help our hated rival.
Did he thank us for not straining the quality of our mercy? His name and
nature would not have been Dalmar-Kalm if he had. His first words at
sight of the two ministering angels by his side were: "You must have
brought me bad luck, I believe. Never have I had an accident with my car
until to-day, but now all goes wrong. For the second time I am _en
panne_. It is too much. This viper of a Joseph says we cannot go on."
Now we began to see why the Prince's chauffeur had acquired the
countenance of a male Niobe. Wormlike resignation to utter misery was,
we had judged, his prevailing characteristic; but hard work,
ingratitude, and goodness knows how much abuse, caused the worm to turn
and defend itself.
"How go on with a change-speed lever broken short off, close to the
quadrant?" he shrilled out in French. "And it is His Highness who broke
it, changing speed too quickly, a thing which I have constantly warned
him against in driving. I cannot make a new lever here in a wilderness.
I am not a magician."
"Nor a Félicité," I mumbled, convinced that, had my all-accomplished
adjutant been a chauffeur instead of a cook, she would have been equal
to beating up a trustworthy lever out of a slice of cake.
"Be silent, brigand!" roared the Prince, and I could hardly stifle a
laugh, for Joseph is no higher than my ear. His shoulders slope; his
legs are clothespins bound with leather; his eyes swim in tears, as our
car's crankhead floats in an oil bath; and his hair is hung round his
head like many separate rows of black pins, overlapping one another.
"We shall save time by getting your car out of the ditch, anyhow,"
suggested Terry; and putting our shoulders to it, all four, we succeeded
after strenuous efforts in pushing and hauling the huge beast onto the
road. I had had no idea that anything less in size than a railway engine
could be so heavy.
There was no question but that the giant was helpless. Terry and Joseph
peered into its inner workings, and the first verdict was confirmed.
"There's an imperfection in the metal," said expert Terry. In his place,
I fear I should not have been capable of such magnanimity. I should have
let the whole blame rest upon my rival's reckless stupidity as a driver.
"It's plain you can do nothing with your car in that condition," he went
on. "After all" (even Terry's generous spirit couldn't resist this one
little dig), "it would have been well if I'd brought that coil of rope."
"Coil of rope? For what purpose?"
"To tow you to the nearest blacksmith's, where perhaps a new lever could
be forged."
"This is not a time for joking. Twelve horses cannot drag twenty-four."
"They're plucky and willing. Shall they try? Here comes a cart, whose
driver is wreathed in smiles. Labour exulting in the downfall of
Capitol. But Labour looks good-natured." "Good morning," Terry hailed him
in Italian. "Will you lend me a stout cord to tow this automobile?"
The Prince was silent. Even in his rage against Fate, against Joseph,
and against us, he retained enough common sense to remember that 'tis
well to choose the lesser of two evils.
The carter had a rope, and an obliging disposition. A few francs changed
hands, and the Hare was yoked to the Tortoise. Yoked, figuratively
speaking only, for it trailed ignominiously behind at a distance of
fifteen yards, and when our little Panhard began bumbling up the hill
with its great follower, it resembled nothing so much as a very small
comet with a disproportionately big tail.
The motor, in starting, forged gallantly ahead for a yard or two, then,
as it felt the unexpected weight dragging behind, it appeared surprised.
It was, indeed, literally "taken aback" for an instant, but only for an
instant. The brave little beast seemed to say to itself, "Well, they
expect a good deal of me, but there are ladies on board, and I won't
disappoint them."
"Félicité," I murmured. "She might have stood sponser to this car."
With another tug we began to make progress, slow but steady. Joseph, as
the lighter weight, sat in his master's car, his hand on the
steering-wheel, while the Prince tramped gloomily behind in the mud.
Seeing how well the experiment was succeeding, however, he quickened his
pace and ordered the chauffeur down. "I do not think that the difference
in weight will be noticeable," he said, and as Joseph obediently jumped
out the Prince sprang in, taking the wheel. Instantly the rope snapped,
and the big red chariot would have run back had not Joseph jammed on the
brake.
Terry stopped our car, and the ill-matched pair had to be united again,
with a shorter rope. "Afraid you'll have to walk, Prince," said he, when
he had finished helping Joseph, who was apparently on the brink of
tears.
Dalmar-Kalm measured me with a glance. "Perhaps Sir Ralph would not
object to steering my car?" he suggested. "Then Joseph could walk, and I
could have Sir Ralph's place in the tonneau with the ladies, where a
little extra weight would do no harm. Would that not be an excellent
arrangement?"
"David left Goliath on the ground, and dragged away only his head," I
remarked. "_We_ are dragging Goliath; and I fear his head would be the
last--er--feather. So sorry. Otherwise we should be delighted."
What the Prince said as the procession began to move slowly up-hill
again, at a pace to keep time with the "Dead March in Saul," I don't
pretend to know, but if his remarks matched his expression, I would not
in any case have recorded them here.
VI
A CHAPTER OF PREDICAMENTS
On we went, and twilight was falling in this deep gorge, so evidently
cut by the river for its own convenience, not for that of belated
tourists. Here and there in the valley little rock towns stood up
impressively, round and high on their eminences, like brown, stemless
mushrooms. Each little group of ancient dwellings resembled to my mind a
determined band of men standing back to back, shoulder to shoulder,
defending their hearths and homes from the Saracens, and saying grimly,
"Come on if you dare. We'll fight to the death, one and all of us."
At last, without further mishap, we arrived at a mean village marked
Airole on Terry's map. It was a poverty-stricken place, through which,
in happier circumstances, we should have passed without a glance,
but--there, by the roadside was a blacksmith's forge, more welcome to
our eyes than a castle double-starred by Baedeker.
Joseph's spleen reduced by the sight of his master tramping in the mud
while he steered, the little chauffeur looked almost cheerful. He
promised to have a new lever ready in half an hour, and so confident was
he that he urged us to go on. But the Prince did not echo the
suggestion, and Mrs. Kidder proposed that we should have tea while we
waited.
Though it was she who gave birth to the idea, it would have been Miss
Destrey who did all the work, had not Terry and I offered such help as
men can give. He went in search of water to fill the shining kettle; I
handed round biscuits and cakes, while the Prince looked on in the
attitude of Napoleon watching the burning of Moscow.
We were as good as a circus to the inhabitants of Airole; nay, better,
for our antics could be seen gratis. The entire population of the
village, and apparently of several adjacent villages, collected round
the two cars. They made the ring, and--we did the rest. We ate, we
drank, and they were merry at our expense. The children wished also to
eat at our expense, and when I translated (with amendments) a flattering
comment on Mrs. Kidder's hair and complexion offered by an incipient Don
Juan of five years, she insisted that all the spare pastry should be
distributed among the juveniles. The division led to blows, and tears
which had to be quenched with coppers; while into the mêlée broke a
desolate cry from Joseph, announcing that his lever was a failure. The
Prince strode off to the blacksmith's shop, forgetful that he held a
teacup in one hand and an _éclair_ in the other. With custard dropping
onto the red-hot bar which Joseph hammered, he looked so forlorn a
figure that Terry was moved to pity and joined the group at the forge.
He soon discovered what Joseph might have known from the first, had he
not lived solely in the moment, like most other chauffeurs. The village
forge was not _assez bien outillée_ for a finished lever to be produced;
the Prince's car must remain a derelict, unless we towed it into port.
We started on again, in the same order as before and at the same pace,
followed by all our village _protegés_, who commented frankly upon the
plight of the Prince, and the personal appearance of the whole party. At
length, however, our moving audience dwindled. A mile or two beyond
Airole the last, most enterprising boy deserted us, and we thought
ourselves alone in a twilight world. The white face of the moon peered
through a cleft in the mountain, and our own shadows crawled after us,
large and dark on the grey ribbon of the road. But there was another
shadow which moved, a small drifting shadow over which we had no
control. Sometimes it was by our side for an instant as we crept up the
hill, dragging our incubus, then it would fall behind and vanish, only
to reappear again, perhaps on the other side of the road.
"What _is_ that tiny black thing that comes and goes?" asked Mrs.
Kidder.
"Why," exclaimed Miss Destrey, "I do believe it's that forlorn little
dog that was too timid to eat from my hand in the village. He must have
followed all this time."
"Do see if it is the same dog, Prince," Beechy cried to the tall, dark
figure completing the tail of our procession.
A yelp answered. "Yes, it is he," called the Prince. "A mangy little
mongrel. I do not think he will trouble us any longer."
Then a surprising thing happened. The Vestal Virgin rose suddenly in the
car. "You have _kicked_ him!" she exclaimed, the gentleness burnt out of
her pretty voice by a swift flame of anger. "Stop the car, Mr.
Barrymore--quickly, please. I want to get down."
Never had that Panhard of Terry's checked its career in less space. Out
jumped Maida, to my astonishment without a word of objection from her
relatives. "I will not have that poor, timid little creature frightened
and hurt," I heard her protesting as she ran back. "How _could_ you,
Prince!"
Now, though the girl was probably no more than a paid companion, she was
lovely enough to make her good opinion of importance to the most
inveterate fortune hunter, and as Miss Destrey called, "Here, doggie,
doggie," in a voice to beguile a rhinoceros, Dalmar-Kalm pleaded that
what he had done had been but for the animal's good. He had not injured
the dog, he had merely encouraged it to run home before it was
hopelessly lost. "I am not cruel, I assure you. My worst troubles have
come from a warm heart. I hope you will believe me, Miss Destrey."
"I should be sorry to be your dog, or--your chauffeur," she answered.
"He won't come back to be comforted, so I suppose after all we shall
have to go on. But I shall dream of that poor little lonely, drifting
thing to-night."
Hardly had she taken her seat, however, than there was the dog close to
the car, timid, obsequious, winning, with his wisp of a head cocked on
one side. We drove on, and he followed pertinaciously. Mildly adjured by
the Countess to "go home, little dog," he came on the faster. Many
adventures he had, such as a fall over a heap of stones and entanglement
in a thorn-bush. But nothing discouraged the miniature motor maniac in
the pursuit of his love, and we began to take him for granted so
completely that after a while I, at least, forgot him. On we toiled with
our burden, the moon showering silver into the dark mountain gorges, as
if it were raining stars.
The further we burrowed into the fastnesses of the Roya, the more wild
in its majestic beauty grew the valley, so famed in history and legend.
The gorge had again become a mere gash in the rock, with room only for
the road and the roaring river below. High overhead, standing up against
the sky like a warning finger, towered the ancient stronghold of Piena,
once guardian fortress of the valley; where the way curved, and crossed
a high bridge spanning the torrent, we passed a tablet of gleaming
bronze set against the rock wall, in commemoration of Masséna's victory
in an early campaign of Napoleon's against Italy. Sometimes we rushed
through tunnels, where the noise of the motor vibrated thunderously;
sometimes we looked down over sublime precipices; but the road was
always good now, and we had no longer to fear side-slip.
We met no one; nevertheless Terry got down and lit our lamps,
Dalmar-Kalm making an unnecessary delay by insisting that Joseph should
light his too. This was sheer vanity on the Prince's part. He could not
bear to have his great Bleriots dark, while our humbler acetylene
illumined the way for His Mightiness.
Suddenly we ran out of the bewildering lights and shadows, woven across
our way by the moon, into the lights of a town; and two _douaniers_
appeared in the road, holding up their hands for us to stop. Down jumped
Terry to see why he should be challenged in this unexpected place, and
the Prince joined him.
"Your papers, if you please," demanded the official.
Terry produced those which had been given us at the custom-house in
Grimaldi.
"But these are Italian papers. Where are those for France?" asked the
_douanier_.
"This is not France," said the Prince, before Terry could speak.
"It is Breil, and it is France," returned the man. "France for nine
kilometres, until Fontan, where Italian territory begins again."
Terry laughed, rather ruefully. "Well," said he, "I have no French
papers, but we paid a penny at the Pont St. Louis to leave France. This
car is French, and we ought not to pay anything to enter; nevertheless,
I shall be delighted to hand you the same sum for the privilege of
coming in again."
"Ah, you paid ten centimes? Then, if you have the receipt it may be
possible to permit you to go on."
"Permit us to go on!" echoed Dalmar-Kalm angrily. "I should think so,
indeed."
"I'm sorry, I took no receipt," said Terry. "I thought it an unnecessary
formality."
"_No_ formality is unnecessary, monsieur," said the servant of form. "I
also am sorry, but in the circumstances you cannot enter French
territory without a receipt for the ten centimes. As a man I believe
implicitly that you paid the sum, as an official I am compelled to doubt
your word."
Who but a Frenchman could have been so exquisitely pompous over a penny?
I saw by Terry's face that he was far from considering the incident
closed; but he had too much true Irish tact to try and get us through by
storming.
"Let us consider," he began, "whether there is not some means of escape
from this difficulty."
But Dalmar-Kalm was in no mood to temporize, or keep silent while others
temporized. The lights of Breil showed that it was a town of comparative
importance; it was past eight o'clock; and no doubt His Highness's
temper was sharpened by a keen edge of hunger. That he--he should be
stopped by a fussy official figure-head almost within smell of food,
broke down the barrier of his self-restraint--never a formidable
rampart, as we had cause to know. In a few loud and vigorous sentences
he expressed a withering contempt for France, its institutions, its
customs, and especially its custom-houses.
"If you'd mix up the Prince's initials, as you do Mr. Barrymore's
sometimes, and call him Kalmar-Dalm, there'd be some excuse for it,"
Beechy Kidder murmured to the Countess.
"Hush, he'll hear!" implored the much-enduring lady, but there was small
danger that His Highness would hear any expostulations save his own.
The functionary's eye grew dark, and Terry frowned. Had the _douanier_
been insolent, my peppery Irishman would have been insolent too,
perhaps, in the hope of cowering the man by truculence more
swashbuckling than his own; but he had been as polite as his countrymen
proverbially are, if not goaded out of their suavity. "Look here,
Prince," said Terry, hanging onto his temper by a thread (for he also
was hungry), "suppose you leave this matter to me. If you'll take the
ladies to the best hotel in town, Moray and I will stop and see this
thing through. We'll follow when we can."
Dalmar-Kalm snapped at the suggestion; our passengers saw that it was
for the best, and yielded. As they moved away, a shadowy form hovered in
their wake. It was the little black dog of Airole.
The Marquis of Innisfallen's first quarrel with his brother had been
caused by Terry's youthful preference for an army instead of a
diplomatic career. Now, could his cantankerous relative have seen my
friend, he would once more have shaken his head over talents wasted. The
oily eloquence which Terry lavished on that comparatively insignificant
French _douanier_ ought to have earned him a billet as first secretary
to a Legation. He pictured the despair of the ladies if the power of
France kept them prisoners at the frontier; he referred warmly to that
country's reputation for chivalry; he offered to pay the usual deposit
on a car entering France and receive it back again at Fontan. To this
last suggestion the harassed official replied that technically his
office was closed for the night, and that after eight o'clock he could
not receive money or issue papers. Finally, therefore, Terry was reduced
to appealing to the cleverness and resource of a true Frenchman.
It was a neat little fencing-match, which ended in the triumph of Great
Britain. The functionary, treated like a gentleman by a gentleman,
became anxious to accommodate, if he could do so "consistently with
honour." He had an inspiration, and suggested that he would strain his
duty by sending a messenger with us to Fontan, there to explain that we
were merely _en passage_. Out of the crowd which had collected a loutish
youth was chosen; a _pourboire_ promised; and after many mutual
politenesses we were permitted to _teuf-teuf_ onto the sacred soil of
France.
It is no more safe to judge a French country inn by its exterior, than
the soul of Cyrano de Bergerac by his nose. The inn of Breil had not an
engaging face, but it was animated by the spirit of a Brillat Savarin,
by which we were provided with a wonderful dinner in numerous courses.
We could not escape from it, lest we hurt the _amour-propre_ of the
cook, and it was late when we were ready for our last _sortie_.
"You will never reach San Dalmazzo to-night, towing that car," we were
informed by the powers that were in the hotel. "The hills you have
passed are as nothing to the hills yet to come. You will do well to
spend the night with us, for if you try to get on, you will be all night
upon the road."
Our passengers were asked to decide, and we expected a difference of
opinion. We should have said that the two girls would have been for
pushing on, and the Countess for stopping. But that plump lady had
already conquered the tremors which, earlier in the day, had threatened
to wreck our expedition at its outset.
"It's a funny thing," said she, "but I want to go on, just _on_, for the
sake of _going_. I never felt like that before, travelling, not even in
a Mann Boudoir car at home, which I guess is the most luxurious thing on
wheels. I always wanted to _get_ there, wherever 'there' was; but now I
want to go on and on--I wouldn't care if it was to the end of the world,
and I can't think why, unless it's the novelty of automobiling. But it
can't be that, either, I suppose, for only a little while ago I was
thinking that bed-ridden people weren't badly off, they were so _safe_."
We all laughed at this (even the Prince, whom plenty of champagne had
put into a sentimental mood), and I suddenly found myself growing quite
fond of the Countess, crowns and all.
After the heat of the _salle à manger_, the night out of doors appeared
strangely white and cold, its purple depths drenched with moonlight, the
high remoteness of its dome faintly scintillant with icy points of
stars. An adventure seemed to lie before us. We turned wistfully to each
other for the warmth of human companionship, and had not the Prince been
trying to flirt with little Beechy unseen by Mamma, I should have felt
kindly even to him. Even as it was, I consented to let him try sitting
in his own car, and the rope, inured to suffering, had the consideration
not to break.
We forged on, up, up the higher reaches of the Roya valley, so glorious
in full moonlight that it struck us into silence. The mountains towering
round us shaped themselves into castles and cathedrals of carved marble,
their façades, grey by day, glittering white and polished under the
magic of the moon. The wonderful crescent town of Saorge, hanging on the
mountain-side, would alone have been worth coming this way to see if
there had been nothing else. Veiled by the mystery of night, the old
Ligurian stronghold appeared to be suspended between two rocky peaks,
like a great white hammock for a sleeping goddess, and now and then we
caught a jewelled sparkle from her rings.
They had not told an idle tale at the inn. The road, weary of going
up-hill on its knees, like a pilgrim, got suddenly upon its feet and we
were on its back, with the Prince's chariot trailing after us.
Nevertheless, our car did not falter, though the motor panted. Scarcely
ever were we able to pass from the first speed to the second, but then
(as Beechy remarked), considering all things, we ought to be thankful
for any speed above that of a snail.
At Fontan--when he had vouched for us--we dismissed our _oaf_, with a
light heart and a heavy pocket. Again, we were in Italy, a silent,
sleeping Italy, drugged with moonlight, and dreaming troubled dreams of
strangely contorted mountains. Then suddenly it waked, for the moon was
sinking, and the charm had lost its potence. The dream-shapes vanished,
and we were in a wide, dark basin, which might be green as emerald by
day. A grey ghost in a long coat, with a rifle slung across his back,
flitted into the road and startled the Countess by signing for us to
stop.
"Oh, mercy! are we going to be held up?" she whispered. "I'd forgotten
about the brigands."
"Only an Italian custom-house brigand," said Terry. "We've got to San
Dalmazzo after all, and it isn't morning yet."
"Yes, but it is!" cried Beechy. "There's a clock striking twelve."
A few minutes later we were driving along a level in the direction of
the monastery-hotel, which was said to be no more than a hundred metres
beyond the village. I had often heard of this hostelry at the little
mountain retreat of San Dalmazzo, loved and sought by Italians in the
summer heat. The arched gateway in the wall was clearly monastic, and we
felt sure that we had come to the right place, when Terry steered the
car through the open portal and a kind of tunnel on the other side.
Before the door of a long, low building he stopped the motor. Its
"thrum, thrum" stilled, the silence of the place was profound, and not a
light gleamed anywhere.
Terry got down and rang. We all waited anxiously, for much as we had
enjoyed the strange night drive, the day had been long, and the chill
of the keen mountain air was in our blood. But nothing happened, and
after a short pause Terry rang again. Silence was the only answer, and
it seemed to give denial rather than consent.
Four times he rang, and by this time the Prince and I were at his back,
striving to pierce the darkness behind the door which was half of glass.
At last a greenish light gleamed dim as a glow-worm in the distance, and
framed in it a figure was visible--the figure of a monk.
For an instant I was half inclined to believe him a ghost, haunting the
scene of past activities, for one does not expect to have the door of an
hotel opened by a monk. But ghosts have no traffic with keys and bolts;
and it was the voice of a man still bound to flesh and blood who greeted
us with a mild "_Buona sera_" which made the night seem young.
Terry responded and announced in his best Italian that we desired
accommodation for the night.
"Ah, I see," exclaimed the monk. "You thought that this was still a
hotel? I am sorry to disappoint you, but it ceased to be such only
to-day. The house is now once more what it was originally--a monastery.
It has been bought by the Order to which I belong."
"Isn't he going to take us in?" asked the Countess, dolefully.
"I'm afraid not," said Terry, "but I'll see what I can do."
Ah, that "seeing what he could do!" I knew it of old, for Terry's own
brother is the only person I ever met who could resist him if he stooped
to wheedle. Italian is a language which lends itself to wheedling, too;
and though the good monk demurred at first, shook his head, and even
flung up his hands with a despairing protest, he weakened at last, even
as the _douanier_ had weakened.
"He says if we'd come to-morrow, it would have been impossible to admit
us," translated Terry for the ladies' benefit. "The lease is going to be
signed then. Until that's done the house isn't actually a monastery, so
he can strain a point and take us in, rather than the ladies should have
to travel further so late at night. I don't suppose we shall find very
luxurious accommodation, but--"
"It will be perfectly lovely," broke in Beechy, "and Maida, anyhow, will
feel quite at home."
"He won't accept payment, that's the worst of it," said Terry, "for we
shall make the poor man, who is all alone, a good deal of bother. Still,
I shall offer something for the charities of his Order, and he can't
refuse that."
We filed into the hall, lit only by the lantern in our host's hand, and
"Kid, Kidder, and Kiddest," charmed with the adventure, were
delightfully ready to be pleased with everything. We seemed to have
walked nearly half a kilometre before we were shown into small, bare
rooms, furnished only with necessaries, but spotlessly clean. Then beds
had to be made and water brought. Every one worked except the Prince,
and every one, with the same exception, forgot to be tired and ceased to
be cold in the pleasure of the queer midnight picnic. We had not dared
hope for anything to eat, but when our host proposed a meal of boiled
eggs, bread, and wine, the good man was well-nigh startled by the
enthusiastic acceptance of his guests.
A small room containing a table, and a pile of chairs against the wall,
was chosen for the banquet. Terry and Maida laid the table with the
dishes from the tea-basket, and a few more found in neighbouring
cupboards. Beechy boiled the eggs while our host unearthed the wine; the
Countess cut slices of hard, brown bread, and I added butter in little
hillocks.
Then we ate and drank; and never was a meal so good. We seemed to have
known each ether a long time, and already we had common jokes connected
with our past--that past which had been the present this morning. It was
after one o'clock when it occurred lo us that it was bedtime; and as at
last the three ladies flitted away down the dim corridor, Terry and I,
watching them, saw that something flitted after.
It was the little black dog of Airole.
PART II
TOLD BY BEECHY KIDDER
VII
A CHAPTER OF CHILDISHNESS
When I waked up that morning in the old monastery at San Dalmazzo, if
that's the way to call it, and especially to spell it, I really thought
for a few minutes that I must be dreaming. "There's no good getting up,"
I thought, "for if I do I shall somnambulize, and maybe break my rather
pleasing nose." Once, when I was a little girl, I fell down-stairs when I
was asleep, and made one of my front teeth come out. It was a front
tooth, and Mamma had promised me five dollars if I'd have it pulled; so
that was money in my pocket. But I haven't got any teeth to sell for
five dollars now, and it's well to be careful. Accordingly I just lay
still in that funny little iron bed, saying, "Beechy Kidder, is this
_you_?"
Perhaps it was because of all those bewildering impressions the day
before, or perhaps it was from having been so dead asleep that I felt
exactly as if I were no relation to myself. Anyhow, that was the way I
_did_ feel, and I began to be awfully afraid I should wake up back in
Denver months ago, before anything had happened, or seemed likely ever
to happen.
When I thought of Mamma and myself, as we used to be, I grew almost sure
that the things hadn't happened, because they didn't seem the kind of
things that could possibly happen to us.
Why, I didn't even need to shut my eyes to see our Denver house, for it
was so much more real than any other house I'd been in, or dreamed I'd
been in since, and especially more real than that tiny, whitewashed
room at the monastery with a green curtain of vines hanging over the
window.
A square, stone house, with a piazza in front (only people out of
America are so stupid, they don't know what I mean when I say "piazza");
about six feet of yard with some grass and flowers. Me at school; Mamma
reading novels with one eye, and darning papa's stockings with the
other. My goodness, what a different Mamma! When I thought of the
difference, I was surer than ever that I must be dreaming her as she is
now, and I had half a mind to go and peek into the next room to look,
and risk falling down-stairs bang into realities and Denver.
Would she have smooth, straight dark hair with a few threads of grey,
all streaked back flat to her head to please papa; or would she have
lovely auburn waves done on a frame, with a curl draped over her
forehead? Would her complexion be just as nice, comfortable, motherly
sort of complexion, of no particular colour; or would it be pink and
white like rose-leaves floating in cream? Would she have the kind of
figure to fit the corsets you can pick up at any shop, ready made for
fifty-nine and a half cents, and the dresses Miss Pettingill makes for
ten dollars, with the front breadth shorter than the back? Or would she
go in at the waist like an hour-glass and out like an hour-glass, to fit
three hundred-franc stays in Paris, and dresses that would be tight for
_me_?
Poor Mamma! I'd made lots of fun of her these last few months, if they
were real months, I said to myself; and if more real months of that kind
should come, I'd probably make lots of fun of her again. I am _like_
that; I can't help it. I suppose it's what Papa used to call his
"originality," and Mamma his "cantankerousness," coming out in me. But
lying there in the narrow bed, with the dream-dawn fluttering little
pale wings at the window, I seemed suddenly to understand how hard
everything had been for her.
At some minutes, on some days, you _do_ understand people with a queer
kind of clearness, almost as if you had created them yourself--even
people that you turn up your nose at, and think silly or uninteresting
at other times, when your senses aren't sharpened in that magic sort of
way. My "God-days," are what I call those strange days when I can
sympathize with every one as if I'd known their _whole_ history and all
their troubles and thoughts and struggles, ever since they were born. I
call them that, not to be irreverent, but because I suppose God _always_
feels so; and the little spark of Him that's in every human being--even
in a naughty, pert thing like me--comes out in us more on some days than
on others, though only for a few minutes at a stretch even then.
Well, my spark burned up quite brightly for a little while in the dawn,
as I was thinking of Mamma.
I don't suppose she could ever have been in love with Papa. I guess she
must have married him because her parents were poor, or because she was
too kind hearted to say no. Anyway, it must have been horrid for her to
know that he was rich enough to let her do anything she liked, but
wouldn't let her do anything nice, because he was a Consistent Democrat,
and didn't believe in show or "tomfoolery."
I'm sure I couldn't explain what a Consistent Democrat really is; but
Papa's idea of being it was to scorn "society people," not to have
pretty clothes or many servants, to look plain and speak plainly, always
to tell the whole truth, especially if you would hurt anybody's feelings
by doing so, and not to spend much money except on uninteresting books.
Mamma would have loved better than anything to be a society leader, and
have her name appear often in the papers, like other ladies in Denver
who, she used to tell me, didn't come from half as good family as she
did. But Papa wouldn't let her go out much, and she didn't know any of
the people she wanted to know--only quite common ones whose husbands
kept stores or had other businesses which she didn't consider refined.
I'm afraid I was never much comfort to poor Mamma either. That
cantankerousness of mine which makes me see how funny people and things
are, always came between us, and I expect it always will. I must have
been born old.
Her only real pleasure was reading novels on the sly, all about smart
society and the aristocracy, but especially English aristocracy. She
simply revelled in such stories; and when Papa died suddenly without
time to tie up his money so as to force Mamma to go on doing what _he_
wanted, and not what _she_ wanted, all the rest of her life, the first
thing that occurred to her was how to make up for lost time.
"We'll travel in Europe for a year or two," she said to me, "and when we
come back we'll just show Denver society people that we're _somebody_."
That was all she thought of in the beginning, but when we'd gone East to
Chicago for a change, and were staying at a big hotel there, a new idea
came into her head. Partly it was from seeing so many smart-looking
young women having a good time every minute of their lives, and feeling
what was the use of being free to enjoy herself at last, with plenty of
money, when she was dowdy and not so very young any more? (I could tell
just what was in her mind by the wistful way she looked at gorgeous
ladies who had the air of owning the world, with a fence
around it.) And partly it was seeing an advertisement in a
newspaper.
Mamma didn't mention the advertisement to me at first. But when she'd
been away one morning alone on a secret errand she stammered and
fidgetted a little, and said she had something to explain to me. Then it
all came out.
She'd been to call on a wonderful French madame who could make a woman
of thirty-eight (that's Mamma's Bible age) look twenty-five, and she
hoped I wouldn't lose respect for her as my mother or think her
frivolous and horrid if she put herself into the madame's hands for a
few weeks. I couldn't help laughing, but Mamma cried, and said that
she'd never had a real good time since she was grown up. She did long to
have one at last, very much, if only I'd let her do it in peace.
I stopped laughing and almost cried, myself; but I didn't let her see
that I wanted to. Instead, I asked what would be the sense of _looking_
twenty-five, anyhow, when everybody would know she _must_ be more, with
a daughter going on seventeen.
Mamma hadn't thought of that. She seemed years older than ever for a
minute; and then she put her hand in mine. Hers was as cold as ice.
"Would you mind going back a little, darling?" she asked. "It would be
_so_ kind and sweet of you, and it would make all the difference to me."
"Going back?" I repeated. "Whatever _do_ you mean?"
It made her dreadfully nervous to explain, because she was afraid I'd
poke fun at her, but she did get out the idea finally. "Going back" was
to bring on my second childhood prematurely. Thirteen was a nice age,
she thought, because many girls get their full growth then; and if I
wasn't more than thirteen she could begin life over again at
twenty-nine.
"What, let down my hair and wear my dresses short?" I asked.
She admitted that was what I'd have to do.
I thought for a whole minute, and at last I just couldn't bear to
disappoint her. But all the same, I reminded myself, I might as well
make a good bargain while I was about it.
"If I do what you want," said I, "you'll have to be mighty nice to me. I
must be given my way about important things. If you ever refuse to do
what I like, after I've done so much for you, I'll just turn up my hair
and put on a long frock. Then everybody'll see how old I am."
She would have promised anything, I guess; and that very afternoon she
gave me three lovely rings, and a ducky little bracelet-watch, when we
were out shopping for short clothes and babyfied hats. Soon we moved
away from that hotel to one on the north side, where nobody had seen us;
and the first thing I knew, I was a little girl again.
It certainly was fun. To really appreciate being a child, you ought to
have been grown up in another state of existence, and remember your
sensations. It was something like that with me, and my life was almost
as good as a play. I could say and do dreadfully naughty things, which
would have been outrageous for a grown-up young lady of nearly
seventeen. And _didn't_ I do them all? I never missed a single chance,
and I flatter myself that I haven't since.
The French madame made a real work of art of Mamma. The progress was
lovely to watch. She kept herself shut up in her room all day,
pretending to be an invalid, and drove out in a veil to the madame's.
Then, when she was finished, we went right away from Chicago to New
York, where we meant to stay for a while till we sailed for Europe.
Mamma hadn't been East before, since she was a girl of twenty, for that
was when she married Papa, and he took her to live in Denver. We bought
lots of beautiful things in New York, and Mamma enjoyed herself so much,
being pretty and having people stare at her, that she was almost sick
from excitement.
When we'd seen all the sights and were tired of shopping, she remembered
that she'd got a niece staying in the country not far away, on the
Hudson River. I'd heard Mamma speak of her sister, who, when seventeen,
had married a Savant (whatever that is), and had gone to California soon
afterwards, because she was delicate. But evidently the change hadn't
done her much good, because she died when her baby was born. The Savant
went on living, but he couldn't love his daughter properly, as she'd
been the cause of her mother's death. Besides, he wasn't the kind of man
to understand children, so when Madeleine was nine or ten, he sent her
to a school--a very queer school. It was kept by a Sisterhood; not nuns
exactly, because they were Protestants, but almost as good or as bad;
and an elderly female cousin of the Savant's was the head of the
institution.
There Madeleine Destrey had been ever since, though Mamma said she must
be nineteen or twenty; and now her father was dead. That news had been
sent to Mamma months before we left Denver, but as she and the Savant
had written to each other only about once every five or six years, it
hadn't affected her much. However, she thought it would be nice to go
and see Madeleine, and I thought so too.
It was a short journey in the train, and the place where the Sisterhood
live is perfectly lovely, the most beautiful I ever saw, with quantities
of great trees on a flowery lawn sloping down to the river.
I was wondering what my cousin would be like--the only cousin I've got
in the world; and though Mamma said she must be pretty, if she was
anything like her mother, I didn't expect her to be half as pretty as
she really is.
We surprised her as much as she did us, for naturally she expected Mamma
to be like other aunts, which she isn't at all--now; and evidently she
considered me a _curiosity_. But she was very sweet, and when she found
Mamma didn't want to be called Aunt Kathryn, she tried hard always to
"Kitty" her.
We only intended to spend the day, but it turned out that the time of
our visit was rather critical for Maida. She was in the act of having
her twentieth birthday; and it seemed that in her father's will he had
"stipulated" (that's the word the cousin-Mother-Superior used) that his
daughter should be sent to travel in Europe when she was twenty, for a
whole year.
The reason of the stipulation was, that though he didn't care for Maida
as most fathers care for their children, he was a very just man, and was
afraid, after living so long in the Sisterhood his daughter might wish
to join the Order, without knowing enough about the outside world to
make up her mind whether it truly was her vocation for good and all.
That was why she was to go to Europe; for when you're twenty-one you can
become a novice in the Sisterhood, if you like.
The Mother Superior didn't really want Maida to go one bit. It was easy
to see her anxiety to have the "dear child safe in the fold." But Maida
wasn't to inherit a penny of her father's money if she didn't obey his
will, which wouldn't suit the Sisterhood at all; so the Mother had to
hustle round and think how to pack Maida off for the year.
When we happened to arrive on the scene, she thought we were like
Moses's ram caught in the bushes. She told Mamma the whole story--(a
ramrod of a lady with a white face, a white dress, and a long, floating
white veil, she was) asking right out if we'd take Maida with us to
Europe.
Mamma didn't like the idea of being chaperon for such a girl as Maida;
but it was her own sister's daughter, and Mamma is as good-natured as a
Mellin's Food Baby in a magazine, though she gets into little tempers
sometimes. So she said, "Yes," and a fort-night later we all three
sailed on a huge German steamer for Cherbourg. "At least, that's what we
did in the 'dream,'" I reminded myself, when I had got so far in my
thoughts, lying in the monastery bed. And by that time the light was so
clear in the tiny white room, that there was no longer any doubt about
it, I really was awake. I was dear little thirteen-year-old Beechy
Kidder, who wasn't telling fibs about her age, because she _was_
thirteen, and was it anybody's business if she were something more
besides?
VIII
A CHAPTER OF PLAYING DOLLS
I looked at my bracelet-watch, which I had tucked under my pillow last
night. It wasn't quite six o'clock, and we hadn't gone to bed till after
one; but I knew I couldn't sleep any more, and life seemed so
interesting that I thought I might as well get up to see what would come
next.
The water-pitcher didn't hold much more than a quart, but I took the
best bath I could, dressed, and decided to find out what the monastery
grounds were like. We were not to be called till half-past seven, and it
was arranged that we should start at nine, so there was an hour and a
half to spare. I wondered whether I should wake Maida, and get her to go
with me, but somehow I wasn't in the mood for Maida. I was afraid that,
being in a monastery, she would be thinking of her precious Sisterhood
and wanting to hurry back as fast as she could. She does mean to join
when her year is up, I know, which is so silly of her, when the world's
such a nice place; and it nearly gives me nervous prostration to hear
her talk about it. Not that she often does; but it's bad enough to see
it in her eyes.
Maida is a perfect dear, much too good for us, and she always knows the
proper etiquetical thing to do when Mamma and I are wobbly; but she is
such an edelweiss that I'm always being tempted to claw her down from
her high white crags and then regretting it afterwards. Mamma gets cross
with her too, when she's particularly exalted, but we both love her
dearly; and we ought to, for she's always doing something sweet for us.
Only she's a great deal too humble. I suppose it's the thing to be like
that in a Sisterhood, but Mamma and I _aren't_ a Sisterhood, and the
sooner Maida realizes that there's such a place as the world, the better
it will be for her.
So I didn't wake Maida, but went tiptoeing out into the long corridor,
and got lost several times looking for the way out of doors.
At last I was in the garden, though, and it was very quaint and pretty,
with unexpected nooks, old, moss-covered stone seats, and a sundial that
you'd pay hundreds of dollars for in America. Staring up at the house I
thought a window-shutter moved; but I didn't attach any importance to
that until, after I'd crossed several small bridges and discovered a
kind of island with the river rushing by on both sides, I saw Prince
Dalmar-Kalm coming towards me.
I was sitting on a bench on the little green island, where I pretended
to be gazing down at the water and not to see him till he was close by;
for I was in hope that he wouldn't notice me in my grey dress among the
trees. I don't believe the Prince's best friends would call him an early
morning man. He's the kind that oughtn't to be out before lunch, and he
goes especially well with gaslight or electricity. I felt sure he'd be
unbearable before breakfast--either his breakfast or mine.
"It's a pity," I thought, "that I can't run down as rapidly from the age
of thirteen to the age of one as I have from seventeen to thirteen. When
the Prince found me. I should be sitting on the grass playing with
dandelions and saying. 'Da, da?' which would disgust him so much that
he'd stalk away and leave me in peace to grow up in time for breakfast."
But even a child must draw the line somewhere; and presently the Prince
said "Good-morning" (so nicely that I thought he must have had a cracker
or two in his pocket), asking if he might sit by me on the bench.
"I was just going in to wake Mamma," I replied, and I wondered whether,
if I jumped up suddenly, his end of the bench would go down and tilt him
into the river. It would have been fun to see His Highness become His
Lowness, and to tell Sir Ralph Moray afterwards, but just as I was on
the point of making a spring, he remarked that he had seen me come out,
and followed for a particular reason. If I tumbled him into the water, I
might never hear that reason; so seventeen-year-old curiosity overcame
thirteen-year-old love of mischief, and I sat still.
"As you have only just come out, I don't see why you should be just
going in, unless it is to get away from me," said the Prince, "and I
should be sorry to think that, because you are such a dear little girl,
and I am very fond of you."
"So was Papa," said I, with my best twelve-and-a-half-year-old
expression.
"But I am not quite ancient enough to be your Papa," replied the Prince,
"so you need not name us together like that."
"_Aren't_ you?" I asked, with big eyes.
"Well, that depends on how old you are, my dear."
"I'm too old for you to call your dear, unless you _are_ old enough to
be my Papa," was the sage retort of Baby Beechy.
"I'm over thirty," said the Prince.
"Yes, I know," said I. "I found the Almanach de Gotha on the table of
our hotel at Cap Martin, and you were in it."
"Naturally," said the Prince, but he got rather red, as people always do
when they find out that you know just how far over thirty they've really
gone. "But I'm not married," he went on, "therefore you cannot think of
me as of your papa."
"I don't think of you much as anything," said I. "I'm too busy."
"Too busy! Doing what?"
"Playing dolls," I explained.
"I wish you were a little older," said the Prince, with a good imitation
of a sigh. "Ah, _why_ haven't you a few years more?"
"You might ask Mamma," I replied. "But then, if I had, _she_ would have
more too wouldn't she?"
"That would be a pity. She is charming as she is. She must have married
when almost a child."
"Did you come out here at this time of the morning to ask me about
Mamma's marriage?" I threw at him. "Because, if _that_ was your reason,
I'd rather go in to my dolls."
"No, no," protested the Prince, in a hurry. "I came to talk about
yourself."
I began to feel an attack of giggles coming on, but I stopped them by
holding my breath, as you do for hiccoughs, and thinking about Job,
which, if you can do it soon and solemnly enough, is quite a good
preventive. I knew now exactly why Prince Dalmar-Kalm had dashed on his
clothes at sight of me and come into the garden on an empty stomach. He
had thought, if he could get me all alone for half an hour (which he'd
often tried to do and never succeeded) he could find out a lot of things
that he would like to know. Perhaps he felt it was impossible for
anybody to be as young as I seem, so that was what he wanted to find out
about first. If I _wasn't_, he would flirt; if I _was_, he would merely
pump.
There wasn't much time to decide on a "course of action," as Mamma's
lawyer in Denver says; but I put on my thinking-cap and tied it tight
under my chin for a minute. "There's more fun to be had in playing with
him than with dolls," I said to myself, "if I set about it in the right
way. But what _is_ the right way? I can't be bothered having him for my
doll, because he'd take up too much time. Shall I give him to Maida? No,
I'll lend him to Mamma to play with, so long as she plays the way I want
her to, and doesn't get in earnest."
"What are you anxious to say about me that can't wait till breakfast?" I
asked.
"_Those men_ will be at breakfast," said he. "They are in the position
of your couriers, yet they put themselves forward, as if on an equality
with me. I do not find that conducive to conversation."
"Mamma asked Maida yesterday whether it was better to be an Austrian
prince, or an English baronet?" said I. "Sir Ralph Moray's a baronet."
"So he says," sneered the Prince.
"Oh, he is. Mamma looked him out in Burke the very day I found you were
thirty-nine in the Almanach de Gotha."
"Anybody can be a baronet. That is nothing. It is a mere word."
"It's in three syllables, and 'prince' is only in one. Besides,
Austrians are foreigners, and Englishmen aren't."
"Is that what Miss Destrey said to your Mamma?"
"No, because Mamma's a foreign Countess now, and it might have hurt her
feelings. Maida said she felt more at home with a plain mister--like Mr.
Barrymore, for instance; only he's far from plain."
"You consider him handsome?"
"Oh, yes, we all do."
"But I think you have not known him and Sir Ralph Moray for long. Your
Mamma has not mentioned how she met them, but from one or two things
that have been dropped, I feel sure they are in her employ--that she has
hired them to take you about in their very inadequate car; is it not
so?"
"I'll ask Mamma and tell you what she says, if you'd like me to," I
replied.
"No, no, dear child, you are too literal. It is your one fault. And I
find that you are all three too trusting of strangers. It is a beautiful
quality, but it must not be carried too far. Will you not let me be your
friend, Miss Beechy, and come to me for advice? I should be delighted to
give it, for you know what an interest I take in all connected with you.
There! Now you have heard what I followed you out especially to say. I
hoped that this would be a chance to establish a confidential
relationship between us. _Voulez-vous, ma chère petite?_"
"What kind of a relationship shall we establish, exactly?" I asked. "You
say you don't want to be my Papa."
"If I were your Papa, I should be dead."
"If you were my brother, and the age you are now, Mamma might as well be
dead."
"Ah, I would not be your brother on any consideration. Not even your
step-brother; though some step-relationships are delightful. But your
Mamma is too charming--you are _all_ too charming, for my peace of mind.
I do not know how I lived before I met you."
I thought that the money-lenders perhaps knew; but there are some things
even little Beechy can't say.
"Your Mamma must have great responsibilities for so young a woman," he
went on, while I pruned and prismed. "With her great fortune, and no one
to guard her, she must often feel the weight of her burden too heavy for
one pair of shoulders."
"One can always spend one's fortune, and so get rid of the burden, if
it's too big," said I.
The Prince looked horrified. "Surely she is more wise than that?" he
exclaimed.
"She hasn't spent it all yet, anyhow," I said.
"Are you not anxious lest, if your Mamma is extravagant, she may throw
away your fortune as well as her own; or did your Papa think of that
danger, and make you quite secure?"
"I guess I shall have a little something left, no matter what happens,"
I admitted.
"Then your Papa was thoughtful for you. But was he also jealous for
himself? Had I been the husband of so fascinating a woman as your Mamma,
I would have put into my will a clause that, if she married again, she
must forfeit everything. But it may be that Americans do not hug their
jealousy in the grave."
"I can't imagine poor Papa hugging anything," I said. "I never heard
that he objected to Mamma marrying again. Anyhow, she's had several
offers already."
"She should choose a man of title for her second husband," said the
Prince, very pleased with the way the pump was working.
"Maybe she will," I answered.
He started slightly.
"It should be a title worth having," he said, "and a man fitted to bear
it, not a paltry upstart whose father was perhaps a tradesman. You, Miss
Beechy, must watch over your dear Mamma and rescue her from fortune
hunters. I will help. And I will protect _you_, also. As for Miss
Destrey, beautiful as she is, I feel that she is safe from unworthy
persons who seek a woman only for her money. Her face is her fortune,
_n'est-ce pas_?"
"Well, it's fortune enough for any girl," said I, thinking again of Job
and all the other really solemn characters in the Old Testament as hard
as ever I could.
The Prince sighed, genuinely this time, as if my answer had confirmed
his worst suspicions. "He will be nice to Mamma, now," said little
Beechy to big Beechy. "No more vacillating. He'll come straight to
business." And promising myself some fun, I got up from the bench so
cautiously that the poor river was cheated of a victim. "Now I _must_ go
in," I exclaimed. "_Good_-bye, Prince. Let me see; what are we to each
other?"
"Confidants," he informed me. "You are to come to me with every
difficulty. But one more word before we part, dear child. Be on your
guard, and warn your Mamma to be on hers, with those two adventurers.
Perhaps, also, you had better warn Miss Destrey. Who knows how
unscrupulous the pair might be? And unfortunately, owing to the
regrettable arrangements at present existing, I cannot always be at hand
to watch over you all."
"Owing a little to your automobile too, maybe," said I. "By the way,
what is its state of health?"
"There has been no room for the automobile in my thoughts," said the
Prince, with a cooled-down step-fatherly smile. "But I have no doubt it
will be in good marching order by the time it is wanted, as my chauffeur
was to rise at four, knock up a mechanic at some shop in the village,
and make the new change-speed lever which was broken yesterday. If you
are determined to leave me so soon, I will console myself by finding
Joseph and seeing how he is getting on."
We walked together towards the house, which had opened several of its
green eyelids now, and at the mouth of a sort of stucco tunnel which led
to the door there was Joseph himself--a piteous, dishevelled Joseph,
looking as if birds had built nests on him and spiders had woven webs
round him for years.
"Well," exclaimed the Prince with the air of one warding off a blow.
"What has happened? Have you burnt my automobile, or are you always like
this when you get up early?"
"I am not an incendiary, Your Highness," said Joseph, in his precise
French, which it's easy to understand, because when he wishes to be
dignified he speaks slowly. "I do not know what I am like, unless it is
a wreck, in which case I resemble your automobile. As you left her last
night, so she is now, and so she is likely to remain, unless the
gentlemen of the other car will have the beneficence to pull her up a
still further and more violent hill to the village of Tenda. There finds
himself the only mechanic within fifty miles."
"I engaged _you_ as a mechanic!" cried the Prince.
"But not as a workshop, Your Highness. That I am not and shall not be
this side of Paradise. And it is a workshop that we must have."
"Do not let me keep you, Miss Beechy," said the Prince, "if you wish to
go to your Mamma. This little difficulty will arrange itself."
I adore rows, and I should have liked to stay; but I couldn't think of
any excuse, so I skipped into the house, and almost telescoped (as they
say of railroad trains) with the nice monk, who was talking to Maida in
the hall.
I supposed she was telling him about the Sisters, but she was quite
indignant at the suggestion, and said she had been asking if we could
have breakfast in the garden. The monk had given his consent, and she
had intended to have everything arranged out doors, as a surprise, by
the time we all came down.
"Aunt Kathryn is up; I've been doing her hair," explained Maida, "but we
didn't hear a sound from your room, so we decided not to disturb you.
What _have_ you been about, you weird child?"
"Playing dolls," said I, and ran off to help Mamma put on her
complexion.
But it was on already, all except the icing. I confessed the Prince to
her, and she looked at me sharply. "Don't forget that you're a little
girl now, Beechy," she reminded me. "What were you talking about?"
"You and my other dolls, Mamma," said I. "Even when I was seventeen I
never flirted fasting."
"What did you say about me, dearest?"
"Oh, it was the Prince who said things about you. You can have him to
play with, if you want to."
"Darling, you shouldn't talk of playing. This is a very serious
consideration," said Mamma. "I never heard much about Austrians at home.
Most foreigners there were Germans, which made one think of beer and
sausages. I do wonder what standing an Austrian Prince would have in
Denver? Should you suppose he would be preferred to--to persons of less
exalted rank who were--who were not quite so _foreign_?"
"Do the Prince and Sir Ralph Moray intend to go over as samples?" I
asked sweetly, but Mamma only simpered, and as a self-respecting child I
cannot approve of a parent's simpering.
"I wish you wouldn't be silly, Beechy," she said. "It is a step, being a
Countess, but it is not enough."
"You mean, the more crowns you have, the more crowns you want."
"I mean nothing of the sort," snapped Mamma, "but I have some ambition,
otherwise what would have been the good of coming to Europe? And if one
gets opportunities, it would be sinful to neglect them. Only--one wants
to be sure that one has taken the best."
"There they all three are, in the yard," I remarked, pointing out of the
window at the Opportunities, who were discoursing earnestly with Joseph.
"Of course, I'm too young _now_ to judge of such matters, but if it was
_I_ who had to choose--"
"Well?"
"I'd toss up a penny, and whichever side came, I'd take--"
"Yes?"
"Mr. Barrymore."
"Mr. Barrymore! But he has no title! I might as well have stayed in
America."
"I said that, because I think he'd be the hardest to get. The other
two--"
"What about them?"
"Well, you don't need to decide between them yet. Just wait till we've
travelled a little further, and see whether you come across anything
better worth having."
"Oh, Beechy, I never know whether you're poking fun at me or not,"
sighed poor Mamma, so forlornly that I was sorry--for a whole
minute--that I'd been born wicked; and I tied her tulle in a lovely bow
at the back of her neck, to make up.
IX
A CHAPTER OF REVELATIONS
Maida really was the prettiest thing ever created, when I looked down at
her from Mamma's window, as she arranged flowers and cups and saucers on
the table which the monk had carried out for her, into the garden. He
had quite a gallan
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