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The Lightning Conductor: The Strange Adventures of a Motor-Car

by C. N. Williamson · English · Gutenberg #33845 · 542,241 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Lightning Conductor: The Strange Adventures of a Motor-Car

Author: C. N. Williamson
        A. M. Williamson


        
Release date: October 7, 2010 [eBook #33845]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33845

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Christian Boissonnas and the
        Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR: THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A MOTOR-CAR ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, Christian Boissonnas and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









  THE
  LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR

  _THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A MOTOR-CAR_

  EDITED BY
  C. N. AND A. M. WILLIAMSON

  REVISED AND ENLARGED

  _FIFTEENTH IMPRESSION_

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
  1903




  Copyright, 1903,
  BY
  HENRY HOLT & CO.

  ROBERT DRUMMOND, PRINTER, NEW YORK.




TO THE REAL MONTIE




THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR




MOLLY RANDOLPH TO HER FATHER


                               In the Oak Room, the "White Lion,"
                                        Cobham, Surrey, _November 12_.

  Dear Shiny-headed Angel,

I hope you won't mind, but I've changed all my plans. I've bought an
automobile, or a motor-car, as they call it over here; and while I'm
writing to you, Aunt Mary is having nervous prostration on a sofa in a
corner at least a hundred years old--I mean the sofa, not the corner,
which is a good deal more. But perhaps I'd better explain.

Well, to begin with, some people we met on the steamer (they were an
archdeacon, with charming silk legs, and an archdeaconess who snubbed us
till it leaked out through that Aunt Mary that you were _the_ Chauncey
Randolph) said if we wanted to see a thoroughly characteristic English
village, we ought to run out to Cobham; and we ran--to-day.

Aunt Mary had one of her presentiments against the expedition, so I was
sure it would turn out nice. When we drove up to this lovely old
red-brick hotel, in a thing they call a fly because it crawls; there
were several automobiles starting off, and I can tell you I felt
small--just as if I were Miss Noah getting out the ark. (Were there any
Miss Noahs, by the way?)

One of the automobiles was different from any I've ever seen on our side
or this. It was high and dignified, like a chariot, and looked over the
heads of the others as the archdeaconess used to look over mine till she
heard whose daughter I was. A _chauffeur_ was sitting on the front seat,
and a gorgeous man had jumped down and was giving him directions. He
wasn't looking my way, so I seized the opportunity to snapshot him, as a
souvenir of English scenery; but that tactless Kodak of mine gave the
loudest "click" you ever heard, and he turned his head in time to
suspect what had been happening. I swept past with my most "haughty Lady
Gwendolen" air, talking to Aunt Mary, and hoped I shouldn't see him
again. But we'd hardly got seated for lunch in a beautiful old room,
panelled from floor to ceiling with ancient oak, when he came into the
room, and Aunt Mary, who has a sneaking weakness for titles (I suppose
it's the effect of the English climate), murmured that _there_ was her
ideal of a duke.

The Gorgeous Man strolled up and took a place at our table. He passed
Aunt Mary some things which she didn't want, and then began to throw out
a few conversational feelers. If you're a girl, and want fun in England,
it's no end of a pull being American; for if you do anything that people
think queer, they just sigh, and say, "Poor creature! she's one of those
mad Americans," and put you down as harmless. I don't know whether an
English girl would have talked or not, but I did; and he knew lots of
our friends, especially in Paris, and it was easy to see he was a
raving, tearing "swell," even if he wasn't exactly a duke. I can't
remember how it began, but _really_ it was Aunt Mary and not I who
chattered about our trip, and how we were abroad for the first time, and
were going to "do" Europe as soon as we had "done" England.

The Gorgeous Man had lived in France (he seems to have lived nearly
everywhere, and to know everybody and everything worth knowing), and,
said he, "What a pity we couldn't do our tour on a motor-car!" At that I
became flippant, and inquired which, in his opinion, would be more
suitable as _chauffeur_--Aunt Mary or I; whereupon he announced that he
was not joking, but serious. We ought to have a motor-car and a
_chauffeur_. Then we might say, like Monte Cristo, "The world is mine."

He went on to tell of the wonderful journeys he'd made in his car,
"which we might have noticed outside." It seemed it was better than any
other sort of car in the world; in fact there was no other exactly like
it, as it had been made especially for him. You simply couldn't break
it, it was so strong; the engine would outlast two of any other kind;
and one of the advantages was that it had belts and a marvellous
arrangement called a "jockey pulley" to regulate the speed: consequently
it ran more "sweetly" (that was the word he used) than gear-driven cars,
which, according to him, jerk, and are noisy, break easily, and do all
sorts of disagreeable things.

By the time we were half through lunch I was envying him his car, and
feeling as if life wasn't worth living, because I couldn't have it to
play with. I asked if I could buy one like it, but he was very
discouraging. He had had his fitted up with lots of expensive
improvements, and it didn't pay the firm to make cars like that for the
public, so I would have to order one specially, and it might be months
before it could be delivered. I was thinking it rather inconsiderate in
him to work me up to such a pitch, just to cast me down again, when he
mentioned, in an incidental way, that he intended to sell his car,
because he had ordered a racer of forty horse-power.

I jumped at that and said, "Why not sell it to me?"

You _ought_ to have seen Aunt Mary's face! But we didn't give her time
to speak, and gasps are more effectual as punctuations than
interruptions.

Her Duke was too much moved to pause for them. He hurried to say that he
hoped I hadn't misunderstood him. The last thought in his mind had been
to "make a deal." Of course, if I really contemplated buying a car, I
must see a great many different kinds before deciding. But as it seemed
I had never had a ride on an automobile (_your_ fault, Dad--your only
one!), he would be delighted to take us a little spin in his car.

Before Aunt Mary could get in a word I had accepted; for I _did_ want to
go. And what is Aunt Mary for if not to make all the things I want to do
and otherwise couldn't, strictly proper?

Anyhow, we went, and it was heavenly. I know how a bird feels now, only
more so. You know, Dad, how quickly I make up my mind. I take that from
you, and in our spin through beautiful lanes to a delightful hotel
called--just think of it!--the "Hautboy and Fiddle," at the village of
Ockham, I'd had quite time enough to determine that I wanted the Duke's
car, if it could be got.

I said so; he objected. You've no idea how delicate he was about it, so
afraid it might seem that he had taken advantage. I assured him that, if
anything, it was the other way round, and at last he yielded. The car
really is a beauty. You can put a big trunk on behind, and there are
places for tools and books and lunch, and no end of little things, in a
box under the cushions we sit on, and even under the floor. You never
saw anything so convenient. He showed me everything, and explained the
machinery, but that part I forgot as fast as he talked, so I can't tell
you now exactly on what principle the engine works. When it came to a
talk about price I thought he would say two thousand five hundred
dollars at least (that's five hundred pounds, isn't it?) for such a
splendid chariot. I know Jimmy Payne gave nearly twice that for the one
he brought over to New York last year, and it wasn't half as handsome;
but--would you believe it?--the man seemed quite shy at naming one
thousand five hundred dollars. It was a second-hand car now, he
insisted, though he had only had it three months, and he wouldn't think
of charging more. I felt as if I were playing the poor fellow a real
Yankee trick when I cried "Done!"

Well, now, Dad, there's my confession. That's all up to date, except
that the Duke, who isn't a duke, but plain Mr. Reginald Cecil-Lanstown
("plain" seems hardly the word for all that, does it?) is to bring _my_
car, late his, to Claridge's on Monday, and I'm to pay. You dear, to
have given me such an unlimited letter of credit! He's got to get me a
_chauffeur_ who can speak French and knows the Continent, and Aunt Mary
and I will do the rest of our London shopping on an automobile--my own,
if you please. Then, when we are ready to cross the Channel, we'll drive
to Newhaven, ship the car to Dieppe, and after that I hope we shan't so
much as _see_ a railroad train, except from a long distance. Automobiles
for ever, say I, mine in particular.

I'm writing this after we have come back to Cobham, and while we wait
for the fly which is to take us to the station. Aunt Mary says I am mad.
She is quite "off" her Duke now, and thinks he is a fraud. By the way,
when that photo is developed I'll send it to you, so that you can see
your daughter's new gee-gee. Here comes the cab, so good-bye, you old
saint. From

                                                     Your sinner,
                                                                Molly.


                                           Carlton Hotel, London,
                                                        _November 14_.

  Dearest,

I've got it; it's mine; bought and paid for. It's so handsome that even
Aunt Mary is mollified. (I didn't mean that for a _pun_, but let it
pass.) Mr. Cecil-Lanstown has told me everything I ought to know (about
motor-cars, I mean), and now, after having tea with us, looking dukier
than ever, he has departed with a roll of your hard-earned money in his
pocket. It's lucky I met him when I did, and secured the car, for he has
been called out of England on business, is going to-morrow, and seems
not to know when he'll be able to get back. But he says we may meet in
France when he has his big racing automobile.

The only drawback to my new toy is the _chauffeur_. Why "_chauffeur_,"
by the way, I wonder? He doesn't heat anything. On the contrary, if I
understand the matter, it's apparently his duty to keep things cool,
including his own head. This one looks as if he had had his head on ice
for years. He is the gloomiest man I ever saw, gives you the feeling
that he may burst into tears any minute; but Mr. Cecil-Lanstown says he
is one of the best _chauffeurs_ in England, and thoroughly understands
this particular make of car, which is German.

The man's name is Rattray. It suits him somehow. If I were the heroine
of a melodrama, I should feel the minute I set eyes on Rattray that he
was the villain of the piece, and I should hang on like grim death to
any marriage certificates or wills that might concern me, for I should
know it would be his aim during at least four acts to get possession of
them. He has enormous blue eyes like Easter eggs, and his ears look
something like cactuses, only, thank goodness, I'm spared their being
green; they wouldn't go with his complexion. I talked to him and put on
scientific airs, but I'm afraid they weren't effective, for he hardly
said anything, only looked gloomy, and as if he read "amateur" written
on my soul or somewhere where it wasn't supposed to show. He's gone now
to make arrangements for keeping _my_ car in a _garage_. He's to bring
it round every morning at ten o'clock, and is to teach me to drive. I
won't seal this letter up till to-morrow then I can tell you how I like
my first lesson.

       *       *       *       *       *

  _November 15._

I _was_ proud of the car when I went out on it yesterday. Aunt Mary
wouldn't go, because she doesn't wish to be the "victim of an
experiment." Rattray drove for a long way, but when we got beyond the
traffic, towards Richmond, I took his place, and my lesson began. It's
harder than I thought it would be, because you have to do so many things
at once. You really ought to have three or four hands with this car,
Rattray says. When I asked him if it was different with other cars, he
didn't seem to hear. Already I've noticed that he's subject to a sort of
spasmodic deafness, but I suppose I must put up with that, as he is such
a fine mechanic. One can't have everything.

With your left hand you have to steer the car by means of a kind of
tiller, and to this is attached the horn to warn creatures of all sorts
that you're coming. I blow this with my right hand, but Rattray says I
ought to learn to do it while steering with the left, as there are
quantities of other things to be done with the right hand. First there
is a funny little handle with which you change speeds whenever you come
to a hill; then there is the "jockey-pulley-lever," which gives the
right tension to the belts (this is _very_ important); the
"throttle-valve-lever," on which you must always keep your hand to
control the speed of the car; and the brake which you jam on when you
want to stop. So there are two things to do with the left hand, and four
things with the right, and often most of these things must be done at
the same time. No wonder I was confused and got my hands a little mixed,
so that I forgot which was which, and things went wrong for a second!
Just then a cart was rude enough to come round a corner. I tried to
steer to the right, but went to the left--and you can't _think_ how many
things can happen with a motor-car in one second.

Now, don't be worried! I wasn't hurt a bit; only we charged on to the
side-walk, and butted into a shop. It was my fault, not a bit the car's.
If it weren't a _splendid_ car it would have been smashed to pieces,
and perhaps we with it, instead of just breaking the front--oh, and the
shop too, a little. I shall have to pay the man something. He's a
"haberdasher," whatever that is, but it _sounds_ like the sort of name
he might have called me if he'd been very angry when I broke his window.

The one bad consequence of my stupidity is that the poor, innocent,
sinned-against car must lie up for repairs. Rattray says they may take
some days. In that case Aunt Mary and I must do our shopping in a hired
brougham--such an anti-climax; but Rattray _promises_ that the dear
thing shall be ready for our start to France on the 19th. Meanwhile, I
shall console myself for my disappointment by buying an outfit for a
trip--a warm coat, and a mask, and a hood, and all sorts of tricky
little things I've marked in a perfectly thrilling catalogue.

Now, if you fuss, I shall be sorry I've told you the truth. Remember the
axiom about the bad penny. That's


                                                             Your
                                                                 Molly


The Horrible Restaurant of the Boule d'Or, Suresnes, Near Paris,

                                                        _November 28_.

  Forgive me, dear, long-suffering-because-you-couldn't-help-yourself-Dad,
for being such a beast about writing. But I did send you three cables,
didn't I? Aunt Mary would have written, only I threatened her with
unspeakable things if she did. I knew so well what she would say, and I
wouldn't have it. Now, however, I'm going to tell you the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth--no varnish. Indeed, there isn't
much varnish left on anything.

I wonder if I can make you comprehend the things I've gone through in
the last two or three days? Why, Dad, I feel old enough to be your
mother. But I'll try and begin at the beginning, though it seems, to
look back, almost before the memory of man, to say nothing of woman. Let
me see, where _is_ the beginning, when I was still young and happy?
Perhaps it's in our outfit for the trip. I can dwell upon that with
comparative calmness.

Even Aunt Mary was happy. You would have had to rush out and take your
"apoplectic medicine," as I used to call it, if you could have seen her
trying different kinds of masks and goggles, and asking gravely which
were most becoming. Thank Heaven that I've inherited your sense of
humour! To that I have owed my sanity during the last _dies irae_. (Is
that the way to spell it?)

I wouldn't have the conventional kind of mask, nor goggles. Seeing Aunt
Mary in her armour saved me from that. I bought what they call a "toilet
mask," which women vainer than I wear at night to preserve their
complexions. This was only for a last resort on very dusty days, to be
hidden from sight by a thin, grey veil, as if I were a modern prophet of
Korassan.

We got dust-grey cloaks, waterproof cloth on the outside, and lined with
fur. Aunt Mary invested in a kind of patent helmet, with curtains that
unfurl on the sides, to cover the ears; and I found myself so fetching
in a hood that I bought one, as well as a toque, to provide for all
weathers. Then we got a fascinating tea-basket, foot-warmers that burn
charcoal, and had two flat trunks made on purpose to fit the back of the
car, with tarpaulin covers to take on and off. Our big luggage we
planned to send to places where we wanted to make a long stay; but we
would have enough with us to make us feel self-contained and
independent.

We did look ship-shape when we started from the "Carlton" on the morning
of November 19th, with our luggage strapped on behind, the foot-warmers
and tea-basket on the floor, our umbrellas in a hanging-basket
contrivance, a fur-lined waterproof rug over Aunt Mary's knees and mine.
I'd taken no more lessons since that first day I wrote you about, owing
to the car not being ready until the night before our start, so Rattray
sat in front alone, Aunt Mary and I together behind.

We meant to have got off about eight, as we had to drive over fifty
miles to Newhaven, where the car was to be shipped that night; but
Rattray had a little difficulty in starting the car, and we were half an
hour late, which was irritating, especially as a good many people were
waiting to see us off. At last, however, we shot away in fine style,
which checked Aunt Mary in the middle of her thirty-second sigh.

All went well for a couple of hours. We were out in the country--lovely
undulating English country. The car, which Mr. Cecil-Lanstown had said
was beyond all others as a hill-climber, was justifying its reputation,
as I had confidently expected it would. The air was cold, but instead of
making one shiver, our blood tingled with exhilaration as we flew along.
You know what a chilly body Aunt Mary is? Even she didn't complain of
the weather, and hardly needed her foot-warmer. "This is life!" said I
to myself. It seemed to me that I'd never known the height of physical
pleasure until I'd driven in a motor-car. It was better than dancing on
a perfect floor with a perfect partner to _plu_perfect music; better
than eating when you're awfully hungry; better than holding out your
hands to a fire when they're numb with cold; better than a bath after a
hot, dusty railway journey. I can't give it higher praise, can I?--and I
_did_ wish for you. I thought you would be converted. Oh, my
_un_prophetic soul!

Suddenly, sailing up a steep hill at about ten miles an hour, the car
stopped, and would have run back if Rattray hadn't put on the brakes.
"What's the matter?" said I, while Aunt Mary convulsively clutched my
arm.

"Only a belt broken, miss," he returned gloomily. "Means twenty minutes'
delay, that's all. Sorry I must trouble you ladies to get up. New belts
and belt-fasteners under your seat. Tools under the floor."

We were relieved to think it was no worse, and reminded ourselves that
we had much to be thankful for, while we disarranged our comfortably
established selves. There were the tea-basket and the foot-warmers to be
lifted from the floor and deposited on Rattray's vacant front seat, the
big rug to be got rid of, our feet to be put up while the floor-board
was lifted, then we had to stand while the cushions were pulled off the
seat and the lid of the box raised. We, or at least I, tried to think it
was part of the fun; but it was a _little_ depressing to hear Rattray
grunting and grumbling to himself as he unstrapped the luggage, hoisted
it off the back of the car so that he could get at the broken belt
inside, and plumped it down viciously on the dusty road.

The delay was nearer half an hour than twenty minutes, and it seemed
extra long because it was a strain entertaining Aunt Mary to keep her
from saying "I told you so!" But we had not gone two miles before our
little annoyance was forgotten. That is the queer part about
automobiling. You're so happy when all's going well that you forget
past misadventures, and feel joyously hopeful that you will never have
any more.

We got on all right until after lunch, which we ate at a lovely inn
close to George Meredith's house. Then it took half an hour to start the
car again. Rattray looked as if he were going to burst. Just to watch
him turning that handle in vain made me feel as if elephants had walked
over me. He said the trouble was that "the compression was too strong,"
and that there was "back-firing"--whatever that means. Just as I was
giving up hope the engine started off with a rush, and we were on the
way again through the most soothingly pretty country. About four
o'clock, in the midst of a glorious spin, there was a "r-r-r-tch," the
car swerved to one side, Aunt Mary screamed, and we stopped dead. "Chain
broken," snarled Rattray.

Up we had to jump once more: tea-basket, foot-warmers, rugs, ourselves,
everything had to be hustled out of the way for Rattray to get at the
tools and spare chains which we carried in the box under our seats. I
began to think perhaps the car _wasn't_ quite so conveniently arranged
for touring as I had fancied, but I'd have died sooner than say
so--then. I pretended that this was a capital opportunity for tea, so
opened the tea-basket, and we had quite a picnic by the roadside while
Rattray fussed with the chain. It wasn't very cold, and I looked forward
to many similar delightful halts in a warmer climate "by the banks of
the brimming Loire," as I put it jauntily to Aunt Mary. But she only
said, "I'm sure I hope so, my dear," in a tone more chilling than the
weather.

It was at least half an hour before Rattray had the chain properly
fixed, and then there was the usual difficulty in starting. Once the
handle flew round and struck him on the back of the hand. He yelled,
kicked one of the wheels, and went to the grassy side of the road, where
in the dusk I could dimly see him holding his hand to his mouth and
rocking backwards and forwards. He did look so like a distracted goblin
that I could hardly steady my voice to ask if he was much hurt. "Nearly
broke my hand, that's all, miss," he growled. At last he flew at the
terrible handle again, managed to start the motor, and we were off.

Going up a hill in a town that Rattray said was called Lewes, I noticed
that the car didn't seem to travel with its customary springy vigour.
"Loss of power," Rattray jerked at me over his shoulder when I
questioned him as to what was the matter, and there I had to leave it,
wondering vaguely what he meant. I think he lost the way in Lewes (it
was now quite dark, with no stars); anyhow, we made many windings, and
at last came out into a plain between dim, chalky hills, with a shining
river faintly visible. Aunt Mary had relapsed into expressive silence;
the car seemed to crawl like a wounded thing; but at last we got to
Newhaven pier, and had our luggage carried on board the boat. Rattray
was to follow with the car in the cargo-boat. So ended the "lesson for
the first day"--a ten-hour lesson--and I felt sadder as well as wiser
for it.

Aunt Mary went to sleep as soon as we got on the boat; but I was so
excited at the thought of seeing France that I stayed on deck, wrapped
in the warm coat I'd bought for the car. We had a splendid crossing,
and as we got near Dieppe I could see chalk cliffs and a great gaunt
crucifix on the pier leading into the harbour. It seemed as if I were in
a dream when I heard people chattering French quite as a matter of
course to each other, and I liked the _douaniers_, the smart soldiers,
and the railway porters in blue blouses. It was four in the morning when
we landed. Of course, it was the dead season at Dieppe, but we got in at
a hotel close to the sea. It was lovely waking up, rather late, one's
very first day in France, looking out of the window at the bright water
and the little fishing-boats, with their red-brown sails, and smelling a
really heavenly scent of strong coffee and fresh-baked rolls.

Later in the morning I walked round to the harbour to find that the
cargo-boat had arrived, and that Rattray and the car had been landed.
The creature actually greeted me with smiles. Now for the first time he
was a comfort. He did everything, paid the deposit demanded by the
custom-house, and got the necessary papers. Then he drove me back to the
hotel, but as it was about midday I thought that it would be nicer to
start for Paris the next day, when I hoped we could have a long, clear
run. In Paris, of course, Aunt Mary and I wanted to stay for at least a
week. Rattray promised to thoroughly overhaul the car, so that there
need be no "incidents" on the way.

There was a crowd round us next morning--a friendly, good-natured little
crowd--when we were getting ready to start in the stable-yard of the
hotel. Our landlady was there, a duck of a woman; the hotel porters in
green baize aprons stood and stared; some women washing clothes at a
trough in the corner stopped their work; and a lot of funny, wee
schoolboys, with short cropped hair and black blouses with leather
belts, buzzed round, gesticulating and trying to explain the mechanism
of the car to each other. Rattray bustled about with an oil-can in his
hand, then loaded up our luggage, and all was ready. With more dignity
than confidence I mounted to the high seat beside Aunt Mary. This time,
with one turn of the handle, the motor started, so contrary is this
strange beast, the automobile. One day you toil at the starting-handle
half an hour, the next the thing comes to life with a touch, and nobody
can explain why. Bowing to madame and the hotel people, we sailed
gracefully out of the hotel yard, Rattray too-tooing a fanfaronade on
the horn. It was a splendid start!

The streets of Dieppe are of those horrid uneven stones that the French
call _pave_, and our car jolted over them with as much noise and clatter
as if we'd had a cargo of dishes. You see the car's very solidly built
and heavy--that, said Mr. Cecil-Lanstown, is one of its merits. It is of
oak, an inch thick, and you can't break it. Another thing in its favour
is that it has solid tyres, and not those horrid pneumatics, which are
always bursting and puncturing, and give no end of trouble. "With solid
tyres you are always safe," said Mr. Cecil-Lanstown. I can't help
thinking, though, that on roads like these of Dieppe it would be
soothing to have "pneus," as they call them. Jingle, jingle! scrunch,
scrunch! goes the machinery inside, and all the loose parts of the car.
It did get on my nerves.

But soon we were out of the town and on one of the smoothest roads you
ever saw. Rattray said it was a "route nationale," and that they are the
best roads in the world. The car bounded along as if it were on a
billiard-table. Even Aunt Mary said, "Now, if it were always like
_this_----" My spirits went up, up. I proudly smiled and bowed to the
peasants in their orchards by the roadsides. I was even inclined to pat
Rattray on the shoulder of his black leather coat. This, _this_ was
life! The sun shone, the fresh air sang in our ears, the car ran as if
it had the strength of a giant. I felt as independent as a gipsy in his
caravan, only we were travelling at many times his speed. The country
seemed to unfold just like a panorama. At each turn I looked for an
adventure.

We skimmed through a delicious green country given up to enormous
orchards which, Aunt Mary read out of a guide-book, yield the famous
_cidre de Normandie_. I thought of the lovely pink dress this land would
wear by-and-by, and then suddenly we came out from a small road on to a
broad, winding one, and there was a wide view over waving country, with
a white town like a butterfly that had fluttered into a bird's nest.
Rattray let the car go down this long road towards the valley at
something like thirty miles an hour, and Aunt Mary's hand had nervously
grasped the rail when there came a kind of sigh inside the car, and it
paused to rest.

Rattray jumped off and made puzzled inspection. "Can't see anything
wrong, miss; must take off the luggage and look inside." It is a
peculiarity that every working part is hidden modestly under the body of
the car. This protects them from wet and dust, Mr. Cecil-Lanstown told
me; but it seems a little inconvenient to have to haul off _all_ the
luggage every time you want to examine the machinery. It didn't take
long to find out what was the matter. The "aspiration pipe," Rattray
said, had worked loose (no doubt through the jolting over the Dieppe
_pave_) and the "vapour couldn't get from the carburetter to the
explosion chamber."

I only partly understood, but I felt that the poor car wasn't to blame.
How could it be expected to go on without aspirating? There was "no
spanner to fit the union," and Rattray darkly hinted at further trouble.
Three little French boys with a go-cart had come to stare. I Kodaked
them and send you their picture in this letter as a sort of punctuation
to my complaints.

Well, when Rattray had screwed up the "union" as well as he could (isn't
that what our statesmen did after the confederate war?), off we started
again, bustled through the town in the valley (which I found from Murray
was Neufchatel-en-Bray), and had a consoling run through beautiful
country until, at noon, we shot into the market-place of Forges les
Eaux. It was market-day, and we drove at a walking pace through the
crowded _place_, all alive with booths, the cackling of turkeys, and the
lowing of cows. There seemed to be only one decent inn, and the _salle
a manger_ was full of loud-talking peasants, with shrewd, brown,
wrinkled faces like masks, who "ate out loud," as I used to say.

The place was so thronged that Rattray had to sit at the same table with
us, and though as a good democrat I oughtn't to have minded, I did
squirm a little, for his manners--well, "they're better not to dwell
on." But the luncheon _was_ good, so French and so cheap. We hurried
over it, but it took Rattray half an hour to replenish the tanks of the
car with water (of course he had to lift down the luggage to do this)
and to oil the bearings. We sailed out of Forges les Eaux so bravely
that my hopes went up. It seemed certain we should be in Paris quite in
good time, but almost as soon as we had got out of the town one of the
chains glided gracefully off on to the road.

You'd think it the simplest thing in the world to slip it on again, but
that was just what it wasn't. Rattray worked over it half an hour
(everything takes half an hour to do on this car, I notice, when it
doesn't take more), saying things under his breath which Aunt Mary was
too deaf and I too dignified to hear. Finally I was driven to remark
waspishly, "You'd be a bad soldier; a good soldier makes the best of
things, and bears them like a man. You make the worst."

"That's all very well, miss," retorted my gloomy goblin; "but soldiers
have to fight _men_, not _beasts_."

"They get killed sometimes," said I.

"There's things makes a man _want_ to die," groaned he. And that
silenced me, even though I heard a ceaseless mumbling about "every
bloomin' screw being loose; that he'd engaged as a mechanic, not a
car-maker; that if he _was_ a car-maker, he was hanged if he'd disgrace
himself making one of _this_ sort, anyhow."

You'll think I'm exaggerating, but I vow we had not gone more than ten
miles further before that chain broke again. This time I believe Rattray
shed tears. As for Aunt Mary, her attitude was that of cold, Christian
resignation. She had sacrificed herself to me, and would continue to do
so, since such was her Duty, with a capital D; indeed, she had expected
this, and from the first she had told me, etc., etc. At last the chain
was forced on again and fastened with a new bolt. We sped forward for a
few deceitful moments, but--detail is growing monotonous. After that
something happened to the car, on the average, every hour. Chains
snapped or came off; if belts didn't break, they were too short or too
long. Mysterious squeaks made themselves heard; the crank-head got hot
(what head wouldn't?), and we had to wait until it thought fit to cool,
a process which could scarcely be accelerated by Rattray's language. He
now announced that this make of car, and my specimen in particular, was
_the_ vilest in the automobile world. If a worse _could_ be made, it did
not yet exist! When I ventured to inquire why he had not expressed this
opinion before leaving London, he announced that it was not his business
to express opinions, but to drive such vehicles as he was engaged to
drive. I hoped that there must be something wrong with the automobile
which Rattray didn't understand; that in Paris I could have it put
right, and that even yet all might go well. For a few miles we went with
reasonable speed, and no mishaps; but half-way up a long, long hill the
mystic "power" vanished once more, and there we were stranded nearly
opposite a forge, from which strolled three huge, black-faced men,
adorned with pitying smiles.

"Hire them to push," I said despairingly to Rattray, and as he turned a
sulky back to obey, I heard a whirring sound, and an automobile flew
past us up the steep hill, going about fifteen miles an hour. That did
seem the last straw; and with hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness
in my breast, I was shaking my fist after the thing, when it stopped
politely.

There were two men in it, both in leather caps and coats--I noticed that
half unconsciously. Now one of them jumped out and came walking back to
us. Taking off his cap, he asked me with his eyes and Aunt Mary with his
voice--in English--if there was anything he could do. He was very
good-looking, and spoke nicely, like a gentleman, but he seemed so
successful that I couldn't help hating him and wishing he would go away.
The only thing I wanted was that he and the other man and their car
should be specks in the distance when Rattray came back with his
blacksmiths to push us up the hill; so I thanked him hurriedly, and said
we didn't need help. Perhaps I said it rather stiffly, I was so wild to
have him gone. He stood for a minute as if he would have liked to say
something else, but didn't know how, then bowed, and went back to his
car. In a minute it was shooting up hill again, and I never was gladder
at anything in my life than when I saw it disappear over the top--only
just in time too, for it wasn't out of sight when our three blacksmiths
had their shoulders to the task.

"_There's_ a good car, if you like, miss," said that fiend Rattray.
"It's a Napier. Some pleasure in driving _that_."

I could have boxed his ears.

Once on level ground again, the car seemed to recover a little strength.
But night fell when we were still a long way from Paris, and our poor
oil-lamps only gave light enough to make darkness visible, so that we
daren't travel at high speed. There were uncountable belt-breakings and
heart-achings before at last, after eleven at night, we crawled through
the barriers of Paris and mounted up the Avenue de la Grande Armee to
the Arc de Triomphe. We drove straight to the Elysee Palace Hotel, and
let Rattray take the brute beast to a _garage_, which I _wished_ had
been a slaughter-house.

I couldn't sleep that night for thinking that I was actually in Paris,
and for puzzling what to do next, since it was clear it would be no use
going on with the car unless some hidden ailment could be discovered and
rectified. Our plan had been to stop in Paris for a week, and then drive
on to the beautiful chateau country of the Loire that I've always
dreamed of seeing. Afterwards, I thought we might go across country to
the Riviera; but now, unless light suddenly shone out of darkness, all
that was knocked on the head. What was my joy, then, in the morning,
when Rattray came and deigned to inform me that he had found out the
cause of the worst mischief! "The connecting-rod that worked the magnet
had got out of adjustment, and so the timing of the explosions was
wrong." This could be made right, and he would see to the belts and
chains. In a few days we might be ready to get away, with some hope of
better luck.

I was so pleased I gave him a louis. Afterwards I wished I hadn't--but
that's a detail. I sent you a cable, just saying, you'll remember:
"Elysee Palace for a week; all well"; and Aunt Mary and I proceeded to
drown our sorrows by draughts of undiluted Paris.

Crowds of Americans were at the hotel, a good many I knew; but Aunt Mary
and I kept dark about the automobile--very different from that time in
London, where I was always swaggering around talking of "my motor-car"
and the trip I meant to take. _Poor_ little me!

Mrs. Tom van Wyck was there, and she introduced me to an Englishwoman,
Lady Brighthelmston, a viscountess, or something, and you pronounce her
"Lady Brighton." She's near-sighted and looks at you through a
lorgnette, which is disconcerting, and makes you feel as if your
features didn't match properly; but she turned out to be rather nice,
and said she hoped we'd see each other at Cannes, where she's going
immediately. She expects her son to join her there. He's touring now on
his motor-car, and expects to meet her and some friends on the Riviera
in about a fortnight. Mrs. van Wyck told me he's the Honourable John
Winston, and a very nice fellow, but I grudge him an automobile, which
_goes_.

I just _couldn't_ write to you that week in Paris; not that I was too
busy--I'm never too busy to write to my dear old boy. But I knew you'd
expect to hear how I enjoyed the trip, and I didn't want to tell you the
bad news till perhaps I might have good news to add. Consequently I
cabled whenever a writing-day came round.

Well, at last Rattray vowed that the car was in good condition, and we
might start. It was a whole week since I'd seen the monster, and it
looked so handsome as it sailed up to the hotel door that my pride in it
came back. It was early in the morning, so there weren't many people
about, but I shouldn't have had cause to be ashamed if there had been.
We went off in fine style, and it was delicious driving through the
Bois, en route for Orleans, by way of Versailles. After all, I said to
myself, perhaps the car hadn't been to blame for our horrid experience.
No car was perfect, even Rattray admitted that. Some little thing had
gone wrong with ours, and the poor thing had been misunderstood.

We had traversed the Bois, and were mounting the long hill of Suresnes,
when "squeak! squeak!" a little insinuating sound began to mingle with
my reflections. I was too happy, with the sweet wind in my face, to pay
attention at first, but the noise kept on, insisting on being noticed.
Then it occurred to me that I'd heard it before in moments of baleful
memory.

"I believe that horrid crank-head is getting hot," said I. "Are you sure
it doesn't need oil?"

"Sure, miss," returned Rattray. "The crank-head's all right. That squeak
ain't anything to worry about."

So I didn't worry, and we bowled along for twenty perfect minutes, then
something went smash inside, and we stopped dead. It _was_ the
crank-head, which was nearly red hot. The crank had snapped like a
carrot. I was too prostrate, and, I trust, too proud to say things to
Rattray, though if he had just made sure that the lubricator was working
properly, we should have been saved.

Fortunately we had lately passed a big _garage_ by the Pont de Suresnes,
and we "coasted" to it down the hill, although of course our engine was
paralysed. You couldn't expect it to work without a head, even though
that head _was_ only a "crank!"

For once Rattray was somewhat subdued. He knew he was in fault, and
meekly proposed to take an electric tram back to Paris, there to see if
a new crank could be bought to fit, otherwise one would have to be made,
and it would take two or three days. At this I remarked icily that in
the latter case we would not proceed with the trip, and he could return
to London. Usually he retorted, if I showed the slightest sign of
disapproval, but now he merely asked if I would give him the money to
buy the new crank if it were obtainable.

I had only a couple of louis in change and a five-hundred franc note, so
I gave that to him, and he was to return as soon as possible, probably
in an hour and a half. Aunt Mary and I found our way gloomily to a
little third-class restaurant, where we had coffee and things. Time
crept on and brought no Rattray. When two hours had passed I walked back
to the _garage_, but the proprietor had no news. The car was standing in
the place where they had dragged it, and I climbed up to sit in gloomy
state on the back seat, feeling as if I couldn't bear to go back to Aunt
Mary until something had happened. Then something did happen, but not
the thing I had wanted. The very car that had stopped when we were in
trouble on the hill of the blacksmiths, far on the other side of Paris,
more than a week ago, came gliding smoothly, deliciously into the
_garage_.

The same two leather-capped and coated men were in it, master and
_chauffeur_, I thought. The madame of the establishment was talking
sympathetically to me, but I heard the voice of the man who had asked me
if he could help (the one I had taken for the master) inquiring in
French for a particular kind of essence. Then I didn't hear any more. He
and the _garage_ man were speaking in lower tones, and besides, the
shrill condolences of madame drowned their murmurs. She was loudly
giving it as her opinion that my _chauffeur_ had run off with my money,
and that, unless I had some means of tracing him, I should never look
upon his face again. I did wish that she would be quiet, at least until
the fortunate automobilists rolled away like kings in their chariot; but
I couldn't make her stop, and I was certain they heard every word. I
even imagined that they had deserted the subject of petrol for my
troubles, because I could see out of a corner of an eye that the
proprietor in his conversation with them nodded more than once towards
my car, in which I sat ingloriously enthroned like a sort of captive
Zenobia.

They seemed to be a long time buying their petrol, anyway, and presently
my worst fears were confirmed. The man who had spoken to me on the fatal
hill came forward, repeating himself (like history) by taking off his
cap and wearing exactly the same half-shy, half-interested expression as
before.

He said "er" once or twice, and then informed me that the proprietor had
been telling him what a scrape I was in, or words to that effect. He
offered to drive into Paris on his car, which would only take a few
minutes, go to the place where my _chauffeur_ had intended to buy the
crank, see whether he had been there, and if so, what delayed him. Then,
if anything were wrong, he would come back and let me know.

I said that I couldn't possibly let him take so much trouble, but he
would hardly listen. He knew the address of the place from the _garage_
man, who had recommended it to Rattray, and almost before I knew what
had happened the car and the dusty, leather-clad men were off.

There was nothing for me to do but to go back to Aunt Mary, which I did
in no happy frame of mind.

That Napier must have tossed its bonnet at the legal limit of speed, for
in less than an hour it drew up before this restaurant. Out jumped _my_
one of the two men and came into the room where Aunt Mary and I had sat
so long reading old French papers.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you," said he in his nice voice, "that your
man appears to be a scoundrel. He hasn't been to Le Sage's, nor to
another place which I tried. I'm afraid he has gone off with your money,
and that your only hope of getting it will be to track the fellow with a
detective."

"I don't want to track him," I said. "I never want to see him again, and
I don't care about the money. I'll engage another _chauffeur_. There
must be plenty in Paris."

As I said this he had rather a curious look on his face. I didn't
understand it then, but I did afterwards. "I'm afraid you'll find very
few who understand your make of car," he said, "which is German,
and--er--perhaps not up to the very latest date."

"I can believe anything of it," said I. "But now the crank's broken,
and----"

"I've taken the liberty of bringing another, which we took out of a
similar car," broke in the man. "The proprietor of the _garage_ across
the way thinks he can put it in for you; if not, I can help him, for I
once drove a car of the same make as yours, and have reason to remember
it."

I burst into thanks, and when I had used up most of my prettiest
adjectives I asked how long the work would take. He thought only a few
hours, and my car might be ready to start again in the afternoon.

I clapped my hands at this; then I could feel my face fall. (Funny
expression, isn't it?--almost as absurd as I "dropped my eyes"; but I
think I did that too.) "How lovely!" said I. And then, "But what good if
I can't get a _chauffeur_?"

The man's face grew red--not a bricky, ugly red; but as he was very
brown already, it only turned a nice mahogany colour, and made him look
quite engaging. "If you would take me," he said, "I am at your service."

I never was more astonished in my life, and I just sat and stared at
him. I was sure he must be making fun.

"Of course you'll think it strange," he went on in a hurry; "but the
fact is, I'm out of a job----"

"Why, are you a _real chauffeur_--a mechanic?" I couldn't help breaking
in on him. I _almost_ blurted out that I had taken him for the master,
which would have been horrid, of course, and suddenly I was ashamed of
myself, for I had been treating him exactly like an equal; and perhaps I
was silly enough to be a tiny bit disappointed too, for I'll confess to
you, Dad, that I'd had visions of his being someone rather grand, which
would have spread a little jam of romance over the stale, dry bread of
this disagreeable experience. Anyhow, this man was _much_ better looking
than his companion, whom I knew now was the master. He wasn't a gorgeous
person, like Mr. Cecil-Lanstown, but I'd certainly thought he had rather
a distinguished air. However, these Englishmen, even the peasants, are
sometimes such splendid types--clear-cut features, brave, keen eyes,
and all that, you know, as if their ancestors might have been Vikings.

While I was thinking, he was telling me that he was a _chauffeur_, sure
enough, and that this was the last day of his engagement with his
master, who didn't wish to take a mechanic any farther. His name, he
said, was James Brown. He had had a good deal of experience with several
kinds of cars--my sort was the first he'd ever driven; he knew it well,
and if I cared to try him, he could get me a very good reference from
his master, Mr. Winston.

"Mr. Winston!" I repeated. "Is your master the Honourable John Winston?"

"That is his name," he answered, though he looked so odd when he said it
that I thought it wise to mention that I knew Mr. Winston's mother, so
he would have a sort of warning if he weren't speaking the truth. But he
didn't look like a man who would tell fibs, and to cut a long story
short, he brought out a letter which the Honourable John Winston had
already given him. It was very short, as if it had been written in a
hurry, but nothing could have been more satisfactory. Brown, as I
suppose I must call him, said that he would be able to start with us as
soon as the car was ready, and when I mentioned where I wanted to go he
remarked that he had been all through the chateau country several times
on a motor-car. One can see from the way he talks that he's an
intelligent, competent young man (he can't be more than twenty-eight or
nine) and knows his business thoroughly. I think I'm very lucky to get
him, don't you?

_Now_ you will understand the address at the top of this long letter;
and I am writing it while James Brown and the _garage_ man fit the new
crank into the car. I must have been scribbling away for two hours, so
almost any minute my new _chauffeur_ may arrive to say that we can
start. I shall write again soon to tell you how he turns out, and all
about things in general; and when I don't write I'll cable.


                                        Your battered but hopeful
                                                                Molly.




FROM JACK WINSTON TO LORD LANE


                                               Orleans, _November 29_.

  My dear Montie,

I have so many things to tell you I scarcely know where to begin. First
let me announce that I am in for an adventure--a real flesh and blood
adventure into which I plump without premeditation, but an adventure of
so delightful a kind that I hope it may continue for many a day. I know
you'll say at once, "That means Woman"; and you're right. But I won't go
to the heart of the story at once; I'll begin at the beginning. First,
though, a word as to yourself. I miss you enormously. It is a cruel
stroke of fate that you should have been ordered to Davos after you had
made all your plans to go with me on my new car to the Riviera. I still
think that a trip on which you would have been in the open air all day
was just as likely to check incipient chest trouble as the cold dryness
of Davos; but no doubt you were right to do as the doctors told you. I
shall look eagerly for letters from you with bulletins of your progress.
As I can't have you with me, the next best thing will be to write to you
often; besides, you said that you would like to have frequent reports of
my doings in France, with "plenty of detail."

Well, the new car is a stunner. I haven't so far a fault to find with
her. She takes most hills on the third, which is very good; for though
we are only two up--Almond and I--I have luggage in the _tonneau_ almost
equal to the weight of another passenger. Between Dieppe and Paris she
licked up the kilometres as a running flame licks up dry wood. She runs
sweetly and with hardly any noise. The ignition seems to work perfectly;
she carries water and petrol enough for 150 miles. I think at last in
the Napier I have found the ideal car, and you know I have searched long
enough. Almond timed her on the level bit at Acheres, and it was at the
rate of over forty-five miles an hour--not bad for a touring car.

It was between Dieppe and Paris (somewhere between Gisors and Meru) that
the adventure began. I was flying up a slope of perhaps one in fifteen,
when I became aware of Beauty in Distress. An antediluvian car, which
was recognizable by its rearward protuberance as something archaic, was
stationary on the hill; two ladies sat on an extraordinarily high seat
behind like a throne, and a mechanic was slouching towards a smith's
forge by the roadside. One motorist, of course, must always offer help
to another--to pass a stranded car would be like ignoring signals of
distress at sea; besides, one of the ladies looked young and seemed to
have a charming figure. So, having passed them, I pulled up and went
back.

The ladies said "America" to me as plainly as if they had spoken. They
were most professionally got up, the elder so befurred and goggled that
I could see only the tip of her nose; the younger with a wonderfully
fetching grey fur coat, a thing that I believe women call a "toque," and
a double veil, which allowed only a tantalising hint of a piquant
profile and a pair of bewildering grey eyes. They--or rather the younger
one--met my profferred help with a rather curt refusal, but the voice
that uttered it was musical to a point rare among the American women of
the eastern States, and these were New York or nowhere. There was
nothing for me to do except retire; but Almond, looking back as we sped
away, said, "Why, sir, blowed if they haven't got those three smiths
pushing them up the hill!" From which I argued that Beauty was very
jealous for the reputation of her car. This is the end of Chapter I.

Chapter II. opens at Suresnes, some days later. I was starting for
Cannes, and had just crossed the bridge when, in the yard of a _garage_
on the left-hand side at the foot of the hill, I detected again Beauty
in Distress--the same Beauty, but a different Distress. There was the
high and portly car, with Beauty perched up in it alone--Beauty in the
attitude appropriate to Patience smiling at Grief. Almost before I knew
what I did, I turned my car into the yard and pulled up near her, making
an excuse of asking for Stelline, though, as a matter of fact, Almond
had filled up the tank only half an hour before at the Automobile Club.
The manager of the _garage_ told me that Beauty's car was stranded with
a broken crank. Now Almond had caught sight of her _mecanicien_ the
previous time we met, and knew him for a wrong un in London; therefore
when I heard he had gone off to Paris with five hundred francs to buy a
new crank, I thought the situation serious. So, despite the former snub,
I again offered my services.

SHE had her veil up, and, by Jove! she was good to look upon! The eyes
were deep and candid; the curve of the red lips (a little subdued now)
suggested a delightful sense of humour; her brown hair rippled over the
ears and escaped in curly tendrils on her white neck. The girl was
delicately balanced, finely wrought, tempered like a sword-blade.
Something in my inner workings seemed to cry out with pleasure at her
perfections; a very unusual nervousness got hold of me when I spoke to
her.

It ended in my flying off to the Avenue de la Grande Armee to search for
the missing man and another crank. You remember my earliest automobile
experiences were with a Benz, as so many people's have been, and I knew
where to go. Nothing had been heard of the man; I bribed a fellow to
take a crank out of another car, and on the way back a wild idea
occurred to me. I was obliged to sketch it to the astonished Almond,
commanded him to deadly secrecy, then offered my own services to the
beautiful American girl in place of her former _chauffeur_, absconded.
The whole thing came into my mind in a flash as I was spinning through
the Bois, and I hadn't time to think of the difficulties in which I
might get landed. I only felt that this was the prettiest girl I had
ever seen, and determined at any price to see a good deal more of her.
Only one way of doing that occurred to me. I couldn't say to her, "I am
Mr. John Winston, a perfectly respectable person. I have been seized
with a strong and sudden admiration for your beauty. Will you let me go
with you on your trip through France?" Even an American girl would have
been staggered at that. The situation called for an immediate
decision--either I was to lose the girl, or resort to a trick. You quite
see how it was, don't you?

In the first instant there came a complication. I had stopped my car a
minute in the Bois to scribble a character for my new self--James Brown,
from my old self--John Winston; but as soon as I presented this piece of
writing to back up my application for the place, Miss Molly Randolph (I
may as well give you her name) exclaimed that she knew my mother. Such
is life! It seems they met in Paris. But the die was cast, and she
engaged me. I trusted the Napier to Almond, giving him general
instructions to keep as near to us as he could, without letting himself
be seen, and for the last two days I have been _chauffeur_,
_mecanicien_, call it what you will, to the most charming girl in this
exceedingly satisfactory world.

By this time I know that your eyes are wide open. I can picture you
stretched in your _chaise longue_ at Davos in the sunshine reading this
and whistling softly to yourself. I have no time to write more to-night;
the rest must wait.

                            Your very sincere and excited friend,
                                                         Jack Winston.


                                       Hotel de Londres, Amboise,
                                                          _December 3_.

  My dear Montie,

The plot thickens. She is _Superb_. But things are happening which I
didn't foresee, and which I don't like. I have to suppress a Worm, and
suppressed he shall be. I am writing this letter to you in my bedroom.
It is three in the morning, and a lovely night--more like spring than
winter. Through my wide-open window the only sound that comes in is the
lapping of the lazy Loire against the piers of the great stone bridge. I
have not been to bed; I shall not go to bed, for I have something to do
when dawn begins. Though I have worked hard to-day, I am not tired; I am
too excited for fatigue. But I must give you a sketch of what has
happened during the last few days. It is a comfort and a pleasure to me
to be able to unburden myself to your sympathetic heart. You will read
what I write with patience, I know, and with interest, I hope. That you
will often smile, I am sure.

I sent you a line from Orleans, telling you that I had got myself
engaged as _chauffeur_ to Miss Molly Randolph at Suresnes. Well, the
_garage_ man and I managed to fit the new crank into my lovely
employer's abominable car, and about three or four in the afternoon we
were ready to take the road. As I tucked the rug round the ladies Miss
Randolph threw me an appealing look. "My aunt," she said, "declares that
it is quite useless to go on, as she is sure we shall never get
anywhere. But it _is_ a good car, isn't it, Brown, and we _shall_ get to
Tours, shan't we?" "It's a _great_ car, miss," I said quite truthfully
and very heartily. "With this car I'd guarantee to take you comfortably
all round Europe." Heaven knows that this boast was the child of hope
rather than experience; but it would have been too maddening to have the
whole thing knocked on the head at the beginning by the fears of a
timorous elderly lady. "You hear, Aunt Mary, what Brown says," said the
girl, with the air of one who brings an argument to a close, and I
hastened to start the car.

By Jove! The compression was strong! I wasn't prepared for it after the
simple twist of the hand, which is all that is necessary to start the
Napier, and the recoil of the starting-handle nearly broke my wrist. But
I got the engine going with the second try, jumped to my place in front
of the ladies (you understand that it is a phaeton-seated car), and
started very gingerly up the hill. Though I was once accustomed to a
belt-driven Benz (you remember my little 3-1/2 horse-power "halfpenny
Benz," as I came to call it), that had the ordinary fast and loose
pulleys, while this German monstrosity is driven by a jockey-pulley, an
appliance fiendishly contrived, as it seemed to me, especially for
breaking belts quickly. The car too is steered by a tiller worked with
the left hand, and there are so many different levers to manipulate
that to drive the thing properly one ought to be a modern Briareus.

I must say, though, that the thing has power. It bumbled in excellent
style on the second speed up the long hill of Suresnes; but when we got
to the level and changed speeds, I put the jockey on a trifle too
quickly, and snick! went the belt. I was awfully anxious that my new
mistress shouldn't think me a duffer, that she shouldn't lose confidence
in her car and me, and determine to bring her tour to an abrupt end; so
as soon as I felt the snap I turned round saying it was only a broken
belt that could be mended in no time. She smiled delightfully. "How nice
of you to take it so well!" she said. "Rattray seemed to think that when
a belt broke the end of the world had come."

Now to mend a belt seems the easiest thing going, and so it is when you
merely have to hammer a fastening through it and turn the ends over. But
in this car you have to make the joint with coils of twisted wire.
Simple as it is to do in a workshop, this belt-mending is a most
irritating affair by the roadside, and when done I found by subsequent
experiences that the wires wear through and tear out after less than a
hundred miles.

On this first day, not having the hang of the job, I found it
disgustingly tedious. To begin with, to get at the pulleys I had to open
the back of the car, and that meant lifting down all the carefully
strapped luggage and depositing it by the roadside. Then the wire and
tools were either in a cupboard under the floor of the car or in a box
under the ladies' seats, which meant disturbing them every time one
wanted anything. How different to my beautifully planned Napier, where
every part is easily accessible!

The mending of that third speed-belt took me half an hour, and after
that we made some progress; but dusk coming on, I suggested to the
ladies that as there was very little fun in travelling in the dark, I
thought they had better stay the night at Versailles, going on to
Orleans the next day. They agreed.

I had thought out plans for my own comfort. I knew that at some of the
smaller country inns there would be no rooms for servants, and that I
should have to eat with the ladies, which suited me exactly. In the
larger towns, rather than mess with the couriers, valets, and maids, I
should simply instal my employers in one hotel, then quietly go off
myself to another. That is what I did at Versailles. I saw the ladies
into the best hotel in the town, drove the car into the stable-yard, and
went out to watch for Almond. He had followed us warily and had stopped
the Napier in a side street two hundred yards away. I joined him, and we
drove to a quiet hotel about a quarter of a mile from Miss Randolph's. I
had my luggage taken in, bathed, changed, and dined like a prince,
instructing Almond to be up at six next morning and thoroughly clean and
oil the German car, making a lot of new fastenings in spare belts. Later
in the day he is to follow us to Orleans with the Napier. Thus I live
the double life--by day the leather-clad _chauffeur_; by night the
English gentleman travelling on his own car. The plans seem well laid;
I cover my tracks carefully; I don't see how detection can come.

With a good deal of inward fear and trembling I drove the car at eight
the next morning to the door of Miss Randolph's hotel. She and her
masked and goggled aunt appeared at once, and in five minutes the
luggage was strapped on behind.

"Now please understand," said the girl, with a twinkle of merriment, in
her eyes, "that this is to be a pilgrimage, not a meteor flight. Even if
this car's capable of racing, which I guess it isn't, I don't want to
race. I just want to glide; I want to see everything; to drink in
impressions every instant."

This suited me exactly, for it gave me a chance of humouring and
studying the uncouth thing that I was called upon to drive. I had come
out to Versailles to avoid the direct route to Orleans by Etampes, which
is _pave_ nearly all the way, and practically impassable for
automobiles. From Versailles there is a good route by Dourdan and
Angerville, which, if not picturesque, at least passes through
agreeable, richly cultivated country. The road is exceedingly
_accidentee_ on leaving Versailles, and I drove with great care down the
dangerous descent to Chateaufort, and also down the hill at St. Remy,
which leads to the valley of the Yvette. Till beyond Dourdan the road is
one long switchback, and it is but fair to record that the solid German
car climbed the hills with a kind of lumbering sturdiness much to its
credit. At Dourdan we lunched, and soon after entered on the long, level
road to Orleans. The car travelled well--for it, and the day's record of
sixty-seven miles was only three breakages of belts. To my relief and
surprise we actually got to Orleans in time for dinner. I was a proud
man when I drove my employers into the old-fashioned courtyard of the
d'Orleans. Almond, I knew, was at the St. Aignan with the Napier, and
there I presently joined him, to hear that he had done the total run
from Versailles, with an hour's stop for lunch, in under the four hours,
the car running splendidly all the way. Almond does not at all
understand why he is left alone, and why I have gone off to drive two
ladies in an out-of-date German car which any self-respecting
automobilist would be ashamed to be seen on in France. He looks at me
queerly, and would like to ask questions; but being a good servant as
well as a good mechanic, he doesn't, and kindly puts up with his
master's whims.

My orders were to be ready for the ladies at ten the next morning, and
when punctually to the moment I drove the car into the courtyard, I
found them waiting for me. Miss Randolph volunteered the news that she
and her aunt had been round the town in a cab to see the sites connected
with the Maid, but that she had found it very difficult to picture
things as they were, so modernised is the town.

The morning we left Orleans was exquisite. The car went well; the
magnificent Loire was brimming from bank to bank, and not meandering
among disfiguring sand-banks, as it does later in the year; the wide,
green landscape shone through a glitter of sunshine; and here and there
in the blue sky floated a mass of tumbled white cloud. Our little party
at first was silent. I think the beauty of the scene influenced us all,
even Aunt Mary; and the thrumming of the motor formed a monotonous
undercurrent to our thoughts.

As I've told you, the German horror is phaeton-seated, and for me in
front to talk comfortably to any lady behind is not easy. In driving,
one can't take one's attention much off the road, so Miss Molly has to
lean forward and shout over my shoulder. A curious and delightful kind
of understanding is growing up between us. You know that the history of
this part of France is fairly familiar to me, and I've already done the
castles twice before. What I've forgotten, I've studied up in the
evenings, so as to be indispensable to Miss Randolph. At first she spoke
to me very little, only a kind word now and then such as one throws to a
servant; but I could hear much of what she said to her aunt, and her
comments on things in general were sprightly and original. She had
evidently read a good deal, looked at things freshly, and brought to
bear on the old Court history of France her own quaint point of view.
Her enthusiasm was ever ready--bubbling, but never gushing, and I
eagerly kept an ear to the windward not to miss the murmur of the
geographical and historical fountain behind my back.

"Aunt Mary," on the contrary, has a vague and ordinary mind, being more
interested in what she is going to have for luncheon than in what she is
going to see. The girl, therefore, is rather thrown back upon herself. I
burned to join in the talk, yet I dared not step out of the character I
had assumed. As it turned out, fortune was waiting to befriend me.

We were bowling along through Meung, when I suddenly spied on the other
side of the river the square and heavy mass of Notre Dame de Clery, and
almost without thinking, I pointed it out to Miss Randolph. "There is
Clery," I said, "where Louis the Eleventh is buried. You remember, in
_Quentin Durward_? The church is worth seeing. It's almost a pity we
didn't go that side of the river." Then I stopped, rather confused,
fearing I had given myself away. There was a moment's astonished
silence, and I was afraid Miss Randolph would see the back of my neck
getting red.

"Why, _Brown_!" she cried, leaning forward over my shoulder, "you know
these things; you've read history?"

"Oh yes, miss," I said. "I've read a bit here and there, such books as I
could get hold of. I was always interested in history and architecture,
and that sort of thing. Besides," I went on hastily, "I've travelled
this road before with a gentleman who knows a good deal about this part
of France."

I don't think that was disingenuous, was it?--for I hope I've a right to
call myself "a gentleman."

"How lucky for us!" cried Miss Randolph, and I heard her congratulating
herself to her aunt, because they had got hold of a _cicerone_ and
_chauffeur_ in one. After that she began to talk to me a good deal, and
now she seems to show a kind of wondering interest in testing the amount
of my knowledge, which I take care to clothe in common words and not to
show _too_ much. You must admit the situation grows in piquancy.

At Mer we crossed the Loire by the suspension bridge and ran the eight
miles to Chambord, meaning to lunch there, and go on to Blois after
seeing the Chateau. It was a grand performance for the car to run nearly
three hours without accident. While luncheon was being prepared I filled
up the water-tanks (even this simple task involved lifting all the
luggage off the car), washed with some invaluable Hudson's soap, which I
had brought from my own car, and made myself smart for _dejeuner_. The
eating business will, I can see, be one of my chief difficulties. At
Chambord, for instance, in the small hotel, there is, of course, no
special room for servants. As I have no fondness for eating in stuffy
kitchens when it can be avoided, I wandered sedately into the _salle a
manger_, where Miss Randolph and her aunt were already seated, and took
a place at the further end of the same long table (we were the only
people in the room). Aunt Mary looked for an instant a little
discomposed at the idea of lunching with her niece's hired mechanic, but
Miss Randolph, noticing this--she sees everything--shot me a welcoming
smile. Then the paying difficulty is an odious one. Of course, at the
end of the meal my bill goes to her, and she pays for me: "_Mecanicien_,
_dejeuner_----" so much. Picture it! Of course, I can't protest, as this
is the custom; but I am keeping a strict account of all her expenses on
my account, and one day shall square our accounts somehow--I don't at
present see how. I have formed the idea that by-and-by I may offer to
act also as courier, relieving her of the bother of making payments, and
so on. If I can work that, I'll deduct my own lot and pay it myself, the
chances being that as she is careless about money she won't notice that
I've done so, only thinking, perhaps, that I am a clever chap to run
things so cheaply.

There's another thing which gives me the "wombles," as those delightful
Miss Bryants used to call the feeling they had when they were looking
forward to any event with a mixture of excitement, fear, and
embarrassment.

Well, I have the "wombles" when I think of the moment, near at hand,
when Miss Randolph will hand me my weekly wage, which I have put at the
modest figure of fifty francs a week; but I am getting away from the
_dejeuner_ at Chambord.

We had just finished the _croute au pot_, when there came a whirr!
outside, upon which Miss Randolph looked questioningly at me. "A little
Pieper," I said. "How wonderful!" she exclaimed. "Can you really tell
different makes of cars just by their sound?" "Anyone can do that," I
informed her, "with practice; you will yourself by the time you get to
the end of this journey. Each car has its characteristic note. The De
Dion has a kind of screaming whirr; the Benz a pulsing throb; the
Panhard a thrumming; a tricycle a noise like a miniature Maxim."

The driver of the Pieper came in. His get-up was the last outrageous
word of automobilism--leather cap with ear-flaps, goggles and mask, a
ridiculously shaggy coat of fur, and long boots of skin up to his
thighs--a suitable costume for an Arctic explorer, but mighty fantastic
in a mild French winter. You know these posing French automobilists. At
sight of a beautiful girl, he made haste to take off his hat and
goggles, revealing himself as a good-looking fellow with abnormally long
eyelashes, which I somehow resented. He preened himself like a bird,
twisted up the ends of his black moustache, and prepared for conquest.
Catching Miss Randolph's eye, he smiled; she answered with that
delightful American frankness which the Italian and the Frenchman
misconstrue, and in a moment they were talking motor-car as hard as they
could go. The poor _chauffeur_ was ignored.

It undermines one's sense of self-importance to find how quickly one can
be unclassed. I tasted at this moment the mortification of service. Once
in an hotel at Biarritz I gave to the _valet de chambre_ a hat and a
couple of coats that I didn't want any more. They were in good
condition, and he was overwhelmed with the value of the gift. "Monsieur
is too kind," the fellow said; "such clothes are too good for me. They
are all right for you, but for _nous autres_!"--the "others," who
neither expect the good things of life nor envy those who have them. The
expression implies the belief that the world is divided into two
parts--the ones and the other ones.

Now, as I heard my sweet and clever little lady babbling automobilism
with all the wisdom of an amateur of six weeks, I felt that I was
indeed one of the Others. Though the Frenchman was to me a manifest Worm
(in that he was supercilious, puffed up with conceit, taking it for
granted that women should fall down and worship him) and a ridiculous
braggart, I had to see her receive his open admiration with equanimity
and listen to his stories with credulity, _my_ business being to eat in
silence and "thank Heaven" (though not "fasting") that I was allowed in
the presence of my betters. Still, I would have gone through more than
that to be near her, to hear her talk, and see her smile, for frankly
this girl begins to interest me as no other woman has.

"Ah, how I have travelled to-day!" the Frenchman said, throwing his
hands wide apart. "I left Paris this morning, to-morrow I shall be in
Biarritz. To-day I have killed a dog and three hens. On the front of my
car just now I found the bones and feathers of some birds, which
miscalculated their distance and could not get away in time." Miss
Randolph gave a little cry, translating for her aunt, who has no French.

"Shocking!" ejaculated Aunt Mary. "A regular juggernaut."

"Your car does not go as fast as that, mademoiselle?" the Frenchman went
on. "A little heavy, I should think; a slow hill-climber?"

"On the contrary," Miss Randolph fired up. "Though my car
has--er--_some_ drawbacks, it goes splendidly uphill, doesn't it,
Brown?"

"That is its strong point," I answered, grateful for the unexpected and
kindly word of recognition thrown to me, one of the Others; but the
Frenchman did not deign to notice the _chauffeur_.

"Capital!" cried he. "If mademoiselle be willing, and a hill can be
found in the neighbourhood, I should like to wager my Pieper against her
seven-horse-power German car. I had an odd experience the other day," he
went on. "My motor stopped for want of _essence_; luckily it was in a
village, but there wasn't a drop of _essence_ to be bought--all the
shops were sold out. What do you think I did, mademoiselle? I filled the
tank with absinthe from a _cafe_, and got home on that. Not many would
have thought of it, eh?"

"Few indeed," said I to myself, for it was news to me that his
carburetter could burn heavy oil. While I was reflecting that
automobiling, like fishing, is a pursuit whose followers are peculiarly
ready to sacrifice truth on the altar of picturesqueness, luncheon was
over, and we all rose. With what seemed to me detestable impertinence,
though clearly not understood as such by innocent Miss Randolph, the
Frenchman sauntered by the side of the ladies as if to go with them to
the Chateau. Perhaps my young mistress was touched by the look of gloom
that doubtless clouded my insignificant features, for she promptly and
cordially tendered me an invitation to go with them. "You know, Brown,"
she said, "we look on you as our guide as well as our _chauffeur_" ("and
I must be your watch-dog too, though it isn't in the contract," I
grumbled to myself, "if you are going to allow every automobilist who
claims the right of fellowship to thrust himself upon you").

Even Aunt Mary was impressed as we passed into the inner court of
Chambord, and Miss Randolph (whose sympathy and imagination throws her
at once into harmony with her surroundings) drew a quick breath of
half-awed astonishment at sight of this enormous structure, more like a
city than a single house, with its prodigious towers, its extraordinary
assemblage of pinnacles, gables, turrets, cones, chimneys and gargoyles.
The Frenchman minced along at her side, twirling his moustache, and
making great play with those long-lashed eyes of his. I divined his
intention to outdistance us, and get Miss Randolph to himself in the
labyrinth of vast, empty rooms through which our party was paraded by a
languid guide; but thwarted him by hastening Aunt Mary's steps and
keeping upon their heels in my new character of watch-dog. I was more
annoyed than I care to tell you when I saw that she seemed to like his
idiotic compliments; but when I heard him tell her airily that Chambord
was built by Louis the Fourteenth, and Miss Randolph turned
questioningly to me with a puzzled little wrinkle on her forehead, I
felt that my time had come.

I began something reprehensively like a lecture on Chambord, putting
myself by Miss Randolph's side, and determined that the Frenchman should
get no further chance. I pointed out the constant recurrence of the
salamander, the emblem of Francis the First, the builder of the house,
and I told how he had selected this sandy waste to build it on, because
the Comtesse de Thoury had once lived near by, she having been one of
the earliest loves of that oft-loving King. I enlarged upon the
characteristics of French Renaissance architecture, pointed out the
unity in variety of the design of Pierre Nepveu, the obscure but
splendid genius who planned the house as something between a fortified
castle and an Italian palace; showed them the H entwined with a crescent
on those parts of the house that were built by Henry the Second; and
sketched the history of the place, talking about Marshal Saxe, Stanislas
of Poland, the Revolution of 1792, and the subsequent tenancy of
Berthier. I can tell you that when once I was started, the
absinthe-driver was bowled over. I simply sprawled all over Chambord,
talked for once as well as I knew how, directed all my remarks to Miss
Randolph, who--"though I say it as shouldn't"--seemed dazzled by my
fireworks. An English girl must have been struck with the incongruity of
a hired mechanic spouting French history like a public lecturer, but
she, I think, only put it down to some difference in the standard of
English education. Anyhow, the Frenchman was done for, and Miss Randolph
and I plunged into an interesting talk, shunting the new acquaintance
upon Aunt Mary. As she can speak no French and he no English, they must
have had a "Jack-Sprat-and-his-wife" experience.

For that happy hour while we wandered through the echoing-rooms of
Chambord, climbed the wonderful double staircase, and walked about the
intricate roof, I was no longer James Brown, the hired mechanic, but
John Winston, private gentleman and man at large, with a taste for
travel. There came a horrid wrench when I had to remember that I had
chosen to make myself one of the unclassed, one of the "others." The
autumnal twilight was falling; we had to get to Blois on a car that
might commit any atrocity at any instant. Yet, strange to say, it had a
magnanimous impulse, started easily, and ran smoothly. The somewhat
subdued Frenchman started just before us on his little Pieper, and soon
outpaced our solid chariot. We went back to St. Die, took the road by
the Loire, and as dusk was falling crossed the camel-backed bridge over
the great river, and went up the Rue Denis Pepin into the ancient city
of Blois. The Chateau does not show its best face to the riverside,
being hemmed in by other buildings, so I drove past our hotel and on to
the pretty green _place_ where the great many-windowed Chateau springs
aloft from its huge foundation. "The famous Chateau of Blois," I
remarked, waving a hand towards it. "The old home of the kings of
France." We all sat and looked up at the huge, silent building, the
glowing colours of its recessed windows catching the last beams of
departing day.

"I suppose its only tenants now are ghosts," said Miss Randolph. "I can
imagine that I see wicked Catherine de Medicis glaring at us from that
high window near the tower." It was an impressive introduction to one of
the greatest monuments of France, and after we had gazed a little longer
I turned the car and drove back into the courtyard of the Grand Hotel de
Blois, where tame partridges pecked at grain upon the ground, many dogs
gambolled, and foreign birds bickered and chattered in huge cages. At
the entrance was the Frenchman, all eyes and eyelashes, darting forward
to help Miss Randolph from her car.

I grew weary to nausea of this shallow, pretentious ass, with no
knowledge of his own land. It began to shape itself in my mind that
though a gentleman in exterior he was the common or garden
fortune-hunter, or perhaps worse. Finding a beautiful American girl
travelling _en automobile_, chaperoned only by a rather foolish and
pliable aunt, he fancied her an easy prey to his elaborate manners and
eyelashes. Knowing we were coming to the "Grand," I had directed Almond
to drive the Napier to the "France," and my duty for the day being over,
I was about to go across to change and dine, when I saw Miss Randolph in
the hall. She was annoyed, she told me, to find that the best suite of
rooms were taken by some rich Englishman and his daughter, and she had
to put up with second-rate ones. "Poor Monsieur Talleyrand," she ended,
"has little more than a cupboard to sleep in." Talleyrand, then, was the
name of the Frenchman. "Oh, is he stopping here?" I asked. "He said he
was going on at once to Biarritz."

"He's changed his mind," said she. "He's so impressed with Chambord that
he says it's a pity not to see all the other chateaux, which are so
important in the history of his own country. He asked Aunt Mary if we
should mind his going at the same time with us. So _of course_ she said
we wouldn't." All this, if you please, with the most candid air of
guilelessness, which I actually believe was genuine.

"She said _what_?" I demanded, quite forgetting my part in my rage.

"She said," repeated Miss Randolph slowly and with dignity, "that we
would not mind his seeing the chateaux when we see them. Why should we
mind? The poor young man won't do us any harm, and it's quite right of
him to want to see his own castles, because, anyhow, they're a great
deal more his than ours."

I was still out of myself, or rather out of Brown.

"But is it possible, my dear Miss Randolph," I was mad enough to exclaim
(I, who had never before risen above the level of a humble "miss"),
"that you and Miss Kedison believe in that flimsy excuse? The
castles----"

"Yes, the _castles_," she repeated, very properly taking the word out of
my mouth; and the worst of it was that she was completely right in
setting me in my place, setting me down hard. "I am surprised at you,
Brown. You are a splendid mechanic, and--and you have travelled and read
such a lot that you are a very good guide too, and because I think we're
lucky to have got you I treat you quite differently from an ordinary
_chauffeur_." (If you could have heard that "ordinary" as she said it!
There was hope in it in the midst of humiliation; but I dared not let a
gleam dart from my respectful eye.) "Still, you must remember, please,
that you are engaged for certain things and not for others. If I need a
protector besides Aunt Mary, I may tell you."

I could have burst into unholy laughter to hear the poor child; but I
bottled it up, and only ventured to say, with a kind of soapy meekness
which I hoped might lather over the real presumption, "I beg your
pardon, miss, and I hope you won't be offended; but, as you say, I have
travelled a little, and I know something of Frenchmen. They don't always
understand American young ladies as well as----"

"'As well as Englishmen,' I suppose you were going to say," snapped she,
that dimpled chin of hers suddenly seeming to assume a national
squareness I'd never observed. "But Monsieur Talleyrand, though a
Frenchman, is a gentleman."

That's what I had to swallow, my boy. The inference was that a French
gentleman was, at worst, a cut above an English mechanic, and with that
she turned her back on me and ran upstairs with such a rustling of
unseen silk things as made me feel her very petticoats were bristling
with indignation.

I could have shaken the girl. And the things I said to myself as I
stalked over to my own hotel won't bear repeating; they might set the
mail-bag an fire; combustibles aren't allowed in the post, I believe. I
swore that (among other things) one such snubbing was enough. If Miss
Randolph wanted to get herself in the devil of a scrape, she could do
it, but I wasn't going to stand by and look complacently on while that
smirking Beast made fools of her and her aunt. I'd clear out to-morrow;
didn't care a hang whether she found out the trick I'd played or not.

That mood lasted about ten minutes, then I began to realise that,
talking of beasts, there was something of the sort inside my own leather
coat, and that if anyone deserved a shaking, it was Jack Winston, and
not that poor, pretty little thing. I was bound to stop on in the place
and protect her, whether she knew she wanted any protection except Aunt
Mary's (oh, Lord!) or not. Besides, I wanted the place, since it was the
best I could expect for the present, and where Talleyrand (?) was, there
would I be also, so long as he was near Her.

Bath and dinner brought me once more as near to an angelic disposition
as I hope to attain in this sphere; and, while I was supposed to be
earning my screw by cleaning the loathsome car, and making new
fastenings for spare belts, I was complacently watching poor Almond in
the throes of these Herculean labours. N.B.--It's only fair to myself to
tell you that Almond is getting double wages, and is quite satisfied,
though I'm persuaded he thinks he has a madman for a master.

About half-past nine next morning (that's yesterday, in case you're
getting mixed) I was hanging round the German chariot with a duster,
pretending to flick specks off it, though Almond had left none, when
Miss Randolph, Aunt Mary, and the alleged Talleyrand came out of the
coffee-room, laughing and talking like the best of friends. Talleyrand
was now in ordinary clothes, perhaps to point the difference between
himself and a mere professional _chauffeur_. Miss Randolph looked
adorable. She'd put off her motoring get-up, and was no end of a swell.
This I saw without seeming to see, for we had not met since our scene.
I didn't know where I stood with her, but thought it prudent meanwhile
to wear a humble air of conscious rectitude, misunderstood.

Talleyrand was swaggering along without a glance at the _chauffeur_ (why
not, indeed?) when Miss Randolph hung back, looked round, and then
stopped. "Oh, Brown, do you know as much about the Chateau of Blois as
you did about Chambord?" asked she, in a voice as sweet as the Lost
Chord.

"Yes, miss, I think I do," said I, lifting my black leather cap.

"Then, are you too busy to come with us?"

"No, miss, not at all, if I can be of any service."

"But, you know, you needn't come unless you like. Maybe it bores you to
be a guide."

Now, if I'd been a gentleman and not a _chauffeur_, perhaps I should
have had a right to suspect just a morsel of innocent, kittenish
coquetry in this. As it is with me--and with her--if there's anything of
the sort, it's wholly unconscious. But it's the most adorable type of
girl who flirts a little with everything human--man, woman, or
child--and doesn't know it. I take no flattering unction to myself as
Brown. Nevertheless I dutifully responded that it gave me pleasure to
make use of such small knowledge as I possessed, and was grateful to her
for not hearing Talleyrand murmur that he'd provided himself with the
_Guide Joanne_. After that I could afford to be moderately complacent,
even though I had to walk in the rear of the party, and no one took
notice of me until I was wanted.

That time came, when we'd wound round the path under the commanding old
Chateau, with its long lines of windows, and reached the exquisite
Gothic doorway. From that moment it was the Chambord business over
again; and I thanked my foresight for having stopped out of my bed half
the night, fagging up all the historical details I'd forgotten. These I
brought out with a naturalistic air of having been brought up on them
since earliest infancy.

Miss Randolph chatters pretty American French, but doesn't understand as
much as she speaks when it's reeled off by the yard, so to say;
therefore my explanations in English were more profitable than the
French of the official guide, who fell into the background. My
delightful American maiden has never travelled abroad before, and she
brings with her a fresh eagerness for all the old things that are so new
to her. It is a constant joy even for poor handicapped Brown to go about
with her, finding how invariably she seizes on the right thing, which
she knows by instinct rather than cultivation--though she's evidently
what she would call a "college girl."

I halted my little party before the Louis the Twelfth gateway, made them
admire the equestrian statue of the good King, drew their attention to
the beautiful chimneys and the adornments of the roof, with the
agreeable porcupine of Louis, the mild ermine and the constantly
recurring festooned rope of that important lady, Anne of Brittany. Then
I led them inside, rejoicing in Talleyrand's air of resentful remoteness
from my guidance. I scored, too, in his superficial knowledge of
English. In the midst of my ciceronage, however, I thought of you, and
how we had discussed plans of this trip together. You had looked forward
particularly to the Chateau; and as you've urged me to paint for you
what you can't see (this time), your blood be on your own head if I bore
you.

You would be happy in the courtyard of the Chateau, for it would be to
your mind, as to mine, one of the most delightful things in Europe. It's
a sort of object lesson in French architecture and history, showing at
least three periods; and when Miss Randolph looked up at that perfect,
open staircase, bewildering in its carved, fantastic beauty, I wasn't
surprised to have her ask if she were dreaming it, or if _we_ saw it
too. "It's lace, stone lace," she said. And so it is. She coined new
adjectives for the windows, the sculptured cornices, the exquisite and
ingenious perfection of the incomparable facade.

"I could be so _good_ if I always had this staircase to look at!" she
exclaimed. "It didn't seem to have any effect on Catherine de Medici's
soul; but then I suppose when she lived here she stopped indoors most of
the time, making up poisons. I'm sorry I said yesterday that Francis the
First had a ridiculous nose. A man who could build this had a right to
_have_ anything he liked, or _do_ anything he liked."

And you should have seen her stare when Talleyrand bestowed an
enthusiastic "_Comme c'est beau!_" on the left wing of the courtyard,
for which Gaston d'Orleans' bad taste and foolish extravagance is
responsible--a thing not to be named with the joyous Renaissance facade
of Francis.

When Miss Randolph could be torn away, we went inside, and throwing off
self-consciousness in the good cause, I flung myself into the drama of
the Guise murder. Little did I know what I was letting myself in for. My
one desire was to interest Miss Randolph, and (incidentally, perhaps)
show her what a clever chap she had got for a _chauffeur_--though he
_wasn't_ a gentleman, and Talleyrand was.

I pointed from a window to the spot where stands the house from which
the Duc de Guise was decoyed from the arms of his mistress; showed where
he stood impatiently leaning against the tall mantelpiece, waiting his
audience with Henri the Third; pointed to the threshold of the _Vieux
Cabinet_ where he was stabbed in the back as he lifted the arras; told
how he ran, crying "_a moi!_" and where he fell at last to die, bleeding
from more than forty wounds, given by the Forty Gentlemen of the Plot;
showed the little oratory in which, while the murderous work went on,
two monks gabbled prayers for its successful issue.

I got quite interested in my own harangue, inspired by those stars Miss
Randolph has for eyes, and didn't notice that my audience had increased,
until, at this point, I suddenly heard a shocked echo of Aunt Mary's
"Oh!" of horror, murmured in a strange voice, close to my shoulder. Then
I looked round and saw a man and a girl, who were evidently hanging on
my words.

The man was the type one sees on advertisements of succulent sauces;
you know, the smiling, full-bodied, red-faced, good-natured John Bull
sort, who is depicted smacking his lips over a meal accompanied by The
Sauce, which has produced the ecstasy. One glance at his shaven upper
lip, his chin beard, and his keen but kindly eye, and I set him down as
a comfortable manufacturer on a holiday--a Lancashire or Yorkshire man.
The girl might be a daughter or young wife; I thought the former. A
handsome creature, with big black eyes and a luscious, peach-like
colour; style of hairdressing conscientiously copied from Queen
Alexandra's; fine figure, well shown off by a too elaborate dress
probably bought at the wrong shop in Paris; you felt she had been sent
by doting parents to a boarding-school for "the daughters of noblemen
and gentlemen"; no expense spared.

It was she who had echoed Aunt Mary; and when I turned she bridled. Yes,
I think that's the only word for what she did. But it was the man who
spoke.

"I beg your pardon," he said, dividing the apology among the whole
party, and taking off his unspeakably solid hat to the ladies. "I hope
there's no objection to me and my daughter listening to this very
intelligent guide? She's learned French, but it doesn't seem to work
here; she thinks it's too Parisian for Blois, but anyhow, we couldn't
either of us understand a word the French guide said, so we took the
liberty of joining on to you, with a great deal of pleasure and profit."

He had a sort of engaging ingenuousness, mixed with shrewdness of the
provincial order, and I could see that he appealed to my American girl,
though I don't think she cottoned to the daughter. She smiled at the
papa, as if for the sake of her own; and in a few pretty words
practically made him a present of me, that is, she offered to let him
share me for the rest of the tour round the Chateau. I was not sorry, as
I hoped that the daughter might occupy the attention of Monsieur
Talleyrand; and as, under these new conditions, we continued our
explorations, I adroitly contrived to divide off the party as follows:
Miss Randolph, the Lancashire man (his accent had placed him in my
mind), and myself; Aunt Mary, the new girl, and our gentleman of the
eyelashes. This arrangement was satisfactory to me and the old man,
whether it was to anybody else or not; and so grouped, we went through
the apartments of Catherine de Medicis (Aunt Mary pronounced "those
little poison cupboards of hers _vurry_ cunning; _so_ cute of her to
keep changing them around all the time!"), and out on the splendid
balconies.

The Lancashire man, thanks to Miss Randolph's permission, made himself
quite at home with me, bombarding me with historical questions. But it
was evident that he was puzzled as to my status.

"You are a first-rate lecturer," said he. "I suppose that's your
profession?"

"Not entirely," said I, with a glance at Miss Randolph; but she was
enjoying the joke, and not minded to enlighten him. Probably he supposed
that leather jacket and leggings was the regulation costume of a
lecturing guide.

"Do you engage by the day," he inquired, "or by the tour?"

"So far, I have engaged by the tour, sir," I returned, playing up for
the amusement of my lady.

He scratched his chin reflectively. "Baedeker recommends several of
these old castles in this part of the country," said he. "Do you know
'em all?"

I answered that I had visited them.

"All as interesting as this?"

"Quite, in different ways."

"Hm! Do you speak French?"

"Fairly," I modestly responded.

"Well, if this young lady hasn't engaged you for too long ahead, I
should like to talk to you about going on with us. I didn't think I
should care to have a courier, but a chap like you would add a good deal
to the pleasure of a trip. Seems to me you are a sort of walking
encyclopaedia. I would pay you whatever you asked, in reason----"

"And, oh, papa, he might go on with us all the way to Cannes!" chipped
in the daughter, which was my first intimation that she was listening.
But she had joined the forward group, and the words addressed to Pa were
apparently spoken at me. I dared not look at Miss Randolph, but I hoped
that a background of other people's approval might set me off well in
her eyes.

I was collecting my wits for an adequate answer, when she relieved me of
the responsibility. I might even say she snapped up the young lady from
Lancashire.

"I'm afraid I must disappoint you," she replied for her _chauffeur_.
"He is engaged to _me_. I mean" (and she blushed divinely) "he is under
engagement to remain with my aunt and myself for some time. We are
making a tour on an automobile."

"I beg your pardon, I'm sure," said the old fellow, as the American and
the English girl eyed each other--or each other's dresses. "I didn't
understand the arrangement. When you _are_ free, though," he went on,
turning to me, "you might just let me know. We're thinking of travelling
about for some time, and I've taken a liking to your ways. I'm at the
'Grand' here at Blois for the day, then we go on to Tours, and so by
easy stages to the Riviera. At Cannes, we shall settle down for a bit,
as my daughter has a friend who's expecting us to meet her there. But
I'll give you my card, with my home address on it, and a letter, or,
better still, a wire, would be forwarded." He then thanked Miss Randolph
for me, thanked me for myself, and, with a last flourish of trumpets,
handed me his card.

By this time we had "done" the castle, as conscientious Aunt Mary would
say, and were parting. All exchanged bows (Miss Randolph's and the
Lancashire girl's expressive of armed neutrality) and parted. I
thereupon glanced at the card and got a sensation.

"Mr. Jabez Barrow, Edenholme Hall, Liverpool," was what I read. That
conveys little to you, though as an address it has suggestive charm, but
to me it meant nothing less than a complication. Queer, what a little
place the world is! To make clear the situation I need only say, "The
Cotton King." Yes, that's it; you've guessed it. These Barrows are my
mother's newest proteges. Jabez Barrow is the "quaint, original old man"
she is so anxious for me to meet, and, indeed, has made arrangements
that I _should_ meet. Miss Barrow is the "beautiful girl with wonderful
eyes and such charming ways," who, in my dear mother's opinion, would be
so desirable as a daughter-in-law. Had not your doctors knocked our
plans on the head you would have had the pleasure of being introduced in
my company to the heiress, when I should have made you a present of my
chance to add to your own. As it is--well, I don't quite see that any
bother can come out of this coincidence, but I must keep a sharp lookout
for myself. I saw no Kodak in the hands of the gilded ones,
or--by-and-by--my mother might receive a shock. But perhaps they may
have possessed and concealed it.

Into the midst of my broodings over the card broke the voice of Miss
Randolph, in whose wake I was now following down the picturesque old
street to the hotel. Talleyrand was in attendance again, and she had
merely to say that the car was to be ready for start to Amboise after
luncheon. Accordingly I stepped over to my own private lair, told Almond
to get off at once with my Napier to Amboise, putting up at a hotel I
named and awaiting instructions.

Have you begun to think there's to be no end to this letter? Well, I
shall try to whet your curiosity for what's still to come by saying that
I have availed myself of a strange blank interval in the middle of the
night for the writing of it, and that dawn can't now be far off. When
it breaks this adventure of mine will have reached a crisis--a
distinctly new development. But enough of hints.

This country of the Loire is exquisite; it has both grandeur and simple
beauty, and the road winding above the river is practically level and in
splendid condition; ideal for motors and "hay-motors." The distance
between the good town of Blois and Amboise is less than twenty miles.
Any decent-minded motor would whistle along from the great grey Chateau
to the brilliant cream-white one under the hour, but that isn't the way
of our Demon.

Miss Randolph once said that owning a motor-car was like having a
half-tamed dragon in the family. She is quite right about _her_
motor-car, poor child! The Demon had been behaving somewhat less
fiendishly of late, and I had hopes of a successful run to Amboise,
which I particularly desired, as Eyelashes was to accompany us with his
Pieper. But this good conduct had been no more than a trick.

The luggage was loaded up; Talleyrand was making himself officious about
helping the ladies, who were in the courtyard ready to mount, when the
motor took it into its vile head not to start--a little attack of
faintness, owing to the petrol being cold perhaps. Of course, there was
the usual crowd of hotel servants and loafers to see us off, and beyond,
standing as interested spectators on the steps, who but Jabez Barrow and
his handsome daughter.

I tell you the perspiration decorated my forehead in beads when I'd
made a dozen fruitless efforts to start that family dragon, Eyelashes
maddening me the while with a series of idiotic suggestions. Even Miss
Randolph began to get a little nervous, and called out to me, "What
_can_ be the matter, Brown? I thought you were such a _strong_ man too.
Do let Monsieur Talleyrand try, as he's an expert."

I could see Eyelashes didn't like that suggestion a little bit,
consequently I welcomed it. It's very well to dance about and give
advice, quite another thing to do the work yourself; but I gleefully
stood aside while he grasped the starting-handle. It takes both strength
and knack to start that car, and he had neither. At first he couldn't
get the handle round against the compression; then, exerting himself
further, there came a terrific back-fire--the handle flew round, knocked
him off his feet, and sent him staggering, very pale, into the arms of a
white-aproned waiter. I couldn't help grinning, and I fancy Miss
Randolph hid a smile behind her handkerchief.

Eyelashes was furious. "It is a horror, that German machine!" he cried.
"Such a thing has no right to exist. Look at mine!" He darted to his
Pieper, gave one twist of the handle, and the motor instantly leaped
into life. Everyone murmured approval at this demonstration of the
superiority of France, or rather, Belgium, to Germany; but next moment I
had got our motor to start. The ladies dubiously took their places, and
under the critical dark eyes of Miss Barrow I steered out into the
streets of Blois.

I will spare you the detailed horrors of the next few hours. It seemed
to me that to keep that car going one must have the agility of a monkey,
the strength of a Sandow, and the resourcefulness of a Sherlock Holmes.
Almost everything went wrong that could go wrong. Both chains
snapped--that was trifling except for the waste of time, but finally the
exhaust-valve spring broke. It was getting dusk by this time, and to
replace that spring was one of the grisliest of my automobile
experiences. To get at it I had to lift off all the upper body of the
car and take out both the inlet and the exhaust valves. As darkness came
on, Miss Randolph (who took it all splendidly and laughed at our
misfortunes) held a lamp while I wrestled with the spring and valves.
The Frenchman, who had kept close to us on his irritatingly perfect
little Pieper, I simply used as a labourer, ordering him about as I
pleased--my one satisfaction. After an hour's work (much of the time on
my back under the car, with green oil dripping into my hair!) I got the
new spring on, and we could start again. Then--horror on horror's
head!--we had not gone two miles before I heard a strange clack! clack!
and looking behind, saw that one of the back tyres was loose, hanging to
the wheel in a kind of festoon, like a fat worm.

It was eight o'clock; we had lunched at one; the night was dark; we were
still miles short of Amboise; if the tyre came right off, it would be
awkward to run on the rim. I explained this, suggesting that we should
leave the car for a night at a farmhouse, which presumably existed
behind a high, glimmering white wall near which we happened to halt,
and try to get a conveyance of some sort to drive on to Amboise.

But I had calculated without Eyelashes. Instantly he saw his chance, and
seized it. Figuratively he laid his Pieper at the ladies' feet. To be
sure, it was built for only two, but the seat was very wide; there was
plenty of room; he would be only too glad to whirl them off to the most
comfortable hotel at Amboise, which could be reached in no time. As for
the _chauffeur_, he could be left to look after the car.

The _chauffeur_, however, did not see this in the same light. Not that
he minded the slight hardship, if any, but to see his liege lady whisked
off from under his eyes by the villain of the piece was too much.

Think how you would have felt in my place. But the hideous part was
that, like "A" in a "Vanity Fair" Hard Case, I could do nothing. The
proposal was vexatiously sensible, and I had to stand swallowing my
objections while Miss Randolph and her aunt decided.

I saw her move a step or two towards the Pieper silently, rather
gloomily, but Aunt Mary was grimly alert. Eyelashes had, I had learned
through snatches of conversation on board the car, been tactful enough
to present Aunt Mary with a little brooch and a couple of hat-pins of
the charming _faience_ made by a famous man in Blois. Intrinsically of
no great value, they rejoiced in ermine and porcupine crests, with
exquisitely coloured backgrounds, and the guileless lady's heart had
been completely won. She now emphatically voted for the Frenchman and
his car. But I have already noted a little peculiarity of Miss
Randolph's, which I have also observed in other delightful girls, though
none as delightful as she. If she is undecided about a thing, and
somebody else takes it for granted she is going to do it, she is
immediately certain that she never contemplated anything of the kind.

This welcome idiosyncrasy now proved my friend. "Why, Aunt Mary," she
exclaimed, "you wouldn't have me go off and desert my own car, _in the
middle of the night_ too? I couldn't think of such a thing. _You_ can go
with Monsieur Talleyrand, if you want to, but I shall stay here till
everything is settled."

I was really sorry for Aunt Mary. She was almost ready to cry.

"You know perfectly well I shouldn't dream of leaving you here, perhaps
to be murdered," whimpered she. "Where you stay, I stay."

She had the air of an elderly female Casabianca.

As for Miss Randolph, I adored her when she bade me go with her to
investigate what lay behind the wall, and told Talleyrand off for
sentinel duty over Aunt Mary and the car in the road.

At first sight the wall seemed a blank one, but I found a large gate,
pushed it open, and we walked into the darkness of a great farmyard. Not
a glimmer showed the position of the house, but a clatter of hoofs and a
chink of light guided us towards a stable, where a giant man with
aquiline face was rubbing down a rusty and aged horse. He started and
fixed a suspicious stare on me, and I daresay that I was a forbidding
figure in my dirty leather clothes, with smears of oil upon my face. His
expression lightened a little at sight of my companion, but he was
inflexible in his refusal to drive us anywhere. His old mare had cast a
shoe on her way home just now; he would not take her out again. Could
he, then, Miss Randolph asked, give us rooms for the night, and food? As
to that he was not sure, but would consult his wife. He tramped before
us to the big dark house, put down his lantern in the hall, opened a
door, and ushered us into a dark room, following and closing the door
behind him. The room was airless and heavy with the odour of cooking.
The darkness was intense, and from the midst of it came a strange sound
of jabbering and bleating which for the life of me I couldn't
understand. I felt Miss Randolph draw near me as if for protection, then
with the scratch of a match and a flicker from a lamp which the farmer
was lighting, was revealed the cause of the weird sounds. Seated by the
stove was a pathetically old woman, with pendulous chin and rheumy eyes.
Swinging her palsied head from side to side, she jabbered and bleated
incoherently to herself, being abandoned to this plague of darkness
doubtless from motives of economy.

The farmer's wife appeared, and after much discussion it was arranged
that the ladies could have a double-bedded room, and there was a small
one that would do for Monsieur Talleyrand; but the _mecanicien_ would
have to sleep in the barn, where he could have some clean straw. Supper
could be ready in half an hour, but we were not to expect the luxuries
of a hotel.

The farmer and I carried the ladies' hand-luggage upstairs into a
mysterious dim region, where all was clean and cold. I had a flickering,
candle-lit vision of a big white room, with an enormously high bedstead,
bare floor, a rug or two, a chair or two, a shrine, and a washhand-stand
with a knitted cover, one basin the size of a porridge-bowl containing a
thing like a milk-jug. Then I set down my burden and departed to wheel
the great helpless car into the farmyard, and wash my hands with
Hudson's soap in a trough under a pump outside the kitchen.

Meanwhile preparations for supper went on, and as I was hungrily hoping
for scraps when my betters should have finished, who should pop out but
that Angel to say that supper was ready, and would I eat with them! I
had been working _so_ hard and must be starved. If she had guessed how I
longed to kiss her she would have run away indoors much faster than she
did.

There was soup, chicken, an omelette, and cheese. Trust a
Frenchwoman--even the humblest--to turn out an excellent meal on the
shortest notice. Miss Randolph smiled and beamed on them, so that in
five minutes the farmer and his wife were her willing slaves. She was
delighted with the "adventure," as she called it, declaring that the
whole thing would be the greatest fun in the world. She was glad that
the horrid tyre had come off, as it gave her the chance, which she would
never have had otherwise, of studying French peasant life at first hand.
Aunt Mary was called in from outside and acquiesced, as she always did,
in the arrangements made by her impetuous niece; the farmer and I had
pushed the German car inside the gate and left it; but Talleyrand was
fussy about getting proper cover for his smart Pieper, and was not
satisfied until he had housed it in a dry barn near the house.

After supper I strolled out into the night, trying, with a pipe between
my lips, to think out the details of an alluring new plan which had
flashed into my mind.

"Flashed" there, do I say? Forced, rammed in, and pounded down expresses
it better. Will you believe it, during supper, that fellow--Eyelashes, I
mean--had had the audacity to urge upon Miss Randolph that she must now
continue the tour on his car!

I was smoking and fuming in the dark, in a corner down by the gateway,
when I heard a whisper of silk (I suppose it's linings; I'd know it at
the North Pole as hers, now), and detected a shadow which I knew meant
Miss Randolph. She came nearer. I saw her distinctly now, for she was
carrying a lantern. At first I thought she was looking for me, but she
wasn't. She went straight to the car and stood glowering at it for a
minute, having set down the lantern. Then she took Something out of the
folds of her dress and seemed to feel it with her hand. "Oh, you won't
go, won't you?" she inquired sardonically. "You like to break your belts
and go dropping your chains about, just to give Brown all the trouble
you can, don't you, and keep us from getting anywhere? You think it's
enough to be beautiful, and you can be as much of a beast as you like.
But you're _not_ beautiful. You're horrid, and I hate you! Take that!"

Up went the Something in her hand; it glittered in the yellow light of
the lantern. If you will believe it, the girl had got a hatchet and was
_chopping at the car_. Her poor vicious little stroke did no great
damage, but she chipped off a big flake of varnish and left a white
gash.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, as if it had hurt her and not her great lumbering
dragon. "Oh, you deserve it, you know, and a lot more. But--but----" and
she gave a little gurgling sigh.

I had been on the point of bursting out with uncontrollable laughter,
but suddenly I ceased to find the thing funny. I couldn't lurk in ambush
and hear any more; I couldn't sneak away--even to spare her
feelings--and leave her there to cry, for I felt she was going to cry.
So I came out into the circle of lantern-light, shaking the tobacco from
my pipe.

"Why, Brown, is that you?" she quavered. "I--I didn't want anyone to see
me, and I wasn't crying about the car, but just _Because_--because of
everything. I found that hatchet, and--I couldn't help it. I'm sorry
now, though. It was mean of me to hit a thing when it's down, even if it
is a Beast. It does deserve to be _killed_, though. It's simply no use
trying to go on with such a thing--is it?"

Because of the Plan in my mind I replied gloomily that the prospect was
rather discouraging.

"Discouraging! It's impossible!" she cried. "I've been hoping against
hope, but I see that now. I _won't_ ask poppa to buy me another; it's
too ridiculous. So there's nothing left except to go on by train
everywhere, unless--you heard how kind Monsieur Talleyrand was about
offering to take us on his car."

In the lantern light I thought I saw that she was beginning to look
enigmatic, but I couldn't trust my eyes at this moment. There were a
good many stars floating before them--not heavenly--the kind I should
have liked to make Talleyrand see.

"Yes, miss, I heard," I said brutally, "and, of course, if you and your
aunt would like that, I could wire to Mr. Barrow, the gentleman who went
round the Chateau with us to-day, that I was free to take an engagement
with him and his daughter."

She turned on me like a flash. "Oh, is _that_ what you are thinking of?
Well--certainly you may consider yourself free--_perfectly_ free. You
are under no contract. Go! go to-morrow--or even to-night if you wish.
Leave me here with my car. I can go back to Paris, or--or somewhere."

"But I thought you were going on with the French gentleman?" I said.

"I should not think of going with him," she announced icily.

"You said----"

"I said he _invited_ me. I never said I meant to go; I couldn't have
said it. For I should _hate_ going with him. There would be no fun in
that at all. I want my own car or none. But that need not matter to you.
Go with your Barrows."

"Begging your pardon, miss, I don't want to go with any Barrows."

"But you said----"

"If you wished to get rid of me----"

"_I_ wish 'to get rid of' you! I don't repudiate my--business
arrangements in that way."

"May I stop on with you, then, miss?" I pleaded at my meekest. "I'll try
and do the best I can about the car."

"Oh, do you _really_ think there's any hope?" She clasped her hands and
looked at me as if I were an oracle. Her eyelashes are very long. I
wonder why they are so charming on her and so abominable on a Frenchman?

"I've got an idea in my mind, miss," said I, "that might make everything
all right."

"Brown," said she, "you are a kind of leather angel."

Then we both laughed. And I am afraid it occurred to her that the ground
we were touching was not calculated to bear a lady and her _mecanicien_,
for she turned and ran away.

It was not yet ten o'clock, and I had something better to do than crawl
into the bed of straw that had been offered me. It was not much more
than ten miles to Amboise, and opening the great gate as quietly as I
could, I stepped out upon the white road and set off briskly for the
town, my Plan guiding me like a big bright beacon.

What I meant to do--what I was meaning and wanting at this present
moment to do--is this.

Being now at Amboise, having knocked up the hotel porter on arriving, I
shall let poor old Almond sleep the sleep of the just until the earliest
crack of dawn. Then I shall wake him, have my Napier got ready--if that
hasn't been done overnight--pay him, press an extra tip into his not
unwilling palm, pack him off to England, home, and beauty, after which I
shall romp back to the sleeping farmhouse on my own good car.

My story to Miss Randolph will be that while in Blois yesterday I heard
from my master. He is called back to England in a great hurry, wants to
leave his car, and would be delighted to let it out on hire at
reasonable terms if driven by a good, responsible man--like me. I
suppose I shall have to name a sum--say a louis a day--or she'll suspect
some game.

She is sure to snatch at a chance, as a drowning man at a straw, and I
pat myself on the back for my inspiration. I am looking forward to a new
lease of life with the Napier.

The window grows grey; I must call Almond. How the Plan works out you
shall hear in my next. _Au revoir_, then.


                              Your more than ever excited friend,
                                                         Jack Winston.




MOLLY RANDOLPH TO HER FATHER


                                    Amboise,
                                        _November Something-or-Other_.

  Dear old Lamb,

Did you know that you were the papa of a chameleon? An eccentric
combination. But Aunt Mary says she has found out that I am one--a
chameleon, I mean; but I don't doubt she thinks me an "eccentric
combination" too. And, anyway, I don't see how I can help being
changeable. Circumstances and motor-cars rule dispositions.

I wrote you a long letter from Blois, but little did I think then--no,
_that_ isn't the way to begin. I believe my starting-handle must have
gone wrong, to say nothing of my valves--I mean nerves.

Last night we broke down at the other end of nowhere, and rather than
desert Mr. Micawber, alias the automobile, I decided to stop till next
morning at a wayside farmhouse--the sort of place, as Aunt Mary said,
"where anything might happen."

Of course, I needn't have stayed. The Frenchman I told you about in my
last letter offered to take us and some of our luggage on to Amboise on
his little car; but I didn't feel like saying "yes" to that proposal,
and I was sorry for poor Brown, who had worked like a Trojan. Besides,
to stay was an adventure. Monsieur Talleyrand stopped too, and we had
quite a nice supper in a big farm kitchen, but not as big as the room
which the people gave Aunt Mary and me--a very decent room, with two
funny high beds in it. I couldn't sleep much, because of remorse about
something I had done. I'm ashamed to tell you what, but you needn't
worry, for it only concerns the car. And then I didn't know in the least
how we were to get on again next day, as this time the automobile had
taken measures to secure itself a good long rest.

I'd dropped off to sleep after several hours of staring into the dark
and wondering if Brown by some inspiration would get us out of our
scrape, when a hand, trying to find my face, woke me up. "It's come!" I
thought. "They're going to murder us." And I was just on the point of
shrieking with all my might to Brown to save me, when I realized that
the hand was Aunt Mary's; it was Aunt Mary's voice also saying, in a
sharp whisper, "What's that? What's that?"

"That," I soon discovered, was a curious sound which I suppose had
roused Aunt Mary, and sent her bounding out of bed, like a baseball, in
her old age. I forgot to tell you that in one corner of our room, behind
a calico curtain, was a queer, low green door, which we had wondered at
and tried to open, but found locked. Now the sound was coming from
behind that door. It was a scuffling and stumbling of feet, and a
creepy, snorting noise.

Even I was frightened, but it wouldn't do, on account of discipline, to
let Aunt Mary guess. I just sort of formed a hollow square, told myself
that my country expected me to do my duty, jumped up, found matches,
lighted our one candle, and with it the lamp of my own courage. That
burned so brightly, I had presence of mind to take the key out of the
other door and try it in the mysterious green lock. It didn't fit, but
it opened the door; and what do you think was on the other side? Why, a
ladder-like stairway, leading down into darkness. But it was only the
darkness of the family stable, and instead of beholding our landlord and
landlady digging a grave for us in a business-like manner, as Aunt Mary
fully expected, we saw two cows and a horse, and three of those silly,
surprised-looking French chickens which are always running across roads
under our automobile's nose.

This was distinctly a relief. We locked the door, and laid ourselves
down to sleep once more. But--for me--that was easier said than done. I
lay staring into blackness, thinking of many things, until the blackness
seemed to grow faintly pale, the way old Mammy Luke's face used to turn
ashy when she was frightened at her own slave stories, which she was
telling me. The two windows took form, like grey ghosts floating in the
dark, and I knew dawn must be coming; but as I watched the squares
growing more distinct, so that I was sure I saw and didn't imagine them,
a light sprang up. It wasn't the dawn-light, but something vivid and
sudden. I was bewildered, for I'd been in a dozy mood. I flew up, all
dazed and stupid, to patter across the cold, painted floor on my poor
little bare feet.

Our room overlooked the courtyard, and there, almost opposite the window
where I stood, a great column of intense yellow flame was rising like a
fountain of fire--straight as a poplar, and almost as high. I never saw
anything so strange, and I could hardly believe that it wasn't a dream,
until a voice seemed to say inside of me, "Why, it's _your car that's on
fire_!"

In half a second I was sure the voice was right, and at once I was quite
calm. How the car could have got on fire of its own accord was a
mystery, unless it had spontaneous combustion, like that awful old man
of Dickens, who burnt up and left a greasy black smudge; but there was
no time to think, and I only kept saying to myself, as I hurried to slip
on a few clothes (the sketchiest toilet I ever made, just a mere
outline), how lucky it was that my automobile stood in the courtyard
where there was no roof, instead of being in the barn, like Monsieur
Talleyrand's. And I knew that Brown slept in the barn, so that, if it
had happened there, he might have been burnt to death in his sleep,
which made me feel as if I should have to faint away, even to imagine.

But I didn't faint. I tore out of the room, as soon as I was dressed,
with my long, fur-lined motoring coat over my "nighty," and yelled
"Fire!" at the top of my lungs. But I forgot to yell in French, so of
course the farm people couldn't have understood what was the matter,
unless they'd seen the light from their windows. It was still dark in
the shut-up house, but somehow I found my way downstairs, and to the
door by which we'd all come trooping in the evening before. Nobody had
appeared yet (though I fancied I heard Aunt Mary's frantic voice), so I
concluded that the farmer and his wife must be outside in the fields
about their day's work, for these French peasants rise with the dawn, or
before it.

I pulled open the door, and the light of the fire struck right at my
eyes, which had got used to the darkness in the passage. There was the
pillar of fire, as bright and straight and amazingly high as ever, not a
trace of the car to be seen in the midst; but silhouetted against the
yellow screen of flame was a tall black figure which I recognized as
Brown's. He was standing still, looking calmly on, _actually with his
hands in his pockets_, instead of trying to put out the fire, and I was
dumbfounded, for always before he had shown himself so resourceful.

I stood still, too, a minute, for I _was_ surprised. Aunt Mary was
having hysterics in one of our windows which she'd thrown open; and
Monsieur Talleyrand had come close behind me, it seemed, though I didn't
know that then.

I heard the queer clucking and roaring of the fire which was drinking
gallons of petrol, but the only thing I _really_ thought of was Brown
with his hands in his pockets while my car was burning up. I didn't love
it--at least I hadn't, and the night before I had behaved to it not at
all in a gentlemanly manner, but I couldn't have stood by like that to
watch it die without moving a finger.

"Oh, Brown!" I gasped out, running to him, so close that the fire was
hot on my face. "Oh, Brown, how _can_ you? Anybody would think that you
were glad."

"And he is!" cried a voice in French at my back. "It was he who set your
automobile on fire, mademoiselle. I myself, who tell you, saw him do
it." I whisked round, and there stood Monsieur Talleyrand, looking very
picturesque in an almost theatrical _deshabille_, with the firelight
shining on him, just as if it were a scene on the stage.

Brown faced round too, and at the same instant, the fire having drunk
the last drop of petrol, the flame suddenly died down, and there fell a
curious silence after the roaring of the fire, which had been like a
blast. The woodwork of the car, the hood and the upper part, as well as
the wooden wheels, had all disappeared--the flame had swallowed and
digested them. Of my varnished and dignified car there remained only a
heap of twisted bits of iron, glowing a dull red. In the grey dawn we
must have looked like witches at some secret and unholy rite. The going
out of the light had an odd effect upon us three. When Monsieur
Talleyrand launched his accusation at Brown, he had thrown up his chin,
and the light, striking on his eyeballs, made them glow like red sparks.
But with the dying of the light, the flash in his eyes died too; and his
face changed to a disagreeable, ashy grey. At the same minute, when I
turned to Brown, it was _his_ eyes that glowed, but the light seemed to
come from inside.

I forget whether I ever told you that Brown is a very good-looking
fellow; too good-looking for a mere _chauffeur_. His face is like his
name--brown; his eyes are brown too, and they can almost speak. One
can't help noticing these things, even in one's _chauffeur_. If he
weren't a _chauffeur_, one might certainly take him for a gentleman.
Some things really are a pity! But never mind.

Brown looked at Monsieur Talleyrand, and then he said, "You are a liar."
Oh, my goodness, I expected murder!

Monsieur Talleyrand gave a sort of leap.

"Scoundrel, hog, _canaille_!" he stammered, trembling all over. "To be
insulted by an English cad, a common _chauffeur_, that a gentleman
cannot call out, an incendiary----"

But here Brown broke in with a "Silence!" that made me jump. And the
funny part was that it was _he_ who looked the gentleman, and Monsieur
Talleyrand the cad--quite a little, mean cad, though he is really
handsome, with eyelashes you'd have to measure with a tape. That awful
"Silence!" seemed to blow his words down his throat like a gust of wind,
and while he was getting breath Brown followed up his first shot; but
this time it was aimed my way.

"Do you believe what that coward says?" he flung at me, without even
taking hold of the words with "Miss" for a handle. Between the two men
and the excitement, I gasped instead of answering, and perhaps he took
silence for consent, though that is such an old-fashioned theory,
especially when it concerns girls. Anyway, he seemed to grow three or
four inches taller, and his chin got squarer. "So far from burning your
car," said he (and you could have made a block of ice out of each
word), "I have been to Amboise to hire a car for you, and thought I had
been lucky in securing my old master's.

"As this expedition has occupied the whole night. I have really had no
time for plotting, even if there had been a motive, or if I were the
sort of man for such work. I hoped you knew I wasn't. But there"--and he
pointed to the road outside the open gate--"is my master's car, and the
motor is still hot enough to prove----"

"I don't want it to prove," I found breath to exclaim. "Of course, I
know you didn't burn my car----"

"But if I say I saw him," cut in Monsieur Talleyrand.

"Pooh!" said I. It was the only word I could think of that went "to the
spot," and I hurried on to Brown. "All I minded was seeing you with your
hands in your pockets. It didn't seem like you."

"You don't understand," said he. "Just as I opened the doors to drive in
the car I'd brought, I saw at a glance that there was something queer
about yours. The front seat was off; and as I came nearer I found the
screw had been taken out of the petrol tank. With that I caught sight of
a flame creeping along a tightly twisted piece of cotton waste--the
stuff one cleans cars with. Then I knew that someone had planned to set
fire to the car and leave himself time to escape. I sprang at it to
knock away the waste, but I was too late. That instant the vapour
caught, and I was helpless to do any good, because sand, and a huge lot
of it, was the only thing that might have put the fire out, if one
could have got it, and then gone near enough to throw it on. Since there
was none, the only thing to do was to stand by; and as I'd scorched my
hands a little, I suppose I instinctively put them in my pockets."

Monsieur Talleyrand laughed. "You tell your story very well," said he,
"but----"

He didn't get farther than that "but," for just then up came running the
farmer and his wife from the fields, where they had seen the flames.
They began chattering shrilly, in a dreadful state about their
buildings, but Brown quieted them down, pointing out that no harm had
been done to anything of theirs, and that the fire was out. "Now," he
said, "since I didn't burn the car, who did?"

I looked at Monsieur Talleyrand because Brown was looking at him, or
rather glaring, when suddenly a loud exclamation from the farmer and his
wife made me turn to see what was going to happen next. What I saw was
the most wonderful old figure hobbling out of the house, through the
door I'd left open--a mere knotted thread of an old thing, in a red
flannel nightgown, I think it must have been, and a few streaks of grey
hair hanging from a night-cap that tied up its flabby chin. It was the
old woman who had breathed so much in the dark the night before; and no
wonder they exclaimed at seeing her crawling out of doors, hardly
dressed.

Somehow I felt frightened; she was just like a witch--horrifying, but
pathetic too, so old, so little life left in her. She would have come
hobbling on into the courtyard, but the farmer stopped her; and there
she stood on the door-sill, raising herself up and up on her stick,
until suddenly she clutched the farmer's arm and pointed the stick
straight at Monsieur Talleyrand, gabbling out something which I couldn't
understand.

The farmer had just been going to hustle her inside the house, but he
changed his mind. "She says _you_ set fire to the automobile," he
exclaimed; "she saw it from the window. She thinks you will murder us
all. Monsieur, my mother has still her senses. She does not tell foolish
lies. You must go out of my house."

"Monstrous!" cried Monsieur Talleyrand. "Am I to be accused on the word
of a crazy old witch? I advise you to be careful what you say."

"Here is something else, which speaks for itself," Brown said. "Look!"
and he pointed to the ground not far from the gnawed bones of my car. We
looked, and saw some wisps of the stuff he had called cotton-waste,
twisted up and saturated with oil. "That was used to fire the petrol,"
he went on. "There was none like it on our car, but you carried plenty
in yours. I've seen you use it, and so, I think, has Miss Randolph."

For an instant Talleyrand seemed to be taken aback, and he looked so
pale in the dim light that I was almost going to be sorry for him, when
with a sudden inspiration he struck an attitude before me. He had the
air of ignoring the others, forgetting that they existed.

"Mademoiselle," he said in a low, really beautiful voice, that might
have drawn tears from an audience if he had been the leading man cruelly
mistaken for a neighbouring villain, "_chere mademoiselle_, I did what
these _canaille_ accuse me of. Yes, I did it! But they cannot understand
why. Only you are high enough to understand. It was--because of my great
love for you. All is to be forgiven to such love. Cheerfully, a hundred
times over, will I pay for this material damage I have done. I am not
poor, except in lacking your love. To gain an opportunity of winning it,
to take you from your brutal _chauffeur_, who is not fit to have
delicate ladies trusted to his care, I did what I have done, meaning to
lay my car, myself, all that I have and am, figuratively at your feet."

If he had really, instead of "figuratively," I'm sure I couldn't have
resisted kicking him, which would have been unladylike. How _could_ I
ever have thought he was nice? Ugh! I could have strangled him with his
own eyelashes! Brown was right about him, after all. I wonder why it
doesn't please one more to find out that other people are right?

"I don't want you to pay," said I. "I only want you to go away."

I've a dim impression that I emphasised these words with a gesture, and
that he seized my hand before I could pull it back. I also have a dim
impression of exclaiming, "Oh, Brown!" in a frightened voice--just as
silly as if I'd been an early-Victorian female. I wished I hadn't, but
it was too late. Brown, evoked, was not so easily revoked. A whirlwind
seemed to catch Monsieur Talleyrand up, but it was really Brown. They
went together to visit a disagreeable, shiny green pond in the middle
of the farmyard. Brown stopped at the brink; but Monsieur Talleyrand
didn't stop--I suspect Brown knew why. He went on, and in. And, oh, Dad!
to save my life, I couldn't help laughing. All my excitement and
everything went into that laugh--the half-crying kind I used to call the
"boo-higgles" when I was a little girl--you remember?

I was afraid the wretch might hear me, so I turned and fairly ran for
the house. Brown took some long steps, and reached me before I got
there, apparently not the least concerned in the splashing sounds which
so much interested everybody else.

"About my master's car, miss," said he coolly. "Will you have it? He was
at Amboise. I'd heard from him there, that if I knew of anyone wanting
to hire a car, his was in the market for the next few weeks, as he was
suddenly called away, and didn't want to take it. It's a good car--the
best I ever drove--and he's willing to let it go cheap, as he trusts me
to drive, and it's an accommodation to him."

"Oh, I'm delighted to have it," I answered, not stopping to ask the
price, because details didn't seem to matter at that moment. "It's--it's
just like the ram caught in the bushes, isn't it? And--I don't know how
to thank you enough for everything." I can't tell exactly what I meant
by that, except that I meant a lot.

"There's nothing to thank me for, miss," said Brown, quite respectful
again; but a queer little smile lurked in the corners of his mouth. "You
must be hungry," he remarked. "Shall I ask them to have breakfast
prepared by the time you're--ready?"

I believe he was going to say "dressed," and stopped for fear of hurting
my feelings. I only stayed long enough to throw a "Yes, please," over my
shoulder. But when I was upstairs with Aunt Mary, my face feeling rather
hot, I didn't begin to make my toilet; I went and "peeked" out of the
window.

That unspeakable Frenchman was shaking himself like a big dog, and
sneaking towards the house, with the farmer at his heels. The farmer was
a big fellow, and dependable; still, I ran and locked the door. I
suppose the Beast finished dressing and packed his bag. I heard nothing;
but half an hour later (I'd bathed and dressed like lightning, for
once), when we were just sitting down to breakfast, and Brown had come
into the room to ask a question, there was a light pattering on the
stairs; the front door opened, and somebody went out. Two minutes later
came the whirring of a motor, and I jumped up.

"Oh, Brown!" I exclaimed, "if he should have taken _your_ car!"

"No fear of that," said Brown. "I know the sound just as I know one
human voice from another. That's his Pieper. It's all right."

Still I wasn't at ease. "But he may have done something bad to yours.
He's capable of anything," I said. "Do let's go and see."

Brown flushed up a little. "I'll go," he said. He was off on the word,
racing across the farmyard. I couldn't eat my breakfast till he came
back, which he did in a few minutes. I knew by his face before he spoke
that something was wrong. "I was a fool to leave the car for even a
second till he was out of the way," said the poor fellow. "Every tyre
gashed. No doubt he'd have liked to smash up the car altogether if he'd
had time, but his object was to do his worst and get off scot free. He's
done both. It's thanks to you and your quick thought that the damage is
so small."

"If it hadn't been for me he wouldn't have been here," I almost wept.
"Now we're delayed again just when I began to hope that all might be
well."

"All shall be well," answered Brown encouragingly. "We'll go 'on the
rims' as far as Amboise."

I didn't know what it was to go on the rims, but when we'd settled up
with the farmer, and I'd said a last, long good-bye to my car's bones
(which I made the landlord a present of), I found out. It's something
like "going on your uppers." I don't need to explain that, do I? But the
car is such a beauty that seeing it with, its tyres _en deshabille_
seemed an indignity. Brown couldn't help showing his pride in it, and I
don't wonder. He is certainly a "Mascot" to me, for he has got me out of
every scrape I've been in since he "crossed my path," as the melodramas
say. And now this lovely car! On the way to Amboise he told me what it
was to be let for. Only twenty francs a day. I protested, because
Rattray had said that good cars couldn't be hired for less than twenty
_pounds_ a week; but Brown explained that this was because his master
liked him to drive it, and that really it wasn't so cheap as I thought.
I suppose it's all right. Funny, though, that I should have the car of
that Mr. John Winston, whose mother--Lady Brighthelmston--I met in
Paris, and promised to meet again in Cannes. Fancy Aunt Mary and me
lolling luxuriously (I love that word "lolling") in a snow-white car
with scarlet cushions, all the brass-work gleaming like a fireman's
helmet--the rakiest, smartest car imaginable! There are two seats in
front and a roomy _tonneau_ behind. The steering and other arrangements
are quite different from those in the poor dead Dragon--rest its wicked
soul! There's a steering-wheel, and below it two ducky little handles
that do everything. One's the "advance sparking lever," the other the
"mixture lever." There are no horrid belts to break themselves--and your
heart at the same time, but instead a "change speed gear" and a
"clutch." I had my first lesson in driving, sitting by Brown on the way
to Amboise. He teaches one awfully well, and I was perfectly happy
learning, especially when I found that the faster we went the easier the
dear thing is to steer. I was so interested that I didn't know a bit
what the road was like, except that it was good and white and mostly
level, so that when Brown suddenly said "There is the Chateau of
Amboise," I was quite startled.

Luckily he was driving again by that time, or I should probably have
shot us into the river instead of turning to the bridge; for we were on
the other side of the Loire looking across to the castle.

You poor, dear, stay-at-home Dad, to think of your never having seen any
of these lovely places that you've nobly sent me to browse among! You
_say_ you admire Wall Street more than French chateaux, and that when
you want a grand view you can go and look at Brooklyn Bridge or the
statue of Liberty by night; but you don't know what you're missing. And
if travelling would _really_ bore you, why do you like me to describe
things, so that I can "give you a picture though my eyes"?

I wonder if girls who have lived all their lives in old, old countries
can have the same sort of awed, surprised, almost dream-like feeling
that comes to me when I see these great feudal castles that are like
history in stone? Yes, in stone, and yet the stone seems _alive_ too as
if it were the _flesh_ of history; and as I think of all the things that
have happened behind the splendid walls, I can hear history's heart
beating as if it and the world were young with me.

This chateau country of the Loire must be one of the most interesting
spots on earth, centring as it did the old Court life of France, and
Brown says it really is so. He has travelled tremendously and remembers
everything, though he _is_ nothing but a _chauffeur_.

Each place we have come to I have thought must be the best; but I know
that no other castle will make me take Amboise down off the pedestal
I've set it on, in my mind.

As I glanced up at it in the sunshine the great white carved _facade_
dazzled me. It looked as if it had been cut out of ivory. The bridge
rests on an island in the middle of the wide, yellow, slow-moving stream
of the Loire, which has a curiously still surface like ice. Brown drove
slowly without my having to ask. He's wonderful that way. He always
knows what you are feeling, as if you had telegraphed him the news. And
there before us lay the little town of Amboise, sprinkled along the
river-bank as if each house were a votive offering on the shrine of the
Chateau towering above on its plateau of rock.

I couldn't make out the architecture at first. The castle was just a
vast, dazzling complication of enormous round towers, bastions,
terraces, balconies, and crenellations. Oh, those balconies! Instantly I
could see poor little fainting Queen Mary held up by wicked Catherine de
Medici--the record wickedest mother-in-law of history--to watch the
execution of the Huguenots. And then the row of heads hanging from the
balcony afterwards, like terrible red gargoyles! When we went into the
Chateau later the custodian, or whatever you call him, showed us where
the fine ironwork was stained and rusted with the Huguenots' blood.

I was very angry with Aunt Mary because she kept her nose in her
Baedeker, and preferred reading about the castle to seeing it when she
had the chance. I have my opinion of people who won't take their
Baedeker in doses either before or after meals of sight-seeing; but Aunt
Mary spreads it so thick over hers that what's underneath is lost.

We drove to a nice little hotel tucked away at the foot of the Chateau,
for _dejeuner_, and to get rid of our luggage, for we'd have to stop at
Amboise till the four new tyres (which Brown now wired for) should
arrive from Paris. We had so many courses that I grew quite impatient,
for I wanted to be off to the castle. And to save time I insisted on
Brown lunching with us. That's happened before several times, so that it
doesn't seem at all strange now, though Aunt Mary fussed at first, and
even I felt rather funny. But the queer part is, it's so _much_ more
difficult to remember that Brown's not a gentleman than to make an
effort to be civil to him as if he were one. Rattray at the table was
beyond words, and so are a lot of Frenchmen who ought to know better;
but--you'll laugh at me--I don't see how a duke could eat any better
than Brown, or have nicer hands and nails; though how he does it with
the car to clean is more than I can tell.

We came towards the castle, after _dejeuner_, from the back through the
town, which was gay with booths and blue blouses and pretty peasant
girls, because the market was being held. We went right through the
crowd, up, up a sloping path, where suddenly we were in a restful
silence, after the chattering and chaffering below. And I felt as if we
had got into a novel of Scott's; for if we'd been his characters he
would have brought us up short at a secretive door in a tower, just like
the one where we had to knock. One couldn't guess what would be on the
other side of that tower; and it was like walking on through the next
chapter of the same novel (walking slowly and with dignity, so that we
might "live up to" the author of our being) to wander up a steep road
leading to a plateau and reach the still, formal garden with the great
castle rising out of it.

On this plateau a lovely thing simply took my eyes captive and wouldn't
let them go. It was the most perfect gem of a little chapel out of
dreamland. Brown said it was "a jewel of the pure Gothic, one of the
most precious of the florid kind in France." Comic to have one's
_chauffeur_ talking to one like that, isn't it? But I'm used to it now,
and feel quite injured if Brown happens not to know something I ask him
about.

I never realised what an important lady Anne of Brittany was, till I was
introduced to her sweet little ermine at Blois. Brown hinted then that I
would keep on realising it more and more as we drove through the Loire
country, and so I do. This chapel was hers--built for her, and I envy
her having it. Couldn't you, Dad dear, just make a bid, and have it
taken over for our garden at Lennox? But no! that would be sacrilege.
It's almost sacrilege even to joke about it. Yet, oh, that carving of
St. Hubert and his holy stag over the door! I've no jewellery so lovely
as that cameo in stone; and I've got to leave it behind in Europe.

Poor Charles the Eighth, too, seemed to come to us like a human, every
day young man one knew when we saw the low doorway where he knocked his
head and killed himself, running in a great hurry to play tennis. How
little he guessed when he started that he should never have that game,
and why! I wonder if Anne was sorry when he died, or if she liked having
another wedding and being a queen all over again when she married Louis
the Twelfth?

I should have thought more about the ladies' love affairs, only I got
so interested in an _oubliette_, and in a perfectly Titanic round tower,
with an inclined plane corkscrewing up, round and round inside it, so
broad and so gradual that horses and carriages used in old, old days to
be driven from the town-level up to the top. "Only think what fun,
Brown," I couldn't help saying, "if we could drive the _car_ up here!"
"The idea!" sniffed Aunt Mary. "As if they'd allow such a thing!" But
Brown didn't answer; he just looked thoughtfully at the gradient.

We went up, too, on the top of one of the great towers of the castle
itself, and it was glorious to stand there looking away over the
windings of the river. We were at a bend midway between Blois and Tours,
and ever so far off we could see two little horns sticking up over the
undulations of the land. They were the towers of the cathedral of Tours;
and in that same direction Brown showed me a queer thing like a long,
thin finger pointing at the sky--the Lanterne of Rochecorbon. They used
to flash signals from it all the way to Amboise, and so on to Blois,
when any horror happened with which they were particularly pleased, like
a massacre of Huguenots.

Now, most patient gentleman, at last I've finished my harangue. I'm
ashamed to think how long it is, but I'm writing wrapped up in a warm
coat, under a _tilleul_ in the Chateau garden, where I've been allowed
to bring my campstool. Do you know what a _tilleul_ is? I don't believe
you do. I didn't till the other day; but I shan't tell you, except that
the very name suggests to me leisured ease and sauntering courtiers.
You must come over to France and find out--and incidentally fetch me
home--only not yet, please, oh, not yet. As for the _tilleul_, if you've
any romance left in your dear old body you'd love sitting under it, even
in winter. If it were summer, with the limes in blossom--well, the best
way to express my feeling is to remark that if, in June moonlight, under
a _tilleul_, a man I hated should propose to me, I'd believe for the
moment I loved him and say "Yes--yes!" But you need not be frightened;
it _isn't_ summer or moonlight, and there's no man except Brown within a
hundred miles of your silly

                                                                Molly.




MOLLY RANDOLPH TO HER FATHER


                                                  Tours, _December 3_.

  Three days since I wrote, blessed old Thing, but it seems three times
three, for all the hours have been as cramfull as you used to fill my
stocking at Christmas.

We couldn't get away from Amboise, as we expected, because the tyres
didn't arrive till late in the evening. I knew it must be a long,
tedious business fixing them on, so I never dreamed of starting next
morning; but when morning came, and with it the chambermaid and my bath,
there was a note from Brown, written in a hand a lot nicer than my poor
"fist," announcing that the car was ready, and if I would like a
surprise, might he "respectfully suggest" that I should come downstairs
as soon as possible. You can imagine that I didn't "stand on the order
of my going." My hair crinkled with surprise at being done so quickly,
and I was in such a hurry that I nearly--but not quite--slid down the
balusters.

Brown was at the front door, with the car all politely polished, and
seeming to stand upon tiptoe on its big new tyres. But smart as the car
was, it was nothing to the _chauffeur_. He looked like a sort of male
Cinderella just after the fairy godmother had waved her wand; only
instead of a ball dress she had given him, in place of his black
leather, a suit of grey clothes; one of those high, turnover collars I
love on a good-looking man; a dark necktie, and what _we_ call a "Derby"
hat and the English call a "bowler." He was nice! I don't know if I'm a
judge of a man's clothes, but to me they seemed as good form as any
tailor in the world could cut. Perhaps the Honourable John gave them to
him. Poor dear! he's far too fine a fellow really to have to wear
another man's cast-off garments; but I suppose Providence must know
best, and, anyhow, I'm sure the H. J. never looked half as nice in the
things.

Brown had on also a mysterious air, which seemed to go with the clothes,
and he asked if I'd mind taking a short run with him, without knowing
beforehand where I was going. I said that, on the contrary, I should
_like_ it. That seemed to please him. He helped me in (not that I needed
it), the car started with a touch, and we began to thread the streets of
the town behind the Chateau, I wondering _what_ was going to happen.
When I had been in this car before, it was to travel "on the rims," you
know. Now, on our four-plump new Michelins from Paris it was like being
in a balloon, so easy was the motion even over the badly paved streets.

We wound round under the high wall of the Chateau, and came in a few
minutes to a huge gateway. As we slowed down this gateway opened
mysteriously from within to show a dim corkscrew of a road winding
upward. I opened my mouth to ask an astonished question; then I thought
better of it and kept still, though I know my eyes must have been
snapping when Brown actually drove the car in. The gateway clanged
behind us, as if by enchantment, shutting us into a twilight region, and
behold, we were mounting the incline of the great tower, up which,
perhaps, nobody had ever driven since the days of Mary Stuart.

Wasn't it _kind_ of Brown to remember my wish (which even I had
forgotten!) to drive up the tower? I could hardly thank him enough for
such a new and thrilling sensation as it was, twisting up and up,
seeming to float in the vast hollow of the passage, the exquisite carved
and vaulted roof giving back a rhythmical reverberation of the throbbing
of our motor.

I couldn't even say "thank you," though, except in my thoughts, till we
got to the top (which we did much too soon), for somehow it would have
broken the charm to speak. But I think Brown understood that I
appreciated it all, and what he had done.

At the top a big doorway stood open, and by it one of the delightful,
grizzled, dignified old dears who must have been made guardians of the
Chateau, because they fit so well into the picture. I thought, though,
that this one looked different from before, for some reason quite
flurried and almost scared. I suppose it must have been the car and the
unusualness that upset him; but Brown drove out splendidly, stopping in
the terrace-garden.

"At that door," said the charming old fellow, "Francis the First of
France received Henry the Eighth of England, who with a train of a
hundred knights rode up the sloping way in the tower. To-day is the
first time that an automobile has ever been inside the doors; therefore,
mademoiselle, you have just been making history." And he bowed so
deliciously that I could have cried, because I hadn't my purse with me
to give him a "guerdon"; that would have been the only word, if I had
had it. Fortunately Brown had. Something yellow glittered as it passed
from hand to hand, and the old Frenchman (so dramatic, like most of his
countrymen) bowed again and took off his hat with a flourish. If the
something hadn't been yellow, but only white, I wonder if he would have
let us make that splendid, sweeping circle round the gardens before we
plunged back into the cool gloom of the tower?

Oh, that descent! I feel breathless, just remembering it, but it was a
glorious kind of breathlessness, like you feel when you go
tobogganing--only more so. Brown took it at tremendous speed, but I
wasn't a bit afraid, for I trust him utterly as a driver. If he said he
could take me safely over Niagara Falls, and looked straight at me in a
way he has when he said it, I believe I'd go--unless, of course, you
objected!

I found myself thinking of Poe's descent of the Maelstrom, and when I
said so to Brown afterwards, it turned out that he'd read it. He had the
car perfectly in hand, and steered it to a hair's breadth. We were down
in a moment--or it seemed so; and coming out into the bright little
streets was like waking up after a strange dream. In three minutes more
we were at the door of our hotel, and I really _was_ asking myself if I
had dreamed it.

"Brown," said I, "I told you once before that you were a leather angel.
Now I believe you are a grey tweed Genie. This has been the nicest
morning of my life. But you really must tell me how much you paid that
custodian, and let me give you back the money at once."

He interrupted himself in the midst of a beaming smile to wrinkle his
eyebrows together. "It's been a nice morning for me, too, miss," said he
quite humbly; "but it will half spoil it if you won't let it stand as it
is. It was only a few francs, and as you pay me a good screw, I can well
afford it. You're always so good, that I know you'd be sorry to hurt my
feelings."

Well, of course I would; so I couldn't say any more, could I? Though
before all these motor-car wonders began it would have felt odd to take
a "treat" from one's servant.

Now, Dad, I'm getting conscience-stricken, and keep wondering with every
paragraph (especially what I call my "descriptive" paragraphs) if I'm
boring you. I won't give you our daily programme _en masse_. I'll just
sum things up by saying that we've simply lived, moved, and had our
being in, on, or at castles. This country of the Loire is a sort of
fairyland, where everybody had a castle, or at the very least a lordly
dwelling-place that was more fortress than private house. You can't look
up or down the river but that on every hill you see a chateau, with
enough history clustering about it to make up a fat volume. How they
all escaped the Revolution is a marvel. But they have; and if they've
been much restored, it is so cleverly done that the most critical eyes
are deceived.

If I could live in one of the "show" chateaux, I'd choose Chenonceaux.
We drove to it on the day of the Tower, as I've labelled it in my book
of memory, "taking it in" on our way to Tours. It's no use your making a
note of that wish of mine, though Dad, and trying to buy it, because
somebody else has done that already. But if you can find a river as
pretty as the Cher (an appropriate name for the little daughter of the
Loire, on which--_over_ which, literally, Chenonceaux stands), you might
build me one on the same pattern, so I'll give you a general idea of
what the castle is like.

Let me see, what _is_ it like? To make a comparison would be giving to
an airy nothing a local habitation and a name. Not that Chenonceaux is
_nothing_--quite the opposite; but it leaves in the mind an impression
of airiness and gaiety, sweet and elusive as one of those quaint French
_chansons_ you like me to sing you, with my guitar, on a summer evening.
I think, even if I hadn't been told, I should have felt instinctively
that it must have been built to please a pretty, capricious woman. If
such a woman could be turned into a house, she would look like
Chenonceaux, and wouldn't suffer by the change. Perhaps Diane de
Poitiers isn't a proper object of sympathy for a well-brought-up young
lady like Chauncy Randolph's daughter; but I can't help pitying her,
because that horrid old frump of a Catherine de Medici grabbed it away
from her before Henry the Second was hardly cold in his grave. Think how
Diane, who had loved the place, must have felt to fancy that stuffy
Catherine in her everlasting black dresses, squatting in her beautiful
rooms! We saw those rooms, by the way, for we came on one of the days
when people are allowed to go through the Chateau (Brown had planned
that), and the clever millionaires who own it have had the sense and the
grace to leave everything just as it was, at least in Catherine's time.
And one can take the bad, Catherine taste out of one's mouth by thinking
of lovely little Mary Stuart singing like a lark through the rooms, and
living there and in the garden the happiest days that she was ever to
know.

One wouldn't suppose that a gloomy, plotting mind like Catherine's would
have had a place in it for creating beauty; but it had its one
ornamental corner, or she couldn't have thought out the bridge-gallery
thrown across the Cher, springing from the original building and
spanning the river to the farther shore.

There are two storeys over the bridge, long corridors, all windows, and
lovely green and gold river lights, netted over the floors and
walls--the most exquisite effect. I walked there, calling up the spirits
of vanished queens and princesses--the "dear, dead women," seeing "all
the gold that used to fall and hang about their shoulders." Oh, I've got
the quotation wrong, but it's Aunt Mary's fault, for at this very minute
she's reading aloud to herself in a guide-book about Rousseau and a lot
of other shining lights who used to visit Chenonceaux when it belonged
to Monsieur and Madame Dupin; but those days were comparatively modern,
so I don't take much interest. Nothing at Chenonceaux seems worth while
unless it happened before the days of Charles the Ninth.

Tours looked at first sight very sedate and grey, after Chenonceaux, for
the airy picture of the castle had kept floating before my eyes during
our run. It seems to me we are always on the other side of the river
from things, and have to get to them by crossing long bridges. We did it
again at Tours, and it was particularly long, and very fine. But it was
evening, and dim and bitterly cold; and I'm afraid I shouldn't have paid
as much attention to it as I did if Brown hadn't said that Balzac called
it "one of the finest monuments of France." And then in a minute, at the
entrance to the town, we saw two ghostly white statues glimmering in a
wide, green _place_. "There, miss, are the two tutelary geniuses of this
part of France," said Brown; "Rabelais and Descartes." By that time we
had flashed past, but I screwed my neck round to look back at them till
I got a "crick" in it. Have you ever noticed that most of the things
people tell you to look at, or that you particularly want to see in
life, are always behind your back or on one side, as if to give you the
greatest possible trouble? It seems as if there must be a "moral in it,"
as Alice's Duchess would have said.

Tours appeared _that_ evening (I have a motive for the emphasis) to
consist of one long, straight street; and turning to the left at the
end, we pulled up at the door of a hotel. Just an ordinary-looking hotel
it was on the outside, and I little thought what my impressions of it
would be by-and-by.

I was tired, not so much physically from what we had done, but with the
feeling that my capacity for admiring and enjoying things had been
filled up and brimmed over, so that a drop more in would actually hurt.
Do you know that sensation? It was just the mood to appreciate warmth
and cosiness. We got both. Aunt Mary and I had two bedrooms opening off
a sitting-room; dear, old-fashioned rooms, and, above all, _French_
old-fashioned, which to me is fascinating. We made ourselves as pretty
as Nature ordained us severally to be, and went downstairs. The
dining-room was our first big surprise. It was almost worthy of one of
the chateaux, with its dignified tapestried and wainscotted walls, and
its big, branching candelabra. I'm sure if we'd been dining at a chateau
we shouldn't have got a better dinner. I don't think anything ever
tasted so good to me in my life, and I couldn't help wondering how poor,
tired Brown was faring while we lazy ones feasted in state in the _salle
a manger_. I thought of you, too, for you would have loved the things to
eat. They were rich and Southern, and tasted in one's mouth just the way
the word "Provence" sounds in one's ear. Aunt Mary had read in one of
her ubiquitous guide-books that Touraine as well as Provence is famous
for its "succulent cooking," and for once a guide-book seems to be
right. They had all sorts of tricky, rich little dishes for
dinner--_rillettes_ and other things which would have made your mouth
water (though if it did, and I were by, I'd shut my eyes), and the head
waiter told me when I asked, that they were specialties of Tours and of
the hotel. I think _he_ must be a specialty of Tours and the hotel too.
He has the softest, most engaging, yet dignified manner; and the way he
has of setting down a dish before you seems to season it and give you a
double appetite. There's another man in the hotel, too, who adds to the
"aroma"; he's like a "bush to wine," or something I've heard you say. By
day he's _valet de chambre_, in a scarlet waistcoat no brighter than his
cheeks and eyes; at dinner he's a waiter in correct "dress" clothes, and
then he goes back to valeting again till midnight. He would put me in a
good temper if I had started out to murder someone, and when he brought
us the wine list, waiting with a cherry-cheeked smile to see what we
would choose, nothing seemed worthy of him except champagne; but
champagne looked so dissipated for two lone females. However, I had
decided to have some, to drink the health of the new car, and perhaps--a
little--to shock Aunt Mary, when the diamond-eyed one respectfully
inquired, in nice Southern French, how we would like to try a "little
wine of the country, sparkling Vouvray; quite a ladies' wine." So we
compromised with Vouvray. It was too ridiculously cheap, but it had a
delicious flavour, and Aunt Mary and I, being merely females, agreed
that it was more delicate than any champagne we had ever tasted. We
drank your health and the car's, and then I had a sudden inspiration.
"To the 'Lightning Conductor'!" said I, raising my glass.

"What lightning conductor? And what do you mean?" inquired Aunt Mary.

"The one and only Lightning Conductor--Brown," I explained. "I have just
thought of that as a good name for him, now that he has a chance to spin
us across the world at such a pace with a new car."

"I do hope, my dear Molly," severely remarked Aunt Mary, setting down
her glass with an indignant little thud, "you will not call that young
man any such thing to his face. He has already been allowed far too many
liberties, and though I must say he has not to any great extent taken
undue advantage of them so far, he may _break out_ at any moment."

I'm sorry to tell you, Dad, that I said "Pooh!" and asked her if she
thought Brown were an active volcano. Anyway, whether I call him so "to
his face" or not, the "Lightning Conductor" he is, and will remain for
me, though perhaps he wouldn't be flattered at being "launched and
christened" with mere Vouvray.

I didn't expect to like Tours half as much as I do. But we have been
here for three days, and though I thought at first there was only one
long street, we've found something interesting to see every hour of
daylight--so I write in the evenings in our cosy sitting-room. Or if I
don't write, I read Balzac. I never appreciated him as I do here, on his
"native heath." I have begged Brown to name his master's car "Balzac,"
because it, too, is a "violent and complicated genius." I've gazed at
the house where Balzac was born; I've photographed the Balzac
medallion; I've stuffed my trunks with illustrated editions of Balzac's
books; and I've gone to see everything I could find, which he ever spoke
about. His _Cure de Tours_ is the most harrowing story I ever read; and
the strange little house in the shadow of the cathedral, with one of the
great buttresses planting its enormous foot in the wee garden,
fascinates me. There lived the horrible Mademoiselle Gamard, and there,
with her, lodged the wicked Cure, and the poor, good little Cure, over
whose childlike, gentle stupidity and agony I half cried my eyes out
last night. But Balzac's French discourages me. He must have had a
wonderful vocabulary. I am always finding words on every page which I
never saw before.

I don't like cathedrals much as a rule, unless there's something really
extraordinary about them; but I love the big, grey, Gothic cathedral of
Tours. It seems a different grey from any other, not cold and
forbidding, but warm and very soft, as if it were made of sealskin. I
suppose that is partly the effect of the beautiful carvings of the tall,
tall front. I feel as if I should like to smooth and caress it with my
hand. And it is beautiful inside. Somehow it is so individual that it
gives you a welcome, as if it meant to be your friend.

The streets of _old_ Tours are so intricate that Aunt Mary and I would
never have known where to go, but Brown, who has been here before, has
guided us everywhere. He took us to see the house of Tristan the Hermit,
and an adorable little convent, which is called the Petit St. Martin,
with lovely Renaissance carving, and actually a _tilleul_. He showed us
the oldest house in Tours, the quaintest building you could imagine,
standing on a corner, with lots of other very old houses on the same
street. And the Charlemagne Tower--I'm not sure, but I liked that the
best of all--and a marvellous fourteenth-century house, a perfect
lacework of carving, which has been restored, and is called the Maison
Gouin, after the rich man who lives in it. Oh, I forgot to tell you,
I have bought your favourite _Quentin Durward_, and am sandwiching
him with Balzac. Reading him over again in this country was Brown's
idea for me, and I'm obliged to him for the "tip." Speaking of tips
reminds me I really ought to give _him_ one--a very large one, I'm sure.
And yet it will be awkward offering it, I'm afraid. I know I shall
stammer and be an idiot generally; but I shall prop my courage with the
reflection that, after all, he _is_ a _chauffeur_, and perhaps has, in
his heart, been wondering why I haven't given him anything before.

Yesterday I saw palm trees, growing in the _place_, and kissed my hand
to them, because they told me that we were on the threshold of the
South. Another thing in Tours which suggests the South, I think, is the
_patisserie_. Aunt Mary and I have discovered a confectioner's to
conjure with; but Tours seems to have discovered him long ago, for all
the "beauty and fashion" of the town go there for coffee and cakes in
the afternoon. We do likewise--when we have time; and yesterday Aunt
Mary ate twelve little cakes, each one different from the other. You
see, they are so good, and she said, as a conscientious tourist, she
thought she ought to try every kind in the shop, so as to know which was
nicest. But she felt odd afterwards, and refused one or two of the best
courses at dinner.

The way that we have used our time at Tours is very much to our credit,
I think--or rather to the Lightning Conductor's. In the mornings Brown
has taken us on excursions outside the town, and in the afternoons,
before dark, we have "done" the town itself, as Aunt Mary would say,
though I hate the expression myself. But one whole day out of our three
we spent in running with the car to Langeais and Azay-le-Rideau.

That new car is a treasure, and Brown drives as if there were a sort of
_sympathy_ between him and it. We go at a thrilling pace sometimes, but
that is only when we have a long, straight road, empty as far as the eye
can see. He is very considerate to "horse drivers," as he calls them,
and he says "for the sake of the sport" everyone driving an automobile
should be careful of the rights of other persons on the road. He slows
down at once, or even stops the car altogether, if we meet a restive
horse. Once he got out and pacified a silly beast that was nervous,
leading it past the car, and when it was quite quiet the old peasant who
was driving exclaimed that if all automobilists were like us there would
never be complaints. We managed to make up for lost time, though; and
when Brown "lets her out," as he calls it, until we are going as fast as
a quick train, I can tell you it is something worth living for. When
the country is very beautiful we drive slowly, and save our "spurts"
for the uninteresting parts.

I know you've read Balzac's _Duchesse de Langeais_, in English, for it
was I who gave it to you. I don't suppose she ever lived, really, at the
Chateau de Langeais or anywhere else; but the thought of her made
Langeais even more interesting to me than it would have been if she'd
been erased from the picture.

It's a great, grey, frowning, turreted and crenelated fortress-house,
and I felt so much obliged to it for having kept its practicable
drawbridge. We drove almost up to the door, through a clean, very old
little town, and just opposite the entrance was a quaint house where
Brown said Rabelais had lived. I don't believe Aunt Mary knew anything
about Rabelais. However, she eagerly Kodaked the house, and later, when
I gravely mentioned to her that Rabelais was the kind you wouldn't allow
_me_ to read, but of course _she_ might, if she liked, she gave a squeak
of dismay, and threatened to waste all her films rather than let a
photographer see that one when they went to be developed. I do hope _I_
shan't be an old maid!

The Parisian millionaire who owns the Chateau, and lives in it part of
the year, must be a wonderfully generous, public-spirited man. Only
think, he has spent thousands and thousands in restoring the castle, in
keeping up the lovely garden, and in having all the rooms exquisitely
furnished and decorated exactly in the period of wicked Louis the
Eleventh and Charles the Eighth. But instead of keeping these beautiful
things for himself and his family and friends, he lets everybody have
the benefit, not even making an exception of his own private rooms. Here
Anne of Brittany was very much to the fore again, for she was married to
Charles at Langeais, and we went into the room of the wedding. I should
have liked to take the splendid, dignified, old major-domo, who showed
us about, home with me; but I'm sure he'd pine away and die if torn from
his beloved Chateau.

We bought quaint painted iron brooches, with Anne of Brittany's crest on
them, in the town; and then we drove away through pretty, undulating
country, which must be lovely in summer, to Azay-le-Rideau. Francis the
First built it; and he certainly had as good taste in castles as in
ladies, which is saying a great deal.

This is a fairy house. It doesn't look as if it had ever been _built_ in
the ordinary sense, but as if somebody had dropped a huge, glimmering
pearl down on the green meadow, and it had rolled near enough to the
water to see its own reflection. Then the same somebody had carved
exquisite designs all over the pearl, and finally hollowed it out and
turned it into a king's house.

As usual, we came to it across a bridge, not spanning the Loire this
time, but a branch of the river Indre; and it's in the Indre that the
pearly Chateau bathes its pearly feet. Almost I wished that I hadn't
gone inside the pearl. Not that the inside was worthless; there was a
mantel or two, and a great show staircase, with a carved, vaulted roof;
but it was an anti-climax after the outside and after Langeais. When we
came out from "viewing the interior," as the guide-books say, I walked
all round the Chateau again, looking up at the carved chimneys and the
sculptured windows, the charming turrets, and the sloping roof of blue
grey slate; all so light and elegant, seeming to say, "Come and live
here. You will be happy." Oh, they have some lovely things in Europe,
that we can never have in our new country! We've a good excuse for
wanting to come over here. But it's so good to feel that the things are
for us, and for everybody--not just for England, or France, or Italy, as
the case may be.

To-morrow we are going to try and see three chateaux--Usse, and Luynes,
and Chinon. We'll come back to Tours and our dear Hotel de l'Univers;
but the day after--good-bye to both, and how-do-you-do Loches! I'll
leave this open, and put in a postscript. I haven't given you a real,
characteristic postscript for a long time.

       *****       *****       *****       *****       *****

                                                _Evening_; and Loches.

  "Here I am again!" as Jack-in-the-Box says. And we've done all the
things I said we were going to. But I'm too full of Loches and too
excited about Loches to tell you anything of yesterday's three castles,
except to fling them an adjective or two, and pass on. Let me see, what
adjective, since I've confined myself to one, shall I give Usse?
"Splendid," I think. "Interesting" is all I can afford for Luynes,
though it deserves a lot more, if only for its history. And
well--"magnificent" must do for Chinon. Perhaps it has the most
beautiful view of all. But Loches--Loches! I had forgotten its existence
till I dug it up for myself in _Quentin Durward_, and the guide-books,
to which Aunt Mary is so faithful, don't do it any sort of justice. They
don't tell you to go to see it, _whatever_ else you must make up your
mind to miss. Why, Aunt M.'s particular pet devoted almost as much space
to the queer little rock village of Rochecorbon, whose lighted windows
glared at us like cat's eyes away high up above the road, one dark
evening (when we'd been belated after an excursion) getting back to
Tours.

Luckily the Lightning Conductor appreciated Loches at its true value,
and told me it was well worth making a short detour--as we must--to see.
We had to go out of our way as far as a place called Cormery, but that
was nothing, and yesterday morning early we started. It was the first
sparkling blue-and-gold day we have had for a while; it seemed as if it
must have come across to us from Provence, as a sample, to show what we
might expect if we hurried on there. The air was like champagne--or
Vouvray--and we spun along at our very best on the smooth, wide Route
Nationale, our faces turned towards Provence as a graceful compliment
for the gift of the weather.

We have a neat little trick of getting to places just in time for lunch,
and we managed it at Loches, as usual. We'd hardly driven into the town
before I fell in love with its quaintness; but I didn't fall in love
with the hotel until I'd been surprised with a perfectly delicious
_dejeuner_. Then I let myself go; and when I'd seen how pretty the
old-fashioned bedrooms were, I begged to stay all night instead of going
on. Brown seems to regard my requests as if they were those of
royalty--commands; and he rearranged our programme accordingly. I'm
writing in a green-and-pink damask bedroom now, but when I shut my eyes
I can see the castle and the dungeons and--Madame Cesar. Yes, I think I
can find my way back for your benefit, and return on our own tracks.

First, like a promising preface to the ruined stronghold of the terrible
Louis, we went through a massive gateway, flanked with towers, and
climbed up a winding street of ancient, but not decrepit houses, to come
out at last upon a plateau with the gigantic walls of the castle on our
left. When I remembered _who_ caused those outworks and walls to be put
up, so high and grim and strong, and _why_, I felt a little "creep" run
up my spine at sight of the enormous mass of stonework. "Who enters here
leaves hope behind" might have been written over the gateway in the
dreadful days when Loches was in its wicked prime. Those walls are
colossal, like perpendicular cliffs. At a door in one of them we tinkled
a bell, and presently, with loud unlocking of double doors, quite a
pretty young girl appeared and invited us in. She was the daughter of
the _gardien_, she told us. It was almost a shock to see something so
fresh and young living in such a forbidding, torture-haunted den as
Louis' Chateau of Loches. She was like one of the little bright-coloured
winter blossoms springing out from a cranny of the grey walls. When she
had lighted rather a smelly lantern, we prepared to follow into the
"fastnesses" of the castle. If ever that good old double-dyed word could
be appropriate, it is to Loches. I never thoroughly realised before the
awful might of kings in feudal and mediaeval days. To think that Louis
XI. had the power to build such a place, and to hustle his enemies away
for ever out of the sunshine, behind those tremendous walls, and bury
them in the yard-square cells hollowed in the thickness of the stone! I
used to wish I'd lived in those stirring times, but I changed my mind
to-day--temporarily.

In the middle of the fortress is an enormous square, white keep, so
heavy, solid, and imposing that it seems more like the slow work of
Nature than of man. Down steep, winding steps in a tower, we followed
our guide into the dungeons where that unspeakable Louis shut up the
people he was afraid to leave in the world. Waving her lantern in the
dusk, the girl showed us where the wretched prisoners had tried to keep
themselves from madness by painting on the roof and walls. In one cell a
bishop had cut into the solid wall a little altar, just where a slanting
ray of sunshine stole through a grating and occasionally laid a small
patch of light for a few minutes, only to snatch it away again. Several
of the cells were just black holes scooped out of the rock, and there it
seemed to have been Louis' delight to put some of the most important
prisoners--men who had lived like princes, and had power over life and
death in their own countries.

Oh, do you remember wily Cardinal Balue? I've been refreshing my memory
of him in _Quentin Durward_, hating him dreadfully; but I did have a
spasm of pity when I saw the big, well-like place where he was suspended
for so many years, like an imprisoned canary, in a wooden cage, because
he betrayed Louis' secrets to the Duke of Burgundy. Henry James says, in
a fascinating Tauchnitz volume I bought in Tours (_A Little Tour in
France_), that Cardinal Balue "survived much longer than might have been
expected this extraordinary mixture of seclusion and exposure." Isn't
that just the _cunningest_ way of expressing it?

Last of all we went up to the top of a high tower in the midst of the
Chateau, and there, as if we'd been on the mast-head of a ship, we had a
bird's-eye view of the pretty white town, with the Indre murmuring by in
sedgy meadows outside. There were some wonderful old cuttings in the
stone, made by the soldiers who acted as sentinels and prisoners'
guards; and Aunt Mary Kodaked me as I sat studying them. We could spy,
across the plateau of the castle, the tomb of Agnes Sorel, and decided
to go to it; but we left the poor girl till so late, finally, that we
could only see her glimmering white in effigy of marble, with a sweetly
resigned face, modest, folded hands, and a dear little soft sitting-down
lamb to rest her pretty feet on. She had, besides, two very pretty young
angels to watch over her and wake her up when it should be time.

I'm sure it would have taken at least three such angels to wake me up,
until I had "slept out," after our long afternoon in the castle, and
later in the town. I went to bed early and slept ten hours. We hadn't
to start immediately, as our drive for the day wasn't long, so I
proposed to Aunt Mary that we should breakfast in our rooms and then go
out for a morning walk. The breakfast idea appealed to her; not so the
walk, and accordingly I had to go alone. I had no plan except perhaps to
buy a souvenir or two; but in the crooked street leading up to the
castle I met Brown. He was reading a notice on the great gateway,
directing strangers to some excavations lately made. He took off his cap
at sight of me, and I asked him if he thought the excavations would be
worth seeing. He had heard that they were, and I said that I should be
glad if he would show me how to go to the place. I didn't like wandering
about by myself. Everything is so horrid that one does by oneself in a
strange country, and then if Brown isn't useful in one way he always
proves to be in another. So he obeyed, of course, walking not too close,
as if to let me see that he recognized the distance between us. I've
often noticed him do that if we have to go anywhere together on foot,
and I think it's rather nice of him, don't you? Just a little pathetic
too, maybe. Anyhow, it seems that way to me, for he really _ought_ to
have been a gentleman. It's such a waste of good material, the Lord
using him up for a _chauffeur_ when any common stuff would have done for
that.

Well, we went on a short distance until we saw a tiny cottage in a
wild-looking garden at the foot of the huge fortress walls. We rang a
gate-bell, when another notice told us we'd got to the right place, and
a little, smiling woman came out to welcome us. "Oh, yes!" said she
volubly. She would show us the excavations, and we would find them as
interesting as anything we could see in Loches. Already it was easy to
see that in _her_, at least, we had found something interesting. She had
the nicest, brightest old face, and she poured out upon us a kind of
benign dew of conversation. She introduced herself as Madame Cesar;
always talking and explaining, she lighted a candle, led us to the mouth
of an egg-shaped subterranean path, and bowed us down. She went, too,
down the steep steps, telling how this passage and many ramifications of
it had been discovered only recently, most of the excavations having
been the work of her husband. It was supposed that an underground
gallery led a long way from Loches to some distant spot, so that people
could come and go to the castle unseen, and so that the fortress could
secretly receive provisions if it were besieged. All sorts of things had
been found in the passages--rosaries, and old, old books, and coins, and
queer playing-cards; and some of the best of the relics she had in her
own cottage. We stopped to see them afterwards, and she reeled forth
yards of history in the most fascinating and vivacious manner,
accompanied by dramatic gestures, almost worthy of Sara Bernhardt. I
suppose she must have been down in the excavations oftener than she
could remember, but you would have thought it was perfectly new to her,
and she was seeing it for the first time. She gave us a rose each to
remember her by, and oh!--wasn't it comic, or tragic? which you
will--she quite misunderstood things, and suggested that _I_ should put
Brown's rose in his leathery buttonhole. He and I both pretended not to
hear, but I felt embarrassed for a minute. Nevertheless, I wouldn't have
missed Madame Cesar and her excavations for a good deal.

There, _dejeuner_ is ready, and you'll be glad, maybe, dear, faraway
Dad, because it will spare you further descriptions. After _dejeuner_ we
shall proceed to be lightning-conducted again, and I shall duly collect
a few more adventures to recount. Good-bye, dear. How I wish you were
with me instead of Aunt Mary!

                                                 Your everlasting
                                                                Molly.




JACK WINSTON TO LORD LANE


                                              Biarritz, _December 11_.

  My dear Montie,

I have let you rest a good long time without a letter (not that I've
been taking a rest myself), and now I should think you are opening your
eyes with astonishment at the picture on my paper of a hotel at
beautiful, blowy Biarritz. Thereby hangs a tale of adventure and
misadventure.

No doubt my fair employer believes me at this moment to be consorting
with couriers in the servants hall (if there be one) of her hotel. But,
as usual, I know a trick worth two of that; and having washed his hands
of Brown for the time being, your friend Jack sits smoking his pipe and
writing to you in what is known as the "monkey-house" of this hotel. As
you don't know Biarritz, you'll think that in exchanging all the
comforts of a servants' hall for a monkey-house I am not doing myself as
well as I might. But there are monkey-houses and monkey-houses. This one
is a delightful glass room built on to the front of the hotel, facing a
garden and tennis courts, commanding a glorious view of the sea and also
of every creature, human and inhuman, who goes by. One has tea in the
monkey-house; one writes letters, reads novels, smokes or gossips,
according to sex and inclination; one can also be seen at one's private
avocations by the madding crowd outside the glass house, hence the name.

The air is luminous with sunshine and pungent with ozone. Great green
rollers are marching in, to break in thunder on the beach, and fling
rainbow spouts of spray over tumbled brown rocks. In the distance the
sea has all the colours of a peacock's tail; the world is at its best,
and I ought to be rejoicing in its hospitality; but I'm not. The fact
is, I'm upset in my mind. I'm over head and ears in love, and as there's
no hope of scrambling out again (I'm hanged if I would, even if I could)
or of getting my feet on solid ground, mere beauty of landscape and
seascape appear slightly irrelevant.

I wouldn't bother you with my difficulties, which, I admit, are mostly
my own fault, and serve me right for beginning wrong, but you asked in
your letter if you could help me in any way; and it does help to let off
steam. You are my safety-valve, old man.

You will have had my hasty line from Angouleme (birthplace of
witch-stories and of Miss Randolph's beloved Francis the First) telling
you how we got rid of Eyelashes. I don't think we shall ever encounter
that beautiful young vision again, and I sincerely hope that we shall be
spared others of his kind, but one never knows what will happen with an
American girl at the helm. I told you also of our doings among the
chateaux. Altogether, that was an idyllic time; and still, though I have
been grumbling to you just now, when I can shut my eyes to to-morrow, I
haven't much fault to find with Fate. You remember that weird story of
Hawthorne's, about the man who walked out of his own house one morning,
took lodgings in a neighbouring street, disguised himself, and watched
for years the agony of his wife, who gave him up for dead? At last the
desire for home came over him again; he knocked at his own door and went
in; there the story ends.

My position is like that of Hawthorne's hero, without the tragedy. When
shall I return to my own home? I cannot tell. I have stepped out of my
own sphere into another, and sometimes I have an odd sense of
detachment, as if I were floating in a void. It is only when I am
writing to you or when I get letters from the world I have left that I
feel the link which unites me with the past. Since I left Paris I have
had only four letters from my world, which have fallen into Brown's
world like strange reminders of another existence. I have had your own
welcome words, and a letter from my mother at Cannes (I gave her my
address at Poitiers) telling me of the arrival there of Jabez Barrow
with his "one fair daughter," and urging me to haste. As if I should
rush from the society of the Goddess in the car to the opulent charms
(in both senses) of Miss Barrow! It appears that Jabez the Rich does not
care for Cannes, but sighs for Italy, and that my mother has promised to
"personally conduct" them to Rome. She wants me to reach Cannes before
they leave, or if that's impossible, to abandon my car and follow by
rail to Rome, lest I "miss this great chance." I am not surprised at
this move. My dear mother, when the travelling fit is upon her, is
nothing if not erratic. She is here to-day, and, having seen the charms
of another place advertised on a poster, is gone to-morrow.

On getting this letter a happy inspiration came into my mind. It had
been the more or less vague intention of the Goddess, after inspecting
the castles of the Loire, to steer for Lyons, arriving at Nice by way of
Grenoble. I offered the wily suggestion, however, that it would make a
more varied and less "obvious" tour if we went down by Bordeaux and
Biarritz, snatched a glimpse of Spain, travelled along the foot of the
Pyrenees to Marseilles, and so reach the Riviera by this long detour.
The word "obvious" is a black beast to an American girl, who will be
original or nothing; therefore my suggestion is in the way of being
carried out. I've written to my mother that I can't reach Cannes before
she herself leaves for Rome; thus I gain time. Still, the day of
disclosure must come at last, and the longer it's put off the less I
like to think about it.

The Goddess (alias Miss Randolph) is staying with her aunt at the
"Angleterre." I have slunk off here, having arranged matters with the
hall porter at the other place, who will, if my mistress wants me, send
a messenger post-haste. Meanwhile the car reposes in a _garage_, where
it is kept clean and in running order without any trouble to me. As I
have gradually drifted into the position of Miss Randolph's courier as
well as her _chauffeur_, I can plan these things as I like, for she
never glances at her bills, which I settle, giving an account every few
days. Do you recall your own story of the conscientious Yankee from the
country who failed in his efforts to eat straight through the _menu_ at
a Paris hotel dinner, and appealed to the waiter to know whether he
might now "skip from thar to thar"? Well, I would skip on my _menu_ from
Loches to Biarritz; but you were to have been my companion on this trip,
and you cry for details.

From Loches we took a cross-country route which brought us out in the
main road from Tours to Bordeaux at Dange. There isn't much to say about
that run, except that it was through agreeable, undulating country with
wide horizons, like a thousand other undulations and horizons in France.
At La Haye-Descartes we struck a pretty picture when crossing a bridge
over the River Creuse. The setting sun had performed the miracle of
turning the water into wine, and, chattering and laughing as if that
wine had gone to their pretty heads, a company of girls and young women,
all on their knees, cheerfully did their washing in the stream. It was
one of those homely scenes that one is constantly coming across in this
"pleasant land of France" to leave a picture in one's mind. Miss
Randolph would have me stop the car on the bridge to watch it.

A queer thing about France, by the way. You and I have both been
entertained right royally in jolly old _chateaux_ by delightful French
people of our own class. We know that life in such country houses can be
as charming as it is in England; yet if one had never seen it from the
inside, one would fancy in travelling that nothing of the sort existed.
Roughly, one might sum the difference up in a phrase by saying that
France presents a peasant's landscape, England a landlord's. In England
you see twenty good country houses for every one you pass in
France--excepting only the district of the Loire; and outdoor life as we
know it, on the road and on the river, doesn't seem to exist over here.
Somehow I was never so much struck with this contrast before, though I
know this country almost as well as I know my hat. Think of the English
roads and lanes, of the pretty girls and decent men one meets on
horseback or in smart dogcarts, the dowagers in victorias, the crowds of
cyclists, the occasional fine motor-car, knickerbockered men walking for
the pleasure of exercise! Here, though one knows there are more motors
than at home, one rarely comes across them out of towns; and as for
ladies and gentlemen, or, indeed, any sort of people out solely for
enjoyment, they're as rare as black opals. I look in vain for pretty
field paths and rural lanes, where workmen and their sweethearts wander
when the day is done. I suppose they prefer to do their love-making
indoors or in front of a cafe, or perhaps they sandwich it in with their
long hours of work, and that is the reason why the whole of France seems
so much more cultivated than country England--the reason why every acre
is turned to account, not a square yard of earth left untilled. It's
only the magnificent roads which aren't enough appreciated, apparently,
by the "nobility and gentry," as the tradesmen's circulars have it. And
what roads the Routes Nationales are--born for motor-cars!--varying a
little from department to department, but equally good almost
everywhere. You come to a stone marking the boundary of a department,
for instance, and crossing an imaginary line, find yourself on a
different kind of surface, each department being allowed to make it's
road after the manner which pleases it best--provided only it makes it
well.

The Route Nationale from Paris to Bayonne, along part of which we've
lately travelled, is good nearly all the way. From Dange to Poitiers is
a splendid bit, and up to Poitiers one climbs a considerable hill. It's
a cheerful town, with a fine cathedral, and lively streets full of
red-legged soldiers, rather weedy and shambling fellows, like most
French conscripts. Beyond Poitiers the road is one long, exhilarating
switchback--you rush down one hill, climb another, swoop again into a
hollow, and so on, the road unrolling itself like a great white tape.
You try to drive faster than the tape unrolls, but somehow you can never
beat it.

That we were getting into the south was shown by the fact that the road
was bordered by endless rows of walnut trees. Under a tumbled sky, and
with an occasional spatter of rain, we passed that day through a vast
stretch of rolling, cultivated land, with obscure villages at long
intervals. In a little town called Couhe-Verac we lunched rather late.
The regular _dejeuner_ was over, as it was nearly three in the
afternoon; but in ten minutes after we got into the house we sat down to
this luncheon: boiled eggs, roast veal, _b[oe]uf a la mode_, _puree_ of
potatoes, pheasant, a delicious _pate_, grapes, peaches, pears, sweet
biscuits, cream cheese, red and white wine, and bread _ad libitum_; all
for two francs fifty per head. Think of it! This was a homely village
inn, with no pretensions. What would have happened if we had turned up
unexpectedly at such a house in England? We should have been offered
cold beef and pickles, with the alternative of ham and eggs, or possibly
"chop or steak, sir; take twenty minutes." Truly in cooking we are
barbarians. The French dine; we feed.

The landlord was a man of character. He had delightful manners, and
though he was young his hair was greyish, and cut low and straight
across a broad forehead. Through gold-rimmed glasses gleamed the blue
eyes of an enthusiast. He went with me to look at the car, and explained
that he was an inventor--that he had designed a new system of marine
propulsion more powerful than the screw. It followed the action of a man
in swimming, "regular in irregularity," and standing on his toes, he
flung out his arms, and beat them rhythmically in the air to illustrate
his theory. It was hard, he confided in me, to have to keep an inn in a
small town, when he ought to be in Paris, among engineers, perfecting
his invention. Did I, by any chance, know of a capitalist who would back
him? I sympathised and regretted; but who knows if he has not got hold
of an idea? At Blois they have a statue of Denis Papin, who, the French
say, invented the steam engine. Perhaps, years hence, if my
grandchildren pass through Couhe-Verac, they may see a statue to the
blue-eyed landlord of its little inn.

Beyond Couhe-Verac we had our first dog accident. Dogs, you know, are as
great a nuisance to automobiles as they are to cycles, and they charge
at one's car with such vehemence that their impetus almost carries them
under the wheels. Sometimes they show their strength by galloping
alongside the car for a couple of hundred yards, barking so furiously
the while that their bodies are contorted by the violence of the effort.
I was driving at a moderate pace (something under thirty miles an hour)
when a 

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