Part 2 (1/2)
There was but one way to do this.
”I suppose, me lord, I'm to travel with the 'eavy luggage, and take rooms at the end of the journey,” he suggested.
The crucial moment had come. If a man can support existence without the girl he loves, thought I, surely it must be possible for him to live without a valet. ”No, Locker,” I said firmly. ”I am to be Mr. and Mrs. Winston's guest, and we--er--shall have no fixed destination. I shall be obliged to leave you behind.”
”Very good, me lord,” returned Locker in a meek voice. ”Very good, me lord; _has_ you will. I do 'ope you won't suffer from dust, with no one to keep you in proper repair, as you might say. But no doubt it will be only for a short time.”
Knowing that days, weeks, and even months might pa.s.s while I consorted with motors and mules, far from valets and civilisation, I was nevertheless toward enough to hint that Locker must be prepared for a wire at any time. I had often derived a quaint pleasure from the consciousness that he despised my bookish habits and certain unconventionalities not suited to a 'hearl'; but one must draw the line somewhere, and I drew it at the mule. I would give a good deal rather than Locker should suspect me of the mule.
It was arranged that we should leave from Jack's house in Park Lane, and as we wanted to reach Southampton early, our start was to be at nine o'clock. ”In France,” Jack had said to me, ”we could reel off the distance almost as quickly as the train; but in our blessed land, with its twenty miles an hour speed limit, its narrow winding roads, chiefly used in country places as children's playgrounds, and its police traps, motoring isn't the undiluted joy it ought to be. The thing to prepare for is the unexpected.”
At half-past eight at Jack's door, I bade an almost affectionate farewell to the last cabhorse with which for many wild weeks I should have business dealings. The untrammelled life before me seemed to be signalised by the lonely suit case which was the one article of luggage I was allowed to carry on the motor. A portmanteau was to follow me vaguely about the Continent, and I had visions of a pack to supersede the suit case, when my means of transport should be a mule.
Sufficient for the motor was the luggage thereof, however, and when my neat leather case was deposited in Jack's hall, I was rewarded with Molly's approving comment that it would ”make a lovely footstool.”
We had breakfast together, as though nothing dreadful were about to happen, and I heartened myself up with strong coffee. By the time we had finished, and Molly had changed herself from a radiant girl into a cream-coloured mushroom, with a thick, straight, pale-brown stem, the Thing was at the door--Molly's idol, the new G.o.ddess, with its votive priest pouring incense out of a long-nosed oil can and waving a polis.h.i.+ng rag for some other mystic rite.
This servant of the car answered to the name of Gotteland, and having learned from Jack that he had started life as a jockey in Hungary, I thought evil of him for abandoning the horse for the machine. He evidently belonged to that mysterious race of beings called suddenly into existence by a vast new industry; mysterious, because how or why a man drifts or jumps into the occupation of chauffeur is never explained to those who see only the finished article. Jack praised him as a model of chauffeury accomplishments, among which were a knowledge of seventeen languages more or less, to say nothing of dialects, and a temper warranted to stand a burst tyre, a disordered silencer, an uncertain ignition, and (incidentally) a broken heart--all occurring at the same time. Despite these alleged perfections, I distrusted the cosmopolitan apostate on principle, and was about to turn upon his leather-clad form a disapproving gaze, when I dimly realised that it would be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Instead, I smiled hypocritically as we ”took a look” at the car before lending it our lives.
”I hope the brute isn't vicious; doesn't blow up or explode, or shed its safety valve, or anything,” I remarked with a facetiousness which in the circ.u.mstances did me credit.
Gotteland answered with the pitying air of the professional for the amateur. ”The _one_ thing an automobile can't do, sir, is to blow up.”
I was glad to hear this, in spite of the strong coffee lately swallowed, but on the other hand there were doubtless a great many other equally disagreeable things which it could do. Of course, if it were satisfied with merely killing me, neatly and thoroughly, I still felt that I should not mind; indeed, would be rather grateful than otherwise. But there were objections, even for a jilted lover, to being smeared along the ground, and picked up, perhaps, without a nose, or the proper complement of legs, or vertebrae.
”Anyhow, the beast has a certain meretricious beauty,” I admitted.
”Those red cus.h.i.+ons and all that bright metal work give an effect of luxury.”
Gotteland revenged his idol with another smile. ”Amateurs _do_ notice such things, sir,” said he. ”Professionals don't care much about the body; it's the motor that interests them.” He lifted a sort of lattice which muzzled the dragon's mouth, disclosing some bulbous cylinders and a tangle of pipes and wires. ”It's the _dernier cri_. That engine will work as long as there's a drop of essence in the carburetter, and will carry you at forty miles an hour, without feeling a hill which would set many cars groaning and puffing. It will do the work of twenty horses, and more----”
”Yet I shouldn't be _really_ surprised if one horse had to tow it some day,” I murmured more to myself than to him, but Molly heard me, through her mushroom.
”You'll soon apologise to Mercedes for your doubts of her, for motors are their own missionaries,” she said, her eyes laughing through a triangular talc window. ”You will have learned to love her before you know what has happened, just as you would the real Mercedes, if you could see her.”
Curious, I thought, that Molly, knowing my state of mind, should be constantly weaving into our conversation some allusion to the namesake and giver of her car. I had never in my life been less interested in the subject of extraneous girls, and with all Molly's tact, it seemed strange that she should not recognise this. However, she did not appear to expect an answer, and we were soon settled in the car, Molly, as I have said, looking like a graceful fungus growth, Jack and I like haggard goblins.
Molly was to drive, and Jack insisted that I should sit in one of the two absurdly comfortable armchair arrangements in front. The chauffeur was presently to curl like a tendril round a little crimson toadstool at our feet, and Jack took the tonneau in lonely state. This was, no doubt, an act of fine self-abnegation on his part, nevertheless I could have envied him his safe retirement, from my place of honour, with no n.o.ble horses in front to save Molly and me from swift destruction.
Physically, we were very snug, however. The luggage was fitted into s.p.a.ces especially made for it; long baskets on the mudguards at the side were stowed with maps and guide-books for the tour, and (as Molly remarked in the language of her childhood) a ”few nice little 'eaties'
to make us independent on the way.”
There was also a sort of glorified tea basket, containing, Molly said, a chafing-dish, without which no self-respecting American woman ever travelled, and by whose aid wonderful dishes could be turned out at five minutes' notice in a s.h.i.+pwreck, on a desert island, or while a tyre was being mended.
As I mentally finished my last will and testament, Gotteland gave a short twist to the dragon's tail, which happened to be in front.
Instantly a heart began to throb, throb. The chauffeur sprang to his toadstool. Molly moved a lever which said ”R-r-r-tch,” pressed one of her small but determined American feet on something, and the car gave a kind of a smooth, gliding leap forward, as if sent spinning from an unseen giant's hand.
Though it was but just after nine, the early omnibus had gathered its tribute of toiling or shopping worms, and was too prevalent in Park Lane for my peace of mind. There were also enormous drays, which looked, as our frail bark pa.s.sed under their bows, like huge Atlantic liners. The hansoms were fierce black sharks skimming viciously round us, and there were other monsters whose forms I had no time to a.n.a.lyse: but into the midst of this seething ocean Molly pitilessly hurled us. How we slipped into s.p.a.ces half our own width and came out scatheless, Providence alone knew, but it seemed that kindly Fate must soon tire of sparing us, we tempted it so often.
”Here's a smas.h.!.+” I said to myself grimly, at the corner of Hamilton Place, and it flashed through my brain, with a mixture of self-contempt and pity, that my last thought before the end would be one of sordid satisfaction because a fortnight ago I had reluctantly paid an accident a.s.surance premium.
My fingers yearned with magnetic attraction toward the arms of the seat, but with all that was manly in me I resisted. I wreathed my face with a smile which, though stiff as a plaster mask, was a useful screen; and as South African tan is warranted not to wear off during a lifetime, I could feel as pale as I pleased without visible disgrace.