The Princess Passes by Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

A >> Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson >> The Princess Passes

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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 circumstances 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 cushions 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 noble horses in front to save Molly and me from swift
destruction.

Physically, we were very snug, however. The luggage was fitted into
spaces 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 shipwreck, 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 passed 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
analyse: but into the midst of this seething ocean Molly pitilessly
hurled us. How we slipped into spaces 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 smash!" 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 assurance 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.

"How do you like it?" asked Molly.

"Glorious," I breezily returned.

"Ah, I _thought_ you would enjoy it, when--as they say of babies--you
'began to take notice.' The other night, of course, you were a little
absent-minded. Besides, it was dark, and the streets were dull and
empty. A motor _is_ just as nice as a horse, isn't it? Do say so, if
only to please me."

Now I knew why the victims of the Inquisition told any lie which
happened to come handy. I said that it was marvellous how soon the
thing got hold of one; and Molly's mushroom reared itself proudly.
"That is because you are so brave," said the poor, deceived girl. "Of
course it's having been a soldier, and all that. People who've been in
battle wouldn't think anything of a first motor experience ("Oh,
wouldn't they?" I inwardly chortled). But, do you know, Lord Lane,
I've actually seen men who were quite brave in other ways, feel a
little _queer_ the first time they drove in an automobile through
traffic, or even in quiet country roads? I don't suppose you can
understand it."

"I couldn't," I replied valiantly, "were not imagination the first
ingredient of sympathy. But--er--don't you think that omnibus in front
is rather large--near, I mean? You mustn't exert yourself to talk, you
know, for my sake, if you need to give your whole attention to
driving."

"I like to talk. It's no exertion at all," said Molly, and I fancy I
responded with some base flattery, though by this time that smile of
mine was so hard you could have knocked it off with a hammer.

"The first day I went through traffic," she continued, "my toes had
the funniest sensation, as if they were turning up in my shoes. One
seemed to come so awfully _near_ everything, without any horses in
front."

At this very moment my own toes happened to feel as if they were
pasted back on my insteps; yet I laughed heartily at the suggestion,
and to my critical ear there was only a slight hollowness in the ring,
although before us now loomed a huge railway van. It was loaded with
iron bars, their rusty ends hanging far out and sagging towards the
roadway, enough to frighten the gentlest automobile. Ours seemed far
from gentle, and besides, we could not possibly stop in time to avoid
impalement on the iron spikes. Molly and I, if not Jack and the
chauffeur, must surely die a peculiarly unpleasant and unnecessary
death, in the morning of our lives, just as other more fortunate
people were starting out, safe and happy in exquisitely beautiful
omnibuses, to begin their day's pleasure. And Molly believed, because
I had been in a few battles, with nothing worse than a bee-like
buzzing of some innocent bullets in my ears, that I should be callous
in a motor car.

However, the bravest soldiers are those who feel fear, and fight
despite it. I maintain that I deserved a Victoria Cross for the grim
smile which did not leave my lips as I braced myself for the
death-dealing blow. But, as in a dream one finds without surprise that
the precipice, over which one is hanging by an eyebrow, obligingly
transforms itself into a bank of violets, so did the dragon which had
been whirling us to destruction magically change into a swan-like
creature skimming just out of harm's way.

I now reflected, with a vague sense of self-disgust, that, instead of
being glad to leave the world which had denied me Helen, I had felt
distinctly annoyed at the necessity, had not given a thought to my
lost love, and had been thankful for the mere gift of life without
her.

"I'm so glad you don't think I'm reckless," said Molly, as quietly as
though we had not passed through a crisis; and indeed to this day I do
not believe she would admit that we had.

"I'm really very careful; Jack says I am. He takes tremendous risks
sometimes, or at least it seems so when you're not driving. You'll see
the difference when _he's_ in front."

I refrained from comment, but I had never valued Jack's friendship
less, and I was in the act of concocting a telegram from Locker which
might recall me to London, when from the speed of the Scotch express
we slowed down to a pace which would have been mean even for a donkey.
We continued this rate of progression for a peaceful but all too brief
interval; then in the line of traffic opened a narrow canal which I
hoped might escape Molly's eye. But there was no such luck. She saw;
we leaped into it, raced down it, and before I could have said
"knife," or any other equally irrelevant word of one syllable, we had
left everything else behind.

I expected to be (to put it mildly) as uncomfortable as I had been
before my short respite, yet strange to say, this was not the case. I
did not know what was the matter with me, but suddenly I seemed to be
enjoying myself. The tension of muscles relaxed, as if a string which
had held them tight--like the limbs of a Jumping Jack--had been let
go. I leaned back against the crimson cushions of my seat with a new
and singular sense of well-being. Once, as a volunteer in South
Africa, I had felt the same when, after having a splinter of bone
taken out, under chloroform, I had waked up to be told it was all
over. This wasn't over, but somehow, I didn't want it to be.

We took Putney Bridge at a gulp, and swallowed the long hill to
Wimbledon Common in the fashion of a hungry anaconda; but before we
arrived at this stage a thing happened which unexpectedly raised my
opinion of motor cars. It was in the Fullham Road that we glided close
behind a hansom bowling along at a rattling pace. Traffic on our right
prevented us from passing, and Molly had just remarked how vexing it
was to be kept back by a mere hansom, when plunk! down went the little
nag on his nose. It was one of those tumbles in which the horse
collapses in a limp heap without any sliding, though he had been going
fast downhill, and of course the hansom stopped dead. The whole scene
was as quick as the flashing of a biograph. The driver struggled to
keep his seat, clawing at the shiny roof of the cab; his fare, in a
silk hat and pathetic frock coat, shot from the vehicle like a flying
Mercury, and this time it seemed that nothing could keep us from
telescoping the vehicle thus suddenly arrested a few feet ahead.

But I reckoned without Molly. Her little gloved hand, and the
high-heeled American toys she had for feet, moved like lightning.
Without any violent wrench, the car stopped apparently in less than
its own length, and as, even thus, we were too close upon the cab,
Molly threw a quick glance behind, then bade Mercedes glide gently
backward.

With the fall of the horse, Jack rose in the tonneau, with the
instinct of protection over Molly. But he said not a word till she had
guided the car to safety, when he gave her a little congratulatory pat
on the shoulder. "Good girl; that was perfect. Couldn't have been
better," he murmured. We waited until we had seen that neither man nor
horse was badly hurt, and then sped on again, with a certain respect
for the motor rankling in my reluctant heart. Comparing its behaviour
with that of an automobile, Hansom's ironically named "Patent Safety"
had not a wheel to stand upon.

When we were clear of Kingston, and winging lightly along the familiar
Portsmouth Road, with its dark pines and purple gleams of heather, I
began to feel an exhilaration scarcely short of treacherous to my
principles. We were now putting on speed, and running as fast as most
trains on the South-Western, yet the sensation was far removed from
any I had experienced in travelling by rail, even on famous lines,
which give glorious views if one does not mind cinders in the eye or
the chance of having one's head knocked off like a ripe apple. I
seemed to be floating in a great opaline sea of pure, fresh air; for
such dust as we raised was beaten down from the tonneau by the screen,
and it did not trouble us. Our speed appeared to turn the country into
a panorama flying by for our amusement; and yet, fast as we went, to
my surprise I was able to appreciate every feature, every incident of
the road. Each separate beauty of the way was threaded like a bead on
a rosary.

Here was Sandown Park, which I had regarded as the goal of a
respectable drive from town, with horses; but we were taking it, so to
speak, in our first stride. Esher was no sooner left behind than
quaint old sleepy Cobham came to view; between there and Ripley was
but a gliding step over a road which slipped like velvet under our
wheels. Then a fringe of trees netted across a blue, distant sea of
billowing hills, and a few minutes later we were sailing under
Guildford's suspended clock.

It was somewhere near the hour of one when Molly brought the car
gently to a standstill by the roadside, and announced that she would
not go a yard further without lunch. The chauffeur successfully took
up the part of butler at a moment's notice, busying himself with the
baskets, spreading a picnic cloth under a shady tree, and putting a
bottle of Graves to cool in a neighbouring brook. Meanwhile Molly was
doing mysterious things with her chafing-dish and several little china
jars. By the time Jack and I had with awkward alacrity bestowed
plates, glasses, knives, and forks on the most hummocky portions of
the cloth, white and rosy flakes of lobster _a la_ Newburg were
simmering appetisingly in a creamy froth.

I was deeply interested in this cult of the chafing-dish, which could,
in an incredibly short time, serve up by the wayside a little feast
fit for a king--who had not got dyspepsia.

"Can't you imagine the programme if we had gone to an inn?" asked
Jack, proud of his bride's handiwork. "We should have walked into a
dingy dining-room, with brown wallpaper and four steel engravings of
bloodthirsty scenes from the Old Testament. A sleepy head waiter would
have looked at me with a polite but puzzled expression, as if at a
loss to know why on earth we had come. I should have enquired
deprecatingly: 'What can you give us for lunch?' What would he have
replied?"

"There's only one possible answer to that conundrum, and it doesn't
take any guessing," said I. "The reply would have been: 'Cold 'am or
beef, sir; chops, if you choose to wait.' Those words are probably now
being spoken to some hundreds of sad travellers less fortunate than
our favoured and sylvan selves."

"If you would like to have a chafing-dish in your family," remarked
Jack, "you'll have to marry an American girl."

"I'm no Duke," said I.

"Earls aren't to be despised, if there are no Dukes handy," said
Molly. "Besides, it's getting a little obvious to marry a Duke."

"Which is the reason you took up with a chauffeur," retorted Jack.

"You call yourself a 'penniless hearl,'" went on Molly, "and I
suppose, of course, you are 'belted.' All earls are, in poetry and
serials, which must be convenient when you're _really_ very poor,
because if you're hungry, you can always take a reef in your belt,
while mere plain men have no such resource. Have you got yours on
now?"

"It's in pawn," said I. "It's no joke about being penniless. Jack
will tell you I'm obliged to let my dear old house in Oxfordshire, and
the only luxuries I can afford are a few horses and a few books. I
prefer them to necessities--since I can't have both."

I thought that Molly might laugh, but instead she looked abnormally
grave. "Jack told me," she said, "how, when you and he came over to
America, six or seven years ago, to shoot big game, you avoided girls,
for fear people might suppose your alleged bear hunt was really an
heiress hunt. I forgive Jack, because that was in the dark ages,
before he knew there was a Me. But why should a girl be shunned by
nice men solely because she's an heiress? Can't she be as pretty and
lovable in herself as a poor girl?"

"She can," I replied, emphasising my words with a look in Molly's
face. "No doubt she often is. But I do wish some American girls who
marry men from our side of the water wouldn't let the papers advertise
their weddings as 'functions' (sounds like obscure workings of
physical organs), attended by the families of their exclusive
acquaintance, worth, when lumped together, a billion of dollars or
so."

"I know. It's as if they were prize pigs at a fair, and were of no
importance except for their dollars," sighed Molly. "And then, the
detectives to watch the presents! It's disgusting. But some of our
newspapers are like Mr. Hyde. Poor Dr. Jekyll can't do anything with
him; and anyhow, you needn't think we're all like that. I have a
friend who is one of the greatest heiresses in America, but she hates
her money. It has made her very unhappy, though she's only twenty-one
years old. If you could see Mercedes, with her lovely, strange sad
face, and big, wistful eyes----"

"I can think of Mercedes only with a shiny grey body, upholstered
crimson; and for eyes, huge acetylene lamps," I was rude enough to
break in; for I fancied that I saw what Mistress Molly would fain be
up to, and my heart was not of the rubber-ball description, to be
caught in the rebound. If Molly cherished a secret intention of
springing her peerless friend Mercedes upon me, during this tour which
she had organised, it seemed better for everyone concerned that the
hope should be nipped in the bud. It was with unwonted meekness that
she yielded to being suppressed, and I suffered immediate pangs of
remorse. To atone, I did my best to be agreeable. All the way to
Southampton I praised automobiles in general and hers in particular;
admitted that in half a day I had become half a convert; and soon I
had the pleasure of believing that the divine Molly had forgotten my
sin.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: "SOMETIMES JACK DROVE, WITH MOLLY BESIDE HIM".]

CHAPTER III

My Lesson

"The broad road that stretches."
--R.L. STEVENSON.

Forty-eight hours later we drove out of Havre, bound for Paris and
Lucerne, where I was to "pick up" that mule, and become a lone
wanderer on the face of the earth. Gotteland had seen to the shipping
of the car from Southampton, while we spent a day on the crowded sands
of Trouville, where I was so lucky as to meet no one I knew.

It was only now, Winston said, that I should realise to the full the
joys of motoring, impossible to taste under present conditions in
England. Our way was to lie along the Seine to Paris, and Jack
recalled to us Napoleon's saying that "Paris, Rouen, and Havre form
only one city, of which the Seine is the highway."

Last year, these two had seen the country of the Loire together, under
curious and romantic conditions, and now Molly was to be shown another
great river in France. We changed places in the car, like players in
the old game of "stage coach." Sometimes Molly had the reins, and I
the seat of honour by her side. Sometimes Jack drove, with Molly
beside him, I in the tonneau; then I knew that they were perfectly
happy, though Gotteland and I could hear every word they said, and
their talk was generally of what we passed by the way, occasionally
interspersed by a "Do you remember?"

Now, if there is an insufferable companion under the sun, it is the
average "well-informed person" who continually dins into your ears
things you were born knowing. This I resent, for I flatter myself that
I was born knowing a good many exceptionally interesting and exciting
things which can't be learned by studying history, geography, or even
_Tit-Bits_. Jack Winston, however, though he has actually taken the
trouble to house in his memory an enormous number of facts,--"those
brute beasts of the language,"--has so tamed and idealised the
creatures as to make them not only tolerable but attractive. I can
even hear him tell things which I myself don't know or have forgotten,
without instantly wishing to throw a jug of water at his good-looking
head; indeed, I egg him on and have been tempted to jot down an item
of information on my shirt cuff, with a view of fixing it in my mind,
and eventually getting it off as my own.

Whenever Molly or I admired any object, natural or artificial, it
seemed that Jack knew all about it. She showed a flattering interest
in everything he said, and, fired by her compliments, he suddenly
exclaimed: "Look here, Molly, suppose we don't hurry on, the way we've
been planning to do? Last year we had that wonderful chain of feudal
chateaux in Touraine, to show us what kingly and noble life was in dim
old days. Now, all along the Seine and near it, we shall have some
splendid churches instead of castles. We can hold a revel, almost an
orgie, of magnificent ecclesiastical architecture if we like to spend
the time. I've got Ferguson's book and Parker's, anyhow, and why
shouldn't we run off the beaten track----"

"No, dearest," said his wife gently, but firmly, and I could have
hugged her. My bump of reverence for the Gothic in all its
developments is creditably large, but in my present "lowness of mind,"
as Molly would say, a long procession of cold, majestic cathedrals
would have reduced me to a limp pulp. "No," Molly went on, "I can't
help thinking that the churches would be a sort of anticlimax after
our beloved, warm-blooded chateaux. It would be like being taken to
see your great-grandmother's grave when you'd been promised a matinee.
You know we engaged to get Lord Lane into his lonely fastnesses as
soon as possible----"

"I don't believe Monty's in any hurry for them," said Jack,
crestfallen. "You ask him if----"

"He'd be too polite to be truthful. No, I'm sure that edelweiss will
do him more good than rose windows, and mountain air than incense."

As she thus prescribed for my symptoms, she gazed through her talc
window with marked particularity into her "Lightning Conductor's"
un-goggled face. It wore a puzzled expression at first, which suddenly
brightened into comprehension. "Do they repent having brought me
along, and want to get rid of me?" I asked myself. I could scarcely
believe this. They were too kind and cordial; still, something in that
look exchanged between them hinted at a secret which concerned me, and
my curiosity was pricked. Nevertheless, I was grateful to Molly,
whatever her motive might be for hurrying on to Paris. Fond as I was
of the two, their happy love, constantly though inadvertently
displayed before my eyes, was not a panacea for the wound which they
were trying to cure, and I still longed for high Alpine solitudes.

I had let myself drift into a gloomy thought-land, when it occurred to
Jack that I had better learn to drive. No doubt the clear fellow
fancied that I "wanted rousing" and certainly I got it. Luckily, as a
small boy, I had taken an interest in mechanics, to the extent of
various experiments actively disapproved of by my family, and the old
fire was easily relit. I listened to his harangue in mere civility at
first, then with a certain eagerness. Molly sat in the tonneau, Jack
driving, full-petrol ahead, and I beside him. We talked motor talk,
and he forgot the churches, except when they seemed actually to come
out of their way to get in ours. I listened, and at the same time
gathered impressions of roads--long, strange, curiously individual
roads.

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