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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Someone has written of the "long, long Indian day." I should like to
write of the long, long roads of France. They had never before had any
place in my thoughts. Paris and the Riviera had been France for me
till now. I had never been intimate, never even got on terms of real
friendship with any country save my own; and I had sometimes been
narrow enough to take a kind of pride in this. The sweet English
country had yielded up her secrets to me; I knew her spring whimsies,
her soft summer moods, her autumn dreams, her wintry tempers, and I
had vaunted my faithfulness and love. But here was France in prime of
summer, giving me of her best. My heart warmed to her loveliness, and
I sniffed the perfume of her breath, mysteriously characteristic as
the chosen perfume of some loved woman's laces. It was glorious to
spin on, on, between the rows of sentinel poplars, bound for the
horizon, yet never reaching it, and regarding crowded haunts of men
more as interruptions than as halting places.

Harfleur was a mere mirage to me, a vision of a gently decaying town
left stranded by the stream of civilisation, flowing past to busy
Havre. Some lines from "Henry the Fifth" made elusive music in my
brain, mixed with a discussion of carburetters, explosion chambers,
and sparking-plugs. At Lillebonne, Winston deigned to break short his
string of motor technicalities and point out the position of the Roman
theatre, almost the sole treasure of the sort possessed by Northern
Europe. I stared through my goggles at the castle where the Conqueror
unfolded to the assembled barons his scheme for invading England; and
I begged for a slackening of speed at ancient Caudebec, which, with
its quay and terrace overhanging the Seine, and its primly pruned
elms, had such an air of happy peace that I wished to stamp it firmly
in my memory. Such mental photographs are convenient when one courts
sleep at night, and has grown weary of counting uncountable sheep
jumping over a stile.

Beyond Caudebec we sailed along a road running high on the shoulder of
the hill, with wide views over the serpentine writhings of the Seine.
Here, Jack urged a turning aside for St. Wandeville or, at least, for
the abbey of Jumieges, poetic with memories of Agnes Sorel, whose
heart lies in the keeping of the monks, though her body sleeps at
Loches. But Molly would countenance no loitering. _Her_ body, she
said, should sleep at Paris that night.

We held straight on, therefore, keeping to a road at the foot of white
cliffs, sometimes near the river, sometimes leaving it. Quickly enough
to please even this unaccountably impatient Molly, we had measured
off the fifty miles separating Havre from Rouen, and slowed down for
the venerable streets of the Norman capital.

"I suppose even you will want to give half an hour to the cathedral
which I love best in France?" Jack inquired, looking back at Molly as
he turned from the quay up the Rue Grand Port, and stopped in the
mellow shade of an incomparable pile which towered above us.

Molly's mushroom, however, was agitated in dissent. She has an
American chin, and an American chin spells determination. We could not
see it, but we knew that it meant business. "You and I will spend
hours in the cathedral another time," she said. "But now--" She did
not finish her sentence, nevertheless a look of comprehension again
lighted up Jack's face, which for the moment was innocent of goggles.

"Molly's so keen on the Maid," said he, "that she can't forgive Rouen
for not really being the scene of the trial and burning. But never
mind, since she wills it, we'll shake the dust off our Michelins, and
when we're outside, you will have got far enough in your motoring
lesson, I think, to try driving."

What the last hour had not taught me (thanks to him) in theory of
coils and accumulators, electromagnets and other things, was scarcely
worth learning. I seemed to have looked through glass walls into the
cylinders, at the fussy little pistons working under control of the
"governor,"--a tyrant, I felt sure. I had already formed a mature
opinion on the question of mechanically operated inlet valves (which
sounded disagreeably surgical), and was able to judge what their
advantage ought to be over those of the old type worked by the suction
of the piston. I could imagine that more than half the fun of owning a
motor car would lie in understanding the thing inside and out; and I
said so.

"It's a little like controlling the elements," Jack answered. "Think
of the difference in this machine, when it's asleep--cold and quiet,
an engine mounted on a frame, a tank of water, a reservoir of cheap
spirit, a pump, a radiator, a magnet, some geared wheels fitting
together, a lever or two. My man twists a handle. On the instant the
machine leaps into frenzied life. The carburetter sprays its vapour
into the explosion chamber, the magnet flashes its sparks to ignite
it, the cooling water bathes the hot walls of the cylinders--a thing
of nerves, and ganglions, and tireless muscles is panting eagerly at
your service. You move this lever, you press your foot lightly on this
pedal; the engine transfers its power to the wheels; you move. The
carriage with you and your friends is borne at railway speed across
continents. You can hurl yourself at sixty miles an hour along the
great highroads, you can crawl like a worm through the traffic of
cities."

By the time Jack had finished this harangue we had climbed the hill
out of Rouen and were on the fine but _accidente_ highroad that leads
past Boos and Pont St. Pierre. Soon we would reach Les Andelys and
Chateau Gaillard. Still Jack was not quite ready to let me put my
newly acquired knowledge into practice. There was a hill of some
consequence before Mantes, which we had to reach by way of La Roche
Guyon and Limay. After that there would be only what the route book
calls "_fortes ondulations_"; and under the stronghold of Lion Heart
himself (an appropriate spot, forsooth!), I was to try my hand at
dragon-driving.

Winston brought the car to a standstill at the foot of the mouldering
ruins of Richard's "Saucy Castle," and as we looked up at the towering
battlements, the huge flanking towers, and the ponderous citadel, the
dark mass on its lofty rock set in the sunny landscape like a
bloodstone in a gold ring, seemed to be an epitome in stone of life in
the Middle Ages.

I uttered every idea that came into my mind concerning the ruin, and
squeezed my brain for more, till my head felt like a drained orange;
not that I enjoyed hearing myself talk, or thought that Jack and Molly
would do so, but because they could not well interrupt the flow of my
eloquence to remind me of the reason for our stop.

At last, however, silence fell upon us. It was a shock to me when
Molly broke it. "Oh, Lord Lane, have you forgotten that this is where
you're to begin driving? The road is nice and broad here."

I put on a brave air, as does one at the dentist's. "I hope that
you're not afraid I shall run you into a ditch?" I asked, laughing. "I
don't believe, after all, it can be any worse than steering a toboggan
down a good run, or driving a four-in-hand with one's eyes shut, as I
did once for a wager on a road I knew as I knew my own hat."

"Perhaps it isn't exactly _worse_," said Molly, "still--I think you'll
find it _different_."

I did.

Meanwhile, however, Winston was cheering me on. "You'll find steering
the simplest thing in the world, really," he assured me. "There's no
car so sensitive as this. The faster you go, the easier it is----"

"But, perhaps he'd better not try to prove _that_, just at first!"
cried Molly, with an affected little gasp.

"No, no; certainly he won't, my child. He won't go beyond a walk until
he's sure of himself and the car. You needn't be frightened. I know my
man, or I shouldn't trust him with you and your Mercedes. Now, then,
Monty, are you ready?"

I had never before sufficiently realised the solemnity of that word
"now." It sounded in my ears like a knell, but I swallowed hard, and
echoed it. To do myself justice, though, I don't think I was afraid. I
was only in a funk that I should do something stupid, and be disgraced
forever in the eyes of Molly Winston. However, I reflected, it
couldn't be so very bad. Molly herself, and even Jack, had to learn.
Winston had explained to me several times the purpose of all the
different levers, and, at least, I shouldn't touch the brake handle
when I wanted to change the speed.

"No need to grip the wheel so tightly," said Jack, and I became aware
that I had been clinging to it as if it were a forlorn hope. "A light
touch is best, you know; it's rather like steering a boat. A very
slight movement does it, and in half an hour it has got to be
automatic. Of course, always start on the lowest, that is, the first
speed, and with the throttle nearly shut."

Mine was in much the same condition, but I managed to mutter something
as I moved the lever, and touched the clutch-pedal with a caress timid
as a falling snowflake. Almost apologetically, I slid the lever into
position, and let in the clutch. Somehow, I had not expected it to
answer so soon; but, as if it disliked being patted by a stranger, the
dragon took the bit between its teeth and bolted. I hung on and did
things more by instinct than by skill, for the beast was hideously
lithe and strong, a thousand times stronger and wilder than I had
dreamed.

Every faculty of body and brain was concentrated on first keeping the
monster out of the ditch on the off side, then the ditch on the near.
My eyes expanded until they must have filled my goggles. We waltzed,
we wavered, we shied, until we outdid the Seine in the windings of its
channel.

I fully expected that Winston would pluck me like a noxious weed from
the driver's seat where I had taken root, and snatch the helm himself;
but strange to relate, I remained unmolested. Jack confined his
interference to an occasional "Whoa," or "Steady, old boy"; while in
the tonneau so profound a silence reigned that, if I had had time to
think of anything, I should have supposed Molly to be swooning.

"Why don't you curse me, and put me out of my misery?" I gasped, when
I had by a miracle avoided a tree as large as a house, which I had
seen deliberately step out of its proper place to get in my way.

"'Curse you,' my dear fellow? You're doing splendidly," said Jack.
"You deserve praise, not blows. I did a lot worse when I began."

Thus encouraged, I gained confidence in myself and the machine. Almost
at once, I was conscious of improvement in mastering the touch of the
wheel. Soon, I was imitating a straight line with fair success,
subject to a few graceful deviations. I realised that, after all, we
were not going very fast, though my sensation at starting had been
that of hanging on to a streak of greased lightning.

I began to sigh for more worlds to conquer, and when Jack reminded me
that we were on the first speed, I pronounced myself equal to an
experiment with the second. He made me practice taking one hand from
the wheel, looking about me a little, and trying to keep the car
straight by feeling rather than sight. When I had accomplished these
feats, and had not brought the car to grief (even though we passed
several vehicles, and I was drawn by a demoniac influence to swerve
towards each one as if it had been the loadstone to my magnet, or the
candle to my moth), Jack finally consented to grant my request. He
told me clearly what to do, and I did it, or some inward servant of
myself did, whenever the master was within an ace of losing his head.
I pressed down the clutch-pedal, pulled the lever affectionately
towards me, and very gradually opened the throttle, so as not to
startle it. In spite of my caution, however, I thought for an instant
we were really going to get on the other side of the horizon, which
had been avoiding us for so long. We shot ahead alarmingly, but to my
intense relief, as well as surprise, I found that Jack had not
exaggerated. It was easier to steer on the second speed than on the
first. I had merely to tickle the wheel with my finger, to send us
gliding, swanlike, this way or that. To be sure, I did well-nigh run
over a chicken, but I would be prepared to argue with it till it was
black in the face (or resort to litigation, if necessary) that the
proper place for its blood would be on its own silly head, not mine.

Elated by my triumphs, I scarcely listened further to Jack's
directions; how, if I thought there was danger, all I had to do was
to unclutch, and put on the brake, whereupon the car would stop as if
by magic, as it had for Molly in the Fulham Road; how I must not
forget that the foot brakes had a way of obeying fiercely, and must
not be applied with violence; how I must remember to pull the brake
lever by my hand, towards me if I wanted to stop; how it acted on
expanding rings on the inside faces of drums, which were on the back
wheels (I pitied those poor, concealed faces, for the description was
neuralgic, somehow), and I could lock them at almost any speed.

"I want to get on the third, and then I'll try the fourth, thank you,"
I interpolated impatiently. "More-more! Faster, faster! Whew, this
knocks spots out of the Ice Run!"

"Let him have his way, Jack," cried Molly, speaking for the first
time. "Hurrah, the motor microbe is in his blood, and never, never
will he get it out again."

"Full speed ahead, then!" said Jack.

I took him at his word. I could have shouted for joy. Mercedes was
mine, and I was Mercedes'.

CHAPTER IV

Pots, Kettles, and Other Things

"Seared is, of course, my heart--but unsubdued
Is, and shall be, my appetite for food."
--C.S. CALVERLEY.

* * * * *

"A little buttery, and therein
A little bin,
Which keeps my little loaf of bread
Unchipt, unflead;
Some little sticks of thorn or brier
Make me a fire."
--ROBERT HERRICK.

If any man had told me before I started, that in two days I should
find it a genuine sacrifice to stop driving a motor car, I should have
looked upon him as a polite lunatic. It was only because Jack could
drive faster than he dared to let me, and because I was ashamed to
tell Molly that after all I was not in a desperate hurry to reach
Paris or anywhere else, that I finally tore myself from the driver's
seat of the Mercedes. Afterwards, though I had not reached the stage
when confession is good for the soul, I sat wondering what there was
expensive and at the same time disagreeable which I could give up for
the sake of possessing a motor of my own. In various phases of my
mental and spiritual development, I had framed different conceptions
of a future state beyond this life. Never, even in my earliest years,
had I sincerely wished to be an angel with an undeserved crown
weighing down my forehead, and a harp, which I should be totally
incompetent to play, within my hand; but now it struck me that there
might be a worse sort of Nirvana than driving a 10,000 horsepower car
along a broad, straight road free from dogs, chickens, or any other
animals (except, perhaps, rich, knighted grocers), and reaching all
round Saturn's ring.

Dogs had been the one "little speck in garnered fruit" for me when
driving, for I love dogs and would not willingly injure so much as the
end hair of the most moth-eaten mongrel's tail; therefore my brain
searched a remedy against their onslaught, as I sat mute, inglorious,
in the tonneau, after my late triumphs.

We flashed on, passing the kilometre stones in quick succession. At
pretty little Mantes we crossed the Seine, and presently came into the
France I knew in my old, conventional way; for we passed St. Germain,
and so on to Paris by Le Pecq, Reuil, the long descent to the Pont de
Suresnes (which seemed to hold laughable memories for Jack and Molly),
through the Bois down the Champs Elysees, and to our hotel in the
Place Vendome, where Jack announced that we had had a run of 130
miles. Winston and I flattered ourselves that Paris had few secrets
from us (though I don't doubt that five minutes' wrestling with
Baedeker might have made us feel small), and we had no wish to linger
at this season. But, if we were deaf to the sirens who sing in the Rue
de la Paix, Molly was not. She had discovered that there were some
"little things she wanted, which she really thought she had better
buy." I fancy that the little things were shoes; anyhow, it was to be
Jack's blissful privilege to help her choose them, and he was of
opinion (probably founded on experience) that it would take nearly
all day. I decided to call on a man at the Embassy, ask him out to
lunch, and do him very well. I had not seen him for years, and he had
bored me to extinction the last time we met; but it had come to my
ears that he had been in love with Helen Blantock, and proposed to
her, so I felt that there would be a certain charm in his society.
Later, there was a "little thing" which I, too, wished to buy (though
I did not intend to seek it in the Rue de la Paix), and then I was to
meet Molly and Jack about tea time at our hotel, in time to arrange
for dining out somewhere.

After all, the man was more boring than ever, as he had got himself
engaged to another girl, and insisted upon talking of her, instead of
Helen. My one pleasure in the day, therefore, lay in purchasing the
article of which I had fixed my mind after driving yesterday. This was
a water pistol, warranted to keep dogs at bay, in motoring. I had some
difficulty in obtaining it, and when I did, it was expensive, but I
was rewarded by the thought of the pleasure my acquisition would
afford my friends. The wild dashes of dogs in front of the wheels gave
Molly such frequent starts of anguish, that I wondered Jack had not
thought of this simple preventive, and I congratulated myself on
having remembered an advertisement of the weapon which I had seen in
some magazine. It was, I thought, rather clever of me to remember,
since in those days motors had been no affair of mine; but then, the
illustration had been striking, in every sense of the word. It had
represented a lovely girl, with hair unbound, saving from destruction
the automobile in which she sat with several companions, by shooting a
fierce blast of water into the face of a huge beast well-nigh as
terrible as Cerberus. I determined to surprise Jack and Molly, when
the right time should come; accordingly, the moment I reached our
hotel, I filled the pistol with water, and placed it, thus loaded, in
the pocket of my motoring coat ready for emergencies. Hardly had I
made this preparation for the future when I discovered on the table a
note addressed to me in Winston's handwriting.

"Dear Monty," I read, "Molly and I have a bet on. She has bet me a
dinner that you will drive her car out to Madrid, and meet us at
half-past seven, so that we can have the dinner by daylight. I have
bet her the same dinner that you won't. Which of us must pay?--Yours,
Jack."

I whistled. What, drive the car through the traffic of Paris? It must
be a joke. Of course it was a joke, but----

When I had dressed for dinner, I strolled over to the garage not far
away where the creature lurked. Anyhow, I would have a look at her,
and see what orders Gotteland had received. Yes, of course it was a
joke. Or else my poor friends had gone mad. Still, there was a kind of
madness with method in it. Diabolical wretches, with their bets, and
their dinners! Did they dream I would try to do it, and smash the car?
"Nothing like driving a motor through traffic, to give one
self-confidence afterwards," Jack had said yesterday, after praising
me for refraining from killing a small boy in a village street. "Once
a man has been thrown on his own resources, and has got through the
ordeal all right, it is as good as a certificate," he had added.

Gotteland was in the shrine of his goddess, talking to other
cosmopolitan-looking persons in leather. There was a nice smell of
petrol in the place. I snuffed at it as a war-horse scents the battle,
and promptly decided that the joke should become deadly earnest, no
matter what the consequence to the cart the chauffeur, or myself.

"Everything is ready, my lord," said one of the sacrifices about to be
offered up. He had now discovered that there was a sort of
starting-handle to my name, and seemed as fond of using it as he was
of the equivalent on his beloved motor.

"Did Mr. Winston--er--say anything about my driving?" I humbly
inquired.

"Well, my lord, his orders were that it should be as you pleased. But
perhaps I had better mention that driving is careless in Paris, with
cabs and automobiles all over the road, to say nothing of the trams;
and then there's the keeping to the right instead of the left. If you
should happen to get a little confused, my lord, not being accustomed
to drive in France----"

"I wish I had a _mille_ note for every time I've driven a four-in-hand
through this blessed town," said I. "I'm not afraid if you're not."

"Oh, my lord, I've been in so many accidents, one or two more can't
matter," he replied, as Hercules might have replied if asked whether
he were equal to a Thirteenth Labour in odd moments. "When I was
jockey in Count Tokai's racing stables, a horse went mad and kicked me
nearly to death. Then I was a racer in old bicycling days, and had
several bad spills. This scar on my face I got in a smash with one of
the first Benz cars made. My master thought it a fine thing at that
time to go ten miles an hour, and before he'd driven much, my lord,
he was determined to take the car through the streets of Duesseldorf
himself. There was a wagon coming one way----"

"Thank you," I cut in, "I'll bear the rest of that story another time.
I'm not sure it would exhilarate me much at the moment. We'll be off
now, and I'll do my best not to adorn you with a second scar."

Without another word, Gotteland started the motor. The critical eyes
of the assembled chauffeurs pierced to my marrow, but I squared my
shoulders, prayed my presence of mind to behave itself and not get
stage fright; then--_noblesse oblige!_--we swept in a creditable curve
to the door of the garage, and out in fine style. Gotteland also tried
to look unconcerned. I think I must have seen this with my ears, as
both eyes were fully occupied in searching a way through the surging
current of street traffic, but I did see it. I was pleased to find
that I was the better actor of the two, for Gotteland's attitude
revealed a strained alertness. He was like a woman sitting beside a
driver of skittish horses, saying to herself: "No, I _won't_ scream or
seize the reins till I must!"

A sneaking impulse pricked me to take the easiest way, by the Rue de
Rivoli, and across the Place de la Concorde, but I shook myself free
of it, and with high resolve turned the car towards the Boulevards,
determined that, if Molly won her bet, it should be well won. A sailor
steering a quivering smack towards harbour in a North Sea hurricane;
an Indian guiding a bark canoe through the leaping rapids of a swollen
river: to both of these I likened myself as the dragon threaded in and
out among the adverse streams of traffic. The great crossing by the
Opera was a whirling maelstrom; a policeman with a white staff,
scowled when he should have pitied; I felt alone in chaos before the
creation of the world. As for Noah and his ark, not an experience
could he have had that I might not have capped it before I reached the
Bois.

If I have a guardian spirit, I am sure that to numberless other good
qualities he adds the skill of an accomplished motorist; for if he did
not get the car to Madrid, without a single scratch upon her brilliant
body, I do not know who did. I have no distinct memories, after the
first, yet when we arrived at our destination, Gotteland generously
complimented, and as I did not care to go into psychological
explanations, I accepted his eulogium. It was Jack, not Molly, who
paid for the dinner at Madrid, and it was a good one.

Next morning early we started on our way again. Jack driving, and I
watching his prowess. I was now as anxious to meet dogs belligerently
inclined towards motors, as I had been to avoid them, but it was not
until we were well past Fontainebleau that the chance for which I
yearned, arrived. Suddenly we came upon a yard of Dachshund wandering
lizard-like across the road, accompanied by a pert Spitz. The waddler
prudently retired, but the Spitz, with all the disproportionate
courage of a knight of old attacking a fire-breathing dragon, lanced
himself in front of the car. After all, what are dragons but strange,
new things which we know nothing about and therefore detest? This
brave little knight detested us, and with magnificent self-confidence
essayed to punish us for troubling his existence.

My hand flew to my pocket, but paused, even as it grasped the water
pistol. The dog was small, the weapon large. A fierce jet of water
propelled from its muzzle might blow the breath from that tiny body,
which my sole wish was to warn from under the wheels of Juggernaut.
However, he was persistent, and was in real danger, since to avoid an
approaching cart, Jack was forced to steer perilously near the yapping
beast.

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