My Friend the Chauffeur Part 3

No, the only husband I ever had was Simon P. Kidder. But--but I've bought an estate, and the t.i.tle goes with it, so it would seem like a kind of waste of money not to use it, you see."

"It's the estate that goes with the t.i.tle, for you, Mamma," said Beechy (she invariably p.r.o.nounces her parent "Momma"). "You know you just love being a Countess. You're happier than I ever was with a new doll that opened and shut its eyes."

"Don't be silly, Beechy. Little girls should be seen and not heard. As I was saying, I thought it better to use the t.i.tle. That was the advice of Prince Dalmar-Kalm, of whom I've bought this estate in some part of Austria, or I think, Dalmatia--I'm not quite sure about the exact situation yet, as it's all so recent. But to get used to bearing the t.i.tle, it seemed best to begin right away, so I registered as the Countess Dalmar when we came to the Cap Martin Hotel a week ago."

"Quite sensible, Countess," I said without looking at Beechy-of-the-Attendant-Imps. "I know Prince Dalmar-Kalm well by reputation, though I've never happened to meet him. He's a very familiar figure on the Riviera." (I might have added, "especially in the Casino at Monte Carlo," but I refrained, as I had not yet learned the Countess's opinion of gambling as an occupation.) "Did you meet him here for the first time?"

"No; I met him in Paris, where we stopped for a while after we crossed, before we came here. I was so surprised when I saw him at our hotel the very day after we arrived! It seemed such a coincidence, that our only acquaintance over on this side should arrive at the same place when we did."

"When is a coincidence not a coincidence?" pertly inquired Miss Beechy.

"Can you guess that conundrum, Cousin Maida?"

"You naughty girl!" exclaimed her mother.

"Well, you like me to be childish, don't you? And it's childish to be naughty."

"Come, we'll go home at once," said the Countess, uneasily; and followed by the tall girl and the little one, she tottered away, sweeping yards of chiffon.

"I do hope she won't wear things like that when she's in--ahem!--_our_ motor-car," I remarked _sotto voce_, as Terry and I stood at the gate, watching, if not speeding, our parting guests.

"I doubt very much if she'll ever be there," prophesied Terry, looking handsome and thoroughly Celtic, wrapped in his panoply of gloom.

"Come away in, while I see if I can find you 'The harp that once through Tara's halls,' to play your own funeral dirge on," said I. "You look as if it would be the only thing to do you any good."

"It would certainly relieve my feelings," replied Terry, "but I could do that just as well by punching your head, which would be simpler. Of all the infernal--"

"Now don't be brutal!" I implored. "You were quite pleasant before the ladies. Don't be a whited sepulchre the minute their backs are turned.

Think what I've gone through since I was alone with you last, you great hulking animal."

"Animal yourself!" Terry had the ingrat.i.tude to retort. "What have _I_ gone through, I should like to ask?"

"I don't know what you've gone through, but I know how you behaved," I returned, as we walked back to the magnolia tree. "Like a sulky barber's block--I mean a barber's sulky block. No, I--but it doesn't signify.

Hullo, there's the universal provider, carrying off the tray. Felicite, _mon ange_, say how you summoned that tea and those cakes and cream from the vasty deep?"

"What Monsieur is pleased to mean, I know not," my fourteen-stone angel replied. "I visited with haste a friend of mine at the hotel, and I came back with the things--that is all. It was an inspiration," and she sailed away, her head in the air.

Terry and I went into the house, for the sun had left the high-walled garden, and besides, the talk we were going to have was more suitable to that practical region, my smoking-room-study-den, than to the romantic shade of a magnolia tree.

We unpocketed our pipes, and smoked for several minutes before we spoke.

I vowed that Terry should begin; but as he went on puffing until I had counted sixty-nine slowly, I thought it simpler to unvow the vow before it had had time to harden.

"A penny for your thoughts, Paddy," was the sum I offered with engaging lightness. "Which is generous of me, as I know them already. You are thinking of Her."

Teddy forgot to misunderstand, which was a bad sign.

"If it weren't for Her, I'd have got out of the sc.r.a.pe at any price,"

said he, bold as bra.s.s. "But I'm sorry for that beautiful creature. She must lead a beastly life, between a silly, overdressed woman and a pert minx. Poor child, she's evidently as hard up as I am, or she wouldn't stand it. She's miserable with them, I could see."

"So you consented to fall into my web, rather than leave her to their mercy."

"Not exactly that, but--well, I can't explain it. The die's cast, anyhow. I'm pledged to join the menagerie. But look here, Ralph, do you understand what you've let me in for?"

"For the society of three charming Americans, two of whom are no doubt worth their weight in gold."

"It's precisely their weight that's on my mind at this moment. You may know one or two little things, my dear boy, but among them motoring is not, otherwise when you were putting that mad advertis.e.m.e.nt into your pink rag, you would have stopped to reflect that a twelve-horse power car is not expected to carry five grown persons up airy mountains and down rushy glens. Europe isn't perfectly flat, remember."

"Only four of us are grown up. Beechy's an Infant Phenomenon."

"Infant be hanged. She's sixteen if she's a day."

"Her mother ought to know."

"She doesn't want any one else to know. Anyway, I'm big enough to make up the difference. And besides, my car's not a new one. I paid a thumping price for her, but that was two years ago. There have been improvements in the make since."

"Do you mean to tell me that car of yours can't carry five people half across the world if necessary?"

"She can, but not at an exciting speed; and Americans want excitement.

Not only that, but you saw for yourself that they expect a handsome car of the latest make, shining with bra.s.s and varnish. Amateurs always do.

What will they say when my world-worn old veteran bursts, or rather b.u.mbles, into view?"

I felt slightly crestfallen, for the first time. When one is an editor, one doesn't like to think one has been caught napping. "You said you ought to get two hundred pounds for your Panhard, if you sold it," I reminded him. "That's a good deal of money. Naturally I thought the motor must be a fairly decent one, to command that price after several seasons' wear and tear."

Terry fired up instantly, as I had hoped he would; for his car is the immediate jewel of his soul. "Decent!" he echoed. "I should rather think she is. But just as there's a limit to your intelligence, so is there a limit to her power, and I don't want it to come to that.

However, the thing's gone too far for me to draw back. It must depend upon the ladies. If they don't back out when they see my car, I won't."

"To all intents and purposes it's my car now," said I. "You made her over to me before witnesses, and I think I shall have her smartened up with a bit of red paint and a crest."

"If you try on anything like that, you can drive her yourself, for I won't. I like her old grey dress. I wouldn't feel at home with her in any other. And she sha'n't be trimmed with crests to make an American holiday. She goes as she is, or not at all, my boy."

"You are the hardest chap to do anything for I ever saw," I groaned, with the justifiable annoyance of a martyr who has failed to convert a pagan hero. "As if you hadn't made things difficult enough already by 'Mistering' yourself. At any moment you may be found out--though, on second thoughts, it won't matter a rap if you are. If you're a mere Mister, you are often obliged to appear before an unsympathetic police magistrate for pretending to be a Lord. But I never heard of a Lord's falling foul of the law for pretending to be a Mister."

"If you behave yourself, there isn't much danger of my being found out by any of the people most concerned, during a few weeks' motoring on the Continent; but it's to be hoped they won't select England, Scotland, or Ireland for their tour."

"We can tell them that conditions are less favourable for motoring at home--which is quite true, judging from the complaints I hear from motor-men."

"But look here; you let me in for this. What I did was on the spur of the moment, and in self-defence. I didn't dream then that I should be, first cornered by you, then led on by circ.u.mstances into engaging as chauffeur, to drive my own car on such a wild-goose chase."

"It's a wild goose that will lay golden eggs. Fifteen guineas a day, my son; that's the size of the egg which that beneficent bird will drop into your palm every twenty-four hours. Deduct the ladies' hotel expenses--say three guineas a day; expenses for yourself and car we'll call two guineas more (of course I pay my own way), that leaves you as profit ten guineas daily; seventy guineas a week, or at the rate of three thousand five hundred guineas per annum. Before you'd spent your little patrimony, and been refused an--er--fratrimony, you weren't half as well off as that. You might do worse than pa.s.s your whole life as a Personal Conductor on those terms. And instead of thanking the wise friend who has caught this goose for you, and is willing to leave his own peaceful duck for your sake, with no remuneration, you abuse him."

"My dear fellow, I'm not exactly abusing you, for I know you meant well.

But you've swept me off my feet, and I'm not at home yet in mid air."

"You can lie on your back and roll in gold in the intervals of driving the car. I promise not to give you away. Still, it's a pity you wouldn't consent to trading a little on your t.i.tle, which Heaven must have given you for some good purpose. As it is, you've made my tuppenny-ha'penny baronetcy the only bait, and that's no catch at all for an American millionairess, fishing for something big in Aristocracy Pond. Why, when that Prince of hers discovers what is doing, he will persuade the fair Countess Dalmar that she's paying a high price for a n.o.body--a n.o.body-at-All."

"What makes you think he doesn't know already, as he evidently followed the party here, and must be constantly dangling about?"

"My detective instinct, which two seasons of pink journalism has developed. Mrs. Kidder saw the advertis.e.m.e.nt this morning, and was caught by it. May Sherlock Holmes cut me in the street if Prince Dalmar-Kalm hasn't been away for the day, doubtless at Monte Carlo where he has lost most of his own money, and will send the Countess's to find it, if she gives him the chance."

"I never saw the fellow, or heard of him, so far as I can remember,"