"Pip" Part 32

"There's somebody coming up the drive," said Lottie, who was gazing indifferently out of the window.

A few minutes later the door was opened by the captain's butler, an elderly gentleman of benevolent appearance. A student of physiognomy would have put him down as a rather eccentric and easily-imposed-upon philanthropist. (He had made his living almost exclusively out of this fact for the past thirty years.)

"Young feller to see you, Cap," he announced, having first satisfied himself that, saving the presence of the Princ.i.p.al Boy, his employer was alone.

"About the motor?"

"Yes."

"Show him in."

The butler retired, and presently returned, ushering a young man, squarely built and black of hair, with serious blue eyes and a healthy brown face.

"I came to see if you were still in want of a chauffeur, sir," he said in reply to the captain's interrogation. "I have been employed at the Gresley works."

"I do want a chauffeur" replied the warrior on the hearthrug; "but how am I to know that you will do, my man?"

"If you care to go and put any part of the machinery out of order, I will undertake to put it right again; and after that I could take you for a run in the car."

This sounded direct and business-like, and pleased the captain, and, incidentally, the captain's daughter.

"Well, that's fair enough. Go and have something to eat now, and after that you can take Miss Lottingar and myself for a spin. By the way, what's your name?"

"John Armstrong--sir!" said Pip. (He was always forgetting that word.)

"Have you any references?"

"No."

"Could you get any?"

"I might, but I'd rather not."

The captain regarded this blunt young man curiously. He possessed no references himself, and he moved in a cla.s.s of society where such things were regarded with pious horror. Pip rather attracted him.

"Never mind them at present," he said, ringing the bell. "If you can handle the car you will suit me. If you can't, you are worth nothing, and you'll get nothing. Would you be willing to do odd jobs as well?"

"Certainly."

The butler appeared.

"Howard," said the captain, "take this man and give him something to eat in the steward's room, and let me see him again at three o'clock."

Mr. Howard, looking particularly benevolent, led Pip away, and Captain Lottingar was left alone with his daughter.

"He'll do, Lottie, I think," he said carelessly.

"M' yes--he'll do," said Lottie.

Her father turned round.

"You don't seem quite sure. What is it?"

"Nothing. I'm sure enough. Take him."

So the bargain was concluded, and Pip found himself engaged as chauffeur to Captain Cuthbert Lottingar (regiment unknown), of Broadoak Manor, Great Stileborough, Herts.

But Lottie was not sure. She had observed one fact which had escaped her usually astute parent, and that was that the new chauffeur was a gentleman--and, as such, a suspicious character. An ordinary mechanical mechanic would have been harmless; but a gentleman was a superfluity, and therefore a source of danger. But Lottie hesitated to comment on the fact. Wisdom said, "Take no risks"; feminine curiosity said, "Chance it!" Lottie chanced it, not for the first time in the history of womankind.

II

However dubious the impression which the new chauffeur had made upon Miss Lottingar, it is only fair to state that the impression made by Miss Lottingar and her gallant papa upon the new chauffeur was more dubious still. Pip, who was not an expert where women were concerned,--only an enthusiastic amateur,--made a mental note that Lottie "looked a good sort, and was a rare pretty girl." Being less bia.s.sed and more experienced in regard to his own s.e.x, he was nearer the mark in his estimate of her father. The fact that Lottie's complexion was not entirely her own was unrevealed to him, but he did not fail to write down Captain Lottingar as a "bounder." He observed that his employer, though he carefully p.r.o.nounced "here" "heah," not infrequently called "nothing" "nothink"; and Pip still possessed enough regard for the fetishes of his youth to be conscious of a thrill of positive horror at the spectacle of a man who wore brown boots with a top-hat on Sunday.

Various guests visited Broadoak,--gentlemen with waxed mustaches and loud garments,--most of whom appeared to be intimate friends of Lottie's. They shot Captain Lottingar's rabbits by day, with indifferent success, and played cards most of the night. Much the most interesting of the guests, however, was the gentleman heretofore referred to as "the Honourable." He was more than a guest at Broadoak,--he was almost one of the family. Captain Lottingar slapped him on the back and called him "my boy"; Captain Lottingar's friends addressed him with admiring deference and borrowed money from him; and Miss Lottingar behaved to him in a manner which left no doubt in the minds of casual observers as to the state of her affections.

The Honourable himself was a pleasant but dissipated-looking youth of about two-and-twenty. His stature was small, and his attainments, beyond those indigenous to every well-born and well-bred young Englishman, insignificant; but his appreciation of the pleasures of life was great.

He was a good specimen of that type of young man but for whom chorus-girls would be compelled to pay for their own diamonds. Pending the arrival of the time when he would be called upon to a.s.sume the office of an hereditary legislator, he was engaged in what he called "seeing life." He did not see much, though he thought he did, for his field of vision was limited; but what he saw he saw thoroughly. He entertained a great admiration for Captain Lottingar, whom he had encountered at a flashy club in town; and any fleeting doubts, derived from the hints of experienced and officious friends, which he might have entertained as to the genuineness of that warrior's pretensions to gentility were at once set at rest when he arrived, in response to a pressing invitation, on a visit to "my old place in Hertfordshire." A ripening friendship with the Princ.i.p.al Boy was now turning his admiration for the name of Lottingar into positive infatuation; and altogether the Honourable Reginald Fitznorton was in that condition usually described as "ready for plucking."

Pip, who did not as a rule concern himself overmuch with his neighbours'

affairs, soon became conscious of a distinct feeling of curiosity in regard to his present surroundings. Captain Lottingar one day mentioned to the Honourable in his hearing that the family of Lottingar had inhabited Broadoak Manor, without intermission, from the days of Queen Elizabeth,--a statement which Pip found rather hard to reconcile with the fact that there lay in the garage at the back of the house a notice-board, showing every sign of having been recently uprooted from the gra.s.splot by the front gate, inscribed with the simple legend "TO LET." Moreover, one afternoon, while exploring the numerous pa.s.sages in the house in search of the Princ.i.p.al Boy's fox-terrier, which he had been bidden to catch and wash, Pip made the discovery that, with the exception of the dining-room, library, kitchens, hall and a few bedrooms, Broadoak Manor was a warren of empty rooms dest.i.tute of furniture, though a few of the more conspicuous windows were furnished with curtains.

His fellow-menials also were a curiosity-inspiring crew. The establishment, besides Howard, consisted of a not unattractive middle-aged female who cooked; a beetle-browed individual named Briggs, the keeper, who, though inclined to be reticent on matters connected with that exotic biped, the pheasant, was a mine of information on worldly topics, and a perfect encyclopaedia of reference in regard to horse-racing; and a pretty but pert maid, who made eyes at Pip, and once, in a moment of inadvertence, addressed the saintly Howard as "Pa."

All were on the best of terms, and sat down to poker in the evening with a regularity and cheerfulness which convinced the inexperienced Pip either that servants' halls were not what he had imagined them to be, or that adversity had landed him in a very shady establishment.

However, he discovered one refreshing and self-evident truth in this home of mystery. There was no doubting the fact that the Honourable's courtship of Miss Lottingar (or Miss Lottingar's courtship of the Honourable, if you happened to live on the other side of the curtain) was fast maturing to a definite conclusion. On numerous motor excursions Pip found himself compelled to combine with his duties as chauffeur the highly necessary but embarra.s.sing role of gooseberry. Occasionally Miss Lottingar attempted to drive the car herself, but as a rule Pip had entire charge, the young people sitting together in close companionship in the tonneau behind. Occasionally the car would be stopped, and Pip would be kindly bidden to smoke his pipe, what time the Honourable escorted Miss Lottingar into a neighbouring plantation, to watch hypothetical pheasants feeding; or Miss Lottingar took the Honourable up a by-path, to show him a view which had sprung into existence within the last five minutes.

Pip, simple soul, knew nothing and cared less about the gentle art of husband-hunting. He felt himself irresistibly drawn towards this young couple. He abandoned himself to sentimental sympathy, and drove his car or smoked his pipe with his eyes fixed resolutely before him, thinking of Elsie and wondering if his own turn would ever come.

One day, as they were returning from a long afternoon's spin, the car suddenly slowed down to a stop, and with the complete and maddening finality of its kind refused to move another inch. Pip divested himself of his coat and disappeared beneath the vehicle, emerging after a brief supine scrutiny to announce that the necessary repairs would involve the a.s.sistance of a blacksmith and take an hour and a half to execute. The couple received this announcement with marked composure, and left Pip to wrestle with the car, merely bidding him call for them at the "George"

at Lindley, two miles ahead, on his way home.

It was dark by the time that the united efforts of Pip and the blacksmith restored the car to a state of kinetic energy, and it was more than two hours before Pip called at the "George" for his pa.s.sengers. They climbed swiftly into the tonneau, and the car proceeded on its way. His charges were unusually silent, and Pip, turning suddenly to ask for a direction, surprised the Honourable in the act of kissing the Princ.i.p.al Boy's hands.

The Honourable departed next morning for London. In the afternoon the car was ordered round, and Miss Lottie announced her intention of receiving a driving-lesson. Pip instructed her to the best of his ability, and by constant vigilance and the occasional intervention of Providence succeeded in indefinitely prolonging the span of life of two old women, one cow, seven children, and innumerable c.o.c.ks and hens.

Presently it began to rain.

"Never mind about putting up the hood, Armstrong," said Lottie. "It's a rotten affair--keeps no rain out. Let's run under those thick trees over there."

Pip took the wheel, and the car slid up a narrow lane and came to anchor under the thickest part of an arching grove of chestnuts.

"There," said the Princ.i.p.al Boy, removing her gloves, "I feel regularly done up. My hands are all of a shake after that beastly wheel. Am I improving?"

"You are a good deal steadier than you were--Miss," said Pip.

"That's all right. Much obliged for your help. You're a good sort, Armstrong."