The Man Who Drove the Car Part 9

Of course, she had come on by train. Lots of people did, to follow the racing; and here she was with a merry party, just as simple-looking and as guileless as a shepherdess at the Vic, and looking no older than a school-girl. When I got up at four next morning I was full of curiosity to know if Ferdy had seen her. But he was out at his car in the "control," cheerful enough as far as he himself was concerned, but mighty anxious about his mechanician, Down, who had broken his arm trying to start up the engine, and had already been taken to the hospital. A minute later I heard that our old wheezer wouldn't start at all, and there it was, as though a special Providence had ordered it.

"You can't move your own char-a-banc--the crank-shaft's broken,"

Ferdinand said to me, as he asked me for the tenth time to get up beside him; "I've got no one, and I'm going to win this race. If you could conjure up a new crankshaft out of nothing, you would still be three behind the last in, and all the town out to laugh at you. Get up, Lal, and have done with it. I tell you I knew it from the first."

Well, I stared at this: and having just a word with my mechanician Billy, and being quite sure that the Vezey, however good she was at going back on me, wouldn't go forward that day or for some days to come, I left instructions for telegrams to be sent to England, and was up beside Ferdinand without further ado.

I have told you that he stood already high in the list, and so you will understand that we hadn't long to wait for the word "Go!" Before that could be given, however, and while the car was still in the "control,"

who should come up to us but Maisa Hubbard herself; and, will you believe it, I felt all my confidence, both in man and car, oozing out of my finger-tips, just like water running out of a tap. How or why that should have been I am not the man to say; but there was the fact, that this pretty woman could work this magic upon me just by a look out of her sly eyes, and could do worse to my friend Ferdinand, as I plainly perceived. As for that poor chap, he turned as white as a ghost directly he saw her, and I really thought he would never be able to start the car at all.

"Oh, my dear boy, I have been looking for you everywhere," cried she, offering him a little bunch of red roses, just as though she loved him dearly. "Now, won't you take these for luck? I'm sure you'll want luck to-day, Ferdy. Do you know, I dreamed about you last night?"

He said "Yes," and laid the flowers on the seat beside him. I could see him licking his lips as though his mouth were dry, and presently he asked her a question.

"What did you dream, Maisa?"

She shook her head and began the play-actress style.

"Oh, I guess I wouldn't tell you, anyway."

"But I want to know, Maisa?"

"It was only a dream, of course--aren't they real sometimes, Ferdy?

Why, I saw you drive your car over the side of the mountain, just as plainly as ever I saw anything in my life."

He laughed quietly, looking at me with a look I shall never forget.

"You're quite a wonder at dreaming, Maisa. Suppose I disappoint you this time?"

"Don't be foolish, Ferdy--you shouldn't have asked me to tell you.

Why, you're too clever to be such a silly, and you know it. Good-bye and good luck. I shall see you in Vienna."

He just nodded his head and let in his clutch with such a bang that he nearly threw me over the dash. I could see that his nerve had gone to the winds with the woman's words, and if wishes could have repaid her, she'd have got something for her pains, I do a.s.sure you. As it was, I could do nothing but pretend to laugh at it, and that I did to the best of my ability.

"Dreams go by contraries," said I; "any child knows that."

"She didn't dream it at all," was his answer; "she said it out of spite."

"Why should she be spiteful----?"

"You ask the man and his master. She's out for another car to win, and will spoil my chances if she can."

"More fool you, then, to listen to her. Make up your mind to forget it. You can do it if you try."

"Ah," he said, and upon my word I was sorry for him, "that girl's going to be my ruin, Lal, as sure as we're on this car."

"You speak like a coward, Ferdy--didn't you say I brought you luck----"

"And you shall--I'll try to believe, Lal--I've thought it from the start. If it wasn't for her----"

"Oh, be d----d to her," said I; and that I really meant.

We were on the starting line as these words were spoken, and in two minutes we got the word to go, and the great Modena car rushed away like some giant bird upon the wing. This was the crucial stage of that famous race, when we had to climb the Arlberg Mountains and drop down to Innsbruck. It was the day which saw Edge the proud winner of the Gordon Bennett Cup, and the morning upon which Jarrott broke up his bedroom furniture to stiffen the frame of his 70-h.p. Panhard. Our car was not in for the Gordon Bennett, and our race did not finish at Innsbruck, but at far Vienna--that is, if we crossed the terrible Arlberg Mountains safely, and got down the other side with our heads still upon our shoulders. This depended upon my friend Ferdinand, the greatest driver that ever lived upon an ordinary day, but a mad devil that morning if ever there was one.

Oh! you could see it from the start. That woman's words had entered into his very soul, and he did not deny that he believed his hour had come. We were early away, and the two big cars ahead of us we caught almost in the first hour. When we came to the mountain we began to climb as though a magic wind was lifting us. Grand as the scene was, with the mighty mountains towering above us and the valley full of wonders spreading out below, I had eyes for nothing but the winding road, nor thoughts of any goal but that of distant Innsbruck, where the danger would be pa.s.sed. Sometimes I wished that Ferdinand would change seats with me and let me drive. No woman that ever was born would frighten me, I thought, and yet I could not be sure even about that.

The words that were spoken in the "control" went echoing in my head.

"We were going over the mountain-side." Good G.o.d, if it were true!

The climb up the Arlberg Mountains is a wonderful thing, but I would have you know that it is child's play to the drop down on the other side. Imagine a series of fearful zigzags with a sheer wall of rock on one side, and on the other a precipice just as sheer, and so open and undefended that some fellows in this race were driven almost mad with terror at the bare sight of it. Luckily for me, I sat upon the left-hand side of the car and could see very little of what was going on; but I knew that our off-side front wheel was within two inches of the edge more than once as we went up; and when we pa.s.sed over the top and began the descent I could have sworn that even Ferdinand himself had lost all hope of getting down safely.

Once, I remember, he gave a great cry, and shot the car over to the inside with such a twist that our wheels sc.r.a.ped the very rock; there were moments when he came to a stand altogether, and pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes as though he could not see clearly. By here and there I thought he drove like a madman, swooping round a fearful corner with our wheels over the very chasm, or dashing down a straight as though nothing could save him at the bottom. If I called out at this and implored him not to be a fool, he answered back that "What was to be, would be"; and then he mentioned Maisa's name, and I knew he had not forgotten.

Well, as many know, the end came at that great dome of rock which looks for all the world like St. Paul's Cathedral. I confess that I should have been no wiser here than Ferdinand. We seemed to be following a gentle curve round the dome, with the rock upon our left hand, and the valley three thousand feet down upon our right. There was nothing to tell us of the danger trap; and, thinking he had a clear road, Ferdinand opened his throttle and we shot ahead like a sh.e.l.l from a gun. Less than a second afterwards I had made a wild leap from my seat--and Ferdinand, without a cry or a sound, had gone headlong to the valley below.

I suppose five good minutes must have pa.s.sed before I knew anything at all, either of the nature of this awful accident or of the good luck which attended my leap. Lying there on my back, I became conscious presently that I was in a thick scrub of gorse, which lined the road hereabouts. It had caught me just as a spider's web catches a fly. I ached intolerably, that is true--my whole body seemed numbed, as though it had been hit with irons, while my leather clothes were torn to rags.

But, by-and-by, it came to me that I could get up if I chose, and when I looked below me and saw the sheer precipice, and that nothing but a bush stood between me and it, you may be sure I scrambled back to the road quicker than a man counts two. And there I lay, trying to remember what had happened, and what my duty called upon me to do.

Ferdy and the car! Good G.o.d, what had happened to them? The sweat poured off me like rain when the truth came back. Ferdy was over there, down that awful precipice. Quaking in every limb, I dragged myself to the edge and looked over. Yes, I could see the car, looking like a little toy thing, far down in the valley. It lay wheels upwards, in what appeared to be a little brook or river; but of my comrade not a sign anywhere. In vain I shouted his name again and again. The cars began to pa.s.s me, and, warned by my presence, they took that awful corner safely; but not a man of their drivers guessed that a good fellow had gone over, and that I was half mad because of it. Away they went, with a nod and a shout, leaving that cold silence of the mountains behind them, and Lal Britten crying like a woman because they didn't stay. In the end I ceased to think of them at all, and, going to the brink again, I shouted "Ferdinand" until the hills rang.

He answered me--as I am a living man--Ferdinand answered me at last.

At first I could believe so little in the truth of what I heard that I almost thought the mountains were mocking me and sending my voice back in echoes. Then I understood that it was not so at all, but that my friend really called to me from a place thirty or forty yards down the road, where the scrub was thicker. It was the spot where our tank and tool-box, cast ahead as the car swerved and went over, lay shattered on the rocks. These I hardly noticed at the moment; but, dashing to the place, I threw myself flat on my face and hung right over the precipice to answer my comrade. And then, in an instant I knew what had happened--then I understood.

The car, I say, had swerved away to the right as she took the precipice. The tremendous force of it not only sent all our loose impedimenta flying down the road, which turned to the left, but it threw Ferdinand sideways; and, although he had gone over, he fell, as the newspapers have told you, just where the sheer wall bulged; and here, holding for dear life to the shrubs, he waited for me to save him. Such a torture I have never known, or shall know again. The sight of my friend, not ten feet away from me, the precipice forbidding me to go down, for it was quite sheer at the top; his white face, his desperate hold at the sc.r.a.ppy shrubs--oh, you can't imagine or think of the truth of it as I had to upon that awful morning.

"How long can you hold on?" I asked him, clenching my teeth when I had spoken.

"Perhaps a minute, perhaps two. If you could get a rope, Lal----"

"I'll stop a car," said I--a madder thing was never said, but I had to say something--"I'll stop a car and make them help me. Perhaps my shirt will do it, Ferdy."

"Good-bye if it doesn't," he said quite quietly; and I knew then that he was prepared for death, and had expected it; but I was already busy with my shirt, tearing it up with twitching fingers, when he spoke again.

"Pity we haven't got the rope I towed you with the other day," he said suddenly; and at that I started up as though he had hit me.

"The rope--where did you carry it?"

"It was in the tool-box," he answered, still quite calm.

I think I shouted out at that--I know I was crying like a woman a minute afterwards. The tool-box! Why, it lay there, against the rock, before my very nose, the d----d fool! And the very rope which had first brought our friendship about: was it accident or destiny which put it into my hands, and did Ferdinand do right or wrong to say I brought him luck?

I shan't answer these questions--for he was sitting beside me less than two minutes afterwards, and we were hugging each other like brothers.

Maisa Hubbard's friend didn't get first to Vienna, and pleased enough I was. Whether Ferdy just imagined that she had an evil influence over him, or whether it is true that some women are the mistresses of men's destiny, I don't pretend to say. The story is there to speak for itself.

And Maisa, I may add, is in the halfpenny papers. Do you remember that famous case of Lord--but perhaps it isn't my place to speak about that?