"Well, now that I have come, I should enjoy seeing the places I"ve cared most to read about in history or poetry," said Miss Destrey quickly, "and Venice is one of them."
"Maida has lived more in books than she has in real life," remarked Miss Beechy with scorn. "I know a lot more about the world than she does, although I am only--only--"
"Thirteen," finished the Countess. "Beechy darling, would you like to have some more of those _marrons glaces_? They aren"t good for you, but just this once you may, if you want to. And oh, Sir Ralph, I should love to see my new estate. It"s a very old estate really, you know, though new to me; so old that the castle is almost a ruin; but if I saw it and took a great fancy to the place, I might have it restored and made perfectly elegant, to live in sometimes, mightn"t I? Just where _is_ Schloss (she p.r.o.nounced it "Slosh") what-you-may-call-it? I never _can_ say it properly?"
"Schloss Hrvoya is very far down in Dalmatia--almost as far east as Montenegro," replied the Prince. "The roads are extremely bad, too. I do not think they would be feasible for an automobile, especially for Sir Ralph Moray"s little twelve-horse-power car carrying five persons."
"I differ from you there, Prince." Terry argued, looking obstinate. "I have never driven in Dalmatia, although I"ve been to Fiume and Abbazzia; but I have a friend who went with his car, and he had no adventures which ladies would not have enjoyed. Our princ.i.p.al difficulty would be about petrol; but we could carry a lot, and have supplies sent to us along the route. I"ll engage to manage that--and the car."
"Then it"s settled that we go," exclaimed Mrs. Kidder, clapping two dimpled hands covered with rings. "What a wonderful trip it will be."
I could see that the Prince would have liked to call Terry out, but he was too wise to dispute the question further; and a dawning plan of some kind was slowly lightening his clouded eye.
My wish was granted at last; something was settled. And later, strolling on the terrace, I contrived to put all that was left upon a business basis.
Never had man a better friend than Terence Barrymore has in me; and my whole attention on the way home was given to making him acknowledge it.
IV
A CHAPTER OF HUMILIATIONS
After all, we did not start on the day after to-morrow. Our luncheon had been on Tuesday. On Wednesday a note came, sent by hand from Mrs.
Kidder, to say that she could not possibly be ready until Friday, and that as Friday was an unlucky day to begin any enterprise, we had better put off starting until Sat.u.r.day. But I must not "think her changeable, as she really had a very good reason"; and she was mine "Cordially, Kathryn Stanley Kidder-Dalmar."
Having first stated that she could not be ready, and then added her reason was good, I naturally imagined there was more in the delay than met the eye. My fancy showed me the hand of Prince Dalmar-Kalm, and I firmly believed that each finger of that hand to say nothing of the thumb, was busily working against us.
All Thursday and Friday I expected at any moment to receive an intimation that, owing to unforseen circ.u.mstances (which might not be explained) the Countess and her party were unable to carry out the arrangement they had entered into with us. But Thursday pa.s.sed, and nothing happened. Friday wore on towards evening, and the constant strain upon my nerves had made me irritable. Terry, who was calmly getting ready for the start as if there were no cause for uncertainty, chaffed me on my state of mind, and I rounded upon him viciously, for was not all my scheming for his sake?
I was in the act of pointing out several of his most prominent defects, and shedding cigarette ashes into his suit-case as he packed, when Felicite appeared with a letter.
"It"s from her!" I gasped. "And--she"s got her coronet. It"s on the envelope, as large as life."
"Which means that she"s ready," said the future chauffeur, examining a suit of overalls.
"Don"t be so c.o.c.ksure," said I, opening the letter. "Hum--ha--well, yes, it does seem to be all right, if you can ever judge a woman"s intentions by what she says. She wants to know whether the arrangement stands, that we"re to call for them at ten o"clock to-morrow morning, and whether we"re to go rain or shine. I"ll scratch off a line in answer, and say yes--yes--yes, to everything."
I did so with a trembling hand, and then gave myself up to the weakness of reaction. Upon Felicite fell the task of doing my packing, which consisted in cramming a suit of flannels, my evening things, and all the linen it would hold without bursting asunder, into a large, fitted suit-case. Terry had a suit-case too, five times better than mine (Irishmen in debt always do have things superior to those of every one else); we had motor-coats, and enough guide-books and road-maps to stock a small library; and when these were collected we were ready for the Great Adventure.
When Terry visits me at the Chalet des Pins, he keeps his car at a garage in Mentone. His habit has been to put up his chauffeur close by this garage, and telephone when he wants to use the car; but the chauffeur was paid off and sent away ten days ago, at about the time when Terry decided that the automobile must be sold. He had not been in spirits for a drive since, until the fateful day of the advertis.e.m.e.nt, but immediately after our luncheon with the Countess he had walked down to the garage and stayed until dinner-time. What he had been doing there he did not deign to state; but I had a dim idea that when you went to call on a motor-car in its den, you spent hours on your back bolting nuts, or accelerating silencers, or putting the crank head (and incidentally your own) into an oil bath; and I supposed that Terry had been doing these things. When he returned on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, spending several hours on each occasion, I went on supposing the same; but when at nine o"clock on Sat.u.r.day morning he drove up to the garden gate after another trip to Mentone, I had a surprise.
Terry had almost bitten off my head when I had innocently proposed to have his car smartened up to suit the taste of the Countess; but, without saying a word to me, he had been at work improving its appearance.
"She" (as he invariably calls his beloved vehicle) was dressed in grey as before, but it was fresh, glossy grey, still smelling of turpentine.
The tyres were new, and white, and a pair of spare ones were tied onto the motor"s bonnet, which looked quite jaunty now in its clean lead-coloured paint.
The shabby cushions of the driver"s seat and tonneau had been re-covered also with grey, and wherever a bit of bra.s.s was visible it glittered like pure gold.
At the sound of the Panhard"s sob at the gate, Felicite and I hurried down the path, armed with the two coats and suit-cases, there to be surprised by the rejuvenated car, and dumbfounded by a transformed Terry.
"Mon Dieu, comme il est beau, comme ca," cried my domestic miracle worker, lost in admiration of a tall, slim, yet athletic figure, clad from head to foot in black leather. "Mais--mais ce n"est pas comme il faut pour un Milord."
"Why, Terry," exclaimed I, "I never thought--I never expected--I"m hanged if you"re not a real professional. It"s awfully smart, and very becoming--never saw you look better in your life. But it"s--er--a kind of masquerade, you know. I"m not sure you ought to do it. If Innisfallen saw you like that, he"d cross you out of his will."
"He"s dead certain to have done that already. When I engaged as your chauffeur I engaged as your chauffeur and I intend to look the part as well as act it. I want this car to be as smart as it can, which unfortunately isn"t saying much, and towards that end I"ve been doing my best these last three or four days. She isn"t bad, is she?"
"From being positively plain, if not ugly, she has become almost a beauty," I replied. "But I thought you were determined to preserve her from the sin of vanity? Why this change of mind?"
"Well, I couldn"t stand Dalmar-Kalm running her down," Terry confessed rather sheepishly. "There was so little time, that half the work on her I"ve done myself."
"That accounts, then, for your long and mysterious absences."
"Only partly. I"ve been working like a navvy, at a mechanic"s shop, f.a.gging up a lot of things I knew how to do on principle, but had seldom or never done with my own hands. I was always a lazy beggar, I"m afraid, and it was better fun to smoke and watch my man Collet making or fitting in a new part than to bother with it myself. This will be my first long trip "on my own," you see, and I don"t want to be a duffer, especially as I myself proposed going down into Dalmatia, where we may get into no end of sc.r.a.pes."
"By Jove!" I exclaimed, gazing with a new respect at my leather-clad friend and his car. "You"ve got some good stuff in you, Terry. I didn"t quite realize what a responsibility I was throwing on you, old chap, when I named you as my chauffeur. Except for my drives with you, I suppose I haven"t been in a motor half a dozen times in my life, now I come to think of it and it always seemed to me that, if a man knew how to drive his own car, he must know how to do everything else that was necessary."
"Very few do, even expert drivers, among amateurs. A man ought to be able not only to take his car entirely to pieces and put it together again, but to go into a mechanic"s shop and make a new one. I don"t say that I can do that, but I can come a bit nearer to it than I could five days ago. I don"t think that the poor old car will be such a shock to the ladies now, even after some of the fine ones they must have seen, do you?"
He was so ingenuously proud of his achievements, had toiled so hard, and sacrificed so much of his personal vanity in providing his employers with a suitable chauffeur, that I did not stint my commendation of him and his car. Felicite, too, was prolific in compliments. The duck, who had waddled out to the gate to see what was doing, quacked flattery; the yellow cat mewed praise; and Terry, pleased as Punch with everything and everybody, whistled as he stowed away our suit-cases.
The moment of departure had come. With some emotion I bade farewell to my family, which I should not see again until I returned to the Riviera to open the autumn season with the first number of the _Sun_. Then one last look at the little place which had become dear to me, and we were off with a bound for the Cap Martin Hotel.
Terry, when in a frank and modest mood, had sometimes said to me that, with all the virtues of strength, faithfulness, and getting-thereness, his car was not to be called a fast car. Thirty miles an hour was its speed at best, and this pace it seemed had been far surpa.s.sed by newer cars of the same make, though of no higher power, since Terry"s had been built. This fact I took for granted, as I had heard it from Terry"s own lips more than once; but as we flew over the wooded road which divided the Chalet des Pins from the Cap Martin Hotel, I would have sworn that we were going at the rate of sixty miles per hour.
"Good Heavens!" I gasped. "Have you been doing anything to this car, to make her faster than she was? Help! I can"t breathe."
"Nonsense," said Terry, with soothing calm. "It"s only because you haven"t motored for a long time that you imagine we"re going fast. The motor"s working well, that"s all. We"re crawling along at a miserable twenty miles an hour."
"Well, I"m glad that worms and other reptiles can"t crawl at this pace, anyhow, or life wouldn"t be worth living for the rest of creation," I retorted, cramming on my cap and wishing I had covered my tearful eyes with the motor-goggles which lay in my pocket. "If our millionairesses don"t respect this pace, I"ll eat my hat when I have time, or--"
But Terry was not destined to hear the end of that boast--which perhaps was just as well for me in the end, as things were to turn out. We spun down the avenue of pines, and in less than a lazy man"s breathing s.p.a.ce were at the door of the Cap Martin Hotel.
Quite a crowd of smart-looking people was a.s.sembled there, and for one fond second I dreamed that they were waiting to witness our arrival. But that pleasant delusion died almost as soon as born. As the group divided at our approach we saw that they had been collected round a large motor-car--a motor-car so resplendent that beside it our poor rejuvenated thing looked like a little, made-up, old Quaker lady.
In colour this hated rival was a rich, ripe scarlet, with cushions to match in her luxurious tonneau. Her bonnet was like a helmet of gold for the G.o.ddess Minerva, and wherever there was s.p.a.ce, or chance, for something to sparkle with jewelled effect, that something availed itself, with brilliance, of the opportunity.
The long scarlet body of the creature was shaded with a canopy of canvas, white as the breast of a gull, and finished daintily all round with a curly fringe. The poles which held it were apparently of glittering gold, and the railing designed to hold luggage on the top, if not of the same precious metal, was as polished as the letters of Lord Chesterfield to his long-suffering son.
One jealous glance was enough to paint this glowing picture upon our retinas, and there it remained, like a sun-spot, even when a later one was stamped upon it. Three figures in long, grey motor-coats, exactly alike, and motor-caps, held on with shirred chiffon veils came forward, two advancing more quickly than the third.
"How _do_ you do, Sir Ralph? Good morning, Mr. Barrymore," Mrs. Kidder and Beechy were saying. "We"re all ready," went on the former, excitedly. "We"ve been admiring the Prince"s car, which came last night.
Isn"t it a perfect beauty? Just _look_ at the sweet poppy-colour, and his crest in black and gold. I never saw anything so pretty, did you?"
"I like Sir Ralph"s car," said Miss Destrey. "It"s such a cool grey, and even in wind or dust it will always look neat. We shall match it very well with our grey coats and veils."
I could have kissed her; while as for Terry, standing cap in hand, he looked grateful enough to have grovelled at our fair champion"s feet.