"Will it take you very long, Britten?"
"Thirty minutes ordinary. But it"s a new cover and stiff--I"ll say forty."
"Then I"ll see to the breakfast. Wasn"t it clever of me to think of it? I"ve brought a Thermos and a basket. We"ll have breakfast in the little wood on the hillside. If no one follows us, I can be myself again at Aix, and we shall get to Paris, after all. But oh, Britten, I must look an object in your clothes. Why ever did you ask me to wear them?"
I made a dry answer. A man wrestling with a 935 by 135 cover isn"t exactly in the mood to compliment a woman on her frippery or talk about the mountains. And I"m no more than human, all said and done, and the sight of the food she took out of the basket made me feel well-nigh desperate. So I turned my back upon her, and she went off to the copse to prepare breakfast as she had promised. Not five minutes afterwards I heard the hum of another car in the distance, and, looking up from my wheel, I saw a great red Mercedes coming down the hillside like a racer at Brooklands.
I knew that we were in for it; instinct told me immediately that we had been followed from Frejus or Nice, and that danger was aboard that flyer, and would be up with us in less than two minutes. What to do, whether to shout to Madame to run and hide herself--to do that or just go on with my work as though nothing had happened was a problem to make a man half silly. But in the end I held on tenaciously, and when the big car drew up beside me, I merely looked up and nodded to the driver as though to signal to him that all was well.
"Bon jour," says he.
"Morning," says I.
"Vous-etes en panne, mon ami?"
"Hit it first time," says I--for those words are understood by every motor-man who"s been in the Riviera--"in the pan and the grease together. Where are you for?"
"Brignoles et Paris. Mais ou donc est Madame?"
I looked up, my heart beating fast, and took a peep into his tonneau.
The red-faced man was there right enough, but as fast asleep as a parson over his empty port-wine gla.s.s. Could I persuade this bonny Frenchman to get on with his job, we were half out of the wood sure and certain. But could I? Lord, how my hands shook when I replied:
"Madame est alle dans le train--Paree--Calais--moi je suis seul"--which was rather good, I thought, though that was not the time to say so.
Well, it seemed successful enough. The Frenchee took a look to the right and a look to the left of him, opened his throttle as though to let in his clutch and closed it again, took off his side brake, and then, just when I was pluming myself that we were through, what do you think the fool does? Why, turns deliberately round and wakes the red-faced Baron.
What pa.s.sed between them I don"t pretend to say, for the French went to and fro like lightning between summer clouds. But of this I am certain: that there never was such a devilish smile as the old Baron turned on me when he got down from the tonneau and took a swift survey of the scene as though sure already of his quarry.
"Ah," he cried, "here is our faithful friend once more. Good-day, Mr.
Britten. I hope I see you well?"
"You see me next door to the devil," said I--for out here on the mountain side I didn"t care a dump for him. Bluff, however, went for nothing that morning. I had met my match, and I knew it.
"Britten," says he, taking a big cigar from a case and lighting it with provoking deliberation. "Shall we make a truce, Britten?"
"Make what you like," says I. "This car has got to get to Paris to fetch my mistress. If a truce will do it, I"m taking some, right here."
He smiled again, but so softly that I could have hit him.
"Where is she hiding, Britten?" he asked, almost in a whisper. "Where has that very pretty lady chosen to conceal her charms? Come, tell me, my lad, and I"ll give you five louis. What is the good of being so foolish?"
I didn"t answer a word, and he took another look all round the hills.
Luckily, if there was one coppice, there were twenty in that gorge, and when I saw him walking away to the wrong one, I thought I should burst out laughing on the spot. That, I am glad to say, I did not do; but calmly going on with my work, I had the new cover in presently and was ready to make a start. From that moment the drollery of the situation--for it was droll, as I live--began in dead earnest, and lasted right through a hot summer"s day--until dusk came down, in fact, and the issue was over for good and all.
Can"t you imagine just what happened, and see the irony of it all?
Depict a great open chasm between the hills, little copses of pines everywhere, and more than one thicket; a white road winding through the valley, and two cars stuck up on that same.
Say that there was a fat Baron trotting to and fro like a dog hunting for rabbits; put down two tired and hungry chauffeurs, famished for want of meat and cursing their fate; do this, and add that they swore at both the s.e.xes indifferently, and you"ll have the thing to a tick.
But I a.s.sure you that it"s pleasanter to read about than to suffer; and any driver would admit as much.
Good Lord, what a day it was! The fat Baron, I should tell you, did not give up the hunt until near twelve o"clock; but when he had searched every thicket within a mile or more, he came back to us and deliberately made himself comfortable inside his car. As for me, I did not dare to move a step either way. If I had gone on, it would have been to have left Madame in the woods; while if I stayed, he stayed--and there you had it. And this game went on till dusk, mind you, and would have gone on longer but for the instinct which came to me quite suddenly like a thought dropped from the skies: that her ladyship had given us both the slip, after all, and would be already where the Baron Albert could not find her. This idea growing to an unalterable conviction decided me at last. I started my engine, mounted my box-seat, and without a word to either of them drove straight away to Brignoles--thence, without a question from any one, to Paris and my master.
It would have been three months afterwards that I received a letter from Madame, addressed from the yacht _Mostar_, then in Norwegian waters. She sent me ten pounds for myself, and after telling me that she was cruising with Baron Albert and his sister--a piece of news which fairly took my breath away--she went on to remark that the train service from Brignoles to Aix is excellent, but that she preferred not to make the journey in a leather cap and a mackintosh.
So, you see, I guessed in a moment that she had slipped away to Brignoles while we were talking about her that morning, and just taken the early express to Aix without a word to anybody. We had been but three kilometres from the town when the tyre burst, and so the journey could hardly have fatigued her.
As for her husband, the so-called Count Joseph, I heard in Paris afterwards that he wasn"t her husband at all, but a rich young Hungarian n.o.ble she was trying desperately hard to marry. The Count Albert had been sent to Monte Carlo by the young man"s people to protect him from this ambitious lady, and right well he appears to have done the business, for he must have found her in Paris afterwards and offered her the hospitality of his yacht.
I hope his sister was on board; I do indeed hope so.
But this is a rum world--and Lord, the scandal that some people will think of makes me quite unhappy sometimes.