We drove through Canterbury, I say, and set the car going her best on the fair road after Sturry is pa.s.sed. I know the country hereabouts pretty well, being accustomed to visit fashionable watering-places from time to time, and well acquainted with Ramsgate and Margate, to say nothing of Deal and Dover. My road lay by Monkton, down toward Pegwell Bay, and it was just at the entrance to Minster that Dolly made me stop without much warning, and took me into her confidence for the first time.
"Britten," says she, "there is something I didn"t tell you, but which I think I ought to tell you now. I"m not asked to Lord Badington"s house at all."
"Not asked," said I, with a mouth wide enough open to swallow a pint of gear-box "B." "Then what"s the good of going there, if you"re not invited?"
"Oh," says she, more sweetly than ever, "I think they"ll be glad to have me if I do get inside, Britten; but we shall have to act our parts very well."
I laughed at this.
"Seeing that neither of us is in the theatrical line, I don"t suppose that anybody is going to take me for Sir Beerbohm Tree, or you for the Merry Widow," says I, "but, anyway, I"ll do my best."
This pleased her, and she looked at me out of her pretty eyes, just sweet enough to make a man think himself a beauty.
"You see, Britten," says she, "if the car broke down just outside Lord Badington"s house, perhaps they would give me shelter for the night; at least, I hope they would, and if they would not, well, it doesn"t really matter, and we can go and stop at the hotel at Sandwich. It would have to be a real breakdown, for Lord Badington keeps motor-cars of his own, and his drivers would be sure to be clever at putting anything right----"
"Oh," says I, quickly enough, "if they can get this car right when I have done with it, I"ll put up statues to "em in the British Museum.
You say no more, miss. We"ll break down right enough, and if you are not breakfasting with his lordship to-morrow morning, don"t blame me."
She nodded her head; and I could swear the excitement of it set her eyes on fire. Lord Badington"s house, you must know, stands overlooking Pegwell Bay, not very far from the golf links, while the Ramsgate Road runs right before its doors. There is nothing but a bit of an inn near by, and not a cottage in sight. I saw that the place could not have been better chosen, and fifty yards from the big iron gates I got off my seat and prepared for business.
"You"re really sure that you mean this, miss?" I asked her, knowing what women are. "You won"t change your mind afterwards, and blame me because the car isn"t going?"
"How can you ask such a thing?" was her answer. "Doesn"t my whole future depend on our success, Britten?"
"Then you won"t have long to wait," I rejoined, and, opening the bonnet, I set to work upon the magneto, and in twenty minutes had done the job as surely as it could have been done by the makers themselves.
"If this car is going on to-night," said I, "some one will have to push it. Now will you please tell me what is the next move, miss, for I"m beginning to think I should like my supper?"
She was down on the road herself by this time, and pretty enough she looked in her motor veil, and the beautiful sables which Mr. Sarand had given her last winter. When she told me to go on to the house, and to say that a lady"s motor-car had broken down at the gates, I would have laid twenty to one on the success of her scheme, always provided that we weren"t left to the menials who bark incivilities at a n.o.bleman"s door. Here luck stood by Miss Dolly, for hardly had I pulled the great bell at Lord Badington"s gate when his own car came flying up the drive, with his lordship himself sitting in the back of it.
"What do you want, my man?" he asked, in a quick, sharp tone--he"s a wonder for fifty-two, and there has been no smarter man in the Guards since he left them. "Where do you come from?"
"Begging your pardon, sir," said I, for I didn"t want to pretend that I knew him for a lord, "but my mistress"s car has come by a bit of trouble, and she sent me to ask if any one could help her."
"What, you"re broken down----"
"It"s just that, sir; magneto gone absolutely wrong. I shall have to be towed if I go any further to-night."
He stood on the steps beside me, and seemed to hesitate an instant. A word and he would have told his own chauffeur to drive us on to Sandwich; but it was never spoken, and I"ll tell you why. Miss Dolly herself had followed me up the drive, and she arrived upon the scene at that very instant.
"Oh, I am so sorry to trouble you," she cried in her sweetest voice, "but my car"s gone all wrong, and I"m so tired and hungry, I don"t know what to do. Will you let me rest here just a little while?"
Talk about actresses; there isn"t one of "em in the West End would have done half so well. There she was, looking the picture of distress, and there was his lordship, twisting his moustache, and eyeing her as one who was at his wits" end to know what to do. If he didn"t take long to come to a resolution, put it down to Dolly"s blue eyes--he couldn"t see the colour of them at that time of night, but he could feel them, I"ll be bound; and, jumping, as it were, to a conclusion he turned to his man and gave him an order.
"This lady will stay here to-night," he said. "Go and help her driver to get the car in, and see that he is looked after," and without another word he waited for Miss Dolly to enter the house. Believe me, I never thought Mr. John"s stock stood higher--and "Britten, my boy,"
says I to myself, "if this isn"t worth a cool fifty when the right time comes, don"t you never drive a pretty girl no more."
I had a rare lark that night, partly with Biggs, his lordship"s chauffeur, and partly with a motor expert who came along on a bicycle, and said he"d have my Renault going in twenty minutes. I"m not one that can stand a billet in servants" quarters, and I chose rather to put up at the little inn down by the bay and take my luck there. It was here that Biggs came after supper, and he and the motor expert got going on my high-tension magneto.
Bless the pair of them, they might have been a month there, and no better off--for, you must know that I had taken out the armature, and if you take out an armature and don"t slip a bit of soft iron in after it, your magnets are done for, and will never be worth anything again until they are re-magnetised. This baffled the pair of them, and they were there until after eleven o"clock, drinking enough beer to float a barge, and confessing that it was a mystery.
"Never see such a thing in ten years" experience," said the motor expert.
"I"m blowed if I don"t think the devil has got inside the magneto,"
said Biggs; and there I agreed with him. For wasn"t it Miss Dolly who had done it, and isn"t she--but there, that wouldn"t be polite to the s.e.x, so I won"t write it down.
I learned from Biggs that Lord Badington"s daughter and stepson were staying in the house with him, and a couple of old gentlemen, who, when they weren"t making laws at Westminster, were making fools of themselves on the links at Sandwich. It was a golfing party, in fact, and next morning early, Biggs took them on to Prince"s--and, will you believe me?--the car came back for the ladies by-and-by, and off went Miss Dolly, as calmly as though she had known them all her life. Not a word to me, not a word about going on, or getting the car ready, but just a nod and a laugh as she went by, and a something in her eyes which seemed to say, "Britten, I"m doing famously, and I haven"t forgotten you."
The same afternoon about tea-time she sent for me, and had a word with me in the hall. I learned then that she had promised to stop until the following morning, and she asked, in a voice which n.o.body could mistake, if the car would be ready. When I told her that I was waiting for a new magneto from London I thought she would kiss me on the spot.
"Oh, Britten," she said in a whisper, "suppose we couldn"t get on for three or four days."
"In that case," said I, "I should consider that we were really unfortunate, miss, but I"ll do my best."
"Are you comfortable at the inn, Britten?"
"Putting on flesh rapidly, miss. I never knew there were so many red herrings in the world."
"And your room?"
"They built it when they thought the King was coming to Sandwich."
She laughed and looked at me, and, just as I was leaving, she whispered, "Do make it three or four days, Britten," and I promised her with a glance she could not mistake. And why not? What was against us? Was it not all plain sailing? Truly so, but for one little fact.
I"ll tell you in a word--Hook-Nosed Moss and the old bill he carried about like a love-letter--a bill against Dolly St. John for seventy-five pounds sixteen shillings and fourpence.
Well, Moss came down from town suddenly on the second afternoon, and while he carried a new magneto under his arm, the bill was in his pocket right enough. I was standing at the inn door as he drove up in a fly, and when I recognised the face, you might have knocked me down with a cotton umbrella. Not, mind you, that I lost my presence of mind, or said anything foolish, but just that I felt sorry enough for Dolly St. John to risk all I"d got in the world to save her from this land shark. That Moss had found her out, I did not doubt for an instant, and his first words told me I was right.
"Do you know who you"ve been trotting about the country?" he asked, as he stepped down. I replied that I did not, but that I believed the lady to be a relative of Lord Badington"s. Then he was fair angry.
"Lord Badington be d----d," he said, speaking through his nose as he always did, "her dabe"s Dolly Sid John, and she"s the sabe who did us id de winter. I wonder you were such a precious fool as not to recognise her. Do you mean to dell me you didn"t dow her?"
"What!" I cried, opening my eyes wide, "she Dolly St. John! Well, you do surprise me; and she gone to Dover this very afternoon--leastwise, if it isn"t to Dover, it"s to Folkestone--but Biggs would tell us. Are you quite sure about it, sir?"
He swore he was sure, and went on to tell me that if I hadn"t been the greatest chump in Europe I would have known it from the start.
"Where are your eyes?" he kept asking me; "do you mean to say you can drive a woman for ted days in London and not dow her again three months afterwards? A fine sort of chap you are. You deserve a statue in the Fools" Museum, upod my word you do. Now take me to the car, and let"s see what"s the matter. I"ll have more to say to you whed we"re in London, you mark that, my man."
I didn"t give him any cheek, much as I would have liked to. My game was to protect Miss Dolly as far as I was able, and to hold my tongue for her sake.
Clearly her position was perilous. If this dun of a Jew went up to the house, and told them her name was not More, but St. John, the fat would be in the fire with a vengeance, and her chance of marrying John Sarand about equal to mine of mating with the crowned heads of Europe. What to do I knew no more than the dead. I had no messenger to send up to the house; I dare not leave Moss to get talking to the people of the inn; and there I was, helping him to fit and time the new magneto, and just feeling I"d pay ten pounds for the privilege of knocking him down with his own spanner.
We finished the job in about half an hour, and the Renault started up at once. Moss hadn"t spoken of Miss Dolly while we were at work; but directly the engine started he remembered his business, and turned on me like a fury.
"Whed did you say she started off?" he asked.
"About two this afternoon, I think."
"In whose car?"