Chapter 9

Upon my life and soul, I believe that she meant it. There was a look in her eyes as she stood before me which, unless I'm the biggest fool in Christendom, told me what was what plainly enough. A word, and I could have taken that fine lady in my arms. I would swear to it.

And what forbade me, you ask? Well, perhaps I'd heard a smash of glass last night, and perhaps I hadn't; but I do believe it was that porter's foolish remark about "votes for women" which put me off more than anything else. So I drew back a step and answered her with more respect than ever.

"I'll see that nobody insults you while I am your servant, madame. If I may make a suggestion, I would advise you to leave this town."

She looked at me thoughtfully.

"And where should I go, Britten?"

"Back to Paris, madame--they won't interfere with you there."

"But my husband--my dear husband?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Perhaps Mahomet will come to the--er--em--to you, madame."

It was her turn to laugh; but I soon learned that my suggestion was no good to her, and for a very simple reason.

"Ah," she said, "men are strange creatures, Britten. When we will, they will not; and when we will not, why, then they give us jewellery. I can't go back to Paris. If I do, a police officer goes with me."

"Take him on the box and call him a footman--unless you prefer to make for London right away, madame."

She was emphatic about this.

"I can't, Britten! I must stay in Paris. It is my last chance of seeing Count Joseph before he returns to Vienna for the summer. Oh, is there no way? Is it quite impossible?"

I scratched my head. Something had been inside it for some minutes.

"Would you care to sit on the box beside me, madame?"

She was all ears at this.

"Of course I wouldn't mind. Have I not myself driven a car? Count Mendez taught me at Cannes last year."

"Could you drive this car a little way on the road to Italy?"

"Why, certainly I could. But how would that help us?"

"Supposing," said I, "that you didn't mind my old mackintosh, madame. I've got that, and a leather cap I keep for the cold weather. If you would put them on and sit beside me, I think we might do it. You can drive if there's any necessity to do so."

She clapped her hands so loud that I thought they would hear us on the Promenade des Anglais below.

"I'll do it, Britten--as I'm a living woman I'll do it. Go and bring your clothes. We may not have an hour to spare. I'll cheat them yet, Britten. Oh, you clever man--you clever man to have thought of it."

"We might start at dusk, madame. Pay your bill, and give it out that we are going into Italy this afternoon. You needn't come back. I'll find you a private room next door to the garage, where you can change, and we can set off just like two drivers on the box-seat, and nobody a penny the wiser. When you get to Paris I can take you to a little hotel----"

She was like a child about it.

"Why, of all the clever men! You shall look after me in Paris. I won't forget you, Britten, and I'm rich enough for anything--at present. You shall stop with me until Count Joseph comes----"

I thought to myself that it would be an over-long engagement in that case; but there was no call to say anything of the kind to her, and stopping only to repeat my directions, I went round to the garage and made ready. If Madame herself was excited at the prospect of giving the fat man the go-by, I was no less; and I assure you that no boy's game I had ever played excited me half as much. Best of all was the thought that our quickness would forestall them; and if the authorities did decide to expel her, we should be on the road to Paris long before the edict arrived.

As to what might happen afterwards, I was indifferent; for Paris is the same as London to a proper motor-man, and I am just as much at home in the Champs Elysees as in Regent Street. So I left that to fortune, and, setting about the plan, I had my things packed and the car made ready under an hour, and at four o'clock sharp that afternoon I picked up Madame and her trunks at the door of the hotel and set off boldly as though to drive her to the Italian frontier. But I turned back before we had gone a mile, and making straight for the little Italian hotel next door to the garage, I smuggled her in without a soul being the wiser, and out again as cleverly just after dusk. She was dressed then just as I have told you--mackintosh up to her ears and a flat leather cap, suiting her pretty face to perfection. But any fool could have seen she was a woman twenty yards away; and I began to ask which was the bigger idiot--me for making the suggestion, or she for taking it? It was too late, however, to think of that, and trusting that good luck might pull us through, perhaps looking on the whole affair as one which was pretty near its end--and that no good end--I let the car go and made straight for Brignoles.

Quite what apprehension of danger was in her head or mine I really don't know. Sometimes I think that she had a silly notion of what the French prefect might have done to her, exaggerating, as women will, the real situation, and dreadfully frightened of "foreigners."

For myself, I wanted to get her back to Paris in spite of the attempt to stop us; perhaps I wanted to be even with the red-faced man, who had ordered me about last night; but whichever way it was, I could have laughed fit to split every time I looked at that odd little bundle by my side and thought of it as it was last night, all dressed in flummery and rustling like the leaves. Nevertheless, I made no mention of it; and, as much to her surprise as mine, we passed through Frejus without any one stopping us, and drove right through the night without let or hindrance. Not until dawn did I begin to ask myself some questions--and they were awkward ones. What the devil was I going to do with her in the towns? Why had I never thought of it? She was wearing my long mackintosh, to be sure; but who would fail to recognise her, and what would the talk be like?

A hundred difficulties, not one of which I had had the brains to think of last night, kept popping up like midgets in a puppet-show; and, as though to crown them all, bang went the near-side back tyre at that very moment, and there we were by the roadside, at five in the morning, in as desolate a place as you want to find, and not the sign of house or village wherever the eye might turn.

Now Madame had been nearly asleep upon my shoulder when this happened, but she woke up at the report and looked up all about her as though she had been dreaming.

"Where are we, Britten?" she asked. "What has happened to us?"

"Tyre gone, madame. I must trouble you to get down."

She woke up at this, and got out immediately. I could see that she was more clear-headed than she had been last night, if not less frightened.

"This was a very foolish thing to do, Britten. We are sure to be followed."

"That's as it may be, madame. I fear it's too late to think of it now. My business is to get this tyre fixed up."

"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 glass. 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 passed 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 sexes indifferently, and you'll have the thing to a tick. But I assure 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 noble 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.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Man Who Drove the Car, by Max Pemberton