My Friend the Chauffeur | Page 2

an egg.
"I believe it's genuine," I began gingerly, almost wishing that I hadn't
purposely put the pink paper where Terry would be sure to pick it up.
"And I don't see why you should call the advertiser in my paper an ass.
If you were hard up, and had a motor-car--"
"I am hard up, and I have a motor-car."
"What I was going to say is this: wouldn't it be much better to turn your
car into the means of making an honest living, and at the same time
having some rattling good fun, rather than sell the thing for less than
half cost, and not only get no fun at all, but not know how to get out of

the scrape in which you've landed yourself?"
It was Terry's turn to laugh now, which he did, though not uproariously,
as I had. "One would think the ass was a friend of yours, by your
enthusiasm in defending him," said he.
"I'm only putting the case to you in the way I thought you'd see it most
clearly," I persisted mildly. "But, as a matter of fact, the 'ass' as you call
him, is my friend, a very intimate friend indeed."
"Didn't know you had any intimate friends but me, anyhow owners of
motor-cars, you old owl," remarked Terry. "I must say in your defence,
though, it isn't like you to have friends who advertise themselves as
titled couriers."
"If you're obliged to start a shop I suppose it's legitimate to put your
best goods in the windows, and arrange them as attractively as you can
to appeal to the public," I argued. "This is the same thing. Besides, my
friend isn't advertising himself. Somebody is 'running him'--doing it for
him; wants him to get on, you know--just as I do you."
Terry gave me a quick glance; but my face (which is blond and said to
be singularly youthful for a man of twenty-nine) was, I flatter myself,
as innocent as that of a choir-boy who has just delivered himself of a
high soprano note. Nevertheless, the end was coming. I felt it in the
electric tingle of the air.
"Do you mind telling me your friend's name, or is he a secret?"
"Perhaps the address at the end of the advertisement will be
enlightening."
Terry had dropped the paper on the grass by the side of his chaise
longue, but now he picked it up again, and began searching for the
place which he had lost. I, in my chaise longue under the same
magnolia tree, gazed at him from under my tilted Panama. Terry is tall
and dark. Stretched out in the basket chair, he looked very big and
rather formidable. Beside him, I felt a small and reedy person. I really

hoped he would not give me much trouble. The day was too hot to cope
with troublesome people, especially if you were fond of them, for then
you were the more likely to lose your head.
But the beginning was not encouraging. Terry proceeded to read the
end of the advertisement aloud. "Address X. Y. Z., Châlet des Pins,
Cap Martin." Then he said something which did not go at all with the
weather. Why is it that so many bad words begin with D or H? One
almost gets to think that they are letters for respectable people to avoid.
"Hang it all, Ralph," he went on, after the explosion, "I must say I don't
like your taste in jokes. This is a bit too steep."
I sat up straight, with a leg on each side of the chair, and looked
reproaches. "I thought," I said slowly, "that when your brother behaved
like such a--well, we won't specify what--you asked, I might even say
begged, for my advice, and promised in a midnight conversation under
this very tree to take it, no matter how disagreeable it might prove."
"I did; but--"
"There's no such word as 'but.' Last year I advised you not to put your
money into West Africans. You put it in. What was the consequence?
You regretted it, and as your brother showed no very keen interest in
your career, you decided that you couldn't afford to stop in the Guards,
so you cut the Army. This year I advised you not to play that system of
yours and Raleigh's at Monte Carlo, or if you must have a go at it, to
stick to roulette and five franc stakes. Instead of listening to me, you
listened to him. What were the consequences?"
"For goodness sake don't moralize. I know well enough what they were.
Ruin. And it doesn't gild the pill to remember that I deserved to
swallow it."
"If only you'd swallowed the advice instead! It would have slipped