My Friend the Chauffeur | Page 4

me, except

to add ten per cent to my bills at hotels. Now, before I could speak a
word of contradiction, Terry went on. "I am only Mr. Barrymore," said
he, and he grinned a malicious grin, which said as plainly as words,
"Aha, my boy, I think that rips your little scheme to smithereens, eh?"
But my presence of mind doesn't often fail for long. "It's Mr.
Barrymore who drives my car for me," I explained. "He's cleverer at it
than I, and he comes cheaper than a professional."
The wonderful white and pink and auburn lady had been looking at
Terry with open admiration; but now the light of interest faded from the
good-natured face under the girlish hat. "O-oh," she commented in a
tone of ingenuous disappointment, "you're only the--the chawffur,
then."
I didn't want Terry to sink too low in these possible clients' estimation,
for my canny Scotch mind was working round the fact that they were
probably American heiresses, and an heiress of some sort was a
necessity for the younger brother of that meanest of bachelor peers, the
Marquis of Innisfallen. "He's an amateur chauffeur," I hastened to
explain. "He only does it for me because we're friends, you know; but,"
I added, with a stern and meaning glance at Terry, "I'm unable to
undertake any tours without his assistance. So if we--er--arrange
anything, Mr. Barrymore will be of our party."
"Unfortunately I have an engagement in South Af--" began Terry, when
the parasol of the third member of the party (the one who had lagged
behind, stopping to examine, or seeming to examine a rose-bush) was
laid back upon her white muslin shoulders.
Somehow Terry forgot to finish his sentence, and I forgot to wonder
what the end was to be.
She was only a tall, white girl, simply dressed; yet suddenly the little
garden of the Châlet des Pins, with its high wall draped with crimson
bougainvilla, became a setting for a picture.
The new vision was built on too grand a scale for me, because I stand

only five foot eight in my boots, while she was five foot seven if she
was an inch, but she might have been made expressly for Terry, and he
for her. There was something of the sweet, youthful dignity of
Giovanni Bellini's Madonnas of the Trees about the girl's bearing and
the pose of the white throat; but the face was almost childlike in the
candour and virginal innocence of its large brown eyes. The pure
forehead had a halo of yellow-brown hair, burnished gold where the
sun touched it; the lips were red, with an adorable droop in the corners,
and the skin had that flower-fairness of youth which makes older
women's faces look either sallow or artificial. If we--Terry and I--had
not already divined that the auburn lady got her complexion out of
bottles and boxes, we would have known it with the lifting of that white
girl's parasol.
Can a saintly virgin on a golden panel look sulky? I'm not sure, but this
virgin gave the effect of having been reluctantly torn from such a
background, and she looked distinctly sulky, even angelically cross.
She had not wanted to come into my garden, that was plain; and she
lagged behind the others to gaze at a rose-bush, by way of a protest
against the whole expedition. What she saw to disapprove of in me I
was at a loss to guess, but that she did disapprove was evident. The
dazzling brown eyes, with the afternoon sun glinting between their
thick dark fringes, hated me for something;--was it my existence, or my
advertisement? Then they wandered to Terry, and pitied, rather than
spurned. "You poor, handsome, big fellow," they seemed so say, "so
you are that miserable little man's chauffeur! You must be very
unfortunate, or you would have found a better career. I'm so sorry for
you."
"Do sit down, please," I said, lest after all it should occur to Terry to
finish that broken sentence of his. "These chairs will be more
comfortable if I straighten their backs up a little. And this seat round
the tree isn't bad. I--I'll tell my servant to send out tea--we were going
to have it soon--and we can talk things over. It will be pleasanter."
"What a lovely idea!" exclaimed the auburn lady. "Why, of course we
will. Beechy, you take one of those steamer-chairs. I like a high seat

myself. Come, Maida; the gentlemen have asked us to stay to tea, and
we're going to."
Beechy--the little brown girl--subsided with a babyish meekness that
contradicted a wicked laughing imp in her eyes, into one of the chaises
longues which I had brought up from its knees to a sort of "stand and
deliver" attitude. But