The Princess Passes | Page 6

support existence without the girl he loves, thought I, surely it must be possible for him to live without a valet. "No, Locker," I said firmly. "I am to be Mr. and Mrs. Winston's guest, and we--er--shall have no fixed destination. I shall be obliged to leave you behind."
"Very good, me lord," returned Locker in a meek voice. "Very good, me lord; has you will. I do 'ope you won't suffer from dust, with no one to keep you in proper repair, as you might say. But no doubt it will be only for a short time."
Knowing that days, weeks, and even months might pass while I consorted with motors and mules, far from valets and civilisation, I was nevertheless toward enough to hint that Locker must be prepared for a wire at any time. I had often derived a quaint pleasure from the consciousness that he despised my bookish habits and certain unconventionalities not suited to a 'hearl'; but one must draw the line somewhere, and I drew it at the mule. I would give a good deal rather than Locker should suspect me of the mule.
It was arranged that we should leave from Jack's house in Park Lane, and as we wanted to reach Southampton early, our start was to be at nine o'clock. "In France," Jack had said to me, "we could reel off the distance almost as quickly as the train; but in our blessed land, with its twenty miles an hour speed limit, its narrow winding roads, chiefly used in country places as children's playgrounds, and its police traps, motoring isn't the undiluted joy it ought to be. The thing to prepare for is the unexpected."
At half-past eight at Jack's door, I bade an almost affectionate farewell to the last cabhorse with which for many wild weeks I should have business dealings. The untrammelled life before me seemed to be signalised by the lonely suit case which was the one article of luggage I was allowed to carry on the motor. A portmanteau was to follow me vaguely about the Continent, and I had visions of a pack to supersede the suit case, when my means of transport should be a mule. Sufficient for the motor was the luggage thereof, however, and when my neat leather case was deposited in Jack's hall, I was rewarded with Molly's approving comment that it would "make a lovely footstool."
We had breakfast together, as though nothing dreadful were about to happen, and I heartened myself up with strong coffee. By the time we had finished, and Molly had changed herself from a radiant girl into a cream-coloured mushroom, with a thick, straight, pale-brown stem, the Thing was at the door--Molly's idol, the new goddess, with its votive priest pouring incense out of a long-nosed oil can and waving a polishing rag for some other mystic rite.
This servant of the car answered to the name of Gotteland, and having learned from Jack that he had started life as a jockey in Hungary, I thought evil of him for abandoning the horse for the machine. He evidently belonged to that mysterious race of beings called suddenly into existence by a vast new industry; mysterious, because how or why a man drifts or jumps into the occupation of chauffeur is never explained to those who see only the finished article. Jack praised him as a model of chauffeury accomplishments, among which were a knowledge of seventeen languages more or less, to say nothing of dialects, and a temper warranted to stand a burst tyre, a disordered silencer, an uncertain ignition, and (incidentally) a broken heart--all occurring at the same time. Despite these alleged perfections, I distrusted the cosmopolitan apostate on principle, and was about to turn upon his leather-clad form a disapproving gaze, when I dimly realised that it would be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Instead, I smiled hypocritically as we "took a look" at the car before lending it our lives.
"I hope the brute isn't vicious; doesn't blow up or explode, or shed its safety valve, or anything," I remarked with a facetiousness which in the circumstances did me credit.
Gotteland answered with the pitying air of the professional for the amateur. "The one thing an automobile can't do, sir, is to blow up."
I was glad to hear this, in spite of the strong coffee lately swallowed, but on the other hand there were doubtless a great many other equally disagreeable things which it could do. Of course, if it were satisfied with merely killing me, neatly and thoroughly, I still felt that I should not mind; indeed, would be rather grateful than otherwise. But there were objections, even for a jilted lover, to being smeared along the ground, and picked up, perhaps, without a nose, or