The Princess Passes | Page 8

breezily returned.
"Ah, I thought you would enjoy it, when--as they say of babies--you 'began to take notice.' The other night, of course, you were a little absent-minded. Besides, it was dark, and the streets were dull and empty. A motor is just as nice as a horse, isn't it? Do say so, if only to please me."
Now I knew why the victims of the Inquisition told any lie which happened to come handy. I said that it was marvellous how soon the thing got hold of one; and Molly's mushroom reared itself proudly. "That is because you are so brave," said the poor, deceived girl. "Of course it's having been a soldier, and all that. People who've been in battle wouldn't think anything of a first motor experience ("Oh, wouldn't they?" I inwardly chortled). But, do you know, Lord Lane, I've actually seen men who were quite brave in other ways, feel a little queer the first time they drove in an automobile through traffic, or even in quiet country roads? I don't suppose you can understand it."
"I couldn't," I replied valiantly, "were not imagination the first ingredient of sympathy. But--er--don't you think that omnibus in front is rather large--near, I mean? You mustn't exert yourself to talk, you know, for my sake, if you need to give your whole attention to driving."
"I like to talk. It's no exertion at all," said Molly, and I fancy I responded with some base flattery, though by this time that smile of mine was so hard you could have knocked it off with a hammer.
"The first day I went through traffic," she continued, "my toes had the funniest sensation, as if they were turning up in my shoes. One seemed to come so awfully near everything, without any horses in front."
At this very moment my own toes happened to feel as if they were pasted back on my insteps; yet I laughed heartily at the suggestion, and to my critical ear there was only a slight hollowness in the ring, although before us now loomed a huge railway van. It was loaded with iron bars, their rusty ends hanging far out and sagging towards the roadway, enough to frighten the gentlest automobile. Ours seemed far from gentle, and besides, we could not possibly stop in time to avoid impalement on the iron spikes. Molly and I, if not Jack and the chauffeur, must surely die a peculiarly unpleasant and unnecessary death, in the morning of our lives, just as other more fortunate people were starting out, safe and happy in exquisitely beautiful omnibuses, to begin their day's pleasure. And Molly believed, because I had been in a few battles, with nothing worse than a bee-like buzzing of some innocent bullets in my ears, that I should be callous in a motor car.
However, the bravest soldiers are those who feel fear, and fight despite it. I maintain that I deserved a Victoria Cross for the grim smile which did not leave my lips as I braced myself for the death-dealing blow. But, as in a dream one finds without surprise that the precipice, over which one is hanging by an eyebrow, obligingly transforms itself into a bank of violets, so did the dragon which had been whirling us to destruction magically change into a swan-like creature skimming just out of harm's way.
I now reflected, with a vague sense of self-disgust, that, instead of being glad to leave the world which had denied me Helen, I had felt distinctly annoyed at the necessity, had not given a thought to my lost love, and had been thankful for the mere gift of life without her.
"I'm so glad you don't think I'm reckless," said Molly, as quietly as though we had not passed through a crisis; and indeed to this day I do not believe she would admit that we had.
"I'm really very careful; Jack says I am. He takes tremendous risks sometimes, or at least it seems so when you're not driving. You'll see the difference when he's in front."
I refrained from comment, but I had never valued Jack's friendship less, and I was in the act of concocting a telegram from Locker which might recall me to London, when from the speed of the Scotch express we slowed down to a pace which would have been mean even for a donkey. We continued this rate of progression for a peaceful but all too brief interval; then in the line of traffic opened a narrow canal which I hoped might escape Molly's eye. But there was no such luck. She saw; we leaped into it, raced down it, and before I could have said "knife," or any other equally irrelevant word of one syllable, we had left everything else behind.
I expected to be (to put it