The Princess Passes | Page 9

mildly) as uncomfortable as I had been before my short respite, yet strange to say, this was not the case. I did not know what was the matter with me, but suddenly I seemed to be enjoying myself. The tension of muscles relaxed, as if a string which had held them tight--like the limbs of a Jumping Jack--had been let go. I leaned back against the crimson cushions of my seat with a new and singular sense of well-being. Once, as a volunteer in South Africa, I had felt the same when, after having a splinter of bone taken out, under chloroform, I had waked up to be told it was all over. This wasn't over, but somehow, I didn't want it to be.
We took Putney Bridge at a gulp, and swallowed the long hill to Wimbledon Common in the fashion of a hungry anaconda; but before we arrived at this stage a thing happened which unexpectedly raised my opinion of motor cars. It was in the Fullham Road that we glided close behind a hansom bowling along at a rattling pace. Traffic on our right prevented us from passing, and Molly had just remarked how vexing it was to be kept back by a mere hansom, when plunk! down went the little nag on his nose. It was one of those tumbles in which the horse collapses in a limp heap without any sliding, though he had been going fast downhill, and of course the hansom stopped dead. The whole scene was as quick as the flashing of a biograph. The driver struggled to keep his seat, clawing at the shiny roof of the cab; his fare, in a silk hat and pathetic frock coat, shot from the vehicle like a flying Mercury, and this time it seemed that nothing could keep us from telescoping the vehicle thus suddenly arrested a few feet ahead.
But I reckoned without Molly. Her little gloved hand, and the high-heeled American toys she had for feet, moved like lightning. Without any violent wrench, the car stopped apparently in less than its own length, and as, even thus, we were too close upon the cab, Molly threw a quick glance behind, then bade Merc��d��s glide gently backward.
With the fall of the horse, Jack rose in the tonneau, with the instinct of protection over Molly. But he said not a word till she had guided the car to safety, when he gave her a little congratulatory pat on the shoulder. "Good girl; that was perfect. Couldn't have been better," he murmured. We waited until we had seen that neither man nor horse was badly hurt, and then sped on again, with a certain respect for the motor rankling in my reluctant heart. Comparing its behaviour with that of an automobile, Hansom's ironically named "Patent Safety" had not a wheel to stand upon.
When we were clear of Kingston, and winging lightly along the familiar Portsmouth Road, with its dark pines and purple gleams of heather, I began to feel an exhilaration scarcely short of treacherous to my principles. We were now putting on speed, and running as fast as most trains on the South-Western, yet the sensation was far removed from any I had experienced in travelling by rail, even on famous lines, which give glorious views if one does not mind cinders in the eye or the chance of having one's head knocked off like a ripe apple. I seemed to be floating in a great opaline sea of pure, fresh air; for such dust as we raised was beaten down from the tonneau by the screen, and it did not trouble us. Our speed appeared to turn the country into a panorama flying by for our amusement; and yet, fast as we went, to my surprise I was able to appreciate every feature, every incident of the road. Each separate beauty of the way was threaded like a bead on a rosary.
Here was Sandown Park, which I had regarded as the goal of a respectable drive from town, with horses; but we were taking it, so to speak, in our first stride. Esher was no sooner left behind than quaint old sleepy Cobham came to view; between there and Ripley was but a gliding step over a road which slipped like velvet under our wheels. Then a fringe of trees netted across a blue, distant sea of billowing hills, and a few minutes later we were sailing under Guildford's suspended clock.
It was somewhere near the hour of one when Molly brought the car gently to a standstill by the roadside, and announced that she would not go a yard further without lunch. The chauffeur successfully took up the part of butler at a moment's notice, busying himself with the baskets, spreading a picnic cloth under