The Princess Passes | Page 6

and sit
glued for days to the seat of a noisy, jolting, ill-smelling machine which
I hated, feeling (and looking), in my goggles and hairy coat, like a
circus monkey or a circus dragon.
Nevertheless, I could confess the motor car to my man with
comparative calmness. That I should fall was no doubt a
disappointment to him. As a conscientious snob and a cherisher of
conservative ideals, he could mention it to other valets without a blush.
The mules however, towards which the motor was to lead, was a
different thing; and while poor Locker excavated me from the motor
coat, my mind was busily devising means to keep the horrid secret of
the mule hidden from him forever.
There was but one way to do this.
"I suppose, me lord, I'm to travel with the 'eavy luggage, and take
rooms at the end of the journey," he suggested.
The crucial moment had come. If a man can 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