The Princess Passes | Page 9

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 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 Mercédès 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