My Friend the Chauffeur. C. N. Williamson

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СКАЧАТЬ themselves more easily if Barrymore and I were together.

      "Then can you both lunch with us to-morrow at one o'clock?"

      Quickly, before Terry could find time to object if he meditated doing so, I accepted with enthusiasm.

      Farewells were exchanged, and we had walked to the gate with the ladies—I heading the procession with Mrs. Kidder, Terry bringing up the rear with the two girls—when my companion stopped suddenly. "Oh, there's just one thing I ought to mention before you come to see us at the hotel," she said, with a little catch of the breath. Evidently she was embarrassed. "I introduced myself to you as Mrs. Kidder, because I'm used to that name, and it comes more natural. I keep forgetting always, but—but perhaps you'd better ask at the hotel for the Countess Dalmar. I guess you're rather surprised, though you're too polite to say so, my being an American and having that title."

      "Not at all," I assured her. "So many charming Americans marry titled foreigners, that one is almost more surprised—"

      "But I haven't married a foreigner. Didn't I tell you that I'm a widow? No, the only husband I ever had was Simon P. Kidder. But—but I've bought an estate, and the title goes with it, so it would seem like a kind of waste of money not to use it, you see."

      "It's the estate that goes with the title, for you, Mamma," said Beechy (she invariably pronounces her parent "Momma"). "You know you just love being a Countess. You're happier than I ever was with a new doll that opened and shut its eyes."

      "Don't be silly, Beechy. Little girls should be seen and not heard. As I was saying, I thought it better to use the title. That was the advice of Prince Dalmar-Kalm, of whom I've bought this estate in some part of Austria, or I think, Dalmatia—I'm not quite sure about the exact situation yet, as it's all so recent. But to get used to bearing the title, it seemed best to begin right away, so I registered as the Countess Dalmar when we came to the Cap Martin Hotel a week ago."

       "Quite sensible, Countess," I said without looking at Beechy-of-the-Attendant-Imps. "I know Prince Dalmar-Kalm well by reputation, though I've never happened to meet him. He's a very familiar figure on the Riviera." (I might have added, "especially in the Casino at Monte Carlo," but I refrained, as I had not yet learned the Countess's opinion of gambling as an occupation.) "Did you meet him here for the first time?"

      "No; I met him in Paris, where we stopped for a while after we crossed, before we came here. I was so surprised when I saw him at our hotel the very day after we arrived! It seemed such a coincidence, that our only acquaintance over on this side should arrive at the same place when we did."

      "When is a coincidence not a coincidence?" pertly inquired Miss Beechy. "Can you guess that conundrum, Cousin Maida?"

      "You naughty girl!" exclaimed her mother.

      "Well, you like me to be childish, don't you? And it's childish to be naughty."

      "Come, we'll go home at once," said the Countess, uneasily; and followed by the tall girl and the little one, she tottered away, sweeping yards of chiffon.

      "I do hope she won't wear things like that when she's in—ahem!—our motor-car," I remarked sotto voce, as Terry and I stood at the gate, watching, if not speeding, our parting guests.

      "I doubt very much if she'll ever be there," prophesied Terry, looking handsome and thoroughly Celtic, wrapped in his panoply of gloom.

      "Come away in, while I see if I can find you 'The harp that once through Tara's halls,' to play your own funeral dirge on," said I. "You look as if it would be the only thing to do you any good."

      "It would certainly relieve my feelings," replied Terry, "but I could do that just as well by punching your head, which would be simpler. Of all the infernal—"

      "Now don't be brutal!" I implored. "You were quite pleasant before the ladies. Don't be a whited sepulchre the minute their backs are turned. Think what I've gone through since I was alone with you last, you great hulking animal."

      "Animal yourself!" Terry had the ingratitude to retort. "What have I gone through, I should like to ask?"

      "I don't know what you've gone through, but I know how you behaved," I returned, as we walked back to the magnolia tree. "Like a sulky barber's block—I mean a barber's sulky block. No, I—but it doesn't signify. Hullo, there's the universal provider, carrying off the tray. Félicité, mon ange, say how you summoned that tea and those cakes and cream from the vasty deep?"

      "What Monsieur is pleased to mean, I know not," my fourteen-stone angel replied. "I visited with haste a friend of mine at the hotel, and I came back with the things—that is all. It was an inspiration," and she sailed away, her head in the air.

      Terry and I went into the house, for the sun had left the high-walled garden, and besides, the talk we were going to have was more suitable to that practical region, my smoking-room-study-den, than to the romantic shade of a magnolia tree.

      We unpocketed our pipes, and smoked for several minutes before we spoke. I vowed that Terry should begin; but as he went on puffing until I had counted sixty-nine slowly, I thought it simpler to unvow the vow before it had had time to harden.

      "A penny for your thoughts, Paddy," was the sum I offered with engaging lightness. "Which is generous of me, as I know them already. You are thinking of Her."

      Teddy forgot to misunderstand, which was a bad sign.

      "If it weren't for Her, I'd have got out of the scrape at any price," said he, bold as brass. "But I'm sorry for that beautiful creature. She must lead a beastly life, between a silly, overdressed woman and a pert minx. Poor child, she's evidently as hard up as I am, or she wouldn't stand it. She's miserable with them, I could see."

      "So you consented to fall into my web, rather than leave her to their mercy."

      "Not exactly that, but—well, I can't explain it. The die's cast, anyhow. I'm pledged to join the menagerie. But look here, Ralph, do you understand what you've let me in for?"

      "For the society of three charming Americans, two of whom are no doubt worth their weight in gold."

      "It's precisely their weight that's on my mind at this moment. You may know one or two little things, my dear boy, but among them motoring is not, otherwise when you were putting that mad advertisement into your pink rag, you would have stopped to reflect that a twelve-horse power car is not expected to carry five grown persons up airy mountains and down rushy glens. Europe isn't perfectly flat, remember."

      "Only four of us are grown up. Beechy's an Infant Phenomenon."

      "Infant be hanged. She's sixteen if she's a day."

      "Her mother ought to know."

      "She doesn't want any one else to know. Anyway, I'm big enough to make up the difference. And besides, my car's not a new one. I paid a thumping price for her, but that was two years ago. There have been improvements in the make since."

      "Do you mean to tell me that car of yours can't carry five people half across the world if necessary?"

      "She can, but not at an exciting speed; and Americans want excitement. Not only that, but you saw for yourself that they expect a handsome car of the latest make, shining with brass and varnish. Amateurs always do. What will they say when my world-worn old veteran bursts, or rather СКАЧАТЬ