A RACE FOR LIFE
The Vicar declared that he met Evelyn upon the road to Derby, "going
like a volcano at thirty miles an hour;" but this was a mere figure of
speech, for her little car, being of no more than ten horse-power could
not possibly accomplish such speeds; nor would the winding roads about
the Hall have permitted them to a larger motor. A reckless driver, if
recklessness were love of the delight of fast travel, Evelyn loved
horses too well to frighten them; and rarely did a coachman complain or
such wayfarers as she met upon her journey do anything but applaud her.
Indeed, Derbyshire had no more enchanting picture than that of this
dark-haired girl, superbly gowned, as she sat at the wheel of her
crimson car; while Bates, the proud _chauffeur_, gazed disdainfully,
from the dicky behind, upon all the world, as though to say, "You can't
beat her." And this was the more noble on Bates' part because Evelyn
had twice deposited him in the ditch since the car came home. "The
horrid thing will go round the corners so fast" had been her lament
after these mishaps. Bates added the pious prayer that he might go
round with the car on the next occasion.
Sometimes, of course, it would be Etta Romney who drove and not my Lady
Evelyn at all. These were mad, wild moods and came mostly at twilight
when the gloom of day crept upon the fields and the sun went down in
crimson splendor. Then the wild, mad dash down tempting hills would
scare the loiterers and send the jogging laborer to the shelter of the
hedges. Then a cloud of dust enveloped the flying car, and the figure
at the wheel might have stood for Melpomene with vine leaves in her
hair. "A rare 'un she be," the countrymen would say; "went by me like
a railway engine, dang 'un, her did."
Evelyn had been into Derby on the day the Vicar narrated the
misfortunes of his straw hat. Having done a little shopping, she set
out for the Hall a few minutes after the hour of twelve, by which time
the day had turned gloriously fine with a light wind from the east and
a bank of white clouds high beneath the azure, which promised welcome
interludes of shade. She had a journey of twenty-three miles before
her (for Melbourne Hall lies far from the little town of that name and
knows it not), and leisure enough in which to do it. Business, she
knew not of what nature, had carried her father to London nearly a week
ago. She would be alone until to-morrow, her own jailer, she said with
a pout, the mistress of hours by which she could profit so little. Her
mood, indeed, had become one of cynical indifference, tempered by the
reflection that this was the first visit the Earl had paid to London
since her escapade. What, she asked, if a word of that story came to
his ears even now? The weeks of safety inspired a sense of security
which circumstance hardly justified. She paled and trembled when she
asked herself what such a passionate man as her father would do if the
truth were discovered by him.
Here, truly, was no impulse to the delights of speed or to that
recklessness which the Vicar chided. Evelyn drove slowly, her thoughts
vagrant and wayward, her attitude that of one who has not pleasure
awaiting her at her journey's end. She had traversed over twenty miles
of the distance and was just looking out for that well-known landmark,
the spire of the village church, when a startled cry from the usually
phlegmatic Bates aroused her attention and called upon a
self-possession which rarely failed her.
"A horse and carriage--bolting behind us, your ladyship--put her on the
fourth--my God, he's coming right on top of us--quick, your ladyship--a
horse bolting----"
He stood up in the dicky and waved his arms and continued to cry, "A
horse bolting!" as though by repetition alone he would bring her to a
sense of danger. Evelyn, upon her part, cast one startled glance
behind her and instantly became aware of the situation. For down the
road, which sloped slightly toward them, a horse bolted madly in their
direction, swinging a light brougham from footpath to footpath and
leaving a dense cloud of dust to bear witness to the speed. So mad was
the gallop that the frightened beast, seen first at a distance perhaps
of six hundred yards, was no more than three hundred yards from them
when Evelyn opened the throttle of her car to the full and sent it
racing down the incline as it had never raced before. Fifteen, twenty,
twenty-five miles an hour the speed indicator registered, and still the
car appeared to be gaining speed. Behind, as though in vain pursuit,
the thundering sound of hoofs waxed louder; and once or twice in the
interludes of sounds, a man's voice could be heard crying to the horse
and to those in the car incoherent words in an unknown tongue.
"Let her go for God's sake, your ladyship--let her go--he's coming
up--keep to the right--don't mind the corner--we'll do it yet--" These
and many another exclamation fell from Bates' volcanic lips as he clung
to the dicky for dear life and tried to drive the mad horse into the
hedge by the wild waving of a spasmodic arm. His appeal to her to keep
to the right showed that he, at any rate, had not lost his head.
Instinctive habit sent the animal flying to the left-hand side of the
road as he would naturally be sent by any coachman. Though the
brougham lurched wildly, the terrified horse returned to his accustomed
place again and again, taking the corners in wide sweeps and increasing
his speed with his terror. A great raw bony brute that had been ridden
to hounds the previous winter, his gallop was that of a thoroughbred
over good grass lands. Even the ten horse-power car could not keep its
lead. Evelyn knew that he was overtaking her. The shadow of
catastrophe seemed to creep over her very shoulders. "Is he far off
now?" she would ask Bates despairingly.
The answer, many times repeated, began to be monotonous.
"Keep to the right, milady--don't mind the corner--I'll blow the horn
for you--now you're gaining a bit--oh, that's fine--let her go--we'll
do it yet, milady."
Evelyn, it may be, realized her own peril less than that of those in
the brougham. A man's cry, whatever reading of character might be
placed upon it, seemed to her an evidence of grave danger and piteous
fear. But for this, her own courage would have almost delighted in the
rare sensations of speed and flight and all the doubt of the ultimate
issue. Guiding her car with a brave hand, she was conscious of a
rushing wind upon her face; of hedges, fields, trees approaching,
disappearing, during that ominous race; of a voice speaking to her; of
a question many times repeated--"How will it end? Will they be
killed?" And yet the speed of it both excited and sustained her. She
swung round the corners as an arm upon a pivot; hugged a difficult path
with the skill of an old _mecanicien_, nursed her engine perfectly, was
never flurried, never hesitating, never fearful. That which she
dreaded was the long incline leading up to the gates of Melbourne Hall.
The mad horse would beat the car upon that, she thought. The
threatened thunder of his hoofs seemed so near to her now. She could
hear the man's voice plainly, and the tongue he spoke had a more
familiar sound.
The moment was critical enough. A gentle hill lay before her. She
knew that a horse galloping blindly would make nothing of it, but that
the little car must be slowed down sufficiently to render escape out of
the question. Had there been a footpath, she would have mounted it and
dared the consequences; but of path there was none. A man in her place
might have bethought him of slacking speed gradually and blocking the
road to the flying carriage. But Bates, her _chauffeur_, had never
been upon a horse in his life. He thought only of himself and the car.
"I could feel his nose down my back," he told the Servants' Hall
afterwards--to which the cook replied "Lor', Mr. Bates, how you must
have suffered!" He admitted that he had done so.
"She turned into the field better than Thery himself could have done,"
he declared, speaking of the driver of the Gordon Bennet car. "Just
when I was asking myself who'd come in for my Sunday clothes, round she
goes like a top and the carriage went flying by us at a jiffy."
The kitchen listened in awe.
"I always said as she was a thoroughbred," Williams, the groom,
remarked; and this opinion appeared to be general.
Evelyn had saved her car just as the excellent Bates described it.
Losing ground steadily upon the hill, the end of it all seemed at hand,
when she espied the open gate of a hay-field upon her right hand; and
taking her courage and the wheel in both her hands, she just touched
the car with the foot-brake and then swung it boldly through the
opening. A terrible lurch, a great bump over wagon-ruts and they were
at a standstill in grass growing to the height of their axles. The
bolting horse meanwhile went by like a shot from a bow, straight up the
hill which leads to the Hall. A turn of the road hid him from their
sight. They heard a loud crash and then all was still.
Evelyn sat, very pale and frightened, and trembling visibly at the
thought of that which must have happened on the hillside above them.
The engine of her car had stopped as they ran into the field and the
imperturbable Bates immediately leaped down from the dicky and made a
wild attempt to restart it.
"There wasn't a driver on the box, milady," he said, as though it were
the most natural remark in the world to make.
Evelyn answered by ordering him, almost angrily, to start the engine.
"We must go to them," she said, her heart beating fast as she spoke.
"I am sure there has been a dreadful accident. Be quick, Bates! Why
are you so foolish? Please start the engine at once."
"I was thinking of you, milady," the man said a little sullenly.
"There was two gents in the carriage. You mightn't like to see what
somebody will see when they go up there."
"Don't talk nonsense," she said firmly. "I am not a child, Bates. You
would make a coward of me. Let us go at once!"
Bates said no more but started the engine at once. Evelyn backed the
car from the field and drove slowly up the hill. She was greatly
excited and afraid, but her resolution to proceed remained unshaken.
Who had been in the carriage? What harm had befallen him or them? The
turn of the road answered her immediately. For there, white and
insensible by the side of the shattered brougham, lay Count Odin, the
Roumanian, and by him there knelt young Felix Horowitz, his friend,
ready to tell everyone that the Count was dead. Evelyn, however, knew
that he was not dead.
And tragedy, she said, had followed her even to the gates of Melbourne
Hall.