"You know perfectly well I shouldn't dream of leaving you here, perhaps
to be murdered," whimpered she. "Where you stay, I stay."
She had the air of an elderly female Casabianca.
As for Miss Randolph, I adored her when she bade me go with her to
investigate what lay behind the wall, and told Talleyrand off for
sentinel duty over Aunt Mary and the car in the road.
At first sight the wall seemed a blank one, but I found a large gate,
pushed it open, and we walked into the darkness of a great farmyard. Not
a glimmer showed the position of the house, but a clatter of hoofs and a
chink of light guided us towards a stable, where a giant man with
aquiline face was rubbing down a rusty and aged horse. He started and
fixed a suspicious stare on me, and I daresay that I was a forbidding
figure in my dirty leather clothes, with smears of oil upon my face. His
expression lightened a little at sight of my companion, but he was
inflexible in his refusal to drive us anywhere. His old mare had cast a
shoe on her way home just now; he would not take her out again. Could
he, then, Miss Randolph asked, give us rooms for the night, and food? As
to that he was not sure, but would consult his wife. He tramped before
us to the big dark house, put down his lantern in the hall, opened a
door, and ushered us into a dark room, following and closing the door
behind him. The room was airless and heavy with the odour of cooking.
The darkness was intense, and from the midst of it came a strange sound
of jabbering and bleating which for the life of me I couldn't
understand. I felt Miss Randolph draw near me as if for protection, then
with the scratch of a match and a flicker from a lamp which the farmer
was lighting, was revealed the cause of the weird sounds. Seated by the
stove was a pathetically old woman, with pendulous chin and rheumy eyes.
Swinging her palsied head from side to side, she jabbered and bleated
incoherently to herself, being abandoned to this plague of darkness
doubtless from motives of economy.
The farmer's wife appeared, and after much discussion it was arranged
that the ladies could have a double-bedded room, and there was a small
one that would do for Monsieur Talleyrand; but the _mecanicien_ would
have to sleep in the barn, where he could have some clean straw. Supper
could be ready in half an hour, but we were not to expect the luxuries
of a hotel.
The farmer and I carried the ladies' hand-luggage upstairs into a
mysterious dim region, where all was clean and cold. I had a flickering,
candle-lit vision of a big white room, with an enormously high bedstead,
bare floor, a rug or two, a chair or two, a shrine, and a washhand-stand
with a knitted cover, one basin the size of a porridge-bowl containing a
thing like a milk-jug. Then I set down my burden and departed to wheel
the great helpless car into the farmyard, and wash my hands with
Hudson's soap in a trough under a pump outside the kitchen.
Meanwhile preparations for supper went on, and as I was hungrily hoping
for scraps when my betters should have finished, who should pop out but
that Angel to say that supper was ready, and would I eat with them! I
had been working _so_ hard and must be starved. If she had guessed how I
longed to kiss her she would have run away indoors much faster than she
did.
There was soup, chicken, an omelette, and cheese. Trust a
Frenchwoman--even the humblest--to turn out an excellent meal on the
shortest notice. Miss Randolph smiled and beamed on them, so that in
five minutes the farmer and his wife were her willing slaves. She was
delighted with the "adventure," as she called it, declaring that the
whole thing would be the greatest fun in the world. She was glad that
the horrid tyre had come off, as it gave her the chance, which she would
never have had otherwise, of studying French peasant life at first hand.
Aunt Mary was called in from outside and acquiesced, as she always did,
in the arrangements made by her impetuous niece; the farmer and I had
pushed the German car inside the gate and left it; but Talleyrand was
fussy about getting proper cover for his smart Pieper, and was not
satisfied until he had housed it in a dry barn near the house.
After supper I strolled out into the night, trying, with a pipe between
my lips, to think out the details of an alluring new plan which had
flashed into my mind.
"Flashed" there, do I say? Forced, rammed in, and pounded down expresses
it better. Will you believe it, during supper, that fellow--Eyelashes, I
mean--had had the audacity to urge upon Miss Randolph that she must now
continue the tour on his car!
I was smoking and fuming in the dark, in a corner down by the gateway,
when I heard a whisper of silk (I suppose it's linings; I'd know it at
the North Pole as hers, now), and detected a shadow which I knew meant
Miss Randolph. She came nearer. I saw her distinctly now, for she was
carrying a lantern. At first I thought she was looking for me, but she
wasn't. She went straight to the car and stood glowering at it for a
minute, having set down the lantern. Then she took Something out of the
folds of her dress and seemed to feel it with her hand. "Oh, you won't
go, won't you?" she inquired sardonically. "You like to break your belts
and go dropping your chains about, just to give Brown all the trouble
you can, don't you, and keep us from getting anywhere? You think it's
enough to be beautiful, and you can be as much of a beast as you like.
But you're _not_ beautiful. You're horrid, and I hate you! Take that!"
Up went the Something in her hand; it glittered in the yellow light of
the lantern. If you will believe it, the girl had got a hatchet and was
_chopping at the car_. Her poor vicious little stroke did no great
damage, but she chipped off a big flake of varnish and left a white
gash.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, as if it had hurt her and not her great lumbering
dragon. "Oh, you deserve it, you know, and a lot more. But--but----" and
she gave a little gurgling sigh.
I had been on the point of bursting out with uncontrollable laughter,
but suddenly I ceased to find the thing funny. I couldn't lurk in ambush
and hear any more; I couldn't sneak away--even to spare her
feelings--and leave her there to cry, for I felt she was going to cry.
So I came out into the circle of lantern-light, shaking the tobacco from
my pipe.
"Why, Brown, is that you?" she quavered. "I--I didn't want anyone to see
me, and I wasn't crying about the car, but just _Because_--because of
everything. I found that hatchet, and--I couldn't help it. I'm sorry
now, though. It was mean of me to hit a thing when it's down, even if it
is a Beast. It does deserve to be _killed_, though. It's simply no use
trying to go on with such a thing--is it?"
Because of the Plan in my mind I replied gloomily that the prospect was
rather discouraging.
"Discouraging! It's impossible!" she cried. "I've been hoping against
hope, but I see that now. I _won't_ ask poppa to buy me another; it's
too ridiculous. So there's nothing left except to go on by train
everywhere, unless--you heard how kind Monsieur Talleyrand was about
offering to take us on his car."
In the lantern light I thought I saw that she was beginning to look
enigmatic, but I couldn't trust my eyes at this moment. There were a
good many stars floating before them--not heavenly--the kind I should
have liked to make Talleyrand see.
"Yes, miss, I heard," I said brutally, "and, of course, if you and your
aunt would like that, I could wire to Mr. Barrow, the gentleman who went
round the Chateau with us to-day, that I was free to take an engagement
with him and his daughter."
She turned on me like a flash. "Oh, is _that_ what you are thinking of?
Well--certainly you may consider yourself free--_perfectly_ free. You
are under no contract. Go! go to-morrow--or even to-night if you wish.
Leave me here with my car. I can go back to Paris, or--or somewhere."
"But I thought you were going on with the French gentleman?" I said.
"I should not think of going with him," she announced icily.
"You said----"
"I said he _invited_ me. I never said I meant to go; I couldn't have
said it. For I should _hate_ going with him. There would be no fun in
that at all. I want my own car or none. But that need not matter to you.
Go with your Barrows."
"Begging your pardon, miss, I don't want to go with any Barrows."
"But you said----"
"If you wished to get rid of me----"
"_I_ wish 'to get rid of' you! I don't repudiate my--business
arrangements in that way."
"May I stop on with you, then, miss?" I pleaded at my meekest. "I'll try
and do the best I can about the car."
"Oh, do you _really_ think there's any hope?" She clasped her hands and
looked at me as if I were an oracle. Her eyelashes are very long. I
wonder why they are so charming on her and so abominable on a Frenchman?
"I've got an idea in my mind, miss," said I, "that might make everything
all right."
"Brown," said she, "you are a kind of leather angel."
Then we both laughed. And I am afraid it occurred to her that the ground
we were touching was not calculated to bear a lady and her _mecanicien_,
for she turned and ran away.
It was not yet ten o'clock, and I had something better to do than crawl
into the bed of straw that had been offered me. It was not much more
than ten miles to Amboise, and opening the great gate as quietly as I
could, I stepped out upon the white road and set off briskly for the
town, my Plan guiding me like a big bright beacon.
What I meant to do--what I was meaning and wanting at this present
moment to do--is this.
Being now at Amboise, having knocked up the hotel porter on arriving, I
shall let poor old Almond sleep the sleep of the just until the earliest
crack of dawn. Then I shall wake him, have my Napier got ready--if that
hasn't been done overnight--pay him, press an extra tip into his not
unwilling palm, pack him off to England, home, and beauty, after which I
shall romp back to the sleeping farmhouse on my own good car.
My story to Miss Randolph will be that while in Blois yesterday I heard
from my master. He is called back to England in a great hurry, wants to
leave his car, and would be delighted to let it out on hire at
reasonable terms if driven by a good, responsible man--like me. I
suppose I shall have to name a sum--say a louis a day--or she'll suspect
some game.
She is sure to snatch at a chance, as a drowning man at a straw, and I
pat myself on the back for my inspiration. I am looking forward to a new
lease of life with the Napier.
The window grows grey; I must call Almond. How the Plan works out you
shall hear in my next. _Au revoir_, then.
Your more than ever excited friend,
Jack Winston.