Part 14

Deceiver.

P. S. It's to-morrow, for I forgot to post this, there were so many things "doing." Please forgive me. The car's splendid, and I am to christen her. We're going to have a kind of ceremony like a launching, and I have to think of a name for her, and throw wine on her bonnet. Sir Lionel is longing to get off on the tour, he says; and as he's to leave town for Warwickshire to-morrow, turning me over temporarily to the tender mercies of the good--(his sister)--I almost hope that after all Mrs. Senter mayn't have time to "sweedle" him into taking her with us, as I know she hopes to do.

We, by the way, are not to see his place until the burnt bit is mended. We're to avoid Warwickshire in starting out, go away up North as far as the Roman Wall, visit Bamborough Castle, where he thinks friends of his, who own it, will actually invite us to lunch, or something (it seems like a dream), and then stop in Warwickshire at the end of the tour, when all the dilapidations have been made good. The Dragon naturally expects me, not only to finish the trip, but to take up my residence at Graylees until next spring, when his plan is that his ward shall be presented. Oh, mice and men, and dragons, how aft your plans gang agley! Of course, mine depend altogether upon Ellaline. I hold myself ready for marching orders from her. But I must confess to you that, whether right or wrong, I don't look forward to the weeks of my duties as understudy with the same feelings I had when I was engaged to perform them.

Little did Sir Lionel guess what was in my mind this morning, when I asked if one could see most of England in a few weeks when motoring! But I may have to take my flight from the car, so to speak, unless Ellaline be detained for some reason. I'm expecting a letter from her any day now, and there may be definite news.

Good-bye, again, dearest.

VIII

AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER

Royal Hotel, Chichester, July 17th

Brightest and Best: La Donna e automobile. I am "la donna"; and the most inward Me-ness of my Me e automobile.

Some people--Mrs. Norton, for instance--might say: "What on earth does the silly thing mean?" But you always know what I mean. You and I were born knowing quite a lot of nice little things like that, weren't we? Things we picked up during our various incarnations; things new souls haven't had time to collect, poor dears.

My automobiliness is the reason I've only sent you snippy "how-do-you-do and good-bye" notes, interspersed with telegrams, for the last few days, just thanking you for wise advice, and saying "Glad-you're-well; so-am-I."

You will guess from my very handwriting that I'm feeling more at home in life than I did when I wrote you last. And I can't help being pleased that Ellaline's adored one won't be able to leave his manoeuvres, to make her his own, till a fortnight or so later than she expected. That is, I can't help being glad, as the doctor thinks you ought to stop at Champel-les-Bains till after the first week of September, and we couldn't be together, even if I were back in Paris. You swear you didn't hypnotize him to say that? I would enjoy more peace of mind, while careering through England in Apollo, if I were certain.

Oh, that reminds me, I forgot to tell you what fun it was christening Apollo. I quite enjoyed it, and felt immensely important. Don't you think "Apollo" an appropriate name for such a magnificent car as I've described to you? The Sun God--Driver of the Chariot of the Sun? Sir Lionel likes it; but he says he isn't sure "The Cloud" wouldn't be a more appropriate name, because the car costs such a lot that "she" has a silver lining. I began by calling her "it," but he won't let me do that. He doesn't much mind my being amateurish, but he hates me to be disrespectful.

I am so dazzled by the motor and enchanted with the sport of motoring--as well as seeing things even more lovely than I hoped for--that I'm not worrying over Dick Burden and his mysterious hints about himself as a detective. Besides, when he and his aunt came to tea (you'll remember I told you in a scrap of a note that it was the day Sir Lionel went to Warwickshire, and how vexed Mrs. Senter was to find him gone), Mr. Dick made himself quite pleasant. He wasn't impertinent, or too admiring, or anything which a well-brought-up young Englishman ought not to be. Indeed, I thought by his manner that he wanted tacitly to apologize for his bad behaviour when we first met; so probably, when I fancied he looked wicked that night at Ennis's Rooms, it was because he wanted to sneeze. You have taught me to give everybody, except young men, the benefit of the doubt; but I don't see why one shouldn't give it to young men, too. I think they're rather easier to forgive, somehow, than women. Is that why they're dangerous? But D. B. could never be dangerous to me, in the sense of falling in love.

His aunt certainly wishes to throw us together; I suppose on account of Ellaline's money. She doesn't like girls, I'm sure, but would always be ready, on principle, to give first aid to heiresses. It is something to be thankful for that she hasn't grafted herself on to our party, as I feared she might; and though they're both going to stop at some country house near Southsea, and they "hope we may meet," I dare say I shan't be bothered by them again while I'm in England. I don't intend to worry. La donna e automobile!

I haven't properly described our start, or told you about the things I've seen en route, and I promised to tell you everything; so I'll go back to the beginning of the trip.

There was Apollo, throbbing with joy of life in front of the hotel door, at nine o'clock of a perfect English morning. There were statuesque, Ritzy footmen, gazing admiringly at the big golden-yellow car (that was one of the reasons I thought she should be named after the Sun God, she is so golden). There was Charu Chunder Bose, alias Young Nick, who would think it a sin against all his gods to dress as a chauffeur, and who continues to garb himself as a self-respecting Bengali--Young Nick, with his sleepy eyes, and his Buddha-when-young smile, about as appropriate on a motor-car as a baby crocodile. There was Sir Lionel waiting to tuck us in. There were we two females in neat gray motor dust-cloaks, on which the Dragon insisted; Mrs. Norton in a toque, which she wore as if it were a remote and dreaded contingency; your Audrie in a duck of an early Victorian bonnet, in which she liked herself better than in anything else she ever had on before. There, too, was our luggage, made to fit the car, and looking like the very last word of up-to-dateness--if you know what that look is.

Of course, it wasn't the first time I'd been out in the car, for I think I told you, the day Apollo was christened I had a spin; but it rained, and we went only through the Park. That was nothing. This morning we were bidding good-bye to London, and our pulses were beating high for the Tour. Young Nick drove on the christening day, but this time Sir Lionel took the driver's seat, with the brown idol beside him; and I saw instantly, by the very way he laid his hand on the steering-wheel, with a kind of caress--as a horse-lover pats a beloved mare's neck--that he and the golden car were in perfect sympathy.

We were starting early, because Sir Lionel had planned a good many things for us to see before dark; but early as it was, Piccadilly and Knightsbridge were seething with traffic. Motor-'buses like mad hippopotamuses; taxi-cabs like fierce young lions; huge carts like elephants; and other vehicles of all sorts to make up a confused medley of wild animals escaped from the Zoo. It looked appalling to mingle with, but our own private Dragon drove so skilfully, yet so carefully, that I never bit my heart once. Always the car seemed sentient, steering its way like a long, thin pike; then when the chance came, flashing ahead, dauntless and sure.

We went by a great domed palace--Harrod's Stores--and then over Putney Bridge, passing Swinburne's house, whose outside is as deceiving as an oyster-shell that hides a pearl; through Epsom, Charles the Second's "Brighton" (which I've been reading about in a volume of Pepys Sir Lionel has given me), to Leatherhead, along the Dorking Road, slowing up for a glimpse of Juniper Hall, glowing red as a smouldering bonfire behind a dark latticed screen of splendid Lebanon cedars. I dare say it's a good deal changed since dear little Fanny Burney's day, for the house looks quite modern; but then neither buildings nor the people who live in them show their age early in England.

Close under Box Hill we glided; and Sir Lionel pointed out a little path leading up on the left to George Meredith's cottage. Just a small house of gray stone it is (for I would get out and walk up part way to see it from far off, not to intrude or spy); and there that great genius shines out, a clear, white light for the world, like a beacon or a star.

Evidently Surrey air suits geniuses. Do you remember reading about Keats, that he wrote a lot of "Endymion" at Burford Bridge? It was only a little after ten o'clock when we passed the quaint-looking hotel there, but already at least a dozen motors were drawn up before it. I wanted to go in and ask if they show the room Lord Nelson used; but we had too many things to see.

Of course, I am always wishing for you, but I began to wish the hardest just as we came into this green, brackeny, fairyland of Surrey. It's the kind of country you love best; although I must say it was never planned for motors. Winding through those green tunnels which are the Surrey lanes, I felt as if, in some quaint dream, I were motoring on a tight-rope, expecting another car to want to pass me on the same rope--which naturally it couldn't!

It would have been much worse, though, if Young Nick had been driving. That little, smooth brown face of his looks as if its idol-simper hid no human emotions, and I believe if people and animals were perfectly flat, like paper dolls, so that they would do no harm to his car, he wouldn't mind how many he drove over. Luckily, however, they aren't flat, and the only thing earthly he adores, after his master, is his motor; so he is nice and cautious for its sake. But the Dragon thinks of everyone, and says there's no pleasure for him in motoring if he leaves a trail of distress or even annoyance along the road as he passes. He slows down at corners; he goes carefully round them; he almost walks Apollo in places where creatures of any kind may start out unexpectedly; and he blows our pleasant musical horn as if by instinct, never forgetting, as I'm sure I should do.

As we twisted and turned through the Surrey lanes, between Dorking and Shere, little children in red cloaks and tams appeared from behind hedges, looking like blowing poppies as they ran. And blue-eyed, gold-brown haired girls in cottage doorways, under hanging bowers of roses, were as decorative as Old Chelsea china girls. The red tiles of their roofs, as I turned back for one more glimpse, would already be half hidden in waves of green, but would just show up like beds of scarlet geraniums buried in leaves.

Shere was almost too beautiful to be real, with its rows of Elizabethan cottages whose windows twinkled at us with their diamond-shaped, diamond-bright panes, sparkling under their low, thatch-eyebrows, from between black oak beams. The Tudor chimneys were as graceful as the smoke wreaths that lazily spiraled above them, and the whole effect was--was--well, inexpressibly Birket Foster. I used to think he idealized; but then, I'd never seen anything of England but London, and didn't know how all English trees, cottages, and even clouds, are trained to group themselves to suit artists of different schools.

I kept wishing that you'd made me study architecture and botany, instead of languages and music. In justice to oneself, one ought, when travelling in England, to have at least a bowing acquaintance with every sort of architecture, and all families of flowers, to say nothing of trees, so that one might exclaim, as snobs do of royalties and celebrities: "Oh, she was the great granddaughter of So-and-So." "He married Lady This-and-That." Also, I find I need much more knowledge of literature than I have. This country is divided off into a kind of glorious chessboard, each square being sacred to some immortal author, playwright, or poet. The artists press them close, without overcrowding; and history lies underneath--history for every square inch.

"Twelve coffin deep," I quoted Kipling to myself, as my mind panted along Roman roads, and the Pilgrim's Way.