Part 8 (1/2)
Well, I was driving for an English company at that time, the Vezey they called themselves, though Wheezy would have been the better name. Such a box of tricks I do believe was never put upon a cha.s.sis before or since. It took two of us to start the engine in the morning, and the same number to persuade her to leave off firing at night. The works manager, Mr. Nathan, whose Christian name was Abraham, said that she'd done eighty miles an hour with him easily; but the only time I got her over fifty she broke her differential by way of an argument, and nothing but a soft place in a hayfield saved me from the hospital. All of which, of course, was good advertis.e.m.e.nt for the firm--and, truly, if it came to making a noise in the world, why, you could hear their car a good quarter of a mile away.
This was the flier I took over to France and tried to break in upon the fine roads we all know so well. As I finished the race almost before I began it, the less said about the affair the better--but I shall never forget that Paris to Vienna meeting, and I shall never forget it because of my friend Ferdinand,[1] one of the best and bravest who ever turned a wheel, and the right winner of that great prize, but for the woman who said ”No,” and said it so queerly and to such effect that a magician out of the story-books couldn't have done it better.
I liked Ferdinand, liked him from the start. A better figure of a man I shall never see; six feet to an inch, square set and wonderfully muscular. His hair was dark and ridiculously curly, so much so that talk of the ”irons and brown paper” was the standing joke amongst the racing men in Paris, who knew no more of him than that he was an Italian by birth and had spent half his life in America. For the rest, he spoke English as well as I did, and I never knew whether Ferdinand was his real name, or one he took for the racecourse--nor did I care.
They say that there is no cloud without a silver lining--a poor consolation in a thunderstorm when your hood is at home and the nearest tree is three miles away. There had been a thunderstorm, I remember, on the morning I met poor Ferdinand, and my batteries had refused to hand out another volt, notwithstanding the plainest kind of speech in which I could address them. Just in the middle of it, when the rain was running in at the neck and out at the ankles, and I was asking myself why I wasn't a footman in yellow plush breeches, what should happen but that a great red car came loping up on the horizon, like some mad thing answering to the lightning's call--and no sooner was it a mile distant than it was by me, so to speak, and I was listening to my friend Ferdinand for the first time.
”Halloa, and what's taken your fancy in these parts?” he asked in a cheery voice. I told him as plainly.
”This musical box don't like the thunder,” said I; ”she's turned sour.”
”Are you stopping here for the lady, or do you want to get back to Paris?”
”Oh,” says I, ”I haven't taken a lease of this particular furlong, if that's what you mean.”
”Then I'll give you a tow,” says he, and without another word, he got down from his seat and began to make a job of it. We were at Vendreux half an hour afterwards, and there we breakfasted together in the French fas.h.i.+on. That meal, I always say, was the luckiest friend Ferdinand ever ate.
He told me a lot about himself and a lot about his car; how he had been everything in America, from log-roller in the backwoods to cook in the Fifth Avenue palaces; how he met Herr Jornek, the designer of the Modena car, on a trip to St. John's to explore Grand River, and how he had come back to Europe to drive it in the big race. His luck, he said, had been out in New York because of a woman; to get far away from that particular lady was the inducement which carried him to Europe.
Here was something to awaken my curiosity, as you may well imagine, and I asked him all sorts of questions about the girl; but to no good purpose. His interest was in the car, one of the first made by the famous Herr Jornek, and called the Modena after the factory in that town. He told me it was unlike any car on the market, and that new features of gearbox, ignition, and engine design would certainly stamp it a winner if no bad luck overtook him. This persistent talk about misfortune set me wondering, and I fell to questioning him a little more closely about his story, and especially that part of it which concerned the woman.
”Who is the lady, and how did she interfere with you?” I asked. He would say no more than that he had known her by half a dozen names over in America, and that she was formerly a dancer at the old Casino Theatre in New York.
”She's done everything,” he said: ”gone up in balloons, ridden horses astride at Maddison Square Gardens, played the cowboys' show with Buffalo Bill, and sailed an iceboat on the Great Lakes. Whenever she's out to win I'm out to lose. Make what you like of it, it's Gospel truth. As certain as I'm up for one of the big prizes of my life, the girl's there to thwart me. If I were what my schoolmaster used to call a fatalist, I'd say she was the evil prophetess who used to play ducks and drakes with the soldier boys at Athens. But I don't believe anything of the sort--I say it's just sheer bad luck, and that woman stands for the figure of it.”
I was troubled to hear him, and put many more questions. How did the girl thwart him? Was it just an idea, or had he something better to go upon? He did not know what to say; I could see it troubled him very much to speak of it.
”She puts it into my head that I shall lose, and lose I do,” he said; ”it's always been the same, and always will be. When I rode that great leaping horse, Desmond, and put him over the fences, she was in the arena with a bronco, and she just looked up to me as sweetly as a child, and said, ”Ferdy, your horse is going to fall next time,” and fall, sure enough, he did, and laid me on my bed for more than a month.
After that I rode the bicycle match against the Frenchman, Devereux, and there she was, dressed like a picture amongst the crowd, and smiling like an angel in the Spanish churches. When I nodded to her she called me back a moment, and just put in her pretty word.
”Ferdy,” she said, ”that Frenchman can't ride straight; he's going to run into you, Ferdy.” Will you believe it, we cannoned together at the last corner, and I was thrown so badly that although he walked his machine in I couldn't beat him.”
He was serious enough about it all, and I must say that his talk put some queer ideas into my head. I've never been a believer over-much in luck myself, holding that we make it or mar it for ourselves, and that what some call misfortune is nothing more or less than misdoing; but here was a tale to make a man think, and think I did while he ate his breakfast and went on to speak of his car almost as lovingly as a man speaks of the new girl he met for the first time yesterday. Just as we were leaving the hotel and he was getting back to his doleful manner a bit, I put in my word and I could see that he took it well enough.
”All said and done,” said I, ”there's a little matter of three thousand miles between you and the lady just at present. Whatever may have happened over yonder is hardly likely to happen in La Belle France, look at it how you like. You should think no more about it, Ferdinand.
You're to win this great race, and win it you certainly will if I'm a judge. Why, then, think about a woman at all?”
”Because,” he replied, and he was as grave as a judge at the moment, ”because I must; I've been thinking of her ever since I picked you up.
It's queer, Britten, but I do believe you're going to bring me luck, and that's as true as Gospel.”
”And true it shall be,” said I, ”if good wishes can do it, my boy.
Let's go and get the cars. My box of tricks will be melted down if I leave it in the sun any longer. Let's get back to Paris and have some fun; I'm sure that's what you're wanting.”
He did not object; and the storm having pa.s.sed, and my coil behaving itself properly now that the damp was off the contacts, we jogged along the road to Paris in company with many who were returning from their morning practice, and just a few amateurs out to see the fun. We had gone a mile, I suppose, when we met a girl driving one of the De Dion motor tricycles, and no sooner had I seen her than she went by with a flash and a nod; and I knew her for little Maisa Hubbard, of whom the town had been talking for three days past. Then I ran my car alongside Ferdinand's just to make a remark about it--but, will you believe me?--he was as pale as a sheet, and his eyes were staring right into vacancy, as though a ghost stood in his path, and he didn't know how to get by it.
”Why,” cried I, ”and what's up now?”
He brought himself to with an effort, closed his hand about the wheel, and then answered me:
”That's the girl, right enough,” he said; ”you saw her for yourself.”