CHAPTER XI
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 mécanicien, 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 Théry 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.