The road mounted continuously, with a gentle incline, weaving its grey thread round the blind face of the mountain, and suddenly, turning a shoulder of rock we came upon the Prince's car which we had fancied many kilometres in advance. The big red chariot was stationary, one wheel tilted into the ditch at the roadside, while Dalmar-Kalm and his melancholy chauffeur were straining to rescue it from its ignominious position.
Our Panhard had been going particularly well, as if to justify itself in its employers' eyes after its late slip from rectitude. "She" was taking the hill gaily, pretending not to know it from the level, and it did seem hard to play the part of good Samaritan to one marked by nature as a Levite. But—noblesse oblige, and—honour among chauffeurs.
Terry is as far from sainthood as I am, and I knew well that his bosom yearned to let Dalmar-Kalm stew in his own petrol. Nevertheless, he brought the car to anchor without a second's hesitation, drawing up alongside the humiliated red giant. Amid the exclamations of Mrs. Kidder, and the suppressed chuckles of the enfante terrible, we two men got out, with beautiful expressions on our faces and dawning haloes round our heads, to help our hated rival.
Did he thank us for not straining the quality of our mercy? His name and nature would not have been Dalmar-Kalm if he had. His first words at sight of the two ministering angels by his side were: "You must have brought me bad luck, I believe. Never have I had an accident with my car until to-day, but now all goes wrong. For the second time I am en panne. It is too much. This viper of a Joseph says we cannot go on."
Now we began to see why the Prince's chauffeur had acquired the countenance of a male Niobe. Wormlike resignation to utter misery was, we had judged, his prevailing characteristic; but hard work, ingratitude, and goodness knows how much abuse, caused the worm to turn and defend itself.
"How go on with a change-speed lever broken short off, close to the quadrant?" he shrilled out in French. "And it is His Highness who broke it, changing speed too quickly, a thing which I have constantly warned him against in driving. I cannot make a new lever here in a wilderness. I am not a magician."
"Nor a Félicité," I mumbled, convinced that, had my all-accomplished adjutant been a chauffeur instead of a cook, she would have been equal to beating up a trustworthy lever out of a slice of cake.
"Be silent, brigand!" roared the Prince, and I could hardly stifle a laugh, for Joseph is no higher than my ear. His shoulders slope; his legs are clothespins bound with leather; his eyes swim in tears, as our car's crankhead floats in an oil bath; and his hair is hung round his head like many separate rows of black pins, overlapping one another.
"We shall save time by getting your car out of the ditch, anyhow," suggested Terry; and putting our shoulders to it, all four, we succeeded after strenuous efforts in pushing and hauling the huge beast onto the road. I had had no idea that anything less in size than a railway engine could be so heavy.
There was no question but that the giant was helpless. Terry and Joseph peered into its inner workings, and the first verdict was confirmed. "There's an imperfection in the metal," said expert Terry. In his place, I fear I should not have been capable of such magnanimity. I should have let the whole blame rest upon my rival's reckless stupidity as a driver.