He stopped because the flying universe seemed to stop. Charging hedgerows came to a halt, as if challenged by the bugle. The racing forests stood rigid. The last few tottering houses stood suddenly at attention. For a noise like a pistol-shot from the car itself had stopped all that race, as a pistol-shot might start any other.
The driver clambered out very slowly, and stood about in various tragic attitudes round the car. He opened an unsuspected number of doors and windows in the car, and touched things and twisted things and felt things.
“I must back as best I can to that there garrige, sir,” he said, in a heavy and husky tone they had not heard from him before.
Then he looked round on the long woods and the last houses, and seemed to gnaw his lip, like a great general who has made a great mistake. His brow seemed as black as ever, yet his voice, when he spoke again, had fallen many further degrees toward its dull and daily tone.
“Yer see, this is a bit bad,” he said. “It’ll be a beastly job even at the best plices, if I’m gettin’ back at all.”
“Getting back,” repeated Dalroy, opening the blue eyes of a bull. “Back where?”
“Well, yer see,” said the chauffeur, reasonably, “I was bloody keen to show ’im it was me drove the car and not ’im. By a bit o’ bad luck, I done damage to ’is car. Well–if you can stick in ’is car–”
Captain Patrick Dalroy sprang out of the car so rapidly that he almost reeled and slipped upon the road. The dog sprang after him, barking furiously.
“Hump,” said Patrick, quietly. “I’ve found out everything about you. I know what always bothered me about the Englishman.”
Then, after an instant’s silence, he said, “That Frenchman was right who said (I forget how he put it) that you march to Trafalgar Square to rid yourself of your temper; not to rid yourself of your tyrant. Our friend was quite ready to rebel, rushing away. To rebel sitting still was too much for him. Do you read Punch? I am sure you do. Pump and Punch must be almost the only survivors of the Victorian Age. Do you remember an old joke in an excellent picture, representing two ragged Irishmen with guns, waiting behind a stone wall to shoot a landlord? One of the Irishmen says the landlord is late, and adds, ‘I hope no accident’s happened to the poor gentleman.’ Well, it’s all perfectly true; I knew that Irishman intimately, but I want to tell you a secret about him. He was an Englishman.”