Then Pugeot, far more delighted than he, dragged him away.
It was now nearly one o'clock, and downstairs they had luncheon, of a sort, and a bottle of cliquot, of a sort.
"You came in with two hundred and you are going out with nine," said Pugeot. "I am so jolly glad—you have the luck. When we've finished we'll go for a great tearing spin and get the air. You'd better get a cap somewhere; that straw hat will be blown to Jericho. You've never seen Randall drive? He beats me. We'll run round to my rooms and get coats—the old car is a Dragon-Fly. I want to show you what a Dragon-Fly can really do on the hard high-road out of sight of traffic. Two Benedictines, please."
They stopped at Scott's, where Simon invested in a cap; then they went to Pugeot's rooms, where overcoats were obtained. Then they started.
Pugeot was nicknamed the Baby—Baby Pugeot—and the name sometimes applied. Mixed with his passion for life, he loved fresh air and a good many innocent things, speed amongst them. Randall, the chauffeur, seemed on all fours with him in the latter respect, and the Dragon-Fly was an able instrument. Clearing London, they made through Sussex for the sea. The day was perfect and filled for miles with the hum of the Dragon-Fly. At times they were doing a good seventy miles, at times less; then came the Downs and a vision of the sea—seacoast towns through which they passed picking up petrol and liquid refreshments. At Hastings, or somewhere, where they indulged in a light and early dinner, the vision of Cerise, always like a guardian angel, arose before the remains of the mind of Simon, and her address. He wanted to go there at once, which was manifestly impossible. He tried to explain her to Pugeot, who at the same time was trying to explain a dark-eyed girl he had met at a dance the week before last and who was haunting him. "Can't get her blessed eyes out of my head, my dear chap; and she's engaged two deep to a chap in the Carabineers, without a cent to his name and a pile of debts as big as Mount Ararat. She won't be happy—that's what's gettin' me; she won't be happy. How can she be happy with a chap like that, without a cent to his name and a pile of debts? Lord, I can't understand women, they're beyond me. Waiter, confound you! do you call this stuff asparagus? Take it away! Not a cent to her name—and tied to him for years, maybe. I mean to say, it's absurd.... What were you saying? Oh yes, I'll take you there—it's only round the corner, so to speak. Randall will do it. The Dragon-Fly'll have us there in no time. Do you remember, was this Hastings or Bognor? Waiter, hi! Is this Hastings or Bognor? All your towns are so confoundedly alike there's no telling which is which, and I've been through twenty. Hastings, that'll do; put your information down in the bill—if you can find room for it. You needn't be a bit alarmed, old chap, she'll be there all right. You said you sent her those flowers? Well, that will keep her all right and happy. I mean to say, she'll be right—absolutely—I know women from hoof to mane. No, no pudding. Bill, please."
Then they were out in the warm summer twilight listening to a band. Then they were getting into the car, and Pugeot was saying to Simon:
"It's a jolly good thing we've got a teetotum driver. What you say, old chap?"
Then the warm and purring night took them and sprinkled stars over them, and a great moon rose behind, which annoyed Pugeot, who kept looking back at it, abusing it because the reflection from the wind-screen got in his eyes. Then they burst a tyre and Pugeot, instantly becoming condensedly clever and active and clear of speech, insisted on putting on the spare wheel himself. He had a long argument with Randall as to which was the front and which was the back of the wheel—not the sideways front and back, but the foreways front and back, Randall insisting gently that it did not matter. Then the wheel on and all the nuts re-tested by Randall—an operation which Pugeot took as a sort of personal insult; the jack was taken down, and Pugeot threw it into a ditch. They would not want it again as they had not another spare wheel, and it was a nuisance anyhow, but Randall, with the good humour and patience which came to him from a salary equal to the salary of a country curate, free quarters and big tips and perquisites, recovered the jack and they started.
A town and an inn that absolutely refused to serve the smiling motorists with anything stronger than "minerals" was passed. Then ten miles further on the lights of a town hull down on the horizon brought the dry "insides" to a dear consideration of the position.