"Ah," he cried, "here is our faithful friend once more. Good-day, Mr. Britten. I hope I see you well?"
"You see me next door to the devil," said I—for out here on the mountain side I didn't care a dump for him. Bluff, however, went for nothing that morning. I had met my match, and I knew it.
"Britten," says he, taking a big cigar from a case and lighting it with provoking deliberation. "Shall we make a truce, Britten?"
"Make what you like," says I. "This car has got to get to Paris to fetch my mistress. If a truce will do it, I'm taking some, right here."
He smiled again, but so softly that I could have hit him.
"Where is she hiding, Britten?" he asked, almost in a whisper. "Where has that very pretty lady chosen to conceal her charms? Come, tell me, my lad, and I'll give you five louis. What is the good of being so foolish?"
I didn't answer a word, and he took another look all round the hills. Luckily, if there was one coppice, there were twenty in that gorge, and when I saw him walking away to the wrong one, I thought I should burst out laughing on the spot. That, I am glad to say, I did not do; but calmly going on with my work, I had the new cover in presently and was ready to make a start. From that moment the drollery of the situation—for it was droll, as I live—began in dead earnest, and lasted right through a hot summer's day—until dusk came down, in fact, and the issue was over for good and all.
Can't you imagine just what happened, and see the irony of it all? Depict a great open chasm between the hills, little copses of pines everywhere, and more than one thicket; a white road winding through the valley, and two cars stuck up on that same.
Say that there was a fat Baron trotting to and fro like a dog hunting for rabbits; put down two tired and hungry chauffeurs, famished for want of meat and cursing their fate; do this, and add that they swore at both the sexes indifferently, and you'll have the thing to a tick. But I assure you that it's pleasanter to read about than to suffer; and any driver would admit as much.
Good Lord, what a day it was! The fat Baron, I should tell you, did not give up the hunt until near twelve o'clock; but when he had searched every thicket within a mile or more, he came back to us and deliberately made himself comfortable inside his car. As for me, I did not dare to move a step either way. If I had gone on, it would have been to have left Madame in the woods; while if I stayed, he stayed—and there you had it. And this game went on till dusk, mind you, and would have gone on longer but for the instinct which came to me quite suddenly like a thought dropped from the skies: that her ladyship had given us both the slip, after all, and would be already where the Baron Albert could not find her. This idea growing to an unalterable conviction decided me at last. I started my engine, mounted my box-seat, and without a word to either of them drove straight away to Brignoles—thence, without a question from any one, to Paris and my master.