One morning I received a cheque for nine hundred dollars from Widgeon & Co.—payment for The Great Quietus, now running serially in the Uplift. Did I wave it in the air? Did I do a war-dance of delight? No. I looked at it with sober sadness. The struggle was over. Henceforward it was the easy money, the work that brought in ten times its meed of reward. Alas! how I was doomed to prosperity! I banked the cheque with a heavy heart.
Always was it thus. I vowed each book would be my last. I would drop out of the best-seller writing game, take to the country and raise calves. Then, sooner or later the desire would come to leap into the lists once more. There was usually a month’s boredom between books, and I would go at it again. “Perhaps,” I would say, “I’ll be able to write a failure this time.”
So, having got The Great Quietus off my hands already, I was having this feeling of energy going to waste. One day then, as I walked along the Avenue de la Grande Armée, I happened to stop in front of an automobile agency. There in the window was displayed the neatest voiturette I had ever seen. It had motor-bicycle wheels, a tiny tonneau for two, an engine strong enough for ordinary touring. It was called the Baby Mignonne, and I fell in love with it on the spot.
As I was admiring the dainty midget two American women stopped in front of the window.
“Isn’t it just the cutest thing?” said one.
“Isn’t it just a perfect darling?” said the other.
Then they passed on, leaving me tingling with pride at their verdict; for on the spur of the moment I had made up my mind that this diminutive runabout should belong to me. Ha! that was it. I was seeking for a new character in which to express my energy. Well, I would become a dashing motorist in a leather cap and goggles, swishing along in my Baby Mignonne. Yet I hesitated a moment.
The price was thirty-eight hundred francs. That would not leave much out of my forty-five. It seemed a little indiscreet in a man who had been fighting the wolf so long to spend the first decent bit of money he made in an automobile; a man who lived in a garret, whose wardrobe was not any too extensive, and whose wife, that very morning, had finished a hat for winter wear with her own hands. Ah! now I came to think of it, she had looked so pale leaning over her cherry ribands. Now I understood my sudden impulse. It was for her I was buying it; so that I might drive her out; so that she might get lots of fresh air; so that the roses might bloom in her cheeks again. With a sense of splendid virtue, I said to the agent: “I’ll take it.”
Then I halted: “But I don’t know how to drive one,” I said prudently. “How do I know I can get a chauffeur’s certificate?”
“Ah,” said the agent, “that was easy. There was a school for chauffeurs next door, where for a hundred francs they qualified you for the licence.”