The strong snake shadows shall bind you,
The swords of the stars shall blind you,
And the terrible, terrible bells of the sea shall crash and cry,
The bells of the sea shall ring you out from under the sky
In a lost grave to lie
Under the ashes of space.
Mr. Banner Hope, although he wanted to be a Blonde Beast, was of the type that is inevitably made use of. He knew how to drive a Ford car. He was known to know how. He therefore found it impossible to demur when Avery Bird asked him kindly next day if he didn’t want to drive. It is, as everyone knows, impossible to look personally dangerous and daring when driving a Ford. You have to sit up straight and there is no spare room for your knees. These things give you a mincing, bourgeois look. The lady seated beside the driver of a Ford, whoever she may be, cannot help looking like the driver’s lawful wife, or at worst, his lawful sister. Conversely, in a racing car with a steering wheel that bends paternally over the indolently prostrate driver, even an aunt looks painted.
Avery Bird had first asked Edward Williams if he could drive a Ford. Edward could not even have driven a donkey. He hoped that his inefficiency was a mark of temperament.
Rhoda Romero sat next to Mr. Hope, telling him of her first love adventure and criticising his driving in alternate breaths. Mrs. Melsie Stone Ponting only travelled in automobiles in order to be kissed. As soon as she was settled in the car between Avery and Edward she began obviously discussing with herself which man’s arm to wear round her waist. Edward hardly counted with her as a man, still, he was unattached. She looked from side to side but there seemed to her to be no answer in Edward’s eyes. So she leaned against Mr. Bird and said, “Now let’s enjoy ourselves,” as they started.
The Ford seemed to Edward to be a sun round which the golden planets of the hills revolved. Except for a lapse into greenness after the rains, California hills are always golden; sometimes rose-gold, sometimes lemon-gold. Now the rains were almost forgotten as the travellers drove inland, but there was a faint dream of green on some of the slopes, a glaze or transparency of green laid lightly on the glowing golden hills. And, besides this dream of color, always there is a sort of dream of air between you and the hills of California, a veil of unreality in the intervening air. It gives the hills the bloom that peaches have, or grapes in the dew.