He sighed. If he had told her a fairy tale she, like all the rest of the world in his past life, would have believed him. Now that he told the truth, he met with blank incredulity.
“I’m going to earn my living. I’m taking on a job as chauffeur.”
She stared at him. “A chauffeur—you?”
“Yes. Why not?”
Her mind ran over his intellectual face, his clothes, his manners, his talk—free and sometimes disconcertingly allusive, like that of the rare and impeccably introduced artists whom she had lodged—his books . . .
“Why—you’re a gentleman,” she gasped.
“Oh no. Not really. I’ve been all kinds of things in my time. Among them I’ve passed as a gentleman. But by trade I’m a chauffeur. I practically started life as a chauffeur—in Russia. For years I drove a Russian Prince all over Europe. Now there aren’t any more Russian Princes I’m going to drive the good people of Fanstead to railway stations and dinner parties.”
“Well, I never,” said Mrs. Pettiland.
“There’s a young man—an ex-officer—Radnor by name, in Fanstead—who has just set up a motor garage.” “He’ll fail,” said Mrs. Pettiland. “They all do. Old Hetherington of ‘The Bull’ has all the custom.”
“With one rickety death-trap for hire and a fool of a mechanic who has wrecked every car sent in for repairs for a radius of thirty miles. I offered Hetherington to teach him his business. You might as well sing ‘Il Trovatore’ to a mule. So I went to Radnor. He had just sacked a man, and with my invariable luck, I stepped in at the right moment. No, Mrs. Pettiland—” he swung his sound leg and looked at her, enjoying her mystification “—the reign of Hetherington is over. Radnor’s Garage is going to be the wonder of the countryside.”