Chauffeur

11. The Dying Gladiator

She was waiting, when Armitage, who was leaning back in his seat in the most professional manner, shut off power under the porte cochère and glanced at her for directions.

"To Mrs. Van Valkenberg's," she said. "Do you know where she lives?"

"No, I don't, Miss Wellington."

"No matter, I'll direct you."

As they entered the Ocean Drive through an archway of privet, Miss Wellington indicated a road which dived among the hills and disappeared.

"Drive quite slowly," she said.

It was a beautiful road, dipping and rising, but hidden at all times by hills, resplendent with black and yellow and purple gorse, or great gray bowlders, so that impressions of Scotch moorlands alternated with those of an Arizona desert. The tang of September was in the breeze; from the moorlands which overlooked the jagged Brenton reefs came the faint aroma of burning sedge; from the wet distant cliff a saline exhalation was wafted. It was such a morning as one can see and feel only on the island of Newport.

As an additional charm to Anne Wellington, there was the tone of time about it all. From childhood she had absorbed all these impressions of late Summer in Newport; they had grown, so to speak, into her life, had become a part of her nature. She drew a deep breath and leaned forward.

"Stop here a moment, will you please."

They were at the bottom of a hollow with no sign of habitation about, save the roof of a villa which perched upon a rocky eminence, half a mile to one side.

"Will you get out and lift the radiator cover and pretend to be fixing something, McCall? I want to talk to you."

Without a word, Jack left his seat, went to the tool box and was soon viewing the internal economy of the car, simulating search for an electrical hiatus with some fair degree of accuracy.

The girl bent forward, her cheek suffused but a humorous smile playing about her face.

"McCall," she said, "I feel I should assure you at the outset that I am quite aware of certain things."

Armitage glanced at her and then quickly lowered his eyes. She gazed admiringly at his strong, clean face and the figure sharply defined by the close-fitting livery.

"Your name is not McCall and I have not the slightest idea that you are by profession a physical instructor, or a driver either."

Armitage unscrewed a wrench and then screwed the jaws back into their place.

"We are what conditions make us, Miss Wellington," he said.

"Yes, that is true," she replied, "but tell me truthfully. Did you seek employment here only because of my--of my interest in--I mean, because of the note I wrote, or did you come because my note put you in the way of obtaining a needed position?"

Armitage started to speak and then stopped short. "Oh," he said finally, "I really needed the position." The girl gazed at him a moment. Armitage, bending low, could see a patent leather pump protruding from the scalloped edge of her skirt, tapping the half-opened door of the tonneau.

"You will then pardon me," she said, "if I call to your mind the fact that you are now employed as driver of my car: I feel I have the right to ask you who you really are."

"Your mother--Mrs. Wellington, catechised me quite fully and I don't think I could add anything to what I told her."

"And what was that? I was not present during the inquisition," said the girl.

Armitage laughed.

"Why, I told her I was Jack McCall, that I came from Louisville, that I had trained the Navy eleven of 19--."

An exclamation from the girl interrupted him and he looked up. She was staring at him vacantly, as though ransacking the depths of memory.

"The Navy eleven of 19--," she said thoughtfully. Then she smiled. "McCall, you are so clever, really."

Armitage's eyes fell and he fumbled with the wrench.

"Thank you," he said, dubiously.

"Not at all, McCall," she said sweetly. "Listen," speaking rapidly, "I have always been crazy over football. Father was at Yale, '79, you know." She studied his face again, and then nodded. "When I was a girl, still in short dresses, father took a party of girls in Miss Ellis's school to Annapolis in his private car to see a Harvard-Navy game. A cousin of mine, Phil Disosway, was on the Harvard team. They were much heavier than Annapolis; but the score was very close, particularly because of the fine work of one of the Navy players who seemed to be in all parts of the field at once. I have forgotten his name,"--Miss Wellington gazed dreamily over the hills,--"but I can see him now, diving time after time into the interference and bringing down his man; catching punts and running--it was all such a hopeless fight, but such a brave, determined one." She shrugged her shoulders. "Really, I was quite carried away. As girls will, I--we, all of us--wove all sort of romantic theories concerning him. Toward the end of the game we could see him giving in under the strain and at last some coaches took him out. He walked tottering down the side lines past our stand, his face drawn and streaked with blood and dirt. I snapshotted that player. It was a good picture. I had it enlarged and have always kept it in my room. 'The Dying Gladiator,' I have called it. I wonder if you have any idea who that girlhood hero of mine was?"

"Was he a hero?" Armitage was bending over the carburetor. He waited a moment and then as Miss Wellington did not reply he added; "Now that you have placed me, I trust I shan't lose my position."

"I always knew I should see you again," said the girl as though she had not heard Armitage's banality. "I know now why I spoke to you on the General and why I wrote you that note in church." Her slipper beat an impatient tattoo on the door. "But why," she began, "why are you willing to enter service as a physical instructor, or motor car driver? I don't un--"

Armitage interrupted.

"Your mother asked me if I had been in college. I told her I had, but that I preferred not to say where, or why I left."

"Oh!" she said, and her eyes suffused with pity. "I am so sorry. But you must tell me one thing now. Was your leaving because of--of anything--that would make me sorry I had found--" she smiled, but looked at him eagerly--"the subject of the Dying Gladiator?"

"I hope not."

"You are not certain?"

"Miss Wellington, there are certain reasons why the position you helped me to obtain was vitally necessary. I am a dependant in your house. I can assure you that you will never find anything half so grievous against me as that which you have already found--your 'Dying Gladiator' a servant. You must think of that."

"But I am not so deluded as to think you cannot explain that" cried the girl. "How foolish! You are not a servant, never were, and I am sure never will be one. And I know you haven't sneaked in as a yellow newspaper reporter, or magazine writer," tentatively. "You are not a sneak."

"No, I have not the intention, nor the ability, to make copy of my experiences," said Armitage.

"Intention!" echoed the girl. "Well, since you suggest the word, just what was, or is, your intention then?--if I may ask."

Armitage straightened and looked full at the girl.

"Suppose I should say that ever since that morning on the General I had--" Armitage hesitated. "I reckon I'd rather not say that," he added.

"No, I reckon you had better not," she said placidly. "In the meantime, how long do you intend staying with us before giving notice?"

Armitage did not reply immediately. He stood for a moment in deep thought. When he looked up his face was serious.

"Miss Wellington, I have neither done nor said anything that would lead you to believe that, whatever I may have been, I am now in any way above what I appear to be, with the Wellington livery on my back. I say this in justice to you. I say it because I am grateful to you. You may regard it as a warning, if you will."

For a moment she did not reply, sitting rigidly thoughtful, while Armitage, abandoning all pretence at work, stood watching her.

"Very well," she said at length, and her voice was coldly conventional. "If you have finished your repairs, will you drive me to Mrs. Van Valkenberg's? Follow this road through; turn to your left, and I'll tell you when to stop."

Sara Van Valkenberg was one of the most popular of the younger matrons of Newport and New York. As Sara Malalieu, daughter of a prime old family, Billy Van Valkenberg had discovered her, and their wedding had been an event from which many good people in her native city dated things. Van Valkenberg was immensely wealthy and immensely wicked. Sara had not sounded the black depths of his character when he was killed in a drunken automobile ride two years before, but she had learned enough to appreciate the kindness of an intervening fate.

Now she lived in an Elizabethan cottage sequestered among the rocks a short distance inland from the Ocean Drive. She was very good to look at, very worldly wise, and very, very popular. She was thirty years old, an age not to be despised in a woman.

When Miss Wellington's car arrived at the cottage, Tommy Osgood's motor was in front of the door, which was but a few feet from the road. With an expression of annoyance, Anne ran up the steps and rang the bell. The footman was about to take her card when Mrs. Van Valkenberg's voice sounded from the library.

"Come in, Anne, we saw you coming."

Anne entered the apartment and found her friend reclining in all her supple ease, watching flushed-face Tommy, who had been attempting to summon his nerve to tell her how little he cared to continue his course through the world without her, which was just what she did not wish to have him do, because Tommy was a manly, likable, unassuming chap and had much yet to learn, being several years her junior.

"Oh, Tommy," said Anne, "I wanted to speak to Sara alone for a moment."

"Tommy was on his way to the polo field," said Mrs. Van Valkenberg, suggestively. "Now he need have no further excuse for being civil to an old lady."

"By George," said Tommy, "that's so, I must be on my way." And he went, not without some confusion.

Sara watched him through the window as he walked to his car.

"Poor, dear boy," she said. She turned to Anne with a bright smile. "What is it, dear?"

"Prince Koltsoff is with us, as you know. I think mother would be pleased if I married him. I don't know that I am not inclined to gratify her. I haven't talked to father yet."

"Then he has not told you about the Russian railroad thingamajigs he is gunning for?" asked Mrs. Van Valkenberg.

"Really!" Anne's eyes were very wide.

"Oh, I don't know anything about it," said Sara hastily. "Only--the men were speaking of it at the Van Antwerps', the other night. And how about Koltsoff?"

"His intentions are distressingly clear," said Anne.

Mrs. Van Valkenberg whistled.

"Congratulations," she said with an upward inflection. "You've no idea--"

"Oh, sh's'sh!" exclaimed Anne. "Don't try to be enthusiastic if you find it so difficult. Anyway, there will be nothing to justify enthusiasm if I can help it."

"Really!" Sara regarded the girl narrowly. "If you can help it! What do you mean?"

"I don't know exactly what I do mean," Anne laughed nervously. "He is so thrillingly dominant. He had not been in the house much more than thirty hours before he had lectured me on the narrowness of my life, indicated a more alluring future, kissed my hand, and reposed in me a trust upon which he said his future depended. And through all I have been as a school girl. He 's fascinating, Sara." She leaned forward and placed her hand upon her friend's knee. "Sara--now don't laugh, I'm serious--"

"I'm not going to laugh, dear; go on."

"Sara, you know the world. . . . I thought I did, don't you know. But I'm a child, a perfect simpleton. I said Prince Koltsoff was fascinating; I meant he fascinates me. He does really. Some time when he gets under full headway he is going to take me in his arms--that's the feeling; also that I shall let him, although the idea now fills me with dread."

"Why, Anne!"

"I know," continued the girl, "isn't it too absurd for words! But I am baring my soul. Do you marry a man because his eyes seem to draw you into them?--whose hand pressure seems to melt your will? Is that love?"

Sara regarded the girl for a few minutes without speaking. Then she lifted her brows.

"Is it love?" she said. "Ask yourself."

Anne shrugged her shoulders and grimaced helplessly.

"It might be, after all," she said. "I am sure I don't know."

"Yes, it might be," smiled Sara; "it's a question in which you must consider the personal equation. I am rather finicky about men who exude what seems to pass for love. They don't make good husbands. The best husband is the one who wins you, not takes you. For heaven's sake, Anne, when you marry, let your romance be clean, wholesome, natural; not a demonstration in psychic phenomena, to use a polite term."

Anne smiled.

"Oh, it isn't as bad as that. I--I--oh, I don't know what to say, Sara. His family, don't you know, are really high in Russia, and Koltsoff himself is close to the reigning family, as his father and grandfather were before him. It is rather exciting to think of the opportunity--" Anne paused and gazed at the older woman with feverish eyes. "And yet," she added, "I never before thought of things in this way. I have always been quite content that coronets and jewelled court gowns and kings and emperors and dukes and," she smiled, "princes, should fall to the lot of other women. I am afraid I have been too much of an American--in spite of mother--"

"Who really underneath is a better American than any of us," said Mrs. Van Valkenberg. She had arisen and was standing looking out of the window, toying with the silken fringe of the curtain. "There's hope for you, Anne. . . . Of course I shan't advise you. I couldn't, don't you know, not knowing Prince Koltsoff." She paused and gazed eagerly in the direction of Anne's car. Her lips framed an exclamation, but she checked it. "By-the-bye, Anne," she said, "I see you have a new driver."

Anne nodded absently.

"Yes. Mother employed him this morning as physical instructor to the boys and I commandeered him--I believe that's the word--because Rimini is in New York and Benoir tried to knock down a telegraph pole and is in the hospital."

"What a find!" observed Mrs. Van Valkenberg. "And yet how curious!" Suddenly she turned to the girl.

"Anne, I am going to be dreadful and you must be honest with me. You know you asked me to go to you the middle of the week to stay over the fête. May I come now--today? I cannot tell you why I ask now, but when I do you will be interested. May I? I know I am preposterous."

"Preposterous! How absurd! Certainly, you may. You will do nicely as a chaperon. Mother, I am afraid, is going to insist upon all the conventions. You must know how delighted I am." She kissed her enthusiastically. "We will expect you at dinner?" she said tentatively. "Or will you come with me now?" She thought a second. "I don't know whether I told you I was to take Prince Koltsoff motoring this afternoon--unchaperoned."

"Why, Anne, if you are going to bother about me that way, I'll withdraw my request. Please don't let me interfere in any way. I couldn't possibly go before late in the afternoon, in any event."

"That will be fine then," said Anne, holding out her hand. "Au revoir. I'll send the car for you after we return."

After she had gone, Mrs. Van Valkenberg stood watching the car until it disappeared, and then snatching her bright-eyed Pomeranian, she ran her fingers absently through his soft hair.

"How ridiculous," she said, "how absolutely ridiculous!"