Chauffeur

“ Instantly, as the wheels ceased to turn, a young man in the smartest livery imaginable, green garnished with gold, leaped smartly from the driver's seat, with military precision opened the door of the tonneau and, holding it, immobilised himself into the semblance of a waxwork image with the dispassionate eye, the firm mouth, and the closely razored, square jowls of the model chauffeur. ”

“ Somewhere a street car was bumping along its rails.
"Our only hope," said Harry. "Come along, Marjorie." 14
He handed the chauffeur five dollars as a poultice to his wounds, tucked the girl under one arm and the dog-basket under the other, and set out, calling back to the chauffeur:
"Good night!"
"Good night!" the girl called back.
"Good night!" the chauffeur echoed. He stood watching them with the tender gaze that even a chauffeur may feel for young love hastening to a honeymoon. ”

“ While he is sleeping peacefully a taxi-cab comes along at a smart pace, and, not observing the slumbering form of the roysterer, the chauffeur drives over him, cutting off both his legs. The shock awakes the man rudely, and he is surprised to find his lower limbs scattered across the roadway. ”

“ Since morning Count Bindo di Ferraris and myself had been on the road, coming up from Shrewsbury, and, tired out, I was anxious to get into the garage.
As chauffeur to a trio of perhaps the most expert “crooks” in Europe, my life was the reverse of uneventful. I was constantly going hither and thither, often on all-night journeys, and always moving rapidly from place to place, often selling the old car and buying a new one, and constantly on the look-out for police-traps of more than one variety. ”

“ An automobile chugging along at the rate of thirty miles an hour whirled around a bend in the road from the eastward and approached the youths, who halted and looked wonderingly at it. The youthful chauffeur bent over the steering wheel, and beside him sat a bearded, grim-looking man in middle life, with a big brass badge on his breast. ”

“ Breathing deeply, the spirit of the morning entered into the chauffeur’s veins as he watched a couple of fat robins enjoying a breakfast of elastic worms pulled from the moist earth. Lifting his voice in muffled 77 song, he ran the big car out of the garage, and, opening its bonnet, reclined on the radiator and lazily looked at the engine. ”

“ The possession of a motor car and the services of a chauffeur, though generally involving more financial outlay than a stable and coachman necessitated, somehow do not quite confer the reflected glory in which the employer of a coachman used to shine. Everybody has a motor and the very prevalence and numerousness of the chauffeur, capable and loyal soul though he be, necessarily detract from the distinction which the rarer coachman used to give. ”

“ The young chauffeur is panicky if he comes to a stop on a lonely road, where no human habitation is visible; he fears he may never get away, that no help will come; that he must abandon his machine and walk miles for assistance. The old chauffeur knows better. It matters not to him how lonely the road, how remote the spot, one or two plaintive blasts of the horn and, like mushrooms, human beings begin to spring up; whence they come is a mystery to you ”

“ Why shouldn't a chauffeur be picked out from among his fellows to do credit to a fine, sixty-horse-power blue motor-car? Besides, a young man who can't look rather handsome in a chauffeur's cap and neat leather coat and leggings might as well go and hang himself. ”

“ I'm driving a taxi."
"Isn't it awfully—risky?"
"You'd think so; but it isn't. Few people ever bother to look at a chauffeur. When they hail a taxi they're in a hurry, as a rule—preoccupied with business or pleasure. And then our uniforms are a disguise in themselves: to the public eye we look like so many Chinamen!"
"But you're mistaken: I knew you instantly, didn't I? And those others—they're as keen-witted as I—certainly. Oh, you should not have stopped on in Paris!" ”

“ The chauffeur, a spare, short young man, punctiliously buttoned up in a long dark green, white-faced livery overcoat, a cap with a white-glazed peak shading a lean, brickdust-coloured face, with ugly, honest eyes that are familiar to the reader, cocked one of the eyes inquiringly at his employer, and receiving a sign implying that his services would not be required for some space of time to come, pulled up the lever, moved on, and turned down the side-street where were the entrance-gates of the stable-yard that had been turned into a garage. ”

“ In what seemed to them scarcely a second of time they had stopped before a very pretty, homelike house, and a polite chauffeur was holding the door of the cab open for them.
Still feeling as if it were all happening in a dream, they crossed the sidewalk and ran up the steps of the house. ”

“ He has forgotten the boast in his advertisement perhaps, or he's trying to live up to it as well as he can when his chauffeur isn't available.
We stopped so long at the Certosa that the sun had gone far down the west as we walked through the beautiful, strange gateway to the roadside resting-place of our car.
Where crowds come from in the country is as mysterious as where pins and hairpins go to; but anyhow, there was a wide ring of people round the automobile, in which our hired caretaker sat gazing condescendingly on the throng. ”

“ Never believe you have got money enough with you when you start. Whatever you think will be right, be sure you will want exactly twice as much.
No. 2. Never suppose you have plenty of time, or plenty of room for your luggage. Never get up in the morning at the time your chauffeur (not Mr. Barrymore, but others) tells you he will have the car ready. Do not leave your bed till the automobile is under your window, and do not pack the things you have used for the night until the chauffeur has started your motor for the third time. ”

“ The car that was to take them to the station was drawn up close to the spot, and the chauffeur stood beside it.
“Your mother says fer you to hurry, Mister Jefferson,” he called in a sepulchral tone. “They’re coming out around the block to watch. Get in as quick as you can.”
The burly chauffeur stood below Gordon, helped him to alight on his feet from the fire-escape, and hustled him into the darkness of the conveyance. ”

“ As an able chauffeur, the master of a good machine, and the ex-leader of the Lincoln Highway procession for a certain distance, how was a man like Speed to take a rebuff like this? Why, as all good and true chauffeurs should, by increasing his own speed and trailing them so close and making such a row that they would have to give way. ”

“ And how consoling is the disdainful glance of the chauffeur who, having a fare, is hailed by the unfortunate, desperate pedestrian that has a pressing engagement at the other end of town.
If one of them ever shows signs of slowing up, it is immediately pounced upon and surrounded by ten or a dozen damp human beings. ”

“ You don’t want me to start in that line, do you?”
“No,” with an irrepressible smile; “I want you to become a chauffeur!”
“A chauffeur!” he repeated, subsiding into an adjacent arm-chair; “but why?”
“But why not?”
“Well, of course, I used to drive a car—and yes—your idea isn’t half bad; a chauffeur gets about the world for nothing, has fair pay, and, by all accounts, bar washing the car, a fairly good time.”
“You need not be thinking of a good time, Owen ”

“ Hotels, however, are very lenient in the matter of the appearance of guests, because of all the begrimed-looking tramps, our “chauffeur” after driving ten hours or so in the sifting dust is the grimiest. The only reason why he is not taken for a professional driver is because no one would hire anyone so disreputable-looking.
In one hotel, though, a grimy working mechanic having gone up in the elevator and a strange, perfectly well turned out person having come down, the confused clerk asked where the chauffeur went and did the new gentleman want a room? ”

“ If your chauffeur tells you that your car will be ready in an hour, it will be three, if not four; if he says that you can start on again that afternoon, it will be to-morrow before lunch.
No. 7. Put not your trust in Princes, nor in the motor-cars of [Pg 157] Princes.
No. 8. Cultivate your bump of presence of mind, and the automobile will see that you have plenty of other bumps.
We hadn't got half to the end of the rules we had thought of, when things began to happen. The road, which had been splendid all the way to Asti and beyond, seemed suddenly to weary of virtue and turn eagerly to vice. ”

“ In relaying the order to the chauffeur the maid volunteered the interesting information that she had left the Judge swallowing his breakfast with unprecedented haste, and that the newspaper had not been unfolded. The chauffeur, having designs of a serious nature upon her, was obliged to conceal his natural repugnance to haste, disassociated from a motor: but he consoled himself with the other part of her message. It was not unpleasant to discover in the lady of one's choice such evidence of keen perception. ”

“ Then, a couple of score of paces beyond Carrington's, the motor stopped altogether, drawn up to the curb, and the chauffeur, looking over his shoulders, shook his head and announced dismally:
“Somethin's wrong, Miss Alice. Better light out. I'll phone a taxi to come get you and I'll have somebody come tow me in to a garage. Gear's got a tooth broke off, from the sound of it.” ”

“ The old-time coachman possessed a certain fluent jargon, which enabled him to chide or encourage his horses and exchange suitable comments with the drivers of brewers' drays and market carts, but the modern chauffeur is all an ear for the rhythm of machinery, all an eye for the nice calculation of the hazards of the road fifty yards ahead. ”

“ When I was dismissed from the Presence, I ran to Lady Kilmarny with my story, and she agreed with me that the thing to dread most in the whole situation was the chauffeur.
"Of course he'll naturally consider himself on an equality with you," she said, "and you'll have to eat with him at hotels, and all that. Once, when my husband and I were touring in France, and used to break down near little inns, we were obliged to have a chauffeur at the same table with us, because there was only one long one (table, I mean, not chauffeur) and we couldn't spare time to let him wait till we'd finished. ”

“ A show fer w’at?”
“A chauffeur, Ephy, is a man who drives an automobile.”
“One o’ dem fellers dat sets up in de front seat en turns de steerin’ apparatus?”
“Exactly. How would you like to do that?”
“I ain’t nebber monkeyed round dem gasoline contraptions none, but I reckon I’d like tuh do w’at yo’ say, Miss Aurory—yas’m; I jes’ reckon I would.”
“Well, Gerald is coming over some time to-day to show you and Jim a few things about the car. You will take turns playing chauffeur on our camping trip, and he wants to give you a lesson every day until we leave.” ”

“ Barrymore, laughing, and giving a glance back over his shoulder for Maida and Sir Ralph, as he stopped the car in front of a machinist's place. "Here we are, Joseph," he called to the Prince's chauffeur, who was steering the broken car. "Now, how soon do you expect to finish your job?"
"With proper tools, it should be no more than an hour's work," said Joseph, jumping down. ”

“ But if there is a second man to assist the chauffeur, who accompanies him on every trip as a motor footman, he should descend and stand at attention while the mistress emerges from the car.
The footman dresses like the chauffeur. He leaves cards when the mistress makes her social calls, and he rings house bells for her. He is also expected to be useful in performing personal service for the masculine members of the household.
Very often it happens that a tourist, instead of hiring a car and chauffeur when he reaches a strange country, desires to take his own car and chauffeur with him. ”

“ There is both sport and pleasure to be had from such an itinerary as this, but it is a serious affair, for one has to have a lookout for many things that are unthought of in a two hours' afternoon suburban promenade. The chauffeur, be he professional or amateur, who brings his automobile back from the Circuit Européen under its own power is entitled to be called expert. ”

“ If you are one of those lucky people whose motor is not numbered (as mine is) 19 or 11 or 22, it does not really matter where your host for the evening prefers to live; Bayswater or Battersea or Blackheath--it is all the same to your chauffeur. But for those of us who have to fight for bus or train or taxicab, it is different. We have to say to ourselves, “Is it worth it?” ”

“ Anne saw the chauffeur's shoulders shrug angrily, and it amused her.
"Cut through here and drive toward the Training Station," she commanded, "and we 'll think about seven o'clock, McCall."
Sara, who had been vigorously nodding and screwing up her eyes at Armitage's back, laughed musically.
"Anne," she said, "your chauffeur is badly trained as to manners. Really, he suggests a man graduated from the Fifth Avenue buses, don't you know."
"You must make allowances, Sara; he's only an improvised chauffeur."
"I know; but he 's hardly of the chauffeur type. ”

“ Only the chauffeur was aware of a woman running down the hillside at an angle, to intercept the car several hundred yards from the mouth of the pass. As it drew near the spot where she paused the head of the pursuing party swept into the mouth of the ravine. ”

“ With the body of the car again the dwelling-place of darkness, objects beyond its rain-gemmed glass—the heads of the Chinese maid and chauffeur, the twin piers of the nearing gateway—attained dense relief against the blue-white glare of two broad headlight beams, that of the limousine boring through the gateway to intersect at right angles that of another car approaching on the highroad but as yet hidden by the wall of the park. ”