T was a really beautiful July afternoon, and Guy Meredith simply bubbled with high spirits and with the milk of human kindness. He was twenty-five, heart-whole, and healthily good-looking; and he was trying out his new motor car. Could any combination of conditions on earth be more entirely satisfying? He was, in fact, supremely contented with himself, with the car, with the weather, with the world in which he so joyously lived. There not a single fly in his ointment, no rift within the sound lute of his being; if any of his dolls were stuffed with sawdust he did not know it.
If he had not been a constitutional optimist, he would have from the very hopefulness of his circumstances. One of the most disillusioning facts of life is that fate never makes us completely happy except as a prelude to a cataclysm; but such a notion would have seemed to Guy morbid and ungrateful—rank heresy to the unanalytical joy in life which thumped so cheerfully in his hardy veins.
The car, he decided, was a peach. It was a pity that he hadn't asked some other chap along. He felt no end of a hog to be having such a tiptop, corking time all by his lonesome. He had leisure to feel passing spasms of compassion for all the other people he met, because they hadn't his A-1, gilt-edged, superlative automobile—pleasant compassion, largely composed of boyish arrogance. But he would really have liked to share his pleasure; so far he was sincere
He looked hopefully along the high-road for some one he knew; but, of course, there wasn't any one. Why should there be? Most of his pals owned cars of sorts, or horses; and, this was not a beaten way that led to any country club; but a rustic, though well-kept byroad, with which he was quite unfamiliar.
Though he was close to the New York suburbs. it was still real country. It was a pretty road, winding along through sunny fields and sudden, dark-green patches of woodland, past sleepy old farmhouses and occasional garden-inclosed country The summer heat lay not too heavily on the pleasant, fertile land; the song of birds penetrated even the voice of his own motor; the warm smell of grass mounted to him through the fumes of the gasoline.
He fell to thinking of the girl he had seen at the garage while he was waiting for his car to be gotten ready. She was—of course!—different from the usual run of feminine creatures; daintier, yet subtly more daring. She had darting brown eyes with gold in them, and her hair was the same alluring mixture of shadow and sunshine. Her rose-colored automobile veil brought out the warm color of her lips.
They had chatted for a full minute with the frankness of healthy-minded young well-bred, people, and she had recommended this road to him as being “good going,” as well as pretty and romantic. She had left the garage before he did; and he had noticed that she knew how to run a machine like an old hand. A girl taking out a big Winton like that, all alone! The sporting quality of it appealed to him. He wished that he knew her name.
Further than this, he wished vaguely that he could have an adventure; not necessarily a sentimental one, or, if sentimental, only incidentally so. He wanted to be a knight-errant; the job looked easy, and always earned lots of credit. He thought of rescues from burning buildings, runaway horses, cruel relatives. A maiden in distress! That was it, a maiden in distress! There was something very taking in the idea of a maiden in distress.
The maidens he knew were mostly very well looked out for, thank you! Keen, sensible, happy young girls—they'd be a jolly sight more likely to get him out of a scrape than he them!
This depressed him. He slowed down the machine to the better accompany his subdued mood, while he ruminated, after the manner of healthy and fortunate lads in moments of introspection, upon his own monumental uselessness! A hulk! A hearty hulk! Six feet two of blooming carcass, eating its head off! His metaphors struck even his own uncritical sense. What was he good for? Football, and spending money. Oh, Lord! And running a car. Say, it was a pippin of a car, and no mistake!
The spell of humility was broken. He chuckled, and played with his new toy for quite half an hour, happily trying speed after speed. Then he whistled: “My Girl's a High-born Lady!” and looked about him.
He was running slowly, the indicator at about twenty. He had been experimenting with that odd, sensatory illusion which arises from a big shift in speed. To go from fifty miles an hour to thirty-five is to be convinced that you are crawling at a footpace. To drop from sixty to twenty is to experience the momentary delusion that you have stopped entirely.