He was wearing himself out. Those early excesses
exhausted his capacity for pleasure, and when we came to stay with him in
the last two weeks of July we found him apathetic about motoring.

But not about motor-cars. As far as the cars went he had developed into
an incurable motor-maniac. He was never tired of talking about
carburetters, and tyres, and petrol, and garages and gear. He dreamed of
these things at night. Every day he invented some extraordinary
contrivance for increasing speed and lessening friction. He knew all that
was to be known about the different kinds of cars; and he would roll
their names on his tongue--Panhard and Fiat and Daimler and Mercedes and
Rolls-Royce, as if the sound of them caressed him like music.

And the first car which he had mastered--it was a comparatively cheap
one, but it wouldn't be fair to say what kind it was, for the poor thing
had gone to pieces under his hand in six months; he had served her, his
chauffeur said, something cruel--that first car had been sold for a
hundred and fifty pounds, and Viola was mourning for it when we came down
in July.

We couldn't think why she mourned, for he had bought another. We supposed
that the new car had broken down, for we were met at Midhurst station by
the local cab proprietor. But we were very soon to know that nothing
had happened to the new car, and that something very serious indeed had
happened to Jimmy.

He had gone mad--you can only call it mad--over his new car.

As soon as we had tea we were taken to see it where it stood in the
coach-house that served as a garage.

It was a magpie car--the first, Jimmy told me, that had appeared down in
that part of the country--white, with black bonnet and black
splashboards, and black leather hood and cushions; so black that its
body, in the matchless purity of its whiteness, staggered you. Anybody,
Jevons said, could have an all-white car, and it wouldn't be noticed any
more than a common taxi-cab. But one magpie in a countless crowd of cars
annihilated all the rest. Lemon colour was good and so was scarlet; but
for effect--for sheer destruction to other automobilists--there was
nothing like a white car with black points. It was, Jimmy said and
Kendal, the chauffeur, said, a perfect car. From their tone you wondered
what you had ever done that you should be allowed to approach and see it
where it stood.

Where it stood, I say. You couldn't see that car doing anything else. It
stood l